Dr Debora Moretti

The Making of the Witch: Fear, Power, and Persecution.

Far from simple superstition, the European witch hunts were born from a powerful and dangerous idea: the reinvention of the witch as a servant of Satan. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, this shift transformed fear into doctrine—and suspicion into a justification for mass persecution. This talk will address how religious belief, social anxiety, and deep-rooted inequalities combined to create the terrifying image of the demonic witch. In doing so, it uncovers how an idea took hold, spread across Europe, and ultimately helped unleash one of the most brutal waves of repression in history—showing how belief itself can become a weapon.

Dr Debora Moretti

is a social historian and archaeologist specialising in the history of magic and witchcraft from the medieval to early modern periods and beyond. She is a Researcher at the University of Hertfordshire on theAlternative Healers project.Her research broadly explores the history of beliefs in witchcraft and magic practices, as well as the intersections of witchcraft, magic, folk medicine, and material culture, with a particular focus on how European societies understood illness, healing, and the supernatural.Debora has published extensively in Italian and English, including, most recently, contributions to the Bloomsbury A Cultural History of Magic series, and has co-authored two archaeological monographs. She regularly presents at international conferences and is the organiser of the annual York Magic and Witchcraft Conference series. Debora is also an experienced public speaker, sharing the history of witchcraft and magic with wider audiences. She is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Scientific and Organising Committee of the Laboratorio Giuseppe Bonomo, a research centre dedicated to the study of magic and witchcraft.

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