Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/Arts and Humanities Research Council
project duration: February 1 2026 – March 31 2029
In collaboration with: Prof. Dr. Alison Rowlands, Essex University https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/ROWLA29503/Alison-Rowlands
Doctoral researcher : Katharina Welker, M.A./ MEd
 

The project explores for the first time the multilateral exchange of ideas about witchcraft, magic and the Devil between early modern England and the Holy Roman Empire. It uses a new ‘witchcraft politics’ model to inter alia compare the regional intensity of witch-trials.

The project will close a longstanding gap in the field of historical research into witchcraft and witch-trials using a new trans-cultural and comparative approach to the subject. Until well into the late-20^th century the historiography of English witchcraft suggested the myth of ‘English’ exceptionalism compared to witch-trials and beliefs in ‘continental Europe’. These ways of thinking were based not just on England’s island geography and sense of identity but also on England’s post-Reformation development into an allegedly homogenous Protestant nation state. This separation between England and ‘continental Europe’ has hitherto hindered historians from gaining a more in-depth understanding of the phenomena of magic, sorcery, witchcraft, and demonic possession. The project is based on two key theses. First, we argue that the fact that Great Britain and Ireland are islands did not seal them off from the rest of Europe; the seas around them, their ports and coastlines functioned rather as sites of transfers of people, things, and ideas, effecting the dissemination and exchange of ideas about the devil, witchcraft and magic as well as about religious change. Second, we argue that comparisons based on modern ‘national’ cartographic boundaries are of limited value for the early modern period. Instead, England and the Holy Roman Empire will be approached as areas of political, judicial, and confessional diversity, with different levels of social, political, and judicial activity (and key actors) operating within and across regions in both polities. The project will establish the key channels through which ideas about witchcraft, witch-trials, and the devil were transmitted within and between England and the HRE, to establish a dynamic sense of how important such cultural exchanges were for the wider developments in European demonological thinking that encouraged early modern actors to instigate or restrain witch-trials. We will undertake the first systematic comparison of the witch-trials and beliefs about witches and devils across the two polities to establish their similarities and differences, using a new model of Hexenpolitik (witchcraft politics).