The Rest Is History - 26. Witches

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Suzannah Lipscomb joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to discuss the history of witches and witchcraft. Why did society see witches as a threat and what is the modern equivalent of a witch hunt? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning or in rain? Some of the most famous words ever written by Shakespeare. And they're spoken, of course, by one of the witches in Macbeth. And witches and witchcraft, these are the theme of today's episode of The Rest Is History. But wait, before we go any further, by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Dominic Sandbrook, how are you doing?

Sledgehammer wit, Tom, as ever. I'm very well, thank you. How are you? The rapier shark slash. So, Dominic, a fan of the dark arts a practitioner perhaps uh no i've got a lot of dark art stuff in my house because my son is massively into jk rowling i know jk rowling is persona non grata in some quarters but this is definitely a rolling friendly household so my house is stuffed with witchcraft and wizardry and all that sort of carry on brilliant well that that should give us something to talk about be good perhaps to get on to on to Harry Potter at some point in this podcast.

But we're very honoured to be joined today by our special guest, Susanna Lipscomb, star of TV, who also happens to be Professor of History at Roehampton University, the author of a series of award-winning books on early modern history, including, most recently, The Voices of Nîmes, about women women sex and marriage in reformation long doc but she's also the author more germainly for our purposes of the recently published ladybird book of witchcraft susie so good to have you great title

yes we've moved on slightly from jack and jill with the. Well, it's a great series. I've also written one, so I know that it's the very highest quality scholarship. And witchcraft, was this a subject that you kind of got into on the back of your interest in early modern history, or was it the other way around? It's sort of the other way around, because my supervisor for my doctorate was Robin Briggs, who's a great scholar of witchcraft and looked at the witches the trials of witches in Lorraine particularly which is one of the

independent duchies that was particularly keen on executing witches and my college advisor was who's worked on witchcraft and the witch craze in Germany so I mean I was I barely evaded witchcraft and the witch craze in Germany. So I mean, I was I barely evaded witchcraft, frankly, as my personal studies. So it's sort of not surprising at all that I've come around to it in the end. So there's so much to get into. I guess the big question, Susie, is, is witchcraft a kind of constant in human history? Have we always believed in witches? I mean, I'm guessing you'll say kind of yes and no, will you? Yes, we have always believed in witches, it seems. So the earliest case that I've come across is, and this is far more Tom's territory than mine, is ancient Greece. So it's about 330 BC. There was an alleged witch called Theurus of Lemnos. And so she was prosecuted for casting incantations

and using harmful drugs. And then we see it appear again and again throughout time. Basically, time is punctuated by there being witchcraft cases, whether you're talking 30 BC or just after the AD, BC, or I don't call it anymore anymore but you know what i mean but just the um into the modern era and um and we see this throughout the anglo-saxons we see it in medieval period and so the period i've particularly worked on is where those beliefs become prosecutions where there's a particularly serious uh craze i suppose um and people are concerned

with trying to persecute witches under law and then have them executed but they've been with us throughout time so is there is the big shift um from thinking witchcraft was fine and it was just something that people did it might be a bit, but it was kind of carrying on to thinking that it was sinful and must be extirpated at all costs. I don't think it was a form of heresy. Right. I think that's the shift. Yeah, because I was wondering about heresy, because famously the Middle Ages, described by R.A. Moore, is a persecuting society. And the definite sense you get with heresy, and Dominic, we talked about this in relation to the supposed Cathars.

