The late medieval origin of the fairy tradition

      "It may be argued, therefore, that the concept of fairies which prevailed in early modern Britain formed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the fourteenth representing the decisive period in its gestation.  By 1400 it had become a stock component of most types of literature, across the island, and was also an established feature of popular belief, certainly in England and probably elsewhere.  Although it drew on older images and ideas, its appearance was a distinctively late medieval phenomenon. . . .
     "If these suggestions are correct, then the fairy kingdom was as much a late medieval development as the concept of the satanic conspiracy of witches, and may (almost certainly) join the wandering nocturnal hosts of the dead and (possibly) the nocturnal retinue of the Lady, as products of the Middle Ages rather than survivals from the ancient world.  In this case, Carlo Ginzberg’s idea that the British fairy queen and the Continental Lady and wandering dead were all surviving fragments of the same prehistoric ‘substratum’ of pagan shamanism is no longer tenable."

     Ronald Hutton, The witch:  a history of fear, from ancient times to the present (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2017), chap. 8, subsection "Where do fairies come from?"
     Cf. Francis Young, Twilight of the godlings:  the shadowy origins of Britain's supernatural beings (Cambridge University Press, ), as reviewed by George Morris in "Fairies," Times literary supplement no. 6275 (July 7, 2023):  24, underscoring mine:

"the fairies are not survivals from a pagan pantheon, but something more complex.
     "The pre-Christian religions of Britain had a clear role for 'godlings', but their place in the Christian cosmos of angels, demons and a single deity was ambiguous.  Not being the objects of worship, they usually didn't need to be demoted or demonized, so often escaped the direct condemnation of Christian authorities.  Far from being in conflict with Christianity, . . . fairies were 'non-Christian artefacts of a Christian culture', filling the same cultural niche as the minor deities of paganism without being direct survivals of the old religion.  Ideas about Roman religion were interpreted through Christian authorities, and the place of godlings in a Christian world was worked out through scriptural references to giants, fallen angels and monstrous beings.
     "Rather than thinking about fairies as survivals, . . . we might consider them as being more like the ship of Theseus, changing over time, but accruing layers of cultural and historical meaning."

Make it possible for me to see them, live with them

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to see them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque cum illis in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac vivere.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to live with them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

     Two forms of the Oratio pro patris et matris, Orationes pro defunctis, Officium defunctorum (Mass for the dead), late medieval/early modern Sarum missal (if not also other uses), translations mine.  Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae eccleslae Sarum, ed. Dickinson (Burntisland:  E Prelo de Pitsligo, 1861-1883), 873*.  I was put onto this by the dedication to Eamon Duffy's The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005 [1992]).

"Not that hit nowe is full of woundes and plages, or nowe deede"

John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln,
as depicted in his Missal, British Library

"Yonder it lyes, yonder is hys bodye, in yonder tombe, in yonder sepulchre.  Lett us goo thidre, lett us wepe with these Maryes, lett us turne and wynde thys bodye of Christe, lett us turne it thys wayes and that wayes, to and froo, and pytussely beholde hit.  And what shall we fynde.  We shall fynde a bloody bodye, a body full of plages and woundes.  Not that hit nowe is full of woundes and plages, or nowe deede:  but y[e]t thowe oughtest nowe as the tyme of the yere falleth, with the churche to remembere this body.  Howe it was for the broken, howe it was for the rente and torn, howe bloody it was, howe full of plages, and howe it was wounded.  And in recollection and remembrance thereof, wepe and lament, for it was doon for the."

Yonder it lies, yonder is his body, in yonder tomb, in yonder sepulchre.  Let us go thither, let us weep with these Marys, let us turn and wend this body of Christ, let us turn it this way and that way, to and fro, and piteously behold it.  And what shall we find?  We shall find a bloody body, a body full of [blow-inflicted] sores and wounds.  Not that it now is full of wounds and sores, or now dead:  but yet thou oughtest now as the time of the year falleth, with the church to remember this body.  How it was for thee broken, howe it was for thee rent and torn, how bloody it was, how full of sores, and how it was wounded.  And in recollection and remembrance thereof, weep and lament, for it was done for thee.

     John Longland, A Sermond made be fore the kynge 1535, RSTC 16795.5, sig. R4, as quoted on p. 36 of Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005 [1992]), 36.

"God does not command the impossible"

"God . . . does not command what is impossible; rather, by his commandment, he warns you to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot."

"non . . . deus inpossibilia iubet, sed iubendo admonet et facere quod possis et petere quod non possis."

