Persecution of Witches

The overwhelming majority of those accused of witchcraft during the early modern European witch-hunt were women. 80-percent of the accused were female with some regions seeing figures as high as 96 percent. The stereotype of the witch as a woman therefore has statistical merit, but this was not the case in all regions. The most remarkable contrary example was in Iceland where between the years 1625 and 1685 only ten of the recorded 120 witch-trials targeted a woman while only two, with one in debate, of the 22 known executions were of women. 1 With the witch-hunt coming to Iceland via Denmark where 90-percent of the accused witches were women, why Iceland was immune to the European witch-hunt's misogyny is a lingering question. 2 I argue that masculinity held its prominence in Icelandic magic and refuted continental influence for two reasons. The first is the entrenchment of masculinity in the Icelandic magical world view dating to the Viking Age and evidenced in the language, literature, and mythology of Old Norse culture. The second reason is the absence of a relationship between magic, sexuality, and the demonic.

Projet de thèse :
CONSTRUIRE LA FIGURE DE LA SORCIÈRE EN FRANCE À LA FIN DU MOYEN ÂGE (XIVe-XVe siècles)
Justice, représentations, circulations des savoirs et des imaginaires

Par Maxime Gelly-Perbellini
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles

Direction de thèse :
Alain Dierkens (ULB)
Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (EHESS / CNRS)
Alexis Wilkin (ULB)

ABSTRACT
The Jacobean era's infamous witchcraft trials are recalled after reservoir repairs close to Pendle Hill reveal a buried cottage with bricked‐up cat. Interpretations of the building as the site of Malkin Tower, recorded in court records as the venue of a witches coven are critically evaluated in the light of archaeological and historical evidence.

KEYWORDS
WITCH, PENDLE WITCH TRIALS, PENDLE HILL, MALKIN TOWER, FOLK BELIEF, MAGIC, LANCASTER ASSIZES, WISE WOMEN, CUNNING FOLK, ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SEVENTEENTHCENTURY, ALIZON DEVICE, SALEM WITCHES, THOMAS POTTS, LOWER BLACK MOSS, ELIZABETH SOUTHERNS, DEMDIKE, ELIZABETH DEVICE, JAMES DEVICE, ANNE WHITTLE, CHATTOX, ANNE REDFERNE, JANE BULCOCK, JOHN BULCOCK, ALICE NUTTER, KATHERINE HEWITT, ALICE GRAY, JENNET PRESTON, GUNPOWDER PLOT, CAT

Pagan beliefs and practices in 19th century Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Hungary, Wisewomen, healers, and seers. Culture loss under repression and displacement from the land. Festival enactments of "Burning the Witch." Rites of witch-detection. Demonization and stubborn retention of pagan elements. Book draft from Vol XIII of Secret History of the Witches.

O presente artigo pretende mostrar os argumentos cristãos que justificavam o uso da tortura na caça às bruxas na Europa no período de transição entre a Idade Média e a Idade Moderna, mostrando alguns motivos que justificavam os argumentos.

Abstract: This article aims to show the Christian arguments to justify the use of torture in the witch hunt in Europe in the transition period between the Middle Ages and Modern Age, showing some reasons that justified the arguments.

Witches’ Sabbath offers an overload of the emblematic characteristics which were attributed to witches during the early modern period, underpinned by the complete nudity of the witches. Naked witches were not often depicted in the illustrations of respectable, cautionary literary works concerning witches, hence this artistic choice on Baldung's part is a rather innovatory. Interestingly only a year after the unveiling of Witches' Sabbath in 1510, Die Emeis - which preocuppied itself with the Lenten sermons of Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg - was published in Strasbourg similarly depicting naked witches. Although we cannot say whether the inclusion of naked witches in Die Emeis was solely the result of Baldung’s depiction, it is very likely that Geiler would have been familiar with Baldung's work due to its popularity and this woodcut could have indeed influenced his own opinions and artistic choices. Whether Baldung intended his woodcut to not only reflect a “real-life” representation of witches but, more importantly, influence how they would be depicted by their persecutors in the future is debatable. Much of the debate surrounding this piece centres on this point: was it Baldung's intention to realistically depict witches or should Baldung’s work be viewed as satirical. Either way, there is much that this woodcut can tell us about what those who genuinely believed in the existence of witches and the way fear of witchcraft was constructed for public consumption.

A structured and partly annotated bibliography of religious non-conformism / dissent / heresy / heterodoxy and its repression in the history of Christianity (now around 750 standard pages) intended to update and supplement, among others, Grundmann, Herbert, Bibliographie zur Ketzergeschichte des Mittelalters (1900-1966), Rome 1967, and Berkhout, Carl T. – Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Medieval Heresies: A Bibliography 1960-1979, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1981. All headings are now also in English; some annotations are in Czech.

