#i know too much about medieval methods of execution for witchcraft

[cathrineteague]

Condo by the Lake of Fire

A personal essay - originally written in 2012

God help me, but I think I want to talk about religion. Christianity, specifically, but not Christianity as it’s written in the Holy Bible itself. The Bible is hardly the root of the problem.

There is a place down South called the Bible Belt, where Church is the wheel on which everything turns. You know as soon as you’ve crossed into this strange, alternate world because suddenly one church per town won’t suffice, and Sunday morning just isn’t enough time for preaching.

You’ll see billboards in the big cities (Don’t make me come down there. – God). And on those otherwise beautiful stretches of highway through miles of green farmland, you’ll come upon the occasional massive, ominous white cross, looming over the highway as if to remind all who pass through whose country they’re traversing.

Don’t stop. Don’t get out of the car, not even to take a picture. Everyone you meet will be vying for a chance at your soul. Evangelical Christians—terrifying creatures bred on generations of threats of hellfire and brimstone—don’t know how to meet a living thing without inquiring about its status with regards to God.

“Hi! Nice to meetcha. Where ya come from? Where ya headed? Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and if not, would you like to do so this very day? For we are living in the End Times! None of us is promised tomorrow, brothers and sisters, and God is not willing that any one of His children should be lost, say amen.”

More frightening for an outside observer than the prospect of crossing this land—to get to some more desirable locale where they don’t try to walk you into such a long-term commitment right away—is the idea of what it must be like to grow up in it.

Don’t weep for the little children, though, you heathen Yankees! They do just fine. They learn all the lessons they need to know at school, at Church and at home. And if one of these places tends to bleed into the others, well…hallelujah, that’s consistency! Sometimes it’s hard and painful of course, but what good, worthy things are there in life that don’t require some work? We have to purge our children of their sins before the Devil gets a foothold!

It’s violence, really. Emotional terrorism, praise the Lord and give God the glory. See the little girl sitting in the third pew, in an itchy pink dress she had to be wrestled into earlier that morning? Teach her Your ways, O Lord.

Teach her that when she gets older holding hands with the little blonde girl next to her won’t be okay anymore, to say nothing of all the other things she’s going to want to do. Teach her that her body and her mind are great betrayers, teach her to shut them down and ignore what they tell her. She must suffer as Christ suffered.

When Jesus was a little kid, did he want to hold hands with the other boys? Teach her not to ask such sacrilegious questions.

Teach her to be ashamed of having questions at all. A good Christian with a healthy relationship with God doesn’t have doubts or questions, and never-you-mind that Jeremiah prophet. He was a prophet, after all, and you’re just a girl. The Bible says women ought not to speak in Church.

Send your children to summer “youth camps” and winter “retreats.” Let them spend all day at the water park in some perpetually sunny Southern city, shrieking with laughter and not a care in the world. Send them, sunburned and still smelling like chlorine and the sunscreen they put on in the morning, to the dimly-lit interior of a hotel conference room. Show them how to raise their hands and sing at the top of their lungs to God, all the more joyful abandon, so the rocks don’t cry out.

Sit them down and bring out a fat, happy guest preacher who says he is their friend. He dresses like they do. He talks the way they do. He knows who their favorite musicians are, knows how to play the saxophone. They are all in agreement: he’s a pretty cool guy, and in the space of half an hour they trust him like they’ve known him all their lives.

Let him talk to them for another sixty minutes. By the end of it they’ll all be on their knees in the altar, sobbing. They’ll cling to each other as they gasp out those prayers, begging God to forgive them for those seconds of the day when they forget themselves and are human. For that single unkind thought, for that dirty joke at lunch three weeks ago, for these offenses and a million more. They will beg forgiveness for everything they’ve done in their lives between Monday mornings and Saturday nights.

And no matter how hard they try, there will always be new seconds of imperfection to cry over come next Wednesday, when their young, handsome youth pastor gets up to remind them of the commitment that he’s sure “some of y’all have already forgotten.”

The battle begins on the first day of school, after all. When you’re walking through the overcrowded hallways, trying to get to your locker across the building in the five-minute break, trying to absorb useless details about ancient Mesopotamia that you’re sure you covered last year, and the year before, trying to understand what’s so great about A House on Mango Street anyway…don’t forget the commitment you made at winter retreat, and renewed on Wednesday night, and Sunday morning, and again on Sunday night.

They all forget, of course. Maybe not habitually, maybe only for a second, but it’s enough. Every single second out of the day they don’t spend in awe of Almighty God is fodder for their guilt-ridden prayers at the Sunday evening service.

