The Herbalist and the witch, part V?

In their pursuit of role models, of analogies, of mythic figures, feminist historians siezed upon the witch. Diane Purkiss, in her excellent The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations gives us this excellent word-picture, that I think you'll recognize:

Here is a story. Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived on the edge of a village. She lived alone, in her own house surrounded by her garden, in which she grew all manner of herbs and other healing plants. Though she was alone, she was never lonely; she had her garden and her animals for company, she took lovers when she wished, and she was always busy. The woman was a healer and midwife; she had practical knowledge taught her by her mother, and mystical knowledge derived from her closeness to nature, or from a half-submerged pagan religion. She helped women give birth, and she had healing hands; she used her knowledge of herbs and her common sense to help the sick."

Sounds like a great life, right? I'd sure jump at an existence like that.

"However, her peaceful existence was disrupted. Even though the woman was harmless, she posed a threat to the fearful. Her medical knowledge threatened the doctor. Her simple, true spiritual values threatened the superstitious nonsense of the Catholic church, as did her affirmation of the sensuous body. Her independence and freedom threatened men. So the Inquisition descended on her, and cruelly tortured her into confession to lies about the devil. She was burned alive by men who hated women, along with millions of others like her."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? That would be our prototypical fantasy healer/herbalist.

But the fascinating part here, is what Purkiss says next:

"Do you believe this story? Thousands of women do. It is still being retold, in full or in part, by women who are academics, but also by poets, novelists, popular historians, theologians, dramatists. It is compelling, even horrifying. However, in all essentials it is not true, or only partly true, as a history of what happened to the women called witches in the early modern period."

It's when we begin to imagine the variety of the history obscured by this idea of the herbalist, of the healer, that we can see the diversity of fantastic possibilities which that history suggests.

Herbalist as Witch, part VI

So, we discuss the witch because the herbalist persona, in fantasy and in herbal historiography, is irrevocably tangled iwith that of the witch, and specifically the witch of the 'burning times'.

This association of woman healer with witch is most often traced back through Ehrenreich and English's booklet, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: a history of women healers, 1973. This wasn't the first such discourse, but it's the one that gets cited continuously, and erroneously. In a discussion of the Malleus Maleficarum [Hammer of Witches] the 1486 witchfinder's manual by Sprenger and Kramer, they say, in quotes, "If a woman dare to cure without having studied, she is a witch and must die."

The trouble is, that sentence doesn't appear in the Malleus Maleficarum edition they cite. Closer examination shows that English and Ehrenreich are not specifically crediting that sentence to Sprenger and Kramer. It may be a quote that has lost its attribution, from another source; or it may simply be the author's framing of what they see as a continuing trend in the literature of the witchhunt. But the Malleus actually specifically exempts the use of herbs and other usual healing objects in healing, as not being witchcraft:

“Therefore we can answer their first argument in this way: that if natural objects are
used in a simple way to produce certain effects for which they are thought to have some
natural virtue, this is not unlawful. But if there are joined to this certain characters and
unknown signs and vain observations, which manifestly cannot have any natural efficacy,
then it is superstitious and unlawful. Wherefore S. Thomas, II, q. 96, art. 2, speaking of this matter, says that when any object is used for the purpose of causing some bodily effect, such as curing the sick, notice must be taken whether such objects appear to have any natural quality which could cause such an effect; and if so, then it is not unlawful, since it is lawful to apply natural causes to their effects.”

Also,

Again, there are some things in nature which have certain hidden powers, the reason for which man does not know; such, for example, is the lodestone, which attracts steel and many other such things, which S. Augustine mentions in the 20th book Of the City of God. And so women in order to bring about changes in the bodies of others sometimes make use of certain things, which exceed our knowledge, but this is without any aid from the devil. And because these remedies are mysterious we must not therefore ascribe them to the power of the devil as we should ascribe evil spells wrought by witches. (Part I, question 2)

Again
But natural bodies may find the benefit of certain secret but good influences.
Therefore artificial bodies may receive such influence. Hence it is plain that those who perform works of healing may well perform them by means of such good influences, and this has no connexion at all with any evil power.

To this we add the fact that most of those who were excecuted for witchcraft don't appear to have been either midwives or healers. Whether they were in fact practicioners of some pre-Christian or alternative religion, rebels against Christianity, innocent victims, or sufferers of some delusion is unclear, and may have varied from place to place. There is some suggestion that the witch-crazes may have been associated with outbreaks of ergotism (a deadly, hallucenogenic condition caused by consuming the ergot rust that forms on improperly cured and stored rye and other grains), but since these stories don't seem to be associated with stories of fingers, toes, or noses turning black and falling off, I'm inclined to doubt them, as this is one of the major side effects of ergotism.