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Overview
This book examines the lives and careers of possibly the most sadistic group of people of the 16th and 17th centuries, the “great age” of witch-hunting in Europe and North America. From the doyen of witch-hunters, the Jesuit del Rio, to the British Matthew Hopkins, not to mention Pierre de Lancre, a judge who was responsible for burning 600 women, P.G.Maxwell-Stuart charts the progress of these fierce and dangerous zealots, while providing an insight into the world they perceived as evil and which they sought to destroy.
Synopsis
The history of a unique reign of terror. A thoroughly readable book on the lives and careers of possibly the most sadistic group of people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the "great age" of witch-hunting in Europe and North America. From the doyen of witch-hunters, the Jesuit del Rio, to the British Matthew Hopkins, not to mention Pierre de Lancre, a judge who was responsible for burning 600 women, Maxwell-Stuart charts the progress of these fierce and dangerous zealots, while providing an insight into the world they perceived as evil and which they sought to destroy.
Author Biography: P.G. Maxwell-Stuart is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St. Andrews and is an acknowledged expert on the occult. His other books include Witchcraft: A History (Tempus 2004), Wizards: A History (Tempus 2004), The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A Documentary History, and Satan's Conspiracy: Magic & Witchcraft in Sixteenth Century Scotland.