The History of European Witchcraft

Modern Wicca has only been around for some fifty or so years but the idea of witchcraft is much older.  This article will examine how the idea of witchcraft has developed in European society and will explode some common myths along the way.  It is necessarily only a brief summary of current historical thinking – for more information the reader is referred to the bibliography.

Definition

The definition of what constitutes witchcraft has vexed academics for many years.  There are three definitions that are widely accepted nowadays:

• Witchcraft is often used as a generic term for the religious practices of tribal peoples.
• Witchcraft is used as a generic term for malefic folk magic, which is its most common usage for the purposes of this article.
• Witchcraft is also used to refer to the modern neo-Pagan religion known as Wicca.

The second type of witchcraft (i.e. malefic magic) has invariably been regarded as a crime throughout Europe from ancient times.

Witchcraft in the Ancient World

Witchcraft does not seem to have been a common feature of the earliest societies (such as Mesopotamian.)  Only one account of a witchcraft trial exists in the sources that we have, and this is possibly due to the harsh penalties attached to an unproven accusation of witchcraft:  where witchcraft was suspected it was usually treated by medicine, exorcism or the purificatory maqlu ritual.

In the classical sources we have a number of great mythic witches, e.g. Circe in “The Odyssey” and Medea in “The Argonautica”.   Horace satirises witches and clearly presents them in a negative light. 

All of the negative stereotypes that would later form the basis of witch-hunting (e.g. child sacrifice) developed during the Early Roman Empire, and they were initially applied to Christians.

Medieval Europe

Until the twelfth century CE the Church taught that witchcraft did not exist, and that anyone who believed they could harm others through magic was being deluded by the devil.  A shift in attitude occurred when the Church began to search for and prosecute heretics.  Now witchcraft became a form of heretical belief and was punished accordingly - the Knights Templar and the Albigensians, among others, fell victim to this type of allegation.  In the fourteenth century a shift in attitude again occurred: now witchcraft was seen as a diabolic conspiracy to destroy Christianity.  By now the myth of the witches’ Sabbat, where witches met to worship Satan, was fully formed.  This was the period of mass witch-hunts.

Causes of Witchcraft Trials

During the Early Modern period a series of widespread witch persecutions swept through Europe.  Historians have identified a number of causes of this phenomenon:

1. The switch from accusatorial justice systems, where the plaintiff had to prove his case, to inquisitorial ones, where the State investigated the case.
2. The consolidation of patriarchal values, since most of the victims were women.
3. The development of demonological thinking, which provided an ideology of persecution.
4. Social tensions at a local level, which could lead to accusations of witchcraft.
5. The spread of the witchcraft idea through printed books, which sped up the rate at which information was disseminated throughout society.

Early Modern Witch trials

First it must be understood that witchcraft was a crime and suspected witches were treated no differently from any other criminals, e.g. judicial torture was common place and burning at the stake was a common punishment for forgers.  Having said this the witch trials do show a number of similarities:

1. Witch trials tended to occur in clumps.  This is because once an allegation of witchcraft was made hysteria could very rapidly set in.
2. Most witch trials occurred in rural communities where people were uneducated and superstitious.
3. Old women were usually the victims of witch accusation, but there are regional exceptions (see below).
4. Pressure to prosecute usually came from the local community within which the accused witch lived.
5. Arrest, trial, conviction and execution were not automatic; due process was usually followed.
6. Convictions were likely to be overturned on appeal to a higher court, because the burden of proof needed to be greater.

About 150,000 people were tried for witchcraft over a period of about two centuries.  This is considerably lower than the figure of six million sometimes quoted, which is a ridiculously high figure at a time when the entire population of Europe was around nine million.  The so-called Burning Times – in their form as a holocaust – never actually happened.

Regional variations

Arguably more interesting than the similarities between witch trials are the regional variations that can be seen:

1. Three-quarters of all witchcraft trials occurred in the Holy Roman Empire (modern ).
2. Half of the people prosecuted for witchcraft in were men, mainly clerics or shepherds.
3. In Catholic countries the Inquisition tended to suppress witch trials, not encourage them.
4. In the retention of accusatory proceedings, the absence of torture and the supervision of higher courts prevented large scale witch trials from occurring.
5. In professional witch-finders and widespread use of torture led to over 2000 witchcraft trials.
6. In a reliance on (false) child testimony produced a witch hunt which lasted twelve years.
7. In Baltic states witches were also regarded as being werewolves.

The End of Witchcraft Trials

From the mid-seventeenth century witch persecutions began to die out.  There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Local justice became better regulated and the higher courts gained more supervisory powers.
2. Torture was abolished making it harder to extract confessions.
3. New standards of evidence were being enforced.
4. More people gained access to legal representation.
5. Witchcraft was eventually decriminalised.
6. Educated people stopped believing in witchcraft.

Did Witches Actually Exist?

This is a very important question for many modern Wiccans, particularly those who regard themselves as the heirs of an ancient tradition.  The available evidence suggests that those who were accused of witchcraft were innocent.  Their confessions were often extracted under torture, and were forced into a pre-conceived pattern which had been created by witch-hunting manuals such as the Malleus Maleficarum, which themselves were based on models of persecution which were originally used against Christians.  The idea that a pagan witch cult actually existed in Medieval times has largely been discredited.

So where does this leave hereditary witches?  Well another group of people existed throughout this period and their profile suggests that hereditary witches are probably descended from them.  These people were the cunning folk, the folk magicians who served the needs of their local community as everything from herbalists to soothsayers.  Although occasionally sued by their clients they were never accused of witchcraft, indicating that they provided a much needed service to their local communities.  It is possible that hereditary witches are descended from these cunning folk.

The Modern Period

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witch beliefs persisted in rural communities but now professional unwitchers dealt with the problem.  Those who persecuted suspected witches were themselves prosecuted for assault.  Even in modern times belief in malefic witchcraft still exists as the cases of Victoria Colombie and others show.

Wicca

In the 1920s Margaret Murray developed the theory that witchcraft was the remnants of an ancient Mother Goddess religion which had been repressed by the Church.  Unfortunately she was very selective in her choice of evidence and her theories were quickly demolished. 

In the 1950s Gerald Gardner founded modern Wicca, claiming that it is an ancient fertility cult and basing his ideas on a mixture of Murray, Aleister Crowley and Freemasonry.  This, of course, is the religion which is thriving today.

Conclusion   

The concept of witchcraft is very ancient, even if its most modern manifestation is only less than a century old.  Despite this, those who regard themselves as hereditary witches are not descended from an actually existing historical cult, but instead from the cunning-folk, the folk magicians who served their local communities as healers and consultants. 

In recent years Wicca seems to be moving on from the “we hate Christians because they persecuted us” viewpoint and embracing a more positive ideology.  Wiccans should look to the future not brood on past wrongs, imaginary or otherwise. 

The future’s bright, the future’s Neo-pagan.

Bibliography

• Ankarloo and Clark (ed):  The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe
• Apollonius of Rhodes:  The Argonautica
• Cohn, Norman:  Europe’s Inner Demons
• Davies, Owen:  Cunning-folk
• Homer:  The Odyssey
• Horace:  Satires
• Hutton, Ron:  Triumph of the Moon
• Murray, Margaret:  The Witch-cult in Western Europe