Tuesday, April 19, 2016

On this day in 1621: remembering Elizabeth Sawyer, convicted witch.

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Three hundred and ninety five years ago today, Elizabeth Sawyer was led out to her hanging at Tyburn, after having been found guilty of t...
Saturday, April 16, 2016

Meditation VIII: 'Upon a crumb going down the wrong way', 1666.

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Meditation VIII. Upon a Crum going the wrong way. What more mean and contemptible thing can there be then a single Crum , either in r...
Sunday, April 03, 2016

Spirited away, early modern style

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The passage above is taken from the incorrigible Joseph Glanvill's work, A Blow at Modern Sadducism (1668) - a work whose boundless...
Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Ezekiel Culverwell's abbreviated Bible

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Ezekiel Culverwell! How could he not have been what he was, a pillar of godliness (as the ODNB joint life of members of the Culverwell...
Thursday, March 17, 2016

At Robert Egger's 'The VVitch'

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As web piety or good netizenship requires, multiple 'spoilers' ahead. I went with a friend to see 'The VVitch'. The...
Saturday, February 27, 2016

Early modern text messages, painfully transmitted

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The vanity of dogmatizing, or, Confidence in opinions manifested in a discourse of the shortness and uncertainty of our knowledge, and...
Tuesday, February 23, 2016

A votive painting to the witchcraft cult?

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A rather pleasing witchcraft image, from the Prado’s online collection: ‘Anonymous’ and ‘17 th century’, ‘oil on board’ is all the...
Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Satan in the form of a duck, c.1635

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From Thomas Gage ’s New Survey of the   West-Indies (1648, 1677 edition used here) ,   chapter 20, p. 379 ff . Gage, born into a Sur...