Christian Witchhunts

[saddletramp]

Yes my source (for one particular part of my argument, not everything I wrote), is Richard Olson. I cited him directly each of the three times I quoted him, so please don't imply that you cunningly discovered a source I had sought to conceal (Fundamentalism 101). Unlike you I actually have the article, so I was able to reference it in full, complete with page numbers. You have ironically accused me of cherry picking (as well as attacking a number of straw men), whilst quoting everything except Olson's conclusion (which I quoted but which you carefully avoided). Here it is:

In any event, for at least a couple of decades after the Restoration, the belief in ghosts and witches--which had begun to decline in the late 16th and early 17th century --returned as a serious and popular topic for polemical discussions; and those who argued in favor of beliefs in spirit phenomena simultaneously drew arguments from and promoted experimental science (Jobe, 1981, pp. 343-356).

You also avoided reference to his statement 'So at least for a time it may be true to say that men actually came to believe in witches as a result of the development of scientific attitudes'. How surprising that you would fail to quote the statements which are contrary to your argument. Since you claim 'You have misread him badly, by cherry picking quotes from religious websites', please provide a list of quotations 'from religious websites' which I supposedly cherry picked, and links to the sites themselves. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I do know what I'm talking about, which is why I'm writing this article and not you.

This was a particularly stupid comment:

Even according to Olson, these scientists were interested in the question of the supernatural for philosophical and empirical purposes only. They did not perpetuate witchcraft persecutions, which had complex social and religious causes. That was the domain of the competing marketers of Jesus.

You are thinking and talking like a Fundamentalist. Regardless of why they were interested (and Olson's quotations alone demonstrate that this wasn't some abstract philosophical discussion, it was borne of a determination to maintain people's belief in supernatural evil), you're still trying to avoid the fact that they were actively promoting belief in witchcraft among the educated classes ('experimental philosophers, as a group, probably had a more profound impact in legitimizing Glanvill's views among intellectuals', Olson), which made and enforced the anti-witchcraft laws. The early modern witch hunt as a whole had complex social and religious causes, but individual witch hunts did not; the various triggers of individual cases have been fully documented in witch hunt taxonomy.

To say that witchcraft persecution 'was the domain of the competing marketers of Jesus' is worse than ignorant. Witchcraft persecutions could not operate without the full compliance and assistance (typically encouragement), of the secular state. Witches were charged on account of their breach of secular laws, and it was secular law which condemned them to death, secular laws which in some countries were not removed until well into the 18th century. In the case of the Spanish Inquisition, it actually ended up fighting against the secular courts, which were gleefully hunting and executing witches as fast as they could accuse them, while the Inquisition repeatedly identified secular legal abuses, cited secular judges and jurists for improper conduct, actively sought to suppress the witch hunts, insisted on caution and skepticism, and preferred to 'punish' even those found 'guilty' with confession and penance, instead of with death (as the secular law required).

A couple of the Inquisitors in particular (Alciatus and Salzar de Frias), demonstrated a brilliant understanding of the mass psychology of the witch hunts, and successfully defused or prevented mass hunts in a number of cases through the 'Edict of Silence', which prohibited discussion of witchcraft; sure enough, when discussion of witches was suppressed, suddenly witch hunts and accusations of maleficium vanished. See in particular Henningsen, 'The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609-1614)' (1980), Tedeschi, ''Inquisitorial law and the witch", in Ankarloo and Henningsen, 'Early Modern European Witchcraft' (1990), and Levack, The Witch-Hunt In Early Modern Europe' (2nd ed. 1995).

'By the time the European witch-hunt began, however, inquisitors had produced a large body of cautionary literature, and the two early modern institutions that succeeded the medieval inquisition - the Spanish and the Roman Inquisitions - demonstrated exceptional concern for procedural propriety. Indeed, the Roman Holy Office has been referred to as 'a pioneer in judicial reform'. Unlike many secular courts, it made provision for legal counsel; it furnished the defendant with a copy of the charges and evidence against him; and it assigned very little weight to the testimony of a suspected witch against her alleged confederates.'

Care to revise your post? If you want to pick a fight with me you will need to do your homework and do it properly (I have around 30 scholarly works on the early modern witch hunts standing by), or I will bury you. You can revise your post, or I will shred what's left of it. What's next, quotations from Andrea Dworkin and Margaret Murray?

