Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England

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Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations (1997); Peter Elmer, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England (2016). Also worth reading is Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Whigs: The Life of Bishop Francis Hutchinson (1660–1739) (2008), a target of Hunter’s that does not escape the footnotes. Authors of popular history often concern themselves with the main events: discoveries and dictatorships, the Henry VIIIs and Alexander the Greats. As readers we enjoy watching the drama unfold on the global stage. But what about life beyond the spotlight? Book reviewers sometimes applaud a book as a masterpiece; occasionally they herald one as a seminal work which will have an enormous influence on the way we will perceive a subject in the future. 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. 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.

Michael Hunter situates the decline of magic between 1650 and 1750, within the areas of research in which he has built his career: the history of the early Royal Society, in particular that ‘Christian Virtuoso’ Robert Boyle, and the widespread fear of atheism in elite circles. Given Hunter’s decades of rumination on these adjacent subjects, this book unsurprisingly has deep roots—the opening chapter first appeared in 1995 and appears here ‘in close to its original form’; other parts were published more recently (p. 25). Still the overarching argument, previewed bullet-point style in the preface, is extremely well-articulated, as punchy as that of the coffee-house wits that partly occupy Hunter in this volume (pp. vi–vii). In fact, the book could be shorter still. One could quite easily omit two of the book’s six chapters (chapters 4 and 6). These case studies provide useful scaffolding, but without them Hunter’s tree would still stand.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. Science and technology have made us less vulnerable to some of the hazards which confronted the people of the past. Yet Religion and the Decline of Magic concludes that "if magic is defined as the employment of ineffective techniques to allay anxiety when effective ones are not available, then

Few historical enterprises have been as intensively historiographical and reflexive in character as the study of witchcraft in early modern Europe. Doubts about the very existence, let alone the character, of the object of study, together with the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, have ensured that the explosion of studies in this field since the 1960s has been accompanied by a regular rethinking of its intellectual parameters and conceptual tools. One of the most important moments in this process was the publication in 1971 of Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. The essays in this book, arising from a conference held in 1991, examine the developments in witchcraft scholarship in the last two decades or so in the light of Thomas' contribution. In part a review of his influence, it also offers both prescriptions and examples for alternative approaches. This introduction begins this process by re-examining the arguments of Religion and the Decline of Magic in the light of subsequent studies (particularly, but not exclusively, in the Englishspeaking world), as a way of exploring the changing nature of witchcraft research. 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:

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. 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. Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (2020), p. 186; Michael Hunter (ed.), The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-century Scotland (2001), p. 173. urn:lcp:religiondeclineo0000thom:epub:35483696-8499-4fe0-8947-fcbc7040e215 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier religiondeclineo0000thom Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t5w76t75d Invoice 1652 Isbn 0684106027 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.

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. What happens when a village witch meets a skeptical judge? What gives way when credulous Catholicism meets the demystifying tendencies of radical Protestantism? For centuries, strategies for self-help run alongside the hopes reposed in magic, and rationality and superstition mingle, the same head often accommodating both. Evidence may be partial, contradictory, or baffling, but the author’s capacious technique scoops it all in. Keith Thomas has given us a book of questions, rather than answers. It is an incitement to further investigation rather than an attempt to categorize, define, or delimit the world we have lost. 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. 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. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-03-17 06:01:00 Boxid IA40076014 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Col_number COL-658 Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierReligion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England 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. 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’. Francis Hutchinson, An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (1718), pp. 150–51; James VI, Daemonologie (1597), p. 42.