Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, vol. 1, Up to 1700; vol. 2, 1700–Present. Edited by Jitse van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote. Brill's Studies in Church History 36/1–2; 37/1–2. Leiden: Brill, 2008. xvi + 770 pp. xv + 603 pp. $312.00 cloth

摘要

Schmieg was the last witch executed here, the affair continued to reverberate innthe total disintegration of her family, in ongoing suspicions and accusations,nand in literature and folklore right down to the present.nThe picture of witch persecution that emerges here will seem in some waysntypical. Local, village-level conflicts led to accusations of malevolent andnharmful actions or rites. Authorities with theological and legal training fittednsuch charges into broader assumptions about satanic forces and an evilncosmic conspiracy. The resulting trials, far from combating the perceivednthreat, only deepened and widened the pall of fear. Individual confrontationsnbetween prosecutors and accused revealed profound psychologicalncomplexities; we cannot simply regard them as the oppressive fallout fromnperverse superstitions. One might well be tempted to see powerful gendernstereotypes at work, or even to discover deep psychic drives to fulfillnunconscious desires in both the judges and their victims.