WEBVTT - Part One: Witches: Witches Were Pretty Cool Even Though They Didn't Really Exist

0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:02.920
<v Speaker 1>Cool Zone Media.

0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:09.000
<v Speaker 2>Hello, Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff Spooky

0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:14.360
<v Speaker 2>Month edition. It's November. You might argue, Spooky Month is over,

0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:18.239
<v Speaker 2>you might say in your ignorance, but you know what

0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:24.520
<v Speaker 2>they say, It's always October somewhere. This week, it's just me,

0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.880
<v Speaker 2>your host, Margaret Kildroy, no guest, no producer, just me,

0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:33.839
<v Speaker 2>my microphone and you. Why Well, mostly because I'm on

0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.360
<v Speaker 2>book tour right now, which makes scheduling guests particularly difficult,

0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.280
<v Speaker 2>but also I want to experiment with this style of

0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.479
<v Speaker 2>podcasting a bit. See how I like it. If I

0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.480
<v Speaker 2>want banter, I'll have to write it into the script myself.

0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:50.920
<v Speaker 2>This week we're covering something near and dear to my heart.

0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:56.240
<v Speaker 2>This week we're covering witches, especially witches in Europe, especially

0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.080
<v Speaker 2>the witch hunts. There aren't a ton of cool people

0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.760
<v Speaker 2>in today's episode, but I think witches themselves, as a

0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.720
<v Speaker 2>reclaimed archetype are cool. I don't know if I've ever

0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.760
<v Speaker 2>seen a topic so well covered by academic literature with

0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:13.679
<v Speaker 2>so little academic consensus about it. What is a witch?

0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.440
<v Speaker 2>Were they real? As in, did they represent an actual

0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:20.040
<v Speaker 2>sort of counter religion during the early modern period? Did

0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.440
<v Speaker 2>witches gather at black masses, as the great Ozzy Osbourne

0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:28.319
<v Speaker 2>once claimed, Well, probably not, at least not in the

0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.560
<v Speaker 2>way depicted by the witch hunters at the time. Believe me,

0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:33.200
<v Speaker 2>if they did, I'd be the first to want to

0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.440
<v Speaker 2>believe in them. There were most likely strange occult countercultures

0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.840
<v Speaker 2>here and there, mostly in cities, mostly selling love charms

0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.640
<v Speaker 2>and poisoning husbands, but they're oddly disconnected from the phenomena

0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.600
<v Speaker 2>of witch hunting. As for what's spurred on the witch trials,

0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.560
<v Speaker 2>that's a harder question one with no shortage of potential answers,

0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.640
<v Speaker 2>and we're going to get into that. So then witches,

0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:01.520
<v Speaker 2>pointy hats, animal familiars right now brooms having a bunch

0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:06.280
<v Speaker 2>of wild sex in the woods, cursing people cackling, I think,

0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.600
<v Speaker 2>which is the coolest shit. I wouldn't have written a

0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.080
<v Speaker 2>book about them if I didn't. What a good time

0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:13.079
<v Speaker 2>to plug the fact that the book I'm on tour

0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.160
<v Speaker 2>with the Sapling Cage is about a young trans witch.

0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.480
<v Speaker 2>But by and large, the modern conception of a witch

0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.200
<v Speaker 2>is of course a modern conception. There weren't, as best

0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.959
<v Speaker 2>as anyone is able to determine people running around in

0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:31.000
<v Speaker 2>the fifteen hundreds in Europe declaring themselves witches. This doesn't

0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:35.120
<v Speaker 2>mean that there weren't magical practitioners, including practitioners of what

0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:37.880
<v Speaker 2>you might want to call black magic, but we'll get

0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:42.239
<v Speaker 2>to that. In general, a witch is a bad guy. Definitionally,

0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.600
<v Speaker 2>one anthropologist Rodney need Him in nineteen seventy eight defined

0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:50.040
<v Speaker 2>a witch as quote someone who causes harm to others

