Guilt and Morality During the Reformation

   

    One of the themes that Levack presents to us during the reformation is guilt. He discusses that this guilt Catholics, Christians and Protestants were feeling was something that might have lead to the accusation of witchcraft. When people felt guilty for committing a sin they immediately wanted relief from feeling and the way that they could do that was to project this guilt onto another. Levack talks about Alan Macfarlane who said many accusations came from people who refused to provide assistance to those in need that showed up at their door. Of course after immediately turning the person away they felt guilty but to rid themselves of this feeling they simply depicted the person in need telling themselves that it was a witch unworthy of the aid anyways.  Even priests experienced moral guilt and projected these feelings sometimes onto the very witches that they interrogated. Levack argues that these accusations and projections of guilt were attempts to preserve the morality of the Christian community.
       Levack also makes another interesting point about how these projections indirectly gave the community the chance for reassurance and moral worth. This is interesting because although we look at the witch hunts as a time of chaos and sometimes it seems as though people are getting accused left and right. Neighbors, wives, daughters, friends, there were accusations all over the place. Can we say that there was some good in these accusations and hunts? Do we agree with Levack in saying that the act of accusing gave the community room for moral growth and reassurance? Is this the only good thing (indirectly) that the witches did?

Cannibalism: Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?

                It is easy to be unsettled when looking at some of the images of cannibalism from early European woodcuts. Images of people roasting children on a spit or boiling them in a pot are even more disturbing. In today’s society, with nonstop violence seemingly everywhere, those images still haunt us. Try and imagine what the people of that earlier era would feel when they looked upon those images. Most people could not read, but the images that they saw resulted in a type of mass hysteria with friends, neighbors, and even family members slinging accusations of witchcraft. The stories that were spread seemed to fit in with what was known about witches. “The meal provided occasion for witches to meet, the leftover flesh was used to make the witches’ salve, the bones were ground to form the witches’ powder, and the broth became the water witches stirred to raise storms (Roper 72).

                The confessions of the accused also helped to solidify the public’s fear of witches eating babies. Torture was used to bring out these confessions, but even after confessions were made, there was rarely any evidence that cannibalism was performed. After Margaretha Minderlin admitted, under torture, that she sold dug up bodies of children to sell to Jews, the council exhumed the bodies of the children that she supposedly sold, but all three were intact. “The absence of physical evidence could not prove that the Devil had not, by means of some glamour, made it appear that the corpses had been exhumed and enable her really to sell them (Roper 76).

                Do you think that the woodcut images of the times contributed to the public’s perception that witches were consuming human flesh? 

Dabbling in Ink

For roughly four centuries, with thousands of works compiled and millions of letters used, the printing press developed by Gutenberg in the fifteenth century remained the basic method of printing until the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to this technological advance, information was made much more accessible to a wide audience through printed material. Although many people undoubtedly know about Gutenberg and his printing press, there is a much smaller awareness regarding a key component of the process of printing, the ink ball.

Ink balls (or dabbers) from the Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam

Utilized in Europe since the invention of the printing press, the ink ball has played a significant role in the mass production of written material. Also known as an inking ball or dabber, the tool was usually made of specially-treated sheepskin with wool stuffing attached to a wooden handle. To use the ink ball, the inker (the person who applied ink to the typeset) would apply ink onto the type so that a smooth layer would be on the letters. It was essential that the type would be coated consistently and uniformly at the proper thickness, otherwise the words and images would not be printed accurately.

From Class: 16th century engraving of printmaking.
Notice the man on the right with the two ink balls.

This method would remain mostly unchanged from the 1400s until the mid-1800s. Thus thanks to this small hand tool, countless works were produced for widespread audiences. Certainly some of these books, pamphlets, etc. with their condemning words and even more condemning woodcut-illustrations would play a major role in the spread of ideas and beliefs that would contribute to the witch-hunts of the early modern era.

Sources and for further reading see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_ball

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing

Protestantism versus Catholicism

The reformation and counter-reformation was a factor to the witch hunts but was not a reason for its occurrence. The reform ha d contributed to an increase concern and awareness of the devils presence in the world. While leading protestant reformers mers, Martin Luther and Jean Calvin rarely spoke of witchcraft, they had preached about the dangers of the devil, similar to Catholicism.

Brian Levack mentioned that Luther took more of a daily battle approach to the devil and his temptations while Calvin spoke of the Devil only operating with God's permission. Both were different than Catholicism and were dancing on the border of heresy. In regards to witches, both Calvin and Luther agreed that they should be burned immediately. As Protestantism focused on the devil and warned of the corruption of the church, some Catholics warned of Protestantism being the product of the devil. Levack included " the rise of Protestantism itself appeared to many Catholics to be the work of Satan" (114).

Why would there be opinions that Protestantism is the work of the devil?

Although they didn't preach about as much, how did Luther and Calvin's emphasis on the devil reflect onto the witch hunt?

The Impact of the Reformation

The reformation was the cause of the Catholic Church losing some power and authority and reformed European beliefs. This religious, political, and cultural reformation became the building block for the European people. The reformation was the era of questioning religious practices and the concept of witchcraft. The reformation had an impact on witch-hunting and encouraged people to believe in witchcraft in which caused a tension that led to witchcraft accusations (Levack 109). The debate over religion caused religious authorities to be quicker to judge and try to get rid of anything that went against their beliefs. It is interesting that during the time of the reformation, 1520-1650, witch-hunting was at its highest and most intense (Levack 110).

