The archives of the ancient Duchy of Lorraine contain an exceptionally rich set of witchcraft trials, with full documentation surviving for about 400 cases. This probably represents around 20% of all the trials that took place within the Duchy proper between approximately 1570 and 1632. For the purposes of my research on witchcraft in Lorraine I have made abstracts of all these trials, which now form the core of this website. The first aim is to provide backup for my book The Witches of Lorraine (Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-822582-2); even in that long monograph it was not possible to include many fascinating details from the trials, while I am also very willing for others to test my conclusions against this evidence. This also applies to their extensive use in my earlier book Witches & Neighbours: The Social and Culural Context of European Witchcraft (2nd ed. Blackwells, Oxford, 2002, ISBN 0-631-23325-3 (hbk), 0-631-23326-1 (pbk). The other main purpose of the site is to place these materials within the public domain, to be used by other scholars carrying out independent research and to be available for teaching purposes.
Website: http://witchcraft.history.ox.ac.uk/
