My answers to the class discussions.

In Chapter VII of Kors and Peters, our wonderfully talented classmates posed the question: If God is the source of all the magic then how can magic be considered blasphemous? Which by the way I think is a really great question and if you guys have a thing or two to say about it please feel free to comment!

I feel like it is the way you use the magic powers that makes it good or bad or neutral. For example, Jesus did many miracles that showed the power of God like make the dead come back to life, cure diseases, turn water to wine and etc... But i feel like because Jesus was the son of God and everybody knew that, they considered that a miracle because Jesus didn't like kill people with his powers and he could actually perform these miracles in front of people as proof. Now if people did not know he was the son of God, like if Jesus just appeared out of nowhere and started doing this then I feel like the people would have said otherwise.

 Source: http://www.stpaulsyg.com/home/p=921 & http://beachristian4rapture.blogspot.com/2012/04/miracles-of-jesus-christ-which-were.html

So then when you compare it to this time period (the early 1500's), I think that the people were too quick to judge the ones that were blamed with sorcery. Did they have solid proof that the ones being accused of sorcery or heresy were killing babies and people? Like did they see with their own eyes or as a mass of group? I don't think so. I feel like they were just going off on speculation and lies and rumors of what they heard from other people. And since the things that they heard were blasphemous, they were conditioned to think like this from their early childhood to their adult life which affected how they lived their lives. For example, the sorcery detected at Orleans was just from a letter that someone wrote and I don't consider that as enough evidence for sorcery. I need to see the evil magic with my own eyes!

Source: https://drawingbynumbers.org/data-design-basics/note-1-where-is-your-evidence

To them magic was considered blasphemous because they were conditioned to think that way and no one dared to say the opposite. Also because they considered that the power did not come from God like it did to Jesus. To incorporate Olivia's last blog question "why did the mid evil folks killed their own kin?" I just think they were too scared to go against their society and the conformity that was going on at the time. I also think it was kind of too late by that time to turn back and even if they knew that killing was wrong and that there was no such thing as evil magic killing babies and humans and livestock, there was nothing they could do and say or they will be killed as well so they sadly just let people die.    

              

Same Shit, Different Era: But Why?

Hey all, this is your life-pondering-question-asking-philosophy-major classmate here. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I think it’s worth a read. Plus there are funny images to make up for it.

The last couple class periods have been filled with discussion on the primary documents read in Kors and Peters’ Witchcraft in Europe. As you may have (hopefully) noticed, most of the documents deal with how to understand, find, and eradicate magic users. The documents we have read involved trials, executions, underhanded tactics, and moral ambiguity.

Moral ambiguity you say?

<www.enumclaw.com> 

The things we have read about made me think of other times in more modern history where, as a society, we have persecuted and punished those who are unlike the majority in the name of God and peace. I think a lot of people have had a negative outlook on the medieval folk that condemned others to death, but don’t we continue to do that as a society?

What really made me do a double take at the text were the Persecutions at Trier. Taking place in Germany, this community killed thousands of their own based on accusations of witchcraft or association of witchcraft. I think that it’s safe to say that the vast majority of those people were incredibly unlucky innocent folks who confessed to witchcraft under the pain of torture, yet similar situations would arise in Germany and the rest of the world for years to come.

<http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3vfx0c/>

What does that say about humanity? I can’t help but draw parallels with the Holocaust, McCarthyism, and the unfair manner in which racial and religious minorities are condemned in comparison to the majority. Let’s face it; we treat men with turbans and women in hijabs the same way medieval folk treated the lady who bakes brownies down the street. How come we haven’t learned any better?

Why?!

<http://alltheragefaces.com/face/misc-jackie-chan>

Humanity often kills off those they don’t understand out of fear of the unknown. We’ve seen this in Classical Greece when Socrates drank hemlock after he was wrongly convicted of impiety and corrupting the youth, and we see this in modern literature as well. I just finished Veronica Roth’s Divergent (it was awesome go read it) and the story takes place in a dystopian America where the people are divided into five factions based on virtue, and the rare individuals who do not fit neatly into any one faction (aka divergent) are discovered and snuffed out simply because they don’t fit. You see this in Harry Potter when muggles and muggle-borns are threatened/killed because they are different, you see this in George Orwell’s 1984 and The Matrix and Doctor Who and even Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is subjected to ostracism.

