Witchcraft & Heresy Final Lesson

Here is another one of my final papers, as for my Witchcraft and heresy class as I have posted before. I have yet to receive my grade and feedback on it. I'll be sure to share that once I find out.

Dear M,
Last time I left you off with my adventures of the first half of my Witchcraft and Heresy in Europe class and now I wish to fill you in on the information I have gathered in the final half of the course. I hope that you have been engaging in the information that I have provided you with so far and that it has given you some sort of different outlook on the world around you as it has for me. I will try my best to describe to you as much as I can in a similar fashion, enjoy!
I had the opportunity to learn about the Cunning folk who resided in the countryside of England during the nineteenth century. A cunning man or cunning woman practiced folk magic, which generally was that of divination, black magic, healing of the sick, and even the unbewitching of the bewitched. Cunning folk tended to be considered good magicians, due to their engagement with seeking out other magic practitioners, as they were sometimes hired to identify witches, as well as their unbewitching of people. Their name comes from “cunnan” which is an Anglo Saxon term for “to know.” They were considered to have advanced knowledge and ability whether learned or innate. Although they did practice magic, they also exposed witches making them hard to categorize and leaving them out of the many scholarly texts about the witch trials that occurred. I found it particularly interesting that they were still punished to some extent by the Church and other anti-magic authorities, but there were no records of executions directly related to the Cunning folk and their magical acts. Even more interestingly, from the class discussions on this subject, my fellow classmates didn’t seem to really take note of the fact that the Cunning folk were still punished and persecuted even though records do not distinctly connect them with magic. Moreover, the mere fact that these people were hired and used to seek out supposed evil-doers yet still used magic to do so and were considered good or “white witches.” The existence and activity of the Cunning folk only further complicated the defining of magic and its practitioners as well as who should be punished and to what degrees. As I have previously informed you, the Church had a strong stance against magic; this still remained in regards to the Cunning folk. The Church may have been further conflicted its followers who may have believed and empathized with the supposed goodness of the Cunning folk but strictly denounced them in regards to the fact that they practice magic.
The next major topic, which we engross in during the whole last half of the semester, is that of heresy. Heresy is defined as a theological or religious opinion or doctrine that is held to be contrary to the doctrine of the prevailing religious authority. In simple terms, having beliefs or engaging in activities that go outside the beliefs and activities of the dominating religion of that time, being the Roman Catholic Church in this case. In the perspective of the Church, being a heretic not only meant you held disapproved beliefs but you did so stubbornly and persistently, as if you were going out of your way to anger and disgrace the Church. I found it most fascinating as I learned more about witch trials and persecutions that the Church particularly feared and felt threatened by these various “heretical” groups and individuals, which I will further discuss as this letter goes on.
You may be wondering why this big ordeal and focus on heresy started, well it started with the emphasis and rise of piety. Piety is the religious devotion, reverence, and desire and willingness to perform religious duties. All this piety created revolutionary reform, enthusiasm for church buildings, emerging of religious art and architecture amongst many other things. Beginning in the twelfth century the rise of heretical movements occurred, many of which were lead by clerics, monks, or canons, and even laypeople. Most of these people felt the Church was inadequate to meet their religious and spiritual satisfaction, which lead them to begin reformations that further separated them from the Church and thus giving them heretical statuses.
Heretical movements varied across time and space so I cannot describe to you all of them nor can I inform you of every reasoning and beliefs held by these groups. With that in mind, I will tell you about the ones that were particularly appealing to me. One example is of a group that rejected the institution of marriage, but put stress on virginity, chastity, and a vegetarian diet. Marriage was an interesting subject for different ideals where held about it. Some approved of it but only between virgins, while some rejected it completely, and in between were those that encouraged it but did not view it as sacramental. Other groups had varying beliefs of those already established in the Church. For instance, some refused to revere the cross, most rejected infant baptism, some refused to pay tithe or make monetary contributions to the Church, and some claimed the Church itself was heretical. As time progressed, heretics were increasingly being viewed as devil worshipers, magicians, witches, murderers, sexually promiscuous, baby killers and eaters, and antichrists as for even a lot of artwork during this time depicted these ideas.
