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WITCHCRAFT PROSECUTIONS Edward Bever Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of Magic Prosecutions for witchcraft were relatively rare in Europe before the second half of the 1500s. They involved a combination of scattered trials focusing on individuals suspected of practicing harmful magic and occasional mass trials—mainly in Switzerland and neighboring territories—driven by fear of an underground conspiracy of devil worshippers. In the second half of the century, the number of prosecutions for harmful magic increased, particu- larly across Northwestern and Central Europe, and routinely led to investigations searching for a diabolic cult. By the early seven- teenth century, ordinary people and the governing elite shared a conviction that harmful magic intimated trafªc with the devil and participation in an organized cult that threatened the Christian or- der. Different Europeans emphasized different elements of this be- lief, with the common people more concerned about harmful magic, or maleªcium, and the elite more concerned about diabol- ism. Western Europeans were more likely to view the danger as an integral whole, whereas Eastern Europeans were only beginning to connect local witches and sorcerers to any larger diabolical threat. 1 By the end of the middle third of the seventeenth century, however, a critical mass of leaders in Western and Central Europe (though not yet in Northern and Eastern Europe) had lost their certainty about the prevalence, if not the potency, of maleªcium; the danger, if not the existence, of a diabolical conspiracy; and the practicality, if not the possibility, of identifying and punishing those involved in either pursuit. Over the next century, these doubts gradually evolved in into hardened certainties held by lead- ing members of the social and cultural elite across Europe that all Edward Bever is Associate Professor of History, SUNY College at Old Westbury. He is the author of The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cogni- tion, and Everyday Life (New York, 2008); “Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Dis- ease,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXX (2000), 573–590. © 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. 1 Brian Levack, “Chronology of the Witchcraft Trials,” in Richard Golden (ed.), Encyclope- dia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (Santa Barbara, 2006) (hereainafter ew), 187–190; idem, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1995; orig. pub. 1987). Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xl:2 (Autumn, 2009), 263–293.
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WITCHCRAFT PROSECUTIONS

Edward Bever

Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of MagicProsecutions for witchcraft were relatively rare in Europe beforethe second half of the 1500s. They involved a combination ofscattered trials focusing on individuals suspected of practicingharmful magic and occasional mass trials—mainly in Switzerlandand neighboring territories—driven by fear of an undergroundconspiracy of devil worshippers. In the second half of the century,the number of prosecutions for harmful magic increased, particu-larly across Northwestern and Central Europe, and routinely ledto investigations searching for a diabolic cult. By the early seven-teenth century, ordinary people and the governing elite shared aconviction that harmful magic intimated trafªc with the devil andparticipation in an organized cult that threatened the Christian or-der. Different Europeans emphasized different elements of this be-lief, with the common people more concerned about harmfulmagic, or maleªcium, and the elite more concerned about diabol-ism. Western Europeans were more likely to view the danger as anintegral whole, whereas Eastern Europeans were only beginningto connect local witches and sorcerers to any larger diabolicalthreat.1

By the end of the middle third of the seventeenth century,however, a critical mass of leaders in Western and Central Europe(though not yet in Northern and Eastern Europe) had lost theircertainty about the prevalence, if not the potency, of maleªcium;the danger, if not the existence, of a diabolical conspiracy; and thepracticality, if not the possibility, of identifying and punishingthose involved in either pursuit. Over the next century, thesedoubts gradually evolved in into hardened certainties held by lead-ing members of the social and cultural elite across Europe that all

Edward Bever is Associate Professor of History, SUNY College at Old Westbury. He is theauthor of The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cogni-tion, and Everyday Life (New York, 2008); “Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Dis-ease,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXX (2000), 573–590.

© 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory, Inc.

1 Brian Levack, “Chronology of the Witchcraft Trials,” in Richard Golden (ed.), Encyclope-dia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (Santa Barbara, 2006) (hereainafter ew), 187–190; idem,The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1995; orig. pub. 1987).

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xl:2 (Autumn, 2009), 263–293.

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magic was impotent, the devil was at most a moral inºuence andpossibly a complete ªction, and those who believed in the physicalreality of either were either foolish or mentally ill. Although occa-sional vigilante actions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuriestestify that popular fears of witchcraft did not completely disap-pear, the virtual cessation of legal actions against witches by theend of the eighteenth century conªrmed the profound changethat Europe had begun to undergo in the previous century.2

Traditionally, historians have concentrated more on the risein witchcraft fears, and the prosecutions that they engendered,than on their decline. The reason for this imbalance is thatwhereas the triumph of illusory beliefs seemed problematical, thereason for their defeat seemed self-evident: Inºuenced by the ra-tional and scientiªc thought of the Enlightenment, educated Eu-ropeans simply came to their senses. More recently, however, so-cial historians have noted that the trials stopped well before theEnlightenment had come to dominate even educated opinion, andpointed instead to such changes in social life as growing prosperity,various forms of insurance, technological development, and thetriumph of individualism to explain the defusing of the tensionsthat they argued had generated accusations and sustained prosecu-tions. However, since most of these changes occurred well afterthe prosecutions died down, and popular suspicions continued tobe expressed long after the socioeconomic developments that pur-portedly lessened the tensions generating them took place, the so-cial-historical explanation has been found wanting, too.3

Historians of witchcraft now reverse the traditional assump-tion and see the decline of witch beliefs as—at least in Western andCentral Europe—an important cause, not an effect, of the changein elite mentalities. Furthermore, changes in both popular practiceand unconscious behavior during the very period of the witchhunts contributed to the decline of elite concerns about witch-

264 | EDWARD BEVER

2 Levack, “Chronology,” 189–190; idem, “Decline of the Witch Hunts,” in ew, 250–254.3 For the traditional view, see Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, “The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in idem, The European Witch-Craze of theSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (New York, 1967), 168–182. For the so-cial-scientiªc interpretation, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York,1971), 581–583, 647–663. For a penetrating critique of Thomas’ interpretation, see JonathanBarry, “Introduction,” in idem, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (eds.), Witchcraft inEarly Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (New York, 1996), 29–31.

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craft. The actual consequences of the witch prosecutions and theelite’s simultaneous “crisis of conªdence” about them were vitalcomponents in a more general “crisis of authority” during themid-seventeenth century and the larger decline of magic duringthe latter half of the early modern period.4

the crisis of confidence in witchcraft and the decline of

belief in magic

The Long Tradition of Skepticism The skepticism aboutwitchcraft and magic that triumphed in Europe’s ofªcial cultureduring the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries culminateddevelopments in both philosophy and religion that stretched backto antiquity. Hebrew monotheism, which began as monolatry, astricture that Jews worship Yahweh alone, gradually evolved intoan insistence that Yahweh was the only true source of spiritualpower. Early Christianity continued this tradition by distinguish-ing miracles (miracula)—truly supernatural events attributable tothe one true God—from wonders (mira)—phenomena that ap-peared to be supernatural effects created by other gods, demons, ormagicians, but were really caused by occult, or hidden, physicalprocesses. This distinction, derived from a philosophical skepti-cism originating in classical Greece, did not deny the possibility ofmagic entirely but disparaged many purportedly magical effects asnatural or fraudulent. This tradition of minimizing the scope ofthe supernatural played an important role during the Middle Ages,because after the fall of the Roman Empire, the alternative—sup-pressing magical activities by force—became impractical. A seriesof Church pronouncements, most notably the Canon Episcopi, fo-cused on the illusory nature of magical practices. Denial thusformed an alternative to repression of heterodox spiritual systems,

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4 Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions,” in Bengt Ankarloo and Stu-art Clark (eds.), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Phila-delphia, 1999), 3–6; Barry, “Introduction,” 45. Other recent work on the decline ofwitchcraft includes Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformations (New York, 1997); RoyPorter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,” inAnkarloo and Clark (eds.), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, 191–282; Sönke Lorenz and DieterBauer (eds.), Das Ende der Hexenverfolgung (Stuttgart, 1995); Bever, “The Crisis of Conªdencein Witchcraft and the Crisis of Authority,” in Philip Benedict and Myron Gutmann (eds.),Early Modern Europe: From Crisis to Stability (Newark, Del., 2005), which is expanded in idem,The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, andEveryday Life (Houndsmills, Eng., 2008), 349–377, 389–432.

