{"product_id":"witchcraft-the-papacy-rainer-decker-9780813927473","title":"Witchcraft \u0026 the Papacy: An Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Rainer Decker was researching a sensational seventeenth-century German witchcraft trial, he discovered, much to his surprise, that in this case the papacy functioned as a force of skepticism and restraint. His curiosity piqued, he tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a secret Vatican archive housing the records of the Roman Inquisition that had been sealed to outsiders from its sixteenth-century beginnings. In 1996 Decker was one of the first of a small group of scholars allowed access. Originally published as \u003cem\u003eDie Papste und die Hexen, \u003c\/em\u003e Witchcraft and the Papacy is based on these newly available materials and traces the role of the papacy in witchcraft prosecutions from medieval times to the eighteenth century. Decker found that although the medieval church did lay the foundation for witch hunts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the postmedieval papacy, and the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, played the same kind of skeptical, restraining role during the height of the witch-hunting frenzy in Germany and elsewhere in Europe as it had in the trial that was the initial focus of his research. \u003cem\u003eWitchcraft and the Papacy\u003c\/em\u003e overturns a large body of scholarship that confuses the medieval papacy with its markedly skeptical successors, and that mistakenly portrays the papacy as fanning rather than quelling the flames of the witchcraft mania sweeping northern Europe from the mid-sixteenth century onward.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Rainer Decker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0813927471\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780813927473\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Virginia Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/29\/2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 280\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.15lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/12\/2008 pg. 24\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2009 pg. 33","brand":"Rainer Decker","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43926415180031,"sku":"9780813927473","price":49.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_2a1303c6-ae0d-4b33-be45-a79cf12ac85d.jpg?v=1681082959","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/witchcraft-the-papacy-rainer-decker-9780813927473","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}