Reduced - The Reformation and The Disenchantment of The World Reassessed

The Reformation and 'The Disenchantment of the World' Reassessed
Author(s): Alexandra Walsham

Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Jun., 2008), pp. 497-528
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The Historical Journal,
? 2008 Cambridge
51, 2 (2008), pp. 497-528
Printed in the United Kingdom
University
Press
doi:io.ioi7/Sooi8246Xo8oo68o8
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
REVIEWS
THE REFORMATION
AND 'THE
DISENCHANTMENT
OF THE WORLD5
REASSESSED
ALEXANDRA
WALSHAM
University ofExeter
abstract.
This essay is a critical historiographical overview of the ongoing debate about the role of the
Protestant Reformation
in theprocess of? the disenchantment of the world*. It considers the development of
this thesis in thework ofMax Weber and subsequent scholars, its links with wider claims about the origins
that have emerged in the last twenty-five years.
of modernity, and the challenges to this influential paradigm
on
the
literature
within
its
wider
context, it explores the links between
Setting
European
England
Protestantism
and the transformation of assumptions about the sacred and the supernatural, and places
renewed emphasis on the equivocal and ambiguous legacy left by the upheavals of the sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries. Attention is also paid to the ways in which theReformation
converged with other intellec
and social developments which cumulatively brought about subtle, but decisive,
tual, cultural, political,
transformations
in individual
desacralization
and resacralization
emphasizes
The
a linear
path
and collective mentalities.

may
help
It is suggested that thinking in terms of cycles of

the potential distortions of a narrative that
to counteract
of development.
on the road towards

to herald
as a milestone
the Protestant
Reformation
tendency
a landmark
and
in the narrative
of progress
that traces
the
secularization,
over
of rationalism
in the age of the Enlightenment,
has
triumph
'superstition'
roots inWestern
and Anglo-American
culture
and scholarship
and con
European
modernity
eventual
deep
tinues
to exert
considerable
influence.
In particular,
the idea that the religious
revolution
a critical
and other
reformers
role in eliminating
Calvin,
by Luther,
played
about
the intervention
of magical
and supernatural
in the world
forces
has
assumptions
resilient.
If it has stimulated
to
and shaped many
seminal
contributions
proved
remarkably
over the last century,
the historiography
of the early modern
it
has
also
in
served,
period
launched
some ways,
to constrain
and distort our understanding
of this era. This
on the evolution
of critical
reflections
and observations
and fortunes
the backdrop
and undercut
text,
its aim
of a body
it. Focusing
is to review
of recent
especially
the current
research
which
has
on
but
England,
state of the debate
seriously
set within
and
review
offers
of this thesis
a series
against
complicated,
challenged,
a wider Continental
con
to provide
an
interim
report
Department ofHistory, University ofExeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ a.m.walsham@ex.ac.uk
497
on
HISTORICALJOURNAL
498
an
and
ongoing
from
dispatches
of reinterpretation.
process
on a train that has not yet
incomplete
a passenger
as a series
regarded
its final destination.1
It may
be
reached
of
I
its seeds
Although
to
helped
its most
The
precipitate
classic and
a seismic
form
in the work
the notion
the
sacred
that
and
of the German
the Reformation
supernatural
Max Weber.
took
In
enduring
sociologist
saw the
and the spirit of capitalism, first published
in 1904-5, Weber
as part of a
which
he later called
'the disenchantment
'great historic
process'
In search of the origins
of modern
of economic
behaviour
and
patterns
Protestant
ethk
Reformation
of
in the early modern

itself,
period
shift in attitudes
towards
he
the world'.
Weber
organization,
tered a fundamental
that,
argued
in its more
ascetic
fos
forms, Protestantism
as a mechanism
for
salvation
magic
aiding
transcendental
and
intellectualized
in which
religion
especially
of sacramental
rejection
the evolution
of a
promoted
numinous
forces were
removed
from
and
to undermine
the sphere of everyday
life. It helped
to manipulate
and
the surrounding
universe
seeing,
understanding,
seeking
as a
to the emergence
that operated
obstacle
of capitalist
modes
of production
major
and consumption.
The doctrine
of personal
vocation
and the elective
of Calvinist
affinity
a mode
the
and
incentive
for
of
predestinarianism
provided
ideological
psychological
a way
of
to the
rationalized
ethical
conduct'
that was deeply
conducive
of
'methodically
pursuit
success and business
These
ideas were
in a
worldly
independently
developed
enterprise.2
more
nuanced
form by Weber's
the Heidelberg
Ernst Troeltsch,
contemporary,
theologian
as an agent
an indirect and accidental
who
likewise heralded
the Reformation
(albeit
one)
of modernization.3
Extracted
of
later
cation
out of the analytical

thesis
and
broader
detectable
caricature
significance.
in Keith
once
Reformation
the title,
internalized
recognized
framework
scholars Weber's
that has
again
some
assumes
a critical
was
than
some
has
and
in the hands
articulated,
from a degree
of simplifi
subtleties.
It has also taken on
of this paradigm
the decline
role in effecting
the reconceptualization
'a ritual method
of living'.
of the ambiguities
first
suffered
of its original
the outlines
unacknowledged,
seminal
Religion
of which
symptom
rather
dogmas
and highlighted
key
eclipsed
Although
Thomas's
it was
in which
of desacralization
and
are
clearly
the
(1971). Here
the development
indicated
of magic
of religion
Although
contradictions
in
itself as a set of
Thomas
himself
that accompanied
to audiences
in Birmingham,
versions of this article were presented
Exeter, London, and
I am grateful to those who offered comments
and asked incisive questions on these oc
and to Jonathan
Grace Davie, Henry
casions, especially Joseph Melling,
Barry, Patrick Collinson,
Peter Marshall,
and Matthias
French, Michael Hunter, Sachiko Kusukawa,
Pohlig for careful readings
of various drafts.
2
Max Weber,
The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (first English edn,
translation
renders the key phrase entzauberung der welt as
London,
1930), pp. 105, 125. Parsons's
Earlier
Warwick.
'the elimination
of magic
from the world'.
See also From Max Weber: essays in sociology, trans, and
eds. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills
(London, 1948), ch. 5, esp. pp. 139, 155;Marianne Weber, Max
Weber: a biography, trans, and ed. Harry Zohn (New York, 1926; first publ. 1926), pp. 331-3, 339-40;
and Max Weber,
The sodobgy of religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff
(London,
1963), pp. 171, 175. For
discussion of the concept, see Hans G. Kippenberg,
ed., Discovering religious history in themodern age, trans.
Barbara Harshav
(Princeton and Oxford,
2002), ch. 11, 'The great process of disenchantment'.
3
Ernst Troeltsch,
Protestantism and progress: the significance ofProtestantism for the rise of themodem world,
ed. B. A. Gerrish
1986; first English edn 1912).
(Philadelphia,
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
and
this process
characterized
thrust
overall
of his argument
immanence
the
about
beliefs
499
the case
too often
(a point
reinforced
the
it remains
forgotten),
that Protestantism
theory
the studiously
of the holy. Despite
decisively
agnostic,
the
that
eroded
anthropological
to the view that the

spirit inwhich he conducted his inquiry, he too subscribed implicitly
under
from a 'superstitious'
to emancipate
the English
populace
helped
in the foreword,
he wrote
around
of the world
which,
them, from assumptions
standing
In more
than a faint echo of the
now
were
persons'.
by intelligent
'rightly disdained
Protestant
and
of
the
the
of
claims
reformers
inflated
themselves,
historiogra
celebratory
Reformation
it gave
rise, he also implied
phy to which
from
Initiated
and driven
markable
speed.
itwas a swift and successful movement
above,
the more
'rational'
through
favourable
religiosity
travelled
society
English
mental
environment
of this d?mystification
early modern
period
Echoes
the
ushered
which
that
this was
below
rather
with
a process
than
spread
re
with
from
imposed
politically
roots.4 For Thomas,
popular
genuinely
was
the Reformation
in by
on its way
that
to the modern
transitional
world.
stage
a
It created
of technology.5
the later triumph
made
possible
of
can be found
other historians
in the work of many
van Dulmen,
Thomas
Richard
Bernhard
Vogler,
which
thesis
including
'
'
Nipperdey, and Carlos Eire. The latter links itwith the Scientific Revolution in laying the
ground
medieval
work
for
of late
and wonder-working
of the mysterious
the replacement
aspects
on the
of
an abstract
faith based
and cerebral
with
reason,
principle
religion
the material
permitted
In recent years, however,
which
disenchantment
is a consequence
by the
medieval
late Bob
in empirical
terms.6
was a
catalyst of'the
powerful
In large part this
and qualified.
has been seriously questioned
of the world'
articles written
and iconoclastic
then provocative
of a series of what were
to evidence
and
between
of
continuities
Scribner.
homologies
Pointing
and Protestant
universe
the notion
mentalities,
to be understood
that the Reformation
Scribner
argued
played
a more
for instance, in A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London, 1964).

As embodied,
Keith Thomas, Religion and thedecline ofmagic: studies inpopular beliefs in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
1973; first edn, 1971), pp. 88, ix, chs. 3, 21-2, and passim. Despite pointing to
?i^/an</(Harmondsworth,
entitled 'The disenchantment
Lawrence Stone's review of Thomas,
and complexities,
inconsistencies
the general line of
in the New York Review of Books, 17 (2 Dec.
of the world'
1971), itself endorsed
stunt the
for 'wholly irrational beliefs which
by implicit contempt
argument and was underpinned
5
:repr. as 'Magic, religion and reason', in his

and prevent effective action for human betterment'
The past and thepresent (Boston, London, and Henley,
1981), pp. 154-74, at p. 174. See Jonathan Barry's
and the problem
and his influences in 'Introduction: Keith Thomas
perceptive discussion of Thomas
inJonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts,
of witchcraft',
eds., Witchcraft in earlymodem
mind
??f (Cambridge,
1996), pp. 1-45.
Europe: studies in culture and
'
6
in der rheinsichen Pfalz
Bernhard Vogler,
Die Enstehung der protestantischen
Volksfr?mmigkeit
zwischen
1555 und 1619', Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, 72 (1981), pp. 158-95; Richard van D?lmen,
Ein versuch', Zeitschrift f?r Historische Forschung, 14 (1987), pp. 1-25, trans, as
'Reformation und Neuzeit:
the modern
ed., The German Reformation: the essential
age', in C. Scott Dixon,
and the modern world',
'The
Reformation
Thomas
pp.
Nipperdey,
readings (Oxford, 1999),
196-219;
in E. I.Kouri and Tom Scott, eds., Politics and society inReformation Europe: essaysfor Sir GeoffreyElton on his
1987), pp. 535-52 ;Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the idols: the reformation of
sixty-fifth birthday (Basingstoke,
'The Reformation
and
esp. p. 312. See also Stanley Jeyaraja

1986), conclusion,
worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge,
science, religion and the scope of rationality (Cambridge,
Tambiah, Magic,
1990), esp. chs. 1-2; Marcel
Gauchet, The disenchantment of theworld: apolitical history of religion, trans. Oscar B?rge (Princeton, 1998).
as a shorthand
thrust of Pieter
The
for secularization.
The
latter uses the concept
general
The broken spell: a cultural and anthropological history ofpreindustrial Europe (Basingstoke,
1991)
Spierenburg's
than his title implies :
echoes theWeberian
though he ismore sensitive to the complexities
paradigm,
see esp. pp. 9-11.
HISTORICALJOURNAL
500
role in
marginal
the historians
who
the
of desacralization
processes
and
than Weber
secularization
and
assumed.
He
admitted
that some aspects
of
footsteps
or
Protestantism
the
of
have
eviction
but insisted
may
encouraged
'magic',
repudiation
that others militated
it. Focusing
less on the theology
of the reformers
than
strongly against
as itwas put into
on the
and
of
the
realities
dissonant
features
untidy
phenomenon
practice
a
at the grass roots, he found
or
did not effect as dramatic
complete
It modified
and curtailed,
break with
the Catholic
rather
past as has often been alleged.
than wholly
with
the
rejected,
rather
than
kind.7
project
its 'success'
superseded
about
to
at which
also a telling
of the Reformation
by
self-congratulation,
by
Protestant
forebears
compromises
bold revisionist
in older
models
stress on
mentalities
with
upon
recover
to
now
entirely
dispense
even a
of its
magic
a
was
matter
of
inferred,
and
its 'failure
and
and
resisted
to
the
the
glorious
to sweep
teleologies
represents
something
on much
recent
mark
of
the
that
linked with
'popular
cul
preten
imperialistic
and
practical
sectarian
and
of analysis
underpinned
in which
their
struggles
under
the carpet
the un
and polarities
approaching
left a palpable
themes of a recent
It has
'.8 It was
recover
securing
ideological
a confessional
grip of
in ages past and

in practice.
the confident
against
of'modernization'
consensus.
historical
engaged
that evolved
backlash
he
sign of the loosening

of a framework
of the demise
a desire
had
a new
intent
rituals
narrative
of the impact
triumphalist
as part of a broader
shift of perspective
it clashed
politicians
It was
historiography
by
collective
reconstruct
enterprise
to detect
the points
and
of theologians
hegemony.
against
be seen
may
Scribner's
a wider
'9ture
edifying
This
; it engendered
and Catholicism,
Reacting
it did not
of the sacred':
'economy
or
times,
places,
objects
difference
between
Protestantism
Reformation,
saw claims
sions
traditional
persons,
holy
own. The
degree
in his
followed
embedded
the
current
in this field,
historiography
own. The
Rublack
survey o? Reformation Europe by Ulinka
including my
own pupils) are a measure
of this general
trend: here we find not only a
(one of Scribner's
cen
on the limits of disenchantment
in the sixteenth
and seventeenth
emphasis
striking
turies,
also
but
to c.
the period
that underpinned
a further
the suggestion
swing of the pendulum)
a
or
intensification
witnessed
temporary
1650
partial
the late medieval
sacramental
universe.10
(in
that, on the contrary,

of the assumptions
on everyday life', inMensch und objekt im

'The impact of the Reformation
Robert W. Scribner,
der Wissenshaften,
Akademie
mittelalter und in derfr?hen neuzeit (?sterrichische
Philosphisch-Historische
vol. 568, Vienna,
Klasse Sitzungsberichte,
1990), pp. 315-43; idem, 'The Reformation,
popular magic
of the world"
and the "disenchantment
',Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993), pp. 475~945 idem,
:from sacramental world tomoralised
universe ', inR. Po-Chia Hsia
and desacralisation
Scribner,
eds., Problems in the historical anthropology of early modern Europe (Wolfenb?tteler
vol. 78, Wiesbaden,
idem, 'Magic and the formation of Protestant
1997), pp. 75-92;
Forschungen,
in his Religion and culture in Germany (1400-1800), ed. Lyndal Roper
culture in Germany',
popular
a historian
A. Brady,
of the
'Robert W. Scribner,
(Leiden, 2001), pp. 323-45. See also Thomas
in ibid., pp. 9?26. The thesis was also implicit in Scribner's earlier For the sake of
German Reformation',
'Reformation
and R. W.
1981).
simplefolk: popular propaganda for theGerman Reformation (Cambridge,
8
Past
See the classic article by Gerald Strauss, 'Success and failure in the German Reformation',
'Success and failure in
and Present, 67 (1975), pp. 30-63. In the English context, see Christopher Haigh,
Past and Present, 173 (2001), pp. 28-49.
the English Reformation',
9
A key contribution here was Peter Burke, Popular culture in early modern Europe (New York, 1978).
10
is not, by
Ulinka Rublack,
Reformation Europe (Cambridge,
2005), esp. pp. 10-11, 155-7. This
influential work of syn
contrast, a theme or problem
explicitly tackled by Diarmaid MacCulloch's
does take
thesis, Reformation: Europe's house divided, i4go-iyoo
(London, 2003), though his discussion
account
of the general
historiographical
trends described
in this essay.
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
REVIEWS
5OI
to
to which
is the extent
it has begun
of this process
of reinterpretation
a trend that also
to encompass
the eighteenth
and nineteenth
centuries,
a
to
to
reflects
the growing
the move
tendency
'Long Reformation'
envisage
speak of
ment
moment
reform and renewal
less as a telescoped
that lasted at
of religious
historical
A
further
move
index
forward
over several centuries.11

