From the wise women of a village called upon to provide cures, to the personal astrologer of Charles II, magic was integral to most people?s lives. In the period between the collapse of the medieval Church's absolute power and the ascendency of scientific rationalism at the turn of the 18th century, across all levels of British society, the split between faith and belief in the power of magic was not always clear. Please see photos as part of condition report 2012 1st Edition (Thus) 1st Printing, Slipcase RELIGION AND THE DECLINE OF MAGIC By Keith Thomas Illustrated By: N/A Format: Hardcover, Language: English Dust Jacket: No Jacket, Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket Published By: Folio Society, London Super octavo (8vo 7 × 11 178 × 279),Pages 992 ISBN: Unknown One of the most intriguing history books of the past 50 years, Keith Thomas?s Religion and the Decline of Magic describes the relationship between the occult and Christianity in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. No central argument is levelled at the readership here the joy of his dry and witty thesis is in its accumulation of fine detail, and also in its broad humanity.Hardcover. Thomas’ analysis of the beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church, and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief, and science was gradually redefining the popular understanding and conception of the universe. Popular ‘magic’ flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, just as the Protestant Reformation was simultaneously attempting to remove magic and its associations from formal religious practice and doctrine. During this magic was not quaint a deviation from mainstream thought in the way it is understood to be now – it was not marginal to the early modern world, it was intrinsic to it.

In Religion and the Decline of Magic his subject is early modern England, between roughly 1500 -1700. Thomas has revealed modes of thought and ways of life deeply strange to us, and he illustrates them with precise evidence.

Keith Thomas is a very old school academic, but this is a carefully observed account of the historical clash between religion and magic – not as a way of entertaining the validity of either belief system, but as a lens through which to read and comment on cultural developments contained therein as well as elsewhere.

The decline of magic