"Medieval" witchcraft

So, this morning, I saw an article shared about how a woman was beaten to death after being accused of witchcraft on Facebook.

That's horrifying and horrible. There's no real reason to comment further on that, because it's obvious.

It does seem as good a place as any to start documenting and addressing misuses of the word "medieval" in the public discourse.

To anyone who is a historian, or hangs around with medievalists, or whatever, this is not a new peeve,* nor do I intend to highlight anything particularly new--if only because the uses are so entirely predictable. The term medieval, in newspaper-speak, always refers to "backwards", "barbaric", "evil", and so on. Honestly, it's not very interesting. However, it's worth pointing out specific instances where the Middle Ages are being abused, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will learn something concrete about history. And so I can let out some steam.

In this instance, of course, I didn't even have to click on the article itself to confirm my suspicion that it would be misusing its historical comparisons. The tagline itself talked about "going back to the Middle Ages".

Well, funny fact: what you really meant, more or less, is "going back to the Renaissance".

See, while witchcraft has often been more or less prevalent as a known element of society--this is pretty much true, in different guises, for most of European history--it didn't really become an issue until after the Protestant Reformation.

There were inquisitions before then, because of all those pesky heretics running around; but they were annoyed by rather than interested in accusations of witchcraft. They would tell the accusers to go away, basically. It wasn't pretend uses of magic that bothered them, it was issues of theology. If you hear about someone being burnt in the Middle Ages, most probably it's for religious (mis)beliefs, not for magic. This is not to say "witches" never got into trouble--but actually, mostly people just kind of accepted witchcraft in the background.

But the security of Catholicism was shaken up by the advent of the Protestants, and that's where things started to get ugly. A group on the defensive is far more dangerous than one that feels confident in its place: just look at evangelical Christians in American society today. Now witchcraft, on one side of the religious line or the other, could join heresy in the array of fear and justification for violent action.

The date of the Salem witch trials? 1692-3. That's so not medieval it isn't even funny. And that's just the most famous example. Heck, even going onto Wikipedia produces very interesting results. In the article Witchcraft, under History: Europe, the very first sentence begins "In Early Modern European tradition..." Medieval witchcraft wasn't a thing; the most famous treatise on the prosecution of witches is late 15th-century. And, interestingly, the Spanish Inquisition dealt much less with witches than any other inquisition in, say, France or Germany: Catholicism was much less challenged by Protestantism there, so no one needed to be as bothered.

I don't intend to outline the entire history of EM witchcraft here,** especially when it's so easy to see that simply using "medieval" to describe its modern recurrence*** is both lazy and really, really inaccurate. But we daren't say anything against the Renaissance, now do we? It wouldn't convey the same point as using medieval, which everyone knows as a bad thing... Nonsense.

Get over it, and get it right!


*Not that many medievalists aren't ignorant about surprising amounts of the period which aren't directly in their familiarity. This one is actually a particular example, so pay attention, folks.
**Although it's very easy to quickly scrounge up some internet information, Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles provides an excellent précis.
***Also, does the fact that these things can apparently still happen today mean that we're travelling in time? how about "society is still messed up, because that's how people are"? Just throwing it out there.