The bass-voiced, solemn-faced preachers all says that Christianity is more than fire insurance, but I’ll be damned if they don’t use the eternal torment of Hell--and a shot at skipping it--as a selling point at every turn.

“Do you have a relationship with God? Are you ready? If you died this very minute, where would you go?”

“You with the heavy eyeliner, the black bondage pants and the heavy metal t-shirt, repent of your sins and come back next week in jeans and this hoodie with the youth group’s logo on it, only $25.”

“You in the low-cut blouse, stop tempting your Brothers in Christ to sinful thoughts. Cover yourself from neck to ankles and be forgiven for the sin of being a pretty girl.”

Your body is a temple; your body is a temptation. Your body is the place all sins originate, so divorce yourself from it as much as possible, praise Jesus.

It starts almost at birth and it never really ends. Even if you escape, drag yourself across the invisible border into a place where towns with populations under a thousand only have one church and no one defaces the highway with terrifying symbols of pre-medieval execution methods…even if you manage to run from the voices all around you telling you that you’re Lost, you’re a Sinner, you’re Backslidden, you’re Going To Hell...you’re not really safe. You can’t escape the voices in your head that tell you the exact same things.

So what if logic says it’s crazy? So what if every rational thought you have screams against the majority of what you’ve been taught since before you could talk? Those teachings took root long before some high school English teacher or college professor took pity and taught you to think, before some song on the radio ignited the tiny fire of rebellion that grew and eventually prompted you to run in the first place.

Your mama says rebellion is like witchcraft in the eyes of God. You shall not suffer a witch to live; it says so in the Bible.

Spend every day for the rest of your life telling yourself that God is love, that God forgives, that God shows mercy to His children. Read the Bible if you want to, highlight all those passages that prove your point. Live your life by day as if you believe it, but say your prayers at night the way you always have: searching frantically in your mind for that one damning little sin, some slip-up that you forgot to beg forgiveness for that’s going to plunge you into Hell if you die in your sleep.

Call home; listen to the voices of your past in a chorus of agreement.

“I’m praying for you, child,” says the elderly aunt before you hang up, every time. You feel her prayers; they prickle the back of your neck every time you pass a church, make you walk a little faster and keep your eyes to the ground.

And what if they’re right? That’s the question you can’t get away from, the one that logic can’t dispel because it’s not a logical adult asking it, but that scared, brow-beaten little girl in the itchy dress.

What if they’re right about everything?

You had a friend once, an anomaly living fun and fancy free among his religious brethren, a jolly-faced man you met at the community theatre who served on the deacon’s board at his church and went home every night to Jerry, his sweet-smiling house husband of more than a dozen years. They threw Christmas parties and pool parties, and welcomed you at the door with warmth and joy and homemade lemonade.

He used to joke that in Hell he’d be a VIP.

“When we all get there, you guys can just join me in my luxury condo, right beside the lake of fire.”

A small, sacrilegious voice inside you hopes that if they’re right, then he is, too.

#writing #writeblr #personal essay #christianity #bible belt #christian fundamentalism

[itshistoryyall]

Part Three: Rule of Three

Photo Credits: here

In this next part I want to talk a little about some important texts for the context of this project. One of them is the Canon Episcopi, a 10th century medieval canon law. For anyone who doesn’t know what “canon law” is, it is basically a written guideline authored by some church authorities and used to govern the church, its clergy, and its patrons. It’s important to highlight this text because it gives us a clear idea of what surviving pagan cultures looked like in Medieval Francia (modern France), but not in the way you might expect. As mentioned above, a lot of what we know about the past is just really good detective work, and this is one of the instances where a document helps us understand far more than what was originally intended. It’s a cohesive set of ideas that suggest how the church should treat several circumstances regarding their local pagans, and as usual, it wasn’t preaching tolerance. In summation, it called anyone who believed in anything other than Christianity an infidel.[1] Pagans still existed, and still do to this day, in fact, but the Church used a heavy hand when dealing with them most of the time. Often, they used their own beliefs against them and merged popular Christian anecdotes to help assuage people who were not happy with the idea of conversion to a new religion. I think that the author of the overview for this document said it best when they said that,

“new Christians [did not] simply cast aside old beliefs…conversion was a dynamic process…[and] elements of indigenous religious practice were frequently mixed, often deliberately, with Christian belief and ritual…Certain practices can be said to have ‘survived’ the process of conversion…After all, nearly every Christian ritual had some sort of pre-Christian antecedent or model.”[2]

They just simply couldn’t kill them all or threaten everyone with violence in order to bring them to their knees before the Lord, and so, they got creative.

