The Witches' Hammer

[Garbarsardar]

Hi all, and especially Halie Satanus, civitates as of yesterday to whom this post is dedicated. A secondary reason for it is the use of the term witchunt recently in the CVRIA; Garb. feels that some clarification is necessary although he will not open a thread on "lynch mobs" any time soon...



“A man or a woman who has a ghost or a familiar spirit shall be put to death; they shall be pelted with stones; their blood guilt shall be upon them.”

Leviticus 20:27

"The Jurors for o'r Sov'r: lord and Lady the King and Queen present:

That Abigaill Barker Wife of Ebenezer Barker of Andivor In & upon the Eighth day of September last in the Yeare aforesaid & divers other days & Times as well before as after Certaine detestable arts Called Witchcrafts & Sorcerys Wickedly Mallitously & felloniously hath used practised & Exersised at & in the Town of Andivor aforesaid in the County of Essex aforesaid upon & Against One Rose foster of Andivor by which Said Wicked Arts the Said Rose foster the day & year afors'd & divers others days & times both before & after, was & is Tortured Afflicted Consumed pined Wasted and Tormented Against the peace of o'r Sov'r lord & lady the King & Queen their Crowne & dignity & the laws & Acts in that Case made & provided."

Indictment v. Abigail Barker, Essex, in the Province of the Massachusetts bay 1692



1. Malleus Maleficarum

In 1486 Pope Innocent VIII appointed Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer Inquisitors of Germany;they co-authored the Malleus Maleficarum (Withche's Hammer) which was the first official diagnostic manual for the detection and tratment of witches and satan worshippers. The book became quite popular and made 19 editions from 1486 - 1760. The book contained three parts: Part I: Argument proving existence of witches, witchcraft;
Part II: Methods to ID (“diagnose”) a witch and clinical vignettes;
Part III: Legal forms of examining and sentencing a witch.
It was the first attempt to provide a systematic manual to counterbalance the arbitrary and vigilante ways by which discovery, examination and punishment of the witches was done in the past. In that sense Malleus Maleficarum can be considered as a dual purpose tool. First to bring extrajudicial processes under Church authority and second to repel accusations of a disregulated approach to sin.

According to the first part, the clinical manifestations of the Devil are the following:

• induce an evil love in a man for a woman, or ...woman for a man
• to plant hatred or jealously in anyone
• bewitch them so that a man cannot perform the genital act with a woman, or conversely a woman with a man
• to procure an abortion
• to cause some disease in any human organs
• to take away life
• to deprive them of reason
• Demons and witches may do “injury to the use of reason, and...tormenting of the inner perceptions…”
• “…they can see absent things as if they were present; they can turn the minds of men to inordinate love or hatred…”


The clinical case studies are quite revealing of the book's scope:

In the town of Ratisbon a certain young man who had an intrigue with a girl, wishing to leave her, lost his member; that is to say some glamour was cast over it so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his worry over this he went to a tavern to drink wine; and after he had sat there for a while he got into conversation with another woman who was there, and told her the cause of his sadness, explaining everything, and demonstrating in his body that it was so. The woman was astute, and asked whether he suspected anyone; and when he named such a one, unfolding the whole matter, she said: "If persuasion is not enough, you must use some violence, to induce to restore you to health." so in the evening the young man watched the way by which the witch was in the habit of going, and finding her, prayed her to restore to him the health of his body. and when she maintained that she was innocent and knew nothing about it, he fell upon her, and winding a towel tightly round her neck, choked her saying: "Unless you give me back my health, you shall die at my hands."Then she being unable to cry out, and with her face already swelling and growing black, said: "Let me go, and I will heal you." The young man then relaxed the pressure of the towel, and the witch touched him with her hand between the thighs, saying: "Now you have what you desire." And the young man, as he afterwards said, plainly felt, before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him by the mere touch of the witch [Kramer & Sprenger, 1485/1971, 119].

The particular case was even commented by Weyer a famous "criminal psychiatrist" of the time

I think that a demon dulls the senses and blinds the eyes of those persons who think that their testicles or all of their sexual organs are removed by a charm; they seem to be bereft of the organs for a while and then to be made whole again. In these cases, the nerves of the testes and pudenda can be drawn back to the point of origin by the power and skill of Satan.We often see this in incurable diseases...But whin a demon is at work, loss of life need not be feared and the underlying natural cause is not permanent.[Weyer, 1583, 323-3]

In the third part the forms of examination and extracting confession are presented:
“…common justice demands that a witch should not be condemned to death unless she is convicted by her own confession.”
“…direct or indirect evidence of the fact, or the legitimate production of witnesses…she is to be exposed to questions and torture to extort a confession of her crimes.”
The Judge should “not be too quick” to examination, for the Devil will render the accused “so insensible to the pains of torture that she will sooner be torn limb from limb than confess any of the truth.”
If a confession is obtained under torture, the accused is “conducted to another place, that he may confirm it and certify that it was not due alone to the force of the torture.”

