| The earliest mass witch hunts in Europe took place in the Alpine region during the first half of the fifteenth century. The examination of these persecutions, as well as the pattern of witchcraft prosecution that developed in the century which followed, is of crucial importance not only to understanding later witchcraft persecutions but also to the study of the social and legal transformations of the late Middle Ages. Whereas previous studies of fifteenth-century witchcraft prosecution have focused on connections between early witch trials and contemporaneous demonological treatments of witchcraft, this dissertation places those trials in an entirely new light. Using city council proceedings, expense records, and remnants of case documentation, I have examined witch trials in Basel, Lucerne, and Nuremberg alongside other legal proceedings. In so doing, I have found that patterns in witchcraft prosecution ran parallel to the prosecution of other capital crimes. Also, an unusually intense interest on the part of the Lucerne city council in social control coincided with clusters of witch trials there, and in both Basel and Lucerne the persecution of women for witchcraft was closely paralleled by a persecution of men for sodomy. Where local jurists and lay judges developed skepticism toward extreme abuses of torture, this was reflected in their treatment of all suspected criminals, including witches; conversely, where torture was given the upper hand, the effects of this policy were as severe for suspected thieves as for suspected witches. Far from being extraordinary, the crime of witchcraft was deeply rooted in local beliefs and its treatment before secular courts was an integral part of ordinary judicial proceedings. |
