IAS Book Launch: Early Modern French Witchcraft

ABOUT THE BOOKS

Thibaut Maus de Rolley will present his book Moi, Louis Gaufridy (Les Belles Lettres, 2023), a study of the 1611 witchcraft trial of the priest Louis Gaufridy in Aix-en-Provence, which examines how Gaufridy's confession was produced during his trial, and how it shaped in turn the contemporary accounts of the case that quickly circulated in France and Europe. He will also introduce his (co-authored) critical edition of the Discours des marques des sorciers (Jérôme Millon, 2024), a medical and demonological treatise published by the Aix physician Jacques Fontaine, one of the main protagonists of the trial.
Switching from Provence to the Basque country, Jan Machielsen will present his new book The Basque Witch-Hunt: A Secret History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), which offers a radically new interpretation of the infamous witch-hunt led in 1609 by the French judge Pierre de Lancre. The Basque witch-hunt – France’s largest – ended with the execution of up to 80 women and men, causing a wave of suspects to flee into Spain and sparking terror there. Moving away from the narrative of a witch-hunt caused by a bigoted outsider (De Lancre), Machielsen shows that far from an outside imposition, Basque witchcraft was a home-grown problem; the consequence of factionalism, a struggle over scarce resources, and geo-politics.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Thibaut Maus de Rolley is Professor of Early Modern Studies at UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society. He teaches French and comparative literature, specialising on the relationship between literature and knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also has a research focus on witchcraft studies and early modern demonology, more particularly on literary approaches to demonological treatises, witchcraft pamphlets and accounts of demonic possession. He has published Elevations. L'écriture du voyage aérienne à la Renaissance (2011) and co-directed the collective work Voyager avec le diable (2008).

Jan Machielsen is Reader in Early Modern History at School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. He is a historian of early modern religion, with a particular interest in reputations - how people came to be seen as exceptionally wicked witches or as exceptionally devout, wonder-working saints. He has written widely on both Catholic Reform and the early modern witch-hunt, two subjects brought together by his first "love", the sixteenth-century Jesuit Martin Delrio who wrote an influential work of demonology. His previous publications include The War on Witchcraft (2021) and The Science of Demons (2020).

Host or Publisher UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)