In 1542 a central tribunal was established in Rome to oversee local Italian inquisitions, and by the 1580s this was advising caution in local trials of witches and enforcing it on some. In 1575 Pope Gregory XIII ruled that nobody could be arrested simply because of a denunciation by somebody already under trial for witchcraft, while in 1594 Pope Clement VIII banished a southern Italian bishop whom he thought had prosecuted it too recklessly. Around 1600 the tribunal accepted a protocol which was sent out to most Italian inquisitors from the 1610s: all alleged deaths from witchcraft were to be investigated by medical experts operating under oath; suspects were to be held in different cells to prevent them from mutually reinforcing their fantasies; and investigators were to avoid any leading questions, identify local hatreds operating in accusations, and consider only objective evidence. This made convictions for witchcraft practically impossible, and after 1630 papal authority effectively ended witch trials in the Italian peninsula.85
A parallel process occurred in Spain, where from 1525 the Supreme Council of the national Inquisition began to reduce death sentences imposed on suspected witches by its local representatives, accusing the latter of excessive credulity and use of torture to force confessions. In 1526 it anticipated the later papal decree by decades, ordering that nobody should be arrested simply on the testimony of somebody already accused of witchcraft. It also sought to take over itself the cases of those formally charged with witchcraft who pleaded innocence. The last execution of somebody for witchcraft by a member of the Inquisition in Aragon was in 1535, and the last in Catalonia in 1548. Trials persisted in Navarre, and in 1609 a serious witch-hunt on the French side of the border spilled over into that province, and produced a major panic, with almost two thousand accusations. The first inquisitors to deal with them were persuaded of the reality of some, and burned six people. Subsequently, however, the Supreme Council sent out a more scrupulous representative, Alonso de Salazar y Frias, who became convinced of the patent falsity of most confessions, and the impossibility of clear proof in the case of the remainder. His report convinced his superiors, who were also shocked by the expense of the investigation. Thereafter they adopted a code of rules for trials of alleged satanic witches which demanded such stringent proofs that it rendered convictions virtually impossible. Witch-hunting was now confined to those parts of north-eastern Spain, especially Catalonia, where the authority of the Inquisition was weakest and trials could be conducted by secular courts with relative freedom. Even there, however, the inquisitors did their best to halt the proceedings, reinforced by royal authority from 1620, and by the end of the 1620s Spain was apparently free of trials for diabolic witchcraft.86
The great influence of the Papacy and the Spanish upon the western Mediterranean lands in general explains why the other territories in the region followed the same trajectory in the same period. The new oversight and professionalism injected into the inquisitorial process by the foundation of central supervisory bodies seems in itself to have engendered a more rigorous and sceptical attitude towards accusations of demonic witchcraft, and a growing disposition to view even those people who confessed to dealings with the Devil as deluded and in need of redemption. This change then became a factor in regional power politics, as interventions to prevent credulous and destructive witch-hunting enabled the central tribunals to enforce their authority more effectively over the localities. Eventually a cautious attitude to accusations of witchcraft, and a programme of correction and not extermination for those convicted of attempting to work magic, became a matter of ethnic identity. Seventeenth-century Italians, in particular, could be surprised and horrified by the huge body counts being stacked up by witch-hunts in Northern Europe.87 The Mediterranean inquisitions remained forbiddingly effective machines for the persecution of magical practices, and even moderate punishments such as imprisonment, flogging and public penance would have been traumatic for those who suffered them. None the less, they rescued a region representing about a quarter of Europe from the most concentrated and deadly period of the early modern witch trials. They seem to have done so, moreover, because of political and ideological developments among the religious elite, in which popular beliefs played only a supporting role, in certain places, and not a decisive one.
