The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the "Disenchantment of the World"

Author(s): Robert W. Scribner

Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 23, No. 3, Religion and History
(Winter, 1993), pp. 475-494
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/206099
Accessed: 13-02-2017 16:15 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxIII:3 (Winter 993), 475-494.

Robert W. Scribner

The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the

"Disenchantment of the World" For most college-
educated people, one of the two or three things they commonly
know about the Reformation is that it contributed, alongside the
Enlightenment, to a process of secularization, often understood
as the rationalization of modern thought-modes by the "disen-
chantment of the world," the elimination of magic from human
action and behavior. This did not mean the repudiation of reli-
gious belief, but a separation of "magic" from "religion" in early
modern Europe. The distinction between religion and magic had
been blurred in the pre-Reformation church; indeed, for con-
vinced Protestants the central act of medieval Christian worship,
the Mass, with its doctrine of the transubstantiated Eucharist, had
at its heart a form of magic. The Reformation removed this
ambiguity by taking the "magical" elements out of Christian
religion, eliminating the ideas that religious rituals had any au-
tomatic efficacy, that material objects could be endowed with any
sort of sacred power, and that human actions could have any
supernatural effect.' Religion was thus freed of "superstitious"
notions about the workings of the world and became a matter of
internal conviction, enabling the rational human action character-
istic of modernity.

Robert W. Scribner is a University Lecturer in History and Fellow, Clare College, Cam-
bridge University. He is the author of For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for
the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981); Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Ref-
ormation Germany (London, 1987); editor and translator (with Tom Scott) of The German
Peasants' War: A History in Documents (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1991).

? 1993 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History.

I Richard van Duilmen, Religion und Gesellschaft. Beitrige zu einer Religionsgeschichte der
Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 10-35, 204-214. The term "Entzauberung der Welt"
is derived from Max Weber, who saw it as a "great historic process in the development
of religions . . . which . . . came here to its logical conclusion," Weber (trans. Talcott
Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958), Io5.
The best summary of the argument about the Reformation taking the "magical" out
of Christian religion is Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth,
1971), 27-89. Weber (trans. Ephraim Fischoff), The Sociology of Religion (London, 1965),
I5I-152, also held the Mass to be a form of magic.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
476 ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

The focus of this article is popular magic, which may

tainly be used as a touchstone for judging the extent and
in which the Reformation redefined the nature of religio
ever, the problem is complicated because our modern view
Reformation rests essentially on the ways in which it w
structed in the nineteenth century out of the characterist
lectual concerns of that age (nationalism, scientific ratio
and a preoccupation with evolutionary models of develop
The Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought fir
sitioned the Reformation as part of a long-term process
tionalization and secularization, whereas post-Enlight
thought-modes failed to understand the essential characte
medieval Christianity, especially the medieval notion of
cramental. The view that the Reformation was a logical
the road to modernization is now seen as problematic, as
conventional wisdom of how it changed the notion of the
In order to understand the relationship of "religion" to
both before and after the Reformation, a good deal of ret
is required.2 Thus, it is necessary to begin with the rela
of magic to pre-Reformation Christianity before we can
appreciate the problem magic posed for both Protestant
Catholicism alike.
Let us begin with a definition of magic, which can be under-
stood in the words of Flint as "the exercise of a preternatural
control over nature by human beings, with the assistance of forces
more powerful than they." Religion, by contrast, is the recogni-

2 For the developing historiography of the Reformation, see A. Geoffrey Dickens and
John M. Tonkin, The Reformation in Historical Thought (Oxford, I985). This impressive
pioneering work is very sketchy on the interpretative currents in nineteenth-century
Germany, but adequately reveals how the Enlightenment changed historical understanding
of the Reformation.
A rethinking of the problem of the relationship of "religion" to "magic" is indicated
in Scribner, "The Impact of the Reformation on Daily Life," in Mensch und Objekt im
Mittelalter und in derfriihen Neuzeit: Leben-Alltag-Kultur (Vienna, I990), 316-343, [Oster-
reichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, DLXVIII].
See also Scribner, "Symbolising Boundaries: Defining Social Space in the Daily Life of
Early Modern Germany," in Gertrud Blaschitz, Helmut Hundsbichler, Gerhard Jaritz,
Elisabeth Vavra (eds.), Symbole des Alltags. Alltag der Symbole. Festschrift fr Harry Kiihnel
zum 65. Geburtstag (Graz, I992), 821-841. It is worth noting that this rethinking process
began with Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, a work which might have led to a
reconceptualization of the Reformation's understanding of religion had less attention been
devoted on his discussion of witchcraft.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC 477

tion by human beings of a supernatural power o

dependent, to whom they show deference and
the face of it we have a clear-cut distinction bet
magic: on the one hand, human dependence o
toward, the divine; on the other, human attemp
divine power and apply it instrumentally. Yet t
so simple when the reality of religion as a histo
is considered. Late-medieval European religion w
varied, and to grasp its totality we must be awa
mensionality. There are at least seven major fea
European religion to consider. It was simultane
ical, functional, pastoral, and concerned with
having irreducible social, political, and econo
Only the first four will be mentioned here as
our theme.3
Medieval European religion was "soteriological" in that it
offered an understanding of, and a means toward, human salva-
tion focused on the saving death and resurrection of Christ as
revealed in the Bible, and, in particular, redemption from sin and
its consequences for humans both individually and collectively. It
was "functional" in that it gave meaning to daily life by marking
out religiously the key stages in the human life cycle and in the
cyclical rhythms of the seasons, thus providing a form of cosmic
order for human existence. Its "pastoral" role was to offer con-
solation amid the anxieties of daily life and to provide a means of
reconciliation for human frailty. The concern with "piety" refers
to a consistent state or attitude about the religious meaning of
life, expressed in actions symbolizing dependence upon and preoc-
cupation with the divine, perhaps better signified by the word
"godliness."
It was in the functional aspect of medieval religion that the
line between religion and magic could become blurred. Religion
functioned as a means of order in daily life because it was predi-

