This portrait of creative and mutable medieval cultures, at all levels of society, calls further into question the former tendency of many scholars, developed during the nineteenth century but remaining strong for most of the twentieth, to categorize many of the beliefs discussed above as ‘pagan survivals’. It might also be proposed, however, that to characterize them as ‘Christian’ instead would be equally inappropriate, save in the broad and not very informative sense that the medieval people who held them were all apparently Christian in at least a formal way. To class all expressions of medieval spirituality according to a polarity between Christianity and paganism is itself a polemical tactic developed by zealous medieval Christians, intent on defining and policing the limits of orthodoxy. It became equally attractive in the nineteenth century to three other kinds of polemic, which retained considerable traction far into the twentieth. One was an attack on Christianity itself, by attempting to prove that during the Middle Ages, often represented as the period of triumphant and largely harmonious Christian piety par excellence, the established religion was actually no more than an elite veneer over a populace still largely faithful to older and more primeval beliefs. The second was a specifically Protestant version of the first, concentrating on demonstrating that Roman Catholicism in particular had failed properly to evangelize the medieval populace, and in some ways encouraged them in superstitious attitudes. The third was a glorification of material and moral progress. This portrayed rural commoners in particular as given historically to the maintenance of outdated and erroneous beliefs and customs, rooted and mired in an ignorant antiquity, and bolstered a call for their education and redemption. What especially matters about the portrait of medieval and early modern culture provided in this book is that it lays an unusually heavy stress on the ability of commoners to develop new beliefs that had little relevance to Christianity rather than simply retaining ideas that predated that religion. The nocturnal processions of the ‘Lady’ or ‘ladies’ provide one striking apparent example of that; the fairy kingdom is another. The first was probably rooted in ancient concepts and the latter certainly so, but the forms they took seem distinctively medieval. Neither made a fit with Christianity, unless by thoroughly demonizing them in a way with which commoners, and in the latter case many members of the elite, were often unwilling to co-operate. There is no sign, however, that any who held these beliefs regarded themselves as pagans, or as adherents of any religion other than Christianity: they seemed to have maintained different cosmologies in parallel to each other, without any adversarial relationship. Nor, indeed, did the orthodox clergy and their lay partners who tried to stamp out these ideas end up regarding those who held them as pagans. Instead, at worst they assimilated those people to established doctrine as heretics and Satanists, fitting them into a Christian framework. The old scholarly classificatory dichotomy between pagan and Christian therefore seems doubly inappropriate. Perhaps in an increasingly post-Christian age, of multi-faith, multi-ethnic and culturally pluralist Western societies, we can develop a new terminology to take account of such phenomena.
The big research question posed at the opening of this book was that of the relevance of ethnographic comparisons, and ancient and earlier medieval ideas as expressed both in the transmission of written texts and in local popular traditions, to the formation of early modern beliefs in witchcraft and the patterning and nature of the trials which resulted. The answers proposed to it have been many and complex, and often not those provided before by historians who have considered the same problem. None the less, it can be suggested that the overall response to the question remains affirmative: that the early modern beliefs and trials can indeed be better understood when worldwide parallels are considered and when the roots of those ideas and events are sought in previous periods of time, extending back as far as history itself. If that suggestion succeeds in encouraging others to follow it up and engender different applications, of their own, then this book will have served a still more useful purpose than it has done by drawing any of the specific conclusions that feature within it.
APPENDIX
Below is a list of works on extra-European witchcraft used in the preparation of this book, but not cited in specific endnotes.
