November 20, 2009
 
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| Who Burned the Witches? |
| by Sandra Miesel |
| 8/08/09 |
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Since the Enlightenment, rationalists have liked to cite witch burning as a prime example of medieval ignorance and religious (usually Catholic) bigotry run amok. (Leftists today still denounce it as a cynical plot by the strong against the weak.) Writing history that way was simple: Historians catalogued horrors, disparaged religion (or at least someone else's religion), and celebrated the triumph of science and liberal government. The history of witchcraft seemed a settled issue in 1969 when Hugh Trevor-Roper published his classic essay, "The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries."
But a clamor of new voices has since reopened the controversy. Members of the growing neopagan revival -- 200,000 strong in America today -- claim witches burned during the great witch-hunt as their martyred forebears. In 2000, a consortium of pagan leaders demanded a special apology from Pope John Paul II on the Jubilee Day of Pardon. They mourned a "pagan Holocaust" of nine million secret nature-worshippers exterminated by Christians 500 years ago under the Inquisition.
Sixty years ago, one of the neopagan movement's founders, Gerald Gardner, coined the term "the Burning Times" to describe this time of persecution. Although Gardner's historical expertise has since been questioned, neopagan proponents Margot Adler and Starhawk (nee Miriam Simos) are still preaching Gardner's teachings because, they say, "invented history is satisfying myth."
Nine million women burned is a figure conveniently larger than the Jewish Shoah, yet it was actually invented out of whole cloth by American feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1893. Radical feminists have made much of this mass "gynecide," as antipornography activist Andrea Dworkin has called it. The feminists see witches as the natural enemy of patriarchy, rallying around them as Old Leftists did around the leaders of the Spanish Republic. For them, as for pagans, playing the politics of victimization strengthens solidarity.
Meanwhile, those of a Green stripe, a group that overlaps with the pagans and radical feminists, charge that suppressing witchcraft deprived medieval people of alternative medicine and estranged them from ancient Earth wisdom. In their 1973 book, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, feminist and environmentalist writers Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English argued that witches were actually midwives targeted by their rivals, male physicians. Ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant has blamed patriarchal science for "the death of Nature" in her book of that title.
Although the general public has yet to notice, recent academic research has largely demolished both the old Enlightenment certainties and the new neopagan theories. Archival studies conducted in different regions of Europe over the last few decades have more accurately measured who killed how many of whom under what circumstances. Using the tools of anthropology and psychology, historians have reconstructed the social context in which the witch-hunts happened. They have a clearer picture now of how witchcraft theories developed and on what intellectual basis.
A Multitude Of Myths
For example, historians have now realized that witch-hunting was not primarily a medieval phenomenon. It peaked in the 17th century, during the rationalist age of Descartes, Newton, and St. Vincent de Paul. Persecuting suspected witches was not an elite plot against the poor; not was practicing witchcraft a mode of peasant resistance. Catholics and Protestants hunted witches with comparable vigor. Church and state alike tried and executed them. It took more than pure Reason to end the witch craze.
Nor were witches secret pagans serving an ancient Triple Goddess and Horned God, as the neopagans claim. In fact, no witch was ever executed for worshipping a pagan deity. Matilda Gage's estimate of nine million women burned is more than 200 times the best current estimate of 30,000 to 50,000 killed during the 400 years from 1400 to 1800 -- a large number but no Holocaust. And it wasn't all a burning time. Witches were hanged, strangled, and beheaded as well. Witch-hunting was not woman-hunting: At least 20 percent of all suspected witches were male. Midwives were not especially targeted; nor were witches liquidated as obstacles to professionalized medicine and mechanistic science.
This revised set of facts should not entirely comfort Catholics, however. Catholics have been misled -- at times deliberately misled -- about the Church's role in the witch-hunts by apologists eager to present the Church as innocent of witches' blood so as to refute the Enlightenment theory that witch-burning was almost entirely a Catholic phenomenon. Catholics should know that the thinking that set the great witch-hunt in motion was developed by Catholic clerics before the Reformation.
But the great witch-hunt was nonetheless remarkably slow in coming. Many cultures around the world believed for millennia -- and still believe -- in witches. In typical folklore, past and present, witches are night-flying evildoers who inflict harm on others by supernatural means, such as curses, the evil eye, and magic substances. Witchcraft is usually thought of as an innate power, unlike sorcery, whose magical spells must be learned. What Christianity uniquely added to those traditional beliefs was Satan. God's enemies were said to join Satan's band of demons through a pact and worship him at monstrous bacchanals called "sabbats," where they parodied the liturgy.
The Church inherited Roman and Germanic laws regarding maleficent magic, laws that treated witchcraft as a crime. But to St. Augustine, concrete witchcraft consisted of idolatry and illusion rather than harm to others. Following Augustine, an anonymous ninth-century text, Canon Episcopi, became part of the Church's canon law, declaring that belief in the reality of night-flying witches was heresy because there was no such thing as an actual witch. Although the idolatry and heresy associated with witchcraft resided only in the will, not in actual deeds, they were nevertheless sinful, Augustine wrote. Punishment was in order -- but not burning.
The High Middle Ages of the twelfth and 13th centuries saw the bloody suppression of heretics, notably the Cathars in Provence. Measures against Jews, magicians, and sexual deviants also grew harsher. These groups were associated with a stereotyped set of blasphemies, orgies, and outrages, including infanticide and cannibalism. Starting in 1232, the papal Inquisition dispatched roving specialists to detect and punish heretics outside existing legal systems.
Then, the idea that witchcraft was a reality rather than a heretical illusion suddenly made a comeback. The inquisitors who had cut their teeth on heretics were devouring accused witches as well by the end of the Middle Ages. This was not simply a matter of shifting scapegoats to suit market demand. In a society that feared supernatural menaces working through human conspiracies, the sinister folk figure of the esoterically schooled magician apparently fused with that of the petty village wise-woman or cunning man to create the new phenomenon of the diabolical witch.