3 Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991), 3. Adapted
from the definition of religion in Stanley J. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope
of Rationality (Cambridge, 1990), 4, although Tambiah's own favored definition might do
as well: "a special awareness of the transcendent, and the acts of symbolic communication
that attempt to realize that awareness and live by its promptings," 6. For the ways in
which religion is socially stratified and its political and economic features, see Scribner,
"The Reformation and the Religion of the Common People," in a Beiheft to the Archiv
fur Reformationsgeschichte, forthcoming.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
478 | ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

cated on the assumption that all creation depended for its we

being on the sustaining power of the divine. Irregularities an
discontinuities in the material world were understood either as a
form of breakdown of this cosmic order or as a result of sacred
power operating upon the world. Sacred power could entail the
operation of either beneficient or malign supernatural forces, the
divine and the angelic or the demonic. All manifestations of the
sacred-whether in persons, places, or events-also entailed man-
ifestations of sacred power and therefore the possibility of access
to it. Saints, their bodies, their relics, and the places in which
they were active; other holy places and charismatic centers; and
moments of intense ritual significance all offered possibilities of
sacred power manifesting itself. It was a power to which all
persons sought access in their attempts to deal with the exigencies
of the human condition-sickness, dearth, climatic variation,
threats to human and animal reproduction, fear and anxiety, and
the breakdown of human relationships.4
The medieval church, as the institutionalized form of the
organized community of believers, found itself under a twofold
pressure. Its sacramental system, slowly developed over the
course of several centuries of Christian practice, was primarily
soteriological. Sacraments involved ritual actions which effected
in the supernatural sphere that which they symbolized by their
signifying performances in the natural: thus, the cleansing and
purifying symbolic action of water in baptism brought about the
purification of the soul from sin. But sacraments were also tar-
geted on the whole person-body, soul and spirit-so that they
were seen as offering consolation, succor, and nourishment for
the body as well as the soul. Sacramental action thus had inner-
worldly as well as transcendental efficacy. This was one field in
which any firm lines between religion and magic could become
blurred, but we can only appreciate the full complexity of the
problem if we highlight another feature of sacramental action, the
way in which it dealt with the demonic and the diabolical.
Christianity's view of the human need for salvation stressed
the action of a perverted form of the supernatural in bringing

4 I outlined some of these ideas in a preliminary way in Popular Culture and Popular
Movements in Reformation Germany (London, I987), I-17, relying on concepts drawn from
Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York, I958), I-3.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC | 479

about sin and human corruption from a preternatural state, per

sonified in the shape of the Devil. The Devil represented an
occasioned spiritual, moral, social, and material disorder in the
natural world, and the sacramental system was primarily (soter-
iologically) directed at reversing the effects of his actions and
offering future protection against them. Sacraments thus had
multiple efficacy-providing a means to salvation, offering succo
for body, soul and spirit, and serving as protection against the
temptations of the Devil. The Devil could, of course, work effect
in the natural world, albeit only on divine sufferance, although
theological opinion throughout the medieval and early modern
period was divided as to whether these effects were real or ima-
ginary. Be that as it may, the blurring of boundaries between
religion and magic also extended along a second axis, the means
through which one dealt with the this-worldly effects of the
diabolical. The twofold problem for the church was, first, how
to balance the soteriological with the functional and pastoral as
pects of its sacraments; second, how to define the ways in which
they could be employed to combat the wiles of the Devil. Th
problem was made the more complex by the medieval under
standing that the sacraments' soteriological efficacy was automati
(ex opere operata); extending this notion to the other features of
sacrament would have brought it perilously close to a form of
"magic."
The difficulty became yet more intricate with the develop-
ment of the practices known as "sacramentals." In part, sacra-
mentals were no more than ritual blessings of certain elements or
objects used in liturgical action, a means of consecrating them to
sacred use; for example, the water and salt used in the baptismal
ceremony or the altar on which the Mass was performed. But
they also involved an act of exorcism by means of which harmful
spirits were expelled from these elements or objects. This aspect
may have arisen from a Christianizing attempt to incorporate
pagan amulets as non-Christian peoples were converted: the de-
monic beings from which they were believed to gain their efficacy
were ordered to depart in the name of God as Creator, the Trinity,
and Christ as Lord of the world, and they were then blessed so
that Christians could use them without harm. Indeed, many of
the blessed items used as expressions of piety by medieval Chris-
tians had this character. However, by the later middle ages, sac-

