Debunking the Pervasive Myths About Medieval Witch Hunts
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- Опубликовано: 1 ноя 2023
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We all have a similar image that comes to mind when we imagine Medieval Witch hunts: millions of innocent women, real witches or not, who were indiscriminately burned at the stake by the church. But the truth is a lot more complicated, and uncovers centuries of historical lies and misunderstandings that we're still trying to fix today. Come learn with me!
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Sources
The Pursuit of Reality: Recent Research into the History of Witchcraft by Malcolm Gaskill
Male Witches in Early Modern Europe by Lara Apps and Andrew Gow
The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth: The Witch, Subject of the Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of Nature by Silvia Bovenschen, Jeannine Blackwell, Johanna Moore and Beth Weckmueller
Witchcraft Myths in American Culture By Marion Gibson
Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-witch by David Harley
Demonology and the rise of science: An example of the misperception of historical data by Irving Kirsch
The Witch in History by Diane Purkiss
Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method By Carlo Ginzburg
The Myth of Medieval Paganism by Francis Young [**Note: the copy of this article I used for this video was found in an academic database unconnected to its original publication. The original article was published through a periodical with a history of questionable content and considerable bias. I cross checked this specific article but the source in general is to be taken with a grain of salt.]
Christianity vs 'Paganism'?: Reflections on Medieval Europe by Norman Tanner
Paganism By Graham Harvey in “Religions in the Modern World”
Is Paganism a Religion? Exploring the Historical and Contemporary Relevance of Paganism By Betsy C. Chadbourn
Modern Wicca and the Witchcraft Movement by Renee Cyr
Witches and the Myth of the Medieval Burning Times by Anita Obermeier
Magic, heresy and the broom riding midwife witch - the Inquisition trial of Isabetta Caruana by Carmel Cassar
Fake History: 101 Things that Never Happened by Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse
Those Goddamn ointments: Four histories by Tom Hatsis
The Witch on the Wall: The Milk-Stealing Witch in Scandinavian Iconography by Amber J. Rose
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Having the mindset of "they were as smart as we are and we're just as stupid as they were" is probably the best way to go about understanding history.
I mean, there are modern countries where the majority of girls have had their genitals mutilated, so the standard isn’t exactly high for what kind of behavior you would expect out of historical people. Modern witch hunts are also common in many non western countries.
We may have more flat earth believers in our modern times than Europeans had in older times... proportionately, not just sheer quantity
I think that’s true but they were also more ignorant based on how much more we have access to knowing today, people today r willfully stupid or duped into nonsense, back then they were ignorant to many things that we take for granted
Absolutely stealing that the next time I talk about History
And neanderthals were probably smarter than Homo sapiens sapiens. Even so the word neanderthal is in my country used as an insult for dumb people.
"Imagine being accused of witchcraft because you gave your friend a Benadryl and they saw the hat man..." is a brilliant quote.
Also, as archaeologist fascinated by the period 1400-1600, thank you for pointing out that the Renaissance was far more violent and brutish than the medieval period. The Medieval gets a lot of shit for stuff it’s over-achieving younger brother did.
I recall Dr. Elanor Janega saying something like: "The Renaissance was something that happened to rich people."
On a serious note though it’s concerning how many people are hallucinating on Benadryl. Perhaps this should not be an over the counter allergy medicine. I’ve read that it could possibly make dementia and Alzheimer’s worse as well. How much Benadryl are people taking at a time??
@@83croissantone or two pills if they're trying to reduce their allergy symptoms. To get high, though? I have no idea. I never knew you could get faded on Benadryl and I'm not going to experiment with dosing to let y'all know how many you need to see the green fairy. Sorry.
@@83croissanti don't remember what number exactly but definitely more than 10?
@@kismesiToku WHAT
History of witches here in Finland is its own fascinating thing. Finland being literally nowhere by middle-ages standards so people here were doing their wholly own thing . And here being a "witch" (noita in Finnish) was a legitimate profession, a job, witches were for a long time respected members of their communities, being herbalists, medicine men and ritualists and Finland had practicing witches until the early 20th century.
The witch hunts didn't get that big here, it was mostly those pesky Lutherans who were really keen on eradicating everything pagan (the Catholics didn't seem to care or just were really bad at the eradication).
Could be because Catholicism was better at syncretism? Though the official church stance is that it’s no bueno. Rather than eradicate the gods, just repurpose then as Saints doing the lords bidding on his behalf. Problem solved
as a finnish speaker this is absolutely fascinating! definitely going to do more research on this, kiitos 💖💖
Catholics: "As long as you cross out Ukko's name in this spell and replace it with a saint, we're good. Now, run along. I gotta go tell the Irish to rededicate Imbolc to St Brigid."
@@Joyride37 Catholics: "We are repurpossing gods into saints."
Orthodox: "Oh cute, hold my Zeus/Perun/Apollo inspired Saint that rides a lightning/fire chariot."
🇫🇮❤
The Malleus Maleficarum only exists because Heinrich Kramer was angry that his church superiors correctly pegged him as an unhinged misogynist and intervened on behalf of his would-be victim, which I think tells you a lot about it and him.
I‘ve heard a historian call him a „zahnschwitzender Irrer“ (tooth-sweating madman) and I think that‘s beautiful.
@@EmpressCosplay An incredible idiom, good job to that historian.
Kramer's madness has also been massively exagerated by out of context quotes and malicious readings, eg claiming Kramer supports a view he's actually citing as being too credulous even for him or taking folk tales he's mixing in for comic relief as actually part of his point. Not his mysogyny though, that's much harder to exagerate. Sadly I think most of his direct targets got off more by being relatively high status than Kramer's mysogyny hurting his credibility.
I mean... it's not a good thing to know that Frollo was not an exaggeration.... Considering the guy is functionally Kramer as a fictional character....
Wasn't he also rejected by a woman he liked and that spurned on more of his hate?
I just audibly said "oh my god OF COURSE it's the victorians AGAIN "
It's practically the free space in "Historical Myth Bingo" 🤣
Victorians....why did it have to be Victorians...? 😔
14:08
Does anyone else listen to Ghoul's Night In Podcast? Because the regularly quoted phrase "those crazy Victorians" is so applicable to much of weird or doctored "history".
Is there anything that Victorian historians got right?
Thank you SO MUCH for pointing out how "The Burning Times" rhetoric appropriates the Holocaust because you put your finger on the judenhass I have experienced from white witches comparing that directly to Jewish persecution
Kaz is Jewish themself and has regularly called out comparisons to the Holocaust on other videos. I always appreciate this because even 2 tragedies on the same scale are incomparable, let alone 2 completely different tragedies on completely different scales. Gotta love me some Kaz
It sounds like the author was prone to hisotronic behavior. She wanted to sensationalize her perceived victimhood and instead of supporting her argument she completely discredits the intent.
A lot of self-proclaimed witches are Jewish, though.
And, a lot of the old ideas about witches were based on ideas about Jews. Including how they look.
@@milascave2Not really, though? I mean, there's overlap in the use of the blood libel to whip people into a frenzy against both groups, and blanket accusations of demon worship and desecration of the host, but that last one was also raised against pretty much any religious 'other', including Muslims, roma people or any splitter sects around reformation times.
And when it comes to appearance, I can't really think of any identifiers of the time that could be considered Jewish-adjacent. There's the pointy hat, yes, but that one doesn't add up, since Jews were forced to wear identifying hats in Central Europe, and in their many, many, MANY pamphlets about witches, Central Europeans didn't depict them as wearing pointy hats. The witch hat was an English invention (probably a dig at Quakers), and Jews there didn't wear pointy hats.
You forgot witches’ sabbath…
as many others say, thank u for calling out neo-paganism lol. being native american & having to watch a bunch of white women overfarm and endanger sage to appropriate smudging and then act oppressed damages me every day. wish wiccans would realize u can be spiritual and attempt to connect to nature without stomping on other ppl but when so many of them come from christian backgrounds i guess its not surprising that the approach is ... colonial
While I agree with everything you say, then sometimes some of them do listen, and decide to explore their own ethnic backgrounds instead: Northern European.
And then they become these really odd Nordic mythology followers, inventing stuff that has little to do with the original practises.
Plus, much worse, they mash it with n*z* ideas.
Us Nordic people (the ones who live in the Nordic countries) feel really icky about the appropriation of our culture.
But I will NOT say anything about oppression, because we are still white, in power of our own lands, and on the side of global power.
The real issue is that those people seem to slide towards another round of n*z*sm - in a pretty package of fertility gods and respecting nature...
it's fucked up how colonialist values are still part of so many groups' rethoric (saying this as a latinamerican colonialist descendant)
@@SIC647 A bit divided on this whole point personally. America is a relatively young country, and many white people here still feel connected to their roots (even for the people who came over at the beginning of "america"/the colonies) because as far as non native people go, everyone else only has a handful of generations here max. There is no "American" culture for people to feel connected with. (Which is, in my opinion, a major driving factor for the consumerism that we are known for. If you don't have a culture to connect to, the things you buy and associate with become that culture) Everything here has been brought from other places, including from the Nordic countries. I can certainly see why the inaccurate portrayal of history and cultural identity would be frustrating, but to completely disallow the descendants (albeit sometimes distantly) of those cultures from connecting with that history has always seemed a bit exclusionary to me. Yes people can be uneducated about it, but when it comes down to it the european and the white american share the same ancestors, and the desire for the american to connect to those roots isn't an inherently harmful one. I don't actually know what the solution is for people misusing gods/traditions and generally being uneducated (sometimes to the point of being offensive) is, but I feel like it isn't just saying Americans can't identity with European cultural identity? Genuinely curious about your thoughts because I'm not sure I articulated my idea well
@@canifer5546 i think sometimes the problem can be in the way americans refer to themselves as being something, despite them not having a very strong connection to that thing. I can only speak as a latinoamerican person, but in my case i have seen many americans call themselves latino when to actual latino people (as in, from LATAM), they would just be a foreigner. And it wouldn't be that much of an issue if they made an effort to connect with their roots in a respectful way, but most of the time it winds up very... Performative so to speak. Like, instead of connecting to the culture, they connect to the americanized, stereotypical, hollywod-esque version of the culture. And then often get upset when people call them out.
Shit, i dont know if this is comprehensible, sorry, just trying to add my 2 cents.
@canifer5546 Denjidenji said the exactly same as I meant to answer
If it is a humble and respectful reconnecting, then it is fine. But it is almost always as what I would describe as Disneyland-esque barging in and picking a few shiny parts.
As well as "American-splaining" the cultures.