As the reformation continued the awareness of the Devil and his presence, Europeans had the urge to fight against him (Levack 112).  Both the Catholic and Protestant reformation had contributed to witch-hunting. In some areas of Europe the witch death rate were higher than others. Witch-hunting was most severe in areas and countries that had larger numbers of religious minorities (Levack 122). The countries that had to most intense witch-hunting were in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland, and Scotland (Levack 123). The divide of churches led to more witch-hunts and deaths; there is a strong correlation between witch-hunting and religious disagreement. 

Do you believe the reformation had an impact on witch-hunting?

What were some things you thought were interesting about the connection between the reformation and the witch-hunts?

The Witch-Hunts: A Story of the City and Capitalism?

     In the Levack readings on pages 134-140, 163-165, and 175-182, the major factor that he points to in the causation of witch-hunts is the changing economic landscape in which Europe found itself at the time. The transition from the traditional feudalistic rurally based economies in Europe began to transition to a somewhat proto-capitalist economy caused massive amounts of social unrest. This compounded with plague outbreaks, climate change, and famine created a perfect storm for witch accusations and belief in the supernatural. The demographics and population distribution at the time helped to contribute to witch-hunts in certain areas as well. Most witch hunts took place in rural villages suspicious of outsiders where most people knew everyone else and those disliked were hard to ignore (Levack 137). Interestingly enough the few urban areas that existed at the time had a disproportionate number of people accused of practicing witchcraft. In Poland and Finland Levack gives the example that even though no more than five percent of the population of either country was urban in Poland nineteen percent of accused witches came from urban areas while in Finland an even larger twenty-six percent of witches came from urban areas. This is attributed by Levack to the use of sorcery for political gain which was something of little use in villages, that cities were more affected by the changing style of economy, and the fact it is easy to whip up a town or city in hysteria over witch-craft where people don't know each other and panic can spread quickly.

 What do you think of witches-hunts being a potential byproduct of the the origination of capitalism? Or what do you think of the standard perception of the village witch may be less true than previously thought?      

Witches: Can They Kill Your Children? Yes.

The accusation that certain ostracized groups can and do kill children, particularly young children, is an ancient one, one that has been applied variously to Jews, pagans, Rroma, and witches, to name a few groups.

In the Malleus Maleficarum, witches are alleged to kill infants at the order of their master, Satan. According to one condemned witch in the state of Berne, they were commanded to find unbaptized children or those that have been baptized but are not protected by blessings and crosses. Through spells they cause these children to die in their cradles or in their parents' beds, and once the children have been buried they exhume them. Once exhumed, the witches cook down the children in large cauldrons and make potions and unguents from the resulting brew. This potion is used most importantly in the ceremony that initiates a new witch into the coven, during which he or she denounces Christ and the Church, offers himself or herself to Satan, and drinks the potion.

Other sources claim that witches (or other ostracized groups) kidnapped children for the purpose of blood sacrifice. This is where the term "blood libel" comes from; it refers to the accusation of Jews specifically, and is a major consequence and source of antisemitism. But I digress.

I find it interesting that the witches claim to cause infant deaths in a way that resembles what we would now call Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) or crib death. The most unnerving part of this is that the cause of SIDS is still unknown. I'm not suggesting that SIDS is caused by witches' curses, either in the Middle Ages or today. I am suggesting that perhaps witches were blamed for the death of children by genuine natural causes, which in turn caused more and more witches to confess to the charge under torture.

Thoughts?

Kors & Peters p. 192-193

The Malleus Maleficarum: Women, Jealousy, and Vice

           As we are slowly discovering in class, more women were accused of being witches than were men. But why is that? The Malleus Maleficarum, a book on witchcraft written by a pair of medieval inquisitors (Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger), begins by attempting to shed some light on why more women were susceptible to utilizing witchcraft than were men.

           One reason the book talks about for why women are more likely to become witches, is “the woeful rivalry between married folk and unmarried men and women,” (Kors and Peters 185). In the text, this is explained through religious examples, such as Miriam speaking ill Moses and so being stricken with leprosy (Numbers vii) (Kors and Peters 185). Kramer and Sprenger mention that many women turn to witchcraft out of a jealousy that comes from a hatred that married women supposedly feel towards unmarried women or that unmarried women supposedly feel towards married women. What a woeful rivalry indeed!

           Another reason that the inquisitors give for a woman’s susceptibility to witchcraft is “a natural vice in them [women] not to be disciplined, but to follow their own impulses without any sense of what is due,” (Kors and Peters 186). Essentially, the authors are claiming that women turn to witchcraft because they are deeply impulsive. The main example given in the text for this is actually an explanation from the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. His reasoning states that if you allow a women to be in control of all the duties needed to run the house, but save a few duties for yourself, she will invariably that you lack faith in her. He states that unless you quickly resolve the matter, she will become witch out of out her anger for you (Kors and Peters 186). So, according to Theophrastus, women are so impulsive that the slightest anger could cause them to turn to witchcraft.

           Of course, these are only a couple of reasons listed in the Malleus Maleficarum for why women were supposedly more susceptible to witchcraft than were men. However, even just these two bits of reasoning bring up a question or two.

           It is with one of these questions that I will finish: If women were witches because they gave into vice more than men, then why didn’t the noblemen who gave into vice by feasting and wildly celebrating not become witches, too?