The Enemy Within Read online

  Behind the leaders in the process of accusation marched many followers, ordinary folk whose interest and anxiety was easily mobilized. They were the ones to provide personal testimony on particular suspects and the details of maleficium. For the most part, they seem an indistinct mass of frightened, beleaguered souls, revealed to us now through a screen of heavily doctored legal and ecclesiastical writings. Generalizations about them can only be suggestive, nothing more. Still, the special importance of female accusers is, as previously noted, quite beyond doubt; to repeat here, a women-against-women dynamic was fundamental to many witchcraft cases, especially those playing out at the village level. However, men were also everywhere involved, and not just as leaders but also as part of an accusing chorus. Strikingly, in certain contexts children might play the critical role. A Swedish witch panic of the 1670s that claimed some 200 lives featured accusers as young as seven or eight. And lesser panics in the Basque country, in Poland, and in some parts of southern Germany also appear to have included children at, or near, the center of things.

  It goes almost without saying that many accusers were also victims of witchcraft (or so they believed), and vice versa. Yet the match was less than total. Some victims were not in a position to speak for themselves: infants and the very youngest children especially. In such cases a parent, or another adult, would have to bring charges on their behalf. (Of course, parents might well feel personally attacked by the witch-induced “affliction” of a beloved child.) Other supposed victims included some who had already died, some who were too sick or injured to come forward, and some who were perhaps too frightened. Conversely, certain groups of accusers were not usually victims themselves: for example, many of the official prosecutors, inquisitors, and “witch-finders.”

  Victimhood invariably spanned a broad range of experience, and its emphasis might differ greatly from one setting to the next. Yet the importance nearly everywhere of youthful victims is impossible to miss. Injury, illness, and death among the young appeared again and again, along with moments of interference in the care of such victims (difficulties in breast-feeding, for instance). Add to this the matter of reproductive failure—an inability to conceive, miscarriage, still-birth—which might be, and often was, attributed to witchcraft. Add, furthermore, another kind of productive (not reproductive) mischance: crops that withered on the vine, cows that wouldn’t give milk, fields that didn’t yield as expected. Roll them together, and the common denominator throughout was nothing less than human, and environmental, fertility. Witches were thought to target fertility above all else.

  Today we can mostly take fertility for granted. We use our knowledge of reproductive biology and the mechanics of contraception to control procreation. And we manage environmental productivity through a parallel combination of science and technology. How different the lives of our pre-modern forebears! For them procreation was always a matter of deep randomness and mystery—the work of “providence,” nothing less. The connection between sex and pregnancy was but partially understood, if not misunderstood; for example, widely prevalent opinion rated the menses as the most likely time for a woman to conceive. Individual families and whole communities struggled constantly to maintain a delicate reproductive balance. A dearth of newborn children, or an epidemic that struck at the young with particular force, could threaten group survival into the future. And so could an excess—by creating too many mouths to feed, from too-scarce resources. On the environmental side, much depended on the success of the annual harvest. In some years there was plenty, in others want; and whatever made for the difference was largely beyond the reach of human contrivance.

  Thus, in one life sector after another, fertility was all—with uncertainty, anxiety, a fear of failure, as its regular accompaniments. No wonder the links from fertility to witchcraft ran so deep and spread so wide. And no wonder the witch-craze years coincided with the climatic period of the so-called Little Ice Age and with what historians of northern Europe now describe as both a severe demographic squeeze and a widespread “crisis of subsistence.”

  Community. How did witchcraft reflect the shapes and structures of community life?

  The most common venue for European witchcraft was a rural village of perhaps 100 households, covering a territorial expanse of a dozen square miles—with a traditional peasant economy and largely self-sustaining, but also in some regular contact with its nearby surroundings. The single, most striking aspect of everyday experience in such a place was sheer social density. All families and all individuals were directly known to one another; life proceeded at every point on an up-close, face-to-face basis. Witchcraft, too, was up close and face-to-face. Accusations were almost never directed toward strangers; instead, the culprit would likely be a neighbor, would certainly be an acquaintance, and might even be an erstwhile friend. Where so much else was personal, suffering and victimhood would logically have a personal cause: she did it, he made it happen—not fate, or environmental mischance, or vast social and economic forces.

  “Panic” outbreaks, in attaining a much larger scale, followed a different pattern. The setting for many of these was not a peasant village, but rather a town or a small city. Such was true during the craze period in southern and central Germany, where most of the major witch-hunting centers were places of considerable size (perhaps 1,000 households, plus or minus) and at least partially urban character (including some involvement with commerce as well as agriculture). There accusations would begin to spiral by outgrowing the level of personal animosity. Strangers were often accused; indeed, this was key to the spiraling. Whereas the social density of village life might breed an initial round of suspicions but then limit their spread, the somewhat looser structures of the town could actually encourage panic episodes. Accusations would multiply where, and because, the element of personal connection was less likely to serve (sooner or later) as a source of restraint.

