What is a Witch & Witchcraft? The Formicarius of Johannes Nider

the image of the witch and the practice of Witchcraft are among the most instantly recognizable in Western mythology I mean you know right pointy hat lustful rry in the forest living deliciously flight a top a broom and bringing ruin through sorcery all the dangerous stereotypes have somehow led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and then also have become staple Halloween costumes the Witch and Witchcraft are indelibly imprinted on our Collective psyche but these Concepts did not appear all at once in history indeed this conception of the witch really developed over several centuries

and only really coalesced into our shared stereotype during the Victorian period the same period that gave us I don't know pilgrims with with Buckle hats the pilgrims didn't wear Buckle hat but where does the witch as we know her first appear in history who invented the witch curiously enough we have a relatively good answer to just that question the witch as we know her probably first appears in the text called the form aarius of Johannes nider composed sometime between 1436 and the end of his life in 1438 and it's in that text that previous centuries

of heresy hunting shifts an inquisitorial Doctrine about how certain forms of sorcery could in fact be heretical in neer's own desire to reform the Church yeah form the church all came together to generate something like we would recognize as a witch let's explore the origins of the witch in neer's 15th century text the form aarius the anthill make sure to subscribe for weekly Explorations and topics in esoteric history and if you'd like to support the work this work of providing evidence-backed free and accessible content then I hope you go check a look at our patreon

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all those links in the description and in the pinned comment but now let's turn to the formicarius literally Latin for antill as I said the first text to truly conjure the witch into the European imagination I'm Dr Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion [Music] for most people at least people who thought about it the image of the witch is the definitive production of a text known as the malas malarum the hammer of which is composed around 1486 primarily by The Inquisitor henricus and while that book

which is important and I've done a whole episode about it if you want to take a look at it was a definitive landmark in the nightmare that was the early modern Witch Trials the witch as we know the concept probably merged about 50 years prior to the composition of the malus malarum but to understand the invention of the witch by Johannes Snider in the form aarias we're going to have to take a note of some of the developments in the centuries prior to even that text the first we should mention is that by the mid-4th

century the church's inquisitorial campaign against groups like the cathars the waldensians the spiritual franciscans and the Brethren of the Free Spirit Well it had more or less wrapped up they they killed most of them arandom into the forest leaving the Inquisition with very little to do in the way of Prosecuting Heretics however by the latter part of the 14th century the Catalan Inquisitor Nicholas immer had begun to link the mere sin of of sorcery with heretical depravity thus bringing such prosecutions into the jurisdiction of the Inquisition further he even argued that the general jurisdiction of

the Inquisition should be expanded to include non-christians including Prosecuting people who were Jewish I mean to be a heretic you have to be a you got to be a Christian first recall the task of the Inquisition was to investigate her heretical beliefs and practices of Christians evaluate the reality of heresy and then return the penitent heretic toward Orthodoxy sorcery however wasn't traditionally linked with heresy now it was a Sim and it was a serious Sim but it wasn't inherently heretical immer for his part argued that the practice of sorcery almost always practically always involved some

sort of worship or Adoration of a demonic entity in the form of a pact or a covenant and given that such improper worship or Ador was already duly regarded as savoring of manifest heresy yes that is the technical language savoring of manifest heresy the link of sorcery as heresy was relatively easy to make for emmer now if you're interested in the this development of sorcery as heresy make sure to check out my pretty deep dive on Emmer's dorium inquisit torum a genuinely terrifying inquisitorial textbook I mean it was so terrifying that that when po wanted

to pull a horrible book to memory he would use The dorium Inquisitor as his textbook example of evil but by 1350 we would see the last inquisitorial execution of a cathar assuming that the cathars even really existed I've done a whole video exploring whether or not this so-called heresy might have actually just been a figment of the inquisition's imagination which makes it all the worse because they were just murdering innocent Christians but that wouldn't exactly be the end of the heresy hunts the wal denans followers of a rich Merchant who abdicated his wealth and taught

