Paganism
During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, it was commonplace among historians that the common people of medieval England had remained substantially pagan in their religious beliefs. Christianity, according to this view, was essentially the faith of the elite, with the populace embracing what was at best a dual allegiance to the new and old religions.
This view has now disappeared, and the time seems right to take stock of medieval popular religion in England with a view to solving three problems: why did the concept of a pagan medieval populace develop, flourish for so long and then decline; what is the actual evidence for medieval popular belief; and what new perspectives can be taken on medieval English Christianity by employing comparisons with paganism?
Prior to the 13 or 14th Century, then, witchcraft had come to mean a collection of beliefs and practices including healing through spells, ointments and concoctions, dabbling in the supernatural, and forecasting the future through divining and clairvoyance. In England, the provision of curative magic was the job of a “witch doctor” (a term used in England long before it came to be associated with Africa), also known as a “cunning man”, “white witch” or “wiseman”. “Toad doctors” were also credited with the ability to undo evil witchcraft. Although they did not refer to themselves as witches, these cunning-folk were generally considered valuable members of the community (however, some were also hired to curse enemies).
By the 13th Century, some groups holding to other beliefs and rituals (notably Christianity, the dominant religion in medieval Europe) began to brand witchcraft as "demon-worship". In 1208, Pope Innocent III opened an attack on a group of heretics known as the Cathars, who believed in a world in which God and Satan, both having supernatural powers, were at war. The Church attempted to discredit the Cathar beliefs by spreading stories that the heretics actually worshipped their evil deity in person, and by embroidering on their devil-worshipping rituals. Many Cathars, Albigensians and Waldensians migrated into Germany and the Savoy, fleeing the papal inquisition against their alleged heresies.
Also in the 13th Century, the leading Christian theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (much of whose work became adopted as the orthodoxy of the Church), argued that the world was full of evil and dangerous demons that try to lead people into temptation, and thus began the long Christian association between sex and witchcraft.
Demonym
Pagan, Heathen
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