Women, witches and sorceresses in the streets of Madrid (1561-1700): from the status of the issue in Early Modern Europe to new historiographical trends and case studies

Abstract

This article offers a general historiographical overview of witchcraft and sorcery in Europe and Spain in the Early Modern Age, with a critical evaluation of the main works, from the earliest scientific writings to recent historiographical currents, such as the gender perspective. Based on a systematic extraction and cataloguing of 132 cases -mostly judicial processes- that affected the current region of Madrid (1561-1700), mainly based on historiographic sources and the Portal de Archivos Españoles, we make some initial qualitative and quantitative observations, complemented with a geo-referenced visualisation, which open new research from the perspectives of cultural history, prosopography and microhistory.