<www.whytry.org>

So why did the medieval folks kill their kin? Were they really that different from us? Were they already corrupt and using magic as a scapegoat? And more importantly, why haven’t we learned from their mistakes and the mistakes of others? How come we’re perpetuating something we openly mock? How come we are so fascinated by this subject that we continue to explore it in various media when it’s so often staring us in the face?

<http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/40-gifs-that-prove-every-day-is-mean-girls-day/>

End rant. And please answer some/any of those questions because there’s nothing I like more than a good argument/discussion.

Strix the Witch

This is just a little overview of my section that I covered during the leadership discussion for Chapter 7 in Kors and Peters.

Strix, by Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, came out in 1523 and it is based on a real event that Mirandola participated in: the witch trial of Caterina de Racconigi (Kors and Peters 239). The work follows a dialogue form between characters, which was a popular writing style in the 15^th and 16^th centuries (239). The four main characters that are listed on pg. 240 are: Apistius (“‘the man without faith’”), Phronimus (“‘the prudent man’”), Dicaste (“‘judge’”) and Strix (who is called Strega in the text) is the witch.

In the first part, Phronimus and Apistius are debating on the existence of magic and witchcraft. Phronimus is trying to prove to Apistius that magic is real: “many learned men, experts, and certainly not part of the mob, all believe it, and have openly expressed their convictions. We cannot believe that they are mistaken.” (242) However, Apistius argues that it is “laughable, that, having drawn a circle and anointed the body with some ointment…and murmuring some gobbledygook, these people can mingle with the demons and that this silly troop of riders through the night on whatever kind of stick that they’ve decorated, can ride a goat or a ram, or that others are carried through the air by a force greater than any wind.” (242) When they see Dicaste and Strega talking, Apistius and Phronimus decide to try to see what is going on.

In the second part we see Apistius and Phronimus talking to the accused witch, Strega. She tells them all about these wicked deeds that she did because of witchcraft. They sort of have a debate about whether or not witches are transported bodily or spiritually to the sabbat. Dicaste’s opinion is that either mode of transportation can happen in different instances and “Sometimes it happens through a deception of the demon and sometimes by the choice of the witches.” (243). On pg. 243, Strega gives a graphic account of how witches like her killed infants. And after all of this evidence in support of witchcraft, Apistius is still not convinced.

In the last part, Dicaste brings in ancient and Biblical references to prove that magic is real. When Apistius is still hung up on how witches get to the sabbat, Dicaste tells him that how the people get to the sabbat does not matter, but what matters is that they turned their backs on Christianity and the Church (244). And then Phronimus gives a nice, neat conclusion, at the end of which Apistius announces that he’s finally convinced and he changes his name. When the others don’t believe him, Pistius responds, “Do you really think that I could joke about something upon which both ancients and moderns agree? Upon that which the poets, rhetoricians, Stoics, jurists, philosophers, theologians, wise and prudent men, soldiers, rustics, experimenters all agree?” (245)

This document is really interesting to read because to the contemporaries of the time, Phronimus and Dicaste make perfect sense while to readers today, Apistius has the most logical views. Therefore, the medieval sense of logic is very different from our common sense and we see this in this document. When I first read this, I was rooting for Apistius because his arguments are ones that people of today would probably make.

 

 

 

 

Kors, Alan Charles and Edward Peters. Witchcraft in Europe: 400-1700. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001. Print.

 

 

Martin Luther and John Calvin

Martin Luther and John Calvin are my two favorite figures from the Reformation.  Martin Luther was one of the first people to actually fight indulgences, which was buying the forgiveness of your sins.  People who didn't even work for the church would sell indulgences too.  I also like Martin Luther because he wrote from personal experiences.  In article 40 on page 261 it talks about how the devil actually assaulted him both physically and spiritually.  So he was not just writing to try to correct people, he was looking out for everyone and wanted them to know that they need to continue to trust in God even when it is hard.  I like how Luther addressed persons transforming into other forms, such as cats.  He knocked that down pretty quickly, and who would really believe that someone could change their form, it's ludicrous.  Luther believed that interior idolatry commanded everyone.  This was until they were "healed by grace in the faith of Jesus Christ" (264).  I don't really see why Luther believes this unless he is referring to original sin and baptism.

