A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from v...

The Devil, like the poor, is always with us. Evil has been personified in every religion and culture, and Christianity in particular developed a highly graphic view of him from its earliest period. Sometimes grotesque, sometimes beautiful, sometimes threatening, sometimes seductively helpful, sometimes comical, Satan has played a variety of roles in human existence.Feared and frightening adversary of humankind during the Middle Ages, supposed master and friend of witches during the...

A bestselling journalist exposes the connection between the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis and the practice of confession.

Bringing together scholars from Europe, America, and Australia, this volume explores the more fantastic elements of popular religious belief: ghosts, werewolves, spiritualism, animism, and of course, witchcraft. These traditional religious beliefs and practices are frequently treated as marginal in more synthetic studies of witchcraft and popular religion, yet Protestants and Catholics alike saw ghosts, imps, werewolves, and other supernatural entities as populating their world. Embedded w...

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearA Tablet Book of the YearMarking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores a revolutionary shift in thinking about the fate of the soul that occurred around the time of Rome’s fall. Peter Brown describes how this shift transformed the Church’s institutional relationship to money and set the stage for its domination of mediev...

This fast-paced survey of Western civilization’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity brings that tumultuous period vividly to life. Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in hi...

The story of violent ghost phenomena through the ages. The poltergeist of 'noisy ghost' phenomenon is commonly thought to be the result of a dead person's angry spirit expressing that anger by violence in the physical world, or the projected energies of an emotionally volatile human being, often a teenager. In fact, poltergeists are more interesting than either of those suggested explanations, because they are actually something of a mystery. Are they spirits of some kind, natural or anoma...

Tens of thousands of people were persecuted and put to death as witches between 1400 and 1700 – the great age of witch hunts. Why did the witch hunts arise, flourish and decline during this period? What purpose did the persecutions serve? Who was accused, and what was the role of magic in the hunts? This important reassessment of witch panics and persecutions in Europeand colonial America both challenges and enhances existing interpretations of the phenomenon. Locating its origins 400 year...

A two-volume study of political thought from the late thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the decisive period of transition from medieval to modern political theory. The work is intended to be both an introduction to the period for students, and a presentation and justification of a particular approach to the interpretation of historical texts. Quentin Skinner gives an outline account of all the principal texts of the period, discussing in turn the chief political writings of D...

George Williams' monumental The Radical Reformation has been an essential reference work for historians of early modern Europe, narrating in rich, interpretative detail the interconnected stories of radical groups operating at the margins of the mainline Reformation. In its scope—spanning all of Europe from Spain to Poland, from Denmark to Italy—and its erudition, The Radical Reformation is without peer. Now in paperback format, Williams' magnum opus should be considered for any university...

The Middle Ages spanned the period between two watersheds in the history of the biblical text: Jerome's Latin translation c.405 and Gutenberg's first printed version in 1455. The Bible was arguably the most influential book during this time, affecting spiritual and intellectual life, popular devotion, theology, political structures, art, and architecture. In an account that is sensitive to the religiously diverse world of the Middle Ages, Frans van Liere offers here an accessible introduct...

Interest in the middle ages is at an all time high at the moment, thanks in part to "The Da Vinci Code." Never has there been a moment more propitious for a study of our misconceptions of the Middle Ages than now.Ranging across religion, art, and science, Misconceptions about the Middle Ages unravels some of the many misinterpretations that have evolved concerning the medieval period, including:the churchwarscienceartso...