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Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England
Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.
880 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1971
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July 26, 2018
Now my Charmes are all ore-throwne,
And what strength I haue's mine owne.
Which is most faint…
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest
You might think from the title of Religion and the Decline of Magic that there is going to be some causal relationship between the two noun phrases: that this is a story of how religion grew as magic diminished.
But that is not at all the story being told in this fantastically wide-ranging, compendious study of the beliefs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Instead we are given something much more subtle – an examination of the magical thinking that pervaded all of society, religion included, and of what happened to religion and society when that magical thinking became untenable.
This isn't a didactic book, and most of the conclusions are held back until the end. Instead of sustained argument, what you get is a vast treasure-house of examples, anecdotes, quotations and calmly measured assessments demonstrating how people in the 1500s and 1600s thought about god, the devil, sorcery, ghosts, astrology, ancient prophecies, fairies, witchcraft, and much more besides.
DOE YOUER BEST
What is the difference between religion and magic, anyway? It's not easy, even for believers, to give a satisfying answer. Theologians liked to say that prayers and religious ceremonies, unlike spells, were ‘propitiatory, not constraining’ – one asked god for help, one did not compel him to act in a certain way. But this was a distinction made by the educated thinkers at the top: for ordinary people (much of the clergy not excluded) it just didn't exist.
Many wizards and conjurers called on God for their enchantments, and many religious rites and prayers were assumed to work purely mechanically as charms. Priests would routinely ring church bells during a thunderstorm to drive off evil spirits; women were ‘churched’ after childbirth to re-fit them for Christian society. The whole structure of the medieval Church ‘appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power, capable of being deployed for a variety of secular purposes’.
Though the Reformation deliberately tried to get rid of a lot of the hocus-pocus, even afterwards there were ‘magical elements surviving in religion, and there were religious facets to the practice of magic’.
The point is not just that religion and science were often seen as magical – it's that many of the practices we'd now dismiss as nonsense were in those days considered genuine scientific paths to knowledge. The great example of this is astrology, which Thomas respectfully describes as ‘probably the most ambitious attempt ever made to reduce the baffling diversity of human affairs to some sort of intelligible order’. Its pedigree was unimpeachable, and even the most sceptical rationalists were unwilling, until well into the seventeenth century, to dismiss the basic principle that heavenly bodies had some effect on men's lives.
Being an astrologer back then must have been a bit like being a private investigator now – sure, it sounds quite exciting, but most of the time you're dealing with boring requests concerning inheritance fraud or whether someone's husband is likely to remain faithful. One typical client sent the following letter:
YOUR VERY GOOD HEALTH
It's true that the educated metropolitan classes could sometimes be sceptical about magic – but this was a tiny proportion of society. The vast majority of people still lived rural lives in small villages, and religion to them was just another brand of the supernatural.
You can get an inkling of what many people understood about religious doctrine from the interview carried out with one sixty-year-old on his deathbed, after a lifetime of attending church several times a week: ‘demanded what he thought of God, he answers that he was a good old man; and what of Christ, that he was a towardly young youth; and of his soul, that it was a great bone in his body’. One shepherd, when asked if he knew who the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were, replied, ‘The father and son I know well for I tend their sheep, but I know not that third fellow; there is none of that name in our village.’ This was admittedly somewhat earlier than the main period under discussion here, but the general attitude lasted through to the seventeenth century and beyond:
TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE
In fact the socioeconomic factor in all this becomes increasingly obvious. The Church had the power and it had the money, which meant ultimately the difference between magic and religion was what the Church said it was: ‘the ceremonies of which it disapproved were “superstitious”; those which it accepted were not.’
Indeed the debate over magic was often a class issue. This is especially true of witchcraft (as Reginald Scot put it, the Pope ‘canonizeth the rich for saints and banneth the poor for witches’). When it came to accusations of witchcraft, Thomas makes the intriguing observation that, paradoxically, ‘it tended to be the witch who was morally in the right and the victim who was in the wrong’. Victims of witchcraft, in other words, often lodged formal complaints in situations where they were feeling guilty about something and considered that in some sense they'd had it coming.
A destitute old woman comes to your door to ask for some butter; you turn her away; you happen to break your ankle later on; and your own feelings of guilt connect the dots. Witches were rarely accused of responsibility for plagues or big fires – it was always personal disasters, individual calamities.
So this is really about poverty. It is both amusing and heartbreaking to read about how little the Devil supposedly had to tempt many of these women with in order to entice them over to Satanism: Elizabeth Pratt claimed to have been promised in 1677 that ‘she should live as well as the best woman in the town of Dunstable’, while Elizabeth Southern in 1645 said she agreed to sell her soul for 2s. 6d.
‘Witch’ (like ‘chav’ today) is a term flung at the very poor by the slightly less poor; what we are looking at in many witchcraft trials (this book suggests) is a society trying to resolve its ‘conflict between resentment and a sense of obligation’.
IT MAKES YOU FEEL HAPPY LIKE AN OLD-TIME MOVIE
The legal system in England was, happily, less willing to accept witch-hunts against defenceless old women than were courts on the continent: indeed one judge in 1712 is said to have responded to some of the more outlandish testimony against one ‘witch’ by remarking cheerfully that there was no law against flying, and promptly dismissing the case.
As mechanical science started to show its value, magic lost its cachet – though magical beliefs of some kind have lingered on well into modern times, as the vogue for horoscopes and new-age mumbo-jumbo demonstrates. It's easy to be snide about it, but what this book really shows is that such ideas do help people deal with things for which medicine or science have no helpful answers: they allow people to feel that they are taking matters into their own hands, they activate the placebo effect, they provide psychological release and reassurance.
The prose is clear and no-nonsense and chock-full of astonishing incidents and examples drawn from pamphlets, court records, diaries, letters and literature. Thomas is also anxious to take on board the latest (for 1971) findings in anthropology, and he looks, perhaps too hard, for parallels between Tudor England and traditional ‘African’ cultures: this analysis seems rather unsophisticated nowadays (although charges of ‘racism’, thrown around in a few other reviews here, are absurd). Perhaps too the sheer wealth of material leads him to drift slightly and repeat himself a couple of times. Still, it's hard to overstate the amount of pleasure on offer here, or the number of fascinating sidelights this book throws on the history of human society and ideas. As Hilary Mantel says, the book is so rewarding that it's not just about magic – it is a little slice of magic in itself.
(Dec 2013)
And what strength I haue's mine owne.
Which is most faint…
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest
You might think from the title of Religion and the Decline of Magic that there is going to be some causal relationship between the two noun phrases: that this is a story of how religion grew as magic diminished.
But that is not at all the story being told in this fantastically wide-ranging, compendious study of the beliefs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Instead we are given something much more subtle – an examination of the magical thinking that pervaded all of society, religion included, and of what happened to religion and society when that magical thinking became untenable.
This isn't a didactic book, and most of the conclusions are held back until the end. Instead of sustained argument, what you get is a vast treasure-house of examples, anecdotes, quotations and calmly measured assessments demonstrating how people in the 1500s and 1600s thought about god, the devil, sorcery, ghosts, astrology, ancient prophecies, fairies, witchcraft, and much more besides.
DOE YOUER BEST
What is the difference between religion and magic, anyway? It's not easy, even for believers, to give a satisfying answer. Theologians liked to say that prayers and religious ceremonies, unlike spells, were ‘propitiatory, not constraining’ – one asked god for help, one did not compel him to act in a certain way. But this was a distinction made by the educated thinkers at the top: for ordinary people (much of the clergy not excluded) it just didn't exist.
Many wizards and conjurers called on God for their enchantments, and many religious rites and prayers were assumed to work purely mechanically as charms. Priests would routinely ring church bells during a thunderstorm to drive off evil spirits; women were ‘churched’ after childbirth to re-fit them for Christian society. The whole structure of the medieval Church ‘appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power, capable of being deployed for a variety of secular purposes’.
Though the Reformation deliberately tried to get rid of a lot of the hocus-pocus, even afterwards there were ‘magical elements surviving in religion, and there were religious facets to the practice of magic’.
The point is not just that religion and science were often seen as magical – it's that many of the practices we'd now dismiss as nonsense were in those days considered genuine scientific paths to knowledge. The great example of this is astrology, which Thomas respectfully describes as ‘probably the most ambitious attempt ever made to reduce the baffling diversity of human affairs to some sort of intelligible order’. Its pedigree was unimpeachable, and even the most sceptical rationalists were unwilling, until well into the seventeenth century, to dismiss the basic principle that heavenly bodies had some effect on men's lives.
Being an astrologer back then must have been a bit like being a private investigator now – sure, it sounds quite exciting, but most of the time you're dealing with boring requests concerning inheritance fraud or whether someone's husband is likely to remain faithful. One typical client sent the following letter:
Ser my desier is you would be pleased to anser me thes queareyes I am indetted and am in danger of aresting. My desier is to know wether the setey or the conterey will be best for me, if the setey whatt part thearof if the contery what partt therof, and whatt tim will be most dangeros unto me, and when best to agree with my creditores I pray doe youer best.
YOUR VERY GOOD HEALTH
It's true that the educated metropolitan classes could sometimes be sceptical about magic – but this was a tiny proportion of society. The vast majority of people still lived rural lives in small villages, and religion to them was just another brand of the supernatural.