After the first wisps of this change in the late 14th century, the flames burst forth around 1425 in the Savoy region, in what is now southeast France, and in the canton of Valais in Switzerland, near the borders of France and Italy. About 500 more witch trials followed before the Reformation began in 1517.
The Witch-Hunter's Baedeker
Meanwhile, witch-hunters' manuals multiplied, most notably the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), published in 1486. Its authors, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer, were experienced Dominican inquisitors who had burned 48 witches in one diocese alone and had obtained a papal bull approving their mission. Reversing the old principle of the Canon Episcopi, Sprenger and Kraemer proclaimed that not believing in the reality of witches was heresy. Witches regularly did physical as well as spiritual harm to others, they wrote, and allegiance to the devil defined witchcraft. Sprenger and Kraemer exhorted secular authorities to fight witches by any means necessary.
Malleus Maleficarum (notice the feminine possessive of "witches") was a vicious misogynist tract. It depicted women as the sexual playmates of Satan, declaring: "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable." Ironically, Sprenger also had a deep devotion to Mary. He helped to shape the modern rosary and founded the first rosary confraternity.
Malleus Maleficarum did not cover its ground completely, failing to discuss the actual pact that witches made with the devil, the sabbat, familiars (imps in animal form who aided witches), and night-flying. But those elements did not always appear in witchcraft cases. By itself, the Malleus started no new witch-panics, but it was freely used by later witchcraft writers, Protestant and Catholic alike. The Spanish inquisitors were nearly alone in scoffing at its lack of sophistication.
The demonologists who absorbed the Malleus were highly cultured men, such as the Protestant Jean Bodin, "the Aristotle of the 16th century," and his contemporary, the Jesuit classicist Martin del Rio. Those theoreticians pounded home the principle of the crimen exceptum: Because witchcraft was so vile an offense, accused witches had no legal rights. "Not one witch in a million would be accused or punished," Bodin boasted, "if the procedure were governed by ordinary rules." Anyone who defended accused witches or denied their crimes deserved the same punishment as witches, Bodin wrote. Socially elite persecutors, demonologists, and judges relentlessly hunted witches with the zeal of modern revolutionaries pursuing a political utopia. No cost was too great, because witch-hunting served the greater good of Christendom, in their view. They believed that witchcraft inverted society's key values, disturbed godly order, challenged the divine right of kings -- the ancient doctrine that rulers derive their right to rule from God -- and diminished the majesty of God. It was thought that witch-hunting saved souls and averted the wrath of God by purging society of evil as the End Times loomed.
Commoners, by contrast, simply wanted relief from the evildoers of folklore who, they believed, were harming them, their children, their cattle, and their crops. It was grassroots complaints that started most witch-hunts. If authorities were too slow to act, peasants were capable of lynching suspected neighbors.
Although maleficium -- physical harm -- loomed much larger than diabolism in common people's accusations against suspected witches, their folk beliefs cross-fertilized the learned ones of Bodin and others in complex ways. Through sermons, gossip, trial accounts, and luridly illustrated "witch-books" (especially popular in Germany), everyone learned what witches did and how to detect them.
Witches Everywhere
The 30,000 to 50,000 casualties of the European witch-hunts were not distributed uniformally through time or space, even within particular jurisdictions. Three-quarters of Europe saw not a single trial. Witch persecution spread outward from its first center in alpine Italy in the early 15th century, guttering out in Poland, where witchcraft laws were finally repealed in 1788. The center had generally stopped trying witches before the peripheries even started.
The Spanish Road stretching from Italy to the Netherlands was also a "witch-road." The Catholic-ruled Spanish Netherlands (today's Belgium) saw far worse persecutions than the Protestant-ruled United Provinces of the Netherlands, which had stopped burning convicted witches by 1600. There were early panics in the German cities of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, as well as in Lorraine, France, and parts of Switzerland and Scotland. The Rhineland and Southwest Germany suffered severe outbreaks, with German ecclesiastical territories hit hardest. Three-quarters of all witchcraft trials took place in the Catholic-ruled territories of the Holy Roman Empire. But Catholic Portugal, Castile and Spanish-ruled Italy, and the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe saw virtually none. The panic in Salem, Massachusetts, was as bad as anything in England, but there seem to have been no executions in the Latin colonies of the New World.
The regional tolls demonstrated the patchwork pattern of witch-hunting. The town of Baden, Germany, for example, burned 200 witches from 1627 to 1630, more than all the convicted witches who perished in Sweden. The tiny town of Ellwangen, Germany, burned 393 witches from 1611 to 1618, more than Spain and Portugal combined ever executed. The Catholic prince-bishop of Wurzburg, Germany, burned 600 witches from 1628 to 1631, more witches than ever died in Protestant Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland combined. The Swiss canton of Vaud executed about 1,800 witches from 1611 to 1660, compared with Scotland's toll of between 1,300 and 1,500 and England's toll of 500. The claim of some Catholic apologists that Elizabeth I executed 800 witches a year is gross slander. In Southwest Germany alone, 3,229 people were executed for witchcraft between 1562 and 1684 -- more than were executed for any reason by the Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman Inquisitions between 1500 and 1800. (All three of these Inquisitions burned fewer than a dozen witches in total.)
The most-dreaded lay witch-hunter was Nicholas Remy, attorney general of Lorraine, who boasted of sending 900 persons to the stake in a single decade (1581-1591). But the all-time grand champion exterminator of witches was Ferdinand von Wittelsbach, Catholic prince-archbishop of Cologne, Germany, who burned 2,000 members of his flock during the 1630s.
Let no one argue that witch-hunting was a predominantly Protestant activity. Both Catholic and Protestant lands saw light and heavy hunts. Demonologists and critics alike came from both religious camps.
