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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
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The Trillium Witch
(Paperback)
Allen Frost; Cover design or artwork by Rosa Frost; Illustrated by Allen Frost
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R367
R302
Discovery Miles 3 020
Save R65 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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It was not so long ago that the belief in witchcraft was shared by
members of all levels of society. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, diseases were feared by all, the infant mortality rate
was high, and around one in six harvests was likely to fail. In the
small rural communities in which most people lived, affection and
enmity could build over long periods. When misfortune befell a
family, they looked to their neighbours for support - and for the
cause. During the sixteenth century, Europe was subject to a
fevered and pious wave of witch hunts and trials. As the bodies of
accused women burnt right across the Continent, the flames of a
nationwide witch hunt were kindled in England. In 1612 nine women
were hanged in the Pendle witch trials, the prosecution of the
Chelmsford witches in 1645 resulted in the biggest mass execution
in England, and in the mid-1640s the Witch finder General
instigated a reign of terror in the Puritan counties of East
Anglia. Hundreds of women were accused and hanged. It wasn't until
the latter half of the seventeenth century that witch-hunting went
into decline.In this book, Andrew and David Pickering present a
comprehensive catalogue of witch hunts, arranged chronologically
within geographical regions. The tales of persecution within these
pages are testimony to the horror of witch-hunting that occurred
throughout England in the hundred years after the passing of the
Elizabethan Witchcraft Act of 1563.
Gender at stake critiques historians' assumptions about
witch-hunting as well as their explanations for this complex and
perplexing phenomenon. The authors insist on the centrality of
gender, tradition and ideas about witches in the construction of
the witch as a dangerous figure. They challenge the marginalisation
of male witches by feminist and other historians. The book shows
that large numbers of men were accused of witchcraft in their own
right, in some regions, more men were accused than women. The
authors analyse ideas about witches and witch prosecution as
gendered artefacts of patriarchal societies under which both women
and men suffered. They challenge recent arguments and current
orthodoxies by applying crucial insights from feminist scholarship
on gender to a selection of statistical arguments,
social-historical explanations, traditional feminist history and
primary sources, including trial records and demonological
literature. The authors assessment of current orthodoxies
concerning the causes and origins of witch-hunting will be of
particular interest to scholars and students in undergraduate and
graduate courses in early modern history, religion, culture, gender
studies and methodology.
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