Front cover image for Eradicating the Devil's minions : Anabaptists and witches in Reformation Europe, 1525-1600

Eradicating the Devil's minions : Anabaptists and witches in Reformation Europe, 1525-1600

"Focusing primarily on the Habsburg-controlled regions of Europe, Gary K. Waite argues that the persecution of Anabaptists did not go hand in hand with the outbreak of witch-hunts in the mid-sixteenth century. Rather, distrust of Anabaptists predated the first major witch panic of 1562-3, and Waite suggests that the virulent propaganda against Anabaptist heretics helped convince governments of the existence of a diabolical threat. Although Anabaptists rejected religious magic, they were consistently demonized by Catholic and Lutheran polemicists." "Eradicating the Devil's Minions is an investigation into the roots of religious intolerance in Reformation Europe, and a unique examination of mass hysteria and social extremism."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2007
University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ©2007
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xvi, 319 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
9780802091550, 9781442610323, 0802091555, 1442610328
77549134
The Devil's minions? Anabaptists, magic, and witches in the sixteenth century
Blackened tongues and miraculous hosts: anabaptists and miracles in the Polemical literature
Shamans and soothsayers: the persecution of anabaptists and witches in the northern Netherlands
Rebaptism and the Devil: anabaptists and witches in the southern Netherlands
The Devil's sabbat: nocturnal anabaptist meetings, hailstorms, and witchcraft in southern Germany
Eliminating the desecrators of hosts: anabaptists and witches in the Austrian Tirol