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One important question comes up repeatedly in books about the history of the Medieval Witch trials. It's a question for which dozens of answers have been proposed, but for which no answer to date has seemed entirely satisfactory. That question is, simply: Why? What were the motivations of the trial judges and theologians, the inquisitors and the lawyers, the Puritans, Catholics, Lutherans, and others? A variety of theories exist: a drive for power or money, madness, misogyny, scapegoating, and so on. This question is particularly vexing in the face of the most common academic theories about the history of Witchcraft itself, which claim there never really were any Witches, certainly not any of Margaret Murray's Pagan-religious variety. Therefore, religious intolerance, a motive which has certainly led to persecutions of this type frequently enough in the centuries since, is ignored as a possible answer.

A piece of this puzzle, however, may have been inadvertently supplied in a recent academic paper. I say "inadvertently", because the paper is concerned with a different topic entirely.

Robert Mathiesen has written an interesting analysis of a Medieval Magickal grimoire, called the Sacred Book or Sworn Book of Honorius.¹ Though this fascinating book is nearly unknown today, several copies of it have survived, and it was mentioned by a fair number of Medieval writers - and by a handful of modern historians, too. Learned grimoires such as this are generally felt to be unrelated to the question of the possible existence of a historical Witch-sect. But follow along, there's more here than meets the eye.

The Sworn Book contains a number of Christian theological statements and arguments, statements which are, perhaps not surprisingly, frequently at odds with official Christian doctrine. For example, orthodox Christian belief holds all Magic to come from Satan; Magic is, therefore, Satanic, and its working is a great sin. But the Sworn Book maintains only those who are pure of heart and soul can work Magic. Indeed, in a fascinating turnabout, it condemns the Pope and cardinals for being themselves inspired by Satan in their drive to exterminate Magic!

The Sworn Book was written no later than the first half of the thirteenth century, implying the Church was already persecuting Magic pretty seriously by that time. Mathieson believes the complaints about persecution in the Sworn Book were anticipatory, not actual.² Another historian, Norman Cohn, insists there was no persecution of Magic to speak of until the fourteenth century, and so says the complaints about it in the Sworn Book prove the Book could not have been written before then.³ But Mathiesen provides quotes from William of Auvergne, writing about 1249, which apparently refer to the Sworn Book. William condemned the Sworn Book as among the very worst of the books about Magic, "accursed" and "execrable", a book which we should "Let Christians not so much as mention."⁴

What was it about the Sworn Book of Honorius which elicited such rage from William?

The Sworn Book provides, in great detail, a Magical technique for achieving a "beatific vision," that is, a direct contact with Yhvh and his angelic court. The Sworn Book claims to describe a method by which one can have a direct experience of the Christian god, and see "the Celestial Palace, and the Majesty of God in his Glory, and the Nine Orders of Angels, and the Company of all Blessed Spirits."⁵

One might think Christians would regard this as a good thing, but the Church itself did not. Mathiesen provides references from the very prestigious theological faculty of the University of Paris in 1398, and from the chancellor of the University of Paris in 1402, condemning various "errors" having to do with the practice of Magic. One of these "errors" was "that by certain magical arts we can come to a vision of Divine Essence or of holy Spirits."⁶

The Sworn Book was condemned precisely because it offered this sort of vision. The procedure described in the Sworn Book is long and exacting, including weeks of prayer and fasting. The strenuous objection to the Book, Mathiesen maintains, was elicited because the procedure might work rather well. After weeks of this psychological preparation and physical deprivation, the magician is bound to experience something out of the ordinary, something which a devout Christian almost certainly would interpret as a vision of - and given by - Yhvh. This is, after all, precisely how Shamanic visions are achieved the world over. If it works for non-Christian mystics, there no reason it shouldn't work for Christians, too.

