he Random House College Dictionary derived "witch" from medieval English wicche, formerly
Anglo-Saxon wicca (masculine), or wicce (feminine): a corruption
of witga, short form of witega, a seer or diviner; from
Anglo-Saxon witan, to see, to know. Similarly, Icelandic vitki, a
witch, came from vita, to know; or vizkr, clever or knowing one.
Wizard came from Norman French wischard. Old French guiscart,
sagacious one.1 The surname Whittaker came from
Witakarlege, a Wizard or a Witch.2 The words "wit" and
"wisdom" came from the same roots.
There were many other words for witches, such as Incantatrix, Lamia,
Saga, Maga, Malefica, Sortilega, Strix, Venefica.3
In Italy a witch was a strega orJanara, an old title of a priestess ofJana
(Juno).4 English writers called witches both "hags" and "fairies," words which were once
synonymous.5 Witches had metaphoric titles: bacularia, "stick-rider"; fascinatrix, "one with the evil
eye"; herberia, "one who gathers herbs"; strix, "screech-owl"; pixidria, "keeper
of an ointment-box"; femina saga, "wise-woman"; lamia, "night-monster";
incantator, "worker of charms"; magus, "wise-man"; sortiariae mulier, "seeress";
veneficia, "poisoner"; maliarda, "evil-doer." Latin treatises called Witches
anispex, auguris, divinator, januatica, ligator, mascara, phitonissa, stregula.6
Dalmatian witches were krstaca, "crossed ones," a derivative of the Greek
Christos7 In Holland a witch was wijsseggher, "wise-sayer,"
from which came the English "wiseacre."8
The biblical passage that supported centuries of persecution, "Thou shall not suffer a witch
to live" (Exodus 22:18), used the Hebrew word kasaph, translated "witch"
although it means a seer or diviner.9
Early medieval England had female clan-leaders who exercised matriarchal
rights in lawgiving and law enforcement; the Magna Carta of Chester called them
iudices de wich (judges who were witches).10 Female
elders once had political power among the clans, but patriarchal religion and
law gradually took it away from them and called them witches in order to dispose
of them. In 1711 Addison observed that "When an old woman begins to doat and
grow chargeable to a Parish, she is generally turned into a witch."11
Reginald Scot remarked that the fate of a witch might be directly
proportional to her fortune. The pope made saints out of rich witches, but poor
witches were burned.12 Among many examples tending to support
this opinion was the famous French Chambre Ardente affair, which involved
many members of the aristocracy and the upper-class clergy in a witch cult.
Numerous male and female servants were tortured and burned for assisting their
masters in working witchcraft; but in all the four years the affair dragged on,
no noble person was tortured or executed.13
Illogically enough, the authorities persecuted poor, outcast folk as
witches, yet professed to believe witches could provide themselves with all the
wealth anyone could want. Reginald Scot, a disbeliever, scornfully observed that
witches were said to "transfer their neighbors' corn into their own ground, and
yet are perpetual beggars, and cannot enrich themselves, either with money or
otherwise: who is so foolish as to remain longer in doubt of their supernatural
powers?"14 Witchcraft brought so little profit to Helen
Jenkenson of Northants, hanged in 1612 for bewitching a child, that the record
of her execution said: "Thus ended this woman her miserable life, after she had
lived many years poor, wretched, scorned and forsaken of the
world."15
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"Women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of
wrinkles; poor, sullen, superstitious, and papists; or such as know no
religion; in whose drowsy minds the devil hath gotten a fine seat; so as, what
mischief, mischance, calamity, or slaughter is brought to pass, they are
easily persuaded the same is done by themselves . . . They are lean and
deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see
them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish; and not much differing from them
that are thought to bepossessed with spirits."16
Persecutors said it was heretical to consider witches harmless. Even in
England, where witches were not burned but hanged, some authorities fearfully
cited the "received opinion" that a witch's body should be burned to ashes to
prevent ill effects arising from her blood.17 Churchmen
assured the arresting officers that a witch's power was lost the instant she was
touched by an employee of the Inquisition; but the employees themselves were not
so sure.18
Numerous stories depict the persecutors' fear of their victims. It was
said in the Black Forest that a witch blew in her executioner's face, promising
him his reward; the next day he was afflicted with a fatal leprosy. Inquisitors'
handbooks directed them to wear at all times a bag of salt consecrated on Palm
Sunday; to avoid looking in a witch's eyes; and to cross themselves constantly
in the witches' prison. Peter of Berne forgot this precaution, and a captive
witch by enchantment made him fall down a flight of stairs - which he proved
later by torturing her until she confirmed it.19
Numerous stories depict the persecutors' fear of their victims. It was
said in the Black Forest that a witch blew in her executioner's face, promising
him his reward; the next day he was afflicted with a fatal leprosy. Inquisitors'
handbooks directed them to wear at all times a bag of salt consecrated on Palm
Sunday; to avoid looking in a witch's eyes; and to cross themselves constantly
in the witches' prison. Peter of Berne forgot this precaution, and a captive
witch by enchantment made him fall down a flight of stairs - which he proved
later by torturing her until she confirmed it.19
Numerous stories depict the persecutors' fear of their victims. It was
said in the Black Forest that a witch blew in her executioner's face, promising
him his reward; the next day he was afflicted with a fatal leprosy. Inquisitors'
handbooks directed them to wear at all times a bag of salt consecrated on Palm
Sunday; to avoid looking in a witch's eyes; and to cross themselves constantly
in the witches' prison. Peter of Berne forgot this precaution, and a captive
witch by enchantment made him fall down a flight of stairs - which he proved
later by torturing her until she confirmed it.19
Any unusual ability in a woman instantly raised a charge of witchcraft.
