The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199578168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645

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Book Description
A collection of essays from leading scholars in the field that collectively 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.

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199578168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of essays from leading scholars in the field that collectively 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.

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191648833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 646

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Book Description
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.

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191648841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 646

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Book Description
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.

Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750

Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750 PDF Author: Marion Gibson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826483003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
A collection of materials, including works of literature as well as historical documents, this work provides a broad view of how witches and magicians were represented in print and manuscript. It presents the voices of witches, accusers, ministers, physicians, poets, dramatists, magistrates, and witchfinders from both sides of the Atlantic.

The Witchcraft Sourcebook

The Witchcraft Sourcebook PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415195063
Category : Magic
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
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.

Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Jonathan Barry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521638753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
An up-to-date account of the present state of scholarship on early modern European witchcraft.

The Oxford History of Witchcraft and Magic

The Oxford History of Witchcraft and Magic PDF Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192884050
Category : Magic
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Histories you can trust. This history provides a readable and fresh approach to the extensive and complex story of witchcraft and magic. Telling the story from the dawn of writing in the ancient world to the globally successful Harry Potter films, the authors explore a wide range of magical beliefs and practices, the rise of the witch trials, and the depiction of the Devil-worshipping witch. The book also focuses on the more recent history of witchcraft and magic, from the Enlightenment to the present, exploring the rise of modern magic, the anthropology of magic around the globe, and finally the cinematic portrayal of witches and magicians, from The Wizard of Oz to Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Witchcraft Sourcebook

The Witchcraft Sourcebook PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317503562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The Witchcraft Sourcebook, now in its second edition, is a fascinating collection of documents that illustrates the development of ideas about witchcraft from ancient times to the eighteenth century. Many of the sources come from the period between 1400 and 1750, when more than 100,000 people - most of them women - were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and colonial America. During these years the prominent stereotype of the witch as an evil magician and servant of Satan emerged. Catholics and Protestants alike feared that the Devil and his human confederates were destroying Christian society. Including trial records, demonological treatises and sermons, literary texts, narratives of demonic possession, and artistic depiction of witches, the documents reveal how contemporaries from various periods have perceived alleged witches and their activities. Brian P. Levack shows how notions of witchcraft have changed over time and considers the connection between gender and witchcraft and the nature of the witch's perceived power. This second edition includes an extended section on the witch trials in England, Scotland and New England, fully revised and updated introductions to the sources to include the latest scholarship and a short bibliography at the end of each introduction to guide students in their further reading. The Sourcebook provides students of the history of witchcraft with a broad range of sources, many of which have been translated into English for the first time, with commentary and background by one of the leading scholars in the field.

Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland

Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland PDF Author: Lawrence Normand
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1802079300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.

Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England

Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England PDF Author: Peter Elmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198717725
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
A wide-ranging 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 seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, it demonstrates how learned discussion of witchcraft, as well as the trials of those suspected of the crime, were shaped by religious and political imperatives in that period.