than as something
that extended
Important
and others has drawn
attention
Davies,
Jane Shaw, Sasha Handley,
by Owen
to the resilience
in magic
and persistence
of belief
and the supernatural
after 1700, and not
at the level of the illiterate
and unlearned.
It has shown how assumptions
about
merely
most
a few decades,
recent work
and
prodigies
survived
miracles,
invisible
providence,
and adapted
world,
as
immortalized
the
'Age
itself. Fresh
Enlightenment
demons,
ghosts,
angels,
to the intellectual
and
of Reason',
studies
in a manner
of the occult
that
and
other
cultural
clouds
in Hanoverian
inhabitants
challenges
the very
and Victorian
of
the
of a period
concept
England
contentious
of
are
of a decisive
in this sphere
the notion
cultural
rupture
rendering
increasingly
to the
that
the
of magic
and pointing
and alternative
resurgence
apparent
possibility
a
new
in
modern
British
less
than the re
may
represent
cosmologies
society
departure
of vigorous
older traditions
that previously
its surface.12
emergence
lay beneath
Three
Setting
fensive
to be mentioned.
deserve
historiographical
developments
or Counter
in writing
transformation
about
the Catholic
a conservative
the older view
that this was merely
reaction
further
concomitant
aside
to the
shock
of
the Protestant
historians
The
first is the
Reformation.
against
or de
have
the
emphasized
set of impulses
and shared many
grew
to intensify
Both
and spiritualize
the piety of the populace
and to prune
priorities.
sought
was
accumu
to
the
accretions
and
dubious
have
away
corruptions
Christianity
perceived
lated in the course
of its entrenchment
and
in the preceding
institutionalization
half
extent
response
to which
millennium.
sacred
both movements
Both
and
to eradicate
to
the boundaries
between
'superstition',
police
and to intensify
the interior faith and moral
fervour of the
tightly,
to which
was
served to stress the extent
the Tridentine
Church
itself
wanted
secular more
trend has
laity.13 This
a
in
that,
engaged
campaign
to be encapsulated
have come
to restrain
saints,
assault,
out of a common
in some
respects
in the phrase
at least, contributed
'the disenchantment
to the
that
developments
of the world'.
It too tried
to curtail unorthodox
of lay enthusiasm,
of the cult of
aspects
to subject manifestations
to rigorous
of the divine
testing and investigation,
in the fifty years
Luther's
bold
in
protest
following
against
indulgences
manifestations
and
particularly
11
Nicholas
The
Tyacke, ed., England's longReformation, 1500-1800 (London, 1998) ;Peter G. Wallace,
hng European Reformation: religion, political conflict and the searchfor conformity, 1350-1750 (Basingstoke, 2004).
12
Owen Davies, Witchcraft, magic and culture, 1736-1951 (Manchester,
1999); Jane Shaw, Miracles in
Visions of an unseen world: ghost beliefs and ghost
Enlightenment England (New Haven,
2006); Sasha Handley,
stories in eighteenth-centuryEngland (London, 2007); Owen Davies and Willem
de Bl?court, eds., Beyond the
witch trials: witchcraft and magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester,
2004); idem and idem, Witchcraft
continued: popular magic in modem Europe (Manchester,
2004); Jonathan
Barry, 'Piety and the patient:
medicine
and religion in eighteenth-century
in Roy Porter, ed., Patients and practitioners : lay
Bristol',
other unpublished work by
perceptions ofmedicine inpre-industrial society (Cambridge,
1985), pp. 145-75, ^d
the same author also exemplifies
these tendencies. See also James Obelkevitch,
Religion and rural society :
of some of these interpretative
(Oxford, 1976), for a percipient
anticipation
and progress: or, did
trends, esp. pp. 302, 307. See also Jonathan Clark, 'Providence, predestination
the Enlightenment
in
fail?', Albion, 35 (2003), pp. 559-89, which provides a foretaste of a monograph
South Lindsey, 1825-1875
preparation.
13
Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (London,
Jean Delumeau,
Notably
1978), and Robert
Culture populaire et culture des ?lites dans la France moderne (XVe-XVIIIe si?cles) (Paris, 1978),
Muchembled,
trans, as Popular culture and elite culture inFrance 1400-1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane
(Baton Rouge,
1985).
HISTORICALJOURNAL
502
in
Wittenberg
humanist
1517.
moment
In
this
sense,
be seen as part of a broader

may
to retreat from the
themselves
evangelicals
a
at
for
least
Thereafter,
piety
generation.
in a manner
the miraculous
that made
it one of
the Reformation
which
Catholic
prompted
of traditional
efflorescences
more
extravagant
the Catholic
Church
re-embraced
we
the scrupulous
the baroque,
should not overlook
wariness
though
a
in ecclesiastical
that remained
thread
about authenticating
the sacred
life.14
continuing
are a testament
to the
and Roman
The
records
of the Spanish,
Venetian,
Inquisitions
the hallmarks
of
that
surrounded
the thaumaturgie
and prophetic
claims
imposture
and
and
about
whether
cloistered
zealous
relics
nuns,
saints,
images
aspiring
or devout
to recognize
it is important
the significant
doctrinal
dif
priests,
laity.15 While
and the divergent
that divided
the two Reformations
ferences
theological
assumptions
in various ways were
the fact remains
that both
that shaped
their endeavours,16
seeking
anxieties
made
to
about
about
redraw
religion.
observation
boundaries
the
That
drew
between
these
they
that early modern
and
'magic',
'religion'
in different
boundaries
places
and Protestantism
Catholicism
and official
'superstition'
from the
does not detract
had
some
key
objectives
in
common.
The
second
trend
historiographical
our
concerns
the medieval
centuries.
Over
the last three
in this period
has been
and
enriched,
revised,
religion
understanding
a chief effect of which
an
to
been
has
extended
by
scholarship,
increasingly
sophisticated
one of the fundamental
bases
traditional
of the
upon which
interpretations
challenge
were built. As Eamon Duffy
and others have shown with much
and
Reformation
sympathy
decades
of
was
religion
and retained
not
in terminal
decline.
It had remarkable
vitality,
the respect and loyalty of perhaps
the vast majority
to relinquish
far
of whom
it for the new religion.17 How
of the laity, many
reluctant
proved
of
and skillfully
with
the pagan
beliefs
and practices
it had willingly
syncretized
co-opted
a moot
erroneous
to dismiss
in the late
remains
culture
religious
Europeans
point,18 but it is
late medieval
sensitivity,
and
inventiveness
vigour,
14
See, among others, Robert Evans, The making of theHabsburg monarchy, 1550-1750: an interpretation
'The recatholicisation
of the Upper
Palatinate
(c. 1621
1984), ch. 11; Trevor Johnson,
(Oxford,
c. 1700)' (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge,
1991); Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in his saints: Counter-Reformation
propaganda inBavaria (Berkeley, 1993); Marc M. Forster, Catholic revival in the age of theBaroque: religious
'Miracles and the
2001); Alexandra Walsham,
identity in southwest Germany, 1550-1750 (Cambridge,
to England', Historical Journal, 46 (2003), pp. 779-815. On attempts to
mission
Counter Reformation
authenticate
the sacred, see Simon Ditchfield,
liturgy, sanctity and history in Tridentine Italy: PietroMaria
Siraisi, 'Signs and evidence:
1995); Nancy G
Campi and thepreservation of theparticular (Cambridge,
and the Italian universities,
autopsy and sanctity in late sixteenth-century
Italy', in eadem, Mediane
1250-1600 (Leiden, 2001), pp. 356-80.
15
See Anne Jacobson
Schutte, Aspiring saints :pretense of holiness, Inquisition and gender in theRepublic of
:
Venice, 1618-1750 (Baltimore, 2001); Stephen Haliczer, Between exaltation and infamy female
mystics in the
the Spanish Inquisition,
Golden Age of Spain (New York, 2002); Andrew Keitt,
'Religious enthusiasm,
of the world', Journal oftheHistory of Ideas, 65 (2004), pp. 231-50; idem, Inventing
and the disenchantment
the sacred: imposture, Inquisition, and the boundaries of the supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden, 2005).
16
for the people in early modern
Euan Cameron,
'For reasoned faith or embattled creed? Religion
Europe', Transactions of theRoyal Historical Society, 6th ser., 8 (1998), pp. 165-87.
17
Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion inEngland, c. 1400-1580 (New Haven,
1992).
18
see
that Christianity willing co-operated with and appropriated
For the argument
pagan magic,
I. J. Flint, The rise of magic in early medieval Europe (Oxford 1991); but note the critical review by
Valerie
Alexander
pp.
Murray,
'Missionaries
and magic
in Dark-Age
Europe',
Past
and Present,
136 (1992),
186-205.
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
503
of
Thomas)
speak (with Keith
not
did
that
Church'
share,
contemporaries
'magic of the medieval
At the same time, we
lens of anachronistic
to see it through
the distorting
assumptions.20
and ongoing
in a periodic
of this era were
cannot
engaged
ignore the fact that churchmen
excrescences
the par
and to establish
of 'superstitious'
to
relieve
Christianity
struggle
in the twelfth century.
at various
which
of orthodoxy,
ameters
notably
junctures,
peaked
such
reformers
de Nogent,
like Guibert
and ecclesiastical
Church
councils,
bishops
vigilant
articulated
and the concerns
were
of areas of vulnerability
as John Gerson
conscious
they
to
the sur
in ways
that help
writers
of post-Reformation
the themes
explain
anticipate
when
confronted
some features
exhibited
of late medieval
which
by
piety
fragility
prising
and
'belief with
This body of work has also taught us that 'scepticism'
Protestantism.21
or diabolical
coexisted
whether
divine
of the supernatural
to manifestations
regard
that tri
the
with
circumstances
middle
the
explanation
ages,
determining
throughout
for ex
and
'scientific'
on a
'Medical'
occasion.
arguments,
techniques
given
umphed
in the course
for sainthood
to test the claims of candidates
were
deployed
regularly
ample,
some
the
have underlined
scholars
More
of canonization
provocatively,
proceedings.22
of
human
and
the physical
about
claims
that surrounded
doubt
tradition
of
reality
long
of demonological
that the elaboration
have
interaction.
demonic
theory
They
suggested
for systematic
and laid the foundations
in the thirteenth
that began
witch-hunting
century
a side-effect
of what
has been
anxieties
was a paradoxical
of these deep-seated
product
about
the settled assumptions
In the face of such scholarship,
'a crisis of belief'.23
termed
middle
ages
medieval
as no more
'credulity'
upon
than
which
superficially
is to judge
Christian.19
To
it by criteria
the Weberian
paradigm
of disenchantment
is predicated
19
'The Christian middle ages as an historiographical
problem', American Historical
John Van Engen,
as
thesis of the Catholic Reformation
Review, 91 (1986), pp. 519-52. This is directed against Delumeau's
a crusade to 'christianize' Europe for the first time, and broadly against other approaches
inspired by
the discipline of anthropology.
20
see the critique by Hildred Geertz
and
Thomas,
Religion and the decline of magic, ch. 2; and
Thomas's
of religion and magic', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975),
reply, 'An anthroplogy
pp. 71-109. Note also the comments of Duffy, Stripping of the altars, pp. 2, 8.
21
and R. I.Moore,
and his world',
in Henry Mayr-Harting
See R. I.Moore,
'Guibert de Nogent
eds., Studies in medieval history presented toR. H. C. Davis (London, 1985), pp. 107-18; Julia Smith, 'Oral
and written:
saints, miracles and relics in Brittany, c. 850-1250',
Speculum, 65 (1990), pp. 309?43; Dyan
of spirits, and Joan of Arc', American Historical
the discernment
Elliot, 'Seeing double: John Gerson,
Review, 107 (2002), pp. 26-54.
22
see Alexander Murray,
For sophisticated
discussions,
'Piety and impiety in thirteenth-century
and Derek Baker, eds., Popular belief and practice (Studies in Church History,
Italy', in G.J. Cuming
and the case of medieval
'Social mentalities
vol. 8, Cambridge,
1984), pp. 83-106; Susan Reynolds,
1 (1991), pp. 21-41; John Arnold, Belief and
scepticism', Transactions of theRoyal Historical Society, 6th ser.,
'
:
venerado
Condigna
unbelief inmedieval Europe (London, 2005), esp. pp. 216?30. See also S. J. Ridyard,
inR. Allen Brown, ed., Anglo-Norman studies
attitudes to the saints of the Anglo-Saxons',
post Conquest
a
IX: proceedings of theBattle Conference, ig86 (Woodbridge,
1987), pp. 179-206, for selective scepticism as
see
tests
Andr?
and
of
On
canonization
reflection of political
sanctity,
proceedings
imperatives.
Sainthood in the later middle ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge,
Vauchez,
1997), ch. 16; Katharine
Park,
Karen
'Relics of a fertile heart:

Rosoff
Encarnaci?n,
and
in Anne L. McClanan
the "autopsy"
of Clare of Montefalco',
eds., The material culture of sex, procreation, and marriage in premodern Europe
History and the supernatural in medieval England
115-33. Carl Watkins's
2002), pp.
period.
2008) will also offer a nuanced view of attitudes in the pre-Reformation
Stephens, Demon lovers:witchcraft, sex, and the crisis of belief "(Chicago and London, 2002). See
and Edward
shifts and the nature of evidence',
also Karen Jolly,
'Beliefs about magic:
conceptual
'
to Isidore of Seville ', in Karen Jolly, Catharina
and magic
from Augustine
Peters,
Superstition
(Basingstoke,
(Cambridge,
23
Walter
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5?4
The
idea of an enchanted
middle
untenable.24
ages is gradually
increasingly
becoming
the easy commonplaces
and distorting
in
So too should
characterizations
evaporating.
are
the era before
which
about
is not a certain
apt to engage
1500.25 This
early modernists
are
touchstone
can measure
we
Thereby
has been
that
'light'
we
by which
Reformation.
the
or
the alleged
desacralization
by the
judge
wrought
contrast
the
between
'darkness'
and
perpetuate
polemical
in
invidious
of
this
combination
with
the
movement,
legacy
in the conventional
remains
fossilized
academic
division
drawn
'
'
centuries
the theological
(early) modern
history. The
preceding
to be seen as part of the
of the mid-sixteenth
and liturgical
need
century
upheavals
prob
as
a
to
rather
than
it.
lem,
prelude
can be dealt with more
A third tendency
and that is a postmodernist
preoccu
briefly
of the most distinctive
of what we define as 'reason'. One
features
the relativity
pation with
between
and which
'
'
medieval
and
of recent
work
Renaissance,
in this field has been
beliefs about
early modern
of the deity Himself
interventions
the 'enormous
of
condescension
and
the unruly
called
context,
fairies, ghosts,
demons,
angels,
in another
from what
E. P. Thompson,
to dismiss
It is no longer acceptable
posterity'.26
as forms of irrational
delusion.
and the apocalypse
witches,
logic
to rescue
its determination
and
intellectual
coherence.
we
'Truth',
assumptions
Instead we
have
been
about
have
taught,
astrology,
to recognize
is culturally
providence,
their inner
and
socially
constructed.27
The
of all the historiographical

into disarray
periodization
consequence
traditional
throw
teleological
is a theme
in more
trends
and
I have
been
to undercut
to
has been
describing
the foundations
of the
upon which
simultaneously,
they support. This
they rest and which,
paradigms
to review
to which
I shall return at the end of the article, but first it is necessary
on the links between
the findings
Protestantism
and the
detail
of recent work
em
the sacred and the supernatural.
Here
renewed
of assumptions
about
on the
associ
and ambiguous
equivocal
legacy left by the upheavals
phasis will be placed
I shall then consider
how
it converged
with other
ated with
the Reformation.
intellectual,
in
that
further
the task of
and
social
cultural,
ways
complicate
developments
political,
transformation
assessing
A few
principally
of belief
decline
per
religion
easily
with
in divine
se. The
disentangled
Raudvere,
impact and
caveats must
its immediate
preliminary
concerned
and Edward
178-86 respectively.
24
See also Richard
latter,
from
long-term
be made
repercussions.
at the outset.
rather
'desacralization'
immanence
rather
contested
equally
the first, must
be
than
The
than with
the
rejection
first
is that
'secularization':
'The
development,
though
set aside for another
occasion.28
specific
rationality
of medieval
be
with
the
or marginalization
not unconnected
with
Peters, Witchcraft and magic inEurope: themiddle ages (London,

Kieckhefer,
I shall
magic',
The
of
or
second
2002), pp.
is
13-26,
American Historical
Review, 99 (1994), pp. 813-36.

