Witchcraft

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss witchcraft in Reformation Europe. In 1486 a book was published in Latin, it was called Maleus Mallificarum and it very soon outsold every publication in Europe bar the Bible. It was written by Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican Priest and a witchfinder. “Magicians, who are commonly called witches” he wrote, “are thus termed on account of the magnitude of their evil deeds. These are they who by the permission of God disturb the elements, who drive to distraction the minds of men, such as have lost their trust in God, and by the terrible power of their evil spells, without any actual draught or poison, kill human beings.”“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” says Exodus, and in the period of the Reformation and after, over a hundred thousand men and women in Europe met their deaths after being convicted of witchcraft.Why did practices that had been tolerated for centuries suddenly become such a threat? What brought the prosecutions of witchcraft to an end, and was there anything ever in Europe that could be truly termed as a witch?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Alison Rowlands 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in European History at the University of Essex
• Lyndal Roper No other episodes
  Fellow and Tutor in History at Balliol College, University of Oxford
• Malcolm Gaskill No other episodes
  Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Churchill College, Cambridge

Related episodes

• The Salem Witch Trials
  
  26 Nov, 2015 970 History of North America
• Catharism
  
  17 Jan, 2002 270 History of Christianity
• Rudolph II
  
  31 Jan, 2008 940 History of Europe
• Renaissance Magic
  
  17 Jun, 2004 130 Parapsychology and occultism
• The Siege of Munster
  
  5 Nov, 2009 270 History of Christianity
• The Thirty Years War
  
  6 Dec, 2018 940 History of Europe
• The Diet of Worms
  
  12 Oct, 2006 270 History of Christianity
• Wyclif and the Lollards
  
  16 Jun, 2011 270 History of Christianity
• The Druids
  
  20 Sep, 2012 290 Other religions
• The Spanish Inquisition
  
  22 Jun, 2006 940 History of Europe
• Marlowe
  
  7 Jul, 2005 820 English and Old English literatures
• Calvinism
  
  25 Feb, 2010 230 Christianity
• Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
  
  2 Jun, 2016 270 History of Christianity
• Baltic Crusades
  
  24 Nov, 2016 940 History of Europe
• Bohemia
  
  11 Apr, 2002 940 History of Europe
• Seventeenth Century Print Culture
  
  26 Jan, 2006 000 Computer science, knowledge and systems
• The Book of Common Prayer
  
  17 Oct, 2013 200 Religion
• Merlin
  
  30 Jun, 2005 390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
• The Schism
  
  16 Oct, 2003 270 History of Christianity
• The Medieval University
  
  17 Mar, 2011 370 Education

---

Programme ID: p004y2b0

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y2b0

Auto-category: 133.4 (Witchcraft and magic)