Download or read book Marks of an Absolute Witch written by Dr Orna Alyagon Darr and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-07-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work explores the social foundation of evidence law in a specific historical social and cultural context - the debate concerning the proof of the crime of witchcraft in early modern England. In this period the question of how to prove the crime of witchcraft was the centre of a public debate and even those who strongly believed in the reality of witchcraft had considerable concerns regarding its proof. In a typical witchcraft crime there were no eyewitnesses, and since torture was not a standard measure in English criminal trials, confessions could not be easily obtained. The scarcity of evidence left the fact-finders with a pressing dilemma. On the one hand, using the standard evidentiary methods might have jeopardized any chance of prosecuting and convicting extremely dangerous criminals. On the other hand, lowering the evidentiary standards might have led to the conviction of innocent people. Based on the analysis of 157 primary sources, the book presents a picture of a diverse society whose members tried to influence evidentiary techniques to achieve their distinct goals and to bolster their social standing. In so doing this book further uncovers the interplay between the struggle with the evidentiary dilemma and social characteristics (such as class, position along the centre/periphery axis and the professional affiliation) of the participants in the debate. In particular, attention is focused on the professions of law, clergy and medicine. This book finds clear affinity between the professional affiliation and the evidentiary positions of the participants in the debate, demonstrating how the diverse social players and groups employed evidentiary strategies as a resource, to mobilize their interests. The witchcraft debate took place within the formative era of modern evidence law, and the book highlights the mutual influences between the witch trials and major legal developments.
Download or read book The Witch in History written by Diane Purkiss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Diane Purkiss ... insists on taking witches seriously. Her refusal to write witch-believers off as unenlightened has produced some richly intelligent meditations on their -- and our -- world.' - The Observer 'An invigorating and challenging book ... sets many hares running.' - The Times Higher Education Supplement
Download or read book THI OMAS THORPE S CATALOGUE OF BOOKS written by thomas thorpe and published by . This book was released on 1839 with total page 1352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Witch Hunting in Scotland written by Brian P. Levack and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2008 Katharine Briggs Award Witch-Hunting in Scotland presents a fresh perspective on the trial and execution of the hundreds of women and men prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft, an offence that involved the alleged practice of maleficent magic and the worship of the devil, for inflicting harm on their neighbours and making pacts with the devil. Brian P. Levack draws on law, politics and religion to explain the intensity of Scottish witch-hunting. Topics discussed include: the distinctive features of the Scottish criminal justice system the use of torture to extract confessions the intersection of witch-hunting with local and national politics the relationship between state-building and witch-hunting and the role of James VI Scottish Calvinism and the determination of zealous Scottish clergy and magistrates to achieve a godly society. This original survey combines broad interpretations of the rise and fall of Scottish witchcraft prosecutions with detailed case studies of specific witch-hunts. Witch-Hunting in Scotland makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in witchcraft or in the political, legal and religious history of the early modern period.
Download or read book The Devil in Tudor and Stuart England written by Darren Oldridge and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Devil was a commanding figure in Tudor and Stuart England. He played a leading role in the religious and political conflicts of the age, and inspired great works of poetry and drama. During the turmoil of the English Civil War, fears of a secret conspiracy of Devil-worshippers fuelled a witch-hunt that claimed at least a hundred lives. This book traces the idea of the Devel from the English Reformation to the scientific revolution of the late seventeenth century. It shows that he was not only a central figure in the imaginative life of the age, but also a deeply ambiguous and complex one: the avowed enemy of God and his unwilling accomplice, and a creature that provoked fascination, comedy and dread.
