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163-524: In The Night Battles , Ginzburg examines the trial accounts of those benandanti who were interrogated and tried by the Roman Inquisition , using such accounts to elicit evidence for the beliefs and practices of the benandanti . These revolved around their nocturnal visionary journeys, during which they believed that their spirits traveled out of their bodies and into the countryside, where they would do battle with malevolent witches who threatened

326-533: A benandante was brought to its conclusion. He noted that this was not down to the inefficiency of the Inquisitors, because they were effective in the repression of Lutheranism at the same time, but because they were essentially indifferent to the existence of benandanti beliefs, viewing them as little threat to orthodox Catholic belief. In his original Italian preface, Ginzburg noted that historians of Early Modern witchcraft had become "accustomed" to viewing

489-628: A horned god whom the Christians had demonised as the Devil. Although gaining some initial support from various historians, her theories were always controversial, coming under early criticism from experts in the Early Modern witch trials and pre-Christian religion. Eventually, her ideas came to be completely rejected within the academic historical community, although were adopted by occultists like Gerald Gardner (1884–1964) who used them as

652-449: A "correct intuition" in identifying the remnants of a pre-Christian 'religion of Diana', and in believing that witch-trial testimonies did at times represent actual or perceived experiences. In the original Italian preface to I benandanti , published in 1966, Ginzburg discussed the work of Murray, claiming that although it contained "a kernel of truth", it had been "formulated in a wholly uncritical way", containing "serious defects". With

815-640: A "well-documented case of the processus through which a popular and archaic secret cult of fertility is transformed into a merely magical, or even black-magical practice under the pressure of the Inquisition." Conversely, other scholars sought to draw a clear divide between the ideas of Murray and Ginzburg. In 1975, Cohn asserted that Ginzburg's discovery had "nothing to do" with the theories put forward by Murray. Echoing these views, in 1999 English historian Ronald Hutton asserted that Ginzburg's ideas regarding shamanistic fertility cults were actually "pretty much

978-414: A business, will not have the freedom to make a will nor shall succeed to an inheritance, goods were to be confiscated. A secular leader who "neglects to cleanse his territory of this heretical filth" would be excommunicated and the supreme pontiff could declare his vassals absolved from their fealty to him and make the land available for occupation by Catholics who would possess it unopposed and preserve it in

1141-469: A claim, and ran a coven called the Clan of Tubal Cain ; he inspired the founding of several movements, including the 1734 Tradition . Alex Sanders also made such a claim, and founded Alexandrian Wicca ; however, Sanders turned out to be a Gardnerian initiate and had based Alexandrian ritual on Gardnerian Wicca. In 1974 E.W. Lidell made the claim that the occultist Aleister Crowley had been initiated into

1304-486: A favourable reception from many readers, including a number of significant scholars, albeit none of whom were experts in the witch trials. Historians of Early Modern Britain like Sir George Clark and Christopher Hill incorporated her theories into their work, although Hill later publicly regretted doing so. For the 1961 reprint of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe , Medieval historian Steven Runciman provided

1467-530: A female divinity (Fraw Selga). We have also seen that these processions were linked to an older and even more widely diffused myth, that of the 'Wild Hunt'. It was precisely these elements that reappeared, as we shall see more clearly, in the confessions of the female Friulian benandanti." Ginzburg, 1966. Ginzburg highlights more evidence of the Wild Hunt folk motif in the Late Medieval accounts of

1630-460: A fertility-based faith that she also termed "the Dianic cult". She claimed that the cult had "very probably" once been devoted to the worship of both a male deity and a "Mother Goddess" but that "at the time when the cult is recorded the worship of the male deity appears to have superseded that of the female". In her thesis, Murray claimed that the figure referred to as the Devil in the trial accounts

1793-447: A foreword in which he accepted that some of Murray's "minor details may be open to criticism", but in which he was otherwise supportive of her thesis. Her theories were recapitulated by Pennethorne Hughes in his 1952 book Witches . It was also adopted and championed by the archaeologist T. C. Lethbridge , marking his increasing estrangement from mainstream academia; in turn, Murray publicly defended his controversial theories regarding

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1956-470: A group of pagan villagers pretend to be witches in order to scare away Christians intent on disrupting their Walpurgis Night festivities. Jarcke's theories were adopted and altered by the German historian Franz Josef Mone in 1839. While serving as director of archives at Baden , he published his ideas in a paper in which he asserted that the pre-Christian religion which degenerated into Satanic witchcraft

2119-548: A historical basis in his creation of the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca . "[D]espite [its] serious defects, Murray's 'thesis', which was rejected by anthropologists and folklorists when it first appeared, ended by prevailing. What had been lacking then, and the need persists today if I’m not mistaken, was an all-encompassing explanation of popular witchcraft: and the thesis of the English scholar, purified of its most daring affirmations, seemed plausible where it discerned in

2282-506: A kind word for Murray". One of the foremost specialists of the trial records, L'Estrange Ewen, brought out a series of books specialising in the archival material which rejected Murray's ideas. Similarly, W.R. Halliday reviewed her work for the Folklore journal and exposed the flaws in her use of sources. E. M. Loeb criticised her in his review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe for American Anthropologist . In Noble's words, "There

2445-428: A male deity known as Lucifer , as well as a female deity, the goddess Diana . Leland's work would provide much of the inspiration for the neopagan witchcraft religion of Stregheria . In 1915, Margaret Murray was an Egyptologist who worked under Sir Flinders Petrie at University College London . However, the outbreak of World War I had meant that many of their staff and students had abandoned scholarship to aid

2608-433: A number of depositions and records of benandanti that were produced from 1600 to 1629, arguing that towards the latter end of this period, benandanti were becoming more open in their denunciations of witches and that inquisitors were increasingly viewing them as a public nuisance rather than as witches themselves. In Ginzburg's analysis, the benandanti were a "fertility cult" whose members were "defenders of harvests and

2771-676: A possibility, not as an established fact. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which attacked Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits , who had both supported Galileo up until that point. He was tried by the Inquisition in 1633. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", forced to recant, and the Dialogue Concerning

2934-526: A prehistoric matriarchal society, and concurred with Gage that the witch-cult was a survival of it. Pearson theorized that during the Christian era, the religion began to emphasise the male deity, which was then equated with the Christian Devil. Pearson also made the claim that Joan of Arc had been one of the last few priestesses of the religion. He was, however, unlike Michelet or Gage, opposed to

3097-405: A punishment that was later remitted. Ginzburg then looks at Gaspurotto and Moduco's claims in greater detail, noting that the benandanti constituted "a true and proper sect" who were united by having been born with a caul . He proceeds to examine the trances that the benandanti went into in order to go on their nocturnal spirit journeys, debating whether these visions could have been induced by

3260-410: A real Satanic conspiracy against Christendom in the Early Modern period replete with witches with supernatural powers. As Hilda Ellis Davidson noted; "how refreshing and exciting her first book was at that period . A new approach, and such a surprising one." "Surely, discussion of what confessedly is so unripe is premature. When Miss Murray has broadened her study to all the lands where she can find

3423-489: A source, with lavish quotation." It was not a best seller; in its first thirty years, only 2,020 copies were sold. However, it led many people to treat Murray as an authority on the subject; in 1929, she was invited to provide the entry on "Witchcraft" for the Encyclopædia Britannica , and used it to present her interpretation of the subject as if it were universally accepted in scholarship. It remained in

