The highly-acclaimed first edition of this book chronicled the rise and fall of witchcraft in Europe between the twelfth and the end of the seventeenth centuries. Now greatly expanded, the classic anthology of contemporary texts reexamines the phenomenon of witchcraft, taking into account the remarkable scholarship since the book's publication almost thirty years ago.

Spanning the period from 400 to 1700, the second edition of Witchcraft in Europe assembles nearly twice as many primary documents as the first, many newly translated, along with new illustrations that trace the development of witch-beliefs from late Mediterranean antiquity through the Enlightenment. Trial records, inquisitors' reports, eyewitness statements, and witches' confessions, along with striking contemporary illustrations depicting the career of the Devil and his works, testify to the hundreds of years of terror that enslaved an entire continent.

Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, and other thinkers are quoted at length in order to determine the intellectual, perceptual, and legal processes by which "folklore" was transformed into systematic demonology and persecution. Together with explanatory notes, introductory essays--which have been revised to reflect current research--and a new bibliography, the documents gathered in Witchcraft in Europe vividly illumine the dark side of the European mind.

This collection of source documents is, in my opinion, the best available for the study of European witchcraft persecutions. The documents included are specifically edited to highlight relevant sections. I find this extremely valuable; I'm not always up to searching through the writings of Acquinas to find a particular passage.

This expanded, second edition provides even more of what I've grown to rely upon: a coherent collection of source documents tracing the development of witchcraft in medieval psychology, through the "witchcraze" in early modern Europe, and concluding with the skepticism developing in the 17th Century.

If I'm ever stranded on a desert island, I hope I remembered to bring this book with me.