As we see there is not only a full justification of torture, but also a requirement reminding us of Orwell's 1984 that the accused have to accept that torture was not the reason of the confession. If the heretic was repentant, penance was determined by religious authority: Imprisonment in monastery, pilgrimage, loss of property; execution was also an option. If condemned (ie, not repentant), heretic turned over to secular authority and burned.




2. Why this, why then?

Although the origins of the witch hunt can be traced to literal interpretations of biblical texts and the demonization of political or social dissent as happened in the Inquisitions the pursuit itself probably originated amongst common people in Switzerland and in Croatia that brought cases to civil and not religious courts. The Inquisition was not involved in the various witch hunts at least not in a systematic way. There are cases such as the one of the Madonna Oriente in Milan in 1384 but the religious courts were rather ambivalent towards such accusations. The witch-hunt was widespread mostly in Protestant countries in Europe.
Many suspects were poor, uneducated women who lived in towns, villages or rural areas and others who may have been practitioners of natural healing or midwifery; Christian authorities in Europe (both Catholic and Protestant) regarded any such expression of non-Christian spirituality with intense paranoia and hatred. There is a suggestion of a highly elevated gender ratio in the witch hunt from 1:2 to 1:50 according to some sources but while it seems that it was a gender related issue there is no compelling evidence that I was caused by gender discrimination. However statements like the following were abundant in the trials "… not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex." or "The Devil uses them so, because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations." It is easy to understand how those lines were not far from earlier Christian preconceptions:

The term witch refers to the female anyway. It is no coincidence. The female body is the source and focal point of sin, by gross misinterpretation of the scriptures:
Genesis 3,1-16 describes the fall of Adam and Eve. Eve was seduced by the serpent and Eve in turn made Adam eat of the apple. They are both reprimanded by God, who says to Eve: “I will multiply your pains in childbirth. You shall give birth to your children in pain. You will long for your husband, but he will lord it over you.” Women's subjection to men was just an example of how the hardships of life are punishment for sin: just as Adam has to till the soil in the sweat of his brow (Genesis 3,17-19).Instead it was interpreted as a specific and inescapable curse by God:
The anti-women rhetoric started especially with the Latin Fathers. Tertullian (155-245 AD) was one of the worst. Listen to this master piece:

(“Every woman should be ....) walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve,-the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition.
"In pains and in anxieties dost thou bear (children), woman; and toward thine husband (is) thy inclination, and he lords it over thee."
And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too.”

* “You are the devil's gateway!
* you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree!
* you are the first deserter of the divine law!
* you are she who persuaded him (Adam) whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack!
* You destroyed so easily God's image, man!
* On account of what you deserved-that is, death-even the Son of God had to die!”

“And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?”

Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, book 1, chap 1.

The same attitude we find with Ambrosiaster (4th cent. AD). He manages to combine many prejudices against women in one and the same passage:

“ Women must cover their heads because they are not the image of God. They must do this as a sign of their subjection to authority and because sin came into the world through them. Their heads must be covered in church in order to honor the bishop. In like manner they have no authority to speak because the bishop is the embodiment of Christ. They must thus act before the bishop as before Christ, the judge, since the bishop is the representative of the Lord. Because of original sin they must show themselves submissive.”
“How can anyone maintain that woman is the likeness of God when she is demonstrably subject to the dominion of man and has no kind of authority? For she can neither teach nor be a witness in a court nor exercise citizenship nor be a judge-then certainly not exercise dominion.”

And of course, finally in the Malleus Maleficarum:

“What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colours.”
“It should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives”.
“(When Eve answered the serpent) she showed that she doubted and had little faith in the word of God. All this is indicated by the etymology of the word; for Femina (Latin for "woman") comes from Fe (=faith) and Minus (=less) since she is ever weaker to hold and preserve the faith”.

The Malleus Maleficarum , p. 43
The most important form of evidence in many of the witch trials was attained by "ordeal" by methods very similar or in cases identical with the ones prescribed in the Malleus. Torture methods including hot pincers, the thumbscrew, varied by region and the inclinations of the local examiners. Most witch trials were held before secular courts, often brought forth by self- appointed "Witchfinder Generals" as Matthew Hopkins, who claimed to be able to identify a witch using techniques such as witches' marks.
Although the burning of witches is a much publicized image and ritual, probably alluding to the Auto da Fe most witches were executed in a variety of different ways with hanging the most prominent amongst them. According to George Ryley Scott:

"The peculiar beliefs and superstitions attached to or associated with witchcraft caused those who were suspected of practising the craft to be extremely likely to be subjected to tortures of greater degree than any ordinary heretic or criminal. More, certain specific torments were invented for use against them."

