Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière is a passionate and imaginative history of witchcraft in the Middle Ages, written by one of France’s greatest historians. Michelet portrays the medieval witch as a figure born of suffering and oppression, a healer and rebel against the harsh order of feudal and ecclesiastical society. Blending history, sociology, and poetic vision, he explores the origins of witch belief, the witches’ Sabbath, and the persecutions that followed.
More a work of Romantic interpretation than dispassionate history, the book is a powerful and sympathetic meditation on the medieval witch and the conditions that gave rise to her. Michelet’s vivid, impassioned style has made it a classic, controversial and unforgettable. Readers interested in witchcraft, folklore, and the social history of the Middle Ages will find it compelling. This free EPUB edition presents an English translation of Michelet’s celebrated study of the witch of the medieval world.