Between the Devil and the Host
Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland
Series: The Past and Present Book Series;
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 26 January 2024
- ISBN 9780198867111
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages320 pages
- Size 235x155x17 mm
- Weight 498 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 6 black and white images 482
Categories
Short description:
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.
MoreLong description:
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.
[A] studious, abundantly researched tour-de-force of early modern Polish witchcraft.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: At the crossroads
Part I. History
Contexts
Imagining witchcraft in literature and law
A winding road to the stake
Mechanisms of justice
Part II. Religion
Healing and Harming
Stealing the sacred
Broken bodies
Piety in the torture chamber
Part III. Demonology
A candle for the devil
Demon lovers
Translating the Devil
Conclusion
Appendix: Polish witch trials 1511-1775
Bibliography
