The European Witch-Hunt seeks to explain why thousands of people, mostly lower-class women, were deliberately tortured and killed in the name of religion and morality during three centuries of intermittent witch-hunting throughout Europe and North America. Combining perspectives from history, sociology, psychology and other disciplines, this book provides a comprehensive account of witch-hunting in early modern Europe. Julian Goodare sets out an original interpretation of witch-hunting as an episode of ideologically-driven persecution by the ‘godly state’ in the era of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Full weight is also given to the context of village social relationships, and there is a detailed analysis of gender issues. Witch-hunting was a legal operation, and the courts’ rationale for interrogation under torture is explained. Panicking local elites, rather than central governments, were at the forefront of witch-hunting. Further chapters explore folk beliefs about legendary witches, and intellectuals’ beliefs about a secret conspiracy of witches in league with the Devil. Witch-hunting eventually declined when the ideological pressure to combat the Devil’s allies slackened. A final chapter sets witch-hunting in the context of other episodes of modern persecution. This book is the ideal resource for students exploring the history of witch-hunting. Its level of detail and use of social theory also make it important for scholars and researchers.
Chapel Hill, 1979: 221–76. Murray, Alexander. 'Medieval Origins of the Witch Hunt', The Cambridge Quarterly 7 (1976): 63–74. Murray, Margaret A. The Divine King of England. London, 1954. Murray, Margaret A. The God of the Witches.
As the centuries since have shown escalating levels both of violence, general and sexual, and of state control, the witchcraze can be considered a portent, even a model, of some aspects of what modern Europe would be like.
Bell is also sometimes credited with writing another tract supporting witch belief, Witch-Craft Proven (1697), but Cristina Lamer has conclusively established that the two tracts have different authors. REFERENCE: Cristina Lamer.
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?
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.
This collection of trial records, laws, treatises, sermons, speeches, woodcuttings, paintings and literary texts illustrates how contemporaries from various periods have perceived alleged witches and their activities.
An analysis of the European Witch Hunts, focusing on the regional experiences and differences.
This book will make essential reading for all those interested in the history and anthropology of witchcraft and magic. In this major new book, Wolfgang Behringer surveys the phenomenon of witchcraft past and present.
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.
In the village of Heiligenstein, near Barr, the town cooper was startled early one morning to find the local carpenter unconscious in his garret. The cooper suspected that the carpenter had broken in to rob him, and his fears were not ...