The medical ideas of this era, especially those concerned with mental illness are also related to the formation of the witch concept. In the second century AD there was already a spiritual/ demonological basis of human ailments and suffering, at the same time centers of learning became religious institutions. This trend cumulated in the late 4th century when the study of medicine was confined in monasteries. As a consequence mental illness separated from medicine. That resolved the early Christian dilemma if all mental illness should be attributable to devil, given variable religious content. By 7th century sectarian or classicist (ie, pagan) learning, reading was actively rejected and study of psychiatry was study of devil, his cohorts, means, etc.

There is a whole set of theories put forth to explain the phenomenon from illness theories variously related to physical and mental conditions of people involved in the hunts to social theories that argue that witch hunts were therapeutically beneficial for society, since they rid society of its troublesome marginalized folk, like the old and the poor.
However no theory can account for a majority of the known cases, and it seems that for a clear understanding of the witch hunt psychological, political, social or even geographical input should be taken into consideration.


3. Salem:The last chapter?

January 20, 1692, Salem. Nine year old Elizabeth Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams begun to exhibit strange behavior. Problems included seizures, trance-like states and screaming. Shortly thereafter, several other Salem girls, like Ann Putnam Jr., started to exhibit similar behavior. Unable to find a physical cause for the symptoms and behavior, Salem's village doctor Griggs concluded that the girls were under the influence of Satan. Pushed to identify the source of their troubles, the girls named three women as witches, including Tituba, Parris' slave. On February 29, warrants were issued for their arrest. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good maintained their innocence, but Tituba confessed and even went so far as to claim that there was a conspiracy of witches at work in the town. Magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin examined Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne for "witches' teats."

Spectral evidence, based on the assumption that the Devil could assume the "specter" of an innocent person started to be used. First session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, during which Bridget Bishop was the first to be pronounced guilty of witchcraft and condemned to death. Bridget Bishop was hanged in Salem, the first official execution of the Salem witch trials.

After 20 people had been executed in the Salem witch hunt, Thomas Brattle wrote a letter criticizing the trials. This letter made a real impact on Governor Phips, who ordered that reliance on spectral and intangible evidence end.

The last witch in Europe was killed in 1792 in Switzerland by decapitation. However in many parts of the world as India, Africa and Mexico, witch hunting practices are still in use:

Ramarayi is a remote tribal hamlet, about 8 km from the national highway near the cahsew trading centre of Palasa. Till last week, it hardly attracted any attention though men in the village, belonging to the Savara tribe, have been dying frequently. Eight men died this year. Believing that a 58- year-old tribal, Dalesu, was a sorcerer who caused the death, four tribals, all in the age group of 20 years, done him to death on November 21. They were arrested by the police on November 30.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2...s/0404201f.htm



Sources:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5218373/
http://jmgainor.homestead.com/files/PU/Inq/mi.htm
http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witc...s/BoySal1.html
http://www.witchway.net/times/times.html
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, (Vol 1, 1888), pp. 494 - 495, Henry Charles Lea, Harbor Press 1955
Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, Beguines and Beghards, 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation

...and definitely visit this site: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/97/salem/

[Halie Satanus]

Amazing Garb. i'm begining to think you may be using a little Magick yourself,considering the amount of work you put in to these little jem's. So before this thred turn's serious, and recent event's encroach.or the ghost of Macarthy is envoked.i made some amendments.

According to the first part, the clinical manifestations which can lead to Ostrakon or prove devil worship are the following:

• induce an evil love in a man for a woman, or ...woman for a man.or a teletubby for a fraggle.
• to plant hatred or lust in anyone, who post's in "say cheese."
• bewitch them so that a man cannot perform the genital act with a woman, or conversely a woman with a man, or any fluffy woodland creature
• to deprive any member of donut's and Twcrack.
• Demons and witches may do “injury to the use of reason, and...tormenting of the inner perceptions especially in the Ethos.
• “…they can see absent things as if they were present; they can turn the minds of men to inordinate love or confusion,we call them atheist's
. The love of, Spam, Flame, Trolls, or just being heinously naive and socially inept.when posting on the Twc.

Hmm it's funny when i was a kid this kind of subject was everywhere, but it seem's now that perhap's youngster's are more cynical, i guess everyone thinks Bill Gates is the devil, or Islam or the usa. Ah well give me good old Nick any day, he may not be as much fun as Bush, but he's got all the best band's. Oh and if you get a chance check out the film "the Crucible"
:devil:

[Ringeck]

[The number of dead is not possible to be estimated with any accuracy. A modest estimate would be no less than 300.000. Accounts differ terribly on this, and there are strong disputes between Catholics and anti catholics around the exact number.]

I strongly suggest you check these numbers more thoroughly. The last time I checked the subject, Hutton and Levack were presenting the actual references Europe-wide (around 12000) to their max numbers of respectively 40,000, and 60,000. Neither of these scholars have much to do with catholicism.

