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While the perception of magic as harmful is age-old, the notion of witches gathering together in large numbers, overtly worshiping demons, and receiving instruction in how to work harmful magic as part of a conspiratorial plot against Christian society was an innovation of the early fifteenth century. The sources collected in this book reveal this concept in its formative stages. The idea that witches were members of organized heretical sects or part of a vast diabolical conspiracy crystalized most clearly in a handful of texts written in the 1430s and clustered geographically around the arc of the western Alps. Michael D. Bailey presents accessible English translations of the five oldest surviving texts describing the witches' sabbath and of two witch trials from the period. These sources, some of which were previously unavailable in English or available only in incomplete or out-of-date translations, show how perceptions of witchcraft shifted from a general belief in harmful magic practiced by individuals to a conspiratorial and organized threat that led to the witch hunts that shook northern Europe and went on to influence conceptions of diabolical witchcraft for centuries to come. Origins of the Witches' Sabbath makes freshly available a profoundly important group of texts that are key to understanding the cultural context of this dark chapter in Europe's history. It will be especially valuable to those studying the history of witchcraft, medieval and early modern legal history, religion and theology, magic, and esotericism.

In the early seventeenth century, thousands of children in Spain's Navarre region claimed to have been bewitched. The Child Witches of Olague features the legal depositions of self-described child witches as well as their parents and victims. The volume sheds new light on Navarre's massive witch persecution (1608-14), illuminating the tragic cost of witch hunts and opening a new window onto our understanding of early modern Iberian life. Drawing from Spanish-language sources only recently discovered, Homza translates and annotates three court cases from Olague in 1611 and 1612. Two were defamation trials involving the slur \"witch,\" and the third was a petition for divorce filed by an accused witch and wife. These cases give readers rare access to the voices of illiterate children in the early modern period. They also speak to the emotions of witch-hunting, with testimony about enraged, terrified parents turning to vigilante justice against neighbors. Together the cases highlight gender norms of the time, the profound honor code of early modern Navarre, and the power of children to alter adult lives. With translations of Inquisition correspondence and printed pamphlets added for context, The Child Witches of Olague offers a portrait of witch-hunting as a horrific, contagious process that fractured communities. This riveting, one-of-a-kind book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of witch hunts, life in early modern Spain, and history as revealed through court testimony.

Este trabajo pretende adentrarse en el modo en que la naturaleza, en distintas formas, está incorporada a nuestro imaginario compartido sobre la brujería. La propuesta se inscribe en la línea de una investigación más amplia, que explora las imbricaciones entre el imaginario de la caza de brujas y los discursos feministas contemporáneos. Desde este punto de partida, nos interesa explorar qué géneros textuales se activan en las narrativas de la brujería, concretamente los que tratan del aquelarre como acontecimiento que encumbra el poder de la bruja, y qué cabida tiene lo fantástico en una pugna discursiva que interroga lo verosímil, lo mágico y, en definitiva, los límites de lo real. En nuestro estudio, partiremos de la historiografía tradicional sobre la caza de brujas para llegar a la crítica feminista, para desde ella ahondar en sus implicaciones sociales y políticas, para pensar en la bruja como construcción discursiva vinculada fuertemente a la naturaleza en diversas formas.

This book explores the phenomenon of Saturnism, namely the belief that the planet Saturn, the seventh known planet in ancient astrology, was appointed upon the Jews, who celebrated the Sabbath, the seventh day of the Jewish week. Moshe Idel details how the anonymous, late 14th century Sefer Ha-Peliyah was to have disturbing consequences in the Jewish world three centuries later, interweaving luminaries with the cultural, historical, religious, and philosophical concepts of their day, and demonstrating how cultural agents were inadvertently instrumental in the mid-17th-century mass-movement Sabbateanism that led to the conviction that Sabbatai Tzevi was the Messiah. Exploring how the tragic misperception of the Jewish Sabbath by the non-Jewish world led to a linkage of Jews with sorcery in 14th and 15th-century Europe, associating their holy day with the witches' 'Sabbat' gathering, Idel brings this wide-ranging study into the present day with an analysis of 20th-century scholarship and thought influenced by Saturnism, particularly lingering themes related to melancholy in the works of Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin.

Jubilee in the Bible: Using the theology of Jürgen Moltmann to find a new hermeneutic combines biblical studies with modern theology and has an orientation towards the Church. This is the first book on Jubilee which combines biblical-theological interpretation in order to reveal a new hermeneutical code of reading and interpreting the message of Jubilee.

