Demons of Urban Reform : Early European Witch Trials and Criminal Justice, 1430-1530

This book illuminates the origins of the great European witch hunts by placing early witch trials in the comparative light of other criminal proceedings in Basel, Lucerne and Nuremberg. The study reveals that the increasingly harsh treatment was paralleled by mounting judicial severity in general, as well as by a keen interest in social control.

Laura Patricia Stokes is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University in California, USA. She has previously published articles on the integration of torture into ordinary judicial procedure and the development of the witch stereotype during the fifteenth century.

Introduction
The Advancing Death Penalty
Procedures of Criminal Justice
Social Control Before the Reformation
The Witch Trials in Context
Three Cases and a Model
Conclusion