Regional Influences
Local factors, not religious loyalties, determined the severity of witch persecutions. Roman law on the continent was harsher than English common law. Prosecuting maleficium alone, as England and Scandinavia did, yielded fewer victims than prosecuting diabolism (Scotland and Germany) or white magic (Lorraine and France). Unlimited torture in Germany induced more confessions than the limited torture in the Franche-Comte region in France. English third-degree methods such as sleep-deprivation were also effective ways of raising the number of convictions.
Ignoring denunciations procured through torture preserved Denmark from Germany's dreadful chain-reaction panics in which accused witches would in turn finger other witches. "Spectral evidence" from accusers' dreams was a significant prosecution device in Salem. Finding a witch's mark insensitive to pricking "or a witch's teat," on which familiars allegedly fed, secured convictions in Scotland and England; uncertainty about the credibility of witch's marks won acquittals in Geneva. Child witnesses -- often-malicious liars -- proved deadly in Sweden, the Basque country in Spain, Germany, and England (the hysteria resembled that surrounding the sex-abuse charges brought against U.S. day-care centers during the 1980s).
Professional witch-finders had dire impact. The best known of these freelance accusers was England's Matthew Hopkins, who doomed up to 200 people from 1645 through 1647. But special inquisitors or investigative committees were also lethal. Local judges were usually harsher than professional jurists from outside the community. Reviews of convictions by central authorities spared accused witches in Denmark, France, Sweden, and Austria. An informal appeal from ministers outside Salem halted the panic there.
Witch-hunting was typically part of broader campaigns to repress unruly behavior and impose religious orthodoxies. The hunt played out in a world of shrinking opportunities for ordinary folk. Early modern village economies were often zero-sum games, where the death of a cow could ruin a family. Peasants were locked into face-to-face contact with their neighbor-enemies. Feuds could last for generations.
The poorest and most common targets of the witch-hunts, social subordinates and even children sometimes turned the tables by accusing their wealthy superiors of witchcraft.
Women were more prominent than men at witchcraft trials, both as accused and as accusers. Not only did Sprenger's image of women as the more lustful and malicious sex generate suspicions; the fact that women had a lower social status than men made them easier to accuse. In most regions, about 80 percent of the alleged witches killed were female. Women were then as likely to be accused witches as men were to be saints or violent criminals. That was because women typically fought with curses instead of steel. Although the stereotype did not always fit, the British witch was usually seen as irascible, aggressive, unneighborly, and often repulsive -- hardly the gentle healer of neopagan fantasy. Her colorful curses could blight everything down to "the little pig that lieth in the sty." She magnified her powers to frighten others and extort favors. If she could not be loved, she meant to be feared.
Alternatively, the witches of Lorraine were said to be "fine and crafty, careful not to quarrel with people or threaten them." Effusive compliments were signs of suspected witchcraft in Lorraine, and suppressed anger could be ominous. Being innocent of the impossible crimes associated with witchcraft did not necessarily mean that witch-hunt victims were "nice." Some were prostitutes, beggars, or petty criminals. Austria's Zauberjaeckl trials (1675-1690) punished as witches people who were actually dangerous felons. The Magic Jacket Society prosecuted in those trials was a Baroque version of the Hell's Angels, recruiting waifs whom it controlled through black magic, sodomy, and conjurations with mice. The prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Austria, graciously forbade executing members of the society who were under the age of twelve. But 200 others were put to death.
Panic And Torture
Witch-hunting could be endemic or epidemic. Its dynamics varied. Small panics (fewer than 20 victims) tended to occur in villages worried about maleficium. Their victims were often poor, obnoxious persons whose removal the rest of the community applauded.
If small panics fed on long-smoldering fears about neighbors, large ones exploded without warning, killing people of all classes and conditions and rupturing social bonds. The worst examples of this were in Germany, where unlimited use of torture (in defiance of imperial law) produced an ever-expanding wave of denunciations. To object was to court death.
Large witch-panics started with the usual obscure suspects and worked up the social scale to prosperous citizens, reputable matrons, high-ranking clerics, town officials, and even judges. The longer a panic lasted, the higher was the proportion of male and wealthy victims.
According to the Dutch Jesuit Cornelius van Loos, confiscations from suspected witches in large panics could "coin gold and silver from human blood," Youngsters were legally old enough to burn as soon as they could distinguish "gold from an apple." Children as young as nine were burned in Wurzburg, including the bishop's nephew, and boys ages three and four were imprisoned as Satan's catamites.
Some of the German trials were marred by collusion, bribes, and rape. Unspeakable tortures were routine -- 17 different kinds were authorized by "the Saxon lawgiver," Benedikt Carpzov, during the 17th century. Confessing "without torture" in Germany meant without torture that drew blood. Nearly all who underwent this broke, even the blameless.
Yet witches sometimes did turn themselves in and confess spontaneously, the equivalent of today's "suicide by police." The same melancholy, frustration, and despair that they claimed had driven them into the devil's arms brought them willingly to the stake. They had apparently come to believe the wish-fulfillment fantasies of pleasure and revenge enacted in the theaters of their minds. Nevertheless, they still hoped to save their souls through pain.
A few brave men spoke up for justice. In 1563, Johann Weyer, a Protestant court physician, drew attention to the cruelty of the trials and the mental incompetence of many of the accused. English country gentleman Reginald Scot mocked witchcraft as popish nonsense in 1584. In 1631, the Jesuit Friedrich von Spec, confessor to witches burned at Mainz, proclaimed them innocent victims. Van Loos, witness to the horrors of witchcraft trials at Trier, had his manuscript confiscated in 1592 before it could be published and was himself imprisoned and banished.
Ironically, a Spanish inquisitor named Alonso Salazar y Frias mounted the most dramatic challenge to witch-hunting. In 1609, a panic among French Basques in the western Pyrenees on the Bay of Biscay spilled over into the Navarra region in Spain, where six accused witches went to the stake. But Salazar, who had been a judge in that trial, became skeptical as the panic widened to engulf 1,800 suspects, 1,500 of them children. Basque witches' confessions included such incredible details as familiars in the form of costumed toads that child-witches herded with little crooks during sabbats.
