Witch trials in the Early Modern period

[Denise Morgan (Helping Hand)]

Witch trials in the Early Modern period

 

The Witch trials in the Early Modern period were a period of witch hunts between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries,^[1] when across Early Modern Europe, and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom. Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshippers of the Devil, who engaged in such acts as malevolent sorcery, cannibalism and orgies at meetings known as Witches' Sabbaths. Many people were subsequently accused of being witches, and were put on trial for the crime, with varying punishments being applicable in different regions and at different times.

 

The witch trials originated in south-eastern France during the fourteenth century, before spreading through central Europe and then into other parts of the continent and also amongst European colonies in North America. While early trials fall still within the Late Medieval period, the peak of the witch hunt was between 1580 and 1630. The last known trial occurred in 1782.^[2] Amongst the most well known of these trials was the Scottish North Berwick witch trials, Swedish Torsåker witch trials and the American Salem witch trials. Among the largest and most notable was the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Würzburg witch trial (1626–1631) and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631). Over the entire duration of the phenomenon of some four centuries, an estimated total of 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed.

 

Historians and other scholars have long debated the reasons for the witch trials. The majority of historians concur that there never were any such organised group of witches.^[3] Mainstream historiography sees the reason for the witch craze in a complex interplay of various factors that mark the Early Modern period, including the religious sectarianism in the wake of the Reformation, besides other religious, societal, economic and climatic factors. Feminist and Neopagan authors have however portrayed them as either being an attempt by the patriarchal authorities to subjugate women,^[4] or as the persecution of an actual Witch-Cult, which had been pagan, rather than satanic, in nature.^[5] Neither of these have been accepted by mainstream historians who have specialised in the subject of the witch trials, such as Norman Cohn, Keith Thomas, Carlo Ginzburg, Robert W. Thurston and Brian Levack.

 

Background

 

Three developments in Christian doctrine have been identified as factors contributing significantly to the witch hunts: 1) a shift from the rejection of belief in witches to an acceptance of their existence and powers, 2) developments in the doctrine of Satan which incorporated witchcraft as part of Satanic influence, 3) the identification of witchcraft as heresy. Belief in witches and supernatural evil were widespread in medieval Europe,^[6] and the secular legal codes of European countries had identified witchcraft as a crime before being reached by Christian missionaries.^[7] Scholars have noted that the early influence of the Church in the medieval era resulted in the revocation of these laws in many places,^[8][9] bringing an end to traditional pagan witch hunts.^[10] Throughout the medieval era mainstream Christian teaching denied the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as pagan superstition.^[11] Notable instances include an Irish synod in 800,^[12] Agobard of Lyons,^[13] Pope Gregory VII,^[14] and Serapion of Vladimire.^[15] The traditional accusations and punishments were likewise condemned.^[16][17] Historian Brian Hutton therefore exculpates the early Church from responsibility for the witch hunts, arguing that this was the result of doctrinal change in the later Church.^[18]

 

However, Christian influence on popular beliefs in witches and maleficium (harm committed by magic), failed to eradicate traditional beliefs,^[19] and developments in the Church doctrine of Satan proved influential in reversing the previous dismissal of witches and witchcraft as superstition; instead these beliefs were incorporated into an increasingly comprehensive theology of Satan as the ultimate source of all maleficium.^[20][21] The work of Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century was instrumental in developing the new theology which would give rise to the witch hunts,^[22] but due to the fact that sorcery was judged by secular courts it was not until maleficium was identified with heresy that theological trials for witchcraft could commence.^[23] Despite these changes the doctrinal shift was only completed in the 15th century,^[24] when it first began to result in Church-inspired witch trials.^[25] Promulgation of the new doctrine by Henricus Institoris met initial resistance in some areas,^[26] and some areas of Europe only experienced the first wave of the new witch trials in the latter half of the 16th century.^[27][28]

 

Medieval persecution of heresy

 

Whilst the witch trials only really began in the 15th century, with the start of the Early Modern period, many of their causes had been developing during the previous centuries, with the persecution of heresy by the Medieval Inquisition during the late twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, and during the Late Medieval period, during which the idea of witchcraft or sorcery gradually changed and adapted. The inquisition had the office of protecting Christian orthodoxy against the "internal" threat of heresy (as opposed to "external" military threats such as those of the Vikings, the Mongols, and the Saracens or Turks).