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
480 ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

ramentals involved the exorcism and blessing of a wide range of

objects, the efficacy of which was held to be analogous to that of
the sacraments. The differences in efficacy were nonetheless cru-
cial. Sacraments were primarily soteriological and only second-
arily pastoral and consolatory, whereas the pastoral and consola-
tory aspects predominated in the sacramentals, whch could be an
aid to salvation insofar as they were used in the right way and
with the right frame of mind (ex opere operantis).
There were three ways in which sacramentals could slide
over into the field of magic: the element of exorcism could be
taken to impart apotropaic significance to them, the blessing or
consecration could be seen to impart a sacred power, and their
primarily this-worldly orientation could lead to their instrumental
application. Moreover, the official distinction between efficacy ex
opere operata and ex opere operandis was commonly ignored, and
sacramentals in popular practice were regarded as though they
were automatically effective. Finally, these items fell more easily
than the sacraments outside the control of the institutional church,
since they became a matter of daily use by laypeople, rather than
being (as the sacraments were) under the control of the institu
tional church in the person of the clergy. Sacramentals were enor
mously popular and it was widespread demand which led to the
mushrooming of such blessed objects throughout the later middle
ages and into the post-Reformation period (indeed, up to the
present day). They, above all else, have earned the designation of
"the magic of the late-medieval church" and attracted the scorn
and hostility of the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century.5
One further matter must be considered before we can claim
to have mapped, even in crude outline, the problem magic posed
for religion in pre-Reformation Christianity. Throughout the Eu-
ropean middle ages there also existed a range of beliefs and cultural
practices that could more properly be labeled "magic" to which
the institutionalized church was, in theory at least, unambiguously
hostile. These included divination, astrology, magical medicine,
love magic, the invocation of demons and the dead, and other

5 The classic (and still unsurpassed) work on sacramentals is Adolf Franz, Die kirchlichen
Benediktionen im deutschen Mittelalter, (Freiburg im Breisgau, I909), 2 v. For their wide-
spread importance, see the references in Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements,
361. For their designation as the magic of the medieval church, Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic, 27-57.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC 481

forms of the "magical arts." Many of these beliefs and

predated Christianity, some may have been dressed in C
garb-possibly the result of attempts at Christianization
certain types of binding and loosing spells and a whole
of spells and charms in the form of magical blessings. All in
the instrumental application of sacred power in ways th
regarded as "superstitious," that is, as a form of false b
Flint has recently shown, the dialogue between the chu
the magical arts in the early middle ages was as much a m
creative assimilation and acculturation as it was of unre
rejection, and it may be that this two-pronged strategy c
throughout the high and later middle ages as well. One
of rejection that had worked well in combatting non-C
religion was that of demonization, accusing pagan gods
no more than servants of the Devil, that great begetter of d
in the world. From the fifth century it was applied to m
John Cassian in attributing the effects and efficacy of m
demons, identified from Old Testament sources as those who fell
with Lucifer. The choice presented to Christians was between
sanctity and magic, the former enabling them to subdue demonic
malice, the latter to invoke it, in which case one was consorting
with demons.6 Thus, any distinction between beneficent and mal-
efic sorcery disappeared, and all magic involved subordination to
the Devil.
A consistent policy of demonization would have done much
to keep a firm boundary between religion and magic, but this
was not always possible in practice, since it would have ruled out
Christianizing strategies. The most important area of the latter
strategy was that of curing and healing charms. The persistence
of non-Christian magical healing practices led monks, as exem-
plars of sanctity and so as wielders of sacred power, to adopt
Christianized forms of healing charms in which the names of
Christ or other Christian figures replaced those of pagan gods.
Healing thus became a result of Christian prayer which, if not
merely dependent on the power of the cross as the most potent

6 Flint, The Rise of Magic, 2I, 393-407. We still lack a thorough modern investigation
of popular magic in the later middle ages, but see Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle
Ages (Cambridge, I990), 56-94, for a useful sketch. He stresses patterns of prohibition,
condemnation, and prosecution without considering the question of acculturation and
assimilation, 176-200.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
482 1 ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

Christian symbol, could be accompanied by magico-medical heal-

ing techniques, the success of which could be made dependent on
the invocation of Christian forms of sacred power. The ambiguity
between prayer and the magical use of a spell or charm remained
built into such Christianized forms, especially when they escaped
the control of the monastic milieu and became the stock in trade
of popular healers, cunning folk, sorcerers, and ultimately, of lay
people. Thus, a third axis of ambiguity was created between
religion and magic, along which ranged acceptable Christian prac-
tices based on notions like the healing power of prayer; mistaken
or misguided "superstitious" invocation of Christ, the Trinity,
and other Christian sacred persons; and being deceived into col-
laborating with the Devil.
This very crude sketch enables us to see why those approach-
ing pre-Reformation religion through post-Enlightenment
thought-modes failed to understand essential characteristics of
medieval Christianity and popular magic or the troubled relation-
ship between the two. What difference did the Reformation make
to this complex and subtle structure of sacrality? The radical point
of departure associated with Martin Luther and (even more rad-
ically) Ulrich Zwingli resided in their understanding of the ab-
solute sovereignty and otherness of God, so that it was impossible
for human beings to gain any knowledge of the divine by merely
created means. This viewpoint destroyed the basis for sacraments
and sacramentals, indeed for any kind of ritual by means of which
this-worldly symbolic action could have any transcendental effi-
cacy. All sacred action flowed one-way, from the divine to the
human, and even salvation was but a recognition in the human
heart of a grace apparently arbitrarily given by God. Even pas-
toral-pedagogical means, such as devotional images, were held
by the most extreme exponents of this position (such as Zwingli
and Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt), to so distract Christians
from this relationship of faith that they were condemned as idol-
atry.7
The consequence was in no sense, however, a desacralization
of the world; quite the contrary. Luther had a powerful belief in
the presence and activity of the Devil in the world, and believed

