LEST WE EVER FORGET!!!



Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-hunters. "At this day," wrote Reginald Scot in 1584, "it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, 'she is a witch' or 'she is a wise woman.'" Common people of pre-reformational Europe relied upon wise women and men for the treatment of illness rather than upon churchmen, monks or physicians. Robert Burton wrote in 1621:

Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards and white witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind.

By combining their knowledge of medicinal herbs with an entreaty for divine assistance, these healers provided both more affordable and most often more effective medicine than was available elsewhere. Churchmen of the Reformation objected to the magical nature of this sort of healing, to the preference people had for it over the healing that the Church or Church- licensed physicians offered, and to the power that it gave women.

Until the terror of the witch hunts, most people did not understand why successful healers should be considered evil. "Men rather uphold them," wrote John Stearne, "and say why should any man be questioned for doing good." As a Bridgettine monk of the early sixteenth century recounted of "the simple people", "I have heard them say full often myself... 'Sir, we mean well and do believe well and we think it a good and charitable deed to heal a sick person or a sick beast'..." And in 1555 Joan Tyrry asserted that "her doings in healing of man and beast, by the power of God taught to her by the... fairies, be both godly and good..."

Indeed, the very invocations used by wise women sound quite Christian. For example, a 1610 poem recited when picking the herb vervain, also known as St. Johnswort, reads,

Hallowed be thou Vervain, as thou growest on the ground / For in the mount of Calvary there thou was first found / Thou healest our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and staunchest his bleeding wound / In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost / I take thee from the ground.

But in the eyes of orthodox Christians, such healing empowered people to determine the course of their lives instead of submitting helplessly to the will of God. According to churchmen, health should come from God, not from the efforts of human beings. Bishop Hall said, "we that have no power to bid must pray..." Ecclesiastical courts made the customers of witches publicly confess to being "heartily sorry for seeking man's help, and refusing the help of God..." An Elizabethan preacher explained that any healing "is not done by conjuration or divination, as Popish priests profess and practice, but by entreating the Lord humbly in fasting and prayer..." And according to Calvin, no medicine could change the course of events which had already been determined by the Almighty.

Preachers and Church-licensed male physicians tried to fill the function of healer. Yet, their ministrations were often considered ineffective compared to those of a wise woman. The keeper of the Canterbury gaol admitted to freeing an imprisoned wise woman in 1570 because "the witch did more good by her physic than Mr. Pudall and Mr. Wood, being preachers of God's word..." A character in the 1593 Dialogue concerning Witches said of a local wise woman that, "she doeth more good in one year than all these scripture men will do so long as they live..."

Even the Church-licensed male physicians, who relied upon purgings, bleedings, fumigations, leeches, lancets and toxic chemicals such as mercury were little match for an experienced wise woman's knowledge of herbs. As the well-known physician, Paracelsus, asked, "...does not the old nurse very often beat the doctor?" Even Francis Bacon, who demonstrated very little respect for women, thought that "empirics and old women" were "more happy many times in their cures than learned physicians..."

Physicians often attributed their own incompetence to witchcraft. As Thomas Ady wrote:

The reason is ignorantiae pallium maleficium et incantatio- a cloak for a physician's ignorance. When he cannot find the nature of the disease, he saith the party is bewitched.

When an illness could not be understood, even the highest body of England, the Royal College of Physicians of London, was known to accept the explanation of witchcraft.

Not surprisingly, churchmen portrayed the healing woman as the most evil of all witches. William Perkins declared, The most horrible and detestable monster... is the good witch. The Church included in its definition of witchcraft anyone with knowledge of herbs for "those who used herbs for cures did so only through a pact with the Devil, either explicit or implicit." Medicine had long been associated with herbs and magic. The Greek and Latin words for medicine, "pharmakeia" and "veneficium," meant both "magic" and "drugs." Mere possession of herbal oils or ointments became grounds for accusation of witchcraft.






SO MOTE IT BE!