John Calvin pressed "the role and power of Satan is critical to the concept of witchcraft as it had evolved in Christian Europe, as is the concept of the pact between Devil and witch" (265).  In his article, article 41, he really makes a good connection between them.  He first states that the word of Satan can never be as strong as God's and that God has complete control over Satan.  I like how he puts that the devil is pretty much sent to punish people for them leaving God.  This goes along with the witchcraft and the devil because the devil is summoned in so many witchcraft rituals and gets people into even more trouble than they would be in anyways, for example, the sorcerers apprentice in article 36.  Calvin also points out how people who have turned away from God, or tempted him, have "become so brutish after they have once turned away from the right path" (268).  Such as the people who truly believed in their cults in the earlier chapters.  Some people would not speak a bad thing about their cult or beliefs even when faced with death.  They truly believed that these terrible views were the right ones and they were put to death because of it.

Magical Tug O' War

I actually enjoyed reading chapter seven in Witchcraft in Europe. Mostly because it is one of the shorter chapters we have read, but also because it interested me. The first document of the chapter, document 36, really interested me because at the end of it, Erasmus asks why people should be so surprised that "new plagues come upon us every day, when each day, by fresh wickedness, we provoke the Lord our God" (236). I find it interesting that Erasmus is blaming the human population for wars, famine, and pestilence (236) because they were all a part of the world before magic existed. I think Erasmus is trying to explain that if these magical happenings keep occurring, things will continue to worsen. The fact that blasphemous acts are growing - like the case of the man who does idolatry with the body of Jesus - means that the trouble in the world is growing. People are turning to the devil for happiness rather than God, and that is why the world is falling apart...so to speak.
The next document explains the ins and outs of magic in a little more detail, which I enjoyed. This document says that the devil is able to commit his evil acts through the "innate powers that he has from God" (238). Since the devil is inherently evil and God is inherently good, it is easy for me to forget that God did give the devil his powers. Not only that, but he did not take "his natural strength" (238) away from him. I think God did not take away the devil's powers because, as we discussed in class, he is needed as a temptation. People need to be reminded that they should always trust in God and not run to the devil for help. In my opinion, this is not a very God-like thing to do, but that's an entirely different matter.
The same text goes on to explain that when people practice magic, they are not actually committing the acts. The witches, therefore, only do "a sign, not the deed itself" (238). If I were alive during this time period, I think this would have made using magic even more appalling. Before, I assumed that the magic users simply used the devil's energy to make what they wanted to happen happen. However, it is the devil himself who commits the actions. The witches turn to the devil himself, not just his power, to create magic. Not only are they turning their backs on God's power, they are turning their backs on God himself.

www.bridgemanart.com 

I like this picture because it shows people being baptized by the devil. I think this is a perfect representation of what magic users of this time were doing.

God and his magical powers

I thought article 36 in Witchcraft in Europe was very interesting and I like how it was presented in class today.  This article also goes along with articles 40 and 41 in chapter 8.  From articles 40 and 41 you see that God has complete command over the devil.  The devil and his demons cannot do anything without Gods permission.  God uses this to punish people who have strayed form the right path and show them how straying from the path only results in darkness.  So the sorcerers apprentice goes through his ritual with his daughter and summons the devil.  This was the first sign that the man was going to get in trouble.  The devil had promised him gifts of treasure and they were not given to him and the devil makes excuses as to why they are not there such as the apprentice was doing a part of the ritual wrong.  This beating around the bush is another symbol that nothing good can coming form trusting something other than God. The devil then begins to give the  apprentice the name of a monk who could help him but in the end the monk turns the apprentice and his entire family over to the church and has them imprisoned.  And this was all because the apprentice tried to use powers that do not belong to a human.  These are things of the gods and people who try to use them always end up getting caught and punished for it.  At the end of the article Erasmus states, "Are we ourselves surprised that new plagues come upon us every day, when each day, by fresh wickedness, we provoke the Lord our God..." (236).  He is basically asking, why are we surprised that history is repeating itself?  They are not learning from their past mistakes and the mistakes of others and therefore are making them again and getting into the same problems.  Society can not move forward and up if people do not see the problems they are creating and own up to it and fix it.  Everyone was failing to realize that they were offending God and leaving him and this lead to them being punished by the church.

