The following discussion is intended as background for Chapter 9: "Margaret's Feat," which raises the issue of witchcraft and witches. This is a scholarly paper I wrote in the 1960s while taking a graduate seminar on the early Middle Ages. Those who have read Dan Brown's best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code (2003), will be aware of some of the same information, particularly concerning the status of women in the early Church. While Brown's novel is fiction (as is The Passing of Merlin Zauber), I can vouch as a scholar for the accuracy of most of Brown's historical information, since I spent several decades exploring this same material myself.
When I became aware of my past lives as Iona, the Celtic priestess, and Margaret, who was hanged for "witchcraft" in the 17th-century colony of Connecticut, I finally understood why this topic seemed so important to me at the time, and why I continued to pursue it even after I had already earned my doctorate.
The purpose of this discussion is threefold: first, to establish the position of the Germanic and Celtic tribal priestess prior to the advent of Christianity; next, to explore the spread of Christianity and the strategy of compromise that made possible the success of the campaign; and finally, to trace the transformation of the once-revered priestess into the witch of popular superstition. This discussion is only incidentally concerned with "witchcraft"; its main purpose is to study the European priestess before, during, and after the advent of Christianity.
What we term "witchcraft," strangely enough, had its origin in one of the proudest and most revered offices in Germanic paganism. The Germanics believed that all women were endowed with divine and sacred qualities; and of all women by far the most sacred, the most respected, admired, relied upon, and sometimes the most venerated and feared person in the tribe was the one variously referred to as the priestess, prophetess, wisewoman, sorceress, or sibyl. Since the terms were synonymous, it made no difference which one of them she was called.
When the Germanic peoples were converted to Christianity, however, the heathen divinities and sanctities were systematically demoted, degraded, and cursed with the imputation of evil. The priestess as a class tended most often to persist in serving the old gods, which existed after the Conversion as little more than shadows of their former glory. Indeed, the pagan gods, like the world of spirits generally, were represented as Christian devils, and the women who served the gods and spirits were said therefore to serve the Devil and to be dedicated heart and soul to the cause of evil.
Grimm (1880-1883, p. 396) points out that Germanic women, as the half-goddesses of mythology as well as in real life, commanded a sphere of activity in which they were able to exert "lasting and momentous influence." Concerning the mythological half-goddesses, whose duty it was to mediate between man and deity, Grimm states that their "authority [was] manifestly greater, [and] their worship more impressive, than any reverence paid to heroes." In Germanic as in other mythologies, Grimm says (p. 397), female beings predominate in the second rank of deities; the first rank is reserved almost exclusively for the male; and divine heroes, who were regarded as a mixture of divine and earthly natures, are placed in the third rank. The half-goddesses stand in a dependent relation to the higher divinities and are neither wife nor daughter of a god. To the upper gods the half-goddesses were, as Grimm puts it, the "handmaids," but to men they were the "revealers."
It is significant that women, not men, were selected for this office. To the Germanic way of thinking, prophecy was a woman's gift, and consequently the decrees of destiny assumed a greater validity when delivered by a woman. Grimm points out that men earned their fame in battle, but women became famous through the exercise of wisdom and through their sacred gift of prophecy.
There are various references to the Germanic veneration of women in the Germania of the first-century Roman historian Tacitus. The most significant of these is the account of Veleda, the prophetess of the Bruterian nation. Tacitus tells us that Veleda had foretold the success of her countrymen against the Roman legions and of the legion's subsequent destruction. At the time of Tacitus her name was held in veneration "throughout Germany" (Tacitus, 1908, p. 262). Indeed, she was herself revered as a divinity (p. 317). When ambassadors were sent by the Romans to Veleda, the deputies were not admitted to her presence. Tacitus tells us that Valeda lived in the top of a "lofty tower," and "to increase the veneration paid to her character, all access to her person was denied." Questions were conveyed to her by a close relative whose duty it was to bring Veleda's "oracular responses" back from the sanctuary "like a messenger who held commerce with the gods" (p. 265). Veleda was one of the many prophetesses who had been revered as goddesses in their own time. Before Veleda, says Tacitus (p. 317), "Aurinia and others were held in equal veneration."
There were prophetesses everywhere, among the Celts as well as the Germanics. According to Mallet (1885, p. 200), there were ten prophetesses for every one prophet. Thus, the American writer L. Frank Baum, in his Oz books, is following tradition when he populates the Land of Oz with multiple witches both good and bad, but only one wizard (who, in The Wizard of Oz, turns out to be a charlatan). Ennemoser (1854, p. 96) points out that the Old Norse epic Edda records the fact that Odin himself sought council of the ancient Vala, who was "the prophetess of the farthermost North, the guardian spirit of the Earth, and the earliest of all prophetesses." The wives of the Druids were prophetesses and were so celebrated for their powers that even the Emperor Vopiscus Aurelian (c. 44) consulted them (p. 87). Ennemoser points out (p. 88) that the De Situ Orbis of Pomponius tells of nine Gallic priestesses on the island of Sark in the British Sea who could foretell the future of all sea-faring people who would consult them.
