Witch hunting

WITCH HUNTING

"The search for moral villains remains as fresh as today's newspaper, as powerful as any social movement on the contemporary scene"

I believe that every single one of you is familiar with the word “witch” and that you mostly would associated it with pictures from our childhood’s fairy tales, Halloween’s party and what else. But do any of you ever wonder about the origins of this word, the origins of that myths ?

There are several definitions or connotations of the word "witch"17th-century definition of witchcraft. In England and New England at that time, it was believed that a malefic witch had made a pact with the devil, the Christian embodiment of evil. The pact would involve an exchange of a soul for special evil powers with which other mortals could be tormented. Victims of witchcraft would claim to see horrible visions, experience physical pain and exhibit bizarre and troubling behavior. The supposed perpetrator, labeled a witch, would be subject to arrest, trial, conviction and sentence. In 17th-century New England, under the English legal system, a person convicted of witchcraft was hanged. The Court of Oyer and Terminer convicted persons accused of witchcraft under the precedent of previous executions in England and New England.

The word witch has another important definition. Practitioners of the religion of Witchcraft or Wicca trace their beliefs to pre-Christian times. Theirs is a nature-based religion which pays homage to a Father God and Mother Goddess. They recognize no personification of evil and disassociate themselves entirely from the 17th-century definition of witchcraft.

Finally, the word witch conjures up another image - the stereotypical crone with pointed black hat, wart on her nose, flying with her black cat or familiar on a broom. This cartoon interpretation of the word reaches far back into Western civilization and is reinforced by movies such as "The Wizard of Oz". Scary/comic witch and cat symbols are used throughout our culture, and the interpretation is particulary prevalent at Halloween.

Clearly, it is important to understand that the word "witch" is complex and powerful. Used as an accusation of Satanic pact in the 17th century, it could result in death. Used as a religious title, it indicates a follower of an ancient pagan belief system, and lastly, used in the popular interpretation of the word, it conveys a range of images from the humorous Broomhilda in the comics to the dangerous and frightening "wicked Witch of the West" in the movies. Each meaning of the word is distinct from the others and needs to be used in its proper context.

Is the idea of a witch as a person associated with evil power still valuable in today’s world ? How did this idea evolve through times and spaces ?

From the witch hunt of the 17th century to today homophobia, passing through the 50’s fear of communism, how has the notion of scapegoat changed ?

I- Origins of witchcraft believes

1563, when witchcraft officially became an offence de jure punishable by death, to 1736, when it ceased to be a crime.

The popular literature and movies such as The crucible (1996) often present he witchhunts as peasant movements driven by superstition of common folks.

Larner defines witchcraft as an evil power. Furthermore this power is distinguished from physical force or any other mechanism or natural phenomenon within the technological understanding of the society concerned. Witchcraft is a supernatural evil and its practitioners were therefore evil persons. (Larner, 7)

First, it is a person who uses supernatural powers to cause misfortune or injury to others. Second, the person usually harms neighbors or kin rather than strangers. Third, this person works not for straightforward material gain but from envy or malice. He or she is either inherently evil or possessed by evil force. Fourth, the appearance of such a figure is not an isolated event. The witch works in a tradition, either by inheritance, training or initiation. Fifth, this person can be opposed by using counter-magic, or by forcing him or her to revoke their own magic, or by eliminating him or her directly. (Hutton, 4)

witches, who were labeled by others

The material from the courts offers three types of evidence: the accusations of neighbours, the confessions of the accused, and the indictments and summing up of the court. (Larner, 135) The accusations represent in their most uncontaminated form the ideas of peasants about what witches could do. They also indicate these peasants’ most central concerns: usually malevolence, cursing and misfortune. The accusation, however, cannot be regarded as entirely genuine since they were collected and arranged by scribes and clerks who had a good idea of what kind of accusations stood some chance in courts. Of the three types of evidence the confessions are the most difficult to evaluate. Although some confessions were made voluntarily to attract attention, most of them were extracted under torture or other varying degrees of pressure. Confessions represent an agreed story between two parties, a witch and an inquisitor, in which the witch drew, through hallucination or imagination, on a common store of myth, fantasy, and nightmare, to respond to the inquisitor’s questions. (Larner, 136)

Unlike original accusations the confessions were not primarily concerned with personal malice but diabolism. The principal focus was on the Demonic Pact which came to be regarded by the Scottish judiciary as a legal minimum for conviction.

