[Note: All Basque words are in Italics and Bold-faced Green]
THE WITCH BURNINGS *
HOLOCAUST
WITHOUT EQUAL
(Contact)
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. What emerged from their
independent and unemotional assessments amounted to a terrible indictment of
the politics of the church in Rome. Most of these researchers concluded that
the brutal burnings had been a terrible mistake; but were they 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 tell their
own tragic stories. Witchcraft an
Imaginary 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 ACTORS 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 to have nothing to do
with 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:
Capuchins.
Oxford became schools of theology. 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 monks 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 monks 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 monks
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 monks 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 monks 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 monks 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
The End of the Nightmare
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. |
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For further detail, please
refer to:
Nyland, Edo. 2001. Linguistic Archaeology: AnIntroduction. Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada.
ISBN 1-55212-668-4. 541 p. [
see abstract & summary]
Nyland, Edo. 2002.
Odysseus and the Sea Peoples: A
Bronze Age History of Scotland Trafford Publ., Victoria,
B.C., Canada.
307 p. [see
abstract & summary].
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