"Evil People": A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier
"Evil People": A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier (Studies in Early Modern German History)
Dr. Johannes Dillinger PhD, Dr. Laura Stokes (Translator)
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813928060
DDC: 133.4309434313
Edition: Hardcover; 2009-09-30
Summary:
Inspired by recent efforts to understand the dynamics of the early
modern witch hunt, Johannes Dillinger has produced a powerful
synthesis based on careful comparisons. Narrowing his focus to two
specific regions--Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier--he
provides a nuanced explanation of how the tensions between state
power and communalism determined the course of witch hunts that
claimed over 1,300 lives in sixteenth - and seventeenth-century
Germany. Dillinger finds that, far from representing the centralizing
aggression of emerging early states against local cultures, witch
hunts were almost always driven by members of the middling and lower
classes in cities and villages, and they were stopped only when early
modern states acquired the power to control their localities.
Situating his study in the context of a pervasive magical worldview
that embraced both orthodox Christianity and folk belief, Dillinger
shows that, in some cases, witch trials themselves were used as
magical instruments, designed to avert threats of impending divine
wrath. "Evil People" describes a two-century evolution in which witch
hunters who liberally bestowed the label "evil people" on others
turned into modern images of evil themselves.In the original German,
"Evil People" won the Friedrich Spee Award as an outstanding
contribution to the history of witchcraft.
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