Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live: How the Incorporation of Sorcery into Heresy Critically Contributed to the Witch Stereotype of the Late Middle Ages
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Harper, Kathryn
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
- Abstract
- This thesis suggests a revision to the chronology of the origins of witchcraft, per se, as opposed to maleficium. The language mobilized in the fifteenth century was not new, it will argue, but rather a reification and instantiation of language already in play during the fourteenth century and even earlier with respect to heresy. This work hopes to challenge this binary, and suggest that there is both a distinct difference between witchcraft of the earlier Middle Ages and of the later Middle Ages, but also that the critical shift occurs prior to the fifteenth century. How the witch came to be is another matter, and this thesis will suggest that first, the sorcerer had to become a heretic. The current literature has also noted the relationship between heresy and witchcraft – as Michael Bailey puts it, “the connection between witchcraft and heresy seems obvious.” Indeed, the fact that the two are related has not escaped historians, yet this relationship seems not to have been explored explicitly. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to examine that relationship more closely and to suggest that rather than heresy becoming more like witchcraft – a notion suggested by Cohn and Russell, among others – sorcery became heretical.
- Date of publication
- spring 2014
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Bull, Marcus
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 89
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