  Meanwhile, still further out along the same spectrum, the truly large cities of the period—London and Paris, for example—saw relatively few witch trials of either the ordinary or the panic type. In their case, experience was so impersonal and diffuse that the old forms of ad hominem suspicion could hardly take hold. Rapid population turnover, the differentiated and complex urban economy, the growth of bureaucracy, the general atmosphere of life en masse: such factors, individually and together, served as antidotes to witchcraft.

  These points lead to another important and controversial question, that of “functionalism.” The term, and the concept, belong to modern anthropological study, from which witchcraft historians have borrowed quite liberally. The question is whether witchcraft was to some extent advantageous—hence “functional”—for the communities in which it lay embedded. And the answer is decidedly mixed: yes, maybe, no, and sometimes quite the contrary.

  Witchcraft served, first of all, to line out crucial boundaries of behavior. The figure of the witch epitomized and personified evil. To trace that figure in detail was to identify the particular qualities deemed most negative by the community at large; hence, in a very basic sense, witchcraft belonged to the realm of moral philosophy. But this element extended beyond simple boundary marking, to embrace boundary maintenance as well. The fear of being labeled a witch undoubtedly influenced individual conduct, for persistent wrongdoing would invite such labeling. Even victims of witchcraft could come under suspicion; neighbors might ask, why have these particular persons been singled out for attack? Thus did moral philosophy mutate into a potent instrument of social control.

  And it went further still. The presence in a village community of a suspected witch worked both to deflect hostility from other targets and to concentrate blame, like a boil on the body that pulls in toxic fluids. To bring the suspect eventually to trial was, in effect, to lance the boil and release its toxicity. Court proceedings were in most instances a highly collaborative affair; neighbors took action as a group, and so reaffirmed their common bonds. The action was shared, the goals were shared, the feeli
ngs (fear, excitement, relief ) were shared. And when the proceedings were over—especially if the witch and her wickedness had been fully excised—the community felt a sharper, more unified sense of itself. Put differently: it was cleansed.

  This is admittedly a too-simple and schematic view; the reality of particular cases could easily become much more complex. Communities were not always of one mind about a suspect; if she had determined defenders, a trial might leave deep residues of bitterness or outright division. Furthermore, with panic witch-hunts it is hard to see any positive social function at all. Beyond the toll in lives lost, there would be massive disruption of familiar routines: work stopped, trade frozen, governance bent out of shape. In large-scale cases, witchcraft might tear a community apart and leave such devastation in its wake that full recovery would take decades or generations.

  The picture, then, is truly ambiguous: sometimes gain (for the group, obviously not for the accused and her kin), sometimes severe, even catastrophic, loss. That witchcraft was deeply, elaborately threaded into the fabric of community life can hardly be doubted. But no single “functionalist” formula will stretch to cover the entire range.

  Class. To what extent, and in what ways, did class difference contribute to the development of witchcraft cases?

  Witchcraft could mean remarkably different things to different people. And class (or “rank,” as people of the time would have said) was indeed a major divider. Peasants and all those who made a living with their hands approached witchcraft in an immediate, specific, fundamentally practical way—as a potential threat to everyday security. Particular forms of maleficium were their chief point of concern. Gentlefolk—in short, all who were not obliged to work with their hands—shared this concern but added to it a strong interest in the more broadly “diabolical” aspects, Satan’s relentless machinations and the cosmic struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. And among the “gentle,” a subgroup of the most literate and educated people, especially the clergy, placed the greatest emphasis on the diabolical; for them, maleficium was but a subordinate part of a much larger whole.

  In the small-scale witchcraft cases, as noted already, the usual starting point was an accusation by one villager or several against another. However, in order to reach the point of an actual trial, and then perhaps a conviction, it helped greatly if prominent local leaders decided to add the weight of their own influence. It was, in many instances, a combination of interest from different social levels that proved decisive against the accused. Or it could go another way: an accusatory process might shut down at a certain point because community leaders withheld their support. At least occasionally, magistrates would directly refuse to validate some particular charge; then a verdict might be set aside and a defendant released. Throughout these oft-repeated dramas one feels a certain tension between the viewpoints of “common” and “gentle” folk. Sometimes they were fully aligned; sometimes they were at odds; often enough they mixed, and jostled, and eventually found their way to a middle ground.

  Even among the ranks of the “common” there were finely graded distinctions between some who had a bit more and others with a bit less. A good many witchcraft accusations followed a pattern that some historians now refer to as “the refusal-guilt syndrome.” One villager, in a state of evident need, would approach another to request assistance: some food perhaps, or drink, or wood for the fire, or simply a chance to perform paid work. Then the request was refused, for whatever reason: We have not enough for ourselves; we’ve already promised someone else; we need to save for the future. And this led to personal recrimination, including—so the refuser might later claim—threats by the refused: I shall be even with you. As a further step, the refuser would experience some “loss” or difficulty of a seemingly mysterious nature. From all of which he would draw the inevitable conclusion: Witchcraft! She was angry, and spiteful, after I turned her away. And this is her revenge.

