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The article reflects on the fiftieth anniversary of Keith Thomas's "Religion and the Decline of Magic" (1971), a seminal work that shaped the study of supernatural beliefs. While initially receiving mixed reviews, the book became a landmark in historical scholarship, exploring various beliefs such as witchcraft, magical healing, astrology, and prophecy. Despite its length and cost, the book has remained influential, embodying the expansion of historical study beyond traditional topics. Thomas's work serves as a valuable sourcebook for students of early modern culture and has become a reference for occultists interested in the history of their practices. The article notes the book's literary qualities, praising its richness, freshness, generosity, and humor, emphasizing its enduring value and continued relevance in historical research.

This introductory article employs the Scottish Jesuit John Hay as a starting point for a wider exploration of the relationship between Jesuits and print, the theme of this special issue. Hay demonstrates how important print could be to a Jesuit's self-worth and identity. In this, as contemporary catalogs of Jesuit publications attest, he was not alone, but he was a controversial outlier. Hay's superiors prevented him from continuing a vociferous polemical exchange and appeared to guide him towards a more suitable subject: translations of missionary reports. Hay's career in print points to the importance of geography and context in shaping Jesuit publications, and to the conflicts between individual authorial projects and institutional restraints. His example shows above all that the commonplace equation of Jesuits with print requires urgent historical investigation. The essays presented here seek to remedy this oversight by paying attention to Jesuits as authors, printers, and readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierre de Lancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons is a significant text in the field of demonology during the Renaissance. It explores the theme of inconstancy and is rich in metaphors and stories. While primarily studied in literature departments, the text has gained wider readership through translations and adaptations, such as the Spanish film Akelarre. The critical edition by Jean Céard provides valuable insights and annotations, although some aspects, such as the structure of the introduction, could have been improved. Overall, the edition is a valuable resource for those interested in de Lancre's work. [Extracted from the article]

The author argues that the rise of witchcraft skepticism was part of a process of elite identity formation that opposed perceived popular credulity and old-womanish superstition. Topics discussed include the premise that witchcraft beliefs are false, modernity as a disenchanted intellectual construct and as a lived experience, and the extent to which non-belief in witchcraft is the product of derisive incredulity.

An introduction a series of articles about magic and witchcraft is presented, referencing the works of sociologist Max Weber and historians Keith Thomas and Michael Hunter.

This publication, in sum, throws important new light on Reginald Scot's I Discoverie of witchcraft i , a seminal text in the early modern witchcraft debate, and yet the views of the anonymous author are also clearly important in their own right. Although he cannot definitively prove it, Pudney suspects Richard Rogers, suffragan bishop of Dover, to have been the author, and he may well be right, as Rogers was also the rector of Great Chart, a village not even four miles from Kennington. Secondly, while the manuscript offers important new insights into Scot's sceptical treatise, it is also significant as a sustained rumination on witchcraft by a late sixteenth-century clergyman whose interest in the subject was limited. [Extracted from the article]

The Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons (Portrait of the inconstancy of evil angels and demons, 1612) by the Bordeaux magistrate Pierre de Lancre offers a famous account of a witch-hunt conducted by the author in the French Basque country in 1609. Yet it also contains a detailed description of the 1603 trial for lycanthropy of thirteen-year-old Jean Grenier, likely the youngest person ever to be convicted as a werewolf. This article systematically compares De Lancre's Tableau with other neglected accounts. Although all of these versions are second-hand, collating them brings us closer to the original trial records and helps us make sense of Grenier's voluntary confession. At the same time, this comparison reveals what details De Lancre chose to highlight and omit in his Tableau and therefore also offers fresh insight into the mental world of the Bordeaux judge held responsible for France's largest witch-hunt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early modern afterlife of Pope Joan has been remarkably little studied, perhaps because its contours have seemed familiar: Joan's existence was embraced by Protestants for its challenge to the apostolic succession of the papacy and rejected by Catholics for the same reason. This role reversal, which cast Protestants as defenders of monastic chronicles and Catholics as their critics, offers ostensible proof for the mercenary use of history in confessional polemics. This article uses an overlooked 1635 defence of the popess, the longest ever written, as a case study to argue the opposite: debates over Pope Joan could be vehicles for popular confessional grievances and identities, and they can teach us much about the difficulties facing the Catholic and Reformed churches in the 1620s and 1630s. Written in Dutch by a German minister of the Church of England, this lengthy treatise possesses a significance well beyond the local conditions - a public disputation in a small biconfessional town in the Duchy of Cleves - that gave rise to its publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of the 1594 oration "Why Has Magic Grown Today Together With Heresy?" by the English Catholic exile Thomas Stapleton as a source of information on the confessional uses of witchcraft. It describes the history of witch-hunting and the significance of the oration to historians of witchcraft and demonology and historians of English Catholicism. It also examines the reasons given by Stapleton in his oration to prove the similarity between witchcraft and heresy.