You can get an inkling of what many people understood about religious doctrine from the interview carried out with one sixty-year-old on his deathbed, after a lifetime of attending church several times a week: ‘demanded what he thought of God, he answers that he was a good old man; and what of Christ, that he was a towardly young youth; and of his soul, that it was a great bone in his body’. One shepherd, when asked if he knew who the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were, replied, ‘The father and son I know well for I tend their sheep, but I know not that third fellow; there is none of that name in our village.’ This was admittedly somewhat earlier than the main period under discussion here, but the general attitude lasted through to the seventeenth century and beyond:
The Reverend Francis Kilvert recorded in his diary how the vicar of Fordington, Dorset, found total ignorance in his rural parish when he arrived there in the early nineteenth century. At one church in the area there were only two male communicants. When the cup was given to the first he touched his forelock and said, ‘Here's your good health, sir.’ The second, better informed, said, ‘Here's the good health of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE
In fact the socioeconomic factor in all this becomes increasingly obvious. The Church had the power and it had the money, which meant ultimately the difference between magic and religion was what the Church said it was: ‘the ceremonies of which it disapproved were “superstitious”; those which it accepted were not.’
The difference between churchmen and magicians lay less in the effects they claimed to achieve than in their social position, and in the authority on which their respective claims rested.
Indeed the debate over magic was often a class issue. This is especially true of witchcraft (as Reginald Scot put it, the Pope ‘canonizeth the rich for saints and banneth the poor for witches’). When it came to accusations of witchcraft, Thomas makes the intriguing observation that, paradoxically, ‘it tended to be the witch who was morally in the right and the victim who was in the wrong’. Victims of witchcraft, in other words, often lodged formal complaints in situations where they were feeling guilty about something and considered that in some sense they'd had it coming.
A destitute old woman comes to your door to ask for some butter; you turn her away; you happen to break your ankle later on; and your own feelings of guilt connect the dots. Witches were rarely accused of responsibility for plagues or big fires – it was always personal disasters, individual calamities.
So this is really about poverty. It is both amusing and heartbreaking to read about how little the Devil supposedly had to tempt many of these women with in order to entice them over to Satanism: Elizabeth Pratt claimed to have been promised in 1677 that ‘she should live as well as the best woman in the town of Dunstable’, while Elizabeth Southern in 1645 said she agreed to sell her soul for 2s. 6d.
‘Witch’ (like ‘chav’ today) is a term flung at the very poor by the slightly less poor; what we are looking at in many witchcraft trials (this book suggests) is a society trying to resolve its ‘conflict between resentment and a sense of obligation’.
IT MAKES YOU FEEL HAPPY LIKE AN OLD-TIME MOVIE
The legal system in England was, happily, less willing to accept witch-hunts against defenceless old women than were courts on the continent: indeed one judge in 1712 is said to have responded to some of the more outlandish testimony against one ‘witch’ by remarking cheerfully that there was no law against flying, and promptly dismissing the case.
As mechanical science started to show its value, magic lost its cachet – though magical beliefs of some kind have lingered on well into modern times, as the vogue for horoscopes and new-age mumbo-jumbo demonstrates. It's easy to be snide about it, but what this book really shows is that such ideas do help people deal with things for which medicine or science have no helpful answers: they allow people to feel that they are taking matters into their own hands, they activate the placebo effect, they provide psychological release and reassurance.
The prose is clear and no-nonsense and chock-full of astonishing incidents and examples drawn from pamphlets, court records, diaries, letters and literature. Thomas is also anxious to take on board the latest (for 1971) findings in anthropology, and he looks, perhaps too hard, for parallels between Tudor England and traditional ‘African’ cultures: this analysis seems rather unsophisticated nowadays (although charges of ‘racism’, thrown around in a few other reviews here, are absurd). Perhaps too the sheer wealth of material leads him to drift slightly and repeat himself a couple of times. Still, it's hard to overstate the amount of pleasure on offer here, or the number of fascinating sidelights this book throws on the history of human society and ideas. As Hilary Mantel says, the book is so rewarding that it's not just about magic – it is a little slice of magic in itself.
(Dec 2013)
December 10, 2013
This is more a collection of topical papers than a continuous book. Some essays are stronger/more interesting/more convincing than others. A couple even contradict one another, leading me to suppose that the author wrote them some years apart. But it is well written and certainly worth picking up if you are interested in this period or subject.
The central question as stated by the author is Why did intelligent people believe in magic? In the category of "magic" Thomas includes "astrology, witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies," and other "systems of belief... now all rightly disdained by intelligent persons." To answer this question, Thomas employs anthropological methods, basing his premises on the conclusions of anthropologists on African religious and magical practices. His own sources are solely English, but he posits that his observations and conclusions are not particular to England and could be applied to the rest of the British Isles and the Continent with similar accuracy.
Thomas argues in response to his own question that the practices he examines "seemed to be discharging a role very close to that of the established Church and its rivals." He posits that contemporary religion and magical systems of belief can be juxtaposed in order to illuminate one another. He also attempts to explain the "mental climate" in terms of its relationship to the "material climate." Accordingly, he begins his book with a section entitled "Environment" in which he lays out the characteristics of a pre-Industrial society, gives a demographic overview of Tudor and Stuart England, and briefly describes its class distinctions, educational standards, and professional breakdown. He describes this England as "a dynamic and infinitely various society, where social and intellectual change had long been at work and where currents were moving in many different directions."
One of the central features of the beliefs with which Thomas is concerned was "a preoccupation with the explanation and relief of human misfortune." This stemmed naturally enough from the insecurity of life under the hazardous conditions of the medieval and early modern world. Life expectancy was low, food scarce, sickness frequent and often inexplicable. Thomas identifies this "helplessness in the face of disease" as an "essential element in the background of the beliefs." Given the primitive state of "orthodox" medicine it is not surprising that many people preferred to rely on folk remedies or magical cures, which likely had a similar success rate, as well as being less painful and easier to comprehend. Other threats, such as crop failure, fire and other natural disasters were also warded off by magical means. Thomas points out that magical thinking was not a universal response to these problems; many people turned to alcohol as an alternative or additional source of comfort.
The second section of the book, "The Magic of the Medieval Church" opens with the assertion that "Nearly every primitive religion is regarded by its adherents as a medium for obtaining supernatural power. This does not prevent it from functioning as a system of explanation, a source of moral injunctions, a symbol of social order, or a route to immortality; but it does mean that it offers the prospect of a supernatural means of control over man's earthly environment. The history of Christianity offers no exception to this rule." Thomas goes on to describe many of the superstitious practices relating to the cults of saints, such as touching cattle with relics to ward off the murrain. He offers this as an example of the manner in which the Church was perceived as a dispenser or "repository of supernatural power" in the form of grace, prayer, rituals, and especially the sacrament. This type of magical thinking, Thomas writes in "The Impact of the Reformation," was attacked from the first by the Protestants, especially Puritans, who sometimes went so far as to denounce formal prayers and other rituals as witchcraft. Many common people converted to this viewpoint, rejecting the idea that religious rituals could effect physical changes and emphasizing the important of faith rather than miracles. However, it proved impossible to stamp out superstitious religious practices completely, even among protestants. Thomas suggests that many adapted the idea of "Providence" so that it in many ways replaced magic, endowing natural phenomena and quotidian occurrences with prophetic or judgmental qualities, and linking moral virtue or status of personal salvation to the earthly fortunes of the individual.
In his analysis of witchcraft, Thomas does not speak generally of the magical or superstitious practices previously described in his book, such as astrology and other forms of divination. Rather, this term refers here to a specific type of magic which contemporary Englishpersons regarded as harmful, or in modern parlance, anti-social. Thomas defines this as "attribution of misfortune to occult human agency." Contemporaries imagined such agency to function in various ways and to cause various misfortunes, but witchcraft's key characteristic way malice. The evil intention and result distinguished witchcraft from other, potentially beneficial, forms of magic. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, this power was attributed to explicit demonic pacts, thus compounding the crime by the addition of apostasy and devil-worship. In the minds of most Latin-illiterate English people malicious activity remained the key conception of witchcraft; whereas on the Continent more emphasis was placed on the role of the Devil, English witchcraft trials focused on allegations of damage to property or persons, rarely raising the issue of devil-worship. Of the persons accused of witchcraft, a high percentage were found guilty of property damage, but very few of invoking spirits or worshiping devils. Judges were mostly likely to condemn when deaths had occurred, and in these cases the conviction was often for murder rather than witchcraft; as matter of fact, it was not until after 1600 that England even passed a law against compacting with the Devil. In brief, persecution of witches stemmed primarily from fear on the part of their neighbors, not from religious outrage. After 1736, witchcraft was prosecuted as fraud rather than magic; in the years preceding this legislation, skepticism had so increased that trials for witchcraft had ceased, although spontaneous lynching continued sporadically in rural areas. This is in accord with the general history of witchcraft in England, the demand for which generally proceeded from a popular level, not from pressure by religious or political leaders.
Thomas goes into considerable detail laying out the influences of Church teachings on demonology, religious despair, possession and the like, and the effect of these on ideas about and belief in witchcraft. He builds a convincing case for the relationship of these two bodies of beliefs, but unfortunately does not explain why this topic remains important in light of his earlier assertion that the role of the demonic in witchcraft was a later and less influential addition to concern with maleficium. Even after this religious exposition he adds again, "Witchcraft prosecution on England did not need the stimulus of religious zeal," but a paragraph later conversely concludes that "religious beliefs were a necessary pre-condition of the prosecutions."
This type of contradiction is typical of the book as a whole. Thomas weaves a rich tapestry and constructs many convincing and reasonable arguments. The weakness of the book is his failure to reconcile these into a totality. This difficulty may be explained by his inability to distinguish precisely in what way he sees magic and religion as distinct. After all, the term religion as described by Thomas does not inherently exclude magical belief systems. Thomas never really defines his usage of the term, but appears at times to use it simply as a synonym for "the Church" and at others even more loosely as a "belief system" in which case it seems hard to exclude magic from the category.