     St. Augustine, De natura et gratia (415) xliii.50, trans. Roland J. Teske, WSA I/23, 250.  =CSEL 60, 270 ll. 20-22.  Cf. Council of Trent VI.11 (ed. Tanner, vol. 2, p. 675):  "God does not command the impossible, but by commanding he instructs you both to do what you can and to pray for what you cannot, and he gives his aid to enable you; for his commandments are not heavy, his yoke is sweet and his burden light."
     Yet if (for example) Pascal was right about "the [supposedly] Augustinian doctrine of the double abandonment [(double délaissement)] of the just by God" (who may withhold first the grace to pray and then, as a consequence of the failure to pray, the grace to keep the commandments), then we are as dependent on an inscrutable grace for the ability to ask (pray) as on an inscrutable grace for the ability to act (keep the commandments).  See Martine Pécharman, "Les écrits sur la grâce, ou de la bonne manière d’être Augustinien," Seventeenth-century French studies 35, no. 2 (December 2013):  110-115 (106-115), which seems to imply (?) that Pascal was going beyond Trent in insisting upon this interpretation, but was nonetheless "doing the work of a theologian" (115) thereby.  For Pascal, to insist that God sometimes does grant the just the grace to keep the commandments was to oppose the Manichaeans and Lutherans, but to insist that God is free to withhold the grace to pray was to oppose the Pelagians.

"faith . . . can save even without the sacrament"

"Therefore let us open our eyes and learn to pay heed more to the word than to the sign, more to faith than to the work or use of the sign. We know that wherever there is a divine promise, there faith is required, and that these two are so necessary to each other that neither can be effective apart from the other. For it is not possible to believe unless there is a promise, and the promise is not established unless it is believed. But where these two meet, they give a real and most certain efficacy to the sacraments. Hence, to seek the efficacy of the sacrament apart from the promise and apart from the faith is to labor in vain and to find condemnation. Thus Christ says: 'He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned' [Mark 16:16]. He shows us in this word that faith is such a necessary part of the sacrament that it can save even without the sacrament [(Quo monstrat, fidem in sacramento adeo necessarium, ut etiam sine sacramento servare possit)], and for this reason he did not add: 'He who does not believe, and is not baptized.'"

     Martin Luther, The Babylonian captivity of the church (1520), LW 36, 67 =WA 6:533 l. 37-534 l. 1.
     But according to Bryan D. Spinks ("Luther’s timely theology of unilateral baptism," Lutheran quarterly 9, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 31-32 (23–45)):  "However, when we inquire as to what Luther here means by faith, we have a very interesting answer.  It appears to be no more than accepting that in this sacrament God will do what he says he does"; "by 'faith' Luther here simply means acceptance that God will grant justification and salvation through this strange ritual" (all underscoring and italics mine).
 

     "Therefore the rule of which I have also spoken above stands. It states that God no longer wants to act in accordance with His extraordinary or, as the scholastics express it, absolute power but wants to act through His creatures, whom He does not want to be idle. . . .  This they call God’s 'ordered' power, namely, when He makes use of the service either of angels or of human beings. . . .
     "But if at times some things happen without the service either of angels or of human beings, you would be right in saying: 'What is beyond us does not concern us.' We must keep the ordered power in mind and form our opinion on the basis of it.  God is able to save without Baptism, just as we believe that infants who, as sometimes happens through the neglect of their parents or through some other mishap, do not receive Baptism are not damned on this account. But in the church we must judge and teach, in accordance with God’s ordered power, that without that outward Baptism no one is saved. Thus it is due to God’s ordered power that water makes wet, that fire bums, etc. But in Babylon Daniel’s companions continued to live unharmed in the midst of the fire (Dan. 3:25). This took place through God’s absolute power, in accordance with which He acted at that time; but He does not command us to act in accordance with this absolute power, for He wants us to act in accordance with the ordered power."

     Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis (1535-1545) 19:14, LW 3, 274, underscoring mine =WA 43, 71 ll. 7 ff.

Thank God for the Spanish and Italian Inquisitions (the Popes, too)

