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Belief
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About the lecture
In this module, we think about belief in witches, focusing in particular on: (i) belief in witches throughout history, from Ancient Greece (Theoris of Lemnos) to the present day (Melisandre in Game of Thrones); (ii) some popular misconceptions about witchcraft (e.g. people accused of witchcraft were 'ducked' on stools, etc.); (iii) the extent to which the persecution of witches in this period was driven by the church; (iv) the extent to which people in 16th-century Europe believed in the supernatural; and (v) the extent to which belief in witches was 'authorised' by the Bible (Exodus 22:18).
About the lecturer
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb MA, MSt, DPhil (Oxon), F.R.Hist.S., FHEA, is an historian, author, broadcaster, and award-winning professor of history at the University of Roehampton. Her research focuses on the sixteenth century, both on English and French history. She works on Henry VIII and the early Tudor court, and is especially interested in the intersection of religious, gender, political, social, and psychological history. Her recent publications include The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc (2019), Witchcraft, a Ladybird Expert book (2018) and The King is Dead: The Last Will and Testament of Henry VIII (2015).
Hello, I'm Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. I am an expert on the 16th century.
00:00:05I've written about Henry the eighth, then about women in the 16th century.
00:00:10And about witchcraft and hear from the University of Roehampton.
00:00:13I want to tell you today about witches,
00:00:16witch beliefs and witch hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries.
00:00:19Now, which is our everywhere? You probably grew up with witches in books. Of course.
00:00:23The which that dominated my youth was Roeder's grand high Witch.
00:00:29Remember her? She had feet without toes.
00:00:33She had ahead as bored as an egg,
00:00:36and she thought that Children smelled of dog droppings.
00:00:38But maybe your, which was from Harry Potter or Mildred the worst, which I don't know.
00:00:41But the fact is that we have the idea of which is in our culture,
00:00:45there are very potent symbol because they're a symbol of inversion of
00:00:49the world turned upside down of everything not being what it should be
00:00:53and the word which is still used as a misogynistic judgement against women,
00:00:58particularly politicians.
00:01:02Neither Theresa May nor Hillary Clinton escaped the charge,
00:01:04but when we think about which is the idea of which is having real evil magical powers,
00:01:08then we have to go back centuries.
00:01:14The first evidence of witchcraft belief that I've
00:01:16come across is thousands of years old.
00:01:19It's an ancient Greece
00:01:21and alleged, which called Theodoros of Lemon, knows who was charged with casting
00:01:22spells and casting incantations using magic for harmful ends.
00:01:28But if we move through history, we find that every 100 or so years we can find evidence
00:01:33of witchcraft beliefs existing Then. So we move on a few years to the Roman Empire,
00:01:39the Roman poet bibulous who promised his mistress in around 30 BC
00:01:43that he'd found a truthful which who could perform rites and spells
00:01:48that would persuade her husband that they weren't having the fair,
00:01:52even if he saw it happening before his very eyes.
00:01:55We go on a few more years to the reign of Tiberius in The Chronicle of 83 54.
00:01:58We find that Tiberius execute 45 sorcerers and 85 sorceress is
00:02:03a few more 100 years.
00:02:09Emperor Valenti in for Bed Harrow. Spicy harrow, spicy is divination.
00:02:11So fortune telling using the entrails of animals.
00:02:15And then, if we get over 2789.
00:02:19Charlemagne ordained that night which is should be executed.
00:02:22Athol Stan,
00:02:26King of the Anglo Saxons in the 900 ordered
00:02:26punishment for anyone casting spells that lead to death
00:02:29and the first witch trial in the British. Ours happened in the 14th century,
00:02:33so people have believed in witchcraft for thousands of years.
00:02:37But there was one moment in history when
00:02:40witches were thought to be especially dangerous.
00:02:43There was one period of time in which they were persecuted,
00:02:47prosecuted
00:02:51and executed in large numbers,
00:02:52and that period was between about 14 50
00:02:5417 50. And if we want to zero in, it's really between 15 60
00:02:5816 50.
00:03:03And the question is, why?
00:03:05Because it hasn't happened before, and so far it hasn't happened since.
00:03:07And so what I'm going to try and answer in
00:03:12this short series of lectures is why it happened then.
00:03:15But first of all, I thought we'd get a sense of your level
00:03:21of knowledge. So
00:03:24think to yourself in the quietness of your heart, or indeed,
00:03:27shout out loud whether you think these things are true or force.
00:03:30So the first one,
00:03:35which is were duct on stools.
00:03:36In actual fact
00:03:40it's not true
00:03:42which is weren't duct on stores. That was the punishment for scolds.
00:03:43Scolds were women who slandered who stirred up
00:03:47strife who were in discord to each other,
00:03:50People who had opinions always women notice,
00:03:54which is the worst swam, and we'll talk about that in a later lecture.
00:03:57How about this one?
00:04:01All convicted witches
00:04:03were burned alive.
00:04:06In actual fact, That's not true either.
