WITCH HUNTERS: PROFESSIONAL PRICKERS, UNWITCHERS, & WITCH FINDERS OF THE RENAISSANCE.

WITCH HUNTERS: PROFESSIONAL PRICKERS, UNWITCHERS, & WITCH FINDERS OF THE RENAISSANCE by P.G. MAXWELL-STUART.

Witches looked and sounded like everyone else, so how could they be detected? This is the first history of the careers of those who believed they were able to identify a witch during the Renaissance - the great age of witch hunting.

Witch hunters were often respectable members of the community. Priest to judge, doctor to fraud, Peter Maxwell-Stuart charts the claims of these driven zealots, and provides an insight into the world which they perceived as evil and sought to expose. Whether the accused had tried to kill or cure by magic made little difference. It was all witchcraft.

From Pierre de Lancre, responsible for the burning of at least 600 suspected witches, to John Kincaid, professional pricker, the fascinating lives of these individuals are intimately explored.

- Inner Front Cover Blurb

Identifying a witch is not easy.

- First Sentence, Introduction

He then began to vomit. The objects taken from his mouth included the flap from a shepherd's breeches, flintstones, little balls of thread, long strands of hair, needles, strips of cloth and a peacock's feather. William blamed an unknown woman he had met by chance one day. She breathed on his face, he said, and thence came his demonic illness.

- Page 84/5, Patrick Morton: The Problem Of Demonic Possession.

SOURCE ... A charity shop buy.

READ FOR A CHALLENGE? ... Yes.

• Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2018; 5 of 12 books.

MY THOUGHTS ... Unlike many of the other books I've come across on this subject this concentrates not on Salem (though there is mention of it) so much as on incidents from across England and Scotland with a smattering from Europe.

Introducing six infamous individuals (Martin Del Rio, Pierre de Lancre, Battista Codronchi, Patrick Morton, John Kincaid and Elizabeth Jameson), chapter by chapter, individual by individual, the author touches on various topics including 'the problems of demonic possession' and 'implicating one's neighbours'.

What is essentially an interesting book. I may well have even rated it as more than OK if it wasn't for the fact that alas I found the writing stilted; as if, well, as if written for one of his lectures (the author is a history professor with what I believe is a special interest in this subject) which, don't get me wrong, delivered as a lecture (with perhaps some slides and maybe some 'audience' interaction), I think I'd have found it fascinating but, as it was, I found reading it a bit of a chore.