Why Should Wizards Never Be Inquisitors?
DOLORES UMBRIDGE’S TITLE, “HIGH Inquisitor,” should send chills down the spine of both wizards and Muggles. It comes from a long, bloody period in history that affected witches and laypeople alike, and which seems to reappear in different forms in almost every era—including our own, as J. K. Rowling suggests with some clever comments.
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“High Inquisitor” is meant to bring to mind the Inquisition, a series of unfair trials in Europe that lasted hundreds of years. The goal of each Inquisition was to make people believe what the authorities wanted them to believe. If you disagreed with the government or church—often they were same thing—you might die.
The authorities took such extreme action for the same reason they always have: fear of losing their authority. (Think about it: why have trials for people you believe are doomed to eternal damnation?) This fear led the Inquisitors to abuse their power. Accusations could be made secretly, so people lied to make trouble for enemies. Trials were also secret. The accused person did not have the right to a lawyer. Most shocking but very common was torture. Many confessions were forced.
“Dolores” comes from the Latin word for “pain.” In English, “dolor” means “grief” or “sorrow.” “Umbridge” is a play on “umbrage,” which means “resentment.” (As in: Dolores Umbridge takes umbrage when you challenge her, so you’re going to be very sorry now.)
The first Inquisition began in the early 1200s in France, Germany, and Spain. Pope Gregory IX named an Inquisitor-General to put an end to doubts about the church’s control of how people could worship. The practice lasted centuries. Its intensity changed with the
mood of the times—for example, it got new life when the Church tried to stop the spread of Protestantism in the mid-1500s.
A medieval woodcut of Jews about to face death in the Inquisition.
A separate Inquisition began in Spain in 1478 and lasted in various forms until the 1820s. It was especially fierce. The first Grand Inquisitor was the famous Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498). His stated goal was no different than Voldemort’s: he wanted only people with sangre limpia—“pure blood,” defined by him as white and Christian—to live in Spain. He executed somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 people in just twenty years, with perhaps another 10,000 punished in other ways. He hounded thousands of Jews, Muslims, and others until they left Spain, and had Jews expelled by law in 1492.
“THE BURNING TIMES”
Sorcerers and witches were often a special target of the Inquisitions. By the 1300s, accusations of witchcraft were common and often led to executions. The Church had decided that magic was the work of the Devil, and that a sorcerer must have made a deal with the Devil to gain magical knowledge and skill.
Ignoring or laughing at this nonsense only made things worse. One French monk and judge, Jean Bodin (1529-1596), came up with the rule that anyone who denied the existence of witches must also be a witch.
Frenchman Nicholas Rémy (1530-1616) claimed to have personally directed the execution of nine hundred witches in a single decade.
Bodin was a fan of torture and harsh punishment. “The country which shall tolerate this [witchcraft],” he wrote, “will be scourged
with pestilences, famines and wars.” But people who “take vengeance on the witches will be blessed by God.”
Burning witches was favored for its cruelty and because it supposedly purifed the soul. But it was a lot of trouble and very expensive. Many witches were hanged instead.
A witch known for kind acts such as healing was no safer than someone accused of using magic for evil. Bodin wrote: “Even if the witch has never killed or done evil to a man, or beasts, or fruits, and even if he has always cured bewitched people, or driven away tempests, it is because he has renounced God and treated with [made a deal with] Satan that he deserves to be burned alive. Even no more than an obligation to the Devil, which means denying God, deserves the most cruel death imaginable.”
Thanks to bloodthirsty inquisitors like Bodin, the times when witch hunts were at their worst were known as “burning times.” Perhaps 200,000 people accused of being witches were killed in Europe and America from the time of the first Inquisition until the nineteenth century, when religion became more moderate.
Most of the victims did not practice magic at all. They were simply victims of angry neighbors and relatives, or greedy prosecutors who wanted to take their property. Sometimes they were picked just because they seemed odd. For example, a woman who did not marry or take part in the social activities was more likely to be called a witch than one who had family ties or a high place in society.
This sad fact is something that scholars see in all cultures, especially when the economy isJean Bodin’s book The Demonomania of Witches (1580), which claimed to explain all the evil practices of magic, was a strong influence on prosecutors. Ironically, all of his other books, which explained his political theories, were denounced by the Inquisition.
Witchcraft was illegal in Britain until 1951, when the last laws against it were replaced with the Fraudulent Medium Act. The new law suggested that witches weren’t dangerous but were trying to fool people into paying for magical help.
bad or a natural disaster has occurred: humans seek someone weak to sacrifice, as if that will win the goodwill of the gods or God and restore a natural order to the world. The 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, began after the colonists had suffered in wars with Native Americans, which made them wonder if their religious settlement still enjoyed God’s favor. This pattern continues today, sometimes with violence and other times with more subtlety.