You also need to decide whether you are talking about catholic witch-trials or protestant witch-trials...the two are very different beasts - and that the protestand witch-trials, by far the most prolific, were primarily run by the secular authorities. Perhaps it would also do to comment that the Malleus Malleficarum has been on the Index of Forbidden Books list (along with the De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, until the De Re got off it in 1835 ) since 1490? Put there by the Inquisition itself? And that while the Summis desiderantes appoint Kramer and Sprenger to combat witchcraft in northern germany, the book was not really "ordered" by anyone - the authors' attached a forged document from the University of Cologne to the preface, but this was vehemently denied as being accurate by the four alleged signatories of the document, before the University condemned it themselves.

Even a quick wikipedia (gah!) search could have gained you some insight into this. I'm all for taking a stance against the witch-craze (happily being practiced in muslim, christian and pagan Africa today, by the way), but get the facts straight.

[Garbarsardar]

Excuse me, but I cannot see your point.

I clearly stated that the numbers are disputed, I never stated that the Vatican ordered the Malleus Maleficarum-although there is no evidence either way.

And I used the middle figures in a long series of contrdictory reports, exactly for the reason to avoid posts like yours. Wiki, that you advocate states 30.000 only for the Spanish Inquisition.

But this is not about numbers, or about the backpedalling of the Vatican on Malleus or about Salem or the protestants.The post was about the reasons of religious procecution be it catholic or protestant.

My principal interest is the logic that led to the inquisitions and not a barter on statistics like the one the Vatican is recently attempting:

The church does not deny its responsibility for atrocities committed by Catholics in its name. In 2000 the Pope publicly apologised for the unnecessary "violence" used.
But he is not keen to be made to repent for sins the Vatican can prove it did not commit.
"Before seeking pardon, it is necessary to have a precise knowledge of the facts," he wrote in a letter released yesterday, in which he expressed his "strong appreciation" of the research.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, a Vatican theologian, said: "You can't ask pardon for deeds which aren't there."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story...239763,00.html

It reminds me of the arguments of Holocaust deniers. "You can't ask pardon for deeds which aren't there." as if the Vatican was planning to ask pardon from each one of the victims anyway. What exactly is not there? Take the lowest figure: 30.000. Is that enough to warrant an apology?

Inquisition protestant or Catholic was an undeniable crime against humanity and any number crunching cannot deny the fact.
If you want to play with numbers you can find all sorts of extremes:

Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France.

-- Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403.

The Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229), under Popes Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX., was one of the bloodiest tragedies in human history. … The number of Albigenses that perished in the twenty years’ war is estimated at from one to two millions.

-- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XIV.

Need I speak to you of the thirty years’ war in Germany, which was mainly instigated by the Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protestants of the right of free religious worship, secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? Or of the Irish rebellion, of the inhuman butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by the Spanish papists? In short, it is calculated by authentic historians, that papal Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight millions of the human race in order to establish her unfounded claims to religious dominion (in Brownlee’s “Popery an enemy to civil liberty”, p. 105).

Concerning the Irish rebellion, John Temple's True Impartial History of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, written in 1644, puts the number of victims at 300,000, but other estimates are much smaller. Some estimates are larger:

In addition to the Jesuit or Catholic atrocities of this century already enumerated with some particulars, they massacred 400 Protestants at Grossoto, in Lombardy, July 19th, 1620; are said to have destroyed 400,000 Protestants in Ireland, in 1641, by outright murder, and cold, and hunger, and drowning; …

-- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

There perished under pope Julian 200,000 Christians: and by the French massacre, on a moderate calculation, in 3 months, 100,000. Of the Waldenses there perished 150,000; of the Albigenses, 150,000. There perished by the Jesuits in 30 years only 900,000. The Duke of Alva destroyed by the common hangman alone, 36,000 persons; the amount murdered by him is set down by Grotius at 100,000! There perished by the fire, and tortures of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy, and France 150,000. … In the Irish massacres there perished 150,000 Protestants!

To sum up the whole, the Roman Catholic church has caused the ruin, and destruction of a million and a half of Moors in Spain; nearly two millions of Jews in Europe. In Mexico, and South America, including the islands of Cuba and St. Domingo, fifteen millions of Indians, in 40 years, fell victims to popery. And in Europe, and the East Indies, and in America, 50 millions of Protestants, at least, have been murdered by it!

Thus the church of Rome stands before the world, “the woman in scarlet, on the scarlet colored Beast.” A church claiming to be Christian, drenched in the blood of sixty-eight millions, and five hundred thousand human beings!

-- W. C. Brownlee, Letters in the Roman Catholic controversy, 1834, pp. 347-348.

or as you eloquently put it:

This is certainly a fine little yarn. However, it belongs in the field of conspiracy theory, not the study of history or archaeology. Feel free to believe it, if you wish, but do not expect me, or anyone who have actually studied history to take you seriously.

