Walter Stephens. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief.(Book Review)

Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. xv + 451 pp. + 16 b/w pls. index, illus, bibl. $35. ISBN: 0-226-77261-6.

Unlike the social and political history of western witchcraft persecutions, the intellectual history of European witchcraft has attracted relatively little scholarly attention. This book fills an important gap by exploring the often-tangled thought processes of the first generation of "witchcraft theorists," as Stephens prefers to call them, who, roughly between 1430 and 1530, constructed the essentials of the early modern notion of the witch. Focusing on less-studied works by Johannes Nider, Jean Vineti, Pico della Mirandola, Alonso Tostado, Bartolomeo Spina, and …