[Please not that I'm discussing
witchcraft as actually practiced in the Middle Ages, and not modern
Wicca. Any modern witch that thinks that he or she is practicing it
as it actually was seriously needs to open up a history book. And
don't get me going on druids...]
Witchcraft was not always the great
thing that we think of today. Rather than rituals meant to pull a
group together and harness the power of the group for beneficial
reasons, witchcraft was usually practiced for the benefit of one.
There was no price to casting curses, or doing evil; it was just a
person using knowledge that was passed down from person to person,
and then they could use that knowledge as desired. Although I will
readily admit most of what we know about medieval witchcraft is
rubbish at best and spin at worst, there was some truth to problem.
It needs to be noted that witches came
in two stripes: The wise woman who did what she could because she was
essentially a nice person, and the more ambitious version, who did
what she did in order to gain power. In places that were far from big
cities, and away from places where medicine ruled, it was not that
uncommon for a witch to be the main medical practitioner. Generally
speaking, the Church left them alone, as long as they behaved
responsibly and didn't call attention to themselves; there was just
no profit ticking off a village by removing its doctor.
This does not necessarily mean that the
witches of yore were practitioners of some form of paganism. Usually
they were just women, usually who were not married or whose husband
died young, who picked up a few more tricks than the average person
did, and became valued for that skill. They knew which herbs and
minerals worked, and were able to remember how much it took to make
the difference between healing and killing. In the countryside, this
made them valuable those skills made the difference between life and
death. An important skill, yes, but hardly magic, and definitely not
the same as today's wicca, which are related more to druidism and its
rites than actual witchcraft.
However, when the witch did bring
attention to herself, the Church would have to investigate. If the
witch had a reputation for using her "powers" for political
power or for killing animals or people, then she would most likely
end up being tortured; a witch that just cured people would usually
escape punishment. Until the Spanish Inquisition, this was pretty
much how the Church dealt with witches.
The Spanish Inquisition was a problem.
They began punishing people for all manner of ecclesiastical crimes,
ranging from adultery to witchcraft, and everything in between.
Although blame on the Inquisition has focused on their persecution of
witches, it needs to be realized that they went EVERYBODY,
adulterers, homosexuals, witches, and anyone else that they could;
they were enforcing biblical law. This is not to whitewash the crime
against humanity by the Inquisition, but rather to widen it, and
point out that this was actually worse than thought. Eventually Rome
would deal with the problem with help from the rulers, as it took
some time for them to find out what was going on, but by then the
damage was done. It did not help that some of the inquisitors fought
back even as they continued their "good work", making life
horrible for everyone.
After that, witches melted into the
woodwork. There were intermittent problems, such as Salem, that did
not help their reputation, but by the end of the Inquisition there
was simply no good reason for witches to even exist, as their role
was taken over by actual doctors, and so they became the bogeymen
that they did. Sometimes the victors really do write the histories...
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