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Saba SeeSAVANEMANJA OFSERBIA,SAINT.
sabbath and witches’ sabbath The sabbath had two
meanings in the Middle Ages and RENAISSANCE. It was the
seventh day of the week for JEWSand Christians, Satur-
day. It initially did and in some denominations still does
prohibit work. It was to be a day limited to rest and the
worship of GOD, for God himself had rested on the sev-
enth day during his creation of the world. Christians
transferred this custom to Sunday during the Middle
Ages, presumably because they believed that Christ’s Res-
urrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost
both occurred on this first day of the week. For the Jews
the sabbath retained its initial character and there was
considerable discussion about what they were and were
not allowed to do on that day of the week.
In very different terms, the witches’ sabbath occu-
pied an important place in the definition of the crime of
WITCHCRAFT, as described in the theoretical treatises and
trial confessions from at least the 15th century. If some-
one was found, or perceived, to have participated in its
celebration or practice, he or she was assumed to be a
witch and was thus liable to execution. The witches’
sabbath was thought to be the central ritual of a cult
antithetical to Christian worship. Its fundamental
aspects allegedly included nocturnal flights, sometimes
on a stick rubbed with an unguent, sometimes on an
animal, to the place where dreamlike, yet voluntary and
“sabbatical” acts were performed. These acts might
include carnal unions with demons or and cannibalism
of newborn children. No proof exists that these events
actually took place. In witchcraft trials, they could have
emerged from the imaginations and the cultural and
religious superstitions of the accusers and melded into
the confessions of the accused.
See alsoVISIONS AND DREAMS.
Further reading: Montague Summers, trans., The
Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James
Sprenger(1928; reprint, New York: Dover, 1971); Alan
C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe,
1100–1700: A Documentary History(Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1972); Jeffrey Burton Rus-
sell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1972); E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from
Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies(London: SCM Press,
1990).Sachsenspiegel (the Mirror of Saxon Law) The Sach-
senspiegelwas a collection of customary on feudal laws
mainly from SAXONYwhich was compiled first in Latin
then in the German vernacular about 1225 by Eike von
Repgow (ca. 1180–ca. 1235) with a final version appear-
ing in 1270. It synthesized German law in reaction and
opposition to the centralizing efforts of the ambitious
HOHENSTAUFENdynasty, who were trying to increase their
control over the German states by imposing a centralized,
standard, and imperial code of law. The Sachenspiegelwas
heavily influenced by Roman law, which favored imperial
authority. The Sachsenspiegelwas divided into two parts,
the law of the land and the law of fiefs or feudal law. It
assumed a duality of law between the secular and the
ecclesiastical but gave the papacy no role in the Law of
Germany. GREGORY XI condemned 14 articles in it in- The HOLYROMANEMPIREwas in theory to be based
on a common and unifying law within a collection of
interacting polities or states. The Sachsenspiegel later