rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Staging witchcraft before the law
    sub title: skepticism, performance as proof, and law as magic in early modern witch trials
  name:
    name part: Peters, Julie Stone
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  genre: Electronic books.
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: enk
    date issued: 2024
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: remote
    extent: 1 online resource.
  abstract: While the judicial machinery of early modern witch-hunting could work with terrifying swiftness, skepticism and evidentiary barriers often made conviction difficult. Seeking proof strong enough to overcome skepticism, judges and accusers turned to performance, staging 'acts of Sorcery and Witch-craft manifest to sense.' Looking at an array of demonological treatises, pamphlets, documents, and images, this Element shows that such staging answered to specific doctrines of proof: catching the criminal 'in the acte'; establishing 'notoriety of the fact'; producing 'violent presumptions' of guilt. But performance sometimes overflowed the demands of doctrine, behaving in unpredictable ways. A detailed examination of two cases--the 1591 case of the French witch-demoniac Françoise Fontaine and the 1593 case of John Samuel of Warboys--suggests the manifold, multilayered ways that evidentiary staging could signify--as it can still in that conjuring practice we call law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
  note: Julie Stone Peters.
  note: Includes bibliographical references.
  subject:
    topic: Trials (Witchcraft)
    topic: History
  subject:
    topic: Evidence (Law)
    topic: History
  classification: K5033.W5 P48 2024
  classification: 345.0288
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Cambridge elements
      part name: Elements in magic
  identifier: 100946969X
  identifier: 9781009469692
  identifier: 9781009469708
  identifier: 9781009469715
  identifier: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009469692
  record info:
    record content source: YDX
    record creation date: 241017
    record change date: 20250127193810.4
    record identifier: in00005615199
    language of cataloging:
      language term: eng