New Times, New Accusations: The Emergence of New Ideas in the European Witch Hunts

Image depicting the Strasbourg witch hunts

In Strasbourg on February 14^th, 1347, 900 people were killed as a result of well-poisoning. From 1324-1325, what is often considered to be the first witchcraft trial took plane in Kilkenny, Ireland when Dame Alice Kyteler was accused of witchcraft. From the years spanning between 1300 and 1499, there were a total of 410 witchcraft trials.

On page 135 of our coursepacket, we see a table entitled Major European demonologies and their context, 1400-1700 (CP 135). In this document, we see a listing of dates, titles of written works, the author, and the persecution that it is describing. We see a strong trend the locations where the persecutions occurred, such as those in Milan in 1505, 1506, 1520, and 1523.

Late medieval witchcraft sources began to form new ideas and new victims for the persecutions. Jews were being targeted, and were accused of blood libel – or the accusation that they kidnapped and murdered Christian children in order to use their blood as part of religious and demonic sacrifices – in addition to the discrimination experienced as Christians labeled them the ones who crucified and were responsible for the death of Jesus.

A collection of Jews committing blood libel

According to Claude Tholosan in his 1436 Ut magorum et maleficiorum errors, “Further, at the instigation of their master, these people swear that those who enter thir sect deny God, whom they call the Prophet” (Kors and Peters 164). Although in this specific instance, Tholosan was speaking of magicians, the denying of Jesus can also be applied towards the Jews and their denial that Jesus is the messiah.

What are your thoughts? Were the Jews rightfully persecuted due to their heretical beliefs that Jesus was not the messiah? Were they guilty of blood libel? Why was there a sudden surge of witch hunts in certain areas as we see in our course packet? It’s something that I think we need to further analyze before coming to any conclusion. 

Image credits:

http://cdn3-www.webecoist.momtastic.com/assets/uploads/2008/12/witches-1.png

http://www.historyinanhour.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Nuremberg-Chronicle.jpg

Voluntary Poverty, Involuntary Persecution: The Waldensians

The year is 1173, and the setting is Lyons, France. A radical Christian began preaching of apostolic poverty – the belief that the clergy and those following and believing in God could do so without any land ownership of excessive wealth – and spreading the gospel with residents of the city. The daring and influential preacher was Peter Waldo, and sparked what would become one of the largest movements and reformations of the time.

Peter Waldo:
Preacher, or pest?

The Waldensians were followers of Waldo’s sermons, and whom believed in a thorough understanding of the Bible and the spread of the gospel to those who otherwise would not have been exposed to it. Central to their beliefs were the Godhead (Trinity), voluntary and apostolic poverty (as discussed in class, and found in Cohn’s Demonization of Mediaeval Heretics), and a staunch denial of purgatory and the Antichrist.

The Waldensians did not believe in needing or utilizing and organized church, nor of needing to be formally educated in order to preach. Referred to as “Poor Catholics” in 1208, after the burning of eight Waldensians in Strasbourg, the distaste and condemnation of the group came to a crux in 1215 when Pope Innocent III declared them heretics during the Fourth Lateran Council.

According to Bernard Gui’s Practica inquisitionis haeretica pravitatis, Devil worship, and other heretical acts committed by the Waldensians, were performed in peculiar ways, primarily in the Devil being presented in the form of an animal – most often a cat, other times a goat, so on and so forth (CP 111). Connecting this to today’s reading, an image of this representation can be found on page 112 of our course packet, and depicts the adoration and worship of the Devil in the form of a cat. The image can also be found below.

The "obscene kiss" - kissing the behind of a goat-like creature
representative of the Devil.

What are your thoughts? Were the Waldensians simply believers who disagreed with the religious doctrine at the time, or was there a deeper, more sinister component to their practices? 

Images in order of appearance:

Peter Waldo Image

Adoration image take from course packet

The Obscene Kiss

Dame Her! Rich, Aristocratic, and a Heretic

By the time Alice Kyteler married Sir John Poer around 1316, she had already outlived three husbands and was financially secure. She had also been accused of killing her first husband with the help of her second husband. This trend would continue when statements from Poer led his children as well as Kyteler’s other step-children to believe he was being poisoned by the dame.

According to Dr. Bernadette Williams’ article The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, not only did Kyteler’s step-children feel that she was involved in the poisoning of Poer, but there was consensus between them that Kyteler had utilized sorcery, specifically maleficia, to cause harm to the men in her life. Furthermore there were accusations that Kyteler had used maleficia to gain financially. This aspect stands out in the fact that many of Kyteler’s step-children did not fare as well fiscally compared to their step-mother. Williams also notes that Kyteler’s actual son was favored over his step-siblings, which further strained relations between the parties.

According to Brian Levack’s The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, Kyteler was unlike the majority of witches in the fact that she was a member of the aristocracy. Whereas most people accused of being witches were “common folk”, Kyteler was far from common (Levack 44). Coming from a family of Flemish merchants and moneylenders, Kyteler quickly became successful through trade in bustling, thirteenth-century Kilkenny, earning well into the thousands (£). In a time when the average daily pay amounted to less than two pennies (Williams). This fact combined with the untimely demise of three of her husbands, and the sickness of her current spouse, undoubtedly contributed to the feelings of ill-will towards the dame. This animosity would come to a head in 1324, when the accusations of sorcery and heresy would be leveled against Kyteler.

