Europe's inner demons

At the end of the story we are left face to face with a riddle. We can appreciate the continuity of the central fantasy; we can compare and to some extent define the social situations in which it flourished, the groups to which it became attached, the conscious, instrumental purposes it served. But what of the structure of the fantasy itself? Why have these particular accusations proved so appealing and persuasive and enduring? In a postscript an attempt is made, if not to provide answers to these questions, then at least to suggest directions in which answers might appropriately be sought.

A reader who happens to be familiar with an earlier work of mine, The Pursuit of the Millennium, may notice a certain relationship between it and the present work. Both books are conceived on the same scale, both cover roughly the same historical period, and both deal with the underside of Europe’s history. The two books are in fact complementary to one another. Whereas the chiliastic fantasies portrayed in The Pursuit of the Millennium flourished amongst the marginal elements in society — free-lance intellectuals and semi-intellectuals, landless, rootless peasants, the poorest, most desperate elements in the urban population — the fantasies studied here were at home in what would now be called the Establishment. Monks, bishops and popes, kings and great nobles, orthodox theologians, inquisitors and magistrates — these were the bearers of this particular tradition. And the mass response they found did not necessarily come from the lowest strata, either.

The Pursuit of the Millennium and Europe's Inner Demons are related also in a deeper sense. Fundamentally, both are concerned with the same phenomenon — the urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings imagined as agents of corruption and incarnations of evil. The social contexts are different, but the urge is unmistakably the same. What is more, it is with us still; and in the minds of some readers this book, like its predecessor, will prompt reflections not only about the distant past but about certain aspects of twentieth-century history too.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

During the years spent on this book various scholars helped me in various ways. Senor J. Caro Baroja, of Madrid, Dr Christina Lamer, of the University of Glasgow, and Professor Jeffrey Russell, of the University of California at Riverside, generously put at my disposal either unpublished material or proofs in advance of publication. Miss Rosemary Handley, of Queen Mary College, University of London, assisted with the deciphering of the extraordinarily obscure shorthand notes of John of Capestrano’s sermon at Nuremberg in 1451. Dr Michael Clanchy, of Glasgow, checked my comments on the accusatory procedure and the law of talion. I was able to discuss the postscript “Psycho-historical speculations” with Professor Meyer Fortes, Dr Robert Gosling and Sir Richard Southern, who commented on the argument from the points of view of social anthropology, psycho-analysis and medieval history respectively; though none of them can be held responsible for the postscript in its final form. I derived much intellectual stimulus from discussions with my colleagues in the Columbus Centre, and also from attending the annual conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists in 1968, which was devoted to the theme of witchcraft.

As so often in the past, I am greatly indebted to the staff of what is now the British Library, but which I still think of as the Reading Room and the North Library of the British Museum; and to the staffs of the Warburg Institute, the Bodleian, the Cambridge University Library and the Bibliotheque Nationale. But on this occasion I must also express my special thanks to the Librarian of the University of Glasgow, Mr R. Ogilvie McKenna, and his staff. Moreover, one particular riddle — the true nature of the witch of Orta (see the third section of Chapter 7) — could not have been unravelled without the collaboration of the libraries of the Middle Temple, of three Cambridge colleges— Trinity, Magdalene and Trinity Hall — and (yet again) Glasgow. For this assistance too I am most grateful.

I am indebted to the boards of the British Library, the Bibliotheque royale Albert I^er, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano and the Prado for permission to reproduce pictorial material in their keeping. Particulars are given in the list of illustrations.