The Puzzle of Left-Handedness (8 page)

The persecution of witches began in the fifteenth century, when the old medieval structures were finally starting to crumble and art and science were wriggling out from under the suffocating constraints of the Christian authorities, a period known as the Renaissance. Furthermore, the urban mercantile classes were demanding a place on the poli tical stage. Their power lay in their money, rather than in any medieval appeal for loyalty to a system ordained by God, and they were determined to win. Eventually, centuries later, that shift in power would result in two revolutions: the Industrial Revolution that made industrial production and capital the most important forces in creating and sustaining the powerful of the earth, and the French Revolution, which finally put paid to the invulnerability of a mythical authority that had been placed above everyone by God and tradition. These changes were still in the distant future. A fifteenth-century European lived in a world that was beginning to rock on its foundations, a world that still bore the barely healed scars of the universal upheaval brought about by the Black Death of 1347–51. That pandemic – traditionally understood to have been bubonic plague although it may equally well have been Ebola or possibly the Marburg virus – claimed 75 million, perhaps 100 million lives on the continent in the space of a few years. The loss would not be made up until around 1600 and the whole of Europe was left deeply traumatized. As if that were not enough, roughly simultaneously a period of relatively low temperatures began, known as the little Ice Age, that lasted until the nineteenth century and caused harvests in large swathes of Europe to fail year after year, resulting in famine, price explosions and further epidemics. In this climate of hunger, want and social uncertainty, a shaken population felt a need to find scapegoats. A deep mistrust of minorities arose, fuelled by a fear of evils that apparently struck without rhyme or reason. By about 1430 a world had been created in which people were quick to see a Devil’s disciple around every corner, a member of a diabolical worldwide conspiracy – a witch.

It was also a period in which little remained of the authority of the church over worldly affairs. This was largely the fault of the church itself. long years of infighting and political intrigue had caused deep cracks to appear in the image of papal inviolability. Antipopes, corruption and libertines within the church who were vulnerable to blackmail gradually led most worldly rulers to pay a good deal less attention to what the pope said, which is not to deny that those rulers were often deeply religious, either by personal conviction or for reasons of political opportunism. Nevertheless it was 1534 before Henry viii openly and irrevocably defied the pope and the church hierarchy, setting up a religious enterprise of his own as boss of the Anglican church.

By this time something had been brewing among ordinary believers for many years. The signs had been visible for two centuries: movements of dissenters such as the Waldenese and the Cathars came and went, as did internal reformists, the Cluny movement being one example. Dissatisfaction with the ethical state of affairs within the church led to the establishment of various new mendicant orders, including the Franciscans. In the end none of this helped. The church remained corrupt; indeed if anything it became even more degenerate than before. As 1500 approached the tipping point arrived: the Reformation was now on its way and it would ultimately lead to the eighteenth-century creation of the nation state as we know it, ending the role of religion as the most important guarantee of political unity.

In the desperately unstable situation that resulted from this power vacuum, with everyone searching for a new equilibrium and new values, the ruling powers did all they could to survive and maintain their grip on power. They naturally turned to the oldest, indeed the only available mechanism: religion. Under its banner the battle lasted for many years, with bloody religious wars ravaging Europe from 1517 to 1648. This was the heyday of the Inquisition. And of the obsession with witches.

Fear of witches, which had always existed but from about 1430 spilled over to become a general fear of a worldwide conspiracy of diabolical powers, was whipped up mainly by those at the top of the hierarchy. The persecution of witches developed into a veritable holy crus ade, whose background was more political than emotional. It was one of the means by which the authorities, consciously or unconsciously, tried to prevent the collapse of the social order. As yet they had no other binding agent to hand. Where the new concept of the sovereign state did at last catch on, witch-hunts quickly ceased. This happened first in the Republic of the United Netherlands, which was founded in the late sixteenth century out of Spanish possessions along the North Sea coast. In 1603 in Nijmegen the last death sentence was carried out, whereas in the nearby province of Limburg, which did not belong to the young Republic, 70 witches were executed between 1603 and 1637. In Spain and Italy, where the Reformation failed to gain a firm footing and the old faith remained fairly securely in place, the persecutions ended in about 1620 and relatively few death sentences were passed. Elsewhere conditions were much more chaotic, and witch-hunts were more ferocious and went on until a much later date. In Western Europe they lasted until not long after the Peace of Münster in 1648, which brought an end to the wars of religion, and they continued longest of all in Eastern Europe, where witch trials were rife until well into the eighteenth century.

