POPULAR CULTURE

1
POPULAR CULTURE

• During the preindustrial period, popular culture
  was a large and fluctuating collection of
  beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, and outlooks
  regarding the visible and invisible worlds
• Expressed in such basically preliterate forms as
  myths, folktales, folk songs, folk dances,
  festivals, processions, games, religious
  activities, and sometimes even violence
• It was the lens through which ordinary people
  viewed the world around them, the way they made
  sense of it and tried to influence it to their
  advantage
• Predominantly oral, passed from generation to
  generation and from person to person by word of
  mouth

2
MEANING

• Popular culture is not as simple or narrow as it
  first appears to be
• Almost always is deeper, more complex, and
  fundamentally more important than it seems at
  first
• Social historians must know how to examine it to
  make the most of it and really understand it
• And thereby gain important insights into the way
  ordinary people in the past viewed their world,
  their political and social environment, their
  superiors, their place in the social hierarchy,
  and their future role in society

3
RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION

• Religion and superstition played very powerful
  roles in the lives of ordinary people and heavily
  influenced the way they viewed the world and the
  way they responded to it
• Religion touched every aspect of a persons
  everyday life, as did superstition
• Both religion and superstition were, in essence,
  reflections of the same powerful tendency of
  preindustrial people to rely on the supernatural
  to explain the world around them

4
WITCH HYSTERIA

• Belief in witches dates back to the dawn of time
• People had always believed that certain
  individuals had the magical power to injure
  others
• Stories about old women who traveled by night on
  broomstick to attend sabbats had circulated for
  centuries
• But during the 16th century the popular concept
  of a witch underwent an important change
• One that set the stage for the massive executions
  of accused witches during the next century or
  more

5
REDEFINITION

• Protestant Reformation led to a redefinition of
  the Devils power by some theologians
• Argued he was much more powerful and active in
  everyday affairs than people had formerly
  believed
• From this redefinition the idea developed that
  witches had made pacts with the Devil in exchange
  for their magical powers
• Since a pact with the Devil meant renouncing God.
  Witchcraft was branded as heresy and all
  denominations persecuted it
• Witches were transformed from merely evil
  creatures to agents of the Devil

6
ORIGINS

• Redefinition combined with unsettled conditions
  in many parts of Europe during 16th and 17th
  centuries to lead to the outbreak of the
  so-called Witchcraft Hysteria
• Especially in regions where tensions between
  Protestants and Catholics remained strong or
  which had recently converted to Protestantism
• England, Scotland, Switzerland, southwestern
  Germany, parts of France, the Netherlands, and
  the English colony of Massachusetts

7
MASS HYSTERIA

• 3229 accused witches executed in southwestern
  Germany between 1561-1670
• 5400 accused witches executed in Switzerland
  between 1570-1700
• Over 1000 accused witches executed in England
  between 1559-1736
• Fear of witches ran out of control in Europe
  during this period
• True example of mass hysteria

8
ACCUSERS

• All sorts of people accused others of being
  witches
• Teenagers were involved
• Reflected the tensions of puberty or other
  adolescent insecurities
• But so did older, more sober, people
• Including magistrates, judges, and learned
  theologians
• Who all assumed that objective standards existed
  that could determine who was and who was not a
  witch

9
THE ACCUSED

• Range of people accused of witchcraft was narrow
• Overwhelming majority were women
• Mostly spinsters and widows over 50 years old
• Many also had little or no property
• Vast majority of accused witches were elderly,
  single women

10
BIZARRE BEHAVIOR

• Bizarre behavior, real or imagined, could provoke
  an accusation of witchcraft
• Suspected witches were accused of attending
  obscene satanic ceremonies where they consorted
  with Satan

11
TORTURE

• Many accused witches confessed to consorting with
  the Devil
• Some of these confessions obtained by torture
• Torture justified on the grounds that it
  determined whether the Devil was protecting his
  clients
• Resistance to torture meant the Devil was
  protecting you
• If you visibly suffered under torture, it meant
  you might be innocent

12
VOLUNTARY CONFESSIONS

• Accused witches also confessed voluntarily,
  without the incentive of torture
• Even though historians have not been able to
  uncover any evidence that satanic ceremonies and
  rituals actually occurred at all during this
  period
• There are vague indications that a few groups of
  people did try to practice magic in order to deal
  with health problems
• These rare examples might have provided a slim
  foundation for the fears and confessions about
  Satanism

