Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland by Michael Ostling (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland by Michael Ostling
It is one thing to dismiss as preposterous Bogdan Baranowski’s claim (1952) that 10,000 judicial executions plus 5,000 to 10,000 lynchings for witchcraft occurred in early modern Poland. Postulating alternative figures, however, is inadvisable, given the state of the archives of the former Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Comparative ethnology, folklore, and anthropology of religion illuminate Ostling’s quest to read the witchcraft trials as a picture of the piety of Polish [End Page 148] Roman Catholic women. Male witches are portrayed as unusual, despite evidence mustered by Magorzata Pilaszek and myself, and the database for Ostling’s book comprises a random selection of 254 trials in secondary sources, when primary sources are easily accessible. Imagining Witchcraft is thus a good title for this study, in more than one sense. Its limitations render suspect references to “the entire corpus of Polish witch- trial testimony” and graphs with titles such as “witch trials featuring sexual relations with a demon or devil.” Still, overall the book is a decent introduction to the witchcraft persecution in a loosely defined “Poland,” with excellent translations of trial records. Historiography, demographics, demonology, statistics, literature and legal writings, appeals, denunciations, synodal decrees, and records of torture are all here to be examined.
Postscript: apparently it was all about moisture. [End Page 149]
Wanda Wyporska is the author of Witchcraft in Poland, 1500–1800 and of several articles on the topic. She is currently writing a historical novel based on her research.
