[Note: All Basque words are in Italics and Bold-faced Green]
WITCHES IN
RELIGION *
A review derived from the following: Nyland, Edo. 2001. Linguistic Archaeology: AnIntroduction. Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada. ISBN 1-55212-668-4. 541 p.
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Introduction
Much is known about the witch-hunts of
the 16th and 17th centuries. In some countries, a great deal of the original
documentation has survived in archives such as the "Archivo Historico National" in Madrid, and
these records have been used by a number of scholars from different countries
to document the witch phenomenon. Edo Nyland
(2001) suggested that emerged from their independent and unemotional
assessments amounted to an indictment of the politics of the church in Rome.
Most of these researchers concluded that the brutal burnings had been a
mistake. It was also clearly shown
that among the members of the Inquisition there were some very responsible,
honest and courageous people, who were, however, unable to control the
excesses of some of their colleagues or of the local government officials,
once the process was out of hand. Edo Nyland's translations of some of the
names, associated with this epidemic of burnings and hangings are revealing. Witchcraft a
Make-believe Offense
The church knew from the beginning that witchcraft did not exist. The
social anthropologist Evans-Pritchard wrote in 1935:
"Witchcraft is an imaginary offense because it is
impossible. A witch cannot do what he/she is supposed to do and has in fact
no real existence. A sorcerer, on the other hand, may make magic to kill his
neighbours. The magic will not kill them, but he can and no doubt, often does
with that intention."
One of the bright lights during the time of the witch craze, which had
thrown a cloud of death and despair over the beautiful Basque countryside,
was the Bishop of Pamplona, the influential Antonio Venegas de Figueroa. His
investigations had led him to believe that the witch craze was almost
entirely based on deceit and self-delusion, and he gave expression to this
view in a letter to the Inquisition in March 1610. After interrogating
various people the bishop established that there had been absolutely no
mention or knowledge of witchcraft before the persecutions had commenced.
Many of the inhabitants had gone to the witch burnings in France and brought
back the knowledge from there. Before that time the people had known nothing
about witch sects or Aquelarres
or evil arts (Henningson
p.127). The bishop had learned that uneducated and
lonely people or people who deviated from the norm of their society, were the
first to be supposed to be members of this secret confederation, where all
the virtues of society were inverted.
Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frias, one of the Inquisition's own
scholars, who was sent to report on the epidemic of witchcraft, wrote in
1612: "There were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked
and written about" (Henningson, p.ix). So why did the church unleash this most demonic of
all holocausts? The church had kept de Salazar's, the bishop's and similar
reports secret and it was not until three centuries later that several of
Salazar's (mislabeled) submissions to the Inquisition were re-discovered in
Madrid by the American historian Henry
Charles Lea who used them in his monumental book "Inquisition of
Spain" (p 211-237). The question now is: was there a reason for the
church to continue the witch charade for so many years (throughout the 16th,
17th and part of the 18th century) when it knew very well that there never
had been any witches or aquelarres? The word "aquelarre" comes from
Basque akelarre, akela-arre, Akela (Priestess, witch) arremankor (social): "The witches' social (gathering)". Our
English word "witch" is taken straight from the Basque language;
the first three letters of the verb itxuraldatu (to transform, to change shape) were used; itx, pronounced "itch" with a
"w" stuck onto it to mask the Basque origin. Changing shape was something
some "witches" themselves had admitted to during questioning,
whether this was possible or not.
But first it must be made clear that there is a great difference
between "Witchcraft", also called the
traditional distrust between people, and the "Witch-craze",
also known as "Demonical Witchcraft"
which is the product of "syncretism of the witch beliefs of the common
people with those of the more specialized or educated classes" (Henningson p.391).
The last type was spread by the preaching of the fanatical Franciscan
Zealots, telling fabricated and detailed witch stories from the pulpits. The
existence of witches, as a group or coven, was therefore a fictitious product
of the church's propaganda. The Roman Catholic clergy knew four classes of Non-believers:
In Spain the burning of heretics had been on the decline in the late
16th century and none had taken place since the Auto-da-fe (act of faith) at Logroņo in
1593. At that time, twenty-three cases had been prepared: six for Judaism, one
for Mohammedanism, one for Lutheranism, one for bigamy, twelve for
blasphemous or heretical utterances, and two for impersonating agents of the
Inquisition. There were no witches around yet. The auto-da-fe's had attracted
many people to witness the event, but nothing compared to what was to come.
