507 - Religion and the Decline of Magic

Religion and the Decline of Magic
By Keith Thomas
716 pp. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. $17.50.

The history of the lives and beliefs of the common people of pre-industrial England has scarcely been explored. Demographers and economic historians have made a beginning in the analysis of basic aspects of life for the majority of the people but have not probed the culture and thought of the lower and middle ranks of society, particularly in the village and town communities where most of the people lived. Now, however, with the appearance of Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic, many vitally important aspects of the extraordinarily complex and fascinating subculture of Tudor and Stuart England are described in rich detail. In successive sections, which collectively form his contribution "to our knowledge of the mental climate of early modern England" (p. ix), Thomas first explores medieval Catholicism and Reformation Protestantism as the major forms of religious belief and experience and then devotes most of his book to the description and analysis of magic, astrology, prophecy, witchcraft, and the various beliefs in ghosts, fairies and omens, which collectively formed either a supplement or an alternative to the dominant modes of belief in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The result is a book which is overly long (665 pages of closely printed text and footnotes) but which will undoubtedly become the standard reference work for these subjects for years to come. It ought also to initiate the exploration of popular culture and belief which has been so lamentably missing from historians' accounts of this period, in both England and her American colonies.

Thomas' comparison of medieval Catholicism and Reformation Protestantism is succinct and superb. It enables us to understand the extent to which Puritanism sought to delimit the magical elements of religious belief and yet, paradoxically, proved to be peculiarly susceptible to magic and witchcraft. "The medieval church," Thomas notes, "appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power, capable of being deployed for a variety of secular purposes" (p. 45). But the Protestants attacked the "sacramental magic" of the church and thus "severely eroded the ritual of the established church. Of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church. . . . only baptism and the Eucharist retained their undoubted sacramental character . . ." (p. 57). "Protestantism thus presented itself as a deliberate attempt to take the magical elements out of religion. . . . The individual stood in a direct relationship to God and was solely dependent upon his omnipotence. He could no longer rely upon the intercession of intermediates, whether saints or clergy; neither could

508 - Religion and the Decline of Magic

he trust in an imposing apparatus of ceremonial in the hope of prevailing upon God to grant his desires" (pp. 75-76). Thus the religious context for the magical activities of the cunning men, of the astrologers, and of the witches, was provided and their symbolic relationship made likely. For as Thomas makes amply clear throughout his study, neither Anglicans nor Puritans really had efficacious practical alternatives for the promises and the accomplishments of the cunning men and the witches. This accounts in part for the reasons "why in England witch-persecution and the Reformation arrived together. For what the religious changes of the mid-sixteenth century did was to eliminate the protective ecclesiastical magic which had kept the threat of sorcery under control" (p. 498).

Throughout his discussion of magic, astrology, and especially witchcraft, Thomas makes clear the usefulness of these modes of belief to the people and thereby illuminates aspects of their experiences which have never been seen so clearly before. His analysis of witchcraft, in particular, reveals much about the personal context of life in rural village England and about the ways in which people handled their hostilities and their fears. He finds that most cases of witchcraft were associated with some form of grudge, arising from the guilt evoked by failure to be charitable or helpful to the poor women (most witches were female) in the neighborhood. "The great bulk of witchcraft accusations thus reflected an unresolved conflict between the neighborly conduct required by the ethical code of the old village community, and the increasingly individualistic forms of behavior which accompanied the economic changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (p. 561). To understand this phenomenon better, he concludes, more must be "known about the history and structure of the English village" (p. 583). Already, however, the work done by Alan Macfarlane (a student of Thomas) on Essex county in England and by John Demos on Essex county in New England demonstrates the centrality of the analysis of witchcraft to the culture, the society, the religious beliefs, and the psychology of ordinary men and women of this pre-industrial setting.

Religion and the Decline of Magic is best when describing the forms these magical practices took and the relationships they had with the lives of the people who employed them. It is weakest when attempting to analyze the decline of magic and allied beliefs, for, as Thomas notes, the process of change and decay is almost silent in terms of surviving literary sources. Thomas successfully and imaginatively draws upon the work done by social anthropologists on witchcraft but is disappointingly hesitant to use various forms of psychological analysis in his explorations for the various activities explored in his book. Nevertheless, this book warrants close attention by anyone interested in the history of

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pre-industrial societies or in religious beliefs and experiences in the early modern period. It also ought to provide an incentive for young historians of early America to explore the hidden popular cultures of New England and the southern colonies, of which witchcraft is probably only the most obvious indicator. When this is done, we will be in a far better position to understand what life was really like for ordinary people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Keith Thomas has pointed the way, provided us with a wealth of evidence and suggestions, and written a book which amply demonstrates the importance of understanding the non- or the counter-Catholic and Protestant religious beliefs and practices of that period.

Philip J. Greven, Jr.
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey