“Tightrope Walkers on the Border Between Religion and Magic”. A Study of the Attitudes of Catholic Clerics North of the Linguistic Frontier within the Southern Netherlands Towards Superstition and the Crime of Witchcraft (1550-1650)

Roelants, Nienke; Vanysacker, Dries

doi:10.1484/j.rhe.3.105

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“…Instead, they acted as cunning men, with some becoming famous because of their magical healing powers. Popular anticlericalism thus held parish priests as sorcerers and magicians responsible for bad weather, harvest failure, and impotence (Roelants and Vanysacker 2005;Robbins 1997). In an urban context, the worldly lifestyle of the canons gave reason for many complaints.…”

Section: Setting the Scene-catholic Clergy And The Crisis Of Priestdommentioning

confidence: 99%

Debating the Devil’s Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th Century)

Voltmer

2019

Religions

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In comparison with the estimated number of about 60,000 executed so-called witches (women and men), the number of executed and punished witch-priests seems to be rather irrelevant. This statement, however, overlooks the fact that it was only during medieval and early modern times that the crime of heresy and witchcraft cost the life of friars, monks, and ordained priests at the stake. Clerics were the largest group of men accused of practicing magic, necromancy, and witchcraft. Demonology and the media (in constant dialogue with trials) reveal the omnipresence of the devil’s cleric with his figure possessing the quality of a ‘super-witch’, labelled as patronus sagarum. In Western Europe, the persecution of Catholic priests played at least two significant roles. First, in confessional debates, it proved to Catholics that Satan was assaulting post-Tridentine Catholicism, the only remaining bulwark of Christianity; for Protestants on the other hand, the news about the devil’s clergy proved that Satan ruled popedom. Second, in the Old Reich and from the start of the 17th century, the prosecution of clerics as the devil’s minions fueled the general debates about the legitimacy of witchcraft trials. In sketching these over-lapping discourses, we meet the devil’s clergy in Catholic political demonology, in the media and in confessional debates, including polemics about Jesuits being witches and sorcerers. Friedrich Spee used the narratives about executed Catholic priests as vital argument to end trials and torture. Inter alia, battling the devil’s clergy played a vital role in campaigns of internal Catholic church reform and clerical infighting. Studying the debates about the devil’s clergy thus provides a better understanding of how the dynamics of the Reformation, counter-Reformation, Catholic Reform, and confessionalization had an impact on European witchcraft trials.

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Section: Setting the Scene-catholic Clergy And The Crisis Of Priestdommentioning

confidence: 99%

Debating the Devil’s Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th Century)

Voltmer

2019

Religions

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“…18 The implementation of these theories on the field required Roelants and Vanysacker to take a more critical standpoint. 19 It is a fact that as soon as a person accused of being a witch was discovered by the ecclesiastical court, he or she was transmitted to a secular judge. Moreover, these transmissions did not just supplement ecclesiastical judicial activities.…”

Section: Local Communities the State And The Church And The Concepts ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Witch Hunts in the Low Countries (1450–1685)

Vanysacker¹

2019

The Routledge History of Witchcraft

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The historiography of witchcraft has, to the present, depicted the Southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium, without the territories of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the Duchy of Bouillon and the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy) as a region of terrible, organized witch-hunts, mainly by the Spanish Habsburg rulers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same time it puts these so-called Spanish Netherlands in total contrast with its northern neighbour, the Northern Netherlands (present-day Netherlands), where mass witchcraft trials were very rare. Archival evidence and the number of people executed as witches seem, at first sight, to confirm this theory. However, we have to discern a clear internal difference -chronologically as well as in terms of the intensity of the prosecutions -between the Flemish-speaking part and the French-and German-speaking parts within present-day Belgium. The witch-hunts in the territory of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège -which belonged from 1500 until 1789 to the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle (Niederrheinisch-Westfälischer Reichskreis) and included most of present Belgian provinces of Liège and Limburg -and the Duchy of Bouillon and the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy will be studied separately. Times and areas of the most intensive witch-hunting and the approximate number of victimsLike most European regions, the Low Countries experienced their real witch-hunts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At that time, the territory of the Southern Netherlands covered some major regions such as Flanders,

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“Tightrope Walkers on the Border Between Religion and Magic”. A Study of the Attitudes of Catholic Clerics North of the Linguistic Frontier within the Southern Netherlands Towards Superstition and the Crime of Witchcraft (1550-1650)

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Debating the Devil’s Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th Century)

Debating the Devil’s Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th Century)

Witch Hunts in the Low Countries (1450–1685)

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