Thomas emphasizes at the outset "the essential unity of the period between the Reformation and the dawn of the Enlightenment." In light of his argument for the "self-confirming character" of belief systems, it seems reasonable that these systems would perpetuate themselves in the manner he suggests, and yet portions of Thomas' arguments are based on the theories of the growth or decline of ideas and beliefs. Despite his confident and authoritative tone, he often seems unable to make up his mind.
The central question as stated by the author is Why did intelligent people believe in magic? In the category of "magic" Thomas includes "astrology, witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies," and other "systems of belief... now all rightly disdained by intelligent persons." To answer this question, Thomas employs anthropological methods, basing his premises on the conclusions of anthropologists on African religious and magical practices. His own sources are solely English, but he posits that his observations and conclusions are not particular to England and could be applied to the rest of the British Isles and the Continent with similar accuracy.
Thomas argues in response to his own question that the practices he examines "seemed to be discharging a role very close to that of the established Church and its rivals." He posits that contemporary religion and magical systems of belief can be juxtaposed in order to illuminate one another. He also attempts to explain the "mental climate" in terms of its relationship to the "material climate." Accordingly, he begins his book with a section entitled "Environment" in which he lays out the characteristics of a pre-Industrial society, gives a demographic overview of Tudor and Stuart England, and briefly describes its class distinctions, educational standards, and professional breakdown. He describes this England as "a dynamic and infinitely various society, where social and intellectual change had long been at work and where currents were moving in many different directions."
One of the central features of the beliefs with which Thomas is concerned was "a preoccupation with the explanation and relief of human misfortune." This stemmed naturally enough from the insecurity of life under the hazardous conditions of the medieval and early modern world. Life expectancy was low, food scarce, sickness frequent and often inexplicable. Thomas identifies this "helplessness in the face of disease" as an "essential element in the background of the beliefs." Given the primitive state of "orthodox" medicine it is not surprising that many people preferred to rely on folk remedies or magical cures, which likely had a similar success rate, as well as being less painful and easier to comprehend. Other threats, such as crop failure, fire and other natural disasters were also warded off by magical means. Thomas points out that magical thinking was not a universal response to these problems; many people turned to alcohol as an alternative or additional source of comfort.
The second section of the book, "The Magic of the Medieval Church" opens with the assertion that "Nearly every primitive religion is regarded by its adherents as a medium for obtaining supernatural power. This does not prevent it from functioning as a system of explanation, a source of moral injunctions, a symbol of social order, or a route to immortality; but it does mean that it offers the prospect of a supernatural means of control over man's earthly environment. The history of Christianity offers no exception to this rule." Thomas goes on to describe many of the superstitious practices relating to the cults of saints, such as touching cattle with relics to ward off the murrain. He offers this as an example of the manner in which the Church was perceived as a dispenser or "repository of supernatural power" in the form of grace, prayer, rituals, and especially the sacrament. This type of magical thinking, Thomas writes in "The Impact of the Reformation," was attacked from the first by the Protestants, especially Puritans, who sometimes went so far as to denounce formal prayers and other rituals as witchcraft. Many common people converted to this viewpoint, rejecting the idea that religious rituals could effect physical changes and emphasizing the important of faith rather than miracles. However, it proved impossible to stamp out superstitious religious practices completely, even among protestants. Thomas suggests that many adapted the idea of "Providence" so that it in many ways replaced magic, endowing natural phenomena and quotidian occurrences with prophetic or judgmental qualities, and linking moral virtue or status of personal salvation to the earthly fortunes of the individual.
In his analysis of witchcraft, Thomas does not speak generally of the magical or superstitious practices previously described in his book, such as astrology and other forms of divination. Rather, this term refers here to a specific type of magic which contemporary Englishpersons regarded as harmful, or in modern parlance, anti-social. Thomas defines this as "attribution of misfortune to occult human agency." Contemporaries imagined such agency to function in various ways and to cause various misfortunes, but witchcraft's key characteristic way malice. The evil intention and result distinguished witchcraft from other, potentially beneficial, forms of magic. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, this power was attributed to explicit demonic pacts, thus compounding the crime by the addition of apostasy and devil-worship. In the minds of most Latin-illiterate English people malicious activity remained the key conception of witchcraft; whereas on the Continent more emphasis was placed on the role of the Devil, English witchcraft trials focused on allegations of damage to property or persons, rarely raising the issue of devil-worship. Of the persons accused of witchcraft, a high percentage were found guilty of property damage, but very few of invoking spirits or worshiping devils. Judges were mostly likely to condemn when deaths had occurred, and in these cases the conviction was often for murder rather than witchcraft; as matter of fact, it was not until after 1600 that England even passed a law against compacting with the Devil. In brief, persecution of witches stemmed primarily from fear on the part of their neighbors, not from religious outrage. After 1736, witchcraft was prosecuted as fraud rather than magic; in the years preceding this legislation, skepticism had so increased that trials for witchcraft had ceased, although spontaneous lynching continued sporadically in rural areas. This is in accord with the general history of witchcraft in England, the demand for which generally proceeded from a popular level, not from pressure by religious or political leaders.
Thomas goes into considerable detail laying out the influences of Church teachings on demonology, religious despair, possession and the like, and the effect of these on ideas about and belief in witchcraft. He builds a convincing case for the relationship of these two bodies of beliefs, but unfortunately does not explain why this topic remains important in light of his earlier assertion that the role of the demonic in witchcraft was a later and less influential addition to concern with maleficium. Even after this religious exposition he adds again, "Witchcraft prosecution on England did not need the stimulus of religious zeal," but a paragraph later conversely concludes that "religious beliefs were a necessary pre-condition of the prosecutions."
This type of contradiction is typical of the book as a whole. Thomas weaves a rich tapestry and constructs many convincing and reasonable arguments. The weakness of the book is his failure to reconcile these into a totality. This difficulty may be explained by his inability to distinguish precisely in what way he sees magic and religion as distinct. After all, the term religion as described by Thomas does not inherently exclude magical belief systems. Thomas never really defines his usage of the term, but appears at times to use it simply as a synonym for "the Church" and at others even more loosely as a "belief system" in which case it seems hard to exclude magic from the category.
Thomas emphasizes at the outset "the essential unity of the period between the Reformation and the dawn of the Enlightenment." In light of his argument for the "self-confirming character" of belief systems, it seems reasonable that these systems would perpetuate themselves in the manner he suggests, and yet portions of Thomas' arguments are based on the theories of the growth or decline of ideas and beliefs. Despite his confident and authoritative tone, he often seems unable to make up his mind.
February 7, 2017
Extraordinary. Rightly considered a masterpiece in its field. Packed full to bursting with primary sources that will fascinate and delight and with a thesis that seems pretty solid. Highly recommended.
" If magic is to be defined as the employment of ineffective techniques to allay anxiety when effective ones are not available, then we must recognise that no society will ever be free from it."
" If magic is to be defined as the employment of ineffective techniques to allay anxiety when effective ones are not available, then we must recognise that no society will ever be free from it."
Read
August 3, 2016Remembering Nancy Reagan consulting Indian astrologers, Cheri Blair's friend's enthusiasm for crystal therapy or the British Royal Families continued support for Homoeopathy it's hard to feel convinced that the seventeenth century saw a decisive shift in attitudes away from a belief in magic and towards a scientific world view.
That minor point aside the book remains an amazing account of something of the intellectual life of seventeenth century England. The description of the role of astrology in the battle for moral and public support during the civil war period was in particular very interesting.
That minor point aside the book remains an amazing account of something of the intellectual life of seventeenth century England. The description of the role of astrology in the battle for moral and public support during the civil war period was in particular very interesting.
May 3, 2011
Well, I'm glad I bought this year when I was in Montreal. I almost didn't, but then I did. I'm really glad, I did. In fact, Penguin publishing ROCKS! Never doubt them!
Thomas chronicles in easy to read prose the conflict and change among beliefs in magic and religion during the Tudor and Stuart periods in England.
While Thomas believes that the English Reformation had an impact on belief systems, he also looks at the rise of education, newspapers, and science as well. The book is split into sections moving from religion to magic to witches to ghosts and so on. While a basic knowledge of Tudor and Stuart Britian is helpful in reading this book, you do not have to be a sociology or history graduate student to understand the book. In fact, when I say basic, I really mean basic.
Thomas heavily footnotes his sources, and this is wonderful. Additionally, he disabuses or challenges the beliefs we have today about some of the beliefs current in Tudor or Stuart times. This is particularly helpful when considering facts about Shakespeare, witches, and people in general.
A good read for anyone interested in the Tudors or Stuarts.
Thomas chronicles in easy to read prose the conflict and change among beliefs in magic and religion during the Tudor and Stuart periods in England.
While Thomas believes that the English Reformation had an impact on belief systems, he also looks at the rise of education, newspapers, and science as well. The book is split into sections moving from religion to magic to witches to ghosts and so on. While a basic knowledge of Tudor and Stuart Britian is helpful in reading this book, you do not have to be a sociology or history graduate student to understand the book. In fact, when I say basic, I really mean basic.
Thomas heavily footnotes his sources, and this is wonderful. Additionally, he disabuses or challenges the beliefs we have today about some of the beliefs current in Tudor or Stuart times. This is particularly helpful when considering facts about Shakespeare, witches, and people in general.
A good read for anyone interested in the Tudors or Stuarts.
May 4, 2020
I first read ‘Religion and the Decline of Magic’ as part of a social history course in the mid 1970s and was totally impressed. It was one of the first multidisciplinary approaches I had come across. Over forty years later I was drawn to read it again and found it had lost none of its power and charm. It doesn’t read like an academic book at all, so many intriguing details of life in the period brought together with theoretical broad strokes, stories of magic inside and outside of religion, of witchcraft, and of beliefs around the period of the reformation. I am not sure how it holds up academically after so many years, but it still continues to entertain.
