The First Witches

An Extraordinary Story of Magic, Strife and Tragedy

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FROM THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF A TRAVEL GUIDE TO THE MIDDLE AGES

In the year 1324, in the burgeoning town of Kilkenny, Ireland's second biggest town, there lived a wealthy, powerful woman named Dame Alicia Kyteler.

After three of her husbands died suspiciously, and with the fourth gravely ill, Alicia and eleven accomplices came under the suspicion of the local bishop, Richard Ledrede. A witch-hunt began. As with every tragedy, we start with the complication – the web of ideas that spread as malicious gossip – and then, the unravelling.

Through rich, creative prose, bestselling historian Anthony Bale reveals how this prosperous yet fractious town stumbled into these allegations, leading to the tragedy that befell Dame Alicia and her accomplices, resulting in one of the accused being burnt at the stake for her crimes against the church.

In time, Europe would be overcome by the “witch craze”. The hysteria that followed was by no means inevitable at the time of Bishop Ledrede and Dame Alicia, but their story bears many of the hallmarks of later witch-hunting. Here, in this small Irish town, was where the case against the witch was crystallised and its impact was felt across Europe.

With vivid and enthralling storytelling, this is a story that starts in a quiet Irish town and transports us across medieval Europe, from the countryside to the papal court, to discover the making of the witch.

© Anthony Bale 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027

This is a wonderfully vivid contextualisation of what was already one of the most sensational legal cases of the Middle Ages. Not only does it provide a better understanding of the trial concerned, but one of the whole subject of the opening of large-scale European witch-hunting, and with it a wonderful introduction to the late medieval inquisitorial mind.
Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch

Fascinating, unsettling, and deeply humane, The First Witches asks not simply who the earliest medieval witches were, but how the idea of the witch itself emerged. The book centres on – but roams far beyond – the charged world of fourteenth-century Kilkenny, where local rivalries, religious fears, and political power struggles converged in the prosecution of Alicia Kyteler and her family. Brilliantly researched and compellingly told, the book reconstructs a remarkable human story while illuminating a decisive turning point in the history of the witch. Chilling and thrilling in equal measure.
Erin Goeres, author of Nineteen Days in Autumn

Deeply researched and eye-opening. Anthony Bale brings us into a world where magic, religion and superstition were inseparable from power, injustice and fear. What emerges so powerfully is that witch hunts were never simply about belief: they were also about conflict, authority and who was vulnerable enough to be caught in the middle. And when that person was a woman, the consequences could be deadly. Compelling, unsettling and beautifully researched.
Estelle Paranque, author of Blood, Fire and Gold

The First Witches is a lyrical, compelling and masterful account of how the roots of the Early Modern European witch craze can be found in fourteenth-century Ireland. Through nuanced and humane engagement with his sources, Anthony Bale renders a medieval witch trial timely and urgent to twenty-first-century readers, as an example of toxic masculinity in a settler-colonial context.
Elizabeth Boyle, Author of Fierce Appetites

About Anthony Bale

Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval & Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. He is a former President of the New Chaucer Society. His previous books include Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life (Reaktion Books) and A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World through Medieval Eyes (Penguin). He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2011) and a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-26). He has held fellowships at institutions including Harvard University, The Huntington Library and the University of Melbourne and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

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