The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief, and: Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry, and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe, and: Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe, and: Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in Modern Europe, and: Doctors, Folk Medicine, and the Inquisition: The Repression of Magical Healing in Portugal during the Enlightenment, and: English Witchcraft, 1560-1736 (review)

There has been a large amount of scholarship on witchcraft in recent years. The books reviewed here represent only a small portion of this work, but they all address issues of particular interest to folklorists. They exemplify evolving trends in the study of witchcraft, including the increased attention given to folk cultural contexts and narratives and the greater awareness that is being afforded to witchcraft in European folk culture after the witchcraft trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Hans Peter Broedel's The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft is an introduction to the best known of the European witchcraft manuals, Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (The hammer of the witches). Those folklorists and historians who have encountered it know that the Malleus, first published in 1847, is a curious blend of theology and folk belief, but until now no one has written a full-length study of the book in English. Broedel's work thus fills an important gap.

Broedel accurately characterizes the Malleus as "an idiosyncratic text, reflective of its authors' particular experiences and preoccupations" (p. 10). Institoris and Sprenger were Dominican inquisitors, and Broedel informs us that their book is "the product of two lifetimes of academic and pastoral experience within the church. But more than this, it is also the result of a peculiarly Dominican encounter between learned and folk traditions" (p. 16). Broedel proposes that Institoris was the principal author of the Malleus, noting that it seems to reflect his beliefs and experiences better than those of Sprenger. Indeed, Broedel suggests that "beyond lending the work the prestige of his name, Sprenger's contribution was minimal" (p. 19). Institoris was himself "a well-educated man," but he was, Broedel argues, also "belligerent, self-righteous, uncompromising, and rather credulous in his attitudes and beliefs" (p. 11), attitudes that show up conspicuously in the Malleus.

The first two chapters of Broedel's book examine the category of witchcraft in medieval and early modern Europe, as well as the social and intellectual backgrounds of Institoris and Sprenger. Though many readers have found the Malleus to be a very strange work, Broedel shows that its arguments and style are well grounded in the theology and concerns of its time. He illustrates how Institoris uses a question-and-answer format to build up his argument about the prevalence of witches and the necessity of action against them. In the following chapters, Broedel looks at the...