Record has preserved nothing beyond the mere fact of the first, while the foregoing extract is all that I can find of the second ; so that I am obliged to pass on to the pitiful tale" of -BESSIE DUNLOP AND THOM REID.* Poor douce honest Bessie Dunlop, spouse to Andro Jak in Lyne, deposed, after torture, on the 8th day of November, 1576, that one day, as she was going quietly enough between her own house and Moukcastle yard, "vmakeand hevye sair dule with hirself," weeping * Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.' BESSIE DUNLOP AND THOM EEID. 9 bitterly for her cow that was dead, and her husbaud and child who were lying " sick in the land-ill," she herself still weak after gissane, or child-birth, she met " ane honest, wele, elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane gTay coitt with Lumbart slevis of the auld fassoun ; ane pair of gray brekis and quhyte schankis gartanit abone the kne ; ane blak bonet on his held, cloise behind and plane befou', with silkin laissis drawin throA? the lippis thairof ; and ane quhyte wand in his hand.' This was Thom Keid, who had been killed at the battle of Pinkye (1547), but was now a dweller in Elfame, or Fairy Land. Thom stopped her, saying, " Gude day, Bessie." " God speid yow, gude man," says she. " Sancta Marie," says he, " Bessie, quhy makis thow sa gi-it dule and sair greting for ony wardlie thing?" Bessie told him her troubles, poor woman, and the little old gTay-bearded man consoled her by assuring her that though her cow and her child should die, yet her husband woidd recover; and Bessie, after being " sumthing fleit " at seeing him pass through a hole in the dyke too narrow for any honest mortal to pass tln'ough, yet returned home, comforted to think that the gude man would mend. After this, she and Thom foregathered several times.

Consideration is given to how elements of the occult: witchcraft, magic and sorcery may be identified in the archaeological record. Working definitions of occult terminology are established before proceeding to propose a new approach, which triangulates data from historic and folkloric sources with archaeological evidence, to establish contextual narratives that stand for the past. Excavation of an occult ritual site at Barway, Cambridgeshire is presented to demonstrate how the approach works in practice. Archaeological evidence, combined with local folklore and historic accounts of spells and sorcery, identify the site as the locus of occult activity performed by cunning folk, or ‘white’ witches, during the seventeenth-century.

KEYWORDS
OCCULT, CUNNING FOLK, WITCH, WITCHCRAFT, SPELL, MAGIC, SORCERY, FOLKLORE, EAST ANGLIA, ELY, SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY, GRIMOIRE, PENDLE WITCH TRIAL, MATTHEW HOPKINS, JOHN STEARNE.

Desde la Antigüedad hasta la Modernidad la humanidad ha te-mido y reverenciado a monstruos y héroes. Este libro explica de forma cronológica la evolución de ambos e intenta dar res-puesta a la razón de su existencia, ya que los dos cumplen una función vital en nuestra sociedad desde sus inicios: son los representantes de las fuerzas del caos y el orden, las encarna-ciones del Bien y el Mal más absolutos. Dioses, héroes, reyes, cazadores, monstruos del abismo, gigantes, brujas, vampiros y asesinos en serie son los protagonistas de esta obra que sostiene una idea simple y constante a lo largo de la misma: monstruo y héroe son creaciones del Estado, es decir, de quie-nes detentan el poder para obtener legitimidad y perpetuar su situación el máximo tiempo posible. Sin embargo, el monstruo es algo más que una construcción del Estado, lo es también del individuo en su deseo de dar sentido a su existencia. Por este motivo, pese a tener unos rasgos comunes a lo largo de la historia, los monstruos se transforman conforme lo hacen también las sociedades. De este modo, dan respuesta a nues-tras inquietudes, nos ayudan a conocer el mundo en el que vivimos y, lo más importante, nos permiten reconciliarnos con nosotros mismos al hacerles a ellos responsables del mal que vemos en el mundo. El hombre contemporáneo no cree en los monstruos, pero suele verlos allí donde mira, puesto que son un mal necesario.

