17 - The Popes and Magic

Summary

This chapter analyzes papal pronouncements in matters of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Popes intervened typically in response to demands coming from local religious authorities involved in the repression of the “demonic arts.” In the early phase – from the 1320s to the 1430s – some papal decrees emphasized that magic was heretical and its practitioners were involved in a demonic conspiracy, giving thus an impulse to the outbreak of the witch hunt. Subsequently, the papacy’s support of witch hunters came close to an approval of the doctrine of diabolical witchcraft. In the final decades (the 1580s to the 1640s), popes issued sweeping condemnations of the entire spectrum of magical practices. Such decrees settled the Church’s accounts with astrology, and at the same time tasked the Roman Inquisition with a campaign to stamp out popular “superstitions,” which remained one of the Holy Office’s main objectives in the early modern era.