He then discusses what he describes as the competing storehouse of supernatural power: the set of beliefs and practices that he collectively calls “magic.
In his section on religion, Thomas argues that the early medieval church was the “repository for supernatural power” for the faithful, providing common people with a kind of magic that offered control over ordinary life through the ritualistic repetition of certain prayers and the potency of consecrated holy objects. Like Thomas, Cameron sees the woes of life in early modern England as strong elements in, if not entirely shaping, people’s belief in the supernatural. Thomas’s method is similar to that in Euan Cameron’s more recent Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750, which interprets religious life in the era partly as a function of the types of harm that “people could expect to suffer.” For Cameron, religion and magic responded to, and offered some control of, the dismal circumstances of late medieval and early modern life. In England’s early modern era, magic, religion, and science all had their days. He cites the plague and fire as the primary threatening conditions, but also gives due attention to high child mortality rates and wealth disparity, among other factors. Thomas begins with what he calls “the environment,” a list of the potential needs of early modern Europeans-especially things the y needed protection against. If a practice fills a need, it will likely endure, even against prevailing reactionary or reformist impulses. That is, in explaining a belief’s traction, he stresses its usefulness to believers.
Generally, Thomas offers a functionalist interpretation of Christianity. This wide-ranging study examines both the tensions and the congruences between the established church’s teachings and popular belief. Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England is a standard in early modern European history.
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