25
see
to label the middle
the tendency
that challenges
For a collection
ages 'superstitious',
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart,
ed., The occult in medieval Europe (Basingstoke, 2005), introduction, pp. 1-10.
26
The making of theEnglish working class (Harmondsworth,
E. P. Thompson,
1968; first edn, 1963),
p. 12. Stuart Clark's Thinking with demons: the idea of witchcraft in early modern Europe (Oxford, 1997) is
perhaps the most powerful
27
See, notably, Steven
(Chicago,
28
For
trend.
and profound example of this interpretative
A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-centuryEngland
Shapin,
1994).
some notable
see Owen Chadwick,

The secularization of theEuropean mind in the
discussions,
The secularization of early modern England: from
nineteenth century (Cambridge,
Sommerville,
1975); C.John
inAlan
'The question of secularization',
religious culture to religiousfaith (New York, 1992); Blair Worden,
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
use
that my
of the word
shorthand
convenient
alties
of
the
for
supernatural
the broad
'disenchantment'
that was
event
'
'
must
and
process
or beyond
from
be distinguished
is at once
cluster
the realm
above
loose
:I
it both as a
and precise
employ
casu
that have been deemed
of phenomena
in its technical
of nature,
505
sense
as understood
to designate
thing
or
by contemporaries.
and entities
incidents
of the 'preternatural',
the category
or
causes
to
natural
and whose
be
abnormal,
extraordinary,
only
mysterious
as
or hidden
were merely
from feeble human
'occult'
space
Thirdly,
perception.
precludes
of the Reformation,
strands
between
full an exploration
of the differences
divergent
This
which
seemed
as
Nor
and radical,
be wished.
is
might
magisterial
the
between
individual
and collec
depth
relationship
that are a function
of the survival
of change
perceptions
and Calvinist,
Lutheran,
Zwinglian
in sufficient
there room to examine
the distorted
tive mentalities
and
and visibility
of certain
types
of sources
and
classes
of evidence.29
II
We
may
adopted
with
begin
a rhetoric
the observation
of rationality
in its early stages, Protestantism

deliberately
In the polemic
that poured
from the
enlightenment.
that would
the dross of
itself as a movement
purge
that,
and
it overtly presented
and prune away the 'superstitious'
of the Christian
the pure metal
'religion'
em
it. The
that had sprung up around
reformers
accretions
and pagan
liberally
popish
as
an
intellectual
of
the
the
of
darkness;
they spoke
Gospel
ployed
metaphor
light dispelling
of the populace
from the yoke of ignorance
for liberating
the mass
in which
instrument
and
pulpit
'magic'
they had
credulity
critique
press,
from
been
that
which
scorn on the crude materialism

and they poured
kept by the papacy;
were
elements
characterized
late medieval
they
echoing
piety. Here
of medieval
been
enunciated
had already
heretics,
groups
by various
and
of a
in
the Lollards,
Nor was this
aspects of popular
religious belief and practice.30
against
to educated
like
An
and
thinkers
dissident
earthy,
John Wyclif.
theologians
as
consecrated
and
hallowed
'mere
stocks
and stones'
for
'rationalist'
contempt
objects
cluding
confined
and
for the host
as common
bread
also found more
than occasional
expression
among
the
and Steve Pincus, eds., A nation transformed: England after theRestoration (Cambridge,
2001),
pp. 20?40. For recent sociological discussion with reference to the modern period, see Jos? Casanova,
Public religions in themodem world (Chicago, 1994), ch. 1 ;David Martin,
On secularization: towards a revised
Houston
and Burlington, VT, 2005); Grace Davie, The sociology of religion (London, 2007),
The decline of the sacred in
definitions of these terms offered by S. S. Acquaviva,
is the
industrial society, trans. Patricia lipscomb
secularization
(Oxford, 1979), esp. p. 35. For Acquaviva,
use of the sacred or of the attribution of sacred significance
to behaviour,
rejection of the magical
whereas desacralization
is a change in the intensity and the diffusion of the experience of the sacred as
general theory (Aldershot
ch. 3. Cf. the different
psychological
experience.
29
For important remarks about the relationship between
individual and collective mentalities
and
their role in intellectual change, see Michael Hunter,
Science and the shape of orthodoxy: intellectual change
in late seventeenth-centuryBritain (Woodbridge,
1995), esp. pp. 11-18; and idem, Robert Boyle (1627-g?):
scrupulosity and science (Woodbridge,
2000), p. 14 and ch. 10.
30
On Wycliffite
views on these topics, see Ann Hudson, The premature Reformation: Wycliffite texts and
ed., Selectionsfrom English Wycliffite

1988), pp. 281-90, 302-3, Anne Hudson,
110-15. This was not a universal feature of medieval
1978), pp. 83-8,
writings (Cambridge,
heresy:
for instance, retained a deep reverence for the real presence
in the Eucharist. See Thomas
Hussitism,
A. Fudge, The magnificent ride: thefirst Reformation inHussite Bohemia (Aldershot, 1998).
Lollard history (Oxford,
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5o6
this extent
To
unlearned.31
the
resources
linguistic
for
launching
an
attack
sacra
upon
were
mentalism
present.
already partially
in the abstract,
This
the fact that, assessed
Protestant
did
is not to undermine
theology
a
and original
assault upon
the assumptions
that
in many
constitute
respects
significant
as
of the
sacred.
the
buttressed
the medieval
economy
by
Especially
expounded
a
in
it
Edward
Muir
calls
'revolution
ritual
Swiss
what
reformers,
theory'
represented
were
as
a 'new
sacraments
The
reconceptualized
metaphysics'.
theological
or mechanisms
bearers
of spiritual grace. While
Luther
signs rather than automatic
to retain a sense of divine
in the Eucharist
of ubiquity,
presence
by the doctrine
sought
as a memorial
of
Christ's
sacrifice
it
rather
than a
reconceptualized
Zwingli
radically
and
embodied
mere
re-enactment
miraculous
were
mysteries
themselves.
likewise
of
Calvin
adopted
the communion
notion
that
their
redeemer
and
saviour.
such as blessings
or
conduits
receptacles
: to believe
resentations
words
heathen
idolatry
Transcendental
to
that were
supposed
reify these holy
in and of
intrinsic
gestures,
symbolic
lacking
efficacy
a different
and more
which
the
complex
preserved
position,
was an instrument
to
God
united believers
actively
by which
it. The
redefined
physical
Protestants
and prayers
the
intercession
ciprocal
that some of its tenets
detract
from
foundations
the
terrestrial
way
that had
the
the
emphatically
like
sacrament?is
objects
rejected
idea
that forms
of
as
could
operate
of the deity and saints were
of holy power.
rep
Images
simply
was
to
that they had any kind of implanted
sacredness
equivalent
a barrier between
and the soul of the individual.
the Almighty
and placed
the mediation
of the mun
truth could not be accessed
through
spiritual
to affect
of mankind
helplessness
also
and material
in theory,
physical world.32 Nor,
dead:
the
abolition
and
the
living
dane
rituals
as
there be any
of purgatory
and
its fate in the afterlife
other to secure a resting

in the thinking
of medieval
that Protestantism
and
disrupted
to assist
fact
could
had
each
roots
of the contemporary
understanding
strands
It systematized
realms.
profound
intellectual
form
of communication
which
between
the
soteriology
of re
ruled out any possibility
in heaven.33 To recognize
place
scholastics
undercut
stressed
and mystics
is not to
least some of the
at
of the relationship
between
in the Western
philosophical
the divine
tradition
and
in a
implications.34
'
Some unorthodox
See, for example, Walter L. Wakefield,
popular ideas of the thirteenth cen
et human?stica: studies in medieval and renaissance culture, n.s. 4 (1973), pp. 25-35. For
tury', Medievalia
of this strand of popular rationalism,
see, for example, Andreas Karlstadt's
'Dialogue
representations
31
on the Lord's
ed., The European Reformations sourcebook (Oxford, 2000),

1524, in Carl Lindberg,
Supper',
116-18.
32
See Eire, War against the idols; Edward Muir, Ritual in earlymodem Europe (Cambridge,
1997), ch. 5,
see Brian A. Gerrish,
in the
and p. 181. On
the Eucharist,
'Sign and reality: the Lord's Supper
in Gerrish, The old Protestantism and the new (Chicago and Edinburgh,
reformed confessions',
1982);
pp.
and Edinburgh,
theEucharistie theology ofJohn Calvin (Minneapolis
1993);
Elwood, The body broken: the Calvinist doctrine of theEucharist and the symbolization of power in
The Eucharist in the
ll?\ Lee Palmer Wandel,
sixteenth-centuryFrance (New York, 1999), esP- PP- 4~5> ^7,
Gerrish,
Grace and Gratitude:
Christopher
Reformation (Cambridge, 2006).

33
The
Peter Marshall,
Beliefs and the dead inReformation England (Oxford, 2002) ;Craig Kolokofsky,
2000). See also
Reformation of the dead: death and ritual in early modern Germany, 1450-1700 (Basingstoke,
Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall,
eds., The place of thedead: death and remembrance in latemedieval and early
modem Europe (Cambridge, 2000).
34
See Alister E. McGrath,
The intellectual origins of die European Reformation (2nd edn, Oxford,
2004;
Forerunners of theReformation : the shape of latemedieval thought: illusfrated by
first edn, 1987) ;Heiko Oberman,
key documents (London, 1967); idem, The Reformation: roots and ramifications, trans. Andrew Colin Gow
(Edinburgh,
1994).
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
What
translation
watch,
emphasis
of these
iconoclastic
destruction
structures
these
not,
profanation
destructive
and
in fact,
that
acts,
artefacts
forms
then
effect
of dispelling
was
'discredited
must
fraudulence
which
by
inertia'.36
The
monks,
and
directed
the aura
against priests,
of reverence
that had
poking
it was an
a sense of the corrosive

to recapture
in which
served as a highly
comedy
period.
Attention
which
see a
of the physical
world.
To
to
reduced
great abbey
to a pyre without
was
to be convinced
disaster
that
striking
were
indeed
lifeless and vacuous
and that acts against
them
an
to become
to
It was
of
processes
sacrilege.
accomplice
songs, and pictures

plays,
a feature
of Protestantism
when
ways
507
is the
the
impact
into practice may have had upon
those who wit
the initial and later phases
To
of the Reformation.
dissolution
of monasteries
and
and chantry
chapels
was
to have
and crucifixes
in churches
personal
received
helped
satirical
need
sometimes
the internalization
of ideological
for such
justifications
to engender
them.35 It was to acquire palpable
proof that
even or
and powerless,
when
out
those carrying
perhaps
especially
and fire had not been certain of this at the outset.
'The supernatural',
to echo Margaret
Aston,
and desecration
filement
of
it has
necessitated
or indeed
they were
impotent
these ordeals by axe
statutes
of
of the desacralization
experience
rubble or to cast an image on
were
than
precepts
theological
and participated
in them during
or to collaborate
in, the physical
nessed
the
more
deserves
REVIEWS
also be paid
formerly
fun at the pope
and
unruly
power
rituals of de
carnivalesque
the mass
also had the visible
surrounded
and
them.
So too did
the cult of saints
the
that were
rebellious
We
protest movement.37
humour
and
and
the
by
laughter
mechanism
for d?mystification
in this
exerted
successful
to the
with
preoccupation
this moment
of cultural
Catholic
and
forgery,
imposture,
Protestants
denounced
accompanied
rupture.38
cures and
of thaumaturgie
of the saints as instances
of popish deceit and
apparitions
were
The
tales that saturated medieval
as fables
duplicity.
hagiography
similarly dismissed
a
devised
by idle friars intent upon deluding
gullible
laity.39 Wonder-working
images and
relics like the Rood
as
of Boxley
and the Blood of Hailes were
fakes, and
exposed
ingenious
to prophets,
divine visions
that appeared
like Elizabeth
the
seers, and 'holy maids'
Barton,
reports
35
Ethan H. Shagan, Popular politics and theEnglish Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), esp. ch. 5.
36
'Rites of destruction by fire', in her Faith andfire: popular and unpopular religion,
Aston,
Margaret
The power of
?350?1600 (London and Ronceverte,
1993), pp. 291?313, at p. 302; David Freedberg,
images: studies in the history and theory of response (Chicago,
1991). See also the remarks of Sommerville,
Secularization, p. 62; Helen L. Parish, Monks, miracles and magic: Reformation representations of themedieval
church (London and New York, 2005), pp. 159?60. More generally see Aston, England's iconoclasts, I:Laws
Voracious idols and violent hands: iconoclasm inReformation
against images (Oxford, 1988) ;Lee Palmer Wandel,
Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge,
1994); Julie Spraggon, Puritan iconoclasm during theEnglish Civil
War
2003): John Walter,

(Woodbridge,
'"Abolishing
superstition with sedition"? The politics of
in England,
popular iconoclasm
1640-1642', Past and Present, 183 (2004), pp. 79-123.
37
R. W. Scribner,
carnival and the world turned upside-down',
in his Popular culture
'Reformation,
and popular movements in Refomation Germany (London and Ronceverte,
1987), pp. 71-101 ; Patrick
Collinson, From iconoclasm to iconophobia: the cultural impact of the secondEnglish Reformation: theStenton Lecture
1985 (Reading, 1986).
38
Peter Marshall,
in the reign of Henry VHT, Past and Present, 178 (2003),
'Forgery and miracles
pp. 39-73. See also Rob Iliffe, 'Lying wonders and juggling tricks: religion, nature and imposture in
inJames E. Force and David S. Katz, eds., Everything connects: in conferencewith
early modern England',
Richard E. Popkin, essays in his honour (Leiden, 1999).

39
See Helen Parish, '"Impudent
and abominable
fictions":
rewriting saints' lives in the English
Sixteenth Century Journal, 32 (2001), pp. 45-65; Parish, Monks, miracles and
Reformation',
magic, esp.
chs. 3, 5, 6.
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5o8
or the effects of
to either human
guile
psycho
for
intrusions
of the supernatural
had
strategies
discrediting
reputed
'
in the medieval
but
neither
the
immediate
effects
of
this
strain
of
past
scepti
in so
it left to later polemicists
should be underestimated.
Yet
the rich bequest
infamous
Nun
precedents
cism' nor
far as
were
of Kent,
illness.
somatic
attributed
Such
was
the devil
seen
to be
source
the ultimate
of
such
fabrications
and
fictions
and
were
to be his agents and minions
and priesthood
this line of
literally believed
was
no means
The
rhetoric
of
'disenchantment'
inherently
desacralizing.
by
so central
to the reformers'
assault
the Church
of Rome
upon
paradoxically
the papacy
argument
that was
sense that
from a heightened
much
of its urgency
acquired
at work
in the world.
condemnations
Protestant
forces were
supernatural
of Catholicism
or
preternatural
as a form
of
an
reflected
and sanctioned
and magic
conviction,
ingrained
inspired
in
Satan
and
his
would
be
active
the
lead up to the
that
by Scripture,
disciples
particularly
themselves
evidence
of the reign of Antichrist
Such lies and illusions were
end of the world.
the culmination
of a great cosmic battle between
and proof
that the Apocalypse,
good and
witchcraft,
sorcery,
evil, was
nigh. The Reformation

and anxiety.
Protestant
expectancy
stimulated
demonological
writing
as the enemies
society
This
us
brings
could
sacred
may
alike.
an
to the point
that Protestantism,
In the guise
in the world.
intervene
the
attempt
depravity
tendency
attacked
his people
Catholicism
of divine
intervention
was
papists
40
not
drives
to eradicate
witches
from
in no
the notion
sense, rejected
of providence,
of the doctrine
of God
try, and
and defended
reward
vigorously
and
individuals
that
the
it placed
the precept
communities
arose because
of, and in tandem
and to underline
the
saintly intermediaries
If anything
the reformers
of human
and helplessness
beings.
strengthened
to detect
behind
and
the hand
of the Almighty
storms,
floods,
fires,
to deflect
other
strange accidents
for sin and
judgements
in the sky were
visions
encourage
to inspire
of God.40
the power and omnipotence

to warn,
chastise,
punish,
stress on divine
renewed
foresight
This
to have
intensified
argued
eschatological
with manifestations
of diabolical
malice
be
preoccupation
and helped
on
emphasis
that he interceded
fresh
with,
utter
thus
swiftly
attention
away
and might
from
as divine
events and to interpret
these visitations
catastrophic
and strange
like prodigies,
of nature
monsters,
impiety. Anomalies
sermons'
he sent to
and
'visible
the 'extraordinary
preachers'
to repent and amend.41 The very vehemence
with which
Protestants
and
was
of their fear
of superstition
and magic
itself a function
that if the false religion
and idolatry practised
by the
they believed
the nations
it.
that tolerated
God would
eradicated
step in to plague
as a form
:
Thinking with demons, pt m; Gary K. Waite, Heresy, magic, and witchcraft in early modem
the writings
of Protestant
'Rational superstition:
2003); P. G Maxwell-Stuart,
(Basingstoke,
inHelen Parish and William G. Naphy,
eds., Religion and superstition inReformation Europe
demonologists',
see Andrew Cunningham
and Ole
(Manchester, 2002), pp. 170-87. For apocalypticism more generally,
Peter Grell, The four horsemen of the apocalypse: religion, war, famine and death in Reformation Europe
See Clark,
Europe
2000), esp. ch. 1; and in the context of France, Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: la
(Cambridge,
violence au temps des troubles de religion {vers 1525?vers 1610) (2 vols., Seyssel, 1990).
41
Robin
Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and gnosis: apocalypticism in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation
Providence in early modern England (Oxford,
1999); Julie
1988); Alexandra Walsham,
(Stanford, CA,
Crawford, Marvellous Protestantism: monstrous births in post-Reformation England (Baltimore and London,
2005); William
(Manchester,
Reformation
E.
Burns,
2002). Philip
An
age of wonders: prodigies, politics and providence in England, 1657-1727

a book on this subject in the context of
is currently completing
Soergel
Germany.
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
The
what
thus remained
world
that
to be populated
the slogan
reiterated
continued
Scribner
called
'
a moralized
and demons.42
by angels
had ceased',
that 'miracles
509
'
universe
If Protestant
and
one, moreover,
re
propagandists
not mean
that God
they did
but
nature,
only that, since
longer disrupt,
change,
saw less need
to do so. What
had been
and received,
He
revealed
they denied
or laity
at the behest
of human
whether
miracles
could occur
clergy
beings,
not
if fine, distinction
that has
been
mental,
by
always
sufficiently
recognized
peatedly
himself
did
Nor
historians.43
or subvert
no
could
the reformers
the devil
deprive
the traditional
view
the truth
was
that
a funda
modern
to bring about puzzling

of his ability
no more
that these were
than clever
even if they maintained

own
tricks permitted
To
by the Lord for his
mysterious
(but ultimately
benign)
purposes.44
as medieval
shared
the same
this extent
Protestants
and
contemporary
cosmology
- as
the Reformation
be said to have done
for polemical
Catholics.
What
much
may
reasons
as for any other
was to
to
the
of
the preternatural
and to
category
help
expand
into
the
miraculous
the
the
latter
the
medium
which
natural,
by
being
collapse
increasingly
effects,
God
to communicate
chose
at large. The
to humanity
his messages
status of events were
the precise
problem
was
that these
lost on the un
largely
were
in which
in a context
advances
in natural philosophy
of scientific
the
such
between
boundary
categories
knowledge,
state of flux. Confidence
and porous
but also in a continual
that
distinctions
about
hair-splitting
learned populace.
Furthermore,
back
pushing
was not
merely
human
vision
strain.
It was
the frontiers
subjective
reliable
provided
giving
way,
under
access
the
to
developments,
unprecedented
to be
modern
sight. Early
people
began
them.45
deceiving
intellectual
It is also
a mistake
a consequence
about
assumptions
was
to
position
of Protestant
the presence
was
of the world
itself under
knowledge
of a conjunction
of religious,
and
cultural,
on the
and malleability
of
fallibility
emphasis
tormented
be
by the fear that their eyes might
to and
influence
the religion
of inner
predestinarianism
and unpredictable
conviction
in opposition
intervention
and
that
spiritual
intensity
to an outlook
suffused by
of occult
forces. On
the
42
Scribner,
'Reformation
and the "disenchantment

of the world"'
'The Reformation,
and
popular magic
from sacramental world to moralised
and desacralisation:
universe'. On the devil in
The devil in early modern England (Stroud, 2000); Brian
English Protestant culture, see Darren Oldridge,
The devil and
;
Levack, The witchhunt in earlymodem Europe (3rd edn, Basingstoke,
2006) Nathan
Johnstone,
demonism in early modem England (Cambridge,
and Alexandra
2006). On angels, see Peter Marshall
eds., Angels in the early modem world (Cambridge,
2006), especially the editors' introduction,
'Migrations of angels in the early modern world', pp. 13-21.
43
in Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, eds., Hermeticism
D. P. Walker,
'The cessation of miracles',
and the Renaissance: intellectual history and the occult in early modem Europe (1988); Mosche
Sluhovsky,
Walsham,
'Calvinist
miracles
and
Renaissance and Reformation,
in sixteenth-century
of the miraculous
Huguenot
thought',
'Miracles in post-Reformation
19 (1995), pp. 5-25; Alexandra Walsham,
and Jeremy Gregory,
eds., Signs, wonders and miracles: representations of divine
the concept
in Kate Cooper
England',
power in the life of the church (Studies in Church History, vol. 41, Woodbridge,
2005), pp. 273-306; Shaw,
44
Miracles, esp. pp. 22-33.
Clark, Thinking with demons, pt 11,esp. ch. 11.
45
'Marvelous facts and miraculous
evidence
Ibid., pp. 153-5,161-78,
262-6, 279; Lorraine Daston,
in early modern Europe', Critical Enquiry, 18 (1991), pp. 93-124; Lorraine Daston and Katharine
Park,
of sight', see
Wonders and the order of nature, 1150?1750 (New York,
1998). On the 'de-rationalization
Stuart Clark, Vanities of the eye: vision in early modem European culture (Oxford, 2007).
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5io
a
this was
contrary,
revolved
piety which
of
into the conscience
miraculous
the
around
the
idea
that
true believer.
the Lord
It also
fostered
infused
actively
an obsessive
grace
assurance
that one numbered
and intangible
of tangible
signs that might
provide
like the death of a friend or relative
disaster
from a devastating
the elect
among
personal
that this
to a minor mishap
like the discovery
of a spider in a porridge
bowl.46 To observe
scrutiny
brand
called
of introspective
'witchcraze'
providentialism
is in no sense
may
to see
have
on the so
influence
moderating
of
desacralization:
agent
by deflecting
one to
sins that had exposed
the private
exerted
it as an
towards
from external
scapegoats
inside the
of the supernatural
the operations
itmerely
relocated
of the Almighty,
or
of God
itself could
the Word
soul.47 For fervent Protestants,
moreover,
hearing
reading
The word was not 'just a communicative
and mystical
be a near sacramental
experience.
'48
some
to believe
and sectaries
This
the
divine.
It
could
mediate
puritans
inspired
sign.
an outsider,
To
of the Holy
vessels
and instruments
that they were
they might
Spirit.49
seem to have made
idols of themselves.50
attention
away
the wrath
in which
Protestantism
is just one respect
may be said
it demoted
of sacred persons.
many men
Although
This
to have
church
the medieval
of
members
the
from
the ranks
traditional
company
of sainthood,
of heaven,
it sanctioned
albeit
on
retained
and women
the notion
a
place
canonized
for
by
of respect for other
of their exemplary
in either
this
exercise
degree
the basis
it denied
which
power,
they could
their lives for
who had sacrificed
or the next.51 Furthermore,
in the guise of martyrs
world
the
cults of celebrity
who were
the centre of popular
the faith and charismatic
preachers
some
to
the
not entirely
Reformation
regard
living
tendency
unwittingly
perpetuated
as set apart or
of some of the former
chosen
human
by God. The deaths
beings
specially
while
were
signs like eerie fights and claps of thunder
by prodigious
accompanied
allegedly
a reputation
for expelling
some of the latter like John
Foxe
and James Ussher
acquired
virtue
rather
than
intercessory
46
See Kaspar von Greyerz,

Vorsehungsglaube und Kosmologie: Studien zu englischen Selbstzeugnissen des 17.
and
Instituts London, vol. 25, G?ttingen
Historischen
des Deutschen
Jahrhunderts (Ver?ffentlichungen
in
evidence on predestination,
covenant, and special providence',
Zurich,
1990); idem, 'Biographical
and Guenther
Hartmut
Lehmann
Roth,
eds., Weber's Protestant ethic: origins, evidence, contexts
a
1993), pp. 273?84; Paul Seaver, Wallington's world: puritan artisan in
(Washington, DC, and Cambridge,
1998),
(Basingstoke,
seventeenth-centuryLondon (London, 1985); John Spurr, English puritanism, i6oj-i68g
The persecutory imagination: English puritanism and the literature of religious despair
ch. 10; John Stachniewski,
(Oxford,
47
On
1991).
this theme,
in Sydney
see Alan Macfarlane,

'A Tudor anthropologist:
George Giffbrd's Discourse and
ed., The damned art: essays in the literature of witchcraft (London,
1977),
Anglo,
in
'Protestant demonology:
sin, superstition and society, c. 1520-1630',
pp. 140-55; Stuart Clark,
centres
and
modem
Gustav
Ankarloo
and
eds.,
witchcraft:
peripheries
European
Henningsen,
Early
Bengt
(Oxford, 1993), pp. 45-81 ;Clark, Thinking with demons, chs. 29, 30, 32.
48
Rublack, Reformation Europe, p. 157.
49
Visionary women: ecstatic prophecy in seventeenth-centuryEngland (Berkeley, 1992); Nigel
Phyllis Mack,
Diafogue',
Smith, Perfection proclaimed: language and literature in English radical religion, 1640-1660
(Oxford, 1989);
The English radical irruigLnation:culture, religion, and revolution, 1630-1660
Nicholas McDowell,
(Oxford,
2003).
50
Ann Kibbey,
The interpretation of material shapes in puritanism: a study of rhetoric,prejudice, and violence
1986).
(Cambridge,
51
See Carol Piper Heming,
(Kirksville, MI,
Protestants and the cult of the saints in German-speaking Europe,
1517-1531
2003).
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
and
demons
foretelling
Martin
Luther
Famously,
that was
future
events
himself
was
were
impending
sometimes
the
defeat
are apparent
apparitions
and the female
punishments
serious
attention
given
by
alike.54
lay people
young women
who
dential
and
mercy
Protestants
may
but
counterparts,
be acknowledged
Nor
can we
the
of
and charged
and adolescent
the
seers whose
ecclesiastical
and
the areas
though
to
prayed
just
these
as
frequently
after
'saints'
fraudsters
of religious
the
as victims
the
should
behaviour,
recipients
of satanic
fashion
of overlap between
pre- and post-Reformation
the differences
and ruptures.
not
by ministers
messengers,
of older modes
reinterpretation
were
seen as
themselves
sometimes
beneficence,
not have
in a manner
were
pronouncements
in post-Reformation
authorities
In a further
starved
Armada.52
Spanish
revered
continuities
superficial
of the many
Lutheran
who
prophets
with warning
their communities
of
in the case
some of these were branded

That
witches,
demoniacs,
England.
as divine
distract from
the fact that others were
indeed regarded
and
511
and posthumously
represented
cult of saints.53 Similar
of the medieval
reminiscent
highly
earlier patterns
of piety
blessed with
angelical
with
as
such
REVIEWS
of
of provi
delusion.55
their
Catholic
mentalities
must
alongside
the fact
that English monarchs

to be seen as conduits
continued
of
like scrofula,
of healing
diseases
power
capable
notwithstanding
puritan
the popish
elements
of the ceremonies
it was dispensed
and
through which
of
these
association
with
the
Stuart dynasty.56
procedures
by
tainting
deposed
ignore
thaumaturgie
doubts
about
the
later
the provocative
John
Bossy has made
suggestion
in part a by-product
of the Reformation
rulers was
at the heart of the mass:
stantiation
sacred presence
that
the
sacralization
repudiation
passed from
of early modern
of transub
of the miracle
the host
to the person
of
52
see Thomas
On martyrs,
S. Freeman,
'Fate, faction and fiction in Foxe's Book ofMartyrs',
Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 601-23,
other contributions;
Brad S. Gregory,
among his many
Salvation by stake: martyrdom in early modem Europe (Cambridge, MA,
1999), esp. ch. 5. On Foxe as a
see Thomas
S. Freeman,
thaumaturge,
'Through a Venice glass darkly: John Foxe's most famous
in Cooper
see Ute
and Gregory,
miracle',
eds., Signs, wonders and miracles, pp. 307?20. For Ussher,
'
: the stylisation of Archbishop
"The spirit of prophecy has not wholly left the world"
Lotz-Heumann,
in Parish and Naphy,
eds., Religion and superstition, pp. 119-32.
James Ussher as a prophet',
53
R. W. Scribner,
'Incombustible Luther: the image of the reformer in early modern Germany',
Past and Present, no (1986), pp. 38-68.
54
For prophets, seeMack,
Visionary women; Diane Watt, Secretaries ofGod: women prophets in latemedieval
and early modem England (Woodbridge,
Providence, ch. 4, esp. pp. 203-18;
eadem,
1997); Walsham,
'Frantick Hacket:
Historical
sorcery, insanity and the Elizabethan
prophecy,
puritan movement',
Journal, 41 (1998), pp. 27-66; eadem, 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings: prophecy, puritanism
and childhood
in Elizabethan
'"Such perfecting of praise out
Suffolk'; and Susan Hardmann-Moore,
as child prophet',
of the mouth of a babe": Sarah Wight
in Diana Wood,
ed., The church and childhood
(Studies in Church History, vol. 31,Woodbridge,
1994), pp. 285-99, 313-24;J?rgen
Beyer, 'A L?beck
in local and Lutheran
in Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson,
context',
eds., Popular religion in
prophet
in
Germany and centralEurope 1400-1800 (Basingstoke,
1996), pp. 166-82; idem, 'Lutherische Propheten
Deutschland
und Skandinavien
im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.
und ausbreitung
eines
Entstehung
Kulturmusters
zwischen M?ndlichkeit
und Schriftlichkeit',
inRobert Bohn, ed., Europa in Scandinavia:
Kulturelle und soziale Dialoge in der Fr?hen Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main,
1994), pp. 35-55.
55
'Notes on some English accounts of miraculous
fasts', Journal of American
Hyder E. Rollins,
Folklore, 34 (1921), pp. 357-76; Shaw, Miracles, ch. 5.
66
Crawfurd, The king's evil (Oxford, 1911);Marc
Raymond
scrofula in England and France, trans. J. E. Anderson
(London,
magic, pp. 227-36; Shaw, Miracles, pp. 64-71.
Bloch,
The royal touch: sacredmonarchy and

Religion and the decline of
1973); Thomas,
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5!2
the king.57 In the light of the work

of Stuart Clark
and others,
it is certainly
increasingly
to agree with
narratives
that seek to chart
the smooth
difficult
of a quasi
displacement
In the
'medieval'
of
the
'modern'
rational
state.58
conception
monarchy
by
magical,
context
at the hands
in 1649 mav
of England,
Charles
I's own martyrdom
of parliament
have
of kingship with a new lease of life, even as his literal
infused
the idea of the divinity
on the scaffold
shattered
the notion
of the inviolability
dismemberment
of
temporarily
those
the Lord
court
anointed
to rule as his
to possess
his claim
the royal
of this benefit
to
partake
to perpetuate
refusal
In practice,
Protestantism
studied
touch
earthly deputies.
after the Restoration
did not dry up after

the royal ritual.59
Charles
and
the accession
II energetically
the crowds which
of William
cultivated
to
flocked
III, despite
his
room
to have
also seems
found
for hallowed
The
objects.
of some portraits
of Martin
Luther
is a particularly
incombustibility
mysterious
intriguing
also note that during Mary's
and striking example,60
but we may
scrambled
reign people
at
burnt
the
relics of the Protestant
handkerchiefs
for charred
stake.61
martyrs
Similarly,
some
to have
I were
in the blood
Charles
soaked
of the executed
King
supposed
by
in the 1650s.62 A degree
properties
of supernatural
virtue
sign and receptacle
the Reformation
have
increased
the further
curative
sixteenth
century.
came
catechisms
in Germany
and
Both
as
to be viewed
possessing
of Catholic
sacrament?is,
of slippage between
souvenir
and sacramental,
to prevent
to
and seems
if anything
hard
travelled
from
the heady
of
the
mid
days
was
England
divine
bibles,
and sometimes
prayerbooks,
in a manner
and to be used
potency
as amulets
and prophylactics.63
The mutilated
zealots were
themselves
sometimes
of images and pictures
destroyed
by Protestant
:
as memorials
of the Reformation
Nehemiah
Wallington
kept fragments
lovingly preserved
to come what God
in the early
of stained glass broken
1640s 'to show to the generation
to
invest
material
iconoclasm
had
the
hath done for us'.64 More
broadly,
capacity
objects
strongly
remains
with
the
evocative
the very numinous

power
of a kind of sacred
subject
it was
aura
designed
itself.65
to disprove
: the void
it left behind
became
to be
in the wider
likewise continued
and other places
churchyards,
landscape
that it was
the pres
in some sense, sanctified.
Reformed
insisted
theologians
in the material
rather
than any inherent
the congregation
of the godly,
sanctity
Churches,
regarded
ence of
as,
57
1200-1700', Past and Present, 100 (1983), pp. 29-61 ;
John Bossy, 'The mass as a social institution,
idem, Christianity in thewest, 1400?1700 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 153-61.
58
'The re
Clark, Thinking with demons, ch. 4; Keitt,
Inventing the sacred, ch. 7; J. C. D. Clark,
in eighteenth-century
in Michael
and monarchy
enchantment
of the world? Religion
Europe',
Schaich, ed., Monarchy and religion : the transformation of royal culture in eighteenth-centuryEurope (Oxford, 2007).
Paul Monod,
The power of kings: monarchy and religion inEurope, I58g-i7i5
(New Haven,
1999), however,
paradigm of disenchantment.
explicitly relates his study to theWeberian
'
59
Andrew Lacey, The cult of lang Charles themartyr (Woodbridge,
2003) ;Robert Zaller, Breaking the
in
of monarchy
Sixteenth CenturyJournal, 29 (1998),
vessels: the desacralization
early modern England',
60
Luther'.
Scribner,'Incombustible
pp.
757-78.
61
in The displaying of protestantes, with a description of divers their abuses
As attested by Miles Huggarde
Salvation by stake, pp. 175-6.
(London, 1556), fo. 54V, and see Gregory,
62
See A miracle of miracles: wrought by the blood ofKing Charles thefirst, of happy memory, upon a mayd at
Detford (London, 1649); Lacey, Cult ofKing Charles themartyr, pp. 62-4.
63
and the
'The Reformation,
Rublack,
Reformation Europe, pp. 157-69; Scribner,
popular magic
'Books
of the world"',
"disenchantment
ed., German Reformation, p. 270; David Cressy,
repr. in Dixon,
as totems in seventeenth-century
and New England', Journal of Library History, 21 (1981),
England
64
Seaver, Wallington's world, p. 151.
pp. 92?106.
65
in The Reformation of the image (London, 2004), esp. chs. 6-8.
See Joseph Leo Koerner
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
itself
of the sacred
that made
from
new
and
both
513
not effect
temple, but this did
so much
as its
the spatial domain
liturgical
to forms
old structures
became
subject
it the Lord's
building
presence
Moreover,
REVIEWS
of the
the evacuation
reconceptualization.
of consecration
and
set apart for

