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Chapter Two From Stark, Rodney (2003) For the Glory of God. Princeton: Princeton University Press Chapter 3 God’s Enemies: Explaining the European Witch-Hunts “Extreme rationalism may be defined as the failure of reason to understand itself.” —Abraham Joshua Heschel For centuries, nearly all educated Europeans believed that their societies were victimized by a horrible underground of “witches” who had sworn oaths to serve Satan, and who gleefully inflicted suffering, death, and destruction upon their neighbors. The reality of these malefactors was beyond question, having been confessed in elaborate and consistent detail by thousands of “witches” brought to justice in many different places. These sworn accounts painted a horrifying picture of absolute evil on the prowl. All “witches” were required to regularly attend gatherings where the most extraordinary sacrilegious, criminal, and immoral things took place. The most frequent of these sabbats (or sabbaths) involved only a few “witches” from the immediate neighborhood and were usually held on Friday nights in places such as churchyards, near the local gallows, in graveyards, or at a crossroads. The participants began by praying to the Devil, who was present—sometimes in human form, sometimes as a hideous horned creature. After having reaffirmed his or her renunciation of Christ, each “witch” then kissed the Devil, usually in the anus. This ceremony was followed by a feast, often consisting of a human baby roasted for the occasion. After the meal, there came a blasphemous version of a Christian service. That done, the “witches” recounted their recent achievements in harming others by causing bad weather, blighting crops, sickening cattle and poultry, causing stillbirths, or making people ill, often fatally. Then, by the light of a candle stuck in the rectum of one of their number, who remained on hands and knees, a dance would begin that soon turned into a general orgy in which nothing and no one was forbidden. The climax involved Satan having sex with everyone present, often changing genders to serve males as well as females. Confessed female “witches” agreed that the Devil’s penis was painfully rough and his semen icy cold. Several times a year “witches” from everywhere gathered for a general sabbat. To overcome the huge distances involved, they were provided with magical means of transport, sometimes riding on flying horses, rams, or large dogs, and sometimes they possessed a magic grease that, when rubbed on a pole or broomstick, enabled them to fly. Events at the large sabbats were like those at the regular meetings, but on a far more magnificent scale. The sabbat began as those assembled reaffirmed their vows, including “that they will both in word and deed heap continual insults and revilings on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the other Saints; that they will trample upon and defile and break all the Relics and images of Saints; Chapter 3: For the Glory of God 2 that they will abstain from using the sign of the Cross . that they will never make full confession of their sins to a priest. and finally that they will recruit all they can into the service of the devil.”1 At the end of both large and small sabbats, all the “witches” were charged by Satan to depart and do as much harm as possible to their Christian neighbors. Had Europeans actually been confronted with such a challenge, the only reasonable and decent thing to do would have been to stamp it out, and that’s exactly what most reasonable and decent people tried to do. The results were tragic. Harmful Misconceptions Few topics have prompted so much nonsense and outright fabrication as the European witch-hunts. Some of the most famous episodes never took place, existing only in fraudulent accounts and forged documents,2 and even the current “scholarly” literature abounds in absurd death tolls. Andrea Dworkin claimed that nine million European women were burned as witches,3 while Mary Daly was content with “millions” of women.4 Pennethorne Hughes included both genders in the “number who died as witches,” and, having noted that some estimate the total as “nine millions,” he added, “It may be many more.”5 Norman Davies6 devoted only two of the more than thirteen hundred pages in his history of Europe to witchcraft, but that was sufficient to include his confident report that the “craze” had “consum[ed] millions of innocents.”7 It is only by accepting such fantastic statistics that writers can plausibly use words such as “genocide” and “gynocide” and make comparisons to the Holocaust. As will be seen, real witchcraft trials began at the start of the fourteenth century, but victims were very few until about 150 years later. Hence the conventional dating of the witchcraft era is from about 1450 until 1750, although many of the most ferocious episodes were clustered between about 1550 and 1650. During the entire three centuries, in the whole of Europe