00:04:09In England and New England, which is were hanged
00:04:11in Scotland and Spain and elsewhere, which is were burned
00:04:16but not alive, they were garroted or strangled first,
00:04:19which must have been a great comfort to them.
00:04:23How about this one?
00:04:26This is a quote
00:04:28the church burned at the stake. An astounding five million women
00:04:29true force.
00:04:34Well, I'm afraid you know that some of that is not true Already
00:04:36about the burnings. What about the numbers? Five million?
00:04:39Well, it would be astounding if it were true.
00:04:43In fact, it would be
00:04:45much of the population of Europe at the time.
00:04:47In fact, it's estimated
00:04:49that 90,000 people were accused of witchcraft,
00:04:51and around half of that 45,000
00:04:54were executed.
00:04:56So who is this great authority giving this quote
00:04:57well that comes from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code,
00:05:00and the other thing about it is it accuses the church.
00:05:03But one of the things that I think is most fascinating about the witch hunts
00:05:07is that actually,
00:05:12this isn't coming from the church. The late, mediaeval church helped only in so far
00:05:14as it linked
00:05:19the idea of which is with a new idea
00:05:20that they were
00:05:23in league with the devil.
00:05:24But the vast majority of trials took place
00:05:25in secular law courts,
00:05:29so this is no frenzied free for all.
00:05:31This is no ecclesiastical crusade. This is carried out before the law,
00:05:33and we'll talk about that later in the lectures as well,
00:05:38anyway, enough myth.
00:05:40Let's get on to some historical truth
00:05:42because in about 1500 just about everyone believed in
00:05:45the utter reality and potent power of the supernatural,
00:05:48magical beliefs and practises
00:05:52easily mingled with Orthodox Christian belief.
00:05:55So, for example, in 15 17, Alonso Gonzalez still open to to
00:05:58describe his cure for haemorrhoids,
00:06:02He said, You take the sick person to a fig tree.
00:06:05You have him kneel, facing east with his hat off.
00:06:07You bless him, you recite a patent Oster and Anna Maria.
00:06:10Then
00:06:14you cut down nine fix,
00:06:15and you take them to a place where neither the sun
00:06:17nor smoke can get at them.
00:06:20And when the figs have dried out,
00:06:22the piles will be cured.
00:06:24So it was very much thought the magic could be benign.
00:06:27Magic could bring you good luck. You might wear an amulet.
00:06:31You might put a shoe in your chimney. You might carry around herbs,
00:06:33and it was very common to turn to somebody
00:06:38in the village a local practitioner of beneficent magic
00:06:41known in England as a cunning men and women
00:06:45in circumstances that were inexplicable or uncertain.
00:06:48So you might go to a cunning man or a cunning woman
00:06:52if you wanted a love potion,
00:06:55or if you wanted to cure for infertility.
00:06:57They also claim to be able to divine the location of lost
00:07:00and stolen goods. So one particular method was to hang a sieve by shears
00:07:04and to nominate suspects. This is called Casino Nancy,
00:07:09and
00:07:13the civil would rotate by magic When the guilty
00:07:13party was named so quite literally open to manipulation.
00:07:16Magical practitioners believed also that they could cure sickness,
00:07:21and they would do this by bearing an animal alive
00:07:25by boiling eggs in urine by tying salt and herbs into a cow's tail
00:07:29and often also by blaming and locating the which he would cause the sickness.
00:07:35And then
00:07:40they would make the witch and the person who was sick
00:07:41meet each other and force the witch to heal the person.
00:07:44And, of course,
00:07:47what we can understand is what's going on there is these
00:07:48moments of reconciliation will probably acting as therapeutic placebo effects.
00:07:50But the supernatural
00:07:57could also be malevolent,
00:07:59which is were said to use their magical powers to carry out mala fickle um,
00:08:01or harmful magic so they could cause damage, injury or even death
00:08:06to persons, animals and property.
00:08:12To do this, they drew on a mysterious supernatural power.
00:08:15Many people at the time believed that which is
00:08:18got their power through a pact with the devil.
00:08:21Now, which is
00:08:25and belief in witches was orthodox doctrine.
00:08:27It's actually even in the Bible
00:08:30in Exodus 22 18, it said in the translation used at the time.
00:08:32Thou shalt not suffer a witch
00:08:37to live,
00:08:39even though critics questioned the translation from the original Hebrew,
00:08:40but belief in witches
00:08:45is very different
00:08:47from the legal prosecution
00:08:48and execution of people
00:08:50for witchcraft.
00:08:52And so what we need to think about next
00:08:53is why witches were persecuted,
00:08:56and we'll do that in the next lecture.
00:08:58
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Lipscomb, S. (2021, February 26). Y312 Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries - Belief [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/options/y312-popular-culture-and-the-witchcraze-of-the-16th-and-17th-centuries?auth=0&lesson=3618&option=610&type=lesson
MLA style
Lipscomb, S. "Y312 Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries – Belief." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 26 Feb 2021, https://massolit.io/options/y312-popular-culture-and-the-witchcraze-of-the-16th-and-17th-centuries?auth=0&lesson=3618&option=610&type=lesson