Scrutinizing the Devil’s Plots: Magic, Witchcraft, and Inquisitions (XIV-XX century)

This volume revisits one of early modern Europe’s most emblematic episodes of witch-hunting – the trials held between 1587 and 1589 in Liguria – and situates it within the broader history of repression, belief, and judicial culture across the Alpine region and the Latin Christian world. Grounded on original archival research and comparative perspectives, it explores how the Inquisitions confronted and conceptualised witchcraft from the late Middle Ages onwards. The volume investigates demonological thought, inquisitorial procedure, and the circulation of ideas and fears across Western Europe and its colonial frontiers. Particular attention is devoted to the evolution of legal, theological, and literary discourses on witchcraft, as well as the entanglements of gender and confession. The essays further examine the transformations of magical belief within broader processes of state formation, evangelisation, and cultural exchange.