0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:54.040
<v Speaker 2>by mystical means. This isn't the only definition of witchcraft,

0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:57.040
<v Speaker 2>but it's the one most applicable to the medieval and

0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:01.400
<v Speaker 2>early modern understanding of them, which then is less a

0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.840
<v Speaker 2>category of a person or a set of magical practices

0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:09.080
<v Speaker 2>or a religious belief system, but instead an accusation of

0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:14.360
<v Speaker 2>crime levied at someone. Being a witch historically was more

0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.079
<v Speaker 2>akin to being a murderer or an arsonist, or more

0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:23.079
<v Speaker 2>specifically and legally actionably, in this case, heretic. It was

0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:27.080
<v Speaker 2>an accusation to throw around at anyone who practiced religion, magic, healing,

0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.080
<v Speaker 2>or science that you didn't like. It was also an

0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.480
<v Speaker 2>accusation to throw around at anyone who slept with someone

0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.160
<v Speaker 2>that you wish they hadn't, or was too rich and

0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:40.040
<v Speaker 2>powerful or too poor and unpowerful. Witchcraft isn't a word

0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.560
<v Speaker 2>for a type of magic, but instead a moral position

0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:47.080
<v Speaker 2>with which we view that magic. Witchcraft is magic I

0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.240
<v Speaker 2>don't like these days. Of course, a witch is something else.

0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.160
<v Speaker 2>It's a reclaimed archetype, and it's one of the most

0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.520
<v Speaker 2>important reclaimed symbols in our pantheon of symbols. Now, a

0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:03.240
<v Speaker 2>witch is something people might identify as, either religiously or politically,

0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.480
<v Speaker 2>the reclamation of folk healing or women's magic, of certain

0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:10.320
<v Speaker 2>pagan practices. What have you? I wear all black and

0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:12.080
<v Speaker 2>live alone in the woods with a dog. I named

0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.600
<v Speaker 2>after a mystical figure from literature, So I like witches.

0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.960
<v Speaker 2>There weren't really self styled witches five hundred years ago,

0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.920
<v Speaker 2>but there were absolutely people in medieval and early modern

0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.320
<v Speaker 2>Europe whose role was what we might describe as sorcerer

0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.440
<v Speaker 2>or magician or whatever, just as there were in more

0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:35.360
<v Speaker 2>or less every hitherto existing society. Every society perhaps has

0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.360
<v Speaker 2>the figure of the magician, the diviner, the healer. In

0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.520
<v Speaker 2>England these people were often called cunning folk, and this

0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.440
<v Speaker 2>label was applied whenever an English speaker talked about just

0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.120
<v Speaker 2>about anyone else in Europe, these were diviners and healers,

0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:51.560
<v Speaker 2>and all of that. One of their main jobs was,

0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.039
<v Speaker 2>in fact, to remove the curses laid on people by witchcraft.

0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.080
<v Speaker 2>The cunning folk were not witches. They weren't even all

0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:03.480
<v Speaker 2>that often accused of witchcraft. When English people met indigenous

0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:07.760
<v Speaker 2>North Americans, they called their magicians, medicine men and medicine women.

0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.240
<v Speaker 2>When English people met Indigenous Africans, they usually called the

0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:16.039
<v Speaker 2>magicians witch doctors. The word shaman, currently used as a

0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.800
<v Speaker 2>sort of catch all for all of these folks, actually

0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.240
<v Speaker 2>comes from the Siberian indigenous group, the Tungus, from their

0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:27.080
<v Speaker 2>word for their magicians. Anthropologist Ronald Hutton, who studies these

0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.400
<v Speaker 2>various types of magicians, refers to this whole category of

0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.480
<v Speaker 2>people of shamans and cunning folk and witch doctors and

0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:38.560
<v Speaker 2>medicine women and men as service magicians. That's what I'm

