Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

Nyd den ubegrænsede adgang til tusindvis af spændende e- og lydbøger - helt gratis

  • Lyt og læs så meget du har lyst til
  • Opdag et kæmpe bibliotek fyldt med fortællinger
  • Eksklusive titler + Mofibo Originals
  • Opsig når som helst
Start tilbuddet
DK - Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

A Poisoned Chalice

Sprog
Engelsk
Format
Kategori

Historie

A Poisoned Chalice tells the story of a long-forgotten criminal case: the poisoning of the communion wine in Zurich's main cathedral in 1776. The story is riveting and mysterious, full of bizarre twists and colorful characters--an anti-clerical gravedigger, a hard-drinking drifter, a defrocked minister--who come to life in a series of dramatic criminal trials. But it is also far more than just a good story. In the wider world of German-speaking Europe, writes Jeffrey Freedman, the affair became a cause célèbre, the object of a lively public debate that focused on an issue much on the minds of intellectuals in the age of Enlightenment: the problem of evil.

Contemporaries were unable to ascribe any rational motive to an attempt to poison hundreds of worshippers. Such a crime pointed beyond reason to moral depravity so radical it seemed diabolic. By following contemporaries as they struggled to comprehend an act of inscrutable evil, this book brings to life a key episode in the history of the German Enlightenment--an episode in which the Enlightenment was forced to interrogate the very limits of reason itself.

Twentieth-century horrors have familiarized us with the type of evil that so shocked the men and women of the eighteenth century. Does this familiarity give us any special insight into the affair of the poisoned chalice? In its final chapter, the book takes up this question, reflecting on the nature of historical knowledge through an imaginary dialogue with Enlightenment-era interlocutors. But it does not reach any definitive conclusion about what happened in the Zurich cathedral in 1776. To search for the truth about such a mystery is merely to extend a dialogue begun in the eighteenth century, and that dialogue is as open-ended as the process of Enlightenment itself.

© 2020 Princeton University Press (E-bog): 9780691221557

Release date

E-bog: 10. november 2020

Andre kan også lide...

Vælg dit abonnement

  • Over 600.000 titler

  • Download og nyd titler offline

  • Eksklusive titler + Mofibo Originals

  • Børnevenligt miljø (Kids Mode)

  • Det er nemt at opsige når som helst

Flex

For dig som vil prøve Mofibo.

89 kr. /måned
  • 1 konto

  • 20 timer/måned

  • Gem op til 100 ubrugte timer

  • Eksklusivt indhold hver uge

  • Fri lytning til podcasts

  • Ingen binding

Prøv gratis
Den mest populære

Premium

For dig som lytter og læser ofte.

129 kr. /måned
  • 1 konto

  • 100 timer/måned

  • Eksklusivt indhold hver uge

  • Fri lytning til podcasts

  • Ingen binding

Start tilbuddet

Unlimited

For dig som lytter og læser ubegrænset.

149 kr. /måned
  • 1 konto

  • Ubegrænset adgang

  • Eksklusivt indhold hver uge

  • Fri lytning til podcasts

  • Ingen binding

Start tilbuddet

Family

For dig som ønsker at dele historier med familien.

Fra 179 kr. /måned
  • 2-6 konti

  • 100 timer/måned pr. konto

  • Fri lytning til podcasts

  • Kun 39 kr. pr. ekstra konto

  • Ingen binding

2 konti

179 kr. /måned
Prøv gratis