I noticed a few repeating themes in this week's readings. One in particular was the subject of "night rides" in which witches perceive themselves to go traveling across vast distances, accompanied by other witches and a pagan god, usually Diana. Regino of Prum, Burchard of Worms and even Aquinas reference these night rides in almost exactly the same terms. Regino and Burchard seem to refute the possibility, saying they're illusions cast on witches by demons, but Aquinas doesn't comment on whether or not such things actually happen. These texts are only a few centuries apart, with Regino writing first. I have to wonder whether these beliefs in night rides were so widespread, and Christian theological beliefs so consistently aligned against them, that all three writers would have addressed them separately in similar terms, or if they had in fact read each other's works and were committing some kind of theological plagiarism. That said, I doubt plagiarism actually mattered much to medieval theologians - what does a little copy and paste here and there matter so long as it's the word of God?
The other major theme I noticed was impotence. Medieval thinkers spent an awful lot of time dealing with the idea that the infliction of impotence was one of the foremost uses of magic. It's very easy to look at this and think that medieval people were just incapable of accepting that they were having their own set of problems and were trying to cast blame elsewhere, but the sheer amount of thought and argument put into "proving" that it was the work of witches and sorcerers and demons and whatever else suggests to me that there was a very strong belief in these powers. It wasn't that they were casting blame for impotence onto things they invented on the spot. Rather, belief in witches was already so strong that if someone was impotent, it MUST have been a witch's fault. I think this is something totally alien to most modern readers who haven't grown up with that kind of cultural paranoia. The closest thing I can compare it to in modern memory is the Red Scare in the '50s, but I don't think even that approaches the perceived pervasiveness of witchcraft in the medieval mindset.
As a side note, I thought it was funny how light most of Burchard of Worms' suggested punishments seemed to be - when he's specific, it's mostly just bread and water for a few weeks. That said, he's not specific very often. I'd be interested to know exactly when the "appointed days" for penance are, and what exactly that penance was supposed to entail.
I agree that the readings for this week focused on the idea of impotence and witches secret night activities. What I found most peculiar about the discussion of witch night travels was the repeated mentioning of the goddess Diana. Instead of blaming demons or the devil solely, Regino and Burchard mention Diana as the being who the witches follow or accompany. The only reason I can think as to why these writers mention Diana is because she is a pagan goddess, representing the moon, an element of the night. By mentioning Diana, it brings forth Roman/Greek mythos from days where multiple gods were worshipped. Once again, I feel like most of this witchcraft originates from monotheistic religions fear and hatred of paganistic religions. How could these people believe in more than one god? As for the fixation on impotence resulting from witchcraft, I saw this as a scapegoat people used for their inability to conceive. The infant mortality rate was high during this time so the ability to have children was important. Instead of blaming fertility issues (of which they probably didn’t think about), people automatically fixated on witchcraft because of the fever circulating towns.
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