Thomas has revealed modes of thought and ways of life deeply strange to us, and he illustrates them with precise evidence. Our readers have come to expect excellence from our products, and they can count on us to maintain a commitment to producing rigorous and innovative information products in whatever forms the future of publishing may bring.Keith Thomas is a very old school academic, but this is a carefully observed account of the historical clash between religion and magic – not as a way of entertaining the validity of either belief system, but as a lens through which to read and comment on cultural developments contained therein as well as elsewhere.

Through our commitment to new products-whether digital journals or entirely new forms of communication-we have continued to look for the most efficient and effective means to serve our readership. Since the late 1960s, we have experimented with generation after generation of electronic publishing tools. The Press's enthusiasm for innovation is reflected in our continuing exploration of this frontier. We were among the first university presses to offer titles electronically and we continue to adopt technologies that allow us to better support the scholarly mission and disseminate our content widely. The growing acceptance of the new mechanical philosophy was less a cause than a consequence of the decline of witch-craft.Īmong the largest university presses in the world, The MIT Press publishes over 200 new books each year along with 30 journals in the arts and humanities, economics, international affairs, history, political science, science and technology along with other disciplines.

The 'crisis of confidence' manifested not only the victory of a long-standing tradition of skepticism and contemporary experience with the cruelty and injustices of the trials but also changes in popular behaviors and practices that the trials brought about.

The trials ended because the elite's skepticism about the magnitude of the threat posed by witchcraft gave way to disbelief in the power of magic altogether. The rise was driven by the dissemination of the late-medieval demonology and the 'scissors effect' of rising population and constricting resources the peak reflected the governing elite's 'crisis of confidence' in the prosecutions and the demonology.

Witchcraft prosecutions in Europe rose dramatically during the late sixteenth century, peaked in the middle third of the seventeenth century, and declined rapidly thereafter, gradually ceasing altogether by the end of the eighteenth century.

The decline of magic