to survive the
in ways which
allowed
the concept
of sacrilege
formally
worship
a
in
of
the
Reformation
and
modified
The
of
form.66
re-emerge
upheavals
early
growth
who
about
the
fates
that
had
befallen
those
sites
of
dissolved
monasteries
anxiety
purchased
in the seventeenth
of the partial
resacralization
of space
century may be seen as a symptom
to restore
the Laudian
'the beauty
of
programme
accompanied
waters were attributed
of healing mineral
whose
medicinal
springs
or even
of the Almighty
and celebrated
for effecting
providential
even as it
to perpetuate,
Protestantism
may also be said to have helped
that
holiness'.67
form
to the benevolence
the notion
that divine
power
was
concentrated
in particular
locations.
or a canvas on which
he
an emblem
of God's majesty
simply
was
some ministers,
it
still
and patients
doctors,
tions;
perceived
by
to
and
virtue
itself.68
potency
supernatural
therapeutic
it severely pruned
the calendar
of saints and dispensed
Although
was
not
miraculous
cures,
transformed,
subtly
The natural
sketched
His
to be a source
with
In the
dozens
world
inten
of access
of former
to suggest
it would
be a mistake
'holy days'
completely
demystified
or neutralized
of time. This
in the series of Protestant
the concept
and patriotic
is evident
anniversaries
that sprang up in the course of the sixteenth
and seventeenth
centuries
days
on which
con
the nation
its divine
commemorated
from popish
deliverances
plots and
as the
on
streets
such
Treason
of
with
bonfires
and
bells
the
and
spiracies
Gunpowder
1605
the ecclesiastical
solemnities
of psalms,
and prayers.69
It may
also be detected
in
addresses,
to the proper
the supreme
which
attached
of the sabbath.
importance
puritans
keeping
Profanation
less than a Protestant
of the Lord's Day by work or sport was nothing
taboo : it
a
a
reflected
belief
that
like
could
be
violated
in
that
time,
space,
way
continuing
might
draw
down
heavenly
vengeance
upon
men's
and women's
heads.
Hence
the proliferation
66
'Places of sanctification:
the liturgical
of Genevan
Christian
reformed
Grosse,
sacrality
'
"
consecration
churches, 1535-1566 ', and Andrew Spicer, "What kinde of house a kirk is :conventicles,
and the concept of sacred space in post-Reformation
inWill Coster and Andrew
Scotland',
Spicer,
eds., Sacred space in early modem Europe (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 60-80 and 81-103 respectively. See also
Andrew
'"God will have a house": defining sacred space and rites of consecration
in early
Spicer,
'
'"
"
:reformed space for worship
and Graeme Murdock,
Pure and white
seventeenth-century
England
in seventeenth-century
and Andrew Spicer, eds., Defining the holy: sacred
in Sarah Hamilton
Hungary',
space in medieval and early modem Europe (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 207-30 and 231?50 respectively.
67
See, for example, Sir Henry Spelman, The history andfate of sacrilege (London, 1698). On this topic,
see Thomas,
The reformation of the
Religion and the decline of magic, pp. 112-21; Alexandra Walsham,
landscape: religion, identity and memory in early modem Britain and Ireland (Oxford, forthcoming).
68
a medical
in early modern Denmark:
Jens Chr V. Johansen,
'Holy springs and Protestantism
rationale
for a religious practice', Medical History, 41 (1997), pp. 59-69;
Alexandra
Walsham,
'
the waters :holy wells and healing springs in Protestant England
', inDiana Wood,
ed., Life
Reforming
and thought in the northern church, c. 1100-1700 (Studies in Church History Subsidia, vol. 12,Woodbridge,
in Ole Grell
1999); eadem, 'Sacred spas? Healing
springs and religion in post-Reformation
England',
and Bridget Heal,
Ute Lotz
eds., The impact of the European Reformation (Aldershot, forthcoming).
Heumann
is currendy reaching similar conclusions on the basis of her research about healing springs
in post-Reformation
Gemany.
69
David Cressy, Bonfires and bells: national memory and theProtestant calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart
The rise andfall of merry England: the ritual year, 1400?1700
England (London,
1989); Ronald Hutton,
Providence, ch. 5.
(Oxford, 1994);Walsham,
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5H
of
stories
on those who
of providential
laboured
judgement
to sermons
of listening
and attending
divine
instead
Sunday
Protestantism
the line between
the
eyes
followed
and
also
supplication
hands
of the
outbreaks
tide
processions
heartfelt
displays
sword
retained
of plague
laity. The
and other
its own
in recreation
on
some of which
of ritual,
crossed
a near-automatic
at least in
acquire
efficacy,
sessions
of humiliation,
and prayer
that
fasting,
and developed
coercion
and
or
engaged
service.70
forms
to
disasters may be mentioned,

rogation
along with
and puritan rites of exorcism.71
Protestant
that
theology may have
taught
to lift His
of contrition
from sin could not in themselves
God
persuade
of vengeance
at the be
been foreseen
and preordained
(all such decisions
having
to
in
but
to
of
continued
the
idea
that
humble
ginning
time),
practice many
repent
cling
ance could
to
indeed
induce him
his mind
And
however
much
change
spontaneously.
was
ministers
insist that the blessing
of the fields
and ejection
of unclean
might
spirits
the will of God,
there were
those who
that such rituals
upon
contingent
clearly
supposed
an
to increase
the fertility of crops and expel unwanted
demons.
ability
to those
to
counteract
the
applies
popular
practices
designed
unpredictabilities
as a
of the natural
environment
which
Bob Scribner
described
Protestant
distinctively
'
too were
to
These
covert
vulnerable
forms
of
what
he
calls
species of magic.
becoming
'
was
sacramentalism
rather than acts of piety whose
evangelical
significance
acknowledged
possessed
same
The
to be
purely
Some
of
Protestant
intrinsic
symbolic.72
these phenomena
as detailed
theology
sit more
than
littie uneasily
with
the orthodoxies
of
formularies
and learned
of
compilations
them? One
is to regard
them as an
approach
in confessional
How,
then, should we
interpret
to transform
of the patent
failure of Protestantism
the mentalities
of ordinary
people
as a measure
of the gap between
ideals and prescriptions
and messy
lofty clerical
practical
and parochial
realities.
Like contemporary
and commentators,
later folklorists
ministers
doctrine.
index
and
survivals
distinguished
of essentially
phalanx
Catholic
to a religious
revolution
traditional
culture
that
of more
imposed
seemed
we
see them as stubborn
recent historians,
might
and observances,
evidence
of conservative
resistance
to preserve
from above and of a determination
aspects of
more
to provide
of
with
their
methods
tangible
coping
beliefs
70
Patrick Collinson,
'The beginnings
of English Sabbatarianism',
repr. in his Godly people: essays on
L. Parker, The English
English Protestantism and puritanism (London, 1983), pp. 429-43. See also Kenneth
sabbath: a study of doctrine and disciplinefrom theReformation to theCivil War (Cambridge,
1988), though he
see Margo Todd, The culture of Protestantism in
On Scotland,
its Protestant distinctiveness.
downplays
Secularization,
2002), esp. ch. 7. But cf. the argument of Sommerville,
early modem Scotland (New Haven,
ch. 3. For stories of divine judgement,
see, for example, Thomas
Beard, The theatre of Gods judgements
(London, 1597); Henry Burton, A divine trag?die lately acted ([London],
1636).
71
See Susan Karant Nunn, The Reformation of ritual: an interpretation of early modem Germany (London,
1997); David
Hall,
(Cambridge, MA,
France and England
Worlds of wonder, days of judgement: popular religious belief in early New England
Unclean spirits :possession and exorcism in
1990), ch. 4. On exorcism, see D. P. Walker,
in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1981) ;Oldridge, Devil in early modem
S. Freeman,
'Demons, deviance and defiance: John Darrell and the politics of
England, ch. 6; Thomas
in late Elizabethan
in Peter Lake and Michael
exorcism
eds., Conformity and
England',
Questier,
orthodoxy in theEnglish church, c. 1560-1660 (Woodbridge,
2000), pp. 34-63. On fasting and prayer,' see
"For
Walsham,
Providence, pp. 142-50; Todd, Culture ofProtestantism, pp. 343-52; Christopher Durston,
the better humiliation
of the people":
public days of fasting and thanksgiving
during the English
Revolution',
Seventeenth Century, 7 (1992), pp.
landscape, ch. 4.
72
R. W. Scribner,
129-49. On
'Magic and the formation

ed., Religion and culture in Germany, pp. 323-45.
rogation,
of Protestant
seeWalsham,
popular
culture
The reformation of the
inGermany',
in Roper,
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
vicissitudes
than
the
can be
argument
in fact, have
may,
arduous
linked with
ethic
Keith
that underpinned
of self-help
Thomas's
influential
suggestion
5X5
Protestantism.73
that
This
the Reformation
recourse
to non-religious
for counteracting
greater
encouraged
strategies
:for him,
men
vacuum
and
the
left by
and misfortune
filled
cunning
astrologers
to disarm
decision
itself of the ecclesiastical
of
Protestantism's
the
medieval
'magic'
here of underestimating
the inherent
of providential
church.74 There
is a danger
appeal
tribulation
ism, as well as of falling

as a mechanism
merely
Thomas's
some
into the trap of an anthropological

functionalism
that sees religion
social and psychological
for meeting
needs. Nevertheless
particular
still deserves
It may
in desperation,
assist in explaining
attention.
why,
thesis
Protestants
committed
the sacramental
utilizing
solutions
and
continued
magic
to resort
of the Church
to the Catholic
of Rome
as part
itself for help,

of
repertoire
priesthood
of an eclectic
remedies.
to suggest
to exploit
that the Tridentine
Church
sought
precisely
and
sacred
which
ritual
the reformers
had
thaumaturgie
protection
in
for
their
of
As
the
influence
the
supremacy.
deliberately
religious
repudiated
struggle
the
medieval
cult
of
saints
and
miracles
declined
Roman
humanist
of
Catholicism
critique
there
Indeed,
those
aspects
ismuch
of
as a
of numinous
In turn, this may
its credentials
reasserted
repository
eagerly
power.75
to account
to engender
in which
for the way
Protestantism
help
began
wonder-working
of its own. To
conflict
be seen to have
features
this extent,
confessional
and rivalry may
in
the
culture
of
the
other
it quite
Protestant
respects,
promoted
supernatural,
just as,
to
and
inhibit
it.
restrain
disillusioned
Furthermore,
clearly operated
increasingly
by the
failure
of the preaching
of the Gospel
to make
significant
impression
on
the
laity,
some
clergymen deliberately tried to harness their fascination with the occult for both devotional
and polemical
in astrology,
ends. Thus
using
the
second-generation
of the
'preaching
that refused
a
to pay
angry with
society
to transform
almanacs
and prognostications
to foster a degree
from this example,
helped
we may
term 'popular
culture'.76
Lutheran
ministers
interest
exploited
popular
to press home
the message
that God was
to sermons
heed
and to urge
the readers
of
their evil lives. Frustration,
itmay be inferred
stars'
of concession
to what
(with
some
reservations)
A more
on this theme
subtle variation
the Protestant
culture of the supernatural
explains
or
of the clergy either passively
what
condoning
actively
finding ways of absorbing
or eradicate.
to reform
it proved
unable
As recent
studies by Bruce Gordon
and Peter
Marshall
have shown,
in the face of an ingrained
conviction
that the dead had not passed
in terms
73
see for instance his 'Introduction'
to Scribner and
This is implicit in the work of Bob Scribner:
'Success and
eds., Popular religion in Germany and central Europe, pp. 8-10. See also Strauss,
Johnson,
in the German
failure
Reformation';
ed., The English Reformation revised
Haigh,
Christopher
1987); idem, English Reformations: religion, politics and society under theTudors (Oxford, 1993);
(Cambridge,
idem, 'Success and failure in the English Reformation'.
74
Thomas,
Religion and the decline of magic, ch. 9, and pp. 132, 763. This argument also influences
Bernard Capp's account of the flourishing state of astrology in post-Reformation
England: Astrology and
thepopular press :English almanacs, 1500-1800 (London and Boston, MA,
1979).
75
See Soergel, Wondrous in his saints; Johnson,
'Recatholicisation
of the Upper Palatinate';
idem,
and popular religion in the eighteenth-century
'Blood, tears and Xavier-water:
Jesuit missionaries
in Scribner
and Johnson,
Palatinate',
eds., Popular religion in Germany and central Europe,
Upper
pp.
183-202; Walsham,
76
C. Scott Dixon,
'Miracles
and the Counter-Reformation
mission'.
and Lutheran
in Reformation
'Popular astrology
propaganda
History, 84 (1999), pp. 403-18. See also Hall, Worlds of wonder, days ofjudgement, pp. 58?61,
similar developments
inNew England.
Germany',
for somewhat
5i6
HISTORICALJOURNAL
the realm of human

Protestant
writers
them
found
irretrievably
beyond
apprehension,
to accommodate
in the reformed
selves obliged
universe.
Since
ghosts
they could not be
as either demons
to redefine
or
the souls of the departed,
in
apparitions
angels
they had
a manner
not merely
of the populace
reveals
the intransigence
but the pastoral
which
to them. As a result, wraiths
in
and revenants
of those who ministered
sensitivity
persisted
out
after
of
had
all
Protestant
the
but
withered
of
consciousness
purgatory
long
theology
Not
existence.77
methods
that the clergy themselves

the discrepancies
of reconciling
own
the unruly
reality of their
with
ostensible
contradictions.
living
and
subjective
to forms
bear witness
examples
in a marriage
beliefs mingled,
worked
but which
nevertheless
Such
and
new
stood
between
:
this process
they too had to devise
tenets they had been
taught
too had to find a way of
They
experiences.
outside
the doctrinal
of cultural
that was
exchange
not without
and negotiation
its ideological
in which
old
tensions
and
well
with
other forms of syn
enough.
Together
of processes
evidence
of adaptation
that facilitated
the rehabilitation
they provide
'
'
or
a
in
of aspects
of the medieval
the
sacred
of
Protestant
economy
system
distinctively
to
not
It
is
also
that
this
occurred
but
because
also
despite,
guise.
important
recognize
merely
:while
some of the most
the theology
of the reformers
of, the Reformation
challenged
of the divine,
that supported
traditional
it reinforced
fundamental
assumptions
conceptions
frictions
cretism,
to create
others
powerfully
the supernatural
of the Reformation
climate
general
to survive,
if not
disapproved,
about
one's
paradoxically
continued
laypeople
this may be because
It is misleading,
in form
frozen
Protestant
moreover,
once
religion.
responsive
organism
found
itself.
it was
original
ideological
pressures
and practices
with
connected
than underlining
the inability
I have been
of the phenomena
its central
of which
some
they provided
If
precepts.
their pastors
those anxieties
engendered
the doubts
it needs
Instead
to alterations
to be analysed
in the successive
we need
to take account
Simultaneously,
were
beliefs
and practices
as, if not more,
alerts
manifestations
than its initial phases
controversial
beliefs
release from precisely

the doctrine
of double
by
predestination
and salvation.78
of the godly about
their election
as a static
to approach
reformed
of doctrine,
body
theology
in writing
enshrined
and print by the founding
fathers
of the
status
spiritual
to assuage
they helped
in which
to thrive. Rather
some
the popular
mind,
a
to
of
internalization
testify
deep
use of forms of divination
to make
to penetrate
may
describing
Protestant
itself-
continued
waxed
priorities
and challenges.
as an
tissue,
living and breathing
climates
in which
it
and cultural
of generational
a feature
often
us
and waned
Thus
as a
social
to the ways
and were
The
change.
of Protestantism
in which
fact
attitudes
replaced
that
such
in its later
altered
new
as
and
by
practical
that had animated
agenda
and
of intensifying
dilemma
piety
In turn, the radical
and apathy.
the anti-Catholic
to the fresh
gave way
its
indifference
perceived
rousing
the
had
the iconoclastic
of
that
characterized
stages of the
holy
rejection
to the renewed
to particular
to reinforce
movement
drive
in response
crises
resurfaced
to
with Archbishop
Laud's
associated
and worship
the sacredness
of ritual
programme
England's
earliest
Protestants
out
the populace
of the immanence
77
Bruce Gordon,
Swiss Reformation',
dead, ch. 6; idem,
of
'Malevolent
inGordon
ghosts and ministering

angels: apparitions and pastoral care in the
and Marshall,
eds., Place of thedead, pp. 87-109; Marshall, Beliefs and the
in Elizabethan
and Jacobean
appearances:
ghosts and reformers
'Deceptive
eds., Religion and superstition, pp. 188-208.
England',
78
See Richard Godbeer, The devil's dominion: magic and religion in earlyNew England
(Cambridge,
P-52.
1992),
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
'
the beauty
'enthusiastic'
promote
of the
of holiness
and
sects which
517
to the threat
up
sprang
posed by the renewed