As a longtime Wiccan myself, THANK YOU KAZ for actual FACTS. So tired of hearing “my people were burned” none of them were Wiccans, or witches for that matter.
Wicca was invented after television, it's so weird that people will pretend it's ancient.
@@PlatinumAltaria Being based on ancient practices and actually being ancient practices are two very different things lol
@@sammypsychosis1674 We don't know much of anything about ancient European religious practices, though. Our sources range from the Romans to later christian writers, and quite a lot of stuff was simply made up in the 18th or 19th centuries. Most of these cultures had no form of writing, and had been christianised long before and records were made by locals. Our main source about the druids is Julius Caesar, who we know just made stuff up to make himself look better.
@@PlatinumAltaria essentially, yes. We just try to do our best to practice what is known of old ways, in a modern format.
@@sammypsychosis1674 We don't know anything, though. In fact it seems that members of neopagan/new age religions tend to know less about ancient cultures than an average joe. If you want to burn rosemary and wear pentacles then I really don't care, as long as you understand that this isn't a tradition but a modern invention.
I decided I wasn't a Wiccan after spending only a week in a Wiccan FB group. The amount of gatekeeping and ego was really off-putting. I know it was only a small percentage of members but it was enough that I backed away slowly 😂
FB is an abomination unto mankind. I don't think you can really blame the Wicca community in general for the behavior of the Wicca FB community.
Yeah... I consider myself pagan, wiccans are weird.
Try looking into folk magic! Appalachian folk magic has been wonderful at expanding my practice. Wicca puts you in a box and makes you feel like you're doing everything wrong. Your practice should be unique to you!
I'm sorry you ran into people like that...though I think it's more part of the nature of Facebook than of Wiccans. ;)
@@laurenheard5187 Hi there! I was born and raised in Appalachian. Don’t live there now but I go back to visit family. This past year I’ve been learning more and more about Appalachian folk magic and it just feels right. I was Wiccan in my teens and pretty much been all over the place spiritually in my 20’s and 30’s trying to find “it”. Now I just believe in Nature and practice folk magic.
What I find odd/interesting about this is that so many false ideas about medieval witchery happened by taking some of the most biased anti-witch sources as gospel, then trying to spin their wild accusations as good things, actually. Like, imagine someone five hundred years from now researching 21st Century queer life... by only reading the rantings of fundie Christians. Of course it would be confused!
(Also religious syncretism is totes a thing and really needs to come up more often in these sorts of discussions.)
This is why I kind of hate when a fantasy horror movie or something has an origin story about some evil witch demon being killed in a notable historical witch hunt incident- like, ok well I guess that Puritan community was right to hang 24 innocent people because that one 25th girl WAS actually a witch and the biblical Satan is real , haha, that’s fine 😅
otoh, some of the things they say about us make us sound awesome. i'm still waiting on the fabled slacker lesbian commune conservatives keep telling me i'm a part of.
This is a problem that polytheistic reconstructionism often runs into. With the Germanic and Celtic polytheistic religions most of the primary sources we have access to now were written by either Roman polytheists, Christians or Muslims not their actual practitioners. Whereas with Greek and Roman polytheism we at least have sources written by people who followed those religions.
Heck even now, conservative researchers already do articles and papers on queer people by citing homophobic Christians and doing surveys with homophobic parents of queer people LMAO I don’t doubt conservative historians will base their theories in these in the future
I remember seeing somewhere, I think it was a Shaun or Big Joel video, that book “Irreversible Damage” was based off reports from transphobic parents of trans men rather than doing research with actual trans people. Hbomberguy’s video on antivaxxers mentioned a study based on vague memories the subjects of a survey had about vaccines from many years prior.
Misinformation isn’t going anywhere, these will be the sources for shit in the future 😭
@@83croissant- That really sucks when you consider that there were no covens of devil-worshippers or any remaining organized pre-Christian religious groups, just scapegoats and easy targets for community anger and fear. Folk magic, not sabbats and orgies with witches giving rimjobs to Satan.
A writer could work with that by showing the tragedy of innocent deaths while the true evildoers are unsuspected for one reason or another. Or create a fictional massacre or hunt in which the witch was originally killed, or even make the slaughter of innocents the reason for the evil. The Sealed Evil in a Can released by torment, terror, and literal bloodshed. Or the witch/sorcerer/whoever uses the deaths to power the spell that returns them to the world centuries later.
I’m a witchcraft historian-and you miss no points here! One of my research areas is how Margaret Murray, as you said, “really didn’t know what she was talking about.” And I’m always so happy when people tackle the hard work of dispelling the burning myth. It’s so hard to escape from 😅
Hey figbury! Do you have any spooky history content to share? Always looking for more!
I think a lot of our ideas about witch trials come from Salem which... look. Imagine the worst religious sect you've ever heard of and the people who are trying to manipulate them. Yeah. That's the whole story in broad strokes. Salem was kind of this weird, outlier event, that's why we all talk so much about it. Even then, when you dig into it, you find familiar stories: old money spiting new money, new money trying to con their way into being old money, poor people getting mowed down in their wake... Salem had it all. My absolute favorite story from that event is the testimony of Tituba. She absolutely knew that she wasn't getting out of it, and she was going to take down every single person who ever pissed her off, so she got up there and said "yep, I'm a witch, so's she and so is that bit over there, the one who was stingy with the wassail at Christmas, yep, she's a witch." At one point they asked her to keep testifying and she said she'd going blind all of a sudden. It's a funny spot in an otherwise horrific series of events.
TL:DR, Salem was rich people fighting and not caring how many poor people suffered, we really are just like the people of yesteryear.
Smart and accurate comment
The book, _In the Devil's Snare,_ by Mary Beth Norton goes deep into the Salem trials and provides a great deal of background for the trials. There was a lot going on, what with wars against the local Indians (who were seen as either devil-worshippers or literal devils), worries about the Salem charter being renewed, feuds among families, possible conversion disorder in the accusers, and so much else.
Tituba was an Indian from the Caribbean, and she and her husband probably practiced folk magic. When hauled up, she either tried to save her life by naming others, or, as you said, decided to take as many with her as she could.
Contrary to popular belief, the supernatural being (either the big D or a lesser devil) was a 'tawny' man, not the 'Black Man' of Europe. Native Americans, the Indians, were described as tawny-colored.
Witches are just heretics from an age where half of Europe were Protestant, and therefore heretics by definition.
I highly recommend The War on Heresy by R. I. Moore.
Moore examines not just the circumstances surrounding accusations of heresy but what we know about the accusers, the accused, and, most importantly, the outcome of those accusations. He makes the case that the vast majority of heresy trials were ultimately motivated by political and financial gain, and that entire crusades were launched to settle land disputes.
The midwife was not labeled a witch by concerned townsfolk fearful of the devil, she was labeled as such by the other midwife in town who wanted to get rid of the competition. Replace midwife with almost any other profession, and you have a world of rampant heresy and witchcraft.
Well, I mean some of "the burning times" notions come from the Spanish inquisition, as well. And public consensus/memory has just kind of conglomerated these similar, but separate histories... Which a lot of people were burned in the inquisition; just not the numbers we like to imagine. And not for witchcraft, but heresy and similar aspersions. Full towns, by some accounts.
But, it too was driven for the same reason/s as Salem: money. I thought this was just an understood aspect of most human interactions. But in particularly witch hunts.
"Follow the money; always follow the money."
Completely agree with your perspective on Tituba, though. She made sure a lesson got learned from her unfair persecution; and was hilarious even while staring down death.
I can completely see why people would want to memorialize her story. And why modern witches view her as a heroic figure.
@@momsaccount-333- Money infected everything, but don't forget the intertwining of the sacred and secular of the time. The guardians of religious orthodoxy felt that it was their duty to stamp out heresy for the spiritual good of the people. Differing even the slightest from the accepted forms and beliefs was not tolerated. The accused had to pay most of the costs of their prosecutions, which introduced financial motivations.
Salem was a stew of interpersonal conflicts, worries about the continued existence of the colony (until the charter was renewed), fears of Indians (who were regarded as literal devils), and many other factors. Tituba (who was a Caribbean Indian, along with her husband) was smart enough to play to the biases of the court.
The Devil here was depicted as a 'tawny man' because of the wars with the Native peoples.
The phrase performing necromancy on the pope, is something that need to get shelved into my memory.
Thank you sm for the modern day paganism and the Wicca callouts. Too many privileged people attempting to co-opt the history and language of the truly oppressed.
EDIT: Um, hi. I'm Indigenous Latin and my ethnic and cultural religion were SO unallowed we had to tack Catholicism onto it to cover up that we were all still practicing. Pointing out that non-white ethnic religions have faced far more violent persecution than other religions is not playing Oppression Olympics. Minority intersection does not stop someone from being of the majority race, sorry not sorry.
It reminds me of a similar situation in which witches/pagans, who are usually cishet, using the phrase “in the broom closet” to talk about not being open about being into magic/spirituality/paganism/etc etc. I just get so uncomfortable as an actual queer person.
@@KazKindred613 I have never seen someone say that because I do not get myself expose to the internet if I can avoid it, but people who compare religious persecution with actual queer persecution must be horrible people for not noticing how delirious that is
@@KazKindred613 Speaking as a queer person who used to be pagan, I actually don't mind it. In some places especially, like America, there's very strong parallels. When they are in christian-dominated environments, there is very much a chance that they will be belittled or face aggression over following a "satanic" religion. There's even stories about families cutting ties, people being kicked out of their homes, parents complaining that people like that shouldn't teach their children, etc. For many people it really is a case of having to stay "closeted" or facing real harm. And even outside of those christian environments, there can be a tendency for pagan religions to be belittled and mocked in a way that "established" religious beliefs might not be, since they're so new (at other times, of course, some of those established religions will face more scorn, this isn't some sort of ladder of oppression.) Being a religious minority just, y'know, tends to suck.
Also, pagan religions tend to be very queer nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised if, proportionally, there were more queer people in paganism than in any other religious group. It's very likely that the verbiage of the broom-closet was introduced by cross pollination from the queer community.
@@cata0rostika religious persecution has often been as severe, and sometimes even worse, than queer persecution though. Oppression and persecution remains oppression and persecution.
I am a practicing witch in a coven of several people. We DO use "in the broom closet." It's a safe phrase that they understand. We are also ALL queer. We know exactly what it means to be shunned and alienated. I get it if it's a "fluffy bunny witch" that romantizes all of history and pretends everything is sparkly and bright. Those are generally faking everything about themselves anyway.
