Customer Reviews

The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe

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During the 70's and 80's, a flood of new information on historical witchcraft became available. Levack's book is the best survey of this new data, which has revolutionized our understanding of the Great Hunt. It's not a very "daring" book; it sticks to the facts, to the things we're sure about. There isn't a lot of speculation in it. But it's a great antidote to the badly researched books, like Anne Barstow's _Witchcraze_, which flood the popular market.

Finally, a scholarly treatment of the issue unimpeded by an emotional attachment to the forgery Etienne Leon de Lamothe-Langon's Histoire de l'Inquisition en France, written in 1829 (even though the forgery was uncovered in 1975)or any strong desire to hammer a square peg into a round hole to promulgate a writer's own personal crusade.

The result is an evidence based and thoughtful historical treatment of the Witch Hunting tragedy with reasonable conclusions.

If you are sick of unrealistic oversimplifications that reflect the pet interest/s of the author more than the historical evidence or sick of books where the author has not taken the time to keep 'up to date' with historical developments (35 years ago) and believes that the Witch Hunt is a purely medieval phenomenon rather than peaking between 1550 and 1650 this is the book to read.

Given the strengths of the book I would recommend it to anyone from budding historians to general public with an interest in a historically accurate take on the Witch Hunts. I acknowledge that Catholics might find slight discomfort in the author's apparent prejudice against Catholicism. He writes of reformation greats being Luther and Calvin and seems to downplay their contribution by contextualising that they didn't make much direct comment on the topic even though one of them insisted that witches need to be killed or something and they were highly influential. That is not to say that he fails to acknowledge that they contributed just a slight reluctance to give their contribution as much weight as someone who doesn't consider reformists to be great might. This is a very subtle issue that does not significantly detract from this first rate book.

This is a thorough and objective examination of the witch hunts. There are no sensational distortions presented here, just the facts. It's well organized and easy to read.

People who were accused of witchcraft were mostly old women that often took care of children or were out begging for money, which annoyed others or made them feel guilty. If a child died and she had cared for it, there was always a chance that she would be accused of killing the child by witchcraft. People believed that misfortune was often caused by the devil and witchcraft in early modern Europe. So if the crops failed, if you or a loved one fell ill, or if a child died, blaming a witch was a convenient thing to do. Not only peasants but the educated believed in witchcraft. They often bolstered their fantasies with elaborate demonological theories. Amusingly, they had this idea that people would ride off into the air to some remote place to bend over backwards and kiss the devil's bum and give themselves over to Satan.

Witchcraft accusations often grow in times when people feel uneasy about radical changes in society, morality, religion, and the economy. If wages are getting lower, prices are getting higher, and there's rebellion against the old order, the devil must be on the loose. Witch hunts often happened more in societies that had provincial, local governments that had no oversight from central governments. Germany with its many small provinces was a hot spot for witch hunts and executions. Thousands of people were executed in early modern Europe, not millions, as some claim. Even white witchcraft could be prosecuted because people thought that if one had the ability to heal, you also had the ability to kill.

Although some people have always practiced black magic, almost all the people accused of witchcraft were innocent and many of the accusations expressed diabolical fantasies. Witch hunts declined when educated people started to have less spiritual, and more skeptical, materialistic worldviews which lead to the legal system refusing to prosecute witchcraft cases.

Witchcraft cases still crop up from time to time today. Most recently in America, childcare workers have been accused of doing diabolical things to children. Most cases have been dropped because they depend on accusations from children who are coaxed into giving outrageous answers or it is realized that children have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Anyone who has worked with kids knows that it is pretty easy to get accused of something that you didn't do. This is the case especially with girls. In fact, a lot of chain reaction witch hunts were started by the false accusations of children in early modern Europe. On a side note, Africa is still known to have "witch" lynchings, especially since the colonial governments have left with their modern skeptical views toward witchcraft. Black Africans often believe strongly in magic and witchcraft.

Although I still believe that nefarious witchcraft rituals are possible, such as human sacrifice, the author makes the valid point that it is impossible to prove it without hard evidence. Witch hunts were almost always based on accusations without hard proof; which is one of the reasons why judges began to reject such accusations.

Pulling together the vast amount of information that Levack does had to be a truly daunting task. He does it well, with easily followed organization and summaries, tables and charts, and copious references to specific witch-hunt episodes. This all makes it a good reference for people who might want to know more about the social and religious settings of the hunts. (I'm reading it for a graduate literature class on mythology and heresy.)
However, he refers to specific hunts as if expecting readers to know a good deal about their causes, effects and events. Except for the Salem, MA, hunt (which is frequently referenced, though technically not in Europe at all), none of the many hunts were at all familiar to me. What, for instance, WAS the 1610-1611 "dream epidemic" in Basque country? It sounds fascinating, but Levack never gives us any details about it. Perhaps this sort of information is beyond the scope of Levack's interest, but its omission does make for dry reading of numbers and dates, as opposed to the more human stories that lie behind them.

I bought this class for a Witch Hunt in Europe class. The book is complete with plenty of words, and works just great. Only problem is my class got canceled. But that's life in the city sometimes...

I really liked this book. Brian Levack is a top historian on the subject and therefore he has other books out there on it. However, this book is short and gives a good overview of the witch hunts in early modern Europe. He focuses on what they were and a little bit on why he thinks they occurred. It's a good overview on the subject but if you are looking for something more thorough, then this is not for you.

I am taking Mr. Levack's classat UT, and of course this book is required reading. Regardless I would probably have gotten the book sooner or later. It is AMAZING. Extremely detailed, delves into both the magical and legal proceedings on the Witch hunt. The focus is on WHY something like this happened, and I feel Mr. Levack is incredibly inciteful in his ideas.

I can't give a literary review as this is required reading for a college course I'm taking but do wish it had been offered as an ebook like my other book was - love my Kindle.

Brian P. Levack explains the the causes and details surrounding the witch hunts of early modern Europe. He writes very clearly about this historical phenomenon which claimed 100,000 lives according to his reasonably conservative estimates.

Levack looks at the role of the Church, of the economy, the social structures, and other institutions of the day and how they laid forth preconditions from which witch hunts sparked when crops went bad or someone became sick.

But in this supposed comprehensive investigation, Levack does one major disservice. The vast majority of convicted witches were women and this doesn't seem to concern Levack. This fact isn't important. He doesn't seem to think gender issues are important. Only briefly does he attend to this fact and lighly attributes this to conflict between women (because women are always at each other's throats and so will more readily accuse each other of witchcraft than men would) and because women were less able to ! defend themselves. But Levack ignores the fact that women were seen as more sinful during that time. Like Eve, they were considered more apt to be tempted by Satan. They were "carnal beings" who couldn't get enough sex. These also happened to be the crimes of witches. Crimes of birth control and women healers were seen as witchcraft, a crime that was punished more severely than a murder by a man. Torture of female witches was often very sexual. (Witch's breasts were cut off. Convicted women were burned in key areas with hot pokers.)

This book is an okay place to START to learn about the witch trials. But I would recommend reading other books that give light to the role of gender, such as Anne L. Barstow's book: Witchcraze.