We did. Is that you get kind of friars, learned scholars who go back to classical antiquity and kind of plunder it for source material. And then they kind of create a package and then they project it onto people and it kind of catches fire. And I guess the is what happens with witchcraft that essentially, what is it? It's by the kind of the 14th century and then really into the 15th century that the church starts to conflate sorcery with heresy and so the assumption becomes that if you were having dealings with the devil then in a sense you are no longer christian and therefore you must be targeted for that reason yeah so it's the end of the 15th century, and it particularly happens through the famous book,

Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of the Witches, which was written by a German Dominican monk called Heinrich Kramer. And he reproduced a papal bull that had recently been published that said that witches were heretics. So it's exactly that that's happening in terms of elevating the threat of witchcraft from being a local sorcerer to being something that is on a kind of this transcendental level where, you know, there's this absolute threat to souls as well as lives. And so I think that's crucial. And then the other shift that happens is that once that has the weight of the church or supposed weight of the church behind it, then we see it starting to be accepted at an elite level. And indeed, we even get demonologies written by members of the elites, including a reigning monarch. And we end up with seeing it becoming a crime under law. So there's kind of two shifts. So it becomes seen as heresy, and then becomes seen as a crime. And that's a crucial thing that has to happen in the 16th

century. And why does that happen where it does? So obviously, Germany is, you mentioned Linda Roper, and she wrote that great book about witchcraft in Germany. And in England, we think of it as, you know, the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, and we obviously witchcraft in Scotland, and then the American colonies, the crucible and all that kind of carry on. But I'm not aware that it's such a big deal in, you know, Spain or Italy or something. Is it places where, I mean, to a sort of layman, it would look like it's places with a lot of Protestants. Is that right? It certainly does it's places with a lot of Protestants. Is that right? It certainly does happen in places with a lot of Protestants.

And I think it helps, as it were, I think in areas where there's a particularly kind of hot form of Protestantism. So in England, it becomes to be called Puritanism. It means that people have a kind of piebald mentality they see the world in black and white they see the devil at work everywhere and it's certainly true that in areas like scotland um in east anglia and essex there and in parts of germany we are we do have a particularly sort of inflamed um no pun intended, culture around Protestantism. And so that is true. But there are trials, although there are fewer,

there are trials in Catholic areas. So, for example, I mentioned Lorraine, the Duchy of Lorraine, which is broadly Catholic, and there are many trials there. There aren't that many in France, about 3,000 over the period, which is not that many, but there are some in Spain. So there are trials in Catholic areas. It's not quite so clear cut as just being Protestant. And I think it's because in this period, whether you're Protestant or Catholic, you're concerned about what is wrong in terms of faith, that the Reformation has produced this kind of

atmosphere of angst about the end days, about whether the devil was at work. Perhaps it's slightly more the case amongst Protestants, but Catholics are certainly concerned about it as well. Well, Susie, there's a brilliant comment by carlos a who says that um that hunting witches was actually the most intensely ecumenical event of the reformation era which is a kind of sober way of putting it and he kind of talks about you know it's almost one of the few aspects of theology where catholics are reading protestants and and vice versa and i i was wondering i mean essentially the kind of the real peak of the witchcraft craze is latter half of the 16th century moving into the 17th century and that's also when

confessional identities among Protestants and among Catholics in the wake of the counter reformation are really intensifying and again as kind of a counter effect that is that you start to get warfare between them religious war is there a link between the prevalence of witchcraft the growth the anxiety about witchcraft and the sense that presumably both catholics and protestants have when they're going to war that they're engaged in some kind of cosmic battle between good and evil. There certainly is. There certainly is this connection that actually they're living in a time of anarchy, spiritual anarchy. And, you know, pretty much no one in the 16th century and early 17th century thinks that toleration is a good idea. You know, they think there's a right way and there's a wrong way and you need to root out that which is wrong.

