Download or read book Witchcraft in Europe 1100 1700 written by Alan Charles Kors and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America written by Brian P. Levack and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this Handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. They also relate these prosecutions to the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the introduction of new forms of criminal procedure, medical and scientific thought, the process of state-building, profound social and economic change, early modern patterns of gender relations, and the wave of demonic possessions that occurred in Europe at the same time. The essays survey the current state of knowledge in the field, explore the academic controversies that have arisen regarding witch beliefs and witch trials, propose new ways of studying the subject, and identify areas for future research.
Download or read book Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present written by Jonathan Barry and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a collection based on the contributions to witchcraft studies of Willem de Blécourt, to whom it is dedicated, and who provides the opening chapter, setting out a methodological and conceptual agenda for the study of cultures of witchcraft (broadly defined) in Europe since the Middle Ages. It includes contributions from historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and folklorists who have collaborated closely with De Blécourt. Essays pick up some or all of the themes and approaches he pioneered, and apply them to cases which range in time and space across all the main regions of Europe since the thirteenth century until the present day. While some draw heavily on texts, others on archival sources, and others on field research, they all share a commitment to reconstructing the meaning and lived experience of witchcraft (and its related phenomena) to Europeans at all levels, respecting the many varieties and ambiguities in such meanings and experiences and resisting attempts to reduce them to master narratives or simple causal models. The chapter 'News from the Invisible World: The Publishing History of Tales of the Supernatural c.1660-1832' is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
Download or read book Witchcraft and Magic in Europe Volume 4 written by Bengt Ankerloo and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteenth to eighteenth centuries was a period of witchcraft prosecutions throughout Europe and modern scholars have now devoted a huge amount of research to these episodes. This volume will attempt to bring this work together by summarising the history of the trials in a new way - according to the types of legal systems involved. Other topics covered will be the continued practical use made of magic, the elaboration of demonological theories about witchcraft and magic, and the further development of scientific interests in natural magic through the 'Neoplatonic' and 'Hermetic' period.Amongst the topics included here are Superstition and Belief in high and popular culture, the place of Medicine, Witchcraft survivals in art and literature, and the survival of Persecution.
Download or read book The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe written by Brian P. Levack and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1450 and 1750 thousands of people – most of them women – were accused, prosecuted and executed for the crime of witchcraft. The witch-hunt was not a single event; it comprised thousands of individual prosecutions, each shaped by the religious and social dimensions of the particular area as well as political and legal factors. Brian Levack sorts through the proliferation of theories to provide a coherent introduction to the subject, as well as contributing to the scholarly debate. The book: Examines why witchcraft prosecutions took place, how many trials and victims there were, and why witch-hunting eventually came to an end. Explores the beliefs of both educated and illiterate people regarding witchcraft. Uses regional and local studies to give a more detailed analysis of the chronological and geographical distribution of witch-trials. Emphasises the legal context of witchcraft prosecutions. Illuminates the social, economic and political history of early modern Europe, and in particular the position of women within it. In this fully updated third edition of his exceptional study, Levack incorporates the vast amount of literature that has emerged since the last edition. He substantially extends his consideration of the decline of the witch-hunt and goes further in his exploration of witch-hunting after the trials, especially in contemporary Africa. New illustrations vividly depict beliefs about witchcraft in early modern Europe.
Download or read book Witch Hunts in Europe and America written by William E. Burns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-10-30 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From early sorcery trials of the 14th century—associated primarily with French and Papal courts—to the witch executions of the late 18th century, this book's entries cover witch-hunting in individual countries, major witch trials from Chelmsford, England, to Salem, Massachusetts, and significant individuals from famous witches to the devout persecutors. Entries such as the evil eye, familiars, and witch-finders cover specific aspects of the witch-hunting process, while entries on writers and modern interpretations provide insight into the current thinking on early modern witch hunts. From the wicked witch of children's stories to Halloween and present-day Wiccan groups, witches and witchcraft still fascinate observers of Western culture. Witches were believed to affect climatological catastrophes, put spells on their neighbors, and cavort with the devil. In early modern Europe and the Americas, witches and witch-hunting were an integral part of everyday life, touching major events such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, as well as politics, law, medicine, and culture.
