Tag Archives: Early Modern

By Francis Young Popular perceptions of magic in Tudor and Stuart England have largely been formed by scholarship on three figures, one real and two fictional: John Dee (1527–1608/9), the astrologer and crystal-gazer who famously advised Elizabeth I; Prospero, the magician in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; and Christopher Marlowe’s learned and hubristic Doctor Faustus. Unfortunately, none of these figures is truly …

Here follows an extract from Wanda Wyporska’s new book Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland 1500-1800: In 1613 the good gentlemen of Kalisz’s municipal court arrived in the village of Kucharki to try Dorota of Siedlików and Gierusza Klimerzyna. Listening to a wide range of testimonies, they heard tell of sex with the Devil, ruined beer, stolen milk, a visit to …