When Magic Was Real

Stanmore’s “interest is ‘service magic’ across the 14th to 17th centuries: the sort of functional help to solve everyday problems that a folk practitioner might provide to their neighbours for a fee”

“instructions came from a ‘cunning man’ or ‘cunning woman’. The concerns of their clients were routinely domestic, familial and financial”

“Stanmore’s sympathies are with ordinary people and ordinary problems. This makes her reluctant to judge either their motives for unleashing magic on their neighbours or the efficacy of their methods”

“One frustrating consequence of Stanmore’s refusal to dismiss magic’s efficacy is that she often avoids opportunities to assess rationally why it might have been perceived to have ‘worked’”

“there’s little interrogation of how magic related to theology, or how different branches of knowledge might be distinguished; a topic fruitfully covered in Anthony Grafton’s recent book Magus”

“Stanmore’s great strength is as a social historian, and her research has won plaudits among her fellow academic historians for combing through church and legal records, and digging up more incidents of people caught practising magic than had ever been found before”