A Discovery of Witches: Sorcery, Courtly Love, Heresy, and the Divine in the Middle Ages

Abstract

The modern recounting of witch trials tend to focus on the implausibility of the supernatural. This disdain for witchcraft as a concept has seeped through the documentation of its history. Whether through the soaring heights of courtly love or the crashing lows of demonic pacts, women were substituted for the divine often within the ambient magical worldview of the Middle Ages. The revilement of witches was not primarily due to their employment of magic, but for the transgressive sexuality which treatises associated with their practice and the innately harmful nature of maleficium. Through historiographical documentation of the study of witchcraft and its stages, combined with analysis of the ambient magical worldview of the middle ages, this research highlights the ways in which religious fervor and the exoticism of mystic traditions has impacted our knowledge of witchcraft on every level and argues for the place of the witch in serious studies of Medieval and Renaissance history.