The innate power of prophecy was attributed to womankind in general; those recognized as prophetesses were women in whom this faculty was present to an extraordinary degree. Grimm (p. 1038) observes that Germanic women were responsible for everything except the mechanical arts, hunting, and war. To the women alone were confided the selection, preparation, and use of powerful herbs and medicines, and in the most ancient times, the art of reading and writing was chiefly committed to them (Ennemoser, p. 193). Indeed, according to Gummere (1892, p. 140), there was a regular system of education for "the ambitious young woman of Germany who had a soul above marriage and a talent for ecstatic shrewdness." Norwegians and Swedes actually sent their daughters to Finland, which Gummere describes as the "chosen country of magic and sorcery," for special training. This and similar references establish the historical basis for J. K. Rowling's fictional "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" depicted so brilliantly in her Harry Potter books.
In addition to an arsenal of charms for every occasion, the women were responsible for casting the runes. Ennemoser has termed the runes "the primeval northern Sanskrit" (p. 97). The runes were a key to the knowledge of a magic so highly esteemed that daughters of the highest nobility were sent to the most celebrated professors for instruction in their use. Tacitus (p. 317 f.) describes the runes as "certain marks" inscribed upon slips cut form a branch of oak or beech. The "certain marks" represent an alphabet the origin of which has given rise to considerable scholar speculation. The fact remains that the runes form the first instance possessed a magical significance. Müllenhoff (quoted in Gummere, p. 469) has suggested that the runes may have served as symbols of initial sounds, and that one process of divination was to make out of the runes an alliterative verse that gave answer to "the question of the hour." Gummere (p. 140) states that since the runes were carved on objects with the idea of enduring magic, it was the duty of the tribal women to see that the potent battle runes were etched upon the sword blades of the warriors.
The women's responsibility to the warriors of the tribe did not, however, end with the etching of runes on the sword blades. Fighting the enemy was quite literally a family affair. When the warriors marched off to war, the women and children went along also. Tacitus (p. 227) describes the field of battle as resounding with "the war-song of the soldiers, and the savage howling of the women. According to Tacitus (p. 317), a battle scene must have looked like a typical American football game, with the female cheerleaders at the sidelines frantically urging their team to victory:
[The Germanics] fight in clans, united by consanguinity, a family of warriors. Their tenderest pledges are near them in the field. In the heat of the engagement, the soldier hears the shrieks of his wife, and the cries of his children These are the darling witnesses of his conduct, the applauders of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The wounded seek their mothers and their wives; undismayed at the sight, the women count each honourable scar, and suck the gushing blood. They are even hardly enough to mix with the combatants, administering refreshment, and exhorting them to deeds of valour. From tradition, they have a variety of instances of armies put to the rout, and by the interposition of their wives and daughters again incited to renew the charge.
The thought of defeat cast particular horror into the minds of the Scandinavians, who, according to Mallet (1855, p. 200) were "more afraid of their [wives'] reproaches than the blows of the enemy." The Germanics dreaded the idea of their women being led into captivity, as was always the case in the event of defeat. Consequently, the tribes that were forced to deliver as hostages the daughters of illustrious families were bound by what Tacitus describes as "the most effectual obligation."
In pagan times there was no connotation of evil connected with the practice of magic and sorcery. Storms (1948, p. 178) points out that in heathen times "the difference between religion and magic... [was] none too clear in theory and often non-existent in practice." As a matter of tact, Tatlock (1950, p. 361) observes that unusual skill of any kind was likely to be confused with the magic arts. The Germanic disapproved of magic only when its purpose was harmful. In the popular mind, witchcraft was evil when used against the community in general, but according to Storms, it was quite permissible "when applied against a hostile tribe." Grimm (Vol III, p. 1103) puts forward as the distinguishing mark of sorcery in the malign sense, in the sense of the word as we think of it in modern times, "the malicious design to do mischief." Thus, according to Grimm,
As an herb, a stone, a spell proves a source of healing, so may it also act perniciously too; the use was proper and permissible, the abuse abhorred and punished.
Life for the Germanic people was hard and uncertain at best; the real practice of malign sorcery, which is the practice of magic to the detriment of one's own people, would clearly be an act of self-destruction on the part of the practitioner, for life was almost always on a strictly communal basis. When the priestess turned the power of the occult forces in Nature against another tribe, or against members of another tribe, it was always for the ultimate welfare of the home tribe. As Grimm points out, where practices of malign sorcery did exist along with the sanctioned benign sorcery, it was "by way of exception, not contrast" (Vol. III, p. 1031). Prior to the advent of Christianity no one would have thought to impute evil and malign intentions to the practitioners of magic and sorcery, the highly esteemed tribal priestesses and wisewomen. But when Christianity entered the picture, everything changed.