Download or read book The Voices of Women in Witchcraft Trials written by Liv Helene Willumsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women come to the fore in witchcraft trials as accused persons or as witnesses, and this book is a study of women’s voices in these trials in eight countries around the North Sea: Spanish Netherlands, Northern Germany, Denmark, Scotland, England, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. From each country, three trials are chosen for close reading of courtroom discourse and the narratological approach enables various individuals to speak. Throughout the study, a choir of 24 voices of accused women are heard which reveal valuable insight into the field of mentalities and display both the individual experience of witchcraft accusation and the development of the trial. Particular attention is drawn to the accused women’s confessions, which are interpreted as enforced narratives. The analyses of individual trials are also contextualized nationally and internationally by a frame of historical elements, and a systematic comparison between the countries shows strong similarities regarding the impact of specific ideas about witchcraft, use of pressure and torture, the turning point of the trial, and the verdict and sentence. This volume is an essential resource for all students and scholars interested in the history of witchcraft, witchcraft trials, transnationality, cultural exchanges, and gender in early modern Northern Europe.
Download or read book The Witch Hunts written by Robert Thurston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tens of thousands of people were persecuted and put to death as witches between 1400 and 1700 – the great age of witch hunts. Why did the witch hunts arise, flourish and decline during this period? What purpose did the persecutions serve? Who was accused, and what was the role of magic in the hunts? This important reassessment of witch panics and persecutions in Europeand colonial America both challenges and enhances existing interpretations of the phenomenon. Locating its origins 400 years earlier in the growing perception of threats to Western Christendom, Robert Thurston outlines the development of a ‘persecuting society’ in which campaigns against scapegoats such as heretics, Jews, lepers and homosexuals set the scene for the later witch hunts. He examines the creation of the witch stereotype and looks at how the early trials and hunts evolved, with the shift from accusatory to inquisitorial court procedures and reliance upon confessions leading to the increasing use of torture.
Download or read book Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe written by Jonathan Barry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important collection brings together both established figures and new researchers to offer fresh perspectives on the ever-controversial subject of the history of witchcraft. Using Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic as a starting point, the contributors explore the changes of the last twenty-five years in the understanding of early modern witchcraft, and suggest new approaches, especially concerning the cultural dimensions of the subject. Witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles, over gender and ideology as well as social relationships, with a crucial role played by alternative representations. Witchcraft was always a contested idea, never fully established in early modern culture but much harder to dislodge than has usually been assumed. The essays are European in scope, with examples from Germany, France, and the Spanish expansion into the New World, as well as a strong core of English material.
Download or read book Beyond the Witch Trials written by Owen Davies and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-27 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the witch trials provides an important collection of essays on the nature of witchcraft and magic in European society during the Enlightenment. The book is innovative not only because it pushes forward the study of witchcraft into the eighteenth century, but because it provides the reader with a challenging variety of different approaches and sources of information. The essays, which cover England, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Scotland, Finland and Sweden, examine the experience of and attitudes towards witchcraft from both above and below. While they demonstrate the continued widespread fear of witches amongst the masses, they also provide a corrective to the notion that intellectual society lost interest in the question of witchcraft. While witchcraft prosecutions were comparatively rare by the mid-eighteenth century, the intellectual debate did no disappear; it either became more private or refocused on such issues as possession. The contributors come from different academic disciplines, and by borrowing from literary theory, archaeology and folklore they move beyond the usual historical perspectives and sources. They emphasise the importance of studying such themes as the aftermath of witch trials, the continued role of cunning-folk in society, and the nature of the witchcraft discourse in different social contexts. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the decline of the European witch trials and the continued importance of witchcraft and magic during the Enlightenment. More generally it will appeal to those with a lively interest in the cultural history of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is the first of a two-volume set of books looking at the phenomenon of witchcraft, magic and the occult in Europe since the seventeenth century.
