Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion, art, science, food, and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. Let’s talk about witches—not today’s Wicca, but about the persecution of witches by the Catholic Church.
For most Europeans during the Medieval Period (Middle Ages) and the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church was a dominant force which permeated many aspects of everyday life. In emphasizing that it was engaged in a perpetual struggle against the forces of evil, which were led by the mythical entity known as Satan, the church referred to itself as the Church Militant.
Having been taught that there were evil forces all around them, it was common for people to blame these evil forces for misfortunes—sickness, death, crop failure, the death of a farm animal. It was believed that there were certain people who had allied themselves with the various Satanic forces and using this alliance they could cast spells to bring about misfortunes. These people were known as witches and the practice of casting spells was known as witchcraft.
The battle against Satan was often a battle against women because women were associated with sex which was, of course, used by Satan to mislead people and gain control over their souls. It was believed that witches would have sexual relations with Satan and his minions, and they enjoyed it. Furthermore, they would have abortions and encourage other women to have abortions so that they could eat the fetuses. Women who lived alone and women who questioned the authority of the Church were often suspected of being witches.
In his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris reports:
“Witches are of particular interest in this context because their persecution required an extraordinary degree of credulity to get underway, for the simple reason that a confederacy of witches in medieval Europe seems never to have existed. There were no covens of pagan dissidents, meeting in secret, betrothed to Satan, abandoning themselves to the pleasures of group sex, cannibalism, and the casting of spells upon neighbors, crops, and cattle.”
In her book A History of God: The 4,000-year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Karen Armstrong writes:
“The witch craze also represented an unconscious but compulsive revolt against a repressive religion and an apparently inexorable God. In their torture chambers, Inquisitors and ‘witches’ together created a fantasy which was an inversion of Christianity. The Black Mass became a horrifying but perversely satisfying ceremony that worshipped the Devil instead of a God who seemed harsh and too frightening to deal with.”
In 1490, two German monks, Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, put together a tract, Malleus Malifactorum, in which they made a connection between European folk beliefs and a plot to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church. In his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan writes:
“What the Malleus comes down to, pretty much, is that if you’re accused of witchcraft, you’re a witch. Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the validity of the accusation.”
This little book’s conspiracy theory led to the torture and execution of thousands of women who were accused of witchcraft.
In 1631, Friedrich von Spee, a Jesuit priest who heard the confessions of people accused of witchcraft in the German city of Würzburg, published Cautio Criminalis (Precautions for Prosecutors). He writes:
“The result is the same whether she confesses or not. If she confesses, her guilt is clear; she is executed. All recantation is in vain. If she does not confess, the torture is repeated—twice, thrice, four times. In exceptional crimes, the torture is not limited in duration, severity, or frequency.”
And:
“She can never clear herself. The investigating committee would feel disgraced if it acquitted a woman; once arrested and in chains, she has to be guilty, by fair means or foul.”
And:
“When, under the duress of pain, the witch has confessed, her plight is indescribable. Not only cannot she escape herself, but she is also compelled to accuse others whom she does not know, whose names are frequently put into her mouth by the investigators or suggested by the executioner, or of whom she had heard as suspected or accused.”
The Scottish Presbyterians adopted the witchcraft conspiracy idea as the reason for the torture and execution of women. According to a display in the National Museum of Scotland:
“They believed that the Presbyterian Church had a pact with God, and that witches had entered a pact with the Devil. They saw the so-called witches as the enemies of the church, state, and people of Scotland.”
In Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 were tortured and executed as witches. In Edinburgh, the Nor’ Loch was a swampy lake which was used in judging those accused of witchcraft: accused witches were bound up and dropped into the lake. If they floated, they were guilty and burned at the stake; if they sank and drowned, they were innocent. Scotland executed more witches per capita than any other country.
We don’t know exactly how many people—primarily women—were formally executed or informally lynched during the European witch craze. Sam Harris writes:
“Witches, in all likelihood, did not even exist, and those murdered in their stead numbered perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 over three hundred years of persecution.”
In an article in Skeptic Magazine, Robert Stern reports:
“Estimates of women condemned and burned as witches range from 30,000 to 300,000 from the 15th to the 18th century.”
While modern writers suggest that witchcraft and the worship of Satan may not have actually existed, William Blackstone, in his 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England, writes:
“To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages of the Old and New Testament.”
With regard to the end of the European witch craze, Carl Sagan reports:
“The last execution for witchcraft in Holland, cradle of the Enlightenment, was in 1610; in England, 1684; America, 1692; France, 1745; Germany, 1775; and Poland, 1793.”
While witchcraft is not considered a crime in the European nations today, there are still those who feel that Satan is continues to encourage witchcraft.
Open Thread
This is an open thread which means that all topics are welcome.
