Représentations sociales, peurs et règlements de conflits.

This paper aims at showing the complexity of the Romanians' implications in the witch hunts of Transylvania, during the 16^th-18^th centuries, particularly as victims, but also as accusers or experts. Their laws against witchcraft were not very severe, but they had to interact, in a multicultural environment, with several others legal systems and religious beliefs, more inclined to condemn magical practices and heresies. This paper discusses briefly the Transylvanian cultural context of the witch craze, presents then some trials in which the Romanians were involved, trying eventually to find some explanations for the mechanisms of xenophobic projections. Feared as strangers, source of fascination and repulsion, the Romanians, principally the women, offered a perfect scheme on which to build social representations meant to comfort the dominant ethnic groups from Transylvania (Germans, Hungarians) in their positions of power and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]