           Canon Episcopi calls anyone who believes in the mystical arts a liar and, what I’m most interested in is it’s mention of, “wicked women, who have given themselves back to Satan…[who] in the hours of the night…fly over vast spaces of earth.”[3] You just can’t get more witchy than that folks, and don’t worry, I know that this was written in like 900CE, but I should also mention that it was referenced in another important document—Corpus Juris Cononici, a canonical law that remained intact beginning in the 12th century all the way until 1917. I’m not going to attempt the math there, but it’s too damn long and we can all agree on that. So, now we know our Collective Catholic Opinion (CCO for the rest of this project),[4] is that we don’t like pagans, and with the introduction of this new text, witchcraft is now a pagan practice. This was originally, a really good detail to hammer out in canonical law because it typically kept the Inquisition from meddling in matters of alternative religions, UNTIL (you knew that was coming, I already warned you in Part 1) Canon Episcopi was thrown out by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 (not the same Innocent One as before, but damn did we not learn a lesson?). Anyway, the most innocent pope of all time decided that witchcraft was to be forever tantamount to devil worship which was what gave inquisitors permission to go after pagans and those accused of practicing witchcraft—great.[5]

           So, that brings me to my next document of importance, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Latin here, in case you aren’t a weird Disney fan, is where we get the word ‘maleficent’ and thus the name for one “Mistress of Evil”…moving on.[6] This book was written between 1486 and 1487 and can also be referred to as “The Hammer of Witches,” a direct translation of the original Latin. It was written by some German Dominican monks—'Dominican’ here, refers to the Dominican order of Preachers founded in France by the Spanish priest St. Dominic, so, not the islanders as I was originally very confused about. Recall from earlier that the first instances we see of witch trials occur in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, so you can see how this thing is gaining speed. There were other texts along the way that were written in regards to witchcraft, but there was a really important invention that made this one unique—the printing press. It spread like wildfire, and there were more copies of this document than any other, and it so precisely aligned with the mounting witch-craze, the Inquisition, and the Corpus Juris Cononici, that it almost seems planned. Am I a conspiracy theorist, you ask? Maybe. After researching this project, I’m beginning to wonder, myself. Let’s indulge.

           In 1481 Pope Innocent VIII (I’m so surprised), heard about those German monks who were in the middle of writing about these witches, and they complained to him that the authorities weren’t properly looking into the accusations. This actually prompted the Pope to issue one of those papal bulls we all know and love, titled, Summus Desiderantes Affectibus, translated—Desiring with Supreme Ardor. It wastes no time getting right to the point, those who were practicing witchcraft were to be henceforth considered heretics, and doling out the full support of the Church and the Faith to inquisitors to prosecute these cases as they saw fit. Three years later, the monks published their instruction manual for other sympathizers. This document was separated into three parts. The first was addressing skeptics and assuring them of the reality of the situation and suggesting that not believing in the existence of witchcraft was another form of heresy. The second part included proof that real harm was caused by magic, and the third part was made up of guidelines for investigating, arresting, and punishing witches. It was used by Catholics and Protestants alike, and while it was never made official by the Catholic Church, it was most assuredly referenced. It was not continuously in print; however, but was re-printed and widely distributed in areas “as needed,” meaning that when prosecutions started ramping up in some areas, the press would begin to print and distribute more.

           I’m gonna delve pretty deep into this document because it’s really important that we know where some of this information comes from in reference to future prosecutions, tortures, and accusations of presumed witches. The manual directly mentions that witchcraft is found amongst women most predominantly and uses the idea that both good and evil manifests in women more powerfully than in men. It specifically singles out midwives because of their aptitude for contraception and pregnancy termination—see, you guys thought this anti-abortion culture was new…it’s not. It made wild claims that midwives ate babies, or offered them to devils, and elucidated pacts made with the Devil, sex with incubi, possession, and, I’m not quite sure how to word this, the act of vanishing penises (That’s the best I can do here. I tried some other stuff and believe me it was much worse). The part I love most is that most of the references used to substantiate these claims come from some of the great Greek philosophers and writers like Homer and Socrates, who were big, giant, probably gay,[7] pagans. I can’t love that more, guys…it really doesn’t get better than two homophobic, misogynistic, intolerant religious zealots getting their entire bibliography from some gay pagans. Finally, what the document describes as “quarrelsome women” could not be considered witnesses to witchcraft, and it excuses this by alleging that this is to prevent friends, families, and neighbors from bitter fights.

