Folk Beliefs and Magic
1. The disenchantment of the world (entzauberung der welt)?

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism (1904-05)

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971)

R. W. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, popular magic and the “disenchantment of the
world”’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993)

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992; 2nd ed. 2005); esp. Ch. 8.

R. W. Scribner, ‘Incombustible Luther’, Past & Present (1986)

Transcendental; numinous; liturgy; syncretism
cf. Alex Walsham, ‘The Reformation and “The Disenchantment of the World” Reassessed’,
The Historical Journal, 51 (2008), 497-528
2. The supernatural world

Eleanor of Portugal; Joan of England (d.1348); Alfonso XI of Castile (d.1350)

Communio sanctorum; Purgatory; Moriens; ars moriendi

Santiago (St James) de Compostella

Shrift; housel: cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet (c.1602) ‘unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled’

Robert Thornton; Book of Hours; pilgrimage; sacramentals; thaumaturgic
3. White magic, cunning folk and wise women

Royal touch for the King’s evil (tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis, aka scrofula)

Divination; sympathetic magic; love magic

Robert Reynes; Peter Idley; Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester (d.1452); necromancy

Grimoires (e.g. Munich handbook; Key of Solomon); hermeticism; John Dee
(d.1608); Isaac Newton (d.1727); Thomas Ashby

Witchcraft Acts (1542 and 1563); Index of Prohibited Books (1559)
4. Werewolves and possession

Demoniac; Loudun possessions (1634) Jeanne des Anges; Ursuline; Urbain Grandier

The disclosing of a late counterfeyted possession by the deuyl in two maydens within
the citie of London (1574)

Faerie; changeling; Jean Grenier (1603); Theiss of Kaltenbrun (1692); beast of
Gévaudan (1764-67)

Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles (1966)

Doctor Lamb’s Darling (1653); James, Daemonologie (1597): ‘a naturall
superabundance of melancholie’
Conclusion: Decline and Disenchantment?

Dives and Pauper (c.1410); John Bale, Comedy concernynge thre lawes (1548);
Erasmus, Colloquies (1524 edn); mountebank; providence; Witchcraft Act (1735)
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‘many of us when we be in trouble, or sickness, or lose anything, we run hither or thither to
witches, or sorcerers, whom we call wise men ... seeking aid or comfort at their hands.’
~ Hugh Latimer (1552)
‘Although this realm is known by common experience to be troubled with witches, sorcerers
and other such wise men and women (as they call them) yet that the Devil should so possess
actually men and women so constantly reported ... is mere vanity and falsehood.’
~ Disclosing of a late counterfeited possession (1574)
‘Doctor Lambs darling: or, strange and terrible news from Salisbury; being a true, exact, and
perfect relation, of the great and wonderful contract and engagement made between the devil,
and Mistris Anne Bodenham; with the manner how she could transform her self into the shape
of a mastive dog, a black lyon, a white bear, a woolf, a bull, and an cat; and by her charms
and spels, send either man or woman 40 miles an hour in the ayr. The tryal, examination, and
confession of the said mistris Bodenham, before the Lord chief Baron Wild, & the sentence of
death pronounc'd against her, for bewitching of An Stiles, and forcing her to write her name
in the devils book with her own blood; so that sometimes the devil appearing all in black
without a head, renting her cloaths, tearing her skin, and tossing her up and down the
chamber, to the great astonishment of the spectators.’
~ Doctor Lambs darling (1653)
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