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me: So you're going to elaborate, or you're not?
Frank: Give me a particular case with the "secular" benefits and I will.

Why not take the example we've been hashing over in this thread. I've claimed that in most cases, and certainly in general, the major benefits of the witch-crazes weren't "religious" -- specifically as defined by Church dogma, but also according to the general "functional" criteria I described to Mr. P -- but that you could find any number of secular (eg. political, economic, personal and sociological) benefits that would explain both the fact of the crazes and their modus operandi.

For example, the religious motivation provided by the Church was the salvation of souls, and Church doctrine provided a set of rituals and professions that outlined the official means of achieving that goal. It's difficult to see how witch persecutions achieved anything along those lines.

Just as a reminder, what prompted my call for elaboration is your argument that "that greed combined with true religious conviction could have caused what you [meaning me] call 'secular' actions".

There are a few problems, as I see it. The first is that of how you determine whether or not a genuinely religious conviction is operative. Simple professions won't cut it, because people are as capable of disingenuous statements of belief as they are of genuine statements of belief, and we don't have a sure fire way of telling which is which in a historical scenario. That becomes incresingly more complicated when their behavior could be explained by reference to another motivation as well. In other words, if it were clear that the only motivation a sane person could have for a particular action were religious, we wouldn't have a problem. If you can come up with some rational, evidence-based criteria for determining the ingenuousness of a profession, that would make things much easier, but I don't think it likely.

Another problem is that of what you mean by "greed combined with true religious conviction". Are you looking at the whole event, in which case combined might only mean that one person was acting from religious conviction in preaching about the dangers of witches, while another acted from greed in making accusations or meting out punishment? If that's your argument, I don't have much in the way of objections -- but then, nor do I find it terribly convincing as a condemnation of religion. If greed is the motive behind the act (as opposed to the exhortation), then the secular motive is far more culpable.

If, on the other hand, you're talking about the combination within the mind of the individual, things get much more problematic. Again, how do we determine which, or how many, individuals were acting from that combination?

Probably the best route (and this is advice I fully expect you to ignore, and probably sneer at as well) would be to demonstrate first the possibility that such was (given the specific conditions of the moment) possible, then that it was operational (ie. that it makes sense to see that combination resulting in witch persecutions) and finally that it was likely.

And really, I don't expect you to make much an effort at any of that.

...and besides we are just trying to level the playing field a little, as atheists we are slandered regularly so when we see someone who is acting like a complete ass and are doing so because of a belief in their one and only true god, we say so with no apologies.

Then why not take it to the playing field? Who in this thread has attempted to malign your atheism? Raise your hand if you've attempted to convert an atheist on BookTalk. Anyone? Anyone?

What it looks like is that you've retreated to a forum that's managed to attract fairly moderate, reasonable theists who are willing to live and let live. You complain about all of the stings theist give you out in the real world, but then you come in here and poke a stick at every hornets nest you can find.

So what is my attitude Mad? Since you have evaluated me so perfectly.

Religion is irrational and pernicuous; religious believers are prone to intolerance and need to be corrected as firmly as possible; society as a whole would be better off without religion. Is that so far off base?

misterpessimistic: So you think it was more women persecuting women?

Persecuting implies (to my mind) a whole field of activity -- everything from conducting a trial to actual execution. That women were particularly involved in those practices seems, to me, unlikely. But Rose cited a figure that women were often the accusers in witch trial cases, and I'm taking it for granted that she has a reputable source for that claim.

Incidentally, in my reading, the accusers have often been children as well.

Do you discount any misogynistic motive at all?

No; I just think that, given some of the evidence and patterns we've seen, the role of misogyny in witch persecution must be fairly complex. A simple conclusion like, "the witch crazes were a way of limiting the influence and authority of women in patriarchal societies" just wouldn't cut it. And if women did make up a disproportionate number of the accusers as well as the accused, that complicates it a great deal. But you still have to take note of the fact that most of the authorities officiating in these cases were men acting in patriarchal roles.

me: Why did they want to dispense with the older, more tolerant, tradition?
Mr. P: You mean the earlier Pagan religions?