supernaturalism
in the 1640s and 50s. The
first Quakers,
was
believed
that their mission
and vocation
were
people who
and miracles.79
Such
and Ranters
Muggletonians,
affirmed
by
'
crises sparked fresh outbursts

signs, wonders,
those who
claimed
divine
and new polemical
against
campaigns
Such writers
revived and extended
tactics
for
ecstatic
long-standing
discrediting
vandalism
confessional
the strategy
including
that had demanded
agendas
chantment'
and
and
enthusiasm,
spurred
as Protestantism
receded
on
of medicalizing
the adoption
of
phase
became
settled
'desacralization'
and
it as a form
of a rationalist
at
institutionalized,
of
of religious
inspiration.
spirituality
If the
'
disen
insanity.80
rhetoric
of
the beginning
they did
of
the period
not
disappear
an
that Protestantism
role in elim
suggests
played
equivocal
or
from the world,
this is not to say that either the intellectual
and linguistic
inating magic
were
the practical
and physical
of this movement
later
Indeed,
legacies
insignificant.
the same language would
and Deists
in their assault upon
much
be taken up by Socinians
the superstition
and fanaticism
with which
believed
mainstream
itself was
they
religion
a series of initiatives
be seen as a kind of second
riddled
that, in their own way, may
If the evidence
completely.
Reformation.81
whether
Anglican
In turn, this fostered

or Nonconformist,
a counter
from
to defend
tendency
godly
the effects of what was perceived
Protestantism,
as a
dangerous
that
observation
reductionism.
Such
remarks
lead to the further
form of theological
were
of'disenchantment'
in one direction.
processes
occurring,
they did not travel steadily
a
to envisage
On
the contrary,
it may
be more
helpful
cycle in which
complex
opposing
and played
in a reciprocal
off each other
and dialectical
interacted
impulses
dynamically
if
fashion.
Ill
that subtle shifts and developments
took place over the course of
were
In thinking
these
decisive.
about
which,
period
cumulatively,
of the holy' has some conceptual
neutral phrase
transitions,
John Bossy's more
'migrations
as a tool for
the gradual
of the sacred and supernatural
advantages
displacement
exploring
contexts
into new social, cultural,
and spaces.82 Some may
and discursive
be
conceptual,
it cannot
Yet
the
early
be denied
modern
are
rather than causes, of cultural
and many
symptoms,
change
on the
It is perhaps
other.
only by concentrating
conjunction
various
forces and factors
that we will best be able to understand
interconnected
and
interaction
with
each
of
these
how (even if we cannot

of the invisible world
in this period.
evolved
comprehend
why) perceptions
a process
to detect
it is possible
certain
sacred rituals and prac
First,
by which
signs of
out
tices were
of
the
realm
of
and
into
the
domains
of leisure and
displaced
religion
piety
fully
79
a new
'Late seventeenth-century
See among others, Rosemary Moore,
and the miraculous:
Quakerism
in Cooper and Gregory,
look at George Fox's 'Book ofMiracles',
eds., Signs, wonders and miracles,
PP- 335-43
80
See R. A. Knox, Enthusiasm : a chapter in the history of religion,with special reference to theXVII andXVIII
centuries (Oxford, 1950); Mack,
in the
'The reaction to enthusiasm
Visionary women; Michael
Heyd,
seventeenth century: towards an integrative approach', Journal ofModem History, 53 (1981), pp. 258-80;
in the seventeenth Century:
to structure',
reaction to enthusiasm
from anti-structure
15 (1985), pp. 279-89 ; idem, Be sober and reasonable: the critique of enthusiasm in the seventeenthand early
81
Worden,
eighteenth centuries (Leiden, 1995).
p. 28.
'Question of secularization',
82
in
die
8.
ch.
west,
Bossy, Christianity
idem,
'The
Religion,
HISTORICALJOURNAL
5i8
was
This
recreation.
a consequence
largely
and
ceremonies
unnecessary
liturgical rites associated

ecclesiastical
calendar
of
the Protestant
observances.
superstitious
campaign
Hutton
Ronald
to prune
has
away
shown
how
with
All Souls Day,

in the
and other key dates
Easter, Whitsun,
out of the church
that were
and driven
the
proscribed
during
were
contexts
into
and
Reformation
translated
transmuted
festive
domestic
into
gradually
at least some eighteenth-century
seem
in a fashion which
and seasonal
customs,
clergymen
as more
or less harmless.83
to have
to hallowed
The practice
of pilgrimage
shrines
regard
a
to have undergone
like holy
appears
springs
comparable
earn them
to
that
such
would
ceased
believe
journeys
people may
to make
in the eyes of God,
visits to them for the purposes
of
merit
but they continued
to the eventual
refreshment
contributed
and relaxation.84
Such
emergence
transpositions
'
to the evolution
of a more
secular'
of tourism and also perhaps
of a more
aesthetic
concept
and
in the
sites
landscape
transmutation
appreciation
and
obscure
elusive.
of nature
at a more
place
1530s was
have
an
and
Daniel
the motor
behind
scenery,
though
a somewhat
Woolf
has identified
these developments
transformation
is no
similar
less
taking
in the
of relic-worship
he speculates
that the abolition
to antiquarian
in them as historical
interest
and archae
of their magical
such objects
continued
denuded
associations,
Gradually
some
if only rhetorically,
of fascination
which
contemporaries
equated,
level:
intellectual
stimulus
indirect
artefacts.
ological
to evoke a kind
with
idolatry.85
There
also seem
was very
that the supernatural
for considering
the suggestion
grounds
While
there had always been a
into the sphere of art and the imagination.
of ghosts,
the titillating
and moralistic
of reports
aspects
apparitions,
to
in the eighteenth
the balance
does appear
and demons,
witches,
century
tip further away
to curiosity
in complex
and entertainment.
This may be related
from awe and edification
a
to
to
of
'news'
and
the
the
between
the
'novel'86
ways
genres
emerging
split
growing
that was
linked not simply with
the rise of empiri
distinction
between
'fact' and 'fiction'
slowly migrating
tension
between
cism
but
from
entities
missed
itmay
also,
the
sacred
of which
Catholic
rather
laughter
tween
'fantasy'
the spirit world
be
to Protestantism's
suspected,
to differentiate
determination
and
from
the
they signified
representations
a
a
It also built upon
they were
symbol.
polemical
'monkish'
miracle
stories as 'mere'
tales and
fables,
things
than
solemn
reverence
The
and
and
beings
which
signs
and
dis
of hilarious
worthy
of the boundary
be
other encounters
with
a redrawing
of the ghost and
of these developments.87
it involved
fictionalisation
spiritual
tradition
'reality'.
is the
is one measure
in gothic
literature
Another
to be relocated
into the interior
for the supernatural
space of the
tendency
increasing
a space less vulnerable
to contestation
of the dream
because
via the medium
unconscious
to
to
verification.
and
difficult
it was
unreachable,
mysterious,
subject
empirical
in the midst
Somewhere
suspend
83
disbelief-
Ronald
Hutton,
of
this we
to set aside
'The English
need
scepticism
Reformation
(1995), PP- 89-116.

84
the waters',
Walsham,
'Reforming
85
The social drculation
Daniel Woolf,
to situate
in the
and
the
interests
emergence
of
the evidence
simple
of a willingness
and
to
the
enjoyment
of folklore',
Past and Present,
and eadem, The Reformation of the landscape.

of thepast: English historical culture, 1500-1730
(Oxford,
pp.
148
2003),
191-7.
86
LennardJ. Davis, Factualfictions: the origins of theEnglish novel (New York, 1983); Michael McKeon,
The origins of theEnglish novel, 1600-1740 (Baltimore and London,
1987).
87
Visions of an unseen
E. J. Clery, The rise of supernaturalfiction, 1768-1800 (Cambridge,
1995); Handley,
world, esp. ch. 4.
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
5*9
that
it in this period
and the devil as reified concepts.88 Was
of hell, providence,
as
came
to think of these primarily
rather than real physical
and women
metaphors
or
of our
Or
is this yet another
locations?
manifestation
entities,
forces,
geographical
on the contrary,
the
modern
attitude
medieval
towards
past? Perhaps,
people
patronizing
decline
men
an
stories and miraculous
tales on
ability to engage with providential
always exhibited
manner
in
Nevertheless
the
which
and
the
levels.
several
different
magic
conceptual
were
amusement
of commodified
and
absorbed
into a culture
becoming
supernatural
cannot be ignored.
and fascination
transformed
of aesthetic
into objects
pleasure
had
In
this
scrutiny.
changes
regard,
Here
the advent
we
though
discard
should
as a natural
in the realm of communication

careful
deserve
taking place
as a medium
for publication
is critical,
and spread of printing
in conjunction
this technology,
lit
models
which
with
present
in favour of a recognition
that itwas more
like a
of'superstition'
enemy
talismans
in both Catholic
and
sword. Not only were books used as magical
double-edged
to
also
and
Protestant
disseminate
contexts;
increasingly,
writing
print
helped
knowledge
tracts in the promiscuous
the contents
of arcane
Latin
of occult
dispersing
techniques,
seems to have
the mass
circulation
facilitated
Similarly,
by print
sphere of the vernacular.89
eracy,
in the prodigious
and supernatural,
fear and an
intensified
interest
initially
exacerbating
and the end of the world.
In
diabolical
malevolence,
intervention,
xiety about providential
in
it arguably
the credibility
of the phenomena
the longer term, however,
placed
reported
strain.
The
under
commercialization
the
of
of
and
genre
newspapers
growing
pamphlets
'
'
arose
led to their abuse and doubts
about their authenticity
stories of the strange but true
in the context
of wonders
and booksellers
of the fabrication
by unscrupulous
journalists
intent
upon making
profit
the early seventeenth
From
out of what
century
to breed
quarters,
began
familiarity
a not dissimilar
have advanced
press
and
earlier
seriously
historical
been
regarded
suggestions
change.
must
Consideration
were
came
to be seen as popular
is a distinct
'.90
'credulity
that, at least in some
sense,
Michael
MacDonald
and Terence
contempt.
Murphy
the role which
the expansion
about
of the periodical
the hermeneutics
of suicide:
they argue that the literary style
thesis
in transforming
an
such texts promoted
increasingly
those who
attitude
towards
committed
played
tone of
mental
increasingly
there
onwards,
'secular',
the
sympathetic,
and
a crime
sin of
even
senti
that had
self-murder,
as a consequence
to take
We
of acute diabolical
need
temptation.91
as well as mirrors,
in literary form can be agents,
that alterations
of
naturally
be given
to the long-standing
claim
or reflected,
processes
by,
that perceptions
of the
social polarization.
of
supernatural
increasingly
shaped
to Patrick Curry's
is critical, for instance,
This
about the making
of astrology
argument
'a vulgar
the speed with
knowledge'
by the end of the seventeenth
century.92 While
into
and
88
A classic exposition
of this theme is D. P. Walker,
The decline of hell (London,
1964). For the
internalization
of idolatry, see Aston, England's iconoclasts, pp. 452-66.
89
See Davies, Witchcraft, magic and culture, esp. ch. 3; idem, 'Newspapers and the popular belief in
in the modern
witchcraft
and magic
period', Journal ofBritish Studies, 37 (1998), pp. 139-66; Sabine
'The supernatural and the development
of print culture', and Stephan Bachter,
Doering-Manteuffel,
'
Grimoires
and the transmission of magical
', in Davies and de Bl?court, eds., Beyond the
knowledge
witch trials, pp. 187?296. For books as magical
'Books as totems'.
talismans, see Cressy,
90
Providence, pp. 218-24.
Walsham,
91
Michael MacDonald
and Terence R. Murphy,
Sleepless souls: suicide in earlymodem England (Oxford,
1990), esp. ch. 9.
92
Patrick Curry,
Stephen
Pumfrey,
in early modern
'Astrology
Paolo L. Rossi, and Maurice
the making
of a vulgar knowledge',
in
England:
Slawinski,
eds., Science, culture and popular belief in
HISTORICALJOURNAL
520
extent
the educated
wonders
with
their unlettered
far
the
for
a divide
to which
tioned,
between
seem
do
'learned'
treated
as evidence
contempt
growing
inferiors. Here,
it was
the
to have
more
simply becoming
out of written
supernatural
the same reason. Even
so,
though,
vocal
and the 'vulgar'

be ques
may
appeared
about marvels
and
ephemeral
publications
of the ignorant
and 'superstitious'
outlook
of
it is hard
and
to know
visible.
The
how
far this was
ostensible
into oral culture

looks
increasingly
was
something
certainly
happening.
and condescension
which
prejudice,
nostalgia,
prompted
and nineteenth
centuries
to collect evidence
of the beliefs
Catholic
eighteenth
about
the occult
the
through
historical
lens
of a
new
and
of beliefs
like an optical
The mixture
how
about
illusion
of anti
the folklorists
of
the
of the common
people
of attitudes.
It may be
fragmentation
the distorting
of such collectors
to see these beliefs
tendency
'
'
of pagan
and popish
survivals
has seriously
theory
hampered
of both the literate origins and the genuinely
Protestant
character
is suggestive
in passing,
that
remarked,
exile
of some
sort of schism
or
understanding
of this popular
culture
of the supernatural.93
was
Further
that
the
climate
of opinion
He in the rise of contem
may
signs
changing
claims
that assumptions
about
the intrusion
of otherworldly
forces
in human
affairs
porary
of much
were
nor
the preserve
the notion
of
of elderly women
'
old wives'
tales
to discredit
long been deployed
as
and
prophecy
possession.94
foolish
of the female
'dotages'
and the mentally

'
was
in any sense
particular
instances
ill. Neither
the language
of insanity
about madness
had
Allegations
or divine
of diabolical
intercession
such
new.
the trope
that miracle
stories
Likewise,
sex had roots not
in Reformation
merely
were
the
merely
but also
polemic,
such beliefs
in
against
in medieval
satire itself. The apparent
of a gender bias
strengthening
more
to
the long eighteenth
has
do
with
the declining
of speech
century probably
authority
as vehicles
and memory
of cultural
transmission
than with any widening
between
the
gap
men
were
never
of
and
That
such
women.95
in
is
volume
mentality
suggestions
growing
was occurring.
theless indicative
that some kind of shift in perception
are
No
less interesting
hints
of
the process
beliefs
in witches,
and ghosts would
werewolves,
by which
to
to
the
and
become
confined
the
outlook
of children
nursery
eventually
relegated
too had a long-standing
rather than adults. This
rhetorical
lineage and its onset, as Lyndal
some
has shown, was not without
In Germany
itmani
consequences.
Roper
paradoxical
early
be
fested
itself
temporarily
in an ambivalent
resulted
fascination
in the pursuit
with
the
and prosecution
world
imaginative
of child witches.96
of the young
which
Renaissance Europe (Manchester,