The so-called Witch of Newbury was murdered by a group of soldiers because she
knew how to go "surfing" on the river. Soldiers of the Earl of Essex saw her
doing it, and were "as much astonished as they could be," seeing that "to and
fro she fleeted on the board standing firm bolt upright . . . turning and
winding it which way she pleased, making it pastime to her, as little thinking
who perceived her tricks, or that she did imagine that they were the last she
ever should show." Most of the soldiers were afraid to touch her, but a few
brave souls ambushed the board-rider as she came to shore, slashed her head,
beat her, and shot her, leaving her "detested carcass to the worms."20
From ruthlessly organized persecutions on the continent, witch-hunts in
England became largely cases of village feuds and petty spite. If crops failed,
horses ran away, cattle sickened, wagons broke, women miscarried, or butter
wouldn't come in the churn, a witch was always found to blame. Marion Cumlaquoy
of Orkney was burned in 1643 for turning herself three times widdershins, to
make her neighbor's barley crop rot. A tailor's wife was executed for
quarrelling with her neighbor, who afterward saw a snake on his property, and
his children fell sick. One witch was condemned for arguing with a drunkard in
an alehouse. After drinking himself into paroxysms of vomiting, he accused her
of bewitching him, and he was believed.21
A woman was convicted of witchcraft for having caused a neighbor's
lameness - by pulling off her stockings. Another was executed for having admired
a neighbor's baby, which afterward fell out of its cradle and died. Two Glasgow
witches were hanged for treating a sick child, even though the treatment
succeeded and the child was cured. Joan Cason of Kent went to the gallows in
1586 for having dry thatch on her roof. Her neighbor, whose child was sick, was
told by an unidentified traveler that the child was bewitched, and it could be
proved by stealing a bit of thatch from the witch's roof and throwing it on the
fire. If it crackled and sparked, witchcraft was assured. The test came out
positive, and the court was satisfied enough to convict poor Joan.22
Witches were convenient scapegoats for doctors who failed to cure their
patients, for it was the "received" belief that witch-caused illnesses were
incurable. Weyer said, "Ignorant and clumsy physicians blame all sicknesses
which they are unable to cure or which they have treated wrongly, on witchery."
There were also priests and monks who "claim to understand the healing art and
they lie to those who seek help that their sicknesses are derived from
witchery."23 Most real witch persecutions reflect "no erotic
orgies, no Sabbats or elaborate rituals; merely the hatreds and spites of narrow
peasant life assisted by vicious laws."24
Witches provided a focus for sexist hatred in male-dominated society, as
one writer pointed out:
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"The spirit of the Church in its contempt for women, as shown in the
Scriptures, in Paul's epistles and the Pentateuch, the hatred of the fathers,
manifested in their ecclesiastical canons, and in the doctrines of asceticism,
celibacy, and witchcraft, destroyed man's respect for woman and legalized the
burning, drowning, and torturing of women . . .
"Women and their duties became objects of hatred to the Christian
missionaries and of alternate scorn and fear to pious ascetics and monks. The
priestess mother became something impure, associated with the devil, and her
lore an infernal incantation, her very cooking a brewing of poison, nay, her
very existence a source of sin to man. Thus, woman, as mother and priestess,
became woman as witch. . . .
Here is the reason why in all the Biblical researches and higher
criticism, the scholars never touch the position of
women."25
Men displayed a lively interest in the physical appearance of witches,
seeking to know how to recognize them–as men also craved rules for recognizing
other types of women from their physical appearance. It was generally agreed
that any woman with dissimilar eyes was a witch. Where most people had dark eyes
and swarthy complexions, as in Spain and Italy, pale blue eyes were associated
with witchcraft. Many claimed any woman with red hair was a witch.26
This may have been because red-haired people are usually freckled, and
freckles were often identified as "witch marks," as were moles, warts,
birthmarks, pimples, pockmarks, cysts, liver spots, wens, or any other blemish.