So it's certainly that's the background to it. I think we have to be careful that it's quite just to prevent against thinking this is Protestants attacking Catholics. Very few instances where that's the case or vice versa. speaking it's that as that lovely quote makes clear it's something that everybody's doing at the time that witches are thought to be a threat overall because people are much more concerned about evil at work in the world um they they differ on their definition of which particular version of faith is correct but they do think there's a right and the wrong way and witches are clearly on the wrong side susie let's talk a bit about witches themselves. So the sort of standard view of the witches, I guess,

is that they are women, older women, childless widows, who are marginal in their village. And it tends to be villages, right, rather than big towns. And is that right? Or is it more complicated than that? I mean, do you ever get a male witch, witch for example so there's a lot to unpack there so yes it tends to be villages rather than towns because most people live in villages right so you don't have that many um like 95% of the population or more lives in villages and and small places under 400 people. And it's true that most witches that are convicted are women

and they're older women. Crucially, they're menopausal or postmenopausal. They are often widowed. They have ceased to have children. They're no longer fertile. And those are really important things. And there are lots of reasons for why they're old for why it's older women being attacked but it's not just women so for example

it particularly during the severe panics 1611 for example in Elwangen in Germany there are 430 people who are executed as witches and they are men and women they include priests they include a judge who's protested about his wife's arrest sometimes witches and this is pretty terrible deviation as it were from the stereotype are children so again in Germany in the 1620s in Würzburg, there are, I think it's more than 40 children who are executed as children. That happens in the Basque country.

Happens in Sweden. Have you seen the, a friend of mine made a film for Dispatches on Channel 4 about 10 years ago. I think it was called Savouring Africa's Witch Children. I mean, we're massively moving forwards now. But this is in southern Nigeria, where, of course, it's become a very radical form of Protestantism, but it's fused with local beliefs in spirits and demons. And there, there's a whole kind of strain of protestantism that says that um that witches are everywhere and

that children are particularly prone to being um witches and children who get accused of it get kind of at best expelled from the family at worst tortured to death um and i wondered you know is is that showing that we're talking about something that is universal and constant? Or is it the fact that it's the Protestantism, it's the Christianity that is inspiring this? Or what's going on there? Can we kind of trace the patterns all the way through history, do you think? It's a difficult thing to answer. I mean, it's certainly true that we have, there have been many witch hunts in recent times um so um in the late 80s early 90s there were 200 lynchings of suspected witches in south africa um there have been that in um

2001 in the democratic republic of congo there were unofficially, officially it figures around 800, unofficially we're told it's more running into the thousands, witches killed, you know, murdered by lynching mobs, as it were. Saudi Arabia created an anti-witchcraft unit in 2009. So it's, and we've seen it more recently, even, you know, wherever you look around the world, Nepal, Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria. So it's a constant for sure. And I suppose even in Britain, I mean, Dominic, I don't know if you've researched

the ritual satanic abuse scandals. Yeah, the 80s. Yeah. So was, in a sense, that's a kind of witchcraft scare, isn't it? Yeah, I suppose you could probably argue that. I mean, there's clearly, well, I don't know, maybe Susie would disagree with this,

but I think there is a human constant, isn't there, to look for scapegoats. And there are particular figures in society that end up being these folk devils. So older women, children, classically, and teenagers tend to be seen as folk devils, generation after generation so maybe disturbingly there is this i don't know suzy let me ask you a question um a slightly weird question

if you were accused of being a witch what's your best way of getting out of it so how would you escape let me just first come to that point about teenagers and old women and i think perhaps the constant with children and teenagers and older women is that they're people that it's harder to control. I wonder if that's something to do with it. How do you best escape? Actually, sometimes you can escape by confessing to it. It depends where you are. So it depends on the jurisdiction you're operating in.

In some places, people got away with it if they confessed and repented. That happened in Salem in New England, the trials in the 1692 outbreak. And it's those who refused to confess that died quite often. But often actually by naming other people, that might be a way out of it. That's kind of depressing, isn't it? But it's like Russia in the 1930s or something. Yeah, exactly. So if you can name people who were in large numbers who were there at your sabbat or whatever they've come up with as an idea,

because quite often it's the interrogators' ideas that are being reproduced by those who are being interrogated, then maybe you've got a chance of being let off. And was the ducking stool, was that a real thing or is that a kind of children's history book invention? It's a real thing, but not for witches. It's a real thing that's used for scolds. So in exactly the same period that we have a rise in the number of people being executed as witches,

we see basically there's a great sort of, how do we put it, intensification of patriarchy in this period of time. And so women who speak out, who are cantankerous or who are gossips or all these sort of things can be ductus scolds but it's basically it's just a confusion what we do have is what's called swimming which is in england um our swam um which uh which is um something that james the first writes about in his demonology, which is the following. You've got your witch, male or female.

