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Wicca | Richard M.Golden - Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Western Tradition | 74 | 46049 Golden Chap. A av First Pages 08/24/2005 p.37 Application File
state church and governmental authorities who perse- Angels
cuted them as the ones in league with Satan. T h e i r Throughout the history of religion there has been a
rejection of transubstantiation and of Catholic ritual as belief in spiritual beings or powers linking our world to
magical nonsense led them to associate belief in diabol- some transcendent realm. In the Western world, spiri-
ical witchcraft with Catholicism. tual beings of this kind that are seen as good are called
When witch hunting became popular again after angels, while those that seem evil are known as demons
1560, no known Anabaptists published works support- or devils. Although it may seem paradoxical, testi-
ing the activity, and a few spoke out against it. Mo s t monies and confessions given at the time of the great
Anabaptists simply ignored the event, seeing it as mere- witch hunts sometimes contain references to the pres-
ly one more oppre s s i ve effort of state churches to ence of angels, in addition to witches and Devils, at the
e n f o rce conformity of belief and practice. A few witches’ Sabbat. Naturally, at that time, the presence of
attacked belief in diabolical witchcraft indire c t l y, by heavenly beings could be explained as a trick of the
sharply reducing the importance of the Devil in their Devil. Given, however, the principle of contrariety that
theology at a time when other Protestant and Catholic characterized the conception of the world—that is, the
theologians were increasing it. In this way, Dutch spiri- belief that good and evil presuppose one another—it is
tualists and Mennonites became the most import a n t perhaps not entirely surprising that angels appear in
Anabaptist critics of witch persecution. As early as these stories.
1540, the spiritualistic Anabaptist David Joris had
diminished the Devil to little more than the inner vices
of individuals and was already condemning fears of
witchcraft and the Devil. Menno Simons (ca.
1496–1561) wrote little on the subject, although he too
m i n i m i zed the De v i l’s powe r, emphasized human
responsibility for evil, and condemned infant baptism
as an anti-Christian ritual and “bewitching sin.”
Anabaptists elsewhere in Europe, however, have left
few hints of their opinions about witchcraft. This is not
surprising, for their main concern was to surv i ve as a
godly remnant in a hostile and persecuting society. If
nothing else, the authorities’ fixation after 1560 on
witches provided Anabaptists with some relief from the
severe persecution that marked their early history.
GARY K. WAITE
See also: APOCALYPSE;HERESY;JORIS,DAVID;MENNONITES;
NETHERLANDS,NORTHERN;NETHERLANDS,SOUTHERN;PROTES-
TANTREFORMATION;WIESENSTEIG,COUNTYOF.
References and further reading:
Haude, Sigrun. 2000. In the Shadow of “Savage Wolves”: Anabaptist
Münster and the German Reformation During the 1530s.Boston:
Humanities.
Monter, E. William. 1996. “Heresy Executions in Reformation
Europe, 1520–1565.” Pp. 48–64 in Tolerance and Intolerance in
the European Reformation.Edited by Ole Peter Grell and Bob
Scribner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Snyder, C. Arnold. 1995. Anabaptist History and Theology: An
Introduction.Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora.
Stayer, James M. 1991. The German Peasants’War and Anabaptist
Community of Goods.Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press.
Waite, Gary K. 1999. “Between the Devil and the Inquisitor:
Anabaptists, Diabolical Conspiracies and Magical Beliefs in the
Sixteenth-Century Netherlands.” Pp. 120–140 in Radical
Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer.Edited The Guardian Angel,by Pietro da Cortona. In the West, good
byWerner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple. Brookfield, VT: spiritual beings, angels, stand in opposition to evil spiritual beings,
Ashgate. demons. People supposedly had guardian angels and guardian demons
———. 2003. Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern (sometimes known as familiars). Authorities often had difficulty
Europe.Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. discerning between the two. (Araldo de Luca/Corbis)
Angels 37 |
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The word a n g e l d e r i ves from the Greek word for night and commanded him to go out as a benandante
“messenger.” Therefore, it relates more to the function (Ginzburg 1985, 9).
fulfilled by the spirit than to the nature or essence of the The clearest re f e rences to angels are found later, in the
spirit: what angels do is more important than what they large-scale witchcraft trials in Sweden in 1668–1676,
are. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, their prima- c e n t e red in the village of Mora. Some scholars believe
ry function has always been seen as performing Go d’s that these persecutions we re based on distortions by the
will and also as enabling human beings to establish con- authorities of a religious re v i val movement. The accounts
tact with him. Fu rt h e r m o re, they can assist human a re full of religious re f e rences similar to those found in
beings through special favors and services. Exe c u t i n g Christian visions and legends. Blåkulla, the place where
the divine will sometimes means that they intervene in the witches met for their Sabbat, is not port r a yed in a
the lives of humans to rew a rd, punish, or save them. totally negative manner; the overriding first impression is
Many angels are believed to act as guardians to entire of a merry peasant feast. Only after the children con-
nations or to individuals, particularly children. T h e y fessed in court that they had been forcibly abducted to
also guide the souls of the deceased on their journey to Blåkulla did their stories emphasize the negative aspects
the afterworld. Their presence emphasizes the impor- of the experience. They explained that, fort u n a t e l y, there
tance of re m a rkable events, and they proclaim gre a t we re angels standing by to save them when the horro r
news, such as the birth of people of great significance. reached its culmination. The children we re then re s c u e d
Although the function that angels fulfil has been of and taken to the safety of the angels’ chamber, and some-
p r i m a ry importance, a great deal of attention has also times even delive red to their homes by these beings. In
been paid to their characteristics. Re g a rding their the security of the angels’ chamber, the children sang
appearance, the dominating picture has been of a figure hymns and said their prayers in a pro p e r, Go d - f e a r i n g
with human features and with wings, which symbolize m a n n e r. Howe ve r, these heavenly beings are by no means
the angels’ heavenly nature. The Bible describes differ- homogenous. Sometimes, they refer to “the white man,”
ent sorts or categories of angel, such as arc h a n g e l s , and there are even a few re f e rences to black angels. T h e
c h e rubim, and seraphim. Beside those, angel-like c h i l d ren also claimed to have been protected by white
beings are found in various other shapes in folklore, for b i rds, lambs, and other children. Oc c a s i o n a l l y, the chil-
example, as nature spirits such as fairies. d ren even met God, Jesus (who appeared as a fif t e e n -
In the early modern period, theoretical discussions year-old youth), or deceased re l a t i ve s .
re g a rding angels and their relationship to witchcraft T h roughout sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry
we re usually part of more general discussions of all Eu rope, these stories of angels met with skepticism
things heavenly or demonic and the difficulty involved from both lawyers and clerics. In the sixteenth century,
in correctly distinguishing between different categories Stoeckhlin was burned, and the benandanti came to be
of spirits. We also find occasional references to angels in seen as witches. Swedish authorities found it strange
trial records. In the 1590 case against Anna Absalons, at that angels protected children from eating unsuitable
Bergen in Norway, her maid testified that her mistress food at the Sabbat, but not from fornication with dev-
rode on her servant’s back to a meeting of witches. The ils. The food that the children we re offered was re a l l y
meeting dispersed when a man in white appeared and transformed abominations such as reptiles or exc re-
struck the group of witches with his staff, declaring that ment, but the children always discove red this in time,
God had not given permission for such a meeting thanks to angels who appeared at the right moment to
(Alver 1971, 97; Levack 1995, 208–209). This angelic prevent them from tasting the food. Certain features in
figure appears somewhat unexpectedly in the story. the appearance of some angels we re also suspicious.
Howe ve r, other cases from the same time establish They wore “linen clothing, short jackets and tight,
e ven clearer connections between the accused and short breeches; others were clad in long white robes and
“angels” and help explain why angels could sometimes bore white hats with black brims.” Moreover, they had
be found at the witches’ Sabbat. Men and women with “claws on their feet, hairy knees and also claws on their
special spiritual gifts and abilities that they used for h a n d s” (Sörlin 1997, 137). These latter features we re
healing we re believed to be in close communication reminiscent of Satan’s practice of appearing as a heaven-
with angel-like spirits. Chonrad Stoeckhlin, a shepherd ly angel in order to seduce careless people.
from the Bavarian Alps, claimed in 1587 to be accom- The Lutheran authorities concluded that the angels
panied by a guardian angel on his spiritual journeys who had “helped” the children we re in fact demons.
( Behringer 1998, 17). In northeastern It a l y, people The official explanation of witchcraft was that God had
k n own as b e n a n d a n t i (do-gooders, who we re often given Satan a free rein in retribution for the sins of the
healers) claimed in 1580 that angels summoned them people. It was thus the duty of Christian leaders to
and that their souls then went out to combat witches. employ all possible measures to avert God’s wrath and
In 1580 Paolo Gasparutto gave an account of a shining avoid further satanic visitations. Through the efforts of
golden fig u re that had appeared to him during the the authorities, Satan would be routed, the witches
38 Angels |
Wicca | Richard M.Golden - Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Western Tradition | 76 | 46049 Golden Chap. A av First Pages 08/24/2005 p.39 Application File
would be justly punished, and the children saved. The Levack, Brian P. 1995. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe.
children saw it differently.They had not been abducted 2d ed. London: Longman.
to Blåkulla to be saved by angels, but to save others. Sörlin, Per. 1997. “The Blåkulla Story: Absurdity and Rationality.”
Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore53: 131–152.
They claimed that the angels had commanded them to
denounce the witches. God had allowed the children to
be abducted in such large numbers in order to increase Anhorn, Bartholomäus (1616–1700)
their credibility in their task of witnessing against the A late Swiss defender of the belief in the reality of
adults who flew to Blåkulla. Mo re ove r, the childre n witchcraft, Anhorn published a voluminous work
claimed that, should the authorities neglect to make a about many different aspects of magic, called
serious investigation and mete out punishment, gre a t Magiologia,at Basel in 1674.
hunger and famine would ravage the land. Anhorn was born on January 16, 1616, in Fläsch, a
In t roducing angels was, howe ve r, not a part i c u l a r l y small village in Graubünden (or Grisons), the son of
dramatic addition if one considers the sort of place the local minister of the Reformed Church. His grand-
Blåkulla was. In his autobiography, Bishop Je s p e r father, Bartholomäus Anhorn the Elder, was a reformer,
Svedberg (1653–1735), the father of Em a n u e l a historian, and a minister.
Swedenborg, tells of a dream that he had as a thirt e e n - In 1632, Ba rtholomäus the Younger completed his
year-old (in 1666), a dream with a setting that was strik- studies in Basel, which he had begun in Zürich four
ingly familiar. He thought that he was in a beautiful open years before. In 1634, at the age of eighteen, he became
place. T h e re he saw a house with two rooms, joined by a minister of Grüsch and Se ewis in the valley of
little hall where Jesus was standing dividing up the souls Prättigau. Soon afterw a rds he moved to the parish of
of the dead into the blessed, who passed through the door Hundwil (Ap p e n ze l l - Ausserrhoden). From 1637 to
on the right, and the damned, who we re shown to the 1649 Bartholomäus worked as a pastor in the city of St.
door on the left. Svedberg was shown both rooms. T h e Gallen, where he was soon granted citizenship. He was
room on the left was reminiscent of Blåkulla after the chil- promoted to city minister in 1638.
d ren confessed in court and its true, dark nature emerged. After encountering some problems in St. Ga l l e n ,
The room to the right was similar to the angels’ chamber. Anhorn moved to the German Palatinate in 1649. El e ve n
It was light, shining white, and filled with people praising years later he tried unsuccessfully to return to St. Ga l l e n .
the Almighty in the highest. Blåkulla and the angels’ Fi n a l l y, in 1661 he was granted the parish of Bi s c h o f s ze l l
chamber seem to re p resent places to which the souls of in Thurgau, where he wrote, following the publication of
the dead make their journey. Thus the children who s e veral other works, his most important book. Anhorn’s
i n t roduced angels into their Sabbat stories we re simply Ma g i o l o g i a is subtitled Christliche Wa rnung für dem
opening the door on the right to the angels’ chamber. A Aberglauben und der Za u b e re y (A Christian Wa r n i n g
skeptical account from this time tells, with Pro t e s t a n t Against Superstition and So rc e ry). In the following ye a r s
i ro n y, how people who had been dead for many ye a r s he published numerous further writings, mainly sermons
we re seen in both the white room and in the cauldron in for funerals and other occasions, as well as works on eccle-
the great hall of Blåkulla, “so now the locations of both siastical history. Anhorn’s writings not only offer proof of
Pu r g a t o ry and Hell have been found, which must intere s t his wide reading and enormous erudition, but also re ve a l
each and eve ry curious person” (“On the White Angels at his tendency tow a rd distortion and spitefulness.
Blåkulla,” anonymous, quoted in Sörlin 1997, 147) Although Anhorn was elected in 1676 to a higher
PER SÖRLIN regional ecclesiastical office, he had to leave the mixed con-
fessional city of Bi s c h o f s zell two years later under pre s s u re
See also:BENANDANTI;BLÅKULLA;DEMONS;FAIRIES;MORA
f rom Roman Catholic episcopal officials, who condemned
WITCHES;STOECKHLIN,CHONRAD;SABBAT;SWEDEN.
him for acting too aggre s s i vely and polemically against the
References and further reading:
Alver, Bente Gullveig. 1971. Heksetro og trolddom: En studie i t ow n’s Roman Catholics. T h e reupon, Anhorn moved to
norsk heksevæsen.Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Elsau (east of Wi n t e rthur), where the octogenarian fin a l l y
Anglo, Sidney, ed. 1977.The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature died on July 6, 1700. He had traveled to Holland and
of Witchcraft.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. England, and three wives had borne him thirteen childre n .
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1998. Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad A n h o r n’s Ma g i o l o g i a , printed at Basel by Jo h a n n
Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night.Charlottesville: Heinrich Me yer in 1674, comprised about 1,200 pages,
University Press of Virginia.
including the re g i s t e r. The author understood his book as
Clark, Stuart. 1997.Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
an antidote to contemporary society, which he saw as
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
dominated on one hand by atheism and Ma c h i a ve l l i a -
Fredericksen, Linwood. 1993. “Angels and Demons.” New En c yc l o -
nism and by superstition and sorc e ry on the other hand.
p æ d i aBritannica.15th ed. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
Reacting to his disapproval of atheism, Anhorn tried to
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1985. The Night Battles: Wi t c h c raft and Ag ra r i a n
Cults in the Sixteenth and Se venteenth Ce n t u r i e s .Ha r m o n d s w o rt h , defend the belief in the effectiveness of magic and witch-
UK: Pe n g u i n . craft against skeptics. In this context, he opposed their
Anhorn, Bartholomäus 39 |
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re p o rts of experiences. For Anhorn it was quite out of the witchcraft. Continental handbooks rarely discussed the
question to understand witch flights only as an illusion; concept; for example, Heinrich Kramer’s infamous
he was convinced of the real physical movement of witch- Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486)
es through the air, guided by the Devil. In such matters, as offers no instructions concerning familiars for judges
well as in the case of witches’ Sabbats, his position was interrogating witches.
based on confessions made during witchcraft trials and on The belief was that the Devil, having made a pact with
the doctrines of theologians, jurists, and physicians. the witch, gave her a low-ranking demon in the shape of
Concerning witchcraft trials, Anhorn rejected va r i o u s a small domestic animal to advise her and perform for
practices that he considered superstitious, such as water the most part small malicious errands—though some
tests, cutting off all hair, or judging someone to be a witch errands included murd e r. A witch might also inherit a
on the basis of inability to shed tears. The fact that some- familiar from another witch. The little cre a t u re was in
one was denounced as a participant in Sabbats was not constant attendance on its mistress (male witches rare l y
s u f ficient evidence to him, because the Devil could kept familiars), who was responsible for its care and feed-
assume the shape of innocent people. He encouraged ing. The animal servant must there f o re be distinguished
judges to re s o rt to preaching as the best way to make the f rom the occasional visitations of the Devil in the guise of
criminals confess, but he also recommended tort u re . a small animal, such as a dog, cat, goat, or ow l .
Howe ve r, he demanded caution here too, because tort u re Reginald Scot in his D i s c overie of Wi t c h c ra f t ( 1 5 8 4 )
could also ove rcome innocent people due to their physical first used the term familiarin this restricted sense. From
condition. Ne ve rtheless, tort u re was effective in discove r- that time on, English re p o rts we re packed with imps
ing truths that would otherwise remain hidden. With tor- ( a p p a rently seen as the evil equivalent of guard i a n
t u re, howe ve r, it was necessary to proceed ve ry care f u l l y angels) to explain and illustrate the presence of suppos-
and to have sufficient other evidence of the crime. For the edly diabolical cre a t u res found in houses or farms to
c o r rect use of tort u re and correct legal pro c e d u re, Anhorn assist the witch in performing m a l e ficium ( h a r m f u l
re f e r red his readers to the Sa xon jurist Benedict Carpzov, a magic). The witchcraft statute of 1604 made it a felony
s u p p o rter of extremely rigid pro c e d u res against witches. to have a familiar. This obsession with familiars
Like Carpzov, Anhorn re g a rded a pact with the Devil as a remained mostly confined to England and Scotland,
crime to be punished by death, even if the accused had w h e re they are mentioned in numerous trial re c o rd s ,
not caused physical damage through sorc e ry, and he especially those related to Matthew Hopkins, England’s
i g n o red objections that witches we re weak old women, great seventeenth-century witch hunter. A witch could
unable to defend themselves against the seduction of the h a ve several familiars; Elizabeth Clark, Ho p k i n s’s fir s t
Devil, or suffering from melancholy illusions and there- victim, confessed to having five of them. Familiars fol-
f o re not to be held re s p o n s i b l e . lowed English colonists overseas, and one finds them in
early American witchcraft trials. Outside of witchcraft
MANFRED TSCHAIKNER
trials, more benevolent familiars served English “c u n-
See also: CARPZOV,BENEDICT(II); FLIGHTOFWITCHES;TORTURE. ning folk,” the village wise men and women who were
Reference and further reading: magicians or healers. These familiars helped diagnose
Stückelberger, Hans Martin. 1962. 1630–1750.Vol. 2 of Kirchen-
illnesses and the sources of bewitchment and also
und Schulgeschichte St. Gallens.St. Gallen: Tschudy.
helped to find lost objects and tre a s u res. Ma g i c i a n s
Animals conjured them in rituals, then locked them in bottles,
rings, and stones. The famous magical thinker Heinrich
The roles of animals in sorc e ry and witchcraft beliefs are
Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was even ru m o re d
e x t remely varied. Sometimes demons take the shape of
to keep a familiar in the shape of a black dog.
animals, sometimes the witches and sorc e rers have the
alleged ability to transform either themselves or their souls
Metamorphosis
into animals. Fu rt h e r m o re, animals played a ve ry impor-
Since ancient times, witches, sorcerers, and magicians
tant part in witchcraft accusations. Witches we re often
have been believed to transform themselves and other
tried for allegedly having bewitched domestic animals
humans at will into animals, birds, and even insects.
such as cows, poultry, pigs, and geese. Casting a disease on
The concept of metamorphosis, to give this kind of
c ows and stealing their milk we re frequent accusations.
transformation its technical name, was accepted in
England and Scotland invented the concept of a demon in
antiquity. The following well-known examples all have
animal shape, the familiar, a sort of assistant. The popular
important applications for later European witchcraft.
books about an apprentice sorc e re r, J. K. Row l i n g’s Ha r ry
The sorceress Circe transformed Odysseus’s compan-
Po t t e rand its sequels, obviously included this concept.
ions into pigs. In Arthurian legend, both the sorceress
Familiars Morgana, King Arthur’s sister, and the famous magi-
The terms familiar, familiar spirit, and imp reflect an cian Merlin were able to transform their enemies into
almost exclusively English contribution to the theory of animals. Two millennia later, some European witches
40 Animals |
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were believed to do the same. In Hungarian witchcraft Edinburgh in 1607 for entering a house in the form of
accusations, the witch’s victims were turned into horses a cat, a common allegation in Scottish trials. Cats hold
and bridled, or struck with a bridle, a narrative element a very important place in sorcery, principally black cats,
favored in folk legends. which were, and still are, regarded as demons incarnate
Apuleius of Ma d a u r a’s widely re a dGolden As si l l u s t r a t- or transformed witches. It is on this latter count that in
ed some important details of the night-flight ( t ra n s ve c- recent centuries peasants all over Eu rope slaughtere d
t i o n )concept. The sorc e ress anointed herself with a mag- black cats, in order to destroy the witches they accused
ic salve and transformed into an owl. The curious of having bewitched them.
p rotagonist Lucius, who was watching the spectacle, was Despite the folk belief in the ability of transforma-
eager to experience the same metamorphosis, but used tion, demonologists disagreed on the topic. Je a n
the wrong ointment and changed into an ass. Ap u l e i u s Bodin and Joseph Glanvill accepted metamorphosis,
himself was subsequently charged with sorc e ry. Hi s w h e reas Heinrich Kramer and many subsequent
notion of night flight re a p p e a red in the tenth-century demonologists (including almost all Pro t e s t a n t
Canon Ep i s c o p i :Women riding on certain beasts re p u t e d- authors) followed St. Au g u s t i n e’s concept that they
ly traversed great distances under the leadership of the we re demonic illusions.
heathen goddess Diana. The belief in night flights, with
the participants either riding on animals or transformed Shamanism and Witches’
into animals, was rejected as superstitious at that time, Animal Doubles
but afterw a rds it was often re p o rted, in confessions and In shamanism and individual totemism, the notion of
by witnesses, that witches smeared themselves with cer- metamorphosis, or shape shifting, is essential. Shamans
tain ointments to become cats or other animals before are held to be able to transform themselves into their
flying to the Sabbat. Tr a n s vection became integrated into guardians, which are often animal spirits. The transfor-
the full-fledged witchcraft concept by the fifteenth cen- mation is generally believed to be a spiritual one, rather
t u ry, and those witches who used hallucinogenic dru g s than an actual physical transformation, although some-
s u rely believed in the flight, if not in the transformation. thing close to a physical transformation is suggested by
In his Eclogue8.64-109, Virgil mentioned herbs with the fact that stories are told of shamans who are actual-
which he claimed to have seen someone transform him- ly killed or wounded while lying in trance when the
self into a wolf. In the age of European witchcraft trials, animals to which they have transformed themselves are
transformation into a wolf became the most feared type killed or wounded. The life of the animal is bound to
of metamorphosis. Man-eating wolves that terro r i ze d the life of the shaman, just as the life of the animal who
villages reinforced links between werewolves and witch is a guardian spirit is bound to the life of the shaman.
beliefs. This concept of the guardian spirit is strongly tied to
During the early modern period, it was sometimes shamanistic initiation, and transformation into the
b e l i e ved that witches transformed themselves into so-called animal-mother is reached by employing some
beasts in order to torment their victims. It was not ecstatic technique (Buddruss 1987, 45–78; Paulson
uncommon to find witnesses testifying that accused 1968, 138).
witches had appeared before them in animal form, In most regions of the witchcraft trials of early mod-
transforming themselves not only in order to torment ern Europe, the most significant variations of the phys-
their victims, but also to escape captors. In various trial ical or spiritual alter egos of witches we re a variety of
accounts, witches were alleged to appear in the guise of animal shapes. The “p ro o f” that an animal was more
almost all small animals and birds. This transformation than a mere cat, or whatever shape the witch took, was
was believed to serve the practical purpose of allowing that the same injuries inflicted on the animal’s body
the witch-animal to crawl unseen into a room; behind reappeared on its human counterpart, providing anoth-
this belief lurks the ancient concept of the soul wander- er parallel with the concept of a totemistic guard i a n
ing about in the shape of a small animal, a bird, a animal. Some sources maintained that, during exe c u-
b u t t e rfly, or a snake. Often witches became pigs, or tions, flames could not touch the witch as she attempt-
despised black or three-legged animals; but one also ed to escape in the form of a toad, her alter ego.
finds a witch described as becoming a bear, bee, goat, Howe ve r, when the toad was killed, the flames would
l i z a rd, duck, owl, fly, fox, goose, hen, dog, cat, beetle, d e s t roy the witch. (Ob s e rved in Styrian witchcraft tri-
raven, toad, cow, mouse, rat, moth, horse, seal, spider, als; Byloff 1929, 119–121.)
wolf, wasp, or weasel. Riding on a human being in ani- A rich variety of “witch animals” we re re p o rted to
mal form was another characteristic element in occur throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, with many
Eu ropean witch beliefs and remained one of the most regional differences and varying prevalence among ani-
typical motifs of witch legends. mal types. The belief in a guiding and helping animal of
The most common transformations we re into cats, diabolical character has permeated both the writings of
dogs, and hares. Isobel Grierson was burned at the educated who have believed in witchcraft and
Animals 41 |
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shamanism and seen the hand of the Devil in them and behind the narratives told about sixteenth-century
popular belief from medieval times until now. Italian witches, of animals being eaten and later
restored from their bones and skins, just like the goats
CHRISTA TUCZAY
drawing the cart of the god Thor, which frequently
See also: AGRIPPAVONNETTESHEIM,HEINRICHCORNELIUS; were eaten and afterward restored from skin and bones
ANIMISTICANDMAGICALTHINKING;APULEIUSOFMADAURA; (Bertolotti 1979). Such ideas contain an element of
AUGUSTINE,ST.; BEWITCHMENT;CATS;CUNNINGFOLK;DEMONS;
shamanism; but because witches used no shamanistic
DOGS;ENGLAND;FAMILIARS;FLIGHTOFWITCHES;HOPKINS,
techniques to prepare themselves for their soul jour-
MATTHEW;LYCANTHROPY;METAMORPHOSIS;SABBAT;SCOT,
neys, it seems preferable to call it animistic thinking—
REGINALD;SHAMANISM;TOADS.
without the context of a belief in the evolution of reli-
References and further reading:
gion in which the nineteenth-century anthropologist
Buddruss, Friedrich. 1987. Schamanengeschichten aus Sibirien.
Berlin: Planegg. Edward B. Tylor elaborated the term animism, desig-
Byloff, Fritz. 1929. Volkskundliches aus Strafprozessen der österre- nating a “primitive” stage of religion with belief in spir-
ichischen Alpenländer. Mit besonderer Berücksichtiung der its inhabiting the surrounding world of natural objects
Zauberei- und Hexenprozesse von 1455–1850.Berlin: de and phenomena (Lessa and Vogt 1958, 11–13).
Gruyter. Another fundamental concept was the witch’s power,
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 2001: Metamorphosis and Identity. which was seen as at once her strength and her we a k-
NewYork: Zone.
ness. If a cow had been bewitched so that its milk had
Cohn, Norman. 1975. Europe’s Inner Demons.London: Paladin.
become full of blood, the traditional remedy was to boil
Donaldson, Thomas A. 1995: “The Role of the ‘Familiar’ in
some of the bloody milk and then spill it over the
English Witch Trials.” http://www.hulford.co.uk/familiar.html
red-hot hearth. The guilty person would then be scald-
(accessed October 13, 2004).
ed all over her body. Or one could take some of the
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.
Translated byWillard R. Trask. London: Arkana. spoiled milk and sprinkle it over an anthill: The ants
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1991. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. would then go and torment the witch terribly. Behind
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. NewYork: Pantheon. both cases lay the idea that the victim was permeated
Kieckhefer, Richard. 1976. European Witch Trials: Their with the witch’s powe r, and what harmed the victim
Foundation in Popular and Learned Culture,1300–1500. could be made to backfire on the witch. This power or
London: Routledge. f o rce had no name but was closely associated with
Marwick, Max, ed. 1970. Witchcraft and Sorcery.NewYork:
“e n v y,” which in popular tradition was not just a bad
Viking.
feeling but a dangerous magical force that acted invol-
Paulson, Ivar. 1964. “The Animal Guardian: A Critical and
untarily; one must never get into a state where one felt
Synthetic Review.” History of Religions3: 202–219.
e n v y. On the other hand, “luck” was not an abstract
———. 1968. “Phänomenologie des Schamanismus.” Zeitschrift
concept in popular tradition; it was something con-
für Religion und Geistesgeschichte.16: 121–141.
Pócs, Éva. 1999. Between the Living and the Dead.Budapest: c rete. Depending on whether people had luck with
Central European University Press. their horses, sheep, pigs, geese, or corn or milk produc-
Robbins, Rossell Hope. 1959. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and tion, they were said to have “horse luck,” “sheep luck,”
Demonology.NewYork: Crown. “pig luck,” “goose luck,” “corn luck,” or “good milk-
Runeberg, Arne. 1974. Witches, Demons and Fertility Magic.1947. ing.” In Danish dialects, words meaning “benefit , ”
Reprint, Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions. “c rops,” or “the good” we re used synonymously with
Thomas, Keith. 1971: Religion and the Decline of Magic.
“luck,” and in a witchcraft trial from 1670 a smallhold-
NewYork: Scribner’s.
e r’s wife was accused of taking “the good” from her
Tuczay, Christa. 1981. Der Unhold ohne Seele: Eine
n e i g h b o r s’ milk, with the result that the milk, even at
motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung.Vienna: Halosar.
the best season of the year, was so bad that not even pigs
would drink it.
Animistic and Magical Thinking Luck was furt h e r m o re a finite asset, or “limited
Popular beliefs about witchcraft reflect many of the good.” In the trial of a cunning woman (a practitioner
ideas found in the religions of nonliterate peoples. of beneficent magic) from Jutland in 1610 it was stated
These popular beliefs are characterized by a dualistic that she “s wept luck from one to another,” and there-
worldview, in which everything in the material world f o re bore the nickname “Anne Swe e p i n g - w o m a n”
has its double in a nonmaterial soul world. Accordingly, ( Henningsen 1991, 20). In t e re s t i n g l y, Ire l a n d’s fir s t
the soul of a witch could travel around, leaving the recorded witch, Alice Kyteler, in 1324 “swept the streets
body behind like an empty shell, and when the witches of Kilkennie” around twilight, “raking all the fil t h
on their out-of-body expeditions “ate” flesh of their vic- t ow a rd the doore of her sonne William Ou t l a w, mur-
tims, it was not their actual flesh but the “soul” of their muring to herself, ‘To the house of William my sonne /
flesh; however, this form of eating sufficed to make Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie towne’” (Davidson and
their victims sicken and die. A similar concept lay Ward 1993, 81–82). Around 1680, a rich ship owner in
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the Jutland town of Ebeltoft was said to have “s e ve n most part, these scholars pointed out, such accusations
men’s luck,” which explained why there were so many did not, in fact, lead to the death of the witch: Instead,
poor people in the town (Henningsen 1991, 20). those accused we re more likely either to move out of
Mi s f o rtune and accidents we re often explained as the the community or to behave with greater circ u m s p e c-
loss of one or several of the above-mentioned kinds of tion. Indeed, in many communities, people risked
luck, which had been taken away by the witchcraft of being called witches if they we re selfish, withholding
envious people. Archaic beliefs of this sort, more in food or drink from passing strangers, or had acquire d
agreement with the religions of nonliterate people than more wealth than others.
with the rationality of early modern European intellec- Middleton’s study of the Lugbara was a classic exam-
tuals, continued to exist in popular culture into the ple of work in this mode. The Lugbara we re an East
twentieth century. African society, based when they we re studied in
Uganda and the Congo. They we re primarily cultiva-
GUSTAV HENNINGSEN;
tors, using roughly three kinds of fields: fertilized fields
TRANSLATED BY JAMES MANLEY
near their home for “d e m a n d i n g” crops like sorghum;
See also: ANIMALS;KYTELER,ALICE;POPULARBELIEFSINWITCHES; u n f e rt i l i zed fields farther from the house under a sys-
SHAMANISM. tem of shifting cultivation for a variety of crops; and
References and further reading:
irrigated high fertility fields for sweet potatoes, maize ,
Bertolotti, Maurizio. 1979. “Le ossa e la pelle dei buoi: Un mito
sugarcane, or bananas. These divisions were important,
popolare tra hagiografia e stregoneria.” Quaderni Storici41:
because there was a presumption that a man should
47–99.
have fields of equal types and equal fertility for each of
Davidson, L.S., and J. O. Ward, eds. 1993. The SorceryTrial of
his wives, and there was a re l a t i vely fixed re l a t i o n s h i p
Alice Kyteler.Binghamton, NY: State University Press.
Foster, George M. 1965. “Peasant Society and the Image of b e t ween the number of wives in any group and the
Limited Good.” American Anthropologist67: 293–314. extent of that family’s territory. The basic social and
Henningsen, Gustav. 1991. Heksejægeren på Rugård. De sidste political unit was the family cluster, a collection of adult
trolddomsprocesser i Jylland 1685–87.Herning: Skippershoved. men, their wives, and their unmarried children, each
Lessa, William A., and Evon Z. Vogt, eds. 1958. Reader in with separate huts but under the general authority of
Comparative Religion.Evanston, IL, and White Plains, NY: the genealogically senior male of the gro u p. This man
Row, Peterson.
was not only the senior authority in the group, but also
the primary intermediary between the living and the
Anthropology dead and the most important officiator in the ancestor
The treatment of witchcraft commonly ranks among cult (the primary form of religious worship). He was
the most successful accomplishments of the functional- thought to maintain his authority by invoking the dead
ist school of British social anthropology, founded by and by so doing sending illness to those who disobeyed
Bronislaw Malinowski but achieving its richest formu- a husband or a senior kinsman.
lation under the guidance of Edward Evans-Pritchard Witches, men or women who caused sickness when
and Meyer Fortes. This approach argued that most m o t i vated by envy or jealousy, we re thought to exist in
aspects of social life helped to maintain the social Lugbara communities. They would strike when they
group. The practice of witchcraft, then—or more pre- passed a house and we re not invited in for dinner, or not
cisely, a society’s acceptance that individuals practiced o f f e red beer; they might envy a man who seemed to ow n
malevolent magic and could be accused and punished m o re than another man, or whom they thought to be at
for doing so—had to be understood, from this perspec- the center of all eyes. Wise people avoided such risks—
tive, as an activity that helped the group function more but they also understood that witchcraft was an impro p-
effectively. er use of powe r, while the elder of the family cluster used
The work that came out of this school (Mi d d l e t o n his magic appro p r i a t e l y, as an expression of his authority.
and Winter 1963; Middleton 1967; Ma rwick 1970; The rub, Middleton argued, was that the invocation
Douglas 1970) suggested that the cultural system of of a ghost took the same form as a witch’s invocation to
witchcraft accusation works as a “social strain gauge,” as send illness. The most common pattern for witchcraft
Ma rwick put it. In the societies these anthro p o l o g i s t s accusations emerged as a family cluster grew in size and
studied (usually African), people we re more likely to its demand for land increased. As young men matured,
accuse other people of being witches when their re l a- they began to need more land and to express more
tionships became socially strained, although they did so independence. The elder would invoke the ghosts to
only if they had experienced some misfortune, like keep them in line—and when a member of their family
death or illness, that could be attributed to witchcraft. fell sick, the community would first understand this as
These accusations helped to make private tensions pub- an appropriate expression of the elder’s need to keep
lic and enabled the community, in effect, to manage c o n t rol. At first, Middleton argued, public opinion
them before they deteriorated into violence. For the sided with the elder. But as the group grew, public
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opinion could shift, seeing the elder as inappropriately The classic anthropological literature on witchcraft
demanding more power than he ought, and might label produced another famous book that proposed an argu-
him a witch. When this happened, the younger man ment different from those discussed above :
who made the accusation might well leave the cluster, Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among
taking his family and others with him and seeking more the Azande(1937). Witchcraft seemed to pervade every
land elsewhere. As a lineage grew, it became increasing- aspect of the Az a n d e’s world in the southern Su d a n .
ly unmanageable, both ecologically and politically. Witches we re thought to exe rcise their power uncon-
Lugbara witchcraft accusations both expressed the ten- s c i o u s l y, without ritual or speech, and when a misfor-
sions inherent in this inevitable but disturbing process tune occurred, the Azande often attributed it to the
and helped to make it work more efficiently. unintentional malice of a person who might not eve n
This analytic approach became the hallmark of the know what he or she had done. If the misfortune was
British functionalist approach to witchcraft, which s i g n i ficant and the victim still suffering, he looked
understood witchcraft accusations as expressions of around for those who might bear a grudge against him,
social tension that indicated the kinds of serious pre s- and consulted a “poison oracle” to determine who it
s u res within the gro u p. Anthropologists (in part i c u l a r was. (He also consulted the oracle to determine
Ma ry Douglas) argued that accusations we re clustere d whether misfortune would occur if he embarked upon
in areas of ambiguous social relationships, either a journey.) This poison oracle was a chicken that was
because such relationships were usually competitive and fed a quantity of poison. Whether the chicken lived or
u n regulated or because a new and anomalous gro u p died provided the answer to the client’s question.
had emerged. Where social relations were well defined Having determined the witch, an intermediary (if nec-
and tensions could be easily resolved, witchcraft accusa- e s s a ry) approached the accused aggre s s o r, who then
tions were uncommon, a conclusion supported both by “blew water” over the wing of the chicken that died in
classic ethnography and by quantitative analysis of naming him witch and asserted his good intentions
accusation patterns. The possibility of accusation, how- t ow a rd the harmed man and his determination to
ever, had a normative effect on behavior. “cool” the witchcraft in his belly.
British functionalist anthropology has had a pro- Eva n s - Pr i t c h a rd argued that concepts about witch-
found influence on the study of early modern witchcraft craft in Azande society played the role that the concept
in America as well as in England, although less so on the of chance played in his own: They explained the pecu-
study of witchcraft in continental Eu rope (Mi d e l f o rt liarity of events. The man died when a rotten granary
1972; Cohn 1975). Perhaps its most famous application fell upon him: He died because the granary was rotten,
was through the work of Keith Thomas (1971), in a but why he should happen to be under it when it fell—
magisterial analysis of the emergence of the En g l i s h that was due to witchcraft. Eva n s - Pr i t c h a rd insisted
witchcraft trials, but a similar influence can be seen in that apparently strange statements made by members of
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (1974), in a different culture did not imply that their mental
T h o m a s’s student, Alan Macfarlane, and others. T h e s e capacities were similarly strange. In fact, he says that he
historians pointed out that fantasies about witchcraft had no problem living as if witchcraft and magic exist-
we re common in agrarian societies, including medieva l ed when living among these people. This appro a c h
Eu rope. In such fantasies, witches we re cre a t u res, often became part of a philosophical and anthro p o l o g i c a l
women, who flew at night, ate human flesh, violated debate between two positions, one that held that magi-
moral precepts about fertility and sexuality, and prac- cal practice was based upon mistaken belief (the intel-
ticed malevolent magic on those they envied. Although lectualist position: magic is a pre - s c i e n t i fic form of
such ideas had existed in an officially Christian peasant explanation and action) and another that explained
society for centuries, few people had been killed until away the magic by showing how little it had to do with
the late medieval period, when such folk beliefs we re explanatory belief (the symbolist position: magical sym-
overlaid with an account of a specifically Christian evil, bols are really expressions of anxiety or some other
in which the so-called witch became bound to the De v i l emotion, not an attempt to explain or alter re a l i t y ) .
and participated in Satanic masses. Hu n d reds of witches Arguments about apparently irrational belief took the
we re hanged in England and thousands burned else- Azande case as their template from that point on.
w h e re in explosions of anxiety as they we re located, Mo re recent work within anthropology carries for-
tried, and executed. Thomas and Macfarlane explained w a rd both of these lines of discussion. Tanya Ma r i e
the salience of witchcraft accusations in England as Luhrmann (1989) presented the ethnography of a
re flecting an unre s o l ved conflict between the neighborly group of middle-class English people who called them-
conduct re q u i red by the ethical code of the old village s e l ves witches and magicians, describing the ways by
community and the increasingly individualistic behavior which apparently reasonable people came to hold such
that accompanied the economic changes of the sixteenth apparently unreasonable beliefs. Peter Geschiere (1997)
and seventeenth centuries. described the way witchcraft remains a visible presence
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in modern Africa (in Cameroon) as a response to mod- Antichrist is to be born in Babylon as the fruit of an
ern political re a l i t y. Although the great functionalist incestuous relation in the Jewish tribe of Dan. Already
studies—as well as that of Evans-Pritchard—were set in in his mother’s womb, bad spirits will have power over
colonial Africa, whose European overlords had decrimi- him. Magicians and sorcerers will bring him up. Grown
n a l i zed witchcraft, anthropology continues to explore up, he will persuade the Jews that he is the longed-for
witchcraft in the postcolonial world, hoping to inspire Messiah. However, many Christians will also adore him
other fields that also seek to understand this occult but as God and receive his sign on their bodies. Those who
irrepressible phenomenon. do not follow him will be cruelly persecuted. For three
and one-half years the fight between this monster and
T. M. LUHRMANN
the true Christians is to endure, while the strange races
See also:ACCUSATIONS;AFRICA(SUB-SAHARAN); DOUGLAS,MARY; of Gog and Magog, the Red Jews, even the Amazons,
ENGLAND;EVANS-PRITCHARD,EDWARD;GHOSTS;MACFARLANE, arrive from the ends of the earth to help the Antichrist.
ALAN;MALINOWSKI,BRONISLAW;THOMAS,KEITH.
Finally, he will kill the prophets Enoch and Elias,
References and further reading:
whom God has kept in reserve in Paradise for this
Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. 1974. Salem Possessed.
eschatological struggle. For the very same span of time
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
(or sometimes for thirty-two years), the adversary of
Cohn, Norman, 1975. Europe’s Inner Demons.NewYork: Basic
Christ will then be allowed to reign over the world. At
Books.
Douglas, Mary, ed. 1970 Witchcraft: Confessions and Accusations. the end, when Antichrist will try to lift himself into
London: Tavistock. heaven, Jesus or the angels will throw him down
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and into hell.
Magic Among the Azande.Oxford: Oxford University Press. The basis of the Antichrist tradition was, of course,
Geschiere, Peter. 1997. The Modernity of Witchcraft. biblical. In the letters of John (1 John 2:18–22; 2 John 7),
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. the enemies of Christ’s teachings we re called Antichrists
Hutton, Ronald. 2004. “Anthropological and Historical
(plural!). Paul did not use the term An t i c h r i s t, but he
Approaches to Witchcraft: Potential for a New Collaboration?”
expected a great opponent of Christ to appear before his
The Historical Journal 47, no. 2: 413–434.
second coming (2 Thess. 2:3–12). Exegetes declared that
Luhrmann, Tanya Marie. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft.
the false messiah and the false prophet spoken of by Je s u s
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
in the Gospel of Ma t t h ew (Matt. 24:5, 11) was the
Macfarlane, Alan. 1999. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A
Regional and Comparative Study.2d ed. London: Routledge. Antichrist, identifying him also with the seve n-h e a d e d
Marwick, Max, ed. 1970. Witchcraft and Sorcery.Harmondsworth, apocalyptic beast from the sea (Re v. 13, 1–10).
UK: Penguin. Until the central Middle Ages, it was almost exc l u-
Middleton, John, ed. 1967.Magic, Witchcraft and Curing.Austin: sively theologians who dealt with this figure, and they
University of Texas Press. did so in Latin treatises, the most important of which
Middleton, John, and Edward HenryWinter, eds. 1963. was the Libellus de Antichristo(Booklet on Antichrist), a
Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa.London: Routledge and
“ b i o g r a p h y” of Antichrist written by the Be n e d i c t i n e
Kegan Paul.
abbot Adso of Mo n t i e r - e n - Der about 954. Most later
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1972. Witch Hunting in Southwestern
writings on this mythical personage, such as the works
Germany, 1582–1684.Stanford: Stanford University Press.
of the virulent reformer of the canons Gerhoh of
Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New
Reichersberg (twelfth century), the prophetic theolo-
York: Scribner’s.
gian of history Joachim of Fiore (about 1200), and the
Antichrist enthusiastic Dominican preacher Vincent Fe r re r
The Antichrist is a negative figure of Christian mythol- (1350–1419), we re based on Ad s o’s treatise. From the
ogy, a demon-like fiend in human form, both the twelfth century onwards, however, more and more lay-
adversary (anti) of Christ and his forerunner (ante), as men were confronted with this figure; Antichrist plays
he will appear immediately before the latter comes back quite a remarkable part in the new vernacular literature
into this world to judge the quick and the dead at the written for them, such as the Li n zer En t e k r i s t ( L i n z
end of time. Though there is little or nothing in the Antichrist, twelfth century) and similar Middle Hi g h
way of a direct link between Antichrist and witchcraft, German pious works, or the To u rnoiement An t é c h r i s t
the renewed focus on this fiend in human form in the (The Antichrist’s Tournament, 1234–1240) by the
late Middle Ages and early modern period can only French poet Huon de Méry, describing an allegorical
have encouraged the fear of the Devil’s power that lay battle between God and the monster.
behind the witchcraft trials. The late Middle Ages saw the heyday of Christian
obsession with this figure. Numerous theologians pub-
The Legend lished treaties about him; the less orthodox ones such as
What one may call the medieval standard tradition Arnaud de Vi l l a n ova, the famous Catalan master of
about Antichrist can be summarized as follow s : medicine (d. 1311), discussed the forbidden theme of
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the date when he might appear. In several Eu ro p e a n such a name were indeed convinced that the Biblical
states, a number of theatrical re p resentations of the prophecies had now been fulfilled, and how far they
Antichrist legend could be seen. In 1604, the re l e va n t used this reproach merely as a convenient propaganda
traditions we re collected into a single extensive work , weapon. A catalogue of all the persons and groups in
De Antichristo libri XI (Eleven Books on Antichrist) by public life that have been suspected to be the incarnat-
the Dominican Tomás Malvenda, a collaborator of the ed Antichrist would fill a sizable book. Let us mention
Roman Index of Prohibited Books. The Catholic only the Holy Roman Em p e rors He n ry IV and
p reacher Dionysius von Lützenburg wrote one of the Frederick II, both of whom the papacy called Antichrist
most voluminous elaborations of the myth, the during their struggle for supremacy within Western
romance-like Leben Antichristi(Antichrist’s Life, 1716). Christianity.The famous liturgical Ludus de antichristo
As late as 1916, the Low German poet Karl Wagenfeld (Play of Antichrist, ca. 1160), the first play to bring this
re v i ved these medieval traditions with his epic De character on the scene, also showed clear political
Antichrist (The Antichrist). implications, as the Germans triumphed over the
The legend of Antichrist was also transmitted French and reformers within the Church were attacked.
t h rough painting and xylography, especially in manu- Later, John Wyclif in his treatise On Christ and his
scripts of the Apocalypse and commentaries on that adversary Antichrist had an easy task identifying the
text. From the twelfth century onwards, we find illus- pope with Antichrist, simply contrasting the lifestyle of
trated lives of Antichrist inserted into religious-didactic Jesus with that of his successor. Both Hussite and
p i c t u re books such as Herrad of Landsberg’s Ho rt u s Lutheran polemicists subsequently adopted this tactic.
d e l i c i a ru m ( Ga rden of Delights, late twelfth century ) , The Schmalkaldic Articles of 1538, Luther’s official
the Welislaw Bible (ca. 1350), and the printed Vi t a confession of faith, equated the papacy and Antichrist
An t i c h r i s t i (Life of Antichrist) of 1472. Among the (2, 4). In the same year, the German humanist Thomas
n u m e rous Reformation images equating Antichrist Naogeorg published his allegorical drama, Tragoedia
with “p o p e ry,” the works of Lucas Cranach re m a i n e d nova Pammachius (The NewTragedy of Pammachius).
unrivalled. Several Gothic fresco paintings of Antichrist Its protagonist, Pammachius (i.e., Antichrist), stood for
have been preserved. At Karlstein near Prague, the main the papacy, which, during its long history, succumbed
castle of the Holy Roman Em p e ror Charles IV, to such typical vices as abuse of power and immorality.
Antichrist appears in antithesis to this sovereign; in the In the nineteenth century, it suffices to note that
dome of Orvieto, Luca Si g n o relli integrated Christ’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s less educated Christian oppo-
opponent into his depiction of the Last Ju d g m e n t nents identified him with the apocalyptic antihero.
(1504).
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, seve r a l Antichrist and Magic
famous authors from Russia to Portugal used Antichrist It seems that Antichrist never appeared in confessions
as a metaphor for the materialistic worldview, including made by people accused of witchcraft, nor did he
Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), appear in any recorded magical formulas or incanta-
Ru s s i a’s Vladimir So l ov yev in K ratkoi powesti ob tions. Nevertheless, in the texts that purported to tell
a n t i c h r i s t e (A Tale of the Antichrist, 1899), Po rt u g a l’s the story of his life, he was regularly depicted as a kind
António Du a rte Gomes Leal in O An t i - Cr i s t o (T h e of sorcerer, whose success was based on the magical
Antichrist, 1884–1886); Swe d e n’s Selma Lagerlöf in tricks he played. In the aforementioned Ludus, the
Antikrists mira k l e r (The Miracles of Antichrist, 1897); German emperor was the only Christian ruler who tri-
and Ge r m a n y’s Joseph Roth in Der Antichrist (T h e umphed over Antichrist, but eventually even he was
Antichrist, 1934). Friedrich Ni e t z s c h e’s De r An t i c h r i s t convinced by his miracles. For example, Antichrist
(The Antichrist), however, written in 1888, remains the made the roots of a tree flower, brought the sea on the
most radical transvaluation of the Christian tradition. top of mountains, caused snowfall and hail, changed
Criticizing this religion because of its detachment from day into night and night into day—all proofs of his
the world, Nietzsche did not hesitate to proclaim him- magic powers, through which many were seduced into
self as the “s u p e r h u m a n” Antichrist. In Catholic believing him to be the real messiah.
regions, many nineteenth-century folktales have been T h e re f o re, occasionally connections we re drawn
recorded that described Antichrist with a wealth of odd b e t ween Antichrist and other sorc e rers. The historian
details. Adam of Bremen (late eleventh century) imagined
Norway to be full of soothsayers, augurs, sorcerers, and
Antichrist and Politics enchanters, as well as other satellites of Antichrist
Again and again, the figure of Antichrist has been (Hi s t o ry of the Archbishops of Ha m b u r g - Bre m e n , 5 7
employed to defame political opponents. It is difficult [55]). Heinrich Kramer’s infamous Ma l l e u s
to decide how far those who called their enemies by Ma l e fic a ru m (The Hammer of Witches, 1486) also
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c o m p a res the “m i r a c l e d” wrought by demons to those failed to happen, a complex theology of “the last things”
done by Antichrist (1.1.9). Many early modern experts, was created and dogmatized during the following cen-
including the Jesuit Martín Del Rio, reckoned that an turies. On a popular level, a tradition of (mostly fifteen)
i n c rease of sorc e ry and witchcraft was one sign of the signs of the approaching final catastrophe was deve l-
a p p roach of the Apocalypse and of Antichrist. oped. As the Bible often underlines the impossibility of
Nevertheless, direct references to Antichrist in connec- k n owing the exact time of the Last Judgment, tradi-
tion with witchcraft were only peripheral in nature. tional Christianity existed in an ambience of fear, which
g rew more acute during specific crises (e.g., the much
PETER DINZELBACHER
discussed “terrors” of the year 1000 or 1033, the years
See also: APOCALYPSE;BIBLE;CRANACH,LUCAS;JESUS; of the Black Death around 1350, the appearance of
MILLENARIANISM. Halley’s comet in 1531, etc.). During the religious crisis
References and further reading:
of the sixteenth century, the most intensive apocalyptic
Adam of Bremen. 2002. History of the Archbishops of
fears we re probably seen, clearly perceptible in such
Hamburg-Bremen. Translated by Francis J. Tschan. NewYork:
e vents as the Anabaptist movement at Münster in
Columbia University Press.
1534–1535, but also manifested in learned theological
Eligh, P. 1996. Leven in de eindtijd. Ondergangsstemmingen in de
writings, especially those of Martin Luther. Apocalyptic
middeleeuwen.Hilversum: Verloren.
Emmerson, Richard K. 1981. Antichrist in the Middle Ages.Seattle: currents reappeared during the religious wars of the sev-
University of Washington Press. enteenth century and even in the epoch of
Guadalajara Medina, José. 1996. Las profecías del Anticristo en la Enlightenment, and have continued to reappear in the
Edad Media.Madrid: Gredos. t wentieth and twe n t y - first centuries. It goes without
Haupt, Barbara, ed. Endzeitvorstellungen.2001. Düsseldorf: saying that some people interpreted the two world wars
Droste. as the beginning of the Apocalypse. Ap o c a l y p t i c i s m
Hill, Christopher. 1990.Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England.
has, however, been eliminated from the teachings of the
London: Oxford University Press.
main Christian churches because of the usually insignif-
Jenks, Gregory C. 1991. The Origins and Early Development of the
icant place eschatological expectations left to the hierar-
Antichrist Myth.Berlin: de Gruyter.
chies, so that this tradition has become restricted to
Kahl, Hans-Dieter. 1991. “Der sog. ‘Ludus de Antichristo’ (De
fringe Protestant sects or denominations such as the
Finibus Saeculorum) als Zeugnis frühstauferzeitlicher
Gegenwartskritik.” Mediaevistik4: 53–148. Shakers, Latter-day Saints (or Mormons), Seventh-day
Könneker, Barbara. 1999. “Der Antichrist.” Pp. 531–544 in Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Dämonen, Monster, Fabelwesen.Edited by Ulrich Müller and As one of the signs appearing before the end of the
Werner Wunderlich. St. Gallen, Switzerland. world would be the apostasy of many Christians (Matt.
McGinn, Bernard. 1994.Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the 24: 4–6.), it was certainly logical to interpret the rise of
Human Fascination with Evil.San Francisco: HarperCollins. the witch-“s e c t” as a token of the appro a c h i n g
Rauh, Horst-Dieter. 1979. Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter.
Apocalypse. T h e re f o re, Heinrich Kramer, in the
Münster: Aschendorff.
Apologia,which he prefixed to the Malleus Maleficarum
Wright, Rosemary Muir. 1995. Art and Antichrist in Medieval
(The Hammer of Witches, 1486), put the persecution
Europe.Manchester: Manchester University Press.
of the “heresy of the witches” into the eschatological
context of the “twilight and evening of the world,”
Apocalypse characterized by an increase of human wickedness (16).
In Christianity, the expectation of the world’s end com- The Devil, argued the Dominican inquisitor, knowing
ing soon created a complex of fears and hopes, often he had but little time left to do evil, had re c e n t l y
called apocalypticism. Its major components may be seduced many people, mainly females, into perpetrat-
evoked by the key words Antichrist, millenarianism (or ing works of sorc e ry. The Lorraine witch-pro s e c u t i n g
chiliasm), second coming (parousia)of Christ, and Last judge Nicolas Rémy, in his treatise Da e m o n o l a t r i a e
Judgment. Connections between the fear of the apoca- (Demonolatry, 1595), saw the current conflict between
lypse and witchcraft are rather marginal. It is possible, witches and demons, on the one hand, and judges such
but has not been proved, that apocalypticism did play a as Rémy and Christianity generally, on the other hand,
part in the rise of the witch persecutions. as the battle of evil against good that would usher in the
The biblical basis for Christian eschatology was sup- Second Coming. John Stearne, the English witch
plied mostly by the prophecies of Daniel, supplement- h u n t e r, in A Confirmation and Discove ry of Wi t c h c ra f t
ed by such New Testament texts as the Re velation of (1648), wrote “For it is undeniably true, that there was,
John and several statements of Jesus in the Go s p e l s , is, and shall be Witches, till Christs conquest there spo-
especially in Mark 13. He himself expected the end of ken of, agreeable with that in Re ve l . 20.1, 2, 3(60).”
times would occur soon after his death, when the divine While other witchcraft theorists had similar views link-
would descend to earth (Mark 9:1). After this prophecy ing the heresy of witchcraft to the appro a c h i n g
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Apocalypse (e.g., Abbot Johannes Trithemius in his overturning of many verdicts from the famous series of
Liber octo quaestionum [The Book of Eight Questions, witchcraft trials known as the Vauderie d’Arras(because
1515] for the Holy Roman Em p e ror Maximilian I), these trials we re directed at the heresy called va u d e r i e ,
this connection seems to have remained mostly theo- “Waldensianism,” seen as associated with witchcraft) by
logical speculation, without becoming a concrete stim- the Pa rl e m e n t of Paris (sove reign judicial court, with
ulus to the persecutors of witches. jurisdiction over approximately one-half of France) in
1491, more than thirty years after the original eve n t s ,
PETER DINZELBACHER
when almost everyone directly involved had died. The
See also: ANTICHRIST;MILLENARIANISM;TRITHEMIUS,JOHANNES. rehabilitative decree of the Paris court was read out with
References and further reading: great pomp at the very spot in Arras where the original
Bynum, Caroline Walker, and Paul Freedman, eds. 2000. Last
sentences had been pronounced; the heirs of the prose-
Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages.
cutors were fined and ordered to erect a memorial cross
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
on the spot where the witches had been burned.
Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium:
Obv i o u s l y, appellate justice could not raise wro n g l y
Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle
convicted witches from the dead, but it could and did
Ages.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collins, John J.ed. 1999. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism.New improve their posthumous legal status and restore their
York: Continuum. f a m i l y’s reputation. By the following century, during
Dinzelbacher, Peter. 1999. Die letzten Dinge. Himmel, Hölle, the most intensive phase of witch hunting, appellate
Fegefeuer im Mittelalter.Freiburg: Herder. c o u rts began to intervene in time to save the lives of
Eligh, P. 1996. Leven in de eindtijd. Ondergangsstemmingen in de accused witches.
middeleeuwen.Hilversum: Verloren. During the most intense phase of witch hunting, sys-
Fried, Johannes. 2001. Aufstieg aus dem Untergang. Apokalyptisches
tematic intervention by appellate courts began in 1576,
Denken und die Entstehung der modernen Naturwissenschaft im
when, after a few notable scandals, the Kingdom of
Mittelalter.Munich: Beck.
De n m a rk re q u i red that all local-court sentences in
Haupt, Barbara, ed. 2001. En d ze i t vo r s t e l l u n g e n .D ü s s e l d o rf: Dro s t e .
witchcraft trials be automatically submitted for re v i ew
Kramer, Heinrich, and James Sprenger [sic]. 1971. The Malleus
to upper-level county courts. The history of
Maleficarum.Translated by the Reverend Montague Summers.
London: John Rodker, 1928. Reprint, Dover Publications. a p p e l l a t e-c o u rt intrusions ended almost two centuries
Thompson, Damian. 1996. The End of Time.London: Sinclair- l a t e r, with Maria T h e re s a’s interventions in her
Stevenson. Hungarian kingdom. She finally issued an order forbid-
Zimbaro, V.P. 1996. Encyclopedia of Apocalyptic Literature.Santa ding further witchcraft trials in 1766, after the roy a l
Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. appeal court had overturned a series of local sentences
against witches and acquitted all defendants during the
Appeals p revious decade (Klaniczay 1990, 235, n. 41). T h e s e
Almost everywhere in Europe, appellate courts were e f f e c t i ve interventions are the positive side of the pic-
responsible for slowing the pace of witch hunts, t u re; the negative side is that the ord i n a ry witchcraft
although they lacked the audacity or legislative author- p r i s o n e r’s chance of gaining access to some form of
ity to bring them to an end. There were no appellate appellate justice was generally remote, just like an ordi-
court systems operating in the Alpine regions where nary prisoner’s chance of gaining access to the Supreme
witch hunting began in the fifteenth century, but it did Court in today’s United States.
not take long before an appellate court first intervened Nowhere was the role of appellate justice in limiting
in a witch hunt: in 1447, the recently re s t o re d damage from witch hunting more important than in
Parlement (sovereign judicial court) of Toulouse revised France, which was Europe’s largest kingdom and boast-
some sentences passed in 1444 at Millau in northern ed a network of appellate courts (the p a rl e m e n t s), that
Languedoc. Here, as later, the appellate court’s primary we re responsible for correcting judicial errors among
purpose was to censure miscarriages of justice by the approximately 20 million French subjects.
overzealous, partisan, or corrupt local justices. Often, as Although an appellate court system also existed for the
in this instance, the court intervened too late to save the Holy Roman Em p i re, within whose spacious bord e r s
lives of many accused witches (three women had the vast majority of executions for witchcraft occurred,
already been burned and two others had died, probably it was tragically unable to imitate the success of the
after being tortured), but they practiced damage con- French in curbing the excesses of local witch hunters. In
trol; the woman who made the appeal had her convic- northern Europe, using customary law, every appellate
tion overturned, and a corrupt judge and notary at c o u rt system reduced punishments in most of the
Millau were suspended from their offices and fined witchcraft convictions it heard, although none of them
heavily. ever managed to stop prosecutions (or even executions)
The most far-reaching intervention by a for witchcraft entire l y. The British Isles, including the
fif t e e n t h-c e n t u ry appellate court was undoubtedly the Kingdom of Scotland, lacked appellate courts in the
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technical sense; however, itinerant judges appointed by that cove red almost half of France and encompassed
the central government managed to have much nearly 10 million subjects, was consistently skeptical
t h e same effect of greatly reducing, although not when evaluating evidence about witchcraft. Although
eliminating, executions for witchcraft. There is no com- Jean Bodin’s famous De a démonomanie des Sorciers(on
parable history of appellate-court intervention in the Demon-mania of Witches, 1580) enjoyed many
Mediterranean Eu rope, largely because the va r i o u s editions, translations, and imitations, it never con-
s t a t e - run Inquisitions filled their essential function of vinced the Parlement of Paris to regard witchcraft as an
removing most witch hunting from the control of local “exceptional” offense that justified otherwise unaccept-
zealots. What all these systems—the Inquisitions, itin- able methods of proof. Instead, the Parisian judges took
erant judges in the British Isles, the Roman law appel- vigorous action in 1588 to quash illegal witch-hunting
late courts in France or Ge r m a n y — s h a red was a far methods in northeastern France, not far from the place
m o re rigorous attitude than most local courts tow a rd where Bodin worked as a royal prosecutor.They inter-
what constituted admissible evidence of witchcraft and vened again in 1601 by arresting the hangman of
t h e re f o re provided satisfactory legal proof of a defen- Ro c roi, a notorious witch finder responsible for the
dant’s guilt. deaths of more than 200 people; although only eight of
One finds several instances, starting in 1593 when his victims were French subjects, the Parlementordered
the High Court (Hooge Raad) of the province of him to the galleys for the rest of his life. They subse-
Holland quashed a witchcraft indictment and effective- quently intervened in the same region in 1623 by pun-
ly ended prosecution in the heartland of the Un i t e d ishing local judges who approved the custom of “duck-
Netherlands, in which appellate court interve n t i o n ing” witches, and followed up in 1624 by ordering that
indirectly brought witch hunting to an end. Elsewhere all condemnations for witchcraft throughout their vast
in Europe, subsequent interventions by appellate courts district be automatically appealed to Paris (So m a n
we re responsible for stopping witch hunting at least 1992).
temporarily. In 1676, for example, firsthand interroga- Although Eu ro p e’s premier secular court had con-
tions by top-level judges in Swe d e n’s capital fin a l l y demned over a hundred people to death for witchcraft
brought an end to a long-running panic that had inter- or magic between 1568 and 1625, this figure represents
mittently terro r i zed several of the kingdom’s nort h e r n less than one-fifth of the death sentences appealed to it
p rovinces for eight years; howe ve r, Swe d e n’s Court of for such offenses. It ord e red 58 such exe c u t i o n s
Appeal subsequently upheld a few death sentences for between 1587 and 1610, but never more than six in a
witchcraft, until a smaller panic erupted in the 1720s, year. Between 1611 and 1620, its ratio of executions for
w h e reupon it not only ove rturned eve ry lowe r - c o u rt witchcraft fell to only 4 percent of cases appealed, while
sentence but also punished the principal accusers. one-sixth of such defendants we re released without
In the French legal system, people arrested for witch- punishment (Soman 1992, II, 35). (This was the time
craft who managed to reach their appellate court (par- when Pi e r re de Lancre, a judge at the Pa rl e m e n t o f
lement)frequently saw their sentences reduced. Even its Bordeaux, similarly failed to persuade his skeptical col-
most seve re branch, the Pa rl e m e n t of Rouen in leagues to change their approach to witchcraft cases,
No r m a n d y, released 20 percent of its 270 prisoners despite publishing two books on the subject.) Ap a rt
charged with witchcraft, even during its most intensive from one extremely late incident, the Parlementof Paris
phase of witch hunting between 1580 and 1622, and stopped sentencing witches to death after 1625, exactly
reduced the sentences of another 25 percent. When one when it also re q u i red that all witchcraft trials be
looks elsew h e re in the French appellate system, these appealed before it. As Soman has emphasized, this date
fig u res increase. But it must not be forgotten that, in marked the de facto decriminalization of witchcraft in
France as elsew h e re, many prisoners failed to take the Kingdom of France.
advantage of the opportunity to appeal a death sentence During the final French witch panic, which affected
for witchcraft. In the only sixteenth-century Fre n c h much of southern and eastern France between 1643
local witch hunt for which we possess a complete trial and 1645, other appellate courts had adopted the
d o s s i e r, only two of the five men sentenced to death Parisian practice of automatic appeals in witchcraft cas-
chose to appeal to the Parlement of Paris, which in this es, although they still imposed a few death sentences. In
instance upheld both condemnations (Ja c q u e s-C h a q u i n some ways, the Parlementof Toulouse compiled an even
and Préaud 1996). more impressive record than Paris during this episode,
Despite this particular incident, the meticulous and releasing almost two-thirds of the 641 accused witches
painstaking research of Alfred Soman (1992) enables us whom it judged during this period, banishing most of
to appreciate how Eu ro p e’s most prestigious secular the remainder, and confirming only a handful of death
c o u rt, the Pa rl e m e n t of Paris, compiled an early and sentences (Vidal 1987, 520, 522). In these years, it
remarkable record in reducing punishments for witch- actually sentenced more people to death for lynching
craft. The Parlementof Paris, with a ressort(jurisdiction) suspected witches than for practicing witchcraft.
