Pairings: Tom Hamilton

Tom Hamilton

Fellow in History

‘You will need reams of paper to write down everything that I am going to reveal to you!’ This is what the accused magician Jean Michel said to the judge and scribe during a gripping trial that resulted in him being sentenced to death at Moulins in central France on 9 September 1623, for ‘practicing the magical arts and the invocation and adoration of demons, and renouncing God and his Church’.

My research asks how people in France’s ancien régime determined what was ‘superstitious’ and how they should deal with it, especially if it should be prosecuted in a criminal court. These questions interest me because often criminal archives provide the only means to uncover the lives and mentalities of people who might not have been able to read or sign their names. Indeed, Michel’s case turns on whether he could read and annotate the magic books found in his possession. He denied this, of course!

The manuscript of Michel’s interrogation arrived at the Wren Library in 2015, as part of the Crewe bequest. When Trinity’s Librarian Nicolas Bell mentioned it to me over dinner one evening, I couldn’t wait to examine it and – after weeks of transcribing – the manuscript did not disappoint. This is just one example of how humanities research in Trinity is enriched by conversations around College and the astonishing scope of the Library’s holdings. Nicolas’ tip opened up to me a whole new collection in the Wren, of which Michel’s case is just a small part.