England’s First Demonologist: Reginald Scot and ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’ by Philip C. Almond (review)

Reginald Scot’s remarkable text The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) provided a startlingly direct challenge to popular witchcraft beliefs and Continental demonology. Scot believed that what commonly passed as witchcraft was little more than fear and delusion, refracted through the melancholic minds of foolish old women, scheming Catholics, or common hucksters. Scot focused his withering gaze on those who presumed supernatural interference where none existed, who saw miracles or wonders in a post-apostolic age, or who insisted that human enemies rather than God’s providence caused their troubles. One of Scot’s most important arguments was that spirits could not take corporeal form, and therefore could not interact with humans in the ways described by European demonologists. And homegrown English maleficium fared poorly in Scot’s view as well, since he saw familiar spirits, spectral afflictions, and even witches’ confessions as products of melancholy and delusion. The Discoverie was very influential, but not because its ideas held sway with authorities. On the contrary, King James refuted it in his Daemonologie of 1597 and Scot’s name became a byword for atheism and Sadducism (the belief of those who denied the existence of spirits, and the soul) for centuries. In his recent book England’s First Demonologist: Reginald Scot and ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’ Philip C. Almond grapples with Scot’s long and intricate text, traces its sources, and highlights the ways Scot picked apart the tenets of European demonology while essentially creating his own Protestant philosophy of spirits, devils, and witches. Almond clearly admires Scot’s passion, and works to redeem him from charges of proto-modern rationalism as well as from the charges of atheism and Sadducism. The book helpfully places Scot’s fascinating work in its intellectual context while illuminating some of its broader religious, political, and legal implications.

In chapter 1, “The Discoverie of Witchcraft,” Almond presents the apparent contradiction of Scot’s text: it was the first major tract to deal with demonology and witchcraft from an English Protestant perspective, but at the same time it was responsible for spreading European and Catholic ideas about witchcraft and magic to English readers. Furthermore, however emphatically skeptical Scot was, his book fostered secular magic by including a discourse, notably extended in later editions, that explained conjuring tricks in enough detail to be of use to aspiring practitioners. Almond provides pertinent political and religious context for the period preceding the publication of Scot’s work, from the attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth using malefic means, in 1561, to the subsequent passing of the new witchcraft statute in 1563. Scot received a more immediate push to write The Discoverie after the conviction and execution of several witches in his part of Kent, particularly at St. Osyth in 1582. In his book, Scot challenged influential works by Jean Bodin, Heinrich Kramer, and others by questioning their translation of Scripture, suggesting that witches were put to death for things it was impossible for them to have done, and asserting that spirits’ supposed interactions with humans were nothing but deception. Accordingly, Almond points out that Scot came much closer to denying the very possibility of demonic interference with humans than Johannes Weyer, whose skeptical De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563) otherwise made him Scot’s closest demonological peer. Almond notes that Scot and his contemporaries grew to view Catholicism and witchcraft as twin threats to the realm, but it would be interesting to hear more about the extent to which Puritan involvement in matters demonological caused the evolution of Scot’s views, as they did to those of his critic, King James.

In chapter 2, “Witchcraft,” Almond explains that Scot did not deny the possibility of witches, but attacked the validity of witchcraft prosecution. One of the ways he did this was by emphasizing divine providence; there was no reason that God alone might not account for the phenomena attributed to witches, he argued...