Witchcraft & Wine!
Iris Lee, Head of Collection Services
Shortly before Hallowe’en on October 21, 2015, the Jacob Burns Law Library and the Academic SIS of the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C. (LLSDC) hosted a Witchcraft & Wine reception in the Tasher Great Room of the Law Library.
Immediate Past President of LLSDC Mary Kate Hunter opens a bottle of red to kick off Witchcraft & Wine.
The in-house witchcraft expert, Library Director Scott Pagel, the Director of Special Collections, Jennie Meade, and the Reference/Legal History & Rare Books Librarian, Karen Wahl, mounted and attended a display of rare books from the Law Library’s Special Collections.
The books chosen for the display fell into one of three categories: works advocating the prosecution of accused witches, such as the 1495 edition of the Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Institoris; works opposing the prosecution of witchcraft allegations, such as a second edition from 1632 of the Cautio Criminalis by Friedrich von Spee; and several notable witchcraft trials such as Histoire des Diables de Loudun (1693).
Librarians from local academic, private law firm, and government agency libraries viewed the works and learned about the collection from Director Pagel. A devilishly good time was had by all! B
 Title page from The Tryal of Richard Hathaway (London, 1702). |
 Left: L’incredulité et mescreance du sortilege (Paris, 1622); Right: Tractatus duo singulares de examine sagarum super aquam frigidam projectarum (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1686). |
