Earliest Manuscript Broomstick Witches August 15, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
A few months ago Beach offered the evidence for early images of broomstick riding witches. There are three important manuscript sabbats that come down to us from the period 1450-1500 and that offer the best early visual evidence for the belief that witches attended sabbats by broom. The first of these images dates to about 1450. […]
Hating Medieval Cats #4: Waldensian Cats November 20, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
Another in our description of the cult of hate for medieval cats. The following text is anonymous and appeared in a fourteenth-century hand in MS Cotton Julius D, xi, fol. 84 r. It is short and it entitled Errores Valdensium, the Errors of the Waldensians. The Waldensians, for the uninitiated were a Christian sect that […]
Waldensian Courage, Waldensian Blood September 2, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
In a recent post Beach looked at the extraordinary survival of the Waldensians, a courageous proto-Protestant sect, which managed to weather the full rage of the Church in the Alps between France and Italy. The history of the Waldensians is a long catalogue of courage and atrocity: the courage of the Waldensians and the violence of the […]
The Longest Surviving Medieval Heresy August 26, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
Imagine this. You wake up one morning in 1216 and say ‘to hell with it’. You walk into the local square of piazza stand on an upturned wheelbarrow and talk to your neighbours about the cosmos. Perhaps you’ve learnt that Christ married Mary Magdalene and had twins; or that the angels are worms in universal […]