The Church saw such a technique as a threat to its authority, since it wanted to present itself as being the sole and exclusive mediator of contact between humans and the Christian god. If people could achieve this contact outside of the mediation of the Church, then the Church would have little reason for continued support or existence, and would certainly lose a great deal of its prestige and power.

According to the Sworn Book, the Church saw the Magical procedures it contained as being demonic and inspired by Satan. William of Auvergne confirms this; he certainly saw them this way, calling these and similar procedures, "The most execrable consecrations and most detestable invocations," and their use amounted to the "evident impiety of idolatry."⁷ But the Sworn Book says this isn't true; the procedures therein were taught by an angel of Yhvh named Hocroël.⁸ The Church, however, maintained all such claims were mistaken, and all such "angels" were really Satan disguised.

The Church objected to magicians knowing methods whereby they could achieve a direct experience of Yhvh, since such knowledge made the Church unnecessary. How much greater would their objection be to magicians who knew how to have direct contact with deities other than Yhvh - knowledge which could make Christianity itself unnecessary?

We don't have to speculate on this question. The answer is known.

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In the year 906 CE, a monk named Regino of Prüm published a vast encyclopedia of canon law, titled, De Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis et Religione Christiana - On Ecclesiastical Discipline and Christian Religion.⁹ This is a collection of nearly nine hundred years' worth of ecclesiastical rulings, Papal letters and decrees, and the decisions of Church councils. Regino's work was used as a standard and vital Christian reference for many hundreds of years thereafter.

Chapter 364 of the second book of Regino's work came later to be known as the Canon Episcopi, or Capitulum Episcopi. Roughly translated, this title means, "Instruction to the Bishops." There is some controversy over when, and by whom, and for what reason, the Canon Episcopi was written. Gerald Gardner, for example, suggests Regino may have written it himself.¹⁰ For our purpose, it doesn't matter, and these questions can be set aside; the Canon existed by the year 906, and it was extensively quoted as official Church doctrine from then on. It is the authority which is wielded by the Canon, not its authorship, which matters here.

The Canon begins with a condemnation of Magic:¹¹ "To the end that bishops and their ministers work to labor with all strength to entirely uproot from their parishes the pernicious and devil-invented sorcery and malefic arts, if they find any man or woman sectarian of this wickedness, they eject them dishonorably disgraced from their parishes. . . . They are subverted, and they are held captive by the devil, who, leaving their creator, curry support from the devil. And therefore, such a pest ought to be cleansed from the holy Church." This certainly agrees with the Church's attitude as described in the Sworn Book of Honorius, some three hundred years later. Already, in the opening decade of the tenth century, Magic was held by the Church to come from Satan, and those who work Magic were held to be followers of Satan, attempting to "curry support from the devil." Furthermore, already by the beginning of the tenth century, such people were to be banished, expelled, "dishonorably disgraced," from any parish in which they were found.

Common scholarly opinion holds Magic to have not been extensively persecuted until as late as the fourteenth century.¹² Perhaps provisions such as those in the Canon were not well enforced until then, but that wasn't through lack of desire. Orthodox theology would have begun the persecutions certainly as early as the tenth century, if it could have been managed. The persecutions awaited only the creation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to supply the needed mechanism.

The Canon Episcopi does not stop at condemning Magic for being an invention of Satan. The Canon goes on to tell why the practice of Magic is so dangerous. Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with possible damage or harm done by Magic. The Canon makes no mention of causing storms, cursing neighbors, poisoning wells, or any of the other destructive acts which usually are referred to in explaining Christian opposition to Magic or Witchcraft generally. Instead, the Canon simply goes on to describe one particular use of Magic: obtaining a vision of a Pagan Goddess, Diana.

This vision of Diana is so important, so offensive, so much a vital part of the Magic which the Canon condemns, that the entire remainder of the Canon deals with this vision. "Certain wicked women," the Canon says, "turned back toward Satan, seduced by demonic illusions and phantasms, believe of themselves and profess to ride upon certain beasts in the nighttime hours, with Diana, the Goddess of the Pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and to traverse great spaces of earth in the silence of the dead of night, and to be subject to her laws as of a Lady, and on fixed nights to be called to her service."