James was trying to convince the doubting populace that the assaults of Satan are most certainly practiced and in this trilogy gives a detailed account of the Devil’s connection with the witches. Here are some examples: I speake first of that part, wherein the Deuill (Devil) oblishes himselfe to them by formes, I meane in what shape or fashion he shall come vnto them, when they call vpon him. And by effectes, I vnderstand, in what special sorts of seruices he bindes himselfe to be subject vnto them. The qualitie of these formes and effectes, is lesse or greater, according to the skil and art of the Magician. (20) All Magicians, Diuines, Enchanters, Sorcerers, Witches, & whatsouer of that kinde that consultes with the Deuill, plainelie prohibited, and alike threatned against Lawe of God. (29) These two degrees now of persones, that practises this craft, answers to the passions in them, which the Deuil vsed as meanes to intyse them to his seruice, for such of them as are in great miserie and pouertie, he allures to follow him, by promising vnto them greate riches, and worldlie commoditie. (32)

The Demonic Pact was a ritual in which an individual gave himself or herself over to the Devils service in return for certain favours. It consisted of the renunciation of baptism, sexual intercourse with the Devil, and finally receiving of the Devil’s mark. The formula for the renunciation of baptism occurred repetitiously in the confessions and indictments. A ritual was performed in which the new witch put one hand on her head and another on the sole of her foot and promised to the Devil all that lay between. A variant was laying a hand on the head and giving all under it to the Devil. (Larner, 148) The Pact was then sealed with sexual intercourse, conferring of one or more marks and sometimes conferring of a new name. The sexual intercourse with the Devil, often called “carnal dealings”, was nearly essential aspect of woman’s version of the Pact.

the Devil similarly gained a special power over his witches, namely sexual access to the witch’s body, dominion over the witch’s actions in life and future rights to the witch’s soul.

II- 1st witch hunt in the 17th century : fear of the unknown and Puritanism

A-scotland and europa

The ancient European penalty for committing a murder by witchcraft was, likewise in early modern Europe, execution or excommunication. The virtual absence of witch-hunting in the Middle Ages, according to Hutton, can be accounted for in terms of a single solvent force, Christianity, which ended witch trials in every society in which it was adopted as the official religion. It did so with a simple and novel theological argument: that if the cosmos was controlled by a single all-powerful and benevolent deity, then magic could not operate unless that deity willed it. (Hutton, 9)

Although the Witchcraft Act of 1563 did not cause immediate witch panics, it was a certain pre-condition of the witch-hunts of the 1590s and the seventeenth century. It brought witchcraft formally into the criminal law at a time when the law and the legal practice were about to develop rapidly, and despite its brevity and its skeptical wording the witch-hunters and the lawyers of the seventeenth century found it more than adequate for their purposes. It is then no wonder that in the 1649 the Witchcraft Act was ratified and confirmed as it stood.

The first was through the accusation of neighbours. The second was through the accusation made by other accused witches. Those were not mutually exclusive and either or both might occur. Although the initial impulse came frequently from another witch, the evidence of neighbours was regarded in law as more significant. The reputation was of particular importance in the production of a witch in Scotland. Alongside the individual charges of maleficence we frequently find that the accused was ‘of ill fame’, ‘a rank witch’, ‘by habit and repute a witch’, ‘of evil repute’. (Larner, 103) The importance of the character of the accused is interesting in relation to the modern law where such aspects are considered improper, but in seventeenth-century Scotland this was a legal virtue. The lack of such reputation could work in favour of the accused when other things were against her.

