From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Later Middle Ages

In comparison with the estimated number of about 60,000 executed so-called witches (women and men), the number of executed and punished witch-priests seems to be rather irrelevant. This statement, however, overlooks the fact that it was only during medieval and early modern times that the crime of heresy and witchcraft cost the life of friars, monks, and ordained priests at the stake. Clerics were the largest group of men accused of practicing magic, necromancy, and witchcraft. Demonology and the media (in constant dialogue with trials) reveal the omnipresence of the devil’s cleric with his figure possessing the quality of a ‘super-witch’, labelled as patronus sagarum. In Western Europe, the persecution of Catholic priests played at least two significant roles. First, in confessional debates, it proved to Catholics that Satan was assaulting post-Tridentine Catholicism, the only remaining bulwark of Christianity; for Protestants on the other hand, the news about the devil’s clergy proved that Satan ruled popedom. Second, in the Old Reich and from the start of the 17th century, the prosecution of clerics as the devil’s minions fueled the general debates about the legitimacy of witchcraft trials. In sketching these over-lapping discourses, we meet the devil’s clergy in Catholic political demonology, in the media and in confessional debates, including polemics about Jesuits being witches and sorcerers. Friedrich Spee used the narratives about executed Catholic priests as vital argument to end trials and torture. Inter alia, battling the devil’s clergy played a vital role in campaigns of internal Catholic church reform and clerical infighting. Studying the debates about the devil’s clergy thus provides a better understanding of how the dynamics of the Reformation, counter-Reformation, Catholic Reform, and confessionalization had an impact on European witchcraft trials.

Section: Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debating the Devil’s Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th Century)

Voltmer

2019

“…Although very little analysed, the personality and culture of the individual inquisitor ended up having a fundamental importance in the trial proceedings. During the trials the defendants would get familiar with and influenced by the theological and personal interpretations given to magic and witchcraft by the judges (Keenan 1940;Bailey 2001) and they would include and absorb the judges' narrative into their own narratives which presents also some elements of their own folklore, beliefs and myths. On their part the judges would use their own experiences and what they have learnt of popular magic and witchcraft during the trials to write new manuals which will form the judicial educations of new judges and inquisitors creating "a circle of borrowed concepts" (Moretti 2018, p. 36).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From St Augustine (Keenan 1940) onwards "for sorcery to fall under the purview of inquisitors, it had to manifest heresy, which generally meant the involvement of demons" (Bailey 2001).…”

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confidence: 99%

Angels or Demons? Interactions and Borrowings between Folk Traditions, Religion and Demonology in Early Modern Italian Witchcraft Trials

Moretti¹

2019

In 1638 Caterina di Francesco, from the town of Siena (Tuscany), was accused by the Roman Inquisition of invoking the devil through a spell called “the white angel spell” or “the spell of the carafe” (incantesimo della caraffa). She was interrogated, tortured and kept in and out of prison for nine years. Despite the accusations of the witnesses being focused on her practice of love magic, specifically her ability to bind men to “other” women rather than their wives and to help the disgruntled wives to have their husbands back with the use of a baptised magnet, the Inquisition focused its attention on her practice of the white angel spell, a divination spell to find lost or stolen objects with the help of shadows seen inside the carafe. This was a well-known spell not only among all levels of Italian lay society but also well known to the Inquisition, so much so that the 17th-century Inquisition manual Prattica per Procedere nelle Cause del Sant’Officio lists this spell among the sortilegij qualificati: Those spells presenting serious heretical elements. Using archival sources, this article will examine the effects of borrowed concepts between the theological/elite and folk witchcraft traditions within a specific case-study.

“…6 The difficulty felt by theologians of distinguishing the holy from the unholy was particularly taxing when it came to visionary women. In her trial at Rouen, the judges asked Joan about her knowledge of mandrakes; and only a few years later she appeared in Johannes Nider's Formicarius (1437) as an example of the devil-worshipping witch who had begun to terrorize the imaginations of clerics [26].…”

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confidence: 99%

Charisma and Routine: Shaping the Memory of Brother Richard and Joan of Arc

Brown

2012

The extraordinary life and fate of Joan of Arc are well known; so is her association with the prophetic preacher, Brother Richard, who predicted the Apocalypse. Less well explained is why contemporaries initially took such an interest in this association, and how and why it began to fade from official memory after Joan’s death. Max Weber’s concepts of “charisma” and “routinization” offer valuable tools to deal with these questions. Both Joan and Richard have earned the title “charismatic” but interest in the preacher has generally been secondary to interest in the Maid. A more rigorous adoption of Weber’s meaning of charisma, however, helps to clarify what the relative importance of these figures was in the eyes of contemporaries. It also shifts attention to the significance of messianic prophecy in the years surrounding Joan’s life, the anxieties it generated and the way it was dealt with. In this context, the processions and commemorative ceremonies organized by townspeople, churchmen and royalty during this period deserve further analysis. Seen as forces of “routine”, these ceremonies assume a greater significance than they have usually been granted, as processes that managed the memory of charismatic phenomena