An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Laws against Witchcraft

Laws against the misuse of occult powers have existed from the earliest times and amongst all peoples. However, the distinction between white magic and black has been clearly recognised. The Roman emperors made many laws against black magic; but they themselves had personal astrologers and soothsayers whom they protected and consulted.

However, with the commencement of the Christian dispensation came the new idea that all other gods except the Christian Trinity were devils. The pagans had willingly recognised the gods of other nations as being different aspects of their own gods; but to the Christians such an idea was blasphemous. The old gods and the magical practices connected with them were alike denounced as devil worship.

Nevertheless, for a long time the officials of the Church could not get their congregations to accept this idea. We find, for instance, the complaint of the Venerable Bede about Redwald, King of the East Saxons, who died about A.D. 627. Bede indignantly records in his chronicle that King Redwald had in the same temple “an altar to sacrifice to Christ, and another small one to offer victims to devils”.

The early history of the Church in England, and indeed throughout Europe, is one of constant struggle against this state of dual allegiance, at once to the new god and to the older, well-remembered divinities. In just the same way—as we can see from hints in the Old Testament, notably in the Book of Jeremiah—the official religion of the Hebrews, the cult of Yahweh or Jehovah, was in constant conflict with the so-called heathenism of the common people, who still wanted to worship the older divinities, such as the Moon Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, after such worship had been denounced and forbidden.

We find in the laws of the old English kings, and in the books of ecclesiastical discipline and penance, frequent mention of witchcraft and magic. These things are equated with heathenism, and priests are strongly exhorted to forbid them, and the people to abandon them. They are being so urged in the seventh century A.D.; under King Edward and King Guthrum in the tenth century, witchcraft and heathen customs are still being denounced; and in the days of King Canute the same legal and ecclesiastical bans are still being promulgated.

King Canute died in 1035; and it is evident from the wording of the law in his time that the country was still not entirely Christian, nor had witchcraft yielded to the pressure of Church and State: “We earnestly forbid every heathenism. Heathenism is, that men worship idols; that is, they worship heathen gods, and the sun or moon, fire or rivers, water-wells or stones, or forest-trees of any kind; or love witchcraft, or promote morth-work in any wise; or by blot, or fyrht, or perform anything pertaining to such illusions.”

If these things had not been happening, there would have been no need to forbid them.

In the next century, John of Salisbury, who died in 1180, writes in his book Policraticus (quoted by Montague Summers in The Geography of Witchcraft, Kegan Paul, London, 1927) of the belief in the witch goddess Herodias, and of the witch-meetings and revels held at night in her honour. This belief had already been denounced by the Council of Ancyra, whose condemnation of the women who worshipped Diana and Herodias by night had become part of the Church’s Canon Law-a decree which in later years the Church was to find very embarrassing, when it wished to foster the idea that witchcraft was the worship of Satan.

In the earlier days, however, much more sanity seems to have prevailed in the treatment of witches than was later evidenced. Neither the hysteria of persecution, nor the money-making trade of witch-hunting, had yet arisen. A witch had to be shown to have committed some definite act of evil, before he or she was condemned; though the actual penalties seem to have varied considerably, probably according to the personal viewpoint of the judges, either ecclesiastical or lay. In those days the Church had its own courts, in addition to those of the State.

Gradually, however, the persecution of witches as heretics gathered momentum. The powers of the ecclesiastical courts were increased and sharpened by the statute De Haeretico Comburendo, “Of the Burning of Heretics”, which was passed in 1401 at the instigation of Archbishop Thomas Arundel. According to the famous English judge, Sir Matthew Hale (1609—1676), who himself played a considerable part in the history of legal proceedings against witches: “Witchcraft, Sortilegium, was by the ancient laws of England of ecclesiastical cognizance, and upon conviction thereof, without abjuration, punishable by death by writ de haeretico comburendo.” (See BURNING AT THE STAKE.)

