The Lore and Myths of Witches Chapter 3: Parchments, Pilgrims, and the Birth of the Witch

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back, brave listeners. We've flown from sagas and spinning

0:04 Speaker 1: huts into a Europe of abbeys, market places and shadowy lanes.

0:09 Speaker 1: Here ideas about witchcraft were written in ink and carved

0:12 Speaker 1: in church doors long before they flared into mass hunts.

0:17 Speaker 1: Pull up a bench by the monastery fire, and maybe

0:20 Speaker 1: keep an eye on that monk. Copying charms in the margins.

0:23 Speaker 2: Churchmen, charms and early manuals ninth to thirteenth centuries.

0:30 Speaker 1: For centuries after Rome's fall, Christian scholars treated magic as

0:34 Speaker 1: mostly delusion. The Canon Episcopy, a tenth century church text,

0:40 Speaker 1: warned priests about women claiming to ride out at night

0:43 Speaker 1: with the goddess Diana or Herodius, not because it was true,

0:47 Speaker 1: but because the devil could trick their imaginations. The message

0:51 Speaker 1: teach repentance, not punishment. Still, villages loved their charms. A

0:57 Speaker 1: priest might bless fields in spring or mutter, or a

1:00 Speaker 1: Latin prayer over a patient while slipping in an old

1:03 Speaker 1: pagan formula pastoral care with a hint of hedge wizardry.

1:08 Speaker 1: Parishioners scratched crosses above doorways, war relics, or buried animal

1:14 Speaker 1: hearts to repel malaficium. The line between devotion and spellcraft

1:20 Speaker 1: was porous.

1:23 Speaker 3: Need to keep your liturgy and your hexes neatly separated.

1:27 Speaker 3: Tri parchment divider tabs for priests who moonlight as folk healers.

1:33 Speaker 2: Universities, lawyers, and the devil's packed thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.

1:40 Speaker 1: By the twelve hundreds, Europe's universities were booming, and scholars

1:44 Speaker 1: loved categorizing everything, including sin, theology, and law, began fusing

1:50 Speaker 1: village fears with scholastic precision. Papal bulls like super ilious

1:55 Speaker 1: Specula one three hundred and twenty six condemned necromancy. Secular

2:00 Speaker 1: courts punished malefactors using poisons or spells. Meanwhile, Europe was

2:07 Speaker 1: racked by the Black Death, famines and wars. People craved explanations.

2:13 Speaker 1: Was the neighbour's cow dying because of damp weather or

2:16 Speaker 1: because she muttered Latin backwards? Enter Inquisitors who collected rumors

2:22 Speaker 1: of night gatherings, ointments, and packs signed theatrically in blood

2:28 Speaker 1: printing presses spread these notions fast. By fourteen eighty seven,

2:33 Speaker 1: two Dominican friars released the infamous Malleus Maleficarum Hammer of Witches,

2:39 Speaker 1: insisting witches formed a vast conspiracy against Christendom, fueled by

2:44 Speaker 1: female frailty and the devil's coaching. It wasn't official doctrine everywhere,

2:49 Speaker 1: but it gave magistrates a ready made villain.

2:52 Speaker 3: This grim milestone is sponsored by Hammer Light, the only

2:56 Speaker 3: witch hunting manual that doubles as a handy paperwork.

3:01 Speaker 2: Festivals, fertility and folk memory.

3:05 Speaker 1: Parallel to clerical worry. Village life kept its own seasonal pageant,

3:09 Speaker 1: may day polls, Midsummer bonfires, and harvest dances all carried

3:13 Speaker 1: traces of older rites. Some involved masking or fertility charms.

3:18 Speaker 1: Others offered playful license. Before Lent's austerity, when clerics looked

3:23 Speaker 1: on nervously, these traditions could be branded sabbaths or pagan survivals.

3:29 Speaker 1: In the Basque valleys, rustic parties called akolaes goat fields

3:35 Speaker 1: featured music, food, and stories about spirits blessing flocks. Centuries later,

3:42 Speaker 1: inquisitors would reinterpret them as secret devil meetings. In Italy

3:46 Speaker 1: for July, peasants testified about the benandanti dream walkers who

3:50 Speaker 1: claimed to fight witches to protect crops armed only with

3:54 Speaker 1: fennel stocks. They weren't villains but folk guardians, proof that

3:58 Speaker 1: witch could still mean champion.

4:01 Speaker 3: Protecting your weed from phantom pests. Fennel fighters has your

4:06 Speaker 3: back battle tested since the fifteen.

4:08 Speaker 2: Hundreds, setting the stage for the hunts.

4:12 Speaker 1: By fifteen hundred, Europe's cauldron of theology, law, folk memory,

4:16 Speaker 1: and political tension was simmering. Witches were no longer just

4:20 Speaker 1: herbalists or mischievous moon chasers. They were being cast as

4:24 Speaker 1: agents in a grand sinister plot. All that remained was

4:29 Speaker 1: a spark and a few hard winters to turn theory

4:32 Speaker 1: into bonfire. That spark is where we're headed next. Get

4:38 Speaker 1: your cloaks and keep your fingers crossed. Chapter four takes

4:42 Speaker 1: us into the roaring heart of the witch Hunts, where

4:45 Speaker 1: fear and fire swept across continents. Hi'm amy, and this

4:49 Speaker 1: has been the Strange History Podcast. If this episode tickled

4:54 Speaker 1: your pineal gland, stirred your cauldron, or at least made

4:57 Speaker 1: you laugh awkwardly in public, sure to subscribe, rate, and share.

5:03 Speaker 1: It helps keep our podcast from fading into the void

5:06 Speaker 1: like so many unswept chalk circles. Until next time, Stay

5:10 Speaker 1: Strange stay magical, and don't forget to ground yourself after

5:14 Speaker 1: flying off on your broomstick of curiosity.