Salazar cross-checked testimony, had supposed magic substances tested, and applied logic to conclude that the alleged witches were simply an artifact of witch-hunting. "There were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about," he reported in 1610. With stubborn practice, Salazar wrested a decision from his superiors that freed the accused in 1614. The Spanish Inquisition never executed another witch; nor did it permit secular authorities to do so after an outbreak in Catalonia that saw more than 300 witches hanged between 1616 and 1619. What could have erupted into Europe's worst witch-panic was extinguished by one man.
Cooling Ashes
Slowly, the critics were vindicated, and ashes cooled all across Europe during the 18th century. This was no simple triumph of Enlightenment wisdom. Witch beliefs persisted -- as they do today -- but witches no longer faced stakes, gallows, or swords. The great witch-panics had left a kind of psychic weariness in their wake. Realizing that innocents had been cruelly sent to their deaths, people no longer trusted their courts' judgments. As Montaigne had written 200 years earlier, "It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them."
After a 20th century unmatched for bloodshed, the world today is in no position to disparage early modern Europe. Witch-hunts have much in common with our own political purges, imagined conspiracies, and rumors of ritualized child abuse. Our capacity to project enormities on the enemy Other is as strong as ever.
The truth about witch-hunting is worth knowing for its own sake. But the issue has added significance for Catholics because it has provided ammunition for rationalists, pagans, and radical feminists to attack the Church. It is helpful to know that the number of victims has been grossly exaggerated, and that the reasons for the persecutions had as much to do with social factors as with religious ones.
But although Catholics have been fed comforting errors by overeager apologists about the Church's part in persecuting witches, we must face our own tragic past. Fellow Catholics, to whom we are forever bound in the communion of saints, did sin grievously against people accused of witchcraft. If our historical memory can be truly purified, then the smoke from the Burning Times can finally disperse.
Sandra Miesel is a writer and medievalist. This article originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of Crisis Magazine. Readers have left 32 comments. The Church has much to be embarassed about regarding witches and their execution, along with all the hysteria. All that being said, I think the Inquisition has a bad rap, in that if I were innocent and unjustly accused of witchcraft, I think that I would rather face a panel of learned priests than a mob of howling peasants. My knowledge of this is quite limited, but I remember reading that many people hauled before the Inquisition were interrogated and then released or given a pennance and afforded the opportunity to repent. Much of the witchcraft executions were by civil authorities or mobs. I would appreciate hearing from someone who really knows this. Written by Austin In a formal sense, organs of the Catholic Church never did burn witches. The Inquisition, which handled most but not all witch trials, only made findings by judges learned in canon law about the guilt or innocence of accused persons. If found guilty, they were handed over to worldly authorities for punishment according to the law of the land and time. The tribunal of the Inquisition did this with the injunction to save the guilty person's life, although one may rightly claim this to have been a mere formality. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was secular courts that conducted witchcraft trials. And they were held in Protestant countries (including the United States) just as much as in Catholic ones. Witches were hanged or burned in solidly Protestant England in the 1640's, where the Puritan Matthew Hopkins prosecuted hundreds of suspected heretics. The Catholic Church still had a role in the prosecution of witchcraft, but it formally was not involved in executions (unless it was in some territories also the secular ruler) and it was not the only religious community to fight witchcraft. Written by Wolfgang Grassl Wolfgang If Popes did not stop such things by interdict, then they approved either consciously or subconsciously. We are more credible not less when we point out the historic sins of Rome and then still believe in the Church. Sandra has done a great job of breaking our tendency to cover up history just like we recently covered up you know what. Written by bill bannon I have to concur with Mr. Bannon. The old maxim that "The Church never sheds blood" was little more than a legal fiction. A ruler could himself be excommunicated if he did not execute those condemned by the Inquisitions.  Written by Eric Giunta I agree that Sandra wrote a fine article, and I found nothing wrong in it. And I agree with Bill that facts are facts and must not be covered up. But whether witchcraft trials in the 15th century can easily be classified as "sins of Rome" -- here I have my doubts. Mind that the published documents (and the Dominican fathers were meticulous!) show that there usually were facts of the matter -- events that the mentality of the time could not explain otherwise than by diabolic intervention. When in 1749 the Premonstratensian nun Renata Singer was executed for witchcraft in Germany, as one of the last cases in Europe, even Empress Maria Theresa requested a report and forbade further trials. There, too, the Church went as far as presenting the indictment (in this case, it was the local Jesuits) but neither passed judgment nor executed it. Does it make the Church guilty if this was the law of the land? I agree that in the Age of Enlightenment the Church wasn't very ... enlightened. Should she have been? Let us all be careful not to judge cases half a millennium ago with today's knowledge and values nor spontaneously to blame Rome or Catholicism in general, particularly if other religious groups had similar experiences. Witch trials can be understood without being a source of guilt or pride. Alas, they happened. Written by Wolfgang Grassl I wonder about the link between "witchcraft" and earlier forms of contraception and abortion. Has that ever been studied? Written by Judith I just want to make sure I have this right, there is no such thing as witches, never was, never will be. Those who today call themselves witches don't exist, they never existed. No one ever worshipped the devil, ever, anywhere. No one ever participated in a black mass. There are no demon worshippers, in fact in this rational era, we all know there are no demons, no Satan, no such thing as hell. In fact I guess Jesus was really just a guy with long hair who got a raw deal(not from the Jews of course, definetly not them, the Romans or anyone, but not the Jews}. Christians do not have to apologise for the persecution of witches and I for one am not completely convinced that those who worship demons or the devil should not be persecuted. Written by Richard What is with the historical study of withcraft; I know people who worship satan today and study books on witchcraft; ![[smiley=think]](http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/components/com_jreactions/custom/templates/blog/smileys/smiley_think.gif) These people often end up committing feloniesand