La sorciere au bucher
Fanatisme religieux et antifeminisme
by Robert Muchembled
Paperback (Published)
(September 2025)
ISBN: 9782251456652
5.91 x 8.43 inches
Price: $34.00
On back order
Robert Muchembled offers a new interpretation of the terrifying enigma of the 40,000 witchcraft pyres that consumed 80% of women and many children in Western Europe, from 1424 to 1782: they result from ferocious human decisions, guided by a very minority sectarian heterodox religious thought, demonology, a pure chimera elaborated by the Dominican inquisitors at the beginning of the 15th century, which propagates an apocalyptic discourse of invasion of the world by a satanic sect composed mainly of women. The most intense witch hunts culminated from 1580 to 1620 in a few regions weakened by the virulence of religious conflicts, especially within the Holy Roman Empire and along the Devil’s Road joining the Alps to the North Sea. They are always led by sovereigns or fanatical local lords who want to annihilate the supreme feminine heresy, rival to the sacred virile authority on which their own power rests. Often supported by a theologian or an exalted judge, they force the secular courts to use torture without restraint and to spare no one. Under the grip of a virile pack leader whose power is measured by the cruelty he deploys, the implacable mechanism results in an unheard-of brutality, traces of which remain today. The sinister fight against so-called evil witchcraft, however, did not succeed in eradicating the old, centuries-old culture of magical survival that had been dominant in Europe until then. The epilogue shows that in France in the 19th century , healers, sorcerers, or disenchanters, then predominantly male, still populate the countryside.
- By (author) Robert Muchembled
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