I love your consistent efforts to debunk Victorian revisionism and the progress narrative! There’s a lot of carry over in studying Indigenous American history. The truth is, painting modern Western Europe as so much more enlightened and developed helped justify imperialism and colonialism. “I have a right to steal your land because you’re stupid and don’t know how to use it” sort of stuff.
So much justification for colonialism, especially in Eastern North America and Central America, was made possible by European's belief that their way of doing things was the only way. They felt fine taking land by force because "the Natives aren't developing or using it so they don't actually own it", and then would marvel at how bountiful the lands were. Ummm yeah, they're bountiful because they're cultivated orchards and farms, you twats 🤦♀ just because it's not kept in neat little monoculture rows like you do it... Although I'm certain they knew exactly what they were doing, they were just greedy and needed to justify their violent takeovers to the folks back in Europe. So much of what colonizers did to take land was illegal, even at the time, under European laws about warfare. So many people still believe those lies to this day.
@@suchnothingyes, I have literally heard someone say that natives were hunter gatherers and didn't do agriculture. Like, they probably haven't had a day in their life where they haven't eaten a crop cultivated by natives here, yet believe the white man invented squash, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.
it’s frustrating to me that people in the past couldn’t understand that folk lore like the green man isn’t inherently “pagan” or even certain practices or beliefs like superstitions or rituals aren’t either. Like you said there were people who identified as a Christian who might’ve believed or done things seen as “pagan” in modern times and would be very confused if you called them a pagan. Folk lore or practices that are seen as “paganism” in modern times didn’t become taboo or disappear or stop overnight just like they didn’t suddenly appear. they were likely slowly combined with Christian beliefs over time or practiced less and less as more people converted to and started practicing Christianity. Which is probably why the green man was in art in churches. Having folk lore in art is such a common thing even these days and the majority of the time it’s just because people think it’s interesting or pretty or part of their culture. Why would people in the past not do similar things?
Before the Roman colonization Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland and what is now the UK was 100% pagan.
I suggest 'The History of the Devil: Horned God of the West, Magic and Worship' by R. Lowe Thompson, at least for a gist.
Stop thinking from the perspective of modern Christian societies. You and Kaz have it backwards. What you're seeing is the slow onset of the ORIGIN of folklores and superstitions from the remnants of indigenous belief systems of European paganisms, due to the Roman colonization of Christianity. They over time get decoupled from the indigenous beliefs if the conquering ideology is successful.
What you are calling "Folk lore", like the "green man", originates in the cultures indigenous belief systems. These beliefs were intertwined with the fabric of society. You can not simply colonize a place with a religion and expect those indigenous beliefs to go away within a few hundred years (last crusades were in northern Europe around 1100 to weed out paganism and further secure the authority of the church), the church had to make concessions to incorporate and/or allow pagan remnants in order to dissipate the indigenous belief systems so Europe could fully transfer to the Roman Christian ideological power structure. And church and political power had no little to no sustaining presence in the rural areas of Europe (the situation in Scandinavia, Europe and the UK/Ireland was different).
There was a gradient from absolutely indigenous paganism, to Rome becoming pagan (see 'The Death of Classical Paganism' by John Holland Smith), to Rome conquering more but leaving them Pagan, to a push to convert to Christianity, and than further pushes to convert everyone up to the last crusades in 1100. The few hundred years after 1100 (1200,1300,1400,1500) there were certainly fewer indigenous belief practicioners (pagans) but there is no way it was utterly eradicated. And many customs and symbols of the indigenous beliefs were retained, even incorporated into the church, and what happened in some places was a parallel existence and syncretism, like how Hoodoo and some forms of Voodoo syncretize with Christianity and it's symbols, same with Brujeria (a Latin form of "witchcraft"), and even Christianity itself which is a syncretism of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Roman paganism, Egyptian myths, and various other systems.
There is no other way, there was a transition with a parallel remnants, and remnants of the indigenous beliefs that were interwoven into the fabric of the societies of the ENTIRE CONTINENT.
I think it mainly hinges on the medieval church having such a tyrannical reputation. It strikes people an unbelievable that the church would tolerate anything that wasn't explicitly Christian, but honestly, that's more of a thing for post-reformation Christianity, where the competing sects were essentially competing in puritanism. This is the period when the Church began to clamp down on anything that wasn't in full compliance with their doctrines and also when people's private lives began to be surveiled a lot more closely. The medieval Church was in some ways more relaxed with regards to people's everyday lives and practices.
@@Oxtocoatl13well for the medieval church there was the Waldensians but that’s just regular heresy by Catholics doing it wrong .
I do recall an incident where they had to correct some people in rural France that had made a dog into a saint
@@83croissant oh yes, absolutely, heresy was violently stamped out by the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages. I should have specified that this "chill" attitude had it's limits and absolutely did not tolerate alternative forms of Christianity.
it also simplifies the naturalistic development of syncretism and socio-cultural changes in general. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and common themes and old ideas can bleed their way locally into belief and iconography, but its rarely as simple as one, cohesive, 'past faith' buried beneath a newer one.
I also think the leap from "what is this image I don't understand" to "must be phallic" is really easy to make for some reason, and many things we now interpret as "fertility rituals" likely had nothing to do with that. We oversimplify people of the past. They weren't animals who only thought about survival and reproducing any more than we are.
Absolutely. On the flip side, we should probably stop talking about ancient phallic symbols or fertility rituals like they're some kind of mystical, uneducated tomfoolery that only dumb ancient humans would believe in, as if modern humans aren't also obsessed with dicks and babies. I'm looking at you, Facebook fertility groups and London's The Gherkin.
As someone who believes in Wicca to the extent that we should have faith in the nature and world around us and not some obscure higher power, thank you Kaz. You have single-handedly helped me to refer my crazy covenmates that 13 is not some blessed number and that we can have more or less than that to be successful in our faith and practice.
You are also always a blessing, and love your style
Wicca has "rules" that literally mean nothing. Like any circle you cast has to be nine feet wide. Why? Like come on lol
-@@laurenheard5187 - Who told you _that?_ Nine feet is just a handy size for larger covens (average size is 3-7, members, so larger ones would be 5+). In practice, the size of the circle tends to be "whatever fits the room/yard/clearing we're meeting in." In all my oldest books (oldest meaning more strictly Gardneria/Alexandrian), 9 feet is said to be part of _some_ traditions, but not any sort of _requirement._
@@laurenheard5187 Wicca has one "rule". One rule to rule them all if you will and that is "Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill: An ye harm none, do what ye will." Practice and hold your beliefs / values however you want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. It is simple in concept and yet quite difficult to do daily! Any witchy (or non witchy) online community will disappoint. I guess that's just what humans do, feel personally attacked when questioned / called out and double down in defense, making the defense of something their personality lol.
I'm not sure how "nature" and "the world around us" is any more specific and less obscure than "higher power". Or the fact you have "covenmates" at all, doesn't indicate you are more involved than just that. Pick a loyalty and stand by it, for Christ's sakes! lol
@@squirlmy - "a higher power" implies some sort of entity, whereas "nature" _can,_ but doesn't have to. There _are_ Wiccans who don't work with any deities. And what's with your "pick a loyalty" remark? What did OP say that implies any sort of divided loyalty...?
I've been Wiccan most of my 48 years and what you said needed to be said. On your closing statement I also agree. My advice to anyone trying to "wake up" is to remember that it's ok to be fooled. You've been fooled, you're being fooled and you will be fooled again. This doesn't make you a fool. Let go of the need to feel secure in your understanding and peruse the truth like the cruel and elusive mistress she is.
Your comment made me think of one of my all-time favorite tiktoks, now privated sadly. This young woman is just like "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... why?! What the heck?! That's so mean. Fool me THREE times. Ooooohhh my God... Fool me FOUR TIMES-"
This is a beautiful thing to say - I think people cling so long to false beliefs that would rather hold onto false belief than “feel dumb” but it’s always better to evolve!!!
To my knowledge, in Medieval times the church often condemned even believing in (evil) witchcraft because it would mean you'd believe Satan can grant anyone power when he's the fallen angel of deceit and lies without any real power beyond tempting to sin. It was *after* the medieval period, when Christendom was much more fractured (and often proliferated more in Protestant-dominant communities in which there wasn't much of a centralized church) that *some* religious authorities accepted that the Devil could grant evil power to mortals in exchange for their soul. You also probably know this but a lot of witchcraft accusations were antisemitic blood libel.
Yeah I learned this when being taught about historical witch-trials in school, for most of the middle ages the Roman Catholic Church's official position was that witchcraft did not exist and anyone claiming to practice it was delusional. In Denmark where I live, witch trials did not become a thing until after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century and reached their peak during the 17th.
It's also a matter of capacity for enforcement. The catholic church was a loose international organization that had massive influence everywhere, but it usually didn't really have the jurisdiction to condemn people to death. It was mostly struggling to keep it's own clergy in check, and involved in a constant game of chess with the Holy Roman emperor and other secular leaders and aristocrats for actual political power. The same kind of decentralized mess is found everywhere in the middle ages, strong central states do not really exist. The inquisitions were the first sort of legal authorities created to handle things like witchcraft on a more grand scale (and everywhere they were instituted they usually came to the conclusion after a decade or two that the witch-accusations were probably baloney). So pretty much every european country has had a decade or two somewhere in the 15-16-hundreds where there is a notable witch-craze, but even in these decades far more other people were executed for completely mundane things like theft and murder. Because in pretty much all regards the early rising more centralized states of the 16th and 17th century are far more blood-thirsty in their power to hand out capital punishment for all kinds of things than these places have ever been before or since. There are more death sentences per capita in the in the 17th century in western europe than there ever was in the entire middle ages.
Interesting - I thought the Catholic Church being such a centralised strictly run organisation is what made it possible for the Vatican to prevent witch-hunts from happening on a large scale. And the Protestant Reformation ended up making each national church in Denmark, Sweden etc independent from any centralised international authority.@@stoferb876
@@stoferb876
It was not unknown for someone charged with a secular crime to utter some mild blasphemy in order to be tried in a religious court, because they knew that there was a lower chance of conviction, and a higher chance of a very mild sentence if convicted.
@@stoferb876 Where did you learn this, I would love to know more. I am having a hard time finding sources about this subject that aren't heavily biased toward the "medieval christianity was stupid and sexist and simply accused every woman of witchcraft" angle
The whole "myth of progress" thing is VERY IMPORTANT in my opinion. Assuming that the world will just always get better with time is not only inaccurate but harmful, and promotes complacency with injustice. People had their own rights and liberties and then bigotry, fascism, etc. rose to power and took it away. Tolerating injustice with the mindset that 'eventually it WILL get better" will only lead to more suffering. We have to actively work towards progress, it won't just happen on its own
Progress is not linear. It's a jagged line because people can be bastards and unexpected disasters can destroy social structures.