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and the Church’s emphasis shifted between them as its coercivepower waned and waxed.5

This skeptical tradition inºuenced late medieval theologianseven as they developed the demonology that would inform thewitch prosecutions. For example, most theologians considered an-imal metamorphosis to be delusional; a number conceded thatmany reports of Sabbats and sexual encounters with demons wereillusory; and some admitted that maleªcium might work throughnatural causation in addition to, if not instead of, magic. Further-more, a skeptical opposition to the demonology and the aggressiveprosecution of witchcraft also developed during the same period.In the 1460s, the Italian jurist Ambrogio Vignati argued that sincethe devil is incorporeal, he could not have physical contact withhumans, thereby making most of the activities that witches pro-fessed impossible and any testimony extracted from them insuf-ªcient evidence to torture other suspects. In 1489, the Austrian ju-rist Ulrich Molitor argued that most witches’ magical crimes wereillusory and that God had ultimate control over the rest. Althoughhe conceded that people who turned from God to the devil de-served death for their apostasy and idolatry, he also emphasizedthat resisting the devil’s blandishments was not difªcult.6

A few years later, the French humanist physician SymphorienChampier was apparently the ªrst to suggest that people whothought that they had participated in a Sabbat were suffering froma mental illness that called for medical treatment, an opinion ech-oed by Agrippa von Nettelsheim in 1509, who also denounced thecruelty and greed of inquisitors. The leading Italian jurist AndreaAlciati gave weight to the psychological interpretation of theSabbat by citing the Episcopi tradition’s rejection of magical ºight

266 | EDWARD BEVER

5 Michael Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe (Lanham, 2007), 39–40, 44; Bever, “Magicand Religion,” in ew, 692–695; Clark, “Witchcraft and Magic,” in Ankarloo and idem(eds.), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Period of the Witch Trials (Philadelphia, 2002), 161–162.6 Matteo Duni, “Skepticism,” in ew, 1044–1045; Bever, “Molitor, Ulrich,” in ew, 776.Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers (Chicago, 2002), argues that uncertainty was actually the pre-dominant, if unstated, attitude toward the supernatural, and the demonology manifested aneed to afªrm its reality (366). Hans Peter Broedel, The Malleus Maleªcarum and the Construc-tion of Witchcraft (Manchester, 2003), 66–67, 102, 135–138, offers a more moderate interpreta-tion that emphasizes the extent of skepticism about witchcraft at the time while alsoacknowledging the evidence of actual practices. Both works advance the insight that the de-monology presupposed doubt, which Clark ªrst proposed in Thinking with Demons (NewYork, 1997), 195.

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and advocating medical cures for those who confessed to it.Girolamo Cardano further depicted witches as poor, malnourishedwomen whose black bile and melancholic humors made them sus-ceptible to delusions and hallucinations. The Aristotelian philoso-pher Pietro Pomponazzi argued that although demons might exist,they could not act on humans, and he proposed natural explana-tions for apparently magical effects.7

Thus, at the same time that the witch demonology was com-ing into its own, all three lines of the skeptical counter-argumentthat would eventually defeat it were also in evidence: questionsabout the physical reality of the supernatural powers and experi-ences attributed to witches, explanations of these in terms of natu-ral processes and mental deªciencies, and concern about the moti-vation and methods of the legal procedures used to prosecutethem. However, it is worth noting that none of the skeptics com-pletely denied the reality of all aspects of witchcraft or the exis-tence of people who engaged in it and had the experiences associ-ated with it. In fact, the very division of early theorists aboutwitchcraft into “skeptics” and “demonologists” is misleading;most writers on the subject rejected some ideas about witchcraftwhile accepting others. For this reason, the so-called skeptics’ par-ticipation in the discussion actually contributed to the growingconcern about witchcraft, despite their questions about the physi-cal reality of the witches’ powers and experiences and the legalprocedures used against them.8

During the late sixteenth century, however, even as the pe-riod of intense witch hunting began, a series of comprehensiveskeptical arguments against it appeared. In 1563, Johann Weyer, aformer apprentice of Agrippa serving as physician to the tolerantDuke of Cleves, said that old women who thought they were inleague with the devil were either victims of drug-induced halluci-nations or mentally incompetent, and therefore deserved religiousinstruction or medical treatment rather than punishment. Weyerquestioned the relevance of biblical passages for modern cases onphilological grounds and disputed the validity of witches’ pactswith the devil on legal grounds. The more radical English skepticReginald Scot went beyond Weyer by denying that demons had

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7 Duni, “Skepticism,” 1045–1046; idem, “Alciati,” in ew, 30; Germana Ernst, “Cardano,”in ibid., 166–167; Michaela Valente, “Pomponazzi,” in ibid., 911–912.8 Clark, Thinking, 210; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 146.

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any physical power, ascribing injuries and ailments to God’s provi-dence or natural causes and treating magic as “a ‘cousening art’ ªtto be believed only by children, fools, melancholics, or RomanCatholics.” Less systematically but even more broadly, Michel deMontaigne observed a symbiosis between demonological theoriesand the delusions of old women. He also maintained that suchwomen were better treated with medicine than punishment, con-cluding that “it is putting a very high value on your opinions toroast a man alive because of them.”9

The Legal Ramiªcations of Witchcraft Although the work ofthese skeptics failed to stem the rising tide of prosecutions at thetime, even in their immediate environs, it apparently exercisedsome direct inºuence on the legal system. For example, when theDutch authorities brought torture in witchcraft cases to an end inthe 1590s, they drew on Weyer to make the argument that mostaccused witches were melancholic women. Weyer’s position alsoinformed discussions on a more informal level, as when theSwabian pastor Thomas Birch in 1600 incorporated Weyer’s ideasalong with the Episcopi tradition into a play entitled A Mirror ofWitches. Similarly, Scot’s ideas inºuenced a number of plays, likeThomas Middleton’s The Witch, and reputedly they were sharedby many of England’s Justices of the Peace—the lowest rung ofthe judicial administration—thereby contributing to an informalreluctance to prosecute that helped to keep England’s trial rate rel-atively low. Montaigne’s skepticism about witchcraft was similarlyshared by many of his fellow members of the Bordeaux parlement,which was the last French jurisdiction to approve the executionsof witches and which strongly resisted Pierre de Lancre’s later at-tempts to prosecute witches vigorously. It also inspired the libertinsérudits of the early seventeenth century, who started a tradition ofundermining magical beliefs through ridicule, irony, and appealsto class snobbery.10

Skeptical writers like Weyer, Scot, and Montaigne contrib-uted to a growing caution about witchcraft in the judicial system,but, contrary to the traditional rationalist understanding of the de-

268 | EDWARD BEVER

9 Duni, “Skepticism,” 1046–1047; Michaela Valente, “Weyer,” in ew, 1193–1195; JamesSharpe, “Scot,” in ibid., 1016–1018; Jonathan Pearl, “Montaigne,” in ibid., 779–780.10 Hans de Waardt, “Netherlands, Northern,” in ew, 812; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,”147; Valente, “Weyer,” 1193–1195; Sharpe, “Scot,” 1017–1018; Pearl, “Raemond,” in ew,948; Pearl, “Lancre,” in ibid., 622–623; Duni, “Skepticism,” 1047.

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cline of witchcraft, they did not provide the primary impetus forthe reversal of the upward trend in prosecutions. Instead, the pri-mary instigators were jurists who, even though they accepted thatlegally competent people might ally themselves with the devil, at-tend Sabbats in spirit (if not in body), and practice maleªcium,were determined to follow proper legal procedures to avoid theabuses to which witchcraft trials proved eminently prone. Con-cerns about legal issues—in particular the rationale for torture andexecution—played a role in early skeptical critiques of the emerg-ing demonology, and jurists were prominent among the earlyskeptics. Later, as the pace of prosecution increased in the late six-teenth century, central authorities, where they existed, began toinsist on their right of review to curb the improprieties that led toboth individual miscarriages of justice and judicial witch hunts inwhich torture produced not only confessions but also endless de-nunciations of accomplices purportedly seen at Sabbats.11

The imposition of central control happened early in much ofFrance. In the 1590s, the Parlement of Paris, which had jurisdic-tion over more than half the kingdom and set an example for therest, began to exert its control over torture and death sentences. Itmade appeals mandatory in 1604 and codiªed its supremacy in anedict of 1624. It overturned an increasing number of sentences onprocedural grounds. Since appeals involved an expensive processof bringing suspects to Paris and keeping them there until a verdictwas reached, and local ofªcials were punished if abuses werefound, indictments at the lower level declined, and acquittals atthe higher level became almost automatic.12

Similarly, in Spain and Italy, the high authorities of the Inqui-sition succeeded in restraining the number and conduct of witchprosecutions. Spain’s central tribunal, which was responsible forsupervising the regional tribunals, issued a comprehensive set ofprocedural rules in 1526 that included a prohibition of the arrestor conviction of a suspect solely on the basis of another’s testi-mony and restricted the conªscation of property. In 1614, after in-quisitor Alonso Salazar de Frias stopped a mass hunt in the Basque

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11 Duni, “Skepticism,” 1045. For the latest study emphasizing the critical role of central au-thorities, see Jonathan Seitz, “‘The Root is Hidden and the Material Uncertain’: The Chal-lenges of Prosecuting Witchcraft in Early Modern Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly, LXII(2009), 126.12 Levack, “Decline and End,” 15, 49; Briggs, “Parlement of Paris,” in ew, 885–886.

