Witchcraft Trials’ Processes and Extralegal Prosecution of Witchcraft

2020 ◽  
pp. 162-262
Keyword(s):  
Court System ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Major Overhaul ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Witchcraft Trials ◽  
Witch Hunt ◽  
State Representatives

This chapter investigates witchcraft trials' processes and extralegal prosecution of witchcraft in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Hetmanate, as well as in Muscovy and imperial Russia. Accusations of witchcraft in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth came from private citizens, not from state representatives; in other words, they flowed into courts from society, rather than being part of a top-down witch hunt. Suspected witches in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth could be prosecuted and sent to the torture chamber in order to elicit a confession. While municipal courts in the autonomous Hetmanate continued to apply Magdeburg Law and other Polish-Lithuanian statutes, they also sometimes referred to Russian decrees. In the witchcraft trials, Muscovite judges asked a prescribed set of questions that dwelled on the issues of physical harm and betrayed concern for preventing the spread of magical criminality. Under Catherine II, the court system underwent a major overhaul, as did the approach to the prosecution of witchcraft.

scholarly journals The Maiden and the Wolf: Law, Gender, and Sexual Violence in Imperial Russia

Slavic Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Katherine Pickering Antonova ◽  
Sergei Antonov
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Court System ◽  
Personal Safety ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Private Spaces ◽  
Evidence Law ◽  
Great Reforms

This article is a close reading of an 1859 court case from Moscow, in which a young orphaned noblewoman accused a much older, wealthier, and better-connected man. It situates the case in its cultural context among the striving middling classes of Moscow on the eve of the Great Reforms, revealing deeply fractured understandings of respectability, civic versus private spaces, masculine violence, and personal safety that permeated Russia's urban classes. Legally, the trial's outcome is not as surprising as the sharply conflicted reasoning of pre-reform judges. Each of the three tiers in the court system produced a radically different decision, pitching the obvious facts of the case against the state's pressure to convict the rapist and pre-reform Russia's supposedly archaic—but actually quite flexible—evidence law. Ultimately, the article argues that this noblewoman was able to use notions of female honor and domesticity in her favor, while the accused's status did not entirely serve to protect him where the need to protect male status conflicted with concerns over the dangers of westernization and modernization.

Possession

2020 ◽  
pp. 361-383
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Dramatic Form ◽  
Witchcraft Trials

This chapter addresses the appearance of demonic possession in seventeenth-century Muscovite witchcraft trials. Klikushestvo, usually translated as “shrieking” or “possession,” was a particularly dramatic form of magical affliction, one that horrified Russian communities and fascinated onlookers by its nightmarish manifestations. As recorded in both miracle tales and court records, possession was often, but not always, attributed to the malevolent acts of witches and sorcerers. Another disturbing condition in Muscovy and imperial Russia, often but not always observed alongside the other characteristics of klikushestvo and sometimes thrown into general symptomology of possession, was ikota — literally, hiccupping. With their dramatic manifestations, klikushestvo and ikota in the Russian lands and the less dramatic (but no less frightening) forms of demonic possession in the Ukrainian lands involved families and communities in shared collective performances. Performance in this sense does not connote any falsehood; rather it underscores the extent to which possession can never be a truly solitary act. It is theatrical in its essence, a public performance. Collective consensus, a shared assessment between afflicted and witnesses, completed and validated possession cases.

The Coptic divorce struggle in contemporary Egypt

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-351
Author(s):  
Sebastian Elsässer
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Court System ◽  
Major Overhaul ◽  
Divorce Law ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Current State ◽  
Coptic Orthodox ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

Since his accession in 2012, Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II has initiated a number of reforms within the church, including a major overhaul of the church court system and the introduction of more liberal provisions concerning divorces. This article explores the historical development and current state of divorce and divorce law within the Coptic Orthodox Community in Egypt and the complex interactions between Coptic citizens, their church, and state courts. Scrutinising interviews and press statements by the new pope and senior clerics, it investigates their ideas of Coptic family law and their justification for changing the Church’s approach to the divorce issue. It also takes the perspective of divorced Copts and looks at the myriad paths people have been following in search of legal and administrative loopholes, and assesses the impact that the new regulations will have on their lives.