You strip them naked. You tie their thumbs to their toes. And you put them in a river to see if they're going to. Sorry, that's the dog. You put them in a river to see if they're going to sink. You're familiar. Yeah, my familiars are nearby. So if they are innocent, they will sink. And, you know, you hope they're going to be pulled out in time to not drown. And if they float, they are a witch. And the logic is that their baptism in waters no longer holds because they have turned to the devil and so the waters will reject them right okay so on that that thing of the of of rejecting your baptism and

you become a worshiper of the devil this idea that you are leaving the christian faith and that you were in a sense, taking up another faith. There was a very popular theory that this was an expression of a kind of ancient paganism that had survived Christianity. And I always remember my parents, when I was a child, had a book of kind of gazetteer to folklore. And they had a wonderful thing about the um the death of william ii in the new forest and this he'd been shot by an arrow and this supposedly was part of a a satanic ritual kind of wicker man style which a wicker man yes which i'd always which i'd always wanted to i'd always wanted to believe but um susie it's not true is is it? There was no such pagan cult lasting into the early modern period that witches were belonging to.

Well, I can say with great certainty there's no evidence to prove it. I can't say it's not true, but I can say there's perilous little to make a case for it. But Susie, that then raises the question, were any of the witches actually guilty? I, were any of the cases kind of banged to rights? They actually had been consorting. I mean, obviously they hadn't been consorting with the devil, but did they think they were witches?

I, had they been doing spells and did they have a, you know, a familiar and all this sort of business? Well, this is the amazing thing about the witchcraft trials is exactly this question. So many of us looking at this see this as one historian described it as a crime with a hole at the centre of it. There is nothing there and they're not doing anything. But clearly some of these people did think that they were acting as witches. At least that's what the confessions seem to suggest. Now, obviously, there are lots of confessions that are extracted under torture. But then there are also confessions that are freely given.

And some of those do seem to suggest that, and we can psychologise about what's going on there, but some of them do seem to suggest that people are saying they've met with the devil. And some of the interesting work, again, actually, from Linda Roper, has looked at the idea that what we're seeing is their fantasies, that quite a lot of the time these are people who are poor and dispossessed and who have very little. And they fantasize about meeting with the devil and him, you know, freeing them from hunger and from want and from poverty. And, you know, lots of feasting goes on with the devil because they're hungry or lots of sex because these people are untouched.

And so that actually what we're seeing there is an idea about what they lack and and this is a period um when the little ice age is kicking in um particularly in the 17th century it's a period of of cold and therefore of famine and therefore of hunger and do you think, is there a connection between the escalation of witchcraft trials and the fact that basically Europe is under massive stress at the time? Yes. Climatically.

Absolutely. There's certainly the case that we've got, I think the thing about witchcraft is it is the sort of perfect storm, you know, it's an overused phrase, but it comes from all sorts of things happening at once, that you do have this extraordinary socioeconomic conditions where people are hungry, where in the 1590s, you have four years where it basically rains non-stop and there are, the harvests are destroyed and there's famine and, you know, bread prices shoot up. And whilst we can't do any sort of bald causality between, you know,

they're hungry and then the people are accused of witchcraft, clearly this is the climate, both literally and sort of more metaphorically, in which witchcraft is happening, witchcraft accusations are happening. And Robin Briggs, who I mentioned earlier, did really good work on examining the details of neighborhood accusations so much of this is happening um between neighbors um between people who are who are hungry and envious between people who are being selfish and not operating as community norms say they should. One of the classic scenarios that Keith Thomas and Alec McFarlane came up with has been called the refusal guilt syndrome. So basically you have probably a older woman,

