Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice

Download or read book Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice written by Jonathan Seitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-08 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early modern Europe, ideas about nature, God, demons and occult forces were inextricably connected and much ink and blood was spilled in arguments over the characteristics and boundaries of nature and the supernatural. Seitz uses records of Inquisition witchcraft trials in Venice to uncover how individuals across society, from servants to aristocrats, understood these two fundamental categories. Others have examined this issue from the points of view of religious history, the history of science and medicine, or the history of witchcraft alone, but this work brings these sub-fields together to illuminate comprehensively the complex forces shaping early modern beliefs.