Explore very early ideas about witchcraft by learning about an especially rare (and sinister) fifteenth-century manuscript. The book itself is a beautiful—if tattered and damaged—example of the luxury volumes produced for the wealthiest princes in late medieval Europe. The book’s contents, by contrast, are vile. They testify to the ways that intellectuals, fired by good intentions and emboldened by institutional power, have sometimes arrived at truly inhumane conclusions. This workshop is an opportunity to learn a little bit about the manuscript materials housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections and to get a closer look at one of the best known and most studied.

Presenters: Robert Desjardins (Faculty of Graduate Studies & Research) and Linda Quirk (Bruce Peel Special Collections)

This is part of a series of introductory workshops designed to allow students to discover something new in the rare book library. Peel Workshops are normally hands-on events held in the classroom at Bruce Peel Special Collections, but for the winter term in 2021 they will be online.