An Examen of Witches by Henry Boguet (review)

BOOK REVIEWS domestic dialogue between Santayana and Kuntz, and a reliable measure and instrument for thinkers to find the way through the labyrinth of ideas, systems and trends of the last eight decades. Its greatest value, perhaps, lies in its turn to and justification of process philosophy, on the basis of the contemporary scientific and philosophical teachings. Mercy CoUege of Detroit Detroit, Michigan C. E. ScaUETZINGER An Examen of Witches. By HENRY. BoouET. Pp. 361, $11.50; Witch Hunting and Witch Trials. Ed. by C. L'EsTRANGE EWEN. Pp. 358, $11.50; The Trial of the Lancaster Witches 1612. Ed. by G. B. HARRISON. Pp. fl35, $6.50. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1971. With the current outbreaks of experimentation in the occult sparking a renewed interest in medieval and early modern witchcraft, Barnes and Noble have capitalized by releasing facsimile reprints of three books all of which were first published in Great Britain in 19fl9. These books will be of considerable interest and of some value to students of witchcraft. Of these the most scholarly is C. L'Estrange Ewen's painstaking compilation of legal indictments and depositions taken from the records of 1373 assizes held for the Home Circuit in England between 1559 and 1736 under the title Witch Hunting and Witch Trials. In a 115 page introduction there is a readable exposition of the editor's insights and viewpoints; the indictments and other legal documents will best be used as a reference work. Easier flowing is the revealing record of the trial of the Lancaster witches held at Lancaster Castle, England, in 161fl. The records, published in 1613 by Thomas Potts Esquire under the title The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, give a valid overview of the attitudes prevalent in the courts and among the people in seventeenth-century England. G. B. Harrison in his introduction provides a survey of the best works available on witchcraft in England. The sixteenth-century An Examen of Witches by Henry Boguet borrows heavily in both style and content from the famous Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, whose influence spread from their inquisitions in Northern Germany throughout Germany, France, Italy, and the British Isles. Published nearly a century after the Malleus Maleficarum, Boguet's work shares the same unmistakable reliance on the scholastic method popularized in the thirteenth-century Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas. When one approaches a new book or books on witchcraft, it is always BOOK REVIEWS 583 with the hope of finding clear and peremptory evidence for or against the historicity of the alleged phenomena and their causality. The former question would seem to be more easily solved. However, of the three authors who have given us the best general studies of witchcraft, one, Dr. H. C. Lea, seems convinced that the only reality of the exploits of witches lies in the hysterical minds of deluded human beings. The other two, Rev. Montague Summers and Charles Williams, recognize a certain objectivity to the alluded phenomena. While Rev. Summers gives unflinching credence to the supernaturality of at least a modicum of these, Mr. Williams seems to support the conviction that the most enlightened position involves a suspension of judgment as to the causality of verified phenomena pending future developments of ever-progressing sciences. It would provide a neat little package if we could say that each of the three books under review represents one of the classical positions on witchcraft investigation-and this is nearly true. An Examen of Witches, which is edited-with an introduction-by the Rev. Montague Summers, certainly assumes the reality and the supernaturality (by diabolical influence) of a good number of cases, at least. There is no question either that G. B. Harrison in his introduction to The Trial of the Lancaster Witches 1612 takes the contrary point of view, decrying the atrocities foisted on man by his own superstitions. Harrison's closing words to us are, " It is as well not to be superior about the superstitions and injustices of our ancestors; our own will make nauseous reading to posterity." C. L'Estrange Ewen would like to have us think that he is totally dispassionate and...