Religion

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Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trials Episode 5: Satanic sabbaths and supernatural sins . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A scene from the Salem witch trials, depicted in a 19th-century lithograph

When the devil stalked Salem: the story of the Salem witch trials

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Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trials Episode 4: The pervasive power of puritanism . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trials Episode 3: A ‘new Jerusalem’ on the edge of a wilderness . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trials Episode 2: How events spiralled out of control . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trials Episode 1: introduction . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Tourists at Stonehenge. We have no better idea today than 200 years ago what the people who erected these sarsens truly believed. (Getty Images)

General prehistory

Prehistoric religion: a pagan riddle we will never solve?

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Dr Benjamin Pohl explores the role of monks and abbots in the Middle Ages, and asks: why did they write histories?

Why did medieval monks write histories? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A stone bust of the Greek god Dionysius

The gods and their whims: your guide to ancient Greek religion

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Neil Faulkner reveals how the Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920 helped give rise to the first modern jihad

Jihad and the British empire . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An Anglo-Saxon cross from the church of St Michael

Anglo-Saxon conversion: the coming of the cross (at the point of a sword)

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A bust of Ashoka the Great

History hero Nihal Arthanayake chooses Ashoka the Great (c304–c232 BC) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Illustration of German Dominican preacher Johann Tetzel selling indulgences inside a church

Q&A What are indulgences, how were they abused in medieval times, and what do they have to do with the Reformation?

An architectural grotesque of a woman displaying her vulva

How naughty was the past? The hidden depths of the medieval church

Portrait Of Edward Seymour (Colorized)

Edward Seymour: the fall of the dithering dictator