The Reverend Montague Summers, commenting upon this hideous statute in his Geography of Witchcraft, remarks airily that it was “in fact nothing more than the application in England of the general law of Christendom”.

This is true; on the Continent the witch pyres had long been blazing. In England, however, the full fury of persecution was never attained, in comparison to what happened in the rest of Europe; though Scotland continued to burn witches until the eighteenth century, and scenes of horror were enacted there which were as much a shame to humanity as those which took place across the seas. Also, torture was not legal in England, but it was in Scotland, and there are records of even children being subjected to torture there, to extort confessions of witchcraft.

The doubtful distinction of the first definitely recorded case of a witch-burning belongs to France. It took place in 1275, at Toulouse, where a woman named Angéle de la Barthe was burned as a witch, upon the orders of Hugues de Baniols, the Inquisitor of Toulouse. She was alleged to have attended the Sabbat, had sexual intercourse with the Devil and murdered babies for the purpose of cannibalism.

One fact has not been sufficiently clearly grasped, with regard to the horrific crimes that witches allegedly confessed. If a witch, in Scotland or on the Continent, where burning at the stake was the standard punishment for witchcraft, agreed to confess whatever he or she was accused of, then they were accorded the mercy of being strangled by the executioner before the sentence of burning was carried out. If, however, they refused to confess after being found guilty, or having confessed, later denied their confession, then they were adjudged obdurate and unrepentant and burnt alive. When one reads the account of the tortures inflicted upon alleged witches, it is only too understandable that those who found themselves trapped in the pitiless mechanism of the witch-hunt, knowing that there was no escape, confessed to what would bring them a comparatively quick death.

Nor would any confession, however obscenely horrible, be disbelieved. Public opinion was so conditioned by a succession of psychopathic books written against witches and witchcraft, such as the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, and the works of Nicholas Remy, Jean Bodin, Francesco-Maria Guazzo, Martin Del Rio, Henri Boguet, to name only a few, that people had almost ceased to be able to think straight upon this subject. Moreover, those who did have doubts of the official stories about the frightful crimes and diabolical powers of witches, generally found it wiser to keep their mouths shut. Martin De! Rio is typical of many writers when he affirms that it is an indication of witchcraft if a person is willing to defend a witch, or to cast doubt upon stories about witches.

Another very significant point of law was that the estate of a convicted witch was confiscated. This, especially in Germany, opened the floodgates of horror. In Britain, Matthew Hopkins made witch-hunting a profitable business; but his activities were petty, compared to what was done in this way on the Continent. The exploitation of torture and death to gratify human greed became so appalling that a number of Churchmen took their lives in their hands to denounce it; though their voices were few. One such, for instance, was Father Cornelius Loos, who in 1592 protested that “by cruel butchery innocent lives are taken; and by a new alchemy, gold and silver are coined from human blood”.

Again, in the early seventeenth century, Canon Linden of Treves exposed the motives of the witch-hunters in his area, making the significant comment, “This movement was promoted by many in office, who looked to wealth in the ashes of the victims.” In areas where this law was repealed, as it was by the Emperor Ferdinand II of Germany in the seventeenth century, the fervour of the witch-hunters soon died down.

In England after the Reformation, burning at the stake ceased to be the punishment for witchcraft, and hanging was substituted. Actual records of how many witches were executed in England are scanty, and the number can only be guessed at. The records we have, however, show that a peak period for executions was the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth.

The government of King Henry VIII had passed a statute against witchcraft, containing the death penalty for invoking or conjuring an evil spirit; a conveniently wide and severe clause. Under King Edward VI this statute was repealed. However, Queen Elizabeth I was strongly urged by a Calvinistic Bishop, John Jewel, to pass more severe laws against witches. In a sermon preached before the Queen, Jewel proclaimed: “This kind of people (I mean witches and sorcerers) within these few last years are marvellously increased within this Your Grace’s realm.” Accordingly, in 1563 a strongly-worded law was passed, whereby the previous statute was resurrected, and anyone who should “use, practice, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed”, could be sentenced to death.

