From Burning Times to
Beatitudes
1.
Witch Persecutions
1.
3.
No photographs
2.
No mention of Salem
Several references to Monty Python and the Holy
Grail
2.
Women of the Churches
1.
Only to page 213
Joan of Arc
• An extraordinary story for
many reasons:
– Young peasant girl does
good and meets the
Dauphin
– lives among military men
yet maintained her virginity
and none contradicted
– Successful strategist and
inspiration on the
battlegrounds
Joan of Arc
• Her story is also extraordinary because we know
it intimately – her trial and the witnesses’
testimony tell us much about peasant life in
France in the 15th century
• She was born in 1412, a trying time for France
as the English had occupied important
strongholds of France since 1380
• Her crime, summarizing the twelve articles, was
heresy and she died for it
Was she considered a witch?
• Joan of Arc was not
typical in so many
ways but that includes
her trial and burning for
heresy
• She is much more
likened to her own
Saints Catherine and
Margaret – a martyr
(who became a Saint in
1920)
• She was not a part of
the witch hunt – that
came a bit later with
the publication of
Malleus Malificarum
A long line of witches
• “Where there are many
women there are many
witches” (165)
• Malleus Malificarum is
published about one
hundred years before the
widespread persecution
• No scholar has been able
to explain the
phenomenon of witch
persecutions that began
in the late 16th and early
17th century (W. Europe)
and continued into the
18th century (E. Europe)
Issue of authority?
• According to the writings of the churchmen men
in positions of power and authority in the Church
and the state encouraged the first accusations
and were the most zealous in hunting down the
evil ones (167)
• Witches became part of purges and expulsion of
Jews, Protestants, lapsed Catholics, the poor,
etc. They were not always the only reason, they
often provided a vehicle for expulsion of
“undesirable” groups
A Woman’s Issue
• Midwives, however,
were often targeted:
– The mystery of their
knowledge of the
birthing process
– Translated to access
infants for the Black
Mass
• Often, the accusation
of one woman led to
many other
accusations
Not trial by ordeal – torture was
more “just” and “legal”
• Trial by ordeal left it
to God
• During this period –
“law” and “science”
were used
– Law including
torture
– Science including
astrology and
alchemy
• Church courts
followed strict rules
of procedure but
still knew that
“things go bump in
the night”
The strapado
A shift in focus
• By the beginning the 17th century, the
focus shifted:
– Rather than calling them heretics united
with the Devil, they were “possessed”,
unwilling souls in need of exorcism and
prayer, not execution
– False accusations brought fines
– By 1613, even the Spanish Inquisition
said the confessions had gone too far
and absolved over 1000 people in the
Logrono region of Spain
Remnants of the Peasant Woman’s
World
What role does the Church play?
• For some, opportunity
• Hrotsvit of Gandersheim
(930-990) used her
position as abbess to
write legends of
exemplary saints and
plays to counter images
of weak corruptible
women
Another learned woman
• Herrad of Landsberg in Alsace
• With her community of sixty nuns they produced the
Hortus deliciarum (The Garden of Delights)
Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179
• Few matched her
intelligence in science
and herb medicine,
music, literature and
art
• She also represents
the cusp, the joint
between the early
Christian women who
challenged sex roles
and the coming of the
centralized Church
Rise of Universities
• These became
male domains,
women in the
Church lost
authority through
loss of land and
office, but also
learning
• Thomas Aquinas –
women had no
power of grace in
them
Aquinas – bit of a jerk
The Woman who would be Pope
• Like Greek comedians
before him, Steven of
Bourbon wrote a
cautionary tale of a
woman, dressed as a
man, who became Pope,
but then her lust for a
young man did her in –
she died in childbirth
Class Issues
• Women of higher
class could still get
into the higher orders
of the church
• Nuns, sequestered,
cloistered; even here
she looks a bit fuzzy
and imprisoned
A Love Story-with castration
Heloise and
Abelard – her
reputation
stayed
remarkably
intact despite
the child Astralabe
The Orders
• Benedictine, Augustinian, (older) Cistercian,
Cluniac and Carmelite (newer) orders all
accepted women’s communities begrudgingly
• Franciscan and Dominican were least likely to
accept “sorority” establishments
• Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 forbade any
more orders, so women had to join what was
available
Benedictine nuns – a life
unchanged over hundreds of years
Mystics
• Helfta community of mystics
including:
• Mechthild, Gertrude and
Mechthild (seen here in
1258):
• Wealthy, pious, learned
• Mystics have a direct
relationship with God,
usually coming through
meditation and prayer,
rather than books