Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old November 22nd, 2014 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
Karl Radl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
Posts: 3,130
Default The Attitude to the Jews displayed in Reginald Scot's 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft'

The Attitude to the Jews displayed in Reginald Scot's 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft'


The sixteenth century English author Reginald Scot's major work 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft' is a good example of becoming famous after the fact because your work was attacked by someone who is historically quite important: in Scot's case this was James I of England. (1)

Another example of this type of after the fact infamy is the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen who spawned the Jansenist movement in theology after he died, which triggered a decades long intellectual war between his supporters and the Jesuit order.

Scot however is well-known to students of the history and theory of witchcraft largely because of the attacks of James I on him, but also because he was one of the earliest Christian authors to throw intellectual doubt on existence of witchcraft and to attack witch beliefs from what can be called a rationalistic perspective. (2)

In this article I want to focus on what Scot's beliefs (and their origin) in relation to the jews as an addition and extension to my general thesis that witch beliefs in medieval and early-modern Europe served as an alternative enemy or target for philo-Semitic intellectuals to divert anti-jewish ideological currents onto.

I have already argued this elsewhere in relation to the Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger's infamous 'Malleus Maleficarum' ('The Hammer of Witches') (3) and also pointed out that the most learned modern proponent of witch beliefs, Montague Summers, can also be viewed in the same light (especially given the time in which he was writing where anti-jewish sentiment was common among intellectuals and the wider populace). (4)

Bringing Scot into the mix adds an additional dimension to that thesis by explaining the reaction of this same intellectual class to witch beliefs when the latter began fusing with anti-jewish ideas: creating an anti-witch element to attacks on the jews and the conflation of witch covens with the practitioners of Judaism (hence the idea of the Witches Sabbath). (5)

This fusion of ideas had become rather marked by the time Scot published 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft' in 1584 and it is perhaps hardly surprising that Scot's intellectual position is that such witch beliefs were archaic and inherently superstitious (which has some truth to it).

In order to maintain clarity: I should point out that the core of Scot's attack on witch beliefs was based in the idea of the utter omnipotency of God as derived from Calvin's system of theology. (6)

Indeed Scot argues in the first chapter of the first book of the 'Discoverie' that 'witchmongers' (as he liked to call them) had not really though their arguments through. The reason being that because God is all powerful then witches and sorcerers cannot, in fact, exist, because to posit they do is to put limitations on the power of God (or equate God with the devil) and thus ipso facto commit heresy. (7)

All this is part of Scot's stress on the absolute power of God, (8) which in turn causes Scot to assert (often without any sort of actual evidence mind you) that many self-styled witches and sorcerers are conscious frauds (9) and that any sincere ones are of unsound mind. (10) He follows on by claiming that those who are unsound of mind have been reporting occurrences that were really dreams (11) and moreover these dreams were sent by Satan himself. (12)

Indeed perhaps the most original (and dare I say outright hilarious) assertion he makes is that those who claim to have seen or have suffered from bodily transformation before or after death (i.e. lycanthropy or vampirism to use the two best known examples) are merely suffering from an unspecified and unknown disease. (13)

All this is fairly standard, if somewhat early and unpolished, rationalistic fare, but what is interesting about it is the rather absurd lengths that Scot goes to attack witch beliefs.

A good example of this is his assertion about bodily transformation before or after death: he could just condemn it as the product of unsound minds, which would be enough to support his case. Instead he claims it is a disease that nobody has never properly identified or knows about, which is stretching his argument to beyond breaking point as if it isn't an identified and known disease then how does Scot know it is caused by said disease?

That he is throwing into the 'Discoverie' every argument he can think of, including those which endanger the credibility of his whole case is thus evident. This suggests that this is an emotional, not an intellectual, endeavour for Scot and it follows that due to this he will use anything and everything he can to back up his case.

Other examples of this type of intellectual behaviour are when the makes the argument that if we are to consider those who make magic ointments as witches/sorcerers then it follows that Jesus (14) and Moses (15) who both made and used such ointments were in fact witches/sorcerers. As well as making the assertion that because numerous Christian authorities doubted the literal raising up of Samuel for Saul by the Witch of Endor then it didn't actually happen as anything but a dream. (16)

Combine this with Scot's rather odd assertion that he doesn't believe anyone could ever provide evidence of people actually committing incest (17) and it is clear that Scot's argument is primarily one from emotion and not as clear and intellectually level-headed as it is oft-portrayed. (18)

Returning to Scot's central proposition, that God is all-powerful, it not difficult to see that the 'Discoverie's' argument is rather problematic: not least because if witch beliefs are primarily caused by dreams and these dreams have been sent by Satan. Then it per force means that Scot has already reduced God's power in the material and spiritual world by admitting to the existence of an anti-force that has successfully tempted God's creations into his bosom and thus shows itself to some extent as an equal and opposite power.

Scot doesn't recognize this however and demonstrates this by identifying (in terms that convincingly suggest he was a good Calvinist) the Pope as the anti-Christ (19) as well as arguing that the devil doesn't need any followers on earth because he can perform all the evil he wants without them. (20)

How on earth the devil not needing any followers on earth, because he can perform all the evil he wants without them squares with an all-powerful God and the devil's own use of dreams to mislead people into believing they are witches or sorcerers is beyond me. Since these ideas are quite clearly contradictory, but yet Scot didn't seem to think so and in doing so he was merely trying to apply Calvin's ideas about the absolutism of God to the world that he found about himself (and in so doing got himself in an intellectual tangle).