The people who had been executed in 1593 had been punished for offenses which
mattered little to the local population. The auto-da-fe of 1610 was very
different. Fifty three people were to be sentenced, but eleven of the group
were covered with figures of devils and flames, because they were condemned
to die for witchcraft. In reality there were only six left alive, the other
five had "died" in prison and were represented by effigies carried
on long poles. These eleven women were their own local people, and they were
going to die for a non-existent offense. This was not justice, this was known
as a sacrifice.
The peoples' response to the happenings had been astonishing to the
church. The scene was described by the inquisitorial commissioner at Vitoria,
the treasurer Pedro Gamiz:
"I can assure your Grace that never before have so many
people been gathered together in this town. It is estimated that over thirty
thousand souls have assembled here from France, Aragon, Navarra, Vizkaya and
parts of Castilla. The reason for such enthusiasm was the publication of the
announcement that the vile sect of the witches was to be revealed at this
auto-de-fe" (Henningson
p.184).
However, Pedro Gamiz did not realize what he had witnessed, or at
least could not admit it. The attraction had been something very different.
The Tribunal sent another account of the auto-da-fe to the Inquisition's
"La Suprema" on November 13, 1610:
The people observed the deepest silence during the entire
ceremony and paid the greatest attention, and no untoward incidents of any
kind occurred. The auto-de-fe has been to the great edification of the
people. For all agree that never before have they experienced
anything more solemn, more strange, and more authoritative" (Henningson p.194).
What these Inquisition members had witnessed was the last of the human
sacrifices of the Goddess religion in western Europe; at least that is how
the local people had seen it. It is appropriate to compare this event with
the human sacrifice in the Scottish Hebrides. Similar huge crowds had, centuries
before, traveled to the north half of the Isle of Hinba (from hinbasio meaning invasion)
when the northern Tammuz was sacrificed in the Whirlpool of Corryvreckan, 70
km west of Glasgow. People from as far away as Norway, the Baltic states and
even Russia had annually attended that sacrifice. No wonder the church in
Rome quickly changed the name of the island from Hinba to Jura (from juramendu meaning cursed),
when they gained the upper hand. Those observing the sacrifice had done so because
speaking at such a holy sacrament would have jeopardized a quick
reincarnation for the young man, called Tammuz in the Bible, into a newborn
body. Therefore the entire sacrifice service was conducted in absolute
silence. It is likely that something very similar happened at Christ's
crucifixion.
The names of five church organizations come up regularly in the
reports of the inquisitioners: 1) the Benedictines, by far the oldest order
(582 AD), 2) the Franciscans (1209), 3) the Dominicans (1215), 4) the
Inquisition (1231), and last 5) the Jesuits (1540). They all had different
functions to perform, as the translations of the names of the organizations
show. In western Europe there had been three main enemies of the church. These were 1) the Priestess and her
clergy, representing the ancient Goddess religion and civilization, 2) the
Cathars, Waldensians, Albigencians etc., belonging to Gnostic Christianity,
representing the Heretics and 3) the witches, who formed the gathering basket
for all other unfortunates who had drawn the ire of the church in Rome. The Benedictines
St. Benedict started his new order in 528 A.D. and gathered a large
number of highly educated Christian men around him. The name Benedict urges
people to come and join him in the evangelization process: Benedict,
.be-ene-edi-ik.-.t., "Come to me (under) the cross and find learning to take
along with you".
