STRANGE HISTORIES

In his lively and slightly ironic account, Darren Oldridge finds nothing unreasonable in prosecuting horses, witches and wolfmen Strange Histories is more than an entertaining catalogue of oddities. Shepherd Express: Milwaukee

A well-researched book, full of snippets of old text, diaries and manuscripts, there is much here for the scholar. Fate

An entertaining book. The Medieval Review

Darren Oldridge s fascinating study of witches, angels, werewolves, heretics, persecution, and justice is extraordinary because it is so contemporary, provocative and insightful. His investigation reveals that our assumptions about the intolerance and absurd ideas of the past need to be critically re-examined if we are to deal with our own strange behaviour in the present.

Jack Zipes,. University of Minnesota

In 1458 a pig was hanged for murder in Burgundy. The French judge Henri Bouget described an apple possessed by demons in 1602. A few years later, Italian Jesuits tried to calculate the physical dimensions of hell.

Strange Histories presents a serious account of some of the most extraordinary occurences of European and North American history and explains how they made sense to people living at the time.

Using case studies from the Middle Ages and the early modern period with some from the more recent past, this book provides fascinating insights into the world-view through the ages, and shows how such goings-on fitted in quite naturally with the common sense of the time. Explanations of these phenomena, riveting and ultimately rational, encourage further reflection on what really shapes our beliefs.

What made reasonable, educated men and women behave in ways that seem utterly nonsensical to us today? This question and many more are answered in this fascinating book.

Darren Oldridge is a lecturer in history at University College Worcester. He is the editor of The Witchcraft Reader (Routledge, 2001).