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3586-440: A surviving race of dwarves, who continued to live in the island up until the Early Modern period. She asserted that this race followed the same pagan religion as the witches, thus explaining the folkloric connection between the two. In the appendices to the book, she also alleged that Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais were members of the witch-cult and were executed for it, a claim which has been refuted by historians, especially in

3749-604: A witch. Following on from this, Ginzburg discussed the existence of clerici vagantes who were recorded as travelling around the Swabian countryside in 1544, performing folk magic and claiming that they could conjure the Furious Horde. Ginzburg then discusses the case of Diel Breull, a German sorcerer who was tried in Hesse in 1630; Breull had claimed that on a visionary journey he encountered Fraw Holt, who revealed that he

3912-462: A women's advocate. Of these, only Bruno was executed, in 1600. The miller Domenico Scandella was also burned at the stake on the orders of Pope Clement VIII in 1599 for his belief that God was created from chaos. The friar Fulgenzio Manfredi , who had preached against the pope, was tried by the Inquisition and executed in 1610. The Inquisition also concerned itself with the Benandanti in

4075-540: Is a gap of about a thousand years between the Christianisation of Britain and the start of the witch trials there, he asserts that there is no evidence for the existence of the witch-cult anywhere in the intervening period. He further criticises her for treating pre-Christian Britain as a socially and culturally monolithic entity, whereas in reality it contained a diverse array of societies and religious beliefs. In addition to this, he challenged Murray's claim that

4238-527: Is no constructive criticism between peers here; it is a frontal attack on an author Loeb clearly believes has no place among published historians, at least on the topic of witchcraft." In his 1962 work A Razor for a Goat , Rose asserted that Murray's books on the witch-cult "contain an incredible number of minor errors of fact or of calculation and several inconsistencies of reasoning." He accepted that her case "could, perhaps, still be proved by somebody else, though I very much doubt it." Highlighting that there

4401-610: The Canon Episcopi , a 9th-century document that denounced those women who believed that they went on nocturnal processions with the goddess Diana; the Canon' s author had claimed that they were deceived by the Devil, but Ginzburg argues that it reflects a genuine folk belief of the period. He connects this account with the many other European myths surrounding the Wild Hunt or Furious Horde, noting that in those in central Europe,

4564-537: The History of Religions journal by Mircea Eliade in 1975. In his book Europe's Inner Demons (1975), English historian Norman Cohn described I Benandanti as a "fascinating book". However, he proceeded to assert that there was "nothing whatsoever" in the source material to justify the idea that the benandanti were the "survival of an age-old fertility cult". In The Triumph of the Moon , his 1999 work examining

4727-644: The Dorset Ooser and the Puck Fair as evidence of his veneration. In 1954, she published The Divine King in England , in which she greatly extended on the theory, taking in an influence from Sir James Frazer 's The Golden Bough , an anthropological book that made the claim that societies all over the world sacrificed their kings to the deities of nature. In her book, she claimed that this practice had continued into medieval England, and that, for instance,

4890-653: The Friuli region, but considered them a lesser danger than the Protestant Reformation and only handed out light sentences. The Inquisition in Malta (1561 to 1798) is generally considered to have been gentler. Italian historian Andrea Del Col estimates that out of 51,000–75,000 cases judged by Inquisition in Italy after 1542, around 1,250 resulted in a death sentence . The Inquisitions have long been one of

5053-467: The Livonian werewolf which occurred in 1692. Ginzburg ultimately argued that these scattered visionary traditions represented surviving elements of a pan-central European agrarian cult that had predated Christianization. In the second part of The Night Battles , Ginzburg turns his attention toward those Early Modern Alpine traditions dealing with nocturnal processions of the dead. He initially discusses

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5216-705: The Middle Ages . The witch-cult hypothesis has influenced literature, being adapted into fiction in works by John Buchan , Robert Graves , and others. It greatly influenced Wicca , a new religious movement of modern Paganism that emerged in mid-twentieth-century Britain and claimed to be a survival of the 'pagan witch cult'. Since the 1960s, Carlo Ginzburg and other scholars have argued that surviving elements of pre-Christian religion in European folk culture influenced Early Modern stereotypes of witchcraft, but scholars still debate how this may relate, if at all, to

5379-713: The Minotaur of Minoan Crete . Within continental Europe, she claimed that the Horned God was represented by Pan in Greece, Cernunnos in Gaul, and in various Scandinavian rock carvings. Claiming that this divinity had been declared the Devil by the Christian authorities, she nevertheless asserted that his worship was testified in officially Christian societies right through to the Modern period, citing folkloric practices such as

5542-600: The Palaeolithic . She further asserted that in the Bronze Age, the worship of the deity could be found throughout Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, claiming that the depiction of various horned figures from these societies proved that. Among the evidence cited were the horned figures found at Mohenjo-Daro , which are often interpreted as depictions of Pashupati , as well as the deities Osiris and Amon in Egypt and

5705-791: The Salem witch trials . This model of repressive system, Kirsch argued, was also applied in Nazism , Soviet Russia, Japanese internment camps , McCarthyism , and most recently, the War on Terror . Through further research and available evidence, the Roman Inquisition was seen in a different light. In contrast with feminist arguments, historians like Clarke Garrett, Brian P. Levack , John Tedeschi, Matteo Duni, and Diane Purkiss pointed out that most witch trials and executions were conducted by local and secular authorities. Clarke Garrett mentioned

5868-532: The Scottish Historical Review . In The Witch-Cult in Western Europe , Murray stated that she had restricted her research to Great Britain, although made some recourse to sources from France, Flanders, and New England . She drew a division between what she termed "Operative Witchcraft", which referred to the performance of charms and spells with any purpose, and "Ritual Witchcraft", by which she meant "the ancient religion of Western Europe",

6031-449: The Wild Hunt . He furthermore argues that these Late Medieval and Early Modern accounts represent surviving remnants of a pan-European, pre-Christian shamanistic belief concerning the fertility of the crops. Academic reviews of The Night Battles were mixed. Many reviewers argued that there was insufficient evidence to indicate that the benandanti represented a pre-Christian survival. Despite such criticism, Ginzburg would later return to

6194-530: The benandanti belief that witches would drink all of the water in a house. "A nucleus of fairly consistent and compact beliefs stand out from these dispersed and fragmentary pieces of evidence – beliefs which, in the course of a century, from 1475 to 1585, could be found in a clearly defined area which included Alsace , Württemberg (Heidelberg), Bavaria , the Tyrol ; and, on the fringes, Switzerland (the canton of Schwyz )... [I]t seems possible to establish

6357-482: The benandanti tradition would be adopted by a variety of scholars based in continental Europe. It was supported by Eliade. Although the book attracted the attention of many historians studying Early Modern witchcraft beliefs, it was largely ignored by scholars studying shamanism. Most scholars in the English-speaking world could not read Italian, meaning that when I Benandanti was first published in 1966,

6520-528: The interrogation of Anna la Rossa , a self-confessed spirit medium who was brought before the Roman Inquisition in Friuli in 1582, before detailing two similar cases that took place later that year, that of Donna Aquilina and Caterina la Guercia. The latter of these women claimed that her deceased husband had been a benandante , and that he had gone on a "procession with the dead", but none of them described themselves as being benandante . Ginzburg then looks at

6683-474: The "cult"; when she has dealt with documents worthier the name of records than the chap-books and the formless reports that have to serve us for the British trials; when she has traced back witch-sabbath and questionary through the centuries of witch and heretic hunting that precede the British; when she has trusted herself to study the work of other students and fairly to weigh their conclusions against her own in