7 See the discussion on this point by Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols: The
Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, I986), 54-104, I97-233.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC | 483

that his age had finally unmasked the Devil's main agent, th
Antichrist, the diabolical antithesis of Christ as Savior. He held
his age to be the one in which the last great confrontation between
Christ and Antichrist, between God and the Devil, was to be
fought. It was an age witnessing a great outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, guiding the world toward its providential culmination in
the Last Days. Luther's thought was thus apocalyptic and escha-
tological, rather than desacralizing. Indeed, it can be said that the
Word of God became for him the overwhelming sacramental
experience, the sole means through which created humanity could
come to knowledge of the divine. The world of Luther and the
Reformation was a world of highly charged sacrality, in which
all secular events, social, political, and economic, could have
cosmic significance. The same was true of the second generation
of reform, associated with Calvin and the followers of the "re-
formed religion," whose characteristic belief above all else was
that Lutherans and Lutheranism had made too many compromises
with the Antichrist by accepting that some matters were indiffer-
ent in the great cosmic struggle. Far from further desacralizing
the world, Calvin and the reformed religion intensified to an even
higher degree the cosmic struggle between the divine and the
diabolical.
It is also incorrect to argue that the Reformation created an
antiritual form of religion which dispensed with sacred time,
places, persons, or things. After initial attempts to abolish or
reform life cycle rituals, many, such as churching and confirma-
tion, reappeared in modified form, even within the Reformed
tradition. The attempt of the first generation of reformers to
dispense with consecration or blessing as a means of setting sacred
objects aside from the profane world proved futile. Throughout
the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, evangelical forms
of consecration reemerged and multiplied, and were applied to a
wide variety of objects: church foundation stones, new or restored
churches, pulpits, fonts, organs, altars, bells, cemeteries, and
even, in Saxony in 1719, a confessional box. Care was always
taken to insist that such consecrations in no way imparted any
form of sacred power, as under Catholicism. Nonetheless, pop-
ular belief insisted in treating such objects as if they were as
sacralized as their Catholic equivalent, for example, church bells
which were held to protect against storms and lightning. Memory

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
484 ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

of the power of Catholic sacramentals was long and proved d

ficult to eradicate, not least those practices associated with t
power of the Eucharist, such as blessed bread, used like St. A
tha's bread to repel fire. Where Protestant pastors refused
accommodate lay demands for such sacrally potent objects, th
parishioners were quite willing to go to Catholic priests for th
Pilgrimage sites, and the healing water sometimes associated w
them, persisted in many Protestant territories into the seventeen
and eighteenth centuries.8
This was no matter of mere survivalism, the ignorant re
sponse of half-protestanized people incapable of understandin
that sacred power no longer existed in a profane world. Protest
belief did not hold that the sacred did not intrude into the secular
world, simply that it did not do so at human behest and could
not automatically be commanded. Thus, there was no contradic-
tion in regarding the Word of God as the most potent manifes-
tation of the sacred in the world and so regarding the Bible as an
especially sacred and potent object. By extension, this was also
held of hymnals, prayerbooks, and catechisms, for they too em-
bodied and expressed God's sacred Word. We can certainly speak
of a distinctive Protestant form of sacramentalism, albeit one far
weaker than its Catholic counterpart.
Nonetheless, the Reformation, both in its first and second
generations, could be said to have drawn a firmer line between
magic and religion by its changed understanding of the sacra-
ments, and its repudiation of Catholic sacramentals. The profu-
sion of blessed objects (salt, water, palms, herbs, and so forth)
that so often gave sacred meaning to the daily life of pre-Refor-
mation Christians did largely disappear from the lives of those of
evangelical belief. Yet this did not remove the popular desire for
some kind of instrumental application of sacred power to deal
with the exigencies of daily life, and Protestants often turned to
distinctively "Protestant" remedies, using Bibles, hymnals, and
prayer books for their healing and protective power. Indeed, their
sacred character was even attested to by the belief that they were
incombustible, a quality associated with the sacred power of saint-
hood in Catholic belief (and which was transferred to Luther as
the quintessential Protestant saint). Some Protestants may have

8 See the discussion in Scribner, "Impact of the Reformation," 323-340.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC 485

drawn the line at accepting the apotropaic power of bles

weather bells, but the no less apotropaic form of the "hail-se
mon" grew up as a Protestant custom, replacing the former
charist procession through the fields to invoke divine protect
over ripening crops.9
A further consequence of Protestant belief to which we mu
call attention before we can fully appreciate the problem pos
for it by popular magic concerns what I have called the "moral
universe." Alongside belief in a sacramental world, pre-Refor
mation religion also believed that certain human actions co
provoke supernatural intervention in the natural world, either
a sign or a punishment. For example, the birth of deform
children or animals was often understood in this way, either
punishment for human sin (for example, a monk fornicating w
a nun) or as a warning of impending divine wrath. Moral dev
ance, both individual and collective, was reflected in natural d
formity, perhaps through belief in the links of microcosm a
macrocosm, but more likely through a perception of a natur
order influenced, via the supernatural, by the quality of hum
moral action. A stock late-medieval version of this causal nexus
involved the belief that lepers had incurred the disease because
some sin committed by their parents, or that whole communiti
were at risk because of heresy in their midst. In summer I523 t
flooding of the Elbe and the destruction of crops was blamed b
Saxon farmers on the activities of Luther and his cronies: God
had afflicted the land because they had eaten meat in Lent.10
Protestant belief in a sacralized but weakly, rather th
strongly, sacramental universe enabled this causal nexus to com
more forcefully to the fore, especially since it accorded with belie
in the sovereignty of God over the world. Indeed, the ear
evangelical movements had made ready polemical use of the n
tion by highlighting the way in which opponents of the Gos

