The Occult in Early Modern Europe

'A huge, and wonderfully rich and varied, collection of source material for the still largely unexplored history of medieval magic. Selecting and translating almost 150 passages, it covers the field in its broadest sense, from popular belief and divination to the arcane practices of alchemy and conjuration. As such, it represents a significant aid to the understanding of medieval religion in general, and a marvellous gift to teachers and students of the period, with some delights for the expert.' - Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol

It covers magic, witchcraft, astrology, alchemy and other related occult themes and presents them, not as disparate elements of folkloric belief and intellectual aberrations, but as parts of a coherent, intellectually rigorous and scientifically challenging world-view, consistently argued in accordance with its given basic principles.Witchcraft and the occult sciences are areas which have benefited enormously from the spread of more sophisticated cultural studies in recent years. The old debate as to whether or not witches were really believed to exist has collapsed in the face of the overwhelming bodies of evidence suggesting a genuine and widespread acceptance of the occult in a notionally Christian Europe.
This excellent and wide-ranging documentary anthology shows the genuinely pan-European nature of the phenomenon, its spread through all classes and its importance in people's thinking about the natural world. It covers magic, witchcraft, astrology, alchemy and other related occult themes and presents them, not as disparate elements of folkloric belief and intellectual aberrations, but as parts of a coherent, intellectually rigorous and scientifically challenging world-view, consistently argued in accordance with its given basic principles. This collection is drawn from a very wide range of authors from the early modern period and includes many newly translated documents which appear in English here for the first time.