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Wicca | Richard M.Golden - Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Western Tradition | 774 | 46049 Golden Chap.M av First Pages 08/25/2005 p.737 Application File
Devil. The degree to which reason of state entered into specialist on occult affairs, answered eight theological
the prince-elector’s motivation is difficult to estimate. questions asked by Emperor Maximilian at the town of
For the members of his Privy Council and the leaders of Boppard on the Rhine. Three of these (nos. 5–7) con-
the estates, the general we l f a re of Ba va r i a’s people was the cerned witchcraft. Although Trithemius’s answers were
guiding principle; it seems likely that Maximilian share d published during Maximilian’s lifetime (Liberocto ques-
their opinion, although he never said so in public. tionum ad Maximilaneum Caesarem [Book of Eight
Questions to Em p e ror Maximilian], Op p e n h e i m ,
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
1515), both the circumstances of the event and the
See also:BAVARIA,DUCHYOF;CONTZEN,ADAM,SJ;DELRIO, emperor’s interests remain unclear. Maximilian’s curios-
MARTÍN;FERDINANDII,HOLYROMANEMPEROR;GERMANY; ity regarding cultural phenomena was insatiable, which
GREGORYOFVALENCIA;HOLYROMANEMPIRE;INGOLSTADT, was one of the reasons he was so tremendously popular
UNIVERSITYOF;JESUITS(SOCIETYOFJESUS), LAWSONWITCH- in Upper Germany and Austria. But there is no evi-
CRAFT(EARLYMODERN); LORRAINE,DUCHYOF;PALATINATE, dence that Maximilian ever encouraged witchcraft trials
ELECTORATEOF;RÉMY,NICOLAS. in his possessions. Neither Tyrol nor Austria saw any
References and further reading:
executions during his reign, although the emperor was
Albrecht, Dieter. 1998. Maximilian I von Bayern.Munich: C. H.
concerned about the frequent clusters of witchcraft tri-
Beck.
als in the Netherlands, his Burgundian heritage.
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1988. Mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tod:
Hexengesetzgebung in Bayern.Munich: Hugendubel. WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
———. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria. Popular Magic,
Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe.
See also:AUSTRIA;HOLYROMANEMPIRE;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;
Translated by J. C. Grayson and David Lederer. Cambridge:
TRITHEMIUS,JOHANNES;TYROL,COUNTYOF.
References and further reading:
Cambridge University Press.
Benecke, Gerhard. 1982. Maximilian I (1459–1519): An
Bireley, Robert. 1975. Maximilian von Bayern, Adam Contzen SJ
Analytical Biography.London and Boston: Routledge and
und die Gegenreformation in Deutschland 1625–1635.
Kegan Paul.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Grössing, Maria. 2002. Maximilian I: Kaiser, Künstler, Kämpfer.
Vienna: Amalthea.
Maximilian I, Holy Roman
Wiesflecker, Hermann. 1971–1986. Kaiser Maximilian I: Das
Emperor (1459–1519, ruled
Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit.5 vols.
1486/1493–1519)
Munich: R. Oldenbourg.
The son of Emperor Frederick III and Eleanor of
Portugal, Maximilian laid the foundations for the rise Mechanical Philosophy
of the Habsburg dynasty to world historical impor- Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century mechanical
tance. Married in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, heiress of philosophy, which held that nature operated like a
Charles the Bold, he was elected “king of the Romans” machine in accordance with the laws of nature, led
in 1486 and succeeded his father as Holy Roman some educated men to question their belief in witch-
Emperor of the German Nation in 1493, although his craft. The mechanical philosophy provided one of the
coronation took place only in 1508. After his wife’s main philosophical foundations for the Scientific
death in 1482, Maximilian secured the Low Countries Revolution. It is most closely associated with the work
for their son Philip I of Burgundy, whom he married to of the French philosopher and mathematician René
Juana of Castile and Aragon in 1496. Maximilian’s old- Descartes, although many other scientists, including
est grandson, Ph i l i p’s son Charles (1500–1558), Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, subscribed to its
became king of Spain (1516), duke of Burgundy, and basic elements. Mechanists argued that nature operated
Holy Roman Emperor (1519); his second grandson mechanically, just like a clock or some other piece of
Ferdinand (named for the Aragonese grandfather who machinery. According to mechanists, nature consisted
raised him) acquired Habsburg Austria and later of many machines, some of them extremely small. The
became king of Bohemia and Hungary (1526) and human body was itself a machine, and its center, the
finally Holy Roman Emperor (1556). At least two heart, was likewise a piece of machinery that moved
demonologists tried to gain Ma x i m i l i a n’s support . other parts of the body. Because God made the human
Heinrich Kramer traveled to Brussels in November body, it was superior to any human-made machine, but
1486 to gain the king’s approval for his book Malleus it was still nothing more than a machine. The only part
Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486). The of a human being that was not a machine was the mind
result must have been disappointing: only Kramer’s or the soul, which according to Descartes was immate-
petition is mentioned in an appendix to the Malleus, rial and therefore completely different from the body
with the text of Maximilian’s response suppressed. In and the rest of the natural world.
1508, Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), abbot of the Descartes argued that matter was completely inert or
Benedictine monastery St. Jacob in Würzburg and a passive. It had neither a soul nor any innate purpose. Its
Mechanical Philosophy 737 |
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only property was extension, by which Descartes meant t re a t i s e , De Be t ove rde We e reld (The World Bew i t c h e d ,
its physical dimensions, such as length, width, and 1691–1693), Bekker denied that the Devil could inter-
depth. Without a spirit or any other internal forc e vene in the operation of the material world. Once the
d i recting its action, matter simply responded to the Devil was denied this ability, the possibility that a
p ower of the other bodies with which it came in con- human being could commit the crime of witchcraft
tact. Ac c o rding to De s c a rtes, “T h e re exist no occult vanished. Bekker was admittedly a follower of
f o rces in stones or plants, no amazing and marve l l o u s De s c a rtes, and he clearly accepted a Cartesian view of
sympathies and antipathies, in fact there exists nothing the sharp distinction between spirit and matter. Bu t
in the whole of nature which cannot be explained in Bekker did not rely primarily on the mechanical philos-
terms of purely corporeal causes, totally devoid of mind ophy or any other scientific evidence to attack the belief
and thought” (Easlea 1980, 111). This view of nature in witchcraft; the main foundation for his skepticism
posed a direct challenge to Neoplatonism, which held was his biblical scholarship, which he used to show that
that the natural world was charged with various occult God maintained sove reignty over the world and had
f o rces and there f o re provided the main philosophical never allowed the Devil to exercise power within it.
foundation for the practice of natural magic. Although the mechanical philosophy called into
The mechanical philosophy also presented a chal- question the beliefs of some educated people in witch-
lenge to the belief in witchcraft. The view that nature craft, it had little influence on the decline of witchcraft
operated in a re g u l a r, predictable way, in accord a n c e prosecutions.The decline in the number of trials began
with immutable laws, called into question the belief in some Eu ropean countries as early as 1600 and in
that witches used the power of the Devil to intervene in most regions of western Eu rope by 1670. These we re
the operation of the natural world. Those who adopted the years when the mechanical philosophy first made its
Descartes’ philosophy, known as Cartesianism, did not appearance. Its spread, however, was a gradual process,
necessarily deny the existence of good or evil spirits, but and it was controversial. It took some time for this new
they did reject the view that those spirits could change mental outlook to make its mark in the universities, the
the course of nature. The English philosopher Thomas legal profession, and state bureaucracies. It is unlikely
Hobbes, who differed with De s c a rtes on many issues that the judges and officials who applied the early
but nevertheless also subscribed to a mechanical view of brakes on witch hunting during the first seventy ye a r s
the universe, went so far as to deny the existence of spir- of the seventeenth century we re even exposed to, let
its altogether. For Hobbes, even God was material, and alone influenced by, these new ideas.
the spirits and demons mentioned in the Bible had thin The critical period in the reception of the mechani-
bodies that we re incapable of being perc e i ved by cal philosophy appears to have been the years between
human beings. 1690 and 1720, the period of the early Enlightenment.
Ne ve rtheless, the mechanical philosophy had only Thus, mechanism did not appreciably affect the mental
limited success in undermining the belief in witchcraft outlook of the educated classes until well after prosecu-
among educated people. The main reason was that oth- tions had begun to decline and, in some cases, until
er natural philosophers modified Descartes’ mechanical after they had stopped altogether. In Geneva, for exam-
view of nature to allow for the intervention of spiritual ple, the first magistrate to profess an adherence to
forces. The English philosopher Henry More, who had C a rtesian ideas, Ro b e rt Chouet, wrote a critical com-
originally been an admirer of Descartes, and the scien- m e n t a ry on Ge n e va’s prosecution of witches in 1690,
tist Joseph Glanvill both claimed that spiritual or occult almost forty years after the last witch had been executed
f o rces we re necessary to explain various natural phe- in that republic, although only nine years after the last
nomena, including the motion of matter. Gl a n v i l l Ge n e van witch had been banished. Even in Fr a n c e ,
argued that spirits played an active role in nature and where the mechanical philosophy may have taken root
that scientists could acquire empirical evidence of their somewhat earlier than in Geneva, Cartesianism proba-
activities. He contended that the phenomena attributed bly did not have the negative influence on the level of
to witchcraft provided evidence for a mechanistic nat- p rosecutions that scholars have often attributed to it.
ural theology, in which the Devil, like God, work e d C e rtainly the members of the Pa rl e m e n t of Paris, who
through the normal course of nature. For Glanvill, the p l a yed a decisive role in the decline of French witch
Devil was part of nature, and the empirical study of hunting after 1624, could not have been influenced by
demons had scientific validity. C a rtesianism until long after they had bro u g h t
The limited influence of the mechanical philosophy executions for witchcraft to an end.
on the decline of witch beliefs among educated people If the mechanical philosophy played any role at all in
can best be seen in the work of the Dutch Re f o r m e d the decline of witch hunting, it was at the end of the
minister and theologian Balthasar Be k k e r. Bekker was p rocess in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
one of the most radical skeptics regarding witchcraft in centuries, when the last trials took place and witchcraft
the late seventeenth century. In his four-vo l u m e was decriminalized, but not in the earlier decades of the
738 Mechanical Philosophy |
Wicca | Richard M.Golden - Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Western Tradition | 776 | 46049 Golden Chap.M av First Pages 08/25/2005 p.739 Application File
seventeenth century, when some dramatic reductions in Mecklenburg had been divided into two duchies in
the number of trials occurred. Even during the later 1621, grew into mass persecutions that sought to wipe
period, however, the influence of philosophical ideas on out witchcraft by eliminating anyone suspected of it.
the conduct of prosecutions was limited. Witchcraft tri- The expanding and intensifying persecutions provoked
als ended mainly because authorities came to the real- resistance from some of the families affected and from
ization that it was impossible to prove the crime, not several of Mecklenburg’s religious leaders. At the same
because they denied its reality. time, the shift away from fear of diabolical witchcraft
and criticisms of the trials led to the end of the persecu-
BRIAN P. LEVACK
tions between 1681 and 1683 in Me c k l e n b u r g - G ü s t row
See also:BEKKER,BALTHASAR;DECLINEOFTHEWITCHHUNTS; and around 1700 in Me c k l e n b u r g - S c h werin.
DEMONOLOGY;DESCARTES,RENÉ;ENLIGHTENMENT;GLANVILL, Early sorc e ry trials can be traced back to aro u n d
JOSEPH;HOBBES,THOMAS;KEPLER,JOHANNES;MORE,HENRY;
1480. In such trials, it is sometimes difficult to draw a
OCCULT;PARLEMENTOFPARIS;SCIENCEANDMAGIC;SKEPTICISM.
clear line between trials aimed at persecuting witches
References and further reading:
for the damages they caused (maleficium) and later cas-
Attfield, Robin, 1985. “Balthasar Bekker and the Decline of the
es that saw the Devil as partner of the sorceress. In 1558
Witch-Craze: The Old Demonology and the New Philosophy.”
we find the first evidence of true witchcraft hearings.
Annals of Science42: 383–395.
Bostridge, Ian. 1997. Witchcraft and Its Transformations, c. 1650– Archival sources show that Mecklenburg held about ten
c. 1750.Oxford: Clarendon. witchcraft trials per year by 1570. The massive increas-
Brann, Noel. 1980. “The Conflict Between Reason and Magic in es in the early phases of prosecution came with
Seventeenth-Century England: A Case Study of the attempts to enforce Mecklenburg’s evangelical ecclesias-
Vaughan–More Debate.” Huntington Library Quarterly 47: tical ordinances of 1562 and 1572. Crimes we re
103–126. d e fined largely according to the terms of the Caro l i n a
C l a rk, St u a rt. 1984. “The Scientific Status of De m o n o l o g y.” Pp.
Code (1532), with some of its standards intensified.
351–374 in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Re n a i s s a n c e .
Local rulers could now follow through on chasing
Edited by Brian Vickers. Cambridge: Cambridge Un i versity Pre s s .
down and punishing witches, using stricter regulations
———. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in
and penalties for breaches of law. At the same time, the
Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon.
Lutheran rulers also prosecuted fortunetellers, tre a s u re
Easlea, Brian. 1980. Witch Hunting, Magic, and the New
Philosophy: An Introduction to the Debates of the Scientific hunters, and people who earned their living by counter-
Revolution 1450–1750. Brighton: Harvester. acting witchcraft (He xe n b a n n e r) on the basis of
Hutton, Sarah, ed. 1990. Henry More (1614–1989): Tercentenary confessional considerations. Me c k l e n b u r g’s late-
Studies.Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. sixteenth-century witch persecution was based on com-
Jobe, Thomas Harmon. 1981. “The Devil in Restoration Science: plaints from individual farmers and municipalities;
The Glanvill-Webster Witchcraft Debate.” Isis 72: 343–356. their claims of evil magic were mainly directed against
Levack, Brian P. 1999. “The Decline and End of Witchcraft
people from families that were already stigmatized.
Prosecutions.” Pp. 1–93 in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The
A round 1600, Me c k l e n b u r g’s persecutions re a c h e d
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.Vol. 5 of The Athlone
their highest point. Between 1604 and 1615, there were
History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Edited by Stuart
an average of thirty witchcraft trials per year in the
Clark and Bengt Ankarloo. London and Philadelphia: Athlone
region, which was also suffering from epidemics and
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New crop failures. Witch prosecution usually took the form
York: Scribner’s. of small groups of trials clustered together. Be c a u s e
magistrates were required by law to send the briefs and
Mecklenburg, Duchy of documentation to the faculties of law and the judiciary
Mecklenburg, a Lutheran duchy in the northeastern chancelleries, a system of re l a t i vely mild ve rd i c t s
part of the Holy Roman Empire, had more than its became the norm. Sentencing in Mecklenburg did not
share of intensive persecution of witches between 1560 e m p l oy full force against all of the criminal aspects of
and 1700. In a region with a population of roughly witchcraft. A rather skeptical Protestant prov i d e n t i a l-
200,000 around 1600, there were more than 4,000 ism led to a relatively temperate interpretation of witch-
witchcraft trials, at least half of them ending with the craft. Certain elements of the cumulative concept of
death of the accused. The worst persecutions came in witchcraft we re abandoned; for example, witches who
two large waves, cresting between 1599 and 1614 and flew and we re transformed into animals we re not part
again between 1661 and 1675. of confessions elicited, nor did Mecklenburg’s clergy or
These two times of persecution were quite different judges accept them.
in nature. In the first phase, when Mecklenburg was More important than the theoretical differentiations
politically unified, the victims were primarily members was the practice of following the p rocessus ord i n a r i u s
of fringe groups or groups caught in the midst of local (ordinary procedure). Witchcraft was not considered a
social conflicts. The second, later phase, coming after crimen exc e p t u m (the excepted crime) in Me c k l e n b u r g
Mecklenburg, Duchy of 739 |
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in the early stages of trials. On the contrary, the tenden- witchcraft became less gender-specific; the longer these
cy was to lean toward moderation and caution in deal- persecutions continued, the more likely they we re to
ing with circumstantial evidence and tort u re . accuse men and children.
Prominent Mecklenburg jurists like Johann Ge o r g Mecklenburg experienced numerous intense wave s
Goedelmann and Ernst Cothmann symbolized the atti- of persecution following the end of the T h i rty Ye a r s’
tudes of the re g i o n’s ruling classes and administrators, War. At this time, its largest chain of trials took place,
who adhered to humanistic principles of thought. Thus i n volving more than eighty people in the village dis-
the use of defense lawyers was always allowed in witch- tricts of Redentin and Bu k ow. The governments in
craft trials, and they appear in roughly one in five court both parts of the duchy (Schwerin and Güstrow) active-
cases re g a rding witchcraft. Rumors of witchcraft we re ly supported these trials, but they used ve ry differe n t
t reated with re s e rvation, and a single accusation neve r means. In Me c k l e n b u r g - S c h werin, the gove r n m e n t
sufficed to open a proceeding. Additional evidence was i n c reasingly discarded the stricter safeguards of public
also treated cautiously. In slightly more than half (55 law and minimized the legal pre requisites for circ u m-
p e rcent) of these cases, tort u re and the death penalty stantial evidence in witchcraft trials, thus allowing for
were permitted. chains of trials to develop. A witch’s accusations toward
Local courts we re less scrupulous about enforc i n g her conspirators were accepted uncritically and used as
these strict codes, and they offer numerous examples of the basis for new trials against “accomplices.” On e’s
b reaches of law in witchcraft cases before 1600. T h e chances of being cleared of such charges and re l e a s e d
systems of serfdom and farmers’ loss of property rights were minimal. Instead, in cases in which witchcraft was
to manorial lords ran parallel to the early witch persecu- not proved, the basic suspicion was cause for banish-
tions in a sparsely populated region with several types ment from the duchy. T h e re was little supervision of
of seigneurial and lesser manorial courts. At the same local courts, because Schwerin law often employed spe-
time, the regional government strove for better disci- cial commissions. Even though its sovereign, Christian
pline and professionalism in local law courts. They dis- Louis I, personally called for an end to all witchcraft tri-
missed various members of small town and district als, he lived abroad; his chief civil servants, Chancellor
c o u rts from their offices after investigations into Hans Heinrich Wedemann and later Adolf Fr i e d r i c h
breaches of law. zur Nedden, ignored his order and continued to issue
A specific type of persecution of witches deve l o p e d commissions. Only after the death of Chancellor
in different jurisdictions—both the smaller and larger Nedden in May 1700 could the persecutions of witches
autonomous cities, and the noble and district courts. It be ended in Schwerin.
focused primarily on those groups of the population Meanwhile, persecution of magic and superstit-
caught in the middle of social tensions and conflicts. In ion became the core elements of an intensive
the larger cities and offices, this meant primarily the campaign of confessional Lutheran discipline in
poor and people from fringe groups. In the smaller Me c k l e n b u r g - G ü s t row. As a result, eve ry rumor of
towns, it was often people associated with the munici- witchcraft was investigated—but not with the same
pal elite; in noble courts, it was members of the farming legal procedures or standards as in Schwerin. The elim-
community who had protested against the loss of their ination of witchcraft was pursued with equal determi-
power and rights. Seigneurial courts, reflecting conflicts nation in Güstrow, but its extensive inquisitions and
between the nobility and their subjects under the new visitations were accompanied by rigorous controls over
social and legal manorial system, primarily conducted its local courts by upper-level and professional judges.
witchcraft trials in the first period. However, the inten- Me c k l e n b u r g’s learned and pious experts studied
sity of these disagreements diminished considerably each piece of evidence from each case with a high
during and after the end of the Thirty Years’ War.The d e g ree of exactness, often resulting in long periods of
noble court leaders and civic judges in the lake are a s imprisonment for the accused without the case eve r
both lost interest in witchcraft trials and consequently being decided. Many died in prison or we re not
dismissed accusations from ordinary people. released until the early 1680s. Meanwhile, because of
These social differences in addressing conflict leveled their experiences in dealing with these trials, members
out after Me c k l e n b u r g’s mass persecutions began. T h e of the clergy we re quick to develop a more critical atti-
l a t e - s e ve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry persecutions also re fle c t e d tude tow a rd witchcraft trials. In the long run, they
other changes. Unlike the earlier persecution, witch- we re able to delay or pre vent chains of new trials
craft no longer manifested itself in the practice of mag- caused by accusations from those convicted, and they
ic or in neighborhood quarrels; rather, ties to witchcraft finally devalued the confessions of pacts with the De v i l
were now sought through kinship and association with and the witches’ Sabbats. Witchcraft was dismissed as a
other witches. Trials no longer targeted small fringe “superstition,” and the persecution of witches ended
groups and poorer people but expanded significantly to by 1700.
include middle- and upper-class defendants. Si m i l a r l y, KATRIN MOELLER
740 Mecklenburg, Duchy of |
Wicca | Richard M.Golden - Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Western Tradition | 778 | 46049 Golden Chap.M av First Pages 08/25/2005 p.741 Application File
See also: ACCUSATIONS;CAROLINACODE(CONSTITIOCRIMINALIS Ph i l o s o p h i a ( On Occult Ph i l o s o p h y, Book 1: 15) that
CAROLINA); COURTS,SECULAR;CRIMENEXCEPTUM;GERMANY, some physicians we re claiming to be able to re s t o re a per-
NORTHEASTERN;GOEDELMANN,JOHANNGEORG;LAWYERS. s o n’s youth by giving him or her a concoction made fro m
References and further reading:
v i p e r’s flesh and hellebore. Medea could also control the
Ankarloo, Bengt, and Gustav Henningsen, eds. 1990. Early
weather by calming storm and sea and blight fru i t f u l
Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries.Oxford:
n a t u re by piercing the liver of a doll made for just this
Clarendon.
purpose, and she had the evil eye. When a bro n ze giant
Katrin Moeller. 2002a. “Das Willkür über Recht ginge”:
called Talos menaced Jason and the Argonauts, Me d e a
Hexenverfolgung im Mecklenburg des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts.
Rostock: University Press. u t t e red invocations and then fixed the giant with the
———. 2002b. “Es ist ein überaus gerechtes Gesetz, dass die p ower of her evil eye and killed him.
Zauberinnen getötet werden: Hexenverfolgung im protestantis- Medea came from Colchis, a region just south of the
chen Norddeutschland.” Pp. 96–107 in Hexenwahn: Ängste der Caucasus Mountains, and so was not a Gre e k .
Neuzeit, Begleitband zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung des Deutschen C o n s e q u e n t l y, Euripides, in Me d e a or An d ro m a c h e ,
Historischen Museums.Edited by Rosmarie Beier-de Haan, Rita p o rt r a yed her in the light of the Gre e k s’ view of the
Voltmer, and Franz Irsigler. Berlin: Minerva Hermann Farnung.
world that was divided between civilized people like
Lorenz, Sönke. 1981. “Johann Georg Godelmann—Ein Gegner
themselves and barbarians, who indulged their passions
des Hexenwahns.” Pp. 61–105 in Beiträge zur pommerschen
with murder or occasionally with incest. Ancient
und mecklenburgischen Geschichte.Edited by Roderich Schmidt.
authors frequently underlined two characteristics of her
Marburg: J. G. Herder-Institut.
magic. She used p h a rm a k a , herbs or minerals with
———. 1982. Aktenversendung und Hexenprozess: Dargestellt am
Beispiel der Juristenfakultäten Rostock und Greifswald p reternatural powers, making her a ve n e fic a , a woman
(1570/82–1630). Frankfurt am Main: Lang. who either poisons others or works poisonous magic
———. 1991. “Ernst Cothmann (1557–1624) aus Lemgo in against them; and she worshipped Hecate, a goddess
Westfalen: Ein Jurisconsultus Rostockiensis in Sachen associated with the earth and the moon and hence the
Hexenprozess.” Pp. 437–449 in Das andereWahrnehmen: deity par excellence of magic. Significantly, then, we are
Beiträge zur europäischen Geschichte, August Nitschke zum 65. told by the third - c e n t u ry-B.C.E. Greek poet
Geburtstag gewidmet.Edited by Martin Kintzinger,Wolfgang
Apollonius Rhodius (Ar g o n a u t i c a 4.50–4.53) that
Stürner, and Johannes Zahlten.Cologne: Böhlau.
Medea was well-acquainted with grave y a rds, having
Lubinski, Axel. 1997.”Hexenverfolgung im Klützer Winkel-Magie,
spent much time wandering through them.
dörfliche Konflikte und Gutsherrschaft im nordwestlichen
The story of Medea, there f o re, contained several fea-
Mecklenburg (Amt Grevesmühlen) gegen Ende des 17.
t u res reminiscent of the medieval and early modern
Jahrhunderts.” Pp. 119–158 in Hexenverfolgung in
Mecklenburg: Regionale und überregionale Aspekte. Edited by scholarly image of the witch. Her emotions we re both
Dieter Harmening and Andrea Rudolph. Dettelbach: J. H. Röll. s t rong and malicious; she indulged herself with illicit
Nedden, August Johann Carl zur. 1880–1881. “Beiträge zur l ove and sex; she employed herbs for magical purposes,
Geschichte der Groíssherzoglichen Justiz-Canzlei zu Schwerin.” which might be beneficent or maleficent according to
Mecklenburger Jahrbücher45: 177–262 and 46: 169–283. the prompting of the emotion that currently ruled her;
she had the evil eye; she worked weather and cro p
Medea magic by piercing enchanted dolls; she belonged, as it
Medea is one of the great paradigms of the classical magi- we re, to a society other than that which is regular and
cian, and hence of the female witch in later times. c i v i l i zed; and her magic was performed in conjunction
Granddaughter of the sun and niece of the divine magi- with a deity who had power over the spirits of the dead
cian Circe, she fell in love with Jason during his search for and was capable of producing extraord i n a ry phenome-
the Golden Fleece and aided him with her magic. A na. The portrait by Ovid (Me t a m o r p h o s e s 7 . 1 8 0 – 1 9 1 )
woman of violent emotions, her enmity could be fatal. of her working a necromantic ritual was part i c u l a r l y
When she abandoned her family for love of Jason and her vivid and highly theatrical. Medea let her hair and
b rother tried to pursue her, she killed him without com- d ress float free; she paced barefoot up and down with-
punction; when Jason fell in love with another woman, out apparent purpose; she operated at night; and
Medea sent her a robe anointed with an unguent intend- instead of uttering comprehensible words, she shrieked
ed to kill; and having re s t o red the youth of Ja s o n’s father and howled almost like an animal. The marks of civi-
by cutting him into pieces and boiling them in a pot with lization had disappeared, and in their place she exhibit-
magical herbs, she persuaded the daughters of Pelias (the ed the signs of a person who had willingly cast aside
king who had sent Jason on his expedition for the Go l d e n the usual restraints observed by the rest of society.
Fleece) to attempt the same, but made sure they failed by Medea thus became alien and frightening as she sought
giving them inefficacious herbs. This was an aspect of her to rend the veil normally dividing the realm of the
magic that early modern writers particularly noted. living from that of the dead. Later writers on witches
Marsilio Ficino and Johann We ye r, for example, drew and demonology, all educated in the Greek and Latin
attention to it; Cornelius Agrippa re m a rked in De Oc c u l t a classics, there f o re had little to do to develop their
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p o rtrait of a witch. All they needed to add we re the element in the witch paradigm, as true. He used certain
p u rely Christian elements. recent trials as evidence that sorc e ry was not confin e d
to women. Men and even children performed this
P. G. MAXWELL-STUART
destructive art. Because this capital crime encompassed
See also:CIRCE;EVILEYE;HECATE;PERSONALITYOFWITCHES. the Se ven Deadly Sins and violated almost all Te n
References and further reading: Commandments, this Lutheran preacher called upon
Arafat, Karim W. 1996. “Medea.” P. 944 in Oxford Classical
the authorities to take action by conducting witchcraft
Dictionary.Edited by Simon Hornblower and Anthony
trials—including handing out death sentences.
Spawforth. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Despite his vehemence, Meder called for re l a t i ve l y
Dickie, Matthew. 2001. Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman
modest witch hunts. He dismissed imposing death sen-
World.London: Routledge.
tences for conviction of nondiabolical sorcery, believing
Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. 2000. Witchcraft, A History.Stroud, UK,
and Charleston, SC: Tempus. that imposing penance was a fair punishment for such
offenses. He criticized exc e s s i vely harsh tort u re and
Meder, David (1545–1616) largely dismissed denunciations from convicted witch-
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Da v i d es. Meder opposed the swimming test and accepted
Me d e r, a Lutheran minister in Sa xo n y, passionately only testimonies of respectable Christians or unforc e d
p ropagated the existence of an aggre s s i ve witch cult on confessions as pro o f. Meder exe m p l i fied the prov i d e n-
e a rth and called for its extinction. Despite his fie rce ze a l , tialist tradition within Lutheranism stemming from the
he desired only moderate witch hunts. Meder was close W ü rttemberg school of Johann Brenz, which saw the
to the official mainstream in the early seve n t e e n t h - c e n- g rowth of witchcraft as a kind of godly prov i d e n c e
t u ry electorate of Sa xo n y, which crafted extremely seve re (Midelfort 1972, 36–66). Thus God permitted witch-
legislation against witchcraft yet followed a re l a t i ve l y craft through the Devil’s agency in order to chasten sin-
mild and scrupulous policy in witchcraft trials. ful mankind and warn the faithful, but, neve rt h e l e s s ,
Born in Naumburg in the electorate of Sa xo n y, God allowed Satan no independent powe r. Thus, the
Meder studied theology at the University of Leipzig and p owers of witches we re horrible, but—because only
became a general inspector of Lutheran churches and God reigns—limited.
schools for the small county of Hohenlohe (in south- Me d e r’s approach was not exempt from contradic-
western Germany) in 1577. He returned to his place of tions, for he could not reconcile his implicit clamor for
birth as a preacher in 1595, later moving to the nearby an extinction policy in the first part of the book with
Saxon town of Nebra, where he died. his explicit demands for re l a t i vely mild treatment of
Because of the divided views on witchcraft trials alleged witches. His explanations also followed prov i-
between the general population, who wished to elimi- dential theology on another level. Because this school
nate witches, and the judges who pronounced sen- rejected the reality of weather spells, Meder’s assertions
tences, who needed proof to justify them, Meder tried on this ve ry important topic for contemporaries we re
to influence public opinion through a series of sermons. contradictory. On one page he attributed the oblitera-
Together with other material, his witch sermons we re tion of harvests by hailstorms to the magic of witches
published in 1605, with a second edition in 1615. but rejected such thinking on another page. Me d e r’s
In Meder’s opinion, the main reason for the growth two editions of his eight witch sermons demonstrate
of witchcraft was the deteriorating state of mankind, the degree of reception of his thoughts.
manifested in increasing wickedness to which too many
ROLF SCHULTE;
Christians yielded. This deterioration was further exac-
erbated by attacks on true Christianity from Catholics, TRANSLATED BY JAN VAN DER CRABBEN
Muslims, and Calvinists.
See also:APOCALYPSE;BRENZ,JOHANN;DEMONOLOGY;EVIDENCE;
In his sermons, the Lutheran theologian cited the LUTHER,MARTIN;MALEFICIUM;PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;PROOF,
Hebrew Bible, the Church Fathers, and Martin Luther, PROBLEMOF;SABBAT;SAXONY,ELECTORATEOF;WEATHER
all of whom accepted that witches existed on eart h . MAGIC.
Meder passionately opposed all skeptics of witch hunt- References and further reading:
ing; in his eyes, witchcraft was a capital crime, which Meder, David. 1605. Acht Hexenpredigten.Leipzig. 2nd ed. 1615.
surpassed all other sins. Witches, he believed, caused Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1972. Witch Hunting in Southwestern
Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations.
much damage; they we re responsible for murd e r, dis-
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
eases among humans and livestock, theft, and poor har-
vests. Their destru c t i ve undertakings we re based on a
pact with the Devil, who granted them powers. T h e Medicine and Medical Theory
pact was supposedly complemented by copulation with Spider webs, ant eggs, snakeskin, extract of wood lice,
the Devil. Unlike many other Protestant authors, extract of foxglove, beetle’s blood, and an elixir with
Meder accepted the witches’ Sabbat, the collective seventy-nine different ingredients . . . “This was not, as
742 Meder, David |
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would be reasonable to suppose, the first aid kit of a Gi rolamo Cardano and Johann We yer asserted that dis-
local witch left behind and found after her arrest. It was eases apparently caused by witches could be traced to
part of the pharmacopoeia of the University of Glasgow natural origins, they we re anticipating the secularization
found byWilliam Cullen on taking up an appointment of a discipline; but the separation of functions betwe e n
as professor of medicine in 1751” (Larner 1984, 142). medicine and religion occurred ve ry slow l y.
Astonishing as it might seem, it would be nonetheless
simplistic to assume from this evidence that early mod- Theoretical Foundations of Early
ern learned medicine was rooted in a seedbed of mis- Modern Medicine
conceptions, that its practitioners had a poor under- Recent works in the history of medicine have demolished
standing of the workings of the human body, and that Whiggish notions of scientific advancements, emphasiz-
the contents of their medicine chests were useless and ing elements that appear pro g re s s i ve in a modern sense.
most of their prescriptions potentially harmful. In A Much of the attention of historians now concentrates on
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom’s words remind us h ow early modern people experienced medicine in terms
of the curative power of a spider’s web against hemor- of therapeutics and relief from anxiety and pain.
rhages: “I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good A preliminary digression on the theoretical mold of
master Cobweb: if I hurt my finger, I shall make bold ancient medicine seems necessary before dealing with
with you” (III, I, 164–165). In terms of therapeutics, medical practitioners and patients. Unquestionably, any
learned and popular medicine substantially overlapped, changes in sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry medi-
and both were powerless to heal serious illnesses. cine took place within these deep-rooted assumptions.
Despite notable developments in the history of medi- The Hippocratic/Galenic tradition retained its preemi-
cine during the last few decades, its nexus with early nence throughout Renaissance, baroque, and
modern witchcraft still awaits a global assessment. T h e Enlightenment Eu rope. Galenic physicians followe d
s p e c t rum of questions raised by this intricate re l a t i o n s h i p humoral theories, understanding the human body as
is discouragingly wide. It has recently been held that the composed of masses of four fluids: blood, phlegm, yel-
idea of witchcraft, “a composite subject consisting of dis- low bile, and black bile. It was a microcosm related to
c u s s i o n s” about all facets of human civilization (Clark the larger macrocosm of the universe. Humors we re
1997, viii), was inherent in the moods, minds, and cul- linked to the seasons, to the four ages of humankind
t u re of early modern people. Ne ve rtheless, from the va n- (childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age), and we re
tage point of the treatment of sick people in early mod- the product of the four Aristotelian qualities (hot, cold,
ern Eu rope, two broad questions can be formulated. d ry, and fire). Good health resulted from a balance
First, how did an age commonly defined by historians as among these four humors, and any alterations in their
one of scientific advancements adjust itself to widespre a d n a t u re might jeopard i ze a person’s physical condition.
beliefs about diseases of demonic origin? Second, how The putrefaction of humors through contagion fro m
did learned medicine of this period succeed, if at all, in some poison, as in plague, could also cause illness.
imposing its intellectual superiority and forcing cure s T h e re f o re all treatments aimed at blocking corru p t i o n
that relied on magic and religion into a corner? and readjusting imbalances through bleeding, purging,
vomiting, and evacuating. Healing meant restoring a
Medicine and Christianity harmony between macrocosm and microcosm. T h e
Christianity had always been a healing religion with a best means of maintaining health was to practice mod-
s t rong affinity between saving souls and healing bodies. eration by avoiding exhaustion, ove reating, ove rd r i n k-
Illnesses came ultimately from an offended God as a ing, overheating, and immoderate passions. Immorality
result of sin. When early modern people fell ill, they did and a vicious life were perceived as causes of disease.
not generally assume that their ailments we re caused by The most challenging break with the Galenic para-
witchcraft. Howe ve r, if the signs of disease appeare d digm came from the physician T h e o p h r a s t u s
we i rd and suspicious, both common belief and Ho l y Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (ca.
S c r i p t u res allowed that it might have been engendered by 1493–1541), who carried out a head-on attack on tra-
b ewitchment cast by malevolent persons with the help of dition by proposing a novel physiology and anatomy.
the Devil. Cu r a t i ve remedies, neve rtheless, should not be C o n t r a ry to Galenic wisdom, which ignored the exis-
magical, and their healing power must be implemented tence of specific diseases, he taught that an archeus(vital
t h rough prayer by both patients and doctors. On l y f o rce) external to the human body caused disease and
C h u rch hierarchies could establish the ort h o d oxy of a offered a basis for understanding that illnesses were real
p r a ye r. After the mid-sixteenth century, ecclesiastical entities. Paracelsus’s chemically based medicine empha-
h i e r a rchies increasingly disavowed the centuries-old s i zed the process of fermentation and putrefaction at
healing practice of divines, although much ambiguity the basis of physiology. After him, iatro c h e m i s t ry
persisted about the practice of exo rcism in Catholic gained much prestige in the treatment of illnesses, in
lands. No doubt, when the sixteenth-century physicians opposition to the herbal remedies mostly used by
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Galenists. Ia t ro c h e m i s t ry was soon joined by another 2000, 24). The writings of such well-known early mod-
f e a t u re of medical examination, iatromechanics, con- ern doctors as Johann We ye r, Jean Fernel, Ambro s e
tending that human body processes obeyed the same Paré, Gi rolamo Cardano, Daniel Se n n e rt, Ed w a rd
laws of physics ruling earth and the planets. A descrip- Jorden, or John Cotta tried to clarify the nature of odd
tion of sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry medicine and puzzling symptoms in patients. However, many of
must include the many bre a k t h roughs in anatomy them rejected both the Paracelsian paradigm and the
(with decisive influence on forensic medicine), physiol- entire Hippocratic/Galenic tradition. The dividing line
o g y, and pathology by Jan Baptista van He l m o n t b e t ween tradition and modernity remained uncert a i n ,
(1579–1644) and his son Franciscus Me rcurius va n and the dominant ethos of every scientific corporation
Helmont (1614?–1699), Théophraste Re n a u d o t avoided the most radical positions.
(1586–1653), Giorgio Baglivi (1668–1707), or For skeptical physicians, this caution meant that
Friedrich Hoffmann (1660–1742). But all these almost nobody would attempt to disprove the authority
advances cannot conceal a stronger reality: throughout of Holy Scriptures in matters of witchcraft, with the
early modern times, methods of treatment re m a i n e d p robable exception of We ye r. Practically things fare d
ove rwhelmingly Galenic, and “f ew of the theore t i c a l quite differe n t l y, because we know from several cases
changes introduced, even the Paracelsian ones, made that physicians did not accept witchcraft as a serious
much difference in how illnesses were treated and none, possibility when natural causes could explain suspicious
by itself, contributed to cures” (Lindemann 1999, 88). possessions, illnesses, or deaths. The “long” sixteenth
c e n t u ry was an era dominated by antagonistic forc e s
Learned Doctors that tended to blur in complex ways. The erudition of
T h e re seems to be an almost perfect corre l a - some medical doctors encompassed a variety of sub-
tion between mid- and late-seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry jects: magic, philosophy, religion, alchemy, and occult
post-Galenic medicine and the end of witchcraft perse- studies. Some became astrological physicians, believing
cutions. But how can we reconcile this temporal coin- that heavenly bodies could affect the human body and
cidence with the fact that no radical epistemological cause illness.
changes characterized the birth of the new medicine? In No early modern medical practice better reveals this
fact, the decline of witchcraft was a complex sociocul- synthesis of late Renaissance learning than the amazing
tural event, unrelated in any direct way to progress in career of Richard Napier, an Anglican theologian, mas-
medical science. What most recent studies have shown ter of arts at the University of Oxford, and parson of a
is that an empiricism that stressed observation and rural parish in Bu c k i n g h a m s h i re. His detailed case-
experience became the dominant theory among physi- books of some 60,000 consultations from 1597 to
cians, an investigative paradigm previously inconceiv- 1634 shed light on multiple health problems of all
able within a community of Christian physicians. social classes (Macdonald 1981). Apparently, sick peo-
The strongest challenges to the belief in witchcraft ple used to go to doctors mainly to re c e i ve physical
among university-trained scholars of the sixteenth cen- t reatment; only 5 percent of Na p i e r’s patients suffere d
tury had come from physicians. And yet many of them, from mental as distinct from bodily illness. In this age,
like Gi ovan Battista Codronchi, Pi e t ro Piperno, or few people from any social class would have questioned
William Drage, championed the causation of illnesses Na p i e r’s medical advice, his mix of astro l o g y, magic,
by witchcraft. But unlike lawyers, philosophers, and C h r i s t i a n i t y, and science. But by the waning years of
theologians, physicians received a professional training the seventeenth century, academically trained doctors
that eventually allowed them to make a different diag- had largely succeeded in branding medical astro l o g e r s
nosis and provide naturalistic explanations for diseases. as quacks.
From correspondence in 1653 between a New Ha ve n
physician, Nicholas Au g u r, and John Wi n t h rop Jr. , Causes Cèlèbres and
medical doctor in Connecticut and later fellow of the New Paradigms
Royal Society, we can observe the shaping of a different It seems self-evident to admit that there was no
diagnosis. The illness of four young girls displaye d i n c o n g ruity at all between a “s c i e n t i fic” age and med-
symptoms similar to their counterparts in Salem fort y ical diagnoses based on demonological beliefs. T h e
years later, but these physicians ignored the girls’ narra- p resence of demonic pathologies in academic medical
tive of diabolical bewitchment. Instead, Augur searched milieus was no marginal and exotic aberration (Clark
for natural explanations for their fits, and his differen- 1997). Howe ve r, the guiding principle gove r n i n g
tial diagnosis included three possibilities: “I must needs medical studies, namely differential analysis, prove d
say that strange and various accidents and distempers to be the most intractable among all fields of learning
do arise both from the obstruction of the spleen as well to reconcile with the presence of a demonic agency.
as from hysterical passions, and sometimes from the Historians know that it is difficult to re c o n s t ruct a
retention of ove rflowing of the menses. . . .” (Ge v i t z c o h e rent picture explaining the establishment of a
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n ew scientific paradigm. Re g a rding medical care and barber-surgeons, apothecaries, and licensed mounte-
the etiology of illnesses, witchcraft could be discerned banks came into play to heal fractures, wounds, abscess-
as an interpre t i ve proposition based on the principle es, and a range of minor affli c t i o n s .
of irradiation from a center. It has been argued that Alongside these authorized health workers, an unof-
the Ma ry Gl over and Anne Gunter cases ficial (and illegal) health system flourished: a net of
(1601–1604) marked a turning point in the history male and female healers able to identify ord i n a ry ill-
of witchcraft in England because the unveiling of nesses and to prescribe medicines for them, there by
both women’s simulated illnesses “encouraged med- providing an additional, sometimes substitutive health
ical sceptics to advance their cause . . . and helped to s e rvice. Wo rkers in both systems generally drew on a
i n c rease the burden of pro o f” (Macdonald 1991, li). common pharmacopoeia, based on herbal lore, miner-
And in France, a similar emergence of ideas empha- als, and specific prayers. Ad m i t t e d l y, the practice of
sizing empirical medical explanations for simulated learned physicians was more interventionist and
cases of diabolical possessions extended from the painful, but the principal difference between medical
Ma rthe Brossier case (1598) through the gre a t practitioners of these two systems was gender: offic i a l
scandals of Loudun (1633–1634) and Louviers medical practitioners were all male, whereas most illegal
(1643–1644), all of which spawned major controve r- healers were female. We have much evidence that peo-
sies, including alternative diagnoses challenging the ple tried all the medical options locally available in their
a p p a rent proofs of diabolical illnesses and encourag- attempts to re c over health, but it is difficult to say
ing skeptical explanations. which system enjoyed a larger clientele and better repu-
tation. To be sure, one reason why the unauthorize d
Patients and Practitioners health service appealed to so many people in the past
Was the world of university-trained and town-based must have been the shortage of stable official, village-
physicians representative of the reality of medicine and based medical practitioners, whose fees we re pro b a b l y
medical care in early modern Europe? Because 80 per- also higher.
cent of its inhabitants did not live in cities, a meaning-
ful understanding of health care systems in the past
requires some knowledge of how they worked in the Curative Magic
countryside. Unfortunately, our information is far from Whenever infants suffered a sudden illness or anyone
satisfactory with regard to where, when, and how heal- experienced a prolonged wasting away of the body, such
ing practices were implemented in European villages. m i s f o rtunes could be contextualized in a scenario
In old Europe, medical care began within the house- emphasizing personal enmities; in such cases people
hold and the neighborhood, where older, experienced had stronger reasons to see themselves as victims of
women practiced midwifery and pooled their wisdom spells and to consult a cunning woman or man with a
to cure minor bodily afflictions. It is more difficult for reputation for discovering witches. Heinrich Kramer
social historians to assess how many health work e r s wrote in the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of
were available beyond the circle of neighborly first aid Witches, 1486) that “such witches . . . can always be
to cure the sick in rural areas. And cert a i n l y, numbers found at interval of one or two German miles and they
matter.We know, for instance, that the rural district of seem able to cure anyone who has been bewitched by
Ve l u we in Holland had one medical practitioner for another witch” (Kramer 1996, 159). He was describing
every 1,400–1,700 inhabitants in the sixteenth century. cunning women or men, whose very ubiquity greatly
In the more urbanized parts of north Holland, this ratio deepened the problem of the medical aspect of witch-
was 1 to 500, and late sixteenth-century Norwich had craft. Kramer’s calculations could be generalize d
ratios of 1 to 200. Clearly, the early modern European throughout early modern Europe, but it would be mis-
health system was not a total disaster. leading to follow either his or the later and much
But we must not forget the inadequate sanitation of stricter Reformation-era theological condemnations of
old Eu rope. In seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Tu s c a n y, for such people as “witches.”
instance, which enjoyed a re l a t i vely good sanitary sys- Cunning men and women we re not “w i t c h e s” but
tem, numerous village communities petitioned the m e rely pundits of an illegal health system, and their
Grand Duke to find them a reliable c e ru s i c o(barber). Of p o l y valent skills we re not restricted to curing magical
course, in attempting to assess the medical context of illnesses. They were rooted in their local communities,
witchcraft, numbers matter less than the quality of the and people stubbornly sought their services despite all
medical care offered, and the range of healers, especially p rohibitions by public authorities. Historians have
in rural areas, could be extremely diverse. Un i ve r s i t y - learned about some famous healers who attracted
trained physicians we re rare, but there was a fair supply patients from large areas. In sixteenth-centuryTyrol, a
of less well theoretically trained medical practitioners. magician who worked as an innkeeper and coppersmith
Be yond the circle of first aid, a net of surgeons, drew clients from a zone extending from eastern Tyrol
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happen after narrating their misfortunes to doctors?
This assumption has been questioned on seve r a l
grounds: early modern people had a different mental
equipment to face misfortune; their threshold of pain
was higher, and their attitude about death more fatalist.
“They might crave release from their illness, but they
also recognized that the length of their days was mea-
sured by God” (Brockliss and Jones 1997, 305). No
matter whether their disease was of natural or preter-
natural origin, early modern patients apparently con-
sulted any kind of doctor who could offer them some
psychological support.
Many medical practitioners provided effective thera-
py, whether orthodox or magical, to cure diseases that
might have psychosomatic origins. Edward Jorden, dis-
cussing the medical value of charms, amulets, and holy
water, observed that their success was due “to the confi-
dent persuasion which melancholic and passionate peo-
ple may have in them” (Thomas 1973, 249). The best
chance of any medical practitioner lay in a patient’s
imagination, enhanced by the secret rituals with which
cunning men surrounded their practice. Indeed, the
knowledge of the placebo effect must have been famil-
iar to both health systems.
Physicians treat victims of witchcraft, including one suffering from
The Two Systems Separate
demonic possession who vomits toads and snakes. To the right, a witch
invokes a demon while other witches attend a Sabbat. From G. A. If therapeutics of the period achieved no substantial
Mercklin, Tractatus Physico Medicus,1715. improvements, did the increase in medical knowledge
induce any changes in the relation between medical
practitioners and patients? We possess scattered but
to Bolzano and Merano in south Ty rol. The s t re g o n i meaningful evidence about the evolution of the medical
(male witches) of the Tuscan village of Ga l a t ro n a , aspect of witchcraft, which suggests that it was the qual-
whose clientele ranged from Lore n zo the Ma g n i fic e n t ity of medical service being offered that mattered most.
to very ordinary Sienese people, extended their activity It has been recently argued that as more advanced med-
over a good part of early seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Tu s c a n y ical knowledge and official healing penetrated local
and probably passed their skills down. Un f o rt u n a t e l y, communities, “the more the latitude and rationale for
we have no way of knowing the ratio between diseases thinking and acting in terms of witchcraft decreased”
re p o rtedly caused by witchcraft and the surely much (Gijswijt-Hofstra 1991, 110). This is certainly true as
larger general morbidity anywhere in Europe. far as witchcraft accusations were concerned. There are
also indications that increases in medical knowledge
Could Medicine Work? eventually changed the balance between the two health
If early modern medical prescriptions were effective care systems. Early modern historians have tried to dis-
against minor ailments, it is beyond doubt that its cern where and when, if at all, the clientele of the unof-
remedies and procedures were “ill-equipped to deal ficial health system shrank as the web of authorized
with organic disorders through drugs or surgery. Many medical practitioners grew. Early-eighteenth-century
men . . . died from incompetent diagnosis or treatment Europe certainly witnessed a progressive masculiniza-
whose lives would have been saved today” (Thomas tion of the discipline, and there are traces of profes-
1973, 251). Should this overt neglect of sanitation in sionalism that widened the gap between learned and
the past suggest that our early modern ancestors did not popular medicine. It was a slow but steady parting of
“go to the doctor” with the same expectation to recov- ways about curative magic that separated ordinary peo-
er health as people living today? To decode the medical ple from educated ones. Recent studies have shown a
stories recounted by patients, mostly illiterate, and dis- shift in cultural psychology stimulated by changes in
cover inner psychological meaning behind their “going material realities, including the rise of medicine as a
to the doctor” is not an easy task. What remedies did commodity market, as a part of the birth of a consumer
they request? If medicine was often powerless to heal, society. Another process of diffusion can also be dis-
did the sick really expect that a recovery was likely to cerned as new fashions and lifestyles eventually spread
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f rom urban centers. T h e re, educated and afflu e n t Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., “Depression with
patients sought out socially respectable unive r s i t y - Melancholy”). In the original sense it referred to a dis-
trained physicians as a symbol of their distance from ease and a temperament. The Anglican divine Robert
ordinary people. Burton summarized this latter implication in 1621 as
follows: “Melancholy . . . is either in disposition, or
OSCAR DI SIMPLICIO
habit. In disposition is that transitory melancholy
See also:AGRIPPAVONNETTESHEIM,HEINRICHCORNELIUS; which goes and comes upon every small occasion of
BROSSIER,MARTHE;CARDANO,GIROLAMO;CESALPINO,ANDREA; sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion or
COUNTERMAGIC;COTTA,JOHN;CUNNINGFOLK;GOODWIN
perturbation of the mind. . . . In which equivocal and
CHILDREN;GUNTER,ANNE;HERBALMEDICINE;JORDEN,
improper sense we call him melancholy that is dull, sad,
EDWARD;LAUDUNNUNS;LOUVIERNUNS;MELANCHOLY;
sour, lumpish ill-disposed, solitary, and any way moved
MENTALILLNESS;PARACELSUS,THEOPHRASTUSBOMBASTUSVON
or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions
HOHENHEIM;PIPERNO,PIETRO;SHAMANISM;WEYER,JOHANN.
no man living is free” (Burton 2001, 143). An equation
References and further reading:
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1998. Shaman of Oberstdorf: Conrad of the melancholic with the commonplace harmless
Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night.Charlottesville: mad would be a misleading oversimplification, inca-
University Press of Virginia. pable of grasping the assortment of characteristics
Brockliss, Laurence, and Colin Jones. 1997. The Medical World of included within that catchall mental disorder described
Early Modern France.Oxford: Oxford University Press. by the melancholy syndrome.
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft Literally, melancholy was the “black bile,” one of the
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
four humors flowing within the human body. It imi-
Di Simplicio, Oscar. 2000. Inquisizione, stregoneria, medicina:
tates earth, increases in the autumn, and pre vails in
Siena e il suo stato (1580–1721).Monteriggioni (Siena): Il
adulthood. A balance of humors assures good health,
Leccio.
but melancholics were thought to suffer from an excess
Gevitz, Norman. 2000. “‘The Devil Hath Laughed at the
of black bile. It could also favor the development of
Physicians’: Witchcraft and Medical Practice in
Seventeenth-Century New England.” Journal of the History of e xceptional intellectual faculties. The Bordeaux judge
Medicine55, January: 5–36. and demonologist Pi e r re de Lancre was certainly not
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke. 1991. “Six Centuries of Witchcraft in alone to maintain that black blood, from which the
the Netherlands: Themes, Outlines, and Interpretations.” Pp. melancholy mood comes, is so sour that it may corrupt
1–36 in Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the the brain, and its color, a symbol of darkness, makes
Twentieth Century.Edited by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Satan take advantage of melancholics. The interpre t a-
Willem Frijhoff. Rotterdam: Universitaire Pers.
t i ve power of melancholy was immense in literature ,
Kramer (Institoris), Heinrich, and James Sprenger [sic]. 1996.
drama, and painting. Being a cultural artifact, it was
Malleus Maleficarum: The Classic Study of Witchcraft (1484
highly changeable, and over time, it came to be charac-
[sic]). Edited by Montague Summers. London: Bracken.
terized by a contrasting variety of attitudes and behav-
Larner, Christina. 1984. Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of
iors. For instance, the earliest opponents of re l i g i o u s
Popular Belief.Oxford: Blackwell.
Lindemann, Mary. 1999. Medicine and Society in Early Modern enthusiasm in seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry England argued
Europe.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. that it was caused by melancholy, but during the eigh-
Macdonald, Michael. 1981. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, teenth century, orthodox controversialists claimed that
and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England.Cambridge: such enthusiasm was a sort of madness.
Cambridge University Press. Among other things, the melancholy syndro m e
———, ed. 1991. Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London: became a Eu ropean-wide mark of gentility. In En g l a n d ,
Edward Jorden and the Mary Glover Case.London and New
it became a fashionable disease for late Re n a i s s a n c e
York: Tavistock/Routledge.
c o u rtiers after the appearance of Bu rt o n’s Anatomy of
Porter, Roy. 2000. Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English
Me l a n c h o l yin 1621: British patients of rank pre f e r red to
Medicine.Stroud: Tempus.
be melancholic rather than merely sad or tro u b l e d .
Thomas, Keith. 1973. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in
Be t ween 1597 and 1634, two-thirds (forty of sixty-two)
Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. of all of the mentally disturbed gentry patients of the
Wear, Andrew. 2000. Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, Bu c k i n g h a m s h i re physician Richard Napier complained
1550–1680.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. of black bile, whereas only one-sixth of his ord i n a ry
patients bemoaned melancholy. Since Napier “s o u g h t
Melancholy also to articulate his patients’ maladies into categories
A disease in early modern Europe that was synonymous that we re at once scientifically useful and consistent with
with a nonviolent form of madness. The word melan- popular usage. . . Ord i n a ry people merited more often
choly has an extremely long and famous history that the rude and common word mopish” (Ma c Do n a l d
from ancient Greece crosses the Christian old regime 1981, 164). In Ge r m a n y, in the course of the sixteenth
and enters the contemporary Diagnostic and Statistical c e n t u ry, “melancholy declined as a theme for painters
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and became increasingly common in literature and life demolish the reality of the demonic pact and the
t ow a rd the end of the century” (Mi d e l f o rt 1984, 114). Sabbat, Weyer wanted to show that the witches’ confes-
As a medical diagnosis, melancholy became pro m i n e n t sions were caused by disturbed minds. “For clinical rea-
t h rough the growing influence of Ga l e n’s humoral theo- sons he linked delusion to gender; but at least this led
ries among German academic psychiatrists. This change him to exclude all women from the witchcraft popula-
is particularly evident with the treatment of mad princes. t i o n” (Clark 1997, 199–200). The medicalization of
Humoral-based therapy replaced “the common practice witchcraft was also championed by the Kentish intellec-
a round 1500 of simply locking or chaining an offensive tual Reginald Scot in 1584: “melancolie abuseth old
p r i n c e . . . . By the late sixteenth century, princes we re w o m e n . . . abounding in their head, and occupieng
regularly subjected to . . . purging, bleeding, change of their braine, hath deprived or rather depraved their
diet and we re expected to change,” whereas poore r judgement and all their senses” (Scot 1972, 30).
Germans, not unlike Na p i e r’s ord i n a ry English patients, B o r rowing melancholy from We ye r, Scot similarly
“went mad with a differe n c e” (Mi d e l f o rt 1984, 125). In planned to employ it in order to discredit the confes-
1575 a Protestant landgrave (count) re p o rted that a sions of old women.
woman thought to be possessed was “m o re likely suffer- But Weyer’s stance was not flawless and could not be
ing from weakness in her head and silly melancholy adapted to a large number of accused witches. Such was
t h o u g h t s”; howe ve r, this suggestion of melancholy came the contention of Thomas Erastus and Jean Bodin: the
f rom a prince, not a villager (Mi d e l f o rt 1984, 130). After former (a fellow physician) denied in 1572 that
1600, most of the 200 male and female insane admitted women’s brains were dulled by melancholy vapors; the
to Juliusspital of Catholic W ü rzburg we re described as latter refuted We ye r’s melancholia thesis shortly after-
“m e l a n c h o l i c” (Mi d e l f o rt 1984, 377). ward within the context of a global demolition job. In
Melancholy people, surrendering to the power of the De la démonomanie des sorciers (On the Demon-Mania
Devil, might have been more prone to commit suicide; of Witches, 1580), Bodin called We yer an ignorant
this phenomenon is well attested in England by the physician who did not even know that, according to
notable increase of suicides re p o rted to the King’s Galen, women’s humor is contrary to adult melancholy
Bench between 1500 and 1650. In sixteenth-century because it derives from heat and dryness, where a s
France also, suicides were frequently blamed on anxiety women are by nature cold and wet.
and melancholy.
Gender
Melancholy and Female Witches Did more women than men suffer from milder forms
Because, according to the Scriptures, the agency of of mental illness in early modern Europe? Is a super-
Satan could not be denied, early modern skeptics abundance of melancholic women confirmed by con-
argued that the signs of disease caused by morbid temporary statistics? Of course, conclusive statistical
humor, above all by black bile, revealed his work. In evidence is hard for historians to get. According to Erik
cases of bewitchment, all kinds of visions and halluci- Midelfort (1999), in the Renaissance the medical lan-
nations were much debated by physicians, theologians, guage of melancholy and madness was not highly gen-
and judges who maintained that senses could be cheat- dered; except for hysteria, physicians expected to find
ed by passions and alteration of physical condition due roughly the same maladies among men and women.
to humoral unbalances. By the late sixteenth century, However, the casebooks of Richard Napier registered
the very concept of witchcraft became an intellectual, more women than men among his mentally disturbed
religious, and political battleground, where melancholy patients. We know that, on a Eu ropean ave r a g e ,
eventually occupied a pivotal position. between 75 and 85 percent of all those accused of
The Dutch physician Johann We yer first used witchcraft were women. Frailty of mind, fickleness of
melancholy for the strategic purpose of making witch- behavior, and notorious lustfulness: such physical defi-
craft a sex-specific (and age-specific) crime. “Mo s t ciencies, when combined with mental delusion engen-
often . . . that crafty schemer the Devil thus influences dered by melancholy, made the weaker sex the Devil’s
the female sex, which by reason of temperament is favorite targets. From witchcraft trials comes much evi-
inconstant, credulous, wicked, uncontrolled in spirit, dence both of women who felt themselves bewitched
and (because of its feelings and affections, which it gov- and of female witches who confessed they had made a
erns only with difficulty) melancholic; he especially pact with the Devil, lived with him as man and wife,
seduces stupid, worn out, unstable old women. . . . flown to the Sabbat, and so on. In the former cases, his-
Now . . . consider the thoughts, words, sights, and torians might still be inclined to consider possessions as
actions of melancholics, and you will understand how evidence of hysterical syndromes. In the latter cases,
in these persons all the senses are often distorted when interpreting such narratives, when they are not clear
the melancholic humor seizes control of the brain and and simple products of torture, poses a continuous
alters the mind” (We yer 1991, 181, 183). Trying to challenge. Some seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry physicians,
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magistrates, or theologians diagnosed these women, o rder around 1550. His career as a practicing exo rc i s t
who were suffering from melancholy, as being mentally and writer was spent in Bologna and Lombardy, bring-
deranged. Today’s psychologists and psychiatrists have ing him the rew a rds of office: Pope Clement V I I I
sometimes speculated about the psychic balance of the appointed Menghi head of the Franciscan Province of
accused. Certainly, it does not seem that European Bologna from 1598 to 1602. He died in 1609 in his
magistrates, even if they had trouble distinguishing n a t i ve town of Viadana; the inscription on his tomb-
demonic possession from madness, ever confused mad stone relates the joy of the infernal hosts at the death of
people—female or male—with witches. their most rigorous assailant and describes him as the
Can one learn more by digging deeper in such mate- greatest exorcist of his century.
rial? Will clues emerge to better define the psychic iden- Certainly he was the most prolific. Not long after his
tity of womanhood within the melancholic tendencies entrance into the Franciscan ord e r, Menghi composed
of women under trials? No doubt, witchcraft material the first of many exo rcist manuals, the ve r n a c u l a r
will continue to provide grist to psyc h o a n a l y t i c a l l y Es o rcismo mirabile da disfare ogni sorte de maleficii per
minded historians. un devoto religioso composto (Wo n d e rful Exo rcism to
Undo Any Kind of Ma l e ficium, Composed by a
OSCAR DI SIMPLICIO
De vout Religious), published in Venice in 1555. T h e
See also:BEWITCHMENT;BODIN,JEAN;DISEASE;ERASTUS,THOMAS; n ovel aspect of this work was its announced focus on
EXORCISM;FEMALEWITCHES;FREUD,SIGMUND;GENDER; using exorcism as a weapon, not only against demonic
LANCRE,PIERREDE;MEDICINEANDMEDICALTHEORY;
possession but also against the more common negative
MENTALILLNESS;POSSESSION,DEMONIC;PSYCHOANALYSIS;
effects of bewitchment or maleficium (harmful magic).