somebody who is in need, going to the door of a richer, not particularly rich, but richer householder and asking for alms. And maybe in England, because they've started giving alms through the parish, they think they've already done enough. So they turn this person away. She mutters under her breath as she leaves. And then, you know, a cow gets sick or a child dies and they accuse her of witchcraft. So there's a lot of projection onto these poorer people that they must be angry. There's a sense that they must be acting against the richer people because it's about guilt. So I think the fact that people are hungry and angry makes a big difference. And I suppose also it kind of provides a reassurance that there is an explanation for these awful things happening rather than just, you know, shit happens.

Anyway, on that note, shit happens, which could really be the motto. That should be our title. We missed that out. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we will return to the dark arts with Susie. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hi, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are talking witches and witchcraft and we've got all your questions. We're about to go through them, very selfishly i've got one question that i i would like to put susie before we get on to yours um and that is really to go back to the gender of witches because one thing you talked about the malius maleficarum um and and their witches are described as as female it's a it's a female noun um but in the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible that people would read in the Middle Ages, the famous line that's translated in the

King James Bible, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live in Exodus, that word, it's malefico, so it's a masculine. And again, just why is it that over the course of the Middle Ages into the early modern period, there seems to be this evolution of thinking of witches as masculine and then becoming female? What's going on there? So the Malleus Maleficarum was a particularly misogynistic text. So the writer conceived of witches as female and that's the sort of dominant theme and it would have been,

even for its time, surprisingly misogynistic. But what we see is a belief that both men and women can be witches and in some places there are more men accused of witchcraft than women in Iceland for example 92 percent of those accused of witchcraft in the 17th century are male in Russia it's something 68 percent Estonia it's very high Normandy the males outnumber females three to one but elsewhere it's the it shifts and it's more like four out of five witches are female because whilst both men and women are thought capable of being seduced by the devil women are weaker it's thought more credulous more likely to fall into sin particularly sexual sin it's thought, more credulous, more likely to fall into sin, particularly sexual sin, it's thought, in this period of time, and therefore more likely to be persuaded away from

the truth. And are the men that are accused, are they sort of marginal men? So are they kind of loners and oddballs or people on the fringe? Or could they be people at the centre of the community? In some places, they are more marginal. So the Russian cases appear to be looking at people who are shepherds or vagrants, people who are moving around, wanderers. So we do have some of that marginality. But we also do see instances of very mainstream men accused as well. So how does Dr. D, Elizabeth I, who's busy looking at angels or doing all kinds of stuff, how does he get away with it?

I suppose he's a sort of wizard as opposed to a witch. So the definition of witch by this point is that you're practising maleficarum, that you're doing evil through magic and he's not doing evil um he's so white white magic is okay yes i mean there's a certainly problematic isn't it it's still problematic and the line between the two is is very easy to cross um i suppose the fact that he's got the patronage of elizabeth the first helps um i mean and he's operating to just much like elizabeth the

first did i'm very interested in alchemy he's very interested in uh trying to find the philosopher's stone um as glenn parry's written about d and shown that elizabeth the first had alchemical laboratories in her palaces so i think that he's pursuing a sort of magic as it were that is state approved and because it's open i suppose he's not hiding anything is it's not like he's doing it you know in the back of a cupboard i mean he's sort of isn't it one of those things that if you try to cover it up or whatever it looks more dodgy than if you're say well i'm an alchemist i'm i'm casting spells i'm sure that's right. And I think it's about his level of power in society. So much of this comes down to it's those who don't have power

who are accused of trying to do something with this illegally gotten power. Okay, so that brings up a good question actually from Wenzel Rosner. And he, I assume it's he, I don't really know what Wenzel is I don't know anything about this person anyway, Wenzel says would the average woman

have been worried about being accused of witchcraft, in other words are you living in fear of witch hunters or could you just go about your daily life you know, without assuming it would never happen to you I suppose it depends who and when where because there would have been certain periods where the culture around witchcraft