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Another smaller French appellate court, the Parlement both of them on the basis of accusations made by his
of Dijon, behaved in a similar fashion during the same wife and daughter until they confessed, and burned
panic: it executed exactly 3 of the 114 convicted witch- them as well. T h ree years later, an appeal to the
es it judged between 1643 and 1645, while re d u c i n g Re i c h s h o f ra t by the city of Nu remberg on behalf of a
the ove rwhelming majority of lowe r - c o u rt rulings and p rominent refugee from Bamberg, followed by thre e
subsequently investigating numerous cases in which imperial orders and pre s s u re from the College of
accused witches had been lynched. Electors, culminated in the evocation of all Ba m b e r g’s
Appellate justice also played a role in moderating witchcraft trials to the emperor in 1631. Ba m b e r g’s
witch hunting even in that political labyrinth, the Ho l y bishop protested vigoro u s l y, but no longer dare d
Roman Em p i re. The newer imperial aulic court, or imprison witches in the special prison he had built for
Re i c h s h o f ra t ,sitting at Vienna since 1559, complement- that purpose.
ed the empire’s original appellate court, the Next year, the Reichskammergericht sharply censured
Reichskammergericht (imperial chamber court), sitting the elector of Cologne when ruling in favor of a plain-
mostly at Sp e yer since 1495. Like other major Eu ro p e a n tiff accused of witchcraft, but it could not curb
c o u rts, the Reichskammergericht insisted on clearer stan- C o l o g n e’s “e x t i r p a t i o n” program. The Re i c h s h o f ra t w a s
d a rds of proof than those used by local witch hunters, not asked to intervene in Fe rd i n a n d’s electorate until
and it invariably opposed abuses of tort u re. No general 1639, when its actions proved as decisive there as they
assessment of its overall record on witchcraft trials has had in Bamberg. Only ten days after learning of
been attempted until recently (Oestmann 1997), Vienna’s decision, Cologne flatly refused a local petition
because its arc h i ves, unlike those of the Re i c h s h o f ra t , to renew witch hunting. Such examples suggest that the
we re dispersed long ago to almost forty different loca- n ewer imperial appellate court could act with some-
tions (Schormann 1991, 157–166; 1992). Although what greater effect than its predecessor, but it had dif-
witchcraft trials made up less than 1 percent of the ferent shortcomings. Because the Reichshofrat had been
Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t’s caseload, this court intervened in c reated in order to arbitrate disputes betwe e n
these trials more often than previously believed, and its autonomous imperial governments, individual subjects
rulings had some positive effects. For example, when a could not appeal to it directly against witch hunting
g o l d s m i t h’s wife in a small Alsatian town sued her ove r- zealots. In order to involve the Reichshofrat,the imperi-
l o rd, the bishop of Strasbourg, at Sp e yer in 1620 for ille- al free city of Nu remberg had to bring a formal com-
gally arresting and torturing her daughter, the empero r plaint against the bishop of Bamberg, or the free city of
g a ve the bishop four weeks to send him a re p o rt on this Cologne had to bring a similar action against the arch-
subject. Although the lawsuit dragged on, her daughter bishop-elector of Cologne. Mo re ove r, because the
was released a few months later; the goldsmith sold his e m p e ror was a partisan Catholic, Protestant gove r n-
house eight months after that and moved to Pro t e s t a n t ments we re often reluctant to appeal to it. But each
Strasbourg. After the mother finally withdrew her suit at appellate court did what it could to curb the worst
Sp e ye r, she refused to pay any of the legal costs in their excesses of witch hunting in the empire.
former home (Schaefli 1993, 35–39). Other Alsatians The peculiar history of how a small Alpine district,
we re still appealing to the Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t a g a i n s t nestled between the Swiss Confederation and Austrian
charges of witchcraft as late as 1661. Vorarlberg, became the principality of Lichtenstein,
The greatest weaknesses of the Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t illustrates how appellate justice could still play a deci-
were that it was distant, expensive, and cumbersome for s i ve role in the history of witch hunting in the Ho l y
n o n e x p e rts, although it probably saved the lives of Roman Em p i re. Witch hunting began in Va d u z
some ve ry ord i n a ry plaintiffs. Contrary to its re p u t a- a round 1648. This first hunt ended in 1651, but an
tion, it could make rulings surprisingly swiftly in witch- even more severe burst of witchcraft trials erupted there
craft cases (Oestmann 1997, 520); but its decisions a quart e r-c e n t u ry later. By 1680, nearly 300 people—
could be impossible to enforce. For example, in 1611 a approximately one-tenth of the entire population of the
plaintiff from the duchy of Sa c h s e n - L a u e n b u r g county of Vaduz—had been executed as witches since
appealed to it, but his mother was convicted and exe- 1648. When prominent families among the count’s vic-
cuted before it could nullify her trial. Even highly tims (whose confiscated properties helped pay his huge
placed plaintiffs suffered similar consequences. In debts) complained to Habsburg officials in Ty ro l ,
1627, during the worst of Ba m b e r g’s witch hunts, the Em p e ror Leopold I appointed the prince-abbot of
episcopal chancellor traveled to Speyer in order to pro- Kempten to investigate their accusations. Supported by
tect his wife and daughter, who had been arrested for the University of Salzburg, the prince-abbot successful-
witchcraft; he returned with a ruling to liberate them, ly pressed charges of extortion and sadistic tort u res in
but they had both been burned in the interval. T h e witchcraft trials against Franz Karl von Hohenems, the
furious bishop immediately imprisoned the chancellor count of Vaduz, before the Re i c h s h o f ra t in Vienna. In
and his son (who had also gone to Sp e yer), tort u re d 1684 the aulic appellate court declared him deposed.
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His accuser, aided by soldiers from the Tyrolean govern- Oestmann, Peter. 1997. Hexenprozesse im Reichskammergericht.
ment, thereupon captured the count of Vaduz and kept Cologne: Böhlau.
him prisoner at Kempten until Franz Karl died sixteen Rochelandet, Brigitte. 1997. Sorciers, diables et bûchers en
Franche-Comté aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.Besançon: Cêtre.
years later. At that time, his lands were forfeited to his
Schaefli, L. 1993. “La sorcellerie à Molsheim (1589–1697).”
a c c u s e r. After the count’s death, the prince-abbot sold
Annuaire de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Molsheim et
Vaduz to the distinguished Au s t ro - Moravian house of
environs.
Lichtenstein with the blessing of Em p e ror Leopold I,
Schormann, Gerhard. 1991. Der Krieg gegen die Hexen.Göttingen:
who raised it to a F ü r s t e n t u m (principality) in 1712.
Vandenhoeck and Rupprecht.
The house of Lichtenstein has ruled in Vaduz eve r ———. 1992. “Die Haltung des Reichskammergerichts in
since, outlasting even the Austrian Empire. Thus a late Hexenprozesse.” Pp. 269–280 in Von Unfug des Hexen-Process.
and unusually brutal Alpine witch hunt and a Viennese Edited by Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Ulbricht. Wiesbaden:
appellate court helped to create one of the smallest sov- Harrasowitz.
ereign states in contemporary Europe. Soman, Alfred. 1992. Sorcellerie et Justice Criminelle: Le Parlement
All appellate courts had the right to increase as well de Paris (16e–18e siècles). Hampshire, UK: Variorum.
Vidal, Jacques. 1987. “Le Parlement de Toulouse et la répression
as reduce the punishments decreed by local court s .
de la sorcellerie au milieu du XVIIe siècle.” Pp. 511–527 in
Appeals could be made a minimaby the prosecution as
Hommages à Gérard Boulvert.Nice: Université de Nice.
well as by the defendants if prosecutors found the orig-
inal sentence overly lenient. Mo re ove r, appellate court
judges were completely free to revise a sentence in any Apuleius of Madaura
manner they wished, without explaining their reasons. (b. ca. 125; fl. ca 155–60)
The p a rl e m e n t s e rving the Habsburg province of Apuleius authored the seriocomic romance dealing
Franche-Comté, for instance, sentenced to death just with magic and shape shifting, the Metamorphoses(bet-
over half (53 percent) of the accused witches it judged, ter known as The Golden Ass), as well as the Apologia,
compared with 83 percent in seigneurial courts and 74 Apuleius’s speech to a Roman court in his own defense
percent in lower-level bailliagecourts. Nevertheless, the against charges of practicing magic. In different ways,
parlement actually increased the severity of lower-court these two works offered considerable information about
sentences in about 10 percent of the witchcraft cases it ideas of popular and learned magic in late antiquity,
judged (Rochelandet 1997, 66–67). Henri Boguet, a and they influenced later European thought about these
regional judge in Franche-Comté, reportedly asked his subjects, and thus, of course, European thought about
publishers to stop reprinting his 1602 demonology witchcraft, after being edited and translated in the late
when he sought to be promoted to the province’s par- fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
l e m e n t ,a goal he finally achieved shortly before his death Born at Madaura (in modern Algeria) in Ro m a n
in 1619. Seven years earlier, that court had revised three No rth Africa, Apuleius was well educated at Cart h a g e
of Boguet’s final four decisions in witchcraft trials; and Athens (in Athens, possibly by a nephew of the
although two death sentences we re ove rturned, one g reat biographer Pl u t a rch) and became interested in
sentence, which had been appealed by Boguet’s pro s e- philosophy, natural science, and magic. Little is known
cutor, was actually increased (Monter 1976, 70, 74). In of the details of his life, except for Apuleius’s falling ill
these cases, as in almost eve rything else ever done by at the home of an old school friend, Sicinius Pontianus,
any appellate court in revising witchcraft sentences, we in the town of Oea, near Alexandria, being nursed back
lack any precise explanations for their decisions. to health by the friend and the friend’s widowe d
m o t h e r, Aemilia Pudentilla, and later marry i n g
WILLIAM MONTER
Pudentilla. The marriage, the death of Si c i n i u s
Pontianus, and other complications arising fro m
See also: ACQUITTALS;ARRAS;BODIN,JEAN;BOGUET,HENRI;BUR-
GUNDY,DUCHYOF;LANCRE,PIERREDE;NORMANDY;PARLEMENT Ap u l e i u s’s inheritance of the estate led to some of
OFPARIS;REICHSHOFRAT;REICHSKAMMERGERICHT;SWEDEN; Pu d e n t i l l a’s re l a t i ves laying a charge of magic against
VADUZ,COUNTYOF. Apuleius and to a trial before the proconsul Claudius
References and further reading: Maximus at Sabratha in No rth Africa. In Roman law,
Jacques-Chaquin, Nicole, and Maxime Préaud, eds. 1996.Les sor- the penalty for the crime of which Apuleius was accused
ciers du carroi de Marlou: Un procès de sorcellerie en Berry was death. The Ap o l o g i a was a revised version of his
(1582–1583).Grenoble: Jérome Millon.
speech to the court in his own defense and offered an
Klaniczay, Gábor. 1990. “Hungary: The Accusations and the
extensive and important survey of learned and popular
Universe of Popular Magic.” Pp. 219–255 in Early Modern
ideas of magic in the mid-second century Ro m a n
European Witchcraft:Centres and Peripheries.Edited by Bengt
world. The Ap o l o g i a told that Apuleius had inherited
Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen. Oxford: Clarendon.
and wasted considerable wealth, had long been interest-
Monter, E. William. 1976.Witchcraft in France and Switzerland:
The Borderlands During the Reformation.Ithaca NY, and ed in philosophy and scientific experimentation, and
London: Cornell University Press. re g a rded the accusations against him as inspired by
Apuleius of Madaura 51 |
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Apuleius of Madaura’s romance, The Golden Ass,informed early modern ideas of magic. Here Lucius observes a witch rubbing ointments on her
body in order to fly, and he is then transformed into an ass. (TopFoto.co.uk)
jealousy and based on his accusers’ misunderstanding of his talks we re collected in two works, Fl o r i d a and On
philosophy and natural science. Plato and His Dogmas.These and other works, includ-
Ap u l e i u s’s best-known work was his Me t a m o r p h o s e s , ing the treatise On the God of Socra t e s , make Ap u l e i u s
popularly known as The Golden Ass. Although Ap u l e i u s an important representative of the philosophical move-
b o r rowed much of the plot from earlier writers, his ow n ment known as Middle Platonism, but his interest in
l i t e r a ry and intellectual skill created a re m a rkably popu- magic certainly equaled his interest in philosophy.
lar novel. It told the tale of a lazy young man named Early Christian thinkers, including St. Au g u s t i n e ,
Lucius, whose fascination with magic, particularly ero t i c we re highly suspicious of Apuleius, considering him a
magic, while on a journey to T h e s s a l y, long reputed to be w o n d e r - w o rk e r, particularly when they read T h e
a center of magic and sorc e ry by the Greeks, led to his Golden As s in conjunction with Ap u l e i u s’s philosophi-
transformation into an ass and a series of seriocomic cally religious works, although other Christians re g a rd-
a d ve n t u res before his return to human shape under the ed at least the Cupid and Ps yche episode as an allego-
auspices of the goddess Isis. The final book told of rization of the soul’s development. The Golden As s w a s
Lu c i u s’s initiation into the cult of Isis; it has been inter- translated by Ermolao Ba r b a ro in the fifteenth century
p reted as a serious meditation on religion, and the entire and printed frequently in that century and the next,
w o rk as a fig u r a t i ve autobiography of the author, because often with illustrations that echoed sixteenth-century
it was narrated in the first person by the character Lu c i u s . concerns, thus turning the second-century philosophi-
The Golden As s also contained other tales of magic, cal comic romance into a justification of contemporary
including the religious fable of Cupid and Ps yche, which ideas of sorc e ry and witchcraft. This translation, print,
o bviously fascinated both Apuleius and his audience, and illustration history made The Golden As s, with sev-
because it was no less a fig u re than St. Augustine who eral other works of Roman antiquity, an important re f-
transmitted the popular title of the work, The Golden As s . e rence in Renaissance discussions of witchcraft and
Apuleius and his wife eventually settled in Carthage, s o rc e ry.
w h e re he lectured on philosophical subjects. Some of EDWARD PETERS
52 Apuleius of Madaura |
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See also: AUGUSTINE,ST.; CRIMENEXCEPTUM;HORACE; L o m b a rd offers an important source for resolving cer-
METAMORPHOSIS. tain issues.
References and further reading: The subject of demonology was, of course, also dealt
Ankarloo, Bengt, and Stuart Clark, eds. 1999. Ancient Greece and
with systematically in T h o m a s’s Summa T h e o l o g i a e
Rome.Vol. 2 of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.Philadelphia:
( Summa of Theology) (1.1, Q.51 f.). It is part i c u l a r l y
University of Pennsylvania Press.
interesting that Aquinas considered demonology within
Apuleius. 1962. The Golden Ass by Apuleius.Translated by Jack
the context of his doctrine of angels. He appro a c h e d
Lindsay. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
p roblems on a purely ontological level, in relation to
Butler, H.E., trans. 1909. The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of
Madaura.Oxford: Oxford University Press. the doctrine of creation, with no reference to practical
Graf, Fritz. 1997. Magic in the Ancient World.Translated by life. On the other hand, The Su m m a T h e o l o g i a e a n d
Frankin Philip. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. other works also discussed individual issues concerning
witchcraft and magic, and these were later consolidated
Aquinas, St. Thomas (ca. 1225–1274) to form certain lines of argumentation. His view of
This Dominican monk and professor of theology, the m a l e fic i u m (harmful magic) was traditional, but he
greatest thinker in that form of medieval theology added the detailed notion of an impotentia ex maleficio
known as Scholasticism, ranks among the most signifi- (impotence from evildoing) (Commentary on the
cant authorities affecting the origins, formation, and Sentences, Bk 4, D. 64, Q. 21, Art. 3), one of the ques-
perpetuation of the early modern image of witches. As tions that was later discussed intensively in relation to
with some other prominent theologians, it is important the impact of witches. In accordance with Au g u s t i n e’s
to distinguish between his intentions and later inter- doctrine of demonology, he assumes the real possibility
pretation of his works. Thomas lived and taught at a of sexual relations between demons and humans. In his
time when witchcraft prosecutions were unknown, but Scriptum super libros sententiarum Magistri Pe t r i
when the foundations were partly laid for the future L o m b a rd i ( C o m m e n t a ry on the Sentences of Ma s t e r
criminalization of witchcraft. The evolution of a stan- Peter Lombard) and Summa Theologiae (I, Q. 51, Art.
d a rd i zed ecclesiastical legal system (known as the 3), Aquinas systematically formulated his doctrine of
Inquisition), which Rome had been shaping since the incubi and succubi and provides a plausible explana-
Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, played an important tion: By nature, demons could not conceive childre n
role in gradually creating a systematic classification and with humans, but they could take the form of a woman
persecution of various types of heretics. and absorb a man’s sperm through a sexual encounter,
Scholasticism was particularly concerned with sys- then take the form of a man and inseminate a woman
tematic theology. All branches of contemporary theolo- with the stored sperm.
gy we re cross-linked to form a network of traditional The scholastic logic of this idea had fatal conse-
re q u i rements, permitting cautious adva n c e m e n t . quences in the future, as it implied “re a l” sexual re l a-
Aquinas was not alone; all dogmatic systems had to tions between devils and humans. The same applied to
grapple with the issues of demonology and magic with- the notion of men forming pacts with demons.
in a vast spectrum of possible interpretations. Thus the Augustine’s statements were made within the context of
significance of Thomas Aquinas resides less in his par- Greek and Roman demonology, but Thomas interpret-
ticular statements about demonology or magic than in ed them in terms of scholastic and systematic theology,
his new theological approach and its philosophical resulting in the idea of eve ryday social re l a t i o n s
b a c k g round, based on his interpretation of Aristotle. b e t ween humans and demons. In the light of the
This background is particularly obvious in T h o m a s’s a l ready ongoing systematic persecution of heretics, a
relationship to his teacher Albertus Magnus (Albert the transfer of this aspect of “re a l i t y” to supposed witches
Great), who was considered not only a universal theolo- became relatively easy.
gian, but also an expert in all fields of science, including T h o m a s’s theology did, howe ve r, contain cert a i n
the borderline between empirical science and magic. aspects that clearly inhibited the outbreak of witchcraft
One can assume that Thomas was acquainted with the persecution: For example, Aquinas (in agreement with
whole spectrum of magical practices, so far as they were traditional canon law) rejected the idea of humans
k n own in academic circles. Of course, T h o m a s’s being physically transported by demons, the issue that
theological background included the fourt h - c e n t u ry eventually led to the notion of witches flying; moreover,
Ch u rch Father St. Augustine and his statements on he was certain that harmful magic was possible only
d e m o n o l o g y, particularly to the extent to which these with God’s permission (permissio Dei), and he gave no
a c q u i red legal status through Gr a t i a n’s C o n c o rd of indication that superstitious practices should be
D i s c o rdant Ca n o n s , k n own as the De c re t u m (1130), or punished or prosecuted as heretical. Ne ve rtheless, his
formed the foundation for the study of theology in n ew methodology could be interpreted in a far more
Peter Lombard’s Se n t e n t i a e (1148–1151). As a re s u l t , radical way, leading to a criminalization of magic. The
T h o m a s’s C o m m e n t a ry on the Se n t e n c e s of Pe t e r i n t e r p retation of Aristotle that characterized his new
Aquinas, St. Thomas 53 |
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school of thought entailed an entirely new understand- ANDSUCCUBUS;INQUISITION,MEDIEVAL;KRAMER,HEINRICH;
ing of the causal interrelation between events in heaven LUTHER,MARTIN;MALEFICIUM;PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;SEXUAL
and those on earth. T h o m a s’s doctrine of causality ACTIVITY,DIABOLIC.
References and further reading:
attributed greater significance than previous philosoph-
Anglo, Sydney. 1977. “Evident Authority and Authoritative
ical and theological traditions, which we re mainly
Evidence: The Malleus Maleficarum.” Pp. 1–31 in The
Platonic, to the so-called causae secundae ( s e c o n d a ry
Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft.Edited by
causes). Consequently, the late medieval doctrine of
Sydney Anglo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
witchcraft could easily use T h o m a s’s authority to
Aquinas, Thomas. 1929–1947. Scriptum super libros sententiarum
emphasize not only the power of the Devil but also that Magistri Petri Lombardi.Edited by Pierre Mandonnet and
of his servants, the witches. They reduced the permissio Maria Fabianus Moos. Paris: Lethielleux 1964–1973. Summa
De i f rom the original claim that nothing evil occurs Theologiae.60 vols. Edited and translated byThomas Gilby et
outside of the divine will, to a general authorization al. London and NewYork: Eyre and Spottiswoode and
f rom the divine for the actions of the Devil and his McGraw-Hill.
witches. The Devil, sorcerers, and witches became pro- Clark Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
tagonists who we re seen as acting independently and
Hansen, Joseph. 1983. Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess
with effect. Thomas never expressed this development,
im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung.
but it is a logical consequence of his fundamental ideas.
Munich: Oldenbourg, 1900. Reprint, Aalen: Scientia.
Thus the tradition of Thomist theology is of particu-
Harmening, Dieter. 1979. Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und
lar interest. Venerated as the “Angelic Do c t o r,” by far
theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theolo-
the most significant theologian produced by the giegeschichtlichen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters.Berlin:
Dominican order, Aquinas became the greatest author- Schmidt.
ity of the papal Inquisition, which had already been pri- Hopkins, Charles Edward. 1940. The Share of Thomas Aquinas in
marily entrusted to the Dominicans during Aq u i n a s’s the Growth of the Witchcraft Delusion.Philadelphia: University
childhood. To what extent such Dominican inquisitors of Pennsylvania Press.
as Heinrich Kramer really found support in Thomas is Kieckhefer, Richard. 1976. European Witch Trials: Their
Foundation in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500.
i r re l e vant in this context; they used (or misused) his
Berkeley: University of California Press.
a u t h o r i t y, thus associating T h o m a s’s name with the
Russell, Jeffrey B. 1972. Witchcraft in the Middle Ages.Ithaca NY:
whole aspect of witchcraft and the persecution of
Cornell University Press.
witches. Pa rticularly during the Counter-Re f o r m a t i o n
of the late sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic
Church officially considered St. Thomas (who had been Aragon
far from the only re c o g n i zed authority in the late During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many
Middle Ages) the most significant Catholic theologian. different authorities prosecuted the offense of witch-
C o n s e q u e n t l y, it became extremely difficult for craft in Aragon (in Spanish, Aragón). In addition to
Catholics to argue against any of Aq u i n a s’s positions seigneurial justice and so-called “popular justice”
affecting demonology. (lynchings performed on the margins of legality), the
Thus it is not surprising that, after the era of witch- three most active judicial institutions were those of
craft trials ended, essential elements of Aq u i n a s’s doc- inquisitorial, episcopal, and royal justice.
trines concerning witchcraft and demonology we re The Holy Office, known as the Inquisition, created
maintained by Catholic theology far into the nine- especially for the eradication of heresies in the thir-
teenth century, aided by the fact that in 1879 Pope Leo teenth century and re s t o red within the crown of
XIII declared Thomas Aquinas to be the “normal the- Aragon in 1483, based its persecutions upon accusa-
o l o g i a n” for Catholics. In the German Ku l t u rk a m p f tions of apostasy, because it was supposed that the
(culture war) and its disputes about witchcraft, Thomas implicit or explicit pact that eve ry witch must have
Aquinas suffered a fate similar to Ma rtin Luther: T h e made with the Devil implied an abjuration of the
confessional opposition degraded him to a pro p a g a n- Christian faith. Despite the Inquisition’s reputation for
dist of relentless witch persecution, which was of course c ruelty (owing primarily to the “Black Legend,” the
historically untrue. Despite any precise implications for d e f a m a t o ry depiction of the Spanish national charac-
individual issues, Thomas Aquinas’s statements remain ter), howe ve r, trials for witchcraft became fewer and
essentially theoretical and lack any direct relation to the fewer in Aragon as the sixteenth century wore on, until
subsequent persecution of witches. they all but disappeared. The last condemnations to
death for witchcraft pronounced by the inquisitorial
JÖRG HAUSTEIN; tribunal of Zaragoza took place as early as 1535, against
TRANSLATED BY HELEN SIEGBURG two women from villages situated in the Py re n e e s .
See also: ANGELS;AUGUSTINE,ST.; DEMONOLOGY;DEMONS;DEVIL; Inquisitorial skepticism as to the reality of the maleficia
DOMINICANORDER;FLIGHTOFWITCHES;GRATIAN;INCUBUS (evil acts, harmful magic) attributed to witches grew
54 Aragon |
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after the famous proceedings in Logroño in 1610, when will of the judge. He could convene such trials on festi-
the rationalist intervention of the “w i t c h e s’ advo c a t e” val days, at any hour of the day or night, at any place of
Alonso de Salazar Frías provoked a decisive turn away his choosing, with or without the presence of legal
f rom further prosecutions for witchcraft by the Ho l y counsel. Under “exceptional” procedures, the liberty of
Office throughout Spain. This shift reflected the inter- an Aragonese secular judge reached such extremes that
ests of an institution whose principal concern was not he could even pass judgment without bothering to
so much to investigate mentalities as to control groups begin a trial. Most extraordinary of all is the fact that a
c o n s i d e red dangerous from a sociopolitical view p o i n t . judge who presided in accordance with newly minted
Gi ven the increasing disbelief among the inquisitors laws about “exceptional” offenses could (and was in fact
about the reality of crimes attributed to witches, these obliged to) apply them re t ro a c t i vely—that is, against
soon began to be considered as minor questions that defendants who had broken these laws before they
would reasonably have belonged to the o rd i n a r i o, t h e existed.
ecclesiastical judge who represented the local bishop. These local magistrates re g a rded witchcraft as pri-
Episcopal tribunals in Aragon, on the other hand, marily a problem of public order against which it was
i n c reased their prosecutions for witchcraft and other considered necessary to fight in the most expedient way
forms of superstition in the last decades of the sixteenth possible. True “witch hunts” in Aragon took place
century, along with prosecution of other behaviors con- e xc l u s i vely in small mountainous and isolated settle-
s i d e red fundamentally irreligious and threatening to ments. Because of the extreme rapidity of this method
p roper supervision of the faithful, including (many victims we re hanged before legal pro c e e d i n g s
c o m m o n-law marriage, homosexuality, usury, and acts against them had even begun) and because only a few
of physical aggression against the clergy. This discipli- widely dispersed local records have been preserved, we
n a ry turn coincided with the imposition of other k n ow little about local justice. Howe ve r, we do know
decrees approved at the Council of Trent and copied by that women were the primary victims of secular prose-
p rovincial synods throughout Spanish territories. T h e cutions in Aragon. This was partly due to prosecutions
Kingdom of Aragon was divided into seven dioceses that were not based on real deeds (as opposed to those
( Zaragoza, Huesca, Te ruel, Jaca, Ba r b a s t ro, Ta r a zo n a , carried out by ecclesiastical courts, or for that matter
and Albarracín). Each had its own episcopal jurisdic- “exceptional” justice carried out against Aragonese ban-
tion, which was delegated to the so-called Vi c a r i o dits), but even more to the need to find a scapegoat,
Ge n e ra l , who performed the functions of judge in the someone who could be blamed for all sorts of misfor-
name of the bishop, as did such other episcopal minis- tunes and who could be sacrificed with impunity. In
ters and officials as the Vi s i t o r (a judge delegated in Aragon, as elsew h e re in Eu rope, women, considere d
places where he made an annual visit), the fiscal procu- since antiquity the living incarnation of evil, perf e c t l y
rator, the public defender (el abogado de Pobres)and var- personified diabolical dealings.
ious notaries, bailiffs, constables, or jailers. Like the Despite the unevenness in our recorded evidence, we
Inquisition, episcopal judges used procedures based on may divide Aragonese witchcraft prosecutions into two
canon law in search of evidence. They re q u i red the major categories: prosecutions for witchcraft (brujería),
presence of many witnesses, for the prosecution as well which included some mention of collective part i c i p a-
as the defense, and, frequently, they ultimately suspend- tion in witchcraft and an implicit pact with the Devil,
ed cases for lack of evidence. When the defendants were and prosecutions for sorc e ry (h e c h i c e r í a), in which,
d e c l a red guilty, the sentences we re usually light and rather than some demonic power of the accused, certain
consisted principally of paying the costs of the proceed- forms of conduct or practices considered superstitious
ings, and sometimes exile or flogging. were prosecuted. Witchcraft prosecutions constituted a
Unlike the relative benignity displayed by its ecclesi- minority, mostly because they were mainly initiated by
astical judges with regard to witchcraft, Aragon’s secular local secular judges and the records have been lost—or
tribunals, whose jurisdiction was confined to a munici- they we re never even convened and conducted as for-
pality or region, pronounced summary judgments mal trials.
based on statutes that constituted authentic “states of Most of the prosecutions for which the records have
exception” to the laws of the realm and were designed been preserved concerned defendants accused of evildo-
to prosecute certain kinds of criminals (such as witches ing by their neighbors because of certain quarrels or
or bandits) on the social margins of a particular juris- c o n flicts, or defendants who we re authentic “m a g i c a l
diction. Thus, although the laws of Aragon prohibited professionals,” that is, men and women paid to resolve
the application of tort u re, the secular tribunals autho- the problems of their clients; prominent among these
r i zed it without limit for such “e xc e p t i o n a l” offenses. p rofessionals we re those who specialized in curing ill
Though Aragonese law re q u i red a formal accusation health, divination of future events, location of treasure
b e f o re a criminal trial could begin, secular tribunals or lost objects, and, above all among women pro f e s-
allowed the opening of “exceptional” trials at the simple sionals, seduction of a desired man.
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Aragonese witchcraft prosecutions enable us to p o l i t i c a l l y, juridically, and religiously in the sixteenth
establish a clear delimitation between masculine and and seventeenth centuries. Its nort h western part includ-
feminine magic. Men dedicated to magic, as well as ed the prince-abbey of St a b l o - Ma l m é d y, which
n e c romancers and a few members of the clergy, often belonged to the Holy Roman Em p i re and there f o re used
came from southern France (or at least had contacts the 1532 imperial criminal code, the Carolina Code
b e yond the frontier). They we re almost always associ- (Constitutio Criminalis Ca ro l i n a ) .The largest state in the
ated with literate culture in general and in part i c u l a r A rdennes region was the duchy of Lu xembourg, a
with g r i m o r i o s(g r i m o i re s— m a g i c i a n s’ books for invo k- p rovince of the Spanish Netherlands. In Lu xe m b o u r g ,
ing demons), which they brought from neighboring legal pro c e d u re followed the criminal ordinances issued
France. On the contrary, the women devoted to magic by the central Habsburg government in Brussels, sup-
tended to have much more humble backgrounds. T h e plemented by ordinances from the provincial adminis-
majority we re illiterate, prostitutes or pro c u re s s e s , tration in Lu xembourg. The southern Ardennes includ-
often from Mediterranean coastal regions, and their ed the duchy of Bouillon, divided after 1559 into two
methods we re heavily influenced by the remnants of autonomous ministates: a small portion (including the
Morisco culture, long established in the Aragonese t own of Bouillon) under the prince-bishop of Liège and
re g i o n . the southern principality of Sedan under the dukes of
Bouillon. The southwestern area of the Ard e n n e s
MARÍA TAUSIET;
belonged to France. In Bouillon, the ducal council
TRANSLATED BY THOMAS SIZGORICH
s u p e rvised criminal legal pro c e d u re, while the Fre n c h
See also: COURTS,ECCLESIASTICAL;COURTS,INQUISITORIAL; p a rt of the Ardennes answe red to the distant Pa rl e m e n t
COURTS,SECULAR;FEMALEWITCHES;FERRER,DOMINGA of Paris, the most important court in Fr a n c e .
(“LACOJA”); INQUISITION,SPANISH;MALEWITCHES;SALAZAR
Except for the principality of Sedan, whose ru l e r s
FRÍAS,ALONSODE;SPAIN;VICENTE,JOAN.
we re Calvinist until 1635, the Ardennes region was
References and further reading:
Roman Catholic, but also fragmented re l i g i o u s l y.
García Cárcel, Ricardo. 1995. La leyenda negra.Madrid: Alianza.
St a b l o - Malmédy belonged to the diocese of Liège and
Gari, Ángel. 1991. Brujería e Inquisición en Aragón en la primera
thus to the archdiocese of Cologne; the eastern admin-
mitad del siglo XVII.Zaragoza: Diputación General de Aragón.
Henningsen, Gustav. 1980. The Witches’ Advocate: Basque istrative districts (Propsteien) belonging to Luxembourg
Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition.Reno: University of formed part of the archdiocese of Trier, while the west-
Nevada Press. ern administrative districts belonging to Lu xe m b o u r g
Monter,William. 1990. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition as well as the duchy of Bouillon formed part of the dio-
from the Basque Lands to Sicily.Cambridge: Cambridge cese of Liège. The Fre n c h - owned Ardennes territory
University Press. was subject to the archbishop of Reims.
Tausiet, María. 2000. Ponzoña en los ojos: Brujería y Superstición en
Eve ry territory and lordship in the Ardennes held
Aragón en el siglo XVI.Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el
witchcraft trials, and each subregion offered special par-
Católico.
ticularities. In the northeast, large-scale witch hunts
———. 2001. “Witchcraft as Metaphor: Infanticide and its
affected the prince-abbey of St a b l o - Malmédy after
Translations in Aragón in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
1585: at least 30 people from the villages of the prince-
Centuries.” Pp. 179–195 in Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative,
Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture.Edited by Stuart abbot had been executed for witchcraft by 1638. T h e
Clark. London and NewYork: Macmillan. sensational trial of Jean del Vaux, a monk from St a b l o ,
who was suspected of having poisoned many of his fel-
Ardennes l ow monks by means of witchcraft, began in 1592.
Several witchcraft trials are recorded from the Ardennes Initially pursued by the Ch u rch authorities, it ended
region (which includes parts of present-day France, with his beheading in 1597. In his extensive, extre m e l y
Belgium, and Luxemburg), ruled by various territorial detailed, and largely vo l u n t a ry confession, the monk
lords during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. claimed to be a pupil of the (in)famous Dietrich Flade of
The southwestern part of the region was characterized Tr i e r, and Del Vaux accused more than 200 other people
by a large number of unofficial lynchings of witches. of being witches. The wave of trials that resulted fro m
Because few records from the Ardennes have survived, his confessions and accusations lasted until 1598, when
we do not know how many trials and executions for St a b l o’s territorial lord, the prince-abbot Ernst of
witchcraft took place. The figure of 20,000 executions, Ba varia, who was also prince-bishop of Liège, issued a
g i ven in the older historiography, is certainly a d e c ree prohibiting people from defaming others as
complete exaggeration. Moreover, the history of the witches. The Jesuit Ma rtín Del Rio discussed the case in
witchcraft trials from the region as a whole has not yet his we l l - k n own demonological treatise, D i s q u i s i t i o n e s
been comprehensively researched. Magicae libri sex ( Six Books on In vestigations into
Although nearly all the inhabitants spoke Walloon, a Magic, 1599/1600). St a b l o-Malmédy endured another
French dialect, the Ardennes region was fragmented cluster of witchcraft trials in the 1620s, when Ae g i d i u s
56 Ardennes |
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Dormael, a judge re n owned for his severity as a witch offenses. Violations of sexual norms also became evi-
h u n t e r, pursued allegations of witchcraft against seve r a l dence against people suspected of witchcraft. Du r i n g
p rominent people in Stablo, including mayors of the the peak of the witch persecution in St. Hu b e rt
t own. A few of those accused of witchcraft managed to between 1615 and 1630, witchcraft trials also increased
bring countersuits before the Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t in two neighboring territories, the duchy of Bouillon
(imperial chamber court) in Sp e ye r, alleging that due and the Luxembourg district of Bastogne. The inhabi-
legal pro c e d u re had not been observed in their trials. tants of St. Hubert-en-Ardenne had already been sensi-
Aegidius Do r m a e l’s brutal and corrupt machinations t i zed to the alleged activities of the Devil even before
emerged all too clearly from the Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t the seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry witchcraft trials, because the
re c o rds: He pursued witchcraft trials primarily in ord e r abbey was a we l l - k n own place of pilgrimage, where
to increase his own power and to make a financial pro fit . people possessed by the Devil went to be exorcised, and
In the eastern and central Ardennes, the exact num- where those who had been bitten by wolves (or alleged-
ber of witchcraft trials and executions in the duchy of ly by we rew o l ves) or who suffered from rabies and
Lu xembourg remains in doubt, although historians epilepsy came to be healed. In the late sixteenth centu-
a g ree they we re numerous. Ma r i e - Sylvie Du p o n t- ry, Peter Binsfeld, the suffragan bishop of Tr i e r, had
Bouchat (1978) presented the following statistics for dedicated an edition of his demonology to Abbot Jean
witchcraft trials in the Walloon-speaking administrative Balla, who ruled St. Hu b e rt between 1585 and 1599.
districts of the Ardennes region that belonged to the C o u n t e r - Reformation influences affected other nearby
duchy of Lu xembourg; the statistics are based on territories in the Ardennes region as well as St. Hubert-
regional account books that are unfortunately incom- e n - A rdenne. A lengthy economic crisis increased the
plete and thus provide only a partial picture of events. fear of witches, whipped up further by the activities of
In Bastogne between 1550 and 1670 there were only 13 the Jesuits, who constantly warned against the destruc-
recorded trials with 2 executions; Chiny-Etalle recorded tive power of the Devil in sermons and catechisms.
26 trials with 16 executions between 1509 and 1670; In the southern Ardennes, only a few trials (the num-
and there were 23 trials and 11 executions recorded in ber is still unknown) took place in the principality of
Vi rt o n - Sa i n t - Ma rd between 1518 and 1645. No re l i- Sedan under its Huguenot dukes (De la Marck and La
able fig u res exist for the La Roche district. In the Tour d’Auvergne) before they turned Catholic in 1635.
German-speaking district of Arlon, on the other hand, Meanwhile, in the northern part of the duchy of
there were 39 trials between 1553 and 1687, all but one Bouillon (including the city of Bouillon), which had
of which ended in execution. While these statistics are belonged since 1559 to the prince-bishop of Liège,
based only on the account books of the re l e va n t Catholic officials re c o rded 73 trials (Du p o n t - B o u c h a t
Pro p o s t e i e n ( a d m i n i s t r a t i ve district) and omit the trials 1978), but only 15 executions (21 percent) betwe e n
that took place in the legally autonomous lordships of 1564 and 1685 (Bodard 1964). However, the parts that
the duchy of Lu xembourg, they show a clear contrast belonged to the Kingdom of France were characterized
between the relatively scattered and mild persecution of by many unofficial lynchings of witches (Soman 1988).
witches in the Walloon-speaking districts and the much He re, the Pa rl e m e n t of Paris tried to assert its legal
larger-scale witchcraft trials that took place in authority in the face of opposition from local officials.
German-speaking districts and lordships. Because the parlementmaintained a relatively restrained
The theory that witchcraft trials occurred with par- approach toward the legal treatment of witchcraft, the
ticular severity in small lordships is supported by the local inhabitants resorted to a series of lynchings against
e vents in the lordship of St. Hu b e rt - e n - A rd e n n e . suspected witches. Perhaps as many as 300 people were
Although part of the duchy of Luxembourg, it retained drowned or burned in this part of the Ardennes and in
legal autonomy and thus could try witches without any the neighboring French territory of Argonne without
external supervision. With only a few exceptions, the proper trials.
21 witchcraft trials in St. Hu b e rt - e n - A rdenne took RITA VOLTMER;
place during the rule of Abbot Nicolas de Fa n s o n
TRANSLATED BY ALISON ROWLANDS
b e t ween 1611 and 1652 (Dupont-Bouchat 1999). A
former pupil of the Jesuits, filled with counter-reform- See also: BINSFELD,PETER;CAROLINACODE;DELRIO,MARTÍN;
ing zeal, Fanson was an enthusiastic champion of FLADE,DIETRICH;FRANCE;JESUITS(SOCIETYOFJESUS);
Tridentine reforms. Convinced that St. Hu b e rt was
LUXEMBOURG,DUCHYOF;LYNCHING;NETHERLANDS,
infested with adulterers, demonically possessed people,
SOUTHERN;PARLEMENTOFPARIS.
References and further reading:
and witches, Abbot Fanson wanted to establish a new
Bodard, Pierre. 1964. “La répression de la sorcellerie dans le duché
moral order in the territory during his lengthy rule. All de Bouillon aux XVIeet XVIIesiècles.” Pp. 31–42 in Mémorial
t r a n s g ressions that we re re g a rded as violations of the
Alfred Bertrang.Arlon: Institut archéologique du Luxembourg.
n ew Counter-Reformation order we re policed with Dupont-Bouchat, Marie-Sylvie. 1978. “La répression de la sorcel-
s e verity: blasphemy, sorc e ry, soothsaying, and sexual lerie dans le duché de Luxembourg aux XVIeet XVIIesiècles.
Ardennes 57 |
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Une analyse des structures de pouvoir et de leur fonction- tion was fixed: The Waldensians were heretics, and their
nement dans le cadre de la chasse aux sorcières.” Pp. 40–154 in practices were witchcraft. A manuscript copy of Martin
Prophètes et sorciers dans les Pays-Bas XVIe-XVIIe siècle. Edited Le Fr a n c’s Champion des Da m e s (The Defender of
by Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat, Willem Frijhoff, and Robert
Ladies) made at Arras in 1451 already incorporated the
Muchembled. Paris: Hachette.
w i t c h c r a f t – Wa l d e n s i a n – Vaudois confusion. In a mar-
———. 1999. “Démonologie, démonomanie, démonolâtrie et
ginal illustration two women were shown flying, one on
procès de sorcellerie à Saint-Hubert au XVIIe siècle.” Pp.
a broomstick and the other on a staff, while the rubrics
237–252 in La Bibliothèque de L’abbaye de Saint-Hubert en
said “des Va u d o i s e s” and “passe martin.” (The latter
Ardenne au dix-septième siècle. Première partie. Vie intellectuelle
et religieuse d’une communauté Bénédictine.Edited by Luc referred to the eve of Martinmas, November 11, a time
Knapen. Louvain: Bibliotheek van de Faculteit der when witches traditionally held their assemblies).
Godgeleerdheid. While other contemporary tracts were devoted to con-
Leestmans, Charles. 1978. “La sorcellerie en Haute-Ardenne (val- demning Waldensians as heretics, descriptions of their
lée de la Lienne) aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.” Glain et Salm- practices were now attributed to witchcraft.
Haute Ardenne9: 27–48. The first arrest was made on November 1, 1459, the
Seibert, Ulrich 2001. “Gerichtsverfassung und Gerichtspraxis im
Day of All Saints. Four vicars-general, acting in the
Fürstbistum Lüttich. Rahmenbedingungen und Verlauf der
absence of the bishop of Arras, Jean Jouffroy, began the
Hexenverfolgungen unter Ernst und Ferdinand von Bayern
proceedings. Jacques du Bois, the dean of Notre Dame
(1581–1650).” Pp. 253–277 in Hexenprozesse und
d’Arras, who quickly took charge, soon joined them.
Gerichtspraxis. Edited by Herbert Eiden and Rita Voltmer.
The second person arrested was Jean Lavite, a
Trier: Paulinus.
Soman, Alfred: 1988. “Le rôle des Ardennes dans la décriminalisa- we l l-k n own local painter and poet, on Fe b ru a ry 25,
tion de la sorcellerie en France.” Revue historique ardennaise2: 1460. Lavite was soon forced to confess and incriminat-
23–45. ed many others. Six more people were arrested by early
April, including Huguet Amery, formerly in the service
Arras of Bishop Jo u f f roy. While the four vicars-general grew
The series of witchcraft trials and appeals known as the uneasy with the way events we re unfolding, Pi e r re le
Vauderie d’Arras began in this Burgundian city in 1459 Broussart and Jacques du Bois, now joined by the suf-
and ended in Paris in 1491. The trials actually lasted fragan bishop, the Franciscan Jean Fa u c o n n i e r, forc e d
less than a year, from November 1459 until October them to continue.
1460; the appeals process, however, extended over thir- On May 8, a general assembly of the clergy of Arras
ty years. From this well-documented series of trials and decided the fate of seven of the eight prisoners (the oth-
appeals emerged our most complete description of late er having been found hanged in his cell the pre v i o u s
medieval witchcraft anywhere in Europe, including night). On the following day, Jean Lavite, five women,
material on the connection of witchcraft with heresy via and the body of the dead prisoner we re led to a high
the Waldensians. Religious, social, economic, and polit- scaffold that had been erected in the court y a rd of the
ical factors all played roles in the Vauderie d’Arras. episcopal palace; only Huguet Amery, who was resisting
Despite the sensation caused by the events in Arras, t o rt u re, was not present. The inquisitor’s sermon
their subsequent influence on the development of repeated all of the charges: these Va u d o i s flew to their
witchcraft beliefs, practices, and prosecutions was soon assembly in the woods, where they found the Devil in
overshadowed by the appearance of the German-based the form of a man or an animal and adored him; then
Malleus Maleficarum(The Hammer of Witches, 1486), they spat upon the cross; then after feasting they
by Heinrich Kramer. engaged in the sins of sodomy and buggery, plus others
The trials at Arras stemmed from a Dominican chap- that the inquisitor dared not mention before innocent
ter-general held at Langres in ducal Burgundy earlier in observers. Amid considerable unrest in the crowd, six of
1459, attended by the inquisitor of Arras, Pi e r re le the defendants we re sentenced to die at the stake.
Broussart. One event then taking place at Langres was Meanwhile, ten more people were arrested.
the heresy trial of a hermit formerly from the county of A further round of arrests, beginning on June 22,
Artois, with Arras as its capital. Armed with the names 1460, reached the city’s rich and powe rful, including
of other heretics gathered at Langres, le Bro u s s a rt two wealthy citizens and Pa yen de Be a u f o rt, a noble-
returned to Arras determined to root out the menace. man. While these new prisoners were being interrogat-
The crimes with which the defendants we re charged ed, the previous group was prepared for the second ser-
were known collectively as Vauderie(because these trials mo genera l i s (general sermon) on July 16. Se ven more
we re directed at the heresy called Va u d e r i e , victims we re sent to the stake, although two we re
“Waldensianism,” seen as associated with witchcraft) s p a red and imprisoned. The citizens grew re s t i ve, but
and the criminals themselves as Vaudois (Waldensians). that very evening another series of arrests began; one of
Whether or not the confusion between Waldensianism the town’s richest men, Antoine Saquespée, was arrested
and witchcraft was deliberate, by this time the defin i- after dark and conducted to prison. On the follow i n g
58 Arras |
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day two more arrests were made, while three other men details about them. In 1468, the plaintiffs re c e i ved a
fled as far as Paris. After this, only two more people favorable decision from the parlement, but it could not
were arrested on accusations ofVauderie,one on July 27 be enforced. This finally happened in July 1491, ove r
and the last on August 13. thirty years after the Vauderie d’Arras had begun. Only
With some wealthy and powe rful men now behind one of the original victims of the tragedy re m a i n e d —
bars, the prosecutions took a new turn. Relatives of the the extremely durable Huguet Amery.
prisoners launched appeals to their overlord, Philip the
GORDON ANDREAS SINGER
Good, duke of Burgundy, who summoned an assembly
of scholars in Brussels. Although they reached no con- See also: HERESY;JACQUIER,NICOLAS;LEFRANC,MARTIN;MALLEUS
clusions, Duke Philip sent the first herald of his Order MALEFICARUM;NETHERLANDS,SOUTHERN;ORIGINSOFTHE
of the Golden Fleece to observe the proceedings in
WITCHHUNTS;TINCTOR,JOHANN;VAUDOIS.
References and further reading:
Arras and quell any rumors that the duke favored them.
Du Clercq, Jacques. 1823. Mémoires.Edited by Frédéric Baron de
Inquisitorial zeal waned after the Brussels conve n t i o n ,
Reiffenberg. 4 vols. Brussels: A. Lacrosse.
yet a third s e rmo generalis was held on October 22,
Frédéricq, Paul. 1889–1906. Corpus documentorum inquisitionis
1460, where the Seigneur de Beaufort was sentenced to
hereticae privatis neerlandicae.5 vols. Ghent: J. Vuylsteke, and
prison and fined an enormous sum, most of which was The Hague: Nijhoff.
e a r m a rked for Duke Ph i l i p’s proposed crusade against Singer, Gordon Andreas. 1974. “La vauderie d’Arras, 1459–1491:
the Tu rks. Of the two others arrested with Be a u f o rt , An Episode of Witchcraft in Later Medieval France.” Ph.D.
one was sentenced to prison, the other to the stake as a diss., University of Maryland.
relapsed heretic. Fi n a l l y, after withstanding tort u re ,
Huguet Amery was sentenced to thirty years on bread Art and Visual Images
and water—in absentia, after he had escaped from jail. An iconography and visual language for witchcraft
During the final months of 1460, the remaining pris- developed in the last decade of the fifteenth century
oners were released after a series of formal hearings. and the first decade of the sixteenth. It was primarily
The effect of the trial of Waldensians in Arras was the work of Hans Baldung Grien and other south
immediate. Sources, using the words sorcherie(sorcery) German artists, apparently stimulated by the increasing
and Va u d e r i e (Waldensian heresy) as synonyms, attention given to this subject in proceeding decades in
describe witchcraft trials in the French-speaking south- t reatises, sermons, and other literary publications.
ern regions of the Burgundian Low Countries in a sim- Experiments in printmaking by artists and the inclu-
ilar way. Thus, at Ni velles, a woman was banished in sion of woodcuts in the new print media by printers
1459 on suspicion of being a Vaudoise or s o rc i è re . eager to attract a broader readership also played a key
So rc e ry became intertwined with fif t e e n t h - c e n t u ry role in the visual elaboration of this new subject.
d e m o n o l o g y, which now included the pact with the Although witchcraft scenes were also depicted in draw-
Devil and his sect of worshippers. Short-term effects of ings and paintings, the ove rwhelming majority of
the trials at Arras also included the initiation, in 1460, images produced prior to the seventeenth century were
of large-scale inquiries about possible witches at prints. Through frequent reproduction, these images
Tournai, Douai, and Cambrai, and the publication of served initially to link witchcraft to themes of sexual
books (most notably by Johann Tinctor) and the and moral disorder, and from the mid-sixteenth centu-
p reaching of sermons about the new dangers of the ry they emphasized the dangers witchcraft posed for a
conspiracy of the Devil and his servants, the witches. Christian society. From the later seventeenth century,
Even before the trials ended, appeals we re made to such images frequently became an object of parody and
both ecclesiastical and civil authorities. The success of ridicule because of growing skepticism concerning
s e veral appeals had a calming effect on the citizens of witchcraft beliefs.
Arras, and popular opinion soon placed the inquisitors Few images of magic, sorc e ry, and witchcraft have
on the defensive. Popular ballads attacked those who s u rv i ved before the 1490s. A gradual demonization of
had fostered the trials, especially Jacques du Bois, Jean s o rc e ry, which laid the basis for a new iconography of
Fa u c o n n i e r, the vicars-general, and their lawye r s . witchcraft, can be found in images of milk stealing in
Although ruled by Burgundian dukes, the province of many fif t e e n t h - c e n t u ry wall paintings in nort h e r n
Artois fell under the appellate jurisdiction of the French German and Scandinavian churches, and also in the
Parlement of Paris (sovereign judicial court, with juris- appearance of the “new vice” of sorcery, as in the second
diction over approximately one-half of France), which redaction (1355) of the popular allegory of Christian
began an official review of appeals from Arras on May life by Guillaume de Deguileville, Pélerinage de la vie
21, 1461. Political and diplomatic considerations influ- h u m a i n e ( Pilgrimage of Human Life). In the En g l i s h
enced the appeals; they concentrated on judicial proce- verse translation of this work by John Lyd g a t e
dure, not on the substance of the charges, although the ( Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, 1426), a character
p a rl e m e n t’s official re c o rds also contain considerable called So rc e ry was depicted as learning her craft fro m
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the Devil as part of a group of women shown preparing allusions in the cooking of sausages helped emphasize
ointments and herbal potions with sieve, mort a r, and the sexual and gender threat of witchcraft as fundamen-
pestle. So rc e ry was also directly linked to the De v i l tal to its link with moral disord e r. Baldung continued
t h rough its identification with the Waldensian, or to develop such ideas over the next three decades, and
Vaudois heresy. In Flemish miniatures of the late 1460s his images continued to be influential thro u g h o u t
and early 1470s from three French versions of the Europe for the next century and more.
C o n t ra sectam Va l d e n s i u m (Against the Wa l d e n s i a n The many copies produced by German artists ove r
Sect) by the Cologne theologian Johann Ti n c t o r, the following decades demonstrated contemporary
Waldensians were shown worshipping the Devil in the interest in Baldung’s work. The most significant image
form of a goat and riding animals, brooms, and other modeled on his work was a woodcut, probably designed
implements through the sky.This association was con- in his workshop and first published as an illustration to
solidated later in the century by illustrations of the a collection of sermons by the Strasbourg cathedral
s o-called witch of Be rkeley being carried off by the p re a c h e r, Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg, entitled D i e
Devil on a black horse in the five editions of the Em e i s (The Ants, 1516). It depicted a witches’ night
Nu remberg Chro n i c l e published between 1493 and ride with strong sexual ove rtones, and helped consoli-
1500. date Ba l d u n g’s sexual interpretation of witchcraft,
A radically new iconography of witchcraft began achieving widespread circulation in five different edi-
with a series of six woodcuts, which appeared in more tions of Joann Pauli’s popular work, Schimpf und Ernst
than twenty illustrated editions of Ulrich Molitor’s De ( Humor and Seriousness, 1522). Di f f e rent versions of
laniis et phitonicis mulieribus (Concerning Witches and this woodcut continued to be re p roduced until the
Fortunetellers, 1489) before 1510. It would be difficult 1580s, as title pages to works by Johann We ye r,
to exaggerate their importance for the iconography of Re i n h a rd Lutz, Ulrich Mo l i t o r, Paulus Frisius, and
witchcraft. The same scenes we re re c ycled numero u s Abraham Saur.
times with only slight changes. They included witches Key elements from Ba l d u n g’s iconography we re
laming a man with a poisoned arrow, embracing a dev- quickly incorporated into the witchcraft images of
il, riding a wolf or sticks through the sky, enjoying their a rtists in Germany and also beyond. A woodcut by a
meal and conversation in the countryside, and creating former fellow apprentice in Düre r’s work s h o p, Ha n s
a hailstorm around a cauldron. The significance of this Schäufelein, The Evils of Witches,which included riding
last scene, which achieved considerable pro m i n e n c e witches and cauldrons, was published in the 1511 edi-
through its reproduction as a title page in at least seven tion of Ulrich Te n g l e r’s Der neü Laye n s p i e g e l (A New
cases, was that for the first time witchcraft was re p re- Mi r ror for Laymen), a revision of Te n g l e r’s 1 5 0 9
sented as the group activity of women gathered around L a ye n s p i e g e l . Two woodcuts featuring cauldrons we re
a cauldron. included in the second (1518) edition of T h o m a s
During the first two decades of the sixteenth century, Mu r n e r’s Na r re n b e s c h w ö ru n g (The Exo rcism of Fo o l s ) ,
such south German artists as Hans Baldung Gr i e n , to illustrate the relationship between sorcery and sexual
together with Albrecht Altdorfer, Albrecht Dürer, Hans desire. A woodcut depicting milk stealing by sorcery in
Schäufelein, and Urs Gr a f, successfully consolidated Ge i l e r’s The An t s also featured a cauldron among the
and extended the new iconography of witchcraft. This expected iconography.The 1526 painting by the Dutch
iconography found its most influential form in a rtist, Jakob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, The Witch of
Baldung’s 1510 single-leaf, chiaroscuro woodcut, usual- Endor,made a radical break from traditional representa-
ly entitled Wi t c h e s’ Sa b b a t h , but more appro p r i a t e l y tions of the biblical story by including a group of witch-
called A Group of Witches Around a Ca u l d ro n . T h e es around a grill, seated on goats, cooking sausages and
woodcut was critical in establishing the image of drinking. Lucas Cranach used the imagery of naked
women gathered around a cauldron as a widely recog- witches brandishing cooking sticks and distaffs while
nizable visual code for witchcraft. Baldung borrowe d riding animals through the sky in his four Melancholia
the key image of the witches’ night ride from Albrecht paintings (1528–1533), in order to re p resent a night
A l t d o rf e r’s pen-and-ink drawing of 1506, Wi t c h e s procession of witches and spirits, the so-called Furious
Riding Animals Through the Air, and the idea of witch- Ho rde of popular Germanic folklore, and identify the
craft as social, political, and religious inversion from the powers associated with the melancholic imagination as
earlier engraving of his master, Albrecht Düre r, Wi t c h diabolical.
Riding Backwards on a Goat (ca. 1500). Baldung’s image Why Baldung and his contemporaries developed such
of a group of witches seated within a triangle of forked a strong emphasis on a gendered and sexual understand-
sticks also established the cooking stick as one of the ing of witchcraft remains unclear. It has been suggested
most common signifiers of witchcraft, especially among that it was the result of humanist interest in the classical
German artists, for the next century and beyond; while world rather than a response to contemporary concerns
his emphasis on the naked bodies of witches and sexual about witchcraft. But more re s e a rch is necessary to
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e x p l o re the links between witchcraft images and con- s t ressed when artists depicted such classical sorc e re r s
t e m p o r a ry discussion concerning not only witchcraft, and witches as Palaestra, Me roe, Pamphile, Me d e a ,
but also related themes such as gender, the body, cosmic or Circe. These ancient fig u res sometimes took on
o rd e r, and diabolical agency. It needs also to be re c o g- such characteristics of contemporary witches as wild
n i zed that this new iconography did not wholly displace hair or the riding of domestic instruments, as in the
older traditions of depicting sorc e ry as the work of an woodcuts of the Monogrammist NH for the 1538
individual. The Augsburg artist, Hans Bu r g k m a i e r, German translation of The Me t a m o r p h o s e s(or T h e
chose an old and hunched female fig u re with a devil on Golden As s)of Apuleius of Madaura; at other times,
her shoulders to re p resent the “black art s” in a woodcut they re flected contemporary discourse about the
he completed ca. 1514 for the book project, the w i t c h’s power as diabolical or sexual, as in the many
Weisskunig (The White King). The most widely dissem- images of Circe produced for editions of Ovid,
inated re p resentation of witchcraft in the sixteenth cen- Virgil, or Renaissance emblem books. The witch was
t u ry was a woodcut condemning healing by sorc e ry, also given a biblical past, primarily through illustra-
which was created by Jörg Breu and first published in tions of the story of the necromancer or witch of
Johann von Schwarze n b e r g’s Memorial der Tu g e n d Endor (1 Sam. 28:3–20). Jakob Cornelisz va n
( Me m o ry Prompts to Vi rtue, 1534). The woodcut fea- Oostsanen radically changed the traditional iconog-
t u red individual healers of both genders as re p re s e n t a- raphy of this subject by inserting elements fro m
t i ves of witchcraft, while also introducing a small yet sig- Ba l d u n g’s work into his painting of 1526. Then, in
n i ficant visual cue of a spewing cauldron and hailstorm. Wittenberg in 1572, the subject was included for the
By the second half of the sixteenth century, images of first time in a Luther Bible, in a woodcut pro b a b l y
witchcraft had significantly increased in number and by Johann Teufel, which was meant to encourage
also changed in emphasis. Its centers of pro d u c t i o n secular rulers to eliminate witches from their territo-
moved north, with Flemish and Dutch artists playing a ries. Illustrations in Bibles continued into the eigh-
greater role. The new emphases can be usefully grouped teenth century, with the emphasis firmly on the
under seven headings: fig u re and techniques of the witch.
3. A link to non-Christian peoples in the present.In the
1. The crimes and punishments of witches.Such images Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (History of
fed the market created for sensational news in the the Northern Peoples), a richly illustrated and
later sixteenth century. Erhard Schoen and Lucas immensely popular account of Scandinavian culture
Mayer from Nuremberg, Lucas Cranach the by the Swedish archbishop Olaus Magnus, first
Younger from Wittenberg, and Georg Kress of published in Rome in 1555 and often republished
Augsburg were just a few of those who created these in various European languages, a series of woodcuts
visual news reports of witchcraft. Broadsheets also depicted Scandinavian magic and sorcery and
satisfied the sixteenth-century interest in providen- imputed them to the power of the Devil. One
tial signs. The Swiss pastor, Johann Jakob Wick, woodcut even presented the well-known, and by
between 1560 and 1588 gathered an extremely rich this time also frequently illustrated, story of the
collection. Among the mass of correspondence, witch of Berkeley, in order to highlight the relation-
reports, pamphlets, and broadsheets, his collection ship between the pagan sorcerers of Scandinavia and
also included many colored pen drawings that Wick the witches of Christian Europe. A similar relation-
inserted into his texts; more than twenty of these ship was created between contemporary witches and
depicted the crime of witchcraft. For Wick and his the Indians of the New World. The Dutch artist,
readers, they were visual signs of the terrible state Crispin de Passe, in a late sixteenth-century engrav-
into which a sinful European Christendom had fall- ing based on a design by his Flemish collaborator,
en; witches were instruments of the Devil in his Martin de Vos, depicted Amerindian cannibals and
unrelenting struggle against Christ’s church. European witches as children of a common father,
2 . The long history of witchcra f t .In the 1560s, Pi e t e r Saturn, the planetary god whose rule was based on
Brueghel the Elder created two ve ry influ e n t i a l violence, namely the castration of his father and the
drawings that depicted the struggle between the devouring of his children. Witches were thereby
apostle James and the ancient magician identified as savage and alien, and could be more
Hermogenes. In 1565, they we re engraved by Pi e t e r easily imagined as castrators and cannibals.
van der He yden, and subsequently copied or adapt- Surviving prints of the same subject by Henri Leroy
ed by later artists. Witchcraft, re p resented by riding and Jan Sadeler the Elder suggest that the compari-
women and a series of belching cauldrons, was sim- son enjoyed considerable currency.
ply one of the many diabolical arts over which this 4 . Witches as savage and cru e l .The Dutch artist, Ja c q u e s
pagan magician was believed to have exe rcised con- de Gheyn the Yo u n g e r, who created a large number
t rol. The longer history of witchcraft was also of drawings of witchcraft in the first decade of the
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s e venteenth century, exe m p l i fies this tendency. Hi s
witches cook up body parts, suck blood from a
child, disembowel a male cadave r, and nail a frog to
the flo o r. They re p resent a theater of cruelty analo-
gous to contemporary images of cruelty and atro c i t y
associated with religious conflict, mart y rdom, and
the colonization of non-Eu ropean peoples, and
re flect the more brutal and uncompromising va l u e s
of confessionalized Eu rope, where by the differe n t
C h u rches aligned with the state to control all aspects
of religion and daily life. In the 1608 edition of
Francesco Maria Gu a z zo’s Compendium Ma l e fic a ru m
(A Su m m a ry of Witches), the most profusely illus-
trated witchcraft treatise published, one finds among
the largely ro u t i n i zed images of witchcraft a new
image of two witches basting a child they are ro a s t-
ing over a fire. Violence was certainly a part of
witchcraft imagery earlier in the century, now h e re
m o re powe rfully than in a large engraving by
Agostino Ve n eziano, usually entitled Lo St re g o z zo
(The Wi t c h e s’ Procession, 1518–1530?), which
depicts a wild female fig u re crushing the life out of
small children at her feet. But from the 1550s, and
especially from the 1590s, such violence became
m o re frequent and intense. The Flemish artist, Fr a n s
Francken the Yo u n g e r, who painted at least six
immensely complex scenes of witches’ assemblies in
the first decade of the seventeenth century, always
included graphic re f e rences to the violence of witch-
Hans Sebald Beham’s Three Witches and Deathdepicts the charged
craft, whether through dismembered body parts, or
sexuality/pornography (note the robust nudity and the right hand of
in the case of his Vienna painting, through the
the middle witch), the ultimate effect of the working of magic (death),
decapitation of a victim.
and the social and moral disorder personified by witches and
5. The stereotype of the witch as an ugly crone with sag- witchcraft. (Hexen: Analysen, Quellen, Dokumente.Directmedia
ging, dried-up breasts.The predominant image of Publishing GmbH: Berlin, 2003)
the witch as a postmenopausal figure who denied
life and nurture marked a significant change from
the sexually seductive figure of the early sixteenth Tractatus de Confessionibus Maleficorum et Sagarum
century. This shift was a direct consequence of the (Treatise on Confessions of Witches and Sorceresses,
emphasis on the witch’s cruelty, and probably also 1589)by the suffragan bishop of Trier, Peter
marked the influence of the literary stereotypes cre- Binsfeld. But just two years later, in 1593, an
ated by the new demonological treatises. The unknown artist produced a detailed engraving of
younger, attractive female figure did not wholly dis- the various Sabbat activities said to have occurred in
appear, as is clear from the work of such artists as the diocese of Trier as an illustration to an Erfurt
Frans Francken the Younger, David Teniers the pamphlet by Thomas Sigfridus. This image depicted
Younger, Matthäus Merian the Elder, and Adrian large numbers of witches engaged in varied activi-
Huberti. But younger female figures remained ties, including dancing, playing music, feasting,
exceptional, often the center of attention by a group drinking, preparing potions and powders, riding
of older women who prepared them for the night animals and various implements, and cavorting with
ride and demonic copulation. demonic partners. The engraving marked the begin-
6. Witchcraft as a mass phenomenon characterized by ning of a new iconography of the Sabbat and was
vast Sabbats.The earliest surviving illustration of a reproduced in slightly different versions over follow-
witches’ Sabbat is a drawing from Johann Jakob ing decades. Sections of it were also copied, not
Wick’s collection that illustrated a text of 1570. The least by the Nuremberg artist Michael Herr, who
number of witches depicted was small and the range designed a vast and spectacular witchcraft scenario
of their activities limited, just as in a title-page that was etched by Matthäus Merian the Elder in
woodcut to the 1591 Munich edition of the 1626. This work influenced the woodcut that
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accompanied the various editions of Johann Francisco Goya, Félicien Rops, Anton Wi e rtz, Alfre d
Prätorius’s work (1668) on the mountain known in Kubin, and Ernst Barlach used witchcraft to explore oth-
Germany as the Blocksberg, and other copies and er topics, such as the artistic imagination, superstition and
versions into the eighteenth century. Another enlightenment, decadence and eroticism, nature and des-
famous Sabbat to exercise considerable influence t i n y. As belief in witchcraft disappeared, the fantasy
was the 1613 etching by the Polish artist, Jan witches of popular literature and film began to pro l i f e r a t e .
