The Real History of Witches and Witch Hunts
Written and Narrated By: Thomas Fudge
Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
Snooooze… hypotheses suggested… snooooze…. no conclusions drawn… snooooooze… Whazza? Is it over?!
I don’t doubt for a second that Prof. Thomas Fudge is a master of his subject. I don’t doubt for a second that he’s studied it ALL. I don’t doubt for a second that he enjoys delivering the subject matter, enlightening the listener.
It’s just that the delivery… and the lack of conclusions… got oh soooo wearisome as these 18-lectures progressed. Granted, each lecture was about 20-minutes, and there’s not a whole heckuva lot you can go in-depth for in such a short timeframe. But it was mighty distressing, nay! AGGravating how Prof. Fudge would say things like: “The Catholics did THIS brutal thing, and THAT brutal thing, so it seems like they did more. But then, the Protestants also did THIS brutal thing, and THAT brutal thing, so we can’t say for sure that one or the other was more active in torturing and executing.”
This gets particularly annoying at the end when threads are being pulled together so that we might get a Big Picture View of Witch Hunts. He goes so far as to say that, since Iceland was mostly “Sorcerer” hunts with some executions, i.e. Men, so that one canNOT say women did all the suffering. Uhm, I beg to differ as, tho’ I did get dozy and snoozy a bit, I was awake for most of this, and I distinctly remember a woman having her breasts sliced off. And I distinctly remember the image of a “Forest” of stakes on the landscape, remnants of the torching of women. Yeh yeh yeh, Prof. Fudge does indeed give quite a few examples of men who were caught up in such a fervor, who were wrongly accused as part of conspiracies to overthrow, but that doesn’t explain why the MASSES (NOT conspiracies by insiders) were driven to torture and execute mostly (Marginalized and lonely) women.
I suspect, given the way Fudge ends it all, that he’s just a tad more in tune with male victimization. As he discusses the Witch Hunts of today, he does address the hysteria over the pre-schools where adult caregivers were accused of HIGHly horrific Satanic behavior, but then he digresses to where I do believe what the far Right is calling today’s “Cancel Culture” is probably making him spaz, making him suffer gastric reflux. He goes on and on about how today’s “Anti-Semitism” labels are the modern witch hunt, with anybody daring to say a negative word about Israel getting lambasted and being silenced. Uhm, once again I beg to differ as, oh I dunno, losing a book deal isn’t quiiiiiiite the same as having your breasts sliced off before you’re burned alive.
…Just saying…
Now onto his delivery. Oy, expect the first parts of each paragraph to be relayed in staccato words, shotgun blasts of sentences, where your ears get a rat-a-tat-tat series of explosions before he settles into a steady rhythm. Still, he obviously finds his subject matter to be immensely interesting, and he’s exceedingly knowledgeable on witches and witch hunts in many, many countries. Fascinating that the Germans were sooooo disgustingly violent and shameless in their brutality, and fascinating that sometimes known drugs/hallucinogens were sometimes used to gain confessions. That all came through in a lively manner because Prof. Fudge seemed enthralled by it all (By the way, he does a LOT of: Not to Get Gruesome -BUT- and then you’ll be hit with some pretty disgustingly savage images of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man… errr… woman).
All in all, however, seven hours have never felt so long, or they USUally don’t in other audiobooks. The delivery was a bit of a soporific, and the subject matter, when Fudge wasn’t getting me riled up with his setting things up and then coming back to negate what he’d posited, was a bit weak. England’s witch hunts were covered, just a TAD, and the New England witch hunts were covered nary at all; no, this is all continental Europe with even far flung countries as Portugal addressed. So THAT was a bit of a disappointment.
I’m sure there are better lecturers out there; there’s a Great Courses one with Teofilo F. Ruiz doing the honors. And wouldn’t ya just know it? THIS audiobook at least piqued my interest enough to wanna jaunt off and get THAT Great Course. Oh well, I s’pose there’s a lot to be said for starting a bit of a craving for something, eh?
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