The last week of discussions is upon us, and Deane has offered some key

The last week of discussions is upon us, and Deane has offered some key insights on which we will now build. Aside from the first week and what was briefly discussed last week we have dealt very little with notions of witchcraft (and magic), but I will try in this posting to tie us back to notions of witchcraft. As I have indirectly mentioned already, it is my contention that one cannot understand witchcraft without first understanding medieval Christian notions of heresy. We saw last week how the phenomena that would be deemed as witchcraft was actually a collection of practices that have been accepted as esoteric (or hidden) throughout Christianity prior to the inquisitorial process of the early twelfth century onward. The ability to perform demonic work comes straight out of the gospels of Mark and Matthew when Jesus (due to his proximity to God or his power of being God) was able to manipulate maleficent beings. The book of Mark, in fact, mainly speaks of Jesus in terms of being a “wonder-worker” or in the terminology of ancient Greece and Rome, as being a type of theurgist.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato actually dismissed theurgy (the invocation of invisible beings) and thaumaturgy (the manipulation of material objects) as being foolish and wasteful because the “real” essence of things lies in immaterial reason, not in the manipulation of material things or invisible persons. Saint Augustine, one of the foremost early Church fathers and a Neo-Platonist, tried to reconcile Platonic thinking with biblical scripture. This point is roughly addressed by Deane at the top of page 220. Protestant notions of direct revelation and the “five solas” (through faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone, Christ alone, and glory to God alone) were also the result of attempts of trying to get back to an Augustinian, and thus a neo-Platonic, understanding of Christianity. The theological doctrines of Thomas Aquinas in 13thcentury gave serious weight to ideas related to material “substances,” (such as the sacraments and their proper uses), but the return to neo-Platonic ideas—inherent Augustine and then in Martin Luther’s thinking—placed authority on individuals, and emphasized the “spirituality” found in the interiority of personal experience, as opposed to outward rituals and ceremonies.  
What is key to Deane’s text and one that I think is very useful in thinking about heresy and witchcraft, is the question of how is a Christian to live in the world? Historian Caroline Walker Bynum refers to this question as being “how can one live in the world but not be of it?” As we saw last week with the heresies of mystics, a complete withdrawal from the world undermined the Church’s authority through diminishing the power of both priests (laity having direct access to God) and the sacraments (baptismal water, and the bread and wine of the Eucharist are all material objects). However, at the same time, too much of an emphasis on the material world was deemed as demonic because the material world was theologically understood as a world in which sin and corruption occurred. The thin line the Church attempted to maintain between sacred and profane or material and immaterial worlds was too difficult to articulate, let alone enforce across diverse European cultures.
To make matters worse, what an individual believes is an incredibly difficult thing to ascertain and articulate, even for the individual herself. I am sure you all have had difficulty trying to explain to others “what you believe,” at some point in your life. Belief is an extremely difficult thing to understand and convey to others in a comprehensible way. This is why we invent silly and easy to answer questions, such as “do you believe in a higher power?” It really does not tell us anything about others or ourselves if you think about it. Other complications include the growing sense of nationalism (that we see in Deane’s text, taking place in England and Bohemia) and the even stickier subject of gender, as even the most radical Hussites still kept women in a lower social station than men. All one needs to do is Google the “Hobby Lobby contraception controversy” to see how recently the Catholic Church was confronted with issues of gender and the autonomous governance of “secular” nations.
I want to get back to this question of “how a Christian is supposed to live in the world but not be of it,” as this is central to not just understanding medieval Christianity, but to understanding the course of Western history from the twelfth century onward. The heresies that Deane deals with were typically made from people that were mostly rejecting the power of holy relics (relating also to indulgences), sacramental authority (monks and priests), and transubstantiation (the concept that the communion bread and wine is physically transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ) (Deane 231). Prior to the twelfth century, a relic was where heaven and earth met, the bones of martyrs (both women and men) were kept in reliquaries which were considered the earthly centers that contained God’s power and transferred it into ordinary or profane or mundane materials in a physical and imperfect world.
Most churches and cathedrals were built on the locations where martyrs were believed to either be buried or killed. Christianity spread like wild fire after the fall of Rome as a world power, but not all local saints in hinterland areas were made official saints. The language of Latin also did not spread as far, or as fast as Christian practices, beliefs and authorities. Direct access to God was only thought about by austere Christian hermits prior to the twelfth century, but as we have seen, since the twelfth century onward heresies began to abound and they all taught the notion of “direct access to God” (think of Francis of Assisi being concerned with mistranslations of the Bible). Practices related to non-canonized saints or petitioning a saint for a material gain (even for health) became understood as accessing demonic powers by ecclesiastical authorities. The Protestant Reformation that resulted from the Hussite and Wycliffist teachings made all types of Christianity more internalized and less material oriented (Deane 289).
Rationality and agency (the ability to act on one’s own will) would be considered to be relegated to the human mind (male minds of course). Materiality and physical reality or objects existed in an inanimate state, that is they could not act, what could be known about them in an absolute sense was what could be measured. God, human souls, and all things divine were relegated to the intellect. Direct access to God was still a possibility, but it happened intellectually, that is, in the subjective mind. Miracles remained mysterious interventions, but happened according to logic beyond human comprehension. God acted through the world as hidden, but all-powerful being, new “empirical” sciences could determine how this happened as a sort of divine logci or natural law.
I am less concerned about you understanding the theological process of this change, but it is good to know that this shift resulted in a move toward Augustinian and Platonic thinking and away from Aquinas and Aristotelian thinking. The result was that praying to images of saints, utilizing material objects thought of as amulets (practiced for centuries in Christianity), and invoking angels and demons (just as Jesus had done in the gospels) all became thought of as forms of idolatry, witchcraft, magic, or demonology. Reformists such as Luther and Calvin, who were considered heretics by the Catholic Church, were protected by autonomous political agents and were thus no longer considered heretics, but could now be considered religious founders. Christian practices that manipulated the material world, or beliefs that the physical world of inert objects could potentially act as social agents, became understood as witchcraft and demonic.
The emergence of Protestantism actually drove the witch hunts in both Europe and the Americas, albeit for different reasons and at different historical periods. To this day, Western modern scholars often look upon other cultures that experience the natural world as being filled with invisible agents as being “religious,” “magical,” or performers of “witchcraft” and “sorcery.” Nonwestern cultures are still sometimes even depicted as being backward or irrational due to their “false beliefs” regarding the natural world (although some academics interested in sustainability and environmentalism are looking to these communities for envisioning a new worldview that privileges protecting the earth); “good religion,” “modern religion,” “non-militant religion,” or “spirituality” on the other hand, are all thought of as being what someone privately believes, and perhaps “good religion” can even be thought of as an ethical activity we should be “tolerant of,” even if we think it to be unscientific and maybe at times a bit backward itself.
Hopefully, you see why I find this course so important and why I love it so much. For the final discussion posting I want to be less restrictive than I have been in the past couple of weeks, however, I want you all to do three things in your final posting:
1) Show me you read this week’s readings by writing about what you found most interesting from each chapter this week.
2) Show me what you think about the relationship between heresy and witchcraft (or magic) in your own words, even if you do not see a relationship tell me why.
3) Give me a bit of feedback on the course, what did you like, and/or what do you think needs to be changed.
Remember, at least five hundred words, before midnight on Monday, and as always let me know if you have any questions about this assignment, rough drafts, the final paper, or anything regarding the course at all, thank you all for our great discussions in our brief time together.