In the second stage, the community would decide that justice required the suspect to receive a criminal trial. This decision would be focused on, and probably led by, an aggrieved individual, such as a surviving relative in murder cases. It was conventional for a victim of a crime to act as the prosecutor in court. He or she had to go to the nearest court with jurisdiction over the crime concerned to make his complaint and demand a trial. The third stage was thus a decision by those responsible for that court whether to hold a criminal trial. This decision was made nominally by the court’s judge, though probably in practice by the clerk to the court. It might be accompanied by an order to arrest the suspect. Witches were normally imprisoned in tollbooth or a barn.

Officials used sleep deprivation, pricking for the witch’s mark, threats of torture and direct torture

The ‘boots’ whereby the legs were crushed, the thumbscrews, burning with hot irons, the ‘turcas’ for tearing out nails, were all mentioned in the complaints and appeals of imprisoned witches. (Larner, 108)

Swimming the witch was an ordeal widely 24 known on the continent and in England. The witch had her wrists tied to her ankles and was thrown into the water. If she sank, she was innocent; if she floated, she was a witch as the Devil would keep her up. The purpose of this was not to drown the suspect as the ropes and planks were kept ready if she sank

The execution was a great public occasion during which the whole community would be in attendance. The witch was normally first strangled and then her dead or unconscious body was burned, sometimes in a tar barrel. (Larner, 113) There are also accounts of witches being burned alive.

Cases began to occur in which the initial suspect or suspects named accomplices. Soon witchcraft would be transformed from the problem of individual witches with a commonly recognized reputation into the problem of ramified underground conspiracy. Everywhere one looked, one could not see individual witches, but witches with a number of accomplices. To deal with this threat of secret and conspiratorial witchcraft is the reason why the authorities took the initiatives we describe as panic. For witch-hunting to take off, both central and local authorities had to panic.

To understand this we must see the witch-hunt not in isolation, but as a part of a far broader program intended to control the thoughts, values and behaviors of the entire population. The witch-hunt needs to be seen as part of this program, a program which attacked everything from the celebration of Christmas to going to holy wells, from sexual behavior to the use of charms to cure an animal or a person. Local institutions of the Church did not only pursue witchcraft cases but spent a great deal of time attempting to alter patterns of sexual behavior, in particular around pre-marital sex but also surrounding adultery. The Church attempted to establish a godly society and the secular authorities were willing to go along with most elements of this program.

Witch-hunting in Scotland was a Protestant business. After all, the witchcraft statute was passed in 1563, only three years after the Reformation. There was, of course, nothing distinctive about Protestantism when it came to which-hunting for many Catholic countries pursued witches with an equal zeal. Early modern reformation movements, whether Protestant or Catholic, were seeking to impose a new model of Christianity in which ordinary people 31 would be personally responsible for their salvation, and deviants from the holy norm would face punishment.

predominantly middle-aged or elderly women of middling or lower peasant status

Witchcraft was predominantly a woman’s crime. About eighty percent of witches were women.

The relationship between women and witchcraft is quite obvious: witches were women; all women were potential witches. This is not to say, however, that witch-hunting was the same as woman hunting. Witches were hunted for being witches in first place. The ungodliness witches stood for was not actually gender-specific. The Devil himself was a male after all. Witch-hunting was directed against for ideological reasons against the enemies of God, and the fact that about eighty percent of them were women was, though not accidental, one degree away from an attack on women as such. (Larner, 92) As the women stereotype is concerned, witches were seen to be predominantly women long time before any witch-hunting. This stereotype has its root in the Aristotelian view of women as imperfectly human – a failure of the process of conception – and the JudaeoChristian view of women as the source of sin and the fall of man. Since witchcraft involved a rejection of what are regarded as the noblest human attributes women were the first suspects. Women were intrinsically and innately more prone to malice, sensuality, and evil in general and were also less capable of reasoning than men were.

profound unease with women in society

e, the way people thought about and feared women in work, position and power in their households and in the social structure and economy

