EVIDENCE ABOUT EARLY MEDIEVAL WITCH BELIEFS HSTEU305 #2

I. SECULAR LEGISLATION ABOUT WITCHES:

A. Late Roman Imperial Law, from Theodosian Code, 4th C. A_D.

"Those who perform maleficia, incantations or raising storms, or those who disturb the
minds of men through the invocation of demons, should be punished by every sort of penalty."
(including capital penalty for invoking demons)

B. Barbarian Legal Codes (customary laws of Germanic tribes, written in Latin)

Salic Law, France, 6th C. (see Cohn, p. 164)

"If any person shall call a free woman a stria or an evil one, and shall
fail to prove it, they shall themselves be arraigned and fired 7,500 denarii, or 187 scudi."

"If a stria eats a man and is put on trial, she shall be sentenced and condemned to pay 8,000 denarii, or 200 solidi."

"If one man shall call another hereburgium and accuses him of having carried a cauldron to the place where the striae meet, and shall be unable to prove it, let him be arraigned himself & condemned to pay a fine of 2,500 denari, that is 625 solidi."

Lombard Code of King Rothar, Italy, 643 A.D. (see Cohn, p.164)

"Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a striga or masca, because it is not possible, nor ought it to be at all believed by Christian minds that a woman can eat a living man up from within. If anyone presumes to perpetrate such an illegal and impious act, he shall pay 60 solidi as compensation according to her status, and moreover, he shall pay 100 solidi in addition for the guilt, half to the king and half to him whose servant she was ....If indeed a judge has ordered him to perpetrate this evil act, then the judge shall pay compensation according as above."

"If he who possesses the guardianship of a free girl or woman (with the exception of her father or brother) unjustly accuses her of being a striga or a masca, he shall lose her guardianship and she shall have the right to choose whether she wishes to return to her relatives or to commend herself to the court of the king, who will then have her guardianship in his control."

Decree of Charles the Bald, France, 873, A.D. (against sorcerers & witches accused of murder)

"We expressly recommend the lords of the realm to seek out and apprehend with the greatest possible diligence those who are guilty of these crimes in their respective countries. If they are convicted, whether they are men or women, they must perish, for justice and the law demand it. If they are under suspicion or accused without being convicted, and if the testimony against them is not sufficient to prove their guilt, they shall be submitted to the will of God (i.e. trial by ordeal). This shall decide whether they are to be pardoned or condemned and put to death, so that all knowledge of such heinous crimes may vanish from our dominions."

II. CHURCH LEGISLATION ABOUT WITCH BELIEFS IN CANON LAW & PENITENTIAL CANONS:

Canon Episcopi, circa 960 A.D. (see text in Kors & Peters, pp. 60-63)

Corrector Rusticorum by Bishop Burchard of Worms, Germany, 11th C.

(see text in Kors & Peters, pp. 63-67 & Cohn, p. 165)

II. CHURCH LEGISLATION ABOUT WITCH BELIEFS

CANON EPISCOPI circa 960 A. D. (see full text in Kors & Peters, pp.60-63).

Some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasms of

demons, believe and profess themselves, in the hours of the night, to ride upon

certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of pagans, and an innumerable multitude

of women, and is the silence of the dead of night to traverse great spaces of

earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be summoned to her

service on certain nights. But I wish it were they alone who perished in their

faithlessness and did not draw many with them into the destruction of infidelity.

For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be

true, and so believing, wander from the right faith and are involved in the

error of the pagans when they think that there is anything of divinity or power

except the one God. Wherefore the priests throughout their churches should

preach with all insistence to the people that they may know this to be in every

way false and that such phantasms are imposed on the minds of infidels and not

by the divine but by the malignant spirit ....The faithless mind thinks these

things happen not in the spirit but in the body. Who is there that is not led

out of himself in dreams and nocturnal visions, and sees much when sleeping

which he had never seen waking? Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that

all these things which are only done in spirit happen in the body?

BURCHARD CORRECTOR RUSTICORUM (Correction of Rustics) 1lth century (K&P, 63-67 ).

Have you believed what many women, turning back to Satan believe and affirm to be true,
as that you believe that in the silence of the quiet night, when you have settled down
in bed, and your husband lies in your bosom, you are able, while still in your body, to
go out through the closed doors and travel through the spaces of the world, together with
others who are similarly deceived; and that without visible weapons, you kill people who
have been baptized and redeemed by Christ's blood; and together cook and devour their flesh;
and that where the heart was, you put straw or wood or something of the sort; and that after
eating these people, you bring them alive again and grant them a brief spell of life?

If you have believed this, you shall do penance on bread and water for fifty

days, and likewise in each of the seven years following.

Ill. POLICY OF CONVERSION BY GRADUALIST AND ASSIMILATIONIST MEASURES

Letter of Pope Gregory to Abbot Mellitus for Augustine in Britain, 601 A.D.

When by God's help you reach our most reverend brother Bishop Augustine. we wish

you to inform him that we have been giving careful thought to the affairs of the

English, and have come to the conclusion that the temples of the idols among the

people should on no account be destroyed. The idols themselves are to be

aspersed with holy water, altars set up in them, and relics deposited there.

For if these temples are well‑built, they must be purified from the worship of

demons and dedicated to the service of the true God. In this way, we hope that

the people, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may abandon their errors and,
flocking more readily to their accustomed resorts, may come to know and

adore the true God. And since they have a custom of sacrificing many oxen to

demons, let some other solemnity be substituted in its place, such as a day of

Dedication or the Festivals of the holy martyrs whose relics are enshrined

there ....For it is certainly impossible to eradicate all errors from obstinate

minds at one stroke, and whoever wishes to climb to a mountain top climbs

gradually step by step, and not in one leap.

from The Venerable Bede, History of the English Church and People early 700’s