Medieval Witches

From Pagan Practice to Witchhunts

Oct 28, 2006 Paula Stiles

Medieval witches were more unusual than many may think. But once the witchcrazes took hold, they swept through Europe with a vengeance.

Witchcraft dates back to ancient times. The legendary Medea of the Argonauts, a demigoddess-turned-goddess who was revered in Corinth and on the Black Sea, is variously called a witch, a sorceress and a shaman by modern historians.

Because of its popularity in the pagan Ancient world, early Church fathers frowned on beliefs in witchcraft as survivals of pagan practice. Rather than persecute people for practicing witchcraft, they reprimanded those who accused and persecuted witches for holding onto outdated beliefs. Charlemagne, for example, gave the same penalty to those who accused and attacked suspected witches as witches had previously received: death. This was similar to our current hostile attitude toward modern witchcrazes in places like South Africa.

The Church's attitude did not change for a long time and we are still not certain why it did when it did. But it appears to have been connected to the rising obsession with heresy (the subject this week's blog) and increasingly unreal blood libel fantasies about out-groups like Jews and Muslims between the 11th and 14th centuries. The first notable legal case of witchcraft occurred in England in 1324. Alice Kyteler, a Norman-Irish noblewoman, was accused of witchcraft by her stepchildren after she cut them out of the inheritance they felt they deserved.

Some later characteristics of witchcraft accusations first appeared in Dame Alice's case: she was accused of poisoning her victims (the fathers of her stepchildren) and sacrificing animals to advance her position; she was also accused of witchcraft after her accusers had lost against her in court. Dame Alice's case was an early example of how the legal charge of witchcraft, like slander, could become a way to use the legal system against one's rivals.

Witchcraft did not really heat up as an accusation until near the very end of the Middle Ages, with the publication of Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) by the Dominican friar Heinrich Institoris in 1486. Incidentally, the Dominicans had been the primary inquisitors in the Templar Trial. This malignant book laid out in lurid detail how to detect, identify, interrogate and destroy witches. The book became almost a manual for prosecuting a witchcraze over the next two centuries.

Ironically, the Catholic Church during the Reformation continued to frown on witchcraft as an accusation, even banning the Malleus Maleficarum in 1490. Though heresy continued to preoccupy the Papacy (John XXII made witchcraft a heresy in 1320) and the Dominicans continued to participate in witchcraft trials, the dreaded Inquisition actually discouraged witchcrazes in places like Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries.

The witchcrazes appear to have been most savage and unrestrained in northern Europe, notably in the Holy Roman Empire and the British Isles. The English Puritans even spread beliefs in witchcraft to the New World, where they culminated, and were eventually discredited, in the trials at Salem in the Massachusetts Colony in 1692. Europe saw a similar drop in witchcraft beliefs and prosecution after 1700. By the 19th century, the witchcrazes were considered completely bogus and a flagrant historical example of malignant superstition, mass hysteria and fatal ignorance.

This was, unfortunately, far too late for the victims of the witchcrazes.

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