Download or read book The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of witchcraft written by Hans Broedel and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 224 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. The Malleus is an important text and is frequently quoted by authors across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. Yet it also presents serious difficulties: it is difficult to understand out of context, and is not generally representative of late medieval learned thinking. This, the first book-length study of the original text in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this controversial work and to the conceptual word of its authors. Like all witch-theorists, Institoris and Sprenger constructed their witch out of a constellation of pre-existing popular beliefs and learned traditions. Therefore, to understand the Malleus, one must also understand the contemporary and subsequent debates over the reality and nature of witches. This book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, its arguments were powerfully compelling and therefore remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten. Consequently, although focused on a single text, this study has important implications for fifteenth-century witchcraft theory. This is a fascinating work on the Malleus Maleficarum and will be essential to students and academics of late medieval and early modern history, religion and witchcraft studies.
Download or read book The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft written by Hans Peter Broedel and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was witchcraft? Were witches real? How should witches be identified? How should they be judged? Towards the end of the middle ages these were new questions, without answers hallowed by time and authority. Between 1430 and 1500, a number of learned "witch-theorists" attempted to provide the answers, and of these perhaps the most famous are the Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches. This, the first book-length study of the Malleus in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this text and to the conceptual world of its authors. Ultimately, this book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, with a view of witches very different from that of competing authors, its arguments were powerfully compelling and so remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten.
Download or read book The Hammer of Witches written by Christopher S. Mackay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Malleus Maleficarum, first published in 1486–7, is the standard medieval text on witchcraft and it remained in print throughout the early modern period. Its descriptions of the evil acts of witches and the ways to exterminate them continue to contribute to our knowledge of early modern law, religion and society. Mackay's highly acclaimed translation, based on his extensive research and detailed analysis of the Latin text, is the only complete English version available, and the most reliable. Now available in a single volume, this key text is at last accessible to students and scholars of medieval history and literature. With detailed explanatory notes and a guide to further reading, this volume offers a unique insight into the fifteenth-century mind and its sense of sin, punishment and retribution.
Download or read book The Malleus Maleficarum written by Heinrich Institoris and published by . This book was released on 2007-06-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title offers a new translation of the medieval treatise on witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum, by the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Institoris.
Download or read book Malleus Maleficarum written by Heinrich Kramer and published by . This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Malleus Maleficarum is a seminal treatise regarding witchcraft and demons, presented here complete with an authoritative translation to modern English by Montague Summers. At the time this book was published in 1487, the Christian church had considered witchcraft a dangerous affront to the faith for many centuries. Executions of suspected witches were intermittent, and various explanations of behaviors deemed suspect were thought to be caused by possession, either by the devil or demon such as an incubus or succubus. Kramer wrote this book after he had tried and failed to have a woman executed for witchcraft. Unhappy at the verdict of the court, he authored the Malleus Maleficarum as a manual for other witch seekers to refer to. For centuries the text was used by Christians as a reference source on matters of demonology, although it was not used directly by the Inquisition who became notorious for their tortures and murders.
Download or read book Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews written by Sigrid Brauner and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brauner shows that the modern notion of the witch as a willful, conniving, promiscuous woman was first established by German Inquisitors in the Malleus maleficarum (1487). In subsequent works by Martin Luther and the sixteenth-century playwrights Paul Rebhun and Hans Sachs, the witch emerged as the counterpart to the new feminine ideal of the urban housewife. By demonstrating how the binary concepts of "good" housewife and "bad wife" (or witch) were propagated among the educated urban elite who presided over witch trials, Brauner suggests that the witch hunts functioned to discipline women who failed to display the docility and subservience expected of the new urban housewife.
Download or read book The Witchcraft Reader written by Darren Oldridge and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The excellent reader offers a selection of the best historical writing on witchcraft, exploring how belief in witchcraft began, and the social and context in which this belief flourished.
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 Battling Demons written by Michael D. Bailey and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was during the late Middle Ages that the full stereotype of demonic witchcraft developed in Europe, and this is the subject of this volume which places the Dominican theologian Johannes Nider at the centre of an emerging set of beliefs about diabolical sorcery and witchcraft in the 15th century.
Download or read book Demon Lovers written by Walter Stephens and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-08-15 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 20, 1587, Walpurga Hausmännin of Dillingen in southern Germany was burned at the stake as a witch. Although she had confessed to committing a long list of maleficia (deeds of harmful magic), including killing forty—one infants and two mothers in labor, her evil career allegedly began with just one heinous act—sex with a demon. Fornication with demons was a major theme of her trial record, which detailed an almost continuous orgy of sexual excess with her diabolical paramour Federlin "in many divers places, . . . even in the street by night." As Walter Stephens demonstrates in Demon Lovers, it was not Hausmännin or other so-called witches who were obsessive about sex with demons—instead, a number of devout Christians, including trained theologians, displayed an uncanny preoccupation with the topic during the centuries of the "witch craze." Why? To find out, Stephens conducts a detailed investigation of the first and most influential treatises on witchcraft (written between 1430 and 1530), including the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). Far from being credulous fools or mindless misogynists, early writers on witchcraft emerge in Stephens's account as rational but reluctant skeptics, trying desperately to resolve contradictions in Christian thought on God, spirits, and sacraments that had bedeviled theologians for centuries. Proof of the physical existence of demons—for instance, through evidence of their intercourse with mortal witches—would provide strong evidence for the reality of the supernatural, the truth of the Bible, and the existence of God. Early modern witchcraft theory reflected a crisis of belief—a crisis that continues to be expressed today in popular debates over angels, Satanic ritual child abuse, and alien abduction.