'The notion that witchcraft was a real and heinous crime is not a medieval or Dark Age idea. Witchcraft theory and the persecution of witches are Renaissance phenomena, and they lasted into the Age of Reason. Throughout much of the Middle Ages, churchmen condemned the belief in witchcraft as a delusion of the uneducated based on their ignorance of true theology. Clergy were expected to combat belief in witchcraft among the laypeople, teaching that it was incompatible with Christian belief, administering penance to and even excommunicating those who persisted.'

Historians now know there was nothing "medieval" about the witch hunts. Large-scale witch panics began in the fourteenth century, at the end of the Middle Ages. They reached their height during the Renaissance and continued into the eighteenth century, an era sometimes called the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason.

'Thus with regard to sorcery, the central message of the Reformation was that people should not blame misfortune or affliction on witches and sorcerers but accept that even unnatural sickness was due to the direct will of God.'

'Murner was shocked that some theologians explained disasters by natural causes rather than by witchcraft.'

Vorkosigan Pwned!

[Fortigurn]

Vorkosigan Pwned!

In the interests of intellectual honesty and moral consistency, I'll have to apply to this post a comment similar to what I wrote to urodacus. I have no desire to 'pwn' Vorkosigan. I simply want him to familiarize himself with the relevant scholarly literature before he writes on the topic at hand. If he doesn't, he's going to continue to make comments based on ignorance. My post was confrontational enough but I didn't aim my criticisms at him personally, rather his comments. He targeted my post because I'm religious and he's one of the crusading types of atheists.

[GuyInTaiwan]

Fortigurn: Perhaps this isn't the response you were looking for, or were expecting, but I'm going to concede this discussion to you (at least for now). It would take me too long to read back over previous posts to re-familiarise myself with what we were talking about. I realise that may frustrate you if a similar thread arises in the future. Apologies in advance.

[urodacus]

Of course witchery and wizrdry did not exist. The ONLY person allowed to do that kind of stuff (miraculous conjuring,etc), was HRH Jesus of Nazareth, Holder of the Flock, Defender of the Faith, Son of 'You know who', and such.

Do you think trolling with a blatantly deliberate confusion of categories is really advancing the discussion?

Please review the (unwritten) rules
1) If it's a Moderator, it isn't trolling, it isn't even bad manners
1a) Any responsibility for advancing the discussion is automatically rescinded if the Moderator has the chance to make himself look clever or cute

That's not a troll, regardless of whether it's a mod or not. It's a simple statement that Christianity is founded on the existence of what would elsewhere be known as magic, but only when performed by the one person canonically permitted to do so. If other people do similar things, that's 'witchcraft' and not allowed. I can't see that as anything else but hypocrisy.

However, to get back on topic, Christmas is entirely Christian, by definition. It may have absorbed rituals and symbols previously associated with other religions , and even some associated with corporations (the jolly red and white Santa, for example) but it is definitely Christian.

[Fortigurn]

That's not a troll, regardless of whether it's a mod or not.

Apart from anything else, the gratuitously inflammatory manner in which it was phrased certainly classifies as trolling.

It's a simple statement that Christianity is founded on the existence of what would elsewhere be known as magic, but only when performed by the one person canonically permitted to do so. If other people do similar things, that's 'witchcraft' and not allowed. I can't see that as anything else but hypocrisy.

That isn't true. The miracles performed by Jesus were not, by any definition of the term, 'magic'. They were not even performed personally by Jesus, they were all performed by God, at most through Jesus. Acts of divine beings are not referred to as 'magic'. Magic is, and always has been, by definition, acts performed by mortals (not gods), with access to a power other than that of divine beings. That has always been the whole point of magic. The standard Catholic understanding of magic which prevailed in the witch hunt era was that magic was a demonical power supplied by the devil and his demons, not an act of God. It was precisely because of this that the witches were considered to have very limited powers; they were understood not to be able to create, and in many cases not even to transform, only to create illusions of reality. The standard understanding of magic which prevailed among the neo-Platonists and 'natural magicians' such as Magnus (13th century), Agrippa (1526), Dee (1526), Everard (1650), Turner (1655), was that magic was a completely natural force, and that there was nothing supernatural about it at all; they looked on 'magic' as a collection of natural forces just as we consider gravity and magnetism today.

By neither of these definitions do Christ's miracles classify as 'magic'. Look up 'miracle'.

miracle
■ noun
1 an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws, attributed to a divine agency.
▶ a remarkable and very welcome occurrence.
2 an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something: a miracle of design.
– ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French from Latin miraculum ‘object of wonder’, from mirari ‘to wonder’, from mirus ‘wonderful’.

Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Look up magic.

magic
■ noun
1 the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.
▶ mysterious tricks performed as entertainment.
2 a mysterious and enchanting quality: the magic of the theatre.
▶ informal exceptional skill or talent.
■ adjective
1 having or apparently having supernatural powers.
2 Brit. informal very good or enjoyable.
■ verb (magics, magicking, magicked) move, change, or create by or as if by magic.
– DERIVATIVES magical adjective magically adverb
– ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French magique, from Latin magicus (adjective), late Latin magica (noun), from Greek magikē (tekhnē) ‘ (art of) a magus’.

Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Your post was predicated on a confusion of categories.

Fortigurn: Perhaps this isn't the response you were looking for, or were expecting, but I'm going to concede this discussion to you (at least for now). It would take me too long to read back over previous posts to re-familiarise myself with what we were talking about. I realise that may frustrate you if a similar thread arises in the future. Apologies in advance.

No problem GIT, I wasn't looking for any more. I enjoyed our exchange, thanks. If it comes up again I don't have any problem covering the same ground. I think we've already done that a couple of times anyway.

[the chief]

That's not a troll, regardless of whether it's a mod or not. It's a simple statement that Christianity is founded on the existence of what would elsewhere be known as magic, but only when performed by the one person canonically permitted to do so. If other people do similar things, that's 'witchcraft' and not allowed. I can't see that as anything else but hypocrisy.

Still talking out of your cloaca.
Christianity, first of all, still maintains a close association with the books of what is referred to as "The Old Testament", which are loaded to the tits with all manner of individuals performing deeds which challenge rational explanation, as part of their duties as His earthly representatives.
Likewise, disciples of Jesus regularly provided what he referred to as "signs and wonders" (John 4:48), as an essential part of their ministry, and earthly recipients of "grace", for lack of a better term, continued to do so for centuries to follow.
The characterisation of the policy as "hypocrisy" is about 7 or 8 kinds of dunderheaded.
Pretty much down to the last, any and all of these circumventions of natural laws take place with the primary purpose of illustrating a direct connection between the executor and G_d. In most cases, a secondary effect is some form of benevolence or delivery from suffering.
There are no instances of G_d suspending the limitations of time and space to allow a blessed individual to win the big 649 Jackpot or get lucky with the hot girl from Geography class.
Consequently, on the (rarer than most assume) occasions when The Church has recognised the deployment of paranormal efforts by those not divinely sanctioned to do so, in all cases with the express purpose of personal enrichment or empowerment, it has chosen to condemn such efforts.

[Fortigurn]

Christianity, first of all, still maintains a close association with the books of what is referred to as "The Old Testament", which are loaded to the tits with all manner of individuals performing deeds which challenge rational explanation, as part of their duties as His earthly representatives.
Likewise, disciples of Jesus regularly provided what he referred to as "signs and wonders" (John 4:48), as an essential part of their ministry, and earthly recipients of "grace", for lack of a better term, continued to do so for centuries to follow

Very efficient explanation TC, I'm impressed.

Edit: It needs to be noted that (with some exceptions), people were typically not prosecuted simply for 'doing magic' or 'being a witch'. Prosecution was for one or both of two key charges:

* The religious crime of the diabolical pact (a heresy): the claim that an individual had entered into an agreement with the devil or a demon, in order to secure benefits through evil supernatural forces

* The secular crime of maleficium (a tort, if I have the legal term correct): the claim that an individual was practicing magic specifically with the aim of causing harm to others

This is why 'white witches' on the one hand, and practitioners of 'natural magic' on the other hand (such as the men I listed previously), were typically not prosecuted unless there was suspicion of the diabolical pact or of maleficium. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Natural magic was actually a commonly successful defense against charges of maleficium,[6] and throughout the entire witch hunt era grimoires and books of natural magic such as astrology, and alchemy continued to be printed in their hundreds without suppression, while their practitioners (though occasionally suspected of maleficium or the diabolical pact), were typically not prosecuted for simply 'doing magic' or 'being a witch' (the exceptions to which prove the rule).

