Conclusion: A Theological Moment

Cotta's “epistemological confusion” noted by Marion Gibson, might be alternatively explained as a “theological moment” especially when one examines his books separately and diachronically.

His inconsistency between the two books is at the same time structural and contextual. On the one hand, the adoption of the codes of the demonological debate forced him to adapt his opinions. By asserting his claim to expertise in the theological field, Cotta appropriated the ground of those he had rivalled in his previous book, which in turn affected the deeper logic of the argumentation and therefore his vision of witchcraft. On the other hand, the immediate context of witch trials in England, reaching a peak between 1612 and 1619 before slowing down until the outburst of the Civil War, might also account for a parenthesis in Cotta's beliefs, probably encouraged by the pressure from the puritan circles of his friends and patients, convincingly analysed by Peter Elmer^[1160] And, in fact, this shift should be apprehended in terms of degree or proportion rather than antagonism. Such a “moment” is reminiscent of the contrasted attitude of King James, whose beliefs in witchcraft seem to have been activated and exacerbated during a rather short period of the 1590s, spanning between two massive witch-hunts in Scotland, whereas he displayed much more sceptical views before and especially after this period. Hesitations like James's or Cotta's were quite natural in a period which only started to experiment with new scientific methods, and had not yet shed the scriptural frame of all knowledge, “in the Labyrinth of amazing wonderments, and reasonlesse traditions and experiments.”^[1161]

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Source: Bhayro Siam, Rider Catherine (eds.). Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period. Leiden, Boston: Brill,2017. — xiv, 434 p.. 2017

Conclusion: A Theological Moment

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