April 29, 2019
I finished the 800-page witch bible and it only took me a week
February 16, 2021
An interesting and quite hefty volume dealing with the various magical beliefs during the stated centuries in England - although the author does contrast the situation then with that in the middle ages - describing the tensions between them and the established church, and the change in the strength of those beliefs over time, especially with the effect of the Reformation and later Civil War. He makes a good case that in the middle ages, the church had its own "magic" in the form of rituals, Latin prayers, holy water, etc, which people could have confidence in when these were deployed against negative magic such as that of bad witches. In the later period, with all these swept away, the only remedy the church could offer was fasting and prayer, which led people to look more to alternative means of protection such as the services of cunning/wise men and women, and astrologers.
The book is divided into sections dealing with various topics, with the role of wise/cunning people aka white witches and natural healers etc, astrology and witchcraft forming the largest sections. Smaller ones cover areas such as the belief in old prophecies or fairy folk. A section towards the end discusses how the belief in the various magical systems faded out and were eventually replaced by rationalism and a faith in human progress rather than the previous harking back to the past and to precedent. This charts the development of, among other things, progress in medicine, the development of insurance, better means of fire fighting, and the development of statistical methods which helped to reduce uncertainty about the future which had previously been the province of the various magical systems.
The main weakness of the book is that the author decided against compiling a bibliography. There is an index, but all references to publications are in the form of footnotes, sometimes copious indeed and taking up half a page in places. This makes it pretty impossible to do follow up reading. The other oddity is that the conclusion which brings together the various threads including a discussion of why the belief in magic petered out well ahead of the technological advances that filled the voids left by its disappearance is pretty inconclusive. I suppose the author is honest enough to admit that he doesn't know, but it does make the conclusion fall a bit flat. On the whole would rate this at 4 stars.
The book is divided into sections dealing with various topics, with the role of wise/cunning people aka white witches and natural healers etc, astrology and witchcraft forming the largest sections. Smaller ones cover areas such as the belief in old prophecies or fairy folk. A section towards the end discusses how the belief in the various magical systems faded out and were eventually replaced by rationalism and a faith in human progress rather than the previous harking back to the past and to precedent. This charts the development of, among other things, progress in medicine, the development of insurance, better means of fire fighting, and the development of statistical methods which helped to reduce uncertainty about the future which had previously been the province of the various magical systems.
The main weakness of the book is that the author decided against compiling a bibliography. There is an index, but all references to publications are in the form of footnotes, sometimes copious indeed and taking up half a page in places. This makes it pretty impossible to do follow up reading. The other oddity is that the conclusion which brings together the various threads including a discussion of why the belief in magic petered out well ahead of the technological advances that filled the voids left by its disappearance is pretty inconclusive. I suppose the author is honest enough to admit that he doesn't know, but it does make the conclusion fall a bit flat. On the whole would rate this at 4 stars.
April 19, 2009
Thomas sets the stage by describing economic and social conditions. During these two centuries, massive poverty and appalling health were the norm. Most children died before age six and the average life-span was only twentyseven so health was a concern. Every religion uses miracles or magic — perhaps a redundancy — to help define its monopoly on the truth. By the time of the Reformation, even though the church did not, as an institution, claim the power to work miracles, it was saddled with a tradition of saints who could, and appeal to them to ward off ill-health was commonplace. St. Wilgerfort (St. Uncumber) " eliminate husbands of those discontented wives who chose to offer her a peck of oats." The mere representation of St. Christopher, " said to offer a day' preservation from illness or death to all those who looked upon it." Saints were, after all, specialists, rather than general practitioners.
The association of magical powers with church ritual was not ostentatiously promoted by medieval church leaders; in fact, it' often through their writings refuting such claims that we know about them. But the imputation of magical powers was a logical result of church actions. In their intense desire to convert the heathens, the church incorporated many pagan rituals into religious practice. Ancient worship of natural phenomena was modified: hence, New Year' Day became the Feast of Circumcision, the Yule log became part of Christmas tradition and May Day was turned into Saints' Days, for example.
Theologians made a distinction between religion and superstition, but superstition was loosely defined as any practice having magical qualities that were not already designated as religious ritual. The church had the power to define what constituted legitimate and what it denied became heretical. The Protestant Reformation had a significant effect on how the populace regarded miracles and magic. By elevating the individual' faith in God, and denigrating ritual, a new concept of religion was created. The ignorant peasant had had no need for knowledge of the Bible or scripture; the rituals and rites of the church had become the "" of the supernatural and evidence for his/her belief. " was a ritual set of living, not a set of dogmas." The Protestant theologian insisted on a more personal faith, so it became necessary to invent a theology that explained the threat of plague, natural disasters, and the fear of evil spirits. One could no longer call on the " solutions offered by the medieval church." The solution was predestination. Everything that happened was God's will. Evil became a test.
Thus every Christian had the consolation of knowing that life was not a series of random events; there was purpose in everything. This also required scapegoats. There had to be a reason for calamitous events, and the moral degradation of your neighbor must be the cause behind the lack of rain for the past several months. Or it' because of the Jews in town. Get rid of the neighbor and the Jews and all will be well. Or, the calamity could be seen as a test of one' own faith. Righteous personal behavior was out of fear that God would avenge wickedness. Many of Pat Robertson' homilies could have been written in the middle ages. A whole genre of diarist writing arose out of the need for Puritans to document the hand of Providence. His interference could be seen in happy coincidences, accidents to the wicked, and deliverance from personal illness.
These judgments could be used as political weapons also. One party issued a whole list of calamities on land and sea that must surely be a sign from God that the Royalists were evil and should be overthrown (shades of Robertson). Of course, Catholics blamed calamities on the Reformation. Handy. But is was ultimately " observer' point of view which determined whether, and by whom, an event was held as a judgment or deliverance. . . the belief in providence degenerated into a crude justification of any successful policy. . . . The doctrine of providences was a conscientious attempt to impose order on the apparent randomness of human fortunes by proving that, in the long run, virtue was rewarded and vice did not go unpunished."
The Reformation did not put an end to prophecy and the association of miracle working to religious supremacy. The period following Elizabeth and during the Civil War reflected growing unease with social inequities. Women, normally excluded from political debate and discussion, used prophecy and dream interpretation to express political dissatisfaction. A virtual army of pseudo-messiahs appeared, claiming all sorts of personal relationships with God. Mostly they were the targets of humor unless their messages conveyed secular political implications. Punishment for heresy (the last burning for heresy occurred in 1642) could be a useful tool to eliminate political opposition. Common prayer served as a useful mechanism to bring people together for the purpose of harnessing group perceptions and action against a common social ill or malady. It became an act of solidarity.
The danger for the ruling elite comes only if the belief is that God is on the opposition=s side and it foments radical social dynamism. Religious fervor could be tolerated only as long as the voice of the people could never be confused or associated with the voice of God. Today=s efforts by some on the Religious Right to confound religion with politics plays right into the hands of political leaders because then religion can be manipulated to political ends. That is what often happened in Europe.
The Anglican Church, by this time, was in a seemingly impregnable position. It was intricately entwined with the ruling political structure, it was a crime not to attend church, one was born into it and the church service itself helped to maintain the social divisions: the rich sat in front, poor in the rear and even the quality of communion wine varied according to social standing. In 1543, one parson even preached there were three heavens, one for each level of prosperity -- Jerry Falwell would have approved -- and the Church was immensely wealthy, actively participating in making political decisions. From the book: " difference between churchmen and magicians lay less in the effect they claimed to achieve than in their social position and in the authority on which their respective claims rested."
The association of magical powers with church ritual was not ostentatiously promoted by medieval church leaders; in fact, it' often through their writings refuting such claims that we know about them. But the imputation of magical powers was a logical result of church actions. In their intense desire to convert the heathens, the church incorporated many pagan rituals into religious practice. Ancient worship of natural phenomena was modified: hence, New Year' Day became the Feast of Circumcision, the Yule log became part of Christmas tradition and May Day was turned into Saints' Days, for example.
Theologians made a distinction between religion and superstition, but superstition was loosely defined as any practice having magical qualities that were not already designated as religious ritual. The church had the power to define what constituted legitimate and what it denied became heretical. The Protestant Reformation had a significant effect on how the populace regarded miracles and magic. By elevating the individual' faith in God, and denigrating ritual, a new concept of religion was created. The ignorant peasant had had no need for knowledge of the Bible or scripture; the rituals and rites of the church had become the "" of the supernatural and evidence for his/her belief. " was a ritual set of living, not a set of dogmas." The Protestant theologian insisted on a more personal faith, so it became necessary to invent a theology that explained the threat of plague, natural disasters, and the fear of evil spirits. One could no longer call on the " solutions offered by the medieval church." The solution was predestination. Everything that happened was God's will. Evil became a test.
Thus every Christian had the consolation of knowing that life was not a series of random events; there was purpose in everything. This also required scapegoats. There had to be a reason for calamitous events, and the moral degradation of your neighbor must be the cause behind the lack of rain for the past several months. Or it' because of the Jews in town. Get rid of the neighbor and the Jews and all will be well. Or, the calamity could be seen as a test of one' own faith. Righteous personal behavior was out of fear that God would avenge wickedness. Many of Pat Robertson' homilies could have been written in the middle ages. A whole genre of diarist writing arose out of the need for Puritans to document the hand of Providence. His interference could be seen in happy coincidences, accidents to the wicked, and deliverance from personal illness.
These judgments could be used as political weapons also. One party issued a whole list of calamities on land and sea that must surely be a sign from God that the Royalists were evil and should be overthrown (shades of Robertson). Of course, Catholics blamed calamities on the Reformation. Handy. But is was ultimately " observer' point of view which determined whether, and by whom, an event was held as a judgment or deliverance. . . the belief in providence degenerated into a crude justification of any successful policy. . . . The doctrine of providences was a conscientious attempt to impose order on the apparent randomness of human fortunes by proving that, in the long run, virtue was rewarded and vice did not go unpunished."