0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:42.599
<v Speaker 2>going to use here. In service magicians are, of course,

0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.560
<v Speaker 2>people who perform magic as a service. In quote unquote

0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.040
<v Speaker 2>simpler societies, they might live in the tribe or village

0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:52.520
<v Speaker 2>and offer services to people. In more complex societies, they

0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.920
<v Speaker 2>might live in towns or cities and well sell their

0:05:55.920 --> 0:06:00.200
<v Speaker 2>services to people. You've got service magicians right now, up

0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:02.600
<v Speaker 2>to the present day. Of course, you can stop in

0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.400
<v Speaker 2>and talk to palm readers and astrologers wherever you'd like.

0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.040
<v Speaker 2>You can subscribe to service magician apps that'll give you

0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:13.240
<v Speaker 2>your horoscopes. I'm, by no means attempting to disparage any

0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.640
<v Speaker 2>of these practices. The line between service magician and healer are,

0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:22.120
<v Speaker 2>of course blurry. Are nature paths. Service magicians are chemists.

0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.920
<v Speaker 2>Allopathic doctors are modern therapists. Specifically any better at making

0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:31.320
<v Speaker 2>you feel better than fortune tellers than Catholic confessors. I'm

0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:33.600
<v Speaker 2>really honestly not trying to opine on the matter here,

0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.560
<v Speaker 2>because there's this incorrect belief that the West underwent what

0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:42.800
<v Speaker 2>gets called a disenchanting process. Jason josephin Storm, author of

0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:47.479
<v Speaker 2>The Myth of Disenchantment, said quote comparing several large scale

0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:52.400
<v Speaker 2>sociological surveys suggests that roughly three and four Americans believe

0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:57.000
<v Speaker 2>in ghosts, telepathy, which is demonic possession, or something comparable.

0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:01.440
<v Speaker 2>Skeptics are in the minority. The sources of practices offered

0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.360
<v Speaker 2>by service magicians vary from time to time and culture

0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.839
<v Speaker 2>to culture, but divination is a big one, of course,

0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.280
<v Speaker 2>as our love potions and charms, protection from curses and evil,

0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:18.040
<v Speaker 2>all sorts of things, healing, midwiffery, even brewing beer could

0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.800
<v Speaker 2>easily be a sort of magic, which makes sense if

0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:23.000
<v Speaker 2>you don't like totally get what's happening with the East,

0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:27.160
<v Speaker 2>like I mean, come on. One common trait, albeit not

0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.200
<v Speaker 2>universal across cultures, is that service magicians often work in

0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.160
<v Speaker 2>conjunction with various spirits who are coordinated with to perform

0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:38.360
<v Speaker 2>the actual magic in question, with witches that we're going

0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:40.160
<v Speaker 2>to get to you later, it's going to be like demons,

0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.200
<v Speaker 2>and then eventually the devil himself. A few years ago,

0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:49.280
<v Speaker 2>I covered the magical underground of early modern Western European cities,

0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.480
<v Speaker 2>in which your street diviner could also help you with

0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:55.679
<v Speaker 2>an abortion or even help you poison your husband. Before

0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:58.800
<v Speaker 2>divorce was legalized, women had to resort to reasonably drastic

0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.360
<v Speaker 2>measures in order to leave unhappy marriages. See our episode

0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.960
<v Speaker 2>about Aqua Tafauna for more about that. Of course, the

0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.840
<v Speaker 2>reality of these magical undergrounds is hard to discern. From

0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.080
<v Speaker 2>here in the twenty first century, there is ample evidence

0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:18.160
<v Speaker 2>of herbalism, alchemy, poisoning, divination, love, charms, curses, and the like.

0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.200
<v Speaker 2>What's less clear is whether or not some of these

0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:25.160
<v Speaker 2>folks met at black Masses performing ostensibly Christian rites with

0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.880
<v Speaker 2>a nude woman as an altar. There certainly is a

0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:30.200
<v Speaker 2>fair amount of writing that a tests that this happened.