radical apost poverty around 1173 continued to be the target of heresy Hunters indeed the question of apostolic poverty was the object of absolute Terror to a church that as you probably know was increasingly wealthy one of the largest land owners in Europe and quite unpopular with both common people and even some Aristocrats but for their the the wal denans escaped the clutches of the Inquisition by doing the rational thing and fleeing into the mountains between France and Italy and in fact they survived down to this day but when they were caught and they were caught

sometimes especially in the areas in what is now Switzerland and prosecuted by the Inquisition especially through the latter 14th century there being wenum or their commitment to Apostolic poverty and thus criticism of the church or the legitimacy of the Pope or all the other kinds of things that made them Heretics was often now increasingly Background by a more Sinister current the emergent heretical sin of sorcery strange elicit Gatherings which involved child murder and the worship of the devil in the form of a goat typical heresy stuff and at first these elements occur peac Mill through

the trial records a little here and a little there and kind of spread out but through through and into the early 15th century these disperate Records begin to come together to form a more composite picture so much so that our earliest depictions of something like a witch in Flight a top a broom or the worship of the devil in the form of a goat is not attributed to witches per se in this early period but to Wal denans now you may have seen this pretty famous 1451 manuscript is actually depicting witches of flight upon brooms

but they're not really witches they're actually waldensians the headgear kind of identifies them as such but the gap between heretic and witch has been short circuited in the mind of the miniature painter indeed the Swiss Canton of VO became so associated with the waldensians that the term Voda became an epithet not just for the group for the wal denans but also became a term for sorcery and sorcerer and sorceress and it was eventually even applied to Jon of Arc during her trial the abstract notion of heresy was being linked in the judicial practice with sorcery

through the ongoing persecution of the waldensians them themselves being momizi Heretics that despite the fact that no historical evidence for the waldensians being anything other than Pious Al be dissident Christians has ever been found but of course this all raises a question where did these various disperate elements of nightly Gatherings worshiping of a goat and the killing of children and even cannibalism come from where did all this emerge it actually comes from Christian law and Christian lore most recently from the important decretum of graci compiled and written in the mid 12th century now for the

cases of this study that was important section of that rather massive text is a so-called Canon episcopy that can be found at CA 26 quo 5 Canon 12 because I know you're going to go look it up this text predates the decretum actually by centuries in fact it's first attested around 906 and it probably reflects attitudes of the period just after the conversion of the Franks from the marenin period from paganism to Christianity and very early years of the Holy Roman Empire thus it's actually a really cool window onto the Pagan pre-christian world of that

time at least viewed Through The Eyes of the Christians writing the rules now this text urges local Bishops to eradicate the practice of magic and divination from the recently converted population however this is not to be done according to the rules by torturing and killing said practitioners not yet they're going to get to that then later on but by expelling those people from their parishes as it is often repeated and after they're admonished against such practices that then a person can be deemed a heretic they basically just can kick you out and tell you to

stop the text also discusses the idea that certain women believe that they could ride beasts with Diana to joining Collective worship of this Pagan goddess now of course who Diana here is and what this deity is is not really clear but of course all of this would eventually evolve into the notion of the witches Sabbath or synagogue as it was often have because you know there's no anti-Semitism at this time though notice here that neither flight is mentioned they're riding upon beasts nor is the devil they're traveling with the Goddess Diana or some probably local

Pagan deity further and this is really crucial the Canon episcopy makes it clear that the journey to wish Diana is a fantasm composed upon the mind it's just an it's happening in their imagination by demonic for forces in that the women do not in fact physically travel anywhere the travel upon the beasts and the collective worship of Diana is a demonic delusion and not actual Geographic travel and further there is condemnation of the idea of shape-shifting perhaps reflecting a pagan belief of transforming into animals or other shamanic practices of that period think of the Berserkers