Top-Down Processing and Visual Reorientation Illusions in a Virtual Reality Environment

2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred W. Mast ◽  
Charles M. Oman
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Line Length ◽  
Perceptual Cues ◽  
Virtual Reality Environment ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Test Conditions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

The role of top-down processing on the horizontal-vertical line length illusion was examined by means of an ambiguous room with dual visual verticals. In one of the test conditions, the subjects were cued to one of the two verticals and were instructed to cognitively reassign the apparent vertical to the cued orientation. When they have mentally adjusted their perception, two lines in a plus sign configuration appeared and the subjects had to evaluate which line was longer. The results showed that the line length appeared longer when it was aligned with the direction of the vertical currently perceived by the subject. This study provides a demonstration that top-down processing influences lower level visual processing mechanisms. In another test condition, the subjects had all perceptual cues available and the influence was even stronger.

Functional Anatomy of Intensity Aspects of Attention

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Sturm
Keyword(s):  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Functional Anatomy ◽  
Fmri Data ◽  
Functional Networks ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Stimulus Modality ◽  
Spatial Orienting ◽  
Phasic Alertness ◽  
Co Activation ◽  
Attention System

Abstract: Behavioral and PET/fMRI-data are presented to delineate the functional networks subserving alertness, sustained attention, and vigilance as different aspects of attention intensity. The data suggest that a mostly right-hemisphere frontal, parietal, thalamic, and brainstem network plays an important role in the regulation of attention intensity, irrespective of stimulus modality. Under conditions of phasic alertness there is less right frontal activation reflecting a diminished need for top-down regulation with phasic extrinsic stimulation. Furthermore, a high overlap between the functional networks for alerting and spatial orienting of attention is demonstrated. These findings support the hypothesis of a co-activation of the posterior attention system involved in spatial orienting by the anterior alerting network. Possible implications of these findings for the therapy of neglect are proposed.

Auswirkungen eines Aufmerksamkeitstrainings auf die aphasische Symptomatik bei Schlaganfallpatienten

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Graf ◽  
Hartwig Kulke ◽  
Christa Sous-Kulke ◽  
Wilfried Schupp ◽  
Stefan Lautenbacher
Keyword(s):  
Top Down

Aufmerksamkeit kann als Kontrollsystem neuronaler Aktivität verstanden werden, welches Neuroplastizität top-down modulieren hilft. Bisher wurde selten versucht, durch deren gezielte Förderung Funktionswiederherstellungen nach Hirnschädigung zu begünstigen. In vorliegender Studie wurde dies am Beispiel der Aphasie erprobt. 15 Schlaganfallpatienten erhielten ein dreiwöchiges Training der selektiven Aufmerksamkeit mit den PC-Programmen CogniPlus und „Konzentration“ bei fünf Sitzungen pro Woche zusätzlich zur Standardtherapie, 13 weitere bildeten eine Kontrollgruppe ohne Aufmerksamkeitstraining. Zur Effektivitätskontrolle dienten zwei Versionen des Untertests Go/Nogo (Testbatterie zur Aufmerksamkeitsprüfung) und die Kurze Aphasieprüfung. Nach dem Training manifestierte sich zwischen den Untersuchungsgruppen kein Unterschied in Aufmerksamkeits- und Sprachfunktionen; das zusätzliche Aufmerksamkeitstraining war also wirkungslos. Allerdings zeigten Patienten mit deutlichen Aufmerksamkeitsverbesserungen tendenziell weniger Aphasie-Symptome, was die Hypothese aufmerksamkeitsvermittelter Plastizitätsmodulation nach Hirnschädigung partiell stützt.

Aufmerksamkeitswechsel und Konzentration: Von den Funktionen zum Mechanismus

2001 ◽  
Vol 209 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Bösel
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Eeg Alpha

Zusammenfassung. Aufmerksamkeit wird sowohl als Selektivität in der bewußter Verarbeitung oder auch als selektive neuronale Aktivierung verstanden. Die neuronalen Strukturen, die Objektdiskrimination ermöglichen, erlauben eine Interaktion von datengetriebenen und endogenen top-down Prozessen, die zu einer selektiven Bereitstellung von Verarbeitungs-Ressourcen führen. Zielgerichtetes Verhalten erfordert manchmal einen Wechsel in der Ressourcen-Bereitstellung und eine Konzentration von mentaler Aktivität. Aufmerksamkeitswechsel kann als ein zweiphasiger Prozeß verstanden werden, der aus einer breiten Mobilisierung von Gedächtnis-Ressourcen besteht (angezeigt durch EEG-Theta), gefolgt von einer re-organisierenden Einengung neuronaler Aktivität (angezeigt durch langsames EEG-Alpha). Dieser Beitrag unterstützt die Annahme, daß die Analyse des gekoppelten Wechselspiels aus Mobilisierung und Konzentration in bestimmten Teilen der posterioren und anterioren Rindenregionen ein Schlüssel für das Verständnis von Aufmerksamkeitswechsel sein könnte.

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