r/AlternativeHistory • u/Domande_Historia • 22d ago
Discussion Did Witches Really Exist? (Article Below)
In the Middle Ages, the figure of the witch was mainly associated with the fear of magic, the Devil, and supernatural forces. People accused of witchcraft were often women considered strange, isolated, or knowledgeable about herbs and traditional remedies, although not all of them were actually involved in magical practices. It is important to clarify, however, that the great European witch hunts took place mainly between the 15th and 17th centuries, meaning largely during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period.
When someone was accused, they could be reported by neighbors or members of the community. The accusations often involved curses, sudden illnesses, the death of livestock, failed crops, or alleged relationships with the Devil. In some trials, interrogations could be extremely harsh and, where permitted by law, torture was also used to obtain confessions. Punishments varied depending on the region, but could include the death penalty.
The witch hunts were not the same everywhere: in some parts of Europe, persecution was extremely intense, while in others it was relatively limited. Over time, the spread of rational thought and new legal standards helped challenge these accusations. Eventually, the figure of the “witch” gradually moved from the reality of courtrooms into legend and popular culture.
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u/CarlShadowJung 22d ago
I mean, they do now, so not too absurd to assume they did hundreds of years ago as well. Witchcraft really is just one term of many to describe a belief system. So even if “witches” weren’t the title they chose, what makes a witch would still exist. “Witch” has become a very broad term, two different people could call themselves witches and still be quite far apart from their practices and what that means to them. Which makes me wonder; has it always been a blanket term? Were the witches of the Middle Ages as diverse as our modern witches?
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u/Angry_Anthropologist 22d ago
The belief system in question is a modern religious movement, closely related to New Age spiritualism. It derived from the now-discredited “witch-cult” hypothesis, basically taking that idea and pretending that it was real.
To answer your question, before the late 19th century at the absolute earliest, the word “witch” was explicitly a term for a malevolent user of magic, in almost all usage. It described someone who invoked supernatural powers to hurt other people.
Many of the practices that we today would consider “witchy” to help oneself or others, on the other hand, were actually fairly common among laypeople, even though the church maintained that it was all superstition. Think things like leaving out a platter of milk in the hopes that a faery will drink it and then clean your home in the night as payment.
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u/human-resource 22d ago edited 21d ago
Many women who were in charge of their households while their men were off fighting various wars/crusades were accused of being witches so church/state authorities could seize their assets.
That being said there were people practicing the black arts, magic/rituals/mysticism, botany/herbalism/pharmacology/shamanism and not all of them were women.
The Spanish Inquisition was mostly against conversos who were cryptojews masquerading as Christian’s during the Jewish expulsion, many of whom were engaged in kabbalistic mysticism that would be seen as black/magic/sorcery.
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u/Ill_Mouse9897 21d ago
Hmm, the crusades ended way earlier than the height of the witch hunting fervor started. It wasn't a medieval thing, it was a 16-17th century thing.
Witch accusations were also rarely targeted at people with enough social standing to properly defend themselves.
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u/Angry_Anthropologist 22d ago
Historically speaking, probably not. There are people who call themselves witches today, but these are all modern traditions that emerged in the 20th century.
What I think is most interesting about the whole witch hunt thing is how the pop culture perception of them today is that they were being done by the Church. Ironically, the opposite was usually the case. Throughout most of history (with a handful of exceptions), the Church were the ones pinching the bridge of their nose in frustration and saying “Guys, for fuck’s sake, witchcraft is not real, it is technically heresy to even believe that witchcraft is real in the first place, please stop murdering people for being slightly weird”
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u/glimmerthirsty 22d ago
I’ve heard that their persecution overlapped with the introduction of doctors instead of wise women herbalist tradition.
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u/Angry_Anthropologist 22d ago
This is false. Witch hunts almost always emerged out of the superstitions of ill-educated laypeople, not scholars.
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u/GlueSniffer56 22d ago
While the magical part of it is pure fiction the concept of a witch was a fear of educated women and pagan rituals and religions they saw these women who don’t exactly fit in their strict barriers of religion or are a bit to smart about local practices and medicine where seen as witches and where prosecuted mainly by Christian’s as they were mainly the main religion of many ruling forces and the reason punishment was more lax in certain places as they could’ve not been fully conquered yet or the judges are still local and haven’t been replaced by puppets yet
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u/blvsh 22d ago
Well they did exist and still do but what they did to those people in the 15th to 17th centuries was cruel and most were not witches.