Ziarnko, used to illustrate the work of the French
magistrate, Pierre de Lancre. CHARLES ZIKA
7. Witches’ assemblies indoors.The moving of witches’
See also:A P U L E I U SO FM A D AU R A; B A L D U N G[G R I E N], H A N S;
assemblies from the wild forest landscapes indoors is
B E R K E L EY, W I TC HO F; B O DYO FT H EW I TC H; B O R D E LO N,
especially marked in the work of David Teniers the LAU R E N T; B R E U, J Ö RGT H EE L D E R; B RU E G H E L, PI E T E RT H EE L D E R;
Younger, the Dutch painter who became the most C A N N I B A L I S M; C AU L D RO N; C I RC E; C R A N AC H, LU C A S; D Ü R E R,
prolific illustrator of witchcraft scenes in the A L B R E C H T; E N D O R, W I TC HO F; F R A N C K E NI I, F R A N S; G E I L E RVO N
mid-seventeenth century. Probably influenced by K A I S E R S B E RG, J O H A N N; G H EY N, J AC QU E SdE; G OY AYLU C I E N T E S,
Pieter Brueghel, Frans Francken, and also by de F R A N C I S C OJ O S ÉD E; G UA Z ZO, F R A N C E S C O-M A R I A; H A I R; H E R M O-
Gheyn, who began to locate some witch scenes in G E N E S; H O G A RT H, W I L L I A M; LAY E N S PI E G E L;M AG N U S, O LAU S;
domestic interiors, Teniers succeeded in domesticat- M E D E A; M O L I TO R, U L R I C H; P R Ä TO R I U S, J O H A N N E S; RO S A, S A LVA-
ing the activities of witches as no other artist before TO R; S A B B AT; S AT U R N; S T I C K S; T E N I E R S, D AV I D, T H EYO U N G E R;
T I N C TO R, J O H A N N; VAU D O I S(WA L D E N S I A N S); Z I A R N KO, J A N
him. As in the paintings of his later copyist, Jacques
References and further reading:
Aliamet, and other artists such as Jaspar Isaac,
Davidson, Jane. 1987. The Witch in Northern European Art,
Teniers’s witches gather in kitchens, around chim-
1470–1750.Freren: Luca.
neys and hearths, where they engage in their evil rit- Hults, Linda C. 1984. “Baldung’s ‘Bewitched Groom’ Revisited:
uals. They appear as everyday figures within the Artistic Temperament, Fantasy and the ‘Dream of Reason.’”
familiar domestic space of the household, which Sixteenth Century Journal15: 259–279.
was fundamental in this period to the proper func- ———. 1987. “Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: the
tioning of church and state. Evidence of Images.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History18:
251–255.
Koerner, Joseph Leo. 1993. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in
From the mid-seventeenth century, an incre a s i n g
German Renaissance Art.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
number of voices began to be raised against the creduli-
Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters. 2001. “Introduction: The
ty of witchcraft beliefs, and trials for witchcraft became
Problem of European Witchcraft.” Pp. 1–40 in Witchcraft in
fewer or even ceased in western Europe. Satire, parody,
Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History.Edited by Alan C.
and ridicule began to be expressed more frequently in
Kors and Edward Peters. 2d ed. Philadelphia: University of
witchcraft images. The Neapolitan artist, Salvator Rosa, Pennsylvania Press.
for instance, created a series of eerie witchcraft tableaux Löwenstein, Machteld. 1986. “Helse Hebzucht en Ereldse Wellust.
in Florence during the 1640s, filled with horror, paro- Een Iconografische Interpretatie van Enkele
d y, and burlesque. A French printmaker, Jean Cr é p y, Heksenvorstellingen van Jacques de Gheyn II.” Volkskundig
d i rectly ridiculed witchcraft in an etching (possibly Bulletin 12, no. 1: 241–261.
based on a lost painting by Ba rtholomäus Sp r a n g e r ) , Préaud, Maxime. 1973. Les sorcières.Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale.
Schade, Sigrid. 1983. Schadenzauber und die Magie des Körpers:
which illustrated the 1710 edition of the comic paro d y
Hexenbilder der frühen Neuzeit.Worms: Werner’sche
by Laurent Bordelon, L’ h i s t o i re des imaginations extra v-
Verlagsgesellschaft.
agantes de Monsieur Ou fle (The St o ry of the
———. 1987. “Kunsthexen—Hexenkünste.” Pp. 170–218 in
Ex t r a vagant Imaginations of Monsieur Ou fle). It was
Hexenwelten: Magie und Imagination vom 16.–20. Jahrhundert.
not only Bord e l o n’s fool (in French, le fou, w h e n c e
Edited by Richard van Dülmen. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer
Ou fle) whom Crépy had in his sights; his etching was Taschenbuch.
also a visual parody of Zi a r n k o’s Sabbat of a century Schild, Wolfgang. 1998. “Hexen-Bilder.” Pp. 329–413 in
e a r l i e r. His countryman, Claude Gillot, another early Methoden und Konzepte der historischen Hexenforschung.Edited
e i g h t e e n t h-c e n t u ry artist influenced by Bord e l o n’s by Gunther Franz and Franz Irsigler.Trier: Spee.
w o rk, also produced a significant parody of a witches’ Sullivan, Margaret. 2000. “The Witches of Dürer and Hans
Sabbat, relegating such beliefs to the world of fantasy Baldung Grien,” Renaissance Quarterly53: 332–401.
Zika, Charles. 1999. “‘Magie’–‘Zauberei’–‘Hexerei’. Bildmedien
and illusion. Likewise, William Hogarth’s brilliant satir-
und kultureller Wandel.” Pp. 317–382 in Kulturelle
ical cartoon of 1762, Cre d u l i t y, Superstition and
Reformation: Sinnformationen im Umbruch, 1400–1600.Edited
Fanaticism: A Me d l e y, re p resented witchcraft as a pup-
by Bernhard Jussen and Craig Koslofsky. Göttingen:
pet manipulated by a preacher-puppeteer.
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
After the mid-eighteenth century, much witchcraft
———. 2002. “Images of Circe and Discourses of
i m a g e ry had abandoned the traditional discourse of Witchcraft, 1480–1580.” Zeitenblicke:Online-Journal
witchcraft. Artists as varied as Johann Heinrich Füssli, für die Geschichtswissenschaften1, no. 1: 35,
Art and Visual Images 63 |
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http://www.zeitenblicke.historicum.net (accessed October 15, moments, which surv i ved in the West until the
2004). Renaissance, when one of its prime advocates was
———. 2003. Exorcising our Demons. Magic, Witchcraft and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Ne t t e s h e i m .
Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe.Leiden and Boston:
Brill.
History
Complex systems of astrology developed indepen-
Astrology dently in three regions: in central America, perhaps as
As late as the mid-seventeenth century, astrology played early as two thousand years ago; in China, probably in
a role in helping those who feared they might be vic- the first millennium B . C . E .; and in Me s o p o t a m i a
tims of witchcraft. In some areas, it still does. Astrology (modern Iraq), prior to 2000 B . C . E. (the form fro m
is literally defined as the “word of the stars,” as distinct which Western astrology is derive d ).The earliest frag-
from astronomy, the “law of the stars.” Thus, while ments of astrological tablets in Mesopotamia date
astronomy deals primarily with the measurement of the back to ca. 2200 B . C . E. , and the first complete set of
stars’ positions, and hence with their motions, astrolo- omens, based on the planet Venus, occurred in the so-
gy is concerned with the significance that human beings called Venus Tablet of Amisaduqa of ca. 1646 B . C . E.
attach to those celestial movements in relation to their Assyrian emperors made extensive use of astro l o g e r s .
own affairs. The discipline of astrology is thus so broad Their patronage stimulated further innovation: T h e
that it is often necessary to talk of “astrologies” rather modern twe l ve-sign zodiac appeared in the sixth cen-
than of one monolithic astrology to which all t u ry, and the first known birth chart dates to 410
astrologers subscribe. B . C . E.Encouraged by the conquests of Alexander the
The fundamental philosophical debate in astro l o g y Great in the 330s, the techniques of Me s o p o t a m i a n
distinguishes belief in real planetary influ e n c e s , a s t rology spread east to India and west to Eg y p t ,
which themselves may be conceived as either physical w h e re they fused with Egyptian religion and Gre e k
or metaphysical in nature, from an astrology of philosophy (especially Plato and Aristotle) and math-
“s i g n s” and “o m e n s” in which a divine force commu- ematics to create an astrology that is both philosophi-
nicates with humanity via the stars. An additional cally and technically recognizably modern. By the fir s t
debate pits an astrology in which the stars re veal a c e n t u ry C . E., we can re c o g n i ze all the competing
p redetermined future against one in which the future philosophical distinctions outlined above, including
is negotiable, either because planetary influences are a s t rologies that favo red signs or influences, material-
only tendencies or because the omens sent by the ism or spirituality, and predestination or freedom of
gods may be withdrawn if suitable supplications are choice. We also see the introduction of daemons,
made. A common distinction in the Middle Ages dis- supernatural entities that St. Augustine confused with
tinguished “natural astro l o g y,” in which the planets demons. A combination of the collapse of the Ro m a n
might be the cause of general influences (for example, Em p i re and literacy in western Eu rope, and hostility
Mars causes heat, while the Moon brings rain) fro m f rom Christianity in Eastern Eu rope and the Ne a r
“judicial astro l o g y,” in which an astrologer uses a East, then moved its focus to Persia and India. T h e
h o roscope (a map of the heavens at a part i c u l a r Islamic re d i s c ove ry of ancient learning led to astro l o-
moment) to make specific judgements about part i c u- g y’s re i n t roduction to the Near East and Moslem lands
lar events such as wealth, health, family happiness, in the Mediterranean. From there it was re i n t ro d u c e d
and professional success. Judicial astrology is divided, into western Eu rope in the twelfth century and
in turn, into four branches, genethialogy (modern became an accepted part of alchemy, medicine, and
natal astrology; the interpretation of birth chart s ) , political prognostication. Its application to individual
re volutions (modern mundane astrology; the study of l i ves always remained controversial, howe ve r, because
h i s t o ry and politics), interrogations (modern horary of the suspicion that it denied the freedom to make
a s t rology; the use of horoscopes to answer pre c i s e moral choices and hence to achieve salvation. A fur-
questions), and elections (the selection of auspicious ther influx of Greek mystical material (Plato and the
moments to inaugurate new enterprises). In its sim- Corpus He rm e t i c u m) in the fifteenth century re i n-
p l i fied form, using only the Sun and Moon, election- f o rced astro l o g y’s cre d i b i l i t y. T h e re was, howe ve r, sub-
al astrology provides the rationale behind most re l i- stantial scholarly criticism of astrology in early mod-
gious calendars, including the Jewish, Christian, and ern Eu rope, together with attempts to reform it,
Islamic. Although most astrological texts since classi- notably by Jean Bodin and Johannes Ke p l e r.
cal times have dealt with the interpretation of celes- By the late seventeenth century, astrology had lost its
tial alignments, the practice of astrology has fre q u e n t- credibility in educated circles in the West. The ancient
ly invo l ved the active manipulation of the future . tradition has continued unbroken until the present day
From this is derived an astrological magic, including in India, while in the West it survived initially only in
the creation of planetary amulets at auspicious popular almanacs, partially re c overing in the early
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twentieth century under the aegis of the Theosophical No rfolk astro l o g e r, declared that the cause of a client’s
Society and the New Age movement. disease was one of three witches in her home village.
Thomas noted that the ve ry existence of such astro l o g i-
Astrology and Witchcraft cal work confirmed the existence of witchcraft at a time
Keith Thomas noted that astrology and witchcraft are when its reality was openly challenged (1971, 757). Lilly
essentially rival explanatory models, because to suspect c e rtainly believed that “people are troubled with witch-
o n e’s neighbor of a malign influence was to rule out pos- e s . . .in many places of this Kingdome” (1985, 465).
sible astral causes (1971, 757). Although there was no The same applied to astrological palliatives: If witchcraft
reason that a witch might not be the intermediate agent had not been believed to be real, then there could be no
of some misfortune which had a celestial origin, T h o m a s reason for such remedies. These treatments, which could
described a client of the astrologer Richard Napier in be adapted for cattle, we re not explicitly astrological but
1635 who “f e a red he was bewitched o r blasted by an ill w o rked according to the principles of sympathetic mag-
planet,” as if the two possible causes are mutually exc l u- ic. For example, if the horoscope established the pre s-
s i ve. Because astrologers we re frequently consulted by ence of witchcraft, then it might be ove rcome if a tile
clients who believed they had been bewitched, they we re f rom the witch’s house was heated in a fire, then had the
obliged to create tests to ascertain this: T h e urine of the bewitched person poured on it, and was
s i x t e e n t h-c e n t u ry English astrologers Richard Sa u n d e r s finally returned to the fire until it was ve ry hot.
and Joseph Bl a g r a ve asserted that astrology offered the Although such practices had disappeared by 1700, at
only certain means of discovering witchcraft. The surv i v- least from educated circles, the twentieth century saw a
ing casebooks of William Lilly, who acquired an interna- number of interesting developments. In the Un i t e d
tional reputation in the 1640s–1660s, contain well ove r Kingdom and the United States, most contemporary
fifty cases of suspected witchcraft, twe n t y - t h ree of which Wiccans pay great attention to the Moon as the embod-
date from 1654 to 1656, the highpoint of Cro m we l l i a n iment of the mother goddess, in a conscious evo c a t i o n
rule in England (Thomas 1971, 756–757). of what are believed to be ancient traditions, and some
An astrologer testing for witchcraft would most like- also study the psychological astrology that has deve l-
ly cast an “interrogation,” a horoscope set for the oped, largely under the influence of the theosophists
moment of the asking of a question such as, “Is the sub- and the psychologist C. G. Jung. Meanwhile, in Latin
ject bewitched?” If the subject was sick and witchcraft America, where belief in witchcraft is strong, astro l o g e r s
was the suspected cause, an alternative would be to cast a re still consulted in cases of suspected witchcraft and in
a “d e c u m b i t u re” (literally, “lying dow n”), a horo s c o p e some instances still use the traditional ru l e s .
set for the moment that the diseased individual took to
NICHOLAS CAMPION
their bed. Lilly, whose 1647 text Christian As t ro l o gy
p rovided the first major compendium of medieva l See also: AG R I P PAVO NN E TT E S H E I M, H E I N R I C HC O R N E L I U S; A LC H E M Y;
a s t rology to be published in English, set out the ru l e s A M U L E TS; B O D I N, J E A N; C A R D A N O, G I RO LA M O; D’A N A N I A, G I OVA N-
for establishing whether witchcraft was a cause of illness N ILO R E N ZO; D I V I N AT I O N; K E P L E R, J O H A N N E S; M O O N; PA R AC E L S U S,
or distress, advising on treatment and assessing whether T H E O PH R A S T U SB O M B A S T U SVO NH O H E N H E I M; SY M PAT H Y.
References and further reading:
it might be ove rcome (Lilly 1985, 56, 250, 464–466,
Baigent, Michael. 1994. From the Omens of Babylon: Astrology and
640–642). In the horoscope, witches were indicated by
Ancient Mesopotamia.London: Penguin.
the “t welfth house,” the sector of sky immediately
Campion, Nicholas. 2006.Cosmos: A Cultural History of Astrology.
above the eastern horizon, and by the planet ruling the Forthcoming. London: London and Hambledon.
sign of the zodiac in which the house cusp (its begin- Culture and Cosmos: A Journal of the History of Astrology and
ning, in this case its uppermost point) was placed. For Cultural Astronomy.Available online,
example, if the uppermost point of the twelfth house http://CultureAndCosmos.com (accessed October 15, 2004).
was in Leo, the ruling planet would be the Sun, Leo’s Lilly,William. 1985.Christian Astrology.London, 1647. Facsimile
“ruling planet.” Lilly defined six rules for the positions edition. London: Regulus.
Tester, Jim. 1987. A History of Western Astrology.Woodbridge, UK:
of house rulers in which he had “found more cert a i n
Boydell.
(the) suspicion of Witchcraft.” For example, if the
Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic.
twelfth house ruler was in the sixth house (i.e., immedi-
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
ately below the western horizon), witchcraft was likely.
Saturn and Mars were likely both to reveal the presence
of witchcraft and indicate the subject’s vulnerability to Augsburg, Imperial Free City of
it, while Venus and Jupiter might suggest the opposite. Few other towns offer a documentation as rich as the
Only five of the horoscopes in Lilly’s casebooks includ- imperial free city of Augsburg. The sheer number of
ed a judgment, and all of those were negative. handwritten and printed chronicles, the quality of
Other astrologers are known to have diagnosed c o u rt re c o rds ( Urgichtenakten, St ra f b ü c h e r ) , c o u n c i l
witchcraft. For example, in 1654, Christopher Hall, the minutes, account books, tax records, and other sources
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render it almost impossible for any capital punishment prince-bishopric, and the Fugger lordships, Au g s b u r g
between 1400 and 1800 to escape scholarly attention; tried eight women, and in 1590–1594 witchcraft trials
between 1580 and 1650, when witch hunting climaxed c l i m a xed with no less than twenty-one court cases.
in central Europe, the documentation is virtually com- Howe ve r, although witchcraft and sorc e ry we re pro s e-
plete, and all court trials can be studied in detail. cuted persistently, with roughly two court cases per
Founded by the Romans in 15 C . E., Au g u s t a year, the judges (Strafherrn),deputies of the town coun-
Vindelicum became the capital of the Roman province cil, considered none of these “w i t c h e s” dangero u s .
Raetia secunda. The inhabitants became Christians in Rather they we re treated as stupid members of the
the third century, and the cult of the female martyr St. u n d e rclass, and sometimes their interrogations re s e m-
Afra survived the DarkAges. When bishops were again ble ethnographers’ interv i ews, leading the scholar
recorded in the eighth century, they had become lords Lyndal Roper to develop in 1994 the idea that witch-
of the town. Howe ve r, the Holy Roman Em p e ro r craft trials we re generally based upon negotiations
Friedrich I Ba r b a rossa stripped them of their legal b e t ween the accused and the judges. Despite scores of
rights in 1167, and already in 1250 the citizens rose up trials, which provide detailed insights into the local
against their bishop in an insurrection. Au g s b u r g magical underworld, throughout the sixteenth century
became an imperial free city, and adopted its own law nobody ever received capital punishment for witchcraft
in 1276. With its favorable legal position, and a loca- in the imperial free city of Augsburg. The authorities
tion midway between Venice and Antwe r p, Au g s b u r g k n ew about the “witches,” but witchcraft was only
became an attractive business center, and in the early prosecuted on demand from neighbors, who were usu-
sixteenth century Jakob Fugger of Augsburg was con- ally as deeply involved in sorcery as the accused.
s i d e red the wealthiest banker in Eu rope. Em p e ro r The mood in Augsburg changed as radically as the
Maximilian I was ridiculed as burgomaster (mayor) of economic situation following the Thirty Years’ War. In
Augsburg, because he enjoyed her riches so frequently. 1625, for the first time, the town court condemned a
His successor Charles V held his most important impe- woman to the stake, mainly because of the accusations
rial diets there, at which the Protestants defined their of her young daughter, who claimed to be a child witch.
belief (in a document known as the C o n f e s s i o This case was quite extraord i n a ry, and Augsburg did
Augustana) and secured Lutheranism’s legal recognition not respond to the waves of mass persecutions through-
at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. However, later in the out the region in the later 1620s. It was only after the
sixteenth century, Augsburg’s textile industry declined, war that urban self-confidence collapsed. The quality of
while its bankers and patricians joined the landed the documentation declined as much as the education
nobility of neighboring territories, or became lords or of the city’s lawyers and theologians. Even Pro t e s t a n t
even princes themselves, like the Fuggers. superintendents like Gottlieb Sp i t zel we re by then
Although Augsburg became central to the European ready to conduct exo rcisms; he re p o rted approv i n g l y
postal communication system, the last imperial diet was one of the most scandalous local witchcraft trials, and
held here in 1582. A city of about 40,000–50,000 c o m p a red it to contemporary events in Sweden and
inhabitants around 1600, its population declined New England. Although there were far fewer witchcraft
sharply during the Thirty Years’ War as a consequence trials after 1650, even in correlation to the declining
of severe epidemics in the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s. At population, the number of capital punishments ro s e
the same time, the export industries lost their markets s h a r p l y. Be t ween 1654 and 1699 no less than sixteen
and never recovered after the war. Although Augsburg witches we re convicted and executed, all of them
remained an important place for printers, artists, and female, and many of them either child witches, or
s i l versmiths, with roughly 20,000 inhabitants in the accused by young girls. It cannot be confirmed, howev-
second half of the seventeenth century and throughout e r, that lying-in-maids we re particularly targeted, as
the eighteenth century, it had lost its former impor- Lyndal Roper claimed from the case of Anna Ebelerin
tance. In 1806, Bavaria sacked the imperial free city. in 1669. Nor can it be proved that incestuous fantasies
From the 1520s, Augsburg was a biconfessional or sexual deviance played a mayor role, as Ro p e r
town, mainly Protestant, but with a Catholic minority claimed from the case of Regina Bartholome in 1670.
supported by the bishop, the dukes of Bavaria, and the Augsburg trials gained particular notoriety thro u g h
Habsburg emperors. Despite the confessional frictions, c o n t e m p o r a ry media hype from the local printing
Augsburg remained throughout the sixteenth century a i n d u s t ry, but the city’s upsurge in witch executions fit s
t own of urban civility, re l a t i vely tolerant of re l i g i o u s well into the regional pattern of declining imperial
dissidents and Jews, and moderate in its attitude toward f ree cities seeking refuge in finding scapegoats.
crimina excepta (the excepted crimes). W h e reas Catholic territories and even the persecuting
The frequency of witchcraft accusations closely fol- prince-bishoprics became more cautious after the
lowed the ups and downs in neighboring territories. In T h i rty Ye a r s’ Wa r, Protestant imperial free cities like
1590, when witch hunts were conducted in Bavaria, the Nu remberg or Memmingen started executing witches
66 Augsburg, Imperial Free City of |
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in considerable numbers. Only around 1700 did they 1563, amazed his audience with incredible stories of a
suddenly stop such executions, presumably due to w i t c h e s’ conspiracy. Suspicions of witchcraft fla red up
changes in the education of the Protestant elites, who under the next bishop, Johann Egolf von Knöringen
i n c reasingly did their legal studies in the Ne t h e r l a n d s , (ruled 1573–1575), who was sick throughout his short
or at Halle and Göttingen, we re influenced by the time in office, and the first two witches were executed at
philosophy of Christian Wo l f f, and reacted to the Dillingen in 1575. Under Pr i n c e - Bishop Ma rq u a rd
antiwitchcraft trial campaigns of Christian vom Berg (ruled 1575–1591), another ard e n t
T h o m a s i u s . Counter-Reformer, witchcraft trials remained endemic;
they reached a first climax between 1586 and 1592,
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
when witch hunts shook the southern district courts.
See also: BAVARIA;CHARLESV;CRIMENEXCEPTUM;FUGGERFAMILY; Curiously enough, a local witch fin d e r, Chonrad
HOLYROMANEMPEROR;JESUITS(SOCIETYOFJESUS); MAXIMILIAN Stoeckhlin, sparked these large-scale persecutions. Hi s
I,HOLYROMANEMPEROR;NUREMBERGIMPERIALFREECITY;
confessions, obtained by illegally seve re tort u re in 1586,
THOMASIUS,CHRISTIAN.
enabled the district judge of Re t t e n b e r g-So n t h o f e n t o
References and further reading:
i n vestigate several dozen suspects. The persecutions
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria:
s p read to neighboring districts of the prince-bishopric,
Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early
c reating the most extensive witch hunt ever in the
Modern Europe.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roper, Lyndal. 1994. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion, region, with more than 100 victims, 68 in the district
and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe.London: Routledge. c o u rt of Ma rkt Ob e rd o rf alone, and dozens more in
the district of Schwabmünchen. The populace sup-
Augsburg, Prince-Bishopric of
p o rted these witch hunts because of a series of unfa-
The prince-bishopric of Augsburg played an important vorably cold and wet years, when crops we re damaged
role in the history of witchcraft, because witch hunts in and mortality soared. The government had to hire for-
this territory sparked witch hunting in the larger region eign hangmen and construct new prisons in order to
in the 1580s, serving as a model for neighboring lord- h a ve sufficient capacity for this large-scale hunt. Pa rt
ships and the duchy of Ba varia. The diocese of of this wave of persecutions was the famous case of
Augsburg was founded in the fourth century, belonging Walpurga Hausmännin at Dillingen, a midwife held
to the archdiocese of Milan. After the collapse of the responsible for the bishop’s death. Local printers uti-
Roman Empire, the Christian cult survived in the l i zed her case, which the Fugger newsletters also
region; with the rise of the Frankish empire, Augsburg re p o rted. Mi d w i ves, howe ve r, we re not the main tar-
became subject to the archbishops of Mainz. When the gets of this campaign, but rather women working in
citizens of Augsburg acquired the status of an imperial the food industry, such as innkeepers. Except for
free city, the city’s bishops had to retire to their landed Chonrad Stoeckhlin, the witch fin d e r, all the victims
property, stretching from the river Danube to the Alps. (i.e., over 99 percent) of this persecution we re female.
They tried to form a territorial state, the prince-bish- Local judges we re largely in charge of this persecu-
opric of Augsburg, whose capital was no longer tion, but some legal supervision came from the bishop’s
Augsburg, but Dillingen on the Danube, the bishops’ court council (Hofrat) at Dillingen, although its inter-
new residence, although the bishops’ see, cathedral, and vention was obviously not obligatory.The records kept
cathedral chapter remained in the imperial free city. by this council re veal that these lawyers we re literally
The prince-bishops of Augsburg we re early borrowing from the German translation of Jean Bodin’s
Counter-Reformers, with the University of Dillingen, famous De la démonomanie des sorciers(on the Demon-
founded in 1544, serving as a bridgehead of Jesuit edu- Mania of Witches, 1580), because they used the term
cation. In 1600, and again in 1800, the prince-bish- He xe n reichstag ( Imperial Diet of Witches) invented by
opric had roughly 100,000 inhabitants. In 1803 it was B o d i n’s Strasbourg translator Johann Fi s c h a rt .
sacked by Bavaria. Concerning the mechanism of witch hunting, a local
It is not coincidence that Pr i n c e - Bishop Ot t o o b s e rver concluded that first the prosecutors arre s t e d
Truchsess von Waldburg (ruled 1543–1573), who had ugly women, then prettier ones, then wealthy inn-keep-
studied in Tübingen, Dole, Padua, Bologna, and Pavia, ers, concluding that if they continued to hunt witches,
and had joined the papal diplomatic service, witnessed they would eventually have to use golden chains for the
the first serious witchcraft trials in this territory. He was nobility. However, it served as a warning that, in 1587,
a pioneering Counter-Re f o r m e r, ardently support i n g a member of the Dillingen patriciate, Ma r g a re t h e
the Catholic hard-liners at the Council of Trent. He Kellerin, was executed for witchcraft. In this region her
founded the first post-Reformation Catholic university, case was quoted as a precedent, alongside the spectacu-
and invited the Jesuits to serve as teachers. Wa l d b u r g lar execution of Dr. Dietrich Flade in Trier.
appointed Peter Canisius as his councilor; as cathedral The authorities seemingly became more cautious
preacher in Augsburg, the famous Jesuit, beginning in afterwards. But witchcraft trials flared up repeatedly in
Augsburg, Prince-Bishopric of 67 |
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the prince-bishopric, providing a source of continuous Protestant reformers and by the Jansenists, continuing
concern for such neighboring territories as the imperial his influence into the modern period.
free city of Augsburg and the duchy of Bavaria. As the The first major reason behind his extraord i n a ry
debates within the Dillingen court council demonstrat- influence was the understanding of demonology in late
ed, the atmosphere under Pr i n c e - Bishop Heinrich V a n t i q u i t y. Au g u s t i n e’s rhetorical training and teaching
von Knöringen (ruled 1599–1646) was hopeless, in experience provided him with an excellent know l e d g e
that the councilors we re unable to put aside their of classical Latin literature. In this context he acquired
stereotypes. Unlike Bavaria, there were no objections in insight into classical demonology, which distinguished
principle to witchcraft trials, although, like the between gods and demons and between good and evil
Bavarian council, this one was split between a moderate demons. To approach the issue of the origin and effects
and a more zealous faction. In fact, the prosecution of of evil in the world, the pagans made qualitative dis-
witchcraft slowed, and the prince-bishopric did not tinctions; Augustine’s reflections begin at this point.
participate in the witch hunts of the late 1620s, despite A second and probably more important aspect
a particularly unfavorable climate, crop failures, and stemmed from Augustine’s youthful inclination toward
w a r. Although a general inquisition was launched in Manichaeism. Manichaeism emphasized a strictly dual-
1629, and witches we re punished in several ways istic view of the world, classifying all events in light of
(sometimes with banishment), there we re no exe c u- the polarity between good and evil forces. Even after his
tions. During the later seventeenth century there were c o n version to Christianity, Au g u s t i n e’s views on this
f ew witchcraft trials, which seems particularly strange, issue remained ambivalent. He undoubtedly disap-
because witchcraft then became a major issue among p roved of the Manichaean enmity against the world
the region’s Protestant imperial free cities. In the eigh- and thus its rejection of the divine creation as described
teenth century, howe ve r, the picture was re ve r s e d : in the Hebrew Bible, but the issue of good and evil in
Protestants stopped executing witches, while there was the world remained largely unresolved. Obviously, as a
another upsurge of trials in the prince-bishopric, with Christian bishop Augustine was a vigorous advocate of
s e veral executions in the 1720s. Re p o rts of a ve ry late monotheism. However, his statements on the effects of
execution in 1766 cannot be confirmed in the sources; the power of evil can easily be, and have been, misinter-
the last execution apparently occurred under Bi s h o p preted.
Joseph von Hessen (ruled 1740–1768), when Ba r b a r a Passages and quotations from Scripture form the
Zielhauserin was executed in Dillingen in 1745. t h i rd source for Au g u s t i n e’s understanding of
Overall figures are difficult to estimate, but the number demonology. Since no Biblical doctrine of demonology
of executions in the prince-bishopric of Augsburg prob- existed, Augustine employed these texts more to sup-
ably approached 200. port convictions and ideas borrowed from classical lit-
erature and Manichaeism than to create a new theory.
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
He also used Biblical texts to re flect about individual
See also: AGRARIANCRISES;AUGSBURG,IMPERIALFREECITY; elements of demonology.
BAVARIADUCHYOF;CANISIUS,PETER;FISCHART,JOHANN;FLADE, When considering Augustine’s position in the histo-
DIETRICH;HAUSMÄNNIN,WALPURGA;HOLYROMANEMPIRE;
ry of witchcraft and witchcraft trials, a strict distinction
JESUITS(SOCIETYOFJESUS); LITTLEICEAGE;STOECKHLIN,
must be made between Augustine himself and his sub-
CHONRAD;TRIER,ELECTORATEOF.
sequent influence on theology. During his lifetime,
References and further reading:
Augustine never had to confront the issues that led to
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria.
witchcraft prosecutions in the late Middle Ages. Hi s
Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early
Modern Europe.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. re flections we re made when the expansion of
———. 1998. Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Christianity was still limited, even though it was the
Phantoms of the Night.Translated by H. C. Erik Midelfort. state religion. Ba c k g round remnants of classical pagan
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. beliefs and other, mainly Middle Eastern, cults and reli-
gions (e.g., Manichaeism) were officially prohibited but
Augustine, St. (354–430) still alive, and popular Christianity was not yet fully
A prime authority for the doctrine of witchcraft that developed.
d e veloped in the later Middle Ages, Au relius Au g u s t i n e Most of Augustine’s work must be understood in the
was the most influential, wide-ranging, and indepen- context of his time and background, particularly his
dent of the Latin Ch u rch Fathers. The effects of his most famous work, De civitate dei ( On the City of
teaching can be traced throughout the Middle Ages, God). This appeared from 416 to 422, after the
during which he was undoubtedly deemed the most Visigoths had sacked Rome in 410, to refute the asser-
a u t h o r i t a t i ve among the Ch u rch Fathers. His work s tions of “heathens” that the fall of Rome was a conse-
and ideas—including his compre h e n s i ve re flections on quence of the empire’s rejection of the Roman gods. In
d e m o n o l o g y — we re re v i ewed extensively by all the response, Augustine developed a doctrine of demonology
68 Augustine, St. |
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based on Scripture (e.g., Ps. 96:5: “All the gods of the demon through a certain act (pactum implicitum).
peoples are idols”), in which the demonic nature of the Augustine developed an actual “sign theory,” which, by
Olympian gods was exhibited systematically (De civitate analogy to the Christian understanding of the sacra-
d e i 8–10). Augustine argued not only that the re l i g i o u s ments and godliness, explained the relationship betwe e n
practices of the heathen (sacrifices, worship, and pagan the will, the rite, and the result. Just as Christians re c o n-
f e s t i vals) implied the worship of demons rather than of firm their covenant with God through praye r, sacra-
the one true god, but also that in general, any classical ments, and worship, so do the “heathen” confirm their
conception that could accommodate or approve the c ovenant with false gods (i.e., demons) through signs,
existence of Jupiter or any other Roman god must be w o rds, and invocations, or unconscious gesture s .
condemned as superstition and worship of false gods. Au g u s t i n e’s theology of demonology eve n t u a l l y
It was crucially important that Augustine neve r became authoritative within a context entirely incongru-
doubted the existence of demons. Heathen gods really ous with the context in which he developed it. T h ro u g h
did exist; their identity was compared to that of angels; early medieval mediators (e.g., Is i d o re of Se v i l l e ) ,
but unlike angels, they sought glory for themselve s Au g u s t i n e’s central statements on demonology found
rather than God. Pagan cults had arisen wheneve r their way into medieval legal texts like Gr a t i a n’s
demons claimed man’s re ve rence, whether in a temple De c re t u m ( C o n c o rd of Di s c o rdant Canons, known as
of Jupiter in Rome or of Zeus in Athens. Although it the De c retum, 1130), and of course into the standard
was not his intention, Augustine implicitly attributed a dogmatic work of Peter Lombard (Se n t e n t i a e ,
certain rank to demons, which they had not previously 1148–1151). Against the background of the Hi g h
held. The overall conception of De civitate dei allowed Middle Ages, Au g u s t i n e’s idea of the two c i v i t a t e s( c i t i e s )
demons to play a decisive role in the re l a t i o n s h i p could be applied to over half a millennium of stru g g l e s
b e t ween the civitas diaboli (city of the Devil) and the b e t ween the established Christian religion and all kinds
civitas dei, which we re presented as contending with of dissenters and heretics. The abstract battle betwe e n
each other. Augustine created a dualistic impre s s i o n , Au g u s t i n e’s two realms was relocated into real life and
even though he strove not to. Instead of the evil spirits, i n t e r p reted in terms of a battle between the Church and
which we re driven out sporadically in the New witches. In addition, further aspects of Au g u s t i n e’s the-
Testament, he depicted a Devil, with followers and a ology we re re i n t e r p reted: His re m a rk that women are
hierarchy that borrowed its nomenclature from the clas- able to conceive children with the half-god Pan and
sical pantheon and that was in direct conflict with the “ Sy l va n s” (De civitate dei15, 23) became a standard cita-
body of Christ, the Catholic Church. The apocalyptic tion for the real possibility of intercourse with the De v i l ;
fears and expectations in the age of the witchcraft trials his opinion that backsliders could be brought back to
found substantial backing in Augustine’s ideas. the Church by force, expressed in an entirely differe n t
Augustine did not linger in the cosmological realm, context, affected Church practice in the late Mi d d l e
but turned his attention to the relationship betwe e n Ages and early modern times.
these demons and their prince, the Devil (a hierarchical On the other hand, certain re t a rding aspects can also
classification that was obviously possible without great be found in Au g u s t i n e’s work. Close scrutiny of his argu-
reflection), and humans. He developed a plausible sys- mentation about Go d’s work of redemption re veals that
tem with far-reaching consequences, based on the he believed that any work of demons was ultimately pos-
ontology of late antiquity and his own notions about sible only with Go d’s authorization. Augustine never fully
the divine act of redemption: Demons are noncorpore- re s o l ved the issue of magic and witchcraft in relation to
al beings who are present in time and space. Being eter- Go d’s mysterious purpose and the arbitrary acts of sorc e r-
nal, they have at their disposal a high cognitive percep- ers and witches. Obv i o u s l y, he never mentioned the cen-
tion and senses that enable them to learn and re a c t tral medieval notion of witches flying, nor did he specifi-
m o re quickly than corporeal humans. In brief, they cally relate demons to gender. Up to the En l i g h t e n m e n t ,
possess sufficient knowledge and capabilities to enable the reality of demons and the whole preternatural world-
them to accomplish acts that men could plausibly but v i ew, supported by Au g u s t i n e’s weighty arguments, we re
falsely interpret as miracles. They employ this know l- h a rdly questioned. Thus with re g a rd to the history of
edge to induce man to revere them (their final goal). In witchcraft prosecutions, the differences betwe e n
De divinatione daemonum ( On the Divination of Au g u s t i n e’s intentions in his lifetime and his posthumous
Demons, 406), Augustine eventually assumed a con- historical influence seem particularly signific a n t .
tractual relationship between humans and demons. He
saw this contract as based on the fact that a person JÖRG HAUSTEIN;
either purposefully sought contact with a demon thro u g h TRANSLATED BY HELEN SIEGBURG
some specific ritual that the demon had communicated
See also ANGELS;APOCALYPSE;BIBLE;CORPOREALITY,ANGELICAND
to him or her (pactum explicitum) or, from foolishness DEMONIC;DEMONOLOGY;DEMONS;DEVIL;GRATIAN;ISIDOREOF
or curiosity, unconsciously communicated with a SEVILLE;MANICHAEISM.
Augustine, St. 69 |
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References and further reading: cipalities of Gorizia and Istria extended to the Ad r i a t i c .
Aurelius Augustinus. De civitate dei.Corpus Scriptorum To the west lay the Alpine county of Ty rol (Ti rol). We s t
Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 40. Prague and Vienna: F. of Ty rol was the county of Vorarlberg, part of “Fu rt h e r
Tempsky, Leipzig: Freytag.
Au s t r i a” (Vo rd e r ö s t e r reich, or die Vorlande), which
———. De divinatione daemonum.CSEL 41, 597–618.
included approximately a hundred scattered enclaves in
Brown, Peter. 1970. “Sorcery, Demons and the Rise of
Swabia (Schwäbisch-Österreich; the oldest ancestral
Christianity: From Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages.” Pp.
Habsburg lands) and the territories of Su n d g a u ,
17–45 in Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. Edited by
Breisgau, and Freiburg farther west. Although parts of
Mary Douglas. London: Tavistock.
———. 2000. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography.2d ed. Berkeley the Austrian Republic today, neither the arc h i e p i s c o p a l
and Los Angeles: University of California Press. principality of Salzburg (separating the eastern and we s t-
Flint, Valerie I.J. 1999. “The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery ern here d i t a ry lands) nor the territory of Burgenland (in
in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions.” the far west of the Hungarian kingdom) belonged to
Pp. 277–348 inAncient Greece and Rome.Vol. 2 of The Athlone early modern Austria, although they had signific a n t
History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Edited by Bengt political, social, and cultural ties to it. On the other
Ankarloo and Stuart Clark. London and Philadelphia: Athlone
hand, not only does Swabian Austria now belong to
and University of Pennsylvania Press.
Germany (with a bit of Vo rd e r ö s t e r reich now in Fr a n c e ) ,
Geerlings, Hermanus Jacob. 1953. De antieke daemonologie en
but also the former Habsburg duchy of Carniola, part of
Augustinus’ geschrift De divinatione Daemonum.The Hague:
Carinthia, and the southern third of Styria now belong
Excelsior.
to Sl ovenia.
Götz, Roland. 1987. “Der Dämonenpakt bei Augustinus.” Pp.
57–84 in Teufelsglaube und Hexenprozesse.Edited by Georg The central feature of Habsburg rule over the hered-
Schwaiger. Munich: Beck. i t a ry lands was that it had a different constitutional
Harmening, Dieter. 1979. Superstitio. Überlieferungs- und theo- basis in each. Each land was governed through tradi-
riegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theolo- tional rather than centralized institutions, bringing
giegeschichtlichen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters.Berlin: each into a purely dynastic union with the others.
Schmidt. Having a limited sense of shared purpose, eve ry indi-
Jenkins, Claude. 1953. “Saint Augustine and Magic.” Pp.
vidual land pre s e rved its own identity, political forms,
131–140 in Science, Medicine and History: Essays on the
legal system, and administrative practices. Thus, most
Evolution of ScientificThought and Medical Practice Written in
lands had their own estates and territorial diets, along
Honour of Charles Singer.Vol. 1. Edited by E.A. Underwood.
with separate laws, privileges, and customs, all con-
London: Oxford University Press.
firmed by succeeding Habsburg rulers.
Markus, Robert A. 1994. “Augustine on Magic: A Neglected
Semiotic Theory.” Revue desétudes augustiniennes40: 375–388. Gi ven this dive r s i t y, witchcraft trials thro u g h o u t
“Au s t r i a” we re a mixed lot. Each territory, along with
Salzburg and Burgenland, experienced such trials, but
Austria
they tended to ebb and flow with changing circ u m-
With perhaps 1,900 executions in territories containing stances. Some territories saw many persons accused, oth-
some 2,000,000 inhabitants, Austria experienced rela- ers re l a t i vely few. For example, Swabian Austria experi-
tively moderate prosecutions for witchcraft. Less a state enced some of the worst witch hunts, like some nearby
than a collection of principalities acquired over several territories in southwestern Ge r m a n y. Trials in St y r i a
centuries, the Austrian Habsburg here d i t a ry lands we re also re l a t i vely numerous. Howe ve r, in most mod-
(Erblande) constituted an informal union of central ern Austrian territories—Vorarlberg, Ty rol, Carinthia,
European territories. They were largely autonomous Upper and Lower Austria, as well as Salzburg and
political units, such as the Bohemian and the Burgenland—the numbers of trials remained limited,
Hungarian monarchies added by the Habsburgs in despite occasional instances of large-scale witch panics
1526 and the Burgundian and Spanish territories, i n volving dozens or even hundreds of accused witches.
acquired by the house of Habsburg in earlier years. All
Austrian lands belonged to the Holy Roman Empire of Common Themes
the German Nation (to which the Habsburgs gave a It is difficult to generalize about witchcraft trials
long string of elected emperors), but remained distinct throughout the Austrian lands, but some common
territories within it. themes emerge—although exceptions must also be kept
The core of the Austrian here d i t a ry lands included in mind. First, most trials remained rural affairs. Some
s e veral principalities situated along the Danube Rive r. notorious trials occurred in major urban centers, at
“Au s t r i a” (Österreich) proper included two duchies, In n s b ruck (Ty rol), for example, in 1485–1486,
Upper and Lower Austria (Ober- and Ni e d e r ö s t e r re i c h ) . conducted by Heinrich Kramer, the notorious author
To the south, “Inner Au s t r i a” (In n e r ö s t e r reich) included of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches,
t h ree contiguous duchies: Styria (St e i e r m a rk), Carinthia 1486); at Vienna (Lower Austria) in 1583; and most
(Kärnten), and Carniola (Krain), while the smaller prin- notably at Salzburg, from 1675 to 1681. Likewise, the
70 Austria |
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vast majority of trials invo l ved the prosecution of one or T h e resa took steps to end witchcraft trials before her son
perhaps a few individuals. Most accused witches came Joseph II decriminalized witchcraft entire l y.
f rom the lower levels of society; a large number we re
socially marginal individuals such as vagabonds or shep- statistics
h e rds, though occasionally even nobles and clergy found No detailed analysis of witchcraft trials based upon an
t h e m s e l ves under investigation and sentenced to death. e x h a u s t i ve examination of source material has ye t
Especially in Swabian Austria and Vorarlberg, accused a p p e a red covering all Austrian here d i t a ry lands. An old
witches we re usually women, but further east re l a t i ve l y w o rk (Byloff 1934) remains the most complete surve y ;
high percentages of men we re accused: 39 percent in despite some strengths, its approach is impressionistic and
Styria, for example. Except at Salzburg, execution rates its documentary base incomplete. Since then, systematic
tended to be higher among women than men. Few chil- analyses have appeared for a few Austrian lands, most
d ren we re tried for witchcraft (or even invo l ved dire c t l y notably Swabian Austria (Dillinger 1999), Vo r a r l b e r g
in witchcraft investigations) in the Austrian territories, (Tschaikner 1992), and Styria (Kern 1994, 1995). Fo r
but several cases in Styria and Lower Austria illustrate other here d i t a ry lands, some work has been done on indi-
that young girls we re not immune. On the other hand, vidual trials, or short series of trials, but our knowledge of
large numbers of adolescent boys we re tried and exe c u t- the course of events in Ty rol, Lower and Upper Au s t r i a ,
ed during the notorious Za u b e re r - Ja c k l - Pro ze s s e Carinthia, and Carniola remains tentative. The same
( So rc e re r - Ja c k — Trials) episode in neighboring Sa l z b u r g . applies to Salzburg (not ruled by Habsburgs) and
Austrian trials include accounts of magical activities Burgenland (part of the Hungarian kingdom).
common throughout Eu rope, and their re c o rds suggest Except for a few scattered early trials, most Austrian
that court personnel usually introduced such diabolical witchcraft trials occurred between 1550 and 1750. Save
elements as pacts with the Devil and the witches’ Sa b b a t . for Swabian Austria and Vorarlberg, they peaked during
Initial accusations we re frequently made by neighbors of the second half of the seventeenth century, well after
the accused and invo l ved such simple m a l e fic i a(evil acts, most of western Europe. In some Austrian areas, prose-
harmful magic) as causing illness, destroying crops, or cutions accelerated after 1580 and initially peaked
s t a rting fires. Summoning bad weather seems especially a round 1620, declining throughout the T h i rty Ye a r s’
p rominent. Most trials emerged when judicial adminis- War (1618–1648). The number of pro s e c u t i o n s
trations we re able and willing to prosecute people on the i n c reased dramatically between roughly 1670 and
basis of such commonplace magical beliefs. Their subse- 1690, particularly because of a large number of trials in
quent interrogations of suspected witches inquired about Styria and Sa l z b u r g’s Za u b e re r - Ja c k l trials. Tr i a l s
diabolical activities such as pacts or sexual liaisons with declined once again after 1690, leveled off to a few per
the Devil or attending Sabbats. Pa rticularly common in year by 1720, and disappeared by 1750, after Salzburg’s
larger trials, this development was visible even in smaller last trial ended. Estimates of the total number of witch-
trials involving mostly female suspects. Trials of male sus- es tried in Austrian territories (including Swabia) range
pects, whose relations with the Devil tended to be busi- from 1,700 to considerably higher (Byloff 1934, 159),
n e s s - related rather than sexual, often introduced a dia- while a more recent estimate suggested a total of around
bolical element through suspicions of host desecration. 1,900 witchcraft executions (Behringer 2000, 61, 66).
Thus, most trials emerged from the nexus of common- One must still examine the courses of witchcraft tri-
place magical beliefs, on the one hand, and judicial als in each Austrian territory, because they vary greatly.
administrations able and willing to prosecute people on From we l l - re s e a rched regions (Swabian Au s t r i a ,
the basis of those beliefs, on the other. Vorarlberg, Styria) emerge data unlikely to be re v i s e d
Although several late medieval witchcraft trials in s i g n i fic a n t l y. For Swabian Austria, some 788 victims
Austrian territories took place in ecclesiastical or inquisi- (90 percent women) of witchcraft trials have been esti-
torial courts, the vast majority we re conducted by secular mated, roughly 80 percent of them in the county of
authorities, in accordance with Charles V’s Carolina Code Hohenberg (Dillinger 1999, 353–357). In Vo r a r l b e r g ,
(Constitutio Criminalis Ca ro l i n a ,1532) or later territorial after two women we re tried for sorc e ry in the late fif-
codes promulgated expressly for the Austrian here d i t a ry teenth century, at least 166 people were tried in the six-
lands. In addition, accompanying Catholic reform after teenth and seventeenth centuries, with at least 105 exe-
the Reformation, a worldview emerged in which witch- cuted, 80 percent of them women (Tschaikner 1992).
craft became one of many threats to church and state. In Styria, around 300 trials took place, involving at
Although no Habsburg ruler ever pursued witchcraft tri- least 879 individuals. Of the 757 suspects whose sex is
als with exc e s s i ve zeal, provincial Austrian law codes and k n own, 463 we re female (61 percent), 294 male (39
police ordinances occasionally established direct links p e rcent). At least 312 witches we re executed, many of
b e t ween prosecuting witches and political–religious va l- them in southern regions now in Slovenia (Kern 1995,
ues of seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry baroque Catholicism. Later, 165–167). In other Austrian territories, only limited
the enlightened eighteenth-century Catholic Ma r i a source material has been explored; much remains to be
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done, and incomplete data permit only rough estimates centuries dramatically increased criminal pro s e c u t i o n s
(Valentinitsch 1987). For Lower Austria, we have for sorc e ry. A long process of centralizing, standard i z-
records from 47 trials involving 120 people, two-thirds ing, and codifying the territorial laws of va r i o u s
of them women (Raser 1989, 17–25); for Up p e r Habsburg Austrian territories re flected the incre a s i n g
Austria, 35 known trials involved about 100 individu- i n fluence of Roman law throughout continental
als, 77 percent of them men. From Burgenland, records Eu rope. After 1532, Charles V’s imperial penal code,
of 13 trials have been found, involving fewer than 50 the Carolina Code, provided a legal basis for prosecut-
individuals (76 percent female). To the south, in ing harmful magic. In 1544, Archduke Fe rdinand I
Carinthia, 116 trials invo l ved about 300 people (57 issued a general mandate for his Lower Au s t r i a n
p e rcent male). In Carniola, ve ry fragmentary sourc e Er b l ä n d e r (including Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola
material re veals only 12 trials in which 35 people, along with Lower Austria, but excluding Up p e r
almost exclusively women, were executed (Vilfan 1987, Austria) calling for the arrest and trial of sorceresses and
293). All told, nearly 500 persons were tried for witch- female fortunetellers.
craft in territories found in present-day Slovenia, which The first territorial prohibitions against sorc e ry,
includes areas that had once belonged to St y r i a , explicitly codified, date from Archduke Charles II’s
Carinthia, and Carniola. Farther west, in Tyrol, 72 tri- 1574 Styrian penal code, modeled on the Caro l i n a
als invo l ved perhaps 200 accused, 72 percent female Code, and his 1577 police regulations for Styria. T h i s
( Dienst 1987, 286–289), while in neighboring code addressed sorc e ry and illicit magic in four re l a-
Salzburg, which experienced at least 43 trials, the num- t i vely short sections. Two additional sections ve ry
bers we re a good deal higher because of the notorious b r i e fly established sorc e ry as a capital offense by link-
Za u b e re r - Ja c k l trials and related trials between 1675 ing it to blasphemy and promised magistrates furt h e r
and 1690 that invo l ved at least 198 suspects and 138 police regulations in the future. These six sections we re
executions. Of those executed, only 36 were women; 46 far more detailed than previous medieval custumals,
we re adult men, the remaining 56 being adolescent but mostly prescribed pro c e d u res magistrates should
boys between 9 and 16. Thus, roughly 59 percent of the adopt, rather than defining the crime of maleficent sor-
individuals tried in Salzburg were men, a figure skewed c e ry, and they offered no detailed statements of witch-
by the exceptionally high number of male suspects tried craft theory. At the same time, howe ve r, connections
in the late seventeenth century (Byloff 1934 passim; b e t ween the gove r n m e n t’s ove rt religious concerns and
Dienst 1987, 286–299; Vilfan 1987, 293). its exe rcise of justice emerged clearly in the duchy’s
1577 police regulations, which established the re l i-
Witchcraft and the Law gious nature of sorc e ry by linking this crime with blas-
Of ficial policy tow a rd witchcraft in Austria underwe n t phemy and enlisting all St y r i a’s public authorities in a
s e veral permutations during the medieval and early c rusade against crime, immorality, and sin. Bl a s p h e m y
modern periods. The eighth-century Lex Ba i u va r i o ru m and sorc e ry constituted crimes to be punished by secu-
(Law of the Ba varians) prohibited the destruction of lar territorial court s .
c rops through m a l e ficium (harmful magic) in Ba va r i a n Later witchcraft decrees, issued by Fe rdinand II for
settlements, including the Austrian Alps. Earlier in the all Austrian hereditary lands in 1633 and by Ferdinand
c e n t u ry, Pope Gre g o ry II had informed his nuncio at the III for Lower Austria in 1656, contained similar
Ba varian court to forbid forms of oneiro m a n c y C o u n t e r - Reformation rhetoric about sorc e ry. Fe rd i n a n d
( d re a m-i n t e r p retation), augury (the reading of por- I I ’s 1633 Tugendsambe Lebens-Führu n g( Gu i de to Virtu-
tents), and the use of magical formulas, as well as sooth- ous Conduct) often copied previous Styrian re g u l a-
saying and the casting of lots. At the end of the century tions. Sorcerers and their accomplices were to be tried
in 799, the Ba varian Synod of Reisbach decreed that and punished in accordance with article 109 of the
i n vestigations should proceed against those invo l ved in C a rolina—which called for death by burning in cases
soothsaying and weather magic. Early medieval pro h i b i- involving genuine harm. Neither the Devil nor the dia-
tions produced few known trials. Nonetheless, medieva l bolical nature of the three activities listed was explicitly
s o u rces (court re c o rds, chronicles, and custumals) fro m mentioned. Despite their rhetoric of religious re f o r m ,
later centuries in these Habsburg patrimonial lands indi- Austrian prohibitions against sorc e ry ignored the
cate that both the nobility and municipal authorities “c u m u l a t i ve” concept of witchcraft until 1656, when
occasionally punished harmful magic. As late as 1499, Fe rdinand III’s L a n d - Ge r i c h t s - Ordnung (Te r r i t o r i a l
Maximilian I’s penal code for Ty rol did not mention sor- Co u rt Ordnance) for Lower Austria (by then distinct
c e ry as a crime, although his 1514 ordnance for Lowe r from the Inner Austrian lands) explicitly mentioned the
Austrian courts prohibited it. Similar inconsistencies Devil and included questions about his role.
c h a r a c t e r i ze much of the late medieval period. Fe rdinand III’s 1656 code re p resented the culmina-
Im p o rtant changes in both the codification of law tion of authoritarian religious reform in Ha b s b u r g ,
and the court system during the fifteenth and sixteenth Austria, in defense of orthodoxy and judicial reform. Its
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sixtieth article, discussing the prosecution of sorc e ry, the T h i rty Ye a r s’ War (1618–1648), and their high
filled several pages. It repeated the basic procedures of point occurred only in the years following 1680.
earlier witchcraft statutes, but added detailed references As R. J. W. Evans re m a rked, “t h e re is evidently a
to witches’ assemblies, diabolical pacts, and the Devil’s good fit [between witchcraft trials and] the Ha b s b u r g
m a rk. It instructed magistrates to search suspects for Counter-Reformation” (Evans 1979, 406). The correla-
objects described by demonologists: “magical objects tion between Ferdinand III’s 1656 decree and a measur-
such as oils, salves, evil powders, magical boxes, oats able increase in the number of witchcraft trials in the
infested with bugs, human bones, magical lanterns, or eastern Habsburg lands (Austria, Bohemia, Hu n g a ry )
wax dolls with nails stuck through them; or Hosts, crys- suggests a link between the consolidation of baro q u e
tals, mirrors for divination, written pacts with the Catholicism and increasing pre s s u re on suspected
Devil, books of sorc e ry, and similar things.” It also witches. It must be emphasized, however, that there was
mentioned other signs of diabolical magic, pre v i o u s l y no directly causal relationship between Ferdinand III’s
absent from official Habsburg legislation on sorc e ry : code and the spread of trials for witchcraft—particular-
the witches’ Sabbat, sexual relations with the De v i l , ly in Lower Austria, the only province directly affected
flight, and apostasy. For the first time, the 1656 ord- by this code, where 52 of 69 known trials occurre d
nance prescribed an inquisitorial method designed to before 1656 (Raser 1989, 17–25). Moreover, in Lower
p roduce complete and detailed accounts of suspected Austrian witchcraft trials for which sufficient documen-
activities of witches. Section four of Article 60 instruct- tation is currently available, elaborate diabolical magic
ed magistrates to inquire if the accused had made a pact r a rely appeared; most cases invo l ved only charges of
with the Devil. It then listed over forty highly specific simple sorc e ry entailing such minor punishments as
questions, in twenty subsections, designed to elicit fines and time in the stocks. Thus, Lower Austrian trial
information sufficiently precise to allow a magistrate to re c o rds re veal diminishing concerns with diabolism
diagnose witchcraft. Howe ve r, the article also distin- after 1656. Of course, legal codes never account for the
guished those who practiced “genuine sorcery” through p rosecution of alleged crimes, because they must be
diabolical means, and who must be put to death by fire interpreted and applied by magistrates familiar with the
or sword, from mere “s o o t h s a yers, those who said specific circumstances of each particular case.
superstitious adjurations, and card-dealers,” who—if In a legal opinion of October 8, 1679 to the Lowe r
little harm was done—should be fined and exiled. Austrian government, Archduke Leopold I provided an
T h roughout the Habsburg here d i t a ry Au s t r i a n e xcellent illustration of exe rcising princely discre t i o n .
p rovinces, witchcraft trials peaked after the pro m u l g a- This ruling applied directly to only a single case invo l v-
tion of article sixty of Fe rdinand III’s 1656 ing four suspects who had not yet been put to death, but
L a n d-Ge r i c h t s - Ord n u n g .The timing of these trials cor- it set clear precedents. While upholding the reality of
responds well with a model of the witch-hunting phe- witchcraft, confirming its status as a particularly re p re-
nomenon that divides Eu rope into a central region and hensible crime, and justifying its continued pro s e c u t i o n
various peripheral areas away from the core. Ac c o rd i n g in Lower Austria, the ruling explicitly prohibited types
to this center-periphery model, trials began the earli- and instruments of tort u re outside the customary law of
est, we re the most seve re (in terms of size, numbers, the land (in this case, the bed of nails), and, more signif-
l e vel of panic), and ended soonest in a core area cen- i c a n t l y, it also re q u i red magistrates hearing witchcraft
t e red on southwestern Germany and the Rhineland. cases to forw a rd all pre l i m i n a ry decisions as well as fin a l
Moving away from this area, into the “p e r i p h e ry,” trials judgments to the Lower Austrian Government for
began much later, did not become as intense, and re v i ew. The Lower Austrian 1656 code contained no
tended to last well beyond the Eu ro p e a n-wide high such clause in its article on witchcraft, and Leopold may
point between 1580 and 1640—sometimes far into h a ve wanted to re m ove authority from individual judges
the eighteenth century. In the western Austrian lands in favor of his government. In this ruling, Leopold
( Swabian Austria, Vorarlberg, Ty rol), most witchcraft o rd e red the release of four “still living” female prisoners,
trials occurred before 1650, while, excluding St y r i a , who had already undergone considerable tort u re, with
the eastern provinces (Upper Austria, Lower Au s t r i a , their honor re s t o red; the accusation of one girl was
Carinthia, plus Salzburg) experienced more trials after- deemed “unmerited.” Although ending the sufferings of
w a rds. In Styria, most witchcraft trials and over thre e - these women, this ruling in no way undermined the
f o u rths of accusations against individuals occurre d general belief in the real dangers of sorc e ry. Ten years lat-
after 1660 (Kern 1995, 123, 167), thus placing Au s t r i a e r, Leopold signed a general order for suppressing Gy p-
geographically in “p e r i p h e r a l” east-central Eu rope. T h e sies in Upper and Lower Austria; it threatened part i c u-
pattern of re l a t i vely higher numbers of trials after 1650 larly harsh treatment for those who practiced sorc e ry.
becomes even more extreme as one moves farther east T h roughout the Austrian lands, the discretion exe r-
in the Habsburg crown-lands to Bohemia and cised by provincial magistrates in actually trying cases
Hu n g a ry, where few trials took place before the end of and government officials in frequently re v i ewing and
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deciding them ultimately proved decisive for the actual tion in a similar light. Its sections describing popular
course of witchcraft trials. Their numbers, the number ignorance and credulity made this clear:
of accused, and the number of executions suggest that
the attitudes visible in Fe rdinand III’s 1656 Lowe r It is a well-known fact at present, however, how the
Austrian code probably stimulated an increased aware- mania of sorcery and witchcraft was grossly exag-
ness of witchcraft theory among government offic i a l s gerated in earlier times. Moreover, its basis was
and judges. El s ew h e re in Habsburg Austria, Styrian trial founded on the inclination of the simple and com-
re c o rds contain both direct re f e rences to the code and mon populace toward superstitious things.
traces of its shaping influence during interro g a t i o n s . Stupidity and ignorance—as the springs of aston-
Although the code remained inapplicable in Styria until ishment and superstition, and from which gullibili-
1721, judges and officials frequently cited it alongside ty without regard for truth or falsity emerges
p recedents from Roman law, the Ca ro l i n a , and the among the common people—have further promot-
Styrian penal code. Still, it exe rcised no direct causal ed such things. All such incidents, which cannot be
effect, because it did not introduce diabolical under- immediately comprehended and which originate
standings of witchcraft. The Lower Austrian code’s tru e only from natural consequences, actions or forces
s i g n i ficance was to re p resent the full creation of “c u m u- (even such natural events as thunder-storms, animal
l a t i ve” witchcraft beliefs among a great majority of poli- diseases or human illnesses, etc.), are attributed to
cymakers throughout the Habsburg lands. the Devil and his agents, particularly the sorcerers
Yet the Habsburg archdukes never expressly used and witches, etc.
witchcraft trials to strengthen their own political posi- These notions of untold diabolical hordes were
tions or baroque Catholicism in their lands. Instead, for implanted from age to age, even impressed upon
at least a century after the 1570s, their decrees created children still in the cradle with terrifying stories
an ethos (though not an all-pervasive one) among gov- and tales. Thereby this mania generally spreads,
ernment officials that construed witchcraft as one of growing stronger and stronger, even corrupting
many potential threats to good ord e r, the Ro m a n genuine judicial standards to a large degree when
Church, and the dynasty.We have no evidence that any settling cases of that sort. (Kern 1999, 171)
of the archdukes zealously prosecuted suspected witch-
es, but much evidence that eradicating witches was one This article broke dramatically with earlier witchcraft
of the state’s responsibilities. legislation, because its overall effect was the suppre s s i o n
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, fears of of witchcraft trials. Nonetheless, it resembled pre v i o u s
witchcraft began to dissolve among Austrian offic i a l s . laws against witchcraft through the state’s ove rt attempts
This trend appeared clearly in the decline in the number to control the beliefs and activities of its subjects. Wi t h
of eighteenth-century trials throughout the Au s t r i a n Joseph II’s thoroughgoing reform of Austrian criminal
lands, although trials continued in the eastern Ha b s b u r g law in 1787 and 1788, witchcraft ceased to be a crime in
kingdoms of Bohemia and Hu n g a ry. By mid-century, the Habsburg territories. But although the re s u l t i n g
the government of Maria T h e resa began taking steps to Un i versal Law Code on Crimes and Their Pu n i s h m e n t s
eliminate such trials. In 1766, the empress issued a gov- ( Allgemeine Gesetzbuch über Ve r b rechen und dere n
ernment patent entitled Artikel von der Za u b e re y, He xe re y, Be s t ra f u n g )and Un i versal Ordnance for Criminal Court s
Wa h r s a g e re y, und dergleichen (An Article on So rc e ry, ( Allgemeine Kriminalgerichtsord n u n g ) eliminated statutes
Witchcraft, Divination, and Similar Activities) for all of against sorc e ry and witchcraft, magical beliefs remained a
her here d i t a ry lands. Pa r a d ox i c a l l y, the patent both s i g n i ficant part of court proceedings for years to come.
a f firmed and denied the reality of magic. One decre e
highlighted the “special attention” state officials must EDMUND M. KERN
g i ve to distinguishing between “t ru e” and “f a l s e” magical See also: AUSTRIANWESTERNTERRITORIES;BOHEMIA;CAROLINA
deeds. It called upon judges to determine if the accusation CODE;GERMANY;HOLYROMANEMPIRE;HUNGARY;INNSBRUCK;
b e f o re them came from fraud, madness, or mere supersti- JOSEPHII,HOLYROMANEMPEROR;LAWSONWITCHCRAFT(EARLY
tion, or if it re p resented genuine sorc e ry or witchcraft. MODERN); MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;MARIATHERESA,HOLY
The latter must be sent to a higher court, where another ROMANEMPRESS;RUDOLPHII,HOLYROMANEMPEROR;RURAL
magistrate would make the same determinations. WITCHCRAFT;SALZBURG,PRINCE-ARCHBISHOPRICOF;SLOVENIA;
Ul t i m a t e l y, the code made clear, only the empress herself
TYROL,COUNTYOF;VIENNA;VORARLBERG.
