We have had disagreements in the past, which I have always felt were 99% about language and emphasis, but I'd like to take this opportunity to gain some clarification. I agree completely with you that there has been an inappropriate tendency to take the cliché of the old hag witch and project her backward, conceiving her as a real character from the practice of pagan religion. I think we can agree that this is a flawed, incorrect process that deserves correcting.

That said, what do we do with pre-modern, post-medieval European ethnographic studies, which describe practitioners of magic who were professional or semi-professional and who were described (or described themselves) with the term "witch" or terms that can be translated with that term? These ethnographic studies suggest that an older tradition of magical practice or expert practitioners did exist. I understand the zeal not to allow these characters to become a magnet to attract the cliché of the witch inappropriately, but how do you recommend we deal with these people who appear in ethnographic studies (and the earlier equivalent of ethnographic studies). Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Hey /u/idjet, thanks for taking the time to do this AMA- fascinating topic.

1. While it is likely that the Cathars did not exist as a identifiable heretical movement, to what extent would you say the fragmented political climate of the Languedoc region in the early 13th century influenced the 'discovery' of heresy there?

2. The Cathars tend to dominate discussions on 13th century heresy- at least folks like myself who are only tangentially acquainted with the subject. Are there any other large-scale heretical 'movements' (real, imagined, somewhere in between) in the high to late medieval period that influenced the formation of Church responses to heterodoxy?

1. Knowing your specific interest, High Middle Ages heresy in southern 'France' (which admittedly dragged on into the fourteenth-century), at what point do you identify heresy being a 'thing which might actually be true', rather than a later codification of a more nebulous contemporary 'dissent'.

2. The High Middle Ages inquisitors in southern France visited a large range of different groups of social networks (arborealists, miners, etc. - you must forgive me I'm remembering rather than sitting with a copy of The Corruption of Angels in front of me) would you care to describe what we can reconstruct from the inquisitional records of the geneal milieu when the inquisition came to town?

Bon chance!

I know this question might be to broad to answer but how much does contemporary writing on witchcraft and (to a lesser extent?) heresy reflect medieval thinking on gender?

I'm asking because I read excerpts from the malleus maleficarum only yesterday and there's some really horrible misogynistic stuff in there. And then of course there is the popular perception of witches being female. How true is that generally? (Having read Stephen A. Mitchell I know it's about 50% in the Scandinavian Middle Ages)

Okey I have to ask this...

Didn't anybody expect the Spanish inquisition?

I'm thinking that it happened so soon after the Reconquista had finished and it almost can be seen as a "natural" transition to establish Catholicism dominance on the Iberia peninsula.

If a member of your family, say a sister, mother, aunt or cousin, was accused of witchcraft what effect would that have on you? Would you be somehow implicated as well? What about for accusations of heresy?

What is the scholarly consensus on the idea that there were hidden or unrecognized pagan cults that survived in Europe through the middle ages and into the Renaissance whose practitioners were interpreted as witches?

I'm not sure if this is the most appropriate questions, but how is medieval inquisition and heresy differ from the early Christian heresy? E.g. how is the procedure/trials, the organization (database of heresy), what aspect is emphasized, etc...

Also I encountered this interesting argument in Talal Asad's work. Basically he says that the reason why the medieval Christian seems to have a lot of interests about other religious practices compared to medieval Muslims was their systematic creation of data of religious others, in which the inquisition and claims of heresy has a lot to contribute. Here is a relevant passage...

Our question is best approached by turning it around asking not why Islam was uncurious about Europe but why Roman Christians were interested in the beliefs and practices of Others. ... Thus, it is no mere coincidence that the most impressive catalogues of pagan belief and practice in early medieval Christendom are those contained in Penitentials or that the successive manuals for inquisitors in the later European Middle Ages describe with increasing precision and comprehensiveness the doctrines and rites of heretics.

My question in relation to that is, could you please expand on/correct Asad's claim on medieval inquisition? And, this might sound really far-fetched, how does this relate to the European's interest to the others in later years?