Title page in an edition of The Hammer of Witches  (1580), published in Frankfurt am Main, on which Jacob Sprenger is the only author mentioned. In reality Heinrich Kramer was the main if not the sole author.

Further evidence that the obsession with witches was not simply a case of mass hysteria but was conscientiously exploited, kept on the boil and sometimes even orchestrated by the religious and secular authorities is the almost endless series of handbooks about the witch problem that appeared in this period. The most notorious example is
The Hammer of Witches
, or
Malleus Maleficarum
to give it its original Latin title, published in 1486 and a runaway success that was reprinted dozens of times. The book is controversial in every respect and even its authorship is uncertain. Two Dominican inquisitors were credited with writing it, although they were not named on the title page until after both of them had died. One was the fanatical persecutor of witches and heretics Heinrich Kramer, a man with a slightly dubious reputation and few scruples, who preferred, as was usual among scholars of his time, to go by a Latin version of his name, Henricus Institoris. As a somewhat scatterbrained fellow, an unguided missile, not averse to the occasional sophism, he seems a rather strange partner to his fellow author Jacob Sprenger. Although Sprenger’s attitude was barely any more enlightened than Kramer’s, he was regarded as a respectable and sensible man, and as an inquisitor he had far greater authority. It has been established beyond doubt that unlike Kramer he was never involved in a witch trial that ended in execution.

Since in many ways
The Hammer of Witches
is a bizarre treatise that frequently contradicts itself, and because it was generally known that Sprenger refused to have anything to do with Kramer, it has been claimed that Sprenger did not in reality have a hand in the writing of the book. Kramer is said to have entered his name as an author to give his tome greater cachet. This is improbable, however.
The Hammer of Witches
was a huge success from the moment of its publication, going through reprint after reprint and becoming greatly respected in witch-hunting circles, which included many German princes. Everyone who was anyone knew it had been written by Kramer and Sprenger, and Sprenger never uttered a word about Kramer’s supposed misattribution. Of course it’s possible that Sprenger did not contribute to the actual writing of it, but in that case he must have been involved in some other way. At the very least he consciously tolerated Kramer’s use of his name.

The content of the book is no less odd than the mysteries surrounding its authorship. To call it a bizarre piece of work is almost an understatement. It is utter claptrap from cover to cover, a dizzying labyrinth of fantasies about incubuses who inseminate fallen women with evil, witches who tear off men’s penises and stick them back on in a trice, and plenty more charming nonsense of that sort. Yet for all its deadly earnest craziness it does offer a precise definition of what witches actually are and describes in great detail the process that must be adhered to in trying them. Surprisingly, perhaps, the court proceedings, if we overlook a few sloppy and self-contradictory passages, are relatively well thought through and hemmed in by all kinds of safeguards. Torture is permissible, but it’s certainly not presented as a first resort for those attempting to get at the truth. Evidence derived exclusively from torture is regarded as inadequate. Grounds for prosecution do not include, for example, a vague alliance with the Devil. Only the most serious form of apostasy counts: a true pact with Satan, sealed by coitus. We are not told how such a thing could be proven unless the woman confessed. Crucially, there had to be an effective
maleficium
, in other words actual harm done to specific people. To put it in more modern terms, reasonable suspicion of a punishable offence was required.

Physical marks on a woman’s body were hardly ever presented as proof in formal witch trials. They served purely as corroborating evidence for the prosecution’s case. Ordinary people as well as informers and self-appointed witch hunters had a different attitude, however. Unusual warts had a considerable ‘what did I tell you?’ impact, as did strangely shaped scars, peculiar birthmarks and any number of deformities great and small. Rudimentary extra nipples had a particularly powerful impact. These are fully or partially developed supernumerary nipples on the ‘milk lines’, the two parallel lines of tissue running down across the chest and stomach, from which nipples sprout in all mammals, including humans. The chances of coming upon such nipples are quite high, since they can be found in about one person in a hundred, sometimes purely as a discolouration, sometimes fully functional. They were suspect not only because of their association with intimate motherly care and eroticism but because by their very nature they normally remain hidden under clothing. In a climate of suspicion it was a short step to the conclusion that the owner must be hiding them deliberately, for nefarious reasons.

