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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Dear all, I clearly know less than I thought about witch processes: I thought it was a generally accepted thesis that witch burning and witch hysteria was more of a non-Inquisition thing. Can't find my Trevor-Roper (did I lend it to someone?), but I am fairly sure that was his thesis. The idea (as I remember it) would be that the Inquisition were much more interested in heretics and that in Catholic areas (with very limited exceptions) it was generally local authorities who wanted to burn witches and the Inquisition who were trying to damp their ardour, so to speak. I may be wrong in the details, but that's how I remember it (I cannot find that book). Gustav Henningsen in his book Heksenes advokat (The Witches' Advocate) gives a very interesting case study of an early 16th century inquisitor, Salazar Frias, who was sent to investigate witchcraft in the Basque countries and gradually got less and less convinced. It is a very good read, and Salazar's dry comments are hilarious. (It should be noted that he got into trouble with his superiors though). Henningsen's conclusion is that witch-hunting is something that happens in the meeting of a small local community (often but not always a small village) with the elite culture, and that there are often witch entrepreneurs involved, i.e. people who have an economic or other interest in encouraging the hysteria. Of course, these entrepreneurs may sometimes be Catholic priests, but they can equally be local lords. Protestant Scandinavia is the only area for which I have done any reading of my own. There were fairly severe outbreaks in the mid-17th century (a little late for this list, I am aware), with c. 280 witches killed (though usually by decapitation, not burning) in Sweden during the 8-year-period before hysteria died down. This may not seem much in terms of overall statistics (which I haven't got access to), but you need to remember that it was a very sparsely populated country with small local communities and it all happened at once: the impact must have been enormous. It breaks out in different provinces, usually related to the movements of individual witch entrepreneurs (beggars etc). Typical scenario is as follows: Entrepreneur with previous form turns up and says he can identify witches. Local women have a tiff about something else and one accuses the other. Local child is dragged in and claims to have been taken to a witch meeting. All local children are put under close surveillance and promptly start producing similar stories. After a certain ampount of investigation (and deaths) their stories are shaken and the whole thing dies down. Individual priests seem to take up different positions, as do individual secular jury members. The vicar of Lovanger placed children in the sacristy and encouraged them to point out witches as the congregation was leaving the church. The vicar of Gavle, on the other hand, had to defend his own wife against accusations brought by the mayor. The two people most involved in putting a stop to it are a doctor and a Church of Sweden vicar. There were occasional witch-processes in Sweden during the 16th century, but they seem often usually resulted in acquittal, as the jury could not believe that these foolish tricks could really do any harm. The one exception, again, is due to one individual: the city of Jonkoping had the misfortune to employ, in 1588, an executioner who claimed to be an expert witch hunter and who had probably learnt the art abroad. Of course, to some extent witch-hunting was an institutional thing: it might not have happened if Kramer and Sprenger had not written their book, if Innocentius had not brought out his bull, and in Scandinavia if the Danish king Kristian had not made a law that Danish witches were to be burnt. Yet to a large extent it still seems to be down to the moral stamina of individuals. Salazar Frias was under a lot of pressure from his colleagues, but he stuck to his position. Others encouraged the witch hunts for their own personal gain when under no pressure at all. I don't know if this is at all relevant, sorry for whaffling on so long. Lena Wahlgren-Smith ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html