This is the final instalment on the burning times, and who was really to blame for the execution of Witches.

                                                           Traditional Witches

What They Did--One of the most shocking facts to emerge from the new trial data is that many traditional Witches actively supported the persecution. During these times, most common people divided Witches into "black" and "white" catagories ( despite that the Church insisted that all Witches were evil). "Black" Witches cursed people. "White" Witches also called wise women and cunning men) were healers and diviners who specialized in undoing the baneful spells of their "black" sisters. Witches blamed misfortunes on harmful magic, and they helped Witch-hunters discover the identities of "evil" Witches. This did not lead to much persecution during the Middle Ages, but at the height of the Witch scare traditional Witchcraft suddenly became deadly. People looked for remedies against "black" magic beyond simple protective charms. Many people took suspected practitioners of baneful magic to court. Thus, many of the people named were put to death. In France, for instance, twenty-five percent of all Witches put on trial were accused by a wise-woman or cunning man.

What They Didn't Do-- They didn't die in great numbers. Contrary to popular opinion, most Witches were not herbal healers or traditional magic-users. Healers and traditional magic-users made up a small percentage of Witches ( perhaps around twenty to thirty percent).  Most traditional Witches, in fact, lived through the burning times in absolute peace and safty. They were never accused of Witchcraft, simply because, as today, most people were able to distinguish between "good" magic and "bad".

For further insight on this read The Witch Hunt in Western Europe by Brian Levack, and Witches and neighbors by Robin Briggs

                                Neighbors and Common Folks

What They Did--Neighbors and common folks accused the majority of Witches. Most Witches were acused by their neighbors, not by the Church or professional Witch hunters. Since killing a witch was believed to be the easiest way to break a perveived spell, average people commonly blamed misfortunes on Witchcraft and therefore often welcomed Witch hunting. In fact, when courts would not kill Witches "fast enough" the public frequently took the law into their own hands and lynched suspects.

What They Didn't Do--The common people did not blindly accept the Church's demonology. A close examination of trial records turned up a suprising fact: many Witches were not convicted of the same crime that they were accused of! Witches were usually accused by their neighbors, then tried by the Church or State. These two groups disagreed over what Witchcraft was. To most people Witchcraft was harmful magic, and they accused Witches of commiting magical crimes- like cursing and killing livestock. To intellectuals of the Church and state, Witchcraft was heresy, or Satanism. Once they had a Witch in custody, they questioned him or her mercilessly about an allegience to the Devil in the origional charges, but by the end of the trial, the Witch stood convicted of full-blown Satanism. This difference is important for it shows that people were not accusing Witches because they were forced to. They had their own concerns that were different from the Church or state's. Also they remind us that we have to be very careful before we assume that the diabolic aspects of a Witch trial are part of folk lore.

I was going to finish this off tonight, but I want to keep you coming back. Tomorrow the conclusion with the Traditional Witches

The final installment on the burning times.

                                    Local Authorities

What They Did-- It was the local authorities who killed the vast majority of Witches, mostly in community-based courts.Some of these courts were virtual slaughterhouses, killing ninty percent of all accused Witches. Germany offers the most horrific evidence of the dangers of local courts. Most countries had a national court that squelched the excesses of the local courts. But since Germany did not, it killed nearly half of alll Witches who died in these times. Panics were noy uncommon in Germant, and all of these panics occured in local courts.

What They Didn't Do--The local authorities didn't kill millions of people. Historians are confident that somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 witches died. This is mainly because, in the past, no one had counted the number of Witch trials in court records. There are millions of trials from this period, and only a small number have anything to do with Witchcraft. Estimates of the numbers of Witches executed were based on wildly varying guesswork. Once historians actually began to count the number of executions, they found that trials were far less common than they thought. To date, fewer than 15,000 definite executions have been found. Compensating for lost records and unrecorded deaths, this suggests that the death toll was nowhere near the millions once suggested. Of course, the true horror of a Witch trial cannot be found in the cold statistics, but in the sad tales of Witches like Anne Gamperle, tortured to death in front of her husband and sons. That is, each individual unjustified death is a tragedy that we should remember, even if the number of tragadies is not so great as we once thought.

                                                National Governments

What They Did--Contrary to what most people believe, Witch hunting was worst where the Church and State were weakest. Governments generally don't like panics and chaos. The persecution of Witches, then, was worst when and where the authorites couldn't stop it in places alond national borders, at times during periods of civil war, and in loose confederacies like Germany and Switzerland. There are some exceptions, cush as in Scotland, where King James introduced Witch hunting. But in most areas, a strong government decreased Witch hunting.