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country—fueled largely by apparently free confessions—and pun-ished ofªcials for improper conduct, the tribunal added regula-tions on how to take confessions and denunciations. The RomanInquisition was even more successful in restraining local ofªcials,both secular and ecclesiastical. After an early period of relativelyintense witch prosecutions in northern Italy during the ªrst de-cades of the sixteenth century, the peninsula became notable forthe moderation of its trials. When trials began to escalate after amid-century lull, the Roman Inquisition intervened in speciªccases, and, in the 1620s, it began circulating a draft of comprehen-sive reforms based on the Spanish precedents, thus helping to re-duce the number of trials to negligible levels.13

The Example of Württemberg A good number of Germanimperial cities and other small sovereignties had records of rela-tively restrained prosecution, thus showing that the interventionof central authorities was not necessary for judicial caution to pre-vail. However, since most of Europe had multiple levels of judicialadministration, the experience of Württemberg, a medium-sizedduchy in southwestern Germany, provides a good illustration ofhow judicial restraint tended to unfold. Overall, Württemberg’srecord of prosecution was moderate. The duchy’s constitutionalfoundation, the Tübinger Verlag of 1514, had established the rightof Württembergers to a legal and systematic trial, and the ducalHigh Council, a body of legally trained bureaucrats, steadily as-serted its supervisory control over witchcraft and other capital tri-als during the sixteenth century.14

The pace of reform quickened in the 1620s, when the HighCouncil mandated restraint in launching investigations, quick re-ports upon arrest, and a cautious approach to torture. In subse-quent decades, it insisted on the need for scrupulous investigationof contested testimony, punishment of false accusations, the in-volvement of lawyers in proceedings, and the cessation of prose-cution after a defendant’s acquittal. The ducal government’s ef-forts received support and guidance from the local university’s lawfaculty. Between the mid-sixteenth and early seventeenth century,legal consultations before torture and sentencing became routine.

270 | EDWARD BEVER

13 Levack, “Decline and End,” 15, 16–17; Guido Dall’olio, “Inquisition, Roman,” in ew,557–560; Oscar di Simplicio, “Italy,” in ibid., 575–579.14 Alison Rowlands, Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561–1652 (Manchester,Eng., 2003), 206–208; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 150–151.

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The jurists’ insistence on sufªcient evidence for arrest, torture, andconviction, as well as on proper procedures, not only helped keepcriminal proceedings on course but also created precedents thatguided ofªcials in future trials. By the 1660s, the Tübingen juristswere recommending against torture and for acquittal in mostcases, and, more often than not, the High Council, if not the localmagistrates, were in agreement.15

Most of these measures did not target witch trials spe-ciªcally but were part of broader legal reforms and institutionaldevelopments. However, because witch trials comprised a sig-niªcant proportion of the capital trial load at the time and in-volved subtle and controversial issues that required considerabledeliberation, and hence time and money, they were both primegenerators and prime targets of the reforms. Furthermore, thewitch trials were particularly targets in one legal area, the resort totorture. Alciati and Weyer, among others, had already noted theproblems surrounding torture in witchcraft cases, especially its po-tential to generate false confessions and denunciations, but in the1620s and 1630s, a number of authors emerged to give these con-cerns new urgency. The Jesuit Friedrich Spee had the greatest im-pact. He systematically criticized the routine disregard of legal cri-teria for the use of torture, denounced the barbarity with whichit was administered, and denied the validity of the confessionsand denunciations that it procured. Though careful not to ques-tion the reality of witchcraft itself, he couched his arguments ina way that contributed to larger doubts, insisting that the mostcommonly cited evidence for maleªcium—an expression ofanimosity followed by some misfortune—was invalid, since mis-fortune would inevitably occur at some point after any utterance.He also pointed out how gossip contributed to witchcraft suspi-cions.16

Mass Arrests, Torture, and the Crisis of Conªdence Judicialskepticism clearly continued a long tradition of concern for legalprocedures and a general uneasiness with the capital prosecution ofoccult crimes, but in most instances, major innovations in legalprocedure grew out of an immediate crisis. The German tractsagainst torture, for example, followed directly from horrible mass

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15 Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence, 151–152.16 Ibid., 151; Levack, “Decline and End,” 19–25; Wolfgang Behringer, “Meyfart,” in ew,757–758; Günter Jerouschek, “Spee,” in ibid., 1077.

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hunts in the writers’ communities. In France, the Parlement ofParis began insisting on reviewing all witchcraft convictions in1587/88 as the result of a mass panic in the Champagne-Ardennesregion where hundreds of suspects were summarily executed. InSpain, the Inquisition issued guidelines for investigations of witch-craft in 1526 after ofªcials played a leading role in a large-scalehunt, and in 1614, it was the mass panic in the Basque country thatled to the revised, stronger version. In Italy, the Roman Inquisi-tion intervened in witchcraft cases when their numbers rose mark-edly late in the sixteenth century, while in Scotland, the privycouncil asserted control over torture after a particularly virulenthunt in 1661/62. In England, judicial caution followed a numberof notorious cases of demonic possession at the turn of the seven-teenth century; it became routine after a second surge at mid-century. Prosecutions ceased in America after the infamous Salemtrials, in Sweden after two mass panics around 1670, and in Hun-gary after the mass trials of the 1750s. The crisis point inWürttemberg was a mass panic in 1656 that led the duke to rebukea number of ofªcials for their “appalling errors,” dispatch a retiredprefect to end the proceedings, and institute a series of reforms intrial procedures.17

Midelfort termed this process of disillusionment a “crisis ofconªdence” in the witch demonology. He coined the phrase todescribe the way in which mass panics in the autonomous jurisdic-tions in the German southwest came to an end, observing that“chain-reaction” trials started with a few stereotyped suspects butgradually widened to include previously unsuspected commonersand eventually friends and relatives of the magistrates—and some-times even magistrates themselves—which led the government tolose conªdence in the ability of the trials to distinguish the inno-cent from the guilty and bring them to an end. This process oc-curred repeatedly in various jurisdictions in the region, andMidelfort labeled the cumulative effect a “General Crisis ofConªdence” that took place between the mid-1620s and the mid-

272 | EDWARD BEVER

17 Levack, “Decline and End,” 14, 54–55; Henry Kamen, “Spain,” in ew, 1069; GustavHenningsen, “Basque Country,” in ibid., 23–27; Dall’olio, “Inquisition, Roman,” 558–559;Levack, “The Decline and End of Scottish Witch-Hunting,” in Julian Goodare (ed.), TheScottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, Eng., 2002), 166, 169–170, 173; Sharpe, “Eng-land,” in ew, 312; Levack, “Decline and End,” 54–55, 9, 69; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,”153–154.

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1680s. Some historians have pointed out that the process did notwork so neatly or universally, and Midelfort himself insisted thatthe individual smaller crises of conªdence that created the generalcrisis ended only the mass panics, since small witch trials involvingone or two suspects at a time continued well into the eighteenthcentury. Nonetheless, Midelfort’s thesis came to be widely ac-cepted as a model of how witch hunts came to an end.18

The idea of a crisis of conªdence has wider applicability iffreed from Midelfort’s view of torture as the mechanism that un-dermined the social structure by threatening members of the elite.Instead, torture was just one way, among others, for the wild con-spiracy theory involving devil-worshipping witches to get out ofhand. Other mechanisms included uncoerced testimony mixingdream experiences and suggestive questioning (as in the Basquecountry and the “Blåkulla” trials in Sweden); the diabolization ofwidespread popular anger about perceived maleªcium and otherinterpersonal conºicts (as happened frequently in northwesternGermany, where local “witch committees” often initiated trials);and the agitation of witch ªnders (as in England’s last surge of trialsduring the 1640s).19

Furthermore, a witch hunt did not have to threaten membersof the elite to create a crisis of conªdence; instead, the trials justhad to become so numerous and undiscriminating that a criticalmass of citizens and ofªcials lost conªdence that justice was beingdone. During a torture-driven hunt in 1608 Württemberg, for ex-ample, the husband of one of the suspects complained to the HighCouncil, “It seems as if the prefect’s private obsession has takenover this place,” thus contributing to the ducal government’s de-cision to end the hunt. Later, during the critical trial in 1656, theHigh Council resisted the duke’s suggestion that one of its mem-bers supervise each witch trial on the grounds that such a commis-sion was “not commensurate with a councilor’s class and honor,”since “personal interviews, confrontations, and attendance at tor-ture” involved “things which plague even the hardest conscience

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18 H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch-hunting in Southwest Germany (Stanford, 1972), 163, 194–196; Rita Voltmer, “Germany, West and Northwest,” in ew, 436; Hillard von Thiessen, DasVerschwinden der Hexen aus Freiburg (Freiburg i. Br., 1997), 32.19 Henningsen, “Basque Country,” 96; Levack, “Decline and End,” 9; Voltmer, “Ger-many,” 431, 435; Alan D. J. MacFarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (New York,1970), 135–142.

