Customer Reviews

Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study

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For those interested in the history of witch-trials, rather than modern witchcraft practices, Macfarlane's study is a classic and even necessary study. After reading extensively in the anthropological literature of the time, Macfarlane formulates a close reading of documents from Tudor/Stuart England.

In essence, Macfarlane argues that accusers usually knew those they accused quite well; they were in fact commonly neighbors. Under older medieval conceptions of neighborliness, one was supposed to offer elderly women (as the accused very often were) charity and the like. But in the early modern period, with the difficult economic conditions all over Europe and the rise of new conceptions of privacy, property, and so forth, as well as tremendous population growth, people increasingly did not feel inclined toward such easy charity. What commonly occurs, then, is that a middle-class landowner turns away a somewhat unpleasant elderly beggar, who then stalks away cursing and muttering; indeed, even if given charity, she may similarly stalk away cursing, perhaps believing the charity stingy, or perhaps angry at a situation which requires her to beg for charity at all. The landowner now feels guilt: he or she has in some sense violated a traditional trust. One way to assuage this guilt, however, is to assert that the woman was undeserving of Christian charity, on the grounds that she is a witch. Thus the accusation of witchcraft could serve to assuage one's own personal sense of guilt.

This is an extremely simplistic version of Macfarlane's complex social-historical reading. More broadly, he goes through huge numbers of documents and establishes that difficulties of social relations seem to underlie the majority of accusations in his chosen period and region.

While Macfarlane's work has been improved upon for both England and for the rest of the witch-hunting Euro-American world, it is nevertheless a seminal work in the social understanding of witchcraft accusations. The basic problem, you see, is that usually there is no reason to think that the accused witches had actually done anything resembling "witchcraft" -- no, they were not midwives, cunning women, or anything of the kind, as a rule. So the questions are (1) why were these particular sorts of people singled out, and (2) why did anyone level the accusations in the first place?

Macfarlane's book should be on the shelf of anyone serious about studying the history of the witch-hunt phenomenon in Europe. If you are a witch, you may find nothing of value here, as suggested by a previous reviewer. If you are interested on an historical level, however, this is a major work.

This book was some what imformative, however lacking in accurate statements. Author made various assumptions with nothing to base them on. However it was well written. The few gems of correct info that he did provide were excellent. Though I don't agree with the portrayal of witches in the book, I would recommend reading this for FUN do not take anything he says as the truth and nothing but the truth.