Keith Thomas, Religion & the Decline of Magic. NY: Scribner, 1971.
[Thomas takes a functional approach in this attempt to explain the role of magic and
religion in English society from 1500 to 1700. He analyzes several
Systems of belief = responses to an insecure environment (= means of
explaining misfortune and mitigating its effects)
= comprehensible parts of a total view of the world, not of
mere oddities or inconsistencies within general patterns
of thought. Thomas explains how intelligent people could
accept what were later to be considered absurd notions.
Systems = religion, magic, astrology
Religion and magic were often associated in popular minds as means of
obtaining supernatural control over the environment.
Protestants attempted to dissociate all magical elements from religious
practices; mysterious, inexplicable happenings were explained in terms
of providence.]
1. The Environment
The systems of belief discussed in this book reveal a preoccupation with
explanation and relief of misfortune—reflected the hazards of a very insecure
environment.
Environment of pain, sickness, and premature death discussed in detail. After
plague, the greatest threat to security was fire; there was no insurance until the
last two decades of the 17th c.
Responses to insecure environment: no real drive for social reform; instead
immediate relief was sought in drinking and smoking, which anesthetized people
against the strains of life, helped steady nerves of Stuart Englishmen. Very
primitive state of medicine meant it was scarcely a remedy for broad population.
Beliefs in magic and religion also explained misfortune and served to mitigate its
rigor.
Religion
2. The Magic of the Medieval Church
Religion was regarded as a medium for obtaining supernatural power, a means
of control over the earthly environment.
The ability to perform miracles became an indispensable test of sanctity.
Around the church, clergy, and their holy apparatus clustered a horde of popular
superstitions, which endowed religious objects with magical power to which theologians themselves had not laid claim: church, churchyard, mass itself, sacraments, prayer.
Sacraments worked automatically, regardless of the moral character of the
priest, and gave medieval Christianity an apparent magical character.
Other ecclesiastical operations could only be accomplished by a good priest and
pious laity. Only at the popular level did such practices become credited with an
inexorable and compelling power.
The problem lay in the church's readiness to assimilate pagan practices, esp.
holidays. The church itself determines what was acceptable and what was not,
but in popular minds the distinction between true religion and parasitic superstition
was difficult to maintain. The magical aspects of the church's functions were often
inseparable from the devotional ones.
3. The Impact of the Reformation
The distinction between magic and religion blurred by the medieval church was
strongly reasserted by the Protestant reformation. Prot emphasis on the omnipotence of God left no room for the church's claims to manipulate God's power
 sharp attack on the mass, esp. miraculous transsubstantiation, but also on
many traditional rites of the old church.
Protestants thus helped form a new conception of religion: as a belief rather than
practices, as a set of dogmas rather than a ritual method of living.
4. Providence
Divine omnipotence was reflected in daily happenings; there was no chance or
accident in the world, only the order that God gave it. This divine control was not
remote; there was no idea of a deus absconditus who had abandoned his creation
to its own devices.
Misfortune, too, came from God and served some purpose of ultimate good to
the sufferer.
A link was seen between moral behavior and a person's fortune in this world
(either in health or professional success); sin as the probable cause of misfortune
 the implication that godliness was linked to prosperity.
In other words, natural events (esp. disasters) had moral causes.
This doctrine of God's omnipotence was imposed by the reformation on a
populace accustomed to other types of explanation (misfortune = result of
working of good and bad spirits, neglect of observances related to good or
bad luck, simply of random chance). Now a direct connection was created
between misfortune and guilt by suggesting that God's action = punishment
for past offenses.
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The doctrine of providence was less likely to appeal to those at the bottom end of
the social scale than the doctrine of luck, which doesn't jeopardize self-esteem.
The notion that people get their just deserts had greatest appeal to those who had
opportunities to better themselves: they combined faith in providence with active
reliance on self-help.
The doctrine of providence (of purpose behind everything) was gloomy: it
taught people how to suffer and accept God's will. Many people could not take it,
and they sought relief and explanation in magic.
6. Religion and the People
Why recourse to magic, astrology, and other nonreligious systems of belief?
This is the question that the rest of the book treats. It is especially intriguing when
we consider the multidimensional character of the church: its strong institutional
framework, systematic theology, moral code, and wide range of social functions.
People had need for advice and got it from the clergy, yet Protestant hesitation to
claim supernatural gifts or special access to God's wisdom  common people
went elsewhere to gain such access.
Thomas presents much evidence to show that common people were ignorant of
or indifferent to religious doctrine.
Magic
9. Magic and Religion
The church campaigned against the resort to magic and magicians by the laity: the
efficacy of ecclesiastical courts was probably never great; after 1660 the church
probably did not think popular magic worth taking seriously.
The battle was fought in the pulpit: clergy versus cunning men.
Magic and religion were not incompatible: magical elements survived the reformation, and religious elements affected magic. The association in the popular mind
between magic and priesthood was only slowly eradicated.
The Catholic Church of the prereformation period had fought magic by offering
its own as an alternative; reformed churches disparaged the whole notion of
magical solutions. They taught that problems could only be solved by a
combination of self-help and prayer.
Only when self-reliance was widely diffused could religion really drive out popular
magic. Until then, wizards continued in their appeal.
Astrology = the study of the effects of celestial bodies and their movements on the
terrestrial sphere.
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Astrological notions were part of educated people's picture of the universe and its
workings, part of a generally accepted worldview.
Principal assumption was that the superior celestial world ruled over the terrestrial
sphere.
Hence, motions in the heavens had an influence on events on earth.
Confirmation of this general view was found in the clear influence of the
heavens on the weather, but also in the medical theory that diseases were
caused by relations among heat, cold, dryness, or moisture.
