Although the gender of a witch in early modern Europe was predominantly female, a not insignificant minority of accusations made during witch hunts was directed against men. According to some estimates, male witches might have constituted on average up to a quarter of all the recorded defendants, however regional proportions varied dramatically, from 5% up to 92%.¹ Gender-based explanations of motivations behind witch hunts abound in the literature, with more nuanced modern approaches highlighting the role of status entangled with gender in specific cases.² Nonetheless, the mechanisms at play in mostly male witcher hunts remain largely unexplained. This volume, edited by Alison Rowlands, contributes to filling in that gap in literature.

Rowlands’s opening essay addresses the primarily problem of analyzing male witchcraft in Europe. She argues it was not the scarcity of records which, as fraught as early modern records were, is counterbalanced by the fact that in virtually every known case gender is either explicitly stated or implied by name or description of the accused. Instead, scholars must face the challenges of classification. Since the very word witch had a strong connotation of femininity, men tried for performing similar punishable acts of witchcraft were unlikely to be referred to using the same term, even in Latin with gender grammatically changed — maleficus instead of malefica. Scholars are, thus, left with the task of categorization of the individuals standing trial on their own. To make the argument stronger, Rowlands and other contributors limit their scope to cases which cite maleficium as one of the crimes, regardless of the word used to describe the alleged perpetrator. Despite those efforts, clear-cut distinctions remain awkward in face of the exuberant judicial phraseology surrounding early modern criminal magic.

Robin Briggs introduces us to a nuanced analysis of several cases of male witch trials in the sixteenth century Duchy of Lorraine and performs an interesting comparison of accusations against men with a quasi-random sample of female witches from the period. The next three chapters take us on the tour of German lands covering cases from Hamburg to the Rhine-Meuse delta, to Brandenburg, to Carinthia. Then we take a brief look at Montepulciano in Tuscany and make a jump to Scotland. The volume closes with two comparative analyses, one of different kinds of magic and the other of possessions considering gender.

The collection of cases discussed in subsequent essays would be more convincing as the basis to draw conclusions about European witch hunts with more regional and cultural diversity. Usually, the focus on German-speaking lands is understandable in research on witchcraft, considering that Central Europe was a hotspot of witch-hunting activities. However, the uniquely strong correlation of witchcraft with femininity in the Alpine-German beliefs of the period makes a wider analysis of the status of witchers impossible without considering other cultural milieus. Unfortunately, the second chapter concentrating on the Duchy of Lorraine is to some extent a red herring because of the famously controversial geographical situation and the cultural proximity of the region to the German culture. The article might as well be called “Male witches in Lothringen”. For a more representative account of male witchcraft it would be necessary to contrast these cases with the trials in Dijon and Normandy where up to 75% of all witches were men.

The same criticism applies to the Italian representation in the volume which took the form of chapter six devoted to Giandomenico Fei, a blacksmith and the single unlucky Tuscan man tried for witchcraft. For the most part of the second half of the 16th century, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was deeply integrated within the Habsburg system of power, remaining a close ally long after that. The Grand Dukes asked the Spanish Habsburgs for permission to interact with foreign nations, like in the case of the trade in jewels with the Moghul emperor, and were, more than happy to follow the spirit, if not the word, of the Carolina reform. Northern Tuscany of Giandomenico Fei was to Italy what the Duchy of Lorraine was to France – German at heart.

Despite these complaints, Rowlands’s volume remains the authoritative work on male witchcraft in early modern Europe as of today. It provides a fascinating selection of cases, the essays range almost from microhistory to continent-wide comparisons of the place of male witches in the pan-European picture. In 2025, this is still the best starting point for any work on witchers.