Do note, the Canon previously claimed the "man or woman sectarian of this wickedness" was a follower of Satan. Here, a few lines later, such a person is being "subject to" the "laws" of "Diana, the Goddess of the Pagans," and is being "called to her service." Which is it, Satan or Diana? The Canon explains: "Satan . . . transforms himself into an angel of light," that is, he disguises himself and makes himself appear to be Diana. The magicians think they're following Diana. But, the Canon says, they're really following Satan.

This is identical to the situation regarding the Sworn Book of Honorius some three hundred years later. The author of the Sworn Book claimed to have learned the Magical technique for obtaining a "beatific vision" from Hocroël, an angel. But the Church claimed differently; Hocroël was really Satan in disguise. So, too, here: though the magicians of the Canon Episcopi claimed to learn from and to follow Diana, the Pagan Goddess, the author of the Canon insisted this "Diana" was really Satan.

People who believe in the reality of the vision are called "stupid and foolish", "deluded", "subjugated" to Satan "though unfaithfulness and disbelief"; "any who believe such and similar things," the Canon says, "destroys the faith, and whoever has not the straight faith in God, is not his, but is of whom he believes, that is, the devil." The strength of the condemnation is certainly reminiscent of William of Auvergne's fulmination against the Sworn Book of Honorius - and for a very similar reason. The magicians of the Canon Episcopi claimed to be able to achieve a Pagan "beatific vision," that is, a direct contact with their Pagan Goddess.

According to the Canon, the magicians believed the visions of Diana happen "in the body," that is, they claimed to physically visit with Diana, and to be "shown things now joyful, now mournful, and persons, now known, now unknown." But the Canon insists the magicians don't really know what or who they're looking at. "Satan. . . immediately transforms himself into the species and resemblances of various persons," and thus the visionaries really see Satan disguised, and not the people they think they see. Further, these visions, the Canon says, don't happen "in the body" at all; they happen "in the spirit," that is, they are trance journeys - what we might today call astral projection.

The Canon directly compares these visions to those of important biblical prophets and apostles: "Who in truth is stupid and foolish enough to decide all this which is done only in the spirit, actually happens in the body, when Ezekiel the Prophet saw visions of the Lord in the spirit, not in the body; and John the Apostle saw and heard the sacred things of the Apocalypse in the spirit, not in the body, just as he himself declares: ‘Firmly I say, I was in the spirit.' And Paul does not dare to declare he was snatched away in the body."¹³ The visions of Diana, the Canon says, are no different in kind from the visions of Ezekiel and John and Paul; however, and this is the sticking point, the Canon claims, "not from a divine, but from a malignant spirit are such phantasms imposed on the minds of the unfaithful." The visions which the magician sees come from Diana (that is, Satan disguised), and not from Yhvh.

Some historians believe the Canon Episcopi claims nothing at all here was real; there were no visions, no Dianas, not even any magicians.¹⁴ Indeed, the Canon does say it is all "illusions and phantasms." "Who truly has not, in sleep and at night, been summoned to visions outside of himself," the Canon asks, "and seen many things asleep which never are seen awake?" But read carefully. The Canon does claim there really are people having these visions. The Canon simply claims a different source for the visions than the people themselves do, and claims the visions happen "in the spirit" (i.e., astrally) rather than physically, as the people themselves claim. That is, the author of the Canon wants people to think it's all illusion, so they'll stop doing it.

This idea of astral journeys at night is not something made up by ecclesiastical theorists and demonologists. What is described in the Canon Episcopi closely resembles the experiences of the benandanti, a fourteenth-century Pagan fertility cult from the Fruili region of Italy, painstakingly documented by historian Carlo Ginzburg.¹⁵ They, too, journeyed "on fixed nights," while asleep in their beds, and they, too, thought of their astral experiences as being completely real, and, in some sense, physical. The Church became convinced, as it was in the case of the Canon magicians, that the benandanti were receiving their visions from Satan.