Although, there's nearly 8 billion people in the world nw, living better quality and length of life than ever before in history, so there's some sort of progress going on, even if it isn't exactly like the ideal. Consider that even when 4 billion was reached in the 70s, starvation and various overpopulation problems were predicted and didn't come to pass. "Work towards progress" may be necessary, but it IS actually happening to a large degree.
@@squirlmy- There was a second agricultural revolution courtesy of Norman Borlaug. At some point, though, we will reach the planet's carrying capacity. How soon we do that, and how we adapt, are up to us.
@@julietfischer5056 We will never reach the "planet's carrying capacity", tho. We are 8 billion now, and even in the highest/wildest UN projections, humans will never surpass the 10 billion mark. Considering how much we still have room for improving agricultural yields around the globe, a 25% increase in output is nothing.
And Borlaug's "green revolution" was actually a third agricultural revolution. :)
OMG Thank YOU! I call myself a Wiccan but I stopped participating in the community because the way they would gatekeep, the low key racism (I'm a black woman) and the way they would try to co op the oppression of the time as if Wicca was so old was insane. I like some of the philosophy, but the community is so toxic and is just a way for privileged people to cosplay oppression.
As a Filipino-American eclectic pagan the local pagan community is dominated by Wiccans and a few Norse heathens. I feel so alone and spiritually disconnected from a bunch of community rituals bc so many white pagans assume their practices are the only way things are done
I'm sorry. There _are_ Wiccans who know better; I've known that Wicca is modern and that the "Burning Times" were a modern myth since my intro to it, in the late 80s. There's really no excuse for anyone to still be saying otherwise...and there was _never_ an excuse to be racist, not at any point.
There's a really interesting documentary on Wicca's founder on RUclips, it's called "The Middle-Class British Man That Founded Modern Witchcraft". He had his fair share of problematic behaviors and ideas, especially with cultural appropriation, so I don't want to talk him up too much lol. But one thing I can't fault him on is that he considered Wicca to be new, experimental, and very much unfinished at the time of his death. To me, that means it can be open to anyone from any background. It also means that problematic practices can be dropped, even the ones created by the founder. He himself introduced many spiritual concepts only to discard them later when they weren't "working" as he or his community wanted. It's silly that so many Wiccans gatekeep the way they do when the founder was so open to community input and so eager to spread his ideas to the world. It's also silly that Wiccans feel the need to co-opt the oppression of others when their wider community has its own experiences, as well as its own success stories in overcoming it. The negative experiences of people in their community can be bad on their own without needing to be "as bad as" the holocaust or LGBTQ oppression, and when those groups discuss their oppression, it would be nice if Wiccans simply listened instead of making it about themselves. It's such a waste of time and energy to cosplay or compete with the oppression of other groups. I think a lot of them feels it adds to the "mysticism" or the overall aesthetic, which is so annoying lol. The racism is less surprising, because, well, the earliest practitioners were 1930s - 1950s white Brits and Americans so... yeah. But just because it started that way doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I hope you can find better people to share your spirituality with.
@@suchnothing - Gardner did cultural appropriation before people in his situation knew it was a bad thing, so I'm willing to cut him a little slack; he didn't know what kind of damage it could do to the peoples being appropriated from. And most Wiccans I've known don't take the "burning times" myth seriously...it's just the new and/or young, overenthusiastic ones who tend to, unfortunately.
I've always been an eclectic Wiccan, so I haven't run into much gatekeeping, though I know it's out there. I just find it hard to comprehend... _so many_ of the books being published when I was in "book acquisition mode" went out of their way to emphasize, over and over (to the point where I often skipped over it, I was already so familiar with the arguments), that different things work for different people, and there's no "One True Way" of anything, and everyone has to find their own path. How can anyone gatekeep if they take that seriously...? (Rhetorical question, I know. Gatekeepers gonna gatekeep.)
Gardner strikes me as similar to Aleister Crowley and G. I. Gurdjieff in many ways, who for all their faults at no point claimed to restore long dead traditions but instead both made it clear that they were creating new systems. Likewise Crowley also made it clear that he didn't want anyone to treat him as an infallible saint, and explicitly encouraged his followers to improve upon his example. Notice that him and Gardner came from the same early 20th century British occult milieu.
The whole "presenting your wild new syncretic systems as revivals of long dead traditions" business seems to have been more of a 19th century mainland European thing now that I think of it, with the clearest examples being Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy and Guido von List's Armanism.@@ShinyAvalon
Oh wow! I have been studying one particular witch trial from the Middle Ages for years. Dame Alice Kyteler of Ireland 1324. To say it was weird is to be polite, a heresy trial stemming from accusations of harmful magic following the death of three of her four husband's of which she benefited heavily. Might have been a serial killer actually. Also she was the richest woman in Ireland, financed Edward I war with Scotland, and was Flemish born from Ypres cloth merchants. Also also the trial was centered on papal authority vs local lordships. She fled but a servant was burned in her place. Absolutely wild story.
Anyway another great historical video Kaz. I live for this content.
It’s fascinating! She was a moneylender and was generally resented by those in the area, also her step kids whose inheritance she ‘stole’. But I do think she was a serial killer, black widow type. You might find Darkey Kelly interesting too, though much folklore has been mixed in with her story
@@kellyblake8925 Yep! She went from merchants daughter to moneylender to landowner to Dame wife of a knight over a 20 year timeframe. Was accused of murder by William Le Kiteler the sheriff of Kilkenny and a cousin. The children of the husbands kept progressively getting madder about being cut out of the will prior to the mans death. Sir John Le Poers kids were the ones who said witchcraft. Interesting note, Bishop Richard De Ledrede said Le Poers symptoms were loss of hair and fingernails, something that happens from arsenic poisoning. St. Calice Cathedral in Kilkenny still stands to this day, where she used to worship.
I can't say I know Darkey Kelly but now I'm curious.
That would make a great Kaz video!
@@maryeckel9682 I fully agree. Its such a fascinating story since it was and wasn't a witch trial. Also Alice Kyteler was the powerful one. Her husband's brother was Sarsnchel of Ireland and a previous husbands brother was Chancellor of Ireland, the Le Poer family were influential and her son was mayor of Kilkenny. She even had the Bishop thrown in prison at one point and fled to Dublin and political allies. She was so wealthy she buried money near her house out of paranoia. Her house got raided and items in bags got burned which may have been the arsenic. She was accused of using the bones of children to summon a familar called Robin that she slept with to poison her enemies. She was also kinda old, 61 in 1324, having survived the 1315 Invasion of Ireland, the Great Famine and the beginning of the Little Ice Age.
I could seriously go on. This woman is absurdly interesting. I'm not even getting into that she's one of the first if not the first documented provable serial killers with evidence for it.
@@LadyTylerBioRodriguez has it really been proven that she was a serial killer? All the evidence I've seen has been circumstantial or rely on Petronilla's testimony, which was given under torture. It's also pretty clear that the people accusing her already hated her for various monetary, political and personal reasons. She did marry four times, but it was over 40 years. Her husbands may just have died of natural causes.
It may be helpful if more people kept in mind who gains a benefit from a story being told a certain way. For example, variations of the "people in the past were dumb" idea benefits the egos of modern folk for being "smarter" than their predecessors. The history of Wicca myth benefits those who look to profit off of it, like Gerald Gardner. When the story being told a certain way benefits modern folk or perceptions more than those of the time when they were supposed to happen, that's a good indication that there's more to the story than what you initially hear.
Well... viewing history not through a wildly sexist lens benefits women... so that's not ever something bad. It just shows that science can never be truly objective. Whatever that means. So it's always important to analyze who does it.
Some Wiccans are completely aware their religion is young, and that the "burning times" myth is exactly that. I (also a Wiccan) view those kinds of people the way Scientifically literate Christians view Creationists.
To be fair, it's difficult watching YT on my smartphone and not consider people in the past were (comparativel) "dumb". Especially in periods where the vast majority aren't literate. That's not really an " ego boost", just an objective fact.
@@squirlmyA person being literate isn't indicative of their intelligence though.
Average oral traditionalists would have been able to memorize vast works of art in a way few trained professionals would now... Your comment kind of proves op's ironically enough.
A person's perceived intelligence has a lot to do with perspective and culture.
@@squirlmy
Also remember that to historical academics being "literate" meant being able to read and write in Latin, the language of scholars.
It wouldn't matter if you were literate in half a dozen other languages, if you didn't do Latin then you weren't one of them.
It's kind of like the "enlightenment" scholars who believed that Greek was the only language worth knowing, and anything written after the end of Greek as a scholarly language was worthless (throwing out 1500 years of academic advancement).
As a witch, I support this message. Also? I’m realizing while watching this that my mom totally would have gotten swept up in witch trials, when you mentioned the Benadryl/Hatman scenario I thought, “gosh that something mom would do.” Oof.
Is your mom friends with the Hatman?
@@aedes947 no, but if I gave her Benadryl and she dreamed about it, she would be suspicious that I did something. She’s kinda paranoid
What does it mean to be a witch
It's indeed more complicated than people think. For instance (and my examples are largely from Moravia/Silesia) quite a few accusations were likely motivated by inheritance or land acquisition, or simply beef an accuser had with the person. And it often wasn't a quick accuse-trial-burn thing, many people were kept imprisoned and repeatedly tortured for quite a while, sometimes months. Because hey, that way their relatives had to pay upkeep for the prison, food and the torturer's fee. (fine racket all in all) Dean Lautner of Šumperk was imprisoned and repeatedly tortured for 5 years before he was executed! This did depend on the kind of trial board you had, some of them did work very quickly.
A surprising number of people were also released after interrogation, because the trial didn't find "evidence" of them being witches.
Around here there wasn't much conflation of witches with paganism (whatever old religion was largely gone, both Slavic and German) - because the connection was usually a different one - to protestants and other "heretics". Many of the places in the mountains where witches were supposedly having their sabbats were actually passes being used by other kinds of Christians to escape north to Polish Silesia.
Even the kind of magic people confessed under torture was sometimes clearly based in Christianity - like using communion wafers to "bless" a cow to produce more milk.
All this said, the witch hunts were undoubtedly horrific and brutal, I've read many actual records from my area and some of them are genuinely hard to stomach. Some people survived a LOT of torture, only to be executed. (often not by burning though, only their dead bodies were sometimes burnt after.)
