Call Your Local Wizard
2nd June 2024
Every now and them, Voice of the Crust SLATE puts out something interesting.
Perhaps you hold the currently popular notion that medieval witch hunts targeted wise old women who made herbal remedies for their ungrateful peasant neighbors? Incorrect, according to Stanmore and most historians of the period. In the first place, witch hunts were rare during the Middle Ages. They proliferated in the early modern period, and while Stanmore does not explore theories about what caused this in Cunning Folk, historians increasingly view Europe’s witch hunts as a symptom of social upheaval and competing faiths following the Reformation. Witch hunts occurred within all Christian denominations and served as a kind of advertisement for a particular church’s ability to secure both salvation and protection from evil for its members. They were dramatic demonstrations of purity in a highly competitive ideological marketplace.[emphasis added]
Which tells you everything you need to know about the Trump trials.