Abstract

The author describes his research experience in the 1960s as an apprentice historian in the Warburg Library. His work on witchcraft trials in early modern Italy, he argues, was deeply affected by the library’s unique character. Aby Warburg’s law of the “good neighbor” is illustrated through a specific example: the encounter with a forgotten tract dealing with some anomalous Bavarian witchcraft trials — a book that would have been very difficult to come across anywhere but Warburg’s Library.