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. . . have cost honorable people . . . their health and well-being,”and turned on issues that were “very abstruse, because one can un-derstand” them “in uncountable ways.” Measures that had seemedvalid and necessary came to seem obscure and repugnant as theirdifªculties and dangers became increasingly clear during the ªrsthalf of the seventeenth century.20

Pious Skepticism and Legal Reform We have seen that suchcrises of conªdence contributed to judicial reforms in France,Scotland, Sweden, England, New England, and Hungary, as wellas various locales in Germany. Although they did not end belief inthe devil, or even in a witches’ conspiracy, they went beyond amere disenchantment with trial procedure. Moderation in thesematters was tantamount to a repudiation of the notion that thedevil’s conspiracy constituted an urgent threat to Christendom.The “General Crisis of Conªdence” did not just lead to the rejec-tion of troublesome ideas and practices, but to the adoption of“new answers to old problems,” to the resolution of the problemsassociated with the old ways. A new attitude accompanied the col-lapse of the demonological consensus, a “pious skepticism” com-bining ªrm religious conviction with deep doubts aboutwitchcraft that characterized the period after the general crisis.21

The key change was the repudiation of a diabolical conspiracythat required extraordinary measures to counteract. In legal terms,participation in the witch cult had been treated as a crimen excep-tum, an exceptional crime justifying the suspension of normal rulesof evidence and procedure. The Spanish and Roman Inquisitionsand the Parlement of Paris had never accepted this doctrine, butmany courts did. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, mostof them were abandoning the policy in practice as a legal techni-cality without formally renouncing the demonology. By puttinggood legal form and avoidance of injustice above the campaign toexterminate witches, they were acknowledging that the threat ofwitchcraft was not signiªcant enough to justify the costs of tryingto eradicate it.22

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20 A209, b. 844, d. 26, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 153.21 Midelfort, Witch-hunting, 194; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 162.22 Edward Peters, “Crimen Exceptum,” in ew, 233; Levack, Witch-Hunt, 97, 226; VincenzoLavenia, “‘Enormous’ Crimes,” in ew, 317; Levack, “Decline and End,” 20, 22–3, 30, 33;Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 161.

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These growing doubts about the danger posed by witchcraftwere also manifested in other judicial trends, including a greaterinvolvement of lawyers for the defense, a signiªcant reduction inthe use of torture, and a shift in the criminal lexicon from com-mon terms like hexerei, sorcellerie, or brujeria to legalistic ones (oftenin Latin) like maleªcium (a magical offense in its own right ratherthan evidence of diabolism), veneªcium (magical poisoning), andmagia. The adoption of this vocabulary signaled a new precision inprosecution, emphasizing suspects’ speciªc actions rather thantheir general moral orientation. Moreover, the use of theologicalexaminations to assess a suspect’s knowledge of the basic doctrinesof Christianity declined—in Württemberg, at least—while con-sultations with physicians about witchcraft increased. As a result ofall these changes, the number of executions, which were handledby the judicial administration, dropped sharply. Indictments, how-ever, showed a more gradual decline, since they still remainedsubject to popular initiatives and the discretion of local authori-ties.23

The increased use of medical consultations reveals the inter-connection between the new orientation toward evidence and thegreater skepticism. Jurists required that allegations of maleªciumbe substantiated by proof that the harm attributed to a witch wassupernatural in origin. Since the burden of proof was on the pros-ecution, the mere possibility that an illness might have a naturalcause was enough to undercut an accusation of witchcraft or trans-form it into a suspicion of ordinary poisoning. Medical judgmentsalso were sought about confessions; Weyer’s argument that con-fession could simply be a reºection of melancholy or senility un-dercut the certainty that this “queen of proofs” had oncebrought.24

In the long run, both the intellectual and the institutional im-plications of the medicalization of witchcraft beliefs contributedsigniªcantly to the decline of magical beliefs in general, but in theshort run, accommodation to, rather than rejection of, religious

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23 Levack, “Decline and End,” 30–32, 19–25; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 152–156.24 Levack, “Decline and End,” 26–30; Thomas Robisheaux, “Witchcraft and ForensicMedicine in Seventeenth-Century Germany,” in Clark (ed.), Languages of Witchcraft: Narra-tive, Ideology, and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (New York, 2001), 212–213; Seitz, “Root,”127.

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beliefs—the “pious” part of “pious skepticism”—was the order ofthe day. The re-evaluation of witchcraft meshed with long-stand-ing religious traditions and dovetailed with contemporary reli-gious currents. In southwestern Germany, for example, the re-gional elite revived a local “providential” school of thought thatviewed God, not the devil, as the source of all spiritual power;misfortune reºected divine displeasure rather than any malevolentpower. This line reasoning also contributed to a decline of witch-craft prosecutions in Denmark during the 1620s, and it found ahome in the German Pietist movement, which emerged in thesecond half of the seventeenth century. The Pietists opposed theorthodox Lutherans’ notion that the devil could cause disease, in-sisting that to blame intermediate agents, including the devil, wasto lose sight of the relationship between disease and moral condi-tion.25

In England, witch fears clearly persisted in the general popu-lace even as some late seventeenth-century authors began to dis-miss them. One of these commentators, John Webster, argued, “Itis simply impossible for either the devil or witches to change or al-ter the course that God hath set in nature.” The dominant attitudeappears to have been the latitudarianism of the Restoration period,a generalized opposition to religious enthusiasm that did not denythe possibility of witchcraft but repudiated concern about it as acombination of popery, radical sectarianism, and plebian passions.In Catholic Poland, a similar climate of tolerance at the turn of theseventeenth century may have prevented a signiªcant number ofwitch trials, although the kingdom experienced a surge at the turnof the eighteenth century, and if religion had any connection tothe decline of witchcraft in other Catholic countries, it was by dis-connecting diabolism from maleªcium. The Italian and SpanishInquisitions resolutely dealt with suspected demoniacs as hereticsand apostates whose souls needed saving more than their bodiesneeded burning, and the French law of 1682, the ªrst to abolishwitchcraft as a crime, maintained separate sanctions against sacri-lege, poisoning, and “pretended magic.” In all of these cases,change in the nature of religious beliefs, rather than any absolute

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25 Midelfort, Witch-hunting, 194; Bever, “Crisis of Conªdence,” 158–160; Levack, “De-cline and End,” 42.

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decline in them, was responsible for skepticism about demonol-ogy.26

Law, Materialism, and Demonology The crisis of conªdencethat climaxed in the middle third of the seventeenth century wasbut the opening act of a larger crisis of authority that would takeanother century to resolve. The threat posed by witchcraft and de-monology was no longer thought to be severe, but how validwere its other contested elements? The reality of magical ºightand, by implication, the Sabbats was contradicted not by somenew innovation in thought, but by the venerable Episcopi tradi-tion, which was far older than the demonology itself. The veracityof self-identiªed witches was called into question on medicalgrounds, and even the power of maleªc magic, the bread-and-butter of popular accusations, was open to doubt. Piousness andskepticism formed an unstable alliance that may have solved theimmediate problem but did not resolve the fundamental issues.Hence, the legal challenges continued, metaphysical attacks in-tensiªed, and the total discrediting of witchcraft would becomeone of the paradigmatic underpinnings of the Enlightenment andthe modern worldview.