No, I mean the 800 year old Christian tradition that mitigated against belief in witches. The men who started the witch-crazes and wrote the anti-witch tracts were actively involved in suppressing a tradition that promoted reason and erred on the side of tolerance. Why?

me: but most of the reasons can probably be subsumed under the category of social uniformity
Mr. P: But why at this specific period and why in this way all of a sudden? Had not these people been around for centuries prior to this, these outsiders?

Re: why at this specific period -- there were a number of events taking place both inside and outside of Europe that were leading to a great deal of social change and instability. Just as an example, advances in maritime technology had recently made it possible to explore vaster areas, including Asia, Africa and the New World. And intellectual influence from these places were providing indirect challenges to traditional social modes within Europe -- challenges that couldn't be faced directly. I wouldn't argue that external influence was the primary cause, or even a consistently felt influence, but it is important to note that Europe was, at that period, emerging into a much broader sphere of influence that might have made stability at home seem much more desireable.

But this is what happened to the Albigensians no? They were 'imbedded' in what we now call southern France...yet they were persecuted because of unorthodox beliefs, not to gain land for the Church.

My understanding of the situation is that the inhabitants of Southern France were regarded as a barely assimilated people living within Europe. That they subscribed to unorthodox beliefs was not, in itself, threatening. What instigated their suppression was the danger of sedition and separatism. H.C. Lea is emphatic on the point that the Albigensian Crusades did little to further religious causes, and Lea is, himself, no friend of religion.

The Innocent VIII got the whole thing really going with the Bull...and then a sect of the Church wrote the ground rules and instruction manual and led the charge!!

If Trevor-Roper is correct, the Bull was leveraged by the Dominicans. And I'm not at all sure that it's proper to consider the Dominicans a part of the Church offices -- everything I've read about the Mendicant Orders and the Holy Office (ie. the Inquisition) depicts them as acting independently, and sometimes in opposition, to the explicit efforts of the Papacy.

And whether we call it political or not, a religious organization was looking to consolidate power under its own dogma.

And that much I've never denied. I don't think that the witch-crazes were a direct effort to consolidate Church power, but I'm clear on the fact that the Church of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance did act frequently in order to consolidate its power. But I consider that a political action, and it doesn't seem to me that very many officials within the Church were acting from religious motives when they supported such actions.

Again, we have a point in common here: we both think that it's best to keep a conscious and deliberate distinction between religious and political institutions. Where we seem to diverge is, that I believe that a great many (not all) of the Church's abuses during this period can be attributed to the fact that it was acting as a political institution, whereas it seems as though you're arguing that a religious institution is prone to the same abuses as a political institution.

This is a good point. Atheists are slandered in this country every day.

And I sympathize. But I'm not the one doing it. Frank isn't achieving any sort of balance or bettering the lot of atheists by bickering with me.

And another point...if we are SOOO bad, why do the theists here stick around so long? ... Obviously you guys like it here.

I stick around because there are periods when the conversation is very civil and really interesting. I feel like I've gained a lot from talking with people like Interbane, Fiske, Rose, and Niall. And in this thread you've demonstrated something I tend to forget, which is that we don't always nitpick one another to death. If Frank and I ever had conversations like the one I've having here with you, I'd probably have less to complain about.

Frank: I would like to know how much influence texts like the malleus might have had, manuscripts like that were incredibly popular during the crazes and to ignore that sort of influence seems careless to me.

They had to have been broadly influential, if for no other reason than that they're the only source for the methodology and a great deal of the standards of evidence on which the witch trials were based. But again, there's good reason to draw a distinction between motivation and facilitation. The Malleus and texts like it provided the basis for conceiving witchcraft as an organized phenomenon with regular features amenable to legal investigation and proceedings. But that gives us very little basis for determining whether or not these texts actually inspired the accusations. And I'm not sure that there's any practical way to determine their influence as a motivation.

Frank: But it does not take into account the very real fear of witches, the element of mythical thinking, or the depth of their religious belief.

