Overview

Magic is ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. Yet if witchcraft is acknowledged as a persistent presence in the medieval and early modern eras, practical magic by contrast – performed to a useful end for payment, and actually more common than malign spellcasting – has been overlooked. Exploring many hundred instances of daily magical usage, and setting these alongside a range of imaginative and didactic literatures, Tabitha Stanmore demonstrates the entrenched nature of 'service' magic in premodern English society. This, she shows, was a type of spellcraft for needs that nothing else could address: one well established by the time of the infamous witch trials. The book explores perceptions of magical practitioners by clients and neighbours, and the way such magic was utilised by everyone: from lowliest labourer to highest lord. Stanmore reveals that – even if technically illicit – magic was for most people an accepted, even welcome, aspect of everyday life.

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9781009286701

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Reviews

This is an innovatively conceived, well researched, and engagingly written book. It marks an extremely important intervention in the field of magic studies and presents not just a remarkable set of conclusions but also a compelling model for others to follow. The innovations here are several, but the most important is the definition of topic itself. The field of magic studies has been dominated by malefic witchcraft. The study of ordinary magical practices deployed regularly, almost mundanely, by non-elite people in the course of their daily lives has endured as a glaring lacuna. Scholars have recognized this deficit but have long failed to address it in any but the most indirect and unsatisfying ways. Tabitha Stanmore now steps with great acuity into the gap. The readership should be broad. All scholars interested in premodern magic in Europe will want to read the book, regardless of its English focus. Conversely, as Stanmore herself argues (when asserting the need to integrate magic into more ordinary social and economic history), historians of premodern England will also want to read it, regardless of whether or not they are interested in magic. I can see the book being assigned in graduate courses, for its innovative methodologies, and in undergraduate ones too, since it contains broad statistical analysis that undergraduates often find reassuring as well as the sort of colorful vignettes they enjoy. The writing is straightforward and clear, in a way that will illuminate complex issues for experts but not confound the uninitiated. Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University The author's argument that work on witchcraft has marginalized the study of magic in the later medieval and early modern periods is well made. The structure of her book is clear and logical, and the fact that so many specific cases are brought into the discussion gives real weight to the statistical analyses and their findings. Indeed, Dr Stanmore makes discoveries which are genuinely new. For instance, whilst it is no surprise to find that healing, or finding lost or stolen property, were key functions of magic, the number of cases of treasure hunting is thought provoking. The attention paid by the author to both magicians and clients is likewise a strength of this volume. Her detailed discussion of popular practices - such as the use of clay balls, and of sieves balanced on shears - is very engaging. The conclusion that all social groups for whom evidence exists, from gentry to servants, engaged with service magicians in similar ways is also very interesting. Equally, the challenges the book makes both to contemporary stereotypes about gullible women as customers and to modern historians' assumptions about clerical magicians are eminently worthy of attention. Anne Lawrence-Mathers, University of Reading 'This is an innovatively conceived, well researched, and engagingly written book. It marks an extremely important intervention in the field of magic studies and presents not just a remarkable set of conclusions but also a compelling model for others to follow.' Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University 'The attention paid by the author to both magicians and clients is a strength of this volume. Her detailed discussion of popular practices - such as the use of clay balls, and of sieves balanced on shears - is very engaging.' Anne Lawrence-Mathers, University of Reading

Author Information

Tabitha Stanmore is a research fellow at the University of Exeter. Love Spells and Lost Treasure (2022) is her first book.

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