When you open the door on Halloween and see a little witch there, asking for trick or treat, please give her a treat on behalf of all the wretched people who were tortured and burnt at the stake in years gone by.

The idea of witches can be traced back to the notion of sorcery, which itself can be traced way back in antiquity. It was well known in ancient Greece, in Rome, over the whole of Europe, and in Asia and Africa. In fact it is timeless and world wide. Basically, it is an attempt to control nature, producing good or evil results sometimes being thought to be by the aid of evil spirits.

A sorcerer would be appealed to in order to help the sick, right wrongs, or inflict revenge. As time went by and the ideas of sorcery spread and developed, magic was practised, often by the use of charms and spells. Particulars varied from society to society. In some cases it was good benevolent magic when oracles were consulted. People were given amulets to wear for protection against charms and performed rites to keep their possessions or their crops safe, praising the relevant spirits for the success of these rites. (Ever wondered where the Harvest Festival came from?)

Sorcery used in conjunction with magic and spells was often meant to harm people, animals, and crops. Its history can be traced all over the world and still exists in some places today, taking various forms which are the basis of religions such as Voodoo or Macumba. Many sorcerers or witch doctors , who are presumed to fight the evil effects of sorcery, are appealed to and are respected in Africa to this day.

In the past, the equivalent of the present day doctor was the wise woman who knew the attributes of herbs and juices from trees and plants. They were respected members of their society whose knowledge, passed down through generations, has been passed on to us. Present day medicine and herbal remedies owe much to these practitioners of the past and their ability to seek and often find cures for their clan or tribe.

The idea of witches came from the belief that sorcerers were in some sort of agreement or pact with the devil or evil gods of the underworld and the powers of darkness. Often the sorcerers were women, particularly those who used their knowledge of herbs and their uses to aid their work, both for good and evil. Witchdoctors, who were traditionally men, were appealed to when an invalid thought he had been the object of a bad spell or curse. As time went by, the idea of witches became more widespread, and they became feared for their supposed association with demons and the devil.

Christianity, which controlled Europe at that time, defined Witchcraft as Heresy. This was said to be a denial of the divine authority of the Bible, the accusation being that the said woman (and sometimes man) had formed a pact willingly with the devil and used demons to help with their craft. This was the root of the accusation of Heresy, when heretics, people who perhaps just desired the modern reform of the Church were sometimes accused, tried and burnt as an example to other folk. This was the beginning of the witch craze in Europe, which first began to gain currency in the eighth century. Although witches were often still respected in some circles, the common peasant came to fear them.

It was not until many years later that the witch hunt craze developed fully. In the 12th and 13th centuries, tales were beginning to grow about witches having meetings with their friends and demons at night, to perform homage to the Devil and to worship him. These were called Sabbats.

The Sabbat was an important part of the accusations that were to be made against witches. Evidence againts these people and, eventually, admissions of guilt were suggested, confirmed, and gained through torture.

Witches were said to smear themselves with flying ointment and ride on a forked stick, broomstick, or a farm implement such as a shovel through the air to travel any distance required to join the assembly. This flying ointment was said to have been made using the fat from boiled babies that they had caught to eat at their feast.

When the witches were said to have met together they lit a large fire The Devil, as the Master of the ceremony, sometimes took the shape of a goat and sat on a throne. Each witch would offer him black candles, infant's navel cords or cakes made from human flesh, amongst other things as gifts and offerings. Then came the kiss, approached in different ways by each person, but ending in that kiss being on the devil's buttocks. After a banquet wild dancing took place facing each other and also back to back, ending in a frantic orgy of lust and bestiality with each other and many of the demons there present. Sabbats were always at night and finished at cockcrow, when the witches flew back home and settled in their beds before their husbands and children awoke.

The Sabbat is just one instance of the accusations that were made against accused men and women, to which no denial was accepted.

In 1320, Pope John XXII told the Spanish Inquisition to prosecute those who worshipped demons, entered a pact with them, or used sacred articles to work magic. Although there was at first some general resistance, by 1350 the Inquisition had accused and burned six hundred people. Many people opposed this until Pope Innocent's bull in 1484 demanded that witches be prosecuted. Denial of their guilt, offered by their friends and people who knew them, could be construed as supporting the guilty and their devilish ways. The function of the Inquisition was to change the opinion of dissenters and to destroy those who disobeyed. Those found guilty had their money and property confiscated even if their lives were spared.

