Короли и ведьмы. Колдовство в политической культуре Западной Европы XII–XVII вв.

Summary

This book is an attempt to study the process of constructing the concept of witchcraft in close connection with the political culture of Western Europe of the Middle Ages and early Modern times. The author focuses less on the efforts of the church to rally the flock, but studies the conscious demarches of the secular authorities, who used the new phenomenon to create an image of their own enemy — a political enemy that threatens the foundations of the state system, the peace and the social order.

The study begins with a detailed analysis of the first secular political treatise of the Middle Ages — the Polycraticus of John of Salisbury (1159), in which the ruler's closest connection with witchcraft and its possible consequences was not just mentioned, but considered consistently and in detail. It was in this treatise that the rigid bundle of the king and the witch acquired its visible outlines and, perhaps, for the first time, the benefits of diabolical interference in the destinies of people were announced. For the ruler who follows the lead of witches and sorcerers, who listens to their advices, turns into a tyrant — a likeness of Lucifer on earth, and this transformation gives his subjects the legal right to kill him.

The influence that the Polycraticus had on European intellectuals of the 12th–14th centuries is explored in the second chapter of the book. The author studies not only the development of the ideas of John of Salisbury in the works of English authors (primarily in Walter Map's De nugis curialium), but traces this influence in French treatises and chronicles: in Hélinand de Froidmont's Chronicon, in Vincent de Beauvais's Speculum majus, as well as in his later writings De eruditione filiorum nobilium and De morali principis institutione, in Gilbert de Tournais Eruditio regum etprincipum, which were written by order of the members of the French royal family. The author pays special attention to the work of the translators at the court of Charles V the Wise, thanks to which John of Salisbury's ideas about the role of witchcraft in the political culture became available at the turn of the 14th–15th centuries to a wider range of readers.

The first part of the book ends with some case-studies on the penetration of John of Salisbury's ideas into the real life of the French Kingdom and on their use in the political propaganda directed against Valentina Visconti, the sister-in-law of Charles VI the Mad, her husband Louis d'Orléans, as well as against Isabeau de Bavière, the wife of Charles VI, and Jeanne d'Arc, Charles VII's faithful assistant in the military affairs.

The second part of the book is devoted to the problem of the confrontation — a real war, which, according to the authors of the demonological treatises of the 15th–17th centuries, literally unfolded on their eyes between secular European rulers and the devil, who, as it seemed to them, created his earthly kingdom and inhabited it with his own subjects. The author examines in detail the topic of the personal responsibility of the sovereign himself and of his judicial officials in the extermination of the witch sects and in the maintaining public order, developed by the authors of the demonological treatises in the Alpine region, in the Duchy of Burgundy, in the French Kingdom, in Scotland and in England: especially in the tractates of Claude Tholosan, Jean Tinctor, Pierre Mamoris, Jean Bodin and James Stuart. She is also studying the problem of the possible assistance that ordinary citizens could provide to the ruler in this matter by participating in the procedure of "watching" described in detail in the English demonological pamphlets and in the manuals for judges.

Finally, the third part of the book is devoted to the problem of recognition of a true witch, whose image was gradually created by the authors of the demonological treatises, by the judges, the doctors and the artists of the 15th–17th centuries. Three chapters are devoted, respectively, to the moral foundations of witch-hunting, which were based on the biblical story of Judas Iscariot, to the physiognomy of witches and sorcerers, as well as to their physiological differences, which, according to the demonologists of the 15th–17th centuries, allow to judge with confidence about the criminal craft of these people and successfully resist it.

In conclusion, the author reflects on the question of the usefulness of witchcraft, as it was imagined by the authors of the Late Middle Ages and early Modern times. It seems that this usefulness consisted not only in the awareness of greatness of God, who allows the existence of the devil, his demons and his minions and uses them to punish the earthly sinners. The concept of malicious witchcraft was also useful, according to the authors of the demonological treatises and the judges, because it allowed them to understand better the limits and the possibilities of the secular power, its main tasks for maintaining the peace and public order in their countries.