This book tells the history of Cambridge from the earliest Roman and Anglo Saxon inhabitants through to the notorious Cambridge Spies, who actively spied for the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Told in an accessible manner, and illustrated throughout, the contents are:
1. Etheldreda: Born a Princess, Died a Saint
2. Vanquished by the Vikings: the sacking of Cambridge
3. Fire, Death and Murder at the Fairs: Stourbridge and Midsummer Fairs
4. Jousting Tournaments: history of jousts at Cambridge
5. The Black Death: death in Cambridge
6. Peasants' Revolt: attacks on Cambridge colleges during the revolt
7. Bloody Mary's Revenge on Cambridge
8. Burnt at the Stake: John Hullier, the Protestant Martyr
9. Bear-Baiting: cruel sport in Cambridge
10. Witches and Witchcraft: women killed for being witches
11. Bull-Baiting: more cruel Cambridge sports
12. The English Civil War: the fortification of Cambridge
13. Oliver Cromwell's Missing Head
14. Pressed for an Answer: Peine Forte et Dure
15. One in the Eye for Sir Isaac Newton
16. Highway Robbery: highway men in Cambridge
17. Branding: punishment for crimes
18. Bloody Burwell Fire: the death of 70 innocent people
19. Dick Turpin: his time hiding in Cambridge
20. Cockfighting: history of cockfighting at Cambridge
21. The Resurrection of Tristram Shandy - death of Laurence Stearne: grave robbers steal his body for dissection in the university
22. Cambridge Gallows: the tragedy of those hung at Cambridge
23. The Tragical Death of the Revd Samuel Reeve
24. The Chimneysweep Burglars: thefts from colleges
25. Elizabeth Woodcock and the Curse of the Three Tuns Inn
26. General Tom Thumb Causes a Riot
27. Sister Act: The Cambridge Arsenic Poisoners
28. The Three Tuns Inn: Den of Thieves
29. Burned Alive
30. Bloody Students: The Battle of Town and Gown
31. Fatal Bumps: death on the river Cam
32. Suffragette's Protest
33. The Great War: the role the university played in WWI
34. The Judases Who Betrayed from Within: the story of the Cambridge spies: Blunt, Burgess, Philby, MacLean, and others
35. The Enigma of the Second World War: the role Cambridge played in cracking the German enigma codes at Bletchley Park

Also attached are reviews of the book in the Cambridge News by Emma Higginbotham and a piece about Oliver Cromwell's Head, taken from the book.

The paper examines the history of relations between the Roman Inquisition and the societies of the Venetian Ionian Islands. Specifically, it studies cases of arrest or accusation to the Inquisition of subjects of the Republic of Venice residing permanently or displaying in the Ionian region delinquent behaviour on issues relating to faith during the period οf the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Besides the definition of the divergent ideas embraced or propagated by the accused as well as their deviant behaviours and practices, principal issues investigated are on the one hand the role and the policies of the State authorities regarding religious dissent and its repression, and on the other the perception of the Roman Inquisition by the local societies and the reflections of its function in the social domain.

Much has been written about witchcraft, a topic which has attracted the attention of scholars from early times. But sorcery, witchcraft and evil are concepts deeply rooted into our western society and embedded in people’s mind from Ancient times. Therefore, it is important to study this process form the perspective of cultural studies. Authors such as Stephen Greenblatt have emphasised the importance of understanding a literary piece of work not as an isolated phenomenon, but in relation to its historical context and exploiting its subversive potential. The aim of this paper will be to give the audience a general overview on traditional ideas about witchcraft present in today’s society compared with what scholars and writers have said about this controversial topic in earlier times, in particular in the Early Modern period when witchcraft hunts were at their peak. However, not only the concept of the witch will be analysed but also the historical background will also be taken into consideration as an important part of this study.

Since its very birth, Christianity has been a plural tradition. However, various attempts have been made throughout Christian history to police the plurality of religious knowledge and religious identities and to handle religious "otherness". This panel enquires into Christian discourses on heresy, "the Other", coercion, persecution, violence, martyrdom and tolerance, and searches for ways of representing them in the study of religions. The papers span a range of topics and periods: the repression of heresy in medieval Europe; charges of ritual murder by the Jews between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Jewish responses to these charges; the reinterpretations and uses of martyrdom in early Protestant/Catholic conflicts; conflicting knowledge in 16th-century debates about the reality of witchcraft; and the discourse on modernism as an esoteric current and as a resurgence of ancient "heresies" at the turn of the 20th century These topics, however, all share an interest in how knowledge of "the Other" was negotiated, established and reinterpreted in Christian discourses, and in how this knowledge was connected to practices of repression.

Much has been written about witchcraft, a topic which has attracted the attention of scholars from early times. But sorcery, witchcraft and evil are concepts deeply rooted in our western society and embedded in people’s mind from ancient times. Authors such as Stephen Greenblatt have emphasised the importance of understanding a literary piece of work not as an isolated phenomenon but in relation to its historical context and also focusing on its subversive potential. This article aims at offering a general overview on traditional ideas about witchcraft present in today’s society compared with what scholars and writers have said about this controversial topic in earlier times, in particular in the early Modern period when witchcraft hunts were at their peak. However, not only the figure of the witch will be analysed but also the historical background that surrounded this phenomenon and that helped give shape to contemporary perceptions on this figure.

In 1609, the Bordeaux judge Pierre de Lancre burned 70 people at the stake and then wrote a justification for his actions in his book ‘On the Inconstancy of Witches.’ Therein, Lancre provided a brief history of dance wherein he argued that, “the truth is that the passion and excitement of war first created dancing.” His argument aligned with Reformist thinkers he probably nonetheless considered heretical. This paper investigates the conception of dance’s origin in ancient Pyrrhic war dance, and articulates how religious writers in the period conceived of dance and war through the Pyrrhic lineage of antiquity.