The legal challenges to demonology came on three mainfronts—theory, practicality, and intellectual context. First of all,the theoretical opposition to prosecution reached a new level in1701 when the pietist law professor Christian Thomasius broughttogether the legal, medical, and providential standpoints to denythe possibility of pacts with the devil, the reality of Sabbats, andthe physical power of evil spirits, concluding unequivocally that“witchcraft is only an imaginary crime.” Thomasius’ critique wasinºuential on an international scale, and was reinforced by changesin the nature of trials in the late seventeenth-century that judgeshad to contend with in practice: Like the Salem trial in Americaand the Blåkulla trials in Sweden, cases came increasingly to bebased on the testimony of children, and seemed more and more tofocus on decrepit old women. Finally, although neither Thom-asius’ legal criticism nor skepticism about children’s testimony andold women’s mental competence required any new modes of

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26 Levack, “Decline and End,” 58, 52; Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment,Romantic, and Liberal Thought,” 202–203; Duni, “Skepticism,” 248.

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thought, they were in fact bolstered by an intellectual current thathad its roots in the early to mid-seventeenth century but began toacquire force around the turn of the eighteenth century—the newmaterialist, mechanical philosophy, which posited a world inwhich supernatural agency beyond God’s ultimate creative powerwas simply impossible.27

This new paradigm was primarily associated with René Des-cartes, who never wrote about witchcraft but who categori-cally insisted on a fundamental dualism of matter and spirit,and Thomas Hobbes, whose materialism ºatly denied the possibil-ity that magic could have any efªcacy or the devil any extra-psychological reality. Hobbes remained a relatively isolated ªgurebecause of his apparent atheism, but Descartes enjoyed the indirectsupport of Pierre Gassendi, who also developed a theory of physicsthat excluded magical forces, and the direct support of MarinMersenne, who vigorously promoted the new worldview. Des-cartes inspired a series of later thinkers who developed his dualisticmetaphysics and materialist physics, and despite telling critiques bycompeting philosophers, entrenched opposition from establishedacademics, and fervent denunciation by the devout of every con-fession, his inºuence widened through the late seventeenth andearly eighteenth centuries. Newton’s synthesis of physics and as-tronomy later in the century may have secured a place for at leastone nonmaterial force—gravity, which Newton deªned to be asincontrovertible as any material substance—but it failed to securean opening for God, or any other spiritual agency, to intervene inthe physical world.28

Descartes’ inºuence undoubtedly lay behind Louis XIV’s curtdismissal of magical powers in the act that abolished the crime ofwitchcraft in France, but it was issued with no rationale and had

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27 Levack,”Decline and End,” 39; idem, “Decline of the Witch Hunts,” in ew, 252; Bever,Realities, 115–118, 416; idem, “Old Age and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe,” in PeterStearns (ed.), Old Age in Preindustrial Society (New York, 1982), 179–180.28 Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (New York,2001), 14; Geoffrey Scarre, “Descartes,” in ew, 269; Edward Peters, “Hobbes,” in ibid., 499;Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses (New York, 1989), 238–240; Dries Vanysacker,“Gassendi,” in ew, 402; Margaret Jacob, “The Crisis of European Mind: Hazard Revisited,”in Phyllis Mack and idem (eds.), Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1987),270; David Wooton, “Hutchinson,” in ew, 531–532; John Henry, The Scientiªc Revolution andthe Origins of Modern Science (Houndsmill, Eng., 2008; orig. pub.1997), 54; Keith Hutchison,“What Happened to Occult Qualities in the Scientiªc Revolution?” in Peter Dear (ed.), TheScientiªc Enterprise in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1997), 105.

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little direct or immediate impact beyond France’s borders. Themost powerful direct inºuence that Cartesianism had on witch-craft beliefs was in Dutch Calvinist minister Balthasar Bekker’smassive and comprehensive refutation of them, The World Be-witched (1691–1693). Asserting that spirit beliefs originated in pa-ganism, Bekker explained that disembodied spirits like the devilcould not possibly inºuence physical processes, which work withuniform regularity through purely physical interactions. He fur-ther advised that because God had cast the devil and all demonsinto Hell where they were chained for all eternity, biblical refer-ences to magic and witches actually referred to tricksters, frauds,delusions, and illusions. Bekker concluded by pointing out thecruelty and irrationality of the witch trials, calling for their com-plete cessation.29

The World Bewitched was an international bestseller, but doz-ens of refutations were published in English, French, and German.Even the normally tolerant Dutch, who had not burned a witch ina century, reacted adversely: The Reformed Church condemnedthe book, expelled Bekker from his ministry, and excluded himfrom communion. Although most people agreed that the masshunts were regrettable, most also thought that to deny the realityof witchcraft and magic was to contradict the lessons of history,the Bible, and innumerable sober and honorable witnesses. Mosttroubling to early modern orthodox believers, the denial of magicled logically to denial of miracles and ultimately to atheism. Argu-ments along these lines continued to be voiced during the eigh-teenth century: Although the leading English jurist WilliamBlackstone celebrated the abolishment of the crime of witchcraftin 1736 because of the manifest abuses that its prosecution had in-volved, he still asserted, as late as 1769, “to deny the possibility,nay the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once tocontradict the revealed word of God.” The Danish jurist C. D.Hedegaard defended belief in witchcraft on biblical grounds in1760, and in 1749, the Jesuit Georg Gaar, during the public execu-

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29 Jacob, Crisis of European Mind, 267–268; William Monter, Ritual, Myth and Magic in EarlyModern Europe (Athens, 1984), 116; Robin Attªeld, “Balthasar Bekker and the Decline of theWitch-Craze: The Old Demonology and the New Philosophy,” Annals of Science, XLII(1985), 383–395; Andrew Fix, “Bekker,” in ew, 106–107; Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic inEnlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,” 200.

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tion of an accused witch, railed against those who protected herkind by denying their existence.30

A rejoinder by the Italian abbot Girolamo Tartarotti’s toGaar’s diatribe triggered the last great debate on witchcraft. Subse-quent publications in Italy denounced Tartarotti for either beingtoo skeptical or for not being skeptical enough. Ensuing argu-ments spilled over national and linguistic frontiers, inspiring anumber of French responses, including a scathing comment byVoltaire, and leading to the Bavarian “War of the Witches” inGermany—a deliberately staged confrontation between champi-ons of the Enlightenment and defenders of the old order. Prince-Elector Max III Joseph’s request that Ferdinand Sterzinger deliveran “Academic Lecture About the Presumption That WitchcraftCan Produce Effects” ignited a controversy that lasted ªve yearsand involved writers from all parts of Germany, Austria, Bohemia,Switzerland, and Italy—one of the most extensive debates in Cen-tral Europe during the Enlightenment. It helped to set the stagefor a series of secularizing reforms in Bavaria and was widely cele-brated as a sign that the Enlightenment had ªnally come to Catho-lic Central Europe. A few years later, the German priest JohannJoseph Gassner, a self-professed exorcist, at ªrst attributed peoples’ailments to witchcraft but declined to identify them, and hestopped mentioning witches at all when he and his supporterswere accused of reviving the bad old days of the witch hunts.Witchcraft had gone from being a live issue in learned discourse toa disreputable relic of the past.31

This transformation of witchcraft into a bad memory was theculmination of a larger process of relegating witchcraft to history.Some English commentators in the early eighteenth century wrotethat witches had once existed but did not exist anymore. Similararguments were made against miracles: God had performed themin biblical times but stopped once the one true religion had beenestablished. Likewise, the devil’s power on earth ended whenChrist cast him and his demons into Hell. Witchcraft had thusshifted gradually from being a clear and present danger to being a

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30 Monter, Ritual, 121; Vanysacker, “Enlightenment,” in ew, 314–316; Levack, “Declineand End,” 43–44.31 Behringer, “Bavarian War of the Witches,” in ew, 102–103; Vanysacker, “Tartarotti,” inibid., 1107; Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment (New Haven, 2005), 97–98, 23.