Download or read book The Witch as Muse written by Linda C. Hults and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Occult topics have long fascinated artists, and the subject of witches—their imagined bodies and fantastic rituals—was a popular one for painters and printmakers in early modern Europe. Focusing on several artists in depth, Linda C. Hults probes the historical and theoretical contexts of their work to examine the ways witches were depicted and the motivations for those depictions. While studying the work of such artists as Dürer, Baldung, Jacques de Gheyn II, and Goya, Hults discerns patterns suggesting that the imagery of witchcraft served both as an expression of artistic license and as a tool of self-promotion for the artists. These imagined images of witches were designed to catch the attention of powerful and important patrons as witchcraft was being debated in political and intellectual centers. Dürer's early engravings of witnesses made in the wake of the Malleus maleficarum of 1487 were crucial in linking the seductive or aged female form with the dangers of witchcraft. The polarized idea of gender pervaded many aspects of early modern culture, including art theory. As the deluded female witch embodied the abuse of imagination and fantasy, so the male artist presented himself as putting those faculties to productive and reasoned use.
Download or read book Witchcraft A Very Short Introduction written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the history and origins of witchcraft, from pre-history to the present day, considering why it still features so heavily in our culture
Download or read book A History of Magic and Witchcraft written by Frances Timbers and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Magic and Masculinity explores the history and development of magic and witchcraft in Western society. Broomsticks, cauldrons, familiars, and spells—magic and witchcraft conjure a vivid picture in our modern-day imagination. While much of our understanding is rooted in superstition and myth, the history of magic and witchcraft offers a window into the past. It illuminates the lives of ordinary people in the past and elucidates the fascinating pop culture of the premodern world. Blowing away folkloric cobwebs, this enlightening new history dispels many misconceptions surrounding witchcraft and magic that we still hold today. From Ancient Greece and Rome to the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, historian Frances Timbers details the impact of Christianity and popular culture in the construction of the figure of the “witch.” The development of demonology and ceremonial magic is combined with the West’s troubled past with magic and witchcraft to chart the birth of modern Wiccan and Neopagan movements in England and North America. Witchcraft is a metaphor for oppression in an age in which persecution is an everyday occurrence somewhere in the world. Fanaticism, intolerance, prejudice, authoritarianism, and religious and political ideologies are never attractive. Beware the witch hunter!
Download or read book Witchcraft Demonology and Confession in Early Modern France written by Virginia Krause and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated at the crossroads of history and literary studies, this book examines confession's place at the heart of French demonology. Drawing on evidence from published treatises, the writings of skeptics such as Montaigne, and the documents from a witchcraft trial, Virginia Krause shows how demonologists erected their science of demons on the confessed experiences of would-be witches.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.
Download or read book The Witch in the Western Imagination written by Lyndal Roper and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an exciting new approach to witchcraft studies, The Witch in the Western Imagination examines the visual representation of witches in early modern Europe. With vibrant and lucid prose, Lyndal Roper moves away from the typical witchcraft studies on trials, beliefs, and communal dynamics and instead considers the witch as a symbolic and malleable figure through a broad sweep of topics and time periods. Employing a wide selection of archival, literary, and visual materials, Roper presents a series of thematic studies that range from the role of emotions in Renaissance culture to demonology as entertainment, and from witchcraft as female embodiment to the clash of cultures on the brink of the Enlightenment. Rather than providing a vast synthesis or survey, this book is questioning and exploratory in nature and illuminates our understanding of the mental and psychic worlds of people in premodern Europe. Roper’s spectrum of theoretical interests will engage readers interested in cultural history, psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, art history, and early modern European studies. These essays, three of which appear here for the first time in print, are complemented by more than forty images, from iconic paintings to marginal drawings on murals or picture frames. In her unique focus on the imagery of witchcraft, Lyndal Roper has succeeded in adding a compelling new dimension to the study of witchcraft in early modern Europe.
Download or read book The Hammer of Witches Malleus Maleficarum written by Heinrich Kramer and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2024-01-18 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Malleus Maleficarum or "Hammer of Witches" is the best known and the most important treatise on witchcraft. It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory. It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years. It was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and first published in 1487. The Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and prescribes inquisitorial practices for secular courts in order to extirpate witches. The recommended procedures include torture to effectively obtain confessions and the death penalty as the only sure remedy against the evils of witchcraft. At that time, it was typical to burn heretics alive at the stake and the Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches. The book had a strong influence on culture for several centuries. It was later used by royal courts during the Renaissance, and contributed to the increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries.
