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In 1997, Stuart Clark published the first monograph since the time of Jules Michelet to focus on pre-modern ideas about witches. The language of belief in witchcraft studies betrays an anachronistic, modernist and dismissive approach to a mental universe quite different from our own. This book makes the male witch visible, to construct him as a historical subject, as a first step toward a deeper understanding of the functions and role of gender in pre-modern European witch-hunting and ideas about witches. The overtly political dimension to the study of witches in early modern Europe demands a high level of consciousness and reflexivity regarding language, representation, and meaning. William Monter provides a wealth of data about male witches, in an 'unremarkable province' close to 'the heart of northern and western Europe'. Here, men comprised the majority of those tried and executed for witchcraft. The book examines cases in which men were accused of witchcraft. The examples are drawn from several different regions, in order to test conventional generalisations about male witches. The agency theory posits that actors always have choices; 'agent-centred' morality proposes a novel twist on both traditional Kantian internalist categories. The problems of both male and female witches' agency and selfhood are discussed. The book also presents data compiled from ten canonical works, and a brief discussion of demonological illustrations. Finally, it addresses the question of what it means to label a man as a witch within a framework that explicitly and implicitly feminised witchcraft.
2 Irish Jacobites in early modern Europe: exile, adjustment and experience, 1691–1745 Éamonn Ó Ciardha Sustained migration to Europe has characterised Ireland and Britain’s shared histories over the last fifteen hundred years. Close links with the Papacy and Europe’s great universities, religious institutions and organisations, the English Crown’s extensive possessions in France, and a lucrative trade in fish, wine and wool across the Irish Sea and English Channel account for much of this traffic in the medieval period. In the early modern era, the political
Given the widespread belief in witchcraft and the existence of laws against such practices, why did witch-trials fail to gain momentum and escalate into ‘witch-crazes’ in certain parts of early modern Europe? This book answers this question by examining the rich legal records of the German city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a city that experienced a very restrained pattern of witch-trials and just one execution for witchcraft between 1561 and 1652. The book explores the factors that explain the absence of a ‘witch-craze’ in Rothenburg, placing particular emphasis on the interaction of elite and popular priorities in the pursuit (and non-pursuit) of alleged witches at law. By making the witchcraft narratives told by the peasants and townspeople of Rothenburg central to its analysis, the book also explores the social and psychological conflicts that lay behind the making of accusations and confessions of witchcraft. Furthermore, it challenges the existing explanations for the gender-bias of witch-trials, and also offers insights into other areas of early modern life, such as experiences of and beliefs about communal conflict, magic, motherhood, childhood and illness. Written in a narrative style, the study invites a wide readership to share in the drama of early modern witch trials.
French subsidies played a central role in European politics from Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494 until the French Revolution. French kings attempted to frustrate what they viewed as a Habsburg bid to pursue universal monarchy. During the seventeenth century, the French monarchy would embrace the payment of subsidies on a different scale than previously, using alliances in which subsidies played a prominent role to pursue crucial aspects of royal policy. Louis XIII made alliances promising subsidies to support the United Provinces’ resumed war against the king of Spain, and for the Danish, Swedish, and various German princes to fight against the Holy Roman Emperor. Louis XIV continued some of these subsidies and used subsidies as a tool in order to implement his own politics. When Louis XIV appeared to Dutch and some English statesmen as aspiring to Universal monarchy, the Dutch and particularly the English used the tool of subsidies to frustrate the French monarch. During the eighteenth century, principally the French and the British, but also the Austrians, used subsidies to procure allies and attempt to maintain the balance of power. The subsidy system prompted significant debates about the legal, political, and moral implications, and was sometimes a source of political conflict between competing power groupings within states. The book argues that participation in the French system of subsidies neither necessarily accelerated nor necessarily retarded state development; but such participation could undoubtedly change political dynamics, the creation of institutions, and the form of states that would emerge.
Necromancy, the practice of conjuring and controlling evil spirits, was a popular pursuit in the courts and cloisters of late medieval and early modern Europe. Books that gave details on how to conduct magical experiments circulated widely. Written pseudonymously under the name of the astrologer and translator Michael Scot (d. 1236), Latin MS 105 from the John Rylands Library, Manchester, is notable for the inclusion, at the beginning of the manuscript, of a corrupted, unreadable text that purports to be the Arabic original. Other recensions of the handbook, which generally travelled under the pseudo-Arabic title of Almuchabola Absegalim Alkakib Albaon, also stressed the experiments non-Western origins. Using Latin MS 105 as the main case study, this article aims to investigate the extent to which a magic books paratextual data conveyed a sense of authority to its contemporary audience.
. , Seem , M. and Lane , H. R. ( Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press ). Eisenstein , E. ( 2005 ), The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press ). Frontier Economics
refracted through but reshaped gendered experiences and ideologies. In post-Reformation Europe ( c. 1550–1700), religious conversion took place on a scale that had not been seen since the official Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Under the combined effects of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations within and pressure from the Ottoman Empire without, early modern Europe
, thus implying sceptical distance in the sense that the ideas in question, while sincerely held,were not only fallacious but also entirely subjective.We do not mean to suggest that Satan-worshipping witches actually flew across the early modern European skies. Rather, we concur with anthropologist Gilbert Lewis: ‘The very word “belief” often implies, in its use, a judgement about the uncertain truth or reliability of that
3 Diasporic or distinct? Scots in early modern Europe Siobhan Talbott The presence of Scots in Europe in the early modern period has long been a subject of scholarly interest, but has attracted widespread attention only in recent years.1 At a conference on early modern European migration held in Dublin in 1990 there was no paper on Scottish migration, and an essay on the subject was commissioned especially for the edited volume arising from that event.2 In the twenty-five years since that conference, research on early modern Scottish migration has expanded
1 Introduction: Serving others – serving the state S ervice to others was integral to medieval and early modern European culture. It played a prominent role in the Christian world view. The Gospels often draw on metaphors of service, and the master–servant relationship is at the core of several of their parables. One example is the story of the nobleman who left his servants money to be wisely invested while he was away; here, the servant who hid his pound in a napkin was upbraided and punished for not having acted in his master’s interests.1 Stories like