The Canon Episcopi is an important document in the history of witchcraft

Witchcraft

Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...

. It is first attested in the Libri de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis composed by Regino of Prüm

Regino of Prüm

Reginon or Regino of Prüm was a Benedictine abbot and medieval chronicler.-Biography:According to the statements of a later era, Regino was the son of noble parents and was born at the stronghold of Altrip on the Rhine near Speyer at an unknown date...

 around 906, but Regino considered it an older text; he, and later scholars following him, believed it to be from a "Council of Anquira" in 314, but no other evidence of this council exists, and scholars today consider it probably to be a ninth-century Frankish composition. It was included in Burchard of Worms

Burchard of Worms

Burchard of Worms was the Roman Catholic bishop of Worms in the Holy Roman Empire, and author of a Canon law collection in twenty books, the "Collectarium canonum" or "Decretum".-Life:...

' Decretum (compiled between 1008 and 1012), an early attempt at collecting all of Canon law

Canon law (Catholic Church)

The canon law of the Catholic Church, is a fully developed legal system, with all the necessary elements: courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code and principles of legal interpretation. It lacks the necessary binding force present in most modern day legal systems. The academic...

, and subsequently in Gratian's

Gratian (jurist)

Gratian, was a 12th century canon lawyer from Bologna. He is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Franciscus Gratianus, Johannes Gratianus, or Giovanni Graziano. The dates of his birth and death are unknown....

 authoritative Corpus juris canonici of c. 1140. Because it was included in Gratian's compilation the text was treated as canon law for centuries, until Roman Catholic views on European witchcraft

European witchcraft

European Witchcraft is witchcraft and magic that is practised primarily in the locality of Europe.-Antiquity:Instances of persecution of witchcraft are documented from Classical Antiquity, paralleling evidence from the Ancient Near East and the Old Testament.In Ancient Greece, for example, Theoris,...

 began to change dramatically in the late medieval period.

The Canon Episcopi has received a great deal of attention from historians of the witch craze

Witch-hunt

A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...

 period as early documentation of the Catholic church's theological

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 position on the question of witchcraft. It has also received attention from scholars of Neo-paganism, such as Ronald Hutton

Ronald Hutton

Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specializes in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A reader in the subject at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and radio...

, because the document seems to link witchcraft beliefs with the Pagan

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 worship of the goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

 Diana of Roman myth. This linkage has been used by authors, such as Charles Godfrey Leland

Charles Godfrey Leland

Charles Godfrey Leland was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe....

, as support for the thesis, normally attributed to Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray

Margaret Alice Murray was a prominent British Egyptologist and anthropologist. Primarily known for her work in Egyptology, which was "the core of her academic career," she is also known for her propagation of the Witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials in the Early Modern period of...

, that European witchcraft represented a continuation of pre-Christian Pagan beliefs.

While the entire Canon Episcopi is several paragraphs long, the critical passage is as follows:

"Have you believed or have you shared a superstition to which some wicked women claim to have given themselves, instruments of Satan, fooled by diabolical phantasms? During the night, with Diana, the pagan goddess, in the company of a crowd of other women, they ride the backs of animals, traversing great distances during the silence of the deep night, obeying Diana's orders as their mistress and putting themselves at her service during certain specified nights. If only these sorceresses could die in their impiety without dragging many others into their loss. Fooled into error, many people believe that these rides of Diana really exist. Thus they leave the true faith and fall into pagan error in believing that a god or goddess can exist besides the only God."

The unknown author's position is that these "rides of Diana" are "superstition" and "phantasm"; that they did not actually exist, and goes so far as to condemn belief in the existence of the "rides of Diana" as leaving the true faith, or committing heresy

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

. This skeptical treatment of magic

Magic (paranormal)

Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...

 in the eleventh century has been compared by witchcraft scholars, such as Jeffrey Russell

Jeffrey Burton Russell

Jeffrey Burton Russell is an American historian and religious studies scholar who received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1955 and his PhD from Emory University in 1960. He is now Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara...

, to the credulity of the much later witch craze period. The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum

Malleus Maleficarum

The Malleus Maleficarum is an infamous treatise on witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, and was first published in Germany in 1487...

, a witch-hunter's manual from 1487 that played a key role in the witch craze, were forced to argue for a reinterpretation of the Canon Episcopi in order to reconcile their beliefs that witchcraft was both real and effective with those expressed in the Canon.

A further complication in the history of the Canon Episcopi is the addition of other names to the document as companions to Diana. Burchard of Worms added the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 figure Herodias

Herodias

Herodias was a Jewish princess of the Herodian Dynasty. Asteroid 546 Herodias is named after her.-Family relationships:*Daughter of Aristobulus IV...

 to his copy of the document in one passage, and the Teutonic goddess Holda

Holda

In Germanic folklore as established by Jacob Grimm, Frau Holda or Holle is the supernatural matron of spinning, childbirth and domestic animals, and is also associated with winter, witches and the Wild Hunt...

 in another. Later, in the twelfth century, Hugues de Saint-Victor quoted the Canon Episcopi as reading "Diana Minerva

Minerva

Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...

" in a church tract

Tract (literature)

A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They are...

 that was attributed to Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

. Later collections included the names "Benzozia" and "Bizazia".