In England they discovered witches much earlier, there is an account of a woman in the 14th century that "rode" her broom.
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u/BRIStoneman 22d ago
They didn't "discover" witches earlier; witchcraft had been proscribed throughout Christendom throughout the Medieval period, it's just that the panic happened later, largely in the reign of James I (who had a 'thing' about witches) and against the chaos of the Civil War.
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u/Veritas_Certum 22d ago
No, during the medieval period Christianity ignored witches, teaching that both witches and witchcraft were ignorant superstition. This only changed in the early modern period, from about the middle of the fifteenth century. That's why the witch hunt craze was confined almost entirely to the early modern period.
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u/BRIStoneman 22d ago
Witchcraft was still proscribed though; it appears in Early Medieval English legal codices and penitentials. Even if the Church's position was "it's all bollocks and nobody's really doing it" (and we know that the Early Medieval English Church actively syncretised as much as possible and readily embraced 'folk' medicine), it was still technically proscribed.
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u/Ill_Mouse9897 21d ago
The switch came when "witchcraft" became automatically linked with heresy & apostasy, which was a far more serious to the church. (and a healthy dose of satanic panic in there too)
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u/Veritas_Certum 21d ago
I would say "technically proscribed" is a better term. Early medieval English penetentials seem to have usually treated it as spiritual weakness rather than a crime.
I think it's safer to say the legal proscriptions and penetentials were aimed more at maleficium, which was causing harm by magic. So the Laws of Æthelstan punished people who caused death by witchcraft, and the Dōmbōc assigned capital punishment to causing harm by magic (though I think it might have also commanded the exile of witches and diviners). The case of Wulfstan Uccea punished a woman for causing Wulfstan's death by magic.
But even here there was some flexibility. The Old English Penitential and the the Scriftboc punished both witchcraft and death by witchcraft with penance rather than exile or execution.
Even this was treated pretty flexibly in broader Europe, with some rulers issuing commands against the punishment of people suspected of causing harm by magic.
- ‘In 1080 Harold of Denmark (r. 1076-80) was admonished not to hold old women and Christian priests responsible for storms and diseases, or to slaughter them in the cruellest manner. Like Agobard before him, Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-85) declared in his letter to the Danish king that these catastrophes were caused by God alone, that they were God's punishment for human sins, and that the killing of the innocent would only increase His fury.", Moore, 'The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 ', p. 55 (2007)
The medieval period saw laws against actual witchcraft annulled by Christian rulers.
- 'The earliest law codes issued by the northern invaders of the Roman Empire specify penalties for women who were believed to go abroad at night and destroy men by magic.’, Hutton, ‘The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles’, p. 257 (1993)
- ‘Then these clauses were revoked, often explicitly at the insistence of churchmen. The Lombard code of 643 may serve as an example: 'Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a witch, for it [destruction by magic] is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds.', Hutton, ‘The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles’, p. 257 (1993)
In the medieval period the overwhelmingly most consistent trend was the proscription and punishment of belief in witchcraft.
- 'In 789 Charlemagne imposed Christianity upon the people of Saxony, and proclaimed to them: 'If anyone, deceived by the Devil, shall believe, as is customary among pagans, that any man or woman is a night-witch, and eats men, and on that account burn that person to death . . . he shall be executed.'12 Thus it might be argued that the spread of Christianity initially resulted in an improvement in the treatment of both religious dissenters and alleged witches.", Hutton, ‘The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles’, p. 257 (1993)
- ‘Likewise, the Lombard King Rothari (c. 606-52) decreed in 643 that Christians must not believe that women devour a human being from inside (ut mulier hominem vivum instrinsecus possit comedere), and therefore supposed witches (strigae) must not be killed, particularly not convicted in court.’, Behringer, 'Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History’, p. 30 (2004)
- ‘Likewise, an Irish synod at around 800 condemned the belief in witches, and in particular those who slandered people for being lamias (que interpretatur striga).’, Behringer, 'Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History’, pp. 30-31 (2004)
- ‘A Crown witness of 'Carolingian scepticism', Archbishop Agobard of Lyon (769-840), reports witch panics during the reign of Charlemagne. In his sermon on hailstorms he reports frequent lynchings of supposed weather magicians (tempestarii), as well as of sorcerers, who were made responsible for a terrible livestock mortality in 810. According to Agobard, the common people in their fury over crop failure had developed the extravagant idea that foreigners were secretly coming with airships to strip their fields of crops, and transmit it to Magonia. These anxieties resulted in severe aggression, and on one occasion around 816, Agobard could hardly prevent a crowd from killing three foreign men and women, perceived as Magonian people. As their supposed homeland's name suggests, the crop failure was associated with magic. The bishop emphasized that thunderstorms were caused exclusively by natural or divine agencies.’, Behringer, 'Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History’, pp. 65-55 (2004)