or something we even have other accounts in Italy where people are shape-shifting into other kinds of creatures to actually fight which is thanks to Carlo Ginsburg thank you Ginsburg inde we read that the person who believes that they're actually able to shape shift is as it has in Latin procal dubio infidelis at Pagano deterior Beyond doubt an Infidel and worse than a pagan if you believe you can shape shift you're worse than a pagan but this previous text of Christian Cannon law is the box into which the so-called heretical Gathering of waldenian century later need

to be put regardless of whether or not it actually have anything to do with actual W waldenian beliefs and practices of course it didn't but that's the only box they had to understand people that didn't agree with the church shov them into that heretical box now how did the Inquisition actually arrive at people telling them these things well leading interrogational practices and of course good oldfashioned torture further recall that the in inquisitional jurists of this period primarily relied on ancient ptic writings to make sense of both the theological world around them but also how to

adjudicate well the law canon law judicial matters and ironically enough one of the texts preserved of those ancient texts was slander of ancient Christians against ancient Christians that they disagreed with especially the so-called gnostics now all of that's made even the more ironical by the fact that most of the slander was actually invented by the Romans to slander the early Christians recall that the Romans felt that Christianity was a recent Superstition it being recent completely delegitimated it in the minds of the Romans religion was by definition for the Romans ancient indeed Christianity was thought of

by the Romans as a Superstition fit for women and slaves as the Romans had it and the Romans slandered the early Christians as engaging in underground rituals and catacombs among the dead worshiping at donkey beheaded God through cannibalism elicit sexual relations drunkenness and just general degeneracy of the worst kinds of course now some of this slander was actually probably deliberate misinterpretations by the Romans of Christian sacramental practices such as the Eucharist or the holy kiss but the slander was so compelling that the Christians themselves adopted it to be used and deployed against other Christians they

didn't like and then they used it against the European Jews and the blood liel and then they used it against the witches and then they used it against the Communists and then they used it against random Punk goth kids in the satanic Panic of the 1980s so when medieval heresy Hunters needed a checklist of heretical behaviors they already had one readymade in patristic literature a list extractable of course from people subjected to you guessed it leading inquisitorial interrogation practices which discussed in my video on Nicholas Emich and of course good oldfashioned torture it was the

Middle Ages after all but as I mentioned most of these heretical waldenian trials through the early 15th century were partial fragments only partial fragments of what will become the witch Narrative of what Scholars Now call the elaborated theory of Witchcraft and trials at carcassone and tulo's real Heartland in the region through the 1400s along with others in Northern Italy before spreading eventually to places like Mets and Germany in the 1440s often only had again fragmentary elements shards of what eventually will become the definitive narrative that we now associate with witchcraft but early on in the

trials the Heretics engaged in sorcery in relations with the devil because they were Heretics while denans or some such heretic but for the concept of the witch to become fully independent as a kind of meme unto itself it would need to be amputated ated from this W denian anchor it would need to become a heresy all of its own and it would need all of those disperate elements of the narratives of the late 14th and early 15th centuries those all would need to be welded together into one composite sect the women LED which heresy which

sought to destroy all of Christendom in a final satanic outrage against God and the first glimmer of that concept the so-called elaborated theory of Witchcraft that would lead to the outbreak of the early modern European Witch Trials it first appears in a mature form in the formicarius of Johannes nider Johannes neider who died in 1438 right after completing the form aarius was in fact himself a really popular preacher and most importantly a church reformer and it's from this view of ner as a reformer of the church that we have to understand the text of the

formicarius written in the last few years of his life the text is a type of preaching manual framed around all things an elaborate series of metaphors about ants yeah the the insect the ant formicarius literally means ant hill in Latin the first book focuses on the righteous acts of various people and is organized around the various occupation of ants various things ants do in their antill world the second book deals with re Revelations and prophetic Visions it was actually based on the different forms of the movements of ants the third book examines false Visions using

