Hazards of the Dark Arts: Advice for Medieval Princes on Witchcraft and Magic, Magic in History Sourcebooks, Translated by Richard Kieckhefer (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017) Paperback

Richard Kieckhefer, translator. Hazards of the Dark Arts: Advice for Medieval Princes on Witchcraft and Magic, Magic in History Sourcebooks. University Park: PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017. Paperback. 158 pages. Condition: New Description from the publisher:  This volume comprises English translations of two fundamentally important texts on magic and witchcraft in the fifteenth century: Johannes Hartlieb’s Book of All Forbidden Arts and Ulrich Molitoris’s On Witches and Pythonesses. Written by laymen and aimed at secular authorities, these works advocated that town leaders and royalty alike should vigorously uproot and prosecute practitioners of witchcraft and magic.   Though inquisitors and theologians promulgated the witch trials of late medieval times, lay rulers saw the prosecutions through. But local officials, princes, and kings could be unreliable; some were skeptical about the reality and danger of witchcraft, while others dabbled in the occult themselves. Bo