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6846-666: The 11th or 12th century. The significance and emphasis of the Malleus Maleficarum is seen more frequently in arguments which hold the Inquisition accountable for the witch-craze. Witch-cult hypothesis The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that the witch trials of the Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pagan religion that had survived the Christianization of Europe. According to its proponents, accused witches were actually followers of this alleged religion. They argue that

7009-560: The 1486 Malleus Maleficarum . In the following two centuries, witch trials usually included the charge of membership in a demonic conspiracy, gathering in sabbaths, and similar. It was only with the beginning Age of Enlightenment in the early 18th century, that the idea of an organized witch-cult was abandoned. Early Modern testimonies of accused witches "confirming" the existence of a witch cult are considered doubtful. Norman Cohn has argued that such testimonies were often given under torture , and that their details were determined mainly by

7172-642: The British war effort, while archaeological excavation to Egypt had been rendered impossible. These events gave Murray more latitude in her studies, and she began to branch out and explore other interests. To aid Britain's war effort, Murray enrolled as a volunteer nurse in the Volunteer Aid Detachment of the College Women's Union Society, and for several weeks was posted to Saint-Malo in France. However, after being taken ill herself, she

7335-486: The Christianization and the trials themselves. Both Jarcke and Mone were politically conservative, and their depiction of the threatening witch-cult would have had parallels with the widespread conservative fear of secret societies as bringers of revolution and irreligion in early nineteenth-century Europe. In 1862, French historian Jules Michelet published La Sorcière ( The Witch ), in which he adapted

7498-613: The Congregation, as well as a prelate and two assistants all chosen from the Dominican Order . The Holy Office also had an international group of consultants ; experienced scholars of theology and canon law who advised on specific questions. The congregation, in turn, presided over the activity of local tribunals. The Roman Inquisition began in 1542 as part of the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation against

7661-458: The Decline of Magic , English historian Keith Thomas dismissed Murray's thesis when he asserted that scholarship on the Early Modern witch trials had established that there was "very little evidence to suggest that the accused witches were either devil-worshippers or members of a pagan fertility cult". Although accepting that when she first published her ideas, they were "the best alternative" to

7824-663: The Dominican friar Johannes Nider . Nader related that certain women believed that they were transported to the conventicles of the goddess Herodias on the Ember Days , something which the monk attributed to the trickery of the Devil. Proceeding with his argument, Ginzburg describes an account by the chaplain Matthias von Kemnat, who recorded the persecution of a sect at Heidelberg circa 1475. According to Kemnat, this sect contained women who believed that they "travelled" during

7987-583: The Ember Days and cast non-fatal spells on men. Ginzburg then turns his attention to a work of the early 16th century, Die Emeis , written by the Swiss preacher Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg . In this account, Geiler refers to those people who went on nocturnal visits to see Fraw Fenus (Venus), including those women who fell into a swoon on the Ember Days, and who described a visit to Heaven after they had awoken. In further search of references to processions of

8150-414: The English edition, they proclaimed that they were "very pleased" to have been given the opportunity to translate the book, opining that Ginzburg's two works "represent only a small part of the best of the new social, cultural and religious history being written today by a host of distinguished Italian scholars." The Tedeschis went on to note that in translating The Night Battles , they had decided to adopt

8313-455: The Italian terms benandante and benandanti (singular and plural respectively) rather than trying to translate such terms into English. As they noted, a "literal translation" of these words would have been "those who go well" or "good-doers", terms which they felt did not capture the original resonance of benandanti . They also noted that in their translation they had used the term "witch" in

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8476-536: The Murrayite theory was "based on deeply flawed methods and illogical arguments" and that the discipline of folkloristics had been damaged by its association with Murray, who had been appointed President of the Folklore Society . Simpson outlined how Murray had selected her use of evidence very specifically, particularly by ignoring and/or rationalising any accounts of supernatural or miraculous events in

8639-425: The Murrayite witch-cult hypothesis. The witch-hunt of the 16th and 17th centuries was an organized effort by authorities in many countries to destroy a supposed conspiracy of witches thought to pose a deadly threat to Christendom . According to these authorities, witches were numerous, and in conscious alliance with Satan , forming a sort of Satanic counter-religion. Witch-hunts in this sense must be separated from

8802-574: The Nocturnal Meeting of Witches ), the Italian cleric Girolamo Tartarotti claimed that the stereotype of the witch in Early Modern Europe was influenced by pre-Christian folk beliefs. Similar ideas were echoed by the German folklorist Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie ( Teutonic Mythology ), first published in 1835. Here, he claimed that the witch stereotype reflected a blending of pre-Christian folk traditions with

8965-685: The Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds , theorised that the origins of the witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos , a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan / Faunus , a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans , those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided

9128-533: The Roman Catholic Church intervened in "traditional peasant practices" and warped them to fit their own ideas about witchcraft. He went on to note that The Night Battles should "fascinate and stimulate all historians of the popular mind." The Night Battles is divided into four chapters, preceded by a preface written by Ginzburg, in which he discusses the various scholarly approaches that have been taken to studying Early Modern witchcraft, including

9291-499: The Roman Inquisition consulted in response to complaints made against Galileo in 1616, judged the proposition that the sun is immobile and at the center of the universe and that the Earth moves around it, to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy" and that the first was "formally heretical" while the second was "at least erroneous in faith". While the Inquisition refrained from condemning either Copernicus or his book (or Galileo) on

9454-574: The Roman and Universal Inquisition '), was a system of partisan tribunals developed by the Holy See of the Catholic Church , during the second half of the 16th century, responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of a wide array of crimes according to Catholic law and doctrine , relating to Catholic religious life or alternative religious or secular beliefs. It was established in 1542 by

9617-689: The Sabbath ceremonies involved the witches' paying homage to the deity, renewing their "vows of fidelity and obedience" to him, and providing him with accounts of all the magical actions that they had conducted since the previous Sabbath. Once this business had been concluded, admissions to the cult or marriages were conducted; ceremonies and fertility rites took place; and the Sabbath concluded with feasting and dancing. Deeming Ritual Witchcraft to be "a fertility cult", she asserted that many of its rites were designed to ensure fertility and rain-making. She claimed that there were four types of sacrifice performed by

9780-546: The Two Chief World Systems was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books). He spent the rest of his life under house arrest at his villa in Arcetri near the city of Florence . 17th century English traveler and author, John Bargrave , gave an account of his interactions with the Roman Inquisition. Arriving in the city of Reggio (having travelled from Modena ), Bargrave

9943-402: The accused witches' genuine experiences of witchcraft, regardless of whether those confessions had been obtained through torture and coercion. He also charged her with selectively using the evidence to serve her interpretation, for instance by omitting any supernatural or miraculous events that appear in the trial accounts. As Pagan studies scholar Catherine Noble later put it, "Burr has hardly

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10106-404: The archival records from the witch trials, leaving no doubt that those tried for witchcraft were not practitioners of a surviving pre-Christian religion. In the original Italian preface to the book, published in 1966, Ginzburg discussed the work of Murray, claiming that although it contained "a kernel of truth", it had been "formulated in a wholly uncritical way", containing "serious defects". With

10269-701: The basis of this assessment, several theological claims in De revolutionibus were ordered to be excised in future publications. Unexpurgated versions of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books). Galileo Galilei revised the Copernican theories and was admonished for his views on heliocentrism in 1615. The Roman Inquisition concluded that his theory could only be supported as