The incubus was a demon who had sexual intercourse with women (a succubus had intercourse with men). These were imagined to be found all over Europe. Other familiars or imps were almost exclusively mentioned in English and Scottish witch trials. There, it was supposed that the Devil having made a compact with a witch, gave him or her a low ranking demon in the shape of a cat or dog to advise her and perform small evil errands, including murder. Toads were also said to be familiars, and hares, moles, slugs, weasels and polecats, not to mention misshapen animals like a dog with an ox's head, a cat with no legs and even flies or bees, if found in the accused house were presumed to be more of her familiars. Traditional pictures of witches remain these days, often in a black silhouette there will be a witch, broomstick, cat, and cauldron (for boiling babies, as well as herbal remedies.)

Some of the familiars' names quoted in the trial papers are fascinating. Pigin, Tiffin, Lyard, Jack, Pluck, Catch, White, Malking Tower, Holyt, Jamara, Vinegar Tom, Sack & Sugar, and Pynewacket are a few. All of these were said to have been fed by sucking on the witch's body. On arrest the accused was stripped and closely examined to see if they had an extra nipple, a mole, any protruding small part or a red mark anywhere. If so, it was presumed that was the feeding place and the person so discovered was definitely a witch - all he or she had to do was to admit it. Then the rest of the trial could continue.

The Inquisition was a Catholic tribunal who exposed and punished religious unorthodoxy and heretics. Though they had been condemning to death many people before Pope Innocent's edict in 1484, the whole witch craze increased, with the Courts even condemning those friends or witnesses who would deny their guilt construing this as supporting the witch. Once charged all accused were found guilty . The method of gaining such success for the Inquisition was simple: they just tortured the suspects until they either died or admitted their guilt. .

This is a list of set questions used in trials over 300 years in Colmar, France. Each question was followed by a variety of tortures until the victim had "admitted her guilt."

• How long have you been a witch?
• Why did you become a witch?
• Who did you choose to be your incubus?
• Which evil demon was your master?
• What animals have you bewitched to sickness or death?
• Who are your accomplices? (Several names needed here)
• What is the ointment you rub on your skin made of?
• What tempests have you raised?

Popular to the Inquisition were thumbscrews that were tightened on fingers and toes, as was stretching on the rack. Another common torture involved tying their victims hands behind their backs and then hanging them up by their arms, jolting them up and down or attaching lead weights to their feet until their shoulders and other joints were dislocated. Other methods were boiling their feet in oil, hanging them from a tree by one foot or arm, and throwing them bound with rope into a pond. If innocent, they sank. If guilty, they floated. If they had the misfortune of sinking and then not drowning, it was said that the devil had saved them.

Each confession was eventually gained. The bonus for the Inquisition being the money and property of the witch and her accomplices (also put to torture), gaining these confessions became big business. The confiscated money went towards the salaries of the judges, court officials, torturers, doctors, clergymen, scribes, guards, and scaffold builders... plus suppliers of wood and tar for burning at the stake all those who survived the tortures. The seized properties were doled out to favourites and those who needed to be mollified, thus ensuring that there was no argument about the guilt of the sufferers.

Apart from one or two areas where torturing was not allowed and few witches were discovered, in the rest of France and Germany and all over Europe, tens of thousands of women were burnt at the stake before this all ended. Alone in Europe, torture was not allowed in England and property was rarely confiscated. Witches did not get away with it, though - they were hung. The last execution in England was in 1685.

Over in America there was some evidence of witch troubles, but the culmination of it all happened in Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1690. There was a division of popular feeling in that the village was split into supporters and dissenters of one Samuel Parris, the new minister. There were also strongly held family and neighbourhood problems. Two hysterical teenagers, supporters of Parris and that part of the Village, accused many people from the opposing side of witchcraft. This eventually ended in some 150 people being arrested, from a cross section of the inhabitants of Salem and the surrounding area. Twenty-five women and six men were tried in 1692, and nineteen of these were hanged, one was tortured to death by being pressed by heavy stones, three died in jail, one escaped, and the rest made confessions. A strange law was that once they confessed all torture was stopped and they were reprieved.

During their time in jail, all these, guilty, innocent, dead, and reprieved had to pay maintenance. This included relatives of the deceased, who had to pay the hangman for his duties. Some people stayed in jail until they died as they had no money to pay the bill, and much extra suffering was caused. Investigations in to unsafe testimonies of the accusers and the unfair trial methods finally resulted in the ceasing of witch trials in America in 1700.

