Nicolas Rémy (1530–1616)

It's hard to know how to rate this book, because I certainly wouldn't want anyone to think I agreed with anything inside. It is a curiosity, a remnant of the European witch trials, written 4 centuries ago by a French witchcraft judge who sent many women, and some men, to their death for an imagined crime, using evidence that no court of law would possibly accept today. This book is a rare look inside the mind of a true believer, and demonstrates just how little actual evidence was required to convict someone of a capital crime. The most frightening thing, to me, was the forward and footnotes written in 1929 that demonstrated how very close we still are to this sort of thinking.… (meer)