  In peasant communities across Europe an ethic of neighborly cooperation, and of charity toward those “in want,” had governed daily life for centuries. So the refusal at the heart of this little scene constituted a breach; the refuser was left feeling guilty, and vulnerable, and perhaps (at some level) anticipating punishment. In fact, versions of the same sequence might appear in all sorts of contentious exchange, whenever the reasons for a person-to-person rebuff seemed questionable. But the refusal-guilt element, in particular, suggests a close link to traditional neighborly values—at a moment in history when those values had begun to erode. Especially in a place like Britain, as the first serious stirrings of market capitalism became evident, “individualism” was a growing cultural presence. And witchcraft cases took shape on the cusp of that momentous development.

  The refusal-guilt pattern produced accusations that aimed down the ladder of social and economic status, from those a rung or two higher up toward others underneath. But there were also situations in which the aim went up. Perhaps a market-minded producer seemed overly self-regarding and “individualist”; he might then open himself, or members of his family, to charges of witchcraft “from below.” This reminds us that witchcraft accusation was an extremely flexible and adaptable weapon: useful in some contexts for defending established positions and in others for launching a tradition-subverting attack.

  Religion. How did religious thought, religious commitment, and religious conflict intermix with witchcraft?

  Much of the energy behind the great witch-hunts during the “craze” period derived from a supercharged intensity about religion. As the Protestant Reformation proceeded past its initial stage and engaged head-on with the Catholic Counter-Reformation, ideas clashed, attitudes hardened, emotions strengthened on every side. Taken together, the two great movements served to Christianize and spiritualize European culture in ways both broad and deep. Their goals became fully evangelical; vernacular preaching exposed ordinary folk to religious and moral exhortation as never before. Gone was the old sense that religion belonged chiefly to specialists (priests and monks); henceforth, each individual soul must take direct responsibility for his or her spiritual condition. This was, of course, the doctrinal heart of Protestantism, but it was also evident in practice among newly energized Catholics.

  In such a context, witchcraft loomed larger than ever. The appalling menace it presented would certainly extend to all branches of “true religion”; hence the need for vigilance was constant. Unbelief, apostasy, and sin in every conceivable guise were rolled together in the figure of the witch. And behind her, towering over her, stood the Devil himself; he, too, seemed more immediate, more personal, more dangerous than before. It was also important that the Bible be taken in increasingly literal ways. This included a famous line from the Book of Exodus: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The word itself was suffused with Satanic implication; “a witch” meant, first and last, a person sworn to do the Devil’s bidding.

  Both Catholics and Protestants contributed hugely to witch-hunting. Much of the supportive ideology, as well as strategy and tactics, was shared between them. The idea of diabolic pact, for example, held central importance on both sides. And torture was a prime instrument of persecution almost everywhere, with England as a notable exception. Still, it does seem that the quantitative profiles of witch-hunting—Catholic versus Protestant—diverged over time. Whereas in the 16th century their victim totals were roughly similar, in the 17th Catholics forged ahead while Protestants gradually fell back; the 10 largest witch-hunts at the height of the craze in southern Germany (1600-1630) were all based in Catholic communities. There were also significant differences of emphasis: Protestantism made much of the witch’s individual relationship to the Devil, while Catholicism stressed its collective aspect, as exemplified by the sabbat. Catholic views were loaded with sexual preoccupation: incubi and succubi as “copulating demons”; promiscuous orgy as a feature of the sabbat; witchcraft as a cause of both impotence in men and infertility in women. The equivalent Protestant imagery downplayed sex
uality but elevated the theme of sheer aggression: the “blasting” of crops and fields; injury to personal property and competence, and to lives.

  Yet, once again, such differences fade when seen in any truly comprehensive perspective. For the most part, Protestant and Catholic witch-hunters—clergy and laity alike—worked in a competitive (if unacknowledged) tandem. Furthermore, differences within their respective ranks were sometimes much greater than those between. In fact, it would be wrong to see either Catholic or Protestant opinion on witchcraft as a monolith. Variable shadings of belief, and even quite basic structural contradictions, were present in both systems. Witchcraft theory was always a matter of debate and dispute; its leading parts could be, and often were, subject to shifting forms of interpretation. There were well-known, widely read skeptics and doubters: for example, the German physician Johann Weyer and the British country philosopher Reginald Scot. Weyer spoke for a considerable group of Continental thinkers, all of whom in one way or another rejected the usual claims made for witchcraft. The Devil, said Weyer, was even more powerful than generally realized and had no need whatsoever for assistance from human followers. Scot, on the other hand, argued that witchcraft belief implicitly slighted God’s own stature, by attributing “to a creature the power of the creator.” Both writers, and others too, decried the way hapless old women—in Scot’s words, “lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and . . . poor . . . wretches”—were such frequent targets of witch-hunting. Most of the accused, they argued, had little means of defense, and some who confessed were simply deluded or deranged. Such strands of belief extended into the “craze” years the old, moderate Episcopi tradition, according to which diabolism was dwarfed by the reach and powers of Providence.