The Benedictines had been the first monastic order created by the church
of Rome. For 1000 years prior to the witch craze they had laboured, often
under great duress, to bring Judeo-Christianity to western and central
Europe. In the process they created new countries out of many tribal regions
and invented a new language for each such new
country. They were pioneer scholars who worked towards a continental goal but
were never very involved in the nitty-gritty business of eliminating
out-of-the-way pockets of people who had either been missed in the overall
effort, or of searching out people who insisted on maintaining their own
ancient religion and language. Putting the final additions on the
evangelization effort required a different type of training and mentality
among the monks. Although the Benedictine Order's name appears in some of the
documents relating to the witch trials, this was only because of their
historical and omnipresent role in bringing Judeo-Christianity to all of
western Europe. Their main opposition had come from the Priestess (akela or ama) and male
clergy (abade) of the Goddess religion and to a lesser degree from the
Gnostic Irish evangelists, but certainly not from the witches, who had not
been invented yet. To their eternal credit, the Benedictines decided not to
support the later witch craze. They
would rather see the demise of their order than to participate in something
so very offensive to Christian teachings. The horrible task of killing the
witch craze was assigned to the Dominicans and Franciscans, who enthusiastically
carried the torch. The Franciscans
The Franciscan friars were a ragtag group of urban wandering lay
preachers and looked their part as unkempt and threadbare evangelists. They
appeared little different from the wild-eyed prophets who had roamed the
countryside of France for many years. The fact that they expanded into a
continent-wide organization is nothing short of amazing. Their evangelical
zeal and simple education made them ideally suited for being brainwashed
against the perceived threat posed by witchcraft and the terrible witch
aquelarres which persisted in inverting all of the virtues of society. Again,
their task is written in the name:
It is clear that St. Francis was given his name when the Order was
formed and when the task was assigned. History books tell us that Pope
Innocent III gave St. Francis of Assisi approval in 1209 to create an Order
whose goal was a life of preaching and penance. The analysis of the name of
the Order tells a different story because the eradication of the witch heresy
was its stated reason for being. The various popes named Innocent were not as
innocent as their name would make us believe. The subsequent endorsement of
the hated "Malleus Maleficarum", the witches' handbook, and
its ruthless and devilish instructions made Innocent VIII possibly the most
brutal and decadent of all popes. There were three types of
Franciscans:
It appears that the Franciscans
participated in the witch trials in an initiating, supporting and
facilitating function by gathering or manufacturing evidence such as for the
Logroņo witch tribunal (in Spain), for which they interrupted their preaching
crusade to present a "dressed toad" and pots of "witches'
salve" as evidence of witchcraft (Henningson
p.345). They were deeply involved in spying out potential witches and
reporting them to the authorities. The Franciscans were not beyond forcibly
extracting false confessions such as done for instance by the monk Fray Juan
de Ladron. He took part in the witch-hunt in Alava in the capacity of one of
the Inquisition's special emissaries. Three women were reported by him after
the priest at Larrea, Martin Lopez de Lazarraga, had tied them by the hands
and neck, assisted by de Ladron, who then threatened to take the women to the
Logroņo showcase witch-trial if they did not confess. They did confess but
later told de Salazar what happened. Lazarraga had been appointed
inquisitorial commissioner. He put
into the head of one of the women the idea of accusing six uncooperative
local priests of witchcraft. At Logroņo many people were tortured into
admitting anything the clergy told them to say. One of the women, Mariquita
de Atauri, felt so terribly distressed after denouncing so many innocent
people under torture that she drowned herself in the river near her house.
The main culprit in extracting the confessions was identified as the
Franciscan Fray de Ladron .(Henningsen
p.292). The still existing records tell of many such cases where the
Franciscans were instrumental in extracting confessions and reporting all to
the witch-tribunals, complete with samples of witches' ointments and toads.
Their involvement in the witch burnings can only be called revolting. The Dominicans
Dominic was a Castilian priest of aristocratic birth who was assigned the
task of countering the wayward Catharist Christians. Before, this task had
been the responsibility of the Order of Cistercian clergy
since 1209 when Pope Innocent III had ordered them to preach a crusade
against the Albigencians. The Cistercians had split off from the Benedictine
Order in 1098 A.D. but these highly educated clergy had no stomach for
getting involved in a crusade against the Gnostic Christians, who had been of
great help to the Benedictines in their initial evangelical work, centuries before.
The translation of their name tells us that their assigned task was to
educate the people, not to make war against them: Cistercian,
.ki-is.-.te-er.-.ki- ia-an.
