Witches & Liberty
I've been enjoying reading Napoleon's Buttons (citation below), sort of the history of the world through the eyes of a couple of organic chemists. More later when I get to the book note.
Anyway, what follows is a longish quotation that I found lots of resonance with for some reason — perhaps because it's US Independence Day and many of us are thinking deeply about independence and liberty, particularly in view of the mendacious Bush administration.
Anyway again, this is a short but spirited summary of witchcraft in the Western world. Rather than write a rumination afterwards, let me inculcate a few background thoughts into your heads as a preamble to your reading:
- It's been fashionable lately to blame hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks on gay and lesbian people;
- Further, gay and lesbian people are generally considered to be in league with Satan, and persecuted for what they are;
- Note the role of corrupt government officials, working in concert but probably not actually conspiring with the Inquisition to fan the flames of hysteria for financial gain;
- Reflect on how the hysteria grew in tiny increments, until it reached the point that entire towns were destroyed;
- Note in particular that the problem was considered so threatening that special action outside the law was widely considered necessary;
- Consider the special role of torture as a vital adjunct to solving the "problem"; and
- Think of all those people who ask, usually in reference to their religion: could all those people have been wrong?
Now: witchcraft!
Before 1350 witchcraft was regarded as the practice of sorcery, a method of trying to control nature in one's own interest. Using charms in the belief that they could protect crops or people, casting spells to influence or provide, and invoking spirits were commonplace. In most parts of Europe sorcery was an accepted part of life, and witchcraft was regarded as a crime only if harm resulted. Victims of maleficium, or evil-doing by means of the occult, could seek legal recourse from a witch, but if they were unable to prove their case, they themselves became liable for a penalty and trial costs. By this method idle accusations were discouraged. Rarely were witches put to death. Witchcraft was neither an organized religion nor an organized opposition to religion. It was not even organized. It was just part of folklore.
But around the middle of the fourteenth century a new attitude toward witchcraft became apparent. Christianity was not opposed to magic, provided it was sanctioned by the church and known as a miracle. But magic conducted outside the Church was considered the work of Satan. Witches were in league with the devil. The Inquisition, a court of the Roman Catholic Church originally established around 1233 to deal with heretics—mainly in southern France—expanded its mandate to deal with witchcraft. Some authorities have suggested that once heretics had been virtually eliminated, the Inquisition, needing new victims, set its sights on sorcery. The number of potential witches throughout Europe was large; the potential source of income for the inquisitors, who shared with local authorities the confiscated properties and assets of the condemned, would also have been great. Soon witches were being convicted not for performing evil deeds but for supposedly entering into a pact with the devil.
This crime was considered so horrendous that, by the mid-fifteenth century, ordinary rules of law no longer applied to trials of witches. An accusation alone was treated as evidence. Torture was not only allowed, it was used routinely; a confession without torture was seen as unreliable—a view that seems strange today.
The deeds attributed to witches—orgiastic rituals, sex with demons, flying on broomsticks, child murdering, baby eating—were, for the most part, beyond rationality but were still fervently believed. About 90 percent of accused witches were women, and their accusers were just as likely also to be women as men. Whether so-called witch-hunts revealed an underlying paranoia aimed at women and female sexuality is still being argued. Wherever a natural disaster struck—a flood, a drought, a crop failure—no lack of witnesses would attest that some poor woman, or more likely women, had been seen cavorting with demons at a sabbat (or witches' gathering) or flying around the countryside with a familiar (a malevolent spirit in animal form, such as a cat) at their side.
The mania affected Catholic and Protestant countries alike. At the height of witch-hunt paranoia, from about 1500 to 1650, there were almost no women left alive in some Swiss villages. In regions of Germany there were some small villages where the whole population was burned at the stake. But in England and in Holland the witch craze never became as entrenched as in other parts of Europe. Torture was not allowed under English law, although suspected witches were subjected to the water test. Trussed and thrown into a pond, a true witch floated, to be retrieved and properly punished—by hanging. If the accused sank and drowned, she was considered to have been innocent of the charge of witchcraft—a comfort to the family but little use to the victim herself.
[Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson, "Napoleon's Buttons : How 17 Molecules Changed History." New York : Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2003. pp. 224—226]
2 Responses
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Thursday, 5 July 2007 at 17.09
Permalink
From what I've seen, it's been fashionable among bullies who use their religion as a club for beating up others, a few crackpot clerics, right-wing-media blather merchants and the occasional power-hungry pol.
Most people I've observed react to these assertions, and the people who make them, much the way they react to some dipstick insisting the Earth is flat or that global warming is a myth.
I don't say this as criticism. I don't walk in your shoes, so I probably miss things that are painfully clear to you. But I see attitudes and willingness to go along with such nonsense changing rapidly.
on Monday, 9 July 2007 at 00.40
Permalink
Yes, SW, things are changing rapidly and generally for the better. But, since this is one of my personal issues, it's probably necessary for me to maintain the heightened appraisal to help keep that progress moving steadily in the right direction, and you get to help us maintain perspective and balance.