      "Clearly, then, popular belief throughout Italy and Iberia, and their attendant islands [(i.e. 'the Western Mediterranean basin' characterized by 'Mediterranean Mildness')], could have assimilated the [fearsome] new [(i.e. early 15th-century)] model of witchcraft [that had originated in the Western Alps], and counter-balancing cultural traits could only have slowed down that assimilation.  Another [mitigating] factor must [therefore] have been at work, and Gunnar Knutsen spotted it in his comparison between Catalonia and Valencia:  in the former, the Spanish Inquisition was much weaker than in the latter, and less able to restrain lay magistrates who responded more avidly to a public fear of witchcraft.  Such restraint was the crucial determinant of result:  in Valencia the girl who confessed to having sex with Satan was sentenced to religious instruction (after a beating), the woman accused of night flight was acquitted, and the would-be witch-finder was punished.  In all the other cases of alleged diabolism cited above, similar moderation was observed and diabolic elements played down by the inquisitors:  the woman who was forced to confess to demonic witchcraft by the Italian friar was then released on the orders of his superior.  General studies of the history of the respective inquisitions reveal a gradual formulation of central policy that made such outcomes at first possible and then mandatory.
     "In 1542 a central tribunal was established in Rome to oversee local Italian inquisitions, and by the 1580s this was advising caution in local trials of witches and enforcing it on some.  In 1575 Pope Gregory XIII ruled that nobody could be arrested simply because of a denunciation by somebody already under trial for witchcraft, while in 1594 Pope Clement VIII banished a southern Italian bishop whom he thought had prosecuted it too recklessly.  Around 1600 the tribunal accepted a protocol which was sent out to most Italian inquisitors from the 1610s:  all alleged deaths from witchcraft were to be investigated by medical experts operating under oath; suspects were to be held in different cells to prevent them from mutually reinforcing their fantasies; and investigators were to avoid any leading questions, identify local hatreds operating in accusations, and consider only objective evidence.  This made convictions for witchcraft practically impossible, and after 1630 papal authority effectively ended witch trials in the Italian peninsula.
     "A parallel process occurred in Spain, where from 1525 the Supreme Council of the national [i.e. the Spanish] Inquisition began to reduce death sentences imposed on suspected witches by its local representatives, accusing the latter of excessive credulity and use of torture to force confessions.  In 1526 it anticipated the later papal decree by decades, ordering that nobody should be arrested simply on the testimony of somebody already accused of witchcraft.  It also sought to take over itself the cases of those formally charged with witchcraft who pleaded innocence.  The last execution of somebody for witchcraft by a member of the Inquisition in Aragon was in 1535, and the last in Catalonia in 1548.  Trials persisted in Navarre, and in 1609 a serious witch-hunt on the French side of the border spilled over into that province, and produced a major panic, with almost two thousand accusations.  The first inquisitors to deal with them were persuaded of the reality of some, and burned six people.  Subsequently, however, the Supreme Council sent out a more scrupulous representative, Alonso de Salazar y Frias, who became convinced of the patent falsity of most confessions, and the impossibility of clear proof in the case of the remainder.  His report convinced his superiors, who were also shocked by the expense of the investigation.  Thereafter they adopted a code of rules for trials of alleged satanic witches which demanded such stringent proofs that it rendered convictions virtually impossible.  Witch-hunting was now confined to those parts of north-eastern Spain, especially Catalonia, where the authority of the [Spanish] Inquisition was weakest and trials could be conducted by secular courts with relative freedom.  Even there, however, the inquisitors did their best to halt the proceedings, reinforced by royal authority from 1620, and by the end of the 1620s Spain was apparently free of trials for diabolic witchcraft.
     "The great influence of the Papacy and the Spanish upon the western Mediterranean lands in general explains why the other territories in the region followed the same trajectory in the same period.  The new oversight and professionalism injected into the inquisitorial process by the foundation of central supervisory bodies seems in itself to have engendered a more rigorous and sceptical attitude towards accusations of demonic witchcraft, and a growing disposition to view even those people who confessed to dealings with the Devil as deluded and in need of redemption.  This change then became a factor in regional power politics, as interventions to prevent credulous and destructive witch-hunting enabled the central tribunals to enforce their authority more effectively over the localities.  Eventually a cautious attitude to accusations of witchcraft, and a programme of correction and not extermination for those convicted of attempting to work magic, became a matter of ethnic identity.  Seventeenth-century Italians, in particular, could be surprised and horrified by the huge body counts being stacked up by witch-hunts in Northern Europe.  The Mediterranean inquisitions remained forbiddingly effective machines for the persecution of magical practices, and even moderate punishments such as imprisonment, flogging and public penance would have been traumatic for those who suffered them.  None the less, they rescued a region representing about a quarter of Europe from the most concentrated and deadly period of the early modern witch trials.  They seem to have done so, moreover, because of political and ideological developments among the religious elite, in which popular beliefs played only a supporting role, in certain places, and not a decisive one."

