Why the burning of Witches?

Press, 28 August 1982, Page 16

Why the burning of Witches?

Enemies ot God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland. By Christina Larner. Chatto and Windus, 1981. 228 pp. $42.60. (Reviewed by Maire Peters) In the sixteenth century, Europeans developed an unprecedented preoccupation with burning their lonelyold women as witches. Ordinary people had. of course, always believed in various kinds of black and white magic, but hitherto the Church had taken a sceptical view of the possibility of witchcraft. however, in the later middle ages, the Church’s teaching had begun to change, and the authorities started to take an interest in accusations of witchcraft. Then, in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, after the “enlightenment” of the Renaissance and the “reform” of the Reformation, persecution grew to new heights. Incredible beliefs about the supposed activities of witches in horrific gatherings, where they entered into compacts with the devil, were elaborated by some of the finest minds and gentlest people. Authorities sent out witch-finders: suspects were searched minutely for blemishes which might be the devil's mark. Cruel torture extracted confessions shaped by the questions of the inquisitor. So mass panics grew. Even in England, which escaped the more elaborate beliefs and the worst panics, a trickle of witchprosecutions became a stream which probably killed more people than there were Catholic or Protestant martyrs. Why did it all happen — in early modern Europe? To answer this question, historians of ideas and of society have increasingly called for the help of sociologists and anthropologists, and have turned to local studies to illuminate the wider phenomenon. Christina Larner is one of a rare breed, a sociologist who is also an excellent historian. Her study of the witch-hunt in Scotland amply demonstrates the new perceptions a combination of disciplines can bring.

Larner's description of Scottish witchhunts. particularly of “two classic cases.” is full of those vivid, pathetic, sometimes tragic, scraps of detail which illuminate the lives of the ordinary people of times past, the individuals who are usually lost in the “masses" of traditional history. The result is far more than mere description. It is an analysis of the circumstances and ideas of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Scotland which permitted and indeed encouraged witch-hunts. Moreover. Larner writes with a European perspective that many studies in Scottish history lack. This comparative context is perhaps the most valuable part of the book. The second chapter concisely surveys the historiography of the European witchhunt. The whole study demonstrates that the Scottish phase belonged more to the European than to the English type of the witch-hunt. The last chapter draws together the various explanations of the European witch-hunt and considers their application to Scotland. This last chapter is the most interesting. According to anthropologists, the persecution of supposed witches is explained by the various social functions it can serve. But Larner, while acknowledging the contribution of such explanations, rightly sees difficulties in accepting them as universally valid. There have always been inexplicable disasters. Why only in the early modern period should witches be blamed for them? Village life was often strained; petty acts of uncharitableness must frequently have provoked the railing of shrewish old women. Why now were they burnt or hanged for their backbiting? Larner’s own explanation stresses rather the political usefulness of witchhunts. She believes that a variety of preconditions made persecution of witches likely, but that two changes of the sixteenth century brought them to a peak at this time. Religious changes put more emphasis on personal responsibility for

one’s own salvation (or damnation) — which meant that for the first time the mass of the people had to be actively converted — and political changes put a premium on the unity of nation states. For a short period of a couple of centuries or so. Christianity became a political ideology which could serve as a focus for political unity and social control, legitimising new political authorities and indoctrinating their subjects. Witchcraft represented total hostility to Christianity: persecution of witches was therefore one of the most effective ways of imposing this new ideology. Such a brief summary cannot do justice to Larner's sensitive consideration of the possible explanations of the witch-hunt. Her argument seems particularly convincing in relation to Scotland, where the period of the witch-hunt closely coincides with the time when the doctrines of the divine right of kings and the godly state were used to defend a new regime against its old ally, the French, and to distinguish it from its new ally, the English. Her emphasis on the struggle for the minds of the peasantry by the newly invigorated Christianity of both the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and on the usefulness of Christianity as a political ideology, can illuminate the circumstances of witch-hunts in other places than Scotland. And in the course of her explanation she considers with her usual sensitivity — if not. entirely convincingly — why those accused of witchcraft were so often women. All in all, the author has done a great deal in a brief, lucid, readable book. Her work shows how the social sciences can combine to illuminate a fascinating problem of the past — one which, unfortunately, was no mere terrible aberration of our forefathers, but which has had its contemporary parallels and is likely to have more. Only the high NewZealand price should stand in the way of a wide readership for this book.