Gradually, with the cessation of the large well-publicised trials, witches began to disappear, leaving a few women who knew the value of the medicinal herbs or who lived on the proceeds of casting spells and selling charms to gullible people. From time to time there was a scandal when a herd of cattle caught an infection or babies died, and witches were sometimes blamed. Keeping a fairly low profile they continued on their way and there are even some living in the present day, all over the world.

In the North of England, in Yorkshire in particular, witches survived very well and some famous ones left vivid memories of their expertise or nastiness after they died. These stories have been handed down.

A local tale concerns one Nanny Thrush who had the reputation of possessing "the evil eye." She used it on some boys who were driving away her donkey. When she saw them she transfixed them with the power of her eye, until she released them. For this and other instances she had to perform penance in Skipton Church more than once, dressed in a white sheet and holding a candle in her hand.

Mad Maggie of Whitby was feared and respected there. She would sell the sailors pieces of knotted string. She told them that when the knots were untied they would bring favourable winds to becalmed mariners. She was said to look displeased with whatever they paid her so if a becalmed sailor found that a wind came very well, he was pleased. If no winds came the sailor would remember Maggie's face and realise that he had not paid her enough, making a note to pay her better next time. She foretold her own death and said that day there would be a great storm over the North Sea and that many sailors and fishermen would never again see their homes. That day came and there was the worst storm in living memory. Many sailors and fishermen never came back from the sea.

There were several witches living in the Pickering area, where this writer lives. Mary Nares, Peggy Duell, and Nan Scaiffe were three of them. Nan's "magic cubes" or dice that she threw to tell fortunes were constructed, so she said, from the ground skulls from hanged men, bullocks blood, and crabs' eyes. Mary Bateman also lived in that area. She was a soothsayer and a thief. When Mr. and Mrs. Perigo came to her for help against "the evil eye," Mary saw her chance and fleeced them of all their money, taking their life savings. When they came back to her for help, she poisoned them with arsenic. The wife died, but William Perigo survived, leading to her arrest and conviction for murder. She was hanged at York in 1809, and the hangman had her body pickled and took it on a tour around the North of England. She was so well known that thousands of people paid to see the corpse. Finally, when her body began to disintegrate, her skin was peeled off and cured, with strips of it being sold as charms against evil.

Betty Struthers of Castleton also had a speciality which paid well. She made and sold "Hands of Glory." Her recipe was as follows:

The people in the house would immediately fall into a deep slumber, the locks would open, and the housebreaker might carry out his crime with no danger of detection.

If the burglar got away with his ill-gotten gains, well enough, but if he were caught, he was either hung or he escaped, but would not reproach the witch for fear of further bad luck. Should he be hung, a few pounds exchanged hands between the hangman and Betty, and a further hand was ready to be prepared for another Hand of Glory.

In 1780, Ann Allan, who lived near Whitby and who was said to be a witch, was accused by the local farmers for making their cows dry up. Her accussers suspected that one of her familiars, a hedgehog perhaps, was stealing milk from the cattle as they slept, and taking it back to Ann, whose pigs were fatter and fitter than any other pig in the village. She was made to visit the church in her underwear for three successive Sundays and confess her crimes in public, promising never to repeat them. This was apparently the end of the matter as the parish records show that some years later she married a local man and lived happily in the parish for many years.

Many old houses in North Yorkshire have "witch boards." These carved wooden boards were placed near the cottage cooking range, which doubled up as a fireplace and were said to keep witches' influence away from the home.

Local houses used to have "witch stones." These flat oolite stones having a natural hole in them are found in abundance on the Yorkshire coast. Some can still be found being used as in the age old way -- tied to the door key or hung from a hook behind the door, they are said to keep witches away. Maybe these were the first key fobs?

The well known lucky symbol, used at weddings and nailed over stable and house doors for good luck is an age old way said to stop witches entering the premises or to stop the effect of any spell that the witch may have cast. Yet another instance that even though witches had a great influence in olden times, some signs of their existence are still present with us up to the present day.

Copyright © 2003 Cecile Hare
All rights reserved.

About the Author

To Cite this Article in MLA:

Hare, Cecile. "How the Inquisition Made Witches." The Kudzu Monthly Oct 2003, (current date) <http://kudzumonthly.com/kudzu/oct03/Witches.html>.