The Silent Centre
What, however, of the core area of the early modern witch trials, where the majority of their victims perished: the German-speaking lands, the French-speaking parts of the Rhine and Moselle basins to their west and Poland to their east? It has already been noted that these had sprouted rich medieval popular traditions, such as those of the ‘furious army’, Holle and Perchte, which should have meshed easily with the concept of the witches’ sabbath. Modern folklorists, led by Jacob Grimm, uncovered a still flourishing lore of nocturnal spirits of this sort, with strong regional hallmarks. All this testifies to a prolific set of beliefs, grounded in the culture of ordinary people, which should have informed the nature of witch trials in the way in which striges, wolf-riders, superhuman ladies and dream warriors did further south; and yet most of the evidence suggests that it did not.88
In saying this, it is important once again not to forget the deeper perspectives. The image of the satanic witch that was transmitted to Northern Europe was based partly on an ancient concept, that of the strix, and the facility with which the Germanic cultural zone picked it up may well have owed much to its own ancient native tradition, of the cannibal witch who attacked all age groups rather than specifically children.89 This tradition might also help to explain why the majority of those accused in this region were women. Moreover, the basic concept of witchcraft was itself ancient, as was the spectrum of magic-working which extended from witches to service magicians, and which many early modern people often saw as more of a polarity between the two. The belief that bewitchment could be cured if the witch agreed to recall it was so common, widespread and ingrained that it must also have been very old. It can, moreover, be readily suggested that pre-existing beliefs in spirits that flew or rode by night would make that of the witches’ sabbath easier to adopt. The basic narrative of temptation by a devil (or the Devil) with which most confessions to satanic witchcraft were supposed to commence must have drawn on the common and widespread folk-tale motif of friendly spirits who encounter distressed human beings, usually in a place out of doors, and become their helpers. It is not surprising in view of this that the names given to attendant demons in confessions of witchcraft made in the northern part of Continental Europe were sometimes those attributed to fairies or equivalent beings.90 Beyond these historical truisms, however fundamental and important, there is not a lot to record. The offences credited to witches varied slightly between regions: for example, they were commonly charged with raising destructive storms in the Alps, southern Germany and southern France, with sending wolves to kill livestock in Lorraine, and with stealing milk in Scandinavia, Poland and much of northern Germany. These distinctions may well rest on much older traditions, but had probably in addition a functional aspect, reflecting the nature of the local economy. Other specific regional or national characteristics attributed to witchcraft could likewise rest on old folkloric motifs: Danish witches were thought more likely to cause illness than death, and those imagined in northern France and the southern Netherlands were especially given to inflicting impotence.91 Whilst the demonic pact was central to witch trials in most parts of this heartland, the concept of witches’ assemblies – the sabbath – was rarer in some than others, and it is not clear whether this was because of predispositions of belief based on local notions of the supernatural, or accidents in the importation of the new idea of the witch. The same is true in the portraits of witches’ activities. In the German-speaking districts of Lorraine, they were believed to meet in groups of varying size and attack other humans collectively; while in the French-speaking parts they met in standard-sized assemblies and operated as individuals. It is certainly tempting to see ancient cultural differences behind these variations, but impossi
ble to prove them.92
Specific folk motifs are rarely easier to detect in the trials across the region. Poland had folk traditions of a more harmless and playful Devil than the one generally imagined elsewhere; and these may have been influenced by pre-Christian beliefs in wood and water spirits, and household spirits which could be placated with gifts. Traces of playful demons do appear in the Polish trials, but the historian who has noted them has also pointed out that the relationship between ancient pagan and early modern popular beliefs in nature spirits, and between both and images of devils, remains speculative.93 German trials sometimes threw up folkloric images. In one at Rottenburg, in the south-west, a man was accused of appearing at the sabbath as a mounted hunter, a ghostly figure from local lore; and across southern Germany some of the misdeeds alleged against witches were those associated with malevolent local spirits.94 When the villagers of Gebsattel in central Germany asserted in a case in 1627 that witches were especially abroad on Walpurgis Night (30 April), they were echoing a tradition found across Northern Europe that attributed uncanny qualities to this date.95 Such details are, however, both relatively rare and incidental. When Edward Bever considered the records of trials in south-western Germany, he acknowledged that the region abounded with traditions of a parallel spirit world, operating largely independently of the orthodox Christian one, in which some people could participate; but this made remarkably little appearance in the actual cases he studied.96
A major example of the way in which people in the European heartland constructed stories about satanic witchcraft is provided by their answers to the question of how witches travelled to the sabbath. Presented with it, usually under interrogation and often under torture, individuals came up with a variety of answers, partly reflecting local belief, but also what they could imagine or invent on the spot in response to a Europe-wide stereotype being articulated by the prosecutors. As a result, those methods presented in demonologies multiplied with time. In the Malleus maleficarum of 1486, the same idea as that recorded in the earliest Alpine witch trials was retained: that witches rode on a piece of wood greased with an ointment made partly from human baby fat.97 By the time that Jean Bodin wrote, almost a century later and basing his information on trials in southern France and Italy, the ideas had elaborated. Some people were now said to apply the ointment to their own bodies, and then fly, while others, with or without using the grease, rode animals of different kinds, or a broom or a pole.98 Older notions were thus surfacing, as the use of an unguent on one’s own body was attributed to the Roman witches in the fictions of Apuleius and Lucian (or whomever was writing in his style), while the hosts of Diana had ridden on beasts in the canon Episcopi. Shortly after Bodin, Nicholas Remy recorded that people he had tried for witchcraft in Lorraine in the mid-1580s had confessed to flying up the chimney to the sabbath, or anointing themselves and putting one foot in a basket, or putting one on an anointed broomstick. Others rode a wicker net or reeds after speaking a spell, or on a pig, bull, black dog or forked stick; or just walked.99 On the far side of Central Europe, in the records of Polish trials, the tales told were equally varied: one woman claimed to fly up her chimney, another to ride a normal carriage, another a horse, and a fourth a bewitched labouring man, while a fifth flew after smearing on ointment.100 German records show the same pattern.101 Some peoples had a more restrictive view of the options: in Swedish trials witches were just said to ride either animals or bewitched humans.102 In 1612 Pierre de Lancre tried to rationalize the bewildering range of testimony available from his own experience as a trial judge. He decided that some people only attended the sabbath in dreams or thoughts, while their bodies stayed in bed. Those who went in physical form did so by walking, or by use of the baby-fat ointment, on their own bodies or on staffs, brooms or animals, which gave the apparent power of flight to any of these – though he himself concluded that this apparent power was always a devilish illusion.103
It is difficult amid all this to find any distinctive local formulations of such an important aspect of the construct of satanic witchcraft. What is striking instead is the propagation across Europe of what became a remarkably standard range of options, from which people selected according to local or individual choice. While the options originally arose as a result of particular trials, and some drew on ancient ideas, their propagation was the work of the elites who introduced the construct of the sabbath into area after area.
