What’s the difference between a witch and a cranky old woman?

The answer to that question got University of North Dakota faculty member Hans Broedel an appearance as a witch hunting expert on a National Geographic Channel television program called “The Witch Hunter’s Bible.” He will be in Washington, D.C., Nov. 16-18 for filming at the Library of Congress.

“The show is about “Malleus Maleficarum” – Latin for ‘the hammer of witches’ – an extremely influential handbook written in 1487 that helped people recognize witches and told them what to do if they spotted one,” said Broedel, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of History.

Broedel’s book, "'Malleus Maleficarum' and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief," brought him to the attention of Hoff Productions and the National Geographic Channel. The book is based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington. Author Christopher MacKay of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Ontario, will also be featured on the show.

Broedel, a Seattle native in his fourth year of teaching early modern history at UND, says that back in medieval times, the burning question of the day was determining whether someone suspected of being a witch should be put to death. "Malleus Maleficarum” was written as a handy guide for separating problem-causing witches from the rest of the population.

 “There weren’t any witches, of course,” Broedel says. “It was a completely imaginary crime. That’s why the book was important because, in a systematic way, it legitimized the practice of hunting and burning witches.”

Initially, the Catholic Church didn’t consider witches a problem.

“The church’s position was that if you prayed to God, the devil wouldn’t do anything bad to you,” Broedel explains. “If God let it happen, you had bigger problems than witches. Ultimately, it was because of your sin and that you were being punished.”

But according to Broedel, the church reversed its stance, and the pope officially sanctioned witch hunting and executions, which reached their zenith in Europe and the American colonies between 1550 and 1650. While the Renaissance is considered an age in which philosophy, science, art and religion flourished, it was also the peak time in history for witch hunting.

“The end of the middle ages was a time of social upheaval,” Broedel explained. “People don’t like change. It makes them nervous and anxious.”

One of Broedel’s favorite scenes from the 1970s movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” occurs when an educated knight from King Arthur’s roundtable uses science, logic and reason to help villagers decide that a woman they dressed up as a witch really is a witch who they could justify burning. Although intended to be humorous, Broedel noted that the scene contains some truth.

“People began to take empirical evidence more seriously, and they started to see a lot of evidence of witches,” he said. “They were trying to use their brains to determine who was a witch.”

Witches were thought to be Satan worshippers who caused bad things to happen.

“As soon as you believed these people existed, you had to do something about them,” Broedel said. “That’s was the motivating factor of ‘Malleus Maleficarum.’

“The author went to the pope and told him what was going on. The pope authorized him to go out and have witch finders to assist him in his job,” he said.

The book identified most witches as primarily older, poor, cranky women with bad reputations who were disliked by their neighbors. However, that alone couldn’t get someone branded as a witch.

“Rumor and suspicion weren’t enough,” Broedel said. “If the suspected witch told parents they had a fine young son and then he got sick the next day, you could associate the coincidence with harm.”
Once the inquisitor convicted the suspected witch, the local authorities were expected to deal with her.

“The final judgment was made by the church, and there would be heck to pay if you didn’t do what the church said,” he noted.

Broedel is no stranger to the subject of Halloween. While a visiting professor of medieval history at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., he was frequently interviewed as an expert on Halloween traditions.

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Contacts:
Hans Broedel
Department of History
(701) 777-2693
hans.broedel@und.edu

Patrick Miller
Office of University Relations
(701) 777-5529
patrick.miller@und.edu