Satanism and Witchcraft: A Study in Mediaeval Superstition [Paperback]

I first read "Satanism and Witchcraft" in 1970, more than thirty years ago, and I still recall how enthralled I was by this incredibly dramatic and engaging history of the development of superstition in the Middle Ages. In fact, I used it as a source-book for one of my plays, "From All Things Evil," many years later.
Jules Michelet may not be the most accurate historian (in fact much fault has been found with his methods) but boy, does he ever tell a good story! Reading it again after all these years, I still have trouble putting it down.
This imaginative recreation of the Dark Ages is filled with pity for the innocent rural women of the time, when Christianity was trying to beat down the centuries old customs of honoring the nature spirits. Michelet traces the evolution of Satan from the gentle Puck of Greek origin, to the fully formed Goat-Headed Pan that became his primary image in the Middle Ages. We realize that the image we have of Satan is largely a construct of the Church, and not incidentally, of the woodcut pamphlets that so horrified and entertained the cloistered monks of the day, the precursor of modern horror fiction. Much of the misinformation we have of the horrors of that era, are the result of these pamphlets. But, as they say, perception often trumps truth, and this was perhaps never so common as in the Medieval Period.
Michelet has no love for the Medieval Catholic Church, but he has great sympathy for it's victims. He sees the Inquisition as far more political and economic than spiritual, as indeed it was. In the Twelfth through the Fifteenth Centuries especially, the Church was corrupt, greedy and power-hungry and many of its own reformers wrote vociferously against its abuses. The victims, most often, were women. Lonely, aged, poor and powerless women whose only offences were oddity at a time when crops failed or milk spoiled.
But, even more engaging than the evolution of Satan, is the evolution of these daughters, wives and mothers during the period, always under the governance of either their fathers, husbands, or in old age, sons, the woman of the house struggled to find any little thing that she could call their own. In many instances, since the "five senses world" offered her so little, her solace was in the imagination, in the "Otherworld" of myth and fairy story. The denizens of that world comforted her loneliness and kept her from despair.
Most moving, to me, is the famous chronicle of the unfortunate Charlotte(or is it Catherine?) Cadiere at the hands of her confessor, Fr. Jean Baptise Girard. Michelet pulls out all the stops on this one.
Michelet's writing is as lush and as engaging as any of the master storytellers of the Nineteenth Century, no spare "journalistic" narrative here! "Satanism and Witchcraft" is intended to sweep the reader away on wings of high prose. It is an incredibly moving journey from cover to cover.

Satan as Hero? Michelet a Satanist? The book is the basis for a group of Michelet Satanists? Oh for pete's sake. What some people think is "real" continues to astound me, and you'd think after all these years my astounder would have been pretty much astounded out. But no. Once again, someone expresses a belief so unfounded and so, well, stupid, there I go, getting astounded again. Too bad they wrote it yonks ago. Chances are they won't be reading this. In any case, this book, of which I have an ancient falling apart copy with a truly lurid cover, is a brilliant bit of historical writing. No pulling punches, no shying away from what the Church might think or say (and there was a time not so long ago, one had to be damned careful of old Popey), this book stands even now as a Classic on the Dark Ages. Were we nuts then? You bet. Are we nuts now? Yes. In a different kind of way, but getting nuttier by the day. Are we headed for a new Dark Age? Might be. Timely this book, no matter how long ago it was written. Dripping with blood and lust and hypocrisy and cruelty...that was us. Now we're dripping with greed and a casual indifference to the suffering of others, not to mention the suffering of animals and the earth itself. What do we care when scads of us are so crazed we think something called the Rapture is coming to take us away.

Satan is here and Satan is us.

Michelet tracks the rise of what was termed "witchcraft" from its roots in the ancient pagan world up to the 18th century. He is unashamedly sympathetic to the women who were victimized by the witch-hunters (keep in mind it was written in 1862) and denounces the misogyny of the church. His descriptions, sometimes poetic and sometimes dripping with sarcasm, really enrich the book.