In article <fugqem$hlk$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
wdstarr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(William December Starr) wrote:
> In article <ddfr-0F8F45.19543210042008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> David Friedman <ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
>
> > In article <IAzLj.40507$rd2.2095@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> > "Karl Johanson" <karljohanson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >
> >> Yes, there would have been cases in both directions. Good
> >> point. And there would have been murderers who blamed some
> >> near by "witch" for what they'd done.
> >
> > If you are talking as early as the thirteenth or fourteenth
> > century, I don't think witchcraft would have been a major issue.
> > That's more a seventeenth century phenomenon.
>
> Does that mean that there was far less of a tendency, in 13th or
> 14th century England/Europe, for accusations to fly of someone
> having used supernatural means to have caused another person's
> misfortune (e.g., illness or accident), or just that the accusations
> weren't of the same "flavor" as the cries of "Witch, witch!" of the
> 17th century?
As I understand it, someone in the 13th or 14th century who claimed that
a witch had used powers given her by Satan to do such things would be
guilty of heresy. I don't know to what extent people believed in magic
of a less exalted sort. Certainly the pagan, and probably early
Christian, Icelanders did--you can see it in the sagas, although not as
a major element.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now
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