I'm sorry if the question is too broad or rather not appropriate for the AMA. I really appreciate your time!

What was the average church response to an outbreak of heresy somewhere in Europe? Was it always as bloody as the fights against the Hussites, or were there allowances and more tolerated groups than others?

Any insight in how the church (and particularly inquisitors) saw alchemy? How did they classify alchemy (natural, impossible, supernatural, work of God vs. evil...) and was there a problem with what alchemists claimed and the church?

Bit of a different question, but are you familiar with dr. Hans de Waardt from the Netherlands? I followed a few of his courses and he specializes in heresy and magic, with an emphasis on Johan Wiers' De Praestigiis Daemonum. I was wondering how well known de Waardt is and if Wiers' book is meaningful for the historiography on heresy, in order to put the things I've learned into a broader scientific perspective.

Non-historian here. Fascinating second paragraph, including:

The historiography of the last 30 years has rewritten quite a bit of how we understand heresy

and

historians who have cast a critical eye over the received evidence about whether or not heretics or witches existed in any form whatsoever, about how much was 'belief', how much was 'invented by the inquisition', how much was 'dissent'.

I understand, in broad strokes, the historiography debate to which you refer...

So my question to you is whether or not that debate or discussion of the finer points (of my second quote from you above) have made their way into any non-specialist writing by credible historians or popularizers? (Books more than journals since my access to journals would only be through Inter-Library loan/copying or open Internet access.)

TL;DR What or where can a non-historian read more about these questions?

Thank you!

I've been intrigued by the premise of Heresy and the Making of European Culture for a long time, but good lord is it expensive. Have you read it and, if so, is it a book you would recommend to a non-academic?

I apologize for the mundanity of asking for a book recommendation when you have so much real knowledge to offer, but I've not had the opportunity to ask a expert's opinion on that particular book, and like I said I've been intrigued for a while.

Did the Greek Otherdox or any of the "Eastern Christianity" have anything comparable to the Inquisition?

What are some good books to read about this subject?

I was recently reading Women Hating, from 1974. Its not a history book, and some numbers were mentioned that I was a bit skeptical about and was wondering if you could tell me more about (I only have it on my e-reader, will try to reproduce the text here):

Although statistical information on the witchcraft persecutions is very incomplete, there are judicial records extant for particular towns and areas which are accurate:

In almost every province of Germany the persecution raged with increasing intensity. Six hundred were said to have been burned by a single bishop in Bamberg, where the special witch jail was kept fully packed. Nine hundred were destroyed in a single year in the bishopric of Wurzburg, and in Nuremberg and other great cities there were one or two hundred burnings a year. So there were in France and in Switzerland. A thousand people were put to death in one year in the district of Como. Remigius, one of the Inquisitors, who was author of Daemonolatvia, and a judge at Nancy boated of having personally caused the burning of nine hundred persons in the course of fifteen years. Delrio says that five hundred were executed in Geneva in three terrified months in 1515. The Inquisition at Toulouse destroyed four hundred persons in a single execution, and there were fifty at Douai in a single year. In Paris, executions were continuous. In the Pyrenees, a wolf country, the popular for was that of the loup-garou, and De L'Ancre at Labout burned two hundred.^11 (the bibliography seems to be absent from my copy of this book)

It is estimated that at least 1,000 were executed in England, and the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish were even fiercer in their purges. It is hard to arrive at a figure for the whole of the Continent and the British Isles, but the most responsible estimate would seem to be 9 million. It may well, some authorities contend, have been more. [...] The ratio of women to men executed has been variously estimated at 20 to 1 and 100 to 1. Witchcraft was a woman's crime.

She also had an interesting bit about how witches were often accused of stealing penises. How common was this? Was it a common fear and accusation?