0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.240
<v Speaker 2>Priests might make some money on the side selling magical

0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:36.720
<v Speaker 2>ointments that are anointed through some strange rituals, like you can,

0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.440
<v Speaker 2>like drip oil down the relic of some old dead

0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:42.560
<v Speaker 2>saint and then sell it as a love charm or whatever.

0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.079
<v Speaker 2>What's far less likely, though certainly claimed, is that these

0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:51.360
<v Speaker 2>same priests and diviners and herbalists killed children for their rituals.

0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:54.480
<v Speaker 2>It's incredibly unlikely that if there were a sort of

0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:59.280
<v Speaker 2>specific cult of satanic demonic counter Christians, that it was

0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.600
<v Speaker 2>multigeneration and lasted through the ages. But it's only these

0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.320
<v Speaker 2>urban groups, these magical undergrounds that I've found that seem

0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:09.800
<v Speaker 2>to have any trace of a legitimate claim to being

0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.880
<v Speaker 2>some kind of organized force doing what might be considered

0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:19.240
<v Speaker 2>black magic or definitionally witchcraft. But you know what is

0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.920
<v Speaker 2>an organized force doing what might be considered black magic?

0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:27.080
<v Speaker 2>The sponsors of this show. That's right, We're brought to

0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:32.080
<v Speaker 2>you by divination. Combine it with gambling and you're sure

0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:45.640
<v Speaker 2>to do well, and we're back. Mostly there were just

0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.720
<v Speaker 2>service magicians out there to help their friends and their

0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.680
<v Speaker 2>customers through white and black magic alike. There have perhaps

0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.199
<v Speaker 2>always been people willing to cast curses upon others, that is,

0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.640
<v Speaker 2>to do witchcraft, and there are poisoners and murderers throughout

0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.599
<v Speaker 2>all of it. But overall, the witch, as he or

0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.480
<v Speaker 2>she existed in the early modern Christian imagination, lived only

0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:11.120
<v Speaker 2>in that self same imagination. The real evil was, of

0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.319
<v Speaker 2>course caused by the inquisitors, who tried and murdered tens

0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.360
<v Speaker 2>of thousands of people across Europe, and oddly, even this

0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:23.200
<v Speaker 2>evil has been greatly exaggerated by the popular imagination. In

0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.040
<v Speaker 2>the nineteen seventies or so, as feminists and pagans worked

0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.720
<v Speaker 2>to reclaim witchcraft, the witch hunts were woefully understudied, and

0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.920
<v Speaker 2>you'll see claims that hundreds of thousands, or millions, up

0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.920
<v Speaker 2>to thirty million. I've seen people, almost exclusively women, were

0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:41.080
<v Speaker 2>killed in these witch hunts. The reality, while still nothing

0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.920
<v Speaker 2>to be excited about, is not nearly so dramatic. Current

0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.040
<v Speaker 2>best estimates hold that about ninety thousand people, a majority

0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.120
<v Speaker 2>of them women, were accused of witchcraft over the course

0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:55.520
<v Speaker 2>of several hundred years, from about fourteen fifty to seventeen fifty,

0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.560
<v Speaker 2>About half of those people were executed. About twenty percent

0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:03.800
<v Speaker 2>of the accused were men, though men were the majority accused.

0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.319
<v Speaker 2>In some countries. In Iceland, about ninety percent of those

0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.160
<v Speaker 2>who were accused were men. The idea that a witch

0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.120
<v Speaker 2>is necessarily a woman is actually a recent one, though,

0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:15.280
<v Speaker 2>as we'll talk about in a bit, the seeds for

0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:19.080
<v Speaker 2>that were sown by a particular medieval misogynist. During the

0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.240
<v Speaker 2>witch trials, women were generally perceived to be more prone

0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:26.960
<v Speaker 2>to the devil's temptations. Christianity had been around for over

0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:30.840
<v Speaker 2>a millennium before the witch trials kicked in, So why

0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:33.680
<v Speaker 2>were the witch hunts decidedly not a medieval phenomenon, but

0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.760
<v Speaker 2>an early modern one. For more than a thousand years,

0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.920
<v Speaker 2>witchcraft was not seen as a serious problem by the Church.