To a rationalist modern historian, anything which is a "mere" vision is not real. But this was not the opinion of the Canon's author, and it most certainly is not the opinion of the Church. Since the Canon compares these visions so directly to the visions of Ezekiel and John and Paul, there is no possible way the Canon's author could have believed the visions to not be real - unless the author were also to believe the visions of Ezekiel and John and Paul were not real. No orthodox Christian theologian could possibly believe such a thing.

No; the Canon objects to these visions because they're non-Christian. They come from Satan, though the magicians believe they come from Diana; the magicians believe Diana to be a deity, and the Church insists the only true deity is Yhvh: "But would that they alone perished in their falsehood," the Canon says of these magicians, "and did not, through faithlessness, hand over many to ruin with themselves! For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true, and so believing, avoid the straight faith, and are again caught in the errors of the Pagans, by judging there to be anything of divinity or divine will beyond the one God. Therefore, priests throughout their churches are required to pronounce this crime to the people, with all insistence, so this will be known to be lies in every way. . . "

Belief in these "errors of the Pagans"; belief in Diana, rather than Satan, as the source of these visions; belief in following the laws of "Diana, Goddess of the Pagans"; belief in the effectiveness of Pagan magic: this was what the Canon objected to. "Whoever, then, believes anything can be made, or any creature can be changed to better or worse, or transformed into another species or resemblance - except by the Creator himself who made all things, and through whom all things are made - is an unbeliever beyond doubt" - that is, these things can only be accomplished by Yhvh. Anyone who believes they could be done through the power of Diana - who is, after all, really Satan disguised - "is an unbeliever beyond doubt."

The influence of the Canon was immense. For eight hundred years after Regino's publication, Christian writers on the subject of Witchcraft had to take the Canon into account - or, at the very least, had to show why their views should be accepted in spite of any differences from the Canon. After Regino, the Canon Episcopi was quoted, excerpted, paraphrased, or used as an authority in an amazing number of Church manuals, listings of canon law, theological treatises, and even popular literature. The Canon, or a reference to it, appears in works by Burchard of Worms, Gratian, Ivo, Thomas Aquinas, Alexander Hales, Ramon de Pennafort, Cardinal Henry of Segusio (Hostiensis), Gervaise of Tilbury, Jean de Meun (in his immensely popular extension to Guillaume de Lorris' Romance of the Rose), John of Friburg, Bartolomaeus Pisanus, Niccolo da Osimo, the Council of Amiens, Alfonso Tostado, Juan de Torquemada, St. Antonio, Nickolas Eymeric, and Reginald Scot, to name only a few.¹⁶ A discussion of a portion of the Cannon even begins the very first page of Sprenger and Kramer's infamous Malleus Maleficarum.

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In the tenth century, as, later, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, the Church condemned the practices of magicians who sought - and claimed to have - divine visions outside of the mediation of the Church. There is this added element in the Canon Episcopi, however: the magicians there are not Christians, as were the magicians described in the Sworn Book of Honorius. Other than those few historians who, like Cohn, believe the Canon to claim nothing at all was going on, most scholars see the magicians described in the Canon as actually having existed, and as being a sect of Pagans.¹⁷

Pagan magicians who were followers of Diana, and who were condemned by the Church as Satanists because they claimed to have direct experience of their Goddess - these would most certainly be recognized by Wiccans today as being historical Witches. But the historians, as a rule, do not so recognize them. Most historians say the Diana-worshipping sect described in the Canon Episcopi were not Witches at all. They say, instead, the Church took some ideas connected with this sect, and combined them with other ideas, to create the later Medieval ecclesiastical fantasy of Witchcraft.

