Invoking the Akelarre : voices of the accused in the Basque witch-craze, 1609-1614 / Emma Wilby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilby, Emma, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Witchcraft--Spain--País Vasco--History--17th century.

Witchcraft.

Sabbat--Spain--País Vasco--History--17th century.

Sabbat.

Witch hunting--Spain--País Vasco--History--17th century.

Witch hunting.

Inquisition--Spain--País Vasco.

Inquisition.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (467 pages)

Place of Publication:

Brighton ; Chicago ; Toronto : Sussex Academic Press, [2019]

Summary:

"With their dramatic descriptions of black masses and cannibalistic feasts, the records generated by the Basque witch-craze of 1609-14 provide us with arguably the most demonologically-stereotypical accounts of the witches' sabbath - or akelarre - to have emerged from early modern Europe. While the trials have attracted scholarly attention, the most substantial monograph on the subject was written nearly forty years ago and most works have focused on the ways in which interrogators shaped the pattern of prosecutions and the testimonies of defendants. Invoking the Akelarre diverts from this norm by employing more recent historiographical paradigms to analyze the contributions of the accused. Through interdisciplinary analyses of both French- and Spanish-Basque records, it argues that suspects were not passive recipients of elite demonological stereotypes but animated these received templates with their own belief and experience, from the dark exoticism of magical conjuration, liturgical cursing and theatrical misrule to the sharp pragmatism of domestic medical practice and everyday religious observance. In highlighting the range of raw materials available to the suspects, the book helps us to understand how the fiction of the witches' sabbath emerged to such prominence in contemporary mentalities, whilst also restoring some agency to the defendants and nuancing the historical thesis that stereotypical content points to interrogatorial opinion and folkloric content to the voices of the accused"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The Basque world

The gleeful executioners

The witch's voice

The black winds

The bloodletting bruja

'Powders and poisons'

'Man's grease'

Hidden healers

Familiar demons

Milking the toad

Jeannette's imagination

The Akelarre

The meadow of pleasure

Dark banquets

'There is no sin in it'

'Be nothing to God'

Theophilus and the stage

The first altar of hell

Mass and misrule

The malevolent mass

De Lancre's imagination

The cultic template.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-78284-622-0

1-78284-624-7