References and further reading:
would decide cases of “g e n u i n e” diabolical activity.
Behringer,Wolfgang. 2000. Hexen: Glaube, Verfolgung,
But the patent also replaced state interest in eradicat-
Vermarktung.Munich: C.H. Beck.
ing witchcraft with state interest in eradicating supersti-
Byloff, Fritz. 1934. Hexenglaube und Hexenverfolgung in den öster-
tion. In some sense, the patent remained similar to ear-
reichischen Alpenländern. Berlin: de Gruyter.
lier prohibitions of witchcraft: If earlier codes saw Dienst, Heide. 1986. “Magische Vorstellungen und
magic as a threat to good order, this one saw supersti- Hexenverfolgungen in den österreichischen Ländern (15. und
74 Austria |
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18. Jahrhundert). Pp. 70–94 in Wellen der Verfolgung in der the In n s b ruck government was reluctant to persecute
österreichischen Geschichte.Edited by Erich Zöllner.Vienna: witches. In 1637, it promulgated a detailed procedural
Österreichischer Bundesverlag. i n s t ruction for witchcraft cases that combined influ-
———. 1987. “Hexenprozesse auf dem Gebiet der heutigen
ences of the Carolina with Adam Ta n n e r’s criticism of
Bundesländer Vorarlberg, Tirol (mit Südtirol), Salzburg,
witch hunts. The conflict between the critical gove r n-
Nieder- und Oberösterreich sowie des Burgenlandes.” Pp.
ment and local witch-hunting groups was a salient fea-
265–290 in Hexen und Zauberer.Edited by Helfried
ture of the witchcraft trials in the Habsburg territories.
Valentinitsch. Graz: Leykam.
As their administrative stru c t u re was weak, local offi-
Dillinger, Johannes. 1999. “Böse Leute”: Hexenverfolgungen in
Schwäbisch-Österreich und Kurtrier im Vergleich.Trierer cials and the councils achieved a maximum of autarchy
Hexenprozesse, vol. 5. Edited by Gunther Franz and Franz by not drawing the gove r n m e n t’s critical attention to
Irsigler.Trier: Paulinus. their witch hunts. When the victims of persecutions
Evans, R.J.W. 1979. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, finally attracted the Ty rolean gove r n m e n t’s attention
1550–1700. Oxford: Clarendon. early in the seventeenth century, that government end-
Kern, Edmund M. 1994. “Confessional Identity and Magic in the ed the mass persecutions in the county of Ho h e n b e r g
Late Sixteenth Century: Jakob Bithner and Witchcraft in
with a number of legal and administrative re f o r m s .
Styria.” Sixteenth Century Journal25, no. 2: 323–340.
Howe ve r, in Vo rd e r ö s t e r reich, the persecutions we re
———. 1995. “The Styrian Witchcraft Trials: Secular Authority
only stopped by the general breakdown of law enforce-
and Religious Orthodoxy in the Early Modern Period.” Ph.D.
ment during the Thirty Years’ War.
diss., University of Minnesota.
Mo re than 1,100 trials took place in Vo rd e r ö s t e r re i c h
———. 1999. “An End to Witchcraft Trials in Austria:
Reconsidering the Enlightened State.” Austrian History b e t ween 1479 and 1751, with the most seve re witch
Yearbook30: 159–185. hunts coming in the 1570s and 1620s. (All statistical
Klaniczay, Gabor. 1990. The Uses of Supernatural Power: The data are found in Dillinger 1999, 93–96 and Schleichert
Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and 1994, 219–220.) Overall, about 85 percent of the
Early-Modern Europe.Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. defendants we re women; about 80 percent of both male
Raser, Dorothea. 1989. “Zauberei- und Hexenprozesse in and female culprits we re executed. Meanwhile, Sw a b i a n
Niederösterreich.” Unsere Heimat60: 14–41.
Austria witnessed a total of more than 520 witchcraft
Tschaikner, Manfred. 1992. Damit das Böse ausgerottet werde:
trials between 1493 and 1711. The first seve re persecu-
Hexenverfolgungen in Vorarlberg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.
tions took place in 1530–1531 and 1558–1559, with
Bregenz: Vorarlberger Autoren Gesellschaft.
the vast majority of accusations made between 1583 and
Valentinitsch, Helfried, ed. 1987. Hexen und Zauberer: Die grosse
1605. He re, 90 percent of the defendants we re women,
Verfolgung—ein europäisches Phänomen in der Steiermark. Graz:
Leykam. and 79 percent of the female but only 51 percent of the
———. 1987. “Die Verfolgung von Hexen und Zauberern im male defendants we re executed. W h e reas all other part s
Herzogtum Steiermark—Eine Zwischenbilanz.” Pp. 297–316 of Swabian Austria experienced moderate witchcraft
in Hexen und Zauberer.Edited by Helfried Valentinitsch. Graz: persecutions, Hohenberg witnessed seve re witch hunts;
Leykam. 80 percent of all witchcraft trials in Swabian Au s t r i a
Vilfan, Sergij. 1987. “Die Hexenprozesse in Krain—Zur Frage took place in Hohenberg, although less than half of the
ihrer Häufigkeit.” Pp. 291–294 in Hexen und Zauberer.Edited
re g i o n’s total population lived there .
by Helfried Valentinitsch. Graz: Leykam.
In these areas, popular imagination had accepted the
demonological stereotype and turned traditional fairy
Austrian Western Territories and ghost legends into witchcraft narratives. In fact, the
The western possessions of the Habsburgs consisted of driving force behind Swabian Au s t r i a’s and especially
two parts: the older Outer Austria (Vo rd e r ö s t e r re i c h ) , Ho h e n b e r g’s witch hunts was the peasant population.
including the territories of Alsace, Breisgau, Ha g e n a u , In Hohenberg, the villagers, especially winegrowe r s ,
and Ortenau, today in eastern France and demanded witch hunts from the authorities. Un l i k e
Ba d e n-W ü rttemberg; and Swabian Austria, namely other parts of Swabian Austria that enjoyed a more
Hohenberg, Nellenburg, the Landvogtei Schwaben f a vorable climate or did not engage in viticulture ,
( Royal Province of Swabia), and Burgau, today in Ba d e n - Hohenberg suffered from a rapid decline in wine pro-
W ü rttemberg and Ba varia. The Habsburg archduke of duction at the end of the sixteenth century, for which
Ty rol and his government at In n s b ruck administered all witches we re supposed to be directly responsible. In
these territories. Vo rd e r ö s t e r reich had its own gove r n m e n t contrast, the Landvogtei Schwaben benefited from the
in Ensisheim in Alsace, whereas each of the Sw a b i a n popular cult of Weingarten monastery that centered on
Austrian territories was directly controlled by In n s b ru c k . the protection of vineyards against bad we a t h e r. T h i s
Although the Habsburg territories we re homoge- cult, supplemented by an unorthodox trade in blessed
neously Catholic, the Church had hardly any influence amulets, made it possible to deal with weather crises
on the witchcraft trials. Accepting the Carolina Code and witchcraft anxiety without having recourse to the
(Constitutio Criminalis Ca ro l i n a , 1532) as a guideline, courts.
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The aggressive demands of the Hohenberg peasantry Louviers: the nuns in all these cases (except at Louviers)
encountered no resistance from the councils of the rur- came from the same order, the Ursulines; all were
al towns. Although town councils in all other Swabian young and daughters of good families; all were exor-
Austrian territories were smaller and staffed exclusively cised unsuccessfully for several years; the exorcisms
by the local elite, Hohenberg town councils had many were spectacular, drawing large crowds; accusations of
members and were open to the middle class, which suf- witchcraft were leveled against local residents; and all
fered directly from the economic crisis. In areas where the cases had an impact on the entire kingdom.
the population had comparatively little interest in witch Whereas priest-sorcerers were blamed for causing the
hunts, such attempts as there were to prosecute witches possessions at Aix and Loudun, nun-witches were
were rejected by town councils that feared social unrest accused at Louviers (Mother Françoise de la Croix and
and legal difficulties. In Hohenberg, the coalition Madeleine Bavent) and at Auxonne (Barbe Buvée).
between the council elites and the majority of the rural Quite unlike the previous affairs, the Auxonne posses-
population forced reluctant local officials to take action sions encountered disbelief among a majority of the
against supposed witches. Denunciations by accom- judges; in this sense, it marked a turning point in the
plices, especially by child witches, were considered seri- history of the treatment of witchcraft in France, herald-
ous evidence. Because of their ill-defined bord e r s , ing (but not causing) the decriminalization of 1682.
Nellenburg, the Landvogtei Schwaben, and Burgau suf- The affair began in 1658, when about fifteen nuns
fered from constant trouble, and they had become part f rom the Ursuline convent in Au xonne claimed they
of a close-knit communicative network of confli c t s , were haunted by demons; at first, with numerous exor-
complaints, and control that obliged them to be in cisms by chaplains inside the convent, the situation was
close contact with the critical Habsburg gove r n m e n t . kept secret. Only in 1660 did the inhabitants of
Hohenberg, however, was comparatively isolated. Au xonne learn the truth about the possessions, when
Persons in permanent conflict with their families or the epidemic first spread beyond the convent walls and
neighbors, as well as foreigners, poor people, and crim- affected the townspeople. Public exo rcisms took place
inals, were suspected as witches. Members of the upper in the parish church, laywomen were sentenced to ban-
class who had violated the social consensus thro u g h ishment by local judges, and two of them we re eve n
c o r ruption, careerism, or pro fit seeking we re also massacred by the population.
accused of witchcraft: The rich, often male witch was In October 1660, one Ursuline, Barbe Buvée (Si s t e r
the dominant figure in the Sabbat imagination. As such Sainte-Colombe), much older than her possessed sis-
persons often were the agents of the Habsburg govern- ters, was indicated by the mother superior as being
ment, the witchcraft trials, largely led by members of responsible for these disorders. Accused publicly, dur-
the older local elites, became a means and a form of tra- ing a religious cere m o n y, of magic, witchcraft, and
ditionalist localism. infanticide, she became a target of violence from other
nuns and was chained inside a specially constru c t e d
JOHANNES DILLINGER
c o n vent prison. At the request of Bu v é e’s family and
See also: AGRARIANCRISES;ALSACE;AUSTRIA;CAROLINACODE; other critics of these procedural irregularities, the
GERMANY,SOUTHEASTERN;GERMANY,SOUTHWESTERN;LITTLE Pa rl e m e n t ( s ove reign judicial court) of Dijon inter-
ICEAGE;POPULARPERSECUTION;TANNER,ADAM;TYROL, vened. An investigation committee under judge
COUNTYOF;WARFARE. Bénigne Legoux went to Au xonne, carried out nearly
References and further reading:
eighty interrogations, made evaluations, and conclud-
Dillinger, Johannes. 1998. “Hexenverfolgungen in der Grafschaft
ed that the possessions we re bogus. The p a rl e m e n t
Hohenberg. Pp. 1–161 inZum Feuer verdammt.Edited by
o rd e red the release of Barbe Buvée, who had been
Johannes Dillinger,Thomas Fritz, and Wolfgang Mährle.
t r a n s f e r red to Dijon. Meanwhile, the spectacle of the
Stuttgart: Steiner.
e xo rcisms drew huge crowds from all over the king-
———. 1999. “Böse Leute”: Hexenverfolgungen in Schwäbisch-
Österreich und Kurtrier im Vergleich.Trier: Paulinus. dom to the parish church in Au xonne. A new inve s t i-
Schleichert, Sabine. 1994. “Vorderösterreich: Elsassß, Breisgau, gation commission, created by the Pa rl e m e n t of Pa r i s
Hagenau und Ortenau.” Pp. 219–228 in Hexen und ( s ove reign judicial court, with jurisdiciton ove r
Hexenverfolgung im deutschen Südwesten.Edited by Sönke a p p roximately one-half of France) at the request of the
Lorenz. Ostfildern: Cantz. municipality of Au xonne, arrived at the opposite con-
clusion from the previous commission and assert e d
Auxonne Nuns (1658–1663) the reality of the possessions. While the Pa rl e m e n t o f
In 1644, Burgundy experienced its final epidemic of Dijon officially re s t o red the reputation of Ba r b e
rural witchcraft; fourteen years later, the nuns of Buvée, the intendant (royal agent in the prov i n c e s )
Auxonne provided the final example of a demonically Claude Bouchu named two more inve s t i g a t i ve com-
possessed convent in France. The case shared numerous missions; the first concluded that the possessions we re
features with previous ones from Aix, Loudun, and fraudulent, the second upheld their authenticity.
76 Auxonne Nuns |
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These mutually contradictory developments and dis- dispersed by the plague, traveled to the country s i d e
sensions largely re flected rivalries between va r i o u s a round Avignon to carry out a Catholic re c o n ve r s i o n
i n fluential families in Au xonne, as well as the confli c t mission in areas that had seen serious penetrations of
b e t ween the intendant and the p a rl e m e n t . Protestantism. It is very possible that the intimate con-
After several new judicial developments and a succes- nection between heresy and the Devil, described by
sion of lawsuits between the intendant and the p a r- some important French Jesuits, played a significant role
lement,the royal council intervened and transferred the in the witchcraft panic that soon developed in this
dossier to the Pa rl e m e n t of Paris, which pre f e r red to atmosphere of crisis and crusade.
bury the case. The epidemic of possessions quickly died The first two suspects were accused near Carpentras
down after the nuns had been transferred to other con- in June 1581, and one of them was executed six months
vents and the exorcisms ended. later. From there, accusations spread to several villages
in the area. By September 1582, the papal legate wrote
BENOÎT GARNOT; TRANSLATED BY KARNA HUGHES
to Rome that he had twenty accused witches impris-
See also: AIX-EN-PROVENCENUNS:BROSSIER,MARTHE;CONVENT oned in Avignon. Ecclesiastical authorities dominated
CASES;EXORCISM;LOUDUNNUNS;LOUVIERSNUNS;MANDROU, the entire legal proceedings, including inve s t i g a t i o n s ,
ROBERT;POSSESSION,DEMONIC.
interrogations, torture, and judgments. This is not sur-
References and further reading:
prising in a territory under direct papal rule, but it is
Ferber, Sarah. 2004. Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early
very different from the way these cases were handled in
Modern France.London: Routledge.
neighboring France, where p a rl e m e n t s ( s ove re i g n
Garnier, Samuel. 1895. Barbe Buvée, en religion sæur Sainte-
courts) had sole control over serious cases. At Avignon,
Colombe, et la prétendue possession des ursulines d’Auxonne
(1658–1663). Etude historique et médicale. Paris: Alcan. inquisitors played a strong role in these cases, as experts
Garnot, Benoît. 1995. Le Diable au couvent: Les possédées and advisors to ecclesiastical and secular judges. T h e
d’Auxonne (1658–1663). Paris: Imago. vice-inquisitor in these cases was Sebastien Mi c h a e l i s ,
Mandrou, Robert. 1968. Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVIIe who thirty years later became a central fig u re in the
siècle : Une analyse de psychologie historique. Paris, Plon. famous Ga u f r i d y - Demandols case in Aix-en-Prove n c e
Sluhovsky, Moshe. 2002. “The Devil in the Convent.” American and wrote an account of it that cemented his reputation
Historical Review107, no. 5: 1378–1411.
as an authority on witchcraft.
In November 1582, fourteen accused witches we re
Avignon e xecuted (Michaelis later wrote that eighteen witches
Located on the Rhone in southern France, Avignon and went to their deaths). Se veral of those accused we re
its surrounding region, the Comtat Venaissin, belonged punished more mildly, or we re released. This mark e d
to successive popes from the fourteenth century (when the end of executions, though accusations continued
they resided there) until the French Re vo l u t i o n . for some time thereafter. Although a few sporadic accu-
Avignon’s key officials, including its governor (a papal sations and executions occurred in the follow i n g
legate) and archbishop, were directly appointed by and decades (1607 seems to have been the last), the wave of
responsible to Rome; even its Holy Office belonged to executions of 1582 was the crisis point for this region.
the Roman Inquisition. This brief panic involved an unusually large number
Although Avignon was not directly invo l ved in the of trials, at least for France. It probably was the most
French Wars of Religion, the late sixteenth century saw serious persecution of witches in France until Pierre de
intense religious controversy and violence in this L a n c re’s foray into the Basque country in 1609. Like
region. After the conclusion of the Council of Tre n t most other large-scale witchcraft trials in ethnically
(1563), Avignon and the Comtat became a re g i o n a l French areas, the restraining hand of a p a rl e m e n t w a s
flagship of Tridentine Catholicism, led by a devo t e d not present, and neither was the restraint of the Roman
n ew archbishop and by the Jesuits, who became we l l Inquisition, which adopted stricter rules about witch-
established and very influential. craft later in the 1580s.
The area around Avignon had recorded only one tri-
al for witchcraft in the first half of the sixteenth centu- JONATHAN L. PEARL
ry, in 1506. But between 1581 and 1583, a witchcraft
See also: AIX-EN-PROVENCENUNS;FRANCE;INQUISITION,ROMAN;
panic swept the Comtat Venaissin. It is impossible to
JESUITS(SOCIETYOFJESUS); LANCRE,PIERREDE;PANICS.
explain its causes, but a few factors coincide in an inter-
References and further reading:
esting way at this point. In 1581, a serious outbreak of
Michaelis, Sebastien. 1614. Discours des Esprits. Lyons,
plague occurred. At the same time, a temporary peace Venard, Marc. 1993. Réforme protestante, réforme catholique dans la
calmed the re g i o n’s religious conflict. The Je s u i t s , province d’Avignon au XVIe siècle.Paris: Cerf.
Avignon 77 |
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B
Baden, Margravate of Margrave Karl II of Baden-Durlach, upon coming into
After 1535, Baden became divided between the houses power, made sure he had the support of the Tübingen
of Baden-Baden and Baden-Durlach, which together jurists for a policy of restraint in conducting witchcraft
executed a total of 281 witches. While the Protestant trials. Above all, these jurists emphasized that when tor-
margravate of Baden-Durlach held only occasional ture was applied, procedures had to adhere to the regu-
witchcraft trials in the second half of the sixteenth centu- lations of the Carolina Code (the imperial law code,
ry (6 victims), the Catholic Ma r g r a vate of Ba d e n-Ba d e n Constitutio Criminalis Carolina,1532), and that denun-
experienced large witch hunts from 1560–1580 (44 ciations were insufficient justification for the use of tor-
victims) and especially from 1625–1631 (231 victims) ture.
(Schneider 2004, 215, 217–218). This difference is
hard to explain, as religious opinions offer only one Margravate Baden-Baden
probable reason: The attitudes of the authorities influ- The first wave of persecution in Baden-Baden took
enced the methods they used in witchcraft trials. Only place during the Bavarian regency for Margrave Philipp
in Ba d e n - Baden was denunciation by accomplices II. Until 1577, approximately 26 women had been
accepted as sufficient justification for torture, leading to found guilty of witchcraft and executed in the districts
its large witch hunts from 1625–1631. Baden’s first (Ämter)of Baden-Baden, Rastatt, Bühl, Steinbach, and
witchcraft trial occurred in 1552, and the last trial and Fr a u e n a l b. Afterw a rds, under Philipp II’s reign, another
execution in Emmendingen in 1669. 18 women from the districts of Rastatt, Baden-Baden,
and Kuppenheim were put to death in 1580 (Schneider
Margravate Baden-Durlach 2004, 217). This first witch hunt was characterized by
This margravate has very few documented witchcraft the central authorities’ control over all proceedings.
trials, just those in Pforzheim (1552), Prechtal (1562), Random prosecutions by individuals were strongly dis-
Badenweiler (1570), and Hachberg (1579), none of couraged. Yet without the desire of the people to hunt
which incited more extensive forms of persecution. In down witches after making connections between crop
these trials, 9 women were accused of witchcraft. Of failures or sicknesses and witchcraft, many accusations
these, 6 were condemned to death and executed, 1 was would have been left unspoken.
put under surveillance; the fate of the remaining 2 From 1594 to 1622, during the occupation of
women is unknown (Schneider 2004, 215). The last Ba d e n - Ba d e n’s core areas by Ma r g r a ve Ernst Fr i e d r i c h
and probably only trial in the seventeenth century took of Ba d e n - Durlach, no witch hunts took place. The sit-
place in Hachberg; 1 woman was found guilty of witch- uation changed, howe ve r, after Ma r g r a ve Wilhelm of
craft and executed (Ibid.). Ba d e n - Baden succeeded in winning back his sove r-
There are few written records of Baden-Durlach’s tri- eignty in 1622. Only four years later, the largest witch
als. The only well-documented trial occurred in 1552, hunt in the history of the Ma r g r a vate Baden began.
when 3 women were accused of witchcraft (Ibid). These Be t ween 1626 and 1631, at least 244 persons from the
sources show a very cautious attitude of the authorities districts of Rastatt, Ba d e n - Baden, Steinbach, and
t ow a rd accusations of witchcraft. For example, after Bühl we re accused of witchcraft; 77 percent we re
their pre l i m i n a ry investigation against an honorable women, which corresponds with the average numbers
w i d ow who had been denounced by a woman alre a d y in the Holy Roman Em p i re. Of these 244 people, all
convicted, the margrave’s councilors applied to the fac- but 13 we re condemned to death and executed; 2 we re
ulty of law at the University of Tübingen for guidance. exiled, and 11 proclaimed not guilty (Schneider 2004,
Of specific concern was the question of whether the 2 1 8 ) .
denunciation was itself sufficient reason to put the In this wave of persecution, it was a critical factor
accused under tort u re. The Tübingen jurists denied that a single denunciation sufficed for arrest and
that it was, and one supposes that the Ba d e n - Du r l a c h torture. Even appeals to the highest court in the empire
authorities followed this opinion. Only one year later, (the Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t , the imperial chamber court )
Baden, Margravate of 79 |
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could not convince Ma r g r a ve Wilhelm and his
councilors to return to more traditional pro c e d u re s .
C o n t r a ry to customary legal pro c e d u res, these witch-
craft trials were not headed by lower officials, but by a
councilor whom Ma r g r a ve Wilhelm had specific a l l y
appointed to this task. This way, the authority that had
to be applied to for permission to tort u re was alre a d y
p resent. The fact that merely the signed confessions
(Urgichten)had to be presented to the Margrave speed-
ed proceedings considerably.
Our sources offer few clues to explain what caused
the end of this witch hunt in the fall of 1631. T h e
ru l e r’s readiness to bring alleged witches to trial seems
to have lessened, and official accusations of witchcraft
became fewe r. Ma r g r a ve Wilhelm recalled his coun-
cilors and left the last witchcraft trials in the hands of
local officials. Then, in Ja n u a ry 1632, Swedish tro o p s
m oved in and temporarily re n d e red witchcraft trials
impossible.
CORINNA SCHNEIDER;
TRANSLATED BY MAIKE LINDER
See also CAROLINACODE;GERMANY,SOUTHWESTERN;REICHSKAM-
MERGERICHT.
References and further reading:
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1972. Witch Hunting in Southwestern
Germany 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Schneider, Corinna. 1994. “Die Hexenverfolgung in den badis-
chen Markgrafschaften.” M.A. thesis, Institut für
Geschichtliche Landeskunde, Eberhard-Karls-Universität
Hans Baldung Grien’s Witches’ Sabbath,but better entitled A Group
Tübingen.
of Witches around a Cauldron, 1510. (Réunion des Musées
———. 1994. “Die Markgrafschaften Baden-Baden und Baden-
Nationaux/Art Resource)
Durlach.” Pp. 187–196 in Hexen und Hexenverfolgung im
deutschen Südwesten.Edited by Sönke Lorenz. Ostfildern:
Cantz. 1509 he returned to Strasbourg, married, acquire d
———. 2000. “Baden, Markgrafschaften.” http://www.sfn. c i t i ze n s h i p, became a master in the guild of gold-
uni-muenchen.de/hexenverfolgung/frame_lexikon.html in: smiths, painters, printers, and glaziers (known as Zu r
Gudrun Gersmann / Jürgen-Michael Schmidt / Margarete St e l t z), and established his own work s h o p. Ba l d u n g
Wittke, Lexikon zur Geschichte der europäischen
designed woodcuts for more than a dozen St r a s b o u r g
Hexenverfolgungen (Ein Server für die Frühe Neuzeit), Ludwig
printers and re c e i ved numerous commissions fro m
Maximilian Universität München / Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
the bishops of Strasbourg and Basel, the upper
———. 2004. “Die Markgrafschaften Baden-Baden und
Rhenish nobility, wealthy Strasbourg families, and
Baden-Durlach.” Pp. 213–224 in Wider alle Hexerei und
ecclesiastics. His works included religious and classi-
Teufelswerk: Die europäische Hexenverfolgung und ihre
Auswirkungen auf Südwestdeutschland.Edited by Sönke Lorenz cal subjects, portraits, and heraldic designs, as well as
and Jürgen Michael Schmidt. Ostfildern: Thorbecke. such re l a t i vely novel themes as death, sexuality, and
w i t c h c r a f t .
Baldung [Grien], Hans (1484–1545) Ba l d u n g’s first and most critical image was a 1510
Hans Baldung [Grien] produced more images of single-leaf woodcut, usually entitled Wi t c h e s’ Sa b b a t h ,
witchcraft than any other sixteenth-century artist and but more appropriately called A Group of Wi t c h e s
was instrumental in establishing a new iconography Around a Cauldron.It was designed with the use of sev-
that influenced its visual re p resentations for over a eral blocks in differently colored tones, in order to cre-
c e n t u ry. Baldung was a south German painter, print- ate its richly laye red, chiaro s c u ro effects. The central
m a k e r, and stained glass designer who spent most of scene depicts three naked women in an eerie forest set-
his life in Strasbourg. From 1503 to 1507 he was an ting, grouped around a cauldron and symbolically unit-
a p p rentice in Albrecht Düre r’s Nu remberg work s h o p, ed by a triangle of forked sticks. They are engaged in a
w h e re he adopted the nickname “Gr i e n” (green). In ritual offering and focus their attention on a cauldro n
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billowing thick clouds of vapor. On the ground lie the Both depicted a trio of witches as the central scene,
i n s t ruments with which these women carry out their their naked bodies and streaming hair complementing
witchcraft: a convex mirror used for entrapping the seething cauldron and its vapors. In the Louvre
demons, a brush employed in rubbing on salves, a bun- drawing, Baldung’s central motif was a sacrificial offer-
dle of animal hair, and a bone commonly used in acts of ing, probably a parody of a priestly mass; the cauldron
sorcery. On the left, sausages are hanging over a forked was replaced by a witch’s body, and from its gas the
stick and roasting on the fire; above a witch rides back- witch lights a taper; the phallic sausages now occupy
wards on a goat, using her cooking fork to carry a small center stage. In the Albertina drawing, the focus is on
pot, her hair flying and legs spread-eagled, as though to the relationship between witches’ trances and sexual
emphasize the link between her destructive and sexual pleasure, with suggestions of masturbation and orgasm.
p owe r. Ba l d u n g’s woodcut proved critical in establish- Witchcraft was also strongly linked to the sensuality
ing the image of a group of women gathered around a of female bodies in Ba l d u n g’s other works. In a
cauldron as a widely recognizable visual code for witch- chiaroscuro drawing of 1514, which survives in a work-
craft. For him, witchcraft was inextricably linked to shop copy inscribed with new year’s wishes, virtually all
women’s bodies and women’s labor. Baldung also devel- reference to malefic activity has been removed, and the
oped the link between witchcraft and inversion: seen in witches’ bodies and wild hair are choreographed to cre-
the backward ride on the goat, or in the ladle and caul- ate a wild and erotic display. Another chiaroscuro draw-
dron of the ritual offering, which replace the traditional ing of 1515, usually entitled Witch and Dragon, exem-
a c c o u t rements of male priestly ritual. The phallic p l i fies contemporary interest in the erotic. It depicts
sausages have been seen as alluding to witches’ powers sexual intercourse between witch and devil in the form
of castration and their appropriation of male powe r. of cunnilingus, while Baldung plays with the ambigui-
And the wild, flying hair of his witches add to the gen- ties of the body’s orifices and the De v i l’s capacity to
eral sense of moral disorder. assume male or female form. In Baldung’s only painting
Although Ba l d u n g’s adopted city of Strasbourg saw of witchcraft, The Weather Wi t c h e s of 1523, two nude
few witchcraft trials until the 1570s, the intense cultur- female witches communicate their sexual independence
al life of this printing center promoted much discourse t h rough their assert i ve poses and self-confident gaze .
on the subject of witchcraft during his time there. In The wild weather they have unleashed is seen overhead,
1499 a Franciscan moralist and later critic of the and a small demon in a flask probably re p resents its
Reformation, Thomas Mu r n e r, published his De phi- source. But the bodies of the witches themselves are also
tonico contra c t u (Concerning the Wi t c h e s’ Pact). In the source of upheaval, their disord e red sexuality
1508 St r a s b o u r g’s most popular pre a c h e r, Jo h a n n re vealed by Ba l d u n g’s use of visual cues such as a
Geiler von Kaysersberg, delive red several Lenten ser- c ro s s-legged stance, a fie ry torch held high by a putto
mons on the subject, which were published eight years who is probably a demonic offspring, the wild hair fly-
later under the title of Die Emeis (The Ants). By 1510, ing out in contradictory directions, and the goat on
s e ven editions of the Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m (T h e which one of the women sits and which she ever so hes-
Hammer of Witches, 1486), by Heinrich Kramer, had itantly re veals. As in his earlier images, the power of
been published in the Holy Roman Em p i re, if not at witchcraft oscillates between sensual attraction, seduc-
Strasbourg itself. And through their common patro n , tion, and destruction.
Baldung was also likely to have known about the two Ba l d u n g’s final image of witchcraft, a woodcut pro-
works on witchcraft by the learned Abbot of Sponheim, duced one year before his death and entitled
Johannes Trithemius. The Bewitched Groom, differs markedly from his previ-
Baldung’s 1510 scene may well have been suggested ous work. The focus is not on the witch but on the vic-
by a chiaro s c u ro drawing of 1506 by his fellow south tim, the apparently lifeless body of a groom lying on a
German artist, Albrecht Altdorfer, while the backward stable floor, his left hand near a currycomb and his right
ride of the witch on the goat was clearly modeled on a hand loosely holding a forked stick. The witch is now
D ü rer engraving completed between 1500 and 1507, an old and clothed female figure, much closer to tradi-
which Baldung must have seen as an apprentice in his tional representations of sorcerers than the iconography
workshop. Baldung’s images of witchcraft were further that Baldung developed thirty years earlier.Yet Baldung
d e veloped and disseminated in a series of intimate still alludes to her sexual powers by the breast that falls
c h i a ro s c u ro drawings (on tinted paper with white ink loose from her clothing and the flaming torch in her
highlighting) that were completed in 1514–1515 when hand. The coat of arms hanging askew on the wall has
he was in Freiburg im Breisgau fulfilling a commission been widely believed to refer to Baldung’s family, which
to paint the cathedral’s high altarpiece. Two drawings suggests that the groom re p resents the artist himself.
i n p a rt i c u l a r, one now in the Louvre at Paris and the The forked stick demonstrates that he has been
other in the Albertina at Vienna, were modeled on the b ewitched, and his fore s h o rtened body with its cod-
iconography and composition of the 1510 woodcut. piece as focal point, identifies the bewitchment as
Baldung [Grien], Hans 81 |
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sexual. The horse positioned immediately above the Ko e r n e r, Joseph Leo. 1993. The Moment of Se l f - Po rt ra i t u re in
g ro o m’s head, which with piercing eye and a swish of Ge rman Renaissance Art .Chicago: Un i versity of
the tail displays its anus, also identifies sexual bewitch- Chicago Pre s s .
Ma r row, James, and Alan Shestack, eds. 1981. Hans Baldung Gr i e n :
ment as the subject. This woodcut has sparked numer-
Prints and Dra w i n g .New Ha ven: Yale Un i versity Art Ga l l e ry.
ous readings: It has been seen as an allegory of anger, a
Mesenzeva, Charmian A. 1981. “Der behexte Stallknecht des Hans
story of shape shifting, a version of traditional tales of a
Baldung Grien.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte44: 57–61.
robber knight abducted by the Devil, Baldung’s dream
Sullivan, Margaret A. 2000. “The Witches of Dürer and Hans
of his own death, and an embodiment of the art i s t’s
Baldung Grien.” Renaissance Quarterly53: 332–401.
fears of his unbridled sexual appetites. Yet its cre a t i ve Zika, Charles. 2003. Exorcising Our Demons. Magic, Witchcraft
power seems all the greater because it is so difficult to and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe.Leiden: Brill.
give it a single reading.
The four different copies of Ba l d u n g’s 1510 wood- Balearic Islands
cut and the five copies of his drawings that have sur- Despite the widespread practice of popular magic, only
v i ved demonstrate the considerable contemporary three accused witches were executed in the Balearic
i n t e rest in Ba l d u n g’s work. But it was a woodcut of Islands. Conquered by the Catalan King James I, the
1516, modeled on Ba l d u n g’s 1510 work and pro b a b l y Balearic Islands belonged to the Crown of Aragon from
a product of his work s h o p, that proved the most the early thirteenth century and became part of Spain
i m p o rtant for the dissemination of Ba l d u n g’s new under the Catholic kings, although its 100,000–
i c o n o g r a p h y. It first appeared as an illustration in the 150,000 inhabitants retained some legal and political
two editions of Ge i l e r’s Die Em e i s (1516 and 1517) autonomy until the eighteenth century. No records
and then in at least five different editions of Jo h a n n document witchcraft and sorc e ry practices in the
Pa u l i’s collection of moral tales, Schimpf und Ern s t Balearics until 1458, when the Majorcan Inquisition
( Humor and Seriousness). The scene depicted a gro u p sentenced a man and a woman, accused of invoking
of three women—two of them naked and holding up and worshipping the Devil and of giving him their
flaming vessels, a third dressed and riding a stool— souls, to die at the stake. In January 1483, a Majorcan
engaging in a wild and seemingly sexual ride. Ve r s i o n s episcopal edict, subsequently confirmed in February
we re re p roduced starting in the 1560s, as title pages to 1499, punished sortilegio (sorcery, spell-casting) with
w o rks by Johann We ye r, Re i n h a rd Lutz, Ul r i c h excommunication.
Mo l i t o r, Paulus Frisius, and Abraham Saur; the key Re c o rds become slightly more plentiful after the
elements of Ba l d u n g’s iconography we re later incorpo- Catholic kings brought the new Spanish Inquisition to
rated into the witchcraft images of such artists as Ja k o b Ma j o rca in 1488. In 1499, a woman was burned to
Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Lucas Cranach, and Ja c q u e s death on charges of having invoked demons.
de Gheyn II. A f t e rw a rds, others accused of dealing with infernal
powers were only sentenced to reconciliation; for exam-
CHARLES ZIKA
ple, a knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in
See also:ARTANDVISUALIMAGES;BALDUNG[GRIEN], HANS; 1502; a woman in 1513; a man in 1531; and a woman
CAULDRON;CRANACH,LUCAS;DÜRER,ALBRECHT;FLIGHTOF as late as 1675. Their punishments included fines, exile,
WITCHES;FRISIUS,PAULUS;GEILERVONKAYSERSBERG,JOHANN; and lashes, sometimes the galleys, but never the death
GENDER;GHEYNII,JACQUESDE;GOAT;HAIR;IMPOTENCE,
penalty. However, this handful of cases does not repre-
SEXUAL;MOLITOR,ULRICH;SABBAT;SEXUALACTIVITY,DIABOLIC;
sent what was actually occurring here in the sixteenth
STICKS;STRASBOURG,DIOCESEOF;TRITHEMIUS,JOHANNES;
and seventeenth centuries.
WEATHERMAGIC;WEYER,JOHANN.
Two different sources now in the Inquisition section
References and further reading:
of the Arc h i vo Histórico National (Madrid) help us
Andersson, Christiane. 1996. “ Baldung [Grien], Hans.”
Pp. 102–104 in The Dictionary of Art.Vol. 8. Edited by Jane m e a s u re witchcraft crimes in those two centuries. A
Turner. London: Macmillan. Relación de Reconciliados y Re l a j a d o s ( Register of
Brady,Thomas A. 1975. “The Social Place of a German Reconciled and Re l a xed), which the inquisitor Jo s é
Renaissance Artist: Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545) at Hualte sent to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition
Strasbourg.” Central European History8: 295–315. in 1693, covers the years 1488–1691; but it does not
Durian-Ress, Saskia, and Ulrich Söding, eds. 2001.Hans Baldung include crimes against morality, including those perpe-
Grien in Freiburg.Catalog from Augustiner Museum, Freiburg.
trated by witches and wizards, which were always con-
Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach.
sidered minor offenses. Far more useful is the Relaciones
Hults, Linda. 1987. “Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: The
de causas de fe de la Inquisición de Mallorca (Register of
Evidence of Images.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History18:
the Trials of Faith of the Inquisition of Ma l l o rc a
249–279.
[ Ma j o rc a ] ) . They provide plenty of information,
———. 1984. “Baldung’sBewitched GroomRevisited: Artistic
Temperament, Fantasy and the Dream of Reason.”Sixteenth although only those from 1579–1617 have been pub-
Century Journal15: 259–279. lished. The period is too short to offer a precise picture
82 Balearic Islands |
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of the In q u i s i t i o n’s persecution of illicit magic in the Un d o u b t e d l y, most white or black magic practiced in
Balearic Islands. Of its 519 cases, only 35, or 7 percent, the Balearic Islands never reached either the inquisitors
fall into this category; 14 defendants (40 percent of this or the episcopal courts, but instead remained unpun-
sample) were men, a rather high proportion. The total ished, protected by an impenetrable complicity
number of cases for the period 1615–1700 was 783, between the sorcerer and his or her customer.
out of which 138 were sentenced for witchcraft or sor-
FRANCESC RIERA I MONTSERRAT
cery (Contreras and Henningsen 1986, 119).
A third source is an anthology of superstitious See also:ARAGON;INQUISITION,SPANISH;MAGIC,POPULAR;SPAIN.
p r a yers for benevolent magic, mixing invocations to References and further reading:
Amorós, José Luis. 1990. Brujas y médicos en el Santo Oficio.Palma
saints with the most bizarre esoteric rites full of ero t i-
de Mallorca: Institut Menorquí d’Estudis y Torre del Puerto.
cism and greed, as well as reflecting the simple desire to
Campaner y Fuertes, Alvaro. 1881. Cronicón Mayoricense: Noticias
recover one’s health. Besides its seventy-two prayers (all
y relaciones históricas de Mallorca desde 1229 a 1800.Edited by
obtained from seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Inquisition trials),
Juan Colmer. Palma de Mallorca: Juan Colomer.
the anthology contains a description of each liturgy
Contreras, Jaime, and Gustav Henningsen. 1986. “Forty-Four
used by the officiating witch. Each prayer has impor- Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700).” Pp.
tant textual differences, even those addressed to the 100–129 in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe. Edited by
same saint (Riera i Montserrat 1979). Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi. De Kalb: Northern
The Majorcan Holy Office did not begin transcrib- Illinois University Press.
ing such prayers until the seventeenth century. T h e Inquisición de Mallorca. Reconciliados y Relajados (1488–1691).
most popular saints among Balearic witches we re St . 1946. Barcelona: Perdigó.
Marí Cardona, Joan. 1990. Arxiu Històric de la Pabordia de Santa
Helen (fifteen invocations), St. Anthony (seven invoca-
Maria d’Eivissa: Sant Ofici. N.p.: Ajuntament d’Eivissa.
tions), and St. Martha (four invocations). No one else,
Pérez, Llorenç, Lleonard Muntaner, and Mateu Colom, eds. 1986.
including Jesus and his mother, was invoked more than
ElTribunal de la Inquisición en Mallorca: Relación de Causas de
twice. It is interesting to notice the evident parallelism
Fe, 1578–1806.Vol. 1. Palma de Mallorca: Font.
between the magic practices on the Balearic Islands, as
Pérez, Lorenzo. 1977–1980. Relación de Causas de Fe de la
prayers addressed to saints as mediators seem similar to Inquisición de MallorcaFontes rerum balearium. Vols. 1–3.
those used by witches on mainland Spain. Probably, the Palma de Mallorca: Fundación Bartolomé.
most active witches in the Balearic Islands were foreign- Prohens Perelló, Bartomeu. 1995. Caterina Floreta. Una bruixa del
ers, even Gypsies, who we re perc e i ved as more gifted segle XVII. Palma de Mallorca: Lleonard Muntaner.
than the locals. ———. 1995. Inquisició i Bruixeria a Mallorca. Palma de
The eighteenth century offers less information than Mallorca: Lleonard Muntaner.
Riera i Montserrat, Francesc. 1979. Remeis matoris, pactes amb el
the seventeenth century, although there is evidence that
dimoni, encanteris, per a saber de persones absents, cercadors de
the Holy Office of Majorca punished two women and
tresors, remeis per a la salut. Bruixes i bruixots davant la Inquisicó
one man for witchcraft in 1708, and two more women
de Mallorca en el segle XVII. Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona:
in 1724, with the aggravating circumstance that they
Olañeta.
were recidivists. In 1769, a young woman was impris-
Rosselló i Vaquer, Ramon. 1982. Menorca davant la Inquisición.
oned under the accusation of searching for hidden Consejo Insular de Menorca: Menorca S.A.
treasures.
Besides the Inquisition, diocesan bishops tried to Balkans (Western and Central)
control the opaque world of illicit magic. Practically all In South Slavic regions under Ottoman rule there were
Majorcan synods of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- no institutional witchcraft trials similar to those in
turies (none we re held in the next two centuries) western and central Europe, nor did the central author-
e m p h a s i zed that the sins committed by s o rtilegi et ities deal with the problem of witchcraft. Accusations,
i n c a n t a t o re s ( s o rc e rers and enchanters) should be however, often shaped by traditional beliefs and oral
re s e rved to the bishop, and not absolved by ord i n a ry customary law, were frequent among the common peo-
confessors. In the final synod, summoned by Bi s h o p ple and the local authorities.
Pe d ro de Alagón in 1692, the first chapter of title 18 The western and central Balkans include the
was devoted to sortilegi and ordered that anyone using e x-Yugoslav republics (Bosnia, Serbia, Mo n t e n e g ro, and
spells to cure the sick will be excommunicated. It stig- Macedonia) as well as Albania and Bulgaria. Be f o re the
m a t i zed such ignorant people as “p r a vos hominess et coming of the Ottoman Tu rks in the fifteenth century,
simplices mulierculas suae salutis immemores” (wicked Bosnia formed the borderland between the Catholic and
men and silly women forgetful of their salvation). This Ort h o d ox worlds in the Balkans. While the countries
text reveals in passing that much of the Balearic popula- u n c o n q u e red by the Ottoman Tu rks (e.g., Cro a t i a )
tion remained attached to magic practices as they had turned tow a rd Latin Eu rope, the lands under Ot t o m a n
been two centuries earlier, and we re still reluctant to rule (the Balkans), mostly populated by Ort h o d ox
denounce such magicians despite clerical anathemas. Christians, experienced a different turn of eve n t s .
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During the early modern period, despite being ethnical- Eve ry w h e re else in the mountainous western and
ly diverse and divided by their official religion, tradition- central Balkans, despite the cultural and religious differ-
al societies in the Balkans shared several common arc h a- ences between ethnic groups, older and deeper cultural
ic beliefs and eve ryday practices. Although there we re no layers (and sometimes even ethnic kinship) united the
witchcraft trials in the judicial meaning of the word, a Muslim population with their Christian neighbors. For
s t rong shared belief in the existence of witches pro d u c e d that reason, even in places with a high percentage of
sporadic witch hunts, almost always in connection with Muslims (e.g., Bosnia or southwestern Serbia), the
natural disasters and from time to time characterized by witchcraft persecutions conducted by local “Turks” dif-
mass hysteria. Some forms of legislation re fle c t i n g fered little from those of their Christian neighbors.
witchcraft beliefs can be found in both oral traditions The absence of any record of witchcraft accusations
and customary laws of the region. Witches we re accused in the Balkans until a later date than in the lands to the
of killing children and cattle, of spreading disease, and n o rth and west may not, in fact, mean that no such
of causing crop failures. Almost exc l u s i ve l y, elderly accusations we re made, given the complete absence of
women we re accused, interrogated, and sometimes pun- documents of any kind from the earlier period, primar-
ished according to “old customs.” T h e re are almost no ily because of constant unrest in the Ottoman border-
data about such persecutions before the seve n t e e n t h lands. Because there we re apparently no institutional
c e n t u ry, and the last executions in this region occurre d trials, it seems that the documented persecutions repre-
in such mountainous regions as Mo n t e n e g ro in the sec- sent the variations of popular witch lynchings practiced
ond half of the nineteenth century. in other parts of Europe. The specific circumstances of
social and economic underd e velopment of this re g i o n
Historical, Ethnic, and Religious (its very late modernization) enabled longer survival of
Background its societies based on oral tradition; understanding the
Due largely to their geography, characterized by impen- oral “legislation” of these societies might help with the
etrable mountains, the Balkans in the early modern re c o n s t ruction of other older cultural layers lying
period continued to preserve a complex variety of cul- beneath the educated tradition of western Europe.
tural and ethnic groups. Because the creation of late
medieval Christian states (e.g., Serbia) was disrupted by The Figure of a Witch
the Ottoman conquest between the fourteenth and six- Although widespread, the belief in witches neve r
teenth centuries, the entire Balkan region inhabited became a dominant belief system throughout the
predominantly by Orthodox Christians never experi- Balkans; it coexisted with more archaic beliefs in fairies
enced institutional and juridical witch persecutions. and other supernatural beings (Pócs 1989). In this
This fact can be explained by a variety of causes, includ- region, the figure of a witch differed geographically
ing the following: strongly preserved archaic beliefs, the from area to area. In Habsburg-ruled northwestern
d e velopment of Ort h o d ox Christian theology; an Croatia, what is known about the witches called coper-
underdeveloped state and juridical system; and a social n i c a s t rongly resembles what is known of the
structure of predominantly peasant and shepherd soci- Austro-Hungarian Zauber (from whom their name
eties. Under Ottoman occupation, these Christian pop- derives), with wizardry and weather making as domi-
ulations found themselves ruled by a central govern- nant characteristics. Farther southeast, the main charac-
ment with different political, cultural, and religious val- teristics of the “witch” were different: the Dalmatian
ues. Nevertheless, the Christian population (with a very striga(from Italian stregha) preserved more archaic char-
strong pre-Christian cultural substratum), who were acteristics, being much more connected with killing
organized in villages, clans, or tribes, preserved their children. Further to the east, from the Dalmatian hin-
own customary laws, implemented by the local chief- terland through southern Bosnia and alongside the
tains or councils of elders. Therefore, Ottoman author- Dinaric Alps, the witch resembled a nocturnal demon
ities rarely dealt with the problem of witchcraft; in fact, that sucks blood from children or cattle. The remains of
there are literally no institutional and juridical regula- a demonic type of witch were also preserved in some
tions nor any written documents about witchcraft trials parts of the Balkans as a belief in mora (etymologically
from the Balkans. The only exception is the Principality related to nightmare), creatures who steal the life-giving
of Tr a n s y l vania (today part of Romania), which, liquids (blood and milk) from a sleeping victim during
although a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, man- the night.
aged to preserve its inner autonomy. With a local gov- In general, in the western and central Balkans a witch
erning class largely composed of urban Calvinist often bears the name veˇs t i c a (with many variations of
Hungarians and Lutheran Saxons, Transylvania pre- the term), basically meaning the “one who is able, the
sented a completely different cultural pattern from the one who knows.” This use of the term might be
central Balkans—and recorded numerous witchcraft explained, at least on an etymological level, by its
trials, starting in the late sixteenth century. p re-Christian and perhaps shamanistic origin.
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Regardless of its origins, data from the eighteenth and beliefs that witches could turn into some kinds of ani-
nineteenth centuries show that the prevailing idea of a mals, people often burned butterflies, birds, or cats,
witch was a woman who attacked sleepers during the hoping to detect the witches afterwards by their burns
night (whether some evil spirit left her body to make or scars.
the attack or she did it herself), causing them either Along with these personal methods of identifying
death or sickness. There was also widespread belief that witches and everyday practices, in periods of major dis-
the witch could turn into an animal or change her size asters the most common interrogation method was the
so that she could pass through very small holes in order swimming test (the cold-water ordeal), which was con-
to attack her victims. The witch, as a mixture of evil sidered to be one of the “old customs.” After a serious
spell caster, weather-controlling expert, and night-stalk- disaster (a massive death rate among children or an epi-
ing demon, was most often accused of killing children demic), a group of accused women we re brought to a
and cattle. Because most of our data come from the river or lake and thrown one by one in the water with
mountainous regions populated by pastoral societies, it their hands tied. Those who did not sink were consid-
is understandable that almost all witchcraft accusations e red to be witches. Data about individual trials are
would involve attacks on humans and livestock, the two quite rare, but there are several examples of interro g a-
fundamental sources of life. tions of entire groups, sometimes including all the
The data show that Balkan-area executions were far elderly women from the area. One of the better-docu-
less frequent in regions where more archaic beliefs mented trials comes from Eastern Bosnia, conducted by
ˇ
about fairies we re better pre s e rved. As a supernatural Smail-aga C engi´c, the muselim(a high Muslim official,
being, the fairy could not be persecuted, while a witch, a type of clerk acting sometimes as a judge) of Gacko,
a human being who integrated traditional fairy activi- in the 1830s. According to one of the witnesses, all the
ties (e.g., causing bad weather), simple sorcery, and the elderly women from the area we re brought to Lipnik,
demonic characteristics of a classical Gre e k - Ro m a n the tower of the m u s e l i m , w h e re they we re put to the
strix (screech owl; term used for “witch”),presented an o rdeal in the local stream. Two Christians and one
ideal scapegoat. The witch, who was almost without Gypsy woman would not sink; and, after being accused
exception an elderly woman, could be made responsible of killing the children, they were burned with a searing
for a broad range of natural disasters. Religious and eth- hot horseshoe. In t e re s t i n g l y, one of the part i c i p a n t s
nic diversity also affected witchcraft accusations. stated that “the disaster (dying of the children) stopped
Constant unrest and war threats, along with permanent i m m e d i a t e l y” (Lilek 1894, 470). Another similar trial
tensions between the ruling Muslims and subject was held in Trebinje in Eastern Herzegovina in 1857. In
Christians as well as between different ethnic gro u p s , that case a large number of Christian women who were
p rovided a sociological and psychological backgro u n d put to ordeal did not sink, so the local Muslims wanted
in which a great number of evil deeds were constantly to stone them. On this occasion, the families of the
attributed to the “other side.” Muslims often accused accused barely managed to save their lives, but they had
Christian women, while both Christians and Mu s l i m s to take an oath before the local monastery that they
accused Gypsies and Vlachs (an ethnic group of “will never eat children again” (Vrcˇevic´ 1884, 13).
Romanian origin). Rich ethnological material show s The fire ordeal was applied in some executions in
the existence of strong prejudices among Christians Serbia as late as the beginning of the nineteenth centu-
about Muslims as practitioners of magic and sorcery (as ry. In some cases, women we re set on fire in order to
well as vice versa). People in the Balkan bord e r l a n d s make them confess their witchcraft; if they would not
sometimes believed that the “Turks” (as Muslims were confess, they were simply burned to death. It seems that
called, whatever their ethnic origin) could turn into this method rested on the widespread belief that a witch
w o l ves or become va m p i res. Despite these divisions, who confessed her witchcraft lost her powers (the belief
s o u rces occasionally mentioned Christians accusing that a witch who confessed her witchcraft in public
their own women and surrendering them to the Turks would lose her powers was also connected with the idea
to be executed. One such example is a trial held in that confession in church could deliver the witch from
Trebinje (eastern He rze g ovina) in 1846, during which the evil spirit that she was born with). T h e re f o re ,
local Christians subjected 73 women to an ord e a l accused witches we re sometimes burned not primarily
before willingly surrendering 11 of them to the Turks to in order to torture or kill them, but to remove their evil
be executed (Maksimovic´ 1979, 220). powers. From the existing data it can be stated that fire
was used in various forms as an interrogation method as
Procedure and Punishment well as a measure of punishment, but it was applied
The common belief was that witches were in the first only in Serbian cases from the late eighteenth and early
place elderly women from the local neighborhood who nineteenth centuries. Such frequent (although it is hard
could be recognized by such natural features as the evil to speculate about the numbers) and extremely late
eye, moustaches, hairy legs, and the like. Because of (beginning of the nineteenth century) burnings can
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p robably be explained by what has been called the Accusations appeared even in the second half of the
periphery effect (the time lag between the diffusion of nineteenth century; at that time, howe ve r, except for
cultural developments from the Eu ropean core to the isolated highland areas, the penalties we re less seve re
periphery, in this case from the witch hunts in the Holy than a century earlier. So u rces mention only flo g g i n g
Roman Empire to the Balkans) and the growing central and beating; this change seems to have been the result
European influence in nineteenth-century Serbia. Such of the introduction of legal penalties for pro s e c u t i n g
cases were reported from central Serbia during the first witches.
re volt against Ottoman rule (1804–1812). The leader
-
of the rebellion, -Do rde Pe t rov ic´ (who had pre v i o u s l y
Officials and the Last
spent some time in Hu n g a ry), ord e red a woman
Prosecutions
accused of witchcraft to be burned alive in the village of
ˇ Witchcraft accusations in the Balkans, unlike those in
Zabari soon after 1805; about the same time, a local
central Europe, lacked any institutional support from
chieftain, Antonije Pl j a k ic´, burned an old woman in
either state or church. Available sources indicate that
the village of Kraljevo.
Ottoman authorities paid little attention to the prob-
In mountainous areas farther south (e.g., Mo n t e n e g ro ,
lem of witches and also suggest that the higher
Albania) no such burnings we re re p o rted. Howe ve r, until
Orthodox Church officials disagreed with the practices
the second half of the nineteenth century, the customary
of their flock. Although we have little early information
laws in the mountainous Dalmatian hinterland and in
on this matter, in regions where executions occurred in
some parts of Bosnia pre s e rved a kind of “hot-water
the eighteenth century and later, high Ort h o d ox
o rdeal,” in the form of having the accused witch re m ove a
Church officials opposed the practice. For example, in
piece of hot steel (usually a horseshoe) from boiling water.
1795 Metropolitan Peter I of Montenegro forbade “the
Although there are no data about actual witchcraft trials
ones who participated in the stoning” to take part in
using this ordeal, it is reminiscent of some other persecu-
liturgical meetings and accused them as “deliberate
tions that mention punishing witches with a searing
k i l l e r s”; another high Ort h o d ox Church offic i a l ,
h o r s e s h o e .
Archimandrite J. Pamuˇsina, claimed that stoning had
The oldest and most widespread way of exe c u t i n g
been “allowed by Ottoman judges as well as some igno-
witches in the Balkans was by stoning them and throw-
rant priests” (Pamucˇina 1867, 52). It is possible that
ing them into pits. Punishment by stoning pre d a t e s
parish priests, often local people without higher educa-
Ottoman rule. The fourt e e n t h - c e n t u ry code of the
tion, sometimes participated in the brutalities and
Serbian tsar Duˇsan, whose terminology stro n g l y
superstitions of their flock.
resembled the contemporary Byzantine legal system,
In Bosnia, the Austrian occupation in 1878 defin i-
o rd e red that “magicians should be punished accord i n g
tively abolished the already dwindling use of customary
to the law of the ancient Fathers,” in other words, by
l a w. Ac c o rding to contemporary observers, the last
stoning, the practice found in the He b rew Bi b l e
ordeals took place in eastern Herzegovina after 1850. In
( R a d o jcˇ ic´ 1950, 54). But the code’s connections with
Serbia, witches were occasionally interrogated by water
popular customs of stoning witches five centuries later
and fire ordeals even after the criminal code of 1810,
h a ve not been satisfactorily explained. The practice of
which forbade “s e a rching for witches, and killing
stoning is especially well documented in eastern
women,” took effect. Howe ve r, some sporadic cases
Bosnia, Mo n t e n e g ro, southern Serbia, and Albania,
occurred even later, for example at the village of Brda in
mountainous regions with pre vailingly tribal social sys-
Ko s ovo, where Ottoman police officers almost beat to
tems. Ac c o rding to some witnesses, stonings took place
death four women accused by their neighbors of witch-
sporadically even in the second half of the nineteenth
craft. In some remote regions of Mo n t e n e g ro, witches
c e n t u ry.
were still stoned even after the 1860s. Although the fol-
In highland tribal societies, an accused woman was
lowing of traditional methods (in the Balkans, distinc-
sometimes released if she could bring a group (usual-
tions between a “lynching” and a “trial according to
ly five) of her clansmen or other influential men to
c u s t o m a ry law” remain problematic) definitely ceased
s wear to her innocence. This practice, sometimes
during the nineteenth century, a few cases of killing
c o n s i d e red a legacy of older Slavic traditional laws,
women accused of witchcraft occurred even in the
did not help widows and other socially unpro t e c t e d
twentieth century.
women, who became ideal scapegoats and we re often
e xe c u t e d . TRPIMIR VEDRIˇS
Along with such cases of following customary laws,
See also:CONTEMPORARYWITCHCRAFT(POST1800); CROATIA;
there were also cases of pure lynching where literally no
EXECUTIONS;FAIRIES;FOLKLORE;HUNGARY;HUNGARYAND
p ro c e d u re was used. Such episodes occurred in Se r b i a
SOUTHEASTERNEUROPE,WITCHCRAFT;ISLAMICWITHCRAFTAND
a round 1810, for example, when some women we re MAGIC;LYNCHING;NIGHTMARES;ORDEAL;ORTHODOX
shot or cut with knives without any interro g a t i o n . CHRISTIANITY;POPULARPERSECUTION;SWIMMINGTEST.
86 Balkans (Western and Central) |
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References and further reading: staged massive witch hunts. Be t ween 1626 and 1630,
-
Bayer,Vladimir. 1982. Ugovor s davlom:Procesi protiv ˇcarobnjaka a p p roximately 630 persons we re imprisoned at
u Europi a napose u Hrvatskoj.3d ed. Zagreb: Zora. Bamberg on witchcraft charges, and most we re con-
Bogiˇsic´, Baltazar. 1874. Zbornik sadaˇsnjih pravnih obiˇcaja u Juˇznih
demned to death. Like other large witch hunts in
Slavena.Zagreb.
southern Ge r m a n y, the tendency to focus on poor,
Cˇicˇa, Zoran. 2002. Vilenica i vilenjak: Sudbina jednog pretkrˇs´can-
e l d e r l y, quarrelsome females, traditionally most apt to
skog kulta u doba progona vjeˇstica.Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju
be considered witches, became much less marked as the
i folkloristiku
D- ord- evic´, Tihomir. 1989. Veˇstica i vila u naˇsem narodnom verovan- s e a rch for greater numbers of suspected witches gath-
ju i predanju.Beograd: Narodna biblioteka Srbije–Deˇcje e red momentum (Mi d e l f o rt 1972). Under these cir-
novine. cumstances, accusations were made against many atypi-
Karadzˇic´, Vuk. 1889. Lexicon serbico-germanico-latinum.Belgrade. cal suspects, such as burgomasters and tow n
Lilek, Emilijan. 1894. “Gottesurteile und Eidhelfer in Bosnien councillors. The bishop’s own chancellor, Dr. Ge o r g
und der Herzegovina.” Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen aus Haan, was among those executed. Ha a n’s arrest was
Bosnia und Herzegovina.Vienna. mainly due to his desire to reform the incre a s i n g l y
Pamuˇcina, Jovan. 1867. Srbsko-dalmatinski magazin.Zadar.
i r regular judicial pro c e d u res used to detect the bish-
Pócs, Éva. 1989. Fairies and Witches at the Boundary of South-
o p r i c’s witches. Like his illustrious predecessor Dr.
Eastern and Central Europe.FF Communications, no. 243.
Dietrich Flade of Trier, Dr. Haan learned that question-
Helsinki: Soumalainen Tiedeakatemia.
ing trial pro c e d u res was a dangerous undertaking and
Maksimovi´c, Miodrag. 1979. “Umesto pogovora” (Instead of an
could lead to charges that obstructors of persecution
Afterword). Pp.187–222 in Veˇstice i njihov svet,vol. 2.
(Translation of Julio Caro Baroja, Las brujas y su mundo.) were themselves witches, protecting their secret demon-
Edited by Hulio Caro Baroha. Belgrade: Mladost. ic coconspirators.
