Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships

Download or read book Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships written by Karen O'Brien and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a historical and socio-legal investigation into the prevalence of litigation arising from cursing and interpersonal hostility in the under-explored region of Northwest England during a period of acute socio-economic crisis in the seventeenth century. Contributing to the scholarship of magic and witchcraft, it shows the complex circumstances of the world of healing and harming using customary knowledge such as magic and folk medicine as it is variously presented in the documents of the legal system. While primary sources such as pamphlets have usefully informed numerous witchcraft studies, this book establishes popular belief derived from the depositions, interrogatories and various other manuscripts of the manorial, ecclesiastical and secular courts positioned within a micro historical early modern context.