Abstract
What general conclusions may be drawn from this study
of continental influences upon Scottish demonoIogical
literature? We have seen that the first witchcraft
work, the treatise of James VI, drew principally on
continental Protestant authors, and mentions no Catholic
demonoIogists at all. His secular successors in Scotland,
represented principally by the legal profession, drew
nearly all their citations from European Catholic
lawyers; his theological successors took their
demonology at second-hand from their Puritan brethren
in England. All Scottish writers included some
ingredients of ancient popular superstition. The
remarkable feature of their work is that there is so
little difference between their beliefs, arguments, and
conclusions. The Scottish theologian learned from the
Cambridge puritan those same intellectual inanities that
the Scottish lawyer derived from the continental canonist.
The rise and fall of demonoIogicaI belief
reflects fairly accurately the rate of intellectual
development in Scotland. Sixteenth century Scotland
was slow to receive new ideas: reformed theoiogy came
late; intellectual demonology arrived a hundred years
old. Scepticism, on the other hand, was absorbed
relatively quickly, for France and Germany were still
burning witches after Scotland had ceased. At the
time when the new Witchcraft Act was passed, Scotland
was entering that century of intellectual dominance in
Europe which she has never approached either before
or since.