10432-412: The belief in witches, the evil eye , and other such phenomena, which are common features of folk belief worldwide. The belief that witches are not just individual villains but conspirators organized in a powerful but well-hidden cult is a distinguishing feature of the early modern witch-hunt. This idea of an organized witch-cult originates in the second half of the 15th century, notoriously expounded in

10595-475: The book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ( On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ), in 1543. The book was dedicated to Pope Paul III , who was known for his interests in astronomy . Both works were known in Rome, and neither attracted adverse theological responses in the sixteenth century. Some seven decades following Copernicus's death, specialists in mathematics, philosophy, and Catholic theology, whom

10758-466: The broader sense to refer to both males and females, but that when the Italian text specifically mentioned strega and stregone they rendered them as "witch" and "warlock". The English translation included a foreword by the prominent English historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012), in which he argued that the "real interest in [Ginzburg's] extremely interesting book" lay not in its discussion of shamanistic visionary traditions, but in its study of how

10921-401: The case of Joan of Arc. Later historian Ronald Hutton commented that The Witch-Cult in Western Europe "rested upon a small amount of archival research, with extensive use of printed trial records in 19th century editions, plus early modern pamphlets and works of demonology". He also noted that the book's tone was generally "dry and clinical, and every assertion was meticulously footned to

11084-512: The chalk hill figures of Wandlebury Hill in the Gog Magog Hills , Cambridgeshire . As a result, a commentator writing in 1962 could comment that the Murrayite interpretations of the witch trials "seem to hold, at the time of writing, an almost undisputed sway at the higher intellectual levels", being widely accepted among "educated people". Canadian historian Elliot Rose suggested that the reason why Murray's theory gained such support

11247-569: The complete academic rejection of Murray's theories in the 1970s, Ginzburg attempted to clarify his work's relationship to Murray's Witch-Cult theory in his "Preface to the English Edition", written in 1982. Here, he expressly stated that "Murray, in fact, asserted: (a) that witchcraft had its roots in an ancient fertility cult, and (b) that the sabbat described in the witchcraft trials referred to gatherings which had actually taken place. What my work really demonstrated, even if unintentionally,

11410-504: The complete academic rejection of Murray's theories in the 1970s, Ginzburg attempted to clarify his work's relationship to Murray's Witch-Cult theory in his "Preface to the English Edition", written in 1982. Here, he expressly stated that "Murray, in fact, asserted: (a) that witchcraft had its roots in an ancient fertility cult, and (b) that the sabbat described in the witchcraft trials referred to gatherings which had actually taken place. What my work really demonstrated, even if unintentionally,

11573-813: The confessions of accused witches as being "the consequences of torture and of suggestive questioning by the judges". Ginzburg argues that the benandanti fertility cult was connected to "a larger complex of traditions" that were spread "from Alsace to Hesse and from Bavaria to Switzerland ", all of which revolved around "the myth of nocturnal gatherings" presided over by a goddess figure, varyingly known as Perchta , Holda , Abundia , Satia , Herodias , Venus or Diana . He also noted that "almost identical" beliefs could be found in Livonia (modern Latvia and Estonia), and that because of this geographic spread "it may not be too daring to suggest that in antiquity these beliefs may once have covered much of central Europe." In

11736-438: The criticisms of her work, but did react to her critics in a hostile manner; in later life she asserted that she eventually ceased reading reviews of her work, and believed that her critics were simply acting on religious prejudice. Noble later stated that Murray "repeatedly dismissed [her critics] in print as close-minded, bigoted, or uninformed." Murray's work came to be increasingly criticised following her death in 1963, with

11899-576: The cult as "the Old Religion". In this work she "cut out or toned down" many of the claims of her previous book which would have painted the cult in a bad light, for instance regarding animal and child sacrifice, and also omitted any mention of sex. In this book she began to refer to the witches' deity as the Horned God , and asserted that it was an entity who had been worshipped in Europe since

12062-550: The cult as a whole. Concurring with this assessment, historian Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander stated that "Murray's use of sources in general is appalling". They went on to assert that "Today, scholars are agreed that Murray was more than just wrong – she was completely and embarrassingly wrong on nearly all of her basic premises." In his sociological study of the Early Modern witchcraft, Gary Jensen highlighted that Murray's work had been "seriously challenged" and that it did not take into account "why it took so long for

12225-575: The dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Ginzburg then highlights a 1489 trial of the weaver Giuliano Verdana held in Mantua and the 1525 trial of a woman named Wyprat Musin in Bürserberg , in both of which the defendant claimed to have seen a procession of dead spirits led by a female figure. This is then followed by a discussion of the case of German herdsman Chonrad Stoecklin, who recounted visionary experiences in 1587 before being condemned as

12388-448: The death of William II was really a ritual sacrifice. She also claimed that a number of important figures who died violent deaths, such as Archbishop Thomas Becket , were killed as a replacement for the king. No academic took the book seriously, and it was ignored by many of her supporters. It did however influence a few historical novels e.g. Philip Lindsay 's The Devil and King John . Upon initial publication, Murray's thesis gained

12551-544: The definitive academic rejection of the Murrayite witch-cult theory occurring during the 1970s. At this time, a variety of scholars across Europe and North America began to publish in-depth studies of the archival records from the witch trials, leaving no doubt that those tried for witchcraft were not practitioners of a surviving pre-Christian religion. Such critics of Murray included Alan Macfarlane , Erik Midelfort, William Monter, Robert Muchembled, Gerhard Schormann, Bente Alver and Bengt Ankarloo. In his 1971 book Religion and

12714-482: The development of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft , English historian Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol asserted that Ginzburg was "a world-class historian" and a "brilliant maverick". Hutton opined that The Night Battles offered "an important and enduring contribution" to historical enquiry, but that Ginzburg's claim that the benandanti' s visionary traditions were a survival from pre-Christian practices

12877-486: The dominant "rationalist" view of witchcraft as "total delusion", he stated that her conclusions were "almost totally groundless" because she ignored the systematic study of the trial accounts provided by Ewen and instead used sources very selectively to argue her point. In his 1975 book Europe's Inner Demons , English historian Norman Cohn commented on the "extraordinary" manner in which Murray's theory had come to "exercise considerable influence" within scholarship. Cohn

13040-529: The early modern witch-craze as a product of Inquisitorial influence, namely the Malleus Maleficarum . Feminist writers Mary Daly, Barbara Walker, and Witch Starhawk argued that the Inquisitions were responsible for countless, "hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions", deaths, most of them women. This notion was similarly echoed by Third-wave feminist writer Elizabeth Connor, who agreed with

13203-598: The encyclopedia until being replaced in 1968. Murray followed this book with The God of the Witches in 1931; although similar in content, it was aimed at a mass market audience and published by the popular press Sampson Low . Whereas the tone in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe had been "dry and academic, the second bubbles with enthusiasm", as her language becomes "emotionally inflated and coloured with religious phraseology"; in particular she refers repeatedly to

13366-432: The existence of a thread linking the various pieces of evidence that have been examined thus far: the presence of groups of individuals – generally women – who during the Ember Days fell into swoons and remained unconscious for brief periods of time during which, they affirmed, their souls left their bodies to join the processions of the dead (which were almost always nocturnal) presided over at least in one case by

13529-432: The existence of something for which no evidence exists. The Murrayites ask us to swallow a most peculiar sandwich: a large piece of the wrong evidence between two thick slices of no evidence at all." Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander, 2007. In 1994, the English folklorist Jacqueline Simpson devoted a paper in the Folklore journal to the subject of "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why?". She noted that