Now, I suggest that you read my post more carefully and without prejudice. Not everyone in this world is interested in Catholic bashing or Catholic persecution complex.



:original:

[Ringeck]

I think it's difficult to have any catholic complex without being catholic. Or religious at all, for that matter.

I read your post quite carefully in the first place, but your answer makes me wonder. I assumed you were talking about the Malleus Maleficarum and Witch Trials as related to the Inquistition. This means Catholicism, since there is no protestant Inquisition (no more than there was a Nazi Inquisition called the Gestapo). Alternately, it could be Protestant witch trials, which were run by secular authorities in the name of their state churches. Since the MM was not accepted (indeed, it was condemned) by the catholic church, what is its relevance for the catholic sect as a whole? The spanish Inquisition was primarily interested in heretics - not witches. What is its relevance to the MM? The theological logic of the Inquisition cannot be traced from the Malleus Maleficarum.

I assume you want to use recent, corrected, secular scholarship for the numbers, which indeed you present. The recent writings on this aren't even close to the number you suggested, so why use it?

People have been persecuting and killing each other over religion and ideology for millennia, and are still doing so today - all over the world, in all cultures, to greater or lesser extent. Certainly that is wrong from my perspective, even if it had been one death only - but that is secondary to my argument against the informations you presented. I am interested in people using recent, more thorough scholarship, not 19th century ideological texts, in their arguments. This is what I critizise about your post, not its religio-ideological slant one way or the other. Present a theme that it is possible to relate to, not a jumble of different medieval-early modern/catholic-protestant/centralist-localist conflicts.

What is it you want to present?

Witch Trials? Try 16th-18th century protestant countries - the sources of most of the trials. Or present-day Africa.

The Inquisition? Select a period, or later a region. It was a very varied beast.

Religious persecution? Look outside the door of practically anyone in conflict-filled areas. And quite a few non-conflict filled areas.

And heavens, no hard feelings. I just cannot see exactly where your argument is, or what it is.

[Garbarsardar]

This is what I critizise about your post, not its religio-ideological slant one way or the other. Present a theme that it is possible to relate to, not a jumble of different medieval-early modern/catholic-protestant/centralist-localist conflicts.

I'm so happy that you don't criticize my post of being a religio-ideologic slant.

I am interested in people using recent, more thorough scholarship, not 19th century ideological texts, in their arguments.

Which is the 19th century ideological text I used in my first post? Ambrosiaster? the Malleus? Tertullian? or Leviticus?
The only text you can possibly refer to is Lea, and this I used only to show the existant controversy.

On the other hand I'm very sorry that you are unable to relate to the theme of the three factors regarding witchunt that I proposed and which in my opinion span all witchunt. Malleus Maleficarum is not a text very different from the religious misconceptions that both preceded it and survived it. The same trail of thought encompassed many manifestations of the trend to demonize the "different" and create internal enemies, with the final aim to preserve what authority conceived as order.

And heavens, no hard feelings. I just cannot see exactly where your argument is, or what it is.

[Ringeck]

I assumed you were accusing me of accusing you of being anti-Catholic. Which I was not - I was critizising the contextual way you were using the MM text.

I
Which is the 19th century ideological text I used in my first post?

Second post, and it should be fairly apparent.

If you really want to understand the witchhunt phenomenon, I'd suggest reading up on some cultural anthropology. Witchhunting, or conditions resembling it, is a widespread concept worldwide, and ties in to many different human concepts -religion, ideology, local custom, superstition, etc. It's not spesifically christian, muslim, or rastafarian. It is, sadly, typically human. Contemporary Western examples would be the U.S. Kern County preeschool abuse craze in 1982, in England the Cleveland child abuse scare of 1987, in Norway the Bjugn preschool abuse craze in northern Norway in 1992. There are many other examples. The mechanisms are uncanningly similar to the descriptions and records we have of early modern witch tribunals, from the methods of interrogation to the information volunteered and the leading questions being asked. These three are all well documented, western secular examples. Today, in areas all over the world, witch crazes with religious or cultural "explanations" are very common, especially in Africa, South America, and India.

[Garbarsardar]

I assumed you were accusing me of accusing you of being anti-Catholic. Which I was not - I was critizising the contextual way you were using the MM text.
Second post, and it should be fairly apparent.

But on the second post I already state that this is an example of the "extremes". Please make up your mind. Am I guilty of false numbers as you implied in your first post, use of antiquated sources as you imply in the last, or Generalised Feyrabend Disorder?