Radojcˇic´, Nikola. 1950. Duˇsanov zakonik.Novi Sad: Matica Sudden crop failures significantly provo k e d
srpska. Ba m b e r g’s seve re panic of the 1620s. Although peasant
Schneeweis, Edmund. 1961.Volksglaube und Volksbrauch. demands that action be taken against sorc e rers who
Serbo-Kroatische Volkskunde, vol. 1. Berlin: de Gruyter. had harmed their crops triggered prosecutions, the
Vrcˇevi´c, Vuk. 1884. “Trebinjski sud i hriˇs´canske veˇstice.” In
principal responsibility for unleashing the large-scale
Südslavische Hexensagen,Mittheilungen der Antropologischen
witch hunt rested with the ruling prince-bishop and
Gesellschaft.Edited byV. and F. Krauss. Vienna.
his advisors; after all, the governing elite conducted
these prosecutions. Ba m b e r g’s outbursts of
Bamberg, w i t c h-hunting activity occurred under the rule of the
Prince-Bishopric of p r i n c e-bishop Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen
The infamous reputation of this Catholic principality (1609–1622) and especially under Johann Georg II
of the Holy Roman Empire for intensive witch hunting Fuchs von Dornheim (1623–1633), nicknamed the
is justly deserved; Bamberg’s witchcraft trials developed “w i t c h - b i s h o p” ( He xe n b i s c h o f) .
into some of early modern Germany’s most savage per- Re c e n t l y, historians have paid more attention to the
secutions. Abundant legal records have been preserved, personalities and general psychological pro file of
primarily in the cathedral city’s library, the Staatliche German rulers who displayed a keen interest in the
Bibliothek Bamberg, and the wealth of surviving pri- extermination of witches. Such princes usually held a
mary source material makes it possible for historians to resolute faith, and they we re especially re c e p t i ve to the
determine the extent of the territory’s witch craze with kind of pessimistic, sin-obsessed, dogmatic mentality
some accuracy. often found among sections of the social elite from the
Ba m b e r g’s first known trial, in 1595, already con- late sixteenth century onwards—an era characterize d
tained specific allegations of demonic witchcraft, by extensive religious conflict and political turmoil.
instead of the traditional offense of harmful sorc e ry Ba m b e r g’s early-seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry prince-bishops
( Za u b e re i ) . The defendant, Ma r g a retha Böhmerin, re g a rded it as a divine mission to cleanse their lands of
admitted under torture that she had engaged in sexual any evils that threatened to undermine the godly
intercourse with the Devil, promised him her soul, and states they we re attempting to establish. As well as
attended a witches’ meeting. She was executed; but no witchcraft, Ba m b e r g’s ove rzealous rulers we re especial-
p rosecutions followed until 1612–1613, when a small ly concerned with policing manners and morals,
panic broke out that resulted in fifteen arrests. Between attempting to eradicate a whole range of their sub-
1616 and 1619, a more intensive series of prosecutions j e c t s’ behavior that could be defined as deviant: cleri-
took place, with at least 155 persons tried for part i c i- cal concubinage, for example, or prostitution, or
pating in demon-worshipping witch sects (Gehm 2000, intemperate immoral conduct during popular festivi-
57, 69). ties. Witch hunting should, there f o re, be related to
A new spate of persecutions erupted during the the wider aims of these pious prince-bishops, part i c u-
1620s, when many other ecclesiastical territories also larly with their efforts to impose social discipline on
Bamberg, Prince-Bishopric of 87 |
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The notorious witch house in Bamberg, constructed in 1627 to hold 30 witches. Most of the approximately 630 witches imprisoned in Bamberg
between 1626 and 1630 were executed. (TopFoto.co.uk)
their subjects and to inculcate conformist, authoritar- He xe n h a u s we re frequently given sadistic forms of tor-
ian va l u e s . ture in order to compel them to admit their guilt. The
In Bamberg, and in a number of other Catholic terri- authorities tortured stubborn suspects by force-feeding
tories that witnessed mass trials in this era, the ru l i n g them on herrings cooked with salt and pepper while
princes were often advised and encouraged about mat- depriving them of drink; by applying feathers that had
ters of witchcraft by members of their court circle who been dipped in burning sulfur(Schwefelfedern)to sensi-
were experts in demonological theory. Suffragan Bishop tive parts of their bodies; by compelling them to kneel
Friedrich Förner fell into this category; in 1626 he pub- for long periods on the Betstuhl (a “prayer stool” fitted
lished a series of thirt y - five antiwitchcraft sermons, with piercing wooden pegs); and by confining such
helping to endorse and support his prince-bishop’s per- obstinate suspects as Jakob Krauss for nearly six hours
secutions. The suffragan bishop also prov i d e d in the B o c k (stocks fitted with sharp-pointed pieces of
Bamberg’s ruler with aid of a more practical nature for metal).
his campaign against witches. It was mainly thanks to Other German authorities, such as the governors of
F ö r n e r’s initiative that a special prison, the notorious the imperial free city of Offenburg, utilized similar
Bamberger Hexenhaus,was built in the cathedral city in methods of tort u re. This city’s council, as part of its
1627 especially to house witches; the jail had room for program to discover witches, instructed a workman to
about thirty prisoners. Suspects imprisoned in the make a spiked chair which could be heated, in order to
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inflict the maximum amount of suffering on prisoners. tioned Em p e ror Fe rdinand II’s Re i c h s h o f ra t ( i m p e r i a l
Such brutal measures become more explicable if they aulic court) in Regensburg to intervene on their behalf.
a re related to government adoption of particular judi- Eventually, the Reichshofrat responded decisively to the
cial approaches to witchcraft. Ba m b e r g’s and mounting criticisms of Bamberg’s procedures; on June
Offenburg’s judiciary concurred with the views of those 12, 1631, it issued a binding imperial mandate order-
demonologists who argued that ordinary procedures for ing Bishop Johann Georg both to appoint a new presi-
determining guilt were not necessarily applicable in cas- dent of his Hexen-Kommissionand to undertake a com-
es of witchcraft, because it was an unusually problemat- plete revision of his panel of judicial experts within this
ical offense, invariably perpetrated in secret. Ma n y committee. These measures we re deemed necessary to
e x p e rts in demonology there f o re maintained that ensure that jurists would, in the future, conduct prose-
witchcraft should be prosecuted as an extraord i n a ry cutions according to the ord e r l y, regulated pro c e d u re s
crime (crimen exc e p t u m ) , a crime excepted from the p rescribed in the 1532 imperial criminal code, the
usual legal procedures because it was so serious and fre- C a rolina Code (Constitutio Criminalis Ca ro l i n a ) . T h e
quently hard to prove. By resolutely following this prince-bishop had been outmaneuvered, and Bamberg’s
advice, legal officials in some German states allowed a reign of terror finally reached its end. By the 1630s, the
situation to develop in which the application of brutal, cultural climate of Counter-Reformation fervor and
i r regular methods to obtain confessions became stan- fundamentalism that characterized the worldview of
dard procedure for detecting witches. such advocates of witch hunting as Bishop Jo h a n n
Bamberg established a special witch-finding commit- Georg was falling from fashion.
tee (Hexen-Kommission) that was responsible for super-
ROBERT WALINSKI-KIEHL
vising and directing these prosecutions throughout the
whole bishopric. The committee greatly facilitated the See also:AGRARIANCRISES;APPEALS;CAROLINACODE;COMMUNAL
p rocess of persecution. Its membership was mainly PERSECUTION;CRIMENEXCEPTUM;ECCLESIASTICALTERRITORIES
restricted to legal experts from the ru l e r’s princely
(HOLYROMANEMPIRE); FLADE,DIETRICH;GERMANY;MERGEN-
c o u rt-council ( Ho f ra t ) who we re especially obsessed
THEIM,ECCLESIASTICALTERRITORYOF;POPULARPERSECUTION;
REICHSHOFRAT;TORTURE;WITCH-BISHOPS(HOLYROMAN
with the dangers of demonic witchcraft. T h u s
EMPIRE); WITCHCRAZE;WITCHHUNTS.
Ba m b e r g’s He xe n - Kommission included such jurists as
References and further reading:
Dr. Ernst Vasoldt, who frequently tort u red suspects
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria:
severely until they named scores of accomplices suppos- Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early
edly seen at witches’ assemblies. This fanatical witch Modern Europe.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
hunter left his mark not only on Ba m b e r g’s pro s e c u- Gehm, Britta. 2000. Die Hexenverfolgung im Hochstift Bamberg
tions but also on the contemporaneous witchcraft trials und dasEingreifen des Reichshofrates zu ihrer Beendigung.
in Mergentheim. He was sent to this Catholic territory Hildesheim: Olms.
in September 1628, after the authorities had requested Merzbacher, Friedrich. 1970. Die Hexenprozesse in Franken.
Munich: Beck.
advice from Ba m b e r g’s prince-bishop on how to pro-
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1972. Witch Hunting in Southwestern
ceed further against recently discove red witches.
Germany 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations.
Vasoldt’s intervention in Mergentheim proved extreme-
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
ly pro d u c t i ve in terms of suspects brought to the
Renczes, Andrea. 1990. Wie löscht man eine Familie aus? Eine
attention of the courts; by the time he left the area in
AnalyseBamberger Hexenprozesse.Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus.
December 1628, lists of over 140 denounced accom- Walinski-Kiehl, Robert. 1988. “‘Godly States’: Confessional
plices had been compiled (Midelfort 1972, 147). Conflict and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Germany.”
It is indicative of the fanaticism of the prince-bish- Mentalities/Mentalités5: 13–24.
o p, and the pro-witch-hunting lobby within the gov-
erning elite, that they did not experience the kind of Baphomet
crisis of confidence in the validity of the pro c e d u res in Baphomet is the name of an alleged demonic idol that
witchcraft trials that their counterparts in other the Knights Templar we re said to have venerated, when
German regions experienced after the “usual suspects” King Philip IV of France collected evidence to destroy
who fitted the old-woman witch stereotype had been this rich military order (1307–1314). But at no time,
exhausted. By 1628, witchcraft accusations in the epis- in antiquity, during the Middle Ages, or in the early
copal city of Bamberg had started to gravitate signifi- modern period, was any deity or demon called
cantly tow a rd members of the social elite, but local Baphomet venerated, nor did an idol of that name
authorities still persisted in searching remorselessly for e x i s t .
m o re accomplices. Although the question of idolatry was a standing
Some re l a t i ves of the growing number of we a l t h y item of the written interrogatories used against this
imprisoned suspects complained bitterly about the order from 1307 to 1314, only a very few of the hun-
judicial abuses perpetrated in the bishopric. They peti- dreds of enforced confessions mentioned Baphomet. If
Baphomet 89 |
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the veneration of a “heathen” or “d e m o n i c” idol was c a verns in the great rock of Gi b r a l t a r, where prisoners
avowed, that idol remained anonymous in most cases. fabricated Baphomets. Such stories had considerable
Obviously, the name Baphomet was chosen because of success, especially in Catholic circles, as they seemed to
the Te m p l a r s’ connection with the Saracens, who, present useful propaganda for the Church’s fight against
according to medieval Christian propaganda formulat- Freemasonry. But in 1897, the main writer on this sub-
ed in written sources from the late eleventh century ject, Gabriel Jo g a n d - Pagès, alias Léo Ta x i l
onwards (especially in many chansons de geste), venerat- (1854–1907), declared that the whole thing had been a
ed an idol called Baphomet or Bafumetz. This word , m y s t i fication without real background, making fun of
h owe ve r, though it sounds somewhat similar to the the credulity of some high-ranking members of the
name of the biblical monster Behemoth (Job 40, Catholic Church.
10–19), is nothing but a Provençal transmogrific a t i o n To the best of current knowledge, Baphomet was an
of Mahomet, as he was called, the founder of Is l a m , i n vention of medieval anti-Islamic and anti-Te m p l a r
into a demonic idol. Idolatry had been a standard accu- p ropaganda. Re d i s c ove red in the eighteenth century, the
sation against all non-Christian religions since the time name became associated with various occultist gro u p s
of the apostle Paul, who often condemned it in his let- claiming to uphold clandestine Templar traditions. As
ters, as it had been condemned in the Hebrew Bible. recently as 1965, the French writer Pi e r re Klossow s k i
If the name Baphomet evokes some mysterious asso- re c e i ved the Prix des Cr i t i q u e s( Cr i t i c s’ Pr i ze) for his nov-
ciations even in our days, this is due to a legend woven el L eBaphome (The Baphomet), the story of a boy in the
a round it, which apparently originated with the center of homoerotic Templar rituals.
German occult society Klerikat der Tempelherren (The
PETER DINZELBACHER
Te m p l a r s’ Clergy), founded in 1767 by the Pro t e s t a n t
(but secretly Catholic) professor of theology Jo h a n n See also:IDOLATRY;OCCULT;SATANISM;TEMPLARS.
August Freiherr von Starck. The ritual one had to fulfil References and further reading:
Gerber, Hermann. 1898. Leo Taxil’s Palladismus-Roman.3 vols.
in order to be initiated into this Masonic-like gro u p
Berlin: Germania.
included worship before an altar with a statue of
Gregorius, Gregor A. 1980. Aleister Crowley’s magische Rituale.
Baphomet. Many other more or less occult groups have
Berlin. Schikowski.
claimed (and still claim) to be the true heirs of the mur-
Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von. 1818. Mysterium
d e red knights and similarly transmit the name
Baphometis relevatum seu fratres militiae templi.Fundgruben des
Baphomet; the leader of the Ordo Templi Or i e n t i s Orients,6. Vienna.
( Order of the Temple of the East), Aleister Crow l e y Hartland, E. Sidney. 1932. “Satanism.” InEncyclopaedia of
(1875–1947), even called himself “a l m i g h t y Religion and Ethics. Edited by James Hastings. Edinburgh: T.
Baphomet.” Baphomet entered the learned world via and T. Clark.
the sophisticated but completely untenable specula- Krüger, Anke. 1999. “Das ‘Baphomet-Idol.’” Historisches Jahrbuch
tions of a famous poet and orientalist, Joseph Freiherr 119: 120–133.
von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856). In 1818, he pub-
lished a study on the mysteries of this figure, in which Bar, Duchy of
he alleged Baphomet to have been part of the Templars’ Because of its exceptionally complicated political histo-
secret teaching, which according to him was a form of ry, the French duchy of Bar (which contained more
heretical Gnosticism. The main part of his paper, how- than 100,000 people around 1600) has yet to be stud-
ever, dealt with the sculptures of a Romanesque church ied as a separate unit, and its history of witch hunting
in Lower Austria, Schöngrabern, which he interpre t e d has remained completely unexplored. Ne ve rt h e l e s s ,
as a cycle of images re p resenting the clandestine doc- when contrasted with the larger duchy of Lorraine, Bar
trine of the order. contains enough evidence to offer some useful lessons
Much more popular we re the fabulous but tru s t e d for historians of witchcraft trials in French-speaking
“confessions” and “revelations” of a group of late nine- Europe, confirming the importance of appellate tri-
t e e n t h - c e n t u ry French writers. In their works, one bunals and suggesting why many suspected witches
could read “records” showing that a group of Satanists were lynched in French-speaking Europe.
adored Baphomet as a palladium, wherefore they were Beginning in the Middle Ages, the duchy of Ba r,
also known as Palladists. The idol of the Templars, they with its capital at Ba r - l e - Duc in eastern France, was
stated, had been secretly pre s e rved through the cen- always administered separately from Lorraine. T h e
turies, together with the skull of the last Grand Master dukes of Lorraine owed feudal allegiance to the Ho l y
of the Templars, burned in 1314. The sect allegedly had Roman Empire for much of Bar, which after 1506 they
its centers in Charleston, South Carolina, in the United had permanently joined to their larger duchy of
States, and later in Rome. One author, C. Hacks (pub- Lorraine, lying directly east of it, but they also owe d
lishing under the name Bataille), described Pa l l a d i s t homage to the kings of France for a large share of Bar.
and Freemason lodges, including descriptions of the Major legal differences separated Bar from Lorraine,
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giving witch hunting a significantly different profile in Meanwhile, all known lynchings of witches occurred
each part of this federation. An extremely import a n t in Bar, the only part of the duke’s lands that used appel-
division separated the Barrois mouvant (that area in the late courts. More than a dozen homicides of suspected
French sphere of influence), its southwestern part s witches we re officially pardoned by the dukes of
(including the capital, Bar-le-Duc), from the rest of the Lorraine and Ba r, including three cases before 1500.
d u c h y, known as Ba r rois non-mouva n t . From the Although Lorraine was three times as populous, eve ry
Middle Ages until France annexed the duchy in the episode of lynching suspected witches occurred in Bar,
eighteenth century, the Ba r rois mouvant re m a i n e d most of them in the part under Parisian appellate juris-
subject to the appellate jurisdiction of the distant diction, the Ba r rois mouva n t . Ve ry few witches we re
Parlement of Paris (sovereign judicial court, with juris- ever convicted in these regions, probably because of the
diction over approximately one-half of France). In reac- enormous cost of appealing a death sentence to distant
tion, the dukes of Lorraine created an appellate tribunal Paris (this situation actually happened a few times). In
for the rest of the duchy at the small town of St. Mihiel 1603, in the tiny southern enclave of Châtillon-
on the Meuse in 1571. The larger duchy of Lorraine sur-Saone, financial records suggest extreme reluctance
never contained a true appellate court; the opinions of to torture and convict arrested witches, and a recorded
the Change de Na n c y [central legal tribunal in ducal pardon from the same place in the same year sug-
Lorraine], where the famous demonologist Ni c o l a s gests a readiness to lynch them instead.
Rémy sat from 1576–1591, we re advisory, although
WILLIAM MONTER
consulting them was obligatory. Its smaller twin, Ba r,
however, was divided between two such courts, one of See also:HOLYROMANEMPIRE;LORRAINE,DUCHYOF;LYNCHING;
them ve ry famous and prestigious but hundreds of PARLEMENTOFPARIS;RÉMY,NICOLAS.
References and further reading:
kilometers distant.
Archives Departmentales du Meuse, Bar-le-Duc, Série B (trial
As with Lorraine, our information about witchcraft
costs).
trials in the duchy of Bar comes almost entirely fro m
Archives Departmentales, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nancy, Série B
financial documents. Although Ba r - l e - Du c’s re c o rd s
(ducal pardons).
were severely damaged by fire as early as 1697, and few-
Cabourdin, Guy. 1991. Histoire de la Lorraine: Les temps modernes.
er than half of them survive, enough evidence remains 2 vols. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy.
to suggest a few significant differences between Bar and Rigault, Jean. 1988. “Contribution à l’ h i s t o i re de la sorcellerie en
Lorraine. For example, the earliest witchcraft trials pre- Ba r rois. Les sorciers de Juvigny-sur-Loison (1594–1598).”
s e rved from the duchy of Bar (three episodes betwe e n Bulletin des Sociétés d’ h i s t o i re et d’ a rchéologie de la Me u s e24:3–9.
1473 and 1475, involving fourteen arrests and eight
deaths) always included interventions by episcopal Baranowski, Bogdan (1915–1993)
inquisitors, a tradition that continued here until 1545. Baranowski was Polish social and cultural historian, and
Howe ve r, expenses for witchcraft trials in Lorraine author of a comprehensive survey of the witchcraft per-
(which begin in 1477) never included inquisitors. secution, published in 1952, Procesy czarownic w Polsce
No judicial records survive from the Parlementof St. w XVII i XVIII w. (Witchcraft Trials in Poland in the
Mihiel, and the overall surv i val rate from Ba r’s two Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries), and other
dozen financial districts during the probable apogee of works on witchcraft. This work has been extremely sig-
trials between 1580 and 1630 was under 50 perc e n t . nificant, because subsequent historians have quoted
Howe ve r, a general panic reached this duchy in Baranowski’s statistics almost exclusively and repeated
1582–1583, moving east from the processions of his explanation of the causes of the witchcraft persecu-
“White Pe n i t e n t s” in Champagne: In those years, 10 tion in Poland. The statistics he published of the num-
witches we re executed at St. Mihiel and 8 more at six ber of deaths that happened as a result of the trials were
d i f f e rent places. Later, our evidence is randomly scat- taken from a French résumé, and Baranowski empha-
tered. After a poor harvest in 1594, the nuns of Juvigny sized that these figures were an estimate. Despite this,
had 6 witches executed by 1596 (Rigault 1988, 3–9). they have become canonical among non-Polish-speak-
Only once—at La Mothe, in 1608—we re more than ing authors of witchcraft studies.
10 witches tried in one district in one ye a r. Ove r a l l , Ba r a n owski, the author of over 300 articles and 35
there is evidence of about 100 witchcraft executions in books, completed his first degree at Warsaw University,
Ba r, suggesting a probable total somew h e re aro u n d w h e re he studied history and oriental studies. Du r i n g
200–250. Calculating re c o rded witchcraft trials per that time he worked at the Central Arc h i ve of Ol d
-
financial district per ye a r, the overall average for the Records (Archiwum Glówne Akt Dawnych) and there-
duchy of Bar from 1580–1630 (0.29 for 305 f o re had a thorough knowledge of Po l a n d’s central
d i s t r i c t / years) was only one-fourth of those from the archival sources. During World War II, he was a mem-
central duchy of Lorraine in the same period (1.2 for ber of the Home Army and took part in the Wa r s a w
936 district/years). Uprising, one of the few to escape. After 1945 he
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-
became a professor at the University of Lód´z, where he scholars use his revised estimates of 1963 rather than
taught until 1985. In 1988 he was awarded an hon- his pioneering estimates of 1952.
-
orary doctorate from the University of Lód´z.
WANDA WYPORSKA
Ba r a n owski estimated a total of 10,000 legally
passed death sentences and 5,000 illegal deaths of both See also:POLAND;POZNAN´;SILESIA.
men and women (Ba r a n owski 1952, 178). He based References and further reading:
Baranowski, Bogdan. 1951. Najdawniejsze procesy o czary w
these fig u res on the territorial unit of Poland in 1952
Kaliszu.Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze.
(without Silesia), and reckoned 1,250 towns in Po l a n d .
———. 1952. Procesy czarownic w Polsce w XVII i XVIII wieku.
He supposed that each town court tried an average of - -
Lód´z: Lódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe.
four cases for witchcraft during the period and sen- ———. 1962. “Wielki proces o czary mi-losne w Praszce w 1665
tenced two people to death from each trial. He then roku.” L-ódzkie Studia Etnograficzne 4: 5–14.
added to this fig u re of 10,000 death sentences, an arbi- Baschwitz, Kurt. 1963. Czarownice. Dzieje procesów o czary.
t r a ry 5,000 deaths to re flect the illegal murders of peo- Warsaw: PWN.
ple suspected of witchcraft, making a total of 15,000 Pilaszek, Ma-lgorzata. 1998. “Procesy czarownic w Polsce w
deaths over the three centuries. In his opinion the peak XVI–XVIII w. Nowe aspekty. Uwagi na marginesie pracy B.
of the persecution was between 1675 and 1725 Baranowskiego.” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce42: 81–103.
( Ba r a n owski 1952, 179), an opinion that has been Wyporska, Wanda. 2002. “Early Modern Exclusion—The
Branding of the Witch in Demonological Literature
borne out by other re s e a rch. In 1963, Ba r a n ow s k i
1511–1775.” Pp. 153–166 in Studies in Language, Literature,
revised his fig u res down to a few thousand in the
and Cultural Mythology in Poland: Investigating “The Other.”
epilogue to the Polish translation of Ku rt Ba s c h w i t z’s
Edited by Elwira M. Grossman. Lewiston: Mellen.
w o rk on witchcraft, Cz a row n i c e (Witches). Un-
———. 2003. “Witchcraft, Arson, and Murder—The Turek Trial
f o rt u n a t e l y, these more accurate fig u res have not been
of 1652.” Central EuropeI (May):41–54.
those usually quoted by subsequent historians.
Doubts have been expressed about the veracity of the Basel, Council of
original and much-cited fig u res, and they have not The Council of Basel (1431–1449) played a unique and
always been considered in the context of the va ry i n g i m p o rtant role as a center for the development and dif-
geography of early modern Poland, which was substan- fusion of the idea of witchcraft in Western Eu rope. T h e
tially different from the postwar territorial boundaries full stereotype of witchcraft, entailing not just harmful
of 1945. Despite the controversy over statistics, s o rc e ry ( m a l e fic i u m ) but also demonic invocation and
Baranowski’s works provided references to many prima- devil worship, heretical gatherings, and apostasy,
ry sources, and provided a good introduction to the emerged in a clear form only in the first decades of the
subject. The majority of his re f e rences have been fifteenth century, and some of the earliest re c o rded witch
checked, but many was clearly inaccurate (Pi l a s ze k hunts took place during these years in lands just south of
1998, 82). In short, Ba r a n ow s k i’s conclusions in his Basel, in the diocese of Ge n e va, Lausanne, and Si o n .
main work was fine, but the statistics was not. Po l i t i c a l l y, most of these regions we re under the domi-
Ba r a n owski adopted a multicausal approach to nance of the ducal house of Sa voy, which enjoyed close
explaining the reasons for outbreaks of witchcraft trials. connections to the council, to the extent that the coun-
He saw them as the result of German influence, because cil fathers elected its duke, Amadeus VIII (1383–1451;
the persecution appeared to have started earlier in the ruled 1416–1451), as anti-pope Felix V in 1439 (re i g n e d
lands neighboring the German territories, and a 1439–1449). Gi ven these proximities, and considering
German legal code, the Magdeburg Law, was used in that Basel brought together a large number of churc h-
many Polish towns. He also re g a rded the Ro m a n men from across Eu rope, it is perhaps not surprising that
Catholic Church as partially to blame. At the same the council became a major center for the collection and
time, Ba r a n owski saw socioeconomic reasons behind c o d i fication of the new ideas of witchcraft emerging in
the trials: He interpreted witchcraft as a means of the lands around the western Alps and the transmission
re venge employed by otherwise powerless peasants of these ideas to the rest of Eu ro p e .
against their masters. Several clerical theorists of witchcraft either attended
Ba r a n owski also published a collection of transcrip- the Council of Basel or were closely associated with the
tions of six trials for witchcraft from Kalisz betwe e n assembly in some way. Perhaps the most important of
1580 and 1616, as well as an article on a trial for love these men was the Dominican theologian Jo h a n n e s
magic from Praszka and many other works on folklore Nider, whose long workFormicarius(The Anthill) con-
and peasant culture in Poland. His work re p re s e n t e d tained the most extensive early accounts of witchcraft
the first attempt to present a comprehensive portrait of written by an ecclesiastical authority. Nider was an
the phenomenon of witchcraft persecution in Po l a n d i m p o rtant member of this council from its inception
and as such remains the natural starting point for until late 1434 or early 1435. Although he wrote the
f u rther re s e a rch—especially if Polish and fore i g n Fo rm i c a r i u s after his depart u re from Basel, mainly in
92 Basel, Council of |
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1437 and early 1438 while he was in Vienna as a mem- See also:ERRORESGAZARIORUM;EUGENIUSIV;HERESY;HUSSITES;
ber of the university faculty, most of his accounts of JACQUIER,NICOLAS;JOANOFARC;LAUSANNE,DIOCESEOF;LE
witchcraft were set in regions of the western Alps, and FRANC,MARTIN;NIDER,JOHANNES;ORIGINSOFTHEWITCH
he clearly collected these stories during his time in
HUNTS;SWITZERLAND,TORRENTÉ,ULRICDE.
References and further reading:
Basel. Another important author, Ma rtin Le Fr a n c ,
Ankarloo, Bengt, and Stuart Clark, eds. 2001. The Middle Ages.
came to Basel as the secre t a ry of Amadeus VIII (later
Vol. 3 of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.Philadelphia:
Felix V) of Sa voy, and was formally incorporated into
University of Pennsylvania Press.
the council in 1440. From 1440 to 1442, he wrote the
Bailey, Michael D. 2003. Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and
long poem Le Champion des Dames (The Defender of Reform in the Late Middle Ages.University Park: Pennsylvania
Ladies), which contained an extended debate about State University Press.
witchcraft, here set in the context of the late medieval Stieber, Joachim W. 1978. Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel,
querelle des femmes(debate about the nature of women). and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The
Yet another critical early source on witchcraft, written Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church.
probably in the mid-1430s, was the brief tract entitled Leiden: Brill.
Er ro res Ga z a r i o rum ( Er rors of the Gazars or Ga z a r i i
[Cathars—a common term for heretics and later for Basque Country
witches]). Although the author of this work re m a i n s Basque country includes the Basque-speaking areas
u n k n own, its connection in some fashion to the near the Bay of Biscay on both sides of the Pyrenees—
Council of Basel appears strong, as both known manu- the French department of Pyrénées-Atlantique and the
script copies of the tract exist within larger collections Spanish Basque provinces and Navarre. Despite the
of material relating to the council. central position of the Basque witchcraft trials in the
In addition to theorists, several important persecutors history of European witch persecution, no scholarly
of witches we re present at the Council of Basel or, again, overview of the subject exists. In particular, knowledge
connected to the synod in some way. George de Sa l u c e s , of the trials in the French Basque country is limited,
bishop of Lausanne from 1440 to 1461, under whose because most archives have been lost. In the Spanish
overall direction numerous witchcraft trials we re con- Basque country they have been preserved to a great
ducted, was present at Basel, and Ulric de To r renté, the extent, but remain far from adequately researched. The
diocesan inquisitor of Lausanne from the 1420s who situation is best in Navarre, where material has been
actually conducted many of these early trials, may have preserved from all three courts that prosecuted witches:
spent time at the council. The most famous persecutor the High Court of Navarre, the Pamplona Bishop’s
of witches to emerge from Basel, howe ve r, was Ni c o l a s Court for Navarre with part of Guipúzcoa, and the tri-
Ja c q u i e r, who attended the council from 1433 to 1440. bunal of the Inquisition at Logroño, with jurisdiction
L a t e r, as an inquisitor in northern France, he wrote an that included all of the Spanish Basque country. The
i m p o rtant treatise on witchcraft, Flagellum here t i c o ru m archives of the last of these courts were lost during the
f a s c i n a r i o ru m(Scourge of He retical Witches), in 1458. Napoleonic Wars, but its documents have been pre-
Despite much circumstantial evidence that Basel was served in summary form in the so-called relaciones de
an important crossroads for the development and trans- causas (reports of cases) sent annually to the Suprema
mission of the idea of witchcraft, there is no evidence (Supreme Council of the Spanish Inquisition), now
w h a t s o e ver that matters of witchcraft or sorc e ry we re preserved at the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid.
e ver a formal concern of the council. Although Ba s e l Inquisition sources for Na va r re and the Ba s q u e
dealt extensively with the Hussite here s y, and even to p rovinces mention 410 cases between 1538 and 1798
some extent with the heresy of the free spirit, there is no against supersticiosos,which was the overall term used by
re c o rd of even a single session being devoted to the the Holy Of fice for a wide range of “magical delin-
p roblem of heretical sorc e rers or supposed cults of quents” from cunning folk, male and female (hechiceros
witches. Ne ve rtheless, at least some direct evidence and h e c h i c e ra s ) and learned magicians ( n i g ro m a n t e s ) t o
shows that informal discussions of witchcraft were cer- witches pro p e r, male and female ( b ru j o s and b ru j a s )
tainly taking place there. The story of Joan of Arc , (Henningsen 1993, 58, 71 ff.; Moreno Garbayo 1977,
burned at the stake the year the council began, was car- 117 ff.). Re c o rds also remain of several hundred cases
ried to Basel by delegates from the University of Paris. f rom secular courts in the sixteenth and seve n t e e n t h
At the council, Johannes Nider heard the story, and, centuries, and a score of cases prosecuted at the bishop’s
although charges of sorc e ry did not actually fig u re in court in Pamplona between 1589 and 1728. From the
Jo a n’s final condemnation, Nider included her sup- latter two courts records also exist of several “witchcraft
posed traffic with demons in his Fo rm i c a r i u s as an countersuits,” i.e., libel cases dealing with accusations
example of witchcraft. of witchcraft or cases against witch hunters for assault-
ing innocent people. In the wake of the great Ba s q u e
MICHAEL D. BAILEY witch persecution of 1609–1611 the High Court of
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Na va r re, for example, sentenced some local offic i a l s years ago,” that is around 1478 (Henningsen 2000,
to banishment for several years for abusing their pow- 355).
er; the parish priest of Errazu was sentenced by the After the conquest of Na va r re in 1512, the
Bi s h o p’s Court to two months’ confinement in the Inquisition was also introduced there, and although it
village church for acting as a self-appointed witch was soon merged with the tribunal of Calahorra, its
hunter and for withholding the sacraments from peo- judges continued to call themselves Inquisitors of
ple suspected for witchcraft (Idoate 1978, 158, 166, Na va r re. It was, howe ve r, the newly established Hi g h
3 8 8 ) . Court of Navarre that took the lead in the witch hunt-
By the fourteenth century, evidence exists of m a l e fi- ing. In 1525–1526 a judge, Pedro de la Balanza, went
c i u m (harmful magic) trials in the Basque Co u n t ry, on a punitive expedition against the witches in the val-
both north (1393) and south (1329, 1332, 1370) of leys of Roncal, Sa l a z a r, and other places in nort h e r n
the Py renees. The accused, all female, we re re f e r red to Na va r re, accompanied by twe n t y - five soldiers and an
as poisoners ( e m p o n zo ñ a d o ra s ) , s o rc e rers ( f a y t i l l e ra s o r executioner. Balanza also made use of a local witch find-
h e c h i c e ras), or evil herbalists ( h e r b o l e ras malas), b u t er, a certain Graciana de Ezcároz, who on one occasion
because they we re also accused of infanticide and had examined a group of 400 people. From these she picked
to acquit themselves of the accusations through ord e a l s out 2 men and 10 women on whom she had found the
by fire, all these accusations probably re flected a popu- Devil’s mark (Caro Baroja 1964). According to a specif-
lar belief in witchcraft (Lespy 1874–1875, 61; Id o a t e ically Basque notion, the witches could be known by a
1978, 245–248). The Basque word for witch, s o r g u i n a , mark that the Devil placed in the iris of the left eye. In
first appeared in a libel suit from Pamplona in 1415, slightly older accounts one can read about a cert a i n
w h e re two women we re sentenced for calling another inquisitor, Avellaneda, who at about the same time gave
woman “sorguina, herbolera et faytillera” (Idoate 1978, an account in a letter to the constable of Castile of a
18). Not until almost a century later do we have similar punitive expedition, during which, among other
reliable information about witch persecution in the things, he carried out an experiment with a witch, who
Basque country: In 1466 the province of Gu i p ú zc o a after anointing herself with flying ointment flew out of
complained to He n ry IV of Castile about the gre a t a high window before the eyes of his soldiers (Caro
harm being done by witches, but at the same time Baroja 1964, 146). As several people have later demon-
d rew attention to the fact that there was nothing about strated, though, this source was a forgery: T h e re was
witches (sorguines y bru j a s ) in their ordinances, so it never an inquisitor for Navarre by that name.
was impossible for local judges to prosecute them. T h i s The secular trials of the 1520s included almost all
situation was promptly remedied by a royal ord i n a n c e the motifs that appeared in later Basque Sabbat narra-
of August 15 the same year (Orella Unzue 1983, t i ves: the flying ointment pre p a red from fla yed toads;
108–110). Ac c o rding to an old source, the first tru e the depart u re through the chimney of the house or
witchcraft trial took place in Na va r re in 1496, while open windows; the diabolical goat at the Sa b b a t ,
the kingdom was still independent (Henningsen 2004, whom the witches must kiss below the tail; the eating,
doc. 2.1). the dancing, and the fornication with the Devil; the
Ac c o rding to the historian of the Inquisition, J. A. return home before cockcrow; Wednesday and Fr i d a y
L l o rente, the inquisitors for the diocese of Calahorra as meeting days; the making of the witch powder to be
burned more than thirty witches in the town of s t rewn over the fields and of the deadly “g reen potion”
Durango in Vi zcaya in 1507. Recent re s e a rch has cast (potaje ve rd e ) , used to poison people (Idoate 1978,
doubt on this information (Monter 1990, 257), but 23–57, 249–271). One special feature of the Ba s q u e
since the trial of a woman who was burned by the witchcraft trials was the notion that the witches carried
Inquisition in the same place the next year has come to c h i l d ren and young people off to the Sabbat while they
light, Llore n t e’s information is hard to dismiss. T h e lay asleep in their beds, and thus re c ruited them to
accused was a midwife from Munguia near Bilbao, and their evil sect. In other countries it was said that witch-
her trial mentioned the witches’ Sabbat for the fir s t es took their own children with them to the Sa b b a t ,
time in Basque territory. María San Juan de Carón, as but the institutionalized abduction of other people’s
the woman was called, confessed to having given herself c h i l d ren to the witches’ Sabbat is only known from one
to the Devil Belcebub and having gone as a witch to his other place in Eu rope: the northern Swedish trials at
meetings and gatherings, where she had re n o u n c e d the end of the seventeenth century, where the phenom-
C h r i s t i a n i t y, worshipped the Devil, and part i c i p a t e d enon was known as b a rn e f ö r i n g– “child-taking.” T h e
with other witches in the destruction of crops in the Basque child witches first appeared at an auto de fe
fields. In addition she had caused impotence in certain ( a u t o-da-fé; literally, “act of faith”) at Pamplona in
marriages and cast spells bringing illness and death on 1540 involving no fewer than thirty boys and girls
animals and people. She also said that the secular aged ten to fourteen (Henningsen 2000, 356). They all
authorities had burned her mother as a witch “t h i rt y came from the Salazar va l l e y, where the secular authority
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had instigated mass burnings in 1525, but thanks to to have attended witch meetings, or had remained at
the Inquisition they now all escaped with milder peni- home all night without leaving the house (Henningsen
tential punishments. Child abduction became a central 2003, 597 ff.).
element in the Basque witchcraft trials and continued The Inquisition was influenced by the strict neo-
to be so until well into the next century. scholastic tradition at Spanish universities, which made
Basque witch persecution enjoyed strong local sup- it difficult for the Neoplatonist-inspired demonology of
p o rt. On several occasions we find Basque peasants in n o rthern Eu rope to gain a foothold in Spain. On e
the Py renees taking up collections in their parish in e xception was the Basque country, where two inquisi-
order to raise the sum necessary to summon a commis- tors of the Logroño tribunal in 1609 came under strong
sioner from the High Court of Na va r re to extirpate French influence, leading to a brief return to witch
their witches (Henningsen 1980, 18). T h e re is some burnings. After scathing criticism of this witchcraft tri-
uncertainty about the number of sentences at the secu- al by the third inquisitor of the tribunal, Alonso de
lar courts of the Basque Co u n t ry. As far as the Salazar Frías, the almost century-old practice of the
Inquisition was concerned, the sentences ceased after Holy Of fice of not burning witches was re e s t a b l i s h e d .
n ew instructions we re issued for witchcraft cases in The new set of instructions of the Supreme Council in
December 1526. Because the tribunal in Calahorra August 1614 (much of it written by Salazar) ensure d
now consistently demanded to have the witchcraft cases that witch burnings defin i t i vely ceased at all Sp a n i s h
handed over to its jurisdiction, restrictions had also Inquisition tribunals.
been imposed on the other two courts. From the subse-
quent period we know of only three witch burnings, all The Great Basque Witch Panic
carried out by the secular authority in 1575 (Id o a t e The phenomenon known as the Great Basque Witch
1978, 242, 328). During the great Basque witch perse- Panic began on the French side of the Pyrenees, in the
cution at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Pays de Labourd, where some nobles and a few urban
Inquisition’s witch burnings were temporarily resumed. authorities made reciprocal accusations of witchcraft in
At an auto de fe in Logroño, where the tribunal had the course of their local power struggle. In 1608, two
n ow moved, four men and seven women we re burned, nobles sent a complaint to Henry IV, alleging that the
and as late as 1621 the local authorities of Pa n c o rvo number of witches had increased so alarmingly during
succeeded in burning four women and one man as the previous four years that no corner of the Pays de
witches (Henningsen 1980, 199, 388). After this, no Labourd was free of them. A royal decree of December
witch burnings are known from the Spanish Ba s q u e 10 appointed two councillors of the Parlement (sover-
Co u n t ry. eign judicial court) of Bordeaux, including Pierre de
Although there we re witch persecutions all ove r Lancre, to investigate the matter. Accompanied by a
n o rthern Spain, it was the Basque events in part i c u l a r president of the parlement, Jean d’Espaignet, he was
that gave rise to the shaping of the Spanish Inquisition’s sent to Labourd with the authority to interrogate under
witch policy. In Ja n u a ry 1526, the inquisitors for torture and pronounce summary death sentences. On
Na va r re sent four trials for re v i ew by the Su p re m e July 1 they embarked on this punitive expedition. Their
Council of the Inquisition, and somewhat later they commission expired in December 1609, but because of
were returned with instructions to obtain evidence for other duties the judges ended their campaign a month
the accusations. The alleged offenses were to be exam- earlier. It is not known how many witches were burned
ined in more detail to establish whether they had in fact that summer; all the original records are lost. De
taken place, and whether a natural explanation could be Lancre’s book, which is our main source, states defi-
found instead of witchcraft (Henningsen 2003, 595 f.). nitely that 3 priests and 8 other witches were burned,
Later that year, the Inquisitor General called a meeting but other prisoners were later transferred to Bordeaux,
of experts in Granada, producing the new instructions where their trials continued for several years; a few fur-
mentioned above on December 14; these instru c t i o n s ther executions may have occurred (Henningsen 1980,
were later also sent to other tribunals. These new regu- 25). Inquisitor Salazar, who appears to have been well
lations we re much concerned with ensuring that the informed of the persecution in the Pays de Labourd
rule of law should apply in witchcraft trials: They man- (probably by the bishop of Pamplona, who was in con-
dated, among other things, that no one could be arrest- tact with his French colleague, the bishop of Bayonne),
ed solely on the basis of accusations from other witches; alleged in 1612 that the French judges had burned over
that, when the inquisitors re c e i ved people accused of 80 persons as witches during their summer campaign
witchcraft, they must consider whether the prisoners (Henningsen 2004, doc. 12.72).
had already been subjected to tort u re by the secular When de Lancre came to the Pays de Labourd, witch
court; and that, by interrogating other members of the hysteria was already high. People watched over their
household, they must find out if the people in question children in churches at night to keep them from being
really had been away on the nights when they claimed taken to the Sabbat, and local authorities had alre a d y
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imprisoned many witches. The principal instigator of h a rdly distinguish them from re a l i t y. After the child
this local witch hunt was the lord of Urtubie, Tristan de witches recounted their nocturnal adventures, the witch
Gamboa d’Alzate, one of the two noblemen who com- panic got under way. But the dreams did not lead
posed the complaint to the king. We know that he d i rectly to accusations; only some time later did the
imprisoned some old women on his own authority and c h i l d ren choose to re veal who came to fetch them at
extracted an account of all the witches in the neighbor- night. In Aranaz, in northern Na va r re, the childre n
hood from one of them (Henningsen 2004, doc. 7.1). kept dreaming for several months, but the witch craze
This account formed the basis for the letter to the king, did not get started until a father had wormed the infor-
and the special commissioners worked closely with him mation out of his little son that it was the cow h e rd
and his ally, the magistrate Jean d’Amou, during their Iricia who took him to the witches’ Sabbat. The father
punitive expedition to Labourd. went straight to Iricia and, pointing a dagger at his
In December 1608 the witch panic spread to Urdax chest, asked him why he had bewitched his son. T h e
and Zugarramurdi, two Spanish villages on the north- following day, another 30 child witches confessed that
ern side of the Py renees. The Inquisition immediately the cow h e rd had taken them to the Sabbat too.
stepped in and had ten of the suspects imprisoned Howe ve r, after the local agent of the Inquisition had
( Henningsen 1980, 52–57). After seven months of sent the cowherd to Logroño as a prisoner, the children
brainwashing in the tribunal’s jail in Logroño, all of agreed among themselves that they were now fetched to
them confessed. Furnished with detailed information the Sabbat by a sixty-year-old woman. When she too
on the witches’ rituals and the names of their accom- was arrested, the children accused another woman
plices, the second inquisitor of the tribunal, Juan de (Henningsen 2004, 216–218).
Valle Alvarado, traveled to the northern border, and in Everywhere in the Basque witch craze there were the
September he made contact there through the local same three components: indoctrination, a dream epi-
clergy with the French witch commissioners and eve n demic, and induced confessions. The villagers resorted
had copies of some of their trials sent to him. Valle was to eve ry possible form of tort u re to force confessions
convinced that he was dealing with a secret sect of from people: Some were tied to trees and remained out-
witches, spread throughout this part of the Py re n e e s , doors in the cold winter nights; others had to sit with
which simply had to be exposed. In Urdax and their feet in water until it froze around them. The vio-
Zugarramurdi things went as Inquisitor Valle expected, lence among the mountain villages of Navarre claimed
but in the so-called “five towns” of the Bidazoa valley all several lives during the winter of 1610–1611.
was calm; not a single person reacted to the By Ma rch 1611 the Holy Of fice had the names of
Inquisition’s edicts calling for people to give themselves 1,946 people who had either made confessions of
up. Only after the priests, on the orders of the inquisi- witchcraft to local agents of the Inquisition or we re
tor, had fulminated against the witches from their pul- under suspicion. Ove rwhelmed by such “mass aposta-
pits, describing the abominable rituals of the sect in full sy,” the Inquisitor General chose to declare an amnesty
detail, did people ready to confess they we re witches for all members of the witches’ sect who gave them-
s h ow up. About the same time, the witch hysteria s e l ves up before a certain date. Sa l a z a r, whose turn it
spread from France along the coast to Fuenterrabía and was to go on a visitation, was sent off to re c e i ve these
San Sebastián, where soon scores of children re p o rt e d voluntary confessions, but was simultaneously ordered
that they were taken to Sabbats every night. by the Inquisition Council in Madrid to obtain pro o f
So far, the panic remained confined to the northern that the alleged witch sect actually existed. After an
border regions; in all other districts under the Logroño eight-month journey through the entire Sp a n i s h
tribunal, peace reigned until autumn 1610, when Basque Co u n t ry, Salazar returned to Logroño with a
preachers were sent into the mountains to convert any- journal of his visitation containing over 11,200 manu-
one influenced by this evil sect. Sh o rtly afterw a rds, in script pages, including the records of the 1,802 cases he
November, an auto de fe was held in Logroño with the had dealt with during his journey (Henningsen 1980,
first 31 witches; 30,000 people poured in to hear the 407, 437 n.). Of these, 1,384 concerned boys and girls
sentences and see the witches burned (He n n i n g s e n under the ages of twe l ve and fourteen, re s p e c t i ve l y
1980, 184, 198–200). The preaching crusade and the ( Henningsen 2004, 266). Both of his colleagues we re
auto de fecaused an explosive spread of the witch craze. now eager to begin punishing those who had failed to
In each village the same pattern can be observed. The turn themselves in. But to their extreme indignation,
panic would begin with an outbreak of dreams. Large Salazar concluded in his re p o rt to the In q u i s i t o r
numbers of people, mostly children and adolescents, General that he had found no proof of a single act of
reported that they were taken to the witches’ Sabbats at witchcraft. On the contrary, his travels had confir m e d
night while they we re asleep in bed. Night after night his suspicion that the witchcraft trials his colleagues had
they had the same dream of being fetched to the begun six months before Sa l a z a r’s appointment had
Sabbats; the dreams we re so vivid that people could been a huge mistake. After a tug-of-war in the tribunal
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lasting several years, the case was decided by the Henningsen, Gustav. 1980. The Witches’ Advocate: Basque
In q u i s i t i o n’s Su p reme Council, which fully upheld Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition.Reno: University of
Salazar’s contention. The sentences from the auto de fe Nevada Press.
———. 1993. “The Database of the Spanish Inquisition. The
were set aside, all current cases were suspended, and to
‘relaciones de causas’-project revisited.” Pp. 43–85 in Vorträge
avoid similar mistakes in the future, the instructions of
zur Justizforschung: Geschichte und Theorie.Edited by Heinz
August 29, 1614, we re sent to Logro ñ o. By now,
Mohnhaupt and Dieter Simon. Frankfurt am Main: Max-
though, the whole region had already fallen calm; as a
Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte.
local re p o rt said, “People are sleeping peacefully and
———. 2000. “El invento de la palabra aquelarre.” Pp. 353–359
there is no news about comings and goings to the aque- in Historia y Humanismo I.Vol. 1. Edited by J. M. Usunáriz
larres” (Henningsen 2004, 396). Garaoya. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra.
———. 2003. “La inquisición y las brujas.” Pp. 563–582 in
L’Inquisizione: Atti del Simposio Internazionale nel Vaticano
A Note on Etymology
1998.Edited by Agostino Borromeo.Vatican City: Biblioteca
Aquelarreis the Basque name for a witches’ Sabbat. The
Apostolica Vaticana.
word is traditionally explained as a compound of aker,
———, ed. 2004. The Salazar Documents: Alonso de Salazar Frías
“billy goat,” and larre, “meadow.” But this etymology,
and Others on the Basque Witch Persecution (1609–1614).
which can be traced back to the printed report of the Leiden and Boston: Brill.
auto de fe in Logroño in 1610, from which de Lancre Idoate, Florencio de. 1978. La brujería en Navarra y sus documen-
took and translated it, has been questioned in recent tos.Pamplona: Institución Príncipe de Viana.
times. The Basque anthropologist Mikel Azurmendi Lancre, Pierre de. 1982. Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges
has claimed that aker cannot lose its r, and therefore et demons.Edited by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin. Paris:
suggested that a q u e l a r re d e r i ves from a l k e l a r re , o r Montaigne.
“meadow with alkaflowers.” Alka(Dactylis hispanica) is Lespy,Vastin. 1874–1875. “Les sorcières dans le Béarn
1393–1672.” Bulletin de la Société des Sciences, Lettres et Arts de
a poisonous plant that can make cows ill when they eat
Pau,2d series 4: 28–86.
it. Probably there was some translation error during the
Llorente, Juan Antonio. 1817–1818. Histoire Critique de
interrogations, which went through a Basque inter-
l’Inquisition d’Espagne. 4 vols. Paris.
preter, so that what was originally the name of a place
Monter,William. 1990. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition
in Zugarramurdi where the witches were thought to
from the Basque Lands to Sicily.NewYork: Cambridge
assemble was misunderstood by the inquisitors as a University Press.
Basque name for a witches’ Sabbat. In sources before Moreno Garbayo, María Natividad. 1977. Catálogo de alegaciones
1609, witches’ Sabbats we re called a y u n t a m i e n t o s fiscales.Madrid: Archivo Histórico Nacional.
(assemblies), conjuntamientos (associations), and con- Orella Unzue, José Luis. 1983. Cartulario Real de Enrique IV a la
ventículos del demonio (conventicles of the Devil), or provincia de Guipúzcoa (1454–1474).San Sebastián: Sociedad
congregaciones del cabrón (assemblies of the goat). The de Estudios Vascos.
word aquelarre first appeared in a letter from the
Bavaria, Duchy of
Logroño tribunal to the Supreme Council in Madrid,
Because Ba varia was a leading power of the
dated May 22, 1609, when the inquisitors wrote that
Counter-Reformation, the traditional perception has
they were gathering information about the juntas y
been that the Bavarian princes also ranked among the
aquelarres (meeting and witches’ Sabbats) from the
most severe witch hunters. Leading demonologists like
witches of Zugarramurdi. The next year, the inquisitors
Ma rtín Del Rio dedicated their demonologies to
asserted that the word was unknown in the Basque lan-
Bavarian princes. These were not, however, the ruling
guage, but that it was a secret term used only by witch-
princes of Bavaria, but rather younger brothers, serving
es. The invented word quickly became widespread;
as prince-bishops in northern German territories like
despite some uncertainty about its spelling (alquelarre,
the archbishopric-electorate of Cologne, or the prince-
aquellarre, aquerrlarre),aquelarresoon won the day and
abbey of Stavelot. As leaders of the German Counter-
was later absorbed into Castilian as a Basque loan word
Reformation, the dukes of Bavaria between 1580 and
(Henningsen 2000).
1760 usually managed to secure a cluster of bishoprics
GUSTAV HENNINGSEN; for their younger brothers, including the ecclesiastical
TRANSLATED BY JAMES MANLEY territories of Cologne, Münster, Hi l d e s h e i m ,
Osnabrück, Paderborn, and Liège, as well as the abbeys
See also:CHILDREN;DEVIL’SMARK;INQUISITION,LANCRE,PIERRE
of Stavelot and Malmédy, and sometimes the dioceses
DE;OINTMENTS;SALAZARFRÍAS,ALONSODE;SPAIN;SPANISH;
of Freising and Regensburg—enough places to form a
VALENCIA,PEDRODE;PANICS;SABBAT;WITCHCRAZE;ZUGAR-
“Bavarian Bishops’ Empire.” Some of these territories,
RAMURDI,WITCHESOF.
especially Cologne and Stavelot, saw extensive witch
References and further reading:
Caro Baroja, Julio. 1964. The World of the Witches.London: hunts. In Bavaria, however, there were fierce debates
Weidenfeld and Nicolson. but no massive persecutions; only once did witchcraft
Bavaria, Duchy of 97 |
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prosecution threaten to get out of control, but the Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria (ruled 1598–1651). The
threat was stopped immediately. Bavarian Wittelsbachs were closely allied with the lead-
Among the territories of the Holy Roman Em p i re , ers of the French Catholic League: Duke Wilhelm mar-
Bavaria was a special case, because the Bavarians consid- ried Renata of Lorraine in 1568, and in 1595
ered themselves a nation rather than subjects of a ruler. Maximilian confirmed this dynastic link through his
“ Ba va r i a n s” we re first mentioned by the Lombard his- marriage to Elisabeth of Lorraine, daughter of Du k e
toriographer Jordanes around 550 C.E., and some kind Charles III, a would-be leader of the French Catholic
of ethnogenesis (defining themselves as a people with a League.
common history and language) must have taken place It hardly seems surprising that Bavaria joined in the
under the rule of the Os t rogoth King Theodoric the g reat wave of persecutions that spread eastwards fro m
Great (ruled 474–526), who tried to defend the north- Catholic League strongholds in Champagne and
ern boundaries of the Roman Empire (Noricum). This Lorraine in the late 1580s, because Jesuit theologians at
p rovince was soon taken over by the Franks, and Ingolstadt, including Peter Canisius, Gre g o ry of
“ Ba va r i a” emerged as a province of the Me rov i n g i a n Valencia, and Jacob Gretser, enthusiastically supported
Em p i re. Under the Agilolfinger dynasty, Ba va r i a the persecutions. Their attitude seemed suffic i e n t l y
became an almost independent duchy, first under the c o h e rent to create the perception of a uniform “Je s u i t
Franks, later one of the largest states within the Ho l y party,” with the dukes of Bavaria firmly under its influ-
Roman Empire. ence. Ne ve rtheless, the first wave of persecutions
By 1600 Ba varia was divided into four prov i n c e s b e t ween 1589 and 1591 remained confined to just a
(Munich, Burghausen, Landshut, Straubing) and orga- handful of Bavaria’s hundred district courts, and it was
nized in roughly 100 district courts. The duchy was ele- stopped after only a few months, when the central gov-
vated to a prince-electorate in 1623, when Du k e ernment abruptly interfered with the main persecution
Maximilian I managed to annex the Upper Palatinate. in the district court of Schongau, which was part l y
When it re c ove red from its losses during the T h i rt y autonomous and governed by Prince Fe rd i n a n d
Years’War, Bavaria counted close to one million inhab- (1550–1608), a younger brother of the ruling duke
itants. It became a kingdom in 1806, after having Wilhelm V. The Schongau witch hunt with its 63 vic-
a n n e xed Franconia and eastern Swabia, formerly the tims remained the largest ever in Ba varia; but there
most fragmented regions of the Holy Roman Em p i re . were also several smaller trials in other district courts in
The Wittelsbach dynasty, which ruled Ba varia fro m 1590, including both the capital at Munich and the
1180, fell in 1918, when a re volution terminated the u n i versity town of Ingolstadt, where 22 women we re
constitutional monarchy and the parliament decided to e xecuted as witches (Behringer 1987, 436 ff.). T h e
join the Republic of Ge r m a n y. Ba varia occupies the Jesuits suggested Peter Binsfeld and the Ma l l e u s
southeastern part of present-day Ge r m a n y, ro u g h l y Ma l e fic a ru m (The Hammer of Witches, 1486) as
within its boundaries of 1806. guides to interpret popular magic, and the re m a i n i n g
In contrast to the conduct of the Wittelsbachs in trial records demonstrate that this combination was an
their ecclesiastical principalities, developments in u n f o rtunate one, because house searches indeed
Bavaria deserve particular attention, because the duchy b rought plenty of unguents and magical devices to
had gained a position of supremacy among the Catholic light. Ex t e n s i ve use of tort u re fueled the trials in dis-
estates of the Holy Roman Em p i re. The Counter- tricts like Schongau and Ingolstadt. There was, howev-
Reformation ideology served Duke Albrecht V (ru l e d e r, some resistance from re l a t i ves, clergy, and magis-
1550–1579) in his struggle against a Protestant faction trates, and a leading Bavarian lawyer, Dr. Kaspar Lagus,
in the 1560s. After defeating the Lutheran nobility and articulated his disgust. Altogether about 100 people—
driving out his Protestant subjects, he introduced the all of them women—fell victim to the witch hunts in
regulations of the Council of Trent, imposed re l i g i o u s Bavaria around 1590.
u n i f o r m i t y, and gave the country’s university to the An analysis of Ba varian domestic policy re veals a
Jesuits. Ingolstadt became a breeding ground for power struggle lasting more than a generation, between
C o u n t e r - Reformation politicians, and many who later two antagonistic factions with stable bases, disparaged
became witch hunters (including almost all of by each other as p o l i t i c i ( “politicians,” with
Ge r m a n y’s notorious “w i t c h - b i s h o p s”) we re educated Ma c h i a vellian ove rtones) and zelanti ( zealots). T h e
there. Although Catholic renewal was begun at least in p o l i t i c i could be seen more appropriately as moderate
p a rt for political reasons, it seems that Albrecht V, as politicians who tried to arrive at balanced judgements
well as his successor Wilhelm V (ruled 1579–1597), in the public interest, while the noblest aim of their
u n d e rwent genuine conversion experiences. With the rivals, the political hawks, was to promote the ideals of
“Cologne War” of the 1580s, Bavaria’s princes assumed the Counter-Reformation. Most of the hard-liners of
leadership of the Catholic party in the Holy Ro m a n this faction, the zealous ideologues, we re pupils of the
Em p i re, institutionalized in the Catholic League by first generation of Jesuits in Ge r m a n y, as we re the
98 Bavaria, Duchy of |
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w i t c h-bishops of Franconia. In the Ba varian gove r n- the logarithmic tables. He also kept in close contact
ment they we re re p resented by the chancellor of the with radically skeptical Protestant jurists like Jo h a n n
c o u rt council, Dr. Johann Simon Wa g n e reckh (ca. Georg Goedelmann, who not only denied that witch-
1570–1617), who, like his duke, had studied in craft was an “exceptional crime”(crimen exceptum),but
Ingolstadt during the 1590 witch hunt, and whose ide- also denied the reality of witches’ flights and Sa b b a t s .
ological commitment compensated for his modest Go e d e l m a n n’s publication on the legal pro c e d u re in
standing within Ba varian society. Similar motiva t i o n s witchcraft trials was translated into the vernacular dur-
d rove immigrants like Wa g n e re c k h’s ally Dr. Cosmas ing the witch hunt of 1590, which Herwarth had man-
Vagh, a convert from northern Germany, and the secre- aged to curb in Bavaria.
taries of the privy council, Christian Gewold and These two parties clashed in 1600, when the zealots,
Aegidius Albertinus (1560–1620). All of them kept in thanks to the new government of Maximilian I, suc-
close contact with the Jesuit part y, with Gre g o ry of ceeded in launching an exe m p l a ry witchcraft trial
Valencia and Gre t s e r, with the demonologist Del Rio, against a family of vagrants. In an incredibly cruel trial,
with the princely confessors and the Rhenish Je s u i t Wa g n e reckh and Vagh, backed by the Jesuit Gre t s e r,
Adam Contzen, as well as with the radical Jesuit court extracted confessions, employing unlimited tort u re ,
preacher Jeremias Drexel (1581–1638). Many “zealots” with Del Rio’s D i s q u i s i t i o n e s Magicae libri sex ( Si x
had experienced witch hunts during their education: Books on Investigations into Magic, 1599/1600) liter-
C o n t zen, for instance, studied at the Jesuit College of ally on the desk. Un s u r p r i s i n g l y, these confessions
Trier during Binsfeld’s era; subsequently, at Munich, he resembled those of a monk from St a velot three ye a r s
maintained close contact with suffragan Fr i e d r i c h earlier, used by Del Rio to describe the Sabbat. In July
Förner in Bamberg. Furthermore Gretser, Contzen, and and December 1600, six people we re burned alive at
Dre xel dedicated their publications to pro m i n e n t Munich in executions of unprecedented cruelty, accom-
witch-bishops, such as Johann Christoph vo n panied by illustrated leaflets and printed songs
Westerstetten in Eichstätt. ( Behringer 1987, 442). Del Rio included some
The social profile of the moderate politicians is quite accounts of these trial records in subsequent editions of
d i f f e rent. Led by the chancellor of the privy council, his demonology.
Dr. Johann Georg He rw a rth von Ho h e n b u r g This episode was intended to signal the start of a
(1553–1626), later chancellor of the Ba varian parlia- general Ba varian witch hunt, similar to contemporary
ment, a group of councillors already articulated their events in Mainz and Fulda. However, “cold and politi-
opposition during the witch hunt of 1590. He rw a rt h cal Christians,” (Behringer 1997, 230–320), as
was succeeded as privy chancellor by his ally Dr. Wa g n e reckh labeled the privy councillors He rw a rt h
Joachim Donnersberger (1565–1650). Un l i k e and Do n n e r s b e r g e r, managed to curb the persecution
Wa g n e reckh, both came from urban patriciates, and to launch a political debate instead. Before further
Herwarth from Augsburg and Donnersberger from the t o rt u re was conceded, the university had to consider
Bavarian capital, Munich. Both had received academic the case, as the imperial law code known as the
training at foreign universities, acquiring doctorates in Carolina Code (Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, 1532)
France or It a l y, and both had served as lawyers at the suggested. Surprisingly, the Ingolstadt law faculty, then
Reichskammergericht (imperial chamber court). T h e dominated by Dr. Joachim Denich and Dr. Kaspar
He rw a rths we re bankers, with Protestant branches in Hell, denied the legality of tort u re and sharply criti-
Augsburg, France, and England, while their Catholic c i zed the trial. Completely enraged, Ba va r i a’s ze a l o t s
branch entered princely service in Ba varia, eve n t u a l l y suggested that the legal opinion had been commis-
joining the landed nobility and becoming parliamen- sioned by the privy council, requested more Je s u i t
t a ry leaders. He rw a rth re c ruited officials from the c o n t rol at the university (namely by Gretser), accused
Bavarian high nobility, as well as members of the impe- Dr. Hell of treason, and demanded further legal opin-
rial aristocracy, including members of the Hohenzollern ions. As a result, Duke Maximilian ord e red re p o rt s
and Wolkenstein dynasties. He personified an open from the universities of Freiburg, Bologna, and Padua,
Catholicism, maintaining international contacts eve n and, at the suggestion of the zealots, from two demo-
beyond confessional boundaries. nologists, Nicolas Rémy and Del Rio, as well as fro m
He rw a rth supported the Protestant astro n o m e r two governments experienced in persecutions, Trier and
Johannes Ke p l e r, for whom he found jobs at Graz in Mainz. Pre d i c t a b l y, Del Rio and Rémy supported the
Inner Austria (In n e r ö s t e reich, the duchies of St y r i a , unrestricted witch hunt and accepted simple suspicion
Carinthia, and Carniola, south of Austria proper) and or denunciation as sufficient evidence for imprison-
subsequently at the imperial court of Rudolf II in ment and torture. However, the University of Bologna
Prague. In their long-standing correspondence, Ke p l e r s u p p o rted the Ingolstadt jurists, and even the gove r n-
and He rw a rth discussed scientific problems, and the ments of Mainz and Trier recommended caution, hav-
Bavarian chancellor participated in the development of ing become disillusioned with witch hunting by 1604.