0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:44.640
<v Speaker 2>Witchcraft was, of course magic done to harm people, and

0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:50.400
<v Speaker 2>the Church they basically didn't believe in it. Witchcraft wasn't real,

0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.720
<v Speaker 2>That was superstitious mumbo jumbo. All magic came from God

0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:57.439
<v Speaker 2>as they saw it, And of course opinions varied over

0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:01.640
<v Speaker 2>time and place, but in general, all that not real.

0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:04.559
<v Speaker 2>There were certain types of magic they admitted were true,

0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.280
<v Speaker 2>potions that caused abortion or impotence, for example, But witchcraft

0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:11.800
<v Speaker 2>and the belief in it and the fear of it

0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:16.240
<v Speaker 2>was generally a popular phenomenon. It is something believed in

0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.120
<v Speaker 2>by the people, as it were. The Church saw itself

0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.120
<v Speaker 2>as the learned authorities not to be swayed by superstition.

0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.920
<v Speaker 2>We've got statement after statement by various Catholic authorities that

0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:33.440
<v Speaker 2>the Church would not investigate witchcraft because witchcraft did not exist. Okay,

0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:34.880
<v Speaker 2>but wouldn't it be funny if it was just like

0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:37.959
<v Speaker 2>they were in on it and that's why they didn't

0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.079
<v Speaker 2>investigate it. I bet you have like these like medieval

0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:42.920
<v Speaker 2>conspiracy theorists who are like, the reason the Church claims

0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:44.960
<v Speaker 2>to not believe in witchcraft is because they're the ones

0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:47.680
<v Speaker 2>doing it, which is funny because I mean, they were

0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.720
<v Speaker 2>doing weird rituals and hurting people and stuff. So maybe

0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:56.520
<v Speaker 2>those conspiracy theorists were right anyway. In the eight hundreds,

0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.320
<v Speaker 2>Saint Agobard wrote a book called Against the fool Fulish

0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.840
<v Speaker 2>Belief of the Common Sort concerning Hail and Thunder, which

0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.880
<v Speaker 2>is a sick title which basically said, Hey, witchcraft doesn't real,

0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.720
<v Speaker 2>you guys. Basically, believing in witchcraft was the actual problem

0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.640
<v Speaker 2>for the early Catholic Church. Belief in this kind of

0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.440
<v Speaker 2>magic was a sin. It just like wasn't a very

0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.680
<v Speaker 2>big deal sin. People accused of witchcraft and devil worship

0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:26.480
<v Speaker 2>were generally told to do penance, but it wasn't taken

0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:30.200
<v Speaker 2>seriously as a problem. In seven eighty five, the Council

0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.480
<v Speaker 2>of Paderborn said anyone who burns a witch will themselves

0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.280
<v Speaker 2>be put to death. Another old code, the Lombard Code

0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:41.160
<v Speaker 2>of six forty three, says let nobody presume to kill

0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.920
<v Speaker 2>a foreign serving maid or a female servant as a witch,

0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.920
<v Speaker 2>for it is not possible nor ought to be believed

0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:51.640
<v Speaker 2>by Christian minds. In eight sixty six, Pope Nicholas the

0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:56.400
<v Speaker 2>First ban torture. In twelve fifty eight Pope Alexander the

0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:01.160
<v Speaker 2>Fourth so that inquisitors shouldn't really bother investigating wins. Just

0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:06.280
<v Speaker 2>over and over again. The Church was clear whiches don't exist,

0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:12.640
<v Speaker 2>not really, And then the Church changed course. By the

0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.720
<v Speaker 2>twelfth century or so, the monopolistic power of the Church

0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.920
<v Speaker 2>was starting to fall apart, or at least show some cracks.