the concerns around witchcraft would have been heightened and so i think even an ordinary woman could be accused but i do think that witchcraft reputations took time to build up and sometimes they came from a sort of family tradition your you know family members grandmother mother thought to be witches and it took many accusations it didn't it wasn't on the first time so because if you think someone's a witch you don, you need to be sure before you accuse them, right? They've got evil magic at their disposal. So we tend to find that in the trials, we get references to this happened 20 years ago, this happened 10 years ago. So that means people are talking about witchcraft a lot. They're talking about it much more than we have trial cases uh to show for it

because then there's going to be lots of people who don't make it to trial but i think you have to have quite a substantial body of evidence against someone to accuse them so that means that you're going to know whether people are going to think you're a witch or not there's there's a follow-up on that from a question from andre um are there examples of of people who are accused of being a witch and presumably convicted only then to get off so basically once you've been once you've been convicted of witchcraft was was that it um or did you have a chance of there are people who aren't convicted and there are people who aren't executed so there's an

instance for example one of the famous outbreaks in England is the Pendle, which is 1612. And in the same year in Lancashire, also in Lancashire, what are known as the Salmsbury witches, there are three women accused by a 14-year-old girl. And it's discovered that the girl has been coached and the women are set free and acquitted. So there are acquittals and it's certainly true that not everyone is executed. So we think there are about 90,000 people who are prosecuted as witches in this period and about half of those are executed as witches.

So it is possible to get away with it, as it were, get away with innocence. You mentioned the Pendle witch trials, and Cain Carlyle asked a question about that. So Cain says, can you talk about the witch trials and their links with the English Reformation? On a side note, Pendle Hill is a stunning place to go for a lockdown walk, Cain also says.

Sounds suspicious to me, very suspicious. So the links with the English Re reformation what's all this about um i i mean i think there's a lot more going on than links to the english reformation there i suppose as usual we've got um the we've got a background of uh religious change we've this is so when religious change. This is... So, Susie, when is this? This is 1612. So, crucially, I suppose, what's happened is that James VI of Scotland

has become James I of England. And James VI of Scotland had written a book called Demonology in 1597 in which he had given people instructions on how to find witches. And so we're in a period in which this Protestant has come to the throne of England and those who are thought to be practising witchcraft are being supported at this you know seriously elite level at the level of the monarch um there is a sense that uh people can rightfully pursue witches um but there's and so that's part of the background for Macbeth isn't it it is it is

absolutely which we opened with that's right yes exactly written in the 1590s, precisely at the sort of time that there are trials in the 1590s in North Berwick, which James VI at the time oversees. So in 1612, we've got witches who are being accused in that climate. But one of them, who's known as Old Demdike, has been accused of being a witch for 50 years. So it's not just about those circumstances. People have been thinking of her as a witch for a long time. And there are lots of associations with some of the ideas about witchcraft that we might pursue. We might think of her as even voodoo. For example, Old Demdike makes these clay figures that she sticks pins into that will injure the people that she's cursing. So it's a really

interesting case for England because it's quite large scale for England. It's sort of 12 people accused of witchcraft and 10 of them are executed. And the one I've mentioned, Old Demdike, Elizabeth Southerns dies in jail it's nothing by comparison to the scale of things in Germany but it's quite big for England right we've got another question from Stephen Clark um going forward now when if ever and why did the British Isles see a significant decline in popular belief in magic and the supernatural that's a huge question um I mean let's narrow that down when what's the process by which the belief in witchcraft in not just in britain across europe starts to fade so i suppose we could say that

in the later 17th century um and early 18th century we see a changing idea about who can be convicted of witchcraft it's not quite the same thing as people stopping believing in witchcraft and i'm not sure that people necessarily did i suppose we see some evidence of change in terms of what you know scientific revolutions it's called the you know the enlightenment perhaps we see changes there but chiefly what we see evidence of is changes in beliefs about evidence what are the grounds on which someone can be convicted of witchcraft and at the same time as we have in america in the salem witch trials we have people who are being convicted on the strength of what are known as spectral evidence so that those who are