[therussian]

This might be off topic, but of all the European States, only one never burnt, decapitated, or in any way harmed "witches". That was Venice. This fact can be explained in many ways. First of all, Venice had always been a secular state. Sure, it's Doge's built countless churches, the most glorious of them being San Marco, but it was not influenced by the West. It was the East, Byzantium that shaped most of Venice's history. As we know, there are little, if any references of witches being burned in the East, in comparison with the Catholic countries. Venice did not entagle itself with Western theology. Any disputes over religion were purely about influence, the main being the Patriarchate of....er...forgot, but it was a real plague to the Venitians throughout their history. Venice was not a spiritual state, it was a secular capitalist state, the "West" of its time, which did not believe that killing people just because they were supposedly "possessed" was either good, or nessesary. It did not get itself caught up in any Catholic doctrine, and even disobeyed the Pope on several occasions. On one occasion, they even did something that Catholics thought impossible, they defied the Interdict.


Just thought I'd point that out.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

But on the second post I already state that this is an example of the "extremes". Please make up your mind. Am I guilty of false numbers as you implied in your first post, use of antiquated sources as you imply in the last

Ringeck is quite correct. You're 'guilty' of false numbers (eg those from Lea) because, in a post supposedly about the Malleus Maleficarum and the Witch Hunts, you veer off into a totally separate subject - the Inquisitiorial persecution of heresy. Witchcraft and heresy were two totally different things. The numbers you gave from Lea are numbers relating to the persecution of heresy: a largely medieval and Catholic phenomenon. But the persecution of witchcraft was a largely Protestant and Early Modern affair. You've muddled the two up and made it seem as though the numbers Lea cites were witches executed (they aren't) and as though the Catholic Inquisitions were heavily involved in the persecution of supposed witches (they weren't).

As Ringeck points out, the Catholic Church quickly recognised that the authors of the Malleus were kooks and condemned the book. When one of its authors, Heinrich Kramer, was investigating 57 suspected witches at Innsbruck, the local bishop became so alarmed at his methods, suspicious of his theology and disgusted at his fascination with the witch's sexual behaviour that he halted the trial and expelled Kramer. In 1487 Kramer tried to get his book officially approved by the Church by submitting it to the theologians of Cologne University. They rejected it as a collection of superstitions and sexual obsessions. Kramer was forced to forge an imprimatur from them to get his work published. The Malleus was then banned by the Catholic Church in 1490 and in 1538 the Spanish Inquisition repeated the rejection of Kramer and Sprenger's theology and methods.

The book remained popular, however, largely because it makes for lurid reading. And it definitely continued to be used by some Catholic witch-obsessives and - in particular - by Protestant witch hunters. So it did contribute to the witch hysteria of the early modern period, but largely in the Protestant countries where that hysteria flourished.

Your posts have muddled up the medieval Catholic attacks on heresy with the later largely Protestant obsession with witches.

[Garbarsardar]

What you say does not refute the fact that the ideas presented in the text of Malleus are common in Theological and quasi-scientific diatribes of the era, and much before it. My post was about the reasons behind this form of addresing a multitude of phaenomena ranging from sin to psychopathology. And that is common both in the Catholic inquisitions and the protestant witchunts. If I had suspected the whole affair will degenerate into a catholic-protestant bashing I would leave all "questionnable" references out. I had the idea for this topic because because of the recent use of the term in the CURIA; had I known how hot is the issue for some, I would treat it more carefully.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

What you say does not refute the fact that the ideas presented in the text of Malleus are common in Theological and quasi-scientific diatribes of the era, and much before it.

I had no intention of 'refuting' that or any desire to. All I was pointing out was that your initial post went about doing this in what seemed a rather confused way. For example, after describing how the methodology in the Malleus virtually required the torture of suspected witches, you went on to say;

'If the heretic was repentant, penance was determined by religious authority: Imprisonment in monastery, pilgrimage, loss of property; execution was also an option. If condemned (ie, not repentant), heretic turned over to secular authority and burned.'

So you've jumped directly from the methodology outlined by Kramer and Sprenger for witches to how earlier heretics were punished, as though the two were the same. The (largely Protestant) persecution of the former certainly developed out of the (largely Catholic) latter, but they are not even close to being the same thing at all.

You then launch into a brief history of the development of the medieval and renaissance Catholic inquisitions; giving the false impression that the Witch Craze (supposedly the focus of your post) was substantially the product of these inquisitions, when in fact it was not. Despite the fact your post was meant to be about the largely Protestant Witch Craze phenomenon of the Early Modern Period, much of your post dwells on the medieval Catholic inquisitions' pursuit of heresy. Virtually none of your post discusses or even touches on early modern Protestant theology or demonology, how witchcraft became a civil crime in Protestant countries or the early modern social and political dynamics of the period drove the witch hysteria.

The result is a post which takes a largely early modern and Protestant phenomenon and discusses it almost exclusively in relation to medieval and Catholic institutions and ideas. Which is ... well ... slightly odd. Sure, the medieval attitudes and responses to heresy did give rise to an extent to the later, Protestant attitudes and responses to 'witches', but that's about where the relevance of most of what you've laid out begins and ends.