SCOT,REGINALD;SKEPTICISM;VISIONS;WEYER,JOHANN.
Although he never took a university degree, Me n g h i
References and further reading:
did edit the unpublished Latin exorcist writings of the
Burton, Richard. 2001. The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).Edited
Dominican inquisitor Sy l ve s t ro Prierias (1456–1523),
by Holbrook Jackson, and with a new Introduction byWilliam
H. Gaas. NewYork: The NewYork Review of Books. an anti-Lutheran polemicist and master of the sacre d
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft palace under Pope Leo X. Menghi’s future work would
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon. draw heavily on Prierias and on other experts in
Macdonald, Michael. 1981. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, demonology and witchcraft, especially Michael Psellus,
and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England.Cambridge: Johannes Ni d e r, and the Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m (T h e
Cambridge University Press. Hammer of Witches, 1486).
———, ed. 1991. Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London:
The most successful of Me n g h i’s works was the
Edward Jorden and the Mary Glover Case.London and New
Italian Compendio dell’ a rte essorcista (Compendium of
York: Tavistock/Routledge.
the Exo rc i s t’s Art) first published at Bologna in 1576.
Midelfort, Erik. 1984. “Sin, Melancholy, Obsession: Insanity and
Literally a compendium, assembling opinions, stories,
Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany.” Pp. 113–145 in
and examples from earlier authorities, it went through
Understanding Popular Culture: Europe From the Middle Ages to
the Nineteenth Century.Edited by Steven Kaplan. Amsterdam: twelve editions by 1605 (fourteen, including two Latin
Mouton. editions in 1580 and 1601). His 1577 Latin Flagellum
———. 1999.A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany. daemonum (Whip of Demons) appeared in twenty-one
Stanford: Stanford University Press. editions by 1608, with another eight between 1626 and
Porter, Roy. 1987. Mind-Forg’d Manacles. A History of Madness in 1727. These numerous editions and the many surviving
England from the Restoration to the Regency.Harmondsworth: copies testify to the popularity and wide demand for
Penguin.
Me n g h i’s writings. In ventories of books owned by
Scot, Reginald. 1972. The Discovery of Witchcraft.Edited by
parish priests throughout Italy invariably included at
Montague Summers. NewYork: Dover.
least one of Menghi’s works, which served as basic man-
Themkin, Owsei. 1971. The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilòepsy
uals for the pastoral work of bringing relief to people
from the Greeks to the beginning of Modern Neurology.2nd ed.
suffering from the effects of m a l e fic i u m or possession.
Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.
Wear, Andrew. 2000. Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, He presented exorcism as just one of the “ecclesiastical
1550–1680.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. medicines” offered by the Church; this category, which
Weyer, Johannes. 1991. Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the included blessings, sacramentals, and other clerical
Renaissance: De praestigiis daemonum. Edited by George Mora. weapons against harm of negative supernatural origin,
Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. was central to the functionalist appeal of his work.
His later works, Fustis Daemonum (Club of Demons)
Menghi, Girolamo (1529–1609) of 1584 and Fuga Daemonum ( Expelling Demons) of
Menghi was the most prominent exponent of exorcist 1596, drew heavily from his own work in the field and
theory and practice in Counter-Reformation Italy. appealed frequently to his own experience. The repeat-
Called “IlViadana” after his birthplace in the diocese ed statement, “Vidi con occhi miei” (“I saw with my
of Cremona, Menghi entered the Observant Franciscan own eyes”), asserted the authority of his position as an
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expert and an eyewitness to vouch for the reality of the the Devil no real influence in the natural world and
events he describes. There is a curiously empirical side attached very little importance to witchcraft.
to this type of argument from experience that, no mat- In 1536 Menno Simons (Simonsz, 1496–1561)
ter how fantastic the alleged occurrence, was pro b a b l y reorganized an Anabaptist community in deep disarray,
more compelling to his audience than his sophisticated one year after the disastrous failure to found a chiliastic
scholastic arguments. Menghi described public dispos- New Je rusalem in the German town of Mu n s t e r.
sessions, some in front of learned audiences, including Menno was a former Catholic priest who became an
skeptical “enemies of adjuration” who were won over by Anabaptist but rejected the millenarianism of the
the performance they witnessed. Throughout it was the Munsterians and taught that the use of force was for-
e x p e rt, accomplished practitioner, the e s o rcista perito, bidden to Christians who wanted to lead a godly life.
who spoke, and his firsthand anecdotes we re clearly The only way to find God was through a spiritual
designed to remind the reader of this fact. Clerics testi- s e a rch leading to a re b i rth in Jesus. In the Me n n o n i t e
fying in sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Ro m a n p e rception, the Devil was not an anthro p o m o r p h i c
Inquisition trials frequently cited his works as an spirit but an almost abstract principle of evil. Wi t h i n
authoritative, learned source supporting their diagnoses the parameters of this cosmology, it was impossible to
of maleficiumor possession. conclude a pact with a demon, let alone have sexual
Me n g h i’s career coincided with the post-Tr i d e n t i n e intercourse with him.
e f f o rt to reform the Church in “head and members,” By the end of the sixteenth century, most
which put special emphasis on the clergy. His work s Mennonites lived in the Dutch Republic, where they
we re aimed at correcting abuses in the practice of exo r- we re a tolerated religious minority. By the follow i n g
cism by providing clear guidelines as well as a theore t i c a l century, the Mennonites had split over a variety of dog-
j u s t i fication for the efficacy and legitimacy of this offic e . matic disagreements, eventually forming three main
The dedication of the Flagellum Da e m o n u m of 1576 to g roups, all with geographical names: the Frisians, the
the reforming cardinal of Bologna, Gabriele Pa l e o t t i , Flemish, and the Waterlanders (named from the region
was indicative of the official and institutional context d i rectly north of Amsterdam). The Frisians we re the
within which Menghi worked. The tactic of publishing most ort h o d ox gro u p, the second was somewhat less
both Latin and Italian versions indicated a re f o r m e r’s stringent, and the Waterlanders were relatively the most
zeal to reach the widest possible audience. The re v i val of flexible. It should be noted that these three groups were
e xo rcism and the promotion of ecclesiastical remedies in themselves subdivided into a multitude of microconfes-
late sixteenth-century It a l y, a movement led by Me n g h i , sions. It was their usual practice to ban anyone who
p rovided an approved ort h o d ox means of addre s s i n g refused to accept the interpretation of the religious dog-
popular fears of m a l e fic i u mand thus contributed to the mas of his or her particular congregation. The implica-
l ow level of witch hunting in It a l y. tions we re quite serious: other members refused to
speak with someone who was exc o m m u n i c a t e d .
MARY R. O’NEIL
Despite this harsh ostracism, Mennonites neve r
See also:BEWITCHMENT;EXORCISM;ITALY;MALEFICIUM;MALLEUS demanded the application of physical force against
MALEFICARUM;NIDER,JOHANNES;POSSESSION,DEMONIC; members who had gone astray; a person could be
PRIERIAS,SYLVESTRO. banned but should not be persecuted. In this sense, tol-
References and further reading: erance remained a leading principle.
Gentilcore, David. 1992. From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Their immaterial perception of the Devil and their
Sacred in Early ModernTerra d’Otranto.Manchester:
readiness to allow other people to choose their own ro a d
Manchester University Press.
in matters of religion remained essential elements of
Maggi, Armando. 2001. Satan’s Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance
Mennonite faith. To them, witchcraft was not really an
Demonology.Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
issue; consequently, few of them ever took the effort to
O’Neil, Mary R. 1984. “Sacerdote ovvero strione:Ecclesiastical and
put his or her views on this matter on paper. Pi e t e r
Superstitious Remedies in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Pp. 53–83
in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages Twisck (1565–1636), minister of a Frisian congre g a t i o n
to the Nineteenth Century.Edited by Steven Kaplan. NewYork: in the Dutch town of Hoorn, did take witchcraft seri-
Mouton. o u s l y, howe ve r. In 1620 he published a chronicle about
Petrocchi, Massimo. 1957. Esorcismi e magia nell’Italia del “the downfall of the tyrants” in which he related numer-
Cinquecento e del Seicento.Naples: Libreria Scientifica. ous stories he had found in pamphlets and other sourc e s
Romeo, Giovanni. 1990. Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia f rom abroad, combined with some incidents he had wit-
della Controriforma.Florence: Sansoni.
nessed himself. In 1639 Jan Jansz Deutel, a Me n n o n i t e
p r i n t e r, also from Hoorn, wrote a short treatise against
Mennonites witchcraft that was published only in 1670 by his son.
With their highly spiritualized view of the relation In De u t e l’s eyes, all stories about witchcraft we re “f a b l e s ,
between God and human beings, Mennonites allowed jokes, twaddle, lies and conceit.” God would never allow
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a n y b o d y, neither the Devil nor a human being, to alter h a ve given an even longer list and included bew i t c h-
n a t u re. A heartfelt trust in God was incompatible with a m e n t .
belief in witchcraft. Identifying the insane is easier than defining them.
Abraham Palingh, a textile trader from Hoorn and Which actions, thoughts, or emotions were considered
member of its Waterlander congregation, expressed a abnormal? Not surprisingly, early modern people recog-
similar view in a book he published in 1659. Antonius n i zed the insane by the way they behaved: strange
van Dale (1638–1708), a medical doctor fro m motions of the body, threatening or harming people, or
Haarlem, became the fourth Mennonite to write about going naked were commonplace indicators of madness.
these matters. An exponent of the early Enlightenment Lunatics we re considered ill, but might be beaten if
that blossomed in the Dutch Republic with the philos- unmanageable or locked up if considered dangero u s .
ophy of Ba ruch Spinoza, van Da l e’s De ora c u l i s ( On The deranged we re believed to be deprived of their
Oracles) of 1683 tried to combat superstitious beliefs in souls and therefore no better than animals. In the late
oracles, demonic possession, and witchcraft. In the sixteenth century, London’s Bethlem Hospital held
1690s van Dale was invo l ved—though indire c t l y — i n about twenty babbling manacled madmen who attract-
the uproar that followed on the publication of Balthasar ed thousands of tourists each year. Figures on the insane
Be k k e r’s De Be t ove rde We e re l d (The World Bew i t c h e d , are hard to get. Between 1597 and 1634, some 60,000
1691–1693). De ora c u l i s was translated into Fre n c h patients flocked to the “consulting ro o m” of Richard
(1687), English (1689), and German (1730). Vo l t a i re Na p i e r, physician and parson of a rural parish in
used it as the basis for the entry on “Or a c l e s” in his Bu c k i n g h a m s h i re; about 5 percent of them, 1,286
Dictionnaire philosophique. females and 748 males, appear to have been mentally
disturbed (Macdonald 1981).
HANS DE WAARDT
But were such unfortunates curable? Some hospitals
See also:ANABAPTISTS;BEKKER,BALTHASAR;DEVIL;ENLIGHTEN- we re available for them, where they re c e i ved mostly
MENT;MILLENARIANISM;NETHERLANDS,NORTHERN;ORACLES; religious consolation. Therefore, no doubt for the poor,
PALINGH,ABRAHAM;VOLTAIRE.
it seems difficult to prove Richard Burton wrong: “For
References and further reading:
the diseases of the mind, we take no note of them”
Dale, Antonius van. 1683. De oraculis ethnicorum dissertations
( Bu rton 2001, 69). Was this omission re g rettable? In
duae.Amsterdam: Boom.
recent decades, the “storm over psychiatry” has project-
Deutel, J. J. 1670. Een kort tractaetje tegen de toovery.Hoorn: Jan
ed his influ e n c e onto historians. Was the eighteenth
Jansz Deutel.
Evers, Meindert. 1981. “Die ‘Orakel’ von Antonius van Dale c e n t u ry really a disaster for the insane (Ma c Do n a l d
(1638–1708): Eine Streitschrift.” Lias8: 225–267. 1981)? Should the two centuries before Mi c h e l
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke. 1989. “Doperse geluiden over magie en Foucault’s “great confinement” of 1656 be viewed as a
toverij: Twisck, Deutel, Palingh en Van Dale.” Pp. 69–83 in world relatively safe for lunatics, when the treatment of
Oecumenismen.Ed. by A. Lambo. Hilversum: Algemene madness depended mostly on family care?
Doopsgezinde Sociëteit. Our best information about the actual treatment of
Waite, Gary K. 2003. Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early
poor people’s madness in early modern asylums ove r-
Modern Europe.Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
turns now - c o n ventional Foucaultian wisdom about
first venerating madmen as holy fools and then confin-
Mental Illness ing them en masse. Two converted rural monasteries in
Many early modern Eu ropeans included the De v i l Protestant Hesse with extremely careful re c o rds fro m
among the possible causes of madness, thus illustrating 1550 to the Thirty Years’ War show a clear increase in
that the symptoms of mental illness are culturally re l a- the number of mentally ill patients admitted after
t i ve and viewed as violations of conventional social 1580, rising from 13 percent to 28 percent of all resi-
norms and that mental illness is notoriously difficult to dents. This post-Reformation transformation of
d e fine. In 1810, a London physician re g i s t e red the m e d i e val piety and charity “p rovided comfort for the
causes of insanity among admissions to Be t h l e m helpless in ways so attractive that people clamored to be
Hospital (“Be d l a m”): “A Table of the Causes of In s a n i t y a d m i t t e d” (Mi d e l f o rt 1999, 358–365). In t e re s t i n g l y,
of about one third of the patients admitted into Be d l a m : they admitted about four times as many insane men
Mi s f o rtunes, Troubles, Disappointments, Grief (206); (141) as insane women (33)—almost the exact reverse
Religion and Methodism (90); Love (74); Jealousy (9); of the percentage of male and female witches—
Pride (8); Study (15); Fright (51); Drink and although the male/female disproportion was much less
In t oxication (58); Fe vers (110); Childbed (79); (8 to 5) in the Juliusspital of Catholic W ü rzburg ove r
Ob s t ruction (10); Family and He redity (115); the same period (Midelfort 1999, 376–377).
Contusions and Fr a c t u res of the Skull (12); Ve n e re a l Not unlike contemporary neuro p s yc h i a t ry, early
(14); Small pox (7); Ulcers and Scabs dried up (5)” modern medicine identified madness as an organic dis-
( Po rter 1987, 33–34). Earlier diagnosticians would ease. In fact, according to Galenic medicine, afflictions
Mental Illness 751 |
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of the mind we re closely connected with bodily Macfarlane, Alan. 1999. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England. A
“distempers” and resulted from an alteration of proper Regional and Comparative Study.2nd ed. London: Routledge.
humoral balance. Minor psychic disturbances we re Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1999.A History of Madness in Sixteenth-
Century Germany.Stanford: Stanford University Press.
c o n s i d e red as forms of melancholy and treated with
Porter, Roy. 1987. Mind-Forg’d Manacles. A History of Madness in
purging and bloodletting until the late seventeenth cen-
England from the Restoration to the Regency.Harmondsworth,
tury, when research on the nervous system pioneered by
UK: Penguin.
Thomas Willis signaled the decline of humoralism.
Temkin, Oswei. 1971. The Falling Sickness. A History of Epilepsy
from the Greeks to the beginning of Modern Neurology.2nd ed.
Mental Illness and Witchcraft
Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.
Although none of the poor madmen admitted to Wear, Andrew. 2000. Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine,
Hessian asylums was considered demonically possessed 1550–1680.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
and although Tudor and Stuart Essex showed only “a
very slight connection between mental derangement Mergentheim, Ecclesiastical
and witchcraft beliefs” (Macfarlane 1999, 183), posses- Territory of
sion by the Devil was, theoretically, a distinct phenom- Within forty years, from 1590 to 1631, approx i m a t e l y
enon. It was admitted that a melancholic temperament 500 persons we re executed for witchcraft in the re g i o n
might make the Devil’s work easier. But because a witch of Mergentheim, a small ecclesiastical possession in
could have sent an evil spirit into a victim, the notions s o u t h western Germany owned by the Teutonic Ord e r.
of possession and bewitchment were amalgamated. And Be f o re the Great Plague (“Pe s t”) of 1626, the two major
unless fraud was invo l ved, diabolical interve n t i o n cities, Mergentheim and Ma rkolsheim, had about 3,200
offered a plausible explanation for the symptoms of inhabitants. Half of them died in the Great Pl a g u e .
possession: the afflicted person would fall into convul- The Teutonic Order was an ecclesiastical order of
sions and contortions, displaying abnormal strength, knights whose extensive lands along the Baltic were sec-
vomiting pins, and speaking languages pre v i o u s l y ularized by Prussia during the Reformation in 1525; its
unknown. If demonic possession might explain any surviving Catholic members continued to govern a few
kind of insanity, tracing the history of madness territories within the Holy Roman Em p i re, cove r i n g
becomes even harder. a p p roximately 77 square miles. The Teutonic Ord e r
Yet it seems clear that the heyday of witchcraft perse- m oved its seat from Prussia to Mergentheim, a little
cutions (ca. 1580–ca. 1660) deserves the label of a t own located between St u t t g a rt and W ü rzburg of
golden age of demoniacs. Close scrutiny of witchcraft a round 2,000 inhabitants (the order still exists today,
and possession cases occasionally made physicians think with its seat in Vienna).
that some demoniacs (and even witches) were mentally Four major witch hunts took place in the area of
ill. In women, acute neuroses were attributed to a “wan- Mergentheim. They all followed the same course, typical
dering womb”: under pre s s u re of internal vapors, “t h e for most parts of Ge r m a n y. A witch hunt started with a
womb moves up or sideways to crush the organs single complaint of m a l e ficium (harmful magic), often
around it . . . physical and mental illness, fits of uncon- against someone whose family had been invo l ved in a
sciousness or hysteria, we re likely to follow” (We a r p revious case of witchcraft. This person was arre s t e d ,
2000, 142). Around 1600, skeptical physicians like t o rt u red, and forced to name other persons she (or he)
Michel Ma rescot in France or Ed w a rd Jo rden in had met during the witches’ Sabbat. These persons we re
England blamed the symptoms of demonic possession then arrested and questioned about further part i c i p a n t s .
on hysteria rather than witchcraft. Johann We ye r, in A chain of denunciations developed and continued to
o rder to defend witches through an insanity defense, expand until the witch hunt finally collapsed, for va r i o u s
had previously “s e i zed upon the exc l u s i vely legal lan- reasons that have never been examined accurately.
guage of furorand infused it with the medical discourse During Me r g e n t h e i m’s first campaign, in 1590, a
of melancholy” (Midelfort 1999, 226). total of 68 people we re arrested. We know that 9 of
them were executed and 7 were released, but we do not
OSCAR DI SIMPLICIO
know what happened to the other 52 people. In the sec-
See also:BEWITCHMENT;EXORCISM;FREUD,SIGMUND;JORDEN, ond episode, during the years 1601–1602, 52 people
EDWARD;MEDICINEANDMEDICALTHEORY;MELANCHOLY;POS- were arrested and 43 were executed; the fate of the oth-
SESSION,DEMONIC;PSYCHOANALYSIS;WEYER,JOHANN.
ers is not known. In the third campaign, which took
References and further reading:
place in 1617–1618, no fewer than 213 persons we re
Burton, Richard. 2001. The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).Edited
a r rested. All but 13 of them we re executed, and 3 of
by Holbrook Jackson, with a new Introduction byWilliam H.
them died during their imprisonment. In the fourt h
Gaas. NewYork: NewYork Review of Books.
and final witch hunt, from 1628 to 1631, another 136
Macdonald, Michael. 1981. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety,
and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England.Cambridge: people we re arrested: 122 of them we re executed, 10
Cambridge University Press. were dismissed, and the other 4 died in prison. Overall,
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of the 584 people who we re arrested, 493 (or 84 per- consulted the largest nearby ecclesiastical ru l e r, the
cent) were female (Wohlschlegel 1990). prince-bishop of Bamberg, who sent a judge with expe-
So far, only the last wave of persecution betwe e n rience in witch procedures. The Bamberg judge worked
1628 and 1631 has been examined systematically re m a rkably quickly. No r m a l l y, only ten days elapsed
(Midelfort 1972, 143–155; Wohlschlegel 1990), using b e t ween a suspect’s arrest and her execution; it took
records at Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart. Details about the longer only if the accused were pregnant or ill. As was
first three waves of witch hunts are available in the customary at the time, the convicted witch or her heirs
so-called Hexenkartothek,drawn up by Nazi SS. Despite paid the costs of the procedure. However, although the
some double naming, its data about Mergentheim seem financial records are unusually rich for the 1628–1631
generally reliable: w a ve, we have no evidence that the Teutonic Ord e r
p ro fited in any way from this affair, despite the claim
arrested: 493 females + 91 males = 584 still made by people in Mergentheim that He xe n g e l d
executed: 333 + 54 = 387 (witch money) financed the tower of their town church.
dismissed: 21 + 6 = 27
KARIN WOHLSCHLEGEL
died in prison: 8 + 0 = 8
unknown: 83 + 10 = 93 See also:BAMBERG,PRINCE-BISHOPRICOF;ECCLESIASTICAL
TERRITORIES(HOLYROMANEMPIRE); FAMILY;FEMALEWITCHES;
The archives of the Teutonic Order in Vienna, which
GENDER;GERMANY,SOUTHWESTERN;LITTLEICEAGE;
contain a great number of files, have not been evaluated
NAZIINTERESTINWITCHPERSECUTION;SOCIALANDECONOMIC
STATUSOFWITCHES.
systematically for evidence about Mergentheim’s witch
References and further reading:
hunts.
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1972.Witch Hunting in Southwestern
Some details have been established: more than half of
Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations.
these women were married. Socially, these women came Stanford: Stanford University Press.
from all walks of life except the nobility; many of them Wohlschlegel, Karin. 1990. “Die letzten Hexen von Mergentheim:
came from mayoral and craftsmen families, and families Auswertung der Verhörprotokolle aus den Jahren 1628 bis
of tavern owners made up a dispro p o rtionately large 1631.” Württembergisch Franken80: 41–115.
part. Their ages ranged from twenty to sixty.The nine-
ty-one masculine defendants, whose ages ranged fro m Merlin
e l e ven to seve n t y - five, came exc l u s i vely from the two Merlin is the legendary magician who advised King
larger towns, Mergentheim and Ma rkelsheim; in the A rt h u r. Me r l i n’s origins lay in two Welsh fig u re s ,
smaller villages, only women we re arrested. A closer My rddin, the author of bardic poetry, and Ambrosius, a
examination of the kinship networks among arre s t e d wonder child and prophet from a medieval We l s h - L a t i n
people showed that “witch families” existed, in which s o u rce. Ge o f f rey of Mo n m o u t h’s Historia Re g u m
up to eight people were arrested. It is interesting that a Br i t a n n i a e ( Hi s t o ry of the Kings of Britain) combined
large share of the people who had previously pro fit e d them to create Merlin, who is a central fig u re in the
f rom these witchcraft trials we re themselves accused A rthurian legend and an exemplar of the all-powe rf u l
and arrested as the persecution continued. magician. Merlin explains the riddle of the dragons
Although Me r g e n t h e i m’s witch hunting occurred at underneath a falling towe r, transports Stonehenge to
times typical for these regions (the 1628–1631 cycle in Sa l i s b u ry Plain, and engineers Art h u r’s conception by
p a rticular corresponds to the greatest wave in southwe s t- transforming his father’s (Uther Pe n d r a g o n’s) appearance.
ern Germany), neither the first major Eu ropean persecu- Geoffrey of Monmouth used Merlin again as a wild
tion wave of the 1560s nor the last a century later affect- man and prophet in Vita Me rl i n i (Life of Merlin, ca.
ed Mergentheim. The causes for Ge r m a n y’s witch hunts, 1150), where he interacted with more localizsed Welsh
as discussed in recent literature, such as famines re s u l t- characters rather than Arthurian heroes. Another
ing from agrarian crises associated with the Little Ic e Welsh-Latin source linked MerlinusSylvestris(Merlin of
Age, seem re l e vant in the case of Me r g e n t h e i m , the Woods) to awenyddion (the inspired) who prophe-
although we cannot prove the immediate cause of any of sied while in a state of trance. These Welsh re f e re n c e s
these four outbreaks of witch hunting. formed the basis for the modern transformation of
Witchcraft trials we re carried out in this area using Merlin into a shaman fig u re. Howe ve r, Ge o f f re y’s
the extremely formal pro c e d u re specified by imperial Merlin was already an established narrative type
l a w. Judges we re re q u i red to ask over 100 pre s c r i b e d combining elements of the wonder child/prophet who
questions, and the answers were recorded. The judiciary triumphed against impossible odds, the magician-
of the Teutonic Order (whose lands were surrounded by engineer who created marvels, and the wise protector.
Protestant territories) considered itself unable to carry An independent tradition of Merlin romances began
out such procedures without assistance. In the last two about 1200. Although indebted to Ge o f f re y, they
witch-hunting campaigns, Me r g e n t h e i m’s gove r n m e n t added magical transformations, prophetic dreams, and
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material from the Antichrist legend. A devil raped a though less so in trials: hares, cats, and the nightmare
nun in order to create a diabolical child. The baby tended to be female witches, but we rew o l ves we re
Merlin was baptized and saved but was often referred to mostly male. Ac c o rding to one edition of the fif-
as “son of Satan.” Merlin possessed magic power, but he t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Evangiles des quenouilles ( Gospel of
was a long way from the omnipotent figure of modern the Di s t a ves), a we rew o l f’s son would inherit the
t reatments, and a woman magician who took on the same destiny, but his daughter would be a nightmare
role of Arthur’s protector eventually imprisoned him. (Jeay 1985, 143–144).
Undoubtedly, some episodes were rooted in folk tra- Shape changing was re c o rded in folk traditions in
dition, for example, the wonder child without a father, p a rts of Eu rope from antiquity to the modern period,
the building that could not stand until some secret was and it was mentioned in some of the earliest re c o rd e d
revealed, the mysterious helper-figure, the motif of the confessions of witches: Matteuccia of Todi admitted
triple death, tears and laughter provoked by iro n i c going to the Sabbat in the shape of a fly in 1428
o c c u r rences, and shape shifting. Their ve ry familiarity ( Ginzburg 1990, 70–73, 299). Early modern court s
must have added to the impact of the Merlin figure and often paid little attention to allegations of transfor-
given an air of authority to pseudohistorical works such mation, sometimes due to skepticism (or to main-
as Ge o f f re y’s. Merlin became important again during s t ream Christian theology, which denied that meta-
the nineteenth-century Arthurian revival. Here, he was morphosis was possible), but mainly because they
unequivocally a powerful magician, and this image per- we re impossible to prove unless defendants confessed,
meated subsequent reworkings in which the Arthurian which many did not (Briggs 2000, 90–91). T h o u g h
legend functioned as an image of a lost world. w i t c h e s’ metamorphoses have often been attributed
Increasingly Merlin, and his spiritual descendents such to pathological delusions, drug-induced hallucina-
as J. R. R. Tolkien’s magician Gandalf, were situated in tions, mistakes of perception, or irrational cre d u l i t y,
a fantastic and romantic Da rk Age Britain, which was s h a red traditions about shape changing appear to
viewed as a context for magic or for a struggle between h a ve arisen from different cultural understandings of
ancient and modern ways of life. Often the We l s h personhood and of human relations with the world of
sources and the romances were treated as a coherent tra- spirits (Napier 1986, 4–29).
dition in which the remnants of a pre-Christian figure Recent scholars have looked more closely at the
could be discove red. This ignored Me r l i n’s links with c o g n i t i ve systems, both intellectual and folkloric, in
other figures and variations within the narrative materi- which metamorphosis was intelligible as a rational
al but remained an important feature in modern New p roposition. As St u a rt Clark has demonstrated, the
Age reconstructions. place and powers assigned to demons in the natural
world enabled intellectuals to make sense of re p o rt e d
JULIETTE WOOD
transformations by classifying them as illusions;
See also:ANTICHRIST,THE;DIVINATION;FOLKLORE;SHAMANISM. though demons had no power to transform miracu-
References and further reading: lously a human being, it was within their natural
Clarke, Basil, ed. 1973.Vita Merlini.Cardiff: University of Wales
capacity to surround bodies with illusory forms and
Press.
i n t e rf e re with people’s senses and imaginations, so
Dean, Christopher. 1992. A Study of Merlin in English Literature
that transformations could be true in appearance but
from the Middle Ages to the Present.Lewiston: Edwin Mellon.
not in reality (Clark 1997, 157–167). Carlo Gi n z b u r g
Geoffrey of Monmouth.1987.TheHistory of the Kings of Britain.
situated shape-changing traditions within an arc h a i c ,
Translated by Lewis Thorpe. Middlesex: Penguin.
Jarman, A. O. H. 1991. “The Merlin Legend and the Welsh shamanistic belief system relating to mediators who
Tradition of Prophecy.” Pp. 117–146 in The Arthur of the fell into trances and dreamed that their souls went out
Welsh. Edited by Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman and in animal shapes to the otherworld to secure benefit s
Brynley F. Roberts. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. for their community (Ginzburg 1990). Eva Pócs
e m p h a s i zed the ambivalence of such ecstatic media-
Metamorphosis tors in central, eastern, and southeastern Eu rope: they
Assuming another shape or transforming a victim is we re capable of harm as well as good and we re part of
called metamorphosis. Metamorphosis was usually an a dualistic system in which individuals born with cauls
innate capacity, but it could also be acquired, either had spirit doubles in animal shapes and we re opposed
from the Devil or from another witch. to supernatural fig u res with similar attributes (Pócs
Eu ropean witches mainly took the shapes of hare s , 1999). These traditions are well delineated in eastern,
cats, wolves, dogs, mice, bees, toads, flies, and cert a i n central, and southeastern Eu rope, as well as parts of
types of birds, but they could also appear as inani- the Ba l t i c .
mate objects (wisps of straw, cartwheels) or natural Western Eu ropean shape-changing traditions show
phenomena (lights, mists, small whirlwinds). A ro u g h enough similarities to indicate common ancestry at some
gender distinction is discernible in folk traditions, stage, but they are less often connected with clearly
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Metamorphosis (shape changing) is common in European folklore. Witches assumed the body of animals, fish, and insects, but also of inanimate
objects. Here witches have become on the left, various animals, and, on the right, a wolf. From Ulrich Molitor, De Laniis et phitonicis mulieribus
(Concerning Witches and Fortunetellers, 1489). (Stapleton Collection/Corbis)
d e fined, potentially beneficial roles like those of the of personal crisis could precipitate a corresponding insta-
b e n a n d a n t i (do-gooders) or the Livonian we rew o l ve s . bility of shape that may be both visible to others and
Scandinavian folklorists’ re s e a rch indicated that shape experienced as a bodily transformation by the shape
changing there was part of a wider scale of extracorpore a l changers themselves (Jackson 1989, 102–118).
manifestations of aspects of the self in altered form; they Shape changing was deeply rooted in narrative tra-
we re not confined to mediators or witches but could ditions. Personal experience stories we re the most per-
happen with variable degrees of intensity and visibility to s u a s i ve genre, but because transformations we re
almost anyone and did not re q u i re trances. A person’s always more told of than witnessed or experienced,
h u g(thought, feeling, will) could wander away from the the genre with the widest influence was the legend, a
body in certain circumstances (such as intense longing) s t o ry told as a true re p o rt of specific people’s experi-
and be perceptible elsew h e re, either invisibly or, if ve ry ences, which might be re p o rted as news yet followed a
s t rong, apparent in a shape (h a m). One of the pro j e c t i o n s traditional narrative pattern. Some of these memo-
of the h u gwas the f y l g j ethat accompanied a person as a rably simple but highly adaptable story schemas
s o rt of guardian spirit, which could take animal shape e n d u red over ve ry long periods, in literature as well
and was visible to people with second sight (Kv i d e l a n d as oral tradition, and we re sometimes re p o rted as per-
and Se h m s d o rf 1991, 41–81). Anthropological studies sonal experiences by witches or their victims.
of shape changing in contemporary societies related it to St . Au g u s t i n e’s fif t h - c e n t u ry account of Italian witches
d i f f e rent cultural constructions of personhood, part i c u- transforming travelers into pack horses by feeding
larly where social role was a vital component, and states them bewitched cheese (City of Go d , X V I I I . xv i i i )
Metamorphosis 755 |
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belongs to the same family as Ho m e r’s story of Circ e a n i m a l s’ bodies (Bynum 2001, 93–109). Commentators
transforming Ul y s s e s’s companions (Od y s s e y, X ) , did not suggest that demons caused these deceptions in
Ap u l e i u s’s Golden As s ,and a later medieval “t ru e” story response to culpable human intentions until after the
re p o rted in the Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m(The Hammer of establishment of the idea of the witches’ pact with the
Witches, 2.2.4) about a witch in Cy p rus transforming Devil. On the contrary, William of Au vergne in the
a sailor into a horse by giving him eggs to eat (Ro b e rt s m i d - t h i rteenth century sought to demonstrate that
1996, 192–194). A related motif, of witches using a suspected we rew o l ves we re unjustly blamed for eating
magic bridle to transform their victims into horses people and we re themselves innocent victims of the
and riding them, was common in Eu ropean legends deceptions of demons (De unive r s o[ On the Un i ve r s e ] ,
f rom the Middle Ages and surfaced in the accusations 2.3.13). It was not until the late fifteenth century that
of witnesses against witches in the early modern peri- writers made any serious effort to account for the
od (Thompson 1955–1958, Motif G241.2.1.1). Anne a p p a rent transformations of diabolical witches and to
A r m s t rong testified in No rthumberland in 1673 that explain away the Canon Episcopi ( e . g . , Malleus malefi-
she had been transformed into a horse in spirit by a c a ru m , 1.10; 2.1.8).
witch who put a bridle on her head and rode her to With the proliferation of trials in the late sixteenth
the witches’ meeting, where they appeared in the century came fresh reports of transformations, leading
shapes of hares, cats, mice, and bees; a to more publications interpreting them. In t e l l e c t u a l s
C a m b r i d g e s h i re woman had made a similar accusa- e x p ressed va rying degrees of belief, ranging from Je a n
tion in 1659, but the judge refused to believe her B o d i n’s conviction that physical transformations we re
( Ewen 1933, 358–361, 457). Wi t c h e s’ victims in possible to Reginald Scot’s skeptical dismissal of all the
e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Hu n g a ry also told their own ve r- re p o rts as untrue; howe ve r, few writers shared such
sions of this story, sometimes even with the same extreme views (Clark 1997, 195–213). Some followed
minor detail about the horse being tied to a post out- medical tradition, as Johann Weyer did, in attributing
side the meeting, which Anne Armstrong had also confessed transformations to melancholic delusions or
mentioned (Pócs 1999, 79–80, 93). A regular motif in the effects of drugs, though demons might sometimes
legends about shape changers was the “analog injury” be involved. Others, including the magistrates Nicolas
(or “re p e rc u s s i o n”): a wound inflicted on the animal Rémy, Pierre de Lancre, and Henry Boguet, refined the
shape produced a corresponding mark on the human t h e o ry of demonic illusions to explain how witnesses
body (Thompson 1955–1958, Motif G252). It occa- saw the shapes that witches confessed they took (which
sionally featured in trial re c o rds: one witness against medical theory could not easily account for). Either the
Ge r a rd Horiel of Jo n velle in 1610–1611 said she demon went about in animal form committing harm
thumped a cat with a stick when it attacked her in bed and altered the witches’ imaginations so that they
one night, and afterw a rd Horiel had a bruise on his d reamed they did those things in other shapes; or the
nose for a month (Oates 1993, 282). Howe ve r, it was witches we re there in person and the demon altere d
also a detail that often crept into news re p o rts of o b s e rve r s’ perceptions so they saw the witch as some-
encounters with shape changers, as specific details thing other; or else he surrounded the witch with a cun-
we re forgotten in transmission and replaced by the ningly fitted animal skin or an airy likeness of another
typical elements of familiar narratives (Oates 1989, species that would deceive observers’ eyes.
3 1 4 – 3 1 5 ) . Multiple interpretations of transformations were cur-
Such stories we re all the more persuasive when rent in early modern Europe, and there was no single,
re p o rted by credible informants; it was this that unified folk view any more than there was unity among
p rompted St. Augustine to formulate a theory of illu- the learned. Aspects of demonology became common
s o ry transformations provoked by demons (with k n owledge at all social levels: witches confessed that
Go d’s permission), which accepted that witnesses demons transformed them or gave them their magic
re p o rted tru t h f u l l y, accounted for any effects wolf skins. Where some understood it as a roving spirit
o b s e rved, and at the same time denied that either the double in animal shape, others took it to be a form of
human soul or body could be really transformed magical disguise of the body or even a physical trans-
e xcept by God (City of God, 18.18). The Ca n o n mogrification, as a boy in Franche-Comté did in 1643,
Ep i s c o p i (ca. 906) emphatically condemned the belief when he testified that after hitting a wolf with a stick he
in shape changing, and that became the stan- saw it immediately turn back into the shape of a beggar,
d a rd position in penitential texts. Twelfth- and Claude Chastelan, who was executed after confessing
t h i rt e e n t h - c e n t u ry interpretations of transformations, (Oates 1989, 352–354).
including those of Gerald of Wales, Ge rvase of Legends about shape changing continued to be told
Ti l b u ry, and Thomas Aquinas, built on St. Au g u s t i n e’s until the twentieth century in some areas. Scholarly
foundations and enlarged on the ways demons could i n t e rest in them did not disappear altogether with the
make them seem to happen, for example, by borrow i n g gradual exclusion of demons from the material world
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during and after the seventeenth century; the occult Meyfart (Meyfahrt), Johann
revival of the nineteenth century and the emergence of Matthäus (1590–1642)
the disciplines of psychology, ethnography, anthropolo- Author of the Christliche Er i n n e ru n g an gewaltige
gy, and folklore all stimulated new interpretations. But Regenten (A Christian Reminder to Powerful Princes,
the emphasis was no longer on explaining how transfor- 1635), Meyfart opposed witch hunting by underscor-
mation could appear to happen, visibly and with mate- ing the cruelties of witchcraft trials. Among all oppo-
rial consequences, which, in the case of we rew o l ve s , nents of witch hunting, Meyfart was by far the most
were illusions that could bite. emotional, and his outrage was not just personal atti-
tude but was inspired by specific cases in his environ-
CAROLINE F. OATES
ment. An orthodox Lutheran, he fervently accused the
See also:ANIMALISTICANDMAGICALTHINKING;ANIMALS;APULEIUS princes for their lack of compassion and their officials
OFMADAURA;AUGUSTINE,ST.; BENANDANTI;BODIN,JEAN; for inhumane cruelty. Although not the first author to
BOGUET,HENRI;CANONEPISCOPI;CAUL;CIRCE;CORPOREALITY, attack witch hunters in the German vernacular under
ANGELICANDDEMONIC;DEMONOLOGY;DEMONS;FOLKLORE; his full name (Trunz 1987, 212) (Johann Weyer and
HUNGARYANDSOUTHEASTERNEUROPE,MAGIC;HUNGARYAND Anton Prätorius did this earlier), Meyfart’s literary skills
SOUTHEASTERNEUROPE,WITCHCRAFT;LANCRE,PIERREDE; enabled him to invent the most powerful metaphors for
LYCANTHROPY;MALEWITCHES;NIGHTMARES;RÉMY,NICOLAS;
this purpose. W h e reas We ye r, Adam Ta n n e r, and
TODI,WITCHOF;WEYER,JOHANN.
Friedrich Spee became entangled in juridical and theo-
References and further reading:
logical discussions and appealed primarily to the read-
Briggs, Robin. 2000. Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cu l t u ra l
er’s reason, Meyfart portrayed the hardships of the tri-
Context of Eu ropean Wi t c h c raft. 2nd ed. Oxford: Bl a c k we l l .
als in full detail, constantly appealing to the reader’s
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 2001. Metamorphosis and Identity.New
York: Zone. compassion. His descriptions of contemporary prisons
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft were unprecedented, as was his ability to make the
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon. reader identify with those poor victims suffering all the
Ewen. Cecil L’Estrange. 1933. Witchcraft and Demonianism: A fear and anguish of imminent torture. Meyfart not only
Concise Account Derived from Sworn Depositions and Confessions taught rhetoric: he was a master of language, a poet, at
Obtained in the Courts of England and Wales.London: Heath times displaying the fervor of Jewish prophets.
Cranton.
Born in Jena, the son of a Lutheran pastor, Meyfart
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1990. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath.
spent his youth in Thuringian villages where his father
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal; edited by Gregory Elliott.
served as a pastor, attended the princely gymnasium at
London: Hutchinson Radius.
Gotha, and studied at Jena. He graduated in 1611 and
Jackson, Michael. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical
turned to theology. In 1614, Me y f a rt matriculated at
Empiricism and Ethnographic Enquiry.Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Wittenberg but returned to his father’s house at Je n a
Jeay, Madeleine, ed. 1985. Les Evangiles des quenouilles: Edition after contracting an infectious disease. Meyfart claimed
critique.Montréal, Québec: Presses de l’Université de Montréal. later that his melancholia hypochondrica, which plagued
Kvideland, Reimund, and Henning K. Sehmsdorf, eds. 1991. him for the rest of his life, also began then. Me y f a rt
Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend. Oslo: Norwegian became adjunctus at Jena’s philosophical faculty before
University Press. being appointed professor in 1616 at the Gy m n a s i u m
Napier. A. David. 1986. Masks, Transformation, and Paradox.
Casimirianum of Coburg, the upper school of Pr i n c e
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Johann Casimir of Sa xe-Coburg (ruled 1596–1633),
Oates, Caroline F. 1989. “Metamorphosis and Lycanthropy in
where he taught for sixteen years. In order to become its
Franche-Comté, 1521–1643.” I: 304–363 in Fragments for a
d i rector in 1623, Me y f a rt had to acquire a doctoral
History of the Human Body.Edited by Michel Feher. 3 vols.
degree from Jena.
NewYork: Zone.
———. 1993. “Trials of Werewolves in the Franche-Comté in the Now married, with children, Me y f a rt was a successful
Early Modern Period.” PhD diss., University of London, theologian and a public fig u re. Howe ve r, he became
Warburg Institute. entangled in a permanent feud with Ge n e r a l
Pócs, Eva. 1999. Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Superintendent Caspar Finck (1578–1631). Re l a t i o n s
Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age. Translated by Szilvia worsened after 1626, as tensions and morbidity ro s e
Rédey and Michael Webb. Budapest: Central European when Franconia experienced crop failure. Court pre a c h-
University Press.
er Nikolaus Hugo felt personally insulted by Me y f a rt’s
Roberts, Gareth. 1996. “The Descendants of Circe.” Pp. 183–206
attacks against the clergy and particularly its conduct in
in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and
witchcraft trials. In 1632, deeply embroiled in these
Belief.Edited by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth
q u a r rels, Me y f a rt re c e i ved a call from the Un i versity of
Roberts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Erf u rt, belonging to the prince-elector of Mainz, but
Thompson, Stith. 1955–1958. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature...
Revised and Enlarged Edition. 6 vols. Bloomington and London: recently conquered by Gustav II Adolf of Swe d e n .
Indiana University Press. Me y f a rt became dean and eventually chancellor of the
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Swedish university at Erf u rt, where he spent the rest of ———. 1635. Christliche Erinnerung an Gewaltige Regenten und
his life, despite being stripped of his office during a Gewissenhafte Praedicanten/wie das abschewliche Laster der
Catholic interlude. Hexerey mit Ernst auszurotten/aber in Verfolgung desselbigen auff
Cantzeln und in gerichtsheusern sehr bescheidenlich zu handeln
Although staunchly Lutheran, the tiny principality of
sey/Vorlengstens aus hochdringenden Ursachen gestellet.
Sa xe-Coburg suffered a surprising number of witchcraft
Schleusingen.
trials, about 178 during Johann Casimir’s reign. Not just
Trunz, Erich. 1987. Johann Matthäus Meyfahrt: Theologe und
its clergy, but even more its lawyers and officials, the
Schriftsteller in der Zeit des Driessigjährigen Krieges.Munich:
prince included, we re supporters of witch hunting. In
Verlag C. H. Beck.
Fe b ru a ry 1629, Johann Casimir issued Ge r i c h t s - Ord n u n g , Wölfel, Dieter. 1983. “Die Krankheit von Johann Matthäus
die He xe rey betre f f e n d ( Regulations for Witchcraft Tr i a l s ) Meyfahrt.” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte,
resembling those in neighboring prince-bishoprics. pp. 53–59.
Me y f a rt wrote Christliche Er i n n e ru n gin 1631, when these
terrible persecutions had already ceased in the Catholic Michelet, Jules (1798–1874)
bishoprics but continued uninterruptedly in Sa xe - C o b u r g Michelet was author of La sorcière (The Witch, 1862),
and peaked that ve ry ye a r. The driving force behind the an account of witchcraft in European history that
persecutions was the court preacher Hugo, who publicly stands outside of any known historical canon and yet
attacked the S c h ö p p e n s t u h l ( c o u rt of lay judges) for its addresses itself directly to the historian’s task.
c o m p l a c e n c y. By 1631 the lawyers of the S c h ö p p e n s t u h l Michelet grew up in a poor Parisian family that
had started referring to Me y f a rt’s opinion. s t ruggled unsuccessfully to maintain a print shop
Howe ve r, his Christliche Er i n n e ru n gwas not published founded during the French Revolution but blighted by
until 1635, when Me y f a rt had reached the safety of Napoleonic censorship. A brilliant example of people
Erf u rt and witch hunting was over: there f o re, it was no n ewly empowe red by the meritocratic standards of
longer necessary. A generation later, when witchcraft tri- p o s t re vo l u t i o n a ry France, he rose rapidly within the
als resumed in Thuringia, it was forgotten; another gen- educational system, becoming a professor at the École
eration later, when Christian Thomasius commissioned a Normale, chief of the historical section at the Roy a l
reprint in 1703, witchcraft trials had already ebbed in ( n ow National) Arc h i ves, and professor at the Collège
Protestant northern Ge r m a n y. It is hardly surprising that de France by the time he was forty. His charismatic style
Me y f a rt saw the Jesuit Ma rtín Del Rio as the main of teaching won him the admiration of students, in
defender of gruesome witchcraft persecutions. Mo re sur- whom he inculcated the values of the Re volution of
p r i s i n g l y, he hardly ever re f e r red to Protestant authorities 1789 in the hopes that they would form the generation
and instead quoted other Jesuits (Tanner and Spee) as capable of completing its work (Wilson 1972: I, chaps.
defenders of humanity. Because Me y f a rt clearly aimed 1–5). But his enthusiasm for the Re volution of 1848,
his book at a Protestant audience, it seems likely that he and his refusal to take an oath of loyalty to Louis
tried to become the Protestant Spee. But since his publi- Na p o l e o n’s imperial government gave ammunition to
cation came too late, his emotional tone was—and to a the many historians who disliked his poetic historical
modern re a d e r, still is—irritatingly ove rw ro u g h t . imagination, poetic style, and radically liberal va l u e s .
Driven from both teaching and archival positions, with
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
no access to documents, Michelet composed a series of
See also:DELRIO,MARTÍN;GERMANY,NORTHEASTERN;PRÄTORIUS,
brilliant meditations in mythical naturalism—T h e
ANTON;SKEPTICISM;SPEE,FRIEDRICH;TANNER,ADAM;
Pe o p l e , Wo m a n , The Bi rd , The In s e c t , The Mo u n t a i n ,
THOMASIUS,CHRISTIAN;THURINGIA;WEYER,JOHANN.
The Sea,and so on.
References and further reading:
In 1862, Michelet returned to a historical topic and
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
composed one of his most famous and challenging
in Early Modern Europe,Oxford: Clarendon.
Füssel, Roland. 2003. Die Hexenverfolgungen im Thüringer Raum. books, La sorc i è re , which combined his extraord i n a ry
Hamburg: DoBuVerlag. n a r r a t i ve abilities and his mythic voice with a wide
Hallier, Christian. 1982. Johann Matthäus Meyfahrt: Ein k n owledge of the documentation of earlier periods in
Schriftsteller, Pädagoge und Theologe des 17 Jahrhunderts. French history. Book 1 traces the (imagined) experi-
Neumünster: Wachholtz. ence of a serf’s wife, at the bottom rung of feudal soci-
Kretz, Hans-Jürgen. 1972. Der Schöppenstuhl zu Coburg.Diss. jur. e t y, and follows her on her discove ry of the magical
Würzburg.
f o rces of nature, forces unknown to the nobles and
Lea, He n ry Charles. 1939. Materials Tow a rd a Hi s t o ry of Wi t c h c ra f t .
priests who dominated the social world. Her contact
Edited by Arthur C. Howland. 3 vols. Philadelphia: T h o m a s
with this other world moved from the companionship
Yo s e l o f f.
of a helpful if mischievous imp to the great Sa t a n ,
Meyfart, Johann Matthäus. 1626. Tuba novissima: Das ist von den
whose penetrating embrace transformed her vision of
vier letzten Dingen des Menschen.Coburg.
———. 1632. Das hellische Sodoma.2 vols. Nuremberg. the world. All this was set out against the backgro u n d
———. 1634. Teutsche Rhetorica oder Redekunst.Coburg. of a viciously intru s i ve Church, inflamed by the
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p rojections of its own moral corruption. This exc e p- Under the pretext of these torments, the devils
tional historical novel, in which Michelet never once pour out on their victims the most revolting
questioned the existence of magic (indeed, he caprices. Immoral notion (and profoundly guilty!)
described it as real), defied all historical canons of nar- of a supposed justice that favors the worst, gives
ration and left many conventional historians at once dominion to its perversity in giving it a toy, and
fascinated and appalled. corrupts the demon himself! (Michelet 1959, 46)
Book 2, however, consists of three early modern cas- (emphasis in the original)
es of witch persecutions, well documented and we l l
re c o n s t ructed. (One served as inspiration for both In his journals at the time of La Sorc i è re’s publica-
Aldous Hu x l e y’s 1952 book The Devils of Loudun a n d tion, Michelet wrote that he had announced the death
Ken Ru s s e l l’s 1971 movie The De v i l s .) By making an of Christianity, a necessary precondition for making the
a b rupt transition from a kind of imaginative mythical best of what it had to offer possible.
anthropology to the kind of detailed and masterful his- The book met immediate resistance; after losing a
torical reconstruction that even the most positivist his- legal case, Michelet had to eliminate two passages (in
torian could admire, he wed his mythical vision to the one he re f e r red to the doctrine of the Trinity as boring
historical documentation through his understanding of and saints’ lives as insipid) and find a new publisher.
the moral madness that underlay the discourse of And yet, La Sorc i è re was Mi c h e l e t’s most popular book.
witchcraft persecution. The book’s two parts were tied As Roland Ba rthes pointed out (Ba rthes 1959), it was
together mainly through Michelet’s relentless anticleri- uncannily modern. What Mi c h e l e t’s positivist critics
cal bias; La sorcière was, above all, a meditation on the c o n s i d e red an insult—his p o é s i e— re flected a level of
c o r ruption of the Church that could produce such empathy and understanding that finds far more appre-
inquisitorial minds and institutions and on the (pro- c i a t i ve audiences among modern historians, who are
foundly Christian) understanding that suffering and m o re familiar with the anthro p o l o g i s t’s craft, more will-
humiliation could bring empowerment. For him, ing to link deeds to the mentalités of an age, and equally,
witchcraft and rebellion re p resented the two major but safely, anticlerical.
forms of popular resistance: “From there [disappointed
RICHARD LANDES
expectations that God would intervene in history and
rid them of the brutal aristocracy that embittered their See also:HISTORIOGRAPHY;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM.
l i ves] the Black Mass and the Ja c q u e r i e [peasant re b e l- References and further reading:
Barthes, Roland. 1959. “Introduction.” InLa Sorcière.Paris: Club
lion]” (Michelet, 1959, 101).
Français du Livre.
In a sense, the book re p resented a mirror image of
Haac, Oscar A. 1982. Jules Michelet.Boston: Twayne.
the Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m (The Hammer of Wi t c h e s ,
Michelet, Jules. 1959. La Sorcière.Paris: Club Français du Livre.
1486). Indeed, Michelet had a chapter on that
English edition, 1965. Satanism and Witchcraft: A Study in
d e m o n o l o g y. It validated both his mythic hero i n e’s
Medieval Superstition.Translated by A. R. Allinson. NewYork:
rejection of her dominant culture and the counterreali- Citadel.
ty she then discove red. At a time when conve n t i o n a l Mitzman, Arthur. 1990. Michelet, Historian: Rebirth and
historians unanimously shunned this topic, Mi c h e l e t Romanticism in Nineteenth-Century France.New Haven: Yale
permitted himself a bold and judgmental discourse that University Press.
anticipated Nietzsche in assaulting the moral imagina- Wilson, Edmund. 1972. To the Finland Station: A Study in the
tion of the Church: Writing and Acting of History.2nd ed. NewYork: Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux.
As long as God punished himself, brought his own
hand down,or struck with the sword of an angel Midelfort, H. C. Erik (1942–)
(according to the noble antique formula), there was An American-born historian, Mi d e l f o rt’s publications
less horror; this hand was severe, that of a judge, h a ve molded the re s e a rch of the current generation of
and yet of a father.The angel, in striking remained scholars of witchcraft. Born into a family of physicians of
pure and clear, like his sword. It was nothing like No rwegian origin, he became interested in the pro b l e m
this, when the execution was done by disgusting of witchcraft while an undergraduate at Yale Un i ve r s i t y
demons. They did not imitate at all the angel that (BA, 1964): the more he studied it, the less he under-
burned Sodom, but who first left. They stayed, and stood. Bearing this experience in mind, as a graduate stu-
their hell is a horrible Sodom where the spirits, dent choosing a dissertation subject, he picked witch-
more soiled than the sinners handed over to them, craft, then still considered a we i rd subject. Howe ve r,
draw odious joys from these tortures they inflicted. t h e re was the example of Wallace Notestein, whose dis-
That is the teaching one finds on the naïve sculp- s e rtation on English witchcraft (1908) had not damaged
tures spread out over the doors of churches. They his career as a major historian of Tu d o r - St u a rt En g l a n d ,
taught the horrible lesson of voluptuous pain. and who was still accessible at Yale Un i versity in the
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mid-1960s. A year at Tübingen (1967–1968) proved to the academic cultures of the United States and
be most pro d u c t i ve: there Mi d e l f o rt confronted the puz- Ge r m a n y, producing English translations of major
zling microcosm of the German southwest, one of the German scholars (e.g., Bernd Mo e l l e r, Peter Bl i c k l e ,
most fragmented regions of the former Holy Ro m a n and Wolfgang Behringer) and, of course, Johann Weyer
Em p i re. Receiving little help from his academic adviser, ( Mi d e l f o rt and Kohl 1998), while alerting U.S. stu-
Mi d e l f o rt immersed himself in the literature and the dents to the attractions of central European history. In
s o u rces and defined the topics and the geographical and Ge r m a n y, Mi d e l f o rt is a member of an international
temporal boundaries of his dissertation himself, com- w o rkshop on the history of witchcraft (AKIH) and
pleting his PhD at Yale in 1970. coeditor of the publication series He xe n f o r s c h u n g
The results of his research proved immediately influ- (Witchcraft Research, 1995ff.) and of the Dictionary of
ential. In 1968, he published the first international sur- Ea rly Mo d e rn Eu ro p e . During his numerous stays in
vey of witchcraft literature since the days of Ge o r g e Germany, at conferences, as a visiting scholar, and as a
Lincoln Bu r r. Its title, “Recent Witch Hu n t i n g re s e a rch fellow, his accessibility, wit, and thought-
Research, or Where DoWe Go from Here?” sounds as p rovoking contributions have stimulated scores of
unusual as its approach then indeed was. His compara- younger German scholars. In the United States, he won
t i ve regional study of southwestern Ge r m a n y many fellowships, and each of his major publications
(Midelfort 1972) has proved a classic. It not only sur- re c e i ved awards, including two Roland Bainton prize s
ve yed all the major and minor witch hunts of this (1995 and 1999) and the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo
witch-ridden area but also analyzed the re g i o n’s live l y Emerson Award for history (1999).
contemporary debates. It put texts into social context,
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
thus breathing life into an important area of early mod-
ern intellectual history. Keeping modern interpre t a- See also:GERMANY,SOUTHWESTERN;HISTORIOGRAPHY.
tions of social theory in the background, Mi d e l f o rt References and further reading:
Midelfort, H. C. Erik 1968. “Recent Witch Hunting Research, or
conjured up a lively and more adequate picture of early
Where DoWe Go from Here?” The Papers of the
modern debates. He was the first to acknowledge in
Bibliographical Society of America62: 373–420.
English the ove rwhelming importance of Jo h a n n
———. 1972. Witch-Hunting in Southwestern Germany,
Weyer, who had endeavored to invent a comprehensive
1582–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations.Stanford:
defense of accused “witches” prior to Reginald Scot and
Stanford University Press.
later opponents of witch hunting and witch beliefs by ———. 1981. “Madness and the Problems of Psychological
attacking the sixteenth-century Protestant ort h o d ox i e s History in the Sixteenth Century.” Sixteenth Century Journal
head-on. We ye r’s claim that those who confessed to 12: 5–12.
being witches—the most persuasive argument for the ———. 1994. Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany.
existence of witchcraft—we re simply insane triggere d Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Mi d e l f o rt’s long-standing interest in demonic posses- ———. 1999. A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
sion and the history of madness in early modern
———. 2005. Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner
Europe, ultimately leading to what is perhaps his most
and the Demons of Enlightenment Germany.New Haven, CT:
ambitious work (Midelfort 1999).
Yale University Press.
The application of psychological theory proved eve n
Midelfort, H. C. Erik, and Benjamin Kohl, eds. 1998. On
m o re difficult than the application of social theory. By
Witchcraft: An Abridged Translation of Johann Weyer’s “De
analyzing contemporary descriptions of these diseases, Praestigiis Daemonum.”Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press.
Mi d e l f o rt abandoned the idea of using anachro n i s t i c
diagnoses and tried to understand how contemporary
physicians, lawyers, and divines interpreted these symp- Midsummer Eve
toms. Again, his method of contextualizing contempo- According to folklore, the evening and night before
r a ry texts, such as an intriguing microstudy on summer solstice are filled with all kinds of magic. Good
Ge r m a n y’s “mad princes” (Mi d e l f o rt 1994), proved to be and evil forces were known to be more active on this
highly successful and we re certainly suited to demolish- evening than at other times of the year. Herbs, dew, and
ing light-handed anachronistic interpretations, especially water from wells should be collected on this evening
those by Michel Foucault. Another recent study on the because of their healing qualities. But Midsummer Eve
l a t e - e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u ry exo rcist Johann Joseph Ga s s n e r, is also regarded as one of the year’s most important
who used witchcraft to explain diseases, shattered a num- dates for black magic and witch merrymaking. Witches
ber of facile assumptions about the En l i g h t e n m e n t . we re thought to be particularly dangerous on
In 1970 Midelfort joined the History Department at Midsummer Eve, when they traveled through the air to
the University of Virginia, becoming professor in 1987 their gatherings; that is why bonfires were lit to protect
and obtaining an endowed chair in 1996. Throughout animals, crops, and humans against potential harm by
this period, Mi d e l f o rt mediated masterfully betwe e n keeping witches, trolls, and dragons at bay.
