Jan Machielsen

This is my contribution on "devil finders" for the forthcoming Routledge History of the Devil, edited by David Winter, Richard Raiswell, and Mikki Brock. The notes need a fair bit of work still, but I thought I'd open it for comment on Academia.edu. Would be curious to hear what people make of the overarching argument.

This is a draft of a chapter I have been commissioned to write for the Cambridge History of the Papacy on the Myth of Pope Joan. The final chapter is due at the end of the summer. The version uploaded here still has some rough edges, and the notes are a mess. (Important works of secondary literature still need adding.)

I'd be grateful for any thoughts and comments especially from medieval and Enlightenment historians, when I'm veering away from my sixteenth- and seventeenth-century heartlands.

It is worth flagging that the chapter, at 8,000 words excluding notes, is about the right length. So suggestions for lengthy additions or expansion may be received with some weariness, but all thoughts, comments, queries are welcome.

Below is a report – by Reviewer 2, naturally – that I received on a journal submission entitled “How Scientists were Transformed into Sorcerers: Andrew Dickson White, George Lincoln Burr, and the Role of Science and Witchcraft in History”. The submission studies the role and impact of scholarly masculinity on the writings of two nineteenth-century American historians, White and Burr, who conceived of history writing as warfare by other means. Little did I know that this would touch a raw nerve and that it would result in a plea to return to nineteenth-century ‘Gründlichkeit’ (see page 3).  As the feedback is not directed at me – well, not really – but at entire fields of history writing, it seemed worth sharing with the wider community.