A Guide to Grand-Jury Men

A Guide to Grand-Jury Men
Author: Richard Bernard
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2017-01-21
Genre:
ISBN: 9781542697071

During the mid 16th century, England was plagued by an overwhelming number of deaths and strange sicknesses that affected both men and their cattle. Instances of the demonically possessed caused fear as sightings of spiritual apparitions affected local villages. People tried many methods to cure themselves, some by prayer, by treatments of superstitious rituals or with the help of good witches, healers, and divination. Accusations of witchcraft were increasingly common and a reformation of witch-trial procedure was underway. This volume was advisement on how Grand-Jury Men should conduct themselves in cases of witchcraft, along with details on their responsibilities and expected conduct in criminal witch-trials as they examined suspected witches and analyzed instances of bewitchment and maladies that surrounded them. It was first published in 1627 and was influenced by many works and witch-trials from antiquity. The work cites a variety of dissertations and provides a grand historical perspective on the subjects of poison, disease, murders and death believed to have been the cause of witch-craft in the minds of the most learned men of that era but also warns against the punishment of the innocent as many could negligently be falsely accused of witchcraft while explaining how one might know if a suspected witch is truly in league with the devil or just plain trickery. Outlined in this treatise are several topics on magic, witchcraft and demonology: The difference between real magic by use of demons and counterfeit magic or trickery; Medical evaluations of various diseases with methods on determining whether certain diseases could truly be caused by witchcraft; the signs of bewitchment versus the sufferings of natural disease; the power of Satan, the analysis of the witch's mark and how an individual may come to league with a demonic entity; the differences between bad and good witches; the methods a witch or demons is able to bewitch and curse others; the methods used by those who think themselves bewitched; discussion on the trials, persecution, conviction and punishment of bad witches. It also discusses demonology and the history of magic, necromancy and various forms of witchcraft.

Detestable and Wicked Arts

Detestable and Wicked Arts
Author: Paul B. Moyer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501751069

In Detestable and Wicked Arts, Paul B. Moyer places early New England's battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting. Focusing on witchcraft cases in New England between roughly 1640 and 1670, Detestable and Wicked Arts highlights ties between witch-hunting in the New and Old Worlds. Informed by studies on witchcraft in early modern Europe, Moyer presents a useful synthesis of scholarship on occult crime in New England and makes new and valuable contributions to the field.

Book Notes

Book Notes
Author: Sidney Smith Rider
Publisher:
Total Pages: 654
Release: 1905
Genre: Local history
ISBN:

Consisting of literary gossip, criticisms of books and local historical matters connected with Rhode Island.

Thinking with Demons

Thinking with Demons
Author: Stuart Clark
Publisher:
Total Pages: 850
Release: 1999
Genre: Demonology
ISBN: 9780198208082

This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

Spellbound

Spellbound
Author: Elizabeth Reis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780842025775

Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America is a collection of twelve articles that revisit crucial events in the history of witchcraft and spiritual feminism in this country. Beginning with the "witches" of colonial America, Spellbound extends its focus through the nineteenth century to explore women's involvement with alternative spiritualities, and culminates with examinations of the contemporary feminist neopagan and Goddess movements. A valuable source for those interested in women's history, women's studies, and religious history, Spellbound is also a crucial addition to the bookshelf of anyone tracing the evolution of spiritualism in America.

Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic

Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic
Author: Jonathan Gil Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 1998-05-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521594059

Jonathan Gil Harris examines the origins of modern discourses of social pathology in Elizabethan and Jacobean medical and political writing. Plays, pamphlets and political treatises of this period display an increasingly xenophobic tendency to attribute England's ills to 'foreign bodies' such as Jews, Catholics and witches, as well as treat their allegedly 'poisonous' features for the health of the body politic. Harris argues that this tendency resonates with two of the distinctive paradigms of Paracelsus' pharmacy which also includes the notion that poison has a medicinal power. The emergence of these paradigms in early modern English political thought signals a decisive shift from Galenic humoral tradition towards twentieth-century politico-medical discourses of 'infection' and 'containment', which, like their early modern predecessors, make mysterious the domestic origins of social conflict and the operations of political authority.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Probable Cause

Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Probable Cause
Author: Barbara J. Shapiro
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520313402

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.