I also liked the two questions asked at the end of the presentation today: Why didn't God strip the devil of all of his power when he withdrew his grace? And if God is the source of all magic then how can magic be considered blasphemous?  To the first question, I think that God did not strip the devil of all of his power because he was going to need the devil.  The devil is temptation, in a way.  He is there to test people.  To see if people have the strength to keep believing in God no matter what happens, and the devil is there for when they fail.  And to the second question, I think that the magic is blasphemous only when when humans use it.  It was not meant for us to use and that is why it often fails for people such as the sorcerers apprentice in article 36 and the many articles before it.  Magic is something for God and he makes it apparent by the fact that it does not work for anyone else.  Humans were not meant to use it and therefore when they try to use it it is as if they are disgracing God for even trying to be like him in that manner because they should not have that power.

Blurred Lines (This Time it's Satanic)

Chapter Five of Witchcraft in Europe deals with Diabolical Witches in history. This is a very interesting title to me because it gives a clear picture of how witches were thought of in the 15th century. To me, it does not indicate that the witches gained anything other than infamy. This chapter has several articles that deal with how practitioners of witchcraft were viewed at the time, and not necessarily a lot about what they did differently from their predecessors. Another aspect that adds to the subjective nature of this chapter is that every passage regarding their actions seem secondhand in terms of source. The author never describes what he/she saw. For instance, on page 157, the author describes how an inquisitor told him of a witch's actions. The two things that stand out to me in this passage are the secondhand (and therefore questionable) nature of this information and the source of the information. Inquisitors often acquired information through extreme methods of interrogation, so they often received confessions from innocent suspects that were trying to avoid torture. Another significant aspect of this Chapter deals with a possible Christian agenda. On page 160, the author assumes that every practitioner of witchcraft is being "seduced by the devil, the enemy of every rational creature". The church viewed Witchcraft as not only blasphemous but inherently Anti-Christian. But, in doing so, they blurred the line between condemning a blasphemous act and perpetuating their own ideals. The devil, or Satan, is a part of Christianity, so anything that concerns the devil also relates to Christianity. The church was under scrutiny at this point in history, with many sects forming and many people disagreeing and clamoring for reform. The church would need to take the focus off of itself while also perpetuating its ideals. The witchcraft problem was the perfect opportunity for the church to shirk the blame it had been handed. It provided a scapegoat for negative religious happenings and provided a way for the church to "explain" the problem in its own context. 

Repent for your Sins! Eat Bread.

In life, humanity is bound to make mistakes.  Individuals are condemned to walk a narrow path of right and wrong.  Once a person falters, can they regain their footing and walk along the path once more?  According to Burchard of Worms, it is possible if the correct penance has been paid for the crime.  His written work, The Corrector, was widely accepted and used as a consult when dealing with an act of sin. 

Frequently, his punishments were fasting for a number of days on bread and water.  I find this form of punishment (or begging of forgiveness) strangely tame.  In later times, people who had committed the same acts were tortured and/or burned.  Yet in this time period, the acts can be forgiven with a simple amount of fasting.  

Did the punishment and persecution of witchcraft become more violent as the years went on?  If this document is anything to judge by, I would say so.

It is also interesting that punishment is viewed as almost starvation.  Hunger is by far one of the most unpleasant feelings a human being can experience and at the time hunger might have been common; especially in the lower classes where the “sinners” were most likely found.  Was his punishment really meant to make them feel remorse like a child standing in a corner or symbolic in a religious way?   

I also find it interesting that as we continue to read through his acts of evil and the penance that should go along with them, he starts to target women more and more.  Initially, the acts of evil seemed to be neutral.  They could be done by a man or woman.  But once we get to the later ones, he begins to focus more intently on females.  Numbers 153, 170, 175, 180, and 181 all start with roughly the same sentence. 
“Have you done what some women…” 

It is as if he is directly implying that women are more prone to fall for these sins or sin in general.  It seems that he believed so but it is hard to say based on what is provided by Kors and Peters. 

A Little Confused……

            In the Kors and Peters’ book, The fifth action, in Kramer and Sprenger’s The Malleus Maleficarum, states that “the accused shall as far as possible be given the benefit of every doubt, provided that this involves no scandal to the faith….” (p 208). This statement confuses me because I don’t understand how a person accused of witchcraft would not have been considered to show a “scandal of faith” (p 208)?

            Throughout the text, the authors describe what constitutes an evil woman. They use bible verses to outline the faults of women, like “women being formed out of a bent rib” (p 184). The way the authors try to use faith as a tool to claim women as witches. They also counter their own points, like when they say a women who doesn’t cry she’s a witch, but if she cries, she could still be a witch and be fake crying (184).

