Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot Scots Discovery of Witchcraft. This is a Facsimile PDF. It has 450 pages and was published in 1584. Description. The Discoverie of Witchcraft was intended as an exposé of medieval witchcraft. It contains a small section intended to show how the public was fooled by charlatans, which is considered the first published material on magic. Scot believed that the prosecution of those accused of witchcraft was irrational and un-Christian, and he held the Roman Church responsible. All obtainable copies of this book were burned on the accession of James I in 1603. Note: Big download, Middle English used, quite hard to read . Free ebook downloads (below donate buttons) Last week, Global Grey readers downloaded 65,000 ebooks - 9 people gave donations. I love creating these books and giving them for free, but I need some help to continue running the site. If you can, please make a small donation - any amount is appreciated. You can also support the site by buying one of the specially curated collections. The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot. Our systems have detected unusual traffic activity from your network. Please complete this reCAPTCHA to demonstrate that it's you making the requests and not a robot. If you are having trouble seeing or completing this challenge, this page may help. If you continue to experience issues, you can contact JSTOR support. Block Reference: #d00b3b90-c410-11eb-bc57-f3ef7df2b5d5 VID: #(null) IP: 188.246.226.140 Date and time: Thu, 03 Jun 2021 02:10:05 GMT. Reginald Scot - The Discoverie of Witchcraft (39.5 MB) Remarkable 16th-century classic attempted to disprove existence of witches. Rich full account of charges against witches, witch trials, practice of the black arts. Excerpts from Inquisition, interviews with convicted witches, discussions of alchemy, astrology, much more. Indispensable primary source on witchcraft. Introduction by Montague Summers. 17 illustrations. Reginald Scot ( or Scott ) (c.1538 - 9 October 1599) was an English country gentleman and Member of Parliament, now remembered as the author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which was published in 1584. It was written against the belief in witches, to show that witchcraft did not exist. Part of its content exposes how ( apparently miraculous ) feats of magic were done, and the book is often deemed the first textbook on conjuring. Reginald Scot was son of Richard Scot, second son of Sir John Scott ( died 1533 ) of Scots Hall in Smeeth, Kent. His mother was Mary, daughter of George Whetenall, sheriff of Kent in 1527. The father died before 1544, and his widow remarried Fulk Onslow, clerk of the parliament; dying on 8 October 1582, she was buried in the church of Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Reginald or Reynold ( as he signed his name in accordance with contemporary practice ) was born about 1538. When about seventeen, Scot entered Hart Hall, Oxford, but left the university without a degree. His writings show some knowledge of law, but he is not known to have joined any inn of court. Marrying in 1568, he seems to have spent the rest of his life in his native county. His time was mainly passed as an active country gentleman, managing property which he inherited from his kinsfolk about Smeeth and Brabourne, or directing the business affairs of his first cousin, Sir Thomas Scot, who proved a generous patron, and in whose house of Scots Hall he often stayed. He was collector of subsidies for the lathe ( county subdivision ) of Shepway in 1586 and 1587, and he was perhaps the Reginald Scot who acted in 1588 as a captain of untrained foot-soldiers at the county muster. He was returned to the parliament of 1588-9 as member for New Romney, and he was probably a justice of the peace. He describes himself as " esquire " in the title-page of his Discoverie, and is elsewhere designated " armiger ". Regarding his religious beliefs, Scot was a member of the Family of Love. This sect's insistence that Satan's influence in the world was entirely mental, never physical, gave the impetus to Scot's unusual skepticism towards witchcraft. Scot married at Brabourne, on 11 October 1568, Jane Cobbe of Cobbes Place, in the parish of Aldington. By her he had a daughter Elizabeth, who married Sackville Turnor of Tablehurt, Sussex. Subsequently Scot married a second wife, a widow named Alice Collyar, who had a daughter Mary by her former husband. Scot made his own will ( drawing it with his own hand ) on 15 September 1599. He died at Smeeth on 9 October following, and was probably buried in the church there. His small properties about Brabourne, Aldington, and Romney Marsh he left to his widow. The last words of his will run: "Great is the trouble my poor wife hath had with me, and small is the comfort she hath received at my hands, whom if I had not matched withal I had