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St. John’s Day Nu m e rous countries pre s e rve mythological ve r s i o n s
Because Midsummer Eve was associated with many of the witches’ Sabbats. An instance of this practice
heathen practices, the Christian Church tried to ban exists in the story of Jane Maxie, a young servant girl
many of the evening’s traditional festivities while simul- f rom a small village in De von, in southwe s t e r n
taneously giving the summer festival a Christian mean- England, who was rumored to be a witch. Under inter-
ing. During the time of St. Augustine, around 400 rogation in 1638, Jane described witch gatherings every
C.E., the feast day of St. John the Baptist was moved Midsummer Eve: “those that would be witches must
close to the summer solstice in order to supplant meet the divell upon a hill and then the divell would
pre-Christian celebrations. licke them, and that the place was black.” On the fol-
Most traditional celebrations surrounding Mi d s u m m e r l owing Midsummer Eve, “the divell would meet them
Eve fell on June 23 (according to Christians, one day againe, and licke them as before” (Sharpe 1996, 77).
b e f o re St. Jo h n’s birth), two days later than the actual In some countries correlations we re made betwe e n
summer solstice. Gi ven the close proximity of these Midsummer Eve and the burning of witches by placing
e vents, midsummer celebrations by both the people and a witchlike doll on top of the traditional bonfire, or per-
the Church cove red the entire period of June 21–24. T h e haps a witch’s broom and hat, to be destroyed as symbols
two traditions gradually merged with each other. T h u s of evil. This tradition, howe ve r, is more recent, dating
the magical significance of St. John the Ba p t i s t’s Eve could f rom the end of the nineteenth century, long after the
result in a variety of rites—most commonly setting bon- last witches had been burned at the stake in the We s t e r n
fires, rolling wheels of fire, and gathering magical herbs. world. Such straw dolls could also symbolize winter.
In the far north of Europe, where midsummer brings
Folklore and Midsummer the midnight sun, celebrations of the sun played a spe-
Throughout Europe, ancient folk narratives offered cial role after the winter’s long darkness. Confessions
profuse descriptions of midsummer themes, in which exist from Scandinavian witchcraft trials in which the
all nature was filled with maximum-strength magical w i t c h’s activities we re directly related to Mi d s u m m e r
force on the longest day of the year. In late-fifteenth- Eve celebrations. For instance, Danish court re c o rd s
c e n t u ry southern France, Canon Ma rtin of Arles and folktales described witches from Jutland who trav-
described how Basques lit Midsummer Eve bonfires, eled as far as the church of Troms County, in Arc t i c
attempting to protect themselves and their crops from No rw a y, to celebrate Midsummer Eve, riding nort h-
the destructive forces of witchcraft. Similar midsummer w a rd on cats. Upon arrival at the church, they playe d
bonfires as antisorcery rituals have profoundly deep card games, danced, ate, and drank. “To ride to Troms”
roots in several parts of Europe. was a common expression in Denmark and especially in
Especially in Slavic and Ort h o d ox Eu rope, stories Jutland. AtTroms Church, the witches gathered to take
abounded of naked witches, oiled in witch lotions, who p a rt in obscene amusements with the Devil and to
climbed up chimneys and flew through the air to witch renew their satanic pacts (Kristensen 1901).
Sabbats on the eve preceding St. Jo h n’s Da y. For such
reasons, Midsummer Eve celebrations fre q u e n t l y In Company with the Devil
o c c u r red on Bald Mountain in the vicinity of Kiev. at the Great Midsummer
Witches we re also said to have poured water, boiled Eve Feast of 1662
with embers from Ku p a l a’s midsummer bonfire, ove r The persecution of accused witches and sorcerers in
t h e m s e l ves or to have used an ointment made fro m eastern Finnmark during the winter of 1662–1663 was
gentian to improve their flying skills (Ryan 1999). the worst of its kind anywhere in Norway (Lilienskiold
Other herbs, too, should be gathered on Midsummer 1998). More than thirty women and some young girls
Eve because of their professed magical powers. Su c h under twelve years old were brought before the court in
traditions can be discovered in both recipes and crimi- the course of a few months. Eve n t u a l l y, eighteen
nal cases from the Middle Ages. Herbs collected on the women were burned at the stake, and three others were
e ve of St. John the Baptist we re especially useful for tortured to death before sentencing. Mari Olsdatter
their magical powers over love and human destiny. (For (who had not yet turned twelve, according to reports)
example, magical plants played a significant role in was among the prisoners, largely because her mother
Sh a k e s p e a re’s A Midsummer Ni g h t’s Dre a m , written at had been burned as a witch several years earlier. Mari
the end of the sixteenth century.) Herbs picked on this began by telling of her visit to hell, along with many
e vening could be used for a number of different pur- other local witches. Satan himself presided from a pond
poses: they could cure sterility and impotence, but they of sulfur, showing her the general “character and
could also cause impotence. In a 1539 Swiss witchcraft grandeur” of the place, according to court records. After
trial near Geneva, the accused witch had fed her neigh- the women had been shown around Satan’s abode, a
b o r’s cow a special kind of herb on Midsummer Eve , party was held at a local mountaintop called Domen on
after which the cow suddenly died (Monter 1976, 56). Midsummer Eve 1662. This time as well, Satan was the
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center of festivities, playing music for a circle dance on than midwives. For when they do not kill childre n ,
his red violin under the light of the flaming midnight then, as if for some other purpose they take them out of
sun on the top of Domen. Mari told in great detail the room and, raising them up in the air, offer them to
about those who held hands while dancing. Following d e v i l s” (Kramer and Sp renger [sic] 2001, 189). T h e
the dance, Satan served beer to the women from a sil- Malleus recounted several stories of midwives who mur-
ver bowl. This Midsummer Eve night at Domen came dered infants, offering their unbaptized bodies for mag-
to an end when Satan accompanied each of the women ical purposes, in particular the concocting of ointment
homeward. Mari’s confession and disclosure of who had that allowed witches to fly.The Malleus took some of its
taken part in the Midsummer Eve celebration with stories of midwife-witches from the earlier Formicarius
Satan resulted in the deaths of several women. (The Anthill) by Johannes Nider, and its examples were
repeated verbatim in some later demonological work s ,
RUNE HAGEN;
including those by Jean Bodin, Ma rtín Del Rio, and
TRANSLATED BY MARK LEDINGHAM Henri Boguet.
Why did demonologists link midwives and witches?
See also:CHARMS;COUNTERMAGIC;CUNNINGFOLK;DEVIL;
FLIGHTOFWITCHES;HELL;HERBALMEDICINE;LAPLAND; One reason was that learned authors used traditional
LOVEMAGIC;MAGIC,POPULAR;NORWAY;POPULARBELIEFSIN myths of Jewish ritual murd e r, in which Jews supposed-
WITCHES;SABBAT;SHAKESPEARE. ly used the bodies or body parts of Christian children in
References and further reading: various ceremonies to create a stereotype of the activities
Henningsen, Gustav. 2000. “Om opfindelsen af ordet ‘aquelarre.’” of witches. Witches, like Jews, sought the blood or fat of
Pp. 244–254 in Rätten: En festskrift till Bengt Ankarloo.Edited innocent children, and what better source of this than
by Lars M. Andersson, Anna Jansdotter, Bodil E. B. Persson,
m i d w i ves? Mi d w i ves also had access to other body part s
and Charlotte Tornbjer. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
associated with births that we re judged to have magical
Hutton, Ronald. 2001.The Stations of the Sun: A History of the
p owers: the placenta, the umbilical cord, and the caul (a
Ritual Year in Britain.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
piece of amniotic membrane that sometimes covers or is
Johansen, Jens Chr.V. 1991. Da Djævelen var ude—trolddom i det
attached to an infant’s head at birth, widely believed to
17.århundredes Danmark.Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag.
Kristensen, Evald Tang. 1901. Danske Sagn.Vol. 6, part 2. h a ve magical pro p e rties and to mark the infant as dis-
Copenhagen: Gyldendal. t i n c t i ve). Thus, more than other women, they we re used
Lilienskiold, Hans H. 1998. Trolldom og ugudelighet i 1600-tallets to handling materials that had special powe r. This con-
Finnmark.Edited by Rune Hagen and Per Einar Sparboe. nection and their vital role in bringing children into the
Tromsø: Ravnetrykk. world explained to demonologists why Satan would be
Monter, E. William. 1976. Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: especially interested in re c ruiting them, for no other
The Borderlands During the Reformation.Ithaca, NY, and
type of woman could be more helpful to his cause.
London: Cornell University Press.
Some scholars of witchcraft have used the writings of
Ryan, W. F. 1999. The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey
demonologists about the evil of midwives as evidence
of Magic and Divination in Russia. University Park:
that the witch hunts were primarily an attempt by male
Pennsylvania State University Press.
religious, political, and medical authorities to eradicate
Sharpe, James. 1996. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in
England, 1550–1750.London: Hamish Hamilton. female healers, midwives among them. Midwives, they
argued, we re often “wise women” who had a wide
Midwives knowledge of the healing and contraceptive properties
The link between midwives and witchcraft is one of of herbs and other materials, which they handed down
many issues invo l ved in the witch hunts in which a clear orally as part of women’s traditional culture. The witch
d i s j u n c t u re separates learned theory from actual prac- hunts enabled male physicians to gain control of the
tice. As men, and generally childless men, demonolo- b i rth process and male authorities to suppress women
gists had little experience with midwives, so they specu- who were independent and skilled in birth control and
lated that these women’s knowledge must come from the abortion.
Devil, whom they repaid with the bodies of childre n . T h e re are several problems with this line of argu-
Most men and women—even those who accused others ment. One is that the chronology is wrong. Though a
of witchcraft—had too much respect for the midwive s f ew male midwives made inroads among the upper
on whose skills they depended to believe they we re in classes in England and France during the period of the
league with Satan and knew ve ry well that these skills witch hunts, most physicians were completely uninter-
came from earthly training and years of practice. ested in obstetrical issues, and female midwives contin-
The Malleus Maleficarum(The Hammer of Witches) ued to handle almost all births in Eu rope and No rt h
of 1486, Eu ro p e’s most influential treatise on America. City governments, rulers, and in some places
demonology and witch hunting, stated without doubt religious authorities did concern themselves with mid-
that witchcraft was particularly rampant among mid- w i ves, but generally they attempted to re c ruit more
wives: “No one does more harm to the Catholic Faith women into the profession and train them adequately,
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not push women out. Women were barred from univer- impact, the statistical presence of midwives among
sity medical training and formal apprenticeship as bar- those accused of witchcraft is negligible. T h e re we re a
ber-surgeons, but this prohibition had begun long f ew spectacular cases, such as that of Wa l p u r g a
b e f o re the period of the witch hunts, and women’s Hausmännin, burned at the stake in 1587, who was
exclusion from medical schools continued into the late accused of killing and eating unbaptized infants and
nineteenth or even twentieth centuries. causing stillbirths and the deaths of mothers in
A second problem with viewing the witch hunts as a childbed. Her case was sensational enough to make it
campaign against midwives is that doing so misre p re- into one of the newsletters published by the Fu g g e r
sents the social and economic position of early family business; howe ve r, this merely indicates its
modern midwives. Though midwives we re generally unusual nature, not its typicality. A few of the mid-
middle-aged and older women—the population group w i ve s’ ordinances that began to be issued in the fif-
most pre valent among those accused of witchcraft in teenth century — first in German cities and then else-
many parts of Eu rope—the similarities stop there . w h e re in Eu rope—did forbid midwives to use (in the
Particularly in urban areas, midwives were well-respect- w o rds of a 1567 English ordinance) “any sorc e ry or
ed, quite well trained, and relatively well paid. In many incantation in the time of the travail of the woman,”
villages, women elected or otherwise chose the mid- but many made no mention of magic at all, though
wives, a clear indication of esteem for their skills. They they went on for many pages about training, pro c e-
were generally the wives or widows of artisans or shop- dures, and fees. Actual court cases against midwives fol-
keepers, not marginal and dependent members of soci- l owed the same pattern as the ordinances, for, like
ety. In many parts of Europe they were literate, for mid- physicians and barber-surgeons, midwives we re occa-
w i ve s’ manuals we re published in many Eu ro p e a n sionally accused of negligence or malpractice, but these
languages beginning in the early sixteenth century — cases almost never involved charges of witchcraft.
some written by midwives themselves—and city or reli-
MERRY WIESNER-HANKS
gious authorities often expected midwives to be able to
read the ordinances and oaths of midwifery that they See also:CAUL;CUNNINGFOLK;DEMONOLOGY;FOLKLORE;FUGGER
issued. The era of the witch hunts saw a sharp increase FAMILY;GENDER;HAUSMÄNNIN,WALPURGA;INFANTICIDE;
in infanticide cases and increasing penalties for abor-
MALLEUSMALIFICARUM;MEDICINEANDMEDICALTHEORY;
tion, but the accused was almost always the mother, not
RITUALMURDER.
References and further reading:
a midwife. Midwives did appear in cases alleging infan-
Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. 1973. Witches,
ticide or abortion through witchcraft, but as expert wit-
Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. NewYork:
nesses, called in to assess whether a woman had been
Feminist Press.
pregnant or whether supernatural causes might have led Forbes, Thomas Rogers. 1966. The Midwife and the Witch.New
to the death of an infant. They also appeared as wit- Haven: Yale University Press.
nesses in other types of court cases, such as rape, pre- Harley, David. 1990. “Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of
marital fornication, and infanticide by natural means, the Midwife-witch.” Social History of Medicine 3: 1–26.
and judges took their opinions very seriously. Horsley, Ritta Jo, and Richard A. Horsley. 1986. “On the Trail of
A third, and the most significant problem with this line the ‘Witches’: Wise Women, Midwives, and the European
Witch Hunts.” Pp. 1–28 in Women in Germany Yearbook 3:
of argument is that it mistakes demonological theory for
Feminist Studies and German Culture. Edited by Mariane
the actual course of the witch hunts. The learned authors
Burkhard and Edith Waldstein. Washington, DC: University of
of demonological works we re apparently the only early
America Press.
modern people who believed that midwives we re especial-
“Judgement on the Witch Walpurga Hausmännin.” 1969. Pp.
ly likely to be witches, for their number among the
75–81 in European Witchcraft.Editedby E. William Monter.
accused was strikingly small. In all the English witchcraft NewYork: John Wiley and Sons.
trials, only a few of the original sources identified the Kramer, Heinrich, and Jacob Sprenger [sic]. 2001. Malleus
accused as a midwife, and in the unusually well- Maleficarum(1486).Pp. 181–229 in Witchcraft in Europe:
documented Scottish cases, which number in the 400–1700.2nd ed. Edited by Alan Charles Kors and Edward
thousands, less than 1 percent of the accused we re mid- Peters. Revised by Edward Peters. Philadelphia: University of
w i ves. In New England, only one midwife was suspected Pennsylvania Press.
Marland, Hilary, ed. 1993. The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern
of witchcraft, and none was tried for it; Anne Hu t c h i n s o n ,
Midwives in Europe. London: Routledge.
the religious leader expelled from Massachusetts Bay
Colony for teaching beliefs contrary to those of the
Puritan leadership—and for doing so as a woman—was Milan
sometimes labeled a witch or midwife or both in later liter- The city of Milan and its surroundings offer a good
a t u re, but there is no evidence that she was either. example of the way witch beliefs grew in northern Italy
Even in the central Eu ropean heartland of witch between the late Middle Ages and the end of the seven-
hunting, where demonological theory had the strongest teenth century, with inquisitorial activities directed
Milan 763 |
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against magical practices increasing during the second by the fact that both prosecutors and pro s e c u t e d
half of the sixteenth century. Statistics are difficult to a d d ressed protests to the Duke of Milan, Fr a n c e s c o
gather because the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, S f o rza. The inquisitor most active at this time, Pa o l o
ordered the destruction of all the Inquisition’s records dei Filiberti, was often supported by Francesco Sforza,
in 1788. Extant cases mention the executions of sixteen who mentioned in his letters that babies we re slaugh-
women and two men. This relatively modest number is tered and even eaten at the Devil’s orders.
due not only to the lack of information but also to the Around 1460, Girolamo Visconti, a scholarly friar at
fact that a greater number of executions took place in Sant’Eustorgio, using the tradition of trials accumulat-
towns and valleys around Milan. ed since the late fourteenth century in his conve n t ,
Mi l a n’s first case of major interest invo l ved a man wrote two treatises about lamiaeand striae(witches), in
called Giovanni Grassi of Valenza (Piedmont). He was which he affirmed the reality of beliefs and practices
arrested around 1375, brought to Avignon, and prose- attributed to witches. Like other Renaissance It a l i a n s ,
cuted by a Franciscan inquisitor who accused him of Visconti decorated his account of this new phenome-
having dealings with the Devil. Grassi saved his life by non with words taken from classical antiquity.
confessing his crime. But ten years later he was arrested After 1484, when the papal decree Summis desider-
again in Milan and charged with similar accusations by antes affectibus ( desiring with supreme ardor) was pro-
a Dominican inquisitor in Sa n t’ Eustorgio, where the mulgated, trials for witchcraft increased in Mi l a n .
Inquisition had its headquarters. Convicted as a second Under the rule of Lu d ovico il Mo ro and at the ve ry
offender, or relapsus,Grassi was condemned to the stake beginning of the sixteenth century, Milan and its sur-
and handed over to the city’s Podestà (highest official), roundings experienced the activities of Rategno,
who duly burned him. In the very same years, Milan’s Bernardo of Como, whose deeds as inquisitor of Como
Dominicans also judged two women, Pierina de affected Milan; a mountainous place named To n a l e
Bugatis and Sibillia Zanni, for crimes linked to magical a p p e a red in sources during those years as one of the
beliefs and deeds and condemned them to light b e s t - k n own Italian locations for Sabbats. Many trials
penances. In 1390, like Grassi, they too were rearrested held from 1483 through 1485 in Bormio, ruled by
on the same charges. During their new interrogations, Como, we re mentioned in Heinrich Kramer’s Ma l l e u s
they confessed to participating in a ludus(game) paying Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486).
homage to the domina ludi (Lady of the Game), called During the first decades of the sixteenth century,
Madona Or i e n t e (Lady of the East) or “Di a n a” or many witchcraft trials took place in the Alpine valleys,
“ Erodiade,” borrowing these names from the now especially in Valcamonica but also in Lugano and
we l l - k n own Canon Ep i s c o p i (ca. 906). Their spells Mendrisio.These trials were all linked to the bishop of
seemed different from those mentioned in later witch- Como more than to Milan. A few cases we re also
craft trials: there were no confessions of killing babies, reported in 1517–1518 around the city of Brescia and
no blasphemy or descriptions of Sabbats; at one in two small towns, Orago and Lomazzo, not far from
moment, Pierina mentioned a spirit called “Lucifello,” Milan. During the second half of the century, Mi l a n’s
who appeared and spoke to her in the shape of a man. most distinguished fig u re was undoubtedly its
Milan’s new inquisitor seemed inclined to treat the two c a rd i n a l - a rc h b i s h o p, St. Carlo Borromeo, who pro s e-
women’s beliefs as real, beyond their unfortunate status cuted witches with such intensity that his actions pro-
as relapsed heretics. Both were condemned to death and voked a polite but firm intervention from the Ro m a n
handed over to the Podestà. Inquisition.
In the early fifteenth century, unlike the bloody In Milan, the end of the sixteenth century and the
re p ression of witches in the nearby diocese of Como, first twenty years of the seventeenth century we re still
Milan offered little evidence of inquisitorial activity for m a rked by witch hunting, with a handful of burnings
either diabolism or maleficia (harmful magic). Around being re c o rded in the city. The persecution of witches
the mid-fifteenth century, we find many trials against slowed and ended around 1640–1650. The last known
men and women accused of heresy for beliefs and acts execution occurred in 1641. Nevertheless, in the north-
connected to magic and Devil-worshipping, but they ern valleys, lay tribunals maintained a policy of fero-
took place in nearby valleys, not in Milan itself.These cious persecution lasting until the beginning of the
trials around 1450 we re led by the inquisitor Luca di eighteenth century.
Lecco, whose sentences we re not particularly seve re ,
MARINA MONTESANO
although several women we re accused of having been
See also:BORROMEO,ST.CARLO;CANONEPISCOPI;DOMINICAN
seduced by the Devil to worship a domina ludi, n ow
ORDER;INQUISITION,ROMAN;ITALY;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;
d e c l a red a demon, and of performing many here t i c a l
RATEGNO,BERNARDOOFCOMO;SPELLS.
acts,such asstealing the Eucharist for their ceremonies.
References and further reading:
By the late fifteenth century, we find considerable con- Farinelli, Giuseppe, and Ermanno Paccagnini. 1989. Processo per
fusion about the way to proceed in such cases, proved stregoneria a Caterina de Medici. 1616–1617.Milan: Rusconi.
764 Milan |
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Fumi, Luigi. 1910. “L’inquisizione romana e lo stato di Milano: of a cow but can also saddle and thus ruin a cow; and
Saggio di ricerche nell’archivio di Stato.” Archivio storico lom- Bulgarian witches who “pull the moon down” from the
bardo4, no. 13: 5–101. sky, which becomes a cow upon reaching the ground
Monter,William, and John Tedeschi. 1986. “Towards a Statistical
and can then be milked.
Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth
Fe a t u res of pre-Christian mythologies persist in
Centuries.” Pp. 130–157 in The Inquisitions in Early Modern
modern-day popular beliefs of various Eu ropean peo-
Europe: Studies in Sources and Methods.Edited by Gustav
ples. A gift of milk is offered around the time of the
Henningsen and John Tedeschi. DeKalb: Northern Illinois
winter solstice for the dead or demons who visit the liv-
University Press.
Portone, Paolo. 1996. “Un processo di stregoneria nella Milano di ing then (e.g., for the “Pe rc h t a” in southern Ge r m a n y
Carlo Borromeo (1569).” Pp. 317–330 in Stregoneria e streghe or Austria between Christmas and Twelfth Ni g h t ) .
nell’Europa moderna.Edited by Giovanna Bosco and Patrizia Among the peoples of the Balkans or among the Ir i s h
Castelli. Pisa: Pacini. and the Scots, fairies of a definitely “d e a d l y” character
are associated with various milk rites, as are the pressing
Milk
demons of the night called mahr ormare by Germanic
Milk has played a very important part in European peoples. In return for receiving milk, these beings
witchcraft and popular magic, in pre-Christian and i n c rease the prosperity of the household and abstain
Christian mythology alike, generating a rich variety of from harming family members. Milk offerings associat-
magical measures and countermeasures. Innumerable ed with Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek fairy cults occur
beliefs and practices reveal the intimate connections in the context of healing rituals: healers offer the fairies
between witches and milk. In Europe, milk witches a sacrifice containing milk when invoking them for
spawned a rich variety of beliefs and rites, because vil- assistance. Swiss and German folklore describes milk
lage witchcraft grew from neighborhood confli c t s , offerings given to the ghost of the house. Offering milk
often between women. Cows and milk were basic for to a house snake, which impersonates the spirit of the
survival in early modern agriculture, and absolutely all ancestors, is recommended in most of Eu rope (if it is
work related to milk (except some cheese making) was not fed milk, the head of the family will die). In the
done by women. Thus there was an automatic associa- Balkans and some Slavic parts of Eastern Eu rope, the
tion among cows, milk, and the huge predominance of “fate women” who determined a baby’s destiny at birth
women among witches. received an offering of food: on the first or third night
after the birth, various foods, including milk, were pre-
Mythological Foundations pared for them so that they would give the newborn a
Beneath these associations lay Indo-European mythical positive destiny.
legacies regarding milk and cows and some beliefs and
rites related to supernatural beings and milk dating Milk Magic and Fertility Rituals
f rom pre-Christian times. Certain In d o - Eu ro p e a n The myth of vanquishing the cow - s n a t c h i n g
deities, particularly such gods of thunder as Indra, d e m o n — w h e re the drought also ends when the cow s
Zeus, or Jupiter, were due a sacrificial offering of milk a re re c ove re d — e m p h a s i zes the connections betwe e n
(the belief that a fire that came from lightning can only rainfall and milk in In d o - Eu ropean mythologies.
be put out by milk survives in several parts of Europe). Some beliefs of modern Eu ropean peoples suggest that
Indo-European linguists have reconstructed traces of a magically induced absence or increase of rain
the original myth (assaults of the lightning-god against induces a similar decrease or increase in milk yield.
monsters of the underworld in order to obtain stolen The practices of milk magic performed at sacred water
cows) from some legends in southeastern Europe that springs, noted in German and French sources, draws
describe lightning striking a devil who is concealing a on the same belief, as do the magical activities and
cow, sometimes under an elderberry tree or “devil’s practices of the rain magician or milk magician (the
tree.” The topos of a dragon that snatches milk or steals fig u re shows a witch milking the pillar and thus bring-
a cow also appears in the Balkans: killing the dragon ing rain). The correspondence between milk magic
restores the milk from dried-up cows. Pre-Christian and rain magic is most clearly shown through the
mythologies about milk witches or milk fairies are w i d e s p read beliefs in and rituals of dew picking in
known to practically all European peoples, and some central and mainly southeastern Eu rope. The people
demonic female figures have cow or milk attributes: the of a village collect all the dew from the grass of the
milk churn belonging to German, Czech, Hungarian, neighboring pasture by repeatedly pulling a tablecloth
or Scandinavian witches (this is how they can be recog- or other textile over the grass, usually during a spring
nized on Christmas night); Romanian witches who or summer festival like Whitsun or Mi d s u m m e r. T h e
travel to their Sabbat on a milk bucket or churn; Celtic villagers there by snatch the milk from the cow s
fairies who steal cows and milk; Romanian and eastern belonging to the neighboring village farmers; in accor-
Hungarian fairies and witches who can take the shape dance with the theory of limited goods, the increase in
Milk 765 |
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their milk yield exactly equals the drop in milk pro- Both in the Eu rope of the witchcraft trials and in
duction from the neighbors’ animals. Fe rtility rituals m o re modern times, related legends described the
connected to the occasion of the first milking or to the milk witches’ operating methods, the ways of identify-
first milk and manifesting in pouring or spraying ing them, and the means of remedying their damage.
water are known in a several places in both we s t e r n Many beliefs associated damages to cows and milk
and eastern Eu ro p e . with certain “witching days”: Walpurgis (central and
western Eu rope); Midsummer (central and eastern
Witches Doing Malefaction Eu rope); St . Luca (central Eu rope); or St. Jo h n’s Da y
to Cows and Milk (essentially all of Eu rope). Legends mention witches
The theory of limited goods also explains why it was sneaking into stables or stroking the cows. Pa rt i c u l a r l y
c u s t o m a ry throughout Eu rope to attribute milk in western and northern Eu rope, witches with the evil
snatching to witches: by depriving others, one e ye can do harm by appearing unexpectedly at the
i n c reased one’s own milk yield. Ac c o rding to legends time of calving or churning, drying up the milk of
k n own all over Eu rope, witches stole milk from their either a human mother or a cow by their jealous looks.
n e i g h b o r s’ stables or gardens or acquired it by stealing All over Eu rope, witches sent helping animals or
objects related to the cow; by picking up its footprint familiars—principally a cat or a frog—in order to
or dung; or by milking such objects as a fencepost, a snatch the milk (but one also finds rabbits or hedge-
pillar of the house, or a gatepost: through the princi- hogs in western and northern Eu rope and snakes in
ple of participation magic, one acquires milk thro u g h eastern Eu ro p e ) .
an attribute of the cow or her ow n e r. The witch who Because of the witch’s malefice, a cow gives no milk
steals milk or damages the cow harms others for his or at all or its milk is bloody; the production of dairy
her private benefit—a general theme about milk p roducts (e.g., churning butter) may fail, or the re s u l t
witches throughout Eu rope, from France to is inedible. Even in contemporary Eu rope, such spells
Scandinavia or Romania. Eve ry w h e re such witches a re considered realistic dangers in several places.
snatched milk or else spoiled it and the related dairy W h e re ver the institution of village witchcraft and its
p ro d u c t s . accompanying beliefs and rites remained active (as in
A witch milks an axe handle, from Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg’s sermons on witchcraft published as Die Emeis (The Ants),1516. Witches were
accused of stealing milk, a serious crime in an agricultural society. The cow in the background links cows, milk, and the prevalence of female
witches. (Cornell University Library)
766 Milk |
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some parts of present-day central and southeastern ———. 1999. Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on
Eu rope), people knew and practiced innumerable Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age.Budapest: Central
magical methods to protect themselves against witches European University Press.
Runeberg, Arne. 1947. Witches, Demons and Fe rtility Magic: An a l y s i s
and pre vent the spoiling of milk, as well as perf o r m e d
of Their Si g n i ficance and Mutual Relations in We s t - Eu ropean Fo l k
rites relating to milk on festive occasions. For example,
Religion. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fe n n i c a .
on the first day the animals we re herded out to pasture ,
Wall, Jan I. 1977–1978. “Tjumjölkande väsen. I. Äldre nordisk
villagers would protect them with prayers, spells,
tradition, II. Yngre nordisk tradition.” InActa Universitatis
s a c red water, sanctified poppies, a cross drawn over the
Upsaliensis. Studia Ethnologica Upsaliensiaseries 3,5.
stable, garlic tied to the cow’s horn, thorny branches of
ro s e h i p, iron objects, or with millet scattered aro u n d Millenarianism
the stable. It was a general principle in many places in In the most general terms, millenarianism or millenni-
Eu rope that no stranger should be present at the time alism is the belief in a radical transformation of this
of calving or churning. world into one of justice, peace, and fellowship; it
Identifying the witch who had laid a curse on the focuses on collective, this-worldly salvation. In
milk, summoning her to the house and forcing her to Christian prophecy it is the expectation of a 1,000-year
c u re the damage still formed part of the resolution of period (hence its name), mentioned in the Book of
malefices within some twentieth-century European vil- Revelation, during which Jesus is to rule and holiness is
lage communities. In most places, howe ve r, only folk- to prevail. On the surface, millennialism would seem to
l o re collections re c o rded these popular legends with a have little to do with witchcraft. But two forms of mil-
rich scale of variants. Essentially, these pro c e d u re s lennialism show distinct predilections for a discourse of
required some technique of divination in order to iden- magic and witchcraft.
tify the culprit and then force her to remove or cure the As opposed to an egalitarian vision of the millennium
spell, usually carried out by a specialized witch doctor in which the “s a ve d” inhabit a world without class dis-
or healer, using various techniques to identify and sym- tinctions, where eve ryone lives by honest labor with none
bolically harm some personal attribute of the suspected to harry them (Isaiah 2), many versions imagine a world
witch, who would then promptly appear at the house of magical fertility in which labor is not necessary. T h e s e
and be forced to remedy the spell. Ac c o rding to other magical millennial visions appeal to those who believe
w i d e s p read legends, the cats, frogs, snakes, and other that the spiritual world can defy the laws of nature .
creatures believed to be accomplices of the witch would Millennialism also spawns intense magical practices
be injured, thus provoking the witch to withdraw the among those believers convinced that the advent of this
spell. Other widespread legends from western and cen- millennium is imminent. Such movements of apocalyp-
tral Eu rope testify that it was also customary to harm tic millennialists often perform rituals that will bring on
the witch by analogy, damaging the milk or urine of the the transformation. The Ghost Dance that spre a d
b ewitched cow either by smoking it (hanging a boot though various Native American tribes at the end of the
containing the cow’s urine over the smoke), beating the nineteenth century promised that its proper execution
milk over the doorstep, immersing pointed or re d - h o t would prompt nature to shed the white man and his
objects into the milk and stirring it, or even by spread- world as a snake sheds a skin.
ing a coat or blanket over the cow and beating it. In general, apocalyptic time (the period of transfor-
mation from the current “fallen world” to the redeemed
ÉVA PÓCS;
millennial kingdom) encourages magical thinking,
TRANSLATED BY ORSOLYA FRANK since these are by definition stupendous times, when
the cosmic struggle between good and evil reaches its
See also:EVILEYE;FAIRIES;FAMILIARS;FOLKLORE;HUNGARYAND
climax and defin i t i ve solution. Charismatic pro p h e t s
SOUTHEASTERNEUROPE,MAGIC;HUNGARYANDSOUTHEASTERN
EUROPE,WITCHCRAFT;MAGIC,POPULAR;MIDSUMMEREVE; regularly exhibit thaumaturgic capacities that demon-
NIGHTMARES;SPELLS,WALPURGIS(WALPURIGS)NIGHT; strate both their cosmic power and their benevo l e n c e .
WEATHERMAGIC. This increases the size and devotion of their following
References and further reading: and sets in motion certain kinds of “idol worship,” in
Eckstein, F. 1935. “Milch,” “Milchhexe” and “Milchopfer.” Pp. which the messiah fig u re commands absolute obedi-
243–367 in Handwörterbuch des Deutschen Aberglaubens. Vol. ence from a following that, despite their initial act of
6. Edited by Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli and Eduard Hoffmann-
independence in breaking with their culture of origin
Krayer. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
and joining the dissident movement, no longer exercise
Ivanov,V.V., and ToporovV. I. 1974. Issledovania v oblasti sla-
independent judgment.
vianaskikh drevnostei: Leksicheskie i frazeologicheskie voprosy
Such groups often meet with strong, even violent
rekonstruktsii tekstov.Moscow: Nauka.
opposition from those in power (whether indigenous or
Pócs, Éva. 1989. Fairies and Witches at the Boundary of South-
Eastern and Central Europe. Folklore Fellows’ Communications imperialist), and among their ways of resisting re p re s-
243. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tieideakatemia. sion, we find magical procedures that ensure immunity
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from the weapons of the enemy. Ghost Shirts were bul- paranoia came with the publication of the Dominican
letproof, as were the very bodies of the Chinese Boxers inquisitor Heinrich Kramer’sMalleus Maleficarum(The
(ca. 1900) who had gone through the proper initiation. Hammer of Witches) in 1486, with its ferocious misog-
The Anabaptist Thomas Münster, a leader of the yny and prurient fascination with the De v i l’s female
German peasant re volt in 1524–1525 who pre a c h e d “agents.” Born of apocalyptic paranoia, the fear of
the imminent end of the world, boasted that he would witches became a hallmark of many subsequent apoca-
catch bullets in his sleeves. Such magical promises regu- lyptic episodes, especially in the early modern period,
larly led these movements into devastating failure s where a significant part of the elite embraced apocalyp-
when real bullets decimated the apocalyptic armies. tic beliefs (Clark 1997). Indeed, in the sixteenth and
Apocalyptic time, howe ve r, also stimulates fear of seventeenth centuries, intense apocalyptic episodes (the
malevolent witchcraft. Most apocalyptic scenarios con- early Reformation) occurred, and even after the early
tain cataclysmic phases in which vast destruction rains expectations had passed, both Catholic and Protestant
d own upon humanity (e.g., Re ve l a t i o n 3–19). T h e s e authorities, permeated with the language of guilt, sin,
tribulations result from the final and universal battle of and fear of the Devil, found the language of coerc i ve
good with evil, and, as a result, most apocalyptic expec- purity aimed at exterminating witchcraft a particularly
tations, whether they anticipate a coming millennium a t t r a c t i ve solution to the persistence of evil. As late as
on earth or the end of the world, foresee cosmic battles. 1692, Cotton Mather delivered an apocalyptic sermon
Such scenarios often begin with a metastasis of evil in on the text of Revelation 12:12 to account for the activ-
the world, often led by an anti-messiah (Christian ities of the Devil and witches at Salem, Massachusetts.
Antichrist, Muslim Da j j a l). This evil fig u re (curiously Witch-hunting episodes also illustrate a key aspect of
like the mutant supervillains of comic books) has myri- the dynamics of apocalyptic time. In periods of waxing
ad minions who do his (almost never her) work in the and optimistic expectation, women often playe d
world, preparing for his coming. prominent roles in millennial movements. But with the
In the Christian West, from the fourteenth century waning of such expectations (and hence the popularity
o n w a rd, these apocalyptic fears often projected onto of the movement), women’s behavior, previously con-
witches the role of minions of Antichrist. In their sidered holy, became viewed as disorderly and danger-
a n t i -apocalyptic phases, trying to discourage the sense ous. This perspective offered two hypotheses about the
of imminence, elites emphasized the terrors of the tran- n a t u re of early modern witchcraft persecutions: fir s t ,
sition in order to discourage people from w a n t i n g t h e that their spread corresponded to more localized apoca-
apocalypse to occur. In their apocalyptic phases, howev- lyptic anxieties in the aftermath of earlier Eu ro p e a n - w i d e
er, such elites often used the language of conspiracy and ones (early Reformation); and, second, that the ebbing
evil coming from below (chaos, anarchy), to fig h t of persecutions corresponded to an increasingly anti-
against forces that threatened their dominion. T h i s apocalyptic attitude taken by elites. The “r a t i o n a l i s m”
scapegoating technique targets certain people as the that put an end to the participation of the educated
apocalyptic enemies. For Christians and Muslims, the elite in witch hunts may well have influenced the
primary apocalyptic scapegoat has been Jews, but at the de-eschatologization of the Enlightenment.
end of the Middle Ages, Christianity added an ominous
RICHARD LANDES
new enemy to its list of agents of Antichrist—a diabol-
ic conspiracy of witches, primarily women.
See also:ANABAPTISTS;ANTICHRIST,THE;APOCALYPSE;BIBLE;
Attacks on witches began in earnest in the early fif-
DEVIL;ENLIGHTENMENT;JESUS;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;
MATHER,COTTON;ORIGINSOFTHEWITCHHUNTS.
teenth century, in part because of an elaboration of a
References and further reading:
vast satanic conspiracy in which witches were perceived
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
as agents in a cosmic plot by the Devil to destroy
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
Christendom. The “witch’s Sabbat,” a parody and sub- Cohn, Norman. 1975. Europe’s Inner Demons.NewYork: Basic
version of every element of Church ritual, was the cen- Books.
terpiece of the activity of the Devil and his servants, the Delumeau, Jean. 1978. La Peur en Occident, XIVe-XVIIIe siecles:
witches. By the late fifteenth century, witchcraft accusa- Une cité assiégée.Paris: Fayard.
tions had become so common in some areas that Kieckhefer, Richard. 1976. European Witch Trials: Their
Eu ropeans could consider eve ry “bad” thing that Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
o c c u r re d (failed crops or business ve n t u res, miscar-
Kramer, Heinrich, and James [sic] Sprenger. 1971. Malleus
riages, illnesses, accidents, etc.) as the maleficia (evildo-
Maleficarum.NewYork: Dover.
ings) of witches.
O’Leary, Stephen. 1994. Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of
The apocalyptic dynamic here conflates the De v i l’s
Millennial Rhetoric.NewYork: Oxford University Press.
minions with the Antichrist’s, and the panic behind the
Wilson, Brian. 1973. Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological
accusations sometimes reached frenzied levels, especial- Study of Religious Movements of Protest Among Tribal and Third
ly in Ge r m a n y. The literary climax of this aggre s s i ve World Peoples.NewYork: Harper and Row.
768 Millenarianism |
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Miller, Arthur (1915–2005) in a tightly knit frontier community, where the pro b l e m s
Famous for writing The Cru c i b l e , his 1952 play about c reated by greed, land hunger, and a domineering theoc-
the Salem witchcraft trials, Arthur Miller brought a con- racy exploded—with devastating re s u l t s — t h rough the
t e m p o r a ry American meaning to the term witch hunt. m i s c o n s t rued actions of some thoroughly bored and
Having grown up in NewYork, against the backdrop re p ressed adolescents. Miller saw “bew i t c h m e n t” as a
of the stock market crash of 1929 and the Gre a t mental state, here taking the form of mass hysteria that
Depression, Miller rose to prominence in the 1930s as could be fomented by self-seeking and self-appointed
one of the outstanding playwrights of his generation, “s a v i o r s” in order to gain power and influence over the
espousing President Franklin Ro o s e ve l t’s attempts to frightened, the gullible, and the we a k - w i l l e d .
improve social conditions. The onset of the Cold War In a case of life imitating art, Mi l l e r — p robably on
and the unscrupulous “Red Scare” campaign waged by account of his authorship of The Crucible—was himself
Senator Joseph Mc C a rthy and the House Committee hauled before the House Committee in June 1956. He
on Un-American Activities to discover Communists in chose to echo the fic t i o n a l i zed sentiments of Jo h n
the government and the entertainment industry caused Pro c t o r, refusing to inform against his Communist
him to reconsider the citizen’s role in resisting irrational friends and acquaintances and proclaiming that “I am
but state-sponsored social pressures. The abject recanta- trying to, and will, protect my sense of myself. I could
tion of his friend and mentor, Clifford Odets, before not use the name of another person and bring trouble
McCarthy’s committee, combined with Odets’s willing- on him” (Ma rtine 1979, 191). On May 31, 1957, he
ness to implicate others, finally compelled Miller to was found guilty of contempt of Congress, receiving a
write The Crucible. suspended jail sentence and a fine of $500. However, as
The play took as its theme the we l l - k n own cycle of the “inexplicable dark n e s s” and dread engendered by
witchcraft trials that had convulsed Sa l e m , Mc C a rthyism began to dissipate, the U.S. Court of
Massachusetts, between June and September 1692. T h e Appeals quashed his conviction in 1958.
parallels between Mc C a rt h y’s persecution of U.S.
JOHN CALLOW
Communists and the Pu r i t a n - i n s p i red witch hunts of the
late seventeenth century we re obvious, but Mi l l e r’s skills See also:BEWITCHMENT;LITERATURE;SALEM;WITCHHUNTS,
as a playwright allowed The Cru c i b l eto transcend simple MODERNPOLITICALUSAGE.
References and further reading:
political allegory and become one of the most fre q u e n t l y
Demos, John Putnam. 1982. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and
p roduced plays in U.S. theater. Although he made good
the Culture of Early New England. NewYork and Oxford:
use of original sources (including the thre e - volume type-
Oxford University Press.
script of the trials, lodged in the Salem Court Ho u s e ) ,
Martine, James J., ed. 1979. Critical Essays on Arthur Miller.
Miller pointed out that this play was “not history in the
Boston: G. K. Hall.
sense in which the word is used by the academic histori- Miller, Arthur. 1957. Collected Plays.NewYork: Viking.
an.” The characters we re “c reations of my own, drawn to ———. 1978. The Crucible/Arthur Miller: Text and Criticism.
the best of my ability in conformity with their know n Edited by Gerald Weales. Harmondsworth, UK, and New
b e h a v i o r,” while his aim as an author was to enable the York: Penguin.
reader “to discove r. . . the essential nature of one of the Moss, Leonard. Arthur Miller.1980. Boston: Twayne.
strangest and most awful chapters in human history” Scarre, Geoffrey, and John Callow. 2001. Witchcraft and Magic in
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe.Basingstoke, UK:
( Miller 1978, 2). As a result, he increased the age of
Palgrave.
Abigail Williams in order to make her sexual re l a t i o n s h i p
with John Proctor more plausible and palatable; he
Miracles
reduced the number of young girls charged to just five, in
o rder to permit greater narrative clarity and fuller dra- Two criteria are necessary to define an incident as
matic characterization; and he reduced the numero u s miraculous: it must stand in contradiction to what the
judges present at the hearings to only two. observer knows from experience to be the common or
Miller provided an unhistorical although dramatical- natural way things happen, and he or she must associ-
ly satisfying ending. He conve yed the impression that ate it with some numinous power. What is regarded as
Proctor’s noble death gave the lie to the allegations and miraculous, therefore, depends on the education of the
that the trials had burned themselves out by autumn of observer and the worldview of the society he or she lives
1692; but that was not the case. Prosecutions continued in. The histories of all higher religions abound in
until April 1693, and their final abandonment—a records of miracles, the main effects of which may be
month later—did not re flect either a rejection of a described as power over animate and inanimate nature;
belief in the reality of the Devil or of the efficacy of healing or reviving humans and animals; punishing dis-
witchcraft and demonic possession. believers and evildoers; changing psychic states; and
Despite such historical license, Mi l l e r’s play plausibly contacting the supernatural through visions, appari-
re c reated the simmering sexual and social tensions pre s e n t tions, voices, or dreams.
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For Christians, the belief in miracles is of course of the miraculous becomes obsolete. This criticism
guaranteed through the many marvellous phenomena started with the Reformation, which confined miracles
re c o rded in the He b rew and Christian Bibles. Mo s t to biblical times; it was continued by the
wonders worked by the saints—or, theologically, by Enlightenment and carried further by such modern sci-
God acting through the saints’ intercession—are imita- ences as psychology and parapsychology explaining
tions of the deeds of Jesus. Howe ve r, if a miraculous away the incredible. To d a y, the belief in miracles sur-
phenomenon occurs within a dualistic religion like v i ves as a dogma within text-based religions, such as
Christianity, the problem arises: which numinous pow- C h r i s t i a n i t y, Judaism, and Islam. In Catholicism, two
er caused it, God or the Devil? The positive or negative miracles are still necessary for canonization, and Po p e
effects of the action in question cannot provide an John Paul II presided over the canonization of more
answer, because God also does painful things to people saints than any other previous pontiff. Ne ve rtheless, one
he wants to correct, whereas the Devil helps people in suspects that most Christian theologians and clergy often
o rder to seduce them. T h e re f o re many miracles of i g n o re miracles. The number of officially accepted won-
saints and misdeeds of witches, taken by themselve s , ders is small in the present and usually related to special
re veal the ve ry same stru c t u re. When, for example, places of pilgrimage like Lourdes, where a group of the-
Saint Bridgit of Sweden (d. 1373) learned that a ologians and surgeons are specially deputed to superv i s e
respected clergyman did not believe her revelations, she ve ry critically the operations of the supernatural.
p r a yed to Jesus, who promised to castigate the man. Writing in the mid-eighteenth century, after the era
Soon he became depressed and died from gout. Bu t of the witch hunts, the Scottish philosopheDavid Hume
causing gout by an evil spell was also a common accusa- e p i t o m i zed the Enlightenment view of miracles: “No
tion in witchcraft trials, as late as when the last sorcer- testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the
e s s’s stake was kindled in Germany in 1749 for Ma r i a testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be
Renata Si n g e r. Se veral comparable instances could be m o re miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to
cited, which we re done in ve ry similar ways both by establish” (1748, pt. 1).
holy and unholy women: influencing the weather, mul-
PETER DINZELBACHER
tiplying food, and contacting the dead. Perhaps the
a m b i valence between divine and devilish help is espe- See also:BIBLE;DEVIL;DISCERNMENTOFSPIRITS;ENLIGHTENMENT;
cially clear when we consider a piece of trial testimony HOLINESS;JESUS;JOANOFARC;LIVINGSAINTS;SUPERSTITION;
against the Va u d o i s (Waldensians, but used to label
VISIONS.
References and further reading:
witchcraft) of Fribourg in 1430. T h e re a woman is
Burns, R. M. 1981. The Great Debate on Miracles.Lewisburg:
mentioned who had served God so well that whenever
Bucknell University Press.
she asked him to avenge an offense she had endured, he
Dinzelbacher, Peter. 2001. Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger
did so immediately. Was this the prayer of a saint or of
Frauen.4th ed. Düsseldorf: Albatros.
a witch? Was the following miracle Go d’s work or the Hume, David. 1748. “On Miracles.” InEnquiry Concerning
Devil’s, whom the woman venerated as God? Human Understanding.London.
The same problem arose when a man or, more often, Mensching, Gustav. 1957. Das Wunder im Glauben und
a woman claimed to have benefited from internal mira- Aberlauben der Völker.Leiden: Brill.
cles, such as illuminations by the Holy Spirit or super- Mullin, Redmond. 1979. Miracles and Magic.London: Mowbrays.
natural visions and apparitions. Were these true mani- Swinburne, Richard. 1970. The Concept of Miracle.London:
Macmillan.
festations of the godhead or illusions caused by the evil
“Wunder.” 2001. Pp. 1311–1319 in Lexikon für Theologie und
one? This difficult question was one reason that the dis-
Kirche. Vol. 10. Freiburg: Herder.
cernment of spirits became more and more elaborate in
the later Middle Ages. But it remained unreliable. In
1391, Do rothy of Montau was on the verge of being Misconceptions about
burned as a sorceress, according to the judgement of the the Witch Hunts
competent ecclesiastical jurisdiction, because many Witchcraft attracts popular interest; everyone “knows”
priests did not believe that her miraculous voices and something about it. Even if this knowledge differs from
visions came from God; today, the Catholic Churc h scholarly knowledge, it may not be “wrong”; scholars
venerates her as the patroness of Prussia. Joan of Arc , and the general public may simply have different inter-
who presumed to hear the voices of Saints Mi c h a e l , ests. Nor is scholarly knowledge necessarily “right.”
Catherine, and Ma r g a ret, was burned as a witch in Re s e a rch develops, new discoveries are made, and
1431 and achieved sainthood in 1920. accepted theories are overturned.
As soon as these manifestations are no longer inter- Ne ve rtheless, there are several widely held beliefs
p reted within a religious scheme but considered as about the Eu ropean witch hunt that can be re g a rded as
natural or psychic phenomena or frauds that had been i n c o r rect in the light of current scholarship. Often these
misinterpreted in either good or bad faith, the question beliefs derive from the scholarship of earlier generations:
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theories that have been ove rturned still linger on. Pa rt l y 3. Inevitability of conviction. The idea of tort u re
this is because nonscholars have no immediate access to points to the idea that trials of witches were so stacked
the latest re s e a rch, but also particular ideas continue to against the defense that convictions were the only possi-
be repeated because they serve a contemporary purpose. ble outcome. In fact, about half of suspected witches
The first set of misconceptions derives from move- actually endured tort u re without confessing—when it
ments of thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- was done strictly according to the official rules, which
turies: the anticlerical tendencies of the En l i g h t e n m e n t was often not the case. Even during large-scale witch-
and the Romantic movement. Those appealing to mod- craft panics, there we re always some acquittals, and
ern rationality and truths derived from nature we re often many other cases we re dropped before reaching trial.
hostile to what they saw as domination of life by churc h- The idea of inevitable conviction is common because
es committed to outdated and art i ficial intellectual tradi- people are receptive to the idea that witch hunting was
tions. Witch hunting re p resented eve rything they dis- cruel and barbaric.
liked about organized religion. As the modern world has 4. Financial pro fit a b i l i t y. Another common idea is
become more secularized, some of these anticlerical ten- that witches we re accused in order to make money.
dencies have been enhanced. The ideas they have pro- Usually it is said that the authorities themselves stood
duced are often effective, but some are misleading. to pro fit, but sometimes accusations by neighbors are
1. Role of the Inquisition. The institution that, said to have been motivated by the neighbor’s desire for
above all others, has symbolized religious obscurantism the alleged witch’s land or goods. It is true that some
and oppression is the Inquisition. Its dominance in the c o u rts could confiscate a criminal’s goods, but many
discussion has given rise to several related misconcep- other courts did not do so, and “confiscation” is a mis-
tions. The first idea is simply that “the Inquisition” was leading term. Most witches were too poor to have any
the main body responsible for witch hunting. In fact, possessions worth coveting. A few active witch hunters
although a few inquisitors helped to develop the witch like Ma t t h ew Hopkins re c e i ved payment, but even he
hunt in its early stages (for instance, by writing the received only modest fees plus expenses; it was certainly
Malleus Ma l e fic a rum [The Hammer of Wi t c h e s , not desire for money that made him a witch hunter.
1486]), the Po rtuguese, Spanish, and Ro m a n Some rich witches were accused because of resentment
Inquisitions effectively pre vented witch hunts during at their wealth and stinginess, but they we re a tiny
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in southern m i n o r i t y. The idea of witch hunting for money is
Europe. Executions were overwhelmingly the responsi- a t t r a c t i ve because it attributes to the witch hunters a
bility of secular criminal courts. m o t i ve that is readily understood in the modern
The second idea is that the papal Inquisition, which world—but it is a modern myth projected onto our
had been established to persecute the Cathar and ancestors.
Waldensian (Va u d o i s) heresies, moved on to hunting 5. Swimming a witch. A misunderstanding of the
witches in order to keep itself in business. However, the “swimming test” (water ordeal) led some to believe that
c h ronology does not support this belief. It used to be witches could be detected by dropping them in water. If
b e l i e ved that there we re mass witch hunts in the early they floated, they we re guilty. If they sank, they we re
f o u rteenth century, shortly after the suppression of innocent—but they drowned. In fact, ropes we re tied
Catharism, but they have been shown to be based on to suspects to pull them out of the water; moreover, this
documents forged in 1829 by Étienne Léon de test had no legal value anywhere in Europe. This belief
Lamothe-Langon. functions as an affirmation of our own cultural superi-
The third idea is that the Inquisition burned witches ority: people today are cleve rer or more sensible than
in order to save their souls. In fact, the Inquisition’s pre- the ignorant witch hunters. An early instance of a back-
ferred aim was to reclaim heretics to the true faith with- lash against this belief from the 1850s comes from the
o u t burning them. Those whom it burned (or rather, Scottish explorer David Livingstone, who explained the
whom it handed over to the secular authorities for swimming test to Africans as part of “the wisdom of my
burning) were impenitentheretics or else repeat offend- ancestors” in order to criticize some of their own tradi-
ers. Burning did not save their souls but simply pun- tional customs.
ished them for their crime. 6. Witch hunting meant woman hunting. Wi t c h
2. Role of tort u re. Along with the emphasis on the hunting is often described as a more or less conscious
Inquisition comes an emphasis on tort u re. To rt u re was, device used by men for re p ressing women. In fact,
of course, extremely important in witch hunts, so this is although there is a clear relationship between women
not entirely a misconception. Howe ve r, the tort u res that and witch hunting, it is quite complex. Feminist schol-
a re re p o rted in popular accounts of witch hunting or arship has done much to bring these issues, which
d i s p l a yed in “museums of tort u re” in various parts of the traditional anticlerical scholars had ignored, to the fore-
world, are usually the most extreme and dramatic physi- front of the discussion; but the results have not gone as
cal ones; the false implication is that these we re normal. predicted. Witch hunters did not target women as such,
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they targeted witches. At least 20 percent of all execut- society could be either men or women. Some of them
ed witches were men, and there are places where most we re accused of witchcraft, often when their cures we n t
of them were men. Moreover, the bulk of the testimony w rong, or they had a dispute with a client or a rival heal-
against female witches came directly or indirectly from e r. But the role of the medical profession in witch hunt-
other women. ing was peripheral—they we re far less important than
7. The “Nine Million Wi t c h e s” trope. As part of l a w yers, for instance, and they we re among the fir s t
their stress on the enormity of the witch hunt, early i m p o rtant early skeptics about witchcraft.
feminist scholars we re among those emphasizing the 9. Witchcraft as a surviving pagan cult. Mo d e r n
largest possible numbers for executions of witches. In pagans of the Wiccan movement have supported the
the eighteenth century, Vo l t a i re mentioned a specula- idea that the witches who were hunted in early modern
tive figure of 100,000 executions for witchcraft. A mis- times practiced a pagan religion that had gone under-
reading by a late-eighteenth-century German arc h i v i s t g round with the coming of Christianity. Its members
was extrapolated and inflated by Gustav Ro s k o f f, a worshiped a horned god, “Dianus,” and were organized
Viennese professor who published a widely read History in covens of thirteen. When the Christian Church dis-
of the Devilin 1869, into a statistical balloon of “9 mil- covered this religion in the late Middle Ages, its mem-
lion witches executed.” A pioneering anticlerical femi- bers were persecuted for allegedly worshiping the Devil.
nist, Matilda Joslyn Gage, took it from Roskoff in 1893 Outline versions of this theory appeared occasionally in
and inserted it into early feminist discourse. Although the nineteenth century, but it took enduring and
this number was a wild guess ultimately based on com- detailed form in 1921 with a book by the Egyptologist
pletely erroneous re s e a rch, it achieved a wide circ u l a- Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. It
tion because those wishing to emphasize the impor- came at the height of a vogue for “pagan” survivals and
tance of witch hunting tended to pick the highest of the had a convincing appearance of deep scholarship. The
various figures available. In more recent times, the fig- book was in fact fraudulent—Mu r r a y’s sources fre-
ure of 9 million was frequently repeated by Nazi propa- quently did not say what she said they said—but that
ganda (which otherwise seldom agreed with feminists) was not re a l i zed at the time. Mu r r a y’s theory became
and, turned back against them, facilitated comparison i n fluential, though it was never universally accepted.
with the standard figure of 6 million Jews murdered in Historians familiar with the records of witchcraft trials
the Holocaust. The true number of executions for f requently criticized it, but often they could say only
witchcraft will never be known pre c i s e l y, but the cur- that they had found no evidence for the theory in their
rently accepted scholarly estimate is under 50,000— own research. The theory even gained a fresh vogue in
close to Voltaire’s figure. The importance of witch hunt- the 1960s among historians interested in popular
ing does not lie primarily in the numbers executed, but m ovements. The painstaking work of exposing
in the climate of fear induced even by sporadic execu- Murray’s fraudulent use of sources was not undertaken
tions. “Overkill” seems the appropriate term here. until the 1970s (Cohn 1975).
8. Midwives and healers. Two related misconceptions By then, the modern Wiccan movement, whose
h a ve to do with midwives. The first idea is that witch founders wished to believe that they we re inheriting an
hunters especially targeted midwives when babies died. ancient tradition, had embraced Mu r r a y’s theory.
In addition to being a feminist idea, this one had an Wi t c h c raft To d a y (1954), the key book by the move-
anticlerical element: the Church was believed to have m e n t’s main founder, Gerald Ga rd n e r, announced that
been hostile to midwives because they tried to re d u c e the author belonged to a coven of witches that had sur-
the labor pains ordained for women to punish the sin of v i ved since pre-Christian times. The book had an
Eve. Some demonologies (including the earliest major a p p roving introduction by Murray herself. Her theory
one, the Malleus Maleficarum) did denounce midwives, thus gained a new lease on life, and the witch hunt
believing that their access to babies gave them material became known as the “Burning Ti m e s” among Wi c c a n s
for cannibalistic infanticide, but most ignored mid- believing themselves to be successors of the witches.
w i ves. Some midwives we re indeed accused of witch- Some Wiccans still adhere to the theory, but many others
craft, but too few to suggest that they were being target- h a ve re c o g n i zed that it cannot surv i ve historical scru t i n y.
ed; most midwives seemed to have been well-respected 10. Ergotism. Finally, we have an idea that depends
people who we re most unlikely to be accused by their on no past intellectual tradition but has achieved popu-
clients or neighbors. larity through its ve ry modernity. The idea is that the
The second misconception involving midwives and symptoms of demonic possession were caused by ergo-
healers is that an emerging male medical profession led tism—eating rye contaminated by the ergot fungus.
an attack on traditional women healers—including mid- Those afflicted accused others of “bew i t c h i n g” them,
w i ve s — by labeling them as witches. It appealed to an thus causing witch hunts. Some versions of the idea
early generation of feminist historians in the 1970s, but focus on Salem, whereas others extend it to all cases of
no evidence supports it. Folk healers in early modern demonic possession or even all witch hunting.
772 Misconceptions about the Witch Hunts |
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Howe ve r, the ergotism theory has been discredited at Monter, E. William. 1972. “The Historiography of European
Salem for various reasons, including its inability to Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects.” Journal of Interdisciplinary
explain why only the “a f flicted girls” suffered from it History2: 435–451.
Purkiss, Diane. 1996. The Witch in History: Early Modern and
(ergotism affects entire households, and men as much
Twentieth-Century Representations.London: Routledge.
as women) and why their symptoms we re often
Simpson, Jacqueline. 1994. “Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her,
brought on by the presence of the accused witches. Nor
and Why?” Folklore105: 89–96.
has ergotism achieved much success in explaining cases
of Eu ropean demonic possession, which we re rare
e xceptions to the normal pattern of witchcraft accusa- Möden, Johann (Jan)
tion based on neighborhood quarrels. Howe ve r, the (ca. 1590s–1663)
much-quoted fact that ergot is the source of lysergic Me a s u red by sheer length of time and number of work-
acid diethylamide (LSD) adds to its attraction: people places, utriusque juris doctor (doctor of both laws—civil
are fascinated by the idea that their ancestors also expe- and canon) Johann Möden seems one of the busiest
rienced drug-induced hallucinations. The idea’s “scien- jurists invo l ved with seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry witchcraft per-
t i fic” appearance gives it high status in a world domi- secutions in the Rhineland—an unusually energetic legal
nated by technology and populated by millions of e x p e rt who hired his services out tirelessly in a dozen dif-
literate drug users. The theory was first popularized in f e rent places, working for Lutherans as well as Catholics.
1976 by a New YorkTimesarticle headed “Salem Witch He epitomized the kind of entre p reneurial witch hunter
Hunts in 1692 Linked to LSD-Like Agent.” that Friedrich Spee knew from personal experience.
