Product Description

Fearlessly, Brian Levack tackles a vast, complex subject and reduces it to a concise and lucid synthesis with consummate skill, challenging old assumptions and casting light into the darkest corners. This, the revised third edition, offers student and expert alike immediate access to an overwhelming secondary literature, establishing it as the essential starting point for the study of early modern witch-beliefs and witchcraft trials. Dr Malcolm Gaskill, Universityof Cambridge "Now, at last, with Brian Levack's careful, scholarly and critical survey, a thoroughly reliable introduction to the whole literature is available. Levack appears to have read every significant work, both new and old and in most relevant languages, and has judiciously sifted out the information, pondered on it, and come up with balanced and sensible verdicts." Henry Kamen, History Today "Levack's logical sorting of a prodigious amount of material has resulted in one of the most informative and comprehensive works of its genre." Hans Sebald, American Historical Review An enthralling and exceptional study, Levack focuses on the great age of witch-hunting in Europe(and also in colonial America), between 1450 and 1750. He discusses how in these years more than 100,000 people - most of them women - were prosecuted for allegedly practising harmful magic and worshipping the Devil. He sets out to answer who the accused and accusers were but most importantly Why, after more than 200 years of vigorous activity, did the trials eventually dwindle away?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179419 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

Review
'Brian Levack's aims are to provide a coherent introduction to the subject and contribute to an ongoing scholarly debate. In both these aims he has succeeded magnificently. xxx; It will serve as a standard introduction to the topic for many years to come.'English Historical Review

From the Back Cover

Fearlessly, Brian Levack tackles a vast, complex subject and reduces it to a concise and lucid synthesis with consummate skill, challenging old assumptions and casting light into the darkest corners. …the essential starting point for the study of early modern witch-beliefs and witchcraft trials.

Dr Malcolm Gaskill, University of Cambridge

Of previous editions:

Now, at last, with Brian Levack’s careful scholarly and critical survey, a thoroughly reliable introduction to the whole literature is available.

History Today

Between 1450 and 1750 thousands of people – most of them women – were accused, prosecuted and executed for the crime of witchcraft. The witch-hunt was not a single event; it comprised thousands of individual prosecutions, each shaped by the religious and social dimensions of the particular area as well as political and legal factors. Brian Levack sorts through the proliferation of theories to provide a coherent introduction to the subject, as well as contributing to the scholarly debate. The book:

·        Examines why witchcraft prosecutions took place, how many trials and victims there were, and why witch-hunting eventually came to an end.

·        Explores the beliefs of both educated and illiterate people regarding witchcraft.

·        Uses regional and local studies to give a more detailed analysis of the chronological and geographical distribution of witch-trials.

• Emphasises the legal context of witchcraft prosecutions.

• Illuminates the social, economic and political history of early modern Europe, and in particular the position of women within it.

In this fully updated third edition of his exceptional study, Levack incorporates the vast amount of literature that has emerged since the last edition. He substantially extends his consideration of the decline of the witch-hunt and goes further in his exploration of witch-hunting after the trials, especially in contemporary Africa. New illustrations vividly depict beliefs about witchcraft in early modern Europe.

Brian Levack is the John Green Regents Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written and edited many books, including The Witchcraft Sourcebook (2004) and Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1999).

About the Author

Brian Levack is a Professor, Universityof Texasat Austin. He written and edited many books including; Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth

Centuries(1999),  The West: Encounters and Transformations (2004), The Jacobean Union: Co-edited with Bruce Galloway, (1985). He has also written many articles including Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology: A Twelve- Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles (1992).

New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology: A Six-Volume

Anthology of Articles, (2001) and The Witchcraft Sourcebook, (2003).

Customer Reviews

Best Summary of Modern Research
During the 70's and 80's, a flood of new information on historical witchcraft became available. Levack's book is the best survey of this new data, which has revolutionized our understanding of the Great Hunt. It's not a very "daring" book; it sticks to the facts, to the things we're sure about. There isn't a lot of speculation in it. But it's a great antidote to the badly researched books, like Anne Barstow's _Witchcraze_, which flood the popular market.

The Destructiveness of Believing in Feverish and Fearful Fantasies
This is a thorough and objective examination of the witch hunts. There are no sensational distortions presented here, just the facts. It's well organized and easy to read.

People who were accused of witchcraft were mostly old women that often took care of children or were out begging for money, which annoyed others or made them feel guilty. If a child died and she had cared for it, there was always a chance that she would be accused of killing the child by witchcraft. People believed that misfortune was often caused by the devil and witchcraft in early modern Europe. So if the crops failed, if you or a loved one fell ill, or if a child died, blaming a witch was a convenient thing to do. Not only peasants but the educated believed in witchcraft. They often bolstered their fantasies with elaborate demonological theories. Amusingly, they had this idea that people would ride off into the air to some remote place to bend over backwards and kiss the devil's bum and give themselves over to Satan.

Witchcraft accusations often grow in times when people feel uneasy about radical changes in society, morality, religion, and the economy. If wages are getting lower, prices are getting higher, and there's rebellion against the old order, the devil must be on the loose. Witch hunts often happened more in societies that had provincial, local governments that had no oversight from central governments. Germany with its many small provinces was a hot spot for witch hunts and executions. Thousands of people were executed in early modern Europe, not millions, as some claim. Even white witchcraft could be prosecuted because people thought that if one had the ability to heal, you also had the ability to kill.

Although some people have always practiced black magic, almost all the people accused of witchcraft were innocent and many of the accusations expressed diabolical fantasies. Witch hunts declined when educated people started to have less spiritual, and more skeptical, materialistic worldviews which lead to the legal system refusing to prosecute witchcraft cases.

Witchcraft cases still crop up from time to time today. Most recently in America, childcare workers have been accused of doing diabolical things to children. Most cases have been dropped because they depend on accusations from children who are coaxed into giving outrageous answers or it is realized that children have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Anyone who has worked with kids knows that it is pretty easy to get accused of something that you didn't do. This is the case especially with girls. In fact, a lot of chain reaction witch hunts were started by the false accusations of children in early modern Europe. On a side note, Africa is still known to have "witch" lynchings, especially since the colonial governments have left with their modern skeptical views toward witchcraft. Black Africans often believe strongly in magic and witchcraft.

Although I still believe that nefarious witchcraft rituals are possible, such as human sacrifice, the author makes the valid point that it is impossible to prove it without hard evidence. Witch hunts were almost always based on accusations without hard proof; which is one of the reasons why judges began to reject such accusations.

Informative, but rather repetitive and dry
Pulling together the vast amount of information that Levack does had to be a truly daunting task. He does it well, with easily followed organization and summaries, tables and charts, and copious references to specific witch-hunt episodes. This all makes it a good reference for people who might want to know more about the social and religious settings of the hunts. (I'm reading it for a graduate literature class on mythology and heresy.)
However, he refers to specific hunts as if expecting readers to know a good deal about their causes, effects and events. Except for the Salem, MA, hunt (which is frequently referenced, though technically not in Europe at all), none of the many hunts were at all familiar to me. What, for instance, WAS the 1610-1611 "dream epidemic" in Basque country? It sounds fascinating, but Levack never gives us any details about it. Perhaps this sort of information is beyond the scope of Levack's interest, but its omission does make for dry reading of numbers and dates, as opposed to the more human stories that lie behind them.