Routledge The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil (Routledge Studies in the History of Witchcraft, Demonology and Magic)

Witches, ghosts, fairies. Premodern Europe was filled with strange creatures, with the devil lurking behind them all. But were his powers real? Did his powers have limits? Or were tales of the demonic all one grand illusion? Physicians, lawyers, and theologians at different times and places answered these questions differently and disagreed bitterly. The demonic took many forms in medieval and early modern Europe. By examining individual authors from across the continent, this book reveals the many purposes to which the devil could be put, both during the late medieval fight against heresy and during the age of Reformations. It explores what it was like to live with demons, and how careers and identities were constructed out of battles against them – or against those who granted them too much power. Together, contributors chart the history of the devil from his emergence during the 1300s as a threatening figure – who made pacts with human allies and appeared bodily – through to the comprehensive but controversial demonologies of the turn of the seventeenth century, when European witch-hunting entered its deadliest phase. This book is essential reading for all students and researchers of the history of the supernatural in medieval and early modern Europe. Review Emily Cock presenting Jan Machielsen's The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nVJ1iIpT2E   "This excellent collection of essays on demonology, from a team of leading scholars, can be firmly recommended. The book sweeps us from the medieval beginnings of demonology into the elaborate and Baroque imaginings of witches' sabbats in the early seventeenth century. Fearing witchcraft, writers on demonology created an intellectual system for combating the Devil and his witches as enemies of humankind. The demonologists revealed in this book are terrifyingly sincere - and we need to understand them better." ― Julian Goodare, University of Edinburgh, UK "The Science of Demons is that rare hybrid: a significant scholarly contribution that is also good fun to read. The demonic realm emerges as a valuable companion to and dark mirror of the clear daylight world. Through examination of nineteen individual demonologists, the collection elaborates on what Stuart Clark calls "thinking with demons." Demons, it turns out, insinuated themselves into every cranny of early modern European thought, from theology to science to entertainment, and from skepticism to belief. They provided early modern thinkers with ways to think across and between disciplinary boundaries and categorical designation, and to resolve the major conundrums of their age. Featuring essays on well-known demonologists and lesser-known figures from peripheral regions, all presented in accessible and often witty form, the collection clarifies much about early modern European intellectual history." ― Valerie Kivelson, University of Michigan, USA "This book brings together a remarkable group of experts to provide a panoramic survey of demonological literature. It is full of surprising insights and will be a standard work for years to come. A fitting tribute to Stuart Clark, it allows the reader to follow the development of the intellectual discussion of witchcraft and magic over time. An extraordinary achievement." ―Lyndal Roper, University of Oxford, UK "This splendid volume takes Stuart Clark’s magisterial work on the ways to think with demons as a jumping off point for nineteen fascinating and carefully researched studies of individual works of demonology from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. These outstanding essays by leaders in the field explore the complex interaction of societal and personal pressures, latent scepticism and local belief, that brought this science of demons to the centre of religious, intellectual and political attention over these centuries, and will immediately become an important