In a time, ours, in which historiography prefers to measure itself with witchcraft as a judicial phenomenon, or with the men who personally led the persecution, or with the demonological treatises that greatly influenced witch hunters, this book focuses on the subjects who were victims of it. Women accused of witchcraft are the protagonists of the educated trials between the late Middle Ages and the early modern age: that was the time when the great witch hunt was unleashed in Europe. The profiles of the alleged witches, even if drawn by their judges, emerge from these pages in all their changeability and drama: women reluctant to plead guilty to unspoken crimes, marked by stubborn silence, surrendered to the full confession of every wickedness extorted by torture . Dinora Corsi taught Medieval History and History of the Medieval Church at the University of Florence. He has curated, together with Laura Caretti, Enchantments and spells. Witches in history and cinema, ETS Editions, Pisa 2002; and with Matteo Duni, «Don't let the evil live». The witches in treatises and trials (XIV-XVII centuries), Firenze University Press, Florence 2008. Directs the scientific journal «Storia delle Donne», published by Firenze University Press. |