Of all the witch trials in the modern European (and North American) era, could you make a reasonable case that any of the accused were actually “guilty”. Are there any cases were you can be pretty sure that rather than caving under torture or coercion, someone did genuinely think they had been using witchcraft to invoke the power of a non christian supernatural entity, and admitted this to their accusers (not considering native Americans and other non-Europeans).
In cases where they “were guilty”, mostly they were cases where they tried to bump off , injure or destroy the sanity health or sexual potency of a rival/client’s rival. Here they typically used potions and other more earthly means and were prosecuted accordingly.
It should be pointed out that authorities for the most part did not believe in witchcraft.
There were certainly people back then who were interested in doing magic, and contacting spirits, or even demons. (Heck, there are a few such people even now.) There were how-to books written about such things. How much these types overlapped with those who actually got accused of witchcraft, or punished for it, I could not say.
If there were some people who were hunting down witches because they believed witchcraft was a genuine danger, there were other people who were practicing witchcraft because they thought it was genuine power.
This doesn’t mean witchcraft had any actual power behind it. But followers exist even if the power they’re worshiping doesn’t.
I was going to add that ‘guilt’ should not include “grey areas” like folk medicine and potions. I mean actually attempting to intercede with a non-christian entity.
But what is the actually evidence of this? I strongly suspect you are right (that over the centuries somewhere in Europe someone did really think they were invoking supernatural evil powers to do their bidding). But what case can you point to that seems most convincing that the authorities actually caught one of them.
This depends entirely on what you mean by a “non christian supernatural entity.”
There were, for example, cases of people who believed themselves to be able to manipulate the “occult” (hidden) powers of the stars. But these powers weren’t always considered to be “non christian”; and they were commonly not believed to be “supernatural” (instead, they were generally categorized as naturalia).
There were also cases of people who believed themselves to be able to do “witch-like” stuff like travelling in spirit, by night, “out of their bodies and into the countryside, where they would do battle with malevolent witches who threatened the local crops.” But they generally self-identified as Christians, considered themselves Christians, and would have been - and were! - shocked to be accused of impious witchcraft.
There were also the Élus Coëns (French text), who did indeed try to call forth the numero uno “non christian supernatural entity,” i.e. Satan, but with a pious twist - they only did so in order to (ritually) defeat him. They, too, considered themselves true and proper Christians, and the “entities” they believed themselves to commune with during their rituals were all clearly Biblical - Adam, Abraham, Moses, etc.
Ronald Hutton, the author of the best scholarly book on modern (“New Age”) witchcraft and its tenuous connections to supposedly “true” medieval witchcraft, has written that most of these people
But OK, having said all that: They were absolutely cases of people signing a pact with the Devil. These were, it seems, often wayward youths, sometimes inspired by deal-with-the-Devil-stories á la Doctor Faustus - and the goal was almost always personal gain, rather than some kind of recognisably “religious” non-Christian devotion.
One authentic Danish contract, from 1803 (fairly late in the game) specifies that the lads wanted lots of cash, constant winning streaks in all games of chance, great physical strengths for fightin’ and such, cray-cray violin skills, and instant fluency in the notoriously tricky German language. The lads were arrested; they repented; and they were let go. (In a similar case in Sweden, the farmhand in question ended up a professor of theology!)
See Gustav Henningsen’s Witchcraft Prosecutions after the End of the Era of the Witch Trials: A Contribution to Danish Ethnology, in the sixth volume of New Perspectives On Witchcraft, Magic, And Demonology: Witchcraft In The Modern World.
On page 206, he goes into the twenty or so Danish cases of selling-one’s-soul-to-the-Devil-for-personal-gain. The 1803 case I mentioned in my previous post is exceptionally well-attested - the original contract, still preserved in the State Archives of Copenhagen, is reproduced on page 207.
Tituba, one of the first people accused in Salem, was almost certainly attempting to cast spells. She confessed to this and that part of her confession seems believable. She said these were harmless spells for telling fortunes she had learned in her native Barbados.
Granted, there can be arguments against this. Tituba initially denied the charges of witchcraft and was punished until she confessed. So was she initially concealed her illegal witchcraft and broke down under pressure? Or was she completely innocent and made up things to confess?
But the same argument can be made about any accused witch. It was a serious crime at the time. Nobody was going to step forward and voluntarily state they were a witch. So if you discount every confession made under pressure then you’ve eliminated every confession.
I agree. If society at large believed in witchcraft then a subset of that society would believe they themselves held such powers.
Under the reign of Louis XIV,La Voisin, a fortune teller was sentenced to death for selling poisons but also organizing Black Masses (celebrated by actual priests). Amongst her “customers” were many proeminent noblemen, and in particular the king’s mistress, who apparently believed such a black mass had gained her the king’s favour.
These days of course, she would have called herself an astrologer and some deluded (but prominent) people would have paid handsomely for her advice. She may also have had a regular slot on prime time TV or radio.
Gilles de Rais, probably.
I’d be interested in reading more about this, got a cite/link?
Christianity overlaid previous religions native to each country. Christian festivals often co-incided with pagan festivals. The expression of these pagan rites was suppressed.
The Catholic church saw various factions emerging and set up inquisitions to root out these heresies. One of the first crusades was against the Abigensian crusade against the Cathars.
After the Reformation there was also a flowering of various strands of Protestantism, some of which were highly intolerant, like the Puritans.
In England James I who followed Elizabeth I and was a famously interested in Demonology and witch trials. So rooting out witches had the stamp of regal authority. The Witches of Pendle is an interesting example. The political background is that that area of the North West harboured stong Catholic sympathies in country that was riven by political and religious paranoia.
Witch hunts usually took place in an environment where the authorities were trying to reinforce their religious domination in the face of an undercurrent of potential dissent. I suspect Witchcraft was a convenient code for Catholicism.
Sure they were found guilty by the courts. But the evidence was obtained under threats or torture. They were certainly guilty of being poor and not having friends in high places to speak for them. They also lived in places considered wild and full of long standing disputes. Salem had similar ingredients.
Witch hunts are a regular phenomenon where courts are used to stamp out dissent.
Whether the accused were guilty of not is incidental. It is the message that is sent out to the public about who holds political power that seems to be more important.
You might compare these traditional witchcraft trials with more modern ones where the accusation is being a catholic, a communist or spy or some type of terrorist.
How about poison? That’s actually the meaning of the term "witch’ in the OT= “poisoner”. “Witches” were often a source of poison for those who wanted to kill someone.
And even today, in some areas, being a fake fortune-teller (and of course they are all fake) is a crime.
However, in no way were the “witches” during the Inquisition period “Pagan/Wiccan priestesses”. Paganism had been long gone by then. Wicca as a religion was mostly reconstructed during the 20th century.
So who is the other signee?. Say I wrote up a list of acceptable conditions for me to render unto Satan, etc.; and even signed my portion of it, in my own blood, yet. Now what?
(I guess I could use Google but this isn’t really what I want in my search history, especially since I’m at work)