Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe by Gary K. Waite

This fear was, we are beginning to appreciate more fully, a significant motivating factor in many of their decisions and actions. Everyone, on all the confessional sides, was afraid of incurring the wrath of God. And while Anabaptist Münster gets most of the “end of the world” attention, we need to remember that almost all actors in that drama, from the Habsburg Catholic overlords to Lutheran and Reformed princes and their theologians, similarly believed themselves to be engaged in a cosmic struggle between Christ and the Devil that was coming quickly to a close. I remain interested in figuring out why they came to believe what they did, such as their intense expectations of the End-times.

Even though I went on to explore several other subjects relating to the history of religion and idea formation, I have remained deeply interested in the history of those people who risked dissenting from orthodox norms. My career started as a historian of the early Dutch Reformation, particularly its Anabaptist variant, with a particular focus on the life and thought of the controversial artist and self-acclaimed Anabaptist messiah, David Joris (1501-1556). This has inspired me to reflect on what it is that I have been doing over these decades. Waite argues that it was only when the authorities came to terms with pluralism that there was a corresponding decline in witch panics.Having just retired as History Professor at the University of New Brunswick, I had the pleasant(?!) task of sorting through some 40 years of collected lectures, research notes, drafts of publications, and correspondence. Waite examines in-depth how church leaders dispelled rising religious doubt by persecuting heretics, and how alleged infernal plots, and witches who confessed to making a pact with the Devil, helped the authorities to reaffirm orthodoxy. Fear of the Devil and his followers inspired horrific incidents of judicially-approved terror in early modern Europe, leading after 1560 to the infamous witch hunts.īringing together the fields of Reformation and witchcraft studies, this fascinating book reveals how the early modern period's religious conflicts led to widespread confusion and uncertainty. However, the religious conflict of the sixteenth-century Reformation - especially popular movements of reform and revolt - helped to create an atmosphere in which diabolical conspiracies (which swept up religious dissidents, Jews and magicians into their nets) were believed to pose a very real threat.

In the fifteenth century many authorities did not believe Inquisitors' stories of a supposed Satanic witch sect.

Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe by Gary K. Waite