Event Type: HA

Takes Place: 13th November 2025

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Online

Description: Hag-ridden dreams, pacts with the devil, demonically-inspired music, diabolical skill, rumours of murder – the world of witches, magicians and demons still fascinated artists and writers after the end of the European witch persecutions in the seventeenth century. This paper discusses how myths and stories about the Italian composers and musicians Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) and Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) and their dealings with the diabolical were elaborated to accommodate this desire for the irrational in the disenchanted world of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It argues that they became symbolic of a movement by other Europeans to remove the supernatural to Italy where it could be imagined safely without disturbing the advance of reason. Jonathan is a historian of witchcraft. After thirty years of researching and teaching the subject at several universities, most recently the University of South Wales, he has left academia to pursue the subject freelance. He is the author of several articles on witchcraft in Germany and England as well as Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany (Brill, 2007) and, with Michael Bailey, the Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft (2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, 2012). In 2024, he led the Historical Association short course “Witchcraft, Werewolves and Magic in European History”. He is currently writing Witchcraft in World History (forthcoming, Routledge, 2026) and is about to launch A Miscellany of Witchcraft on Substack.

How to book: Book via Zoom link below.

Price: Free & open to all. Recordings of talk will be available to HA members.

Website: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bDvbp1zcRlah9MoqtP2q9g

Organiser: HA

Lecturer: Dr Jonathan Durrant