The Enemy Within Read online

  Taken as a whole, the concept of witchcraft joined popular tradition with the most elevated religious doctrine of its age. A long spectrum of attitude and belief stretched from the witch in one’s midst—personal, domestic, all too familiar—to the broad philosophical problem of evil and the Devil’s unending war against God. It was, finally, witch-hunting that fused these different elements and rooted them in particular times and places.

  That some proceedings against witches occurred well back in the Middle Ages there can be no doubt: witness the concerns expressed in Charlemagne’s capitulary and the Canon Episcopi. But, with rare exceptions, records of these have not survived. What has survived, from the early and middle decades of the 14th century, is evidence of rising alarm over witchcraft, magic, and heresy—directed at (and by) leadership groups in both church and state. For example, in 1317 a French bishop was burnt at the stake for allegedly using witchcraft in a plot against the life of Pope John XXII. In subsequent years the same pope brought similar charges against others among his Church adversaries. (Moreover, on two occasions he aided investigations of sorcery thought to have been aimed at French kings.) Meanwhile, in England, the Bishop of Coventry was tried for having made a pact with the Devil (and was barely acquitted); and King Edward II repeatedly accused his political opponents of practicing witchcraft against him. In Ireland, as well, political feuds led straight to witch trials—most famously in the case of a noblewoman named Lady Alice Kyteler. Caught in the midst of long-standing animosities among several prominent Irish families, Lady Alice was charged with murdering three successive husbands by witchcraft and incapacitating a fourth; in addition, she was thought to have led a Devil-worshiping cabal and to have consorted frequently with an “incubus” (copulating demon). Her trial took place at Kilkenny in 1324-25, under the general supervision of the local bishop. Though she herself made a timely escape to England, many of her alleged associates were seized, convicted, and variously burnt alive, whipped, imprisoned, or banished. Her considerable wealth wound up mainly in the hands of her accusers.

  The list of individuals brought to trial in roughly the same time period includes others of high rank: a French abbot (1308), an English earl (1330), an Italian viscount (1320). Even a pope, Boniface VIII, was accused of being a sorcerer and entertaining a “familiar” spirit (1303). But most sensational of all was the state-sponsored, Church-abetted assault upon the so-called Knights Templar, spanning nearly a decade (1306-15) and touching many different parts of the continent. In the early 12th century, the papacy had constituted the Templars a military order under monastic rule; their mission was to protect the gains of the several medieval Crusades to the Holy Land. As time passed and the Crusader realm fell to Islam, the order was no longer linked to its original goals. Instead, it grew into a large, virtually freestanding, institutional edifice of extraordinary power and riches; in France especially, its activities supported (and profited from) key elements of the state. Inevitably, it aroused envy and acquired enemies in both the ecclesiastical and the secular establishments. Then, as the 14th century began, the French king, Philip VI (known as “the Fair”), set his eye on the Templars’ wealth. With the off-and-on collusion of Church leaders and some direct assistance from the papal inquisition, Philip used the courts to bring the order down. The charges lodged against it ran a broad gamut from heresy to Devil-worship, from magic to witchcraft. By 1320 the Templars were finished as an organized body, with dozens of their leaders executed and their vast properties confiscated to shore up the monarchy.

  This 30-year spate of politically motivated trials at the highest levels of society was unique; never again would the searchlight of persecution point so steadily and distinctly at monarchs, nobles, popes, bishops, and their ilk. It was, to be sure, somewhat blurred in its focus. Witchcraft was invariably a part of it, and was sometimes at its center; but heresy and magic were also frequently in the mix. Moreover, the specifically diabolical aspects, while present, did not overshadow the rest; pact, for example, appeared only to a limited extent. In the meantime, witchcraft among the common people remained a small and scattered affair. Occasional trial proceedings, amounting to an average of barely one per year for all of Europe, around isolated suspects, and with little impact beyond a single village locality: such was the pattern throughout most of the 14th century.