13692-485: The expectations of the interrogators and by free association on the part of the accused, reflecting only the popular imagination of the times. Carlo Ginzburg and Éva Pócs hold that some of these testimonies can still give insights into the belief systems of the accused. Ginzburg discovered records of a group calling themselves benandanti , the "good walkers" who believed that they combatted witches ( streghe ) by magical means. The benandanti were persecuted for heresy in

13855-654: The feminist claim that the Inquisition was responsible for the death of so many women. Watt points out that in 1588 the Roman Curia stated it would only allow testimony about participation in a Sabbath by the practitioners themselves and not by outside witnesses. Additionally, the Inquisition would eventually ban torture for the procurement of a witchcraft confession. The Holy Office also began seeking less harsh punishment for witches and viewed witches as those who had simply lost their way and who could be redeemed, not as apostates deserving death. Historians who leaned toward

14018-441: The fertility of fields." He noted that by the time of the records of the benandanti that were produced in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the tradition was still an "actual living cult" rather than some "fossilized superstition" from preceding centuries. Ginzburg noted that with the notable exception of the cases brought against Gasparutto and Moduco by Montefalco in 1581, in the period between 1575 and 1619, no case against

14181-516: The few isolated incidents in which they did encounter and interact with the benandante during this period, opening with a discussion of the denunciation and arrest of self-professed benandanti Toffolo di Buri, a herdsman from the village of Pieris, that took place in 1583. This is followed by an exploration of the 1587 investigation into a midwife named Caterina Domenatta, who was accused of sorcery, and who admitted that both her father and dead husband had been benandante . From there, Ginzburg outlines

14344-534: The first part of the 20th century, the English Egyptologist and anthropologist Margaret Murray (1863–1963) had published several papers and books propagating a variation of the Witch-cult hypothesis , through which she claimed that the Early Modern witch trials had been an attempt by the Christian authorities to wipe out a pre-existing, pre-Christian religion focused around the veneration of

14507-497: The free-born population both in the pagan period and the Christian era, eventually resulting in the witch trials. However, as English historian Norman Cohn asserted in 1975, "neither of [Jarcke or Mone's] theories are convincing", with neither being able to show any evidence of pre-Christian gods being worshipped in Early Modern Germany or being able to explain why there were no accounts of this witch-cult in between

14670-479: The group and to Goddess worship in general, believing that it was primitive and savage. Charles Leland was an American folklorist and occultist who travelled around Europe in the latter 19th century and was a supporter of Michelet's theories. In 1899 he published Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches , which he claimed had been a sacred text for Italian witches. It made no mention of a horned god , but did mention

14833-556: The heretic witch to be invented and targeted", noting that had the Murrayite witch-cult been a reality, then it would have been persecuted throughout the Medieval and not just in the Early Modern period. During the 1930s and 1940s, Neo-Pagan Heinrich Himmler organised a branch of the SS to undertake the largest survey of witch-hunt trial records in Europe ever taken, with the dual aim of using it as anti-Christian propaganda, to claim that

14996-551: The importance of proper procedures and sparse use of torture. The low rate of torture and lawful interrogation, Black argued, means that trials tended to focus more on individual accusation, instead of groups. For the same reason, the notion of the Black Sabbath was much less accepted in contemporary Italian popular culture. The Holy Office's function in the disenchantment of popular culture also helped advance rationalism by getting rid of superstitions. Jeffrey R. Watt refutes

15159-536: The information which it contained remained out of the grasp of the majority of historians studying Early Modern witchcraft in the United States. In order to learn about the benandanti , these scholars therefore relied on the English-language book review produced by the witchcraft historian William Monter , who did read Italian. A summary of Ginzburg's findings was subsequently published in English in

15322-509: The inquisition had been a repression of an indigenous Völkisch Norse-Germanic nature religion, and as evidence for reconstructing that religion. This prompted Stuart Clark to dub the Nazi regime "Europe's first and only 'pro-witch' government." One pamphlet, 1935's The Christian Witch-Craze , claimed that the witch-hunts were an attempt to exterminate "Aryan womanhood". In 1985 Classical historian Georg Luck , in his Arcana Mundi: Magic and

15485-501: The later Medieval views of heresy . Both Tartarotti and Grimm would subsequently be erroneously cited as claiming that the witches had been members of a surviving pre-Christian cult. The first modern scholar to advance the claim that the witch trials had been designed to wipe out an anti-Christian sect was the German Karl Ernst Jarcke , a professor of criminal law at the University of Berlin . In 1828 he edited

15648-652: The leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Paul III . In the period after the Medieval Inquisition , it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition , the other two being the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition . The main function of the institution was to maintain and implement papal bulls and other church rulings, in addition to their function of administering legalistic ramifications upon deviants of Catholic orthodoxy within states that cooperated with

15811-476: The light of the further evidence they may adduce: then perhaps she may have modified her views. Whether she changes or confirms them, she will then have earned the right to a hearing." George L. Burr, 1922. Nevertheless, Murray's theories never received support from experts in the Early Modern witch trials, and from her early publications onward many of her ideas were challenged by those who highlighted her "factual errors and methodological failings". Indeed,

15974-532: The local crops. Ginzburg goes on to examine how the Inquisition came to believe the benandanti to be witches themselves, and ultimately persecute them out of existence. Considering the benandanti to be "a fertility cult", Ginzburg draws parallels with similar visionary traditions found throughout the Alps and also from the Baltic, such as that of the Livonian werewolf , and also to the widespread folklore surrounding

16137-495: The local inquisitions, effectively eliminating the power of the church to prosecute heretical crimes. Nicolaus Copernicus circulated for scholarly discussion his hypothesis of a cosmos that was heliocentric and an Earth that rotated around its own axis, first, in 1514 in a manuscript essay, " De hypothesibus motuum coelestium commentariolus " (Brief Commentary on the Hypotheses of Heavenly Movements), and then more robustly in

16300-486: The majority of Britons in the Middle Ages remained pagan as "a view grounded on ignorance alone". Simpson noted that despite these critical reviews, within the field of British folkloristics Murray's theories were permitted "to pass unapproved but unchallenged, either out of politeness or because nobody was really interested enough to research the topic." As evidence, she noted that no substantial research articles on

16463-510: The majority of scholarly reviews of her work produced at the time were largely critical. George L. Burr critically reviewed both of her initial books on the subject for the American Historical Review . In his review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe he asserted that she was not acquainted with the "careful general histories by modern scholars" and criticised her for assuming that the trial accounts accurately reflected

16626-565: The name of Diana was supplanted by that of Holda or Perchta . Ginzburg then highlights the 11th-century account produced by French Bishop William of Auvergne , in which he had described a folk belief surrounding a female divinity named Abundia or Satia, who in William's opinion was a disguised devil. According to William's account, this creature travelled through houses and cellars at night, accompanied by her followers, where they would eat or drink whatever they found; Ginzburg noted parallels with

16789-542: The notion of "gynocide", or "woman hunting", inaugurated by the Malleus . The same sentiment regarding the Inquisition's notorious reputation of torture was shared by American writer and attorney Jonathan Kirsch. In his book, The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God , Kirsch argued that the Inquisition's use of torture not only applied to the witch-craze which peaked in early 17th century, but also to

