Since the dawn of history

People have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called superstitious by educated elites.

For centuries religious believers used superstition as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith wrongly. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what superstition was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make rational sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons.

Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving superstitious customs as folklore and ethnic heritage.

Enchanted Europe

is the first comprehensive, integrated account of western Europe’s long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular superstition in the European mind.