Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss elements of what can be seen as technological procedures in the 15th century anti-Witchcraft treatise Errores Gazariorum. It will pose the question, to what extent were these elements culturally intuitive in the context of late medieval Latin world.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of the Witches’ Sabbath represented perhaps the most notorious element of the late medieval and early modern persecutions of Witchcraft. While it has been thoroughly studied as a patchwork of various learned and popular notions about magic, the Devil, and heretical sectarianism, not much attention has been paid to the practices of Devil worship and diabolical magic, included in descriptions of the Witches’ Sabbath, as examples of, no matter how bizarre, technological procedures. This paper will focus on a famous inquisitorial treatise Errores Gazariorum, written in the 1430s Aosta Valley and widely regarded as an early description of alleged Witches’ Sabbath. I will try to show that an underlying logic of technological method can be identified on the background of the mixture of learned and popular notions, providing a common base for them. I will try to pose the question, to what extent can this base be considered a cultural intuition, vertically pervading different levels of the late medieval society.