Frank: Thanks Mad, I knew you could not resist
What, you get the last word just because you've decided to bow out? It should be a generally recognized rule of BBS etiquette that, when one person bows out of a discussion, the other conversants get to respond to their final points with impunity.
But its not just me is it? Even though you have shown your assumptions as lacking you refuse any middle ground in the matter.
Frank, my "position" on what caused and sustained the witch crazes is a less solid matter than you've made it out to be, and one of the things that I've found most frustrating about this discussion is that I've succumbed on too many occasions to the tendency to respond as though my opinions on the matter were both final and fully worked out. That has a lot to do with the terms in which you've couched discussion; if you look back at the exchanges between myself and Rose, or myself and Mr. P, you'll see a much greater willingness on the part of both sides to consider the possibilities. You've consistently invited me to defend positions that were far more entrenched and definite than my own, and to my dismay, I realize that I've come out looking as though I really did subscribe to those positions. That works all to the benefit of the program you're pushing -- that of a parlour debate -- but I prefer a conversation that's less about offence and defence and more about considering the information coming from all sides.
I am not claiming that they did, I am responding to your claim that those influences had nearly no weight.
I didn't claim that. What I claimed is that you have to consider the context in which each account is made in order to understand to what degree it is representative of the whole.
me: There are also examples of writing and art that demonstrate a vein of skepticism in the same population, but you don't seem to have put much emphasis on that.
Frank: In all of my years studying medieval culture I have rarely come across such documentation.
Both Trevor-Roper and Baroja provide lists and discussion of prominant critics; Baroja's book offers the added attraction of exploring the skeptical effect of the use of irony in literature and the visual arts, particularly the works of Goya and Bosch.
I also took into account that the less educated tend to be more religious...
Again, how do you substantiate this? It looks like an assumption to me, one generalized to include the entire swath of European peasantry.
Sure it could, these girls knew the people that they were accusing, they might have seen them doing something that they perceived as witchcraft and were scared. Heck the "witches" might have threatened these girls for running on their lawns and actually said something foolish such as they would turn them into newts. In your mind this is apparently impossible.
Given that the girls accused about 150 people of witchcraft, I'd say it's unlikely.
Another wild goose chase no thanks.
I suggest that your arguments are based on ungrounded assumptions and generalizations; you tell me to name those assumptions so that you can defend them; and when I do, you dismiss them as a wild goose chase. Hell of a defense you're putting up there.
Unless I am reading this incorrectly you are claiming that the social malcontents account for close to 100% of the witch hunt accusations.
You are reading it incorrectly. What I actually wrote was, that close to 100% of the accusations made a) during the earliest phase of the witch craze in Europe, and b) in America during the specific periods examined by John Demos, were directed at, or made by, social malcontents. And as it so happens, I provided sources for that information. That statement does nothing to exclude the probability that religion played some part in the phenomenon, but it does a lot to suggest that secular, political and social factors also played a prominent role. But you want to read it in very black and white terms. That's your prerogative.
Now here you were careful to restrict this statement to the early stages of the witch hunts but you have suggested similar thoughts about the later periods. How pray tell did you come up with that conclusion without a broad presumption?
For later periods I'm relying on the statistical analysis that links peaks in witch persecution to peaks in socio-political conflicts (like the Thirty Years War); on the particular cases alluded to in the books I've been reading on the subject; and on the body of information that points to the disproportionate incidence of witch persecutions in politically contested areas (like the Basque region of Spain).
how do you even get through the day you seem to over analyze everything
Single malt scotch helps.
I gave a few examples, anyone who looks can find thousands of others. You can deny it if you want to, but I am not going to supply you with volumes of information to support a well established historical premise.
Then let's compromise. We'll take one specific example. Give me the time and place, refer me to some sources on the case, I'll look into it and we'll discuss specific points. If you can provide or I can find good reason for taking that example as broadly representative, then you'll have grounds for generalizing about the whole of the witch crazes.
See you have already made up your mind before ever looking at the material.
I'm skeptical about the example you've given, yes. Skepticism is a healthy thing in historical critique. Or don't you agree? But you seem to want me to take all of your examples at face value, without critical reservation. And then you expect me to accept your interpretations of those examples. I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to look this one up, given that you've given me no time frame, and the closest you've given me to a name is "the king of France". Mr. P's willingness to at least read the same book that I'm drawing my conclusions from is a hell of a lot more generous in that regard.
Besides, that is what you are using for the witch trials isn't it? The peasants did not leave a written account so who's word are you taking?
A lot of the most valuable information comes in the form of court records, which provide far less conditioned evidence in the forms of records of the accusation, the evidence given, the date of the trial and death, and so forth. They are, at the least, less susceptible to coloration than anecdote.
If you continue to throw out the religious natures of the people involved you are always going to wind up with a deficient theory.
I have no intention of throwing it out of consideration altogether, but I think you've erred by giving it the bulk of emphasis without any critical reservation. A very generalized critique of religion as leading to travesties like the witch crazes has been a common argument for atheism since at least the Enlightenment, and a great many secularists and atheists have inherited the generalizations of the Enlightenment philosophes without given due consideration to whether or not those generalizations were grounded in fact. It's to guard against too facile an acceptance of the conclusions drawn by men who died 300 years ago that I even bother to reconsider the evidence available on the subject of the witch crazes. But you seem more than comfortable accepting them at face value. Enjoy your inheritance.
