You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A thoroughly revised, greatly expanded edition of the most important documentary history of European witchcraft ever published.
This volume deals with contrasting developments in the period between 1400-1550. It is one that is characterized by a search for greater personal liberty and more opportunities for creative expression, on the one hand, and a quest to secure stability by establishing binding norms, on the other.
When Johannes Nider wrote his formative description of witchcraft in 1437, Europe was beset by heretics and infidels. His self-appointed task was, however, to alert Christendom to an altogether more sinister danger - witches and demons.
Possessed behaviors -- Ciphers -- Fallen women and fallen angels -- Breath, heart, bowels -- Exorcizing demonic disorder -- Testing spirits in the effeminate age
On September 20, 1587, Walpurga Hausmännin of Dillingen in southern Germany was burned at the stake as a witch. Although she had confessed to committing a long list of maleficia (deeds of harmful magic), including killing forty—one infants and two mothers in labor, her evil career allegedly began with just one heinous act—sex with a demon. Fornication with demons was a major theme of her trial record, which detailed an almost continuous orgy of sexual excess with her diabolical paramour Federlin "in many divers places, . . . even in the street by night." As Walter Stephens demonstrates in Demon Lovers, it was not Hausmännin or other so-called witches who were obsessive about sex with d...
It was during the late Middle Ages that the full stereotype of demonic witchcraft developed in Europe, and this is the subject of this volume which places the Dominican theologian Johannes Nider at the centre of an emerging set of beliefs about diabolical sorcery and witchcraft in the 15th century.
In Ruling the Spirit, Claire Taylor Jones revises the narrative of women's involvement in the German Dominican order, arguing that Dominican women did not lose their piety and literacy in the fifteenth century as is commonly believed, but instead were encouraged to reframe their practice around the observance of the Divine Office.
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.
This work is a guide to the life, thought and activities of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), the great fifteenth-century philosopher, theologian, jurist, author of mystical and ecclesiastical treatises, cardinal and reformer. It is intended not only for advanced scholars, but also for beginners and those simply curious about a man who has been called 'one of the greatest Germans of the fifteenth century' and a 'medieval thinker for the modern age'. The book provides a series of detailed but readable essays on ideas, persons, and places, a work developed over the course of nearly three decades. First, it contains articles on the important events and concepts that affected Cusanus--philosophical,...
Sometime around 1230, a young woman left her family and traveled to the German city of Magdeburg to devote herself to worship and religious contemplation. Rather than living in a community of holy women, she chose isolation, claiming that this life would bring her closer to God. Even in her lifetime, Mechthild of Magdeburg gained some renown for her extraordinary book of mystical revelations, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, the first such work in the German vernacular. Yet her writings dropped into obscurity after her death, many assume because of her gender. In Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book, Sara S. Poor seeks to explain this fate by considering Mechthild's own view of female author...