Some witch-finders said the mark could resemble an insect bite or an ulcer.27
No one ever explained how the witch mark differed from an ordinary
blemish. Since few bodies were unblemished, the search for the mark seldom
failed. Thomas Ady, one of the few 17th-century English debunkers of the
witchcraft craze, author of A Perfect Discovery of Witches (1661),
recognized this, and wrote: "Very few people in the world are without privy
marks upon their bodies, as moles or stains, even such as witchmongers call the
devil's privy marks."28 But no one paid attention to this.
Trials were conducted with as much injustice as possible. In 1629 Isobel
Young was accused of crippling by magic a man who had quarrelled with her, and
causing a water mill to break down. She protested that the man was lame before
their quarrel, and water mills can break down through neglect. The prosecutor.
Sir Thomas Hope, threw out her defense on the ground that it was "contrary to
the libel," that is, it contradicted the charge.29 When a
witch is on trial, Reginald Scot said, any "equivocal or doubtful answer is
taken for a confession."30
On the other hand, no answer at all was a confession too. Witches who
refused to speak were condemned: "Witchcraft proved by silence of the
accused."31 Sometimes mere playfulness "proved" witchcraft, as
in the case of Mary Spencer, accused in 1634 because she merrily set her bucket
rolling downhill and ran before it, calling it to follow her.32 Sometimes
women were stigmatized as witches when they
were in fact victims of unfair laws, such as the law that accepted any man's
word in court ahead of any number of women's. A butcher in Germany stole some
silver vessels from women, then had them prosecuted for witchcraft by claiming
that he found the vessels in the woods where the women were attending a witches'
sabbat.33
Sometimes the accusation of witchcraft was a form of punishment for women
who were too vocal about their disillusionment with men and their preference for
living alone. Historical literature has many references to "the joy with which
women after widowhood set up their own households, and to the vigor with which
they resisted being courted by amorous widowers."34 The
solitary life, however, left a woman even more vulnerable to accusations of
witchcraft, since men usually thought she must be somehow controlled.
Those who tortured the unfortunate defendant into admitting witchcraft
used a euphemistic language that showed the victim was condemned a
priori. One Anne Marie de Georgel denied making a devil's pact, until by
torture she was "justly forced to give an account of herself," the record said.
Catherine Delort was "forced to confess by the means we have power to use to
make people speak the truth," and she was "convicted of all the crimes we
suspected her of committing, although she protested her innocence for a long
time." The inquisitor Nicholas Rémy professed a pious astonishment at the great
number of witches who expressed a "positive desire for death," pretending not to
notice that they had been brought to this desire by innumerable savage
tortures.35 (See Torture.)
The extent to which pagan religion, as such, actually survived among the
witches of the 16th and 17th centuries has been much discussed but never
decided. Dean Church said, "Society was a long time unlearning heathenism; it
has not done so yet; but it had hardly begun, at any rate it was only just
beginning, to imagine the possibility of such a thing in the eleventh century."
In 15th-century Bohemia it was still common practice at Christmas and other
holidays to make offerings to "the gods," rather than to
God.36 European villages still had many "wise-women" who acted as priestesses officially or unofficially.
Since church fathers declared Christian priestesses unthinkable, all functions
of the priestess were associated with paganism.37 Bishops described
pagan gatherings in their dioceses, attended by "devils . . . in the form of men
and women."38 Pagan ceremonies
were allowed to survive in weddings, folk festivals, seasonal rites, feasts of
the dead, and so on.39 But when women or
Goddesses played the leading role in such ceremonies, there was more determined
suppression. John of Salisbury wrote that it was the devil, "with God's
permission," who sent people to gatherings in honor of the Queen of the Night, a
priestess impersonating the Moon-goddess under the name of Noctiluca or
Herodiade.40
The Catholic church applied the word "witch" to any woman who criticized
church policies. Women allied with the 14th-century Reforming Franciscans, some
of whom were burned for heresy, were described as witches, daughters of Judas,
and instigated of the Devil.41 Writers of the Talmud
similarly tended to view nearly all women as witches. They said things like,
"Women are naturally inclined to witchcraft," and "The more women there are, the
more witchcraft there will be."42
Probably there were few sincere practitioners, compared with the
multitudes who were railroaded into the ecclesiastical courts and legally
murdered despite their innocence. Yet it was obvious to even the moderately
intelligent that Christian society deliberately humiliated and discriminated
against women. Some may have been resentful enough to become defiant. "Women
have had no voice in the canon law, the catechisms, the church creeds and
discipline, and why should they obey the behests of a strictly masculine
religion, that places the sex at a disadvantage in all life's
emergencies?"43 Possibilities for expressing their frustration
and defiance were severely limited; but voluntary adoption of the witch's
reputation and behavior was surely among such possibilities.