In addition, illustrations, some of them new, are much clearer, and tables, now with percentages rounded up, are easier to read. Citations are now placed at the bottom of the page and are complete, following the accepted format for historical scholarship. One wonders why no reference to any of the twelve books, available since 1992, on such subjects as witchcraft in England, in Scotland, in colonial America, and in continental Europe, appears in the list of works worth consulting.Īuthor Levack and publisher Longman have responded wisely to criticism about the first edition's production values and the usefulness of its chaotic endnotes. Conspicuously missing from the bibliography, however, are the multiple volumes on witchcraft and demonology edited by Levack himself for Garland Press. In Scotland, by contrast, a simple majority of jurors was necessary for a guilty verdict.Īlthough his arguments remain unaltered by the avalanche of new research on the subject, Levack has updated his bibliographical essay, citations, and the fifteen-page bibliography to include the most recent publications. Since in England trial was by jury, not by inquisitor, and since unanimity was required to convict, fewer convictions were forthcoming. Even when some were charged with witchcraft, torture was rarely used to extract confession or recanting. The English elite, Levack argues, never accepted witch beliefs, and rejected continental ideas about demons. His explanation for these regional differences is reliable and, of course, multiple. For instance, the author concludes that while German communities exhibited frenzied paranoia directed at "witches," England only did a little witch-hunting. One strength of Levack's impressive synthesis is its use of printed sources in many languages to provide national examinations of the witch-craze. There are, however, few textual additions apparent to this reader after a thorough paragraph by paragraph comparison of the two editions except some fresh material on Dutch, Hungarian, and Russian witch-hunts in chapter seven. In fact, Levack states that recent regional and thematic studies buttress his multi-causal conclusions.
Necessitated by eight years of scholarly activity on witchcraft, this new paperback version repeats Levack's insistence that witch-hunts were sparked by diverse and complex causes. The second edition of Brian Levack's survey of the age of witch-hunting in Europe and colonial America improves on the significant success of the first edition, published to good reviews in 1987. Reviewed by Elizabeth Lane Furdell (University of North Florida)
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