Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe : Studies in Culture and Belief (Past and Present Publications)

Rating:
Summary: Essays centered on Keith Thomas' classic
Review: This is another fine collection of essays on witchcraft. To be able to fully appreciate the contributions, one should have read Keith Thomas' classic study "Religion and the decline of magic", as most authors refer to the chapters on witchcraft in Thomas' book, and to the related research done by Alan Macfarlane. This is what binds the contributions to this book together. A very interesting essay is the one by Brian Levack on state-building and witch hunting, but that may be my personal bias, as Levack's "The witch hunt in early modern Europe" (another classic) first got me seriously interested in the subject a few years ago. Apart from Levack, there's an essay referring to Dutch witchcraft material, and a contribution by Lyndal Roper, which is identical to chapter 9 of her "Oedipus and the devil".