It is well to also point out the obvious corollary to Scot's claim about the devil not needing any followers on earth, because he was already a power on earth: if the devil doesn't need any then why does the all-powerful God of Scot need any himself?

An interesting theological conundrum: isn't it?

In applying this Calvinistic absolutism Scot frequently cites the relationship between Yahweh and the Israelites in the Old Testament. In so far as he correctly points out that Yahweh frequently punishes the Israelites by performing acts that were frequently ascribed to the activities of witches and sorcerers in medieval and early modern Europe

Among the acts that Scot cites are the use of hail stones, wind, floods and drought to maim/kill the Israelites and cause them suffering by destroying and/or polluting their sources of food and water. (21)

He also cites Yahweh turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for disobeying him (22) and states that the treatment meted out by Yahweh to Job strongly resembles the conduct ascribed to witches and sorcerers in the world in which he lived. (23)

Scot is holding here to the position that these acts are not those of the devil or his agents (witches and sorcerers), but rather they are brutal pedagogic acts instituted by God himself for the failings of humanity (as he had previously inflicted on the Israelites).

Thus he argues that witch confessions themselves (instituted as the beliefs are by the devil) are the products of a lack of faith in God (24) and that God as part of his brutal pedagogy reduces those who doubt him down to the status of the 'beasts of the field' to teach them a lesson. (25)

As such Scot's view of the Christian faithful is hardly complimentary (he even accuses many Christian temporal leaders of being more faithful to Satan than to God), (26) but his direct comments on jews are largely complementary.

He refers in gushing prose (for the time) to the famous Torah commentator Rabbi David Kimhi, (27) as well as several other rabbis, (28) and he even shows some knowledge of (and compliments) Kabbala (even if he considers it pointless and baseless mysticism [citing Cornelius Agrippa's comments on it] because God is all-powerful). (29)

From this we see that Scot's attitude to the jews was remarkably different to his attitude to his fellow Christians (who he accuses of numerous failings generally) and especially those who held and/or propagated witch beliefs. This contradiction is odd, but not unheard of since Calvinism stressed the importance of the Biblical text and lionizes the ancient Israelites to the point of near deification.

As such then it appears that Scot viewed the jews, who he approvingly cited, as the living descendants of the ancient Israelites and as such a living connection to the Old Testament that he based his theological beliefs on. Compared with his romantic vision of these living relics of the prophetic era (and remember there were no jews in England officially at this point): the behaviours and ideas of his contemporary Christian fellows must have seemed shallow and ungodly.

Therefore it would not be a surprise if Scot's attachment and love for the jews was primarily an intellectual romance with him harking back to the days of yore in search of a more godly and just society. It is an old dream and one that has often been exploited for (and been the cause of) evil ends and such an end is certainly to be seen in Scot's case.

Scot's lionization of the Old Testament lead him to almost worship the jewish people and in turn attack anything that doesn't fit into an Old Testament vision of the world of an absolute and vengeful God hell bent on schooling his creations come hell or high-water: such a target was witch beliefs.

Essentially Scot was what we call today: a Judeo-Christian. A man who had become Christian in name only, because of his romantic and fundamentally deluded notions conflating contemporary jews with the ancient Israelites (as if the world was still the same one Abraham, Jonah and David knew).


References


(1) On James I's attitude towards the jews in his written work please see the following article: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...-and-jews.html
(2) Cf. Brian Levack, 1995, 'The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe', 2nd Edition, Longman: London, p. 61
(3) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...-and-jews.html
(4) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...e-summers.html
(5) For a broad, and still highly regarded, discussion of this trend see Alexander Trachtenberg, 1943, 'The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jews and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven (New Ed.: 2002). For confirmation see Christopher Ocker, 2004, 'Contempt for Friars and Contempt for Jews in Late Medieval Germany', p. 124, n. 18 in Steven MacMichael, Susan Myers, 2004, 'The Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance', 1st Edition, Brill: Leiden
(6) The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 5:8 (Montague Summers' translation)
(7) Ibid, 1:1
(8) Ibid, 5:5; 15:29
(9) Ibid, 15:31
(10) Ibid, 1:6
(11) Ibid, 9:6; 10:10
(12) Ibid, 5:7
(13) Ibid, 5:6
(14) Ibid, 5:7
(15) Ibid, 12:11
(16) Ibid, 7:9; 7:11-16
(17) Ibid, 3:2
(18) Cf. Norman Cohn, 1993, 'Europes Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom', 2nd Edition, Pimlico: London, pp. 105-109
(19) The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 7:2
(20) Ibid, 1:6
(21) Ibid, 1:2; 3:13
(22) Ibid, 5:2
(23) Ibid, 3:13; 5:8
(24) Ibid, 3:12; 10:10; 12:4
(25) Ibid, 5:1
(26) Ibid, 3:14
(27) Ibid, 7:9
(28) Ibid, 5:8; 11:10; 13:1
(29) Ibid, 11:11; 12:2

-----------------------------------

This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...played-in.html
__________________
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 08:04 PM.
Page generated in 0.28986 seconds.