Women were feared as a source of disorder in patriarchal society. Larner states several possible reasons for this fear. At the level of popular witch-beliefs there was a number of reasons for this fear. Through women’s life-bearing and menstruating capacities they were considered potential owners of strange dangerous powers. For example, a contact with the menstrual blood was thought to make the corn wither; iron and steel presently take rust; or bees in the hive die. But not only menstruating women were to be feared. So too were women as child bearers. It was only by exhibiting a total control over the lives and bodies of their women that men could know that their children were their own. They were also feared in the sexual act. The fact that they were receptive, not potent, and could receive indefinitely, whether pleasurably or not, generated the myth of insatiability. Because it was thought that women through insatiable lusts might either lead men astray or hold them to ridicule for their incapacity, witches were alleged to cause impotence and to satisfy their own lusts at orgies with demons.

Witch-hunting was the hunting of women who did not fulfill the male view of how women ought to conduct themselves. In terms of ideology, the case for witch-hunting being seen as woman-hunt is more convincing. The religion of the Reformation demanded that women for the first time became fully responsible for their own souls. The preachers were indeed referring to ‘men and women’ in their sermons. But along with this new personal responsibility they preached the ritual and moral inferiority of women. Witchcraft as a choice was only possible for women who had free will and personal responsibility attributed to them.

The pursuit of witches could therefore be seen as a rearguard action against the emergence of women as independent adults. The women who were accused were those who challenged the patriarchal view of the ideal woman. They were accused not only by men but also by other women because women who conformed to the male image of them felt threatened by any identification of themselves with those who did not

The witches were, in this sense, a threat to the building of this godly society. That threat was irrespective of any belief in the Devil; witches were a threat just by their very existence.

The philosophical level was related to the emergence of modern rationalism, the rise of science, and as a result, gradual dispelling of ignorance and superstition. If we attribute the decline solely to these reasons, however, we run into difficulties. The main problem is that the expression of skeptical ideas, especially those that denied the possibility of the crime of witchcraft, either had little impact among the intellectual elite or took place after witchcraft prosecutions had already begun to wane. There were skeptical voices throughout the entire period of witch-hunting but they did not undermine the prosecutions. Even the most prominent critics of witch-hunting never challenged the intellectual foundations of witch-believes. The farthest they would go was 39 challenging some of their aspects

Since the rise of witch-hunting was the outcome of the emergence of the godly state, its fall was connected with the chronological point at which the establishment of kingdom of God ceased to be a political objective.

the strive for godliness was thus slowly but inevitably replaced by the pursuit of liberty, enlightenment and other secular alternatives.

B-salem and America

The events which led to the Witch Trials actually occurred in what is now the town of Danvers, then a parish of Salem Town, known as Salem Village. Launching the hysteria was the bizarre, seemingly inexplicable behavior of two young girls; the daughter, Betty, and the niece, Abigail Williams, of the Salem Village minister, Reverend Samuel Parris.

By the time the hysteria had spent itself, 24 people had died. Nineteen were hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem Town, but some died in prison. Giles Corey at first pleaded not guilty to charges of witchcraft, but subsequently refused to stand trial. This refusal meant he could not be convicted legally. However, his examiners chose to subject him to interrogation by the placing of stone weights on his body. He survived this brutal torture for two days before dying.

Salem for Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace.

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692

In January of 1692, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village became ill. William Griggs, the village doctor, was called in when they failed to improve. His diagnosis of bewitchment put into motion the forces that would ultimately result in the hanging deaths of nineteen men and women. In addition, one man was crushed to death; several others died in prison, and the lives of many were irrevocably changed.

To understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to examine the times in which accusations of witchcraft occurred. There were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A strong belief in the devil, factions among Salem Village families and rivalry with nearby Salem Town combined with a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. Soon, prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem; their names had been "cried out" by tormented young girls as the cause of their pain. All would await trial for a crime punishable by death in 17th-century New England - the practice of witchcraft.

In June of 1692, the special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) sat in Salem

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