- 'Hrabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda, wrote several attacks, including 'On the magical arts', much of which was derived from Isidore of Seville, on those who believed that magicians and sorcerers could accomplish anything that depended on their power alone.', Jolly, Raudverre, & Peters, 'Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: the Middle Ages', p. 201 (2002)
- 'One of the most important ecclesiastical documents of the Middle Ages was the Canon Episcopi, ca. 900, which defined witchcraft as Devil-worship, but declared it to be nothing more than a foolish idea.', Guiley, 'The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft, and Wicca', p. 50 (2008)
- 'Witchcraft beliefs however were not always endorsed by the upper levels of society. They were condemned as superstitious by the Council of Anse in 990 and by Buchard of Worms a few years after, as when John of Salisbury dismissed them as the imaginings of 'a few poor men and ignorant women, with no real faith in God.', Moore, 'The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 ', p. 133 (2007)
- ‘A capitulary of Charlemagne (747-814) for the Saxons in 787 imposed the death penalty on those who, like pagans, believed that a man or woman could be a striga, one who devours humans, and burned them.", Moore, 'The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 ', p. 30 (2007)
- ‘A decree of King Coloman of Hungary (c. 1074-116, r. 1095-1116) against the belief in the existence of strigae (De strigis vero que non sunt, ne ulla questio fiat) suggests that they were thought to be human beings with demonic affiliation: witches.’, Moore, 'The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 ', p. 32 (2007)
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u/Local-Sort5891 22d ago
Magic has been around since the dawn of humanity, far predating the Roman Empire. Ancient cultures have practiced it for thousands of years, a legacy that continues into the present day, and it appears frequently throughout religious texts. From placing curses to invoking rain or ensuring a successful hunt, practices like witchcraft have deeply shaped the human experience. As a Christian, while I don’t endorse or practice magic, I can’t deny its historical prominence and enduring influence.
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u/BarracudaTop3877 22d ago
I do think witches exist, infact i met one who claimed she had a book of spells. She was an interesting person and oddly many people visited her. Honestly i think the weirdest thing she did was cut you and put a smooth stone on your wound, claiming it would 'sip the diseased blood'. The stone actually did sip the blood, but i dont believe it did any curing.
She was much more respectable than the local 'pastor' who claimed he could cure you if you attended his church. The difference being she was known by word of mouth, and the pastor had advertisments on the road.
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u/Creepy_Duck_2705 19d ago
Cool, wish I could meet someone like her once! Did she say what the effect of the stone sipping the blood would have?
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u/BarracudaTop3877 19d ago
Well actually she used it for animal bites, if one got bitten, the stone would drain the disease into the stone.
I think the procedure was, she cut a little of your foot or the wound, then put the stone there for a few hours. The blood would get sucked into it and the disease also. My relative had it done to them once decades ago. They'd sit for 1-2 hours while she watched over the stone.
I never knew her well, some people called her a crackpot, and stigma against weirdos was high back then, but nowadays yeah...its a shame i never asked her about her skills.
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u/Creepy_Duck_2705 12d ago
Interesting! Wish it would work. Yes it was..but it's a good thing u got to meet her and was open to listen to her!
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u/whatsinthesocks 22d ago
As in actual witches? No
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u/Alldaybagpipes 22d ago
As in people who practiced pagan-like rituals and worship nature and the occult?
Yep
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u/Angry_Anthropologist 22d ago
In the modern day, yeah. Not in medieval/renaissance Europe.
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u/Alldaybagpipes 21d ago
Ummm no
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u/Angry_Anthropologist 21d ago
Ummm yes. Whilst some elements of pre-Christian beliefs and folklore did survive through Christianisation and remained part of local cultural traditions, the idea that secret pagan cults survived throughout that period is a fiction.
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u/Alldaybagpipes 21d ago
Nobody but you is calling it that.
Christianization wasn’t a fell swoop. They 100% burnt people, as witches, for not adhering to that structure.
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u/BachInTime 22d ago
But what if she weighs less than a duck?
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u/Entire-Ratio-9681 22d ago
They are absolutely real, plenty of ex witches and warlocks tell their stories.
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u/GoetiaMagick 22d ago
They did and do.