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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nFrom Balthasar Bekker\u2019s The World Bewitch\u2019d<\/em>, 1695.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n How you feel about witchcraft has a lot to do with how you grow up. In most of the United States, \u201cwitch\u201d 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 \u2013 especially in certain religious circles \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is this history that the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection<\/a> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Illustration from \u2018Newes from Scotland\u2019, a 1591 pamphlet reporting on the North Berwick witch trials of 1590.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s codified text on witchcraft; defining texts on demonology, like Jean Bodin\u2019s De la d\u00e9monomanie 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<\/a>, 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<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ischoolgroups.sjsu.edu\/slasc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-2.58.42\u202fPM-684x550.png\")
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