Originally written in Latin:
In
passages of The Holy Bible witches are condemned; examples include Exodus and Leviticus, two Old Testament
books that make up part of the “Laws of Moses” and the primary history of the
Jewish people; most theologians believe they were written sometime during the
sixth century BC by several unknown authors.
The passage in Exodus
22:18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” and a similar passage in Leviticus
20:27 “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard,
shall surely be put to death”, leave little doubt what “true believers” of the
faith should do when confronted with individuals they perceive to be witches or
wizards.
Saint
Augustine of Hippo (present-day Annaba, Algeria), was once an influential
theologian in the early Christian Church of the early 400’s; he argued that God
alone could suspend the normal laws of the universe. He taught that neither Satan, witches, nor
wizards had supernatural powers or were capable of invoking magic of any type. Of course, if “witches and wizards” are indeed
powerless, logic dictates, that the Church need not concern itself with their alleged
spells or other attempts at mischief.
The late
medieval Church accepted St. Augustine’s view. In fact the Church of that era felt
little need to bother itself with tracking down witches & wizards or
investigating ridiculous allegations such as witchcraft. With this in mind, you might mistakenly conclude
that the Church and its leaders had entered into the world of reality or an age
of enlightenment.
Sadly, in
1273, a Dominican monk named Thomas Aquinas decided it was time for him to make
his case for the existence of God. His efforts
resulted in the Church’s accepted view that the world was full of evil and
dangerous demons. According to Aquinas; sex and witchcraft begin
what would become a long association.
Demons were seen as not merely seeking their own pleasure, but intent on
leading good men into temptation.
By the
mid 1400’s any supporters of Catharism, the Christian dualist movement that
thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, fled to countries like Germany to avoid a papal
inquisition launched against their alleged sacrileges. Torture inflicted on heretics suspected of
magical pacts or demon-driven sexual misconduct led to disquieting confessions.
Often time
defendants admitted to flying on poles or broom sticks and changing themselves into
various animals to attend gatherings presided over by Satan who typically appeared
in the form of a goat. Some defendants
told investigators that they repeatedly kissed Satan’s anus as a display of
their loyalty. Others admitted to
casting spells on neighbors, having sex with animals, or causing storms. In this way the typical crime of witchcraft
began to gain momentum and take shape throughout Europe.
In 1484
Pope Innocent VIII announced that Satanists in Germany were meeting with
demons, casting spells that destroyed crops, and performing abortions on
mothers to be. The pope engaged two friars,
Heinrich Kramer (a papal inquisitor of sorcerers from Innsbruck, Austria) and
Jacob Sprenger, to publish a complete report on the suspected practice of witchcraft. Two years later, in 1486, the friars
published Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”) which once and for all
cleared up the old belief that witches were powerless (as was taught by St. Augustine
more that a thousand years prior), in the face of God to a new orthodoxy that made
it crystal clear that Christians had a responsibility to hunt down and kill witches
& wizards. In short the manuscript / report claimed that witches were
powerful creatures who could inflict harm on the innocent, which justified
death by the most atrocious means imaginable.
This
publication for years to come brought about the outbreak of “witchcraft
hysteria”; mass executions began to appear in the early 1500s. For example authorities in Geneva,
Switzerland burned 500 accused witches at the stake in 1515. Nine years later in Como, Italy, witchcraft
charges led to as many as 1,000 executions.
Over the
160 years from 1500 to 1660, Europe saw somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 so-called
witches executed. Almost 80% of those
killed were women. Execution rates ranged
from a high of about 26,000 in Germany to almost 10,000 in France, 1,000 in
England, but only four in Ireland, where cooler heads more often than not, prevailed.
Scotland’s
witch-hunting had its roots with the marriage of King James VI (James the 6th
of Scotland & James the 1st of England) to Princess Anne of
Denmark. Anne’s voyage to Scotland for
the wedding met with a bad storm at sea; she ended up taking refuge in Norway. Learning of this unfortunate event, James
traveled to Scandinavia and the wedding took place at Kornberg Castle in
Denmark. Following a long honeymoon in
Denmark, the royal newlyweds met with dreadful seas on the return voyage; the
ship’s captain blamed the bad weather on witches. A bit later six Danish women confessed to
having caused the storms (in all likelihood following some serious torture or
maybe they were simply dim-wits) that allegedly bedeviled the King; he in turn
began to take witchcraft rather seriously.
The newly paranoid James “sanctioned” the torture of suspected witches in
1591. The largest witch-hunt in British
history resulted, dozens of alleged witches were condemned; in the North
Berwick area they were burned at the stake.
More than a hundred years passed before in 1682, Temperance Lloyd, a
senile woman from Bideford, became the last “Witch” to be executed in England.
Practically
everyone knows from our history that the “crime” of being a witch was just
beginning to surface in British America, hence the Witchcraft Trials of 1692 in
Salem, Massachusetts
are a reality. A total of 19 human
beings were hanged and one crushed to death during that horrendous event. Several more were imprisoned, including
Dorothy (Dorcas) Good; did you know she was only four year old.
Maybe it’s
too easy to simply say that the trials or events of 1692 in Salem, MA did not
happen overnight. Yes it was years in the making carried out by numerous “religious
zealots”, but what have we learned if anything from these actions? Hopefully it’s not
like Samuel Adams (aka Mark Twain) once said, “History does not repeat itself,
it rhymes.” . . . In
any event, this Halloween, leave that Witch alone you see standing in
the moonlight; otherwise she just might turn you into a toad and you’ll not be comforted by the fact that witches are seldom burned for that anymore.
Sources:
http://salem.patch.com/groups/tom-mcgoverns-blog/p/bp--witchcraft-before-1692 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/witchhistory.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Old_Testament_canon
http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/