What They Didn't do--The national Government didn't kill many Witches. National courts killed more Witches than Church courts did, but nowhere as many as the local courts. In many areas, roughly thirty percent of the Witches tried by national courts were killed.

Well I guess I will finish this last piese on Common folks and traditional witches in another installment.

 For those interested in the past blog post here is a continuation. This will be a three part series.

                                              The Christian Churches

What They Did--The churches laid the groundwork that made the persecution possiable. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church taught that there was no such thing as neutral magic. All Magic was evil, and ass of it came from Satan. While there weren't many Witch trials during the Middle Ages, this teaching set the stage for the tragedy to come. Moreover, in the eleventh century the Church supressed religious diversity by executing "heritics." Their methods- such as burning at the stake- became the traditionalmethod of killing a Witch. Then Protestant churches arose during the religious turmoil of the Reformation, they carried on in the Catholic Church's footsteps, prohibiting magic and violently persecuting religious minorities.

What they didn't do--During the Middle Ages, when the Church controlled most Witch trials, very few Witches were killed. Witch hunting didn't skyrocket until the Early Modern Period in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after the Reformation split "the" Church into Protestant and Catholic sects. Even then, church courts killed very few Witches--generally less than one percent of the people they tried. Most Witches were killed by local, nonreligious courts. People were put to death by their own neighbors.

                                       The inquisition

What they did--The Inquisition encouraged the stereo-types that drove the panics. The earliest Witch-hunting manuals were written by inquisitors. At the height of the persocution of Witches, most manuals were written by nonreligious authors. However these later writers built from the earlier writings of the Inquisition. In fact, the most influential anti-Witch manual of all times was written by two inquisitors: the Malleus Maleficarum  of Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. Nonreligious courts seized upon this text and followed many of its horrific guidelines. The Inquisition inspired others to commit atrocities, even if their own trials were generally more restrained.

What they didn't do-- The Inquisition didn't kill many Witches. When it was first created in the early thirteenth century, the Inquisition was not allowed to try Witches as the Church did not consider Witchcraft a heresy. This changed in the early fourteenth century. Yet even then the Inquisition did more talking than killing. Scholars could only find a few hundred Witches who were definitely killed by the Church and Inquisition from 1300-1500. By the time of the main persecution in the mid-sixteenth century, the Inquisition no longer existed in most countries. Odder still, the places where the Inquisition did try Witches (Spain, Italy, and Portugal) had some of the lowest death tolls in Europe. In Spain, the Inquisition actually opposed Witch trials. 

 I just finished reading a very informative piece from LLewellens 2001 Almanac written by Jenny Gibbons. Wow quite an interesting piece, and over the next several days I will type it into this wonderful little portal I call mine here in cyberspace.

                                        A New History of Witchcraft by Jenny Gibbons

History changes, Or rather, our knowledge of the past changes. Every few decades, scholars discover new information-- such as new carbon-dating data, or a new primary source such as the Dead Sea Scrolls -- that revolutionizes our understanding of history.

Witchcraft studies recently went through such a revolution. During the 1970s and 1980s, historians began to study the witch-trial records. Prior to this time, our knowledge of the persocution of Witches was mainly based on Witch-hunting propoganda: manuals, sermons, and other dogmatic information. Historians have studied a handful of trial records from larger, more infamous cases, but it was not until about twenty years ago that scholars began to compile serious databases of every known Witch trial. Through their efforts, a wealth of new information was found. Today, we can list approximatly thirty times as many Witch trials as we could twenty years ago. This new evidence has shown us that almost everything we thought about witch hunting was WRONG. For the first time in history we have a good idea what the average trial and the average witch looked like.

  In the past , people tended to see the burning times as a dualistic fairy tale. There were good guys ( Witches, Pagans, wise women), and there were bad guys ( the Inquisition, Witch-hunters, male doctors).  The bad guys were said to have done awful things to the good guys. The truth is a bit more complicated and uncomfortable; that is, every section of society bears some of the blame. No one group committed all the horrors; no one can claim their hands were clean. Not even the traditional Witches. For many of us Witches, that's a hard pill to swallow. But when we turn a blind eye to the truth simply because it's painful, we loose the lessons that history can teach us.  And the people who suffered through the burning times deserve better. 

Over the next few days I will post a short list exposing some of the formerly unknown truths about some of the involved groups, and what they did and did not do during the burning times