This rich collection of essays offers valuable insight into the causes and nature of witch trials in early modern Hungary and Transylvania. With one exception, articles in this volume have been translated and adapted from existing publications in Hungarian. The editors and translator have produced very readable versions of these texts by leading researchers on witch-hunting across Hungary and Transylvania. Chapters provide insightful reflection on methodological approaches to dealing with trial records and useful contextualisation of Hungarian case studies within the historiography of the witch-hunt across Europe. Essays explore important themes about changing patterns of elite opinion and popular beliefs, set in the context of analysis of the legal system and the changing religious and political landscape of early modern Hungary. Authors draw on extensive archival research to provide an overall sense of the witch-hunt in this region which is illuminated by fascinating examples drawn from individual trial records. These studies do not simply extend a sense of the geography of witch-hunting in Europe but also raise important questions about the timing, character and context of witch trials and about the decline of the witch-hunt during the eighteenth century.

Across the lands of the former Hungarian kingdom there were sporadic bursts of accusations against witches from the late sixteenth century to the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Around 700 people were executed out of over 4,250 formally accused of being witches (with about 3,675 of those accused being women). Several of the contributions to this volume examine witch-hunting in particular towns and regions. Ildikó Sz. Kristóf analyses the witch-hunt in Bihar county centred on the Calvinist town of Debrecen. Accusations emerged from everyday tensions between neighbours in the context of clerical antagonism towards magic and sorcery. Accusations were raised against people perceived to be quarrelsome or threatening neighbours who failed to protect their reputations. Anxiety around the appeals of the poor for assistance and tensions with the Roma community added to potential sources of conflict that could lead to formal witch trials. Many accusations were raised against healers and midwives. Gábor Klaniczay's essay confirms that rivalry between healers and demands for payment over healing services could lead to tense exchanges between practitioners and their clients. Klaniczay quotes testimony given in 1584 against a midwife-healer called Kató Szabó from a new mother who had been unable to pay the midwife's fee. When the mother later fell ill, her ‘husband started to beg Kató Szabó to heal me, and that he would pay her anything. And she healed me, which made me suspect her’ (p. 130). The healing and magical community could implode under pressure of claims and counter-claims to explain illness and premature deaths. Such conflicts undermined the confidence of communities about the intentions of those who claimed powers to heal. Some healers also claimed to be able to diagnose bewitchment by divination. Rivalry among the healing community grew more intense once new medical professionals added to the numbers of those suggesting that they could help the sick. This in part helps to explain the late spike in the numbers of witch accusations in Hungary at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Judges were willing to take firm action in response to stories from aggrieved victims about malevolent harm that they had suffered. Magistrates were often persuaded about the likely diabolic source of witches' powers. The character of the Hungarian witch emerged from the fusion of popular and elite narratives about those with the desire and power to cause harm. A range of traditional popular beliefs also persisted well into the eighteenth century. Éva Pócs provides a thoughtful analysis of the figure of the táltos, who seems to reveal some elements of pre-Christian shamanistic beliefs. A trial at Miskolc in 1740 heard about a táltos who turned into a fish and disappeared for three days, about ritual trances and weather battles fought in the sky. Whatever the táltos and her neighbours believed about her powers, some tribunals were persuaded that claims of treasure-finding and the ability to identify bewitchment amounted to the confessions of a witch. In her treatment of trials in the town of Baia Mare (Nagybánya), Judit Kis-Halas emphasises that patterns of witch-hunting reflected local circumstances. Healers and midwives were again prominent among those accused. Religious divisions could also be mobilised in accusations, as in 1704 when a witness claimed that a healer would only have given medicine to his sick wife if he ‘became a Papist’ (p. 169). A vampire-panic surfaced in nearby Cavnic (Kapnikbánya) in 1752 with bodies exhumed and one corpse sentenced by the authorities to be burnt at the stake. The role of individuals within witch-panics is addressed by the essay of László Pakó on the witch-trials in the Transylvanian town of Cluj (Kolozsvár) during the 1580s. A corrupt judge, György Igyártó, brought accusations against seven witches. Six were executed but charges against the seventh woman were dropped after the husband of the accused bribed Igyártó. Daniel Barth examines the career of a Franciscan exorcist of the 1760s whose behaviour was judged scandalous by his superiors but who seems to have attracted a good deal of support in his community.

How was this lively world of popular belief tamed and the witch-hunt in Hungary and Transylvania finally ended? The essay by Péter G. Tóth offers a very helpful analysis of changing perceptions of witch-trials at the Habsburg court under Maria Theresa. A royal decree in 1756 allowed Hungarian courts to continue to hear accusations against witches but required the confirmation of any death sentence by central authorities. A similar decree followed in 1768 for Transylvania, and by 1770 a new law code curtailed the executions of accused witches. Maria Theresa intervened to end scandals that shed an unfavourable light on her realm and thereafter required courts to seek the monarch's help to determine if there was convincing evidence of evil magical activities. The contribution by Ágnes Hesz provides further pause for thought on the persistence of ideas about witches through a study of the popular culture of a contemporary Transylvanian village.