As its title indicates, the book deals not with the great witch-hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but with its medieval antecedents. More specifically, it aims to show that witchcraft was a cult, indeed a sect, which developed out of medieval heresy: “The development of medieval witchcraft is closely bound to that of heresy, the struggle for the expression of religious feeling beyond the limits tolerated by the Church.”(41)
Like heresy, medieval witchcraft can be understood only if it is studied in the context in which it flourished — the context of a profoundly Christian civilization. It was a protest against the dominant religion, and this meant that it was also a form of social rebellion:. “The witch was a rebel against Church and society at a time when the two were wholly identified.”(42) That is why towards the close of the Middle Ages, in a time of economic, political and social crisis, witchcraft increased along with other forms of revolt.(43)Russell does not, of course, claim that every form of religious dissent, or heresy, contributed to the development of witchcraft; but he does claim that one particular tendency, perhaps even one particular tradition, contributed mightily. The groups which he regards as representative of that tendency or tradition are in the main the groups described in the second and third chapters of the present volume. But whereas in the present volume the stories which were told about those groups are treated as examples of demonization, Russell believes them to have been more truthful than not. In his view the canons of Orléans who were burned in 1022, the victims of Conrad of Marburg in Germany in 1231-3 and various German and Italian groups in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did in all probability worship the Devil and hold indiscriminate erotic orgies, even on occasion kill and eat babies.(44)
Indeed, he regards these groups as being already, in all essentials, organizations of witches. Writing of the period 1000–1150 he comments: “Through its connection with heresy, witchcraft in this period witnessed the addition of new elements and the further development and definition of older ones: the sex orgy, the feast, the secret meetings at night in caves, cannibalism, the murder of children, the express renunciation of God and adoration of demons, the desecration of the cross and the sacraments. All these had now become fixed elements in the composition of witchraft.”(45) And when we come to the thirteenth century the section on Conrad of Marburg’s victims is headed simply “heretic witches”. By the time of the great witch-hunt new features have appeared, but most of these too are treated as reflecting real practices. Of course witches did not fly through the air, but witches’ sabbats took place, and in very much the form traditionally ascribed to them. Instead of being held in a cave or cellar they were held in the open air; the participants were mostly women; and the proceedings were dominated throughout by a being who was understood to be the Devil. Still addicted to their old practices, blasphemous, promiscuous and cannibalistic, the witches nevertheless devoted much of their attention to their master. They kissed his behind and, being mostly women, copulated with him. Russell considers that “the stirrings of feminine discontent” may have contributed to “the orgiastic elements in the witches’ revels”; but he also notes that copulation with the Devil was not pleasurable. He advances a number of hypotheses in explanation of this paradox; one being that “we cannot suppose that… a woman submitting sexually to a being she believes to be the Devil can be wholly relaxed”.(46)The witches of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, were adherents of the most extreme of all heresies, members of the most nihilistic of all sects. But this heresy and this sect were the products of a Christian society which insisted on religious conformity, and they drew new strength from every drive to enforce that conformity. The Inquisition was largely responsible for the spread of witchcraft, but only because of all institutions it was the one most directly concerned with repressing dissent. In the last analysis medieval Christian civilization as a whole was responsible.