9 See Regine Griibe-Verhoeven, Zauberei und Frommigkeit, Volksleben 13 (Tubinge

I966), 1-57, on incombustibility, 48; also Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Moveme
323-353, on incombustible bibles, 330-33 . Heinze-Dieter Kittsteiner, "Das Gewissen i
Gewitter," Jahrbuch fjr Volkskunde (1987), 7-26, discusses the "Hagelpredigt" as a form
Protestant protective magic.
Io Report of the Polish diplomat Johannes Dantiscus, traveling to Wittenberg in Aug
1523, in Inge B. Muller-Blessing, "Johannes Dantiscus von Hofen. Ein Diplomat u
Bischof zwischen Humanismus und Reformation," Zeitschriftf ur die Geschichte und Al
tumskunde Ermlands, XXXI/XXXII (1967/68), 149-150.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
486 ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

sometimes appeared to be struck down by divine intervention,

doubtless a reply to Catholic readiness to claim divine interventio
in support of their own cause. It was applied with less polemica
intent in the argument that those who used prohibited magical
conjurations would become poor in consequence of divine pun-
ishment. However, Protestants significantly broadened the notion
by insisting that the material consequences of moral failures wer
not simply confined to deviants and marginal groups, but were
applicable to the failings of the population at large. It was summe
up as early as 1530 by Johann Oldendorp, the Rostock city syndi
who argued that if God's Word were ignored, it would lead to
hunger, confusion, and ruin, but if it were observed, all street
and houses would be full of grain and money. This moral nexus
became a constituent part of Protestant disciplinary ordinances
aimed at moral improvement: failure to observe God's (and the
prince's) laws would lead to dearth, hunger, crop failure, war,
plague, pestilence, and other punishments which God would visit
on the earth and its people.11
The Protestant elaboration of the moralized universe had the
effect of increasing anxiety among those it affected. Deprived of
the protective means inherent in the Catholic sacramental system,
Protestants found themselves prey to anxiety that was hardly
allayed by invoking the Protestant doctrine of providence. Indeed,
anxiety may even have been increased by awareness of the om-
nipresence of a sacred order in and among the secular. I do not
mean just the activity of God, his Word and his Spirit, or of the
Devil. Protestant belief allowed for a whole range of supernatural
beings to be active in the world, especially angels, demons, and
various kinds of spirits, such as those of the revenant dead. Their
activity was accepted as possible not so much because it was
experienced but because such beings were mentioned in the Bible,

II A typical Catholic tale of divine retribution concerned a pregnant weaver's wife in

Magdeburg who demanded to be given communion under both kinds in 1524 and sub-
sequently suffered a stillbirth. See "Die Historia des M6llenvogtes Sebastian Langhans,
1524-25," Chroniken der duetschen Stadten (Leipzig, 1899), XXXVII, I57. See Rudolf
Gwerb, Bericht von dem aberglaubigen und verbottenen Leuth-und Vych besegnen (Zurich, 1646),
199-207; for the claims "Segner sind arm," 203, and "Segner erhalten schmale Vieh," 207.
Johann Oldendorp, Von Rathschlagen. Wie man gute Policey und Ordnung in Stadten und
Landen erhalten moge (Rostock 1597, facsimile ed., Glashiitten im Taunus, I97I), the High
German translation of the Low German original edition of 1530, 55-56. See, e.g., Duke
Ulrich of Wiirttemberg's mandate of I547, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart A38, Bi. 12.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC | 487

although there was a tendency to trace many such phenomena

back to the "tricks of the Devil." Indeed, it seemed to many
observers as though the Devil and demonic spirits had becom
wilder and more incalculable, attested by the remarkable efflores
cence of Protestant demonology, which by the second half of th
sixteenth century attained the level of an obsession.l2 However
Protestants found themselves deprived of ritual and sacramental
ways of dealing with the activities of such beings, and official
Protestantism was never quite sure what to make of ghosts, pol-
tergeists, visions, prophecies, miracles, and, above all, demonic
possession. The traffic between the supernatural and the natural
worlds had perhaps become one-way, but the boundaries between
sacred and secular remained highly porous and the seepage of th
one into the other was highly unpredictable, incalculable, an
even dangerous. It was for this reason that Protestants wer
tempted to turn to Catholic means of protection and also to form
of popular magic.
Protestantism thus experienced problems along two of the
axes of ambiguity we have identified for pre-Reformation belief
inner-worldly efficacy of sacred action, and the activities of the
diabolical/demonic. The same was also true along the third axis-
the "magical" power of prayer. As we might expect, practitioner
of magic continued to ply their trade despite the implementation
of religious reformation in any given territory. Indeed, we migh
well surmise that they received a double boost: the competition
provided by the "magic of the medieval church" was in great par
removed, while the anxiety about how to deal with the exigencie
of daily life was often intensified rather than lessened. In the
absence of a Protestant rite of exorcism, practitioners of magi
who were able to deal with demonic possession or with polterge-
ists found themselves virtually in a position to monopolize the
market.13 Indeed, they were able not only to survive under

