Carrol
Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> At 11:49 AM 8/21/2010, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> >>Not so minor. Ginzburg, who knows more about
> >>this than anyone, would argue that witch scares
> >>were part of the beginnings of modernism.
> >
> >That sounds fascinating. Can you remember where
> >he develops that?.... Being a careful
> >historian, Ginzberg sticks very closely to his
> >local case and what he can back up with
> >evidence. But in the introduction he gives
> >several indications that he personally believes
> >the complex of beliefs behind Benandanti
> >practices are part of a tradition that at one
> >time spread all over Europe and which was
> >continuous back to pre-Christian times.
>
> I think he does believe that. How does that not
> square with the idea that demonizing those
> practices is part of the transition from medieval to early modern?
>
> This is the kind of observation Ginzburg makes
> almost as an aside and in more or less explicit
> terms, depending on whether it's a book, essay,
> or lecture. I heard him speak and lecture many
> times at UCLA, so part of my understanding of his work comes from that.
>
> For example, in one essay called The Inquisitor
> as Anthropologist (published in a collection
> called Clues, Myths, and Historical Method) he
> talks about realizing how much his own approach
> was shaped by the inquisitors. He says as he
> read the vatican inquisition documents he was
> pulling for the peasants but felt as if he was
> looking over the inquisitors shoulder hoping they
> would succeed in extracting more information.
>
> Another example, in the interview I linked to the
> other day he talks about connections between the
> rise of the nation state and concentrated efforts
> to disrupt, control, inter, or kill troublesome
> populations or sectors of populations that could
> be marginalized by association with something like the Witches Sabbath:
>
> http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2003-07-11-ginzburg-en.html
>
> Carlo Ginzburg: What we witness in the spring of
> 1321 is the idea of the great conspiracy, the
> notion that external enemies can ally themselves
> with persons in our midst in order to undermine
> the entire social structure. This idea had an
> overwhelming impact in the period under review.
> In 1348, for example, Jews all over southern
> France were massacred after being accused of
> spreading the Black Death. Early in the fifteenth
> century, this conspiracy model re-emerged, though
> in a different guise. This time it was the
> practitioners of the Black Arts who were supposed
> to be behind the veiled attack on Christianity.
> They were no longer in league with the Muslims,
> but with the Devil. Conspiracy had thus become
> omnipresent. It could no longer be linked to a
> specific section of the population; and it was no
> longer rooted in human conflicts, but on the
> contrary in the absolute struggle between God and
> the Devil. With this, a mainstay of the belief in
> the existence of a Witches' Sabbath was firmly in
> place. The effects of that belief were to make
> themselves felt throughout the whole of Europe
> for more than two centuries afterwards.
>
> Trygve Riiser Gunderson: Even so, you think that
> the events of 1321 were unique?
>
> CG: The rumours spread so rapidly and
> systematically that spring that it could not
> possibly have been by chance. Some central
> authority must have taken steps to spread the
> charges. The idea of a conspiracy was thus in
> itself a conspiracy. From the sources available
> to us it is reasonable to conclude that it was
> persons at the centre of power in France who were
> behind it all. The accusations may, of course,
> have originated at a local level, but their
> dissemination was encouraged and directed from a
> central source. That distinguishes the unrest of
> 1321 from the events of 1348 and those around
> 1400, which were more spontaneous in nature.
>
> In the years prior to 1321, there was a strong
> desire in political circles both to destroy the
> Jews' economic position and to assume control of
> the considerable sums then accruing to charitable
> organizations set up to help lepers. Shortly
> afterwards both these aims were fulfilled.
>
> The appearance of such a large-scale, coordinated
> campaign can only be explained by the concurrent
> rise of the nation-state. The conspiracy appears
> as a distorted image of the new political system,
> a kind of grotesque caricature of the
> nation-state's new functions - but with that
> grain of truth in it that is a feature of all caricatures.
>
> But this picture emerges only when the
> occurrences of 1321 are viewed as a whole and
> studied chronologically – when the many diverse
> incidents are pieced together and analyzed day by
> day, if not hour by hour. Only then does the link
> between them become clear. I¹m convinced that
> chronology, pure and simple, is one of the
> historian's most powerful weapons. It may be
> treated with suspicion in modern historiography,
> but its critical efficacy is greater than many people realize.
>
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