the various sizes of ants as tools of instruction the fourth book deals with virtuous lives of saints employing the life cycle of the ant how he knows this about ants I don't know the fifth book the most famous and I'd argue responsible for the invention of witches as we know them and the topic of this episode is structured around the various colors of ants but yeah ants dude was into ants I mean so was Aristotle actually and we have to admit mean they are pretty cool they can carry like multiple times their own body weight

and stuff like that but um all this cool ant imagery aside the text takes a form of a student interrogating his theology teacher who uses the opportunity to clear up all manner of misunderstandings floating around during this time period but rather than just using droll boring Scholastic arguments ation the teacher actually draws contemporary examples at least contemporary to them to Stave off the boredom of the student and keep a student interested in the questions of theology like teaching about how to deal with parasocial relationships by invoking I don't know Chapel Rowan as supposed to say

Plato the pair social relationships exist in PL Chapel Rowan but this is this focus on reform here reaching a new generation of students and using contemporary examples is all really important it armed preachers of neer's time with contemporary accounts of pressing issues that could be used in local preachings all in the interest of actually reaching people with the message of Christianity no one cares about what happened 600 years ago they want to learn about modern saints that matters here Neer was reform-minded he was a reform-minded person felt that such reforms were the key to staving

off the worst possible outcome for Christian people to fall into the predition of the Soul precisely through heresy further neider even suggested that the appearance of all these new weird heretical groups including witches was the result of the church failing to reach common people through preaching through community service and because of the church's incredible wealth and frankly it's corruption again neither is a reformer thus it's not to the lens of the zealous Inquisitor that the witch emerges but as a reformer who sees the witch heresy as something emergent from a church not properly shepherding her

flock further ner sees this emergent witch heresy as something rather new it's kind of a new form of heresy and thus it should be possible to eradicate it primarily not through violence not through violence and torture but through preaching and education and loving service to the community Community something that the Dominicans could have learned a bit more about people he argues turn to Satan and sorcery out of desperation and protest to a corrupt Church No One turns to sorcery and devil worship when things are going good for them they go to that when things are

going bad and those are two conditions that the church itself could solve thus eliminating the heresy in its cradle but to do so nider wants to diagnose the nature of this novel heresy and to do so he draws on various reports of this emergent sorcery heresy that he had gathered while serving as a legot at the Council of Basil especially Tales of sorcery trials emerging from the region of the SEMA Valley in Switzerland basically nether gathered all of the data he could about this new emergent sorcery heresy trials he synthesized them into one narrative and

then corrected that narrative around the standard theological positions of his day basically the scholasticism of his day in effect he created the concept of Witchcraft and in turn he created he invented witches as we know them but what did this heresy actually look like to ner at its core were people many of the tales that gider actually gathered focused on men just as much as women that had entered into a pact with Satan to gain Supernatural Powers by rejecting and actively resisting the church however of course the jokes on them demons can't really alter nature

only God can do that but the demons can produce various kinds of Illusions through trickery unless God Wills otherwise thus the soul for magic trade is always a scam and nether has real pity I think real pity on people who are duped by these satanic demonic scammers but the principal means by which the Maliki the technical Latin term for which wish to do harm is seven different primary modes they wish to inspire love which is really just lust they want to inspire hatred they want to cause impotence because dudes are always terrified about their junk

they want to induce disease killing they want to cause Madness and they want to injure property especially animals of special interest and horror to nigher is harm done to Children babies and fetuses including harvesting their bodies to create various potions and poison a principal use of which was for a shape-shifting potion by the way anxiety continues to exist and all this adicom madness and konon in fact one of those potions is actually used to induce people into the heretical order itself in one of the narratives provided by nider we're told how the heretical sect would

actually sneak into churches on Sunday morning before the blessing of the holy water and in mockery of that sanctification one would be inducted into the satanic order by drinking one of the baby potions which would induce something like Di diabolical Visions in which the inductee would gain immediate knowledge of the dark arts in fact these narratives around which Neer builds up the character of The Witch are almost medieval anthropological in character he's building this narrative up from disperate elements and saying ah this is all one thing that shape-shifting potion that I mentioned is actually attested

in another text by a sorcerer named scabas who would actually Escape his enemies including inquisitors by using that potion to turn into a Mouse a mouse why he wouldn't turn into a lion and just eat them but he to turn into a mouse however one time he was too slow on the draw with the potion and he was near a window and he caught the business end of a sword and some Spears that was the end to that dude any rate he had a disciple named hopo who in fact would go on to teach another

