>The tactic in our case is to discredit an enemy. How would you frame
>the medieval events in terms of tactical objectives?
At the local level accusing someone of witchcraft became a way to not only discredit but to make life difficult for someone for petty or more serious reasons. More fundamentally, Carlo Ginzburg argues that the very idea of the existence of a Witches Sabbath has roots in a tactically contrived conspiracy.
>Actually, it would seem that witchcraft trials enhanced the credit
>of witchcraft, when authorities attributed it with magic power.
But that's not what happened is it?
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2003-07-11-ginzburg-en.html
It sounds like something from a cheap historical novel: In the spring of 1321, in Easter Week, rumour is rife in the south of France that a conspiracy is on foot to kill all Christians and that wells have been poisoned all over the country. The rumour soon spreads throughout the whole of France and, in time, across its borders to what are now Switzerland and Spain. In some of the chronicles that have come down to us, the plot is said to be the work of lepers.
Elsewhere, the poisoning of wells was ascribed to Jews working together with the lepers. In some places blame was laid at the door of Muslim rulers in Granada or Tunis, or of the Sultan of Babylon, who were said to have paid Jews and lepers to kill Christians. The rumours resulted in persecutions and massacres all over France, and before long they were being substantiated by confessions and other evidence. Long and detailed explanations appeared to show how the poison had been introduced into the wells. The conspirators' accomplices were denounced, and contemporary letters and documents tell of the Jews' association with the Saracens and of plans for setting up a government composed of Jews, lepers, and Muslims to take over Europe in the aftermath of the calamity.
As a consequence of these happenings in the spring of 1321, all over France lepers were interned. The object was to sever the connection between the infected and society at large, and to prevent them from having children. This is the first recorded instance in European history of such large-scale isolation measures, and it was to provide the pattern for similar measures for centuries to come. For the Jews, the events of 1321 resulted in pogroms and death at the stake, confiscation of property, exclusion from trade and other commercial activities, and, in 1323, the issuance of a royal edict providing for their expulsion from the realm of France. As early as the summer of 1321, the King had officially confirmed that the accusations levelled at Jews and lepers were well-founded and should be taken seriously.
The belief in a Witches' Sabbath
This story opens the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg's book Storia notturna: Una decifrazione del Sabba (1989), which was recently published in English under the title Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. Ginzburg retraces the course of events in 1321 in minute detail, describing how rumour spread from village to village and town to town, and how the charges became increasingly substantiated. In the author's opinion, the conspiracy theories that took root in these months constitute one of the principal prerequisites of a phenomenon which, in the centuries that followed, was destined to leave a lasting mark on European history: the belief in a Witches' Sabbath.
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