Sixteenth-Century Religious Reform and the Witch-Hunts

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary K. Waite
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Witch Hunts

The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien*

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Witch Hunts

This study seeks to demonstrate that the timing, subject, and audience for the art of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien all argue against the view that the witches in their prints and drawings were a reaction to actual witch-hunts, trials, or malevolent treatises such as theMalleus maleficiarum. The witch craze did not gain momentum until late in the sixteenth century while the witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien belong to an earlier era. They are more plausible as a response to humanist interest in the poetry and satire of the classical world, and are better understood as poetic constructions created to serve artistic goals and satisfy a humanist audience.

scholarly journals Conjuring legitimacy: Shakespeare’s Macbeth as contemporary English politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-405
Author(s):  
Edvard Djordjevic
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
State Power ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Failed Attempt ◽  
The Witch ◽  
English Politics ◽  
Witch Hunts

The text provides a political reading of Shakespeare?s Macbeth, claiming that the play is responding to the curious connection between witchcraft and state power in the preceding century, as well as contemporary political events. Namely, practices variously labeled as witchcraft, magic, conjuring were an integral aspect of English politics and struggles over royal succession in the sixteenth century; even more so were the witch hunts and attempts by British monarchs to control witchcraft. These issues reached a head with the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, and the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. On the surface, Shakespeare?s play, written in the immediate aftermath of the failed attempt at regicide, brings these historical and political issues together in an effort to legitimize James? rule. However, the article shows that a closer look reveals a more complicated, indeed subversive undercurrent at play. Paradoxically, while Macbeth does provide James with legitimacy, at the same time it calls into question the grounds of that legitimacy.

A Literary Link between Thomas Shadwell and Christian Felix Weisse

PMLA ◽  
1906 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 808-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred E. Richards
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sort It ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Doctor Faustus ◽  
The Witch

Witchcraft in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a subject upon which the dramatists from Marlowe to Shadwell seized with the greatest avidity. There was material of the most pliable sort; it could be moulded into a magnificent tragedy or distorted into the wildest buffoonery. In the sixteenth century it was the darker side of magic which we find in the drama, and though we note as early as 1604 the effort to brighten up Marlowe's tragedy of Doctor Faustus by the introduction of broadly comic scenes taken from the prose tale, yet one can well believe that the theatre audiences from 1590 to 1610 remembered too vividly the cruelties of the witch trials in 1590 to appreciate the buffoonery of Ralph in the comic scenes as deeply as they felt the dark despair of the protagonist Faustus.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Germany ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Witch Hunts

This Introduction sets out the intentions of this book: to use the rich witch-trial records from the early modern duchy of Württemberg in south-western Germany to explore the central themes of emotions, gender, and selfhood. It provides an overview of the key historiographical debates on witchcraft persecutions in the early modern period, and suggests new questions that need to be asked. It also provides a methodological and theoretical framework in which to address these questions, and provides an overview of the current state of the field of the history of emotions, and, by drawing on psychological approaches to listening to self-narratives, it suggests ways in which historical studies of emotions can be pushed further by incorporating the body and subjective states. It also sets out the legal, political, and religious framework of the Lutheran duchy of Württemberg, in order to put the witch-hunts in this region into context.

scholarly journals Erasmus and the Politics of Translation in Tudor England

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Lucy Wooding
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
The Political ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Significant Figure ◽  
Original Intention

Desiderius Erasmus was a significant figure in early sixteenth-century England, and many of his works were translated into English during the reign of Henry VIII. In the process of translation the original intention of these works was subverted as Erasmus's reputation was appropriated by his translators and their patrons for their own purposes. His works were recast in English form to serve a variety of different agendas, from those of Henrician conservatives to Protestants pushing for more radical religious reform. This article looks at some of these translations, showing how they illustrate the variations in religious attitudes during these volatile years and the competing claims for validation. In particular, Erasmus's pronouncements on the importance of Scripture translation were annexed and deployed in the debate over the English Bible, demonstrating how his views about translation were in themselves translated to reflect the political and religious needs of the English situation.

scholarly journals Animal Transformation in Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Paweł Rutkowski
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Witch Hunts ◽  
Traditional Component

