Witch hunts are the products of intense fear and paranoia and the results are often terrible. The accused in three famous witchcraft cases - in Bamberg and Wurzburg, Germany, in Loudun, France, and in Salem, Massachusetts - were assumed to be guilty without proof. Secret accusations were accepted, evidence was falsified, and extreme pressures, including torture, were used. Arguing that fear was, and still is, a prerequisite to any witch hunt, Robert Rapley shows that the current hunt for terrorists mirrors the witch crazes of the past. Rapley analyses witch hunts in the sixteenth and...

An extraordinary tale of passion, intrigue, and revenge, A Case of Witchcraft is the true story of Urbain Grandier, a seventeenth-century priest who was accused and found guilty of sorcery. Although popularised by Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, the story has never been told in its entirety. Robert Rapley provides a compelling new interpretation of the case, revealing startling evidence of a secret conspiracy to destroy the priest that went as high as Louis XIII. As a Catholic priest, Grandier was an influential figure in the Loudun community and local government. A brilliant speaker,...