Witch Hunters: Professional Prickers, Unwitchers and Witch-finders of the Renaissance (Revealing History) - Softcover

'The lurid tales of orgies and other debauchery told by these individuals still make for shocking reading today' THE DAILY MAIL 'A grim story of Renaissance witchfinders' BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE. 'A learned, informative, at times very subtle book, yet one which is eminently readable' JAMES SHARPE, author of Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, and Dick Turpin.

The history of a unique reign of terror. A thoroughly readable book on the lives and careers of possibly the most sadistic group of people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the 'great age' of witch-hunting in Europe and North America. From the doyen of witch-hunters, the Jesuit del Rio, to the British Matthew Hopkins, not to mention Pierre de Lancre, a judge who was responsible for burning 600 women, Maxwell-Stuart charts the progress of these fierce and dangerous zealots, while providing an insight into the world they perceived as evil and which they sought to destroy.