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clear but past danger, eventually to become an obscure delusion inthe past.32

From Pious Skepticism to Dogmatic Disbelief Another way thatthe Bavarian witch war and the controversy over Gassner showedthat Catholic Central Europe was entering the Enlightenment wasthe prominent role of satire and ridicule in its polemics. Despiteinnovations in serious intellectual discourse about supernaturalphenomena in Western Europe during the mid-eighteenth cen-tury, most notably David Hume’s questioning of even biblicalmiracles, the most important development during the two genera-tions after Bekker was the rise of a new cult of reason and reason-ableness that gave no credence to the “brainless caprices of an ig-norant villager . . . the crack-brained head of a ridiculousshepherd.”33

The transformation of witchcraft from a hotly contested in-tellectual issue to a laughable relic of a bygone era was a two-stageprocess, each phase of which spanned approximately one genera-tion. The ªrst one, which lasted from around the turn of the eigh-teenth century to the 1730s, began with the ªrestorm of contro-versy about Bekker’s book and ended with an embarassing scandalin France about miracles and the almost uncontested, indeed al-most unnoticed, repeal of all English witchcraft statutes in 1736.The one member of Parliament who spoke against it was politi-cally crippled by his stance. In fact, the entire exercise was part oflarger struggle between the dominant Whig party and their moreconservative and provincial Tory opponents. The bill’s introduc-tion was probably motivated more by a desire to sucker the Toriesinto defending an already lost cause than to call a halt to witch tri-als, which had ended in practice almost twenty years earlier. Therepeal was part of new dynamic of political progressives versusconservatives that was replacing religious conºict as the foremostissue in public life.34

In France, the miraculous healings attributed to the revered

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32 Levack “Decline and End,” 59; Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic, and Culture (Manches-ter, Eng., 1999), 7–8; Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Lib-eral Thought,”199–200; Midelfort, Exorcism, 97; Vanysacker, “Enlightenment,” 315–316.33 Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and LiberalThought,”201–202; Duni, “Skepticism,” 1048–1049; Cyrano de Bergerac, “A Letter AgainstWitches,” in Monter (ed.), European Witchcraft (New York, 1969), 114.34 Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,”207; Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformation, 180–194.

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Françoise de Paris led to a series of increasingly tumultuous gath-erings by Jansenist sympathizers at his grave. The establishedchurch labeled the followers of the new cult “convulsionaries”and denied the miracles, and the government closed the cemeteryand outlawed private convulsionary activities. Even the majorityof Jansenists eventually repudiated both the movement and themiracles. Meanwhile, champions of the Enlightenment had a ªeldday lampooning both the extravagant displays of the convulsion-aries and a Church that denied the possibility of miracles in thepresent while insisting on the reality of miracles that had occurredalmost 2,000 years earlier.35

The use of witchcraft beliefs as a political trap in England in1736 indicates that a critical mass of men from the upper class whohad come of age since 1700 was steeped in a widely shared, relaxedlatitudinarianism. Similarly, the resistance of the French civil andreligious establishments, not to mention mainstream Jansenists, tomiracle claims in the 1730s indicates how weakened the belief insupernatural interventions (at least in the present) had become.At the same time, the brazen ridicule to which both sides of thereligious debate were subjected shows how far disbelief had ad-vanced. In the next generation, the champions of the Enlighten-ment would make full use of this tactic not only as a way of furtherdiscrediting magical beliefs themselves but also, and more impor-tantly in their minds, as a way of indirectly criticizing establishedreligion by mocking the elements of supernaturalism in it.36

The tradition of ridiculing magical beliefs began with theearly seventeenth-century libertins érudits, but their mockery wasthat of a small avant garde bolstering its sense of exclusivity in theface of an overwhelming majority who did not share their beliefs.Skeptics later in the seventeenth century echoed their portrayal ofmagical beliefs as the foibles of simple peasants, old women, andfools, but their criticism was more earnest. Ridicule did not beginto play a prominent role in the discourse until the turn of the eigh-teenth century, with Pierre Bayle’s dismissal of astrology inhis Dictionaire and Laurent Bordelon’s A History of the ridiculous Ex-travagances of Monsieur Ouºe; Occasion’d by his reading Books treatingof Magik. It came into its own in the 1640s with the Marquis

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35 Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,”211–213.36 Porter, ibid., 202–203; Henry, Scientiªc Revolution, 82–83; Duni, “Skepticism, 1048–1049; Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 6, 14.

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d’Argens’ satirical Cabalistic Letters and the start of Voltaire’s bar-rage of invective against magic in general and witch beliefs in par-ticular. Exasperation with the tenacity of such human folly foundits way into the Encyclopedie and numerous other works of thephilosophes.37

During the middle third of the eighteenth century piousskepticism gave way to a dogmatic disbelief in the minds of West-ern Europe’s leading intellectual and administrative ªgures. Thegreat majority of people continued to believe in magic and, to alesser extent, witches, while many of the elite in France, Britain,and Holland were skeptical about magic but unconvinced that itwas totally impossible. In neighboring countries—Spain, Italy, andGermany—only a minority within the elites could be called disbe-lievers. Farther east, the elites were still conducting old-fashionedwitch trials into the middle of the century, although they werehalted rather abruptly in the next decades by high ofªcialsinºuenced by the intellectual currents ºowing from the West. Justas in the crisis of conªdence a century earlier, a crucial tippingpoint had been reached.38

The rapid cessation of trials in Eastern Europe just mentionedwas one sign of this; another was the changing deªnition of “su-perstition.” The word shifted from designating outmoded andpresumably invalid spiritual beliefs to designating outmodedand presumably invalid beliefs about physical reality (interestingly,the actual content of what was designated as superstitious did notchange). As disbelief in magic spread throughout Europe andeventually much of the world, magical experiences ªrst and thenthe very belief in magic turned into psychological disorders.39

changing beliefs and changing behaviors Disbelief in magicdeveloped a vitriolic tone because it was becoming a critical socialmarker, a sign of membership in the forward-looking, modern-

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37 Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,”219–225, 240–241, 247–248. An early example of ridicule outside France was LudvigHolberg’s play Hexerie oder Blind Alarm (Copenhagen, 1722 or 1723) (thanks to Peter Burkefor this reference). Marina Montesano, “Voltaire,” in ew, 1173.38 Davies, Witchcraft, Magic, and Culture, 7–8; Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlighten-ment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,” 213–216, 219–235; Bever, Realities, 419–420.39 Peter Dinzelbacher, “Superstition,” in ew, 1091–1092; Lorraine Daston and KatharinePark, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 2001), 337–338; Porter, “Witch-craft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,” 225–226, 255–256, 259,266–272; Bever, Realities, 425–426

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thinking, cosmopolitan elite, as much opposed to staid, conserva-tive provincial leaders as to the great unwashed. It played into adramatic schism between the upper and lower strata of society thathad been forming for centuries, and that increased sharply in thelate seventeenth century. The ruling classes gradually gave up theircampaign to reform the masses and their traditional culture in fa-vor of celebrating their superiority over them and their emancipa-tion from outmoded thinking. The “theater of everyday life” sawthe upper classes adopt an ever-more elaborate set of mannerisms,behaviors, beliefs, and taboos to distinguish them from their socialinferiors. Not only were expressions of disbelief in magic used toproclaim membership in the cultural leadership but also, whethermanifested as a regal hauteur or a levelheaded practicality, to sus-tain an immunity to the unreasonable fears and hopes throughwhich magical beliefs could become self-fulªlling prophesies, avisceral imperviousness that was both a sign and effect of member-ship in the new elite. This elite was further deªned along genderboundaries. A well-bred woman might be susceptible to the fearand the allure of the occult, but a well-bred man could no moresuccumb to an old woman’s curses than indulge in some ritualhocus-pocus to advance his own interests. Disbelief in magicplayed a critical role in deªning the new autonomous individual inrational control of his own actions and feelings, internally inte-grated and essentially isolated from the outside world.40

As noted above, France in 1682 and England in 1736 revisedtheir statutes to make all claims of magic prosecutable as fraud.Only Poland and Sweden, however, went so far as to decriminal-ize witchcraft completely in the late eighteenth century. Prussia,the Habsburg Empire, and Russia reformed their laws to bring asigniªcant limit to prosecutions, but trials involving witchcraft andmagic in these countries remained theoretically possible. In thisrespect, the decline in those countries was not much differentfrom that in the great majority of jurisdictions where the laws re-mained unchanged until the nineteenth century. This process, inwhich the number of witchcraft trials dwindled from their post-crisis low level to nothing, while trials for nonmaleªc magic also

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40 Monter, Ritual, 115–116; Jacob, Crisis of European Mind, 252; Porter, “Witchcraft andMagic in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Liberal Thought,” 208, 240–241; Robin Briggs,“Embattled Faiths,” in Euan Cameron (ed.), Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (NewYork, 1999), 197; Bever, Realities, 431–432.