  But with the century’s last decades came the beginnings of change. Trials increased in both quantity and scope; by the 1430s the continent-wide average had virtually tripled. The reasons for this are at best a matter of speculation, yet certain possibilities seem obvious. The Black Death, a massive outbreak of plague, spread across Europe starting around 1350; periodically recurring thereafter, it brought suffering and death on an unparalleled scale. (Overall depopulation reached at least 30 percent.) Meanwhile, too, France and England plunged into what became known as the Hundred Years’ War, a series of on-and-off conflicts that took its own massive toll in blood and property. With so much of life in disarray, authorities of all sorts stood open to questioning by those to whom they had traditionally offered protection. Thus it was hardly coincidence that this period brought chronic rebellion among peasants and other marginalized groups in many parts of the continent; their superiors responded, not surprisingly, with fear and sometimes with brutal acts of repression. The immediate reverberations of such large trends need not necessarily have centered on witchcraft; Jews, for example, were the first group to be scapegoated in the Black Death. Still, disease, warfare, and rebellion would inevitably sour the climate of life almost everywhere. And this, in turn, might set a stage for witch-hunting as well as pogroms. (Moreover, in some specific cases, witches were depicted first and foremost as rebels, reflecting the widespread fear of social uprising.)

  There were other contributing factors as well. Heresy seems, on the whole, to have declined after the mid-14th century. The Cathars and the Waldensians steadily shrank in both numbers and influence; their remnants survived chiefly along the mountainous margins. Alarm about heretics, together with much associated imagery, was then refocused on witches. Central to this process, now as before, were the linked notions of pact and sabbat. As pact rose in importance, so, too, was its character changed. Instead of being a bargain between equals, it was increasingly construed as an act of submission in which witch-recruits acknowledged the fundamental supremacy of Satan. By the same route, Satan’s role and power were substantially elevated; previously taken as a foil to Christ the Son, he now became a match for (and opposite to) God the Father—and thus a plausible object of full-fledged idolatry. The sabbat, for its part, was reframed as an elaborate worship performance, with traditional Catholic elements directly inverted (the Black Mass, and its “devilish” accompaniments). Witchcraft as an organized, Satan-centered antithesis to Christianity—here was heresy indeed!

  Changing legal practice also played in. The main trend was a gradual shift from an “accusatorial” and “interpersonal” system, in which court proceedings were initiated and carried through by private parties, to an “inquisitorial” and “bureaucratic” one, with public authority at the center. The earlier pattern had left the chief responsibility for prosecuting crime, including witchcraft, to its supposed victims; the later one took crime as a matter of generalized civic concern. Specifically, this meant that judges and prosecutors (or “inquisitors”) would take the lead by gathering up informal suspicions, conducting investigations, bringing charges, evaluating proof, and—not least—imposing penal sentence. (A prime example was the Inquisition itself.) The result was a significant widening of the door to witch-hunts.

  A further widening came from the increased use of torture as a means to gain evidence, especially confessions. Because witchcraft could be viewed as a crimen exceptum (extraordinary crime) that threatened the very foundations of community, physical coercion seemed allowable, even (under some circumstances) necessary. And proof was so elusive that, as a contemporary theorist explained, “not one out of a million witches would be
accused or punished if regular legal procedure were followed.”

  As these changes went forward, witchcraft cases moved from being the exclusive concern of the Church toward shared jurisdiction with the state; indeed, secular courts would sometimes take the lead. Finally, in most parts of Europe before the 17th century, such courts operated locally or regionally, without much oversight from central authority; in effect, they could do as they pleased. This, too, went in the direction of widening.