None of which are measureable even in principle, much less in particulars. How do you guage "element of mythical thinking"? How do you verify "the depth of religious belief" in a historical personage, or -- more to the point -- abstract it to embrace an entire society? For that matter, how can we determine when a person or population was genuinely afraid of witches and when they're giving pious lip service?

And I explained that the benefits are not (in many cases) a good indicator of motive.

I didn't want to address your example because you drew it in very personal terms, but I don't think it's terribly applicable. It wouldn't make sense to apply the cui bono? question to an inheritor if the person acting was someone else. Of course it doesn't make sense to surmise that the inheritor encouraged the suicide in order to inherit. Unless there's some mitigating factor, it's safe to say that the inheritor has lost more than they've gained -- they've lost a benefactor and a family member, and all they've gained out of it is an object of limited utility. Nor does the act of bestowing property necessarily have anything to do with the suicide. The question is, what does the agent's actions indicate were his motive. If one person wanted to give their truck to another, they wouldn't have to literally kill themselves to do so, and if that were, in fact, their motive, then we'd have to conclude that, for that person, the fact of bestowing seemed like a benefit greater than that of continuing to live. Which isn't out of the question -- it all depends on how greatly the person valued their life.

But in the case of the witch trials we're talking about particular people (we can generalize them as "Accusers" and "Authorities") making specific actions that are presumably motivated by one cause or another. If we were talking about an isolated instance, then it might be reasonable to suppose that the person made a mistake in suiting their action to their motive. But we're talking about a pattern of events that repeated itself thousands of times over, so if we assume that there was some mistake that perpetuated itself over and over again, with no exceptions, then we should probably also conclude that humans (or at least 16th and 17th century Europeans) are spectacularly unsuited to matching means and end. The cui bono? question applies specifically to the question of what it was they thought they were achieving when they settled on the particular course of action that led to the persecution of a witch. And the answer to that question is at variance with the doctrine that the Church laid down as the religious motive par excellance.

Ok, but the church was not doing most of the accusing was it. The people (who you admit you can't even get a grasp of what they believed) were doing the accusing.

And that supports your argument how?

(Beyond which, I don't recall having said that the populace couldn't get a grasp of what they believed. They may not have known official Church doctrine very well, but that's a different matter altogether. Nor do I readily assume that they would blindly follow religious doctrine -- and that the Church thought it necessary to continually expose heresy ought to serve as evidence to that end.)

My point in all of this was to explain that the way you have gone about determining their motives is just as flawed, because you have neglected to give ample credit to their religious beliefs.

I think you've given too much credit to their religious beliefs. The impression I've gained from a lot of study is that most people were lukewarm towards religion so long as it didn't bother them and they hadn't settled on it as a way of escaping poverty or some other misfortune. There were zealots and pious people in the Middle Ages, of course, but your interpretation tends to situate them as the majority, whereas I think it very likely that they were a minority. It doesn't seem likely to me that people acted from religious conviction alone with any sort of frequency.

For every secular reason that you can come up with I can find an equally reasonable religious one.

Your religious suggestions are only reasonable so long as we're willing to assume that people routinely accept religious texts ver batim and follow religious dictates without reservation. There are extremists in any society for whom this is true, but I don't think that it's generally applicable as a rule.

You tend to down play the role of religion in those peoples lives. The church told them how to behave, how to dress, what to eat, how to have sex, even what to think.

And they routinely disobeyed and resisted its influence. You see less physical evidence of that in large part because the Church itself left most of the documentary evidence, but if you look closely enough you'll see that the Church had its hands full trying to maintain orthodoxy and ensure belief. Religion had a foremost role in the life of the medieval commoner in large part because the Church served double time as the organizing political body that held Europe together as a cultural and political entity, but a great many contemporary people fell in line just as much as they had to in order to escape the notice of the Church. I see absolutely no reason to draw the conclusion that the most people swallowed Church doctrine wholesale or conformed their behavior to the standards of the Church.

In my opinion your downplaying of this influence is bordering on the absurd, the vast majority of those people were deeply religious, they truly believed what the bible and their preachers told them.

