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Origins of Belief (Relation with Christianity (Christians unable to deny…
Origins of Belief
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Bailey, Diabolic Magic
Early Teachings
- St Augustine not first to associate witchcraft/magic with demons, but most influential
- 'All superstitious arts ... constituted through a certain pestiferous association of human beings and demons ... must be utterly repudiated and shunned by a Christian'
- His writing provided solid foundation for later learned discourse on diabolical magic
- Magic defined theoretically by most Christian authorities as 'unholy alliance' between humans and demons despite range of actual practices
- Long time before authorities actually did anything about 'demonic menace'
- Episcopi canonical text
- Used as evidence of low concern of early centuries and used by later sceptics
- First appears early 900s, believed to date from 300s Council of Ancyra
- Tells people to eradicate harmful magic from their regions and expel practitioners and talks about women of Diana - demon as Diana but women are 'seduced by illusions' - illusory nature of demonic power, no real harm
- 1010 Burchard of Worm's Decretum
- Statues condemn less magical actions and more belief that they would have real effects no matter what the intention - believing in magic a worse crime than practicing?
- Changed dramatically from 1000s-1800s - old doubts never vanished but more dramatic concerns arose
- Most importantly concept of diabolic conspiratorial witchcraft leading to tens of thousands of trials - hundreds of thousands accused, fewer than 50,000 executed for maleficia and being agents of the devil
- Witchcraft and trials multifaceted - reflected social, legal, political and economic tensions and elite vs popular beliefs
Belief or Scepticism
- Often presented as steadily increasing fear and credularity
- Valid but leaves out that currents of scepticism existed throughout the period
- Scepticism not about existence of demons but about their power
- Scepticism of 1600s-1700s ended witch hunts and contributed to undoing of notion of 'enchanted world'
- Not innovative or unprecedented but another phase in long tradition of concern and scepticism
New Knowledge - C11-13
- 'C12 renaissance' from C11-13 changed elite concepts of magic
- 'New' learning from rediscovered monastic texts and Classical texts annotated by Muslim scholars
- Often addressed astral, alchemical and spiritual magic - rites to invoke and harness power of spirits identified by West as demons
- eg Picatrix - entered West C13, dealt with astral spirits
- Considered dangerous but came with intellectual pedigree
- New fears of diabolic magic from tales set in areas of Christian and Muslim contact - Iberia and S Italy
- eg rumours that Pope Sylvester II (before he was Pope) had studied diabolical magic when he had been studying in Toledo and had used it to rise in the church - rumours extended to other C11 popes and a 'secret diabolical school' in Rome
- Stories moved north eg John of Salisbury in 1100s wrote about how his teacher had encouraged him and another schoolboy to get involved in rituals for conjuring demons
- Indicates new level and focus of concern about diabolism and a new type of magician - male, educated, cleric, connected to great schools and universities and often finding work in courts
- Kiekhefer - 'clerical underworld of necromancy'
- No-one making addressing of diabolical magic main intellectual activity until high medieval emerging from C12 scholasticism
- Gratian's Decretum became fundamental basis for all canon law but mostly discussed village priests succumbing to fraud, not necromancers - basically reiterated the canon Episcopi
- C13 diabolism became focus of scholastic reflection
- Thomas Aquinas - set power of demons within world - preternatural (could manipulate world) but not supernatural (couldn't act outside natural law)
- eg could impregnate women by taking sperm from human men as succubi then becoming incubi and using it impregnate a human woman
- Scholastic thinking led to fundamental problem - if demons manipulated natural processes, how could they distinguish demonic acts from natural ones?