Fame Necromancer that we do name named stadim whose trial record actually partially survives he was especially famous for weather magic which was terrifying for the very agricultural economy of that time especially through summoning up storms and hail though apparently the magic he practiced wasn't terribly precise he confessed to having thrown a hen into the air and then a demon would grab it and it would rain down hail and lightning but not always on the desired Target it would just like randomly hail he could also transport hay grain and manure he could cause children to drown

in front of their parents he could drive horses to Madness by touching the sterup he could predict the future he could create horrible smells especially when he was getting arrested people were terrified to arrest him he could fly through the air I could go on this is typical witch warlock stuff but speaking of flight ner actually discusses the case of a woman who claimed that she could fly through the air to meet Diana remember that one that's the exact narrative from the Canon episcopy that I discussed earlier now this idea that this woman could fly

through the air with Diana or interested a local Dominican you don't want to interest local Dominicans with these kinds of stories at any rate said Dominican tried to convince this lady that this claim was nonsense she could not fly through the air and maybe it was even heretical nonsense that she should keep it to herself but she kept it up and he demanded to be present the next time she went on such a flight so there they are the lady sat down in a large bowl used for kneading dough a top of bench she smeared

herself with some kind of ointment she uttered in some kind of incomprehensible magical words to summon the devil and then she promptly fell into unconsciousness in that sleep she started to violently gesticulate she fell out of the bowl and badly injured her head in the fall eventually she came to she testified that she had gone on the flight the Dominican convinced her that she did not fly anywhere I guess aside from falling out of the bowl and hurting her head and apparently she was ultimately disabused of her errors now aside from that salv which was

probably made from henbane belladona mandre hemlock and God knows what else we have here one of the first records of something like flight to the Sabbath here being a flying ointment but notice no broom she's flying in a in a bowl now recipes for this flying ointment do survive from this period and in later text no you should not try them yes they will kill you people have literally died Scholars have died trying to recreate them yes there have been Scholars and occultists who have died working with those toxins don't ner also deals with so-called

love magic it's not really love because there's no consent involved if you're magically making people love you we typically refer to it as erotic binding magic but at any rate it was accomplished through beans and rooster testicles so yeah exactly what your eighth grade in my engine was probably thinking he also admits to the existence of inabe and sakabe these are demons who torment people sexually at night torment but these are tells that he thinks are mostly just bad dreams what we might Now call night terrors ner rejects using magic to fight magic can't do

that rather focusing on the use of prayers sacraments and even the ranging of church bells to drive demons away because that's not magic ultimately however Satan his demons and the heretical follow followers of this new sect need not be to be feared by Christians in good standing they only have powers from what they do from Divine allowance and when such witches do inflict harm it's to I don't know it's with God's permission to test the faithful so if you're being afflicted by a witch strike your best job while the constant misogyny common text about witchcraft

isn't quite yet ingrained in neer's position ner doeses have an interesting position on why women generally become known better as witches why are witches more known than warlocks well of course General moral weakness recall that Eve was the first to fall to temptation but women are well known for witchcraft not because there are just so many more of them than men again many of the cases that ner goes through are about men witches rather he argues that women are simply more powerful if they choose to be evil or if they choose to be good thus

women's Saints such as the Virgin Mary are far more righteous than even the best of Godly men and by extension when women turn to heretical evil it's own like rooster testicles and they are all the more evil it turns out and thus women witches are far more known and rightly feared now neer's corrective to women turning to satanic witchcraft is also fascinating again again he thinks many of these people are turning to heretical depravity out of desperation or protest against a corrupt church but he also sees that there are women who are turning to other

