Welcome to the HIS 4933 Special Topics: Heresy, Witchcraft & Popular Violence Research Guide. In this guide, you will find library and online resources to help you with your research and course assignments. Scroll below to see the most used resources for getting started on your research. Click on the side navigation tabs on the left to see more in-depth and comprehensive resources.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Exodus 22:18)
The course will consider the process of cultural conflict and eventual accommodation between Late Medieval and Early Modern European elite’s and the general populace. This class will explore the Medieval Heretical movements as a prelude to the “culture wars” within Early Modern Europe before we examine the suppression of witchcraft and carnival, agents of apparent chaos & demonic forces, as a means to re-define, strengthen, and ensure the orderly rule of Secular and Spiritual elites. It will seek to illuminate the struggle over ideological and socio-cultural beliefs for a more orderly society that have helped shape the modern world and were forcefully imposed upon peoples across the globe, in addition to the commoners of Europe.
Witchcraft at Salem Village, 1876, etching. The central figure in this 1876 illustration of the courtroom is usually identified as Mary Walcott.
The tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials extended beyond the people who were executed. Added to the list of victims should be Sarah Good’s nursing infant, who died while Good was incarcerated; Roger Toothaker, who was murdered in prison; Lydia Dustin, who was found innocent but never released and died in prison in 1693; and many others, including slaves who suffered not only from bondage but also from witchcraft accusation. A number of reasons have been offered to explain this tragic period in colonial history: Generational, racial, and sexual hostility, opposition to law, social stresses, and food poisoning all have been advanced as the causes of anxiety and hysteria in Salem during this time. However, the causes were complex and no single explanation is sufficient in itself. Whatever their causes, the Salem Witch Trials have taken on an iconic role in American history, and an unjust search for scapegoats is now commonly referred to as a “witch hunt.” Indeed, when Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted his search for Communists in the United States government and in Hollywood in the 1950s, playwright Arthur Miller responded by writing The Crucible (pr., pb. 1953), a play about the Salem witchcraft trials.
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A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition by
American Congregations, Volume 1: Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities chronicles the founding, growth, and development of congregations that represent the diverse and complex reality of American local religious cultures. Some, like Center Church in New Haven, trace their stories back to colonial times. Others, like the Swaminarayan Hindu temple in suburban Chicago, are recent attempts to create local religious worlds. Ranging from congregations of Lebanese Muslims in Northern Canada to Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, the essays convey the distinctive character of each congregation and provide vivid evidence of the importance of congregations in daily life. "This study refreshingly illuminates [congregations'] strengths as places where the public and private lives of their members meet in dynamic creativity and as havens of religious meaning and comfort in the midst of a secular world."—Choice "A major contribution to how debates about American religion will be framed in the years ahead. . . . In giving us these case histories and a set of excellent interpretive essays, Wind and Lewis have reminded us that American religion must be understood in its particular, local, gathered, human forms. They remind us that congregations matter."—Nancy T. Ammerman, First Things "Well-presented and engaging essays, by some of the foremost religious scholars working today, examining the histories of twelve diverse religious institutions. . . . A fascinating and important social history of religion."—Kirkus Reviews "Scholarship and the religious traditions have been enriched by the labors of the Congregational History Project. Theologically, its pioneering research invites us to examine ourselves."—Gabriel Fackre, Christian Century
Witchcraft in Early North America by
Witchcraft in Early North America investigates European, African, and Indian witchcraft beliefs and their expression in colonial America. Alison Games's engaging book takes us beyond the infamous outbreak at Salem, Massachusetts, to look at how witchcraft was a central feature of colonial societies in North America. Her substantial and lively introduction orients readers to the subject and to the rich selection of documents that follows. The documents begin with first encounters between European missionaries and Native Americans in New France and New Mexico, and they conclude with witch hunts among Native Americans in the years of the early American republic. The documents--some of which have never been published previously--include excerpts from trials in Virginia, New Mexico, and Massachusetts; accounts of outbreaks in Salem, Abiquiu (New Mexico), and among the Delaware Indians; descriptions of possession; legal codes; and allegations of poisoning by slaves. The documents raise issues central to legal, cultural, social, religious, and gender history. This fascinating topic and the book's broad geographic and chronological coverage make this book ideally suited for readers interested in new approaches to colonial history and the history of witchcraft.
Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe by
Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe theological uniformity was synonymous with social cohesion in societies that regarded themselves as bound together at their most fundamental levels by a religion. To maintain a belief in opposition to the orthodoxy was to set oneself in opposition not merely to church and state but to a whole culture in all of its manifestations. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, however, dissenting movements appeared with greater frequency, attracted more followers, acquired philosophical as well as theological dimensions, and occupied more and more the time and the minds of religious and civil authorities. In the perception of dissent and in the steps taken to deal with it lies the history of medieval heresy and the force it exerted on religious, social, and political communities long after the Middle Ages. In this volume, Edward Peters makes available the most compact and wide-ranging collection of source materials in translation on medieval orthodoxy and heterodoxy in social context.
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