This week we’ll be watching Coven of Sisters in class. This Spanish movie (called Akelarre in Spain) is described as “historical fiction meets atmospheric horror”. It focuses on an aspect of the Basque witch hunt of the early seventeenth century: the relationship between witnesses, suspected witches, and the inquisitors who were examining them.
Preparation
Read this article by Jan Machielsen, a historian who is writing a book on the Basque hunts from the perspective of Pierre de Lancre, a French witch hunting judge just across the Pyrenees. De Lancre wrote a demonological text and was obsessed with sexuality and witchcraft. https://theconversation.com/film-coven-of-sisters-gets-a-lot-right-about-the-terrible-1609-basque-witch-hunt-158336
Otherwise, we’ll spend some time thinking about popular representations of the witch hunts and whether or not they can be used as tools for understanding the historical past.