Download or read book John Stearne s Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft written by Scott Eaton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1645-7, John Stearne led the most significant outbreak of witch-hunting in England. As accusations of witchcraft spread across East Anglia, Stearne and Matthew Hopkins were enlisted by villagers to identify and eradicate witches. After the trials finally subsided in 1648, Stearne wrote his only publication, A confirmation and discovery of witchcraft, but it had a limited readership. Consequently, Stearne and his work fell into obscurity until the 1800s, and were greatly overshadowed by Hopkins and his text. This book is the first study which analyses Stearne’s publication and contextualises his ideas within early modern intellectual cultures of religion, demonology, gender, science, and print in order to better understand the witch-finder’s beliefs and motives. The book argues that Stearne was a key player in the trials, that he was not a mainstream ‘puritan’, and that his witch-finding availed from contemporary science. It traces A confirmation’s reception history from 1648 to modern day and argues that the lack of research focusing on Stearne has resulted in misrepresentations of the witch-finder in the historiography of witchcraft. This book redresses the imbalance and seeks to provide an alternative reading of the East Anglian witch-hunt and of England’s premier witch-hunter, John Stearne.
Download or read book Four Centuries of Witch Beliefs RLE Witchcraft written by R. T. Davies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1947, it is the essential purpose of this book to investigate attitudes of leading Elizabethan and Stuart statesmen, ask whether witchcraft was of any importance in seventeenth-century English history, or even influenced the Great Rebellion. The reader is placed in possession of the more pertinent passages from the arguments used to support or discredit belief in witchcraft.
Download or read book Witchcraft Magic and Superstition in England 1640 70 written by Frederick Valletta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the relationship between élite and popular beliefs in witchcraft, magic and superstition in England, analyzing such beliefs against the background of political, religious and social upheaval characteristic of the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration periods. Belief in witchcraft received new impulses because of the general ferment of religious ideas and the tendency of participants in the Civil Wars to resort to imagery drawn from beliefs about the devil and witches; or to use portents to argue for the wrongs of their opponents. Throughout the work, the author stresses that deeply held superstitions were fundamental to belief in witches, the devil, ghosts, apparitions and supernatural healing. Despite the fact that popular superstitions were often condemned, it was recognized that their propaganda value was too useful to ignore. A host of pamphlets and treatises were published during this period which unashamedly incorporated such beliefs. Valletta here explores the manner in which political and religious authorities somewhat cynically used demonic imagery and language to discredit their opponents and to manipulate popular opinion.
Download or read book A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 written by Wallace Notestein and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Book about the Film Monty Python and the Holy Grail written by Darl Larsen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired from 1969 until 1974, but the conclusion of the series did not mark the end of the troupe’s creative output. Even before the final original episodes were recorded and broadcast, the six members began work on their first feature-length enterprise of new material. Rather than string together a series of silly skits, they conceived a full-length story line with references to the real and imagined worlds of the mythical King Arthur, the lives of medieval peasants, and the gloomy climate of 1970s Britain. Released in 1975, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a modest success but has since been hailed as a modern classic. In A Book about the Film Monty Python and the Holy Grail:All the References from African Swallows to Zoot, Darl Larsen identifies and examines the cultural, historical, and topical allusions in the movie. In this entertaining resource, virtually every reference that appears in a scene—whether stated by a character, depicted in the mise-en-scène, or mentioned in the print companion—is identified and explained. Beyond the Arthurian legend, entries cover literary metaphors, symbols, names, peoples, and places—as well as the myriad social, cultural, and historical elements that populate the film. This book employs the film as a window to both reveal and examine “Arthurian” life and literature, the historical Middle Ages, and a Great Britain of labor unrest, power shortages, and the common man. Introducing the reader to dozens of medievalist histories and authors and connecting the film concretely to the “modern” British Empire, A Book about the Film Monty Python and the Holy Grail will appeal to fans of the troupe as well as medieval scholars and academics who can laugh at themselves and their work.
Download or read book Emotions in the History of Witchcraft written by Laura Kounine and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together leading historians, anthropologists, and religionists, this volume examines the unbridled passions of witchcraft from the Middle Ages to the present. Witchcraft is an intensely emotional crime, rooted in the belief that envy and spite can cause illness or even death. Witch-trials in turn are emotionally driven by the grief of alleged victims and by the fears of magistrates and demonologists. With examples ranging from Russia to New England, Germany to Cameroon, chapters cover the representation of emotional witches in demonology and art; the gendering of witchcraft as female envy or male rage; witchcraft as a form of bullying and witchcraft accusation as a form of therapy; love magic and demon-lovers; and the affective memorialization of the “Burning Times” among contemporary Pagan feminists. Wide-ranging and methodologically diverse, the book is appropriate for scholars of witchcraft, gender, and emotions; for graduate or undergraduate courses, and for the interested general reader.