join the covens in our prisons; its sad that innocent people were abused and even killed in the past; however, I think collective society has a duty to suppress people who want to cast "evil spells" on people and otherwise spread hate; Many of Hitler's closest hench men were heavy into witchcraft; the Swedish guy that formed the SS has an internet site where he brags about his devil worship; nut jobs like that ought to be locked up; Written by Jerry Sandra Miesel's article is misleading on several points. For instance, Jenny Gibbon's article "Recent Developments on the History of the Great Witch Hunt" points out that the authors of the Malleus were disbarred shortly after their book appeared precisely because it was nuts. The Malleus was used almost exclusively by secular courts and Protestants. Catholic courts wouldn't touch it. Similarly, she points out that witch hunts took place primarily where the Catholic control of the area was weak or non-existent. For the whole essay, see http://tinyurl.com/mj7lbd or http://tinyurl.com/kj7wuh Indeed, other studies have shown that witch trials were largely a function of local village politics, in which women initiated the charges and forced men to follow up on them. Even Wikipedia does a better job than Miesel. Here are some other URLs worth looking at: http://tinyurl.com/lfau5c http://tinyurl.com/mxjs5j http://tinyurl.com/tvp9a http://tinyurl.com/nymqmv It is unclear why Sandra Miesel continues to push this essay, given that I've sent her the more up-to-date information on this when it first came out in Crisis nearly ten years ago. She doesn't seem to have corrected a word of it. Written by Steve Jenny Gibbons, by the way, is not only a historian of medieval Europe, she is also a practicing Wiccan. If a practicing Wiccan says the Catholic Church played a big role in suppressing witch trials, the statement is worth paying attention to. Written by Steve Kellmeyer "I just want to make sure I have this right, there is no such thing as witches, never was, never will be. " That's right. There are people who <i>call</i> themselves witches, who really wish they were, but I can call myself an elf, a fairy or magic; it doesn't make it true. "Those who today call themselves witches don't exist, they never existed." No, they exist, as humans. They do not exist as anything but humans. "No one ever worshipped the devil, ever, anywhere. No one ever participated in a black mass." Where did you get that from? "There are no demon worshippers, in fact in this rational era, we all know there are no demons, no Satan, no such thing as hell." What an absurd thing to say. People do worship Satan, there are demons and there is a Hell. Why do you have a problem discerning between these things? Written by MaryFairy Wolfgang — bill bannonIf Popes did not stop such things by interdict, then they approved either consciously or subconsciously. We are more credible not less when we point out the historic sins of Rome and then still believe in the Church. Sandra has done a great job of breaking our tendency to cover up history just like we recently covered up you know what. Mr. Bannon: You miss Wolfgang's point. At the time of Christendom the Church and State were two arms of the same body. Witchcraft was and is a spiritual evil. The Church's job was to determine the guilt or innocence of people accused of witchcraft by the State. Punishments were determined and meted out by the State. The Church had no authority to impose interdict on witchcraft trials as that was not within its purview. For the Church to have declared innocent those guilty of authentic witchcraft would mean leaving society open to grave social unrest. Society lacked many of the protections that we are accustomed to today and all crime begins with spiritual errors. It almost seems like witchcraft is being raised to a virtue these days. To lay the guilt of post-Medieval executions on the Church is like laying the guilt of the many brutal executions in the U.S. on the jurors who pronounced the guilty sentence on all the defendants many of whom were innocent. Jurors are recruited by the State from the ranks of average Americans. Mr. Bannon, those are yours and my peers we are talking about. The Church is the soul of Western Civilization. Every day the Catholic Church feeds more people, educates more people, takes care of more sick people, houses more people, clothes more people, and visits more imprisoned people than any organization on Earth could ever hope to. Everything that is wonderful in Western Civilization originated in the Catholic Church. Have you even noticed? Yet so many people prefer to focus exclusively on centuries old sins of the Church, many of which are ridiculously exaggerated if not lies fabricated by untrustworthy anti-Catholic historians. At the same time they prefer to ignore the sins of the Protestants and other religious groups as well as the many sins of Western governments including the multitude committed by the U.S. federal government. Surely the Catholic Church is a popular boogie man for the selective consciousness of our day! Written by TyroneHill None of us were there when the executions took place. Would we think that the Church was complicit in the executions that take place throughout the world in this day and age? There is always nuance, human emotions and above all politics that take place with every decision made, especially when it comes to the taking of a life. You never know what was going on behind the scenes by members of our Church or any other Church, particularly after the reformation. Sometimes kings and communities just killed people who were evil, unpopular, or even a nuisance. Without the modern media, the word of these killings may not reach high level authorities for several years. I think we tend to view history through our modern eyes and not by thinking about human nature. Written by Christine The author of this piece, while correct that there was a lack of justice and serious examination of evidence in many instance, seems to treat witchcraft as if it has no bad consequences. Witchcraft, apart from a grave sin against the 1st commandment, produces many evil effects in the community. Witches spells can lead to demonic possession, obsession, the possession of houses or property, it can lead to generational curses which destroy families, attack society and cause great defects in individuals which inhibit their spiritual life because they are difficult to overcome. This is why St. Thomas taught that witchcraft was a capital crime, since it wreaked destruction and havoc on society and is contrary to the common good. Many an exorcist can speak for days on the harm witchcraft causes to society today. There are people who became possessed because they moved into a house right next to an active witch coven. There are cases where because a witch knew someone was catholic they put a curse on him so that he would lose his job, etc. This was no less true in the middle ages. The fault of men in the Church in the middle ages was not discriminating between cases where the witch needed exorcism and when they should be put to death, and by making certain that capital punishment for witches was carried out by state authority and not a roaming mob of vigilantes imparting more damage to society principally because demons are real, they do engage in spiritual warfare, and they like to have a parallel structure to the one God set up with their own