We should not be too surprised that left-handedness as such never featured even as corroborating evidence. There’s nothing particularly secretive about it. It may well pass unnoticed for years, but at the same time it is hard to conceal and will not suddenly emerge to the utter astonishment of others in the way that an extra nipple or a suspiciously shaped birthmark on the buttock might. In any case, it’s simply too common. Had left-handers been persecuted, all citizens would have run an unacceptable risk of losing someone close to them.

10

Factionalism

‘In such manner labour the National Deputies . . . with toil and noise,’ wrote English satirist and historian Thomas Carlyle in 1837 of the revo lutionary French parliament of 1789, ‘cutting asunder ancient intolerable bonds; and, for new ones, assiduously spinning ropes of sand. Were their labours a nothing or a something, yet the eyes of all France being reverently fixed on them, History can never very long leave them altogether out of sight.’ The Assemblée is a mess, says Carlyle:

As many as a hundred members are on their feet at once; no rule in making motions, or only commencements of a rule; Spec tators’ Gallery allowed to applaud, and even to hiss; Presi -dent, appointed once a fortnight, raising many times no serene head above the waves.

There is hope all the same. The chaos is not unlimited:

Nevertheless, as in all human Assemblages, like does begin arranging itself to like; the perennial rule,
Ubi homines sunt modi sunt
, proves valid. Rudiments of Methods disclose themselves; rudiments of Parties. There is a Right Side (Cote Droit), a left Side (Cote Gauche); sitting on M. le President’s right hand, or on his left: the Cote Droit conservative; the Cote Gauche destructive.

The rightist faction was not composed of sheep, by any means:

On the Right Side, pleads and perorates Cazales, the Dragoon-captain, eloquent, mildly fervent; earning for himself the shadow of a name. There also blusters Barrel-Mirabeau, the Younger Mira beau, not without wit: dusky d’Espremenil does nothing but sniff and ejaculate; might, it is fondly thought, lay prostrate the Elder Mirabeau himself, would he but try, which he does not. last and greatest, see, for one moment, the Abbé Maury; with his jesuitic eyes, his impassive brass face, ‘image of all the cardinal sins’. Indomitable, unquenchable, he fights jesuiticorhetorically; with toughest lungs and heart; for Throne, especially for Altar and Tithes. So that a shrill voice exclaims once, from the Gallery: ‘Messieurs of the Clergy, you have to be shaved; if you wriggle too much, you will get cut.’

Carlyle spotted an ominous figure on the left:

seagreen Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian; he would make away with formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly in formulas, of another sort. ‘Peuple,’ such according to Robespierre ought to be the Royal method of promulgating laws, ‘Peuple, this is the law I have framed for thee; dost thou accept it?’, answered from Right Side, from Centre and left, by inextinguishable laughter. Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen may by chance go far: ‘this man,’ observes Mirabeau, ‘will do somewhat; he believes every word he says.’

In this warm-blooded description of the birth pangs of a new and revolutionary France lie the roots of the left–right dichotomy that has come to dominate modern society like no other. The political, ideological left and right have ever since been the benchmark of political and social polarization from london to Beijing, from Puget Sound to Pata gonia. The French delegates invented the concepts more or less by accident, but it was Carlyle who chiselled them into granite.

Carlyle characterized the leftist faction as destructive. He meant it was the place for people who wanted to change things, to build a new, better society, and who therefore demanded that the old structures of authority be torn down – precisely those structures ‘the right’ held dear. Right-wingers thought society was fine the way it was, with altars and tithes and respect for one’s betters.

In the Paris of 1789 that was the basic antithesis, but people would not have been people if they hadn’t immediately started to deck out the core concepts of left and right with countless associations, encouraged by events and by the emergence of a wide range of tendencies and ideologies. Little by little a new table of opposites was created, looking something like this:

This is no less inconsistent, generalizing, simplistic and contradictory than Pythagoras’ list, or any other version – and no better a reflection of reality – yet it does offer a clear image of the lines along which Western political and social discourse has run for the past two centuries.

In one fascinating respect it’s fundamentally different from Pythag -oras’ table, which was concerned with far more neutral phenomena, most of them aspects of nature. Straight, crooked, sun, moon, life, death – these things may be bound up with emotions and value judgements but in themselves they are objective concepts, independent of mankind. The table of socio-political opposites contains quite different elements. Almost without exception they are concepts invented by man that could not exist without him. These are choices made for reasons of principle, indissolubly linked to value judgements, yet we use both tables opportunistically, simply shutting our eyes to their contradictions and inconsistencies.

Take respect for authority, traditionally seen as one of the core values of the conservative right. Since the rise of socialism (left) and capitalism (right), if not before, the right has been associated with individualism, in the sense that it’s oriented towards self-interest rather than the general interest. But how does that fit with the equally right-wing tendency towards conformism? What does individualism mean if at the same time you always have to conform? Conversely, how can leftists be at one and the same time socially oriented, and therefore the personification of solidarity, and non-conformist? Which societies were the most egalitarian in the past? That particular honour goes to the Communist regimes in Russia and China and their satellites. And what should we make of Nazi Germany? It was the textbook example of an extreme right-wing society but it called itself socialist, was explicitly anti-capitalist and indeed had all the familiar features of socialism.

Let’s be honest. Countries that are so intolerant that you’d do well to avoid getting noticed, where conformism is therefore a prerequisite for survival, have always ranged right across the spectrum from the extreme left to the extreme right, no matter how those terms are understood. The interesting thing is that although a table of opposites like this has little to do with reality even when it comes to the basic principles according to which we live, it is felt to be a helpful way of organizing our thoughts in this complex chaos we call society, which explains why we’re so quick to use the terms left and right, and why we often find it so incredibly hard to say exactly what we mean by them.

In modern, more or less democratic countries with a high degree of press freedom, the concept of the political left has been used of late in one particular way. Complaints are consistently heard that the media in these countries are too left-wing. Strangely enough you rarely if ever hear claims that the press or television are generally speaking too far to the right.

This tends to contradict the impression we get from reading the better British newspapers, for example, and it’s hard to discern any features of the
BBC
that would identify it as the mouthpiece of socialist agitators. In American dailies you’ll have to look long and hard to detect voices that sound the slightest bit leftist, even in the best-quality and most critical papers. The biggest selling Dutch newspaper,
De Telegraaf
, calls itself ‘the paper of the wide-awake Netherlands’. The term ‘wide-awake’ refers to the early to bed, early to rise, hardworking conformist citizen, and the paper has an undisguised right-wing slant. Things are little different in France. Wherever you look, the lower reaches of the media, especially the most popular British newspapers, tend overwhelmingly towards the narrow-minded, fearful right and show very little interest in improving society. Instead of dealing with troublesome social evils they concentrate on bite-sized personal scandals and simple sensation.

What ‘too left-wing’ means is that newspapers and news or current affairs programmes on radio and television often report on, and side with, those who are victims in one way or another. They are full of stories about the powerless and neglected, the oppressed little man and those who are dependent on others. They report on the weak, the sick and the homeless, refugees and illegals, butterflies and beetles. This is indeed how the media work, but ultimately it has little to do with left and right. Good-news media and nothing-to-worry-about media don’t survive for long. Whatever their complexion, media organizations rely on bad news, scandals, problems and abuses, since they make for interesting reports and revelations. These are the things people want to read about.

The result is that newspapers and magazines, radio and television, plus whatever other media we have or are currently inventing, always pay disproportionate attention to the things that disturb and frighten us, to the bad things in life. Those are precisely the things that the con -ser vative, contented segment of the nation would prefer not to think about too much, which is something they have in common with the people who hold high office at any given time and are therefore seen as responsible for everything that’s wrong with society. They, the comfortable and the powerful, whatever their other beliefs or political persua sions, are the source of complaints that the media are too far to the left.

This eternal criticism of the media therefore has little to do with left or right. American linguist and political thinker Noam Chomsky has uncovered its true purpose. It always suits the class of conservative top dogs in any society to say that the media are too left-wing, because by doing so they define what counts as reasonable opposition. If the respec -table media are too far to the left, then truly critical or negative opinions about the political and social state of affairs automatically belong to what the British rather delightfully call the loony left.

This is a fairly easy way to declare off-limits any critical voices calling for radical change to the existing social order. After all, everyone is aware of the boundaries, everyone follows the mainstream media to some extent. No one wants to be sidelined, so we all, especially those of us who are involved in politics, automatically stay on the safe middle ground, where uncomfortable matters can be swallowed up in a sea of obfuscation. Those who complain about media bias today may be more civilized and subtle in their approach, but as an instrument of power for use by the ruling class they perform the same role as the Stasi did in the former
DDR
. Their goal is to set limits to critical thought and keep control of movements favouring change.