Piety in the Torture Chamber
Piety in the Torture Chamber
What can the Polish witch-trials tell us about Christianity in early modern Poland? Missionaries and reformers constructed Christianity in opposition to paganism, superstition, ignorance, and magic—a rhetorical strategy that nearly always renders the peasantry as ignorant, practico-magical, or worse. Modern scholarship has too often repeated this pattern, making use of Frazer’s distinction between magic and religion without examining the Christian apologetic genealogy of that schema. The confessions of accused witches under torture challenge our preconceptions, and require us to hear Christianity in their invocations of Jesus, the Holy Sacrament, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints in their time of trial. Read carefully, some confessions to diabolical witchcraft can be seen as witnesses to Christian piety.
Keywords: Christianity, piety, torture, paganism, magic and religion, confession, superstition
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