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I am also indebted to the following publishers for permission to quote from the works listed: Basil Blackwell, Oxford, and the New York University Press, Martyrdom and persecution in the early Church, by W. H. C. Frend; the Cornell University Press, Witchcraft in the middle ages, by Jeffrey B. Russell; the Oxford University Press and the International African Institute, Witchcraft and sorcery in Rhodesia, by J. R. Crawford; Routledge & Kegan Paul, The history of witchcraft and demonology, by Montague Summers; the Stanford University Press, Witch hunting in southwestern Germany, 1562–1684, by H. C. Erik Midelfort; the Toronto University Press, A razor for a goat, by Elliot Rose; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, and Scribner, New York, Religion and the decline of magic, by Keith Thomas.

The work has been generously financed throughout by the Columbus Trust, particulars of which are given in the Editorial Foreword.

In the second century after Christ the Christian communities in the Roman Empire — still small and scattered groups — were the object of strange suspicions and accusations. One of the first of the Latin apologists for Christianity, Minucius Felix, who probably wrote towards the close of the century, has recorded them in detail. He makes a pagan describe the practices of Christians as follows: