It seems a reasonable assumption that all
belief systems have perpetually to deal with anomaly; that is not to say
that they are perpetually threatened with chaos or ruin but merely that
their systems of classifications and causality will never be sufficiently
perfect to deal with all their experience, especially new experience
(Barnes 1973:189).
For almost two thousand years people
believed the earth was the center of the universe. Theirs was a two-sphere
cosmos consisting of a spherical vaulted heaven that moved eastward across
the heaven, and an earthly sphere that was at the center of the universe.
There were problems with the system; it was difficult to explain the
behavior of the planets that sometimes seemed to reverse their course, or
increase and decrease in brightness. But the system worked well enough for
thousands of skilled and knowledgeable observers to accept it for hundreds
of years. Then, in 1543,
Nicholas Copernicus announced his theory of a sun-centered universe, and a
cosmological system that had been sustained in belief for so long slowly
began to crumble.
The history of astronomy reveals some
interesting questions about belief systems; for example, how was a
cosmological scheme that we think was clearly wrong sustained for over two
thousand years? Greek, Roman,
and medieval astronomers certainly were aware of problems with an
earth-centered universe, so why didn't they reject it?
Nor was the metaphor of a sun-centered universe unique to the
astronomers of the sixteenth century; it had been around as long, if not
longer, than the idea of an earth-centered universe.
So why wasn't a sun-centered cosmology adopted earlier?
These questions, of course, relate to
the central concern of this book: why do people hold to their beliefs, and
cling to certain metaphors? If
our beliefs are full of contradiction, anomaly, and ambiguity, why are we
not constantly rejecting them. It
is possible, perhaps, to have a society where the dominant metaphors are
never questioned; the metaphors do everything expected of them, and are
successfully rendered in ritual and myth and reinforced with magic.
It is more likely, however, that in most societies, at some point,
the anomalies, contradictions and ambiguities generated by a particular
metaphor are made apparent, and the meaning generated by the metaphor is
questioned. Someone says that
the outcome expected by the use of a certain metaphor is not what it should
be, or the connections between things predicted by the metaphor don't seem
to be producing the expected results. Of
course, the judgment that a given meaning generated by a metaphor is
problematical needs to be a social one; nevertheless at some point the
meaning generated by a metaphor is deemed by someone to be problematical.
What then? Is the
metaphor automatically rejected? Obviously
not. The earth-centered
universe was around for thousands of years in spite of the fact that
periodically someone would point out its flaws, and we are constantly
finding that one of our beliefs or another is being attacked by someone or
something as faulty; yet we still hold to those beliefs.
Since people can sustain metaphors in
the face of questions about their validity or reliability, we must build
into a belief machine some mechanism to affirm the truth of the metaphor in
the face of evidence that seems to refute its meaning.
Let's look at some different ways that meaning can be adjusted and
sustained in the face of questioning.
SECONDARY
ELABORATION
One day in the mid-1950's, a Midwestern
newspaper carried a story headlined:
PROPHESY FROM PLANET CLARION CALL TO
CITY: FLEE THAT FLOOD. IT'LL SWAMP US ON DEC 21, OUTER SPACE TELLS
SUBURBANITE.
Lake City will be destroyed by a flood
from the great lake just before dawn, Dec, 21, according to a suburban
housewife. Mrs. Marian Keech
of 847 West School Street, says the prophesy is not her own.
It is the purport of many messages she has received by automatic
writing, she says.... The
messages, according to Mrs. Keech, are sent to her by superior beings from
a planet called "Clarion." These beings have been visiting the
earth, she says, in what we call flying saucers.
During their visits, she says, they have observed fault lines in
the earth's crust that foretoken the deluge.
Mrs. Keech reports she was told the flood will spread to form an inland sea stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of
Mexico. At the same time, she
says, a cataclysm will submerge the West Coast from Seattle, Wash. to
Chile in South America (from Festinger et al 1956:30-31).
Prophesies of doom are not unusual in
western culture. They have been
a feature of our belief system for centuries.
Some, like the one voiced by Mrs. Keech, lead to activities by people
to escape, prevent or prepare for the expected devastation; and some, like
Mrs. Keech's, actually predict the time and date of the catastrophe.
The question is, what happens to the beliefs of people when the event
their beliefs have led them to expect seems not to occur?
The case of Marion Keech and her followers is illustrative.
For several years Marion Keech had been
receiving messages, first from her dead father, then from beings from outer
space. Soon there gathered around her a small group who shared her
conviction that intelligent beings in space were in contact with certain
people on earth. The members of
the movement claimed that they received warnings of a great flood that would
occur on December twenty-first, and that they would be forewarned and escape
on flying saucers. This was not a half-hearted belief; people quit their
jobs, gave away belongings, removed all metal from their clothing because it
would cause burns while riding in a spaceship, and suffered the ridicule of
the community. Yet they persisted.
On December seventeenth they received a
phone message that a saucer would land in Mrs. Keech's backyard at 4 A.M.
Some were suspicious it might be a crank call, but after careful
consideration they decided to take it seriously. However the spaceship
didn't arrive; the system of assumptions failed to predict accurately. The
meaning generated by the belief machine would seen to have failed a reality
test.
However, the initial response of the
group was not to doubt the viability of the belief system. Instead members
said the beings from space were testing them to discover the sincerity of
their beliefs. So they awaited another message. Soon another message came,
and once again they were disappointed, but still they continued to sustain
their beliefs.
Finally a message came with detailed
instructions; in fourteen hours, on the night of December twentieth, a
spaceman would come and escort them to the place where the saucer was
parked, and they would be led to safety. The time leading up to midnight was
tense; and when the visitor did not arrive, the members of the group showed
little outward reaction, but admitted later to having been very hard hit. At
this point some of the members of the group dropped out, but the core
remained, and while disappointed, still held to their beliefs. Then, on the
morning of December twenty-second, a message was received that the
devastation had been called off because of the faith of the group: it was,
the caller said, a Christmas message;
The little group, sitting all night long,
had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction (Festinger
et al 1956:169).
Years later
Mrs. Keech and most
of her original
followers were still convinced of the truth of their beliefs, and still
receiving messages from other planets.
Whether or not Mrs. Keech and her group
were really getting messages, and whether there were or are beings from
outer space communicating with people on earth is besides the point.
What is relevant is that even though, on this occasion, a metaphor
failed to accurately account for an experience, the metaphor was sustained.
The falsifying experience was explained away.
E.E. Evans-Pritchard applied the phrase
"secondary elaboration" to the type of rationalizing process
illustrated by Mrs. Keech and her followers.
He illustrates secondary elaboration in his much repeated account of
divination among the Azande. When a Zande needs to make an important
decision or discover the cause of an event, he or she consults a diviner.
The diviner or oracle worker uses a poison he feeds to chickens, addressing
questions to the oracle thought to be manifest in the poison. The poison
used by the Azande has the quality of sometimes killing the chicken and
sometimes not killing the chicken. The questions are put to the oracle in
the form "if such is the case, kill (or don't kill) the chicken."
The procedure is done twice to check its accuracy.
Sometimes, however, the oracle is wrong.
It replies positively to a question, and subsequent events prove the oracle
false. It is, of course, easy for us to say "we told you so," but
an Azande can, if he or she wishes, easily continue to believe in the power
of the oracle by secondary elaboration. Instead of doubting the power of the
oracle to predict, they can excuse the error by saying the oracle failed
because the wrong poison was used, or because witchcraft interfered with the
oracle, or because the poison was old, or ghosts were angry or the diviner
was incompetent. In case of the spaceship believers, the non-arrival of the
spaceship was explained by saying the followers were being tested, or,
because of the activities of the group, the earth had been saved and the
spaceship was not needed.
In America today people still search for
water by water-witching. The technique varies from person to person, but
typically the diviner walks over the ground with a forked stick and places a
marker in the ground when the stick dips. A good portion of the time the
technique works, although it is unclear whether the success is due to the
technique or the high likelihood of finding water no matter where you dig.
For example, in twenty-nine cases examined by Evon Vogt where water was
divined, twenty-four resulted in successful wells, whereas of thirty-two
cases where the well was not divined, twenty-five resulted in successful
wells (Vogt and Hyman 1959). Regardless, the success rate of the diviner is
sufficient for people to believe in the validity of his technique.
However, occasionally the technique does
not work; water is divined and not found. What is the reaction to failure?
Instead of questioning the assumptions of the belief system, acceptable
reasons are found why the system failed that time. It may be the stick
wasn't straight, or a knife in the diviner's pocket short-circuited the
electric current supposedly flowing from the ground to the diviner, or the
vein may have dried up before the well was drilled. The question of the
truth or falsity of the theory of water-witching need never arise.
The fact that all belief systems can be
sustained in this way was recognized by physicist and philosopher Pierre
Duhem in the early part of the century. Duhem realized that a belief system,
whether it be science or otherwise, is so constructed that explanations are
always based on a network of theories, laws and assumptions so that if a
predicted event does not occur, we need only question a subsidiary
assumption and not the entire system of belief. Beliefs are tied together in
what Barry Barnes calls a "contextual fabric," and he gives an
interesting example of how this works to sustain belief.
Suppose, Barnes says, we take three
categories, "goose," "species," and "breed,"
and tie them together with the law "species breed true." To test
this statement members of the species goose are collected and induced to
breed. However, some of the offspring are judged not to be geese. Is the law
false? Duhem's point is that the failure of the experiment can always be
attributed to the inadequacy of some other hypothesis in the system. For
example, the hypothesis "species breed true," and the experiment
to test it, imply at least two other hypotheses; first, that geese are a
species and second, that geese breed true. Consequently the appearance of an
anomalous bird can be attributed to the inadequacy of the assumption that
geese constitute a species. What if we then shift to the hypothesis
"geese breed true"; isn't this disproven by the experiment? Not
so, says Barnes;
because just as geese can be said not to be
a species in the first case, so particular "geese" used in the
experiment can be said not to be genuine geese after all. Certainly to
reject the status of the birds used as geese might count against other
generalizations involving the term "geese"--say "only geese
among birds eat grass." But this is merely to reiterate Duhem's point.
The "geese breed true" hypothesis can be saved by shifting the
problems raised by the experiment over to other hypotheses in the contextual
fabric (Barnes 1982:74).
This does not mean that no hypotheses or
belief is falsifiable; it means only people can maintain their beliefs if
they want to. As Barnes puts it:
A whole conceptual fabric can always be
made out as in perfect accord with experience, if the community sustaining
it is of a mind to do so (Barnes 1982:75).
"MONSTER-BARRING"
The Nuer, a herding people in Sudan,
make a distinction, as do most peoples, between man and animal.
Occasionally, however, a phenomenon will occur to threaten the distinction:
a deformed infant is born, a monstrous birth occurs and obscures the
distinction between human and non-human.
The Nuer solve the problem by saying the infant is a baby
hippopotamus born to a human parent, and they place it in the river. They
have saved their system of classification by forcing the event into a
category.
Because of the way we categorize things,
there will always be things that don't quite fit into one category or
another. The phenomena is an anomaly. What
do we do then? Do we reject the
system of categories that we use to label experience?
Or, do we come up with some way of maintaining the categories?
In a fascinating account of the logic
behind the biblical dietary restrictions on such things as pork and
shellfish, Mary Douglas calls attention to biblical categories of edible and
inedible things. Edible land animals, for example, are those which have
split hooves and chew their cud; those which don't fit the category, such as
pigs (which have spit hooves but don't chew the cud) or camels (which chew
the cud, but don't have spit hooves), are anomalies, and are prohibited from
the diet as a way of suppressing the conceptual boundaries they violate
(Douglas 1966:41-57).
Mary Douglas says there are a limited
number of responses we can make to an anomaly; we can ignore it, we can
exclude it (as did the Nuer with the monstrous birth by denying it was
human), we can redefine it so it does fit, or we can modify the belief
system to accommodate the new phenomenon, or we can welcome the anomaly in
expectations of the advantages it may bring.
Anomalies occur everywhere. Imre Lakatos
provides an interesting reaction to anomaly in mathematics. It concerned a
theorem of Euler's regarding the number of vertices (V), edges (E) and faces
(F) of a polyhedron, a many-sided figure. The theorem states V‑
E+F=2; that is if you take the number of corners or vertices (V),
subtract the number of edges (E) and add the number of faces (F) you will
get two. However, critics of the theorem kept inventing figures they claimed
were polyhedra, but did not conform to the theorem. The theorem was not
predicting correctly.
Defenders of Euler's theorem responded
in various ways to the anomalies, and Lakatos gave the responses names such
as "monster-barring," "monster-adjustment," and
"exception-barring." In monster-barring, defenders claimed that
anomalous figures were not polyhedra as all, but something else.
Monster-adjusters accounted for the anomalies by finding "hidden"
edges in the figures proving the theorem was correct after all, while others
adjusted the category system to accommodate the anomalies by concluding
there were different kinds of polyhedra. Thus, along with secondary
elaboration, a belief machine would contain a mechanism that is capable of
convincing its user that an anomaly can be easily accounted for, or
convincing the user that there was really no anomaly to begin with.
SELECTIVE
PERCEPTION
There is no society where beliefs are
not, to some extent, maintained by empirical judgments, no matter the nature
of the beliefs. People see, hear, and feel what their beliefs lead them to
expect to see, hear or feel. The
Azande, for example, believe
witches are people who have inside them a substance responsible for making
them witches. This substance can be discovered through autopsy, and is
believed to be inherited from one generation to another. If someone is
accused of witchcraft they can be convicted or acquitted if an autopsy is
done on a kinsmen who dies. The person is cut open, and an expert in the
procedure sifts through the intestines in search of the witchcraft
substance. If he finds it, as he sometimes does, he holds it aloft for
everyone to see. The following
is an account of autopsy from one of Evans-Pritchard's informants:
`A man says:
`"My blood-brother, I am much worried by the tongues of men, for people
are always accusing me of witchcraft. Since it is my son who has died I want
someone to open his belly that I may see my witchcraft, because he is my own
son."
`His blood-brothers reply:
`"What you say, sir, is true, for it is to perform such actions that we
made blood-brotherhood with you, and we will open your son's belly."
`They enter into the hut and bear the corpse to the graveside, where they
lay it down. Then a blood-brother takes a knife and slashes open the belly,
cutting between the ribs and the navel. He cuts the flesh along the inner
edge of the ribs and cuts into the belly. He then goes and chops off a
branch of the dama tree and splits the end of it, and fixing the end of the
intestines in the cleft he commences to twist it on the branch. Some of the
chief persons present say:
`"Ai, that is not a good belly, we shall see witchcraft substance
today."
`They wind the intestines a little and then the cutter exclaims:
`"There is witchcraft substance."
`The relatives say: 'Twist it."
`But the cutter replies: `"Certainly not. Look first at this thing
which is like witchcraft substance. Look, Men of the Court, what is this
thing like witchcraft substance?"
`The elders say: `"It is witchcraft substance." `Then the
onlookers begin to run away, shouting: `"It is a thing of misfortune,
we will not look at it, witchcraft is an evil thing and we would die from
its ill luck."
`The cutter remarks: `"Every one has run away."
`Then he speaks to the kinsman of the dead and says to him: `"Give me
presents in order that I may bury your corpse." `The relatives of the
dead reply: `"All right, it is a sad affair, we will give you
presents." `They commence to make his presents...and they take the
corpse and bury it.
`The people say: `"In truth you are witches for we have seen your
witchcraft-substance" and they become known as witches and are
humiliated, for it is a disgrace' (Evans-Pritchard 1963[1937]: 43-44).
Witchcraft substance is seen also at
other times as it travels to the place of its victim. The Azande say it
moves along like a flame. In an interesting passage Evans-Pritchard relates
his experience with witchcraft-substance:
I have only once seen witchcraft substance
on its path. I had been sitting
late in my hut writing notes. About midnight, before retiring, I took a
spear and went for my usual nocturnal stroll. I was walking in the garden at
the back of my hut, amongst banana trees, when I noticed a bright light
passing at the back of my servants' huts toward the homestead of a man
called Tupoi. As this seemed worth investigation I followed its passage
until a grass screen obscured my view. I ran quickly through my hut to the
other side to see where the light was going to, but did not regain sight of
it. I knew that only one man, a
member of my household, had a lamp that might have given off so bright a
light, but the next morning he told me that he had neither been out late at
night nor had he used his lamp. There
did not lack ready informants to tell me that what I had seen was
witchcraft. Shortly afterward, on the same morning, an old relative of Tupoi
and an inmate of the homestead died. This
event fully explained the light I had seen.
I never discovered its real origin, which was possibly a handful of
grass lit by some one on his way to defecate, but the coincidence of the
direction along which the light moved and the subsequent death accorded well
with Zande ideas (Evans-Pritchard 1963 [1937]:34).
The history of science is full of
instances of selective perception. In the seventeenth century Europeans
believed that each male sperm contained tiny but complete persons called
"homunculi" who began to grow when injected into a woman's womb.
When Anton von Leeuwenhoek perfected the microscope, people used it to
examine the sperm of a donkey. They claimed to be able to see tiny donkeys,
and the homunculus theory of conception was preserved.
Phrenology was, in the early nineteenth
century, a serious discipline, highly developed and taken very seriously by
many reputable scholars. Developed by two German-born physicians, Franz
Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, phrenologists assumed the brain was
divided into various parts or organs, each responsible for a specific
personal trait. For example there is an organ of "amativeness"
determining disposition to sex, an organ of "tune" determining
one's sensitivity to music, and so on. The larger the organ, the greater the
disposition toward the trait. A corollary of the theory is that the contours
of the skull, the "bumps" were determined by the underlying organ.
Consequently if you could map the organs of the brain, you could
"read" them on the skull.
Since the phrenologists had carefully
mapped the brain, and could locate each of 27 to 33 organs, it seemed an
easy task to see if their version of cerebral structure could be validated
empirically by examining a brain. Here is what Steven Shapin says about the
"tests" performed in the early nineteenth century to resolve the
dispute between the phrenologists and their opponents;
`Appeals to nature', to the `evidence of
one's senses', were made by both sides, in a vain attempt to secure public
consensus and the conversion of the heathen. Skulls were sawn open, along
one axis and then along another, as well as being probed by needles. They
were displayed to the interested of all classes and standing. Accounts of
what was seen were published in the popular press, in medical journals, in
the organ of the Phrenology Society, and in books and pamphlets for
professional anatomists and the generally curious. Umpires to decide the
issue by expert opinion were proposed...and an appeal to the general public
was suggested by phrenologists. A panel of umpires was duly appointed, but
failed to come to a definitive finding.... Exchanges grew increasingly
acrimonious and undignified. Accusations of bad-faith and fraud mounted, as
reality refused to be successfully negotiated.... it had by then long been
clear that the phrenology controversy was not to be decided by appeals to
anything so apparently problematic as `nature' or the `evidence of one's
senses' (Shapin 1979:151-152).
Finally there is the case of Bathybius
Haeckelii. Shortly after Darwin announced his theory of evolution, some of
his supporters tried to link planetary with organic evolution by finding
evidence for the origin of life out of inorganic matter (abiogenesis).
Pasteur threw doubt on this idea with his demonstration of the germ theory
of fermentation. But, in the
meanwhile, E.H. Haeckel reported on a primitive microbe (Monera), consisting
of undifferentiated protoplasm without a nucleus and which reproduced by
fission. The existence of such an organism, contrary to Pasteur's discovery,
could supply evidence for the generation of life out of matter.
At about the same time T.H. Huxley
examined a number of mud samples dredged during an expedition aboard the
Cyclops, Northwest of Ireland. The sample had been preserved in alcohol.
Using a microscope, Huxley observed a gelatinous substance with a granular
texture, which he interpreted as an example of Haeckel's Monera;
I conceive that the granule-heaps and the
transparent gelatinous matter in which they are imbedded represent masses of
protoplasm. Take away the cysts which characterize the Radiolaria, and a
dead Sphaerozoum would very nearly resemble one of the masses of this
deep-sea "Urschleim," which must, I think, be regarded as a new
form of those simple animated beings which have recently been so well
described by Haeckel.... I propose to confer upon this new "Moner"
the generic name of Bathybius, and to call it after the eminent Professor of
Zoology in the University of Jena, B. Haeckelii (quoted in Rupke 1976:55).
Inside the gelatinous substance Huxley
identified skeletal components of Bathybius Haeckelii.
Huxley's discovery was confirmed by
others. Sir Charles Wyville Thompson examined a sample of ooze from the
Atlantic Ocean floor and concluded,
This mud was actually alive; it stuck
together in lumps, as if it were white of egg mixed with it; and the glairy
mass proved, under the microscope, to be a living sarcode. Huxley regards
this as a distinct creature, and calls it Bathybius (quoted in Rupke
1976:56).
In the meantime Haeckel interpreted
Huxley's discovery to mean the ocean floor at depths below 5000 feet was
covered with free living protoplasm. He even examined a sample from the
coast of Ireland sent to him preserved in alcohol and substantiated Huxley's
observations.
Huxley accepted Haeckel's exaggerated
interpretation and added to it. In a speech before the Royal Geographic
Society in 1870 he said in regard to Bathybius,
Evidence of its existence had been found
throughout the whole North and South Atlantic, and wherever the Indian Ocean
had been surveyed, so that it probably forms one continuous scum of living
matter girding the whole surface of the earth. This opinion has been
confirmed in all its essentials by Prof. Haeckel, who had published an
admirable account of specimens obtained by him (quoted in Rupke 1976:56).
Haeckel in the meantime expressed the
opinion it was almost certain Bathybius originated through abiogenesis, and
that Bathybius therefore provided the link between planetary and organic
evolution;
Already among the Monera known up till now,
one type exists which still today probably continuously originates by
abiogenesis. This is the marvellous Bathybius Haeckelii, discovered and
described by Huxley (quoted in Rupke 1976:57).
Others began to confirm the findings.
One biologist found evidence of Bathybius in samples from the Adriatic Sea,
and observed Bathybius in samples not preserved in alcohol. And immediately
after Huxley's discoveries evidence of Bathybius was found in the geologic
record. German E. Bessels, a surgeon and naturalist, discovered in the
Arctic evidence of a primitive form of Bathybius he called protobathybius.
Then, in 1872, an expedition run by
Thompson, was dredging in the Atlantic and failed to identify any evidence
of Bathybius in fresh samples. One of the naturalists noticed, however, when
alcohol was added to a sample, Bathybius was found. Bathybius, it seems, was
a product of mixing mud and alcohol. Thompson wrote to Huxley in a letter
dated June 1875;
When sea-water is treated with twice its
volume of spirit or less, nearly the whole of the amorphous precipitate
assumes the crystalline form in a short time. When treated with a great
excess of the spirit the precipitate remains amorphous, and assumes a
gelatinous aspect. This gelatinous-like sulphate of lime colours with the
carmine and iodine solutions, and when mixed with the ooze has, under the
microscope, the appearances so minutely described by Haeckel. When it is
remembered that the original describers worked with spirit-preserved
specimens of the bottom, the inference seems fair that Bathybius and the
amorphous sulphate of lime are identical, and that in placing it amongst
living things, the describers have committed an error (quoted in Rupke
1976:60).
After the letter Huxley was inclined to
drop the issue of Bathybius, but not Haeckel. In a nice bit of secondary
elaboration he argued Bathybius had a more limited geographic distribution
then first thought, and so Thompson's expedition was not able to find it.
It is clear, I think, we may see what we
want or expect to see, and a belief system may be sustained by our senses,
regardless of what is "really" there.
APPEALS
TO AUTHORITY
Meaning generated by the belief machine
may also be adjusted by appeals to authority. Something must be so because
some authority (priest, political leader, scientist, etc.) says it is so.
History is full of charismatic leaders whose singular vision of reality was
accepted by thousands of followers, regardless of the consequences. Soldiers
have accepted a belief in their immunity to bullets, while others have
accepted a belief in ultimate destiny. Most beliefs, in one way or another,
are sustained by a faith in or an appeal to authorities who are accepted as
guardians of those beliefs, and all of us, at one time or another, either
sustained a belief by such an appeal, or heard someone else do it. Even
science, as Michael Polanyi points out, is ultimately based on the
acceptance of authority.
No one person, Polanyi says, knows more
than a tiny fraction of scientific knowledge. For most knowledge a person
must rely on the authority of a community of people accredited by society as
scientists.
But this accrediting depends in its turn on
a complex organization. For each member of the community can judge at first
hand only a small number of his fellow members, and yet eventually each is
accredited by all. What happens is that each recognizes as scientists a
number of others by whom he whom he is recognized as such in return, and
these relations form chains which transmit these mutual recognitions at
second hand through the whole community. This is how each member becomes
accredited by all. The system extends into the past. Its members recognize
the same set of persons as their masters and derive from this allegiance a
common tradition, of which each carries on a particular strand (Polanyi
1964:163).
THE
AUTHORITY OF THE GROUP
Another source of authority is the
group; try to get confirmation and assurance from others that the belief is
correct, in spite of evidence to the contrary. Social psychologists
demonstrated the power of the group to direct belief when they conducted
experiments in which a prepared group was able to convince a subject
something happened when it obviously did not (see Asch 1951). The power of
the group to sustain belief was illustrated with the case of Mrs. Keech's
failed prophesy. Before their belief in world destruction was subject to
doubt, the group around Mrs. Keech did little proselytizing. They were happy
to get new converts, but they did not actively seek them. After the failure
of their predictions, however, their efforts to get social support for their
views greatly increased. Before the spaceship failed to appear, they kept
most of their predictions to themselves because, they said, they wished to
avoid panic. After the prediction of world destruction on December
twenty-first failed, they attempted to reach a wider audience with their
predictions because this time they wished to avoid a panic. Besides trying
desperately to convince others, members of the group frequently bolstered
each other's beliefs with reassurances, even finding firm evidence of the
correctness of the prediction of world cataclysm. For example, on December
twenty-second, the day after the flood was predicted, there were newspaper
articles about an earthquake in Nevada, and speculations about what could
have happened if it occurred in a populated area.
Mrs. Keech showed the story excitedly to
the members of the group, emphasizing the fact that, indeed, cataclysms were
happening; though the Lake City area had been spared because of the light
shed by this little group, upheavals were taking place elsewhere. Here, she
declared, was evidence for the validity of the prediction (Festinger et al
1956:180).
And members of the group agreed.
FAITH
AND MYSTIFICATION
In an American community in the
Southeast there was a man who spent all his time studying the bible. He
wanted to know all there was to know of the workings of God, said members of
the community. In the end he went mad, and community members told the story
as a cautionary tale about asking too many questions. "Only God
knows," or "only the spirits know" are responses people may
make to an unexpected occurrence. It is, to some extent, a variation of the
appeal to authority; we may not know enough to explain why something
happens, but someone does. Thus appeals are made to sustain a belief system
through faith.
The concept of "mystery" as it
is used in the Catholic church is a good example of this.
The church, as John Skorupski (1976:218) points out, recognizes the
anomalous features of such doctrines as the Trinity, the Eucharist and the
Incarnation. But the church
certainly does not reject these ideas because they are problematical in some
way. Instead they are seen as
"mysteries," doctrines whose truth cannot be demonstrated, but
must be taken on faith.
...the church accepts that no human being,
however much logical ingenuity he may apply to the task, can succeed in
showing how a strict supernatural mystery, such as the doctrine of the
Eucharist, given the concepts it deploys, and the use made of them, can
avoid strictly logical incoherence. Nevertheless
it regards such doctrines as literally--and certainly not metaphorically or
symbolically--true (Skorupski 1976:218).
VIOLENCE
AND HOSTILITY
A threatened belief may also be
sustained through violence by forcing the phenomenon to conform to
predictions or forcing others to confirm the belief. Psychologist George
Kelly defines hostility in exactly this way:
Hostility is the continued effort to extort
validational evidence in favor of a type of social prediction which has
already proved itself a failure (Kelly 1955:510).
When a person tests his beliefs by
basing predictions on them, as did Mrs. Keech and her followers, they invite
validational evidence. When the evidence is contradictory, says Kelly, the
person can do one of three things: concede he or she was wrong, say the
evidence was misinterpreted, or try to alter events to make them meet the
expectations. Sometimes persons alter events through violent means, as in
extorting confessions through torture. Sometimes people are able to force
people to accept a certain viewpoint because of their position of power.
Secondary elaboration, monster-barring,
selective perception, appeals to authority, the authority of the group,
faith and mystification and violence are not the only techniques for
sustaining beliefs threatened by anomaly or contradiction, but they
represent some of the more common ways we are able to sustain our metaphors.
The history of astronomy illustrates all
these techniques. The Ptolmaic system, with the earth at the center, and the
stars, sun and planets revolving around it, was full of anomalies and
contradictions. The behavior of the planets, for example, was a problem;
sometime they could be observed reversing direction, a phenomenon we explain
as a consequence of the differing speed of rotation of the planets around
the sun. As the earth catches up to or is passed by a planet, the planet
seems to reverse its motion. In the Ptolmaic system, however, it was
explained by the use of epicycles, figure-eight loops the planets were
supposed to make as they rotated around the earth. The epicycle also
explained why a planet could vary in brightness since during its loops its
distance to the earth would vary. The system was preserved by secondary
elaboration.
And the system was almost universally
agreed upon. There were some, like the Greek Aristarchus, who proposed a
sun-centered cosmology, but, by and large, everyone agreed the earth was the
center of the universe. And this certainly could be sustained by the
evidence of the senses. Once working on the assumption the earth was
stationary, it was easy to see it was so; the sun "rose" and
"set," the stars could be "seen" rotating in the
heavens, as if engraved on a gigantic, revolving sphere. And there was
certainly nothing to indicate the earth moved. In fact, the senses indicated
just the opposite; if you dropped an object, it fell straight down.
If the earth moved, the object should fall to the right or left of
the spot it was dropped. And the system was backed by scientific, as well as
religious authority, to the extent that it was heresy to argue otherwise.
The authority of the Scriptures was behind the Ptolmaic system. And if
evidence existed to contradict the earth centered universe, one could argue
man should not presume to know how the world was really made. This is what
Galileo proposed to say if allowed by the church to describe both the
Copernican and Ptolmaic systems. And, of course, force was used as a
mechanism to preserve the system. When Galileo's observations confirmed to
him the validity of the Copernican system, he was tried by the Inquisition,
forced to recant, and spent the last years of his life under house arrest.
Add the use of these tactics to the fact the Ptolmaic system did everything
it needed to do (provide a means of measuring time, and provide a means of
navigation), and it is easy to see how the system was sustained for almost
two thousand years.
However it is important that we remember
two things about the adjustment of meaning; first, a contradiction or
anomaly has to be made explicit before an adjust is necessary.
Someone or something must bring the meaning generated by a particular
metaphor into question. Our
beliefs may be full of anomalies, but we may never know it. The idea that a meaning is flawed is a social judgment, and
the standards by which people judge the meaning generated by a given
metaphor are also socially determined.
Second, it is tempting to think that if we are very careful, and use
none of these techniques for adjusting meaning, we can better grasp
"objective truth." The
point, however, is that if all our beliefs are in some way contradictory and
ambiguous, as they must be in a metaphorical view of knowledge, then we
cannot escape using these techniques for sustaining belief.
These techniques are not used solely to sustain beliefs we think, in
retrospect, are wrong. Since all outputs of the belief machine contain
anomaly, ambiguity and contradiction, these techniques must constantly be
used whenever meanings are brought into question.
This is as true of beliefs we think are correct as it is of those we
think are in error.
But let me illustrate with one more
example. I want to give the belief machine a test run, so to speak.
I will examine another set of beliefs that were sustained for
hundreds of years, but a set of beliefs that we often treat as the height of
irrationality-- witchcraft in the Middle Ages.
I will utilize the blueprint for our belief machine.
First I will outline the theory, the set of metaphors that gave
meaning to the Medieval experience. Next,
I will examine the ambiguities and conflicts contained within the beliefs
generated by the metaphors. Then
I will explain how, in the process of resolving these ambiguities and
conflicts, people tried to reaffirm the meanings of their experiences, and
why, in that process, witches acting in concert with the Devil became a
necessary feature of the belief system.
Put another way, I propose that the witch beliefs and witch trials
that accompanied them, represented an adjustment made to Christian theology
in response to anomalies that formed the basis of attacks by various
heretical movements of the Middle Ages against the established church.
I want to show that the witch beliefs represented a way of sustaining
the existing belief system.
THE
HAMMER OF WITCHES
The witch
trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are virtually synonymous
with irrationality and delusion. We
refer to them with such terms as "witchcraze" and "mass
madness"; some say the witches were scapegoats, victims of frustration
brought about by plagues, famine and political upheaval.
Others say witches represented archetypal fantasies.
I want to suggest another way of looking at the witch beliefs of the
medieval period; I want to ask what it was that would cause the belief
machine of the time to generate a belief in witches acting in concert with
the devil, and why people were so convinced of the horror of witches that
thousands were burned at the stake for the crime of witchcraft. It is a good test for the belief machine.
While the beliefs may seem absurd and irrational to us, they were
accepted by thousands of people, including the best minds of the time.
In addition, the major metaphors on which the belief system was built
are still very much with us; an omnipotent God, the idea of evil and its
personification in persons and supernatural beings, and the notion of
retribution and salvation through death.
One aspect of the witch beliefs not
adequately explained in a historical context is the link between witchcraft
and heresy. I want to suggest
that the witch beliefs were linked to the heretical movements that emerged
in the two or three centuries before the outbreak of the witch hunts; that
members of these heretical movements utilized contradictions and anomalies
in church doctrine to separate themselves from the established church, and
that the witch beliefs represented an attempt of the church to refute those
threats to belief. I want to
show how, by using some of the mechanisms that I've outlined above for
protecting and reaffirming threatened belief, members of the church of that
time were able to protect established church dogma from attack and doubt.
The major document of medieval
witchcraft is The Malleus Maleficarum, an encyclopedic treatise
written by two Dominicans, Heinrich Institoris (Kramer) and James Sprenger
and published in 1486. It was
the handbook and guide for those who led the fight against witchcraft in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Malleus Maleficarum, or "Hammer of Witches"
(after the expression "hammer of heretics," as the inquisitors
were called) is a codification of fifteenth century beliefs about witches.
It did not offer any new ideas.
Instead it was a systematization of church doctrine and popular
belief. It held, in essence,
that witches existed, they worked in concert with the Devil, they did harm
to humans, and the only solution to their evil was to kill them.
The beliefs encapsulated in The
Malleus Maleficarum were dominated by metaphors of hierarchy and
struggle. The universe
contained an omnipotent God and his counterparts and emissaries on earth in
the person of popes, and kings. There
were intermediary levels in this great chain of being--saints, bishops,
priests, and lords-- all serving as links to the higher orders.
On the bottom of the hierarchy were peasants, commoners, slaves, and
non-believers, and each of those groups was arranged into their own
hierarchy. The hierarchy was
manifest with agrarian imagery containing metaphorical relations such as
shepherd to sheep, familial metaphors such as father to son, and political
metaphors such as lord to peasant. And
there was struggle: between the legions of God and the legions of the Devil,
between believers and heretics, between the goodness in men and the evil
in men. However, as with all
belief systems, there was anomaly, contradiction, and ambiguity.
And, at some point, these anomalies were exploited by persons as a
way to challenge the prevalent beliefs and the authority of those who
maintained them.
THE
FOUR ANOMALIES
Four areas of church doctrine were
selected specifically for criticism by dissenting groups.
The first concerned the nature of God and an anomaly central to
Western Christianity arising from the belief in an all good, all powerful
Divinity; if God is all good and all powerful, why does evil and misfortune
exist?
To one who believes in an omnipotent
all-creating God, it is not easy to explain the existence of evil.
God is infinitely powerful; yet he permits evil to exist and stands
aside while it attacks those same men whom he created in his own image.
To this problem Catholic theology offered no satisfactory solution
beyond the historical explanation found in the book of Genesis (Sumption
1978:21).
A second set of problems in church
doctrine concerned the role of the clergy and the church.
The church hierarchy is not described or legitimized in the Bible.
Churchmen did, from Saint Augustine in the fourth century onwards,
try to find analogies to Catholic officialdom in the Old Testament.
But this analogy was problematical because as representatives of God,
churchmen should be living lives of asceticism and purity.
How was this to be reconciled with the spectacle of bishops and
priests living amid luxury with mistresses and offspring?
How could they be different from other men if they indulged
themselves in the same evils or pleasures?
The Waldensians, for example, renounced the church hierarchy because
the church refused to require the clergy to take vows of poverty, as did the
apostles, and because the clergy broke their vows of virginity and chastity
(see Cohn 1975:41).
The role of women was a third problem in
Catholic theology. On the one
hand women were denied access to positions of authority in the Church and
were thought to be subservient to men in all areas.
On the other hand the Virgin was worshiped, and the virtues of women
were being celebrated in the songs of the troubadours.
The ambiguity of the role of women is described well by J.B. Russell;
The changing function of women in medieval
thought is a subject that has not yet been fully explored.
Everyone is aware that in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries an
enormous shift took place in the attitude toward women, a shift that
constitutes one of the most fundamental social changes in Western history.
Women, who had previously been considered somewhat as chattel created
especially to bear children and tend to the house were suddenly given a new
image. It is true that the
image seldom improved the treatment of women and was applied only to ladies
of high social standing, but it represented a revolutionary shift
nonetheless. In the theory of
courtly love, the lady became a being more spiritual, more delicate, and
more refined than the man, who addressed her with a devotion bordering upon
religious adoration. At the
same time as courtly love, veneration of the Virgin Mary developed, placing
one woman closer to God than any other human being save Christ himself. But most women had the ill fortune to be born neither noble
or the mother of God. The
church banned women from holy orders and considered their entrance into the
sanctuary a profanation; women could not preach, nor could they attend the
cathedral schools or the universities that succeeded them; they were passed
over whenever possible in the succession to thrones and fiefs, for the
feudal system was based on war, and with a few exceptions, women did not go
to war (Russell 1972:284).
The model women, the saints, were
virgin-martyrs who preferred death to surrendering faith or virginity.
Attitudes toward and beliefs about sex
constitute the final set of anomalies that dominated the medieval dialogue
about witches and heretics. Sex
was equated with original sin by the church, and deemed evil.
Yet, it was still believed to be necessary for procreation.
These were the major problems with
established belief that were exploited by dissenting groups.
There were, no doubt, many other anomalies in the prevailing belief
system, but, as I hope to show, these four were sufficient to threaten the
prevailing church position, and sufficient to generate an adjustment to a
belief system requiring witches. Let's
begin with the problem of an all good, all powerful god and the existence of
evil.
THE
HERETICS SOLUTIONS TO THE FOUR ANOMALIES
The idea of a single, powerful being was
challenged early in Christian history.
The alternative view was a dualist one; the existence of good and
evil was resolved by asserting the existence of two equally powerful
creative agencies, one responsible for good, the other for evil.
This type of dualism is found in belief systems all over the world
and predates Christianity. The
dualist solution to the omnipotent god problem was central to almost all the
heretical movements of the Middle Ages.
Dualism can be traced back to the Gnostics of early Christianity, and
it survived into the Reformation. Dualists
claimed God was not the creator of the world; instead, all matter was
created by the demiurge, a spirit of evil whose power equaled God's, and who
created man in his own image. Consequently,
this world, and all matter and life in it were evil.
The good God had, however, implanted in man the consciousness of good
through which he could be saved. The
message contained in the dualist view of the world was man must divorce
himself from and renounce the world of matter and hence become spirit.
There were variations in dualist
doctrine from group to group, but the major premises were similar: the
existence of two equally powerful agencies, and the belief this world was
created, not by the good God, but by Satan.
The dualist heresy was so powerful that even groups that were not
dualist, such as the Waldensians, were assumed to be so by the church who
accused them of "Devil worship" (Cohn 1975:42).
There were powerful implications in
dualist thought for the role of the church, the role of women and the nature
of sex. Since the world was
created by an evil agent, it followed that the church, like everything else
on earth, was evil, and that churchmen had no real authority over men. In fact some heretical movements, especially the Albigensians
in the twelfth century, thought churchmen were agents of the Devil.
Dualist movements also gave a more prominent role to women.
In some movements they were even allowed to preach and occupy church
offices.
Finally, the meaning of the sex act was
different to dualists. Since
the world was evil, and every birth represented an additional good spirit
imprisoned in a "cage of flesh," many of the heretical movements
banned both marriage and sexual intercourse.
An alternative view, although a minority one, reasoned that if all
matter is evil, and sex is evil, then those who have freed themselves from
the taint of matter can be indifferent to sex, and, since they are beyond
sin, do as they please.
The Cathars represented one successful
and widespread heretical movement. The
Cathars, or, as they were called in Southern France, the Albigensians, began
their rise to prominence in the mid-thirteenth century, and, at the height
of their success, were the dominant sect of Southern France, as well as
portions of Northern Italy and Eastern Spain.
Catharism was the most powerful heresy of the thirteenth century, and
the church reacted to it with alarm and hostility.
Cathars believed that the sensible world
was evil; how else, they reasoned, could we explain thunder and earthquakes,
toads, worms, and fleas? These
evils proved that the world could not possibly have been created by a good
God. Instead, there was an evil
God, coeternal and of power equal to that of the good God.
The spirit of evil...created the material
world for the purpose of entrapping spirit in matter.
He imprisoned the human soul in a cage of flesh.
The creator of the world...is the lord of matter, the prince of this
world, and the Devil. All the
personages in the Old Testament, and John the Baptist in the new, are demons
(Russell 1972:123).
A person could escape the material
world, according to the Cathars, only by renouncing it and allowing the soul
to flee the body.
Cathars divided themselves into three
categories: the highest ranking category were "perfects," persons
who had gone through the "consolamentum," a ceremony in which the
soul was reunited with the spirit left in heaven.
The attainment of the status of perfect meant that the person was
beyond the power of Satan; he or she was a manifestation of the divine in
Satan's world. Consequently,
the perfect had to observe a strict dietary regime, renouncing food thought
to be the product of coition--meat, milk, eggs and cheese.
They also had to live a life of strict celibacy.
Next in rank were "adherents." They did not yet take the
"consolamentum, but they held to Cathar beliefs and participated in
ceremonies. After the
"adherents" were "believers." It is unclear if they were
practicing members of the church or just strong supporters.
The Cathars believed the established
church was evil, and clergy were "servants of Satan's church." The
"perfect" was the only true link to God.
They rejected all the Catholic sacraments and replaced them with
their own rituals.
The role of women in the Cathar Church
was typical of heretical movements:
In ritual and status, Catharism offered
certain advantages to women not to be found in Catholicism.
No position in Catholicism, not even that of abbess, offered the
status which accrued to a woman who received the "consolamentum.
The woman perfect, no less than the man, possessed the spirit.
If she was debarred by her sex from holding office and could never be
a deacon or bishop, she took precedence in any gathering over all supporters
who were not perfects, whether man or woman.
If no perfect was present, she could lead the prayers (Lambert
1977:116).
Sexual attitudes of Cathars were also
typical of dualist heresies. The
perfect observed celibacy and could not even come into physical contact with
a member of the opposite sex. Their
attitude toward sex is embodied in a Cathar myth which tells how angels
captured by Satan wept when they discovered the bodies into which Satan had
imprisoned them were sexually differentiated.
Cathars, as did most members of
heretical sects, considered themselves Christians.
In fact they believed they were the only "true" Christians.
What they did was fasten on to certain anomalies in Christian
doctrine, and offer their own interpretations.
Why they did this, and why they selected those particular anomalies
is an additional problem. Certainly the heretical movements were a great attraction to
the lower orders of society, especially to women, even women from the
nobility. Suffice to say that
voluntary poverty, humility and a renunciation of material things must have
been an attractive creed to people to whom poverty or humility was the only
way of life.
The heretical movements also triggered
the Inquisition. Papal
authority was given to persons to actively search for and prosecute
heretics. In fact, it is
important to note that the major thrust for the persecutions of witches came
continually, not from the general populace, but from the church hierarchy
itself (see Cohn 1975:24-28). The
question is, how did witches come into the picture?
THE
CHURCH'S RESPONSE TO THE HERETICS
The church did not invent witches. A belief in witchcraft long antedates the medieval period,
and likely exists in one form or another in all societies.
However, while the church did not invent witches, only the church
could declare them heretics. Before the fourteenth century witches were not thought of as
heretics, and their crimes were usually referred to the secular courts.
The church's shift in position on witches is reflected in a series of
Papal Bulls in which the inquisitorial courts were ordered to proceed
against and actively persecute witches.
The most famous is the Papal Bull of 1484 issued by Pope Innocent
VIII, and printed as the introduction to The Malleus Maleficarum.
That witchcraft became equated with heresy is also evident by the
fact that the common terms for witches in fifteenth and sixteenth century
Europe were "Gazarri," a Greek derivation of "Cathar,"
"vaudenses," derived from Vaudois or Waldensian, or, simply,
"haeretici." So gradually witchcraft came to be associated with
heresy. One question we will
need to answer is why did this change occur?
The definition of witches as heretics
was not the only change to take place in the belief system during the period
of the witchcraze. Another
major feature was the idea of the demonic pact.
In fact, the belief that witches entered into a pact with the devil
was one reason for considering them heretics; as J.B.
Russell put it,
The idea of pact was the shallowest part of
the stream that separated sorcery from heresy and witchcraft (Russell
1972:173).
The belief in a satanic pact was not a
new one, any more than the belief in witches and sorcerers was unique to the
Middle Ages. Faust-like tales
and legends go back to St. Basil (c 380), and St. Theophilus, and even St.
Augustine said sorcery necessarily involved the intervention of demons. Peculiar to the medieval period was the idea that witchcraft
required open and voluntary cooperation between witch and devil.
Thus around 1326 Pope John XXII urged inquisitors to proceed against
sorcerers since they "made a pact with hell" (Russell 1972:173).
One additional change in the belief
system figured in the witch trials; torture as a means of extracting
confessions became acceptable, and, eventually, openly encouraged.
Early theologians, such as St. Augustine, universally condemned
torture. Only in the thirteenth
century did it gradually gain approval from church authorities, until, by
the fifteenth century, Institoris and Sprenger were able to devote an entire
section of The Malleus Maleficarum to instructions on how to apply
torture and extract confessions. Torture
was encouraged because witchcraft was declared a crimen exceptum (see
Larner 1984:44).
Without these three changes in the
belief system of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries-- the idea that
witches were heretics, the idea that they made a pact with the devil, and
the legitimizing of torture--it is unlikely the witchcraze could have
occurred. The question, again, is why were these changes in belief
made?
I think the witch beliefs encoded in
documents such as The Malleus Maleficarum represent reactions by the
established church to attacks made against church doctrine by members of
heretical movements. These
movements, for their own reasons, selected certain anomalies in Christian
belief and used them to further their own ideological and social programs. The anomalies selected included the problem of evil in a world
created by an all good, all powerful God, the legitimate role of the church,
the place of women in society and the meaning of the sex act.
The attacks on these points of doctrine required the church to
preserve and restore their beliefs, and they did this using such techniques
as secondary elaboration, appeals to authority, violence, etc.
But the process of reaffirming the established beliefs required
witches acting in concert with the Devil.
Let me try to demonstrate this thesis using The Malleus
Maleficarum as a source document.
THE
RESPONSES ENCODED IN THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM
The dualist dilemma, as we saw, arises
from a belief in a single, all good, all powerful God, for why should a good
God create evil and misfortune? The
Church's answer is that evil is the creation of Satan.
But how can Satan create evil unless he is as powerful as God? The
dualist (Cathars, etc.) response is that Satan is equal in power to God.
But this was totally unacceptable to the church, and much was written
to resolve this problem. Most of the church response was summed up in The Malleus
Maleficarum, and involved resolving the problematical relationship
between God and Satan.
The solution was simple; since the Devil
cannot be more powerful than God, and since God is omnipotent, Satan can
operate only with God's permission. This
was the stock answer to Dualist claims of equality between the Good God and
the Evil God. But it created
another anomaly; why should God allow the Devil to work his evil? "This
question," say Institoris and Sprenger, "is as difficult to
understand as it is profitable to elucidate"; it is not unreasonable,
they continue, to question why God, the "provider and governor of all
things," would not keep evil from those he cares for, "as, among
men, that a wise provider does all he can to keep away all defect and harm
from those who are in his care". God,
they say, is different. He can
allow evil to be done because he is so powerful he is able to bring good out
of evil;
From the persecution of tyrants, came the
patience of the martyrs, as through the works of witches comes the
demonstrations of the faith of believers (Institoris and Sprenger 1971
[1484]:69).
Consequently, they say,
so merciful is almighty God, that he would
not allow evil to be in his works unless he were so omnipotent and good that
he can bring good even out of evil (Institoris and Sprenger 1971 [1484]
:69).
God allows evil "for the glory of
men," who while tempted to evil by the devil, resist and consequently
prove themselves worthy of God's faith.
He also allows evil to accentuate the good, since "good things
are more pleasing and laudable when compared with the bad." And
finally, in a masterpiece of secondary elaboration, they use the existence
of Satan and evil to establish the primacy of God:
No doubt the Devil, owing to the malice
which he harbours against the human race, would destroy mankind if he were
allowed by God to do so. The
fact that God allows him sometimes to do harm and that sometimes God hinders
and prevents him, manifestly brings the Devil into more open contempt and
loathing, since in all things, to the manifestation of his glory, God is
using the Devil, unwilling though he may be, as a servant and a slave (Institoris
and Sprenger 1971 [1484]:10-11).
Institoris and Sprenger also make use of
mystification in answering dualist claims.
Man, they say, is too inferior to question the wonderful workings of
the creator: "God alone is the judge of that which is hidden."
We see, then, one church reaction to the
dualist attack on established dogma; there are two spiritual entities--God
and the Devil-- who, though unequal, compete for the souls of men at one
level, but are partners (albeit unwillingly) on another.
God permits the Devil to do evil for "the perfection of the
universe." This argument is the first step in the refutation of dualist
attacks. The second step
required witches.
No one in the middle ages doubted the
reality of witches. Even the
strongest protesters against the witch trials such as Johann Weyer and
Reginald Scott, acknowledged their existence.
The critical question was why did their activities require that they
make a pact with the Devil? Why
not believe witches and sorcerers could act without the intervention of
demonic agencies?
Institoris and Sprenger deny that this
could be, and they base their argument not so much on the nature of witches
as on the nature of the Devil. Since
the Devil is spiritual in substance, they argue, he cannot have material
effects, that is he cannot directly cause evil things to happen.
Consequently he must have the assistance of human agents:
...for every act which has an effect upon
another some kind of contact must be established, and because the Devil, who
is a spirit, can have no such actual contact with a human body, since there
is nothing common of this kind between them, therefore he uses some human
instruments, and upon these he bestows the power of hurting by bodily touch
(Institoris and Sprenger 1971 [1484]:12).
And then they say;
...devils, by their art do bring about evil
effects through witchcraft, yet it is true that without the assistance of
some agent they cannot take any form, either substantial or accidental and
we do not maintain that they can inflict damage without the assistance of
some agent, but with such an agent diseases and any other human passions or
ailments, can be brought, and these are real and true (Institoris and
Sprenger 1971 [1484]:11).
They buttress their argument by claiming
that witches cannot work without the help of the Devil:
Whence witches, by the exercise of no
natural power, but only by the help of the Devil, are able to bring about
harmful effects (Institoris and Sprenger 1971 [1484]:20).
Then Institoris and Sprenger add the
final ingredient to the emerging system; they maintain the connection
between witch and Devil is a voluntary one;
Witches are human instruments and free
agents, and although they have made a compact and a contract with the devil,
nevertheless they do enjoy absolute liberty; for as has been learnt from
their own revelations--and I speak of women who have been convicted and
burned at the stake and who were compelled to wreak vengeance and evil
damage if they wished to escape punishments and blows inflicted by the
Devil--yet these women do cooperate with the Devil although they are bound
to him by that profession by which at first freely and willingly gave
themselves over into his power (Institoris and Sprenger 1971 [1484]:16).
The metaphors of "demonic
pact," of witches as heretics, and the devil as God's servant, provided
believers with an answer to the doubts of heretics.
The portrait of Satan as God's servant able to do evil only with the
help of human agents struck at the very foundation of dualist belief. No longer was there a co-equal God of the material world, but
only a Demon with his witch-recruits doing evil with God's permission.
The trinity of God, the Devil and witches shattered the dualistic
symmetry of co-rulers. But the
anomaly is resolved only by creating the fearful spectacle of witches and
demonic pacts.
Institoris and Sprenger's attack on
dualism also disarms the heretic's attack on the church.
The dualist claim that the material world was evil seriously
threatened the church for, since the church was part of the material world,
then it too must be evil. And
the dualist were probably able to find ample evidence for their claim in the
corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval church.
But with God on his rightful perch, and evil relegated to only a
portion of the material world, the legitimacy of the church is restored.
Moreover, the terror of the witch increases the importance of the
church, since it is now the sole bulwark protecting man from demonic evil.
Institoris and Sprenger elaborate at length when they write about
cures for witchcraft.
The belief in demons and witches acting
with God's permission is itself problematical; if the Devil, through
witches, can cause evil, illness and misfortune only if God allows it, then
attempts to counteract witchcraft runs counter to the will of God.
Referring to the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Institoris and Sprenger
(1971 [1484]:156) write:
...a bewitchment must be permanent because
it can have no human remedy; for if there is a remedy, it is either unknown
to men or unlawful. And these
words are taken to mean that this infirmary is incurable and must be
regarded as permanent; and they add that even if God should provide a remedy
by coercing the Devil, and the Devil should remove his plague from man, and
the man should be cured, that cure would not be a human one.
Therefore, unless God should cure it, it is not lawful for a man
himself to try in any way to look for a cure.
Of course, that is not entirely true;
cures and preventatives are available through the legitimate church.
For example, there are people who are immune to witchcraft, such as
those charged with the prosecution of witches--the Inquisitors--and those
who make regular use of the holy rites of the church.
But what happens when a regular church-goer is a victim of
witchcraft? In the same way a
Zande could find an acceptable reason why the magic oracle was wrong, one
can always find an acceptable reason why a devout church-goer was struck
down by witchcraft. Institoris
and Sprenger (1971 [1484]:156) tell about a man, the mayor of a town in
Wiesenthal,
who was bewitched with the most terrible
pains and contortions who had previously fortified himself with blessed salt
and holy water every Sunday but had neglected to do so on one occasion owing
to the celebration of somebody's marriage; and on that same day he was
bewitched.
There are also some "lawful"
measures to take if someone is bewitched.
Unlawful cures include those involving other witches or those that
involve the invocation of devils. Lawful
cures are those available through the church.
For example, persons assaulted by incubi and sucubi
(male and female demons) can make use of sacramental confession, the sacred
sign of the cross, or the ceremony of exorcism.
Persons made impotent by witchcraft should make a pilgrimage to a
holy place, go to confession, or use the sign of the cross.
The idea that only the church could cure
witchcraft was a major retort to groups such as the Cathars since, contrary
to the heretics view of the church as inherently evil, Institoris and
Sprenger's church was a last recourse for persons fleeing the danger of
witches. Instead of being evil itself, the church was the last
sanctuary against the Devil.
The belief system encapsulated in The
Malleus Maleficarum also dealt with the dilemma of the place of women in
society and the church. The
medieval church was not well disposed toward women.
As J.B. Russell (1972:283-284) puts it:
The fathers of the church debated whether
all sin entered the world through Eve or whether the demons originally fell
because they lusted after the daughters of men.
Janva diaboli--"the gate by which the Devil enters"--was a
Patristic epithet for women. The
fear of women in Christianity was heightened by the suspicious attitude that
most of the fathers took toward sexual relationships: virginity was the most
desirable state, and woman was the temptress luring man away from
perfection. Woman was more
carnal, more concerned with material things; her lust and her greed turned
man's eyes from the path of heaven. There
have been many Christian women in the past two thousand years, but very few
have been canonized who did not die virgins.
The misogyny of the church is only too
evident in The Malleus Maleficarum.
For example, almost all witches are women since, as Institoris and
Sprenger put it, women are more "light-minded" and
"carnal." "Three vices appear to have dominion over wicked
women," they write, "infidelity, ambition and lust." Russell
(1972:284) proposes that the woman-as-witch theme may have been a reaction
to the ambiguous role of women in the late medieval period;
The rise in the status of ladies caused
by courtly love and the cult of the virgin may actually have encouraged the
development of the witch image as a reaction.
The basic mythological image of the female has both good and bad
qualities, and when the good qualities are extracted, refined, and elevated
to the status of principle, the evil qualities that remain also attain the
status of principle.
Regarding the ambiguous role of women,
it is noteworthy that only in the Middle Ages did women face legal
prosecution. Until then they
were the responsibility of men, that is husbands or fathers (see Larner
1984:61-63).
By equating women with witchcraft, the
church may have been reacting to the heretics who would allow women a more
prominent place in the church. But
this equation must have had risks; women cannot be totally condemned since
this attitude likely drove women of all classes into the heretical movements
in the first place. Some
heretical sects, such as the Beguines in Northern Europe, were composed
largely of women who renounced their families, sex, marriage and the
material world to live together and worship.
The Beguines were not dualists, but they shared with the Cathars and
other heretical movements the belief in the capability of women to worship
God in the same way as men.
Institoris and Sprenger do temper their
attack on women, and they do it in an ingenious manner; they associate women
with clerics, and at the same time deal with the problem of a corrupt
clergy. There are, they say,
three things in nature, the tongue, an
ecclesiastic, and a woman, which know no moderation in goodness and vice;
and when they exceed the bounds of their condition they reach the greatest
heights and the lowest depths of goodness and vice.
When they are governed by a good spirit, they are most excellent in
virtue; but when they are governed by an evil spirit, they indulge in the
worst possible vices (Institoris and Sprenger 1972:42).
Up to this point The Malleus
Maleficarum has dealt with the heretics attack on an omnipotent God, the
place of the church, and the place of women.
Yet the most dominant theme in The Malleus Maleficarum is
sexual; obstructing the sex act, for example, was the most frequent ill
visited on witchcraft victims. Of
course, sex was also the dominant concern of the heretical movements that
condemned it as the supreme symbol of the material world, or, less
frequently, practiced it with promiscuous abandon.
Ironically, however, most of the heretical movements were more
vigorous in their condemnation of sex than the established church, in spite
of the fact that heretics they were universally charged by the church with
wanton sexuality (see Cohn 1975).
Some of the earliest charges against the
heretics concerned sexual excess. These accusations were common, especially
later in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when the witch was said to
have intercourse with the Devil to seal their pact.
The theme of demonic intercourse is interesting also because of the
alleged eyewitness accounts. Institoris
and Sprenger report that
the witches themselves have often been seen
lying on their backs in the fields or the woods naked up to the very navel,
and it has been apparent from the disposition of those limbs and members
which pertain to the venereal act and orgasm, as also from the agitation of
their legs and thighs, that all invisibly to the bystanders, they have been
copulating with incubus devils; yet sometimes, howbeit this is rare, at the
end of the act a very black vapour of about the stature of a man, rises up
into the air from the witch (Institoris and Kramer 1971 [1484]:114).
And husbands would sometimes observe
their wives having intercourse with devils;
It is certain also that the following has
happened. Husbands have
actually seen incubus devils swiving their wives, although they have thought
that they were not devils but men. And
when they have taken up a weapon and tried to run them through, the devil
has suddenly disappeared, making himself invisible (Institoris and Kramer
1971 [1484]:114).
Institoris and Kramer codified the
association between sex, witches and devils.
They are explicit in linking the Devil to sex, as when they say,
"the power of the devil lies in the privy parts of men." They are
also explicit in listing the sexual evils witches can induce; they can
prevent lovers from approaching each other, they can cause a man to lose his
desire for sex, prevent erection, cause a woman to look loathsome, prevent
the flow of semen, and even perform a "prestidigitory illusion" to
cause men to think they have been "deprived of their virile
member." They claim that
God allows witches to obstruct the generative act,
not so much because of its nastiness, but
because it was that act that caused the corruption of our first parents, and
by its contagion brought the inheritance of original sin upon the whole
human race (Institoris and Kramer 1971 [1484]:86).
However the risks of so vehemently
condemning sex carries the same risk as the virulent attack on women; while
sexual intercourse may be evil, it is also necessary.
Moreover, if the medieval church went too far in condemning sex, it
would be treading close on heretical doctrine which banned sex in the belief
that for each child born, another soul was imprisoned.
This risk was partially alleviated by openly attacking the heretics
for wanton sexuality, instead of acknowledging their prohibition of sex.
It was also addressed by recognizing the inevitableness of sex; as
Institoris and Kramer put it,
Of all the struggles those are the hardest
where the fight is continuous and victory rare (Institoris and Kramer 1971
[1484]:26).
The Malleus Maleficarum
is explicit in associating sex and witches.
Besides the evils listed above, it was with sex that the Devil
enticed young girls into witchcraft; we are given cases of young girls being
led by a witch into rooms where they were given their choice of young men. We are told of cases where young girls, rejected by a lover,
would cast a spell on him to prevent him from consummating a marriage with
another.
At the same time as they associate sex
with the Devil, Institoris and Sprenger proclaim the glories of chastity.
One group of persons immune to witchcraft are those, "blessed by
the holy angels," as Institoris and Sprenger put it.
The "blessing" took the form of real or symbolic
castration. They relate the
case of a particular holy man who, moved by pity, took thirty women into his
monastery, but after two years fled from "the temptation of the
flesh," and, while praying, was visited by three angels.
...for one seemed to hold his hands,
another his feet, and the third to cut off his testicles with a knife;
though this was not really so but only seemed to be.
And when they asked if he felt himself remedied, he answered that he
was entirely delivered. So...he
returned to the sorrowing women and ruled over them for the forty years that
he continued to live, and never again felt the spark of that first
temptation (Institoris and Sprenger 1971 [1484]:94).
The set of associations is complete: sex
with the devil, chastity with the holy angels, but with the tacit
recognition of the inevitability of sex and its acceptability when
legitimized by the sacraments of the church.
They solve the sex dilemma by condemning sex, but recognizing its
inevitability, while, at the same time, glorifying chastity, but not
recommending its emulation.
All the changes to the medieval belief
system involving witches-- the demonic pact, the association of witches and
the sex act, the church monopoly on cures, the idea that almost all witches
were women-- provided systematic adjustments to portions of church doctrine
under attack from the heretical movements.
And The Malleus Maleficarum was the most complete exposition
of these changes. The book was
enormously influential. It was
used as a guide for prosecuting witches, not only by the inquisitorial
courts, but by the ecclesiastical and secular courts as well, and the ideas
in it were disseminated to the populace by bishops and priests.
Yet as convincing as their arguments may have been to medieval
adherents, and as much as the populace was prepared to accept the word of
religious authority, the ultimate verification of the belief system came,
not from the writings and words of the church, but from the witches
themselves.
The witch trials were by far the most
dramatic expression of the witch beliefs.
Accordingly, almost one-third of The Malleus Maleficarum is
devoted to judicial procedures. Trials,
it says, should be as simple as possible.
An accused witch may have an advocate, but he should be given strict
guidelines by the judge;
His behavior must be free from prolixity or
pretentious oratory.... He must
abide by the truth, not bringing forward any fallacious arguments or
reasoning, or calling false witnesses or introducing legal quirks or
quibbles (Institoris and Sprenger 1971 [1484]:218).
The advocate should also be advised not
to undertake "unjust or desperate" cases, nor risk the charge of
defending heresy which would make him liable to excommunication. In fairness, judges are warned about the questionable status
of testimony of persons who are "mortal enemies" of the accused;
but they also warn judges not to be too hasty to dismiss such testimony
since, because of their acts, witches are hated by everybody.
Witnesses do not have to come forward and openly accuse a defendant;
Institoris and Sprenger advise witnesses to make secret accusations to avoid
being accused of slander.
The instructions to judges, advocates
and witnesses in witch trials are important because the use of torture to
obtain confessions was not advised unless the guilt of the accused was
already assured. However, as is
evident in The Malleus Maleficarum, the rules of the trial
made proving guilt a relatively easy matter if such was the desire of the
court. The only other
circumstance where torture was recommended was in cases where accused
witches gave inconsistent answers to questions put to them by the judge.
Torture was recommended because,
common justice demands a witch should not
be condemned unless she is convicted by her own confession (Institoris and
Sprenger 1971 [1484]:222-223).
If the accused did not confess, it did
not mean she was innocent; since they were bound to the Devil, witches were
able to resist the torture and remain silent.
However, it is unlikely many resisted.
The ordeal of an accused witch began with the arrest.
She was stripped and searched for witchcraft paraphernalia.
Her head was shaved and she was put into jail.
If found guilty at the trial and she did not confess, she was put to
the torture. Hugh Trevor-Roper (1972:120) itemizes some of the tools of
the inquisition:
There were the "gresilons",
which crushed the tips of the fingers in a vice; the "echelle" or
"ladder," a kind of rack which violently stretched the body; and
the "tortillon" which squeezed the tender parts at the same time.
There was the "strappado" or "estrapade," a
pulley which jerked the body violently in mid-air.
There was the leg-screw or Spanish boot...which squeezed the calf and
broke the shin bone in pieces--"the most severe and cruel pain in the
world," a Scotsman called it--and the "lift" which hoisted
the arms fiercely behind the back.... But
in the long run perhaps nothing was so effective as the tormentum insomniae,
the torture of artificial sleeplessness which has been revived in our day.
If confession did not follow the initial
torture session, Kramer and Sprenger recommend releasing the accused into
prison where authorities and friends should try to persuade her to confess.
They even recommended promising the accused her freedom if she
confessed; but, they advised further, those making the promise should not
take it too seriously. If this
didn't work, the torture was resumed.
It is a source of debate why people
confessed to witchcraft. Some
claim many women really believed themselves to be witches. Others attribute
the confessions to the torture. It
may have been that people believed themselves really to be witches as a
result of the torture which, in many respects, resembles rituals of
initiation found all over the world. Regardless,
the impact of the confessions must have been dramatic.
Every witch who confessed to her crime,
and there were thousands, filled in the details of a world her accusers
could only guess at. In a
diabolical twist of irony, the witch became the chief witness for the
church, verifying its doctrines, its rightful place of authority, and its
right to interpret the world of experience for its adherents.
The witch's pact and intercourse with the Devil refuted dualist
thought, destroying the equality of God and the Devil by reducing Satan to
concourse with witches. The
witch affirmed the power of the church by succumbing to its authority and
justice; and the witch exhibited the evil of the fallen woman, and gave
testimony to the depravity of the sex act outside the sacraments of the
church. In effect, every witch
who confessed and was burned at the stake was added proof of the veracity of
the belief system. The violence
of the torture provided the final push forcing the belief system back into
its necessary shape from which it was pulled by the heretical movements.
The medieval church used all the
mechanisms of adjustment to protect the system; secondary elaboration,
mystification, monster barring, appeal to authority, selective perception,
violence, and social reinforcement. But
the important thing is the beliefs could be maintained only if people wanted
to maintain them. The fact that
the Malleus so carefully dealt with the very points attacked by the heretics
cannot be coincidence. Delusion
and madness cannot explain why the belief system was systematically modified
to create the conditions for the witch trials, nor why the church so
actively propagated the changes in the belief system.
The beliefs selected were not invented anew; the demonic pact, the
Devil, the magical power of the sacraments, all the major ingredients in the
witch beliefs, had been around, in one form or another, for centuries.
But they took on a new meaning in the late medieval period.
The question then is, if the witch beliefs were not psychological
reactions to social, economic and physical deprivations, why were they
maintained?
The answer is relatively easy; the
church was under serious attack; its prestige, power and authority were
being challenged. The witch
beliefs offered an answer to the heretics.
If the adjustment to belief creating the demonic pact was accepted,
so was the authority of the church and all that went with it.
This does not mean this was a "conscious" strategy,
although it may have been sometimes. But
the fact the beliefs reinforced special interests certainly made them easy
to accept. The witchcraze was
not irrational or paranoid or delusional; it made use of all the tools
available in the belief machine to protect and sustain against attack a set
of metaphors through which experience of the time was given meaning by the
church.
Go to Chapter Five