HIST 4000 - Senior Seminar - Witchcraft and Witch Hunting

Part of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell’s Witchcraft Collection contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft, primarily in Europe.

The majority of the Witchcraft Collection was acquired in the 1880s through the collaborative efforts of Andrew Dickson White, Cornell’s first President, and his first librarian, George Lincoln Burr. The collection documents the earliest and the latest manifestations of the belief in witchcraft as well as its geographical boundaries, and elaborates this history with works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives. The collection focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy.

It features many early texts from the period when the theory of the heresy of witchcraft was being formulated, including fourteen Latin editions of the Malleus maleficarum, which codified church dogma on heresy. Four of these Latin editions were printed in the fifteenth-century, most notably the scarce first edition printed before April 14, 1487. The collection also contains other defining texts of the doctrinal discussion of demonology, such as Jean Bodin’s De la Demonmanie des sorciers (1580), Nicolas Remi’s Daemonlatreiae (1595), Henri Boguet’s Discours des sorciers(1602) and Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de I’inconstance des mauvais anges (1612).

"All Considered according to the Scriptures, History, Experience, and the Judgment of may Learned men. By Increase Mather,
President of Harvard Colledge at Cambridge, and Teacher of a Church at Boston in New-England." --- Increase Mather / University of Virginia

"A Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery, and Witchcraft Vol. II, Sorcery, and Witchcraft; Containing, I. The Trials of Several Witches at Salem in New-England. II. A Narrative of many Surprising and Amazing Sorceries, and Witchcrafts practised in Scotland. With the Learned Arguments of lawyers on both sides, at the Tryals of Seven Witches and the Remarkable Passages which happen'd at their Execution. III. The Surrey Demoniack. With all the Testimonies and Information Taken upon Oath relating thereunto. Volume II." --- Richard Boulton / Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection

Final notes on witchcraft in Massachusetts: a summary vindication of the laws and liberties concerning attainders with corruption of blood, escheats, forfeitures for crime, and pardon of offenders, in reply to "Reasons," etc., of Hon. Abner C. Goodell, jr

"Further Notes on the History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts, Containing Additional Evidence of the Passage of the Act of 1711, for Reversing the Attainders of the Witches; also, Affirming the Legality of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer of 1692: with a Heliotype Plate of the Act of 1711, as Printed in 1713, and an Appendix of Documents, etc. By Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr. Reprinted, with Slight Alterations, from the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society." --- Abner Cheney Goodell

"By John Hale, Pastor of the Church of Christ in Beverley Anno Domini 1697, Boston in N. E.
Printed By B. Green and J. Allen, for Benjamin Elliot under the Town House, 1702." --- John Hale / University of Viriginia

A Brief and True Narrative, by Deodat Lawson, 1692 *** Letter of Thomas Brattle, F. R. S., 1692 *** Letters of Governor Phips to the Home Government, 1692-1693 *** From “The Wonders Of The Invisible World,” by Cotton Mather, 1693 *** From “More Wonders of the Invisible World,” by Robert Calef, 1700 *** A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, By John Hale, 1702

"Notes on the History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts; with Illustrative Documents. From Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the American Antiquarian Society, October 21, 1882. By George H. Moore." --- Cornell University

"Some Miscellany Observations On our present Debates respecting Witchcrafts, in a Dialogue Between S. & B. By P. E. and J. A. Philadelphia, Printed by William Bradford, for Hezekiah Usher. 1692." --- Massachusetts Historical Society

"The Witchcraft Delusion of 1692 by Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, From an Unpublished Manuscript (An Early Draft of his History of Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Archives, With Notes by William Frederick Poole." --- Cornell University