"Horrors in the West" is a book about how the fear experienced by an individual - on the guillotine, at the moment of castration on St. Bartholomew's Night, a look at the hanged man, into a bottomless abyss from which fetid smoke rises, at a corpse hanged upside down ... - penetrates into the public consciousness and becomes a collective feeling. Despite the “yellow title”, the book contains scientific information, being an artistic adaptation of a dissertation on the topic of fear in Western European society of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Professor of history, doctor of sciences, Jean Delumeau has long been and fruitfully studies a complex of problems associated with the Renaissance. His doctoral dissertation, “Rome in the XIV Century,” which was revised for a wide range of readers, brought him worldwide fame. For "The Civilization of the Renaissance" the author was awarded the highly respected academic Gobert Prize in 1968, and two subsequent publications - "The Birth and Establishment of the Reform" and "Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire" marked a new vision of the place and significance of religion in the life of society and a non-standard approach to studying this problem. Fear, what is it? What is the relationship between the personal and the social in fear? How does fear experienced by an individual penetrate the public consciousness and become a collective feeling? What are the causes, the fertile soil of fear, and what are the consequences of fear that has taken hold of an entire community of people? Here is the range of problems studied by the author on the cultural material of Renaissance Europe. CONTENTS: PART ONE. ALL VARIETIES OF FEARChapter I. FEAR IS EVERYWHERE. Chapter II. THE PAST AND THE DARKNESS OF THE NIGHT. Chapter III. TYPOLOGY OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR DURING THE PLAGUE. Chapter IV. FEAR AND REVOLT (I). Chapter V. FEAR AND RIOTS (II). PART TWO. RULE CULTURE AND FEARChapter VI. WAITING FOR THE SECOND COMING. Chapter VII. SATAN. Chapter VIII. SATAN'S ASSISTANTS (I): PAGENTS AND MUSLIMS. Eyes IX. SATAN'S ASSISTANTS (II): THE JEWS ARE ABSOLUTE EVIL. Chapter X. SATAN'S ASSISTANTS (III): WOMAN. Chapter XI. HISTORICAL MYSTERY: THE GREAT WITCH PERSECUTION (I): dossier. Chapter XII. HISTORICAL MYSTERY: THE GREAT WITCH PERSECUTION (II): an attempt at interpretation. Notes.