HERESY, MAGIC, AND WITCHCRAFT IN

EARLY MODERN EUROPE

 European Culture and Society
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HERESY, MAGIC, AND
WITCHCRAFT IN
EARLY MODERN
EUROPE

Gary K. Waite
© Gary K. Waite 2003
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Heresy, magic, and witchcraft in early modern Europe / Gary K. Waite.
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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1
1. The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 11
2. The Reformation and the End of the World 52
3. Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 87
4. The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 118
5. Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting,
1562–1630 151
6. Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 192
7. Conclusion 229

Notes 235
Annotated Bibliography 253
Index 267

v
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have benefited immensely from the support and advice of many indi-
viduals and institutions while researching and composing this book.
Although I have been pursuing this subject for many years, the bulk of
the writing took place during a sabbatical leave in 2000–2001. The latter
portion of this time was spent in the heady climate of Cambridge, U.K.,
one of the great academic cities in the world. I am deeply grateful to the
(then) President, Dame Gillian Beer and the Fellows of Clare Hall for
admitting me into their college for the spring and summer of 2001. This
provided an opportunity not only to avail myself of the collection and
services of one of the great university libraries, but also to receive a
unique stimulus to creative thought through the informal interaction
with international fellows and graduate students that is the hallmark of
Clare Hall. That all members of my family enjoyed their stay as well
speaks volumes of the college’s friendly and supportive atmosphere.
I am thankful also for the generous financial support provided by my
home institution, the University of New Brunswick (UNB), especially
the History Department, as well as by my in-laws, John and Irene
Hayward. Earlier research trips were funded by UNB and by a major
research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada (1993–7). Susan Meyer provided helpful research
assistance. I am also thankful for the editorial advice and assistance of
Terka Acton and Sonya Barker of Palgrave Macmillan, their copyeditor,
Tessa Hanford, as well as of the publisher’s anonymous reader. It is an
honour to be included in Palgrave Macmillan’s European Culture and
Society series under the editorship of Jeremy Black.
Teaching is an unrivalled path to learning, and I have benefited
greatly from teaching the subject matter of this book for many years now

vi
 Acknowledgements vii

at UNB. I am thankful that my students have forced me to probe many

questions deeper than I was perhaps inclined to do. I hope that this
book will assist all students to continue exploring the power of religious
belief, fear of doubt, and irrational suspicion of the “Other”, both in the
past and in the present.
My greatest debt of gratitude extends to my wife, Katherine Hayward.
She has borne a great deal of the family care burden while I pursued the
research and writing of this book, and she has remained an unswerving
support throughout. She has constantly pressed me to write this book in
as interesting and accessible fashion possible, although I am not entirely
confident I have reached her standard. To our daughters, Jessica and
Eleanor, I give my thanks for their patience with my constant distraction
from “real life”. It is to Jessica that I dedicate this book as she embarks on
the adult adventure.
 INTRODUCTION

This book explores the mental terrain of early modern Europe, roughly
speaking from 1400 to 1700, a world both comfortably familiar and fan-
tastically strange. If this study highlights the latter, it is only because of
the author’s belief that it is impossible to comprehend a culture without
an appreciation of its darker side. It will therefore take seriously what
early modern Europeans believed about the Devil. Even today, belief in
this evil persona continues to inspire hostility toward his supposed
minions, often leading to allegations of the existence of an organized
Satanic ring committing horrific acts of ritual abuse and murder, despite
the lack of any supporting forensic evidence.1 The image of a diabolical
conspiracy still possesses latent power to terrorize. In early modern
Europe it was central to religious discourse and intellectual debate
and ultimately contributed to the seventeenth-century’s Scientific Revo-
lution. 2
Diabolical conspiracy theories laid the foundation for some of the
worst judicial persecutions in European history: pogroms against Jews,
heresy trials, and the horrendous witch-hunts of the later sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. There is no way to pass off these horrific events as
anomalies or as moments of collective psychosis. Instead, they were fully
consistent with several basic presuppositions about the workings of the
cosmos which, during periods of crisis or religious turmoil, inspired
actions of great cruelty.
In this discussion we will explore attitudes toward and prosecution of
religious deviance (heresy), magic, and witchcraft from the fifteenth to
the seventeenth centuries across Europe, with particular attention to the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation era. The study takes seriously
the power of religious beliefs to influence behavior, public and private

1
2 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

and, conversely, the ways in which political, economic, and social consid-
erations reshaped those ideas. It will examine the reasons for popular
religious dissent, and the means by which church leaders, first Catholic,
then Protestant, sought to counteract doubt, skepticism, heresy, and
popular magical beliefs. In an era when the central identity of both the
individual and society was religious at its core, dissenting from orthodox
teachings on even “minor” theological points was a threat to the officially
sanctioned conception of the cosmos and was readily criminalized. How-
ever, doubt is a universal aspect of the human psyche which, when sup-
pressed by those who fear its articulation, often breaks out in the
assertion of irrational beliefs or projection of guilt. Those targeted as
responsible for inspiring such doubt were often attacked as a means of
alleviating the fear of disbelief.
Since in the sixteenth century magic and religion were completely
interwoven, it will be a primary goal of this study to map out some of the
places where these fields intersected. Because of the intense specialization
within the history discipline and the burgeoning number of scholarly
studies on each of these subjects, this study makes no pretense at compre-
hensiveness, but seeks merely to assist students of early modern Europe
to appreciate the dense complexity of life and thought in that period.
Some definitions of terms might be useful. Following the classic study
by Peter Burke we define culture as the complex set of attitudes, beliefs,
and rituals that underpins any society.3 Of course the way a university-
trained clergyman experienced this shared culture was very different
from that of an urban artisan or rural peasant. For one thing, literacy in
Latin, the lingua franca of higher learning and the Church, was the sole
preserve of members of the “higher” culture of clerics, professors, and
aristocracy, although the development and spread of printing presses
and cheap paper helped create a vernacular counterpoint for laypeople.
No longer satisfied with being passive recipients of official religious
culture, literate city dwellers especially insisted on greater control over
their religious experience and were less forgiving of clerical failings.
They expressed such views by their voracious appetite for religious
publications, by creating and joining religious confraternities or brother-
hoods, by writing and performing vernacular religious drama, or by
forming heretical alternatives to the approved Church. They also articu-
lated an intense dissatisfaction with the religious status quo and with an
often poorly informed clerical elite. Such sentiment fed directly into the
Reformation begun by the German monk Martin Luther, but was not
contained by it.
 Introduction 3

Religion and religious culture therefore feature heavily in this study.

Simply put, religion is the attempt of humans to communicate with
a higher being and to be subject to its dictates. At times religion included
efforts to influence the supernatural world, although there is always
a sense that devotees of a god are ultimately at its mercy. Religion is
always nonrational, for its tenets cannot be proven by empirical testing
and even when such nonrational thought accords fully with what is known
empirically about the world, it still might lead to irrational beliefs or actions.4
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the cosmos was ruled by one God
(for most Christians one God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit) with a supporting cast of semi-divine beings or angels. For Catholic
Christians this heavenly domain also included some of the Christian
dead who had died as pious heroes or martyrs for the faith. These saints,
including the Virgin Mary and the twelve apostles, acted as officially
sanctioned mediators between the supernatural and natural worlds. For
the mediocre majority the medieval Church created purgatory, a place
between heaven and earth where deceased believers were purified of
remaining sin. As Jacques Le Goff notes, the natural and supernatural
worlds, the past, present, and future, were “conjoined in a seamless fabric.”5
Most ordinary believers had at best a rudimentary understanding of
official church dogma. At this level Gavin Langmuir’s distinction
between religiosity and religion is particularly helpful: religiosity is the
set of beliefs of an individual that help develop and maintain his or her
identity and place in the world, while religion is the social codification of
those beliefs prescribed by those in authority.6 There was thus a wide
variation in the religiosity of a populace, with those who closely harmon-
ized their “nonrational consciousness and conduct” at the saintly end,
and those with little such coherence at the irreligious or indifferent end.7
Most of those whom the religious authorities identified as heretics were
deeply religious, despite the Church’s attempts to castigate them as
atheists. In medieval Europe, all people, apart from Jews, were by law
members of the Roman Catholic Church and depended utterly on its
clergy and means of divine grace, the sacraments, for their spiritual life.
These sacraments worked ex opere operato, by the divine power invested
in them, and neither by the recipient’s nor the performer’s particular
religiosity. At birth children were baptized into the Christian fold, and
their stages of life marked by five of the other six sacraments: confirm-
ation at the age of accountability (usually by twelve years); confession and
penance at least yearly thereafter; participation in the eucharistic Mass
which reenacted Christ’s sacrifice on the cross; marriage; and at the end
4 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

of their life, extreme unction, when the dying gave their last confession
and received the consecrated bread or Host for the last time. The seventh
sacrament, holy orders, was administered only to priests, investing in
them the spiritual power to perform the other sacraments and control
the eternal destiny of their parishioners.
The Eucharist especially revealed the clergy’s power. Taking the
bread and wine into his hands, the priest spoke the words of consecration
in Latin (a language not understood by most celebrants) and ordinary
bread and wine became the true and living body of Christ, God himself.
For various reasons the wine was withheld from laypeople. In the
thirteenth century the great Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas
(1225–74) provided a learned explanation of this process using the
ancient philosopher Aristotle’s system of logic. Aristotle believed that
every object contained within it its eternal form or essence, so Aquinas
argued that when the priest said the words of consecration the inner
essence of the bread became the body of Christ while the outer forms –
texture, taste, appearance, etc. – remained those of bread. By the late
Middle Ages, this transformation of ordinary matter into the divine
being had become the object of increasing devotion, and the Host was
commonly held aloft on a pole in a glass case called a monstrance and
paraded through a community during moments of crisis. Most people
could not comprehend Aquinas’ explanation of the bread’s “transubstan-
tiation”, as it was called, hence it became a particular target of skepticism.
At the popular level especially, but not exclusively, the intermingling
of religion with magic becomes most obvious. Valerie Flint’s definition of
magic as “the exercise of a preternatural control over nature by human
beings, with the assistance of forces more powerful than they” is a very
helpful one in this regard.8 Even though the early medieval missionaries
had demonized the gods of the Celts, Franks, and Saxons, to ease the
conversion to Christianity they allowed many pagan practices to be
incorporated into popular Catholicism. The result was a fusion of beliefs
in which it was no contradiction to use priests or the sacramentals – the
blessed objects of Catholic ritual such as holy oil, holy water, or the
consecrated Host – in magical efforts to protect or heal.
Those believed to have some control over preternatural power
included not only the clergy, but also saints, who left behind their body
parts as tangible conduits of divine grace, and informal magical dabblers
known as wise women and cunning men who provided their neighbors
with medicinal cures, love potions, divinatory services, assistance in find-
ing lost objects, and communication with the dead. Richard Kieckhefer
 Introduction 5

has described magic as a “kind of crossroads” where religion and science,

popular and learned forms of culture, and reality and fiction inter-
sected. 9 Standing at this intersection, it was believed, was the Devil, in
Christian tradition Lucifer, one of God’s leading angels who rebelled
against the Creator and was cast out of heaven with his fellow rebels to
reside in the earth’s atmosphere. Here they plotted their revenge, marking
humanity for special attention. The widespread famine, devastating
bubonic plague, destructive warfare, and popular uprisings of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries were therefore seen as Satan’s handiwork.
In this era of deep distress, then, the Church saw it absolutely neces-
sary to crack down on all lay challenges to its authority and monopoly
over spiritual power. From a sign of weakness requiring mere confession
to a priest, the expression of religious doubt became a potential breeding
ground for skepticism and heresy. Church leaders therefore developed
various means to suppress heterodoxy, most effectively the office of
Inquisitor, whose methodology in extracting confessions from supposed
heretics was readily copied by secular rulers who likewise saw the danger
to civic unity inherent in religious dissent.
While the fifteenth-century Renaissance humanists increased the
pressure by attacking Aquinas’ philosophical and theological construct
as well as popular credulity and superstition, the following century’s
religious reform movements initiated by the German monk Martin
Luther set off a profound period of religious crisis, conflict, and scrutiny
of many hitherto unassailable dogmas. As political rulers vied for
supremacy, they legislated upon their populace adherence to specific
religious affiliations, each with its own catalogue of precisely defined
doctrines called confessions, as a means of ensuring total obedience.
A few individuals ultimately rejected this confessionalization altogether.
Protestants and Catholics found different means to battle against these,
the former emphasizing a largely internalized faith with few tangible aids
while the latter placed renewed emphasis on the power of the priests
and sacraments.
One of the battlegrounds in this confessional conflict was the religious/
magical culture of the common people. The assertion that there was
a strong correlation between the religious conflict of the Reformation
and the rise of witch-hunting was most famously made in 1967 by Hugh
Trevor-Roper in his brilliant essay “The European Witch-craze of the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”. Trevor-Roper argued that when
Protestant and Catholic leaders met with serious opposition to their
efforts to inculcate villagers with correct doctrine, they resorted to the
6 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

late-medieval device of identifying the dissidents as witches and gaining

broad support for their evangelizing campaign among locals who wished
to be rid of such evil beings. 10 Trevor-Roper’s essay set off a debate that
is still raging, although most scholars of witch-hunts now suggest that
despite his elegant and compelling arguments, Trevor-Roper’s position
neglects the fact that pressure for witch persecution arose not from the
elite but from the common people who tended to accuse neighbors –
mostly correligionists – whom they had long suspected of practicing
witchcraft. As Gustav Henningsen asserted in his 1980 study of the
Basque witch panic of 1610–14,

the witch-hunting of the western European villages throughout the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had very little to do with religious
persecution. It was in fact entirely related to the function of witch
belief in the social life of the time. That popular and traditional witch-
hunting was encouraged by legislation and incited by sermons
preached against “limbs of Satan” is quite another matter.11

Is there then no basis for postulating a pronounced influence for the

Reformation on the rise of witch-hunting? In his groundbreaking study
of witch-hunting in southwest Germany, H. C. Erik Midelfort found
some validity “in correlating witch hunts with periods of religious con-
flict and renewal, but the correlation is still incomplete, and the reasons
for the beginnings of large-scale witch hunting remain unclear.” 12 Jean
Delumeau, Robert Muchembled, Brian Levack, Stuart Clark, E. William
Monter, and several others have since discovered considerable evidence
suggestive of some interrelation between the religious reforms and the
witch panic of the later sixteenth century, although there still remains no
single, overarching interpretive key to explain the rise of witch-hunting.
Instead, a multivalent approach is required, one that takes seriously the
various social, economic, legal, political, psychological, biological, and
religious factors that combined in particular ways to spark witch-hunting.13
The witch-hunts have been the subject of a vast amount of scholarly
and nonscholarly attention. For some time the popular view has been
dominated by the interpretation of Egyptologist Margaret Murray, who
asserted in 1921 that the witch persecution of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries was the elite’s finally successful campaign to eradicate the
pre-Christian, fertility religion of the common people. In her treatment,
the witch sabbath was merely the demonized version of real gatherings
of pagans.14 The final demolition of Murray’s thesis was undertaken in
 Introduction 7

1975 by Norman Cohn, although it still retains some of its considerable

popularity, despite the lack of any clear, supporting evidence. 15 For
Cohn, there was no reality behind the sabbath meetings, only the vivid
imaginings of Inquisitors and judges.
In recent years, two interpretative schools have dominated the field of
witchcraft studies. The first is in many respects a reaction to the posture
of Trevor-Roper and his predecessors who made a great deal of the
early modern demonological literature and governmental campaigns to
enforce religious and moral conformity. Instead of focusing on the ideas
about witchcraft, as expressed by the educated classes, scholars began
applying the newer approaches of social history in their quest to uncover
the beliefs and actions of the ordinary people of Europe. In these works,
epitomized in the profoundly influential study of Alan Macfarlane,
witchcraft accusations were a product almost entirely of village conflict
and communal tensions, and had little to do with elite concerns.16 The
other interpretation arose at about the same time, and concentrated on
why women were the overwhelming majority of victims of witch perse-
cution. It became all too easy to inflate the number of witch burnings
(sometimes as high as nine million) in a polemical effort to adopt the
witch persecution as a “woman’s holocaust” and to see it as merely the
most egregious example of the deleterious effects of misogyny. While it
helps to explain why so many of the victims were women, this approach
still has difficulty with the 20–25 percent of victims who were men (in
a few hunts men were in the majority). It also does not take seriously
enough the religious and magical beliefs of the era as precipitating
factors in the rise of witch persecution.17
This study contributes to the discussion by returning to the question
of the Reformation’s involvement in the formulation of the concept of
the diabolical witch sect. At the same time, it will seek to incorporate the
best research from the social history schools in its efforts to evaluate the
religious beliefs and fears of both the learned minority and illiterate
majority (and those who fell somewhere in between). While acknowledg-
ing that misogyny was indeed a factor in why women were more often
the victims of witch trials than men, this book does not deal extensively
with the gender of accused witches, except to examine the impact of the
religious reform of the sixteenth century on attitudes toward women,
and point readers to other, reliable works on the subject. Even so, the
literature for both the Reformation and the witch-hunts is immense,
thus this book will merely highlight some of the points of intersection
and direct the reader to the more specialized literature.
8 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

As we shall see, in several regions witchcraft trials began just as heresy

trials against Protestants and Anabaptists ended, suggesting that heresy
and witchcraft trials shared the purpose of “eliminating individuals who
were believed to be in league with Satan and corrupting society.”18
While church leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, were determined to
suppress religious dissent, this project was massively overshadowed after
the middle of the sixteenth century by the fear of a nightmarish conspiracy
led by Satan and fulfilled by groups of women and men to whom he had
granted magical powers in the hope of overthrowing Christian society.
This conspiracy theory had first developed in the fifteenth century, but
its proponents had great difficulty in convincing the various authorities
of its real danger. The Reformation, especially its more radical manifest-
ations, helped persuade princes and magistrates of the seriousness of
Satan’s machinations.
The book’s first chapter provides a cursory introduction to the mental
world of late-medieval Europeans, with special attention to the gradual
accretion of conspiratorial theories that led to persecution of Jews,
lepers, heretics, magicians, and, in the fifteenth century, witches. By the
fourteenth century the Inquisitors appointed by the Pope to investigate
heresy complaints were turning their attention to magical beliefs and
practices, superimposing what they had learned from their interroga-
tions of heretics onto supposed magicians and devil worshipers. Anxiety
about heretical threats and alleged criminal acts of Jews, such as the
ritual murder of young Christian boys, also continued to spark violent
reaction. Princes learned how to use accusations of heresy and diabolical
magic as tools of political propaganda. Fears of diabolical witchcraft
spread as a result of clerical propaganda and, in the 1430s, the Council
of Basel was a major center for the dissemination of learned demono-
logical notions. The Pope encouraged such preoccupation in part to
distract church reformers from clamoring for the decentralization of
church authority in favor of conciliar governance. With the publication
in 1487 of the Malleus Maleficarum, the witch-hunting manual of the
German Inquisitor Heinrich Krämer (Institoris), the stereotype of Satan’s
most frightening allies, female witches, was generally complete. Yet there
was, with the exception of individual trials here and there, a lull in witch-
hunting. After 1521 printers showed no interest in further reprints of
the Malleus until the revival of large-scale witch prosecution after 1560.
Chapter 2 will summarize the major developments in the Reformation
movements; highlight the widespread preoccupation with the coming
apocalyptical judgment; describe the rise of movements for radical
 Introduction 9

reform; and pursue the question of why the authorities came to see these
as a diabolical threat worthy of the most vicious repression. Chapter 3
will examine in greater detail the polemical rhetoric used by religious
leaders of all camps and discuss the potential impact of such propaganda
on the revival of diabolical stereotypes. Some attention will be paid here
to the question of why women became a principal target of conspira-
torial thinking. Many scholars have pointed to the Reformers’ attempts
to reinforce patriarchal marriage as one factor. This chapter will also
explore how Anabaptism inadvertently contributed to this general
targeting of women as witches. The growing fear of “atheism” likewise
spurred many leaders to search for a secret or fifth column movement of
diabolical agents seeking to sap the inner strength of Christianity
through the spread of doubt and skepticism while witches attacked the
health of the body politic through evil magic.
Chapter 4 will describe in detail how beliefs about the Devil, magic,
and witchcraft were transformed in the Reformations’ religious and
moral crusading. Here the discussion will engage both the learned
debates regarding the Devil, exorcism, and magic and the popular
beliefs, practices, and rituals relating to these subjects. Reformers’ reac-
tions to the revival of interest in learned forms of magic – the so-called
Occult Sciences – will be of major concern. Moreover, the chapter will
also describe the “typical” witch trials and demonic possession cases on
the eve of the witch-hunts and how these related to the preoccupations
of Reformers. Using their tools of propaganda – the sermon, the woodcut
image, and the printing press – Reformers generally sought to alter or
suppress aspects of “popular culture” viewed as superstitious or pagan.
Yet they used some popular beliefs and practices, after properly sanitiz-
ing them, to convince the common people about the veracity of the “true
faith.” Witch trials, exorcisms, and ritual desecration became powerful
tools in the Reformation battles.
Following the recent trend in regional analysis of witch-hunting,
Chapter 5 will focus particularly on the impact of the religious contro-
versies on local witchcraft beliefs and persecution. The heartland of
witch-hunting was also the center of religious conflict and radical
dissent. The emphasis in this section will be on exploring the interplay
between religious belief and conflict and witch-hunting in the regions
most affected by fear of diabolical conspiracies: the Holy Roman Empire,
France and Switzerland, and the British Isles.
The book concludes with a similar survey of regions which either
suppressed witch-hunting early, such as the Dutch Republic, or which
10 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

were never captivated by such panics, such as the Mediterranean Inqui-

sitions, or which joined the fray late, notably Scandinavia and Eastern
Europe. It postulates a correspondence between the type of religious
culture sponsored by the state and the level of witch-hunting in a region.
It also pursues the religious factors behind the ending of witch persecu-
tion in the phenomenon’s heartland. As rulers and citizens developed
alternatives to the traditional conception of a unitary religious identity
and learned to tolerate the religious “Other”, they became less susceptible
to heed calls to attack Satan’s minions.
 1
THE DEVIL, HERESY, AND MAGIC
IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

To know where a treasure is hidden, first a person must make

a general confession of all his sins, under a waxing moon, on
a Sunday, when the Sun is in Leo, early in the morning. And
when you first arise, sprinkle yourself with holy water, saying
the antiphon, Asperges me, domine, ysopo, etc., in its entirety. Then
go to a crucifix and say before it, Miserere mei, deus . . . in its
entirety, gazing constantly at the crucifix, with utter devotion.
And when you say these things, then say most devoutly and with
contrite heart, “O rabbi, rabbi, my king and my God, and Lord
of lords, you who are creator of all things, hear the prayer which
I, a wretched and unworthy creature, make, . . . And I pray you
by your kings . . . that on the following night Haram, a benign
spirit, may come to me in my sleep and enkindle my heart and
my mind, that I may know how to find a treasure . . .”
Richard Kieckhefer, ed. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s
Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park, PA, 1997), 114.

Let us imagine following this fifteenth-century prescription for treasure

hunting. We would need to live in a world wherein religion and magic
were intertwined, surrounded by mysterious forces and invisible beings
of awesome power that we could command if only we knew how. Our
understanding of the universe would have to be very different from today’s
predominantly scientific depiction of an infinitely large and impersonal
vastness of colliding atoms and swirling stellar gasses; instead, it would
have to be a small, enclosed cosmos overseen by a divine being which was
willing to bend its laws to the benefit of humans. It would be a world

11
12 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

wherein some humans, particularly priests, were granted enormous

powers by that deity to speak to and for him and even at times to
command his angelic assistants.
Early modern people took comfort in this world view, believing that
the cosmos had been created primarily for their benefit. Church author-
ities tried to monopolize preternatural (i.e., “above-natural”) power,
condemning as heretics those who doubted priestly control over the
“other” realm. Religious leaders could hardly contend that popular
magical processes were impossible without casting into doubt their own
sacramental system which worked by supernatural means that were
a clear parallel to the magical. Instead, they asserted that non-approved
magic worked by diabolical agency. The Devil was presumed to be
behind every non-approved religious activity, sowing among the faithful
doubt in the veracity of the Catholic ritual or outright desecration of the
same. Papal investigators (Inquisitors) imagined that religious dissidents
or heretics secretly worshiped Satan, committed gruesome acts of
cannibalistic infanticide, and took pleasure in incestuous orgies. Norman
Cohn’s argument that these particular charges were largely a figment of
clerical imaginations has been supported by every serious investigation
into the trial accounts and procedures. 1 At the same time, some elements
of what would become the demonic witch stereotype originated from
popular beliefs, such as the witches’ evil magic and ability to fly or change
shapes. 2
The strength and endurance of this demonic fantasy is remarkable, as
is its power to inspire numerous atrocities in the name of the Christian
religion. This chapter will set the stage for the larger discussion of
diabolical conspiracies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by
briefly surveying the mental world of late-medieval people; examining
the respective roles of religion and magic in this era; and describing the
development of the various late-medieval conspiratorial threats that led
to persecution of Jews, lepers, heretics, sorcerers, and witches, all of
whom were presumed to be inspired by the Devil.

Late-Medieval Cosmos

Although at night medieval people looked up at the same sky as we do

today, they invested it with a different set of meanings. They believed
that the universe’s creator was benevolent and that he cared deeply
about the pinnacle of his creation, humanity. Circling the universe’s
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 13

center on translucent spheres were the sun, moon, and planets, while
the stars remained fixed on their own sphere at the cosmos’ outer edge.
To explain the apparent anomalies in planetary movements medieval
scholars postulated that the heavenly bodies traveled through a mysteri-
ous fifth element called ether, while everything in the sub-lunar realm
(between the moon and the center of the earth) consisted of the primary
elements: earth, air, water, and fire. In 1543 Nicholas Copernicus’ On the
Movement of the Heavenly Spheres offered an alternative explanation by
suggesting that the sun was the center of the universe. Such an idea
would not be taken seriously for nearly another century.
Even though God was believed to reside just outside the celestial
spheres, the world was far from benign. It was often capricious and
inexplicable, a fact explained as divine punishment for sin. Nothing
was morally neutral, and even the qualities of the inanimate elements –
hot, cold, moist, and dry – were morally ranked in order of virtue, with
hot superior to cold. The universe was similarly arranged hierarch-
ically, with God and pure spirit beings at the top and base matter at
the bottom. Humans, who consisted of both material and spiritual
components – a soul (and spirit) and body – resided somewhere in the
middle.
Like a giant living thing the components of the universe were joined
together by a process of influence described as “correspondence.” Unlike
modern notions of cause and effect, correspondence “worked” on the
assumption that humans were a smaller copy, or microcosm, of the larger
universe. For every part of the human body there was a matching item
in the macrocosmic corpus, while the four elements had their twins in
the body’s four humors, the basic matter and fluids which were the
body’s essential building blocks: blood (corresponding to air), phlegm
(water), black bile (fire), and yellow bile (earth). Each of these shared the
qualities of the corresponding element: blood was hot and moist,
phlegm cold and moist, black bile hot and dry, and yellow bile cold and
dry. Health was maintained by keeping the proportions among these
humors in relative balance. If a patient was feverish and sweaty, he or
she would be treated for an excess of corrupted blood by a phlebotomy or
bleeding. Although humoral imbalances were internally caused, they
could be influenced by the person’s diet, state of mind, or stellar and
planetary movements. Most learned physicians therefore consulted the
stars when preparing their prescriptions. Similarly, herbs that were
considered cold or moist were used to cure illnesses caused by an excess
of heat or dryness, and so on.
14 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Occult Sciences and Magic

Both learned and illiterate sought to manipulate the preternatural

beings or forces believed to channel the divine power diffused through-
out creation. As described by the famous physician and occult scientist
Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486–1535), stars

have their own natures, properties and terms upon which one deals
with them, and by means of their rays they produce the signs and
characters of these even in inferior things, such as elements, stones,
plants, and animals and their bodily parts. In consequence, every single
thing is allotted some special sign or character which is stamped upon
it; and these it gets from the way its constituent parts are arranged in
relation to the principles of natural harmony, and also from its own
star shedding rays of light upon it.3

It was believed possible to capture such rays in their corresponding

metals and gems, which could then be used as amulets to supply the
human wearer with the planet’s unique powers.
While some churchmen condemned predictive astrology as pre-
sumptive of God’s will, and the brilliant Italian humanist Pico della
Mirandola (1463–94) critiqued it for its fatalism and lack of accuracy,
astrologers and diviners found ready employ at noble courts where
they helped alleviate anxiety about the future and offered a sense of
God’s proximity and will in the world. 4 The fifteenth century also saw
a matching growth of interest in alchemy whose practitioners believed
that the seven metals corresponded to the seven planets in a hierarchy
with gold and the sun at the top, reflecting the light of heaven itself.
Descending from these were the correspondences of silver/moon,
mercury/Mercury, iron/Mars, lead/Saturn, tin/Jupiter, and copper/Venus.
Alchemists sought to break down the lower metals into their essential
elements which then could be recombined into the higher metals, in
the process discovering the invisible, spiritual essence permeating the
universe. With their ovens and stills they practiced a form of proto-
chemistry, stumbling upon chemical processes that they only vaguely
understood. While some alchemists cynically manipulated gullible patrons
into funding their projects, such charlatanry should not be taken as the
norm. Instead, alchemy required a level of devotion to the task that is
exceptional and which would draw devotees well into the eighteenth
century.
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 15

Inspired by their love of the ancients, some Renaissance humanists

sought the spiritual force animating the universe in the writings of the
putative ancient Egyptian philosopher Hermes Trismegistus (“Thrice-
great Hermes”) which purportedly preserved the secret lore of the
universe granted Adam by God that had been passed down orally to
selected adepts. With such knowledge and ascetic purification they
hoped to gain the assistance of the spirits which moved the planets in
accordance with the divine will. Until 1614, when Isaac Casaubon
discovered that it was a forgery, the Corpus Hermetica delighted scholars
and occultists alike, helping to inspire a major resurgence of learned
magic throughout Europe. Also of interest to Pico and his fellow neo-
Platonists was the Jewish Cabala, writings of mystical contemplation on
the names and attributes of God as revealed in the Hebrew scriptures.
Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet corresponded to a particular divine
quality dispersed in creation. For Pico especially, the Cabala provided
a unique tool to uncover the essential unity of humanity and of all
religions.
The most unorthodox form of occult science was ritual magic which
required the precise performances of prayers and rituals to summon
and command spirit beings to provide secret knowledge or to perform
magical acts. Many ritual magic manuscripts have survived, such as the
Sworn Book of Honorius or the ars notoria which called upon God or angels
to provide the wisdom of the cosmos. Ritual magicians contended that
since only godly men could command the spirits, the Church’s persecution
of magicians was misguided. As the fourteenth-century Honorius of
Thebes wrote,

Moved by covetousness and envy under the similitude of truth, these

bishops and prelates through demonic instigation spread abroad false
and unlikely stories. For it is not possible that a wicked and unclean
man could work truly in this Art; for men are not bound unto spirits,
but spirits are constrained against their will to answer clean men and
fulfill their requests.5

Angelic magic may have raised suspicion of unorthodoxy, but there was
no doubt about necromancy, which by the fourteenth century had
become a major hobby for underemployed clergy or university students.
Convinced that since Holy Orders imbued them with spiritual power to
exorcise or expel demons from the possessed, clerical necromancers
assumed that they could control these malevolent spirits. As seen in
16 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

their conjurations, it was expected that God would cooperate in such

ventures:

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
amen. I conjure you, O elves and all sorts of demons, whether of the
day or of the night, by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
and the undivided Trinity, and by the intercession of the most blessed
and glorious Mary ever Virgin, by the prayers of the prophets, by the
merits of the patriarchs, by the supplication of the angels and archan-
gels, by the intercession of the apostles, by the passion of the martyrs,
by the faith of the confessors, by the chastity of the virgins, by the
intercession of all the saints, and by the Seven Sleepers, whose names
are Malchus, Maximianus, Dionysius, John, Constantine, Seraphion,
and Martimanus, and by the name of the Lord †A†G†L†A†, which is
blessed unto all ages, that you should not harm nor do or inflict any-
thing evil against this servant of God N., whether sleeping or waking.
† Christ conquers † Christ reigns † Christ commands † May Christ
bless us † [and] defend us from all evil † Amen.6

Based on the belief that demons, as fallen angels, maintained their pre-
fall intelligence, knowledge, and flying abilities, necromancers hoped to
use them to discover secrets, provide magical transport, create fantasies
to impress friend and foe, compel love, even to reanimate the dead.
Whether from sincere belief or a quest for entertainment, necromancy
remained popular, and many unscrupulous practitioners made a good
living pretending to call up spirits for naive clients. Their rituals illustrate
the permeability of the boundaries between perceived reality and fantasy,
between sense and nonsense. They may also have conditioned people to
believe more readily the strange stories of magical flight, sabbath banquets,
and magical acts arising out of the witchcraft trials. As Kieckhefer reasons,
the “playful fantasies of the necromancers, then, became sources for the
Boschian nightmares of the witch trials.” 7

Popular Magic

The magic of common people was quite distinct from its learned coun-
terparts, rarely written down but transmitted orally from generation to
generation. It was simpler, requiring less by way of preparation and
purification, while of extraterrestrial influences, it looked primarily to
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 17

the moon. It relied little on spirit beings or demons but focused princi-
pally on symbolical likeness or opposites. It also had more earth-bound
goals than its learned forms: preserving fertility, restoring health, and
manipulating human relations within the community.
Even seasonal changes required the repetition of rituals ensuring the
return of warm weather and the success of the harvest. The local parish
priest was often involved by blessing the objects involved in the ritual.8
For example, to remedy an infertile field, before sunrise the performer
would dig four clumps of earth from the four sides of the afflicted land;
sprinkle these with a mixture of holy water, oil, milk, honey, and fragments
of trees and herbs, while reciting in Latin the words spoken by God to
Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” After further
prayer, he was to carry the clods to the church, where the priest would
sing four masses over them. Finally, before sunset the clumps were to be
returned to the fields, where it was expected they would spread their
blessing to the whole field.9 While such rituals may not have influenced
the weather, magical medicine could have had an effect on patients
psychosomatically, by manipulating the expectations of patients or victims
and thereby relieving or elevating stress levels which could cause the
anticipated symptoms. 10 Many potions also required ingesting some
curative, poisonous, or hallucinogenic plants. Even so, one of the most
popular forms of local magic was the love potion, which in the case of
a male victim usually involved the ingestion of such sympathetic ingredi-
ents as the menstrual blood of the intended beloved. Such preternatural
cures were believed to work mainly through the proper disposition of
both healer and patient, not by chemical processes.
The blending of magical and religious notions was clearest in popular
conceptions of the sacraments. While theologians understood the
Eucharist to be a conduit through which God effused his grace and
power to believers, ordinary people regarded the consecrated bread or
Host as containing divine power to protect them from harm, even when
they had merely seen it elevated in a monstrance.11 Not surprisingly,
many people developed the conviction that consecrated Hosts smuggled
out of Mass could be powerful agents in magical activity.
Not only was the universe organic and moralized, it was also gendered.
Aristotle, and Aquinas following him, believed that the differences
between men and women were built into creation itself so that there
were natural roles for men and opposite ones for women; not surpris-
ingly, the male sex was given the positive pole, the female the negative.12
A curative for a male, dominated as he was by the hot humors, would
18 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

therefore be distinct from that for a female who was ruled by the lower,
cooler humors, even if both suffered from the same ailment. The
learned games-playing with polarity became a very useful justification to
exclude women from certain occupations or restrict their control over
property, while inflation in dowries for both marriage and entry into
a convent and shrinking work opportunities added up to a very difficult
situation for single women. Despite such gender distinctions, medieval
men and women shared an extremely precarious existence, with short
life expectancy and frequent ill health. In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries these difficulties were augmented by frequent crop failure,
famine, disease epidemics, especially the bubonic plague, and increas-
ingly destructive warfare.
The psychological impact of such disasters was enormous, spawning
extreme group efforts to avert the wrath of God; most famous of these
were the flagellants, groups of men who traveled throughout Europe
preaching repentance, criticizing the obviously useless clergy, and whip-
ping themselves bloody to appease God. According to the chronicler
Guillaume de Nangis, in 1349 masses of flagellants traveled through the
Southern Netherlands claiming that their blood had intermingled with
Christ’s, giving them his power to heal and perform miracles.13 Hedging
their bets, the flagellants also blamed the Jews for incurring God’s wrath,
the choice being that either God had utterly rejected his Christian
people, or he was angry at the presumed blasphemy of nonbelievers.
Most Christians chose the latter, in part to help suppress their fear that
the first option was the truth.
By 1500 the image of Death had become that of the grim reaper, hunting
down the living. In some works, such as the fifteenth-century Flemish
comedy, The Entertainment of the Apple Tree, Death and the Devil together
hunted humans. Here a simple farmer outwitted them both, tricking
first Death and then the Devil to climb into his magical apple tree, from
which he releases them only after extracting promises for a long and
healthy life. Such comedies momentarily alleviated the intense anxiety
about the almost instant and horrifying death that the plague raised.
That ordinary people took the Devil seriously is seen by their use of his
name in magical conjurations. For theologians, demons were as real as
angels and saints, while lay people added them to the panoply of other
spirit beings inhabiting their forests and meadows: fairies, imps, elves,
ghosts, revenants, and wood spirits. James Sharpe finds plenty of evidence
in England to suggest that the Devil “was evidently firmly established in
the popular consciousness,”14 while Fernando Cervantes asserts that for
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 19

both popular and elite cultures, “there is no question that the idea of
the devil belongs equally to both cultures and that it cannot be forced
exclusively into either of them without gross simplification and impov-
erishment.”15 Only priests had the requisite authority effectively to
counteract the activities of Satan’s minions and even they faced a super-
human struggle at times. The sacraments were the principal means of
defense for lay people, starting with the rite of baptism which began
outside the church doors with the exorcism of the infant, an act nicely
portrayed in a sixteenth-century Flemish drama, The Play of Saint Trudo,
wherein Lucifer and his minions Baalberith and Leviathan are constantly
thwarted by priestly power in their efforts to foil God’s plans for the
future saint, beginning with pedobaptismal exorcism.16 This drama was
part of a longstanding effort to encourage lay people to battle the Devil
within themselves as well as without. Fernando Cervantes suggests
demons became “instigators of interior desires that individuals could not
acknowledge as belonging to themselves.”17 For John Bossy, the con-
temporaneous replacement of the seven deadly sins with the Decalogue
furthermore moved the emphasis on sin from harm against humans to
that against God, epitomized as idolatry and blasphemy, and there was
no worse form than the worship of demons. 18

Anti-Judaism

Jews had long been a target of demonization, but were also officially
tolerated in the Christian west because they proved an extremely useful,
if unwitting, ally in the campaign to expel religious doubt from the
hearts of Christian believers. The survival of the Jews was seen as
a confirmation of the “Old Testament” background to the Christian
faith and allowed for the fulfillment of one of the major signals presaging
the return of Christ: the conversion of Jews to Christianity. Moreover,
Jews offered preachers a visual aid confirming the gospel accounts of the
passion of Christ, helped Christians maintain their self-conception as
successors to Judaism as the people of God, and acted as a tangible
reminder of God’s judgment on those who reject him. Although offi-
cially tolerated, Jews lived a tenuous existence within Christendom,
non-citizens at the mercy of the Christian majority and authorities.
Outside of the Mediterranean region the number of Jews in western
Europe was small, concentrated in the major commercial cities of the
Holy Roman Empire, France, and England. They possessed no real
20 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

freedom of religion, although generally they could worship in their own

synagogues.
Gavin Langmuir has surveyed the transition in the thirteenth century
from Christian anti-Judaism – the expression of religious animosity by
Christians against Judaism – to anti-Semitism – the irrational hatred of
a category of people called “Jews”. Anti-Judaism was based on Christians’
need to explain why the vast majority of Jews had not recognized their
supposed messiah, Jesus. Christian accusations that the Jews had killed
Jesus (deicide), Langmuir suggests, “camouflaged Christian awareness
that the continued existence of Jewish disbelief challenged Christian
belief” and helped to repress widespread doubts about Jesus’ resurrec-
tion. 19 At times of intensified religious fervor anti-Judaism could break
out in intense violence, yet this was not irrational rage, but an attempt to
compel Jews to perform their service of proving the veracity and super-
iority of Christianity.
As Christian theology became more sophisticated (and for many
incomprehensible), Christians turned again to the Jews to help dispel
the rising doubt. During Easter, 1144, near Norwich, England, the
corpse of a boy, William, was discovered. Six years later, the monk Thomas
of Monmouth, who had arrived in the local monastery after the discovery,
explained the boy’s death as an act of Jews who had crucified him in
their hostility to Christ. Many of Monmouth’s colleagues were initially
skeptical, and no wonder, given the thinness of Thomas’ evidence, based
on the testimony of a converted Jew that “the Jews, without the shedding
of human blood, could neither obtain their freedom, nor could they ever
return to their fatherland.” 20 Thomas may have been the first to postulate
a Jewish conspiracy of ritual murder, but the myth struck a responsive
chord among Christians, as seen in its retelling in Gloucester in 1198
where a chronicler admitted to considerable skepticism regarding this
story of the unfortunate Harold, who

is said to have been carried away secretly by Jews, in the opinion of

many, on Feb.21, and by them hidden till March 16. On that
night, . . . the Jews of all England coming together as if to circumcise
a certain boy, pretend deceitfully that they are about to celebrate the
feast appointed by law in such case, and deceiving the citizens of
Gloucester with that fraud, they tortured the lad placed before them
with immense tortures. It is true no Christian was present, or saw or
heard the deed, nor have we found that anything was betrayed by any
Jew. But a little while after when the whole convent of monks of
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 21

Gloucester and almost all the citizens of that city, and innumerable
persons coming to the spectacle, saw the wounds of the dead body,
scars of fire, the thorns fixed on his head, and the liquid wax poured
into the eyes and face, and touched it with the diligent examination of
their hands, those tortures were believed or guessed to have been
inflicted on him in that manner.21

Such stories depicting Jews as ceaseless Christ killers and their victims as
miracle performers confirmed beliefs about the death and resurrection
of Jesus.
Accusations of ritual murder were followed in the thirteenth century
by the equally strange charge of ritual Host desecration. Christians for
some time had been expressing serious doubts about the Christian
dogma of the real, physical presence of Christ in the Eucharistic bread
and wine. The processions, dramas, and supposed miracles of Eucharistic
devotion of the Corpus Christi feast helped to dispel such doubt, Miri
Ruben contends,

[v]iewing a Eucharistic miracle could influence understanding of sac-

ramental claims more than many sermons, and tales abound of shaky
belief which was strengthened by a vision, such as that told of the
Patarins of Ferrara who were convinced of the faith when a lamb
appeared in the host, or that of a northern heretic, Gautier of Flos,
who saw a baby in the host during a mass celebrated by St John of
Cantimpré. And it was to counter the nagging questions of doubtful
believers, as well as of heretics, that miracles were reported, creating
the setting for the use of exempla which retold a miraculous event; the
story of a woman’s pet monkey, for example, which strayed into
a church and ate the host, and which was consequently burnt by its
owner who found in its stomach the undamaged sacrament.23

By seeking to harm or use consecrated wafers for malicious purposes,

evil doers revealed their belief in the real presence and provided proof
of the dogma’s truth.
While the charge of misuse of Hosts was not restricted to Jews, they
became its principal targets, and tales abounded of Jews stabbing conse-
crated Hosts which bled in accusation against their attackers. Such
stories developed shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council’s approval of
transubstantiation, a complex explanation of the transformation process
of bread into the flesh of Christ which proved a tough sell to those who
22 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

relied on experience and common sense instead of Aristotelean logic to

understand reality. The magical act of bleeding Hosts was a sensory
confirmation of transubstantiation, and hence of Christian faith and the
priests’ spiritual power.
Although many local priests and friars helped spread such hateful
beliefs, the papacy sought to keep a lid on anti-Semitic violence, as when
in 1272 Pope Gregory X condemned Christian parents who pretended
that a child had been abducted so as to extort money from local Jews. He
also denounced the illogical belief that Jews, whose scriptures strictly
forbade the consumption of any blood, drank the blood of Christian
youths. 24 Clearly, then, as doubt about certain Christian teachings
increased, so too did anxiety about that doubt.

Doubt and the Rise of Religious Dissent

Medieval Europe was not a good place for the expression of religious
dissent. There was a single, overarching ideology explaining life and
death, while the Pope, as God’s representative on earth, dispensed God’s
mercy. Lay people were expected to work in the place assigned to them
by birth, to be good Christians, attend the sacraments, and live as
morally as possible, hoping for eternal rewards that might make the
harshness of their earthly existence worthwhile. Those who challenged
this model by denying the veracity of the sacraments, saints, and relics,
were removing from people’s hands their sole means of spiritual protec-
tion from the invisible, maleficent forces arrayed against them.
Church leaders called any such variants of Christian teaching heresy.
In medieval society, even a simple reinterpretation of an obscure scrip-
tural passage or theological notion could be construed as an attack on
the whole faith and world view of believers. Initially lay people reacted
to “heretics” with a hostility borne of fear, as when a mob in Soissons in
1114 broke into the prison housing a group of ascetic priests and burned
them at the stake.25 By viewing religious doubts as the malicious product
of external threats, the people, according to Langmuir, “attributed
cosmic evil to other human beings – heretics, sorcerers, witches, and
Jews.”26 In the high Middle Ages there arose several such “heretical”
challenges, the most prominent being the Waldensians and Cathars.
The Waldensians, founded by a Lyons merchant Peter Valdes (Waldo)
who in 1173 gave his property to the poor and embraced a life of apos-
tolic poverty, studied the Bible in the vernacular and preached a simple
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 23

message of personal religious devotion. When Valdes’ bishop steadfastly

refused to grant them a preaching license, these “Poor of Lyons” con-
tinued their activities regardless, and around the end of the twelfth
century the Cistercian monk Alan of Lille expressed his horror that they
were allowing women to preach, asserting that Valdes’ disciples were
really “deceivers” who “seduce the simple folk in various regions of the
world, divert them from rather than convert them to the truth.” He then
comments:

If it is a dangerous thing for wise and holy men to preach, it is most

dangerous for the uneducated who do not know what should be
preached; to whom, how, when and where there should be preaching.
These persons resist the Apostle [Paul] in that they have women with
them and have them preach in the gatherings of the faithful, although
the Apostle says in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: “Let women
keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted for them to speak,
but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would hear anything,
let them ask their husbands at home.”27

As the Church persecuted them, the Waldensians became more radical,

eventually rejecting the Catholic Church and its clergy as apostate and
corrupt.
For their part the Cathars (the “pure ones”) were distinct from
Catholic orthodoxy from the start, teaching that only those who had
achieved complete purity and separation from all things material
could be saved. Espousing the existence of two gods, a good one which
created the spiritual realm and an evil one which was responsible for
base matter, Cathars believed that the object of the evil god – an
extreme version of the Devil – was to imprison good souls in evil
bodies. Ultimate deliverance was possible only through the Cathar
sacrament called the consolamentum, or the baptism in the spirit by the
laying on of hands by a Cathar perfecta, who lived an extremely ascetic
and peripatetic existence. All heretical movements played to the wide-
spread disaffection with the seeming privileges, indolence, and hypoc-
risy of the Catholic clergy and fed upon the growing wish of urbanites
for a more literate religious experience. The Church’s efforts to crush
Catharism in southern France by the bloody Albigensian crusade of
1209–20 merely drove the heretics underground, and so the papal
authorities were compelled to find alternative means to eradicate the
threat.
24 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Inquisition

In 1215 Pope Innocent III called the Fourth Lateran Council to find
a better solution. It clarified orthodox beliefs, reasserted the vital role of
the priesthood and sacraments, mandated yearly confession and attend-
ance at Mass, ordered priests to keep closer tabs on their parishioners, and
stipulated that recalcitrant heretics lose their property. Lay princes, who
viewed religious dissent as a threat to the civic order, added mutilation
or execution to the designated correction. Without an effective police
force, such efforts proved inadequate, until Pope Gregory IX (1227–41)
turned to the Franciscans and Dominicans, two recently founded men-
dicant (traveling) orders of monks which became Europe’s greatest
preachers, inspiring the dramatic growth of an activist, lay piety in
Europe. 28 Gregory used them as the recruiting ground for the Church’s
new weapon in its war against heresy: the office of Inquisitor against
depraved heresy, inquisitionis haereticis pravitatis.
In reality the office was little more than a title implying papal authority.
Without soldiers or secretaries, Inquisitors relied entirely on the good
graces of local rulers. Yet these generally appreciated the Church’s help
in enforcing religious and civic conformity and in replacing mob action
against heretics with a semblance of judicial proceedings. To distinguish
truth from falsehood, Inquisitors relied on their experience in hearing
confessions and convincing the guilty to repent. There was no need for
lawyers or witnesses, only a notary or two to keep detailed records of
proceedings and a couple of noble witnesses during sentencing, when
the Inquisitor set out the requisite penances for the repentant or handed
over the stiff-necked to the secular authorities for harsher treatment.
Penance varied from a ten-day diet of bread and water, completion of
a pilgrimage, or imprisonment for one year or life.
Even with these weapons, however, Inquisitors complained bitterly
about heretics who had learned how to dissimulate or whose silence may
have been caused by the Devil. In 1252, Pope Innocent IV’s bull ad
extirpanda gave Inquisitors the right to torture suspects, although only in
one session and only in cases of clear suspicion of guilt. As priests were
not allowed to shed blood, the application of pain could not cause bleed-
ing, mutilation, or death. By various tools of compression, such as the
thumbscrews, or extension, such as the rack or strappado (a simple rope
and pulley device which raised suspects off the ground by a rope tied
to their wrists bound behind their backs), Inquisitors were now well
equipped to restore suspected heretics to the bosom of the Church.
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 25

Whatever the legitimacy behind its original motivation, through the

course of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries the office of Inquisitor was
readily abused; the increasing practice of trying deceased heretics whose
land and possessions were confiscated from their heirs became a major
means of funding the tribunals’ expensive operations. Thus an individ-
ual’s beliefs were often of little consequence in determinations, while
heresy seemed inheritable. By the early fourteenth century Catharism
was a dead letter in Languedoc, and Waldensians widely scattered
throughout Europe.29
Catharism had been linked with rebellion and, as Malcolm Lambert
notes, Cathar belief in a powerful god of evil, “helped to fabricate the
image of a heretic as a servant of Satan.” 30 The crises of the late Middle
Ages led the clergy especially “to consider Christianity as a besieged
Jerusalem, assailed by the forces of evil, as Satan and his armies let fly,
betokening the end of time.” Not only heretics, but increasingly sorcerers
and witches “represented the diabolical troops engaged in this dramatic
conflict.”31 The image of heretics as vile worshipers of Satan was
cemented especially in the work of the infamous Conrad of Marburg
who in 1231 was commissioned Inquisitor of Mainz by Pope Gregory IX.
Conrad, an experienced crusade preacher, knew how to manipulate the
religious enthusiasm of the masses. Like Gregory, Conrad sincerely
believed heresy to be part of a grand diabolical conspiracy in which
heretics, despite outward appearances of piety, secretly committed the
most vile and blasphemous acts imaginable, including worship of the
Devil. As another churchman, Guillaume d’Auvergne, bishop of Paris
wrote in the 1230s, Lucifer “is permitted . . . To appear to his worshippers
and adorers in the form of a black cat or a toad and to demand kisses
from them; whether as a cat, abominably, under the tail; or as a toad,
horribly, on the mouth.” 32 Conrad’s unorthodox approach was to raise
a community’s ire against the local demonic threat and direct the flock
to round up suspects. All evidence was accepted and suspects given the
choice of recanting or facing the flames. Those who maintained their
innocence were burned regardless, since they would then receive a mar-
tyr’s crown. Gregory believed Conrad’s reports of a new sect of Luciferans
who had made a pact with the Devil, so that when Conrad was assassin-
ated in 1233 by an enraged nobleman, Gregory issued his bull Vox in Rama
reiterating the supposed activities of the Luciferans and decrying the
skepticism of the German bishops.
Some of Conrad’s audience applied his conspiratorial notions to others,
as on Christmas Day, 1235 in Fulda when the bodies of five boys were
26 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

found in a burned down mill. With Conrad’s words still ringing in their
ears, local Christians rounded up the few Jews of the town and accused
them of killing the boys to obtain the blood they allegedly needed for
their rituals. Had Conrad himself implicated Jews in such noxious acts?
We cannot know, but it seems some lay people transposed his notions of
a diabolical sect upon the Jews. The German Emperor conducted his
own investigation and forbade anyone to accuse Jews of ritual cannibalism.
However, not even the Pope’s condemnation of the accusations was
sufficient to stop the spread of such rumors.33
In short time the term Waldensian (Vauderie) became synonymous
with worship of the Devil and evil magic. That there were in all likeli-
hood no such organized demonic sects did not stop the authorities from
hunting them down and “discovering” proof of their existence largely
through intimidation or outright torture. Gregory IX’s Vox in Rama had
formally established, as William Monter puts it, “the notion that religious
dissenters – generally Waldensians, who, in fact, led exemplarily plain
and sober lives – were really Devil-worshipers who engaged in nocturnal
orgies.”34 The approach would be followed frequently in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries.

Inquisitors and the Mystics

In the thirteenth century groups of devout, unmarried women of the

Rhineland cities began living in self-supporting communities which
followed the religious vocation without taking the lifelong vows of nuns.
These “Beguine” houses were not directly supervised by males, making
their inmates susceptible to misogynistic suspicions of clerics who readily
imagined the worst of groups of independent women. Many of these
Beguines sought through mystical contemplation to communicate
directly with God, without the aid of priests, finding inspiration in the
loose network of mystics calling themselves the “friends of God.” The
leading Rhineland mystic, Meister Eckhart (1260–1327), was soon placed
under inquisitorial house arrest, although he died of natural causes just
prior to sentencing. Many lay mystics were not so fortunate.
Robert Lerner’s analysis of the court records relating to the trials of
the so-called “Brethren of the Free Spirit” reveals that no such organ-
ized, heretical group ever existed. Instead, Inquisitors, trained in the art
of making connections between heretical groups and individuals, made
much of the idiosyncratic confessions of a few who took their mysticism
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 27

and anticlericalism to an extreme libertarianism. In 1367, one of these,

John Hartmann, confessed during his trial in Erfurt that, “one who is
truly free can be subject to no authority because he himself is king and
lord of all creatures,” and that “just as calves and oxen were created for
men to eat, so women were created for the use of the free in spirit,”
hardly a notion that would be appealing to the Beguines. 35 Yet, in
a great leap of logic, the Inquisitors linked the two, suggesting that the
few “Free Spirits” that they had caught were merely the tip of the iceberg
of an extensive and dangerous heretical sect promoting complete moral
license and the eradication of the Church hierarchy. Throughout most
of the fourteenth century, particularly the 1360s and 1370s, Beguines
were arrested, tried, and punished, many of them facing the fiery death
accorded other heretics. The writings of such prominent Beguines as
Mechtild van Magdeburg, whose manuscript, “Flowing Light of the
Godhead” expressed a deeply sexual conception of the mystical union of
the soul with Christ, was used as evidence that the ostensibly pious
Beguines were Free Spirits intent on indulging their fleshly urges.36
Only in the early fifteenth century were Franciscans able to protect the
Beguines by making them associated or “tertiary” houses and promising
to supervise them. The propaganda and persecution, however, added
another layer to the sediment of belief about diabolical heresy, one that
increased suspicion of women who expressed a measure of religous
independence.

Political Inquistions

Secular rulers very quickly appreciated the effectiveness of crusades and

Inquisitions to crush political dissent. The master of secular inquisitorial
handiwork was undoubtedly King Philip IV “the Fair” (1268–1314) of
France, who used it against Pope Boniface VIII in his efforts to control
and tax the French church. Foiled in his plan to bring the elderly pontiff to
trial in France, Philip proceeded to try him post mortem, and in 1310/11
the Estates General of France became the first court to convict a suspect
of both blasphemous heresy and ritual magic.
Philip had earlier used the inquisition for financial gain. In 1306 he
followed his cousin King Edward I of England’s example by expelling
the Jews from the realm after expropriating their property (unlike
England, the Jews were allowed to return to France after payment of
a sizeable fee). Unfortunately his financial woes continued, so Philip in
28 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

1307 turned his inquisitorial weapon upon the Knights Templar,

a wealthy crusading order unfairly blamed for the final defeat of the
Crusader States in 1291. According to Philip, the Inquisitor of France
had informed him that the Templars were secretly venerating the bust
of a mysterious figure, obscurely identified as the demon Beelzebub, and
performing sodomy (homosexual sex), renouncing the Christian faith,
spitting on the crucifix, and kissing the anus of the order’s grand master.
On the morning of October 13, 1307, all Templars were arrested, and
many tortured, leading to several confessions, including that of grand
master James of Molay. The following year Pope Clement V sent his own
investigators, before whom many knights reaffirmed their innocence.
The Archbishop of Sens, Philip Marigny, ordered over fifty “relapsed
heretics” immediately burned at the stake. The Templars fell back in
line and the Pope commanded the order’s dissolution. For his immense
service to the Christian faith, Philip received his share of Templar
wealth.

The Leper–Jew Conspiracy of 1321

Confronted by worsening financial straights, Philip V, Philip the Fair’s

second son, applied his father’s methodology to another wealthy target:
the leper houses. Mired in a devastating period of famine, epidemics,
and increasing social unrest, the French populace was prepared to
believe in a conspiracy theory, especially when propagated by royal
agents. In 1321 the famous Inquisitor Bernard Gui presented the case
against the lepers who, “diseased in body and soul,” had sprinkled poi-
sonous powders in the wells to transmit their disease to the healthy and
thus take over France. In a clear case of guilt projection, the accusers
suspected that this severely disadvantaged group were seeking to exact
personal vengeance against those who abhorred them. The first rumors
appeared that year in Aquitaine during Easter, always a dangerous season
for “outsiders.” With the first leper arrests and forced confessions came
mob action and in some places inhabited leper houses were burned to
the ground. The king issued an edict on June 21, 1321 defining the leper
crime as lése majesté, a crime against the person of the king, while pros-
ecutors suspected that other masterminds were behind the plot. Since
many regarded Jews as inwardly leprous, it is not surprising that lepers
began confessing that Jews, in league with Satan and the Muslim sultan
of Granada, had bribed them to scatter the alleged poison consisting of
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 29

human blood, urine, various herbs, and consecrated Hosts. Throughout

Aquitaine Jews were rounded up and burned, and when the pogroms
reached Paris, the king extorted a fortune of 150,000 livres from the
richest Parisian Jews. However, in 1322 a plot to poison Philip V was
“uncovered” and the Jews expelled from France the following year by
Charles IV who kept their property and the revenues of the leper
houses.
Although the authorities led this notorious assault, lay distrust of Jews
and lepers was ubiquitous, needing only official sanction to turn into
violent action. Resentment against the lepers quickly dissipated, so that
in 1338 Pope Benedict XII declared the Toulouse lepers innocent (as
Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers, this Pope had earlier declared
them guilty). However, suspicion of Jewish poisoning plots simmered,
boiling over in apparently spontaneous massacres of the Jews with the
onset of the plague in 1348/49. The conspiracy theory promoted by
royal agents had evidently taken deep root in popular soil.37 The Jewish
conspiracy was of course imaginary, but as Gavin Langmuir argues,

the fear and hatred the image engendered were all too real. Indeed,
the hatred was peculiarly intense because what these Christians feared
was buried deep within themselves. They feared and hated their
own doubts about beliefs basic to their sense of their identity, doubts
they could neither acknowledge consciously nor eradicate subcon-
sciously.38

When the flagellants realized that their self-mutilation was not diverting
God’s wrath, they blamed the immorality of the clergy and the blasphem-
ous presence of the Jews. Local clergy were only too glad to divert
attention to the latter.

Jews and Conversos in Spain

A similar outbreak of anti-Semitic rhetoric and violent action occurred

in Christian Spain where prominent Jews had become indispensable
intermediaries and tax collectors for the Christian rulers. Under the
smooth surface of this multicultural society seethed considerable resent-
ment against these Jewish officials. Some preachers, such as Hernan
Martínez in the 1340s and Ferrant Martínez in the 1380s, further
inflamed this acrimony by preaching fiery sermons during the Christian
30 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

holy days characterizing the Jews as Christ killers whose existence was
an affront to God. Just before Christmas, 1390, Ferrant Martínez suc-
ceeded in closing some of Seville’s synagogues, and the following Lent
his sermons now included stories that the local Jews were conspiring to
crucify innocent Christian boys. Despite the authorities’ opposition, on
June 9, 1391 a mob sacked the Jewish quarter. The attacks spread
quickly to other regions of Spain, and thousands of Jews were killed.
In the face of the violence many Spanish Jews converted rather than
commit suicide. Not as conditioned to Christian violence as their
coreligionists elsewhere, the Spanish Jewish leaders were so shocked by
the violence that, as John Edwards puts it, they succumbed to “a growing
belief that God had abandoned the Jews and given his blessing to the
Christian Church.”39 Some saw baptism as merely another cultural
adaptation, like eating pork or shaving beards, while others expected to
return to their Jewish faith once passions calmed. Whatever the motiva-
tion, the mass conversions of 1391 brought thousands of former Jews
fully into Christian society, allowing many to rise to high positions in
government and business, to marry into the landowning class, even to
become priests and bishops. The example was set, so that when there
was a new outbreak of anti-Jewish hostility in 1415 inflamed by the
sermons of the Dominican Vincent Ferrer, thousands more converted.
Unfortunately, converso success inspired jealousy rather than admir-
ation. Suspicions lingered that most conversos were secret Jews intent on
infiltrating the government and church so as to overthrow the Christian
government, even though many converso descendants were intensely
devout Christians. In the middle of the century resentment between old
Christians and new Christians broke out in armed conflict. Many
conversos left Spain altogether. In 1449 Pope Nicholas V condemned
this anti-converso sentiment in his bull Humani generis inimicus by asserting
that between “those newly converted to the faith, particularly from the
Israelite people, and Old Christians, there shall be no distinction in
honors, dignities, and offices.” 40 His efforts proved fruitless.
In 1478 Spain’s most Catholic monarchs Queen Isabella of Castille
and King Ferdinand of Aragon responded to mounting pressure from
both old and new Christians and began proceedings to establish a per-
manent office of Inquisition. This they placed under the direct governance
of the Suprema, a council of eight royal appointees. The institution
succeeded not only in “uncovering” Jewish heresy among Christians,
but also in assisting the monarchs’ centralization efforts. The extreme
measures that the Inquisition would take to purify the realm of supposed
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 31

Judaisers is seen in its “pure blood laws” (limpieza de sangre) which eased
the way for Inquisitors to convict supposed Judaisers by asserting that
the sacrament of baptism was unable to purge conversos of their Jewish
blood. The theory was simple: if after the application of Christian baptism
most conversos and their descendants still remained secret Jews, then
the concept of sacramental ex opere operato was under threat. A solution
to this perceived dilemma was found by postulating demonic and bio-
logical factors impeding baptism when administered to Jews. That this
notion was outside of Spain a heretical one does not seem to have
bothered the first Grand Inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada (d.1498), who
formalized these unusual laws and orchestrated the expulsion of Spain’s
remaining Jews in 1492. Certainly the limpieza de sangre made the Inquis-
itors’ job easier, for instead of having to extract confessions of heresy
from accused Judaisers, they had merely to determine if the percentage
of corrupt Jewish blood was more than 1/32, which could reach back as
many as three generations, stopping just short of Torquemada’s own
heritage. Persecution of conversos had little to do with an accused’s
actual beliefs; when Torquemada tried Juan Arias Dávila, Bishop of
Segovia, he ignored the bishop’s pleas that he had proven his Christian
zeal by vigorously persecuting the Jews of his diocese.41 In the Inquisition’s
first decades, thousands of convicted conversos, both living and deceased,
were burned and thousands more granted penance. Early on mortality
rates of accused conversos hovered around 40 percent, and grand,
showpiece executions of dozens or even hundreds of victims, called
autos-da-fé (acts of faith), brought considerable notoriety to Spain. While
after 1540 the death sentence was passed much less frequently, the pure
blood laws ensured that no one of Jewish ancestry could hold public
office of any kind or inherit land. By this means, the threat to sacramental
faith was crushed and doubt dispelled by force.

Joan of Arc

The cynical manipulation of Inquisitions to get rid of political enemies

became a frequent enough event by 1400, as evident in the case of the
clergy accused in 1406/7 of attempting to assassinate Pope Benedict XIII
by magical means, or the trial two years later of the same pontiff by the
Council of Pisa for sorcery and divination. Most famous was the trial of
Joan of Arc, the young peasant woman of Domrémy who, inspired by the
voices of saints and the archangel Michael, led the French army to defeat
32 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

the English at Orleans, opening the way for the coronation of the dauphin
as Charles VII (1422–61). Stories of Joan’s supernatural powers abounded,
such as the belief that she could fly, which compelled the people
of Troyes, Champagne, to open their gates to her.42 Stinging at their
losses to a peasant girl, the English bought her from her Burgundian
captors and tried her in 1429 on heresy and sorcery charges before the
Bishop of Beauvais, turning her saints’ voices into demonic ones and
finding proof of her diabolical intent in her insistence on wearing male
clothing. In 1431 she was burned at the stake, although like Pope Boniface
VIII her reputation was later restored.

