Witchcraft: a History. - book review

Witchcraft: A History. By P. G. Maxwell-Stuart. Stroud and Charleston: Tempus, 2001. 160 pp. 32 illus. 12.99 [pounds sterling]/$19.99 (pbk). ISBN 0-7524-2308-8

Satan's Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. By P. G. Maxwell-Stuart. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001. 225 pp. 16.99 [pounds sterling]/$26.95 (pbk). ISBN 1-86232-136-1

So much work has been done on European witchcraft in recent years that it is no longer possible (if it ever was) to produce a comprehensive history of the whole topic in one book. What Dr Maxwell-Stuart has actually done in the first of the two books under review is to concentrate his discussion on certain periods and places where important issues come sharply into focus. First are ancient Greece and Rome, where the large number of words referring to practitioners of magic and divination indicates a rich variety of beliefs and activities, obscured if translated by one all-purpose term, "witch." Nevertheless, it was in these cultures that several features of the stereotype originated. The next two chapters trace the growth of the view of witches as heretics, adversaries to God and the Church, and the period of medieval witch-trials; there is a careful analysis of the Malleus Maleficarum, and a sceptical assessment of its influence: "in so far as the Malleus was intended to be a clarion call to inquisitors and judges to eradicate the menace of diabolism, it largely failed" (p. 64). He makes the interesting comment that the Malleus was unusual in using many allegedly true contemporary anecdotes to back up its arguments.

Maxwell-Stuart argues forcefully that the intensive outbreak of prosecutions in many parts of Europe between (roughly) 1580 and 1660 cannot be ascribed to one single cause, but to the interaction of several strands of theological debate. There is an interesting section on divergent attitudes of Spanish, French, and English settlers in the New World to Amerindian magic. Next follows a chapter on the legal mechanism of trials under various judiciaries, with particular attention to a well-documented, but hitherto unpublished, Scottish case, that of Janet Cock in 1661. The last two chapters cover the debate accompanying the repeal of the Witchcraft Acts, the persistence of popular belief in magic in later centuries, and the arrival of eclectic, sophisticated neo-pagan ritual witchcraft. Many of the points here are based on the works of Ronald Hutton and Owen Davies. There is a constant need for the results of scholarly research to be disseminated to the widest possible audience, especially in a subject where a great deal of nonsense has been printed; this book provides an admirably effective summary of the present state of knowledge on its topic.

Dr Maxwell-Stuart's other book is designed for specialists. It is a detailed survey of the evidence for various types of magic and witchcraft in sixteenth-century Scotland, going beyond Christine Larner's pioneering study of 1981 in the range of material examined. He is particularly concerned to assess the situation in the decades before James VI's celebrated involvement in the trials of 1690, often too readily assumed to be the initial stimulus for Scottish prosecutions. As in his other book, he warns against pitfalls of vocabulary: to the Scottish Kirk, "superstition" primarily meant traces of Catholicism. His close reading of trial records provides valuable insights into the folk beliefs underlying many confessions; for the accused, the Sithean ("fairies," in the weaker English terminology) and the dead were often the central figures in experiences which prosecutors viewed as demonic. His assessment is that neither the types of magic described in the trial accusations, nor the procedures and outcomes of the trials themselves, conform to the stereotypes of demonologists. Both these books can be heartily recommended.

Jacqueline Simpson, Folklore Society

COPYRIGHT 2003 Folklore Society
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group