Changing Conceptions of National Biography: The Oxford DNB in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Religion & the Decline of Magic is Keith Thomas's classic history of the magical beliefs held by people on every level of English society in the 16th and 17th centuries and how these beliefs were a part of the religious and scientific assumptions of the time. It is not only a major historical and religious work, but a thoroughly enjoyable book filled with fascinating facts and original insights into an area of human nature that remains controversial today- the belief in the supernatural that still continues in the modern world 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’. 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. urn:lcp:religiondeclineo0000thom:epub:35483696-8499-4fe0-8947-fcbc7040e215 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier religiondeclineo0000thom Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t5w76t75d Invoice 1652 Isbn 0684106027

It is important not to exaggerate the grimness of the early modern age. Our ancestors in Tudor and Stuart England may well have been healthier, happier, and saner than those who toiled in the factories of the industrial revolution. Even though two centuries were marked by plague, civil war, and religious turmoil, the English were spared some of the depredations of the long wars and cyclical famines that afflicted continental Europe. Even so, life expectancy was low and the levels of routine pain and misery were high. It was a world of thatch and bedstraw, where an unattended candle could burn down a town. One third of infants died before the age of five, even among the aristocracy. The harvest failed about one year in six, and epidemics broke out in the wake of hunger.

a degree of intellectual arrogance about the infallibility of this [new] paradigm which contrasted with the rather humble sense of the provisional nature of knowledge that had characterised Boyle .... For better or worse, the new scientific world view challenged both the inclusiveness of the Boylian style of science and the rather heroic open-mindedness that Boyle displayed about the causation of phenomena.’ (p. 162) Sir Keith Thomas (b.1933), President (1986–2000) – Art UK Art UK – Discover Artworks Sir Keith Thomas (b.1933), President (1986–2000)". Art UK. 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’. 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." 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.

The decline of magic thus emerges from an oral culture of sarcasm and wit that flourished in the coffee houses. At first, this was seen as a threat to orthodoxy, in part because it was taken up by free-thinking Deists, but later the position was co-opted by religious, medical, and scientific establishment figures who worked hard to elide its heterodox origins and implications. Hunter is careful to stress the ‘pluralism that has come to be seen as characteristic of Enlightenment thought’, perhaps because in his mind the pendulum has swung too far towards the study of occultism (p. 142). Chapter Six, the second case study, partly fills in this pluralist picture further and provides some reasons behind the orthodox shift in attitude.

Wikipedia citation

In his section on magic, Thomas charts popular healing practices, especially as they related to psychosomatic conditions, and details the place of those who engaged in them (known as “cunning folk”) in English society—generally, that the laity both feared and respected them. He finds that religion provided a “rival system of ecclesiastical magic” to take the place of folk magic. But despite religion’s ascendancy as a means of protection from life’s hazards,folk magic persisted to some degree. In contrast, astrology apparently “ceased, in all but the most unsophisticated circles, to be regarded as either a science or a crime.” Whereas magic could sustain competition from Christianity, astrology could not. Hunter’s critique of the whiggish assumptions which, for all the book’s insight and subtlety, underpinned the concluding chapters of Religion and the Decline of Magic is encompassed in his very different approach. Thomas built up his mosaic of interpretation by meticulous accumulation of examples, but Hunter prefers to wield the brush of the miniaturist, drawing wider inferences from the analysis of detailed case studies. Some chapters are, indeed, versions of previously published articles and essays, but these have been reworked for the purposes of the volume. The Perception of the Past in Early Modern England: The Creighton Trust Lecture 1983, Delivered before the University of London on Monday 21 November 1983 (London: University of London, 1983)