This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Looks at why witch-trials failed to gain momentum and escalate into 'witch-crazes' in certain parts of early modern Europe. Exames the rich legal records of the German city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a city which experienced a very restrained pattern of witch-trials and just one execution for witchcraft between 1561 and 1652. Explores the social and psychological conflicts that lay behind the making of accusations and confessions of witchcraft. Offers insights into other areas of early modern life, such as experiences of and beliefs about communal conflict, magic, motherhood, childhood and illness. Offers a critique of existing explanations for the gender bias of witch-trials, and a new explanation as to why most witches were women.

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.

“A Demon-Haunted Land is absorbing, gripping, and utterly fascinating... Beautifully written, without even a hint of jargon or pretension, it casts a significant and unexpected new light on the early phase of the Federal Republic of Germany’s history. Black’s analysis of the copious, largely unknown archival sources on which the book is based is unfailingly subtle and intelligent.” —Richard J. Evans, The New Republic In the aftermath of World War II, a succession of mass supernatural events swept through war-torn Germany. A messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder. What linked these events, in the wake of an annihilationist war and the Holocaust, was a widespread preoccupation with evil. While many histories emphasize Germany’s rapid transition from genocidal dictatorship to liberal democracy, A Demon-Haunted Land places in full view the toxic mistrust, profound bitterness, and spiritual malaise that unfolded alongside the economic miracle. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials, acclaimed historian Monica Black argues that the surge of supernatural obsessions stemmed from the unspoken guilt and shame of a nation remarkably silent about what was euphemistically called “the most recent past.” This shadow history irrevocably changes our view of postwar Germany, revealing the country’s fraught emotional life, deep moral disquiet, and the cost of trying to bury a horrific legacy.

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.

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.

Using the example of Eichstatt, this book challenges current witchcraft historiography by arguing that the gender of the witch-suspect was a product of the interrogation process and that the stable communities affected by persecution did not collude in its escalation.

Witchcraft in Early North America investigates European, African, and Indian witchcraft beliefs and their expression in colonial America. Alison Games's engaging book takes us beyond the infamous outbreak at Salem, Massachusetts, to look at how witchcraft was a central feature of colonial societies in North America. Her substantial and lively introduction orients readers to the subject and to the rich selection of documents that follows. The documents begin with first encounters between European missionaries and Native Americans in New France and New Mexico, and they conclude with witch hunts among Native Americans in the years of the early American republic. The documents—some of which have never been published previously—include excerpts from trials in Virginia, New Mexico, and Massachusetts; accounts of outbreaks in Salem, Abiquiu (New Mexico), and among the Delaware Indians; descriptions of possession; legal codes; and allegations of poisoning by slaves. The documents raise issues central to legal, cultural, social, religious, and gender history. This fascinating topic and the book’s broad geographic and chronological coverage make this book ideally suited for readers interested in new approaches to colonial history and the history of witchcraft.

An important collection of essays that use a variety of different approaches and sources to uncover the continued relevance of witchcraft and magic in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe.

Different conceptions of the world and of reality have made witchcraft possible in some societies and impossible in others. How did the people of early modern Europe experience it and what was its place in their culture? The new essays in this collection illustrate the latest trends in witchcraft research and in cultural history in general. After three decades in which the social analysis of witchcraft accusations has dominated the subject, they turn instead to its significance and meaning as a cultural phenomenon - to the 'languages' of witchcraft, rather than its causes. As a result, witchcraft seems less startling than it once was, yet more revealing of the world in which it occurred.

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.