  During the period between 1450 and 1500, the numbers of the accused continued to rise; a careful accounting of recorded trials shows a tenfold increase as compared with the previous century. By now, too, the conceptual picture of witchcraft had largely filled out while spreading continent-wide. Its main vehicle was the new print literature. Learned treatises on its theological and philosophical context, as well as practical “handbooks” for local inquisitors bent on actual prosecutions, proliferated widely—and constituted, indeed, a publishing genre virtually unto itself. The most famous of all witch-centered works, the Malleus Maleficarum, appeared in 1487. But there were others scarcely less important; taken together, they served to codify and publicize witchcraft on a grand scale. Their authors were, in nearly every case, drawn from the ranks of the educated elite: clerics especially, but also lawyers, scientists, philosophers, and other “humanist” intellectuals. To read these works was to enter some of the most learned discourse of the time. Moreover, they were used more and more in actual trial proceedings; thus they helped forge a crucial link between local, everyday witchcraft and witchcraft as highly elaborated demonology.

  However, their impact was felt more in the long than in the short run. The Malleus, for example, would be read and cited as much as two centuries later—and by Protestants as much as by Catholics. Yet the years immediately following its publication saw relatively modest levels of witch-hunting. Indeed, the period from about 1500 to 1560 represented a kind of pause in this long and turbulent history. Witch trials were a continuing occurrence, with significant outbreaks in northern Italy and the Basque country. But in France and Germany, their past and future center-points, they hardly appeared at all. For Europe as a whole, the sum of prosecutions leveled off—and may actually have fallen somewhat.

  Perhaps not coincidentally, the same period brought an eruption of religious conflict of completely unprecedented scope, as the Protestant Reformation (usually dated to Martin Luther’s 1517 posting of his Ninety-five Theses) evoked the Catholic Counter-Reformation and an ensuing, intense competition in both the spiritual and the secular realms. The connection of all this to witchcraft was important but uneven; essentially, it followed a two-stage sequence. For several decades after the start of the Reformation, the energy previously devoted to witch-hunting seems to have lessened—drawn off, as it were, into the bitterness of sectarian struggle. It is striking, for example, that wherever such struggle resulted in open warfare, witch trials would decline dramatically, or even (temporarily) disappear. Conversely, the return of peace was likely to bring renewed attention to witchcraft. These correlations are not perfect, but do seem strong enough to imply some form of underlying, and dynamic, linkage.

  This history has reached one of its most critical turnings, the start of the “craze” phenomenon in the second half of the 16th century. For roughly the next hundred years—albeit with considerable variance between different geographical regions—Europe and the British Isles were preoccupied with witches, witchcraft, and witch-hunting as never before or since. The following pages treat the period essentially as a unit. At the same time, however, they divide the subject into a number of descriptive and interpretive sections, each framed by a leading question.

  Sequence. What was the typical progression of events in witchcraft cases?

  Always and everywhere, charges of witchcraft were grounded in a web of local, intensely personal relations. Even episodes that would ultimately grow very large started small. A quarrel between neighbors—about cattle, about crops, about the terms of trade or the payment of debts, about the boundaries of fields or social space, about more bits and pieces of everyday experience than could possibly be enumerated here—thus was a seed sown, a process begun. One quarrel would probably not be enough; but here and there, one became two, or three, or several. Resentments built, angers festered; these, in turn, might lead to an exchange of threats and cursing.

  Then a new factor entered: misfortune and suffering for one or the other party. A sudden, inexplicable illness in the family (most often a child); the death of a cow (also sudden, also inexplicable); the disappearance of valued property; a surprise failure in work or human relations: another innumerable range. Now there would be worry, doubt (including self-doubt), and a vexing, perhaps obsessively held, question: Why? Why me? Why this? The previous quarrels were remembered, and configured in a new way: Might she have . . . ? And yet it took time to make a witch—time, and many quarrels, and a growing cluster of suspicion-laden victims. The end result was the forming of a reputation: Beware of her; she has a wicked spirit—“malice and envy” in her heart—and she has “powers.”

