The Witches’ Sabbat: The development of Witchcraft in the Middle Ages

By Quinn Marriott.

Originally submitted as an assessment for Frontiers of the Medieval Imagination.

Whenever someone hears the word ‘witch’ or ‘witchcraft’, many would think of the Salem witch trials or of the early modern witch craze of the sixteenth – seventeenth centuries. The rise of and belief in witchcraft, however, did not appear from thin air and is deeply rooted in the Middle Ages.

Our understanding of witches comes mostly from European-wide persecutions and those leading them (Jolly, Raudvere, Peters, 2002, p.7). It is therefore difficult for historians to learn more about witchcraft while also looking beyond contemporary and even modern stereotypes (Ginzburg, 1989, pp.39-51).

With this in mind, this article will attempt to demonstrate the complex developments in the belief of witchcraft. In doing so, we will divide this argument into three section: origins and beliefs; reception and counter-attack; and magic leading up to witchcraft . While talking about these aspects, we will also focus on the sabbat, a key diabolical ritual practiced by witches (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.195). This will allow us to closely follow the progress of witchcraft in this period.

Origins and beliefs:

One of the sources we have on witchcraft in medieval Europe is a sermon given by Bernardino of Sienna where he introduces witchcraft and emphasise its seriousness to his listeners (Kors, 2001, pp.133-137).

Bernardino explains in his sermon that witches were servants of the devil who committed various sins and disguised themselves as everyday people. The sermon stresses the need to go out and find these witches because of the idea that individual sins could have serious repercussions on the entire community (Kors, 2001, pp.133-137).

He particularly targets "wise-women", local healers who made use of herbs and potions as remedies, and says, “know that she who claims to have the power to break a charm knows well, be assured how to work one” (Kors, 2001, pp.133-137). This idea that those who do good can equally do bad would become a common trend in looking for witches.

In other sources such as the famous ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ (Hammer of the Witches) (1485), the origins of witchcraft or ‘harmful magic’, as is referred to in the text, is produced when an evil spirit (a demon or the Devil himself) co-operates with a “worker of harmful magic” (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, p.52). The text in fact theorises that harmful magic comes from and is increased by human wickedness (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, p.67).

Beliefs about witches and what they would get up to at night were various but they all started from the same point, the sabbat. The sabbat was both a gathering of witches and a complex ritual with several components, as can be seen in the image below, depicting a sabbat.

The Sabbat:

For new witches, the sabbat was an initiation process where they would make their pacts with the devil and seal them through sexual intercourse (Jolly, 2002, p.231). For already existing witches however, they would pay homage to the Devil by kissing his posterior as seen on the right-side of the image. The sabbat would then continue with feasting (on the flesh of children), dancing and more sex (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.195).

A common theme among the types of magic carried out by witches was the use of sacraments/sacramental items to create harmful magic. The belief was that witchcraft was functioning literally in direct opposition to Christianity, for example worshiping the devil instead of God or taking communion under rather than over the tongue (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, pp.146-147).

Specific examples of the kinds of sinful acts believed to be generally carried out by witches included: killing children; using ointments to shapeshift; working on charms and spells (Kors, 2001, pp.135-136); summoning familiars (demon companions in the shape of animals) (Jolly, 2002, p.231); communicating with the dead (Ginzburg, 1984, pp.46-47); manipulating the weather to cause crop failures (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.195).

When it came to making accusations, people of the Middle Ages had a wide variety of reasons to justify their actions.

Reception and Counter-Attack:

By the late fourteenth-early fifteenth centuries, magic in the minds of contemporaries became an organised cult of demonic sorcery (Jolly, 2002, p.23). It was with practices like those in the sabbat as well as general diabolical conjurations, that magic gained very serious connotations of danger.

We can see this with Bernardino’s sermon and the Malleus Maleficarum as they both suggested this notion of 'the enemy at the gates', witches hidden in plain sight within society. This posed a real threat to the Christian world because they were essentially surrounded by an “intolerable danger” (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, p.78) (Kors, 2001, pp.133-137).

Gender in witchcraft:

The fear of witchcraft was further escalated by its focus on women. Malleus Maleficarum is notably harsh on women. Despite admitting that men could be witches, women were likelier suspects (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, pp.74-75). The rationale behind this was that women are the opposite gender to men so they are therefore credulous, physically weak, deceptive and “having a lewd, slippery tongue” (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, pp.74-75).

This was part of a long tradition of treating women as inferior and sinful in comparison to men. This trend came from the story of Eve who was the first to be tempted by the Devil. When you then consider events like the sabbat where one was tempted to not only make a pact but also have sex with the Devil, it might have been easy for contemporaries to assume that these witches were probably women.