0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.040
<v Speaker 2>There were these heresies like the Cathars and the Waldensians,

0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:25.120
<v Speaker 2>who I think I'll be covering more in the future,

0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.600
<v Speaker 2>that were starting to spread. The Catholic Church figured we

0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.560
<v Speaker 2>should do something about this. We should stamp this out,

0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:35.240
<v Speaker 2>force everyone to convert back to the one true faith,

0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:37.800
<v Speaker 2>or you know, murder the shit out of them if

0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:43.280
<v Speaker 2>they don't. So they formed the Inquisition. Their main targets

0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.920
<v Speaker 2>in France were these heretical groups that I was talking about,

0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.000
<v Speaker 2>while in Spain and Portugal they targeted the Jews and

0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.040
<v Speaker 2>the Muslims who had been forced to convert, suspecting them

0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:56.560
<v Speaker 2>of secretly still being Jewish or Muslim. Much like our

0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:03.120
<v Speaker 2>main target is you with our inquisitional ads forcing you

0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:17.240
<v Speaker 2>to convert to capitalism. Here's ads and we're back and

0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:20.360
<v Speaker 2>the Inquisition. Of course, it's like a fucked up thing, right,

0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.320
<v Speaker 2>It's not a good thing to do, to have an inquisition.

0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.400
<v Speaker 2>But they weren't just running around setting people on fire.

0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.760
<v Speaker 2>By and large. People who were convicted were forced to

0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:33.200
<v Speaker 2>wear a cross like so across under their clothing or whatever,

0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.280
<v Speaker 2>or go on a pilgrimage. Though it started to ramp

0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.040
<v Speaker 2>up in its murderousness over time. I'm sure I'll be

0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.200
<v Speaker 2>covering resistance to the Inquisition and the heretical groups themselves

0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.240
<v Speaker 2>at a later time, and I'll come to understand this

0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:49.560
<v Speaker 2>better here and there. The Inquisition went after witches, or

0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.480
<v Speaker 2>at least various local church and secular authorities did. One

0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:57.400
<v Speaker 2>of the earliest, most famous cases took place on that

0:15:57.440 --> 0:15:59.840
<v Speaker 2>little island of Ireland. Okay, And this is gonna be

0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.280
<v Speaker 2>really notable because almost none of the witch hunts took

0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:04.480
<v Speaker 2>place on Ireland, and yet one of the first ones does.

0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.640
<v Speaker 2>Ireland is decidedly light on witch trials throughout history for

0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.760
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of reasons besides just being a decidedly cool place.

0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:16.040
<v Speaker 2>But the first witch trial in the British Isles was

0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:21.280
<v Speaker 2>in Ireland, in Kilkenny in thirteen twenty four. One source

0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:23.840
<v Speaker 2>called this the first witch trial in Europe, but you

0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:25.800
<v Speaker 2>know how much I hate the claims of like the

0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.200
<v Speaker 2>first in history, so I'm just gonna stick with the

0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.480
<v Speaker 2>first in British Isles. Also even then, like I don't know,

0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.800
<v Speaker 2>there were probably some before that. This trial went after

0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:40.480
<v Speaker 2>a woman who well quite possibly was doing witchcraft, that is,

0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.320
<v Speaker 2>things understood as magic at the time for ill intent.

