Englishmen at Sea: Labor and the Nation at the Dawn of Empire, 1570-1630

Abstract

lished by freelancers. Careful examinations of local evidence permit insights into how demonological ideas from across the social spectrum came to be spread and interpreted. Jens Chr. V. Johansen’s chapter is an evocative account of a rare but recurrent narrative from both Denmark and Germany in the seventeenth century. It traces near-identical versions of a story, about a male personage who used fox tails to play a glass drum at witches’ gatherings, which seems to have been recounted over time by travellers as diverse as merchants, soldiers, and ox drovers. (Sadly, Johansen passed away in 2017 and the collection is dedicated to his memory.) Taking readers further into the world of Danish witchcraft, Louise Nyholm Kallestrup identifies the complex layering of learned and folk demonology and the links of both to witch trials, as well as locating diffusion sites for demonology, including pulpits and executions. Jari Eilola revisits the infamous Blåkulla trials from late seventeenth-century Sweden, tracing with precision connections between the official, adult ‘frame story’ of the witches’ sabbat and the accounts of accused and accusing children. James Sharpe’s survey of English pamphlet literature between 1566 and 1712 makes a strong case for the role of a specifically English ‘popular demonic’ in both trials and wider theological debates. The book’s coverage is focused on western and northern Europe, but its methods will hold good for future research into the prosecution of diabolical witchcraft in Catholic and Protestant jurisdictions elsewhere in Europe and its colonies. This collection will be required reading for current and emerging witchcraft and demonology scholars, as well as being an eminently teachable set of texts for undergraduates encountering this complex and often tragic history for the first time.