Desperate Magic

In early modern Europe, thousands of women were burned as witches during the period of the witch hunts. From the court records of seventeenth-century Russia a very different picture emerges. The great majority of those accused of witchcraft were men. Broadly comparative, Desperate Magic by Valerie Kivelson is the first sustained study of seventeenth-century Russian witch trials. The book uses trial evidence to illuminate some of the central puzzles of Muscovite history. The routine use of tortur