Sarah Johanesen

Religion and magic have usually been regarded as separate and rival systems of meaning and action, but their relationship is fraught and complex. Attempting to unravel it involves not only careful interrogation of analytical categories, but an understanding of how their meanings have changed over time, and of how the categories themselves have been deployed for ideological purposes. In this seminar, we will consider how historical sociologists and anthropologists have defined the spheres of magic and religion; we will investigate when, where and why magical thinking went into decline; and we will analyse the historical relationship between religious faith and the magical harm inflicted by witches. In doing so, we will also address the extent to which this is principally a pre-modern topic, or one that in fact transcends conventional boundaries between early modernity and modernity.

Seminar questions

• Can a meaningful distinction be made between ‘religion’ and ‘magic’?
• When, if at all, did magic ‘decline’?
• How has the relationship between religion and witchcraft belief changed over time?

• What are the benefits and drawbacks of thinking globally about the history of witchcraft and magic?

Required reading

Michael Bailey, ‘The Meanings of Magic’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 1 (2006), 1-23

Owen Davies, Magic: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2012), select a chapter, recommended are: Chps 2 and 6.

Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, From Ancient Times to the Present (2017), chap. 1, ‘The Global Context’, pp. 3-43

Further reading

Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies (eds), Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (2004)

Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250-1750 (2010), part 1

Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1997), esp. chap. 29

Owen Davies, A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War (2018)

Owen Davies (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic (Oxford, 2021)

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580 (1992), introduction and ch. 8

Julian Goodare, The European Witch-Hunt (2016), chap. ‘Perspectives on the Witch-Hunt’, pp. 360-96

Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (2020)

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (1999)

Kathleen Kamerick, ‘Shaping Superstition in Late Medieval England’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 3 (2008)

Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (3^rd edn 2022)

Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power (1990)

Peter Marshall, Invisible Worlds: Death, Religion and the Supernatural in England 1500-1700 (2017)

G. Maxwell-Stuart (ed.), The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A Documentary History (1999)

Darren Oldridge, The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England (2016), esp introduction

R. W. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the “Disenchantment of the World”’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993)

Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World (2004)

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1991 edn), chaps. 1-2, 22

Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World Reassessed’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008)

Stephen Wilson, The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe (2000), introduction and chap. 17.