The Reformation did not put an end to prophecy and the association of miracle working to religious supremacy. The period following Elizabeth and during the Civil War reflected growing unease with social inequities. Women, normally excluded from political debate and discussion, used prophecy and dream interpretation to express political dissatisfaction. A virtual army of pseudo-messiahs appeared, claiming all sorts of personal relationships with God. Mostly they were the targets of humor unless their messages conveyed secular political implications. Punishment for heresy (the last burning for heresy occurred in 1642) could be a useful tool to eliminate political opposition. Common prayer served as a useful mechanism to bring people together for the purpose of harnessing group perceptions and action against a common social ill or malady. It became an act of solidarity.
The danger for the ruling elite comes only if the belief is that God is on the opposition=s side and it foments radical social dynamism. Religious fervor could be tolerated only as long as the voice of the people could never be confused or associated with the voice of God. Today=s efforts by some on the Religious Right to confound religion with politics plays right into the hands of political leaders because then religion can be manipulated to political ends. That is what often happened in Europe.
The Anglican Church, by this time, was in a seemingly impregnable position. It was intricately entwined with the ruling political structure, it was a crime not to attend church, one was born into it and the church service itself helped to maintain the social divisions: the rich sat in front, poor in the rear and even the quality of communion wine varied according to social standing. In 1543, one parson even preached there were three heavens, one for each level of prosperity -- Jerry Falwell would have approved -- and the Church was immensely wealthy, actively participating in making political decisions. From the book: " difference between churchmen and magicians lay less in the effect they claimed to achieve than in their social position and in the authority on which their respective claims rested."
September 28, 2009
Probably every historian of the Reformation (Protestant, Counter-, or Catholic) knows the contents of this book, even if they've never read it. And it says pretty much what everyone thinks it says, in 800 long and sometimes dull, often sexist, usually racist, and almost always paternalist and condescending language. Nonetheless, it is a very important and groundbreaking work on the culture of magic (et al.) in the premodern period, accounting for its widespread appeal, as well as its social and even political function. Does not actually discuss the decline of magic until the last fifty pages, which Thomas attributes partially to the rise of rationalism, partially to Malinowski's theory of the development of new technologies superseding the uses of magic and increasing human control over the environment, and partially to who the fuck knows, because his sources failed him.
In conclusion, still better than Dan Brown.
In conclusion, still better than Dan Brown.
August 7, 2024
This is one hefty tome, a thorough, dryly academic treatment of religion and superstition (i.e. not authorized by the church) in Tudor and Stuart England. Quite cautious and thoughtful in his judgments, author Thomas avoids sensationalism and virtually all opportunities for sarcasm or humor. This is serious, foundational work.
What struck me the most was England's transition from Catholicism to a variety of Protestantisms during this period and how different they were in their relationships to popular ('superstitious') beliefs, the distinctions being hard to draw as regards the former, more accomodating, faith, radical in many instances of the latter.
I had hoped for much more material on John Dee and other mages with real political influence, but this topic is not addressed. Margaret Murray's theories are, but only dismissively.
What struck me the most was England's transition from Catholicism to a variety of Protestantisms during this period and how different they were in their relationships to popular ('superstitious') beliefs, the distinctions being hard to draw as regards the former, more accomodating, faith, radical in many instances of the latter.
I had hoped for much more material on John Dee and other mages with real political influence, but this topic is not addressed. Margaret Murray's theories are, but only dismissively.
April 11, 2011
One of the great works of social and religious history of the 20th-c. Thomas looks at religion in England--- both "official" and popular religion ---and how over the course of the 1500s and 1600s "magic" was slowly purged from the body of ritual and popular observances. The medieval English Church was a great accreted mass of beliefs and rituals and superstitions where Oxford theology existed alongside wonder-working local relics and saints,and where the line between prayer and spell-casting was blurry at best. Thomas charts the ways in which the medieval world, one which was filled with supernatural and religious forces and explanations, was gradually reduced (by the Reformation, by politics, by early science) to an early modern world where the beginnings of purely natural explanation of the world could be accepted and where religion was no longer seen by the populace as another, albeit more powerful, kind of magic. Thomas' theme may be the disenchantemnt of the English world--- the growth of a rationalist view of the world...but also the growth of a world where the English Church became less and less in touch with popular fears and hopes, where Anglican ritualism and academic theology separated more and more from popular belief.
March 9, 2025
Religion and the Decline of Magic is a remarkable book and a landmark in the study of history.
Whilst other historians have been concerned about what people did. Thomas’s study is about how 16th and 17th Century people thought, and the result is an incredible insight into a period of remarkable change which spanned the Reformation, regicide and the first stirrings of the Enlightenment.
Yet this is, without question, a work of genius it makes for quite a difficult read. It runs to 800 pages making it not so much exhaustive as exhausting. Yet who would not want to know more about magical healing, “cunning men”, astrology and witchcraft and why faith in magic was so deep in the past and how and why it faded as we entered the modern age?
This is a fascinating, but demanding and very time-consuming read. The breadth of research and Thomas’s scholarship is off the scale. I’ve long been fascinated by this period of history and after reading this book feel I will never look at it in the same way again.
Whilst other historians have been concerned about what people did. Thomas’s study is about how 16th and 17th Century people thought, and the result is an incredible insight into a period of remarkable change which spanned the Reformation, regicide and the first stirrings of the Enlightenment.
Yet this is, without question, a work of genius it makes for quite a difficult read. It runs to 800 pages making it not so much exhaustive as exhausting. Yet who would not want to know more about magical healing, “cunning men”, astrology and witchcraft and why faith in magic was so deep in the past and how and why it faded as we entered the modern age?
This is a fascinating, but demanding and very time-consuming read. The breadth of research and Thomas’s scholarship is off the scale. I’ve long been fascinated by this period of history and after reading this book feel I will never look at it in the same way again.
January 4, 2020
What was magic actually like in England? There are a lot of things we "know," but are they true? Why did people turn to magic? And, almost more importantly, why did they stop?
This is excellent; a long book that I wish were longer!
This is excellent; a long book that I wish were longer!
September 27, 2015
Keith Thomas’s justly acclaimed book tells of the decline of medieval styles of religion and magic and of the rise of secular thought. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, he shows a shift in emphasis between two different ways of dealing with life’s problems. In the earlier period, there was a heavy emphasis upon the use of magic and what Thomas calls the “magical” aspects of religious ritual. To cure illness, to win a lover, to foretell the future, individuals characteristically employed charms, amulets, rituals and the like. Conversely, it was often assumed that misfortune came from the animosity of sorcerers or witches who used similar means to bring afflictions. The poor in particular might use sorcery or witchcraft when the well-heeled neglected their obligation to give them alms or other assistance. And the relatively well-to-do might attribute their misfortunes to an impoverished crone whom, they might suspect, they had inadvertently failed to assist.
By the later period, however, the use and belief in such ritual means had much diminished in favour of rational, mechanical, and more strictly practical means, informed – at least in principle - by careful observation, experimentation and by “trial and error”. Belief in the danger of witchcraft and sorcery had similarly diminished. This shift was never total, however, but a matter of emphasis. In the sixteenth and earlier centuries, plenty of rationality had co-existed with magic and religious ritual. Conversely, ritual practices have persisted, despite the pre-eminence of science and rational technology.
Thomas takes to task the great anthropologist, Brontislaw Malinowski. Malinowski had argued that magical practices were used when rational practices promised only limited success. Thus, the Trobriand Islanders, whom he studied, used entirely rational, practical methods in the horticulture and fishing on which their lives depended. But such rational practices did not always produce the hoped-for results. So, argued Malinowski, the Trobrianders employed magic to supplement their rationality and to assuage their fear of failure. Thomas, in contrast, notes that the shift in England away from magical towards rational practices occurred before the arrival of superior technology, and not after. If formerly, God and magic had filled the gaps in rationality, latterly, religion and magic diminished, leaving these same gaps exposed.
In his discussion of medieval and immediately post-medieval religion, I found his use of the term “magic” confusing. In this period, much reliance was placed upon prayers, relics, etc., to gain access to the assistance of God and the saints to stave off misfortunes of different kinds. Many Protestants came to dismiss these aids – along with more mainstream activities, among them the mass – as “magical” and Thomas broadly accepts their usage. I see no reason, however, to follow their lead. The distinction seems to rest upon the idea that such objects and practices tried to coerce supernatural entities to intervene on one’s behalf, whereas a properly religious practices merely asked for help. This is, I fear, a fairly tenuous distinction. Moreover, if approaches to God and other supernatural beings to solve one’s problems cannot be described as “religion”, then nothing can. More properly, one should say that, in the early period, God – and also the saints and even the fairies – were supposed to intervene frequently in the trivia of daily life, often in response to human supplications. Later, God, the saints and the fairies had withdrawn and were held to intervene only occasionally, if at all.
The notion that miracles existed only in the past - in Biblical times - nevertheless continued to be used only selectively. Some divine interventions were therefore regarded as genuine and others as more suspect. The belief that human actions in the form of rituals could change a person's destiny in matters large or small, did, of course, chime in well with post-Lutheran Protestantism. Anglican orthodoxy therefore came to reduce the role of divine intervention. Perhaps surprisingly, the smaller sects, particularly in the Interregnum, remained keener on it.
Some people feared that the doctrine that God would never intervene in human affairs might lead to a disappearance of belief in God completely. And indeed, it seems likely that the notion that God had set the world going, and then disappeared, led to a Deism that tipped over finally into atheism. Indeed, a "Clockmaker God" who had withdrawn into inactivity is pretty useless as a God.
A similar process (not, however, discussed here) can be seen in the New Light found in Quakerism and in the Scottish and Ulster Presbyterianism of the later seventeenth century, but which persisted into the nineteenth century. Here God revealed himself centrally in the indwelling “Light” of Conscience and Reason found in the human heart. It was a view that gave its name to the “Enlightenment”. Unfortunately for religion, it became possible to see Reason and Conscience as entirely human faculties, and forget they were supposed to be divine ones.
The strength of this book is that it is packed with endlessly detailed examples. These make it impossible for the reader to think that witchcraft, magic, day to day religious rituals and the rest, were somehow on the edge of English life, or practiced only by lunatics or fools. Rather, these beliefs and practices plainly permeated every corner of life, even as opposition to them grew. Thomas makes frequent references to modern anthropologists' studies in Africa, where magical and religious practices are still remarkably similar to those of seventeenth century England. The continual iteration of examples, however, does become tedious after a while, and sometimes one does wonder where the argument is going. All the same, the book is a massive tour de force.
By the later period, however, the use and belief in such ritual means had much diminished in favour of rational, mechanical, and more strictly practical means, informed – at least in principle - by careful observation, experimentation and by “trial and error”. Belief in the danger of witchcraft and sorcery had similarly diminished. This shift was never total, however, but a matter of emphasis. In the sixteenth and earlier centuries, plenty of rationality had co-existed with magic and religious ritual. Conversely, ritual practices have persisted, despite the pre-eminence of science and rational technology.
Thomas takes to task the great anthropologist, Brontislaw Malinowski. Malinowski had argued that magical practices were used when rational practices promised only limited success. Thus, the Trobriand Islanders, whom he studied, used entirely rational, practical methods in the horticulture and fishing on which their lives depended. But such rational practices did not always produce the hoped-for results. So, argued Malinowski, the Trobrianders employed magic to supplement their rationality and to assuage their fear of failure. Thomas, in contrast, notes that the shift in England away from magical towards rational practices occurred before the arrival of superior technology, and not after. If formerly, God and magic had filled the gaps in rationality, latterly, religion and magic diminished, leaving these same gaps exposed.
In his discussion of medieval and immediately post-medieval religion, I found his use of the term “magic” confusing. In this period, much reliance was placed upon prayers, relics, etc., to gain access to the assistance of God and the saints to stave off misfortunes of different kinds. Many Protestants came to dismiss these aids – along with more mainstream activities, among them the mass – as “magical” and Thomas broadly accepts their usage. I see no reason, however, to follow their lead. The distinction seems to rest upon the idea that such objects and practices tried to coerce supernatural entities to intervene on one’s behalf, whereas a properly religious practices merely asked for help. This is, I fear, a fairly tenuous distinction. Moreover, if approaches to God and other supernatural beings to solve one’s problems cannot be described as “religion”, then nothing can. More properly, one should say that, in the early period, God – and also the saints and even the fairies – were supposed to intervene frequently in the trivia of daily life, often in response to human supplications. Later, God, the saints and the fairies had withdrawn and were held to intervene only occasionally, if at all.
The notion that miracles existed only in the past - in Biblical times - nevertheless continued to be used only selectively. Some divine interventions were therefore regarded as genuine and others as more suspect. The belief that human actions in the form of rituals could change a person's destiny in matters large or small, did, of course, chime in well with post-Lutheran Protestantism. Anglican orthodoxy therefore came to reduce the role of divine intervention. Perhaps surprisingly, the smaller sects, particularly in the Interregnum, remained keener on it.
Some people feared that the doctrine that God would never intervene in human affairs might lead to a disappearance of belief in God completely. And indeed, it seems likely that the notion that God had set the world going, and then disappeared, led to a Deism that tipped over finally into atheism. Indeed, a "Clockmaker God" who had withdrawn into inactivity is pretty useless as a God.
A similar process (not, however, discussed here) can be seen in the New Light found in Quakerism and in the Scottish and Ulster Presbyterianism of the later seventeenth century, but which persisted into the nineteenth century. Here God revealed himself centrally in the indwelling “Light” of Conscience and Reason found in the human heart. It was a view that gave its name to the “Enlightenment”. Unfortunately for religion, it became possible to see Reason and Conscience as entirely human faculties, and forget they were supposed to be divine ones.
The strength of this book is that it is packed with endlessly detailed examples. These make it impossible for the reader to think that witchcraft, magic, day to day religious rituals and the rest, were somehow on the edge of English life, or practiced only by lunatics or fools. Rather, these beliefs and practices plainly permeated every corner of life, even as opposition to them grew. Thomas makes frequent references to modern anthropologists' studies in Africa, where magical and religious practices are still remarkably similar to those of seventeenth century England. The continual iteration of examples, however, does become tedious after a while, and sometimes one does wonder where the argument is going. All the same, the book is a massive tour de force.
Read
May 1, 20201000 odd pages detailing the decline in magical belief in 17th century England at the expense of the comparatively rational Protestant faith. Exhaustive in its collection of magical beliefs and clear-headed in its thinking, if occasionally repetitive. Still, if you're looking for a doorstop of social history to wade through, you could do a lot worse.
August 29, 2021
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this, despite the length of time it took me to get through - it's a long book ok! Hugely interesting discourse on the way magic as a concept came to be in society and some poignant links to the modern day and how our beliefs today are not so different from our early modern predecessors. Read this mostly for dissertation prep but enjoyed it as a reading process far more than I expected to. Slightly outdated in places but still great!
May 1, 2023
總算看完啦
又消滅一本閱讀器藏書啦
簡單的心得是：
現代人不會動不動就認為無解的事情
背後有超自然力量
如此和古人就有本質上的區別
全書用那麼多字，其實就是想討論是什麼原因
讓超自然力量說退場的~
本書的內容其實非常之硬派
需要強大的社會心理學背景才看得懂
一開始看還覺得各種英格蘭古代民間信仰很有趣
這些人號稱一神教徒，想法其實跟東方多神教也沒啥差異
到了中後段就淹沒在無數的事例裡抓不到作者的核心論述
接下來就覺得無聊，囫圇吞棗看完全書了
又是一本不自量力亂讀的書Orz
又消滅一本閱讀器藏書啦
簡單的心得是：
現代人不會動不動就認為無解的事情
背後有超自然力量
如此和古人就有本質上的區別
全書用那麼多字，其實就是想討論是什麼原因
讓超自然力量說退場的~
本書的內容其實非常之硬派
需要強大的社會心理學背景才看得懂
一開始看還覺得各種英格蘭古代民間信仰很有趣
這些人號稱一神教徒，想法其實跟東方多神教也沒啥差異
到了中後段就淹沒在無數的事例裡抓不到作者的核心論述
接下來就覺得無聊，囫圇吞棗看完全書了
又是一本不自量力亂讀的書Orz
Want to read
December 11, 2018الكتاب من ترجمة وتعليق د. قاسم عبده قاسم..
#يُنتبه إليه.
#يُنتبه إليه.
Want to read
April 16, 2024This book is mentioned in this article by Alan Jacobs in connection to Charles Taylor's A Secular Age.
November 9, 2020
I hope to create a class to teach this subject and use this book as a text.
November 18, 2017
I finally finished this monster of a book, 800 pages packed full with detailed information on the lives of people of England from the 16th and 17th century and their belief systems. It is an incredibly thorough book that I expressly recommend to all those interested in anthropology/sociology and of course the history of religion and magic.
While some chapters were more tedious than others (Thomas is heavy on exemples) as a whole it is brilliant and I will take good care of my copy as I intend to go back to it from time to time for historical reference.
The only negative thing I have to say, is that the author sporadically speaks in a paternalist tone and tends to defend his own theories rather than to stick to the facts. I think it is still worth overlooking those details and the great and accessible writing should help you do so.
While some chapters were more tedious than others (Thomas is heavy on exemples) as a whole it is brilliant and I will take good care of my copy as I intend to go back to it from time to time for historical reference.
The only negative thing I have to say, is that the author sporadically speaks in a paternalist tone and tends to defend his own theories rather than to stick to the facts. I think it is still worth overlooking those details and the great and accessible writing should help you do so.
May 13, 2024
An entirely thorough catalogue, probably more useful from a research perspective than from an entertainment perspective.
August 11, 2014
This is one of those magisterial works of social history that probably elicits back cover gushings like "Weaves a spell over the reader" or "A bewitching tour de force". These are the sorts of blurbs written by people too affected and stupid to actually read the book and who can't pun for shit.
I'll keep it simple and avoid crass pedagogical simile-izing. If you're looking for a history of magic and you make it a habit to sit around in a floral-print smock rubbing crystals against your genitals, then this is probably not the book for you. If you're looking for a history of magic as a social phenomenon, the possible reasons for its rise and fall, and, most importantly, its relationship with post-Reformation Anglican/dissident English religion, than this is the shiffizzle for thee! Yes, there's some discussion of actual traditions and rituals, but this is more a serious take on the role magic and superstition played in English society, mostly lower class society, between the Middle and Modern Ages. Witches, wizards, and cunning men and women plied their trade fulfilling gaping societal needs: why did a storm destroy my house? Will my eighth newborn die? What is up with the extra cow eye? Why does disease ravage my family? Curse Goody Newfane for her blasted potato blight!
It might seem weighty at 800+ pages, and there's some weak sections (the omen and prophecy bits don't seem so relevant to the period as they might've in earlier times), but it's well worth the slog.