0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:46.040
<v Speaker 2>There is a really good chance that this lady was

0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:51.120
<v Speaker 2>a poisoner. Dame Alice Kiteller was a rich woman who

0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:54.040
<v Speaker 2>inherited her father's fortune and then married the Chancellor of

0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:57.600
<v Speaker 2>Ireland's brother in twelve ninety nine, then ran an inn

0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.800
<v Speaker 2>and got even wealthier. Her husband died suspiciously. The story

0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.560
<v Speaker 2>goes like, I don't know the different husbands that are

0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.320
<v Speaker 2>all going to die have like, oh, fingernails fell out

0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:13.000
<v Speaker 2>and hair got thin or whatever. The full story goes,

0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:15.840
<v Speaker 2>according to a write up by Irish identity dot Com,

0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.480
<v Speaker 2>that this husband found her cupboard in the basement full

0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.800
<v Speaker 2>of things like entrails of roosters and eyes of ravens,

0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.680
<v Speaker 2>and jars of night shade, and another more jars full

0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:29.960
<v Speaker 2>of weird worms, and of course pieces of unbaptized babies.

0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:32.240
<v Speaker 2>How did they know that those babies in the jars

0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:36.679
<v Speaker 2>were unbaptized? Who knows? And a pot made from the

0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.919
<v Speaker 2>skull of a beheaded thief with which they cooked it

0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:45.320
<v Speaker 2>all anyway, the husband dies after discovering the mysterious witchcraft thing.

0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.080
<v Speaker 2>She keeps running the inn and is surrounded by young women.

0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:54.600
<v Speaker 2>More husbands show up, more husbands die. Her story is actually,

0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.639
<v Speaker 2>it really interestingly parallels another story I've told on this show,

0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:03.720
<v Speaker 2>the story of Elizabeth Botori. It's people mispronounce it as Bathory,

0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.960
<v Speaker 2>and there's a metal band called Bathory, but it's pronounced

0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:09.440
<v Speaker 2>but Tory, said the pet end who reads history books

0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:12.119
<v Speaker 2>for a living, which doesn't actually make me the expert.

0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.280
<v Speaker 2>It just means that I get lost in this stuff. Anyway.

0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.959
<v Speaker 2>Her story parallels but Torre's story, who probably was teaching

0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:24.160
<v Speaker 2>local women to become healers, but was accused of bathing

0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.240
<v Speaker 2>in the blood of virgins. She was rich and the

0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:30.480
<v Speaker 2>king owed her money, and so she's accused of unspeakable evil.

0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.960
<v Speaker 2>Alice Kayiteller, she was rich and the king owed her money.

0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.040
<v Speaker 2>I mean again, all of her husbands are dying mysteriously.

0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:41.280
<v Speaker 2>I think this lady's up to no good, although I

0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:43.679
<v Speaker 2>don't know, maybe they all deserved it. I'm not like

0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:46.119
<v Speaker 2>going to give the benefit of the doubt a random

0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:49.199
<v Speaker 2>medieval husband man, although I'm not really going to give

0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.560
<v Speaker 2>it to Alice here either. Anyway, After her fourth rich

0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.359
<v Speaker 2>husband dies mysteriously, each husband leaving a bunch of money

0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:59.480
<v Speaker 2>to either her or the oldest of her children. I've

0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.040
<v Speaker 2>read both a London born bishop showed up and accused

0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.399
<v Speaker 2>her of witchcraft. The accusation is that she goes to

0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.200
<v Speaker 2>the crossroads every night with her coven and like cuts

0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:13.200
<v Speaker 2>up living animals and fucks a demon named Robin, son

0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.760
<v Speaker 2>of Artisan. I want to know more about Robin's son

0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:19.080
<v Speaker 2>of Artisan, but the Internet only provides this story. So

0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.879
<v Speaker 2>she's found guilty, but she escapes. Most versions of the

0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.520
<v Speaker 2>story say that her brother in law, the Chancellor of Ireland,

0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.520
<v Speaker 2>helped secret her way to London. More serious analyzes seem

0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:32.760
<v Speaker 2>to say, well, we have no idea how she escaped

0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:36.879
<v Speaker 2>or where she went. Her handmaiden, Petronella of Meath was

0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.600
<v Speaker 2>burned at the stake in her place, confessing to all

0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:44.960
<v Speaker 2>sorts of demonic sins because you know, torture. This story