           To determine whether or not someone was a witch, they could be examined physically. Any corporeal evidence might include marks on the body, physical objects that were concealed on the body, or not weeping while being tortured or when presented in front of a judge. When checking for these “marks,” women were stripped of their clothing (by other women), their hair was shaved—this could be a small amount or all of it depending on where that pesky devil’s mark was going to be found. Often, this mark could be a mole, a flea or insect bite, a birth mark, or a speck of dirt. Anything passed, really, and once these marks were found they needed to make sure that there were no other instruments of witchcraft on a person in order to execute them. The manuscript mentions that if these items are not removed, there would be an inability to burn or drown the witch, and the same goes for if she was still under the protection of other witches. The practice of drowning or burning an accused witch to prove her innocence began, and although the accused was never around to celebrate her liberation afterwards the practice persisted, nonetheless. While determining the guilt of these witches, a confession was paramount in determining the outcome of a person’s wellbeing after the trial.

           Accused witches could only be executed by the inquisitors or authorities of the church if they confessed themselves, but, remember that the church had already authorized torture as an acceptable method of questioning at this point and could be persuaded into confessing by any means necessary. Often, they would confess quickly under the pain of torture, and were said to have been abandoned by the Devil. Conversely, those who held out, were under the Devil’s protection and more closely bound to him, and torture was viewed as a form of exorcism. Confession under torture was not enough; however, and they had to confess again while not being tortured for it to be a valid confession. If the accused continuously denied the accusations the church was not permitted to execute her, but they could eventually turn her in to local authorities who were not beholden to the same restrictions.

After a confession, the accused could be offered the option of repenting against all prior acts of heresy and perhaps be granted the avoidance of a death sentence, but later when I pull out the statistics, you’ll see precisely how rare that option was. They were also likely to allow a witch to avoid a death sentence if they snitched on other witches, but typically the investigations into those that were implicated by the original witch were presumed to be innocent until a thorough investigation could take place. Prosecutors also did not have to reveal that the removal of a death sentence did not mean that they could not imprison them indefinitely. Judges that presided over these trials were given specific instructions on how to ward themselves from wayward spells of the spurned witches on trial, and to ensure that they had the full cooperation of those amongst the court and spectators, there were specific instructions that allowed those who were uncooperative to be excommunicated from the church or even labeled heretics themselves if their obstruction was persistent.

Pope Innocent VIII’s bull acted as a metaphorical magnifying glass over the ant that this situation was in Switzerland and Germany, but to conflagrate things further, in 1501, Pope Alexander VI[8] issued a new papal bull, the Cum Acceperimus,[9]that extended the reach of prosecutions for witches to Lombardy and officially broadening the reach into Italy. I think it’s important to point out that this particular pope was a Borgia, and for those of you who haven’t seen The Borgias on Showtime, the Borgia family is basically the Kardashian/Jenners of the Medieval world—so many scandals and orgies, one can nary keep up. Beginning in 1500 and all the way through 1560, historians consider these few decades to be the peak of trials in Europe, and in order to focus more in-depth on this aspect we’ll be ending this part here, but it may be worth mentioning that this oddly severe belief in superstition beginning with the Malleus Maleficarum, may have been one of the many sparks that stoke the flames of the Protestant Reformation in Europe.[10]

[1] See Canon Episcopi for a full quote, but this is in direct reference to a bible verse from John 1:3 that makes mention of God being the maker of all things and suggests that those who believe that other entities may have done so are “infidels.”

[2] (Traces of Non-Christian Religious Practices in Medieval Pentitentials, n.d.)

[3] Direct quote from the Canon Episcopi and shortened for clarity and pointed reference.

[4] Please don’t talk to normal people about the CCO, it’s not a real organization, and outside of this context it’s probably very offensive to modern Catholic practitioners and I am not looking to get cancelled on Twitter

[5] (encyclopedia.com, 2019)

[6] Maleficent is defined by Webster’s as, “doing evil or harm; harmfully malicious,” and the original Latin form is maleficentia.

[7] the ancient Greeks were partiers and lovers, man

[8] Not a safer name than ‘Innocent,’ it turns out.

[9] DON’T YOU DARE GIGGLE AT THAT NAME

[10] It’s important to note here that history doesn’t have a large grasp on one specific event that might have been what caused this leap, but it was more likely a combination of quite a few different things, but it is my own humble opinion that torturing people certainly wasn’t a good way to rally support for the Catholic Cause™

#witch #witches #witch trials #european witch trials #malleus maleficarum #pope alexander vi #historical texts #history #itshistoryyall #coronavirus #covid-19 #quarantine #social distancing #pandemic #2020