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decreased, has not attracted much scholarly attention. But theavailable information sheds valuable light on the informal processby which a generalized sentiment of pious skepticism gave way toa dominant attitude of dogmatic disbelief.41

Recent studies of witchcraft and magic after the period of thewitch hunts tend to focus on the continuation of beliefs, seekingto correct the mistaken assumption that the decline of witch pros-ecutions corresponded closely with a decline in witch beliefs. Be-sides showing that popular witchcraft fears and magical practicescontinued through the eighteenth and nineteenth and well intothe twentieth century, they reveal that local elites’ attitudes werefar more variegated, and changed far more slowly, than traditionalhistorical discussions allowed. Nevertheless, elite attitudes clearlychanged over the course of the eighteenth century, not just in in-tellectual circles and the cosmopolitan courts but across the board.In the core areas of the Enlightenment, the social leaders who dis-missed magic out of hand grew from a small and beleaguered mi-nority c. 1700 to a dominant majority by century’s end. In themore peripheral areas, such naysayers became more inºuential, atleast forcing traditionalists to go on the defensive and modify theirarguments to accommodate new points of view.42

The Decline of Magical Practices in Württemberg The progressof this evolution is mirrored by changes in how ofªcials inWürttemberg stigmatized magical practices over the course of theeighteenth century. In the ªrst decades of the century, the govern-ment focused primarily on the religious implications of magicaloffenses, referring to them as “sinful,” “disobedient,” and “super-stitious” (in the sense of illicit spiritual practice). During the de-cades around mid-century, the government continued to exhibitconcern about the religious and moral implications of magical ac-tivities but also began to characterize them more frequently as

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41 Levack, “Decline and End,” 75.42 Davies, Witchcraft, Magic, and Culture, 1, 17. The most recent contributions to this discus-sion are idem and Willem de Blécourt, Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlight-enment Europe (Manchester, Eng., 2004); idem, Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in ModernEurope (Manchester, Eng., 2004), 1. But the same point was made by earlier historians—forexample, Judith Devlin, The Superstitious Mind: French Peasants and the Supernatural in the Nine-teenth Century (New Haven, 1987), 216; Herbert Leventhal, In the Shadow of the Enlightenment:Occultism and Renaissance Science in Eighteenth Century America (New York, 1976), 124–125;Robert Bushaway, “‘Tacit, Unsuspected, but Still Implicit Faith’: Alternative Belief in Nine-teenth Century Rural England,” in Levack (ed.), New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and De-monology (New York, 2001), VI, 96–97.

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fraudulent or foolish. After 1780, their deceptiveness and irratio-nality, along with the disobedience that they involved, replacedtheir religious implications entirely. Notwithstanding differencesin timing from one locality to another, the trend was the samethoughout Europe, concluding by the end of the nineteenth cen-tury where not by the end of the eighteenth.43

In Württemberg, the diffusion of scientiªc progress andFrench fashion were important in the transition from pious skepti-cism to dogmatic disbelief, but they do not fully account for it; thegovernment’s own experience with popular magical practicesplayed a role as well. In particular, divinatory treasure hunting—aby-product of the new monetary economy that provided charla-tans with a new way to ºeece the public—became the most com-monly prosecuted form of magic early in the eighteenth century.It was largely responsible for the tenfold rise in magic trials fromthe late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. Furthermore,the steady decline in prosecutions for treasure hunting from the1760s into the ªrst decade of the nineteenth century reºected adecline in commoners’ use of this form of magic; ofªcials contin-ued to prosecute it vigorously even as their conception of itchanged from sinful disobedience to fraudulent foolishness. Com-mon people lost their taste for the practice after mid-century be-cause they, too, came to see its folly, partly because more depend-able ways to make money were available and partly because thepunishment for it—stiff ªnes, banishment, prolonged imprison-ment, and even repeated ºogging—was prohibitive.44

Changes in the rate at which other magical activities wereprosecuted also reºected changes in the frequency and openness oftheir occurrence, at least to some extent. Even though a practicelike magical healing, for example, continued through the nine-teenth century, it was not necessarily unaffected by prosecution.The penalties for illicit magical activities were similar to those fortreasure hunting. Furthermore, conviction of, arrest for, and evenjust suspicion of criminal behavior could result in a damaged repu-tation that could affect a victim’s entire family, as well as descen-dants. Economists emphasize that “informal (that is, illegal) blackmarkets” involve “high costs and risks” that affect “the options

286 | EDWARD BEVER

43 Bever, Realities, 425–426.44 Ibid., 370–371, 419–428.

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and behavior of many members of society, and thus the develop-ment of the entire economy,” and much the same is true of the ef-fects of repression on the development of a culture. As late as1775, a magistrate in Württemberg commented, “it is indeed wellknown that magical healing is in full swing everywhere, andwhere not openly then secretly.” Once upon a time, though, suchactivity was both ubiquitous and conspicuous; even sporadic re-pression meant that it assumed an increasingly furtive, illicit char-acter that prevented it from expanding with the growing popula-tion, burgeoning economy, and developing culture. At the end ofthe eighteenth century, Württemberg had three times the popula-tion of the 1660s but only half the number of trials for beneªcentmagic. Ofªcials’ indifference can account for only part of this in-version; the authorities took their responsibility to protect thepublic from swindlers seriously. The relatively low number of tri-als for beneªcent magic reºects at least in part its lesser place inprovincial culture.45

The Effect of the Witchcraft Trials on the Development of Cultureand Society The repression of magic during the Enlightenmentclearly had a signiªcant inºuence on provincial society and popu-lar culture, and there is reason to think that the earlier witch perse-cutions, which were considerably more severe, did as well.

To begin with, while the early skeptics and the demonologistsdisagreed about the physical reality of magical crimes and howthose who committed them should be treated, even the skepticsaccepted that some people in late medieval society sought out en-counters with malign spirits and attempted to use harmful magicalpowers. Only toward the end of the witch-trial era did questionsarise about whether such people existed in signiªcant numbers,and in the generations that followed, there was a transitional pe-riod when witchcraft was said to have been a reality in the past buthad ceased to exist. The questions raised about the nature and ex-tent of witchcraft that helped to end the trials were certainly salu-tary, given the exaggerations and distortions that pervaded the de-monology. But attention to the changing nature of the highintellectual and juridical discourses about witchcraft, as well as tothe substantial issues raised in many of the small trials, show that

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45 Ibid.; Sheilagh Ogilvie, State Corporatism and Proto-Industry (New York, 1997), 444;A213, b. 8399/1775, Hauptstaatsarchive Stuttgart.

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not only beneªcent but also malevolent magical practices andpractitioners were an integral part of late medieval culture and so-ciety. The former were employed to help people; the latter con-veyed righteous anger or malicious animosity in ways intended tocause harm. The variety of maleªc techniques ranged from poi-sons to surreptitious battery of children and animals, to noxious orsymbolic items hidden in living areas, to curses, to subtle playingon peoples’ fears, and to subliminal signals that could trigger so-matic ailments and accidents. Furthermore, a small but signiªcantnumber of people did not just employ magical techniques;they also lived in a world of spontaneous or cultivated magicalexperiences, altering their consciousnesses via autosuggestion,vivid dreams or apparent out-of-body experiences, hallucinogenicsalves and potions, or involuntary dissociation. The spirits thatthey perceived during these experiences could be amoral or evenmalevolent as well as benign.46

The prosecution of witches for malevolent attacks and diabol-ical associations was just one front in a wider campaign to suppressall forms of magic and, indeed, all popular practices deemed im-proper by the governing and religious elite. Combining secular“social discipline” and religious “confessionalization,” this cam-paign worked through a collaboration of state, church, and localcommunity to purge unwanted practices, practitioners, behaviors,and experiences. This campaign began in Protestant countrieswith the Reformation and then spread to Catholic lands with theCounter-Reformation, reaching its high point during the ªrst halfof the seventeenth century, when witch hunting was also at itspeak.47

Many currents combined to produce this surge of reformism.In the case of the witch prosecutions, the rising tide of trials fromthe late sixteenth into the early seventeenth century seems to havebeen connected with the “scissors effect” of limited resources, due

288 | EDWARD BEVER

46 Bever, Realities, 56–57, 154–156, 6, 11–37, 158–167, 73–92, 106–150, 170–185, 187–212.47 Levack, Witch-Hunt, 109–112; Robert Muchembled, “Satanic Myths and Cultural Real-ity,” in Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Pe-ripheries (New York, 1990), 140, 153, 157; idem (trans. John Burke), “Lay Judges and theAcculturation of the Masses (France and the Southern Low Countries, Sixteenth to Eigh-teenth Centuries),” in Kaspar von Greyerz (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe(London, 1984), 61–62, 64–65; Jean Wirth (trans. John Burke), “Against the AcculturationThesis,” in ibid., 66–69, 71, 75–76; Clark, Thinking, 509–512; Briggs, “Acculturation Thesis,”in ew, 2–3; Bever, Realities, 337, 440.