In general, many of these ideas are attractive because Though we know much about his activities, his biog-
they enable people to sympathize with the victims of raphy remains fragmentary. Möden was born at
witch hunting and to feel indignant at their cruel fate. Koblenz in the 1590s, probably the son of a cert a i n
It is perhaps natural to feel that there must have been Herr Johann Möden who had lived in a high-status
some obvious fault in the witch hunters: they we re neighborhood since 1591. Matriculation registers show
wicked, ignorant, or both. Contemporary individual- young Möden as a student from Ko b l e n z
ism has enhanced this tendency. Individuals who do (C o n flu e n t i n u s) enrolled at the Jesuit College of the
not fit into the surrounding society and who struggle to Un i versity of Mainz in 1612 and 1613; in 1613 he
ove rcome collective prejudice in order to re a l i ze their began studying law at the Un i versity of W ü rz b u r g ,
true worth are the heroes of numerous genres of mod- where he probably received his doctoral degree in both
ern culture. People identify with witches as misunder- civil and canon law. After Möden finished his studies,
stood individuals of this kind. A willingness to we know almost nothing about him, except that he
empathize with people of the past, particularly victims married the daughter of a local official (S c h u l t h e i s s) of
of persecution, is laudable. However, historians wish to Remagen and had his first child in 1619.
extend the same understanding to allthe people whom In 1627, Möden appeared on the regional scene of
they study—witch hunters as well as witches. Calling witchcraft persecutions. The outbreak of Arc h b i s h o p
witch hunters wicked or ignorant cannot explain why Fe rd i n a n d’s “war against the witches” (Schormann
they did what they did; moreover, many of them were 1991) in the electorate of Cologne offered unpre c e-
clearly not ignorant, and some we re considered pious dented opportunities, which Möden exploited inge-
rather than wicked. History is not an easy subject. n i o u s l y. Thus, we see him assisting the notorious Dr.
Franz Buirmann in the town of Ahrweiler in
JULIAN GOODARE
1628–1629 at trials that led to the death of at least
twenty-six people. Möden soon became a commissarius
See also: ACQUITTALS;BURNINGTIMES;CONFISCATIONSOF
( c o m m i s s a ry) himself, working until 1633 in more
WITCHES’PROPERTY;CONTEMPORARYWITCHCRAFT(POST-1800);
DRUGSANDHALLUCINOGENS;ERGOTISM;FEMALEWITCHES; than 100 trials in the various territories of the counts of
FEMINISM;GENDER;HISTORIOGRAPHY;HOPKINS,MATTHEW; Ma n d e r s c h e i d - Blankenheim, Ma n d e r s c h e i d - Ge ro l s t e i n ,
INQUISITION,PORTUGUESE;INQUISITION,ROMAN;INQUISITION, and Manderscheid-Schleiden. His first engagement
SPANISH;LAMOTHE-LANGON,ÉTIENNELÉONDE;MALEWITCHES; took place in the northern districts of Ma n d e r s c h e i d -
MIDWIVES;MURRAY,MARGARETALICE;NUMBEROFWITCHES; Blankenheim, ve ry close to Cologne territory. Möden
POSSESSION,DEMONIC;SALEM;SWIMMINGTEST;TORTURE; next moved to further similar business in the adjoining
VAUDOIS(WALDENSIANS); VOLTAIRE;WITCHANDWITCHCRAFT,
Herrschaft(estate) of Satzvey.
DEFINITIONSOF;WITCHHUNTS,MODERNPOLITICALUSAGE.
Though in the following years there was a notable
References and further reading:
decline in prosecutions, Möden and his colleague
Cohn, Norman. 1975. Europe’s Inner Demons.London: Chatto.
Buirmann moved their business to the Rhenish parts of
Harley, David. 1990. “Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of
the electorate of Cologne. Herman Löher, fro m
the Midwife-Witch.” Social History of Medicine3: 1–26.
Hutton, Ronald. 1999. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Rheinbach, described their activities in his locality as we l l
Modern Pagan Witchcraft.Oxford: Oxford University Press. as in Meckenheim, where Möden was responsible for
Möden, Johann 773 |
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some seventy executions. In November 1637, Möden See also:BUIRMANN,FRANZ;COLOGNE;COMMUNALPERSECUTION;
became acting mayor for one year of Münstereifel, where LÖHER,HERMAN;SPEE,FRIEDRICH.
he had settled in 1629 and married his second wife about References and further reading:
Bous, Robert, and Hans-Georg Klein, eds. 1998. Quellen zur
1636. Although local notables became godparents for
Geschichte der Stadt Ahrweiler 856–1812.Bad Neuenahr-
two of his children, Möden began to experience familial
Ahrweiler: Selbstverlag der Gemeinde Bad Neuenahr.
and economic decline. His second wife probably died by
Kettel, Adolf. 1995. “Hexenprozesse in der Grafschaft Gerolstein
1641, leaving him with enormous debts (he owed 1,465
und in den angrenzenden kurtrierischen Ämtern Prüm und
Reichstaler to twe n t y - t h ree creditors). We can there f o re
Hillesheim.” Pp. 355–388 in Hexenglaubeund Hexenprozese im
assume that Löher’s description of Möden as needing Raum Rhein-Mosel-Saar.Edited by Gunther Franz and Franz
money desperately because of his wife’s obsession with Irsigler.Trier: Spee.
pomp went beyond simple rhetoric. Löher, Hermann. 1676. Wemütige Klage der frommen Unschültigen.
In 1641–1642, Möden left Münstereifel, taking two Amsterdam. Annotated edition byThomas Becker. http://
of his seven children (the youngest born in 1640), and www.sfn.uni-muenchen.de/loeher (accessed October 20, 2002).
moved back to Koblenz. In professional terms, his deci- Rummel, Walter. 1991. Bauern, Herren, und Hexen: Studien zur
Sozialgeschichte sponheimischer und kurtrierischer
sion proved useful. He conducted witchcraft trials at
Hexenverfolgungen.Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
the Cologne exc l a ve of Rhens from 1645 to 1647; in
Schormann, Gerhard. 1991. Der Krieg gegen die Hexen: Das
1646, he started a long-lasting engagement in
Ausrottungsprogramm des Kurfürsten von Köln.Göttingen:
Winningen near Koblenz, a Lutheran exc l a ve of the
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
lower county of Sponheim. He also worked at the near-
by lordship of Bürresheim in 1647 and gave his counsel Modena
on trials at the Sponheim county district town of The prosecution of witchcraft at the northern Italian
Kastellaun in 1648. In 1649 he worked in the Cologne city of Modena (in Emilia) was carried out by the
district of Altenahr and in 1653 in the county of Inquisition, mainly in the sixteenth century, and fol-
Sa y n - Hachenburg; in 1654 and 1656 he was again lowed the usual patterns for Mediterranean ecclesiasti-
occupied with providing counsel for trials in Lutheran cal tribunals. Modena’s significance is simply that its
Kastellaun. When Wi n n i n g e n’s persecutions fin a l l y inquisitorial records are better preserved than in most
ended in 1659, Möden disappeared as well. He died in other Italian cities. Although significant energies were
Koblenz on February 24, 1663. devoted to the repression of magic in all its different
Möden practiced both as a Cologne-type commis- forms, there was little attention paid to diabolical
sary, exclusively in charge of the procedure, and later, in witches, and apparently only one of them was ever exe-
more southern territories, through the “mixed” method cuted here, in 1539. Although some key components of
i n volving close cooperation with village committees the cumulative concept of witchcraft (the Devil, the
and local officials. Like his colleague and mentor Sabbat) were present by the end of the fifteenth centu-
Buirmann, Möden combined working in a respectable ry, its prosecution remained a rare occurrence in Emilia,
field with earning respect, money, and a reputation for e xcept for a real panic in nearby Mirandola in
ruthlessness through a specialization in witchcraft trials. 1522–1523. After a long interval when the Roman
If a surplus of jurists existed in the seventeenth century, Holy Office battled the spread of Protestantism, sorcery
such careers as Möden’s exemplify the possibilities of and magic reappeared among the priorities of the
compensating for structural underemployment. A final Modenese Inquisition toward the end of the sixteenth
assessment of his social achievement acquired in this century. However, by this time, the Roman Holy Office
manner is difficult. His and his first wife’s popularity as had practically ruled out the prosecution of witchcraft
g o d p a rents in Münstereifel could re flect pro p h y l a c t i c through its cautious attitude.
considerations by fearful neighbors. In his later An Inquisition tribunal established in Mo d e n a
Koblenz period (1641–1662), Möden never gained a round the end of the thirteenth century was staffed by
access to the inner circle of city councilors. After Trier’s Dominican friars, dependents of the chief inquisitor for
A rc h b i s h o p - Elector Karl Kaspar von der Leye n the duchy of Ferrara and Modena, then residing in
(1652–1676) stopped witchcraft persecutions aro u n d Ferrara. Su rviving trials from the Modenese branch
1653, Möden’s ongoing business in neighboring terri- include several early cases of magic attributed to demon-
tories could hardly give him any further re s p e c t a b i l i t y ic intervention, the most significant being that of
in his hometown. When he died, he left one adult Be n venuta Mangialoca, tried in 1370 for healing and
daughter at home unmarried. d i v i n a t o ry magic using traditional popular remedies and
the invocation of “s p i r i t s” (Biondi 1993). The court
WALTER RUMMEL
found her guilty of heretical magic, imposing re l a t i ve l y
Many thanks to Karin Trieschnigg (Münstereifel) for light spiritual penances but adding the humiliation of
kindly offering me her ove rwhelming collection of infor- making her wear the special punitive robe of convicted
mation on the family history of Dr. Johann Möden. h e retics, with two ye l l ow crosses. Her punishment
774 Modena |
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c h a r a c t e r i zed Inquisition policy tow a rd illicit magic and an escalation culminating in 1539 with the trial of
witchcraft in the following centuries. Orsolina Togni, la Ro s s a (the red one), the fir s t
After a long gap (1382–1495), the Mo d e n e s e Modenese witch to confess the full range of stereotypi-
In q u i s i t i o n’s re c o rds resume, first fragmentarily and cal activities (the Sabbat, sexual intercourse with the
then in almost complete form after 1517. The tribunal’s Devil, apostasy, etc.) and the only witch ever sentenced
activity increased under the determined leadership of to death at Modena. The presence of diabolical ele-
Bartolomeo della Spina, author of the Quaestio de stri- ments continued in the following decades, reaching its
gibus (An Investigation of Witches, 1523) and vicar of most complete expression in 1564 with the trial of
the Inquisition from 1518 to 1520 (Ginzburg 1990; Antonia Vignola. However, witchcraft became less of a
Be rtolotti 1991). A substantial number of trials fro m priority for the Inquisition, which devoted its energies
1517 to 1520 revealed the pervasive presence of magic to destroying Mo d e n a’s strong and we l l - ro o t e d
in everyday life and the pivotal role of the clergy in its Protestant community in the 1560s and 1570s: the
practice. Male s t re g o n i ( w i z a rds), mostly literate and number of trials for magic and witchcraft declined from
middle class, fig u red prominently among those pro s e- almost five per year in 1517–1523 to less than one per
cuted for conjuring demons (generally using books of year between 1530 and 1570 (thirt y - t h ree and
n e c romancy), foretelling the future, or finding hidden thirty-eight, respectively).
t re a s u res. Female sorc e resses, who we re often of lowe r In the last twenty years of the sixteenth century,
status, performed love magic and healing magic, usual- when the threat of Protestantism had passed, Modena’s
ly derived from popular traditions. Inquisition returned to re p ressing magical practices,
All practitioners of magic required some consecrated but from a different perspective. Its inquisitors now
objects or Catholic rituals to re i n f o rce their spells or scrutinized the entire range of popular “superstitions,”
incantations. The Modenese clergy frequently practiced from healing rituals to divinatory magic, seeing them as
magical rituals themselves, although they we re seldom abuses of supernatural powers to which only the
prosecuted because they enjoyed widespread acceptance Catholic Church had legitimate access. The goal was to
in the community and active support from the local redirect the requests of the Modenese faithful for super-
C h u rch. When, in 1517, the Inquisition tried the natural assistance from the sorceress and folk healer to
Cathedral exorcist, Don Guglielmo Campana, who had the priest, who alone could guarantee the orthodoxy of
p e rformed an endless series of diabolical incantations, the supernatural remedies applied. Unfortunately, some
both the bishop’s vicar and the cathedral chapter mobi- of Modena’s lower clergy showed clear signs of profes-
l i zed in his favo r, forcing the court to pronounce a sional inadequacy. Unlike the days of Don Campana in
favorable sentence (Duni 1999). People from very dif- 1517, priests and friars were now frequently prosecuted
ferent backgrounds intersected through the practice of for magic and the abuse of sacraments: there we re
magic; the humanist and poet Pa n filo Sassi and a sor- t we l ve trials between 1580 and 1600 (O’Neil 1984).
ceress from a mountain village, Anastasia la Frappona, In c reased attention was also directed to female practi-
were both tried in 1519. tioners, especially prostitutes accused of casting love
In the early sixteenth century, Modenese inquisitors spells and using “s u p e r s t i t i o u s” o ra z i o n i or praye r s
did not condemn magicians and sorceresses as members (O’Neil 1987; Fantini 1999). Meanwhile, references to
of a diabolical sect, but rather for ove restimating the “d i a b o l i c a l” witches disappeared. Clearly connected to
p owers of Satan and there f o re implicitly worshipping the changing policy of the Roman Holy Of fice with
him through their practices. The gravest punishments respect to witchcraft after the 1580s, this trend is diffi-
were exile from Modena (up to ten years) or imprison- cult to chart with precision, especially given our frag-
ment (for two or three years), besides varied penances m e n t a ry knowledge of the massive re c o rds extant for
and such “shaming rituals” as standing in front of the seventeenth century, which, to date, have been
c h u rch for several Sundays wearing the garments of almost untouched by historical investigators. But if
convicted heretics. Modena was anything at all like Siena, no malefic e n t
The relative lack of interest in witchcraft on the part witches will ever be found in its seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry
of the Modenese Inquisition contrasted sharply with inquisitorial records.
the treatment of convicted witches in Mirandola, a tiny
city-state some 20 miles north of Modena ruled by MATTEO DUNI
Count Gianfrancesco Pico, where at least ten people
were burned at the stake in 1522 and 1523. Although it
See also:CLERICALMAGIC;INQUISITION,ROMAN;ITALY;POPULAR
BELIEFINWITCHES;SIENESENEWSTATE;SPINA,BARTOLOMEO
is impossible to understand fully this dramatic eve n t
DELLA.
due to the total loss of trial records, it is clear that the
References and further reading:
witch hunt of Mirandola marked a turning point for
Bertolotti, Maurizio. 1991. “The Ox’s Bones and the Ox’s Hide: A
the entire area. By the 1530s, the Modenese re c o rd s Popular Myth, Part Hagiography and PartWitchcraft.” Pp.
contain increasing re f e rences to diabolical witchcraft, 42–70 in Microhistory and the Lost People of Europe.Selections
Modena 775 |
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fromQuaderni Storici.Edited by Edward Muir and Guido 1496 chancellor of Ty rol. In 1497, he became a pro c u r a-
Ruggiero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. tor of the Re i c h s k a m m e r g e r i c h t ,the recently created impe-
Biondi, Albano. 1982. “Lunga durata e microarticolazione nel ter- rial chamber court. In addition to his most famous work ,
ritorio di un Ufficio dell’Inquisizione: il “SacroTribunale” a
De Laniis, Molitor wrote a number of legal texts and a
Modena (1292–1785). Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico
c o m e d y.
in Trento8: 73–90.
Biondi, Grazia. 1993. Benvenuta e l’Inquisitore: Un destino di
De Laniis
donna nella Modena del ‘300.Modena: Unione Donne Italiane.
In 1485, the papal inquisitor Heinrich Kramer con-
Duni, Matteo. 1999. Tra religione e magia: Storia del prete mode-
nese Guglielmo Campana (1460?–1541).Studi e testi per la ducted an extensive investigation of witchcraft in the
storia religiosa del Cinquecento 9. Florence: Olschki. area around Innsbruck, the capital of the county of
Fantini, Maria Pia. 1999. “Saggio per un catalogo bibliografico dai Tyrol. Although it ended with the acquittal of all seven
processi dell’Inquisizione: orazioni, scongiuri, libri di segreti suspects actually prosecuted, Kramer inve s t i g a t e d
(Modena, 1571–1608).” Annali dell’Istituto storico approximately fifty people, including some from the
italo-germanico in Trento25: 587–668. archduke’s household. Sigismund apparently remained
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1990.“Witchcraft and Popular Piety: Notes on a
relatively aloof from these proceedings, but was suffi-
Modenese Trial of 1519.” Pp. 1–16 in Myths, Emblems, Clues.
ciently disturbed by them that he commissioned
London: Hutchinson Radius.
Molitor to clarify the issues for him.
O’Neil, Mary. 1984. “‘Sacerdote ovvero strione’: Ecclesiastical and
This Molitor proceeded to do in the form of a dia-
Superstitious Remedies in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Pp. 53–83
logue involving himself, the archduke, and another
in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages
to the Nineteenth Century.Edited by Steven L. Kaplan. Berlin, jurist named Konrad Schatz. This form was a standard
NewYork, and Amsterdam: Mouton. scholastic device, and Molitor used it to deliver a stan-
———. 1987. “Magical Healing, Love Magic, and the Inquisition d a rd Christian message. Drawing on these recent eve n t s ,
in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Pp. 88–114 in Inquisition and at almost the same time that Kramer was composing the
Society in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Stephen Haliczer. Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m , Molitor developed an alternative
London: Croom Helm. p e r s p e c t i ve deeply rooted in the Canon Ep i s c o p i t r a d i-
Trenti, Giuseppe, ed. 2003. I processi del tribunale dell’Inquisizione
tion of denying the reality of most experiences attrib-
di Modena. Inventario generale analitico 1489–1784.Modena:
uted to witchcraft and magic while insisting on Go d’s
Aedes Muratoriana.
ultimate control over the rest. After some discussion, all
t h ree concluded that witches could not affect the we a t h-
Molitor, Ulrich (1442–1508) e r, cause illness or impotence, change into animals, fly to
A jurist who served both at the episcopal court of the Sabbat, pro c reate with demons, or foretell the
Constance and later at the court of Sigismund, the count f u t u re. Of course, such things we re possible if God per-
of Ty rol (often re f e r red to as “A rchduke Si g i s m u n d” ) mitted them; but only the Devil had this limited powe r,
Ulrich Molitor wrote an early treatise on witchcraft that and he worked mainly through natural processes and his
stood as a counterpoint to the Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m(T h e p ower to create illusions to deceive people into thinking
Hammer of Witches, 1486). Entitled variously De Laniis they had magical powers. Molitor acknowledged that
et Phitonicis Mulieribus (Concerning Witches and some people did turn from God to the Devil and assert-
Fo rtunetellers) and Tractatus de Pythonicis Mu l i e r i b u s ed that a real pact deserved death for apostasy and idola-
(Treatise Concerning Women Who Prophesy), it fir s t t ry, but he ended by noting the Devil could be easily
a p p e a red in 1489 and was reprinted many times in both defeated through Christian devo t i o n .
Latin (with “ L a n i i s” changed to “L a m i i s”) and Ge r m a n . Like the Malleus, De Laniist reated witchcraft as some-
Although Molitor accepted that anyone who actually thing particularly associated with women, perhaps
made a pact with the Devil and renounced God deserve d because the great majority of suspects in the In n s b ru c k
death for apostasy and idolatry, he also argued that the i n vestigation we re women, resulting from a long-standing
p owers attributed to witches we re illusory, emphasized the folk tradition linking harmful magic particularly (though
role of the Devil and the fact that his power depended by no means exc l u s i vely) with women. Unlike Kramer,
ultimately on Go d’s permission, and noted the ease with Molitor did not try to explain this association, noting
which the Devil could be resisted. Iro n i c a l l y, Mo l i t o r’s only that women turned to the Devil because of pove rt y,
book was the first treatise on witchcraft to be illustrated d e s p a i r, hatred, or some other temptation. He concluded
with woodcuts, which depicted as real the ve ry activities by exhorting women to resist the De v i l’s blandishments
his word denied. Born in Constance, Molitor studied at by remembering the story of the virgin Justina, who
the universities of Basel and Pavia, from which he earned fought off three demons with the sign of the cro s s .
a degree in canon law in 1470. Returning to Constance,
he served first as a notary and then as vicar in the episco- Illustrations
pal court. In 1482, he began working at the court of De Laniiswas the first book about witchcraft to be illus-
Sigismund, becoming an adviser and then in 1495 or trated with woodcuts showing witches and the Devil
776 Molitor, Ulrich |
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engaged in various activities discussed in the text. Witches, beings who transgress the confines betwe e n
Ironically, these pictures, which became models for human and nonhuman, are also a kind of monster. T h e
future illustrations, depicted as real things those that monster shares a number of characteristics and func-
Mo l i t o r’s text argued we re only illusions. Pe r h a p s tions with the witch: they both may have a connection
Molitor hoped the illustrations would draw credulous with supernatural forces; their appearance may indicate
readers whose ideas would then be set straight by his an evil done or about to be done; they may appear in
words, but it seems almost certain that despite his skep- times of social crisis; their wicked origins are attested to
tical text, the book became a wellspring of images that by their telltale bodies; they may have an “u n n a t u r a l”
made witchcraft seem real, helping thereby to fix the connection with animals; they may be agents of divine
impression that witches and their magic posed a real or diabolical retribution; they may tempt good people
and potent threat to individuals and to the Christian off their path of righteousness; a possessed person may
community generally. be monstrously deformed; and they are both associated
with powers of transformation, illusion, deception, and
EDWARD BEVER
diabolic intervention. Both the witch and the monster
See also:ARTANDVISUALIMAGES;CANONEPISCOPI;FLIGHTOF a re also categories of narrative and appear in narrative
WITCHES;GERMANY,SOUTHWESTERN;INNSBRUCK;KRAMER, traditions in which their identity ranges freely fro m
HEINRICH;LAMIA;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;PACTWITHTHE
physical to moral qualities and back again. Fi n a l l y, the
DEVIL;TYROL,COUNTYOF;WEATHERMAGIC.
categories of the monster and the witch take on negative
References and further reading:
or positive connotations over time and in differe n t
Baroja, Julio Caro. 1964. The World of the Witches.Trans. O. N. V.
places. For example, the siren of antiquity (half-woman
Glendinning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
and half-bird or fish), symbolizing the extremely nega-
Broedel, Hans Peter. 2003. The Malleus Maleficarum and the
Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief. t i ve consequences of succumbing to the lure of feminine
Manchester, UK, and NewYork: Manchester University Press. charms, appears today in the form of a widely merc h a n-
Lea, Henry Charles. 1939. Materials Toward a History of d i zed mermaid, presented as a role model for little girls.
Witchcraft.Vol. 1. Edited by Arthur C. Howland. 3 vols.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gender and Monstrosity
Maxwell-Stewart, P. G. 2001. Witchcraft in Europe and the New A r i s t o t l e’s scientific writings—authoritative texts well into
World, 1400–1800.NewYork: Palgrave.
the seventeenth century in Eu rope—established the med-
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 1972. Witch Hunting in Southwestern
ical precept that the cause of monsters was to be found in
Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations.
the struggle of the formal agent (male seed) to dominate
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
the female matter. Depending on the strength, heat,
Server Frühe Neuzeit. “Lexikon zur Geschichte der
abundance, or deficiency of the seed, its formative move-
Hexenverfolgung: Ulrich Molitor.” http://www.sfn.uni-
muenchen.de/hexenverfolgung/frame_lexikon.html?art839.htm ment pre vailed more or less efficiently over the generative
(January 21, 2003). s e c retion of the female (the menses). Because when it
came to re p roduction, “like should produce like,” a baby
Monsters that did not resemble its parents was already “a sort of
Monsters are real or imagined entities that serve as a m o n s t ro s i t y”; following this logic, the birth of a female
binary opposition in the process of defining what is was “a first depart u re” from a successful re p ro d u c t i o n
human. Whether they are live, described, depicted, or (Aristotle, Physics 4.767b–769b). Mo n s t rosity was thus
used as figures of speech, monsters function as repre- placed on a graduated scale of imperfection falling away
sentations of the other face of humanity, some bestial or f rom the realization of the intended perfect male form.
demonic alter ego that must be repudiated and effaced During its height of popularity in the early modern
in order for the authentically human being to assert its period, the pseudo-Aristotelian science of physiogno-
civilized selfhood. They are ugly because they are de- my, the art of reading a man’s character from his physi-
formed, literally “out of shape,” deviating from the cal features, further popularized the idea that, as one
beauty of standardized corporeal order. Another funda- Italian author of the period put it: “Woman is a mon-
mental meaning of the monster—perhaps the most ster of nature, she is an imperfect man, as many
important aspect for an anthropological understanding Learned writers are pleased to determine, which we
of its mythological and social significance—is its hybrid may deduce from all her parts” (Ghirardelli 1670, 624).
c h a r a c t e r. Monsters create confusion and horro r Feminine qualities such as deceitfulness, vagueness, and
because they appear to combine animal elements with capriciousness were thus considered monstrous signs of
human ones; they posit a possibility of animal origins, the naturally deformed female physiognomy.
of bestiality. They thus represent a call to antisocial
instincts and a threat of regression that the civilized self Form and Function
must struggle to overcome in order to maintain the pre- The monster defines the limits of the human at both its
carious barrier of civilization. “ l owe r” and “u p p e r” thresholds: half-animal or half-god,
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what is other is monstrous. A monster is “not human,” either auspicious or ominous portents: an extra fin g e r
then, and explicitly signals its foreign status with its meant abundant crops and so forth. The appearance
body: too many limbs, or not enough, or not in the of a monster thus presupposed an interpre t i ve com-
right place, or unnaturally formed. Certain characteris- m u n i t y, a social order to which it was addressed, and
tics of the monster are perhaps universal, but only those a priestly caste charged with deciphering its pre c i s e
that describe the place it occupies in the social order and s i g n i fic a n c e .
its relation to the interpre t i ve community that defines it More recent “readings” of monstrous bodies, in addi-
as such. In other words, a monster always indicates a tion to predicting political changes or calamitous wars,
t r a n s g ression, a bre a k d own in hierarchy; it is quintes- had precise propagandistic purposes. Martin Luther, for
sentially a symbol of crisis and undiffere n t i a t i o n . example, made great use of a famous monster baptized
Howe ve r, beyond these attributes a monster can take on the Mönchskalb(the monk-calf), whose image appeared
any form: a baby born with birth defects, an extraord i- in numerous pamphlets as an emblem of Catholic
narily talented or depraved person, a machine that depravity. Interpretation of monsters in the Renaissance
m oves or speaks, the state, women, peoples with differ- was nothing less than an alternative political science,
ent colored skin or unusual customs, an android, or an m o re popular and contemporary in nature than the
e x t r a t e r re s t r i a l . e rudite fare of princely counselors like Ni c c o l ò
The designation of a vulnerable member of the com- Machiavelli.
munity as an agent of the sacred or the diabolical can Mo n s t rous births continued to inspire pious terro r
p rovide an effective way to identify and contain the well into the modern period. In 1543 in Avignon, we
forces of evil or misfortune that could contaminate the a re told, King Francis I ord e red a woman to be
e n t i re community. Ritual slaying or ostracism of the burned along with her dog because she had give n
d a n g e rous element in the form of a sacrificial victim b i rth to an infant with canine features. The woman
can act as a safety valve to tension that could otherwise e ventually confessed to having had intercourse with
e rupt into destru c t i ve violence. From this perspective , the dog; her monstrous progeny was thus interpre t e d
both the monster and the witch have been viewed as as a sign of her wickedness and a divine punishment
scapegoats and their histories analyzed according to the for her unnatural desires. As late as 1825, in Si c i l y, a
scapegoat mechanism. b a by girl born without a brain provoked such terro r
In addition to its mythological and poetic represen- that those attending the birth threw her down a deep,
tations, the monster has appeared textually in the form d ry well. She was saved only by order of the mayo r
of omens in prodigy books (Paré 1982), as a sign to (Ta ru f fi 1881, 1:7:11).
be interpreted in the divination arts (Cicero, De Fear of monstrous births was also inspired by their
D i v i n a t i o n e), as proof of the marvelous cre a t i v i t y supposed connection with demons, who were said to be
o f n a t u re or God (Pl i n y, Na t u ral Hi s t o ry Libri V I I ; responsible for parenting monsters through va r i o u s
St . Augustine, City of Go d), as an object of scientific techniques of “artificial insemination.” In demonology
curiosity in the Aristotelian tradition, as illustrative fig- texts, such as Fr a n c e s c o - Maria Gu a z zo’s C o m p e n d i u m
ures in moralizing emblem books (Alciati 1985), and as Maleficarum(A Summary of Witches) of 1608, demons
a rhetorical figure or concept (Hobbes, Leviathan). and monsters were also linked by an obvious and rela-
t i vely unproblematic correlation between moral
depravity and corporeal deformation: the demon
History of the Monster assumes a monstrous appearance; or to be more precise,
In ancient times, the appearance of a monster, as an demons a remonsters, and monsters a re demons. T h i s
e vent happening outside the ord i n a ry course of association between evil and ugliness is widespread and
n a t u re, was interpreted as an indication of divine will. deeply ingrained in the Platonic/Judeo-Christian tradi-
Mo n s t ru m and t e ra t o s , the Latin and Greek roots of tion in which, conve r s e l y, truth and goodness are
m o n s t e r, did not signify a deformed being, but fell in equated with beauty.
the same category as other terms belonging to the During the early modern period, monsters gradually
d i v i n a t o ry sciences, only migrating later thro u g h lost their terrifying association with the forces of the
association to the natural sciences. A m o n s t ru m ( f ro m sacred and became objects of wonder or curiosity to be
m o n e re , to warn or threaten) was by definition a ter- put on exhibition in public squares and museums.
rible pro d i g y, not for what it was—a piteously Famous freaks of this period who traveled aro u n d
deformed infant destined to die quickly by natural Europe to show themselves included the double-bodied
causes or by ritual sacrifice—but for what it fore t o l d L a z a rus and his brother Baptista who grew out of his
as a sign of coming calamity. How that sign was inter- side, and the giant Gi ovanni Bona. Stuffed animals
p reted was purely a matter of historical context. Fo r made out of various animal parts pieced and sew n
example, the ancient Chaldeans assigned one-to-one together to represent fantastic creatures such as hydras,
c o r respondences between limbs and exact eve n t s , basilisks, and dragons were sold by charlatans and were
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David Ryckaert III (1612–1661), The Witch,shows a Dutch witch battling and sending off monsters and demons in hell. The zoomorphic
monsters remind us of their bestiality and opposition to humans. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource)
in great demand. Scientific collections called “cabinets Hanafi, Zakiya. 2000. The Monster in the Machine: Magic,
of curiosity” often contained specimens of monstro u s Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific
animals or deformed human fetuses and even extended Revolution.Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.
to live specimens such as the dwarves Sebastiano and Impey, Oliver, and Arthur Macgregor, eds. 1985. The Origins of
Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and
Angelica Biavati, who lived their whole lives in a muse-
Seventeenth-Century Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
um in Bologna on a permanent salary.
Niccoli, Ottavia. 1990. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy.
ZAKIYA HANAFI Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
See also:ANIMALS;CIRCE;DEMONOLOGY;DEMONS;DIVINATION;
Paré, Ambroise. 1982. On Monsters and Marvels.Translated by
GENDER;GUAZZO,FRANCESCOMARIA;INFANTICIDE;
Janis L. Pallister. Chicago and London: University of Chicago
LYCANTHROPY;MEDICINEANDMEDICALTHEORY;
Press.
METAMORPHOSIS;PRODIGIES;SCAPEGOATS.
Park, Katherine, and Lorraine Daston. 1982. “Unnatural
References and further reading:
Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in France and England.”
Alciati, Andrea. 1985. Emblems in Translation.Edited by Peter
Past and Present92: 20–54.
Daly. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Taruffi, Cesare. 1881. Storia della Teratologia. Bologna: Regia
Findlen, Paula. 1994. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and
Tipografia.
Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy.Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Montaigne, Michel de (1533–1592)
Ghirardelli, Cornelio. 1670. Cefalogia fisonomica.Bologna: Presso
The best-known French author and thinker of the six-
gli Heredi di Evangelista Dozza e Compagni.
Girard, René. 1977. Violence and the Sacred.Translated by Patrick teenth century, Michel de Mo n t a i g n e’s collection of per-
Gregory. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University sonal re flections, the Es s a y s , was popular in his lifetime
Press. and has undergone hundreds of editions and translations.
Montaigne, Michel de 779 |
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His Es s a y scontinue to be read today, and scholarly intere s t of criminal behavior.’ [quoting Titus Livy] . . . After all,
in their author—including his famous digre s s i o n it is putting a very high value on your opinions to roast
ridiculing belief in witchcraft—remains high. a man alive because of them” (Montaigne 1991,
Montaigne’s family came from the Bordeaux region; 1166–1169).
they were wealthy and well connected. He was a relative Mo n t a i g n e’s opinions on witchcraft inevitably
of two writers on demonology, Pi e r re de Lancre, and caused controve r s y, because belief in the power of the
( t h rough his Spanish Marrano mother) Ma rtín De l Devil and witches was an important part of the fig h t
R i o. Educated in classical humanism, Mo n t a i g n e against Protestant here s y. The position that witchcraft
became a judge at the Pa rl e m e n t ( s ove reign judicial was only a fantasy of old women was attributed to
c o u rt) of Bordeaux in 1557. He served until 1570, Montaigne (sometimes coupled with such heretics as
when he sold his position to Florimond de Raemond Johann We yer) and was mentioned many times in
and retired to his country estate, seeking tranquility in demonological writings as a particularly dangerous idea
o rder to re flect and write during a time of brutal civil that gave impunity to witches. Ma rtín Del Rio, the
war. His early retirement was frequently interrupted by most authoritative ort h o d ox Catholic demonologist,
politics and military ventures as well as by two terms as sharply criticized Mo n t a i g n e’s views, calling him an
mayor of Bordeaux, making him a participant in as well unbeliever who endangered the fight against the Devil
as an observer of the events of his turbulent age. through his opinions.
Based on a firm belief in the unknowability of God’s Pierre de Lancre, despite his admiration for Del Rio,
intentions and his readings of the classics, he adopted a defended his distant kinsman Montaigne against De l
position of skepticism, summed up in his famous Rio’s criticisms, stating that Montaigne “did not present
rhetorical question, “Que sçay-je?” (What do I know?). this proposition as tru e . . . no more than his other
He attempted to avoid the extreme positions of his day o p i n i o n s . . . . leaving all things in doubt, where it
because their adherents claimed true know l e d g e . seemed bold to decide them absolutely” (Lancre 1622,
Because humans could not know the mind of Go d , 339). Ne ve rtheless, family honor aside, de Lancre was
Montaigne argued that they should follow the religion concerned that judges might let such views deter them
of their country. Montaigne primarily blamed the from their responsibility to punish witches.
Protestants for the chaotic civil war that raged for thir- Montaigne lived and died as a Catholic. He traveled
ty-five years, but he also criticized Catholic zealots who to Italy, where he visited the shrine at Loretto, met with
similarly mistook their extreme opinions for facts. Juan Maldonado, and had an audience with the pope.
Montaigne was an early example of the Ga l l i c a n He was also careful to submit his work to papal censors.
Catholic p o l i t i q u e , holding that it was unjustified to He died long before the religious wars ended and did
label dissidents as heretics and to kill people for such not see Henry IV’s triumph.
d i s a g reements. This position, which ultimately pre-
JONATHAN L. PEARL
vailed under King Henry IV, was attractive to many of
his contemporaries (and to modern readers) but See also: DELRIO,MARTÍN;FRANCE;LANCRE,PIERREDE;
aroused bitter hatred from zealous Catholics. MALDONADO,JUAN;MIRACLES;SKEPTICISM;WARSOFRELIGION
In his writing, Montaigne touched frequently on
(FRANCE); WEYER,JOHANN.
References and further reading:
popular cre d u l i t y. His essay, “On the Lame” (1588),
L a n c re, Pi e r re de. 1622. L’ i n c redulité et mescréance du sort i l e g e .Pa r i s .
addressed the belief in witchcraft and the penalties met-
Montaigne, Michel de. 1991. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne.
ed out to convicted witches. Montaigne re vealed his
Edited and translated by M. A. Screech. London: Penguin.
basic skepticism tow a rd the supernatural, stating, “A l l
miracles and strange happenings hide away when I am
about.” He mocked the works of demonologists. “My Monter, William (1936–)
local witches go in risk of their lives, depending on the Professor emeritus of early modern European history at
testimony of each new authority who comes and gives Northwestern University in Illinois, where he taught
substance to their delusions.” He then told about from 1963 to 2002, Monter has exercised considerable
o b s e rving and conversing with a group of old women influence on a generation of witchcraft research.
who had been convicted of witchcraft, through the After completing a dissertation on Ge n e va, Mo n t e r
c o u rtesy of an unnamed prince who wanted to ove r- became interested in witchcraft re s e a rch during the
come his distinguished visitor’s skepticism. (In this con- Vi e t n a m - p rotest era, while reading both Carlo
text, he never mentioned his experience as a judge in Gi n z b u r g’s and Hugh Tre vo r - Ro p e r’s utterly contradic-
the Pa rlement of Bordeaux, because witchcraft cases t o ry accounts of it in 1967. By 1969, Monter published
we re unheard of there in the 1560s.) Montaigne con- a collection of essays and sources titled Eu ro p e a n
cluded, “In the end, and in all honesty, I would have Wi t c h c ra f t .T h ree years later, following Erik Mi d e l f o rt’s
prescribed not hemlock for them but hellebore. ‘Their example, he provided a historiographical surve y, divid-
case seemed to be more a matter of insane minds than ing witchcraft into three major currents: rationalist,
780 Monter, William |
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romantic, and social scientific. An active witness to the phy of witch hunting. Monter served on the editorial
“ongoing renaissance in the historiography of Eu ro p e a n b o a rd of the En c yclopedia of Wi t c h c raft: The We s t e rn
w i t c h c r a f t” (Monter 1976, 9), Monter contributed one Tradition.
of the most important early comparative studies on a
WOLFGANG BEHRINGER
region labeled as “the borderlands during the
Reformation,” including Calvin’s Ge n e va. Unlike Alan See also:HISTORIOGRAPHY.
Macfarlane or Mi d e l f o rt, Monter emphasized the References and further reading:
Monter, E. William. 1967. Calvin’s Geneva.NewYork: John
i m p o rtance of popular belief, and, unlike Ke i t h
Wiley.
Thomas, Mo n t e r’s study paid close attention to re g i o n a l
———, ed. 1969. European Witchcraft. NewYork: John Wiley.
d i f f e rences between such territories as the Fr a n c h e -
———. 1972. “The Historiography of European Witchcraft:
Comté and the Swiss Canton of Fribourg (both
Progress and Prospects.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History2:
Catholic) on the one hand, and Ge n e va and Bern
435–451.
(both Reformed) and Mo n t b é l i a rd (Lutheran) on the ———. 1976. Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The
o t h e r. Monter succeeded in destroying stereotypes about Borderlands During the Reformation. Ithaca, NY, and London:
uniform patterns of persecution or of patterns depend- Cornell University Press.
ing on the form of religion. Fu rt h e r m o re, he insisted on ———. 1983. Ritual, Myth, and Magic in Early Modern Europe.
putting his results into a Eu ropean perspective . Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Two re c u r rent themes in his publications deserve ———. 1987. Enforcing Morality in Early Modern Europe.
London: Variorum Reprints.
comment: that the “witchcraft of the Germanic core of
———. 1988. “European Witchcraft: A Moment of Synthesis?”
the Holy Roman Em p i re” could be taken as “n o r m a-
The HistoricalJournal31: 183–185.
t i ve” (Monter 1976, 191; Monter 2002) and that
———. 1990. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the
Geneva’s Calvinists took a relatively moderate approach
Basque Lands to Sicily.NewYork: Cambridge University Press.
toward witchcraft (Monter 1976, 42–66). However, the
———. 1993. “Les enfants au sabbat: Bilan provisoire,” Pp.
Holy Roman Empire contained large territories with no 383–388 in Le sabbat des sorciers en Europe, XVe-XVIIIe siècles.
executions of witches during the early modern period. Colloque international E. N. S. Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, 4–7
Mo re ove r, Ge n e va was located near the center of the novembre 1992.Edited by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin and
Romance-speaking areas where the cumulative crime of Maxime Préaud. Grenoble: Millon.
witchcraft first emerged. The sixteenth-century urban ———. 1997. “Toads and Eucharists: The Male Witches of
republic was an angst-ridden society, driven by fears of Normandy, 1564–1660.” French Historical Studies20:
563–595.
p l a g u e - s p readers and witches; its “gentle Calvinists”
———. 1999. Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by
killed more witches within their narrow confines than
Sixteenth-Century Parlements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
all popes in Rome together, or Lu t h e r’s princes in
University Press.
Saxony, or most European towns.
———. 2002. “Witch Trials in Continental Europe, 1560–1660.”
Monter’s publications are among the most illuminat-
Pp. 1–52 in The Period of Witch Trials. Vol. 4 of The Athlone
ing on witchcraft and related subjects. His well-written History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.Edited by Bengt
survey Ritual, Myth and Magic in Early Modern Europe Ankarloo and Stuart Clark. London and Philadelphia: Athlone
(1983) provided insights into the cultural fabric of and University of Pennsylvania Press.
d i f f e rent strands of Catholicism, Protestantism, and ———. Forthcoming. “The Catholic Salem: Mattaincourt.” In
Judaism in all parts of Eu rope and their ove r s e a s Witchcraft in Context.Edited byWolfgang Behringer and James
colonies. It drew on recent re s e a rch in all major Sharpe. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
European languages, and by treating witchcraft as one
of many subjects, put it in perspective. In contrast to Moon
a n t h ropologically oriented historians, Monter always The moon has occupied a pivotal role in myth, re l i g i o n ,
e m p h a s i zed the importance of “c u l t u re,” popular as and magic, assuming a divine or at least anthro p o m o r p h i c
well as religious or intellectual. In numerous essays, he n a t u re (sometimes male, sometimes female) in the major-
d rew attention to the significance of such subjects as ity of belief systems since prehistoric times. As a measure-
s o d o m y, child witches (1993), or male witchcraft ment of time, the moon and its cycles designated the
(1997), with predominance in places like Normandy or various phases in the agricultural calendar as well as indi-
the Alpine regions that can hardly be explained socially. cated appropriate times for the gathering of marine pro-
Subsequently, he explored the group dynamics of a pos- duce and sailing the seas. As a celestial force endowe d
sessed Lorraine village with a parish priest who was a with personality or divinity and associated with time, the
f u t u re saint, proposing it as a Catholic counterpart to moon and its movements we re naturally re g a rded as
Puritan Salem (Monter forthcoming). e xe rting an influence on humans and their destinies,
Vi ewed as a whole, his publications combined the occupying a central position in the astrological system.
rational, romantic, and social-scientific approaches to In terms of witchcraft and the occult, the moon
witchcraft that he long ago identified in the historiogra- has a re ve red and powe rful function in the practice of
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The moon presides over a witches’ dance (from an eighteenth-century chapbook). The moon has been linked to witchcraft since antiquity. Meetings
and activities were most effective when coordinated with the phases of the moon, especially a full moon as shown in this illustration.
(Bettmann/Corbis)
magic. In ancient Greece, witches regularly invo k e d the Ph a r s a l i a (6.505–6.506) by the Latin author
Selene, goddess of the moon, in their rites and incan- Lucan (C.E. 39–65) who re f e r red to a lunar flu i d ,
tations, often calling on her to assist their work by emitted by the descending moon, that coated eart h l y
either shedding or concealing its light. Later in her foliage, endowing it with miraculous pro p e rties. In a
myth cycle, Hecate also became associated with the similar vein, the ancients believed in the magical
moon. In both Greek and Roman literature, witches p ro p e rties of stones from the moon, which we re worn
such as Medea we re described as working with the for a variety of purposes, including as amulets, and
moon, and the practice of drawing down the moon sold by magicians. Pl i n y, in his Na t u ral Hi s t o ry
was a re n owned art of Thessalian witches in part i c u- (37.164), also mentioned g l o s s o p e t ra , which fell fro m
l a r. This magical art was sometimes presented in liter- the sky during the waning of the moon and was used
a t u re as the means to assist in the performance of by “m o o n - d i v i n e r s . ”
rituals that re q u i red secrecy and, there f o re, dark n e s s . In early modern Europe, the moon continued to be
An alternative motivation for the act was presented in regarded as a central part of a variety of forms of occult
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practice. The idea of drawing down the moon contin- suspected cases of witchcraft in the parishes of Älvdalen
ued as a belief as illustrated in the speech of Hecate in and Mora by the Witchcraft Commission, was translat-
Shakespeare’sMacbeth(Act 3, Scene 5). In alchemy, the ed into Dutch as early as 1670. It was published in
moon was a major cosmic force, representing the metal German the same year; by the turn of the eighteenth
s i l ver and the feminine principle as well as being an century it had appeared in several editions, including
a s t rological influence that re q u i red acknow l e d g e m e n t English and French translations. There was a link to
in particular operations; by working under a waxing North America, where Cotton Mather was well aware
moon, for example, one obtained purer metals. In folk of the Swedish witch hunt when discussing the pos-
magic, the moon and its phases marked pro p i t i o u s sessed children of Salem (Discourse on Witchcraft,1689;
times for the working of spells and similar endeavo r s The Wonders of the Invisible World,1693).
such as summoning fairies or other supernatural beings. The early translations of Skragge’s account have giv-
The links between the moon and witchcraft also con- en rise to a greatly exaggerated view of the Blåkulla tri-
tinued, with consistent re f e rences in the literature of als, due to misunderstandings and incorrect translations
the persecution era to Satanism, its practitioners (and of the original text, which have influenced even re l a-
victims), and the lunar cycles. The MalleusMaleficarum t i vely modern studies (e.g., Robbins 1959, 348). T h e
(The Hammer of Witches, 1486) stated that devils, first Dutch translation stated, with no support in the
who could only operate through the medium of natural original, that eighty-four adults and fifteen childre n
f o rces, “molest men at certain phases of the moon” were put to death.
(1:5). It regarded men who were vulnerable to such sit- Sk r a g g e’s account belonged to the initial phase of
uations as lunatics, thereby reflecting the age-old folk- Swe d e n’s great witch hunt, which afflicted Da l a r n a
tale tradition of lunar-inspired madness. Such thinking from 1668 to 1671. Official hearings began in Dalarna
was closely aligned with the belief in lyc a n t h ro p y, a in the summer of 1668, when an eleve n - year-old girl
state of transformation often re g a rded as being deter- called Gertrud Svensdotter, who lived in the village of
mined by certain phases of the moon. Witches we re Åsen in the parish of Älvdalen, disclosed strange and
believed to meet at times designated by the cycles of the terrible tales of widespread consorting with the De v i l .
moon, the full moon being an especially favorable time Based on testimonies principally given by children, the
for gatherings. This association between the witch and local court passed eighteen death sentences, which were
the moon was particularly strong in the artwork of the in due course re f e r red to Svea High Court in
persecution era (and beyond), with consistent images of Stockholm. In March 1669, it ratified seven death sen-
a full or crescent moon watching over the predominant- tences, those passed on adults who had confessed their
ly female fig u res and their activities. In a Vi c t o r i a n guilt, including two seve n t e e n - year-old maidserva n t s .
magical text, Charles Leland’s Arcadia: Gospel of the Those whose death sentences we re re voked included
Wi t c h e s (1889), the author wrote of witches gathering four children (Ankarloo 1990, 295). The death sen-
once a month “‘when the moon is full” to worship the tence was not usually passed on children under fifteen
goddess Diana in a passage that clearly drew fro m years of age, the only notable exception occurring in
ancient beliefs concerning the moon and one of its Stockholm in 1676, when the witch hunt finally came
principal deities. to an end. T h e re a thirt e e n - year-old boy called Jo h a n
Grijs was executed because his perjury had caused a
MARGUERITE JOHNSON
number of people to be sentenced to death.
See also:ASTROLOGY;DIANA(ARTEMIS); DIVINATION;HECATE; From Älvdalen, rumors of witchcraft quickly spre a d
LYCANTHROPY;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;MENTALILLNESS. to the neighboring parish of Mora. The increasing dis-
References and further reading:
quiet in the region resulted in a government decision
Barton, Tamsyn. 1994. Ancient Astrology.London: Routledge.
to appoint a Witchcraft Commission, which held hear-
Flint, Valerie, Richard Gordon, Georg Luck, and Daniel Ogden.
ings in Mora in August 1669, presided over by
1999. InAncient Greece and Rome.Vol. 2 of The Athlone
Councillor Lorentz Creutz. The local community
History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.Edited by Bengt
demanded the establishment of special courts of law.
Ankarloo and Stuart Clark. London and Philadelphia: Athlone
and University of Pennsylvania Press. The Witchcraft Commission passed the death penalty
only on those who had confessed (a pre requisite that
Mora Witches was later abandoned at the culmination of the gre a t
The large village of Mora was the first center of witch hunt) and who proved to have had pro l o n g e d
Sweden’s great witch hunt of 1668–1676. Because the dealings with the Devil. This latter criterion enabled
earliest and until recently the most widespread source younger witches (for instance, two women in their
of information about the entire affair was an account t wenties) to escape the death penalty. The hearings of
written by Mora’s vicar, Elaus Skragge, his parish the Witchcraft Commission lasted only a few days.
became the Swedish equivalent of Salem. Skragge’s The commission interrogated a total of sixty suspects
account, which covered the August 1669 hearings into in addition to an even larger number of childre n
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(Ankarloo 1990, 295). In view of the large number of the cleric present at the hearing, there f o re instru c t e d
confessions that resulted, one suspects that tort u re was the girl about the nature of God and explained how the
e m p l oyed. The execution of those who had confessed Almighty does not change, become ill, die, or the like.
took place on August 25, two days after the commis- The girl had described how Satan fell ill at Blåkulla and
sion had departed from Mora. Of the twe n t y - t h re e had lain on a bed in the banqueting hall, gru n t i n g ,
who had been condemned to death, fifteen we re groaning, and appearing to be so ill that his guests had
beheaded and then burned at the stake in Mora. Si x wept and mourned for him. Despite the efforts of one
others we re executed in Älvdalen at the same time of the most experienced witches to cure him with lini-
(Ankarloo 1990, 295). Hopes that the authorities ments and cupping, he continued to lose stre n g t h .
would now take control of the situation proved to be Finally, he was led out to another chamber, but a ghost-
in vain. The abduction of children to Blåkulla spre a d like image of him remained in the bed, as though it was
like wildfire, and other parishes requested gove r n m e n t his dead body. At this point, Satan’s son-in-law entered
help to deal with the situation. Another Wi t c h c r a f t the room together with his wife and two of his daugh-
Commission was appointed in 1671. A further fif t e e n ters, and with tears and weeping they carried him out,
people we re executed (Ankarloo 1990, 296). T h a t as though to be buried. Howe ve r, Satan suddenly
finally brought the witch hunt in Dalarna to an end, regained life; rushing back into the room, he danced
but in the rest of Sweden, the panic was only just around with one of the young witches in his arms to the
b e g i n n i n g . delight of the guests.
Julio Caro Ba roja noted that one aspect of El a u s This tale has been interpreted as a misunderstanding
Sk r a g g e’s account re g a rding the Blåkulla tales was of the biblical theme of Jesus’s death and resurrection.
unique in Eu ropean tales of witches: namely, Sa t a n’s The mention of Satan’s son-in-law is of particular inter-
death and resurrection (Caro Baroja, 1965, 207ff.). The est. At the beginning of the witch hunt, a number of
narrator of this occurrence was the afore mentioned references described Satan with a wife and children. In
Ge rt rud Sve n s d o t t e r. The re c o rd of the pro c e e d i n g s Älvdalen, these clearly referred to the vicar’s own family.
described her tale in great detail because it contravened At one point, Satan was referred to as “Lasse,” a nick-
accepted theological doctrine. Anders Nohr Mo r a e u s , name for the vicar, Lars Elvius. In the section of the
re c o rds referring to Sa t a n’s death and re s u r rection, the
names of Satan’s two daughters, Sara and Margeta, were
crossed out, but they were in fact the names of two of
the vicar’s daughters.
Elaus Skragge’s report of Gertrud Svensdotter’s con-
fession did not tell the entire story.The background to
the Blåkulla trials took place in 1667, when Ge rt ru d ,
then eleven years old, was herding goats together with a
slightly younger boy on the banks of the rive r
Ö s t e rd a l ä l ven, near the village of Åsen. The childre n
fought over a chunk of bread, and the boy, who came
out the worst in the tussle, told the tale to his father so
dramatically that before long the vicar, Lars El v i u s ,
came to hear of it. The boy claimed that while the chil-
dren were fighting, some of the goats had strayed out to
an islet in the river, and Gertrud had fetched the goats
by walking out on the water to the little island. In
September 1668, the court concluded that Ge rt ru d’s
walking on water was the first substantial indication of
what turned out to be widespread witchcraft. It could
equally well have become a miracle, but the re c o rd
called it the work of the Devil. Satan had oiled the girl’s
feet so that she could wade out across the current with-
out touching the riverbed.
In another episode from the girl’s story, Satan showe d
Ge rt rud and the other witches “the whole world.” In
spite of the fact that they had calves to ride on, most of
Witchcraft at Mora, Sweden, including the flight of witches to
the journey was made by boat. During the boat trip,
Blåkulla, child witches, sex with the Devil, and the execution of
witches. (Anonymous, Sabbat der Hexen von Mora, 1739–1745. Satan instructed the youngest members of the part y,
Directmedia Publishing GmbH: Berlin, 2003) including Ge rt rud, to keep the calves calm by scratching
784 Mora Witches |
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them on their necks while Satan himself rowed the boat systematically re s e a rched, except for the nort h e r n
with mighty strokes of the oars. During the boat ride, Moravian witchcraft trials of 1678–1696. At present,
they noticed a man who stood and scooped salt from the the total number of known victims of the witch hunt in
water onto the shore. Satan and the witches took a sup- Moravia (including the northern Moravian witchcraft
ply of salt with them before proceeding onward. After trials) was roughly 300 people, most of whom were exe-
some days, they reached the shore, from whence they cuted. Considering the substantial losses of source
flew onward, passing towns, villages, and churches. On material, especially records of town criminal courts
their return, Satan confiscated all the salt, so the only before 1620, the real total was considerably higher.
thing that Ge rt rude and the others had to show fro m Today part of the Czech Republic, Moravia (Morava)
their long journey was exhaustion. Tow a rd the end of in the ninth and early tenth centuries was the center of
the nineteenth century, at the time of a religious re v i va l , the vast empire of Greater Moravia, which included
stories of Blåkulla we re heard again in the province of Bohemia, Silesia, Slovakia, southern Poland, and north-
Dalarna. This time, howe ve r, the destination was called ern Hungary. Later, Moravia became a margravinate in
Josefsdal, an adaptation of the biblical valley of the Holy Roman Em p i re under the suzerainty of the
Jehosaphat, Josafats dal (dal means va l l e y ) . princes and then kings of Bohemia.
Mo r a v i a’s laws and juridical system in the medieva l
PER SÖRLIN
and early modern periods closely resembled those of
See also: ANGELS;BLÅKULLA;CAROBAROJA,JULIO;CHILDREN; Bohemia. Criminal courts in over 200 Moravian royal
CONFESSIONS;DEVIL;MATHER,COTTON;PANICS;ROBBINS, and patrimonial towns tried most of the region’s witch-
ROSSELLHOPE;SALEM;SWEDEN.
es until the battle of the White Mountain in 1620.
References and further reading:
A f t e rw a rd, patrimonial courts took a more active part
Ankarloo, Bengt. 1990. “Sweden: The Mass Burnings
in prosecuting sorc e ry in Moravia alongside the tow n
(1668–1676).” Pp 285–317 in Early Modern European
c o u rts. The Land court, the only one with authority
Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries.Edited by Bengt Ankarloo
over all of Moravia, almost never heard any cases of
and Gustav Henningsen. Oxford: Clarendon.
Caro Baroja, Julio. 1965. The World of the Witches.English transla- sorcery.The Court of Appeal in Prague only established
tion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. its authority to approve all death sentences fro m
Lagerlöf-Génetay, Birgitta. 1990. De svenska häxprocessernas Moravian town and patrimonial courts in 1700. Like
utbrottsskede 1668–1671: Bakgrund i Övre Dalarna. Social och Bohemia, Moravia’s first detailed legal regulation for the
ecklesiastik kontext.Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell offense of witchcraft (sorc e ry) came only with the
International. Summary in English. Josephina, the criminal code of Em p e ror Joseph I for
Lennersand, Marie. 1997. “Androm till sky och skräck: Den
Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, decreed in 1707, a time
rättsliga behandlingen av trolldomsprocesserna i Älvdalen och
when witchcraft trials had almost ended in Bohemian
Mora 1668–1669.” Pp 23–44 inVägen till Blåkulla: Nya per-
crown lands.
spektiv på de stora svenska häxprocesserna.Edited by Linda Oja.
Unlike Bohemia, Moravia lacks information about
Uppsala: Department of History, Uppsala University. Summary
the activities of its fourteenth-century papal inquisitors.
in English.
Monter, E. William. 1990. “Scandinavian Witchcraft in Anglo- Mo r a v i a’s most notorious inquisitor was cert a i n l y
American Perspective.” Pp. 424–434 in Early Modern European Heinrich Kramer (Institoris), author of the Ma l l e u s
Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries.Edited by Bengt Ankarloo Ma l e fic a rum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486), who
and Gustav Henningsen. Oxford: Clarendon. was named papal inquisitor to Moravia and Bohemia in
Robbins, Rossell Hope. 1959. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and 1500 by Pope Alexander VI at the instigation of the
Demonology.NewYork: Crown. bishop of Olomouc, Stanislav T h u rzo. Kramer settled
Skragge, Elaus. 1683. An Account of what happened in Sweden.
in Olomouc, which boasted an important Do m i n i c a n
Translated by E. Horneck. InSadducismusTriumphtus.By
monastery, until 1505. He made no attempt to conduct
Joseph Glanvill.London, 1683.
witchcraft trials in Moravia; his task was rather to erad-
Sörlin, Per. 1997. “The Blåkulla Story: Absurdity and Rationality.”
icate various Czech heresies. In April 1501, he pub-
Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore53: 131–152.
lished two tracts at Olomouc against them, but neve r
Tegler, Kristina. 1997. “Till Blåkulla med kropp och själ:
Schamanistiska föreställningar i svenska trolldomsprocesser.” Pp began any inquisitorial trials against heretics in Moravia
47–74 in Vägen till Blåkulla: Nya perspektiv på de stora svenska or Bohemia; his five years there were devoted to public
häxprocesserna.Edited by Linda Oja. Uppsala: Department of disputes and literary polemics.
History, Uppsala University. Summary in English. Inquisitorial pro c e d u re had long been known in
Wall, Jan. 1987. “Resorna till Josefsdal.” Svenska landsmål och Moravia, but as late as the first half of the seve n t e e n t h
svenskt folkliv110: 99–120. Summary in English. c e n t u ry it was used only by town courts in pro s e c u t i n g
capital crimes and then only in some southern Mo r a v i a n
Moravia t owns owned by the capital city of Br n o. Until the out-
Witchcraft persecution in Moravia in the late Middle b reak of the northern Moravian witch hunt in 1678, the
Ages and the early modern centuries has not been offense of witchcraft meant simply m a l e fic i u m( h a r m f u l
Moravia 785 |
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magic)—mostly poisoning people or cattle, causing ill- Christoph Alois Lautner (1622–1685), opposed the
ness or damage to pro p e rt y, and sometimes administer- p roceedings of this special patrimonial court (among
ing love charms. T h e re was no diabolism, no apostasy, the first people accused were Lautner’s housekeeper and
and no participation in witches’ Sabbats. Mo r a v i a’s fir s t the wife of his friend, the former mayor Kaspar Sattler).
