Medieval – Page 2 – Jon Kaneko-James

A Prideful and Naughty Coniurer: Tudor England’s Crackdown on Semi-Learned Male Magicians

In the parliament of 1541/2, Henry VIII passed a witchcraft act entitled ‘An Act against Conjurations, Witchcraft, Sorcery and Enchantments.’

The act had a very different focus to what we might expect for an act punishing witchcraft: killing by magic is only mentioned in passing, and the idea of the witch as being in league with Satan was given a backhanded reference:

“Where dyvers and sundrie persones unlawfully have devised and practised invocacons and conjuracons of Sprites, p’tendyng by such meanes to understand and get Knowledge for their own lucre in what place treasure of golde and Silver shoulde or mought be founde or had in the earthe or other secret places, and also have used and occupied witchcrafts inchauntment and sorceries to the distruccon of their neigbours persones and goodes, And for execucon of their said falce devyses and practises have made or caused to be made dyvers Images and pictures of men women children Angells or devells beastes or fowles, and have also made Crownes Septures Swordes rynges glasses and other thinges, and giving faithe & credit to suche fantasticall practises have dyged up and pulled downe and infinite nombre of Crosses within this Realme, and teaken upon them to declare and tell where things lost or stolen shulde become; wiche things cannot be used and exercised but to the great offence of Godes lawe, hurt and damage of the Kinges Subjects, and losse of the sowles of such Offenders, to the greate dishonour of God, Infany and disquyetnes of the Realme…”

The target of this crackdown was, of course, a class of troublemaker more threatening to Henry than all the village wise women and argumentative spinsters combined: educated sorcerers, very often former monks or clerically trained university men, who had turned to magic as a way of earning a crust. Continue reading “A Prideful and Naughty Coniurer: Tudor England’s Crackdown on Semi-Learned Male Magicians”

Did the Medieval Church Persecute Male Sorcerers?

Were men the victims of a crusade against learned magic in the era before the witch trials? Listen to find out…

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Were the Witch Hunters Bad People? Six Types of People Who Persecuted Witches

This blog post comes after a Twitter conversation with the awesome writer and publisher Theo Paijmans. One of the biggest motivations behind the history title I’m writing at the moment is to look at the people and legal developments behind the witch trials. To us, as citizens of the 21^st century, the barbarism of the witchcraft accusation – flimsy evidence, torture, intimidation, false promises of leniency and finally burning at the stake – is palpable.

But nothing is ever so simple. Even the way we imagine the witch trials – a single monolithic persecution spanning hundreds of years – is far from what the evidence shows to be the case. Even the term ‘witch hunter’ is a misuse. Those who brought the witches to their deaths came from a variety of backgrounds, and most were never full time persecutors of witches.

Persecutors could be anything from neighbours, to local worthies, or scholar-clerics with the whole gamut of motivations: the frightened, the desperate, the grief stricken, the corrupt and the cruel… even the well-meaning, but simply wrong. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at them. Continue reading “Were the Witch Hunters Bad People? Six Types of People Who Persecuted Witches”

Bells as a Defence Against the Supernatural

Being entirely honest, I have a lot of books. I doubt any of my readers will be surprised to find that many of them are about the supernatural in the Middle Ages and Early Modern.

One thing that crops up again and again is the idea that bells have power over the supernatural. In as many as a quarter of my books, there are references to the idea that bells have the power to drive away demons and abate storms.

The English version of this Latin poem, A Help to Discourse, shows the general sentiment… Continue reading “Bells as a Defence Against the Supernatural”

The Cucking Stool

This is a mini-blog post that resulted from a question from Paul, a Blue Badge guide from Canterbury who asked whether their ducking stool was ever used for really swimming witches. The question was whether the stools would ever have been really used to duck witches…

The answer is yes… but not when they were being charged with witchcraft… Continue reading “The Cucking Stool”

The Shepherd Witches of Normandy

In his book Grimoires, A History of Magical Books Owen Davies writes of how Thomas Tryon, the English mystic, learned to read while working as a Shepherd. In Tryon’s writings, he leaves the passage, ‘[The] Sherpherd and Husbandman understand something of Nature, putting out their own Eyes, and boasting what Wonders they can see with other Mens.’ Likewise, Davies records that John Cannon, while a child, met a shepherd who introduced him to the magical arts contained in a copy of Agrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. Continue reading “The Shepherd Witches of Normandy”

Why Are There Violent Rabbits In The Margins Of Medieval Manuscripts?

Images like these have been very popular on the internet recently, with this listicle from The Poke giving some great examples of the genre, as well as the great Sexy Codicology website, and a lot of fantastic accounts on Twitter.

The image of cute little bunny rabbits doing horrible violence to people is strangely adorable – watching the twitchy nosed little guys beat the hell out of people who’d normally have then for dinner with Rosemary, thyme and sage – but it does beg a simple question: what the hell is going on? Continue reading “Why Are There Violent Rabbits In The Margins Of Medieval Manuscripts?”

Things That D&D Got Right: The Party Thief

My first ever D&D character was a thief. My brother’s group was playing the Dragonlance setting (in fact, they were playing through the actual modules of Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance Saga) when I started playing with their group (they were in their 20s, I was someone’s annoying kid brother). He was a ginger Kender thief called Arthur, and I went on to play a lot more much beloved thieves (my favourite was the my cowardly thief Villa who backstabbed a dragon to death with his shortsword).

There are a huge number of mythological tricksters, but they weren’t right for this article. Most of them have hugely unfair advantages (e.g. they can change shape, or they’re very often Gods, or the children of Gods). Also, they don’t steal things in the right way. Yes, it’s important that Prometheus stole fire. I’m very grateful for fire, but it isn’t the same as stealing cold, hard cash.

However, I have managed to come up with a couple of thieves from the history of folklore who were exactly that: thieves.

The Master Thief

Pharaoh Rhampsinit is a fictitious Egyptian king from the works of the Greek historian Heroditus. In addition to talking about giant ants who mined gold, Heroditus wrote down the Egyptian tradition of stories featuring the mythical king.

The Master Thief is Continue reading “Things That D&D Got Right: The Party Thief”

The Dancing Plague in Medieval Europe

Many of us will be familiar with the image of the Danse Macabre: scenes depicting dancing skeletons, and the living dancing with the dead. In the work of Herefordshire chronicler Walter Map he describes a knight who rescues his dead wife from a dance of the dead.

What’s less well known is that for a disquieting length of time – from the 13^th to 17^th centuries – the Medieval European might be able to see a live enactment of the Danse Macabre as bands of strangers, friends and neighbours dancing themselves to exhaustion, or even death. This was the dancing plague: St. Vitus’ Dance, The Dancers of St. John, Tarantism. Continue reading “The Dancing Plague in Medieval Europe”

Spectacle, Tourism and Demonic Possession in Early Modern Europe

The historian Philip Almond describes 1550-1700 as ‘the golden age of the demoniac’. There are a lot of reasons, one of the biggest being the Reformation. Demoniacs had been important in the days of the early church, when church fathers were trying to build a new religion in an environment of borderline (and sometimes outright) hostility. On the other hand, as D P Walker tells us in his book Unclean Spirits, by the middle ages there were no more pervasive threats to subvert. Christianity was the ruling religion of Europe, and those heretics who did exist could be hunted directly by fire and the sword.

This led to a somewhat differing attitude to demonic possession during the middle ages. Theological orthodoxy held that since demoniacs could be constrained to speak the truth, they should be allowed to do so. After all, Continue reading “Spectacle, Tourism and Demonic Possession in Early Modern Europe”