Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazzo

Trade paperback format.  This extraordinary document, considered one of the most important manuals ever compiled on witchcraft, offers striking insight into the early seventeenth-century mind and society's attempts to cope with the evils it saw manifested in sorcery. A collection of writings by the Ambrosian monk Francesco Maria Guazzo, the Compendium comprehensively and penetratingly describes the entire practice and profession of witchcraft. First published in 1608, the commentaries came at an appropriate time. Contemporary accounts noted that witchcraft and sorcery had "spread in all directions," leaving "no country, town, village, or district, no class of society" free from the practice. This probing work, by a distinguished writer and scholar who perceived the devil as an evil force seeking to destroy men's bodies and souls, was an attempt to help man live piously and devoutly, thus guarding against such seductions and manipulations. Reproduced from a rare limited edition publish