Download or read book Witchcraze written by Anne Llewellyn Barstow and published by Harper San Francisco. This book was released on 1994 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the annihilation of seven million women of spirit and intelligence under the guise of 'witch hunts' in Reformation Europe
Download or read book Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe written by A. Rowlands and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-10-22 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men – as accused witches, witch-hunters, werewolves and the demonically possessed – are the focus of analysis in this collection of essays by leading scholars of early modern European witchcraft. The gendering of witch persecution and witchcraft belief is explored through original case-studies from England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and France.
Download or read book Demonology and Witch Hunting in Early Modern Europe written by Julian Goodare and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonology – the intellectual study of demons and their powers – contributed to the prosecution of thousands of witches. But how exactly did intellectual ideas relate to prosecutions? Recent scholarship has shown that some of the demonologists’ concerns remained at an abstract intellectual level, while some of the judges’ concerns reflected popular culture. This book brings demonology and witch-hunting back together, while placing both topics in their specific regional cultures. The book’s chapters, each written by a leading scholar, cover most regions of Europe, from Scandinavia and Britain through to Germany, France and Switzerland, and Italy and Spain. By focusing on various intellectual levels of demonology, from sophisticated demonological thought to the development of specific demonological ideas and ideas within the witch trial environment, the book offers a thorough examination of the relationship between demonology and witch-hunting. Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe is essential reading for all students and researchers of the history of demonology, witch-hunting and early modern Europe.
Download or read book The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe written by E. Bever and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-06-11 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the elements of reality in early modern witchcraft and popular magic, through a combination of detailed archival research and broad-ranging interdisciplinary analyses, this book complements and challenges existing scholarship, and offers unique insights into this murky aspect of early modern history.
Download or read book Male witches in early modern Europe written by Lara Apps and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This is the first ever full book on the subject of male witches addressing incidents of witch-hunting in both Britain and Europe. Uses feminist categories of gender analysis to critique the feminist agenda that mars many studies. Advances a more bal. Critiques historians’ assumptions about witch-hunting, challenging the marginalisation of male witches by feminist and other historians. Shows that large numbers of men were accused of witchcraft in their own right, in some regions, more men were accused than women. It uses feminist categories of gender analysis to challenge recent arguments and current orthodoxies providing a more balanced and complex view of witch-hunting and ideas about witches in their gendered forms than has hitherto been available.
Download or read book Witchcraft in Europe and the New World 1400 1800 written by P. G. Maxwell-Stuart and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-06-23 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illuminates the way in which people in the early modern era framed their ideas about the Creator and the created universe in terms of magic. This perspective informed and molded theology, philosophy, the law, medicine, and the sciences, as well as offered practical help with the problems of everyday life. The study of witchcraft (as a particular manifestation of this mental world), helps to illustrate many of the key concepts which governed both defenders and, later, opponents of the magical Zeitgeist.
Download or read book Witch Craze written by Lyndal Roper and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful account of witches, crones, and the societies that make them From the gruesome ogress in Hansel and Gretel to the hags at the sabbath in Faust, the witch has been a powerful figure of the Western imagination. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of women confessed to being witches--of making pacts with the Devil, causing babies to sicken, and killing animals and crops--and were put to death. This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches during this period and beyond. Drawing on hundreds of original trial transcripts and other rare sources in four areas of Southern Germany, where most of the witches were executed, Lyndal Roper paints a vivid picture of their lives, families, and tribulations. She also explores the psychology of witch-hunting, explaining why it was mostly older women that were the victims of witch crazes, why they confessed to crimes, and how the depiction of witches in art and literature has influenced the characterization of elderly women in our own culture.
