Gunnar W. Knutsen

Biography

Professor of early modern history at
the university of bergen

I am a professor of early modern history at the University of Bergen. Most of my research centres around questions of belief and the connection between belief and action in early modern Europe.

The three areas that I have been most focused on have been witchcraft trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and wars of religion. Most of my scholarly work is in English, while my textbooks and books of popular history are in Norwegian.

I have taught at a number of European universities, and served as referee for journals and academic publishers and external expert for funding agencies in several countries and at the European level.

New book

Acquittals in the Spanish Inquisition

This is the first comprehensive study of acquittals in the Spanish Inquisition, drawing on more than 67,000 trials to uncover over 2,500 formal acquittals, more than 6,600 suspended trials, and nearly 2,100 cases with unknown or no recorded outcomes. The inquisitors were jurists who applied the same evidentiary rules as other Spanish courts. If every acquittal may be taken as an admission of error, the Spanish Inquisition admitted its errors thousands of times — occasionally even putting them on public display at the autos de fe. Routledge, 2024.

English version

Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons: The Spanish Inquisition's Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona, 1478-1700

This is a study of trials in two neighbouring tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition. In one, there were trials against against women who had allegedly given their souls to the devil, flown through the air to the witches’ sabbath and commited gruesome cimes against their neighbours. In the other, this kind of trial was absent, while there were numerous trials against poeple accused of love magic and magical hunts for enchanted treasure. What can. explain the difference?