The Lore and Myths of Witches Chapter 3: Parchments, Pilgrims, and the Birth of the Witch

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back, brave listeners. We've flown from sagas and spinning huts into a Europe of abbeys, market places and shadowy lanes. Here ideas about witchcraft were written in ink and carved in church doors long before they flared into mass hunts. Pull up a bench by the monastery fire, and maybe keep an eye on that monk. Copying charms in the margins.

0:23 Speaker 2: Churchmen, charms and early manuals ninth to thirteenth centuries.

0:30 Speaker 1: For centuries after Rome's fall, Christian scholars treated magic as mostly delusion. The Canon Episcopy, a tenth century church text, warned priests about women claiming to ride out at night with the goddess Diana or Herodius, not because it was true, but because the devil could trick their imaginations. The message teach repentance, not punishment. Still, villages loved their charms. A priest might bless fields in spring or mutter, or a Latin prayer over a patient while slipping in an old pagan formula pastoral care with a hint of hedge wizardry.

1:08 Speaker 1: Parishioners scratched crosses above doorways, war relics, or buried animal hearts to repel malaficium. The line between devotion and spellcraft was porous.

1:23 Speaker 3: Need to keep your liturgy and your hexes neatly separated. Tri parchment divider tabs for priests who moonlight as folk healers.

1:33 Speaker 2: Universities, lawyers, and the devil's packed thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.

1:40 Speaker 1: By the twelve hundreds, Europe's universities were booming, and scholars loved categorizing everything, including sin, theology, and law, began fusing village fears with scholastic precision. Papal bulls like super ilious Specula one three hundred and twenty six condemned necromancy. Secular courts punished malefactors using poisons or spells. Meanwhile, Europe was racked by the Black Death, famines and wars. People craved explanations. Was the neighbour's cow dying because of damp weather or because she muttered Latin backwards?

2:19 Speaker 1: Enter Inquisitors who collected rumors of night gatherings, ointments, and packs signed theatrically in blood printing presses spread these notions fast. By fourteen eighty seven, two Dominican friars released the infamous Malleus Maleficarum Hammer of Witches, insisting witches formed a vast conspiracy against Christendom, fueled by female frailty and the devil's coaching. It wasn't official doctrine everywhere, but it gave magistrates a ready made villain.

2:52 Speaker 3: This grim milestone is sponsored by Hammer Light, the only witch hunting manual that doubles as a handy paperwork.

3:01 Speaker 2: Festivals, fertility and folk memory.

3:05 Speaker 1: Parallel to clerical worry. Village life kept its own seasonal pageant, may day polls, Midsummer bonfires, and harvest dances all carried traces of older rites. Some involved masking or fertility charms. Others offered playful license. Before Lent's austerity, when clerics looked on nervously, these traditions could be branded sabbaths or pagan survivals. In the Basque valleys, rustic parties called akolaes goat fields featured music, food, and stories about spirits blessing flocks. Centuries later, inquisitors would reinterpret them as secret devil meetings.

3:45 Speaker 1: In Italy for July, peasants testified about the benandanti dream walkers who claimed to fight witches to protect crops armed only with fennel stocks. They weren't villains but folk guardians, proof that witch could still mean champion.

4:01 Speaker 3: Protecting your weed from phantom pests. Fennel fighters has your back battle tested since the fifteen.

4:08 Speaker 2: Hundreds, setting the stage for the hunts.

4:12 Speaker 1: By fifteen hundred, Europe's cauldron of theology, law, folk memory, and political tension was simmering. Witches were no longer just herbalists or mischievous moon chasers. They were being cast as agents in a grand sinister plot. All that remained was a spark and a few hard winters to turn theory into bonfire. That spark is where we're headed next. Get your cloaks and keep your fingers crossed. Chapter four takes us into the roaring heart of the witch Hunts, where fear and fire swept across continents.

4:48 Speaker 1: Hi'm amy, and this has been the Strange History Podcast. If this episode tickled your pineal gland, stirred your cauldron, or at least made you laugh awkwardly in public, sure to subscribe, rate, and share. It helps keep our podcast from fading into the void like so many unswept chalk circles. Until next time, Stay Strange stay magical, and don't forget to ground yourself after flying off on your broomstick of curiosity.