SOURCE: Hanft, Sheldon. “The True King James Version: His Bible or His Daemonologie?” Selected Papers from the West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association 6 (spring 1981): 50-7.

In the following essay, Hanft asserts that James's intense interest in spirituality and religious practice led not only to his call for a new translation of the Bible but also to his study of witchcraft, Daemonologie.

The effort to mark the emergence of modern society in Great Britain is an endeavour which has stirred substantial controversy among scholars over the last three decades. While different interpretations have suggested a variety of dates, events, and institutions prominent from the close of the War of the Roses to the entrenchment of the Reformation, all agree that modernity was firmly settling on Britain by the early seventeenth century.¹ King James, whose peaceful ascent to Elizabeth's throne in 1603, appears as the embodiment of this development because he...