How to Kill a Witch is an examination of the early modern period’s witch hunts through the lens of Scotland (with a couple quick jaunts to other locales). I knew a decent amount of the worldwide epidemic of witch hunts, but not enough about Scotland specifically and my visit to Scotland back in 2023 is one of my favorite travels.
I appreciated most how Venditozzi and Mitchell lay out the way in which the cultural understanding of magic and witchcraft existed in the early modern period, its important level setting. The authors are very clearly arguing that in the knowledge of the time these executions were legal and thought to be just – even if all actors were not. Which is an important piece in the popular history that has sprung up around witches and witch trials in the west. These were not marauding mobs committing extrajudicial murder. This was (with a very few exceptions) legally sanctioned ways of dealing with what could otherwise not be explained.
Venditozzi and Mitchell walk the reader through the various stages of how a person (usually a woman, but far from always) would find themselves at the center of a witch trial. I found it to be highly readable, but a bit repetitive. There were also sections that were fully modern English translations of historic resources, and I found myself struggling to stay with those.
One of the detractions I saw was that this book does often read as if it was written by podcasters, because it was (Venditozzi and Mitchell are the hosts of The Witches of Scotland podcast). There is a certain amount of the way in which the prose is presented that you can feel that the author is most accustomed to presenting this information out loud. But where I disagree is that there are a lot of complaints about the relative lightheartedness of the language. The authors are intentionally lightening the heavy topic of the murder of hundreds and hundreds of people. I had no problem with the general tone, just the flow.
Bingo Space: Sheep. Witch hunts are a prime example of mob mentality.