  Sooner or later would come a tipping point. The quarrels would become so frequent and bitter, the misfortunes so troubling, that an actual accusation would be voiced: aloud (previously it was muffled), in public, in a local court. From here on, events would follow a legal track. The basic charge would be maleficium, injurious action performed by supernatural means; sometimes, not always, there would be additional reference to compacting with the Devil. Testimony would be taken from a large group of witnesses. The suspect would be formally charged, arrested, committed to prison. There she would be examined, both physically (for the so-called marks of a witch) and verbally (for evidence of ill will, unbelief, or “evil connection”). A trial would follow, with all the evidence presented anew. At the end, a verdict would be rendered: guilty or innocent. There might, or might not, be an appeal. The suspect, if convicted, might try to flee, might commit suicide, might effect some form of plea bargain by confessing and implicating confederates. But, far more likely, she would suffer the official penalty prescribed in such cases: possibly imprisonment, probably execution by hanging or burning at the stake.

  Thus the bare bones of witchcraft’s “smaller” cases, in which there was little or no need for follow-up. When the trial ended, a balance was restored, and life in the local community could proceed as before. Yet this did not mean that witchcraft would entirely drop from view. For there would be other suspects—who might or might not prompt other trials, depending on the circumstances. Virtually all pre-modern communities held a little pool of possible or probable “witches”; indeed, a village or town would hardly have seemed complete without them.

  The bare bones’ version is exactly that; actual cases would add a wealth of place- and person-specific detail. There might be other participants beyond the principals—in effect, a supporting cast. Sometimes “cunning folk” would receive and respond to a direct appeal from the victim(s); this might involve confirming the witch’s identity or suggesting a remedy for particular forms of “affliction.” Sometimes physicians would be needed to rule out natural causes. In certain contexts, clergy would come to the home of those most centrally involved to offer prayers for divine guidance and intervention. And a corps of associates and neighbors might enlist on one side or the other—to support, or rebut, the charges against the accused. In this way an entire community could be galvanized, and mesmerized, by the supposed operations of witchcraft, for weeks or months at a stretch.

  At the other end of the witch-trial spectrum stood the full-fledged “panic” outbreak. This meant witch-hunting in a much more concentrated form. Sometimes it would grow out of an initially limited case, with a single suspect then joined to others in a steadily widening spiral. But sometimes it depended on the organized effort of inquisitors or “witch finders.” Most often, the latter were clergy; yet secular authorities would usually run close behind and act in direct collaboration. The
mood in such cases was most definitely one of panic, as accusations piled rapidly on one another. A central element was confession by the accused, for this would nearly always bring forth the names of fellow witches. And crucial to obtaining confession was the purposeful use of torture (or at least the threat). Common methods included various forms of physical distension—stretching on a rack, for example, or being strung up in midair by a device called the “strappado,” a pulley system roped to the arms—or else of compression, by means of clamps or screws attached to head, legs, thumbs, and other sensitive body parts.

  Episodes of panic witchcraft raised the stakes at every level. The emphasis would shift from maleficium to diabolism—from specific moments of personal injury and distress in a particular victim, to broad-gauge, Devil-inspired conspiracy against all of Christendom. Just here, the idea of sabbat would prove especially powerful. What the inquisitors most wished to hear, and what the accused did frequently provide, was detailed information about this utterly blasphemous nighttime proceeding—with the Devil himself in full charge—and including not only a parodied version of the traditional Christian sacraments but also naked dancing, sexual orgy, ritual infanticide, and gluttonous feasting on human flesh.

  The process of concluding a panic outbreak, with its invariably high toll in lives taken or radically disrupted, is hard to discern from several centuries later on. It must often have involved some form of retreat, with the details left unrecorded. Perhaps there came a point of sheer exhaustion. And probably there was a sense among some in positions of authority that events had gone far enough, if not already too far. Occasionally the spiral of accusation might seem to have overreached itself by touching certain quite unlikely targets (persons of high social rank or previously unquestioned moral character). Then, one way or another, those at the center would decide to stand down.