I have mentioned earlier (Tues.) the persecution launched across the decaying Roman Empire against those who did "magic" in the 5th Century. During the so-called Dark Ages, from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, perhaps because pagan kingdoms still survived in Western Europe, the official Western Church line was simply a straight out denial of the efficacy of pagan magic, pagan prayers or rituals. The Papacy ruled that it was a heresy to belief in the power of witches to do magic but there were in this period still occasional killings of "witches" in the Christianised countries. Others may well have died at the hands of invading Christian armies for simply refusing to become Christian. However in Egypt, where Christianity was more affected by that country's ancient culture, many Christians still carried out magical practices without being persecuted.(see p x below) Magical "recipe-books' from this part of the world later made their way into Europe.

Once all the rulers of Western Europe were officially "converted", all subjects of these kingdoms were presumed to have followed orders and become Christian. If evidence emerged that any were keeping up pagan practices including magic they could now be held to be relapsed Christians or heretics and thus to fall under Church authority. In the next few centuries, most of those thought to practice magic were to die condemned not as witches but as "heretics".

At varioius times between the 9th and 13th Century, Church documents stated that a "vast" number of European women were still involved in a pagan cult within the "Christianised" nations. These women were said to be engaging in magic and worshipping Diana, a pagan Goddess. One of these documents was entitled "Canon Episcopi" and dated from around 900AD. It seems that this practice may have lasted at least into the 14th Century for the Church incorporated this document into Church Law around 1140 and re-issued it in various forms until 1310. It stated:.

"'Bishops and their officials must labour with all their strength to uproot thoroughly from their parishes the pernicious art of sorcery and malefic invented by the Devil, and if they find a man or woman follower of this wickedness to eject them foully disgraced from the parishes. For the Apostle says, "A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition avoid." Those are held captive by the Devil who, leaving their creator, seek the aid of the Devil. And so Holy Church must be cleansed of this pest.

"It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess themselves, in the hours of the night, to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to traverse great spaces of earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on certain nights. But I wish it were they alone who perished in their faithlessness and did not draw many with them into the destruction of infidelity. For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true, and so believing, wander from the right faith and are involved in the error of the pagans when they think that there is anything of divinity or power except the one God." REF. Taken from Witches and Witchcraft, Rosemary Ellen Guiley.

The Bishop of Verona had complained in the 9th century that a third of the world were worshipping the Goddess Herodias. (W18) John of Salisbury wrote around 1150 of the honouring of her in France: "they assert that a certain woman who shines by night, or Herodias, ... summons gatherings and assemblies which attend various banquets. The figure receives all kinds of homage from her servants ..." W30. This may be the Goddess later known as Arcadia.

There were very ancient and pervasive European folk legends about Goddesses who travelled the sky at night blessing the earth, accompanied often by wild creatures and by the spirits of the departed (and sometimes by living women who flew with them). In Germany this was lead by the mother Goddess Holda. Her winter travels brought fruitfulness to the land and to the families she visited. Babies come from her. Food and drink were left out at night as a ritual gift to these visiting spirits. The legend of "Father Christmas" today has taken over much of this old myth. It is now a man who travels the skies accompanied by reindeer, rewarding good families, gaining entry into their homes by coming down chimneys - and for whom cakes and drink are left out.

The women who flew with these Goddesses were only reported as doing good works. But as the Middle Ages drew to an end, it was another old folk legend that came dominate. This seemed to have started around the Mediterranean in Classical times with the story a flying hideous bird or Harpy like creature that ate human flesh known as a strix. Perhaps there were overtones originally in this story of a Dark Goddess, like the Indian Kali, the mother goddess that ruled over death. Pliny the Elder and Ovid said the Strix that flew at night and lived on humans.. Ovid said they ate babies. He said one could protect one's house by magic - with a wand of whitethorn at the window and offering the strix the entrails of a young pig. Petronius said the strix could take away a man's virility by eating him from inside.

Classical literature also spoke of flying women. Ovid said the witch hag Dipsas knew the magic of herbs, could destroy the chastity of the young and conjure up the dead - and fly in the form of a bird. Apuleius in The Golden Ass 207 - had a witch Pamphile who could turn herself into a bird with a magical drink of laurel and dill. She was always after young men. According to Festus women who practised sorcery and flew were called "strigae". p 207

Positive images of flying women survived into 13th Century France. Guillaume d'Auvergne, bishop of Paris, who died in 1249, p214 , "heard of spirits who on certain nights take on the likeness of girls and women in shining robes and frequent woods and groves - and visit homes lead by Lady Abudia or Satia - if food and drink is left out for them - they enrich the house." In Sicily such stories were still believed according to Norman Cohn. He reported that they tell of "ladies of the night" who enter enter well ordered houses through the keyhole or cracks in the door. These are "guardian spirits" and not destroyers. P 216

Cohn concluded: 'from all this there emerges a coherent picture of a traditional folk-belief. Its origins seem to lie in a pre-Christian, pagan world-view. It is certainly very ancient; and, despite certain variations of detail, it has remained constant in its main features over a period of at least a thousand years and over a great part of Western Europe. It is concerned with beneficent, protective spirits, who are thought of above all as female, and who are sometimes associated with the souls of the dead." "And this age-old folk belief can be brought into relation with equally ancient beliefs about witches. In both cases, we find that women are believed - and sometimes even believe themselves - to travel at night in a supernatural manner, endowed with supernatural powers by supernatural patrons."

But it seemed that the stories of strix and strigae merged in some folklore accounts to produce the image of a woman who flew on both amorous and cannibalistic missions. The earliest Germanic legal code that we possess, the 6th Century Lex Salico, stated: "if a stria shall devour a man and it shall be proved against her " then she should be fined. The code also set a fine for a false accusation. But the 634AD Lombard Law, the last of the Germanic codes, stated: "let no one presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a striga, for it is not possible, nor ought it to be at all believed by Christian minds that a woman can eat a living man up from within.". Gradually this creature came to be seen as a night flying woman of evil character, an eater of children and bringer of misfortune. Soon she was to become under contract to the devil - and the archetypal witch found in "confessions" extracted with torture and condemned by Church and State.