Witchcraft and the Sense-of-the-Impossible in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections Based on the Literature of Superstition (ca. 1500–1800)

Abstract

For a long time, Lucien Febvre was obsessed by an arduous problem in cultural history: how could some brilliant intellectuals of the Renaissance have believed in witches? Influenced by the parallel that Lucien Levy-Bruhl drew between child and primitive mentalities,Lucien Levy-Bruhl, La mentalidad primitiva (Madrid: Akal, 1982). The original French edition was published in 1922. the French historian proposed an answer: in early modern times many beliefs could be upheld because a real Sense-of-the-Impossible did not exist. Febvre declared: “men in 1541 never said impossible.”Lucien Febvre, El problema de la incredulidad en el siglo XVI: La religion de Rabelais (Mexico: Uthea, 1959) 382. Six years later he returned to the same issue, explicitly stating the dilemma in the title of an almost forgotten paper, “Sorcellerie, sottise ou revolution mentale?” How could Jean Bodin reconcile the publication of his Six Books of the Commonwealth with the ridiculous witchcraft stories included in his Demonomanie des Sorciers? In Febvre's view, Bodin could believe in the sabbat because until the middle of the seventeenth century there was no real Sense-of-the-Impossible in Western culture.Lucien Febvre, “Sorcellerie, sottise ou revolution mentale?” Annales 3 (1948) 15. See also Alexandre Koyre's 1949 article, “La aportacion cientifica del Renacimiento,” reprinted in Estudios de historia del pensamiento cientifico (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1988) 43.