16952-709: The opposite" of what Murray had posited. Hutton pointed out that Ginzburg's argument that "ancient dream-worlds, or operations on non-material planes of consciousness, helped to create a new set of fantasies at the end of the Middle Ages" differed strongly from Murray's argument that an organised religion of witches had survived from the pre-Christian era and that descriptions of witches' sabbaths were accounts of real events. Upon publication, Ginzburg's hypothesis in The Night Battles received mixed reviews. Some scholars found his theories tantalizing, while others expressed far greater scepticism. In ensuing decades, his work

17115-592: The orgies of the sabbat the deformation of an ancient fertility rite." Carlo Ginzburg, 1983 [1966]. The definitive rejection of Murray's Witch-Cult theories among academia occurred during the 1970s, when her ideas were attacked by two British historians, Keith Thomas and Norman Cohn , who highlighted her methodological flaws. At the same time, a variety of scholars across Europe and North America – such as Alan Macfarlane , Erik Midelfort, William Monter, Robert Muchembled, Gerhard Schormann, Bente Alver and Bengt Ankarloo – began to publish in-depth studies of

17278-581: The period of 1575 to 1675. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the common belief among educated sectors of the European populace was that there had never been any genuine cult of witches and that all those persecuted and executed as such had been innocent of the alleged crimes. At this time, two figures independently raised the prospect that the witch trials had been influenced by stereotypes and folk customs that had pre-Christian origins. In his 1749 work Del Congresso Notturno delle Lamie ( On

17441-414: The perspective of a historian of religion, "her use of comparative materials and, in general, the methods of Religionswissenschaft have been unfortunate." "That this 'old religion' persisted secretly, without leaving any evidence, is of course possible, just as it is possible that below the surface of the moon lie extensive deposits of Stilton cheese . Anything is possible. But it is nonsense to assert

17604-629: The pope and ostensibly exhibiting proper procedure to Catholic states in the process of formulating the Counter-Reformation. The papal bull Ad abolendam , by Lucius III , prescribed penalties for heretical clerics and laymen and established a procedure of systematic inquisition by bishops; the third canon of the fourth Lateran Council (1215) specified procedures against heretics and their accomplices. Clerics were to be degraded from their orders, lay persons were to be branded as infamous and not be admitted to public offices or councils or to run

17767-409: The prehistoric world, humanity had been matriarchal , worshiping a great Goddess, and that the witches of the witch cult had been pagan priestesses preserving this religion. In 1897, the English scholar Karl Pearson , who was the professor of Applied Mathematics at University College London and an amateur historian and anthropologist, expanded on Michelet's theory. Pearson agreed with the theory of

17930-452: The previously dominant rationalist idea that the witch trials were the result of mass delusion. Related to this, folklorist Jacqueline Simpson suggested that part of the Murrayite theory's appeal was that it appeared to give a "sensible, demystifying, liberating approach to a longstanding but sterile argument" between the rationalists who denied that there had been any witches and those, like Montague Summers , who insisted that there had been

18093-459: The primary subjects in the scholarly debates regarding witchcraft accusations of the early modern period. Historian Henry Charles Lea places an emphasis on torture methods employed to force confessions from the convicted. Carlo Ginzburg , in The Night Battles , discussed how Inquisitorial propaganda of demonology distorted popular folk beliefs. In similar light, Elliott P. Currie saw the Inquisitions as one singular, ongoing phenomenon, which drove

18256-617: The prototype for later Christian conceptions of the Devil , and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches. While Murray's theory had received some negative critical attention at the time of its first publication, it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that her books became best sellers, reaching a larger audience and thereby subsequently causing experts to decide that "the Murray thesis had to be stopped once and for all". Simpson noted that

18419-506: The publication of the Murray thesis in the Encyclopædia Britannica made it accessible to "journalists, film-makers popular novelists and thriller writers", who adopted it "enthusiastically". It influenced the work of Aldous Huxley and Robert Graves . The Murrayite thesis provided the blueprint for the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca . In the 1950s, several British occultists claimed they had found remnants of

18582-621: The purity of the faith. The organisational system of the Roman Inquisition did differ essentially from that of the Medieval Inquisition. Typically, the pope appointed one cardinal to preside over meetings of the Congregation. Though often referred to in historical literature as Grand Inquisitors , the role was substantially different from the formally appointed Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. There were usually ten other cardinals who were members of

18745-505: The quick decline and insignificance of the Malleus Maleficarum . In-depth historical research regarding minor details of different types of magic, theological heresies, and political climate of The Reformation further revealed that Inquisitorial procedures greatly restrained witch hunting in Italy. Scholars specializing in the Renaissance and Early Modern period such as Guido Ruggiero , Christopher F. Black, and Mary O'Neil also discussed

18908-437: The rationalist interpretation that emerged in the 18th century and the Witch-cult hypothesis presented by Margaret Murray . He proceeds to offer an introduction to the benandanti, and then thanks those who have helped him in producing his study. "I am a benandante because I go with the others to fight four times a year, that is during the Ember Days, at night; I go invisibly in spirit and the body remains behind; we go forth in

19071-402: The reality of the witches' Sabbath" and thus the publication of I Benandanti in 1966 "reopened the debate about the possible interconnections between witchcraft beliefs and the survival of pagan fertility cults". Similarly, Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade asserted that while Ginzburg's presentation of the benandanti "does not substantiate Murray's entire thesis", it did represent

19234-405: The records of a seventeenth-century German witch trial for publication in a legal journal, and included the theory in his own comments. Jarcke suggested that witchcraft had been a pre-Christian religion that survived Christianisation among the rural population, but that after being condemned as Satanism by the Church, it eventually degenerated into genuine Devil-worship and malevolence. At that point,

19397-497: The religion as many of her family had previously done, and a similar claim came from the Australian artist Rosaleen Norton , whose family had been of Welsh origin. Charles Cardell also made the claim of a hereditary lineage of the witch-cult, and he posited that the horned deity of the witches was known as Atho. Other Britons soon made the claim that they were members of a long line of family Witches. Robert Cochrane made such

19560-447: The service of Christ, and the witches of the devil; we fight each other, we with bundles of fennel and they with sorghum stalks." Montefalco's record of what Moduco informed him, 1580. Quoted by Ginzburg, 1983. The first part of The Night Battles deals primarily with the accounts of two benandanti who were interrogated and sentenced for heresy by the Roman Inquisition between 1575 and 1582. These two figures, Paulo Gaspurotto of

19723-408: The service of their deity. She also claimed that in some cases, these individuals had to sign a covenant or were baptized into the faith. At the same time, she claimed that the religion was largely passed down hereditary lines. Murray described the religion as being divided into covens containing thirteen members, led by a coven officer who was often termed the "Devil" in the trial accounts, but who

19886-408: The significance of the caul in benandanti belief. In Part III, Ginzburg comments on how uninterested the Inquisition were in the benandanti between 1575 and 1619, noting that "The benandanti were ignored as long as possible. Their 'fantasies' remained enclosed within a world of material and emotional needs which inquisitors neither understood, nor even tried to understand." He proceeds to discuss

20049-411: The sort of "discovery most historians only dream of." Prior to Ginzburg's work, no scholars had investigated the benandanti phenomenon, and those studies which had been made of Friulian folklore – by the likes of G. Marcotti, E. Fabris Bellavitis, V. Ostermann, A. Lazzarini and G. Vidossi – had all used the term " benandante " as synonymous with "witch". Ginzburg himself would note that this

20212-624: The spread of Protestantism, but it represented a less harsh affair than the previously established Spanish Inquisition. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V established, with Immensa Aeterni Dei , 15 congregations of the Roman Curia of which the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition was one. In 1908, the congregation was renamed the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office , in 1965 it