Isaac Newton for example was in far greater danger for denying the trinity (which he kept secret), than for his occult studies into alchemy (which were common knowledge). The likes of Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Heinrich Agrippa, and John Dee, were openly known as magicians, but never suffered prosecution.
_____________________

[1] 'Moreover, Christina Larner points out that men also were arrested for unofficial healing, and that "most of the women who were arrested for witchcraft were more often accused of harming than of healing - white magic alone rarely brought anyone to the stake."', Hammer, 'Giving birth: reclaiming biblical metaphor for pastoral practice', p. 111 (1994).

[2] 'But to the end of the witch-hunts and after, the peasants accepted white magic, denouncing as witches only those women seen to have used magic to harm their neighbours.', Scribner, Porter, & Teich, 'The Reformation in national context', p. 104 (1994).

[3] One example is Ramon Lull (a 13th century Christian mystic), who was not prosecuted for his practice of the tradition of 'natural magic'; 'It is true that Lull, as a continuator of the via antiqua, had been condemned, but it was for his mystical theories and his claim to demonstrate the divine essence, and not for the crime of magic.'

[4] 'But by the Middle Ages a distinction was being made between 'demonic' and 'natural' magic. According to Kieckhefer, 'Demonic magic involves evil spirits and rests on a network of religious beliefs and practices, while natural magic exploites "occult" powers within nature and is essentially a branch of mediaeval science' (Kieckhefer 1989:1).'', Fontaine, 'Speak of the devil: tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England', p. 24 (1998).

[5] 'The high Neoplatonic magic of the Renaissance might indeed be condemned as the old demonological magic in new dress, but it had about it the pretense and dress of learning - and it had influential patrons. Its practitioners never ran quite the risk of systematic condemnation and persecution as did those necromancers and witches of whom Agrippa so scornfully spoke.', Peters, 'The magician, the witch, and the law', p. xii (1978).

[6] 'Webster drew from the occult traditions of Paracelsianism and Hermeticism to argue that actions attributed to the demonic power of witches could be explained by natural magic and to defend natural magicians from charges of involvement with demons and Satan.', Burns, 'Witch hunts in Europe and America: an encyclopedia', p. 318 (2003).

[Gao Bohan]

In 1526 the Inquisition, skeptical of the many reports of witches, convened a committee to investigate a range of issues relating to witchcraft. One of the issues debated was whether witchcraft was real or a delusion. Out of ten committee members, six said witchcraft was real, but four said it was only a delusion.

Right, so a majority of that Inquisition committee believed in witchcraft. Your long post has not disproved the simple point that the Inquisition did consider witchcraft real and did in fact try people for witchcraft. I am not disputing that the Inquisition was skeptical of witchcraft claims. But I see little merit in their skepticism, as it was all an exercise in lunacy. There's no such things as witches. That a single person was tried for that "crime" is a testament to medieval insanity.

The committee also voted that those who repented of witchcraft when accused, were not to be given to the secular courts for judgment, but were to be considered reconciled (no punishment would follow).

I don't see why we should praise the Inquisition for letting people off the hook once they "repented" for an imaginary crime. They should never been on trial in the first place, much less had to confess.

In response, the Inquisition issued a reply to the secular courts, objecting to the executions which they had carried out, declaring the evidence in the cases to be frequently ambiguous and unreliable, and again urging the secular courts to act with great care and moderation.

Again, how sweet. Act with "great care and moderation" when trying people for an imaginary crime. What exactly is your point?

This is almost completely backwards. Although those accused of witchcraft typically denied it (of course, since the overwhelming majority of accusations were false), the 'clients' almost always believed in witchcraft themselves. Not only that, some of them were actually practicing witches and confessed entirely legitimately to believing that they had practiced black magic or cursed people.

Uh, no, Fortigurn, there were not actually practicing witchcraft. There's no such thing as witchcraft, black magic, or curses. They may believed they were witches, but their claims were not legitimate. This conversation has taken an unexpected turn.

[Fortigurn]

Your long post has not disproved the simple point that the Inquisition did consider witchcraft real and did in fact try people for witchcraft.

That's hardly surprising given that my post wasn't intended to disprove that point.

I am not disputing that the Inquisition was skeptical of witchcraft claims. But I see little merit in their skepticism, as it was all an exercise in lunacy. There's no such things as witches. That a single person was tried for that "crime" is a testament to medieval insanity.

I agree it was an exercise in lunacy. However, the Inquisition did not try people for the crime of 'being witches', it tried them for heresy as I've already explained. And unfortunately there was such a thing as heresy, regardless of how arbitrary the crime was. The fact that you see little merit in them being skeptical about accusations is surprising to me. Why do you think there was little merit in them being skeptical about accusations? I think there was great merit in them being skeptical about accusations. Their skepticism saved thousands of people from false accusations and punishment for something they never did. Don't you see any merit in that?