I think it was in Polish Silesia where an executioner was so incredibly busy killing "witches" that he requested a giant oven be built so that he could burn more of them at once. (also he went on strike for higher pay)
thanks for posting this reply, I know very little about witchcraft history from Eastern Europe so it's very informative hearing about how differently it went down in your area
my man executioner doing god's work and going on strike lmao /s
That's super interesting! Europe was really going through something at that time lol. A really famous set of witch trials in England, the Pendle witch trials, were motivated by the politics and greed of one insane witch hunter. The first of the trials took place over one or two years, in a courthouse that is still standing and I think may still be in use today. It would have looked a lot like a modern British/American court trial, actually. The Pendle trials happened in the 1600s.
I used to associate witches with Britain and America only. I have somewhat recent Norwegian ancestry but I'm Canadian and very disconnected from that past, so when I was reading about Norway's history I was surprised to learn that they had a witch-hunting craze that was one of the deadliest and most barbaric in Europe. They actually did execute most of the convicted by burning them, unlike other places. Many died during torture or imprisonment before even being convicted. Even so, out of the 1400 or so that were accused, only around 350 were executed. Most went free due to lack of evidence. This all happened in the mid 1500s to mid 1700s, not during the medieval period. Folk "magic" was widely practiced and accepted for most of Norway's Lutheran history, and during the actual Middle Ages "witchcraft" was only illegal when an injury or death was attributed to the practices. So they weren't persecuted for practicing witchcraft, they were punished for allegedly harming someone. Few records exist of witch trials or executions from Medieval Norway. The idea of punishing all types of "witchcraft" didn't begin until the mid 1500s, but even then it was usually related to an injury or death so it wasn't as random or petty as people think. The problem is that often innocent people were accused of witchcraft to try to explain unexplainable deaths that they couldn't have been responsible for, and prejudice over race, class, or other things was usually a factor in who got accused. For example, many accused and executed were Sami peoples, men and women, who the Scandinavian Lutherans were very suspicious of and wanted to oppress.
it looks like pretty much everywhere in Europe, witch trials were for the most part a 16th-17th century thing not a mediaeval thing@@suchnothing
When laws changed to forbid confiscation of property, the number of trials went down. Amazing coincidence (sarcasm).
Hey Kaz, eclectic Wiccan here. I've known for years that Wicca is a relatively modern religion. With my religion/spirituality, the goal for me was always to find a spiritual home, not feel more connected with some supposed witch ancestor, so I never bought into the "I'm the granddaughter of the witches you forgot to burn" mentality. As much as I've learned as a Wiccan, I've also had to do a fair amount of unlearning of misinformation spread by the likes of popular witch authors *cough* Silver Ravenwolf *cough* Love your style and your content, as always.
I’ve never been able to shake the suspicion that Silver Ravenwolf is a name chosen for the express purpose of a grifter mocking their target audience.
I'd love to see more on this topic! As a welshperson I've always been a bit iffy on how our history often gets divided between this concept of "celtic paganism" vs "invading christianity", which erases like 95% of our actual history in favour of some nature theme park. Like you can look at the charms and spells used by Dynion and Gwragedd Hysbys to see that they're using bible scripture and prayer alongside plants and remedies. Perhaps the local parish authorities might not like it but it wasn't meant to be some middle finger against the heavens.
Yes. If you told those medievals that what they were doing was "pagan" they'd just look at you like you were touched in the head.
They were Christians engaging in rituals that they believed to be Christian, and it was no more "magic" to them than any other form of prayer.
Its okay to believe in something and then later realize it is inaccurate, it is okay to be wrong, it is okay to change your mind, its okay to be ordinary. It is okay to to larp as a witch on the daily... AND... be wary about making anything external your personal identity.
It's a harsh thing to say but, if you break down the figures, executions for witchcraft form an almost inconsequential part of European history, given that in some countries there were upwards of 50 or more offences (many of them quite trivial) that carried the death penalty.
Based on the estimate of around 60,000 executions over a 300 year period, that breaks down to roughly 200 executions a year across the whole of Europe and the Americas. Outside of the witch-panics in some parts of central Europe during the 30 years war, witch trials were rare and highly localised occurences and execution was not inevitable. Of the 3000 people officially charged with withcraft in England during the period 1563 to 1700, only 400 were found guilty and hanged; by contrast (although it's an extreme example) between 50-70,000 people were executed in the reign of King Henry VIII for opposing his break with Rome - so, if you're of English ancestry, you're more likely to be descended from a Catholic martyr than a condemned witch!
And over 3000 officially accused in Scotland according to University of Edinburghs mapping program on the topic.
England was actually a lot more restrained than some other countries...Scotland and Germany had some much higher numbers.
Where are you getting your numbers? Just curious.
@@ShinyAvalon- The legal and cultural system in England had crucial differences from those in European nations, and quite possibly the English Channel helped restrict the spread of Continental ideas.
@@julietfischer5056 - The Channel did not, alas, stop Scotland from committing some horrific excesses in its pursuit of heretics and witches.
I’m Jewish. I DEFINITELY would have been burned at the stake for simply being Jewish many times in many places in Europe. Especially after the Black Death since we were blamed for it
Unfortunately yes. The conspiracy theories about witches plotting to overthrow Christianity that emerge towards the end of the Middle Ages also have clear roots in older, anti-semitic conspiracy theories, such as the blood libel myth. I mean... The gatherings of witches are called Witches' SABBATHS for fuck's sake.
Yes, especially the Kabbalahist.
As a hema practitioner, and a person obsessed with learning about medieval history, I always find it deeply disconcerting how much blatant misinformation and ahistorical nonsense gets repeated and spread around on social media and the internet at large.
So thank you for combating misinformation, your hard work is appreciated
This reminds me of one of the Cadfael books, the Heretic's Apprentice, where a trial was held to determine whether this guy who'd had Thoughts and was questioning some Christian doctrines was actually a heretic. In the end, the judges were actually reasonable and let him off because he still held core Christian beliefs.
Just sending you a high-five for being another Cadfael fan! Ellis Peters books were so good!
Cadfael is my comfort reading!@@JoyfulOrb
@@JoyfulOrb Yeah, Cadfael fans unite!
Love people who are knowledgeable of the Victorian era have the same love and hate relationship that Psych majors do with Freud “until the Victorians got a whole of it” really just summarizes it all
Also, English majors will have a thing against Victorians for painting Jane Austen as a twee little prude, a reputation still not fully shaken to this day
The channel "Horses" did an excellent mini-doc on the history of "witchcraft" in Iceland that provides a look into how "pagan" practices melded with day-to-day life and what clashes there where with Christianity. It gives perfect examples on how inaccurate modern ideas of witchcraft are and how nuanced the reality was.
I literally just subbed to that channel only a few days ago.
The religious syncretism you allude to in 18:45 reminds me a lot of Guatemalan and Mexican “brujería” or witchcraft blended into catholic iconography. Such as “la santa muerte”. Very cool!
Exactly what I thought of as well!!
Thanks for this. If anyone's brutally interested in hard-core Medieval religious history I strongly recommend Schwerpunkt's videos series
God I'm so grateful for this video- I have to explain all this stuff so many times. "Hey guess what midwives were complicit/the accusers a lot of the time" and "hey this is appropriating language of the Holocaust" and "hey uh this isn't medieval" and most of all "...hey guys you know that European populations had magic traditions besides the ones left over from paganism, right? right? You know you can invent or develop new traditions and it doesn't all have to be ancient roots? You gonna tell me that Kabbalah and using saints' relics is all ~the paganism~?"
It's extra frustrating because these same (white, Gentile) modern witches have a nasty habit of appropriating magical and religious traditions from nonwhite cultures. Like they aren't here studying the Sámi drum burnings or the persecution of Indigenous Americans and West Africans, all of which *are* pretty directly related to the witch hunts and the European wars of religion. Not in a cause and effect way, exactly, more like a whole circle of societal forces that they were coexisting under.
The, "weird thing we don't understand? Paganism!" reminds me of this AMAZING book you would adore, Kat--if you don't already know it, which I kinda assume you do. It's called Motel of the Mysteries, and everytime these future archaelogists find something they don't understand they call it a "ceremonial artifact" or "spiritual" etc.
10/10 for clowning on those who came before and really thought siblings liked being buried together.
I loved that book! Haven't thought of it in years!
To be fair, 'ceremonial' could mean nothing more than the equivalent of the 'gold' shovels at ground-breaking ceremonies, not religious rites.
What happens is that we don't have enough context for the artifacts. Any writing is either gone or we can't translate it; other objects have deteriorated or decomposed, leaving bits of stone or metal; we don't have any records from neighboring cultures, and all we can do is make our best guesses.
My favorite tidbit about the witch hunts in germany is the... Lack of it in some places.
I have a memior by an executioner in nuremberg who earnestly believed in witchcraft. But he wanted "proof". So he often ended up arresting "witches" (a good number of them self-proclaimed witches selling love charms, hate charms, petty stuff like that) and got annoyed when they threatened to curse him but showed absolutely no witch craft.
Then theres the witch Hunter who he eventually executes after kicking him out of the city no less than 5 times. The Dude came into town, started accusing people of being witches, got banned for disturbing the peace and threatening the Citizens... And he kept coming back. So eventually he ended up being hanged.
Of course thats just one account, but it is interesting how that belief in witches could coexist with that demand to see.... Real proof. Not that male maleficarum nonsense.
What is the name of the memoir? Fascinating!
this is really funny lol
Really good video, and I especially appreciate your insistence on being careful with historical claims. In line with that, I was curious about one of your sources, Francis Young's The Myth of Medieval Paganism, so I looked it up, and found it's an article from First Things magazine, published in 2020.
First Things is an extremely conservative Christian magazine, and I used to subscribe to it. It's a real mixed bag. They've always published good articles -- and presumably the Francis Young article is one of the good ones -- but they've also published a huge amount of trash. The former editor was famous for his public defense in the pages of First Things of one of the worst sexual abuser priests in history, Marcial Maciel.
First Things is also, of course, disgustingly and consistently homophobic and transphobic.
At the same time, there were articles in First Things that permanently changed the way I think, even after leaving conservative Christianity. First Things has a tendency to publish work that tries to debunk what it sees as attempts by anti-Christians to smear the Church, especially the Catholic Church. So you'll probably find more than a few articles that present different perspectives on various aspects of medieval Christianity than we're used to, especially the Inquisition and the Crusades. I would guess some are good and some are not so good.
