An

almost universal feature of demonologies is an engagement by the author with the question, what can witches do? Once they've made this pact with the devil, everyone is caught up in this question, okay, so now that they have the power, what can they do with it? I think there's a kind of cross-pollination between what's happening in the courtrooms and what's happening in the demonological treatises.

A lot of the treatises are giving these sort of broad theological explanations and then saying, so there was a case of a woman who did X, Y, and Z things.

They're trying to draw on rumor or what they've heard about what's happening in courtrooms.

So this discourse evolves over time as we move forward, as more people start contributing to the demonological sort of record.

They're capturing more stories.

More people are being put on trial.

And then, of course, there was the sex.

So how did they get exposed to these ideas? I put this to Professor Jennifer McNabb, who teaches the history of the European witch hunts.

So I think we have to remember first, people traveled in the early modern world.

Pre-modern people were a lot more mobile than we tend to imagine.

The elite were more mobile still in material culture, in the things that they purchased, in the things that they experienced, in the conversations that they had when they went to court and other people came to court from different places.

right? What happens when a Scottish official is imported or exports himself to a distant location? He is going to be informed by the worldview of his origins.

It is Scotland's devil that comes to Finnmark.

That's sort of how I'm imagining it in my mind.

When John Cunningham took his oath as governor, he swore to strike down hard upon the enemies of God.