The article focuses on acceptance of Therapeutae, a Jewish sect alleged by Jewish philosopher Judaeus Philo, over Essenes, another Jewish sect which was supported by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Topics discussed include merger of both Jewish sects, historical background of separation of Essenes and Therapeutae by historian Cesare Baronio, and Baronio's attempt to support apostolic origins of Christian monasticism and religious orders.

Historians have rarely acknowledged the restraint shown by Catholic exile writers in their portrayals of Queen Elizabeth. As a general rule, exiles took care to restrict their often stringent criticism to the queen’s government or advisers. This restraint has been obscured, in part, by the Apologia pro Rege Catholico Philippo II (1592) written by Thomas Stapleton (1535–1598), Regius Professor of Scriptures at the University of Leuven (Louvain). The Apologia represents the queen as a malignant genius and witch responsible for much of the world’s evils. This article shows that the Apologia, hitherto read as transparently the work of an English Catholic exile, was written for a largely Netherlandish audience, played to Netherlandish concerns, and appeared under a Netherlandish pseudonym. English involvement in the Revolt of the Netherlands on the side of the Protestant rebels meant that anti-Elizabethan sentiment in the Spanish Netherlands was widespread, and the Apologia was part of Stapleton’s efforts to bridge English and Netherlandish Catholic concerns. By presenting his criticism of Elizabeth as a defence of and a sign of devotion to Philip II of Spain by a loyal subject, Stapleton sidestepped accusations of disobedience levelled against the Catholic exiles by the English government. Careful study of Stapleton’s representation of Elizabeth shows why as a general rule other Catholic apologists, such as Robert Persons and Richard Verstegan, did not follow suit. Stapleton’s portrayal of a powerful and malignant queen highlights how the standard representation was influenced by a language of loyal opposition and a need for the nominal preservation of obedience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the birth and demise of Seneca Tragicus, c 1365-1593, based on arguments between two old friends, the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius and the Flemish-Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio.

The return of the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) to the Spanish Netherlands and his reconciliation with Catholicism (1591) have defined his image for posterity. Debates about the sincerity of Lipsius' religious beliefs have continued to the present day. Scholars have presented Lipsius' departure from Leiden as the result of external pressure, as effortless, and conducted in secret. By contrast, this article shows that Lipsius' public engagement in the Republic of Letters was instrumental in enabling his reconciliation with Catholicism. Lipsius employed both published and private letters and the rhetoric of friendship to win support for his return to the Southern Netherlands. After his arrival, Lipsius' correspondence and friendship with the Flemish-Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio (1551-1608) served as a public platform on which the humanist acted out his reconciliation. The article concludes with a discussion as to why Lipsius only published a fraction of his letters to Delrio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1612 the Bordeaux witchcraft inquisitor Pierre de Lancre (1556–1631), himself linked by marriage to Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), revealed that the essayist and sceptic was related on his mother’s side to a leading authority on magic and superstition, the Flemish-Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio (1551–1608). De Lancre confounded historians’ expectations by using the revelation to defend Montaigne against his cousin’s criticism. This article re-evaluates the relationships of De Lancre, Delrio and Montaigne in the light of recent scholarship, which casts demonology as a form of ‘resistance to scepticism’ that conceals deep anxiety about the existence of the supernatural. It explores De Lancre’s and Delrio’s very different attitudes towards Montaigne and towards evidence and scepticism. This, in turn, reveals the different underlying preoccupations of their witchcraft treatises. It hence argues that no monocausal explanation linking scepticism to witchcraft belief is plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the strategies used by the English Catholic Thomas Stapleton (1535-1598) and the Flemish-Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio (1551-1608) to have their works printed by Jan Moretus I, successor and son-in-law of the well-known printer Christophe Plantin, and the economics behind Moretus' reluctance to commit their writings to print. Delrio's ultimate success and Stapleton's failure are explained by their different approaches. While Stapleton missed clear opportunities to make the publication of his text more appealing and resorted to empty rhetorical threats, Delrio used various contacts to exert pressure on the printer. The single-mindedness of the two authors stands in contrast to the attitude of their publisher who faced many different pressures in a competitive market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]