Book Review by Rita Rippetoe
Title: Witchcraft and the Papacy: an Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition
Author(s): Rainer Decker, H.C.Erik Midelfort, trans.
Publisher: University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8139-2747-3
$45.00, hb, 262 pages, includes index, illustrations, bibliography.
Originally published as Die Päpste und die Hexan: aud den geheiman Aken der Inquisition, Primus Verlag, Darmstadt, Germany, 2003
Everything you know about the Inquisition is wrong!
Well, not quite everything. However Rainer Decker’s forays into the recently opened Archive of the Holy Office have revealed much that contradicts the “black legend” of Protestant propaganda that painted the Inquisition solely as an instrument of terror and injustice.
Decker traces the published statements from successive popes on the subject of witchcraft and other magical crime and related heresies. In doing so he explains that rules of evidence and procedure were put in place for church conducted trials. These rules, combined with an apparent resolve to reform and correct the those convicted rather than to execute them, account for the lower rates of execution in Papal territories as compared to France, Germany and other areas outside the direct control of Rome.
In explaining the difference between the practical minded Romans and magistrates in other parts of Europe where witches were feared as part of a gigantic conspiracy against society as a whole, Decker states:“. . . we should not ignore the fact that the popes and inquisitors of the seventeenth century did not conduct any real witchcraft trials—at least, as they were understood in central Europe. . . .Rather they punished all sorts of magic that had actually been practiced and pronounced death sentences only in specific cases, especially when magic had been used in an attempted murder.” P 144
A key factor in the restricted scope of witch trials in Rome was the skepticism of Church leaders regarding the reality of the sabbat. The Canon Episcopi states that the belief that one is able to travel through the sky in company with demons is a superstitious delusion. It would follow that testimony about the sabbat could not be used as a cause to arrest those that the accused had supposedly seen there. If the devil can make you believe that you are on a remote mountain worshiping him he can also make you believe that you see your innocent neighbor there. Since such accusations did not lead to further arrests the cascade effect of one accused naming others under torture, who would in turn name more, was stopped before it started.
Little in this book would apply in any way to the history of Wicca, since English trials were never under control of the pope. However Wiccans may find the details of Continental magic practice interesting. Serious students of the history of witchcraft will find this a good guide to the changing attitudes about witchcraft, although the chronology of various pronouncements is sometimes hard to follow. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of beliefs about witchcraft and the effects of such beliefs on society.