Heresy In Medieval Witchcraft

At the end of the Middle Ages, European societies underwent economic, political, social and religious changes. The apocalypse of witch hunts coincided with a wave of Christian messianism against social and economic injustice. The witches were needed to focus the anger of people, at the same time, protecting the patriots (Harris 2007: 198-204). The process of witchcraft allowed the explanation of social inequality to occur through supernatural phenomena. The condemnation of the deaths of the lower classes, especially women stands for social, not religious, basis of the process of witchcraft (Harris 2007:

The renaissance of the twelfth century was a revival of cultural and intellectual activity from 1050 to 1250. Guibert of Nogent’s autobiography, A Monk’s Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent, and the prologue of Peter Abelard’s Sic et Non (“Yes and No”) are both products of this time period, having been written in 1115 and 1122, respectively. While Abelard’s text primarily focuses on applying reason to religious matters—a very renaissance thing to do—Guibert sheds light on a greater variety of affairs. Both documents indicate the strong faith that one would expect to find in people during this era of religious enthusiasm. Together, the documents paint an informative picture of the intellectual activity and culture of their times.

Witch craze in Europe during: the period of the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of national governments from about 1480-1700

Those who claimed to know the future and weren’t prophets were convicted of blasphemy and witchcraft and were punished. It was considered witchcraft because fortune-telling required a direct relationship between a human or witch and unholy spiritual powers. During the Middle Ages, witchcraft in ecclesiastic or church courts was presided over by church-appointed officials. This may have caused biased opinions and also links to religion being a cause of the harsh punishment. In medieval judicial proceedings, torture was sometimes used as a means of extracting information concerning witchcraft, and confessions were not uncommon. Historical evidence states that many confessed out of fear of being tortured and not because they were truly guilty.

During the fifteenth century throughout the seventeenth century, the belief in god was common. The bible states of demons able to control people making them do bad things with evil magic. “As for the question, why a greater number of witches if found in the fragile feminine sex than among most men… the first is, that they are more credulous this.... The second reason is, that

Society was intolerable of witchcraft in any way, although a multitude of people acknowledged it as logic and a way of life. If someone contradicted with what was ordinarily accepted, they were said to be associated with the devil. The devil’s assistance was always available to those who were willing to pay a price. The dissemination of witchcraft in England was affected by the production inflation of Bibles which incorporated knowledge about witchcraft, the need for someone to hold accountable for plagues and disasters, and having access to medicines and herbs with techniques that have been passed down through generations.

In document two, heretic Jan Hus is on trial for his ideals. A similar situation is described in document five which talks of The Council of Trent. One of the discussion points of the council was methods of dispersing heretical ideals. Some methods mentioned were burning the books, banning them, and condemning vertices themselves. The printing press aided the spread of these “heretical” ideals and consequently the Church began a campaign of

The 1486 Malleus Maleficarum set up the precedent for the witchcraft craze, which came to its prime in the mid 16th century, during the Renaissance period. Though the Malleus was not the only factor in this craze, as Margaret Sullivan notes, ‘it made no discernable impact… for nearly half a century’ , it, with a number of other social factors, provided a wealth of information to witch hunts and hunters. This treatise further established several of the basic ideas essential to the identification of witches such as the identification of witches as largely women; through the treatise’s continual argument that women were of gullible and carnal nature the text further advocated ideas of fear and hatred in regards to women.

In the 16th Century, Europeans had their faith shattered and were forced to realize that there was doubt in what they believed in. From the countless wars being fought in the name of religion, to the once great and wealthy countries that needed to reaffirm their place in the world, ‘all that they had once taken for granted was suddenly cast into doubt’ (446). Europeans were desperately searching for new foundations to put their faith in ‘in the face of intellectual, religious, and political challenges’ (446). This period is an example of the expression “Age of Doubt, Age of Uncertainty”.

As a text written in the early middle ages, the Canon Episcopi by Regino of Prüm was revolutionary in the fact that it exemplified a growing skepticism for magic within the Christian community, and most importantly, it served as a strict call to arms for church officials to identify and eliminate practices of magic within parish communities. As a major theological text in the time where Christianity is finally solidifying doctrine, the Canon Episcopi should both draw upon existing ideas of its predecessors and shape the theological works of its successors. While the works of other theological minds show evidence of a common theme or influence, there is still extreme variability and sometimes even direct opposition to Regino’s themes. While

The group agreed that Heresy is an inaccurate teaching or cults with wrong beliefs based on the perspective of the five-fold core beliefs and teachings of Christianity. With this in mind, several scriptures from the Old Testament were read that pinpoint back to Lucifer, and the beginning of creation. Followed by the Gospel of John and Matthew 23:1-3 where “Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. 3 So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they

Interbreeding folk traditions and catholic piety presented a danger to the Catholic Church being viewed as tainting the potential for redemption of souls and spreading the true message. Menocchio became an imperfect model of everything the church wanted to purge itself of. He was a danger not because he was a Lutheran, Turk, Jew, or Witch saturated full of folk tradition but because he blurred the lines between them and Christianity. Menocchio did not attempt to convert the community to Protestantism—one of the catholic church’s biggest perceived enemies—but confused the message of the Catholic doctrine. Menocchio posed himself as an internal threat to the Christian religion instead of an external one. The inquisition was constructed to rid itself of internal risks like Menocchio. There is a direct relationship between inquisitors’ reaction and the goals of the church in Catholic reformation. This is evident through the inquisition preoccupation with fundamental dogmas of Christianity such as the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and Christ’s relationship to his body. These concepts proved especially hard to teach to a popular culture influenced by a long line of rural folk traditions. The inquisition, as a tool of the Catholic Reform Movement, attempted to

Being accused of heresy and his ideas said to be dangerous deviations from the church he had to defend himself from opposition. (C/S 436) He once proclaimed “the bible teaches us how to get to heaven, not know how heaven goes” in his defense. (C/S, 438)

“ In fact, Baird goes on to question whether there was a heresy to even be considered at all ! While this might seem a reluctant view of the situation in Colossae, J.B Lightfoot offers an interesting proposal to the situation. While he does recognize the Judaizing and early Gnostic influences (which will soon be discussed), he believes there to be a single group or culprit responsible for the religious heresy that is taking place . Lightfoot goes on to defend his theory with the ideas that the epistle shows no traces of multiple opponents being faced, and that in historical criticism the multiplication of persons is needless and should be downplayed . While this theory would also seem to be solid, it would still seem that there is more than a single movement taking place in Colossae.

In Religion and the Decline of Magic by Thomas Keith, the relationship between religion and magic from the medieval period to the post-reformation period is discussed. Religion and magic are two different practices which depend on the beliefs of the common people. People follow what they believe, and the only way for an organization to gain followers is to prove that they are a worthy cause of believing in. Religion and magic are both practices which have gained followers by trying to prove that they can perform supernatural actions. Over time religion and magic become more tolerant of each other and were constantly changing by adapting to each other’s practices.