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

Demonology was once the subject of scorn from virtually all intellectual historians, with its practitioners condemned as credulous or mentally unbalanced. It was also thought, just as casually, that theory had driven practice, so that these writers were largely responsible for the torture and execution of tens of thousands of innocent people. Through a series of elegant and astute articles, Stuart Clark has already done more than almost anyone to undermine these fallacious assumptions. Now, in this massive and learned book, he has undertaken a major exercise in revaluation and rehabilitation. One part of his achievement is to have covered the field with exemplary thoroughness: there are eighty-five pages of bibliography, forty of them devoted to primary printed sources, and the reader will quickly see that this is no mere parade. Dr Clark has looked for early modern ideas about devils and witches on the widest possible front, with particular attention to theological …