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Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

by Stuart Clark (Author)
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
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This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0198208081
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0198208082
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    November 25, 1999
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    2 x 9.2 x 6.1 inches
  7. Print length
    850 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"From the 15th through the beginning of the 18th century, many intellectuals expounded and defended views of the world and of human behavior to which witches were central. This volume presents a magnificent attempt to understand this demonological thinking and the intellectual activity of which it was a part."--CHOICE

"A short review cannot do justice to the richness or the subtlety of this volume. One of the most striking things about it is Clark's willingness to treat the subject with proper seriousness...The book...ought to be in the hands of as many readers as possible."--Sixteenth Century Journal

"Nothing in [Clark's] earlier writings would have led one to expect that he was meditating a work so powerful in conception and so massive in scale as he has now produced. His Thinking with Demons, which runs to over eight hundred large, closely printed, and heavily annotated pages, suddenly places him at the forefront of cultural history...For anyone interested in what we can hope to learn about ourselves from past systems of thought, this is a genuinely important book."--Common Knowledge

"Carefully researched and documented, supported by a mountainous bibliography, this is a book that should be carefully read, and reread, by every historian of the early modern period."--Seventeenth-Century News

"Clark's mastery of the sources, his effective use of linguistic theory, and the originality of his interpretations make the reading of this massive, complex, and skillfully constructed book an immensely rewarding experience...[T]he most comprehensive and thorough study of early modern witchcraft beliefs in any language."--Albion

"This is intellectual history at its best. Clark reads and understands the demonological writings between the late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries on their own terms...This massive and rich book is brimming with suggestions for future researchers. Clark's bibliography is itself a contribution to witchcraft scholarship. Thinking With Demons will become a classic."--Religious Studies Review

About the Author

Stuart Clark is at University of Swansea.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (November 25, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 850 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198208081
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198208082
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1720L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.57 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 2 x 9.2 x 6.1 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