The Catharist clergy had spiritual elite who were famous for their
austerity and self-denial. Dominic decided that his evangelists had to be a clerical
order from the beginning and needed specialized education, different from
what the Cistercians had received, to be able to stand up to, and overcome
the biblical arguments of the devoted Catharist theologians. From the
beginning, the Dominicans therefore were a learned order and all efforts were
aimed at furthering the needs of the pastoral mission. In 1215 Pope Innocent
III gave provisional approval to Dominic to create an institute of preachers
to convert the deeply devoted Gnostic Albigencians of southern France, the
"heretics", to the "proper" form of Christianity. The
church in Rome was on record as having created this special order of clergy
to preach against the Albigencians and to prepare for the entire infamous
episode of the crusade against these austere Christians. The translation of
the name "Dominican", however, appears to have no relationship to
the Albigencians, because these had nothing to do with Hallowmass. Dominican,
do-omi-ini-ika-an.,
Especially in the mountainous regions, many people still adhered to
their ancient Goddess religion, guided by their priestesses. The Inquisition and
the Dominicans concentrated on the Alps of southern Germany, Switzerland,
northern Italy and eastern France. This was the Ligurian region from which the
Benedictines for many centuries had obtained their Saharan-speaking
(Basque/Ligurian) grammarians who had been instrumental in creating the new
languages of Europe. To detect and destroy the adherents to the Goddess
religion, the use of torture had been officially authorized by Pope Innocent
IV in 1252. The clergy were to extract admissions of heresy, sorcery and
witchcraft from the people, many of who were the families of the grammarians,
working for the Benedictines. The witch craze in the Alps and southern
Germany killed more people than in any other region but next to nothing of
the documentation has survived.
The Order of the Dominican Mendicant friars took the initiative in
collecting ancient lore connected with the peoples' belief in magic. When the
time was right for the witch-hunt to begin, all of this gathered hearsay and
gossip was authoritatively assembled into the "Malleus Maleficarum",
the witch hunter's handbook. The Dominicans trained and guided the judges of
the Inquisition and wrote justifications why people should be so very cruelly
put to death, in spite of the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill" [Hebrew = Thou Shalt not Murder]. They laid the entire blame for the existence of witches on the
pre-Christian Goddess religion although the witches and their aquelarres had been
a total fabrication of the church of Rome. But it was a fabrication which
served a very specific purpose: the elimination of the last pockets of the
adherents to the Goddess religion, the Gnostic heretics and of the ancient
language of the Goddess which many still spoke; it was to be the final
solution by Christian Europe. They succeeded everywhere except in Euskadi,
where the [modified form of Saharan =] Basque language is still spoken to this day. The Inquisition
Pope Gregory IX instituted the papal Inquisition in 1231 for the
apprehension and trial of heretics such as the Cathari and Waldenses. The
medieval Inquisition functioned in northern Italy and southern France. In
1478 Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Spanish Inquisition to combat apostate
former Jews and Muslins, and the heretic Alumbrados. This inquisition proved
so severe that Pope Sixtus IV tried to interfere but the Spanish crown forced
the pope to give up his efforts. In 1483 he authorized a grand-inquisitor for
Castile, a few months later for Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia. The first
inquisitor was de Torquemada. The name Inquisition means the following: Inquisition,
ink-isi-ishi-on.,
The person responsible for organizing the Inquisition in Spain, the
Dominican Tomas de
Torquemada, is regarded as the epitome of the zealous witch
hunter: Tomas de Torquemada: .to-oma-as./ .de/ .to-or.-.ke-ema-ada,
The tribal
grandmother makes me furious; that murderer must be defeated and the deceiving
prostitute prosecuted.
This, of course, referred to the female head of the matrilineal
organized tribe, and possibly also the voluntary death of a young man (Tammuz) who had
participated in the Sacred
Marriage with the Priestess on May 1, and then was sacrificed on
October 31 / November 1 (Hallowmass) so others might live. In northwestern
Europe, this sacrifice took place annually in the Whirlpool of Corrivrecken.
