This course, taught by Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, looks at mysticism, heresy, apocalyptic movements, and the witch craze in Europe between 1000 and 1700. It explores the supernatural and irrational beliefs and the political and social forces that have produced Western Civilization's greatest saints and its most shameful acts. Topics covered include the mysticism of Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Dante Alighieri, and St. Francis of Assisi; the Cathar and Waldensian heresies; and "outbursts" of witchcraft in Essex, England and Salem, Massachusetts. You study how society identifies some groups of people as "other," and persecutes them. Highlights include lectures on such mysterious books as the Zohar, the text of Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism, and the Malleus Maleficarum, a handbook for identifying and trying witches.