´
k n own trial for harmful sorc e ry occurred around 1350 Lautner came from a rather poor family in Su m p e rk ;
at Brno: the accused women we re re q u i red to swear a his father had been a soldier during the T h i rty Ye a r s’ Wa r.
p u r i fication oath. Sporadic trials against performers of Lautner studied theology at Landshut in Ba varia, then
harmful magic dotted the final quarter of the fif t e e n t h philosophy and law at the Un i versity of Vienna, and the-
c e n t u ry. Mo r a v i a’s first known execution for this crime ology again at the Un i versity of Graz (Styria). He was
o c c u r red in 1494 (four years before the first such o rdained a priest at Olomouc in 1656, where he re m a i n e d
instance in Bohemia) at the southern town of Uherské as a chaplain before becoming a village priest at Do l n í
H r a d i´s teˇ, where a woman was sentenced to death for Moravice by Ry´ m a˘r ov in northern Moravia (1658–1663),
harmful sorc e ry, in addition to other crimes. then a dean in the Silesian town of Os o b l a h a
´
Only sparse information surv i ves about Mo r a v i a n (1663–1668), and finally dean of his native Su m p e rk .
witchcraft trials during the first half of the sixteenth Lautner was an extraordinarily we l l - read priest. His rich
century. Trials and executions increased gradually after l i b r a ry re flected his various interests; unlike Boblig, he
mid-century. Before 1620, they were individual affairs, e ven owned and read the Malleus Ma l e fic a ru m . B o b l i g
with one outstanding exception: the series of witchcraft re c o g n i zed a dangerous opponent in Lautner and soon
trials from 1571–1576 in the patrimonial town of charged him with witchcraft. Consequently, Lautner was
Velká Bítes´ in southwestern Moravia, where at least a r rested in August 1680 with the approval of the bishop
t wenty-two women we re executed (fifteen of them in of Olomouc, Karl II of Lichtenstein. The bishop immedi-
1576) for harmful witchcraft, mainly poisoning ately created a special commission (“committee of jus-
humans or cattle or magically stealing milk. After 1620, t i c e”) for the purpose of investigating witchcraft charges
Moravian witchcraft trials still usually remained indi- against Lautner and some other clergymen from his dio-
vidual affairs, even when mass witchcraft trials took cese: it contained four men, including Boblig. Lautner
place after 1651 in the neighboring principality of remained imprisoned for five ye a r s .
Neisse in Silesia, claiming hundreds of victims. Meanwhile, Boblig’s tribunals in Velké Losiny and
´
The single dramatic exc e p t i o n — by far the largest Su m p e rk passed death sentences and executed seve r a l
mass persecution of witches in Moravian history—was d o zen persons, mainly women. Lautner’s housekeeper
the northern Moravian witchcraft trials, which lasted Susanna and Maria (the wife of Kaspar Sattler) we re
from 1678 to 1696. They began at Easter 1678 in the executed for witchcraft in December 1682. Sattler was
l o rdship of Velké Losiny, after someone profaned the put to death for the same offense, together with his
consecrated Eucharistic wafers, attempting to use them daughter Elisabeth in August 1683. Dean Lautner was
to perform magical spells. The guardian of Ve l k é first interrogated in August 1680, and his examination
L o s i n y, Anna Si byla (countess of Galle), called in a was repeated many times. The bishop of Ol o m o u c
lawyer with vast experience in the field of witchcraft tri- a p p roved his tort u re in June 1684. After numero u s
als, Heinrich Franz Boblig (1612–1698), from the postponements and delays, Lautner was condemned by
Moravian capital at Olomouc. Boblig came from a the episcopal “committee of justice” in September 1685
patrician family of Edelstadt; his father had been enno- to be defrocked and then burned at the stake. After the
bled and served as mayor of the rich mining town of bishop of Olomouc approved this sentence, Lautner
Zuckmantel in Silesia. He never completed his law was burned on September 18, 1685, in the bishop’s pat-
studies (probably at Vienna Un i versity) and lacked a rimonial town of Müglitz, in the presence of an enor-
doctor’s degree. By 1638, Boblig had become a judge in mous crowd. In all pro b a b i l i t y, Lautner was the only
the Silesian principality of Neisse; his career culminated Catholic priest ever executed in Moravia or Bohemia
during the mass witchcraft trials, which took place for the offense of witchcraft. Boblig’s witchcraft trials
t h e re in 1651–1652. Sometime later, he moved to continued after Lautner’s execution, lasting until 1696,
Olomouc. He came to Velké Losiny in September 1678 but with less intensity. Overall, roughly 100 people
as chairman of the newly established special patrimoni- (mainly women) died during these northern Mo r a v i a
´
al court, charged with finding its alleged witches. witch hunts, including 48 people from Su m p e rk (27
The first executions took place at Velké Losiny in women and 21 men).
August 1679. That same month, Boblig succeeded in We do not know when the last death sentence for
becoming head of another newly established special witchcraft was carried out in Moravia; it pro b a b l y
patrimonial court of justice in the rich town of happened during the first half of the eighteenth century.
´´
Su m p e rk (German Mährisch Scho¨nberg), owned by a
PETR KREUZ;
g reat Moravian and Silesian aristocrat, Prince Karl
´
Eusebius of Lichtenstein. The dean of Su m p e rk , TRANSLATED BY VLADIMIR CINKE
786 Moravia |
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See also:BOHEMIA;HOLYROMANEMPIRE;INQUISITORIAL grammar school and in 1631 entered Christ’s College,
PROCEDURE;KRAMER,HEINRICH;MALEFICIUM;S´INDELÁRˇ, Cambridge, which was to remain his home and haven
BEDRˇICH;TRIALS.
for the rest of his life. More was elected to a fellowship
References and further reading:
in 1639 and soon afterward took up holy orders. In the
Verbík, Antonín, and Ivan S´tarha, eds. 1973. Smolná kniha
1640s and 1650s, More remained staunchly loyal to the
velkobíte´sská 1556–1636 Brno: Blok.
royalist cause but after 1660 refused all preferment and
Kocˇí, Josef. 1973. Cˇarodˇejnické procesy: Z deˇjin inkvizice a
promotion offered in reward. Instead, More adhered to
cˇarodˇejnicky´ch procesu v cˇesk´ych zemích v 16.–18. století.Prague:
a life of contemplation, conversation, and composition;
Horizont.
Kubícˇek, Antonín. 1902. “Jindrˇich Institoris, papezˇsky´ inkvizitor he was a pro l i fic writer who translated his own work
vCˇechách a na Moraveˇ.” Cˇasopis katolického duchovenstva63, into Latin. He died in Cambridge in September 1687,
20–26, 115–120, 222–226, 320–325, 372–378, 491–500, much missed as an inspirational teacher.
521–525. Mo re was re m e m b e red as a Christian mystic as well as a
Lambrecht, Karen. 1995. Hexenverfolgung und Zaubereiprozesse in scientist in the providential tradition, an Anglican who
den schlesischen Territorien. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: spent his working life promoting a compre h e n s i ve natural
Böhlau.
theology suited to an age of science and experiment. T h e
Macek, Josef. 1999. Jagellonsky´ vˇek v cˇesk´ych zemích (1471–1526).
d i verse subjects cove red in his books included the doctrine
Vol. 4 Venkovsky´ lid. Národnostní otázka.Prague: Academia.
of providence, the nature of the soul, idolatry, transubstan-
Mo l n á r, Amadeo. 1980. “Pro t i valdenská polemika na úsvitu 16.
tiation, the Kabbalah, and a commentary on the visions of
století.” Historická Olomouc a její soucˇasné pro b l é m y3: 153–174.
the prophet Daniel. In 1653, Mo re published his best-
Rojcˇíková, Kamila. 2000. “Magické praktiky velkobítes´sky´ch
cˇarodeˇjnic.” Západní Morava4: 149–154. k n own contribution to witchcraft literature: An An t i d o t e
S´indelárˇ, Bedrˇich. 1970. “Konec,honu na cˇarodeˇjnice¥ v terezián- Against Atheisme: or an Appeal to the natural Faculties of the
ské dobeˇ u nás.”Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brneˇnské uni- Minde of Man, Whether T h e re be no Go d . It included the
verzityC17: 89–107. s t o ry of a Cambridge witch who refused to repent; at her
———1981. “C´arodeˇjnictví a jeho pronásledování u nás do r. e xecution, which Mo re may have attended, an unnaturally
1526.” Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brne´nské s t rong gust of wind shook the gallows. He had cert a i n l y
univerzity C28: 177–206.
witnessed some trials of East Anglian witches in the mid-
———1986. Hon na ˇcarodeˇjnice: Západní a strˇední Evropa v
1640s. Despite its local anecdotal evidence, his book was
16.–17 století.Prague: Svoboda.
also a serious work of theology, drawing upon such author-
Spurny´, Franti´sek, Vojteˇch Cekota, and Kourˇil Milos´. 2000.
S´umpersk´y faráˇr a deˇkan Kry´stof Alois Lautner, obˇet ities as Jean Bodin, Johann We ye r, and René De s c a rtes and
ˇcarodeˇjnick´ych inkviziˇcních procesu.S´umperk: Mˇestsky´ úˇrad lamenting that free thinking and discussion in religion was
S´umperk arˇímskokatolická farnost v S´umperku. undermining Go d’s ord e r. He argued that because the exis-
Teichmann, Eduard. 1932. Rennaisance und Hexenwahn mit beson- tence of God and a spiritual realm was beyond question,
derer Berücksichtigung der Verbrennung Lautners in Müglitz. then the power of witches must surely follow. Witches, in
Hohenstadt: Burschofsky. Mo re’s opinion, we re powerless and poor but we re tempt-
ed through weakness and impiety to follow the De v i l’s
path. He believed that witches gathered in covens to make
More, Henry (1614–1687) pacts with the Devil, a continental idea rarely known in
More was an English theologian and believer in the England before his own time.
reality of apparitions, spirits, and witches. Mo re In his later years, More became a strong supporter of
belonged to a small band of philosophers known as the the credulous physician Joseph Glanvill (who had long
Cambridge Platonists because of their metaphysical a d m i red Mo re’s own work). He reputedly edited
interests and beliefs. Though fascinated by the spirit of Gl a n v i l l’s polemical Saducismus Tr i u m p h a t u s( Sa d d u c i s m
inquiry in the occult sciences, More maintained a Conquered) of 1681, which also connected skepticism
devout Christian faith. Astrology, for example, he dis- with atheism; there is little doubt that More influenced
missed as “a fanciful study built upon very slight it. Like Glanvill, More believed that accumulated testi-
grounds” (Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 1656). He exert- monies demonstrating the reality of witchcraft would
ed an important influence on the debates about witch- ultimately confound the skeptics and would offer a last-
craft in the second half of the seventeenth century, rep- ing antidote to atheism. The flaws in this line of reason-
resenting the conservative view that skepticism in such ing were, first, that the data of hauntings and bewitch-
matters was dangerously linked to atheism. Over time, ings could never be tested, and, second, that skeptics
however, his opinions lost favor and would be branded would never accept any evidence they considered to be
“superstitious” by eighteenth-century free thinkers. ridiculous. As David Hume later argued, no testimony
More was born at Grantham in Lincolnshire, the son was sufficient to prove a miracle unless its falsity was
of a minor gentleman. His parents we re strict more miraculous than the fact it sought to establish.
Calvinists, but as he grew up, Mo re inclined tow a rd a Mo re died before his worst fears about the pro g ress of
m o re moderate faith. He was educated at his local atheism and the decline of the miraculous we re re a l i ze d ;
More, Henry 787 |
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but after 1700 it was clear that the occult medieva l in the New Testament) as the basis for the Pro t e s t a n t
world of witches and spirits was crumbling as the foun- understanding of demonology and how to combat it.
dation for Christian faith that Mo re, Glanvill, and oth- During the Middle Ages and subsequently during
ers of their generation believed it to be. the period of the Reformation, the fig u re of Mo s e s
became canonized into a dual character. He was both
MALCOLM J. GASKILL
the quintessential lawgive r, having re c e i ved thro u g h
See also:ASTROLOGY;BODIN,JEAN;DECLINEOFTHEWITCH direct divine revelation the primal judicial code and the
HUNTS;DESCARTES,RENÉ;GLANVILL,JOSEPH;KABBALAH; model for a divinely chosen secular leader. In the for-
MIRACLES;OCCULT;SKEPTICISM;SUPERSTITION;UNIVERSITIES;
mer role, he became the authoritative fig u re upon
WEYER,JOHANN.
whom magistrates, judges, and exo rcists based their
References and further reading:
commissions and upon whose code of justice they
Hall, A. Rupert. 1990. Henry More: Magic, Religion, and
relied in dealing with criminals and those accused of
Experiment. Oxford: Blackwell.
witchcraft or dealings with demons. This was even the
Hutton, Sarah, ed. 1987. Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary
Studies.Boston: Kluwer. case with Protestants, who tended to rely more on the
Sharpe, James. 1996. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Gospels and Paul’s concept of public office as a “divine
England 1550–1750.London: Hamish Hamilton. ministry.” The Protestant pastors of Strasburg, in their
April 1538 treatise on witchcraft, enjoined godly rulers
Moses to “administer not their own judgment, but that of the
Among the personages found in the Hebrew Bible, Lord and they ought therefore to follow His Law” (i.e.,
none was more venerated than Moses, and none, save the Mosaic code). Their combating of witchcraft there-
perhaps Elijah, had a greater reputation for performing f o re became a license to deal with social deviance, as
miraculous deeds and communing directly with God. they defined it, while using a theocratic underpinning
Because his actions were considered part of the Israelite as justification for their actions and beliefs.
understanding of divinely shared power, Moses was not As noted by the early-seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry En g l i s h
considered a magician or sorcerer or a practitioner of clergyman William Pe m b e rton, Moses had two roles: he
divinatory magic. Thus, when his staff was transformed was a prophet of God and the ruler of Go d’s people. In
into a snake (Ex. 4:2–3) or he struck the Nile with his this latter capacity, he transmitted his authority dow n
staff and it turned into blood (Ex. 7:15–18) or he t h rough the ages to kings and other rulers by means of
extended his rod to open the Red Sea (Ex. 14:13–31) or Go d’s instructions to Mo s e s’s successor Joshua (Jo s h .
struck a rock to produce a stream of water (Num. 1:1–9). Because these early leaders had been given the
20:10–13), these events were seen as manifestations of book of divine laws on Mo s e s’s death, it was attendant
God’s power over creation, not a conjuration of forces upon them to obey and enforce them vigoro u s l y. T h a t
by Moses. The storyteller, however, demonstrated a model of leadership was in turn applied to later periods.
clear understanding of Egyptian magical practices in Thus witchcraft, which violated both the first and third
the narrative of the plagues (Ex. 7–11), indicating that, commandments (Ex. 20:3, 7), also threatened the entire
although magic was not part of the Israelite theological system of law, and it became the paramount duty of sec-
premise, the Egyptian audience for the match between ular leaders to eliminate it. In addition, and again based
Moses and the sorcerers would be impressed by the on the biblical narrative, Mo s e s’s achievements in com-
abilities of God’s representative (compare Acts 7:22 for bating magicians (Ex. 7:11—9:11) and usurpers of his
later tradition on this). p ower (Num. 16:27–33) became a portion of the argu-
By tradition, Moses was the recipient of the divine ment, such as that made by Jean Talpin in 1567, that
judicial code contained in the Books of the Pentateuch kings we re to be venerated because of their ability to
that functioned initially for the Israelites and the later p e rform miraculous deeds, such as applying a healing
Jewish community as the basis for judicial pro c e d u re touch to their subjects (compare Mo s e s’s raising a
and their official system of justice. During the Christian b ro n ze serpent to cure his people of snakebite in Nu m .
era, the strength of this legal and authoritative tradition 21:8–9). As a result, the person and the tradition that
transformed these statutes into a divinely inspired set of s u r round Moses became singularly useful to re l i g i o u s
injunctions upon which life was to be based and from and civil authority.
which society’s leaders could draw to solidify their own VICTOR H. MATTHEWS
authority and pre s e rve their people from error (De u t .
31:24–29). As a result, the laws against witchcraft (Ex.
See also:BIBLE;EXODUS22:18 (22:17); JEWS,WITCHCRAFT,AND
MAGIC;LAWSONWITCHCRAFT(ANCIENT); MIRACLES.
22:18 [22:17]; Lev. 19:26; Deut. 18:10–14) were given
References and further reading:
the force of divine command and irrevocability because
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
they we re a part of the Mosaic code. In addition, the
in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon Press.
injunctions on these matters were used (along with the Cryer, Frederick H. 2001. “Magic in Ancient Syria—Palestine—
story of the suffering of Job and the principle of grace and in the Old Testament.” Pp. 97–152 in Biblical and Pagan
788 Moses |
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S o c i e t i e s .Vol. 1 of The Athlone Hi s t o ry of Wi t c h c raft and Ma g i c w i t c h’s actions and character as those of a bad mother
in Eu rope. Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and St u a rt Clark. London who had turned to Satan in her desire for re venge on
and Philadelphia: Athlone and Un i versity of Pe n n s y l vania Pre s s . other people’s children.
Noegel, Scott E. 1996. “Moses and Magic: Notes on the Book of
Lyndal Roper and Deborah Willis have noted that
Exodus.” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of
p s ychoanalytical theory, especially that of Me l a n i e
Columbia University 24: 45–60.
Klein, could be helpful in exploring links betwe e n
Pemberton, William. 1619. “The charge of God and the King: io
motherhood and witchcraft that went deeper than
iudges and magistrates, for execution of iustice”: a sermon preached
openly acknowledged notions of good and bad mother-
before Sr Henry Hobart Knight and Baronet, Lord Chiefe Iustice
of the Common Pleas: and Sr Robert Haughton Knight, one of the ing. Klein’s work centered on the experiences of early
iudges of the Kings Bench, at the Assises at Hartford.London. i n f a n c y, particularly the development of such negative
feelings as envy, aggression, fear, and hate that accom-
Motherhood pany the love and attachment an infant feels toward its
In local accusations, learned demonological treatises, m o t h e r. These negative emotions we re suppressed as
and plays, the witch was often an inversion of what c h i l d ren learned it was unacceptable to express them
early modern people expected good mothers to be. openly but remained part of the subconscious and
Much like today, good mothers nurtured their children might emerge later in fantasies about or aggre s s i o n
both physically and spiritually, cooked nutritious food toward mothers or other people one expected to be nur-
for their families, and cared for them when they were turing, such as care g i vers. Both Roper and Wi l l i s
sick. Unlike today, society also expected them to assist warned that psychological theory developed thro u g h
other women during childbirth. Conversely, witches analyzing modern people must be used carefully when
poisoned their own or other people’s children, nursed looking at individuals who lived hundreds of years ago,
and nurtured demonic imps or animal familiars rather but because envy and anxiety played such a central role
than children, dried up other women’s milk or men- in witchcraft trials, it is useful to consider why they are
strual flows so that they could not mother, killed farm such powe rful emotions. Explaining people’s fantasies
animals, and made food spoil. Issues of maternity and lies at the heart of both modern psychoanalysis and
images of bad mothers emerge very often in witchcraft modern studies of the witch hunts, so an etiology for
trials and the literature of witchcraft, including confes- the witch hunts that incorporates the psychic and
sions by women admitting they were witches. This emotional state of those involved seems more accurate
identification of witches with bad mothers was rooted than one that does not.
in the circumstances of witchcraft charges, and may As an aid to understanding certain aspects of witch-
also be linked to deep-seated psychological ambivalence craft, recent medical re s e a rch about the experience of
in people’s emotions about mothers, as well as ambiva- motherhood may be even more useful than theories
lence about being a mother felt by mothers themselves. about infantile development. Physicians and psycholo-
Charges of witchcraft sometimes grew out of often gists have studied what is now labeled postpart u m
long-standing quarrels among women, which generally depression or postpartum psychosis, in which hormon-
emerged during activities in which women normally al and other changes in the mother’s body after birt h
engaged. Women spent much of their time caring for can lead to serious clinical depression or even delusions
children and animals and preparing food, often in the about oneself and one’s children. In a few ghastly recent
company of other women, and childbirth was experi- examples, this psychosis has led mothers to kill or
enced within a group of female relatives and friends. All attempt to kill their own children, explaining this
these activities held possibilities for misfortune or behavior as a desire to keep them from harm or prevent
tragedy: flocks of geese strayed into gardens and ruined them from doing evil. This same language occasionally
them, cows lost their milk and the calves died, children emerged in the confessions of early modern women
became ill or injured, or mothers and children died in accused of witchcraft, who reported that the Devil had
childbirth. Such incidents could easily be the origin of a tempted them to kill their own children, though they
witchcraft accusation, and the woman most likely to be generally denied giving in to this temptation.
accused was often one whom the others felt was some- Women who we re found guilty of killing their ow n
how deficient in her own mothering: she was past child- c h i l d ren we re also sometimes accused of witchcraft,
bearing age, her own children had been sickly and died, with authorities arguing that only the Devil could lead
or her own animals fell ill. Thus the accused had reason a mother to kill her own child. In Belgium, such
to project their own greatest shortcomings as mothers women we re executed in even more gruesome ways
onto another woman who had bewitched them and than “n o r m a l” witches, such as being impaled on a
their families. The male authorities who heard witch- stake before being burned or having the offending hand
craft cases largely shared women’s ideas about what cut off before being drowned. It is impossible to tell, of
made a good mother. Although they added ideas drawn course, whether such women suffered from what would
f rom demonological theory, they still described the currently be labeled “postpartum depression,” but that
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is a distinct possibility; historians have frequently noted the Pyrenees (both the Spanish and French sides); the
that behavior ascribed to divine or demonic forces in Valtelline; or the northern mountain valleys of Italian
the early modern period is explained in medical or psy- bishoprics like Milan, Brescia, or Bergamo. Historians
chological terms today. have long debated the association between geography
Given the sleep deprivation and other problems asso- and witch hunts. Today, the “mountain theory” con-
ciated with new motherhood, many mothers who are centrates on two issues: the association between the
not clinically depressed often feel ambivalence tow a rd Alpine region and the origin of the craze and an
their infants, emotions that they feel guilty about and indirect corollary to the mountain theory, a climatic
r a rely express openly. Though the cultural context of interpretation of witch hunting in general.
the modern world and the world of the witch hunts is
ve ry different in many aspects, in both eras mothers Origins
we re expected to be loving and nurturing, and those Historical research currently agrees that the geographi-
who were not were regarded as unnatural. Thus it is not cal birthplace of witch hunting was largely confined to
surprising that women whose children had become sick western Alpine areas, including Dauphiné, the Pays de
or had died should have projected their negative feel- Vaud, Savoy, the Val d’Aosta, Fribourg, Lucerne, and
ings onto someone other than themselves, accusing a Bern. Between 1375 and 1440, primarily in three dio-
neighbor, acquaintance, or servant of witchcraft. ceses of western Switzerland (Geneva, Lausanne, and
Sion) Europe’s first fully developed cases of diabolized
MERRY WIESNER-HANKS
witch hunting occurred. Trevor-Roper provided an
See also:ACCUSATIONS;CHILDREN;CONFESSIONS;FAMILY; early version of the acculturation thesis to explain this
FEMALEWITCHES;FEMINISM;GENDER;INFANTICIDE;MIDWIVES; location. Witch hunting happened, he said, because
PSYCHOANALYSIS.
Dominican inquisitors had reached into backward and
References and further reading:
incompletely Christianized mountain communities,
Jackson, Louise. 1995. “Witches, Wives, and Mothers: Witchcraft
which were also haunts of heretics. His interpretation
Persecution and Women’s Confessions in Seventeenth-Century
was soon opposed by Jeffrey Russell, who maintained
England.” Women’s History Review 4: 63–83.
that “witchcraft descended from heresy more than from
Leboutte, René. 1991. “Offense Against Family Order: Infanticide
in Belgium from the Fifteenth through the Early Twentieth sorcery and first appeared in the lowland cities where
Centuries.” Journal of the History of Sexuality2: 159–185. heresy was strong, only later spreading into the moun-
Roper, Lyndal. 1994. “Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern tains where it gained strength from the lingering
Germany.” Pp. 199–225 in Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, practice of ancient sorcery” (Russell 1980, 72).
Religion, and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe. By Lyndal Su b s e q u e n t l y, Arno Borst claimed that both inter-
Roper. London: Routledge. pretations needed reappraisal. Borst’s argument hinged
———. 2004. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque
on two pre l i m i n a ry questions. First, was the
Germany.New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.
e a r l y - fif t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Alpine territory really a back-
Willis, Deborah. 1995. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and
w a rd place? By 1400, Borst argued, the Alpine re g i o n
Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY, and
had become a very active crossroads between Italy and
London: Cornell University Press.
northern Europe and had begun to gear its economy to
Mountains and the Origins distant European markets. Second, if from an econom-
of Witchcraft ic and institutional point of view the Swiss federation
Was witchcraft a phenomenon concentrated in the resembled the modernity of northern Italian or upper
mountainous areas of Old-Regime Europe? Over half a Rhineland areas, why did the first significant trials take
c e n t u ry ago, Fernand Br a u d e l’s influential T h e place in the Simme valley, high in the Bernese Alps?
Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age Borst claimed that this ve ry dynamic social change
of Philip II (1949) suggested that mountains constitut- e n g e n d e red a social and a spiritual crisis, pro d u c i n g
ed a world apart from civilization, the privileged shelter witch hunts as one of its side effects. Using the account
of witchcraft. Braudel’s geographical determinism was of the trial of a well-off peasant named Stadelin by a
later taken up by Hugh Trevor-Roper, who maintained Bernese patrician Peter von Gre ye rz (a judge in the
that “mountains are the home not only of sorcery and Simme Valley between 1392 and 1407) as retold by
witchcraft, but also of primitive religious forms and Johann Nider in his Fo rmicarius (The Anthill,
resistance to new orthodoxies” (Trevor-Roper 1967, 1437–1438), Borst described the introduction of
106); at high altitudes, thin air breeds hallucinations, witchcraft in the va l l e y. Some episodes re vealed that
and such natural phenomena as storms, cracking glaci- St a d e l i n’s rise in social status contrasted with seve r a l
ers, or avalanches foster beliefs in the power of the m i s f o rtunes (dead babies; damages to animals and
Devil. No wonder that western Europe’s great witch crops) of his fellow villagers; his jealous neighbors even-
hunts began in the Swiss and French Alps and contin- tually blamed him for causing them through the inter-
ued in other mountainous zones: the Jura; the Vosges; vention of the Devil. In the end, the original forms of
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Alpine witchcraft invo l ved the clash between an open n ew demands for persecution with eve ry change due
and dynamic society and a closed one. to the Little Ice Age.... Contemporary court re c o rd s
Borst proposed three conclusions: (1) we cannot dis- and broadsheets tell us about the importance of mete-
sociate demonological theories built by intellectuals o rological events as triggering factors in the back-
from the superstitions of Alpine villagers; (2) mountain g round of these persecutions.... During the third
c u l t u re cannot be blamed for the origins of the craze ; decade of the 17th century, when the T h i rty Ye a r s
but (3) the phenomenon of early witch hunting was War occupied the governing elites, organized witch
n e ve rtheless specifically Alpine. During the 1430s, as hunts in the ecclesiastical territories of the Em p i re
papal inquisitors and secular judges carried out the ear- reached their peak. The climax of witch hunting again
liest methodical witch hunts in the Swiss and Fre n c h coincided with some extraordinarily dramatic meteo-
Alps, several texts (Nider’s tract, the anonymous Errores rological events. (Behringer 1999, 370)
Ga z a r i o ru m , the treatise of Claude Tholosan, and
Martin Le Franc’sDefender of Ladies) provided “impor- Most re c e n t l y, the geographic/mountain theory has
tant testimony to the revolution in thought about sor- been widened into a hypothesis contrasting the big cli-
c e ry and witchcraft” (Kors and Peters 2001, 159) and matic difference between areas of moderate witch hunt-
m a rked the defin i t i ve formation of the idea of the ing (It a l y, Spain, So u t h western France) with the areas of
witches’ Sabbat (Ostorero, Bagliani, and Tremp 1999). s e ve re hunts, finding the cold as a factor more vague but
richer than mountain theory (Bechtel 1997, 770).
Climate If the age of witch hunting overlapped with the Little
When Peter von Greyerz asked Stadelin “how he was Ice Age, the nexus between the two phenomena seemed
able to cause hailstorm and tempest, the criminal to be limited to a very loose chronological coincidence
answered that he stood in a field saying certain words in most European states. Places like England, Scotland,
and begged the most powerful of all demons to send Spain, or sub-Alpine Italy were certainly agrarian soci-
him a lesser demon to strike whatever Stadelin wished” eties that also endured colder winters, subsistence
(Kors and Peters 2001, 159). Here historians could crises, and occasional meteorological disasters, but vil-
spotlight some ways in which Christian doctrine was l a g e r s’ imaginations rarely connected unusually seve re
already transforming popular beliefs. But couldn’t one storms with witchcraft. In England, “the storm at sea
of these Alpine maleficia—the weather-making witch- which affected a single ship might sometimes be attrib-
es—be associated with some more basic and deep-seat- uted to witchcraft, but on land the action of a tempest
ed cause, specifically with the cooling of the global cli- was usually too indiscriminate for such an interpre t a-
mate known as the Little Ice Age, which afflicted t i o n” (Thomas 1973, 668). Si m i l a r l y, in Scotland,
Europe intermittently between 1430 and 1770? In fact, witchcraft was blamed “occasionally for storm raising; it
in some of the harsher phases of climate deterioration, was rarely held to be responsible for large-scale disasters
agricultural failures led to disastrous food shortages, in which the suffering might be random” (Larner 2000,
subsistence crises, and hunger that overlapped with 82). In sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Sp a i n ,
some of the fiercest episodes of witch hunting. Aragonese considered mountains to be the shelter of
Re c e n t l y, Wolfgang Behringer has used the extre m e bandits and witches, but there is no trace of
sensitivity of sixteenth-century Germans to a series of weather-making witches (Tausiet 2000); if “r i t u a l . . .
agricultural disasters provoked by meteoro l o g i c a l for calling up storms were included in the repertoire of
changes to explain this chronological coincidence. If w i t c h e s” during the Basque craze of 1609–1614
the first major witch hunt (in Wiesensteig in 1563) ( Henningsen 1980, 88), it remained utterly marginal.
“s e rved as an example for radical eradication of ‘t h e In It a l y, although accusations of causing hailstorms
evil,’ between 1562 and 1565 an interesting debate were rife in the northernmost Alpine valleys, no witch-
emerged about the possibility of weather-making. In a es were ever reported to have caused damaging meteo-
small Imperial city, Esslingen, an Evangelical preacher, rological phenomena in the Sienese country s i d e ,
Thomas Naogeorgus, supported popular demands for although agriculture there also suffered from many cold
witch hunts and urged the magistrates to extend its per- winters and wet summers. Historians have yet to
s e c u t i o n . . . as a kind of regulation of the we a t h e r” explain this extremely uneven geographical distribution
( Behringer 1999, 367). A scholarly debate ensued of witches’ interference with the weather—or with such
about whether witches could raise such disastrous hail- other human activities as sexual intercourse.
storms. Behringer found the connections between the
OSCAR DI SIMPLICIO
Little Ice Age and witch hunting primarily within the
Holy Roman Empire, but occasionally elsewhere:
See also:ACCULTURATIONTHESIS;AGRARIANCRISIS;DOMINICAN
ORDER;HERESY;LITTLEICEAGE;NIDER,JOHANNES;ORIGINSOF
W h e re demographic pre s s u re and economic depre s- THEWITCHHUNTS;RURALWITCHCRAFT;TREVOR-ROPER,HUGH;
sion lingered on, unstable governments we re prone to WEATHERMAGIC.
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References and further reading: The treatise De incantationibus seu ensalmis w a s
Bechtel, Guy. 1997. La sorcière et l’Occident: La destruction de la divided into three sections. The first part attempted to
sorcellerie en Europe, des origines aux grands bûchers.Paris: Plon. refute the positions of João Bravo Chamisso, a lecturer
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1999. “Climatic Change and
at Coimbra University, who had asserted in 1606 that
Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on
some words had intrinsic healing powers and that such
Mentalities.” Pp. 335–351 inClimatic Variability in Sixteenth
p ower did not come from an implicit pact with the
Century Europe and Its Social Dimension.Edited by Christian
Devil. Vale de Moura presented a doctrine, which he
Pfister, Rudolf Brazdil, and Rüdiger Glaser.
b e l i e ved defensible, re g a rding the legitimacy and effi-
Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Borst, Arno. 1992. “The Origins of the Witch-Craze in the Alps.” ciency of healing with words. He stated that the saints
Pp. 43–67 in Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists. c reated blessings and holy words, to which the Lord
By Arno Borst. Translated by Eric Hansen. Chicago: University g a ve His merits, and added that in the He b rew Bi b l e
of Chicago Press. Solomon expelled demons from human bodies by pro-
Henningsen, Gustav. 1980. The Witches’ Advocate: Basque nouncing words. Vale de Moura suggested, follow i n g
Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition.Reno: University of Cajetan and St. Thomas Aquinas, that many of these
Nevada Press.
w o rds had later been misused in vain cere m o n i e s ;
Kieckhefer, Richard. 1976.European Witch Trials: Their
although unapproved, they could still be tolerated
Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500.
because they resulted from Christian devotion. But, the
Berkeley: University of California Press.
author claimed, whenever it was not proved that natur-
Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters, eds. 2001. Witchcraft in Europe,
al effects or divine virtues underlay a healing ceremony,
400–1700. A Documentary History.2nd ed. Revised by Edward
Peters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. one might conclude that the healing originated in dia-
Larner, Christina. 2000. Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in bolical powers.
Scotland.2nd ed. Edinburgh: John Donald. In the second part of De incantationibus, the author
Ostorero, Martine, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and Kathrin Utz refutedthe incorrect opinions presented in the first part
Tremp, eds. 1999. L’imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des and put forw a rd his own doctrine. He condemned all
textes les plus anciens (ca. 1430–ca. 1440).Lausanne: Université healing of diabolical origin, stating that Devil’s “bene-
de Lausanne.
fit s” we re always injurious. He distinguished betwe e n
Russell, Jeffrey B. 1980. A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics,
s o rc e rers and s a l u d a d o re s (healers): the former act in
and Pagans. London:Thames and Hudson.
ceremonies using words, holy objects, or herbs, and the
Tausiet, María. 2000. Ponzoña en los ojos: Brujería y superstión en
latter act through personal virtue. He stressed that
Aragón en el siglo XVI.Saragossa: Institucíon “Fernando el
w o rds had no intrinsic power to produce healing
Católico.”
Thomas, Keith. 1973. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in effects. Hence if they did produce such effects, they
Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England. came from external virtues. He insisted that one must
Harmondsworth: Penguin. be careful about spells that supposedly resulted fro m
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. 1967. “The European Witch-Craze of the divine revelation, as they might be either real or imag-
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Pp. 90–192 in Religion, ined and might sometimes come from God or good
the Reformation and Social Change.By Hugh Trevor-Roper. angels and other times from the Devil, especially when
London: Macmillan.
they we re “f a n t a s t i c a l” or “imaginary.” Some effects
were natural and were caused by excessive imagination.
Moura, Manuel Vale de (d. 1650) Vale de Moura believed those healed through their own
Vale de Moura wrote nine books, including De incan- supplications should not be condemned, as long as they
tationibus seu ensalmis (On Incantations or Ensalmi made no pleas forsaking divine providence. Therefore,
[evil incantations]), published at Evora in 1620 (the he says, it was permissible to cast spells, using holy
only edition known). It was a long treatise about verbal w o rds invoking God, in order to plead for health or
magical healing, which briefly mentioned maleficium tame a tempest, and always having steadfast faith that
(harmful magic) and diabolical witchcraft. The author such pleas could be granted by God. Howe ve r, the
was obviously familiar with demonology; he described strongest argument Vale de Moura presented in his sec-
the diabolic pact, asserting that the Devil marks his fol- ond part was that allhealing through prayer was in gen-
lowers and kills little children through witches. It was eral suspicious. Although holy words or church prayers
an erudite work filled with citations of Italian and we re pronounced in such acts, they we re nonetheless
Spanish theologians and canonists, Greek and Latin evil, for the Devil normally acted under the cover of
classics, the Church Fathers, and Holy Scripture. sanctity.
Little is known about his biography. Vale de Moura was The third part of Moura’s book dealt more specifical-
born in Arraiolos, studied theology at the Jesuit Un i ve r s i t y ly with issues of jurisdiction over those who healed
of Evora, and later graduated with a degree in canon law t h rough spells. Vale de Moura asserted that only the
f rom the Un i versity of Coimbra. In 1603, he entered the Inquisition should be responsible for surveying such
Inquisition as deputy (d e p u t a d o) of the Evora tribunal. practices, because until proven otherwise, all healers
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were suspected of heresy and should therefore be prose- subjects. The evolution of his position on cultural history
cuted by the one court with jurisdiction over here s y. can perhaps best be seen in what is probably the best-
Mo u r a’s aim throughout was to limit the sacred fie l d k n own and most widely translated among his many
and to place it solely in the hands of its official re p re- books, L’ i n ve n t i o n de l’ h o m m e m o d e rn e , b e t ween its fir s t
s e n t a t i ves. Thus he stressed the efficiency of the (1988) and second (1994) editions, where a “society of
Church’s invocative prayer and exorcism when done by c o m p ro m i s e s” deployed various strategies—adaptations,
ecclesiastics and insisted that holy words should be pro- bricolage, resistances—to accommodate civilizing and
nounced only in holy places. Thus there was no need to confessional norms to which they supposedly conformed.
turn to private prayers by laypeople. Some of his works (e.g., Muchembled 1995) ranged
The impact of Vale de Mo u r a’s work was not gre a t . widely across cultural history, blending chapters on
In Po rtugal, few quoted it, although some Sp a n i s h No r b e rt El i a s’s court civilization, the role of women (a
inquisitors followed his advice. Vale de Mo u r a’s posi- latent concern of most major witchcraft specialists), urban
tions were not immediately adopted by the Inquisition. f e s t i vals and violence, French raconteurs as cultural medi-
Howe ve r, there would come a time, in the first thre e ators, village sociability, legal forms of social contro l —
decades of the eighteenth century, when healers would and, of course, witchcraft.
suffer much from Portugal’s Holy Office. As a witchcraft scholar, Muchembled has exploited
some significant archival discoveries. Three in particu-
JOSÉ PEDRO PAIVA
lar stand out. First, he pioneered a “g ro u n d - u p” per-
See also:CUNNINGFOLK;DELRIO,MARTÍN;DEMONOLOGY;DEVIL; s p e c t i ve on witch hunting by uncovering some
DIABOLISM;INQUISITION,PORTUGUESE;PORTUGAL; SPELLS; e a r l y - s e ve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry petitions from the “better”
WORDS,POWEROF.
(and richer) inhabitants of some Netherlands villages,
References and further reading:
encouraging their sluggish rulers to increase pro s e c u-
Caro Baroja, Julio. 1990. “Witchcraft and Catholic Theology.” Pp.
tions of local witches by offering to pay the costs of
19–43in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and
such trials (Muchembled 1979, 192–196). Second, he
Peripheries.Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen.
e x p l o red the gruesomely macabre history of the child
Oxford: Clarendon.
Fajardo Spinola, Francisco. 1992. Hechiceria y brujeria en Canarias witches of Bouchain in Hainaut, the earliest (but unfor-
en la Edad Moderna.Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular de Gran tunately not the worst) known wave of trials and execu-
Canaria. tions of witches well under the legal minimum age any-
Machado, Diogo Barbosa. 1965. Bibliotheca Lusitana.Coimbra: w h e re in Eu rope (Muchembled 1990). T h i rd, he
Atlântida Editora. p resented a richly documented micro h i s t o ry of a re l a-
Maggi, Armando. 2002. Satan’s Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance t i vely late witch-hunting episode in a tiny village of
Demonology.Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Francophone Flanders (Muchembled 1981); among
Paiva, José Pedro. 1997. Bruxaria e superstição num país sem “caça
other merits, this work first called attention to the role
às bruxas.”Lisbon: Editorial Notícias.
of feminine gossip in establishing the publica fama that
often underlay witchcraft accusations.
Muchembled, Robert (1944–) At a synthetic level, one cannot ignore Mu c h e m b l e d’s
A leading French historian of European witchcraft, v i g o rous polemic with his prominent Italian colleague
Robert Muchembled has made numerous significant Carlo Ginzburg over the cultural origins and signific a n c e
contributions to this topic at both the archival and syn- of the Sabbat, which produced some light as well as
thetic levels. much heat (Muchembled 1990). Su b s e q u e n t l y,
A lifelong social historian working loosely within Mu c h e m b l e d’s most important contribution has been his
the French An n a l e s tradition, Mu c h e m b l e d’s earliest e f f o rt to expand and reshape his sociopolitical analysis of
a rc h i val-based work on witch hunting deployed docu- witchcraft from his original southern Low Countries
mentation from southern parts of the former seve n t e e n regional perspective to a more truly panoramic Eu ro p e a n
p rovinces of the Netherlands, particularly the region of l e vel (Muchembled 1993). He has also shifted his cultur-
Cambrésis (Muchembled 1979, 159–261), in service of al history perspective from the witch and her accusers to
the “acculturation thesis.” He incorporated this witchcraft her supposed accomplice, the Devil (Mu c h e m b l e d
re s e a rch into a chapter (“The Re p ression of Wi t c h c r a f t 2000). Both endeavors have subsequently taken the form
and the Acculturation of the Rural Wo r l d”) of his fir s t of lavishly illustrated coffee-table books (Mu c h e m b l e d
book to be translated into English: a general survey titled 1994, 2002), each the best of its particular genre; the
Popular Cu l t u re and Elite Cu l t u re in France, 1400–1700. latter is a by - p roduct of a television program on the
He has often employed witchcraft as an unusually vivid Fr a n c o - German channel Art e , born from a critique
illustration of this process (e.g., Muchembled 1984). that Mu c h e m b l e d’s De v i l discussed innumerable
O ver time, howe ve r, Muchembled has considerably soft- t we n t i e t h - c e n t u ry films but lacked any illustrations.
ened the originally sharp contours of his dichotomy
b e t ween a strongly dominant elite and their often-passive WILLIAM MONTER
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See also:ACCULTURATIONTHESIS;CHILDREN;GINZBURG,CARLO; months. In the county of Werne, in the southern part
HISTORIOGRAPHY. of the bishopric, the “witch craze” resulted in over sixty
References and further reading: witchcraft trials, more than thirty of them in 1629. In
Dupont-Bouchat, Marie-Sylvie, Willem Frijhoff, and Robert
1629–1631, twe n t y - five accused witches died at the
Muchembled, eds. 1978. Prophètes et sorciers dansles Pays-bas,
executioner’s hands in the city of Coesfeld. Meanwhile,
XVIe–XVIIIe siècle.Paris: Hachette.
in the city of Münster, witchcraft trials are re c o rd e d
———. 1978. Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France
f rom 1552 until 1644, with the worst persecutions
moderne (XVe–XVIIIe siècles): Essai.Paris: Flammarion. Trans. as
occurring between 1627 and 1635.
Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750.
Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Baton Rouge and London: The intensity of witchcraft prosecution differed by
Louisiana State University Press, 1985. l o c a l i t y. The county courts, controlled by the gove r n-
Muchembled, Robert. 1979. La sorcière au village (XVe–XVIIIe ment in Münster, pursued a re l a t i vely cautious policy
siècle).2nd ed., 1991. Paris: Gallimard. with respect to witchcraft accusations that resulted in
———. 1981. Les derniers bûchers: Un village de Flandre et ses only a few trials, all carried out through a processus ordi-
sorcières sous Louis XIV.Paris: Ramsay. narius (ordinary procedure). Only 27 of the 170 known
———. 1984. “Lay Judges and the Acculturation of the Masses
e xecutions we re carried out by county courts; there
(France and the Southern Low Countries, 16th–18th
we re no mass prosecutions. Howe ve r, some individual
Centuries.” Pp. 55–65 in Religion and Society inEarly Modern
seigneurial courts became strongholds of pro s e c u t i o n ,
Europe, 1500–1800.Edited by Kaspar von Greyerz. London:
c a r rying out trials independently of the Münster gov-
Allen and Unwin.
ernment under the pretext of exercising their sovereign
———. 1987. Sorcières, justice et société aux XVIe et XVIIe siècle.
Paris: Imago. rights of criminal jurisdiction. These trials served as
———. 1990. “Satanic Myths and Cultural Reality.” Pp. vehicles of self-assertion for local nobility and we re
139–160 in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and mostly characterized by arbitrary pro c e d u res and
Peripheries.Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen. infringements of legal requirements.
Oxford: Clarendon. One peculiarity of the bishopric of Münster was the
———. 1993. Le Roi et la sorcière: L’Europe des bûchers, swimming test (the cold water ordeal), which was not
XVe–XVIIIe siècle.Paris: Desclée.
only a mass phenomenon there but also was carried out
———, ed. 1994. Magie et sorcellerie en Europe du Moyen Age à
in a unique way. The water ordeal, widespread in six-
nos jours. Paris: Armand Colin.
teenth- and seventeenth-centuryWestphalia, continued
———. 1995. Cultures et société en France, du début du XVIe siècle
the medieval tradition of ordeals. It followed the usual
au milieu du XVIIe siècle.Paris: SEDES.
rules: an accused witch was declared innocent if she
———. 2000. Une histoire du diable, XIIe–XXe siècle.Paris: Seuil.
Trans. as History of the Devil: From the Middle Ages to the sank but guilty if she floated on the water’s surf a c e ,
Present.Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge, UK: Polity, because the “pure water” refused the witch’s body that
2003. had become ethereally light due to her sexual inter-
———. 2002. Diable!Paris. Seuil/Arte Editions. course with the Devil. Local courts usually arranged the
test during an ongoing trial, where the ordeal served as
Münster, Prince-Bishopric of an “indicator for torture.” However, in the bishopric of
The largest ecclesiastical territory of the Old Reich in Münster the test took another form. Here, some noble
n o rt h western Ge r m a n y, the prince-bishopric of c o u rts developed regular water-ordeal centers, where
Münster had re l a t i vely few witchcraft prosecutions in e ve ry subject could voluntarily ask to undergo the
comparison to neighboring territories, such as electoral swimming test, on condition of paying a large amount
Cologne. The bishopric spread across an area of ro u g h- of money to the noble judge. Because more than 200
ly 11,000 square kilometers (4,247.5 miles) and con- “independent” water ordeals can be proven in the bish-
tained about 200,000 inhabitants by 1700. Be t ween the opric between the years 1590 and 1650, we can speak
mid-sixteenth century and the end of the seve n t e e n t h of a mass phenomenon.
c e n t u ry, about 450 such cases can be proven; about 170 This peculiar practice, unique to Eu rope, re s u l t e d
cases ended with the execution of the defendant. On e - f rom the same constellation of legal conflicts that had
t h i rd of those executed we re men, a re l a t i vely high per- stimulated the prosecutorial zeal of some seigneurial
centage. Howe ve r, because of the fragmentary nature of c o u rts in the late sixteenth and the early seve n t e e n t h
the sources, our information is ve ry incomplete. centuries. The local nobility was in fierce conflict with
The first documented witch burning in this territory the government of the prince-bishopric, trying more
o c c u r red in 1544; the last provable execution came in and more vehemently to conserve its traditional juris-
1699, when a woman was sentenced to death for for- dictional rights in reaction to the threat from Münster,
tunetelling and witchcraft. Three local witch hunts can while the central government fought to standard i ze
be discerned from documents surviving in re g i o n a l administration and jurisdiction. Witchcraft trials
a rc h i ves. In 1624, twenty people we re executed for o f f e red the local nobility a welcome method for
witchcraft in the town of Lüdinghausen within a few upholding their right of criminal jurisdiction. Si m i l a r
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motives underlay the creation of water-ordeal centers at i m a g i n a ry. “Exo rcists certainly have power from God to
noble courts. The Münster government firmly opposed c u re those who are truly possessed; but they also have the
the swimming test, publishing several prohibitions of m i s f o rtune to produce many imaginary [victims]; many
this practice. By systematically violating these prohibi- a re the tricks played by the frailty of female fantasy. ”
tions, the nobility (always by referring to their “g o o d Ou t b reaks of possession in Milan and elsew h e re when
old right”) expressed their resolve not to bow to the pol- relics we re shown during Church services we re a localize d
icy of the central government. This conflict between the custom (u s o ) or “o b s e rva n c e” rather than evidence of
nobility and the regional government was literally car- demonic presence. “When the relic is cove red up, all that
ried out on the backs of their subjects. g reat noise ceases and there are no possessed persons
l e f t . .. . The ruined fantasy of one woman pulls a hun-
GUDRUN GERSMANN
d red along behind her” (Muratori 1995,1 0 4 ) .
See also:COLOGNE;ECCLESIASTICALTERRITORIES(HOLYROMAN The same applies to ghosts (f a n t a s m i ) , which we re
EMPIRE); GERMANY,WESTANDNORTHWEST;ORDEAL; frequently sighted during outbreaks of plague and oth-
OSNABRÜCK,BISHOPRICOF;SWIMMINGTEST.
er times of universal fright: Muratori advised his readers
References and further reading:
to investigate skeptically, “to spare themselves an imagi-
Gersmann, Gudrun. 1998. “Wasserproben und Hexenprozesse:
n a ry [s o g n a t o, d reamed] but real evil, accompanied by
Ansichten der Hexenverfolgung im Fürstbistum Münster.”
the loss of tranquillity and health.” Ord i n a ry people
Westfälische Forschungen48: 449–481.
should consult men who were wise and learned, rather
than common rumors and the gossip and imaginations
Muratori, Ludovico of silly women (d o n n i c i u o l e ) ( Muratori 1995, 104). It
Antonio (1672–1750) had also been proved that one person’s imagination
A proponent of reason and enlightenment who ignored could not produce physical effects on another person
or discounted the anxieties of the educated elites and through the evil eye; besides, it made no sense for some-
attributed belief in witchcraft to the ignorance and one to communicate a disease while not suffering from
credulity of uneducated people, Muratori was an Italian it herself. Muratori derived his disbelief in the evil eye
antiquarian, historian, and critic, editor of several mul- f rom his understanding of communicable diseases.
tivolume collections of fundamental medieval historical Mentioning it reminded him of some precautions he
documents. Trained in philosophy and both civil and had omitted from his recent Del gove rno della peste
canon law and ordained a priest, he managed the (Treatise on Managing the Plague): in the presence of
Ambrosian Library in Milan before becoming librarian plague sufferers, one should not only cover one’s nose
of Rinaldo I of Este’s court in Modena. and mouth but never swallow one’s own saliva, instead
As its title indicated, Muratori’sDella forza della fan- spitting constantly, as tobacco chewers do. Accusations
tasia umana ( On the St rength of Human Fa n t a s y, of the evil eye and other witchcrafts have fallen on
1745) examined the phenomena of witchcraft as exam- many “poor old women, even good and innocent
ples of the power of the human imagination (or fanta- Christians” and parish priests often vainly oppose these
sy) to distort and falsify reality. Muratori’s contempt for “vain and injurious rumors” (Muratori 1995, 105).
the intellect of common people was matched by his Mu r a t o r i’s treatise continued a preoccupation with
m i s o g y n y. He accepted the stereotype of the witch as the power of imagination that had motivated discus-
female, and, following a strain of opinion dating from sions of witchcraft since the fifteenth century. In 1749,
the Ca n o n Ep i s c o p i (ca. 906), presumed that the phe- Gi rolamo Ta rt a rotti investigated the question more
nomena of the Sabbat had no basis in external reality; n e rvo u s l y, insisting passionately that the unreality of
these illusions were mostly suffered by women afflicted witchcraft phenomena must not be construed as
with a diseased and “filthy” imagination. disproving the reality of demons or of magic.
The most important chapter of Mu r a t o r i’s treatise was
WALTER STEPHENS
the tenth. T h e re he described treatises against black
magic as “a great forest where there is some truth, much See also:CANONEPISCOPI;ENLIGHTENMENT;EVILEYE;EXORCISM;
simplemindedness, a great number of imposture s” and GHOSTS;IMAGINATION;POSSESSION,DEMONIC;SKEPTICISM;
concluded that “perhaps some people believe too little TARTAROTTI,GIROLAMO.
about this vile art, which horrifies anyone who is a tru e References and further reading:
Bosco, Giovanna. 1994. “Ludovico Antonio Muratori.” Pp.
Christian. But on the other hand, there are great num-
197–198 in Bibliotheca lamiarum: Documenti e immagini della
bers of people who believe too much about it.” Ma n y
stregoneria dal Medioevo all’Età Moderna.Edited by Patrizia
phenomena attributed to demons by “incautious or we a k
Castelli. Ospedaletto (Pisa): Pacini.
f a n t a s y” we re either natural effects or outright fables
Cognasso, Francesco. 1949–1954. “Ludovico Antonio Muratori.”
( Muratori 1995, 100). Muratori did not contest the re a l-
Vol. 8, cols. 1523–1527 in Enciclopedia cattolica.12 vols. Città
ity of demonic possession but called it a “t ruth mixe d del Vaticano: Ente per l’ Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro
with many false suppositions”; most possession was Cattolico.
Muratori, Ludovico Antonio 795 |
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Fido, Franco. 1996. “Muratori and Historiography.” Pp. 344–345 though others had previously put forward similar theo-
in The Cambridge History of Italian Literature.Edited by Peter ries—including Jules Michelet, Charles Leland, and
Brand and Lino Pertile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Karl Pearson, a professor at her own college.
Press.
Mu r r a y’s theory about witchcraft was set out in an
Muratori, Ludovico Antonio. 1995. Della forza della fantasia
a rticle in Fo l k-L o rein 1917 and then in a book, T h e
umana.Edited by Claudio Pogliano. Biblioteca della Scienza
Wi t c h - Cult in We s t e rn Eu ro p e , in 1921. Witches, she
Italiana, VII. Florence: Giunti.
said, eve ry w h e re worshiped the same deity, a phallic
“Horned God” dating from prehistoric times; they fol-
Murray, Margaret Alice l owed exactly the same ceremonies on the same dates;
(1863–1963) and they we re organized in groups of thirt e e n
Perhaps the most controversial twe n t i e t h - c e n t u ry ( “c ove n s”), each group obeying a male leader who
author to investigate witchcraft, Margaret Murray’s impersonated the god and had sexual rights over them.
theories infuriated experts but persuaded much of the She believed that from time to time the leader (or a sub-
general public, inspiring much of the ritual and organi- stitute) would be willingly burned to death to ensure
zation of modern neopagan witchcraft (the Wicca the fertility of crops; here, she was influenced by Si r
movement) from the 1950s onward. James Frazer’s study of the “Killing of the Divine King”
Murray maintained that Eu ropean witchcraft was an in The Golden Bough.
o r g a n i zed form of pagan worship originating in re m o t e In one sense, her view of witchcraft was re s o l u t e l y
p re h i s t o ry and surviving in secret throughout the rational. Reading trial records and other writings from
Christian era. Its purpose was to ensure the fertility of the time of the witch hunts, she seized upon anything
c rops, animals, and people by seasonal rituals and by for which she could devise a natural explanation, how-
periodic sacrifices of animals and human beings. Sh e e ver implausible, and accepted it as proven fact; any-
saw this as a joyful, life-enhancing religion that thing magical or supernatural she simply ignored. So, if
Christians had persecuted; she claimed it had had a text described an encounter with a black, horned, and
n u m e rous secret followers, including several medieva l cloven-hoofed devil, she would take this to mean a man
kings and famous fig u res such as Joan of Arc. Although in black clothing wearing an animal mask and with a
her theory gained ve ry little support from pro f e s s i o n a l peculiarly shaped boot; if a witch confessed to riding to
historians, it reached the general public both thro u g h the Sabbat on a “little horse,” she would accept the
her entry in the authoritative En c yclopedia Br i t a n n i c a horse as real, even if the witch also stated that this
and indirectly through novels and films that exploited it. “ h o r s e” was a wisp of straw. This selectivity seriously
Murray was born in Calcutta, where her father’s misrepresented her sources.
business was based. She passed some of her childhood Her work also suffered from a total disre g a rd for
in England but received little formal education, despite chronology and cultural context, mixing evidence from
her intelligence; her autobiography hinted that her life many countries and many centuries; that was common
was one of middle-class inactivity and bore d o m practice among comparative mythologists of her period
throughout her teens and twenties. In 1894, when she and was not criticized at the time, though it is now seen
was thirty-one, new horizons opened: she attended a as a serious flaw. Furthermore, she was an enthusiastic
course on Egyptology at University College in London system builder, erecting rigid universal rules on ve ry
and made such rapid pro g ress that in 1899 she was weak evidence. One of her most influential notions was
appointed a junior lecturer in hieroglyphics on the rec- the coven of thirteen, yet she herself admitted that only
ommendation of her tutor, Professor Flinders Pe t r i e . one witch actually mentioned this number; she resorted
The study of Egyptian antiquity became her life’s work, to dubious manipulations of fig u res in the attempt to
and she earned considerable respect in this field. prove that it was widespread. Similarly, the four season-
The outbreak of war in 1914 disrupted academic al festivals she claimed we re held annually eve ry w h e re
life. Murray found herself with no students to teach and (Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, and Ha l l oween) we re
no possibility of fieldwork in Egypt. After a short spell only mentioned as a group in one source. Mu r r a y
as a nurse in a French military hospital, which badly ignored the fact that even in England several other dates
affected her health, she turned to new studies, first the are also mentioned (e.g., the Lancashire witches met on
Grail legend and then witchcraft. She had “started with Good Friday).
the usual idea that witches were all old women suffering However, some aspects of her book provided a wel-
f rom illusions about the De v i l” but “suddenly re a l i s e d come change from much conventional wisdom on the
that the so-called Devil was simply a disguised man” subject. Many writers had explained witch hunting as
and immediately concluded that he was a masked priest the result of ignorance, hysteria, and the use of torture
of some ancient, primitive religion (Murray 1963, to obtain confessions; a small minority, such as the
104). Murray always treated this as her personal insight, eccentric Montague Summers, believed that De v i l
achieved purely through reading primary sources; even worship had actually occurred, with supernatural
796 Murray, Margaret Alice |
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results. In comparison, Murray’s interpretation seemed public; her two main books had been reprinted in
both novel and demystifying; it effectively eliminated paperback, popular writers and novelists had taken her
both sides of this argument, opening the way to more ideas on board, the Wiccans we re citing her to prove
rational discussion. This may explain why in 1929 she that their religion was ancient paganism. Silence was no
was invited to contribute the entry on “w i t c h c r a f t” to longer appropriate. Norman Cohn and Keith Thomas
the Encyclopedia Britannica;characteristically, she seized included a few pages savagely criticizing Murray in their
this opportunity to put forward her theory as if it were analyses of the general history of witchcraft beliefs
universally accepted. (Cohn 1975, 107–115; Thomas 1971, 514–517);
Her second book, The God of the Witches ( 1 9 3 3 ) , Ronald Hutton, while exposing the flaws of her theory,
written for a wider audience, was an emotional and described the cultural influences that shaped it (Hutton
openly anti-Christian defense of the “Old Re l i g i o n” (not 1991, 301–306; Hutton 2000, 194–201).
only was this term taken from Leland without acknow l- From the point of view of historical and anthro p o-
edgement, but her position was also disturbingly similar logical studies, Ma r g a ret Mu r r a y’s theory has prove d
to contemporary Nazi propaganda on the topic of valueless; howe ve r, she played a significant (though
witchcraft). She painted a glowing picture of the devo- unintentional) part in the growth of twentieth-century
tion of witches tow a rd their god and his human re p re- paganism in Britain and the United States and in the
s e n t a t i ve, expressed through feasts and dances, though image of the witch in modern popular culture.
reticent about their sexual orgies, which she had
JACQUELINE SIMPSON
described in her earlier, more academic book. Su c h
unpleasant activities as animal sacrifice and the killing of See also:BURR,GEORGELINCOLN;CONTEMPORARYWITCHCRAFT
babies we re mentioned only in passing, but the ritual (POST-1800); HALLOWEEN;HISTORIOGRAPHY;MICHELET,JULES;
killing of the coven leader was strongly emphasize d .
MUSIC;SUMMERS,MONTAGUE;THOMAS,KEITH.
References and further reading:
Her third study of witchcraft, The Divine King in
Cohn, Norman. 1975. Europe’s Inner Demons.Falmer: Sussex
England, a p p e a red in 1954, when she was ninety-two. It
University Press.
p resented the sensational conspiracy theory that many
Hutton, Ronald. 1991. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British
kings, from Anglo-Sa xon times to the early St u a rt s ,
Isles.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
belonged to the “Old Re l i g i o n” and had to be killed ———. 2000. The Triumph of the Moon.Oxford: Oxford
unless some prominent member of their family or court University Press.
a g reed to die as a substitute. In the same ye a r, she also Murray, Margaret. 1921. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A
w rote an approving introduction for Gerald Ga rd n e r’s Study in Anthropology.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wi t c h c raft To d a y.Ga rdner said that in 1939 he had been ———. 1933. The God of the Witches.London: Sampson, Low,
initiated into a coven in Ha m p s h i re whose practices and Marston.
———. 1954. The Divine King in England.London: Sampson,
we re ve ry like those Murray described; she took this as
Low, and Marston.
p roof of her views, seemingly unaware of the alternative
———. 1963. The Genesis of Religion.London: Routledge and
possibility that these “w i t c h e s” (who we re we l l - e d u c a t e d ,
Kegan Paul.
middle-class people) could have simply read her books
———. 1963. My First Hundred Years.London: William Kimber.
and copied what they found there .