The legality of magic:

Initially, the idea of magic and witchcraft didn’t seem of great concern to law-makers and local authorities and there was also some confusion as to whether it was the same as heresy, an already existing crime (Jolly, 2002, p.176). Over time, however, witchcraft began to become more closely associated with heresy and in the thirteenth century, it began to come more under the attention of church officials (Jolly, 2002, pp.211-212).

As a result, instead of waiting for accusatory evidence, inquisitors were sent out to search and investigate for heretics, magicians and witches (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.196). It is only by the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries that witch accusations started appearing more often and were increasingly becoming more official (Jolly, 2002, pp.218-219).

Ecclesiastical courts focused on the invisible crime, the 'harmful magic' wielded by witches. This tied the knot between witchcraft and heresy (Jolly, 2002, p.218). The sabbat served as a good example since it involved paying homage to the Devil in return for such magical powers. Secular courts on the other hand looked at the actual damage thought to have been caused by witchcraft (Jolly, 2002, p.218).

During a witch trial, the prosecution could only be successful if there was a certain degree of evidence, found either through (at least) three witnesses or a confession from the accused (Maxwell-Stuart, 2007, p.185). To obtain the latter, judges were free to use any methods necessary to draw it from the accused, especially torture which increased the rate of successful prosecutions (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.190). If they were found guilty, the accused witch would then be executed. Methods of executions varied, in many cases as can be seen on the woodcut below was death by hanging.

Why did witchcraft accusations rise in the 14-15th centuries?

This is a big question for historians. A theory was potentially the impact of ‘macro-conditions’ which afflicted the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries with events such as the Great Famine (1315-7) or the Black Death (1348-52), motivating the imagination of contemporaries to blame witches as scapegoats for unexplained problems.

Ultimately, we will only know the answer to this question based on regional contexts and circumstances (which vary) rather than national ones (Jolly 2002, p.226).

Magic leading up to witchcraft:

The idea of magic has been prevalent throughout human history, the Middle Ages were no exception. Despite the impressions made of magic in the late medieval period, it was not always considered completely evil or diabolical (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.80). Interest in the supernatural through the period took on various forms such as practical, academic or sexual (Fanger, 1998, p.3). Magic was a grey area, both good (helpful) and bad (harmful) magic existed but were sometimes hard to distinguish.

Helpful magic:

Most societies had informal healers and diviners who would serve the local community through the use of herbs, charms and magical rituals to help cure sicknesses, lift curses etc…(Kieckhefer, 1989, pp.58-59).

Yet despite the benefits of this, magic still later emerged as generally diabolical. This relates back to the difficulty in separating out the good from the bad magic. An example of this could be if a healer accidentally worsens a condition, bringing about accusations of black magic (Kieckhefer, 1989, p.80).

Harmful magic:

Diabolical magic was not exclusively used by witches and could be identified in several separate contexts that could be classed as heretical rather than witchcraft. We can see this in Cesarius of Heisterbach's 'Dialogue of Miracles', where a necromancer called Philip on request successfully summons demons and perhaps the Devil himself. (Lawrence-Mathers, Escobar-Vargas, 2014, pp.102-104). A similar situation can be seen on the below image where a man is summoning demons to use its power for his own gain, protecting himself by standing in the drawn circle. Demonic magic also included animal sacrifices, written or spoken words (cryptic or foreign) etc... (Fanger, 1998, p.vii).

These beliefs and practices survived across the period and only changed in terminology. In the late Middle Ages, the same type of harmful magic was around but was under a new name: 'witchcraft'. The sabbat is evidence of this. Witches were not the first groups to be accused of going to secret meetings at night and performing orgies and demonic rituals; Jews for example were previously accused of this (Ginzburg, 1984, pp.39-40).

Conclusion:

To conclude, until it came to prominence in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, the magic witchcraft consisted of had existed throughout the medieval period and was maintained on a fine line against its counterpart, the helpful/good magic. It was by no means an original idea. We can therefore say that witchcraft followed a long and complex chain of development.

References/Further reading:

- C. Fanger (ed.), Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic, Sutton Publishing Limited, Stroud, 1998.

- C. Ginzburg, 'The Witches Sabbat: Popular Cult or Inquisitorial Stereotype?', in Understanding Popular Cult: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, S. Kaplan (ed.) (New York, 1984), pp.39-51.

- K. Jolly, C. Raudvere, E. Peters, The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, The Athlone Press, London, 2002.

- R. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989.

- A. Kors, E. Peters, Witchcraft in Europe 400-1700, A Documentary History (2nd ed. Philadelphia, 2001), pp.133-7.

- P. Maxwell-Stuart, The Malleus Maleficarum, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2007.

- A. Lawrence-Mathers, C. Escobar-Vargas, Magic and Medieval Society , Ablingdon, 2014, pp.102-7, 127-130.