accusing them are possessed by the specter of this witch and also on their own confessions we have the evidence from the home assizes the court circuit of trials saying actually um they're they're just there's no evidence against them apart from their own confession, and this isn't good enough. And that's a radical change, whereas 60 years earlier, it had been the strength of the confession that had convicted witches. So it's more about that than about a change in beliefs. And some people still do believe in witchcraft. And we see some people who are pursuing witches, when the members of the elites won't do it at law they're going to pursue them with a mob in the 18th century but the last person to be executed

for witchcraft is in england in 1685 and in scotland in 1722 because in the 20th century i mean that that idea that there was a kind of pagan, often female-centred religion in the background of the Christian Middle Ages. Yes, yes, yes, which I think is pronounced Witcher originally. OK. Kind of really giving you a hint of what's going on there. And that becomes kind of, that becomes the basis for 20th century paganism. And I suppose that more recently, most obviously in children's books, so the worst witch first, and then

most famously Harry Potter, which is basically, I mean, Hermione Granger is a witch, isn't she? I mean, she's kind of the hero. Yeah. Although Bellatrix Lestrange is a very kind of stereotypical witch, and she's a baddie. So, you know, she's kind of dark, mad hair, and Helena Bonham Carter, and you know she's kind of dark mad hair and helena

bonham carter and you can imagine her on a broomstick and stuff so there's still some of the old helena bonham carter's always playing with yeah i mean it's basically anyway suzy go on sorry i'm interrupting no you're not i mean the interesting thing there is that we do have both the idea of a witch being uh evil uh black as it were, and the idea of white magic that we mentioned earlier. That's what comes out in the 20th century and it's what comes out in children's stories. So that very much you can have Hermione Granger who's a witch but using magic for good. And I think that many of the people who identify with being a witch today or practicing Wicca feel that they have a lineage to the witches who were accused in the 16th century, whether that's true or not.

And they, particularly one of the things that comes out, I'm often asked whether it's to do with being healers, whether they were people who were what was called cunning men and women in the 16th century and who were conjuring up potions using herbs to heal people and certainly many of them may have been that the evidence is quite hard to follow on that through the trials but there is a sense today and in the 20th century that surely magic could be used for good. And throwing it even further forward to the present day, to the 21st century, I mean, the question that we got a lot when we advertised this subject, we get it from Neil Page, for example, he says, what's the modern version of the witch trials? And you see this

all the time, particularly on social media, people talking about witch hunts and how particular women, we mentioned J.K. Rowling without getting into the kind of ins and outs of that debate but particular women become stigmatized and scapegoated and is there any you know is obviously we use the terminology of the witch and the witch hunt but do you think there is any kind of continuity any parallel or is it purely a sort of metaphor i think there are parallels with punishments in the 16th century, though not so much that that was dealt out to witches. I think what we see today reflects the sort of religious punishments that happened, for example, the Protestant church in Scotland or in France

dealt out shaming punishments. And what we see on social media is this large-scale shaming that happens, of course, John Ronson wrote about it. And so I suppose that's what we would say when we're talking about a witch hunt today, that somebody's life is made so uncomfortable that they are considered a persona non grata. They don't end up dead, but they might end up socially dead. Dominic, do we have any other questions?

Rather good question from Felma Dinkley, I see. They don't end up dead, but they might end up socially dead. Dominic, do we have any other questions? A rather good question from Velma Dinkley, I see. Thanks, Dad. Yeah, Velma Dinkley, I can read. Velma Dinkley says, How were witches regarded... Oh, come on, Thomas. Oh, jeez, I've fallen for that one. OK.