Witches: The Devil’s Minions par excellence

Despite Joan’s example, most educated churchmen did not believe the
stories of strange processions of women who flew on strange beasts to the
wild hunt of the goddess of fertility or the hunt, the German Holda or
the Romanized Diana. This moderately skeptical position regarding the
efficacy of popular magic was recorded in the ninth-century decretal
known as the Canon episcopi,

Bishops and their auxiliaries shall endeavor as far as possible to uproot

from parishes all kinds of sorcery and magic, which are pernicious
inventions of the Devil. . . . Nor should any credence be given to what
follows: viz. that certain women, perverted and dedicated to Satan,
seduced by diabolical fantasies and deceits, believe and profess that
they ride at night-time with Diana, goddess of the pagans, and with
Herodias, astride certain beasts, in a company of innumerable other
women, traversing immense spaces and obeying Diana’s orders like
those of a mistress who convokes them on certain nights. . . . Great
throngs, deceived by this false persuasion, believe in all these lies and
thus fall back into pagan error. Therefore priests should preach wher-
ever it may be necessary to point out the falsity of these errors and make
it known that such tricks are produced by the Evil One who seduces
the mind by vain imaginations. . . . So it must be loudly proclaimed that
those who believe such things have lost the faith and no longer belong
to God, but only to him in whom they believe, that is the Devil.43

As this citation shows, most medieval churchmen thought that what

such people were experiencing was merely a demonic deception upon
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 33

gullible imaginations. However, those who believed themselves to perform

such magical acts were still viewed as spiritual dangers. In contrast, secular
law stipulated the death penalty for all who performed maleficium, harmful
magic, on their neighbors or communities, regardless of whether or not
the Devil was involved. Thirteenth-century scholastics such as Aquinas
brought together these two conceptions of witchcraft – spiritual apostasy
and secular maleficium – into an all-encompassing crime of incredible
blasphemy. This assisted judges untrained in the fine art of scholastic
theology because they could do away with trying to determine whether
the accused’s maleficium was effective or not and simply condemn all
magic as demonic.
The Canon episcopi approach was confirmed in 1258 when Pope
Alexander IV forbade Inquisitors from investigating cases of divination or
sorcery which involved no patently heretical acts, such as praying at the
altars of idols, committing sacrifices, or consulting demons.44 However,
Inquisitors continued to press for jurisdiction over magic, justifying
their position with the belief that the papacy’s foes “were not what they
claimed to be, but practiced horrible rites and committed misdeeds without
number.”45 Adding sorcery to the alleged crimes of heretics helped
Inquisitors win popular and governmental support for their activities,
for just about everyone feared maleficia.
The real shift in papal policy was made in 1320 by Pope John XXII
who was convinced that there had been an attempt on his life by magical
poisoning. On his behalf the Cardinal of Santa Sabina announced that
“our most holy father and lord, . . . fervently desires that the witches, the
infectors of God’s flock, flee from the midst of the House of God.”46 In
1326 a list of forbidden magical acts that Inquisitors could now investi-
gate included invoking or sacrificing to demons or their images, making
a pact with the Devil, and abusing the sacraments of baptism or the
Eucharist. Six years later the pope himself proclaimed,

Grievingly we observe . . . that many who are Christians in name

only . . . sacrifice to demons, adore them, make or have made images,
rings, mirrors . . . for magic purposes, and bind themselves to demons.
They ask and receive responses from them and to fulfill their most
depraved lusts ask them for aid . . . and make a pact with hell. 47

These condemned acts corresponded to learned necromancy, not to the

popular magic of the village witch. Well into the fifteenth century, trials
against sorcery focused primarily on courtly necromancers.
34 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Suppression of Magic

Sorcerers, poisoners, and plotters haunted the halls of most European

princely courts. For example, in 1411 Laurens Pignon, the Dominican
confessor to the future Philip the Good of Burgundy, composed a little
known manuscript entitled the Traitié contre les devineurs, or “Tract
Against the Diviners,” hoping to steer Philip’s father, Duke John the
Fearless and his court away from the divinatory and magical practices
so prevalent in French and Burgundian courts. To do so he affirmed
that since demons possessed enormous maliciousness and almost limit-
less powers, magical heresy caused immense social disruption. Pignon
was fighting a losing battle, as the madness of King Charles VI was
widely blamed on sorcery and attracted numerous magicians to his
court. The political conflict between the houses of Orleans and
Burgundy, moreover, had began with the murder of the king’s brother at
the behest of Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy, who admitted to the
crime with the unfortunate excuse that “the devil had driven him” to it.
For his part Pignon argued that the civil war had been caused by
princely dabbling in the occult and by the general degeneration of
the court as a result of such magical activity.48 Pignon’s impression was
confirmed by Jean Petit (c.1360–1411), a theologian patronized by
Duke John the Fearless for whom Petit composed a justification for
John’s assassination of Louis, accusing Louis of magically causing the
king’s madness. Petit’s literary opponent, the Monk of St. Denis, denied
the charge, contending that Louis had been an inveterate opponent of
sorcery, as seen in his support of the trials of several necromancers in
the last years of the fourteenth century, including the royal physician
Jehan de Bar and the ascetic sorcerer Arnaud Guillaume, both of whom
were burned.
News of such courtly sorcery reached the Parlement of Paris by 1390,
which decreed that sorcery was now a civil offence worthy of its attention.
Almost immediately two cases were brought forward, the first in 1390
involving the jilted lover Marion la Droiturière and a female magician,
Margot de la Barre, who specialized in love charms. Under torture the
two confessed that when the love magic failed they turned to the Devil,
who appeared in a form reminiscent of the costumed demons of mystery
plays, and provided the means to impede the former lover’s forth-
coming marriage. When the betrothed couple fell ill, Marion and Margot
were immediately arrested, and after their trial burned at the stake in
Paris.49
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 35

The second case involved a female diviner of Guérart, Jeanne de Brigue,

who was arrested for magically assisting an ill innkeeper. Under torture
she too confessed to using diabolical assistance, thus the Parlement’s
jurists assented to her burning, not so much for the magic, but for calling
up demons, a form of manifest heresy. Then, in 1398, the University of
Paris declared Devil-assisted sorcery to be heretical since it required
a pact with the Devil. These cases reveal how learned notions of clerical
necromancy were transposed onto incidents of popular magic. Lay
magicians may indeed have called upon the Devil for help, imagining him
in the form portrayed in popular drama, but it seems more likely that
torture and leading questions forced the accused to add demonic elements
to their magical rituals.
However, prior to 1420, there exist fewer than one hundred refer-
ences to trials involving sorcery. 50 Many of these involved individuals
accused of performing maleficia against the powerful. The accusations
against Dame Alice Kytler and her confederates in Kilkenny, Ireland in
1324/25 included maleficia, the sectarian organization and apostasy of
heresy, and demon worship. Like the Templars’ trial, Kytler’s demise
was politically caused. 51 Invocation of the Devil appeared with increasing
frequency, but despite Kytler’s example there seemed little real anxiety
about a sect of Devil-worshiping, magic-performing heretics. The scat-
tered trials of alleged Luciferans did not generally include charges of
sorcery, which remained largely restricted to political enemies or clergy.
In no surviving trials prior to the fifteenth century was the full stereotype
of the flying, sabbath-attending, cannibalistic witch complete. Even so,
the “discovery” of sectarian heretics who worshiped Satan and desecrated
Catholic rites helped confirm the veracity of Christian rituals and beliefs.

Waldensians and Witches

While attending the Council of Basel between 1435 and 1437 the
Dominican Johann Nider composed a long treatise on sin called the
Formicarius, recounting an earlier conversation with the Bernese judge
Peter von Greyerz (Gruyères) regarding a series of trials in the Upper
Simme Valley between 1397 and 1406 against a sect of Devil-worshiping
sorcerers who devoured infants and performed maleficia. Von Greyerz
said they had originated about the year 1375 and while there is no
corroborating evidence for such, some Inquisitors working in the Alpine
regions during the last quarter of the fourteenth century were claiming
36 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

that the Devil was instructing his Waldensian disciples in the magical
arts. One Inquisitor revealed that some Waldensians “celebrated wild
orgies and drank magical liquids provided by a Mistress of Ceremonies,”
while Wolfgang Behringer has remarked on the close correspondence
of Alpine Waldensianism with the earliest known witch trials and how
Inquisitors adapted “the popular belief in nocturnal assemblies” to fit
their developing conception of the activities of the heretical/witch “syna-
gogue.”52
Despite such blurring of boundaries between theological and magical
heresy, it seems that Von Greyerz’ trials at Boltigen were the first against
a supposed sect of demonic, cannibalistic-infanticide witches. The credu-
lous judge justified the use of torture by his fear that the captives could
emit incapacitating odors or turn into mice to escape. In their confessions,
maleficia was front and center, including murder by lightning, magically
drowning children, bringing sterility to fields, animals, and women, raising
storms, and performing divination. Under torture their leader, a man
named Stedelen, provided the how-to details for their malevolent activities,
most of which required the assistance of demons.53
The roots of this witch-hunt lay in the economic and political conflicts
between the new rulers of the region, urban Bern, and the rural society
of the Simme Valley, and since the trials were conducted entirely by
Bern’s secular governor and were opposed by the semi-skeptical local
clergy, they were clearly an attempt to establish Bernese jurisdiction
over the region. The era’s atmosphere of religious confusion bred fears
among commoners about the “the doubtful validity of the communion,
the concern about the earthly and eternal salvation of every Christian,
and the loss of the community of living and dead in heaven and on
earth,” leading to a “general fear that the world is full of devils.”54

Fifteenth-century trials

After these trials it appears that church and state authorities became
increasingly convinced of a massive diabolical conspiracy combining
maleficia and Devil worship. The most nightmarish component of this
underground witch sect was the ritual murder of infants. In some cases,
especially Italy, witches were accused of sucking the blood from infants
while they lay in their mother’s bed, while in French-speaking Switzerland
the accusation involved kidnapping the infants and killing and eating
them at the witch synagogues. As Richard Kieckhefer remarks, the myth
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 37

of blood-sucking witches probably relates to old, commonly held beliefs

of vampirism, while the French charges of cannibalistic infanticide
paralleled the diabolical conspiracy portrayed by preachers.55 In both
events, the charges that Jews and witches murdered infants fed into
parental fears and made prosecution of the foes easier. Moreover, the
meetings of Vauderie were called synagogues and later sabbaths; both
Jews and witches were accused of using poisons to harm their neighbors;
both were believed to be in league with the Devil in his assault against
Christianity; both were thought to require the blood or bodies of Christian
youths for their rituals; both were accused of desecrating the Eucharist
in their hostility to the Church. Many Jews possessed reputations as
potent magicians, and sometimes charges of ritual murder and sorcery
were combined, as seen in a 1407 trial in Frankfurt which involved the
purported sale of a child to a Jewish sorcerer.56 As Jews were expelled
from various regions, their supposed diabolical activities were merely
transferred onto other suspects.
Even so, trials against alleged witch sects did not begin to escalate until
the 1420s, reaching peaks in the 1450s and 1480s, petering out thereafter
to the more typical trials against individual witches and sorcerers.57
Between three and four hundred trials of witchcraft, some involving
multiple suspects, are known to have taken place between 1428 and
1500. The heartland of such trials were the Alpine regions of Italy,
French-speaking Switzerland, and France. In Switzerland witch-hunting
spread from the French- and Italian-speaking regions into the German,
where the word hexerye, the Swiss-German term for witch that would
become the German standard (hex), first appeared in Lucerne in 1419,
while the first known description in German of a witch-hunt was also
from Lucerne (1428).58 In the 1420s trials of groups of accused increased
with regularity, such as the infamous witch-hunts in the secular court of
Dauphiné which executed 110 women and 57 men. 59 In the following
decade prominent groups of sorcerers were tried in the secular court of
London in 1430; in 1430–1 and again in 1439 in Swiss Neuchâtel; in 1433
in Lucerne and Tirol, and elsewhere.

San Bernardino of Siena and the Witches of Italy

Leading the charge against alleged witches in Italy was the Dominican
preacher Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) who, like his contemporary
John Capestrano, was also a fervent opponent of religious dissidents,
38 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

although Bernardino’s sermons were much less anti-Semitic than

Capestrano’s. The common people, who relied almost exclusively on
aural means of communication, flocked to hear such preachers in the
hopes of receiving means of protection against evil. Thousands listened
to Bernardino’s long, mesmerizing sermons which profoundly escalated
a sense of both personal guilt and anxiety about diabolical enemies.
Against the latter Bernardino promoted the veneration of his mono-
gram tablet displaying the holy name of Jesus.
For his efforts Bernardino was accused by other churchmen of
encouraging idolatry and magic and spurning devotion for the Eucharist
and the crucifix. In the spring of 1426 Pope Martin V summoned him to
Rome to stand trial before a phalanx of theologians. On his way he
preached in Viterbo, telling his audience that “I am going to Rome to be
cremated by fire and you, enjoying peace and tranquillity, will remain
behind. They are calling me a heretic and the word circulating in Rome
is that I must be burned at the stake.”60 With Capestrano’s intervention
Bernardino was cleared of the charges, but suspicion lingered until
he was completely exonerated in 1432. Having just escaped his own
inquisition, Bernardino turned even more vigorously to denouncing
other heretics, especially witches and sorcerers whose crimes closely
paralleled his own.
Carlo Ginzburg has clearly charted the subtle transformation in
Bernardino’s views on witchcraft that apparently resulted from his brush
with the law. 61 In 1423 Bernardino had declared that old women who
believed they flew with the goddess of the hunt and possessed powers to
predict misfortunes and help bewitched children, women in labor, and
the sick, were actually subjects of the Devil. However, he did not see
them as members of a diabolical sect until the summer of 1426 when he
began preaching in Rome against a demonic sect of witches. Upon his
return to Siena in 1427 he added that it was a sin not to accuse witches:
“I don’t know how better to tell you: To the fire! To the fire! Oimmè! Do
you want to know what happened in Rome when I preached there? If
I could only make the same thing happen here in Siena! Oh, let’s send
up to the Lord God some of the same incense right here in Siena!”62
Whether or not Bernardino was aware that he was projecting onto
others the suspicions that had clung to him, his impact was profound. As
Franco Mormondo suggests, Bernardino helped “to crystallize and
popularize this panic-raising image of the witch as evildoing, heretical,
idolatrous ‘servant of Satan’” and to convince officials of the necessity of
vigorous action against it. 63
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 39

Soon hundreds of denunciations against alleged witches swamped

the ecclesiastical authorities, forcing the Pope to restrict proceedings to
the most serious cases only. These included the trial of Finicella, about
whom Bernardino commented:

And there was taken among others one who had told and confessed,
without being put to torture, that she had killed thirty children or
thereabouts, by sucking their blood; and she said that every time she
let one of them go free she must sacrifice a limb to the devil, . . . And
furthermore, she confessed, saying that she had killed her own little
son, and had made a powder from him, which she gave people to eat
in these practices of hers. And because it seemed beyond belief that
any creature could have done so many wicked things, they wished to
test whether this was indeed true.64

By this means Bernardino astutely turned attention away from suspicion

of his own heterodox practices toward a more diabolical enemy.
Bernardino’s sermons inspired the magistrates of Todi in 1428 to try
one of their local and very popular female healers, Matteuccia Francisco.
Two years earlier they had adopted Bernardino’s anti-sorcery statutes,
one of which stipulated “that no one must conjure up devils or carry out
or cause to be carried out any spells or acts of witchcraft.” At the start of
her trial Matteuccia confessed to being a sorcerer and herbal healer with
a large and prominent clientele. Suddenly Matteuccia’s testimony took
a sharp turn as she began confessing to the whole range of diabolical
crimes, including the demonic pact, demon-assisted flight, attendance at
distant sabbaths moderated by Lucifer, animal metamorphosis, the use
of horrific unguents, and killing infants by sucking their blood. Such
change, Kieckhefer surmises, was a result of direct judicial coercion or
torture. On March 20, wearing a paper hat on her head, she rode a donkey
to the public square and was burned at the stake.

Heresy and Conciliarism

Despite Bernardino’s rhetoric, by 1400 the real threat of heresy was

effectively gone in Italy and severely suppressed elsewhere. Yet Bernardino
and his fellow preachers were not really cognizant of this fact, and the
heresies of the previous century still lingered in their minds.65 Such
threats helped divert attention away from the very real problems
40 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

confronting the institutional Church, such as the Papal Schism, increasing

anticlerical sentiment, and even outright rebellion. The period between
the Council of Constance’s ending of the schism in 1418 and the Council
of Basel’s (1431–47) efforts to replace papal authority with a conciliar
administrative system was a particularly tumultuous one. It is no wonder
that the Council of Basel’s participants raised concerns about the
increasing attacks of Satan on Christendom. As part of this information
campaign, several more treatises on diabolical witchcraft were com-
posed, including Ut magorum et maleficiorum errores by the secular judge
of the Dauphiné Claude Tholosan, the anonymous Errores Gazariorum,
the Lucerne chronicle of Johannes Fründ, and Johann Nider’s Formi-
carius.66 At the Council of Basel in particular delegates “could exchange
opinions as if at a European trade fair, they heard not only reports of the
trial of Joan of Arc, but also got the first public view of the new image of
the witches’ sabbath, an idea that had been invented in the region
around Lake Geneva.” 67 The battle between conciliarists and papal cen-
tralists was long and fierce, and Nider’s news of a diabolical, magical con-
spiracy threatening Christendom provided the papacy with a welcome
alternative target for clerical attention.

Witch Trials after the Council of Basel

After the Council of Basel the prosecution of groups of witches acceler-

ated throughout much of western Europe, fostered by the agitation of
urban preachers. 68 Most trials still involved relatively small groups
of defendants, such as a case from the Pays de Vaud in 1448. Beginning
with an inquisition against Jaquet Durier, a doctor accused of witchcraft
when a functionary for the local châtelaine died under his ministration,
the interrogations soon implicated Catherine Quicquat and the miller
Pierre Munier. These two seem to have been having an affair, while
Quicquat was known to have earlier procured a love potion from an
accused witch. The trial against the doctor began with the charge of
maleficia but moved quickly to implicate him in the diabolical sabbath
and cannibalistic infanticide. It was not until Quicquat’s interrogation
that the sexual and animalistic elements of demonic witchcraft came to
the fore, foreshadowing the misogynistic notions of the 1487 Malleus
Maleficarum. Ironically, even though Munier was the least socially
respectable of the accused, he was the only defendant spared torture
and a fiery death, thus his confession lacked the diabolical elements of
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 41

the other two. As the community’s miller, Munier was on good relations
with the local lords, who may have protected him in this case.69
This example reveals how witchcraft accusations could be encouraged
by the local authorities as a means of seeking legal redress, in this case
a wrongful death, or of getting rid of troublesome residents. At the same
time, once initiated, the trial process and the Inquisitor’s sermonizing
raised popular suspicion toward others in the community. Interpersonal
conflicts, suspicion, and jealousy added to sincere fear of maleficia or of
diabolical heresy to create a ready supply of accusers.
Other cases in the 1450s to 1480s followed a similar pattern. Merely
affirming the moderate skepticism of the Canon episcopi could be
dangerous, as William Adeline, a preacher and former theologian of the
University of Paris, discovered. Persistently asserting that the witches’
sabbath was fiction, Adeline was degraded from the priesthood and
sentenced as a Waldensian witch to life in prison on a diet of bread and
water. A signed pact with the Devil committing him to preach against the
sabbath’s reality was allegedly found on his person, and under torture
he confessed to flying to diabolical meetings where he venerated
demons and renounced his Christian faith. By this confession Adeline
was forced to dispel the doubts he had raised.70
The most famous fifteenth-century trial of sectarian witches took place
in Arras, northern France, between 1459 and 1462. The charges against
the thirty-four accused centered on devil worship and “attendance at the
synagogue of the Vaudois.” Unusually only one individual was accused
of maleficia, suggesting that it was clerical pressure and not local fears of
witches that had sparked this event. The first accused, a male hermit,
confessed under torture that his accomplices included a prostitute and
a writer famed for poems honoring the Virgin Mary. Even by the standards
of the day the procedures followed by the two Dominican Inquisitors,
Jean, Bishop of Beirut, who as suffragan bishop was acting in the Bishop
of Arras’ absence, and the learned Jacques du Boys, were inexcusable.
Several accused were tricked into confessions by insincere promises of
leniency, and five were burned at the stake despite never having
confessed to the crime. Following Bernardino’s model the Inquisitors
delivered impassioned sermons on the dangers of the diabolical threat,
proclaiming that those who opposed the burnings must themselves be
witches. 71 In his report of 1460, an anonymous Inquisitor justified the
burnings by describing in grim detail the noxious sabbath activities of
the accused and their dangerous opinions about heaven, hell, and the
immortality of the soul. 72 News of the Arras trials spread quickly, for in
42 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

1460 a messenger was sent from Lille, north of Arras, to discover if there
might be Waldensians there as well. 73 Even so, the Arras witch-hunts did
not severely infect other territories, especially after the city’s merchants
began to complain to the Duke of Burgundy about the loss of business
(no one seemed willing to risk doing business with possible witches), and
after consulting the University of Louvain, Duke Philip the Good ordered
a stop to further arrests. Over the complaints of theInquisitors, an appeal
of one of the prisoners reached the Parlement of Paris, which ordered
the discharge of most of the imprisoned and the recently returned Bishop
of Arras formally ended the trials. Du Bois was denounced and seems to
have lost his mind, dying a few months later. In a postscript, the Parlement
of Paris pardoned all of those condemned and ordered the former
prosecutors to fund masses in their honor. 74

Ulricus Molitor and Heinrich Krämer

Despite this decision, the trials and burnings of sects of witches continued
apace.75 Scholarly interest in the subject remained strong, and a number
of handbooks for Inquisitors were composed, including Nicholas Jacquier’s
Flagellum Haereticorum Fascinariorum of the 1450s, and two famous works
from the late 1480s, Ulricus Molitor’s De Lamiis (The Witches) of 1489,
and the best known Inquisitor’s manual of all time, Heinrich Krämer’s
(Institoris) Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, published in
1487. As a means of gauging the range of possible positions we will
examine Krämer’s pointedly credulous work and Molitor’s mildly skep-
tical treatise.
Although the Malleus claims to have been coauthored by the Dominican
Inquisitor Jacob Sprenger, Krämer was responsible for most, if not all, of it.
Like Bernardino, Krämer’s personal motivation for his campaign
against witches was vaguely linked with a spot of trouble he experienced
with his ecclesiastical superiors. On April 2, 1482, Pope Sixtus IV ordered
the Bishop of Augsburg to arrest Krämer and oblige him to return
money and silverware that he had allegedly stolen following a sale
of indulgences. Before formal condemnation could take place, the Arch-
bishop of Craynensis (Albania) issued a formal call for the reconvening
of the Council of Basel as a means of reducing papal authority. Krämer
saw his moment, hastily composed a polemical attack upon the Bishop’s
motives, and was immediately rewarded with the dropping of embezzle-
ment charges.76 The Pope expected that Krämer would become a fervent
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 43

opponent of conciliarism, and in October 1483 Sixtus IV commissioned

him to combat such errors. The Inquisitor, however, required frequent
reminders to return to his anti-conciliarist activities and never fulfilled
his pledge to write another treatise on the subject. 77 Instead, he turned
to attacking demonic witches. It can be surmised that Krämer, recently
released from his own investigation, saw in witchcraft a means to redirect
attention from his problems onto a massive threat to Christendom
requiring the concerted efforts of all churchmen, conciliarist and papist
alike, thereby taking the wind out of the conciliarists’ sails.
Krämer, with Sprenger’s help, manipulated Pope Innocent VIII into
issuing a bull supporting their inquisitorial efforts, the Summis disiderantes
affectibus of 1484 which offered papal support for the campaign against
a vaguely defined diabolical threat. The strength of opposition to their
work is evident from Krämer’s experience in Innsbruck in 1485 where
the Bishop and Archduke of Austria released all of Krämer’s fifty
suspects. Eric Wilson suggests that Krämer’s defeat at Innsbruck colored
his composition of the Malleus, as he sought to “negate the baleful effects
of skeptical clerics” by demonizing magic as a means of maximizing
“the potential of the heretical-demonic threat” of maleficia.78 Krämer’s
reputation as a major hunter of witches was, like the demonic sabbath he
pursued, illusory, based more on his baneful treatise than on actual
convictions.
Sprenger does not seem to have shared the anti-witch passion of his
supposed friend, becoming in fact an implacable enemy of Krämer as
a result of the latter’s unethical methods of winning scholarly support
for his manual among the theologians of the University of Cologne.
When only four professors offered qualified support for the text,
Krämer, without Sprenger’s knowledge, hired a clerical notary to forge
a second letter of enthusiastic approval and inserted it into the other-
wise legitimate notary instrument issued on May 14, 1487. When the
forgery was uncovered, it blackened Krämer’s reputation and enraged
Sprenger who, as provincial vicar of southern Germany, proceeded to
prosecute his colleague for the forgery. 79 Krämer withdrew to the
Mosel region where in March of 1488 he further incensed his superiors
by approving a community’s erection of a counter-magic crucifix. Only
in 1491 did he return to his beloved witch persecution when the
Nurnberg city council requested his assistance in some trials. Here he
composed a treatise counteracting laxity in pursuing witches and
rebuking skeptical magistrates. 80 The aldermen refused to allow its
publication.
44 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Malleus was intended to assist Inquisitors to extract confessions

from accused witches. It irrevocably linked maleficia to the Devil’s sect,
explained why women were so prominent among the accused, and used
the “reality” of demonic witchcraft as a proof of the veracity of the Catholic
faith. Walter Stephens has shown that Krämer’s peculiar obsession with
magically induced impotence and theft of penises was rooted in his own
need to prove the reality of the sacraments, especially that of marriage.
According to Catholic theory, the sacraments worked unfailingly by
virtue of the divine power within them (ex opere operato). Yet it was self-
evident that the sacrament of marriage, which major purpose was to
produce children, did not always work as many couples remained child-
less. By showing that the Devil and his human assistants were impeding
the marital act, Krämer believed he had found an acceptable explanation
for the sacrament’s apparent impotence. He therefore compelled
witches to confess in prurient detail to this particular crime, thereby
tangibly confirming his faith, just as charges of abusing Hosts confirmed
the veracity of the Eucharist. 81
Above all, Krämer was a vigorous defender of the real presence of
Christ in the Host, composing in the early 1490s two treatises on the sub-
ject. In one of these, the Tractatus novus de miraculoso eucariste sacramento
(New Treatise on the miraculous Sacrament of the Eucharist), he defended the
veneration of a miraculously bleeding Host at an Augsburg shrine
against the slanders of a skeptical preacher, threatening all skeptics with
excommunication. The second, longer treatise, the Tractatus varii cum
sermonibus plurimus contra quattor errores novissime exortos adversus divinis-
simum euchariste sacramentum (Various treatises with many sermons against four
new errors against the divine sacrament of the Eucharist) appeared in 1494,
seeking to inoculate lay people against the growing skepticism toward
transubstantiation. Promoting belief in Eucharistic miracles, he fixed
“upon the skeptical minds of his listeners a firm belief in both the efficacy
of supernatural power in general and in the reality of the threat of
demonic magic in particular” and declared that denying the reality of
maleficium was itself the heresy of unbelief.82
Krämer’s reputation within the Dominican Order was not fully
restored until after Sprenger’s death in 1495. Nor did his magnum opus
have its desired effect. Despite its popularity as a printed manual (at least
fourteen editions between 1487 and 1521), it did not spark witch trials
throughout Europe, and interest in persecuting witches declined after
its original publication. Many church and secular officials preferred the
approach of Ulricus Molitor, the jurist of Constance whose 1489 dialogue
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 45

on female witches reasserted the Canon episcopi tradition against the

realist camp. In contrast to Krämer, Molitor advocated sending infertile
couples to a physician who would undoubtedly discover a natural cause
for their affliction. The supposed preternatural abilities of witches to
control weather or fly were mere illusions of demons which could not
suspend the course of nature. Yet, Molitor also admitted that female
sorcerers who worshiped the Devil deserved harsh treatment, not for
supposed maleficia but because of their apostasy. Molitor too shared
Krämer’s misogynistic belief that women were incredibly susceptible to
the Devil’s charms, advising them to remember their baptismal covenant
with Christ, resist the Devil, and arm themselves with the sign of the
cross. 83 Sprenger had likewise established the cult of the Rosary in
Germany as a means of regulating female thought. Many officials clearly
preferred Molitor’s stance on the subject of witchcraft and disdained the
Malleus for its advocacy of inquisitorial supremacy over local lords.
Instead, civic officials were becoming preoccupied with another sin
against God that seemed to be provoking his ire: blasphemy.

The Battle against Blasphemy

Judging from the inquisitorial records of the Low Countries, trials for
blasphemy were increasing in the late fifteenth century. Between 1470
and 1517, dozens of individuals were punished for blaspheming the
sacrament, denying the virginity of Mary, expressing skepticism about
Christ’s divinity or resurrection, and desecrating saints’ images or sacra-
mentals. Even the eating of meat during Lent was treated harshly as
a tangible denial of Christ’s crucifixion. While Count John of Nevers was
expelled from the Order of the Golden Fleece for his “disbelief,” most
offenders were ordinary townsmen. Over fifteen men were banned from
Ghent between 1478 and 1482 for “swearing horrible and blasphemous
oaths against God.” At the end of September 1481 the Dominican
preacher Jacob Weyts publicly accused the city of harboring heretics,
although a chronicler wryly noted that he offered no names. In response,
Ghent’s magistrates closed the Dominican house until the brothers
publicly retracted their offensive remarks.84
Civic magistrates, however, did not wish to have their city’s reputation
besmirched by charges of godlessness, while Inquisitors linked “skeptics”
with the largely fictitious “Brothers of the Free Spirit,” easing prosecution
of individual urbanites who vented anticlerical anger or religious doubt.
46 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Such blasphemy was also tied to sedition, as seen in the case of the five
men beheaded in Bruges in 1485 for blasphemy of the “sacrament of the
altar” and for their “rebellion against [Emperor] Maximilian and his son
Philip [Duke of Burgundy]” who ruled Flanders.85 Perhaps spurred by
this notorious case, on February 19, 1491 Ghent’s jurists specified the
punishment for a first blasphemy offence as pillorying, the boring of the
tongue with a hot iron, and a month’s imprisonment on a diet of bread
and water.86 Bruges’ council followed suit a month later by stipulating
that “no one is from now on in any way to blaspheme the almighty God
or his saints, nor to swear any unseemly oaths, upon threat of severe
punishment at the discretion of the magistrates by expulsion and other
things.” 87
A few years later, in 1495, an official with the court of Brabant, Willem
vander Taverijen, composed a treatise on how to deal with heresy, dis-
belief, blasphemy, sacrilege, and sorcery. While he affirmed that some
doubt was merely from individual weakness, the determined expression
of such sentiment was heretical. Blasphemy, the “swearing by the head,
beard, hair of God, or similar oaths” was worthy of civil punishment
because it angered God who countered with “plagues, miserable times
from tempests and earthquakes.”88 Sacrilege, which included the dese-
cration or theft of sacred objects, merited punishment in the stocks,
while sorcery deserved the torture of red-hot irons. This last crime he
defined as “to do any soothsaying or witchcraft under appearance of
holiness or religion, or with holy words to hinder someone or to know
secret things . . . or to conjure the devil to come.” Like blasphemy, sorcery
was inviting immediate divine retribution. 89 This Brabant jurist’s treatise
on crime both confirms John Bossy’s theory of the overshadowing of the
“Seven Deadly Sins” by the Decalogue in late-medieval religious and
legal discourse and reveals how magic and religion remained interwoven
in the social fabric. In this context, the spoken word possessed great
destructive power, directly through magical conjurations or curses and
indirectly by incurring the wrath of God.
Punishment for such crimes was therefore harsh. As a result of her
unspecified blasphemy, in 1491 Katheline, widow of Willem sLozen, was
stripped naked, placed on a wagon, stroked with a red-hot iron, and
taken to the main square where a large piece of her tongue was cut
off and thrown into the fire. She was then banned for fifty years from
Flanders. 90 A similar edict of expulsion (without the torture) was
granted Mathijs van der Eeke merely for covering his eyes with a pair of
nutshells when the Holy Sacrament passed by in a procession. Why
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 47

Katheline was treated so harshly is difficult to surmise, for even Vander

Taverijen had recommended that women and youth be accorded lighter
sentences than adult men because of their “frailty of complexion.”91
That she was accorded the hot iron treatment suggests that her blasphem-
ous oath was perceived as a veiled threat of magic.
Such punishments did little to stop blasphemous actions. On July 15,
1506, Jacob de Zomere was banned from Ghent for sticking a knife
through a silver crucifix, while Jan Steinic’s horribly blasphemous oaths
won for him a fifty-year ban the following year. These offences forced
the Emperor Maximilian and the Ghent-born Prince Charles, sovereign
of the Low Countries, to publish a mandate setting out the punishment
for blasphemy: for a first offence, a fine; for a second, a fine and imprison-
ment; for a third, the boring of the offender’s tongue and exile.92
Charles would reissue and strengthen this mandate twice more, but to
no avail. After 1519, Protestant preachers gained a strong foothold in
the Low Countries, in part because they were able to feed off this popular
substratum of anticlericalism and skepticism toward the preternatural
aspects of Catholic belief and practice.

The Possessed Nuns of Le Quesnay

One wonders about the effects of this escalated moral vigilance, of the
inflammatory sermons against blasphemy, and promotion of fervent
introspection that became the counterpoint to increasing skepticism and
doubt. A clue is provided by an extraordinary event around 1491 that
shook a convent of Le Quesnay in Cambrai ( just east of Arras). Sister
Johanna Potiere, one of the mostly aristocratic nuns of this devout
Augustinian house, was suddenly and mysteriously overcome with fits
that forced her into painful contortions, caused her eyes to bulge out of
her head, and to speak horrible blasphemies in a hideous voice, all signs
of demonic possession. Quickly the disorder spread through the
convent, and three learned clergymen, the deacon Gilles Nettelet and
the preachers Nicholas Gonor and Jan Sarrasin were called in to investi-
gate. Their exorcisms led to fascinating discussions with the legion of
demons plaguing the women. When asked why they were tormenting
these nuns, they replied: “we are perpetually damned for only one
transgression, and you Christians commit them infinitely, yet you are
always pardoned by grace, by contrition, confession and satisfaction,
which we are not allowed.” Why, then, the exorcists inquired, do you not
48 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

afflict soldiers and other dissolute men, instead of these pious women?
Because, they answered, the former are already “our friends” and assist-
ants. Approaching the possessed women with the consecrated Host had
the desired result, for when confronted by the “true body of Christ,”
the victims cried out “Jesus” as a sign of their deliverance, while the
demons ridiculed Christian devotion to the miraculous without denying
the veracity of the real presence. Three long Masses said over a period of
three days finally expelled most of the demons, although when the
Bishop of Cambrai Henry of Bergen arrived to cleanse and reconsecrate
the convent, he had to expel three or four persistent spirits by holy
conjurtions and the sign of the cross. An investigation into the cause
of the disturbance revealed that prior to the possessions the roughly
45-year-old Potiere had not only committed some unspecified sins, but
had composed a “hideous and abominable” work entitled Mon amoureux
which inflamed diabolical passions. For this she was imprisoned for life,
although she died not long after her trial. 93
By uttering in a horrifically demonic voice the doubts and skepticism
being expressed by ordinary people, demoniacs dramatically proclaimed
that such skepticism was diabolical. Defenders of sacramental realism
cheered when demons confirmed the veracity of the real presence of
Christ in the Eucharist and the spiritual power of the clergy. Although it
seems unlikely that the original possessions were directly encouraged by
the clergy, they were not hesitant to turn these newsworthy events to
their own advantage.

Mary of Nijmegen

A late fifteenth-century drama reveals some of the elements of the Devil’s

conspiracy which by 1500 were known to urbanites. Mary of Nijmegen was
first printed in prose form in illustrated Dutch and English editions and
then dramatized sometime between 1485 and 1510, around the same
time as the publication of the Malleus.94 Its story recounts the tale of
a young maiden of Guelders, Netherlands, Mariken (Mary), who was
sent by her uncle priest to the city of Nijmegen to purchase supplies.
Once done, she notices that night was coming and seeks lodging from an
aunt who lived in the city. This woman, however, had that day argued so
strenuously with several other women over Duke Adolf’s imprisonment
of his father that they accused her of being a “raging she-devil”. She
directed this fury at Mariken, accusing her of gross sexual misconduct,
finally refusing her request. Disheartened and frightened, the girl
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 49

collapses next to a hedge, praying for help from either God or the Devil.
The latter arrives as a handsome man (albeit with a set of horns on his
head), and through his usual means of subterfuge convinces Mariken
to make a pact with him in exchange for knowledge of the seven liberal
arts – rhetoric, music, logic, grammar, geometry, arithmetic, and alchemy –
subjects of learning normally closed to women. She asks to learn necro-
mancy, for her uncle was a practitioner but had refused to show her his
magic manual. Naturally the Devil spurns this request, not wanting
Mariken to learn how to control him. He also insists she change her
name to Emma (Emmeken), as her real name is too reminiscent of the
Virgin Mary’s, and she promises never to make the sign of the cross. For
the next seven years Emma is the demon’s mate, amazing people with
her knowledge. Then, during a return visit to Nijmegen, she and her
demon lover watch a drama entitled the “play of Masscheroen,” in which
a demon advocate brings Lucifer’s case for the souls of men to the court
of heaven and is ultimately trounced by God and the Virgin Mary. The
play convinces Emma that her soul is in eternal danger, and she seeks
release from the pact. In anger, the demon raises her high up in the air
and then, to the horror of her watching uncle, drops her to the street
below. She survives, recovers from her wounds, and embarks with her
uncle on a quest to be restored to the Church, ultimately appealing to
the Pope himself. Although horrified at her tale of a seven-year affair
with a demon, the Pope admires her penitent spirit, and he commands
that for the remainder of her life she wear a set of heavy iron rings as
penance. She becomes a nun and for the next several years lives an
extremely ascetic life until an angel releases her from the rings, and she
dies forgiven two years later.
Clearly Mariken was no simple peasant witch, but a young woman
with aspirations of higher learning, indeed a female Faustus. In this play
are many of the elements of the demonic witch stereotype that had
developed by the late fifteenth century: a pact with Satan, renunciation
of Christianity, implied sexual congress with demons, and demonic
flight, although this last was not a means of transportation but the result
of a demon’s pique. However, in several respects Mariken does not
fit the stereotype, for she actually receives the promised knowledge,
whereas the demonic rewards of ordinary witches vanished once the
pact was sealed. Furthermore, Mariken did not carry out acts of maleficium,
was not part of a Satanic conspiracy, nor did she attend the sabbath and,
most importantly of all, she was ultimately forgiven and became a saint.
If this play acts in any way as a reflector of the views of the urban play-
wright, performers, and audience, it appears that necromancy was
50 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

widely known as a clerical pursuit, that making a pact with Satan was
a credible thing, and that the audiences wished for even the most
extreme cases of diabolism to be forgivable. Although the play can be
read as a warning against women seeking higher education, it can also
be seen as a critique of their exclusion from universities which forced
some to seek knowledge by forbidden means.

Conclusion

Several points need to be reiterated to bring together this chapter’s

strands of argument. The early modern cosmos was a living thing that
worked by means of moralized correspondences and which provided
magic of all sorts with a logically consistent role. The cosmos was also
filled with invisible, powerful beings, some of whom, the demons, lived
close to humans and received far more attention in art and literature
than the angels. Ecclesiastical officials worried about the increased prac-
tice of necromancy on the part of the lower clergy, and argued that it
was impossible for any human to control demons. These ideas about
diabolical magic were transposed by Inquisitors onto the image of a
conspiratorial sect of heretics to create the Luciferans, then to transform
the Waldensians into witches plotting the destruction of Christendom.
The sensational news of each trial spread by word of mouth, by sermon
and, by the middle of the fifteenth century, by print.
This cosmos was also highly gendered, and it is not surprising that the
ultimate evil, demonic witchcraft, would be associated most strongly
with women. The process took about a century, as most of the accused
in the early fifteenth-century trials were men, while by the writing of the
Malleus Maleficarum most suspects were women. Women were generally
believed to be weaker in mind and body, and with their cooler humors,
more susceptible to diabolical temptation. Despite the Church’s assault
on necromancers, there remained the assumption that learned clergy
could control demons if they followed the rituals to the letter. Women,
excluded from higher education and holy orders, could only become
the agent of the Devil, whatever rituals they performed. In the harsh
economic and social climate of the fifteenth century, moreover, there
was an increasing tendency for men to project their own feelings of guilt
(for excluding women from universities, skilled vocations, and inherit-
ance or for abusing them in and out of families) or sexual frustration.
Celibate clergy were particularly prone to this fear of female sexuality
 The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages 51

and pollution. 95 By the end of the fifteenth century, the stereotype of

a magician had changed from a learned, pious male to that of a sect of
vengeful servants of Satan who were mostly old women, seeking power
over their lives and neighbors otherwise denied them. Inquisitors and
preachers encouraged people to accuse those who fit the stereotype, and
with each trial, the stereotype was reinforced.
One of the critical components of the spread of this conspiracy theory
was the clerical, and sometimes popular, campaign against skepticism,
doubt, and dissidence. Although medieval Europe was a strictly Christian
realm, not everyone believed fervently, and there were many expressions
of doubt about Christian dogma. As Richard Marius remarks,

To admit to irreligion or to skepticism was to confess oneself scornful

of the common human bonds that defended morality and held chaos
at bay. To some extent it was also to scorn one’s fellow human beings,
for if nearly everyone in a society professes a religion, those who do
not profess faith contemn the collective wisdom of the community and
inevitably seem a threat – the threat that God or the gods may punish
the entire society for the neglect of a few. . . . Yet the doubts exist. They
exist because the community ardently presses a conformity of faith on
everyone; the community does become aware of them; and the reli-
gious orders of society in reacting against those doubts push all the
harder to make their faith normative and unassailable. The very
intensity of this effort to make faith and the culture identical creates in
some quarters all the more reaction. . . . The late medieval church’s
response to philosophical skepticism about theology seemed to be an
almost subconscious drive to multiply cultic practices that submerged
doubt, that made piety so physical, so demanding, that one had no
time for reflection and brooding on doubts that reflection might
induce.96

Efforts to deflect such doubt often took unusual forms, such as charges
of Jewish Host desecration, or miracles performed at saints’ shrines, or
the horrid stories of malevolent witches desecrating Christian holy
objects. The battle between zealots and skeptics escalated to a fevered
pitch as a result of the sixteenth-century Reformation.
 2
THE REFORMATION AND THE END
OF THE WORLD

because of our sins we are in tribulation, for which we must do

penance . . . for all Christendom is placed in great anxiety,
danger and fear on account of the heresies, disunity, dissension,
and wars between the Christian princes. . . . The Turk, seeing
that through the disunity and wars the Christian authorities are
weakened, augments himself, so that he quickly deliberates
(if God is not merciful to us) to spring upon Christendom from
all sides with mighty armies, both at sea and on the land . . .
Een cort begrijp vanden Payse/tusschen den Keyser/den
Coninck van Enghelant/ende den Coninck van Vranckerijcke
(Antwerp, n.d. [1544]), iv.

So thought an anonymous Catholic pamphleteer in 1544. By this date

the divisions engendered by the various reform movements had left
Christian unity an empty shell and had inspired innumerable predictions
of apocalyptical punishment, in this citation to be enacted by the Muslim
Turks. Such predictions ultimately came to nought, but this was not
apparent to people living in one of the most religiously vexing moments
in European history. Throughout the sixteenth century the sense of living
on the eve of the great tribulation predicted in the book of Revelation
remained vivid, inspiring both fear and determination to act. Yet this
was not how the century had begun.
By 1500, papal supremacists and Inquisitors had largely managed
to suppress both heresy and conciliarism, ameliorating somewhat the
profound religious confusion which had driven them to hunt out

52
 The Reformation and the End of the World 53

diabolical sectarian witches. Even Heinrich Krämer saw the writing on

the wall, spending the last years of his life (from January 1499 to his
death in 1505) battling not witches but Waldensians and radical Huss-
ites in Bohemia and Moravia. His major target were the Moravian
Brethren who denied the real presence of Christ in the Host, against
which he wrote two highly polemical treatises. Although he managed
to slip in some of his anti-witchcraft notions in a list of Bohemian
errors (identifying opposition to witchcraft trials as a Waldensian
heresy), Krämer seems not to have been involved in any further witch
trials. 1 Instead, he now argued that the “Bohemian heresy” was a sign
of the nearness of the Last Judgment. He was not alone in believing
himself to be standing on the edge of the apocalyptical nightmare.
The soon eruption of Luther’s Reformation movement challenging
papal supremacy and Roman Catholic truth escalated this eschatological
anticipation to fevered levels, helping to revive the lagging fears of
diabolical conspiracies.

The Humanist Challenge

Despite Inquisitors’ efforts to distinguish sharply between licit reli-

gion and illicit magic, for most people living around 1500, the two
realms remained closely interwoven. This situation became a cause of
increasing criticism from Renaissance humanists who generally scorned
university scholasticism’s preoccupation with metaphysics and natural
philosophy and promoted the revival of the values of ancient Greece
and Rome, although some of these merely replaced Artistolean meta-
physics with Platonic mysticism. Others, such as Desiderius Erasmus
of Rotterdam, became the sixteenth century’s most fervent critic of
superstition and popular devotionalism. Erasmus not only mastered
the style of Cicero but also was deeply influenced by the spirit of the
Devotio moderna, a late-medieval movement of reform which highlighted
inner devotion to Christ and the sacraments against the crass vener-
ation of religious objects. With his philosophia Christi, or the philosophy
of Christ, Erasmus promoted the personal imitation of Christ and the
eloquence of the ancients and satirized both scholasticism and popular
devotionalism. In his 1526 dialogue “A Journey for Religion’s Sake,”
two friends, Menedemus and Ogygius, discuss the latter’s pilgrimage
to several English saints’ shrines, especially the Virgin-by-the Sea,
wherein was housed a vial of the milk of the Virgin Mary. Menedemus
54 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

expostulates, “O Mother so like her Son! The son left us so much of his
blood on earth; the mother left us so much of her milk. Yet it is hard to
believe that the mother of an only child could have had so much milk,
even if the baby hadn’t had a drop of it.” Ogygius explains that they
“say the same thing about the Lord’s Cross, bits of which are displayed
in many places publicly and privately. If all the bits were brought
together in one place, they’d be a load for a freighter. And yet the Lord
was able to carry the whole cross.” When his mate seems skeptical, Ogygius
offers the Church’s rationale for the existence of multiple copies of
a single relic: “After all the Lord is omnipotent and can multiply these
things at his will,” a response that hardly mollifies Menedemus, who
comments, “That’s a pious explanation, but I fear that many such
things are devised for monetary gain.” In the end Menedemus con-
tends that what is most important is to take responsibility for one’s own
affairs and not to blame saints for misfortune: “Scripture instructs me to
look after these things myself. I have never come across a precept tell-
ing me to commit them to the saints.” 2 Although Erasmus would have
preferred worship be concentrated on Christ, he was not averse to the
proper veneration of the saints. He wrote in The Handbook of the Christian
Soldier,

You venerate the saints, and you take pleasure in touching their relics.
But you disregard their greatest legacy, the example of a blameless
life. No devotion is more pleasing to Mary than the imitation of Mary’s
humility. No devotion is more acceptable and proper to the saints
than striving to imitate their virtues. . . . And although the model of all
piety is readily found in Christ, nevertheless, if you take great delight
in worshipping Christ in his saints, then make sure you imitate Christ
in his saints and in honor of each saint eradicate one vice or strive to
attain a particular virtue. If this is the fruit of your devotion, I shall not
be averse to these external manifestations.3

Erasmus hoped that by providing editions of the original writings of the

founders and early fathers of Christianity purified of the medieval scho-
lastic glosses, all of the accumulated misinterpretations keeping people
from the philosophia Christi would simply fall away and the Church
reform itself. His younger admirers clamored more impatiently for such
reform and eventually turned to a less diffident champion in the monk
and professor Martin Luther.
 The Reformation and the End of the World 55

The Reformation Event: Martin Luther and Indulgences

On October 31, 1517, the Augustinian monk and professor of biblical

studies at the University of Wittenberg (Electoral Saxony), Martin
Luther (1483–1546), circulated a set of ninety-five theses on the subject
of indulgences which he proposed for a scholarly debate. Unexpectedly
this academic announcement set off a storm of controversy. Luther’s
major concern was with the relationship between God and humanity.
He was deeply distressed about the discord between his deep religiosity
and the laxity of official religion, and sought somehow to bring the two
into harmony. He did so by arguing that winning God’s pleasure was no
human work at all, but a gift given freely by God to the truly penitent. In
this scheme, the entire ecclesiastical system of priestly confession and
penance would disintegrate. Church leaders could hardly let his opinions
go unchallenged.
Despite his bluster and remarkable array of verbal weaponry, Luther
was a sensitive man, fearful of the prospect of death and eternal damna-
tion. Throughout his life he remained tormented by personal doubt,
attacks which he dubbed the assaults of Satan and against which he rec-
ommended direct confrontation by boldly asserting one’s Christian faith
despite the lurking incertitude, shouting to the Devil “I am a Christian”
like a kind of exorcism. He also developed a doctrine of certitude which
affirmed that those chosen by God for salvation were given an unshake-
able faith and assurance of their election. As a believer’s faith increased,
Luther asserted, the Devil attacked more viciously, hence escalated
bouts of doubt were themselves proof of growing faith. For Luther, the
Devil was as real as God, and oftentimes more proximate and tangible
than the Creator.
Many of Luther’s beliefs were formulated to dispel his lifelong fear of
God’s displeasure and of death. When as a law student he was caught in
a lightning storm in the summer of 1505, Luther was so terrified of
death he vowed to become a monk. 4 As an Augustinian monk he tried
traditional monastic disciplines – self-denial, lack of sleep or comforts,
wearing itchy hair shirts – to assuage his guilty conscience, but nothing
helped. He despaired that the saintly panoply was not listening, and
began wondering if the Church actually controlled the means of salva-
tion. His thoughts began to coalesce while lecturing at the University,
and when in the summer of 1517 he heard that some of his parishioners
were purchasing indulgences from itinerant preachers just outside the
boundaries of Electoral Saxony (from which they had been forbidden by
56 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Elector Frederick III “the Wise” as a means of protecting his own lucrative
relic business) Luther reacted vehemently.
The indulgences were issued by Pope Leo X (1513–21) at the behest of
Albrecht of Brandenburg who needed funds to repay the loan incurred
to fund his election as Archbishop of Mainz. The Dominican indulgence
hawker Johann Tetzel made the extraordinary claim that for some coins
these documents could remit sin entirely and spring loved ones out of
purgatory. Although Luther’s debate on indulgences was never held,
the professor sent a copy with a respectful letter to Archbishop-elect
Albrecht, informing him of his preachers’ misinformation, and circulated
the Ninety-Five Theses to friends who had them immediately published
and disseminated. Tetzel demanded a heresy trial for Luther, but the
pontiff did not take the threat seriously, brushing off Luther as a
“drunken German” and delaying action because he was trying to woo
Frederick the Wise to stand as emperor-elect against King Charles I of
Spain. The Pope sent Cardinal Cajetan (1469–1534) to convince Luther
to accept papal authority over purgatory, but Luther merely dug in his
heels and repudiated the whole doctrine of the treasury of merit and the
Pope’s power to draw from it.
Luther’s papal opponents at first viewed him with some justification as
another proponent of conciliarism. In 1518 Luther and one of his
Wittenberg colleagues, Andreas Bodenstein, or Karlstadt, faced their
most serious opponent, the Ingolstadt theologian Johann Eck, at the
disputation in Leipzig. Eck forced Luther into expressing sympathy with
Jan Hus and to admitting that he rejected both papal and conciliar
authority in religious matters in favor of the authority of the scriptures.
Thanks to Frederick, Luther continued to elude the Inquisition and by
1520 had embarked on his prolific propaganda campaign promoting
reform. Humanists applauded him as a critic of clerical and scholastic
abuses, while German nationalists depicted him as Hercules bashing in
the skulls of papal foreigners who were sucking the Germans dry. His
key booklets of 1520 and 1521, To the Christian Nobility of the German
Nation, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of a Christian,
called upon lay rulers to inaugurate a variety of reforms of the Church in
the face of papal intransigence and popularized the slogan of the priest-
hood of all believers, that all Christians were ultimately responsible for
their own salvation without mediation of a priesthood. He called for the
dismantling of the sacramental system, leaving only two sacraments,
baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the latter to be celebrated in the vernacular
and to include communion with both the bread and wine for lay people.
 The Reformation and the End of the World 57

While he maintained that Eucharistic bread and wine became the body
and blood of Christ, he rejected any clerical role in this transformation,
relying instead on the verbal commitment of Christ at the Last Supper.
Luther furthermore promoted the reading of the scriptures by all
believers, translating the Bible from its original Hebrew and Greek into
a very powerful German. In every writing and sermon he asserted that
salvation was a gift from God received solely by faith and based entirely
on divine mercy, without performance of any good works. His famous
catchphrases, “priesthood of all believers,” and “freedom of a Christian,”
not to mention his portrayal of the papacy as the Antichrist, made him
tremendously popular. When in 1521 he was tried by the newly crowned
emperor, Charles V at the imperial meeting or Diet at Worms, Germany,
Luther refused to recant any of his writings. Although the emperor had
granted him a letter of safe conduct, Luther sensed that his days were
numbered. His prince, however, intervened, kidnapping the professor
and hiding him at Wartburg castle, thus avoiding a popular uprising.
Here Luther translated the Bible and directed the Reformation.
Luther’s sophisticated theological ideas were grossly simplified by
pamphlet writers and preachers who popularized his catchphrases
(today’s “soundbites”). As a result, the Reformation movement that he
inaugurated quickly spiraled out of his control, a fact which frustrated
him, believing as he did that there could be only one true, divinely
inspired interpretation of the scriptures. Evidently he did not count on
the impatience and militance of much of the German populace, including
his Wittenberg colleagues. For while Luther was in hiding, Karlstadt
and the young professor of Greek Philip Melanchthon were overseeing
the transformation of the religious life of Wittenbergers, following
Luther’s reform program. At the end of 1521 they believed the populace
ready for the conversion of the Mass into the evangelical Lord’s Supper.
On Christmas Day, Karlstadt appeared before the congregation wearing
a plain cleric’s robe. When the moment came for the Eucharist, Karlstadt,
facing the audience instead of the altar, began speaking the words of the
ceremony in German. There was no incense, no elevation of the Host
and, perhaps most radical of all, no denial of the consecrated wine to lay
people. The tension was palpable as the quasi-magical rite of transub-
stantiation reinforcing priestly power was replaced by a simple ceremony
implying the spiritual equality of all believers.
Karlstadt also preached and wrote against the veneration of saints’
images as a form of idolatry. Thus emboldened, crowds of Wittenbergers
began removing and sometimes destroying religious images and statuary.
58 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

For centuries the devout had venerated the images and relics of saints as
direct conduits of divine mercy, but now, suddenly convinced that they
had been duped into placing their trust in inanimate objects, they lashed
out in ferocious anger, destroying the objects of their previous devotion
and implicitly condemning the Catholic clergy who had promoted them.
Reformed leaders insisted on the removal of Catholic religious art from
churches as part of the refashioning of sacred spaces by eradicating any
taint of “priestly magic” and making the word of God the central aspect
of worship. The ultimate goal was to create literate congregations which
conceived of their faith much more in literary, rather than visual, material,
or magical ways.
The violence in Wittenberg was too much for Elector Frederick and
Luther therefore returned to Wittenberg in March, 1522 whereupon he
immediately condemned radical action and advocated a more leisurely
pace of reform which would allow the new ideas to sink into the hearts of
all citizens before further external changes be made. Against Karlstadt,
Luther asserted that since religious artwork was not explicitly condemned
in the scriptures, it was permissible. An enraged Karlstadt denounced
Luther as a sellout to the godless authorities and left the city. Impatience
for radical transformation mounted, inflamed by Karlstadt and other
popular preachers and justified by the almost universal conviction that
the end was near.

Luther, the Devil, and the End of the World

Much of what Luther said resonated loudly among the German people.
The Reformer’s early mental world was shaped within a rural milieu in
which, Heiko A. Oberman, has suggested, Luther gained his “respect”
for “the at once wondrous and scary world of spirits, Devil, and witch-
craft, which the modern mind has come to call superstition.”5 Oberman
suggested further that

Luther’s world of thought is wholly distorted and apologetically

misconstrued if his conception of the Devil is dismissed as a medieval
phenomenon and only his faith in Christ retained as relevant or as the
only decisive factor. Christ and the Devil were equally real to him: one
was the perpetual intercessor for Christianity, the other a menace to
mankind till the end. To argue that Luther never overcame the
medieval belief in the Devil says far too little; he even intensified it and
 The Reformation and the End of the World 59

lent to it additional urgency: Christ and Satan wage a cosmic war for
mastery over Church and world.6

Every believer was intimately and personally involved in this struggle,

for the Christian lived on the battleground of the cosmic struggle
between God and the Devil which intensified as individuals became
more godly. The Devil who constantly harassed Luther was an immensely
dangerous opponent who sought to thwart the word of God by dividing
the Reformation and making believers doubt their salvation and wallow
in uncertainty and fear. To stop these assaults, Lutherans were to
announce loudly to Satan, “I have been baptized, I am a Christian.”7
Luther also advocated demeaning the Devil and his agents through the
use of crass, even scatological language, hurling verbal excrement at the
Devil and his alleged minions, especially Catholics, other disagreeable
Reformers, Anabaptists and, most infamously, Jews. Thus Luther’s original
campaign to eradicate his fear of death was metamorphosed into a battle
against death’s partner, the Devil.
For Luther, then, anyone who opposed his version of the gospel was
a much greater danger to faith than witches. He certainly believed in
diabolical witchcraft, and affirmed that witches should indeed be put to
death for their apostasy. In 1533 he told this story of his mother’s
encounter with a local witch:

Doctor Martinus said a great deal about witchcraft, about asthma and
hobgoblins, how once his mother was pestered so terribly by her
neighbor, a witch, that she had to be exceedingly friendly and kind to
her in order to appease her. The witch had cast a spell over the
children so that they screamed as if they were close to death. And
when a preacher merely admonished this neighbor in general words,
she bewitched him so as to make him die; there was no medicine that
could help him. She had taken the soil on which he had walked,
thrown it into the water, and bewitched him in this way, for without
that soil he could not regain his health.8

Such devilish acts, made so much of by Krämer, Luther thought

secondary to the diabolical bewitchment of the minds of Christians to
follow incorrect interpretations of the Bible.
Not only did Luther struggle daily against Satan, but he lived in the
shadow of the apocalypse, believing that he would witness the final
cataclysmic battle between the Devil and Christ which would sorely test
60 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

the faith of believers but ultimately end with Christ’s triumph and the
judgment of the living and dead. Luther sincerely believed that his
rediscovery of the “gospel” would convert the Jews, reveal the Antichrist
(as the papacy), and usher in the final judgment. In complete confidence
he published in 1523 That Jesus Christ was born a Jew, a letter to the
Empire’s Jews welcoming them with open arms to the new Christian
gospel and recommending the end of Christian intolerance against
them as a means of encouraging them to fulfill their eschatological
mission. He was not alone in such convictions. A confluence of apocalypt-
ical expectations and astrological predictions led many to predict a
universal flood and the Last Judgment to arrive in 1524. 9 Events that
year seemed to many as a fulfillment of these prophecies.

The Popular Reformation and Revolt

The first quarter of the sixteenth century was a difficult time for most
people. The plague continued its regular rounds of town and countryside,
while a new deadly disease, syphilis, began its ravages. Military conflicts,
especially those between the Habsburg Charles V and the Valois King of
France Francis I, caused widespread hardship. In the 1520s and early
1530s a scarcity of food resulted in malnourishment and consumption of
tainted foodstuffs, contributing to a general mood of paranoia and
fear.10 On top of these internal crises, Europeans lived under the threat
of invasion by the Muslim Turks, a prospect predicted by many preachers
as divine punishment for Christendom’s tolerance of sin and heresy.
Through the 1520s Sultan Suleiman’s conquest seemed an eventuality,
leading the prominent Lutheran preacher Johannes Brenz to write in
1531 a treatise on “How Preachers and Laymen Should Act When the
Turks Conquer Germany.”11 Moreover, news about the strange and
frightening peoples of the New World and Far East began to enter the
European consciousness, revealing that the world was much larger and
less predictable than hitherto believed. The intensifying confusion over
religious authority engendered by Luther’s break from Rome proved
that Europeans were living in the great tribulations predicted by the
biblical writers. While Luther and most of his learned colleagues
expected that the new kingdom of Christ would take place in the heavenly
realm, the common folk, who yearned for justice in the here and now,
understandably conceived of Christ’s kingdom in more immediate and
practical terms.
 The Reformation and the End of the World 61

Thanks to his rural upbringing, Luther knew how to appeal to the

populace, and between 1520 and 1525 he unleashed an impressive
quantity of vernacular publications which inspired dozens of other
preachers, pamphlet writers, and woodcut artists to simplify and propa-
gate Luther’s reform message for an uneducated audience. In their
works they depicted simple peasants, for decades the subject of ridicule
as ignorant beasts, now as the bearers of the gospel. In numerous
printed dialogues, Karsthans (“Hans of the Hoe”), a stalwart German
peasant armed only with his simple faith in God and knowledge of the
scriptures, defeated the scholastic arguments of clerical opponents who
sought to suppress reform ideas. 12 These pamphlets fed off the common
yearning for a just, Christian world which partially welded together
rural and urban commoners, despite the considerable differences in
their life experiences. Commoners began more openly to discuss the
unfairness of their burdens and possible solutions. Some began to
organize, leading ultimately to the greatest populist uprising seen to that
day, one that involved some 300,000 commoners. Despite many efforts
to exculpate Luther from blame for the German Peasants’ War of 1525,
there is no doubt that his example of standing bravely against the papal
and imperial authorities inspired the common folk to do likewise. His
assertion that the Bible was the only religious authority for Christians
and his slogans of “the freedom of the Christian” and the “priesthood of
all believers” provided commoners with theoretical justification to
oppose any lord whose actions could be construed as godless. Popular
reform preachers and pamphleteers proved so effective that James
M. Stayer has argued that there “is no absolute distinction between
Reformation pamphlet literature and Peasants’ War programs” and that
the sermons and pamphlets “helped to define commoners’ notions about
divine law.” 13
Peasant protests began innocently enough in the autumn of 1524 on
an estate near Schaffhausen when the peasants of the Count of Lupten
refused his good lady’s command to gather snail-shells–used in the
winding of yarn–in the midst of their harvesting efforts. These labor
strikes soon spread to the regions around Nuremberg and Lake
Constance, while peasants expressed their anticlerical anger by burning
their tithe grain in the fields. They also found some allies among
commoners in the cities, and a few towns, such as Waldshut, which was
engaged in a struggle with the emperor to keep their popular reform
preacher, Balthasar Hubmaier, openly sided with the growing peasant
forces. Throughout the winter of 1524/25, commoner leaders hammered
62 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

out a more comprehensive and radical list of demands which proved

ultimately destructive of the feudal system. This they justified by appeal
to Luther’s slogan of “godly law,” arguing that the burdens of serfdom
were not only unfair but also unscriptural.14 To this moment the peasants
were armed but not seeking violence, a good thing for the princes of the
Swabian League who had been totally caught off guard by the rebellion.
Instead, the rebels continued to deprive their landlords of their labor as
a means of pressuring them to conduct binding negotiations to lighten
peasant labor services and payments in kind, to allow them to cut wood,
hunt, and fish in the lord’s forests and lakes, and to allow a measure of
communal self-administration. Some peasant groups also demanded
better religious instruction and the right to choose their parish priest.
Feeding off the Reformers’ anticlericalism, commoners expressed
a special ire for clerical landlords who more than secular landlords
insisted on maintaining traditional dues. Leading this charge was Thomas
Müntzer, a former associate of Luther who had come to view himself as
a divinely appointed agent ushering in the apocalypse. By 1523 totally
disenchanted with both the Catholic and Lutheran clergy, Müntzer
proclaimed that the common people were the bearers of the new order.
In August, 1524, he was given the opportunity to preach before Duke
John of Saxony and his son. Explicating Daniel 2, Müntzer encouraged
the princes to support his campaign to establish the kingdom of God on
earth by helping to destroy the present alliance of secular and spiritual
powers and eradicating the godless, those preachers who resisted
reform. If they spurned his request, Müntzer warned the princes, God
would take government from them and give it to the common people.15
The duke responded by ordering Müntzer’s expulsion from Saxony. In
turn, the prophet began urging commoners to resist ungodly authorities,
broadening his anticlericalism to include secular princes. Luther joined
the fray with a tract entitled “Letter to the Saxon Princes about the
Rebellious Spirit,” to which Müntzer contributed his “Much Provoked
Defense of the Spiritless, Soft-living Flesh at Wittenberg” in which he
accused Luther of using his theology as a prop for the existing godless
order and announced that “the people will become free, and God alone
will be their master.” This freedom implied no moral license, for
Müntzer expected the peasants to become committed to an intense level
of personal devotion to Christ which required bearing the cross of suffering.
During spring, 1525, the prophet inspired the rebels of Mühlhausen,
Thuringia, to “attack, attack, while the fire is hot! Don’t let your sword
grow cold or dull. Strike, cling, clang, on Nimrod’s anvil and cast his tower
 The Reformation and the End of the World 63

to the ground.” For, he insisted, “it is not possible so long as they live for
you to be free of the fear of men. It is impossible so long as they rule you
to speak to you of God. Attack, attack, while it is still day! God goes
before you, follow, follow!”16 God, the preacher insisted, would protect
his followers from the weapons of the knights. He was wrong.
In March, 1525 the peasants of Memmingen held a Peasant Parlia-
ment to approve a program of twelve articles, a document which while
composed by urbanites was printed and widely used by other peasant
bands. Whether motivated by only limited demands or by a vision of an
egalitarian society ruled solely by the law of God, the rebels were in for
a rude awakening. The leader of the Swabian league, Duke Georg
Truchsess von Waldburg, was now ready to crush the rebellion. Justifi-
cation for ruthless action was provided on April 16, 1525 when Jäcklin
Rohrbach and other members of the Odenwald peasant band massacred
a group of two dozen noblemen at Weinsberg. The “Weinsberg massacre”
was widely depicted as a diabolical inversion of the divine social order,
leading the parson Johann Herolt to comment: “Then Lucifer and all
his angels were let loose; for they raged and stormed no differently than
if they were mad and possessed by every devil.”17 The thought that the
topsy-turvy world of Carnival might become permanent and common-
ers become the rulers was a terrifying one to the middle and upper strata
of society.
Angered that his earlier plea for compromise had been ignored, at the
beginning of May Luther issued his infamous Against the Robbing and
Murdering Hordes of Peasants, commending the princes to kill the rebels
as if they were rabid dogs. The knights needed no such encouragement.
At the mere sight of Truchsess’ armored knights and foot soldiers, many
peasant bands fled without battle, while others were dispersed by insincere
promises. In several unevenly matched engagements against battle-
hardened soldiers and artillery thousands of peasants, perhaps as many
as 100,000, were slain. Müntzer’s Thuringian peasant army too was
annihilated by the Lutheran Philipp of Hesse and the Catholic Georg of
Saxony, while the prophet, found hiding in an attic, was executed. Some
peasant bands experienced limited success, such as Michael Gruber’s
Salzburg army which on June 3 defeated a professional army, and the
Tyrolian rebels of Michael Gaismaier which held out into 1526.
Gaismaier, who unlike Müntzer tempered his idealism with effective
military leadership, also sought the creation of a new Christian, demo-
cratic peasant republic but his vision was left unfulfilled as his band
dispersed. Gaismaier himself was assassinated in 1532.
64 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Although an unmitigated disaster for the rebels, the Peasants’ War

forced the princes to ease some of the burdens on their peasants. It also
remained a vivid image of the danger of allowing commoners to toy with
religious dissent. From that moment on, Catholic churchmen and
princes linked Luther with uprising and reform with rebellion, while the
peasants themselves now viewed Luther as a traitor. Many gave up hope
for change. Those still hoping for religious reform turned to more radical
versions, in particular Anabaptism.

Anabaptism

Anabaptism arose out of the same currents of popular reform that had
inspired the Peasants’ War, and a number of Anabaptist leaders were
veterans of the rebellion, including one of Müntzer’s disciples, Hans
Hut. For his part, Karlstadt, who in 1522 had exchanged his pro-
fessor’s robes for the garb of a simple peasant (after the revolt he
returned to his academic calling), continued to write scathing criti-
cisms of Luther’s compromising approach, while he condemned the
real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and infant baptism as empty
ceremonies blocking lay people from genuine contact with the divine.
He did not, however, go so far as to advocate adult believers’ baptism.
Others did, becoming known by their opponents as Anabaptists or
“rebaptizers,” even though these reformers rejected their first baptism
at infancy as an invalid, quasi-magical ceremony with no authentic
spiritual effects.
Although the movement would have several distinct origins and
branches that differed from each other on many important points, the
first known Anabaptist baptisms took place in January 1525 in Zurich,
Switzerland, a city where reform was being implemented by the human-
istic preacher Ulrich Zwingli. A small group of his supporters, led by
Conrad Grebel, became dissatisfied with the slow pace of change and
especially with Zwingli’s refusal to transform baptism in the same fash-
ion as the Eucharist (like Karlstadt Zwingli rejected the concept of the
real presence of Christ in favor of a spiritual interpretation). Zwingli had
the ear of the city council which decided that infant baptism should
remain. Grebel’s group therefore decided to gather at the home of one
of their number, Felix Mantz, in order to inaugurate the first believer’s
baptism. Zwingli accused Grebel of promoting schism, even though, as
Stayer reminds us, “the symbolic interpretation of the Lord’s Supper
 The Reformation and the End of the World 65

advanced by Zwingli was as equally radical a departure from Catholic

sacramental theology as was adult believers’ baptism.”18
Forced underground by persecution, the Swiss Brethren (as these
Anabaptists called themselves) continued to spread their message of
radical reform by word of mouth. In 1529 at the imperial Diet at Speyer,
the assembled Catholic and Protestant princes agreed to the emperor’s
mandate making rebaptism a capital crime. In the course of the next
several decades, hundreds of Anabaptists were captured, tried, tortured
into providing the names of their cohorts, and horribly executed, usually
by burning, beheading or, in a gruesome parody of believer’s baptism,
drowning. The worst regions of persecution were the Catholic territories,
especially the Habsburg Netherlands, which the emperor ruled directly
as immediate overlord, and the duchies of the Tyrol and Bavaria,
although Zwinglian Zurich and Bern and Lutheran Saxony also used
the executioner to enforce correct religious beliefs.19
It may be difficult to comprehend how people could put their lives
and those of their families at risk for the sake of a theological notion or
practice. Yet what motivated both persecutors and persecuted was their
sincere belief that this short, earthbound existence was merely a prelude
to the eternal kingdom of God. Anabaptism was also viewed as a new
form of popular revolt seriously threatening the civic unity of the
Empire. The emperor believed that learned reformers and Lutheran
princes might be amenable to theological compromise if moderate
church reform proceeded, a hope not extinguished until the Regens-
burg Colloquy of 1541 failed to draft a compromise on the sticky points
of priestly powers, transubstantiation, and papal authority. Charles V
refused entirely to hold discussions with more radical reformers, such as
Zwingli, whose attempts to unite the Swiss Cantons under Protestant
leadership led to two bloody wars, during the second of which Zwingli
was slain.
Prior to the defeat of the peasants in the summer of 1525, Anabaptism
was fast becoming a major force in the communal reform of towns, such
as Swiss Hallau, where one source put it “virtually the whole population”
underwent adult baptism. 20 In Waldshut, one of the few towns openly to
support the rebels, Hubmaier and sixty others were baptized on Easter
day, 1525, by Wilhelm Reublin, one of Hallau’s Anabaptist preachers.
In a short time Hubmaier baptized most of the citizenry and city
council of Waldshut, while other Swiss towns, such as Schaffhausen,
were moving quickly in similar directions, pressured by the peasant
rebels without and their own guilds and journeymen within their walls.
66 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Realizing the fate of its reforms rested squarely on the success of the
peasant rebels, Anabaptist Waldshut sent an armed contingent to the
Lake Constance army. The defeat of the peasants in mid summer, how-
ever, also meant the end of such communal Anabaptism, at least in the
Swiss Cantons and southern Germany.21 Hubmaier fled to Nicholsburg,
Moravia, where he oversaw the baptism of that city’s lord, Leonhard von
Liechtenstein, and of most of its populace, and welcomed the hundreds
of Anabaptists fleeing the increasing persecution of the Swiss and
German lands.
Not all of these were happy with Hubmaier’s communal reformation.
Hans Hut, having survived the slaughter of Müntzer’s godly band, was
baptized in May 1526 and considerably revised his apocalyptical expect-
ations, asserting that members of the elect covenant, marked on the
forehead by Hut’s peculiar sign of baptism – the invisible mark of Tau
(the Greek letter that resembles a cross) – were nonviolently to await
Christ’s return before joining in the destruction of the godless. In the
meantime, they would be protected from angelic destruction by their
baptism. Upon their arrival in Nicholsburg Hut and his associates
immediately condemned all earthly government as godless, including
Hubmaier’s, and refused to take up the sword even in a godly cause.
Arrested by the Catholic authorities in September, 1527, Hut was horribly
tortured and died in a mysterious fire in his prison cell. Not to be
cheated of their auto-da-fé, the authorities bound his lifeless corpse to the
stake and burned him anyway.
Not all Anabaptists gave up militancy as readily as Hut. A plot to
capture Erfurt by force fomented by Hans Römer, another of Müntzer’s
disciples, was discovered by the authorities in 1527. According to one
witness, Römer’s followers preached that “Whoever will not let himself
be baptized again will be consumed by locusts. Müntzer and Pfeiffer
[another of Müntzer’s associates] were true teachers and were unjustly
slain. And all those who had received the sign of baptism again should
wait in the hills, for it would rain locusts, and then the world would not
last longer than eleven months.” Römer himself was not captured until
1534, and in his confession he confirmed the reports of his earlier plans.
One of his associates captured in 1528 likewise confessed that “it was
their intention, when the disturbance broke out in Erfurt, to strike dead
whoever was not [re]baptized or would not accept the sign of baptism.
Whoever had more than another should share it with him; whoever
refused to do so, should also be struck dead (but they expected that the
Lutherans would all join them).”22 The authorities would find confirmation
 The Reformation and the End of the World 67

of Anabaptist sedition, enforced rebaptism, and community of goods, in

the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster.

Northern Anabaptism and the End of the World

The vicious Habsburg efforts to crush Anabaptism succeeded in destroy-

ing most of the educated leadership of the Swiss and south-German
Anabaptist groups, yet many Anabaptists fled to more tolerant regions
such as Moravia, or cities such as Strasbourg wherein was found a large
Anabaptist community which included several visionary prophets, espe-
cially Ursula and Lienhard Jost and Barbara Rebstock. These strongly
influenced Melchior Hoffman (1495/1500–43?), a furrier originally
from the south-German city of Schwabisch-Hall who, as a lay Lutheran
missionary, had won many to reform in northern Germany and Scandi-
navia, although his increasing obsession with the Last Days and view of
himself as the eschatological prophet announcing the return of Christ
raised some alarm bells. In his commentary on Daniel 12, Hoffman
predicted Christ’s return would occur in 1533, an opinion shared by
other Lutheran preachers, such as Michael Stifel who was even more
precise, setting the date as the morning of October 19. 23 In 1529, with
only a few years left before the end, Hoffman visited Strasbourg, where
he was deeply moved by the Josts’ visions. Once baptized, he pressured
the city council to provide a church for the Anabaptists, but since rebap-
tism was illegal, Hoffman soon found himself with a warrant for his arrest.
In 1530 he escaped to Emden, East Frisia, where he preached to
a large number of Netherlandic religious dissenters who had found safe
haven from the Habsburg persecution in their homeland. Hoffman
personally baptized a few hundred of these during his brief stay in the
city and many of them returned to the Netherlands as missionaries,
baptizing and establishing Anabaptist communities in several Dutch
cities, especially Amsterdam. In 1531, however, several of Hoffman’s
disciples (covenanters) were executed in The Hague, leading Hoffman to
suspend baptisms for two years, after which he expected Christ’s return.
Persuaded by a supporter’s vision that Christ would soon descend to
Strasbourg, Hoffman re-entered the city in 1533, hopeful that the messiah
himself would release him from jail. It seems that Hoffman remained
unrepentant in prison until his death or release in 1543.
In December 1533, the Dutch baker Jan Matthijs ordered an end to
Hoffman’s suspension of baptism and announced that Christ would
68 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

return on Easter, 1534. He then dispatched representatives to the West-

phalian city of Münster which seemed amenable to Anabaptist reforms.
With the help of hundreds of immigrant coreligionists, the Anabaptists
of Münster soon won the civic election and took over city government.
The prince-bishop of Münster saw this as a usurpation of his authority
and began preparations for a siege. In north Germany and the Nether-
lands Anabaptism became a mass movement of religious enthusiasm and
social unrest, fuelled by eschatological expectations, disgust with the
repressive Habsburg persecution, and an intense anticlericalism. In
their excitement to be witnesses of Christ’s triumphant return, in March,
1534, thousands of Anabaptists sold their possessions and attempted,
most unsuccessfully, to reach Münster, the new kingdom of God. Driven
by an overwhelming need to purify the city before Christ’s arrival,
Münster’s Anabaptist government declared that all residents had to be
baptized or leave, while a community of goods was established to support
all of the immigrants.
Things did not go according to plan, however, and on Easter, 1534,
Matthijs confidently marched out of the city to face the besiegers, only to
be cut to pieces. His successor was an actor, Jan van Leiden, who eventu-
ally transformed an Anabaptist magistracy into a Davidic kingdom with
himself in the leading role. Justified by the great preponderance of
women in the city, the king also mandated polygamy. At the height of
the intense siege, news sheets reported horrific acts of cannibalism in the
city. They also broadcasted reports of Anabaptist militancy elsewhere,
such as the capture in 1535 of a Frisian monastery, Oldeklooster, by 300
Anabaptists under Münsterite leadership. Although retaken by the
governor’s army a week later, this incident confirmed the authorities’
suspicion that Anabaptism would revive the Peasants’ War. In May forty
Anabaptists captured Amsterdam’s city hall, in the process killing
a mayor and some of the civic guard, but this uprising too was quickly
suppressed. In the end, all attempts to spread Anabaptism by force of
arms were put down, as was Münster itself, which fell to the besieging
forces at the end of June 1535.
Despite the catastrophic failure of the Anabaptist kingdom, a few
Anabaptists remained stubbornly militant, such as the small, roving
bands of religious guerillas known as the Batenburgers, followers of the
nobleman Jan van Batenburg who enacted vengeance against the
authorities by pillage and arson, specializing in the theft of church
silverware. After Batenburg’s arrest in late 1537, it became known that
some of Batenburg’s group and other militant Anabaptists were plotting
 The Reformation and the End of the World 69

to hire mercenaries to recapture Münster in 1538. Batenburg was

executed in early 1538, yet similar groups of religious militants continued
to rob and burn in the name of Christ into the 1560s.

Spiritualism and David Joris

Opposing Batenburg within the post-Münster Anabaptist community

was a Delft glasspainter called David Joris who, after the fall of Münster,
saw himself as Hoffman’s successor for the mantle of nonviolent apoca-
lyptical prophet. Although some from both the militant and pacificist
wings joined him, most Anabaptist leaders became frustrated with his
obtuse spiritualizing interpretation of controversial issues. Despite this,
for a few years Joris was the most influential Anabaptist leader in the
Low Countries.24 As apocalyptical expectations remained unfulfilled,
Joris became a thorough spiritualist, following the path trodden earlier
by Sebastian Franck (1499–1542) who, after a period as a Catholic priest
and then Lutheran activist, denounced all confessions and doctrinal
squabbling as inimical to true, internal Christian faith. Such spiritualists
emphasized the dichotomy between spirit and flesh and relied heavily
on an immediate experience with the “inner Word” or voice of the Holy
Spirit for religious authority. Thus, the inner significance of religious
rites and teachings was far superior to their external forms which caused
unnecessary conflict, persecution, and warfare. Some, such as Joris,
advocated Nicodemism, attending approved religious ceremonies to
conceal one’s true beliefs.
Joris’ most distinctive idea was his denial of the independent existence
of the Devil. For him the Devil originated after the fall of Adam and Eve
as the evil nature of humans. 25 This notion provoked considerable alarm
among his learned theological opponents, who condemned him as the
most diabolical of all Anabaptists and as a promoter of atheism. His
unorthodoxy, however, was not limited to demonology, as he became
a vigorous promoter of religious toleration, an idea which won him
followers from across the social and confessional spectra. His letters and
publications were disseminated throughout the Low Countries, Germany,
Switzerland, and France, and in an age of increasing religious conflict
and bloodshed, such spiritualism influenced many, undercutting the
rational for religious warfare. For this reason Joris was regarded by the
authorities as a greater threat than Batenburg. Joris escaped the flames
only through the devotion of his followers, over a hundred of whom
70 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

died protecting his whereabouts. For the last dozen years of his life
he resided in Basel, Switzerland, as John of Bruges, his true identity
a secret until nearly three years after his death in 1556 when a posthu-
mous trial found him guilty of heresy and condemned his corpse to the
stake. His death ended neither his influence nor the antagonism of his
opponents.

Post-Münster Anabaptism

Joris’ approach had been vigorously opposed by Menno Simons (1496–

1561), a former Catholic priest of Friesland who, after Joris’ move to
Antwerp in 1539, began forming the remaining peaceful Anabaptists
into a coherent sect known as the Mennonites. Like Joris, Menno lived
a peripatetic existence, hounded by the authorities, protected by fol-
lowers or noble friends, aware that many of his supporters were dying
rather than reveal his whereabouts. Throughout his career he distanced
his group from the excesses of Münster. His pacifistic fellowships
emphasized personal piety and mutual support, membership in which
was voluntary and sealed by believers’ baptism. Against spiritualists Menno
insisted on a visible church, distinct from the world and the apostasy of
the mainstream churches, kept pure by banning or shunning any whose
sin might corrupt the community. Mennonites not only insisted on non-
violence for the Christian, but also refused to swear an oath of allegiance
to the state or participate in civic government. Guided by Menno’s vision
and writings, northern Anabaptism survived the worst era of religious
persecution, emerging after the 1560s as a significant religious minority in
the northern Netherlands promoting notions of religious choice and
tolerance.
Spurred by both Catholic and Protestant theologians, the princes and
magistrates of south Germany and the Swiss Cantons likewise perse-
cuted their Anabaptist dissenters, nearly extinguishing the movement
altogether. Those Anabaptists who survived met infrequently and at
night in woods and caves, fearful of discovery and arrest. Many fled to
more tolerant Moravia joining with the Hutterites who, inspired by the
apostolic example of Acts 2:44–45, formed themselves into self-supporting
communitarian settlements which at their height in the seventeenth
century encompassed thousands of members. Despite their promotion
of nonviolence and religious tolerance, suspicion that all Anabaptists
were plotting sedition was slow to die.
 The Reformation and the End of the World 71

Women and the Popular Reformation

As if the theological innovations and social rebellion inspired by reli-

gious dissent were not problematical enough for mainstream church-
men and princes, the early Reformation also opened up another Pandora’s
box. Many women, long excluded from religious leadership outside of
the confines of a cloister, saw in Luther’s “priesthood of all believers”
permission to take up the functions of preaching and teaching the
gospel previously forbidden them. In his Babylonian Captivity of the
Church of 1520, Luther had opined, “therefore everyone who knows that
he is a Christian should be fully assured that all of us alike are priests,
and that we all have the same authority in regard to the word and the
sacraments,”26 rationale enough for some women to start preaching and
writing pamphlets on behalf of the Reformation. In 1521 Müntzer’s
preaching in Zwickau inspired several women to begin preaching. And
while women were not prominent leaders during the Peasants’ War,
there were a few spectacular exceptions, such as Margaret Rennerin,
“the Black Hoffmännin,” who was something of a Joan of Arc for the
perfidious Rohrbach band. According to an official of the city of Heil-
bronn, Rennerin had “continually and often consoled the band that they
[the rebels] should march boldly, [for] she had blessed them so that
neither pikestaffs, halberds, nor firearms could harm them.”27 Even
though she confessed to participating in the Weinsberg massacre, she
was not executed with her male colleagues. In another incident, approxi-
mately sixty women plotted on May 5, 1525 to storm a convent in Wind-
sheim, although they were persuaded by the town’s magistrates to cancel
the assault.28 Women elsewhere made similar collective protests, such as
the group that on September 29, 1522 released the Lutheran Augustinian
preacher Hendrik van Zutphen from his imprisonment in St. Michael’s
Abbey in Antwerp.29 Here too only three or four of the participants were
interrogated, and these were released without punishment. As Natalie
Zemon Davis has shown for early modern France, women rebels were
typically let off with lesser sentences than their male compatriots because
the authorities believed that such female public action was such a reversal
of their traditional social/political roles they must have been led astray by
men and were not responsible for their actions.30 However, these same
authorities made exceptions in the cases of Anabaptist women and
alleged witches.
As reform-minded authorities closed convents, hundreds of nuns
were brought out of the forced seclusion within their walls and into
72 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

society, and not all of them were content to take a back seat to their male
cohorts; even Katharina von Bora, the former nun who married Luther,
assisted in the management of the Wittenberg Reformation as so much
of it was directed from their home. Other nuns, notably the St. Clara
convent of Nuremberg led by their learned prioress Charitas Pirckheimer,
vigorously resisted the closure of their convents and the ending of their
religious vocation.31 Some Catholic women wrote against the Reformation,
such as the famous Antwerp poet Anna Bijns whose poems condemned
Luther and other sectarians for deceiving gullible lay people into thinking
they could actually interpret the scriptures for themselves. In one refrain
she lamented,

Scriptures are read in the taverns,

In the one hand the gospel, in the other the stein,
They are all drunken fools; nevertheless by these
Are learned preachers ridiculed.32

Bijns’ efforts were not rewarded, as the Catholic authorities became

concerned about activist women, even orthodox ones, and the Council
of Trent ordered the enforced claustration of religious women. Many,
such as the Ursulines, resisted this order, only strengthening the resolve
of male clerics to enforce it.33 Similarly, after the Peasants’ Revolt, Luther
and his male colleagues clarified that the office of Protestant preacher
was exclusively male. A number of women preachers of Zwickau were
exiled in 1529 for their activity, while the council of Memmingen actually
passed a law that year forbidding servant women from discussing reli-
gion when drawing water from the wells. In 1543 King Henry VIII of
England forbade women from reading the Bible, and while his example
was not followed elsewhere, most authorities sought to forbid women
from discussing scripture.34
The rise of Anabaptism, however, gave women another venue to express
their leadership aspirations, and they did so in a variety of ways, some as
preachers (although here too the male leaders quickly restricted the
office of elder or minister to men), others more prominently as prophets,
teachers, leaders of house churches and meetings, missionaries, and
martyrs. In hundreds of cases, Anabaptist women proved their devotion
to their beliefs through separation from families, frightening court inter-
rogations, horrific bouts of torture, and execution. From their prison cells
they composed moving letters to family and fellow believers that were
later published separately or collectively in Anabaptist martyrologies.
 The Reformation and the End of the World 73

When permitted by the authorities, they would even preach short hom-
ilies to audiences attending their execution. According to one Mennonite
song about her, Elisabeth Dirksdochter, executed in Leeuwarden in 1549,
was asked by the city magistrates about rumors that she was a Mennonite
preacher:

It is said that you deceive many people

And that you are also a minister,
So we want you to tell us
Who have you taught in the past.

She did not deny the charge, but asked them to interrogate her solely
about her faith, which she would be happy to explain to them. When she
quoted the Bible extensively, her captors expostulated, “the Devil speaks
through your mouth.” That women could have a knowledge of the Bible
confounding the clergy was clear evidence of the Devil’s work. In the
face of torture, for which she was stripped against her protests, “she kept
on invoking God ardently who eased her pain, and she said calmly: ‘Go
ahead, keep on interrogating me.’” Her experience was not dissimilar to
that of accused witches. Elisabeth’s intransigence, her seeming impervious-
ness to pain, and her command of the scriptures, were regarded as con-
trary to proper womanly conduct, even under these extreme conditions.35
Women were also prominent in several of the most infamous cases of
Anabaptist radicalism, such as the Strasbourg prophets Ursula Jost and
Barbara Rebstock, or the four women who participated with seven male
colleagues in the scandalous naaktlooper (naked runners) incident in
Amsterdam which occurred on February 11, 1535 when the visionary
Heynrick Heynricxz commanded his group to burn their clothes and
run naked through the streets of the city, crying “woe, woe over the
world and the godless” and proclaiming the “naked truth.” Puzzled by
their behavior, the chief judge, Gerrit van Assendelft, president of the
Court of Holland, wondered if they might be possessed:

It is a strange thing to see these naked people, springing like wild folk.
It leads one to think that they are in part possessed by the Devil,
although they speak pertinently, with good understanding, and say
strange, unheard of things which would take too long to write.36

He rejected this diagnosis because the accused seemed to have maintained

their faculty of reason. Instead of exorcisms they were treated with flames.
74 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Most infamously, the population of Anabaptist Münster was over-

whelmingly female, and the women played critical roles in establishing
Anabaptism and defending the kingdom. Inspired by the story of the
biblical Judith who raised a Babylonian siege by insinuating herself into
the tent of the Babylonian general Holofernes to behead him, the
Münsterite woman Hille Feicken on June 16, 1534 snuck out of the
besieged city to assassinate Bishop Franz von Waldeck. She was caught
and executed before she could fulfill her mission and news of her intentions
shocked not only the bishop, but also Jan van Leiden, who became so
distressed about such independent female action that shortly thereafter
he commanded that every woman be under a male head, resulting in the
kingdom’s infamous polygamy. 37
It was not simply the polygamy of Münster that convinced the author-
ities that Anabaptism would overturn the institution of marriage, for many
Anabaptist leaders permitted a believer to leave an unbelieving spouse
and to remarry a believer. This policy was widely feared to give women
freedom to break the marriage vow with impunity. Yet, despite their
reputation as destructive of gender norms, Anabaptist and Mennonite
leaders sought, like their mainstream opponents, to limit the leadership
aspirations of their women, eventually restricting official leadership
roles to men. Their efforts were not entirely successful, as female vision-
aries, martyrs, and house leaders continued to inspire the faithful and
frighten the authorities who feared the effects of loosening the strictures
of proper female behavior. 38 The parallel between Waldensian women
preachers and Anabaptist women activists became a commonplace of
Catholic rhetoric.

The Image of Münster and of the “Anabaptist Conspiracy”

The breaking of gender norms, disseminating of wildly heretical notions,

and fomenting of sedition became stock charges brought against all
Anabaptists, regardless of their real beliefs. Reports from Batenburg’s
1537 interrogation that Anabaptists were plotting a new assault on
Münster in 1538 so alarmed the authorities that almost everywhere
they cracked down on even the peaceable dissenters in their midst. Some
of this fear was perhaps reasonable, given the role of radical religious
rhetoric in inspiring rebellion, although much of it was clearly irrational
as even some preachers and magistrates recognized that most Anabaptists
were now utterly opposed to violence. Even tolerant Strasbourg, enduring
 The Reformation and the End of the World 75

at that moment another visitation of the plague, uncharacteristically

struck out at the Anabaptists in their region.39 The excessive anti-
Anabaptist propaganda promoted by Bishop Von Waldeck continued to
haunt civic leaders, keeping alive the fear that tolerating popular heresy
would lead to another Münster where societal norms had been turned on
their head, a tailormade king, foreigners replaced the stalwart citizenry,
private property abolished in favor of community of goods, and the
sacrament of marriage obliterated in favor of polygamy. All of these were
certainly signs of the Devil’s work, as Luther wrote in a forward to a news
pamphlet account of Münster from 1535, “the devil himself lived there,”
recreating the polygamous blasphemy of the Islam world.40 As Sigrun
Haude comments about responses to Münster,

Anabaptists, together with the Turks, were the great enemies of the
sixteenth-century Holy Roman Empire, and “Münster” displayed the
worst example of this heretical movement yet. As representations of
them in the daily press and in learned writings reveal, the Anabaptists
conjured up images of the criminal and the vagabond, the foreigner
and the rebel, the devil’s handmaiden and the blasphemer, the
insurrectionist and the barbarian. A polyphony of fears, some more
powerful than others, converged in the Anabaptist.41

Anabaptists were also despised by orthodox churchmen for their

denial of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements and
their denunciation of the entire sacramental system as priestly magic.
Like Karlstadt and Zwingi, Anabaptists transformed the Eucharist into
an entirely memorial ceremony using ordinary bread and wine. Their
rationale revealed a lay person’s commonsense theology, for they could
not understand how Christ could be physically present both in heaven
and in the bread. For example, during his interrogation before the
Amsterdam magistrates on May 12, 1534, the Anabaptist leader Adraien
“the one eyed” Pieterszoon confessed that he had told people entering
the city’s famous shrine, the “Holy Place” which housed an incombustible
consecrated Host, that the bread and cheese in his hands were as good as
the shrine’s Host. He told others to bring “fifty gods” (Hosts) for him to
stab and if they bled, he would believe in the sacrament. For him, the
Host was merely baked bread and priests could not make gods, for God
is in heaven. Those supposed miracles performed by the Host, Adriaen
asserted, were merely diabolical imitations.42 In another, later case from
1557, a Mennonite known as “John the Monk” ( Jan de monick) was
76 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

accused of smearing holy oil on his shoes to show his disdain for this
sacramental. 43
Such examples could be multiplied ad infinitum across Europe.
Although many Anabaptists experienced ecstatic and visionary incidents,
most sought to create a bible-centered faith purified of the taint of magic
or superstition. Like Zwinglians and Calvinists (those who followed the
French Reformer of Geneva, John Calvin) they desired to cleanse their
society of the sinful, superstitious practices that were meriting the wrath
of God, such as the idolatrous veneration of saints’ images or relics.
Anabaptists instead defined the church as the congregation of living
believers and rejected completely the concept of sacred places or objects,
offering the most radical rejection of the clerical, sacramental church
possible in the sixteenth century. They moreover extended their anti-
clericalism to encompass the new Protestant preachers as well as the
Catholic priesthood.
Most radical was their rejection of infant baptism and practice of adult
baptism for which the emperor condemned them to death. Both Catholic
and Protestant leaders regarded infant baptism as the initiation ceremony
bringing children into the Christian community and, for Catholics and
Lutherans, as an important weapon to deliver children from the
clutches of Satan, hence the rite of exorcism remained important for
both of these churches, although Calvinists did away with it as a remnant
of papal magic. Many learned polemicists – Catholic, Reformed, and
Lutheran – argued that Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism placed
children in danger of damnation and led ultimately to social chaos, the
two principal goals of the Devil. 44 We shall return to these themes in the
next chapters after a quick survey of the developments in the Reformation
elsewhere in Europe.

The Reformation in England

Calls for religious reform and social change reached almost all the
corners of Europe, including England, although the Reformation here
followed a rather different path from the continent. For one thing, while
there was considerable popular anticlericalism and appeal for reform,
the actual transformation of the church in England was conducted by
and for the monarch, King Henry VIII, whose obsession with gaining
a male heir led him to seek a divorce from his Habsburg wife, Catherine
of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. With the emperor interceding on
 The Reformation and the End of the World 77

Catherine’s behalf, the Pope refused the request and Henry cut off papal
control over the English Church. In 1534 the English Parliament pro-
claimed Henry the head of the Church in England and made it a capital
offence to dispute the king’s divorce. Henry’s chief minister Thomas
Cromwell (c.1485–1540) hoped to avoid the religious conflict of the
continent by plotting a middle way, a via media, between Lutheran and
Swiss Reformed variants, although the king, who remained theologically
a Catholic, wished for few doctrinal changes and condemned Luther’s
attacks on the sacramental system. In 1539, responding to the increasing
number of Protestants who rejected the real presence in the Eucharist,
the king issued the Six Articles which more or less outlawed Protestant
ideas entirely. Cromwell became Henry’s next scapegoat for his realm’s
troubles, and was executed without trial in the summer of 1540. For the
next two decades there ensued the religious conflict that Henry and
Cromwell had sought to avoid, although in the end the Church of
England did become that via media, a fusion of Catholic and Protestant
positions in which most Christians, apart from extreme Calvinists and
Catholics, could find a home.
On the ground there was both support for and opposition to the
reform initiatives of the crown. Many Lutheran preachers, pamphlet-
eers, and dramatists promoted the Reformation to apparently wide
audiences and there seemed an insatiable thirst for printed reform
works and vernacular Bibles. Unlike the Pope and emperor who had
vainly sought to suppress the publication of vernacular bibles, Henry
VIII and Cromwell harnessed the laity’s appetite for the scriptures by
producing an official English translation. At the same time, the only
popular uprising spurred by the Reformation was a reactionary one, as
peasants rose up in 1536 to protest the enforced closure of monasteries
in a popular movement known as the “Pilgrimage of Grace.” In contrast
to the peasants of Germany, the English peasants appreciated their
monastic landlords who, in contrast to their continental equals, were
milder landlords than secular lords. The lack of a major reform-
inspired uprising in England speaks volumes of the success of the
crown’s efforts to control reform sentiment through parliament. At the
same time, the crown had no intention of allowing the spread of radical
reform ideas, and Anabaptists who had fled continental persecution in
the summer of 1535 found themselves in the grips of Henry VIII’s
much more efficient judicial machinery, leading to the arrest of some
twenty-five Anabaptists and the execution of about half of their
number. 45 Such measures, however, did little to suppress heterodoxy,
78 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

and many English were attracted to an increasing number of radical

religious groups, such as the spiritualistic Family of Love founded by
the Dutch contemporary of David Joris, Hendrick Niclaes. These
“Familists”, like their later spiritual cousins the Quakers, provoked
condemnatory response far out of keeping with their actual numbers or
influence.

The Catholic Response

In the face of these challenges to its religious supremacy the papacy did
not sit idle. Means were sought to bring dissident princes back into line
and to clear up for ordinary believers the prevailing doctrinal confusion.
Reform was nothing new to Catholic leaders, who had long been
overseeing a wide range of improvements to doctrine and ritual. Many
Catholic reformers attempted to use the pressure of the Protestants as
a means of compelling the papacy to undertake further reform.
Although too late to stop Luther and the rise of the various Reformation
movements, in the 1540s the papacy unleashed two major forces that
would proceed with the long-desired ecclesiastical changes: the Jesuits
and the Council of Trent.
The frustration of orthodox Catholics over the success of the Protestant
challenge impelled many men and women to revive Catholic spirituality.
The most influential of these was undoubtedly the Spanish soldier,
Ignatius Loyola (c.1491–1556), who while recuperating from injuries in
1521 saw visions which led to a deep religious conversion. After a period
of intense prayer and asceticism, during which he began composing his
famous Spiritual Exercises, he embarked first on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem
and then pursued studies at several universities in Spain. Suspicion that
his mystical experiences were comparable to those of the heretical
Alumbrados (an “inner-light” group comparable to the spiritualists) –
a target of the Spanish Inquisition – led to investigations of heresy,
although these proved unfounded. He then pursued his studies at the
University of Paris (1528–35) where he attracted a number of followers
with his emphasis on a life of spiritual contemplation combined with
rigid self-discipline and vigorous action on behalf of the Church. In
1540 he and his followers were officially approved by Pope Paul III as
the Society of Jesus, with an itinerant mission of preaching and teaching
of lay people, opposing Protestantism in Europe and exporting Catholi-
cism to the newly “discovered” lands of Japan, China, India, Brazil, and
 The Reformation and the End of the World 79

the New World. They established schools, wrote simple catechisms,

preached unpretentious sermons, and performed entertaining dramas
to get their message across. They also wrote vigorous polemical works
against the Protestants, emphasizing the real presence of Christ in the
Lord’s Supper and papal primacy, among other things. More than any
other Counter-Reformation activity, the Jesuit instruction of lay people
forced the retreat of Protestantism from southern Germany and helped,
with the Spanish and Papal Inquisitions, to drive it out of Spain and Italy.
The Jesuits focused their assault on Protestantism along the very line
that divided Calvinists and Anabaptists especially from Catholics: the
relationship between the supernatural and natural worlds. For most
Protestant leaders, especially Calvinists, God communicated primarily
through the written scriptures, although they admitted that natural
events were reflections of divine providence. They therefore often
interpreted heavenly signs, monstrous births, and natural disasters as
messages from God. Generally, however, they did not invest matter with
direct supernatural power (as in the Catholic sacramentals) nor did they
regard places of worship or particular human beings as essentially sacred
by nature. Although God might send a sign in the heavens or an angel to
communicate with his children, most Protestant preachers taught that
the age of direct miracles had passed and condemned the supernatural
workings of Catholic saints, sacraments, and sacramentals as remnants
of pagan magic (what their parishioners actually believed is another
matter). Against such skepticism the Jesuits became major promoters of
Catholic miracles. Their public exorcisms of demoniacs became the most
famous expression of this battle between a biblicist religion stripped of
most day-to-day supernaturalism and one that provided believers with
tangible proof of the divine in their daily lives.
Despite the advances of the Jesuits, reform-minded Catholics waited
impatiently for the pope to convene a reform council. Fear of a revival of
conciliarism motivated pope after pope to postpone the promised meeting
until 1545 in Trent. By this time all attempts to heal the doctrinal split
between Catholics and Protestants had failed and most delegates of the
Council, which would meet in three major sessions between 1545 and
1563, were content to define controversial doctrines solely to secure
Catholicism in Italy, Spain, France, and southern Germany. The result
was a strengthening of the authority of the pope and a narrowing of
Catholic orthodoxy. Against Luther, the Council: proclaimed church
tradition as a parallel authority to scriptures; asserted the importance of
traditional acts of penance along with faith in achieving salvation; and
80 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

defended the special status of ordained priests. It also embarked on

a program of improving the educational and moral standards of the
clergy with the goal of encouraging better preaching and instruction of
lay people.

The Mediterranean Inquisitions and the Suppression of Dissent

Working hand in glove with the new religious orders and the Council of
Trent, Inquisitors in Spain and Italy also helped to suppress religious
dissent. As we have noted, the Spanish Inquisition had been established
specifically to attack supposed Judaisers among the conversos, fueling
fears that the New Christians were a Jewish fifth column plotting the
overthrow of Spanish Christendom. Between 1485 and 1500, the Spanish
Inquisition focused almost exclusively on converso heresy. Thereafter,
its attention turned to other crimes, especially ex-Muslim moriscos and,
after 1540, to heretics, such as the Alumbrados whose emphasis on the
inner reception of the sacraments was seen as a parallel to secret Judaisers.
Protestants of all stripes were lumped together by Inquisitors under the
name of “Lutherans.” By this time the Spanish tribunals had become
morals courts and a significant didactic tool in the post-Trent reform
movement, while by 1600 their concern had turned to suppressing blas-
phemy, bigamy, sodomy, sorcery, and witchcraft, although its execution
rates were now extremely low; of the 44,674 cases tried by Spanish
Inquisitors between 1540 and 1700, only 846 led to executions, a mortality
rate of 1.8 percent. 46 It seems that the horrific bloodshed of its first few
decades had extinguished the flames of the autos-da-fé. It may also be the
case that by 1540 the tribunals had so cowered resistance to political and
doctrinal orthodoxy that penance alone was sufficient.
In Italy, in 1542 Pope Paul III established the Roman and Venetian
Inquisitions as a means of weeding out “Lutheran” heresy from the minds
of the faithful and propagating Catholic orthodoxy among the populace
at large. In this context “Lutheranism” was a broad term encompassing
any form of non-Catholic reform or expression of rigorous anticlericalism,
whether or not it was faithful to Luther’s actual teachings. These tri-
bunals were modeled along Spanish lines, and they had to follow exacting
rules of procedures, such as allowing the defendant rights to a lawyer
and to an appeal to a higher court and strictly controlling the use of
torture. Since the goal was conversion, those heretics who indicated
a desire to be reconciled with the holy mother Church were granted
 The Reformation and the End of the World 81

light sentences. Thus, in Italy there was not the vicious and relentless
persecution of religious dissenters that characterized the Habsburg
Netherlands, for example, where the authorities were much less con-
cerned about persuading heretics to repent than about eradicating all
challenges to approved orthodoxy. Even so, by trying thousands of sus-
pected heretics and keeping the diabolical dangers of heresy constantly
before the eyes of Italians, these Inquisitions proved remarkably effective
in suppressing heterodoxy.

The “Mature Luther” and the Devil

In the face of the increasingly successful Catholic counterattack on the

Protestant movements, in the late 1530s and 1540s Luther increasingly
depicted Catholicism in repulsive terms. In his 1545 pamphlet, Against
the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil, Luther commissioned the promin-
ent artist Lucas Cranach to illustrate his accusation that the papacy
originated from the union of a she-devil with the Antichrist and to
encourage his supporters to show their disdain for papal authority by
scatological means. By this time the military conflict between Protestant
princes and the Catholic emperor was heating up and Luther feared
that an ecumenical council would explicitly condemn his reform. Luther
typically cast the theological battle in intensely apocalyptical terms as the
Devil’s final assault on Christians. He believed that the Devil was
marshalling all of his forces together for the final Armageddon, with the
pope as the Antichrist, the Turks playing the part of punishing Gog, and
the Jews, who steadfastly refused to convert to Luther’s gospel, now
depicted as a dangerous fifth-column ally of the Turks. His Protestant
and Anabaptist opponents he cast as the apocalyptical false prophets and
apostles. His verbal attacks became unswervingly vicious; in 1543, hearing
reports that Jews were successfully proselytizing in Moravia and Bohemia
(there was a new sect of Sabbatarian Christians who worshiped on the
Jewish sabbath, Saturday, rather than Sunday), he composed his most
infamous work, On the Jews and their Lies. In this diatribe he embold-
ened the authorities to destroy Jewish homes, synagogues, and schools
and to steal their money, force them to work in the fields as serfs, or
expel them from the Empire.47 Many of Luther’s supporters were
deeply embarrassed by these virulent tracts and feared their con-
tribution to the increasing religious intolerance, hatred, and fear of the
apocalypse.
82 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Religious Warfare

Frustrated by papal inaction, Emperor Charles V took the lead in restor-

ing Protestant dissidents to Catholicism and, failing that, in eradicating
them as a political threat. Because of the political decentralization of the
Empire, he was unable to install a Spanish-style Inquisition in the
Empire, although on February 28, 1545 he instituted one for the Low
Countries where he had greater success in compelling local authorities
to arrest religious dissidents. Already several hundred Anabaptists and
other heretics had been executed, many burned at the stake. Although
not nearly as centralized or effective as the Spanish Inquisition, the
establishment of Inquisition tribunals in the Low Countries escalated the
persecution there and contributed to the mounting pressure for political
resistance that would culminate in the Eighty-Years War against Spanish
hegemony. 48
Unfortunately for him, Charles could not order Inquisitors into the
German lands without the agreement of the German princes, many of
whom had become Lutherans. In 1529 a number of them, along with
magistrates of reforming cities such as Strasbourg, protested the anti-
heresy decrees of Diet of Speyer – although many of them approved its
anti-Anabaptist mandate – and were thereafter known as Protestants.
Two years later they formalized a protective alliance, the Schmalkaldic
League. Led by Elector John of Saxony and Landgrave Philipp of Hesse,
the Protestant rulers pledged to defend the Reformation, although until
1542 they were hardly a military success. The League’s very existence,
however, limited the emperor’s range of action in suppressing heresy in
the Empire. By 1544, thanks to a temporary truce with Francis I and the
waning of the threat of Turkish invasion, Charles V was able to turn his
attention to the Protestants. Open warfare broke out in June 1546, and
although neither side showed military brilliance, the Protestants were
too cautious and divided to defeat the emperor’s scattered forces, and by
November 1548 the League retreated. Charles’ terms stripped both
Philipp of Hesse and Elector John Frederick of Saxony of their estates.
When the Protestant princes defeated him in 1552, the emperor agreed
officially to tolerate Lutheranism in the Empire, formalizing this in
a treaty signed in Augsburg on September 25, 1555 which stipulated for
the first time that an alternative form of Christianity to Catholicism was
to be tolerated. This agreement, however, was by no means a declaration
of individual religious choice for, based on the principle of cuius regio eius
religio or “whoever the king, his religion,” it decreed that the religion of
 The Reformation and the End of the World 83

a prince would be the religion of his territory, and that even with his
death his principality was not to switch faiths. Moreover, the tolerance
was limited to Lutherans, as neither Calvinists nor Mennonites were
included. Although ostensibly signaling the end of religious conflict, the
Peace of Augsburg actually became a source of further conflict, as princes
broke its provisions by seeking to convert neighboring properties to
their own faith and as Calvinist princes sought entry into it. The vicious
religious conflict ended only with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia
in 1648.
Henry VIII had managed to steer England relatively calmly through
limited reform waters, containing the demands of English Calvinists and
suppressing more radical reformers, such as the Anabaptists. His Tudor
children, Edward VI (1547–53), who began a more fully Protestant
reform of the Church, Mary (1553–8), who sought to restore Catholicism
to England and who married the Catholic Philip II of Spain as an ally,
and Elizabeth (1558–1603), who returned the realm to a moderate
Protestantism which would incorporate some elements of Catholic ritual,
were faced with a great deal more dissent than their father. Although the
hardline Calvinists remained unhappy with the Anglican compromise,
Elizabeth and her Stuart successor, James I, were able to contain much
of that dissent by promises of future reforms. This religious disaffection
finally joined with the prevalent social and political discontent and gave
a special fervor to the military conflict which broke out in 1642 that
would ultimately dethrone the king in favor of parliamentary government
in the hands of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell.
Across the channel the French religious wars between a zealous
Catholicism and an equally fervent and militant Calvinism (Huguenots)
kept that country in a state of virtual civil war from roughly 1562 to the
signing of the Edict of Nantes in 1598 which granted some measure of
tolerance to the Huguenots. A sizeable minority of the populace, especially
in the coastal provinces and cities of the south and west, the so-called
“Huguenot Crescent” (the earlier heartland of Catharism), had joined
Calvin’s reform movement. The resulting French wars of religion were
immensely bloody as the strident Catholic forces, led by the aristocratic
Montmorency and Guise families, fervently opposed any concessions
to Calvinism. From 1559, however, the minority Calvinists, who were
predominant among the wealthy merchant class, managed to win the
support of about one-third of France’s nobility, forming an impressive
coalition of money and military power. Seeking to avenge the wild
iconoclasm of the rank and file Calvinists, in 1560 the troops of Duke
84 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Francis of Guise fell upon a congregation of Calvinists worshiping in

Wassey, beginning the decades of vicious conflict. Zealots on both sides
refused compromise and rejected the notion that there could be two
versions of Christianity within a single realm, both believing the other to
be inciting God to wrath. The most infamous act of the war occurred
during a period of supposed truce, broken on St. Bartholomew’s Day,
August 24, 1572, with the slaughter of hundreds of prominent Huguenots
gathered in Paris to celebrate the marriage of their champion, Henry
of Bourbon, king of Navarre. Weeks of brutal massacres of thousands of
Protestants by Catholics in Paris and across France followed, and many
Protestants reconverted in the face of this fury. Others held out and
withstood bitter sieges, formed armies, sought help from Protestants
elsewhere in Europe and survived, although ultimately the Huguenot
hope of capturing the crown was dashed. Upon mounting the throne
as Henry IV, Henry of Navarre converted to Catholicism in order to
restore peace to his realm.
Similar religious warfare erupted in the 1560s in the Low Countries
led again by Calvinists. By this time Calvinism had not only penetrated
into the Low Countries via the French-speaking or Walloon south, but
had become the dominant approach to reform in the cities of Flanders
and Brabant as well. Where Lutheranism and Anabaptism failed to
reform the region, Calvinism succeeded, but only after a bloody struggle
against the Spanish overlords. One of the reasons for its success was the
Calvinist reliance on the local community and magistracy for support.
As overlord of the Low Countries Philip II (Charles had abdicated in
favor of his son in 1555) ordered the Netherlands’ governor, Margaret
of Parma, to proceed apace with both the Inquisition against heretics
and the administrative reforms to reduce the power of local princes
and magistrates. Understandably the local aristocracy, led by William of
Orange, opposed these changes. Like the religious reformers, they too
hated the local Inquisition as a cynical tool of Habsburg centralization
and demanded a relaxation of the heresy placards. In October 1565
Philip refused and a number of the local nobility began negotiating with
the Calvinist leaders; soon over 350 nobles had signed the “Compromise”
committing them to fight against the placards and Inquisition. To many
Calvinist preachers it appeared that the Reformation was assured, and
in August 1566 Protestant crowds broke into many of the region’s major
churches and smashed or removed religious paintings, statuary, stained
glass, and other sacred objects. This so-called iconoclastic fury was actually
the leading edge of a well-orchestrated campaign of religious purification
 The Reformation and the End of the World 85

and reform. However, even though Margaret granted concessions to the

dissidents, Philip was furious over the desecration of Catholicism and
growing strength of heresy. In response he sent an army of occupation
under Duke of Alba which arrived in August 1567. The duke established
an authoritarian and brutal administration, strengthening the placards
and establishing the infamous Council of Troubles which heard over
10,000 heresy cases and executed 1,100 heretics during its existence. In
time William of Orange managed to surmount the considerable oppos-
ition to rebellion on the part of moderate Catholic princes and magistrates
to weld together an army of defense that would eventually battle the
Spanish to a standstill along the waterways dividing Zeeland and Holland
in the north from Brabant and Flanders in the south. After being
restored to William of Orange and Calvinism in 1577, Antwerp fell to
besieging forces in 1589, and thousands of its wealthy Calvinist merchants
fled north to the newly formed Dutch Republic. The southern provinces
were restored to a vigorous, post-Tridentine Catholicism, expelling all
traces of heresy and supporting lay Catholics in the north from which,
for a time, all priests had been expelled.
The northern rulers immediately ended formal prosecution for heresy
and the handing out of death sentences for religious dissent, among the
first regions in Europe formally to do so. Interestingly, the rulers of the
Dutch Republic did not grant Calvinism the status of a state church, only
that of the officially approved church. Those wishing to join the
Reformed Church had to undergo a period of examination as to doctri-
nal orthodoxy and moral fitness before being allowed to partake of
communion, a procedure remarkably similar to that of the Mennonite
fellowships. Thus, in the Republic membership in the approved church
was voluntary and in many regions the Reformed were significantly
outnumbered by Catholics and even Mennonites. An informal system of
toleration became the order of the day, although there were considerable
social and economic advantages to associating with the Reformed, and
disadvantages accorded Catholics in particular. However, in this country
still struggling to maintain its independence (a struggle that would not
end until the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1648), there developed
a remarkable religious diversity, as four distinct confessions – Reformed,
Catholic, Mennonite, and Lutheran (by far the smallest of the four) – vied
for followers.
In this environment, religious competition replaced enforced conform-
ity and people had the opportunity to choose their own faith. Many refused
formally to join any church. What these believed is not altogether clear,
86 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

although the strength of spiritualism here influenced many to depre-

ciate confessional adherence altogether. In the Republic Catholics,
Reformed, and Mennonites learned to do business with each other, and
while polemicists on all sides tried to reinvigorate religious partisanship,
they had little success. Instead, the region became home to religious and
intellectual flux and a center for the debate over religious tolerance.
At the same time, the tolerant atmosphere fostered dissent within con-
fessions, and the Mennonites especially became infamous for their
multiplicity of divisions and sects, ranging from strict followers of Menno
to the Doopsgezinde, the “Baptist-minded” who were less inclined to develop
precise doctrinal statements. Catholic polemicists saw such develop-
ments as the natural outcome of the Devil’s plans. Those who lived in the
Republic obviously thought differently.

Conclusion

In surveying pertinent aspects of the history of the Reformation this

chapter has highlighted the widespread preoccupation among members
of all confessions and social levels with the nearness of apocalyptical
judgment and the need on the part of authorities to persecute dissenters
as agents of the Devil’s final, apocalyptical assault on Christendom. We
have also seen how the authorities regarded the various radical reform
groups as diabolical threats to the survival of the social/political order of
the day. The Peasants’ War, the rise of Anabaptism, the rise of religious
conflict and the infamous Münster Anabaptist kingdom, all increased
fears of secret diabolical conspiracies that might at any moment break
out into open revolt. This anxiety lingered long after the last Anabaptist
plot to recapture Münster died with the execution of Batenburg in early
1538. Swiss Brethren and Dutch/North German Mennonites struggled
long and hard to prove to the authorities and their neighbors that they
were the most peaceable of people and had no plans to overturn the
social order. Suspicion, however, remained, nourished by Catholic and
Protestant polemicists through the 1540s to 1560s. In the next two chap-
ters we shall examine more carefully the shift in attention during these
decades from religious heretics to witches.
 3
HERESY, DOUBT, AND
DEMONIZING THE “OTHER”

Thus in our day we, too, must labor with the Word of God
against the fanatical opinions of the Anabaptists and the
Sacramentarians . . . For we have recalled many whom they had
bewitched, and we have set them free from their bewitchment,
from which they could never have been untangled by their own
powers if they had not been admonished by us and recalled
through the Word of God. . . . So great is the efficacy of this
satanic illusion in those who have been deluded this way that
they would boast and swear that they have the most certain truth.
Martin Luther, LW, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, 194–5.

I regard not your swearing, for it is a craft of sorcerers who

swear against the truth. But now I see clearly how the souls of
our two brothers and sister were murdered and deceived
through your magical swearing, that they did not protect them-
selves against the Devil’s cunning, that they did not have the
gifts to dispute. . . . understand, you noble gentlemen, the misuse
and maltreatment of your state or office, which we confess not
to be from God but the Devil. For the antichrist has bewitched
and blinded your eyes through the cunning of the Devil that
you do not perceive yourselves to be what you are.
Hans van Overdamme, Mennonite leader, to his
interrogators during his trial in Ghent, 1550, responding to
their demands that he swear to tell the truth and lamenting
the recantation of three of his colleagues. In S. Cramer ed.,
Het Offer des Heeren, vol. 2, Bibliotheca Reformatoria
Neerlandica (The Hague, 1904), 110–14.

87
88 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Whether or not intended by Luther and other Reformers, their

movement of religious reform unleashed passions and prejudices which
deepened animosities and increased suspicion of “the Other.” In the
examples cited above, we have first Luther himself comparing Anabaptists
to witches and then a Mennonite characterizing his Catholic captors in
similar fashion. Both of these comparisons were made prior to the
revival of large-scale witch-hunting in Europe. What role did such
polemical, demonizing rhetoric play in heightening anxiety about
diabolical conspiracies? For a society deeply riven by religious factional-
ism, calling all citizens to confront the great demonic threat offered a
potentially unifying discourse. According to Brian Levack, the Reforma-
tions made several contributions to the rise of witch-hunting:

the demonization of European culture that preceded and accom-

panied the Reformation, the reliance upon Biblical injunctions against
witchcraft (especially Exodus 22:18), the determination of religious
reformers to eliminate magic in its various forms, the subjection of the
rural masses to a rigorous moral discipline as part of a program of
Christianization, and the determination of public authorities to estab-
lish a godly state by taking legal action against moral deviants and
blasphemers all contributed significantly to the intensification of witch
prosecutions in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.1

This chapter will examine these factors, concentrating on the perceived

need to neutralize the increasing levels of doubt and skepticism which
church leaders blamed on their religious opponents, especially Anabaptists
and spiritualists.
As we have seen in Chapter 1, Catholic officials prior to the Reformation
had become alarmed about the increasing number of cases involving
blasphemous denial of the reality of sacramental transformations, applying
both rational persuasion and judicial coercion to the problem. They
found too that doubt could be dispelled through the empirical proof
of miracles or the confessions of Jews, heretics, demoniacs, or witches.
Although the sixteenth century is remembered primarily as an age of
faith, it was as much an era of heightened doubt, as individuals and
groups sought by various means to deal with the conflict between their
own subjective religious beliefs and competing official religious cultures.2
Luther’s insistence that the scriptures were the sole religious authority –
superior to pope, tradition, and council – was eagerly taken up by lay
people, leading to a multiplicity of interpretations and disagreements, and
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 89

ultimately to a crisis over authentic religious authority that made the

religious confusion of the fifteenth-century Papal Schism pale in com-
parison. This new battle against doubt and disbelief reached fevered levels
by mid-century. In a parallel to the earlier Inquisitors’ fixation on imaginary
“Luciferans” after their successful suppression of Catharism, sixteenth-
century authorities become preoccupied with fictional Devil-worshipers
after they had virtually suppressed Anabaptism.

The Quest for a Godly Realm

All religious reformers hoped to refashion society into a godly common-

wealth. Lutherans looked to their godly princes to legislate ecclesiastical
and moral reform, while urban Reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli and
John Calvin conceived of the church as virtually coterminous with the
civic commune and aimed from the start to involve urban magistrates in
the oversight of Christian morality. Calvin, himself an exile from France,
developed a theology and church model that were readily transplanted
to a variety of locales, from the urban communes of south and western
France or the Dutch Republic to the kingdom of Scotland and the
American colonies. Sinning Catholics faced the social control force of the
confessional and penance system, the threat of excommunication and, in
extreme cases, the Inquisitions. Lacking secular power, Mennonites limited
themselves to replicating the godly society within their voluntaristic
fellowships, and sinners were banned and ostracized by their coreligionists
until repentant.
Some scholars have suggested that the witch-hunts were a conscious
attempt on the part of religious and secular authorities to enforce the
widely desired religious conformity upon the populace. There is some
truth to this theory, at least to the extent that the Reformations comprised
a grand campaign to improve levels of doctrinal literacy and behavioral
conformity among lay people and to suppress deviance of any kind. By
sermon, woodcut image, and a flood of printed propaganda, learned
Reformers sought to eliminate “superstitious” or pagan elements of lay
culture. Pastors were ordered to preach more often, to hold catechism
classes and to interrogate their charges about their beliefs and practices.
Bishops or their representatives began regular visitations of parishes,
interviewing local clergy about the beliefs and practices of their parish-
ioners. The results proved shocking, revealing widespread ignorance,
erroneous beliefs, and superstitious practices especially in rural parishes.3
90 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Even Mennonites caught the “confessional conformity bug,” producing

their own lengthy and detailed doctrinal statements which not only
distinguished them from the “Devil’s church” but led to endless internal
wrangling and formation of splinter groups. For all confessions, the
religious conflict sensitized leaders to the threat posed by deviance.
How this campaign of religious conformity related to the sudden revival
of interest in witch-hunting around 1560 remains, however, unclear.
Pressure for the persecution of witches arose first and foremost out of
the local community fuelled by the suspicions and conflicts among
neighbors, requiring little direct encouragement from the higher author-
ities. Witch-hunting could hardly have been a cynical maneuver on the
part of the authorities to scare the populace into religious and political
subservience; on the contrary, many central courts and authorities put
the brakes on local witch panics.4 Even so, by the middle of the sixteenth
century the reluctance of local authorities to take seriously Heinrich
Krämer’s demonic witch conspiracy was breaking down. They therefore
became more receptive to the complaints of villagers and townspeople
about suspicious neighbors and incorporated these into the preachers’
stereotype of demonic heresy. What changed in the minds of church and
secular officials? The major event behind this attitudinal shift was the
Reformation and the threat to religious, social, and political authority
and stability that it posed for both elites and commoners.
While Reformers had succeeded in mobilizing masses of laypeople to
condemn the old Catholic hierarchical system, they had no ready-made
alternative to put in its stead, nor were they equal to the task of persuading
most ordinary believers to make wholesale changes to their beliefs and
practices. After the veritable free for all of the “peoples’ Reformation” of
the 1520s, the authorities sought to contain popular religious sentiment,
aided by their preachers and propagandists who railed fervently against
heterodoxy, especially the violent kind of the Münsterites or the perni-
cious notions of spiritualists who seemed to be infiltrating the churches,
governments, and homes of the orthodox. With every sign of indiffer-
ence toward the supposed threat, preachers sermonized even more
fervently about the Devil’s minions, ultimately convincing many of the
existence of a secretive, underground sect of heretics working in league
with the Devil to overthrow Christianity on the eve of the apocalypse.
If there were real religious heretics in their communities, villagers may
have come to see them as no threat at all and disregarded the propaganda
against them as governmental meddling. Or they may have transferred
the demonizing rhetoric from religious heretics onto those neighbors
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 91

whom they believed performed maleficia against them. Harmful magic

was universally feared in early modern society, and when Protestant and
Catholic Reformers denounced using village wise women or cunning
men to remove magical curses, villagers had little legal recourse to
counteract their bewitchment but to take suspected witches to court, an
action which the higher authorities made easier by the passage of anti-
witchcraft statutes, such as that contained in Charles V’s Carolina of 1532.
The constant fulminating of their preachers about the coming divine
retribution for those who tolerated Satan’s minions was taken as implicit
permission to denounce suspected witches to their local magistrates
and lords.

Spiritualism and Religious Tolerance

One of the most popular targets for condemnation by orthodox pro-

pagandists were the spiritualists, those religiously devout individuals
who depreciated the importance of written scriptures, confessional state-
ments, and disputes over dogma in favor of a religion of the heart. With
some justification Catholic theologians blamed Erasmus for inciting
such seditious notions and placed his works on the list of books officially
forbidden to Catholics.5 Spiritualism’s ethic seems to have best suited
the cultural world of the upper classes of town and country, especially
merchants, professionals, and the aristocracy. One of the most prominent
spiritualists, Caspar von Schwenckfeld, was himself a landed nobleman,
while David Joris’ supporters included several prominent nobles, espe-
cially the wealthy Van Berchem family of Antwerp who moved with him
to Basel and financed his religious mission. While in Basel, Joris (as John
of Bruges) entered a circle of acquaintances that included the noted French
doctor Jean Bauhin (1511–82) and the humanistic anti-dogmatist Sebastian
Castellio (1515–63), as well as many other learned aficionados of non-
dogmatic spiritualism and religious toleration. When Castellio composed
his treatise decrying the 1553 heresy execution in Geneva of the brilliant
Spanish physician Michael Servetus (discoverer of the pulmonary passage
of the blood), his anthology included excerpts from ancient Church
fathers, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin (who had approved of Servetus’ execution)
and, under a pseudonym, Joris.6 Hendrik Niclaes’ Family of Love
embraced a number of prominent families, including the famous Antwerp
printer Christoffel Plantijn, while a few of his English adepts served in
Queen Elizabeth’s court. 7 Although the number of known supporters of
92 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

such spiritualists was really very small, the orthodox saw their notions as
extremely destructive of confessional rigor. Calvin conducted a running
battle against such “libertines” whom he believed had infiltrated the Calvinist
Church, sapping its resolve to stand openly against Catholic idolatry.
The Netherlands became a prominent home for such spiritualistic
notions and the writings of Sebastian Franck, Castellio, Joris, and Niclaes
were published and republished there throughout the century. Readers
readily disregarded Joris’ and Niclaes’ narcissistic claims as divine prophets
and appreciated their views promoting personal inspiration from the
Holy Spirit and an entirely inner religious experience. Spiritualistic
individuals could be found in all confessions, especially in the Doopsgezinde
branch of the Mennonites, and there were a number of Calvinist ministers,
such as Herman Herbertsz of Dordrecht and Herbert Duifhuis of Utrecht,
who used spiritualism to smooth what they regarded as the harsher
edges of Calvinist theology.8 For Herbertsz these included the uncharit-
able belief that the pope was the antichrist when in fact everyone’s inner
evil desires were an antichrist.
Undoubtedly the most famous Dutch advocate of spiritualism was the
writer and playwright Dirck Volkerts Coornhert (1522–90), who in 1572
became secretary of state to William of Orange and who helped influ-
ence the prince in the direction of a policy of religious toleration for the
young republic. Coornhert was personally acquainted with Niclaes and
knew the writings of Joris. Although he rejected the egotistical claims of
both prophets, Coornhert followed their critique of theological dogmatism,
intolerance, and sectarianism and emphasized that the Devil’s true work
was to cause people to mistake lies for the truth and fight against each
other over doctrinal issues. 9 Another pronounced Dutch spiritualist
was Matthias Weyer (Wier), the brother of Johann Weyer, whose acquaint-
ance we shall make in the following chapter.
In the Dutch Republic, where stately powers of compulsion were not
used to enforce confessional conformity, spiritualistic ideas fused with
a merchant’s pragmatism to inform the religious attitudes and policies of
princes, magistrates, and townsfolk. Here converso and Jewish refugees
from Spain via Portugal and antitrinitarian Socinians from Poland
joined Calvinists, Mennonites, Catholics, Lutherans, spiritualists, and
the uncommitted to help create the most religiously diverse realm in
Europe. Amsterdam became a nexus for this intellectual cross-fertilization
and a home for leading proponents of religious tolerance, rational
skepticism, and empiricism, including Réné Descartes and Benedict
Spinoza. In Holland’s cities, intellectual nonconformists, including many
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 93

of Anabaptist heritage, met regularly to rethink religious and philo-

sophical issues. In the seventeenth century this “Collegiant” movement
paved the way for the rise of rationalism and skepticism in the Dutch
enlightenment.10

The Devil and the Antichrist in the Sixteenth Century

For the fervently orthodox, such open spiritualism and skepticism could
be nothing else but the nefarious work of the Devil. Having failed in
his original quest to destroy Catholicism by means of the Reformation
(for Catholic polemicists) or to discredit the Reformation by means of
Anabaptism (for Protestants), Satan had turned to inspiring atheism,
defined as the belief that confessional orthodoxy was just not important.
By deluding people into disbelieving his own existence, Satan made
them easier targets for his evil machinations. In France Catholic demon-
ologists worked hard to convince the moderate majority that Protestantism
was a demonic heresy and that “skepticism and unbelief in demons and
witches” were equivalent to “an attack on the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul” or that “unbelief in demons was the equal of unbelief in
God.”11 While believing that Satan’s malicious arsenal still included
demonic magic, demonic possession, open heresy or sedition, emphasis
was increasingly placed on his insidious manipulation of the inner
person by means of false beliefs, doubt, or general disregard for godliness
or scriptural truths. As Erik Midelfort notes for the seventeenth century,
“belief in the powers of the devil was often used as a criterion of sound
religion, since doubt on this point might reveal skepticism, unwillingness
to accept the authority of scripture, or ‘atheism.’” 12 Once Satan had
achieved this inner conquest of the human mind, polemicists feared that
the defeat of Christendom through heresy and magic would inevitably
follow. Convincing a sometimes skeptical populace of the reality of the
Satanic threat became a major preoccupation of many Catholic and
Protestant churchmen.
Like Luther, Calvin stressed the supreme danger of Lucifer’s spiritual
and mental assaults on people, with little mention of witchcraft. Apart
from the Catholic papacy which he identified as the Antichrist, Calvin’s
greatest ire was reserved for the libertines who sought to soften disciplinary
codes or moderate the harshness of double predestination (i.e., that God
has chosen both those who will be damned and those who will be saved),
efforts Calvin feared merely played into papist hands. 13 For example,
94 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

before moving to Basel, Castellio had been a teacher in the Genevan

Academy until he expressed some doubts about whether the Song of
Songs belonged in the canon of scripture, and for this Calvin had his
“libertine” colleague fired. In the midst of the battle against the Antichrist
there could be no toleration of such doubt, even on relatively minor
issues.
The diabolical threat was heightened by the nearly universal belief
that Europeans were living on the eve of the return of Christ and the
Last Judgment. An example of Catholic propaganda identifying Luther-
anism with the Antichrist appeared in an anonymous pamphlet of 1524
which was dedicated to the ruler of Guelders and Groningen, Duke Karl
van Egmond (1492–1538), a prominent prosecutor of both Anabaptists
and witches in the Northern Netherlands, although his son, Karl van
Guelders, the stadholder of Groningen, hindered his campaign against
the former. The author of this tract shared Luther’s conviction that the
end of the world was near, setting February 1524 as the date. The Anti-
christ was alive now, heralded by the birth of his forerunner, Martin
Luther, to a Christian mother and Jewish father (others had it that
Luther was born to a Jewish mother and demon father). Luther’s heresy
was clearing the path for the Antichrist’s final assault on Christendom
which would be enacted by witches who had made a pact with the Devil
and who were already terrifying Eastern Netherlanders by their black
magic. 14 In this same year Van Egmont began his great offensive against
witchcraft. When after 1530 Melchiorite Anabaptism entered the scene,
the duke interpreted them in similar terms, issuing on February 13, 1535
a mandate describing them as a “devilish sect” led by “false diabolical
preachers and prophets” who sought to deceive simple people against
the holy Christian Church. He hated both heretics and witches, seeing
them both as parts of the same diabolical conspiracy auguring the arrival
of the Antichrist, and meriting the most severe penalty.
By the 1550s the apocalyptical expectations had been left unfulfilled
for all, yet they did not disappear, but returned almost every generation
to motivate a new group of believers. After Münster most Anabaptists,
who had suffered intensely for their apocalyptical preoccupations, toned
down or spiritualized their endtime visions. However, the same cannot
be said for Lutherans, as right up to his death in 1546 Luther continued
his apocalyptical denunciation of opponents. As Robin Barnes notes, “the
decades after Luther’s death . . . saw the emergence of an increasingly
explicit, eclectic, and strident apocalypticism among many Protestants,
especially in Germany.” Lutheran factional strife, the increasing
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 95

influence of Calvinism within Germany, and the successful reconquest

of southern Germany for Catholicism at the hands of Jesuits, all contrib-
uted to a pervasive pessimism among German Protestants who now
feared that true religion was in decline, doubt and skepticism on the rise,
and the Devil more active than ever before. Signs in society as well as in
the sky were interpreted to plot the new date for Christ’s return, and
1588 and then c.1600 proved popular choices. The last decades of the
sixteenth century, as we shall see in the next chapter, also witnessed a
remarkable effort to find magical means to unlock the secrets of creation
and of the future, incorporating astrology, alchemy, numerology, and
the Cabala within a Christian apocalyptical framework. That the second
half of the sixteenth century coincided with the rise of demonic posses-
sion and witch-hunting in Germany is extremely suggestive; Barnes for
one has raised the “largely unexplored” possible connections between
this apocalyptical moment and the rise of witch-hunting, while Andrew
Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell have asserted that the witch-hunt
“was very much a product of the general apocalyptic mood” of the
Reformation era.15 On this point Stuart Clark too has commented that
the “eschatological view that witchcraft flourished because the world was
in a state of terminal decline was as common among French Catholic
authors . . . as among the writers of Lutheran Germany and Calvinist
England – in this case reflecting the popularity of apocalyptic history in
both Reformations.” 16
At moments of crisis the Calvinists could equal Lutherans in denouncing
the papacy as the Antichrist. This technique was most prominent in
France during the wars of religion (1562 to 1595) when the embattled
Huguenots depicted themselves as the children of God fighting to survive
the final tribulation of the Antichrist. Even so, there were alternative
currents within most confessions that interpreted the apocalypse in very
positive, millenarian terms as the creation of a utopian society on earth,
while English Puritan writers viewed themselves as the agents of God
in the final establishment of England as a “godly republic.” Although
eschatological predictions were still being made by Catholic writers,
Catholic authorities had become wary of the popular penchant for
prophecy that had convulsed Italy as well in the 1520s and 1530s, leading
to its suppression thereafter.17 Areas of strong Catholic clerical and
inquisitorial presence therefore witnessed a decline in popular apoca-
lypticism; by mid-century they were also relatively mild persecutors of
both heresy and witchcraft. Even so, many Jesuits depicted themselves
as the prophets of the Last Days ushering in the transformation of the
96 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

world, although few went so far as the French spiritualist Guillaume

Postel (1510–81), who was expelled from the order for his unorthodox
belief that a universal language could create a rapprochement between
Christianity and Islam and unite the world. Thereafter his views became
more extreme as he portrayed himself as the firstborn son of the new
restitution, and in 1555 he was judged insane by the Roman Inquisition.
Even so, he had already managed to win many admirers among Catholics,
Protestants, and spiritualists (including Joris and Niclaes), not the least
for his brilliance of mind and breadth of vision.