sacramentals, their own intercessors, and their own curses in place of God's blessings. Witchcraft is real, it is truly demonic and brings untold harm to society, and later medievals were completely justified in seeking to put witches and warlocks to death, the problem is they did not always do so using Catholic principles of due process or present an evidentiary basis or even use an alternative of exorcism to cure the individual. Written by Athanasius The Church, as an institution, is almost always blamed for the acts of individuals or entities who claimed to be Catholic, even if the Church subsequently excommunicated those responsible for the acts and condemned the acts themselves. On the other hand, institutions and individuals who are viewed as "progressive" are accorded every possible excuse for their actions, even if they are carried out by, or with the knowledge of, those holding the highest levels of authority in the institution. Written by Brian English The original article that appeared years ago in CRISIS was accompanied by a reading list. I got that information from well-received academic authors, not a Wiccan on the Covenant of the Goddess website.(I happen to be acquainted with one of CoG's founders and interviewed her for a parallel article on modern Wicca, but that's neither here nor there, inasmuch as we are not discussing Wicca or modern Satanism in this essay.) If you want an even more recent historical survey by a premier authority on the European witch-hunt, consult Wolfgang Behringer's WITCHES AND WITCH-HUNTING. Other good authors are Robin Briggs, William Monter,Erick Middelfort, Gustav Hemmingsen, Brian Levack, and Lyndal Roper. There's also a fine series on the history of witchcraft from the U. Pennsylvania Press. The old CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA article is worse than useless. It's soothing to argue that "The Church" didn't execute witches. Nevertheless, Catholic theologians developed the theories, the papacy created the Papal Inquisition that started with heretics but moved on to witches after they were equated with heretics,Catholic bishops installed local Inquisitions, Catholic universities urged the execution of witches, and most horribly, territories civilly ruled by Catholic bishops, monasteries, etc. were the worst persecutors of witches in all Europe. I do not share the complacency of people who can view the judicial murder of 100,000 overwhelmingly innocent persons so calmly. Written by Sandra Miesel It is intersting that Ms. Meisel is able to convince herself that 100,000 innocents were executed and to use that as an obvious attack on the church and therefore also on Christ. The proof of whether those executed practiced witchcraft might be a little difficult to prove or disprove at this point. However, I think that the murder of over 35,000,000 babies in the US since Roe v Wade, might be a little more relevant. As an aside to maryfairy, black masses and devil worship are what witches do for fun. Written by Richard My family being from Mexico, and being a student of Latin American history and culture, I can tell you that our neighbors to the south are in many ways a medieval culture in our own backyard. In Mexico and other parts of the Catholic world, there exists a concept white magic and black magic. Often, the curandero (folk healer) mainly exists to fight the curses and spells of witches (thus, the famous “limpias” with eggs, chickens, etc. while reciting the Apostle’s Creed, the Magnificat, or the prayer, “The Twelve Truths of the World”). There are plenty of Catholic prayers against witches in Mexico, such as the prayer of St. Peter’s Shadow. Often, if things are really going badly for you, someone will say, “alguien te hizo un trabajo” (they did a work on you). More to the point of this article, I have heard that it is common in Mexico for people to lynch supposed witches, or for witches spells to turn on them. Carlo Ginzburg talks about the benandanti in Italy in his book, The Night Battles, who would fight the witches on Ember nights to defend the crops for that year. Werewolves in Eastern Europe were seen as being witch hunters. Even in Mexico, the dreaded folk saint, Santa Muerte, a feminized Grim Reaper, is used to defend oneself against witchcraft in her “white” manifestation (la Niña Blanca). Oddly enough, the aloe vera plant was also seen as a charm against witchcraft, and so forth. Bottom line: the Wiccan fantasy of a Europe where witches were seen as heroes of the people is a complete pipe dream. Witches for a long time have been seen as menaces to the fabric of society, and for that reason, vigilante violence against them was seen as being justified. Written by Arturo Vasquez Stop living in the past and go to www.christiananswersforthenewage.org and make sure to read the personal story of this woman. It is worth it. Written by Newman54 It is intersting that Ms. Meisel is able to convince herself that 100,000 innocents were executed and to use that as an obvious attack on the church and therefore also on Christ. The proof of whether those executed practiced witchcraft might be a little difficult to prove or disprove at this point. However, I think that the murder of over 35,000,000 babies in the US since Roe v Wade, might be a little more relevant. — RichardAs an aside to maryfairy, black masses and devil worship are what witches do for fun. Can we please stop using abortion statistics as a kind of black/whitewash to cover up and minimize other evils?...whether they are committed by the Republican party or by the Medieval Church? It's an offense to BOTH the victims of those evils and the victims of abortion whose injustice is being used to score political points. It also does not help the Church to sweep over the wrongs committed by her stewards. Written by Barbara Tyrone Hill I think you are unique above regardless of the side various posters are on. I want to simply give you something from the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent since you might accept that source and it relates to this above topic indirectly but surely. A famous internet priest once jumped into a debate and simply posted the phrase "the Popes never killed anyone, the secular rulers did". Later Fr. Conner on EWTN stated in one history lesson that Popes of the early 13th century never burned anyone at the stake. The Catholic Encyclopedia in the following quote is about to show you the problem with these two incidents...watch carefully: Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent) Inquistion (And remember..Fr. Connor had said that Popes did not kill in the early 13th century) " In this way Gregory IX may be regarded as having had no share either directly or indirectly in the death of condemned heretics. Not so the succeeding popes. In the Bull "Ad exstirpanda" (1252) Innocent IV says: When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them. Moreover, he directs that this Bull and the corresponding regulations of Frederick II be entered in every city among the municipal statutes under pain of excommunication, which was also visited on those who failed to execute both the papal and the imperial decrees. Nor could any doubt remain as to what civil regulations were meant, for the passages which ordered the burning of impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal decretals from the imperial constitutions "Commissis nobis" and "Inconsutibilem tunicam". The aforesaid