academic expositions of 'the burning times'

Barry, Hester & Roberts (eds)

Witchcraft in early modern Europe : studies in culture and belief

ISBN 0-521-55224-9

Once again I have been re-reading this study. It’s a collection of thirteen essays originating from a 1991 conference held at the University of Exeter on the cultural contexts of the European witch hunts. It’s admirable academic stuff. Full of details and bountifully provided with footnotes showing where the writers unearthed their material. And that material comes from the books on the shelves they were surrounded with as they read and as they wrote.

As the subtitle indicates : this is a book about historical attitudes towards witchcraft rather than a book about witchcraft itself. ‘Early Modern Europe’, in this context, means mostly the 1500s and the 1600s, though Ian Bostridge on ‘Witchcraft repealed’ is actually about the events leading up to and surrounding the passing of the Witchcraft Act of 1735 (which he treats as belonging to March 1736 without explaining why). Only in his very last footnote does he mention ‘14 and 15 Geo. 6. ch. 33. Fraudulent Mediums Act, 1951. (An Act to repeal the Witchcraft Act, 1735, and to make in substitution .. .. )’. That, and leads to a handful of 1990 newspaper articles of the more sensational persuasion. Not a word about Gerald Gardner and the witchcraft revival. But that could be par for the course in certain academic surroundings even so recently as a score of years ago. I can remember being advised that my own department actively avoided contact with 20th-century witches (unless they were in a distant part of the world and, preferably, pre-literate).

So there we have it. A useful collection of detailed information about ‘the burning times’ by a respectable table of academics paying due homage to Keith Thomas and his ‘Religion and the Decline of Magic’, a classic work of the genre.

francis cameron

oxford, 24 june 2009