The Enemy Within Read online

  At about the same point, Kramer embarks on a further, and closely related, project: to prepare a book about his inquisitorial activities. Written in Latin, entitled the Malleus Maleficarum (English translation: The Hammer of Witches), and published at Strasbourg in 1486, this work will come to be seen as an epitome of witch-hunting.

  The Malleus was not the first work of its kind—a list of witchcraft treatises from the preceding half century runs to more than three dozen—but it would become far and away the most famous. Read today, it seems very much a hybrid: part bible, part encyclopedia, part operational guide. It is long: some 400 pages in a mid-20th century reprinting. It is densely written, with lots of heavy scholastic verbiage: “Here is set forth” . . . “With reference to these words it is to be noted that” . . . “Firstly . . . secondly . . . thirdly . . . fourthly.” Its expository method is basically that of a catechism, with questions raised (and answered), objections posed (and resolved), principles stated, “admonitions” tendered, conclusions declared. Its goal is to describe and analyze the entire panoply of witch-related phenomena, and to offer judges and fellow inquisitors a comprehensive model of response.

  The book has three main parts. (Its preface is the pope’s recent bull, republished entire.) The first part lays some theoretical groundwork—by establishing that disbelief in witches is rank heresy, by showing the irrevocable connection between witches and the Devil, by canvassing the numerous harms (maleficia) they bring, and by tracing their usual biographical profile (with special emphasis on their female gender). The second part describes the leading forms of witchcraft—its causal ways and means—and declares certain general principles of investigation. And the third part provides an exhaustive account of the legal steps to be taken against witches: details of charging, examining (including the use of torture), sentencing, and executing.

  The argument builds and builds, through abundant reference to “authorities”: to the Scriptures, most of all, but also to patristic sources (especially St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas) and other demonologists from around the same time period, as well as to classical writers and philosophers with something valuable to say on the subject (Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Cato, and many more). It also invokes the “credible experience” of the authors themselves in pursuing their targets. As such, the Malleus is, from first to last, a compendium of stories: here are a few representative examples.

  A young girl in the village of Breisach (near Basel, Switzerland) was “converted” to witchcraft by her aunt who “had [subsequently] been burned in the diocese of Strasbourg.” This aunt “one day . . . ordered her to go upstairs . . . where she found fifteen young men clothed in green garments after the manner of German knights.” She was then “sorely beaten” and forced to have sex with one (or more) of the men, and afterward was “initiated” into the Devil’s ranks. During the following weeks and months she “was often transported by night . . . over vast distances” in order to meet other witches “in conclave.” There she observed the ritual killing of infants; among other horrors, she recalled a time when “she had opened a secret pot and found the heads of a great many children.”

  A confessed witch “in the state of Berne” (Switzerland) also spoke of child-murder, and added to it the element of cannibalism. “We set our snares chiefly for unbaptized children, . . . and with our spells we kill them in their cradles or even when they are sleeping by their parents’ sides. . . . Then we secretly take them from their graves and cook them in a cauldron, until the whole flesh comes away from the bones to make a soup which may easily be drunk. Of the more solid matter we make an unguent which is to help us in our arts and pleasures and our transportations; and with the liquids we fill a flask or skin—whoever drinks from which, with the addition of a few other ceremonies, immediately acquires much knowledge and becomes a leader in our sect.”

  A third story, from the German town of Regensburg, where Kramer’s inquisition had just recently been active, expressed another theme very prominent in the Malleus: sexual dysfunction, supposedly caused by witchcraft. A young man, having broken off “an intrigue with a girl,” suddenly “lost his member . . . so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body.” During a visit to a local tavern, he lamented his loss to a fellow patron, who urged that he confront his former sweetheart and demand her to “restore to you your health.” He did just that, but the girl protested her innocence; whereupon “he fell upon her, and . . . choked her,” threatening her very life. At this, “She . . . with her face already swelling and growing black, said ‘Let me go, and I will heal you.’ ” And she “touched him with her hand between the thighs, saying ‘Now you have what you desire.’ And the young man . . . plainly felt . . . that his member had been restored to him by the mere touch of this witch.”

  This last belonged to a much larger discussion—of witches, devils, and sex. The key questions included: “How in Modern Times Witches perform the Carnal Act with Incubus Devils”; “How, as it were, they Deprive Man of his Virile Member”; and “Whether the Relations of an Incubus Devil with a Witch are always accompanied by the Injection of Semen.” Some of the answers were ingenious and mystifying (as perhaps befits such a literally Satanic subject). For instance: in order to effect their “abominable coitus,” devils would assume bodily form “through condensation by means of gross vapors raised from the earth.” Devils, and witches too, might then create “an illusion of glamor . . . to collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members . . . as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report.” Indeed, the questions went on and on. Where did the semen used on these occasions come from? (Perhaps the Devil would collect what he needed from “nocturnal pollutions in sleep.” Or possibly he got it by taking the form of a woman and seducing concupiscent men.) Did intercourse between devils and witches afford “venereal pleasure”? (In some cases, yes; but a devil’s penis was often uncomfortably cold.) And might such connection lead to pregnancy—and thus to devil-spawned children? (When certain necessary “causes concur,” the result could well be “progeny that are . . . [uncommonly] powerful and big in body.”) In one way or another, the sex act was crucial to the spread of witchcraft, not only because of its “natural nastiness,” but also because it had “caused the corruption of our first parents and, by its contagion, brought the inheritance of original sin on the whole human race.”

  Child-murder and sex are recurrent preoccupations in the Malleus . But what seems most striking of all, as viewed from half a millennium later, is something else again: the flat-out, unblinking misogyny in which the entire work is drenched. Right at the start, the authors asked: “Why it is that women are chiefly addicted to evil superstitions?” Then, at great length and with fervent conviction, they offered their answer. Women, they declared—invoking long-familiar stereotypes—are “more credulous” and “more impressionable” and “feebler in mind and body” than men; these qualities, separately and together, naturally invite the attentions of the Devil. But this is just the beginning. A woman has a “slippery tongue,” and is “a liar by nature.” Thus she inclines always to “deceit”; moreover, “her gait, posture, and habit [betray her] vanity of vanities.” A further “natural reason” for her basic “perfidy” is that “she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations”; indeed, her “carnal lust . . . is insatiable.” Finally, “it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib . . . in a contrary direction to a man. [Thus] she is an imperfect animal.” To repeat: credulous, impressionable, feeble in mind and body; lying, deceitful, vain; insatiably carnal; and defectively formed in the first place. Put the whole together, and “it is no matter for wonder that there are many more women [than men] found infected with the heresy of witchcraft.”

  Perhaps it seems unsurprising that two aging male p
riests, sworn to lifelong celibacy, would spew such pointedly woman-hating invective. But, in fact, Kramer and Sprenger were as careful here as throughout the Malleus to cite numerous other writings in support of their views. Again and again they invoked the Bible: for example, “There is no wrath above the wrath of a woman” (Ecclesiastes 25). And also the saints: “What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with fair colors” (St. John Chrysostom). And, not least, the sages of antiquity: “The many lusts of men lead them into one sin; but the one lust of women leads them into all sins; for the root of all woman’s vices is avarice” (Cicero). Indeed, this aspect of the Malleus is best understood as a pulling together of misogynous attitudes from many different sources and centuries. As such, it exemplifies a virtual mother lode of feeling (especially, but not exclusively, in men) that fueled witch-hunting everywhere.

  In its final section, the Malleus turns from theory to practice—from witchcraft as a social, cultural, and cosmological presence to the specific requirements of inquisition. Witch-hunting was then in the early stages of a highly consequential shift; formerly the special province of the church, it would soon become a prime focus for the state, as papal inquisitors yielded more and more responsibility to secular courts and judges. The Malleus was a major instigator, both in furnishing overall warrant and as a source of particular strategies and tactics. The chief arguments favoring secular prosecution were: “First, because . . . the crime of witches is not purely ecclesiastical, being rather civil on account of the temporal injuries they commit”; second, “because special laws are provided for dealing with witches”; and, “finally, because it seems that in this way it is easiest to proceed with the extermination of witches.” The Malleus did, at every point, emphasize maleficia (“temporal injuries”) over broadly theological issues. Governments had recently begun to write witchcraft into statute law. And, for certain, there was no quicker, more efficient way to achieve the ultimate goal of witch “extermination.”

  The specifics, reflecting as they did the authors’ direct experience, ran the gamut from basic principles of law to elaborate counter-magical tips. Thus, on the one hand: “The judge is not bound to publish the names of deponents”; or, “an Advocate shall be allotted to the accused”; or, “while she is being questioned about each point, let her be often and frequently exposed to torture”; or, “take note whether she is able to shed tears . . . [for] if she be a witch, she will not be able to weep.” Yet, on the other hand, there are certain detailed “precautions” to be taken by judges and their assistants: “They must not allow themselves to be touched physically by the witch . . . [and] they must always carry about them some salt consecrated on Palm Sunday or other Blessed Herbs . . . [as] remedies against illnesses and diseases caused by witchcraft.” Moreover: “The witch should be led backward into the presence of the Judge [to prevent her from casting an evil eye]. And “the hair should be shaved from every part of her body . . . [since witches] are in the habit of hiding some superstitious object . . . in their hair, or even in the most secret parts of their bodies, which must not be named.” Follow such procedures, the Malleus concluded, and judges would be safe, witches would be punished (or “eliminated”), justice would be served.

  The Malleus will have a place in the history of printing as well as the history of witchcraft. The invention of movable type by a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg, just a few decades earlier, has already begun to reshape the contours of European culture. Books are pouring from presses in many different countries, and the Malleus will move quickly into the vanguard of period “bestsellers.” By 1523 it has appeared in no fewer than 13 different Latin editions. Then come several decades during which it is not republished, as witch-hunting in general seems to stall. However, near the end of the 16th century, it inspires a new burst of printings—29 of them before all is said and done. Considered as a whole, this first century of its publication history seems to embody not only the technology but also the mind-set of a new age—when witch-hunting, like so much else, follows an increasingly secularized track.

  Meanwhile, new “handbooks” come along as well. Perhaps the most influential are by the French philosopher Jean Bodin (De la demonomanie des sorciers, 1580), a French judge and prosecutor, Nicholas Remy (Daemonolatreiae, 1595), and a Belgian Jesuit priest, Martin Del Rio (Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex, 1599). All credit the precedence, and importance, of the Malleus. Even skeptical authors, most notably the German physician Johann Weyer, whose De praestigiis daemonum appears in 1563, make similar acknowledgment, though in their case the Malleus is more a target than a source of inspiration.

  This pattern continues into and throughout, the 17th century. Trial records from the peak craze years are sprinkled with explicit or implicit reference to the Malleus. And writers on witchcraft as far away as New England’s Increase Mather give it mention. When parts of the book appear in Polish translation, it helps open a new front for witch-hunting in northeastern Europe. Finally, in the 18th century, and more especially in the 19th, the Malleus begins to fade from sight. But then, against all odds, it undergoes something of a revival in the 20th century, when an eccentric Catholic intellectual named Montague Summers steps forward to defend witch-hunting. Indeed Summers vigorously champions the entire project in which Kramer and Sprenger played such an important part: he affirms the existence, and powers, of the Devil as traditionally conceived, and affirms, too, the menacing reality of witchcraft. In 1928 he puts the Malleus back into general circulation and 20 years later publishes yet another “modern” edition. Summers describes it, rather grandly, as “one of the world’s few books written sub specie aeternitatis [of eternal significance].”

  Still in print and widely available, the Malleus remains a lightning rod for passionate debate even today. A favorite online bookseller lists no fewer than 71 “reviews” by current readers. Their opinions stretch across a wide range, from complete disapproval and disgust to equally fervent appreciation. A clear majority take one or another negative position: the Malleus as “a pack of myths and bigotries”; “a compendium of fifteenth-century paranoias”; or “a detestably cold and calculated book of horrors.” Some detect close parallels to “totalitarian modernity,” especially Nazism (with the Malleus cast as “the Mein Kampf of the Middle Ages”). Several seize the chance to belabor “traditional Catholicism,” for having initially sponsored “the best example of Christian sadism.” Additional commentators mix revulsion with a feeling of interest. One finds it “both special and vile.” Another gains from it “a fascinating insight . . . into the fearful mind.” A third regards it as “a history lesson . . . and a way to weed out false beliefs.” A fourth offers this extravagant encomium: “The magnificent Malleus Maleficarum is one of the greatest works of psychology and sociology ever written.”

  Like witch-hunting as a whole, the Malleus has traveled a long journey. And it travels still.

  PART TWO

  EARLY AMERICA

  Inevitably, the idea of witchcraft crossed the ocean with the first European colonists coming to America. And so, too, did witch-hunting cross over. Chapter IV presents a specific case from 17th-century Connecticut: specific, local, small-scale, altogether ordinary in its particulars, and for these very reasons a good example of the general type.

  Chapter V zooms out and up to survey the entire landscape of Colonial-era witch-hunting, as if from a historical mountaintop. Virginia and its southern neighbors; the so-called middle colonies of New York and Pennsylvania; New England most especially (up to, but not including, the Salem trials of 1692-93): thus the scope of the view. Concern with witchcraft can be seen everywhere, albeit in widely differing proportions.

  Chapter VI returns to ground level, and to the earliest phase of New England history, in order to follow the course of a single life, in which suspicions of witchcraft involvement played a
recurrent role. As the folk themselves might have said, once a witch, always a witch—so, on both sides, be careful.

  CHAPTER IV

  Windsor, Connecticut, 1654: A Town Entertaining Satan

  An autumn afternoon in the year 1651; the town of Windsor, in the colony of Connecticut. Several dozen men have gathered on the local “training field” for militia drill. They march in formation, with officers at the front. Drums beat; colors fly from a long, hand-hewn staff; muskets are raised and lowered on command. Presently the group divides in two, so as to engage in mock battle. Each side moves back from the center, turns, crouches, and fires over the heads of the other. This exercise is repeated a number of times.

  As the trainees resume their original positions and prepare to break ranks, there comes a sudden, sharp report from somewhere in their midst. Seconds later, one of them staggers out of line and falls heavily to the ground; he has been hit by an errant bullet fired from close-up. Blood flows from a deep wound in his neck. Other men run toward him and attempt to help. Presently they carry him on a makeshift bier to a nearby house, where the town physician can attend to him. But he is beyond saving; he dies later that night.

  His name was Henry Stiles, his age about 58. The source of the shot that killed him is a musket belonging to another man named Thomas Allen; the two were marching side by side. Allen is young (not yet 20), carefree, and self-absorbed. Eyewitnesses to the afternoon’s events will later recall Allen’s blatant mishandling of his gun. He failed to secure its firing cock and lowered it virtually to Stiles’s head. Then he swung it heedlessly back and forth. And then, somehow, it discharged.