Witch Hunts

Beyond the Witch Trials is an important volume on the nature of witchcraft and magic in European society during the Enlightenment. This innovative book provides the reader with a challenging variety of approaches and sources of information, as well as advancing the study of witchcraft into the eighteenth century. The essays cover England, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Scotland, Finland and Sweden, and examine the experience of and attitudes towards witchcraft in those countries. The ...
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An important late sixteenth century text on witchcraft "drawn from the capital trials of 900 persons, more or less, who within the last fifteen years have in Lorraine paid the penalty of death for the crime of witchcraft" by Nicholas Remy, 'Privy Councillor to the Most Serene Duke of Lorraine, and Public Advocate to his Duchy.' Along with the better-known Malleus Maleficarum one of the core works on witch hunting. This edition formed Volume IV ...
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Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it. From ...
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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 ...
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This book is the first major study of England's biggest and best-known witch trial which took place in 1612, when ten witches were arraigned and hung in the village of Pendle in Lancashire. The book has equal appeal across the disciplines of both History and English Literature/Renaissance Studies, with essays by the leading experts in both fields. Includes helpful summaries to explain the key points of each essay. Brings the subject up-to-date with a study ...
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The Path of the Devil is organized around three fundamental theories: witch hunts as functional sacrificial ceremonies, realistic conflict and strategic persecution, and scapegoat phenomena. All conjectures point to the role of epidemic disease, war, and climactic and economic hardships as considerable factors. However, such crises have to be differentiated: when war is measured as a quantitative characteristic it is found to inhibit witch hunts, while epidemic disease and economic hardship encourages them. The book ...
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From the wicked witch of childrens 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 neighbours 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 ...
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This in-depth and comprehensive resource explores the intersection of religion, politics, and the supernatural that spawned the notorious witch hunts in Europe and the New World. Witch Hunts in the Western World traces the evolution of Western attitudes toward magic, demons, and religious nonconformity from the Roman Empire through the Age of Enlightenment, placing these chilling events into a wider social and historical context. Brian A. Pavlac discusses witch hunts in fascinating detail by region, ...
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Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England constitutes a wide-ranging and original overview of the place of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the broader culture of early modern England. Based on a mass of new evidence extracted from a range of archives, both local and national, it seeks to relate the rise and decline of belief in witchcraft, alongside the legal prosecution of witches, to the wider political culture of the period. Building on the ...
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