Oates, Caroline, and Juliette Wood. 1998. A Coven of Scholars:
Murray’s last two books appeared in the year she died Margaret Murray and Her Working Methods.London: Folklore
at the age of 100: an autobiography, and The Genesis of Society.
Re l i g i o n , a rather sketchy work in which she fir s t Simpson, Jacqueline. 1994. “Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her,
a c k n owledged the importance of goddesses in and Why?” Folklore105: 89–96.
prehistoric cults. Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic.London:
Until the 1960s, most professional historians simply Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
ignored Murray’s work, presumably thinking her theory
so self-evidently absurd as not to need re b u t t a l . Music
However, a few historians (e.g., George Lincoln Burr in Music plays an important role in both ancient and
The American Historical Re v i e w) and folklorists (e.g., modern religions, and it is therefore unsurprising that it
W. B. Halliday in Folk-Lore) had written strongly criti- should have strong associations with magic and witch-
cal reviews of The Witch-Cult.In the late 1920s and the craft. Music has been used throughout the centuries in
1930s, C. L’Estrange Ewen re s e a rched numero u s a number of ways to enhance rituals and to produce
p r i m a ry re c o rds of English witchcraft trials without altered states of consciousness allowing, it is sometimes
finding any traces of an organized cult. But Mu r r a y alleged, contact with supernatural deities. Beyond this,
simply ignored any adverse comments; her books grew classical and modern composers have chosen the theme
steadily more dogmatic and extreme. of “witchcraft” for large numbers of their works, some
A time came, howe ve r, when historians finally re a l- of which will be discussed below. However, finding
i zed how strong her influence was among the general examples before the early modern period can be
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extraordinarily difficult. One has to rely mainly on themes. The twentieth century saw a revival of Purcell’s
court documents and stage works from the sixteenth departure from the earlier haglike stereotypes. In an age
century, with an increasing abundance of material avail- of Wiccan themes, works such as John Corigliano’s
able up to the present time. Song to the Witch of the Cloistersand Max von Schilling’s
Ma r g a ret Murray was largely responsible for intro- poignant He xe n l i e d p o rt r a yed witches in a far more
ducing witches’ alleged musical activities to the public, favorable light.
which included them “singing most filthy songes” and As one would expect, orc h e s t r a l / i n s t ru m e n t a l
generally performing “a kind of villanous musicke” music has obvious problems attached to it, since the
( Michaëlis 1613, 336). Her descriptions of the music, absence of text forces one to rely on the composers’
mainly tortured out of Scottish and European victims, own program notes (when they exist). A few mainly
conformed to traditional folk gatherings gone awry, anonymous witches’ dances have surv i ved from the
with dissonance and irregular rhythms suggesting the s e venteenth century, attached to productions of
laws of misrule. Sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry Ma c b e t h . In the eighteenth century, Joseph Ha yd n’s
drama encouraged this tradition, with suitably exagger- so-called He xe n - m e n u e t ( f rom his string quartet, the
ated stage directions in such works as Ben Jonson’sThe Fi f t h s ) had no real bearing on witchcraft whatsoeve r.
Masque of Qu e e n s and, most famous of all, He n ry Howe ve r, in the nineteenth century, the expansion of
Pu rc e l l’s opera Dido and Ae n e a s . The infernal music the orchestra combined with interest in Go t h i c
theme continued in eighteenth- and nineteenth-centu- themes to create a dramatic increase in the number of
ry literature with such works as Robert Burns’s Tam o’ w o rks re p roducing witchcraft themes. He c t o r
Sh a n t e r and Johann Go e t h e’s Fa u s t , both of which Be r l i o z’s Songe d’une nuit du Sa b b a t f rom his
incorporated music and have received numerous musi- Symphonie Fa n t a s t i q u e i n t roduced violent syncopa-
cal settings. Twe n t i e t h - c e n t u ry written accounts of tion, col legno(wood of the bow) playing, and general
music appertaining to witchcraft have often re p e a t e d musical mayhem. This work was matched by
Mu r r a y’s interpretations, adding personal biases in Mu s s o r g s k y’s famous Night on Bald Mo u n t a i n ,
Montague Su m m e r s’s and Dennis W h e a t l e y’s descrip- famously re c ycled in Walt Di s n e y’s Fa n t a s i a , and his
tions of demonic music. Si g n i fic a n t l y, it was Ge r a l d “ Baba Ya g a” in Pi c t u res from an Ex h i b i t i o n . Less we l l
Ga rdner who introduced magical elements into the k n own we re two contrasting works by Antonin
w i t c h’s music (Scire 1999). This trend has been re i n- D vorak: The Noonday Wi t c h and a piano piece for
f o rced by the otherworldly music introduced by four hands called The Wi t c h e s’ Sa b b a t h .
authors such as Kenneth Graham in the episode with In the twentieth century, the Russian composer
Pan in The Wind in the Wi l l ow s or Karen Ralls- Anatol Lyadov wrote a jagged, infernal Baba Yaga, and
MacLeod in Music and the Celtic Otherworld. Alexander Scriabin conceived a diabolical counterpart
to his Messe blanche with the discordant Messe noire in
“Rough Music” in Classical and 1913. Other twe n t i e t h - c e n t u ry works maintained the
Romantic Europe harsh sounds, including Franz Wa x m a n’s Goy a n a a n d
Considerably more material can be found in the classi- Ian Ba l l a m y’s chamber work Walpurgis Ni g h t . Sa m u e l
cal music repertoire, where the witchcraft theme has Barber treated the theme more broadly to match the
always been and still is popular. Even a superficial sur- sorceress’ range of emotions in Medea’s Meditation and
vey uncovers hundreds of works, including many com- Dance of Ve n g e a n c e . The influence of Igor St r a v i n s k y’s
positions that may be divided into vocal/choral and Rite of Spring(a pagan scenario, not a specific witchcraft
orchestral/instrumental. event) could be seen in many works after its first perfor-
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stage works used mance in 1913. The complete opposite of the evil
a variety of music by different composers, and thus aspects of witchcraft was stressed in James MacMillan’s
there is, for example, confusion about who wrote what The Confession of Isobel Gowdie,which painted a picture
concerning William Sh a k e s p e a re’s Macbeth a n d in orchestral terms of the grief and sense of guilt felt at
Thomas Mi d d l e t o n’s The Wi t c h . In a more skeptical the execution of so many innocent women in the
age, Purcell broke the mold of hideous music for witch- “burning times.”
es with a stunningly beautiful anthem, In Guilty Night, The interpretation of witchcraft in classical music
but a century later Thomas Linley hinted at what the has varied throughout the centuries. The dissonance
nineteenth century would provide in terms of harmon- and rhythmic angularities at the start of the early mod-
ic and melodic dissonance in his Ode on Witches and ern period swelled in the nineteenth century and reced-
Fairies of Sh a k e s p e a re . Modeste Mussorgsky wrote a ed in the twentieth, sometimes replaced by far more
choral version of his famous Night on Bald Mo u n t a i n , f a vorable portrayals at a time when witchcraft was
including the obligatory “Black Mass” scene, and Felix re v i ved in benign forms. One constant feature is that
Mendelssohn, Ro b e rt Schumann, and Jo h a n n e s male witches have been ve ry poorly re p resented, with
Brahms also wrote choral and vocal works on similar just a few to be found, mainly in operas.
798 Music |
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Music and Witchcraft Today of mind. After the ritual, music was also used for social
One might ask what music is actually used by witches purposes if live or as background sound for the feasting
for their rituals and ceremonies in the third millenni- and possibly dancing that followed. Certain types of
um. The results of an extensive survey in 2001 con- music were not popular at meetings: commercial pop,
ducted in England, with some input from the United jazz, and “d i f fic u l t” classical music. The re a s o n s
States, provided useful information. According to cir- probably include the age of the participants, who were
cumstances and the availability of musicians, either mainly above their mid-twenties and the feeling that
recorded or live music is played before, during, and such music was not suitable for joyful or emotional
after rituals. Before a ritual, it is usually recorded, and gatherings. It was of overriding importance to make
its task is to relax the participants; examples mentioned music an important part of the religion, whether in its
were Enya and Loreena McKennitt. During the ritual, historical setting or in contemporary practices.
the recorded music used was mainly instrumental or
wordless, because words of songs might clash with the MELVYN J. WILLIN
primary emphasis of the rituals. When recorded, the
See also:BURNINGTIMES;MURRAY,MARGARET;OPERA;
music was chosen for a number of different reasons: to
RENAISSANCEDRAMA,ENGLAND;SHAKESPEARE.
build up energy, to bind the group, to aid altered states
References and further reading:
of consciousness, to encourage the visitation of spir-
Michaëlis, Sebastien. 1613. Admirable Historie of the Possession and
its—and practically, to obliterate external noises from Conversion of a Penitent Woman.London.
t r a f fic or other distractions. Examples we re thus Murray, Margaret. 1921. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A
extremely varied, taken from the popular classical, folk, Study in Anthropology.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
World, or New Age repertoire. Examples included Ralls-MacLeod, K. 2000. Music and the Celtic Otherworld.
R i c h a rd Wa g n e r, Carl Orff (Ca rmina Bu ra n a) , Edinburgh: Polygon.
Clannad, Native American chants, Carolyn Hillyer, and Sadie, Stanley, ed. 2001. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians.London: Macmillan.
Nigel Shaw.When musicians were available, live music
Scire (Gerald Gardner). 1999. High Magic’s Aid.Thame: I-H-O
used whatever instruments were available—often the
Books.
acoustic guitar. Even if the group did not contain
Stewart, R. J. 1988. Where Is St George?London: Blandford.
musicians, drumming and chanting were frequently
Willin, M. J. 2004. “Music in Pagan and Witchcraft Ritual and
employed to build energy and create a trance-like state
Culture.” PhD diss. University of Bristol, UK.
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N
Naples, Kingdom of in the capital (Romeo 1990, 20, 166–167, 179). In the
Re l a t i ve to north-central It a l y, the southern Kingdom of rest of the kingdom, trials against superstition we re
Naples participated only marginally in early witch hunts re c o rded at Bitonto in 1594; at Capua, where 130 cases
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Chro n i c l e s of magic we re tried between 1600 and 1715; and at
did not re c o rd any persecutions in the south; the va s t Gallipoli, where three sorc e resses we re tried for witch-
demonological literature, both Italian and Eu ro p e a n , craft in 1600. T h roughout this region, judges—re g a rd-
contained no traces of activity in the south compared to less of the gravity of the errors confessed—mere l y
re f e rences to northern It a l y, where the large numbers of re q u i red the accused to repent, recant their errors, and
trials and the zeal demonstrated by inquisitors such as accept spiritual penances (D’Ippolito 1996, 425–437).
those in Como merited commendation from He i n r i c h Documents from the Holy Of fice conserved at
K r a m e r, the author of the Ma l l e u s Ma l e fic a rum (T h e Trinity College Library in Dublin contain numero u s
Hammer of Witches, 1486). Except for a few late- cases in which subjects of the Kingdom of Na p l e s
s i x t e e n t h - c e n t u ry works such as Gi ovanni Lore n zo a p p e a red spontaneously before the tribunal of the
d’ A n a n i a’s (Anania) De Na t u ra Daemonum ( Of the Inquisition in Rome to confess they we re sorc e rers or
Na t u re of De m o n s ,Venice, 1589), Leonardo Va i ro’s De necromancers, together with a few inquiries from local
Fascino ( On Enchantments, Venice, 1583), and, later, ecclesiastical tribunals in Naples, Lecce, and Te a n o.
medical examiner Pi e t ro Pi p e r n o’s De magicis affectibus These trials also provide evidence that pagan spirituali-
h o rum dignotione, praenotione, curatione, medica, stra t a- ty was so profoundly imbued with official Christianity
gemmatica, divina, plerisque curationibus electis, et De that it was experienced and practiced without any sense
Nuce beneventana maga . . .( On Magical Ailments, T h e i r of wrongdoing. The judicial sentences indicate that the
Diagnosis, Prediction, and Treatment with Select Cu re s , inquisitors we re principally concerned with punishing
Medical, Strategic, and Divine, and On the Wa l n u t - Tre e the error of “believing that it is right to serve the work
of Be n e vento; Naples, 1634), literature on the theme of of the devil” (Trinity College Library, Dataria, Vo l .
witches remained underd e veloped and did not influ e n c e 1228, ff. 111–114). The nature of these offenses, mostly
debate about their re p re s s i o n . entailing minor suspicions of heresy, and the primarily
Although references to inquisitorial activity concern- spiritual penalties imposed were never very severe (e.g.,
ing witchcraft are scarce, it is possible to trace a general whipping, confinement to a cloister for regular clergy,
p i c t u re of the attitudes adopted by local ecclesiastical formal imprisonment for a brief period, or, at worst,
authorities tow a rd witchcraft from documents con- five years in the galleys). The Congregation of the Holy
served in the diocesan historical archives of Naples and Of fice demonstrated a “s o u t h e r n” orientation that
f rom the sentences and abjurations conserved in the seemed far less rigorous than the attitude of Mi l a n’s
Trinity College Library in Dublin, which anticipated famous cardinal-archbishop, St. Carlo Borromeo.
and in some ways inspired the changes in the offic i a l In general, the severity of southern Italian authorities
position outlined in Instructio pro formandis processibus against superstitions was restricted to their defin i t i o n s
in causis strigum, sort i l e g i o rum et malefic i o ru m of what constituted illicit use of the sacraments a n d
( In s t ruction for Conducting Trial Pro c e d u res Ag a i n s t sacramental objects. At the same time, ecclesiastical
Witches, Sorcerers, and Evildoers, ca. 1620). authorities sought to strengthen the thaumaturgical-
T h ree witches (called j a n a reor m a g a re in southern d e f e n s i ve system of sanctioned traditional rituals
Italy) we re condemned to death in 1506 by the inquisi- (especially exo rcism) and increase such forms of popu-
tor-general of the Kingdom of Naples, and around 200 lar devotion as the cult of saints while limiting their
trials we re initiated by Be n e ventan archiepiscopal curia, re p re s s i ve action to intimidating marginal and subal-
the outcome of which is unknown. Ot h e rwise, nothing tern segments of society to discourage them (without
is known of the re p ression of witchcraft in southern It a l y much success) from engaging in magic spells and
b e f o re trials we re conducted in Naples in 1574, 1580, s y n c retistic practices. In the late sixteenth century, a
and 1590; between 1582 and 1601, 143 trials we re held “campaign of aggression and intolerance” was dire c t e d
Naples, Kingdom of 801 |
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against superstitions, in line with Sixtus V’s Coeli et Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark.London and
Te r rae Creator ( Creator of He a ven and Earth, 1586) Philadelphia: Athlone and University of Pennsylvania Press.
and Immensa Dei Ae t e rni (The In finity of the Et e r n a l Monter,William, and John Tedeschi. 1986. “Towards a Statistical
Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth
God, 1587). Notwithstanding the gravity of the apos-
Centuries.” Pp. 130–157 in The Inquisitions in Early Modern
tasies committed by the accused (participation in the
Europe: Studies in Sources and Methods.Edited by Gustav
Sabbat, homage to or pact with the Devil) and the
Henningsen and John Tedeschi. DeKalb: Northern Illinois
a t rocities they confessed (often spontaneously), no
University Press.
k n own cases invo l ved accusations of diabolical witch-
Romeo, Giovanni. 1990. Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia
craft. The principal goal was instead to circ u m s c r i b e della Controriforma.Florence: Sansoni.
and re l a t i v i ze the errors of the faithful: exo rcism was Sallmann, Jean Michel. 1986. Chercheurs de trésors et jeteuses de
p referable to burning at the stake because it trans- sorts: La quête du surnaturel à Naples au XVIe siècle.Paris:
formed the witch into someone possessed by the De v i l Aubier.
( Romeo 1990, 244). Tamblé, Maria Rosaria. 1996. “Streghe, guaritrici, indovino.” Pp.
Southern tolerance was also associated with the futile 541–565 in Stregoneria e streghe nell’Europa moderna. Convegno
internazionale di studi (Pisa, 24–26 marzo 1994).Edited by
e f f o rts of southern bishops to eradicate superstitions
Giovannea Bosco and Patrizia Castelli. Pisa: Pacini.
practiced by their clergy. Even after the Council of
Trent, even higher-level southern monks lived in
concubinage, moral laxity, and superstition. Numerous Nassau-Saarbrücken,
sentences from the Trinity College Library re c o rd s County of
detailed proceedings against members of the secular The county of Nassau-Saarbrücken, Lutheran since
and regular clergy, including some cases against 1575, experienced only fifty-two witchcraft trials
o rd i n a ry diocesan clerics accused of dealing with the between 1578 and 1679, making it—like the Calvinist
Devil. A somewhat classical interpretation attributes duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken—one of the territories in
such corruption among southern Italian clergy to the this region with a relatively mild pattern of witch hunt-
particular structure of the Church in the region, which ing. Through strict regulation of the costs of witchcraft
was more receptive to it. This institution was controlled trials, the counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken succeeded in
by laypeople and managed by re f r a c t o ry clergy who preventing the expansion and worst excesses of witch
were often ignorant and superstitious, indifferent to the hunts, although they were not opposed in principle to
spirit of reform, and unresponsive to an inner religiosi- the persecution of witches. Nassau-Saarbrücken’s witch-
ty founded on the purity of the evangelical message. craft trials were concentrated in areas subject to the
These conditions are crucial to understanding the fail- criminal courts of the abbey of Wadgassen (nineteen
u re of the post-Tridentine Churc h’s commitment to trials), the lordship of Ottweiler (thirteen trials), and
Christianizing the countryside. Ancient superstitions the lordship of Uchtelfangen (seven trials). In these
continued to thrive among the faithful. So u t h e r n three courts, other local lords shared criminal jurisdic-
bishops who lamented the presence of rites and cults of tion with the counts, although their respective rights
pagan origin frequently denounced them in the late were often in dispute. As in other German Protestant
s e venteenth century and throughout the eighteenth territories, women comprised almost all (95 percent) of
c e n t u ry (Tamblé 1996, 545). Twe n t i e t h - c e n t u ry the accused and executed witches in Na s s a u-Sa a r b r ü c k e n
a n t h ropologists and folklore scholars studied these (Labouvie 1997, 45).
same beliefs and practices. Summaries and statistics pertaining to the
PAOLO PORTONE; Na s s a u-Saarbrücken witchcraft trials have been studied
as part of the Saar region (e.g., Hoppstädter 1959;
TRANSLATED BY SHANNON VENEBLE Labouvie 1991, 1997). Unlike other major rulers in the
See also:BORROMEO,ST.CARLO;D’ANANIA(ANANIA), GIOVANNI Saar region (the elector of Tr i e r, the duke of Lorraine,
LORENZO;INQUISITION,ROMAN;ITALY;MALLEUSMALEFICARUM; and the duke of Pfalz-Zweibrücken), the counts of
PIPERNO,PIETRO;SUPERSTITION. Na s s a u-Saarbrücken ruled a re l a t i vely coherent territory
References and further reading: as resident lords. They could thus exe rcise greater con-
De Rosa, Gabriele. 1978. Chiesa e religione popolare nel t rol over witchcraft trials than absentee rulers gove r n i n g
Mezzogiorno.Rome-Bari: Laterza. fragmented territories. The counts followed the
D’Ippolito, Lucia. 1996. Spunti per una ricerca sulla stregoneria nel
C a rolina (the 1532 code of criminal pro c e d u re for the
territorio della diocesi di Oria.Pp. 425–437 in Stregoneria e
Holy Roman Em p i re) on matters of evidence, the appli-
streghe nell’Europa moderna. Convegno internazionale di studi
cation of tort u re, and consultations with legal expert s ,
(Pisa, 24–26 marzo 1994).Edited by Giovannea Bosco and
and local customary laws (We i s t ü m e r) regulated the costs
Patrizia Castelli. Pisa: Pacini.
and length of trials and the arrest and imprisonment of
Monter,William. 2002. “Witchcraft Trials in Continental Europe
1560–1660.” Pp. 1–52 in The Period of the Great Witch Trials. suspects. The counts published no special witchcraft
Vol. 4 of The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. mandates: general ordinances of criminal pro c e d u re
802 Nassau-Saarbrücken, County of |
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g overned court fees, wages of court officials, payments re q u i red the heirs of the condemned to settle such
to witnesses, and the use of tort u re. Howe ve r, costs, should be followed instead. His ordinance made
complaints from the count’s subjects about incre a s i n g it clear that trial costs must be settled at the local level,
costs of witchcraft trials led to promulgation of an without intervention from the count’s officials. Because
o f ficial mandate at the beginning of the seve n t e e n t h neither local witch-hunting committees nor local lords
c e n t u ry, aiming to eradicate abuses and fix the level of were willing to take responsibility for paying the often
wages and subsistence expenses of eve ryone invo l ved in horrendous costs involved in witchcraft trials, this ordi-
witchcraft trials. nance significantly dampened local enthusiasm for
Witchcraft allegations in Na s s a u - Sa a r b r ü c k e n witch hunting. In 1613, the count also repealed an ear-
between 1535 and 1734 were usually treated as cases of lier ordinance stipulating that witchcraft suspects must
slander and did not trigger criminal pro c e e d i n g s — be kept only in prisons subject to his authority. Putting
another reason for the relatively low number of witch- suspected witches in prisons belonging to lords of the
craft trials there. Unlike other Saar region territories, re l e vant local criminal courts provided another means
the terms for both female (He xe) and male for the counts to avoid expenses in witchcraft trials.
(He xe n m e i s t e r) witches we re apparently established at The T h i rty Ye a r s’ Wa r, which caused an 84 perc e n t
an early date. Accusations of witchcraft came from both decline in population in Na s s a u - Saarbrücken, also
men and women, but with one exception, their targets brought its witchcraft trials to an end (Labouvie 1991,
we re always women who we re accused of making 252). A few trials occurred after 1648. In the last
people ill or blind, bewitching dairying processes, or known case, a woman subject to the criminal court of
performing other serious acts of harmful magic. Ottweiler claimed to be a witch in 1679. Legal advice
The first known witchcraft trial took place in 1578 on her case was sought from jurists at the University of
in Uchtelfangen following an accusation brought by Strasbourg, who recommended that the woman be
c o u rt officials. The first witchcraft trials pursued with questioned by clerics. Although the verdict is unknown,
the help of organized village witch-hunting committees many indications suggest that she was treated mildly by
(He xe n a u s s c h ü s s e) also occurred in Uchtelfangen and the men who judged her.
n e a r by villages in the lordship of Ot t weiler in 1595.
RITA VOLTMER;
Such witch-hunting committees we re, howe ve r, much
less widespread in Na s s a u - Saarbrücken than in other TRANSLATED BY ALISON ROWLANDS
n e a r by states, for example, the duchy of Lu xe m b o u r g ,
See also:CAROLINACODE(CONSTITIOCRIMINALISCAROLINA);
the electorate of Tr i e r, or the territory of the imperial COMMUNALPERSECUTION;GERMANY,WESTANDNORTHWEST;
abbey of St. Maximin. LORRAINE,DUCHYOF;LUXEMBOURG,DUCHYOF;
The witchcraft trials in the territory of the abbey of PFALZ-ZWEIBRÜCKEN,DUCHYOF;POPULARPERSECUTION;
Wadgassen constituted a peculiar episode in the SAARREGION;ST.MAXIMIN,PRINCE-ABBEYOF;TRIER,
Na s s a u - Saarbrücken story. Although formally subject ELECTORATEOF.
to the ultimate sovereignty (Landeshoheit) of the counts References and further reading:
Hoppstädter, Kurt. 1959. “Die Hexenverfolgungen im saarländis-
of Na s s a u - Saarbrücken, the abbey stood under the
chen Raum.” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Saargegend9:
d i rect administrative authority (Vo g t e i) of the duke of
210–267.
Lorraine. This meant that it was forc e d — s o m e t i m e s
Labouvie, Eva. 1991. Zauberei und Hexenwerk: Ländlicher
militarily—to seek advice in cases of witchcraft fro m
Hexenglaube in der frühen Neuzeit.Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
the central legal tribunal in Lorraine (the Change de
———. 1997. “Rekonstruktion einer Verfolgung: Hexenprozesse
Nancy) rather than from the main court of the counts und ihr Verlauf im Saar-Pfalz-Raum und der Bailliage
in Saarbrücken (the Ob e rh o f). The dukes of Lorraine d’Allemagne (1520–1690).” Pp. 43–58 in Hexenprozesse und
clearly pursued a long-term policy of establishing their deren Gegner im trierisch-lothringischen Raum.Edited by
own sove reignty over Wadgassen. Its witchcraft trials Gunther Franz, Günter Gehl, and Franz Irsigler.Weimar: Rita
thus took place against a backdrop of conflicting prior- Dadder.
ities of its rival lords, whose territorial disputes we re
finally settled by treaty only in 1766. Native Americans
Although the pro p e rty of executed witches was not Until ve ry re c e n t l y, virtually eve ry native No rt h
confiscated in Nassau-Saarbrücken, the trial costs were American people believed in witches or evil shamans,
settled by surviving relatives, as the Carolina stipulated. who used their special access to potent spiritual power
Nonetheless, the question of paying trial costs when the to attack enemies with disease, “accidents,” bad luck in
p ro p e rty of the condemned witch was insufficient to hunting, and other misfortunes. Witches were nearly as
c over them arose as early as 1595, at Uc h t e l f a n g e n . ubiquitous as life’s troubles, and nearly anyone could be
Although the Carolina made the authorities meet the a witch; thus, people were always on the lookout for
costs in such cases, the count of Na s s a u - Sa a r b r ü c k e n secret offenders who gave themselves away through
insisted that customary laws (We i s t ü m e r), which antisocial behavior. Indians across time and space have
Native Americans 803 |
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held common beliefs about witches, contributing to a individuals turned to witchcraft. They we re jealous,
shared historical pattern in which communities split muttering underneath their breath at others’ good for-
into factions advocating different approaches to colo- tune; hypersensitive, interpreting casual exchanges as
nial encroachment and then charged members of the insults; selfish, refusing to share food with their neigh-
rival faction with witchcraft. When such factions gelled bors; and outcasts, who might be found wandering
a round the revitalization programs of re l i g i o u s alone in the woods. Some of them either were the off-
prophets, accusations sometimes escalated into actual spring of an incestuous relationship or participants in
witch hunts marked by systematic executions. Witch incest themselves. Others had been contacted during
hunts have been rare since the early twentieth century, their visions by spirits oriented toward evil, such as Owl
but belief in witches is still common in some Native and Coyote in Apache belief, or the horned winged
American communities. serpent found in Algonquian speakers’ pantheon.
Quite unlike European beliefs about the supernatur- Although the vast majority of Na t i ve American
al, which divided power into good and bad as personi- shamans were male and witches were defined as wicked
fied in God and the Devil, Na t i ve Americans believe d shamans, a high percentage of accused witches we re
that all power was double-edged, capable of being put elderly women, as among Eu ropeans. This disparity
to positive or negative ends depending upon the person suggests an underlying hostility toward females who no
who wielded it. Individuals gained access to spiritual longer could contribute to the group by reproducing or
power sometimes by communing with a spirit during a raising children and who, unlike old men, had little or
d ream but most often through a vision quest. Du r i n g no formal role in government, but sometimes tried to
the vision quest, an individual—almost always male— retain control over a household, apparently to their
fasted, deprived himself of sleep, imbibed hallucino- relatives’ irritation.
gens, and sometimes tortured himself until he pictured Witchcraft suspicions were ubiquitous among Native
one or more spirits, usually in the form of animals or Americans because of a tendency to read any violation
m e t e o rological forces such as the wind. The spirit of the people’s unachievable consensus ideal as a sign of
taught the vision seeker its song, gave him fetishes that ill will. In the small-scale, face-to-face, and generally
could be used to call for power whenever it was needed, d e c e n t r a l i zed societies of Na t i ve America, cooperation
and explained what taboos would void this gift. T h e was necessary to feed, defend, and govern. T h e re f o re ,
g u a rdianship of an especially powe rful spirit enabled everyone was under extreme pressure to suppress anger
the seeker to become a shaman with the ability to affect and disagreement with relatives and neighbors in favor
cures, rain, divination, or other social benefits. But he, of a moderate, pleasant attitude and willingness to share
and sometimes she, also could cause accidents or make resources with anyone in want. For men, there were few
people ill or insane by magically implanting poisonous- outlets for social tension aside from war against foreign
ly enchanted objects as mundane as hairs or fingernails peoples and rough sport, and even fewer for women.
into the bodies of their victims or by capturing one of Thus, when someone became sick or hurt follow i n g
the victim’s two souls as it lay exposed during dreaming. unsanctioned but inevitable family squabbles, love
Until recent times and sometimes today still, American r i valries, or political disputes, people we re quick to
Indians attributed many, if not most, of their illnesses imagine that a witch on the other side was responsible.
to such evildoing. The consensus ideal that bred suspicions of witch-
Among the Indian shaman’s most important duties craft also suppressed collective action against it. An
was diagnosing and treating witchcraft. The shaman accused witch was prosecuted only if community
would work himself into an ecstatic trance by fasting, leaders agreed on the verdict. However, a witch was in
dancing, contorting himself, and chanting, while peo- grave danger when such consensus was achieved. A sus-
ple around him drummed and sang until he contacted pected witch was sometimes captured and tort u red in
his guardian spirits, who identified the root of the sick- o rder to re m ove his or her curses and then either
ness. If the disease stemmed from an implanted magical warned, banished, or even killed. Customarily a witch
item, the shaman would apply a tube to the violated was executed and left to rot unburied, but troubles with
area and suck out the object without breaking the skin. the witch did not end there. The witch’s spirit lingered
Sickness deriving from a captured dream soul required for a time in anticipation of finding a new host, and, if
a more intricate cure because the shaman had to enter successful, it returned to plague the community with
an even deeper trance to travel to the land of the dead fresh vengeance.
to re t r i e ve the patient’s ghost. At other times, the The witch hunt has been one of the most violent man-
shaman might trap the witch’s dream soul in an insect ifestations of Na t i ve Americans’ internecine responses to
or frog and then crush it dead. colonization, particularly epidemic disease, Christian
Indians also depended upon their shamans to identi- missions, and harassment from Eu ro-American gove r n-
fy specific witches, who went to great ends to re m a i n ments. Eu ro p e a n - i n t roduced diseases like smallpox often
anonymous. Nevertheless, everyone knew what types of wiped out most of an exposed community’s population,
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Chief of Florida Indians consulting a shaman before going into battle. Shamans were common among Native Americans, and functioned to attack
enemies as well as to practice beneficent magic. (Ann Ronan Picture Library/HIP/TopFoto.co.uk)
leaving the traumatized surv i vors to try to determine reservations in exchange for annuities, peace, and trade
what had happened. An unfamiliar disease causing such b e n e fits; and a “t r a d i t i o n a l i s t” wing that advo c a t e d
u n p recedented mortality had to have a spiritual cause some version of pan-Indian cooperation (including vio-
like witchcraft, as the Pima Indians of southern Arizo n a lent resistance), religious revitalization, and rejection of
concluded in 1844–1845 when they killed four shamans the alcohol trade and land sales. Traditionalists received
in the aftermath of a cholera outbreak. Christian mis- their inspiration from religious visionaries who claimed
sionaries we re less lethal than Eu ropean diseases but revelation from the “Great Spirit” and a special ability
nearly as disru p t i ve. Indian neophytes neglected their to identify witches. Not surprisingly, usually those
p e o p l e’s customary rituals, broke their taboos, and par- witches we re accommodationists and their leaders.
took of strange new religious forms and in the pro c e s s Witch hunts of this type accompanied the rise of some
turned themselves and their missionaries into obv i o u s of Na t i ve America’s most famous prophets: the
targets of witchcraft accusations. Delaware Neolin among Ohio River Valley tribes dur-
The simultaneous appearance of disease and mis- ing the 1760s as a prelude to Pontiac’s famous uprising;
sionaries provoked particularly aggre s s i ve witch hunt- the Seneca Handsome Lake among the Iroquois of
ing, as in southern Ontario when the Hurons executed upstate NewYork during the 1790s; and, most notably,
s e veral French Jesuits and their followers during the the Shawnee Tenskwatawa among the Great Lakes and
1630s and 1640s. Howe ve r, witch hunts took their Ohio Valley tribes and the Creek Indians during the
most dramatic forms when Indian societies came under early nineteenth century in conjunction with
intense pressure from white expansion, leading not only Te c u m s e h’s campaigns against the United States. Few
to epidemic disease and proselytization but also to land other witch hunts are so well documented, but they
loss, warfare, alcohol abuse, economic dependency, and continued to mark intratribal politics well into the
i n fighting. By the late eighteenth and nineteenth cen- twentieth century.
turies, Indian communities in the path of American Many Indian groups continue to believe in witch-
expansion typically divided into two factions: an craft, mostly along traditional lines with some
accommodationist wing that agreed to land sales and concessions to outside influences. Christian In d i a n s
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often associate witches with the Devil rather than material pre s e rved in the Poznan arc h i ves or the copy
traditional guardian spirits. Some people continue to on film kept by the Fr a n k f u rt Bu n d e s a rc h i v. After the
attribute certain accidents, psychological disorders, and fall of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in
“t r a d i t i o n a l” ailments to witchcraft but acknow l e d g e 1989, Jörg Rudolph discove red additional material in
that “foreign” diseases can have other sources. They also SS files, which had been kept secretly by the Stasi, the
b e l i e ve that witches work only as individuals, not as intelligence service of the former GDR, for political
p a rt of the “witch societies” that we re found during reasons. By 1999, a study group was able to present a
ancient times. Official executions of witches have been collection of essays examining various aspects of the
r a re, but even into the late twentieth century, not H - S o n d e rk o m m a n d o, including, in addition to its
unknown in some isolated cases. Most importantly, as political aims and ideological grounds, a critical
the enduring antithesis of community values, the witch assessment of the scientific value of the SS collection.
continues to define what those values are.
National Socialist Views of
DAVID J. SILVERMAN
Witchcraft and Witchcraft
See also:SHAMANISM. Persecution
References and further reading: Though clearly reflecting his intention to use the witch-
Dowd, Gregory Evans. 1992. A Spirited Resistance: The North
craft-trial material politically against both the Catholic
American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815.Baltimore:
Church and Protestant opponents, Himmler’s interest
Johns Hopkins University Press.
was also deeply rooted in Nazi ideology. Like other
Edmunds, R. David. 1983. The Shawnee Prophet.Lincoln:
intellectual National Socialists, the master of the exter-
University of Nebraska Press.
mination camps believed that the victims of late
Hultkratz, Åke. 1992. Shamanistic Healing and Ritual Drama:
Health and Medicine in Native North American Religious medieval and early modern witchcraft persecution had
Traditions.NewYork: Crossroad. been pure descendants of the Germanic race. Witches
Sturtevant, William, ed. 1978–. Handbook of North American were supposedly adherents and practitioners of a tradi-
Indians.12 vols. to date. Washington, DC: Smithsonian tional Germanic religious cult, who for this very reason
Institution. had fallen prey to persecutions instigated by Church
Trigger, Bruce G. 1987. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of authorities in their attempt to erase remnants of pagan-
the Huron People to 1660.1976. Reprint with a new preface,
ism. At bottom, this theory drew on anti-Semitism,
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
pretending that the Catholic Church from its origins
Walker, Deward E., Jr. 1989. Witchcraft and Sorcery of the
was penetrated by Jews and a “Jewish” commitment to
American Native Peoples.Moscow: University of Idaho Press.
destroy all racially superior beings.
Like so many other ideas and visions of Na t i o n a l
Nazi Interest in Witch Socialism, the pagan interpretation of witchcraft
Persecution stemmed from a long tradition of antimodern view s .
Reports about the interest of SS (the Schutzstaffel— After the Enlightenment had disenchanted witch belief
protection force or defense squad) leader Heinrich in the late eighteenth century, subsequent centuries,
Himmler in research on witch persecutions were circu- longing for romantic inspiration, discove red the “re a l
lated as early as 1947 by the Berlin newspaper Telegraf. t ru t h” behind it. In France, Jules Michelet declared the
The information stemmed from an unknown librarian witch to be the people’s authentic medical service; in
in Polish Poznan (formerly Posen), where a huge Ge r m a n y, Jakob Grimm saw it as incorporating a lost
collection of books and some files from the SS were Germanic culture. In England, Ma r g a ret Murray (1921)
now stored, both giving credibility to such a project. In p o rt r a yed witchcraft as an ancient fertility cult. Bu t
1948 and 1951, further information came from a n ow h e re did the materialization of the witch fig u re go
former concentration camp prisoner, Herbert Blank, f a rther than in Germany and Austria. When Hitler came
who had been ordered by the SS to produce summaries to power in 1933, the neopagan vision of witchcraft
of witchcraft trial documents. In 1952, an investigation d i s p l a yed both a “w h i t e” interpretation and a “black”
dealing with the fate of German archival sources in c o u n t e r p a rt. The former claimed (like Michelet) that
Polish territory offered more hints about the project. witches had been agents of popular medicine; the latter
Howe ve r, information about Hi m m l e r’s pro j e c t d e c l a red that people accused of witchcraft we re re a l l y
vanished afterward, until Gerhard Schormann gave a g roups of Germanic warriors fighting demonic forc e s
firsthand account of the SS H-Sonderkommando’s (spe- t h rough ritual means. The military version, expounded
cial unit H [Hexen-witches]) witchcraft-trial collection by Vienna Germanist Otto Höfle r, was, of course, highly
in his introduction to a short book (Schormann 1981). a g reeable to Himmler and his “Black Ord e r,” the SS,
The news aroused widespread interest in Germany. w h e reas the more peaceful “w h i t e” version, advocated by
Since then, numerous scholars of both early modern Hi m m l e r’s political opponent, chief ideologist Alfre d
Europe and Nazi Germany have used either the original Rosenberg, fell prey to internal party riva l r i e s .
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Independently of these differences, both factions separate (and racially conceived) people’s culture. It is
a g reed that Christianity had been responsible for w o rthwhile to remember in this context that the idea
slaughtering millions of Germanic victims. He n c e , of elite culture as opposed to popular culture would
re s e a rch about witchcraft trials became an act com- become a cherished approach of some social historians
memorating “racial losses” and honoring the “ordeal of long into the 1980s, before yielding to rather more
Germanic heroes,” women and men alike. Gi ven the complex assumptions of differentiated interc u l t u r a l
a p p a rent continuity of that confrontation, it also pro- relations. Meanwhile, the romantic image of witches
vided ammunition for an ongoing battle. Po l i t i c a l l y, being simply persecuted for being “wise woman”
therefore, witchcraft research figured as “scientific ene- seems to be as lively as ever in feminist and neopagan
my observation,” with full responsibility for the project c i rcles. Tru l y modern, on the other hand, was the
falling on the SS secret service (SD) and centered at first H - S o n d e rk o m m a n d o’s intention to popularize its fin d-
in the Amt II Ge g n e rf o r s c h u n g ( re s e a rch on enemies) ings by exhibitions and articles in popular papers and
within the central SS administration, the Reichssicher- by massive use of photographic material.
h e i t s h a u p t a m t( National Central Security De p a rt m e n t ) . Despite its ambitious and modern aims, strategies,
Wo rk started in 1935, after Nazi publication of an and approaches, the pro j e c t’s results we re disappoint-
ideologically revised version of a traditional peasant ing. With 33,846 cases re c o rded by the end of 1943,
calendar claiming Church responsibility for millions of when project work ceased due to the course of war,
s l a u g h t e red heretics and witches had been successfully results lagged far behind the 500,000 or even millions
refuted as a scandalously ignorant historical fake. This of victims that had been expected. About the role of the
failure made it obvious that historically accurate antire- C h u rch, apart from confirming what was alre a d y
ligious propaganda must henceforth be put on an k n own about its propaganda, the evidence rather sug-
organized scientific basis. gested the re verse, that is, the support persecutions
enjoyed from ordinary German people. Obviously, ear-
Organization and Performance ly modern society had been more deeply penetrated by
The SS witchcraft research group (H-Sonderkommando) Christianity than the adherents of racial paganism
took pains to conceal its activities, as its abbreviation believed. The search for traces of suppressed Germanic
(“H” for “Hexen”) showed. While the exploration of cults could not find substantial evidence.
published literature continued, members began visiting Besides conceptual shortcomings and dead ends, the
archives within the Third Reich already in summer intellectual mediocrity, indeed dilettantism, of the H -
1935, extending their investigations to occupied terri- S o n d e rk o m m a n d o re n d e red its products useless for
tories as well during the war.When doing so, they never antireligious propaganda. Recent reexamination of the
officially revealed their membership in the SS, working material in comparison with the arc h i val sourc e s
under academic or private cover instead; otherwise, ( L o renz et al. 1999) demonstrated countless erro r s ,
they would never have gained access to Church institu- which opponents of Nazi paganism would have been
tions, like the archiepiscopal archives in Trier. able to re veal as well: mistaken identification of cases,
Trial records and related documents were investigat- misreading and confusion of names of the accused, mis-
ed following a fixed scheme, devised not only to estab- understanding of context, and ignorance of what was
lish the basic facts (number of victims, age, sex, and really happening in local persecutions.
race(!)) but also to provide proof about who made the No wonder then that none of its ambitiously planned
accusations and trials and especially about the responsi- studies could be finished. Si g n i fic a n t l y, a personal
bility of the churches. Se c retaries later transferred the attempt by SS officer Dr. Rudolf Levin, a leading mem-
findings onto typed forms—hence the Polish title ber of the gro u p, to exploit his product on the academic
Kartoteka (card index) and organized it by localities, so m a rket by presenting it as a Ha b i l i t a t i o n(second disser-
that it could quickly be used to furnish local press cam- tation, necessary to earn tenure) at the Un i versity of
paigns. Within a more scientific framework, systematic Munich was defeated by the academic tribunal. Eve n
studies were planned on racial and demographic aspects crisis management by the gro u p’s gray eminence, pro m i-
of the persecutions, on the use of tort u re, and on nent National Socialist historian and SS officer Pro f e s s o r
forgery in earlier historical accounts. Günther Franz, could not improve the situation.
Though the pro j e c t’s ideological limits are plain, its The mediocrity of the group’s philologists tells some-
p e r s p e c t i ve from below granted at least theore t i c a l l y thing about their motives for participating in the
n ew insights, in particular by focusing on the social project: to exploit it as a vehicle for an academic career
context (if one replaces “r a c e” with “social rank” ) . o t h e rwise not accessible. The “m o d e r n i s t s” within the
Fu rt h e r m o re, the SS re s e a rchers we re not so narrow - g ro u p, howe ve r, those in charge of distributing the
minded as to overlook the close alliance between secu- p roduct to the public, used it as a chance to deve l o p
lar and Church officials within learned culture, but techniques crucial for their future careers in postwar
their ideology compelled them to use the notion of a German press and marketing. Thus, the head of the SS
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o f fice on “s c i e n t i fic enemy observation,” Pro f e s s o r T h roughout Western antiquity, necromancy was
Dr. Franz A. Six, became a leading fig u re in We s t w i d e s p read, with re c o rds of its practice in Ba by l o n ,
German marketing in the postwar era. Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The oldest literary account
Given the scholarly deficits of the SS witchcraft trial of necromancy is in Ho m e r’s Od y s s e y(ca. 700 B.C.E.),
collection, its usefulness for current research is limited. in which the divine sorc e ress, Circe, instructed the
Except for its photographic copies, transcriptions, and h e ro Odysseus on summoning the deceased (primarily
extracts of original documents, the K a rtotheka c a n n o t the ghost of the famous seer, Ti resias) for pro p h e t i c
be used to substitute for otherwise lost archival materi- insight concerning his voyage home (X.488–540;
al. However, it does have advantages as a means for sur- XI.13–149). The Homeric passages contained many
veying or checking sources and getting hints about intricate details: the rites must be nocturnal and based
some rather irregular findings, such as the sixteen a round a pit and a fire; Odysseus must pour libations
witchcraft executions it re p o rted as taking place in to a specified recipe; animals must be sacrificed and
1629 and 1630 in the village of Sehlem near Tr i e r. their blood drained for the ghosts to imbibe; and
These cases we re documented only by a note in the p r a yers must be recited to the ghosts and also to the
Sehlem parish re g i s t e r, quite an exception to the con- gods of the underworld (who had to give their consent
t e m p o r a ry doctrine denying condemned witches both for the temporary release of the spirits). In a subse-
Christian burial or even re c o rding them. Gi ven their quent piece of Greek literature, the Pe r s i a n s ( 4 7 2
generally superficial pro c e d u re, the SS re s e a rchers in B.C.E.), the playwright Aeschylus described the prac-
this case surely relied on a local informant, pro b a b l y tice of necromancy among the royal household of the
someone working through parish registers for the sake Medes. This dramatic piece bore similar ritualistic
of racial genealogy. traits to the Homeric description and re flected the
Greek perception of Persians as exotic and inextricably
WALTER RUMMEL
linked with the practice of magic.
See also:COMMUNALPERSECUTION;HISTORIOGRAPHY;MICHELET, Roman sources regularly associated necromancy with
JULES;MURRAY,MARGARETALICE;POPULARPERSECUTION. the working of evil magic by wicked witches. The most
References and further reading:
infamous necromancer of antiquity was in Lu c a n’s
Baumgarten, Achim R. 1994. “Hexenprozessforschung im
Latin epic Ph a r s a l i a (65 C.E.). Lu c a n’s necro m a n c e r,
Bundesarchiv.” Mitteilungen aus dem Bundesarchiv2: 75–83.
the Thessalian sorceress Erictho, practiced hideous ritu-
Behringer,Wolfgang. 1994. “Zur Geschichte der
als involving the mutilation and consumption of
Hexenforschung.” Pp. 93–146 in Hexen und Hexenverfolgung
corpses in her magical pursuit of divination. Although
im deutschen Südwesten. Edited by Sönke Lorenz. Ostfildern:
Cantz. Lucan reveled in the repugnant details of Erictho’s rites,
Hachmeister, Lutz. 1996. Der Gegnerforscher: Die Karriere des the graphic detail of his portrayal was also part i a l l y
SS-Führers Franz Alfred Six.Munch: Beck. designed to reflect the contemporary societal and polit-
Harmening, Dieter. 1989. “Himmlers Hexenkartei: Ein ical condemnation of magic. Beyond the literary tradi-
Lagebericht zu ihrer Erforschung.” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde. tion, the Greek Magical Pa py r i (PMG) contain spells
Neue Folge 2: 99–112. concerning necro m a n c y, such as PMG IV. 2 0 0 6 – 2 1 2 5
Lorenz, Sönke, Dieter R. Bauer,Wolfgang Behringer, and Jürgen
(fourth century C.E.), which involved the conjuration
Michael Schmidt, eds. 1999. Himmlers Hexenkarthotek: Das
of a ghost to assist a magician in a variety of endeavors,
Interesse des Nationalsozialismus an der Hexenverfolgung.
including divination.
Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte.
The practice of necromancy is condemned in the
Schormann, Gerhard. 1981. Hexenprozesse in Deutschland,
He b rew Bible, for example in De u t e ronomy 18:10–11
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Sebald, Hans. 1989. “Nazi Ideology Redefining Deviants: ( w h e re the necromancer is listed alongside a series of
Witches, Himmler’sWitch-Trial Survey, and the Case of the magic practitioners), I Kings 28:8, and Isaiah 16:19. T h e
Bishopric of Bamberg.” Deviant Behaviour10: 253–270. most famous biblical account of necromancy concerns
the witch of Endor (I Sam. 28), consulted by Sa u l
Necromancy during the war with the Philistines. Saul, dismayed at
Derived from the Greek words nekros (dead) and his situation and bereft at the belief that God had
manteia (divination), necromancy is a form of divina- abandoned him, went to the necromancer at night
tion in which the dead are used. Necromancy usually and implored her to reanimate the spirit of Sa m u e l .
involves some form of direct interaction with a corpse The woman summoned Samuel, who confir m e d
(or parts thereof) to invoke spirits of the dead in order Go d’s rejection of Saul and predicted the defeat and
to obtain an omen. This magical act presupposes belief death of Saul and his sons. Theologians we re intrigued
in the afterlife, belief in the life of the soul after the by the account and various interpretations re s u l t e d .
death of the physical body, and the conviction that the The Church Fathers Te rtullian and St. Au g u s t i n e
spirit of the deceased is endowed with supernatural re g a rded the apparition as real, but argued that it was
wisdom or knowledge. the Devil who appeared to the necro m a n c e r, not the
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spirit of Samuel. In contrast, St. Je rome re g a rded the was re q u i red to perform necro m a n c y’s most intricate
apparition as a hoax and the so-called pythoness a and learned procedures, but the practice of necromancy
d e c e i ve r. In t e r p retations of the story by early modern was not the exclusive domain of the clergy. In 1324, for
writers we re similarly divided; Jean Bodin, the Fre n c h example, Dame Alice Kyteler was eventually found
demonologist, supported the explanation of Te rt u l l i a n guilty of practicing sorc e ry, including summoning
and St. Augustine, but Reginald Scot argued that she demons and the use of body parts for various maleficia
was merely a ve n t r i l o q u i s t . (evil acts). Although Alice Kyteler escaped being
In the early centuries of the Christian era, necroman- burned at the stake, her assistant, Petronella of Meath,
cy was a common magical practice, despite its condem- was not so fortunate. In a less spectacular or threatening
nation by the Church. Te rtullian warned against context, and one in keeping with the original meaning
becoming invo l ved in activities “in which demons of the art, there are accounts of cunning folk participat-
re p resent themselves as the souls of the deceased” (De ing in necromantic rites in order to acquire information
a n i m a 57.2), an important statement in view of its concerning the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
premise that necromancy was not, in fact, the reanima- Likewise, ordinary folk summoned the deceased to visit
tion of the dead but a process that unleashed demonic them in their dreams for a series of reasons, including
f o rces masquerading as ghosts. This definition charac- advice on matters ranging from their love lives to
t e r i zed the term n e c ro m a n c y in the early Christian era finances.
and subsequent centuries. By the Middle Ages, necro- The curiosity that appears to have been a major
mancy came to be associated with demonology and component of early modern Eu ropean experiments in
other forms of malevolent magic. necromancy was perhaps best captured in an account of
By the fifteenth century, from when a few necro- his experience with this so-called black art by
m a n c e r s’ manuals surv i ve (Kieckhefer 1997), this art Be n venuto Cellini, an Italian goldsmith and sculptor.
was not necessarily associated with the aim of conjuring In 1523, Cellini hired a Sicilian priest to locate a missing
demons or devils for the primary purpose of divina- woman and was invited to participate in a necromantic
tion, but it now encompassed a series of rituals for a rite; he described his reaction: “I, who had a great desire
variety of aims, including the acquisition of “love” and to know something of the matter, told him, that I had
power in addition to the infliction of harmful magic on all my life felt a curiosity to be acquainted with the
others, such as insanity and personal problems. Richard mysteries of this art” (Autobiography,64).
Kieckhefer (1989, 153) explained that a principal A half-century later, a practitioner of so-called high
s t ronghold of necromancy was the “clerical under- magic, John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, was
world.” The fact that clerics could be entrusted with the fascinated with contacting spirits. He sought an alliance
ritual of exorcism meant that they had access to specific with Edward Kelley, an alchemist, medium, and necro-
texts that could also provide useful insights into the m a n c e r. Together they created a system of occultism
p rocesses of invoking demons instead of driving them k n own as Enochian magic, the magic of angels and
away. Clerics (and some members of higher ecclesiasti- demons, subsequently influential in the development of
cal orders) also experimented with necromancy in order the philosophies of the Golden Dawn. A more adept
to verify certain aspects of their faith, such as the sacra- spiritualist than Dee, Kelly invoked spirits, while De e
ments and purgatory. Various books on necro m a n c y re c o rded the rites. Although rumors abounded that
were available, including the Table of Solomon and the both men had been involved in grotesque acts of necro-
Tre a s u ry of Ne c ro m a n c y. The Dominican inquisitor mancy entailing tomb robbing, more accurate accounts
Nicolas Eymeric, re f e r red to the latter texts in his indicated the use of various magical implements, such
D i rectorium inquisitorum ( Di re c t o ry of In q u i s i t o r s , as a scrying mirror, and the evocation of angels.
1376); the books were, in fact, publicly burned by him
MARGUERITE JOHNSON
(after he had read their contents). Eymeric re c o rd e d
numerous rituals alleged to have come from texts such See also:AUGUSTINE,ST.; BIBLE;BODIN,JEAN;CIRCE;CLERICAL
as the Table of Solomon, including inversions of MAGIC;CUNNINGFOLK;DEE,JOHN;DEMONOLOGY;DIVINATION;
Christian rites, such as genuflecting before the demons, ENDOR,WITCHOF;EYMERIC,NICOLAS;GHOSTS;GREEKMAGICAL
baptizing icons or images, and perve rting prayer for- PAPYRI;HOMER;KYTELER,ALICE;RITUALMAGIC;SCOT,
mats. A century later, Joan Vicente, a cleric fro m REGINALD;TRITHEMIUS,JOHANNES;VICENTE,JOAN.
References and further reading:
Eymeric’s region, used the Table of Solomon to perform
Kieckhefer, Richard. 1989. Magic in the Middle Ages.Cambridge:
necromantic rituals before the Inquisition caught him.
Cambridge University Press.
Not surprisingly, the Church took a seve re position
———. 1997. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the
in regard to necromancy (among other forms of magic)
Fifteenth Century.Gloucestershire, UK: Alan Sutton.
and, in the late Middle Ages, numerous clerics we re
Ogden, Daniel. 2002.Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek
accused of practicing it. The contents of various texts and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook.Oxford: Oxford University
on necromancy suggested that some formal education Press.
Necromancy 809 |
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Netherlands, Northern ran the risk of being executed if they we re unable to
In the northern provinces of the Low Countries, the produce the necessary evidence. In at least one case (in
region that is now the Netherlands, trials for witchcraft Kampen 1515), a woman was indeed executed after
were rare, with very few mass persecutions. The last failing to prove her allegations. Us u a l l y, the accused
Dutch witch was executed in 1608, making the were allowed to buy off legal prosecutions by paying a
Netherlands the first European state where witchcraft fine or “composition.” Only after the introduction of
accusations ceased to be life-threatening. Both its eco- the inquisitorial pro c e d u re did the authorities start
nomic situation and the attitude of its courts were investigations on their own initiative. The Burgundian
instrumental in this remarkable development. dukes and their Habsburg successors strongly support-
Until the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt in 1568, the ed this development and restricted the possibility of
northern provinces of the Low Countries were part of resolving such quarrels through compositions. Du r i n g
the Habsburg federation of seventeen provinces. After the first half of the sixteenth century, Roman law final-
the Dutch Re volt, the northern provinces became an ly entered court practice in the Low Countries. In
independent confederation, the Dutch Republic, which 1554, the Flemish jurist Joos de Damhouder published
c ove red roughly the area of the pre s e n t - d a y his Praxis Re rum Cr i m i n a l i u m ( Practice of Cr i m i n a l
Netherlands. During the 1580s the southern provinces, Matters), which was almost immediately acknowledged
located in what are now Belgium, Lu xembourg, and as the best manual for judges and lawyers. It taught
p a rts of northern France, we re re c o n q u e red by the them how to interpret the laws of the Codex Ju s t i n i a n i
Spanish army. But the war lasted for eighty ye a r s (Justinian Code), including those re g a rding witch-
(1568–1648), during which time the boundaries of the c r a f t . Damhouder viewed witchcraft as a form of
new state shifted, depending on military developments. lèse-majesté.
Around 1500, the new demonology, making people Another important element was the conviction of
who committed magical actions into accomplices of the many jurists that the prince was responsible for the
Devil, reached the northern provinces of the Low we l f a re of his people and there f o re should ensure that
Countries. But it should be emphasized that extre m e the conduct of his subjects followed Christian stan-
v i ews, such as those propagated in the Ma l l e u s dards. Not only the Habsburgs, but even their lifelong
Ma l e fic a rum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486), we re opponent Duke Charles of Gelderland saw it as their
never generally accepted there. Until the mid-sixteenth duty to fight the power of the Devil and his human fol-
c e n t u ry, influential theologians maintained the tradi- lowers. But the rapid growth of heresy already provided
tional scholastic doctrine as articulated by St. Augustine m o re demonically inspired offenders than they could
and Thomas Aquinas. These scholastics distinguished punish. Although repeatedly instructing their local rep-
b e t ween explicit and implicit pacts. The former was a re s e n t a t i ves to prosecute witches and sometimes eve n
capital crime, but the implicit pact was made without taking the lead in a campaign to wipe out these heinous
realizing its horrible implications and should therefore people, as Duke Charles did in 1514, their major con-
be discouraged by other, less radical methods. It result- cern was to stem the rising Protestant tide. Obviously,
ed from superstitious practices and thus was merely a both the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his ene-
sign system through which humans informed demons my Charles of Gelderland desired the eradication of
about their wishes. Superstitious actions there f o re witchcraft; they wanted their law courts to pro s e c u t e
implied a demonic covenant, but human beings could witches and punish them if proven guilty. But witch-
p e rform them while unaware of this implication. craft was a difficult crime to prove; there we re usually
Because the laws of nature bound the Devil, these no eyewitnesses to the crime, and material evidence was
superstitious acts had at best a limited effect. He could generally also lacking. The only way to prove the guilt
create illusions and make people believe that they had, of a suspected witch was by forcing her or him to con-
for instance, flown through the air in the company of fess. Torture was almost always needed to extract such a
other people and demons. All this was sheer illusion, confession, but the usual torture devices were not suffi-
h owe ve r, and it was sinful to believe in its re a l i t y. In ciently effective. In 1502, for instance, the sheriff of
learned circles in the Low Countries, the Ca n o n Haarlem arrested a woman who was subsequently tor-
Episcopi(ca. 906) remained dominant until at least the tured. But she managed to withstand the pain, despite
mid-sixteenth century. the use of “exceptional severity,” and in the end she was
Before 1500, accusations of witchcraft rarely evolved released. Only after Dutch hangmen had mastered spe-
into open trials in the northern Netherlands but we re cial techniques, the so-called watching and walking,
usually handled as minor offenses. Witchcraft was in could they force witches into confession. It took several
t h e o ry already perc e i ved as a capital crime, but tradi- decades to learn this skill, but by 1550 it was know n
tion made it extremely difficult to attain a conviction. throughout the country.
The talio ( retribution) was still valid in this period; In 1547, the countryside of the nort h e a s t e r n
therefore, individuals who accused others of witchcraft p rovince of Groningen witnessed the first major
810 Netherlands, Northern |
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outbreak of trials, during which twenty women and one persecution began in the region around Roermond, a
man we re executed. In the 1550s, a wave of pro s e c u- small town today in the southeastern Netherlands, in
tions affected the region between the Rhine and the which at least thirty-nine women and one man we re
Meuse Rivers. The total number of victims cannot be e xecuted. But in 1613, Roermond was under Sp a n i s h
established, since most trials took place in small, semi- control. This is also true of the chain of trials in August
autonomous domains, where archives have been badly and September 1595 that swept over northern and cen-
p re s e rved. In the mid-1560s, especially in 1564, the tral Brabant, ultimately reaching Brussels, taking the
number of trials rose once again, this time in the west- lives of twenty-nine women and three men; the Dutch
ern province of Holland. Once again, we cannot estab- did not conquer northern Brabant until 1629.
lish an exact number of victims, because many relevant Some areas (for instance, the northern province of
sources were lost during the tumult of the Dutch Revolt Friesland) remained completely free of witchcraft trials,
that began a few years later. and in other regions prosecutions began relatively late.
Despite this lack of precision, in the third quarter of No trials occurred in central or northern Brabant until
the sixteenth century prosecutions seem to have 1585, the year Antwerp surre n d e red to the Sp a n i s h .
reached their highest point in the nort h e r n The region around Antwerp subsequently suffered an
Netherlands. Although the number of trials once again economic collapse and severe subsistence problems. In
rose around 1590, this period was probably less bloody. the densely urbanized and highly developed coastal
After 1595, sizable persecutions occurred only in provinces, popular fear of witchcraft was largely decid-
regions under Spanish control. In 1613, for instance, a ed by economic conditions. The years 1589 and 1595
Execution of the witch Ann Hendricks in Amsterdam, where witchcraft trials seldom occurred. (TopFoto.co.uk)
Netherlands, Northern 811 |
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witnessed the first trials and executions in this re g i o n , who drafted the unive r s i t y’s advice we re members of
but in booming Holland they stopped in that same the Family of Love .
period. In 1564, for example, the number of trials sud- The Low Countries produced ve ry few pro p o n e n t s
denly rose in Holland—but only in towns that of the prosecution of witchcraft, with the notable
depended on trade and shipping, at a time when the e xception of Ma rtín Del Rio. Traditional scholastics
sound was blocked because of a war between Swe d e n like Jacob van Hoogstraten re p resented an old-f a s h i o n e d
and De n m a rk, there by severing connections to the a p p roach to demonology and as such we re not
Baltic and blocking the grain supply, called the “m o t h- founders of a skeptical tradition. Howe ve r, later oppo-
er trade” by the Dutch. In 1563, Brussels banned all nents from the Low Countries we re skeptics who did
i m p o rts of English wool, and Queen El i z a b e t h not believe that the Devil was re c ruiting an army of
responded by excluding ships from the Low Countries human followers. Two prominent early examples of
f rom English ports. Consequently, the economy of this skepticism are Johann We yer (born in 1515 as
t owns that depended on the trade with the Baltic and Johan Wier in Gr a ve, a small town not far fro m
England collapsed. In 1564, particularly vulnerable Nijmegen) and Cornelis (Cornelius) Loos (born in
places like Amsterdam and its surrounding country s i d e 1546 in the town of Gouda in Holland). T h e
or the port of Delft suddenly became centers of witch- Erasmianism that dominated the intellectual climate in
craft trials. the Dutch Republic offered perfect surroundings for
After 1585, the economic focus of nort h we s t e r n this skepticism.