Bull "Ad exstirpanda" remained thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or reinforced by several popes, Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-68), Nicholas IV (1288-02), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake." What this passage shows compared to the two priests' version is that there is two versions of Catholic history...one at the quick verbal level....and another more detailed Catholic history at the more scholarly level. One is propaganda laced with falsehood and one is a history people can respect us for. Catholicism is the true Church and she has problems that will not be solved by flattery...constant self flattery as when the priest jumped into the debate and uttered a falsehood that Popes never killed and then he vanished. God nor Mary are pleased by the flattery only side of Catholicism. Written by bill bannon The question was raised above, why did I claim that The great majorty of executed witches were innocent victims? Let's look at the witness of two priests who were there and wh were mention in my article. Friedrich von Spee who heard the confessions of hundreds of ,condemned witches in one of the huge Rhineland panics,firmly believed them all innocent and wrote CAUTIO CRIMINALIS to argue against the mass persecution of witches. Spanish Inquisitor Antonio Salazar y Friasconducted the only forensic investigation of witchcraft charges, demonstrated that nothing had happened, freed more than a thousand accused witches, and persuaded the Spanish Inquisition to stop looking for witches. The outbreaks at Salem and in Sweden were strictly the work of malicious, lying children, as the local authorities eventually admitted. And so it goes when records are examined. Were there some people who practiced spells and frightened their neighbors? Yes. But those were the spark, not the substance of Early Modern European witch-hunts.There were no actual Sabbats or covens as depicted in lurid literature then or now. Modern Wiccans and other Neo-Pagan nature-worshippers are not Satanists although real Satanists do exist and have committed murder at times. The Devil is indeed real and makes use of whatever comes to hand--witchcraft or witchhunting--to further his designs. Written by Sandra Miesel Bill Bannon: I do not know exactly what Fr. Connor said, but a Bull issued in 1252 would fall in the second half of the 13th Century, so it would not appear to prove that a statement regarding the first half of the 13th Century was false. I think you are also mixing the issues of heresy and witchcraft. The Church, from its early days, has sought to suppress heresy because it was seen as destroying souls. The article in the Encyclopedia you cite deals with both the suppression of heresy prior to the formal Inquisition and the actions of the various Inquisitions. What the unnamed internet priest and Fr. Connor were probably referring to was the fact that Church authorities would only rule on the issue of heresy, with punishment imposed by the secular authorities. You also fail to note that even after the promulgation of Ad exstirpanda, only a small percentage of those tried in Inquisition Courts were turned over to civil authorities for punishment. Secular courts were far more severe, and there were instances of defendants blaspheming so that they would be transferred to Inquisition courts. Written by Brian English Brian All Fr.Connor had to do was place a small caveat like so "in the first half of the 13th century, no Popes cooperated in the death of heretics unlike later." Two words. Why were they missing in both priest's tv spot and post as it were. Also all the other priest had to do was jump in and say the same thing... "unlike later". As for your other details, they depend on our trusting your sources which sources you do not quote nor mention as to books or authors. Tyrone likewise stated how the Church visits more in prison and houses more poor...with no citations. We can only be compared sizewise to all of Protestantism taken together or all of Islam and so we would need stats as to how many prison visits are done by each of those groups and how many do each of those groups house. I doubt that such figures even exist. Let me give you an example of a Pope doing this editing out of the bad and maybe because he was following a p[revious Pope's inaccurate history also. Go to Pope Leo XIII May 1888 letter to the Bishops of Brazil concerning slavery and go to section 13 which leads off like this: " Moreover, the Roman Pontiffs, who have always acted, as history truly relates, as the protectors of the weak and helpers of the oppressed, have done their best for slaves." In section 16 he goes on to mention several Popes in the late 15th century who sought to ameliorate the slaves' situation. What he never mentions in the whole piece is that 6 Popes as John T. Noonan had documented ("The Church That Can and Cannot Change" Nortre Dame/1997 or so) starting in 1454 AD had furthered slavery by giving or confirming as to Portugal and Spain the right to enslave in perpetuity any distant natives that resisted the gospel which you can verify in part right on the net by going to Romanus Pontifex 1454 by Nicholas V and then go to the 4th paragraph middle where he gives Portugal that right to enslave along with taking all their belongings for the profit of Portugal's King and his successors and toward the end of the bull you will see that he voids all future attempts to void his bull. Pope Leo left out that bull as he praised the papacy's place as to slavery and he left out if he even knew that 3 subsequent Popes confirmed it in writing after Nicholas V died. Again..Catholicism is the true Church but if you really believe that, you do not need to leave out the bad of history as it relates to the papacy. If you can only believe in the church as long as papal history is perfect, then something is amiss and you may need too much security so that you have to protect that security by editing. Written by bill bannon Istead of configuring who was at what percentage of fault, or who was harsher, and who should carry the most giult,this story of a time ignorance and despair thoughout mankind should be felt equally across the world as a whole. This article stayed on my mind since i read it. I feel a sense of tragedy for the fallen souls who's light was smothered out. In today's times would you consider a healer to deserve death, or giving guidance to ones that need it- a sin punishable by death. I mean the term "witch" makes you think of an evil old woman surrounded by fogging postions and dead animal parts out to get small children to eat for their supper. I wonder how many burnt, hanged, beheaded, or what ever where so unhelplessly dark and lost. How many where only everyday people with an enemy, and how many were souls of light... blown out. Brandy Malone Written by Brandy Malone Bill: I have always been interested in history, so I agree with you that history has to be taught accurately. However, history also has to be taught in context. Actions in the 13th Century cannot be evaluated based upon 21st Century standards. You may believe the Church has been violent and/or intolerant in the past. My response is, "As compared to what?" Find me a society in the 13th Century that did not persecute those who were believed to endanger the moral and/or political order. Indeed, the Church has led the way in creating a more humane world. A good introduction to