means of popular piety as well they're also rejecting the church but they're remaining Pious those women are the beins now for anyone who's been on this channel for any length of time you know I got real love for my be ladies and it's this whole movement was INSP ired by in fact a revivalist call to live the Vita apostolica the desire to live in Simplicity and religious devotion precisely like the early followers of Jesus as described in the books of Acts these women became known as the beins and they formed communities of mutual Aid to

facilitate a life of devotion service to the community and economic independence that last part women's economic independence and autonomy that scared the dudes important to note here is the beIN were not nuns they imposed these vows upon themselves for their own communal living and they could leave for instance to marry or they could in fact join an enclosed Community which many of them did toward the end of their life the beIN also produced some of the most powerful Mystics of this period now I've done a whole episode about the beins if you want to learn

more about them and also specific uh examples of Mystics that the beins produced including my personal favorite Haik of Anwar Haik of Bron who I think is one of the most spectacular Mystics in all Western history and while their piety is impressive opinions about them were sharply divided in neer's day they were Independent Women it was controversial however his being on the side of Reform saw the beIN as something like anti- witches yes anti- witches and thus he supported the early be movement as a hedge against the emerging heretical witch movement now this needs to

be movie like the beIN versus The Witches like there's like an eternal war between the beIN and the witches I have to say that at this point the begins are probably losing while niders form macarius probably represents the first appearance of the witch in historical and Theological literature notice that the elaborated theory of Witchcraft isn't quite complete in the 1430s aerial flight is present but not yet flight to the Sabbath which is present in the literature and is still also known as a synagogue in fact one is seemingly initiated into the Sabbath into this switch

heresy in a church as a kind of antiac now child killing is already present along with all the various developed forms of sorcery especially weather magic there are Tales of both heretical men and heretical women with a few named men like stelin and hopo but there's an admission on the part of nider that the heresy is being led primarily by a legion of unnamed women so that that that misogynistic element is already built in as well but while still in development niders for macarius does present us I think with a firsttime composite notion of the

sorcery heresy primarily led by women completed through a covenant with the devil all in the interest of harm through sorcery and magical means as a final outrage against God before the apocalypse I think here a compelling argument has been made that johannas neider has affect ively invented the witch and the next few centuries women and to a less degree men would be hunted as part of a European wide vast let's call it what it is folks a conspiracy theory resulting in over a 100,000 trials numerous acts of torture and the execution of between 40 and

60,000 people between 1450 and 1700 nider had conjured the witch and now they would begin to haunt people thinking that they were witches it's the sad irony of history that a man honestly bent and I believe this honestly bent on reforming the church would ultimately birth a concept that would cause so much misery and death the formicarius while now obscure to most people people never heard of this book it survives in about 25 manuscript copies from the 15th and early 16th centuries it would see additions from the 1470s all the way down to 1692 near

the very end of The Witch Trials proving it was enormously popular at that time in fact after the 1574 Venetian edition of the malus malarum that horrible text would often be printed with the fifth book of the formicarius along with other various demonological books in toe the fate of a text hop to reform the Church was then hitched to one that frankly would tarnish the reputation of the church forever there's no English translation of the pharus there's just not one someone should at least do the fifth book so we have access to it however the

definitive edition of the text at this point and thank goodness it's relatively new is the two volume Edition in French by Katherine Shen an absolute Masterpiece of scholarship verer chaker has also produced an incredibly important study explaining how ner effectively built a bridge between Scholastic and popular preaching but that stud is also while enormous it's also in German so unless you read French and German at this point there's not even an expensive Brill edition of the form macarius to consult for my part I've consulted the French and I've also consulted the 1692 Latin Edition to

prepare this episode over at Google Books and I'll give you a link to that 1692 Edition so even a text in which the witch first appears for the first time in European history remains a Ive at least for folks who only read English but of course more on the history of magic and the history of Witchcraft to come until then I'm Dr Justin Sledge and thank you for watching esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion [Music]