The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection

Written by: Genevieve Hammang

Edited by: Michelle Sosa and Adina Vega

From Balthasar Bekker’s The World Bewitch’d, 1695.

How you feel about witchcraft has a lot to do with how you grow up. In most of the United States, “witch” is a word that comes up mostly in stories, around Halloween, or in the advertising campaign for the movie adaptation of a blockbuster musical. You may even know someone who practices Wicca or paganism. But for some – especially in certain religious circles – witchcraft is and has been a serious concern. So serious that it has a long history as a crime worthy of the death sentence and as a political tool to remove marginalized people.

It is this history that the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection is concerned with: the legal, social, and religious persecution of witchcraft in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Part of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, the Witchcraft Collection includes over 3,000 titles documenting the history of witch hunting trials. Most of these were collected during the 1880s through Cornell University’s first president Andrew Dickson White and his first librarian, George Lincoln Burr; however, other additions have been made over the years. By focusing on the legal history of witchcraft as theological and religious heresy, this collection is a testament to both the function of the Christian as a governing body from the 14th to 19th centuries and its capacity for violent injustice. 

Illustration from ‘Newes from Scotland’, a 1591 pamphlet reporting on the North Berwick witch trials of 1590.

The collection encompasses a wide range of documents such as early texts on the theory of witchcraft as heresy, including 14 Latin editions of the Malleus Maleficarum, the Church’s codified text on witchcraft; defining texts on demonology, like Jean Bodin’s De la démonomanie des sorciers; court records of witch trials, including the original depositions taken from victims; and the remarkably small number of works opposing witch hunts, such as those by the first German theologian to speak out against them, Cornelius Loos, as well as the minutes from a witchcraft trial of judge and rector Dietrich Flade, who openly spoke out against the injustice of said trials. Among the more modern additions are posters for films featuring witchcraft, newsletters for active Wiccan and Pagan communities, and featured student papers from a long-running class on the Salem witch trials of 1692 to 1693 (which was purposefully designed to use the Witchcraft Collection to its fullest capacity). Although these modern additions are often more anthropological, the majority of the collection is focused on an unfortunately rich and bloody history of religious persecution.

German poster for the 1958 Bell, Book, and Candle, featured in the Witchcraft and possession-related movie posters, lobby cards, and other cinema memorabilia of the Witchcraft Collection.

Cornell University Library’s overview of the collection does not directly state why it was created or continues to exist. However, the witch trials in the United States killed hundreds of people; the witch trials in Europe killed between 30 and 60 thousand people. Thus, the Witchcraft Collection serves as a reminder of the lives lost and as an archive of the political and religious justifications used for those deaths. Considering how commonly the term “witch hunt” is still used in politics today to describe perceived persecution – whether accurately or not – this history deserves ongoing and honest study.

While most of the collection can only be seen in person, 104 of the English language books are accessible online through the Digital Witchcraft Collection. Take a look and see the history for yourself.