Abstract
There have been many studies of witch-hunting, but the crucial issue behind the execution of thousands of people as witches is one of belief. Why did people in early modern Europe believe in witches? This is not the same question as asking why people hunted witches, since many people believed in witches but did not hunt them. Still, it was the witch-hunts, which in Scotland lasted from the middle of the sixteenth century to the early eighteenth, which made these beliefs historically important; they were a matter of life or death. Witch-hunting also generated most of the evidence for witchcraft beliefs. But witchcraft has almost always had an important place in people’s cosmology, helping them to organise their ideas about neighbourliness and charity, good and evil, and indeed God and the Devil. Hence the idea for this book.
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Notes
S. Clark, Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), 4. His further argument, apparently to the effect that witchcraft beliefs were simply about the language in which they were expressed and not about the ‘external world’ at all, seems to be addressed more to philosophers than to historians, and he points out that it applies to all statements about the world, with no special significance attaching to statements about witchcraft: ibid., 6–8.
C. Larner, Enemies of God: the Witch-Hunt in Scotland (London, 1981), 11–14;
C. Larner, Witchcraft and Religion: the Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford, 1984), 159–65.
P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978).
M. Lynch, ‘Court ceremony and ritual in the personal reign of James VI’, in J. Goodare and M. Lynch (eds), The Reign of James VI (East Linton, 2000).
For their views on divine right see J. H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: Concepts of Monarchy in Early-Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1996), ch. 7
C. Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–90: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas (Woodbridge, 2003), ch. 3.
For the links between the two beliefs for James see S. Clark, ‘King James’s Daemonologie: witchcraft and kingship’, in S. Anglo (ed.), The Damned Art: Essays on the Literature of Witchcraft (London, 1977).
J. Goodare, ‘Witch-hunting and the Scottish state’, in J. Goodare (ed.), The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002), 144–5.
M. Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn., 2002), ch. 8;
R. Mitchison. Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn., 2002), ch. 8
R. Mitchison, ‘The social impact of the clergy of the reformed kirk of Scotland’, Scotia, 6 (1982), 1–13.
K. Fisher, ‘Eldritch comic verse in older Scots’, in S. Mapstone (ed.), Older Scots Literature (Edinburgh, 2005), 302–13.
J. Goodare, ‘John Knox on demonology and witchcraft’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 96 (2005). 221–45, at pp. 235–6.
J. Goodare, ‘The Scottish witchcraft act’, Church History, 74 (2005), 39–67, at pp. 53–4, 62–4.
For the tournament see L. O. Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison, Wis., 1991), ch. 13.
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Satan’s Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (East Linton, 2001), 153–8.
S. Macdonald, The Witches of Fife: Witch-Hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560–1710 (East Linton, 2002), ch. 10 and passim.
D. G. Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 1590–1638 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 6.
S. Clark, ‘Protestant demonology: sin, superstition, and society (c.1520— c.1630)’, in B. Ankarloo and G. Henningsen (eds), Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (Oxford, 1990).
I. Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, c.1650—c.1750 (Oxford, 1997), 184–91.
For ritual and magic in Europe see S. Wilson, The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modem Europe (London, 2000)
for Britain see R. Hutton, Stations of the Sun: a History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, 1996).
E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. Ward Swain (New York, 1915).
K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971)
A. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1970). These works are often cited as promoting the idea that the guilt associated with the refusal of charity led to accusations of witchcraft.
The best-known such attempt was by J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: a Study in Comparative Religion, 2 vols. (London, 1890; many subsequent editions).
P. Bawcutt, ‘Elrich fantasyis in Dunbar and other poets’, in J. D. McClure and M. R. G. Spiller (eds), Bryght Lanternis: Essays on the Language and Literature of Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (Aberdeen, 1989).
Sir James Melville of Halhill, Memoirs of His Own Life, (ed.) T. Thomson (Bannatyne Club, 1827), 395–6. ‘Eyn’ = eyes; ‘how’ = hollow.
W. Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago, Ill., 2002), 15–16.
D. Gentilcore, ‘The fear of disease and the disease of fear’, in W. G. Naphy and P. Roberts (eds), Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester, 1997), discusses the use of counter-magic, saintly intervention and miracles in Italy.
M. F. Graham, The Uses of Reform: Godly Discipline and Popular Behavior in Scotland and Beyond, 1560–1610 (Leiden, 1996), 308.
Their principal works on the subject are W. Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (London, 1830)
J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1834)
C. K. Sharpe, A Historical Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland (London, 1884; first published as part of another work 1818).
On the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, founded in 1780, see its bicentenary volume: A. S. Bell (ed.), The Scottish Antiquarian Tradition (Edinburgh, 1981).
For Murray in general see R. Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: a History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford, 1999), 194–201
for the use she made of Goudie see N. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: the Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom (2nd edn, London, 1993), 157–9.
C. Larner, review of K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, SHR, 50 (1971), 168–71.
See S. Macdonald, ‘Enemies of God revisited: recent publications on Scottish witch-hunting’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 23 (2003), 65–84, and the Further Reading section at the end of the present book.
G. F. Black, A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland, 1510–1712 (New York, 1938)
C. Larner, C. H. Lee and H. V. McLachlan, A Source-Book of Scottish Witchcraft (Glasgow, 1977).
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© 2008 Julian Goodare and Joyce Miller
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Goodare, J., Miller, J. (2008). Introduction. In: Goodare, J., Martin, L., Miller, J. (eds) Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591400_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591400_1
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