Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft

Briggs gives one of the sanest, most carefully documented accounts to date of Europe's witch hunts. Tracing local records across many nations focuses the locale, duration, and scope of the main witch-hunting episodes. Briggs studies what kinds of people were accused of evil, how the whole notion of evil varied, and how the persecutions developed. The reliance on records of specific individuals brings the whole process to light in an understandable way -- in the course of interrogations one accusation led to the next. According to trial records in Lorraine, Georgeatte Didier threatened that if she was accused, "she would accuse others whether they were good women or not". Mengeotte Lausson said that if she was burned, she would denounce her husband's sister Toussaine as well. Chrestaille Wathot said if she was arrested, "I would accuse such important people of witchcraft that they would release me for the love of them". (p. 361) Yet nearby communities were unaffected, because the neighbours refrained from labeling each other as evil. Such periodic storms of fear are all the more disturbing when we are introduced to the people involved. -author of Correcting Jesus

In `Witches and Neighbours', Robin Briggs provides a wider picture of witchcraft rather than just concentrating on the trials and persecution of supposed witches. He starts by looking at the definition of witchcraft, something that is not often approached in other books of this type. From there, the book studies topics such as the gender issue. It is commonly assumed that witches are usually female but the author dispels that myth and provides statistical evidence showing 25% of accused or executed witches in Europe were in fact male. He goes on to discuss witchfinders (e.g. the infamous Matthew Hopkins) and witch cures, the influence of enmity between neighbours/kin that could lead to false accusations and addresses the issue of mental illness, a topic that is often ignored in other studies of this subject. A well written conclusion pulls all this information together. As would be expected from a book of this type, an extensive bibliography and list of further reading is included. Although this book can be a little heavy going at times, it is an invaluable sourcebook for undergraduates studying history and probably one of the best to be found on this subject.

Ths book is packed with enthralling detail from begtinning to end. All sorts of msiconceptions I had previously held about the subject were blown away by this marvellous book. For instance, it is evident that recent writers on the subject have wildly exaggerated the numbers of people put to death as witches, it is often given as several millions, whereas Briggs shows that the actual number is about 40,000. Also another misconnception, that withces were always female, whereas in fact of those put to death about 20% were men, in some areas, men were in the majority of those killed. Also, most of the accusers tended to be women themselves, contrary to the feminist fantasy that it was all about wiched men persecuting women etc. Another fantasy, that midwives were persecuted as witches, weheras in fact when midwives were involved in witchtrials it was generally as inspectors of the accused, to look for suspicious marks on their bodies. There isn't a dull page in this enthralling book.

I chose to review this book because of a movie I saw about ten years ago I rather like Jack Nicholson's role as a little demon in the movie "The Witches Of Eastwick" Particularly as he waxes sanguine about witch burning starting in the 14th century as a professional jurisdictional dispute between doctors and midwives. That led me to thinking that it would be nice if someone wrote a serious book about the social construction of witchcraft. Well some did and I finally found it and added it to collection of the literature of the professions.Robin Briggs' Witches & Neighbors: The Social And Cultural Context Of European Witchcraft (copyright 1996) is a reinterpretation of the witchcraft fears and persecution that deviled Europe, particularly from the 14th through the 17th centuries, offers the first general history of witchcraft to be written by a historian with specialist knowledge, which makes the subject come alive. In authoritative and rich detail, Briggs chronicles the brutal inquisitions, the trials, and the practices and beliefs of this minority. Complete with Woodcuts, illustrations, and maps Witches and Neighbors, a remarkable history of European witchcraft, explores the persecutions against its supposed Practitioners in the late Renaissance era. Even at the time, writes Robin Briggs, many thought the inquisitions against witchcraft absurd; a chronicler of the time asked "whether the evidence be not frivolous, and whether the proofs brought against [alleged witches] be not incredible." Despite such objections, thousands died, mostly women, mostly poor. Examining contemporary accounts and court records--300 from the duchy of Lorraine alone--Briggs notes that the inquisition heightened divisions between the educated and the uneducated classes, "as their world views polarized to the point where vast areas of what had once been common belief were stigmatized as superstition.There is still a lot of work to be done in this area. Most of our readers do not remember Stalin's purge show trials in the 1930's, or Wisconsin's own tail Senator tail gunner Joe McCarthy wrecking havoc upon the Army, State Department, and the rest of American Society. Joe was really only stopped when he went after President Eisenhower. I can assure that Those who do not remember history are according to Harry Truman doomed to repeat it. Here doomed is used in the Old English Sense meaning fatedPhilip Kaveny, Reviewer

I'm going to have to review my European history, which is well worth doing before tackling this book. As the title indicates, Briggs examines the history of witchcraft persecution in Europe from a socio-cultural standpoint, taking into account the vast social changes taking place during the early modern period. He is especially thorough in dealing with the meeting of the medieval mind and the modern one, and what conflicts could arise from that meeting.At the same time, Briggs addresses the notion that witchcraft persecution owed its pervasiveness to some kind of conspiracy conceived and imposed from above. Actually, as he points out with numerous examples, this kind of thing was quite rare, with authorities for the most part reluctant to give credence to such claims. Presenting a very clear picture of life in the early modern village, he shows how the beliefs of the general populace provided fertile ground in which suspicions could grow into full-blown accusations.My only real criticism is that some of his examples are hard to follow; in some cases it's difficult to determine who did or said what in a particular case, especially since the genders associated with many names aren't readily apparent to this American reader. Nonetheless, this is a minor complaint relative to Briggs' extremely thorough analysis and painstaking research.And lest we think ourselves beyond such forms of persecution today -- well, have a look at the news over the last few years. Now, as then, witch-hunts seem to consist primarily of looking for someone to blame