Matthew uses Hos. 6:6 in two scenes of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. He defines the differences between Jesus and the Pharisees in terms of adherence to the Law with focus on the mercy that God desires. Matthew depicts Jesus as one who teaches and enacts Hos. 6:6 in continuity with the original prophetic intention of this statement. Jesus teaches by example by enacting mercy towards the marginalized and people in need. He loves the way Hosea announces that God intends his people to love. Jesus Himself becomes the presence and source of mercy. Jesus forms the central focus and prototype of the Matthean community. The community should follow his example.

From Augustine to Caesarius, through the Reformation and the Puritan flight from England, down through the ages to contemporary debates about Sunday worship, Miller explores the fascinating history of the Sabbath.

This article extracts from Heinrich Heine's famous poem “Prinzessin Sabbat” a portrait of the Jew as a figure that occupies a liminal state between humanity and animality. This figure of the Jew, who spends the week as a dog and regains his humanity on the Sabbath, has been conventionally read as allegorical of Jewish existence in the diaspora. Without challenging this interpretation, I propose an alternative reading of the figure of the Jew in Heine's poem as emblematic of his own deteriorated physical condition during the last eight years of his life, and link it to his departure from the “Hellenic” persona he had previously espoused in his writings, and to his renewed interest in Judaism. The Judaism with which Heine identified toward the end of his life had little to do with the “Nazarene” mentality that he had fiercely denounced in his earlier writings. Rather, the figure of the Jew in Heine's late writings problematizes the prevalent anthropocentric outlook that maintained since biblical times the supremacy of humanity over all of creation, and breaks the traditional boundary between human and earthly nature. From the perspective of the Jew who shares the suffering that epitomizes creaturely life, Heine articulates a subtle critique of German Romanticism.

The Sabbath is the original feast day, a day of joy and freedom from work, a holy day that allows us to reconnect with God, our fellows and nature. Now, in a compelling blend of journalism, scholarship and personal memoir, Christopher D. Ringwald examines the Sabbath from Creation to the present, weaving together the stories of three families, three religions and three thousand years of history. A Day Apart is the first book to examine the Sabbath in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A marvelously readable book, it offers a fascinating portrait of the basics of the three Sabbaths--the Muslim Juma on Friday, the Jewish Shabbat on Saturday and the Christian Lord's Day on Sunday--and introduces us to three families, including Ringwald's own, and shows how they observe the holy day and what it means to them. The heart of the book recounts the history of the Sabbath, ranging from the Creation story and Moses on Mount Sinai, to the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad, the impact of the Protestant Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the modern weekend. Ringwald shows that the Sabbath instinct, to observe a special day of withdrawal and repose, is universal. Indeed, all religions and philosophies teach that life is more than toil, that time should be set aside for contemplation, enjoyment and culture. In today's frantic 24/7 world, the Sabbath--a day devoted to rest and contemplation--has never been more necessary. A Day Apart offers a portrait of a truly timeless way to escape the everyday world and add meaning to our lives.

This now classic study is concerned with the richly imagined world of kabbalistic myth concerning the sabbath as it developed from the late twelfth century to the early sixteenth century and with its activation in religious life via ritual. The book opens with a historical overview of classical kabbalah, an outline of its symbolic universe. Special attention is given to the key mythic motifs that underlie sabbath observance: the sabbath as source of cosmic blessing, the sabbath as perfected time, the drama of divine restoration and sacred marriage, and the drama of human transformation by the sabbath as reflected in the motif of the sabbath-soul. This is followed by a theoretical discussion of the function and meaning of kabbalistic ritual and the problems of its interpretation. Theory gives way to practice with the close study of dramatic rituals located on the margins of the sabbath: the ritual of preparation—how one enters the sabbath—and the ritual of separation—how one leaves the sabbath and yet takes it into the week. Brief appendices deal with the special issues of Torah study and sexuality related to sabbath observance. The book also demonstrates how many of the influential practices associated with Safed kabbalah were actually anticipated by earlier mystics. The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah combines the close textual readings of traditional scholarly enquiry with more innovative approaches drawing on symbolic anthropology and the like. The presentation is coherent, cohesive, and accessible. It makes a contribution to the history of Jewish spirituality and, more broadly, to the understanding of myth and ritual.