The Reformation and Anti-Semitism

One of the expected signs heralding the return of Christ was the conversion
of the Jews, but they steadfastly refused to play their role of dispelling
doubt for early modern Christians. They faced increasing levels of intoler-
ance, still plagued by charges of usury, blasphemy, and ritual murder.
However, accusations of Jewish Host desecration seem to have stopped
during the Reformation, as Catholic defenders of the sacrament focused
exclusively on Protestant deniers of the real presence of Christ, especially
Calvinists and Anabaptists. 18 Pressure to convert Jews mounted with the
Reformations’ intense eschatological fervor, although some Protestants,
such as the Strasbourg Reformer and Hebrew scholar Wolfgang Capito
and the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander, continued to promote
toleration as a means of bringing about the hoped for conversion of
Jews. When in 1540 the Jews of the Neuburg village of Sappenfeld were
charged with the ritual murder of the boy Michael Pisenharter, Osiander
anonymously composed Whether it is True and believable that Jews secretly
kill Christian children and use their blood, a treatise which demolished the
flimsy evidence behind ritual murder charges and provided alternate
explanations for the crimes. For his efforts Osiander was rewarded with
the “most massive and systematic formulation of the blood libel” in
Johannes Eck’s Refutation of a Jewish Booklet. In this work Eck defended
Christian hatred of Jews by affirming their “murderous nature,” their
malicious plots, including the poisoning of wells and their practice of
black magic that added Christian mother’s milk to Christian blood as
a salve to wash away the bloodstain imposed on them by God for their
act of deicide. Eck also repeated the myth that Christian blood helped
remove the two tiny fingers that Jewish babies were supposedly born
with on their forehead, an elaboration of the belief that Jews, like the
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 97

Devil, had horns. Eck provided what he saw as empirical proof of these
beliefs by recounting the recent ritual murder in 1475 of Simon of
Trent, as well as similar incidents in Brandenburg in 1510 and Poesing,
Hungary in 1529, wherein, as Ronnie Hsia notes, the alleged victims
“proved that miracles still happened; they were living relics, embodiments
of a salvific source that dispensed grace to their beholders” and dispelled
doubt about the truth of Christian dogma about Jesus. When placed on
display the victims’ corpses, like abused Hosts, bled miraculously. For
Eck, Osiander’s treatise “undermined the entire theological, or one may
say magical, foundations upon which salvific sacrifice and Christian
redemption were based.” 19 In the end Eck linked Lutherans with Jews,
suggesting that the Lutheran denial of transubstantiation was of a piece
with the desecration of Hosts committed by Jews. Protestants like Osiander
who suggested Jews should be tolerated were immediately scolded as
Judaisers. To defend themselves of such charges, many Protestants
transferred the accusations to their opponents.
Despite the fact that he too was a target of Eck’s polemical ire, Luther
in his 1543 tracts On the Ineffable Name and On the Jews and their Lies,
acknowledged ritual murder charges against Jews whom he called “the
Devil’s children” who used evil magic to destroy Christians. To his wife
Katherina von Bora Luther recounted in the same year,

I became ill on my way just before reaching Eisleben. It was really my

own fault. But if you were there, you would have said that it must have
been the fault of the Jews or their God. We had to pass through a village
before reaching Eisleben which was inhabited by many Jews. Perhaps
they were blowing hard at me . . . and it was done. When I passed
through the village, a cold draft came into the wagon and almost froze
my head, I swear.20

Just as Eck accused Lutherans of being allies of Jews, Luther suggested

that the Jewish “superstition” linked them with both Catholics and
Turks, all under the Devil’s leadership. However, Luther was not as
credulous as Eck when it came to the supposed magical acts of Jews, for
his primary goal was to attack all manner of religious magic and super-
stition, although his success in disenchanting Christianity was limited.
Luther was sensitive to the fact that Jews accused Catholic Christianity of
using word magic, and so he attacked both the Jewish Cabala and Catholic
ritual magic. He also suspected that many of his own followers, including
many pastors, continued to use magical books, some of which relied on
98 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

the unpronounceable Hebrew name for God, the Tetragrammaton, for

magical efficacy. Hence, Luther’s invective against the Jews was as much
a condemnation of Christian magical practices as it was of Jewish.21 In
general, Protestants tended to shift attention away from the magical
aspects of anti-Judaism such as Host desecration, and were less likely to
believe that Jews ritually murdered Christian children, identifying the
supposed miracles of the “martyr’s corpse” as another form of Catholic
magic.
Within the Reformed tradition of Zwingli and Calvin there was expressed
much less hostility toward Jews and Judaism and a greater willingness
to read Hebrew and Jewish works to assist in the interpretation of the
scriptures. There were obvious limitations to this influence, as Michael
Servetus discovered to his dismay. Servetus was so deeply influenced by
his reading of Jewish theological works that he rejected the Christian
doctrine of the trinity, a view for which he was condemned to death in
Catholic Vienne. Fleeing incognito, Servetus arrived in 1553 in Geneva,
which in general did not execute heretics. His true identity was discovered
and he was arrested. Ignoring pleas from many quarters, Calvin supported
the Genevan court’s sentence of death because Servetus’ heresy was so
extreme that it threatened all Christians. Possibly too Calvin hoped to
counteract the charges of Judaising that had been brought against
his movement for its self-conception as the “people of Israel,” – with
infant baptism as the sign of membership replacing Jewish circumcision –
and its condemnation of Jewish ritual murder charges. Although the
“disenchanting” effects of Calvin’s rejection of the magical aspects of anti-
Semitism would become evident only in the long term, in the short term
the violent anti-Jewish language that the Reformation engendered and the
demonization of opponents actually contributed to demonic and magical
beliefs and to suspicion of “the Other”, whatever Luther and Calvin’s
intention may have been.
The extremes to which Protestant polemical writers would go to use
Jews as verifiers of the Protestant Christian faith is seen in a pamphlet
published in 1601 purporting to recount a story told by Paulus von Eytsen,
Lutheran bishop of Schleswig about an incident which occurred when
he was a student in Wittenberg. Visiting his parents in Hamburg in the
winter of 1542, the future bishop entered a church wherein he witnessed
a tall, barefooted man with long hair listening intensely to the sermon
and beating his breast each time the name of Jesus was mentioned.
Inquiries into his identity led Von Eytsen to a strange discovery: the man
was none other than the Jew Asverus who had been an eyewitness to the
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 99

crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem some 1,500 years earlier. His story was
an unusual one, to say the least. Like his coreligionists, Asverus had
regarded Jesus as a heretic and helped the chief priests to have him
crucified. While Jesus was carrying his cross to the place of execution,
Asverus held up his young child to see the criminal, but when Jesus got
alongside them he said, “I will stop and rest, but you will go.” Disturbed
by this comment, Asverus returned home, but became so restless he
could not remain there, but hastened to the scene of Christ’s crucifixion,
after which he felt compelled to leave Jerusalem, not returning until long
after his family had died. Since then he lived as a wanderer throughout
the world, kept alive by God until the Judgment Day as a witness of the
reality of Christ’s death and of Jewish responsibility for it. According to
the pamphlet, Van Eytsen called in the rector of the school of Hamburg
to determine Asverus’ veracity, and both were amazed by his detailed
knowledge of first-century Palestine and his seemingly miraculous facility
with a multitude of languages. The pamphlet writer discounted the widely
held belief that Asverus’ knowledge was provided by a flying spirit which
revealed such things to him, pointing to the Jew’s intense indignation
whenever Christians swore on the cross or wounds of Christ. This myth
of the wandering Jew, whether as an individual such as Asverus or as
a people, remained popular, and many Protestants, with their strong belief
in divine providence, found it conceivable that God might miraculously
prolong a human life for this particular purpose. They saw no inherent
contradiction between this belief and their denunciation of Catholic
belief in Jewish Host desecration.22
In the later sixteenth century, then, the negative anti-Semitic polemics
won out over Osiander’s milder approach and cries for further restric-
tions on Jewish freedom resounded throughout the Empire, leading to
anti-Jewish riots in Braunschweig and elsewhere, while the Strasbourg
Reformer Martin Bucer’s urging to expel all Jews from Protestant lands
fortunately went unheeded. Hsia cites the example of the Lutheran
professor at the University of Giessen George Schwarz (1530–1602),
who decried the tolerance of some civic officials who were allowing the
coexistence of several confessions by comparing such tolerance for Jews,
Catholics, Turks, and Anabaptists to ignoring the evil work of witches,
blasphemers, and murderers. Hsia concludes that “owing to Luther’s
powerful legacy and in part to the sharpened polemics among the
Christian confessions, hostility to Judaism and Jews became entrenched
among the Lutheran clergy during the second half of the sixteenth
century.”23
100 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Devil in the New World

The European contact with the peoples of the New World and renewed
meetings with the populations of the old, exotic societies of India, Japan,
and China, also increased fears of the Devil and of “the Other”. The late-
medieval European world was a very small one, surrounded by hostile
forces and under threat from a resurgent Islam. Christian princes sought
means to bypass Muslim control over the Far East trading routes through
making contact with the mythic king Prester John who supposedly
ruled over a powerful Christian principality somewhere to the east.
Thus the quest to explore the world was part and parcel of the medieval
crusader’s mentality to defeat Islam. 24 It took some time for the old
conceptions of the world to adjust to the reality of what the explorers
had stumbled upon. Best-selling travel accounts blending fantastical
fiction with even stranger facts interpreted everything in the New World
as unusual and monstrous. As Fernando Cervantes notes, the power of
these myths over the European imagination meant that Europeans saw
exactly what they expected to see: giants, wild men, cannibals, and cities
paved with gold.25 After the 1530s, however, as Christian missionaries
sought to convert the New World peoples, a demonological interpretation
was applied to their religious practices. For one early Spanish writer,
Francisco de Aguilar, there was no place like the New World “where the
devil was honored with such reverence,” while by mid-century, a “negative,
demonic view of Amerindian cultures had triumphed and its influence
was seen to descend like a thick fog upon every statement officially and
unofficially made on the subject.”26 The Franciscans had managed to baptize
masses of native peoples, an approach that Dominicans complained led
to shallow or insincere converts. In the early 1530s Inquisition tribunals
uncovered evidence confirming such suspicions, leading, as in Europe, to
increased efforts to enforce complete confessional conformity. Pessimism
mounted as it appeared Satan himself was intervening to keep the native
peoples as his idolatrous servants. The discovery in 1562 of widespread
idolatry in Yucatan, Mexico, resulted in mass arrests, torture, and execu-
tions comparable to the Spanish Inquisition’s earlier assault on Judaising
conversos. 27 The emphasis on witchcraft and pagan ritual as a form of
demonic idolatry, rather than as mere pagan survivals, was a major
factor in this trend as well. The persecution of supposed idolatry in the
New World paralleled remarkably the increasing anxiety over secret
diabolical plots in the Old World, mutually reinforcing or feeding the
anti-Devil frenzy in both locales.
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 101

The Devil and Confessional Conflict

The confessional conflict, apocalyptical expectations, fear of Turkish

invasion, and the struggle of rulers to gain control over their realms,
increased fears of diabolical agents at work within European society.
The specific target of suspicion was readily transferable, shifting back
and forth from heretic to Jew, to Anabaptist, to New World natives, and
ultimately to demonic witches. What may have been passed off as an
unfortunate accident increasingly took on eschatological or even demonic
significance. For example, on the evening of St. Lawrence Day, 1546,
a bolt of lightning ignited the munitions house of Mechelen, Brabant,
causing a massive explosion that leveled several buildings and killed
hundreds. Similar disasters were often explained as naturally caused in
the providence of God. But one reporter noted that in this disaster God
was expressing his ire over the sins of Netherlanders who were flirting
with various reform movements. On that fateful night, “through the
help of the evil enemy [Satan], who always shows his evil,” the lightning
struck the tower where gunpowder was stored to assist the emperor’s
battles against the rebellious German princes. 28
However, another commentator linked this disaster to the Devil’s
efforts to obstruct the gains made by the Protestant movement and
presented it as a warning to the Catholic emperor “to abstain from his
unchristian, improper, unfaithful resolutions” which have been given
him by the Pope “and the entire spiritless crowd.” In this news sheet
Charles V’s regent, Mary of Hungary, was dressed in apocalyptical attire
as the despised Jezebel and the two of them were admonished to stop
shedding “the innocent blood, so much of which has been spilt in the
Netherlands on account of the gospel.”29 While both writers saw the
catastrophe ultimately as an act of God, the Devil played a prominent
role for both: for the first as an agent of evil whose indiscriminate, mali-
cious act with the lightning was used by God as a further means to punish
sin; for the second as a nasty opponent of true faith whose vicious destruc-
tion of a portion of Mechelen inadvertently hindered his own plot to
crush the gospel by depriving his agent, Charles V, of his needed
gunpowder. Neither tract adequately resolved the question of true
responsibility for this disaster, and the second news sheet unintentionally
depicted the Devil as a bumbling schemer who could not keep track of all
of his plots. In both works the lightning was directed by Satan alone,
without the human agency of witches who were elsewhere accused of
brewing storms to harm neighbors.30
102 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

To varying degrees all Protestants condemned Catholic sacramental

practice as magical, although the Calvinists and Anabaptists were the
most thorough in this regard, while Luther’s maintenance of the real
presence of Christ in the Eucharist muted his condemnation of priestly
magic. Calvinists attacked Catholic sacramentals, priestly power, and
exorcism as Catholic magic or hocus pocus. As one anonymous Reformed
writer put it in 1556,

Oh Babylon, Babylon, all the blood of the witnesses of Jesus Christ,

from the creation of the world until its end, shall be demanded of you
and of your servants, for the sorcerers who conjure demons are more
holy than you who are the whorish church. What difference is there
between these sorcerers through whom an evil spirit enters into a crystal
and from there into their [finger]nail or some into a mirror; but you
command Christ to enter into a piece of bread and believe that you
could have him as often as you say the words, “this is my body.”31

Gazing into crystals, a fingernail, or a mirror were all necromantic

means of visualizing the summoned spirit. To make such comparisons
between sacramental practice and ritual magic was an extreme means of
desacralizing and demonizing Catholic sacred objects. In their place
Protestant leaders preferred congregational prayer and fasting as a means
of assisting those assailed by demons. While most Protestant intellectuals
insisted that ghosts were evil spirits, not the souls of the deceased, this
merely contributed to the great confusion over the spectrum of super-
natural beings on the part of the populace. 32

The Changing Role of the Dead

As well as seeking to separate the magical from the religious by demonizing

the former and purifying the latter, Protestants, especially Calvinists and
Mennonites, attempted to redefine the relationship between the living
and the dead by closing communication between the two realms. Given
the formidable import that the dead had held for the living prior to the
Reformation, it is indeed impressive how far Reformers succeeded in
this program, in many places weaning people from belief in saints and
purgatory, although this was often replaced by reliance on angels or fear
of ghosts.33 The Calvinist assault on old notions about the dead was well
orchestrated. In 1565, the year before the iconoclastic fury in the Low
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 103

Countries, an anonymous dialogue was published wherein two friends,

Pasquillus and Marphorius, discuss the former’s trip to hell, in an obvious
parody of Dante’s Inferno. Expressing his astonishment that his colleague
was able to be whisked away by an angel to the gates of hell without the
traditional ceremonies, Marphorius commented that this was “very different
from what I have read in other books, for you have not first killed a ram
or a black goat; . . . you have not sought the golden bough, you have not
sprinkled yourself with holy water, nor signed yourself with the holy
cross, nevertheless you have so quickly gained entry.” Bemused, Pasquillus
admits that his entry into hell was incredibly easy, as he merely followed
the crowds of people, mostly monks, priests, and nuns, filing into it.
There was no Purgatory, Pasquillus discovered, for it was a diabolical
and papal fiction created by “Hillebrand the sorcerer, that is [Pope]
Gregory VII” who was influenced by “the false miracles and visions and
deceitfulness of the Devil, transformed into an angel of light.” 34 Thus the
living should have no further concern about the deceased.
This sharp, theoretical delineation between the dead and the living
and between magic and religion was applied to the sacraments as well.
In another anonymous dialogue from 1565, a peasant was told by a
Reformed pilgrim not to rely on the Catholic priesthood for his salvation.
Confronting his priest, the peasant asked if he was “the Antichrist, or
must we wait for another?” The priest not only admitted the charge, but
revealed also that the Catholic Church had created sacramental baptism
so that ordinary believers would be distracted from the clergy’s hypocrisy
with respect to repentance: “so that we might prove that penance was
not necessary, we made baptism so much mightier and stronger, with
blessings, with holy water, chrism, incense, bitter salt, so that it would not
become vile or stinking,” convincing everyone that it was essential for the
salvation of children. Similarly, the contrast between Jesus’ Lord’s Supper
and the Catholic Mass could not be clearer, as the priest explained:
“Christ held a night meal and we hold a Mass; he spoke to his disciples,
we speak to the bread; he said ‘this is my body’, we say ‘therein is his
body’; he went from there to his death, we to a well prepared table,” and
so forth. 35 For this author the Mass was nothing more than veneration of
dumb idols.
In this and countless other examples of Calvinist and Mennonite
propaganda, the Catholic sacramental system and priestly order were
demonized, while in Protestant hands the sacred objects, such as conse-
crated bread and wine or holy oil and water, or saints’ images and relics,
became mundane things divested of supernatural power and significance.
104 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

How were Catholics to respond to this very effective ritual challenge to

their monopoly over divine approval? Rational arguments were so framed
as to defuse Protestant criticism, such as those developed by Guillaume
du Vair, president of the Parlement of Provence, who suggested that the
Devil would not have so attacked the Church’s sacraments “if he had not
thought that they were truly what we believe them to be, that is to say,
the certain effects of the word of God, the treasures of his favors, and the
sure signs of the salvation of men.” Bishop Friedrich Forner of Bamberg,
a zealous proponent of witch-hunting, argued that because Protestants
were already apostates from the true religion, the Devil did not bother
attacking them. The prevalence of witchcraft among Catholics, another
piece of Protestant propaganda, became in the bishop’s terms a “most
splendid, nay most certain, and infallible sign that the true and saving
faith, the true gospel, the true sacraments, the true religion are found
among Catholics.”36 Why should the Devil bother with heretics who
were already under his spell?
Another approach was to offer empirical evidence of the veracity of
the miraculous within the sacramentals, such as the many miracles of
incombustible or bleeding Hosts. The power of consecrated wafers, water,
salt, oil, incense, and crucifixes, was also proven by their effectiveness in
casting out demons from the possessed. The moment that the demon
admitted defeat and fled the victim in the face of the priest’s power and
spiritual equipment was a decisive one in dispelling doubts about sacra-
mental power. In this way exorcisms provided tangible proof of the reality
of the Devil, and by contrariety of God, his chosen agents, the priests,
and conduits of supernatural power, the sacraments.
With their emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of God, Protestants
denied that humans could in any way gain knowledge of or control the
supernatural by any means apart from God’s own written revelation,
while sacred action for Protestants flowed in one direction only. Such a
belief should have undercut any place for the magical in religion, but all
confessions failed in their goal to separate the two as the magical realm
proved remarkably resilient to reform. Protestant laypeople continued
to use sacramentals to assist them in their daily existence, while in some
respects Reformed leaders created their own magical objects in the
printed Bible, hymnals, and prayer books which were occasionally used
for healing and protective purposes. Protestants may have condemned
using blessed weather bells and Eucharistic processions to divert storms,
but in some locales these were merely replaced by the Protestant “hail-
sermon.” As noted by Robert Scribner, the Protestant version of the old
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 105

“moralized universe” increased anxiety among the populace who, deprived

of the Catholic means of protection, “found themselves prey to anxiety
that was hardly allayed by invoking the Protestant doctrine of providence.”37
Every incident of famine, hail storm, war, plague, and the like brought
out the moralists’ chastisements and inspired further communal and
governmental attempts to expunge the offending sin or sinners from the
community. Protestant preachers railed ever more fervently against
“superstition”, heresy, or immorality as the immediate causes of God’s
retribution. But every catastrophe led more people to return to trad-
itional magical or ritual means of protecting themselves. It became neces-
sary then for Protestant leaders to condemn all such “white magic” as the
moral equivalent of the maleficia of witches, implicating the practitioner
in the forming of a Satanic pact.

Anti-Protestant Propaganda: Diabolical Heretics

As part of their campaign to oppose the incursions of Lutheran and

Calvinist reform, zealous Counter-Reformation churchmen, especially the
Jesuits, argued that the Catholic Church alone performed true miracles,
that the Protestant denial of traditional Catholic rites and beliefs was
Satanic, and that Protestants of all stripes, but especially the more radical
Calvinists, were agents of the Devil to sow the seeds of doubt, heresy, and
atheism, contributing to the alarming increase in demonic witchcraft in
Europe. This position could be illustrated by reference to the writings of
any number of zealous Catholic polemicists. The case of France presents
a very clear example.
According to Jonathan Pearl, the writings of France’s demonologists,
almost exclusively zealous Catholics, were composed to provide ammu-
nition for the fervent Catholic side in their struggles against both the
Protestant minority and the moderate Catholic majority which supported
the tradition of royal control over the national church, a position known
as Gallicanism. The small but vocal zealot party sought to have the crown
eradicate all traces of Protestant heresy from France and to implement
the decrees of the Council of Trent in the realm, thereby reasserting papal
control over the French Catholic Church. In 1557 it seemed that they
would soon have their wish, for King Henry II proclaimed a royal
ordinance establishing the Inquisition in France, but it was rescinded the
following year and trials against Protestant heretics were more or less
ended after 1562.
106 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

It was therefore extremely important in this religious–political climate

to portray the Protestants in the darkest colors possible and to associate
the tolerant position as evil. In this polemical battle, the zealots (later
formalized as the Duke of Guises’ “Catholic League”) decried the Gallicans
as the allies of heretics. Zealot demonologists contributed by defining
Protestantism as demonic heresy and advocating its complete destruction.
Any Catholic official, they announced, who refused to perform his duty of
eradicating this diabolical threat to the kingdom was guilty of assisting
heresy, atheism, and the Devil. Moderation itself was declared demonic.
Unbelief was the greatest threat to civil order and divine pleasure in
France, and any signs of skepticism about demonic activity was condemned
forcefully as an attack on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and
as atheism. Politique judges therefore found themselves condemned as
members of “the widespread satanic conspiracy that prevented the rule
of godly reformed Tridentine Catholicism in France.”38 After Francis II’s
death in 1560 the Catholic zealots came to see themselves as “an unjustly
spurned minority” frustrated over their inability to influence royal
policy. They therefore preached incendiary sermons, marched in long,
emotional processions and, as we shall see later, used theatrical exorcisms
of demoniacs to extremely good effect. In all of these the message was
very clear: the toleration of Protestantism was a diabolical evil that was
destroying France.
In France the Jesuits were prominent in this campaign. Particularly
influential was one of the first professors of the Jesuit College in Paris,
the Spaniard Juan de Maldonado or Maldonat (1534–83). A vigorous
opponent of Protestantism, Maldonat lectured Catholics to stand firm
against heresy. That his lectures coincided with the second and third
wars of religion in France (September 1567 to August 1570) gave his
words potentially explosive significance. After another peace was
declared in the late summer of 1570, Maldonat returned to Paris and to
his lectures after a period of missionizing within the former Protestant
stronghold of upper Poitou. After this experience he turned with even
greater thoroughness to the subject of demons, strongly linking them to
Protestant heresy and arguing that witches always accompany heretics, as
in “Bohemia and Germany, [where] the Hussite heresy was accompanied
by such a storm of demons that witches were busier than heretics.” He
claimed that Geneva was now infected by witches who were spreading
into France, for “magical arts follow heresy.” Pearl’s summary of Maldonat’s
explanation of the process is illuminating: “demons live with heretics;
after a violent outburst, heresy degenerates into atheism and magic; the
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 107

‘curious arts’ follow heresy like a plague; demons use heretics to deceive
mankind. All this was made possible and worsened through the negli-
gence of unfit or undedicated priests.”
The Devil was ably assisted in this process by the curiosity of individuals,
for “there is nothing that helps the devil more than curiosity, in which he
is well studied. That is why there are more women than men who are
witches, since women are more inclined to curiosity.” Moreover, denying
the reality of demons, or disclaiming the ability of witches to fly with
demons to their sabbaths or to make themselves invisible, was akin to
atheism. Thanks to their disavowal of transubstantiation, Calvinists were
also among such atheists. For this influential Catholic zealot, Protestants
were not merely wrong theologically, but were responsible for the rise of
both political sedition and dangerous witchcraft. As summarized by
Pearl, Maldonat

labeled the Protestants as heretics and always referred to them as

such. Then he argued that in their heresy, they were inspired by and
allied to the Devil. He always stressed the intimate connection of
witchcraft and heresy, arguing that the Devil made both possible and
benefited from the growth. In other words, rather than only saying
that witches were heretics, Maldonat inferred strongly that the
modern Protestant heretics were witches.39

Such demonization of the Protestant opponents, Pearl concludes, was a

major factor in the frenzied slaughter by Catholic mobs of Protestants
which broke out in Paris on St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572 and
which consumed some 3,000 victims. The stage was set the preceding
Advent and Lent by the virulent sermons of mendicant preachers which
so stirred up public hatred that it created a climate favorable to violence,
although actual massacres could occur only with the tacit approval of the
crown and the leadership of local authorities.
The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in fact followed traditional rites
of magical purification performed against the “accursed dead.” For
example, a Parisian house which had been polluted by Protestant
sermons and communion services was torn down by a Catholic mob
who, as with former Jewish synagogues, erected a cross over the site; the
cadavers of Huguenots were removed from their graves and dragged
through the mud, while young children castrated and disemboweled the
corpses. These gruesome acts were in some respects a reversal of what
the Reformed themselves had performed against the statues of saints
108 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

during the iconoclastic storms (see Chapter 4 below) and an effort to

“reestablish a sacrality that had been violated.” 40 The blossoming of a
hawthorn bush before a chapel dedicated to the Virgin and miraculous
cures performed there helped to confirm for Parisian Catholics that
their violent actions had received divine approval and possibly helped
alleviate any guilt they may have retained. For the Huguenots, the
massacre triggered a great number of conversions as many saw the
violence as a sign that God was no longer with them.
Catholic preachers influenced by Maldonat harangued their congregants
on the dangers of heresy and the need for its extermination, allowing for
the spread of the massacres across France. The famous Flemish Jesuit
demonologist, Martin Del Rio (1551–1608), was one of those influenced
by Maldonat, and he too argued that “the filth of magic accompanies
heresy and follows it like a shadow follows the body” which, he suggested,
“is such a clear fact that whomever doubts it doubts the day and makes
night out of high noon. The principal heretics have been magicians.”41
In France, the identification of Protestantism with diabolical heresy
remained a pronounced one throughout the second half of the sixteenth
century.

Anti-Anabaptist Propaganda

Even more than Huguenots, Anabaptists, with their early history of radical
nonconformity and insurrection, proved a favorite target for demonizing
among both Catholics and Protestants. After the destruction of the Münster
kingdom in 1535, Anabaptists offered no serious threat against the social
order. Yet, twenty years later the propaganda war against them was
intensified, even though fears of Anabaptist insurrection were no longer
rational. In contrast to the image portrayed by mainstream polemicists,
Anabaptists and spiritualists depreciated fear of the Devil, except to
the extent that they linked their persecutors to the Antichrist. They
thoroughly stripped away the miraculous and magical from religious
practice and their places of worship (where permitted) were devoid of
religious imagery (plainer even than the Calvinists) and were designated
not as churches but as meeting places. Their ministers were laypeople
normally chosen by casting of lots and disallowed from pursuing formal
theological or philosophical education so that they would not fall into
the trap of clerical pride. They rejected the concept of a sacrament
altogether, interpreting the body of Christ present at the Lord’s Supper
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 109

as the gathered group of believers, turning primary attention away from

the bread and wine. While their opponents tried to argue that they made
believers’ baptism into a new idol, Mennonites themselves believed it to
be merely a public statement of an individual adult’s decision to join the
people of God. For them infant baptism – maintained by Calvinists as
well as Lutherans and Catholics – implied magical efficacy, as the infant
had no control over what was happening to it.
We can explain the ongoing attack on Mennonites by keeping two things
in mind. First, for more than three centuries preachers and Inquisitors
had been warning the populace about secret, demonic groups that were
a major threat to Christian society. After the crushing of the Cathars,
Inquisitors began spreading the notion that these demonic heresies had
merely gone underground, dissembling and obscuring their true, evil
intentions under “feigned” godliness or confessional conformity. In this
way the supposed godliness of the small numbers of known Anabaptists
could be used instead as evidence that they were the Devil’s agents.
Second, if the Anabaptist critique was accepted by the authorities, the
entire sacramental and theological edifice of the Catholic Church
would come crashing down as its miraculous/magical underpinnings were
removed. The best way to neutralize Anabaptist skepticism was there-
fore to demonize the Anabaptists themselves, to compel them to play in
the polemical literature, in the court and on the scaffold, the role of
secret demonic agent. Most of them, even under severe torture, adamantly
refused to perform their appointed parts in this drama, and flung the
charge of demonic inspiration back into the faces of their accusers. Many
captured Anabaptists and Mennonites were able to dispute the scriptures
with their captors as near equals, something that at first caught the
authorities off guard. Only diabolical magic, some Inquisitors explained,
could have made so many ordinary women and men literate and so con-
fident in the face of the usually terrifying Inquisitor or secular judge. For
example, in a series of anti-heresy treatises composed in 1567, the Bishop
of Roermonde and Inquisitor of South Holland, William Verlinde
(Lindanus), claimed that some Anabaptists had confessed that “as soon as
they had given their oath [i.e., joined the Anabaptists], they felt in them-
selves the singular power of the Devil so that they could begin to read
the Scriptures when before they could not read a letter, and once they
returned to the Church they could no longer do so.” 42 Verlinde more-
over accused David Joris of deceiving many people through his denial
of the reality of the Devil. According to this learned Inquisitor, Joris’
followers had “their origin from a mistaken or straying sorcerer, who
110 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

around 1545 sowed his malicious teaching from the old cisterns or pools
of stinking heresies, reawakening the Sadducee errors of denying
angels, devils and baptism, and also the Last Judgement.” 43 Joris’
reputed miracles, such as transforming water into wine, turning himself
invisible to avoid detection, and levitating six or seven feet above the
ground, Verlinde explained as acts of evil sorcery. Of course Joris pur-
ported to do none of these things.
Anabaptists, Inquisitors and preachers agreed, were the leading edge
of Satan’s final assault on Christendom to invert the social order. Stuart
Clark suggests that the vocabulary of witchcraft was part of a language
used to condemn the “properties of a disorderly world,” of a world
turned upside down.44 Such language was also used with great abandon
to condemn Anabaptists as promoting misrule, as a mirror image of the
orderly world. Despite such characterizations, the ideas of this persecuted
minority continued to find an audience throughout the century. The
authorities soon realized that the campaign to demonize Anabaptists
and spiritualists was not working among the populace. In response,
some gave up and began tolerating the dissidents, while others became
more extreme in their demonizing efforts, but even here the effects were
not as intended, as instead of inspiring people to turn in suspected
Anabaptist heretics among their neighbors, the polemics heightened
fears of other alleged agents of the Devil in their midst.
Another reason for the continued demonization of Anabaptists was
the need for Catholic and Protestant clergy to redirect Anabaptist
anticlericalism away from themselves back upon the accusers or onto
another easily demonized target. From the movement’s early days,
Anabaptism’s leaders had accused the clergy of complete corruption and
of practicing sorcery, such as the Hutterites who in 1532 argued that
pedobaptism was a “dog’s bath” through which “the priest claimed to
drive demons out of the pure child while he, himself, is full of demons.”45
In some locales such as western maritime France, anticlerical sentiment
included charges that the clergy, whether Catholic or Protestant, used
sorcery against their parishioners as a means of maintaining a monopoly
over the sacraments.46 That such charges were widespread is shown by
a Catholic catechism published in Freiburg, Germany, wherein the
writer denies the belief that the clergy caused hailstorms and suggests
that the peasants give up “their dreadful cursing and swearing before
blaming such storms on their priests’ absence from the parish or for
their not properly blessing the weather.”47 Catholics explained Anabaptist
obstinacy in not recanting their heresy by reference to diabolical control,
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 111

and at times turned the tables upon the Anabaptists by using “clerical
magic” to compel their confessions; Werner O. Packull cites a case in
1533 from the southern Empire “when the food of eleven prisoners was
spiced with holy water and blessed salt in the hope of exorcising the
demonic powers believed to hold sway over the prisoners” and in
another instance priests were commanded to sprinkle holy water on two
recalcitrant women.48 Torture was more typically applied as a means to
loosen the grip Satan had on the accused’s tongue, a technique that had
been used on both heretics and witches in the late Middle Ages.
The taint of Münster lingered long as propagandists continued to
warn their audiences that outwardly peaceable Anabaptists were secretly
plotting insurrection. For example, in 1588 the Tyrolian theologian
Christoffen Erhard compared the Hutterite Brethren (who practiced
community of goods) to the infamous Münsterites and warned the
residents of Moravia about the rebellious intentions of the 17,000 Brethren
who resided in the region. 49 Many propagandists also linked this
supposed renewal of Anabaptist militancy to a larger diabolical conspiracy,
one with very clear parallels to the demonic witch stereotype. Persecution
of Mennonites and other radical reformers therefore continued apace,
and would do so in the southern Netherlands and some parts of the
Empire throughout much of the second half of the sixteenth century.
Perhaps of greatest concern to the secular authorities was the connec-
tion made by propagandists between Anabaptism and the Peasants’ War.
As the courtly astrologer Johann Carion put it in his 1543 chronicle, “all
heretics are rebels who seek to spread their heresy by force, for their
master the Devil is a liar and a murderer.”50 Moreover, many learned
polemicists argued that Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism placed
children in danger of damnation and led ultimately to social chaos;
such could only have arisen, they believed, from the kingdom of hell
itself. 51 Protestants saw the rise of Anabaptism as the Devil’s means of
subverting the Reformers’ rediscovery of the gospel. Proof of the diabol-
ical intentions of Anabaptists could be readily found in their habit of
meeting at night in dark woods or caves, despite the fact that this proced-
ure had been forced upon them by persecution. Much the same was
suspected about the Huguenot preachers in 1550s France who were
forced to hold their meetings at unusual times and places, as one pamph-
leteer put it,

These ministers, who are known as ‘beards’ or ‘uncles’, go from one

place to another without staying long anywhere; and to console and
112 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

encourage the unfortunate people, they usually assemble at night,

sometimes in a pit or a quarry, for fear of persecution. These clan-
destine assemblies have given wicked people occasions to vent all
kinds of calumny upon them. . . . They have had the reputation among
common folk of practicing incest, sorcery and enchantment and of
being completely devoted to the Devil, meeting in conventicles as
much to indulge in lewd behavior and do other execrable things as to
conduct their ‘Sabbat’ (I use their terminology) with the Devil who is
present on that occasion.52

Many ordinary people too equated refusal to partake of the Eucharist

with Anabaptism and magic, all of which were “subversive of the public
cult.”53 For the death of such outcasts, no funeral bell was to be rung and
no burial was to be conducted in consecrated ground.

Lutherans, Calvinists, and Possessed Infants

The polemical conflict kept the fires of religious hatred and suspicion
burning among the various Protestant and Catholic reform currents.
Luther’s condemnation of Anabaptists as agents of spiritual bewitchment
cited at the start of this chapter was enhanced by his successors who were
engaged in a struggle to preserve sacramental realism against the desac-
ralizing of Calvinists which Lutherans depicted as leading ultimately to
Anabaptism. As Justus Menius, Lutheran preacher at Eisenach put it in
1544, as rejecters of baptism and the Eucharist, Anabaptists were members
of the Devil’s church, turning people against God and setting them
against each other. Children, Menius asserted, must be baptized so that
they will be “purified from sin, delivered from eternal death and from
the Devil’s dominion.”54 Calvinists maintained the importance of infant
baptism as a sign of membership in God’s covenant, but rejected exorcism
as a carry-over of Catholic magic. By the 1550s their position was beginning
to influence many Lutheran pastors who were leaving the exorcism rite
out of their baptismal services. As Adam Crato, Lutheran pastor in
Magdeburg warned, excising exorcism from Luther’s baptismal book
implied that “Christian children prior to holy baptism are not heathens,
nor under the authority of Satan, nor physically nor spiritually possessed.”
Demons, he cautioned, were everywhere, seeking “to establish their
dwelling in the children.” For their part, the Calvinist-minded Lutherans
accused their orthodox fellows of teaching that a pregnant women
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 113

might carry a possessed fetus or “physical devil,” a prospect that under-

standably terrified many Lutheran parents. 55
The propaganda war of the 1550s and 1560s on the question of
baptismal exorcism was part of a larger Lutheran obsession with all things
diabolical, evidenced in the creation of a new genre of works, the Devil
books (Teufelbücher), which linked particular vices, such as adultery, to
corresponding demons, which numbered twenty by 1569. Robert W.
Scribner has noted that it seemed “as though the Devil and demonic
spirits had become wilder and more incalculable, attested by the remark-
able efflorescence of Protestant demonology, which by the second half of
the sixteenth century attained the level of an obsession.” 56 What fuelled
this obsession was the need both to counteract the rising skepticism
toward the demonic realm and to explain the relative failure of the
Reformation to capture the imaginations of most ordinary people. In
a major compendium of Devil books published in 1569 as Theatre of the
Devils (Theatrvm Diabolorum), the editor, Sigmund Feyerabend, attacked
those doubters who believed and lived as if there was no Devil, propagat-
ing the modern proverb: “hell is not as hot as the priests make it and the
Devil is not as black as the artists paint him. . . . All that is said and
preached about hell and demons is vain falsehood and a trivial thing to
frighten the people and bring the priests money.” Against those who
suggested that the Devil existed solely as the evil thoughts of humans,
Feyerabend pointed to the demons which Jesus had cast out of the
possessed man and into the herd of swine (Matt. 8) and to the fact that
even the pagan philosophers believed in invisible spirits. Like his Catholic
counterparts, Feyerabend took comfort also in the current machinations
of Satan’s mob which proved his existence, such as the increasing cases
of physical possession or the rising “war and bloodshed, hunger and
inflation, pestilence and other harmful sicknesses, that here someone has
broken his neck, there an arm or leg which, without fear of contradiction
were caused by the Devil, though allowed by God.” As for the relative
ineffectiveness of Luther’s gospel, Feyerabend turned to the story of one
of the ancient Church fathers who one day saw a demon with various
flasks and boxes and asked him what he was making with them. The demon
replied that “he had a special salve which he would smear on the eyes
and ears of people so that they could not hear God’s word nor perceive
his work and thus be damned, blind and stubborn, in disbelief.” Satan
sought to bring discord, both on the world stage, with the Peasants’ War
of 1525, the Münsterite kingdom of 1535, and the recent conflict
between Sweden and Denmark, and within marriage by turning love
114 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

into hatred and affection into murderous jealousy. Destructive fires,

deadly plagues, and personal injuries were all the manifestations of
Satan’s evil. 57 Just as Heinrich Krämer had turned to diabolical witches
to explain infertility within sacramental marriage, this Lutheran writer
explained the failure of Luther’s gospel to transform human relations
within and outside of marriage by recourse to the direct activities of
Satan, albeit without the involvement of witches.
As suggested by Feyerabend, there was indeed a dramatic rise in
demonic possession cases in Lutheran Germany, some of them quite
spectacular events involving large groups of afflicted people. The Lutheran
propaganda about exorcism was carried by sermon and pamphlet to the
populace at large, many of whom began thinking more intensely about
demonic possessions. Pastors used this growing fascination with the
diabolical to chastize their flock which they thought were “full of Sadducees,
Epicureans, and self-satisfied worldlings, who refused to recognize the
reality of the spirit world” while several possessions resulted in “revival
sermons and angelic visions.”58 Among the educated classes, Wolfgang
Behringer suggests, there arose “a greater willingness . . . to attribute
every conceivable misfortune, not to natural causes, but to the machin-
ations of the Devil” and to heed the “constant clamor for witch-burning
from the populace.” Many authorities resisted, but most ultimately gave
in, such as Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria who in the 1580s noted that
in these “last days” God was punishing his people with the “foul and
frightful vice of sorcery and witchcraft.”59 To many the apocalyptical
expectation of an increased demonic attack on the church was being
fulfilled.

Suppressing Atheists

An example of how the campaign to eradicate alleged skepticism about

the spirit world actually elevated fear of demonic activity comes from
Strasbourg where since 1525 the city’s Reformed preachers had been
trying to persuade the Anabaptists to return to the Protestant church. In
the 1530s they achieved some success among the Melchiorite Anabaptists
by addressing their criticisms about lax disciplinary standards among
the Reformed. Even so, the preachers were soon confronted by a new
problem in the revival of interest in soothsaying and bewitchment.60
However, their vigorous efforts to discourage parishioners from seek-
ing out the assistance of magical experts had the unintended effect of
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 115

stimulating their hearers’ interest in the diabolical arts, already raised by

rumors of Anabaptist visions and by the artistic renditions of witches by
Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545) who resided in Strasbourg.61 In
1535 the city’s preachers asked the city council to extend its disciplinary
measures against sectarians and soothsayers into the countryside in an
attempt to eradicate superstitious notions. Between 1543 and 1544 these
efforts were intensified as part of an investigation into the activity of
a popular soothsayer, the priest Ott von Hagenau, whose powers the
Reformers ascribed to a pact with Satan. In September 1544 Martin
Bucer delivered a sermon on the dangers of soothsaying and Ott was
expelled. 62 Over the next decade, the Reformed preachers were also
faced with countering Jesuit propaganda promoting Catholic miracles.
Further heightening anxiety about diabolical activity around 1544
was a perceived revival of interest in Anabaptism and spiritualism in the
city which “coincided with articles promulgated by Jorists.” In their petition
for council action of February 1545, the preachers Martin Bucer, Caspar
Hedio, and Matthias Zell warned the council of some who “openly
maligned Strasbourg’s church and religion, some denied the existence
of the Devil, and others argued that one should tolerate all citizens
whether Jew, Turk or Catholic.” In addition, they noted that David Joris
was in the area with “a large following who plan to drive out the
godless.”63 Joris had in fact just moved to Basel (a mere 70 miles down
the Rhine from Strasbourg), while one of his noble patrons, Cornelis van
Lier, lord of Berchem, moved in 1545 to Strasbourg. Joris both promoted
religious toleration and denied the Devil’s independent reality. In the
face of this allegedly atheistic threat, the city’s preachers preached even
more fervently on Satan’s existence.
In the 1550s accusations of witchcraft began reaching the ears of
Strasbourg’s magistrates. In 1556, during an investigation into an Ana-
baptist gathering, the city council discovered that a Lumpen Barthlin had
been attempting to ply his magical talents among some of the religious
dissenters, albeit without success. Over the next several decades, pros-
ecution of witchcraft increased in the city, as did publication of works
on the subject. Fears about the influence of religious dissenters and of
religious skepticism about the Devil helped stoke popular interest in
visions, prognostication, and diabolical activity. In preachers’ minds the
Devil was closely allied to atheism and skepticism, while news of diabolical
activity helped counteract popular uncertainty about the spirit world.
The denial of the reality of the Devil also became associated with
witchcraft accusations. The Calvinists of Geneva, according to William
116 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Monter, regarded witchcraft as “primarily a theological deviation rather

than a magical type of criminal activity.” 64 For example, the jurist most
prominently involved in sixteenth-century Genevan cases of witchcraft
was the French refugee Germain Colladon who advised Geneva’s court
on 54 witchcraft cases. He depreciated charges of maleficia and concen-
trated instead on answers to the questions, “Does the Devil exist?” and
“Do witches exist?” If a suspect gave a negative answer to either of these
queries, Colladon assumed his or her guilt, as anyone so “‘poorly
informed and instructed in the Christian religion’ was probably in the
Devil’s clutches already.” Several accused who denied the reality of the
Devil were therefore tortured into confessing to witchcraft.65 (Colladon’s
test would later be replaced by the more typical search for the Devil’s
mark.) Thus, news that Joris’ followers were disseminating views depre-
ciating the Devil raised debate on the subject and led indirectly to
demands for witch prosecution as Reformed preachers sought to reduce
popular interest in such pernicious ideas.

Conclusion

The central focus of this chapter has been on how Catholic and
Protestant polemics linked religious heresy to a demonic conspiracy.
Certainly the rhetoric almost always exceeded actual efforts of suppres-
sion, causing the frequent and bitter complaints of zealous theologians.
However, throughout the sixteenth century, many thousands of people
were imprisoned, tortured, and horribly executed because of the belief
that they were a profound threat to the social order and in league with
the Devil. What marked the Anabaptists off very clearly from the witches
was that Anabaptists actually believed and practiced much of what they
confessed to the authorities, while witches were forced into confessing
to deeds no human could perform. As we have seen, Inquisitors and
theologians had had lots of practice transforming real heretics into imagin-
ary demon worshipers. When real heretics were largely suppressed, the
diabolical conspiracy was not dismantled, but merely adjusted to fit
other supposed dissidents. The demonizing rhetoric that was casually
tossed about in the Reformation era therefore had profound con-
sequences.
In the shift from real Anabaptist heretics to witches, attention turned
away from religious dissidents and rebels to unruly women, especially
those with reputations for witchcraft, a stereotype enunciated forcefully
 Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other” 117

in Krämer’s misogynistic Malleus Maleficarum which focused on the

dangers of female sexuality and its susceptibility to demonic temptation.
Frightened by the sight of women activists, Catholic and Protestant
ideologues strengthened the calls for patriarchalism, so that the actions of
every woman would be monitored by a male head, ironically the same
motivation behind Münsterite polygamy. These theoreticians broadened
the image of the potential witch to include any woman who was behaving
in any fashion outside the bounds of a properly submissive housewife.66
By acting as visionaries, prophets and informal house-churches leaders,
by divorcing non-Anabaptist husbands, abandoning families, participat-
ing in the polygamy and armed defense of Münster and running naked
through the streets proclaiming apocalyptical judgment, Anabaptist
women gained considerable notoriety as breakers of traditional gender
roles and as examples of the effects of loosening the strictures limiting
female behavior.67 Although such male fears of independent female
action did not, in and of themselves, create the witch-hunts, they helped
focus attention on women as the sex most susceptible to the charms
of Satan.
 4
THE REFORMATION, MAGIC, AND
WITCHCRAFT, 1520–1600

Moreover, in the year 1568 the Italians and Spaniards going

to the Low Countries, carried notes full of spells, which they
had been given in order to be safe from all evils. . . . In such
a case, the Master Sorcerer (who does not deserve to be named
[i.e., Cornelius Agrippa]) for the invocation of evil spirits wants
one to fast first, and then celebrate Holy Mass. It is not then an
easy matter to discover witches, nor to distinguish them from
respectable people, and much less now than formerly, although
all peoples, and all sects of philosophers have condemned
witches. . . .
Jean Bodin, writing in 1580 against Johann Weyer,
Agrippa’s former student. In Randy A. Scott and
Jonathan L. Pearl, eds. and trans., Jean Bodin,
On the Demon-Mania of Witches (Toronto, 1995), 67.

If by the sixteenth century heresy was made an ally of the Devil, then
magic became his lover. The era’s dramatic increase in anticlericalism,
doubt, and skepticism compelled church leaders more strongly to defend
their particular beliefs, sometimes by attacking the belief’s antithesis as
a diabolical inversion of the true faith. As targets Anabaptists and spiritual-
ists worked well for a time but after mid-century there still remained no
resolution to the confessional conflicts nor significant decrease in the
general populace’s attachment to “superstitious” practices. Bombarded
by clerical propaganda warning of the various Satanic dangers, lay
people seem to have become convinced of a diabolical conspiracy, but

118
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 119

reinterpreted it to best suit their daily existence. They therefore began

insisting more strenuously that the authorities deal with those neighbors
whom they long suspected of performing witchcraft, for this was a
demonic danger they could truly comprehend. Initially hesitant to deal
with these cases, local authorities were soon convinced, while many
clergy quickly depicted demonic witchcraft as the exact mirror image of
the true faith, and attacked it with extreme vigor. Whichever confession
could prove its power over skepticism and the Devil’s realm, was surely
the one approved by God.
The process outlined above was only one of many factors involved in
the turn from heretic to witch-hunting, which also included a worsening
climate in the second half of the sixteenth century, the further central-
ization of political and judicial authority on the part of princes, and the
deteriorating conditions for women. This chapter will necessarily
restrict itself to highlighting some of the major stages in the development
of the ultimately fearful stereotype of the demonic witch. These will
include: how church leaders demonized first learned magic (the occult
sciences) and then popular magic and witchcraft; a description of the
typical sixteenth-century trials against witches prior to the major witch
panics; and an analysis of the extraordinary cases of demonic possession
that proved so useful as religious propaganda. Throughout, we will be
concerned about the role of religious faith and conflict in the coalescing
of the demonic witch conspiracy by 1560.

The Reformation, Magic, and Science

Undoubtedly the most famous occult philosopher of the early Refor-

mation period was the Dutch physician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
of Nettesheim (1486–1535), author of two apparently contradictory
works: De occulta philosophia (The occult philosophy), published in 1533
although composed in 1510, and De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum
(The uncertainty and vanity of science), which appeared in 1530. The first
book praised the occult sciences and ritual magic, while the second
condemned these as vain in comparison with a simple, biblicist faith.
After studies at the Universities of Cologne and Paris, Agrippa began
lecturing on the Cabala in 1509 at Dôle (during this period he wrote
De occulta philosophia) and after 1512 at the University of Pavia, Italy, where
he may have obtained doctorates in law and medicine. Between 1524
and 1526 he acted as physician to Louise of Savoy, the Queen Mother of
120 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

France. From 1532 until just before his death in 1535 he was attached
to the court of the reform-minded Archbishop of Cologne. Agrippa’s
reputation as a magus was profound, an early Faust who, if Bodin can be
believed, was responsible for the spread of interest in both natural and
demonic magic. Agrippa’s actual beliefs are difficult to assess, although
he clearly belonged to that intriguing group of humanists that included
the Florentine Neoplatonists Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola
and the German Johannes Reuchlin, who sought through study of ancient
magical texts, such as the Hermetic corpus or the Hebrew Cabala, to
manipulate the secret natural powers within the cosmos and to uncover
the essential religious unity of humankind.
At the same time, Agrippa’s humanistic education tended toward
a pessimism with respect to establishing an unassailable philosophical
or scholastic system and a skepticism about “superstitious” practices and
beliefs. Agrippa apparently kept his Neoplatonic mysticism in an unre-
solved tension with his rationalistic skepticism. In this way, he could
condemn Inquisitors who accused poor women of witchcraft while still
maintaining a love affair with occult magic. Each of these intellectual
currents resulted in its own monograph, published in close proximity to
each other, although it was a wise move to publish De incertitudine prior
to De occulta philosophia, allowing him to use the former to counteract
charges that he was promoting illegal magic in the latter.1
For Agrippa, there were three worlds – elemental, celestial, intellec-
tual – each receiving influences from the one above it as the divine
virtues emanated downward as rays. Ceremonial magic (involving the
Cabala) was aimed at influencing the angelic beings of the highest realm,
celestial magic the stars of the middle realm, and natural magic the
elements of the lowest order.2 Agrippa believed his magic relied entirely
on good angelic beings and the divinely created cosmic forces, such
as planetary rays, and in no way involved the forbidden, dangerous
powers of demons. To him, magic “is a faculty of wonderful power, full
of most high mysteries. It contains the most profound contemplation of
things which are most secret, . . . and the knowledge of the whole of
nature. . . . This is the most perfect and principal branch of knowledge,
a sacred and more lofty kind of philosophy,” requiring an intense edu-
cation in natural philosophy, mathematics, astrology, and theology. 3
Agrippa’s Cabalistic methodology divided the Hebrew alphabet into
three divisions: twelve simple, seven double, and three “mothers”; the
first corresponded to the signs of the zodiac, the second to the planets,
and the third to three of the four elements (the Hebrews regarded air
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 121

as a spirit infusing the other three). While perhaps obscure to the modern
reader, for early modern educated people this system of correspond-
ences made sense. For, according to Agrippa, these letters played the
role of sacramental vessels containing the essence of the heavenly body,
much as the chalice was believed to contain the true blood of Christ.
“Accordingly,” Agrippa wrote, “the twenty-two letters are the basis of the
world and of all the creatures which exist and are named by them.”
Similarly, it was widely believed in Agrippa’s day that mathematics
provided indisputably direct knowledge about the universe; in Agrippa’s
words, through numbers “we succeed in discovering and understanding
everything knowable.” Numbers corresponded to cosmic reality; for
example, Agrippa believed that the herb cinquefoil could resist poison,
expel demons, and help expiation by virtue of its possessing five leaves.
One of these taken twice daily in wine could cure a one-day fever, while
a similar concoction of three leaves cured tertain fever, and four quartian,
and so forth. 4 And of course the numbers corresponded to letters, in
both the Hebrew and Latin alphabets, which gave rise to many intriguing
interpretations of holy writ and eschatological predictions. Analysis of
the sacred scriptures using both Cabala and numerology, moreover,
provided the magician with divine clues as to how the virtues of the
superior astral body could be drawn into the inferior earthly object.
Like Pico, Agrippa wove together his interest in magic with his non-
conventional religious views. Although he believed that the magic he
advocated worked “naturally”, i.e., by the powers inherent in heavenly
and earthly bodies, these powers functioned ultimately at the behest of
God who commanded his angels and other invisible divine powers so
that all things worked to maintain the divine harmonies. The name of
God, especially the ancient Hebrew four-letter Tetragrammaton
(IHVH) was likened to the four-letter Latinized name of Jesus, IESV,
which was believed to wield ultimate power over creation. Because Jewish
Cabalists never used this name, Agrippa believed their efforts were
futile. Instead, only the learned, humble, and devout Christian magi
who knew how to use the name of IESV, whether spoken verbally in
incantations or inscribed on a talisman, could expect the obedience
of the angels. For Agrippa, as for most of his Neoplatonic cohorts,
religion and magic were inextricably interwoven into a rich fabric of
immense color variation but essential unity of design. According to
Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Agrippa represented the “Renaissance dream of
rediscovering a submerged but divinely ordained wisdom that would
both confirm and revivify Christianity” based on the revival of the
122 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

ancient sources containing portions of the ultimate wisdom originally

possessed by Adam.5 This dream, outlined so eloquently in Pico’s Oration
on the Dignity of Man, posited that, like an alchemist, a truly accomplished
Christian philosopher could distil the essential spirit of unity underlying
all religions by a comparative reading of surviving sacred writings.
Ultimately, the approach immensely irritated orthodox churchmen by
promoting tolerance of other religions and challenging clerical monopoly
over divine power.
Comparable in many respects to Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Agrippa’s
De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum was a diatribe against all sorts of intel-
lectual activity that advocated reliance on the scriptures and on faith as
the sole source for truth. According to George Mora, Agrippa’s main
message was “the inability of human reason to grasp the essence of the
mysterious reality of the world and, consequently, the necessity for anyone
involved in the search for the ultimate entities to open his heart to the
infinite dimensions of the divine grace.”6 This uneasy alliance between
mysticism and skepticism reflected the growing crisis of Renaissance
scholarship, one that the religious Reformers sought to resolve by a firm
adherence to faith and a rejection of the mystical. In De incertitudine,
Agrippa recommended that “It is better therefore and more profitable
to be Idiotes, and knowe nothinge, to beleve by Faithe and charitee,
and to become next unto God, than being lofty & prowde through the
subtilties of sciences to fall into the possession of the Serpente.”7 Was
Agrippa sincere in this apparent repudiation of his magical writing?
That he published his two books almost contemporaneously suggests not.
Agrippa realized that the era of general tolerance for the Neoplatonic
speculations of mystics such as himself had ended with the Reformation
controversy. In an age of increasing intolerance, Nicodemite spiritualism
proved attractive, meshing neatly with ritual magicians’ obsession with
secrecy.8
It was in this contradictory realm of magic and skepticism that
Agrippa developed his attitude toward witches. Like almost all practi-
tioners of the occult sciences or natural magic, Agrippa sought to dispel
assumptions that he relied on demons for the performance of his craft,
although his post-mortem reputation as forerunner of Dr. Faustus
and rumors that he had kept a black dog as a demonic familiar showed
how ineffectual his efforts were. Thus he condemned necromancy and
the invocation of demons as horrible abuses of true magic, “entangled in
the craftes and errours of the deuils of hell” whose practitioners
deserved to be punished with fire.9 Even so, he was a prominent critic of
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 123

the methodology of Inquisitors and opposed the prosecution of women

for black magic, between 1518 and 1520 intervening successfully on
behalf of a poor woman accused of witchcraft in Metz. For Agrippa, only
learned men, not ignorant women, had the remotest possibility of
summoning demons.

Paracelsus

Renaissance Neoplatonists and occult scientists found themselves in

extreme danger of accusations of diabolical agency during the Reforma-
tion era. For a time, the activity of Renaissance occultists became more
secretive, more apologetic, and more liable to misinterpretation in
diabolical terms. Even so, some medical theorists and practitioners, most
notably the Swiss physician Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim,
known more simply as Paracelsus (1493–1541), were brave enough to
challenge accepted authorities such as Galen or Aristotle to forge new
approaches to understanding and treating disease. In real terms many of
the new cures were hardly improvements on the older medical models,
although Paracelsus claimed that his theory of the workings of the
human body was more in keeping with both the Bible and the empirical
treatment of the ill. He openly boasted that he had discovered many
of his treatments from village healers, and wherever he resided, he
challenged the local authorities to bring him their toughest medical
cases which their physicians could not cure. Even when he succeeded in
winning a funded position as a civic physician, his abrasive personality
and insistence that the Galenic medicine of the university was utterly
useless made far too many enemies, and he had to move on. His curatives,
moreover, relied heavily on mercury, the ingestion of which we now
know can be damaging, even lethal, although it proved useful in treating
syphilis. His theory of human physiology rejected the four humors
in favor of a three-fold conception encompassing mercury, salt, and
sulfur. Opposing the common belief that health was determined by
the stars, Paracelsus argued that illness was caused by the invasion of
external agents into the body. His treatments were mostly alchemical,
and it is thanks to the publication and dissemination of his medical texts
after his death that there was a major revival of alchemical medicine in
Europe.
What these later Paracelsian alchemists sought to do was to elevate
alchemy, which by the middle of the sixteenth century had a soiled
124 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

reputation as vaguely linked with heresy or popular magic, into a spiritual

quest for human perfection. Practitioners of this higher art, such as the
English poet/minister John Donne (1572–1631), the English physician
and occult philosopher Robert Fludd (1574–1637), or the Dutch
Paracelsian physician and Cabalist Francis Mercury van Helmont
(1614–98), insisted that the true objective of the sincere alchemist was
to discover the means to convert the human “from a lower to a higher
form of existence, from life natural to life spiritual,” while Christ’s
spiritual transformation of the individual corresponded to the action of
the alchemist’s “philosopher’s stone.”10 This alchemical product was
believed to provide the spiritual essence of reality and religion, a
curative for all illnesses and the means of prolonging life. For example,
Fludd suggested that the alchemist’s work was intended to transform
the practitioner “from an ordinary mortal immersed in the physical
world into a superior being fully conscious of the mystery of life
and death.”11 Ficino believed that the world spirit that infused creation
“was material enough to be consumed, inhaled, or absorbed in various
foods, drinks, perfumes, or sounds, each one of which possessed power
to ennoble the spirit of a practicing Magus.” 12 Even the antitrinitarian
heresy of the unfortunate Servetus was linked to his efforts to compre-
hend how the human’s spirit carried the power of life through the
body; his studies of the Hebrew conceptions of God, spirit, and air
convinced him that human life consisted in the interaction between
spirit/air and matter, with the blood carrying the spirit through the
lungs.13
Although not intended by its leading lights, the Reformation helped
shake rigid reliance on traditional authorities in a variety of fields,
including natural philosophy (science) and medicine, although in most
cases dissidents merely switched allegiance to other ancient authorities.
Most importantly, thinkers from a wide range of professions and fields
turned their attention to the quandary of religious competition and
conflict and to find a solution to religious discordance. Many prominent
unconventional medical or “scientific” theorists, such as Paracelsus,
Servetus, Johann Weyer, Isaac Newton, and Galilei Galileo, made “scientific
discoveries” as part of a religious quest to read the “Book of Nature” as
a companion to the Bible and as a means of bringing their empirical
study of the human body or the cosmos into harmony with their reli-
gious beliefs. How mainstream church and secular leaders responded to
these innovations determined to a large extent whether they would be
regarded as acceptable or as demonic.
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 125

The Reformation and Witchcraft

The Reformation’s sense of living on the eve of Christ’s return added

incredible urgency to the need to eradicate any hint of the diabolical
from Christian society. As Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell
have recently suggested, it is “within this eschatological interpretation
of a decaying world turned upside down during its Last Days that we
should consider the great European witch hunt.” 14 In this campaign of
cleansing, both ritual and popular magic were depicted as tools of
Satan’s apocalyptical assault on Christendom, although many learned
occultists sought to direct critical attention especially to women practi-
tioners, arguing that their weaker minds made it impossible for them
to perform the intricate spells without fatal errors and their perverse
wills made them easy prey for Satan. Others, such as Agrippa and his
disciple Johann Weyer, suggested that women who believed they had
successfully performed magical acts were merely deluded by the Devil,
for it was impossible for women to succeed in such endeavors even with
Satan’s assistance. Diabolical delusion or physical reality: this became the
question vigorously debated both within and between learned Protestant
and Catholic camps.
Two major positions were maintained with respect to the efficacy of
magic. First, the providentialist or moderate skeptic’s opinion followed
the Canon episcopi that the malicious activity of demons was limited to the
mental and spiritual spheres. As purely spiritual beings, demons could
not directly transgress the laws of nature, but they could cast illusions
on an individual’s senses to provide a phantasm of magical potency.
They could not transform a human into a werewolf or cause witches to
fly, but they could delude people into believing they had done so. Only
God, providentialists asserted, could mutate creation and perform true
miracles. Even so, those who thought they performed maleficent magic
against their neighbors were still guilty of blasphemous apostasy and
deserved punishment.
The second position was that propagated by “realists” such as Heinrich
Krämer: magicians or witches were able, with God’s permission and
through the agency of powerful demons, to perform the magic ascribed
to them. Even though there was considerable disagreement over such
details as whether witches could transform themselves into animals
or how precisely they could have sexual relations with the spiritual
bodies of demons, there was agreement that witches made real, binding
pacts with the Devil, flew to their sabbaths where they cavorted together,
126 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

worshiped and copulated with Satan and his fallen angels, conceived
and then murdered unbaptized infants for their magical ointments, and
plotted evil magic against others. In this scheme, confessions of accused
witches were taken at face value.
Both moderate skeptics and zealous realists therefore believed that
the Devil was very real, very powerful, and of malign intent. Both
affirmed that Satan sought out human agents to assist him in his
campaign of revenge against Christ. Both believed that these diabolical
agents needed to be dealt with by stringent means. While moderate
skeptics and realists were present in both Protestant and Catholic camps,
there was within the Protestant tradition a strong tendency to spiritualize
the crime of witchcraft and to depreciate the supposed maleficia per-
formed by witches. Thus diabolical and heretical aspects, such as the
renunciation of God, despising of the sacraments, and the worship of
the Devil at the sabbath, were front and center in their depiction of
witchcraft. Wolfgang Behringer suggests that in this spiritualized view,
“the witches no longer caused harm through their own powers, or even
with the aid of the Devil; rather, they were simply the indirect agents of
evil, through their wickedness.” Of greatest import was the religious
apostasy of those who believed they had made a pact with Satan. As
Christoph Mumprecht (1560–1620), an advisor to the Lutheran Count
Palatine Philipp Ludwig von Neuburg, wrote,

when one speaks of witchcraft, one understands by it all kinds of vice

that can be imagined, against all the commandments of God, which
come together and combine in the same, as idolatry, the most vicious
blasphemy, wanton rejection and despising of the word of God, of the
holy sacraments, the most wilful denial of God’s grace, of the Holy
Ghost, crimen laesae majestatis utriusque, the cruellest murder, theft,
unspeakable immorality, which far exceeds the sin of Sodom . . .15

The debate among Protestants was how to treat such apostates. Most
Reformers shied away from capital punishment unless there existed real
evidence of harm, but almost all agreed that such blasphemers had to be
converted to the true faith or exiled from the community, otherwise
God’s wrath would come crashing down. During visitations church leaders
discovered that the common folk still clung to the preternatural usage of
blessed objects, conjurations, and local magical experts for healing,
protection, and divination, including Catholic priests, when available.
Protestant demonologists therefore directed their energies to changing
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 127

these popular “superstitious” beliefs, rather than on a frontal assault

against the Catholic opponents. 16
The Lutheran Reformer of the Duchy of Württemberg, Johannes
Brenz, was the most famous proponent of the Protestant providentialist
position, arguing that misfortune, storms, and famines were God’s
way of warning Christians to stop sinning. In 1539 the controversy
surrounding a damaging hailstorm impelled Brenz to preach against
those of his congregants who blamed the storm on witches. Witches
who confessed to performing weather magic, he exclaimed, “confused
sequence with causal relationship,” for the Devil, perceiving that God
was about to chastize his people by a storm, prompted his witches to
perform their rituals so that he would receive credit and Christians not
seek repentance. Godless witches who spurned their baptism and gave
themselves over to the Devil deserved to be punished by death, but they
could bring neither storms nor pestilence.17
Brenz’ opinion was comparable to Ulricus Molitor’s and proved
increasingly influential among Protestants. At the same time, the decrees
of the Council of Trent compelled Catholic theologians to define their
views in ways clearly distinct from Protestants. Hence, by the 1560s there
was considerable pressure for Protestants to line up with proponents of
the providentialist position as a means of counteracting the Catholic
defense of realism which, as we shall see, included very dramatic displays
of Catholic power over demons. By the end of the century the Canon
episcopi posture was squarely identified by Catholics as indefensibly Prot-
estant, despite its long tradition within the medieval Catholic Church.
By the last decade of the sixteenth century it was in fact dangerous for
Catholic theologians to espouse it, as Cornelius Loos discovered to his
peril when in Trier in 1592/93 he was discovered to have composed
a manuscript against the witch-hunts. In an earlier context the opinions
of Loos, a vigorous opponent of Protestantism, would not have elicited
the violent response that it did, and he was fortunate indeed to escape
Trier alive.
Within the Protestant camps there was discord as to the various
aspects of the diabolical witch stereotype. But most Protestants, as well
as Mennonites, emphasized the inner working of the Devil in the indi-
vidual’s heart and mind, rather than his supposed assault on the human
body. Few, however, doubted that with God’s permission witches could
do some damage, although the emphasis here was on how a spell raised
a victim’s level of stress to the point of causing a humoral imbalance.
In this way the distance between Martin Luther, who suggested that the
128 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

spiritual bewitchment of heretics was the most deadly form of diabolical

assault, and extreme spiritualists such as David Joris, who completely
internalized the Devil, was one merely of degree.

