The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change

ISBN: 0865972788

Author: Trevor-Roper, Hugh

Condition: Used

The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century collects nine essays by Trevor-Roper on the themes of religion, the Reformation, and social change.In his longest essay, The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Trevor-Roper points out that in England the most active phase of witch-hunting coincided with times of Puritan pressure-the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the period of the civil wars-and some very fanciful theories have been built on this coincidence. But . . . the persecution of witches in England was trivial compared with the experience of the Continent and of Scotland. Therefore . . . [one must examine] the craze as a whole, throughout Europe, and [seek] to relate its rise, frequency, and decline to the general intellectual and social movements of the time.Because Trevor-Roper believes that the English Revolution of the seventeenth century cannot be isolated from a general crisis in Europe, he devotes the longest of his essays to the European Witch-craze. Events in England-and the intellectual currents from which they emerged and to which they gave impetus-cannot be understood apart from events and intellectual currents on the Continent.Trevor-Roper acknowledges that the belief in witches, and the persecution of people believed to be witches, may be, to some at least, a disgusting subject, below the dignity of history. However, he goes on, [I]t is also a historical fact, of European significance, and its rise precisely in the years of the Renaissance and Reformation is a problem which must be faced by anyone who is tempted to overemphasize the modernity of that period.Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Dacre (1914-2003) was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford.