Witchcraft In The Middle Ages by Jeffrey Burton Russell
A scholarly history tracing how European ideas about magic and diabolical witchcraft developed from late antiquity through the medieval centuries, showing how folklore, clerical doctrine, and social anxieties converged into the stereotype of the satanic witch. It explains the Church’s early skepticism toward night flights and maleficium, exemplified by the Canon Episcopi, and the later scholastic and inquisitorial shift that redefined magic as heresy and a pact with the Devil. By distinguishing popular practices from learned magic and demonological theory, it clarifies why systematic persecution emerged only toward the later Middle Ages and set the stage for the early modern witch hunts.
- Published
- 1972
- Nationality
- American
- Length
- Moderate
- Pages
- 390-400
- Original Language
- English
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- Alternate Titles
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