Dr Peter Elmer, a senior lecturer in the OU’s Department of the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, writes about how the belief in magic and witchcraft declined in the 18th century.

My own work is very much concerned with how early modern (15th to early 18th century) Europeans perceived the place of witchcraft and magic in their universe. I´m especially interested in the process of ´decline´ among the learned elites, that is how and why those in positions of power and authority (magistrates, clergy, doctors, academics) rejected magic and witchcraft as real - something which did not occur universally across the population or at the same time.

Traditional explanations have focused on the role of the ´new science´ or ´scientific revolution´ in arguing witchcraft and magic out of existence, but a whole range of studies have now made this untenable, not least the discovery that key figures such as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were wedded to many of the concepts related to the magical or occult view of the natural world. Both Newton and Boyle, for example, were practising ‘adepti’ or alchemists, and the latter consistently sought evidence to sustain belief in ghosts, apparitions and witches.

God/Devil

My own work on 17th-century Irish miracle healer Valentine Greatrakes (pictured) suggests that there was no simple correlation between scientific advance and witchcraft scepticism. In my research, I have tried to develop my belief that the main reason for the demise of witchcraft was broadly political, not scientific, in nature. In short, I argue that belief in witchcraft (and along with it the legal punishment of witches) faded out of existence as European society became increasingly pluralistic in terms of religious and political belief. In other words, belief in witches was integral to a worldview in which only binary opposites were thought to exist: good/bad; heaven/hell; God/Devil, etc. Traditionally, your religious or political opponent could only be right or wrong; one of us or one of them.

Within a European context, this usually meant Protestant or Catholic, and in Britain itself in the late 16th and 17th centuries (ie. the height of the witch hunts) anti-Catholicism was frequently tainted with the rhetoric of diabolism and witchcraft. However, once these simple binary contrasts were first challenged and then outlawed, and religious and political difference was slowly accepted, so too the ideological framework upholding ideas such as witchcraft were dismantled, and the belief in witches, leastwise among elites, lost their grip and appeal.

The explanation for the popularity of certain ideas, and their demise, is never facile or easy. The processes whereby major changes in though structures occur is by their very nature complex. Witchcraft is no exception. Unfortunately, as a subject it lends itself to others who might wish to use it for polemical purposes. Some feminist historians, for example, have jumped on the bandwagon and painted witchcraft as a rather obvious example of the misogynist thinking of the early modern period. The numbers of witches executed has frequently been ludicrously exaggerated (the press often reports some who claim up to six million victims, putting it on a par with the genocide of the Jews in the 20th century). More conservative estimates would suggest about 50,000 across Europe over a period of about 350 years, of whom about 10 to 20 per cent were men.

New ´faith´

Others, such as modern Wiccans, have sought to establish a continuous tradition for their new ´faith´ and so have envisaged those women executed centuries ago as martyrs for the cause, that is practitioners of an ancient fertility religion that was at odds with resurgent Christianity in the early modern perion. Again, there is precious little evidence to support such a view, but it remains widely reported.

Despite the vast amount written by scholars, especially historians, about historic witchcraft in early modern Europe, the message is slow to gain a popular footing. Perhaps people just like the idea too much of a universal and never-ending demonic conspiracy. After all most people seem to subscribe to the view - why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

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Study Medicine and society in Europe 1500-1930