Medieval Witchcraft

Witchcraft refers to the use of certain occult and spiritual
practices to seek the assistance of the supernatural powers

Persons accused of practicing the witchcraft were labeled as
heretics. Once caught, the victim was coerced into

in resolving the problems whose solutions can not be
achieved through the known rational means. The process

confessing his crime through inhuman tortures and was either
hanged or burnt alive during the inquisition. The law

involves reciting prayers and performing rituals in a
certain specific format or craft. Prayers and rituals when

against the witchcraft was further exploited by the vested
interests to score personal vendetta or to snatch the

performed with utmost sincerity and faith do quite often
fructify into the desired results. Since there is no

property or land of victims. Some influential persons in the
society, in collusion with the priests, would manage to

reasonable explanation for the manifestation of the result,
they are termed miracles or magic. Witchcraft is therefore

arouse suspicions against their targets as being witches or
wizards. They victims were arrested, made to confess and

considered synonymous with magic.

killed.

Witchcraft has existed since man was born and he had to
struggle for his survival against the unpredictable and

Witches were generally portrayed as ugly old hags so as to
make them the target of dislike and hatred, but the matter

unmanageable forces of nature such as famines, rains,
floods, epidemics or some other occurrences at personal

of fact is that they were and still are quite normal men and
women and in some case witches were and are quite pretty and

level which could not be easily explained. Witchcraft had
all the more reason to exist in the medieval times when

presentable ladies.

human knowledge was still at a rudimentary stage and there
appeared no other solution to day-to-day problems that

The witches used scrolls for witchcraft in those times. Some
of them survive even today. Besides the spells, the witches

confused and befuddled the people of those times.

also used some herbs and animal parts to make potions to
cure some diseases and heal the wounds. Potions were brewed

In their desperation to seek the desired results, some times
the practitioners of the witchcraft went out of the way of

in cauldrons in order to combine them properly. Cauldrons
were often made of wood, but other materials such as stones

prayers and resorted to certain extreme practices and
rituals such as the use of blood and so on or invoking evil

were also used. These potions, though denigrated as
superstitious, were quite efficacious in those times as they

spirits for help. Moreover witchcraft, like every other
branch of knowledge, was manipulated and misused by vested

are equally efficacious now.

interests. A few such cases here and there gained wide
spread notoriety and provided the ecclesiastic powers, which

A widely used tool of witchcraft was a broom. The use of
broom can be traced to the peasants, both men and women, who

commanded influence in formulating the secular policies of
the kings and rulers of those times, an excuse to brand the

used them to fertilize their crops. They would, then, ride
on the top of them as horses.

witches or wizards as agents of the evil or Satanic
powers. Now Satan is considered the greatest enemy of the

In some cases, the priests were genuinely concerned about

Church and therefore God. Consequently any person who was
suspected to be indulging in witchcraft was hounded out and

the souls of the ‘witches’ and burnt them alive for
their salvation. The case of Joan of Arc, who was later

persecuted with the punishment of death through hanging or
burning at stake.

canonized as Saint Joan is one of the most glittering
examples of such acts of papal fanaticism. She was branded