According to a traditional historiography, clear-cut demarcations between superstitious and licit remedies against witchcraft were made in the sixteenth century. Max Weber's concept of “disenchantment” states that the Reformation introduced a revolution in Christian ritual praxis: a purification of all “magical” elements. Using Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum as a case study, this paper shows how, pace Weber, such systematic demarcations were already made in the late Middle Ages.