 

During the High Middle Ages, a number of heretical Christian groups, such as the Cathars and the Knights Templar had been accused of performing such anti-Christian activities as Satanism, sodomy and malevolent sorcery in France. While the nucleus of the Early Modern "witch craze" would turn out to be popular superstition in the Western Alps, reinforced by theological rationale developed at or following the Council of Basel of the 1430s, what has been called "the first real witch trial in Europe",^[29] the accusation of Alice Kyteler in 1324, occurred in 14th-century Ireland, during the turmoils associated with the decline of Norman control.^[30]

 

Thurston (2001) speaks of a shift in Christian society from a "relatively open and tolerant" attitude to that of a "persecuting society" taking an aggressive stance towards minorities characterized as Jews, heretics (such as Cathars and Waldensians), lepers or homosexuals, often associated with conspiracy theories assuming a concerted effort on the part of diabolical forces to weaken and destroy Christianity, indeed "the idea became popular that one or more vast conspiracies were trying to destroy Christianity from within. The plotters were reputedly financed and abetted by an outside, evil force, often the Muslims."^[31] An important turning-point was the Black Death of 1348-1350, which killed a large percentage of the European population, and which many Christians believed had been caused by their enemies. The catalogue of typical charges that would later be levelled at witches, of spreading diseases, committing orgies (sometimes incestuous), cannibalising children, and following Satanism, emerged during the fourteenth century as crimes attributed to heretics and Jews.

 

Witchcraft had not been considered a heresy during the High Medieval period. Indeed, since the Council of Paderborn of 785, the belief in the possibility of witchcraft itself was considered heretical. While witch-hunts only became common after 1400, an important legal step that would make this development possible occurred in 1320, when Pope John XXII authorized the inquisition to persecute witchcraft as a type of heresy.^[32]

 

By the late fourteenth century, a number of "witch hunters" began to publish books on the topic, including Nicholas Eymeric, the inquisitor in Aragon and Avignon, who published the Directorium Inquisitorum in 1376.^[33]

 

Medieval and Early Modern magic

 

During the Mediaeval period, there was widespread belief in magic across Christian Europe, and as the psychologist Gustav Jahoda noted, "the new world as people saw it [in the medieval] included witches, devils, fairies and all kinds of strange beasts ... magic and miracles were commonplace."^[34] The Mediaeval Roman Catholic Church, which then dominated a large swath of the continent, divided magic into two forms: natural magic, which was acceptable because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God, and demonic magic, which was frowned upon and associated with demonology, divination and necromancy.^[35] This idea of malevolent magic, or maleficarum, was mentioned by historian Robert W. Thurston, who stated that "One of the most persistent features of European world views ... was the presence of humans who used magic to help or hurt their neighbours."^[36]

 

During the Late Mediaeval and Early Modern periods, magical practice was roughly divided into two forms. The first of these, folk magic, was the form of popular practice widely found amongst common people, comprising largely of simple charms and spells. There were various professionals who performed folk magic in a professional capacity, including charmers, astrologers, fortune tellers, and most importantly, cunning folk. These were believed to "possess a broader and deeper knowledge of such [magical] techniques and more experience in using them" than the average person, and it was also believed that they "embodied or could work with supernatural power which greatly increased the effectiveness of the operations concerned."^[37] One of the primary purposes of the cunning folk was in removing curses and other bewitchments that their clients believed that they had suffered, and in this manner cunning folk were in most cases working actively against witchcraft, using such methods as the witch bottle in order to do so.^[38]

 

The other form of magic was ceremonial magic, followed by those who adhered to philosophies like Hermeticism and the Qabalah. Whilst the Church disapproved of demonic magic, which was practiced by both certain cunning folk and ceremonial magicians, and condemned it in Early Medieval texts, they did little to actively suppress those that they believed practiced it, not believing them to be any significant threat to Christendom.^{[citation needed]}

 

Shamanic and animistic influence

 

