Magic and Witchcraft

Dr. Sharon Wright and Dr. Frank Klaassen

Despite popular representations of witches, real female magic practitioners, commonly known as cunning women, were rarely accused of witchcraft. In fact, such practitioners were commonly understood as protections from witchcraft, and if scholarly estimates are correct, hundreds of thousands offered their magic services at any given time in pre-modern Europe.

Yet in comparison to the hundreds of monographs on the witch trials, not a single credible academic book deals with the female magic practitioner of pre-modern Europe. In addition, while a good deal is known about the unusual hot spots of the witch trials, such as South-Western Germany where the overwhelming majority of the executions took place, very little is known about the regulation of magic practice in most of Europe where such trials and executions were rare or non-existent.

Klaassen and Wright’s research seeks to correct this situation with a close study of late medieval ecclesiastical courts in England, focussed studies of known female practitioners, and a broad-based comparative survey of female practitioners in Western and Central Europe.

Sharon Wright is Professor of History at St Thomas More College. Frank Klaassen is Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan.