Witchcraft Europe 1500-1750

WHAT ARE WE TAKING FROM THE ARTICLE;

According to the Magic vision of the world of the 1500s, there was a relation between you and God: the individual or the community was placed within a natural setting where everything connects and everything effects everything; not alone before God. Forests, rivers, stars, minerals, animals, an animated universe of influences involving the upper and inferior worlds, planets and stars, sprits and humans, foreigners and neighbours, sorcerers and priests, living and dead people.
A vision of permanent interaction with this network of connections.

Sorcerers role was to mobilise these forces in your favour.

No clear cut separations between this world and others, nature and culture, etc

This was not limited to Europe, but took a particular version within Europe.

Does not matter if it's real or not, People believe in this, people act according to this, it affects their lives.

The vision of feelings channelling influences: envy and hate; love and tenderness; rivalry and support.

EXAMPLE: Medical doctor attempted to explain 'Evil Eye' from a medical point of view.

These treatise often revealed intolerances and cultural prejudices as well as ideas of pollution and impurity

Some of these ideas still exist; people carrying bad luck.

The perception of vulnerability and exposure of every human being to this gigantic exchange of influences that was supposed to shape daily life.

In this society, scientific explanation was at a primitive level and so they relied on this explanation

The Shaman as mediator, supposed to intervene in this exchange of influences in favour of his community (good, crops, good health, harmony and strength before the enemies; harmony wise a lot revolved around the ruler; different from culture to culture, for example, Congo, first leader of the polity converted to Christianity; why did they accept Christianity when they had refused it before? The issue was that all the rulers in that region had very little power and were controlled by the King Makers in tribal sorcerers. Every time they had impurity in their body, they would be killed by their concubines. By converting to Christianity, they could bring in another kind of religion that would preserve them.

The idea of harmony is the special capacities of the shaman. Shamans could be found in Central Asia, Africa, North America and some parts of Europe. Treatise on Night Battles; trial of shamans in Venice related to ritual shamanism against witches LOOK THIS UP IT SOUNDS FANTASTIC. The state of trance in which his soul or spirit leaves his body and flies to the other world to find favour for the community or for specific individuals. Sometimes you had to fight and sometimes you could negotiate.

Poltiical and social interventions of the shamans as king makers and protectors of the community

Traces of Shamanistic rituals in Europe: the benandanti in Friuli (Venice) who fought night battles against the witches. The archaic rituals of fertility led by people born with exceptional signs. In the magic vision of the world, a sorcerer had powers by himself. In the Christian view of the world, all power was divined from either God or the Devil. So all of these shamans and sorcerers were labelled as having a pact with the Devil after being fooled by the Devil.

Eg The Myth of Faust, idea of knowledge as being something dangerous

Most common magic users in Europe: The role of the sorcerers as mediators: love potions, healing practices, divination of the past and the future.

Symbolic action and reversible nature of symbols based on attributes, astrological charts for example. Mistaken idea of there being black magic and white magic, not like that: the sorcerer who heals is also believed to have the power to damage; reversible symbols: one who know how to heal also knows how to kill.

This explains why people go to the witch of another village not of their own. Sorcerer of their own village may trigger forces that he or she may not be able to control. This is why they made a circle around them. This is part of the complicated position o

The danger of reputation: the search for the sorcerer away from home; the sorcerer from the community is believed to attract strong forces, which can escape his power. Attracts investigation and assault.

The magician's search for reputation: the (relatively mild) trial of the Inquisition can be used for individual promotion, mainly in Southern European countries; the Inquisition was concerned with heresies, protestants, Muslims, Jews, Conversos and so on. Witch hunting was not an issue. In 1610, there is a famous case of the witches of a village in the Basque Country where hundreds of witches were persecuted by civil courts and the Inquisition was involved and stopped the trials, writing that he did not accept these believes and that witches did not have this power.

The circulation of oral and written culture in the universe of the magicians: amulets; talismans; written sacred words (from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc); consecrated hosts; fumigations; prayers and sayings; rituals.

The witch: the ambiguous notion of black magic (all magic is reversible) attached to the witch; the Roman notion of strix (strega) as a woman who sucks the blood of children; the Christian refashion of this old myth as a woman empowered by the devil to harm the community; the popular notion of the power of the magician opposed to the Christian notion of power delegated by the devil; the witch as the servant of the devil who revives her power from him and who may have cold sexual relation with him.

The Myth of the Sabbath: the possible animal metamorphosis of th withc; the flight to the Sabbath, the worship of the devil; the black mass; the kiss of the devil; the collective orgy; the prescription of nasty practices on return to extend the devil's power on earth.

How did the witch travel from her house to the Sabbath (which she confessed to under trial): turning into a bird, anointing with oil and flying on broomstick, the Devil flying the witch himself; image of a dinosaur skeleton thing flying a witch who is cooking on top of her in the 17th century.

Never a pure myth; the myth of the Sabbath contains the Black Mass, so one should not exclude it lightly.

The Christian juxtaposition of the Shamnistic beliefs  of flight and metamorphosis with the worship of the devil and black mass. The difficulty to disentangle these original morphological elements of the Sabbath

The crucial notion of pact with the devil to justify persecution.

The geography of the Sabbath and of Witch Beliefs in Europe: central and Northern Europe: the preponderance of Magicians in Southern Europe; the exceptions of benandanti in Friuli and  Donnie di four in Sicily; the rare cases of fligt and metamorphosis in Southern Europe.

The geography of persecution: civil couts in Central and Northern Europe; mahor waves of persecution from the 16th century

The main explanation for the persecution

a Unfavourable imagery of old women (Michelet)
b. Atmosphere of nsecurity and the withc as scapegoat (delumeaue)
c the rise of individualism and the disruption of community assistance ; the withc as threatening guilt and the projection of anxieties and guilt on the Witch (Thomas/MacFarlane)
d The anxiety over fertility projected against old women accused of witchcraft (Lyndal Roper) Freudian

The problems of gendered approach the multiple explanation; the process of state building

The disappearance of the persecution of witchcraft throughout the eighteenth century

Disbelief followed by decline of the belief in daily action of the devil or its crates (the witches) d

Drawings and engravings by Goya: the detachment and the reticule of the belief in witches


Seminar

PALLETE OF CRAZY

Demonic Possession
Witchcraft
Fraud

Judges had to determine if someone was demonically posses

Charged a witch with assault, destruction of property etc.

When they're tried and executed it's not as a witch, but as

They were aware of mental illness and there were distinct categories

How to prosecute? Witnesses, wil

How did people deal with witches if they didn't want to get

Main concern of authorities: peace and stability in a community: esp. during 1500s with the Reformation

'Witches' description depended on the time, the geographical region and the culture

EXAMPLES:

Older women, lying-in women (mid-wife/servant/therapist): jealous of the wife/jealous of the lying-in woman from the wife, lots of tension.

Witchcraft: exceptional and uncommon, but once brought up, it generated a lot of activity and records; note the evidence is limited mainly just to the trial.

The article on Demonic possession focused on the legal steps to determine whether or not someone was demonically possessed or just mad while the Witchcraft article focused on attitudes of people at the time.

Microhistory and Macrohistory

Demonology article;

Does this seem like a rational belief of a polite society? No; there is an undercurrent of this stuff that continues.

This phenomenon takes place outside of Europe where Europeans settle. Appeals to European authorities. Doesn't really happen in Spanish America

Food is scarce; people who aren't able to work or people who were not members of the community were a drain; typical witch accusee's were these outsiders, beggars, old people, etc.

Old people also have a lot of property; someone who's sons have died and have property they don't want to sell are targeted. Sexual aspect as well directed at young men.

In more aristocratic circles, people did not tend to be accused of Witchcraft; used sometimes for people to act in a way outside the norm; power relation reverals.

Most of the accusers are women against other women or children against other children, etc.

Concerned about fraud due to financial aspect.

Don't think that it must have been fraud 90% of the time because of the ardent belief that this was true; even sceptics were convinced that there were real cases of witchcraft and demonic possession.

Signs of demonic possession; speaking in 'tongues': the ability of an uneducated peasant to speak the languages of the educated classes: Greek and Latin.

Both witchcraft and demons have aspects of purity within communities.

Printed manuals of what to do with a witch.

Miscarriages, Child Birth, etc tend to be linked with spikes

Emotions of Childbirth,
External Factors : stressful situation (30 years war, etc). Anything that would

Childbirth is incredibly dangerous 8-10% of mothers will die in childbirth depending on the area.

Infant mortality is roughly 30-40%

Incredibly dangerous and stressful time.

When this happens, one needs to blame an external factor; something going wrong when everything

DEVILS VS DEVIL

The Devil=Old Harry, the BIG L himself
Devils= One of the names legion of hells; Satan's minions

Demonic possesion=Devils
Witchcraft=Pact and sex with Satan.

Men could be witches: particularly in Norway, Iceland and Normandy

Especially Shepherds

Why?

Isolated people interested in herbal medicine who were outsiders who cared for expensive animals

Exorcism; Protestant Priests can't exorcise people because they're

People aren't prosecuted for Kabbalist, intellectual magic; sanctioned.

Upper class cases were very well published

Heresy is an intellectual challenge of authority
Witchcraft is accessing another world beyond what most humans would dare to go.

Witches represent powerless people getting powers against the order of society;

Demonic Possession and Witchcraft have to happen in certain locations and times; areas of mixed confessional identity or rural isolated communities; France, England, Southern Scotland, Germany, Holland, etc.

Didn't happen in Catholic communities due to more acceptance of magic and protection from Catholic priests. Within the faith there's a means of dealing with the problem that protestants didn't have.

Witchcraft goes away in the west but generally in Europe you don't see witches after the 18th century.

Witchcraft and Demons Notes

Possesed by the Devil? A Very Public Dispite in Utrecth

Records of reputed cases od Demonic possession reveal the otherness and alien quality of early modern culture quite dramatically.

Previously it had been a rare phenomenon, but it exploded in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The physical symptoms were said to be recurrent fits, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, difficulty eating and drinking, bug eyes and extreme contortions of the body.

The afflicted also ranted incoherently, spoke blasphemies, denied Christian dogma and insulted authority figures.

They seemingy defied all social, cultural and physical norms and conventions.

Explaining this Behaviour:

It's always posed a challenge to historians.

Modern Historians offer several explanations:

John Demos: Those said to be possessed were mentally ill
Carol Karlsen: Demonic possession was a 'status reveral ritual' (Inspired by Anthropology)

Even in the Early Modern Period, reputed demonic could be ambiguous figures even to their contemporaries.

People in the Early modern period had a range of possible interpretations for this behaviour:

Genuine Possession
Illness: Perhaps the most common explanation: many 'Demoniacs' were diagnosed as melancholic, epileptic or hysterical.
Mental Illness: either sent to a madhouse or placed under family care.

BUT these two diagnoses were problematic as it was believed that a devil may might choose a person who was mad and ill in order to hide his presence.

Fraud: Some claimed to be demonically possessed for the sake of gain: alms, sympathy and attention
Possessed by Good Spirits: The Holy Spirit, etc. Put forward with some frequency by the Demoniacs themselves, suggesting they were instruments of God, bears of divine message, etc.
Voluntary Submission to the Devil: rarely Observers suspected this, those who were suspected were seen as witches.

How did Contemporares Determine Whether a Case was Genuine.

Early modern elites agreed upon a set of four criteria: three of the four amounted to testing whether the alleged demoniac had the powers attributable only to a devil.

1. Speaking in tongues: ie speaking a language that the demoniac could not know; lower class cases were tested to see if they knew Greek or Latin
2. Clairvoyance: the ability to know about secret or far off things
3. Extraordinary Strength: strength beyond what was considered normal for the person being questioned; ie a teenage girl lifting weights suitable for an adult man.
4. Expression of Horro and Revulsion at sacred things: for Protestants, this was normally the wordsof the Bible and for Catholics, the consecrated host, holy water, the agnus die, etc. This last criterion was believed to offer some of the clearest proofs of possession. Eg Testing with holy water and normal water to see of which the suspected Demoniac was afraid

Disagreement about the interpretation of such testing

1. It has a systematic or even proto-scientific character:

Erol Midelfort notes that these tests involved the collection of empirical data and the keeping of individual case histories.
Cecile Ernst credits exorcists with writing the first extensive psychiatric case studies.
Michael MacDonald found that English healers who used astral magic for their diagnoses and cures of the sick tended to work more systematically and keep more careful records than strict Galenists.

2. The tests yielded results that reflected the interests and preconceptions of the testers.

DP Walker: Catholic priests in France used tests for possession as vehicles of confessional polemics; reaction by Demoniac to relics were trumpeted as proof that a sacred power was found in the relic, as opposed to the assertions of the Huguenots. This was used to sway public opinion and reconvert Protestants to Catholicism.
Robert Mandrou found a conflict in France between credulous Catholic clears and skeptical medical doctors with the latter group tending to seek natural causes for the behaviour of demoniacs.

Note that Piety did not necessarily lead to credulity and could prejudice the results of tests for possession towards disbelief and skepticism.

Anglican Ministers who claimed the age of mires had long past.
Some argue the same is trye for some Catholic clerics; Alison Weber and Fernando Cervantes in regards to Spanish theologians and the Inquistion in Mexico.

However, a lot of these explanations focus only on a small elite group responsible for evaluating and labelling the posssesed. Clerics always play the lead role with doctors their only serious rivals. Non-elites only appear in these accounts purely as spectators:

Walker: objects of propagandistic manipulation

Communities and the Possesed seem to accept whatever determination the learned experts make.

The narrative of two apparent demoniacs; Mayken Huberts and Clara Gelaudens in Utrecht in 1603, seems to suggest otherwise.

Their behaviour cased a vehement dispute over the genuiness of their purported possession and of other demoniacs possession as well. Over the course, large and varied segments of Utrecht's population got involved with opinions and emotions:

Catholics, Calvinists, Neighbours, Deacons, Magistrates, the Provincial Estates, crowds of Utrecthers and the possessed themselves all become involved.
Groups from diverse social strata struggled to influence one another, each claiming a better understanding about the phenomenon then the other.

The case has some background: in 1595, an anonymous pamphlet was published in Utrecht entitled Short and True Account of the Wonderours Attack and Delieverance of David Wardavoir… which told the story of a man who successfully fought off a series of demonic attacks through his faith in Christ.

The pamphlet stresses the importance of the grace of God in rescuing David, not the work of exorcists and priests. It was a piece of reformed Polemic aimed at countering a widespread belief amongst the Dutch Catholics that David had been cured by priestly exorcism and to give a Reformed alternative to Catholic exorcisms.

The Dutch Republic was divided in its belief; officially a Reformed nation, it's population included several denominations (Catholic, Letherna, Mennonite, Calvinists, sectarians, etc) and people with no strong ecclesiastic affiliation at all. The religious pluralism distinguished the Republic from the rest of Western Europe. This never led to violent conflict but did lead to competition between the churches for recruits and legitimacy. This competition had a large influence on exorcism. Public exorcism was banned in the Republic, as in England, so priests could not stage exorcisms like those in France. But they were still active across the republic.

In this context, cases of possession were laden with confessional polemics and became occasions for the various churches to prove their legitimacy through the powers bestowed by God.

Dutch Protestants suffered from a gnawing uncertainty about the effectiveness of Protestant treatments of Posession. None denoted the possibility of demonic possession, but they refused to offer the counter-magic of the Catholic Church to theriir members. Instead they relied on a regimen of fasting and prayer.

Keith Thomas: ' A Clergyman could no longer command a spirit to depart; her could only entreat God to show his mercy by taking the devil away."

While adhering directly to the tenets of Protestantism, it left popular demand unsatisfied. In England, many Anglicans resorted to soothsayers and white witches for their
Dutch Calvinists did the same; records in Amsterdam show that  91 members of the reformed church were disciplined for this between 1578 and 1700. Sometimes, they even resorted to Catholic priests. In 1603, Utrecht's magistrates removed a girl from the municipal orphanage and sent her to a convent. A similar event happened in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

Confessional Polemics and Protestant Uncertainties shaped the climate of opinion in the Dutch Republic.

But the presence from 1599 of Reformed Minister Hohannes Bergerus exacerbated the situation in Utrecht. His claims to be able to see devils active everywhere heightened Utrechters' fears of demonic possession and presented himself as an answer to Protestants uncertainties, claiming his powers could cure the possessed.

His prior career is chequered (see article) but even when fully aware of it, the Utrecht authorities appointed him anyway.

Bergerus promoted cures for Exorcism that were not Catholic rites but constituted parts of the larger 'Medical' practice and were denounced by the Reformed Church AS 'Godless and Superstituous remedies… no basis in nature or reason but much more in magic.

Eg A cure for bewitchment: Take three teeth from a dead man's head, pulverise and make a fumigation from them and vomit. Take the witch's excrement, put it in one of your shoes and put it on the other wrong foot."

These cures were in the tradition of sympathetic magic, not uncommon around Europe. Bergerus used these to shore up his status, as his boasted expertise at dealing with possession and bewitchment gave him a unique power and special following in the reformed.

