In the imagination of thousands of Europeans in the not-so-distant past, night-flying women and nocturnal orgies where Satan himself led his disciples through rituals of incest and animal-worship seemed terrifying realities.Who were these "witches" and "devils" and why did so many people believe in their terrifying powers? What explains the trials, tortures, and executions that reached their peak in the Great Persecutions of the sixteenth century? In this unique and absorbing volume, Norman Cohn, author of the widely acclaimed Pursuit of the Millennium, tracks down the facts behind the European witch craze and explores the historical origins and psychological manifestations of the stereotype of the witch.Professor Cohn regards the concept of the witch as a collective fantasy, the origins of which date back to Roman times. In Europe's Inner Demons, he explores the rumors that circulated about the early Christians, who were believed by some contemporaries to be participants in secret orgies. He then traces the history of similar allegations made about successive groups of medieval heretics, all of whom were believed to take part in nocturnal orgies, where sexual promiscuity was practised, children eaten, and devils worshipped.By identifying' and examining the traditional myths — the myth of the maleficion of evil men, the myth of the pact with the devil, the myth of night-flying women, the myth of the witches' Sabbath — the author provides an excellent account of why many historians came to believe that there really were sects of witches. Through countless chilling episodes, he reveals how and why fears turned into crushing accusation finally, he shows how the forbidden desires and unconscious give a new — and frighteningly real meaning to the ancient idea of the witch.
BASIC BOOKS,INC., PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Car c’est à la vérité une violente et traistresse maistresse d’escole, que la coustume. Elle establit en nous, peu à peu, à la desrobée, le pied de son autorité: mais par ce doux et humble commencement, l’ayant rassis et planté avec l’ayde du temps, elle nous descouvre tantost un furieux et tyrannique visage, contrc lequel nous n’avons plus la liberté de hausser seulement les yeux.
For truly, Custome is a violent and deceiving schoole-mistris. She by little and little, and as it were by stealth, establisheth the foot of her authoritie in us; by which mild and gentle beginning, if once by the aid of time, it have settled and planted the same in us, it will soone discover a furious and tyrannical countenance unto us, against which we have no more the libertie to lift so much as our eies.
1. “Waldensians” adoring the Devil in the form of a he-goat. From a manuscript of a French translation of a Latin tract or sermon by Johannis Tinctoris,
2. The witches’ sabbat as imagined at the height of the great witch-hunt. From Pierre de Lancre’s
3. Goya: Capricho No. 71, with the caption: “Si amanece, nos vamos” (“When day dawns, we have to go”).
4. Goya: Painting of witches, often known as El aquelarre (The witches’ sabbat), in the Museo de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.
5. Goya, Painting of witches, often known as El hechizo (The bewitching), in the Museo de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.
6. Goya: Capricho No. 45, with the caption: “Mucho hay que chupar” (“There’s plenty to nibble at”).
7. Goya: Saturn devouring one of his sons, in the Prado, Madrid.
8. Rubens: Saturn devouring one of his sons, in the Prado, Madrid. Reproduced from the Mansell Collection, London.
Following a proposal originally advanced by Mr David Astor, a research centre was set up in the University of Sussex in 1966 to investigate how persecutions and exterminations come about; how the impulse to persecute or exterminate is generated, how it spreads, and under what conditions it is likely to express itself in action. The Centre was originally called the Centre for Research in Collective Psychopathology, but later adopted the more neutral name of the Columbus Centre, after the Trust which finances it.
The Centre’s work has now resulted in a series of books and monographs on subjects ranging from the roots of European nationalism and racism to the fate of the Gypsies as a minority, from the causes of the persecution of “witches” to the causes of the exterminations carried out under the Third Reich, and from the biological to the psychological roots of the very urge to persecute or to exterminate.
