Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt

Norman Cohn's Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt, published by Sussex University Press in association with Chatto and Heinemann in 1975, is a scholarly study tracing the medieval and early modern development of the stereotype of the demon-worshipping witches' sabbath, arguing that the fantasy drew on older accusations levelled against heretics and Jews rather than describing any real practice. Its strength is that Cohn was an established historian whose earlier work on medieval millenarianism is itself a standard reference, and this book remains widely cited in witch-hunt historiography. Its limit is that later scholarship has refined and in places revised his specific claims, so a detail resting on this book alone should be checked against more recent witch-hunt historiography too.