Research Catalog

Title

"Evil people" : a comparative study of witch hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier / Johannes Dillinger ; translated by Laura Stokes.

Author

Dillinger, Johannes.

Publication

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

298 p. : ill., maps; 25 cm.

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."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Studies in early modern German history

Uniform Title

• Böse Leute. English
• Project Muse UPCC books
• Studies in early modern German history.

Alternative Title

Böse Leute.

Subject

• Witchcraft > Swabia > History
• Witch hunting > Swabia > History
• Witchcraft > Trier > History
• Witch hunting > Trier > History

Genre/Form

History

Note

• "Originally published in German as "Böse Leute." Hexenverfolgungen in Schwäbisch-Österreich und Kurtrier im Vergleich, c1999"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-289) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Authority and liberties for the country and the people : administration, legal, and social circumstances -- Golden goblets and cows' hooves -- If she's not a witch yet, she will certainly become one -- There goes the werewolf : we thought he had been caught already -- Let no one accuse us of negligence -- A slippery and obscure business -- Chronology and quantitative analysis of the persecutions

ISBN

• 9780813928067 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0813928060 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780813928388 (e-book)
• 0813928389 (e-book)

LCCN

^^2008055272

OCLC

• 298112205
• SCSB-11139645

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library