in the 13th Century something happened to make the trials of suspected witches much more common and more likely to result in a death sentence. Up until then most punishments for witchcraft were for isolated cases of "maleficium" or the working of harmful magic. It was not so much magic that was being punished in most cases, but the doing of harm through magic. What happened from around the 14th Century was that a pact with Satan became the dominant reason for the condemnation of alleged witches.
Norman Cohen, in his book "Europe's Inner Demons", argued that this change occurred because of the rise in the practice of "High Magic" among the literate elite in the 1200s. Many were fascinated by the possibility of forcing a demon to serve a Christian by invoking the name of the Holy Trinity. This demon taming was said to be a task only to be undertaken by pious literate men who had full confidence in the power of God. In 1267 Roger Bacon complained of the numbers of Grimoires being written on the techniques of demon raising and high magic. Some of these books purported to derive from the teachings of the biblical Solomon. These books taught that one had to prepare for demon raising by periods of chastity, fasting and prayer. There were special magical tools that had to be prepared, fumigated and consecrated while psalms were recited. According to Cohen these often included a sword, staff, white handled and black handled knives. Early in the 14th Century Michael Scot, tutor to the young emperor Frederic II wrote for him a personal grimoire known as the "Liber Introductorius." This gave the names by which demons could be summoned and stated that, if a demon was to be tamed by being imprisoned in a ring or bottle, a sacrifice should first be made to it - even by offering it some human flesh taken from a corpse!
But although many clergy tried their hands at High Magic, it also had powerful opponents within the Catholic Church. One of the most influential was St. Thomas Aquinas. He taught that it was foolish for the magician to pretend to gain control over demons - rather it was the demon that was gaining power over the magician. Furthermore Aquinas charged that this practice involved a form of apostasy in that the practitioner was making a pact with the demon in order to secure its aid.
In 1220 Emperor Frederick II made burning alive the penalty for heresy. In 1231 the Papacy assigned the same penalty and set up the Inquisition. In 1233 Pope Gregory 9 had ordered punishment for "Luciferians" accused of worshipping Lucifer. In 1258 Pope Alexander said the Inquisition was to punish sorcery that involved consulting demons - that is, High Magic. He also authorised the torturing of suspects.
In 1307 the French Emperor Philip the Fair utilised this controversy against the powerful Order of Knights Templar. Early in the morning of the 13th October he had the unsuspecting Knights arrested throughout France. His motive seems to have been his desire for personal power and his wish to enrich himself from their wealth. He fancied himself as the grand chief of a new Order and the Emperor of the West. The previous year he had arrested Jews throughout his kingdom on 22 July 1306, seized their assets and expelled them from his kingdom. He proclaimed this as a great victory for the church - just as he was to do with the Knights Templar.
He had to justify his act against the Knights as they were under the protection of the Holy See in Rome - so he accused them of worshipping the devil in the form of a statue and of a black cat - and of engaging in ritualistic sexual orgies. When the Pope refused to endorse the imprisonment and torture of the Knights, Philip threatened the papacy, then based in France, with charges of complicity with heretical devil worship.
Thus it came about that a Pope was one of the first to be formally tried for practising ritual magic. A Roman family allied to Philip kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII to put him on trial. The Pope was rescued - but died shortly afterwards. Philip then pressed for him to be put on trial posthumously - and these proceedings began in 1310. 180 ch 10..
The charge against Boniface was that he had 3 demons, one of which he carried with him imprisoned in a ring through High Magic. A monk testified that "he saw how the lord Benedict went out into a garden adjoining the palace, drew a circle with a sword, placed himself in the middle of the circle, sat down and pulled out a rooster and also fire in an earthen jar. He saw the lord Benedict kill the cock and throw its blood on the fire" while reading from a book and conjuring up demons. p 184. It seemed to me that this high magic ritual bore interesting similarities to African Voodoo. I do not know if there was a cultural link.
"Philip the Fair" in 1308 also charged Guichard, Bishop of Troyes of using demonic witchcraft against Queen Joan by employing a Dominican Friar to summon a demon. The demon told him he could attack the Queen by making a wax doll, baptise it in the Queen's name, prick it with pins - and if needed, throw it in the fire. P188. Later 27 witnesses reported the bishop was the son of an incubus (a devil) who had slept with his mother. The bishop was also accused of keeping a demon trapped by High Magic in a glass flask and in the point of his cowl.
