Witches and Neighbours

Robin Briggs is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford where he has worked since his election as Prize Fellow in 1964. He was educated at Felsted School and Balliol College, Oxford and he is the author of The Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (1970), Early Modern France (2nd Edition 1998), and Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (1989).

Maps ix

Preface to the Second Edition xiv

Preface to the First Edition xv

Introduction 1

1 Myths of the Perfect Witch 12

2 The Experience of Bewitchment 51

3 Supernatural Power and Magical Remedies 82

4 The Projection of Evil 115

5 Witch-Finders and Witch Cures 146

6 Love and Hatred: Spouses and Kin 191

7 Men against Women: The Gendering of Witchcraft 224

8 The Age of Iron 250

9 The Web of Power 276

10 Internal and External Worlds 321

Conclusion 343

Notes 357

Further Reading 377

Additional Bibliography 386

Index 390