Women's History Resource Site

King's College History Department

Book Review

Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997.

There are many books available on the history of witchcraft in Europe. Some examine a particular aspect while others attempt (with varying degrees of success) to provide a broader picture of the whole phenomenon. One of those books is Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe by Stuart Clark. This book, written mostly for professional historians with some knowledge of the subject, looks at witchcraft and demonology with the intent to "reinsert the beliefs of early modern intellectuals into the history of witchcraft ‘as one, but only one, of its necessary ingredients’" (Hindle, 211). Clark also asserts that the question of how so many people believed in things that could not possibly be ‘real’ is not a relevant question. He feels that early modern texts are important tools to study the witch-hunts regardless of whether or not they actually believe in witchcraft. This review will attempt to analyze Thinking with Demons by examining organization, its use of sources, and its style. This reviewer is only beginning to study early-modern European witchcraft so I do not presume to be able to judge Dr. Clark's theories in terms of their basis in historical fact or relevance.

Dr. Clark is a professor of early modern history at the University of Wales Swansea. His research interests include early modern intellectual and cultural history. His teaching interests are the history of magic and witchcraft, historical theory, and 16th and 17th century European history. He has published several books and articles on witchcraft and demonology. Among these are Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, and the soon to be released Biblical and Pagan Societies (Witchcraft and Magic in Europe).
Thinking with Demons attempts to redirect some of the emphasis of the study of the history of witchcraft and demonology in early modern Europe back to studying the texts from that time on their own merit without trying to answer the question "how could they believe that?" The book is more of an intellectual history of demonology than a history of witchcraft. The author describes it as "a book about demonology, certainly, but set in a series of contexts drawn from early modern intellectual life as a whole" (ix).

The book is divided into five sections. Each section relates witchcraft to a particular topic. They are language, science, history, religion, and politics. Each of the topics support the idea that demonology was widely accepted as part of the early modern worldview and that in light of the times that was a rational belief. Thinking with Demons examines texts from early modern scientists, theologians, philosophers, lawyers, and others to place demonology within its proper context as a legitimate area of study in the early modern period. These texts still have something to be learned from them today even though we don’t see witchcraft as real.

Dr. Clark supports his arguments with a great deal of primary and secondary texts. The bibliography contains several hundred entries and is broken into two parts: works before 1800 and works after1800. There are only two illustrations in the book. More would have been nice but at over 800 pages its not hard to see why the author didn’t include any more.

Thinking with Demons is a comprehensive look at demonology and its place within the intellectual life of its time. The book includes a great amount of detail and covers a wide variety of topics very well. It is very well organized with a chapter at the beginning of each of the five sections that talks about general ideas within that topic. Six to nine chapters that examine in detail the subject as it relates to demonology follow those introductory chapters.

If the book has a weakness its that it is too philosophical in some places. This is most apparent in the opening chapter Witchcraft and Language where there is a lengthy discussion on weather language creates reality or merely describes it. It is pertinent to Clark’s argument that we in western culture "are driven by a kind of logical imperative to understand what [these early modern texts on demonology] say in binary terms" (9) when whether or not what they talk about is "real" should be an irrelevant question but the book gets so deep into this complex argument that it almost starts to loose focus. The opening chapter isn’t the only part where the book can be too philosophical. It is also present in the sections on history and politics.

This book contributes significantly to the field of demonology by trying to change the perspective of those who study it by making them less concerned with the ‘reality’ of demonology and witchcraft. The author does take into account opposing viewpoints, most notably that he doesn’t examine law which could have brought him closer to mixing the intellectual history of his book with the more general history of the witch hunts. 

There is no doubt that this is an extensive, detailed, and important work that looks at demonology from different perspective than most. Dr. Clark’s main point is that demonology is an important part of the intellectual currents of early modern Europe and should be studied as such without trying to label it as wrong and explain why people could have thought this. He supports this with a huge quantity of information and he has produced an interesting and informative (if somewhat hard to read) book on demonology. An informed reader looking for a detailed book on demonology from a slightly different perspective would by well served by reading this book.

Annotated Reviews

Black, Jeremy. Review of Thinking with Demons, by Stuart Clark. History Today, July 1998, 59-60.
Jeremy Black describes Thinking with Demons as a study of constructions of witchcraft (59). He comments on some of the religious aspects of the text and then goes on to summarize the book and conclude that Clark has read widely and is up to date with critical works.

Hindle, Steve. Review of Thinking with Demons, by Stuart Clark. The Economic History Review 51 ( 1998): 211-212.
Steve Hindle gives a very thorough and positive review to Thinking with Demons. After summarizing Clark’s thesis Hindle says, "He succeeds brilliantly"(211). The review briefly recapitulates the book and then offers a few criticisms; most notably that the book is somewhat morally detached.

URL: http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/wrevclark.html Written by Harry Lyons Last Revision: 12 November 2001 Copyright © MM Prof. Pavlac's Women's History Site