The Withch-hunt In Modern Europe :: essays research papers

THE WITCH-HUNT IN MODERN EUROPE By Brian Levack The Witch-Hunt in juvenile Europe by Brian Levack proved to be an interesting as swell as insightful look at the intriguing world of the European practice of witchcraft and witch-hunts. The book offers a solid, reasonable interpretation of the accusation, prosecution, and performance for witchcraft in Europe between 1450 and 1750. Levack focuses mainly on the deal from which the witch-hunts emerged, as this report will examine. The causes of witch-hunting have been sometimes in publications represent differently from reality. The hunts were not pris bingler escapee type hunts but rather a hunt that involved the identification of individuals who were believed to be engaged in a secret activity. Sometimes professional witch-hunters carried on the task, but judicial government activity performed most. The cause of most of these hunts is the multi-causal approach, which sees the emergence of new ideas about the witches and changes in the wrong law statutes. Both point to major religious changes and a forget me drug of social tension among society. The intellectual foundations of the hunts were attributed to the witchs face-to-face conformity with the devil and the periodic meetings of witches to engage in practices considered to be barbaric and heinous. The accumulative fantasy of witchcraft pointed immediately to the devil, the source of the magic and the one most witches adored. There was strong belief then that witches made pacts with the devil. Some would trading their soul to the devil in exchange for a gift or a taste of well organism. Many believed that these witches observed a nocturnal Sabbath where they worshipped the devil and paid their homage to him. They were also accused of being an organization known for its cannibalistic practices of infanticide incest. Another component of this cumulative concept was the belief of the flight of witches. The belief for this was contributed to by the assumpt ion that witches took flight from their homes to goto nocturnal meetings without their absence from home being detected. The belief in flying nighttime witches was shared by many cultures in the modern world. These women were referred to as strigae, which was one of the many Latin terms for witches. As the reader first opens the jural foundations of witch-hunting, one finds that historically it was a judicial process from discovery to elimination. Levack states that sooner the thirteenth century European courts used a system of pitiful procedure that made all crimes difficult to prosecute.