Not sure if this have been discussed before, but as most of you probably already know, before the Ministry of Magic was founded in 1707 after the establishment of the Statute of Secrecy, there was the Wizards' Council. Back in medieval times when wizards and Muggles lived side by side, before the witch hunts, what do you think their role was? Did they govern the wizarding community separately from the kings and queens of Muggles, or do you think it was in some ways answerable to or an extension of the dominion of Muggle royalty?

And in a broader sense, in what ways do you suppose the wizarding way of life differed in the time of the founders and in the time of Harry Potter?

 

We know that even before the statute of secrecy was in place, wizards and muggles usually kept to themselves and that the statute only formalised what was the essential default and made countries responsible for keeping the secrecy.

This is clear from the Tales of Beedle the Bard, which includes a story meant to encourage wizards to interact with muggles more and help them out, which really wasn't a common position. Likewise we know that the Potter ancestor Linfred of Stinchcombe, was also had his status as wizard hidden from his neighbours in the twelfth-century.

Quidditch Througout the Ages also explicitly mentions this when explaining why wizards use brooms of all things to fly.

Likewise the book mentions how precautions against muggles sightings were taken into account when designing the rules of Quidditch and even mentions that the Wizard's council passed several laws to prohibit muggles from witnessing quidditch.

So overall I'd say that no, the wizard's council didn't rule side by side with muggles, but seemed to have functioned in a similar, though probably less formalized way to the ministry, as in that they ruled wizarding society distinct from the muggle one.

Though we know that exceptions existed such as Nearly Headless Nick who was openly a court wizard, using magic for the benefit of nobles. Something similar applies to Armand Malfoy, who used magic to aid William the Conqueror in his invasion and received a good amount of land for it.

 

I'd imagine that the way it worked was probably the rich/educated members of muggle society might know about wizarding society, and might interact with at least a couple of wizards. But your average peasant wouldn't, because its too different from what they know for them to be able to empathise or understand.

So having wizards interacting with royalty makes sense, probably you'd also get a couple of wizards on staff at Oxford and Cambridge, and the various Scottish universities. Maybe within the Church hierarchy you'd get wizards working alongside senior figures.

But you can understand why most wizards would want to keep themselves to themselves - magic can solve the majority of problems that your average medieval peasant would be facing on a regular basis. Most people don't like living their lives at the beck and call of other folk, being obliged to spend their time helping others for no reward. And there's very little in the way of reward that your average medieval peasant could provide, the only things they really had available would be things the wizard could easily get for themselves.

 

A follow-up question is at which point did the first "wizarding societies" form? I'd imagine the very first magic users were some kind of tribal shamans and healers who wouldn't necessarily identify as separate from their tribes, and then later when first larger societies started forming you'd likely have wizards acting as priests (and healers), but my headcanon is that for the wast majority of history most wizards weren't even aware that they are such, as there wouldn't have been a coordinated effort to find them similar how Hogwarts reaches out to muggleborns.

 

Probably a very long time ago, if muggleborns only pop up at a very low rate (say around 1 in 200,000 births). Really you're probably relying on those muggleborns that do happen naturally to breed and have magical offspring in order for a magical society to take place.

I wonder whether, amongst very early humanity, you ended up getting very occasional entire groups that were magical because those with magic were better able to survive?

But for a wizarding society to exist, you probably need society as a whole to exist first, in order to bring together sufficient numbers of people that there'd be enough wizards to form a society.

So maybe Ancient Sumer and other similar cradles of civilisation would be where the first groups of wizards would have started to create their own independent cultures?

 

Wizards likely existed within muggle society during the Greco-Roman period as part of the priestly class. Cults like the Dionysian Mysteries, the Oracle at Delphi and the legal distinction between good and bad magic heavily suggests that there was integration between magical and muggle people. It would also solve the 'we don't want to be bothered all the time' thing if wizards were largely upper class or religious people. The upper classes were always afforded the ability to say no and just be listened to during those eras.

My head canon would be (at least for European wizards) that after the Fall of Rome and the danger to priests from pagan invaders that they began to voluntarily seclude themselves for their own safety. It would have started so that invaders wouldn't be able to tell them from the crowd at first, but with apparation it would means wizards would begin to form their own culture within but separate to muggle society. As they became less directly involved with religion it would also mean losing some of their former status unless they've got a link to the existing political structure like the Malfoys did. So they'd be approached by people asking for favours more often.

All this added together means wizards begin to form their own society mostly because they can teleport and don't want to be harassed by muggles (either domestic or foreign), beginning with just finding other wizards and hanging out, followed by mixed muggle-wizard villages, then by wizard only towns after the Statute of Secrecy came about in the 1600s.

 

Here's some somewhat separate thoughts on how I see the history, in roughly chronological order.

- In the ancient times wizards were relatively evenly distributed into the population, with the idea that all wizards were ultimately descendants from muggleborns. Most wizards weren't aware of other wizards. These wizards were farmers, craftspeople, village healers etc "hedge wizards" who were mostly illiterate and what active knowledge of magic they had was transferred as oral tradition from parents to children. They would have different kinds of methods and tools to do their magic; a blacksmith would use some kind of enchanting, a farmer might have knowledge of herbology, a healer might know how to make potions etc.

- In addition to "hedge wizards" there were more institutional magical groups, mostly in the priestly class. They might have done some active searching for new "priests" and have written records of magic.

- At some point you'd have literate wizards starting to travel and try to gather together the oral traditions of these "hedge wizards". This would be the start of first unified magical textbooks. Era wise I'd say bronze age would have been the first time this happened, and the Library of Alexandria would likely become the greatest collection on magic where you'd have combined knowledge from all of the former empire of Alexander the Great.

- I'd imagine the first coordinated efforts to standardize magic use would have been for military purposes. There you'd have first recruiters going around trying to find young magic users from the "hedge wizards", giving them standardized tools (wands in the case of the Romans) and teaching them standardized magic. This kind of recruitment would likely be the first time most "hedge wizard" families would come into contact with other wizards. Serving together in a military would also help form relationships between wizards.

- The military explanation could also feed into the need to keep magic hidden. The muggles would learn of battles where magic was used, and that could lead into fear of all magic and discrimination against known wizards. On the other hand you'd have wizards who would try to dodge getting drafted into service. You could also have a beginning of class segregation between wizards at this point: the officers and nobles who were the leaders of the magical force would see the draft-dodging country wizards as inferior, leading to a sort of proto-version of purebloods vs. muggleborn.

- At some point you'd likely get at least one empire led by a Wizard emperor into a murderous expansion (think Xerxes in the movie 300). That kind of event could lead into first international cooperation between wizards to try enforce some kinds of "rules of warfare" for magic to keep the entire world from burning up in some cataclysmic runaway fiendfyre accident.

- The Roman empire would likely have had a pretty comprehensive network of wizards all aware of each other, and through military service you'd have knowledgeable wizards stationed and pensioned all around the empire. After the collapse of the Western Rome, you'd still have local wizards holding the knowledge. I'd also imagine portkeys and apparition would have been invented around that time (the need to somehow hold together the wast frontiers of Roman Empire would definitely create a need for fast transportation), giving the wizards opportunities to keep contact with each other and transfer knowledge.

- And then we get to the medieval times, founding of new independent magical institutions (Hogwarts) and beginning of formation of magical societies wholly outside the muggle sphere of influence. You'd still have high-class wizards who'd rather socialize with their muggle peers than some lower class craftswizard, but that would slowly start to fade as the wizarding schools become more prominent and prestigious.