Witches and Heretics

One possible key to the explanation of the witch-craze lies in the fact that the period of greatest persecution of witches followed shortly after the period of greatest persecution of heretics. Witches and heretics were often confused in the popular mind. Heretical sects like the Albigenses and Waldenses were also accused of all the same sexual excesses attributed to witches, and the traditional costume of the witch owes much to the costume of the heretic. Both witches and heretics menaced the primacy of the Church by daring to assert personal revelation of the deity. Witches required no priestly intercessor between themselves and God—and for that alone they were ripe for burning.

What was heresy? According to Thomas Aquinas (and canon law), heresy was “religious error held in wilful and persistent opposition to the truth after it had been defined and declared by the Church in an authoritative manner.” In 1215, the Lateran council decreed that all heretics were not only to be excommunicated, but punished with death. The acceptance of this notion, that people could (and should) be put to death for what they believed (or failed to believe), laid the theological foundations for the witch-hunts. Witchcraft was a heresy—thus punishable with death. Ironically enough, “heresy” comes from a Greek word meaning “free choice.”

When we wonder why the misogyny of the Church should have become so murderously virulent only in the late Middle Ages, why sorcery (which exists in all cultures all over the world) should have become specifically a Christian heresy only in the late Middle Ages, we have only to contemplate the position of the Church in society at that time. Threatened by schisms, criticized for its worldliness, it was under great pressure to turn the attack outward.

The witch is used as a lightning rod for society’s fury. She takes the fire, and the thunderclouds move on to the next location.