With their dramatic descriptions of black masses and cannibalistic feasts, the records generated by the Basque witch-craze of 160914 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. In its local context, this study provides an intimate portrait of peasant communities as they flourished in the Basque region in this period and leaves us with the irony that Europes most sensationally-demonological accounts of the witches sabbath may have evolved out of a particularly ardent commitment, on the part of ordinary Basques, to the social and devotional structures of popular Catholicism.
While the perception of magic as harmful is age-old, the notion of witches gathering together in large numbers, overtly worshiping demons, and receiving instruction in how to work harmful magic as ...part of a conspiratorial plot against Christian society was an innovation of the early fifteenth century. The sources collected in this book reveal this concept in its formative stages.
The idea that witches were members of organized heretical sects or part of a vast diabolical conspiracy crystalized most clearly in a handful of texts written in the 1430s and clustered geographically around the arc of the western Alps. Michael D. Bailey presents accessible English translations of the five oldest surviving texts describing the witches’ sabbath and of two witch trials from the period. These sources, some of which were previously unavailable in English or available only in incomplete or out-of-date translations, show how perceptions of witchcraft shifted from a general belief in harmful magic practiced by individuals to a conspiratorial and organized threat that led to the witch hunts that shook northern Europe and went on to influence conceptions of diabolical witchcraft for centuries to come.
Origins of the Witches’ Sabbath makes freshly available a profoundly important group of texts that are key to understanding the cultural context of this dark chapter in Europe’s history. It will be especially valuable to those studying the history of witchcraft, medieval and early modern legal history, religion and theology, magic, and esotericism.
In Malevolent Nurture , Deborah Willis explores the dynamics of witchcraft accusation through legal documents, pamphlet literature, religious tracts, and the plays of Shakespeare.
Recasting the Salem witchcraft trials in light of Walter Benjamin's theses on historiography, this paper revisits the question of history by examining ways in which Tituba is dis/con-figured as the ...subject of American history in Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Both stories of persecution revolve around the figure of Tituba, a slave from the Caribbean to whom the beginning of the witch trials is attributed, as the nodal point of different modes of representing the Salem history. The telos in Miller's drama coincides with the subject-formation of Proctor as the legitimate inheritor of American history from the Puritan civilizing mission to the Cold War Manichean worldview. Miller's reaffirmation of the American myth is problematic because it ends up reproducing the same oppressive ideology it proposes to criticize by displacing its contradictions onto peripheral figures. Conde begins from this periphery, collecting pieces from disparate historical and cultural records into a collage of Tituba's story, which does not reproduce, but instead ruptures, the narrative of progress. Conde captures history not as linear but sedimented, and Tituba does not progress to identify with the American telos but re-articulates the sum total of its ideology.
Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades play vital roles in signal transduction in response to a wide range of biotic and abiotic stresses. In a previous study, we identified ten ZjMAPKs and ...five ZjMAPKKs in the Chinese jujube genome. We found that some members of ZjMAPKs and ZjMAPKKs may play key roles in the plant's response to phytoplasma infection. However, how these ZjMAPKKs are modulated by ZjMAPKKKs during the response process has not been elucidated. Little information is available regarding MAPKKKs in Chinese jujube.
A total of 56 ZjMAPKKKs were identified in the jujube genome. All of these kinases contain the key S-TKc (serine/threonine protein kinase) domain, which is distributed among all 12 chromosomes. Phylogenetic analyses show that these ZjMAPKKKs can be classified into two subfamilies. Specifically, 41 ZjMAPKKKs belong to the Raf subfamily, and 15 belong to the MEKK subfamily. In addition, the ZjMAPKKKs in each subfamily share the same conserved motifs and gene structures. Only one pair of ZjMAPKKKs (15/16, on chromosome 5) was found to be tandemly duplicated. Using qPCR, the expression profiles of these MAPKKKs were investigated in response to infection with phytoplasma. In the three main infected tissues (witches' broom leaves, phyllody leaves, and apparently normal leaves), ZjMAPKKK26 and - 45 were significantly upregulated, and ZjMAPKKK3, - 43 and - 50 were significantly downregulated. ZjMAPKKK4, - 10, - 25 and - 44 were significantly and highly induced in sterile cultivated tissues infected by phytoplasma, while ZjMAPKKK6, - 7, - 17, - 18, - 30, - 34, - 35, - 37, - 40, - 41, - 43, - 46, - 52 and - 53 were significantly downregulated.
For the first time, we present an identification and classification analysis of ZjMAPKKKs. Some ZjMAPKKK genes may play key roles in the response to phytoplasma infection. This study provides an initial understanding of the mechanisms through which ZjMAPKKKs are involved in the response of Chinese jujube to phytoplasma infection.
Before Salem Ross, Richard S
2017, 2017-04-30
eBook
From 1647-1663 eleven people were hanged as witches on the New England frontier, in the Connecticut River Valley. The outbreak of witch hunting in New England was directly influenced by the English ...Civil War and the witchcraft trials begun in 1644 led by the witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins in East Anglia, England. The authorities in New England were armed with a legal manual influenced by recent English demonological writings for identifying a witch and new techniques pioneered by Hopkins for examining witches. This book examines why the witch hysteria first erupted in the Connecticut River Valley. The accounts from this first outbreak of witch hunting included information on the devil's role, demonic possession, bewitchment, apotropaic magic, witch accusations, legal issues, and the role of the clergy in these trials. These early witch hunting accounts later influenced contemporary writers on the Salem witch trials in 1692. This study offers a fresh assessment of the first outbreak of witch accusations, trials and executions in the Connecticut River Valley. It discusses the witchcraft trials before Salem and the reasons for the continued witch hunting that led to the executions of convicted witches up to 1663. After 1663 the hanging of witches was ended in Connecticut. The book concludes with a discussion as to why these executions ceased and how the local communities resolved the continuing conflict over their fear of witches in the face of a progressive magistracy unwilling to try and convict witches. Apotropaic magic is examined with evidence linking some aspects to specific occupations. The source of the Connecticut document ""Grounds for Examination of a Witch"" is identified.
PDF
