In the original dust jacket. Black binding with gilt title on the spine.

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Please view the extensive photographs to this much sought after rare hard backed book.  ‘Europe’s Inner Demons’ is a fascinating history of the irrational need to imagine witches and an investigation of how those fantasies made the persecutions of the middle ages possible. In addition, Norman Cohn’s discovery that some influential sources on European witch trials were forgeries has revolutionized the field of witchcraft, making this one of the most essential books ever written on the subject.

In this ground-breaking book, Professor Norman Cohn traces popular beliefs about witches to their origins. He examines the fantasies that inspired the great European witch-hunt of the 16th and 17th centuries when thousands of innocent people were tortured and burned alive. It is a fascinating history of the need to imagine antihuman conspiracies and an investigation of how those fantasies made the great European witch-hunt possible. In addition, Professor Cohn’s discovery that some influential sources on witch trials were forgeries has revolutionized the field of witchcraft studies, making this one of the most essential books ever written on the subject.

Review: “Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom” by Norman Cohn is a study of the origins of the idea of witchcraft and the process that led to the great witch-hunt between the 15th and 17th century. As unappealing the topic seems at face value, its reach is far beyond the scope of this book as I think this can be read as a warning for our times. Written in the 1970s about Early Modern Europe, the similarities with the current era are striking as of the first paragraph of the foreword: “This book is concerned with a fantasy and its consequences … . The essence of the fantasy was that there existed somewhere in the midst of the great society, another society, small and clandestine, which not only threatened the existence of the great society but was also addicted to practices which were felt to be wholly abominable, in the literal sense of anti-human”. Cohn’s book shows how myths, half-truths and gossip can develop into stereo types, conspiracy theories and “… the urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings imagined as agents of corruption and incarnations of evil.” When cultural context, political opportunity and personal ambition create momentum, wholesale violence against groups of people is then a question of time. “Europe’s Inner Demons” focuses on witches, but it is easy to see the same process currently in play, with fringe groups trying to make their crazy fantasies about the sinister ambitions of groups of people mainstream. The social contexts are different, the urge is unmistakably the same. Not as good as Cohn’s “The Pursuit of the Millennium”, and hard going in places, I can recommend “Europe’s Inner Demons” to anybody interested in Medieval and Early Modern European History or anybody who wants to make sense of the current situation in the West.