In any case, Francis Young's article seems to be a good example of how it's important to seek out different perspectives in order to get to the truth. But I would recommend being cautious in general with anything published by First Things. They very much have an agenda.
Interesting, thanks a bunch for added context on that source! I’ll add a note on my sources list.
The Myth of Progress has probably been one of the greatest sources of error in modern thought. Our information store grows (we hope) but the thin-furred apes maintaining and accessing the stacks are not much different from their ancestors a couple thousand years ago.
I'm disappointed she didn't talk about mental illness and the role it played with both accused witches and accusers. It's generally accepted that about 1% of any given population can be diagnosed with schizophrenia, and while diagnosing people of the past with modern mental illness raises a whole bunch of problems, I think it could go a long way towards explaining how the phenomenon of witchcraft accusations happened. It goes a lot further than "psychoactive ointments" would, at the very least.
Two interrelated myths are that it was a medieval phenomenon, and that it was driven by the Church. During the medieval period prosecutions for witchcraft were actually rare and the punishments weren't usually severe. The phenomenon of mass witchcraft accusations really only began near the end of the medieval period, and really took off during the Early Modern (renaissance) period, with the majority occurring between 1485 and 1700. The Catholic church brutally persecuted religious minorities, but was actually generally sceptical about witchcraft. Medieval Europeans who were accused of doing magic were usually just shamed in front of their communities by having to do a public act of penance, e.g. standing outside the church holding a candle. But during the Reformation, the Church lost much of its authority and many states became Protestant, meaning that witchcraft trials were taken over by the secular courts. Standards of evidence slipped massively, and death sentences became much more common.
here in Denmark witch trials only really became a thing in the 16th and 17th century, and died quickly out after that
Great video and wonderful content overall. Having done a lot of episodes myself about the early modern which trials it's amazing how much misinformation is still out there. Thanks for making such a great video and for all your content!
So fun to see you're also on this channel
All about supporting my queer Jewish historian folks!@@ladylongsleeves3175
Love you Dr.Sledge!
Would love a collaboration with Kaz, Dr Sledge, Angela Pucca and Dan Atrell
You're the reason I know about the Maleus Maleficarum!
In my country the general story is: When crops didn't grow well or a cow died, then at times people saw it as a convenient excuse to accuse random women in the village, whom they didn't like, of witchcraft. Men would also sometimes accuse their wives of witchcraft since a divorce wasn't possible.
Most of the ensuing lawsuits led to aquittal, or they were fines. Some were convicted and burned but fewer than public imagination will have it.
Witches have been convenient explanations for bad things all over the world. Dry cows, bad crops, unseasonal storms, illness, and so on. There are some cultures that regard death itself as unnatural, whatever the cause. And then the people look for the witch and do whatever their culture demands.
The absolute majority of people historically accused of witchcraft would be comprised of men tho
I could go on the longest rant about this. When I studied history years and years ago, we had a whole class about this as the formost expert on the witch hunt here in Norway was a professor. Here were the two biggest take aways from that class.
1. IT WAS PETTY AS FUCK!
2. The sami people were a very convenient target.
Now I'm going to casually paraphrase one witchcraft story from my city, I don't remember names anymore, I just remember how weird it was to read the first hand account documents about this. Okay, so woman A is accusing woman B of witchcraft, because she hasn't been able to get pregnant, and she thinks woman B is using witchcraft on her husband to prevent it. Then woman B is like 'Hold on, I didn't do that, those are just God's punishment because you cursed my cows, and now they are dying'. Woman A is like: ' Um, no, I didn't do that, that was my mother in law. You learned witchcraft from her'. Then a third woman shows up and is like: 'Yeah, her mother in law is a witch.' Then a man speaks up and agrees, and more and more agrees. So now everyone has decided that the mother in law is a witch. She was hanged for this if I remeber correctly. I don't remember what happened to A and B, I just remembered thinking that this was some Desperate Housewilfe level drama.
Accusing people of witchcraft was used to deal with people you didn't like, or to gain something.
Also, as I studied this stuff a bit in England too. The witch hunt ordeal became a bit of a protistant vs chatolic ordeal, they were accusing each other.
that is W I L D. (and petty)
When I interned at my german hometowns archive i got to hold a hexenhammer that had a little handwritten note of names of women who had been hanged
The whole "witches they couldn't burn" thing has always bothered because the whole point was that none of the women were witches. They were just women. It's always struck me as an attempt by yt feminist to blanket themselves in a more marginalized identity in order to be taken seriously. And we know how that plays out.
Yeah, or you could view it as a coping mechanism for women who ARE still very much oppressed, and who are looking for ways to contextualize their experiences. The feminist-bashing rhetoric is just not a good look. I hate how little empathy and understanding we have for women in general.
Either you lack reading comprehension, or you're honestly telling me to have more empathy for my oppressors, which is wild. In any case, I don't respect your opinion enough to care about how I "look" to you.
I won't pretend to understand you, because I really don't know what you're referring to as "witches they couldn't burn". Could you give a cite or further reference? I also don't know what you mean by "sympathy for my oppressers", because I don't see any reference to any such thing in the previous comment. I'm wondering if you both are talking past each other and not even referring to the same things, but getting angry about it anyways!
@@squirlmy It makes sense if you assume "my oppressors" are "feminists".
Also, the "witches they couldn't burn" thing is covered in the video.
@@mchlle94
Ah yes, the businesswoman striding over the homeless man in her high heels and complaining about how much his existence oppresses her.
Piss off.
As an individual who identifies as both non binary and a witch; thanks Kaz for this amazing video and for repeatedly stating that both men and women have been called "deemed" a witch throughout time. Thank you too for clarifying how much of a modern religion Wicca actually is. I think it's super important too to clarify that not all witches are Wiccans and not all Wiccans are witches. Wicca is a religion, where witchcraft is a practice, a craft- hence; witch"craft". Anyone (regardless what gender/gender identity) who practices witchcraft, is therefore a witch, just like someone (regardless what gender/gender identity) who practices/plays the violin is therefore a violinist.
ok, but I've seen those "my outfit would get me burned for witchcraft in the middle ages" with stuff like, idk, studded leather lingerie tops, booty shorts and baphomet-themed everything. some of those outfits would absolutely get you sentenced for witchcraft. not many ways to interpret a shirt that says "im weirdly horny for demons"
pointy shoes got some people executed before becoming the fashion norm later lmao
thank you for this! i'm a witch who's been learning about Witchcraft, Paganism and other traditions for a few years now and i still feel like i know nothing!! a lot of the most innocent-seeming new books and sources we use currently still are full of misinformation, lack of historical context, cultural appropriation, and more. even elder Witches believe lies we've been told, on purpose or by accident out of genuine ignorance. there is so much behind our current ideas in Paganism and trying to learn the truth about everything is overwhelming, it feels like a neverending cycle of learning and then unlearning! but i value knowing where every idea i'm introduced to came from, and debunking the lies about it all. thank you for helping the daunting task of clearing up of confusion in the sea of mixing and adopting and appropriating that is behind western Paganism and Witchcraft.
If you are interested in these modern versions of the traditions, then please do your homework. That is, read up on actual practices and historical beliefs from scholarly sources. Good sources can be found out there. If you're interested in British Isles paganisms and mythology, go find or watch some of the lectures by Ronald Hutton. Start there and you can branch out. But for the Gods' sake, don't touch anything by Llewellyn or mass marker publishers that specialize in teen drivel.
I've dropped and picked up the practice many times over the years because I feel like I do research and find a few books that look promising for learning actual history of specific folk practices and then come to find out its another blend of cultures and im not getting closer to the truth of what I'm trying to learn about. I found one about germanic folk practices and it was written by 2 alleged historians/witches with doctorates. I got like half way though and they started stating that they practiced the full wheel of the year and that white sage and rosemary can be substituted for any herb. Very frustrating
@@grimmsfairytales2224 yeah, it can be frustrating for sure.
I have the same issue, Im a celtic pagan as I have a great grandmother who practiced a lot. Current day paganism is filled with so much appropriation and capitalistic greed that it feels impossible to find the truth. I managed to find a friend who has cleared up a LOT of the misinformation and that im learning from
No need to apologize for belated spooky tidings. Even "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" makes mention of scary ghost stories. Spooky-til-Spring!
Thank you for sharing! I was raised Wiccan and as I grow older and wiser I’ve come to realize a lot of things I was taught as fact are really misinformation perpetuated by a few major names-history and our narratives of the past are always more complicated that we initially think.
I always learn something from you! 💕 -A Fellow Dr. Pepper Lesbian
When I see "We are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn", I cringe so hard lmao
yeah women trying desperately to hold on to the few figures of female empowerment in modern culture truly is cringe, right?
@@quinnandvalor9657 yeah "desperate" is right lol
From what I can see, it's mostly said by TERFs, such as JKR. TERFs having a persecution complex is not a surprise
@@quinnandvalor9657 It definitely is.
@@quinnandvalor9657i get what you are saying and agree attacking women for larping is silly, that said the actual sentiment is very inflamatory. not necessarily wrong but you cant just say "*you* killed my ancestors" and expect people to not react poorly lol
Worth noting- Pagan comes from the Latin, paganus, meaning villager/rustic. A lot of the derogatory discourse on pagans mirrors anti rural sentiment and views of their supposed backwardness, as they were deemed to deviate from the progression towards organised religion, from polytheism into monotheism, etc. And a lot of this time period also saw a growing suspicion of rural outsiders migrating to towns as it coincided with changes to poor law relief. Conflicting views of charity and suspicion of doctrinal differences by the 15th century seemed to interestingly converge and become the fertile ground for the myths of later ages.
Additionally, I deeply appreciate the end message of this video. Its very easy to reduce down huge stretches of time and talk very broadly about very particular and complicated things and linear progressive histories are just so strangely seductive when tip toeing into a topic you're not fully familiar with.
God, this video is great to watch. As someone who’s been trying to study the history of witchcraft for god knows how long, I’ve had to wade through so much misinformation
If anyone uses Cousera, they have a really cool class on Magic in the Medieval Ages, which covers not only witchcraft, but Islamic and Jewish magic as well as “magical sciences” like astrology and geomancy.
Yeah, i find ye olde magic beliefs intersting, and they help with worldbuilding.
Dear God have these people seen old times brooms? Have they never had a splinter?!
Kaz can you do a whats in my closet? I understand you aren’t a fashion channel but I genuinely get so excited seeing your outfits and accessories.
The "witches broomstick" myths are pretty laughable when you're aware of how differently brooms would have been constructed during the middle ages. A common method was braiding soaked branches together and tying them together with cordage. Kinda hard to insert that kinda handle anywhere sensitive...