12 See the discussion of the Teufelsbiicher by Rainer Alsheimer, "Katalog protestantischer

Teufelserzahlungen," in Wolfgang Bruckner (ed.), Volkserzdhlung und Reformation. Ei
Handbuch zur Tradierung und Funktion von Erzdhlstoffen und Erzdhlliteratur im Protestantismu
(Berlin, 1974), 415-519; also H. C. Erik Midelfort, "The Devil and the German People
Reflections on the Popularity of Demon Possession in Sixteenth-Century Germany," i
Steven Ozment (ed.), Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation (Kirksville,
Mo., 1989), 99-119.
13 It was probably coincidental and at best opportunistic that in 1529, at the point where
the Elector of Saxony was actively reforming Catholic cult and doctrine in his territories,

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
488 | ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

Protestant dispensation but even to prosper, and they defied al

attempts to eradicate them from the sixteenth to the eighteent
century and beyond. Practitioners of magic covered a wide rang
in early modern Germany, from purveyors of spells and charms
(Segner, Segenssprecher), soothsayers and diviners (Wahrsager, Wahr
sagerinnen), cunning men and women (weise Manner, weise Frauen),
shepherds and herdsmen, specialists such as swine and cattle doc
tors (Schwein und Viehartzet), and those who practiced occasiona
sorcery based on acquired or inherited knowledge. Such persons,
men and women, were approached for a variety of reasons: to
perform counter-magic against bewitchment, to divine lost or
stolen objects, to discover the cause of human and animal illness
to heal, to protect, and to cast spells of various kinds, whether
against human or demonic ill will, or simply to guard agains
disaster.
In the I54os it was clear to Protestant commentators that
popular magic of this kind was a different phenomenon from
Catholic sacramental magic and posed a quite different problem.
Johann Spreter, a Wiirttemberg pastor, in 1543 distinguished be-
tween two kinds of magic, that "on the right side" and that "on
the left side." The first was that practiced by the papist church in
the traditional form of the sacramentals; the second involved the
use of "good or evil words" together with characters or objects
through which the users believed "creatures might be protected
or changed." The distinction was adopted in 1566 by Conrad
Platz, a preacher in Biberach, in attacking the activities of a local
exorcist (Teufelsbanner), although it was clear by then that "magic
on the left side" was causing far more trouble than that "on the
right side." By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, popular
magic was being discussed wholly within the framework of Prot-
estant belief, but as false Protestant belief.14

a woman exorcist approached him with the request that she be allowed to practice her art
professionally, i.e. as a recognized trade, Carl A. H. Burckhardt, Geschichte der sachsischen
Kirchen-und Schulvisitationen 1524-49 (Leipzig, I879), 87.
14 Johann Spreter, Ein kurtzer Bericht, was von den abgitterischen Sagen [und] Beschweren
zuhalten . . . (Basel, 1543), Aiii; Conrad Wolfgang Platz, Kurtzer, nottwendiger und Woll-
gegrundter bericht, auch Christentliche vermanung, von der Grewlichen, in aller Welt gebreuchlichen
Zauberey, Sind dem zauberischen Beschowren und Segenssprechen, Predigtweys gethon (n.p.,
1566). See the more detailed discussion in Scribner, "Magic and the Formation of Protestant
Popular Culture in Germany," forthcoming.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC | 489

Recourse to blessings, spells and charms caused

difficulty for the attempts of official Protestantism, us
person of concerned pastors such as Spreter or Platz,
forms of popular magic. If we recount the arguments
Platz in 1566, we can appreciate the nature of the pr
called attention to the important role that words pla
jurations, spells and charms. These words were of th
good, bad, and neutral. The "bad" involved invoking
the "neutral" consisted of saying words, harmless
themselves, in conjunction with certain "superstitious
which turned them to misuse. Platz gave as examples
of words at certain times when it was hoped the
especially efficacious such as reciting the names of the T
making the sign of the cross in certain ritual context
rative spells said over wounds to effect healing.
words were words found in Scripture but which wer
for magical spells. Platz specifically mentioned the nam
the Trinity, and Christ's five wounds, the inscription
the cross of Christ, the first chapter of John, the Pa
and the Ave Maria. These were used magically as
written words, sometimes in conjunction with herbs
times as amulets. Whatever their form, Platz asserte
involve "magic" because the users put their trust in t
words and ignore God as our only helper. As such the
the first and second commandments.15
It is worthy of note that Platz cited formulas and practices
that were common in Catholic magical usage, and many of the
forms of charms or spells used by Protestants certainly were
adaptations of older Catholic versions. However, they seem to
have been "reformed" for evangelical use by removing references
to Mary and the saints, and retaining the names of God, Christ,
or the Trinity; or else they used prayers found in Scripture such
as the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. Indeed, the Pater Noster,
along with the sign of the cross and its invocation of the Trinity,
were held by Catholic and Protestant alike to be formulas of great
magical potency which found continual usage throughout the
medieval and early modern period.16 Platz listed, in order to refute
I5 Platz, Kurtzer, nottwendiger .. bericht, B6r-C4r.
I6 On the Pater Noster, Ludwig Strackerjan, Aberglauben und Sagen aus dem Herzogtum

