Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (Penguin history) | 
 enlarge | Author: Keith Thomas
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £11.06
You Save: £7.93 (42%)
New (18) Used (12) from £10.40
Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 14798
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 880
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 1.4
ISBN: 0140137440
Dewey Decimal Number: 200
EAN: 9780140137446
ASIN: 0140137440
Publication Date: December 12, 1991
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Incisive, enlightening and well before it's time. September 3, 2008
Celtic Cymro (Ffestiniog)
This was one of my sources for an essay I wrote on how witchcraft, wise men and divination etc were tolerated more in Britain - even more so in Wales - after the Reformation, while in Catholic Europe, thousands were executed for practicing the so-called "dark arts."
When Catholicism disappeared in Britain, so did all its 'magic' (the rites, ceremonies and blessings that had replaced old pagan charms and offerings). Overnight, people lost their protection from those evil spirits out there, and turned to witches' and wise men's charms and spells. You could say it was a mini boom time for wise men and witches! And these gifted people were no fakes either. Being excellent herbalists and healers, they're magic was trusted, and people had faith in their spells - which made them work too. It was no wonder that people began to believe they could also protect crops from bad spirits that caused storms and drought. Their whole livelihoods depended on this magic.
A masterly work, this book is incisive, enlightening, and well before its time.
A Controversial Masterpiece. November 30, 2005
silas sondanson (oxford)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is unquestionably one of the great works of history written in Englsh in the 20th century. It is hard, over thirty years later, to conceive of just how radical and imaginative this book appeared when it was first published. It not only transformed our understanding of English religious history, but also helped to permanently change our approach to the past. I would encourage prospective buyers not to pay too much attention to the negative comments in some of other reviews: the fact that this book still inspires controversy and debate a whole generation after its first printing is testimony to its greatness.
 A Book that is good on what it covers January 5, 2005
14 out of 19 found this review helpful
This book is a classic. It should be read by all serious students of the esoteric and all with a genuine interest in the spiritual history of Western Europe. The book provides a great deal of detail on the superstitions and quack medicine of the 16th and 17th centuries in Britain. It gives wonderful detail, and some lovely anecdotes, concerning the horrors of 16th and 17th century medicine, and the apothecaries that offered a cheaper, and no less effective service to the poor. After a general overview of the historical trend there is an in depth study of Astrology, as practised at the time. Where the book fails, and it fails badly, is that it gives the impression that magic was for the ignorant only. Very little space, about two pages, are devoted to the work of Frances Yates, work I do not think Thomas was keen to understand, but keen to dismiss. The overall result is that I feel Thomas wishes to dismiss magic as old-fashioned mumbo-jumbo, indulged in by the poor and the ignorant in desperate times, and so tells the story of superstition rather than magic. It is a book that provides a great overview of the social climate of the time, but works with a deliberately narrow definition of magic, a definition that is never properly expounded or discussed, and deals very poorly with hermetic, gnostic and masonic trends, and so does not deal with what the average modern lay-thinker is interested in at all.
Shallow but informative February 5, 2002
C. SKALA (London, United Kingdom United Kingdom)
17 out of 25 found this review helpful
This book comes highly recommended and is indeed a milestone in the merging of sociology and history in the late sixties. It is however, badly in need of revision. Thomas's book has been rightly criticised for an unduly shallow sociological approach to religious and magical phenomena for the period covered. With little or no genuine interpretative inquiry from the author, the book rapidly descends into 'list-making' under generic headings. As such, it fasincates with its archeological unearthing of details but ultimately bores this reader with its undue emphasis on repetition. For a stimulating, critically robust and sophisticated approach to particular instances of 'witchcraft', please read Carlo Ginzburg's ECSTASIES.
More then History. September 7, 2001
T. Mazerolle (Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada)
28 out of 30 found this review helpful
Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic was the first of my books for summer reading, and I doubt that any novel that I choose will be half as entertaining or any text as informative. By the conclusion I felt that I was completing an odessey throughout the early modern era with a sympathy and understanding of a world far different then ours in some respects, yet, as Thomas succinctly points out in the conclusion, profoundly similar. No other history book has granted me a deeper sense of understanding about human drives for stability and for explaination in all things. This is a book that grants insight and understanding far beyond its proclaimed subject matter, with positive and sweeping consequences for the objective thinker
|
|
|
|
