The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: 5 (Witchcraft & Magic in Europe) [Paperback]

Until now the Roman Catholic Church has been viewed as the chief source of persecution of "witches." While the RCC was involved with witchcraft (in more ways than one as it turns out) heretofore historical research about witchcraft was biased as it was largely based on RCC records. The studies in W&E go beyond the RCC records and include work undertaken by hundreds of scholars engaged in the difficult task of ferreting out information from less well organized secular and non-RCC sources scattered across Europe.

Witchcraft in Europe has been defined in dozens of ways and the authors use the terms witchcraft and magic interchangably since anyone thought to engage in magical practices was viewed as a sorcerer (male) or magician or witch (female). Magicican, Magi, Witch, Sorcerer all mean "wise one". One has to wonder if the current craze for Harry Potter would be so great if the protagonist was Harriet Potter and she was a witch.

The amazing finding of the W&E scholars (who insist they are still compiling the story) is that the Enlightenment did not end witchcraft and nor did the Reformation before it. Magic was alive and well before and after both movements in spite of the extreme efforts of Protestant leaders like Luther, Calvin, and Wesley to root out RCC herersy and magical practices like turning wine into the blood of Christ and removing evil spirits through exorcism (though some Protestants continued to do faith healing), as well as the attempts of Rationalist thinkers Voltaire, Hume, Locke and others to rid thinking of magic. Eventually, the Protestants and the Rationalists found themselves locked in conflict since belief in God was not "rational". The focus of the Protestants changed from eradicating magic to limiting magic.

In his section entitled 'Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romatic and Liberal Thought' Roy Porter says "...at the grassroots 'superstitions' did not dissolve like mist in the sunshine but proved highly tenacious -- driving reformers to dispair! And the educated themselves continued to uphold a mixed bag of beliefs." For example, while Whigs of 18th Century England tried mightly to bring the Neoclassical movement to life in all parts of England via architecture, art, clothing, and literature, but cheap thrillers like the "Castle of Otranto" held the people in thrall--not Alexander Pope's Essay on Man. Jane Austin, whose own father was a village vicar, made fun of the "Gothic" thrillers in her book 'Northanger Abbey' but even this popular author could not dissuade popular opinion.

Later in the Eighteenth Century, when the Romantic Movement was in full flower, Europe and America produced Shelley's 'Frankenstein'; Stoker's Dracula; and Irving's 'Sleepy Hollow'; Edgar Allen Poe's 'House of Usher'; Sir Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe'; (Avonlea, the Lady of the Lake, Merlin and Arthur, the Tales of Robin Hood). The Romantic movement was fueled by love of the non-rational in a "rationalized" and industrialized age.

From village priests who practiced sorcery to Puritan Protestant ministers who ran them out of town, from Rationalists who preached efficency to Romantics who painted clouds, wrote poetry about daffodils or tigers in the night, or set down fairy tales, from women and men stoned as magicians, witches, or fairy-changlings to the men who appropriated female magic and called it medicine W&E covers it all. This is a wonderful book about an incredible era. In the end, magic IS.