There were four aspects to astrology:
General predictions = weather, state of crops, epidemics
Nativities = individual's prospects
Elections = choice of action
Horary questions = any matters resolved by examining the heavens
The ambiguity of prognostications, their often self-fulfilling character, made
astrology acceptable. It was a highly flexible system.
Astrology experienced a decline, even though it discharged many useful
functions:
The intellectual acceptability of astrological theory was shattered by
the astronomical revolution started by Copernicus and completed by
Newton.
The earth was revealed as a planet like any other, subject to the same
laws of motion; the heavens were robbed of their former perfection
(spots on the sun, irregular surface of the moon)  the distinction
between terrestrial and celestial bodies was destroyed.
Slow permeation of this change in European society, especially during
the 17th c among the educated elites.
Witchcraft
There were two basic definitions of witchcraft:
(1) heretical worship of the devil = the theological definition, prevalent on the
Continent and among the clergy in England and
(2) the employment of occult means to harm other people = the popular
concept that stressed antisocial crime, prevailed over heresy in English
popular thinking and legislation.
Chronology
Statutes: 1542 (repealed 1547), 1563 (repealed 1604), 1604-1736
Executions were almost all in the second half of 16th and first
three-quarters of the 17th c.
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Why? Not because of the new emphasis on heretical character of witch
belief, which never won out in England anyway
Not because of financial motives
Not because of a government campaign by clerics or judges (not
associated, for example, with Puritanism)
Popular fear of maleficium = driving force; demand for prosecution
grew suddenly.
Major analytical problem for Thomas is not to explain the belief in witchcraft
itself, which is easily enough related to the highly developed demonology of the
MA. Most important issue is the increased demand for prosecution, the high
incidence of witch prosecution from the mid 16th into the last third of the 17th c.
Decline in ecclesiastical magic after the English Reformation as a safeguard
against malevolent magic  legal prosecution of the witches themselves
In contrast to the Continent, England saw a movement from the bottom
one that had no political cause and no connection with any particular
religious group.
Existence of cursing tablets and magical formulae proves the use of those
techniques by women and men to do occult harm to others. There is no proof,
though, of devil worship in England.
Who were the witches? "Poor old women" captures the largest category.
Many displayed religious despair. Usual witch had a desire to avenge herself on
her neighbors.
Who were the victims? People who sought explanation of their misfortune and
then a cure = prosecution and execution of witch. Usually people guilty of
breach of charity or neighborliness traditionally expected of them.
Essential features of witchcraft allegations:
(1) occurrence of personal misfortune for which there seemed no natural
explanation
(2) awareness of victim that he/she had offended a neighbor by not meeting
social obligations
(3) link between two furnished usually by frank expression of anger on part
of the suspected witch
Thus, witchcraft accusations reflected the social tensions between an old
communitarian tradition and individualistic behaviorreflected an ambivalent
attitude toward the poor.
Witch beliefs might serve at least three functions:
(1) explanation of misfortune and means of redress
(2) reinforcement of accepted moral standards: a breach in the norms of
neighborliness could bring dangerous repercussions (charitable person could
not be affected by sorcery)
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(3) justification for ostracizing charity cases, once a breach in communal ideal
of neighborliness had occurred
DECLINE OF WITCH BELIEFS in the late 17th c. among the educated elites (though
not among general populace until much later)  repeal of the law in 1736, but actually
there were very few convictions after the 1670s.
Decline in prosecution reflected the intellectual assumptions of the educated elites and
may have had several bases:
(1) Argument by Protestant fundamentalists that there was no scriptural foundation for the popular image of Satan, no possibility of women's being in touch
with him
(2) Courts became more and more skeptical about proving witchcraft
(3) New mechanistic philosophy = the assumption that the universe was orderly
and regularnot upset by the capricious intervention of God or the devil.
Note that no real scrutiny of witchcraft was involved = simple rejection
because of the absurdity of the old conception of nature.
(4) Optimistic assumption that people would one day be able to find the natural
causes of events still mysterious.
Decline of popular accusations was slow, but volume may have lessened in the late 17th
c.: development of poor laws resolved the old tensions between communal norms of
mutual aid and the individualistic ethic of self-helplargely by reducing the demands of
the old neighborliness.
Conclusion
Religion, astrology, and magic helped people with their daily problems by
teaching how to avoid misfortune or, at least, explain it.
Religion was a comprehensive view of the world and also a promise of a
future life.
Magic was much more limited but did claim to bring supernatural power to
bear on earthly problems in a way religion no long tried to do after the
reformations. Magic continued to offer services to those for whom the
Protestant notion of self-help was too arduous. Magic was proscribed yet
managed to compete with religion for some time after the reformations =
testimony to the needs of the common people.
Religion survived the decline of magic, but a different kind of religion resultedone
shorn of its magical character.
The self-confirming nature of magical beliefs meant the impossibility of undermining them from within; how, then, were they broken?
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The real intellectual revolution was the triumph of the mechanical philosophy,
which spelled the end of an animistic conception of the universe for European
elites. The rise of the new empirical science lent weight to skepticism about
traditional views.
The decline of magic coincided with some improvement in controlling the
environment (better living conditions in England and the Netherlands,
better communications, the development of life and fire insurance, improved
fire-fighting), yet it was the abandonment of magic that led to an upsurge of
technology--not vice versa, as functionalist theory à la Malinowski would have it.
Real advances in environmental control came later.
Hence, the real difference between the 16th and the 18th century lay not in the
achievement of security but in aspiration, the expectation of greater progress in the
future. The real change of the 17th c. was mental = a new faith in human initiative,
a faith of and in the new scientists.
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