英文摘要 |
In the history of Scottish witch trials, King James VI has featured as a victim, an inquisitor, a judge, and later an experienced demonologist. The examinations of the principals in 1590-91 and their confessions accredit a cabal against the crown and hereafter occasion his writing of the Daemonologie on the forbidden crime. Being high treason against God, state, and king, witchcraft has become a new basis of the Reformed ecclesiastical discipline on the construction of its pertaining knowledge and the exploitation of canonical penance. Throughout the royal treatise, the author appeals to an antipathy between satanic demonocracy and godly magistracy. Therewith, it espouses a monarchical hegemony that the divine sanction of the de jure government alone can vanquish the real power of its supernatural enemies and bolster high-handed controls over the soul and body of the subjects. From the vantage-point of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, this paper aims to look anew into the religio-political contexts and subtexts of the Daemonologie and to investigate how the technical apparatus of confession and penance has been appropriated to constitute, criminate, and eradicate magical arts in the realm. |