A more modern style broom would be more of a luxury item considering the amount of tools used to carve the handle.
Even a modern broom is not exactly…. Let’s call it “optimized for appealing to a large portion of the vagina-possessing demographic.”
Particularly when so many much more readily available alternatives existed.
to be fair carved wood handles do last a real long time if maintained but would be family heirlooms. in much of the world extremely heavy use tools like hoes and machetes often have wood carved handles that get maintained for decades and decades
hm thinking about it i dont think theyre that difficult, getting the varnish/oil is the difficult bit but most cultures had wood preservation methods for a long time. thing is theyre wood so very few would survive past 200 years.
I will say, I think we should give tiktokers a little grace on associating witches and midwives. During one of my core history classes, I wrote a paper on medieval women's medical practice and my professor (someone that has a doctorate in medieval historical and religious studies) suggested I look into the link between women practicing medicine and witch trials. I was, of course, intrigued but found next to nothing concrete and what I did find was from the "Renaissance" (early modern period) not the Middle Ages. However, there is an interesting correlation there. As the early modern period began there was a persecution of medical practitioners (usually women). And that was due to the rising requirement of licensure and degrees for the practice of medicine. The reason women were more frequently persecuted by courts was of course because they couldn't go to the universities that provided the degrees. That is what ended the careers of many women who were physicians and it did not effect midwives because it was accepted that midwifery could be taught via practical experience but somehow medicine (which at the time was not hugely complicated) could not be taught in a practical apprenticeship. Anyways, point is, my professor who has a doctorate on the medieval period fell somewhat victim to the myth as they had never done research on it themself, so it makes sense that armchair historians who likely can't access a lot of critical papers on the topic also fell victim to the topic.
Bro I love how you dispel myths like this it soothes the historically inaccuracy rashes that plague my sensitive historian skin😂
I spent part of my childhood in Brittany, and I lived near Brocéliande - which was considered by many to be the forest where Merlin's tomb was. One thing I noticed about neo-paganism is that a lot of things they think is part of Celtic religions that were surpressed by Christianity are... actually part of folk Catholicism. Celtic beliefs were pretty fluid, not very dogmatic, and erosion actually started not because of Christianity, but because of a little thing called the Roman Empire. They even worshipped a version of Athena/Minerva they referred to as Birgit, who came with the Roman Empire given there aren't any traces of her prior to that era.
Otherwise, people in the Middle Ages believed in fairies, unicorns, dragons, and other mythological creatures, alchemy and astrology were considered to be legitimate scientific fields (although pretty different of what we refer to as alchemy and astrology today), you have plenty of stories of saints meeting the Fair Folk and so on. There's even an old story that St. Michael chose what is today Mont Saint-Michel because King Arthur killed a dragon there. If you read St. Joan of Arc's trial (cw for mentions of SA), the judges were trying really hard to find motives to condemn her for witchcraft given it would be an easy way for them to get rid of her. She mentions leaving food for fairies with her friends and dancing around the May Tree, and that is not noted as being abnormal or pagan at all, which does show that the clergy knew about these folk practices and at the very least tolerated them. That led to her not being burned on accounts of witchcraft at all (contrarily to what I've seen some people claim, even if the texts of her trial are the most well-documented in the Middle Ages and VERY easy to find on the Internet), but on accounts of... heresy, for wearing men's clothes (yeah, that was a thing). Because when she was initially condemned to be imprisoned for life, she wasn't transferred to a women's prison as she requested, but kept in a men's prison, and to protect herself from sexual assault, she put her men's clothes back and then received a death sentence for recanting.
Yes. Sir Isaac Newton, who was likely one of the smartest people to ever live, and invented entire fields of science just because he had nothing better to do, also had a great interest in alchemy.
I was just thinking about this because of the overlap with the 'burning times' enshrined mythos and transphobes in paganism.... it's so complex but ultimately not at the same time lol! I'm so happy you made this video! A similar subject is the weird assignment of "goddess" to every pre- iron age artifact made to look like women, which is informed by victorian gender essentialism but then processed through 60's and 70's era academic feminism... it's a mess!
It's so interesting to think that misinformation was just as prevalent throughout history, and if it was written down, it was somehow legitimized enough to keep it relevant as "evidence" in current arguments. I Love this channel. 😊
We have a local museum in Nottingham that goes through the history of crime through the medieval era up to modern day. They had some really good examples on how the Catholic church banned the belief in witches as heresy. They also showed many recorded examples of when a new child was welcomed into the community, the local priest and healer/witch would visit the child usually at the same time.
If you ever want to look at another deeply mistaken area is the Spanish Inquisition, which was one of the first juristictons to ban Torture while getting confessions.
Thank you for the call outs on Wicca and differentiating it from other neo-paganism. It is good, too, that the actual history is burbling up to a higher strata of mainstream.
kaz I have to tell you how much I love your videos. They're not only aesthetically beautiful and incredibly informative but your passion for history is so palpable. it's just a joy to watch you, to witness someone doing what they love in life. Thank you so much for these videos! I hope you have an amazing November ❤❤❤
Around the 1830 mark when you say that these practices were seen as a valid way to express Christianity, it reminds me of some of Alice Loxton's videos where she points out medieval graffiti in churches meant to ward off evil spirits. And things like the evil eye. I think she said that some of the inscriptions were done by priests themselves.
Our taste in music, books, movies, and clothing might not have gotten us burned at the stake back then, but it was enough for Damian Echols to get sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit in 1993. His best friend, Jason Baldwin was convicted of the same murder and only got life in prison and the prosecution used his heavy metal t-shirts as evidence that he was a Satanist. The other guy they barely knew who was supposedly in on it with them got life, too. Again, 1993. THIRTY YEARS AGO. An eighteen-year-old was sentenced to death because he was the weird Goth kid in town. We are absolutely not any better than people in the past.
Unlucky young goths. Yeah. Sad.
'History Buffs', a RUclips channel specialized in fact-checking historical movies, recently released a video comparing 'The Crucible' to the recorded facts regarding the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century. It was a fascinating watch - possibly also for you, although you obviously already know quite a lot about it.
In the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, the apostles come across a 'Magus' called Simon. Now in the 'Pilgrim's Progress', John Bunyan refers to Simon as a 'Witch'. This was about 1670, and just goes to show that the word 'witch' was a unisex word until at least that time.
It’s interesting how often the “burning times” myth is used when that could easily be used to describe the punishments doled out to Protestants during Bloody Mary’s reign!
Absolutely fascinating video. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for that end part. No one is immune to propaganda, but you CAN learn and be on the right side of history. We cannot allow our ignorance to get the best of us, genocide is happening now and we must stay vigilant.
I was hoping they would be more explicit about what they were referencing (the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli state in case it wasn't clear). But even so, it was a very important reminder. Some historical misinformation is harmless, and others are weaponized against colonized and otherwise marginalized people.
@@zkkitty2436 yeah, I definitely wish creators were able to freely speak about this atrocity without the risk of getting targeted with harassment/mass reporting and terrible terms of service biases :[
I thought the water test was because the local river or body of water was often used for baptisms, and if someone had made a pact with the devil, the baptismal waters would reject them, so they would float
From a modern-day Celtic Pagan: keep up the good work debunking and educating! Some of these things i knew from the video, and others were totally new to me!
The daughters of the witches they couldn't burn are the roommates who eat all your food and never do the dishes.
Ah so you’ve met River and Sock
@@83croissant Of course, and their mothers were the ones who'd curse you out because your chickens were too loud or some shit.
@@PrincessMadeira the Crunchy Karens
I was raised pagan/wiccan, and now as an adult, I don't consider myself religious, but I do value a lot of the rituals/traditions I was raised with. Now I just see it as a part of my culture that I enjoy having in my life. Just things like how I value animals and nature, I think lots of practices are just different ways to meditate or do something relaxing for yourself. It's all about the energy and mindset you put out in the world. and of course community. The people in my mom's pagan community have a special place in my heart.
There’s an Ursula K LeGuin quote I think about a lot when it comes to people talking about the primal and esoteric nature of women’s knowledge:
“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior - women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”
I wrote a research paper in the 1970s using Murray as one of my primary sources to prove that pagan beliefs were common in Shakespeare's time. How sad to find the woman wasn't a creditable source. Here's me thinking she was a red-haired firebrand in academia, only to find she was a white-haired zealot without credibility. I received my copy of your new book, Liberated, and loved it. Thank you. Sometimes I wondered whether it was Cahun's voice or your voice, and I loved that dissolving of the distinction between you.
Seems like it was believed by most people in the 70’s so don’t feel bad. -I mean, what am I saying, you probably don’t feel bad, you just admitted to receiving new information and adjusting your worldview, and that is a great thing. I think I get a terrible impression of people around your generation-pardon me if I assume but you went to college in the 70’s so you may be my parents’ age - and it’s just that I see a lot of really angry people on Facebook and the cool aunts and uncles and mames are out there minding their business. Thank you. Thank you for being you
As a percentage of the population, millions today is about the equivalent of tens of thousands in the pre-industrial times.
I'm so grateful you tackle this subject. As a wiccan myself, I'm so happy you lift all the cliches around medieval witchcraft
OMG OMG OMG I can't believe it!!! You're mentioned Michelet for romanticizing the medieval times! I love you SO MUCH!!! ❤❤❤
He is so notorious in my home country, France, for spreading all sorts of bullshit about the story of our country, and history in general.
I'm definitely a fan of yours
Thanks for this video, thanks for the debunk. Everyone interested in the medieval era should see it.
Hugs from France 31:33
I really like the story of Johannes Junius, a mayor accused of witchcraft and put on trial, eventually killed on baseless acusations, after facing torture and threats. I believe he was prosecuted for not being severe enough in his search for witches and signs of witchcraft within his comunity, which lead to suspicion about his leniancy being bc he was a witch actually 🫠. His letter to his daughter is so fucking sad. Just the clear defeat and feeling of sorrow he describes. It was so clear he was very aware of the injustice of the situation (being that he was, surprise surprise, not a freaking witch) and knew there was no hope for him, managing to say goobye to his daughter only by letter, assuring her of his innocence and telling her all the crazy stuff he was facing.
It's brutal. It really puts into clear, unromanticezed perspective, what the witch hunts really were: Mass histeria promoted by the church and perpetrated by people in position of power to keep themselves in power by controling those around them, using everything they could, from random deseases to unforseen local tragidies to religious outrage, in the search for money, influence and dominance. All in the name of God.
