Michael Ostling

I attempt a close interpretation of a small group of witchcraft trials by examining their intersection with two other sorts of discourse: elite demonology and popular folklore. I want to discover how witchcraft was imagined at all three levels, and how judges and their victims related it to other categories: Christianity, "superstition," the nature and character of demons. Throughout, my primary loyalty is to the victims of the Polish witchcraft trials; to reconstruct their worldviews with neither hagiography nor condemnation is a kind of memorial work.