Johann Weyer and Jean Bodin

Likewise, the differences between the moderate skeptical and zealous

realist positions were not great, as we can see from a quick survey of the
two most famous books published in the sixteenth century on the subject
of diabolical witchcraft: The Trickery of Demons (De praestigiis daemonum)
of Johann Weyer, published in 1563, and On the Demon-Mania of Witches
(De la démonomanie des sorciers) of Jean Bodin, which appeared in 1580
as a rebuttal of Weyer’s tome. Weyer (or Wier) was the court physician
of Cleves who opposed the burning of witches. Bodin was the brilliant
legal and political theorist whose writings reflected both an unorthodox
religious posture and an incredible zeal to persecute witches. Neither
of these writers fits neatly into a confessional box, although Weyer has
been described as a spiritualistic Lutheran, while Bodin was a very
unconventional Catholic. Their books greatly influenced the course of
the intellectual debate on witchcraft.
In 1530 the fourteen-year-old Weyer began a five-year appren-
ticeship with Agrippa, serving his master during the time that Agrippa
published his major tomes. Although master and student were very
different in personality – Agrippa contentious, Weyer conciliatory – both
evidenced a concern for the reform of the church without confessional
discord; an appreciation for the sway of emotion over bodily functions;
a humanists’ critique of scholasticism; and a criticism of Inquisitors.
Both found themselves defending women accused of witchcraft.18
Despite these similarities, Weyer’s published views on magic and science
diverged from his teacher’s and only rarely referred to Agrippa’s contro-
versial writings. After leaving Agrippa’s employ, Weyer continued his
studies in medicine at the University of Paris, although there is no
evidence that he completed his doctorate in medicine. After a brief time
at the University of Orléans, Weyer returned home to practice. In 1550
he was appointed the court physician of the Duke of Cleves, Jülich, and
Berg, a position which he maintained until his death. The relative
tolerance of Duke William V who was pursuing an Erasmian-style
reform of religious life in the duchy which included reducing supersti-
tious practices and accommodating Protestantism, proved a perfect fit
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 129

for Weyer’s irenic temperament and medical and theological interests.

In this atmosphere in 1561 he began composing De praestigiis which
explained witch confessions as the result of a delusional affliction, caused
by the Devil’s trickery on the minds of old women already mentally
disturbed by a humoral imbalance leading to melancholia. Weyer’s
immensely popular work went through several editions in several
languages, influencing many to dispute witch-hunting, although by the
beginning of the seventeenth century “Weyer’s arguments were in
abeyance and the witchcraft debate in Germany had become essentially
legal and jurisprudential in character.”19
Weyer’s major criticism of contemporary demonology was based on
his somewhat misogynistic belief that the Devil was too powerful to
require the assistance of old women. Diabolical calamity, he contended,

occurs only because of the demons’ own malicious wills and with God’s
permission, in accordance with His hidden plan, so that these persons
might be tested or chastised and corrected. . . . This sly old fox needs
no one’s help, being abundantly capable on his own of mocking men,
blinding them mentally and physically, torturing them with unnatural
maladies, striking them with ulcers, and disturbing the air in many
ways. We read in the Malleus that the Devil works evil by himself and
does not need the consent of a malicious woman. But he also seeks
the ruin of the witch, and therefore he somehow compels her to coop-
erate. . . . Meanwhile, however, certain deluded old women are con-
vinced (and so confess) that crimes of this sort are perpetrated by
them, and that these people are severely tormented, world affairs are
thwarted, and all kinds of diabolical wonders are brought about.

Despite their sincere belief in their magical powers, witches, Weyer

concluded, were merely

beleaguered by the demon, and their minds so seriously impaired by

witchcraft, and their brains – the organs of their thoughts and imagin-
ings – so firmly ensnared by rare and deceptive phantasms and forms
because of their unbelief . . . that they know of nothing else; subjected
to torture, they confess to crimes which are purely imaginary on their
part, and which truly proceed from Satan, with God’s permission.20

Thus, demons possessed and harmed humans, but solely with the per-
mission of God who did not allow them to use humans to perform their
130 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

maleficia. Instead, they befuddled the minds of old women suffering

from an excess of the melancholic humor to think that they had become
the willing slaves of the Devil with enormous magical powers at their
command. For this delusion, Weyer prescribed medical and spiritual
treatment, not judicial punishment.
Weyer sought to find natural explanations for the many supposedly
preternatural events that he himself had witnessed or heard about. For
example, to explain demoniacs’ vomiting of unnatural objects such as
pins, nails, or pacts written in blood on paper or cloth, Weyer referred to
his medical examination of individuals who had accidentally swallowed
pins or stones to prove that such regurgitation was impossible, hence
these demoniacs were frauds. Moreover, the claim that a witch’s guilt
could be proven by having her speak a blessing over the bewitched was
also false, contradicting as it did the well-known medical canon of
administering “contraries against contraries” and on Jesus’ words in
the gospels, “if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself ”
(Matt.12:26, RSV). There was only one reason why someone afflicted by
demonic torment or illness would be healed under these circumstances:

after the Devil (with God’s permission) has tormented these bodies
because of the victim’s unbelief, he gives way – not under duress but
freely and of his own will – in order to confirm the afflicted and the
bystanders in their unbelief, and also those who have learned of this
strange ailment, and finally the magistrate. I grant that he pretends to
be under compulsion, the better to deceive and ensnare, and to make
people believe more unhesitatingly that the poor women who recite
the words are witches – though they are really innocent.21

What better way to entrap people than by giving them the illusion of
magical powers?
Weyer’s efforts to defend women accused of witchcraft did not immedi-
ately put the brakes on the rising tide of witch-hunting, although there
developed a school of promoters of his views that became increasingly
influential in Protestant circles. However, his views reflected his desire
to promote a relative degree of religious toleration. His own con-
fessional position is obscure, although he has been described as an
“Erasmian minded Lutheran,” and as a Nicodemite spiritualist who had
learned from Agrippa how to “to keep his religious views to himself.”22
To support his desire to promote religious tolerance, he quoted Erasmus to
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 131

the effect that heretics should not be killed, that healing was preferable
to harshness, and that a check should be placed on the savagery of
Inquisitors.23 Weyer himself called the persecutors of witches “the special
slaves of the Devil; some may call them diviners, but for me they shall
stand as the real evildoers.”24 Stuart Clark suggests that “Weyer was
inspired to attack the prosecution of witches by precisely those ideals of
moderation, even toleration, that the period that experienced it swept
away.”25 For example, in the foreword to the second, German edition of
De praestigiis, Weyer lamented that members of one religion refused to
tolerate alternate interpretations, even though there “is no divisiveness
in the chief articles of our Christian faith but only in the form or time or
some changes of the ceremonies or religion or words or matters that do
not touch the saving Articles of the true, established faith.”26 Based on
the correspondence from his spiritualistic younger brother, Matthias
Wier (1521–60), Johann’s religious attitudes emphasized inner faith as
opposed to rigid dogmatism. He was also interested in the writings of
spiritualists such as Hendrik Niclaes and may have corresponded with
David Joris. 27
Unlike Weyer, Bodin’s unconventional religious views – which also
leaned toward a spiritualized, universalist church – did not lead him to
reject the reality of witch confessions of diabolical activity. Instead, he
claimed that his personal involvement in the 1578 trial of the witch
Jeanne Harvillier (from Verbery near Compiègne) convinced him to
write his book as a means of neutralizing the skepticism that this case and
others was arousing within the French intelligentsia. According to
Jeanne’s confession, her mother had not baptized her as an infant but
had instead committed her to the Devil, so that when Jeanne reached
the age of twelve, the normal age for sacramental confirmation, her
mother presented her to the Devil in the form of a tall, dark man dressed
in black with spurs, boots, and sword. From that moment until her arrest
at the age of fifty she and the demon were lovers, sometimes holding
their trysts in her marriage bed with her husband sleeping next to them;
apparently she alone could see this evil angel. Neighbors suspected her
of practicing witchcraft, including the poisoning of a man with powders
provided by the Devil. After she was convicted, she described how her
diabolical consort helped her fly to the witches’ assemblies where a great
crowd assembled to worship a man in black they called Beelzebub and
engage in sexual orgies, after which the “Prince preached to them to
trust in him, that he would take revenge on their enemies and that he
would make them happy.” All the judges in this case advocated the death
132 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

penalty, although one wished her to receive a merciful death by hanging;

he was overruled and she was condemned to be burned alive. It was the
relative moderation of the dissenting judge that motivated Bodin to take
up quill to eradicate such dangerous skepticism:

And because there were some who found the case strange and almost
unbelievable, I decided to write this treatise . . . to serve as a warning to
all those who read it, in order to make it clearly known that there are
no crimes which are nearly so vile as this one, or which deserve more
serious penalties. Also partly to respond to those who in printed books
try to save witches by every means, so that it seems Satan has inspired
them and drawn them to his line in order to publish these fine books.
One was Pietro d’Abano [a controversial late thirteenth-century pro-
fessor at the University of Padua who died before an inquisition into
his views was complete], a doctor, who tried to teach that there are no
spirits; it turned out later that he was one of the greatest witches in
Italy.28

Another case which Bodin cited was that of the fifteenth-century theo-
logian at the University of Paris, Guillaume de Line (William Adeline),
condemned as a witch in December, 1453. He too confessed to attending
the witches’ sabbath, worshiping the Devil in the shape of a man or goat,
and “renouncing all religion.” According to Bodin, De Line “was found
in possession of a written agreement that he had with Satan, setting out
mutual promises, among which the Doctor was obliged to preach pub-
licly that everything people said about witches was only a fable and an
impossibility and that one must not believe any of it.” The result of the
professor’s skeptical sermons was of course the multiplication of witches
“since the judges gave up their pursuit of witches.” 29 Bodin concluded
that deniers of the reality of demonic witchcraft must be mad, for “it is
hardly less of an impiety to call into doubt the possibility of witches than
to call into doubt the existence of God.”30 His opponents on this issue,
such as “the Protector of Witches” Weyer, were mad and godless and
implicit in the Devil’s conspiracy, therefore “one must keep from
listening to those who preach that what is said about witches is only an
illusion.”31
While one might gather that Bodin’s position accorded fully with the
Catholic realist position on witchcraft, such was not the case. At points he
acknowledged the validity of some of the Protestants’ arguments, such as
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 133

Brenz’ theory on how the Devil informed his witches of an impending

storm to make it appear that they had caused it, suggesting that this was
merely one way the Devil worked. Moreover, his solution to the problem
of witchcraft deeply disturbed many zealous French Catholics who were
engaged in a life and death struggle against Huguenots. Along with
advocating the harshest legal measures against witches and blasphemers,
Bodin suggested that the best way to prevent witchcraft from arising in
the first place was for each father to lead his family in morning and
evening prayers, to give thanks to God before meals, “and to give at least
one or two hours one day of the week to have the Bible read by the head
of the family in the presence of the whole family.” 32 And despite the
fearmongering that his portrayal of diabolical activity encouraged,
Bodin proposed that another remedy was “not to fear Satan at all, nor
witches. For there is, perhaps, no greater way to give power to the Devil
over oneself than to fear him. . . . Nonetheless, the surest and most effect-
ive way of all, is to have faith in God, and to trust in Him like a high and
unassailable fortress.”33 Luther could not have said this better, and
Weyer concluded his own tome with the following:

Let us not voluntarily enslave our bodies to Satan and make them his
dwelling-place. More than this, by our true faith and the sanctity of
our lives let us shut off his every avenue of attacking us, continually
imploring the assistance of God’s Son with fervent prayer and fortifying
ourselves vigilantly . . . with the living word of God and the help of the
Holy Spirit, so that even if our sworn enemy boldly attacks us while we
are enclosed within these fortifications (as within a solid wall), he will
not break through this mighty defense and take us by storm.34

To advocate lay reading of the Bible and the repelling of Satan by

prayer and faith was, in this era of confessional conflict, identified almost
exclusively as a Protestant approach. Thus, despite the enmity between
them, Bodin and Weyer were not far apart on the religious solution to
the Devil’s assaults, but contended primarily on whether or not witches
were victims of diabolical illusions, requiring medical treatment and
religious instruction, or willing participants in a real, diabolical conspiracy
that threatened civic order, punishable by death. The question really
was where to draw the line against skepticism. Bodin defended ortho-
doxy by proving the reality of the demonic realm, a strategy Weyer
feared could backfire as more and more diabolical activities were
explained as natural events.
134 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Persecution of Witches during the Early Reformation, 1520–60

Soon Bodin’s exotic realm of demonic witches overwhelmed Weyer’s

cautions, and Europe was gripped in a persecution mania. Prior to this
revival of witch-hunting in the 1560s, trials of witches had more or less
followed Weyer’s models. For example, after the notorious trials of
heretical witches in Arras had ended in 1462, there were only scattered
trials of magicians before the Netherlandic inquisitorial tribunals, such
as the Le Quesnoy possessions of 1491; four “Waldensian” women tried
at Bouvignes and Aureloyes between 1510 and 1512; and the trials of
Marye de Beauvolz and Pierette Pourreau in Fleurus in 1524 and 1527.
These latter two were charged with “Waldensian heresy” because they
possessed bad reputations (“vaudoise et femme de très maluaise vie”)
and had performed harmful magic against their neighbors’ animals and
infants. Both were eventually tortured into confessing their guilt and
burned at the stake. 35 Yet the authorities did not pursue the supposed
conspiracy of their “Waldensianism.” By this time the authorities had their
hands full with a real heretical conspiracy of blasphemous Lutherans.
Martin Luther himself approved of the execution of four witches at
Wittenberg in 1541, while just a few years later his major Protestant
opponent, John Calvin, was advising the Genevan authorities to “extir-
pate the race of witches” from its rural hinterland, leading to several
trials and three executions, mostly having to do with charges of plague
spreading. 36 Preoccupied as they were with the Reformation heresies
and conflicts, the authorities showed great reluctance to deal with
accusations of witchcraft. Similarly, there was a scarcity of publications of
works on the subject (no known printings of the Malleus Maleficarum
between 1521 and 1569). Yet witchcraft remained of concern within
the local community, and people continued by a variety of means to
counteract evil magic. It is essential to remember that, as Scribner puts
it, “popular magic, sorcery or witchcraft were embedded in the texture
of daily life.”37 Most day-to-day witchcraft was rather mundane, such as
the cursing of milk so that it curdled or of cream so that it could not be
churned into butter; the hexing of various agricultural or artisanal imple-
ments; the creation or redirection of storms to destroy crops or cause
fires; the effecting of enmity between friends or love between acquaint-
ances; the discovery of stolen objects or of the perpetrator of a nefarious
deed; the procurement of abortifacients; or the spread of disease to
humans or animals. Until stringent laws were passed forbidding any
magical activity, the bewitched found relief through the ministrations of
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 135

a wise woman or cunning man, or applied pressure on the suspected

witch to undo the spell. The Reformation strongly discouraged recourse
to these traditional remedies, leading victims to seek legal redress with
greater insistence.
In 1536 in Blankenheim, Saxony, the seventy-year-old Else Weissensee
was arrested on charges of witchcraft. Through torture and questioning
she maintained her innocence and the governor released her, ignoring
threats from the commune to bring the case to the Elector of Saxony. At
other times the authorities were convinced of an accused’s guilt, as in
1529 when a woman called “old Roderin” confessed to a court in Saxony
that she had magically stolen milk from her neighbors, an art she had
learned from Hans Moller von Dippertswald, who seems to have made
a decent living selling magically potent objects such as mandrake roots,
thumbs of hanged thieves, or potions against animal pestilence. While
Moller was punished only for deceit, his disciple was turned into
a diabolical witch, charged also with flying to a witches’ sabbath in the
form of a cat (that all of her seven “accomplices” were already dead
meant that this case did not escalate into a witch-hunt), and burned at
the stake. The difference in treatment, as we have seen, was not due
solely to her gender, but centered especially on “old Roderin’s” bad
reputation among her neighbors.
Between 1500 and 1560 there were very few efforts to uncover a large,
diabolical conspiracy of witches. Instead, legal proceedings were con-
ducted against individual witches, typically but not exclusively an old
woman with a reputation for magic or malicious behavior, and the trial
normally ended with non-capital sentences. Some examples from the
Netherlands will illustrate these points.
In the northern Netherlands witch-hunting never reached the epidemic
proportions of its neighbors to the south and east. The closest that the
later Dutch Republic came to a major panic occurred in the eastern
province of Groningen where twenty accused witches were executed in
1547 and five more in 1562, both incidents spurred by news of witch
trials in the neighboring portions of the western Empire. In the province
of Holland, trials of witches started roughly in 1500, although most were
restricted to individual witches or their immediate accomplices.
The earliest known cases of sixteenth-century witchcraft trials revolved
around mundane accusations of bewitchment of milk, butter churns,
and dye pots, actions that impeded individual economic activity. There
were a few accusations involving diabolical elements, such as those arising
from Schiedam in 1504 wherein some residents complained that they
136 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

had seen a woman perform a ceremony of bewitchment upon her

husband and mother-in-law which involved lit candles and consumption
of a “communion” of magically blessed bread and cheese, after which the
“Devil had visited her on the second day of Easter.”38
Around mid-century belief in witchcraft remained strong in this highly
urbanized province and, until trials were suppressed around 1610, over
300 individuals claimed to have been bewitched. Many others turned
to non-judicial remedies, including consulting counter-magicians. In
one case Katharina Galen was accused in 1530 in Haarlem of bewitching
a dye tub. Evidence was provided by a priest from Delft, Jan Vos, who
was hired by the dyer to identify the culprit. The priest placed some ingre-
dients into a pot over the fire, spoke a conjuration, and waited for the
guilty party to begin suffocating. When the dyer rushed to Katharina,
whom she obviously suspected, she discovered the woman to be suffering
the appropriate distress. Katharina’s desperate plea for her accuser to
“go home, it will no longer happen” was treated by the city’s sheriff as
sufficient evidence to proceed to trial, although the magistrates disagreed
and released her. Katharina’s reputation as a witch, however, endured,
so that in 1543 the sheriff compelled her to bless a bewitched woman.
She was also supposed to have caused the illness of another woman who
refused to work for her, while a cook who declined to roast some wormy
mutton for her discovered his property to be similarly crawling with
worms. With such evidence, on October 7, 1549 the sheriff arrested
Katharina along with some other accused, but she pointed out that
the Haarlem magistrates in 1530 had thrown out the original charges
because the evidence against her had been procured by illegal means,
as the law forbade the use of divination to identify witches. The Court
was persuaded and on January 17, 1550, set her free.
In a contemporaneous rural case from Spijkenisse, a 48-year-old
peasant woman, Aechtgen Hughendr suddenly developed terrible pain
in her legs which became immovably contorted as if tied in a knot.
On the advice of her maidservant whose mother had apparently suf-
fered from the same ailment, a flask of Aechtgen’s urine was dispatched
to a neighboring priest who then referred her to a medical practitioner
who diagnosed the cause as excessively cold and impure blood. Suspect-
ing unnatural causation instead, Aechtgen consulted a Mr. Symon of
Rotterdam, who confirmed bewitchment and came to Spijkenisse to
treat her. His ministrations began with readings from a Latin and Dutch
magical text, after which he heated Aechtgen’s urine in a never used pot.
Since the liquid did not boil over, Symon said that witchcraft was
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 137

involved, but would only identify the culprit as a “stern whore” who lived
nearby. Another priest replayed the urine test, confirmed the diagnosis
of witchcraft, but declined to reveal the witch’s name because of his
religious vows. In May, 1551, the peripatetic soothsayer Dirck Pieterszn
of Nijmegen arrived, caught up on all of the local gossip while residing
in the village inn, and was taken by the innkeeper to treat Aechtgen.
After an eye examination and the usual urine test, he proclaimed the
guilty party to be the elderly Anna Jacopsdr and her adult daughter
Tryn Pietersdr.
Of the two it was the widowed mother who possessed a bad reputation
among her neighbors. When a married couple took her to court for
non-payment of debt and for grazing her cattle on their pasture without
permission, an enraged Anna placed her fingers on the door of their
house and uttered, “if I must swear [my innocence], then you will not
live until May.” The wife was terrified but her husband seemed unper-
turbed, saying sarcastically, “well, now I know how long I will live.”
When he died suddenly, his wife blamed Anna. Aechtgen herself bore
a grudge, as ten years earlier her husband had bought from Anna’s son
a heifer which died shortly after Anna had prophesized that they would
profit little from this purchase. Finding herself now under suspicion
of maleficia, Anna sought to win the other villagers to her side, saying to
one “God bless you,” believing that a true witch could not express such
blessings. During a spinning session, Anna told the other women
present that witches have “a little hole in their head, for the Devil cuts
their chrism [the holy oil used in baptism] out of them.” She then opined
that “witchcraft originates from great poverty and that the women who
perform witchcraft fornicate with the Devil . . . and that the Devil comes
as a young man with a scarlet hat on his head to the women and deceives
them.” At least this was what her husband had told her about witches
elsewhere. Despite her efforts, the village leaders supported the sooth-
sayer and forced Anna and her daughter to read a blessing from a magic
book over the suffering Aechtgen, after which they drank three cups of
holy water and were kicked out of the house. The next day all three
magical performers – Anna, her daughter, and the soothsayer – were
arrested. In an unusual twist, the two women were released while Dirck
was whipped and exiled from Holland for his forbidden magic.
The vast majority of witch accusations were made against someone
possessing a long reputation for witchcraft. In some cases witch accus-
ations were blatant efforts to seek revenge against a political or economic
rival, as Marie Holleslootendr, a member of Amsterdam’s ruling families,
138 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

found out. The story began with the failed Anabaptist uprising in 1535
for which the current burgomasters and aldermen, dominated by the
Heynen and Boelen families, were blamed for being too soft on the
heretics. In this climate, Willem Coeck, who took a ruthless line toward
heretics, rose in influence until 1538 when the civic deck was reshuffled
in favor of the loyal Bam, Occo, and Buyck families, who pursued a vig-
orous persecution of Anabaptists, eventually pushing Coeck to the side.
Marie Holleslootendr was related to both sides but most prominently to
the victors, having married into the Bam family, and her sons won high
positions in civic government. Her brother, Jan Ysbrantzn Holleslooten
had married a Boelen, hence he and his son-in-law Jan Pieterszn lost
political influence.
Pieterszn tried to make the best of a bad situation by converting an oil
mill into a brewery, but his beer kept souring, even though that of his
next-door neighbor, using the same water and grain, was flourishing.
This successful brewer was none other than one of Marie Holleslootendr’s
sons, Cornelis Jacobszn Bam. At every turn, Pieterszn believed, his aunt
was frustrating his ambitions and in July 1547 he hired a 26 year-old
soothsayer, Jacob Judoci de Rosa of Kortrijk, to identify the source of
bewitchment. De Rosa, a former damask weaver then teacher of French,
had learned the craft of curing bewitchment from an Antwerp sooth-
sayer in 1545 and was equipped with the magic book of Cornelius
Agrippa and one ascribed to the ancient King Solomon, as well as a mag-
ical ring which confined a powerful spirit. With these accoutrements
De Rosa and his wife had traveled the Low Countries identifying witches
and removing spells until Jan Pieterszn invited De Rosa to Amsterdam.
While there, De Rosa gained another client, the ironmonger and magis-
trate Willem Coeck, who likewise believed his house to be bewitched
since his star was waning. Fatefully, De Rosa said that the same woman
had bewitched both locales.
Both clients applied considerable pressure on De Rosa to confirm
their already held suspicions that the witch was none other than Marie
Ysbrant Holleslootendr. De Rosa, sensing the political realities better
than his clients, delayed as long as he could; then he publicly identified
Marie Holleslootendr as the witch and quickly fled the city. As sus-
pected, the city’s sheriff ordered his immediate arrest and when
De Rosa was captured in Tiel, Guelders, for another incident of sooth-
saying, Holleslootendr used her political connections to ensure that he
not escape punishment. On July 14, 1548, De Rosa was condemned to
a whipping and exile, his books were burned, and his ring melted.
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 139

Despite this, he did not retire, appearing in later trial accounts else-
where.39
In all of these cases, and hundreds of others across Europe, feelings of
hostility were readily transformed into suspicions of bewitchment. Many
of these early cases were part of larger disputes among neighbors and
families, while there was little of the religious conflicts that were raging
at the time. There was another form of diabolical activity, however, that
would bring the religious battle into the forefront and heighten religious
tensions considerably: demonic possession.

Demoniacs and Confessional Conflict

Learned demonological theory distinguished clearly between demoniacs

who were involuntarily possessed by an evil spirit and witches who made
a pact with the Devil and were his willing accomplices. Demoniacs were
therefore treated with exorcisms while alleged witches faced judicial
action. Often victims of possession accused someone else of having sent
a demon into them, blurring the theoretical line between demoniac and
witch. In the 1560s especially, the debate about demonic possession
climaxed with a number of prominent possessions that were deeply
entangled in the religious conflicts which had helped create the psycho-
logical conditions behind such ecstatic behavior and which reshaped
the possessions into a spectacular feature of religious propaganda.40
Even in regions where the Catholic authorities were able to contain the
Reformation, as in Italy, there were outbreaks of demonic possession.
In one case from Rome in 1554, eighty-two women were so strongly
possessed by demons that a French monk’s efforts at exorcising them
proved fruitless. During one session, the monk demanded that the
demons tell him why they had entered these women. According to Jean
Bodin, our source for this story, the demons responded that “the Jews
had sent them into the bodies of these women (who were mostly
Jewesses) angry, they said, at the fact that they had been baptized.” He
then recorded that Pope Paul IV (1555–9) would have banished the
entire Jewish community, which he despised, were it not for a Jesuit’s
caution that people did not have the power to send demons into others.
Paul IV, a former Roman Inquisitor, was a passionate prosecutor of
Protestants and enforced the segregation and harsh taxation of Rome’s
Jews, reversing his predecessor’s relative tolerance. This outbreak of
demonic possession therefore occurred within a climate of intensified
140 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

religious conflict and intolerance, against both heretics and Jews. Bodin’s
purpose in telling this story was to reinforce belief in the reality of the
women’s symptoms, such as speaking foreign languages, for “atheists”
(such as Weyer) who denied that there are devils “cannot claim either
that melancholy teaches one to speak Greek, Hebrew, or Latin to a
woman who has never learned anything.”41 Undoubtedly the anxiety
aroused among the Jews by the new repressive measures was a formative
factor behind this collective ecstatic behavior.
The frequency of demonic possessions rose across Europe during the
1550s and 1560s paralleling the escalation of religious polemics and
conflict. With its devastating and bloody religious warfare, France was
the site of some of the most spectacular exorcisms which assisted the
efforts of zealous Catholic propagandists to demonize their religious
opponents. The first, and most influential of these public exorcisms
began on the afternoon of November 3, 1565, when in a village of
Picardy, Nicole Aubrey (Obrey), a young woman of fifteen or sixteen,
saw the spirit of her deceased grandfather appear from his grave and
enter her, begging her to release him from Purgatory by completing the
masses and pilgrimages that he had left undone when he had died
suddenly without last rites. The family completed most of these, yet the
possession reoccurred, so the local priest was called in. Uncertain of the
spirit’s true identity, the priest called in a Dominican who declared
the spirit to be an “Ange mauvais et Sathanique . . . un Diable” who, when
conjured in the name of Jesus, revealed itself as Beelzebub. A conse-
crated Host was held up before Nicole’s face, causing her to become
“hideously horrible to see, frightful to hear [and] incredibly hard and
stiff to the touch.” Beelzebub accused the audience of various vices
and identified the Protestants as his servants. No exorcism seemed to
provide permanent relief, so early in the New Year Nicole was sent to
Laon. 42 Here the ecclesiastical authorities escorted her each day in
a great procession to the cathedral where she was exorcised before
a large crowd. Symptoms of demonic possession now included the ability
to speak in foreign tongues and superhuman strength, so that one time
when the Host was brought to her she broke the hold of several men
and leapt high into the air. Each performance ended with a temporary
deliverance involving a Eucharistic wafer.
Realizing the threat to their anti-Catholic magic position, the Protest-
ants decried the possession and exorcisms as a hoax and tried to stop
them, but the exorcists forced Beelzebub to proclaim even louder that
he was the Prince of the Huguenots and to describe how some of his
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 141

Protestants had stolen, cut up, boiled, and burned a consecrated Host.
According to one witness, the demon seethed, “I with my obstinate
Huguenots will do Him [Christ] more evil than the Jews did!”43 During
one exorcism wherein Beelzebub chided his Protestants for keeping
themselves covered during the elevation of the Host, “the Catholics
and Calvinists looked at each other, both fearing a massacre, and then
they all rushed out of the cathedral.”44 Despite the efforts of Protestant
leaders to discredit the goings on, some Huguenots were convinced
and reconverted. The Huguenot Prince of Condé ordered Nicole
imprisoned, but she was released shortly thereafter by the king. Finally,
on February 8, 1566, Beelzebub left Nicole’s body for the last time
in such convincing fashion that one Protestant eyewitness, Florimond
de Raemond (a future member of the Parlement of Bordeaux), recon-
verted, describing the scene in the following fashion:

Finally Beelzebub, conjured by the presence of the precious body of

Jesus Christ [the Host], left and quit his prison [Nicole’s body] after
having made smoke and caused two claps of thunder, leaving a thick
fog that encircled the belltowers of the church, and all those in attend-
ance were delighted at such a great marvel. How long, oh impenitent
souls, will you rot in your incredulity and abuse the patience of God?45

Very quickly news of this amazing victory of Catholic realists over the
Devil, doubters, and Protestants spread throughout Europe, becoming
known as the “Miracle of Laon.” Sensational pamphlets were published
from all quarters, even from the Catholic spiritualist Guillaume de Postel
who came to regard the miracle as the herald of the new spiritual age.46
Most Catholic polemicists used it to condemn religious toleration as
a plot of the Devil. The Laon exorcism also seems to have helped spark
interest in demonic possessions both in France and elsewhere in Europe,
in Germany adding fuel to the fire of the polemical debate over pedo-
baptismal exorcism that coincided with a noticeable rise of possession
cases there.
Even in highly urbanized realms, such as the Netherlands, more than
a few Catholic monks and priests supplemented their living by performing
exorcisms and various magical services, and there were some Protestant
clergy and Mennonite elders who did likewise, although ostensibly as
medical practitioners. When the States of Holland complained to the
Bishop of Utrecht about ignorant priests who were not distinguishing
between the sacraments, which were supposed to work without fail, and
142 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

the sacramentals and abjurations used in exorcism, which did not

possess automatic efficacy, the Bishop claimed he could do little to curb
such clerical dabbling in magic.
His response was understandable, for Catholic sacramental thinking
ran parallel to magical practice. The booklets of exorcisms composed for
priests were in some respects comparable to ritual magic texts. For example,
around mid-century some Franciscans near Dordrecht composed a manu-
script Book of Exorcisms (Liber exorcismorum). This collection of abjurations,
conjurations, and spells began with the typical means of spiritual prepar-
ation for the exorcist, then turned to the blessings or benedictions that
the cleric could use to heal eye ailments or the falling sickness, to avert
storms, lightning, and hail, to identify thieves, or to lift magical spells
and curses. Also described was the technique for the urine test, as were
various cures for bewitchment, mostly concoctions of herbs, wine,
honey, consecrated incense, and a touch of holy water. As a protective
against further assaults, the exorcist was to place around the sufferer’s
neck a wax Agnus Dei (a likeness of Christ as a lamb bearing a cross).
Unconventionally, the writer suggested that it “might also be very effective
to baptize the patient a second time.” To dispel a curse on a butter
churn, the priest needed to perform a mass, wash his hands while reciting
John 1:1 (a very popular text in Christian magic), utter some special
prayers, make the sign of the cross, and finish off with some holy water.47
Franciscans were clearly viewed as magical experts, for during the 1541
witchcraft trial of Engel Dirksdr, Amsterdam’s magistrates and sheriff
sought the advice of the local Franciscans as to how to avoid being
bewitched by the accused. The Franciscans gave them the name of
Brother Gerrit van Zutfen of the Utrecht house, and a city alderman and
secretary were sent to consult him. On January 10, 1542, Dirksdr was
burned at the stake. 48 Clearly the Catholic Church sought to monopolize
control over the supernatural and magical realms, and could not tolerate
lay people who sought to use such supernatural power, just as it could
not allow them to perform the sacraments or preach.

The Devil in the Images

The Calvinists planned a frontal assault on these monopolistic claims

by separating religion entirely from the magical. In the Low Countries
they were growing in confidence and in the summer of 1566 targeted
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 143

church buildings for a great act of cleansing of idolatrous religious

images and sacred objects, an act that would prove the utter impotence
of the Catholic clergy. For the Catholics, the destruction of such icons
was much more than an affront to artistic sensibilities but a direct attack
on Christ, Mary, and the saints and a proof of the iconoclasts’ nascent
atheism. The Calvinist iconoclastic fury was as ritually staged as Catholic
exorcisms, and possessed a comparable intent: to prove tangibly that
images of saints were inanimate and undeserving of veneration. An
anonymous news report of the first wave of iconoclasm in Antwerp in
August of 1566 illustrates this point quite clearly. Events began
on August 18, 1566 during a feast honoring the Virgin Mary during
which her large wooden image, richly decorated as queen of heaven, was
carried about in procession. Upon her return to the Our Dear Lady
Cathedral, some spectators called out to her, “Mary, Mary, this is your
last meal; Mary, Mary, this is your last procession.” The next day a group
of reform-minded folk entered the church singing Psalms (the only
genre of hymn Calvinists permitted). In 1550s’ France such “shocking”
behavior had led to religious violence, and it did here as well. After
warning all citizens to stay indoors, the iconoclasts set to work, pulling
down all images from the Cathedral and then moving on to the other
churches. The sheriff arrived with some troops, but discovering that
the violence was directed “only against the idols” and not people, he
decided only to ensure that matters escalate no further. Throughout the
night the iconoclasts destroyed all accessible images and windows with
incredible speed.
In the morning a great pile of images was collected in the cathedral
square. Onto this were thrown vessels containing blessed salt, holy oil,
and holy water, as well as the “sacrament houses” containing conse-
crated Hosts that had not been consumed during Mass. Then, like
executioners finishing off the wounded, the iconoclasts moved about the
sacred objects stabbing, chopping, and smashing them, so that not
a single one was left whole. Not one saint cried out in protest; not
a single “sacrament house” oozed blood or water. All were very clearly
inanimate, without sentience. Saints’ images had hands, but they could
not reach out, they had ears but could not hear, feet, but could not run
from their enemies. They were dead, and as such, required a burial.
On August 22 and 23 they were transported on wagons to the city’s
mass burial field and buried. In their desecration of consecrated Hosts
Calvinists performed the same act attributed to Jews, except in this case
the Hosts did not bleed. 49
144 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Similarly, during the second iconoclastic storm in Amsterdam in

September, 1566, after tossing their purloined statues, altarpieces, and
pictures on a great heap, participants said of each, “here is such an
image which was famed to perform so many miracles,” revealing that
the material object held no such power at all. Then some of the activists
gathered in the Old Church to desecrate sacramental exorcism and
baptism, calling out to the priest, “cease with your exorcising of the Devil
from the children. You have deceived the world too long with your
falsehood. Baptize in the name of Jesus, just as the apostles did.”50 By
such means the Calvinists performed a ritual drama of desacralization,
attacking both the Catholic realist interpretation of sacramental power
and popular usage of it.

A Bewitched Orphanage

In 1566 in Amsterdam the intense religious conflict intersected with

fears of witches in a profoundly disturbing fashion. By this year many
prominent Amsterdamers who had been excluded from political office
were openly supporting the local Calvinist community which on July 8,
1566 began their own preaching and worship services just outside city
walls. Rumors of another religious revolt greater than that of 1535 ran
through Amsterdam, confirmed when in August and September the
Calvinists stormed the city’s churches. Such tensions were readily
manipulated. Earlier, on January 14, 1566, the city council noted that
a large number of inmates of the city’s orphanage (thirty in some accounts,
seventy in others) were seized by a “special passion” that was drawing
large crowds of curious onlookers to the orphanage, hindering the efforts
of the institution’s administrators to deal with the problem. The city
effected to dissipate rumors of demonic activity by isolating the victims
and describing their affliction as a miserable mental ailment, but to no avail,
as by June the stories of demonic possession were widespread, detailing
how the demons forced their victims into horrible contortions, uncon-
trollable singing, and violent vomiting of pieces of iron, glass, hair, and
nails. Efforts at medical treatment and exorcism failed.
Since all of the afflicted orphans were from well-established families
and had been apprenticed out to various of the city’s craftsmen or shop-
keepers, they were not isolated from the political and religious conflicts
dividing the commune. When the city council held an emergency meeting
to deal with the rising religious tensions, somehow, probably through
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 145

family connections, the possessed revealed the magistrates’ deliber-

ations even before they had left the city hall. Then, some of the possessed
climbed a church tower to proclaim their denunciation of the person
who had bewitched them all, Jacoba Bam, the daughter of the afore-
mentioned Marie Holleslootendr. The charge was investigated and, not
surprisingly, Jacoba was cleared on July 1. Contemporaries suspected
that the afflicted children had been manipulated by some of the
pro-reform citizens who had been forced to the periphery of political
power.51 Yet, the original possession of the orphans was most likely
a product of group anxiety related to the scarcity of food in 1565–6 and
the rising religious tensions in the city. Further contributing to this
atmosphere were reports of several recent Amsterdam witch trials,
including the execution of four witches in 1555, the banning of another
in 1560, and, most immediately, the burning of Volckgen Hermansdr
in 1564 for brewing a storm that killed a number of sailors and denying
her baptism and Christendom before the Devil.52 News of the contem-
poraneous “Miracle of Laon” may have also provided a model for the
orphans. However, in a reversal of the French case, it was the zealous
Catholic authorities in Amsterdam who were being accused of causing
the affliction, thus they sought to isolate the victims, hush up the rumors,
and dissipate the accompanying tensions. This case provides a rare
example of reform-minded citizens manipulating demonic possessions
against the Catholic hard-liners who held power. Under different political
circumstances, those same rulers would have likely used the demoniacs
to trumpet the power of the Catholic Church over Satan and his minions.

Heresy and Witch-Hunting

In several regions witchcraft trials began at the same time, or shortly

after, heresy trials were ended. This has been shown to be true for parts
of France, Catholic Cologne, and the southern Netherlands. 53 Between
1520 and 1565, several thousand individuals had been executed for
their dissident religious beliefs, some two-thirds of them Anabaptists
who had terrorized the authorities with nightmares of popular revolts
and sedition far out of scale with their actual threat. As William Monter
has noted, it was this fear that finally convinced many rulers to secularize
heresy trials, making it easier to try witches as well.54
What escalated local conflicts about the maleficia of neighborhood
witches into the infamous witch-hunts was the development of belief
146 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

in the diabolical sabbath conspiracy between Satan and his minions. The
framework of this conspiracy had arisen first in the fifteenth century
within the educated milieu of clerics, jurists, and professors, while
anti-Devil preachers and propagandists sought to persuade secular
rulers and skeptical bishops to join in the hunt. Although many were
convinced, by the start of the Reformation interest in witch-hunting was
waning. Then, with the widespread belief that the Reformation heralded
the Last Judgment, the impression that Satan was now exerting extra-
ordinary efforts to destroy the church was strengthened, especially as
memories lingered of the religiously inspired insurrections of 1525 and
1535. Many lords therefore became more amenable to the clergy’s
warnings of Satanic activities. While the Catholic authorities were more
ruthless in their campaign of eradicating Anabaptists as Satan’s minions,
many Protestant princes and magistrates joined in as well. After 1560 the
supposed witch conspiracy supplanted anxiety about Anabaptists, and
the Holy Roman Empire and its neighbors became home to some of the
most fearsome examples of what can only be described as persecution
mania.
For as long as local authorities were occupied with trying and executing
Anabaptists and other religious dissidents, they paid little heed to the
pressure of their citizens to bring witches to trial. There were, however,
a few regions which remained fixated on the old Waldensian witch
threat, and in these there were no Anabaptist hunts. For example, the
small Netherlandic duchy of Namur from 1509 until 1646 conducted
a series of witch trials in which dozens of alleged “sorcières et vaudoises”
were executed.55 Here, unlike many of its neighbors, there were no
major Anabaptist hunts. Holland, in contrast, was the location of a
vicious judicial attack on Anabaptists, and experienced only modest
witch-hunts, forbidding the use of torture and the water test in cases of
witchcraft by 1594 and formally suppressing all witch trials by 1614 (the
last execution occurred in 1608). Finally, in Flanders, where some of the
civic authorities continued to prosecute Anabaptists with great vigor
until the early 1590s, witch burning did not generally begin until after
the ashes of the last Mennonite had blown away in the wind. 56
Propagandists and jurists may have clearly distinguished between the
heresy of Anabaptism and that of diabolical witches, but in functional
terms, both offered leaders with a target for cleansing a community of
blasphemy and proving the veracity of the official, orthodox position
on God. Some courts learned how to quash blasphemous heresy by
cutting their teeth on the Anabaptists, although most Protestant courts
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 147

condemned recalcitrant Anabaptists to exile rather than death. Once

such real heretics were suppressed and still God’s wrath prevailed, then
attention turned to exposing the secretive, diabolical agents responsible.
In this way concern over rebellious Anabaptists and secretly seditious
libertines was fused with the older notion of a diabolical sect, leading to
mounting pressure to discover and eradicate members of the sabbath
conspiracy. As the common people had long wished to get rid of their
troublesome witches, they were only too eager to comply.

Inquisitors and Witches in Spain and Italy

Before discussing this turn to witch-hunting, it is necessary here to

discuss the Mediterranean states which, in contrast to the northern
European states, remained uncaptivated by notions of a diabolical witch
conspiracy and which did not generally secularize heresy or witchcraft
trials but kept them under inquisitorial jurisdiction. Neither the Italian
nor Spanish Inquisitions showed any real interest in prosecuting
witches, seriously considering the crime only after 1580. Apart from the
Inquisition of the so-called Benandanti of the northeastern Friuli region
at the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Italian
tribunals likewise remained hesitant to attack a witch sect. 57 Prior to the
witch panic of 1608–12, there were in Spain only a handful of witch
trials. Why then was there so little interest in hunting witches in those
regions possessing the most effective Inquisitions ever established? The
reasons for this anomaly are varied and complex, but before turning to
them (in Chapter 6), it is important briefly to examine the handful of
early cases.
In 1466 the local authorities of the province of Guipúzcoa, Castile,
petitioned King Henry IV for the authority to extirpate the witches
who were supposedly harming people and crops. Supporting this
clamor was the Navarra canon Martín de Arles who composed a treatise
on superstition, later published in 1517, in which he affirmed the
Navarra witches’ ability to perform maleficia with the assistance of the
Devil, although he agreed with the Canon episcopi that they could not fly.
The efforts bore some fruit, as in 1500 a number of residents of the
mountainous region of Amboto were accused of worshiping the Devil
and practicing magic, while seven years later some thirty women were
burned at the stake for witchcraft. In 1527, ten years after the publi-
cation of de Arles’ work, Spain’s most infamous sixteenth-century case
148 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

of witchcraft began when two prepubescent girls approached the

authorities of Pamplona with the disturbing news that they were
members of a witch cult but would gladly identify their fellow witch
conspirators – by looking at the Devil’s mark in their left eyes – in
exchange for amnesty. An elaborate procedure was put in place to
test their veracity, but independent of each other the girls fingered
the same witches from the suspects rounded up by the local authorities.
In the end, 150 sorcerers and witches were investigated by Inquisitor
Avellaneda who commented that his initial doubts about the verity of
the girls’ claims of having flown to covens were put to rest when he
witnessed one of the accused witches escape from prison with the assist-
ance of a demon. Avellaneda quickly uncovered three distinct covens of
over 100 members each and sentenced dozens of the accused. In summa-
rizing the Inquisitor’s letter to a Castilian official, Julio Baroja comments,

The emphasis which Avellaneda . . . placed on the evil that was done by
large bands and assemblies of sorcerers, together with the fact that
the investigations were carried out at a critical historical moment,
when Charles I was annexing the kingdom of Navarre, suggests that
there may have been some political motives behind what is usually
considered to be a religious question. The accused may well have been
supporters of the ancient kings of Navarre, that is, agramonteses.58

The Inquisitor urged the secular authorities to proceed harshly against

this conspiratorial threat, and some heeded his advice, with the encour-
agement of several preachers. In 1530 a General Church Council was
held to discuss the matter, and in 1538 further outbreaks of witchcraft
in Navarra filled the prisons with accused. In 1555 several towns begged
the higher authorities to act against the threat, but the Suprema govern-
ing the Inquisition refused, ruling that the accused had been unfairly
imprisoned.
Between 1555 and 1558 the civil judges of Ceberio heard a case
of witchcraft involving two rival families of the town. Some young girls
from each side denounced the other’s family as members of a witch
coven; the judges saw some merit in one set of accusations and twenty-
one members of one family were arrested, interrogated but eventually
released with the relatively mild punishment of ordeal by water and
whipping. Here the secular judges regarded witchcraft as merely one
part of a larger inter-family conflict. In Spain on the whole, however,
it was the civil authorities, acting on the rhetoric of local preachers
 The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600 149

and Inquisitors, who feared demonic witches, whereas the central

inquisitorial authorities denounced hasty actions. As was the case in
1527, moreover, suspicion of the existence of witch covens was linked to
efforts to resist royal centralization and the resulting propaganda and
trials provided means of demonizing those opponents.
In Italy, “Lutheran” heresy and anticlericalism were principally
assailed as the sins incurring God’s anger, requiring the establishment in
1542 of the Roman and Venetian Inquisitions as means to convert
offenders. After the Council of Trent and especially after 1580, the pre-
occupation of Inquisitors switched from the pursuit of Protestantism to
crimes of sorcery and magic, becoming the object of over 40 percent of
inquisitorial activity thereafter.59 Even so, the focus in the trials was not
on maleficium but on the so-called white magic of healing, recovering lost
treasure, or performing love magic. A large number of defendants in
Italian witch trials were ecclesiastics denounced for abusing sacramental
paraphernalia and liturgical rites. Formal apostasy to the Devil was only
an occasional charge. In these respects, then, Italian Inquisitors and
jurists evinced an attitude toward diabolical witchcraft in keeping with
that developed by most Protestant demonologists: the real danger to the
soul was recourse to magical means of protecting oneself from the vagar-
ies of life which ultimately were in the bailiwick of divine providence.
There were some witch trials in Italy prior to the rise of the Counter
Reformation. In 1518 the ecclesiastical authorities of Venice arrested
a number of supposed witches, but fairly quickly the republic’s patricians
stepped in to stop what it perceived to be the excesses of ecclesiastical
judges. When in 1534 one of the city’s senators announced that he was
going to debate the problem of witches, “the whole matter seems to have
assumed very little significance in comparison with the more serious
threat of Lutheranism.”60 Thus, as in Flanders and the Netherlands,
a concerted effort to eradicate witches in Spain and Italy could not take
place at the same time as a major assault against religious heretics,
however these were defined.

Conclusion

In the Empire there was a shift in perception regarding diabolical heresy

between the fall of Münster in 1535 and the revival of witch-hunting in
the 1560s–80s. This shift was observed already in the early 1560s by
Johann Weyer who attempted to stem the rising tide of witch-hunting
150 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

which he had hoped had died out with other superstitions. Instead,
it had returned, perhaps, he suggested, as a continuation of the blood-
thirst that had not been quenched with the persecution of heretics
(Protestants and Anabaptists) and which was now attacking old women
accused of witchcraft. 61 The process of demonizing the “enemies of
God” therefore shifted its focus from heretics to supposed practitioners
of magic. The Peasants’ War of 1525 and the infamous kingdom of
Münster heightened fears of groups plotting insurrection, which became
more pronounced in the demonic conspiracy stereotype. Until the
1560s (later in some lands), most courts remained preoccupied with the
real heretics who openly confessed their beliefs. However, the rise of
Nicodemite spiritualists or libertines raised the specter of Cathar-like
dissimulators secretly spreading their noxious views among an ignorant
populace. In the last decades of the sixteenth century, courts throughout
Europe turned from hunting heretics to attacking this invisible
diabolical threat which became increasingly elaborate and fantastical.
Behind it all was the need to counteract the expression of skepticism
toward the approved understanding of the supernatural realm.
As we shall see, witch-hunting took on a life of its own, with a particu-
lar dynamic that varied from place to place. Yet the intensified religious
passions and fear of doubt which helped lay the foundations for the
diabolical witch stereotype also helped inflame the anti-witch activities of
a community, giving justification for both the bewitched to denounce
their malefactors to the authorities and for the judges to take such
charges seriously. At other times and places, the cooling of these
religious passions, especially in regions experimenting with religious
toleration, helped extinguish witch panics. This process, however, was
extremely complex, and did not always work as expected. In the
sixteenth century especially, espousal of tolerance for religious dissent
sometimes produced the opposite effect to that intended, as zealots
condemned skeptical or libertarian notions as diabolical and destructive
of the Christian state. This is precisely what happened with the reception
of Johann Weyer’s De praestigiis daemonum, a work that was extremely
modest in its efforts to cool the soaring fear of diabolical witches but
which was roundly condemned by Bodin and others as part of Satan’s
attack on Christendom. For a time, the escalated rhetoric of demonic
conspiracies so polemicized the debate about religion and magic that
rational and balanced discussion was virtually impossible. The witch-
hunts further exacerbated the problem.
 5
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND
THE RISE OF WITCH-HUNTING,
1562–1630

First the Hussites invaded Bohemia, then the Lutherans Germany,

and Sprenger and Nider, . . . have told us that the Hussites were
followed by a great force of workers of maleficent magic, while
the Lutherans know what torrents of witches they have poured
into the lands of the North, which have become paralysed with
fear, as though frozen by Arctic cold. For in these places there is
scarcely anything unharmed or free from – I scarcely know what
to call them – these animals disguised as humans, these evil
spirits. Most of the older ones in the territory of Trier, not only
upon the rack but after questioning as well, confessed to the
judges that they were first drenched with this disastrous stain
when that foul, hellish supporter of Lutheranism, himself well
known for magic, Albert of Brandenburg, plundered and
ravaged that province with fire and sword. . . . Nothing has
spread this plague further and more quickly through England,
Scotland, France and Belgium than the dread pestilence of
Calvinism. . . . Now, with this heresy, as in the case of the frenzy
of a fever, it has invaded very many people all over the place . . .
Martino del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicae, as translated by
Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 165.

An invading force of infiltrators empowered by Satan is a story worthy

of a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet it was not fiction but fact in the minds of

151
152 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

churchmen such as Del Rio who believed that the Reformation had
caused an invasion of demonic spirits. Del Rio’s fellow Jesuit Juan de
Maldonat neatly explained this coincidence by asserting that as pagan
religion was eliminated the Devil found himself cast out of idols but
gained a new home in the “divine writings themselves in the minds of
heretics.” Because error could not long imitate truth, all heresy must
“either degenerate into magical arts or into the final extremity of atheism”
as heretics “enter upon a close companionship with evil spirits” and
learn the diabolical arts. Thus, he contended, as “plague follows famine”
so the magical arts, the disease of the soul, follow heresy, while evil spirits
use heretics to charm others into error and magic. The neglect of ecclesi-
astical leaders to teach the faithful, Maldonat admitted, had allowed
such ravages, and “what the heretics had made a shell, witches despoil by
the art of evil spirits, and what witches leave behind, atheists destroy.”
Del Rio lamented that while the three unclean spirits which had come
“out of the mouth of the dragon” (Rev. 16:13) – Calvinism, Lutheranism,
and Anabaptism – were now withering away, “we see various swarms of
locust-witches ravaging the whole of the North,” while atheists and
compromising politicians replicated themselves.1
There was, of course, no inherently causal link between such propa-
ganda and the outbreak of a witch persecution, and Del Rio’s comments
were published after the eruption of a witch panic in the Spanish Neth-
erlands in 1596. Yet, zealots had every reason to dread the susceptibility
of a poorly indoctrinated populace to confessional laxity and religious
accommodation. Nicolas Rémy, the jurist and witch prosecutor of
Lorraine, put this succinctly in 1595 when he observed that the Devil
had two routes to tempt humans to abjure their faith and become
atheists. The first was through the “light of human reason,” resulting in
learned heresy and blasphemy, the second through stupidity and poverty,
leading to an intense desire for revenge. He added,

The atheists of the former class are begotten, bred and protected by
the freedom which in our time has arisen from the variety and con-
fusion of nations, and it is generally said that their numbers have
reached a figure that is not easily creditable. But either because they
brood in silence over their blasphemies and, hiding behind the cover
of whatever form of religion comes to their hand, escape detection
and accusation; or else because they do not, out of zeal for their
opinions, collect a following, they are overlooked and are only called –
a term of the basest inadequacy in view of the enormity of their
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 153

impiety – licentious: in any case no proceedings are taken against

them, nor are they held up for a public example.2

In this influential jurist’s mind, the campaigns against heresy and

witchcraft were an interlocked battle against a single, invisible enemy:
atheism.
It bears reiterating that the heartland of witch-hunting – the south-
western Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, and France – was also the great
center of religious strife. As James Sharpe comments about seventeenth-
century England, “the problems caused by the erosion of traditional
authority were made heavier, in Puritan East Anglia, by the populace’s
previous exposure to sermons and other forms of religious consciousness-
raising in which the devil and his works figured prominently.” 3 By this
process of clerical communication learned demonological notions
became an integral part of popular culture, interwoven with traditional
concepts of religion and magic. Preachers may have interpreted
witchcraft in spiritual terms as the ultimate blasphemy against God, but
they forgot how readily their unlearned parishioners could “misinterpret”
a spiritual truth as applicable to their mundane world. As preachers
badgered their flocks to inspect every sinful thought and deed, God’s
anger remained unabated. Removing the horrible blasphemers
believed responsible for divine punishment became a priority, and as
real heretical sects had been virtually suppressed (Anabaptists) or driven
underground (libertines), attention turned to other demonic candidates.4
Thus, even if innocent of harming neighbors by maleficia, witches were
condemned for incurring God’s wrath by renouncing their Christian
faith.
Ordinary people happily took up the cause of ridding their communities
of troublesome witches. On this community level Robin Briggs suggests
witch accusations served several functions, such as: drawing communities
together to set standards and attack evil; assisting local officials impose
tighter moral control on their subjects; increasing the prestige of local
clergy, lawyers, and doctors; providing outlets for masculine insecurity,
aggression, and a “potent cocktail of forbidden libidinal and social
desires”; offering a legal means of counteracting malevolent magic; and
supplying booksellers with a ready market for their sensational wares.5
The publicity surrounding demonic activity also helped fill churches in
an era of increasing doubt as to the value of confessional identity.
The discussion in this and the next chapter will pursue regionally
the intersections of the campaigns to suppress religious dissent and
154 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

witchcraft. In general, while popular beliefs about witches varied little

across Europe, what determined the extent of judicial action was the
acceptance on the part of the clergy, judiciary, and political authorities,
of the reality of the diabolical conspiracy idea. Altogether, it is estimated
that something in the order of 60,000 to 100,000 witch trials were con-
ducted across Europe, and with an average execution rate of approxi-
mately 50 percent, these resulted in anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000
executions.6 These are considerably greater than the figures for heresy
executions, which William Monter has calculated to be in the range of
3,000. 7 Yet if one includes the thousands of Protestants killed by the
“Council of Blood” during the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands
and during the St. Bartholomew Day’s massacres in France, then the
differences in scale are not nearly as pronounced. In both heresy and
witchcraft persecution, the authorities hoped that such activity would
purify their region of godlessness, eradicate religious doubt, and
strengthen allegiance to the authority figures. They got more than they
expected.

The Holy Roman Empire

On August 3, 1562 in Lutheran Württemberg the hail fell from the

clouds onto many of the fields of maturing grain as if heralding the Last
Judgment. With an unfavorable dominance of the moon, astrologers
had been predicting especially bad times for 1559–62.8 Coming as it did
after several years of crop failure and epidemic disease, the harvest’s loss
was devastating. The only solution one contemporary reporter could
offer was to beg God for enlightenment so that Württembergers would
heartily repent and improve their sinful lives.9 Yet one local lord, Count
Ulrich of Helfenstein, was determined to eradicate the specific culprits
responsible. His more powerful neighbor Duke Christoph of Württem-
berg remained uncertain as to the ability of witches to brew up storms,
with or without the aid of demons, while many of the local preachers
followed Johannes Brenz’ reasoning that God alone was responsible for
sending storms to punish sin, regardless of the Devil’s efforts to steal
credit for them.
Unfortunately Brenz’ arguments carried little weight with Count Ulrich,
who was being pressured by his clergy to adopt the Reformation and by
his wife to return the duchy to Catholicism, which he did in 1567.
Encouraged by the fervent anti-witch sermons of the Calvinist-oriented
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 155

Lutheran superintendent of nearby Esslingen, Thomas Naogeorgus (or

Kirchmeyer, 1508–63), Ulrich ordered the arrest of a number of women
in Wiesensteig. Esslingen’s magistrates saw Naogeorgus’ fiery sermonizing
about Satan as responsible for the rising terror of demonic witches and
on August 18 warned him to stop agitating the citizenry with his notions
of a diabolical conspiracy, and eventually fired him. Naogeorgus, long
suspected by orthodox Lutheran preachers of harboring heterodox
beliefs, may have been attempting to deflect such accusations onto sup-
posed witches, an act similar to that of San Bernardino of Siena. Duke
Christoph and the Esslingen magistrates were informed that Ulrich had
already ordered the deaths of six witches and that a number of the
accused had confessed to seeing some Esslingen citizens (nearly thirty
miles away) at the witches’ sabbath. In response, the Esslingen author-
ities arrested three individuals, but ultimately released them. Count Ulrich,
however, showed no such leniency, approving the execution of over
sixty accused witches, the first large-scale witch panic of the sixteenth
century.10 Immediately preceding this witch persecution was a vigorous
campaign of parish visitations searching for remnants of Anabaptist her-
esy and magical idolatry. Just weeks before Ulrich’s actions a large noc-
turnal meeting of Anabaptists was uncovered in the area, leading to a
regional investigation and corresponding spread of rumors. In this way
the drive to expunge Anabaptist heresy from the region may have con-
vinced the Count of the reality of diabolical, sabbath conspiracies.11
According to one contemporary Lutheran chronicler, the auto-da-fé of
twenty of the accused on December 2, 1562 was the scene of an incredible
debate. After the list of their alleged crimes – blaphemy, sorcery, boiling
infants to produce their salve, and weather magic – was read out, the sky
turned deep red, and an angel of God appeared in the sky, warning the
more than 3,000 onlookers to abstain from such godless behavior, else
they would face the same severe punishment. The condemned then
responded together that “the devil’s kingdom is greater than his God’s,”
and the angel vanished in a huff. 12 Whatever happened on that day,
there could be no clearer message in our reporter’s mind as to the reality
of the supernatural realm and the danger of the witch sect.
News of Count Ulrich’s supposed witch coven helped foster witch panics
throughout the Empire, especially with each new famine, destructive
hailstorm, or plague. With each trial, the belief in the diabolical sabbath
conspiracy was confirmed, the skeptics denounced, and the reality of the
supernatural realm proven. The various principalities of the Holy
Roman Empire accounted for a disproportionately high number of
156 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

major witch panics, and a total of 30,000 to 60,000 trials, with roughly
half of these resulting in executions. In 1532, Charles V’s Carolina had
made witchcraft a crime for secular courts, yet this change had little
immediate impact as the Empire lacked a centralized judiciary and
police force. Besides, until 1555 Charles V and his princes were too
preoccupied fighting each other and stamping out Anabaptism to under-
take any other campaigns. Thereafter, attention turned increasingly to
witchcraft and by the time of Emperor Ferdinand’s revised witchcraft
statute of 1607, the Empire had gained the dubious distinction as the
leader of witch persecution, precisely because of its political weakness
and judicial decentralization which allowed local authorities virtual
independence in pursuing witches.
In general, with the notable exception of the Duchy of Mecklenburg,
the northern and eastern territories were much more restrained than
those of the south and west, where most of the infamous witch panics
took place. The worst witch-hunts engulfed the southern Catholic
prince-bishoprics where the ruling bishops were struggling to shore up
Tridentine Catholicism within their small realms against both Protestant
incursions from without and confessional indifference and low levels of
religiosity within. Behringer estimates that in the first decades of the
seventeenth century the two successive bishops of Bamberg oversaw
the execution of some 1,500 alleged witches, two Würzburg bishops were
responsible for about 1,200 victims, three bishops of Mainz ordered
the deaths of 1,800 individuals, and one bishop of Cologne, Archbishop
Ferdinand of Bavaria (ruled 1612–50), executed at least 2,000 victims.
These figures are staggering for such small territories and illustrate how
important the disposition of local authorities was in determining the
extent of witch persecution. On the other extreme were the Calvinist
rulers of the Palatine of the Rhine who absolutely forbade executions for
witchcraft as a means of avoiding the excesses of their neighbors. As
Behringer reminds us, other nearby Calvinist territories in the Empire
did conduct such trials, hence the distinctiveness of the Palatine was not
due to its particular confessional identity. 13
Yet, the panics in the archbishoprics were very much tied to certain
religious attitudes, a point noted by the witch defender Friederich
Spee who wrote that the witchcraft persecutions in these territories were
“the fatal consequence of Germany’s pious zealotry.” Although a sense
of embattlement by external Protestant forces contributed to a mood of
apocalyptical gloom gripping the bishops’ courts, the principal concern
of Counter-Reformation leaders was to inculcate in their subjects an
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 157

intense desire to inspect every sinful thought and cast out all diabolical
doubt. After describing Archbishop Ferdinand’s own daily, excessively
ascetic efforts to repulse Satanic temptation, Behringer concludes that
one “need not be a strict Freudian to understand how this accentuated
consciousness of one’s sinfulness might arouse self-deprecation, neurosis
and projection complexes.” 14 Hence, what spurred a desire to hunt the
Devil’s minions on a major scale was not so much the battle between one
confession and another, but the struggle to instill in one’s less zealous
coreligionists a passion for the true faith which would eradicate personal
doubt.