Adinkrah, Mensah, ‘Witchcraft Accusations and Female Homicide Victimization in Contemporary Ghana’, Violence Against Women, 10 (2004), 325–56
Ashforth, Adam, Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa, Chicago, 2005
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Bahn, Paul, and Flenley, John, Easter Island, London, 1992
Bailey, F. G., The Witch-Hunt, Ithaca NY, 1994
Barman, Mita, Persecution of Women: Widows and Witches, Calcutta, 2002
Bastian, Misty L., ‘“Bloodhounds Who Have No Friends”: Witchcraft and Locality in the Nigerian Popular Press’, in Comaroff and Comaroff (ed.), Modernity and its Malcontents, 129–66
Beidelman, T. O., ‘Witchcraft in Ukaguru’, in Middleton and Winter (ed.), Witchcraft in East Africa, 57–98
Bercovitch, Eytan, ‘Moral Insights: Victim and Witch in the Nalumin Imagination’, in Gilbert Herot and Michelle Stephen (ed.), The Religious Imagination in New Guinea, New Brunswick, 1989, 122–59
Berndt, Ronald M., ‘The Kamano, Usurufa, Jate and Fore of the Eastern Highlands’, in Lawrence and Megitt (ed.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, 78–104
—, and Berndt, Catherine M., The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia, Ringwood, Australia, 1989
Bleie, Tone, The Cultural Construction and the Social Organisation of Gender: The Case of Oraon Marriage and Witchcraft, Bergen, 1985
Bloomhill, Greta, Witchcraft in Africa, London, 1962
Bohannan, L. and P, The Tiv of Central Nigeria, London, 1955
Bond, George Clement, ‘Ancestors and Witches: Explanations and the Ideology of Individual Power in Northern Zambia’, in Bond and Ciekawy (ed.), Witchcraft Dialogues, 131–57
Bukurura, Sufian, ‘Sungusungu and the Banishment of Suspected Witches in Kahama’, in Abrahams (ed.), Witchcraft in Contemporary Tanzania, 61–9
Bulmer, R. N. H., ‘The Kyaka of the Western Highlands’, in Lawrence and Meggitt (ed.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, 132–61
Chaudhuri, A. B., Witch-Killing among Santals, Delhi, 1984
Ciekawy, Diane, ‘Witchcraft in Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya’, African Studies Review, 41 (1998), 19–41
—, ‘Utsai as Ethical Discourse: A Critique of Power from Mijikenda in Coastal Kenya’, in Bond and Ciekawy (ed.), Witchcraft Dialogues, 158–89
Clough, Paul, and Mitchell, Jon P. (ed.), Powers of Good and Evil, New York, 2001
Cope, R. L., ‘Written in Characters of Blood? The Reign of King Cetshwayo ka Mpande’, 1872–9’, Journal of African History, 36 (1995), 262–3
Dennis, Matthew, ‘American Indians, Witchcraft and Witch-Hunting’, Magazine of History, 17.4 (2003), 21–3
—, Seneca Possessed, Philadelphia, 2010
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Dundes, Alan, The Evil Eye: A Casebook, Madison, Wisconsin, 1981
Ebright, Malcolm, and Hendricks, Rick, The Witches of Abiquiu, Albuquerque, 2006
Edel, May Mandelbaum, The Chiga of Western Uganda, Oxford, 1957
Edmunds, R. David, The Shawnee Prophet, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1985)
Elkin, A. P., Aboriginal Men of High Degree, Sydney, 1945
Ellis, Florence H., ‘Pueblo Witchcraft and Medicine’, in Deward E. Walker (ed.), Systems of North American Witchcraft and Sorcery, Moscow, Idaho, 1970, 37–72.
Elmendorf, William W., ‘Skokomish Sorcery, Ethics and Society’, in Walker (ed.), Systems of North American Witchcraft and Sorcery, 147–82
Emmons, George Thornton, The Tlingit Indians, Seattle, 1991
Endicott, Kirk Michael, An Analysis of Malay Magic, Oxford, 1970
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avid K., ‘Obeah and Witchcraft on Roatán Island’, in Walker (ed.), Systems of North American Witchcraft and Sorcery, 109–24
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Glasse, R. M., ‘The Huli of the Southern Highlands’, in Lawrence and Meggitt, Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, 27–49
Gluckman, Max, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society, Oxford, 1965
—, Custom and Conflict in Africa, Oxford, 1970
Gonzalez, Nancie L. Solien, ‘Two Views of Obeah and Witchcraft’, in Walker (ed.), Systems of North American Witchcraft and Sorcery, 95–108
Goody, Jack, ‘Anomie in Ashanti’, Africa, 27 (1957), 356–63
Gregor, Thomas, ‘Uneasy Peace: Intertribal Relations in Brazil’s Upper Xingu’, in Jonathan Haas (ed.), The Anthropology of War, Cambridge, 1991, 118–21
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Hund, John (ed.), Witchcraft Violence and the Law in South Africa, Pretoria, 2003
Hunter, Monica, ‘Witch Beliefs and Social Structure’, American Journal of Sociology, 56 (1951), 307–13
—, Reaction to Conquest, Oxford, 1961
Iliffe, John, Africans: The History of a Continent, Cambridge, 1995
Jackson, Michael, ‘The Witch as a Category and as a Person’, in Russell T. McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, Ithaca, 1999, 311–30
Junod, Henri A., The Life of a South African Tribe, Neuchatel, 1912
Kapferer, Bruce, The Feast of the Sorcerer, Chicago, 1997
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Lane, R. B. Lane, ‘The Melanesians of South Pentacost’, in Lawrence and Meggitt (ed.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, 250–79
Lawrence, P., ‘The Ngaing of the Rai Coast’, in Lawrence and Meggitt (ed.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, 198–223