Eu rope shifted to Holland and more specifically to T h e re was a market here for vernacular books that
A m s t e rdam, where an unprecedented economic boom denied the reality of the pact and the satanic cult. T h e
began. The re l a t i ve security of subsistence re m ove d first translation of Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of
much of the fear of witchcraft. During the seve n- Wi t c h c ra f t (1584) appeared in Leiden in 1609, albeit
teenth century, many people immigrated from nearby in an abridged form, which was reprinted in 1637 and
p a rts of Germany affected by large-scale witchcraft 1638. In 1657 a translation of Friedrich Sp e e’s Ca u t i o
panics. But none of them pressed for a prosecution of c r i m i n a l i s (A Warning on Criminal Ju s t i c e ,1631) was
witches in their new domicile. Dutch authorities published. It should be added, though, that King
could now easily repel any attempt to influence their Ja m e s’s Da e m o n o l o g i e(1597) also appeared in a Du t c h
policy in this re g a rd. For instance, when Amsterd a m’s translation in 1603, as did William Pe rk i n s’s A
Reformed ministers demanded in 1597 that the mag- Discourse of the Damned Art of Wi t c h c ra f t (1608) in
istrates should suppress heresy and magic, they 1611. But the publication of works supporting the
re c e i ved the blunt answer that the Dutch had no p rosecution of witches was rather exceptional. A
d e s i re to replace the Spanish Inquisition with Puritan minister had made these translations of
Calvinist intolerance. Ja m e s’s and Pe rk i n’s books, but they we re never men-
In the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, it became tioned approvingly by leading Dutch Puritans; for
v i rtually impossible in the 1590s to convict someone instance, Gy s b e rtus Voetius (1589–1676), pro f e s s o r
for witchcraft if the defendant refused to confess of theology at Ut recht Un i versity after 1634 and the
f re e l y. In 1593 the High Council, the appellate tri- undisputed leader of Dutch Puritans, taught that it
bunal for the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, ove r- was morally wrong to prosecute somebody for witch-
turned a ve rdict of the court of Holland and Ze e l a n d craft. Fully in line with the Dutch intellectual climate
to tort u re two women. The High Council acquitted was the publication in 1660 of We ye r’s Op e ra omnia
both women, and, as a result, it became virt u a l l y (Complete Wo rks). Original Dutch treatises on witch-
impossible to tort u re people suspected of witchcraft. craft we re also meant to erode the fear of witchcraft;
A year later the court of Holland and Zeeland ruled in for example, Daniel Jo n c t y s’s plea to restrict the use
f a vor of a woman who had been convicted by a lowe r of the rack (1651), Abraham Pa l i n g h’s warning against
bench to undergo the swimming test (water ord e a l ) . a resumption of the trials (1659), Herman Löher’s
Its decision was based on advice from the professors of ego-document (a memoir, autobiography, diary, or
medicine and philosophy of Leiden Un i ve r s i t y, which personal correspondence in whose text the author is
in turn was based on Johann We ye r’s De Pra e s t i g i i s continuously present) (1676), and of course, Ba l t h a s a r
Daemonum ( On the Tricks of Devils, 1563). Be k k e r’s voluminous rejection of demonic powe r
Ac c o rding to the professors, most women who we re ( 1 6 9 1 – 1 6 9 3 ) .
accused of witchcraft we re melancholics and we re Together with economic pro s p e r i t y, an Er a s m i a n
t h e re f o re likely to be rather fat, which would keep tolerance that was broadly shared by secular authorities
them afloat. They also deemed it conceivable that the explains why the judicial search for witches ended so
Devil would lift them up to pre vent them from sink- much sooner in the Dutch Republic than elsewhere in
ing. It should be noted that both the president of the Eu rope. The republic was nominally Reformed, but
High Council and the rector of Leiden Un i ve r s i t y secular authorities usually declined the Calvinist
812 Netherlands, Northern |
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m i n i s t e r s’ appeals to remodel society, if necessary by witchcraft remained a capital crime until the end of the
force. After 1594 the new jurisprudence regarding the Old Régime, but after 1608 this legal provision was
crime of witchcraft spread from Holland and Ze e l a n d only used to prosecute cunning folk and soothsaye r s ,
to the other provinces; the last execution on the territo- who we re never put to death but only banished, and
ry of the republic took place in 1608 in the town of sometimes also flogged.
Gorcum, the final victim a woman who had confessed
HANS DE WAARDT
to the local magistrates on her own initiative that she
had committed a pact and had bewitched seve r a l See also:ACCUSATORIALPROCEDURE;AMSTERDAM;BEKKER,
people. At least 140 people lost their lives in witchcraft BALTHASAR;CANONEPISCOPI;DECLINEOFTHEWITCHHUNTS;
trials in the northern Netherlands, and that number
DELRIO,MARTÍN;ERASMUS,DESIDERIUS;FAMILYOFLOVE;
rises to over 200 by including cases after the beginning
HOOGSTRATEN,JACOBVAN;INQUISITORIALPROCEDURE;
JONCTYS,DANIEL;LÖHER,HERMAN;LOOS,CORNELIUS;
of the Dutch Re volt in territories then under Sp a n i s h
LYNCHING;NETHERLANDS,SOUTHERN;PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;
control but now part of the Netherlands. Considering
PALINGH,ABRAHAM;PERKINS,WILLIAM;PURITANISM;ROMAN
that the population of these provinces rose from about
LAW;SCOT,REGINALD;SKEPTICISM;SPEE,FRIEDRICH;SWIMMING
1 million to approximately 1.5 million between 1500 TEST;WATCHINGANDWALKING;WEYER,JOHANN.
and 1600, the ratio of victims was re m a rkably low in References and further reading:
comparison to other regions. Blécourt, Willem de. 1990. Termen van toverij: De veranderende
The early ending of the trials does not imply that betekenis van toverij in Noordoost-Nederland tussen de 16de en
belief in the reality of witchcraft also disappeare d . 20ste eeuw.Nijmegen: SUN.
Accusations of witchcraft or sorc e ry we re still made Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke, and Willem Frijhoff, eds. 1991.
Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the
long after legal prosecutions had ended (for that matter,
Twentieth Century.Rotterdam: Universitaire Pers Rotterdam.
they still are), and occasionally secular and ecclesiastical
James I. 1603. Daemonologie, dat is, eene onderrichtinge tegen de
authorities had to deal with them, for example,through
tooverie.Amsterdam: Claes Cornelisz and Laurens Jacobsz.
slander trials or similar pro c e d u res. Lynchings of sup-
Jonctys, Daniel. 1650. De pyn-banck wedersproken en bematigt.
posed witches occurred in Amsterdam in 1624,
Amsterdam: Hendrick Maneke.
Rotterdam in 1628, and at Huizen, a village southeast Perkins, William. 1611. Tractaet van de ongodlijcke toover-const.
of Amsterdam, as late as 1746. People regularly asked Amsterdam: Jan Evertsz. Cloppenburch.
church officials for help to undo what they saw as the Scot, Reginald. 1609. Ontdecking van tovery.Leiden: Thomas
effects of witchcraft. The only assistance that Reformed Basson.
ministers could offer was prayers and communal fast- Spee, Friedrich. 1657. DeWaerborg om geen quaed hals-gerecht te
ing, but Catholic priests disposed of a far wider range of doen.Amsterdam: Jan Hendriksz and Jan Rieuwertsz.
Waardt, Hans de. 1991. Toverij en samenleving: Holland
resources. In the 1580s the Catholic Church had crum-
1500–1800.Den Haag: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks.
bled away almost completely, but a small group of
Waite, Gary K. 2003. Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early
priests soon began building a network of clandestine
Modern Europe.Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK;
parishes. These priests, the Jesuits especially, soon
Palgrave Macmillan.
detected the value of exo rcisms as propaganda and
exploited this device to the fullest. Annual Jesuit reports
Netherlands, Southern
to their superior in Brussels contained dozens of
In the historiography of witchcraft, the southern
accounts about the exo rcisms the Fathers applied to
Netherlands (contemporary Belgium), which remained
undo bewitchings of people, cattle, and houses and
under Habsburg rule until the end of the eighteenth
scores of other objects; to drive away demons; or to lib-
c e n t u ry, has usually been qualified as a region of terrible,
erate people who had concluded a pact with the Devil.
centrally organized witch hunts during the sixteenth
Be f o re, during, and after the trials, most accused
and seventeenth centuries, in total contrast to its neigh-
witches we re women, charged with a wide variety of
bor, the so-called witch-free northern Netherlands.
destructive activities. However, in the eastern provinces
Recent archival research countered this statement and
about half of the accused we re male. Most we re sus-
discerns a clear internal difference—chronologically as
p e c ted of attacking their enemies’ cattle in the guise of
well as in terms of the intensity of prosecutions—
we rew o l ves. But in the trials, only a few men we re
between the Flemish-speaking part and the French- and
formally charged with being we rew o l ves. After 1610,
German-speaking parts of the territory, which in
l ower courts we re sometimes inclined to take action
general corresponds to present-day Belgium, minus the
against supposed witches, but this never led to a convic-
prince-bishopric of Liège.
tion. In Holland, for instance, the fear of witchcraft
revived again in the 1650s. In 1659, a woman was even
formally accused of concluding a pact with the De v i l Territory(see Map)
and offering him her children. But in the end she was Be f o re we look at the witchcraft trials in the
only put in the pillory and then released. In theory, southern Netherlands from 1450 to 1685, it is ve ry
Netherlands, Southern 813 |
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i m p o rtant to fix the territory of that region during Witchcraft Trials (1450–1685)
this era. The southern (or Habsburg, or Au s t r i a n )
Netherlands corresponds to the territory of the Low Early Phase (1450–1480)
Countries that jurisdictionally did not belong to the The ongoing impact of the famous trial of 1459 against
Union of Ut recht after 1579. Regions that would lat- the Waldensians in the city of Arras can hardly be
er be connected with the Dutch Republic or (after overestimated. Fifteen persons were burned at the stake
Louis XIV) with France are here considered parts of after they admitted to have taken part in obscene
the southern Netherlands. The territory of the south- Sabbats and to have done homage to a black goat. The
ern Netherlands cove red major regions such as ever-increasing sorcery trials within the French-speak-
Flanders, Artois (with Douai and Arras), Br a b a n t ing regions south of the linguistic frontier we re
(with Breda, Antwe r p, Mechelen, Brussels, Louva i n described in a similar way. Within the sources we find
[ L e u ven], and ‘s He rtogenbosch), Ma a s t r i c h t , the words sorcherie (sorcery) and vauderie (Waldensian
Roermond, Na m u r, Lu xembourg, Limburg, Ha i n a u t heresy) as inextricable synonyms: at Nivelles, a woman
( Hainault), Lille-Orchies, Tournai, and Cambrai was banned in 1459 on suspicion of being a vaudoise ou
(Cambray). Recent re s e a rch has shown that at least sorcière(one who commits sorcery or heresy). Moreover,
2,564 (and perhaps even 1,000 more) witches we re the crime of sorcery was increasingly mixed with fif-
e xecuted in the southern Netherlands during the teenth-century demonology. The pact with the Devil
period 1450–1685 (see Table 1). This number con- and his adoration by a sect had become standard items.
siderably exceeded the 160 witches executed in the The short-term consequences of the trials at Arras were
n o rthern Ne t h e r l a n d s . substantial: already in 1460, large-scale inquiries were
814 Netherlands, Southern |
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Table N-1: Total of Witches Executed in the Southern Netherlands (1450–1685)
North of the South of the linguistic frontier South of the linguistic frontier
linguistic frontier (French-speaking) (French- and German-speaking)
County of Flanders: 202 County of Artois, Cambrésis, Duchy of Luxembourg:
Lille-Orchies, Tournai: 47 between 2000 and 3000
Duchy of Brabant: 57 County of Hainault: 28
Limburg: 9 Duchy of Brabant: 31
Roermond: 46 County of Namur: 144
Duchy of Luxembourg: minimum 2000
in all: 314 in all: minimum 250 in all: between 2000 and 3000
begun at Tournai, Douai, and Cambray about possible s o rc e ry. It took until 1532 to burn the first witches—a
witches. This exaggerated fervor to persecute forced man and a woman—at the stake on suspicion “of hav-
officials to act. Episcopal inquisitors became aware of ing given themselves to the enemy of He l l” (Va n y s a c k e r
the fact they must cope with a new phenomenon. 1988, 151). The aldermen of the city of Bruges thus
Several tracts were published; in 1477 Jean Tinctor had became the first in Flemish-speaking southern
his tract against the Waldensians translated fro m Netherlands to execute witches by fire. Mo re ove r, it is
French into Latin at Bruges. Preachers influenced the striking that in the 1530s, six witches we re burned or
common people in the late fifteenth century using decapitated in Flanders. During the same period, seve r a l
demonological interpretations of sorcery and thus artic- f o rtunetellers we re re p roached for having made a pact
ulating the cumulative concept of witchcraft to make with the Devil. In cases of recidivism, no mercy was
them believe that witches belonged to an organized sect s h own. Ne ve rtheless, there we re no mass exe c u t i o n s :
serving the Devil. Peculiarly enough, this belief or after 1538, Flemish stakes we re extinguished, at least for
interpretation of the crime of sorcery made no headway witches (although large numbers of heretics we re
in the Flemish (Dutch)-speaking part north of the lin- burned), for a period of fifty years, except for two exe-
guistic frontier. In the county of Flanders, sorcery was cutions at Ou d e n a a rde (1554) and Furnes (1567).
still punished only in combination with poisoning. The Flemish-speaking part of the duchy of Br a b a n t
a voided witch hunting for a long time. Of course there
First Prosecution and a re accusations of sorc e ry, but the custom of buying off
Relative Calm (1510–1560/1570) p rosecutions from the officers of justice generally pre ve n t-
In 1495 Ysabeau Packet, of Huy in the prince-bishopric ed trials. Real trials only started at the end of the sixteenth
of Liège, was accused of flying to secret nocturnal gath- c e n t u ry at Kempen, ‘s He rtogenbosch, and Malines, as
erings with other witches. After a short jurisdictional well in Inner and No rthern Brabant. Two exceptions we re
p ro c e d u re, she was burned at the stake on suspicion of Tienen, where seven women we re burned from 1552 to
harmful sorc e ry. Witch burnings soon spread to the 1554 and 1560 to 1564, and Kasterlee, where a woman
neighboring county of Namur: between 1509 and 1555 was tort u red to death during a witchcraft trial in 1565.
at least forty-eight persons we re executed at the stake
and thirty-one others banished on suspicion of va u d o i s i e Second and Greater
et sorcellerie ( h e resy or sorc e ry). Also, fortunetellers we re Witch Hunt (1570–1685)
s e ve rely persecuted. In the duchy of Lu xemburg, at least After a period of re l a t i ve calm, which lasted longer in
t h i rt y - t h ree people stood trial on suspicion of witchcraft some regions than in others, around 1570 new pro s e c u-
b e t ween 1509 and 1579. Fo u rteen of them—all tions based on cumulative witchcraft began. Once again
w o m e n — we re burned at the stake. In Art o i s , the regions south of the linguistic fro n t i e r, and especially
Fre n c h-speaking Flanders, and Cambrésis, officers of the German-speaking territorial jurisdictions of the
justice for the first time concentrated intensively on duchy of Lu xembourg, we re the pioneers. Re c e n t
female witches in the years 1510–1530. Also in the re s e a rch has claimed that there we re around 2,500–3,000
French-speaking part of Brabant, witches we re exe c u t e d witchcraft trials in the duchy of Lu xembourg betwe e n
b e t ween 1539 and 1543 at Limal and Jodoigne and 1560 and 1683; at least 2,000 ended with the exe c u t i o n
t wenty years later at In c o u rt, Villers, and, once again, of the accused. The jurisdictions of Bitburg, Arlon,
Jodoigne. The county of Hainaut burned its first witch Gre ve n m a c h e r, Lu xembourg, and Remich we re espe-
only in 1549, but between 1559 and 1576 at least four- cially zealous. The French-speaking regions of
teen others followed at Braine-le-Comte. After 1520, Lu xembourg (Bastogne, Chiny, Du r b u y, Vi rt o n ,
the county of Flanders intensified its prosecutions of Ma rche, Sa i n t-Hu b e rt, and Bouillon) reached their
Netherlands, Southern 815 |
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highest point of persecutions between 1615 and 1630. f o rty executions, with three more following in 1622.
War stopped most persecutions after 1630, except at In the duchies of Limburg and Overmaas, Eysden had
Su g n y, where eleven trials we re held between 1657 and s e ven executions between 1609 and 1613, and
1661. The last witch of the duchy of Lu xembourg and of Valkenburg had two executions in 1620.
the whole southern Netherlands was executed in Anloy Around 1630–1646, we see a new flash of prosecu-
(near Bouillon) in 1685. Besides the county of Na m u r, tions north of the linguistic fro n t i e r. Bruges and
w h e re almost 100 witches died at the stake between 1560 Malines had four and three executions, respectively, in
and 1646, the French-speaking part of the duchy of 1634–1635 and 1642. The most striking characteristic
Brabant also had its executions, especially at Ni velles and of the witchcraft prosecutions in the county of Flanders
Genappe, with a minimum of twenty witches exe c u t e d is their late end: Ni e u p o rt still had four pro s e c u t i o n s
b e t ween 1572 and 1587 and another eight betwe e n between 1650 and 1652; Olsene two in 1661; Heestert
1594 and 1601. The county of Hainaut had its pro s e c u- three between 1659 and 1667; and Belsele burned the
tions: at Braine-le-Comte, there we re twenty-eight trials last witch in Flanders in 1684. In all, there were at least
b e t ween 1581 and 1613, with thirteen women burned at twenty-three northern executions after 1650.
the stake. T h e re we re more sporadic prosecutions until Within the southern Netherlands we must distinguish
1640, the year in which the eighty-seve n - year-old Anna b e t ween the prosecutions north and south of the linguis-
Faulconnier died in jail. tic fro n t i e r. Na m u r, Lu xembourg, Lille-Orchies, Art o i s ,
A rtois, Lille-Orchies, and Cambrésis had two peaks, in and Cambrésis had their first serious hunts during the
1590–1600 and 1610–1620. After a period of re l a t i ve first half of the sixteenth century, immediately followe d
calm, the stakes we re once again lit in the decade by Hainaut, but the county of Flanders—without forget-
1630–1640. For twenty years, only female witches ting a first phase of prosecutions around 1530–1540—
s u f f e red, but from 1650 to 1660 many male witches we re and the Flemish-speaking part of the duchy of Br a b a n t
especially prosecuted. In the decade 1660–1670, witches still awaited their first big trials. The real witch hunt
again we re exc l u s i vely female. In all, at least 245 people n o rth of the linguistic frontier started only around 1589,
(203 women and 42 men) we re prosecuted for witchcraft lasting until 1612 (Brabant) or 1628 (Flanders); a second
b e t ween 1550 and 1700. How many died is unknow n , c ycle began around 1630–1645, and—surely for
because the sources containing ve rdicts are lacking; we Flanders—the last executions came after 1650. No rth of
k n ow only that at least 17 men and 30 women we re exe- the linguistic frontier there we re possibly some 308
cuted. In the Artesian villages of Oisy and Arleux, there witches executed, with Flanders, Brabant, Ro e r m o n d ,
we re at least 8 (perhaps 13) executions from 1612 to and Limburg accounting for 202, 57, 46, and 9 witches,
1614, some of them Cistercian nuns at the abbey of re s p e c t i ve l y. The essential difference between the
Oi s y - l e - Ve r g e r. In Cambrésis, the villages of Qu i é v ry, Flemish-speaking regions of the southern Ne t h e r l a n d s
Bazuel, Rieux, Fressies, and Hem-Lenglet we re especially and the northern Netherlands lay more in the chro n o l o-
k n own for their witch hunts. In addition, villages and gy than in the intensity of witchcraft pro s e c u t i o n s .
cities such as Douai, Bouvignies (in 1679), Va l e n c i e n n e s , A totally different situation existed south of the lin-
Bouchain, and Saint-Amand are to be mentioned. guistic frontier: there witchcraft persecutions began
No rth of the linguistic fro n t i e r, the actual witch hunts much earlier and we re much more violent. After an early
began only in 1589. In the duchy of Brabant, we fin d first phase, most regions experienced a second peak
both the execution of Cathelyne van den Bulcke at Lier from 1570 until 1630. Some of them, certainly Artois
and trials against women and girls at Breda and and Cambrésis, continued their witch hunts deep into
‘s He rtogenbosch, all in 1589. The county of Fl a n d e r s the seventeenth century. Nevertheless Namur, with 270
opened in 1589 with the burning at the stake of Lievine trials and 144 executions between 1509 and 1646, and
Mo r reeuws in Furnes. For Brabant, Peelland, and especially the German-speaking parts of Lu xe m b o u r g ,
Maastricht, the witch craze seems to have been re l a t i ve l y with between 2,500 and 3,000 trials and at least 2,000
limited until around 1612, with forty-two exe c u t i o n s . e xecutions between 1560 and 1683, we re by far the
The year 1595 was especially bloody: from June until worst witch-hunting regions in the southern
Se p t e m b e r, twenty-nine women and three men we re Netherlands. Their proximity to the Trier of
e xecuted in the Flemish-speaking part of Brabant. In the Archbishop Johann von Schöneburg, who ordered hun-
county of Flanders, the persecutions lasted until 1628, d reds of executions between 1581 and 1591, and the
with at least 161 executions. The so-called We s t h o e k— direct influence of the witchcraft tract of his suffragan
with Furnes, Ni e u p o rt, Diksmuide, Si n t - Wi n o k s b e r g e n , Peter Binsfeld surely influenced the attitude of Namur
Du n k i rk, Hondschote, Broekburg, Cassel, and Y p re s — and Luxembourg toward the crime of witchcraft.
was the principal home of Flemish witches. Such gre a t
cities as Bruges (in 1595) and Ghent (in 1601) also had Conclusions and Explanations
their “witch years.” The region of Roermond, belonging With the exception of some isolated cases, trials in
to the southern Netherlands, had its witch hunt in 1613: which the pact between a “cumulative” witch and the
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Devil stood central were all held in the southern the aldermen of Bruges dated 1596 to their “ignorant”
Netherlands before local secular benches of aldermen or colleagues at Courtrai demonstrated this point. T h e s e
feudal courts, not before episcopal courts or central learned aldermen, often humanists, spread the new
bodies like the Council of Flanders or the Council of c u m u l a t i ve concept of witchcraft throughout the re g i o n .
Brabant. Witchcraft trials followed normal criminal An analysis of the private libraries of the aldermen of
procedure, but the judges, influenced by demonology, Bruges shows that they we re acquainted not only with
accepted the combination of facts and especially the the Ma l l e u sor with the “p r i m i t i ve” demonology of their
punctum diabolicum (the Devil’s spot or mark) as indi- f e l l ow townsman Joos de Damhouder (1507–1581),
cations of guilt, which permitted arrests, torture, and but also with the later demonological tracts of Pa u l o
even condemnations. Death by fire, the typical punish- ( Paulus) Grillando (Grillandus), Jean Bodin, Ni c o l a s
ment for witchcraft, necessarily had to be preceded by R é m y, and Del Rio. This presence of the learned witch-
the suspect’s voluntary confession. craft concept in Bruges can also be found in the tort u re
If 80 percent of the witches executed in the sessions and in the formulation of ve rdicts by the magis-
Eu ropean witch craze we re female, the southern trates. In the spread of modern witchcraft concepts and
Netherlands was no exception. In Flanders, exactly 80 practices (e.g., pricking for a punctum diabolicumon the
percent (162 of 202) of those executed were women. In body of the witch), an active role was also played by the
the Flemish-speaking part of Brabant this figure rose to touring executioners. In the wake of these touring pro-
94 percent. In Hainault, a l l e xecuted witches we re fessionals, one could draw a chronology of witchcraft
women, and in Namur women constituted an ove r- trials within several regions. Biographical studies on
whelming 92 percent. Only two regions showed a main fig u res (witches, aldermen, and exe c u t i o n e r s )
somewhat different picture: in Luxembourg, according could also be illuminating.
to Ma r i e - Sylvie Du p o n t - B o u c h a t’s now - d i s p u t e d
DRIES VANYSACKER
figures, “only” 75 percent of the executed witches were
female, and in the region around Cambray and Artois, See also:ARRAS;BINSFELD,PETER;DELRIO,MARTÍN;DEVIL’SMARK;
only thirty of fort y - s e ven known cases (64 perc e n t ) EXECUTIONERS;EXECUTIONS;FEMALEWITCHES;LUXEMBOURG,
were women. This figure certainly has something to do DUCHYOF;TINCTOR,JOHANN;TRIER,ELECTORATEOF;URBAN
with a relative scarcity of sources. WITCHCRAFT;VAUDOIS(WALDENSIANS).
References and further reading:
Recent publications have shown that despite exc e l-
Aerts, Erik, and Maurits Wynants, eds. 1989. Les sorcières dans les
lent historical research, many fallacies persist about the
Pays-Bas Méridionaux (XVIe–XVIIe siècles).Brussels: Archives
witch hunt in the southern Netherlands. Thus, the
Générales du Royaume.
statement that the central government decrees of Ju l y
Blécourt, Willem de, and Hans de Waardt. 1990. “Das Vordringen
20, 1592, and November 8, 1595, greatly stimulated
der Zaubereiverfolgungen in die Niederlande: Rhein, Maas und
the witch hunt, has become out of date. Those decrees Schelde entlang.” Pp. 182–216 in Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen: Die
did not mention cumulative witchcraft, and the central Anfänge der europäischen Hexenverfolgungen.Edited by Andreas
g overnment, on the contrary, was reacting against Bauert. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
excesses by local benches of aldermen. Also, the impact Dupont-Bouchat, Marie-Sylvie, ed. 1987. La Sorcellerie dans les
of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, Pays-bas. Aspects juridiques, institutionnels et sociales. De hekserij
1486) on the prosecuting authorities in the southern in de Nederlanden onder het Ancien Régime. Juridische, institu-
tionele en sociale aspecten.Heule: UGA.
Netherlands has been greatly exaggerated. Un d o u b t e d l y,
———, Willem Frijhoff, and Robert Muchembled, eds. 1978.
the Disquisitiones Magicae libri sex ( Six Books on
Prophètes et sorciers dans les Pays-Bas, XVIe–XVIIIe siècle.Paris:
In vestigations into Magic, 1599/1600) of the Je s u i t
Hachette.
Martín Del Rio had far more impact on the witch hunt
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke, and Willem Frijhoff, eds. 1991.
in his native region. It was this Catholic encyc l o p e d i a
Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the
on witchcraft and on legal procedures in witchcraft tri- Twentieth Century.Rotterdam. Universitaire Pers Rotterdam.
als, first published at Louvain, that made the theories of Monballyu, Jos. 1996. Van hekserij beschuldigd: Heksenprocessen in
the Ma l l e u s k n own in the southern Netherlands a Vlaanderen tijdens de 16de en 17de eeuw.Heule: UGA.
century after its publication. ———. 2002. “Die Hexenprozesse in der Grafschaft Flandern
In the Netherlands, witchcraft was far from exc l u s i ve- (1495–1692). Chronologie, Soziographie, Geographie und
ly a rural phenomenon. It began at Arras and spread to Verfahren.” Pp. 279–314 in Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis.
Edited by Herbert Eiden and Rita Voltmer.Trier: Spee.
many large and small cities: Bruges, Malines, Gh e n t ,
Muchembled, Robert. 1981.Les derniers bûchers: Un village de
L o u vain, Antwe r p, Breda, Roermond, Lille, Do u a i ,
Flandre et ses sorcières sous Louis XIV.Paris: Ramsay.
Valenciennes, Ni velles, Bastogne, Du r b u y, and
———. 1994. “Te r res de contrastes: France, Pa y s - Bas, Prov i n c e s -
Bouillon. Mo re ove r, the influence of the learned city
Unies.” Pp. 99–132 in Magie et sorcellerie en Eu rope du Moyen Ag e
aldermen, who we re well informed about the cumula-
à nos jours.Edited by Ro b e rt Muchembled. Paris: Armand Colin.
t i ve concept of witchcraft, which they studied in Roelants, Nienke, and Dries Vanysacker. 2005. “Tightrope
demonological tracts, was considerable. A letter fro m Walkers on the Border Between Religion and Magic: Attitudes
Netherlands, Southern 817 |
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of Catholic Clerics North of the Linguistic Frontier in the occult forces that were apparently being wielded against
Southern Netherlands Toward Superstition and the Crime of them by their enemies. To blame a particular incident
Witchcraft (1550–1650).” Revue d’Hisoire Ecclésiastique 100, on witchcraft invo l ved holding a specific individual
nos. 3–4.
responsible for one’s misfortune. People today who seek
Vanhemelryck. 1999. Het gevecht met de duivel: Heksen in
external explanations for suffering and misadve n t u re
Vlaanderen.Louvain: Davidsfonds.
often blame impersonal forces such as corporate power
Vanysacker, Dries. 1988. Hekserij in Brugge: De magische leefwereld
or oppre s s i ve governmental agencies, as befits the
van een stadsbevolking, 16de–17de eeuw.Bruges: Van de
largely impersonal nature of our society. Pre m o d e r n
Wiele—Genootschap voor geschiedenis.
———. 2000. “Het aandeel van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de men and women were much more inclined to point the
Europese heksenvervolging (1450–1685): Een status quaesion- finger at individuals, re flecting the intensely personal-
is.” Trajecta9: 329–349. i zed environment in which they lived. Most New
———. 2001. “The Impact of Humanists on Witchcraft England communities contained no more than a few
Prosecutions in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Bruges.” h u n d red adult residents, so that each individual inter-
Humanistica Lovaniensia50: 393–434. acted with neighbors in a wide variety of contexts. We
Voltmer, Rita. “...Ce tant exécrable et détestable crime de sortilège.
deal regularly with all sorts of people who are otherwise
Der ‘Bürgerkrieg’ gegen Hexen und Hexenmeister im
u n k n own to us, but colonial New Englanders lived in
Herzogtum Luxemburg (16. und 17. Jahrhundert).” Hémecht;
communities where “e ve ry social transaction was
Zeitschrift für Luxemburger Geschichte56, no. 1: 57–92.
personal in the fullest sense” (Demos 1982, 312).
Waardt, Hans de. 1995. “Open en gesloten havens: Vervolging van
Most allegations in witchcraft trials related to
toverij en toegang tot de zee aan het einde van de zestiende
eeuw.” Pp. 149–168 in De Republiek tussen zee en vasteland: mysterious incidents that people explained in personal
Buitenlandse invloeden op cultuur, economie en politiek in terms. Accuser and accused were usually neighbors with
Nederland 1580–1800.Edited by K. Davids, M. ‘tHart, H. a history of disagreement. The accused had often
Kleijer, and J. Lucassen. Louvain: Garant. requested a loan or gift, perhaps of food or a household
implement; the accuser had refused but then felt guilty
New England for having done so, especially since communitarian
Sixty-one trials for witchcraft are known to have taken values we re accorded great significance among early
place in seventeenth-century New England, in addition New Englanders. The person who had refused the
to those that occurred during the 1692 Salem witch original request now shifted guilt onto the aggrieve d
hunt (Godbeer 1992, 235–237). The notorious Salem neighbor by blaming him or her for subsequent
trials have often distracted attention away from the misfortunes such as a child’s illness, the sudden death of
many other prosecutions for witchcraft that occurred l i vestock, or the inexplicable spoiling of food. T h e
throughout the seventeenth century in New England, assumption underlying most accusations was that a
from the 1638 indictment of Jane Hawkins in Boston person who felt aggrieved had resorted to witchcraft as
to the 1697 acquittal of Winifred Benham and her a form of revenge.
daughter in Connecticut. Some formal complaints There was no institutional outlet for the tension and
never came to trial, and many suspicions were never hostility resulting from such disagreements. If a neigh-
recorded but lurked nonetheless in the minds of towns- bor trespassed upon someone else’s pro p e rty or
folk and villagers, warping their interactions with committed assault and battery, a law had been broken
neighbors or acquaintances whom they suspected to be and the malefactor would be dealt with accord i n g l y ;
witches. Belief in the reality of witchcraft and fear of but refusing to give a neighbor food or lend a tool was
those who might be using occult powers to harm their not a crime, so that the animosity that resulted could
enemies were part of everyday life in colonial New not be expressed or mediated directly through civil or
England. Prosecutions for witchcraft were the tip of a criminal proceedings. Allegations of witchcraft provid-
cultural iceberg. ed an indirect outlet for feelings of guilt and hostility
In New England, a witchcraft trial generally took that resulted from confrontations of this kind. Su c h
place only after a gradual and often lengthy pro c e s s allegations made good sense in a culture that habitually
during which local suspicions had accumulated and explained human experience in both supernatural and
h a rdened into conviction that a particular individual intensely personal terms. The stress laid by Pu r i t a n
was indeed a witch. These suspicions resulted from the ministers upon the ubiquity of evil and of temptations
convergence of otherwise inexplicable misfortunes with to commit evil doubtless fostered suspicions that witch-
p roblematic personal relationships. Puritan ministers craft lay behind many misfortunes.
encouraged their flocks to see individual suffering as a Not all New Englanders we re equally vulnerable to
punishment from God for sin and inadequate faith. But accusations of witchcraft. When people feared that they
in common with the English and other Eu ro p e a n s , had been bewitched and sought to identify the malefac-
colonists often preferred to explain illness or mishap for t o r, they often blamed men and women in their local
which there was no clear explanation in terms of malign communities who already had a reputation for occult
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skill. These individuals (re f e r red to by contemporaries place in a gendered hierarchy that Puritans held to be
as “cunning folk”) we re known for their expertise in ordained by God.
magical divination and also healing techniques that Women who fulfilled their allotted roles as wive s ,
combined spells or charms with simple herbal remedies. mothers, household mistresses, and church members
Though ministers condemned any such activities as without threatening assumptions about appro p r i a t e
dependent upon the De v i l’s assistance, many colonists female comportment we re respected and praised as
we re less concerned about issues of causation and va l- handmaidens of the Lord, but those whose circ u m-
ued the services provided by cunning men and women. stances or behavior seemed to disrupt social norms
Yet popular belief that occult power could serve both could easily become branded as the servants of Sa t a n .
benevolent and malevolent purposes placed such practi- Especially vulnerable we re women who had passed
tioners in an ambiguous and vulnerable position: cun- menopause and thus no longer served the purpose of
ning folk might use their skills to harm as well as to procreation, women who were widowed and so neither
help their neighbors and could easily become the target f u l filled the role of wife nor had a husband to pro t e c t
of suspicion if a disagreement in which they had been them from malicious accusations, and women who had
i n vo l ved was followed by a mysterious stroke of bad inherited or stood to inherit pro p e rty in violation of
f o rtune that befell the other part y. Healers we re expectations that wealth would be transmitted fro m
especially susceptible to accusation if their patients man to man. Women who seemed unduly aggre s s i ve
grew sicker instead of recovering. and contentious we re also more likely to be accused;
Women known for their “cunning” were much more conduct that would not have struck contemporaries as
likely than men to be accused of witchcraft. The power p a rticularly egregious in men seemed utterly inappro-
wielded by cunning folk was potentially dangero u s priate in women. Behavior or circumstances that
whether in the hands of a man or a woman, but occult seemed disorderly could easily become identified as dia-
skill was especially threatening if the practitioner was bolical and associated with witchcraft: the Devil had,
female: the aura of power surrounding cunning folk after all, led a rebellion against God’s rule in heaven.
contradicted gender norms that placed women in sub- Once New Englanders became convinced that a par-
ordinate positions. Neither belief in the efficacy of folk ticular person was a witch and had accumulated
magic nor its practice were gender-specific: men as well s u f ficient evidence to justify a prosecution, they lodged a
as women resorted to and functioned as cunning folk. formal complaint with the authorities and so initiated a
Yet suspicions that magical skill had been used for mali- criminal prosecution. The penalty for witchcraft
cious ends were much more likely to be directed against t h roughout the New England colonies was death, as laid
female practitioners. Most accused cunning folk we re d own by Scripture. Yet convincing oneself and one’s
women. Their prosecution testified not only to the neighbors of an individual’s guilt was not the same as
ambiguous place that occult practitioners occupied convincing a court. Of the sixty-one known pro s e c u t i o n s
within New England communities but also to specifi- for witchcraft in seve n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry New En g l a n d ,
cally gendered fears. e xcluding the Salem witch hunt, sixteen at most (perhaps
An ove rwhelming majority (around four-fifths) of only fourteen) resulted in conviction and execution, a
those New Englanders tried for witchcraft were women. rate of just over one-quarter (26.2 percent). Four of these
As in old England, roughly half of the New En g l a n d individuals confessed, which made the court’s job much
men charged with this crime were married or otherwise e a s i e r. If they are omitted, the conviction rate falls to just
close to accused women: they we re, in other word s , under one-fifth (Godbeer 1992, 158).
guilty by association (Karlsen 1987, 47–48). Except in New England laws defined witchcraft in theological
a few regions, such as New France and Iceland, witch- terms, demanding proof of diabolical allegiance. Ye t
craft was perc e i ved on both sides of the Atlantic as a w h e reas the Puritan authorities depicted witches as
primarily female phenomenon. Puritan ministers did h e retics and servants of the Devil, ord i n a ry men and
not teach that women we re by nature more evil than women were more inclined to think about witchcraft as
men, but they did see them as weaker and thus more a practical problem: believing that their misfort u n e s
susceptible to sinful impulses. Clergymen re m i n d e d were due to witchcraft, they wanted to know who the
New England congregations that it was Eve who fir s t witch was, and they wanted her punished. The evidence
g a ve way to Satan and then seduced Adam, when she presented in witch cases rarely made any mention of the
should have continued to serve his moral we l f a re in Devil. That disjunction between legal requirements and
obedience to God; all women inherited that potential the nature of most popular testimony led to acquittal in
for collusion with the Devil from their mother Eve. Yet most cases. That deponents did not adapt their testimo-
some women were much more likely than others to be ny to fit legal criteria suggests that ord i n a ry colonists
accused of witchcraft. Throughout the seventeenth cen- were very much focused upon practical threats to their
tury, women became especially vulnerable to such alle- safety when thinking about witchcraft and also that at
gations if they were seen as challenging their prescribed least some people were much less thoroughly schooled
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in official ideology than persistent stereotypes of early condemned as diabolical proved collusion between the
New Englanders would suggest. accused witch and the Devil, but even here magistrates
Persons accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century we re mostly reluctant to convict unless there was
New England, excluding the Salem outbreak, were less explicit mention of the Devil in a confession or hostile
likely to be convicted and executed than their counter- depositions.
p a rts across the Atlantic. The English statutes enacted New England magistrates we re ready and willing to
against witchcraft in 1542 and 1563 had defined the convict and execute accused witches, should the
crime as a hostile act rather than as heresy, so that the evidence against them prove convincing. But as in their
p reoccupation of popular depositions with practical handling of prosecutions for other capital crimes, the
harm was less problematic. Continental law generally c o u rts refused to convict unless the evidence satisfie d
d e fined witchcraft in theological terms, but in many r i g o rous standards of pro o f, which meant either a vo l u n-
Eu ropean countries, the courts used tort u re to extract t a ry confession or at least two independent witnesses to
the kinds of evidence that would justify conviction for an incident demonstrating the individual’s guilt. It was
diabolical here s y. The New England authorities, d i f ficult enough to secure two witnesses for sexual
operating under English jurisdiction, had no legal offenses that carried the death penalty, but the challenge
recourse to tort u re when questioning defendants in was compounded when dealing with an invisible crime
witchcraft cases. (The Salem witch hunt was the only i n volving alleged collusion with supernatural agents.
occasion on which New England courts gathere d Only in a minority of cases we re New England magis-
e x t e n s i ve evidence of diabolical allegiance; it was also trates convinced that the evidence before them satisfie d
the only occasion on which the authorities used psy- the established criteria for conviction. At other trials,
chological pre s s u re and physical tort u re, illegally, to their fastidious adherence to evidentiary standard s
extract a large number of confessions.) resulted in acquittal. Judges sometimes pro n o u n c e d
The depositions given against New En g l a n d’s accused witches to be “suspiciously guilty” but “n o t
accused witches generally fell into one of four cate- legally guilty” of the alleged crime (Godbeer 1992, 173).
gories. Most fre q u e n t l y, villagers and tow n s f o l k In some cases, they ove rturned jury ve rdicts, re j e c t i n g
described quarrels with the accused individual that had the instincts of local jurymen who we re convinced of the
been followed by misfortune or illness for which there accused person’s guilt.
was apparently no natural explanation; the witnesses The neighbors and enemies of accused witches who
claimed that the alleged witch had afflicted them as a had given what they considered to be damning
d i rect consequence of these arguments. Second, depo- testimony we re often infuriated by the reluctance of
nents claimed that the accused had a reputation for skill magistrates to treat their depositions as legally
as a fortuneteller or healer; this established that the compelling. Sometimes they would confer with each
accused had occult powers that, it was implied, had also o t h e r, gather new evidence against the acquitted indi-
been deployed for malign purposes. T h i rd, witnesses vidual, and then renew legal charges. Three individuals
described having used countermagical techniques such we re each prosecuted on three separate occasions;
as boiling the urine of a bewitched child; if a neighbor another five appeared in court twice on charges of
suffered an analogous injury or was drawn inexplicably witchcraft. All these cases resulted in acquittal. Repeat
to the house in which the experiment was taking place, p rosecutions expressed unshaken belief in an individ-
that information was offered up to the court as incrim- u a l’s guilt and also dissatisfaction with the court s’
inating testimony. And finally, neighbors of the accused handling of witchcraft cases. That dissatisfaction some-
would describe generally suspicious behavior, such as times resulted in extralegal retaliation: MaryWebster of
extraordinary and perhaps superhuman strength. Hadley, Massachusetts, was brutally assaulted in 1684,
These depositions show beyond any doubt the fear a year after her acquittal, when townsfolk became
that alleged witches aroused among their neighbors, convinced that she had again bewitched one of her
but they we re mostly unconvincing from a legal per- neighbors.
s p e c t i ve. Magistrates and the learned ministers whom As the difficulty of securing a legal conviction for
they consulted during many of these cases dismissed witchcraft became increasingly apparent, New
testimony relating “strange accidents” following quar- Englanders became less and less inclined to initiate legal
rels as “slender and uncertain gro u n d s” for conviction p rosecutions against suspected witches: there we re 19
(Hall 1999, 348). Clergymen denounced countermagic witchcraft trials during the 1660s, but only 6 during
as “going to the Devil for help against the De v i l” the 1670s and 8 during the 1680s. That dramatic
( Godbeer 1992, 81) and warned that Satan was a decline was not due to a lessening fear of witches, as
malicious liar, which hardly encouraged magistrates to would become clear in 1692, when official encourage-
rely upon testimony describing countermagical experi- ment of witchcraft accusations in and around Sa l e m
ments. They were occasionally willing to conclude that Village unleashed a deluge of allegations. The witch
divination or other magical practices that ministers hunt of 1692, which resulted in over 150 arrests and 19
820 New England |
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e xecutions, was atypical in its scale and intensity. Ye t England, New France was a recently established, tiny
the fears and beliefs that underlay it merely expressed in c o m m u n i t y. In 1660, there we re only around 3,000
e x t reme form assumptions and anxieties that we re Eu ropeans in Quebec. This number rose to aro u n d
deeply rooted throughout New England culture. 10,000 by the end of the century—only one-eighth of
The damaging controversy over the Salem court’s New En g l a n d’s population at this point. The largest cities
reliance upon problematic testimony that led to the in New France we re small towns by French standard s ,
halt of the trials in the fall of 1692 re a f firmed and with Mo n t real at 500 and Quebec City at 800 in 1663.
i n t e n s i fied judicial concerns re g a rding evidentiary The French we re not eager to emigrate. Both the
issues. These combined with embarrassment as well as s e ve re weather and the fear of attacks from In d i a n s
sincere distress over the problematic convictions of that discouraged immigration to New France. Many who
year to discourage future prosecutions. Yet an end to voyaged to Quebec did not stay, so the colony’s early
witchcraft trials in New England by the end of the population was especially transient and unstable. T h i s
century did not signify an end to belief in and fear of was different from old France, where towns and villages
witches. New Englanders continued to use counter- had existed for centuries and most people stayed in
magic against suspected witchcraft throughout the their communities. Those who came to New Fr a n c e
eighteenth century and occasionally assaulted we re mostly young, unattached males from the Pa r i s
individuals whom they believed to be witches. In Ju l y region and northwestern France, who were more urban
1787, as the Constitutional Convention was meeting in in origins than the mainly rural French population.
Philadelphia to design a new system of government that This frontier community imported much traditional
would embody Enlightenment principles, a mob out- f o l k l o re and culture, which included a strong role for
side in the city streets lynched a woman who was the Devil, magic, and supernatural occurrences. On e
believed to be a witch. popular legend was the Chasse Galerie,which was a wild
ride across the night sky by souls destined for damna-
RICHARD GODBEER
tion. This was a widely diffused European legend, with
See also:ACQUITTALS;BERMUDA;COUNTERMAGIC;CUNNINGFOLK;
many local variants; in Quebec, the hell-bound riders
EVE;FEMALEWITCHES;GENDER;OCCULT;PERSONALITYOF
used canoes rather than horses. Belief in the pre s e n c e
WITCHES;PURITANISM;SALEM;TRIALS;WITNESSES.
and power of the Devil was widespread. The inhabi-
References and further reading:
tants of the Ile d’ Orléans, for example, feared that, if
Demos, John Putnam. 1970. “Underlying Themes in the
someone were dying at night, the Devil would intercept
Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New England.” American
Historical Review75: 1311–1326. the friend or relative who went in search of a priest, so
———. 1982. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of that he could gain possession of the soul of the person
Early New England.NewYork: Oxford University Press. who died without absolution. If possible, they would
Godbeer, Richard. 1992. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and send two carriages for the priest, expecting that at least
Religion in Early New England.NewYork: Cambridge one could get through. In addition, any unusual
University Press. climactic condition like comets or strange sounds could
Hall, David D. 1985. “Witchcraft and the Limits of
be regarded as a diabolical portent.
Interpretation.” New England Quarterly 58: 253–281.
Religious authorities, perhaps trying to get more
———. 1989. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular
priests dispatched to the colony, complained about the
Religious Belief in Early New England.NewYork: Knopf.
ignorance of the settlers as well as their unwillingness to
———. 1998. “Middle Ground on the Witch-Hunting Debate.”
attend Mass or pay their tithes. Still, Catholicism lay at
Reviews in American History26: 345–352.
———, ed. 1999. Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New the core of life in New France, with the same mixture of
England: A Documentary History, 1638–1693.Boston: folklore and Christianity that flourished in old France.
Northeastern University Press. A church at Beaupré near Quebec Ci t y, dedicated in
Kamensky, Jane. 1997. Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech 1658 to Ste. Anne, soon became a scene of miraculous
in Early New England.NewYork: Oxford University Press. c u res. In 1700, after a re m a rkable cure, Jean Sa l o i s
Karlsen, Carol F. 1987. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: hung his crutches on the chapel wall, beginning a tradi-
Witchcraft in Colonial New England.NewYork: W.W. Norton.
tion that persists to the present.
Reis, Elizabeth. 1997. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in
Unlike the situation in Europe and New England in
Puritan New England.Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell
this period, New France produced few cases invo l v i n g
University Press.
witchcraft that we re serious enough to come to the
Weisman, Richard. 1984.Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in
attention of the courts. In 1658, a disappointed suitor,
Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts.Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press. René Besnard, cast a spell on the marriage of his former
sweetheart by tying ritual knots in a string. This noue-
New France ment de l’ a i g u i l l e t t e (tying a knot, a ligature), widely
During the seventeenth century, when witchcraft was a practiced and feared in early modern France, was a tra-
serious concern for the elites of Eu rope and New ditional way of causing male impotence. The couple,
New France 821 |
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frightened of the spell, could not consummate their colonies to marry and multiply. Not surprisingly,
marriage, and accused Be s n a rd of causing “p e r p e t u a l women, even widows with children, married with ease
i m p o t e n c e . . . by m a l e fic e .” The court found him in Quebec. Marriages took place at much earlier ages,
g u i l t y, imposing a heavy fine and banishing him fro m which tended to make families larger as well. Is o l a t e d
Mo n t real. Both secular and religious authorities took older women we re often accused of witchcraft in
this sort of spell casting seriously: the bishop of Eu rope, but this group did not exist in New Fr a n c e .
Mo n t real annulled the marriage. When both part i e s The basic social unit there was the family farmstead, in
e ventually remarried and, between them, had twe n t y - which all the members worked together to clear the
five children, it only confirmed the reality of the spell. land, grow crops, and defend themselves against
Another serious case, a few years later, invo l ve d Indian attacks.
another disappointed suitor. Daniel Vuil (or Will), a In Eu rope, most witchcraft accusations we re made
c o n ve rted Protestant, was accused of causing the against women, supported by a long tradition of misog-
demonic possession of Barbe Hallay, who had rejected y n y, but both old and New France emphasized male
his marriage proposal. She was brought to Quebec City, witchcraft. Qu e b e c’s three most serious cases all
w h e re she was exo rc i zed and freed of her demons involved accusations against single men who had been
t h rough the care of the saintly Mother Catherine of disappointed in their attempts to marry. This was clearly
Saint Augustine and the intervention of the mart y re d the result of the unusual gender ratios in New France,
Father Jean de Bre b e u f. Vuil was tried, convicted, and where patterns of settlement and a shortage of women
executed—though it is not clear whether it was primar- p roduced a society that, at least in its early stages,
ily for blasphemy, for causing Barbe’s possession, or for differed significantly from the old village communities
trading brandy with the natives. of Eu rope. These factors apparently underlay the
In 1685, Jean Campagnard was charged with several e x t r a o rd i n a ry scarcity of formal witchcraft trials in
instances of making people ill through witchcraft, New France.
including a young woman who refused his adva n c e s .
JONATHAN L. PEARL
The local court found him guilty, but the colony’s
appellate court, the Sovereign Council in Quebec City, See also: FRANCE;IMPOTENCE,SEXUAL;MALEWITCHES;NEWENG-
established in 1663 as the equivalent of a Fre n c h LAND.
References and further reading:
p a rl e m e n t ( s ove reign judicial court), ove rturned his
Greer, Allan. 1997. The People of New France.Toronto: University
conviction. These few cases do not compare to the
of Toronto Press.
record of New England, where sixty-one witchcraft tri-
Moogk, Peter.La Nouvelle France: The Making of French
als took place and at most 36 witches were executed.
Canada—A Cultural History.East Lansing: Michigan State
Several factors contributed to the remarkable paucity
University Press.
of witchcraft trials in New France. For one thing, by the Pearl, Jonathan. 1977. “Witchcraft in New France in the
time a viable community was established in Qu e b e c , Seventeenth Century: The Social Aspect.” Historical Reflections
the French judicial elites we re punishing ve ry few 4: 191–205.
people accused of witchcraft. Ord i n a ry people still Seguin, Robert Lionel. 1971. La Sorcellerie au Québec du XVIIe
b e l i e ved that witches we re real and dangerous and Siècle.Montréal: Leméac.
accused their neighbors of trying to harm them by
diabolical means, but the French judicial system was New Granada
not responding strongly to these concerns. The New Kingdom of Granada (Nu e vo Rein de
Crucial differences also separated the social and Granada), corresponding to the modern states of
demographic structures of New France and old France. Colombia and Venezuela and parts of Panama and
Although most of its people lived by farming, Quebec’s Ecuador, was characterized by an especially high inci-
inhabitants did not replicate the society of French agri- dence of witchcraft trials in comparison with other
cultural villages. The settlements in Quebec stre t c h e d Spanish American jurisdictions. In 1547 an audiencia,
along the Saint Lawrence River between Quebec City or high court, was established at the capital Santa Fe de
and Mo n t real, with pro p e rties averaging around 90 Bogotá. The first archbishop came in 1553 to Santa Fe
acres. Houses were built close to the river on each prop- to assume the episcopal inquisitorial jurisdiction. From
e rt y, around 300 meters apart. Although conditions the foundation of the tribunal at Lima in 1570, New
we re ve ry harsh, within a few years these h a b i t a n t Granada was subject to the Peruvian Inquisition until
( resident) farmers we re substantially better off than September 26, 1610, when the third tribunal in
their French counterparts. Spanish America was installed in the city of Cartagena
Most early immigrants to New France were male. In with jurisdiction over northern South America, Central
1660, New France had over six single men for eve ry America, and the Caribbean Islands. At the end of the
a vailable Eu ropean woman. The royal gove r n m e n t seventeenth century, the Cartagena tribunal declined
responded by sending shiploads of women to the and was abolished after the proclamation of
822 New Granada |
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independence in 1811 and again in 1821 before the the faith), held in 1634, twenty-one witches we re
final achievement of independence of South America in punished, mostly by scourging.
1824. Witchcraft trials occurred during the whole
IRIS GAREIS
period of colonial rule, with peaks in the decades from
1610 to 1650 and at the beginning of the eighteenth See also:INQUISITION,SPANISH;NEWSPAIN;PERU;POPULARBELIEFS
c e n t u ry. Witchcraft, sorc e ry, and superstitions INWITCHES;SABBAT;SPAIN;SUPERSTITION.
References and further reading:
constituted the bulk of cases registered by the tribunal
Ballesteros Gaibrois, Manuel. 2000. “La instalación del tribunal
at Cartagena.
del Santo Oficio en Cartagena de Indias. Nuevas Noticias.”
Witchcraft beliefs we re widespread at all levels of
Pp. 1025–1029 in Historia de la Inquisición en España y
New Granadan colonial society. In the period
América.Vol. 3, Temas y problemas.Edited by Joaquín Pérez
1614–1690, 188 cases of superstitions we re tried by
Villanueva and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet. Madrid: Biblioteca
the Cartagena Inquisition, of which 58 we re witch- de Autores Cristianos, Centro de Estudios Inquisitoriales.
craft trials (Henningsen 1994, 19). Female defendants Ceballos Gómez, Diana Luz. 1994. Hechicería, brujería e
far outnumbered their male counterparts. After 1571, Inquisición en el Nuevo Reino de Granada: Un duelo de imagi-
the indigenous population was exempt from the narios.Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
inquisitorial jurisdiction. Ne ve rtheless, several witch- Escobedo, Ronald. 1993. “América y la Inquisición.” Pp. 319–350
craft cases involving Amerindians can be traced eve n in Los Inquisidores.Vitoria-Gasteiz: Fundación Sancho el Sabio.
Henningsen, Gustav. 1994. “La evangelización negra: Difusión de
after the installation of the Cartagena tribunal.
la magia europea por la América colonial.” Revista de la
During the colonial period, a multiplicity of jurisdic-
Inquisición3: 9–27.
tions characterized the territory of the Cart a g e n a
Lea, Henry Charles. 1922. The Inquisition in the Spanish
Inquisition. In distant regions, both ecclesiastical and
Dependencies: Sicily–Naples–Sardinia–Milan–The
secular tribunals pronounced sentences in witchcraft
Canaries–Mexico–Peru–New Granada.NewYork: Macmillan.
cases. Also, the inquisitors we re generally not ve ry Medina, José Toribio. 1899. Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio
concerned with the superstitions of the poor, the de la Inquisición de Cartagena de las Indias.Santiago de Chile:
Amerindians, or the slave population, even though the Universo.
g reat majority of witchcraft accusations re vo l ve d
a round individuals of African descent. Often the New Spain
accusations came from other members of the African In New Spain, witchcraft cases we re subject to the juris-
population. Nonetheless, the ideas on witchcraft as diction of the Inquisition. Fo l l owing the Sp a n i s h
re c o rded in trial documents correspond mainly to the conquest of Mexico in 1520, a monastic and later an
Eu ropean model of witches. episcopal Inquisition was introduced in the vice-roy a l t y
Witchcraft beliefs in sixteenth- and seve n t e e n t h-c e n t u ry of New Spain; until 1570, all sectors of the population
New Granada included characteristic elements of both we re subject to them. In 1571, a branch of the Sp a n i s h
the Eu ropean popular and demonological traditions: the Holy Of fice was installed at Mexico City with jurisdic-
witches we re thought to be able to transform tion over Central America, the Spanish dependencies in
t h e m s e l ves into animals, fly through the air, and cause No rth America, and the Philippines. It was not abol-
sickness and death through maleficent magic. ished until 1820. During its most active period, fro m
Defendants re p o rtedly took the shape of tigers, 1571 to 1700, it investigated about 2,000 cases (Alberro
snakes, cats, and birds to fly at night. While their body 1988, 195), including a considerable number of sorc e ry
remained lifeless at home, as if dead, their “s o u l” we n t and witchcraft accusations. Amerindians we re exe m p t
t h rough the air to suck the blood of children and to f rom the jurisdiction of the Mexican Inquisition but
attend assemblies, where the witches venerated the remained under the control of ecclesiastical courts after
Devil by kissing his anus. The tribunal at Cart a g e n a 1571. The similarity of pro c e d u res that characterize d
was founded at a time when the Su p re m a(the supre m e these institutions soon led to a confusion of competen-
council of the Inquisition) in Madrid had ord e re d cies and jurisdictions. Other evidence indicates that
e x t reme caution to be exe rcised in dealing with witch- monastic and secular tribunals, especially in distant ru r a l
craft accusations. In periods of crisis, howe ve r, such as a reas, sometimes acted on their own, independently of
in the 1630s, the inquisitors at Cartagena gave full the Mexican Inquisition, but did not always keep
c redit to the accusations. First, two women we re re c o rds of their witchcraft cases.
a r rested, and later, as the witch hunt spread thro u g h- In the course of this long period, witchcraft trials
out the province, a great number of people we re underwent substantial changes in New Spain, due to a
imprisoned. Fi n a l l y, two women of African descent changing assessment of the crime of witchcraft.
we re sentenced to die at the stake, but the Su p re m a Witchcraft and sorc e ry we re seve rely punished before
o rd e red a copy of the documents to be brought to 1570, but after the installation of the Inquisitorial tri-
Spain and eventually re voked the sentence of the bunal, they were no longer considered heresy, but only
C a rtagena tribunal. In the resulting auto-da-fé (act of superstition. With re g a rd to the nature of witchcraft,
New Spain 823 |
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trial documents suggested that in New Spain, the great i d o l a t ry; of transforming themselves into such fie rc e
majority of witchcraft and sorc e ry cases essentially animals as jaguars, lions, or dogs; or of making rain and
involved individuals serving individual clients, either by p roducing similar effects by magical means.
magically curing people or inflicting harm on them. C o n t e m p o r a ry colonial descriptions labeled these
From 1540 to 1700, the Mexican Inquisition tried abilities of indigenous specialists as witchcraft. T h e
144 people for “superstition” (Henningsen 1994, 10, n. trials, however, drew a clear distinction between sorcery
1). No absolute data are available for the eighteenth and witchcraft: the former supposed an implicit pact
c e n t u ry; but there is evidence of 60 cases qualified as with the Devil and the latter an explicit pact and denial
“superstitious healing” being investigated by the of the Christian faith. Additionally, witchcraft was asso-
Mexican Holy Office from 1701 to 1806, including 10 ciated with harmful magic. Consequently, the offenses
cases classified as sorc e ry (h e c h i c e r í a), and 5 as malefi- of the Amerindians we re usually qualified as sorc e ry
cent witchcraft (brujería) (Quezada 1989, cuadro 8). In rather than witchcraft.
addition, another source lists 125 different cases insti-
tuted by the Inquisition during the same period, Witchcraft Trials by the
including 20 cases of harmful witchcraft, 39 cases of Spanish Inquisitorial Tribunal
sorcery, and 66 for other forms of superstition (Aguirre Lacking jurisdiction over Amerindians, the Me x i c a n
Beltrán 1963, 333–376). Ev i d e n t l y, more witchcraft branch of the Spanish Inquisition also instituted
cases were tried by the Inquisition in New Spain during many more sorc e ry trials than witchcraft cases
the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth century, b e t ween 1571 and 1820. Like the “Eu ro p e a n” defen-
once all cases of superstition are included. dants of the episcopal inquisition, the great bulk of
accusations again dealt with love magic, superstitious
Witchcraft Trials by healing, and divination. Divination was practiced to
Ecclesiastical Inquisitions find lost objects, for diagnostic purposes in magical
During the period before 1571, a peak in the frequen- curing, for advice in daily life, and to foretell the
cy of trials occurred from 1536 to 1543, when Bishop f u t u re. Practitioners could be male or female, but
Juan de Zumárraga served as apostolic inquisitor in considerably more women we re accused of love
Mexico. He conducted at least 152 trials, among which magic. Some cases we re classified as maleficent witch-
23 dealt with accusations of sorcery and superstition craft, an offense usually committed by individuals
(Greenleaf 1961, 14). The historical documents from t rying to harm another person. Ac c o rding to their
these trials enable us to distinguish the witchcraft ethnic descent, they pre f e r red Eu ropean, African, or
beliefs reflected in trials of Europeans, Africans, or the Amerindian methods, including the native Me x i c a n
m e s t i zo populations from those instituted against p ro c e d u re of magically causing the death of a person
Amerindians. Accusations against the first group close- by breathing in his or her dire c t i o n .
ly resembled the “superstitions” dealt with by other Very few accusations corresponded to the contempo-
Spanish tribunals: divination (with or without invoca- rary European model of witchcraft. In 1614, however,
tions of the Devil), superstitious healing, and love witchcraft accusations suddenly increased in the north-
magic (combined with incantations and the use of ern Mexican town of Celaya, following the inquisitor’s
magic potions) were the most frequently mentioned p roclamation of the Edict of Faith (a list of types of
offenses qualified as sorc e ry or superstition. Mo s t h e resy). The resulting inquisitorial trials, held a few
defendants in this period (15 cases out of 20) were years after a famous outbreak of witchcraft had preoc-
women (Greenleaf 1961, 112). All were slaves or cupied the Inquisition in Sp a i n’s Basque country,
belonged to the lower classes of colonial society. Trials o f f e red a vision of witchcraft similar to early modern
from this period demonstrate vivid cultural exchanges Spanish ideas on witches (brujas) and their deeds. As in
among all ethnic groups of the colonial population, Spain, the majority of Mexican witchcraft defendants
especially near the bottom of the social hierarchy. we re women of low social status. Although women of
Spaniards, Africans, and Amerindians exchanged beliefs d i f f e rent ethnic descent we re implicated in the Celaya
and practices of divination, magical healing, and love cases, most were descendants of Spanish colonists. They
magic, and introduced such new elements as the use of were accused of assembling at night outside the town,
Mexican hallucinogenic drugs. Intercultural contacts where they allegedly adored the Devil in the form of a
also connected practitioners of magic with their clients, billy goat with an obscene kiss. A strange detail of this
as colonial magicians consulted Amerindian specialists Mexican version of the witches’ Sabbat relates that the
in search of more effective practices or because of their Devil, after the adoration, provided each of the witches
knowledge of local herbal medicine. with a portion of dung. His gift had special properties.