The witch panics of the Franconian prince-bishoprics

Although the most common or ordinary trials for witchcraft arose from
within the face-to-face communities of rural villages, the major witch
panics were often urban enterprises, in large part because it was in the
towns where the major courts were located. In the urban milieu, denun-
ciations moved quickly from the stereotypical rural crone to urbanites.
For example, during the 1580s and 1590s, the citizens of Trier partici-
pated in a terrifying witch panic wherein over 300 accused witches
named about 1,500 different accomplices, many of these encompassing
middling to upper class townspeople. It was here in 1593 that the Dutch
priest Cornelius Loos (1546–c.1597) was accused of complicity with the
Devil for having composed a manuscript, De vera et falsa magica (The true
and false magic) rebutting the reality of preternatural witch activities.
Loos’ treatment was part of the Archbishop Johann VII von Schönen-
berg’s (r. 1581–99) campaign to expunge the diabolical danger. He was
encouraged in this godly work by his assistant bishop Peter Binsfeld’s
Tractatus de Confessionibus Maleficorum et Sagarum (Treatise on the Confession
of Witches and Sorcerers) which, after its publication in 1589, became the
major witch-hunting manual in the German lands. Binsfeld affirmed
that witches dangerously profaned the sacraments, brought down the
wrath of God upon the land, and destroyed harvests and caused famine.
Magistrates must uncover every member of this demonic conspiracy and
compel them by torture to confess their hidden evil. Lax magistrates
themselves merited God’s anger, he warned. 15
Just three years after Binsfeld’s book, part of Loos’ skeptical tome was
printed in Cologne and it appears that the Binsfeld party pressured the
Trier court to prosecute the Dutchman in order to win an inter-Catholic
158 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

scholarly argument over the true nature of demonic heresy. Loos sur-
vived only by recanting; hundreds of others were not so fortunate. Once
the autos-da-fé had ended, two of the twenty-two villages around Trier
were left with only two inhabitants apiece.16 In the prince-bishopric of
Würzburg, Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn accused Protestants
of witchcraft as part of his campaign to return his realm to Catholicism,
but this sort of crude confessional manipulation of witchcraft denunci-
ations was rare.17 What was far more prevalent was the use of such
charges to warn the populace away from heresy and superstition in
general and reinforce the veracity of their ruler’s faith.
The dynamics of witch-hunting can be illustrated also by the case of
Ellwangen, where a trial against an elderly woman in 1611 snowballed
into a panic. This quite small Catholic territory, ruled by a secularized
monastery, had already executed dozens of alleged witches in 1528
and 1588–9. In 1611 it experienced a witch-hunt on an altogether
unheard of scale. As in Württemburg in 1562, a number of damaging
hailstorms, mysterious livestock deaths, and an outbreak of plague
preceded the event; and while Midelfort admits we really do not know
why the hunts began, his comment that 1611 “also brought the first
Jesuits to Ellwangen,” is instructive in the light of our discussion here.
Certainly not all Jesuits promoted witch-hunting, and one of its greatest
opponents was the Jesuit confessor Friederich Spee, who in 1631 published
anonymously his condemnation of the witch-hunting procedures (the
Cautio criminalis). However, Jesuits generally pushed for a harder,
Tridentine line against reform incursions. 18 Whatever their role here,
on April 7, 1611 the elderly Barbara Rüfin, wife of Casper Rüf from the
village of Rindelbach, was arrested and brought into Ellwangen on
suspicion of witchcraft, a charge which revolved around her supposedly
desecrating the consecrated Host and a general reputation for witch-
craft. Apparently she found no support in her husband who regarded
her as a witch, nor her son who charged her with attempted poisoning.
Several sessions over three days of being stretched on the rack loosened
her tongue and she confessed to desecrating the Host, making a pact
and having sex with the Devil, and performing maleficia on her family
and neighbors. As was typical in such cases, once the torture was ended
she denied everything, but was compelled to return to her confession
after further painful persuasion. On May 16, she was beheaded and
burned. But this cleansing of the community merely whetted the judges’
appetite to exterminate a suspected sect of witches in their community.
With mounting frequency, denunciations flowed into the court from
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 159

concerned neighbors and interrogators became more efficient in evalu-

ating the accusations, finding the Devil’s mark on the accused, and
extracting the required confessions. By the end of the year residents of
the town had been witness to over 100 executions in seventeen separate
autos-da-fé, and a further 140 or more in an equal number of burnings
the following year. Details of witch activities from one case were pursued
in subsequent interrogations and a list of thirty questions was prepared
for each accused, helping to explain the consistency among confessions.
These included the standard test of having the accused recite the Lord’s
Prayer, Ave Maria, Apostles Creed, and Ten Commandments, followed
by interrogations into how the defendant was seduced into the Devil’s
service, what sex with him was like (not allowing that there might have
been none), and who were the accused’s associates. The resulting picture
of witchcraft centered on the renunciation of God, the Church, and bap-
tism, submission to diabolical sacraments, desecration of eucharistic Hosts,
and the grisly use of infant corpses in the witches’ ointment.
In 1613 the local Jesuit teacher Father Johann Finck noted that over
300 accused had been executed, including one of his own pupils, com-
menting “I do not see where this case will lead and what end it will have,
for this evil has so taken over, and like the plague has infected so many,
that if the magistrates continue to exercise their office, in a few years
the city will be in miserable ruins.” He did not have long to wait, for in
June of 1615 charges of performing black masses and baptizing infants
in the name of the Devil resulted in the trial of three priests who prior to
sentencing were degraded from holy orders by having the chrism on
their right hand, tonsure, and forehead literally cut out and having the
wounds rubbed with salt and vinegar. In the resulting hysterical atmos-
phere several individuals voluntarily confessed, including a sixteen-year-
old woman described by Father Finck: “God has comforted us especially
through a girl of 16, who last month was executed with six others. She
could no longer endure the persecutions of the devil and placed herself
voluntarily in custody. With tears she explained that she would rather
bear death and the stake than put up with the tyranny of the devil any
longer. Standing, she received the death blow.”19 Apart from clearing
her conscience of guilt, her expiatory confession implicated over thirty-
four others. Another voluntary confession was provided in 1611 by
a seven-year-old girl named Margaretha who confessed to riding to the
witches’ sabbath and to all manner of ungodly dealings with the Devil. At
first the magistrates blamed her fall into the Devil’s clutches on her having
been ineffectively baptized by a Lutheran, so the Jesuits taught her Catholic
160 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

dogma and applied the rituals the Lutherans had excluded from her bap-
tism, such as exorcism. Yet, four years later she continued to boast of her
magical abilities. Unfortunately we do not know her ultimate fate.
Even those higher up on the social ladder were implicated. Magdelena,
the wife of the chapter scribe Georg Weixler, was imprisoned and abused
by the jailer who was eventually arrested and executed for his crimes,
but this did not stop her own execution. Prior to her death she wrote her
husband, “I know that my innocence will come to light, even if I do not
live to see it. I would not be concerned that I must die, if it were not for
my poor children; but if it must be so, may God give me the grace that I
may endure it with patience.”20 An Ellwangen judge who publicly defended
his wife was himself executed in November, 1611. The magistrates ener-
getically defended the proceedings in “the kind of passionate self-defense
that springs from glimmers of self-doubt,” as Midelfort suggests.21 The
trials petered out when it had become clear by 1618 that many potential
merchants and students were avoiding Ellwangen because of its reputa-
tion as a center for witchcraft.
The paranoia suffered by residents of a city in the midst of a witch
panic was comparable to the mass hysteria engendered by a plague
epidemic, although the former died out when the community could no
longer bear the economic and social costs of the trials of dozens or
hundreds of its citizens, or when members of the aristocracy found
themselves implicated. Even then, some of the political elite were exe-
cuted before the fires were extinguished, as a past-mayor of Bamberg,
Johannes Junius, discovered in 1628. Bamberg’s witch panic was like
Ellwangen’s approved by the prince-bishop, and led to the deaths of at
least 300 judicial victims. As the accused struggled in the interrogation
room to come up with credible names of fellow sabbath conspirators, the
social status of the implicated rose. On June 28, 1628 Junius protested
his innocence and challenged the court to bring forward a single witness
who had seen him at the witches’ meetings. Dr. Georg Adam Haan,
a former council colleague of Junius, accordingly denounced him to his
face. Still the 55-year-old Junius denied the charges. He was put to the
thumbscrews, then the leg-screws, both of which were ineffective as
Junius continued to assert that “he has never denied God his savior nor
suffered himself to be otherwise baptized.” At this point the official
record and Junius’ own account of the proceedings diverge, for the
former stated that Junius felt no pain during his torture, while Junius
himself described the experience as horrifically painful, leaving him
unable to use his hands for a month. As witches were believed to be
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 161

protected by their demons during torture, the court officials carefully

noted any variation in Junius’ reactions during these sessions, so if his
screams were muted they could record the effect as painless, thus
explaining his reticence to confess and justifying continued pressure. He
was accordingly stripped and searched for the Devil’s mark, which was
found in a clover-leaf shaped birthmark and pricked three times, an
action which produced neither pain nor blood (not unlike the proper
application of a hypodermic needle). This was evidence sufficient to
proceed to the infamous strappado, and according to Junius’ account
they raised and dropped him eight separate times, an experience which
caused him “terrible agony.” At the end of this horrible day, June 30, the
executioner told him, “Sir, I beg you, for God’s sake confess something,
whether it be true or not. Invent something, for you cannot endure the
torture which you will be put to; and, even if you bear it all, yet you will
not escape, not even if you were an earl.” Even with this advice, his
Christian piety and fear of lying to God made him hesitate, until, in
hopes of later confessing to a priest, he confessed on July 5. His tale is
familiar: after losing a lawsuit and a considerable sum of money, he sat
despondently in his garden when a lovely woman “like a grass-maid”
appeared and enticed him into sexual improprieties. She then turned
into Beelzebub and threatened to kill him unless he renounced God and
underwent a diabolical baptism. He confessed also to the usual sabbath
activities, desecrating Hosts, and poisoning his horse with diabolical
powders which were intended for his children.
Junius’ letter, smuggled out of prison with the assistance of the jailer
on July 24, provided his daughter with his motives to confessing. It begins,

many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter

Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been
tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch
prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something
out of his head and – God pity him – bethinks him of something.

He assures Veronica that torture alone compelled him to give a certain

number of names of accomplices from specified city neighborhoods.
And, when his interrogators were dissatisfied with his confession of acts
of maleficia and were about to raise him again on the strappado, he
admitted to desecrating “a sacred wafer . . . When I had said this, they left
me in peace.”22 In the German prince-bishopric panics, the most
important service that accused witches could perform was to confirm the
162 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

reality of the sacraments. In this example, Junius’ prosecutors were

satisfied with his required confession of maleficia only when he admitted
to Host desecration, a position that Bishop Friedrich Forner of Bamberg
helped foster with his belief that witches abused all seven sacraments. He
also countered Protestant propaganda by asserting that witch sabbaths
were more prevalent in Catholics territories because, as Stuart Clark
summarizes him, “the devil could only gain true apostates from the true
faith; Protestants were already in this state and represented no gain.
Catholic witchcraft was, thus, a ‘most splendid, nay most certain, and
infallible sign that the true and saving faith, the true gospel, the true
sacraments, the true religion are found among Catholics’.”23

Bavaria – panic and restraint

Some parts of Germany, such as Bavaria and the Lower Rhineland, had
relatively few witch scares, although just about every area participated in
the major panics of the late 1580s and early 1590s. The Duchy of
Bavaria, Wolfgang Behringer estimates, experienced approximately
4,000 trials and anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 executions, both fairly
moderate figures for a territory of this size, compared to the confessionally
mixed territories of the German southwest where over 3,000 witches
were executed between 1561 and 1670. A high proportion of Bavaria’s
witch trials occurred during the 1590 persecution, an event which made
an increasing number of Protestant preachers and princes and the
Catholic rulers of Bavaria wary of the extreme social damage that
witch trials incurred. By 1600, moreover, many Protestant theologians
identified intense witch-hunting with Catholicism, while the scholars of
Bavaria were divided between a zealous witch-hunting and a moderately
skeptical party, the latter winning the ear of the rulers. 24

The northern empire

As in the south, there was considerable variation in the level of witch

persecution in the northern German principalities, although most
regions were caught up to some extent in the major panics around 1590
and between 1627 and 1631, with the Duchy of Westphalia and the
Archbishopric of Cologne leading the way. Until 1627, however, the
core region of the principality of Cologne had escaped major witch
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 163

panics, but in that year the authorities conducted an extermination

program against witchcraft that Gerhard Schormann has compared
with Jewish pogroms. Both, he notes, were depicted medically as the
surgical removal of a corrupt organ from the body of Christendom so as
to preserve the whole from the spread of infection, and both were
conducted by the central authorities. The witch persecution was led by
Prince Ferdinand von Wittelsbach (r. 1612–50). His struggle to maintain
Catholicism in a principality surrounded by Lutheran and Calvinist
princes helped convince Von Wittelsbach in the late 1620s to unleash his
full territorial machinery to enact a “final solution” to the witch question
and preserve the health of his realm.25
Similarly, the small County of Lippe, now part of Northern Rhine-
Westphalia, belonged to the heartland of witch-hunting, experiencing
peaks in persecution around the same time as other German regions;
the worst panic in the Lippe town of Lemgo occurred in 1628 when over
eighty people were executed. Similarly, neighboring Osnabrück executed
close to 300 accused witches between 1561 and 1639, more than half in
the panics of 1583 and the 1630s, while Minden killed 138. Until 1600
Lippe was like the Franken territories, a small, Catholic region with
larger Lutheran neighbors, while Lemgo was Lutheran. After 1600, Lippe
turned Calvinist, while Lemgo remained Lutheran. One of the earliest
known trials in Lemgo was conducted in 1566 against a male sorcerer,
Johan Büchsenschütz, who was accused of using a crystal ball, blessing
sorcery books, and selling spells and talismans. Despite being tortured,
however, the accused denied that his magic was diabolical, but was
“under the appearance of the Word of God.” Büchsenschütz’s very
Lutheran appeal to the Word of God in a Lutheran city within a Catholic
county may therefore have complicated matters for Lemgo’s magistrates,
who burned his books but not his person. 26 With its small, decentralized
state and legal system, Lippe possessed all of the elements required for
major German witch panics, including a confessional struggle that created
an atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust.

Swiss Confederacy

In the various cantons that together formed the Swiss Confederacy, the
witch-hunts were also quite intense, with about 10,000 trials and high
execution rates.27 The Reformation divided the Confederacy between
six Protestant and seven Catholic cantons, leading to open warfare in the
164 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

1530s and continued polemical conflict thereafter. As each canton was

judicially autonomous there was considerable variation across the various
regions: the Pays de Vaud, the French-speaking Calvinist dependency
of Bern, was one of the worst regions, killing more than 90 percent of the
over 2,000 accused brought before its courts, while Calvinist Geneva had
a relatively mild record of witch prosecution, conducting 479 known trials
and executing 132 of the accused (27.7 percent). However, eighty-four
of these victims were caught up in the engraisseur or plague-spreader
panics of 1545, 1567–8, 1571, and 1615, when outbreaks of the plague
led to a frenzied search for those responsible. Many of these accused
were compelled to admit to membership in a Satanic conspiracy, but the
central accusation was the smearing of plague essence on door handles,
a clear parallel to the charges brought earlier against lepers and Jews
starting in the 1320s. Geneva executed only about 17 percent of its
“regular” witches, although many others were banished. 28
Geneva’s moderation, outside of plague epidemics, was not based on
a purely confessional distinction, as William Monter notes, for other
Swiss Protestant authorities were as enthusiastic witch persecutors as
their Catholic neighbors.29 Even during the engraisseur panics the vast
majority of Geneva’s accused witches were women, showing that Reformed
regions were as likely as Catholic territories to identify poisoning and
witchcraft as a female crime. Calvin strongly promoted the submissive-
ness of women within patriarchal marriage, and most of the engraisseurs
were older women (in the Geneva panic of 1571 only nine of ninety-nine
accused were men, while in other years the rate of female accused in
Geneva hovered around 76 percent). 30 Like most church and state
leaders, Calvinists sought to control or contain female behavior and to
strengthen the authority of males within the family as a microcosm of
the centralizing power of princes. What mattered then, was not so much
the particular confessional identity of a region, but a combination of
factors which included: an especially intense, gloomy form of religiosity
among its elites; an accompanying fear of unruly female behavior; a
continued concern about the incursions of heterodoxy; and an apparent
rise in blasphemy, skepticism, and doubt among the populace.
Monter’s study of Jura witch-hunting reveals also the prevalence
of demonic possession cases, not merely as a clerical tool of religious
propaganda, but more essentially as an element of popular witchcraft
beliefs. In the Franche-Comté, a French-speaking region technically
under Charles V’s Burgundian jurisdiction but which had its own
parlement, demonic possession was part of the ordinary witchcraft of
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 165

peasants. Initially jurists, such as Henri Boguet, Grand-Judge of Abbey

of St. Claude and writer of the demonological work Discours des Sorciers of
1602, did not know how to treat such demoniacs and their denunciation
of witches. Boguet’s first witch case in 1598 involved an eight-year-old
girl, Loyse Maillat, who on June 5, 1598 was suddenly “struck helpless in
all her limbs.” No cure could be found, so on July 19 her parents took
her to church to be exorcized. While there, it was discovered that she was
possessed by five demons named Wolf, Cat, Dog, Jolly, and Griffon
(names that would spring readily to a child’s mind). When the priest
asked the girl who had cast the spell on her, she pointed to one of the
spectators, Françoise Secretain, an old woman who the night before the
fits started had requested a night’s lodging of Loyse’s mother, who
initially refused because her husband was away but finally succumbed to
François’ pleas. While the mother was momentarily absent the visitor
supposedly compelled the girl to eat a piece of bread “resembling
dung.” The next day Loyse was possessed, and only the fervent prayers
of her parents could expel the demons which, in the form of red or black
fist-sized balls, danced around the fire before vanishing, leaving the girl
to recover.
In court Boguet forced François to confess to the accusations, despite
the fact that

To look at her, you would have thought she was the best woman in the
world; for she was always talking of God, of the Virgin Mary, and of
the Holy Saints of Paradise, and she had in her hand a long rosary
which she pretended to say without interruption. But the truth is that
the Cross of this rosary was defective, and it will be seen that this fact
furnished evidence against her.31

Once the determination of guilt was made, a process of rationalization

was required to explain away the accused’s supposed piety and turn her
saintly behavior into demonic. After being stripped and searched for the
Devil’s mark, she confessed to bewitching Loyse, to having given herself
to the Devil in the shape of a large, black man, and to having flown on
a white staff to the witches’ sabbath where she and other witches danced
and beat water to produce hail. She confessed also to murdering another
victim by means of poisoned bread and to killing cattle with the touch of
her hand or a wand. According to his own account Boguet had struggled
hard whether to accept the girl’s testimony, for in capital crimes proofs
needed to be clearer than daylight. However, the girl “never wavered”
166 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

and her parents corroborated her story; moreover, as witchcraft was

usually committed in secret, “it did not call for such positive proof as
would be required in the case of any other crime.” From the moment he
made this decision, the die was cast, and he noted that Loyse’s confession
led him to the discovery of “countless” other witches. Subsequent trials
provided further evidence of the veracity of his unusual decision to
accept a mere child’s evidence and helped quash any residual uncertainties
he may have harbored. As with Heinrich Krämer, this inner battle
against doubt made Boguet an even more ardent hunter of witches than
usual: of thirty-five that he himself tried between 1598 and 1609, he
condemned twenty-eight to death (eight were burned alive) while four
more died in prison.32 In 1611 he requested his printers to stop reissuing
his demonological treatise, because, Monter suggests, he was hoping to
be selected to sit on the local parlement which had just overturned some
of his sentences for witchcraft.
Boguet found further examples of witchcraft-induced possession both
in the writings of other demonologists, such as Bodin, and in his own
courtroom (one involved a twelve-year-old boy who had denounced his
father) to dispute Johann Weyer’s skepticism on the matter. Boguet’s
examples suggest that it was popularly believed that a witch could send
demons into a victim through enchanted food, usually an apple in what
Boguet took to be a demonic replay of the temptation of Eve and which
warned against the mortal sin of gluttony. That Boguet thought such
cases arose from peasant culture is evident from his comment that

Every day in our own town we continually meet with large numbers of
persons who, for the most part, impute their possession to certain
Vaudois or sorcerers. The truth is confessed by the devils themselves,
being wrung from them by the might and virtue of exorcism, and of
the glorious body of St. Claude . . . his body may be seen laid out whole
upon the altar of the church in the eternal triumph of countless
miracles which are performed upon those who resort to him; and
demoniacs especially are every moment being healed by his prayers
and intercessions.33

In Burgundy, demonic possession was a common form of bewitchment

for which many of the afflicted sought out the miraculous cure of a saint’s
relics; Monter has found further “evidence from other parts of Franche-
Comté [that] confirms the impression that here demonic possession was
built into the base of popular witchcraft.”34
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 167

By the early 1600s in urban Geneva causing diabolical possession had

become the single most common act of maleficia, while many of the more
traditional features of witchcraft, such as making hail or the sabbath,
virtually vanished. There had been several earlier cases of possession,
such as that of a man who in1578 was handed a three-day sentence for
taking his diabolically possessed eight-year-old daughter to a Catholic
priest for an exorcism, or the 1587 trial of a widow accused of putting
nine devils into a child, although she too was treated mildly. But in 1607
the attitude of the Genevan authorities changed when they were con-
fronted with a case of mass possession of several women and children,
seventeen of whom were quarantined while the city’s pastors prayed for
them. Here the Reformed pastors were concerned not only about the
disturbances the demoniacs caused during Communion services, but
also about the propagandistic points the Catholics would score if the
Genevans could not cure the afflicted in a Protestant fashion. Soon
the demoniacs were accusing others of bewitching them and turned to
the courts for a solution (it was at this time that the Genevans began
searching diligently for the Devil’s mark), although most of the convicted
were expelled rather than executed.
For his part, Boguet, like so many other witch-hunters, projected his
inner conflict over the reality of witch and demoniac confessions onto
the screen of the battle against religious doubt. As one scholar put it,
for fervent Catholics such as Boguet “the saint, the sorcerer, and the
possessed were the elementary figures in a militant theatre which . . .
dramatized the Tridentine liturgy and dogma” and which provided a
symbolic representation of the battle against Protestant heresy.35 After
estimating the number of witches in France alone to be at least 450,000,
Boguet continued,

for if we but look around among own neighbors, we shall find them all
infested with this miserable and damnable vermin. Germany is almost
entirely occupied with building fires for them. Switzerland has been
compelled to wipe out many of her villages on their account. Travelers
in Lorraine may see thousands and thousands of the stakes to which
witches are bound. We in Burgundy are no more exempt than other
lands; for in many parts of our country we see that the execution of
witches is a common occurrence.

Witches by the thousands, he affirmed, were everywhere, “multiplying

upon the earth even as worms in a garden.” For magistrates to ignore
168 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

this immense threat was a clear act of disobedience to God, for God has
“sometimes brought them [cities and villages] to utter ruin for the same
crime of witchcraft.” His own battle against doubt he externalized in the
following form:

I know that there have before this been those who have not been able
to believe that what is said of witches is true; but in these present days
they are beginning to believe it, owing to a special grace of God, who
has opened their eyes, which had been blinded by Satan that by this
means he might, as he has done, increase his kingdom. These men,
I say, are now busy in hunting down witches, so that not long ago they
caused some to be put to death. And I take this as a sign that in a short
time Satan and all his subjects will be overcome, and witches will no
longer boast that they are able to make war upon a King . . .

He expressed “astonishment” that “there should still be found to-day

people who do not believe that there are witches. For my part I suspect
that the truth is that such people really believe in their hearts, but will
not admit it.” As a means of further expelling such insidious doubt from
his own mind, he condemned all skeptics as members “of the witches’
party,” an incrimination which he thought explained why so many witches
escaped the death penalty. 36 Boguet, who set aside judicial caution by
accepting a child’s fantasies of diabolical magic, spent the next several
years defending that decision to himself and others and vindicating the
reality of all manner of supernatural manifestations against even mild
skepticism.

The Spanish Netherlands

Emperor Charles V may have had great difficulty in coordinating a

judicial assault against blasphemy in the largely decentralized Empire,
but he had much greater control over his Habsburg and Burgundian
inheritances. Here, as in Spain, he and his son Philip II passed laws
against heresy and witchcraft with some expectation that they would be
heeded, establishing inquisitorial tribunals when local courts proved
recalcitrant. However, his Netherlandic domains rebelled against such
measures, and it took Spain’s great military might to return the southern
territories to fealty to the crown and Catholicism. The northern provinces
ceded, forming the Dutch Republic which developed such an unusual
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 169

attitude toward persecution of both religious dissent and witchcraft that

we will reserve its discussion to the next chapter. In contrast, the Spanish
Netherlands were not allowed to tolerate religious dissidents who faced
continued horrible persecution. The only permitted religion was post-
Tridentine Catholicism, and great efforts were made by Inquisitors,
secular priests, and Jesuits thoroughly to inculcate proper Catholic
attitudes within each citizen. Even so, the Habsburg authorities faced
great difficulties in this campaign, for the various reform groups had
made significant inroads within the populace, while the Calvinists of the
Dutch Republic and north and western France provided a potent source
of Reformed propaganda.
Here too there were several waves of witch-hunting. For example, in
the Duchy of Luxembourg witch persecutions occurred in the periods
1580–1600 and 1615–30, consuming over 350 condemned. Namur, which
unlike most regions had continued a fifteenth-century style hunt for
demonic Vauderie into the sixteenth century, executed some 200 alleged
witches between 1509 and 1646. The highly urbanized province of
Flanders tried over 600 and executed over 200 supposed witches
between the late fifteenth century and the 1690s, the bulk of these falling
into the last decade of the sixteenth and the first of the seventeenth
century. The peak year was 1596, just four years after Philip II’s new
legislation transferring jurisdiction for the crime of witchcraft from
ecclesiastical to secular courts.
The new law was merely one of several contributing factors in the rise
of witch-hunting in the southern Netherlands; as elsewhere, individuals
with reputations for witchcraft and soothsayers who unhexed the
bewitched were the usual victims. In 1545 Charles V had introduced a
quasi-Spanish Inquisition to the Low Countries which, by his abdication
in 1555, had virtually suppressed Anabaptism. Yet demonizing rhetoric
escalated. In this climate, many Flemish Inquisitors and magistrates
became convinced of the diabolical conspiracy of witches. For example,
in Laarne on September 11, 1607 a judge convicted Paesschyne Neyts,
wife of Pieter Tweecruys, of, among other things, “abandoning God
almighty your lord and creator, and clinging to the Devil of hell, enemy
of the human race, to whom you have opened yourself over some
years in the form of a calf.” Two years later a nearly identical accusation
was brought against a sixty-year-old widow of Nazareth named Janne
Slaenders who, “for about the last thirty years has abandoned God of
heaven,” clinging instead to “the enemy of hell,” attending with some
other women the “dance in Gansbrouck on Eecke near Landuijt,” where
170 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

sat “the enemy in the form of a goat” the hind foot of which each partici-
pant kissed. Although acts of maleficia remained an element of all of
these later cases, they were merely aspects of the more serious diabolical
apostasy. Neyts, for example, was convicted also of receiving a poisoned
apple from the Devil and giving it to her daughter’s employer, Janneken
Scheers, who accordingly died in misery. The account then returns to
the more sensational elements, for Neyts apparently also confessed that
when her husband was absent from home performing his military service
for the city of Oostende, in her despair and loneliness she accepted the
sexual advances of the Devil, still in a calf ’s shape, at which time he marked
her on the hip.37
Such descriptions of diabolical Flemish witches were replicated in the
courts of the province dozens of times after 1590, yet they were a clear
contrast to the descriptions of witches in the Dutch Republic, where the
presumed maleficia remained the principal charge. The statistical differ-
ence is striking: the southern provinces executed over 900 witches, while
the northern region killed about 160. 38 An important difference, as we
have already suggested, was the propaganda of zealous Catholic anti-
heresy and witchcraft activists who were sponsored by the Spanish
authorities as the leading edge of the recatholicization of the southern
provinces. The transition from heresy to witch-hunting was often an
abrupt one, and the faggots piled beneath accused witches were ignited
only after the heresy fires had grown cold. After the victory over the
Reformed in Antwerp and the flight of thousands of Calvinists from that
city in 1585, the battle against heresy moved from one conducted against
an external, easily demonized enemy – Calvinists and Mennonites – to the
less visible but even more dangerous threats of neighbors thought to be
secret demonic agents. In some cities where religious dissidents had
been heavily persecuted, such as Kortrijk and Antwerp, the magistrates
seem to have become disgusted with the process of burning people as
a means of averting divine wrath, turning instead to some measure of
religious compromise and resisting the efforts of Counter-Reformation
churchmen to promote severe witch persecution. 39 In others, the civic
leaders moved almost seamlessly from one form of persecution to the
other. While zealous propagandists frequently expressed disappointment
with the state’s efforts to eradicate heterodox notions and enforce Catholic
dogma and practice, their efforts were partially effective in stirring up
concern about supposed diabolical conspiracies. In Spanish-controlled
regions such as the Franche-Comté, Lorraine and the southern Nether-
lands, Spanish royal agents successfully encouraged witch prosecution.
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 171

Undoubtedly witch panics required little in the way of propaganda to

leap across political boundaries to engulf citizens and rulers in a swirl of
denunciations, trials, and executions. They could, however, spread farther
and faster when encouraged by authorities, as seems to have happened
across much of Europe in the 1590s, partly as a result of a growing
conviction in the reality of a demonic witch sect, and partly as a vaguely
defined means of eradicating false belief within a populace in the era of
confessionalization.

France and Lorraine

Although in the fifteenth century France had led the way in witch-hunting,
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witch persecution here was
no more intense than in England; the maximum number of victims for
the period between 1560 and 1670 was a few thousand, a figure which
reveals considerable moderation in the judicial treatment of witches and
a general lack of the kind of panics that gripped many regions bordering
on the country. Alfred Soman has shown that even though it approved
slightly more than 100 lower court capital sentences, the Parlement of
Paris acted as a major brake on witch trials, overturning more than 1,100
other cases. Even so, there were in France several infamous incidents of
demonic possession leading to witch trials, and even though these did
not lead to mass trials, the publicity and panic that they engendered
brought the subject of the diabolical into public discourse. Moreover, as
Erik Midelfort has noted for the German lands, ordinary people had
great difficulty in distinguishing between “the supposedly clear categories
of witchcraft and possession.” 40 Demoniacs not only denounced witches
but also inspired imitation. Ultimately, however, these infamous instances
of demonic possession served the cause of skeptics rather than of
the defenders of supernatural reality, and on the whole contributed to
the discrediting of witch-hunting. A discussion of them will therefore be
reserved for our final chapter. More typical witch-hunting in France was
centered on the eastern, north-eastern, and extreme southwestern
portions of the realm, regions too of strong Huguenot presence.
As elsewhere, France had its share of learned promoters of witch
persecution, including legal experts such as Jean Bodin whose rebuttal
of Weyer’s skeptical tome in 1580 was the first major demonological
book in French. This was followed in the last decade of the century by
the treatises of Nicholas Rémy, a judge of Lorraine who oversaw several
172 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

hundred witch trials himself, and Boguet. Despite the considerable

opposition that they faced from more moderate learned fellows, their
demonological efforts seem to have contributed to the increasing pace of
trials after 1580. For one thing, as jurists and legal experts, they shared
numerous anecdotes drawn from their own courtroom experiences
which may have influenced local court officials more readily than mere
theoretical musings. Structurally, their treatises followed the model set
by earlier writers on the subject by organizing their material thematically
around the various demonological aspects, each of which was proven by
recourse to both the writings of the ancients and church fathers and
“real” confessions provided by “actual” witches. It still proved difficult to
oppose the authority of the ancients and the scriptures even when
apparently contrary to empirical evidence. Likewise, the courtroom was
a daunting place for ordinary folk, and it is amazing that so many illiterate
women protested their innocence on witchcraft charges for so long
given the weight of literate, male, legal authority that was confronting
them.
Rémy’s treatise, Demonolatry, provides a sufficient example of this
process. Claiming to have presided over 900 death sentences over his
fifteen-year career as Lorraine judge, he asserted his

head was entirely filled with considerations of the monstrous assem-

blies of the witches, who were very frequently among those who came
up before me for trial, with thoughts of their banquetings, dancings,
charms and spells, their journeyings through the air, the horrid
practices of their carnal relations with the Demon, their frequent
transmutation into other shapes and form (for so it seemed), and all
the crimes and blasphemies with which it is well known that their lives
are polluted and utterly defiled.41

Rémy’s declaration that he had become convinced of the reality of a dia-

bolical sabbath conspiracy as a result of hearing witch confessions cannot
be taken at face value, for these were the product of considerable judicial
pressure. It is much more plausible that after hearing his initial cases
Rémy turned to the writings of learned demonologists for the theoretical
superstructure upon which to arrange the strange accusations he was
hearing. As he compelled his defendants to conform to this intellectual
construct, he found further evidence of the reality of his religious beliefs.
He concluded his treatise by declaring,
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 173

I shall not fear to proclaim freely and openly my opinion of them [i.e.,
witches], and to do all in my power to bring the very truth to light:
namely, that their lives are so notoriously befouled and polluted by so
many blasphemies, sorceries, prodigious lusts and flagrant crimes,
that I have no hesitation in saying that they are justly to be subjected to
every torture and put to death in the flames; both that they may expiate
their crimes with a fitting punishment, and that its very awfulness may
serve as an example and a warning to others.42

Composing his treatise after his retirement, Rémy seems to have used
such categorical assertions to suppress the moments of doubt about his
bloody activity that he surely endured.

England and Scotland

Ever since the pioneering works of Keith Thomas on magic and witch-
craft in England and Alan Macfarlane’s on the witch-hunts in Essex, the
focus on witchcraft has been on the local social relations and popular
belief systems which lay behind specific accusations of witchcraft. A typical
scenario portrayed an elderly or middle-aged woman suddenly down on
her luck and forced to beg from her neighbors. When refused by some
yeomen farmer or his servants, she might mutter a curse, so that when
a sudden, inexplicable ailment befell the farmer’s family or livestock,
suspicion, fueled by guilt over the lack of charity, fell upon the woman,
who may already have possessed a reputation for harmful magic. 43 The
psychological process of guilt projection and accusation was a common-
place elsewhere in Europe.
More recently, James Sharpe has counted a total of 474 accused
witches (nearly 90 percent of them women) brought before the home
circuit assizes. Fewer than forty trials immediately followed the passage
of Elizabeth I’s witchcraft statute of 1563, although that decade witnessed
the publication of the first polemical tracts and news sheets on the subject.
Thereafter assize trials jumped dramatically to over 100 cases each
decade until 1600, dropping to twenty or fewer in the 1620s and 1630s.
It seemed that serious witch persecution was dying out as it had in
England’s major economic competitor, the Dutch Republic.
Such was not to be the case, for in the 1640s, as England was plunged
into a Civil War between Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians and the
Royalists, a major witch panic erupted in Puritan Essex and spreading
174 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

from there to neighboring counties. Altogether, Essex, with over 470

indictments, accounted for nearly twice as many cases as the other four
major regions of witch persecution put together. Since several of these
counties were undergoing similar socio-economic pressures to Essex,
Sharpe suggests that its exceptional witch persecution record might be
explained by the nature of elite politics within the county which were
intimately intertwined with religious conflicts. For example, the first
person to have been executed for witchcraft under the new witchcraft
statute of 1563 was Elizabeth Lowys, whose persecution was nourished
by Thomas Coles, an archdeacon of Essex and a returned Marian exile.
Many of the Protestant divines who faced persecution under Queen
Mary understandably saw the religious struggle against both Catholicism
and skepticism in the light of the apocalyptical battle. Sharpe points out
the high correlation between levels of heresy and witch burnings in Essex,
and notes that

In one case where it is possible to grasp the mechanics whereby heretics

were brought before the authorities, arising from Great Bentley, it is
possible to see elements of community dismay and neighbours
informing on each other, admittedly co-ordinated by the local clergy-
man, which look very similar to the background to many witchcraft
cases. And, interestingly if ironically given his earlier adherence to the
Protestant cause, one of the Justices of the Peace who played a leading
role in processing the accusations against these heretics was Lord
Darcy of Chiche, kinsman of that Brian Darcy who, as landlord and
Justice of the peace, managed to orchestrate a local witch-craze in
Essex in 1582. Going back to the political and religious situation
in Essex in the early years of Elizabeth might well offer evidence of
a context in which the actions and attitudes of members of the local
religious and secular elites helped construct a tradition of witch-
hunting within the country.44

A few examples from Essex and elsewhere will illustrate some intersec-
tions between fervently held religious beliefs and conflict and concerns
over demonic witchcraft.
Persecution of leading Protestants was a hallmark of Queen Mary’s
reign, as was the suppression of Catholicism under Queen Elizabeth I.
Even after the establishment of the Church of England in the reign of
Elizabeth, there were many malcontents who, demanding a more thor-
ough church reform, eventually separated from it, leading to a proliferation
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 175

of sects which Puritan ministers regarded as a form of diabolical

blasphemy nearly as bad as the prospect of the restoration of Catholic
“papalism”, the great Antichrist for most Calvinist divines. Efforts to
restore Catholicism were also linked with Philip II’s efforts to assert his
claim to the English throne as Queen Mary I’s consort, and proof of this
threat was found in the Spanish Armada of 1588 which was destroyed by
a storm, an event interpreted by the English as a sign of God’s blessing
upon their Protestant nation. Puritan ministers were fighting a three-
front war against a resurgent Catholicism, a variety of home-brewed
religious dissent groups, and what they saw as entrenched religious
indifference on the part of many parishioners. Puritan writings therefore
reveal an intense sense of embattlement, of assault by invisible, demonic
forces. Armed only with the word of God and prayer, Puritans propa-
gated a defense strategy based on the imprinting of sound doctrine and
proper Christian virtues upon the psychology of individuals, shaping
and directing their attitudes and decisions. Only if morality, sobriety,
prayer, and humble devotion to God’s will became every English person’s
second nature, could they resist the twin dangers of Catholic invasion
and heresy. Despite their vigorous efforts, the Protestant preachers soon
discovered that many of their flock remained obstinately fond of the old
“superstitions” or utterly indifferent to the task. In witchcraft the divines
found an ally in this battle.
In sermons and writings Protestant preachers attempted to discredit
Catholicism by associating it with magic. One of the earliest writings on
the subject was Francis Coxe’s A short treatise declaringe the detestable
wickednesse of magicall sciences, published in 1561. Coxe, a reformed
necromancer, argued that permitting the magical arts in England was
an act of treason against both the prince and God. Like those opposing
the decriminalization of marijuana today, Coxe suggested that not even
relatively benign magical crafts such as astrology could be tolerated, for
these were merely Satanic snares to entrap people into the “hard” forms
of magic such as necromancy. He claimed that necromancy was prevalent
mostly among the Catholic clergy and that a new statute was needed to
dissuade others from embarking on this diabolical path which was
turning Christians into infidels and “the temple of ye holy Ghoste into a
synagoge of Sathan.” Although in times past fear of the “godly” law against
magic had deterred many from such wicked practices, the law “for lacke
of execution hath lyen a slepe.”45
Coxe’s opinions were shared by many Protestant pamphleteers,
such as the author of one of the earliest English witch pamphlets,
176 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Examination of John Walsh of 1566, which asserted that the accused,
John Walsh, had learned his sorcery from a Marian priest, and that
invoking his spirits required a book of sorcery, magical circles, candles of
virgin wax, and waxen images of the intended victim, accoutrements
indeed of clerical necromancy. Walsh’s case, along with that of a priest’s
concubine who confessed to having learned sorcery from her paramour,
revealed the “fruites of Papistes and papistrye” as an increase in super-
stitious practices. The author also lists several popes, most notably
Alexander VI, who had gained their throne by diabolical means and
used necromancy against their foes.46 Coincidentally, Walsh’s trial occurred
on August 22, 1566, just a few days after the start of the iconoclastic fury
in the Low Countries, and was another part of the Calvinist assault on
Catholic ritual.
Coxe’s comments also pointed to a lacunae in English law. The
creation of Henry VIII’s 1542 witchcraft statute was possibly linked to
lingering concerns over the trial of Anne Boleyn, who, among her
many alleged treasons, had been charged with witchcraft, while the
discovery of a waxen image of Prince Edward with pins stuck in it may
also have incited the monarch to suppress magic. However, the young
Edward VI (1547–53) began his own reform of England’s laws by
repealing many of his father’s statutes, but died before he could
replace them. Mary Tudor (1553–8) was simply too busy to turn to the
project. Hence, between 1547 and 1563 witchcraft was not a secular
crime in England, although it remained a subject for the realm’s
ecclesiastical courts; Coxe’s treatise was therefore part of a broader
campaign encouraging Elizabeth to fill this legal void. 47 Why Elizabeth
took up the matter is not clear, although Keith Thomas suggests that it
“may have been precipitated by political conspiracies in which magic
was employed against the reigning monarch,” 48 while Deborah Willis
sees it as part of the Queen’s efforts to distinguish herself from her
Catholic predecessor and to keep at bay both the Catholic holdovers
and the ardent Protestant Reformers, many of whom had just returned
from their exile on the continent imbued with an even greater zeal
to eradicate Catholic remnants.49 An apparently sudden increase in
1559–60 of witchcraft cases brought before the ecclesiastical court of
Canterbury also raised concern. 50
The last revision of the witchcraft statute occurred under the watch-
ful eye of King James I, whose own concern about magical plots against
the crown had earlier led him when king of Scotland to participate in
several trials in the early 1590s and to publish his own demonological
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 177

treatise, the Daemonologie, in 1597. Yet, and despite his evident involve-
ment in creating the 1604 witchcraft statute, once monarch of England
James placed a restraining hand on witchcraft persecution, largely
because he defined the crime as treason against the crown, noticing
little to disturb him in most of the cases he witnessed in the early seven-
teenth century. 51 English law, moreover, required royal permission to
proceed to judicial torture, while trials were heard by juries which
looked for sound evidence. Based on these legal constraints and the lack,
until the 1640s, of widespread concern about a diabolical witch sect, it is
apparent why the hunts here were considerably more moderate than
elsewhere.
Prior to the Civil War there were a few witch panics, especially in the
1580s and 1640s in Essex, coinciding with moments of vigorous Puritan
activity. Macfarlane’s analysis of the trials, however, revealed no apparent
link between the two events, as many Puritan preachers remained
disdainful of the popular fear of witchcraft and very few actually took
part as witnesses in trials against witches. Instead, some, such as George
Gifford (c. 1548–1620) publicly condemned blaming disasters on old
women when such came directly from God as a punishment of the
victim’s own sin, not that of his or her neighbor.52 Although Gifford’s
published works on witches were, by the standards of his day, moderate
and intended to stop indiscriminate prosecution of witches, his writings
about Catholics and Protestant sectarians were far from that. As preacher
in Maldon, Essex, Gifford published a number of attacks against both
Roman Catholicism (by far his greatest enemy) and Protestant dissidents
such as the Separatists (Brownists), Family of Love, and other promoters
of “atheism.” His famous treatises on the Devil and witchcraft therefore
need to be read in the context of his whole literary corpus.
Undoubtedly Gifford’s most ambitious project was his series of fifty
sermons on the book of Revelation, a large tome of over 450 pages
published in 1596. This was not the first time that his congregation had
endured a lengthy discourse on the apocalyptical visions of St. John; in
the first sermon he half apologized to them for expounding again on this
subject. For Gifford this prophetic section of the Christian scriptures was
being fulfilled in his own day as the Protestant forces of Christ battled
against the antichristian papacy. Assisting the apocalyptical beast were
newly arisen “filthy monsters”: Anabaptists, Libertines, Familists, and other
secret agents of Satan working from within the godly commonwealth to
spread license and atheism now that his open allies, the papacy, were
hindered by English law. For Gifford and other Puritan preachers,
178 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Catholic sacramental practice and veneration of the saints were forms of

demon worship which gave credence to the superstitious and magical
beliefs of the “vulgar sort.” The gravest danger to the English common-
wealth was therefore not the maleficia of witches but moral laxity and
doubt in the providence of God, sins which would lead the realm back
into the arms of the papal whore of Babylon. He wrote,

For what can bee more bitter then in steede of a liuely feeling through
faith, that wee are reconciled to God through the bloud of his sonne,
and insteed of the spirit of adoption by which we are sanctified, which
beareth witnes to our spirits that we are the children of God, to haue
the doubts and tortues of conscience, which I say doe follow of super-
stious and corrupt doctrine? The assurance of faith, or full perswasion
of the remission of sinnes, is condemned of the papists as high
presumption: and to bee in doubt is deemed great humilitie.53

The inner turmoil of Puritans over whether or not they were members
of the elect is a well-known topos in religious psychology, as believers
frantically searched for signs indicating they were members of that
exclusive club and grieved over every sinful thought that might indicate
their exclusion.54 One has to wonder about the effects that Gifford’s
intense hatred of Catholicism, obsession with the Devil, and constant
harping on the signs heralding Christ’s return had on the minds of his
congregation. Writing about the possession case of Helen Fairfax in
1621, James Sharpe comments about the possible role played by the
sermonizing of a local vicar who like Gifford was an experienced anti-
popery controversialist:

One can safely surmise that attentive listeners to his sermons would
have had their sensibilities alerted to the wiles of the Antichrist.
Similarly, the images of God which Helen recounted give us insights
into how a young Puritan woman might see her creator, while it seems
likely that the monster dripping with blood which she saw owed not
a little to the Book of Revelation.55

Gifford was therefore not alone in planting such images of the Devil
and Catholics in the minds of parishioners. As the Puritan bishop of
Salisbury John Jewel wrote in a letter to the famous Italian Reformer
Peter Martyr Vermigli in 1559,
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 179

It is incredible how great a crop and forest of superstitions has sprung

up in the darkness of the Marian time. Everywhere we found relics of
the saints, nails by which foolish persons imagined that Christ had been
crucified, and I know not what fragments of the holy cross. The number
of sorceresses and witches had increased immensely everywhere.56

Shortly afterward Jewel gave a sermon before Queen Elizabeth, warning

her about witches and sorcerers who “within these few last years are
marvellously increased within your grace’s realm. . . . Your grace’s sub-
jects pine away even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth,
their senses are bereft.”57 Jewel and his cohorts fervently longed for a witch-
craft statute that would eradicate malicious magic and suppress the
remnants of Catholic superstition. Their zealous sermons on this matter
may have had some undesirable side effects. For the Puritans of New
England, Richard Godbeer notes, those

who used countermagic assumed that suffering was the result of

affliction by outside forces and could be removed through magical
ritual. Ministers insisted that the sources of sin and suffering were
internal, as were the means for resisting them. Yet at the same time
they maintained a tradition of externalizing evil and so inadvertently
promoted recourse to countermagic. Clerical statements about Satan’s
role in the generation of human sin and suffering could result in the
very abdication of responsibility ministers claimed to abhor.58

In other words, while Gifford intended his writings and sermons to

end both white magic and witch accusations, his apocalyptical demonizing
of his religious opponents and endless harping on the need for all
believers to inspect and take responsibility for the demon-inspired sin
within them may have had the opposite effect. Moreover, as in Germany
where clerical visitations helped increase fear of heresy and witchcraft
among parishioners, several English bishops ordered their clergy to
beat the bushes of their parishes for any signs of superstitious practices,
helping in fact to draw attention to the subject. In 1576 the Archbishop
of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, instructed his clerics to inquire
“whether there be any among you that use sorcery or witchcraft, or
that be suspected of the same, and whether any use any charmes or
unlawful prayers, or invocations in Latin, or otherwise . . . and whether
any do resort to any such for help or counsel, and what be there
names.” 59
180 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Demonic possession and witchcraft

In England witchcraft accusations often originated from victims of

demonic possession, a phenomenon very much linked to confessional
conflict. One of the earliest such incidents reveals this quite well. In
September 1584 the Jesuit priest William Westen and eleven other
Catholic priests illegally conducted in Denham a series of well-attended
exorcisms of six demoniacs which apparently convinced hundreds of
Protestants to reconvert to Catholicism. They also helped introduce
“Continental” notions of demonology into the popular consciousness of
Englanders. 60 As in France, these English exorcisms were intended as
proof that the Catholic priests alone had power over the Devil. The
demoniacs cooperated sensationally with their priestly exorcists, con-
firming the power of the consecrated Host and the relics of recent English
martyrs while, in their demonic voices, identifying the Protestants and
Queen Elizabeth as Beelzebub’s allies. Such cooperation was the product
of both religious zeal and the unorthodox techniques of the exorcists,
which included binding the afflicted to chairs and forcing them to inhale
noxious fumes and swallow some foul drink. Elizabeth’s principal minis-
ter, Francis Walsingham (c. 1530–90), allowed these scandalous events
to take place until he had collected enough evidence to pounce on all of
the leaders of the infamous Babington plot, who aimed to assassinate the
Queen, restore Catholicism to the realm, and open the door to a Spanish
invasion. Among the exorcists was one of the plot’s leaders, John Ballard,
while one of the possessed was William Morwood, servant of the central
plotter, Anthony Babington. Westen himself probably knew of the
conspiracy, but the evidence against him was insufficient to proceed to
his execution, although he was imprisoned for ten years. 61
Neither the publicity of the exorcisms nor Westen’s influence ended
with the Babington affair. Along with his demonological notions Westen
had brought to England’s Catholic priests an extreme Counter-
Reformation asceticism. Many resisted, forming an anti-Jesuit Catholic
party which preferred to negotiate with the crown for a means to stay
both Catholic and loyalist. Discussions culminated in November 1602
with a promise from Bishop Bancroft that all Catholic priests who swore
allegiance to the Queen would be treated mildly. For his efforts, Bancroft
was accused by the Puritans in Parliament of high treason for negotiating
with Catholics. To dispel Puritan charges of incipient Catholicism and
hostility to Puritanism (he had overseen the condemnation of the Puritan
“dispossessor” John Darrell three years before), Bancroft began an
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 181

examination into the Denham exorcisms, a published account of which

kindled the fires of debate about the Devil’s assaults on England through
treasonous plots, demonic possession, and witchcraft (one of the demon-
iacs had accused a witch of causing the bewitchments).62
One pamphlet recounting how a possession led to a witch trial pro-
vides a number of important clues as to both the ongoing confessional
disputes and Puritan religious attitudes and psychological states. The
pamphleteer’s propagandistic goal was to rally parishioners to daily
vigilance against the Devil, for the book of Revelation prophesized “that
the devil hath great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time,” a
prediction that was now fulfilled in the “outragious fury that Sathan
useth in raising persecution against Gods Saints, by his mischieuous
instruments, & corrupting mens minds by his wicked suggestions, but also
in tyrannizing, according to his limited power ouer them by torments.”
The most important sign of the soon coming of judgment was “the cooling
of Charity, [and] quenching of the Spirit” which the author believed
characterized his own day. The story of the “pittifull vexing of this poore
distressed child” revealed that Christians could withstand the Devil, if
only they availed themselves of the proper weapons.
This account of the trial in 1596 of Alice Gooderidge of Stapenhill
before the Derby Assizes began with the demonic possession in Burton-
upon-Trent of thirteen-year-old Thomas Darling. For our pamphleteer
it offered rebuttal to “both the peeuish opinion, that there are no wiches,
and the Popish assertion that only their priests can dispossesse,” for
a Puritan minister, John Darrell, was instrumental in releasing the boy
from his torment. The long story began innocently enough on February
27, 1596 when Darling returned home ill from a trip to the woods, being
overcome by “sore fits” in which he shouted “Looke where greene Angels
stand in the window, and not long after would often complaine, that a
green Cat troubled him.” A physician found no sign of disease, even
though he “doubted that the Childe was bewitched.” In between fits the
boy seemed fine, mature beyond his years, showing “the frutes of his
education, which was religious and godly.” In fact, he hoped to become
a preacher, “to thunder out the threatenings of Gods word, against sinne
and all abhominations, wherewith these dayes doo abound.”
Whatever their cause, the convulsive and hallucinatory fits increased
in extremity over the following weeks, marked by superhuman
strength and unusual contortions. Moments of calm were filled with
prayers and scripture readings, particularly from John 1 (commonly
used in countermagic), although these often caused new fits, proving
182 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

that his body was inhabited by demons who found the word of God
repulsive. When suspicion of bewitchment was expressed, Darling
finally told his story of how, when wandering in the woods, he had
stumbled upon a little old woman whom he remembered had earlier
begged at their door. As he walked by her in the copse, he passed wind,
a rude act which the woman took as intentional. In anger she spoke the
rhyme “Gyp with a mischiefe, and fart with a bell: I wil goe to heauen,
and thou shalt goe to hell” and stooped to the ground for some mys-
terious purpose. Immediately suspicion alighted on Alice Gooderidge,
the daughter of “the witch of Stapenhill” and a reputed practitioner of
“diuellisch practises.”
As the fits continued into Easter, the boy’s relatives sent for Gooderidge;
when she appeared before Darling, “he fell sodainly into a maruellous
sore fit.” Gooderidge denied any knowledge of the boy, but some of the
bystanders persuaded Darling to perform the scratch test, after which
the accused told the boy “take blood enough child, God helpe thee,”
a blessing which Darling interpreted as an effort at countermagic, for he
said “praye for thy selfe, thy prayer can do mee no good.” The pamph-
leteer displayed his Puritan disgust with such forms of soothsaying to
“discry a witch” as lacking both natural cause and scriptural warrant,
thus they too were “amongst the witchcrafts, whereof there bee great
store used in our Land, to the great dishonor of God.” A more orthodox
test was applied by compelling her to repeat the Lord’s Prayer and Creed,
which she failed by skipping over key phrases such as “lead us not into
temptation.”
Moved to tears by Darling’s descriptions of terrifying visions of a mon-
strous green cat with eyes of fire, the bystanders “thought it good that
the Witch were brought before a Justice.” Thus the nearly 60-year-old
Gooderidge and her “witch” mother Elizabeth Wright were taken to the
Justice of the Peace. Gooderidge confessed to having cursed the boy, but
explained that she had thought him to be another youth who had broken
her basket of eggs. The Justice of the Peace tested the boy by having
him read from John 1, which resulted in another fit. Thus the judge
ordered the accused to face their accuser, but Wright’s mere glance
caused the boy further quaking which ended only with her withdrawal.
These tests justified the search for the witch’s mark (the extra nipple used
to feed a demonic familiar), which was found on Elizabeth, although
on Alice only a fresh wound was discovered which was assumed to be
her effort to remove evidence. Gooderidge was therefore committed to
the Derby gaol.
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 183

Darling played the role of Puritan demoniac with aplomb, dramatically

reenacting Christ’s resistance to Satan’s temptations, crying out “Doost
thou say thou art my god, and that I am thy sonne?: Auoyde Sathan,
there is no God saue the Lord of hosts,” and “And dost thou say, that if
I wil not worship thee, thou wilt torment me three times more; if thou
torment me three hundred times, yet canst thou not touch my soule.”
When the demon was pressed for the witch’s identity, Darling voiced the
Devil’s reply, “thy Mistris hath giuen thee a drop of her bloud to thy din-
ner, and that therefore thou wilt tel no tales of her?” At least one acquaint-
ance remained unconvinced, grilling the boy with critical queries and
telling him to stop the pretense. Upset, Darling confronted him, saying,

you bade me I should not dissemble, saying that there was no witches:
also you asked of me if I thought there were a god? God blesse me
from such comforters: I pray you al pray for me that the Lord would
deliuer mee from this temptation: at which wordes speaking hee was
ouerthrowne into a cruell fit; which beeing ended, that man which
thought there was no witches departed.

By implication such skepticism toward the reality of the boy’s bewitch-

ment was diabolically inspired.
Confronted again by Darling’s convulsions, Gooderidge admitted
“that she indeed did vex the childe, but if they would forgiue her, it
should cease.” In early May, after a soothsayer applied upon her a mild
form of torture (heating a pair of new shoes on her feet until they tight-
ened painfully, a procedure our pamphleteer thought ridiculous), she finally
confessed: “I met the boy in the wood, the first saterday in Lent, and
passing by me, he called me witch of Stapen hil: vnto whom I said, Euery
boy doth call me witch, but did I euer make thy arse to itch?” Later she
added that when she had stooped to the ground “the Diuell appeared to
me in likenesse of a little partie-colored dog red and white, and I called
him Minn. Seeing that euerie boy calleth mee witch, therefore goe thy
waies and torment this boy in euerie part of his bodie at thine owne
pleasure . . .” After these words Darling’s fearsome cat became a dog.
Meanwhile, the boy was visited by more godly ministers, one of whom
was a Mr. Hildersham of Ashby de la Zouch who tested the boy’s faith,
concluding,

howsoeuer the Papists boasted much of the power their priests had
to cast out diuells, and the simple euerie where noted it as a great
184 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

discredit to the Ministers of the Gospel, that they do want this power,
yet did he professe there was no such gift in them, that thogh the Lord
oft in these daies, by the praiers of the faithful casts out diuels, yet
could he not assure them to cure him. To holde this faith of myracles
to remaine still in the church, is an opinion dangerous.

Hildersham’s advice was not long maintained, for close on his heels
came one John Darrell, a Puritan divine whose career with helping pos-
sessed teenagers had begun in 1586. Against his many detractors and
skeptics, Darrell assured Darling that his demonic possession was real,
and that he must vigorously resist Satan, for to fail was a sin. He gave the
boy and his guardians a book called The Enemy of Securitie, told them
what to expect next and to pray and fast. Although Darrell soon left
the scene to avoid charges of seeking “vainglory,” Darling followed the
preacher’s script and as the bystanders sang Psalms and prayed, the
boy’s visions now alternated between sightings of Christ and the apostles
and terrifying visions of drunkards, swearers, and filthy talkers being
punished in hell and of apocalyptical scenes of the Last Judgment.
Finally the demons admitted defeat, saying, “we cannot preuayle, let vs
goe out of him, and enter into some of these heere.” The alarmed viewers
were saved by their pious activities and the demons departed, shouting
“Wee cannot preuaile, for they will not be holpen with Witches. Brother
Radulhus we cannot preuaile: let vs goe to our mistres and torment her,
I haue had a draught of her blood to day.” The boy recovered while the
witch was overcome with a sudden attack of “the Ague,” dying before
sentencing. 63
This was, however, not to be the end of the matter for the other
protagonists; when Darrell faced his own trial for fraud, Darling and his
Bible-reading friend Jesse Bee were summoned to testify. Under pressure
Darling confessed to counterfeiting his possession, although he retracted
this once released. For his part Bee continued to believe in Darling’s
heavenly speeches (Darrell now admitted that they may have been the
work of Satan) although he commented that Darling had caused some
of his fits during the Bible-reading sessions so that “when the word of
God was read, those who were present might thereby the better bee
brought to thinke that the devil could not abide it, & so have a more due
and godly regard afterwardes for it.”64 At least for the next few years,
Darling remained a convinced Puritan, in 1602 suffering a whipping
and mutilation of his ears for his zeal. Although Darrell’s opponents
concluded Darling’s fits were fraudulent, it must be remembered that
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 185

the discredited exorcist had entered Darling’s story late in the day. It
seems fairest to explain Darling’s ecstatic behavior as a result of uncon-
scious psychological forces of repression and projection that afflicted
many of the hyper-godly.
Doubting one’s election was a frequent subject of Calvinist sermons,
tracts, and individual counseling. For example, the 1585 tract A Godly
and comfortable treatise could have provided a script for Darling’s behavior.
For those godly periodically vexed by doubt, the author reassured that
thoughts of despair were from the Devil, against whom one must not
dispute, for he is far too subtle an opponent, but merely “saye shortlye
vnto him: away Sathan with sorrow, it is written, Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God.” 65 Darling’s victory over Satan affirmed for his
anxious audience the veracity of the Protestant portrayal of the spirit
realm. Darrell was not without defenders, one of whom interpreted his
persecution as part of the battle against “Papistes and Atheistes.” While
most Calvinists were skeptical about exorcisms, our writer argued that
it was blasphemy to deny the ability of the godly minister to cast out
demons “at the prayer and fasting of his holy people.” This divine power,
he asserted, was distinct from the “false miracles” of the “Romish
Synagogue” which “draw foolish people to their vaine superstition.” In
contrast, Darrell’s “dispossessions” had inspired a religious revival which
Satan opposed by discrediting Darrell’s ministry by having the “Papists”
deny that there is “any such power to be in our Church;” inspiring atheists
to “scorne whatsoever tendeth to prove that there is a God or a Divel;”
and, most grievously, egging on their own clergy to deny Darrell a fair
hearing and spread rumors that Darrell had “cast out Divells by witchcraft
or coniuration.” Behind this trial lay the question of the existence of the
spiritual realm and of God himself. The author concluded:

Because Atheists abound in these dayes and witchcraft is called into

question. Which error is confirmed by denying disposession & both
these errors confirm Atheists mightily. For thus will they gather if 11.
possessed (at sundry times & in sundry places) were all counterfeits,
why should we thinke there is any possession at all? If neither posses-
sion, nor witchcraft, . . . why should we thinke that there are Divells?
If no Divells, no God.”66

The justices were not convinced and, as James Sharpe notes, the publicity
of this case “served to discredit exorcism in the Church of England.”67
186 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

As the Puritan ministers became increasingly frustrated with the

slow pace of reform on the part of Elizabeth I’s government, they
turned to strengthening the devotion of their flocks, untainted by
doubt in their divine mission. By the 1590s many of them were con-
vinced that the Reformation was an utter failure. 68 Some were led into
separatism, while others, such as Gifford, continued to fight for the
erasing of blasphemy from the entire realm. This frustration becomes
evident in pamphlets describing witch trials, such as A Detection of
damnable driftes, practized by three Witches arraigned at Chelmisforde in Essex
of 1579, which warned against being lulled into a false sense of security
by the limited Reformation undertaken by Elizabeth. Instead, believers
must beware the “Ambushementes of Sathan” who draws the simple
into silly witchcraft, and plots treason against her majesty with those in
high positions. The solution was for everyone to “stop by all possible
meanes” any incidents of witchcraft in their neighborhoods and through
prayer and “assured faithe in the merites of Christ Jesus shield thy
self.” 69
In another pamphlet describing the trial of four accused witches from
Windsor, the author opined that

among the punishmentes whiche the Lorde GOD hath laied vpon vs,
for the manifest impietie and carelesse contempt of his woorde,
aboundyng in these our desperate daies, the swarmes of Witches, and
Inchaunters are not the laste nor the leaste. For that old Serpent
Sathan, suffred to be the scourage for our sinns, hath of late yeares,
greately multiplyed the broude of them, and muche encreased their
malice.

Such diabolical magic was a canker upon the body politic, he suggested,
one that many lower justices too readily winked at. Though without the
Devil witches could do no magic, still by the law of God and of this land
they were to be executed as traitors to her highness and realm. 70 And in
another trial account from 1589, from Chelmsford, Essex, the author
used the story as a lesson for readers to “with-draw our filthy affections
and naughty dispositions,” to curb the “desire of our diuelish appetites.”
The testimony of the elderly widow Joan Cunny added weight to this
homily, for she had confessed that her familiar spirits had been unable to
harm some men, including the local parson, because they “had at their
comming a strong faith in God, and had inuocated and called vpon him,
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 187

that they could doo them no harme.” A daily, practiced piety was the best
defense against the spite of witches.71
For both Protestant and Catholic tellers of these possession stories,
the intended goal was to frighten the faithful away from ungodly living
and heretical notions and toward full conformity to official orthodoxy,
indeed, an eradication of religious doubt. Specific charges against
witches, however, arose usually not from the elites but from neighbors
deeply fearful of the power of suspected witches. As Protestants sought
to replace magical remedies with prayer and bold assertions of faith,
many ordinary folk took offenders to the courts where it was widely
believed God provided special protective power to the judge and court
officials against the machinations of both the alleged witch and the
Devil. Thomas Cooper, a prominent vicar and author of The Mystery of
Witchcraft, wrote that the power of witches was restrained by divine
providence and the magistrate’s authority. “For though, if a priuate
person detain them, they may either hurt or escape, yet if once the
magistrate hath arrested them, Satans power ceaseth.” Cooper’s long
treatise illustrates also how witchcraft and possession cases could be
used in the battle against doubt. Cooper’s 1617 work sought to uncover
the “seuerall Stratagems of Sathan, ensnaring the poore Soule by this
desperate practize of annoying the bodie: with the seuerall Vses thereof
to the Church of Christ. Very necessary for the redeeming of these
Atheisticall and secure times.” Like a talisman, The Mystery of Witchcraft
was to act as “a preseruatiue against the secret Atheisme that fretteth
like a Gangrene,” threatening to sap the life out of religion. 72 That
virtually no one explicitly rejected the existence of God did not matter,
for those who disputed the reality of specters or demonic possession,
for example, were in Cooper’s mind incipient atheists, upon whom
could be projected one’s own doubts, making a physical enemy of an
inner state.

Scotland

As the witch-hunts of the Scottish lowlands were promoted by secular

and church authorities they were quite intense. After the legal imple-
mentation of the Reformation in 1560, the Protestant clergy became
important governmental assistants to local lords. They significantly
raised the standard for lay participation in religion and their sermons,
preached before captive parish audiences, proved powerful forms of
188 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

indoctrination on several fronts.73 In the minds of the Scottish King

James VI and his Protestant divines, the witch was a monstrous criminal
who had committed the ultimate treason by rejecting God and entering
into a compact with the Devil, hence charges of maleficia played second
fiddle to the diabolical and heretical elements. Prior to the 1563 law con-
demning the practice of magic and transferring jurisdiction for witch-
hunting from ecclesiastical to secular courts, witch trials were rare,
although three witches were burned in St. Andrews in 1542. The new
statute did not immediately precipitate witch persecutions, as over the
next few decades the Reformed clergy and General Assembly were pre-
occupied with the campaign to make the crown give the Kirk sessions
greater power to deal with “heresies, blasphemie, witchcraft, and viola-
tion of the Sabbath day.”74 Instead, Scottish witch-hunting occurred
between 1590 and 1662, with national hunts in 1590–1 (those overseen
by James VI), 1597 (the year of James I’s Daemonologie), 1629–30, 1649,
and 1661–2. Altogether Christina Larner estimates over 1,000 execu-
tions, many of these during brief, terrifying witch panics reminiscent of
the German model, such as that of the small county of East Lothian in
1649 which led to the burning of over 200 accused.
The first major Scottish witch trial was that conducted in 1591 in
North Berwick under the command of James VI who was investigating
a treasonous plot to sink his flotilla by storm as it sailed from Denmark.
This case began when David Seaton, a deputy bailiff of Tranent,
suspected his maid Geillis Duncane of practicing evil magic because she
had developed a reputation as a successful healer. By application of
crude torture Seaton forced her to confess and provide the names of
several other alleged witches, including the elderly Agnes Sampson, an
Edinburgh woman called Agnes Thompson, the skipper Robert Grierson,
and a schoolteacher named Doctor Fian ( John Cuningham). Some of
these confessed to bewitching the former Earl of Angus whose mortal
ailment had confounded his physicians. Soon news of the case reached
the King, and he decided to attend further deliberations personally.
Before his majesty Sampson and Thompson described diabolical sabbath
meetings of more than 200 participants wherein the Devil proclaimed
his utter hatred of James VI and commanded his minions to do away
with him. James was apparently incredulous, but when Sampson took
him aside and divulged to him the words that he had spoken to his
Queen Anne on their wedding night in Norway, he was convinced.
Sampson then provided the recipe for the magical poison she had
prepared for the king and described how the witches had stirred up
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 189

a peculiar wind that divided the King’s ship from the flotilla, although
the plot ultimately failed because his faith “preuayled aboue their
ententions.”75
Convinced of the threat against his person, James VI composed his
own demonological treatise and exerted royal pressure to eradicate the
threat, leading to an indiscriminate witch-hunt in 1597 which surpassed
accusations of royal treason and ultimately required the King’s interven-
tion to stop the denunciation of the innocent. Thereafter, witchcraft
remained an important tool in the power struggle between ecclesiastical
and secular authorities, while the Calvinist clergy, knowing full well the
King’s personal interest in witchcraft, sought to placate James by pursuing
action against witches. This seems to have been the principal motivation
behind the witch-hunt in Aberdeenshire in 1596–7. 76 Thus, while they
did not normally promote witch-hunting, Scottish ministers and elders
assisted in interrogations and, as members of the General Assembly, they
applied constant pressure on the government to construct a godly state
by eradicating superstition and witchcraft. Later witch-hunts, such as
the 1649 panic, which accounted for several hundred more trials, mostly
in East Lothian and Berwickshire, were part of a crusade to depict the
government as a “covenanted” state which could claim direction from
God as readily as the clergy.77 A period of relative calm during the
interregnum was inspired by Oliver Cromwell’s justices who were more
skeptical about witchcraft accusations and forbade the use of torture.
However, with the Restoration, witch-hunts were revived in 1661–2,
leading to over 600 trials and about 300 deaths. Once again, concern
over the mechanics of the witch panic led the Privy Council to enact new
legislation making such chain reaction witch-hunts virtually impossible
and to try witch-hunters and “prickers” for fraud.
Thus in Scotland trials against witches became part of a larger dispute
between a newly Protestantized church and state representatives over
who controlled morality, whereas in England the clergy were never as
powerful a force as their Scottish brethren. In both regions, however,
the preaching and propagandizing of clergy, especially of the Calvinist
variety, were important factors in the development of a particularly
guilt-laden attitude among lay people, an attitude which in some cases
resulted in sudden outbreaks of demonic possession or witch denunci-
ations. In neither realm, however, were these unusual incidents the
expressed wish of the preachers, although some of them quickly found
ways to manipulate such preternatural behavior to their confessional
advantage.
190 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Ireland

On the other hand, trials were rare in Ireland, even after the Irish
Parliament passed its own witchcraft statute in 1586. One trial involved
a Protestant minister John Aston charged with using magic to discover
the whereabouts of treasure. In a more typical case from 1661 a Florence
Newton was charged with witchcraft. As the “Witch of Youghal” this
woman already possessed a reputation for witchcraft, so that when she
was refused charity at the home of John Pyne, it is natural that she would
be accused of magically causing the fits of one of his servants, Mary
Longdon. However, even at this late date, Newton was not compelled to
confess to diabolical activities or involvement in a conspiracy, and no
hunt ensued. 78 Although belief in witchcraft was promoted by Protestant
settlers and missionaries in the second half of the seventeenth century,
Ireland remained almost entirely Catholic and its extremely popular
fairies were not successfully converted to witches until the nineteenth
century. A major reason for this, one which we will explore in the next
chapter, was the fact that Ireland remained relatively unmoved by the
confessional conflicts or campaigns to inculcate proper religiosity that
were the hallmark of its neighbors, England and Scotland, or that would
later convulse it.79

Conclusion

We shall turn to other regions of witch persecution in the next chapter

when we discuss the “periphery” of witch-hunting – the Mediterranean
regions, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe – which either started witch-
hunting late or were not seriously caught up in such activity to begin
with. That chapter will also discuss the effects of changes within the
religious and political sphere on the decline of witch-hunting. Before
embarking on that enterprise, it will be useful to summarize a few of
the major points made in this chapter on the intersections between the
Reformations and the sudden revival of witch-hunting.
What lay behind the origins of witch-hunting (as opposed to magic or
witchcraft which were endemic features of the European landscape) was
the need to defend particular religious beliefs against both heretical
challenges, such as Anabaptism, and inner doubt. As the Jews before
them, alleged witches and demoniacs provided tangible proof of the
reality of the Christian supernatural realm. And while many ordinary
 Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630 191

peasant denouncers of local witches were not deeply concerned about

the diabolical conspiracy, their social betters and religious leaders clearly
were. Atheism was a term freely tossed about in the religious propaganda,
yet most of those accused of this blasphemy were, in fact, deeply religious
individuals who condemned the political interlinking of church and
state so important to both popular religion and the authorities. The
cross-confessional belief in the nearness of the apocalypse added
urgency to the campaign to establish a purified and firm faith, one that
necessitated the demonization and eradication of “peasant superstitions.”
As we shall see next, the witch persecution too increased skepticism,
leading many authorities to suppress it at about the same time that they
gave up efforts to enforce confessional conformity.
 6
RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND THE
END OF THE WITCH-HUNTS

It is strange to see the madness of the people, that will ask the
devil who sent him. And then he telleth who is his dame [i.e., the
witch], and to how many she hath sent him, and how many
he hath killed. If it were the Devil indeed, would they believe
him? Is it not his desire to bring innocent persons into
danger? . . . it is no godly zeal but furious rage, wherewith the
common sort are carried against witches. Moreover there be
none more extreme haters of witches, than such as be infected
with a kind of witchcraft themselves: for what are they but
witches . . . which have their night spell, and so many charms
& devices to avoid the dangers of witchcraft, or to unwitch?
None are more furious against witches than these, & such as of
all others are ye readiest to run for help unto the devil: there-
fore I may boldly affirm, that it is of a mad rage, and not of
a good zeal that the most are carried withall against witches.
George Gifford, A Discourse of the Subtill Practises of Devilles
by Vvitches and Sorcerers. (London, 1587), G4v and I1v
[spelling modernized].