Bavaria, Duchy of 99 |
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Del Rio’s opinion was taken very seriously, even leading Christoph Abegg, had re l a t i ves burned in Ei c h s t ä t t .
to a correspondence between Del Rio and the duke’s When Maria Richel, the wife of Dr. Ba rt h o l o m ä u s
Jesuit confessor Johannes Buslidius, who demanded Richel (1580–1649), chancellor of Eichstätt, was
clarification on some points. Given the high reputation burned in 1620, Ba va r i a’s privy councillors interve n e d
of Jesuits in Bavaria, Del Rio could only be trumped by to evacuate the rest of the family from the dangero u s
another Jesuit. Now He rw a rth played his final card : prince-bishopric, immediately appointing Richel vice-
Adam Tanner, the famous Jesuit critic of witch hunts. chancellor in Munich. Munich, the hothouse of
It is unnecessary to delve further into the details of C o u n t e r - Reformation Ge r m a n y, became a safe have n
this Ba varian power struggle, which lasted for more than for endangered Catholic politicians and their families.
a generation, and invo l ved almost the entire political In 1628 the privy councillors offered a position to
leadership and a good part of the spiritual elite. Ba va r i a’s Chancellor Dr. Georg Haan of Bamberg, whose wife
zealots continued to support their allies in other had just been burned. Haan failed to accept after the
Catholic territories, but whenever they tried to launch a Bamberg government had assured the Ba varian prince-
witch hunt in Ba varia, they failed. During the agrarian elector (from 1623) Maximilian that Haan was in no
crisis of 1608–1609, they tried to exploit a panic in the imminent danger. This proved to be a terrible mistake;
small exc l a ve of Wemding, less tightly controlled by the the bishop ord e red his execution a few weeks later.
g overnment in Munich. Howe ve r, after a number of In the late 1620s, when the witch hunts in the
e xecutions, the government became suspicious, inter- Franconian prince-bishoprics reached their climax,
vened, and began an inquiry into the conduct of the tri- Bavaria’s zealot faction succeeded in launching another
al, which soon led to the imprisonment and trial of the local witch hunt in the exc l a ve of Wemding, in the
judge, Gottfried Sa t t l e r. The government decided to set vicinity of Eichstätt, costing the lives of another 40
an example by punishing his misconduct with the death women (Behringer 1987, 451 ff.). At this point, Tanner
p e n a l t y. The zealots in Munich fie rcely opposed the sen- included his opinion on witchcraft, designed
tence, trying to rally support among the ruling family twenty-four years earlier, in his textbook of moral the-
and among the Jesuits, but the Ingolstadt law faculty ology, thus serving as an anchor for future Catholic the-
twice confirmed the gove r n m e n t’s judgment. Sattler was ologians. Tanner also made the internal Munich discus-
decapitated in 1613, the first Catholic witch hunter to sions of twenty-four years ago public. When Friedrich
meet such an end, providing an important symbolic vic- Spee published his Cautio Cr i m i n a l i s (A Warning on
t o ry for the opponents of witch hunting. In his Criminal Justice) in 1631, Tanner was the only impor-
Theologia scholastica (Scholastic T h e o l o g y, 1627, vol. 3, tant Catholic authority he could use who re l e n t l e s s l y
col. 1005), Tanner mentioned this capital punishment, denied the legality of witchcraft trials, without getting
together with the trial and execution of the Fulda witch enmeshed in debates on the existence of witches.
judge Balthasar Nuss of 1618, another success of the After the Thirty Years’War there were few executions
Ingolstadt law professors. Both death penalties came to for witchcraft in Bavaria. The population had collapsed
be extremely important because they proved that seve re because of several severe mortality crises, but there was
mistakes had occurred in Catholic witchcraft trials and also some disillusionment about witchcraft trials, at
that victims might be innocent. Borrowing their evi- least at the level of the central government in Munich
dence from Tanner and Friedrich Spee, later opponents under Duke Fe rdinand Maria, as a legacy of these
of witch hunting regularly re f e r red to these cases. long-standing debates and of the cruelties in the prince-
Clearly Ingolstadt had become a bridgehead for the bishoprics. Later in the seventeenth century, howe ve r,
Ba varian moderates, whether lawyers or Jesuits. A the central government’s grip on the provincial govern-
younger Jesuit student of Ta n n e r, Professor Kaspar ments loosened, and the number of trials incre a s e d
Hell (1588–1634), was bold enough to challenge pub- again. Two minor panics affected the district court of
licly the terrible witch hunts of Bishop Jo h a n n Haidau in Lower Ba varia in 1689–1692 and
Christoph von Westerstetten in Eichstätt, attacking him 1701–1702, when Capuchins fueled the local hysteria
so sharply that the Jesuit general, Mutius Vi t e l l e s c h i with exo rcisms of possessed children, eventually pro-
(1563–1645), intervened repeatedly in favor of this ded- voking the extinction of whole families. In the early
icated Counter-Reformation prince-bishop and sup- eighteenth century, a number of small panic were seen,
p o rter of the Jesuit ord e r. Ba varians knew only too we l l although they we re usually tolerated by the prov i n c i a l
h ow to classify such Franconian events. But they did not g overnments. No less than 15 people, mostly yo u n g
need Tanner to enlighten them. Jesuits like Hell and male beggars, were executed in the 1720s.
Kaspar Denich we re sons of Ingolstadt lawyers who had A final chain of trials conducted between 1749 and
cut short the attempted general persecution in 1601, 1756 in the neighboring prince-bishopric of Sa l z b u r g
and their families we re closely linked to such privy affected the Ba varian provincial capitals of Bu r g h a u s e n ,
councillors as Dr. Kaspar Lagus. Some Ba varian “p o l i t i- Straubing, and Landshut. In almost all of these cases,
cians,” for instance court council chancellor Dr. Jo h a n n accusations by children triggered the trials. The last
100 Bavaria, Duchy of |
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Ba varian witch was an orphaned fourt e e n - year-old girl, court council records (since the early seventeenth cen-
Ve ronica Zerritschin (1742–1756). She confessed vo l- t u ry), trial re c o rds, official re p o rts, special files for
untarily that the reason for her possession was her theft witchcraft trials, legal opinions, official correspondence,
of some hosts, which she had used for sorc e ry. The court diaries, travel re p o rts, and publications of all kinds.
found the hosts, which had visibly been used for sorc e ry, Witchcraft generated debate, but did not really bother
so there was undeniably a corpus delicti and suffic i e n t the majority of the ruling elite. An extensive piece of
c i rcumstantial evidence to prove the suspicion. The girl legislation on witchcraft, Landgebott wider die
p rovided extensive narratives of seduction by the De v i l , Aberglauben, Za u b e re y, He xe re y, etc.(Law Against Su p e r-
the witches’ flight and Sabbat, and harmful magic; she stition, Magic, So rc e ry, etc.), was enacted in 1612; re i s-
had also learned to act as a sorc e rer and could recite a sued in 1665 and 1746, it remained in place until 1813,
rhyming weather spell of twenty verses. The harm she but was not designed to lead to witch hunts.
claimed to have caused had indeed occurred, although
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
her victims had not been aware of her witchcraft. T h e
judge found the case difficult, because this culprit was See also:BAMBERG,PRINCE-BISHOPRICOF;BAVARIANWAROFTHE
still quite young and cooperated willingly. But if the WITCHES;CAROLINACODE;CHILDREN;COLOGNE;CONTZEN,
c o u rt would not convict a confessing witch, it would
ADAM,SJ;DELRIO,MARTÍN;ECCLESIASTICALTERRITORIES
n e ver again convict anyone for witchcraft. T h e re f o re ,
(HOLYROMANEMPIRE); EICHSTÄTT,PRINCE-BISHOPRICOF;
GERMANY,SOUTHEASTERN;GOEDELMANN,JOHANNGEORG;
the girl had to be executed, as a matter of principle,as the
GREGORYOFVALENCIA;GRETSER,JACOB;HOLYROMAN
judge indicated. Because Ba varia had seen so many late
EMPIRE;INGOLSTADT,UNIVERSITYOF;JESUITS(SOCIETYOF
trials, there was good reason to take decisive steps
JESUS); KEPLER,JOHANNES;KRAMER,HEINRICH;LAWSON
against these re a c t i o n a ry forces. A group of enlightened WITCHCRAFT(EARLYMODERN); MAXIMILIANI,DUKEOF
l a w yers and theologians convinced the prince-elector BAVARIA;NUSS,BALTHASAR;PAPPENHEIMERFAMILY;SATTLER,
Max III Joseph (ruled 1745–1777) that a public debate GOTTFRIED;SPEE,FRIEDRICH;TANNER,ADAM;WESTERSTETTEN,
was the appropriate means for intimidating the re l i g i o u s JOHANNCHRISTOPHVON;WILHELMV,DUKEOFBAVARIA;
o rders and their allies. This debate was launched in 1766 WITCH-BISHOPS.
and lasted four years; contemporaries labeled it the References and further reading:
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1987. Hexenverfolgung in Bayern:
Ba varian War of the Wi t c h e s .
Volksmagie, Glaubenseifer und Staatsräson in der Frühen Neuzeit.
In re t rospect, Ba varia serves as a striking illustration
Munich: R. Oldenbourg.
of the development of Eu ropean attitudes tow a rd witch-
———. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria. Popular Magic,
craft. During the Carolingian period, it re c e i ved a com-
Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe.
p re h e n s i ve common law, the Lex Ba i u va r i o rum (Laws of
Translated by J. C. Grayson and David Lederer. Cambridge:
the Ba varians), containing sanctions against specific Cambridge University Press.
forms of harmful magic to horses and grain. T h e re we re , Bireley, Robert. 1975. Maximilian von Bayern, Adam Contzen S. J.
h owe ve r, few examples of prosecution for death spells und die Gegenreformation in Deutschland, 1624–1635.
and love magic throughout the Middle Ages, including Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
the later centuries when sources become more abun- Gehm, Britta. 2000. Die Hexenverfolgung im Hochstift Bamberg
dant. Clearly death penalties we re always possible, but und dasEingreifen des Reichshofrates zu ihrer Beendigung.
Hildesheim: Olms.
we re rarely enacted then. When Heinrich Kramer
Kunze, Michael. 1987. High Road to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft.
launched his witch hunt in In n s b ruck in 1485, Ba va r i a n
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
theologians like the abbot of Tegernsee articulated their
Tanner, Adam. 1627. Theologia scholastica.Ingolstadt.
disgust and tried to interf e re. In the early modern peri-
od, witchcraft trials become more frequent, but rare l y
led to large-scale persecutions. Bavarian War of the Witches
An extrapolation of recent re s e a rch projected that The final debates about witchcraft in Catholic Europe
a p p roximately 1,500 trials for witchcraft or sorc e ry were launched after a scandalous public speech given by
could be expected to have taken place in Ba varia, but the Jesuit Georg Gaar on the occasion of a witch burn-
h i t h e rto fewer than 200 death sentences have been ing in Würzburg. In 1749 the seventy-one-year-old
detected in the sources, and it seems unlikely that any subprioress of the abbey of Unterzell, Maria Renata
large trials have escaped scholarly attention. Most of Singerin, was decapitated and her body burned at the
those executed died during the few large-scale persecu- stake. In the background were, as usual in cases of pos-
tions and panic trials. But as far as serial analysis is con- session, the group dynamics of the female convent and
cerned, much remains to do: Historians possess an a mentally disturbed person who voluntarily accused
ocean of sources, which they have so far only explored herself. The authorities felt considerable unease about
in part. There are expense records from virtually every her case, as many acknowledged her disability, but her
district court (from the fifteenth century onwards), as conviction was finally declared to be a matter of princi-
well as from some central Ba varian prisons; there are ple, and the hard-liners gained their victory.
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However, the reaction was quite unexpected: Italian to the conserva t i ve clergy by inviting the T h e a t i n e
intellectuals took this occasion to start a major debate father Don Fe rdinand St e rz i n g e r, a member of the
about witchcraft. Abbot Girolamo Tartarotti, a member Bavarian Academy of Science, to discuss witchcraft on
of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Rovereto (then the occasion of the prince’s birthday, October 13, 1766.
under Austrian rule), ridiculed the barbarian Ge r m a n His “Academic Lecture About the Prejudice that
Jesuit Gaar in his famous De l C o n g resso notturno delle Witchcraft Can Produce Ef f e c t s” provoked a debate
l a m m i e ( On Nocturnal Gatherings of the Wi t c h e s , labeled by contemporaries as the Ba varian War of the
1749), in which he interpreted witchcraft as an illusion. Witches, which lasted about five years. It became one of
More radical intellectuals were not satisfied, feeling that the largest debates of the Enlightenment in central
Ta rt a rotti had still made too many concessions to the Eu rope, with contributors coming from all ove r
Christian interpretation of magic. Scipio Maffei fro m Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland, and northern
Ve rona published three thick volumes on the subject, It a l y. St e rz i n g e r’s intent was clear from the onset,
L’ a rte magica distru t t a (The Magical Art Annihilated, because he labeled the belief in witchcraft a “common
1754), denying the existence of magic and therefore of p rejudice,” a matter of “the common rabble” rather
witchcraft, and urging a complete halt to all trials. than of the educated (Behringer 1997, 359–380).
Un e x p e c t e d l y, a Franciscan provincial, Be n e d e t t o While openly acknowledging his debt to Ta rt a ro t t i ,
Bonelli (1704–1783), led the conservative Italian clergy Maffei, and “Dell Os a” (Jo rdan Si m o n’s pseudonym),
in trying to refute Maffei’s arguments. St e rzinger was not yet ready to mention Pro t e s t a n t
Soon afterw a rd the debate returned to Ge r m a n y, authors like Christian Thomasius, Balthasar Bekker, or
when the historian Jordan Simon, a former Augustinian John Webster, although obviously sharing their ridicule
hermit, defended Maffei’s arguments in a massive book, of the concept that spirits could assume corporeal form.
Das grosse Welt-betrügende Ni c h t s oder die heutige When Sterzinger mocked the ideas of Martín Del Rio,
Hexerey-und Zauberkunst (The Great World-Deceiving his irony was directed against the Jesuits who still dom-
Nothing, or To d a y’s Witchcraft and Art of So rc e ry, inated the Ba varian university and secondary schools;
1761). At this point the Catholic realms of the this Jesuit preponderance had in fact pro m p t e d
Habsburg and Wittelsbach dynasties we re suffering prince-elector Max III Joseph to create an independent
f rom a struggle between court and country. As in Academy of Sciences just seven years earlier, in 1759.
Protestant Europe, the rulers generally dismissed witch- And it was indeed the members of this academy, for
craft as unimportant or ridiculous; but the internal bal- instance Peter von Os t e rwald, who had pre s u m a b l y
ance of power was complicated because the Jesuits were commissioned St e rz i n g e r’s speech. At the occasion of
in control of higher education, the bishops contro l l e d the prince-elector’s birthday, the conservatives were cer-
the book market, and the religious orders were held in tainly present as well, and St e rzinger was suffic i e n t l y
high esteem by the rural population, over whom they p rudent not to question the authority of the Bible, or
exercised considerable influence. The greatest problems the Bavarian penal code.
o c c u r red in re l a t i vely autonomous provinces, mostly Nevertheless, the conservatives understood very well
a d m i n i s t e red by the regional higher nobility, who that this was a political move, and that St e rz i n g e r’s
(often in alliance with the religious orders and the pop- speech had launched an attack on traditional
ulace) tried to maintain the witch paradigm. This stale- Catholicism by the Catholic En l i g h t e n m e n t .
mate exacerbated the developmental gap betwe e n Contemporaries re p o rted on the unusually exc i t e d
Catholic Eu rope and the more developed Pro t e s t a n t reaction throughout the region: “There was no palace,
societies. From the second third of the eighteenth cen- hut, nor cell, no matter how sleepy, which did not raise
tury, the Austrian and Bavarian privy councils therefore its voice with enthusiasm, as if it was now up to them to
began to develop strategies to force their reform pro- decide the issue” (Behringer 1997, 362). Di s c u s s i o n s
grams into their domestic peripheries. In Ba varia, the we re conducted in cafes and beer-halls. Charismatic
central government had tried to discourage furt h e r p reachers prodded peasants in the countryside. In
witchcraft trials by decree in 1727, but another chain of Munich, sermons we re delive red against the fre e-
trials began in 1749 in the provinces and lingered until thinkers, for instance by the Jesuits at the major Marian
1756. The Austrian Em p ress Maria T h e resa (ru l e d pilgrimage site Altötting, and by the episcopal hierar-
1740–1780) intervened directly to curb witchcraft tri- chy at Salzburg; the administrator of the Ba va r i a n
als in present-day Poland and Slovakia in 1756, and in province of Straubing, a high-ranking nobleman, Franz
p resent-day Croatia in 1758, but a new wave of trials Xaver von Lerchenfeld, also commissioned a refutation.
occurred in Hungary in the 1760s. Do zens of theologians from the capital (Au g u s t i n i a n
As in England, the fight against witchcraft trials hermits and Paulinian monks in Munich), Ba va r i a n
became a lever to break the power of conservatism. In monasteries (the Benedictines in Scheyern and
Bavaria, the enlightened Prince-Elector Max III Joseph Oberaltaich), and those from various ecclesiastical terri-
(ruled 1745–1777) and his advisers engineered a blow tories (Benedictines in Salzburg, Premonstratensians in
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W ü rzburg) began writing defenses. These defenses debate, Peter von Os t e rwald, gave the next speech,
included some cumbersome dogmatic books with more using the occasion of the prince-elector’s birthday to
than 250 pages, which could have been designed in summarize the debate and to deliver the decisive blow.
exactly the same way 300 years earlier, like that of the Os t e rwald blamed the “useless form of scholarship”
Benedictine Beda Schallhammer from Oberaltaich. conducted over the past centuries and pleaded for a
Others came up with re m a rkably ridiculous argu- new science governed by reason alone. Unsurprisingly,
ments. The Benedictine Angelus März, from the abbey some enlightened participants in the debate later
of Scheyern, argued that his monastery was selling became directors of the Ba varian education system,
about 40,000 S c h e y re rk re u z l e i n (little cro s s - s h a p e d replacing the Jesuits after their order was dissolved in
amulets made of silver) all over Ba varia, Sw a b i a , the 1770s.
Bohemia, Austria, Moravia, Hu n g a ry, Sa xo n y, and Howe ve r, if Os t e rwald intended to terminate the
Poland, which were meant to drive off the witches, and debate, he failed. In November 1766, the imperial gov-
t h e re f o re would suffer considerable economic loss if ernment in Vienna issued a decree in order to stifle fur-
this trade was stopped art i fic i a l l y. Oswald Loschert , ther witchcraft trials in Hu n g a ry, and this event was
from the Premonstratensian monastery of Oberzell near widely debated within Ba varia. And the subject of
W ü rzburg, who had participated in the trial against witchcraft remained useful in political struggles. Mo re
Renata Singer in 1749, likewise employed practical and more satires were written; the academics ridiculed
arguments. Enlightened luminaries may indeed have their opponents by themselves publishing additional
shared the fear of the theological conservatism that the stories of ghosts and witches, stories written, for
Augustinian re a c t i o n a ry Agnellus Me rz displayed in instance, by Heinrich Braun, a former Benedictine of
print in December 1766, but they we re delighted to Tegernsee, or Beda Ma y r, a former Benedictine of
discover the silly arguments of some of their opponents. Donauwörth and future follower of Immanuel Kant. In
In January 1767, the first mocking satire appeared in 1768 legal reforms proposed by Osterwald were initiat-
print: Andreas Ulrich Mayer, the chaplain of an Upper ed: The ecclesiastical council was now controlled by
Palatinate nobleman, published it under the telling secular lawyers, monasteries were taxed, and censorship
pseudonym of “Bl o c k s b e r g e r,” indicative because it was removed from ecclesiastical hands and given to sec-
used the name of the mountain where witches were tra- ular censors, who immediately made it a we a p o n
ditionally supposed to gather. If Mayer claimed that he against reactionary theologians. All these reforms were
“laughed himself to death over [these] hare - b r a i n e d intended to erode the position of the clergy and to pro-
fantasies,” he still revealed his fears by writing that luck- mote secularism.
ily his tract would not “find its way past the porter in The Bavarian War of the Witches marked the victory
the contemporary world of the great free-thinkers: oth- of the Bavarian Enlightenment over the representatives
e rwise one could still hope that witch-burnings, now of a surviving social system at a moment when such a
forbidden—unfortunately—in all places, would greatly victory was probable or even assured, given the protec-
add to the confidence of the faithful and might begin tion of the prince-elector. Nevertheless, the debate was
a g a i n” (Behringer 1997, 370). From Ja n u a ry to Ap r i l m o re than just a symbolic struggle, because the last
1767, another twelve polemic tracts fueled the Bavarian stakes in central Eu rope we re still ve ry recent. It was
War of the Witches, including some literal satire s . widely regarded by contemporaries as a milestone in the
Meanwhile, the members of the academy started to use h i s t o ry of the Enlightenment, because the Catholic
the recently founded magazine C h u r b a y r i s c h e s south had caught up with Protestant Eu rope. Ma j o r
In t e l l i g e n z b l a t t ( C h u r - Ba varian Intelligence Sheet) to authors of the period, for example the poet Fr i e d r i c h
review every new contribution in print and ridicule the Klopstock in Hamburg or Friedrich Nicolai in Be r l i n ,
efforts of the country bumpkins, whom they labeled as displayed their interest, and many enlightened journals
“learned fools,” “pedants,” “f oxy scholars,” “learned commented on the progress in the Catholic south. The
ignoramuses,” or “bewitched brains.” One of the jour- imperial councillor von Senckenberg wrote approvingly
n a l’s editors, Peter Paul Fi n a u e r, eventually refused to from Vienna of his pleasure at the destruction of super-
compose any more satires against the conserva t i ve s , stition in the empire, playing on the book title of Scipio
because “they have suffered enough by having their Maffei. At the same time, however, the enlightened sci-
works printed.” In 1767 the Viennese imperial council- entists in Ba varian monasteries, for instance the
lor Konstantin von Kautz contributed a re m a rk a b l e Augustinian canons at Polling, felt increasingly uneasy
Latin dissert a t i o n , De cultibus magicis ( On Ma g i c a l because they were caught in the middle between secular
Cults), which contextualized that Bavarian debate with reformers and dull monks.
earlier debates in both Catholic and Protestant Europe The contributors to the Bavarian War of the Witches
( It a l y, northern Ge r m a n y, the Netherlands, and overlapped with those who had been part of the earlier
England). On the annive r s a ry of St e rz i n g e r’s speech, Catholic debate, some authors still having participated
the academic who had presumably engineered the a c t i vely in witchcraft trials. Its contributors also
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overlapped with those who took part in later debates of poor Creatures be put to death as Witches, if it were
about the exo rcist Johann Joseph Ga s s n e r, who linked not clearly manifest that they were such. We have too
all diseases to witchcraft, and Franz Anton Me s m e r many examples lately among us, to leave any doubt of
(1734–1815), considered a luminary in Germany but a the truth of this” (Baxter 1650, 261–262).
charlatan in France. To their annoyance and embarrass- Howe ve r, after the mid-seventeenth century, both
ment, the defenders of witchcraft had to notice that En g l a n d’s judiciary and its social elites we re re q u i r i n g
they we re now treated as the re a r g u a rd of a defeated an ever-growing body of empirical proof before acting
ideology, in the same class as witches, jugglers, tellers of on allegations of witchcraft in their communities. As a
fairy tales, and madmen. But even during the reign of result, Baxter was forced to move beyond simple cita-
the enlightened Em p e ror Joseph II (ru l e d tions of classical and Biblical sources to compile
1765/1780–1790), it took courage to defend the end of detailed eyewitness accounts of the devastation wrought
the witchcraft trials. The mendicant orders re m a i n e d upon innocent people by m a l e fic i u m (harmful magic)
powerful even after the dissolution of the Jesuits, as can in order to justify both prosecution of and belief in
be seen from Johann Pezzl’s (1756–1838) satirical nov- witchcraft. Thus, his works are crammed with
el Faustin, or the Philosophical Century. Many contem- first-hand accounts of apparitions, juvenile possessions
poraries interpreted the end of the witchcraft trials— (in which nails and pieces of flint we re vomited up),
this became quite clear at the end of the debate—as the and motifs drawn from rural folklore, like the “Corpse
victory of light over darkness, as one of the biggest suc- C a n d l e s” in South Wales, which we re thought to
cesses of the era of Enlightenment and maybe in the presage an individual’s death (Baxter 1834, 23–24, 31,
history of humankind. 42, 45). Moreover, he also recorded evidence of the cor-
relation between refusals of charity to the poor and
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
immediate retribution through witchcraft. In this man-
See also: AUSTRIA;BAVARIA,DUCHYOF;DECLINEOFTHEWITCH ner, a gentleman who refused to buy pins at the road-
HUNTS;DELRIO,MARTÍN;ECCLESIASTICALTERRITORIES(HOLY side was swiftly visited by a series of debilitating pin-
ROMANEMPIRE); ENLIGHTENMENT;GASSNER, JOHANNJOSEPH;
pricks all over his body. Baxter also attempted to
HUNGARY;INGOLSTADT,UNIVERSITYOF;MAFFEI,SCIPIO;MARIA
explain the location of witchcraft within the home and
THERESA,HOLYROMANEMPRESS;SIMON,JORDAN;SKEPTICISM;
the fact that the damage done to property by magic was
STERZINGER,FERDINAND;TARTAROTTI,GIROLAMO;THOMASIUS,
often quite petty by arguing that the corrupted spirits
CHRISTIAN;WÜRZBURG, PRINCE-BISHOPRICOF.
who worked on the vulnerable we re themselves but
References and further reading:
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1995. “Der ‘Bayerische Hexenkrieg.’ Die “base spirits” and therefore more likely to be concerned
Debatte am Ende der Hexenprozesse.” Pp. 287–313 in Das with petty and greedy matters, centering around mon-
Ende der Hexenverfolgung.Edited by Sönke Lorenz and Dieter ey, land, or revenge (Baxter 1834, 28, 90). Individuals,
Bauer. Stuttgart: Steiner. c o n g regations, and ministers all sought out Ba x t e r’s
———. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria. Popular Magic, advice and contributed valuable case studies to his
Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe. archives because he was an acknowledged expert. Baxter
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
b e l i e ved that the detection of malignant spirits and
Riezler, Sigmund. 1983. Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Baiern. Im
operations of the Devil was a collaborative, rather than
Lichte der allgemeinen Entwickelung dargestellt.St u t t g a rt: Ma g n u s .
a solitary pursuit. His ideal was for a “godly” communi-
ty of professionalized, specialist investigators to be per-
Baxter, Richard (1615–1691) mitted the authority to examine every case individually.
This prominent Presbyterian divine, prolific author, This, he claimed, would rule out false or malicious
and widely influential preacher propagated the learned claims and enable magistrates to detect and dispel evil
belief in witchcraft far longer and far more effectively spirits far more efficiently.
than most of his near contemporaries. Baxter’s fascina- Well-educated and skilled in medicine, Baxter had
tion with witches, dreams, ghosts, and demonic posses- witnessed his own cures hailed by country folk not as
sions was not due to extreme credulity, but stemmed curing the symptoms of a disease, but as the casting-out
from his wholly rational desire to account for suppos- of devils. Such simple superstitions troubled him deeply
edly inexplicable phenomena and his need to under- and strengthened his conviction of the need for special-
score the peril that civil society faced from any inver- ist investigators. He recorded that even as he was writ-
sion of the natural order. Consequently, the “devil’s ing in 1659, “I am put to dissuade a man from accusing
work [in] hurting and destroying” and the refusal of one of his neighbours of witchcraft, because his daugh-
atheists, cynics, and modern Sadducees to acknowledge ters hath this disease, and cryeth out of her” (Ba x t e r
the efficacy of magic and malignant spirits attracted his 1659, 184–185). Si m i l a r l y, he could find no convinc-
particular censure (Baxter 1834, 51, 102, 107). “Sure it ing proof for the efficacy of the touch of the En g l i s h
were strange,” he wrote, “if in an Age of so much monarch in healing scrofula, known as the King’s Evil,
knowledge and confidence, there should so many score though he held a firm belief in the power and signifi-
104 Baxter, Richard |
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cance of angels as messengers from God (Baxter 1834, Bonn until his appointment to a full professorship at
82–83, 97–100). the Un i versity of Yo rk. In 2003 he returned to
Baxter concluded that witches we re far less danger- Germany, accepting the chair of history previously held
ous to society than the invisible operations of spirits by his former mentor van Dülmen at the University of
that corrupt us by encouraging pleasure, pride, and Saarbrücken.
lust. Ul t i m a t e l y, Baxter managed to evo l ve a cohere n t Be h r i n g e r’s dissertation, originally published in
argument for the existence of magic and witchcraft German in 1985, was translated into English by J. C.
that continued to find some support among noncon- Grayson and David Lederer and published by
formist communities into the nineteenth century, Cambridge Un i versity Press in 1997 as Wi t c h c ra f t
though by the time he died, the question of the re a l i t y Persecutions in Ba varia: Popular Magic, Re l i g i o u s
and effectiveness of m a l e fic i u m had moved to the out- Ze a l o t ry and Reason of State in Ea rly Mo d e rn Eu ro p e .
ermost fringes of intellectual debate across most of The German original has now gone into its third edi-
Eu ro p e . tion. This classic study reexamined an older treatment
of the subject by Sigmund Riez l e r, incorporating con-
JOHN CALLOW
siderable new information from a serial analysis of the
See also:DEMONOLOGY;ENGLAND;GHOSTS;POSSESSION, seventeenth-century Bavarian Court Council protocols
DEMONIC;PURITANISM. and the re c o rds of the infamous H - S o n d e rk o m m a n d o,
References and further reading:
the Nazi group that researched archives for the persecu-
Baxter, Richard. 1650. The Saints Everlasting Rest. London.
tion of witches.
———. 1659. A Key for Catholicks.London.
Since 1986, Behringer has been a member of the
———.1696. Autobiography.London.
Association for In t e rd i s c i p l i n a ry Witchcraft Re s e a rc h
———. 1834. The Certainty of the World of Spirits Fully Evinced.
and coeditor of its monograph series. Howe ve r, much
1691. Reprint, London: Joseph Smith.
Cooper,T. 2001 Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: of his seminal work has continued to appear in German
Richard Baxter and Antinomianism.Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. and, like his work on communications theory or brew-
Keeble, N. H. 1982. Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters. eries, remains largely undiscovered by the English-read-
Oxford: Clarendon. ing public. For example, together with Swiss climatic
Lamont, W. M. 1979 Richard Baxter and the Millennium. historian, Christian Pfister, Behringer has energetically
Protestant Imperialism and the English Revolution.London: promoted research on the nexus between an ecological
Helm.
crisis lasting from 1565 to 1630, the so-called Little Ice
Age, and related cultural phenomena such as confes-
Behringer, Wolfgang (1956– ) sional strife, social disciplining, suicide, and popular
Affectionately known to colleagues as the “witch mas- attitudes tow a rd magic during the iron century. So m e
ter” (Hexenmeister), Behringer has been seminal in of his more significant book titles include his early
achieving international recognition for witchcraft stud- study of Bavarian witchcraft legislation (1988); a wide-
ies as an independent field of historical re s e a rc h . ly used paperback collection of key documents and
Behringer was born and raised in Schwabing, the cos- connected commentary on Hexen und Hexenprozesse in
mopolitan university district of Munich, into a peda- De u t s c h l a n d (Witches and Witch Trials in Ge r m a n y ) ,
gogical family. While working part-time, he studied n ow in its fourth edition; an extremely short but
h i s t o ry, political science, and German at the e x t remely meaty paperback called simply He xe n
Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, where he (Witches, 1998), which discusses worldwide witchcraft
received his masters degree and, in 1985, his Ph.D. for beliefs, persecutions, and publicity, and a richly anno-
a dissertation on Bavarian witchcraft trials under the tated edition and new German translation of the
supervision of the social and cultural historian, Richard Malleus Maleficarum(The Hammer of Witches, 1486),
van Dülmen. From 1991 to 1997, Behringer was a done with Günter Jerouschek (2000).
researcher and teacher at the universities of Augsburg Among dozens of his other publications on the histo-
and Bonn, simultaneously producing monographs on a ry and theory of early modern witchcraft, a few are
freelance basis about several topics far removed from available in English. They include Behringer’s brilliant
Eu ropean witchcraft: the Thurn and Taxis family monograph on nocturnal shamanistic ghost-riders who
(founders of the imperial postal service), the almost came to be thought of as witches, first published in
equally venerable Lowenbrau and Spaten breweries, German in 1994 as C h o n rad Stoeckhlin und die
and the ve ry modern Lufthansa. In 1997, the Nachtscharand soon translated by H. C. Erik Midelfort
University of Bonn awarded him the Venia Legendi as The Shaman of Oberstdorf(1998). They also include
(authority to teach) for his Habilitation (a post-doctor- two brief statements of Behringer’s well-known theories
al degree required in some nations for professional post- about the connections between agricultural crises and
ing at a university) on the communications revolution the rise of mass witchcraft persecutions: “We a t h e r,
in early modern Europe. He continued teaching at Hunger and Fear.The Origins of the European Witch
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Persecution in Climate, Society and Me n t a l i t y” and, Motivated in part by his Cartesian rationalism and in
more recently, “Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting. p a rt by concerns re g a rding scriptural interpre t a t i o n ,
The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities.” Bekker rejected the operative role of the Devil in witch-
craft and sorcery, undertook a wide-ranging critique of
DAVID LEDERER
traditional beliefs re g a rding witchcraft and the De v i l ,
See also:AGRARIANCRISES; HISTORIOGRAPHYNAZIINTERESTIN and applied a method of biblical interpretation in har-
WITCHPERSECUTION;RIEZLER,SIGMUND. mony with his position.
References and further reading:
The first volume of The World Bewitchedprovides an
“Behringer,Wolfgang.” 2003. InKürschners Deutscher
historical ove rv i ew of popular opinion about spirits
Gelehrten-Kalender 2003.Munich: Saur.
f rom antiquity to the present. Bekker argued that the
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1995. “Weather, Hunger and Fear.The
roots of spirit belief lay in pagan antiquity, but these
Origins of the European Witch Persecution in Climate, Society
ideas had infiltrated the Catholic Church and had been
and Mentality.” German History13: 1–27.
———. 1998.The Shaman of Oberstdorf.Translated by H. C. perpetuated in the Christian tradition. Even his ow n
Erik Midelfort. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Reformed doctrine was not free of such beliefs. Bu t
———. 1999. “Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting. The belief in the Devil and evil spirits, as well as in such
Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities.” Pp. 335–351 in things as fortune telling, sorc e ry, and witchcraft, we re
Climatic Variability in Sixteenth Century Europe and Its Social essentially pagan ideas founded upon ignorance, preju-
Dimension.Edited byChristian Pfister, Rudolf Brazdil, and dice, and fear. According to Bekker, such ideas could be
Rüdiger Glaser.Climatic Change43 (September).
supported neither by reason nor by the Bible.
“Professor Doctor Wolfgang Behringer.” http://www.uni-saar-land.
Volume two of his work was by far the most impor-
de/fak3/behringer/HP/ (accessed November 16, 2004).
tant, influential, and controversial. In this vo l u m e ,
C a rtesian dualism influenced Be k k e r’s arguments.
Bekker, Balthasar (1634–1698) Fo l l owing De s c a rtes, he maintained that the material
A Dutch Reformed pastor influenced by Cartesian and spiritual worlds could not interact with each other
rationalism, Bekker became one of the most influential (except in human beings). Thus spirits without bodies,
critics of belief in witchcraft and demonology in such as the Devil, could have no effect on people. In
late-seventeenth-century northern Europe. His book, fact, neither reason nor experience could prove that
De Be t ove rde We e reld (The World Bew i t c h e d , spirits without bodies even existed. Bekker did not
1691–1693), remained well into the eighteenth centu- deny God’s power to create such spirits, and he pointed
ry one of the hallmarks of a tradition that prepared the out that the Bible did indeed prove the existence of
way for the later Enlightenment rejection of belief in both good and bad angelic spirits. His main concern,
witchcraft and sorcery. however, was with the Devil and evil spirits.
Born in 1634 in the northern Netherlands, Be k k e r While reason could not explain how evil spirits could
was educated at the Un i versities of Groningen and act on humans, the Bible testifies that the Devil did not
Fr a n e k e r, where he came under the influence of in fact act on people on the earth, Bekker argued.
C a rtesian ideas and thus also under the suspicion of Genesis told how the Devil and all of his evil angels had
conservative Reformed clerics. Bekker nevertheless was been cast by God into hell, where they were to remain
o rdained a Reformed pastor and served several Du t c h chained for all eternity. How then, Bekker asked, could
congregations before accepting a call to the ministry in they wander the earth and torment people? Witchcraft
the important city of Amsterdam in 1680. He re he and sorcery could not exist, he concluded, because the
d e veloped his interest in witchcraft and sorc e ry, Devil was powerless on earth. But Bekker still had to
a p p roaching these subjects from the fundamental per- deal with biblical passages that seemed, when taken lit-
spective of questioning the nature and temporal power erally, to speak of the earthly activities of the Devil.
of the Devil and evil spirits. In places where the Bible spoke of the De v i l ,
Bekker’s interest in the Devil’s power began in 1688 Bekker contended that the Holy Spirit was mere l y
when he wrote a commentary on the biblical Book of accommodating its language to the limited intellectu-
Daniel. He began to preach sermons on the topic, and al abilities of the common people of biblical times
friends urged him to expand his ideas into a book. who believed in evil spirits. When the Bible used the
Then Bekker read an account of an English witch at the w o rd d e v i l ,it was only speaking fig u r a t i vely and re a l l y
time imprisoned in Beckington. He translated the meant evil men or mortal enemies of God. When it
account into Dutch and added his own commentary, used the terms m a g i c i a n or s o rc e re r, it meant simple
which was quite skeptical of this supposed case of tricksters and frauds. To complicate matters furt h e r,
witchcraft. This short treatise became the foundation later translators of the Bible, who themselves believe d
for Be k k e r’s further re s e a rch into witchcraft and in the Devil and evil spirits, often mistranslated Gre e k
d e m o n o l o g y, which led to the publication of his and He b rew words as “De v i l” when they could have
four-volume work, The World Bewitched. been more correctly re n d e red as “s l a n d e re r,” “e n e m y, ”
106 Bekker, Balthasar |
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or “opponent,” again referring to Go d’s mortal ene- and would lead to a denial of belief in the divine mys-
mies. Be k k e r’s most difficult exegetical task was how teries and even to a rejection of belief in God himself.
to explain the various New Testament passages that Be k k e r’s ideas we re called heretical, scandalous, and
spoke of spirit possession. Ac c o rding to the common s l a n d e rous to God. A long church process was start e d
i n t e r p retation of such passages, demons sometimes against him that ended by condemning his book,
possessed people’s bodies, making them behave in deposing him from the ministry, and even exc l u d i n g
strange ways or causing them terrible sickness, pain, him from Reformed communion.
or insanity. Drawing on the works of such earlier Be k k e r’s ideas exe rted considerable influ e n c e . T h e
skeptics as the Dutchmen Johann We yer and Ja c o b Wo rld Be w i t c h e d became an instant best seller, going
Vallick and the Englishman Reginald Scot, Be k k e r t h rough at least two printings in 1691, followed by
argued that these passages really describe cases of men- s e veral later Dutch editions. Be k k e r’s original publish-
tal illness, again clothed in language the common peo- e r, recognizing the earnings potential of such a work ,
ple could understand. rushed the book to market even before the author had
In volume three of The Wo rld Be w i t c h e d , Be k k e r re v i ewed his entire text. It was soon translated into
built upon his earlier foundations to reject all manner French, German, and English. Outside of the
of witchcraft and sorc e ry as merely fraud and decep- Netherlands, The Wo rld Be w i t c h e d had its gre a t e s t
tion. Evil magic, conjuring, and fortune telling we re i n fluence in Ge r m a n y, where it could be found in
supposedly done by people who had given themselve s many libraries, especially those of “e n l i g h t e n e d” re a d-
over to the Devil in order to use his power against oth- ers and collectors, far into the eighteenth century.
ers. But since it was clear that evil spirits could not have Although it is an exaggeration to claim that Be k k e r
these kinds of interactions with humans, these magi- almost single-handedly ended the witch persecutions
cians and witches we re simple tricksters who seldom in northern Eu rope, he was clearly a major fig u re
accomplished anything. The famous witch of Endor in among the late seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry authors who suc-
the First Book of Samuel, chapter 28, was merely a ven- cessfully opened the sustained assault on witchcraft
triloquist, while other biblical stories of sorc e ry we re and diabolical magic that the Enlightenment bro u g h t
really accounts of idolatry. to completion.
In volume four, Bekker argued that belief in the ANDREW FIX
Devil, evil spirits, and sorcery was caused by ignorance
and fear of the unknown, or by deception of the senses.
See also:DESCARTES,RENÉ;PALINGH,ABRAHAM;SCOT,REGINALD;
SKEPTICISMWEYER,JOHANN.
Bekker then related a series of cases of supposed witch-
References and further reading:
craft, sorc e ry, and spirit possession, all of which, he
Attfield, Robin. 1988. “Balthasar Bekker and the Decline of the
a s s e rted, had natural causes. People often faked spirit
Witch-Craze: The Old Demonology and the New Philosophy.”
possession in order to make money, or else possessed Annals of Science42: 383–395.
people suffered from “melancholy” or physical illnesses. Bekker, Balthasar. 1996. Die bezauberte Welt.Edited byWiep van
Bekker proclaimed other we l l - k n own cases of the Bunge. Stuttgart: Honoré Champion.
supernatural, such as the miracle healing of Sir Kenelm Fix, Andrew. 1999. Fallen Angels: Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief,
Digby, the story of the bricklayer in Bolsward, the pied and Confessionalism in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic.
piper of Hamlen (usually spelled Hamlin), the devils of Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Israel, Jonathan. 1996. “The Bekker Controversies as a Turning
Macon and Te d w o rth, and the ghosts of Annenberg
Point.” Dutch Crossings20: 5–21.
and Lausanne, to be frauds.
Jacob, Margaret. 1987. “The Crisis of the European Mind: Hazard
Bekker ended his work by decrying the cruelty and
Revisited.” Pp. 251–271 in Politics and Culture in Early Modern
irrationality of witchcraft trials, arguing that foolish tes-
Europe: Essays in Honor of H. G. Koenigsberger.Edited by
timony had led judges to condemn innocent people. It
Phyllis Mack and Margaret Jacob. Cambridge: Cambridge
was obvious, Bekker declared, that popular beliefs University Press.
about sorc e ry and witchcraft we re mistaken, because van Bunge, Wiep. 1993. “Balthasar Bekker’s Cartesian
these things simply did not exist. Hermeneutics and the Challenge of Spinozism.” The British
Despite the fact that trials for witchcraft had largely Journal of the History of Philosophy1: 55–80.
ended in the Dutch Republic almost a century before ———. 1995. “Balthasar Bekker on Daniel:An Early
Bekker wrote, and despite the fact that by the 1690s Enlightenment Critique of Millenarianism.” History of
European Ideas21: 659–673.
many in the Dutch medical, legal, and intellectual pro-
———. 2000. “DuBetoverde weereldau Monde enchanté.Traces
fessions shared Be k k e r’s views, The Wo rld Be w i t c h e d
de Bekker dans les premières Lumières françaises.” Pp.
p rovoked an uproar within the Reformed Ch u rch. It s
453–471 in Materia actuosa Antiquité, Age classique, Lumières:
conservative wing, already angry with Bekker for many
Mélanges en honneur d’Olivier Bloch. Edited by Miguel Benitez,
years because of his Cartesian views and exegetical posi-
et al. Paris: Frommann-Holzboog.
tion, rose against him with full force. His denial of van Sluis, Jacob. 1994. Bekkeriana: Balthasar Bekker biographic en
demonic power contradicted Scripture, critics charged, bibliographic. Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy.
Bekker, Balthasar 107 |
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Benandanti German-language regions have shown that the beliefs
In 1966, Carlo Ginzburg published a study on the pre- of the b e n a n d a n t i , p a rticularly those involving contact
viously unknown benandanti (do-gooders) of Friuli. In with the dead and therapeutic activities, surv i ve d
Ginzburg’s view, the beliefs of the benandanti seemed to (albeit with modifications) until a ve ry few years ago. A
constitute a folkloric anomaly at odds with the “classic” recent investigation focused on the later trials of
paradigm of diabolical witchcraft, while also offering benandanti has re vealed that therapeutic functions
the most fully documented instance in early modern we re central to the beliefs of the b e n a n d a n t i . T h e i r
Eu rope of how the Inquisition re p ressed popular myth assumed re l e vance in the society in relation to
culture. their curative practices, which increasingly incorporat-
At first, the benandanti confidently maintained that ed ideas, such as exo rcism, drawn from the matrix of
they we re opponents of witches, defenders of the ecclesiastical ritual. In this new perspective, the b e n a n-
Christian faith, and protectors of crops and people in danti seem to have been primarily healers, exo rc i s t s ,
their communities. The most detailed confessions made and opponents of witches, and only marginally witches
by benandanti to the Inquisition represent an extended and causers of harm. Thus Gi n z b u r g’s notion of the
n a r r a t i ve sequence that can be summarized as follow s . b e n a n d a n t i’s gradual “p s ychological conve r s i o n” to the
Born with the caul (amniotic sac), which they pre- n e g a t i ve model of the Sabbat and black magic appears
served, benandanti believed that they were predestined d i f ficult to sustain.
to play a distinctive role. When they reached adult- Indeed, reexamination of the inquisitors’ and episco-
hood, they began to leave their bodies at night on pal vicars’ mode of operation shows that rather than the
Ember Days in order to do battle against opponents, benandanti becoming witches, it was the judges whose
whom they called m a l a n d a n t i (evil-doers), or to visit attitudes changed. Intent on demonstrating their for-
the otherworld. In the form of smoke, mice, butterflies, mal heresy, the first inquisitor who interrogated benan-
or cats, or riding on supernatural goats, roosters, or danti in the late sixteenth century was interested in noc-
cats, they traveled in ecstasy to gatherings of their fel- turnal battles, which lent support to such a contention.
l ows. Wielding such beneficent ritual weapons as In contrast, his successors in the mid-seventeenth cen-
branches of viburnum and stalks of fennel, the “m i l i- t u ry we re much more concerned with curative prac-
t a ry” b e n a n d a n t i fought to defend the harvest against tices. Placing little emphasis on nocturnal battles, some
malandanti,who were armed with stalks of sorghum or p a rticularly zealous inquisitors—inclined, despite the
sticks of firewood. “Fu n e re a l” b e n a n d a n t i i n t e r ro g a t e d skepticism of many cardinals on the Congregation of
the dead about what would happen in the future, and the Holy Office, to believe in the reality of the witches’
conveyed this information to the living after the benan- Sabbat—induced some benandanti to admit to being
d a n t i returned. The myth of their nocturnal journeys witches during their trials. Whether the defendants’ real
gave the benandanti a context and justification for their convictions changed, howe ve r, is doubtful and
everyday healing practices. undemonstrable.
Between 1574 and 1749, Inquisition tribunals in the The richness and puzzling character of the documen-
dioceses of Aquileia and Concordia and in Venice con- tation about benandanti furnishes excellent opportuni-
ducted eighty-five proceedings against b e n a n d a n t i ties for studying the interactions between learned and
( Na rdon 1999, 136). Mo re than half of these we re popular culture, as well as enabling a confro n t a t i o n
denunciations that the Holy Office did not pursue; the b e t ween historical and anthropological methods and
rest we re summary or full-fledged trials on charges the sources that they employ.
including the practice of therapeutic or harmful magic,
abuse of the sacraments, and participation in the witch- FRANCO NARDON
es’ Sabbat. In the fifteen sentences issued, punishments
See also:CAUL;FERTILITYCULTS;FLIGHTOFWITCHES;FOLKLORE;
ranged from simple admonition to formal abjuration, INQUISITION,ROMAN;INQUISITION,VENETIAN;POPULAR
imprisonment, and banishment. Ac c o rding to BELIEFS,INWITCHES;SABBAT.
Ginzburg, some inquisitors ingeniously managed to References and further reading:
equate the innocuous agrarian and otherworldly beliefs Ginzburg, Carlo. 1983. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian
of the b e n a n d a n t i with the witches’ Sabbat, an only Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.Translated by
remotely related and basically learned construction. By John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
the mid-seventeenth century, when inquisitors had suc-
———. 1990. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. Edited
ceeded in eliciting from benandanti confessions of
by Gregory Elliot. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. London:
i n vo l vement in diabolical witchcraft, the myth of the
Hutchinson Radius.
benandanti disappeared.
Gri, Gian Paolo. 2001. Altri modi: Etnografia dell’agire simbolico
Since the appearance of Gi n z b u r g’s book, anthro p o-
nei processi friulani dell’Inquisizione.Trieste-Montereale
logical studies of types, motifs, and narrative functions Valcellina: Edizioni Università di Trieste—Circolo culturale
of popular beliefs in Friuli, Istria, and adjacent Menocchio.
108 Benandanti |
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Martin, Ruth. 1989. Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, reputation. Me d i e val tradition derived its assumed
1550–1650.Oxford: Basil Blackwell. t oxicity from the etymology of its name, supposedly
Nardon, Franco. 1999. Benandanti e inquisitori nel Friuli del taken from the Latin verb n o c e re (to harm). Po p u l a r
Seicento.Prefazione di Andrea Del Col. Trieste-Montereale
tales contributed to spread its sinister reputation, such
Valcellina: Edizioni Università di Trieste—Centro Studi Storici
as the account of the poor Umbrian who awakened
Menocchio.
p a r a l y zed after napping under a walnut tree and was
Rowland, Robert. 1990. “‘Fantasticall and Devilishe Persons’:
then miraculously healed by Saint Francis. In part i c u-
European Witch-Beliefs in Comparative Perspective.” Pp.
l a r, the tree was said to have the power to infect the
161–190 in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and
Peripheries.Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen. brain of any person who might carelessly fall asleep
Oxford: Clarendon. under its damp shade. In his Quaestio de Strigis ( A n
In vestigation of Witches, ca. 1470), Gi o rdano da
Benevento, Walnut Tree of Bergamo claimed that under the shadow of the walnut
Provincial capital of Campania, ancient Lombard prin- tree by the “virtue of the Devil the witch’s humors can
c i p a l i t y, and part of the Papal States until 1860, become mixed-up and her fantasy can create illusory
Be n e vento is still legendary as a land of witches, who images,” because “being so damp,” the tree is “we l l-s u i t e d
met under the walnut tree. For centuries it has been to our brain, which is very damp” (Abbiati, Agnoletto,
re g a rded as the principal location of Italian witches’ and Lazzati 1984, 82–83).
Sabbats, similar to Blocksberg (or Brocken) in Ge r m a n y, A sacred tree (not a walnut tree) worshipped by the
Blåkulla in Sweden, and Mount St. Ge l l é rt in Hu n g a ry. Lombards of Benevento was mentioned in a work writ-
Judicial re c o rds, demonological literature, and popular ten after the ninth century, the Vita Barbati Ep i s c o p i
fables suggested Valtelline (Valtellina; Veltlin), Em i l i a , Be n e ventani (The Life of Barbato, Bishop of
Val d’ Adige, and Val Camonica as additional meeting Be n e vento). Bishop Barbato uprooted the tree after
places for Italian witches. No other place, howe ve r, obtaining a promise from Lombard duke Romualdo to
could compete in notoriety with Be n e vento, the fame of renounce the pagan cult in exchange for victory ove r
which extended far enough to come to the attention of the Byzantine army that besieged Be n e vento in 663.
the celebrated demonologist Ma rtín Del Rio, who wro t e The pagan rite consisted of a competition testing the
of the noce di Be n e ve n t o (Walnut Tree of Be n e vento) in abilities of knights, who were required to gallop toward
his Disquisitiones Magicae libri sex (Six Books on the sacred tree, grab a small part of a snake’s skin hang-
In vestigations into Magic, on 1599/1600) (Cocchiara ing from it, and then “superstitiously” eat the skin. In
1980, 193). Echoes of the diabolical legend are found in the next few centuries, the myth of the evil tree was
the works of numerous late medieval and early modern grafted onto the traditions of this tree-worshiping cult
Italian authors such as Agnolo Fi renzuola, Gi a m b a t t i s t a according to a typical pattern in which Christians asso-
Basile, Tommaso Ga rzoni, Francesco Redi, Ip p o l i t o ciated preexisting religious traditions with the De v i l .
Neri, Lore n zo Lippi, Ge rolamo Ta rt a rotti, Lu d ov i c o Howe ve r, not all scholars agree that the legend of the
Antonio Muratori, and Gioacchino Belli, and in come- walnut tree is tied exc l u s i vely to a distorted version of
dies by playwrights such as Pi e t ro Aretino, Anton this Lombard rite. Other indications suggest multiple
Francesco Grazzini, and Nicolò Piperno, who wrote and s o u rces for the legend; for example, the cult of the
p roduced the play La noce Maga di Be n e vento Es t i r p a t a snake, an intercultural element spread throughout oth-
da San Ba r b a t o(The Magical Walnut Tree of Be n e ve n t o er areas of Europe, or the cult of Isis, a goddess particu-
u p rooted by St. Barbato) in 1665. larly venerated in Benevento, where a magnificent tem-
Among the most interesting descriptions of the ple was erected to her under the Roman empero r
Sabbat was a nineteenth-century poem, published in Domitian. An urn of the cult of Isis with a lid adorned
Naples, entitled Storia della Famosa Noce di Be n e ve n t o with images of the sacred serpent, discovered in 1903,
( Hi s t o ry of the Famous Walnut Tree of Be n e ve n t o ) . convinced some scholars that the Be n e ventans wor-
This work definitively established the central nucleus of shipped snakes through the cult of Isis, and that this
the diabolical legend of Be n e vento: a “large snake” tradition was bequeathed to the pagan Lombards.
twisting around a walnut tree of “immense size,” “in Among the first to discuss the Be n e ventan Sa b b a t s
the shadows of its leaves, the witches’ Sabbats take was Mariano Sozzini in a letter of 1420 to the human-
place, with the participation of a great number of ist Antonio Tridentone. Also in the 1420s, St .
witches, wizards, and devils from hell,” dedicated to Be r n a rdino of Siena spoke in his sermons of the witch-
“far del male” (practice evil), and “u n a p p roachable by e s’ assemblies in Be n e vento, but without mentioning a
the profane, bound by Sa t a n” (Cocchiara 1980, 188). walnut tree. In the 1428 trial of Umbrian healer
Among the principal elements of the legend, the walnut Matteuccia da Todi, which was connected to St .
t ree (Juglans re g i a ) re p resents a constant of It a l i a n Be r n a rd i n o’s sermons, we find the first description of
Sabbats. Nu m e rous medieval testimonials from both the Sabbat under the noce di Be n e ve n t o, p receded by
learned and popular sources documented the tree’s evil the nocturnal flying brought about by anointing with a
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magic salve and by the recitation of a spell that, with Cocchiara, Giuseppe. 1980. Il paese di Cuccagna.Turin:
slight regional variations, re c u r red frequently in other Boringhieri.
late medieval and early modern trials and is found in De Blasio, Abele. 1900. Inciarmatori, maghi e streghe di Benevento.
Naples: Pierro. Reprint, 1976. Bologna: Forni.
the popular saying, “Sa l ve, salve / Send me to the noce
Di Gesaro, Pinuccia. 1988. Streghe.L’ossessione del diavolo. Il reper-
di Be n e vento / Over the water and over to the wind /
torio dei malefizi. La repressione.Bolzano: Praxis.
And over all bad we a t h e r” (Mammoli 1969, 31).
Grillando, Paolo. 1592. Tractatus duo: unus De sortilegiis d. Pauli
From this point forw a rd, in the minds of inquisitors
Grillandi Castellionis, iureconsulti florentinii
and demonologists and of their victims, the legend of
excellentissimi...alter De Lamiis.Francoforti ad Moenum:
Be n e vento as a diabolical place was consolidated, Martinum Lechlerum.
combining elements from the mythical Lombard s a c ra Mammoli, Domenico. 1969. Processo alla strega Matteuccia di
a r b o r ( s a c red tree) and the sacred snake of the cult of Francesco 20 marzo 1428.Todi: Res Tudertinae.
Isis. In demonological literature, the work of distin- Montesano, Marina. 1996. Streghe.Florence: Giunti.
guished papal theologian Si l ve s t ro Prierias concerning Piperno, Pietro. 1640. Della superstitiosa noce di Benevento.Naples:
the noce di Be n e ve n t o is particular notew o rt h y Giacomo Gaffaro.
Portone, Paolo. 1990. Il noce di Benevento.Milan: Xenia.
( Abbiati, Agnoletto, and Lazzati 1984, 226). Ec h o e s
Summers, Montague. 1929. The History of Witchcraft and
of the Campanian Sabbat can also be found in the
Demonology.London: Mystic.
Tractatus de haereticis et sort i l e g i i s (Treatise on He re t i c s
and So rc e rers), written around 1524 by Pa o l o
Berkeley, Witch of
Grillando, which re f e r red to the Sabbat under the
“e x t remely cold noce di Be n e ve n t o” (Grillando 1592, The medieval story of a witch, or more precisely a sor-
1 1 1 – 1 1 2 ) . c e ress, from Be rkeley (Gl o u c e s t e r s h i re) circulated wide-
Howe ve r, the defin i t i ve systematization of this leg- ly in Eu rope from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.
end came from Pi e t ro Piperno, author of De Nu c e Probably of much earlier origin, the story was fully
Maga Be n e ventana ( On the Magical Walnut Tree of d e veloped by William of Ma l m e s b u ry, who included it
Be n e vento, 1634), subsequently translated into It a l i a n in his Gesta regum angloru m ( Deeds of the Kings of the
as Della Superstiziosa Noce di Be n e ve n t o ( On the English) of ca. 1142. William located the episode in
Superstitious Walnut Tree of Be n e vento, 1640). In this 1065, just before his account of the Norman Conquest.
tract, a true and proper demonological work, the He told the story as a warning that those who practiced
Be n e ventan medical examiner not only identified the s o rc e ry with demonic assistance would find it impossi-
s a c red tree venerated by the Lombards with the evil ble to protect themselves from the De v i l’s attacks at the
walnut tree, but also tried to demonstrate that its time of death. The later popularity of the story was
Sabbats we re a product of diabolical knowledge that based on its clear message that sorc e rers belonged to the
could make it appear illusively at any moment De v i l .
( Piperno 1640, 96). Piperno claims that witches did Ac c o rding to Wi l l i a m’s story, the Be rkeley woman,
not gather under the diabolical tree in their dre a m s , whom he described as morally debauched as well as a
but in corpore (physically), and there by advises secular practitioner of sorc e ry and augury, heard her pet rave n
and religious authorities to guard more attentive l y chattering more than usual one day and believed it an
against such gatherings. Requests for greater penalties omen that her own end was imminent. A message
against superstitious acts did not result in local witch about the sudden death of her son and his family con-
hunts, except for a series of perhaps as many as 200 tri- firmed her belief. So she immediately took pre c a u-
als, mentioned in later sources, that we re dispersed in tions to pre vent the Devil from taking her body when
1860, and an event in which three women we re re p o rt- death ultimately came. Summoning her re m a i n i n g
edly handed over to secular authorities in 1506 (Di c h i l d ren, a monk and a nun, she confessed her
Ge s a ro 1988, 385). demonic arts and entreated them that, when she died,
they would sew her corpse in a deerskin, place it in a
PAOLO PORTONE; stone coffin, fasten the lid with lead and iron, and
bind a stone to it with three massive iron chains. T h e y
TRANSLATED BY SHANNON VENEBLE
should also arrange to have fifty psalms a night sung
See also:BERNARDINOOFSIENA;BLÅKULLA;DRAMA,ITALIAN; a round her body for three nights, as well as thre e
GRILLANDO,PAOLO;ITALY;PIPERNO,PIETRO;PRIERIAS, Masses a day for three days. Despite her detailed pre-
SILVESTRO;SABBAT;TODI,WITCHOF. cautions, howe ve r, demons burst through the bolted
References and further reading: doors of the church on the first two nights and bro k e
Abbiati, Sergio, Attilio Agnoletto, and Maria Rosario Lazzati.
two of the massive chains on her coffin. On the third
1984. La stregoneria.Milan: Mondadori.
night, the tallest and most terrible devil snapped the
Bonomo, Giuseppe. 1971. Caccia alle streghe. La credenza nelle
remaining chain like a piece of string and kicked off
streghe dal secolo XIII al XIX con particolare riferimento all’Italia.
the coffin’s lid. He then dragged the woman out of the
Palermo: Palumbo.
110 Berkeley, Witch of |
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the lead cover of the coffin mangled like a piece of
cloth.
A similar summary and illustration appeared in the
popular Pro d i g i o rum ac Os t e n t o rum Chro n i c o n
( C h ronicle of Prodigies and Curiosities), compiled by
Conrad Lycosthenes (Konrad Wo l f h a rt) and pub-
lished in Basel in 1557 in both Latin and Ge r m a n
editions. In 1555, a full version of the story drawn
f rom Vincent of Be a u vais was re c ycled in the encyc l o-
pedic work by the Swedish Bi s h o p, Olaus Ma g n u s ,
Historia de Gentibus Se p t e n t r i o n a l i b u s ( Hi s t o ry of the
No rthern Peoples), first published in Rome and soon
translated into Italian, Dutch, German, and Fre n c h .
In this case, the story supported the view that the
De v i l’s work in pagan Scandinavia was similar to his
activity in Christian Eu rope. Although this woodcut
was somewhat more narrative in style, its main focus
remained the violent reclaiming of a sorc e ress by the
De v i l .
CHARLES ZIKA
See also:ANIMALS;ARTANDVISUALIMAGES;DEVIL;HAIR;MAGNUS,
OLAUS;SORCERY.
References and further reading:
Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peterseds, eds. 2001. “The Sorceress of
The Devil takes away the Witch of Berkeley, despite her precautions. Berkeley (ca. 1140).” Pp. 70–72 in Witchcraft in Europe,
Her story and hapless fate were well known in late medieval and early 400–1700: A Documentary History.2d ed. Philadelphia:
modern Europe. (TopFoto.co.uk) University of Pennsylvania Press.
Magnus, Olaus. 1996.Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus,
Romae 1555.Description of the Northern Peoples, Rome 1555.
c h u rch, laid her on the iron barbs projecting from the Vol. 1. Translated by Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens.
back of his black horse, and rode off out of sight, Edited by Peter Foote. London: Hakluyt Society. Pp. 180–181.
while the horrified onlookers heard the woman’s Peters, Edward. 1978. The Magician, the Witch and the Law.
pitiable cries. Hassocks, UK: Harvester.
William of Malmesbury. 1998. Gesta regum anglorum. Vol. 1.
Wi l l i a m’s C h ro n i c l e became a major historical work
Edited by R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M.
and was widely cited both in England and on the Con-
Winterbottom. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Pp. 377–381.
tinent. This story reappeared virtually word for word in
the Eulogium historiarum(Eulogy of Histories), written
Bermuda
in Ma l m e s b u ry abbey ca. 1367. Mo re import a n t l y, it
a p p e a red in slightly abbreviated form in Vincent of Between 1651 and 1696, the colony of Bermuda expe-
Be a u va i s’ Speculum historiale ( Mi r ror of Hi s t o ry), the rienced twenty-one witchcraft trials and five executions,
t h i rd part of Vi n c e n t’s massive medieval encyc l o p e d i a the largest number in English America outside of New
(ca. 1244–1260), which circulated throughout Europe England. Settled in 1612 and administered by the
in numerous Latin and vernacular manuscript versions. joint-stock Bermuda Company of London, the island
After 1473, printed editions began; there were eight cir- took on a Puritan character as nonconformist ministers
culating by 1546. turned out of their benefices in London occupied
From the late fifteenth century, woodcuts also popu- Bermuda’s parish churches. Fears of witchcraft and
l a r i zed the story. An illustrated summary—little more demonic influence we re present from the start .
than a commentary on the accompanying image of dia- Be r m u d a’s second minister, Lewis Hughes, had
bolical abduction—appeared in the five editions of the supported the witchcraft claims of servant Mary Glover
Nu remberg Chro n i c l e b e t ween 1493 and 1500, a work against her London mistress in 1602 and exorcised the
p rofusely illustrated by the Nu remberg workshop of girl. In 1623, the London company enjoined Bermuda’s
Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pl e yd e n w u rf f. Fo r churchwardens to present “all Sorcerers, Inchanters,
eighty years, this image became a model for illustra- Charmers, Witches, Figure-casters or fortune-tellers,
tors—with the woman naked except for her shroud, her [and] Conjurers” to local courts for prosecution (Lefroy
frizzy hair a testament to her evil, her open mouth 1981, 1:320). El e ven years later, Governor Jo h n
giving terrified cries, the horse with the iron barbs, and Winthrop of Massachusetts recorded that an unnamed
Bermuda 111 |
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Bermudian minister exorcised a man “possessd with a Bermuda two years later amidst lingering tensions. The
devill” before his congregation (Dunn et al. 1996, 119). witchcraft trials of 1651–1655 allowed members of
Be r m u d a’s first witchcraft case was prosecuted in both groups to come together as jurymen to rid their
May 1651, when Jean Gardiner was accused of afflict- island of demonic influences, facilitating a lasting rap-
ing a mulatto servant woman. A female jury found a p rochement. Mo re ove r, in 1651 Bermuda re c e i ve d
blue spot, or “mark of the Devil,” in Gardiner’s mouth, Scottish war prisoners, with fresh memories of the mas-
and she twice failed a water test in the sea, where she sive witchcraft prosecutions in their homeland.