The topic of sexual promiscuity, which I find most fascinating, it is important to make note of how so much sexual activity is viewed as bad, evil, and almost always associated with the devil or demons. Demonic orgies are described almost always from every witch-persecuting group. As for demons could take on a human form and have sexual intercourse with humans, a demon in male form was known as an incubus, and a succubus for a demon in female form. Interestingly, most often described were incubi, therefore the creatures that had sex with women. Women were obviously targeted as victims of demonic powers and were very much involved in magic in the eyes of persecutors and others during the Middle Ages. Here arose a significant part of history, the increase of misogyny, the hatred of girls and women. The idea that women are innately inferior to men was quite common during this time as it was before and after as it still continues today in various cultures including our own. During Medieval time, women were thought to have intellects similar to that of children, considered to be more carnal in her desires than men, and so on. Women of both extremes in regards to age were incredibly loathed, a birth of a female child was a disappointment and widows were particularly warned against. As for female offspring, the dowry system led to an increasing trend of contempt for women. Marriage rituals switched from a bride walk to the dowry system, which the former was the transfer of wealth from the husband’s family to the bride’s family while the latter is the opposite. Therefore, a newborn daughter meant that the family would soon have to give a portion of their wealth to her future husband. Dowry is still exists in the world today. India, which I have had previous experience learning about the effects and evolution of dowry, still struggles with issues surrounding it currently. Although the dowry has been made illegal in India since 1961, it is still practiced and even forcibly so in some families. I had learned about the horrific dowry deaths, which usually occurred when the rides that did not provide dowry or not a satisfactorily amount of dowry were burned to death. These burnings would be posed as accidental and thus hard to prove, therefore difficult to punish those responsible. Fortunately, dowry deaths were finally officially recognized as a form of criminal domestic abuse in 1986. On the other hand, widows were viewed as temptresses and were especially dangerous because they were no longer virgins and may seduce any man. Because of this, even unmarried women were not allowed in certain towns by law! Celibacy, then increasingly became more pronounced as a part of piety as for sex was only accepted within the marriage and only for the purpose of procreation or to keep man away from illicit activity. As celibacy became more emphasized, the image of women declined. I just find it so interesting how sex is so often associated with evils during the pre-modern days and even still today. In addition, if disapproved sexual activity occurs, it is generally always the woman’s fault; she is the temptress, she is the wrong-doer, she is carnal, she is evil. All this misogyny led to women having a restriction of options for occupation as well as high competition for occupations. This left them with low status and low paying positions and only fifteen percent of independent tax payers were women. A manual, Malleus Maleficarum meaning the “The Hammer of Witches,” was written by two Dominican monks about how to put witches under trial by describing ways to interrogate and torture them and the likes. This manual provides countless negatives views of women including, a lot of what I have mentioned already with an emphasis on the sexual appetite of women.
The Malleus Maleficarum outlined the many heretical groups and witch trials including groups such as Lepers, homosexuals, Jews, and a majority of women. Other groups that were repressed and/or persecuted include the Templars, Cathars, Waldensians, Beguines, and Beghards. Lepers are people diagnosed with leprosy and were generally always avoided before and during this time. However they were eventually officially rounded up, confined, stripped of all civil rights and often murdered. Homosexuality was outlawed as a capital crime almost everywhere in Medieval Europe. Jews, as they have always faced some sort of discrimination, were considered noncitizens in Christendom during the time of the Spanish Inquisitions. Jews were accused of crucifying Christian children, and poisoning the wells of the town amongst other things. Templars make up a military religious order founded in the early twelfth century as a part of the Christian effort to repossess the holy lands from Muslims. Suddenly they were arrested and charged with a variety of heresies, upon defending their order many Templars were burned at the stake. To name a few of the supposed heresies the Templars engaged in, they denied Christ, worshipped idols, disrespected the sacrament, engaged in infanticide, and used and consumed magical potions to allow them to know secrets of the order forever. Cathars were a group of radical heretics presenting an enormous threat to the Church, as according to the Church itself. Believing they were the true Christians, the Cathars lived their lives protected from all the things Christ warned them of and rejected the grandeur of Churches. Cathars created their own independent Church structures with their own specialists, ceremonies, and so on. Massacred in the Crusades, having their city burned, and being officially an enemy of the Church left only fourteen surviving Cathars by the fourteenth century. Waldensians, another heretic group, emphasized Apostolic life and rejected the authority of the Church hierarchy seeing it as ill-founded and unnecessary. Numerous Waldensians were burned, and as the persecutions continued they sought reformation and joined into the larger reformed Protestant movement. Finally, beguines and beghards were free spirited laypeople that lived a religious life outside the officially recognized religious orders. Beguines refer to the women while the beghards are the men; both groups were committed to piety, poverty, chastity, fasting, and prayers without taking permanent vows.
This time period marks the beginning of the stereotyped witch. What do you imagine when you hear the term ‘witch?’ A woman, perhaps, ugly and old with a hooked nose, who rides on a broomstick and could possibly turn into an animal. All of these traits were born from the Medieval era. Contrary to popular assumption, the term ‘witch’ does not refer solely to women. Many of the witch trials involved the capture, interrogation, torture, and murder of all the mentioned groups which further enhanced the negative views of these groups and thus spreading the stereotyped witch notion.
It has been a fast paced semester and unfortunately this fun and fascinating class has come to a close. I hope you find all this fascinating and look forward to discussing any more aspects with me sometime. Although I have informed you on a lot of topics from this class, I hope that you take in consideration of possibly taking this class and by the same professor; I recommend it with the utmost enthusiasm!