20375-509: The subject of witchcraft were published in the journal Folklore between Murray's in 1917 and Rossell Hope Robbins ' in 1963. However, she also highlighted that when regional studies of British folklore were published in this period by folklorists like Theo Brown , Ruth Tongue , or Enid Porter , none adopted the Murrayite framework for interpreting witchcraft beliefs, thus evidencing her claim that Murray's theories were widely ignored by scholars of folklore. Murray did not respond directly to

20538-570: The supposed 'witch cult ' revolved around worshiping a Horned God of fertility and the underworld, whom Christian persecutors identified with the Devil , and whose followers held nocturnal rites at the witches' Sabbath . The theory was pioneered by two German scholars, Karl Ernst Jarcke and Franz Josef Mone, in the early nineteenth century, and was adopted by French historian Jules Michelet , American feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage , and American folklorist Charles Leland later that century. The hypothesis received its most prominent exposition when it

20701-501: The surviving Witch Cult. The first of these was Gerald Gardner , who claimed to have discovered a coven of such witches - the New Forest Coven , in 1939. Gardner said that he was concerned that the religion would die out, and so initiated more members into it through his Bricket Wood coven . The tradition that he started became Gardnerian Wicca . The New Forest witch Sybil Leek made a similar claim, stating that she followed

20864-678: The theories about a shamanistic substratum for his 1989 book Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath , and it would also be adopted by historians like Éva Pócs , Gábor Klaniczay , Claude Lecouteux and Emma Wilby . In the Archiepiscopal Archives of Udine , Ginzburg came across the 16th- and 17th-century trial records which documented the interrogation of several benandanti and other folk magicians. Writing in 1992, historian John Martin of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas would characterize this lucky find as

21027-575: The theory further. Michelet, a liberal who despised both the Roman Catholic Church and absolute monarchies, claimed that the Witch Cult had been practiced by the peasants in opposition to Roman Catholicism, which was practiced by the upper classes. He wrote that the witches had been mostly women (he greatly admired the feminine sex, once claiming that it was the superior of the two), and that they had been great healers, whose knowledge

21190-426: The theory. It rested on highly selective use of evidence from the trials, thereby heavily misrepresenting the events and the actions of both the accused and their accusers. It also mistakenly assumed that claims made by accused witches were truthful, and not distorted by coercion and torture. Further, despite claims the 'witch cult' was a pre-Christian survival, there is no evidence of such a 'pagan witch cult' throughout

21353-532: The trial records, thereby distorting the events that she was describing. Thus, Simpson pointed out, Murray rationalised claims that the cloven-hoofed Devil appeared at the witches' Sabbath by stating that he was a man with a special kind of shoe, and similarly asserted that witches' claims to have flown through the air on broomsticks were actually based on their practice of either hopping along on broomsticks or smearing hallucinogenic salves onto themselves. In 1996, historian Diane Purkiss asserted that Murray's thesis

21516-421: The use of special psychoactive ointments or by epilepsy , ultimately arguing that neither offer a plausible explanation in light of the historical evidence at hand. Ginzburg looks at the agricultural elements to the benandanti's battles with their satanic opponents, arguing that their clashes represent an "agricultural rite" that symbolized the forces of famine fighting the forces of plenty. He suspected that this

21679-574: The village of Iassaco and Battista Moduco of the town of Cividale , first came under investigation from the priest Don Bartolomeo Sgabarizza in 1575. Although Sgabarizza later abandoned his investigations, in 1580 the case was re-opened by the Inquisitor Fra Felice da Montefalco, who interrogated both Gaspurotto and Moduco until they admitted that they had been deceived by the Devil into going on their nocturnal spirit journeys. In 1581 they were sentenced to six months imprisonment for heresy,

21842-517: The wider population came to reject it, resulting in the trials. This theory exonerated the Christian Church of blame by asserting that they had been acting on the wishes of the population, while at the same time not accepting the literal intervention of the Devil in human affairs which liberal rationalists disbelieved. In 1832, Felix Mendelssohn adopted similar ideas when composing his orchestral piece, Die Erste Walpurgisnacht , in which

22005-473: The winter and summer solstices, and Easter. She asserted that the "General Meeting of all members of the religion" were known as Sabbaths, while the more private ritual meetings were known as Esbats. Murray claimed that these Esbats were nocturnal rites that began at midnight, and that they were "primarily for business, whereas the Sabbath was purely religious." At Esbats, magical rites were performed both for malevolent and benevolent ends. She also asserted that

22168-542: The witch-cult in 1899 or 1900, after being introduced to it through Allan Bennett , a Golden Dawn friend of his. Lidell continued his claim by saying that the coven's High Priestess expelled Crowley for being "a dirty minded, evilly disposed, vicious little monster". No substantiating evidence has, however, been produced for this. From the 1960s Carlo Ginzburg documented the beliefs of a number of early modern groups of sorcerers, seers and healers. He claimed they were rooted in pre-Christian paganism, and credited Murray with

22331-429: The witch-cult, hence ignoring any theoretical considerations regarding the male-centric nature of their own perspectives. In his 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon , Hutton asserted that Murray had treated her source material with "reckless abandon", in that she had taken "vivid details of alleged witch practices" from "sources scattered across a great extent of space and time" and then declared them to be normative of

22494-416: The witch-hunt to its peak. Currie argued that the methods pioneered by the Inquisition indirectly guided continental Europe to a series of persecutions motivated by profit. Second-wave feminism also saw a surge of historical interpretation of the witch-hunt. A number of 100,000 to 9,000,000 executions was given, all of which was attributed to the Inquisition. Feminist scholars Claudia Honeger and Nelly Moia saw

22657-472: The witch-hunt-restraining argument were more inclined to differentiate different Inquisitions, and often drew contrast between Italy versus Central Europe. The number of executed witches is also greatly lowered, to between 45,000 and 60,000. Those who argued for the fault of the Inquisition in the witch-craze are more likely to contrast continental Europe to England, as well as seeing the Inquisitions as one singular event which lasted 600 years since its founding in

22820-467: The witches' use of animals, which she divided into "divining familiars" used in divination and "domestic familiars" used in other magic rites. Murray asserted that paganism had survived the Christianization process in Britain, although that it came to be "practised only in certain places and among certain classes of the community." She believed that folkloric stories of fairies in Britain were based on

22983-478: The witches: blood-sacrifice, in which neophytes write their names in blood, the sacrifice of animals, the sacrifice of a non-Christian child to procure magical powers, and the sacrifice of the witches' god by fire to ensure fertility. She interpreted accounts of witches' shapeshifting into various animals as being representative of a rite in which the witches dressed as specific animals which they took to be sacred. She asserted that accounts of familiars were based on

23146-456: Was "intrinsically improbable" and that it "commands little or no allegiance within the modern academy". She nevertheless felt that male scholars like Thomas, Cohn, and Macfarlane had committed "ritual slaughter" when setting up their own histories of witchcraft by condemning Murray's. In doing so, she identified a trend for them to contrast their own perceived methodologically sound and sceptical interpretations with Murray's "feminised belief" about

23309-683: Was a far greater influence on scholarship in continental Europe than in the United Kingdom or United States. This is likely because since 1970, the trend for interpreting elements of Early Modern witchcraft belief as having ancient origins proved popular among scholars operating in continental Europe, but far less so than in the Anglo-American sphere, where scholars were far more interested in understanding these witchcraft beliefs in their contemporary contexts, such as their connection to gender and class relations. Ginzburg's interpretation of