Many early modern Protestant 'witch hunters' who drove the witch hunt hysteria certainly did (indirectly) inherit aspects of medieval anti-feminism, for example, but none of them would have been terribly familiar with the works of Catholic Church Fathers like Tertullian or Ambrose. And about 80% of the people executed for 'witchcraft' between 1500 and 1800 were women, but 20% were men. In places, only women were killed. In other places (Finland and Iceland, for example) it was only men. In other places, it was about 50/50.

You make some other strange assertions. For example, under 'Pathology' you write:

'The second factor is the medical ideas of this era, especially those concerned with mental illness. In the second century AD there was already a spiritual/ demonological basis of human ailments and suffering, at the same time centers of learning became religious institutions.'

Er, this happened in 'the second century AD'? When Christianity was still a persecuted 'religio illicita'? How did a tiny, illegal cult from Judea manage to take over all centres of learning this early? How did they manage to extinguish naturalistic explanations for mental illness while they were still a small underground cult?

'This trend cumulated in the late 4th century when the study of medicine was confined in monasteries.'

It was?

'As a consequence mental illness separated from medicine.'

Medieval attitudes towards mental illness actually differed very little from its Greek and Roman antecedents.

'By 7th century sectarian or classicist (ie, pagan) learning, reading was actively rejected ...'

Pardon?!

'The first criteria for Heresy include what today would be classified as mental health problems:
Error in reasoning
Error must be in matters concerning faith
Accused must be of Catholic faith
Accused still professes some Christian belief
Accused obstinately holds to the error'

Leaving aside the fact that you are now back to discussing heresy rather than witchcraft, you seem to have misinterpreted these criteria. 'Error in reasoning', for example, does not mean the person was delusional, incoherent or out of touch with reality, it means that they held religious beliefs which were based on flawed logic. A person who was clearly insane or delusional would quickly be dismissed by an inquisition - heresy required coherent (if 'incorrect' or 'flawed') reason. Inquisitions did encounter cases of people who openly declared themselves to be Jesus Christ or God himself. They dismissed these people as being simply mad.

Then you use Lea's figures on the numbers of heretics executed between 1000 and 1500, which is odd considering your post was supposedly about the Witch Hunts of 1500-1800. The commonly accepted figures for the numbers killed in the Witch Hunts are about 40-60,000.

Finally, you give a link to some modern research into the numbers of heretics killed, followed by a site which gives a grab-bag of quotes and arguments from rabid anti-Catholic bigots and then some sites which actually are about the topic of your post: the Witch Hunts.

All in all, a pretty confusing and/or confused post.

My post was about the reasons behind this form of addresing a multitude of phaenomena ranging from sin to psychopathology. And that is common both in the Catholic inquisitions and the protestant witchunts.

But, for some reason and despite the fact the post was supposedly about the Protestant witch hunts, your post seems to focus almost exclusively on the medieval Catholic persecution of heretics, mingled with references to the witch hunts in such a way that it certainly seemed that you thought they were the same thing.

If I had suspected the whole affair will degenerate into a catholic-protestant bashing I would leave all "questionnable" references out.

I'm not a Protestant, a Catholic, a Christian of any kind nor do I have any religious or spiritual beliefs at all. But I have studied heresy, magic and the Witch Craze in some detail and the way these three things get muddled up is a pet peeve of mine. They are related but separate phenomena and are confused way too much already. If you want to write about the medieval war against the great heresies then fine. If you want to write about the Protestant witch hunts, then fine. If you even want to write about how the two were psychologically and theologically related, then fine. But there are some important historical distinctions which should be made clear in discussing these subjects and to not do so simply perpetuates some hoary old myths and prejudices.

[Ringeck]

Ah well, get out of bed and there is Thiudareiks, making my points better than myself.

For a study of the contemporary western Witch Craze, I suggest Jean LaFontaine (1998) : The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Child Abuse. London:HMSO 1994 or Philip Jenkins: Intimate Enemies, New York:Aldine de Gruyter (1992). Both point to the similarities between the secular processes with minimal religious overtones in the 1980s and the early modern processes, sanctioned by state churches. Interesting reading. There are some similar studies on the culture of finger-pointing and similar processes from very non-western cultures (Greap Leap Maoist China and Khmer Rouge academic-hunt in Cambodia) published as well (I read them years ago) but I cannot track down the references right now.

Now, if this debate is to continue, I suggest we clearly separate the different concepts and time periods, attempting to study them seperately.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

Ah well, get out of bed and there is Thiudareiks, making my points better than myself.

Aw shucks! Nice to see you back here by the way - I haven't noticed you around TWC for a while.

