Between the Devil and the Host

Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-958790-2
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 296 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 611 g

Outside the imagination, witches don't exist. But in Poland and in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, people imagined their neighbours to be witches, with tragic results. For the first time in English, Michael Ostling tells the story of the imagined Polish witches, showing how ordinary peasant-women got caught in webs of suspicion and accusation, finally confessing under torture to the most heinous of crimes. Through a close reading of accusations and confessions, Ostling also shows how witches imagined themselves and their own religious lives. Paradoxically, the tales they tell of infanticide and host-desecration reveal to us a culture of deep Catholic piety, while the stories they tell of demonic sex and the treasure-bringing ghosts of unbaptized babies uncover a complex folklore at the margins of Christian orthodoxy. Caught between the devil and the host, the self-imagined Polish witches reflect the religion of their place and time, even as they stand accused of subverting and betraying that religion. Through the dark glass of witchcraft Ostling explores the religious lives of early modern women and men: their gender attitudes, their Christian faith and folk cosmology, their prayers and spells, their adoration of Christ incarnate in the transubstantiated Eucharist, and their relations with goblin-like house demons and ghosts.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ostling, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction: At the crossroads

- Part I. History

- 1: Contexts

- 2: Imagining witchcraft in literature and law

- 3: A winding road to the stake

- 4: Mechanisms of justice

- Part II. Religion

- 5: Healing and Harming

- 6: Stealing the sacred

- 7: Broken bodies

- 8: Piety in the torture chamber

- Part III. Demonology

- 9: A candle for the devil

- 10: Demon lovers

- 11: Translating the Devil

- Conclusion

- Appendix: Polish witch trials 1511-1775

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Ostling grew up in northern California. He fell in love with Poland while teaching English in that country during a break from university. He did his graduate work at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, and currently teaches witchcraft, Christianity, mythology and related subjects at Central Michigan University.