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Product Description
Witches and Neighbors is a remarkable interpretation of the course and causes of the fear and persecution of witches that bedeviled Europe for centuries. Robin Briggs draws on the latest research into the local realities underlying the phenomenon. In particular, he employs his own extensive work in the rich archives hidden away in the area in Europe in which so many cases became known. Who were the witches? What were their practices? Who believed in them? What was their place in society? Why, exactly, were they feared? And how were they accused, tried, and executed? Robin Briggs attempts to answer these questions. But he goes one step further than simply looking at the persecutions themselves; he focuses on the society in which perceived witchcraft existed. Wiches and Neighbors is an illuminating social and cultural history of a period all too often darkened by myth and misinformation.
Amazon.com Review
This remarkable history of European witchcraft explores the persecutions against its supposed practitioners in the late Middle Ages. Even at the time, writes Briggs, many thought the inquisitions against witchcraft absurd, but still thousands died, mostly women, mostly poor. Examining contemporary accounts and court records -- 300 of them from the duchy of Lorraine alone -- Briggs notes that the inquisition heightened divisions between the educated and the uneducated classes, "as their world views polarized to the point where vast areas of what had once been common belief were stigmatized as superstition."
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