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Witchcraft Past and Present
came to believe that Jesus Christ was a prophet, followers of Christ
believed that he was the son of God and part of the ‘Holy Trinity’ a triad
made up of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.
Christians believed that the way to communicate with God was through
Jesus Christ.
The Christian faith spread from Palestine, eastwards into Europe and in
AD 317, the Emperor Constantine declared it to be the official religion
of the Roman Empire. All over Europe old gods were banished and the
new religion imposed in their place.
Of course, followers of the old ways persisted with their traditions,
despite the fact that it was not uncommon for the priests, including the
Druids, to whom people looked for spiritual leadership, to be persecuted
and in some cases put to death. But old traditions die hard and they
continued to be handed down from generation to generation.
Two hundred years later, Pope Gregory I (540-604) did a great deal to
consolidate the power of the Catholic faith. Tens of thousands of people
were baptized into it, forswearing their old ways and giving themselves
to Rome. Gregory was cunning. He realized that people are unwilling to
change their ways. He saw that they would continue to gather to honour
the one god in places where they, and their fathers, and their fathers
before them had gathered to worship the old gods and perform the
rituals and ceremonies attendant with traditional worship. So wherever
it was possible, he decreed that churches be built on the sites of existing
pagan temples.
Pagans believed in an entity called ‘The Great All’ who was formed of
The God’ and ‘The Goddess’. Sites dedicated to The Lord and The Lady
were common, and when churches were built on these sites, they were
often dedicated to The Virgin Mary and called ‘The Church of Our Lady’
‘Our Lady’ being another name for the Holy Virgin.
‘
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In simple ways like this, the old ways persisted.
In any organization, the larger it grows, the more difficult it becomes to
control. So it was with the Catholic Church. Centralized in Rome but
spreading north to Britain, west into present-day Spain and Portugal and
east into Greece, it was hard for the Pope in the Vatican to stop variations
in doctrine and ritual creeping in. To discourage this, inquisitors were
employed to search out Christians whose beliefs and practices were not
in line with official dogma. Anyone who did not follow the true path was
branded heretic and if they did not immediately recant when the
accusation had been made, were imprisoned and in some cases put to
death.
An Infamous Bull
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull concerning the practice of
witchcraft. He was not the first to do so: several of his predecessors had
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