Fear of fire, flood, plague, invasion by the infidel, purgatory, death, witchcraft - these are just some of the fears that plagued the early modern world which are dealt with in this fascinating well-integrated collection of essays, based on extensive and ground-breaking new research. Drawing on British and Continental examples, the volume explores the panoply of personal and communal tragedies which tormented and terrified both elite and popular communities in this period, and shows how they formed strategies for dealing both practically and psychologically with their fears; it tells of the creation of the first fire service in France, of dog-massacres in times of plague in England, and of flood emergency plans in Holland.

Fear and the Shaping of Early American Societies is the first collection of essays to argue that fear permeated the colonial societies of 17th- and 18th-century America and to analyse its impact on the political decision-making processes from a variety of angles and locations. Indeed, the thirteen essays range from Canada to the Chesapeake, from New England to the Caribbean and from the Carolina Backcountry to Dutch Brazil. This volume assesses the typically American nature of fear factors and the responses they elicited in a transatlantic context. The essays further explore how the European colonists handled such challenges as Indian conspiracies, slave revolts, famine, “popery” and tyranny as well as werewolves and a dragon to build cohesive societies far from the metropolis. Contributors are: Sarah Barber, Benjamin Carp, Leslie Choquette, Anne-Claire Faucquez, Lauric Henneton, Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber, Susanne Lachenicht, Bertie Mandelblatt, Mark Meuwese, L. H. Roper, David L. Smith, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, Christopher Vernon, and David Voorhees.

The Fear of Hell is a provocative study of two of the most powerful images in Christianity&—hell and the eucharist. Drawing upon the writings of Italian preachers and theologians of the Counter-Reformation, Piero Camporesi demonstrates the extraordinary power of the Baroque imagination to conjure up punishments, tortures, and the rewards of sin. In the first part of the book, Camporesi argues that hell was a very real part of everyday life during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Preachers portrayed hell in images typical of common experience, comparing it to a great city, a hospital, a prison, a natural disaster, a rioting mob, or a feuding family. The horror lay in the extremes to which these familiar images could be taken. The city of hell was not an ordinary city, but a filthy, stinking, and overcrowded place, an underworld &"sewer&" overflowing with the refuse of decaying flesh and excrement&—shocking but not beyond human imagination. What was most disturbing about this grotesque imagery was the realization by the people of the day that the punishment of afterlife was an extension of their daily experience in a fallen world. Thus, according to Camporesi, the fear of hell had many manifestations over the centuries, aided by such powerful promoters as Gregory the Great and Dante, but ironically it was during the Counter-Reformation that hell's tie with the physical world became irrevocable, making its secularization during the Enlightenment ultimately easier. The eucharist, or host, the subject of the second part of the book, represented corporeal salvation for early modern Christians and was therefore closely linked with the imagery of hell, the place of perpetual corporeal destruction. As the bread of life, the host possessed many miraculous powers of healing and sustenance, which made it precious to those in need. In fact, it was seen to be so precious to some that Camporesi suggests that there was a &"clandestine consumption of the sacred unleavened bread, a network of dealers and sellers&" and a &"market of consumers.&" But to those who ate the host unworthily was the prospect of swift retribution. One wicked priest continued to celebrate the mass despite his sin, and as a result, &"his tongue and half of his face became rotten, thus demonstrating, unwillingly, by the stench of his decaying face, how much the pestiferous smell of his contaminated heart was abominable to God.&" When received properly, however, the host was a source of health and life both in this world and in the world to come. Written with style and imagination, The Fear of Hell offers a vivid and scholarly examination of themes central to Christian culture, whose influence can still be found in our beliefs and customs today.

This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft

In Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred, François Soyer offers the first detailed historical analysis of antisemitic conspiracy theories in Spain, Portugal and their overseas colonies between 1450 and 1750.

Persons living in the old Estate society were expected to live according to their position, and to be content with the situation into which they were born. But people nonetheless harboured dreams and goals for a better future, and this sometimes led them to strive for a higher position than the one into which they were born. In the end, persons were not prisoners of their social status, and climbing higher on the social ladder was indeed possible. It required, however, careful strategising and the use of a variety of tactics, the study of which has been neglected in traditional history research. The use of such tactics sometimes allowed the actors to realise their hopes, but also left space for failure, which gave rise to very real fears. In this book fifteen scholars present their views on different aspects of Swedish society during the period 1500-1800. The book focuses on remarkable events and processes taking place in the Swedish realm during this era. Behind each event was a web of individual hopes and fears which motivated people's actions. The universal theme of hopes and fears has occupied persons of all eras, and this volume will interest scholars and students in cultural history, early modern studies, history of mentalities and political culture.

Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.