1991), pp. 274-91 ; idem, Prophecy and power: astrology in early modem
in prodigy belief in similar
1989). Burns, Age of wonders, presents transformations
England (Cambridge,
terms: see esp. ch. 5, and conclusion.
93
See Alexandra Walsham,
'Recording superstition in early modern Britain: the origins of folklore
revisited', in Steve Smith and Alan Knight,
eds., The religion offools? Superstition past and present, Past and
Present Supplement Series (Oxford, forthcoming,
2008).
94
in early modern
See Michael
MacDonald,
'Insanity and the realities of history
England',
11 (1981), pp. n-25; Walsham,
see
'Frantick Hacket'.
For earlier manifestations,
Psychological Mediane,
Caciola, Discerning spirits: divine and demonic possession in themiddle ages (Ithaca and London,
2003).
et anthropologie
et les
'Savoir medical
J. Agrimi and C. Crisciani,
religieuse: Les representations
functions de la vetutaXIIIe-XVe
si?cle', Annales ESC (1993), pp. 1281-308; Adam Fox, Oral and literate
culture inEngland, 1500?1700 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 3, and Daniel Woolf,
'A feminine past? Gender, genre,
Nancy
95
and historical knowledge

in England,
1500-1800', American Historical Review, 102 (1997), pp. 645-79.
96
'"Evil imaginings and fantasies":
and the end of the witch craze',
child-witches
Lyndal Roper,
Past and Present, 167 (2000), pp. 107-39.
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
There
did not
seems
also
some
mileage
or decline
that magic
in the proposition
as retreat from the public
into the private
domain
and
the fervent providentialism
of the 1690s found
disappear
writers
educated
English
somewhat
of their predecessors
sphere. That
millenarianism
or edit
to suppress
outlook.
to be
so much
521
it out
to echo
Rather,
of
their memoirs
Blair Worden,
and
and discomfiting
embarrassing
a
not necessarily
rejection
signal
a
in public
fashion
and
it registers
change
does
sought
of this
taste.97
and
align
but this did
in the diabolical
and prodigious
belief
overtly disparage
might
of
in the seclusion
about
it seriously
to ponder
and speculate
they ceased
In excavating
the archive
of
of their minds.98
their libraries, closets, and the inner chambers
a similar
his
and
between
has uncovered
Hunter
Michael
Robert
public
disjuncture
Boyle,
a
of
with
his own preoccupation
between
aspects
persona
negotiation
complex
private
norms
of legitimate
the boundaries
that dictated
and the collective
the supernatural
activity
to preserve
a function
of a desire
in this area was
in late Stuart
reticence
society. His
to
anxious
Gentlemen
themselves
the
with
culture
of
'reason',
'civilization',
'Enlightenment'
not mean
that
with a pro
combined
to the expectations
of genteel
decorum,
realm.
with
the
of
the
about
spiritual
meddling
permissibility
scrupulosity
were
in the following
reinforced
of self-censorship
These
century by the efforts of
processes
con
now
to purge
of traces of what were
remains
his manuscript
biographers
Boyle's
an
but
shift
and 'credulity'.
sidered evidence
important
gradual
Signalling
of'superstition'
his
reputation
moral
nounced
and
adhere
that they should be seen as an index

suggests
gravity, Hunter
make
the
Such suggestions
than the 'rise of schizophrenia'.99
of magic'
techni
the
wide
which
and
in
occult
of
interest
resurgence
appeal
apparent
phenomena
and Edwardian
in the polite
exercised
England
ques like mesmerism
society of Victorian
in the centre
less of the
of
intellectual
'decline
from
that re-emerged
this an aspect of culture
seem less bewildering
and puzzling.100 Was
it underground
became more
favourable
that had driven
the conditions
the shadows when
?
and socially
and when
it once again became
respectable
intellectually
concerns
to which
the
the extent
examination
further
issue that warrants
Another
supernatural
the medieval
was
in confessional
implicated
less than the early modern
been
of diabolism
had always
no
was true of
and party politics. Once
again this
and
of miraculous
intervention
Claims
period.
a tool
for
but there are grounds
of faction,
use of them intensified
and in
in
of
the
Reformation
the
wake
that
thinking
propagandist
of the
Wars
of Religion
of the European
of the upheavals
the context
partly because
mass
a world
more
In
in which
the
forms
of
of
effective
communication.101
emergence
allegations
of a single
monopoly
and in which
political
version
of Christian
polarization
was
truth was
taking
to denominational
plurality
yielding
institutional
shape in the rivalry
permanent
97
Worden,
'Problem of secularization',
Secularization, p. 14. See also
pp. 24-6; and see Chadwick,
for growing embarrassment
about George Fox's miracles
Moore,
'Quakerism and the miraculous',
within the Society of Friends by the late seventeenth century.
98
Jonathan Barry, 'Public infidelity and private belief? The discourse of spirits in Enlightenment
in Davies and de Bl?court, eds., Beyond thewitch trials, pp. 117-43.
Bristol',
99
Michael Hunter,
'Magic, science and reputation: Robert Boyle, the Royal Society and the occult
in idem, Robert Boyle, pp. 223-44, at p. 244.
in the late seventeenth
century',
100
Alison Winter,
'Mesmerism and popular culture in early Victorian
England', History of Science,
32 (1994), pp. 317-43; eadem, Mesmerized: powers ofmind in Victorian Britain (Chicago and London,
1998).
101
The same is true of astrology. As Luc Racaut
shows, the label superstition was levelled by both
or Catholic
and
Catholics
and Protestants
superstition? Astrology
against each other: 'A Protestant
eds., Religion and superstition,
during the French wars of religion',
eschatology
pp.
154-69.
HISTORICALJOURNAL
522
between
and Whigs,
the exploitation
term it raised
the heat
Tories
of
this potent
vocabulary
had
contradictory
it with
invested
controversy
ideological
as Ian
even
In the long run, however,
and
cosmic,
significance.
eschatological
Bostridge
to demonology
with
Peter Elmer
have argued
and witchcraft,
its de
regard
persuasively
a
to
of targets
contributed
and relativizing
against
proliferation
ployment
destabilizing
to
in a way
these categories
that eventually
undermined
their power
of analysis
inspire
to their
from
the
In
dread and contributed
these
mainstream.102
accounts,
marginalization
'
'
was far more
the supernatural
the byproduct
of ecclesiastical
about
scepticism
infighting
'
or rational
than it was
the result of the inevitable
of science
and rage of party
triumph
effects.
In the
short
of
and
in 1736 was
The passage
of the act repealing
witchcraft
religion'.
legislation
in this diabolical
crime
than of the disintegration
of
of declining
belief
state and its
as an expression
of
the
role
sacral
Political,
aspirations.
symbolic
its loss of credibility
and did not preclude
the
factors
intellectual,
lay behind
in less conspicuous
in it at other
levels and
This
fits
interest
contexts.103
of
It may
be
commented
that,
although
Interregnum.104
as a mode
the notion
of the inexorable
of reason
progress
still rest upon
and reinforce
of
the linear paradigm
ironically
they often
with
it.
that is intertwined
experiment
political
such interpretations
of explanation,
disenchantment
the
repudiate
run
risk of underemphasizing
that was
religious
pluralism
spread
unstoppable
in the Act of Toleration
and by its institutionahzation
may
also
of peaceful
antichristian
uniformity
reducing
those who
coexistence
individuals
with
a part not
for political
papists
played
as a
prerequisite
the intensity of) belief
one
upheld
dead
of
truth
polarities
and evaporate.105
the
the
of
the
of
persistence
with Michael
which
century,
sectarian
striking
demonology's
rather than
in the later seventeenth

of elite dissociation
from
such beliefs
reading
of their perceived
with
he sees as a consequence
connection
lower-class
the
Wars
of
and
and
the
the
anarchic
enthusiasm
Civil
1640s
during
1650s
MacDonald's
They
less a function
just
and
in a moralized
the
true
for
tolerating
and
falsehood,
To
religion?
falsehood
It is at least worth
that belatedly
legislation
sensibilities.
collective
who
good
five
and
of
were
damnable
theoretically
in undermining
the commitment
social
stability, but also

in which God
universe
alongside
was
to see
evil,
dissenters
heretics
in eroding
intervened
without
and
to religious
(or at least
to defend
an angry God
and comforting
the transparent
dissolve
underpinned
persecution
that this state of affairs and
the possibility
that
considering
it contributed
legitimized
effects wrought
by the
of the Reformation,
legacy
it be that decades
1689. Could
indirect
a chief
to changing
both
individual
and
must
and philosophical
shifts which we
be said about
the intellectual
Finally,
something
of the
and
'Scientific
Revolution'
under
the grand
group
headings
conventionally
to unsettle
have done much
Recent
the 'Enlightenment'.
historiographical
developments
and the
about
the role that the rise of Baconian
traditional
empiricism
presuppositions
102
in
and the decline of witchcraft
'"Saints or sorcerers": Quakerism,
Peter Eimer,
demonology
and
in Barry, Hester,
'Witchcraft
and Ian Bostridge,
repealed',
England',
seventeenth-century
Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft
Roberts,
eds., Witchcraft in earlymodem Europe, pp. 145-79, 309-34 respectively;
and its transformations c. 1650-c. 1750 (Oxford, 1997).
103
remarks in reviewing this :
Hunter's
Bostridge Witchcraft and its transformations. See also Michael
'Witchcraft and the decline of belief, Eighteenth-Century Life, 22 (1998), pp. 139-47, at 143-7.
104
a
MacDonald,
'Insanity and the realities of history'. See also Roy Porter, 'The rage of party:
in English psychiatry?', Medical History, 27 (1983), pp. 35?50.
glorious revolution
105
See Wake, Heresy, mague, and witchcraft, ch. 6, for a variation on this theme.
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
523
about
in exterminating
notions
'superstitious'
philosophy
played
about
their
inherent
world.
and the wider
claims
spirit
Against
that religious
conviction
it is increasingly
stimulated,
apparent
frequently
incompatibility,
to enumerate
evidence
of the immi
rather than inhibited,
scientific
inquiry.106 Eagerness
to unravel
nence
in
the divine messages
encoded
of the Second
and a concern
Coming
transformation
of natural
the operations
of God
and portents
fostered
to position
empirical
wonders
wrong
ever
of the mysteries
scrutiny
and belief
in a vibrant,
closer
investigation
of nature.107
but
It is also
world
invisible,
of incorporeal spirits in antithesis. Figures like the Anglican clergyman, Joseph Glanvill,
to prove
to demonstrate
its inner workings
and
these
harnessed
techniques
eagerly
to
same observations
to
events
and
which
The
its existence.108
late
apply
apparitions
women
as miracles
: these too were
and
tried
recognized
seventeenth-century
Englishmen
and
in the crucible
tested
a remarkable
demonstrated
in a way
universe
Boyle,
nation
and
other
which
natural
of the laboratory.109 More

Protestant
generally,
providentialism
to adapt
of the mechanical
itself to the regularities
ability
The
of Isaac Newton,
its demise.110
activities
Robert
delayed
philosophers
to protect,
demonstrate,
defend,
in the universe
intervention
continuing
were
and
he
themselves
illuminate
had
created.
underpinned
by
the sovereignty
As
pious
of God
determi
and
Andrew
his
has
Cunningham
was
natural
It
'by its very nature God-oriented'.
early modern
philosophy
an
in
the queen
of the sciences.111 The
of theology,
remained
active
ally and adjunct
arts has not merely
in alchemy
and other
'occult'
of these men
volvement
complicated
demise
of these disciplines.112
received wisdom
about
the inevitable
It has also reinforced
reminded
growing
creative
pursuit
us,
a considerable
and practices
exerted
that magical
and
philosophies
of modern
science. The Neoplatonic
and hermetic
the development
secrets and the attempt
to manipulate
of a profound
of nature's
it to
knowledge
awareness
influence
on
106
It is impossible to do justice to this vast and complex literature in the space of a few paragraphs.
follows is inevitably partial. For two nuanced
syntheses, see John Hedley Brooke, Science and
1991); John Henry, The scientific revolution and the origins of
religion: some historical perspectives (Cambridge,
What
modem science (Basingstoke,

1997), ch. 5.
107
The transformation of natural philosophy : the case of
Barnes, Prophecy and gnosis; Sachiko Kusukawa,
Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge,
1991).
108
See Moody
E. Prior, 'Joseph Glanvill, witchcraft,
and seventeenth-century
science', Modem
'The Anglican
sci
andj. R.Jacob,
Philology, 30 (1932), pp. 167-93; M. C.Jacob
origins of modern
'The devil in Restoration
science: the
ence', Isis, 71 (1980), pp. 251-67; Thomas Harmon
Jobe,
Simon Schaffer,
Glanvill-Webster
witchcraft
debate', Isis, 72 (1981), pp. 342-56;
'Godly men and
natural philosophy',
souls and spirits inRestoration
Science inContext, 1 (1987),
philosophers:
pp. 55-85; A. R. Hall, Henry More: magic, religion and experiment (Oxford, 1990). Much of this owes a debt
to Charles Webster,
The great instauration: science, medicine and reform, 1626-1660
(London, 1975).
109
See Shaw, Miracles,
chs. 4, 7, and passim. Also Peter Dear,
and the
'Miracles, experiments,
ordinary course of nature', Isis, 81 (1990), pp. 663-83.
110
Michael
P. Winship,
Seers of God: puritan providentialism in the Restoration and early Enlightenment
mechanical
(Baltimore, MD,
1996).
111
Andrew Cunningham,
'How the Prindpia got its name; or, taking natural philosophy
seriously',
History of Science, 29 (1991), pp. 377-92. See also Harold Fisch, 'The scientist as priest: a note on Robert
Isis, 44 (1953), pp. 252-65.
Boyle's natural philosophy',
112
See R. S.Westfall,
'Newton and the hermetic tradition', in A. G. Debus, ed., Science, medicine and
in Brian Vickers,
society in theRenaissance (New York, 1972), pp. 183-93; idem, 'Newton and alchemy',
Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge,
'Newton as
1984); Karin Figala,
History of Science, 15 (1977), pp. 102-37; B- J- Dobbs, The foundations ofNewton's alchemy: or'the
hunting of thegreen lyon' (Cambridge,
1975); J. W. Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the limits of reason (Cambridge,
ed.,
alchemist',
1997); Lawrence
Principe,
The aspiring adept: Robert Boyle and his alchemical quest (Princeton,
1998).
524
HISTORICALJOURNAL
work
effects
special
Paracelsianism
of
office
religious
history
was
of
one of the streams

that fed this. In the world
of medicine,
supplied
an inner
convictions
about
and
the quasi
infused with
about
spark
it the nickname
the physician
that earned
'chemical
The
divinity'.113
ventriloquism
that the practice
inverts
of magic
our
in
settled
assumptions
a residue of'backward'
was
reverse,
mentalities
suggestion
advance.
On
the contrary,
it originated
the tide of philosophical
were
method
of proving
that many
reputedly
prodigious
phenomena
an antidote
a 'tool of
to 'superstition',
illusions-as
Enlightenment',
with
the disreputable
of the nexus between
re-coupling
complexities
as an
no more
experimental
than mere
and a strategy
of stage entertainment
and subsequent
warns
of wizardry
the
against
underestimating
in the
post-Reformation.114
into a form
Its transmutation
for disenchantment.
the
questioning
which
resisted
world
science
from another
Stuart Clark
has taught us that
the problem
Approaching
perspective,
to com
and
itself was a highly
dedicated
science,
demonology
sophisticated
specialized
the elaborate,
but ultimately
mechanisms
the devil,
that
'natural',
prehending
by which
'
master
and deluded
of Experimental
illusions
the sen
', wrought
Knowledge
deceptive
was
more
to
out of the
effect of these endeavours
collective
ses.115 The
phenomena
push
over
of
of
the
the
into
the
classes
the
category
'supernatural'
boundary
'preter
literally
natural'
which
and
these
'natural'.
inhabited:
It was
God
not fundamentally
to overturn
remained
the first and final cause.
the providential
framework
should the speed of the
cast off their religious
births
Nor
and prodigies
like monstrous
anomalies
by which
even if
shifted away from the wrath
of the Almighty
be exaggerated,
associations
emphasis
to
fear
and
and
This
towards His
admiration.116
benevolence,
slowly gave way
ingenuity
an alteration
was
in
about
the
of
the
who
reflected
deity,
assumptions
personality
arguably
as a merciful
to be seen less as a wrathful
than
and
dictator
father
and
loving
coming
a
to regard God
with
It coincided
less as a busy and unpre
growing
tendency
patron.117
process
dictable
meddler,
normally
need
than
as a distant
to tinker with
and passive
spectator,
he had created.
the machine
a clockmaker
This
latter
deity who
trend did not
did not
so much
113
Charles Webster,
From Paracelsus toNewton :magic and themaking ofmodem science (Cambridge,
1982) ;
in early modern
and occultism
Brian P. Copenhaver,
'Natural magic, hermeticism,
science', inDavid
C. Lindberg
and Robert
S. Westman,
eds., Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge,
1990),
pp. 261-302; Henry,
Scientific revolution, ch. 3; idem, 'Magic and science in the sixteenth and seven
in R. C. Olby, G. N. Cantor, J. R. R. Christie, and M. J. S. Hodge,
teenth centuries',
eds., Companion
to die history of modem science (London and New York,
and
'Alchemical
1990); Charles Webster,
in idem, ed., Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century (Cambridge,
Paracelsian medicine',
1979),
pp. 301-34.
114
Leigh
to magic
'From demon possession
show: ventriloquism,
Eric Schmidt,
religion, and the
and a
Church History, 67 (1998), pp. 274-304. See also Peter Lamont,
'Spiritualism
Enlightenment',
crisis of evidence', Historical Journal, 47 (2004), pp. 897-920.
mid-Victorian
115
and popular
naturalism
Stuart Clark,
'The rational witchfinder:
conscience,
demonological
in Pumfrey, Rossi, and Slawinski, eds., Science, culture and popular belief inRenaissance Europe,
superstitions',
idem, Thinking with demons, pt 11,chs. 10-11; idem, Vanities of
pp. 222-48;
the Scientific Revolution',
and science during
Kirsch,
'Demonology
Behavioural Sciences, 16 (1980), pp. 359-68.
116
Daston and Park, Wonders and the order of nature, which offers a more
'
: the study of monsters
in sixteenth- and
earlier, Unnatural
conceptions
and England', Past and Present, 92 (1981), pp. 20-54.
117
'Toleration and the Cromwellian
Blair Worden,
toleration (Studies in Church History, vol. 21, Oxford,
of secularization',
pp. 35-6.
protectorate
1984), pp.
the eye, ch. 4. See also Irving

of theHistory of the
Journal
subde exposition
than their
seventeenth-century
France
', inW. J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and

