[Sociology] The Witches Hammer

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Author: Garbarsardar
Original Thread: The Witches Hammer

The Witches Hammer

“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/