This conclusion may stand with respect to the general part played by specific folkloric and ancient motifs in witch trials in the central zone of Europe in which most of those trials occurred. The mass of recent research suggests not only that such motifs played an occasional, incidental and marginal role, but that the opposite phenomenon was immensely powerful: the newly developed stereotype of satanic witchcraft developed by late medieval preachers and inquisitors made a considerable impact on the popular imagination, once introduced into an area. To be sure it did so slowly, patchily and with some features emphasized or adopted more in particular places than others, but it none the less became very widely accepted and understood by the people who feature in trials as accusers and accused; indeed, trials represented an especially vivid means of transmitting it. In many parts of Europe, especially outside the central zone, people were prosecuted for alleged acts of harmful magic alone, without any reference to a pact with Satan or organized assemblies. Nevertheless, it can be strongly argued that the readiness of European elites to allow such prosecutions was itself driven by an enhanced consciousness, and fear, of witchcraft produced by the stereotype of a satanic religion.
In this context it is worth asking how much any aspects of such a religion were acted out by any of the people subsequently charged with witchcraft: did any of them actually try to be satanic witches? This question of the ‘reality’ of witchcraft was posed in the global context as part of the first chapter of the present book (a passage which readers may wish at this point to revisit), and it was suggested there that it is very hard to reach any firm conclusions with respect to it even in contexts in which living people could be interviewed by scholars. It is even harder to do so when testimony is refracted through old written texts. This problem is summed up by two statements from recent experts. One is Robin Briggs, who has declared that ‘historical European witchcraft is quite simply a fiction’; the other is Brian Levack, who stated that it ‘has a solid basis in reality, in that certain individuals in virtually all societies do in fact practise harmful or evil magic’.104 Both are in fact complementary, because they refer to different phenomena. To Briggs witchcraft represented the belief that people made pacts with the Devil to enable them to work genuine magical harm on other humans, and met in assemblies to worship him and engage in murderous and disgusting activities. Levack was speaking solely of attempts to hurt others by means of magic. Both, however, require further interrogation.
There is a great deal of evidence in favour of Levack’s dictum. As he pointed out himself, curse tablets and images stuck with pins are solid evidence of ancient attempts to harm or coerce others, while medieval and early modern books of ceremonial magic contain destructive spells. The court records of early modern Europe are full of proven cases of individuals who attempted to damage or kill by physical means, and who were heard to utter curses against others. It seems unthinkable that some of them would not have used spells aggressively if they believed that they would work. The problem is that of proving it in any individual case. This was the reason why the inquisitors in the republic of Venice never convicted anybody for the specific crime of magical harm: even in cases where material evidence – of suspicious objects like bones, feathers and inscriptions – was produced from the homes of alleged victims, it could all either have been planted or got there by innocent means.105 Where such trained professionals could not find solutions on the spot, historians cannot hope to do better. The matter ends in a paradox whereby there is virtual certainty in principle that people attempted to work witchcraft across early modern Eur
ope, but no apparent way of demonstrating it conclusively in the case of any named individuals. A similar problem attends Edward Bever’s bold attempt to extend to Europe the insights gained by doctors working in the developing world and discussed in the first chapter of the present book: that somebody who believed with utter certainty that they had been bewitched could fall ill as a result and even die. He has assembled a range of more recent medical and psychological insights to show the manner in which such fear can weaken the immune system and put pressure on vulnerable organs, of both humans and livestock: in this sense, in Europe as elsewhere, witchcraft could ‘work’.106 At this distance in time, however, it is medically impossible to prove that this actually happened in the case of any of the alleged early modern victims of witches, let alone that any of those accused actually performed the actions needed to create such an effect. Once again a reasonable presumption cannot be grounded in conclusive evidence.
The Witch Page 31
