The Enemy Within (2 page)

The reality behind the idea is another matter. That some attempts were made to practice witchcraft, and that certain individuals (at least a few) were willing to cast themselves as witches, seems beyond doubt. Where the idea was so prevalent and powerful, a portion of those it touched would, almost inevitably, decide to embrace it. There is great difficulty, however, in identifying such “actual” witches and their specific doings now. For the evidence we have is heavily filtered, coming (as it invariably does) from those who sought to oppose and suppress witchcraft: judges, inquisitors of various types, clergymen and theologians, or simply the countless ordinary folk who feared its use against them.

These distinctions frame a book—any book—on witchcraft history. The focus in what follows is the idea
of
witchcraft, as it melded with emotions
about
witchcraft, to prompt actions
against
witchcraft. Again: it is the idea, the emotions, the actions—not the actual practice—that we, from several centuries later on, can directly scrutinize. As a result, this is—first and last—a history of witch-
hunting.

But witch-hunting is itself a large subject, hardly confined to any single part of the world. In fact, it rises virtually to the level of a cross-cultural universal; witches of one sort or another are, or previously have been, “hunted” just about everywhere—in Asia, in Africa, in Australia, and among native peoples all across the Americas. This book cannot, and does not, reach so far; its boundaries are those of the pre-modern, and modern, West.

There are other boundaries to flag, and additional subject areas that lie beyond reach. Witch-hunting, large as it is, belongs to a still more capacious terrain that also includes racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, as well as pogroms, lynchings, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. To such patently downside matters, witch-hunting bears an obvious similarity—and even perhaps some dynamic connection. But one crucial element divides them. While the goal for all is separation from a despised “other,” witch-hunting alone finds the other within its own ranks. The Jew, the black, and the ethnic opposite exist, in some fundamental sense, “on the outside”; the point of actions against them is to enforce difference and distance, and sometimes to eliminate them altogether. The witch, by contrast, is discovered (and “discovery” is key to the process) inside the host community; typically he or she is a former member in good standing of that community who has chosen not only to reject but also to subvert it. Thus, the idea of witchcraft holds at its center the theme of betrayal. Thus, too, witch-hunting has an intensely countersubversive, anti-conspiratorial tone. Always and everywhere, its goal is to root out the hidden enemy within.

Most of this book addresses witch-hunting in a quite straightforward sense: through a wide array of experience pertaining to witchcraft, as an explicit presence in Western society during the medieval and early modern eras (roughly A.D. 500-1700). However, its concluding section moves to the modern period, and broaches something more: what might be called witch-hunts without witches. This design reflects the widespread usage nowadays of the
term
—as a metaphor, a figure, for events that, while lacking witchcraft in the literal sense, seem in other respects remarkably similar to the old pattern. Presumably, the key link between literal and figurative witch-hunts is the search for enemies within. But that proposition needs testing against specific cases. In short, how fully is the witch-hunt metaphor justified? Can the modern, figurative witch-hunts be understood as “functional equivalents” of the pre-modern ones?

A final note: the book follows a kind of zoom-lens principle, combining long, broadly topographical views with others that are sharp and close-up. Its four major parts move roughly in chronological order, from European witch-hunting, especially during the “craze” years of the 16th and 17th centuries (Part One), to witch-hunting in the early “colonial period” of American history (Part Two), to the notorious Salem trials of the late 17th century (Part Three), to the figurative witch-hunts of modern times (Part Four). Each part includes a lengthy central chapter presenting the topic, from start to finish, in summary form. And each is bordered, fore and aft, by “vignettes” keyed to some particular episode, person, artifact, or career. The aim is to balance the general against the particular, to juxtapose structure and texture, to mix interpretation and analysis with narrative flow and human detail. History,
all
history, requires no less.

PART ONE

Though witchcraft is a very old presence in Europe, its origins were diffuse and scattered. Throughout the first millennium there were no witch-hunts as such. Still, the suffering of the early Christian martyrs can be seen as prefiguring the persecutions that would come later on; thus the vignette presented in chapter I.

 
With the passage of time, conditions would ripen for a full-blown “witch-craze” at the end of the Middle Ages. The ripening process, and the craze itself—a sequence without parallel in the history of the Western world—are the focus of chapter II.

 
As anxiety over witchcraft rose, and large-scale persecution began, a single book—the notorious
Malleus Maleficarum
—served to orient, and galvanize, those most directly involved. For more than two centuries it served as a virtual bible of witch-hunting; witness the tale of its “travels” recounted in chapter III.

CHAPTER I

 
These details reach us now by way of a long letter written after the fact by survivors of the Lyons “martyrdom.” The letter begins with an address, “From the servants sojourning in Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia, who have the same hope of redemption.” It was meant, in short, for another band of Christians, residing far off in what today we call the Middle East.

