Witchcraft - Popular Culture Flashcards
Rituals
Christianity = strongest cultural bond in society
integrated within society - weddings - funerals and sacraments - maintained order - dictated morality etc.
Pageants - Festivals and Carnivals
Feast of Fools - debauchery before sin repenting Lent - Jan/Feb = safety valve on society
17 annual festivals
Saints Days = ecclesiatical events
May Day / Midsummer etc.
Public Humiliation
Social outcasts / deviation was punished publicly
- such as domineering women - hen picked husbands etc.
- led to mobs of villagers in localities - carrying effigies / playing rough music / forcing individuals to confess sins in public - form of intimidation
Legal Punishment
Corporal = maiming / removal of limbs / branding etc
Capital = hanging / beheading / burning - methods of killing criminals celebrated as events by villagers
Magic
Hermetica - Treatises - Alchemy - from the cunning folk in local and peasant societies to the learned classes and astrology - well integrated in Medieval and very early modern society
Moral Regulation
1540 - 1660 = claimed English period of crises and disorder
- genuine fear of societal collapse attributed to sinful acts or religious innovation - greater emphasis on repentance and social control
- led to prot/cath regeneration - religious limitations - P = Saints = pagan gods / C = Council of Trent 1545 - limit Saints day festivals - removal of safety valves
Challenges to Popular Culture
- Printing Press
= 1440s Gutenberg - by 1630s 6,000 titles in English - Economic prosperity
= economic growth due to Mercantile Capitalism and trade growth as well as population increase led to more urbanisation - dissonance between cultures - Withdrawal of the Elite
=by 1800 = abandoned to lower classes - engaging in more separate higher society - education - greater wealth inequality - scientific revolution / clergy new found emphasis upon religious moral regulation