Still on the reading list about 'witch hunts' generally and the (literal) demonisation of various groups as a recurring theme in European culture, probably the best book to read is still Norman Cohn's Europe's Inner Demons. Cohn looks at how the same accusations have been made about various marginal or closed groups throughout European history. Over and over again accusations of sorcery, orgies, ritual murder, child murder, well poisoning etc were made about various groups: the early Christians, the Jews, heretics, witches, gypsies, Protestants, Catholics etc etc. He examines the origins of and links between these periodic hysterias and what may trigger them. The 'Satanic Ritual Abuse' hysterias of the 1980s and 1990s, fuelled by dubious 'repressed memory therapy', shows that these 'inner demons' are still very much with us.

A good introduction to the subject of magic and sorcery in the Medieval Period, I'd recommend Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages. Kieckhefer shows that far from bringing automatic howls of 'Witchcraft!', magic was an accepted part of the everyday world in the Middle Ages. Using magic per se was not a problem, but the uses to which it was put could be. Like any tool, magic was considered something which could be used for good or evil and it was only the latter use that was condemned, not because it was magic but because of its evil intents and effects. Folk magic was regarded as being no problem, so long as it wasn't used to harm. Priests and clergy happily used charms and spells and many medieval Christian prayers and rituals in popular religion weren't too far from magical formulae anyway.

The late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century, however, saw a shift in theological attitudes towards at least some forms of magic and the idea that some magic was diabolical/infernal in nature began to appear. That gave rise, in its most extreme forms, to versions of theology and demonology such as that found in the Malleus and eventually became the dominant strand of theology amongst the Protestants witch hunters of the post-medieval period.

Books on the actual Witch Craze vary from solid scholarly works through some books skewed by various political agendas to stuff that panders to the prejudices and misconceptions of certain schools of feminism ('It was a holocaust of WOMEN!!!') and neo-pagans ('It was a holocaust of PAGANS!!!'). Brian Levack's The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe is one that is definitely worth reading. Any book that talks about 'the Burning Times', cites figures like 'nine million women killed', claims that the witches were closet pagans or traditional healers, prominent lesbians or proto-feminists probably isn't. Unfortunately, many bookshops stock stuff like Anne Barstow's sloppy, badly researched and ideologically warped Witchcraze rather than less lurid but more scholarly works.

[Garbarsardar]

I see your point, ThiudareiksGunthigg and I edited the first post as to lessen the confusion between inquisition and witch hunt.

[Ringeck]

Aw shucks! Nice to see you back here by the way - I haven't noticed you around TWC for a while.

Thanks. Lot to do at work, in the living history scene (we're conducting some extensive weapons vs armour tests with high medieval equipment), and in my "game time" I'm playtesting Europa Universalis III, so...I've been a slacker on the Imperia Romana team lately as well. Bad boy.

[edit: I want to make it clear that I do not advocate the use of wikipedia for the checking of any historical hypothesis that isn't very established fact. Wiki, sadly, has a really low standard of accuracy. Which was why there was a "gah" after my mention of it :original: ]

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

I see your point, ThiudareiksGunthigg and I edited the first post as to lessen the confusion between inquisition and witch hunt.

It still contains some quite misleading information though - you still claim Christians somehow had control of centres of learning in the Second Century, which is a historical impossibility. You still maintain that there was some sharp disjunction between Greco-Roman and medieval views on mental illness, which is flatly incorrect. And you still claim classical learning was discouraged in the medieval period, which is totally wrong.

And, while your post is supposedly about the Witch Hunts of the early modern period, there is very little to nothing in it which is actually about that period at all; which is pretty weird, considering that's when they occured.

[King Henry V]

This might be off topic, but of all the European States, only one never burnt, decapitated, or in any way harmed "witches". That was Venice. This fact can be explained in many ways. First of all, Venice had always been a secular state. Sure, it's Doge's built countless churches, the most glorious of them being San Marco, but it was not influenced by the West. It was the East, Byzantium that shaped most of Venice's history. As we know, there are little, if any references of witches being burned in the East, in comparison with the Catholic countries. Venice did not entagle itself with Western theology. Any disputes over religion were purely about influence, the main being the Patriarchate of....er...forgot, but it was a real plague to the Venitians throughout their history. Venice was not a spiritual state, it was a secular capitalist state, the "West" of its time, which did not believe that killing people just because they were supposedly "possessed" was either good, or nessesary. It did not get itself caught up in any Catholic doctrine, and even disobeyed the Pope on several occasions. On one occasion, they even did something that Catholics thought impossible, they defied the Interdict.


Just thought I'd point that out.

That is because of Venice's position and history: it was a group of islands, cut off from the political whirlpool of the mainland and rarely was its sovereignty threatened. It had never been dominated by another power (unless you count Byzantium, though that was very loose) and so had a great feeling of independence. Any attempts by the Holy Roman Empire or the Catholic Church to bring Venice under their domination were swiftly thwarted. Though the city was very pious, they would never allow a foreign power to dictate to them what to do. The position of the Church in Venice was only ever strictly spiritual, thus they were never able to exercise the control and influence that they did elsewhere.