Witch-hunt

A witch-hunt is a search for people believed to be witches, individuals allegedly possessing supernatural powers that can damage others. Although belief in witchcraft and witch-hunts occur all over the world, in Europe the history of witch-hunting is usually limited to the early modern period, the "classical period of witch-hunting", when thousands of people were accused of witchcraft and executed as a result of fear, panic and organised persecution. The North-American witch-trials of Salem at the end of the 17th century were on a lesser scale but the trials were triggered by the same mechanics of fear and mass hysteria. In another modern sense, the term witch-hunt is used to describe the persecution of individuals or groups who after creating a climate of panic are discredited and accused of crimes against society. The best known example is probably the McCarthyist search for communists during the Cold War. Other contemporary witch-hunts occur in many African societies where the fear of witches causes periodic witch-hunts during which specialist witch-finders identify suspects, after which they often are put to death by a mob.

Witch-hunts in Europe

In early modern Europe (1500-1800) there were two different concepts of witchcraft: the popular belief in witches and the intellectual concept of witchcraft that involved Satan and nocturnal meetings called Sabbaths.

Popular belief in witches

The illiterate part of the population believed in witchcraft and belief in witches was part of their life. They were convinced that witches could harm others with their evil powers and blamed all kinds of human mischiefs on 'witches'. When an animal died or a neighbour got sick, when crops had withered of there was a dry season and a shortage of water, they went searching for the 'cause' of these misfortunes. Usually they blamed a lonely eccentric or someone they considered an outsider. Women who had no family were by definition outsiders. Those among them who by nature, physical disability or a peculiar lifestyle lived in isolation from the rest of the community, ran an even greater risk to be suspected of possession of 'dark powers'.

The stereotype of the witch, as seen by the witch hunters

In the 15th century this straightforward popular concept of witchcraft was radically changed by an intellectual elite. Both secular and clerical authorities linked a number of other elements to the practice of maleficium. Witches became a pagan sect of devil worshipers, a threat for the christian church. This new diabolical stereotype of the witch was totally made up, it was a fantasy, based on nothing but irrational fear and, according to some scholars, fueled by the will of the church to destroy the last roots of paganism. The book Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of the Witches (1485-1486) written by two Dominican inquisitors Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer was a kind of handbook for the witch hunters and explained how witches could be identified and tortured to make them confess. From this and other numerous documents and descriptions of witch hunts of that period the following picture of the witch emerges:

• A witch was a human being, usually a woman but sometimes a man or child, bound to the devil by a pact or contract and thus had become his servant. A typical witch would be an elderly woman despised by her neighbours, living alone.
• The devil appeared to her in the guise of a man. In exchange for money, or by frightening her, he made her promise to obey him.
• A witch was able to do maleficium, causing harm to others by occult powers. She could sicken the cattle, make men impotent, kill people, produce hail storms and rains that destroyed grain fields and much more.
• Witches were accused of cannibalism. It was said that they killed and ate babies because it would give them supernatural power, and that they also made lethal ointments of this meat.
• At regular intervals witches gathered to perform blasphemous rituals. At first these meetings were known as Synagogues, later as a Sabbaths, a reference to the Jewish Sabbath.
• Larger Sabbats occured three or four times a year and on these occasions witches from all over the country came to the meetings.
• Sabbaths were held at night and ended in the morning. They often took place at cemeteries, crossroads, cellars, caves, or at the foot of the gallows.
• To cover the great distances to the place of the Sabbath witches flew. They used flying ointment they rubbed all over their bodies. Then they flew out the window of their bedroom, flying by themselves or seated on the back of a demonic ram, goat, pig or a black horse. For the same purpose sometimes sticks, shovels, brooms and other common household implements were used.
• During the Sabbath the devil sat on an ebony throne, not in the shape of a man, but as a monstrous hybrid being, half man, half goat: a horrible black man with huge horns, blazing eyes, the beard and feet of a goat, often depicted with bird claws instead of hands.
• This ritual on the Wiches Sabbath, the worship of the devil, was anti-Christian. The witches had to kneel down and call the devil their "Lord". The whole ritual was a parody of the Christian liturgy, like kissing the devil in three places - left foot, genitals and anus - was a parody of the Eucharist.
• After the ceremony, the Sabbath ended in an orgy, where a meal was served with revolting substances like rotten fish, rotten meat and meat from babies. The witches formed a circle around a witch placed in the middle (with a candle in her anus) and then danced around her to the sound of drums, trumpets and flutes. Slowly, the dance became more ecstatic and degenerated into acts of sodomy and incest where everything was allowed. The devil himself copulated with every woman, man and child.
• When the devil sent his subjects home, he gave them the assignment to do as much maleficium as possible against their Christian neighbours.

