Welcome to new Broad History members Gina, Mark, Susan, Priscilla, Heidi, and Christine! It's extra special to see new members come in, and others maintain their membership, in this quiet time between series. I couldn't do it without these absolute heroes. You can join them right now and help me make the show at broadhistory.com/membership. And this week, it comes with a lot of perks! Read on...
The incel manifesto that fuelled the witch hunts
I have two new fantastic interviews ready that I want to share with you. The first is out today to Broad History members and it's actually a request from one of them (brilliant idea, Jackie!) – I talked to medieval historian and beloved podcaster Eleanor Janega, who was a real hoot. You may think we're besties as you listen, but it was actually our first chat. You gotta love Americans for that. We went deep on the Malleus Maleficarum, the bonkers demonology treatise written by a seriously misogynistic German monk in 1486, which laid out a lot of the "intellectual theory" (I'm using massive air quotes here) behind the witch hunts. The book wasn't particularly popular when it came out, and his contemporaries thought Kramer was a bit deranged and quite problematic. Janega calls him a "stupid man's idea of a smart man." Today, he'd have a podcast.
After a clever marketing/misinformation campaign gave the book the false imprimatur of the pope and 70 years passed so everyone would forget the context, the book was rediscovered and became a popular handbook for murdering women. The Malleus was a compendium of pre-existing folk beliefs about witchcraft, which Kramer dialled up to 11 and attempted to scientifically prove with fancy Latin and Aristotelian logic. Truly, Kramer was "psychosexually obsessed" with women and, no two ways about it, the Malleus was an anti-woman manifesto. It did damage. Though we can't say every witch hunter, let alone every peasant accusing a neighbour, would have read it, it did help spread these ideas among educated elites and give them a veneer of respectability.
Eleanor and I also talked about the difference between witchcraft and heresy, "the worst century to be alive in" (the 1300s, see last week's newsletter) and how the massive crisis of Christianity of the 14th and 15th century fuelled the witch panics, which she described as "a spiritual arms race between Catholics and Protestants." We discussed "the worst group of people on Earth" (she means Puritans, I think they get a bad rap, sorta) and whether witches could actually glamour your penis off and keep it in a nest and feed it rolled oats. I told you it's a hoot.
🎧 The episode is available right now to members, whom you can join by signing up here.
Isabelle Roughol
Next, I'll be releasing my conversation with witch hunt history royalty, Marion Gibson, with whom we traveled to the English Civil War in the 1640s – the height of the witch panics here, when sinister witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins roamed the countryside.
And remember my conversation with Malcolm Gaskill is already available to members as well. I put a sneak peek in the public feed so you can gage your interest. No pressure.
Isabelle Roughol
I'm trying to schedule a couple more interviews, but I promise, I'm also entering the scripting and recording phase for the narrative episodes. It's happening...
“The most dangerous person was the single woman”
We're going to get into the ideas here on the show, but if you want some advanced reading, read this piece by my friend Amy Freeborn. We sat together in this class where we learned just how threatening we would have seemed to early modern folks. (I'm told I still scare them away...)
Amy Freeborn
Witches getting cold and ignoring aerodynamics
You may have noticed, I've introduced a brand new look, colourway and cover image to Broad History for all witchy content. The stories are going to be dark, but I did not want the homepage I look at every day to be all murder and misogyny. Our rather more lighthearted new mascots were drawn by Otto Goetze in 1924.
Grant me this one ok, there are no unproblematic public domain images of witches. Flying naked on a cashmere goat with your gals sounded like a fun night out. Would you want them on a t-shirt or tote bag?
xoxo, Satan
The next time you accuse someone of being a kiss-ass, just so you know, you're essentially accusing them of witchcraft.
Ass-kissing was thought to be an essential ritual of the witches' sabbath and they weren't puckering up for just any derrière – it was Satan's himself.
Of course, it makes for absurd Puritan erotica.
1. Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 1608. 2. Witches' sabbath, Chronicles of Johann Jakob Wick, Germany, 16th century. 3 and 4. Johannes Tinctoris, Traité du Crisme de Vauderye, 1460. 6. Johannes Praetorius, Blockes-Berges Verrichtung, 1668.
Sir, what are you doing with that goat?
Wannabe witches marked their submission and devotion to Satan by approaching his backside crawling, bowing or walking backwards and kissing his buttocks or anus. Sometimes demons or a demonic animal (a goat, toad or cat typically) stood in for him. It was an initiation ritual that, like a pact signed in blood, formalised the witch's departure from good Christian society and their fall into heresy.
What's going on here? Like in the rest of witchcraft symbolism, you have an inversion of all that is good and desirable to the early modern mind. Osculum infame, the kiss of shame, makes a mockery of the Christian kiss of peace. It's the polar opposite of a dignified and loving greeting, an act of humiliation and debasement that separates a man or woman from their goodness and godliness and leaves behind only the witch, Satan's plaything.
Plus, it never hurts to include a little sexual titillation for repressed Puritans with suggestions of bestiality and analingus, prudently veiled in moral outrage. Though early modern society recognises sexual pleasure as a normal part of married life and even necessary – on both sides! – in order to procreate, any sexual act that is not strictly reproductive is considered sodomy and quite verboten. If you make it a witch's sin though, and shake your head reprovingly, you can still talk about it – and make suggestive woodcuts. (For more on early modern sexuality, listen back to episode 7 with Kate Lister.)
We no longer think about witches when we talk of ass-kissing or, more politely, boot-licking, but we mean the same thing: to debase yourself entirely and part with your dignity, in order to curry favour from an unworthy master.
