Exploring the methodologies of cultural transmission in early modern Germany, influenced by the scholarship of H.C. Erik Midelfort, this volume brings together a broad range of essays from leading European and North American scholars. By examining the ways in which people expected ideas to influence others, where influenced themselves, and the unexpected ways that ideas could permeate through society, the volume as a whole adds significant features to our conceptual map of life in early modern Europe.

Contents: Foreword; Introduction: witch-women and madmen: digging postholes with H.C. Erik Midelfort, Thomas A. Brady Jr; Part 1 Laity: Serfs 'are not cows or calves': Urbanus Rhegius's theological effort to legitimate unfreedom and to promote personal liberty, Peter Blickle; Layers of literacy in a 16th-century case of fraud, Helmut Graser and B. Ann Tlusty; Immigration and civic identity in 16th-century Cologne, Janis M. Gibbs; Melancholy murderers: suicide by proxy and the insanity defense, Kathy Stuart. Part 2 Clergy: Venus in Wittenburg: Cranach, Luther, and sensuality, Lyndal Roper; 'The much married Michael Kramer': evangelical clergy and bigamy in Ernestine Saxony, 1522-1542, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer; Penance, confession, and the self in early modern Lutheranism, Thomas Robisheaux; Crime and Christianity in early sensationalism, Joy Wiltenberg. Part 3 Humanists, Doctors, and Professors: Reuchlin and the University of Tÿbingen, Sönke Lorenze; Welfare land: Johannes Eberlin von Gÿnzburg and the reformation of folly, David Lederer; Alexander Seitz and the medical calling; physic, faith, and reform, Robin B. Barnes; Johannes Crato von Krafftheim (1519-1585): imperial physician, Irenicist, and anti-Paracelsian, Charles D Gunnoe Jr and Jole Shackelford; Witchcraft and the media, Wolfgang Behringer. Part 4 Jurists and Magistrates: Experiments in pain: reason and the development of judicial torture, Laura Stokes; 'Lies as truth': policing print and oral culture in the early modern city, Allyson F. Creasman; Leprosy and the defeat of diagnosis in 16th-century Germany, Mitchell Lewis Hammond; Collecting testimony and parsing texts in Zurich: documentary strategies for defending reformed identities in the Thurgau, 1600-1656, Randolph C. Head; Conclusion: the good, the bad, and the airborne: levitation and the history of the impossible in early modern Europe, Carlos M.N. Eire; Bibliography of H.C. Erik Midelfort's publications; Select bibliography; Index.

Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer is Professor of History at Western Kentucky University, USA.

Robin B. Barnes is Professor of History at Davidson College, USA.