Animal metamorphosis was a traditional component of witchcraft beliefs during the European early modern witch-hunts, during which it was taken for granted that witches could and did turn into animals regularly in order to easier do evil. It must be noted, however, that the witch-turned-animal motif was much less common in England, where witches did possess the shape-shifting abilities but relatively rarely used them. A likely reason for the difference, explored in the present paper, was the specifically English belief that most witches were accompanied and served by familiar spirits, petty demons that customarily assumed the shape of animals. It seems that the ubiquity of such demonic shape-shifters effectively satisfied the demand for magical transformations in the English witchcraft lore.

scholarly journals Theology, Martyrdom and Female Agency in Reformation Prague

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 748
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Fudge
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
The World

The Hussite tradition historically has been excluded by the mainstream of Reformation historiography. Czech-language scholarship treating Hussite history have made few significant advances in the study of women and there has been limited attention given to the role women played in the Hussite tradition. The gap in Anglophone historiography is even more apparent. This essay considers Klára, a sixteenth-century Prague housekeeper, Marta, a learned figure contemporary with Klára who withstood civil and ecclesiastical officials, and Anna Marie Trejtlarová, an early seventeen-century educated laywoman. Their names are almost completely unknown outside Czech historiography. An examination of their lives and faith by means of the surviving primary sources and relevant historiography provides a window through which to observe the nature of religious reform in the Prague context in the world of Reformations. What is striking is the role of theology and the nature of female agency in the examination of these women. The essay endeavours to use these case studies to present a preliminary answer to the question: What do women tell us about Reformation? This study reveals the world of religious reform more fully by situating women and female agency in an active capacity.

scholarly journals Mulier Striga, documento atribuido a Bartolo de Sassoferrato. ¿Primera piedra medieval para el retrato de la bruja?

Medievalismo ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 273-301
Author(s):  
Eva LARA ALBEROLA
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Witch

In this article we delve into de consilium entitled Mulier striga, attributed to Bartolo de Sassoferrato and dated between 1331-1334. We contribute to spread the fact it is a forgery and that its author was Giovanni Battista Piotti, a sixteenth-century lawyer, a fact hardly known by many specialists who continue to present the texto as medieval. On the other hand, we will analyze in detail the portrait ot the witch present in this work, never examined by the experts before, in order to determine whether the picture offered is anachronistic, as it happens with other aspects of the document, or matches the beliefs of the first half of the fourteenth century. En este artículo profundizamos en el consilum Mulier striga, atribuido a Bartolo de Sassoferrato y fechado entre 1331-1334. Contribuimos a difundir el hecho de que se trata de una falsificación y que su autor fue Giovanni Battista Piotti, jurista del siglo XVI; cuestión apenas conocida por muchos especialistas que siguen presentando el texto como medieval. Por otra parte, analizaremos pormenorizadamente el retrato de la bruja presente en este escrito, no abordado por los expertos, con el fin de determinar si la imagen ofrecida es anacrónica, como sucede con otros aspectos del documento, o se ajusta a la primera mitad del siglo XIV.

Battista Carioni da Crema (c.1460–1534) and the ‘Third Life’: Visions of Reform in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (573) ◽  
pp. 303-336
Author(s):  
Querciolo Mazzonis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Spiritual Director ◽  
New Geography ◽  
The Church

Abstract This essay sheds new light on the spirituality and historical significance of the influential and controversial Dominican friar Battista Carioni da Crema (c.1460–1534). A popular spiritual writer, charismatic founder of devout associations such as the Barnabites, and a spiritual director of several well-known Catholic figures, including Gaetano Thiene, Battista’s significance has not yet been fully acknowledged. The essay considers his spirituality in the framework of reforming movements emerging in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century. In dialogue with previous interpretations of Battista, the essay provides a novel and systematic analysis of his notion of perfection and concept of the Church. Synthesising ascetic and mystic spiritual influences rooted in the monastic and humanist culture of the fifteenth century, Battista presented a distinctive view of Christian life, which included an ecclesiological perspective and a new geography of the sacred. Defined as the ‘third life’ and conceived in a period of religious fluidity, it neither fitted emerging Lutheran ideas nor the orthodox Catholicism of the Roman Church. In addition, the essay argues that Battista’s proselytism can be seen as an attempt to reform society which preceded proposals for religious reform made by groups such as the Spirituali.

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