How were witches regarded in Roman, pagan, pre-Christian times? Please answer, Susie, in such a way that Tom cannot add anything of worth to your answer. There's no way I'm doing that in Tom's presence. Could I just very quickly answer that one? Please do. Are you Velma Dinkley? I'm not at liberty to reveal whether i am velma dinkley

but it's an excellent question um well thank you velma for asking that question so witches um were absolute theme of roman poets they were obsessed by them very hard thing for roman poet who doesn't portray a figure of a sinister old woman who kind of grubs around in graveyards digging up bones and making potions with ashes and I'm sure I mean I don't know when but I'm sure that that this must then feed into what the the friars and the dominicans and the protestant divines are reading and kind of creating from it but I think also the other thing that um must feed into the witch scare in the in the 16th century is the sense the Romans and people across the Mediterranean have that there are kind of malign figures. So the Romans have striges who are kind of female figures who fly through the air and who feed on the hapless. There's an amazing story told of Apollonius of Tyana.

Who's a kind of Jesus figure. He's often parallel to Jesus. Who turns up at Ephesus I think. And Ephesus is plagued by all kinds of hideous witchcraft. And they ask Apollonius what's going on. And he points to a poor beggar who sat at the gate. With his asking for alms. And Apollonius says that's the guy. Stone him. is you know what's going on and he points to a poor beggar who's sat at the gate with his his asking for arms and apollonia says that's the guy stone him and it's a bit like monty python

but beggar says i'm not i've nothing to do with it and everyone says no he's not he's just a harmless beggar and apollonia says stone him so they all stone him and he gets buried beneath a great pile of stones and then he turns into an evil dog and howls and dies. So I think that, you know, there's all kinds of elements there. The idea of flying through the air, the idea that human beings can become animals, the idea of familiars. I guess it's all kind of the brew of stuff that scholars in the 16th century can read and then can kind of form this cocktail of what a witch should properly be. I mean, do you think that's what's happening? I think that's right. I mean, I think what we've got going on by the time we get to the 16th century is you've got

two discourses about witchcraft. At one level, you've got what the elites are saying, which is absolutely going to be informed by their new humanistic renaissance study of classical texts and is going to have those elements and so they're thinking about them flying through the air maybe backwards on a goat or maybe on a broomstick and at the same time you've got what is believed at a village level um and this all those neighborhood accusations and the sort of i was going to say the magic the the terrible thing that happens is that those two connect right that's that those those two beliefs which are really probably quite different connect up and are thought to be the same thing um i was i wrote a forward for a book

which is called a history of magic witchcraft and Occult. And that looks at witchcraft beliefs across the world throughout time. And there are many strands that come out as being similar in different, really radically different societies. But it is interesting to consider the ways in which there is a lineage that these ideas are being passed on. And do you think it will always be with us then? do you think witches and witchcraft will always be with us so in this sort of visions of the 27th century that you have there are no witches but actually is that unrealistic and we'll always be you know looking dominic something beyond are you asking susie to look into the future i am that's exactly what i'm tempting her into the practice of witchcraft. Yeah, I have indeed. I shall look into my crystal ball.

I think that there will always be things that humans can't explain and that the desire to explain them and to control them will mean that people may well um point to uh other forces to deal with what is uncertain and what is inexplicable and i suppose so that can in other words that is a sort of where the witch comes in you know yeah and the scapegoating as well will surely always, I mean, that's, you know, it's part of being human, isn't it? Unfortunately. Yes. I mean, it was what we were talking about earlier with the climate change. You've got, somebody's got to be to blame. And now perhaps we'd like to think that we wouldn't blame that because we would recognise the scientific change.

But I think we still do see scapegoating in different ways. So unless humans change, I'm not sure the witches are going to be eradicated, really. Well, do you know, I think the hurly-burly's done. Susie, can't thank you enough for coming on the show and all your learning, all your wisdom and scholarship. And thank you, everyone who's listening. A reminder that we're producing two pods a week

at the moment. Mondays and Thursdays are the days to keep an eye out for us. See you soon, I hope. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.