He presented an alternative both to the Reformed treatments, uncertain in effectiveness and the unorthodox Catholic rituals.

BUT problems arose:

Catholic priests saw Bergerus' practice as highlighting weakness within Protestantism; showing that People still believed in the power of the catholic church to cast out demons. Competing on the same ground, the magic of the Catholic church was stronger.

Protestants in the city understood this: they saw Bergerus' activities as a scandal, bringing their church into disreputr. They also saw his activities as undermining their efforts to turn the people away from relying on magic, associate magic with the Catholic Church thus making their Church a model of enlightened dependence on God's grace alone.

They responded by denouncing Bergerus' activities but also called into question the guinineness of the possessions he was claiming to cure. Possessed and their Exorcizers were accused as frauds by Johannes Gerobulus (Utrecht's senior minister).

There was no denial of the reality of possession, but Bergeru's activities made them more outspoken then they might have been.

In the case of Clara and Mayken; their Demonic possession was not questioned. Family and neighbours both adopted Clara's self-diagnosis of possession and defended it ardently when questioned later by authorities.

Recognistion as demoniacs gave the women sympathy and aid; from October 1603, the Women were receiving weekly alms; probably around fifteen strivers a week; equal to a weekly wage for a weaver's wife. Recognition also brought fear; the women were to be kept indoors to prevent them from terrifying the populace.

When Gerobulus preached his sermon against the false possessed, this caused a violent response from the two women. After the sermon, they ran to Gerobulu's house and threw themselves against his door. Repeated performances occurred both at the house and at the Stadplaats. The city authorities responded by locking the two women in jail. However, this gave the women a public forum as the jail was part of the City of Hall; crowds gathered in front of the jail for three days as the women barked, laughed and sang. Alarmed at the gathering, the Magistrates decided to put the women int the torture chamber to prevent them from being heard. However, after the wailing response, the magistrates were terrified to the extent that they released the women.

In this case the two women were able, knowingly or not, manipulate popular opinion to create support and fear strong enough to overwhelm the min ister's skepticism. This was added on by the extraordinary act of the two husbands petitioning the municipal court accusing the minister to stop his pronouncements against their wives possession. Ie; accused the minister of slander for saying that their wives were not possessed; and demanded a committee to investigate the matte

This is unique; across early modern Europe, there were many cases when persons accused of witchcraft sued their accusers for defamationr; seen in England, Spain, tScandanavia, New England, the Nedtherlands; it was unheard of for victims of occult forces to bring a defamation suit against sceptics who denied the reality of their bewitchment or possession. Not to mention that the suit was brought by poor lay folk against a minister. The suit had the support of the neighbours; eleven male neighbours signed the bottom of the petition and supported it.

This pressure forced the city council to convene;

The whole incident reveals that demonic possession was a highly-charged, emotional issue about which different social groups from the lowest to the highest had opinions and concerns. The inquiries of magistrates and experts to determine the genuineness of a possession were not conducted in a social vacuum, but were part of a struggle to shape public opinion. Experts and elites could not take their authority for granted, but  rather needed to assert it.

Demonic possession was laden with confessional connotations, but official Church dogmas gave few fixed reference points on it. Both Protestant and Catholic believed in the possibility of possession, but either could be believers or skeptics which encouraged uncertainty and divisions.

Utrecht's dispute highlights the social consequences of failing to promote a uniform, official credo; this allows an opportunity for diverse segments of the urban community to manoeuvre for influence over others. Public opinion became a force provoked response from magistrates as whoever shaped it had real power.

In absence of established dogmatic anchors, the positions taken by people on demonic possession reflected on how they wanted to be positioned next to others in the community

Rival Religious Leaders
Mayken or Clara; gained an authority uncommon to poor women, allowing them to directly challenge their ministers through the male voice of the devil.
Husbands of the Two:  honour and reputation of the family and the alms they received
Neigbours:  A rupture in social normality that caused a 'scandal' they wanted to be removed.

The magistrates ruling was intellectually ambiguous; it did not declare whether or not the women were possessed or not, or were lying, mad etc. But they resolved the dispute by ending a dangerous series of public clashes of opinion. They couldn't cause an agreement, but they restored order, reduced the level of tension in the community and asserted themselves as final arbitrators of conflict and ispenders of justice.