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Stuart Clark

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Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
10 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Pewsagl
5.0 out of 5 stars including footnotes (on each page for easy reference), an excellent bibliography divided into works before ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2015
Meticulously researched and well written. Over 800 pages, including footnotes (on each page for easy reference), an excellent bibliography divided into works before 1800 and works after 1800, and a thorough index. This is difficult and challenging material, so I recommend that you already have a decent background in European witchcraft as well as Christianity and the bible generally. Well worth the effort, though - filled with interesting and insightful exploration of demonology and related subject matter of the period. A keeper and worth re-reading (I'm on my third read right now). Enjoy!
6 people found this helpful
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Jeff Heeren
5.0 out of 5 stars A Comprehensive Examination of Witchcraft
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2001
When discussing the impact of women in European society, witchcraft inevitably enters the forefront of study. Many authors have discussed the crimes and punishments of witches, but Stuart Clark's Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe breaks away from the traditional format. Rather than focus on witchcraft itself, Clark writes about the idea of witchcraft; he concludes that the concept of witchcraft was an integral component in the general intellectual life of early modern Europe, woven into the scholarly debates about the key issues of the era. According to Clark, the emphasis was on demonology, which was a "composite subject consisting of discussions about the workings of nature, the processes of history, the maintenance of religious purity and the nature of political authority" (viii). To encompass this broad nature of demonology, Clark divides the book into five separate yet overlapping sections - Language, Science, History, Religion and Politics - each of which expresses a relatively simple argument. In `Language,' Clark discusses the antithetical nature of rhetoric and discussion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; this permitted the discussion of witchcraft as the natural malevolent balance to proper behavior. The section titled `Science' argues that demonology was part of the advancement on science, rather than an obstacle or adversary to it. Magic, both good and evil, was assumed to be part of the natural world, and subject to the scientific investigations of the time. `History' details how the people were easily convinced of the activities of the devil and his minions through the increasing emphasis on the apocalyptic vision that the world was in the Last Days. `Religion,' which focused mainly on the writings of the clergy, essentially demonstrated that the religious powers of Europe believed that witchcraft was a sin against the Lord, and involved illicit dealings with the devil. Finally, `Politics' presents that view that the power of the king was based upon his inability to engage in witchcraft. Essentially, since a monarch was conferred power through divine right - meaning the ruler was empowered by the Lord - he was inviolable and therefore immune to the effects of witchcraft.
Thinking with Demons continues the examination of women and their relationship to criminal behavior that was introduced in Ulinka Rublack's The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany. The most fascinating aspects of this book dealt with the importance of duality in early modern Europe, particularly in regards to the masquerade. Such dualism, and the perception that it was natural and important to society, is a fascinating concept to consider. Such a system of duality, in which everything is "distributed between a column of positive (or superior) terms and categories and a column of their negative (or inferior) opposites" (38) would seem to be an important tool in explaining the gender-based hierarchies that evolved in society.
20 people found this helpful
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John D. Cox
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Anyone Interested in the Early Modern Period
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2000
Stuart Clark explains the thinking that produced the panic about witches in the seventeenth century and why the panic occurred when it did. He argues that witches should be understood as an expression of demonology, that is, thinking about demons. Traditional thinking divided the world between God and the devil, an opposition that explained everything in science, history, religion, and politics. These four categories organize the book. In each of them, Clark discusses how oppositional thinking accounted for how things worked, how things happened, how things really were, and how political relationships functioned. The book is exhaustively researched, citing authorities in all the major early modern European languages and cultures, and at the same time responding to recent scholarship about witches and language. The latter is important because of the binary thinking that Clark identifies at the heart of demonology. Few historians are as familiar both with traditional sources and with postmodern thinking about historical thinking. This is a fascinating and rewarding book. I read it straight through.
26 people found this helpful
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Jeff Heeren
5.0 out of 5 stars A Comprehensive Work
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2001
When discussing the impact of women in European society, witchcraft inevitably enters the forefront of study. Many authors have discussed the crimes and punishments of witches, but Stuart Clark's Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe breaks away from the traditional format. Rather than focus on witchcraft itself, Clark writes about the idea of witchcraft; he concludes that the concept of witchcraft was an integral component in the general intellectual life of early modern Europe, woven into the scholarly debates about the key issues of the era. According to Clark, the emphasis was on demonology, which was a "composite subject consisting of discussions about the workings of nature, the processes of history, the maintenance of religious purity and the nature of political authority" (viii). To encompass this broad nature of demonology, Clark divides the book into five separate yet overlapping sections - Language, Science, History, Religion and Politics - each of which expresses a relatively simple argument. In `Language,' Clark discusses the antithetical nature of rhetoric and discussion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; this permitted the discussion of witchcraft as the natural malevolent balance to proper behavior. The section titled `Science' argues that demonology was part of the advancement on science, rather than an obstacle or adversary to it. Magic, both good and evil, was assumed to be part of the natural world, and subject to the scientific investigations of the time. `History' details how the people were easily convinced of the activities of the devil and his minions through the increasing emphasis on the apocalyptic vision that the world was in the Last Days. `Religion,' which focused mainly on the writings of the clergy, essentially demonstrated that the religious powers of Europe believed that witchcraft was a sin against the Lord, and involved illicit dealings with the devil. Finally, `Politics' presents that view that the power of the king was based upon his inability to engage in witchcraft. Essentially, since a monarch was conferred power through divine right - meaning the ruler was empowered by the Lord - he was inviolable and therefore immune to the effects of witchcraft.
Thinking with Demons continues with the examination of women and their relationship to criminal behavior, as was introduced in The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany by Ulinka Rublack. The most fascinating aspects of this book dealt with the importance of duality in early modern Europe, particularly in regards to the masquerade. Such dualism, and the perception that it was natural and important to society, is a fascinating concept to consider. Such a system of duality, in which everything is "distributed between a column of positive (or superior) terms and categories and a column of their negative (or inferior) opposites" (38) would seem to be an important tool in explaining the gender-based hierarchies that evolved in society.
7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

CC123
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book and great service
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 22, 2022
Verified Purchase
Remarkable book on an important topic
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Reptilian Lord
5.0 out of 5 stars An Intellectual Masterpiece
Reviewed in Canada on January 25, 2020
Verified Purchase
Mr.Clark has produced a book which is not only a game changer but a intellectual masterpiece. He tackles the influence of witchcraft in early modern Europe and the central role it had in the intellectual climate and currents of the day. He divides the book into 5 sections (Language, Science, History, Religion, and Politics) each of which explores a particular aspect of demonology and how it not only influenced fields of knowledge but absorbed them into itself. It also helps to show the broad appeal and influence of demonology in various fields of knowledge, not being limited to religion or theology alone. This approach also fortifies Mr. Clark's central thesis: that demonology fit coherently and logically into the context of early modern European thought and was not a irrational paranoia or product of religious zealotry. Rather, it was a paradigm through which the world was understood and how early modern European men understood their place in the world. Another remarkable feature of the book is the massive bibliography. Mr.Clark has consulted a massive array of sources in English, French, German, Spanish, and Latin which brings a diversity of views on the phenomenon and fleshes out its regional manifestations. Additionally, the author has divided the bibliography into sources before 1800 and those after 1800 for ease of navigation. It is remarkable to see how many primary sources Mr.Clark referenced in a detailed manner and not merely with a superficial skim. I can only imagine the countless hours of hard work he spent engaging these primary sources in archives and libraries. My only complaint regarding the text would be the lack of English translations for terms referenced in Latin or other languages, but this does not at all impede enjoying the text or understanding the authors analyses. Mr. Clark has produced a intellectual history that is unrivaled and a true masterpiece of scholarship that is a model for scholars and thinkers in any field and which is worthy of immense praise. The book is worth its weight in gold and its insights are immensely more valuable than the price tag.
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