ABSTRACT
In 1608 the English naturalist Edward Topsell published a study of dragons. Surveying the compendious evidence that he had amassed, he observed that it should “satisfy any reasonable man that there are winged serpents and dragons in the world”. As these dangerous creatures were seldom seen in his homeland, Topsell hoped “that we never have better arguments to satisfy us” by their appearance on English soil. A few years earlier, the Flemish theologian Martín Del Rio began a discussion of the danger of harmful magic by noting that its existence was beyond dispute; there was no need to prove that evil magic was real, only to explain its nature and the various forms in which it occurred. Henri Boguet, the judge of the lands of the Abbey of St Claude in Franche-Comté, expressed astonishment in 1602 that anyone could doubt the existence of witches. Like Topsell’s dragons, the evidence for them was so compelling that it stretched credulity to suggest they were not real. 1