According to Grimm (Vol. I, p. 2), Christianity In the second and third centuries passed from Greece and Italy into Gaul. Soon after the year 300 there were a few Christians among the Germanic peoples along the Rhine, especially the Alamanni. Christianity came to the Goths about the same time. It did not, however, gain a firm footing until the fourth century when first the West-Goths, then the East-Goths, and then the Vandals, Gepidae, and Ruggi were converted and held by the new doctrine. The Burgundians in Gaul became Catholic at the beginning of the fifth century. Christianity won the Franks around the beginning of the sixth centuries, the Frisians, Hessians, and Thuringians in the eighth, and the Saxons in the ninth.
Browne (1896, pp. 9 f.) points out that Christianity had found early entrance into Britain; at least two hundred years before Augustine came in 596 Christianity had spread over what is present-day England, Wales, and the southern part of Scotland. Before this time, Christianity was widespread over the island we now call Ireland. In the years between 400 and 596 there was a complete disappearance of Christianity in all those parts of Britain when the Angles, Saxons, or Jutes had established themselves. Grimm observes that toward the close of the sixth and in the course of the seventh century, this area finally went permanently over to the new faith. The Danes were Christened in the tenth century. In the first half of the eleventh century the Norwegians were christened, and in the second half of that century, the Icelanders and the Swedes.
Christianity brought with it a foreign language, with which the missionaries imparted their teachings, and which was exalted as the one sacred language, thus excluding the mother tongue from almost any share in the public worship. The national feelings of the pagan were often offended by what Grimm refers to as the "sternly devout, abstemious missionaries," to whom not only the bloody sacrifices, but also the sensuous pleasure-loving side of heathenism was "an abomination." The indigenous paganism was sensuous, cruel, and barbaric; Christianity, by contrast, was mild, simple, and spiritual. In exchange for peace of spirit and the promise of Heaven, the pagan relinquished certain of his earthly joys and the memory of his ancestors.
Kemble (1876, Vol. II, p. 443) points out that the easy triumph of Christianity can be explained in many instances as having arisen from the dawning conviction among the pagans of the inefficacy of their heathendom on the one hand, and on the other hand from the fact that the moral demands of the new faith did not seem more onerous than those to which the people were already accustomed. According to Gummere (pp. 343 f.), Heathendom had set a high value on chastity and certain forms of justice that were analogous, but more sharply outlined, in the new religion. There were articles of faith in the old creed that substantially agreed with important tenets of the new. The Church assured and defined the vague but insistent belief in personal immortality that is common to all people, however primitive. The Germanic belief that death was merely the transition form one life to another was the reason the soldiers of Ariovistus fought with such very desperate courage. The Celtic Druids, who pushed the Germanic concept to extraordinary heights, were so certain of immortality that they contracted debts that were to be paid in the next world. This general notion of immortality that was so firmly fixed in the heathen mind was individualized, ennobled, and confirmed by the new faith. According to heathen belief, a person's future life was merged in the future of his family or clan. Christianity, on the other hand, treated him an individual and mediated directly between him and God.
Gummere points out (p. 341) that the early Christian missionaries attacked the heathen divinities with what was really a remarkable discretion. They made their main assault on the pagan beliefs, and left the custom and ceremony to be undermined by slow siege or clever strategy. The extremely violent methods used in the conversion of the Frisians and Saxons, and characterized by an abrupt attack upon the dearest heathen sanctities, were an exception to the rule, and stands in direct contrast to Iceland's mild conversion.
In the ecclesiastical and secular laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and among the other Germanic peoples as well, various aspects of heathenism were defined and forbidden. Thus the Laws of the Northumbrian Priests of York, the Canons of King Edgar, and the Secular Laws of Cnut specifically describe the heathen practices. In 749, about 300 years before Cnut, the Council of Clovesho directed its bishops to be particularly vigilant in the campaign against "soothsayers, sorcerers, auguries, auspices, amulets, spells, or all the filth of the impious and errors of the heathen." In the Laws of Edward and Guthrum (before 940) "wizards and witches, soothsayers, perjurers, secret murderers, and harlots" are classed together. The Ecclesiastical Law of King Edmund (ca. 942), the Laws of AEthelred (1008), and the Secular Laws of Cnut (ca. 1030) contain similar clauses with the ever-present proviso that "all such offenders are to be banished or destroyed unless they reform and make amends." Hell, according to the tenth-century Bickling Homilies, is the destination "of those wizards that practice incantations and conjuring and thus beguile the unwary and seduce them from God by witcheries and illusions." Another homilist prophesies that when Antichrist comes, "he shall have with him wizards and sorcerers and diviners and those who know how to chant spells ... and cursed spirits shall be his teachers and his companions" (Kittredge, 1956, p. 27).
