The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England

ISBN-13: 9780199570904 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 224 str.

Alec Ryrie

Opis

An earl's son, plotting murder by witchcraft; conjuring spirits to find buried treasure; a stolen coat embroidered with pure silver; crooked gaming-houses and brothels; a terrifying new disease, and the self-trained surgeon who claims he can treat it. This is the world of Gregory Wisdom, a physician, magician, and consummate con-man in sixteenth-century London. Drawing on previously unknown documents to reconstruct this extraordinary man's career, Alec Ryrie takes us through the cut-throat business of early modern medicine, down to Tudor London's gangland of fraud and organized crime; from the world of Renaissance magi and Kabbalistic conjurers to street-corner wizards; and into the chaotic, exhilarating religious upheavals of the Reformation. On the way, we learn how Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld were intimately connected to each other. Gregory Wisdom's career is an object lesson in how to conjure up wealth and respectability from nothing in a turbulent age. Praised as "an excellent snapshot of a time intrigued by the spiritual realm" (Los Angeles Times), this is a unique glimpse into a world intoxicated by new ideas.

Recenzje

Hold tight, it's a breath-taking trip.

O autorze

Alec Ryrie studied history at Cambridge, St. Andrews, and Oxford, and is now Reader in Church History at Durham University, specializing in the history of the Reformation. He lives in the Pennines with his wife, son, and cat. The Sorcerer's Tale is his third book.