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
490 | ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

them, various arguments advanced by those who used such spells

and charms, but in so doing revealed how far such "scripturally-
based" spells and charms had come to constitute what was, in
effect, a Protestant form of magic.
These are nothing but good words, their defenders claimed,
which speak only of God, and what is done in God's name must
surely be proper and good; one should use the means provide
by God, who has blessed all things on earth; one prays and calls
upon God with such words, so why should one not use them fo
blessings and incantations? It cannot be wrong to invoke the nam
of the Trinity when this is done by the words of the sacraments
for example, baptizing in the name of the Trinity or using the
words of consecration in the communion. Moreover, the words
spoken from the pulpit during a sermon have their efficacy and
such words should also be efficacious in blessings; God expelled
the Devil and worked miracles through the spoken word, an
this same practice was allowed to the Apostles.
All of these arguments conformed to a typically evangelical
understanding of the importance of God's Word as the mos
potent form of sacrality, and were not easy to refute, although
Platz did his best to dispose of them. He insisted that such things
must be founded in the Word of God and should be commanded
by God: thus, the words used in the sacraments are done only a
God's command. The preacher speaking God's Word does so a
his instrument and the efficacy of the Word in this case is not that
of the spoken word but of the Word working in the heart, nor
it worked by the preacher of his own power but as a tool of God
Spells and charms even using such good words are not mean
provided by God; there is no command to do so in the Bible an
magic is expressly prohibited there in several places. Moreover
the words used in such spells are mere human words of the
spellcaster and these do not constitute a form of blessing, but
rather an impious incantation.17
Platz may have had the better theological argument, but
continued recourse not only to spells and charms but also to muc
the same "evangelical" arguments over many subsequent gener-

Oldenburg (Oldenburg, I909), I, 2, 77, I20, 290; Carl Seyfarth, Aberglauben und Zauber
in der Volksmedizin Sachsens (Leipzig, 1913), 138.
17 Platz, Kurtzer, nottwendiger . .. bericht, C6V-G7v.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC 491

ations shows that his refutations were held to be unc

During the seventeenth century similar and somewh
fined justifications of popular magic as wholly consis
Protestant belief were still to be found, one of which
creative adaptation of the Protestant doctrine of adiaphor
may have counted more was the argument that experi
that the spells actually worked. The retort of Plat
pastors confronted with this claim was that this appa
was a deception and was only possible through the w
Devil. Thus, for Protestantism there was also a pe
ambiguity between religion and magic along the thir
when faced with the most intractable challenge thrown
ambiguity, that of the apparent efficacy of "magical p
resorted to the same strategy of demonization used i
Reformation church.
If we were to lay a Protestant template on that formed by
our three axes of Catholic belief, we would find one nestling
inside the other like a pair of angle brackets. The relationship of
Protestant to Catholic was a matter of degree, since the same axes
were involved for both confessions in the three-dimensional re-
lationship between religion and magic. Indeed, if individuals were
positioned in the religio-magical space thus formed, many Prot-
estants would be found at points not too far removed from Cath-
olics. Protestantism was as caught up as Catholicism in the same
dilemmas about the instrumental application of sacred power to
secular life because it was positioned in the same force-field of
sacrality. For this reason, Protestants experienced the same diffi-
culties as Catholics when accusations of maleficent magic (and
sometimes even of "white" magic) were laid in ways that turned
them into accusations of witchcraft. The possibility of consorting
with, and becoming implicated in, demonic activity was as real
for Protestants as for Catholics. Thus, the puzzle of how a massive
witchcraze could apprently arise in a period said to usher in the
dawn of "modern rationality," a puzzle which Trevor-Roper saw
as an "intellectual challenge" and which caused Tambiah to raise

I8 Gwerb, Bericht von dem aberglaubigen . . . besegnen, 265-266, had to repudiate the
argument that the use of magical blessings was not expressly forbidden in the Bible, and
that this was therefore permissible. At the end of the seventeenth century, Georg Christoph
Zimmermann, a Franconian pastor, was also confronted with similar justifications, see the
discussion in Scribner, "Magic and the Formation of Protestant Popular Culture."

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
492 ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

a quizzical eyebrow, rests on a false dilemma.19 Th

inconsistency between Protestant thought-modes and
that accepted diabolical efficacy in the world.
This is not to say that we could not find in Prot
elements pointing in the direction mapped by those w
Reformation as the first stage in the "disenchantm
world," as the first step on the road to modernity. T
of the typicality of such elements remains a major po
the thesis could be criticized, although this is too la
to pursue here. The explanation for the apparent pla
the thesis resides less in the nature of the Reformation of the
sixteenth century and more in its historiography. Historical un-
derstanding of exactly what "the Reformation" had been about
and what it produced developed through many stages and phases
although the view of the subsequent two centuries emphasized it
potently sacred character: the Reformation was part of a great
divine intervention in the world, part of God's ultimate plan fo
creation and humanity. It was the Enlightenment that first inter
preted the Reformation as part of a long-term process of ration
alization and secularization, an interpretation further reworked by
the historiography of the nineteenth century until it constructe
our modern view of the Reformation.20
The paradigm of a secularizing and rationalizing Reformation
has influenced many overarching interpretations of the ways in
which the religion of Protestants contributed to long-term his-
torical development, foremost among them that of Max Weber,
who injected the notion of the "disenchantment of the world"
into historical discussion. We may take Weber as a prime example
of the ways in which nineteenth-century concerns were projected
onto historical understanding of religion in the Reformation. We-
ber wrote from a background of nineteenth-century liberalism,
claiming that he was himself "religiously unmusical." Many of
the concepts he applied to the Reformation were arbitrary, if
creative, adaptations of terms used in other, rather different con-
texts. The concept of "charisma" was rationalized from the strictly
theological usage of the church historian Rudolf Sohm, that of
the "disenchantment of the world" from Schiller's poetic usage.

