The Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts (review)

Many Europeans in the years 1450-1750 suspected that thousands of women conspired with the devil to become witches. Cases were documented throughout the world. These women were tortured and killed, typically by burning. The same "witch hunts" occurred in the United States, some of the most notable in Salem, Massachusetts at the end of the 17^th century. Later, 20^th century scholars (including Jensen) would use the term to characterize contemporary political and ideological persecutions.

The actual and curious witch hunts were explained by the theological (suggesting that there was an actual battle with the devil), through complex historical and social convergence of factors (wars, plagues, changes in the status of women, economic changes), and even medical theories (witches were mentally ill, under the influence of hallucinogenic agents or otherwise sick). Jensen's book is the last addition to a glorious tradition of works in this area.

Relying on time series analysis methodology, Jensen examines all forms of witch hunting. While his focus is on those in Europe, he also devotes space to Salem, and other locales. Jensen's approach begins with a critical in-depth presentation into, and analysis of, the existing approaches to and explanations for witchcraft.

Jensen identifies three broad sociological perspectives regarding the interpretation of witch hunts: deviance, control and collective behavior. He then focuses on three narrower perspectives: witch hunts as sacrificial ceremonies, as strategic persecution and as scapegoating. Jensen is well aware that many researchers associated three apocalyptic (but specific) variables with witch hunting: disease, war and famine. These last variables provide Jensen with testable variables. In chapters 4 and 5, he uses time series analysis with charts, maps and text to demonstrate how diseases, war and hardships correlated with witch hunts.

Two questions spotlight Jensen's analysis. What are the conditions that encourage or inhibit witch hunts? Following these, Jensen formulates three hypotheses. The intensity of witch hunting within a territory is related (1. inversely to war and other forms of overt structured conflict and positively to (2. plague epidemics (3. climatic and/or economic hardship. Jensen is not only able to confirm all three hypotheses, but discusses exceptions as well as complexities and variance in different regions (e.g., the witch-hunt in Scotland which did not match precisely the hypotheses). After we have the correlates which explain the timing of the hunts, Jensen's explanation for the specificity of the targets (mostly women) relies on mechanisms of scapegoating as a response to perceived internal threat/s.

About two-thirds of the book deal with the European witch hunts. The last third deals with the Salem witch hunt and with what Jensen refers to as metaphorical modern witch hunts. The key imagery Jensen uses to explain the 1690s Salem witch-hunt is "a perfect storm." That is, the perfect convergence of a few conditions that combined to produce an unavoidable hunt in Salem. The book ends with a survey of modern witch hunts in India, Africa and Asia as well as persecutions that range from McCarthyism to fundamentalist preachers to "demonize" feminists, and suggests that "some of the same patterns found in the study of early modern witch hunts may be found in studying the social context and timing of more recent events." (247)

Jensen's book raises some questions. Were there cases when the conditions he identified as producing witch hunts existed but did not yield any such hunt? Too much attention was probably given to clearly inappropriate approaches and scholars (e.g., Andreski). Some interesting issues remained vague. For example, Henningsen's work on the Basque witch hunts or the idea that countries at war do not tend to persecute imaginary enemies. WWII Germany was involved in a nasty war and persecuted a large number of imaginary enemies. The specificity of the targets for the hunts is not always made very clear. Using such hunts and purges as those by Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Zedong (and not just...