Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age is a study of the beliefs regarding witchcraft and magic in Early Modern Hungary written by the Hungarian historian Éva Pócs. The study was first published in Hungarian in 1997 as Élők és holtak, látók és boszorkányok by Akadémiai Kiadó. In 1999, it was later translated into English by Szilvia Rédey and Michael Webb and published by the Central European University Press.
Building on the work of earlier historians such as Carlo Ginzburg and Gábor Klaniczay, both of whom argued that Early Modern beliefs about magic and witchcraft were influenced by a substratum of shamanistic beliefs found in pockets across Europe, in Between the Living and the Dead, Pócs focuses in on Hungary, using the recorded witch trial texts as evidence to back up this theory.
The reviews published in specialist academic journals were mixed, with many applauding the fact that information on Hungarian witchcraft was being brought to a wider English-speaking audience. Conversely, some reviewers claimed that Pócs' argument was largely unconvincing and lacked sufficient evidence to support it, with criticisms also being aimed at Pócs' writing style and the quality of the English translation.
Background
Pócs' research
In gathering the data for her book, Pócs noted that she made use of "several thousand pages of records", all of which pertained to the Hungarian witch trials of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. This included published documents relating to "approximately two thousand witch trials", and several hundred further documents which were unveiled in the course of Pócs' research by her team, who included fellow academics Gabór Klaniczay, Katalin Benedek, Ildikó Kristóf and Péter G. Tóth.
Synopsis
Arguments
Reception
Academic reviews
In his review for The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Andrew Sanders of the University of Ulster noted that Pócs' "examination and analysis are folkloric rather than anthropological", and that as a result, "the great majority [of case studies in the book] are examined in insufficient detail and contain inadequate information to answer the kinds of questions likely to be posed by anthropologists." Furthermore, Sanders argued that "the main problem of the book could be poor translation from the original Hungarian. At times the discussion is difficult to follow or to understand, because the account is ambiguous or contradictory and the meaning is unclear". Believing that Pócs went into "bewildering detail" over her categorisation of the different kinds of Hungarian magical practitioner, Sanders finally remarked that the book could have been improved with a "more careful translation and/or presentation" and the inclusion of an index.
Valerie Kivelson of the University of Michigan called Between the Living and the Dead an "intriguing book" in her review that was published in the Slavic Review journal. Noting that Pócs had set herself an "ambitious, broadly defined project", Kivelson felt that the work had both "strengths and weaknesses". Believing that the sources which she used were "rich and fascinating", containing "vivid testimony and lurid imagination", Kivelson felt that the work provided convincing evidence to support Carlo Ginzburg's theories regarding shamanistic survivals. Nonetheless, Kivelson did have some criticisms, for instance noting that "A more systematic study of Hungarian witchcraft trials and the villages and towns that produced them, even a brief summary of Gabor Klaniczay's work on the subject, would have added force to the argument", whilst she felt that the amount of space given over to categorizing the different types of magical practitioners was "dizzying".