This session focuses on perceptions of witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period of the most intensive witch-hunting in European history. The objective is to analyze and compare different perspectives-clerical and lay, learned and unlearned, orthodox and dissenting-and to explore the ways in which such perspectives were consistent with prevailing religious, scientific, and philosophical world-views.

You should come prepared to discuss two sixteenth-century English texts.

The first text, The Examination and Confession of Certain Witches, is a pamphlet that purports to be a verbatim account of the trial of three alleged witches, who were found guilty by a jury and condemned to death in 1566 in the town of Chelmsford, Essex. The excerpts below are taken from the testimony of the three women accused of witchcraft; they reveal the defendants' beliefs about witchcraft and their interpretation of events. Preceding the account of the trial is a preface and exhortation written by John Phillips, who presents in verse some lessons to be drawn from the trial. The spelling in the text has been modernized.

The second text, George Gifford's Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes, is a fictional account of the perspectives of five people in a sixteenth-century Essex village. Four of the characters appear in the excerpt below: Daniel, a godly traveler holding Puritan views; Samuel and his wife, a couple recently plagued by witchcraft; and M.B., the schoolmaster and local intellectual. George Gifford was himself a Puritan, one who was noted for his acute insight into popular culture. The dialog presents very different perspectives on witchcraft, including Daniel's nuanced perspective, which may come as a surprise to those who, raised on popular images of the Salem witch hunts, equate Puritanism with irrational, unthinking witch-hunting. For the sake of variety, the original spelling has been preserved in this text.