Ymir's blood
01-20-2005, 03:34 AM
I recently picked up "Strange Histories : The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds" by Darren Oldridge from Barnes & Noble and read it yesterday and today at work.
"This book explains how beliefs that are strange to us were once widely accepted. It sets out the intellectual world of men and women in the distant past, and shows how their assumptions and expectations allowed them to believe things that we cannot: that heresy and witchcraft posed a threat to society, that demons carried people through the air, and that the dead occasionally wandered from their graves."
The focus of the book is to examine Medieval and Renaissance ideas about the supernatural and show how these beliefs were founded in the paradigm of the times. Instead of trying to find naturalistic causes for witchcraft etc..., the author attempts to show that many acts which seem irrational to us made perfect sense to the people of the day, not due to ignorance but rather because they were operating under a different set of premises.
In order to show that similar beliefs are found in our own times, some examples of modern cases are given. The Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the nineties is shown to be similar to the witch crazes of the fifteenth century, minus only that authorities dismissed allegations of supernatural events and focused their attentions on child abuse and murder, both of which were featured in the witch cases.
Overall, I found the book to very readable. Numerous writings from the times are used to illustrate the worldview which made people act in ways which seem completely alien to persons living today. Despite the beautifully macabre cover by John Jose Palencar and the odd subtitle, the book really isn't lurid or sensationalist (as I had hoped) but is a serious attempt to explain how the base assumptions by which people view the world have changed dramatically since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All in all, it was very informative and worth the somewhat high price. The B&N brick and mortar store charged me $27 for it, though they have it for $22 online (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ex14TGnAF0&isbn=0415288606&itm=3). Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0415288606/103-3694519-0001460) has it for $20.
"This book explains how beliefs that are strange to us were once widely accepted. It sets out the intellectual world of men and women in the distant past, and shows how their assumptions and expectations allowed them to believe things that we cannot: that heresy and witchcraft posed a threat to society, that demons carried people through the air, and that the dead occasionally wandered from their graves."
The focus of the book is to examine Medieval and Renaissance ideas about the supernatural and show how these beliefs were founded in the paradigm of the times. Instead of trying to find naturalistic causes for witchcraft etc..., the author attempts to show that many acts which seem irrational to us made perfect sense to the people of the day, not due to ignorance but rather because they were operating under a different set of premises.
In order to show that similar beliefs are found in our own times, some examples of modern cases are given. The Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the nineties is shown to be similar to the witch crazes of the fifteenth century, minus only that authorities dismissed allegations of supernatural events and focused their attentions on child abuse and murder, both of which were featured in the witch cases.
Overall, I found the book to very readable. Numerous writings from the times are used to illustrate the worldview which made people act in ways which seem completely alien to persons living today. Despite the beautifully macabre cover by John Jose Palencar and the odd subtitle, the book really isn't lurid or sensationalist (as I had hoped) but is a serious attempt to explain how the base assumptions by which people view the world have changed dramatically since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All in all, it was very informative and worth the somewhat high price. The B&N brick and mortar store charged me $27 for it, though they have it for $22 online (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ex14TGnAF0&isbn=0415288606&itm=3). Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0415288606/103-3694519-0001460) has it for $20.