From the text:

The most blatant proof of the explicitly sexual nature of the persecutions, however, had to do with one of the witches' most frequent crimes: they cast "glamours" over the male organ so that it disappears entirely. Sprenger and Kramer go to great lengths to prove that witches do not actually remove the genital, only render it invisible. If such a glamour lasts for under 3 years, a marriage cannot be annulled; if it lasts for 3 years or longer, it is considered a permanent fact and does annul any marriage. Catholics now seeking grounds for divorce should perhaps consider using that one.

Men lost their genitals quite frequently. Most often, the women responisble for the loss was a cast-off mistress, maliciously turned to witchcraft. If the bewitched man could identify the woman who had afflicted him, he could demand reinstatement of his genitals:

A young man who had lost his member and suspected a certain woman, tied a towel around her neck, choked her and demanded to be cured. "The witch touched him with her hand between the thighs, saying, 'Now you have your desire.'" His member was immediately restored^22

Often the witches, greedy by virtue of womanhood, were not content with the theft of one genital:

And what then is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many as is a matter of common report?^23

So uh yeah sorry for the massive walls of quoted text. I was wondering if you could speak to the accuracy of any of this? Was penis theft a wide concern that women were accused of doing? How high are the estimates of numbers of people burned for witchcraft?

How was the topic of witchcraft approached and dealt with in the eastern Mediterranean? Specifically in Orthodox states like the Byzantines or Georgians? Was there similar movements as in the west under Catholicism?

Hi, thanks for doing this AMA, it is extremely interesting. I have a question about the Spanish Inquisition mainly. I understand in the 1400 and 1500's the Jews were expelled from Spain if they refused to covert, and I understand some left to Portugal where they were persecuted still. There is an enduring story in my family that back in the 1500's our family was part of the expulsion in the Spanish Basque Country when we fled to Scotland. I do know some of the Basque Jews were chased out, but what kind of percentage actually ended up in Scotland?

Which is your favourite Heresy?

There is an accepted narrative in the lay world about church officials using heresy charges to deliberately dispossess political enemies and others. I'm curious as to whether there are documented cases of this that are more than merely circumstantial.

Maybe this is more of a borderline question, but it seems like your project is in many ways less a history of witchcraft than a prehistory of witchcraft. With that in mind, what do you see as the defining difference between "magic" and "witchcraft" both in the historiography and in late medieval ideas about "witchcraft" and magic?

Hi, I hope you are still taking questions.

There is a very interesting excerpt about using the scientific method to disprove the basis for the witch hunts in Steven Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature. Can you expand on those two examples or tell us about any more examples?

Many of the "witchcraft guides" were published and printed by printers that would also publish pornography and radical pamphlets. Does this show up in these publications? I've heard word of obscene and graphic description of witchcraft rituals but I haven't found any particular text on it.

I don't know if this AMA is still active, but I just realized that I had an old question that I never really found the answer to, so I guess I might as well ask here.

Did the secular authorities ever commute or pardon heretics remanded to them by the Inquisition?

At what point in history did inquisitors have the most influence/power, and how far did that power extend?

When studying heresy and witchcraft, what kind of artifacts do you typically look for and study? Like, what kinds of manuscripts? Do you look for any kind of material evidence from archaeological sites that would be useful?

What do your studies on heresy and witchcraft tell us about the medieval period in general?

Has any idea that was condemned as heretical at time been incorporated into the Church?

About the Spanish Inquisition: I know many Spanish Jews converted to Catholicism due to pressures by the Inquisition, and then after the Inquisition didn't stop harassing them they were forced to go to the outskirts of Spanish territory or rural villages (like the ancestors of Spinoza and Menasseh ben Israel), and when that became untenable, they moved abroad; whereupon many became Jewish again, although they had to relearn much.

Why, exactly, did the Spanish Inquisition target conversos? Was crypto-Judaism that prevalent, even though later on most of them had to essentially 'relearn' Judaism? Or was it, as I've seen mentioned in places, an early form of racism based on proto-racial beliefs?

This might be a bit too late (the Alhambra Decree was in 1497, after all), but this lack of 'respect' for the conversion of Jews is something I've never understood.