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~iiiiiiiiiiiiiIr+~iiiiiiiiiiiiiii l IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY WITCH BELIEFS Richard Kieckhefer University 0/ Texas, Austin Throughout the Middle Ages there were sporadic trials for witchcraft in some form or other, but the surviving records show a startling increase in prosecution of witches during the second half of the fourteenth century. The frequency of trials continued to mount, with some fluctuations, during the fifteenth century, and the grand crescendo came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, women throughout Europe repeatedly confessed the most implausible crimes: not only had they inflicted curses on their neighbors, but they had attended nocturnal Sabbaths, where the devil received their veneration, had intercourse with them, and shared with them the flesh of newborn babies. Many historians have taken such confessions more or less at face value. These scholars argue that Sabbaths of this sort did in fact occur in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period-that they were vestiges of a preChristian fertility cult,z or ways of giving vent to social protest, or expressions of discontent with the orthodox Church,4 if not merely an innocuous form of entertainment. Although so me forms of this argument are seldom given serious consideration today by
Explorations in Renaissance Culture – Brill
Published: Dec 2, 1975
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