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. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. 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. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. 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.
BRIAN P. LEVACK THE WITCHCRAFT SOURCEBOOK SERIES
paper) Bibliography Note: Includes bibliographical references and index. 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. 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. 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.
BRIAN P. LEVACK THE WITCHCRAFT SOURCEBOOK TRIAL
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.
Catholics and Protestants alike feared that the Devil and his human confederates were destroying Christian society. During these years the prominent stereotype of the witch as an evil magician and servant of Satan emerged. Many of the sources come from the period between 14, when more than 90,000 people - most of them women - were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and colonial America. Summary: 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. Contents: Witchcraft and magic in the ancient world - The medieval foundations of witch-hunting - Witch beliefs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - The trial and punishment of witches - Witchcraft trials in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - Witchcraft trials in England, Scotland, and New England - Demonic possession and witchcraft - The skeptical tradition.
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