“did swyme like a cork and could not sinke” (Lefroy After 1671, Bermuda had no further convictions for
1981, 2:602–603). Found guilty, she was hanged on witchcraft. Witchcraft of a different sort emerged in
May 26. A second woman, Anne Bowen, was accused e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Bermuda within the island’s slave
at the same assize but acquitted, as we re two more population in a handful of accusations brought against
accused witches, planter He n ry Wa rd and El i z a b e t h slaves for attempting to poison or harm whites and oth-
Middleton, in 1652. The next ye a r, Mi d d l e t o n’s hus- er slaves by concealing suspicious mixtures about their
band, John, a failed planter, was accused of malefic houses or in their foods. Possibly linked to West African
attacks on a Scottish indentured servant (probably a Obeah practices, poisoning scares broke out sporadical-
prisoner of war sent to Bermuda by Cromwell follow- ly in the late 1720s and 1750s. The trial and burning at
ing the Battle of Worcester) while the latter was in the the stake of a mulatto slave, Sarah Basset, is confused in
c o l o n y’s jail. After a host of suspicious marks we re Bermudian lore with witchcraft, but the method of her
found on Mi d d l e t o n’s body and he failed a water test, e xecution was consistent with the petit tre a s o n a g a i n s t
he confessed that “I was a witch, wch I knew not her master and mistress for which she was convicted.
before” (Lefroy 1981, 2:608) Before he was hanged, he
MICHAEL JARVIS
implicated two other suspected witches, Alice Mo o re
and Christian Stevenson, who were quickly tried, found See also:SCOTLAND;SWIMMINGTEST.
guilty, and also hanged. Despite claims that there were References and further reading:
Dunn, Richard James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds. 1996. The
additional undetected witches within the colony,
Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649. Cambridge: Harvard
Be r m u d a’s prosecutors pre vented hysteria from seizing
University Press.
the island. Late the same year, Edward Brangman’s wife
Jarvis, Michael. 1998. “‘In the Eye of All Trade’: Maritime
won damages from a neighbor who insinuated that she
Revolution and the Transformation of Bermudian Society,
was a witch.
1612–1800.” Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary.
In Ja n u a ry 1655, the Ma y flowe r put into Be r m u d a Lefroy, J. H., ed. 1981. Memorials of the Bermudas.2 vols.
with two English passengers strongly suspected of prac- London, 1878–1879. Reprint, Hamilton, Bermuda: Bermuda
ticing witchcraft on the high seas, prompting another National Trust.
trial. Despite alleged past connections with Lancaster Maxwell, Clarence. 2000. “‘The Horrid Villainy’: Sarah Bassett
witches, Elizabeth Page was acquitted, but Ja n e and the Poisoning Conspiracies in Bermuda, 1727–30.” Slavery
Hopkins was not so lucky: She had several incriminat- and Abolition21, no. 3: 48–74.
Shipley, Gregory. 1989. “Turbulent Times, Troubled Isles: The
ing marks, was deemed guilty of conjuring, and was
Rise and Development of Puritanism in Bermuda and the
p romptly hanged. Although several more men and
Bahamas, 1609–1684.” Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological
women were accused of diabolically inflicting harm on
Seminary, 266–271.
l i vestock, pro p e rt y, and neighbors, Jane Hopkins was
the last witch executed in Bermuda. In June 1671,
Susan Cole was found guilty of “t o r m e n t i n g” T h o m a s Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444)
Holt and sentenced to death, but Governor Jo h n Franciscan friar, reformer, and saint, Bernardino was
Heydon pardoned her (Lefroy 1981, 2:630). one of the most influential popular preachers of
In total, four men and seventeen women, fifteen of fifteenth-century Italy, second only to Savonarola. His
them married, we re accused (or defended themselve s many vehement, intransigent sermons and treatises
against informal accusations) of witchcraft. Be r m u d a against witchcraft, superstition, demonology, and
appears singular in the weight it gave to accusations heresy helped pave the way for the outbreak of witch
made by marginal members of society; enslaved black hunts shortly after his death. Be r n a rd i n o’s public
children, mulatto and Indian women, and Scotch-Irish instruction represented an important contribution to
i n d e n t u red servants fig u red prominently among not that gradual transformation within the collective
only the victims but also the accusers in many witch- European imagination that reshaped an inchoate body
craft cases. The spate of cases in the 1650s had political of disparate beliefs and vague notions regarding super-
causes. During the previous decade, Be r m u d a’s minis- stition, simple sorc e ry, pagan ritual, magic, and
ters and leading planters had bitterly divided over the demonology into what has been called “The Classical
issue of severing ties with England. The Separatists were Formulation of the Witch Ph e n o m e n o n” (Ru s s e l l
exiled to the Bahamas in 1649, but returned to 1972, 227), whereby the witch came to be understood
112 Bernardino of Siena |
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as a devil-worshipping, evil-working woman belonging to witchcraft are his sermons, “On the T h ree Capital
to a massive, well-organized, international company of Si n s” (Siena; 1427), “Why We Must Not Be l i e ve in
moral–social subve r s i ves who gathered regularly at Fo rt u n e - Tellers and Di v i n e r s” (Fl o rence; 1425), “On
Sabbats in remote parts of the countryside in order to the De v i l’s Sow i n g” (De seminatione daemonii, 1 4 2 3 ) ;
engage in orgiastic rituals. Bernardino’s sermons open and his treatises, On the Cult of Idolatry (De idolatriae
an ample window onto what the Christian faithful cultu, 1430–1436) and On the Army of Evil Spirits (De
believed about witches and their activities in an histor- exercitu spirituum malignorum, 1430–1444).
ical period for which written documentation is scarce. Be r n a rd i n o’s preaching and writing produced con-
A vociferous adversary, as well, of Jews, sodomites, and crete, documented results, although never as radical as
religious dissenters, Be r n a rdino was a conspicuous he demanded. After consultation with Pope Martin V,
exponent of what R. I. Moore has termed the “perse- one mission in Rome concluded, he tells us in his Siena
cuting society,” the violently intolerant Christendom of 1427 sermon, with a massive roundup of suspected
the premodern era. witches and sorc e rers, three of whom we re eve n t u a l l y
Born into a family of minor aristocracy in the Tu s c a n e xecuted. Re p o rts of this Roman episode we re docu-
t own of Massa Marittima, Be r n a rdino Albizzeschi was mented in contemporary Italian, Swiss, and Ge r m a n
orphaned of both parents by the age of six. At eleven he s o u rces, thus confirming Be r n a rd i n o’s role in dissemi-
was sent to live with re l a t i ves in Siena where, hagio- nating his antiwitchcraft hysteria. The preacher also
graphic sources relate, he already began to show signs of p l a yed a crucial though indirect role in the witchcraft
his future sanctity. Child of wealth and social privilege, trial of Matteuccia Francisci, burned in Todi in March
the pious and intellectually gifted Be r n a rdino re c e i ve d 1428; she had been arrested, as her extant trial re c o rd
the best education available in Siena; he began studying makes clear, because of local consciousness-raising by
canon law, but discontinued it after two years. In 1400, friar Be r n a rd i n o. Another documented result of his
the plague struck Siena, and Be r n a rdino distinguished i n fluence was the promulgation of more seve re laws
himself during the outbreak by his valiant, selfless ser- against witchcraft and superstition in several of the
vice to its victims. In 1402, after a harrowing brush with towns he visited, including Siena, Perugia, and Todi.
death due to lengthy illness, Be r n a rdino joined the
FRANCO MORMANDO
Ob s e rvants, the austere reform branch of the Fr a n c i s c a n
Ord e r. He soon rose to positions of authority within his See also:ITALY;SIENESENEWSTATE;TODI,WITCHOF.
o rder; he was offered the bishoprics of Siena, Fe r r a r a , References and further reading:
Moore, R. I. 1987. The Formation of a Persecuting Society. Power
and Urbino, but refused all of them because he consid-
and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250. NewYork and
e red his primary role that of a pre a c h e r.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
After a period of training and false start s ,
Mormando, Franco. 1999. The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of
Be r n a rd i n o’s preaching career finally took off with a
Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy.
successful mission in Milan in 1417. From then until
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
his death, he and his band of disciples and confre re s Origo, Iris. 1962. The World of San Bernardino.NewYork:
c r i s s c rossed northern and central It a l y, preaching to Harcourt Brace.
ever growing masses of people. Bernardino’s reputation Polecritti, Cynthia. 2000. Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy:
wavered temporarily in 1426, when he was summoned Bernardino of Siena and His Audience.Washington, DC:
to Rome to face charges of heresy for his “novel” cult of Catholic University of America Press.
the Holy Name of Jesus. This Roman trial, howe ve r, Russell, Jeffrey Burton. 1972: Witchcraft in the Middle Ages.Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
resulted in the friar’s acquittal and increased his fame.
Be r n a rdino resumed his preaching, writing, and social
and moral activism until 1444 when, worn out by Bérulle, Pierre de (1575–1629)
incessant labors, asceticism, and illness, he died in the A leading figure of the French Catholic revival and a
Kingdom of Naples. Canonization followed, re m a rk- s i g n i ficant theorist of demonic possession, Béru l l e
ably, only six years later. (made a cardinal in 1627) is best known as the founder
Witchcraft and allied topics rank among the most of the Oratorian order.
f requent subjects of Be r n a rd i n o’s vernacular sermons Trained at the Jesuit c o l l è g e ( s e c o n d a ry school) of
(recorded live by scribes) and his manuscript treatises in Clermont and at the Sorbonne, Bérulle worked with
Latin, the so-called sermones latini.Having encountered some of the key spiritual fig u res of his day to imple-
witchcraft or similar diabolical activity in nearly eve ry ment major reforms of Catholic life in Fr a n c e’s so-
place he visited, the friar condemned it as one of those called “c e n t u ry of saints.” Together with Ma d a m e
especially heinous crimes for which God continually Barbe Acarie, he helped establish in 1604 the order of
punishes states and kingdoms. He encouraged his Discalced Carmelites, on the model of St. Te resa of
audiences actively to seek out and destroy its practition- Avila’s Spanish order. In 1611 he founded the Oratory
ers. Among Bernardino’s most important texts relating of Jesus, for the training of priests. Bérulle encountered
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cases of demonic possession several times in his career, often regarded as the result of the sufferer’s sin.
most notably in the controversial 1599 case of Marthe Bérulle argued that the doctrine of Incarnation also
Bro s s i e r, during which he defended Brossier and her d i g n i fied exo rcists. He maintained that the person of
e xo rcists from derision by providing a uniquely clear the exo rcist was in a way an embodiment of the
theological exposition of possession and exorcism. Catholic Church, the Church itself being the mystical
A humanist mystic with a commitment to the body of Christ (as it is sometimes known). The Church
humanity of Jesus, Bérulle wrote his first treatise in p rovided “the living source from which flows fore ve r
1597, the Bref Discours de L’ Abnégation In t é r i e u re ( Br i e f the authority to remedy [possession]” (Bérulle 1599, f.
Discourse on Inner Renunciation). In June 1599, he 5 4 r.). Within this framew o rk, the exo rc i s t’s position
w rote in defense of the demoniac Ma rthe Brossier and a c q u i red a new significance: Christ cast out demons
her exo rcists. Militant Catholics had exo rcised Bro s s i e r from the possessed in his time on earth, and his power
b e f o re Parisian crowds earlier that ye a r, permitting her was passed on to the Church that he both founded and
“d e m o n s” to harangue French Calvinists (Hu g u e n o t s ) . embodied. T h rough the Incarnation, Christ eleva t e d
In a time of religious division, such perf o r m a n c e s humanity to partake of the divine, and his power over
posed a threat to the implementation of He n ry IV’s demons was a signal aspect of his own divinity. It fol-
chief instrument for bringing about religious peace, l ows, Bérulle wrote, that “the illustrious title [of exo r-
the 1598 Edict of Nantes. Royal officials punished and cist], which gives us jurisdiction above demons, is the
humiliated Brossier and her exo rcists, and the Ki n g appanage of our new dignity” (Bérulle 1599, fols.
asked one of his physicians, Michel Ma rescot, to sati- 54r–v). Bérulle then moved to a polemic point about
r i ze the exo rcisms in print. Bérulle responded to the exclusivity of this role. Because the Church is
Ma re s c o t’s jibes in a lively and highly learned defense Christ, Bérulle argued, no authority outside of the
of possession and exo rcism, the twin texts Traicté des Church is appropriate to confront demons. In the high-
energumenes, Suiuy d'vn discours sur la possession ly charged political climate of the Brossier case, with
de Ma rthe Brossier: Contre les Calomnies d'vn Me d e c i n c h u rch and state at loggerheads, Béru l l e’s polemic
de Pa r i s (Treatise of Demoniacs, Fo l l owed by a thrust against the monarchy was clear.
Discourse on the Possession of Ma rthe Bro s s i e r : B é rulle was invo l ved in other similar, though less
Against the Calumnies of a Physician of Paris). By politically sensitive, cases. He was in the company of
defending the Brossier possession in print, Bérulle con- Madame Acarie when a young woman named Ni c o l e
tinued the learned rehabilitation of possession and Ta ve r n i e r, who had ecstasies and made pro p h e c i e s ,
e xo rcism in France that had begun with the 1566 story spontaneously became “c u re d” of her apparent gifts.
of Nicole Ob ry and the “miracle of Laon.” This tre n d B é rulle concluded that Ta vernier's sudden change of
a rose out of the need of militant French Catholics to b e h a v i o r, her becoming “ignorant and idiotic,” meant
find public and spiritual, as well as military, ways to that a demon had deceived her (Ha b e rt 1646, 97).
defeat the Huguenots. To protect himself from the roy- Although Bérulle warned a superior in the Or a t o r i a n s
al displeasure that his friends had endured, Béru l l e against involvement in cases of possession, his support
used the pseudonym “Léon d’ A l e x i s” and had the of the possessed woman Elisabeth de Ranfaing in the
w o rks published in Troyes (his birthplace), without a late 1620s suggests his position relied on case-by - c a s e
royal privilege. judgments, rather than re flecting doubts over time.
B é ru l l e’s Traicté des energumenes was a learned tre a- This mutability was something for which ort h o d ox
tise, but his Discours sur la possession de Marthe Brossier Catholic tradition provided by encouraging a degree of
had a vituperative edge. To g e t h e r, the two works gave skepticism, but always allowing for true signs of God’s
possession and exorcism increased credibility, endowing action.
these largely performance-oriented phenomena with
SARAH FERBER
the authority of a clear, intellectually based theology.
B é rulle worked within a humanist tradition, using See also:bROSSIER,MARTHE;COTON,PIERRE;DISCERNMENTOF
mainly ancient texts to support his views; his originality SPIRITS;DUVAL,ANDRÉ;EXORCISM;OBRY,NICOLE;POSSESSION,
lay in his view that the value of demonic possession and DEMONIC;RANFAING,ELISABETHDE;WARSOFRELIGION
exorcism could be underscored by reference to the doc- (FRANCE).
References and further reading:
trine of the Incarnation. He sees demonic possession as
[Bérulle, Pierre de], Léon d’Alexis. 1599. Traicté des energumenes,
the “shadow and idea of the singular possession which
Suiuy d'vn discours sur la possession de Marthe Brossier: Contre les
God took in our humanity in Jesus Christ: for in one
Calomnies d'vn Medecin de Paris.Troyes.
[case] it is a god, in the other it is a demon, re-clothed
Cruickshank, John. 1994. “The Acarie Circle.”
by human nature” (Bérulle 1599, f. 38v). This argu-
Seventeenth-Century French Studies16: 48–58.
ment paved the way for the increasingly re s p e c t a b l e Dagens, Jean. 1952. Bérulle et les origines de la restauration
place of demonic possession in seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry catholique (1575–1611).Bruges: Brouwer.
French mystical life, lending dignity to a condition Habert, Germain. 1646. La Vie du Cardinal de Berulle instituteur
114 Bérulle, Pierre de |
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et premier Superieur General de la Congregation de l'Oratoire de p l e a s u re in inflicting harm. The means by which
Iesus—Christ nostre Seigneur.Paris: Veuve Jean Camusat and witches are thought to bewitch include sorc e ry — r i t u a l
Pierre le Petit. acts such as incantations, curses, symbolic gestures, use
Thompson, William M., ed. 1989. Bérulle and the French School:
of potent objects, and preparation and administration
Selected Writings.Translated by Lowell M. Glendon; preface by
of potions—and witchcraft—spontaneous acts like
Susan A. Muto. NewYork: Paulist.
t h reats, scowls, and piercing glances, or even malicious
Viller, M., et al. 1937–1995. Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique
thoughts that are harbored but not expre s s e d .
et mystique: doctrine et histoire.Paris: Beauchesne.
Although most of the time acts thought to cause
Bewitchment b ewitchment are ove rtly hostile, in some cases, appar-
Bewitchment is the occult action or power by which a ently friendly gestures are taken to be methods of
person is thought to come under a witch’s malign influ- b ewitchment as we l l .
ence. The process may be thought to involve a deliber- The most common consequence of bewitchment is
ate ritual action or spell, what modern social scientists generally thought to be some physical malady.
generally call sorcery, or a spontaneous act or even just Sometimes the bewitched person has symptoms that
a malicious thought, which they refer to as witchcraft. seem directly related to the incident or suspect, such as
The form or consequence of bewitchment is most often paralysis of an arm the suspect touched or stomach
a physical malady in a person or animal, although infat- cramps after eating the suspect’s food, but such an
uation, despondency, accidents, and bad luck are also association is not necessary. In fact, a wide variety of
often ascribed to bewitchment. The motive may be symptoms are ascribed to bewitchment, and the most
re venge, riva l ry, envy, or arbitrary maliciousness. common characteristic is not their specific nature, but
Potential cures include getting the witch to remove the that they come on unusually suddenly, they linger
spell, countermagic, and punishing the witch, and u n u s u a l l y, or they cannot be explained in any other
many societies that believe in bewitchment have spe- w a y. Ps ychological problems like depression and sui-
cialists or semispecialists who help people identify who cide can also be ascribed to bewitchment, as can other
has bewitched them and cure the bewitchment. Belief personal problems, such as accidents and runs of bad
in bewitchment is widespread, and fear of bewitchment luck, and so can problems with animals such as disease,
was a far more important reason commoners in early a cow’s inability to give milk, or a chicken’s inability to
modern Europe participated in witchcraft trials than lay eggs. Although problems caused by seve re we a t h e r
concern about the Devil. or with processes like churning butter and brew i n g
Modern social scientists most often ascribe the expe- beer can be thought to result from witches’ spells, the
rience of bewitchment to some form of psyc h o l o g i c a l term b e w i t c h m e n tis less likely to be used in these cases,
displacement in which the “bewitched” person ascribes because it has connotations of exe rting a power ove r
his or her own hostility to the witch to shift the burden living things.
of guilt in an interpersonal conflict, to gain some T h e re are a variety of measures available to counter-
a d vantage in a dispute or competition, or simply to act bewitchment. People who suspect they have been
explain the source of some otherwise inexplicable mis- b ewitched may try some remedies on their own, or
f o rtune. A more recent approach, cultural analysis, they may consult a specialist, an “u n w i t c h e r.” On e
attempts to place the idea of bewitchment in the con- type of cure for bewitchment is to get the witch to
text of the culture’s symbol system, seeing it as a way of re m ove it, which can be achieved either by (re ) g a i n i n g
narrating certain events and processes in terms of social the witch’s favor or by threatening the witch with re t-
relationships rather than mechanistic causation. So c i a l ribution. Re versing a spell is one technique offered by
scientists explicitly regard the belief in bewitchment as a unwitchers, who may also re d i rect it some other way,
m i s p e rception caused by some cognitive malfunction, or offer some sort of more passive tre a t m e n t .
while cultural analysts tend to be more agnostic, but it Re versing a spell is one form of punishment, but oth-
is also possible to interpret the concept of bewitchment er forms may also have curative powe r. In tribal soci-
as a recognition of the real potential for disturbed inter- eties, this punishment may be informal violence or a
personal relations to cause or contribute to physiologi- communal decision to drive out or kill the witch,
cal problems and other maladies. while in peasant societies this can also include calling
in the magistrates. Howe ve r, because the early modern
Causes, Consequences, and authorities generally evinced strong interest only
Counteractions when some egregious harm had been suffered, their
Bewitchment is thought to manifest malice. Pe o p l e i n t e rvention was more useful for getting re venge or
who believe in witchcraft attribute various motives to p re venting future attacks than in effecting a cure; call-
witches, most commonly the desire to get re venge, an ing on them was often a sign that more effective coun-
attempt to get an advantage in some competition, t e r m e a s u res had failed.
e n v y, or some unprovoked maliciousness, a perve r s e
Bewitchment 115 |
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Social Structure, Cultural Meaning, craft and magic played an essential role by generating
and Interpersonal Psychophysical the fear that disrupted necessary physiological
Influences p rocesses or set in motion damaging ones. In re c e n t
Since the Enlightenment, educated Westerners have decades, h owe ve r, medical doctors have abandoned
assumed that bewitchment was impossible, so belief in Fre u d i a n-style psychodynamics in favor of the more
it needed to be explained as some sort of psychological straightforward effects of the stress response, the flight-
malfunction. Social scientists have explained it as a way o r - fight reaction in which the body shuts down some
of explaining otherwise inexplicable events or a way of systems and boosts others in preparation for a short ,
displacing social tensions. These lines of reasoning are intense physical exe rtion. These physiological changes
generally combined, so that either an inexplicable event a re useful in coping with a brief physical emergency,
happens and people search for a culprit along social but damaging when prolonged. Bewitchment seems to
fault lines, or else people’s need to assign fault in order be what happens when, during an interpersonal alterca-
to redirect social tensions generated by other, real con- tion, or because of some unstated antipathy, ove rt or
flicts leads them to create a scapegoat for problems with subliminal signaling between people triggers the flight-
real causes that are unknowable and uncontrollable. In or-fight reaction in one, but in the claustrophobic con-
this view, the concept of bewitchment kills two birds text of a small community there can be no quick resolu-
with one stone, giving people the illusion of control tion to the danger signaled. Consequently, the person
over the uncontrollable while justifying the victimiza- remains in the kind of prolonged state of excitation that
tion of social undesirables. becomes damaging to health. Although culturally
A n o t h e r, more recent approach that grows out of determined postures and words certainly play a role in
semiotics and literary theory is to treat witchcraft transmitting hostility and threat, noncultural physio-
beliefs as part of a symbol system in which bew i t c h- logical changes such as constricted pupils, tension in
ment is an element in a culturally structured narrative. the facial muscles, and pallor or ruddiness may be at
In other words, people construct a story of what is hap- least as important in the process. Similarly, no specific
pening to them from the narrative elements supplied by belief in magic or an innate power of hostility is neces-
their culture, and bewitchment is one of the possible s a ry for the stress response to be triggered or main-
stories that can be constructed to explain certain kinds tained, although again, cultural beliefs can contribute
of misfortune. The decision to pick this story rather to the intensity of the reaction and shape the specific
than one of the alternatives, in this interpretation, is symptoms manifested.
determined not by any re f e rence to “actual eve n t s” This approach is not fundamentally incompatible
(with an uncertain original existence and with remem- with the other two, just as they are not fundamentally
b e red details that are subject to constant re c o n s t ru c- incompatible with each other. Social science illuminates
tion), but instead by its psychological, social, and cul- the social situations in which interpersonal conflict cul-
tural meaning. The task of the interpreter is therefore to minating in bewitchment often takes place. Cu l t u r a l
deconstruct the narrative to reveal what its different ele- analysis shows how people conceptualize the pro c e s s ,
ments meant; bewitchment can thus be a way of talking which can amplify, dampen, or channel it into specific
about conflicts in women’s space in one narrative, and a forms. Psychophysiology explains the process by which
metaphor for the adolescent desire to fre eze time to most bewitchments take place, illuminating their inter-
avoid adulthood in another. nal dynamics and showing the boundaries of what can
Although cultural analysts generally claim to be o c c u r. Together these approaches provide a richer and
agnostic on the question of whether bewitchment can more nuanced understanding than any one alone.
actually take place, some take the more radical position
that any concept of a reality beyond peoples’ concepts is EDWARD BEVER
i l l u s o ry, or at least unknowable, making bew i t c h m e n t
See also:CHARMS;COUNTERMAGIC;CURSES;DISEASE;EVILEYE;
no more, as well as no less, real than any other narrative IMAGEMAGIC;IMPOTENCE,SEXUAL;LOVEMAGIC;MALEFICIUM;
device. Even in more moderate cultural analysis, SPELLS;TOUCH,WORDSOF.
bewitchment is implicitly treated as unreal, just as it is References and further reading:
explicitly treated as unreal in social scientific explana- Bever, Edward. 2000. “Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors
tions. An alternative understanding has recently been in Disease.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History.30: 573–590.
proposed that, while still relatively undeveloped, seems Briggs, Robin. 1996. Witches and Neighbors: The Social and
Cultural Context of European Witchcraft.NewYork: Penguin.
w o rth considering. It has long been known that some
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
ailments ascribed to bewitching can be caused by psy-
in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon.
chological processes, that they are examples of what has
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. 1980. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage.
been known as psychosomatic disease. It used to be
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
assumed that psychosomatics worked through some
Gibson, Marion. 2001. “Understanding Witchcraft? Accusers’
complex psychodynamics, in which a belief in witch- Stories in Print in Early Modern England.” Pp. 41–54 in
116 Bewitchment |
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Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in terminology applied to magic practices included casting
Early Modern Culture.Edited by Stuart Clark. NewYork: St. spells
(cho-be-
r,
cha-
b e r), from the He b rew root for
Martin’s. binding (cha- bar); consulting familiar spirits ('ôb, weyid-
Hemsworth, D. H., et al. 1992. “Fear of Humans and Its - -- -
d˘e'o n î); and necromancy (doeˇs el-hamme t î m). In the
Consequences for the Domestic Pig.” Pp. 264–284 in The
First Book of Samuel, divination ( q e s e rn ) is compare d
Inevitable Bond: Examining Scientist–Animal Interactions.Edited
to rebellion (15:23). In Je remiah, the diviners and
by Hank Davis and Dianne Balfour. Cambridge: Cambridge
others are named together with false prophets, to
University Press.
whom one should not listen (27:9). Another form of
Vangelisti, Anita. 1994. “Messages that Hurt.” Pp. 53–82 in The
Dark Side of Interpersonal Communications. Edited byWilliam magic was called whispering (lachaˇs),which means pro-
Cupach and Brian Spitzberg. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. nouncing spells. The term for sorc e ry and witchcraft,
keˇsep,is related to the Assyrian word for witch (kaˇsˇsap).
Bible In the famous magical competition between Moses and
The importance of the Bible for the formation of Aaron and the magicians of the Pharaoh, in which both
witchcraft doctrine in Christian Europe is impossible to sides changed rods into serpents, but the serpents of
overestimate. Moses swallowed those of the Egyptians, the magicians
-
we re called the wise ones (q˘esa m î m ) and sorc e re r s
- -
Hebrew Bible (m˘ekaˇsˇsepîm) (Exod. 7:11). Chartomîm (Exod. 7, 22;
The religion of ancient Israel was exposed to many Dan. 1, 20) was another term used for magicians who
influences of polytheistic religions, especially those of made enchantments.
-
Egypt, Canaan, and Babylonia. Egypt was regarded as Familiar spirits and spirits of the dead (yidd˘e'onî 'ôb)
the country of magicians par excellence. The reception a re named together and associated with necro m a n c y,
of foreign cults and the official syncretism that the because of the belief that the dead had occult powe r s
prophets so energetically denounced in the time of the and comprehensive knowledge. Therefore the spirits of
kings of ancient Israel was a reflection of this cultural the dead are described as whispering and murmuring
influence. An entirely separate aspect of popular reli- ( Isa. 8:19), their voices coming out of the earth (Is a .
gious belief among the peoples of ancient Israel and 29:4; compare 1 Sam. 28:7). In Leviticus we find this
Canaan was their concern over the existence of destruc- prescription: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar
tive demons. Sorcerers and magicians who could con- spirit [‘ob], or that is a wizard [has a yid‘oni], shall sure-
trol these demons were sought after and feared. Biblical ly be put to death: they shall stone them with stones:
books claim that these demons had been heavenly their blood shall be upon them” (20:27). Leviticus also
beings who were overpowered byYHWH, or they con- reported these divine words: “And the soul that turneth
stituted a pantheon of minor gods under YHWH after such as have familiar spirits [’ôbot], and after wiz-
(Ps. 29:1, Ps. 89:6–8). The most common terms for ards [yid‘ônîm], to go a whoring after them, I will even
these creatures are “hairy demons or satyrs” (´se˘ˆirîmand set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from
ˇs˘edîm). Among the names associated with demons are among his people” (20:6). In later times, y i d ‘o n i is no
Azazel, mentioned as part of the ritual in which the longer the spirit itself, but the soothsayer and the magi-
high priest sends a goat into the desert as an expiatory cian. In the Septuagint the term is often translated as
sacrifice (Lev. 16:7–10), and Lilith, associated with è n g a s t r í m y t h o s ( ventriloquist). The term ’ôb suggests a
unclean animals in Isaiah 34:14, who is better known connection (at least as one kind of explanation) with
from later rabbinic literature and is considered a wilder- ’ab(father), which would identify the spirits of the dead
ness-dwelling demon of the night who was a succubus as the spirits of ancestors. The catalogs of pro h i b i t i o n
and a “child-stealing” creature. were probably a reaction to the cult of ancestors, which
Se veral types of magic developed either to prov i d e was seen as inimical to the cult of YHWH.
protection against this world of demons or to seek their The most famous witch in the He b rew Bible, the
assistance. Prohibitions against these forms of magic, witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28), who is never called a
which correspond roughly to black and white magic, “w i t c h” in the Biblical text (“w i t c h” being a later
we re enumerated in several catalogs of vices in the Christian convention) was someone who consulted the
Hebrew Bible (e.g., Deut. 18:10–11; 2 Kings 21:6; Jer. dead, because she had an ’ôb. She puts Saul in contact
27:9). The passage in De u t e ronomy is one of the with the dead Samuel, and in the ritual she sees elohîm
most important; it mentions as practices of the native (literally, “gods”; often translated as “God”). The King
peoples that the people of Israel must not take up mak- James Version of the Bible translated the passage thus:
i n g a son or daughter pass through the fire, practicing “I saw gods ascending out of the eart h” (13). Wo m e n
-
divination ( qˇesa m î m ) , and being an observer of times we re re g a rded as more likely than men to practice
-
(mˇe'ônen, either an astrologer or a diviner who studies s o rc e ry (k eˇs e p). In Exodus, the death penalty is pre-
- - -
patterns in smoke or clouds), an enchanter (mˇenakheˇs), scribed for the female witch (m˘ekaˇsˇsepah) only (22:17
- - -
or a witch (mˇe k aˇsˇsep, f e m i n i n e mˇe k aˇsˇsepa h). Ot h e r in the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint; 22:18 in the
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Latin Vulgate and in the King James version), although Ac c o rding to the Talmud, the religious elite in
t h e re is scholarly debate on this, whereas in Leviticus Biblical times, the prophets, considered magic and
both man and woman are mentioned (St. Je ro m e’s witchcraft incompatible with the belief in YHWH and
Vulgate translated the passage in Exodus using the mas- that belief in magic means denying the power of
culine plural form: Maleficos non patieris vivere(“Thou YHWH and those who serve him (Ba by l o n i a n
shalt not suffer workers of harmful magic to live”). In Talmud Sanhedrin 67 b). Certainly the passage quoted
the Talmud, sorc e ry was attributed to women; the from Exodus above, usually translated “Thou shalt not
Ba bylonian Talmud Sanhedrin (67 a) claimed that suffer a witch to live” (22:17), an extremely important
Exodus 22:17 referred to men too, but that they were text for the persecution of witches in early modern
not mentioned because women we re the main practi- Europe, prescribed the death penalty for witches. They
tioners of sorcery. Only women were mentioned in the we re stoned in ancient Israel, unlike in Assyria, where
practice of making magical wrist ties (Ezek. 13:18). Yet they were burned. An actual persecution of witches was
another kind of magic, the evil eye, did harm. Proverbs mentioned in the First Book of Samuel in connection
contained an admonition not to eat the bread of some- with the witch of Endor. Because Saul had the ’ôbotand
one who had an evil eye (23:6), but in this example the the y i d ‘o n i m d r i ven out, the soothsayer of Endor was
description might simply have meant “e n v i o u s” (com- frightened when the king approached her (the term
- -
pare Ulmer 1994, 3). usually translated “witch” [m˘ekaˇsˇsepah] was not in fact
The crime of sorcery was sometimes enumerated in used in this passage). A post-biblical legend told that
catalogs of other vices. It was, for example, named Simon ben Shetah had eighty witches hanged or cruci-
together with sexual crimes and the oppression of the fied in the second century B.C.E. (Mishnah Sanhedrin
poor. Malachi condemned sorcerers, adulterers, perjur- 6:4); the passage named only women in general, but the
ers, and those who oppressed employees, widow s , implication was that they were witches.
fatherless orphans, and strangers (3:5). Si m i l a r l y, Black magic had to be distinguished from permissi-
Exodus mentions enticing a maid, lying with a beast, ble rituals. Those who merely played tricks to deceive
and sacrifices to other gods together with sorc e ry the eye were not regarded as guilty in Jewish law, or so
(22:16–23). The Mishnah (Sota 9: 23) says that forni- the Mishnah, which dates from approximately 200
cation and sorcery destroy everything, while the Second C . E., in the post-Biblical period, asserted (Sa n h e d r i n
Book of Kings mentions both the whoring and the VII 11). The distinction of black magic (although the
witchcraft of Jezebel, mother of Joram (9:22). Su c h rabbis never used this term) from miracles, which were
examples suggest that witchcraft was perceived in con- p e rformed by a genuine prophet, was also import a n t .
nection with deviant behavior. Miracles we re sometimes re g a rded as ambiva l e n t
It is also striking that sorc e ry and divination we re because of their relation to magic; when Elijah asked
very important in foreign policy: Sorcerers and diviners God for a miracle (1 Kings 18:37), later interpre t e r s
traditionally lived at courts in the ancient Near East. In claimed that Elijah had asked God that the miracle not
Egypt, this kind of specialist often practiced sorcery and be re g a rded as witchcraft (BT Berakhot 6 b). Si m o n
cursing against the enemy in wartime. This explains b a r - Yohai, a great rabbi and Talmudic sage in the sec-
why the prophet Isaiah (3:2) announced that the Lord ond century C.E., opposed witchcraft, but he was a
would take eve rything vital away from Je ru s a l e m — miracle worker, who could change men into a heap of
b read, water, warrior, judge, prophet, the old—and bones simply by looking at them (the evil eye; BT
- -
included its diviner ( q o s e m )and conjurer (n˘ebon lacha s) , Shabbat 33 b). When the fir s t - c e n t u ry B . C . E. R a b b i
and why King Manasseh was blamed for his political Honi Ha - Me ‘aggel wrought a rain miracle, the sage
magic (2 Chron. 33:6; 2 Kings 21:6), or why Jeremiah Simon ben Shetah said to him: “if you were not Honni,
associated false prophets, diviners, dre a m e r s , I would ban [excommunicate] you” (Mishnah, Ta‘anyot
enchanters, and sorcerers with a concrete foreign policy, 3:4). Because rabbis performed magical rituals, some of
speaking of them as assuring their king that his them were said to practice witchcraft. They could force
kingdom would not be subjected to Ba bylon (27:9). witches to undo the evil they had caused. Amulets—
On the contrary, Jeremiah’s political prophecy said that f requently using the tetragrammaton, the name of
it was Go d’s will that the Jews should become Go d — we re often employed against black magic and
Ne b u c h a d rez z a r’s subjects. In the Book of Na h u m , demons by rabbis from antiquity to modern times.
Nineveh, the Assyrian capital city, was referred to as the Thus rabbis, after the He b rew Bible was codified, no
well-favored harlot and mistress of witchcraft, who sold doubt integrated into Judaism some practices they con-
nations through her whoredom and families thro u g h s i d e red superstitious because they could not pre ve n t
her witchcraft (3:4). Overall, the political function of them.
witchcraft seems to have been much more important in If Jewish magic had been generally under control in
Biblical times than in the early modern European witch biblical times, it became stronger in the He l l e n i s t i c
hunts. period and even more so in late antiquity, so that Jews
118 Bible |
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were regarded as the people of sorcerers par excellence the New Testament was the ability to send and drive
(Trachtenberg 1939). Many Greek magical papyri con- out ( è k b á l l e i n ) evil spirits. The belief was widespre a d
tained Jewish elements. In the time of Jesus, Jews knew that eve ry heavy blow of fate, eve ry disease, was either
and developed the demonology of the He b rew Bi b l e . caused by a demon or sent by a god. The deaf and
Their demons, led by Asmodeus and Lilith, dwelled in dumb we re also thought to be bound by a demon
places of impurity, in the air, the desert, or in ru i n s . ( Ma rk 7:35). The d e fix i o,a magical rite often used in
They worked mainly at night. They we re Sa t a n’s ser- those days, was a spell written on lead tables and
vants, but God gave them their powe r. In Ju b i l e e s, an s h a rds, intended to deliver someone to evil spirits. On e
apocryphal book of the second century B.C.E., diseases of its aims was to cause love or hatred (the so-called
we re attributed to demons (10:10–14). Their human d i v i d e r s ) .
allies were less important than the demons themselves. The focus of the authors of the NewTestament was
Josephus, the Jewish general and historian of the fir s t not on the people who sent these spirits, but on the
century C.E., recorded that King Solomon was regard- spirits themselves and those obsessed by them. Je s u s
ed as a great magician, to whom God taught the art of himself appeared as a great exo rcist. The extent of his
banishing evil demons for the protection of humanity; fame in this respect can be seen in the fact that his dis-
Solomon composed formulas for conjurations to drive ciples tried to forbid a man to exorcise in Jesus’s name,
out such spirits. Josephus reported an exorcism he had but Jesus did not allow them to do this (Mark 9:38 ff.;
o b s e rved himself, in which the spirit was drawn fro m Luke 9:49 f). After Jesus’ death, some wandering Jews,
the nose of an obsessed person with the help of a root sons of a high priest, exorcised in the name of Jesus, but
suggested by Solomon; in order to prove that it had left the demon overpowered them (Acts 19:13–16). Jesus’s
the person, the spirit had to ove rt h row a water basin enemies saw him as a magus who drove out devils with
(Josephus, Jewish Antiquities8:45, p. 594). The Talmud the help of Beelzebub, or who had an evil spirit (Mark
and many other Jewish works are full of magical prac- 3:22; Matt. 10:25; Matt. 9:34; John 8:48). Jesus’s sigh-
tices that rabbis used as white magic. Later, the ing in Ma rk 7:34 might refer to the notion that the
Kabbalah became the main domain of Jewish magic. obsessed, tormented by a demon, used to sigh, which
can also be found in the Pa pyri graecae magicae
New Testament (Preisendanz and Henrichs 1973–1974, I:118 –27). In
In the New Testament, witches are not mentioned in a famous exorcism, Jesus did not order the demons he
discussions of magic, and women had no special place was casting out of a man to enter into swine, but when
in its conception of magic, as they did in later times. they begged him, he allowed them to do so (Ma rk
New Testament terms for magician include mágos 5:13). It may well have been that active sending would
-
(Acts), góes (2 Tim. 3:13) and pharmakeús or phar- h a ve suggested black magic. It was common to send
makós.In Revelation, this last term was connected with spirits into a person in his food; thus Mo rton Sm i t h
dogs, whoremongers, murderers, idolaters, and liars (1978, 110) interpreted Jesus’s giving of bread to Judas
(22:15; compare Gal. 5:20). The magi originated in during the last meal before the Cru c i fixion (Jo h n
Medea; they interpreted dreams and omens and sold 13:26–27) as a magical act designed to bring about
-
amulets. Goeteía, also mentioned by Plato, was con- p o ssession by a spirit. When Jesus made a fig tree with-
nected with sophists, and pharmakeúsprobably referred er (Ma rk 11:12–14 and 20–22), the words he speaks
to a shamanist rite (Symposium 202 e; Smith 1978, c o r respond to spells in Greek papyri. The instru c t i o n
-
70). The góes was the practitioner of a lower form of he gave to his disciples about how to curse a town that
magic than the mágos.In Josephus, he was a cheat who did not make them welcome (Luke 10:10–12) also
promised, for example, to divide the Jordan River, c o r responded with then-current magical practices. In
defeat the Romans, or overthrow the walls of Jerusalem his healing, Jesus used only prayer, the word, laying his
(War2:261 ff.; Antiquitiesvol. 20, 97, 167 ff., 188; vol. hands on a person, or saliva. If Jesus was said to be the
9, p. 440 ff., p. 478 ff., p. 490). The three magi who re s u r rected John the Baptist (Ma rk 6, 14–15), this
came to Bethlehem to see the child were viewed as pos- probably means that he was regarded as a necromancer
itive characters, probably astrologers. who worked through John’s soul.
Magical rites we re ve ry common in the time of the The disciples also exo rcised and healed ill people,
New Testament. A practice associated with witchcraft using the oil often mentioned in magical texts (Mark 6,
was the evil eye. The author of the Gospel of Ma rk 12–13). They also fasted before performing exorcisms.
-
mentioned ò p h t a l m ó s p o ne r ó s (evil eye) in association Ac c o rding to Jewish tradition, Jesus learned his magic
with thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lascivi- arts in Egypt. His miraculous healings have been com-
ousness, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness (7:22). T h e p a red to those of the first century C . E. Py t h a g o re a n
apostle Paul uses the term f a s c i n a t i o n in the Epistle to miracle worker Apollonius of Tyana, who similarly
the Galatians: “Who has bewitched you?” (3:1). (T h e d rove out evil spirits and appeared to his followers as
verb is b a s k a í n e i n ; Latin f a s c i n a re .) Most important in a divine man, but to his opponents as a charlatan
Bible 119 |
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( Smith 1978). Ac c o rding to Smith, Ma t t h ew and Lu k e Aune, David E. 1980: “Magic in Early Christianity.” Aufstieg und
tried to tone down the magical elements found in Ma rk . Niedergang derrömischen Welt II Princeipat, vol. 23/2:
It would certainly be wrong, howe ve r, to re d u c e 1507–1557.
Bar-Ilan, Meir. 1998. “Sorceresses.” Pp. 114–131 in Some Jewish
Jesus to the role of magician: Other scholars (e.g.,
Women in Antiquity.Atlanta: Scholars.
Ga r rett 1989) have rejected Sm i t h’s interpretation of
Betz, Hans Dieter. 1997. “Jewish Magic in the Greek Magical
Jesus entirely; David Aune (1980, 1539) asserted that
Papyri.” Pp. 45–63 inEnvisioning Magic.Edited by Peter
Je s u s’s magical activities should be subsumed under his
Schäfer and Hans G. Kippenberg. Leiden: Brill.
role of messianic prophet. As Samson Ei t rem pointed
Blau, Ludwig. 1987: Das jüdische Zauberwesen.1898. Reprint,
out, Jesus worked less through charms than thro u g h Dreieich: Hesse and Becker.
p r a ye r, nor was he a thaumaturge with magical training Davies, T.Witton. 1898. Magic, Divination and Demonology
(1966, 40). Among the Hebrews and Their Neighbours.London. Clarke.
We can conclude from the great number of magical Eitrem, Samson. 1966. SomeNotes on the Demonology in the New
deeds associated with early Christians that human Testament.2d ed. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
beings we re thought to be the cause of evil, but neve r- Garrett, Susan R. 1989. “Light on a Dark Subject and Vice Versa:
Magic and Magicians in the NewTestament.” Pp. 142–165 in
theless healing practices concentrated on the demons
Religion, Science, and Magic: In Concert and in Conflict. Edited
t h e m s e l ves, rather than on persecuting those who had
by Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil
sent them. St. Paul also worked as an exo rcist (Ac t s
McCracken Flesher. NewYork: Oxford University Press.
16:16–17). When he preached in Ephesus, many who
Hengel, Martin. 1984. Rabbinische Legende und frühpharisäische
had formerly practiced magic conve rted. T h e y
Geschichte. Schimon b. Schetach und die achtzig Hexen von
b rought their magic books, worth 50,000 pieces of sil- Askalon.Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der
ve r, and burned them in public (Acts 19:19). T h e re Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, 2. Heidelberg: Winter.
was one famous case of Paul himself practicing harm- Hillel, Yaakov. 1990. Faith and Folly: The Occult from a Torah
ful magic: addressing him as a child of the Devil, he Perspective.Spring Valley, NY: Feldheim.
i n flicted blindness on the m á g o s Bar Jesus (El y m a s ) , Jeffers, Ann. 1996. Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and
who wanted to turn the proconsul away fro m Syria.Leiden and NewYork: Brill.
Josephus. 1961. The Jewish War,vol. 2. Edited by H. St. J.
Christianity (Acts 13:6 ff.). Paul addressed Bar Jesus as
Thackeray. London: Heinemann (The Loeb Classical Library).
the De v i l’s child. Pa u l’s “blackest kind of magic”
———. 1965–1966. Jewish Antiquities,vols. 2 and 9. Edited by
( Smith 1978, 110) was to give over some people to
Louis H. Feldman. London: Heinemann (The Loeb Classical
Satan (“for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit
Library).
may be save d”; 1 Cor. 5:5; also 1 Tim. 1:19 ff. ) .
Preisendanz, Karl, and Albert Henrichs, eds. 1973–1974. Papyri
Simon Magus wanted to purchase their magical powe r Graecae Magicae. Die griechischen Zauberpapyri.2 vols. 2d ed.
f rom the apostles, and Peter cursed him for this (Ac t s Stuttgart: Teubner.
8:9 ff. and 18 ff.). Obv i o u s l y, magic was not unusual Smith, Morton. 1978. Jesus the Magician.San Francisco: Harper
among Christians, in a world where inimical gro u p s and Row.
often re p roached each other with performing black Toorn, Karel van der, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst,
magic. T h e re we re even Christian charms asking for eds. 1999. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible.2d ed.
Leiden and Boston: Brill; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
re venge (Preisendanz and Henrichs 1973–1974,
Trachtenberg, Joshua. 1939. Jewish Magic and Superstition:A
2:224). All this illustrates that the New Testament was
Study in Folk Religion. NewYork: Behrman’s.
written in a magical context transmitted from Jew i s h
Ulmer, Rivka. 1994. The Evil Eye in the Bible and in Rabbinic
s o u rces and enlarged by Hellenistic influences. T h e s e
Literature.Hoboken, NJ: KTAV.
d e velopments proved to be ve ry influential. In the late
m e d i e val and early modern periods, both the He b rew
Bible and the New Testament we re interpreted literal- Bibliomancy
ly and so offered strong arguments for the existence of The art of divination using the Bible or another
demons and witches and for the execution of the lat- s a c red text is a subcategory of stichomancy, the art of
t e r. Enlightened opponents of persecutions we re con- seeking spiritual guidance through the written word ,
f ronted with the biblical texts. and was sometimes used to identify witches. In bib-
l i o m a n c y, passages found when the Scriptures are
RAINER WALZ
opened at random are believed to offer advice, dis-
See also:ANGELS;DEFIXIONES;DEMONS;DEVIL;DIVINATION;
close the future, or answer questions. T h rough such
ENDOR,WITCHOF;EVILEYE;EXODUS22:18 (22:17); GREEK blind biblical selection, people have found re l e va n t
MAGICALPAPYRI;JESUS;JEWS,WITCHCRAFT,ANDMAGIC;KABBAL-
a n s wers to personal and societal problems; many
AH;LILITH;MIRACLES;MOSES;NECROMANCY;SIMONMAGUS;
b e l i e ve bibliomancy demonstrates the power of holy
SORCERY;SUPERSTITION.
t e x t s .
References and further reading:
Ankarloo, Bengt, and Stuart Clark, eds. 2001. Witchcraft and Similar divinatory practices have never been con-
Magic in Europe: Biblical and Pagan Societies.London: Athlone. fined to Christians. Ancient Chinese culture used the I
120 Bibliomancy |
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Ching (The Book of Changes); Muslims opened the in the nineteenth century. A key was put in the Bible.
Quran for divinatory purposes; ancient Greeks used Pieces of paper containing the names of the accused
Homer’sIliad or Odyssey, Romans opened the Sibylline we re inserted in the hollow end of the key. When the
books or Vi r g i l’s works. In Christianity, the Bi b l e paper with the name of the guilty person was inserted,
became the only book used for divinatory purposes. the Bible fell from the grasp of the person holding it. A
Medieval Christians denounced divination with pagan slight variant used for tracing a thief is to tie up the holy
books, but neve rtheless sought answers for their ques- book and suspend it from a string. The key within the
tions from the Bible, even willfully altering the mean- Bible is believed to point out the thief. By yet another
ing of the Biblical texts encountered, if necessary. method, when the Bible is attached to a piece of string
Bibliomancy played a major role among clergy and affixed to the ceiling, and all names of the people living
laymen alike in early medieval times. This type of div- in a household are spoken aloud, the culprit’s name is
ination, known in Latin as so rt e s . was common in the supposed to make the book turn. In German lands,
Middle Ages. An elaborate example of a s o rt i l e g i u m people tried to learn the names of the witches who
(sorcery), the Sortes Sangalleses (sixth or seventh centu- jinxed the cows by means of the turning book.
ry), used a succession of dice throws to lead the inquir-
CHRISTA TUCZAY
er through the texts. Christian authorities like
Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great opposed this See also:BIBLE;DIVINATION;ORACLES.
superstition, and numerous Church synods denounced References and further reading:
Bolt, Carol. 2000. The Literary Book of Answers.NewYork:
and prohibited s o rt i l e g i u m f rom the fifth century
Hyperion.
o n w a rds. Charlemagne decisively forbade it in his
Burnett, Charles. 1996. Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages.
capitulary ofMarch 789. But church and state authori-
Aldershot, UK: Variorum.
ties fought in vain against this widespread and popular
Flint, Valerie I.J. 1992. The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval
method of divination.
Europe.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Folk belief could not be broken by force. Be rt h o l d Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1989. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
von Regensburg, a famous thirteenth-century German Witchcraft.NewYork and Oxford: Facts on File.
p re a c h e r, attacked bibliomancy (also called thumbing) Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic.New
in his sermons. But Christians would never abandon York: Scribner’s Sons.
the method; even St. Francis allegedly founded his Thorndike, Lynn. 1923–1958. A History of Magic and
order only after consulting the Bible three times in this Experimental Science.8 vols. NewYork: Columbia University
Press.
m a n n e r. The Bible itself was looked upon as a magic
object, and when put on a child’s head, would bring
about sleep. Reading the Bible to a pregnant woman Bilson Boy
would guarantee a safe delive ry. In England, persons In 1620, a twelve-year-old boy named William Perry, of
accused of witchcraft we re weighed against the gre a t Bilson (now Bilston), Staffordshire, accused a female
Bible in church; anyone who weighed more than the neighbor, “Jone Coxe,” of having bewitched him. Perry
Bible was guilty. suffered from what were later called extraordinary fits
Even nowadays the custom still exists of opening the and spasms, his urine appeared black, and he vomited
Bible at random on New Ye a r’s morning to learn the straw, feathers, rags and crooked pins—a sure sign of
general topic of guidance for the coming year.Web sites witchcraft. Coxe was accused of sending a spirit into his
on the Internet provide bibliomantic readings and a body to punish him for not having returned her greet-
LiteraryBook of Answers to meet the needs of inquirers. ings one day. She apparently had a poor reputation in
On all occasions of importance one can ask God for the neighborhood, was considered to have a testy tem-
guidance, such as before a journey or an import a n t per, and was already suspected of being a witch.
business meeting, on a church holiday, or after a chris- Coxe’s subsequent trial at the Staffordshire Assizes in
tening to learn the future of the new Christian. Biblical August 1620 would have proceeded with ve ry little
oracles have been used to foretell death, interpre t notice had it not been for the interest King James I had
dreams, or determine guilt; bibliomancy has been espe- taken in a witchcraft trial conducted at Leicester four
cially popular during wars. years earlier. Nine women we re hanged on that occa-
Among several known methods of bibliomancy, the sion, primarily on the testimony of John Smith, a boy
t h u m b, the pin, and the key seem the most common. about Pe r ry’s age. Sh o rtly after, James had personally
By the first method, the reader opens the Bible at ran- c ross-examined Smith and denounced him as a liar,
dom, and the verse the thumb points at will serve as an declaring that a terrible miscarriage of justice had
a n s we r. People who we re fond of precision chose the o c c u r red. It was undoubtedly an awareness of roy a l
pin instead of the thumb and pierced through seve r a l interest in such cases that led the assize judges, Sir Peter
pages. The very verse finally hit by the pin foretold the Wa r b e rton and Sir John Davies, to examine Pe r ry’s
future. The key method was still used in Great Britain testimony with particular care. The trial began in
Bilson Boy 121 |
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dramatic fashion, with Perry falling into violent fits as References and further reading:
soon as Coxe entered the courtroom. There are, howev- [Baddeley, Richard]. 1622. The Boy of Bilson: or a true Discovery of
er, two contradictory versions of the court’s verdict on the late notorious Impostures of certaine Romish Priests in their
pretended Exorcisme, or Expulsion of the Divell out of a young
the evidence they saw and heard. According to Richard
Boy, named William Perry.London: F.K. for W. Barret.
Ba d d e l e y’s 1622 account of the trial, Pe r ry was found
The Second Part of the Boy of Bilson, or a true relation of the impos-
an unreliable witness and the case against Coxe was dis-
tor, Susannah Fowles.1698. London: Whitlock.
missed, but later accounts (Wilson 1653; Second Part of
Summers, Montague. 1927. The Geography of Witchcraft.London:
the Boy of Bilson1698) stated that she was found guilty
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
and sentenced to death, though she was later acquitted Wilson, Arthur. 1653. The History of Great Britain, being the life
following subsequent revelations. and reign of King James the First.London: printed for R.
After the trial Perry was committed to the care of the Lownds.
bishop of Lichfield and Cove n t ry, Thomas Mo rt o n
Binsfeld, Peter (1546–1598)
(1564–1659). Perry was brought to the bishop’s home,
Eccleshall Castle, where he continued his pantomime, Peter Binfeld was suffragan bishop of Trier and a demo-
patently enjoying the attention and sympathy his nologist. Born at Binsfeld near Bitburg, young Binsfeld
supposed bewitchment generated. Mo rton and his attracted the attention of Hi m m e rod Cisterc i a n
s e c re t a ry Richard Baddeley repeatedly questioned the monastery in the Trier region. The Cistercians accepted
boy and applied a series of tests. On various occasions him as a pupil, even though he came from an insignifi-
Perry was given six lashes with a rod, had needles thrust cant peasant family. From 1570 to 1576, Binsfeld stud-
into his toes and fingers, and burning candles thrust so ied theology and philosophy at the Jesuit Collegium
near his eyes that they singed his eyelids. Perry seemed Germanicum in Rome, where he was consecrated priest
i n s e n s i t i ve to such pain, which further bolstered the and received a doctorate in theology. He became an
claim that he was truly possessed. But despite Pe r ry’s ardent promoter of the Tridentine reforms. When
impressive display of resilience and cunning, his decep- Binsfeld returned to the Trier region, Archbishop Jakob
tions were ultimately revealed in two crucial ways. First, III of Trier entrusted his protégé with the reform of
one day, when Pe r ry thought eve ryone had gone to Prüm Abbey, where he stayed until 1578. In 1578,
c h u rch, a servant who was employed to watch him Binsfeld was appointed provost of St. Simeon convent
t h rough a spy hole saw him pour some ink into his in Trier and nominated as suffragan to the archbishop
chamber pot and place a piece of ink-soaked cotton of Trier. He received the prebend of Wasserbillig. In
under his foreskin. Second, he failed a standard theo- 1580, the Vatican confirmed Binsfeld as suffragan and
logical test for diabolic possession, by responding incor- made him vicar-general of the archdioceses of Trier.
rectly when passages of the Bible we re read out in Fu rt h e r, he held office as vice-chancellor of Tr i e r
ancient languages. University in 1580, and as dean in 1582–1583 and
C o n f ronted with his imposture, Pe r ry finally con- 1587–1588. Binsfeld’s personal letters reveal not only
fessed. He stated that an old peddler of pots and glasses genuine zeal for orthodoxy but also dissatisfaction with
whom he had met on the road one day had coached his own achievements and world-weariness. He died in
him. Seduced by the prospect of not having to go to Trier during an epidemic in 1598.
school, he began to simulate the behavior as instructed.
His parents, who we re Roman Catholics, we re then Demonology
persuaded to employ several recusant priests to exorcise In 1589, Binsfeld published in Trier the Tractatus de
the boy. Morton interpreted these events as a propagan- confessionibus malefic o rum et sagaru m (Treatise on
da ploy by the Catholic community in the region to Confessions of Sorcerers and Witches). Archbishop
p romote the benefits of their Church. If such a plan Johann VII had sought the advice of theologians at his
really existed, it backfired; Perry refused to be success- university about the problem of the reliability of witch-
fully exo rcised. He enjoyed the attention too much, es’ denunciations; Binsfeld probably wrote his book to
and his parents apparently received much-needed char- answer his patron’s question. It has two parts: The first
ity because of his predicament. On July 26, 1621, Perry discussed the preconditions, possibilities, and limits of
revealed all this before the assizes at Stafford. He begged witchcraft; the second dealt with procedural problems
C oxe’s forgiveness and was pardoned by the court . in witchcraft trials.
Bishop Mo rton subsequently had Pe r ry bound out as The first part opened with fourteen p ra e l u d i a ( p re-
an apprentice. liminary thoughts) in which Binsfeld repeated the fun-
damentals of demonology: Witchcraft included here s y
OWEN DAVIES and harm done to innocents; therefore it was subject to
both ecclesiastical and secular courts. He intro d u c e d
See also:BEWITCHMENT;CHILDREN;ENGLAND;EXPERIMENTSAND
TESTS;JAMESVIANDI,KINGOFSCOTLANDANDENGLAND; the idea of Go d’s permission and the doctrine of
POSSESSION,DEMONIC. implicit and explicit diabolical pacts. T h roughout his
122 Binsfeld, Peter |
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Anonymous frontispiece from the 1591 German edition of demonologist Peter Binsfeld’s Tractatus de Confessionibus Maleficorum et Sagarum
(Treatise on Confessions of Sorcerers and Witches),1589. The drawing buttresses Bishop Binsfeld’s severe attitudes toward witches and
witchcraft. Two witches fly on a goat and stick to the Sabbat, where another witch pays homage to the Devil, another causes a hailstorm, and one
places a baby in a cauldron to cook. (Cornell University Library)
book, Binsfeld used both ideas extensively to bolster his their help, had to suffer the death penalty. Binsfeld re j e c t-
arguments. Bi n s f e l d’s Devil was incredibly powe rf u l : ed confiscations, howe ve r, and criticized judicial irre g u-
All magic was by definition demonic; in other word s , larities that left defendants or their heirs penniless.
all magic was witchcraft. Every effect with no obvious In the book’s second part, Binsfeld first discussed the
natural cause was likely to be caused by witchcraft, question of whether the denunciations of accomplices
especially if the use of signs or letters was involved. The by convicted witches we re reliable. It was the duty of
De v i l’s power to deceive the senses knew hardly any judges to question witches concerning their accom-
limits; even to pious Christians, he could appear in the plices. Witchcraft was a crimen exceptum (the excepted
shape of Jesus himself. crime), a crime so serious and extremely hard to prove
After the praeludia Binsfeld treated the causae, “pre- that it was excepted from the usual legal pro c e d u re s .
conditions,” of witchcraft: the sinful weaknesses of Binsfeld there f o re admitted children as witnesses—he
individuals who fell prey to Satan’s temptations, as well was among the first to deal with this specific problem.
as the shortcomings of church and state. Binsfeld open- He also stated that an inquisition might begin after a
ly criticized the secular authorities’ apparent negligence person had been denounced as an accomplice by only
in persecuting witches as well as the ineptitude of one convicted witch. If there were additional presump-
priests and their sometimes unort h o d ox practices, tions of any kind against a suspect, Binsfeld even stated
regarded from his Tridentine point of view. that one denunciation sufficed for torture; two denun-
At the end of the book’s first part, Binsfeld described ciations justified the use of torture even without further
the abilities of witches and devils. Ma l e fic i u m ( h a r m f u l evidence. Although Binsfeld warned that the De v i l
magic), sexual intercourse between humans and demons, could appear in any shape he chose, and therefore that
and the bodily flight of the witches we re all real; the people re p o rtedly seen at a Sabbat might have been
Canon Ep i s c o p i was irre l e vant. (Ac c o rding to Bi n s f e l d , demons in their shapes, he argued that the persons
that work did not deal with the witches of his own day denounced must be witches because demons could only
but with some other here s y.) For Binsfeld, the witchcraft assume the appearance of persons who have given them
trials themselves proved that the flight and the Sa b b a t permission to do so. Binsfeld’s argument was based on
really took place. Witches, as well as those who sought the axiom that God would never allow innocents to fall
Binsfeld, Peter 123 |
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victim to witchcraft trials. Suspects we re not to be interweaving canonical and secular laws and promoting
tricked into confessing, and penitent witches might disciplinary measures. His handbook for priests, the
receive the sacraments. Enchiridion theologiae pastoralis et doctrinae neccessariae
Binsfeld’s book provided a theoretical basis and prac- s a c e rd o t i b u s ( Handbook of Pastoral Theology and
tical guidelines for witch hunts. Short, erudite, and well Doctrine Necessary for Priests, 1591) dealt with the
argued, it was reprinted in 1591, 1596, 1605, and theology of the sacraments, sins, the De c a l o g u e ,
1623; German versions appeared in Trier, 1590, and in Church organization, and ecclesiastical law, as well as
Munich, 1591 and 1592. In later editions, Bi n s f e l d disciplinary measures and irregularities that prevented
added various materials, mostly examples. In 1591, he individuals from taking holy orders. His stress on disci-
also appended a commentary about magicians in gener- pline is obvious; christology and ecclesiology were
al. After repeating his essential condemnation of all neglected. His discussion of the First Commandment
magic as satanic, Binsfeld examines the magical realm, contained a lengthy and furious attack on magic and
using the Codex Iustinianus (the Justinian Code, as the superstition reminiscent of Binsfeld’s appendix to his
great collection of Roman law done under the aegis of book on witchcraft. In his Commentarius theologicus et
the sixth century C . E. Roman emperor Justinian was iuridicus in titulum iuris canonici de usuris(Theological
called) as his guide. Mathematics and astronomy were and Legal Commentary on Canon Law Regarding
legitimate but we re not to be abused for divination, Usury, 1593), Binsfeld reviewed moral teachings as well
which was vain and demonic. Alchemy was not per se as canonical and secular laws against usury, discussing
magical but was highly questionable in both moral and profits and fair trade in general as well as the rules of
intellectual terms. Love magic was a capital crime. All international trade. Binsfeld allowed Jews to take mod-
countermagic was forbidden. erate interest, as long as the state as a whole benefited
Binsfeld also added more details about procedures at from it. His dogmatic Liber receptarum in theologia sen-
witchcraft trials. Even though he criticized negligent or tentiarum et conclusionum (Book of Sentences and
overeager magistrates, his trust in torture and denunci- Conclusions Accepted in Theology, 1593) dealt with
ations remained unshakable. He rejected ordeals, and the lost state of innocence, original sin and the perpet-
held that the De v i l’s mark, deformity, or inability to uation of sin, grace and free will, and justification and
shed tears should not be used as evidence. However, he merits, as well as with the fate of the soul after death.
accepted as evidence not only extrajudicial confessions Binsfeld discussed the canonical and secular laws con-
and all indicia(circumstantial evidence) of witchcraft in cerning numerous kinds of injuries, damage, and resti-
the imperial law code known as the Carolina Code tution in the Commentarius in titulum iuris canonici de
(Constitutio Criminalis Carolina,1532), but also swear- iniuriis et damno dato (Commentary on Canon Law
ing, superstition, failure to defend oneself against accu- Regarding Violations and Damage, 1597). Two of
sations, and the suspect’s apparent fear of arrest and Binsfeld’s works were printed posthumously by his Trier
condemnation. He added an appendix listing va r i o u s publisher, Heinrich Bock: Commentarius in titulum
ecclesiastical laws against magic. iuris canonici de simonia (Commentary on Canon Law
In 1592, the theologian Cornelius Loos contradicted Regarding Simony, 1604) and Tractatus de tentationibus
Binsfeld’s book with the treatise De vera et falsa magia et earum remediis (Treatise on Temptations and Their
( On True and False Magic), in which he depicted Remedies, 1611). The last work reintroduced the Devil
witches as victims of dreams and illusions. Bi n s f e l d as an omnipresent seducer who could corrupt anything
became the driving force behind the ecclesiastical mea- that was seemingly good and attacked all the senses and
sures taken against Loos. His book was prevented from functions of the mind.
being published. Loos was arrested and had to re vo k e
his theses in the presence of Binsfeld and the papal nun- JOHANNES DILLINGER
cio Octavio Frangipani. With Binsfeld’s victory over his See also:BAVARIA,DUCHYOF;CANONEPISCOPI;CAROLINACODE;
antagonist, opposition in German Catholic theology CHILDREN;CRIMENEXCEPTUM;DEMONS;DEVIL’SMARK;FLIGHT
against witchcraft persecutions was silenced until the OFWITCHES;GERMANY,SOUTHEASTERN;LOOS,CORNELIUS;
time of Adam Tanner in the early seventeenth century. MALEFICIUM;PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;SEXUALACTIVITY,DIABOLIC;
Although Binsfeld failed to influence the secular legisla- TANNER,ADAM;TEARS;TRIER,ELECTORATEOF.
tion against magic in the electorate of Trier, he had con- References and further reading:
Binsfeld, Petrus. 2004: Tractat von Bekanntnuss der Zauberer vnnd
siderable influence in Bavaria.