that history can be found in "How the Catholic Church Created Western Civilization", by Thomas Woods. I do not know if this is true of you, but I often find that people who insist on condemning the Church's past are recounting that history in order to undermine the authority of the Church today. Written by Brian English I think this article overstates the connection between the Church hierarchy and the Malleus Maleficarum. A very different picture is provided at pages 101-104 of The Da Vinci Deception, a book by Mark Shea, Edward Sri, and the Editors of Catholic Exchange. Kramer, the primary author of the Malleus Maleficarum, was condemned by the Inquisition in 1490, four years after the Malleus was published. That fact should have been included in the article. Written by Brian English This comment doesn't have much to do with the essay. However, it is not completely unrelated. I have a long distance relationship with a woman who has been a Catholic pretty much from birth (funny how Catholics and Christians seem to belong to separate religions). Her life has been anything but blessed so far. A while ago I asked her to stop praying to Mary as to a goddess. She got upset, but over time I have seen a shift towards our Lord and away from the handed-down idolatry. She still has a ornamented crucifix above her bed, and several months ago she painted an upside-down cross on her chin, and used make-up to fashion the eye of Horus from her right eye. She claimed not to know what I was talking about, and asserted that it was just spontaneous creativity. She's not a witch in a traditional sense, but at times I suspect that her body and mind are used by some entity. I am prone to evade the issue though, in fear of going insane myself! I have met at least two possessed individuals and it made my body shiver, the fact that they can turn into something demonic in the twinkle of an eye. Can someone please explain what signifies a witch? How can I tell if she is one? I would rather not raise a family with someone I can't trust. Written by Mattias Mattias, Your feeling that your friend's body and mind are sometimes used by some entity may well be true, and that entity may be totally human. You might think about studying up on satanic ritual abuse (SRA) and dissociated identity disorder (DID). They go hand-in-hand. A victim will have no conscious idea that they have been badly abused from very early childhood to create a habit of dissociation which the group (call it a coven, if you'd like; I call the whole thing The Network since it involves quite a bit more than just witches and satanism)then programs to be separately-functioning personalities that they can totally train and control. Occultists have known for several thousand years how to create trance states and how to create programmed If your friend's behavior resembles that of a victim of SRA, you may want to seriously break off the engagement but try to be a supportive friend. Please consider this hard-to-accept truth, as well: The Network almost NEVER permits one of their slaves to marry outside the Network. So if she's a victim and you marry her, you may well be one, too. If that is true, your children will be the next generation of slaves to the Network, and you will have no idea what you did to them. I would gladly give my right arm to be wrong about this, Mattias. Good luck and Godspeed. As for the article and Sandra Miesel's contention that there were no actual sabbats or covens in the middle ages, I must respectfully disagree. I understand that a lack of records would make it seem that they did not exist, but covens have not and will not ever leave a paper trail because their activity is as evil as it gets. Linda Written by Linda "Christians do not have to apologise for the persecution of witches and I for one am not completely convinced that those who worship demons or the devil should not be persecuted." Nothing Jesus said ever condoned this kind of behavior. In fact, burning witches at the stake is nothing more than a modified version of Molech and Baal worship - nothing a REAL Christian would ever contemplate. Then again, REAL Christians wouldn't worship phallic Egyptian obelisks like the one in St. Peter's square either... Written by A. Magnus Magic is neutral. It is intentions of people involved which makes it evil or good. Red headed people were mostly killed by catholics. They are associated with magic and rh nehative blood - Irish people. I believe catholics just wanted to get rid of them both black or white witches. Power is the issue. And by the way prayer is what? I guess it is sort of magic because it is using another entity like Jesus, God or virgin Mary to help with health, material things...... You can only know the truth if you are at the top of any kind of religion. Written by Susannah I think that many Wiccans believe themselves to be witches and even call themselves witches. Are they witches.? Probably not. Demons are another matter entirely. They do exist. In the Old Testament God, together with the Archangel Micharl, Rafael, Uriel, Gabriel, Metatron and others cast Lucifer and his legions to...Earth! I personally know two demonologists/psychiatrists/and exorcists. One is a priest in the University, and lives in Austria. The other is a Jesuit in California who deprograms youths who survive satanic rituals. Both these men are learned and spiritual men. I don't believe that in today's world surrounded by drugs, war, pestilence,and pornography that an exorcist and/or a demonologist can be of use to his fellow men without the knowledge of Psychology and Psychiatry. In Italy we have an extraordinary exorcist, a Franciscan Gabriel Amorth who still performs exorcisms. He has also written several books on the subject. I lived in a 16th century Renaissance Villa in Florence. It was built in 1521. Beings, entities, creatures, and angels lived there as well. Even my small children noticed this. Guests who stayed overnight suddenly came to me, terror all over their demeanor. "We have been hearing a choir of children singing in Latin. We are wondering if you indeed have children practicing at 3:00 in the morning or are they phantasms?" What could I say? Their bedroom was near the wall of the chapel. It was the 30th of April - Walpurgisnacht. We often heard the choir of (castrati I think) sing before dawn. The nobility used to rise early, attend Mass and then go about their good and /or ugly businesses. I offered to put them in another room. To no avail. They took only what was necessary and asked me to book them at the Excelsior Hotel, a luxury hotel on the banks of the Arno river. They often came to visit but never ever stayed overnight. My dearest cousin was driven away as well . First by the choir and then by voices chanting. I myself heard what must have been a frenzied sexual coupling in the Great Hall of the Villa, called Villa of the Saracen. My first instinct was to fear for my soul, because at the time, I had been celibate out of choice for three years. I prayed only to Jesus and to his angels from my bedroom suite facing the crucifix for an interminable time and surrounded myself with light by turning on all the lights in the chandeliers and all the candles in my bedroom and in my library, which adjoined my bedroom. Ad Maijoram Dei Gloriam. My blog has details of three experiences: isabellavacani.blogspot,com Written by Contessa Isabella Vacani |
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