13
REASONS

• Some confessors might have been crazy or senile
• Some may have been motivated by a twisted desire
  for attention and fleeting bit of local notoriety
• Most commonly, it was the power of community
  opinion and traditional deference to those in
  authority that prompted voluntary confessions

14
COMMUNITY OPINION AND DEFERENCE

• Preindustrial rural people were ruled by the
  values, regulations, and customs of their local
  community
• This control was so powerful that some accused
  witches believed that if the community condemned
  you, it must be right
• Common people also had been taught to obey those
  in authority without question
• And if those people you were expected to
  instinctively obey condemned you as a witch, they
  must be right

15
PERSONAL MISFORTUNES

• A more common form of accusation involved the
  belief that a persons individual misfortunes
  were cause by someone elses practice of
  witchcraft
• Many people believed that their world was haunted
  by evil spirits, who worked their spells through
  the agency of particular individuals who had sold
  their souls to the Devil
• Accusations were not made lightly
• Suspicion and fear gradually built up for a
  period of time before an outright accusation
  emerged
• Witchcraft trials were therefore only the tip of
  a larger iceberg of bigger and more longstanding
  fears

16
MOTIVATIONS

• Some have argued that the Witchcraft Hysteria
  demonstrated a new level of irrationality
• One that caused people to believe what their eyes
  could not see and to attribute ordinary
  misfortunes to an unseen evil power and its human
  agents
• But this view does not advance our understanding
  much
• More important in explaining this phenomenon was
  the fact that a new level of tension had
  developed with European society
• One which affected accusers and accused alike
• And which caused both to deeply believe in the
  satanic threat

17
CAUSES OF TENSION

• New religious uncertainties caused by corruption
  within the Roman Catholic Church and the
  Protestant Reformation
• In places where the Church seemed corrupt, people
  wonder if Satan and his minions were not gaining
  ground
• Catholics feared that Protestant attacks on
  traditional rituals and ceremonies would unleash
  evil spirits
• Newly converted Protestants also feared that loss
  of Catholic traditions would let the evil spirits
  they had formerly contained free

18
CHANGE IN MEDICAL PRACTICES

• Many doctors realized that traditional
  explanations for illness and many traditional
  remedies were now disputed by new medical
  findings from the Middle East and Asia
• Robbed them of their confidence in traditional
  methods
• At a loss in terms of what to believe, they began
  to blame illness on the Devil
• Also attacked traditional non-medical healers and
  accused them of witchcraft and being in league
  with the Devil

19
THE POOR

• New anxieties about the poor and new problems of
  poverty also contributed to hysteria
• Poor people became more numerous for various
  reasons
• And as their numbers grew, they became a growing
  threat to social stability in the eyes of
  property owners
• As this fear grew, property owners often
  symbolically transformed individual poor people
  into the Devils agents
• The poor often unintentionally aided in this
  because many attempted to earn extra money by
  selling magic charms and remedies

20
OLD WOMEN IN TROUBLE

• Older women who lacked property faced growing
  economic distress
• Many were abandoned by younger family members and
  forced to live a threadbare existence
• Some tried to earn money and a perverse kind of
  respect by pretending to be witches by brewing
  magic potions and uttering evil curses
• Thereby arousing wider fears because of the new
  anxieties about the poor
• Reflected in transformation of the image of the
  witch from young beautiful woman to haggard old
  crone

21
FAMILY VALUES

• Families were growing closer during this period
• Womens roles were increasingly defined by their
  functions as wives and mothers
• As a result, women without families became
  increasingly isolated and often frightening
• Witchcraft trials expressed new belief in a
  womans proper place by sending a strong signal
  that their safest path was the family path and by
  showing older women that a passive, uncomplaining
  attitude was the safest course
• Witchcraft Hysteria therefore enforced new values
  and was a response to new uncertainties about the
  validity of popular beliefs and traditions

22
SUMMARY

• The Witchcraft Hysteria was a reaction of popular
  culture to the rise of new threats to tradition
  and the appearance of new values
• But it ultimately did pass
• There had always been some who didnt believe in
  witches and their number increased with time
• By the middle of the 17th century, judges became
  increasingly unwilling to accept evidence of
  witchcraft
• Popular belief in the phenomena finally declined
  as well
• But during the 16th and 17th centuries,
  witchcraft fears reflected a vital and difficult
  transition period in Europe in which old beliefs
  and practices were uprooted but fully accepted
  new ones had yet to emerge