It’s only two days until Halloween, which primes our psyches for tales of witchcraft and ghosts. But nowadays most of us (at least around here) see these things in a lighthearted way. It hasn’t always been that way. Witchcraft — even though people weren’t all that sure what it was — was something you could get accused of and even put on trial for. In Massachusetts that brings the Salem Witch Trials to mind, but three centuries before that happened, the same thing occurred.
It was October 29, 1390. The autumn sun dawned on a cloudy day…oh never mind; nobody has any idea what the weather was on any particular day in 1390. Well…probably nobody remembers…
But back to the story. It was October 29, 1390. A woman in Paris was distraught because her paramour had left her. André was a tall, handsome…no, wait a second, nobody knows who the guy was, just that it was really all his fault for walking out. I mean…I don’t think anybody knows who he was.
This time for sure, though. It was October 29, 1390. A distraught woman, upset because the man she loved had left her, decided to take action. But what could she do? Women in medieval Europe, even if they lived in the big city, didn’t have much recourse when they’d been wronged. That was left up to the men — but due to the event in question, this woman was fresh out of men. She didn’t even have much ability to chase down the man herself; as a rule women in 1390 Paris didn’t go marching around the city alone except for short distances to safe locations.
What she did instead was visit two other women. Everybody in the neighborhood probably knew them, or knew about them. They were probably the ones you’d go to if you were sick, or if your chickens stopped laying, or your cow’s milk dried up. Or…well, OK, in Paris in 1390 you’d be far more likely to have a goat than a cow, but you get the idea; these two women were the neighborhood fixers. Maybe their cures and amulets and potions didn’t always deliver results, but as they say in Paris, “couldn’t hurt!” Except they would probably say it in French, and depending on just what ingredients they were brewing up, those mixtures could have done real damage. But never mind, they didn’t really say that in Paris in those days anyway; I just made that up. (As far as you know, anyway…I mean, nobody could actually remember those days…could they?)
The two fixers — we’ll call them Ann and Sarah; both of those names were common then — listened to the woman’s plight and assured her that they could whip up a potion to get everything back the way it was — and maybe better. After all, if they guy was somehow magically restricted from leaving again, everybody would rest easier, right? Well maybe not including him, but witchcraft isn’t really about taking men’s feelings into consideration. Which, now that I mention it, might have something to do with what seems to keep happening. But I digress.
Ann and Sarah got paid (they never charged too much; probably just a couple loaves of bread or a spare pigeon or something) and told the woman to return in three days. When she did, they’d brewed up some fragrant brown stuff that they gave her careful instructions about. She was to…well, no, now that I recall, there’s no way we could know what the instructions were, is there? It being centuries ago and all. Right.
So the woman followed Ann and Sarah’s instructions as best she could, but probably made some beginner-level mistakes. Those pesky mortal whiners are always messing things up that way; they can never remember to apply salves counter-clockwise instead of clockwise. Especially in 1390, when nobody had clocks… but for whatever reason, the potion didn’t work. The woman’s distress turned to anger, and she went straight to the gendarmes to complain about being cheated out of a whole pigeon. Or whatever it was.
That is, she would have gone to the gendarmes if there had been any in 1390. She did the late-fourteenth-century equivalent instead, and complained to the priest. You know what happened next, and exactly 610 years ago today — they put Ann and Sarah on trial. The first civil trial for witchcraft.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that a bit over three centuries later, on the same day, October 29, the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts Colony, concluded. It’s probably another coincidence that the names Ann and Sarah showed up in that trial too — I mean, if I was just making up names for those 1390 women, I could have picked any names I wanted (assuming I was able to exercise free will in the matter, which obviously I was able to, right?) But there’s also the possibility that just maybe, they were the same witches; they were just trying again in Salem! If that’s true, they’re about for a third attempt…