I'll keep it simple and avoid crass pedagogical simile-izing. If you're looking for a history of magic and you make it a habit to sit around in a floral-print smock rubbing crystals against your genitals, then this is probably not the book for you. If you're looking for a history of magic as a social phenomenon, the possible reasons for its rise and fall, and, most importantly, its relationship with post-Reformation Anglican/dissident English religion, than this is the shiffizzle for thee! Yes, there's some discussion of actual traditions and rituals, but this is more a serious take on the role magic and superstition played in English society, mostly lower class society, between the Middle and Modern Ages. Witches, wizards, and cunning men and women plied their trade fulfilling gaping societal needs: why did a storm destroy my house? Will my eighth newborn die? What is up with the extra cow eye? Why does disease ravage my family? Curse Goody Newfane for her blasted potato blight!
It might seem weighty at 800+ pages, and there's some weak sections (the omen and prophecy bits don't seem so relevant to the period as they might've in earlier times), but it's well worth the slog.
July 29, 2019
Review title: When magic, science, religion and culture collided
In 1971 Keith Thomas first published this lasting pioneering study that is still in print via the Penguin edition I purchased at Blackwell's in Oxford. He mined primary legal and ecclesiastical sources--court transcripts and verdicts, doctrinal studies and church edicts--as well as popular pamphlets and the rare surviving personal papers and letters on the role of religion and magic in both explaining and controlling the environments in which most Englishmen and women lived.
He starts by setting the context of that environment--disease was common, crops and financial survival uncertain, societal safeguards for the poor few, and geographic and class boundaries close and seldom crossed, natural disasters like fire and flood seemingly unpreventable, unpredictable, and capricious. The 16h and 17th centuries of his scope encompassed the bubonic plague, the great London fire (and many disastrous fires on smaller scales in other cities), short and often brutal lifespans fraught with pain and danger from childbirth. The Catholic church before the Reformation offered incantations in the form of prayer, talismans in the form of holy relics of the saints, and magic in the form of transubstantiation during Communion and exorcism at infant baptisms (to remove the demon of original sin from the unbaptized newborn). From there, despite legal restrictions and church sanctions, it was a small step in the mind and life of the average layman to the use of
--"cunning men" to use white magic for healing, when doctor's applied approved medical cures that were seemingly no more likely to cure and often did more harm than good, or recovery of lost or stolen property when effective police forces were non-existent for the poor.
--astrologers to forecast the weather and planting and harvesting times to ensure successful crops, when astrology was the only system claiming scientific rigor that offered seemingly rational forecasts.
--ancient prophecies to predict political outcomes, when the ancient was valued more than the current events which were only beginning to be referred to as "news", and the idea of progress was new.
--witches to seek retribution and revenge, when the poor had little recourse to legal justice.
Thomas cautions several times that his pioneering study of the primary sources has just scratched the surface so that statistical so significance can't be assigned to the data he quotes and references in the many bottom-of-the-page footnotes. He doesn't include a bibliography, other than brief notes describing essential sources he believes will be accessible to readers (this is 1971 before the internet, remember), and the arcane primary sources he footnotes are unlikely to be available to most readers, so this is not a good source for further research.
As his title gives away, he concludes that reliance on magic declined during the period, based on the trends in the available primary sources, even if his conclusions can only be anecdotal based on the limited range of data he has started to mine. He bases his conclusion on the decline of legal cases which prove or even accept magical explanations, and the decline of prosecutions of witches through the period under the various witchcraft laws in force during the period. Given the circumstantial evidence and lack of statistical basis for the spread, timing, and prosecution of magic in legal and church doctrines, Thomas does not assign cause and effect in his conclusion, other than to say, as in this quote, that magic seemed to begin its decline in the public mind and common usage before religion and science had replaced it with effect alternative means to offer explanatory or operative controlling measures.
If anything, after the Reformation, Protestant doctrines denying transubstantiation and downplaying the satanic sources of the power of witchcraft seemed to reduce the explanatory and operational resources available to the average church-going citizen. Science discredited alchemy and astrology without offering more reasonable explanations of natural versus supernatural events. Medicine continued to offer cures which seemed to the laymen little better than old wives' tales and little more effective than the local cunning man or woman still offered.
On the other hand, advances in technology, transportation, and government offered expanded geographical movement (reducing reliance on magic that required knowledge of village-based events), better methods to provide poor relief, and more scientific approaches to crop and livestock management to ensure better yields and harvests. The new of idea of progress downplayed dependence on ancestral knowledge and predictions. These are a few of the starting points for an explanatory theory for the decline of magic offered by Thomas.
This is 800 pages of history that is sometimes arcane, but reads well given the clear organization Thomas gives to the topic as he progresses from the cultural background of the era through the dominance of religion and its doctrinal and practical approach to magic and miracles, and then proceeds through the forms of magic: white magic (for healing and recovery of lost or stolen goods), astrology, prophecy, and witchcraft. Readers may want to read this in conjunction with Marylynne Robinson's essays rescuing Puritan political and doctrinal reputations from charges of being punitively retributive and witch-obsessed, as Thomas provides primary evidence which backs up Roginson's essays. It is a book readers interested in the time period and the topic will find well worth the effort.
In 1971 Keith Thomas first published this lasting pioneering study that is still in print via the Penguin edition I purchased at Blackwell's in Oxford. He mined primary legal and ecclesiastical sources--court transcripts and verdicts, doctrinal studies and church edicts--as well as popular pamphlets and the rare surviving personal papers and letters on the role of religion and magic in both explaining and controlling the environments in which most Englishmen and women lived.
He starts by setting the context of that environment--disease was common, crops and financial survival uncertain, societal safeguards for the poor few, and geographic and class boundaries close and seldom crossed, natural disasters like fire and flood seemingly unpreventable, unpredictable, and capricious. The 16h and 17th centuries of his scope encompassed the bubonic plague, the great London fire (and many disastrous fires on smaller scales in other cities), short and often brutal lifespans fraught with pain and danger from childbirth. The Catholic church before the Reformation offered incantations in the form of prayer, talismans in the form of holy relics of the saints, and magic in the form of transubstantiation during Communion and exorcism at infant baptisms (to remove the demon of original sin from the unbaptized newborn). From there, despite legal restrictions and church sanctions, it was a small step in the mind and life of the average layman to the use of
--"cunning men" to use white magic for healing, when doctor's applied approved medical cures that were seemingly no more likely to cure and often did more harm than good, or recovery of lost or stolen property when effective police forces were non-existent for the poor.
--astrologers to forecast the weather and planting and harvesting times to ensure successful crops, when astrology was the only system claiming scientific rigor that offered seemingly rational forecasts.
--ancient prophecies to predict political outcomes, when the ancient was valued more than the current events which were only beginning to be referred to as "news", and the idea of progress was new.
--witches to seek retribution and revenge, when the poor had little recourse to legal justice.
Thomas cautions several times that his pioneering study of the primary sources has just scratched the surface so that statistical so significance can't be assigned to the data he quotes and references in the many bottom-of-the-page footnotes. He doesn't include a bibliography, other than brief notes describing essential sources he believes will be accessible to readers (this is 1971 before the internet, remember), and the arcane primary sources he footnotes are unlikely to be available to most readers, so this is not a good source for further research.
As his title gives away, he concludes that reliance on magic declined during the period, based on the trends in the available primary sources, even if his conclusions can only be anecdotal based on the limited range of data he has started to mine. He bases his conclusion on the decline of legal cases which prove or even accept magical explanations, and the decline of prosecutions of witches through the period under the various witchcraft laws in force during the period. Given the circumstantial evidence and lack of statistical basis for the spread, timing, and prosecution of magic in legal and church doctrines, Thomas does not assign cause and effect in his conclusion, other than to say, as in this quote, that magic seemed to begin its decline in the public mind and common usage before religion and science had replaced it with effect alternative means to offer explanatory or operative controlling measures.
In the eighteenth century, for example, physicians finally ceased to regard epilepsy as supernatural, although they had not yet learned to understand it in any other way. But they now grasped that the problem was a technical one, open to human investigation, whereas a hundred years earlier, as a contemporary remarked, people were 'apt to make everything a supernatural work which they do not understand'. The change was less a matter of positive technical progress than of an expectation of greater progress in the future. Men became more prepared to combine impotence in the face of current misfortune with the faith that a technical solution would one day be found, much in the spirit in which we regard cancer today. (p 790)
If anything, after the Reformation, Protestant doctrines denying transubstantiation and downplaying the satanic sources of the power of witchcraft seemed to reduce the explanatory and operational resources available to the average church-going citizen. Science discredited alchemy and astrology without offering more reasonable explanations of natural versus supernatural events. Medicine continued to offer cures which seemed to the laymen little better than old wives' tales and little more effective than the local cunning man or woman still offered.
On the other hand, advances in technology, transportation, and government offered expanded geographical movement (reducing reliance on magic that required knowledge of village-based events), better methods to provide poor relief, and more scientific approaches to crop and livestock management to ensure better yields and harvests. The new of idea of progress downplayed dependence on ancestral knowledge and predictions. These are a few of the starting points for an explanatory theory for the decline of magic offered by Thomas.
This is 800 pages of history that is sometimes arcane, but reads well given the clear organization Thomas gives to the topic as he progresses from the cultural background of the era through the dominance of religion and its doctrinal and practical approach to magic and miracles, and then proceeds through the forms of magic: white magic (for healing and recovery of lost or stolen goods), astrology, prophecy, and witchcraft. Readers may want to read this in conjunction with Marylynne Robinson's essays rescuing Puritan political and doctrinal reputations from charges of being punitively retributive and witch-obsessed, as Thomas provides primary evidence which backs up Roginson's essays. It is a book readers interested in the time period and the topic will find well worth the effort.
March 31, 2009
Thomas looks at the transition point from a medieval world to the more modern version as it relates to religion and magic in England. He provides some contrasts to information from the continent, but England is the focus. It is remarkably detailed and examines the reasons that religion and magic were once almost inseparable, but became antithetical. That process came from the nature of change in the reform of Christian religion and was manifest in official pronouncements long before there was much effect on the way the people understood either religion or magic.
The modern world assumes that there is a fundamental gap between the two. Thomas examines how that gap developed and how it was manifest in public and private practice.
I began reading for some basic research, but it caught my attention and I'll finish the whole book rather than simply use it as reference.
The modern world assumes that there is a fundamental gap between the two. Thomas examines how that gap developed and how it was manifest in public and private practice.
I began reading for some basic research, but it caught my attention and I'll finish the whole book rather than simply use it as reference.
August 15, 2020
According to Thomas the decline of magic is due to science and new technology. But in my view magic was already on the way back (see the medical sector); not the technological progress, but a change of mentality was decisive, namely the new belief in human possibilities. And I agree this belief mainly was generated through innovations in science. So, I think the the effect was more indirect than Thomas proposes. Nevertheless, this is an interesting read, most of all because this book contains a nice overview of the material living conditions in the 16th and 17th Century.
Read
August 22, 2020An interesting popular historical treatise. I’m not rating it however as I only dipped in and out of the book upon finding it wasn’t quite what I was after. My fault, I emphasise, not the authors.
I had thought it’d be a light, popular tour of magical practises in the late medieval, early modern era (roughly 1400-1750) in Britain. My fiction reading is heavy on fantasy and I thought I’d check out what the real magical practises were of the not too distant past.
The author apologises for being fairly superficial with his publication, intending it to be a popular exposition. But one historian’s superficiality can be a lay reader’s in-depth history, it seems! The author usually supports, often with several referenced examples, any statements he’s trying to make. So, at least for me, it came across as a more academic work than I wanted. I just dipped in and out of various well labelled chapters in the end, skipping what seemed to me an over emphasis of the points being made.
With that explanation for my no rating I should say there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the book. I was under the misapprehension that maybe medieval magic still included bizarre practises inherited from pagan Anglo Saxon, or Viking times, or even Roman and pre-Roman. But no, over 1000 years of Christianity in Britain ensured that magic and religion were linked, parallel rivals. For the late Medieval Catholic Church with its arcane ceremonies, icons, holy water, holy relics, it wasn’t so much of a step to the practises of cunning men and white witches in villages, who commonly used pseudo religious incantations and charms, sometimes even using stolen holy water or communion hosts!
Following the Protestant Reformation, which included a reaction to more superstitious church practises, a stronger line was taken against such magical practitioners. Even so, Astrology maintained and even grew in popularity because it was perceived to have some scientific basis (laws of planetary motion allowing predictions, etc). Protestants also found it hard initially to accept that God would allow good persons to have a miserable time so the concept of Providence grew in importance. Theologians didn’t usually say that if you experienced misfortune or had apparent good luck that this was directly linked to you doing bad or good things, respectively, but it was commonly believed to be the case. This still hangs on today with some preachers ascribing natural disasters to liberal social behaviour, for example!
Of course a critical underlying reason for many seeking magical assistance of any type was the lack of control people had over their lives which were briefer on average than today, often cut short by an unexpected and incurable (for the time) illness. More than anything else this is the understandable reason for superstitious beliefs.
There’s a lot I’ve left out here on other magical practises pre and post Reformation including a few unusual ones supposedly linked to ‘classical times’ and the common attempts by the church to link Witchcraft to Satanic practises. A shame that my expectations of bizarre pagan practises being more common were not met, for novelty value, so at least I learnt that! But interesting to see that many of the superstitions people held at that time are still maintained to some degree today, even if paying for the service of a local cunning man or witch has (mostly) died out.
If you’ve got a historian’s mind and don’t mind wading through lots of referenced links and examples to the points the author makes then it’s a nice diversion. I just found it a bit heavy going for my taste....
I had thought it’d be a light, popular tour of magical practises in the late medieval, early modern era (roughly 1400-1750) in Britain. My fiction reading is heavy on fantasy and I thought I’d check out what the real magical practises were of the not too distant past.
The author apologises for being fairly superficial with his publication, intending it to be a popular exposition. But one historian’s superficiality can be a lay reader’s in-depth history, it seems! The author usually supports, often with several referenced examples, any statements he’s trying to make. So, at least for me, it came across as a more academic work than I wanted. I just dipped in and out of various well labelled chapters in the end, skipping what seemed to me an over emphasis of the points being made.
With that explanation for my no rating I should say there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the book. I was under the misapprehension that maybe medieval magic still included bizarre practises inherited from pagan Anglo Saxon, or Viking times, or even Roman and pre-Roman. But no, over 1000 years of Christianity in Britain ensured that magic and religion were linked, parallel rivals. For the late Medieval Catholic Church with its arcane ceremonies, icons, holy water, holy relics, it wasn’t so much of a step to the practises of cunning men and white witches in villages, who commonly used pseudo religious incantations and charms, sometimes even using stolen holy water or communion hosts!
Following the Protestant Reformation, which included a reaction to more superstitious church practises, a stronger line was taken against such magical practitioners. Even so, Astrology maintained and even grew in popularity because it was perceived to have some scientific basis (laws of planetary motion allowing predictions, etc). Protestants also found it hard initially to accept that God would allow good persons to have a miserable time so the concept of Providence grew in importance. Theologians didn’t usually say that if you experienced misfortune or had apparent good luck that this was directly linked to you doing bad or good things, respectively, but it was commonly believed to be the case. This still hangs on today with some preachers ascribing natural disasters to liberal social behaviour, for example!
Of course a critical underlying reason for many seeking magical assistance of any type was the lack of control people had over their lives which were briefer on average than today, often cut short by an unexpected and incurable (for the time) illness. More than anything else this is the understandable reason for superstitious beliefs.
There’s a lot I’ve left out here on other magical practises pre and post Reformation including a few unusual ones supposedly linked to ‘classical times’ and the common attempts by the church to link Witchcraft to Satanic practises. A shame that my expectations of bizarre pagan practises being more common were not met, for novelty value, so at least I learnt that! But interesting to see that many of the superstitions people held at that time are still maintained to some degree today, even if paying for the service of a local cunning man or witch has (mostly) died out.
If you’ve got a historian’s mind and don’t mind wading through lots of referenced links and examples to the points the author makes then it’s a nice diversion. I just found it a bit heavy going for my taste....
July 6, 2020
This was a fascinating read. It is extremely well cited, and very scholarly, so if you dislike that style, you will not like the book. It is not an "exciting" read, but is full of interesting thoughts and ideas. It is also very careful in its reasoning.
The book is about magic in the 1500's and 1600's, exactly as the title suggests. I do not remember whey I bought this book (maybe I mistook it for another), but it turned out to be an interesting read. It covers the intellectual and popular milieu of England during two centuries and the enormous changes in people's beliefs during this period. This includes the Reformation (and making of the Anglican Church), the English Civil War, the Restoration, and the beginnings of modern science.
There is much to learn and because the book is restricted in scope to England, the author is careful to only make claims about this area (in general), and looks at mulitple possible theories. What you learn is how people thought about magic, such as astrology, witchcraft, and hell/demons/fairies. I never realized how disbelief in most magical ideas had its origins in the Reformation. How there were cunning men/women (essentially magic healers or finders of thieves, etc.). How witchcraft was viewed (it peaked, and then the people in the criminal justice system started to require higher standards of evidence, making prosecutions pretty much impossible). In England, witches were hanged not burned, and the author even comes up with a hypothesis why old women were the most likely to be branded witches [they were the most vulnerable, and people usually accused people of lower "class" as being witches when they felt that they had not been charitable enough and so had been justifiable cursed by the "witch"].
There are tons of other interesting ideas explored, and it really gave me a much better idea of how much religious, magic, and science beliefs changed and were influenced by each other.
As I said, it's an academic tome, and so if you don't want that, you will not like this. I read it slowly chapter by chapter, as each is essentially a long essay and so works can be read as if they are a bunch of interrelated essays.
The book is about magic in the 1500's and 1600's, exactly as the title suggests. I do not remember whey I bought this book (maybe I mistook it for another), but it turned out to be an interesting read. It covers the intellectual and popular milieu of England during two centuries and the enormous changes in people's beliefs during this period. This includes the Reformation (and making of the Anglican Church), the English Civil War, the Restoration, and the beginnings of modern science.
There is much to learn and because the book is restricted in scope to England, the author is careful to only make claims about this area (in general), and looks at mulitple possible theories. What you learn is how people thought about magic, such as astrology, witchcraft, and hell/demons/fairies. I never realized how disbelief in most magical ideas had its origins in the Reformation. How there were cunning men/women (essentially magic healers or finders of thieves, etc.). How witchcraft was viewed (it peaked, and then the people in the criminal justice system started to require higher standards of evidence, making prosecutions pretty much impossible). In England, witches were hanged not burned, and the author even comes up with a hypothesis why old women were the most likely to be branded witches [they were the most vulnerable, and people usually accused people of lower "class" as being witches when they felt that they had not been charitable enough and so had been justifiable cursed by the "witch"].
There are tons of other interesting ideas explored, and it really gave me a much better idea of how much religious, magic, and science beliefs changed and were influenced by each other.
As I said, it's an academic tome, and so if you don't want that, you will not like this. I read it slowly chapter by chapter, as each is essentially a long essay and so works can be read as if they are a bunch of interrelated essays.
September 27, 2020
Finished after a 2-month reading. A milestone in the field of Historical Anthropology and Witchcraft studies. Are superstitions, such as witchcraft, charm, pagan ritual, worthless and inessential to understanding our past? Are witch-hunt in England purely derived from ignorance and madness? The precise and magnificent examination by Sir Keith Thomas of the minds and spiritual world in Early Modern England not just revealed the social and mental context of the witch-hunt, but also inspired the related research afterwards. And it is a splendid experience reading this masterpiece.
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