0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:47.639
<v Speaker 2>happens like one hundred and fifty years before the witch

0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:51.280
<v Speaker 2>trials start really kicking off, and to me, it seems

0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.600
<v Speaker 2>most likely that Alice was killing her husband's sure and

0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.480
<v Speaker 2>also that she was too rich and powerful and murdery

0:19:57.560 --> 0:19:59.600
<v Speaker 2>and needed to be stopped because of how that threatened

0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:02.399
<v Speaker 2>power in the area, and of course because you're not

0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:06.400
<v Speaker 2>supposed to murder people. So some of the basic ideas

0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:08.560
<v Speaker 2>of witchcraft have been going around for a long time.

0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:12.359
<v Speaker 2>Witches fuck demons at midnight sabbaths in the woods or

0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.120
<v Speaker 2>at the crossroads. They get there by flying on sticks.

0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:18.359
<v Speaker 2>The first known drawing of a woman on a broom

0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.840
<v Speaker 2>is drawn in the margin of a book from fourteen forty,

0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:25.040
<v Speaker 2>The Champion de Dame. Sometimes lots of witches rode the

0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.040
<v Speaker 2>same stick, And again, like the stick is the important part,

0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.960
<v Speaker 2>not the broom, right, And it seems like the sexual

0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:36.320
<v Speaker 2>energy implied by stick writing seems self evident. But I'll

0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:40.440
<v Speaker 2>just point it out in case you missed it. These

0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.040
<v Speaker 2>witches would also turn into animals, or they would ride

0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.439
<v Speaker 2>strange demon animals to the sabbaths or fuck demons in

0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.800
<v Speaker 2>animal form. But flying to the sabbaths has been an

0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.000
<v Speaker 2>important part of the stories for a very long time.

0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:55.720
<v Speaker 2>But again, the witch trials didn't kick off for a

0:20:55.760 --> 0:21:00.439
<v Speaker 2>long time yet. The soil was the inquisition the seed.

0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:03.520
<v Speaker 2>The seed was a guy with real big in cell

0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:08.199
<v Speaker 2>energy who wrote a little book called Malleus Maleficarum, The

0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:13.080
<v Speaker 2>Hammer of Witches, which we'll talk about on Wednesday. You're

0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.040
<v Speaker 2>gonna have to wait till Wednesday to hear about The

0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:20.840
<v Speaker 2>Hammer of witches. I can totally be trusted to record

0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.560
<v Speaker 2>episodes by myself. I don't know what you're talking about anyway,

0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.520
<v Speaker 2>dear guest, what would you like to plug? Well me

0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:34.440
<v Speaker 2>the guest. I have a substack. It's called my substack.

0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.439
<v Speaker 2>It's Margaret kiljoydot substack dot com. And I have been

0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.600
<v Speaker 2>putting up my tour diaries, and I've been putting up

0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.560
<v Speaker 2>essays and my reflections on these various things. I'll probably

0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:49.600
<v Speaker 2>write a witch thing next week, but who knows. You

0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:54.359
<v Speaker 2>might know if you listen in the future where it's spooky,

0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:56.320
<v Speaker 2>actually all are going to have bigger problems next week

0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:58.919
<v Speaker 2>maybe or maybe next week will be fine. I'm recording

0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:02.360
<v Speaker 2>this the day after Halloween, and you know the elections

0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.000
<v Speaker 2>are coming up, and you in the future know what happened,

0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:08.639
<v Speaker 2>or honestly, I suspect you don't. I suspect that people

0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.280
<v Speaker 2>don't know what happened yet, but I do know that

0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:18.280
<v Speaker 2>this episode's done. Bye.

0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:22.359
<v Speaker 1>Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:25.520
<v Speaker 1>cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,

0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.920
<v Speaker 1>visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:31.920
<v Speaker 1>on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:33.600
<v Speaker 2>You get your podcasts