19 Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, 47.

20 Dickens and Tonkin, Reformation in Historical Thought, 7-89, II9-49; E. W. Zeeden,
Martin Luther und die Reformation im Urteil des deutschen Luthertums (Freiburg im Breisgau,
I950, I952), 2 v.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REFORMATION AND MAGIC 493

The notion of the "Protestant ethic" was an insight W

at less from historical research and more from observations of
nineteenth-century Protestant behavior, which he then project
backwards in time in a classic example of the "regressive metho
The further assumption that an adequate understanding of "Pro
estantism" was achieved by focusing primarily on the theolog
of the main reformers, was a crucial next step, so that he did n
have to confront the problem of the actual historicity of Prot
tantism, or the untidiness of the phenomenon as it was put in
practice. It was sufficient to find examples to illustrate his ide
typical construction, drawn (as has often been remarked) rath
indiscriminately from several way stations along the road fro
Luther to Weber's own day.21
Whatever we may think of the sociological status of Weber
insights about the Reformation-and I must concede that I hav
always found them heuristically rewarding-I do not think th
the thesis about the "disenchantment of the world" will any longer
pass muster as a historically accurate description. It has certain
inspired many contemporary treatments of how the Reformati
relates to the process of "modernization," not least the curren
interest among historians of the sixteenth century in social pr
cesses such as "confessionalization," social discipline and the "civ
ilizing process" (alongside Norbert Elias and Michel Foucaul
both of whom worked with the classic nineteenth-century par
digm of the Reformation). None of these interpretations, how
ever, deal with, or show any understanding of, the nature
popular Protestantism.
I do not think it possible at this stage to offer an alternativ
vision of how the "decline of magic" and associated developmen
2I H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology (Londo
1974), 25, 51-52. This projection is apparent from the opening pages of The Protest
Ethic, 35-46, where Weber ponders on contemporary religious affiliation and social strat
ification, the more so when we realize that this question had been "very much in the air
around 900o, along with theorizing on the role of Protestantism in the industrial rev
tion, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, The Age of Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociol
of Max Weber (New York, 1974), Ioo. Weber then embarked, according to Mommsen
I02, on his research on the sociology of world religions in order to corroborate ex negat
his findings on the "Protestant ethic." For the "regressive method," Peter Burke, Popula
Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978), 77-87. Curiously, the very rich footnot
to the final version of The Protestant Ethic often reflect a more highly developed awaren
of historical complexity than the main text. One is reminded by them how far the "fin
work was the product of almost two decades of thought on the problem in which so
of Weber's later insights, for example those on the importance of Protestant sects, w
more rewarding than his initial thoughts on the subject.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
494 | ROBERT W. SCRIBNER

came about (in many ways, they involve processes still in train).
Thomas offered a number of useful conjectures over two decades
ago, but his suggestions have yet to be properly explored in th
English context, much less in that of Germany. Moreover, the
discussion has yet to take cognizance of the possibility that proc
esses of secularization and desacralization may not be as closely
tied to the development of Protestantism as has been assumed. It
is interesting that Acquaviva, writing from a Catholic tradition,
is able to provide a nuanced and perceptive analysis of such reli
gious and social phenomena without, at any point, mentioning
Protestantism or the Reformation.22
To explore the role of Protestantism in such processes, it is
first necessary to construct a new understanding of the Refor-
mation of the sixteenth century which takes account of those
dissonant elements which falsify the paradigm that has been hith-
erto accepted, and then to write a new history of Protestantism
which includes the religious experience and practice of ordinary
believers, with all of their contradictions and misunderstandings.
From the progress made so far on this task, I suspect that we
would discover that Protestantism was a much a part of the
problem as the self-evident solution to it; not a prime mover, but
as subject as any other confession to secularization and desacrali-
zation, whatever set these processes in motion and whatever
forms, stages, and modes of development they passed through.23
Some aspects of Protestantism doubtless encouraged some Prot-
estants to recognize a world purged of magic, whereas other
militated against it. It may also turn out that the "disenchantment
of the world" played a marginal role in both the developing
history of Protestantism and in advance toward "the modern
world." This, however, is a story which still awaits its careful
analyst.
22 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 767-800; Sabino S. Acquaviva (trans.
Patricia Lipscombe), The Decline of the Sacred in Industrial Society (1966; rev. ed., Oxford,
I979).
23 Exemplary for the kind of sensitive and nuanced study needed is C. Scott Dixon,
"The Reformation in the Parishes: Attempts to Implement the Reformation in Branden-
burg-Ansbach I528-I603," Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Cambridge, 1992). It is illuminating
that Protestantism and the Reformation feature only marginally in the reflections offered
on such processes by Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New
York, I984). Tilly presents a cogent argument for purging historical discourse of the
"pernicious postulates" of the nineteenth century before we can begin to understand the
nature of long-term historical change.

This content downloaded from 87.77.156.236 on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:15:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms