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

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This chapter studies the phenomenon of second sight, the ability of some individuals (especially those living in the Scottish Highlands) to see into the future, from Robert Boyle onwards. Hunter argues that Boyle turned away from witchcraft and towards ‘new sources of evidence to prove the reality and elucidate the workings of the supernatural realm.’ Following the interminable trench warfare of the Tedworth controversy, second sight ‘must have seemed ideal’ (p. 148). Hunter also links the growth of scepticism in the phenomenon to a change in scientific ‘fashion’, namely the displacement of ‘the Boylian tradition of Baconian science’ with ‘an essentially mathematical mode’ based on a ‘new, Newtonian ethos’ and general laws of nature (pp. 154, 161). Boyle’s biographer does not approve. Hunter notes Jonathan Barry, University of Exeter , Marianne Hester, University of Bristol , Gareth Roberts, University of Exeter In sum, Hunter has taken us on a fascinating journey, providing us with some astute case studies and pointed observations along the way, but it is almost as if he refused to look down to study the stones his path was made out of. 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-identifier

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. 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

An 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. Remembering 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. 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. Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners. 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 reason is the author is working with raw data. Testimony from legal proceedings, medical notes by physicians, sermons of priests. Religion and the Decline of Magic attempts to connect a vast collection of tiny data points to build a picture of systemic belief in flux. It’s dense and messy, because humans are messy. 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’. What’s crazy is that it worked. People gave money to the poor and thieves succumbed to the pressure of mystical examination. Even more radically the book suggests magic ‘may have provided as effective a therapy for diseases of the mind as anything available today’.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. 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. 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. Magic, prophecy, witchcraft and astrology – the outmoded, discredited, untenable intellectual debris of a former era; so one would think, but during the past half century in particular, there has been a recrudescence of interest in each of these, and as for religion, it hardly needs me to draw the reader’s attention to the revival of its poisonous fanaticism across the globe.