In 1317 Pope John XXII had the bishop of Cahors arrested for trying to kill him by poison and maleficium. The bishop was interrogated by the pope himself, tortured, scourged and burned at the stake with his ashes thrown into the Rhone. Other cases involved leading Italian and French families and clergy. P 176 - In 1320 the Pope was disturbed when he heard ritual magic was being practiced at his own court in Avignon. Thus in 1320 the Inquisition was empowered to charge practitioners of ritual magic as heretics.
In 1324 a leading Irish Anglo-Norman family were accused of high magic.P198 Lady Alice Kyteler, the banker William Outlaw, the cleric Robert of Bristol and other associates was put on trial in Kilkenny in 1324-5. The charges against them were of using sorcery to enrich themselves. The accusers were step children who had lost their fortunes to Kyteler. She was said to have organised a heretical sect that sacrified cocks to demons and to have slept with a demon called "Robin, Son of Art." The demons were said to have made her wealthy and given her the ability of making love potions. Much of the evidence against her was extracted from a maid servant who was then burnt. Lady Alice herself was rescued by relatives and taken to England. 203. Cohn commented that in calling him Robin, "Petonilla of Meath was no doubt uttering the name of the first local wood-spirit that occurred to her" 203
In South France in 1335 mass witchtrials commenced that were effectively continuing the earlier work of the Crusades against the Cathars in "purifying" the region - or subduing the religion of the people to the power of the Papacy. Na Prous Bonnet, a prophetess on trial in 1325 in Toulouse who claimed that the Holy Spirit inspired her words, declared the pope had forfeited his role as the head of the Church by corruptly killing and persecuting. But trials for High Magic were notably few compared to those against the Cathars and Waldensians. This did not mean that there were not many suspected high magicians. They simply were better connected. In 1374 the Inquisitor of France complained to Pope Gregory XI that many, including clerics, were invoking demons;but when he tried to proceed against them, his jurisdiction was contested.
Cohen believed that the campaign "against ritual magic helped to produce the fantastic stereotype of the witch." He noted how suspected witches were increasingly accused not simply of being workers of evil folk magic but of working in alliance with the devil. He gave examples of how in 1390-1 women of low social status had their "confessions" formulated in terms of ritual magic. In 1390 a Margot de la Barre admitted before torture that she could cure such illnesses as impotence by combining traditional herbal cures with high magic.p197 "They had operated by means of chaplets of herbs which the devil, at their request , had endowed with magical powers. Invoked 3 times in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the devil appeared. " Margot and her woman partner were consequently burnt to death. Another case he gave was of a woman called Macete. She was accused of employing Jehanne de Brigue to use magic to induce a man to marry her. Then, when he proved a poor husband, they worked with toads and wax figures to make him ill. Jehanne confessed under torture that this had been done through the help of a demon she invoked in the name of the Holy Trinity. She said she learnt this technique from her godmother.
He also noted how folk history and legend had shaped the image of the witch. The flying witch of old legend had by the 14th Century become the subject of serious juridical investigation. In the witch-hunts unleashed against the Waldensians, the suspects were accused of flying - but now by the power of the devil who allegedly had given them a flying ointment to grease the flying sticks which they flew to their "synagogues" or "sabbats" (words borrowed from another religion Church authorities had demonised, Judaism) on various mountain tops in the French and Italian Alps.
But Cohn's theory did not explain why charges against High Magic magicians were relatively few and why charges of calling on demons came to be levelled mostly against women who had never seen or used a grimoire. Cohen like many male historians missed many of the gender dimensions of this persecution.
Many women, and some men, suffered from demon worshipping accusations that had much more to do more to do with the elite's dabbling in high magic than with the practices of the common folk. It has been alleged by Ronald Hutton "that it is now obvious that the main force in driving the persecution was pressure from the common people who genuinely feared and hated witches" - but he did not explore why this fear was so strong and violent. In great part it had been whipped up and reinforced by the teachings of the Church especially its doctrinaire male chauvinism, fear of the devil and view of nature as corrupt. P379