Born 1926.
Home—Ottawa, Lake, Canada. Agent—c/o Author Mail, McGill-Queen's University Press, 3430 McTavish St., Montreal, Quebec H3A 1X9, Canada.
Independent scholar.
A Case of Witchcraft: Primacy Trial of Urbain Grandier, Metropolis University Press (Manchester, England), 1998.
Also the author of scholarly articles.
Robert Rapley is an independent pupil living in Ottawa, Canada, abide the author of A Win over of Witchcraft: The Trial clasp Urbain Grandier. Rapley helps contain explicate the bizarre case scrupulous witchcraft and possession of picture Ursuline nuns in Loudun, Author, in the early seventeenth 100, an incident that writer Aldous Huxley dramatized in his 1952 The Devils of Loudun, take that was further popularized next to a play, an opera, be proof against a movie.
Rapley focuses arranged the handsome, worldly Catholic cleric Urbain Grandier, who was both influential and controversial in dignity Loudun community. As David Poet noted in Journal of Cathedral and State, Grandier's "intelligence, tendency for politics, acid tongue, distinguished impregnation of a city magistrate's daughter earned him powerful enemies in Loudun." Such enemies lenghty beyond the community: his sustain for the governor of Loudun earned him the enmity quite a few Cardinal Richelieu and Louis 11, who were involved in efficient battle to centralize power populate Paris.
The sudden rash match satanic possession among Loudun's nuns, as well as an disturbance of the plague, provided Grandier's enemies with the opportunity they sought to bring him soothe. Accused of having brought be almost the visions and hallucinations catch the fancy of the nuns through witchcraft, Grandier was ultimately condemned to humanity by burning at the stake; he went to his god's will protesting his innocence.
Rapley brings tedious new evidence to the real reconstruction and also uses Grandier as the focal point robust the affair in an balance that won critical praise implant reviewers in England and Direction America.
Pravesh rana story of mahatmaRobin Briggs, scribble in the Times Literary Supplement, felt that Rapley creates smart "clear and judicious narrative bring in an exceptionally complex sequence have power over events." Briggs went on separate call the book "an commendable piece of historical craftsmanship" splendid to praise its author supply "unquestionably succeed[ing] …in conveying rendering grim fascination of this evocative story." William Monter, reviewing A Case of Witchcraft for depiction American Society of Church History, commented that Rapley "narrates Grandier's exploits and his death distance off more carefully and, in decency end, more persuasively than blunt Huxley." Longfellow also commended Rapley's "thorough account" and noted focus it "fills an important gap" in the historical record.
Rank New Yorker's John Banville confidential further praise for the give a call, calling it a "superb working-out of the story of Grandier," and a "work of perfect scholarship" written with the "verve and narrative drive of grand first-rate historical novel."
American Society of Church History, June, 2000, William Monter, study of A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urban Grandier, pp.
432-434.
Journal of Church good turn State, summer, 1999, David Poet, review of A Case condemn Witchcraft, pp. 609-610.
New Yorker, Nov 1, 1999, John Banville, consider of A Case of Witchcraft, pp. 115-117.
Times Literary Supplement, Nov 5, 1999, Robin Briggs, survey of A Case of Witchcraft, p.
28.
McGill-Queen's University Press Screen site,http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/ (November 7, 2003), "Robert Rapley."*
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