Reginald Scot [Scott]. The Discovery of Witchcraft: Proving, That the Compacts and Contracts of Witches with Devils and ...
|Sold for:||Sign-in or Join (free & quick)|
|Claim Item:||Sign-in or Join (free & quick)|
|Auction Ended On:||Oct 4, 2012|
4 Internet/mail/phone bidders
1,587 page views
Heritage Auctions - Beverly Hills
9478 West Olympic Blvd., 1st Floor
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Scott made a number of remarkable claims. He maintained that there were no witches in contemporary England and that all those executed for witchcraft were innocent - he had tried to find anyone who would offer instruction in witchcraft without success. He asserted that none of the terms used in the Bible which had been translated as 'witch' had that meaning in the original languages, thereby undermining the claim that there was a biblical sanction for the execution of witches, and he is thus a significant figure in the history of biblical criticism. According to Scott, witchcraft was an impossible crime, because words could not work upon the world. His arguments thus implied a radical separation between mind and matter. He contended that where curses or spells were followed by unpleasant events the link between the two was entirely coincidental. Scott went beyond a systematic attack on the intellectual foundations of the belief in witchcraft because he described witch accusations in England as resulting out of a particular type of social encounter: old women begging for food or other assistance would curse their neighbors when they were turned away empty handed; if something bad then happened - the death of a child, perhaps - the old woman would be taken to be a witch. Witchcraft accusations in England thus arose in the context of disagreements over expectations and obligations relating to charitable giving. This sociological account was persuasive to contemporaries and has been adopted by modern historians. As far as Scott was concerned, those who confessed to being witches were either deluded or the victims of torture, while much of what Bodin had taken to be evidence for the existence of witchcraft in different eras and diverse cultures Scott was prepared to dismiss as mere fable and fiction.
Wing S945. ESTC r39108. Toole-Stott, Conjuring, 620. Cornell, Witchcraft, 497-498.
Service and Handling Description: Books & Catalogs (view shipping information)