            With using religion to identify a possible evil woman, and the authors’ ability to counter their own evidence, then how is it possible that the women will be “granted every benefit of the doubt” (p 208)?  It seems that an accused is literally in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Using biblical versus to strength the accusers point automatically causes a wrongdoing to the church and God.  

Mischievous Magic: Kramer and Sprenger Did Not Get The Joke

Before I begin, I would like to credit one person who, in my excitement, I forgot to mention in my presentation. I would like to thank my friend Stephan Vandevander (Lord Morien MacBain), who lent me supplementary reading material about witchcraft, and an actual copy of the Malleus Maleficarum. I also meant to say "and as my friend, the Honorable Lord Morien MacBain says, there are peasants killing the chivalry of Europe.... This can't be God's plan!!" However, I neglected to credit him in that phrase and for that I apologize. I am very grateful for his help.

 

Behold his awesomeness and tremble!!!
 

Credit for photo goes to Sam Silva

Now that that is done onto my main point. There is a portion of the text that contains a passage that I am sure was a joke. I don't mean a joke in the sense that it is really bad logic, or an example clearly taken out of context to prove a point (thus making it a joke of an argument). I mean that there is literally a joke in the text that Kramer and Sprenger cite as an example of witchcraft supposedly in the real world. The passage in Question is on page 203.

"For a certain man tells that, when he had lost him member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest." (Page 203)

 

http://images.wikia.com/thehungergames/images/f/fd/1346839458-auto-dafuq-dafuq-did-i-just-read-200165.jpeg

.......... That passage was a joke. Seriously, it was a joke. The reasons I believe this include:

 

1. Unlike the examples that are given on pages 199-202, no specific names or locations are mentioned. Thus it does not have any actual information that could be used to properly document or verify the story. This passage could easily apply to anyone, anywhere, in any situation. Thus it has greater mass appeal, which is useful for a joke.

 

2. It lays out the situation quickly, so that it can hold the audience's attention without wearing out its welcome... like the structure of a good joke.

 

3. It has some social commentary in it (the "member" can only be taken from those who have been doing sinful acts with their "member," and somehow the priest's "member" ended up in the tree with the rest (page 202-203)). Social commentary is a feature found in many jokes, especially in political satire.

4. It even has a punch line! "You must not take that one (the big member); adding, because it belonged to a parish priest." (page 203)

 

Kramer and Sprenger treated the example above as just another serious example of witchcraft around them; however, because of all of the reasons I just mentioned, I believe this this passage was originally intended to be a joke. So what happened?

"Oh no! I sent them the wrong bird. They're going to get the one with my indecent, witch-based humor! Quick get it back!!!"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4349216-3x2-940x627.jpg

            Either someone brought Kramer and Sprenger this tale and somehow manage to convince them that it was 100% legitimate, or (I think more likely) these two were so joyless that they literally did not know a joke when they heard one. I say this because they treated everything in this book completely seriously; despite the fact that, even back when this text was written, there were people who would have seen some of this as weird and/or comical. There are several examples in the text that could be seen as humorous, but Kramer and Sprenger didn't even acknowledge it. I can't recall one instance where they wrote anything like “Despite how strange this seems, it really happened and it is a subject to be treated seriously.” They just plow straight through as though there was nothing possibly amusing in the least about anything that they were writing. Which is why I feel that, even when presented with something that was meant to be a joke, Kramer and Sprenger failed to see any humor in it.

Nope, there is nothing funny about this at all. Move along citizens.

http://api.ning.com/files/wD-b8tJJjO2gZMYVwll5vnnERg-eIpUrxIx94j06cf79jCaod3ec2rpx20wolekTNMAwP7Z3gZzpqJAhHgVoVF5RpLGuVDn*/cap_ghostbusters_cinebug_5.jpg

I get the feeling that these two are the kind of guys that if you asked them "Why did the chicken cross the road?" They would say "The better question is: how did the chicken escape from its pen? I shall tell you. It is because the devil has sent agents among us to attack farmers and steal out livestock!" Then they would write a 150 page long book on the subject, in which they still manage to have a 75 page long rant about the inherent wickedness of women. This book would be guild to hunt down the devil's cattle thieves and help track down chickens in the act of crossing roads.

"Come back chicken! You will not escape the Inquisition!!!"

 

http://whatexitnj.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Chicken-crossing-the-road-in-Lexington-NC-Donnie-Robberts-AP-SF-Gate1.jpg