But see how closely the magicians of the Canon Episcopi - and the Church's reaction to them - resemble the late Medieval idea of the Sabbat! At night - in fact, "on fixed nights", that is, according to some schedule of observances - certain women ride off on beasts to obey the laws and commands of Diana, the Pagan Goddess, as their Lady - and the Canon here, for "Lady", uses the term domina, the feminine form of dominus, "Lord", a title by which the Canon itself elsewhere refers to Yhvh! The Canon insists that the magicians' supernatural patron is really Satan, who is able to disguise himself in various forms. All this should be terribly familiar, for it is exactly what the Inquisitors would be saying of the Sabbat a few centuries later.

Of course, by then, the Church would have added propaganda about wild orgies, infanticide, cannibalism, and other nonsense - nonsense which has been shown, time and again, to be the staple of religious hate campaigns since the beginning of Christian history.¹⁸ But in the case of the Witches, what the Christian authorities objected to was not the orgy, or the infanticide or cannibalism, except secondarily. It was the fact of the Sabbat itself which brought Christian wrath. Simple attendance at a Sabbat, even if one committed none of these antisocial acts, was enough to bring death for being a Witch.

Why?

This question bothers historians immensely, for they often can make little or no sense of it - especially since most historians claim no one ever actually went to a Sabbat at all. Why punish someone for an impossibility? Worse: why punish someone for an impossibility which would do no one any harm, even if it were possible?

The answer to this comes from Mathiesen's analysis of the Sworn Book of Honorius. Travel to a Sabbat, with its revelers and Faeries and Pagan deities, is certainly analogous to travel to the "Celestial Palace," with its vision of "the Majesty of God in his Glory, and the Nine Orders of Angels, and the Company of all Blessed Spirits."¹⁹ Attendance at a Sabbat - even claimed attendance at a Sabbat, even if one went only "in the spirit" and not "in the body," even if "only" in a dream - any sort of attendance at a Sabbat implied a belief in the ability to achieve a "beatific vision" outside of the mediation of the Church. It doesn't matter if this vision is "real" in a physical sense or not, any more than it mattered whether the visions of Ezekiel or John or Paul were physical. A vision is a vision; and if someone claimed to be getting visions outside of the control of the Church, such visions had to be stopped, lest the Church lose its self-declared power to be sole mediator between deity and humanity.

The Medieval Church claimed the Witches were in league with Satan in a plot to overthrow Christianity. Historians write this stance off to gullible paranoid delusion on the part of the Church demonologists. There was no widespread cult of Satanists, certainly no organized Satanic movement to destroy the Church. And even if there were pockets of heretical opposition here and there, it is absurd to believe any of these tiny heretical sects had any sort of realistic chance to overthrow the mighty political, military, and economic power of the Medieval Church.

But - historians see as completely credible the idea of Medieval Ceremonialist magicians who engaged in practices such as those described in the Sworn Book of Honorius. Historians are now convinced, thanks to the work of Ginzburg, of the survival of at least some Pagan fertility sects into Medieval Europe. Historians generally agree that the Canon Episcopi really did describe an actual Pagan sect still existing in the early tenth century, a sect whose visionary practices fit rather well with those of the benandanti and the Sworn Book of Honorius, some three to four hundred years later. And the Inquisitorial descriptions of the Witches' Sabbat include - amidst all the common religious propaganda - exactly those same elements which are condemned in both the Sworn Book and the Canon Episcopi, elements which would, if allowed to grow unchecked, threaten the very underpinning of the Church's claim to power and authority.

Suddenly, the whole basis and reason for the Witch trials seems frighteningly clear.

The Church had a very real fear, and was acting in a way which, given its position, had a chilling logic. Far from being the irrational, incomprehensible paranoia generally seen by the historians, the Church's actions are perfectly rational, and entirely understandable.