—, and Meggitt, M. J. (ed.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, Oxford, 1965
Levine, Nancy, ‘Belief and Explanation in Nyinba Women’s Witchcraft’, Man, 17 (1982), 259–74
Lienhardt, Godfrey, ‘The Situation of Death’, in Douglas (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions, 279–91
Lindhardt, Martin, ‘Who Bewitched the Pastor, and Why Did He Survive the Witchcraft Attack? Micropolitics and the Creativity of Indeterminacy in Tanzanian Discourses on Witchcraft’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 46 (2012), 215–32
Luongo, Katherine, Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, Cambridge, 2011
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Marwick, Max, ‘Another Modern Anti-Witchcraft Movement in East Central Africa’, Africa, 20 (1950), 100–12
—, Sorcery in its Social Setting, Manchester, 1965
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Metraux, Alfred, Voodoo in Haiti, trans. by Hugo Charteris, 3rd edition, New York, 1972
Middleton, John, The Kikuyu and Kamba of Kenya, London, 1953
—, (ed.), Magic, Witchcraft and Curing, Austin, Texas, 1967
Miller, Jay, ‘The 1806 Purge among the Indiana Delaware’, Ethnohistory, 41 (1994), 245–65
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—, ‘Witchcraft and the South African Bantustans’, South African Historical Journal, 64 (2012), 41–58
—, ‘Kuru, AIDS and Witchcraft: Reconfiguring Culpability in Melanesia and Africa’, Social Analysis, 57 (2013), 25–41
Nitibaskara, Ronny, ‘Observations on the Practice of Sorcery in Java’, in Watson and Ellen (ed.), Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia, 123–33
Offiong, Daniel, ‘The Social Context of Ibibio Witch Beliefs’, Africa, 53 (1982), 73–82
Opler, Maurice Edward, ‘Chiricahua Apache Material Relating to Witchcraft’, Primitive Man, 19 (1946), 81–92
Parrinder, Geoffrey, Religion in an African City, Oxford, 1952
—, Witchcraft: European and African, London, 1963
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Porterfield, ‘Witchcraft and the Colonization of Algonquian and Iroquois Cultures’, Religion and American Culture, 2 (1992), 103–24
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Riviere, Peter, ‘Factions and Exclusions in Two South American Village Systems’, in Douglas (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions, 245–55
Rödlach, Alexander, Witches, Westerners and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa, Walnut Creek, CA, 2006
Rowlands, Michael, and Warnier, Jean-Pierre, ‘Sorcery, Power and the Modern State in Cameroon’, Man, NS 23 (1988), 118–32
Salisbury, R. F., ‘The Siane of the Eastern Highlands’, in Lawrence and Meggitt (ed.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, 50–77
Selby, Henry A., Zapotec Deviance, Austin, Texas, 1974
Simmons, D., ‘An Ethnographic Sketch of the Efik People’, in Jo Anne Chandler and Cyril Darryll Forde (ed.), Efik Traders of Old Calabar, Oxford, 1956, 16–22
Simmons, Marc, Witchcraft in the Southwest, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1974
Skeat, Walter William, Malay Magic, London, 1900
Spindler, Louise, ‘Menomimi Witchcraft’, in Walker (ed.), Systems of North American Witchcraft and Sorcery, 183–220
Stewart, K. M., ‘Witchcraft among the Mohave Indians’, Ethnology, 12 (1973), 315–24
Stewart, Pamela J, and Strathern, Andrew, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumours and Gossip, Cambridge, 2003
Tait, David, ‘A Sorcery Hunt in Dagomba’, Africa, 33 (1963), 136–46
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Various Authors, ‘Yoruba’, ‘Ewe’, and ‘Glidyi Ewe’, Africa, 8 (1935), 548–56
Voules, E. M., ‘African Witchcraft as Found on Pemba Island’, in Munday et al. (ed.), Witchcraft, 27–51
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—, (ed.), Systems of North Ame
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Warner, W. Lloyd, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe, New York, 1958
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Wilson, Monica, ‘Witch Beliefs and Social Structure’, American Journal of Sociology, 56 (1951), 307–13 (studies from South Africa and Tanzania)
Wyllie, R. W., ‘Introspective Witchcraft among the Effutu of Southern Ghana’, Man, NS 8 (1973), 74–9
Yamba, C. Bawa, ‘Cosmologies in Turmoil’, Africa, 67 (1997), 200–23
NOTES
A Note on Referencing
In setting out these endnotes, a compromise has needed to be made between providing the fullest possible source references and pressing the boundaries of a generous but still strict word limit. The following conventions have therefore been observed. Instead of a bibliography, full publication details are given of each work cited, afresh, in the notes to each chapter, so they should be relatively easy to trace. When the sources involved are literary texts that exist in a number of different editions (much augmented now by the Internet), references are made to the section and chapter of the original work, to make them easy to trace in any of those editions. Only if a given text exists in only a single edition are references made to page numbers of that.
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