At this point the Christian movement was just over a hundred years old. From ragged and uncertain beginnings in the aftermath of Jesus' death around A.D. 30, it had achieved strong gains. Its growth was especially marked during the early part of the second century, in the cities and villages between the Mediterranean and the Black seas, in Syria, in Egypt (around the ancient metropolis Alexandria), and (to a lesser extent) in Palestine. It had then begun to spread north and west into Roman Gaul. Lyons would quickly become the front line in this latest expansion, along with its sister city, Vienne.

Lyons had grown impressively during the previous decades. Originally just a small settlement of fishermen and boatmen near the point where the Rhône and the Saône rivers meet, it was colonized in the name of Rome as early as A.D. 43. There, a military garrison overlooking the river confluence would enable farther advance to the north. There, too, a nucleus of trade would rapidly develop. Soon the emperor Augustus would make Lyons the provincial capital. And his successor (and son-in-law), Agrippa, would create a network of roads reaching out in several directions from the town center—over and around the Alps, off toward the Pyrénées and beyond.

By the mid-2nd century, the city's population of perhaps 50,000 was divided into three districts. To the north lay the chief Roman settlement, with villas and barracks grouped around a large forum. To the west, on the back of a steep ridge, was the heart of the Gallic community; in its midst stood important public buildings, an amphitheater, and a terraced altar for worship of the emperor. Toward the south, straggling out on a narrow peninsula and along the opposite riverbank, was the lower city, home to numerous ship carpenters, sailors, porters, and tradesmen.

The people of early Lyons were remarkably cosmopolitan in spirit and diverse in origin. In addition to a large contingent of Romans (officials, soldiers, merchants), there were many immigrants from the Orient, especially the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Even the Gallic majority was a checkerboard of regional and local difference: peasants from the countryside both near and far, boatmen and traders from upstream sites beside the two major rivers. Latin was the language of state, and south Gallic dialects the main vernacular. Greek and Aramaic were also frequently spoken.

The city's economy was centered on trade; in virtually all sectors a market atmosphere prevailed. Grains, meat, and dairy products flowed in from the surrounding villages, and out again down the rivers. Craft production focused on ceramics and ironwares. There was wealth among the local aristocracy; there was poverty and vagrancy, too, within the ranks of the maritime workforce.

The culture of the city was no less variegated. Religious worship stretched across a remarkably wide range. The Roman gods came first: Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and many others. State-run festivals, including veneration of emperors past and present, filled the calendar. But dozens of richly developed cults also clamored for attention. Among the various cult figures, some loomed especially large: Cybele, the Mother of Gods, of Phrygian origin but found in different guises all around the Mediterranean; Mithra, the Sun God; Isis, Osiris, and Serapis, brought by migrants from Egypt and now joined to Roman tradition; Bacchus and the Olympian gods of Greece. There were probably (though not certainly) some Jews at Lyons, as well.

And, finally, there were the Christians. These included many foreigners, recent arrivals from the much larger Christian communities across the Mediterranean. A few had attained some prosperity and local distinction—a physician, a public advocate—but most were of modest social position; some were slaves.

Regarded at first as members of a minor Jewish sect and thus as targets for traditional anti-Semitism, Roman Christians had gradually forged a separate identity. But precisely for that reason, they seemed worrying, and threatening, to their neighbors. More than Jews and devotees of the foreign cults, Christians set themselves apart. Living in what they thought of as the Last Times, and thus in full expectation of an approaching apocalypse, they declined to conform with common standards. On the contrary, they viewed the world around them with a hostile eye. Rome itself was for them a seat of idolatry, the new “Babylon.” Throughout the empire, they saw ominous signs of Satan's influence growing apace, just as forecast by their Scriptures for the premillennial years.

In the eyes of the public at large, such attitudes seemed deeply subversive. Christian disdain, Christian clannishness, Christian proselytizing all bespoke a “conspiracy” gnawing at the entrails of the empire. Moreover, the details of Christian worship were uniformly horrifying. At regular intervals their members would gather for a rite called the Eucharist, which included deliberate acts of flesh-eating. Another of their ceremonies was the Agape—the “bond of love”—performed at night, in private homes, in order to achieve a mutual state of spiritual ecstasy. But not only spiritual—physical, sensual, sexual, too! And openly promiscuous, setting aside even Nature's ancient prohibition against intimacy within families.

Given all these elements—conspiracy, revolution, sacrilege, cannibalism, black magic, incest—the Christian movement posed a grave and gathering danger. The great gods, on whose protection the empire and all its citizens relied, would surely be angered; this, in turn, might bring catastrophe. According to one observer (writing some years later), it was widely assumed that “Christians are the cause of . . . every disaster that afflicts the populace. If the Tiber floods, or the Nile fails to, if there is a drought or an earthquake, a famine or a plague, the cries go up at once: ‘Throw the Christians to the lions!' ”