The Sorceress

The Sorceress is a book by Jules Michelet on the history of witchcraft. According to Michelet, medieval witchcraft was an act of popular rebellion against the oppression of feudalism and the Roman Catholic Church. This rebellion took the form of a secret religion inspired by paganism and fairy beliefs, organized by a woman who became its leader. The participants in the secret religion met regularly at the witches' sabbath and the Black Mass. Michelet's account is openly sympathetic to the sufferings of peasants and women in the Middle Ages. The first part of the book is an imaginative reconstruction of the experience of a series of witches who lead the religion from its original form of social protest into decadence. The second part is a series of episodes in the European witch trials.