it is very unlikely that more than 100,000 people died as “witches.” In fact, scholars who have sifted through the actual records with a real concern for numbers agree that the best estimate is that only about 60,000 people—men as well as women— were executed as “witches” in Europe during the entire witch-hunting period.8 That works out to a total of about two victims per 10,000 population.9 Even if we were to assume a death toll twice that high, the total is a tiny fraction of what has been claimed. Of course, witch-hunts were not evenly spread across time and space. Rather, they tended to come in waves and to be concentrated in a few places, so most local episodes were bloodier than the overall statistics suggest. But even most of these episodes were far less deadly than has often been claimed. Theo. B. Hyslop10 reported that in England from 1600 to 1680, “about forty-two thousand witches were burnt”11 —the actual death toll in England probably amounted to fewer than a thousand over the entire three centuries.12 In similar fashion, it was long believed that early in the seventeenth century, 600 witches were executed in the Basque region of Spain. The true figure may be as low as 30 and no higher than 80.13 Until recently it was also assumed that 99 men, women, and children were burned alive in Mora, Sweden, in 1669.14 In fact, 17 adults (and no children) were beheaded and then burned.15 Henry C. Lea placed the death toll in Scotland at about 7,500,16 five times more than the actual number.17 And so it has gone. The death of 60,000 innocent people is appalling, but that is no excuse for exaggerating fatalities by orders of magnitude. Nor is there any justification for merely assuming and then asserting that most witch-hunters were sadistic fanatics. If that were true, it might make for an easy explanation, but the facts will not permit it. Hugh Trevor-Roper pointed out that the “most ferocious of witch-burning princes, we often find, are also the most cultured patrons of contemporary learning.” As for many of those who took active roles in the actual prosecutions, upon examining their biographies, Trevor-Roper reported “what harmless, scholarly characters they turn out to be!”18 Granted that several infamous witch-hunters were fanatics who would stop at nothing, but most judges and inquisitors seemed quite concerned to reach fair verdicts. “With few exceptions European criminal courts showed notable restraint and caution in dealing with witchcraft suspects.”19 This is reflected in the fact that the overall conviction rate of those brought to trial for witchcraft was about 50 to 55 percent20—low as criminal 3 Stark (2003): For the Glory of God prosecutions went in those days.21 Nor was death the inevitable outcome for those convicted of witchcraft. In many places the penalties for a first offense were very mild—in Spain the norm was reconciliation with the Church without punishment, and it was usually only those who refused to repent who were condemned.22 In some places, of course, death was the usual sentence given convicted “witches.” But here, too, keep in mind that capital punishment was the usual penalty for all significant offenses—even at the height of the witch-hunts, many times more thieves and robbers than “witches” were being executed.23 Indeed, “more women were probably executed for infanticide than for witchcraft.”24 For example, in Rouen, between 1550 and 1590, at the height of the witch-hunts, sixty-six women were burned for infanticide, while three women and six men were burned for witchcraft.25 Moreover, the use of the stake as a method of execution for witchcraft was chosen not to inflict unusual suffering but “to prevent resurrection of the body.”26 Consequently, “witches” were often strangled before being burned, or wet leaves were placed on the fire so that the victims died of asphyxiation before the flames reached them. In Sweden “witches” were beheaded before being burned. Moreover, many “witches” were not burned, dead or alive. In England and Scotland they were hanged, and in some parts of Germany they were beheaded or drowned. It should also be noted that, rather than being staffed by religious extremists, the ecclesiastical courts were far more judicious and lenient in dealing with accused witches than were the secular courts.27 Contrary to its notorious reputation, the consensus among respectable historians is that the Inquisition was initiated in Spain to replace mob actions with judicial process and restraint,28 with the result that, as Brian Levack pointed out, during “the largest witch-hunt in Spanish history” more than nineteen hundred persons were accused, but most were never charged, ‘only eleven individuals were condemned.”29 It is true that torture was often used to extract confessions from accused witches, and that these brutally compelled confessions, more than anything else, sustained belief in the reality of pacts with the Devil.
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