I don't see why we should praise the Inquisition for letting people off the hook once they "repented" for an imaginary crime. They should never been on trial in the first place, much less had to confess.

Well of course you don't, because you say you don't see any merit in their skepticism. You see merit in your skepticism of witchcraft (even though your skepticism of witchcraft benefits no one), but you don't see any merit in their skepticism of witchcraft (even though their skepticism of witchcraft benefited thousands of people).

You're shifting the goalposts. Previously you gave me a description of what you thought the Inquisition did when investigating charges of witchcraft. When I showed that in fact the opposite took place, you didn't say 'Oh, I'm very glad to see I was totally wrong about that, the reality sounds much more reasonable', you simply changed the subject and refreshed your outrage with a claim intended (incredibly), to denigrate the skepticism of the Inquisition, and the care with which they conducted their investigations.

Previously you said 'Producing cautionary literature and legal counsel to someone accused of witchcraft is not remotely the same as opposing a belief in witches or witchcraft trials', and asked 'Did the church actively oppose the belief in witches, or were they merely concerned that secular courts were using improper procedures in trying witches?', and when I showed you numerous examples of opposing a belief in witches, and opposing witchcraft trials, you simply abandoned that and looked for a new target.

This is not an intellectually honest line of investigation, it's a consistent attempt to avoid crediting any merit to people who: 1) exercised greater care in trial investigation and procedure than any secular court in Europe for several hundred years, 2) repeatedly took action to discourage the superstitious beliefs which led to such trials in the first place, 3) saved thousands of people from the horrors of the secular courts, and from certain death. And why are you avoiding crediting any merit to such actions? Simply on the basis of prejudice; these were 'religious people', so nothing they did must be credited with any merit whatsoever. Meanwhile you are silent on the actions of the secular courts.

Again, how sweet. Act with "great care and moderation" when trying people for an imaginary crime. What exactly is your point?

My point is that it's a great idea to act with great care and moderation when trying people for crimes, especially imaginary ones. I'm surprised by your refusal to agree with this. Following the Inquisition's guidelines for trial made it virtually impossible to incriminate anyone, because the Inquisition's guidelines for trial were specifically designed to prevent people being convicted of a crime they could not have committed. I think that's a good thing. Don't you?

Uh, no, Fortigurn, there were not actually practicing witchcraft. There's no such thing as witchcraft, black magic, or curses. They may believed they were witches, but their claims were not legitimate. This conversation has taken an unexpected turn.

Of course there's such a thing as witchcraft, you can buy all kinds of books on it and go at it to your heart's delight. What there isn't is such a thing as magical powers wielded by witches, so nothing's going to happen. What you're saying is like saying there's no such thing as astrology or palm reading. You're confusing categories (these are execration texts; feel free to explain to me that they don't actually exist). And read carefully what I said, they confessed 'legitimately to believing that they had practiced black magic or cursed people'. They didn't actually practice black magic or curse people in the sense that black magic and curses actually happened, but they believed they had practiced black magic and cursed people in that sense, so it was legitimate to them confessing they believed they had done so. If I believe I've done X, then it's legitimate for me to say I believe I have done X, whether or not X has actually taken place.

[Gao Bohan]

Previously you said 'Producing cautionary literature and legal counsel to someone accused of witchcraft is not remotely the same as opposing a belief in witches or witchcraft trials', and asked 'Did the church actively oppose the belief in witches, or were they merely concerned that secular courts were using improper procedures in trying witches?', and when I showed you numerous examples of opposing a belief in witches, and opposing witchcraft trials, you simply abandoned that and looked for a new target.

This is not an intellectually honest line of investigation...

What a load of bullshit. You constantly claim that anyone who disagrees with you is intellectually dishonest. I was responding to your reply, not "looking for a new target". In any event, I will offer no further defense. I stand by my statements here, and my record speaks for itself as to whether I approach discussions with integrity.

Simply on the basis of prejudice; these were 'religious people', so nothing they did must be credited with any merit whatsoever.

If there's any atheist on this website sympathetic towards "religious people", and the positive role the church has played in Western history, it's me. But I have disagreed with the enlightened master Fortigurn, therefore, I must be going out of my way to target the religious. I will leave it to our readers' discretion to determine if that is my modus operandi.