George Gifford was no religious skeptic but a devout Puritan preacher

who decried the “vulgar” fear of witches and called for judicial caution.
Yet, his fiery sermons raised the dreadful specter of a demonic plot between
the Antichrist – the papacy – and his apocalyptical beastly assistants –
Protestant dissidents, especially Familists and Baptists. Did he thereby
restrain or encourage fear of demonic witchcraft? Where belief in
a diabolical conspiracy embraced both populace and rulers, judicial

192
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 193

action against Satan’s presumed minions was the result. There were
a variety of factors determining the extent of witch-hunting in a particular
territory, including the relative independence of local courts, the use of
torture, the prevalence of communal tensions, and the anxiety produced
by plagues or climatic, social, and economic crises. The goal in this chap-
ter is more narrowly to evaluate the religious aspects behind the absence
or ending of witch-hunting. Beginning with the Dutch Republic, where
trials against both heresy and witchcraft were suppressed remarkably
early, the discussion will move to areas under the jurisdiction of the
Mediterranean Inquisitions (Italy, Spain, and Portugal) where suppression
of heresy remained a priority but where there was no corresponding
transition to witch-hunting; and then to regions where witch-hunting
arrived late, such as Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. It will finally examine
the role of religion in the eventual stifling of witch-hunts in the Empire,
France and England.
This deliberation follows Stuart Clark’s suggestion that one reason
“for the decline of witchcraft prosecutions and of witchcraft beliefs in
general was the coming of a religious pluralism that permitted the members
of all types of churches to coexist and spelt the end of the confessional
state.”1 Using the typology developed by the eminent sociologist Ernst
Troeltsch, Clark defines a “church” type as universal, compulsory, and
conservative, reinforcing the secular order’s hierarchies, while sects were
selective, voluntary, aimed at personal perfection, and condemnatory of
the secular realm. A state church viewed witchcraft as “a serious counter-
institutional competitor” for the fidelity of its members, the witch as
a rival to the official priesthood, and the witches’ sabbath as the diabolical
reverse of the approved liturgy. In contrast, for sectarians, the state church
was part of the secular world and its devils were of no concern. Most
sectarians – Anabaptists, spiritualists, Familists, and Quakers – identified
the Devil with their persecutors or spiritualized him altogether, in the
process suppressing fear of witchcraft among their members.
In broad terms, Clark’s typology helps predict the level of witch-hunting
in a particular region. First, where a church-type model was enforced
upon the populace by the authorities, there was a concomitant suppres-
sion of religious deviance and of skepticism toward the official dogma. The
propaganda accompanying this campaign dehumanized and demonized
the religious “Other” to make the populace less sympathetic to the
subversive notions of dissidents. The resulting climate of suspicion was
amenable to witch-hunting, as local officials and ordinary folk were
commanded to look out for heretical and diabolical activity in their vicinity.
194 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Such was the case for the centers of major witch-hunting, such as the
Empire, Switzerland, or Scotland. Second, in territories where a church
type was followed but with some informal accommodation for “quiet”
religious dissidents, as in England, there was a lower level of witch-hunting,
but even here tensions produced by the polemical warfare among Puritans,
sectarians, and Catholics helped foster some localized witch panics.
Third, in those areas where there was no significant religious com-
petition to the state church, or where there were present effective tools to
keep such in check, or where a large segment of the population willingly
adopted the official ideology, there was little need to encourage massive
witch-hunting. This was the case in the regions under the jurisdiction of
the Spanish, Portuguese, Roman, and Venetian Inquisitions. And finally,
where the authorities adopted a sect model for religious affiliation,
not enforcing membership in a state church and allowing a degree of
religious pluralism, there was little desire to hunt witches; this was the
situation in many parts of Eastern Europe until the middle of the seven-
teenth century (when the “church-type” model became predominant)
and in the Dutch Republic.

The Dutch Republic

For those scholars who use a social crisis model to explain witchcraft
panics, the Dutch Republic remains an enigma. It endured many of the
same climatic, economic, and political crises as regions with major witch
panics, and for the eighty years between the start of its war of independence
against Spain in 1568 and the final victory in 1648, the United Provinces
of the Dutch Republic was an embattled realm, one that, during the
pauses in the conflict, should have seen at least a few witch panics on
a scale similar to its southern neighbor, the Spanish Netherlands. Prior
to the revolt, both the northern and southern provinces of the Low
Countries had conducted one of the worst heresy persecutions outside
of Spain. Yet it appears that the elites who led the Dutch Republic did
not suffer from the particular religious mindset amenable to persecution
mania, unlike their Catholic opponents. Instead, once embarked on their
war with Spain, the Dutch authorities showed little desire to allow or
encourage persecution of heretics of any kind. For one thing, they had
aligned themselves with the Calvinists who, the object of vicious persecu-
tion themselves, preferred persuasion rather than the stake to achieve
a unitary Calvinist realm. The lack of publication of demonological works
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 195

throughout the sixteenth century, moreover, strongly suggests little

market for such literature. 2 After a quick summary of witch-hunting in
the Republic’s most populace province, Holland, we will consider the
factors behind the country’s distinctiveness.
A total of 193 adults, mostly women, were formally accused of witch-
craft in Holland, thirty-three to thirty-five of whom were executed (a
relatively low execution rate of 18 percent overall). The peak periods
of persecution occurred around 1540, 1564, 1585, and 1591. The last
three periods can be linked to economic difficulties, as the year 1564
marked the beginning of the economic conflict between England and
the Low Countries and the blocking by Denmark of the Sound, the
major conduit for Amsterdam trade. Most of the witches tried in 1564
were from regions heavily dependent upon such international trade,
although Hans de Waardt notes that it was “probably more the feeling
that prosperity was suddenly and unexpectedly in grave danger that
stirred up fear of witchcraft and not so much the actual economic
depression.”3 In the latter two peaks, 1585 and 1591, Spanish ships
made fishing the North Sea a virtual impossibility and most of these
trials were conducted in fishing towns, while many of the prosecuted
women were accused of causing shipwrecks. Even so, the number of
executions was extremely small and to describe even the worst year of
witch persecution in Holland as a panic is misleading.
The Republic’s ongoing war against Spanish hegemony has been
depicted as a reason for its lack of interest in hunting witches. However,
the magistrates of the Spanish Netherlands showed no comparable
reluctance to hunt witches during the civil war. A more likely reason for
the Republic’s distinctiveness in this regard was its booming economy.
Its peasants resembled self-conscious entrepreneurs producing for the
world market while urbanites possessed a remarkable range of social
and economic mobility; both were less susceptible to fear diabolical
conspiracies. The lack of a strong, central authority in Holland after
1581 also allowed this tolerance to win the upper hand and be enshrined
in the law and governance of the realm. 4
After seeking advice from the professors of the University of Leiden, in
1593/94 Holland’s central court forbade the use of torture and the water
test in witchcraft cases, making conviction extremely difficult. The last
person to be executed in Holland for the crime of witchcraft was
a woman burned in 1608 (the first in fourteen years), while the last
formal indictment led to an acquittal in 1614; through the course of its
“Golden Age”, the province suppressed all further trials against withcraft.
196 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Compared to its immediate neighbors to the south and east, these are
extraordinarily early dates for the legal squelching of witch trials. Even in
the “heartland” of witchcraft persecution in the northern Netherlands,
the province of Groningen, its two major “panics” took place quite early,
in 1547 (twenty executions) and 1562 (five). The relative disinterest
in witch persecution was certainly not from a sudden disbelief in the real-
ity of witchcraft or a lack of desire of commoners to oppose maleficia, for
belief in witchcraft, soothsaying, and other forms of popular magic
remained important aspects of “popular” culture well into the nineteenth
century. 5 There was therefore something quite distinctive about Dutch
culture that made skepticism toward diabolical conspiracies a stronger
force than elsewhere. What most distinguished its religious life from that
of the south was the remarkable informal tolerance that developed in the
former as compared to the uniform and aggressive Tridentine Catholi-
cism promoted by the Spanish rulers of the latter. In the Dutch Republic
the members of the States General decided against giving Calvinism the
powers of a state church, although they did grant it privileged status
as the only officially approved confession. Adherents of the others –
Lutheran, Mennonite, and Catholic – were informally permitted to con-
tinue their own forms of worship, although for a time all unconverted
Catholic priests were expelled from the realm, and other restrictions
were placed, in ascending order, on Lutheran, Mennonite, and Catholic
worship which had to be contained within sanctuaries hidden from street
view (however, the rise to power in 1619 of the ardent Calvinist Prince
Mauritz led to the temporary exile of the dissident Arminians). In other
words, the authorities did not engage in a concerted effort to enforce
a unitary faith upon its citizens or to expel all forms of doubt or heterodoxy,
despite the pressure of individual zealous Calvinist pastors for them to do
so. Instead, the Reformed Church remained a voluntary society, and in
many regions attracted only a minority of citizens as members, while the
government continued on its path of religious accommodation for the
sake of good business. For the Catholic priest Cornelius Loos, this apparent
victory of heresy and of religious toleration was the real enemy, not some
imaginary sect of witches.
Here too spiritualism, with its depreciation of confessional conformity
and promotion of religious tolerance, was quite strong and the Republic
developed the dubious reputation as a comfortable home for a wide
range of foreign unorthodox groups, such as the Polish Socinians who
rejected the doctrine of the trinity, English Separatists, and conversos
and Jews from Portugal and Spain. Mennonites soon found themselves
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 197

struggling with how to retain their self-image as God’s martyred elect in

a non-persecuting realm in which many of their number were prospering.
Even prior to the Reformation, Dutch theologians, strongly influenced
by Erasmian humanism, had shown a pronounced reluctance to adopt
the sacramental and diabolical realism of a Heinrich Krämer, although
Hans de Waardt finds little evidence of a dominant skepticism among
Netherlandic jurists until the generation of those born around 1600.6
Moreover, prior to the 1560s the authorities conducted several vicious
judicial campaigns against Anabaptists, although most of these occurred
in the aftermath of Anabaptist militancy or were pressed upon local
authorities by the Habsburg government. As the citizenry learned to
tolerate the religious “Others” in their midst, they were less threatened
by the expression of dissident religious notions.
A public controversy over exorcism in Utrecht in the 1590s nicely
illustrates the points raised here about the distinctiveness of Dutch
religious attitudes. Like most of the Republic’s cities, Utrecht (formerly
the region’s ecclesiastical capital) was a religiously diverse community
with large Calvinist and Catholic, and smaller Lutheran and Mennonite
congregations, as well as a significant group of spiritualists or libertines
who often blended in with the other confessions.7 Since public Catholic
worship was not yet permitted, staged exorcisms proving the supernatural
superiority of Catholic priests were not possible. Yet Catholic exorcists
still quietly performed their ministry and many ordinary Protestants,
now disallowed the use of countermagic to cure bewitchment, often
availed themselves of priestly services, much to the chagrin of Reformed
preachers who had considerable difficulty in offering their flocks effective
alternative defenses against Satanic assault.
The debate in Utrecht began with the possession of a velour maker,
David Wardavoir, reported in 1595 by a Calvinist pamphleteer who
refuted Catholic rumors that Wardavoir had been cured by the exorcism
of Catholic priests, for he was instead “delivered not through conjur-
ations, as is the usage among the exorcists, but by God’s grace through
a constant faith.”8 However, after 1599 such propaganda was neutralized
when an unusual Reformed minister, Johannes Bergerus, arrived in the
city. A former Bavarian Franciscan and then Lutheran pastor, Bergerus
had already been forced out of several Reformed parishes in rural
Groningen for a variety of offences. Bergerus sought to fill the void for
Protestant exorcists, although his techniques were unorthodox even by
Catholic standards. For example, one of his bewitchment remedies said
to take “thrice-three teeth of a dead-man’s head, pulverize them and
198 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

make a fumigation from them, and vomit; take the witch’s excrement
and put it in one of your shoes and put it [i.e. that shoe] on the other,
wrong foot.” Given that Reformed individuals plagued by witchcraft
were supposed to take the “religious high ground” by “an enlightened
dependence upon God’s grace alone,” it is easy to see how Bergerus
attracted a large clientele among the less certain of Utrecht’s Protestant
population.9
In response, in 1603 several of his ministerial colleagues, led by
Johannes Lindenius and Johannes Gerobulus, publicly denounced the
exorcist and his demoniacs as frauds. However, two of the latter, the
sisters-in-law Mayken Huberts and Clara Gelaudens, whose afflictions
had begun some time earlier and who as demoniacs were currently
recipients of civic alms, rushed to Gerobulus’ home and threw them-
selves at its door. They then moved their anti-skeptic campaign to the
main city square, drawing large crowds with their loud shouting. Even
when thrown into jail, the two women’s voices attracted the curious
around the prison’s windows. The sheriff released the women into their
husbands’ custody, but the latter, poor textile workers, took the unusual
step of filing a lawsuit against Lindenius for blasphemy and slander for
denying their wives’ possession. The council, sensing the large support
for the plaintiffs, acted circumspectly by putting the demoniacs to the
typical tests of possession. When Mayken’s demon refused to translate
some Latin, the court proceeded with its efforts to determine if the women
were frauds, mad, true demoniacs, or witches. In the end, despite com-
pelling evidence of fraud, the court merely ordered the husbands to
keep their wives out of public view, otherwise they would be cast into the
madhouse. The most important goal of the magistrates was to dissipate
the dangerous tensions that had arisen in the city. The case reveals the
widespread belief in demonic possession, the difficulty that “skeptics”
faced in counteracting such sentiment, and the opportunity that possession
offered even poor women to defy learned ministers, for the voice of the
demoniac was that of a powerful, if malevolent, male spirit.

The skeptical tradition and Balthasar Bekker

Elsewhere, such defiance toward leading ecclesiastical figures might

have led to trials and executions. By adopting a voluntaristic church
model, the Republic shied away from state persecution of heterodoxy.
Thus the notions of radical reformers, such as Mennonites and spiritualists,
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 199

were allowed to intermingle with the region’s mainstream religious

discourse, influencing many who did not regard themselves as dissidents.
One such idea was the spiritualization of the Devil, equating him essen-
tially with inner sinful desires. Even some of the Reformed clergy were
infected with this idea, such as Hubert Duifhuis (c.1517–81) of Utrecht
and Herman Herberts (1540–1607) of Dordrecht and Gouda, the latter
of whom was investigated as an adept of Joris and who had published a
controversial tract identifying each person’s evil thoughts, not the Pope,
as the Antichrist. 10 For such spiritualistic-minded individuals, “there
is no mightier witchcraft in the human than the ensnared holiness that
he received in the flesh [i.e., preoccupation with religious ceremonies]” as
the spiritualist Hendrik Jansen Barrefelt put it around 1580.11
Undoubtedly the most influential Dutch spiritualist of the century was
Dirk Volkerts Coornhert (1522–90), who in 1572 became secretary of
state to Prince William of Orange, encouraging him to adopt a policy of
religious toleration for the young Republic. Coornhert, a Catholic with
spiritualistic tendencies, was an acquaintance of Hendrick Niclaes and
knew the writings of Joris. Although he rejected the narcissistic claims of
both prophets, Coornhert followed their condemnation of theological
dogmatism, intolerance, and sectarianism. Like them he restricted the
Devil’s work to the mind where he caused people to fixate on doctrinal
precision instead of brotherly love.12
As witch prosecutions rose across Europe, a number of Dutch Mennonites
wrote works on the subject, all opting for an extremely limited role for
the Devil that largely undercut belief in demonic witchcraft. For
example, in 1638 Jan Jansz Deutel, a Mennonite printer of Hoorn,
emphasized the impotence of the Devil and chastized people for ascribing
powers to him that belonged only to God. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra
suggests that Deutel’s position was “positively revolutionary,” for his
“denial of the power of the devil was in complete contrast to the ruling
theological opinions.” 13 Mennonites opposed the witch persecutions for
another very practical reason: they themselves had been the target of
a vicious demonization campaign that had led to torture and execution
of hundreds. Such sentiment was expressed in 1659 by the Mennonite
cloth merchant Abraham Palingh (c.1588–1682), who implored the
magistrates of his city, Haarlem, not to prosecute old women mali-
ciously accused of witchcraft, suggesting instead that they be treated in
Haarlem’s hospital. He condemned the persecution zeal of both Cath-
olics and Lutherans and ridiculed their fear of witchcraft, which was
a mere deception of the Devil. 14
200 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Such radical notions were kept alive in the Dutch Republic also in the
salon-like gatherings of undogmatic advocates of religious exploration
and toleration known as the Collegiants, which included a variety of
confessional adherents, from Socinian to Mennonite to Reformed. In the
course of their discussions, the Collegiants eventually shed the eschato-
logical and theological notions of their predecessors and became advocates
of rationalism, skepticism, and broad-based religious freedom. They also
came to deny the intervention in the human realm of both evil spirits
and angels. 15 Among those influenced by these ideas was the learned
Reformed preacher of Amsterdam, Balthasar Bekker (1634–97), who in
1693 published his famous book, The Bewitched World, arguing that the
Devil possessed no physical reality but was merely a symbol of evil within
humans, while a few years earlier he had translated an English witch trial
pamphlet, using it to expose the absurd nature of the charges. Despite the
strength of the spiritualizing currents that we have been describing,
Bekker’s opinions ignited a storm of controversy that in the end cost him
his job.16 His opponents sought to discredit him by associating his beliefs
with the views of: Joris; Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who fashioned
a thoroughly materialistic conception of the universe; Benedict Spinoza
(1632–77), who suggested that knowledge gained from religious sources
was uncertain compared to that of the natural order; and Socinians.
They were also deeply disturbed by Bekker’s championing of Descartes’
Cartesianism, which many feared would leave God out of the scientific
picture entirely.17
Collegiantism and Cartesianism were not the only routes to depreciating
the Devil’s agency in human affairs. Another was Neoplatonic mysticism.
Pico della Mirandola’s efforts to construct a complete harmonization of
human religion did not die out with him. Instead, it was revived later
in the sixteenth century in the wake of the posthumous publication of
the medical and religious writings of Paracelsus. Central to Paracelsus’
writings was alchemy, which later adepts combined with their reading of
the Jewish Cabala to discover the essential unifying principle of all know-
ledge, natural and religious. This search for perfection culminated in
the person of the Dutch Paracelsian physician and Cabalist Francis Mercury
van Helmont (1614–98), whose writings promoted both religious toler-
ation and scientific empiricism.18 Unconventional religious exploration
and alchemy were no strangers to scientific empiricism; Isaac Newton,
founder of the law of gravity, was also an alchemist and biblical scholar
who metamorphosed the Devil into human evil desires.19 What united
these disparate groups and individuals, from Joris to the Collegiants to
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 201

Bekker and Van Helmont, however, was a passion to promote religious

tolerance. The Dutch Republic’s environment provided fertile soil for
such ideas to flourish.

Witchcraft and the Mediterranean Inquisitions: Italy and Spain

The Inquisitions of Rome, Venice, Spain, and Portugal were also

remarkably restrained when it came to persecuting witches. Some of the
earliest witch trials had occurred in Italy, strongly encouraged by
preachers such as Bernardino of Siena and by local efforts at communal
moral cleansing. Yet witch trials here peaked by 1550 and were concen-
trated thereafter in northern Italy, such as those in the Friuli against the
Benandanti. In this case, Inquisitors were shocked by popular belief in
a cult of “good men” who periodically left their bodies to defend the
crops against evil sorcerers. Over years of interrogations, Inquisitors
transformed the Benandanti from the good men into conventional
witches. 20
For the first several decades of their existence the Inquisitions of
Rome and Venice were preoccupied with the Protestant threat, while
Spain’s tribunals remained fixated on the converso problem. Until the
1580s, 80 percent of cases brought before the Venetian Inquisition
involved Protestants of some type (including a few dozen Anabaptists),
while in the southern, Spanish-ruled regions of Italy, more defendants
were accused of harboring Islamic beliefs than Protestant. As for perse-
cution of Jews or Judaisers, only the Holy Office of Sicily – which was
reorganized by Spanish authorities in 1537 – persecuted Jews to any
significant extent, and even here interest waned after 1560. After 1580,
by which time Protestantism had been suppressed, Inquisitors broad-
ened their scope of activities as they sought to remold popular religiosity
and shore up Tridentine Catholicism. Attention accordingly shifted to
eradicating popular “superstition,” blasphemy, and irreligious behavior,
and illicit magic replaced Protestantism as the single greatest charge
brought before most Italian tribunals.21 Even so, Inquisitors developed
the reputation of being soft on the crime, for in their efforts to suppress
magical superstition among the populace they showed little concern
about witchcraft per se or about a supposed pact with the Devil. Instead,
they applied the same rules in trying witches that they had used with
Protestants, aiming for reconversion and rewarding the contrite with
penance instead of death. Only the recalcitrant and repeat offenders
202 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

were treated harshly. 22 Thus, while Italian Inquisitors heard many illicit
magic cases, they executed very few. Instead, they used the trials as tools to
bring the populace’s beliefs and practices into harmony with Tridentine
Catholicism. Illicit magic was therefore regarded as a crime equal to
blasphemy and heresy, and the diabolical sabbath conspiracy was practic-
ally ignored.

The Compendium Maleficarum of Francesco Guazzo

This mildness on the part of Inquisitors was certainly not from a lack of
local demonologists promoting witch-hunting, such as the Milanese
monk Francesco Maria Guazzo whose Compendium Maleficarum was pub-
lished in 1608. Like most such works, Guazzo’s was highly derivative,
borrowing heavily from the treatises of Krämer, Molitor, and more
recently Rémy and Del Rio, although a series of woodcut drawings
detailing each of the horrific acts of the sabbath was new. Ironically,
Guazzo composed his treatise between 1605 and 1608 at the court of
Duke John William of Cleves and Jülich, the very place where Johann
Weyer had earlier written his skeptical tome. Circumstances had radic-
ally changed in the duchy, as the current duke had ended the irenical
atmosphere of Weyer’s day, committing himself to a fervent Tridentine
Catholicism and to the eradication of witches, actions rewarded in 1596
with a dedication in Franz Agricola’s anti-Weyer treatise on witchcraft,
Von Zauberen, Zauberinnen und Hexen (On Sorcerers, Sorceresses and
Witches). Guazzo was summoned by the duke who feared he had been
bewitched by an old man who had committed suicide in prison rather
than face the stake.
Guazzo’s treatise unintentionally provides evidence of the strength of
the skeptical tradition in his homeland. His purpose was “that men,
considering the cunning of witches, might study to live piously and
devoutly in the Lord.” Fear of diabolical witchcraft thus served a positive
religious function by driving people to the true faith, even though the
Devil’s assaults on firm believers could be as dangerous as his blatant
attacks on the weak:

When he sees men of weak and timid mind, he takes them by storm:
when he finds them dauntless and firm, he becomes as it were a cun-
ning fox to deceive them: for he has a thousand means of hurting us,
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 203

and he uses countless methods, superstitions and curious arts, to

seduce men’s minds from God and lead them to his own follies; and all
these he wondrously performs by means of illusions and witchcraft.23

In other words, the Devil tempted the simple minded with crass witch-
craft, but for the learned he used subtler tools, such as Protestantism or
skepticism, to mislead believers. Even though the Devil was regarded
as the father of lies, when he spoke out supporting Catholicism against
Protestantism, Guazzo accepted his words as fact. For example, he recorded
that the demon expelled in 1566 from Nicole Aubrey, the famed demon-
iac of Laon, “in the hearing of all mocked at the Calvinists, crying out
that he had nothing to fear from them since they were his friends and
allies.” 24 When Luther died in 1546 at Eisleben, Guazzo added, “the
demons flew to his funeral from those who were possessed.” Moreover,
he affirmed the physical reality of all sabbath activities, including flight,
infanticide, and sexual intercourse with demons, aligning the spiritual
interpretation with “the followers of Luther and Melancthon” who
alleged that “witches went to their Sabbaths in imagination only, and
that there was some diabolical illusion in the matter, alleging that their
bodies had often been found lying at home in their beds and had never
moved from them.” Guazzo’s rebuttal postulated that the Devil actually
deceived spouses by placing a false body in the bed in lieu of the real
partner, who was busy attending the sabbath.25 A realist interpretation,
he asserted, was now generally held by the theologians and jurists of
Italy, Spain, and Catholic Germany. And while Guazzo did not explicitly
identify diabolical witchcraft as a Protestant doing, he described the
witches’ desecration of Catholic sacraments in terms that could just as
readily have applied to the iconoclastic Reformers. At their infamous
meetings witches make vows never to adore the Eucharist and

that they will both in word and deed heap continual insults and revilings
upon the Blessed Virgin Mary and the other Saints; that they will tram-
ple upon and defile and break all the Relics and the images of the Saints;
that they will abstain from using the sign of the Cross, Holy Water,
blessed salt and bread and other things consecrated by the Church; that
they will never make full confession of their sins to a priest; that they will
maintain an obstinate silence concerning their bargain with the devil.26

A near century of anti-Anabaptist propaganda also had its effect, as

Guazzo made diabolical rebaptism a prominent feature of the witches’
204 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

sabbath, depicting it in a way strikingly similar to images of Mennonite

baptismal ceremonies.
Like Krämer, Guazzo strongly defended sacramental realism and
power, going beyond most other Catholic demonologists by asserting
that the Devil could truly enrich his subjects and that witches, with
God’s permission, could actually control weather. For Guazzo, the Devil’s
inversionary scheme extended to the sacramental concept of ex opere
operato, so that if a witch’s magic proved ineffectual because God had
protected an intended victim, then the witch had to turn the evil magic
upon him or herself, for “the devil will not endure that the injunctions
he has laid upon them should all come to nothing. And she to whom
the fateful lot falls has to suffer the evil for them all.” This supposedly
happened to Catherine Praevotte of Freising whose efforts to poison
a neighbor’s daughter were repulsed by the prayers of the intended
victim’s mother. Satan therefore commanded Praevotte to poison her
own infant. In this way Guazzo explained why some witch hexes proved
impotent and provided, in a diabolical mirror image, a tangible confirm-
ation of sacramental realism.
Mere expression of skepticism toward the witches’ sabbath was a major sin:

they who assert that all this is not true, but only a dream or an illusion,
certainly sin in the lack of true reverence to our Mother the Church.
For the Catholic Church punishes no crime that is not evident and
manifest, and counts no one a heretic unless he has been caught in
patent heresy. Now for many years the Church has counted witches
as heretics and has ordered that they be punished by the
Inquisitors . . . Therefore either the Church is in error, or they who
maintain this belief.27

Like so many of his colleagues, Guazzo drew his line defending his
belief system on the shifting sands of demonic witchcraft, arguing that to
dispute one aspect of the witches’ sabbath was to doubt all. Guazzo’s
extremely defensive tone reveals the strength of opposition within the
Italian intelligentsia and Church hierarchy to his ultra-realist position.

Italian Inquisitions and witchcraft

However, many local Italian judges were like Guazzo extremely unhappy
about the laxity of the Roman Inquisition toward witch persecution, and
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 205

they began applying considerable pressure to be given jurisdiction for the

crime. On November 28, 1619 this conflict climaxed with the execution,
over the protests of the Roman Holy Office, of two alleged witches by the
Milan court. Hoping to repulse charges of leniency, on March 20, 1623
Pope Gregory XV issued the Bull Omnipotentis Dei, officially decreeing
the death sentence for even first offenders convicted of having aposta-
tized to the Devil and killed others by maleficia. However, to ease the
Bull’s severity, prominent members of the Roman Holy Office com-
posed and circulated some guidelines for Inquisitors as to the treatment
of accused witches. These reveal considerable affinity with the writings
of Catholic moderates, such as the Jesuit Adam Tanner’s Disputationes
Theologicae of 1617 which rejected the evidence of accused witches
against their supposed coconspirators. In May, 1624 a senior member
of the Holy Office sent a copy of the guidelines to a provincial official,
advising that

The question of witchcraft has always been considered fallacious and

uncertain here, as it is, in fact; and, often, even experienced and
knowledgeable persons have exceeded proper bounds, and quickly
encountered difficulties, which occasioned errors prejudicial to the
Holy Office, to inquisitors, and also to those instituting trials, since it
is a crime difficult to verify, and in which a great role is played by the
frivolity and flightiness of women, and the treachery of the Devil
who is the teacher and father of lies. Therefore, in regard to what
your lordship writes about the witches, I must tell you, by order of
my most illustrious colleagues, that you and the father inquisitor
should take careful note of the enclosed Instructions, which I send
to you.28

While these comments about the testimony of women were hardly

laudatory, they were at least more consistent than those held by Heinrich
Krämer and Jacob Sprenger who believed much the same about the
reliability of women’s evidence but who still took seriously the testimony
of female witches supposedly in league with the Devil. In any event,
throughout the seventeenth century Italian Inquisitors dealt with thou-
sands of cases of illicit magic, but passed virtually no death sentences for
the crime; there was no transition here from trials against real heretics to
a campaign against a diabolical witch conspiracy.
206 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

The Spanish Inquisition and witchcraft

In broad terms the situation was comparable in Spain where attention

remained concentrated for some time on the presumed Judaising of
conversos, thanks largely to the influx of Portuguese conversos in the
second decade of the seventeenth century and revival of fears of wide-
spread Judaising. Even so, the severity of the persecution rose and fell
with the level of perceived threat and supply of suspects. Until the
1540s, Spanish Inquisitors fiercely attacked the conversos, thanks to the
fanaticism of individual Inquisitors and the pressure of Old Christians to
suppress the alleged New Christian plot against the Christian state.
Moreover, southern Spain, formerly under Islamic rule, proved infertile
ground for belief in diabolical witchcraft, in part because the Devil was of
much less significance in Muslim and Hebrew thinking. For example, in
1526 a number of Inquisitors, theologians, and lawyers met in Granada
to discuss the interrogations of accused witches in Navarre. The meeting
resolved “that the existence of a sect of witches was still to be regarded as
a dubious matter about which the judges could easily be deceived.”29
By the 1540s the centers of presumed Spanish crypto-Judaism had
been destroyed and the supply of ready suspects dried up. Not willing to
close shop altogether, the Inquisitors, like their Italian counterparts,
turned to other forms of “religious” offences, especially “Lutherans” –
anyone expressing vaguely Protestant ideas. Execution rates, however,
plummeted. Between 1540 and 1614, Judaisers made up only 5.9 percent
of the 29,584 accused brought before all Spanish Inquisition courts,
while the Suprema now began rectifying the excesses of local tribunals,
frequently overturning local death sentences. 30 Only 2 percent of all
cases prior to 1615 involved illicit magic. In fact, apart from the Alpine
region of Italy, the Mediterranean Inquisitions accounted for no more
than a few hundred witch executions among the thousands of trials
against illicit magic.
Similarly, the Portuguese Inquisition, established in 1547, almost
exclusively investigated Judaisers. Up to 1580, its three tribunals at Lisbon,
Coimbra, and Evora conducted thirty-four autos-da-fé which proclaimed
almost 2,000 sentences, over 200 of them capital ones, although not
all were carried out. By 1580, Stephen Haliczer notes, a violent anti-
Semitism had overwhelmed most of the clergy and populace, leading to
an even worse wave of persecution between 1581 and 1600, climaxing
with some fifty autos-da-fé that penanced nearly 3,000 convicted and con-
demned 220 to death. The decades of the 1620s and 1630s witnessed the
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 207

worst Judaiser persecution, with nearly 5,000 punished and 230 executed
(of over 390 death sentences). Many Portuguese Jews and conversos
fled their homeland to southwestern France, the Papal States, Amster-
dam, the Turkish lands and, interestingly enough, Spain, drawn by the
new moderation of the Spanish Inquisition. This sudden influx of New
Christians into Spain revived persecution of conversos there, who
between 1615 and 1700 accounted for more than 20 percent of the
Inquisition’s over 15,000 cases.31 In this climate, efforts to demonize
magical offences were considered an inefficacious distraction.
The few witch panics in the Mediterranean region were imports from
northern lands. Leading Inquisitors shared Cornelius Loos’ perspective
that the real danger to the Church was theological heresy, not the fantas-
tical and largely imaginary acts of witches. In Italy, humanists ridiculed
the Dominican defense of realism, lumping together scholastic demon-
ology and popular superstition, a criticism that led central Inquisitors to
shy away from openly espousing credulous views on demonic agency.
Central Holy Offices mandated rigorous controls over the trials of
accused witches, demanding concrete proof of guilt prior to sentencing
and strictly limiting the use of torture. How these cautions worked is
seen clearly in the famous witch panic of Logroño.

The Basque witch panic of 1608–12

Gustav Henningsen’s richly detailed study of the internal struggle

among the three members of Logroño’s inquisitorial tribunal illustrates
the determinative role played by leading individuals in inspiring a witch
panic. Driven by religious zeal and a personal need to justify their initial
credulity in a complaint of bewitchment, they incorporated belief in
demonic witchcraft into the very core of their faith. The case began in
December 1608 when Maria de Ximildegui, a young woman originally
from the Basque village of Zugarramurdi (across the Pyrenees from
France), returned home after a stay in the Pays de Labourd village of
Ciboure. Her time in France corresponded with the beginnings of
a witch panic there which had been encouraged by the local ruler, the
Spaniard Tristan de Gamboa d’Alsatte, lord of Urtubie, who had written
to King Henry IV of France “that the number of sorcerers had increased
so alarmingly during the previous four years that no corner of the
region was free of them.”32 In response, the crown sent to the region the
French judge Pierre de Lancre, who by the end of 1609 had tried dozens
208 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

and burned at least eleven witches, including three priests. Three years
later he published his own treatise on the subject (the Tableau de l’incon-
stance des mauvais anges et demons) in which he refers to about three dozen
children who had testified to being involuntarily carried to witches’
sabbaths.
Upon her return to Zugarramurdi, Maria de Ximildegui began describing
her involvement in a witch sect and how during the summer of 1608 she
had repented and been reconciled to holy mother Church. Claiming to
have attended a sabbath in Zugarramurdi itself, she provided the names
of some of her new neighbors as fellow witches, including María de
Jureteguía who initially denied the charge until it became clear her
accuser’s detailed testimony had convinced family and friends. She then
confessed to a priest, blaming her aunt for having initiated her into the
sect as a girl. Paranoia soon gripped the village as residents feared an attack
by the remaining witches. The others accused by Maria de Ximildegui
quickly confessed, and the priest decided that confessional absolution
and neighborly reconciliation would sufficiently restore village harmony.
But news of these events reached the Logroño Inquisitors who
deemed the reconciliations inadequate. Investigators were sent, reports
prepared, and the decision made to conduct a formal Inquisition.
Initially only two of the requisite three Inquisitors were available, the
monk Dr. Alonso Becerra Holguin and the recently appointed priest
Juan de Valle Alvarado; the third position was not filled until June 20,
1609, when the priest and canon Alonso de Salazar Frías (c.1564–1635)
arrived. By this time Becerra and Valle had already found precedents in
the Inquisitorial archives and were convinced by their interrogations of
four suspects of the reality of the threat. The Suprema, however, remained
skeptical, demanding precise, eye-witness details of the witches’ sabbath
and physical evidence, such as witches’ salves and powders. Becere and
Valle instead concentrated on extracting further confessions in a process
of imprisonment and interrogation that Henningsen compares to brain-
washing. The Inquisitors were amazed by the detail and consistency of
the suspects’ stories and seemed blithely unaware of the psychological
impact of their detailed questioning and of the richness of storytelling in
an oral culture.
Only after convincing themselves of the veracity of the threat did
the Inquisitors send one of their number on a search for corroborating
evidence. At each village the Inquisitor promulgated the Edict of Faith
detailing all forms of heresy – from Judaising to Protestantism to popular
skepticism and magical superstition – and commanded all residents
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 209

to attend church on the following Sunday. At that time they would hear
the Edict and a sermon detailing the dangers of the Devil’s doings and
participate in a High Mass, after which they would all confirm their faith
in the Catholic Church and pledge to assist the Holy Office in uncovering
heretics. Informants and repentant heretics were granted a week’s grace
and promised gentle treatment. The following Sunday the excommuni-
cation was promulgated against all unconfessed heretics while the faithful
were sprinkled with holy water to protect them from demons. When the
first results proved meager, Valle convinced himself that this was the
result of the Devil’s control over his human agents, not evidence of the
falsity of the accusations. Alibis were broken by recourse to the “counter-
feit-body” theorem whereby the Devil appeared publicly as one of his
witches so as to provide him or her with an alibi. Given such logic it is
hardly surprising that Valle’s evidence confirmed the reality of the witch
sect. While at Urdax he also communicated with the witch judges from
across the French border and agreed to hunt down all of the French
witches who had fled to Spain.
Concerned about Valle’s procedures, the bishop of Pamplona, Antonio
Venegas de Figueroa, decided upon the unusual step of conducting his
own visitation which persuaded him that the whole affair was a matter of
self-delusion or deceit. In response, Valle compelled the local priests
and friars to preach vigorously about the dangerous sect of witches,
leading the skeptical bishop to conclude that “if the people had not
known previously what an aquelarre [witch sabbath] was, they soon got
to know about it now.” 33 Some preachers participated enthusiastically
for obvious personal reasons, such as Lorenzo de Hualde, the rector of
Vera whom the residents resented because he was a Frenchman
appointed by the Lord of Urtubie. Hualde had assisted this lord in his
French witch-hunts, hence, the bishop claimed, the priest was blatantly
using witchcraft accusations to get even with his detractors. His dubious
technique of extracting confessions from children and adults by keeping
them confined for over forty days in the church rectory and regularly
interrogating them proved effective. To the confessing children he gave
talismans with the names of Jesus and Mary inscribed upon them. His
opponents in the village who denied the reality of the witch sect he
excoriated as suspected witches.
All of this evidence was forwarded to the Logroño Tribunal and to
the Suprema, and an auto-da-fé was organized for October 1610, even
though outbreaks of a strange disease in the prison had decimated the
list of suspects, something that Inquisitors Becera and Salazar put down
210 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

to the Devil’s work. Even so, the bodies of five of the deceased were
burned along with several living accused, while some others were granted
penance. The grand event was witnessed by a massive crowd of some
30,000 spectators, many of whom arrived skeptical but left convinced:
one witness reported that “Having listened to so many ghastly monstrosities
for the space of two whole days . . . we all returned to our several homes,
crossing ourselves the while.” Another commented, “May God in His
mercy assist us to stamp out this devilish and pernicious sect which is so
alarmingly widespread.”34 King Philip III ordered a preaching crusade
throughout the afflicted region and soon thousands, many of them
children, were coming forward with evidence against their neighbors or
themselves.
However, cracks in Inquisitorial solidarity were forming. Although he
seems initially to have concurred with his colleagues, Salazar began to
insist on stronger evidence before assenting to death sentences, and such
dissent meant referral to the Suprema. Arguments amongst the three
Inquisitors increased, and Salazar embarked on his own visitation.
Unlike Valle’s tour, Salazar’s followed the Suprema’s instructions to the
letter. Searching for solid evidence of a witch sect, Salazar found only
credulous acceptance of the fantasies of children, gross abuse of legal
procedure, and the effects of personal ambition. After examining thou-
sands of confessions and accusations, Salazar concurred with the skeptical
bishop of Pamplona. Back in Logroño, Salazar’s two colleagues, who had
staked their careers on the reality of the witch sect, were compelled to
expend every bit of energy defending their original decisions. The
preaching campaign of the friars had also convinced parents that their
children were in danger of abduction by witches, and the pressure for
immediate and extreme action against the accused rose to a fevered
pitch. Skeptics were decried as tools of the Devil, and there was no space
for reasoned debate. Despite this, Salazar calmly reinterrogated witnesses
and accused alike and discovered the proffered witch ointments to have
been fake. After eight months on the road, he presented his report to the
Suprema that there was no solid evidence for any of the accusations,
concluding

I have not found a single proof nor even the slightest indication from
which to infer that one act of witchcraft has actually taken place . . .
Rather I have found what I had already begun to suspect in these
cases before my experiences during the visitation; that the testimony
of accomplices alone – even if they had not been submitted to violence
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 211

and compulsion – without further support from external facts

substantiated by persons who are not witches is insufficient to warrant
even an arrest.35

The nearly 2,000 accused were eventually cleared, and the Suprema
adopted more rigorous regulations on the conduct of heresy trials that
effectively ended witch panics.
The reasons why some individuals became fervent proponents and
others critical skeptics of a demonic witch conspiracy resided within the
particular psyche. Yet, one thing is clear: when prominent individuals real-
ized that their personal integrity and world view had become intertwined
with their decision to believe in a witch sect, they had no choice but to fight
with everything in their power to defend this religious construct. Even
though many of the skeptics, Salazar included, had originally concurred
with the witch trials, they had not made that fateful decision to invest
their personal honor in such sentiment and were able to maintain an
admirable level of objectivity when evaluating the evidence. It helped
too that unlike so many witch persecutors, Salazar was no philosophical
realist.
Despite the differences in typology of victims between the Spanish and
Italian Inquisitions ( Judaisers for one, Protestants for the other),both
reached their peak of activity after 1580, with a sharp decline around 1615.
This period coincided with both the first major apex of witch-hunting
in northern Europe and with the major push within post-Tridentine
Catholicism to instill the new, narrower definition of Catholicism within
the minds of all believers. Despite this campaign, the skeptical tradition in
Spanish and Italian intellectual circles, the ongoing concern with Judaisers,
and the insistence on strict procedural rules for the Inquisitions resulted
in a nearly insurmountable inertia for zealous witch-hunters to over-
come. Its reputation notwithstanding, after 1540 the Inquisition became
a remarkably lenient court for the repentant, certainly in comparison
with the bloodbaths of many secular courts which cared little about
repentance and conversion. 36

The “Periphery”: Scandinavia and Eastern Europe

The principalities outside the witch-hunting “heartland”, Scandinavia and

Eastern Europe, were among the last European regions to be Christianized.
In Scandinavia, pre-Christian magical and fertility practices coexisted
212 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

with Catholic Christianity much more obviously than elsewhere in the

west, and already in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Scandinavian
law was condemning alleged witches to death, while witchcraft was asso-
ciated with heresy and both with the idolatrous worship of Satan. 37 In
the sixteenth century, the Protestant clergy urged the authorities to press
the campaign to the limits, now with the purpose of eradicating remnants
of both Catholicism and “pagan idolatry”. Despite this clerical pressure,
the various territories that made up Scandinavia were more restrained
in witch-hunting than the German Empire, although with something
around 5,000 executions, it was hardly a region of moderation. Here
most of the major panics did not take place until the middle of the seven-
teenth century, and it was not until these trials that the full, diabolical
conception of witchcraft was accepted. A major reason for this relative
restraint was, as in France, the moderating influence of the central
courts and their insistence on proper jurisprudence.
However, the first chain-reaction witch-hunt was quite early, in the
1540s in Denmark when the Lutheran Bishop Peder Palladius strongly
urged the prosecution of witches as a means of purifying the realm of
residual Catholicism on the eve of the return of Christ. The hunt claimed
over fifty victims, many of whom had manifested Catholic tendencies.
However, the government soon put in place regulations forbidding
the use of torture and reliance upon the denunciations of convicted
witches, and requiring automatic appeals of death sentences to a central
court, squelching further panics. In Norway, governed by Denmark and
under the same legal strictures, the diabolical conception of the witch
never superceded that of the more traditional maleficent witch, thus
witch-hunts were restrained. One of the region’s early trials, however,
illustrates again how the religious controversies contributed to the start
of witch-hunting. In the 1570s Anna Pedersdotter Absalon, the wife of
the Lutheran minister Absalon Pedersen Beyer, was tried for witchcraft
in an evident effort to stop Beyer’s iconoclastic efforts by attacking his
wife. In this case Anna was cleared, but after his death she was tried and
executed in 1590 for maleficia and of turning her servant into a horse
and riding her to the sabbath. 38
Swedish authorities showed little inclination to indulge in witch trials
until the second half of the seventeenth century, although there were
clusters of cases in the crucial years between 1590 and 1610. The major
peak for both northern and southern Sweden occurred quite late, in the
1660s, with the notorious Blåkulla panic of the north when large numbers
of children confessed to having been abducted by alleged witches and
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 213

taken forcibly to the witches’ sabbath. At least 240 accused were burned
at the stake in the state’s efforts to protect its children from such malicious
harm. In the south, the major witch-hunts occurred even later, from
1669 to 1672, although here the trials only occasionally hinged on the
accusations of children, concentrating instead on maleficia. By this time
the belief that witches consorted with demons at the sabbath had been
“firmly implanted in the popular imagination.” 39 Routine application of
the dunking test and of judicial torture made confessions and denunci-
ations of others a matter of course, and the trials quickly spun out of
control. Here too there were a large number of those claiming to have
been possessed by demons, although the courts distinguished between
“true” demoniacs and those “who had betrayed the baptismal sacrament
by turning their bodies into an abode for demons” but who had not yet
become full apostates. Swedish soldiers returning from the German
battlefields after the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 may have
contributed to this spread of demonological notions into Scandinavia.
In Finland and Estonia, the rise of witch-hunting in the seventeenth
century was very much related to Swedish influence. Both had fallen
under the orbit of Sweden by the early seventeenth century and the
Swedish ecclesiastical officials overseeing the Lutheranization of the
dependent states frequently preached vigorous sermons against Catholic
and pagan idolatry. For example, in the 1640s the Swedish Lutheran
Bishop Isaac Rothovius embarked on a crusade against Catholic and
Calvinist ideas as well as residual pagan superstition which he described
as sorcery. He began the cleansing of the Turku Academy of such errors,
a work that was followed up in the 1660s by one of that university’s gradu-
ates, the judge Nils Psilander, who overlaid learned demonological
theory upon the popular beliefs of the Finnish people. The result was
a chain-reaction hunt that barely escaped escalating into a panic, thanks
mainly to skeptical juries.40 In Livonia, the situation was quite similar, as
the Swedish Lutheran Superintendent Hermann Samson (r.1622–43)
inaugurated an anti-witch campaign by printing a series of sermons on
the subject in 1626 and by overseeing a series of clerical visitations
during which he and his officials encountered evidence of the shocking
survival of paganism. What most concerned these ministers was the
possibility that such pagan idolatry would leave the populace open to
a return to Catholicism. In 1637 the Livonian Consistory was commanded
to discover “whether the peasants still organized idol-worship and . . .
assembled on hillocks or in valleys, near chapels or chapel ruins, to
worship idols and sacrifice,” and it seems that the clergy found plenty of
214 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

confirmation among parishioners. A major visitation throughout southern

Estonia in 1667–8 revealed that almost every parish reported examples of
such perfidious activity, leading to “the first massive offensive against the
traditional religion of Estonia – and with the imposition of serfdom.”41
Here then was one region where the demonization of religious unortho-
doxy led very directly to witch trials, although it must be remembered
that Estonia was exceptional in this regard, and the witch trials them-
selves were relatively restrained.

Eastern Europe

Like Scandinavia, major witch-hunting was a latecomer to the eastern

European principalities, not dying out there until the middle of the
eighteenth century. The reasons for this “delay” in witch persecution are
multivalent, yet the religious/political dimension is prominent. Levack
explains Poland’s belatedness in hunting witches as a result of a series of
devastating wars around the mid-seventeenth century that distracted
the legal authorities from prosecution of magic. Moreover, until 1648
the Catholic rulers of Poland officially tolerated Protestants and conducted
no major heresy or witch persecutions. However, after 1648 a new militant
Catholicism came to the fore, leading to increased restrictions against
Protestants and promotion of an uncompromising Catholicism for the
populace. Although Levack notes that religious intolerance did not
necessarily lead to witch burning, he finds the correspondence of the
two in Poland as too significant as to be mere coincidence. He suggests
that “the burning of witches was one of the means by which an intolerant
Catholic majority expressed its will to impose religious uniformity on
a country which, even in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, remained religiously pluralistic.”42 In other words, until the
middle of the seventeenth century the Polish authorities followed
a model of informal confessional coexistence comparable to that pioneered
by the notables of the Dutch Republic, although in Poland this approach
was only provisional and not a permanent part of the population’s religi-
osity. Consequently, until the middle of the seventeenth century, there
was no government-supported effort to spread fear of a demonic
conspiracy.
The large-scale witch persecution in seventeenth-century Silesia, the
Germanized western portion of Poland, showed signs of having been
stage managed as an instrument of princely authority, particularly in the
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 215

duchies of Troppau and Jägerndorf ruled by Karl von Liechtenstein

and his son Karl Eusebius, who oversaw several witch-hunts as part of
their recatholicization efforts.43 Despite the skepticism of many clerics,
the populace and the state both found the burning of witches advanta-
geous. Prior to the confessional campaign, in fact, it was not witches who
were persecuted during incidents of bad harvests and plague, but the
so-called “grave diggers” (Totengräbern) who were accused of digging up
and eating corpses during famines and spreading disease by magical
means. Clerical visitations brought such unorthodox folk beliefs and
practices to the attention of the authorities.
Inspired by the infamy of the Totengräbern and witch persecutions,
there was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a rise in belief in
revenantism, the notion that the dead could rise from their graves to kill
or harass the living. In parts of Eastern Europe revenants or vampires
became the favorite target of blame for devastating plagues. Grieving
survivors disinterred the remains of the first person to die unexpectedly
and inspected it for signs that he or she was a member of the “living
dead.” If the corpse had not decayed as anticipated, showing instead
signs of suppleness, fresh blood on the lips, or growing nails and hair,
then gruesome preternatural countermeasures were taken to kill the
revenant, usually by driving a stake through its heart. An early case of
revenantism occurred in Silesia in 1591 when a shoemaker who had
committed suicide on the eve of a plague outbreak was believed to
be terrorizing his neighbors. Those attending the disinterment were
shocked to find his body in good condition and they proceeded to stake
it, during which the corpse bled copiously and groaned (actions that
pathologists can now readily explain). If such action against the original
vampire did not end further deaths, then villagers proceeded to the
bodies of the revenant’s victims in the assumption that they too had
become vampires. 44
In a moment we shall see how the vampire epidemic helped end
witch-hunting across the Austrio-Hungarian empire. We must return to
the larger pattern of persecution in Silesia. As elsewhere, the Jews had
been the traditional scapegoat for all manner of disasters, especially the
disappearance or murder of children and the spread of plague. Also, in
1315 a group of Waldensian heretics were accused of performing per-
verse rituals of child murder and magic during secret meetings. In 1455
the anti-Semitic friar John of Capistrano preached through the realm,
leading to the expulsion of the Jews. By this time, there was much talk
of Jewish sorcerers and even of a Jewish “witch sabbath” that, unlike
216 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

its Christian counterpart, was entirely male. In the sixteenth century,

judicial attention turned to trying shepherd sorcerers, the Totengräbern,
Jews, witches, and vampires, so that by the end of the century there was
a confusing blend of notions arising out of the trials of these disparate
groups.45 Between 1676 and 1725 such beliefs were applied to alleged
witches, several thousand of whom were condemned, despite the
Catholic bishop’s efforts to wrest control over such cases away from the
municipal courts which abused proper judicial procedure with great
abandon.
Hungary, Poland’s southern neighbor, took even longer to adopt the
demonological theory that was required to escalate a trial against a single
maleficent witch into a hunt for members of a demonic sect. As in Poland,
ideas of diabolical witch activity were spread among Hungarian villagers
by resident German and Austrian troops. However, it was not until after
the expulsion of Turkish soldiers in 1690 and a period of civil war that
the Hungarian courts turned with any seriousness to the problem of witch-
craft, leading to several waves of panic between 1710 and 1750 which
saw at least 100 trials each decade. 46 Other eastern regions, especially
those more distant from German influence, were less preoccupied with
the issue, and while there were trials or the odd panic in such territories
as Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, demonological ideas were
less prominent in the Slavic regions dominated by the Eastern Orthodox
Church. These areas were, until the second half of the seventeenth
century, also relatively free from campaigns to drive out heterodoxy and
to compel a unitary set of beliefs or a confession upon the minds of the
general populace. When such efforts to ensure religious conformity
were pursued by the authorities, there was a corresponding rise in
witch-hunting.
One of the great ironies of the witch-hunts was the fact that while they
were encouraged by some elites as a means of developing confessional
uniformity and suppressing religious doubt, in the end, the process of
prosecuting witches itself raised more doubts about the supernatural
realm than it resolved. When witch trials or demoniacs were discredited,
so too were many of the ideological elements that underpinned them.
Many theologians and pastors feared that tolerating skepticism toward
the demonic would lead to the spread of doubts about God himself.
When increasing legal, medical, and theological evidence discredited
the methods used to extract witch confessions, the whole demonic
construct came under fire. What allowed the authorities in every region
to turn back from their persecution of diabolical witchcraft was first and
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 217

foremost the calming of confessional conflict and the cooling of religious

passion.

France: The Embarrassment of Demoniacs

Despite the remarkable publicity surrounding the possession and exor-

cism of Nicole Aubrey in Laon in 1566, there was a lull in such phenomena
in France until the exorcisms of four individuals in Soissons in 1582.
There was no corresponding calm in the conflict between hardline
Catholics and Huguenots, which broke out in another vicious civic war
shortly after the “Miracle of Laon.” In Soissons, the staged exorcisms
were witnessed by thousands who were proffered evidence of the real
presence of Christ in the sacramental wafer and its power over the
demonic realm. One contemporary pamphleteer, Charles Blendec,
hoped that his publication would convert Huguenots and “Aristoteleans
and atheists, quite numerous nowadays, who do not believe in devils.”47
Demons afflicting the possessed obliged the exorcists by praising the
Huguenots and admitting that God had allowed their activity for his
own glory and to the confusion of the heretics. However, despite the
efforts of Blendec, the Soissons exorcisms received relatively little publicity,
in part because the tests put to the demoniacs by some Franciscans –
sprinkling the possessed with ordinary water but pretending it to be
blessed – had ambiguous results. The following year the local authorities
issued a warning against naive acceptance of possession claims, insisting
that physicians be consulted before an exorcist. Not everyone took this
advice seriously, as the case of Marthe Brossier of Romorantin reveals.
Early in 1598 Marthe Brossier began screaming in church that one of
her neighbors, Anne Chevreau, had bewitched her, causing her to be
possessed by a demon. Brossier’s motivations for this seemingly unex-
pected action were complex, but revolve around the inability of her father,
Jacques, to provide her with a dowry, either for marriage or entrance
into a convent (Marthe, already twenty-five, had two older unmarried
sisters). Marthe was therefore facing very bleak prospects for her life. In
late 1597 she cut off her hair, donned male attire, and ran away from
home. She was found and returned, but her family’s shame was consid-
erable, as was the fear that her cross-dressing might elicit suspicion that
she was a witch, as it had with Joan of Arc. Just a year or two earlier, in
fact, three women of Romorantin had been tried and executed on
charges of witchcraft which including causing others to be demonically
218 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

possessed. Her father pressed the case against Anne, whose family had
shunned a marriage arrangement with Marthe’s oldest sister, and the
unfortunate woman was arrested, jailed, and interrogated. However,
the local judges decided to wait until Marthe’s possession was declared
authentic. To this end, Jacques called upon the local curé, who declared
her a demoniac and began exorcizing her. Even so, there remained many
skeptics and Anne composed her own perceptive commentary on the
affair. To her, Marthe was not so much a fraud but a weak-minded woman
troubled by depression and fantasies. For the sake of family honor
Marthe’s father had to prove her possessions to be true. He therefore
took her on a travelling exorcism show, looking for the moment when an
exorcism would provide definitive proof of Marthe’s claims. In the process
she learned a great deal from individual exorcists and from her copy of
a book about the “Miracle of Laon.” Formal certification of her possession,
however, proved elusive, and when the bishop of Angers put Marthe to
the requisite tests, he found her wanting and told her to go home and
stop playing tricks. She ignored his advice and continued to Paris, arriving
there in early March 1599, just days after the Parlement of Paris formally
signed off on the Edict of Nantes.
Knowing that the ecclesiastical authorities of the city might be
resistant to allowing public exorcisms during this delicate moment of
religious peace, she and her father went immediately to the monastery
of the Capuchins, who had no such reservations. Instead, these monks
exploited Marthe’s exorcisms as a weapon against the Edict’s tolerance
toward Protestants, whom Marthe’s demon, Beelzebub, claimed as his
allies. By the end of the month the whole city was in uproar and the city’s
bishop, fearing a revival of the religious bloodshed, sent a team of theo-
logians and physicians to examine her. Their diagnosis suggested fraud.
With his hard-won religious peace at stake, Henry IV ordered Marthe’s
arrest. The Capuchins protested, claiming that the government’s action
was instigated by the heretics. On May 24, the king ordered Brossier and
her father to return home and desist from further incendiary behavior.
This they did, and it is likely that the case against Anne Chevreau
collapsed. However, faced now with even greater disgrace as a fraudulent
demoniac, Marthe returned to her devilish activities, and a local anti-
Huguenot prior took her to Italy for an audience with the Pope. Under
pressure from the French crown, the prior returned home without ful-
filling his mission, leaving behind Marthe, who found herself an object
of ridicule in Italy where anti-Huguenot rhetoric was of little effect. She
was last seen in 1604 being exorcized in Milan.48
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 219

Was Brossier merely a pawn in the hands of hardline Catholic priests

infuriated by tolerance toward Huguenots? Certainly her behavior was
exploited by them, but she seems to have been a quasi-independent
instigator of events. Like Brossier, many women discovered possession
to be a socially sanctioned means of expressing their deep frustration
with the restrictions which family and society placed upon them. The
famous case of the deeply religious Elizabeth de Ranfaing of Lorraine
who began her career as a demoniac in 1620 after her parents had
married her to a much older and abusive soldier is quite illustrative of
this process.49 Many demoniacs were also deeply disturbed by the
leniency granted to the Protestants, although many became little more
than pawns in the religious controversies. Even so, the public exorcisms
provided these laywomen with a great deal of public attention and
a sense of personal fulfillment. The fact that most of the possessed were
laywomen, however, made Catholic leaders uncomfortable, since
women were increasingly being restricted to the private sphere and it
was thought highly unlikely that God would allow them such a public
voice in religious affairs. Nuns, possessing as they did a formally
approved religious vocation, took up the cause. In the most famous
of these cases – those at Aix-en-Provence (1611), Loudun (1634), and
Louvais (1633–44) – entire convents became possessed and a local priest
condemned for bewitchment. For brevity’s sake we will discuss only the
first two of these.
It is not difficult to find a psychological explanation for the strange fits
of Madeleine Demandols de La Palud, which quickly spread to many of
her sisters at the Ursuline convent of Aix-en-Provence. While a student
at the Ursuline school in Aix, Madeleine suffered from depression that
was relieved by returning home and confessing frequently to her parish
priest Louis Gaufridy. Rumors began circulating that the long, private
meetings involved more than confessional counseling, and her parents
were undoubtedly happy when she entered the local Ursuline convent.
However, in the religiously intense confines of this cloistered monastery
where the nuns were expected to be models of Tridentine Catholic
purity, she began telling scandalous stories about her meetings with the
priest. She was quickly transferred to Aix, but at Christmas 1609, she
began to experience uncontrollable fits and to see demons. The con-
vent’s spiritual advisor, the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Romillon – a former
Huguenot who had become an ardent campaigner against clerical
immorality – immediately diagnosed her as possessed, although his
exorcisms failed. He pursued her accusations against Gaufridy, who
220 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

denied any impropriety. As a result of Romillon’s questioning of the

other nuns, many of them too began to share Madeleine’s obsession with
Gaufridy and to convulse uncontrollably. Romillon took Madeleine and
another afflicted nun, Louise Capeau, to the Inquisitor Sébastien Michäelis
who, at a popular saint’s shrine near Avignon, turned the sisters’ private
fantasies into a grand piece of anti-Huguenot theatre. The demons
remained and Michäelis in February 1611 convinced the Parlement of
Paris to begin proceedings against Gaufridy. The trial was a spectacular
one, what with the demoniacs’ frequent courtroom fits and Gaufridy’s
firm denials. Once the Devil’s mark was found on his body, Gaufridy
finally confessed to being the “Prince of the Synagogue” and to having
mistreated the sacraments, giving Hosts which he had consecrated at the
diabolical sabbath to dogs. He was horribly tortured and executed. Sud-
denly, Madeleine was freed of her demons, although Louise’s continued
for another year until another accused witch was burned.50 A visiting
nun from Lille who witnessed some of the exorcisms helped spread the
possession phenomenon to her own convent, while Michäelis wrote and
published his widely disseminated account of the affair, translated as
The Admirable Historie of the Possession and Conversion of a Penitent woman,
Seduced by a Magician that made her to become a Witch (London, 1613).
Apart from spreading the fame of this case, Michäelis wrote his massive
tome to counteract skeptics who questioned whether “a woman should
speake and preach in the Church, since that Saint Paul forbiddeth
a woman to speake there” and whether to believe “all that the Deuill
saith.”
The exorcisms overseen by Michaëlis made preachers of demons.
Against the heretical incursions, Louise Capeau’s demon confirmed
central Catholic doctrines such as Purgatory, the immaculate concep-
tion, the sacraments, and the real presence of Christ in the consecrated
Host. In December 1610, the demon Verin announced through Louise
Capeau that “the houre of that great day of Iudgement is at hand, for
Antichrist is borne and brought forth some moneths past by a Iewish
woman. God will rase out Magick & al Magicians, and witches shall
returne home vnto him,” major signs of the coming seven years of tribu-
lation heralding the end of the world. 51 While theologians debated the
murky issue of whether or not demons could ever be expected to tell
the truth, many laypeople were convinced, escalating religious pas-
sions and apocalyptical fears. Similarly, one of the possessed Brigidine
nuns of Lille in the 1620s admitted that she spoke about the Antichrist
“because a certain very famous preacher of the Company of Jesus
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 221

preached to us on an occasion that the Antichrist was already born.”

In the light of these peculiar events, one Catholic polemicist, Jean le
Normant (who in 1611 himself had been possessed), advised King
Louis XIII that he should personally submit to exorcism and once
freed of any demonic interference, oversee the exorcism of the whole
kingdom. 52
The most famous case of a possessed convent was that of the Ursuline
house of Loudun, which was an even more explicit manipulation of
a witch trial to dispose of a political enemy, this time the Jesuit Urbain
Grandier. In the dispute between Cardinal Richelieu and the town’s
governor Jean d’Armagnac over royal plans to destroy the city’s fortifica-
tions, Grandier sided with the latter party. He also made enemies of
a prominent citizen, Philippe Trincant, by making his daughter pregnant.
Trincant’s revenge started with the testimony of some of his associates
that Grandier was living a lecherous life, rumors that quickly reached
even the cloistered Ursulines. An enraged Grandier denied all and
sought legal redress, but even though he won formal retractions, these
only made Trincant more resolved to destroy him. Trincant’s opportunity
came in September 1632 when Sister Joan and several other nuns began
experiencing convulsions which their family members could explain
only as bewitchment. While modern psychology might diagnose their
affliction as a neurosis brought on by fear of the plague, intense religious
introspection, and sexual repression, the nuns behaved as expected within
a seventeenth-century religious context. The exorcists, intentionally or
not, helped plant the idea that Grandier was the one responsible, and
Trincant and his allies pushed for a trial. The exorcisms and stage-managed
trial scandalized the nation as Joan’s recantation of her accusations
fell on deaf ears and Grandier was burned regardless of his refusal to
admit guilt through bloodcurdling torture.53 The Huguenots exploited
the trial’s obvious abuses and pronounced all Catholic exorcisms as
fraudulent, a position that called into question the whole intellectual
construct of demonic witchcraft. Long before Louis XIV in 1682 formally
ended witch persecutions in France, the central court and royal author-
ities were habitually overturning death sentences pased by local courts.