How do you determine that?

Frank: I was under the impression that some old tales and stories about witches must have survived, since there were witch trials and burnings before then, as well as a church that was divided on the issue of their existence before the Malleus was written.

There were witch beliefs independent of the Malleus, but they never amounted in a concerted program of witch persecution, not did they find broad consolidation as a "theory" of witchcraft. What the Malleus (and other documents) brought to the table was a sense of organization -- not only among witch hunters, but the sense that outbreaks of witchcraft were not isolated incidents but were evidence of a continent-wide affiliation of witches.

I suppose that none of the above examples are even remotely possible?

I know what you're getting at, because it's the same thing you've been getting at all along. I just don't know how it is you think you're getting there.

Rose, I appreciate your attempt to come in and clarify what the points of contention are in this discussion, but I think you're wasting your time with Frank. I don't think it likely that he ever intends to reach any accord on the matter, nor to consider it from another point of view. What he wants is an admission of defeat.

Frank: See, I do not disagree with this in theory, and under normal circumstances I would agree, except that the times of the witch crazes were far from normal.

There were periods where hysteria certainly took over, and for relatively long periods of time, but what we're referring to as the witch crazes took place over a period of nearly 200 years. Throughout this discussion I have made a distinction between those periods during which hysteria reached a fever-pitch and the periods during which the persecutions were a matter of methodology rather than patent madness. What I'm talking about in most cases are those long stretches between peaks during which witches were still persecuted but in a manner not markedly different from any other legal proceeding.

There are many examples of writings and art that are religiously motivated. Journals from ship crews and captains. Much of it points to a population that believed in myth.

Can you demonstrate that credulous accounts of witch belief outnumber accounts written with a tone of disbelief, scepticism or neutrality? There are also examples of writing and art that demonstrate a vein of scepticism in the same population, but you don't seem to have put much emphasis on that. And you always have to bear in mind that literacy rates dictated who did and did not leave behind records of their beliefs.

me: Even people who fervently believed in the existence of witches and the efficacy of witch-craft were prone to tolerate the presence of witches in their community, so long as witchcraft wasn't being used maliciously against them.
Frank: When was this? Not during the time of the witch crazes, which is what we are discuss

Both before and during that period. Cf. John Demos on the matter, or any number of accounts in which suspected witches were allowed to cohabit civilized areas with non-witches.

What about before the crazes. Why did some of the general populace continue to believe even when the church said it was wrong? Where were these early Christians getting their information?

There were apparantly two sources for the rather scant methodology of the middle ages: one was heterodox folk tradition (read: superstition), the other was the precedent of pagan law, which formed the kernal of most secular (in this case, meaning, distinct from the authority of the Catholic Church) judicial systems. Baroja's book discusses this at some length in the early sections.

And considering that the witch belief survived even with the church declaring it as heretical, why is it so hard to believe people believed when it was church supported?

I think they very probably did believe it. What I doubt is that they believed it because of church approval; that they consistently feared witches to the point of unprovoked persecution; and that said belief was really understandable apart from a great many secular pressures that the turmoil of the age brought to bear.

me: So would you say that there are (or at least could be) examples of religion that are not irrational or pernicious?
Frank: Yes.

Would you be so kind as to give some examples?

And the fact that Juveniles are even more prone to fear and fairy tale reasoning is meaningless too I suppose.

It wouldn't be if you could somehow demonstrate that they were acting from fear or "fairy tale" reasoning. In some of the specific cases I've looked at, it looks more as though they were acting from premeditation and had even organized their responses to achieve a certain amount of uniformity. For example, in the case I mentioned in my previous post, the authorities investigating the case were careful enough to have the girls separated while identifying supposed witches. Despite not witnessing one another's identification process, each of the witnesses selected the same suspects, and according to criteria that no one else was supposed to be able to observe (ie. a corneal mark visible only to the girls themselves). Fear and "fairy tale reasoning" alone hardly account for that.

Please name some of my baseless assumptions, and I will provide the bases.