23472-545: Was a member of her nocturnal band. Ginzburg then makes comparisons between the benandanti and the Perchtenlaufen , an Alpine ceremony in which two masked groups of peasants battled one another with sticks, one dressed to appear ugly and the other to appear beautiful. Debating as to whether the traditions surrounding the processions of the dead originated in Germanic or Slavic Europe, Ginzburg then goes on to discuss

23635-410: Was a survival from an "older fertility rite" that had originated in pre-Christian Europe but which had subsequently been Christianized. He then goes on to examine the Early Modern accounts of aspects of popular belief across Europe that were similar to those of the benandanti. In particular he highlights the alleged cult of the goddess Diana that was recorded in late 15th century Modena and the case of

23798-440: Was accountable to a "Grand Master". According to Murray, the records of the coven were kept in a secret book, with the coven also disciplining its members, to the extent of executing those deemed traitors. Describing this witch-cult as "a joyous religion", she claimed that the two primary festivals that it celebrated were on May Eve and November Eve, although that other dates of religious observation were 1 February and 1 August,

23961-470: Was adopted by British Egyptologist Margaret Murray , who presented her version of it in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), before further expounding it in books such as The God of the Witches (1931) and her contribution to the Encyclopædia Britannica . Although the "Murrayite theory" proved popular among sectors of academia and the general public in the early and mid-twentieth century, it

24124-405: Was an idea resting on "imperfect material and conceptual foundations." Explaining his reasoning, Hutton remarked that "dreams do not self-evidently constitute rituals, and shared dream-imagery does not constitute a 'cult'," before noting that Ginzburg's "assumption" that "what was being dreamed about in the sixteenth century had in fact been acted out in religious ceremonies" dating to "pagan times",

24287-450: Was because it "appealed to so many of the emotional impulses of the age", including "the notion of the English countryside as a timeless place full of ancient secrets", the literary popularity of Pan, the widespread belief that the majority of British had remained pagan long after the process of Christianisation, and the idea that folk customs represented pagan survivals. At the same time, Hutton suggested, it seemed more plausible to many than

24450-503: Was criticised by scholars like Jessie Weston for making unsubstantiated leaps with the evidence. Returning to London, she began to work on the concept of witchcraft. Her first published work on the subject was an article in the academic journal Folklore in 1917, which she followed with a second in 1920. Further articles on the subject appeared in the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and

24613-484: Was entirely "an inference of his own". He thought that this approach was a "striking late application" of "the ritual theory of myth", a discredited anthropological idea associated particularly with Jane Ellen Harrison 's 'Cambridge group' and Sir James Frazer . Roman Inquisition Former dicasteries The Roman Inquisition , formally Suprema Congregatio Sanctae Romanae et Universalis Inquisitionis ( Latin for 'the Supreme Sacred Congregation of

24776-425: Was never accepted by specialists in the witch trials, who publicly disproved it through in-depth research during the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary experts in European witchcraft beliefs view the 'pagan witch cult' theory as pseudohistorical . There is now an academic consensus that those accused and executed as witches were not followers of any witch religion, pagan or otherwise. Critics highlight several flaws with

24939-656: Was nevertheless highly critical; he asserted that Murray's "knowledge of European history, even of English history, was superficial and her grasp of historical method was non-existent." Furthermore, he added that her ideas were "firmly set in an exaggerated and distorted version of the Frazerian mould." That same year, the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade , writing in the History of Religions journal, described Murray's work as "hopelessly inadequate" and full of "numberless and appalling errors". He added that from

25102-482: Was not Germanic in origin, but had instead been practised by slaves who had come in contact with the Greek cults of Hecate and Dionysus on the north coast of the Black Sea . According to Mone, these slaves adopted these cults and fused them with their own pagan faiths to form witchcraft, a religion that venerated a goat-like god, celebrated nocturnal orgies and practised poisoning and malevolent magic. This horrified

25265-507: Was not because of "neglect nor... faulty analysis," but because in the recent oral history of the region, the two terms had become essentially synonymous. The translation of The Night Battles into English was undertaken by John and Anne Tedeschi, a couple who had previously produced the English translation for Ginzburg's 1976 book The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller . In their Translator's Note to

25428-431: Was partly because of her "imposing credentials" as a member of staff at UCL, a position that lent her theory greater legitimacy in the eyes of many readers. He further suggested that the Murrayite view was attractive to many as it confirmed "the general picture of pre-Christian Europe a reader of Frazer or [Robert] Graves would be familiar with". Similarly, Hutton suggested that the cause of the Murrayite theory's popularity

25591-651: Was renamed again to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , and in 2022 it was renamed once again to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith . While the Roman Inquisition was originally designed to combat the spread of Protestantism in Italy, the institution outlived that original purpose and the system of tribunals lasted until the mid 18th century, when pre- unification Italian states began to suppress

25754-699: Was sent to recuperate in Glastonbury , Somerset , where she became interested in Glastonbury Abbey and the folklore surrounding it which connected it to the legendary figure of King Arthur and to the idea that the Holy Grail had been brought there by Joseph of Aramathea . Pursuing this interest, she published the paper "Egyptian Elements in the Grail Romance" in the journal Ancient Egypt , although few agreed with her conclusions and it

25917-403: Was simply the first point." He proceeded to accept that although he ultimately rejected her ideas, he reiterated that there was a "kernel of truth" in Murray's thesis. Some historians have described Ginzburg's ideas as being connected to those of Murray. Hungarian historian Gábor Klaniczay asserted that "Ginzburg reformulated Murray's often fantastic and very inadequately documented thesis about

26080-678: Was stopped by the city guard who inspected his books on suspicion some may have been on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum . Bargrave was brought before the city's chief inquisitor who suggested they converse in Latin rather than Italian so that the guards might be prevented from understanding them. The inquisitor told him that the inquisition were not accustomed to stopping visitors or travellers unless someone had suggested they do so (Bargrave suspected that Jesuits in Rome had made accusations against him). Nonetheless, Bargrave

26243-517: Was the basis of much of modern medicine. He believed that they worshiped the god Pan , who had become equated with the Christian figure of the Devil over time. When Michelet's La Sorcière was first published in France, it was, according to historian Ronald Hutton , "greeted with silence from French literary critics, apparently because they recognized that it was not really history". In 1893, an American suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage , published Woman, Church and State , in which she claimed that in

26406-592: Was the witches' god, "manifest and incarnate", to whom the witches offered their prayers. She claimed that at the witches' meetings, the god would be personified, usually by a man or at times by a woman or an animal; when a human personified this entity, Murray claimed that they were usually dressed plainly, though they appeared in full costume for the witches' Sabbaths. Members joined the cult either as children or adults through what Murray called "admission ceremonies"; Murray asserted that applicants had to agree to join of their own free will, and agree to devote themselves to

26569-594: Was told he was required to hold a license from the inquisition. Even with a license, Bargrave was prohibited from carrying any books "printed at any heretical city, as Geneva , Amsterdam , Leyden , London, or the like". Bargrave provided a catalogue of his books to the inquisition and was provided with a license to carry them for the rest of his journey. Among the subjects of this Inquisition were Franciscus Patricius , Giordano Bruno , Tommaso Campanella , Gerolamo Cardano , Cesare Cremonini and Camilla Erculiani an Italian apothecary, writer, natural philosopher, and

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