MODERN WITCH HUNTS
J. K. Rowling’s High Inquisitor is more than a reference to the Inquisition. The term “witch hunt” is used in modern times too, to describe the way governments and other institutions unfairly claim certain vulnerable people are guilty of hurting society as a whole, often for something vague and unproven. In the 1950s, it was common for Western nations to conduct “witch hunts” of people who believed in communism, a belief the government said automatically made those people dangerous to others. Communist countries did the same, hunting for people who didn’t support their governments. In many cases the government charges were nonsense. And even those who didn’t support the authorities were rarely any sort of threat.
This is exactly what happens to Harry at the Wizengamot in Phoenix. Having said in Goblet that Voldemort has returned, and that some Dementors are under Voldemort’s control, he has challenged the official position of the Ministry of Magic; so in Phoenix Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge make him stand trial to silence him. They even attempt to keep him from having the help of Dumbledore’s counsel just as in the old days of the Inquisition, and as sometimes happens today when governments go too far. The connection to today is what Rowling wants us to see. When Dolores Umbridge waves the list of students in Dumbledore’s Army she’s doing exactly what one of the most famous witch-hunters of the twentieth century did to attack his enemies. U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy is remembered for waving a piece of paper that supposedly showed top government officials were traitors. The list was phony; but he was discredited only after he had ruined many lives by forcing people to face a U.S. government inquisition that lasted years.
Dolores Umbridge uses another common trick against Griselda Marchbanks. WhenThe Salem witch hunts began when two young girls accused a servant and two other women of witchcraft. In time the hysteria spread to other towns and the girls traveled as “experts.” Twenty-five people were dead before the mob violence ended.
See also: Fortescue Order of the Phoenix Death Eaters
Marchbanks protests the Hogwarts inquisition, Umbridge spreads lies that Marchbanks is working with goblins who want to overthrow the wizards. She is trying to assassinate Marchbank’s character by appealing to the other wizards’ fear of goblins. That’s a trick used all the time, from medieval inquisitions to modern politics.
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br /> IS ALL FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR?
Dolores Umbridge and Cornelius Fudge have plenty of excuses for what they do. That’s always the way. Inquisitions have always been tolerated or excused by people who refuse to question the perfection of their religion or their nation. J. K. Rowling isn’t one of those people. For her, nothing is more important than having the courage to think for ourselves. Umbridge, who for all her faults is still a witch, should have shuddered at the title of High Inquisitor of Hogwarts. Any wizard should have known better.
How Do You Catch a Unicorn?
FEW MAGICAL CREATURES HAVE STRUCK the human imagination as deeply as the elegant unicorn. Even in Harry’s wizard world, with so many wondrous beasts, the unicorn is a symbol of the sacred. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling says unicorns have “silvery” blood; and in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire she describes unicorn
The Unicorn in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass, like everything else in the story, is the opposite of what you would expect: He is anything but peaceful—in fact he casually sticks other creatures with his horn. And when he is introduced to Alice, he is the one surprised to meet a human: “I always thought they were fabulous [mythical] monsters! . . . Is it alive?”
foals that are “pure gold,” adding that their coats will turn silver around age two, and “go pure white” when the unicorns mature.
ANCIENT UNICORNS
Unicorns appear in the ancient art and myths of Mesopotamia, China, and India. The Roman naturalist Pliny, relying on reports he had heard, listed a few varieties of unicorns, each with horns of about two cubits (three feet) on its forehead: one, “a most swift beast,” could mimic a human voice; another could move its horn at will, to use as a weapon; and yet another had skin that “cannot be pierced.”
A traveler from the early 1500s saw two unicorns at the temple of Mecca:
The elder is formed like a colt of thirty months old, and he has a horn in the forehead, which horn is about as long as three arms. The other unicorn is like a colt of one year old, and he has a horn of about one foot long. The colour of the said animal resembles that of a dark bay horse, and his head resembles that of a stag; his neck is not very long, and he has some thin and short hair which hangs on one side; his legs are slender and lean like those of a goat; the foot is a little cloven in the fore part, and long and goatlike, and there are some hairs on the hind part of the said legs. Truly this monster must be a very fierce and solitary animal. These two animals were presented to the Sultan of Mecca as the finest things that could be found in the world at the present day, and as the richest treasure ever sent by a king of Ethiopia, that is, by a Moorish king. He made this present in order to secure an alliance with the said Sultan of Mecca.
Pliny reported that the unicorn can “never become tamed.” William Shakespeare referred to the same elusive nature: “Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light . . . to tame the unicorn and lion wild.”
