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After Europe was evangelized in
the centuries following the fall of Rome, pockets of pagan belief with
its goddess worship persisted, and wise women skilled the use of herbal
medicines were also not uncommon. Christianity, though, had been
developing a contemptuous view of women ever since St Peter pronounced
them "the weaker vessel." St. Clement of Alexandria wrote in
the 2nd century that "Every woman should be filled with shame by
the thought that she is a woman," and the 6th century Christian
writer Bothius declared in his work The Consolation of Philosophy
"Woman is a temple built upon a sewer."
Elements of the coming confrontation were already falling into place by
the 8th century as the Church legislated against wicce-craeft - heathen
practices such as evil spells, sacrificing to demons, and divinations.
By the 9th century women claiming to have flown at night astride animals
with many other women in the company of the goddess Diana came to the
attention of the Council of Ancyra. The council, however, soberly
dismissed these assertions as products of dreams and officially
dismissed them as illusory, thus impeding the persecution of witches for
centuries to come.
In his classic 1958 study Witchcraft, British
scholar Geoffrey Parrinder suggests that some of these claims, a common
thread in the confessions of witches, could have been inspired by the
use of the hallucinogen belladonna, and that flying dreams without the
use of drugs are not unusual anyway. After rats on grain ships from the
Crimea brought bubonic plague to Europe in 1346, killing an estimated
third of the population within three years, a demand for scapegoats
arose.
The Inquisition, which had been established to root
out heresies in the 12th century and on the continent of Europe was
armed with torture as a means of extracting confessions, started with
Jews rather than the as yet undiscovered bacterium Yersinia pestis as
the probable cause. In Germany, most Jews were executed, although some
fled to Eastern Europe. But with the plague continuing to recur about
once every ten years, a great fear of witches seized Europe. The
Inquisition's gaze then turned to those it suspected of the banned
heathen practice. And they were mostly women.
The Council of Ancyra's decree holding that there
was no such thing as night-riding and nocturnal congregations of witches
stood in the Inquisition's way, though. In an instance of ecclesiastical
chicanery, the old edict was circumvented in 1458 when an inquisitor
named Nicholas Jaquerius held that witchcraft was a new sect altogether
different from that the Council had spoken of, and tied it to Satan by
claiming that woman had confessed to consorting with devil in the shape
of goat during their Sabbaths. And besides, he maintained, even if night
riding was an illusion, these women still clung to Satan during the day.
The Inquisition was only too happy to see it Jaquerius' way.
In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull
declaring war on witches in which both the Church and secular
authorities were given full power to proceed against them. Within five
years, Germany's two chief inquisitors, Fathers Kramer and Sprenger,
wrote a notorious textbook for conducting witch trials, the Malleus
Maleficarum, translatable as "the hammer of witches." Under
the new rules, torture could be kept up for days on end, children could
turn in their parents, criminals could give evidence, and even defense
lawyers could become suspect. A denial of witchcraft was seen as sure
sign of guilt. Convicted witches were to be handed over to local
authorities and burnt at the stake. And conveniently, only the
inquisitors themselves were somehow immune from the satanic influence
that seemed to be spreading like the plague itself.
With Innocent VIII's bull in one hand and the Malleus Maleficarum in the
other, the inquisitors fanned out through Europe hunting, torturing and
burning witches. The popular belief was that witches engaged with
lustful revels with Satan, mocked the Christian religion, and, worst of
all, and ate unbaptized babies at their Sabbaths. The hapless people
accused by friends, neighbors, and relatives trying to save themselves
from the stake were expected to confess to all this. Only a steadfast
denial of guilt under torture could save the accused. Most, of course,
confessed to avoid the agony of the racks, thumbscrews, and other tools
of the inquisitors' trade.
Estimates of how many perished range from one hundred thousand to a
million, with the greatest loss of life occurring in France and Germany.
Fortunately for England, common law forbade torture in most cases, and
relatively few executions took place. In Spain, too, the chief
inquisitor, Frias Salazar, examined hundreds of cases and found merit in
none of them. But elsewhere on the Continent, entire villages were
sometimes wiped out. With the Reformation, Protestant inquisitors joined
the hunt as well The witch-hunts were an orgy of misogyny - scholars
estimate that 80 to 90 percent of those burned as witches were women. Of
the male victims, many were simply trying to protect the accused women
from the hunters. Single women, elderly and feeble peasant women,
midwives, lesbians, and women who had pets that could be brought into
evidence as "animal familiars" all became targets.
And yet, through it all, history does not record a single instance of
anyone ever having witnessed a witches' Sabbath. The phenomenon of
witchcraft, Parrinder writes, was entirely in the minds of the
inquisitors. And even though the Age of Enlightenment brought the witch
burnings to an end, history always seems to provide enough events to
prove that wherever ignorance and blind obedience to either religious or
temporal authority prevail, innocent people will be in danger.
List of Metroland Stories by Glenn Weiser
©2002 by Glenn Weiser. All rights reserved.
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