Notices by Prof. Boswell's meanest TA (alpine_thistle@fandom.ink)

Since it's Halloween season, and I'm apparently Medieval-ish History Bill Nye on like three different platforms now, have some information about "witches."

There was never really any such thing as a "witch." There were no "Burning Times." There was no underground pan-European goddess magic cult that was suppressed by the evil Christians.

Many different cultures believed in different forms of magic, both good and evil, and had different names for the practitioners of this magic.

Often, "magic" was inseparable from medicine and religion (including Christianity). A "healing spell" might include folk herbalism, the invocation of a spirit or saint, and other rituals.

The witch trials didn't take off until the very late Middle Ages into the Early Modern period, which is when European monarchies (including the Papacy) started consolidating power and began persecuting ALL kinds of nonconformists (including Jews, Christian minorities, gay people, etc).

The "witches" weren't persecuted for being "witches." They were persecuted for being marginalized/vulnerable in societies that were undergoing massive, chaotic transformations, with populists and mobs who were looking for someone to blame.

"Cunning folk" and "wise women/men" were often persecuted for being at the rural edge of societies that were moving away from the traditional, decentralized agrarian order. They often went to their deaths saying Christian prayers.

The "witches" aren't your protofeminist girlboss ancestors. They are part of a dark and complex lesson about the dangers of authoritarian religion, centralized power, us/them propaganda, mob rule, and the scapegoating of minorities.

[third eye opens]

Professor Boswell will eventually become a canonized Roman Catholic Saint. It might take them a stupid long-ass time to make it official, but he's not in a hurry anymore.

[third eye closes]

It's so telling that a lot of saint-honoring Christians (yes, this is @ my beloved Episcopalians as well as the Romans) would rather consider noted colonizer Damien of Molokai the "patron saint of AIDS patients" and not someone who actually had, or ministered to, people with AIDS

Yeah! There's a lot of parallels between people who had leprosy in the past and people who had/have AIDS in the present. But we need to not be squeamish about this

"Nongay" is such a wonderful term for straight people

I think what I like about this is that

1) it's kind of told in the style/structure of an actual heroic tale from the Middle Ages, with tropes that are recognizable from such tales

2) the characters have believably medieval mindsets and react in believably medieval ways

3) the costumes and set dressing help you understand how such a tale would have been viewed by its original audience

4) it is critical of medieval biases and power structures WHILE portraying them accurately