Other writers suggest the trick is to bait the unicorn with a young virgin—and although this method has never been successfully employed, it fits with the unicorn’s role as a symbol of purity and chastity. Many medieval tapestries portray scenes of unicorns to convey the power of sacred devotion. The Old Testament refers to unicorns several times: “God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as itChinese legend also mentions a sacred unicorn with a deer’s body, ox’s tail, and horse’s hooves. Its coat is five different colors. It lives 1,000 years.
were the strength of the unicorn” (Numbers 23:22); “His horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth” (Deuteronomy 33:17); “My horn shall thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn” (Psalms 92:10); “Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide in thy crib?” (Job 39:9). These references, to some scholars, indicate that the unicorn is actually a symbol of Christ. Others disagree. The word in the original text would be better translated as “wild ox.” Perhaps the translators of the King James Version (1611)
Unicorn appearing on a family crest.
were influenced by the knowledge that their patron, King James I of Britain, considered the unicorn his emblem.
HORN OF PLENTY
The unicorn’s ability to save one’s body as well as one’s soul has always been a part of its legend. Ctesias, a Greek physician in the employ of the ruler of Persia around 400 B.C., wrote one of the first accounts of the creature:
There are in India certain wild asses which are as large as horses, and larger. Their bodies are white, their heads dark red, and their eyes dark blue. They have a horn on the forehead that is about a foot and a half in length. The dust filed from this horn is administered in a potion as a protection against deadly drugs. The base of this horn, for some two hands’-breadth above the brow, is pure white; the upper part is sharp and of a vivid crimson; and the remainder, or middle portion, is black. Those who drink out of these horns, made into drinking vessels, are not subject, they say, to convulsions or to the holy disease [epilepsy]. Indeed, they are immune even to poisons if either beforeThe unicorn was the emblem of Scotland’s royal House of Stuart. James VI of Scotland, upon becoming James I of Britain in 1603, added the unicorn to the British coat of arms, opposite the English lion. It is said to represent Scotland’s independent spirit. In The Faerie Queen (1596), Edmund Spenser mentions the “Lion, whose imperial power a proud rebellious Unicorn defies.”
In modern Hebrew, re’em refers to a horned gazelle, says Gili Bar-Hillel, the translator of Rowling’s works into Hebrew, who helped uncover the biblical source. No doubt that animal inspired some early descriptions of unicorns.
See also: Centaurs Forest
or after swallowing such, they drink wine, water, or anything else from these beakers.
These medicinal qualities, so important to the critically ill like Voldemort—who kills a unicorn to drink its life-sustaining blood—once made the unicorn an object of hunters. (Of course those hunters were frustrated.)
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
Close readers of Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them may have noticed that a similar healing power is mentioned for the magical creature called the Re’em. Its blood, although hard to come by, “gives the drinker immense strength.” That’s a very sly connection by Rowling. The Hebrew word that the translators of the King James Bible turned into “unicorn” is re’em. Rowling’s animal combines the original Hebrew meaning with qualities later associated with unicorns. Like the biblical animals, Rowling’s Re’em are “giant oxen.” Like unicorns, they are “extremely rare” and capturing them is difficult.
What Makes Veela Angry?
VEELA, SEDUCTIVE NATURE SPIRITS WHO first appear in Goblet, originate in legends of Central Europe. They are beautiful young women—or appear to be such. In some stories they are said to be ghosts of unbaptized women whose souls cannot leave earth. Their beauty is astonishing and can make men act foolishly. They have long hair, so fair it seems white.
THE DARK SIDE OF VEELA
Veela can be quite jealous. A famous Serbian tale, “Prince Marko and the Veela,” tells of an encounter with the veela Ravioyla:
Two brothers, Duke Milosh and Kralyevich Marko, rode side by side over magnificent Miroch Mountain. As the sun rose, Marko fell asleep, then awoke with a start.Veela are the nymphs and dryads—the nature spirits—of Greek mythology, made into local spirits.
Kralyevich Marko is named for a real leader of Serbia, but the real Marko is not believed to have been heroic or even particularly interesting. He seems to have received the credit for the deeds of others, and of course to have benefited from the skills of storytellers.
“Milosh,” he said, “I cannot stay awake. Sing to me to keep from sleeping.”
Duke Milosh answered, “Oh, Kralyevich Marko, I cannot sing to you. Last night I drank with the veela Ravioyla, and drank too much and sang too loudly and too well, and the veela warned me that i
f I sing on her mountain she will shoot her arrows into me.”
Kralyevich Marko replied, “Brother,
you cannot be afraid of a veela. I am Kralyevich Marko. With my golden battle-axe, we are both safe.” So Milosh sang, telling a story of kings and kingdoms and the glory of our country.
Marko listened, but the song did not keep sleep away. Soon he was dreaming again.
The veela Ravioyla heard Milosh, and she sang back to him in a beautiful voice. But Milosh answered her in a voice that was even finer, and she became angry as she had before. She flew to Miroch Mountain, and expertly drew two arrows at once in her bow. One hit Milosh in the throat, silencing him. The other hit his heart.
Both horses stopped, and Marko awoke. With great effort Milosh was able to speak, but only in a dying whisper. He said to Marko, “Brother! Veela Ravioyla has shot me because I sang on Miroch Mountain.”
The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter Page 14