Howe ve r, a different picture emerged from the trials Used as an ointment, it transformed the witches into
instituted against native Mexican people. The defen- animals (for example, geese) and enabled them to fly
dants—mainly men—we re accused of sorc e ry and t h rough the air; one woman became a parrot for her
824 New Spain |
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s o l i t a ry nocturnal excursions. At the trials, the quently embellished in order to make a sensational
defendants prided themselves on their exploits, including story or advance a political point.
their ability to transport other people through the air to In late September 1643, just after the Battle of
distant places. Se veral male defendants related their New b u ry in Be rk s h i re, the royalist newspaper Me rc u r i u s
encounters with the Devil and confessed to signing an Ci v i c u s re p o rted that an angry old woman had left the
a g reement with him, written in their own blood. royalist encampment outside New b u ry and had cro s s e d
Despite these we l l - k n own elements of the Eu ro p e a n the River Kennet to present herself before the parliamen-
witch stereotype, the colonial Mexican version of t a ry army under the earl of Essex. T h e re she had demand-
witchcraft suffered from a lack of coherence, with ed to meet the general himself but had been denied. After
certain characteristic elements still present in the popu- a scuffle, she was arrested and charged with attempting to
lar imagination, while the general picture had fallen b l ow up the parliamentary army’s magazine. It seems like-
into oblivion. ly that she was executed as a spy or saboteur. At least, that
was one version of what happened.
IRIS GAREIS The following month saw this story change in at
least three other newspapers. The most fre q u e n t l y
See also:BASQUECOUNTRY;COURTS,ECCLESIASTICAL;
repeated version was that parliamentary soldiers had
DIVINATION;DRUGSANDHALLUCINOGENS;FEMALEWITCHES;
been amazed to see an old woman sailing on a plank (or
FLIGHTOFWITCHES;KISSOFSHAME;LOVEMAGIC;
NEWGRANADA;OINTMENTS;SABBAT;SORCERY;SPAIN; e ven, by some blasphemous miracle, walking on the
SUPERSTITION;WITCHANDWITCHCRAFT,DEFINITIONSOF. water) and had captured her as a witch.
References and further reading: In wartime, it is likely that many suspected witches,
Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo. 1963. Medicina y magia: El proceso de including this one, suffered summary justice; England’s
aculturación en la estructura colonial.Mexico: Instituto Nacional worst panic, the Ma t h ew Hopkins episode, lay in the
Indigenista. near future. But her execution apparently did not go as
Alberro, Solange. 1988. Inquisición y sociedad en México
planned. A cheap pamphlet published in 1643, A Most
1571–1700.Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica (French
Certain, Strange, and true Discovery of a Witch,claimed
Original 1988).
that she caught the bullets fired at her and chewed them
García-Molina Riquelme, Antonio. 1999. El régimen de penas y
u p, laughing and mocking the troops as she did so.
penitencias en el Tribunal de la Inquisición de México.Instituto
They were now certain that she must be in league with
de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Serie: Doctrina Jurídica, Núm. 7.
Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. the Devil and resorted to the customary magical coun-
Greenleaf, Richard E. 1961. Zumárraga and the Mexican termeasure of “scoring the witch above the breath”; that
Inquisition, 1536–1543.Washington, DC: Academy of is, cutting her forehead in the belief that drawing blood
American Franciscan History. would rob the witch of her power.This done, a soldier
———. 1969. The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century. placed his pistol beneath her ear and shot her at
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. point-blank range, upon which, the pamphlet said, “she
Grunberg, Bernard. 1998. L’Inquisition apostolique au Mexique:
straight sank down and died, leaving her legacy of a
Histoire d’une institution et de son impact dans une société colo-
detested carcass to the worms” (A Most Certain, Strange,
niale (1521–1571).Paris and Montreal: L’Harmattan.
and true Discovery of a Witch, 7) Though less gruesome
Henningsen, Gustav. 1994. “La evangelización negra: Difusión de
than other wartime stories of this age, like Hans Jacob
la magia europea por la América colonial.” Revista de la
Christoph von Grimmelshausen’s, the episode suggest-
Inquisición3: 9–27.
Huerga, Alvaro. 1993. “ElTribunal de la Inquisición de México.” ed that the carnage at Newbury had left British armies
Pp. 351–386 in Los Inquisidores.Vitoria-Gasteiz: Fundación in a brutal state.
Sancho el Sabio. The pamphlet account, with a clear parliamentari-
Medina, José Toribio. 1905. Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio an bias, also related that one of the soldiers who
de la Inquisición en México.Santiago de Chile: Imprenta a p p rehended her first saw a tall, lean, agile woman
Elzeviriana. t r a veling down the rive r. They set a trap for her. So m e
Quezada, Noemí. 1989. Enfermedad y maleficio: El curandero en el
soldiers we re afraid to touch her, but others obeye d
México colonial.Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
the order to capture her and drag her before the mili-
México.
t a ry commanders. After they perc e i ved that she was a
witch, a firing squad of two marksmen was arranged.
Newbury Witch (1643) The first lead musket ball bounced off her body (as
Soldiers killed this anonymous woman during the l ow velocity bullets sometimes did) and nearly hit the
English Civil War, possibly in the belief that she was a m a rksman in the face. Enraged, he ran at her with his
witch. Like many stories of witchcraft reported in the s w o rd. As the veins of her temple we re cut, she re a l-
popular press, fact and fiction are difficult to separate. i zed that the Devil had deserted her. She stopped
What may have been a very straightforward event was laughing and began instead to wail and moan, tearing
probably misinterpreted at the time and then subse- at her hair.
Newbury Witch 825 |
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Nider, Johannes (ca. 1380–1438)
A Dominican theologian and religious reformer active
in the early fifteenth century, Nider wrote some of the
most extensive and influential early accounts of witch-
craft. His major work on this subject, Formicarius (The
Anthill), written in 1437 and 1438, was printed in
seven separate editions between 1475 and 1692. It was
also an important source of information for the infa-
mous Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches),
written by the Dominican Heinrich Kramer and first
published in 1486. The fifth book of the Formicarius,
which dealt specifically with “witches and their decep-
tions” (“de maleficis et eorum deceptionibus”), was
included in several later editions along with the
Malleus. In addition to relating numerous stories of
witchcraft in the Formicarius, Nider treated the topics
of magic and sorcery in two other works, De lepra
morali (On Moral Leprosy) and Preceptorium divine
legis (Preceptor of Divine Law).
Born in the small Swabian imperial city of Isny in the
early 1380s, Nider entered the Dominican Order at
Colmar in 1402. At this time, Colmar (now in Alsace,
France) was one of only two Dominican houses in
German lands controlled by the so-called observant, or
reform, movement. We can assume that Nider chose to
enter the order at Colmar because he was attracted to
the observant movement; he eventually became one of
the most important observant Dominican leaders of his
Title page of pamphlet describing the witch of Newbury, caught day. Following the normal course of Dominican educa-
walking on a plank in the water. (Glasgow University Library,
tion, Nider underwent his initial training at Colmar,
Department of Special Collections)
then learned the liberal arts at a Dominican s t u d i u m
g e n e rale (house of studies; literally “general studies” ) ,
and finally received his theological education. He began
At the dramatic climax, the propaganda message
studying theology in Cologne, possibly as early as 1410,
was delive red. The witch’s last words we re re p o rted to
but left before completing his degree and attended
be: “And is it come to pass, that I must die indeed?
some sessions of the Council of Constance
Why then, his excellency the earl of Essex shall be for-
(1414–1418). In 1422, he petitioned to be admitted to
tunate and win the fie l d” (A Most Ce rtain, St range, and
study theology in Vienna, where he received his degree
t rue Discove ry of a Wi t c h , 7). The defeat of a roy a l i s t
in June 1425.
witch was thus made into a prophecy of parliamentary
Nider taught briefly at Vienna and then served as
superiority and provided proof that the Devil was on
prior of the Dominicans in Nu remberg from 1426 or
the king’s side. The story of the witch of New b u ry
1427 until April 1429, when he moved to Basel to
t h e re f o re re vealed itself to have been a powe rf u l l y
u n d e rtake the reform of the Dominican priory there .
i n s t ru c t i ve fantasy or allegory, albeit one with little, if
While in Basel, he not only served as prior of the
a n y, foundation in fact.
Dominicans but also became a leading member of the
MALCOLM J. GASKILL Council of Basel (1431–1449). He delivered the open-
ing sermon of the council, served on its deputation for
See also:ANTICHRIST;ENGLAND;HOPKINS,MATTHEW;PAMPHLETS religious reform, and undertook several import a n t
ANDNEWSPAPERS;WARFARE. missions to negotiate with the heretical Hussites in
References and further reading:
Bohemia. Moreover, under his leadership, several of the
Capp, Bernard. 1989. “Popular Culture and the English Civil
c o u n c i l’s most important deputations and delegations
War.” History of European Ideas10: 31–41.
met in his Dominican priory. In late 1434 or early
Ewen, C. L’Estrange. 1933. Witchcraft and Demonianism.London:
1435, however, Nider left Basel, returning to Vienna to
Heath Cranton.
teach theology. He was elected dean of the theological
Purkiss, Diane. 1997. “Desire and Its Deformities: Fantasies of
Witchcraft in the English Civil War.” Journal of Medieval and faculty in 1436. In 1438, he returned briefly to Basel,
Early Modern Studies27: 103–132. continuing on that summer to direct the reform of the
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female Dominican convent of St. Catherine in Colmar. i n f e rtility or illness in people or animals, killing small
Upon his return journey, he died at Nu remberg on c h i l d ren, damaging or destroying crops, or magically
August 13, 1438. stealing crops from their neighbors’ fields. Witches per-
Although an active intellectual figure for slightly over formed this magic through the agency of demons, and
ten years, from 1426 until 1438, and although fre- the witches gained their power over demons by formal-
quently occupied during this period with numero u s ly renouncing their faith and worshipping the Devil at
other duties, Nider was neve rtheless a pro l i fic author s e c ret nocturnal gatherings. At these ceremonies they
who wrote at least fifteen major treatises, as well as also desecrated the cross and the sacraments, cannibal-
numerous sermons and letters. His topics ranged from ized the bodies of young children and babies, engaged
the reform of the religious orders to here s y, as well as in sexual orgies, and performed various other detestable
general moral guides and treatises on the care of souls. acts. Notably, Nider’s witches did not fly to these gath-
Yet he is mainly known as an authority on witchcraft, erings; night flight was never mentioned in the
a b ove all for his most important work, Fo rm i c a r i u s . Formicariusexcept as a delusion.
This long treatise was composed in the form of a dia- Although in the course of his stories, Nider described
logue between a theologian, who was clearly Ni d e r both male and female witches, and although he consis-
himself, and a lazy but curious student who posed ques- tently used male pronouns when referring to witches in
tions on a wide range of moral and spiritual matters. general, he is neve rtheless the first major clerical
The treatise took its title and its organizing symbol authority to argue that women we re more prone to
f rom Proverbs 6.6 (which also served as its opening witchcraft than men. Immediately after the discussion
line): “Go to the ant, O lazy one, and consider its ways of Joan of Arc in the Fo rm i c a r i u s , the lazy student
and learn wisdom.” T h roughout, the character of the e x p ressed amazement that the weaker sex could be
student (the “lazy one” of the Proverbs) posed questions capable of such terrible crimes. T h rough the voice of
and demanded not just scholastic reasoning but also the theologian, Nider responded that, shocking as it
p resent-day examples to illustrate the theologian’s seems, learned authorities knew that it was not rare for
points. Thus the dialogue of the Fo rm i c a r i u s o f t e n women to wield such demonic powe r. He then
became a collection of morally edifying stories probably explained how women were more prone to the tempta-
intended for use in sermons. tions of the Devil, due mainly to their weaker physical,
Because of this format, when Nider turned to the mental, and moral nature, and produced several bibli-
topic of witchcraft, he presented not just a purely theo- cal, patristic, and classical citations to this effect. Thus,
retical, scholastic account of the powers of demons and women we re more easily seduced into the crime of
the workings of sorcery but actual stories of witches and witchcraft than men. This section of the Fo rm i c a r i u s
witchcraft that he had heard from other authorities (he served as a basis for the even more extreme misogyny of
never seemed to have actually encountered a witch him- the later Malleus Maleficarum.
self). Many of these stories were set in various locations In t e re s t i n g l y, alongside tales of nocturnal conve n t i-
in the western Alps, mostly the territory of Bern in the cles and diabolic cults of witches, Nider also presented
diocese of Lausanne, where some of the earliest tru e s e veral accounts that lacked these more extreme flo u r-
witchcraft trials we re beginning to take place at this ishes. Most of these stories centered on the figure of a
time. Many of Nider’s stories of witchcraft came from a single “great witch,” a man named Staedelin, of whom
single source, the secular judge Peter of Bern, who had Nider heard from Peter of Bern. Although called a
conducted numerous sorcery or witchcraft trials several witch ( m a l e fic u s ) , Staedelin was not presented as a
years earlier in the Simme valley of the Be r n e s e member of any cult, and although his magic was
Ob e rl a n d . Nider supplemented these accounts with demonic in nature, he does not appear to have surren-
information from a Dominican inquisitor of Au t u n d e red his soul to the Devil or to have apostasize d .
who was active against witches, with personal discus- Rather, these stories seemed much more “realistic” and
sions he had in Vienna with a former demonic magi- p robably more accurately depicted certain common
cian or necromancer who had since reformed and now magical practices and beliefs that existed before the
l i ved as a pious Benedictine monk, and with the emergence of the full stereotype of witchcraft. T h e
account of certain delegates to the Council of Ba s e l Fo rmicarius, t h e re f o re, seemed to re p resent almost the
about the burning of Joan of Arc and several other exact moment when the more developed stereotype of
women whom Nider regarded as witches. diabolic witchcraft superceded earlier ideas of simple
The picture of witchcraft that emerged in the demonic sorcery, at least in the minds of some clerical
Fo rm i c a r i u s contained most of the elements that authorities.
became standard parts of the witch stereotype through- Nider also discussed magic and witchcraft in
out the centuries of the great witch hunts in Eu ro p e . sections of his moral treatises De lepra mora l i a n d
Nider described witches mostly as simple rustics who Preceptorium divine legis. Lacking the narrative quality
p e rformed harmful sorc e ry of various sort s — c a u s i n g of the Fo rm i c a r i u s ,these treatises generally presented a
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m o re purely theoretical account of the supposed is considered to be in a state of suspended animation, a
w o rkings of demonic magic, particularly of the va r i- n e c e s s a ry lull during the hours of the dominion of
ous powers and natural abilities of demons, and of the death” (Caro Baroja 1964, 5).
necessity and workings of the pacts that supposedly In Greece and Rome, ghosts and certain deities asso-
bound demons to the human sorc e rers or witches who ciated with witchcraft, such as Hecate, were thought to
commanded them. haunt cro s s roads and similar frightening places at
night. Such beliefs remained and we re altered and
MICHAEL D. BAILEY
elaborated upon throughout the centuries. In the
See also: BASEL,COUNCILOF;DOMINICANORDER; Basque region, for example, there are various stories
FEMALEWITCHES;FLIGHTOFWITCHES;HUSSITES; about the nocturnal activities of witches, including
JOANOFARC;KRAMER,HEINRICH;LAUSANNE,DIOCESEOF; ones not necessarily relating to evil acts, such as horse-
MALLEUSMALEFICARUM;ORIGINSOFTHEWITCHHUNTS; back rides in the dark hours. The witch’s association
PETEROFBERN;SABBAT. with cats (in addition to owls and wolves) was partially
References and further reading:
based on the belief that witches, like cats, were particu-
Bailey, Michael D. 1996. “The Medieval Concept of the Witches’
larly active at night. The conviction that witches could
Sabbath.” Exemplaria8: 419–439.
transform themselves into cats gave rise to va r i o u s
———. 2001. “From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions
stories (and court cases) involving maleficium (harmful
of Magic in the Later Middle Ages.” Speculum76: 960–990.
magic) directed against infants and children, as well as
———. 2003. Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in
the Late Middle Ages.University Park: Pennsylvania State other random acts of evil. In 1608, Francesco Ma r i a
University Press. Guazzo, citing Nicolas Rémy, commented: “Remy (II,
Borst, Arno. 1992. “The Origins of the Witch-Craze in the Alps.” 5) writes nearly all those who came into his hands
Pp. 101–122 in Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and charged with witchcraft told him that they changed
Artists.Edited by Arno Borst. Translated by Eric Hansen. themselves into cats whenever they wished to enter oth-
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. er people’s houses in secret, so that they could scatter
Chène, Catherine. 1999. “Jean Nider,Formicarius (livre II,
their poison there by night” (Compendium Maleficarum
chapitre 4 et livreV, chapitres 3, 4 et 7).” Pp. 99–265 in
[A Summary of Witches] 1.8).
L’imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des textes les plus anciens
The idea of the witch who transformed herself at
(1430 c.–1440 c.).Edited by Martine Ostorero, Agostino
night predated the early modern Eu ropean age, as evi-
Paravicini Bagliani, and Kathrin Utz Tremp, with Catherine
denced in the poem by Pro p e rtius (ca. 50–ca. 16
Chène. Lausanne: Université de Lausanne.
Tschacher,Werner. 2000. Der Formicarius des Johannes Nider von B.C.E.) in which he described the activities of a witch
1437/38: Studien zu den Anfängen der Hexenverfolgungen im who “can change her form into that of a night-prow l i n g
Spätmittelalter.Aachen: Shaker. w o l f” (4.5.14). Si m i l a r l y, Ovid (43 B.C.E.–C.E. 17)
described the witch Dipsas, whom he suspected of per-
Night Witch, or Night Hag forming shape-shifting magic to transform herself into a
A witch believed to wander in the night is called a night nocturnal bird (Am o re s 1.8.13–14). In the Fa s t i
witch or night hag. (6.131–146), Ovid described owl-like birds, which he
The origins of the night witch can be traced back to suggested we re old women transformed, who traveled at
ancient times. In He b rew belief, for example, the night in search of unprotected babies to devo u r.
female demon Lilith was associated with the night and Norman Cohn (1993, 64) noted the existence of similar
its denizens. Lilith, the baby-snatching demon whose beliefs among the Germanic peoples prior to Ro m a n
p resence was a constant threat to mothers and their and, later, Christian influences. During the Early
n ewborns, subsequently became a powe rful force in Middle Ages, belief in the s t r i g a econtinued thro u g h o u t
early modern European demonology; her various pow- Ge r m a n y, and the images that characterized their
ers included the ability to steal semen from sleeping descriptions in Latin literature, namely, metamorphosis
men. In Roman literature of the imperial era, the image and cannibalism, we re re flected in indigenous Ge r m a n i c
of the witch who worked her evil at night was pre va- folktales. Those gripped by nightmares or suffering fro m
lent. In the Sa t y r i c o n (§ 63), Pe t ronius (d. C.E. 65) night paralyses could also find an explanation in the
described the work of the strigae(witches; etymological- p resence and effects of the night witch. Sensations of
ly connected with strix, or screech owl), whom he later heaviness, suffocation, and general discomfort we re
called nocturnae(literally, “women of the night”). These once ascribed to the night witch sitting on a person’s
night witches we re described as having worked magic chest (hence the term night hagor o l dh a gs y n d ro m e ) .
on a youth (replacing his innards with straw) and also The definitive expression of the activities of the night
causing insanity and later death to a valiant man who witch was, arguably, participation in the Sabbat, the
attempted to drive them away.The connotations of the gathering of witches in remote places that inva r i a b l y
night have contributed significantly to the belief in and took place at night. Again the motif of metamorphosis
depiction of the night witch, for it is at night that “life was prominent in the conceptualization of the Sabbat,
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with stories abounding of witches traveling to the S c o t’s views on the nightmare formed part of his
specified location in the form of wolves, cats, owls, and attempt to debunk popular beliefs about witchcraft.
bats. Belief in organized groups of witches flying to the Ne ve rtheless, not only in England but also in many
Sabbat, which began to dominate the relevant literature other parts of Eu rope, the nightmare experience was
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, has its origins often attributed to the nocturnal visits of witches. It
in earlier convictions about women of the night and was widely believed that they came and straddled those
nocturnal hags; for example, John of Sa l i s b u ry, in his whom they wished to torment, giving rise to the
Po l i c ra t i c u s (The St a t e s m a n , 1159) re c o rded gatherings English expressions “hag-ridden” and “w i t c h - r i d d e n . ”
in honor of Herodias, in which women (lamiae, a clas- The physical sensations of paralysis, pre s s u re, and
sical correspondent for s t r i g a e) banqueted on babies, suffocation we re frequently accompanied by aural
“some of them being dismembered and gluttonously hallucinations and visions of suspected witches.
devoured” (2.17). Examples of people interpreting the nightmare expe-
rience in terms of witchcraft can be found in the court
MARGUERITE JOHNSON
records of several European countries. Trial depositions
See also:CANNIBALISM;CATS;CROSSROADS;DIANA;FLIGHTOF
from seventeenth-century Augsburg, Germany, referred
WITCHES;GHOSTS;HECATE;JOHNOFSALISBURY;LAMIA;
to witches’ t ru c k e n , or pressing. In 1666 a pre g n a n t
LILITH;METAMORPHOSIS;NIGHTMARES;PEOPLEOFTHENIGHT;
woman named Anna Maria Cramer testified that a
SABBAT;STRIX,STRIGA,STRIA;WITCHANDWITCHCRAFT,
witch kept visiting her at night and lying upon her; in
DEFINITIONSOF.
1685 a man testified that his wife complained of feeling
References and further reading:
Caro Baroja, Julio. 1964. The World of the Witches.Translated by someone pressing her at night (Roper 1994, 209).
Nigel Glendinning. London: Phoenix Press. When in 1609, Jean Grand Didier, from the duchy of
Cohn, Norman. 1993. Eu ro p e’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Lorraine, went to sleep after having exchanged harsh
Christians in Me d i e val Christendom.Re v. ed. London: Pi m l i c o. w o rds with a suspected witch, he felt a heavy we i g h t
Gaster, Moses. 1900. “Two Thousand Years of a Charm Against upon him and saw several people in his bedro o m ,
the Child-Stealing Witch.” Folklore11: 129–161. including the suspected witch, whom he imagined had
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1991. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath.
tried to throttle him (Briggs 1996, 115–116).
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
In parts of western England, occasional accusa-
Ogden, Daniel. 2002. Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek
tions of witchcraft resulting from nightmare attacks
and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook.Oxford: Oxford University
still reached the courts in the nineteenth century ;
Press.
most concerned people prosecuted for assault after
Stephens, Walter. 2002. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the
Crisis of Be l i e f .Chicago and London: Un i versity of Chicago Pre s s . drawing blood from witches whom they believe d
we re “hag-riding” them. In 1871, for example, a
Nightmares t we n t y-t h re e - year-old farmer from the county of
The origin of the word n i g h t m a recan be found in the Dorset was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment
ancient Germanic and No rdic belief in the m a ra , a after having beaten an eighty-five - year-old woman he
supernatural being, usually female, who lay on peo- accused of persistently “hag-riding” him. In the pre v i-
p l e’s chests at night, suffocating and paralyzing them. ous decade, a Somerset couple, the Clapps, we re
The same concept is also present in Slavic culture s : p rosecuted after having drawn blood from an elderly
we find the z m o rain Poland, k i k i m o ra in Russia, and n e i g h b o r. The court heard how “between 12 and 1
m o r i c a in Croatia, which suggests that the m a ra c o n- o’clock, the old lady came into defendant’s bedro o m ,
cept may have In d o - Eu ropean roots. All these terms and lay on her feet, when she suddenly felt her body
describe a sleep disturbance phenomenon classifie d g row stiff. After this complainant laid half across Mr.
today as sleep paralysis, which has been the subject of C l a p p’s chest, which he stated deprived him of the
intellectual debate for nearly 2,000 years. The physi- power of breathing, and rendering him quite helpless”
cian Galen, writing in the second century C.E., was (Davies 1997, 40–50).
the first to propose that the experience was caused by The nightmare experience or sleep paralysis may
gastric disturbances. His explanation remained the seem to play only a minor role in witch accusations and
dominant physiological explanation for the night- beliefs, but the very physicality and perceived reality of
m a re right down to the twentieth century. That gre a t such supernatural aggression was a potent confirmation
Elizabethan witchcraft skeptic Reginald Scot of witchcraft. The nightmare experience represented an
explained: “the mare, oppressing manie in their sleepe intimate, brutal assault. People awoke sore, swe a t i n g ,
so sore, as they are not able to call for helpe, or stir and tired from the ordeal, and the vivid nature of
t h e m s e l ves under the burthen of that heavie humor, associated hallucinations helped reinforce the supposed
which is ingendred of a thicke vapor proceeding fro m powers of witches.
the cruditie and rawnesse in the stomach” (Scot
1972, 49). OWEN DAVIES
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in his 1563 book De praestigiis daemonum ( On the
Tricks of De v i l s ) .In Book 3, chapter 17, We ye r, himself
a physician and thus familiar with medicinal plants,
w rote that witches we re thought to use belladonna,
hemlock, and aconite, among other poisons, citing
Italian examples from Giambattista Della Po rta and
Gi rolamo Cardano, supplemented by an illustration of
n i g h t s h a d e’s effects on the son of one of his Rhineland
colleagues. Traditional names for the plant re veal more
of this commonly held folklore. The plant has been
called De v i l’s cherries, naughty man’s cherries, and
De v i l’s herb. The word b e l l a d o n n a perhaps derives fro m
the herb’s ability to cause dilation of the pupils; women
used it in infusions to make their eyes look larger. T h e re
was even a folk belief that the herb could take on the
form of a beautiful woman, which may offer another
s o u rce for the plant’s name.
Witches used brews compounded with poisonous
herbs such as belladonna for various supernatural pur-
poses. A witch might have administered belladonna as a
poison in a drink. One might also have compounded
poisonous herbs, including nightshade, with grease to
make a flying ointment. This last belief is supported by
the nature of the chemical constituents of nightshade,
which include hyoscyamine and atropine, as well as
In Henry Fuseli’s most famous painting, The Nightmare scopolamine. Such drugs produce effects on the circula-
(The Incubus),a demon lies on a woman’s chest, suffocating and tory system and can make the individual who uses them
paralyzing her. (Snark/Art Resource) feel as though he or she is flying or floating. Aside from
its uses in witchcraft, belladonna was also considered an
See also: NIGHTWITCH,ORNIGHTHAG;SCOT,REGINALD.
herb that belonged exc l u s i vely to the Devil, who was
References and further reading:
said to tend it personally. Fo l k l o re held that the De v i l
Briggs, Robin. 1996. Witches and Neighbours: the Social and
was so fond of his belladonna that he rarely left it alone,
Cultural Context of European Witchcraft.London:
stopping his gardening duties only on Walpurgis Night
HarperCollins.
to attend the famous witches’ Sabbat.
Davies, Owen. 1997. “Hag-Riding in Nineteenth-CenturyWest
Country England and Modern Newfoundland: An
JANE P. DAVIDSON
Examination of an Experience-Centred Witchcraft Tradition.”
Folk Life35: 36–53. See also: DRUGSANDHALLUCINOGENS;FLIGHTOFWITCHES;
———. 2003. “The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and HERBALMEDICINE;OINTMENTS;POISON;WALPURGIS
Witchcraft Accusations.” Folklore114: 181–203. (WALPURIGS)NIGHT.
Hufford, David J. 1982. The Terror That Comes in the Night: An References and further reading:
Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. Davidson, Jane P. 1987. The Witch in Northern European Art,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1470–1750. Freren, Germany: Luca.
Jones, Ernest M. 1931. On the Nightmare.London: Hogarth Press. Fletcher, R. 1896. “The Witches’ Pharmacopoeia.” Bulletin of the
Roper, Lyndal. 1994. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, Johns Hopkins Hospital147–157.
and Religion in Early Modern Europe.London and NewYork: Grieve, M. 1931. A Modern Herbal.London: J. Cape.
Routledge. Müller-Ebeling, Claudia, Christian Rätsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl.
Scot, Reginald. 1972. The Discoverie of Witchcraft.London: 2003. Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices,
William Brome. 1584. Reprint, NewYork: Dover. and Forbidden Plants.Translated by Annibal Lee. Rochester,
VT: Inner Traditions.
Nightshade Weyer, Johann. 1998. OnWitchcraft: An Abridged Translation of
At ropa belladonnais an excellent example of a poisonous Johann Weyer’sDe Praestigiis daemonum. Edited by Benjamin
and medicinal herb believed to be used by witches in the G. Kohl and H. C. Erik Midelfort. Asheville, NC: Pegasus.
compounds called witches’ brews. One finds it men-
tioned in various demonological and witchcraft texts Nodé, Pierre
among the general lists of constituents of such A Minim friar in Paris during the French Wars of
poisonous compounds. For example, Johann We ye r Religion, Nodé published a book in 1578,
mentioned the use of belladonna in witches’ compounds Declamation contre l’ e r reur exe c rable des malefic i e r s
830 Nightshade |
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( Declamation Against the Execrable Er ror of T h roughout his tirade, Nodé trotted out clichés
Evildoers). Typical of the intellectual position of ze a l- stressing the intimate connection between the heresy of
ous Catholics in those troubled times, Nodé lamented the day and Sa t a n’s machinations that we re central
that the chaotic conditions of his world we re a sign of aspects of Catholic rhetoric during the Wars of
its imminent end. Like so many others, he considere d Religion, hoping—vainly—to stimulate more active
the troubles caused by the rise and spread of persecution of witches (and Protestants) by the state.
Protestantism in France as the work of the Devil. It was
incumbent on all believers in God (Catholics) to fig h t JONATHAN L. PEARL
back and exterminate their enemies. Nodé appealed to See also:APOCALYPSE;BOUCHER,JEAN;DEMONOLOGY;FRANCE;
the monarch, high nobles, and high court justices to HERESY;PROTESTANTREFORMATION;WARSOFRELIGION,
join the battle wholeheart e d l y. FRANCE.
Ac c o rding to Nodé, witchcraft and magic we re an References and further reading:
epidemic in his time. Witchcraft involved such horrible Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
sins as apostasy, blasphemy and lèse-majesté divine o r in Early Modern Europe.Oxford: Clarendon.
Nodé, Pierre. 1578. Declamation contre l’erreur execrable des male-
“treason against God.” French Catholic demonologists
ficiers. Paris.
frequently made this last charge (borrowed from French
Pearl, Jonathan L. 1999. The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and
legal jargon condemning heretics) as an import a n t
Politics in France, 1560–1620.Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred
argument for imposing the death penalty for witch-
Laurier University Press.
craft, even if the witches had harmed no one.
Nodé bemoaned the lack of commitment by the king
and high nobles to eradicate heretics and witches. Ju d g e s Nördlingen, Imperial Free City
had the responsibility and the duty to pursue active l y T h i rt y - t h ree individuals—all but one of them
these “diabolical monsters.” As Nodé stated, “The civil women—were burned at the stake as witches in the
law wishes their bodily death, the holy canons ord e r Lutheran city of Nördlingen, Swabia, between 1589
their spiritual death, and God commands both against and 1594. It constituted one of the most severe witch
them so that this race of perverse malefactors is extermi- hunts seen in a Protestant imperial free city. The main
nated from He a ven and eart h” (Nodé 1578,4 6 ) . reasons for this persecution were the zeal of the city
He was clearly angry and frustrated because Fre n c h councilors who tried the witches and the fact that they
royal authorities we re not taking this task to heart . treated witchcraft as a crimen exceptum (the excepted
French writers on demonology and heresy complained crime), subject to none of the usual safeguards for the
constantly that the French legal system did not pursue protection of the accused. Torture was therefore used to
witches aggre s s i ve l y. Either “indiscreet pity” or excess, usually forcing accused individuals to confess to
i n c redulity was extremely dangerous. “It would be far witchcraft and denounce others as their accomplices.
better to exterminate such people from the earth and Records of virtually all trials, which formed part of a
wipe out all memory of them,” Nodé expostulated, wave of witch hunts that occurred in Germany between
“rather than wait for a great disaster and calamity” 1585 and 1595, survive in Nördlingen’s city archive.
(Nodé 1578,55). Be f o re 1589, Nördlingen had experienced only
Nodé’s equation of the Protestant heresy with witch- two witchcraft trials, in 1478 and 1534; both times,
craft, in the context of the anarchic conditions of the t h e alleged witches we re released unpunished. T h e
civil wars and the perceived presence on the apocalypse, l a t e-s i x t e e n t h - c e n t u ry persecution was triggered by
was typical of these writers and preachers. The violence Ursula Ha i d e r, a mentally unstable woman who in
of the polemical wars matched the military violence of 1589 had the misfortune to nurse the three children of
the times. knifesmith Ma rtin Hindenach, all of whom died of
Following conventional wisdom, Nodé’s work exam- smallpox. Haider had claimed that she was plagued by
ined many aspects of the complex of beliefs comprising the Devil even before 1589. Now she confessed that she
witchcraft: the transportation of witches over gre a t had killed the second Hindenach child at the De v i l’s
distances, we rew o l ves, maleficent crimes, and sexual command, chiefly because its corpse had appare n t l y
dysfunction, always linking these evils to the curre n t bled as she held it: contemporaries believed that a body
rise in heresy and unbelief. He also re p o rted a ve ry would bleed when touched by its murd e re r. She was
interesting case. Stating that the Devil could make peo- a r rested on suspicion of witchcraft on November 8,
ple hate food, he told of a young woman who died after 1589. Under interrogation, she confessed to other acts
not eating for four months. The poor anorexic girl died of maleficium(harmful magic) and claimed that she had
in “extreme languor, dry as wood, thinner that a heron, seen other Nördlingen women at witches’ Sabbats, thus
pale as a sheet and thinner than parchment that shrivels c reating the potential for further trials. Haider was
near a fire” (Nodé 1578, 32). Some supernatural evil executed with two of the women she had denounced on
force must have caused something so extraordinary. May 15, 1590. That ye a r, fourteen more Nörd l i n g e n
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women we re arrested, mostly on the basis of suffering sixty-two bouts of tort u re with thumbscrew s ,
denunciations: twe l ve we re burned alive, one was l e g - s c rews, strappado, and the rack, Maria refused to
burned after dying under tort u re, and one (Ap o l l o n i a confess. On that basis and because her re l a t i ves fro m
Rorendorfer) was released after refusing to confess. Ulm petitioned the Nördlingen council on her behalf,
Apart from one execution in 1592, there was a lull in the council reluctantly released her on October 11, 1594.
the intensity of persecution from May 1591 until 1593, She was not the first Nördlingen woman to refuse to
when sixteen more Nördlingen inhabitants were arrest- confess: Apollonia Ro rendofer had shown similar stead-
ed. T h i rteen of them (twe l ve women and one man) fastness in the face of savage tort u re in 1590. Howe ve r,
we re executed, the bodies of two women who died Ho l l’s case increased concern on the part of some coun-
under tort u re we re burned, and one (Maria Holl) was cilors and inhabitants of Nördlingen that denunciations
released in 1594. The impetus for the 1593 trials came we re an unsafe basis for pursuing witchcraft trials. After
mainly from Nördlingen inhabitants who believe d t h ree more executions for witchcraft in 1598, there we re
themselves to be victims of maleficium. Once restarted, no more witchcraft trials in Nördlingen. Maria Holl died
h owe ve r, the process of persecution again relied on at the age of eighty-five in 1634. By then one of the
denunciations for its continuation. Villagers from out- richest women in Nördlingen, she had outlived thre e
side Nördlingen had a better chance of escaping execu- husbands and all the men who had been invo l ved in her
tion: of nine women arrested as alleged witches at trial for witchcraft forty years before .
Goldburghausen, Itzlingen, and Sechtenhausen in
1590 and 1593, only one was executed. The council’s ALISON ROWLANDS
“ l e n i e n c y” in these cases probably stemmed from its
See also: AGRARIANCRISES;BAVARIA,DUCHYOF;CRIMENEXCEP-
d e s i re to avoid legal disputes with the count of
TUM;EXECUTIONS;GENDER;GERMANY;GERMANY,SOUTHEAST-
Oettingen, who ruled the area around Nördlingen, over
ERN;GERMANY,SOUTHWESTERN;HOLYROMANEMPIRE;IMPERI-
the right to try witches.
ALFREECITIES;MALEFICIUM;MENTALILLNESS;SABBAT;TORTURE;
N ö rd l i n g e n’s witchcraft trials did not result fro m TRIALS.
social conflicts: those executed came from a wide range References and further reading
of social backgrounds, from the poor and socially mar- Behringer,Wolfgang. 1997. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria:
ginal to wives or widows of councilors. Nor did the Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early
council target particular individuals as witches: around Modern Europe.Translated by J. C. Grayson and David Lederer.
one-third of all suspects were accused of maleficium by Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eschbaumer, Gloria. 1983. Bescheidenliche Tortur: Der ehrbare Rat
their fellow inhabitants, and suspects tended in the
der Stadt Nördlingen im Hexenprozess 1593/94 gegen die
course of forced denunciations to name alleged Sabbat
Kronenwirtin Maria Holl.Nördlingen: Buchhandlung Greno.
attendees on the basis of personal vendettas and prefer-
Friedrichs, Christopher R. 1979. Urban Society in an Age of War:
ences. However, the city councilors were responsible for
Nördlingen, 1580–1720.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
the severity of the witch hunt. In 1589 they could
Press.
either have dismissed Haider as insane or ignored her Roper, Lyndal. 2004. Witch Craze. Terror and Fantasy in Baroque
claims to have seen other women at Sabbats, there by Germany.New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.
depriving the hunt of its momentum. They did neither Voges, Dietmar-H. 1994. “Reichsstadt Nördlingen.” Pp. 361–369
because they we re convinced of the reality of witches’ in Hexen und Hexenverfolgung im deutschen Südwesten
Sabbats and of the need to rid Nördlingen of this evil. (Aufsatzband). Edited by Sönke Lorenz. Karlsruhe: Badisches
Crucially, they decided from the outset to treat witch- Landesmuseum.
Wulz, Gustav. 1937; 1938/39. “Nördlinger Hexenprozesse.”
craft as a crimen exceptumand therefore to subject many
Jahrbuch des RieserHeimatvereins20: 42–72; 21: 95–120.
accused women to extremely seve re tort u re. Ma yo r
Johann Pferinger and jurist Wolfgang Graf, both newly
appointed in 1589 and desirous of making their mark, Normandy
played leading roles in driving the witch-hunting zeal of Famous for the trial and execution of Joan of Arc in its
the council. The active or tacit support of the persecu- capital, Rouen, this northern French province now seems
tion by a significant pro p o rtion of Nörd l i n g e n’s most notew o rthy in the history of Eu ropean witchcraft
inhabitants also helps account for its seve r i t y. T h e i r as the leading punisher of male witches in we s t e r n
anxiety about witchcraft may have increased before Eu rope. From the early 1540s until well after Louis XIV
1589 after a series of agrarian crises: it was doubtless supposedly decriminalized witchcraft in Fr a n c e ,
heightened afterw a rd by the sight of so many alleged No r m a n d y’s appellate court, the Pa rl e m e n t of Ro u e n ,
accomplices of Satan burning at the stake. i n vestigated primarily men for the crime of s o rt i l è g e
The immense courage of Maria Holl was instru m e n t a l (diabolic magic). And, by French (or at least Pa r i s i a n )
in finally ending Nörd l i n g e n’s witchcraft trials. The wife s t a n d a rds, Norman judges punished them seve re l y :
of innkeeper Michael Holl, Maria was arrested on the although such other French p a rl e m e n t s as To u l o u s e
basis of six denunciations on November 2, 1593. De s p i t e (1562) or Paris (1568) confirmed death sentences for
832 Normandy |
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witchcraft sooner than Rouen (1574), No r m a n his personal reign in 1661, Normandy kept putting its
p a r l e m e n t a ry re c o rds from the sixteenth and seve n t e e n t h s h e p h e rd-witches on trial from 1670 until after 1700.
centuries identified almost 400 accused witches and Louis’s government tried but ultimately failed to shut it
about 100 burnings for witchcraft. Almost thre e - f o u rt h s down; despite the royal legislation supposedly decrimi-
of these defendants we re men, as we re about two-third s nalizing witchcraft in 1682, the Rouen p a rl e m e n t w a s
of those executed (Monter 1997, 572, 584). still burning them for sacrilege and “so-called sortilège”
The predominance of men among accused witches in 1694 and 1703, and sending them to the galleys even
in Normandy increased over time. When the parlement a f t e rw a rd. In 1718, Louis XIV’s German sister-in-law
first encountered one or two witches each ye a r remarked that “at Paris people don’t believe in witches
(1564–1578), men outnumbered women by only 15 to and we hear nothing about them; at Rouen they believe
10. But the dispro p o rtion between male and female that witches exist, and there one always hears about
witches grew steadily larger after 1600. Under Louis them” (Monter 1997, 594).
XIII, it surpassed 4 to 1, and by the late 1640s, when C e rtainly the Norman p a rl e m e n t n e ver displayed the
the parlementagain averaged one or two witchcraft cas- scornful skepticism of their upriver Parisian colleagues
es per ye a r, women had almost disappeared. If cert a i n about witchcraft. But compared with “o f f s h o re
types of women like old widows reappeared frequently No r m a n d y”—the Channel Islands, governed by En g l a n d
among suspected witches elsewhere, so did certain types but speaking only French during the age of witchcraft tri-
of men in No r m a n d y. By far the most feared male als—the Pa rl e m e n t of Rouen seems quite gentle in its
witches in this cheese-producing region we re shep- t reatment of witches. In terms of size and population, its
h e rds, some of whom possessed veritable arsenals, judicial district was a hundred times greater than the
featuring such items as toad venom and stolen Channel Islands (and its legal re c o rds are as rich as
Eucharists, suitable for performing both offensive and theirs), yet more women we re burned as witches in the
d e f e n s i ve magic. Priests we re also heavily re p re s e n t e d Channel Islands than in No r m a n d y. The key to this
among Norman witches; between 1598 and 1647, seve n g rotesque discrepancy is that the Channel Is l a n d s
Norman priests we re burned for s o rt i l è g e , another was e n j oyed complete legal autonomy while Normandy had
g i ven a life sentence to the galleys, and a half-doze n a scrupulous, if credulous, appellate court .
others we re permanently banished from the Kingdom
WILLIAM MONTER
of France with loss of their benefices (Monter 1997,
582–583). A third dangerous occupational group was See also:CHANNELISLANDS;FRANCE;JOANOFARC;LOUVIERS
No r m a n d y’s blacksmiths, who exe rcised their skill in NUNS;MALEWITCHES;PARLEMENTOFPARIS.
harming as well as healing horses. References and further reading:
The chronology and severity of Norman witchcraft Monter,William. 1997. “Toads and Eucharists: The Male Witches
of Normandy, 1564–1660.” French Historical Studies20:
persecution seemed unre m a rkable. Re p ression acceler-
563–595.
ated sharply here in the 1580s, as it did elsew h e re in
France. Between 1585 and 1610 the Rouen parlement
judged over five witchcraft trials each year and upheld North Berwick Witches
over 60 percent of lower-court death sentences for this The cluster of witchcraft trials that occurred in
crime; it ord e red at least one witch burned eve ry ye a r Scotland in 1590–1591 in East Lothian and Edinburgh
until 1615 (Monter 1997, 572–573). Howe ve r, this was sufficiently widespread and severe to merit the term
c o u rt placed little emphasis on the witches’ Sa b b a t ; “witch panic.” From late November 1590 until
although as many as ten witches we re executed in the December 1591 the hunt developed, as local magis-
very worst years, they came from scattered places, and trates and then the king and privy council uncovered
in Normandy no single episode ever grew into a serious what they believed to be conspiracy and treason by
panic. At the same time, Normandy experienced no many women (and some men), led by the politically
scandals involving sadistic tort u res, professional witch powerful earl of Bothwell.
finders, “d u c k i n g” suspected witches (the swimming The causes of the panic we re long-term as well as
test, or water ordeal), or other clearly illegal practices; immediate; some of the women and men who we re
everything here seemed orderly and regular, except for i n t e r rogated, tried, and executed in 1590–1591 we re
the oddity that most accused witches were men. When accused of witchcraft activities stretching back as far as
the French phenomenon of bewitched convents finally seventeen years. In 1586, Andrew Melville, the leading
reached Normandy in the 1640s, it was re l a t i ve l y Presbyterian, returned from England along with fellow
unspectacular—and the most important female defen- h a rd-line Protestants intent on creating a godly,
dant (Madeleine Ba vent) was never executed, despite disciplined nation. They soon established Pre s by t e r i a n
her repeated confessions. k i rk sessions (parish disciplinary committees) in low-
Although witch hunting had all but disappeared in land and northeastern Scotland, where ministers and
most other parts of France by the time Louis XIV began elders tried to enforce church discipline on a sometimes
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resistant population by investigating social disord e r, began to revoke their confessions, asserting them to be
sexual offenses, and popular magical practices. In cer- false and compelled by torture. There were indeed net-
tain areas, including East Lothian and Ed i n b u r g h , w o rks of acquaintance among those implicated in the
many people retained remnants of old Catholic beliefs accusations, but these ord i n a ry links, some indeed
and rituals. For the Kirk (the national—Presbyterian— based on shared practices of magic and witchcraft, were
C h u rch of Scotland), Catholicism and magical beliefs present in Scottish society from top to bottom.
were indistinguishable. The Kirk found an identifiable Su rviving trial re c o rds of the four most pro m i n e n t
enemy in the No rth Be rwick witch hunt: an under- accused witches show Scottish authorities reacting as
g round network of witches inspired by the Devil and the fearful and uncontrolled powers of magic, embod-
intent on overturning church and state. ied in particular social types, threatened to ove rt u r n
The chain of events began in November 1590 when established social relations: a peasant wise woman
a servant girl who was a healer was accused by her mas- with uncanny medical and political knowledge; a sub-
ter of witchcraft, tort u red, and found to have the ve r s i ve schoolmaster in league with the De v i l ;
Devil’s mark. The scope of the investigations widened, respectable townswomen re volting against both class
and a treasonable conspiracy involving some forty peo- and sexual subordination; and Bothwell, who epito-
ple was soon discovered against King James VI and his m i zed the sort of aristocratic rebellion against roy a l
newlywed wife Anne. The network contained assorted p ower that had plagued James for a decade and
practitioners of maleficent witchcraft, love magic, div- Scotland for generations. Socially insignific a n t
ination, and healing, including a long-established and accused witches we re easily dealt with, but higher up the
respected healer, Agnes Sampson, and a schoolmaster, social scale, resistance to arrest and conviction mounted.
Dr. John Fian. Torturing some of the accused revealed a In May 1591, Barbara Na p i e r, a we l l - c o n n e c t e d
momentous tale of treasonable witchcraft. The accused Edinburgh bourgeois, was acquitted of attending the
came from a wide social range—peasants, serva n t s , No rth Be rwick Sabbat, though she was convicted on
urban bourgeoisie, and aristocracy—and showed that other capital charges. James reacted angrily, and after
belief in and practice of magic was prevalent through- t h reatening the assize with “wilful erro r” in blocking
out Scottish society. the operation of justice, he obtained a guilty ve rd i c t .
The renegade earl of Bothwell, Francis St ew a rt , The trial of Euphame Ma c C a l zean, another we a l t h y
whose relations with the kirk and his cousin, the king, Edinburgh woman from a well-connected legal family,
were highly unstable, was accused of involvement in the i n vo l ved a two-week long struggle to obtain a convic-
plot; he fled to escape trial and began an insurre c t i o n tion and execution by the exceptionally cruel sentence
against James that ended with his forfeiture and banish- of being burned alive .
ment. Kirk and crown we re temporarily allied against The government seized the opportunity to destroy
this supposed witchcraft conspiracy. James Carmichael, B o t h well that his contact with witchcraft offere d .
minister of Haddington, located in the area where B o t h well was convinced that his enemy Chancellor
many of the accused lived, helped King Ja m e s . Maitland was behind the witchcraft charges, and there
Carmichael was an ardent Pre s byterian returned fro m is evidence that the government kept the main witness
exile with Melville, and one of the kirk’s leading against Bothwell, a man later executed for witchcraft,
reformers and intellectuals. in pro t e c t i ve custody. Brought before the king and
A number of legal re c o rds of interrogations (some- privy council in April 1591 to answer charges of tre a-
times under tort u re) surv i ve from November 1590 to sonable conspiracy with a lately executed witch,
mid-1591. They produced stories that became more B o t h well avoided trial in May when his peers re f u s e d
elaborate and coherent as the weeks passed, ultimately to assemble to try him and escaped custody in Ju n e
cohering into one story of a large-scale treasonous con- when Euphame Ma c C a l zean was executed. In 1593,
spiracy involving personal appearances of the Devil at when he was finally tried for witchcraft, he was acquit-
the witches’ Sabbats. The stories mixed reality with fan- ted. When accused witches mentioned Bothwell in
tasy: witches made pacts with the Devil and conspired depositions, they clearly saw him as Ja m e s’s gre a t
to raise storms to pre vent Anne’s fleet from re a c h i n g a d ve r s a ry, so p rominent that he became elided with the
Scotland and then James’s from reaching Norway. After Devil himself.
James and Anne returned safely, the witches planned Information about the witch hunt reached London
James’s death, using such familiar magical techniques as in late 1591, while Scotland’s witchcraft trials we re still
melting a wax image and poisoning his clothes. Ja m e s p roceeding, with a pamphlet called Ne wes fro m
was initially skeptical of the witchcraft threat but even- S c o t l a n d , composed from materials probably supplied
tually took it seriously. Although later historians have by Carmichael. Its lurid account of the witchcraft
been too ready to interpret the witchcraft conspiracy conspiracy offered maximum propaganda for King
from the authorities’ point of view, the evidence for its James, struggling heroically and single-handedly
reality began to disintegrate by mid-1591, as witnesses against diabolical agents, and contrasted Ja m e s’s
834 North Berwick Witches |
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The North Berwick witches and witchcraft; nautical witchcraft, the Devil preaching, witches brewing in a cauldron, the earl of Bothwell reclining,
witches eating and drinking in a cellar. (Fortean Picture Library)
divine-right legitimacy with the witches’ diabolical f rom the next Scottish witch hunt of 1597 and that
s u bversion. It made no mention of Bothwell, who was the government did not lose control of witchcraft
still threateningly at large. The witch hunt also prosecutions.
i n s p i red Ja m e s’s Da e m o n o l o g i e ( Demonology), pro b a- The witch hunt begun in No rth Be rwick induced a
bly written in 1591 but not published in Ed i n b u r g h brief lull in hostilities between Scotland’s Pre s by t e r i a n
until 1597, during a later witch hunt. Ja m e s’s account p a rty and its monarch, while they cooperated in pursuing
of witches’ practices included details that he acquire d witches who re p resented each one’s deepest fears: Catholic
f rom personally interrogating some of the No rt h and magical beliefs and practices for the kirk, lawlessness
Be rwick witches and that re a p p e a red in trial re c o rd s . and insurrection for James and his government. It was
Da e m o n o l o g i e , in ort h o d ox fashion, made explicit the t h rough witchcraft accusations that Bothwe l l’s political
political threat to the established authorities that t h reat was destroyed. When Parliament ratified Bothwe l l’s
witchcraft re p re s e n t e d . Ja m e s’s b o o k had a baleful f o rf e i t u re in 1592, it also finally gave the Kirk what it had
long-term effect on Scottish witch hunting by locating long sought, legal sanction for Pre s byterian churc h
witchcraft within a theological framew o rk and defin- g overnment, though the struggle between church and
ing it as involving a pact with the De v i l . state would continue.
Historians have argued over what part, if any, Privy
LAWRENCE NORMAND
Council orders of 1591, 1592, and 1597 may have
p l a yed in prolonging or exacerbating witch hunting
See also:DENMARK;DEVIL’SMARK;IMAGEMAGIC;JAMESVIANDI,
after the North Berwick panic. What now seems clear is KINGOFSCOTLANDANDENGLAND;PACTWITHTHEDEVIL;
that the North Berwick witch hunt was a separate event PANICS;SABBAT;SCOTLAND;WEATHERMAGIC.
North Berwick Witches 835 |
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References and further reading: As one consequence of the Reformation, the Mosaic
Dunlap, Rhodes. 1975. “King James and Some Witches: The Date laws—including Exodus 22:18 (22:17; “Thou shalt not
and Text of the Daemonologie.”Philological Quarterly 54: suffer a witch to live”)—were introduced into criminal
40–46.
codes throughout Scandinavia. This process followe d
Go o d a re, Julian. 2002. “The Fr a m ew o rk for Scottish Wi t c h-Hu n t i n g
s o m ewhat different courses in different states. In
in the 1590s.” Scottish Historical Review81: 240–250.
Sweden, the penalties of the Pentateuch we re simply
Levack, Brian P. 1996. “State-Building and Witch Hunting in
added to the existing law of the land as an appendix. In
Early Modern Europe.” Pp. 96–115 in Witchcraft in Early
De n m a rk and No rw a y, the Mosaic prohibitions we re
Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief.Edited by
Jonathan Barry, Marion Hester, and Gareth Roberts. i n t roduced piecemeal during the century after 1540,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. with various articles punishing specific deeds; most of
Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. 1997. “The Fear of the King Is Death: the Mosaic laws had been incorporated into the
James VI and the Witches of East Lothian.” Pp. 209–225 in Norwegian legal framework by 1630.
Fear in Early Modern Society.Edited byW. G. Naphy and P. C h u rch and state cooperated closely in this confes-
Roberts. Manchester and NewYork: Manchester University sional age: the king’s laws about witchcraft we re re a d
Press.
f rom the pulpit eve ry Su n d a y, and pastors re m i n d e d
———. 2001. Satan’s Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in
their congregations that the whole kingdom would suf-
Sixteenth-Century Scotland.East Linton: Tuckwell.
fer from God’s wrath unless these creatures of the Devil
Normand, Lawrence, and Gareth Roberts. 2000.Witchcraft in
we re brought to justice and suitably punished. T h e
Early Modern Scotland: James VI’s Demonology and the North
Lutheran clergy cooperated closely with the new
Berwick Witches.Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Stafford, Helen. 1953. “Notes on Scottish Witchcraft Cases, Lutheran regime to recommend strong actions against
1590–91.” Pp. 96–118 in Essays in Honor of Conyers Read. the enemies of God. Witches ranked among the ve ry
Edited by Norton Downs. Chicago: University of Chicago worst kind conceivable: a crimen maiestatis laesae div-
Press. ina,being a traitor to God, was even worse than being a
Wormald, Jenny. 2000. “The Witches, the Devil, and the King.” traitor to the king. Such reasoning made it possible to
Pp. 165–180 in Freedom and Authority: Scotland c. 1050-c. legitimate the use of torture in witchcraft cases.
1650: Historical and Historiographical Essays Presented to Grant
In 1584, the Danish king, responding to a petition
G. Simpson.Edited byTerry Brotherstone and David
f rom the Lutheran bishop of St a va n g e r, introduced the
Ditchburn. East Linton: Tuckwell.
fully formed concept of demonology into the criminal
Yeoman, L. A. 2002. “Hunting the Rich Witch in Scotland:
code of No rw a y, ordering local authorities to pro s e c u t e
High-Status Witch Suspects and Their Persecutors,
all kinds of witchcraft, including “s u p e r s t i t i o u s” healing
1590–1650.” Pp. 106–121 in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in
Context.Edited by Julian Goodare. Manchester and NewYork: practices that medieval legislation had ignored. T h i s
Manchester University Press. statute, introduced in the diocese of Bergen in 1593,
seems to have been known throughout No rw a y. Fi n a l l y, a
Norway n ew general witchcraft code was introduced for
Almost all witchcraft trials in Norway, which was under De n m a rk and No rway in 1617. It divided the crime into
Danish rule from 1388 to 1814, took place from 1551 t h ree parts: the pact with the Devil, m a l e fic i u m ,and heal-
to 1700. With few exceptions, they occurred after the ing practices. Death by beheading was to be employe d
implementation of the Reformation, which reached on persons convicted of the first two categories.
Norway from Denmark in 1537 after the king had
turned Lutheran and Norway’s last Catholic bishop had Witchcraft and Crime
fled. Until the Reformation, the crime of witchcraft had Norway’s recorded witchcraft trials began about 1540.
been defined solely as maleficium (harmful magic); in Although there were no mass persecutions until after
medieval Norwegian (and Danish) laws, it deserved the enactment of the Witchcraft Code in 1617, an
capital punishment only if it had caused death or increasing number of trials took place after 1570. The
injuries to people or animals. However, the medieval best-known case involved Anna Pedersdotter, a clergy-
statutes on witchcraft in Norwegian customary law man’s wife in Bergen, who, after two trials in 1575 and
(Landsloven, or “Laws of the Lands”) do not seem to 1590, was burned at the stake. Bits and pieces of
have been applied until after 1540. The only case of information show both torture and the water ordeal
medieval witchcraft dates from 1325, when a woman (swimming test) being used in Norwegian witchcraft
accused of love magic suffered penance ordered by the cases since the sixteenth century, although Danish and
bishop of Bergen. In 1520, King Christian II intro- Norwegian laws formally permitted neither.
duced new laws involving harsher procedures in many The total number of cases known numbered about
criminal cases, including those involving witchcraft, 880. In about 780 of these cases, a man or a woman was
that were not put into effect. Nevertheless, continental accused of some kind of witchcraft; the other 100 were
practice strongly influenced procedures in witchcraft defamation suits, initiated by a person who had come
cases as the death penalty came into use. under suspicion for witchcraft in a local community.
836 Norway |
Subsets and Splits