Life giving resources. Faithfully delivered.
FREE delivery on orders over £10
Serving over 2 million Christians in the UK
with Bibles, Books and Church Supplies
Our Buy-Now-Pay-Later accounts used
by over 4,000 UK Churches & Schools
Excellent 4.8 out of 5

Trustpilot

You now have 0 of this item in your basket

Sinners on Trial

Jews and Sacrilege After the Reformation [Hardback]

by Magda Teter

Author
Magda Teter
Book Format
Hardback
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Published
January 2021

Read full description

Click to expand

Today's Price

£60.63

Free UK Delivery

Available - Usually dispatched within 4 days

Buying for a school or church? Upgrade to a FREE Eden Advance Account

Enter the product quantity

Sinners on Trial

Today's Price £60.63

Frequently Bought Together

Sinners on Trial

by Magda Teter

Hardback

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era

by Magda Teter

Hardback

Add both to basket for £126.96

Product Description

In post-Reformation Poland--the largest state in Europe and home to the largest Jewish population in the world--the Catholic Church suffered profound anxiety about its power after the Protestant threat. Magda Teter reveals how criminal law became a key tool in the manipulation of the meaning of the sacred and in the effort to legitimize Church authority. The mishandling of sacred symbols was transformed from a sin that could be absolved into a crime that resulted in harsh sentences of mutilation, hanging, decapitation, and, principally, burning at the stake. Teter casts new light on the most infamous type of sacrilege, the accusation against Jews for desecrating the eucharistic wafer. These sacrilege trials were part of a broader struggle over the meaning of the sacred and of sacred space at a time of religious and political uncertainty, with the eucharist at its center. But host desecration--defined in the law as sacrilege--went beyond anti-Jewish hatred to reflect Catholic-Protestant conflict, changing conditions of ecclesiastic authority and jurisdiction, and competition in the economic marketplace.Recounting dramatic stories of torture, trial, and punishment, this is the first book to consider the sacrilege accusations of the early modern period within the broader context of politics and common crime. Teter draws on previously unexamined trial records to bring out the real-life relationships among Catholics, Jews, and Protestants and challenges the commonly held view that following the Reformation, Poland was a "state without stakes"--uniquely a country without religious persecution.