2024-10-15 02:32:00
More than five centuries have passed since “witchcraft” appeared in the legal texts of many European countries. From that moment until today, as strange as it may seem given that it is a brutal and irrational practice that has its origins in the Middle Ages, all those people with a reputation as witches have been the subject of massive persecution in many parts of the world. And even though most governments where these types of attacks and murders of women by “witches” have occurred do not recognize this crime, this does not mean that it has been completely eradicated.
Silvia Federici account in “Witches, witch hunts and women” (Traficantes de Sueños, 2021), that at the roots of the new persecution «we can find many of the factors that already triggered the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, including religion and the regurgitation of the most misogynistic inclinations. “as the foundation of ideological justification. Since 2008, in fact, the Italian-American philosopher and historian claims that the number of murders committed under the pretext of witchcraft has skyrocketed in much of the planet.
In Tanzania alone it is estimated that more than five thousand women are killed as witches every year. Many of them are stabbed to death without any real justice doing anything to prevent or punish it. Others are buried or burned alive, as the Inquisition has done for centuries. In some countries, such as the Central African Republic, prisons are full of women also accused of being witches. In 2016, for example, more than a hundred were executed, burned at the stake by rebel soldiers, who, “following in the footsteps of 16th-century witch hunters, made a business of accusations and forced people to pay by threatening them.” .” with the probability of its execution,” says Federici.
In “The Witches’ Lawyer”originally published in 1983 and republished by Alianza Editorial in 2010, Gustav Henningsen described the inquisitorial trial that took place in Logroño at the beginning of the 17th century, with two thousand defendants and almost five thousand suspects. It was one of the most copious known so far. He remembers how panic spread from France to the Spanish Basque Country, how the silent machine of the Inquisition was set in motion and how it placed the country “on the brink of holocaust, after more than eighty years in which the Tribunal of Sant’ Office “He opposed the burning of witches.”
Vera’s hunt
Among all the existing sources consulted by this researcher who died last October, considered for years the world’s leading expert on the phenomenon of witchcraft, he concentrated above all on the Pyrenean town of Vera de Bidasoa, where the witch hunt conducted by jealous priests took place of the place reached surprising dimensions. According to the statistics that the inquisitors of Logroño sent to their superiors in Madrid in 1611, 32 confessions of witchcraft were made in this locality alone. In them the same crime was attributed to 187 other people. If we add both figures, we are talking about 219 witches, 39% of the total population.
What happened to Vera de Bidasoa is a perfect example to observe how this witch hunt was unleashed which, unfortunately, has reached the present day in other parts of the world and in its different versions. Henningsen consulted not only the secret judicial investigations of the Inquisition, but also other sources such as letters and eyewitness reports, some of whom claimed not to depend on the Holy Office. It was, therefore, a much larger hunt than we can imagine.
During the great persecution, the inquisitors of the Tribunal went to Vera twice. The first occurred in 1609, when Mr. Juan del Valle Alvarado stayed with his entourage at the house of the eighty-year-old priest Domingo de San Paúl, inquisitorial commissioner of the nearby city of Lesaca. The old man undertook to discover the witches in his area, a task in which a young parish priest, Lorenzo de Hualde, also undertook. In the second, in 1611, an edict of grace was presented for all members of a presumed diabolical sect, with which a safe conduct was given to all those who recognized themselves as witches. The delegation sent the Court 339 confessions and the repentant offered the names of 1,607 other members of the alleged organization. Seeing the number, the punishment of burning at the stake was reinstated for those who did not confess.
Matthew Hopkins
A more striking case outside Spain occurred four decades later in England, a country that also firmly believed in the existence of witches thanks to James I. The king even wrote a book: ‘Demonologies’. Thanks to this trend, there were people who dedicated part of their lives to investigating alleged cases of witchcraft among innocent women, with the sole aim of making money. This is the case of Matthew Hopkins and John Stearn, two infamous hunters who committed all kinds of abuses.
Since meeting in 1644, this team proved that they could turn witch hunts into a very profitable business. The first thing they did was hire the services of “researchers,” women who examined the bodies of the accused to find marks of the devil on them, such as moles, scars, warts, and any marks they could think of. The first town they attacked was Manningtree, where they accused 36 women of having made a pact with Satan and practicing black magic. 19 were hanged. It was the beginning of his career, which spread terror in the English countryside.
A month later they arrived in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where they investigated around one hundred people suspected of practicing witchcraft. In a single day they convicted and executed 18 people, 16 of whom were women. In a second trial they managed to accuse another 60. Their procedures were thus questioned by the press of the time, even if they cared little what was said about them, as long as the money ended up in their pockets. They continued on their way and did the same in towns such as Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.
The methods they used were the most random and unlikely imaginable, as well as cruel. For example, they pricked their victims with needles, knives and awls, and if they didn’t bleed, they were witches. Another of the most common methods used by the couple was to tie the accused to a chair and throw him into a river or pond. If he floated he was guilty, but if he sank and drowned before he could be saved he was innocent. The result, therefore, was almost always the same: death. Hopkins and Stearne retired from business in 1647 without being tried or convicted for their actions.
The current hunt
Far from being a practice of the past, in some countries they sometimes surprise us with these hunting trips. In India, explains Federici, the numbers of witch murders are rampant, especially in “tribal territories”, such as the land of the Adivasis, where large-scale land privatization processes are underway. And the phenomenon is spreading. “We now know that witches were killed in Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia,” the historian writes. The difference is that today technology contributes to this persecution and on the Internet you can even download recordings of murders of alleged witches and manuals that explain how to recognize them.
In 2008, however, there was an increase in women’s resistance against this old hunt. In India, above all, they have mobilized and go from village to village to combat rumors about the existence of witches spread by local authorities, witch hunters and other more or less secret persecutors. Others gather evidence and put pressure on the authorities, who often show little interest in prosecuting the killers.
According to the organization Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network, more than 20,000 incidents have been reported in more than 60 countries over the past decade, of which more than 5,000 have been murders. The victims are, for the most part, elderly women, children and people with albinism. Industry experts believe that, far from being a practice of the past, the phenomenon is on the rise around the world. In the summer of 2021, the United Nations adopted a resolution for the first time condemning human rights violations related to witchcraft accusations.
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