As title say - I saw information that Catholic Church was against burning of witches and that witches were burned only at civil courts. Reasoning being that one had to belive in witchcraft to attack witches, and C.C. saw witchcraft as non-existing, since Devile can not give power God can.
Is it true? If yes who were those people burned during Early Modern Age? Heretics of what kind?
There cannot be a true or false answer to this question, but for the sake of it, early modern persecutions and formulations on which they were based are brought about in fifteenth century in southern France ( though precedents can be found in late medieval inquisitions, but the transference and development between them would be a separate question. ), and the accusations prior to this period were not about witchcraft as understood in early modern period.
So, it is true that witchcraft-related persecutions in early modern period were carried by civil courts, but those laws often sought justification in writings done by clergymen, for continental Europe, the highlight being Malleus Maleficarum, written by clergyman Henricus Institoris. The treatise was opposed by some clergymen and ecclesiastical institutions, but was recommended and approved by others, so the characterization that clergymen and Catholic institutions viewed the devil or subsequent witchcraft as non-existent seems contrary to intricate and sophisticated treatises on demonology found in late medieval and early modern period, just one notable example of this would be Nider´s Formicarius.
If we are speaking about the vast majority of witchcraft related trials from sixteenth to eighteenth century, and I will speak mostly about the trials in Habsburg monarchy, more precisely for regions of Carniola and lower Styria, and their regional courts. First tangible legal development specifying witchcraft was in 1532, when Criminal code of Charles V - Constitutio criminalis Carolina, then Holy Roman Emperor, stated in article 44:
When someone offers to impart sorcery to other people, or threatens to bewitch someone and such befalls the threatened person, and the aforesaid person otherwise has associated with men or women sorcerers, or has employed suspicious things, gestures, words, and signs such as characterize sorcery, and when, further, the said person has a bad reputation of similar sort, then that constitutes a legally sufficient indication of sorcery and is adequate basis upon which to examination under torture.
With further clarification in article 109 that punishment with death was standard if the practice caused harm, be it bodily or material.
In the regions mentioned above, we have records of 265 persons burned, for 131 verdict is unknown ( though most would be killed ), 54 either minor punishment or cleared of guilt, 41 died while awaiting trial and 6 escaped, with further classification, 341 of the accused were female, 62 men, 94 unknown, cases with children were rare. Further, most of them would be from lower societal spheres, like farmers, winemakers, beggars, from the nobles or inhabitants of cities, cases are rare.^(1,2)
Another important distinction has to be made that heresy and witchcraft are two quite separate, the former being rather an error in an important article of faith, or contrarian to the orthodoxy, if we take a standardly applied terminology, although historically, the judicial usage lost the potency during Reformation due to countless accusations.
On this note, one of the common late medieval and early modern heretics in Britain, Lollards, in one of their article of critiques stated, as to put them diametrically opposed to witchcraft or charm.
The fifth conclusion is this: that exorcisms and hallowings, made in the church, of wine, bread, and wax, water, salt, oil and incense, the stone of the altar, upon vestment, miter, cross, and pilgrim staffs be the very practice of necromancy rather than of the holy theology. This conclusion is proved thus: For by such exorcisms creatures be charged to be of higher virtue than their own kind, and we see no thing of change in no such creature that is so charmed but by false belief, the which is the principal of the Devil's craft. The corollary of this, that is the book that charmeth holy water spread in Holy Church were all true, us thinks verily that holy water used in holy church should be the best medicine to all manner of sickness. Cuius contrarium experimur.
Naturally, more detailed follow-ups are welcome.
- Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Raisa Maria Toivo.
- The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, Brian P. Levack.
-Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, I. Hunter, J.C. Laursen, C.J. Nederman
- Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas. ( Mainly British setting ).