not died worth one groat." Reginald Scot's works about hops cultivation: In 1574 he published his Perfect Platform of a Hop-garden, and necessary instructions for the making and maintenance thereof, with Notes and Rules for Reformation of all Abuses. The work, which is dedicated to Serjeant William Lovelace of Bethersden, is the first practical treatise on hop culture in England; the processes are illustrated by woodcuts. Scot, according to a statement of the printer, was out of London while the work was going through the press. A second edition appeared in 1576, and a third in 1578. Reginald Scot's works witchcraft: His work on witchcraft was The Discouerie of Witchcraft, wherein the Lewde dealing of Witches and Witchmongers is notablie detected, in sixteen books . whereunto is added a Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Devils, 1584. Scot enumerates 212 authors whose works in Latin he had consulted, and twenty-three authors who wrote in English. He studied the superstitions respecting witchcraft in courts of law in country districts, where the prosecution of witches was constant, and in village life, where the belief in witchcraft flourished. He set himself to prove that the belief in witchcraft and magic was rejected alike by reason and religion, and that spiritualistic manifestations were either wilful impostures or illusions due to mental disturbance in the observers. Credits: This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: " Scott, Reginald ". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885-1900. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. They sacrifice their owne children to the divell before baptisme, holding them up in the aire unto him, and then thrust a needle into their braines … They use incestuous adulterie with spirits … They eate the flesh and drinke the bloud of men and children openlie … They kill mens cattell … They bewitch mens corne … They ride and flie in the aire, bring stormes, make tempests … They use venerie with a divell called Incubus and have children by them, which become the best witches … In 1584, when there were few who would even defend witches against these charges, Reginald Scot went one step further. He actually set out to prove that witches did not and could not exist! King James later found Scot's opinion so heretical that he ordered all copies of his book to be burned. But so rich and full of data on the charges against witches, on witch trials and on the actual practice of the black arts was Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft that it remained a much-used source throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is still one of the few primary sources for the study of witchcraft today. At the heart of Scot's book are stories and charges pulled from the writers of the Inquisition about the supposed nature of witches. Scot believed that the utter absurdity of the facts would be enough to stop belief in witchcraft forever. But he also goes on to give opinions of medical authorities, interviews with those convicted of witchcraft, and details about the two-faced practices of those in charge of the inquisitions to show even further why the charges of witchcraft were simply not true. In later chapters Scot details the other side of the question through a study of the black arts that are not purely imaginary. He discusses poisoners, jugglers, conjurers, charmers, soothsayers, figure-casters, dreamers, alchemists, and astrologers and, in turn, sets down the actual practices of each group and shows how the acts depend not upon the devil but upon either trickery or skill. In the process, many of the magician's secrets and much other folk and professional lore of the time is made available to the reader of today. Shortly after the Spanish Inquisition, directly in the wake of Sprenger and Kramer's Malleus Maleficarum, during the great upsurge of witch trials in Britain, Scot was a direct witness to the witchmonger in one of witch-hunting's bloodiest eras. Whatever your interest in witchcraft — either historical, psychological, or sympathetic — Scot, in his disproof, tells you much more about the subject than the many, many contemporary writers on the other side of the question. The Discoverie Of Witchcraft By Reginald Scot Analysis. What does discovery of witchcraft reveal regarding 16th century witchcraft Analysis of Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of witchcraft. This essay shall analyse Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) in its historical context and explore sixteenth century attitudes towards witchcraft. Due to Scot’s radical disbelief regarding the nonexistence of witches during a period with copious church interference propagating all supernatural claims, one had a unique opportunity to explore the reasoning behind the study of witch confessions and the community’s role in the empowerment of witchcraft.