The Religion of Fools?: Superstition Past and Present (review)

In a fine review article published in 1994, the late Robert W. Scribner remarked on how "the topic of witchcraft has preoccupied historians of late-medieval and early modern Europe for so long now that equally important issues such as magic and 'superstition,' which have much to tell us about the nature and evolution of witch belief, have been woefully neglected. The works reviewed here offer some hope that this may be about to change." That change, though long in coming and many times foreshadowed in interesting monographs and editions of texts, has well and truly come to fruition in the last few years.

This collected volume of essays and papers contributes substantially to our understanding and processing of a complex and important subject. "Superstition" is evidently a pejorative label, on one hand, and the loose designation of a range of beliefs and activities, on the other. The term originates in classical antiquity; its etymology is hopelessly obscure, its meaning always contested. However, for many centuries people rarely if ever, and then only with irony, declared themselves to be "superstitious." The adjective was always something that one applied to another person deemed less refined, less educated, or less rational than oneself. On the other hand, the bundle of beliefs and activities conventionally designated as "superstitious" has displayed some consistent common features: it comprises divination; omens; healing spells, and charms; or the ability of charismatic healers to detect and cure harmful sorcery. The rhetoric surrounding the subject in the past has inevitably involved the historian of ideas and the anthropologist in a certain amount of uneasy trespass into each other's territory.

One of many strengths of this collection is that it confronts many of the most difficult issues of comparison, terminology, and labeling. It deliberately challenges itself, and its readers, by the juxtaposition of material from radically different time periods, geographical and cultural areas, and academic disciplines. The individual contributions begin with two chapters on classical antiquity: Hugh Bowden compares deisidaimonia in Theophrastus and Plutarch, while Richard Gordon tracks the objects of religious disapproval from the late Roman republic to c. 300 CE. Grouped with these two is T. H. Barrett's critical review of the debatable meanings of the terms used for "bad religion" in imperial China. There follow five chapters grouped under the heading "superstition in Christendom" and devoted to the work of historians. Michael D. Bailey reprises his review of late medieval superstition-treatises. Stephen Bowd discusses a crisis over attempts to prosecute alleged witches in the region north of Brescia under Venetian control. Alison Row-lands analyses concern over spell casting in seventeenth-century Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Alexandra Walsham explores the origin of folklore in the writings of English theological and antiquarian commentators. Simon Dixon discusses the ambivalent attitude toward folk-religion in pre-Revolutionary Russia.

The final group of four chapters presents the "modern world" in the shape of two chapters each on Latin America and on Africa. Alan Knight explores the changing fortunes of dechristianization in Mexico, while Lauren Derby discusses the socioeconomic background to scares about "chupacabras" (semimythical predatory animals) in Puerto Rico. Basile Ndjio comes to multiple conclusions about how the "magically" nouveau riche young men of Cameroon are regarded by their neighbors, while Peter Geschiere analyzes the impact of legislation allowing the prosecution of witches with the help of evidence from semiprofessional healers-cum-witchfinders in Cameroon and South Africa.

The summative introduction to the whole volume by S. A. Smith deserves separate mention. This chapter, comprising nearly fifty pages, will doubtless equip many a seminar by itself. With great dexterity and perception it analyzes and brings into conversation many of the most important themes in the very diverse chapters that follow. It also presents something like a unified narrative of the understanding of superstition across two-and-a-half millennia and across several continents...