Before the Conversion, according to Grimm (Vol III, p. 1055), priestesses were said to ride through the skies in the retinue of Holda and the other goddesses. With the advent of Christianity the goddesses were hurled from their thrones and "transformed from gracious adored beings into malign and dreaded ones." The priestesses still took part in these rides, but this time as witches in the retinue of Unholda, the devilish dame of night. Instead of their once stately progresses, the deposed goddesses could maintain only "stolen forbidden conferences with their adherents." Grimm (Vol. III, p. 1062) points out that as soon as the Devil was able to overcome the persistent Germanic attempts to feminize him, the witches passed into the fellowship of the Devil himself, and the relationship was transformed into something wicked and sinful. The idea was that the Devil came to fetch the women, and there grew up the idea of an alliance between him and every single witch. Thus was born the germ of the modern concept of witchcraft, that witches are in league with the Devil and dedicated to evil for the sheer love of it; that, indeed, they are the Devil's very helpers.
It is not difficult to understand why the women were apt to continue in the ways of heathenism and become witches in the Christian sense of the word. Before Christianity arrived and wrought the inversion of their world, they had been, as we have seen, revered as wisewomen and priestesses of their tribes. Their position in the tribe had not been gained easily. The greater part of their lives had been spent in dedicated training, sometimes traveling as far as Finland for "graduate study." The office of tribal wisewoman, by the nature of the position itself, would seldom be occupied by a very young woman. "The art of magic," says Grimm (Vol. III, p. 1030), "must have been chiefly monopolized by old women, who, dead to love and labour, fixed all their thoughts and endeavours on the hidden science...." The wisewomen, in other words, were too deeply committed to their profession to relinquish it for another.
There is another explanation for why these women persisted, and although it is often overlooked, it dwarfs all others. It is a factor inherent in the Judeo-Christian cultural tradition itself, and led to the singling out of the wisewomen for persecution and degradation. The position of women among the Hebrews as well as the Romans differed radically from the exulted position they enjoyed among the Germanics, for Roman and Hebrew society were centered around the male, and their women nearly always held a secondary position. For this reason the Christian missionaries would seek out the pagan priests, not the priestesses, and convert them to Christianity. Then if possible the missionaries would train them for the Christian priesthood. This was facilitated by the fact that pagan priests were in a one-to-ten minority with respect to priestesses. The cultural background of the foreign missionaries was such that they were unable to understand that heathen society was strongly centered around the woman, if not actually, at least psychologically. Had it occurred to the Christians to recruit the pagan priestesses as well as the priests, the entire subsequent scandal of witches and witchcraft, if not averted completely, could have been diminished considerably.
The fact is, however, that the priestesses were immediately degraded and hurled beyond the pale of the Church. The priestesses were never a part of Christianity; they were never really permitted to be; perhaps their degradation was part of the overall strategy, for they served effectively as scapegoats in the Christening of Europe. Despite the gestalt of extenuating circumstances that then existed, the truly disgraceful fact is that the priestesses were usually represented as deliberate apostates from the Christianity of which they were never a part. Consequently, since the priestesses would not and could not abandon their art, they went underground, and practiced the rites and rituals of paganism in secrecy and shadows.
Suddenly, almost overnight, the forces fanatically dedicated to the annihilation of magic became powerful, and these forces initiated a reign of terror that began with the fourteenth century and continued for the next four centuries. Grimm (Vol III, p. 1067) summarizes the situation thus:
[W]hat with the priestly Inquisition, with the formality of the Canon and Civil law process simultaneously introduced in the courts, and to crown all, with Innocent VIII's Bull of 1484, as well as Malleus Maleficarum and the tortures of the criminal court, the prosecutions and condemnations of witches multiplied at an unheard-of rate, and countless victims fell in almost every part of Europe.
This culminated in a scourge of drownings, hangings, and burnings perpetrated against women in the name of justice and law. Hardly a nation in Christendom escaped the contagion; impressed indelibly on European history of that period are the pockmarks of guilt, and guilt blackens American history itself with the witch trials at Salem, Massachusetts.
Thus commenced the witch panic, the plague compounded of superstition, imagination, and hearsay. The proud tradition of the tribal priestess, which represented the highest conception of the very real Germanic virtue of respect for women, had by this time been marred beyond recognition. What remained and was perpetuated was a sad and hopeless travesty of what had been. With regard to both the tradition and the virtue, it is sufficient to say that seldom has so honorable a tradition been so completely ground to rubble, and seldom so noble a virtue so soundly repudiated.
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© Copyright 2005 by Robert J. R. Rockwood. All rights reserved.