An important element is that the surrounding decades saw the collapse of medieval mode of production in Europe - at least in part a Malthusian crisis (and perhaps a result of climate change). Areas that were under cultivation at the beginning of the 14th c. fell out of production after mid-century - and have never been brought back. A population weakened by famine in the first half of the century declined by more than a half at mid-century. The Black Death (1348-49) may have been a result as much as a cause of the population crisis.
On 8/19/10 7:35 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> At 05:08 PM 8/19/2010, martin wrote:
>
>
>> 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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