Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zika, Charles. Exorcising our demons : magic, witchcraft, and visual culture in early modern Europe / by Charles Zika. p. cm. --(Studies in medieval and Reformation thought ; v. 91) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004125604 (hard cover) 1. Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: Demons and Histories Chapter One Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century Chapter Two Reuchlin and Erasmus: Humanism and Occult Philosophy Chapter Three Agrippa of Nettesheim and his Appeal to the Cologne Council in 1533: The Politics of Knowledge in Early Sixteenth-Century Germany Chapter Four Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany Chapter Five The Reformation Jubilee of 1617: Appropriating the Past in European Centenary Celebrations Chapter Six Fears of Flying: Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality in Sixteenth-Century Germany Chapter Seven She-man: Visual Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality Chapter Eight Dürer’s Witch, Riding Women and Moral Order Chapter Nine The Wild Cavalcade in Lucas Cranach’s Melancholia Paintings: Witchcraft and Sexual Disorder in Sixteenth-Century Germany Chapter Ten Body Parts, Saturn and Cannibalism: Visual Representations of Witches’ Assemblies in the Sixteenth Century Chapter Eleven Fashioning New Worlds from Old Fathers: Reflections on Saturn, Amerindians and Witches in a Sixteenth-Century Print Chapter Twelve Cannibalism and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images Chapter Thirteen Appropriating Folklore in Sixteenth-Century Witchcraft Literature: The Nebelkappe of Paulus Frisius Chapter Fourteen Writing the Visual into History: Changing Cultural Perceptions of Late Medieval and Reformation Germany Chapter Fifteen Nuremberg: The City and its Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century Index of Names Index of Places Index of Subjects Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought "This collection of sixteen essays deals with the role of magic, religion and witchcraft in European culture, 1450-1650, and the critical role of the visual in that culture. It covers the relationship of humanism and magic; the intersection of religious ritual, orthodoxy and power; the discursive links between the visual language of witchcraft and contemporary anxieties about sexuality and savagery. The introductory chapter urges us to exorcise our tendency to reduce historical experiences of the demonic to forms of unreason created in a distant past. Only then can we understand the role of the demonic in our historical definition of the self and the other. Richly illustrated with 112 images, the book will interest historians and art historians."--BOOK JACKET This collection of fascinating essays explores the relationship between humanism and magic, the intersection of religious ritual, orthodoxy and power, and the links between witchcraft, sexuality and savagery in the visual culture of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.