Hexen.Edited by Hiram Kuemper.Vienna: Mille Tre.
Dillinger, Johannes. 1999. “Böse Leute.” Hexenverfolgungen in
Other Writings
Schwäbisch-Österreich und Kurtrier im Vergleich.Trier: Spee.
Even though magic and witchcraft played almost no
Eerden, P. C. van der. 1995. “Der Teufelspakt bei Petrus Binsfeld
role in Binsfeld’s numerous later publications, his book
und Cornelius Loos.” Pp. 51–71 in Hexenglaube und
on witchcraft was in harmony with the rest of his work. Hexenprozesse im Raum Rhein-Mosel-Saar.Edited by Gunther
His whole oeuvre centered on sin and discipline, Franz and Franz Irsigler.Trier: Spee.
124 Binsfeld, Peter |
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Scholer, Othon. 1998. “‘O Kehricht des Aberglaubens, o leerer ing collaboration between aristocratic courtiers and the
Wahn der Täuschung und Gespenster der Nacht!’ Der Angriff baroque Parisian descendants of those medieval clerical
des Cornelius Loos auf Petrus Binsfeld.” Pp. 255–276 in necromancers, a few of whom, like the abbé Guibourg,
Methoden und Konzepte der historischen Hexenforschung.Edited
offered numerous titillating confessions about their sac-
by Gunther Franz and Franz Irsigler.Trier: Spee.
rilegious Masses. Spurious accusations abounded and
Seibrich, Wolfgang. 1998. Die Weihbischöfe des Bistums Trier .
e ven reached King Louis XIV’s mistress, Madame de
Trier: Paulinus.
Montespan, falsely denounced for attending Bl a c k
Black Mass Masses where newborn babies were sacrificed.
Although this phrase has often been used extremely Although the Black Mass that ordained priests per-
loosely to cover a multitude of bizarre rituals, in strict- formed had a history until the time of Louis XIV, it had
ly technical terms a Black Mass is a sacrilegious imita- no future in the de-Christianizing Western world of the
tion of a real Mass for purposes of illicit magic often in eighteenth century and beyond. Once blasphemy lost
the service of witchcraft, performed by a properly its power to shock and neither church nor state pun-
ordained Catholic priest, preferably wearing clerical ished people for it, perve rted religious rituals became
dress. Because only authorized priests can celebrate the banal. The Black Masses Sir Francis Dashwood, Jo h n
Eucharistic miracle of a genuine Mass, only they can Wilkes, and other members of the Hell-Fire Club per-
perform an “authentic” Black Mass. Supposedly, the formed in Medmenham Abbey in England in the eigh-
Catholic Mass is said backwards, urine replaces holy teenth century aroused little public concern. The noto-
water and water the wine, the cross is set upside down rious Montague Summers (who claimed to be a
or trampled (or both), and noxious material or perhaps Catholic priest, although no re c o rd of his ord i n a t i o n
a black turnip or boot substitutes for the Host. Rarely survives) performed probably the closest approach to a
is there any historical evidence that such actions actual- Black Mass in the twentieth century in 1916. Ma n y
ly occurred in western Europe. such ceremonies were performed later in the century by
Se veral partial approximations of the Black Ma s s another quasi-celebrity, Anton LeVe y, founder of the
o c c u r red in Latin Christendom after the deve l o p m e n t C h u rch of Satan, whose works (still in print) include
of an “underworld of clerical necromancers” in the later directions for performing them; unlike Summers, how-
Middle Ages (Kieckhefer 1989; 1997, chap. 7). Despite e ve r, LeVey never claimed to have been ord a i n e d
the abundance of lurid tales about witches’ Sa b b a t s , ( Medway 2001, 380–388). The difference betwe e n
however, no surviving medieval document has yet been these examples suggests that, to a greater degree than
found that offers directions for performing a sacrile- Summers, LeVey inhabited a world where the Catholic
gious Mass for magical purposes. By the sixteenth cen- priesthood had been marginalized. In a world where
tury, fragmentary evidence about Black Masses, in the Satan has been thoroughly trivialized, Black Ma s s e s
form of corroborated testimony from defendants seem utterly irre l e vant. Meanwhile, jaded sensation-
obtained without tort u re, occurred in re c o rds of the seekers discussing animal and ru m o red human sacri-
Spanish and Roman Inquisitions. The most spectacular fices and arguing about the reality of Satanic ritual child
earlier examples of Black Masses we re usually per- abuse in the contemporary Western world abusive l y
formed in order to find buried tre a s u re. In 1586, the multiply this phrase to mask the absence of the thing
Sicilian Inquisition punished two priests and two stu- itself.
dents for conjuring the Devil by performing Masses in
WILLIAM MONTER
a cave, using three skulls and nine candles; on one occa-
sion the priestly ringleader sacrificed a live dog, letting See also:AFFAIROFTHEPOISONS;SATANISM.
the blood drip into a burning dish while he recited a References and further reading:
Latin prayer to Lucifer.The group had also sacrificed a Henningsen, Gustav, and Jaime Contreras. 1986. “Forty-Four
goat, and on a third occasion two acolytes committed Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition.” Pp. 100–129 in
sodomy while a priest said mass, because, they said, The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and
Methods.Edited by Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi. De
“this sin was necessary in order to effect the invocation”
Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
( Henningsen and Contreras 1986, 103–104). In this
Kieckhefer, Richard. 1989. Magic in the Middle Ages.Cambridge:
instance, three defendants were sent to the galleys.
Cambridge University Press.
The Black Mass reached its most famous and fully
———. 1997. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the
developed form during the tumultuous scandal known
Fifteenth Century.Stroud, UK: Sutton.
as the Affair of the Poisons that took place in Fr a n c e Medway, Gareth. 2001. Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History
from 1679 to 1682, during which accusations of witch- of Satanism. NewYork: NewYork University Press.
craft and the holding of Black Masses swirled aro u n d
charges of poisoning and love magic. The largest docu- Blackstone, William (1723–1780)
m e n t a ry collection of evidence about Black Ma s s e s The leading English jurist of his age, Sir Wi l l i a m
comes from the special court and the police investigat- Blackstone expressed a belief in the reality of witchcraft
Blackstone, William 125 |
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while at the same time criticizing witchcraft trials. He the British parliament had repealed the act of 1604,
was the first professor of English law at the Un i versity of thereby putting an end to all executions for this “dubi-
O x f o rd, serving in that capacity from 1758 until 1766, o u s” crime. In taking this step, he observed that
and owed his fame mainly to his lectures on English law, Parliament had followed the wise example of Louis
Commentaries on the Laws of En g l a n d ,published in four XIV, whose edict of 1682 ended most witchcraft prose-
volumes between 1765 and 1769. The final vo l u m e cutions in France. The British statute of 1736 provided
deals with crimes. Unlike offenses that violated the support for Blackstone’s argument that English law had
rights or possessions of individuals, crimes we re “p u b l i c undergone a considerable number of “improve m e n t s”
w ro n g s” committed against the entire community. over the course of the centuries (Blackstone 1979, 429).
Blackstone divided crimes into different categories, the
BRIAN P. LEVACK
first of which he labeled “offences against God and re l i-
gion.” Within this category, which included apostasy, See also:DECLINEOFTHEWITCHHUNTS;ENGLAND;
h e re s y, and blasphemy, he listed “witchcraft, conjura- ENLIGHTENMENT;LAWSONWITCHCRAFT(EARLYMODERN);
tion, inchantment or sorc e ry” (Blackstone 1979, 4:60).
LAWYERS;SKEPTICISM.
References and further reading:
Like many eighteenth-century jurists and theolo-
Blackstone, William. 1979. Of Public Wrongs.Vol. 4 of
gians, Blackstone admitted a belief in the reality of
Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First
witchcraft, grounding his belief in the Bible. “To deny
Edition of 1765–1769.Introduction byThomas A. Green.
the possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft or
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
sorcery,” wrote Blackstone, “is at once flatly to contra- Bostridge, Ian. 1997. Witchcraft and Its Transformations,
dict the revealed word of God, in various passages both c.1650–c.1750.Oxford: Clarendon.
of the Old and New Te s t a m e n t” (Blackstone 1979, Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat. 1989. The Spirit of the Laws.
4:60). He cited the famous passage from Exo d u s , Edited and translated by Anne M. Cohler et al. Cambridge:
22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” as the Cambridge University Press.
“express law of God.” He also observed that Roman law
endorsed this condemnation, punishing with death not Blåkulla
only witches but those who had consulted them. Blåkulla is the mythical site of the witches’ Sabbat in
English laws had restated these Biblical and Ro m a n Sweden. The literal translation of the name is Blue (Blå,
condemnations, linking the crime with that of heresy. which in earlier times meant black) Mountain (Kulle).
Even though Blackstone believed in the reality of “The distant blue mountains” have traditionally been
witchcraft, he did not approve of witchcraft trials. In referred to as the home of trolls. Tales of Blåkulla and
this regard he took the same position as the eighteenth- what took place there combined elements from many
century French jurist and philosopheMontesquieu, who different sources. Nevertheless, the original material for
in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) demanded great cau- the tales has a common basis in Scandinavia. Most of
tion in the prosecution of magic and here s y, because the testimony about Blåkulla derived from witchcraft
even the most moral persons were vulnerable to suspi- trials, especially the infamous trials in Sweden from
cion on these grounds (Montesquieu 1989, 192). 1668–1676 that involved several thousand people,
Blackstone claimed that the “ridiculous stories” told mostly children or adolescents. Ever since, the abduc-
about witches and the “many impostures and delu- tion of children to Blåkulla has been a recurring theme
s i o n s” invo l ved in accusations of witchcraft would be in Swedish tales of the witches’ Sabbat.
sufficient to demolish all faith in such a dubious crime The name Blåkulla appeared first in a story of a mir-
if the evidence of its reality we re not also extre m e l y acle from 1410. The story related that a ship bound
s t rong (Blackstone 1979, 4:60). He agreed with the f rom Lübeck to Stockholm found itself in distress in
argument of Joseph Addison in The Sp e c t a t o r in 1711 the straits between Öland and the Swedish mainland
that, although there was such a thing as witchcraft, one (Kalmarsund), but was saved near a place called
cannot place credence in any particular modern Blåkulla. This place, associated with dramatic eve n t s ,
instance of it. Addison observed that it was the ignorant was no doubt the island known as Ju n gf run. In the
and credulous who often believed in these stories and mid-sixteenth century, Olaus Magnus, the last Catholic
that those accused of witchcraft we re often people of bishop of Sweden, re f e r red to it as the place where
weak understanding and crazed imagination. witches gathered to practice their magical arts. T h e re
Blackstone clearly disapproved of English statutes were references to Blåkulla elsewhere as a place name. A
against the crime of witchcraft. On the basis of these c h u rch mural from the late fifteenth century depicts
acts, which he claimed were a source of terror to all old witches flying to the Devil on a rake, a broomstick, and
women in the kingdom, “many poor wretches we re a baker’s shovel. From the end of the sixteenth century,
s a c r i ficed there by to the prejudice of their neighbors, Blåkulla was expressly mentioned in witchcraft trials, but
and their own illusions” (Blackstone 1979, 4:61). the Blåkulla re f e r red to in the major seve n t e e n t h-c e n t u ry
Blackstone expressed considerable relief that in 1736 witchcraft trials was no longer the island in Kalmarsund.
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Either the witches’ Sabbat took place locally, or people References and further reading:
believed Blåkulla to lie in some distant mythical land- Ankarloo, Bengt. 1984. Trolldomsprocesserna i Sverige.2d ed.
scape to the northwest. Stockholm: Institutet för rättshistorisk forskning. Summary in
English.
The Blåkulla story is a variation of the depictions of
Lagerlöf-Génetay, Birgitta. 1990. De svenska häxprocessernas
the witches’ Sabbat from other parts of Europe. Trying
utbrottsskede 1668–1671:Bakgrund i Övre Dalarna. Social och
to isolate aspects of these stories that are originally
ecklesiastik kontext.Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell
Swedish from those originating elsew h e re is almost
International. Summary in English.
impossible, as is trying to trace the time of their adop-
Mitchell, Stephen. 1997. “Blåkulla and Its Antecedents:
tion in Sweden. The provincial law of V ä s t e r g ö t l a n d Transvection and Conventicles in Nordic Witchcraft.”
from the thirteenth century mentioned women who, in Alvíssmál7: 81–100.
the shape of trolls, made nocturnal flights. We s t e r n Sörlin, Per. 1997. “The Blåkulla Story: Absurdity and Rationality.”
Scandinavian fif t e e n t h - c e n t u ry sagas described people Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore53: 131–152.
flying to gatherings. A notable difference between these Tegler, Kristina. 1997. “Till Blåkulla med kropp och själ:
sources and fourteenth-century manuscripts is that the Schamanistiska föreställningar i svenska trolldomsprocesser.”
Pp. 47–74 in Vägen till Blåkulla: Nya perspektiv på de stora
later tales and sagas tended to depict flying as a means
svenska häxprocesserna.Edited by Linda Oja. Uppsala:
of gathering information or attacking fiends. However,
Department of History, Uppsala University. Summary in
there is insufficient evidence to indicate an independent
English.
development of a uniquely Nordic witches’ Sabbat.
Wall, Jan-Inge. 1989. Hon var en gång tagen under jorden...:
Swedish folklore had a mystic belief that people
Visionsdikt och sjukdomsbot i gotländska trolldomsprocesser.
could be carried off or spirited away to a distant place Uppsala: Institute of Dialect and Folklore Research. Summary
or a nether region inhabited by trolls. People could even in English.
turn into trolls, either during their lives or after their
deaths. The idea of witches’ abduction of children bears Blood
a resemblance to the belief that trolls sometimes In all pre-Christian Western religions, blood was
e xchanged their own children for human children as extremely important as an offering to the gods. And
changelings. Tales of this type were then combined with long after Christianization, blood remained a central
stories of here s y, consorting with the Devil, and the component in all kinds of magic, as it was and is in
witches’ Sabbat. In addition to this link between folk- most non-European cultures. Ancient Jewish, classical,
l o re and the witches’ Sabbat, there is a further aspect Celtic, and Teutonic peoples sacrificed hecatombs of
w o rth considering, namely the connection betwe e n animals and men because the supernatural beings
tales of Blåkulla and medieval visionary tales, with craved blood. For example, in about 1230, Snorri
descriptions of hell that are clearly reminiscent of the Sturluson described the heathen Drontheim sacrifices
descriptions of Blåkulla. as follows: “To this festival, all the farmers brought cat-
This varied background helps to explain the marked tle and horses, slaughtered them and collected their
contrasts in the descriptions of Blåkulla during the blood in vessels. Staves were made, like sprinkling
w a ve of persecution in the seventeenth century. On e bushes, with which the whole of the altars and the tem-
can discern a transition from an initial, relatively bright ple walls, both outside and inside, were sprinkled over,
stage in the Sabbat stories to one that is far darker and and also the people” (Sturluson 1968, 94). Official
more depressing. Some children gave seductively beau- Christianity condemned this use of blood along with
tiful descriptions of Blåkulla as a means of explaining other forms of heathen survivals; it possessed its own,
h ow they we re tricked. When they we re interro g a t e d more spiritualized blood cult in the form of the tran-
about witches’ activities, howe ve r, a less agreeable pic- substantiation of wine into Jesus’s blood during the
ture emerged. Thus Blåkulla could be both a beautiful Mass and in the veneration of many miraculous relics of
place and an evil one where the witches gorged them- the Holy Blood. The life-bearing power of blood is,
selves, fought, danced backwards, and fornicated under however, so obvious that its application for magical
the table in the banqueting hall. This contrast was rein- purposes was often spontaneously reinvented. This
forced when Blåkulla took on its true character of dark- happened in orthodox Christian surroundings, as, for
ness, after the children had confessed in court. The chil- example, at Crossen (near Frankfurt an der Oder) in
d ren perc e i ved the agonies of the damned in He l l , 1481, when the sacristy was saved from fire by slaugh-
whose strangled voices could be heard from the boiling tering a calf and pouring its blood onto the flames. But
cauldrons. one cannot deny a possible continuation with some
local pre-Christian fire magic.
PER SÖRLIN Ge n e r a l l y, blood has been seen as having power to
heal as well as destroy, but also has become itself an
See also:ANGELS;BENEVENTO,WALNUTTREEOF;CHILDREN;
FOLKLORE;HELL;MAGNUS,OLAUS;MORAWITCHES;SABBAT; object of magical manipulations. Among its positive
SWEDEN;WITCHFINDERS. uses, a widespread half-medical, half-magical tradition
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stemming from antiquity claimed that leprosy could be (1660–1727) dipped her quill in her own blood, run-
cured with the blood of innocent children. The twelfth- ning from the letters IHS (an abbreviation for Je s u s ,
c e n t u ry tale of Ami and Amile, found in many Latin taken from initials of corresponding Greek words) that
and vernacular versions, narrated that after one of these she had engraved into her bosom, thereby making her-
two close friends became a leper, the other helped him self the spouse of Jesus.
by sacrificing his sons and washing him with their Since the twelfth century, a recurring accusation,
blood. Ac c o rding to another medieval legend, lasting into the twentieth century in Eu rope, charged
Alexander the Great was healed by bathing in his chil- Jews with killing Christian children in order to perform
d re n’s blood; the plot of Ha rtmann von Au e’s famous superstitious rites with their blood. But the “blood
s t o ry Der arme He i n r i c h ( Poor He n ry, ca. 1215) was libel” could also work in reverse. In 1784, two women
also based on this assumption. The high esteem for the were executed at Hamburg, accused of killing a Jew in
blood of executed criminals suggests that, later on, the order to use his blood in their sorceries. Late medieval
magical side of the concept of blood began to prevail. witches were thought to have a predilection for sucking
Black magic had always found many uses for blood. blood from small children, making the witch into a
Ne c romancers employed it in order to summon the kind of vampire. This stereotype became so strong that
dead from the other world. The master narrative is e ven Joan of Arc was condemned as a sorc e ress who
Lu c a n’s Ph a r s a l i a , book six, in which the witch thirsted for human blood. Of course, blood became an
Erichtho re v i ved a soldier’s corpse by cutting into its essential ingredient in many unguents and philtres. In
b reast, draining the contents of its veins, and pouring 1428, Matteuccia di Francesco, the witch of To d i ,
in warm menstrual blood mixed with the most extrava- confessed to mixing the blood of children and owls in
gant poisons. Thereupon his cold body quickened and the potion she used to fly to the walnut tree at
began to pro p h e s y. Later, Is i d o re of Seville, He i n r i c h Be n e ve n t o. Even worse, sorc e resses also abused Je s u s’s
K r a m e r, in the Malleus Ma l e fic a rum (The Hammer of blood. Ac c o rding to the celebrated Austrian pre a c h e r
Witches, 1486), and many other authorities mentioned Abraham a Sancta Clara, witches pressed stolen hosts
the use of blood as a sign of superstitious necromancers until they issued blood, then used the blood to raise
and hyd romancers, who usually re q u i red it as an thunderstorms. On the other hand, one part of the
offering for blood-loving demons. Magical handbooks witch test consisted in pricking the body of the witch in
like the Clavicula Salomonis ( Key of Solomon, which o rder to see whether the wound would shed blood. If
dates from antiquity) prescribed using the blood of a this happened, the witch could do no more harm, and
black cock to inscribe on virgin parchment the symbols the blood worked as a remedy against bewitchment.
n e c e s s a ry to conjure ghosts. Ac c o rding to the court From Biblical prescriptions of ritual purity and from
physician and university professor Arnold of Villanova ancient medicine, a firm belief in the special danger of
(ca. 1300), inscriptions written in bat’s blood under a menstrual blood had developed. It was not only a topic
man’s bed could make him impotent, but sprinkling the for learned treatises like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
walls with some blood from a black dog would provide von Ne t t e s h e i m’s De occulta philosophia ( On Oc c u l t
an antidote. Ph i l o s o p h y, 1531, I, chap. 42), but also permeated
The witch’s pact with the Devil was supposedly popular belief. Women used this blood’s toxic pro p e r-
written or subscribed with blood. Similar sanguine ties, as we learn from a French royal pardon of 1382,
pacts we re already mentioned in French and Ge r m a n given to a wife who had tried to harm her husband by
t h i rt e e n t h-c e n t u ry versions of the legend of having him drink water into which a sorc e ress had
Theophilus. Go e t h e’s famous scene in Fa u s t ( t a k e n boiled her bloodstained shirt. More often, women used
from earlier versions of this legend) cannot be dismissed their menstrual blood as a love potion. Already forbid-
as poetical invention. Se veral sources offer rich details den a millennium ago in such early penitentials as
about such blood pacts, including the famous confes- Burchard of Worms’Corrector (1015), this practice was
sion of Magdalena de Cruce [1487–1560], the “devilish mentioned again and again until the twentieth century.
a b b e s s” of Cord ova), or the even more famous 1634 If used corre c t l y, howe ve r, menstrual blood also had
affair of Loudun, where no fewer than three offic i a l c u r a t i ve pro p e rties, as Agrippa von Nettesheim wro t e .
copies of Urbain Gr a n d i e r’s pact with Asmodeus (two The ambivalent character of this fluid, both benevolent
in Latin, one in French) are contained among the pre- and destructive, seems obvious.
s e rved evidence, although the bloody originals we re Finally, magical spells to stop bleeding were extreme-
taken to hell. Mo re bureaucratic Austrian and ly frequent in folk medicine, frequently combined with
Hungarian devils commanded their adepts to write the paradigmatic evocation of Jesus’s redeeming blood.
their names with bloody characters in a black book. In A typical formula, using a No rwegian source fro m
a pious re versal of this rite, extremely devout baro q u e 1777, runs: “Stand blood, stop blood, like Jesus Christ
Catholics practiced self-dedications to the Virgin, writ- stood in Hell. And the three names of God the Father,
ten in blood; the famous mystic Ve ronica Gi u l i a n i God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
128 Blood |
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Sometimes such spells had to be written in blood. A late Life and Works
medieval German example, which could be multiplied, Bodin was born in Angers, in midwestern France, in
went: “If a woman’s menstruation lasts too long, she 1529 or 1530. He pursued his legal training in
should write this name with blood: ‘on: on: on: inclitus Toulouse during the 1550s. While there, Bodin wrote a
milus’. This works.” book on educational methods, insisting on using
French instead of Latin as the language of instruction.
PETER DINZELBACHER
After leaving Toulouse, Bodin moved to Paris in 1562
See also: AGRIPPAVONNETTESHEIM,HEINRICHCORNELIUS;BEN- to become a public attorney, an avocat,at the Parlement
EVENTO,WALNUTTREEOF;BURCHARDOFWORMS;FAUST, of Paris, a sovereign judicial court, with jurisdiction
JOHANNGEORG;JOANOFARC;LOUDUNNUNS;NECROMANCY; over approximately one-half of France. T h e re he
PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;RITUALMURDER;THEOPHILUS;TODI,
became involved in court intrigues at a time when
WITCHOF;VAMPIRE.
France’s Valois dynasty was torn by armed conflicts
References and further reading:
between the Catholic and Protestant fractions of the
Camporesi, Piero. 1995. Juice of Life. The Symbolic and Magical
French nobility. Bodin tried to find a solution to this
Significance of Blood.NewYork: Continuum.
bitter conflict between the Huguenots and the
Ebermann, Oskar. 1903. Blut- und Wundersegen in ihrer
Entwicklung dargestellt.Berlin: Mayer and Müller. Catholics in his writings.
Fauré, Marcel, ed. 1999. Le Sang au Moyen Age.Actes du qua- Like most of Europe, France also experienced sharp
trième colloque international Montpellier, Université inflation along with its religious wars in the second half
Paul-Valéry (27–29 November 1997). Montpellier: Association of the sixteenth century. In 1568, Bodin explained this
C.R.I.S.I.M.A., Université Paul-Valéry. mysterious rise in prices by showing a connection
Flint, Valerie I. J. 1991. The Rise of Magic in Medieval Europe. b e t ween imported precious metals and inflation, thus
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
launching a quantitative financial theory based upon
Kieckhefer, Richard. 1989. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge:
political economics. At about the same time, Bodin also
Cambridge University Press.
published a Method for the Easy Understanding of
Schiffner,Th. 1923. Blutzauber und anderes.2d ed. Leipzig:
Hi s t o ry, which sharply diverged from contemporary
Altmann.
opinions. Bodin’s view emphasized the necessity of a
Schulz, Monika. 2002. Beschwörungen im Mittelalter.Heidelberg:
C. Winter. comparative approach to historical studies and stressed
Stemplinger et al. 1927. “Blut [etc.].” Pp. 1434–1463 in the decisive impact of such factors as climate, topogra-
Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens,vol. 1. Edited by phy, and geography upon human behavior.
Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli. Berlin: de Gruyter. What has been hailed as Bodin’s most import a n t
Strack, Hermann Leberecht. 1971. The Jew and Human Sacrifice: work was published in 1576. His République, called in
Human Blood and Jewish Ritual, an Historical and Sociological EnglishSix Books of a Commonwealth,offered an analy-
Inquiry.Translated from the 8th ed. By Henry Blanchamp.
sis of political power in which the term sovereignty had
NewYork: B. Blom.
central importance. Bodin tried to justify the need for a
Sturluson, Snorri. 1968. Saga of King Hakon the Good.Translated
s t rong French monarc h y, and his views on power and
by S. Laing. Heimskringla 2. London: Dent.
g overnment provided ideological foundations for later
Bodin, Jean (1529/1530–1596) autocratic growth. The remedy for domestic chaos was
Author of an extremely important and blood-curd l i n g a strong central government that combined the exercise
book on the evil nature of witches, Bodin’s De la démono- of power with the establishment of religious fre e d o m .
manie des sorc i e r s ( On the De m o n - Mania of Wi t c h e s , Bodin’s private religious views, developed in a dialogue
1580) became a textbook for Eu ro p e’s legal pro f e s s i o n , that remained unpublished until the nineteenth centu-
p robably cited even more often than the Ma l l e u s ry, were amazing in this age and have led some modern
Ma l e fic a ru m (The Hammer of Witches, 1486) for judi- scholars to consider him as secretly Jewish. T h e
cial practice in witchcraft trials. It was printed in twe n t y - monarch, according to these writings, should acknowl-
t h ree editions, including translations into Ge r m a n , edge all religious denominations.
Italian, and Latin, and the time of its popularity coincid- Bodin died from the plague in June 1596 at Laon, a
ed with the worst persecution of witches in Eu ro p e . n o rthern French town where he had served as roy a l
One of the greatest thinkers in sixteenth-century prosecutor (procureur du roi)since 1587.
France, Bodin was highly controversial in his lifetime,
and his posthumous reputation remains somew h a t The Démonomanie
dubious. He is regarded as a pioneer in education, eco- Despite his exceptionally wide-ranging originality and
nomics, history, politics, and natural philosophy. humanitarianism, the same man wrote his second most
Because the theology of his posthumous He p t a m e ro n popular book in order to attack witches and demons.
d i s p l a yed unprecedented tolerance and obvious ecu- His teachings on these subjects have bewildered his
menical traits, scholars have depicted Bodin as a admirers for over 400 years. Many of them have tried to
humane intellectual giant. avoid discussing the book.
Bodin, Jean 129 |
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Because it struck at God, nature, and the social nal French jurists, such as Nicolas Rémy, Henri Boguet,
order, according to Bodin, witchcraft was the worst of and Pierre de Lancre, imitated Bodin.
all possible crimes. His main objective was to teach his The notion of witches as an organized sect conspir-
f e l l ow members of the legal profession how to fig h t ing against church and state challenged both types of
such crimes effective l y. But before Bodin could pro- a u t h o r i t y. The depiction of an organized, separatist,
claim sorc e ry as an “e xceptional crime” (crimen exc e p- and satanic threat was central to Bodin’s demonological
tum),the handling of which prosecutors could suspend manual. When viewed in relation to his theory of sover-
o rd i n a ry rules of pro c e d u re, he first had to prove that eignty, which was meant to secure political conformity,
witches and demons really existed. He tried to make a sect that aimed to encompass social disintegration had
demonology into a precise science. In a didactic man- to be resisted by all means. Witches’ Sabbats turned the
ner, and with considerable intellectual arrogance, Bodin world upside down; they were construed as subverting
accused those who doubted the existence of witches of all positive norms in politics, economics, and religion.
being atheists: such people we re part of the same dia- B o d i n’s cumulative description of the Sabbats made
bolical network as other sorcerers and should be burned them sound similar to the growing peasant re volts in
at the stake along with them. France at the end of the sixteenth century. The witch
B o d i n’s proofs for the existence of pacts with the could be used—and was used—as a personification of
Devil, the witches’ Sabbat, and maleficent sorc e ry began re volt and divergent behavior. The belief that witches
with his own experiences. Oc c a s i o n a l l y, he had sat in we re all agents of the Devil occurred simultaneously
c o u rt and listened to the stories the accused witches had with the implementation of an ideology based upon a
told. Their stories we re based upon confessions that paternal and central monarchy. Because of state consol-
we re not extracted by tort u re. Next, Bodin mentioned a idation, Bodin believed it necessary to prosecute those
large number of reliable officials from all across Fr a n c e who impelled the breakup of the state by diabolical
who had told him frightful stories about the dangero u s means. In other words, the ideological and divine legit-
s p read of sorc e ry. Then Bodin wrote of what he had imacy of state building rested on the existence of witch-
found in the writings of his Eu ropean predecessors con- craft. A powe rful monarch, anointed by Go d’s grace,
cerning blasphemous witch Sabbats. His information became the metaphoric archenemy of Satan. Thus there
f rom northern Eu rope about sorc e ry and Sabbats was in was an obvious inner connection between Bodin’s polit-
complete accordance with similar stories fro m ical interpretation of the 1570s onward and his theories
Mediterranean countries. To Bodin this proved that sor- on demonology from the 1580s, and the same was true
c e ry was a pan-Eu ropean conspiracy against God and of his religious tracts of the 1590s. In fact, one of
the public. To further convince his skeptics, Bodin Bodin’s major points was to show that all religious per-
could prove that the existence of witches and demons suasions had something in common: the need to wage
had thorough documentation in both the Scriptures and war on sorcery.
the works of the Ch u rch Fathers. His extensive use of Although Bodin’s R é p u b l i q u e was blatantly misogy-
biblical exegesis added weight to his arguments. nistic, his evidence for witchcraft came more often from
Nearly any means could legitimately be used when men than from women. French courts prosecuted more
p rosecuting crimes related to witchcraft and sorc e ry. men than women for witchcraft when the
Bodin, who had been educated in law, developed what Démonomanie was most popular. He can at least be
we re known as “e xc e p t i o n a l” means by which to conduct exonerated from the charge that he attacked witchcraft
legal proceedings in sorc e ry cases. Prosecutors could use simply because of his hostility to women. It can also be
s u rveillance, lies, provocation, or evidence from convict- said as some palliation of his cruel demonology that at
ed criminals—all of which we re normally prohibited in least he failed to influence the Pa rl e m e n t of Paris, his
criminal cases. It was permissible to use the whole line of original audience; the p a rl e m e n t n e ver viewed witch-
p s ychological and physical tort u re as well. Anesthetic craft as an exceptional crime.
m a rks left by the Devil could be found by poking needles The genre called political demonology saw a clear
into a suspect’s body. Other circumstantial evidence link between the body politic and the evil doings of
s h owed that it was difficult for witches to shed tears dur- demons. To this genre, witchcraft constantly invo k e d
ing interrogation; the Devil could tie witches’ tongues fears about destructive forces within the society, which
and thus pre vent them from crying or confessing. t h reatened the safe integration of the body politic.
The pro c e d u res Bodin advocated became common Bodin’s teachings on sorcery can best be described as an
in several European countries during the 1600s. Bodin e x t reme variant on the political demonology in which
cannot be blamed for the thousands of witches who he seemed to lack the criteria for separating the tru t h
we re burned at the stake in Eu rope in the years when from deception in his methodology.
his D é m o n o m a n i e was so widely read and cited.
RUNE HAGEN;
Nonetheless, he published his arguments at the right
time and apparently fulfilled an urgent need; less origi- TRANSLATED BY MARK LEDINGHAM
130 Bodin, Jean |
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See also:BOGUET,HENRI;DEMONOLOGY;DEVIL’SMARK;FRANCE; edly housed and hid, which re vealed the state of her
LANCRE,PIERREDE;PARLEMENTOFPARIS;REBELS;RÉMY, soul and “p rove d” claims about the evil of which she
NICOLAS;SABBAT;TEARS;WARSOFRELIGION(FRANCE); WEYER, stood accused. The witch’s body was thought to be
JOHANN.
physically distinctive because of her perc e i ved inability
References and further reading:
to display normal reactions and imagined capacity to
Blair, Ann. 1997. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and
be transformed and transported in ways ord i n a ry peo-
Renaissance Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
ple could not.
Bodin, Jean. 1580. De la Démonomaniedes sorciers.Paris: Du
The so-called De v i l’s mark was a bodily index of
Puys.
———. 1955. Six Books of the Commonwealth.1576. Abridged witchcraft separating the legal treatment of witches
and translated by M. J. Tooley. Oxford: Blackwell. from that of other criminals or heretics. This scratch or
———. 1966. Method for the Easy Comprehension of History. mark on the witch’s body had supposedly been made by
1566. Translated by Beatrice Reynolds. NewYork: Octagon. the Devil as a token of ownership, and was held to be
———. 1975. Colloquium of the Seven About Secrets of the i n s e n s i t i ve. The De v i l’s mark betokened re n u n c i a t i o n
Sublime. 1593. Edited and translated by Marion Leathers of the witch’s will; it was inscribed when one gave one’s
Daniels Kuntz. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
soul to the Devil, providing a “t e x t” that was the
———. 1995. On the Demon-Mania of Witches. Edited and trans-
functional equivalent of a written pact. Demonic pacts
lated by Randy A. Scott and Jonathan L. Pearl. Toronto: Centre
signed by witches in their own blood were seen similar-
for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.
ly as embodiments of the will. An English variant of the
———. 1997. Response to the Paradoxes of Malestroit.Translated
De v i l’s mark was the witch’s mark, the hidden teat,
and edited by HenryTudor and R. W. Dyson. Bristol, UK:
Thoemmes. re p o rtedly used for suckling of the witch’s familiar.
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft (The Jacobean play The Witch of Ed m o n t o n , a d a p t e d
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
May-Tasch, Peter Cornelius. 2000. Jean Bodin: Eine Einführung in
sein Leben, sein Werk und seine Wirkung.Bonn: Parerga.
Pearl, Jonathan L. 1999. The Crime of Crimes. Demonology and
Politics in France, 1560–1620.Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press.
Rose, Paul L. 1980. Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral
and Religious Universe of a Judaiser.Geneva: Droz.
Soman, Alfred. 1992. Sorcellerie et justice criminelle (16e–18e siè-
cles).Hampshire: Variorum.
Zarka, Yves Charles, ed. 1996.Jean Bodin. Nature, histoire, droit et
politique.Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Body of the Witch
A source of fascination to many people in the early
modern period, the bodies of witches, above all female
witches—their form, responses, and capacities—pro-
vided proof in the eyes of many that witches were trai-
tors to Christian society.
The modern image of the witch—a hunched, wrin-
kled old woman, with a hooked nose sprouting a
w a rt — d e r i ved from both “n o n fic t i o n a l” and art i s t i c
re p resentations in the period of witch hunting. T h i s
s t e reotype, even narrower than the artistic images of
the early modern era, draws attention to the re d u c t i ve
p e rception that physiognomy betrays a person’s moral
state. For early modern people, imagining visible and
tangible differences between a witch’s body and those
of other people was partly a response to the worst fears
of witchcraft, connected to its secre c y. Fear of the hid-
den nature of witchcraft is a functional reason why the
bodies of female witches preoccupied those who
sought to condemn them: The features and capacities
Al b recht Düre r’s engraving Four Naked Wo m e n ,or The Fo u r
of the witch’s body in captivity would display for them
Witches (1497), depicts women who, while not as erotic as subsequent
what otherwise remained hidden. A female witch was witches are port ra yes in early modern art, still convey the sexuality of the
convicted partly on the basis of what her body suppos- De v i l’s servants and their porn o g raphic appeal. (SEF/Art Re s o u rc e )
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f rom the story of Elizabeth Sa w ye r, a convicted witch “a n t i - m o t h e r” (Pu rkiss 1996, 100) re a p p e a red in her
who in 1621 confessed to suckling a familiar in the use of food as a form of seduction.
form of a dog, dwells suggestively on the presence of a The fact that witches we re stereotypically women
teat.) Ro u t i n e l y, witches we re stripped, shaved, and re i n f o rced conventional beliefs and prejudices about
searched all over for marks, including—and sometimes female anatomy in general. In Christian tradition,
especially—in their mouths, genitals, and anal are a . w o m e n’s bodies we re twice defective: physically,
They were also pricked once marks were discovered, to because made from Ad a m’s rib, and morally, because
test for insensitivity. Eve’s appetite, understood literally, dictated her moral
While searches for the De v i l’s mark and the use of choice. Humoral medicine argued that melancholy,
pricking tests have been legitimately described as which probably affected both genders in equal num-
forms of tort u re, official tort u re was used during trials bers, made women more susceptible to the blandish-
“so that the witch’s integral, diabolic personality might ments of the Devil.
be stripped away by the application of pain to uncov- In this context, it is also important to recall that
er the tru t h” (Roper 1994, 203). To rt u re was suppos- some supposedly natural attributes and stereotypes of
edly not employed as a form of punishment, but to female witches, and indeed of all women, equally
make the accused confess to disavowing Christian s e rved skeptical arguments against witchcraft and the
baptism, and to succumbing, body and soul, to the reality of witches’ confessions. In this light, the female
Devil. Some works of demonology warned that witch- body was still condemned, even when seen as the re a-
es might resist tort u re; and the ve ry hiddenness and son she was n o t a witch. For example, Johann We ye r
heinousness of their crime justified for officials the use suggested that frailty made women susceptible to dia-
of harsher tort u re than for other crimes. Mo re ove r, bolical delusions, and made them confess things of
judges, who believed that many witches could not or which they we re incapable. The skeptical Re g i n a l d
would not cry in their presence, feared that witches Scot re g i s t e red something close to disgust at those
might use magic to immunize themselves against the humble female bodies, so unsuitable for the sublime
pain of tort u re . enterprise of flight. “What an unapt instrument is a
“ Sw i m m i n g” a witch was a form of “immanent” toothless, old, impotent, and unweldie woman,” he
justice, similar to an ordeal. If the witch floated, she e xclaimed, “to flie in the aier? Truly the divell little
was guilty, because the “p u re” water (like the holy needs such instruments to bring his purposes to passe”
water of baptism) rejected her. Unlike some other ( Kors and Peters 1972, 318).
tests of witch’s bodies, in this case, a normal charac- Martin de Castañega, while deploring the witchcraft
teristic condemned the suspected witch, where a s in many magical practices, nonetheless dismissed the
o rdinarily her apparently distinctive capacities con- evil eye, accounting for it by re f e rence to all women’s
demned her. bodies, understood naturalistically. “To give the evil
While generally not considered able to fly unaided, eye,” he says, “is a natural act and not witchcraft,” argu-
witches we re believed to use magic unguents, applied ing that during menstruation “if a woman should stare
for example to a stick, to fly to Sabbats. The image of closely at a tender and delicate child, she would imprint
witches as riders was readily sexualized, her transport s on him . . . poisonous rays and distemper his body in
becoming a metaphor for sexual ecstasy. Witches were such a way that he would be unable to open his eyes or
also accused of shape shifting, the spirit leaving the bed to hold his head up. Even her breath could harm him,
in the form of a mouse, for example, with the body because it is harsh and smelly at that time, which is a
remaining a mere husk, a kind of diabolic dummy. sign of the corrupt and indigestible humors” (Da r s t
Some witches, drawing on their own folk traditions, 1979, 309). Castañega associated the power of the evil
appear to have believed they really had these capacities: eye in old women with their physical decrepitude, and
Friulian b e n a n d a n t i ( d o-gooders), who we re mainly implied that their capacity to use this natural magic
men, easily confessed to going out to their night battles resulted from their malice.
“in spirit.” Early modern artistic re p resentations of witches
Bodies of female witches were also implicitly defined articulated and perpetuated beliefs about witch’s bodies,
by what they lacked in a community context: T h e y emphasizing their diabolical power and moral we a k-
we re generally different from those of their alleged ness. The typical witch was depicted as old, and often
female victims, most notably, parturient mothers and naked (to display her sagging breasts, a sign of depleted
their babies. Recent anthropological and psychoanalyt- and supposedly repellent femininity), with flying hair
ic theories have contextualized the witch’s body in rela- (a code for errant and uncontrolled sexuality). T h e
tion to the bodies of other women around her, showing c a u l d ron—itself a perversion of female domesticity—
her caught in the psychic cro s s fire of primal fears also connoted a powe rful, almost volcanic va g i n a .
re g a rding infancy, nourishment, and community A l t e r n a t i ve l y, artists (notably Hans Baldung [Gr i e n ]
(Roper 1994; Purkiss 1996). The image of the witch as and Albrecht Dürer) depicted witches as youthful and
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sexually alluring, but as similarly suspect, morally. its practicality by including “the procedure necessary to
D ü re r’s famous backwards-riding witch exuded ele- be a judge in trials for witchcraft” (Boguet 1929, title
ments of masculine powe r, echoed most famously by page). Boguet’s Discours was mildly successful. It went
the witches in Ma c b e t h , of whom Banquo said: “Yo u through a second edition in 1603, which was reprinted
should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to six times in France; a third edition, in 1610, added six
interpret that you are so.” of Boguet’s legal opinions for other nearby courts on
matters related to witchcraft.
SARAH FERBER
When he first published his treatise, Boguet had tried
See also:ARTANDVISUALIMAGES;BALDUNG[GRIEN], HANS; b a rely a dozen witches. His first-hand experience eve n t u-
BENANDANTI;CASTAU˜EGAMARTINDÉ;CAUL;CAULDRON;DEVIL’S ally included judging 35 known witchcraft defendants,
MARK;DÜRER,ALBRECHT;EVILEYE;FAMILIARS;FEMALEWITCH-
all of them put on trial at St. Claude between 1598 and
ES;FLIGHTOFWITCHES;GENDER;HAIR;MALEWITCHES;MEDI-
1609 (Monter 1976, 71). Overall, Boguet condemned
CINEANDMEDICALTHEORY;MELANCHOLY;METAMORPHOSIS;
f o u r - fifths of them to death; he even sentenced 8 witches
MOTHERHOOD;PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;PERSONALITYOFWITCH-
to the unusual punishment of being burned alive. Fo u r
ES;PRICKINGOFSUSPECTEDWITCHES;PSYCHOANALYSIS;SWIM-
other accused witches died in prison before he could
MINGTEST;TORTURE;WITCH’SMARK;WORDS,POWEROF.
References and further reading: complete their trials; in chapter 45 of his Discours, h e
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft explains that “Satan often kills witches when they are in
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon. prison or inspires them to kill themselve s” (Boguet 1929,
Darst, David H. 1979. “Witchcraft in Spain: The Testimony of 130). Boguet’s decisions apparently influenced the appel-
Martin De Castanega’sTreatise on Superstition and Witchcraft late judges of the province of Franche-Comté, to which
(1520).” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society123, his rulings we re sometimes appealed. From 1599 until
no. 5: 298–322.
the second edition of his D i s c o u r s , in 1603, they pro-
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1983. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian
nounced only 2 clear death sentences in 14 witchcraft tri-
Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.Translated by
als; but over the next seven years, until its third edition in
John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
1610, they sentenced over half of all accused witches (25
Press.
of 48) to death. Boguet’s local reputation as an expert on
Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters, eds. 1972. Witchcraft in Europe,
1100–1700: A Documentary History.Philadelphia: University of witchcraft grew. In 1604, the imperial free city of
Pennsylvania Press. Besançon, the largest town in his province, consulted
Levack, Brian P. 1995. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. him about a particularly difficult witchcraft case; this
2d edition. London: Longman. prisoner—and 5 more women in the next six
Purkiss, Diane. 1996. The Witch in History: Early Modern and m o n t h s – we re burned as witches at Be s a n ç o n .
Twentieth-Century Representations.London: Routledge. Like several other writers on demonology, Boguet also
Roper, Lyndal. 1994. “Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern
e xe rcised his erudition on other topics. In 1604, he pub-
Germany.” Pp. 199–225 in Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft,
lished a learned Latin commentary on the customary
Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe.London and
law of Franche-Comté at Lyons, and five years later he
NewYork: Routledge.
added a biography of his local patron, St. Claude.
Sharpe, James. 1996. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in
Howe ve r, his work on witchcraft soon became an
England, 1550–1750.London: Hamish Hamilton.
Weyer, Johann. 1998. OnWitchcraft: An Abridged Translation of embarrassment rather than an adve rtisement for pro f e s-
Johann Weyer’sDe praestigiis daemonum. Edited by Benjamin sional promotion. In the three years after the third and
G. Kohl and H. C. Erik Midelfort; Translated by John Shea. final edition of Boguet’s D i s c o u r s , the Pa rl e m e n t ( s ove r-
Asheville, NC: Pegasus. eign judicial court) of Franche-Comté pronounced only
Zika, Charles. 1995. “She-Man: Visual Representations of 1 death sentence in 20 witchcraft cases; more signifi-
Witchcraft and Sexuality in Sixteenth-Century Europe.” Pp. c a n t l y, early in 1612 the p a rl e m e n t ove rturned 3 of
147–190 inVenus and Mars: Engendering Love and War in
B o g u e t’s final 4 decisions in witchcraft cases, releasing 2
Medieval and Early Modern Europe.Edited by Andrew Lynch
women whom he had sentenced to death. Boguet’s work
and Philippa Maddern. Nedlands: University of Western
was never reprinted after 1611, re p o rtedly because its
Australia Press.
author requested that his publishers not reissue it. After
t wenty years as head judge at St. Claude, Boguet fin a l l y
Boguet, Henri (ca. 1550–1619)
applied for promotion to Fr a n c h e - C o m t é ’s p a rl e m e n t .
Boguet is best known as the author of a handbook for Letters patent admitting him we re signed in May 1618,
conducting witchcraft trials, the Discours des Sorciers but he actually sat on this bench for only two months
(Discourse on Witches, 1602). The work’s title page b e f o re his death in Fe b ru a ry 1619.
boasted of two things: first, that Boguet based his work Boguet’s importance as a demonologist was not very
on his personal experiences as senior judge of the lands great. His boot was never translated into Latin, but his
of the abbey of St. Claude in southern Franche-Comté, treatise did fill a market niche in France because it was
near Switzerland, since 1596. Second, the book stressed re l a t i vely short and had a useful final section, a
Boguet, Henri 133 |
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“ Manner of Pro c e d u re for a Judge in Cases of made Bohemia’s king one of the seven electoral princes
Wi t c h c r a f t” in seventy brief articles. A few of its fea- who chose the emperor.The Bohemian crown (includ-
tures seem specifically local. For example, Boguet’s first ing Silesia, now part of Poland) fell to the Austrian
five chapters all connected to a single case involving an Habsburgs in 1526; they governed it throughout the
e i g h t - year-old girl “possessed of five devils and later age of witch hunting. The number of victims of the
d e l i ve red of them” (Boguet 1929, 1) and the old witch hunt in Bohemia proven by sources may be pro-
woman whom he imprisoned in 1598 for casting this visionally estimated at roughly 400 (mainly executed).
spell. In his fifth chapter, Boguet remarked that “every Considering the substantial losses of source material,
day in our town we continually meet with large num- particularly the records of the town criminal courts, the
bers of persons who, for the most part, impute their real number of victims of Bohemia’s witchcraft trials
possession to . . . sorc e re r s” (Boguet 1929, 10); these between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries could
Sa voy a rds often traveled many miles in order to be have been more than twice as high.
exorcised near the body of St. Claude. Boguet learned B o h e m i a’s first laws prosecuting magical spells date
f rom his early investigations that it was even possible f rom 1092 (Prince Brˇe t i s l a v II), in connection with
for one witch to send demons into the body of another attempts to eradicate remnants of heathenism. In
witch (chap. 6). And because his first “star witness” was Bohemian law, the offense of witchcraft (sorc e ry) was
only eight years old, he also emphasized how deeply d e fined for the first time in article O.II of the Tow n
children could be tainted by witchcraft. Code by Pa vel Kristián fro m Koldín, which came into
Another specifically local aspect of Boguet’s Discours f o rce in 1579. Detailed legal regulation of this offense
was his discussion of werewolves (chap. 47). “The peo- was also promulgated in 1707, in the so-called Jo s e p h i n a ,
ple of this country ought to know as much as any oth- the criminal code of Em p e ror Joseph I for Bohemia,
ers about we re - w o l ves,” he asserted, “for they have Moravia, and Silesia. The papal inquisition operated in
always been known here” (Boguet 1929, 140). T h e Bohemia with great intensity from 1318 up to the mid-
heavily forested and witch-infested Jura Mountains had dle of the fourteenth century, when, especially in south-
indeed spawned an unusually intense pre o c c u p a t i o n ern Bohemia, more than a thousand alleged heretics we re
with werewolves in Boguet’s district; he mentioned pic- burned at the stake. Bohemia adopted inquisitorial pro-
t u res of three we rew o l ves executed in 1521 that we re c e d u res by the fourteenth century, but used them for
hanging in a local church. Boguet began his discussion p rosecuting serious criminal offenses; before 1650, there
of lyc a n t h rophy by naming 4 witches (3 of them a re practically no indications of their use in courts with
women) arrested in his first roundup of suspects in authority over the whole kingdom. The first reliable data
1598, all of whom admitted that they had killed and about persecution of practitioners of harmful magical
eaten children while in the form of wolves, but he com- spells date from the 1330s, but Bohemia has no re c o rd s
plained that 2 other admitted werewolves, a father and b e f o re the fifteenth century of any trials against such peo-
son, “we re hurried too quickly to their exe c u t i o n” ple. As a rule, Bohemian sorc e ry invo l ved harmful magic,
b e f o re they could provide him with useful details on done mainly with the aim of poisoning people or cattle,
this subject (Boguet 1929, 138). causing illness, and causing damage to livestock or cro p s ,
as well as sometimes love magic. Ap a rt from a few exc e p-
WILLIAM MONTER
tions (including echoes from massive Silesian witchcraft
See also:CHILDREN;DEMONOLOGY;FRANCE;FRANCHE-COMTÉ; trials in the 1650s), in Bohemia the offense of witchcraft
LYCANTHROPHY. r a rely invo l ved a compact with the Devil or part i c i p a t i o n
References and further reading:
in a witches’ Sa b b a t .
Bavoux, Francis, ed. 1958. Les procès inédits de Boguet en matière
From the mid-fifteenth century until the 1760s, the
de sorcellerie dans la grande judicature de Saint-Claude.Dijon:
p r i m a ry base of Bohemian criminal justice re m a i n e d
Bernigaud and Privat.
the almost 400 town courts located in royal cities, pat-
Boguet, Henri. 1929. An Examen of Witches.Edited by Montague
rimonial cities, and small towns. Municipal criminal
Summers. London: Rodker.
Monter, E. William. 1976. Witchcraft inFrance andSwitzerland: c o u rts heard the ove rwhelming majority of witchcraft
The Borderlands During theReformation.Ithaca, NY and trials in Bohemia between the fifteenth and eighteenth
London: Cornell University Press. centuries; partial exceptions we re patrimonial court s
and ecclesiastical (consistorial) courts. Other court s ,
Bohemia, Kingdom of including those with authority over the entire kingdom
Witchcraft and its persecution in Bohemia in the late (Land Court, Chamber Court, etc.), judged sorc e ry
Middle Ages and the early modern periods have not yet cases only sporadically. In the 1680s, Bohemia acquired
been systematically researched. Today part of the Czech its first appellate court, the Court of Appeal in Prague,
Republic, Bohemia became a kingdom between 1198 with authority over the whole kingdom, empowered to
and 1212. Although Bohemia was not formally part of sanction all death sentences passed by all lower court s
the Holy Roman Empire, the Golden Bull of 1356 in the kingdom (particularly the town and patrimonial
134 Bohemia, Kingdom of |
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ˇ
c o u rts). This court acquired the same authority ove r Kreuz, Petr. 1997. “Carodˇejnické procesy na Nymbursku na
Moravia in 1700. pocˇátku 17. století.” Právnˇehistorické studie 34: 127–161.
The first trials against sorc e rers and performers of Lambrecht, Karen. 1995. Hexenverfolgung und Zaubereiprozesse in
den schlesischen Territorien. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna:
harmful magic spells occurred in Bohemia during the
Böhlau.
second half of the fifteenth century, as isolated cases.
Macek, Josef. 1999. Jagellonsk´y vˇek vˇcesk´ych zemích (1471–1526).
The first known execution of a witch took place in
Vol. 4. Venkovsk´y lid. Národnostní otázka.Prague: Academia.
1498, when a woman was burned for harmful sorcery ˇ
Sindeláˇr, Bedˇrich. 1970. “Konec, honu na ˇcarodˇejnice vterezián-
in Kutná Hora; later in the same ye a r, at least four
ské dobeˇ u nás.”Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brnˇenské
women we re burned in Prague for the same offense univerzityC 17: 89–107.
(Macek 1999, 77). By or before 1502, death sentences ———. 1981. “Cˇarodeˇjnictví a jeho pronásledování u nás do r.
for witchcraft and poisoning we re almost cert a i n l y 1526.” Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brnˇenské univerzityC 28:
passed at trials against an unknown number of men and 177–206.
women at Vysoké M´yto, a royal town in eastern ———. 1986. Hon na ˇcarodˇejnice. Západní a stˇrední Evropa
Bohemia. Another witchcraft trial resulting in a death v16.–17. století.Prague: Svoboda.
Svátek, Josef. 1879. “Hexenprocesse in Böhmen.” Pp. 1–40 in
sentence was re g i s t e red in the 1520s in the eastern
Culturhistorische Bilder aus Böhmen.Edited by Josef Svátek.
Bohemian patrimonial town of Náchod. After the
Vienna: Braumüller.
1540s, the number of Bohemia’s witchcraft trials and the
number of death sentences passed increased gradually.
Ap a rt from a few exceptions, Bohemian witch trials Bohuslän
f rom the fifteenth to the eighteenth century we re almost Between 1669 and 1672, a series of large-scale witch-
always individual in character; one can hardly speak of craft trials were held in the province of Bohuslän, in
mass witchcraft trials. The most outstanding exc e p t i o n southwestern Sweden. By the time they ended, twenty-
o c c u r red in 1598, when a nobleman named Mi k u l áˇs nine people had been executed, two had committed
f ro mBubna ord e red a total of 21 women either burned suicide, and fifteen more had died, often as a result of
at the stake or buried alive for witchcraft in the eastern unsanitary prison conditions and torture (Svenungsson
ˇ
Bohemian patrimonial town of Za m b e rk (in Ge r m a n , 1970, 327 ff.). More than fifty other individuals had
ˇ
Senftenberg) (Si n d e l áˇr 1986, 247; Lambrecht 1995, been accused or interrogated. The term “witch hunt” is
304, 477). This case was the worst known mass witch- applicable here, as the dynamics of the persecution
craft trial in the Czech lands of Bohemia and Mo r a v i a . clearly stemmed from the methods used by the court,
Another exception is the series of witchcraft trials held including a routine use of torture and ordeal by water
b e t ween 1602 and 1617 in the central Bohemian roy a l (swimming test). As a recently conquered area on the
t own of Ny m b u rk; altogether, 20 people we re interro- periphery of the Swedish kingdom, Bohuslän was in a
gated, with 10 of them (3 women and 7 men) sentenced sensitive position, which may have caused the authori-
to death and executed (Kreuz 1997, 130–159). Aro u n d ties to overreact. Equally, local conditions played a sig-
1580, an unknown number of witch trials and seve r a l nificant role. The witchcraft trials in Bohuslän dis-
e xecutions also took place in the northern Bohemian played the same contradictory praxis that one observes
patrimonial town of Chomutov (Germ. Ko m o t a u ) . after the outbreak of the infamous Blåkulla trials in
We do not know when the last death sentence for the northern Sweden. Despite the High Court’s official pol-
offense of sorc e ry (witchcraft) was carried out in icy of exerting strict control over the lower courts, in
Bohemia, but it is highly probable that it happened the case of these witchcraft trials they often accepted
sometime in the first half of the eighteenth century.The the procedures and decisions of the local courts.
last person sentenced to death for witchcraft, the shep- Sweden had only re c e n t l y, in 1658, annexed the
herd Jakub Polák from the village of Jistebnice in south- p rovince of Bohuslän from De n m a rk; Danish law was
ern Bohemia, was freed through the personal interven- still in force, and, unlike Swedish law, it permitted the
tion of the empress Maria T h e resa in July 1756. use of tort u re in certain circumstances. To rt u re was
Afterwards, no cases of legal persecutions for witchcraft e m p l oyed after conviction but prior to execution, as it
or magical spells were registered in Bohemia. was felt undesirable even for witches to go to their
deaths without first confessing their sins and there by
PETR KREUZ;
gaining redemption. Danish law also stipulated, howe v-
TRANSLATED BY VLADIMIR CINKE e r, that testimonies forcibly extracted from convicted
persons we re not admissible as the sole basis for arraign-
See also:MARIATHERESA,HOLYROMANEMPRESS;MORAVIA;SILESIA;
ing and convicting potential accomplices. These prov i-
SˇINDELÁRˇ,BEDˇRICH.
sions would have had a dampening effect on the
References and further reading:
Koˇcí, Josef. 1973. Cˇarodˇejnické procesy. Zdˇejin inkvizice p ro g ress of the Bohuslän witchcraft trials, but they we re
aˇcarodˇejnick´ych procesu˚ vˇcesk´ych zemích v 16.–18. století. both disre g a rded, and local praxis was applied instead.
Prague: Horizont. The accused we re tort u red prior to sentencing, and
Bohuslän 135 |
Wicca | Richard M.Golden - Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Western Tradition | 173 | 46049 Golden Chap. B av First Pages 08/23/2005 p.136 Application File
witnesses other than persons already accused of witch- Sörlin, Per. 1999. “Wicked Arts”: Witchcraft and Magic Trials in
craft we re not always produced in court. Because devia- Southern Sweden, 1635–1754.Leiden: Brill.
tion from formal legal pro c e d u re was explicitly justifie d Svenungsson, L. M. 1970. Rannsakningarna om trolldomen i
Bohuslän, 1669–1672.Lilla Edet: Svenungsson.
by local praxis, witchcraft trials had probably taken place
in this region earlier. In the pre l i m i n a ry stages of the tri-
Books
als, Governor Harald Stake sanctioned the use of tort u re
Books had a central place in producing the image and
by allowing local authorities to act as they thought fit. In
recording the practice of witchcraft. They were used in
practice, howe ve r, both tort u re and water ordeals had
cases of witchcraft both as magical objects and as sacred
been used in the hearings from the ve ry beginning.
texts, either to invoke or repel demonic power. The
Though the use of water ordeals had fallen into gen-
Bible was especially important, particularly to
eral disrepute by the middle of the seventeenth century,
Protestants, because they believed that Satan responded
in Bohuslän they were conducted frequently. Here, the
to it violently, but other works of varying holiness, size,
re l a t i ves of a suspect occasionally conducted offic i a l l y
and cost were also influential. Manuscript books and
sanctioned water ordeals to spare a mother or wife the
scrolls as well as printed books were read and used,
ignominy of being handled by the executioner, who was
either as texts or objects, in a variety of ways and for a
c o n s i d e red “unclean.” Water ordeals finally became
number of reasons. Books were perhaps the most
subject to a popular crisis of confidence when people
i m p o rtant medium through which literate people
began to suspect that the method did not re p resent a
learned the supposed behavior of witches and devils;
miracle or sign, but that in fact everyone would natu-
cheaper and easily read printed materials, particularly
rally float. Ord i n a ry people began testing each other,
pamphlets or woodcuts, spread stories about witchcraft
although when questioned in court they were quick to
to a wide range of semiliterate people over long periods
claim that, in contrast to the official tests, no one float-
of time. Books were used in possession cases and as
ed. Both men and women took part in the unoffic i a l
tools of dispossession, as protective charms, as objects
tests, where the persons being tested occasionally even
to bring harm and to cast spells, and as aids to discover
had their arms and feet crossed and tied together.
witches or hidden treasure. Demonologists wrote many
There was no real need for the courts to use torture
books to help find witches, justifying the existence of
to raise the issue of the witches’ Sabbat or to extract the
their crimes and the need for their persecution. They
names of the initial participants. Local conflicts and
also wrote some books that proved influential in move-
rumors combined with the popular conception, also
ments to end the prosecution of witchcraft.
found in De n m a rk, that witches operated collective l y
The images of the witch and the book we re re l a t e d
when harming others, ensured that plenty of suspects
but fluctuating. W h e reas the scarcity and expense of
we re available for further examination. The Bohuslän
manuscript books in the Middle Ages gave books a quasi-
witch hunt started with an accusation of m a l e fic i u m
magical image, stimulating stories in which witches or
(harmful magic). Its first accused witch committed sui-
evil magicians used books to cause harm, books printed
cide “at the instigation of Satan” by hanging herself in
after the development of movable type were commonly
prison, there by confirming her own guilt and prov i n g
called upon to repel witches. In the eighteenth century,
that Satan was at work in the town of Marstrand.
when witches became figures of entertainment, and in
Fairly soon a second suspect began to implicate oth-
the nineteenth and twentieth, when childre n’s books
ers. Voluntarily and in reply to questioning, she accused
d i s p l a yed pictures of witches casting spells, books
two women and a number of their companions of using
helped to develop and sustain certain stereotypes about
witchcraft to keep fish away from the local waters.
witches.
Recently, a drastic reduction in the number of fish off
the Bohuslän coast had struck local fishermen severely.
The court felt obliged to investigate the matter further, Witchcraft and Printing
questioning the woman closely about how she knew Movable type was invented only a generation later than
that the women named were witches and the exact cir- the witches’ Sabbat. A sixteenth-century story associat-
cumstances of their activities. Accusations cascaded; ed Gu t e n b e r g’s innova t i ve technology firmly with
imprisonment and tort u re followed, until a hundre d witchcraft. Faustus of Mainz, the story went, among
suspects were involved and almost half of them died. the first to print a book, had stolen the invention and
headed to Paris to sell printed Bibles and make a prof-
PER SÖRLIN it. There he was condemned for sorcery and only
reprieved when he told the authorities of his discovery.
See also:BLÅKULLA;DENMARK;EXECUTIONERS;MORAWITCHES;
As with many other technological inventions, including
SWEDEN;SWIMMINGTEST;TORTURE.
today’s word processors, Satan, commonly considered a
References and further reading:
Linderholm, Emanuel. 1918. De stora häxprocesserna i Sverige, I: great scholar, was thought to have played a leading role
Inledning. Bohuslän.Uppsala: Lindblads. in the invention of printing from movable type. Only
136 Books |
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