- Led to emergence of 'natural magic' - Aquinas said all natural magic from demons, others eg Bishop of Paris said that he was too quick to attribute it to demons, could be natural
C14 Diabolical Concerns
- Argument that Christian demonology began early 1300s with Pope John XXII - concerned with clerical demonic magic so ordered prosecution of clergy on charges of demonic invocation
- 1320 - John XXII ordered inquisitors of Carcassonne and Toulouse to investigate demonic magic
- 1320 - assembled a commission of theologians and canon lawyers to investigate whether demonic invocation was automatically heresy - agreed that it was because invoking demons, even if it didn't work, showed some sort of devotion to them and against God
- Boureau - establishing canonical grounds to condemn demonic magicians major issue of John's papacy
- Gui, Toulouse inquisitor wrote 1324 manual - addressed clerical magicians but also common sorcery eg spells with herbs and household items to heal, protect, divine and arouse
- Start of pattern of elite extending beliefs about diabolism based on elite practices to popular practices
- Elite necromancy real - defended selves by saying that they commanded the demons they summoned because Christ said the faithful could wield power over demons - authorities pointed to candles and blood offerings as signs of worship
- Purpose of John XXII's council - could say that necromancers summoning demons were automatically heretics no matter what their argument
- Some argued they invoked beneficent spirits, not demons, but authorities said they had been deceived by the demons - same as they said to the Benandanti
- By end of 1300s many notions established - authorities increasingly concerned about demons, convinced all forms of magic demonic - but still mostly focused on elite necromancers and no sense of cults/sabbaths
Emergence of Diabolical Witchcraft
- Concept of witchcraft different from concept of clerical necromancy
- C15 concept more similar to early medieval focus on simple people rather than high medieval necromancy - but elite ideas of demons as actively threatening carried over
- Not so powerful it swept aside scepticism
- Late 1400s Kramer's trials in Innsbruck collapsed in the face of opposition over him as an inquisitor and prosecutor and over the existence of witches in the sense he was preaching - responded by writing MM saying that failing to believe in diabolical witches was heresy in itself
- Kiekhefer - shouldn't think of a single coherent conception of witchcraft at least in C15 because of disparate origins - Bailey says extend that to whole period
- Concept of diabolical sect of sorcerers appeared around same time all over Western Alps - borderland regions where different cultures came into contact
- Strong inquisitorial presence overlapped with growing secular jurisdictions via centralisation
- Idea of sects/groups essential to large hunts - single source - Nider's Formicarius mid-C15 describes both singular witches and assemblies with pacts and rites - Bailey says marks moment when singular witch gave way to witch-sects
- Extended heretical polemics to witches - worshipping demons, obscene kiss, orgies, infanticide, cannibalism
- Witchcraft stemming from heresy originally argued by Russell in 1970s - Cohn and Kiekhefer linked it to traditional demonic magic
- Ginzburg argues sabbath stems from continent-wide shamanistic beliefs about spirit journeys
Diabolic Magic and Witch Hunts
- Bailey - Christian diabolism distinguishes Western European witchcraft from everywhere else
- Hunts clustered in areas, often German Empire - politically fragmented and diverse
- Hunts always had multiple factors - political, legal, economic, social, underlying fear of demons loose in society
- Suspicions started with conviction of maleficia - things that could happen naturally (illness, drought, animals dying) but that had another factor eg feud with neighbours
- Suspicions built up and accusations finally emerged loaded with conflicts from within community eg property, inheritance, charity, motherhood, sexuality, gender roles - diabolism playing small role if any
Foundations
Foundations
- Pagan beliefs eg Classical, Germanic
- Biblical teachings
- Texts entering 1100s Europe via Arab world esp. forgotten Classical texts annotated by Arab scholars
- Necromancy common in clerical/learned circles - originally humans controlling demons, later humans submitting via pacts
- Need in society for people who inverted societal norms to explain world around them
- Ideas about heretics later applied to witches - sabbath, infant sacrifice, cannibalism
- 'Natural magic' - cunning folk, astrology etc at papal court to combat maleficia
- Used to condemn belief in witchcraft
- Gratian - devil deceived people into thinking they had powers - still heretics conferring with devil, just didn't actually have powers
- People admitting to witchcraft
- To gain respect/fear in society
- Susceptible to suggestion eg dreamed about sabbath and believed they went
- Use of hallucinogens so believed they went to sabbath, flew etc
- Explanations of natural disasters - plagues, droughts, crop failure - didn't want to believe God did it?
- Vulnerability of women to devil - Eve, Lilith
- As above so below - war between God and Satan being acted out on Earth
- Developing notions of free will and agency let you blame witches for making pacts
Relationship Between Witch and Devil
- Giving up Christian baptism to be baptised by devil
- Submission to devil - obscene kiss
- Devil could manifest/take on human form/metamorphose to perform sexual acts with witches
- Sabbath - presided over by devil, animal and child sacrifice, bribery/contractual agreement/pact, parody of Mass, sexual acts
- Reversal of natural order - rebellion against God
Nider
- Professor of theology, Dominican friar
- Gives v specific examples of maleficia and sabbath events
- Mentions that certain answers are under torture
- Doesn't specify the question that led to the answer - could be leading questions
- Credible - people would and did listen to him
- Scaremongering, encouraging people to be constantly involved in church life, confessing, donating etc to be safe
Errores Gazarorium
- Written by anonymous inquisitor
- Focus on specific crimes and events - desecration of Eucharist, infanticide, sexual acts
- Detailed description of pact - what to look for to find a witch
- Translates to 'Errors of the Cathars' but Cathar meaning witch - shows influence of heresy on concept of witchcraft
- Shows move from individual trials to witch hunts - inclusion of sabbath and social elements meant multiple witches per case