{"collection":"Paganism & Neopaganism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/pag/sor/index.htm","path":"pag/sor/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/pag/sor/index.htm","text":"| The Snow Queen, by Edmund Dulac [1911] (Public Domain Image) | The Sorceress (La Sorci\u00e8re) by Jules Michelet tr. by Afred Richard Allinson [1939] | \n \n But the greatest revolution the Sorceress brought about,\n the chief movement of all in contradiction,\n in direct contradiction to the spirit of the Middle Ages,\n is what we might well call a rehabilitation of the belly\n and its digestive functions.\n They boldly proclaimed the doctrine that\n \"nothing is impure and nothing unclean.\"\n From that moment the study of physical science was enfranchised,\n its shackles loosed, and true medicine became a possibility.--p. 86\n \n This is a translation of Jules Michelet's La Sorci\u00e8re, originally published in Paris in 1862. I have titled this text The Sorceress because that is a literal translation of the original French title. The original title of this translation was Satanism and Witchcraft, and it was later retitled Witchcraft, Sorcery and Superstition. However there is no need to sensationalize this book; the material is already sensational enough. And women are at the center of this book: peasant healers, aristocratic noblewomen, and nuns; we get an unparalleled look at the misery that medieval women faced, and some of the ways they rebelled.\nMichelet was one of the first to attempt a sociological explanation of the Witch trials. Like his successor Margaret Murray, he interprets the source material very literally. Unlike Murray, he presents a proto-Marxist explanation for the phenomena; the witch cult as a primal rebellion against conventional society, one of many 'heretical' movements quashed by the Church. As time went on, the cult became institutionalized, which led to tacit toleration in some quarters. Michelet's portrayal of the lone sorceress as a pioneer of medicine and science is also memorable. Towards the end, a different kind of diabolical intervention is analyzed; the 'possession' of nuns in the 17th century, and how it was stage-managed by sadistic male clerics.\nMichelet uses a style popular in the 19th century, of interspersing fictional but representative incidents in with the exposition. A more academic style would quote pages and pages of heavily footnoted and very repetitive accounts. By condensing these into an short story, Michelet makes the book infinitely more readable. If you want an academically cited study, you'll have to look elsewhere, but that doesn't prevent this book from being a classic study of the burning times.\nTitle Page\nContents\nIntroduction\nPart One\n1. Death of the Gods\n2. What Drove the Middle Ages to Despair\n3. The Little Demon of the Hearth and Home\n4. Temptations\n5. Diabolical Possession\n6. The Pact With Satan\n7. King of the Dead\n8. Prince of Nature\n9. Satan the Healer\n10. Charms and Love Potions\n11. Communion of Revolt\u2014Witches\u2019 Sabbaths\u2014The Black Mass\n12. Black Mass Continued\u2014Love and Death\u2014Satan Disappears\nPart Two\n13. The Sorceress in Her Decadence\u2014Satan Multiplied and Vulgarised\n14. Persecutions\n15. A Hundred Years\u2019 Toleration in France\n16. The Basque Witches (1609)\n17. Satan Turns Ecclesiastic (1610)\n18. Gauffridi (1610)\n19. The Nuns of Loudun\u2014Urbain Grandier (1633, 1634)\n20. The Nuns Of Louviers and Satanic Possession\u2014Madeleine Bavent (1640-1647)\n21. Satan Triumphant in the Seventeenth Century\n22. Father Girard and Charlotte Cadi\u00e8re\n23. Charlotte Cadi\u00e8re at the Convent of Ollioules\n24. Trial of Charlotte Cadi\u00e8re (1730, 1731)\nEpilogue\nNotes and Elucidations\nPrincipal Authorities","title":"The Sorceress Index","type":"page"}