That belief in the efficacy of witch craft and the existence of witches was normative during the time period; that conformity of personal belief to church doctrine was normative; that the normative relationship between non-witch and witch was determined by a fear leading necessarily towards persecution. That should make a good start.

I am having fun, but I really do want to know why you think that the religious mindset has nearly no influence on the vast majority of these cases.

Again, point out where I've said that the "religious mindset" had no influence. Your choice of the phrase "religious mindset" seems particularly revealing to me, as it seems to highlight the notion that if the people of the era had drawn a more modern distinction between religious and secular culture, and had relegated religion to the background, they could have avoided the witch crazes. From what I've seen of the evidence, that doesn't seem the case at all to me. Some form of persecution was practically inevitable given the tensions prevalent throughout Europe. That doesn't mean that religion played no part.

The people of that time lived in a world where their science, their laws, and their logic were often based off of their religion. This type of thinking led to the development and belief in vampires and werewolves as well as other myths and superstitions, for you to stubbornly sit there and say that those people were secular thinkers is ludicrous.

With this paragraph you've made a distinct causal link. Now why don't you back that up with some evidence. Show me, in distinct steps, how subscription for Catholic church doctrine led to belief in vampires and werewolves, or in the belief that people attended Black Sabbaths and fornicated with the Devil.

Mad, I am sad for you because I have been saying the same thing for quite a while now and you still do not get it.

Don't be sad for me. I get what you're saying. I just don't see much reason to believe it.

Well I do have a few books on medieval life, ancient and medieval fables and superstitions, many of the superstitions that exist to this day are from that time period, there is other evidence of their religious and superstitious nature, like the time the king of France tried to get the farmers and peasants to grow and eat potatoes, but they wouldn't because they considered the potato the devils root.

I've got a few books on vampires. Doesn't mean I believe every word in them. Nor do I think a few isolated examples, recited anecdotally apart from their context, suffices as evidence of the beliefs that persisted for more than 200 years. How do I know, based on your 1/2 sentence account, that the peasants in question didn't have other reasons for not growing potatoes, and that they "devil's roots" argument wasn't satirical or idiomatic? Dramatic names were given to all sorts of plant matter that was considered toxic or dangerous for simple taxonomic reasons. The peasants themselves likely left no written record of their reasons, so it's likely that we have to take the word of a condescending aristocratic class on the matter.

If you would like I can find much, much more and supply names and dates as well, but that will take some time, most of my books are in storage.

Don't bother. What I would like is evidence of a less anecdotal nature.

So are you suggesting that the malleum was being bought up for recreational reading? Do you know how absurd that sounds?

Why? I suspect that the Malleus was bought for a plethora of reasons, and I have very little doubt at all that a great many people bought it just to see what all the fuss was about. As a sheer number, the number of copies of the Malleus tells us almost nothing except that it circulated widely. It doesn't tell us anything about how widely its claims were accepted, or what proportion of any given population supported its claims.

Because you have failed to even make an attempt in that regard I cannot take your argument seriously and there really is no further discussion necessary.

That's a relief.

It seems to me that you have two choices here, you can accept the flaw in your theory and attempt to correct it by getting some perspective on the common person's thinking of the time, or you can continue to march arrogantly down the same path we began on.

What I intend to do is continue to read the best books I can find on the subject and make up my own mind on the matter.

He simply claims that I can't prove that that type of person even existed

I have no doubt that hysterical, unbalanced, irrational people existed. What I'm asking you to demonstrate is that those people were responsible for very public accusations and judicial trials spanning 200 years, for circumventing any rational opposition, and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

But then, it seems it was never your intention to actually lend anything substantive to this discussion. You wanted to poke holes in my "theory" (which you've built into far more of a theory than I ever did -- I'd have considered it a line of inquiry), but it doesn't look to me like you've even managed that. What you've done is raised a question, over and over again, in a very tight spectrum of variations, in regard to something that I never really claimed in the first place.

If you're bowing out of this discussion, I consider you well quit. I hope Rose or Mr. P have more to add, but I'm afraid that you've dragged us so far off course that there's little hope of getting this discussion back on even footing.