What this early modern stereotype of the witch makes clear, is that witches in the minds of the witch persecutors were regarded as a group that met regularly to put the Christian doctrine to shame. Although witches practiced maleficium individually, they were considered to be a sect of devil worshipers. Many of those elements were borrowed from earlier sources in mythology and folklore. By tracing back the origins of these beliefs we get a better understanding of how this strange stereotype came about and how the views and policy of the Christian church towards magic and witchcraft changed in the late medieval period.

Prelude in Antiquity

From classical Greek and Roman literature many descriptions of women and evil creatures using harmful magic have come to us. Circe, although of divine origin, was often regarded as a witch and Medea was also described as malevolent. She acted as a priestess of Hecate, and was in contact with the dark forces of the underworld. Like Circe, she later became the archetype of the witch in medieval and early modern Europe. In ancient Greece and Rome each association with Hecata was considered a sign of witchcraft. Interestingly enough, in the early history of Greece, there was a special group of ritual experts, the goetes, visionaries who acted as mediators between the living and the dead. They specialized in funeral rituals and summoned Hecate as the goddess of the underworld. Gradually, however, they expanded their domain and began to earn the reputation that they worked with spirits and daimones who assisted them in their magical practices. So, while they initially forfilled a valuable social function, due to their declining reputation they gradually became to be regarded as evil figures. The name for their practices, goeteia, is often translated as "witchcraft". Some other terryfying descriptions from classical literature are Horace's Canidia, wandering in cemeteries, taking organs from dead bodies to prepare magical potions, and Eritho from the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucan. Eritho was portrayed as a cruel, sinister, half demonic being robbing corpses, making plants wither and poisening the air by her mere presence. In his Phasalia Lucan describes how she dragged a dead soldier from the battlefield into the woods where she brought him back to life to receive messages from the underworld from his dead lips. Stories like these give some insight in who was thought to be a witch in ancient Greece and Rome. While the evil in these literary representations often was embodied in female figures this was not entirely correct. Non-literary sources such as curses, often inscribed into lead tablets, and other evidence shows that there were as many men as women practicing magic.

A being in the Greco-Roman religion appearing as the personification of evil is the strix (Latin for 'scream owl'), a female, vampire-like creature that flew out at night and chased children to suck their blood. The lamia is another night creature that hunted the children of other women. These beings are not identical to human witches, but seem to be related. Eventually the words strix and lamia got the significance of 'witch' in the Mediterranean region. Descriptions as these also point to the recurrent association of women with the night and with dark forces, an erotic threat embodied in female monsters.

From writers like Homer, Apuleius and Ovid we learn that magic was an important part of the Greco-Roman society and everyday life. Many charlatans, quacks, doctors and priests roamed the streets of Athens and Rome in search of a gullible paying public. The Roman state itself employed forecasters to tell the future, and that form of magic was highly valued and taken seriously. The acceptable form of magic took place during the day while the night was considered the best time for black magic. The use of magic and curses with the intent to harm was punishable by law.

From the period of the Roman Empire curses and spells are known, sometimes in the form of inscribed leaden tablets, dedicated to a pagan god. A typical example is the incantation that shoud prevent horsemen to win a race. One of the originally in Latin written curses from the Late Roman Empire ran as follows:

'I adjure you, demon, whoever you are, and I demand of you, that you have the horses of the Whites and the Greens tortured and killed and that you have their riders crushed!"

Apart from this category of curses there were criminal magical acts that involved the use of poison (Greek:pharmaka, Roman:veneficium). In the Roman world veneficium gradually became the name for all harmful magic. Furthermore there was also the category of superstitio, by which was meant the practice of inappropriate, excessive foreign rites that could harm the stability of the Roman state and corrupt its citizens.