Sorcery: The Uncanny

Chapters 4 and 5 in Kors/Peters have certainly taken a sharp turn from the jovial, upbeat magic portrayed in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to graphic, brutal descriptions of terrifying sorcery. A headless, living green man seemed like child's play compared to stories of cannibalism and boiling dead infants for sustenance. I noted extreme specificity in these two chapters in the discussions and denunciations of magical rituals by religious authorities. Additionally, in these chapters, sorcery became completely aligned with heresy.

In these chapters, magic became even more so the enemy of Christianity: sorcerers were the heretical agents of Satan, and magic was their tool for evil - quite the departure from its benign household use as compiled in the Wolfsthurn handbook many reading assignments ago.

Early on in chapter 4, while reading Pope Alexander IV's "Sorcery and the Inquisitors,” I was pleasantly surprised when he advised “inquisitors of heretical depravity” not to investigate magical activities unless there was proof of heretical activity. I perhaps shouldn’t be surprised that he advised people to simply do their job, but with the occasional stereotypical thought of witch-hunting mobs clouding my judgment as I read, I appreciated the Pope’s progressive attitude. On the other hand, his letter effectually opens up sorcery to inquisition, and I am sure there were cases of inquisitors bending this decree for their own purposes. I, perhaps naively, would like to think that this letter was the Pope’s way of preventing these inquisitors from disturbing benign magicians.  

Hopefully Pope Alexander's letter prevented things like this.

Immediately following Pope Alexander's letter, though, are letters from William, Cardinal of Santa Sabina and Pope John XXII on Sorcery and the Inquisitors. These completely oppose Pope Alexander's viewpoints. The Cardinal, for instance, calls sorcerers "infectors of God's flock" (119) and Pope John states that "they ally themselves with death and make a pact with hell. By their means a post pestilential disease... grievously infects infests the flock of Christ throughout the world" (120). Granted, Pope John is speaking from a place of fear, as sorcerers have made an attempt on his life, which is completely understandable. As Pope, these letters had extreme influence and likely reaffirmed the Christian, God-fearing public's anxieties about the malevolent power and potential of magic. 

Perhaps the most memorable reading was Bernardino of Siena's sermon against women sorcerers. He must have been an extremely effective preacher through his fear-mongering, emotionally appealing language. He speaks directly to his audience in an accusatory tone, telling them YOU have committed this sin, YOU have caused this suffering, YOU will then suffer in eternal torment. What a way to terrify his congregation into denouncing any kind of magic for fear of their eternal destiny. Part of me, now, doesn't blame the paranoia that ensued in Salem in the late 1600s. 

Chapter 5 just built on the terrifying heresy established in the the previous chapter, with anecdotes of infanticide and cannibalism. My notes literally read "~evil witchy anecdotes~" and "~bad things~" because some of the stories were so disturbingly graphic.  My favorite one was The Errores Gazariorum because of its description of the process of a person's seduction to the dark side.

I had to do it.

It is specific, backwards, perverse, etc. It is the opposite of normalcy for a typical Christian. It is the inverse, the uncanny - and it makes it all the more terrifying. Again, the fears of average folk at this time was completely understandable. They were molded by their religious leaders and knew little else. How sad. :(