![]() ![]() ![]() As Coy finds, both of these reform efforts failed, and divination remained a prominent feature of rural life in Thuringia until well into the nineteenth century. Popular divination faced centuries of elite condemnation, as the Lutheran clergy attempted to suppress these practices in the wake of the Reformation and learned elites sought to eradicate them during the Enlightenment. Jason Phillip Coy brings their enchanted world to life by examining theological discourse alongside archival records of prosecution for popular divination in Thuringia, a diverse region in central Germany divided into a patchwork of princely territories, imperial cities, small towns, and rural villages. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. In early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. ![]()
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