The death of Tammuz is still being remembered in our churches on Good Friday,
when many Christians in Europe and elsewhere wear black mourning clothes to
church (Ezekiel 8:14). The sacrifice is an extremely ancient tradition, the
memory of which the church in Rome was unable to extinguish and therefore
decided to incorporate into the church's calendar as Halloween, thoroughly
ridiculed and distorted. The Malleus
Maleficarum
The Dominican clergy Heinrich Kramer
and James Sprenger assembled many fairy tales and magic stories, nightmares,
hearsay, confessions and accusations and put this all together as factual
information in what became the handbook for the witch hunters, examiners,
torturers and executioners, called the Malleus Maleficarum, a title
which was translated as Hammer of Witches. It was published in 1487, but two
years previously, the authors had secured a bull from Pope Innocent VIII,
authorizing them to continue the witch-hunt in the Alps that they had already
instituted against the opposition from clergy and secular authorities. They
reprinted the bull of December 5, 1484 to make it appear that the whole book
enjoyed papal sanction. Both names of the authors tell us about their
fanaticism: Heinrich Kramer, .he-in.-.ri-ik.-.h.
/ .k.-.ra-ame-er.,
James Sprenger, ja-ame-es. /
.s.-.p.-.re-en.-.ge-er., ja ja jainkogabe godless, sinful ame ame ameslilura fantasy es./ ese/ esetsi to attack .s. ase aserrez angrily .p. epa epaipatu to sentence .re are aren her en. -ena -ena suffix to express future .ge age ageriki publicly er. era erraustu to burn "To attack that sinful fantasy, he angrily sentenced her to be burned publicly".
Anybody with a grudge or suspicion, very young children included,
could accuse anyone of witchcraft and be listened to with attention; anyone
who wanted someone else's property, or wife could accuse any loner, any old
person living alone, anyone with a deformity, or a physical or mental
problem. In fact, anybody was likely
to be accused. Open hunting season was declared on women, especially herb
gatherers, midwives, widows and spinsters. Women who had no man to supervise
them were of course highly suspicious. It has been estimated by Dr. Marija
Gimbutas, professor of archaeology at the University of California, that as
many as 9 million people, overwhelmingly women, were burned or hanged during
the witch-craze. For nearly 250 years the Witches' Hammer was the guidebook
for the witch hunters, but again some of the inquisitionists had misgivings
about this devilish book. In a letter dated November 27, 1538, de Salazar
advised the inquisitionists not to believe everything they read in Malleus
Maleficarum, even if the authors write about it as something they themselves
have seen and investigated (Henningson
p.347). The Jesuits
Special obedience to the pope was the hallmark of the Jesuits. Pope Paul
III had approved the outline of the order's organization on Sept. 27, 1540.
The order functioned quite different from the others with its special
flexibility, allowing them to get involved around the globe. The Jesuits were
cosmopolitan Christian clerics, trained to function in the urbane world of
the courts; many of them were distinguished classicists. They were the
educators and confessors of the leading men of France and Spain and were
highly respected. Many of them were of Basque origin, which made them ideally
suited to communicate with the thousands of bewildered Basque refugees who
had fled the brutal French witch-hunt and trials, ordered by King Henry IV of
France. They had fled across the border to Spain because at least half of the
women had been accused by witch-hunter de
Lancre of being witches. The Jesuits do not appear to have had any part
in the gory details of the witch-hunt, but instead they mediated,
interviewed, observed, reported, translated, helped and advised where this
was necessary and possible. It appears that their good services were mainly
responsible for the fact that the Basque language is still spoken today. The
meaning of the name Jesuit has nothing to do with the
witch-craze or any other confrontation; it comes from: jesu
Jesus
End of the Ordeal
Reading about this dreadful part of our European history in this our modern
age, makes one think that the witch-craze must have been just a horrible
nightmare; it couldn't have happened; but it did. Henningson sums up some of the important points
at the end of his book. The research he did was impressive but in no way was
it the final word. Three of the conclusions which he, de Salazar, the Bishop
of Pamplona and others reached are:
Firstly: the belief in witchcraft and in witches as a sectarian
organization practicing inversion of Christianity, including pacts and
fornication with the devil, was totally irrelevant to popular belief. It
flared up and was forgotten; it did not become a popular tradition anywhere
until in very recent years when it became "hip" to belong to a
witches coven and in this way harmlessly show disdain for conventional
thinking and religion.
It would be marvelous to think that such a horror would never happen
again, but it did recently in Uganda, Africa and likely, it will happen again
elsewhere. |