     Ronald Hutton, The witch:  a history of fear, from ancient times to the present (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2017), chap. 7, subsection on "Mediterranean mildness."  (I am citing chapters rather than pages until I can insert the latter with the book (rather than just the differentially paginated browser-based e-book) in hand.)
     Hutton gives here what his review of the scholarship of his fellow specialists indicates was the reason for the approximately 500 executions in this area between 1560 and 1640 by comparison with the "between forty and sixty [(most likely less than fifty)] thousand people . . . legally put to death for the alleged crime of witchcraft" between 1424 and 1782 across Europe (and especially Northern Europe) as a whole, the former despite the fact that 1560-1640 was precisely "the period in which the regional inquisitions that defended the purity of the Roman Catholic religion in the Western Mediterranean basin, and which represented some of the most formidably efficient investigative and punitive machines in Europe, launched an attack on magical practices of all kinds."
     What he says at the end of chap. 7 here about the role played by "popular beliefs" in witch trials of the 15th-18th (or 16th-17th) centuries, whether medieval or even in a few cases ancient (that it was minor), is also what he says in the following paragraphs about "the core [northern] area of the early modern witch trials, where [by contrast] the majority of their victims [(the majority of those tried)] perished:  the German-speaking lands, the French-speaking parts of the Rhine and Moselle basis to their west and Poland to their east" (and presumably (?) other regions even further north, for example the British Isles and Scandinavia):  that they, too, were dominated in a top-down fashion by the new and largely unprecedented conception of witchcraft that arose out of the Western Alps in the 1420s (the pact with Satan or his demons, the Witches' Sabbath, the supposedly organized religion of Satan worship, etc.), and not by popular local traditions, however—as in the case of an inconsistent smattering of the motifs—ancient, so that the mentality responsible for the killing was almost entirely modern, and the influence (from the elites—until they caught up with those of the Western Mediterranean—downwards), mostly unidirectional.  The trials "were propelled and dominated . . . by a new, almost pan-European concept of witchcraft propagated by elites and accepted into general culture."
     I.e., it did it not arise out of an ancient or even medieval Satan-worship organically from below, but was a novum of a comparatively short duration:

modern historians completely reject the literal reality of that cult, however much they may attempt to understand and explain belief in it.  In this they are simply following the path laid out by early modern scholarly opinion itself, which came, first in practice and then in theory, to abandon that belief.  After all, medieval Europeans did not have it either, until the fifteenth century, and in long historical perspective it was a relatively short-lived phenomenon. . . .  This is an area in which no academic investigator ever goes native" or even "agnostic," regardless of "whether there [ever] were any actual would-be satanic witches in early modern Europe."  (Though "all the professional research of the past half century[, unwilling to step 'over the boundaries of current scientific knowledge',] seems to unite behind the conclusion that there were not, and that all of the witches’ assemblies described in the records were illusory [(the inquisitor Salazar:  "'the witches are not to be believed'")].  Furthermore, . . . there is an equal consensus that accounts of those assemblies were not mistaken or distorted portraits of some other religious tradition, such as a pagan one:  they just never happened.

But keep reading to the end of chap. 7 and beyond.  What follows at just the end of chap. 7 alone is quite nuanced.)
     As for the period after the witch-hunts of the fourth century, for which latter it isn't at all clear that Christianity was in any decisive respect responsible, there is this summary of chap. 6 (which, with Prof. Hutton's written concurrence, corrects the inadvertent transposition of the terms "encourage" and "discourage"):

What seems to be especially significant in th[e surviving] records is the part played by churchmen.  As said, they regularly and vehemently condemned all or most kinds of magic as demonically inspired and assisted, and none seems to have argued against a belief in witchcraft; indeed, the most influential theologian of the central Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, ruled firmly that the Christian faith proclaimed that to dispute the existence and effectiveness of harmful magic was to deny the reality of demons.  On the other hand, they did not develop any theology that demanded and encouraged the hunting of witches either, and, in practice, seem to have acted more frequently to [discourage] than to [encourage] it before 1300. . . . 

. . . Churchmen between 500 and 1300 were also generally consistent in condemning as illusions and superstitutions some widely held popular beliefs which would, had they taken them literally instead, have encouraged witch-hunting. . . .  [The] belief . . . that . . . night-roaming cannibal women who attacked sleeping people, children or adults, and consumed their organs[,] . . . embodied in the earliest surviving Germanic law code, was outlawed in subsequent codes as the effect of Christianity (and perhaps of educated Roman opinion, which had questioned the reality of the strix demon from pagan times) was felt.  Early medieval sermons and penitentials continued to condemn belief in such figures as a fiction.  Thus it can be suggested that early and high medieval churchmen both believed in the existence of magicians—and indeed this was beyond doubt as there were always plenty of people offering magical services, and also probably some who did attempt to use magic to harm enemies—and the need to stop them; and yet operated in many ways to reduce the likelihood of frequent and large-scale witch-hunting. 

. . . It may be that, once again, ideological factors were more significant than functional factors in producing a low and intermittent rate of persecution of presumed witches.  After all, exactly the same period, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, saw what has been called ‘the formation of a persecuting society’ in Europe, as its peoples turned upon Jews and homosexuals with a new hostility and introduced ever more rigorous measures and structures to deal with a new problem of widespread and mass Christian heresy.  The witch-figure, however, did not get caught up in these developments.