Books

History for laughs and for keeps

February 3, 2023 Edward Short 1

Many readers of Karl Keating’s 1054 and All That: A Lighthearted History of the Catholic Church might be tempted to see the book as little more than an amusing chronology of the Church history no […]

Books

T.S. Eliot and Uncritical Biography

January 14, 2023 Edward Short 10

I The other day, I was reading Eugenio Montale’s introduction to Allen Mandlebaum’s translation of The Divine Comedy and I was struck by the wisdom of something the modern Italian poet said, and it was […]

Features

Who Burned the Witches (Part 2)

November 1, 2022 Sandra Miesel 19

Editor’s note: Part One of this essay was published on October 30, 2022. (Editor’s note: A different version of this article ran in CRISIS magazine in October 2001. Witches Everywhere How many people died in […]

Features

Who Burned the Witches? (Part 1)

October 30, 2022 Sandra Miesel 13

The stench of their burning is with us yet. The stakes and gibbets where witches perished by the tens of thousands during Earl Modern times still stand in popular imagination. For historians, the Great European […]