Download or read book Catalogue of the Choice Curious and Extensive Library of the Late George Nassau written by Robert Harding Evans and published by . This book was released on 1824 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The two battles of Newbury the substance of a paper written by Bezer Blundell and published by . This book was released on 1859 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Witches of Warboys written by Philip C. Almond and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-10-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a foggy November day in 1589, when one of the five daughters of Robert and Elizabeth Throckmorton suddenly fell sick, no one in the small English village of Warboys could have predicted the terrifying events that would follow. Or envisaged that four years later, in April 1593, the Throckmortons' neighbours Alice, Agnes and John Samuel, would be dragged before a country court on charges of sorcery, enchantment and murder. There is no more dramatic story in the annals of English witchcraft than that of the witches of Warboys. Yet, despite a rich and colourful cast of characters, and a potent mixture of tension and pathos to match anything in the later Salem witch trials, it has never before been told in full. At one level, the story of Warboys features a conflict about honour and truth between two families in a close-knit Elizabethan village. At another level, the tale concerns a wider struggle between local gentry and yeomanry. But at the heart of the narrative coils a dark account of possession by demons, of malevolent spirits, of trust broken and of children accursed. What really happened in Warboys in the late sixteenth century, to drive this unremarkable rural community into such frenzy? Philip Almond leads us into a half-forgotten world of horror and crime, of victims and victimisers, of spectres, sex with the devil and 'scratching' the witch: a macabre and dangerous world where nothing is as it seems, where evil begets evil, and where innocence is betrayed.
Download or read book Witchfinders written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-31 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By spring 1645, two years of civil war had exacted a dreadful toll upon England. People lived in terror as disease and poverty spread, and the nation grew ever more politically divided. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to drive out the presumed evil in their midst. Touring Suffolk and East Anglia on horseback, they detected demons and idolators everywhere. Through torture, they extracted from terrified prisoners confessions of consorting with Satan and demonic spirits. Acclaimed historian Malcolm Gaskill retells the chilling story of the most savage witch-hunt in English history. By the autumn of 1647 at least 250 people--mostly women--had been captured, interrogated, and hauled before the courts. More than a hundred were hanged, causing Hopkins to be dubbed "Witchfinder General" by critics and admirers alike. Though their campaign was never legally sanctioned, they garnered the popular support of local gentry, clergy, and villagers. While Witchfinders tells of a unique and tragic historical moment fueled by religious fervor, today it serves as a reminder of the power of fear and fanaticism to fuel ordinary people's willingness to demonize others.
Download or read book The First and Second Battles of Newbury and the Siege of Donnington Castle During the Civil War 1643 6 written by Walter Money and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 written by Wallace Notestein and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-10-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wallace Notestein's 'A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718' is a comprehensive exploration of the cultural and legal contexts surrounding the infamous witch hunts during the Early Modern period. Notestein meticulously examines the beliefs, accusations, and persecutions of individuals accused of practicing witchcraft, shedding light on the socio-political climate that fueled such hysteria. Drawing from archival records and contemporary accounts, Notestein's scholarly approach delves deep into the psychological and societal motivations behind the witch trials, offering valuable insights into this dark chapter of English history. Notestein's writing is engaging, with a clear and concise style that appeals to both academics and general readers interested in the topic. His meticulous research and thoughtful analysis elevate this book from a mere historical account to a nuanced exploration of the human psyche and the power dynamics at play in witchcraft accusations. Wallace Notestein, a renowned historian of Early Modern England, brings his expertise to bear in this authoritative study of witchcraft, providing readers with a compelling narrative that challenges conventional assumptions and encourages critical reflection. For anyone interested in the history of witchcraft, Notestein's 'A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718' is an essential read that offers valuable insights into a complex and enduring phenomenon.
