Third Edition, [18], 292, [12], 72, contemporary ownership note to title “Wm Hardy Inn Neward”, ownership note to title verso “William Webster His Book 1761”, woodcut initials, numerous woodcut illustrations, pagination misprint p.96 as p.60, separate title for A Discourse concerning the Nature and Substance of Devils and Spirits and begins new pagination with quire 3A, occasional light spotting, elaborately gilt calf, 4to (265 x 180mm), London, for A. Clark, 1665.
The Discovery of Witchcraft is a seminal sceptical treatise recording and debunking popular and scholarly beliefs about witchcraft, magic and other superstitions. Scot argued that belief in magic was both irrational and un-Christian. Most sceptics, no matter how zealous or well constructed their attack on traditional witchcraft belief was, failed to argue it out of existence because they left intact the central idea which maintained its intellectual coherence as a belief system: Satan’s ability to intervene in the temporal world. Scot denied the relevance of demons, if not their reality, pronouncing them devoid of physical existence and incapable of interaction with humans. He declared attributing human misfortune to demonic and human interaction affronted Divine Providence by diminishing God’s power and justice.
The first edition of The Discovery of Witchcraft was published the year following Weyer’s final edition of De Praestigiis (in 1583). Both Weyer and Scot are considered extremist by their contemporaries for their fervent condemnation of the witch trials. They made many of the same arguments about the melancholic delusions of pathetic, aged, and poor defendants. What differentiates Scot from Weyer, and from every other writer on magic, is that he was neither a theologian, philosopher, nor magus.
Reginald Scot was a very unlikely candidate for intellectual honours. Having studied at Hart Hall, Oxford, without completing a degree, he settled down in Kent, where he was active, though not especially prominent, in public affairs and private business till his death on 9 October 1599. Scot was roused to write the Discovery after attending a witch trial in Rochester. It seems likely that the increasing pace of witchcraft prosecutions in England must have weighed heavily upon him and led him to a systematic study of the evidence presented at such trials. Several factors appear to have inspired Scot’s work: horror at the prejudice of the judges in witch trials; the absurdity of the charges brought against helpless and often senile women; the way in which, to his mind, the evidence presented in trials was totally inadequate and unsubstantiated; and the fact that his own religious convictions – reinforced, paradoxically, by an extremely sceptical temperament – seemed to invalidate even the possibility of magical activity. Furthermore, Scot appreciated, as few contemporaries did, the inconsistency and gross credulity of the apologists for witch-hunting, and the distance between their intellectual structures and the sordid trivialities of the persecution itself. Scot maintained that those who had been accused and executed for witchcraft were innocent and blamed the Catholic Church for encouraging these superstitious beliefs.
Scot systematically set out a serious and sustained argument, and was able to construct a coherent and solidly planned book which provided radical answers to a host of contemporary intellectual problems. For Scot, the study of demonology meant much more than merely haggling over the varieties of witchcraft; the whole problem of magic was involved. He concentrated on destroying belief in demons and in the devil himself, knowing full well that when that diabolical edifice was demolished witchcraft would collapse with it. He suggested non-magical reasons and causes for both magical phenomena and accusations of witchcraft. These included psychological and sociological causes. For example, Scot argued that the social tension and guilt felt by those who denied charity to poor women sometimes led the deniers to accuse these women of witchcraft. He described in detail what he held to be the erroneous prayers, spells and practices of those who dabbled in the magical arts, to convince the reader once and for all just how foolish and superstitious their actions were.
The Discovery of Witchcraft was very widely read in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and was printed in numerous editions. It was a central text in witchcraft debates, with vitriolic hostility directed at Scot by both Catholic and Protestant demonologists. James VI of Scotland, author of Daemonologie and a firm believer in the power and danger of the witch, strongly rebuked Scot and the views he had put forth.
Because of the comprehensiveness of The Discovery of Witchcraft, it was a useful source of information on supernatural beliefs and practices. By a miraculous irony of history, Scot’s book accomplished the task of transmitting in print the recipes of occult magical tradition to succeeding generations. He would surely have turned in his grave to discover that his work was the most commonly owned volume in the libraries of seventeenth and eighteenth century English conjurors.
[Witch Craze Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany, Rober, 2004; The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, 2013; The Damned Art, Anglo, 1977]
