Ostling M.
Between the Devil and the Host
Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland
Oxford University Press, Oxford (UK) 2011
Scheda a cura di: Ostling M.
Outside the imagination, witches don't exist. But in Poland and in
Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, people imagined
their neighbours to be witches, with tragic results. For the first time
in English, Michael Ostling tells the story of the imagined Polish
witches, showing how ordinary peasant-women got caught in webs of
suspicion and accusation, finally confessing under torture to the most
heinous of crimes. Through a close reading of accusations and
confessions, Ostling also shows how witches imagined themselves and
their own religious lives. Paradoxically, the tales they tell of
infanticide and host-desecration reveal to us a culture of deep Catholic
piety,
while the stories they tell of demonic sex and the treasure-bringing
ghosts of unbaptized babies uncover a complex folklore at the margins of
Christian orthodoxy. Caught between the devil and the host, the
self-imagined Polish witches reflect the religion of their place and
time, even as they stand accused of subverting and betraying that
religion. Through the dark glass of witchcraft Ostling explores the
religious lives of early modern women and men: their gender attitudes,
their Christian faith and folk cosmology, their prayers and spells,
their adoration of Christ incarnate in the transubstantiated Eucharist,
and their relations with goblin-like house demons and ghosts.
Introduction: At the crossroads
Part I. History
1: Contexts
2: Imagining witchcraft in literature and law
3: A winding road to the stake
4: Mechanisms of justice
Part II. Religion
5: Healing and Harming
6: Stealing the sacred
7: Broken bodies
8: Piety in the torture chamber
Part III. Demonology
9: A candle for the devil
10: Demon lovers
11: Translating the Devil
Conclusion
Appendix: Polish witch trials 1511-1775
Bibliography
A cura di Giulia Tarquini
Link
Introduction