Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London

Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London PDF Author: Michael MacDonald
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415017882
Category : Case studies
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Reassesses and sets in its historical context Jorden's famous pamphlet. In his introduction, Michael MacDonald provides an analysis of the politics of credulity and scepticism in early modern England and Jorden's part in them.

Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London

Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London PDF Author: Michael MacDonald
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415017882
Category : Case studies
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Reassesses and sets in its historical context Jorden's famous pamphlet. In his introduction, Michael MacDonald provides an analysis of the politics of credulity and scepticism in early modern England and Jorden's part in them.

Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London

Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London PDF Author: Lauren Kassell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191514225
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Simon Forman (1552-1611) is one of London's most infamous astrologers. He stood apart from the medical elite because he was not formally educated and because he represented, and boldly asserted, medical ideas that were antithetical to those held by most learned physicians. He survived the plague, was consulted thousands of times a year for medical and other questions, distilled strong waters made from beer, herbs, and sometimes chemical ingredients, pursued the philosopher's stone in experiments and ancient texts, and when he was fortunate spoke with angels. He wrote compulsively, documenting his life and protesting his expertise in thousands of pages of notes and treatises. This highly readable book provides the first full account of Forman's papers, makes sense of his notorious reputation, and vividly recovers the world of medicine and magic in Elizabethan London.

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.

Witchcraft in Early Modern England

Witchcraft in Early Modern England PDF Author: James Sharpe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131788129X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
With the renewed interest in the history of witches and witchcraft, this timely book provides an introduction to this fascinating topic, informed by the main trends of new thinking on the subject. Beginning with a discussion of witchcraft in the early modern period, and charting the witch panics that took place at this time, the author goes on to look at the historical debate surrounding the causes of the legal persecution of witches. Contemporary views of witchcraft put forward by judges, theological writers and the medical profession are examined, as is the place of witchcraft in the popular imagination. Jim Sharpe also looks at the gender dimensions of the witch persecution, and the treatment of witchcraft in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Supported by a range of compelling documents, the book concludes with an exploration of why witch panics declined in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century.

Demon Possession in Elizabethan England

Demon Possession in Elizabethan England PDF Author: Kathleen R. Sands
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031305777X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In October of 1563, 18-year old Anne Mylner was herding cows near her home when she was suddenly enveloped by a white cloud that precipitated a months-long illness characterized by sleeplessness, loss of appetite, convulsions, and bodily swelling. Mylner's was the first of several cases during the reign of Elizabeth I of England that were interpreted as demon possession, a highly emotional experience in which an afflicted person displays behavior indicating a state of religious distress. To most Elizabethans, belief in Satan was as natural as belief in God, and Satan's affliction of mankind was clearly demonstrated in the physical and spiritual distress displayed by virtually every person at some point in his or her life. This book recounts 11 cases of Elizabethan demon possession, documenting the details of each case and providing the cultural context to explain why the diagnosis made sense at the time. Victims included children and adults, servants and masters, Catholics and Protestants, frauds and the genuinely ill. Edmund Kingesfielde's wife, possessed by a demon who caused her to hate her children and to contemplate suicide, was cured when her husband changed his irreverent tavern sign (depicting a devil) for a more seemly design. Alexander Nyndge, possessed by a Catholic demon that spoke with an Irish accent, was cured by his own brother through physical bondage and violence. Agnes Brigges and Rachel Pindar, whose afflictions included vomiting pins, feathers, and other trash, were revealed as frauds and forced to confess publicly, their parents being imprisoned for complicity in the fraud. All these cases attest to a powerful need to ascribe some moral significance to human suffering. Allowing the sufferer to externalize and ultimately evict the demon as the cause of his or her affliction bestowed some measure of hopeā€”no mean feat in a world with such widespread human distress.

A History of Witchcraft in England

A History of Witchcraft in England PDF Author: Wallace Notestein
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1776536010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Many historical treatments of witchcraft tend to be somewhat sensationalistic and cartoonish. Not so with Wallace Notestein's measured, intellectual take on the subject in A History of Witchcraft in England, which offers not only a thorough historical narrative, but also puts the practice into social and political context.

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
This important collection brings together both established figures and new researchers to offer fresh perspectives on the ever-controversial subject of the history of witchcraft. Using Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic as a starting point, the contributors explore the changes of the last twenty-five years in the understanding of early modern witchcraft, and suggest new approaches, especially concerning the cultural dimensions of the subject. Witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles, over gender and ideology as well as social relationships, with a crucial role played by alternative representations. Witchcraft was always a contested idea, never fully established in early modern culture but much harder to dislodge than has usually been assumed. The essays are European in scope, with examples from Germany, France, and the Spanish expansion into the New World, as well as a strong core of English material.

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
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 seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, Peter Elmer 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 the period from the passage of the witchcraft statute of 1563 to the repeal of the various laws on witchcraft. In the process, Elmer sheds new light upon various issues relating to the role of witchcraft in English society, including the problematic relationship between puritanism and witchcraft as well as the process of decline.

Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640-1789

Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640-1789 PDF Author: J. Barry
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230361382
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Using south-western England as a focus for considering the continued place of witchcraft and demonology in provincial culture in the period between the English and French revolutions, Barry shows how witch-beliefs were intricately woven into the fabric of daily life, even at a time when they arguably ceased to be of interest to the educated.

Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England

Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England PDF Author: Philip C. Almond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113945160X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
This book is exclusively devoted to demonic possession and exorcism in early modern England. It offers modernized versions of the most significant early modern texts on nine cases of demonic possession from the period 1570 to 1650, the key period in English history for demonic possession. The nine stories were all written by eyewitnesses or were derived from eyewitness reports. They involve matters of life and death, sin and sanctity, guilt and innocence, of crimes which could not be committed and punishments which could not be deserved. The nine critical introductions which accompany the stories address the different strategic intentions of those who wrote them. The modernized texts and critical introductions are placed within the context of a wide-ranging general Introduction to demonic possession in England across the period 1550 to 1700.