Various historians, namely Carlo Ginzburg, Éva Pócs, Gabor Klaniczay and Emma Wilby, have theorised that many elements of Early Modern witchcraft were based upon, or even a continuation of, pre-Christian religious beliefs about visionary journeys that had connections with both shamanism and animism. In Early Modern Europe, there was often a belief that witches (and in many cases also cunning folk), were aided in their performance of magic by supernatural entities known as familiar spirits, who appeared in many different forms, usually taking the appearence of either humans or animals.^[39] As historian Ronald Hutton remarked, "It is quite possible that pre-Christian mythology lies behind this tradition",^[40] an idea supported by other historians, such as Wilby.^[41]

 

In the Early Modern period, it was also widely believed by the prosecutors that the witches travelled to a nocturnal meeting known as the Witches' Sabbath where they worshipped the Devil, feasted, and committed various Christian sins. Although some historians believe that this was entirely a fictional idea created by the witch hunters, others, having studied the first hand reports given by self-professed or accused witches, have come to the conclusion that these trips to the Sabbath were genuine visionary journeys that some witches believed that they went on. Emma Wilby compares these to similar claims made in the Early Modern period by certain cunning folk that they travelled on a visionary journey into Fairyland, where they found an assembly led by the King and Queen of the Fairies, feasted, and danced. After making various comparisons with ethnographic and anthropological examples of shamanism in Siberia and North America, she came to the conclusion that both the witches' Sabbath and the Fairyland journeys were visionary experiences undergone by various magical practitioners that likely had their origins in earlier, pre-Christian shamanic ideas.^[42]

 

Some historians have traced the idea of a visionary nocturnal journey from the Early Modern period into earlier periods of European history that were closer to the pre-Christian era. The fact that such nocturnal journeys containing supernatural entities have been found across Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe, from the Benandanti of sixteenth century Friuli in Italy to the supposed werewolves of Early Modern Hungary^[43] has led historian Carlo Ginzburg to believe that they were a part of an "ancient stratum of beliefs" in Europe, that had been found in pre-Christian paganism.^[44] Indeed, historian Robert Thurston noted that in the tenth century document, the Canon Episcopi, the author (likely a Christian monk) described that there were women who, due to a trick of the Devil, had visions that made them think that they met other women at nocturnal meetings to ride in processions led by the goddess Diana across "great spaces of the earth". Thurston notes that it was these descriptions of women's nocturnal travels which were "clearly the cultural forerunner of the witches' sabbath."^[45] According to these historians therefore, the idea of the witches' sabbath, along with the similar idea of familiar spirits and the cunning folk's journey to Fairyland, were not developments of the witch hunters but were genuine visionary traditions amongst the European populace, ones with their origins in pre-Christian religion.

 

Satan

 

It was also during the Medieval period that the concept of Satan, the Biblical Devil, began to develop into a more threatening form. Around the year 1000, when there were increasing fears that the end of the world would soon come in Christendom, the idea of the Devil had become prominent, with many believing that his activities on Earth would soon begin appearing. Whilst in earlier centuries there had been no set depiction of the Devil, it was also around this time that he began to develop the stereotypical image of being animal-like, or even in some cases an animal himself. In particular, he was often viewed as a goat, or as a human with goat-like features, such as horns, hooves and a tail. Equally, the concepts of demons began to become more prominent, in particular the idea that male demons known as incubi, and female ones known as succubi, would roam the Earth and have sexual intercourse with humans. As Thurston noted, "By about 1200, it would have been difficult to be a Christian and not frequently hear of the devil ... [and] by 1500 scenes of the devil were commonplace in the new cathedrals and small parish churches that had sprung up in many regions."^[46]

 

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the concept of the witch in Christendom underwent a relatively radical change. No longer were they viewed as sorcerers who had been deceived by the Devil into practicing magic that went against the powers of God, as earlier Church leaders like Saint Augustine of Hippo had stated. Instead they became the all-out malevolent Devil-worshipper, who had made a pact with him in which they had to renounce Christianity and devote themselves to Satanism. As a part of this, they gained, new, supernatural powers that enabled them to work magic, which they would use against Christians. It was believed that they would fly to their nocturnal meetings, known as the Witches' Sabbath, where they would have sexual intercourse with demons. On their death, the witches’ souls, which then belonged to the Devil, subsequently went to Hell.^[47]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Early_Modern_Europe