at p. 223; Worden,
'Question
199-223,
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
525
a
as
its parameters.
Newton
himself
Christian
envisaged
adjust
cosmology
a
to intervene
to correct mistakes,
cosmos which
cyclical
preserved
place for the Almighty
or
to the mechanism,
and carry out some form of 'Reformation'
make
adjustments
as his instruments,
were one of the instruments
the
Lord
used
but
he
Comets
did
servicing.
as one in which
not rule out acts of direct
of the universe
fiat. He conceived
God
still had
'
'
was
even accuse Newton
to
to operate.
if
it
Leibnitz
would
essential
chores
perform
of gravity
itself a perpetual
miracle.
The
of making
the action
late seventeenth-century
undermine
of the laws of nature did not spell the end of the concept
of the miraculous:
systematization
in the writing
it in a manner
that revived an earlier strand of thinking
rooted
of
it redefined
in
of
Meanwhile
the
the
work
of
Simon
Steven
and
Schaffer,
fight
Shapin,
Augustine.118
other
scholars
were
so
the victory
of mechanical
and the experimental
that
philosophy
techniques
to look less like an inevitability
it are coming
linked with
than the
intimately
and social contingencies.119
of a series of political
this argument
confection
Extending
a
sees
as
not
Adrian
it
of
the
inherent
of
intellectual
further,
consequence
Johns
superiority
were
their
in
these ideas, but of the imprimatur
enshrinement
The
they
given by
print.120
has proved
but it has had the
such perspectives
tendentious,
underpins
that posits
the enduring
the rapid collapse
of old
of challenging
paradigm
of the physical
in the face of the sweeping
ideas about
the workings
world
of'rational'
thought.
relativism
that
beneficial
effect
fashioned
advance
Nor
did
elimination
statements
ebrated
but
questioned,
dimensions
John
of deism
and
the collective
by key Enlightenment
also the tendency
of past
fashionable
worldview.
thinkers
historians
doubt
Not
to which
only
reflected
wider
to
play
down
opinion
the religious
with
radical
in a way
Thus
upon
the
favour
unequivocally
is the extent
a movement
that has
synonymous
long been
is gradually
its
reclaiming
place at the heart of this project
link between
and secularization.121
the forces of modernity
Charles
and others
launched
their assault
Toland,
Blount,
of
Christianity
the assumed
which
the development
of magic
from
now
roots
cel
being
and
scepticism.
that severs
the texts
in
the pillars of
work
demon
were
not
or
in essence
priestcraft
anti-religious
origin. Justin
Champion's
strates that they sought to debunk
of the clergy and institutional
the false authority
church,
on trial or
to our
rather
than to put God
per se. Contrary
mystery
question
theological
were
a function
instinctive
their efforts to effect d?mystification
of religious,
assumptions,
rather than anti-religious,
zeal.122
118
David
'Newton and the cyclical cosmos: providence

and the mechanical
Kubrin,
philosophy',
'Locke and Boyle on miracles and
Journal of theHistory of Ideas, 28 (1967), pp. 325-46; J. J. Macintosh,
inMichael Hunter,
God's existence',
ed., Robert Boyle reconsidered (Cambridge,
1994), pp. 193-214; Peter
'Newtonian
Harrison,
science, miracles and the laws of nature', Journal of theHistory of Ideas, 56 (1995),
'The nature of Newton's
science and religion:
pp. 531-53; J. E. McGuire,
"holy alliance" between
to Newton
from the Scientific Revolution
(and back again)', inMargaret J. Osier, ed., Rethinking the
Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 247-70.
119
Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life
(Princeton, 1985); Shapin, Social history of truth.
120
Adrian Johns, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in themaking (Chicago, 1998).
121
'God and the Enlightenment',
and Jonathan
See, among others, Dror Wahrham,
Sheehan,
:a review essay', American Historical Review,
'Enlightenment,
religion, and the enigma of secularization
108 (2003), pp. 1057-60 and 1061-80 respectively;
S. J. Barnett, Enlightenment and religion: the myths of
modernity (Manchester, 2003) ;Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and themaking of themodem world(London,
2000); Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (2nd edn, Cambridge,
2005), esp. chs. 7-8.
122
The pillars of priestcraft shaken: the Church of England and its enemies, 1660?1730
J. A. I. Champion,
(Cambridge,
1992).
526
HISTORICALJOURNAL
to argue
that Enlightenment
increasingly
plausible
actually
of interest
the
in, and discussion
of, the supernatural.
Against
to be a
of what was perceived
tide of indifference
and atheism, ministers
rising
and Richard
Baxter
evidence
Glanvill, William
Turner,
energetically
compiled
In addition
it is becoming
a resurgence
to foster
served
backdrop
like Joseph
of the continuing
intervention
of demons
and spirits in the temporal
realm and of provi
to punish
and angels were
sin and impiety. Miracles,
witches,
ghosts,
to hold back
of irreligion
in the crusade
the flood
and these, as we
interference
dential
weapons
powerful
have seen, were
themselves
efforts
Contemporary
the perceived
against
those
ployed
against
which
Newton,
was
exploited
seems
There
in the
world'
was
Boyle,
by deists
threat
natural
philosophy
and infidelity,
of atheism
in this pious
engaged
and others
formulated
to transform
justification
seventeenth
God
therefore
new
by
were
by
prompted
labels that would
enterprise.
to buttress
In
for speaking
turn,
the
a traditional
into an absentee
methodologies.123
a desire
to fight
be de
ironically
clockwork
sense
universe
of the
sacred
landlord.124
of a partial
're-enchantment
centuries
and for arguing
of the
this
early eighteenth
the drive for disenchantment
that preceded
and coincided
against
was no less
than the Reformation
the Enlightenment
sense,
ambiguous
which
be seen as part of a perennial
the
boundaries
between
process
by
later
and
scientific
that
a backlash
itself
it. In
with
some
and authenticated
defended
to revise
itself. Both
this
may
was
the malleable
of 'superstition'
category
and resacralization.
spiral of desacralization
'
'
its own counter
It should not really
produced
EnHghtenment
in the discipline
One
is
the
ambivalent
enshrined
and
alter
reactions
egos.
impulses
recover
to
traces
and
of the quaint
of folklore.
The
folklorists'
preserve
quest
nostalgic
new
were
into extinc
that
and
industrial
driving
technologies
philosophies
'superstitions'
and
'magic'
as successive
'religion'
redefined,
tion was
ress and
parcel
bodied
were
and
readjusted
in a perpetual
us that the
surprise
loops
a quest
that simultaneously
A second
'civilization'.125
of the Methodist
celebrated
revival,126
of artists, musicians,
a desire
to re-spiritualize
the lament
and mourned
the onward
march
of prog
and
of the supernatural
is the resurgence
that was part
a movement
which
while
the rise of romanticism,
and poets
for the barren
rationalism
em
of the modern
a third
term
it aesthetically,
The
provides
example.
to articulate
this sentiment
of regret was
entzauberung, disenchantment.
employed
use of this borrowed
to im
has helped
in the thought
of Weber,
whose
Even
phrase
to detect a sense of the
theorist of'modernity',
it is possible
him as a pioneering
mortalize
a measure
its emergence.127
It is perhaps
of the distorting
loss that accompanied
spiritual
world
and
Schiller
123
On
in Cooper and Gregory,

ghosts, see Sasha Handley,
'Reclaiming ghosts in 1690s England',
Shaw,
eds., Signs, wonders and miracles, pp. 345-55; eadem, Visions of an unseen world, ch. 1 ; on miracles,
in post
'Invisible helpers: angelic intervention
Miracles, ch. 7. On angels, see Alexandra Walsham,
124
Reformation
Brooke, Science and religion, pp. 118, 143.
(forthcoming).
England'
125
superstition'.
Walsham,'Recording
126
inW. J. Sheils, ed., The church
'Doctors, demons and early Methodist
healing',
Henry D. Rack,
and healing (Studies in Church History, vol. 19,Oxford,
1982); idem, Reasonable enthusiast: John Wesley and
The religion of thepeople: Methodism and popular
therise ofMethodism (Philadelphia,
1989); David Hempton,
'Seeing
(London and New York,
1996), pp. 18, 23-4, 33, 34; Robert Webster,
religion c. 1750-igoo
in John Wesley's
Arminian Magazine',
and John W. B.
salvation:
the place of dreams and visions
and their influence on the early Primitive Methodist
'The magic Methodists
movement',
Tomlinson,
and Gregory,
in Cooper
eds., Signs, wonders and miracles, pp. 376?88, 389-99
respectively; Handley,
Visions of an unseen world, ch. 5.
127
aesthetics and sociological
H. C. Greisman,
of the world": Romanticism,
'"Disenchantment
theory', British Journal of Sociohgy, 27 (1976), pp. 495-507.
REVIEWS
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
527
to
discourse
that we are inclined
that still shape historical
and linear paradigms
polarities
see a certain
in the
the current
in these developments.
surge of interest
Finally,
paradox
:a
as a further cycle in this
itself be regarded
process
symptom
ongoing
might
supernatural
reason'.
and a recoil against
the rule of'scientific
for the numinous
of a yearning
Perhaps
the same may
be
said about
revival
the parallel
of religion
as a crucial
of and
explanation
engine of historical change,128 one reflection of which is the flourishing state of the field of
studies
Reformation
itself.
IV
lessons
Several
to revisit the classic thesis

have emerged
from this attempt
the decline
of magic,
and 'the disenchantment
the Reformation,
here as a prolonged
is that the Reformation
process
(envisaged
themes
and
a link between
posits
the world'.
The first
from
stretched
intellectual
the
and
that
of
that
to the eighteenth
of as both an
be conceived
century) must
we
to
to shape and
of
have
the
process:
recognize
thought
capacity
and practice
and vice versa. Both
and anticipate
action
ideas and
sixteenth
social
influence,
precipitate
events must be accorded
an element
or
of agency.
is not a passive
Secondly,
entity
theology
a
that is constantly
and altering.
Owen
process
dynamic
modulating
thing. It is rather
at any time not
'the crass error that minds were
wise warning
Chadwick's
against making
must
to the
in motion'
be
shown
is of importance
here.129 Thirdly,
constantly
sensitivity
and within
the clergy and laity, learned
elites
took place both between
and individual mentalities,
and to the compromises
and
collective
laypeople,
belief
and unbelief,
and credulity,
that occurred
between
settled
scepticism
negotiations
era - as, of course,
the early modern
in others
doctrine
and lived experience
throughout
too. Testing
to transcend
is
if we
and endeavouring
these comfortable
essential
polarities
are to reach a nuanced
ambivalence
and
should
contradiction
Similarly,
understanding.
transactions
and
that
ordinary
not be regarded
Protestantism's
as anomalies
at the level of both

theory and practice.
world
of the material
coexisted
with an
sanctity
that God
and the devil
intervened
and
unpredictably,
providentially,
must also be made
in human
affairs. Room
for the general
untidiness
radical
insistence
emphatic
indeed miraculously,
of the human
ennial
feature
mind,
of
but
assault
for
normalities,
upon
the
the eclectic
inconsistent
and
Fourthly,
intellectual
individual
of
intermingling
mentalities.
collective
opinions
we have
that
seen
is a per
that the
sole responsibility
for the
and cultural
shifts that
did not have
: if it
was because
in
it
it
took place
this
with
other
respect
proved
significant
converged
hard to pinpoint
and analyse precisely.
A fifth suggestion
trends in a manner
that remains
is that thinking
in terms of cycles of desacralization
and resacralization,
disenchantment
Reformation
re-enchantment,
may help to counteract
a linear
path of development.130
emphasizes
that recognizes
that the early
perspective
and
grew
out
of and
embodied
in later generations
giving way
less important
is the insight
a moment
of
to a fresh
that
the
the liabilities
There
are
Reformation
scepticism
receptiveness
so-called middle
and
and dangers
surely
of a narrative
advantages
(both Catholic
'rationalism'
that
in adopting
and Protestant)
that slowly faded,

to the
and sacred. No
supernatural
witnessed
and
ages
developments
128
See here Jonathan Clark's overview in 'The re-enchantment

of the world?'. His English society,
1688-1832:
ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancient regime (Cambridge,
1985) was also a
129
landmark in this regard.
Chadwick,
Secularization, p. 17.
130
See the rather similar argument of Martin
in On secularization, p. 3 and passim. Martin
speaks of
'successive Christianizations,
followed or accompanied
by recoils'.
HISTORICALJOURNAL
528
reversals
in this
identified
here.
are
that
sphere
not
separate
from,
but
integral
to,
the wider
pattern
to
should be allowed
the fact of long-term
observations
change.
eclipse
even if we cannot
the accumulation
of
explain,
completely
acknowledge,
of the past seem like a foreign
that have made
transformations
individual
many
aspects
as well as
and stasis, is and should be a central
part of the
country.
continuity
Change,
we face is that
to
how
The
about
remit of historians.
teleological
assumptions
problem
None
We
of
these
to
still have
are ingrained
in the very sources upon which we rely to construct
these changes
interpret
we resort to
are also
and tools to which
it. They
the past, as well as in the models
explain
that taxonomically
classifies
in the periodization
scholars as 'medievalists',
institutionalized
in itself perpetuates
the ubiquitous
and 'modernists'.
This
'early modernists',
modernizing
of
is just one reflection.
the
notion
of'the
disenchantment
the
world'
of
which
paradigm
Even
studied
the
to discard
like Michel
of postmodernists
Foucault
and
it by inversion.131
The
very effort of recent
reproducing
of belief
off as 'irrational'
the 'rationality'
and
systems formerly written
of the hold
this thesis still has over us. The
itself be a measure
debate
determination
subvert
it have
often
scholars
to recover
ended
up
may
'delusionary'
or
of the Reformation
is in this sense both a question mal
about
the 'rationality'
'modernity'
a
to
to
It
is
remind ourselves
that the very
barrier
clear
and
salutary
pos?e
thinking.
crippling
so
our
movement
of
the
of
this
have
dominated
that
impact
understanding
long
paradigms
a deliberate
were
of their own propaganda,
and
themselves
product
polemic,
partly
the power
and urgency
of this rhetoric
rhetoric.
Ironically,
mythologizing
retrospective,
was
the
of
convictions
about
the vulner
of
contemporary
strength
initially
symptomatic
was
to
It
modern
world
intrusion.
of a belief
of
the
symptomatic
supernatural
ability
early
and reform
the sacred then God would
that if steps were not taken to suppress
superstition
to a final apocalyptic
the world
confusion.
society and bring
a history
with
the notion
of Protestantism
the task of writing
of'progress'
a formidable
one.
not only by the lingering
influence
It is complicated
to crush
intervene
Ultimately,
out remains
left
of
to which
but also by the extent
study of the Reformation,
are bound
in
the development
both of the historical
such assumptions
up with
discipline
sense of national
and of a residually
Protestant
world
Britain
and the Anglo-American
and ethnic and religious
eroded by multiculturalism
that has yet to be completely
identity
sentiment
confessional
in the
cannot
of the past we are
We
the fact that we are heirs and prisoners
escape
or avoid
to excavate,
it casts. That
the long shadows
said, itmay be argued
endeavouring
over
hold
the academy
is
these
that the tenacious
teleological
paradigms
grip which
own accord:
of
with
of
Protestantism
of
its
the
processes
equation
dissolving
gradually
to our
them
is no longer as self-evident
which
modernization
underpins
post-Christian
to
To
this extent
the disenchantment
thesis may
society as it was
generations.
preceding
diversity.
have
are
an
run
nearly
its course
and
be
to
the protracted
regard
likely
de sac.
cul
interpretative
131
of
discussion
For a perceptive
in eadem, ed., Writing
'Modernization',
approaching
about
debate
this
theme
the end
of its natural
it as an historiographical
in a broader
early modem history (London,
context,
life. Future
scholars
red herring
see Garthine
and
Walker,
2005), pp. 25-48.

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The Reformation and 'The Disenchantment of the World' Reassessed

Author(s): Alexandra Walsham

The Historical Journal,

and collective mentalities.

It is suggested that thinking in terms of cycles of

on the road towards

Department ofHistory, University ofExeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ a.m.walsham@ex.ac.uk

in the early modern

out of the analytical

of the holy. Despite

to the view that the

that the Reformation

that the Reformation

for instance, in A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London, 1964).

:repr. as 'Magic, religion and reason', in his

esp. p. 312. See also Stanley Jeyaraja

in ages past and

sign of the loosening

that, on the contrary,

on everyday life', inMensch und objekt im

over several centuries.11

South Lindsey, 1825-1875

be seen as part of a broader

the last three

'Relics of a fertile heart:

in this field has been

of all the historiographical

Peters, Witchcraft and magic inEurope: themiddle ages (London,

Review, 99 (1994), pp. 813-36.

see Owen Chadwick,

in its early stages, Protestantism

scorn on the crude materialism

for the host

also found more

ed., Selectionsfrom English Wycliffite

other to secure a resting

ed., The European Reformations sourcebook (Oxford, 2000),

Grace and Gratitude:

Reformation (Cambridge, 2006).

a sense of the corrosive

songs, and pictures

the cult of saints

2003): John Walter,

Richard E. Popkin, essays in his honour (Leiden, 1999).

nigh. The Reformation

the power and omnipotence

age of wonders: prodigies, politics and providence in England, 1657-1727

to bring about puzzling

even if they maintained

and the "disenchantment

Renaissance and Reformation,

See Kaspar von Greyerz,

see Alan Macfarlane,

The interpretation of material shapes in puritanism: a study of rhetoric,prejudice, and violence

Protestants and the cult of the saints in German-speaking Europe,

some of these were branded

that English monarchs