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to the “Little Ice Age,” and a steadily rising population, whichcreated the kind of competitive environment conducive to bothwitchcraft fears and the employment of maleªcium. In these direcircumstances, many ordinary people were ready to believe thatneighbors who employed techniques like curses, the evil eye, oremotional bullying were actually the devil’s minions. Similarly,many clergymen and some ofªcials came to believe that bene-ªcent magicians were also agents of the devil who secretly prac-ticed witchcraft and openly seduced the unwary into reliance onmagic. Other people interpreted their own impulses or spiritualexperiences as concourse with the devil, and some even deliber-ately invoked him in order to draw on his power.48

Most of the people who were caught up in the witch huntswere neither malevolent witches nor beneªcent magicians but or-dinary commoners victimized by malicious enemies, communalhysteria, or tortured denunciations. The accusations show howthe demonology was incorporated into popular culture, trans-forming neighborhood feuds, interpersonal conºicts, idiosyncraticspiritual experiences, and individual fears and angers into localmanifestations of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, andthereby shifting ordinary peoples’ moral frame of reference fromthe values and interests of their immediate surroundings to theuniversalized standards of the Christian commonwealth. Otherdevelopments contributed to this process—better educated cler-gymen, the propagation of catechisms, public confession, and reli-giously oriented elementary education—but the widespread dis-semination of the witch demonology was surely a major factor.49

This assimilation of the demonology into popular conscious-ness was just the ªrst stage of its effect on European society andculture. The evidence from Württemberg suggests that during thecrisis of conªdence, a whole series of shifts in popular practicesand behaviors came as a reaction to the concern about, and prose-cutions for, malicious and illicit magic. One change was an evolu-tion in the symptomology of bewitchment, ªrst as people adoptedthe demonology’s readiness to ascribe ailments to witchcraft andlater as their descendants manifested increasingly blatant symbolicsymptoms in reaction to ofªcials’ growing reluctance to attribute

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48 Behringer, “Little Ice Age,” in ew, 660–663; Bever, Realities, 60–63, 386, 73–92, 106–118; 173–180; 183–185.49 Bever, Realities, 434, 73–92, 387–389, 399–400.

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illnesses to it. Another was a decline in poisonings, partly becauseof an increased regulation of apothecaries and partly because ofpoison’s association with witchcraft and the danger that the suspi-cion of using it entailed. Yet another was a decline in the numberof women assuming the role of semiprofessional healer (at least inWürttemberg). Before the witch hunts, these women comprised asigniªcant proportion of the public magical practitioners. Duringthe trials, a woman’s reputation as a healer could trigger, or con-tribute to, her prosecution for witchcraft. By their end, womenhealers had essentially vanished from public practice.50

This suppression of female healers was but one change inwomen’s behavior caused by the witch hunts. The trials punishedthe extreme forms of perceived female misbehavior, aggressivenessand overt sexuality, that were held in check more generallythrough moral admonishments and social disapproval. Evidencefrom trials, as well as from the learned discourse, suggests that earlyin the period, society considered women’s sexuality and aggres-sion to be signiªcant problems because they were routinely mani-fested in everyday life. By the end of this period, women hadcome to be regarded as delicate and asexual by nature. In between,a critical mass appears to have learned to curb their anger and vio-lent impulses, and to see their own sexuality as devilish. Thechange was hardly uniform or complete, and many socioculturalforces beyond the witch trials pushed in the same direction. Butthe widespread, brutal, and protracted persecutions seem to haveformed the cutting edge. Hartman has suggested that northwest-ern Europe’s unusual family structure created far more unmarriedwomen with relative autonomy in the community, thus generat-ing unusual tensions in society. The analysis herein suggests thatthe witch trials were part of a much broader effort to substitute in-ternalized controls for the supervision exercised by the family toregulate women’s behavior in other traditional cultures.51

A ªnal phenomenon that shows the important role that thewitch trials played in the transformation of Europeans’ behaviorand self-conception was the wave of child-centered trials that took

290 | EDWARD BEVER

50 Ibid., 400–408.51 Ibid., 408–413; Merry Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York,1993), 235; Anne Barstow, Witchcraze (San Francisco, 1994), 217, n.3; Mary S. Hartman,Household and the Making of History (New York, 2004), 171, 5–6, 38, 53, 58, 62, 138–139, 141,176, 200.

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place toward the end of the era. During the initial phase of the tri-als, children ªgured mainly as victims, but by the late seventeenthcentury, they had become regular accusers, often the primaryones. In some cases, they denounced older people for introducingthem to magic, and they often claimed to have ºown to witchsabbats and engaged in related activities. In a few cases, the chil-dren had engaged in play modeled on the witch beliefs, but inmost, it is clear that they were reporting fantasies and dream expe-riences. What they reported were generally not stock appropria-tions of the demonology but admixtures of demonological ele-ments and aspects of their own life situations, combined in waysthat suggest they were using witch beliefs to make sense of theirpersonal situations. These dreams and fantasies manifested the pro-cess of enculturation that made up the larger process of accultura-tion to which the trials and the larger campaigns of social disci-pline and confessionalization contributed.52

The crisis of conªdence in the witch demonology oc-curred in the mid-seventeenth century not only because ofthe gross abuses and manifest injustices to which it had led but alsobecause these gross abuses and manifest injustices changed the re-ality against which the demonology was measured. In the mid-sixteenth century, magical techniques were public and pervasive,openly performed by both ordinary people and expert profession-als. By the mid-seventeenth century, magic was in much shortersupply, as people learned to avoid or hide practices and behaviorsthat were associated with it. What had seemed to be a clear andpresent danger to one generation had become an obscure exagger-ation three or four generations later.

Discussing a variegated historical phenomenon like the witch trialsby tracing an overarching narrative arc is like drawing a trend linethrough a scatter diagram; it helps to show the overall pattern inthe array of speciªc instances. Despite enormous regional and localvariations, prosecutions for witchcraft in Europe rose dramaticallyduring the late sixteenth century, peaked in the ªrst half of theseventeenth century, declined during the second half, and dwin-

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52 Bever, Realities, 114–118. See also Hartwig Weber, “Von der verführten Kinder Zauberei”:Hexenprozesse gegen Kinder im alten Württemberg (Sigmaringen, 1996); Robert Walinski-Kiehl,“The Devil’s Children: Child Witch-Trials in Early Modern Germany,” Continuity andChange, XI (1996), 171–189.

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dled away in the following one. This trajectory was directly re-lated to a changing consensus in European culture that ªrst vieweddevil-worshipping magicians as a uniªed threat, then suffered a le-gal and intellectual crisis of conªdence about the demonology, re-solved into a pious skepticism about the signiªcance of the threatposed by witchcraft, and eventually evolved, at least within the so-cial and cultural elite, into a dogmatic dismissal of any suggestionof magic at all.

This trend line also helps relate the witch prosecutions to par-allel developments. The crisis of conªdence in the demonologywas part of a larger crisis of authority in the seventeenth century,which in turn was the cultural dimension of a more general crisis.In the sixteenth century, administrative policies went hand inhand with religious goals, but by the eighteenth century, secularprofessionals like physicians and lawyers were more involved inthe legal and political system than religious authorities were. Thetrajectory of the witch prosecutions also dovetailed with larger so-cioeconomic trends, rising with population growth and economicconstriction, climaxing with Europe’s religious wars, and declin-ing with economic recovery and the relaxation of elite concernabout popular behavior.

The witch trials, however, also inºuenced social trends. Theycame to an end in part because they changed reality, marginalizingor suppressing roles and behaviors that had once ºourished in Eu-ropean society. Similarly, the larger campaigns of confessionaliza-tion and social discipline may well have dissipated because theirsuccess made them obsolete. It has become fashionable to stressthe limited effectiveness of these efforts, but in actuality the qualityof life in the late eighteenth century was appreciably differentfrom that in the early sixteenth century. Innumerable forces con-tributed to the change—among them, printing, education, eco-nomic growth, political consolidation, and the development oftransportation infrastructure—but, as we have seen, deliberate cul-tural reform was also a major contributor to it.

Finally, carrying the examination of the rejection of witch-craft beliefs forward from the crisis of conªdence into the eigh-teenth century shows that, far from being a minor episode in thepre-Enlightenment, it was critical to the larger decline of magic.From an intellectual and social standpoint, the demonology wasthe most vulnerable part of magical belief. It conºated a wide vari-

292 | EDWARD BEVER

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ety of phenomena, distorting their nature, cohesiveness, andsigniªcance, and countless innocent lives were sacriªced in itsname. In the process, however, the witch hunts changed the real-ity that had given rise to them, thereby contributing to the even-tual discrediting of the demonology and ultimately of magical be-liefs in general.

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