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Episode Description
What did the scholars who studied witchcraft most seriously actually believe? And why did their conclusions so often cut against prosecution?
Professor Darren Oldridge of the University of Worcester joins Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack to examine the intellectual world that produced English demonology and shaped witch trials on both sides of the Atlantic.
In this episode:
Why the devil mattered far more than witches to learned English Protestants
The demonological writers whose work traveled directly to colonial New England
What Reginald Scott and George Gifford argued, and why it surprised their contemporaries
The specific figure whose writing brought popular and learned ideas into dangerous alignment
Why the demonic pact was central to prosecution and nearly impossible to prove
What the Massachusetts law code of the 1640s reveals about biblical influence on colonial legal thinking
How Increase Mather's skepticism at Salem connected to a century of English Protestant thought
Why the "good witch" was considered more dangerous than the harmful one
Learn more at endwitchhunts.org and aboutwitchhunts.com.
#WitchTrials #SalemWitchTrials #Demonology #WitchHunts #DevilHistory #WitchcraftHistory #EnglishHistory #HistoryPodcast #EarlyModernHistory #WitchcraftPodcast #EndWitchHunts #ProtestantHistory #ColonialHistory #SalemHistory
Links
Professor Darren Oldridge https://www.worcester.ac.uk/about/profiles/professor-darren-oldridge
Buy Books by Darren Oldridge https://bookshop.org/lists/guests-of-the-thing-about-witch-hunts-podcast
Learn more at endwitchhunts.org and aboutwitchhunts.com