The Bamberg witch trials lasted from 1626 to 1631, and were ended when Church officials became outraged by the proceedings, including the indiscriminate and unlimited use of torture.
The Prince-Bishop of Bamberg did not represent the entire Church.
One related thing I always see is the bullshit story about St. Patrick supposedly committing some genocide of Irish pagans. I new a neopagan girl once who would talk about how “traumatic” St Patrick’s Day was, using the language of actual generation trauma for defendants of genocide victims that I really doubt she got from her WASP parents.
the idea of brooms being the only thing medieval women had for self pleasure is WILLLLD. people could jerk it without getting gooch splinters if they wanted to i promise the girlies were not living like that
This predates TikTok- my college professor (admittedly his specialty was bio and not history) taught this in a class on botanical medicine in 2009 (I’m assuming he used the source Kaz mentions in the video). It has lived rent free in my head since then as a “weird fact” that didn’t feel like it would hold up to scrutiny (but how does one find the time to scrutinize a “fact” like “medieval witches used broomsticks to freebase with their v*g”)
@@daeglo87 oh yeah i dont doubt that it predates tiktok
As a medievalist, THANK YOU! I have been irritated by witchcraft and Burning Times myths for actual years and it’s good to see someone actually trying to address them for once.
It’s always a good time when Kaz uploads 😊
I know almost nothing about european history but it would be interesting to see a video about witchcraft hunting in Latin America, the thing is that some of those practices have persisted even to this day in small towns and we even had "las guerras cristeras" when many atrocities were committed in the name of the Christian god, promoted by spanish conquistadores, so i bet it would be worth it to talk about it 😢 a lot of small ethnicities still suffer from this erasure and satanizing of their cultures by Christianity
Man you would love how many indigenous creed, Religion and Traditions became some flavor of catholicism over time in Latin America.
Though I recommended watching Djpeacecobbler's video on the Aztecs to get a view on how both relievant the conquistadors are and irrelevant they were in context.
There is more “witches” apparently harmed in current times then in all the burning times in just what you are saying. Latin American, and also Africa. There are videos on it. I just recently saw this. Just thought you may want to know. It is a bit jarring though.
"To all faithful Christians to whom this writing may come, health in Christ our Lord and the apostolic benediction.
The sublime God so loved the human race that He created man in such wise that he might participate, not only in the good that other creatures enjoy, but endowed him with capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face; and since man, according to the testimony of the sacred scriptures, has been created to enjoy eternal life and happiness, which none may obtain save through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary that he should possess the nature and faculties enabling him to receive that faith; and that whoever is thus endowed should be capable of receiving that same faith. Nor is it credible that any one should possess so little understanding as to desire the faith and yet be destitute of the most necessary faculty to enable him to receive it. Hence Christ, who is the Truth itself, that has never failed and can never fail, said to the preachers of the faith whom He chose for that office ‘Go ye and teach all nations.’ He said all, without exception, for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith.
The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
By virtue of Our apostolic authority We define and declare by these present letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, which shall thus command the same obedience as the originals, that the said Indians and other peoples should be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching the word of God and by the example of good and holy living."
Sublimis Deus : Official Papal Bull On the Enslavement and Evangelization of Indians. Pope Paul III - 1537
Many of the activities in Latin America were done in defiance of the expressed views of the Pope.
“Guerras Cristeras”?
Fantastic video! Always look forward to your work debunking popular stereotypes about the past. As a historian of the early Middle Ages, the period so often referred to as ‘the dark ages’, it drives me nuts when people apply ideas of early modern witch hunts and back project them to a time when they didn’t happen much at all.
Imagine how future generations will interpret and reimagine our eras, how much exaggerated our problems and events will be and how events from very distant times will be merged, mixed and combined with new ideas that didn't exist at all.
i want to mention the book 'caliban and the witch' by silvia federici here because i'm surprised it wasn't included. federici spends the book talking about the material conditions that led to and came out of the witch hunts as it relates to the development of capitalism.
taking a point from the video- there were more witch burnings in the renaissance than earlier periods precisely BECAUSE they were 'rational' and wanted to persecute people who were 'irrational'. thomas hobbes wrote in the 1650's (maybe 40's? i forget) that while he didn't think witchcraft existed, he felt it was important to punish 'witches' so that people wouldn't even attempt witchcraft.
federici makes a very compelling argument about how the black death, which killed a lot of people, changed the class dynamic between serf and lord and began the idea that a government should think about its population in a numerical scientific way. this led to the persecution of 'witches' (again, whether or not the accusers truly believed in witchcraft) as a means of restricting womens' right to choose, controlling the size of the available workforce.
awesome video! i just thought federici's marxist analysis would be a great addendum :)
I thought the bit from 13:03 alluded to Federici, among others. I also hope I'm grossly misinterpreting the bits of this video that to me feel like a denial of the underlying misogyny throughout the history and societies affected by the abrahamic religions.
It's definitely a compelling book.
I don't feel entirely convinced by it, but I'm glad I read it.
Federici is bullcrap.
I had a student who was a wiccan who described in detail this innaccurate popular version of the witch trials - millions, it happening throughout the middle ages, them all being surviving pagans etc. - in a researched essay that was not about history, abd she didn't cite sources. But bc she was presenting it as history, i didn't think it should stay in as is. I didn't have her take that info out, though, but simply asked her to find academic sources and give the version of those events that they provide, or (if she was expressing her religious ideas and want concerned about what historians say) to make it clear that these ideas were according to her religion or religious community. Like, I wouldn't let a Christian say the world was created in 7 days of was only 6000 years old in a scholarly paper if that goes against all scientific evidence and they only think that bc of their religious beliefs, so this seemed reasonable. But though she took most of my other suggestions in her edits, she kept it in after 2 more drafts and me repeating that sentiment. I don't know her motives but i can only assume she was protesting my suggestion since i would be grading her paper. The said, i feel my request was reasonable
The bible says the world was created in 6 days and on the 7th God rested! That’s why Christians rest on Sunday because you can’t work during the Shabbat. God created the world in 6 days not 7, and Eve never convinced Adam to eat an apple either. There’s at least 82 different versions of the bible and there’s no creating the world in 6 days, and other silly, inaccurate statements attributed to the bible.
Also in the Middle Ages the Roman Catholic Church taught that females didn’t have souls, as does Islam. Most people were peasants, superstitious and were illiterate.
@@brigidspencer5123 oh, I was confused for a second why you were saying what you were saying as a response to my comment, until i reread my comment. yeah, so I was raised as a conservative Christian and am still a Christian. I actually do know it's 6 days and that God rested on the seventh. The Isrealites also were supposed to rest every seven years as well bc of that, not just every 7 days. I just said 7 by accident, bc that wasn't the point of what i was saying and i have ADHD so i can more easily get distracted or forgetful than an average person. But I am going to assume most people understood what I meant, but then again the internet is where nuance goes to die. So in the spirit of that, ill point out that the the Sabbath is meant to have been originally on saturday, the day in the Jewish week corresponding to Saturn's (the astrological planet's) day in the latin calendar. But Christians changed their holy day to the first day of the week, Sunday (the sun's day), and the reason often given is that Jesus is meant to have risen on a Sunday. He was still in the tomb on the official Sabbath, having died shortly b4 the Sabbath begins on friday evening, and his followers finding it empty on Sunday morning.
I will also add that all religions in all eras have a great diversity of belief in my experience, though there is sometimes an attempt to have everyone believe the exact same thing, often to no avail. I think its unwise and unhelpful. But my point is, that I doubt all church institutions in all places throughout the medieval period believed women didn't have a soul, full stop - i don't have a source to counter that idea and don't feel the need to find one, but it seems likely to be demonstrably false that they did not think women had no soul, as they seemed regularly concerned about women's souls going to heaven alongside everyone else. The closest I've heard to that idea is about women getting a soul through childbirth or marriage, but I have only heard that pertaining to water spirits in stories written in like the 1700s and 1800s. And I know the Muslims I've met do not believe that. Though I'm sure there are uncited internet posts or out of context translations of the Quran that agree with you, and (like I said) I don't know for sure. But at any rate, I actually don't see what that has to do with whether or not there were witches burned in the middle ages. My understanding is that a variety of people were killed in various ways based mostly on forced confessions under torture, and that it mostly occurred in the 1500s and 1600s, after the invention of the printing press and occurred among protestants as much as if not more than catholics. So what you said seems to have barely any connection, hence my initial confusion.
It's been suggested that witch hunts were a response to "the little ice age" which didn't start until the 14th centaury, and devastated the food supply for hundreds of years. And also overlaps with the reformation and several other huge cultural and political shifts across Europe. Some churches (particularly English ones, which are relatively young, and sitting on a northern island dealing with some of the worst of the little ice age) supported the hunts, while others (particularly the old "establishment" Catholic church, centered in the warmer southern peninsulas of Europe) mostly sought to prevent witch hunts.
Nobody executes witch hunts just because they're uneducated or whatever. Witch hunts (figurative and literal) happen out of desperation, paranoia, or occasionally by authoritarians. The middle ages were mostly fine, they didn't need scapegoats.
And yeah, "Pagan" was mostly just another word for "heathen" or "non-Christian" or maybe just "foreigner". But, Europeans generally knew of Jewish people, and so marginalized & scapegoated them separately from any "witches" or similar.
i think people stuggle to understand that we are exactly the same as the humans that lived 500, 5000, or 300,000 years ago. we are not more intelligent, we just have more knowledge
Precisely. All the good and bad that comes with it, too.
Totally agree that we are equally as stupid and “gullible” as we were back then. They did what they could with the knowledge available, and so do we 🤣😅
you literally never miss kaz! so refreshing whenever i see accurate and well-researched history content. thank you!
The aestheticism and emotion in this video are beyond what you've ever produced IMO. I've found other videos more interesting but I was arrested by your passion here, especially in the final call to action. And three years later I STILL love and appreciate you continuing to tell people to wear their f*cking masks. Thanks for another video. I hope parenthood is treating you well.
The issue with wicca not being an accurate practice of ancient pagan religions is that we don't really have much historically accurate information about pagan religions. Most of their religious practices and beliefs have been lost to history, and we'll probably never know. And in reality, for most pagan religions, there probably never was a 'correct' way to practice it, or any kind of canonised belief system.
The term "pagan" actually just means non-abrahamic religion. You could argue that Hinduism is a pagan religion.
i was in my uni’s library yesterday and saw your book on one of the carts and nearly pulled a muscle with how quickly i changed course to get to it lmao. i had been looking for a copy for ages, and was so excited to see it there! i read the whole thing in one sitting and really loved it. you did a great job :D