The Sworn Book proves there really was knowledge in the Middle Ages of at least one way to achieve Divine visions outside of the control of the Church. Girnzburg's work on the benandanti proves there really were surviving Pagan fertility cults which claimed to have the knowledge of how to travel "in the spirit." The Canon Episcopi proves the Church was aware of Pagan sects which claimed to have direct contact with Pagan deities. In all these cases, the Church claimed the real source of the visions and the knowledge - for Honorius, for the benandanti, and for the sect of the Canon Episcopi - was Satan.

In the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church instituted the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which was intended to battle against heresies within the Catholic Church, in order to maintain the purity of its doctrine. In the fourteenth century, the Holy Office turned its attention to those people - now labeled "heretics" - who believed they were able to have sacred visions outside of the control of the Church, an ability which threatened the very foundations of the Church itself. In the fifteenth century, a series of writings, culminating in the Malleus Maleficarum, increasingly equated imagery associated with the visionaries of the Canon Episcopi to the fantasies of the ecclesiastical diabolists and the Ceremonialist enchanters.

In attempting to explain the Christian reason for conducting the Witch trials, it makes no difference whether there really were any surviving Pagans who remembered how to have contact with their Gods. There indisputably once were such sects, and various Christian churches believed they still existed, and viewed their continued existence, quite reasonably, as threatening to the very survival of Christianity. Almost any organization, backed into a corner, fighting for its survival, will be willing to engage in extreme measures. And that's just what the various Christian churches did.

Nor have the Christian churches - or, at least, the Catholic Church - forgotten yet today, and this is where the really frightening part comes in. The Church does not openly admit to its reasons for persecuting the Medieval Witches. But it does still condemn the various forms of modern Paganism, and it does disapprove of the newage fad of "channeling" and other forms of divination (divin-ation means "contact with the Divine"). And it does remember the connection between the modern Wiccan religion of the earth and the seasons, and the Medieval Witches whom it once attacked so avidly:

In 1995 CE, noted scholar and Catholic theologian Father Matthew Fox was charged by the Vatican with the crime (among other acts) of "consorting with witches." It was the first time the Catholic Church had leveled this charge against a clergyman in nearly three centuries. The last time was in 1697. The "witches" with whom Father Fox was "consorting" were modern Neopagan Wiccans.

Every time you go into Circle and invoke our Goddess or our God, you are having direct contact with Deity, contact not mediated by an official Christian church, contact with a being whom any orthodox Christian sect will equate to Satan. Every time you perform a ritual which was taught by the Gods, you are engaging in exactly the sort of practices which brought the wrath of the Inquisition down on us in centuries past.

Perhaps one of the few things which moderates the response of the Christian churches today is the belief of many in the psychological nature of it all. Many modern Pagans and Witches - perhaps most? - do not "really" believe in the Gods. Many see Magic as the art of changing oneself, or see the Goddess as an aspect of one's own "higher self", rather than seeing the Gods as real, separate beings in Their own right. The visions we receive, if any, come from deep in our own subconscious, not from Real Gods.

Perhaps it's safer this way. If the Christian Churches think we've forgotten how to achieve a "beatific vision," if they think we've forgotten how to fly to the Sabbat, perhaps they'll be less inclined to spread rumors about infanticide, cannibalism, and wild orgies. There's no reason to be worried about us, if we're no threat. As long as we don't take it too seriously or too literally, we're safe.

The Holy Office of the Inquisition still exists, under the title of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - is now the Pope, Bendict XVI. These may be good facts to keep in mind...

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• Jacqueline Simpson, Library of the World's Myths and Legends: European Mythology, Peter Bedrick Books, 1987, p105-106
• H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch-Hunting in Southwestern Germany 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations, Stanford University Press, 1972, p15-17
• Elliot Rose, A Razor for a Goat: A Discussion of Certain Problems in the History of Witchcraft and Diabolism, University of Toronto Press, 1989 (reprint), p106ff
• Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Cornell University Press, 1972, p76-77.

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