The witch hunts of Early Modern Europe took place from about 1400 to 1780. In this era, an industry of publication was born, where men wrote, printed, and profited from manuals devoted to the identification, apprehension, interrogation, and execution of witches. Across the continent a new domain of expertise crystallized: demonology. But there were always dissenting voices. This chapter looks at a series of Early Modern thinkers whose skepticism about the existence of witches led them to issue moral condemnations of those who profited from publishing demonological texts. The focus is on two skeptical threads of discussion: the medicalization of visions and the public contagion of belief. These threads are used to explain the outcome of a curious case of a nun’s visions in seventeenth-century Tuscany. There, where an accusation of witchcraft might have been appropriate, we find a condemnation to solitude. This chapter argues, first, that the investigators in this case may have decided in the way they did because they were aware of the power and danger posed by allowing the nun to tell her story. And, second, that those who denounced demonology were renegotiating the terms of moral responsibility for spreading disinformation in light of the burgeoning era of print media.

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The New Demonographers: Early Modern Ethics of Persuasion and Belief

  • Julie Walsh

摘要

The witch hunts of Early Modern Europe took place from about 1400 to 1780. In this era, an industry of publication was born, where men wrote, printed, and profited from manuals devoted to the identification, apprehension, interrogation, and execution of witches. Across the continent a new domain of expertise crystallized: demonology. But there were always dissenting voices. This chapter looks at a series of Early Modern thinkers whose skepticism about the existence of witches led them to issue moral condemnations of those who profited from publishing demonological texts. The focus is on two skeptical threads of discussion: the medicalization of visions and the public contagion of belief. These threads are used to explain the outcome of a curious case of a nun’s visions in seventeenth-century Tuscany. There, where an accusation of witchcraft might have been appropriate, we find a condemnation to solitude. This chapter argues, first, that the investigators in this case may have decided in the way they did because they were aware of the power and danger posed by allowing the nun to tell her story. And, second, that those who denounced demonology were renegotiating the terms of moral responsibility for spreading disinformation in light of the burgeoning era of print media.