Tag: Witchcraft

On a Witch Trial

We’ve spoken about the history of witches in the western world before, but this story caught my attention because of its ties to Scotland. Many of us are aware of the beginning of Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, where three witches begin the story with the infamous incantation, “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble…” Scotland has had a long association with witches, and Shakespeare knew that the new King James was Scottish; he knew his audience. But one real-life Scottish witch is peculiar for her supposed ability to read people’s minds and discover secrets that no one knew.

As late as 1735, Britain passed something called the Witchcraft Act. It made it a crime for anyone to either practice witchcraft or to claim the powers of a witch. Now, while that seems odd or harsh, the law was actually fairly forward-thinking. You see, rather than punish witches with death or allow for vigilante groups to go on witch hunts, the Witchcraft Act imposed a penalty of imprisonment. And, rather than be based on the idea that witches are real, the “new” law worked off the supposition that witches were charlatans, people who preyed on the weak-minded or the desperate. Think of it as more of a consumer protection law rather than a desire to punish based on any kind of religious belief. And, it was under this new act that a woman named Helen Duncan was arrested.

Helen lived in Edinburgh, a town that has a long history for being somewhat spooky, especially the Old Town part with its narrow closes and wynds. It seems that Helen had been conducting sessions in her home where she would contact the spirits of the dead. During a period of war in Britain, many people who lost loved ones in the conflict came to Helen, and she would speak to the dead and communicate the messages she received back to the grieving relatives. Some people today would say that she was a medium or someone performing what we might call parlor tricks. On one hand, this seems to be somewhat comforting to the relatives of the deceased and possibly harmless.

But then, Helen reached out to some people who had relatives onboard a certain British warship. While Edinburgh isn’t on the water per se, it uses the nearby port of Leith and has a long history of providing sailors for Britain and for merchant ships. And it seems that Helen told several people that their relatives had died because of the sinking of a British warship named the HMS Barham. Now, no one in the government had said that the ship had been sunk. As you can imagine, these relatives were horrified. They bombarded the government with inquiries regarding the safety of their loved ones onboard. A minor scandal arose. British officials were caught with no good option. If they reassured the families of the sailors that all was well, but then it turned out that the ship had indeed been sunk, then they would look either incompetent or dishonest. If they admitted that the ship went down, then they might be revealing war news that might embarrass the government and then questions would arise about why the government was keeping the deaths a secret.

It was a lose-lose. What do to?

The government decided to blame the messenger. Citing the new Witchcraft Act, the government ordered the arrest of Helen Duncan. The newspapers of the day printed details of Helen’s trial, and the public proclaimed her a hero for telling the relatives the truth when the government wouldn’t. Eventually, however, Helen was convicted under the provisions of the law and sentenced to jail. It was determined that she had heard a war-time rumor of the sinking of the ship and had parlayed that into a way to make money from the relatives of the sailors. And, also eventually, the public outrage about the scandal and seeming coverup died down.

But Helen Duncan would be the last person convicted in Britain of being a witch…in 1944.

On an Alternative Method of Healing

The Catholic Church of the medieval period pretty much controlled every aspect of the lives of their parishioners. Everyone from king to peasant had to go through the Church literally for life’s events from cradle to grave and everything in between. From baptism to confirmation to confession to marriage to last rights and burial on Church grounds–if you didn’t go through the Church for these things they weren’t considered legitimate.

But it happened quite often that when the church couldn’t provide a certain service, the people would be left to seek alternative ways of doing what they wished to do. Let’s say you wanted a certain boy or girl to fall in love with you. The Church wouldn’t have any remedy for that situation. Or take the case of healing the sick. Now, it was absolutely the practice in some areas of Christendom that the Church would set up hospitals and provide medical care for sick people, especially during times of plagues and other pandemics. But if you wanted the healing of, say, a headache, the best the Church could do for you is pray. And prayer can only do so much, mostly as a placebo.

And that’s where a certain class of people arose in the middle ages to meet the needs of people who found that the Catholic Church didn’t actually have the ability to solve or handle all the problems of their parishioners. And we’ve discussed this before, and recently, that when someone or some group tries to take the place of an already established entity or power (or even if there is the perception of such), then those in power will strike out against the usurper. And that’s what happened here.

You see, there was no such thing as a doctor as we today would recognize, at least in Western and Central Europe. Oh, a handful of medical schools opened across the continent, but they were often run by the Church, and they were most often in large cities that were springing up especially after the Crusades. But these medical schools did nothing for the people who lived in smaller towns and villages and certainly they were not helpful to those in the countryside across Europe.

And so people began turning to the people who would at least try to help them with their headaches and skin rashes and venereal diseases and whooping coughs and other physical maladies. Oh, and, sometimes, people sought help for other things, things like their love lives and their melancholy or their nightmares. And, sure enough, when these people who offered help grew too popular or too successful or too prominent, the local priest or the local Church organization would rise up to put them down and restore the normal progression of things such as relying on the Church for the solutions to all of life’s problems. In doing so, they literally demonized those people who were only trying to help others. And people kept going back to the healers.

Now, you and I would call a person like that a doctor and reward them.

The Catholic Church called them witches and burned them.