brian p levack the witch hunt in early modern europe

Brian Levack rejects the idea of a monolithic witch hunt driven by one or two all-explaining reasons. Most authors have their own pet theory of the main cause of the travesty (personal revenge, misogyny, the Protestants, the Catholics, religious intolerance in general, societal changes, political maneuvering, mass hysteria, etc.). There is no lack of books about the shameful era of witch-hunting (most intense from ~1450-1750). But if you want a balanced, sober account of things, this is a great intro. It's a relatively dry book, and if you're looking for a lot of exciting and salacious witchcraft stories there are better places to go. They eventually petered out as it became increasingly clear that many accusations were entirely specious and as ecclesiastical authors and jurists promoted heavy skepticism about the reality of (or the ability to identify) witchcraft.

In the end, he argues that despite all of these overarching causes, most persecutions were local and were caused by local events.

Levack also suggests that the Reformation didn’t cause witch-hunt – witch trials were going on 100+ years before the 95 Theses – but it probably did intensify and quicken its spread by its promotion of biblical literalism and condemnation of superstition. The Spanish Inquisition is not known as a bastion of tolerance, but if you were accused of being a witch it was probably one of the best places to be tried. Regions where justice was decentralized - particularly the Holy Roman Empire and Scotland - saw the worst bursts of violence and accusations, while areas of centralized ecclesiastical justice like Spain saw very few. Interestingly, secular courts were nearly always stricter in witchcraft persecutions than ecclesiastical ones. This allowed for the local secular court to step in. This made everything quite a bit uglier, primarily because it transformed witchcraft from a crime to an act of heresy. This was always frowned upon, but things were taken to a new height when the emphasis shifted to the diabolical aspect of witchcraft (which likely had trickled down from the medieval court magicians, who claimed to be able to command demons for the sake of good). The concept of witchcraft was very old, but in the past it had usually centered on the concept of maleficia: doing harm, usually to a neighbor.

Levack argues that the two long-term causes of the rise of witchcraft accusations in the 16th and 17th century were the prominence of the devil in witchcraft accusations and the involvement of local, secular courts in prosecutions. This is a nice & sober recounting of a subject that's often pretty sensationalist.

Brian p levack the witch hunt in early modern europe