Delving further into the background information causes one to wonder about the real reasoning behind why people accused others of heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery. Did Kyteler’s step-children truly believe that she was practicing maleficia against her husbands or could the fact that she was a successful, wealthy widow play into the accusations that were made?

For further reading see: Shelby Weissenbach’s blogpost Dame Alice Ketyler; Brian Levack’s The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe; and Bernadette Williams’ The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, at http://www.historyireland.com/medieval-history-pre-1500/the-sorcery-trial-of-alice-kyteler-by-bernadette-williams/

Dame Alice Kyteler

The trail of Dame Alice Kyteler was and important case in Ireland during the time 1324-25 (Levack 43). Dame Alice was accused of harmful, dark magic that involved murder so she can gain wealth. Along with witch craft she was also accused of belonging to a sect of heretics that secretly met a night. The sect were charged with having potions and were in possession of clothing of dead unbaptized babies.  Even though, somethings related to witchcraft, practice of ritual magic was not present. This case was a landmark because “it reflects for the first time the belief that malefici were organized in a devil-worshiping heretical sect” (Levack 44).

The demonization that occurred in Dame Alice case relates back to many others during the pre-witch hunt era. During this time the idea of witchcraft had not been fully formed; because of this people were only on trial and accused not yet burned and killed. Like in this case and others it shows how trials can be politically motivated by relating magic to worshiping the devil.

Along with murder and creating potions the accusation of cannibalistic infanticide came into Dame Alice’s case; they were not charged. Cannibalistic infanticide disappeared for some lengths of time and did not reappear until 1450s; there is still a creepy feeling that comes into play when thinking about such acts of witchcraft. Like the image below from page 45 of The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe by Levack.  

What do you think about this image?

Witches burning and boiling infants. From Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum (1610 edition)

Pilgrimage to Stolen Lands

"Pilgrimage to the Beautiful Virgin of Regensburg"--Michael Ostendorfer, woodcut, 1520

This woodcut by Michael Ostendorfer illustrates an all-too-common event in Europe during the 1500s (possibly earlier and later as well). Jewish people were forced out of towns and regions, or else killed, and on the claimed land churches and religious hospitals were built (after all Jewish buildings on the site were demolished, of course). We see this in Regensburg, a city in modern southeast Germany of about the same size as Springfield today. In the late 15th century, the Jews of Regensburg were murdered or banished from the city and the ghetto was demolished. On the grounds of the demolished synagogue a pilgrimage church devoted to the Virgin Mary was built. It is said that some of the stones used in the construction of the church were gravestones from the nearby Jewish cemetery. The Juliusspital in Wurzburg bears a similar history.

I find it interesting that despite anti-Semitic ideas that Jews were magic-users, killed Christian children for rituals, and were responsible for the death of Christ, their holy grounds were considered prime real estate for new churches. I imagine dramatic speeches about "conquering the savages" and "claiming what is ours as the true people of God" used to legitimize this use of effectively stolen land.

Do you have any other ideas as to the Church of Regensburg's rationale for using the site of a demolished synagogue for a new church?

Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 2004. 40-43. Print.

Demonization and Persecution of Jews

The readings over the past few class periods seem to be following the same trend; whether it is Cathars, Waldensians, Templars, or Jews we continue to read about persecution and demonization of these minority groups. Yet again these weeks readings provided a number of vivid descriptions paralleling those of witches. In Roper we read that "Jews stole Christian children to torture and kill them so that they could use their blood in Jewish holy rites" (Roper 41) Another image that stands out to me in Roper's reading is the Jewish woman giving birth to twin piglets (Roper 42) Are there any other images or descriptions that stand out or further parallel imagery of witches or witchcraft?

In the Robert Chazan reading in our course packet was the increasing humanization of Jesus. As Jesus became more and more humanized it is easy to understand how Christians would begin to sympathize for his suffering and that animosity for his assailants would grow. Chazan writes of the depiction of the Crucifixion of William of Norwich (CP 99), which I have provided below. This image showed Christians just how gruesome the death of Christ had been further depicting Jews as tormentors and aggressors. I believe that the humanization of Christ is one of the the leading factors behind the persecution of Jews. What other factors could have helped lead to the persecution of Jews?

 

History Repeating

               “When He had called the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear and understand: Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” Matthew 15:10-12

               Before Jesus had come to the Earth the people who ran the show were the Pharisees. They were the leaders of the church and they told the people what the Bible said, or implied what the Bible might say. Basically they manipulated people who were illiterate in the ancient Greek or Latin languages that the Bible was written in and had them succumb to the plot of tradition and not actual Biblical principles. Skip ahead several hundred years the same methods are being reproduced in Western Europe. The Pope would hear ‘records’ of people doing barbaric things like kissing animals on the behind as well as men kissing men and the Devil being adored. After hearing these instances he would unleash his authority in the form of inquisitors who would uncover their answers in a non-educated man. The more people they captured as these brutal Devil worshipers the more power they could gain over the rest of the land. Applying this sort of manipulation to our world now in the twenty first century my mind automatically goes towards the Presidential power. However, I am not politically adequate so that could be misconstrued…  Do you think that as people of the United States of America we are being manipulated by some larger power?