What, you get the last word just because you've decided to bow out? It should be a generally recognized rule of BBS etiquette that, when one person bows out of a discussion, the other conversants get to respond to their final points with impunity.
But its not just me is it? Even though you have shown your assumptions as lacking you refuse any middle ground in the matter.
Frank, my "position" on what caused and sustained the witch crazes is a less solid matter than you've made it out to be, and one of the things that I've found most frustrating about this discussion is that I've succumbed on too many occasions to the tendency to respond as though my opinions on the matter were both final and fully worked out. That has a lot to do with the terms in which you've couched discussion; if you look back at the exchanges between myself and Rose, or myself and Mr. P, you'll see a much greater willingness on the part of both sides to consider the possibilities. You've consistently invited me to defend positions that were far more entrenched and definite than my own, and to my dismay, I realize that I've come out looking as though I really did subscribe to those positions. That works all to the benefit of the program you're pushing -- that of a parlour debate -- but I prefer a conversation that's less about offence and defence and more about considering the information coming from all sides.
I am not claiming that they did, I am responding to your claim that those influences had nearly no weight.
I didn't claim that. What I claimed is that you have to consider the context in which each account is made in order to understand to what degree it is representative of the whole.
me: There are also examples of writing and art that demonstrate a vein of skepticism in the same population, but you don't seem to have put much emphasis on that.
Frank: In all of my years studying medieval culture I have rarely come across such documentation.
Both Trevor-Roper and Baroja provide lists and discussion of prominant critics; Baroja's book offers the added attraction of exploring the skeptical effect of the use of irony in literature and the visual arts, particularly the works of Goya and Bosch.
I also took into account that the less educated tend to be more religious...
Again, how do you substantiate this? It looks like an assumption to me, one generalized to include the entire swath of European peasantry.
Sure it could, these girls knew the people that they were accusing, they might have seen them doing something that they perceived as witchcraft and were scared. Heck the "witches" might have threatened these girls for running on their lawns and actually said something foolish such as they would turn them into newts. In your mind this is apparently impossible.
Given that the girls accused about 150 people of witchcraft, I'd say it's unlikely.
Another wild goose chase no thanks.
I suggest that your arguments are based on ungrounded assumptions and generalizations; you tell me to name those assumptions so that you can defend them; and when I do, you dismiss them as a wild goose chase. Hell of a defense you're putting up there.
Unless I am reading this incorrectly you are claiming that the social malcontents account for close to 100% of the witch hunt accusations.
You are reading it incorrectly. What I actually wrote was, that close to 100% of the accusations made a) during the earliest phase of the witch craze in Europe, and b) in America during the specific periods examined by John Demos, were directed at, or made by, social malcontents. And as it so happens, I provided sources for that information. That statement does nothing to exclude the probability that religion played some part in the phenomenon, but it does a lot to suggest that secular, political and social factors also played a prominent role. But you want to read it in very black and white terms. That's your prerogative.
Now here you were careful to restrict this statement to the early stages of the witch hunts but you have suggested similar thoughts about the later periods. How pray tell did you come up with that conclusion without a broad presumption?
For later periods I'm relying on the statistical analysis that links peaks in witch persecution to peaks in socio-political conflicts (like the Thirty Years War); on the particular cases alluded to in the books I've been reading on the subject; and on the body of information that points to the disproportionate incidence of witch persecutions in politically contested areas (like the Basque region of Spain).
how do you even get through the day you seem to over analyze everything
Single malt scotch helps.
I gave a few examples, anyone who looks can find thousands of others. You can deny it if you want to, but I am not going to supply you with volumes of information to support a well established historical premise.
Then let's compromise. We'll take one specific example. Give me the time and place, refer me to some sources on the case, I'll look into it and we'll discuss specific points. If you can provide or I can find good reason for taking that example as broadly representative, then you'll have grounds for generalizing about the whole of the witch crazes.
See you have already made up your mind before ever looking at the material.
I'm skeptical about the example you've given, yes. Skepticism is a healthy thing in historical critique. Or don't you agree? But you seem to want me to take all of your examples at face value, without critical reservation. And then you expect me to accept your interpretations of those examples. I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to look this one up, given that you've given me no time frame, and the closest you've given me to a name is "the king of France". Mr. P's willingness to at least read the same book that I'm drawing my conclusions from is a hell of a lot more generous in that regard.
Besides, that is what you are using for the witch trials isn't it? The peasants did not leave a written account so who's word are you taking?
A lot of the most valuable information comes in the form of court records, which provide far less conditioned evidence in the forms of records of the accusation, the evidence given, the date of the trial and death, and so forth. They are, at the least, less susceptible to coloration than anecdote.
If you continue to throw out the religious natures of the people involved you are always going to wind up with a deficient theory.
I have no intention of throwing it out of consideration altogether, but I think you've erred by giving it the bulk of emphasis without any critical reservation. A very generalized critique of religion as leading to travesties like the witch crazes has been a common argument for atheism since at least the Enlightenment, and a great many secularists and atheists have inherited the generalizations of the Enlightenment philosophes without given due consideration to whether or not those generalizations were grounded in fact. It's to guard against too facile an acceptance of the conclusions drawn by men who died 300 years ago that I even bother to reconsider the evidence available on the subject of the witch crazes. But you seem more than comfortable accepting them at face value. Enjoy your inheritance.