There were lesser penalties for other acts of witchcraft. If, for instance, a person was bewitched so that they were wasted, consumed or lamed, the punishment of the witch was a year’s imprisonment, with four exposures in the pillory; and for a second offence, the sentence was death.

However, this Act was not enough for the learned King James I, author of Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), in spite of the number of executions that had been carried out under it. When James I came to to the throne in 1603, he at once set about making sure that witchcraft was prosecuted as a capital crime in itself, whether or not the witch could be shown to have harmed anyone.

Accordingly, in 1604 the most extensive Act against witchcraft in English law was passed. It was particularly directed against anyone who invoked evil spirits or communed in any way with familiars, which it presumed to be evil spirits. This was something new in English law, and explains the emphasis on familiars often found in English witch trials.

Although there are actually more recorded executions under Elizabeth I than there are under King James, the importance of the increased severity of the law passed in his reign, was that it made possible the fierce persecution of witches by the Puritans, in the days of the Civil War and the Commonwealth.

In general, both in England and on the Continent, the seventeenth century was about the worst time for a witch to be living in. However, it was a great darkness before the dawn. In the eighteenth century, the belief in the dangers of witchcraft, and the desire to persecute witches, began notably to decline. This was not because of any change of heart on the part of the religious authorities, but the result of the rise of rationalism, of scepticism, and a general attitude of questioning accepted beliefs, which gained momentum as the century advanced.

The clergy protested vehemently against any change in the popular attitude to witchcraft, because they regarded a belief in the supernatural as an important part of religion. John Wesley wrote in his Journal, in 1768 (J. M. Dent, Everyman Library Edition, London, 1906): “The giving up of witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible.” In 1743, certain Scottish Churchmen at Edinburgh included in their published “Confession of National and Personal Sins” the fact that the penal statutes against witches had been repealed contrary to the express law of God.

In England, an enlightened Chief Justice, Sir John Holt (1642—1710), did much to put an end to witchcraft persecution, by throwing out case after case, especially those in which hysterical or mischievous children accused people of bewitching them. (There are a horrifying number of cases of this type in the records of witchcraft trials. As an instance, one 11-year old girl, Christian Shaw of Bargarran in Scotland, caused seven people to be burned at the stake in Paisley in 1697 as a result of her accusations. The executions in Salem, Massachusetts, were the direct result also of the lies of hysterical girls, combined with the sick-minded credulity of their elders.)

In 1736, in the reign of George II, a great change was made in English law. The Act of James I was repealed, and so were the similar laws in Scotland. Witchcraft ceased to be a capital offence in Britain. What this really reflected was a fundamental change in public opinion because the law now took an entirely different attitude to witchcraft. Witchcraft was still illegal; but the law now stated that anyone pretending to exercise witchcraft should be punished, usually by imprisonment.

It was under this Act, and under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, that Spiritualist mediums were harassed and prosecuted. The last big trial under the Witchcraft Act of 1736 was that of the medium Helen Duncan in 1944. This took place at the Old Bailey, and the case went on for eight days. Her offence, according to the prosecution, was that she pretended to communicate with spirits.

According to Maurice Barbanell, who wrote about this famous case in the Spiritualist journal Two Worlds in December 1956, the decision to prosecute was taken because of a series of seances Helen Duncan gave in Portsmouth in 1944. World War II was raging then, and among the spirits who manifested at these seances were those of seamen who said they had gone down with H.M.S. Barham. At that time, the news of the ship’s sinking had not yet been released by the Admiralty.

Helen Duncan was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. She appealed, but the appeal was dismissed. It was the interest created by this case that urged Spiritualists to renewed efforts to get the Witchcraft Act repealed, because under it any seance could be illegal.

In 1951 they were at length successful. The old Witchcraft Act was finally repealed, and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. This is a remarkable piece of legislation, in that it recognises the possibility of genuine mediumship and prosecutes only when deliberate fraud is committed for gain.