German Witch-Hunts and Friedrich Spee

Even during a German witch panic local officials could become convinced
that the judicial procedures, especially use of torture, were creating, rather
222 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

than uncovering, a witch sect. Protestations of innocence even by prom-

inent individuals such as the Ellwangen judge Michael Dier (Dirren),
burned in 1611 for contesting his wife’s execution, were not immediately
effective in forcing a reevaluation of witch-hunting, as Ellwangen’s panic
continued until 1618. 54 While mass panics may have eroded confidence
in the legal process and raised fears about the survival of the community,
this form of incertitude was often temporary, as some regions had multiple
scares. Moreover, the judicial burning of thousands of people by 1590
made it extremely difficult for many to admit that their authorities had
made such a grievous error.55
By 1600 Protestants were identifying the hardline, fanatical position
against witches as a Catholic preoccupation that had arisen out of the
“idolatries” of the papacy, and they tended to discredit the fantastical
aspects of the witch stereotype in favor of a purely spiritual crime of
diabolical illusion. This helped relieve, but not eliminate, pressure
for witch persecutions in many Protestant realms. To distinguish their
position more sharply from the Protestant, many Catholic theologians
and jurists continued to promote the full witch stereotype and witch
persecution became something of a hallmark of Catholicism. 56 Thus,
uncovering and destroying a sect of witches who practiced an inversion
of the Catholic religion remained an important weapon in the Catholic
polemical arsenal against doubters.
Catholic skeptics, however, did not give up their fight against witch-
craft belief. Although harboring its share of demonologists, the Jesuit
Order also led the way in the skeptical camp as well, most notably in
the writings of Adam Tanner and Friedrich Spee von Langenfelds.
Both gave voice to growing concerns about the social effects of witch-
hunting, while Tanner reconciled opposition to witch persecution with
Catholic theology, a not inconsiderable task given the confessional
importance of witchcraft persecution for Catholicism after 1600. 57
For several years Spee acted as a confessor to imprisoned witches,
becoming convinced that while witchcraft might be real, the vast
majority of those whose confessions he heard were innocents forced
by torture into confessing their guilt. He put his critical opinions to
print in 1631 in his anonymous Cautio criminalis seu de processibus contra
sagas liber, a work of considerable influence. This focus on judicial
abuses was perhaps the best way for Catholic intellectuals to attack
witch persecution without risking charges of supporting Protestant
heresy. Although major climatic catastrophes in the second half of
the seventeenth century inspired sporadic witch trials across the
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 223

German Empire, by the end of the century Protestant rulers had

abandoned them while most Catholic courts were acting with greater
circumspection.

England and Religious Compromise

In the second half of the seventeenth century England’s rulers too

turned firmly away from promoting or permitting witch persecution,
and for many of the same reasons as their Dutch and German contem-
poraries. Since the supposed maleficia performed by witches was most
commonly associated with rural life, such as the bewitching of livestock,
crops or milk, the increasing urbanization of England helped lower
concern with traditional witchcraft, although other forms of magic, such
as divination or love magic, remained a part of daily life in cities as well as
the country. 58
Like the Netherlands, England also had its share of skeptics, most
famously the country gentleman and Justice of the Peace Reginald
Scot (c.1538–99), whose book, Discoverie of Witchcraft, appeared in
1584. Expressing disgust at what he saw during some witchcraft trials,
Scot tried to remove the theological and juridical support for such
prosecution. Both common sense and the scriptures argued against
the reality of many of the diabolical deeds ascribed to witches, and to
prosecute women especially for these was a horrible injustice. In fact,
those who deserved judicial punishment were the “witchmongers”
and promoters of fantastical opinions. Scot went even further in his
critique, asserting that as a purely spiritual being the Devil possessed
no corporeal nature, for “diuels are spirits, and no bodies. For spirits
and bodies are by antithesis opposed one to another: so as a bodie is
no spirit, nor a spirit a bodie. And that the diuell, . . . is a creature
made by God, and that for vengeance . . . and of himselfe naught.”
Biblical terms describing Satan as physically real were merely meta-
phors for this spirit of evil. 59 The deeds attributed to diabolical witches
were impossible, for a spiritual being could have no physical involve-
ment with humans, apart from inwardly tempting them. As Keith
Thomas notes, Scot’s position that “Satan was merely a symbol of
man’s evil temptations, incapable of corporeal existence,” undercut
the rationale for prosecution of diabolical witchcraft. 60 It is also inter-
esting that like Johann Weyer, Scot was in touch with spiritualists, in
his case members of the Family of Love. 61 Even if a minority position
224 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

among England’s intelligentsia, Scot’s perspective was common

enough.
Debate over the genuine problems confronting judges and jurors
in proving witchcraft accusations was also becoming a factor in the
dismissal of charges. Robert Filmer’s An Advertisement to the Jury-men of
England, Touching Witches of 1653 did not reject the reality of witch-
craft per se, but highlighted the difficulties in determining guilt on
the basis of demonological theory, especially since convictions neces-
sarily rested on the intellectual construct of the demonic pact and on
the dubious procedure of compelling witches to testify against alleged
coconspirators. Attacking the demonological treatises of Del Rio and
especially William Perkins, Filmer sought to ridicule judicial reliance
on the notion of a pact. For example, if the centerpiece of the
demonic pact was the renunciation of Christian baptism and faith,
Filmer contended that

it will follow that none can be Witches but such as have first beene
Christians, nay and Roman Catholiques, if Delrio say true, for who else
can renounce the patronage of the Virgin Mary? And what shall be
said then of all those Idolatrous Nations of Lapland, Finland, and of
divers parts of Africa, and many other Heathenish Nations which our
Travailers report to be full of Witches.62

Not an argument likely to break down the bastion of a century’s worth of

demonological theory and witch persecution, perhaps, but one indicative
of a more cautious attitude among the judicial elite of England. Filmer’s
pamphlet was only part of a major debate over the judicial role of spectral
evidence, such as the bewitched who in court suddenly “saw” the ghost
of the accused or a demon, or who experienced fits when the accused
was brought into court. Judges increasingly insisted on more earth-
bound proof. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the rift
between the culture of the elites and that of the commoners widened,
leading the intelligentsia to associate witchcraft beliefs and pressure to
prosecute witches with the vulgar superstitions of the masses. 63
The Restoration, however, did not end religious and political turmoil,
and every theological dispute added strain to the government’s efforts
to maintain political equilibrium. Several leading intellectuals, such as
Henry More and Joseph Glanvill (1636–80) vigorously defended the
reality of witchcraft as part of an effort to hold back the tide of Deism
(which emphasized the non-miraculous and predictable nature of creation
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 225

and which depreciated religious enthusiasm, confessional rigor, and

reliance on revelation), fearing that denial of witchcraft would ultimately
expel the Devil, then God himself, from the cosmos.64 Despite their efforts,
many learned clergy agreed that the age of miracles had passed. Most of
their parishioners disagreed, judging from their consumption of the flood
of printed prodigy and miracle literature in the 1640s and 1650s.65
The rise of party politics soon swallowed up witchcraft as a tool in the
ideological and political debates. During the Civil War, the English were
forced to rethink their conception of religious and secular authority and
governance, and many Puritan leaders viewed the real threat to civil
order as coming from tolerance of religious plurality. The populace still
longed for the traditional, divinely ordained political and social order,
but that order was passing away. The witchcraze launched in the 1640s
by the infamous witch-finder general Matthew Hopkins helped skeptics
associate witchcraft prosecution with disorder and fanaticism. After the
Restoration, promotion of witch-hunting became identified as a strictly
nonconformist occupation. Since the learned Anglican clergy already
linked nonconformism with subversion and disloyalty to the crown,
attacking sectarians necessarily involved discrediting fear of witchcraft.
Like the continental Anabaptists in the previous century, English sectarians
were readily demonized; because they too rejected infant baptism for
believers’ baptism, English Baptists shared the Anabaptist fate of being
likened to demonic witches who had similarly renounced their original
baptism.
It was the Quakers, however, who were victimized the most in this
polemical shift. As described by Peter Elmer, the obscure appearance
of the Quaker movement around the same time as the Civil War suggested
to many who opposed its individualistic and anti-authoritarian bent that it
was ultimately subversive of the political order. Protestant polemicists saw
it as part of the same diabolical Jesuit plot to subvert the true faith that had
hindered Cromwell’s godly work. Conspiratorial notions of Quakers arose
just as interest in persecution of witches was on the decline, and Quakers
became in Elmer’s phrase “surrogate witches.” Like witches, Quakers
confirmed the official ideology by acting as a demonic mirror image. All
political factions, from high Anglican to Puritans to nonconformists,
co-opted the language of witchcraft in their party polemics, and it soon lost
its power to inspire dread. Even the Quakers became widely tolerated as
eccentrics.66 By the early eighteenth century the force of diabolical rhetoric
had lost much of its edge, “as the memory of the religious upheavals of the
1650s receded, the devil became marginalized.”67
226 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

Despite these developments, witchcraft latently retained some of its

force, requiring only a new political or social crisis to spark renewed cries
for a witch-hunt. Hope for a return to a non-party, unitary Christian
government lingered, and some thought to whip up enthusiasm for this
nostalgic notion by reviving fear of its ungodly opposite: the diabolical
witch, symbol of ultimate disorder and depravity. By the 1720s, however,
most political leaders had accepted the permanence of party factionalism,
and witchcraft lost its motivational potency. As there developed a
consensus on the issue of religious pluralism, witchcraft was shunted to
the sidelines; in the same parliamentary session as the repeal of James I’s
witchcraft statute in 1736 was a bill to provide relief for Quakers from
mandatory tithe payments, a position rejected by the hardline Tories. 68
Witchcraft’s last political stronghold, Ian Bostridge has shown, was
in the struggle of Scottish politicians and churchmen to oppose com-
plete English dominance of their society. For many Scots the Devil’s
minions were the English who had stopped prosecuting witches. The
anti-repeal cause was taken up in Parliament by Lord James Erskine,
whose passionate speech on the abiding importance of demonological
theory for sound governance was greeted with laughter. At the heart
of Erskine’s opposition, however, was the battle over Scottish rights,
defined in this case as the rights of the Scottish Calvinist Kirk to maintain
jurisdictional control over all ecclesiastical and moral offences. The
opponents of repeal lost their case and the new law, which was extended
to Scotland, outlawed accusing others of witchcraft or pretending to
possess magical powers. One of the three main sponsors of the repeal
bill, moreover, was John Conduit, Isaac Newton’s nephew and his suc-
cessor as master of the mint. Newton had entrusted his unpublished
papers to Conduit, who may have been influenced by his uncle’s
unorthodox belief that the Devil was merely a symbol of individual evil.69
By repealing the witchcraft statute, Parliament was effectively removing
the Devil from the legal realm, symbolizing the increasingly secular
nature of England’s government, and highlighting its turn away from
state-sponsored efforts to compel doctrinal uniformity.

The Embarrassing Case of the Hungarian Vampires

The suppression of witchcraft persecution by the state could follow the

gradual model of Germany or England, or it could ensue from a sudden,
and largely unexpected, act of a monarch. The latter was the case for the
 Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts 227

Austria-Hungarian Empire ruled by the enlightened Empress Maria

Theresa. As we have noted, the peak of witch persecution in Hungary
was quite late, the first major panic occurring not until the 1720s and
1730s, and a second wave beginning in 1755. In 1756 Maria Theresa
suddenly ordered all lower court rulings against alleged witches to be
passed on to her court of appeals, which overturned nearly all death
sentences. She then issued a new decree, entitled the “Imperial and
royal law for uprooting superstition and for the rational judgment of
magical and sorcery crimes,” which made further prosecution of witch-
craft virtually impossible. The second wave of witch panics in Hungary
was immediately squelched, despite the protests of local court officials
about this royal infringement on their jurisdiction. What inspired this
sudden volte face on the part of the Empress? The answer is to be found
in the rise of a parallel, if more exotic, supernatural phenomenon to
witchcraft: vampirism.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the fear of and fascination
with vampires had reached epidemic proportions. With every plague
outbreak in and around Hungary, corpses of suspected revenants were
disinterred and re-dispatched in a grisly manner. The recently deceased
had become the ideal scapegoat for personal and communal disasters,
replacing the heretic, leper, Jew, and witch as the ultimate “Other”
whose mere presence in the community was spreading death. Belief in
revenantism was constructed upon the intellectual foundation that
supported Christian teaching about the incorruptible bodies of saints
and the resurrection of the dead, while by disinterring and burning
long-deceased heretics, the Church had provided the model for dispos-
ing of the threat. Thus, local clergy tolerated popular action against
revenants as a way of diverting skepticism toward Christian dogma of
life after death.
The Empress and her court, however, found the Europe-wide publicity
about Hungarian vampires deeply embarrassing. Official investigations
began in 1755 with the disinterment of the corpse of Rosina Polakin in
Hermersdorf, near the Silesian and Moravian borders. As expected,
Rosina’s remains appeared fresh and undecayed, and her family was
forced to drag it outside consecrated ground and have it beheaded
and burned. When Maria Theresa heard of this macabre affair, she
immediately sent two of her court doctors to investigate. After receiving
their lurid report, she consulted with her principal court physician, the
Dutchman Gerard van Swieten, who agreed with his colleagues that
the Empress should immediately abolish such superstitious behavior. In
228 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

March she issued a decree forbidding action against magia posthuma,

while Van Swieten published a learned treatise on the subject, explain-
ing how each of the supposedly preternatural signs of vampirism could
be medically accounted for. As Maria Theresa’s scholars turned their
energy to explaining this new sensation, they applied their conclusions
to the older but still terrifying phenomenon of witchcraft. Very quickly
witchcraft, magic, and vampirisim were linked as vulgar and offensive
superstitions, entirely unbefitting the realm of an enlightened monarch.
The law of 1756 put the matter in this fashion: “It is well known, what
an unbearable extent has been lately reached by the craze concerning
sorcery and witchcraft. Its foundations were laid by the inclination of
the idiotic and vulgar crowd toward superstition.”70 Maria Theresa’s
actions did not, of course, immediately end belief in witchcraft nor
fear of revenants. But they did bring an end to both panics. For his part,
Van Swieten had studied medicine at the University of Leiden under the
renowned professor of medicine Herman Boerhave (1668–1738) who
had made no secret of his distaste for charlatans who pretended to be
practioners of magic. From Erasmus, to Joris, to Weyer, and Van
Swieten, the skeptical currents flowing through Dutch culture trickled
far across Europe.
 7
CONCLUSION

The goal of this book has been to show how the changes within the early
modern religious climate intersected with the discourse of magic and
witchcraft. The cosmos of early modern Europeans was an organic,
interconnected thing, the parts of which interacted by a process of influ-
ence called correspondence. In this environment, magic was merely a
means by which humans sought to manipulate creation’s hidden forces
and invisible beings. Some of these beings were believed by the Church
to be malign, although it was its own clergy which became the major
practitioners of angelic or demonic magic. Church authorities became
deeply concerned about clerical necromancy and, through a process of
transference, added diabolical magic to the supposed crimes of heretics
and Jews.
Religious dissidents, such as the Waldensians and Cathars, had
proven a serious challenge to Church authority, for in those regions
where they were popular, they convinced many laypeople that alternate
beliefs were not a threat to communal survival. Doubt as to the veracity
of Church-approved dogma increased, and the Pope developed the
ultimate weapon to deal with this, the office of Inquisitor. By its process,
accused heretics were compelled to recant their evil errors and to
acknowledge that they had been misled by the Devil. The recalcitrant
were handed over to the secular ruler for punishment, and the horrible
autos-da-fé became an effective means of moral persuasion.
Similarly, Jews proved a useful, if unwitting, tool in the drive by
church leaders and ordinary parishioners alike to eradicate doubt.
Already associated with Satan by virtue of their refusal to convert to
Christianity, they became frequent targets of ritual murder accusations

229
230 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

and Host desecration charges. These helped prove the veracity of Christian
teaching about Christ’s death and resurrection and his miraculous
appearance in the consecrated bread. In times of hardship, such as
famines or outbreaks of epidemic disease, Christians turned against the
increasingly isolated Jewish communities with a vengeance, and bloody
pogroms became the rule. Some authorities, such as the kings of France,
cynically manipulated popular distrust of Jews (and lepers) by elaborating
and disseminating conspiracy theories as a means to enrich themselves
or rid themselves of political foes. In Spain, thousands of Jews converted
rather than face the flames, leaving that region with a singular problem
of how to incorporate these conversos into Christian society. Suspicion
that the New Christians were still practicing Judaism in secret and hatching
plots against the Christian governments led ultimately to the creation
of the Spanish Inquisition and to the elaboration of the bizarre pure
blood laws.
In all of these repressive actions, the Church and state sought means to
maintain control over the beliefs of the common people, an increasingly
difficult task thanks to rising levels of literacy and increasing anticlerical
sentiment. Several infamous attempts at magical murder of popes and
princes by clerical necromancers likewise gave Church leaders the motiv-
ation they needed to begin demonizing ritual magic. By the fifteenth
century, the theory that sectarian witches were plotting the destruction
of Christendom with the aid of the Devil was widespread, thanks largely
to preachers seeking to counteract anticlerical sentiment (or, in the case
of Bernardino of Siena, to divert attention away from his own heresy).
It was further reinforced by the sensational news of trials of groups of
witches. The diabolical conspiracy also diverted attention away from the
conciliarist threat to papal authority onto an even more frightening target.
As inquisitorial concern shifted from the magic of learned clerics (who
were presumed able to control demons by virtue of their supernatural
power) to popular, demonic heresy, the gender of most accused
changed from male to female, a fact illustrated with the publication of
the infamous Malleus Maleficarum in 1487. By the end of the century, the
demonic conspiracy was more or less complete, and many churchmen
were promoting the eradication of this sect of malicious, magic performing,
heretical witches who had made a pact with the evil one. Yet, as Heinrich
Krämer discovered to his chagrin, many authorities were not so easily
persuaded, and the number of trials was in decline by 1500.
By this time there was also a pronounced sense of the nearness of
apocalyptical judgment and an expectation of an escalated assault on
 Conclusion 231

humanity by the Devil’s agents. Martin Luther used this fear to promote
his agenda for reforming the Church, which quickly gained immense
popular support. Many people, however, wanted to move further and
faster than Luther, and in the early 1520s the “Reformation” was
already extremely diverse, with various groups of laypeople and clergy
trying to take reform in an assortment of directions. Several infamous
episodes arising from popular discontent, such as the Peasants’ War,
Anabaptism, and the Münster Anabaptist kingdom, heightened anxiety
about secret diabolical conspiracies that might at any moment break out
into open revolt. Even though later Anabaptists and Mennonites sought
to convince the authorities of their peaceable intent, suspicion lingered,
fed by Catholic and Protestant polemicists. During the “early” period of
the Reformation, say up to the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, the authorities
had their hands full with religious dissidents of many stripes, and major
witch-hunting virtually disappeared from across Europe. However, during
the 1540s to 1560s, the countless sermons and pamphlets warning the
populace of the Devil’s evil plots and the nearness of the Antichrist’s
arrival had worked their magic, reviving fear of diabolical conspiracies.
Although the demonizing rhetoric was always greater than actual
efforts of suppression, during the sixteenth century thousands of individ-
uals were arrested, tortured, and executed because they were perceived
to be a profound, diabolical threat to the social order. Until the 1560s and
1570s, the judicial slaughter targeted religious dissidents, particularly
Anabaptists in the Empire, Anabaptists and Calvinists in the Low Countries,
and Calvinists in France. Starting in the 1560s, judicial persecution of
a sect of witches was revived, and once again the beliefs about religious
dissidents were transposed onto the imaginary sect of witches. Among
these was the belief that Anabaptism had unleashed unruly women from
male control. Inspired also by reformers’ calls for increased patri-
archalism, the old stereotype of female witches found a second wind.
In the 1560s, Johann Weyer observed that there was an apparently
sudden, widespread revival of witch-hunting, something that he
decried as a continuation of the bloodthirst that had not been quenched
with the execution of religious dissidents. Until this time, most courts
were too preoccupied with real heretics who openly confessed their
beliefs. However, the rise of Nicodemite spiritualists or libertines raised
the specter of a fifth column of dissimulators secretly spreading their
harmful views among an ignorant populace. In the last decades of the
sixteenth century, courts began attacking this invisible diabolical threat
in earnest. Behind all of this persecution lay the need to neutralize the
232 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

expression of doubt and skepticism toward officially approved beliefs.

The intensified religious passions and fear of doubt helped inflame the
anti-witch activities of a community, justifying neighborly denunciations
and serious judicial action. Those who expressed notions of religious
tolerance or skepticism toward diabolical conspiracies were increasingly
condemned as atheists or as demon-inspired themselves. Jean Bodin’s
vicious rejoinder to Weyer’s tome is merely one example of this trend.
What lay behind the origins of witch-hunting (as opposed to magic
which was an ancient and endemic aspect of European culture) was the
need to defend particular religious beliefs against both heresy and inner
doubt. Alleged witches and demoniacs provided tangible proof of the
reality of the Christian supernatural realm, just as heretics and Jews had
done earlier. The widespread belief in the nearness of the apocalypse
intensified the drive to purify society and establish or reinforce a uniform
and unchallenged belief system. To do so required the demonization
and eradication of anything that could be construed as offensive to God,
especially since storms, famines, plague outbreaks, and religious conflict
seemed on the rise, indicating divine displeasure. Starting in 1562 in
Wiesensteig, Württemberg, local authorities began taking seriously their
subjects’ denunciations of neighbors whom they suspected of causing
destructive hailstorms, livestock deaths, or human disease. And while there
were a handful of opponents of such scapegoating, during the decades
around 1600 just about every government permitted or encouraged at
least one major witch persecution.
In general, the heartland of witch-hunting proved also to be the
center of religious conflict and heresy persecution: the Holy Roman
Empire, the Swiss Cantons, France, and the Southern Netherlands (as
well as Puritan Essex in England and Scotland). In all of these major epi-
sodes of witch persecution, the religious dimension was prominent, and
not just in the terrifying panics encouraged by the Franconian arch-
bishops. After decades of confessional conflict and propaganda, many
people were utterly confused as to which confession was divinely
approved. In a few places, particularly the Dutch Republic, confessional
competition was allowed to blossom, and many citizens were permitted
to comparison shop, as it were. In this environment, some people
refused to join any church. Such a relaxed attitude toward confessional
conformity significantly reduced concern about diabolical conspiracies
or a witch sect, even though belief in magic continued just about every-
where. In some regions, such as Poland, authorities moved in the opposite
direction, from religious tolerance to enforced confessional conformity,
 Conclusion 233

and witch-hunting increased correspondingly. In the Mediterranean

regions, where both heresy and witchcraft remained for the most part in
the jurisdiction of the Inquisitions, witch persecution proved an anomaly,
in large measure due to the Inquisition’s success in removing all chal-
lenges to orthodoxy. In the end, many authorities suppressed witch trials
at about the same time that they gave up efforts to enforce confessional
conformity.
The trials and executions of alleged witches and the dramatic exorcisms
of the possessed were for a time remarkably effective in reaffirming
belief in the “other world.” At the same time, closer examination of these
unusual and frightening events soon caused many intellectuals and
jurists to dispute their intellectual underpinnings and to force reconsid-
eration of the proceedings. While this led proponents of exorcisms or of
witch persecution to fight harder against this new tide of doubt, the ultimate
result was a mounting sense of unease with notions of diabolical plots. In
other words, the very tools that proponents of witch-hunting promoted
as means of eradicating doubt in themselves became the motor propelling
skepticism. Moreover, in many places the authorities and populace both
learned how to adjust to a measure of confessional coexistence and
religious tolerance, while the presence of some religious disagreement,
confusion, and doubt became a matter of course rather than a threat to
the survival of the state.
Unfortunately, belief in diabolical conspiracies has not died out
completely, nor has the magical universe disappeared entirely, as the
recent revival of interest in occult sciences, earth magic, and “new age”
religions shows. Since the end of the seventeenth century, old prejudices
and conspiratorial beliefs have surfaced often enough in times of hardship
or rapid transformation to work their old damage to groups and individ-
uals perceived as in league with the forces of evil. “Witch-hunting” has
become a remarkably flexible term to describe any form of persecution
against groups or individuals, and comparisons between the early modern
witch-hunts and contemporary persecutions, such as the American
Senate’s anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s, have become common-
place. 1 Less well known is how Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler’s
infamous SS, established in 1935 a special SS unit of historians – the
H[exen]-Sonderauftrag – to ferret out every archival reference to a
witch trial, and their prodigious efforts uncovered some 30,000 cases.
Himmler’s rationale for this unusual activity was two-fold: first, to
support his anti-Church (especially anti-Catholic) propaganda by placing
responsibility for the infamous witch-hunts in the lap of the Church; and
234 Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe

second, to find evidence of pre-Christian, Germanic paganism that was

suppressed by the witch persecution.2 Most recently, the witch-hunts
have been portrayed by some feminists as a “Holocaust against women”
which, as a comparison with the horrific Nazi destruction of European
Jews, implies that the witch-hunts were a highly organized campaign
against an identifiable group that consumed women in the millions. As
we have seen, such was not the case.
Real witch-hunting still goes on, especially in certain parts of rural
South Africa where concern about witchcraft has arisen dramatically
in recent decades, leading to several hundred lynchings. In these cases,
as in the early modern European trials, fear of the magic, malice, and
conspiratorial goals of supposed witches, heightened by the tensions
produced by local social conflicts, provide the major reasons behind the
murders. Like the earlier European witch persecution, organized public
witch-hunts have become a common means in South Africa to deal with
communal misfortune. They have also become tools in recent power
struggles within the African National Congress. 3
Elsewhere, the methods to quell dissidents and skeptics developed by
early modern proponents of heresy and witch-hunting have proven
readily adaptable. Recent efforts of fundamentalist religious leaders
to battle against the seemingly insurmountable drift to disbelief and
skepticism have led to a renewed interest in the Devil. Once again, this
mythical, frightening figure is being used to prove the existence of God
and the supernatural realm. By suggesting the existence of a pernicious,
highly organized, secretive, and immensely dangerous Satanic
cult whose members have infiltrated the highest levels of society, some
Christian leaders have been able to capitalize on the fear aroused to
restore a measure of credibility to their apparently out-of-date notions.
Serious investigation of many cases of supposed conspiratorial Satanic
abuse of children has time and again proven most charges to be ground-
less, although the reputation of many an accused has been irrevocably
damaged in the process. While this has had the general effect of discredit-
ing such “moral panics”, believers in conspiracy merely point to the
judicial investigations as in themselves proof that the Devil has his talons
hooked deeply into the higher reaches of government. In the context
of early modern societies with unitary and state-mandated ideologies,
such beliefs led to vicious persecution. Even in our multi-cultural and
religiously diverse environment, however, the right confluence of crises
and widespread anxieties could broaden the appeal of the fearmongering
of a minority fringe.
 NOTES

Introduction

1. See James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley, eds., The Satan-
ism Scare (New York, 1991).
2. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern
Europe (Oxford, 1997).
3. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978).
4. Here I follow Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley,
1990), esp. 143–57.
5. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago,
1984), 209.
6. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, esp. 136 and 160.
7. Ibid., 172.
8. Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ,
1991), 3.
9. Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 1.
10. Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seven-
teenth Centuries (Harmondsworth, 1969).
11. Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft & the Spanish
Inquisition (Reno, 1980), 18.
12. H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The
Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford, 1972), 6.
13. See esp. Robin Briggs, “‘Many reasons why’: witchcraft and the problem
of multiple explanation,” in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Cul-
ture and Belief, eds. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts
(Cambridge, 1996), 49–63.
14. Margaret A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921).
15. Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (London, 1975).
16. Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Com-
parative Study, 2nd ed. with introduction by James Sharpe (London, 1999).
17. See Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch
Hunts (New York, 1994), and Robin Briggs’ rebuttal in Witches and Neighbors
(New York, 1996).
18. Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (London
& New York 1995), 120.

235
236 Notes

The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages

1. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons.

2. Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (New York, 1991).
3. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, book 1, chapter 33, in P. G. Maxwell-Stuart,
ed., The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A Documentary History (Basingstoke,
1999), 71.
4. J. R. Veenstra, Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text
and Context of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les Devineurs (1411) (Leiden, 1998),
134–5.
5. As cited in Robert Mathiesen, “A Thirteenth-Century Ritual to Attain the
Beatific Vision from the Sworn Book of Honorius of Thebes,” in Conjuring Spirits:
Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic, ed. Claire Fanger (University
Park, PA, 1998), 143–62, here 148.
6. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 73.
7. Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth
Century (University Park, PA, 1997), 64.
8. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe.
9. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 58–9.
10. Edward Bever, “Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease,” Journal
of Interdisciplinary History 30(2000), 573–90.
11. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge,
1991).
12. Susan Stuard, “The Dominion of Gender: Women’s Fortunes in the High
Middle Ages,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds. Renate
Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1987), 153–74.
13. Paul Fredericq, ed., Corpus documentorum Inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis
Neerlandicae, 3 (Gent and Gravenhage, 1906), 17. Hereafter, Fredericq, Corpus.
14. James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550–1750 (London,
1996), 75.
15. Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New
Spain (New Haven and London, 1994), 3.
16. “Tspel van Sinte Trudo,” in G. Kalff, Trou Moet Blycken. Toneelstukken der
zestiende eeuw (Groningen, 1889), 89, line 192.
17. Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, 20; See also Cohn, Europe’s Inner
Demons, 73.
18. John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), 35–8, 138–9;
“Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments,” in Edmund Leites,
ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1988), 215–30.
19. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 288.
20. In Jacob R. Marcus, ed., The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book: 1315–1791
(New York, 1978), 121–6, esp. 125.
21. From Marvin Perry et al., eds., Sources of the Western Tradition (Boston, 1987),
1:257.
22. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 299.
23. Ruben, Corpus Christi, 113.
24. Cited in Brian Tierney, ed., The Middle Ages, vol. 1, Sources of Medieval History,
5th ed. (New York, 1992), 260.
 Notes 237

25. Bernard Hamilton, The Medieval Inquisition (London, 1981), 25.

26. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 263.
27. Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, eds., Heresies of the High Middle Ages
(New York, 1969, 1991), 217–19.
28. Hamilton, The Medieval Inquisition, 38–9.
29. See Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans.
Barbara Bray (New York, 1979).
30. Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford, 1998), 315.
31. Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival c1170–c1570,
trans. Claire Davison (Cambridge, 1999), 73.
32. As cited by Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 22.
33. Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990),
chap. 12.
34. Willam Monter, “Witchcraft,” in Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia
of the Reformation (New York & Oxford, 1996), IV: 276–82, here 276–7.
Hereafter OER.
35. Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley,
1972), 136–7.
36. Ibid., 18–19, 63–5.
37. Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 68; and Malcolm Barber, “Lepers, Jews and Moslems:
The Plot to Overthrow Christendom in 1321,” History 66 (1981), 1–17.
38. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 303.
39. John Edwards, “Why the Spanish Inquisition?’” in Christianity and Judaism, ed.
Diana Wood (Oxford, 1992), 221–36, here 230.
40. As cited by Edwards, “Why the Spanish Inquisition?,” 230–1.
41. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition (New York and London, 1964), 52–3.
42. Eugen Weber, Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs through the
Ages (Toronto, 1999), 58.
43. Julio Caro Baroja, “Witchcraft and Catholic Theology,” in Early Modern
European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, eds. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav
Henningsen (Oxford, 1990), 19–43, here 26.
44. As cited in Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100–
1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia, 1972), 79.
45. Baroja, “Witchcraft and Catholic Theology,” 27.
46. Kors and Peters, Witchcraft, 80–1.
47. Ibid., 82.
48. Veenstra, Magic and Divination, 48–50.
49. Ibid., 77–8.
50. Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and
Learned Culture, 1300–1500 (London, 1976), esp. 108–74.
51. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 198–203.
52. Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms
of the Night, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort (Charlottesville, 1998), 130–1.
53. Arno Borst, “The Origins of the Witch-Craze in the Alps,” in Arno Borst,
Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists in the Middle Ages, trans. Eric
Hansen (Chicago, 1991), 101–22.
54. Borst, Medieval Worlds, 121, summarizing František Graus, Das Spätmittelalter
als Krisenzeit (1969).
238 Notes

55. Richard Kieckhefer, “Avenging the Blood of Children: Anxiety Over Child
Victims and the Origins of the European Witch Trials,” in The Devil, Heresy
and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. Alberto
Ferreiro (Leiden, 1998), 91–110.
56. Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 119.
57. Ibid., 10–26.
58. Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious
Zealotry and the Reason of State in Early Modern Europe, trans. J. C. Grayson and
David Lederer (Cambridge, 1997), 70.
59. Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 122–3.
60. Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social
Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1999), 88.
61. Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 297–300.
62. Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 52.
63. Ibid., 53–4.
64. As cited by Kieckhefer, “Avenging the Blood,” 95.
65. Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 81.
66. Kieckhefer, “Avenging the Blood,” 102.
67. Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf, 131.
68. See, for example, Andreas Blauert, ed., Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen: Die Anfänge
der europäischen Hexenverfolgungen (Frankfurt am Main, 1990).
69. Martine Ostorero, Folâtrer avec les démons (Lausanne, 1995).
70. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 230.
71. Ibid., 231.
72. Fredericq, Corpus, 3:93–109.
73. This inquiry seems to have resulted in the sorcery trial on October 27, 1460
in Lille of Caterine Patée. Ibid., 3:112–13.
74. Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington,
1985), 42.
75. Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 133–40.
76. Eric Wilson, “The Text and Context of the Malleus Maleficarum (1487),”
Ph.D. Diss. (Cambridge University, 1991), 71–6.
77. Jürgen Petersohn, “Konziliaristen und Hexen: Ein unbekannter Brief des
Inquisitors Heinrich Institoris an Papst Sixtus IV aus dem Jahre 1484,”
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 44 (1988), 120–60.
78. Eric Wilson, “Institoris at Innsbruck: Heinrich Institoris, the Summis Desiderantes
and the Brixen Witch-Trial of 1485,” in Popular Religion in Germany and Central
Europe, 1400–1800, eds. Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson (Houndmills,
Eng., 1996), 87–100, esp. 100.
79. Ibid., 86–7.
80. Ibid., 89–90.
81. Walter E. Stephens, “Witches Who Steal Penises: Impotence and Illusion in
Malleus maleficarum,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998),
495–529; also his Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and Belief (Chicago, 2002).
82. Wilson, “Institoris at Innsbruck,” 96.
83. Ulric Molitor, Des Sorcières et des Devineresses. Reproduit en fac-simile d’après
L’Édition Latine de Cologne 1489 et Traduit pour la Première fois en
Françe. Bibliothèque Magique des XV e et XVI e Siècles I (Paris, 1926), 81.
 Notes 239

84. Fredericq, Corpus, 2:273–7.

85. Ibid., 3:141–3.
86. Ibid., 1:458–9.
87. Ibid., 2:278.
88. Ibid., 2:288–9.
89. Ibid., 2:291.
90. Ibid., 2:279.
91. Ibid., 2:280–92, here 290–1.
92. Ibid., 3:158.
93. Ibid., 1:483–6.
94. Therese Decker and Martin W. Walsh, eds., Mariken van Nieumeghen: A
Bilingual Edition (Columbia, SC, 1994).
95. Dyan Elliot, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, & Demonology in the Middle Ages
(Philadelphia, 1999).
96. Richard Marius, Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Cambridge, MA,
1999), 41–2.

The Reformation and the End of the World

1. Wilson, “The Text and Context,” 105–7.

2. Erasmus, “A Journey for Religion’s Sake,” in Scheming Papists and Lutheran
Fools: Five Reformation Satires, ed. Erika Rummel (New York, 1993), 88–117,
esp. 99–100 and 116.
3. In The Erasmus Reader, ed. Erika Rummel (Toronto, 1990), 144.
4. Marius, Luther, 44.
5. Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-
Schwarzbart (New Haven, 1989), 102.
6. Ibid., 104.
7. As cited in Ibid.; originally from Luther’s “Table Talk” (Tischreden), informal
comments recorded by Luther’s students and dinner companions.
8. Ibid., 102–3.
9. Robin Barnes, “Apocalypticism,” OER I: 63–7, here 65.
10. Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe,
trans. David Gentilcore (Oxford, 1989).
11. Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 (Ithaca, 1972), 180.
12. Werner O. Packull, “The Image of the ‘Common Man’ in the Early Pamphlets,”
Historical Reflections, 12 (1985), 253–77.
13. James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods
(Kingston and Montreal, 1991), 7.
14. Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525 (Baltimore, 1981).
15. Thomas Müntzer, “Sermon Before the Princes,” in George H. Williams and
Angel M. Mergal, eds., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Philadelphia, 1957),
47–70.
16. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Thomas Müntzer: Revolutionary in a Mystical Spirit,”
in Profiles of Radical Reformers, eds. Hans-Jürgen Goertz and Walter Klaassen
(Kitchener and Scottdale, 1982), 29–44, here 39–40.
240 Notes

17. Tom Scott and Robert W. Scribner, eds., The German Peasants’ War. A History
in Documents (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1991), 158.
18. James M. Stayer, “Anabaptists,” OER, I: 31–2.
19. Ibid., 34.
20. Cited by Stayer, The German Peasants’ War, 63–4.
21. Stayer, The German Peasants War; C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and
Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, Ontario, 1995).
22. Scott and Scribner, The German Peasants’ War, 328–30.
23. Barnes, “Apocalypticism,” 65.
24. See Gary K. Waite, David Joris and Dutch Anabaptism, 1524–1543 (Waterloo, 1990).
25. See Gary K. Waite, “‘Man is a Devil to Himself ’: David Joris and the Rise of
a Sceptical Tradition towards the Devil in the Early Modern Netherlands,
1540–1600,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis/Dutch Review of Church
History, 75/1(1995), 1–30.
26. From John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from his writings (New
York, 1961), 349.
27. Scott and Scribner, The German Peasants’ War, 225.
28. Ibid., 226.
29. Fredericq, Corpus, IV: 137–8.
30. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women on Top,” in her Society and Culture in Early
Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 124–51.
31. Merry E. Wiesner, “Nuns, Wives, and Mothers: Women and the Reformation
in Germany,” in Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe, ed.
Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington, 1989), 8–28, esp. 10.
32. “Dit zijn de mirakelen die Luther doet,” in Herman Pleij, ed., ‘T is al vrouwen-
werk. Refreinen van Anna Bijns (Amsterdam, 1987), 49.
33. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, “Women,” OER IV: 290–8, esp. 295.
34. Wiesner, “Nuns, Wives, and Mothers,” 15.
35. Gary K. Waite, “Between the devil and the inquisitor: anabaptists, diabolical
conspiracies and magical beliefs in the sixteenth-century Netherlands,” in
Radical Reformation Studies: Essays presented to James M. Stayer, eds. Werner O.
Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple (Aldershot, 1999), 120–40.
36. Ibid., 132.
37. Sigrun Haude, In the Shadow of ‘Savage Wolves’: Anabaptist Münster and the Ger-
man Reformation during the 1530s (Leiden, 2000), 14.
38. Sigrun Haude, “Anabaptist Women – Radical Women?,” in Infinite Bound-
aries: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture, ed. Max
Reinhart (Kirksville, MO, 1998), 313–28.
39. Haude, In the Shadow, 112.
40. Newe zeytung von den Wydertaufferen zu Münster (Nurnberg, 1535) fol. Biiir.
41. Haude, In the Shadow, 20.
42. Waite, “Between the Devil and the Inquisitor,” 130–1.
43. Albert F. Mellink, ed., Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, II: Amsterdam
(1536–1578) (Leiden, 1980), 263.
44. D. Jonathan Grieser, “Seducers of the simple folk: The polemical war against
anabaptism (1525–1540),” Th.D. diss. (Harvard University, 1993), 24;
Sigrun Haude, In the Shadow.
 Notes 241

45. Irvin B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to
1558 (Nieuwkoop, 1972), 77.
46. James Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, “Forty-four Thousand Cases of
the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank,” in
Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi, eds., The Inquisition in Early Modern
Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods (Dekalb, IL, 1986), 100–24.
47. Mark U. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca,
1983).
48. However, see also F. E. Beemon, “The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition and
the Preconditions of the Dutch Revolt,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 85
(1994), 246–64.

Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other”

1. Brian P. Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions,” in

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, eds.
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian P. Levack, and Roy Porter, vol. 5, The
Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, eds. Bengt Ankarloo
and Stuart Clark (London, 1999), 1–94, here 41.
2. The terminology of religiosity and official religion is from Langmuir, History,
Religion, and Antisemitism.
3. Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the
German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978).
4. See esp. Alfred F. Soman, “The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt
(1565–1640),” Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978), 31–44.
5. Die catalogen oft inuentarisen vanden quaden verboden boucken, ende van andere
goede, diemen den iongen scholieren leeren mach: na aduys der Uniuersiteyt van
Loeuen (Louvain, 1550), bir.
6. Samme Zijlstra, Nicolaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk. Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis
van het Davidjorisme (Assen, 1983), 110–14.
7. Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630
(Cambridge, 1994).
8. Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht,
1578–1620 (Oxford, 1995).
9. Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, Wercken (Amsterdam, 1630/31), vol. 1, 89r.
10. Andrew C. Fix, Prophecy and Reason. The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlight-
enment (Princeton, 1991).
11. Jonathan Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620
(Waterloo, 1998), 30–1.
12. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 27.
13. Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1990).
14. Willem Frijhoff, “Het Gelders Antichrist-tractaat (1524) en zijn auteur,” Archief
voor de Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland, 28 (1986), 192–217,
esp. 206–7. See also Clark, Thinking with Demons, 333.
242 Notes

15. Barnes, “Apocalypticism,” OER I: 63–7, here 66; and Andrew Cunningham
and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine
and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 9.
16. Stuart Clark, “Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society (c.1520–
c.1630),” in Ankarloo and Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 45–81,
here 47–8.
17. Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1990).
18. A point made by R. Po-chia Hsia, “Jews,” OER 2: 339–45, here 340.
19. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany
(New Haven, 1988), 125–31, esp. 131.
20. As cited in Ibid., 132.
21. Ibid., 136–62.
22. Corte ende waerachtighe beschrijuinge van eenen Jode/Ghenaemt: ASVERVS Die by
de Kruysinghe Christi gheweest is/ . . . (Sleswicht, 1601).
23. Hsia, “Jews,” 343.
24. Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of
Discovery (New York and Oxford, 1995).
25. Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, 6.
26. Ibid., 8.
27. Ibid., 16.
28. Wunderbarliche vnd erschröckliche geschichte/so durch donner vnd blitz zu Mechelen
in Brabant . . . geschehen (n.p., n.d. [1546]).
29. Newe zeittung/ der man furmals nicht viel gehöret/ die sich begeben haben in Nidderland/
zu Mecheln (n.p., n.d. [1546]).
30. See also Sabine Holtz, “Der Fürst dieser Welt: Die Bedrohung der Lebenswelt
aus lutherisch-orthodoxer Perspektive,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 107
(1996), 29–49, esp. 29.
31. Den val der Roomscher Kercken/mer al hare afgoderie (n.p., 1556).
32. Carleton Cunningham, “The Devil and the Religious Controversies of
Sixteenth-Century France,” Essays in History 35 (1993), 34–47, here 37.
33. Craig M. Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern
Germany, 1450–1700 (Basingstoke, 2000).
34. Een Colloquie oft tsamensprekinghe van twee personagien/ waer af die eene Pasquillus/
ende de andere Marphorius genaemt is (n.p., n.d. [1565]), Aiiv and Biv v.
35. Een schoone Vraeghe van eenen Bwr hoe dat hy eenen Pape geuraecht heeft/van
weghen sommigher Articulen (n.p., 1565), Aiiij v.
36. The above quotations are from Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons, 140.
37. Robert W. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the ‘Disenchantment
of the World’,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993), 475–94, here 486.
38. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes, 32.
39. These citations are from Ibid., 66–8.
40. Denis Richet, “Sociocultural Aspects of Religious Conflicts in Paris during the
Second Half of the Sixteenth Century,” in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred: Selec-
tions from the Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations vol. 7, eds. Robert Forster
and Orest Ranum, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore
and London, 1982), 182–221, here 194; also Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites
of Violence,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 152–85, esp. 179.
 Notes 243

41. As cited by Pearl, The Crime of Crimes, 71.

42. Willem Verlinde, Een Claer betooch vanden oorspronck der Lutherie, Van die
menichvuldicheyt der Secten (Brugge, 1567), 262–3.
43. Verlinde, Oprecht Tryakel Teghen t’venijn alder dolinghen onser tijdts (Antwerpen,
1567), 121r.
44. Stuart Clark, “Inversion, Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft,” Past and
present 87(May 1980), 98–127, esp. 99, 127.
45. Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the
Reformation (Baltimore, 1995), 173.
46. Kevin C. Robbins, “Magical Emasculation, Popular Anticlericalism, and the
Limits of the Reformation in Western France circa 1590,” Journal of Social
History 31 (1997), 61–83.
47. As cited by Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 59.
48. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 194.
49. Christoffen Erhard, Gründliche kurtz verfaste Historia. Von Münsterischen
Widertauffern: vnd wie die Hutterischen Brüder (München, 1588).
50. Johann Carion, Een Chronijcke van al tghene datter gheschiet is vant beghinsel des
weerelts totten iare M.CCCCC.ende xliii. (Antwerpen, 1543), 62v.
51. Grieser, “Seducers of the Simple Folk”, 24; Haude, In the Shadow of ‘Savage
Wolves’.
52. Histoire memorable de la persecution et saccagement du peuple de Merindol et
Cabrieres (1555), as translated by Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern
Europe, 169.
53. David W. Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture & Village Discourse in
Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), 58.
54. Justus Menius, Von dem Geist der Widerteuffer (n.p., 1544), 4v.
55. Adam Crato, Rettung Des Christlichen Tauffbuchleins Heern D. Martini Lutheri.
(n.p., 1591), 3, 8 and 10. For this controversy, see Bodo Nischan, “The Exorcism
Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation,” The Sixteenth Century
Journal, 18 (1987), 31–51.
56. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic,” 487.
57. (Sigmund Feyerabend) Theatrvm Diabolorum (Franckfurt am Main, 1569),
introduction.
58. H. C. Erik Midelfort, “The Devil and the German People: Reflections on the
Popularity of Demon Possession in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” in Religion
and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Steven Ozment (Kirksville,
MO, 1989), 99–119, here 111 and 115.
59. Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 112–13.
60. Lorna Jane Abray, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in
Strasbourg 1500–1598 (Oxford, 1985), 170–4.
61. Linda C. Hults, “Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: The Evidence of
Images,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (1987), 249–76.
62. John D. Derksen, “Strasbourg’s Religious Radicals from 1525 to 1570:
A Social History,” Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Manitoba, 1993, 289–96; Marc Lienhard,
Stephen F. Nelson, and Hans Georg Rott, eds., Quellen zur Geschichte der
Täufer, vol. 16, Elsass IV, Stadt Straßburg 1543–1552 (Gutersloh, 1988),
Beilage, 537.
244 Notes

63. Lienhard, Nelson and Rott, Stadt Straßburg, 119–21.

64. “Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–1662,” Journal of Modern History 43 (1971),
179–204, esp.189; reprinted in E. William Monter, Enforcing Morality in Early
Modern Europe (London, 1987).
65. Monter, “Witchcraft in Geneva,” 190–1.
66. Sigrid Brauner, Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of
the Witch in Early Modern Germany, ed. Robert H. Brown (Amherst,
1995).
67. Haude, “Anabaptist Women – Radical Women?,” 313–28.

The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600

1. Michael H. Keefer, “Agrippa’s Dilemma: Hermetic ‘Rebirth’ and the Ambiva-

lences of De Vanitate and De Occulta Philosophia,” Renaissance Quarterly 41
(1988), 614–53.
2. Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London, 1979), 44–5.
3. Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, book 1, chapter 2, as translated in
Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 116.
4. This discussion and citations are from Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences
in the Renaissance: A Study in Intellectual Patterns (Berkeley, 1972), 136–8.
5. Charles G. Nauert, Jr., “Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius,” OER I: 12–13,
here 12.
6. George Mora, gen. ed., Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann
Weyer, ‘De praestigiis daemonum’ (Binghamton, NY, 1991), xxx.
7. As cited by Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza,
2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1979), 24.
8. Paola Zambelli, “Magic and Radical Reformation in Agrippa of Nettesheim,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976), 69–103.
9. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences,
ed. Catherine M. Dunn (Northridge, CA, 1974), 129–30. See also Levack, The
Witch-Hunt, 55–6.
10. James R. Keller, “The Science of Salvation: Spiritual Alchemy in Donne’s
Final Sermon,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 23 (1992), 486–93, esp. 487.
11. Allison P. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The
Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–1698) (Leiden, 1999),
144–5.
12. Ibid., 227.
13. Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early
Reformation (Albany, 1997), 31.
14. Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , 87.
15. Cited in Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 116.
16. Clark, “Protestant Demonology,” 71–2.
17. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 37–8.
18. Mora, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, xxxi.
19. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 205.
20. Mora, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 285.
21. Ibid., 294–5.
 Notes 245

22. Both citations are from H. C. Erik Midelfort, the first from “Johann Weyer in
medizinischer, theologischer und rechtsgeschichtlicher Hinsicht,” in Vom Unfug
des Hexen-Processes: Gegner der Hexenverfolgungen von Johann Weyer bis Friedrich
Spee, eds. Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Ulbricht (Wiesbaden, 1991), 53–64, esp.
59; the second from “Johann Weyer and the Transformation of the Insanity
Defense,” in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia (Ithaca
and London, 1988), 234–61, esp. 238.
23. Mora, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 529–35.
24. Ibid., 324.
25. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 202–3.
26. Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonvm (n.p., 1567), Av v.
27. See Gary K. Waite, “The Radical Reformation and the Medical Profession:
The Spiritualist David Joris and the Brothers Weyer (Wier),” in Radikalität und
Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert/Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century, eds.
Hans-Jürgen Goertz and James M. Stayer (Berlin, 2002), 167–85; and
Hans de Waardt, “Johan Wiers De Praestigiis: Mythes en Motivatie,” in Jan
Jacob Cobben, ed. Duivelse Bezetenheid: Beschreven door dokter Johannes Wier,
1515–1588 (Rotterdam, 2002), 17–74.
28. Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of Witches, 37.
29. Ibid., 38. For Adeline, see also Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 230.
30. Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of Witches, 38, 44.
31. Ibid., 146.
32. Ibid., 147.
33. Ibid., 148–9.
34. Mora, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 583–4.
35. Fredericq, Corpus, 5:213–17.
36. Monter, “Witchcraft,” OER IV, 277–8.
37. Bob Scribner, “Witchcraft and Judgement in Reformation Germany,” History
Today (April, 1990), 12–19, here 12. The following example comes also from
Scribner.
38. Hans de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving. Holland 1500–1800 (Den Haag, 1991), 52.
39. These cases are all from De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 52–63.
40. Referring to a particularly puzzling case from the seventeenth century, Erik
Midelfort asks why this case was not treated as witchcraft. He replies, “But
also perhaps because ordinary people were having trouble keeping the
supposedly clear categories of witchcraft and possession clearly separate.”
H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany
(Stanford, 1999), 77.
41. Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of Witches, 109.
42. See Carleton Cunningham, “The Devil and the Religious Controversies of
Sixteenth-Century France,” Essays in History, 35 (1993), 34–47; and Pearl,
Crime of Crimes, 43–5.
43. Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 44.
44. D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in
the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1981), 27.
45. Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 44.
46. See Irena Backus, ed., Guillaume Postel et Jean Boulaese: De summopere (1566)
et Le Miracle de Laon (1566) (Geneva, 1995).
246 Notes

47. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 67.

48. J. ter Gouw, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1878–1893), vol. 5 (1886),
412.
49. Newe zeittung. In welcher Kürtzlich, ordentlich vnd warhafftighlich, nach aller vms-
tendigkeit erzelet wird, was sich in der berhümbten Kauffstadt Antorff zwischen den
18. vnd 28. Augusti dieses 1566 (n.p., 1566).
50. G. Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, en andre kerkelyke geschiedenissen in en ontrent
de Nederlanden (Amsterdam, 1671), vol. I: 356–7.
51. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 70–4; A. Querido, Storm in het weeshuis: De
beroering onder de Amsterdamse burgerwezen in 1566 (Amsterdam, 1958).
52. Waite, “Between the Devil and the Inquisitor,” 139.
53. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 120.
54. E. William Monter, “Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565,”
in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, eds. Ole Peter Grell
and Bob Scribner (Cambridge, 1996), 48–64, esp. 49–50.
55. Willem de Blécourt/Hans de Waardt, “Das Vordringen der Zaubereiver-
folgungen in die Niederlande Rhein, Maas und Schelde entlang,” in Andreas
Blauert, ed., Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen. Die Anfänge der europäischen Hexenverfol-
gungen (Frankfurt a.M., 1990), 182–216.
56. I am currently preparing a more detailed study on this subject tentatively
entitled “Anabaptists, the Devil, and Witchcraft in The Netherlands and
Germany, 1535–1600.”
57. Carlo Ginzburg, Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth &
Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (New York and Middlesex,
1983).
58. Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches, trans. O. N. V Glendinning (Chicago,
1964), 148.
59. John Tedeschi, “Inquisitorial Law and the Witch,” in Ankarloo and
Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 84–118, here 85; Ruth Martin,
Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650 (Oxford, 1989), 6.
60. Martin, Witchcraft, 15.
61. Johan Weyer, foreword, De praestigiis daemonvm. Aivr–Av v.

Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting 1562–1630

1. Martino del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicae, in Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early

Modern Europe, 165.
2. Demonolatry by Nicolas Remy, Privy Councillor to The Most Serene Duke of Lorraine,
and Public Advocate to his Duchy, in 3 Books . . . trans. E. A. Ashwin, ed. Montague
Summers (London, 1930), v.
3. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 141.
4. Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 116–17.
5. Briggs, “Many Reasons Why”, 49–63, esp. 55.
6. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 21–4.
7. Monter, “Heresy executions in Reformation Europe.”
8. Weber, Apocalypses, 70.
 Notes 247

9. In Wolfgang Behringer, ed., Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland (München,

1988), 136–7.
10. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 88–90.
11. Details of this will be provided in my unpublished “Anabaptists, the Devil, and
Witchcraft in The Netherlands and Germany.” For other areas, see Achim R.
Baumgarten, Hexenwahn und Hexenverfolgung im Naheraum: Ein Beitrag zur
Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 87.
12. Dionysius Dreytweins Esslingische Chronik (1548–1564), ed. Adolf Diehl (Tübingen,
1901), 246.
13. Wolfgang Behringer, “Witchcraft Studies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland,”
in Barry, Hester, and Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 64–95, here 75.
14. Behringer, “Witchcraft Studies,” 87–8.
15. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Witchcraft in Europe and the New World, 1400–1800
(Basingstoke, 2001), 56–7.
16. W. Rummel, Bauern, Herren und Hexen: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte sponheimischer
und kurttrierscher Hexenprozesse, 1574–1664 (Göttingen, 1991).
17. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 138; Levack, The Witch-Hunt,
116–17.
18. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 101.
19. Both citations are from Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 104
and 108 resp.
20. As cited in Ibid., 109.
21. Ibid., 112.
22. For Junius’ letter, see E. William Monter, ed., European Witchcraft (New York,
1969), 81–7.
23. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 140.
24. Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 83.
25. Gerhard Schormann, Der Krieg gegen die Hexen: Das Ausrottungsprogramm des
Kurfursten von Koln (Gottingen, 1991).
26. Gisela Wilbertz, Gerd Schwerhoff and Jürgen Schleffer, eds., Hexenverfolgung
und Regionalgeschichte: Die Grafshaft Lippe im Vergleich (Bielefeld, 1994), esp.
Christine Meier, “Die Anfänge der Hexenprozesse in Lemgo,” 83–106, here
90–3.
27. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 22–3.
28. E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during
the Reformation (Ithaca, 1976), 42–66, and Enforcing Morality in Early Modern
Europe (London, 1987), chap. X “Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–1662,” 179–204
esp. 186–7.
29. Monter, Witchcraft in France, 196.
30. Ibid., 116–18.
31. Henry Boguet, An Examen of Witches Drawn from various trials of many of this sect
in the district of Saint Oyan de Joux . . . trans. E. Allen Ashwin, ed. Montague
Summers (1929, facsimile ed. New York, 1971), 4.
32. Ibid., 14.
33. Ibid., 10.
34. Monter, Witchcraft in France, 72.
248 Notes

35. Sophie Houdard, Les sciences du diable: Quartre discours sur la sorcellerie,
Xve-XVIIe siecle (Paris, 1992), 159.
36. Boguet, Examen of Witches, xxxi–xxxix.
37. J. Monballyu, Van hekserij beschuldigd: Heksenprocessen in Vlaanderen tijdens de
16de en 17de eeuw (Kortrijk-Heule, 1996); and his website at: www.kulak.ac.be
38. Dries Vanysacker, “Het aandeel van de zuidelijke Nederlanden in de europese
heksenvervolging,” Trajecta 9 (2000), 329–49.
39. Alfons K. L. Thijs, Van Geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk: Maatschappelijke beteke-
nis van de kerk in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen (Turnhout, 1990), 127–36.
40. Midelfort, A History of Madness, 77.
41. Remy, Demonolatry, ix.
42. Ibid., 188.
43. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England.
44. James Sharpe, introduction, ibid., xxi.
45. Francis Coxe, A short treatise declaringe the detestable wickednesse of magicall
sciences, as Necromancie, Coniurations of spirites, Curiouse Astrologie and suche lyke
(n.p., 1561).
46. The Examination of John Walsh, before Maister Thomas Williams, . . . touchyng Wytch-
crafte and Sorcerye, in the presence of diuers gentlemen and others (London, 1566).
47. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 29–30.
48. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (NewYork, 1971), 462.
49. Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-hunting and Maternal Power in Early
Modern England (Ithaca and London, 1995).
50. Malcolm Gaskill, “Witchcraft in Early Modern Kent: Stereotypes and the
Background to Accusations,” in Barry, Hester, and Roberts, Witchcraft in
Early Modern Europe, 257–87, here 262.
51. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 48–9.
52. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 186–8. See most recently
Scott McGinnis, “‘Subtiltie’ Exposed: Pastoral Perspectives on Witch Belief in
the Thought of George Gifford,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33(2002), 665–686.
53. George Gifford, Sermons vpon the Whole Booke of the Revelation (London, 1596),
163.
54. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958).
55. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 201.
56. As cited by Willis, Malevolent Nurture, 118–19.
57. As cited by Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 89.
58. Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New
England (Cambridge, 1992), 120–1.
59. As cited by Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 93.
60. Ibid., 238.
61. D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits, 43–9.
62. Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures, . . . vnder the
pretence of casting out deuils (London, 1603).
63. I. D., The most wonderfull and true storie, of a certaine witch named Alse Gooderige of
Stapen hill . . . (London, 1597).
64. As cited by Walker, Unclean Spirits, 55.
65. A Godly and comfortable treatise, Very necessary for all such as are ouer-laden with the
burden of their sinnes, & do seeke comfort in christ . . . (London, 1585), C5v.
 Notes 249

66. Triall of Maist. Dorrell, Or A Collection of Defences against Allegations not yet
suffered to receiue convenient answere (n.p., 1599), 3–8.
67. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 98.
68. Christopher Haigh, “Success and Failure in the English Reformation,” Past
and Present 173 (November, 2001), 28–49.
69. A Detection of damnable driftes, practized by three Witches arraigned at Chelmisforde
in Essex, . . . whiche were executed in Aprill. 1579 (London, 1579).
70. A rehearsall both straung and true, of hainous and horrible actes committed by Elizabeth
Stile, Alias Rockingham, Mother Dutten, Mother Deuell, Mother Margaret, . . .
(London, 1579).
71. The Apprehension and confession of three notorious Witches. . . . executed at
Chelmes-forde, . . . the 5 day of Iulye, last past, 1589 (London, 1589).
72. Thomas Cooper, The Mystery of Witchcraft (London, 1617), A4v–A5r.
73. Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland (Baltimore, 1981),
53–8.
74. As cited in Ibid., 68.
75. Newes from Scotland. Declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian a notable Sorcerer,
who was burned at Edenbrough in Ianuarie last (London, 1591).
76. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, “Witchcraft and the Kirk in Aberdeenshire, 1596–97,”
Northern Scotland, 18 (1998), 1–14.
77. Larner, Enemies of God, 74–5; see also Brian P. Levack, ed., Articles on
Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, vol. 7, Witchcraft in Scotland (New York and
London, 1992), introduction.
78. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 116, 203–4.
79. Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget
Cleary (New York, 2000).

Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts

1. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 545.

2. From a survey of Paul Valkema Blouw, Typographia Batava, 1541–1600, 2 vols.
(Nieuwkoop, 1998).
3. Hans de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 337.
4. Hans de Waardt, “Rechtssicherheit nach Zusammenbruch der zentralen
Gewalt. Rechtspflege, Obrigkeit, Toleranz und wirtschaftliche Verhältnisse
in Holland,” in Das Ende der Hexenverfolgung, eds. Sönke Lorenz and Dieter
R. Bauer (Stuttgart, 1995), 129–52.
5. Willem de Blécourt, “On the Continuation of Witchcraft,” in Barry, Hester,
and Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 335–52.
6. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 161; also Marcel Gielis, “The Netherlandic
Theologians’ Views of Witchcraft and the Devil’s Pact,” in Witchcraft in the
Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century, eds. Marijke Gijswijt
Hofstra amd Willem Frijhoff (Rotterdam, 1991), 37–52.
7. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines; the case described here is detailed in his “Pos-
sessed by the Devil? A Very Public Dispute in Utrecht,” Renaissance Quarterly
49 (1996), 738–59.
8. As cited by Kaplan, “Possessed by the Devil?”, 743.
250 Notes

9. Ibid., 747–8.
10. Herman Herberts, Een corte ende grondige verclaringe van den Antichrist
(Vianen, n.d. [c.1584]).
11. Hiël [Hendrik Jansen Barrefelt], Het Boeck Der Ghetuygenissen vanden verborghen
Acker-schat . . . (n.p., n.d. [Antwerp, c.1580]), 94.
12. Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, Wercken (Amsterdam, 1630/31), vol. 1, 89r and
232v. See also Mirjam G. K. van Veen, “Spiritualism in the Netherlands: From
David Joris to Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33
(2002), 129–50.
13. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, “Doperse geluiden over magie en toverij: Twisck,
Deutel, Palingh en Vale Dale,” in Oecumennisme: Opstellen aangeboden aan Henk
B. Kossen ter gelegenheid van zijn afscheid als kerkelijk hoogleraar, ed. A. Lambo
(Amsterdam, 1989), 69–83, here 75–6. Deutel’s work is Een kort tractaetje tegen
de toovery, als mede een verklaringe van verscheyden plaetsen der H. Scrifture
(Hoorn, 1670).
14. Abraham Palingh, ‘tAfgerukt Mom-aansight der Tooverye: Daar in Het bedrogh der
gewaande Toverye, naakt ontdekt, . . . (Amsterdam, 1659).
15. Fix, Prophecy and Reason, and “Angels, Devils, and Evil Spirits in Seventeenth-
Century Thought: Balthasar Bekker and the Collegiants,” Journal of the History
of Ideas 50 (1989), 527–47.
16. G. J. Stronks, “De betekenis van De betoverde weereld van Balthasar Bekker,” in
Nederland betoverd: Toverij en Hekserij van de veertiende tot in de twintigste eeuw, eds.
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff (Amsterdam, 1987), 207–11.
17. Popkin, The History of Scepticism, 229–47.
18. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah.
19. My thanks to Dr. Stephen Snobelen, of the University of King’s College, Halifax,
for providing a copy of his “Lust, Pride and Ambition: Isaac Newton and the
Devil,” forthcoming in Newton 2000: Newtonian Studies in the New Millennium,
ed. James E. Force and Sarah Hutton, c. 2003. See also Margaret J. Osler, ed.,
Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 2000).
20. Ginzburg, Night Battles.
21. Stephen Haliczer, ed., Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (London,
1987), 1–3.
22. John Tedeschi and William Monter, “Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian
Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” reprinted in John Tedeschi,
The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy
(Binghamton, NY, 1991), 89–126.
23. Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, ed. Montague Summers,
trans. E. A. Ashwin (New York, 1988; 1929 ed.), iv.
24. Ibid., 111.
25. Ibid., 33–4.
26. Ibid., 16.
27. Ibid., 39.
28. As cited by John Tedeschi, “The Roman Inquisition and Witchcraft: An Early
Seventeenth-Century ‘Instruction’ on Correct Trial Procedure,” in Tedeschi,
The Prosecution of Heresy, 205–27, here, 206.
29. Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish
Inquisition (Reno, Nevada, 1980), 23.
 Notes 251

30. Stephen Haliczer, “The First Holocaust: The Inquisition and the Converted
Jews of Spain and Portugal,” in Haliczer, Inquisition and Society, 7–18, here 10.
31. Ibid., 11–16.
32. Henningsen, Witches’ Advocate, 24.
33. Ibid., 129–30.
34. Ibid., 193–4.
35. Ibid., 304–5.
36. John Tedeschi, “Inquisitorial Law and the Witch,” in Ankarloo and Henningsen,
Early Modern European Witchcraft, 84–118.
37. See Maxwell-Stuart, Witchcraft in Europe, 78–9.
38. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 208–9.
39. Per Sörlin, ‘Wicked Arts’: Witchcraft & Magic Trials in Southern Sweden, 1635–1754
(Leiden, 1999), 29.
40. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 212–13.
41. Juhan Kahk, “Estonia II: The Crusade against Idolatry,” in Ankarloo and
Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 273–84, here 283; see also
Maria Madar, “Estonia I: Werewolves and Poisoners,” in Ibid., 257–72.
42. Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 214–18; here 217.
43. Karen Lambrecht, Hexenverfolgung und Zaubereiprozesse in den schlesischen
Territorien (Cologne, 1995).
44. Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven,
1988).
45. Lambrecht, Hexenverfolgung, 350–401.
46. Gábor Klaniczay, “Hungary: The Accusations and the Universe of Popular
Magic,” in Ankarloo and Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft,
219–56.
47. As cited by Walker, Unclean Spirits, 29.
48. Anita M. Walker and Edmund H. Dickerman, “‘A Woman under the Influence’:
A Case of Alleged Possession in Sixteenth-Century France,” Sixteenth Century
Journal, 22 (1991), 535–54.
49. Klaits, Servants of Satan, 104–5.
50. Ibid., 113–15.
51. Sebastien Michaëlis, The admirable historie . . . trans. W. B. (London, 1613), 260.
52. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 432.
53. Robert Rapley, A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Montreal and
Kingston, 1998).
54. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 112.
55. Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 212.
56. Ibid., 215.
57. Ibid., 246.
58. Owen Davies, “Urbanization and the Decline of Witchcraft: An Examination
of London,” Journal of Social History, (1997), 597–617.
59. Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft (London 1584) (rep. Amsterdam and
New York, 1971), 507–11; also 539–41.
60. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 475.
61. David Wootton, “Reginald Scot /Abraham Fleming /The Family of Love,” in
Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture,
ed. Stuart Clark (Houndmills, UK, 2001), 119–38.
252 Notes

62. Robert Filmer, An Advertisement to the Jury-men of England, Touching Witches.

Together with a Difference Between An English and Hebrew Witch (London, 1653), 6.
63. These arguments are drawn largely from Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness,
213–33.
64. Ibid., 236–50.
65. Jerome Friedman, The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies: Miracles and the
Pulp Press during the English Revolution (New York, 1993).
66. Peter Elmer, “‘Saints or Sorcerers’: Quakerism, Demonology and the
Decline of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-century England,” in Barry, Hester,
and Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 145–79; Sharpe, Instruments
of Darkness, 251–75.
67. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 271.
68. Ian Bostridge, “Witchcraft Repealed,” in Barry, Hester, and Roberts,
Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 309–34.
69. Snobelen, “Lust, Pride and Ambition.”
70. As cited by Gábor Klaniczay, “Decline of Witches and Rise of Vampires in
18th Century Habsburg Monarchy,” Ethnologia Europaea: Journal of European
Ethnology 17 (1987), 165–80, here 167. See also his The Uses of Supernatural
Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern
Europe (Princeton, 1990).

Conclusion

1. Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon (New York, 1952), implicitly condemned
the McCarthy hearings by revealing how the persecutors of Urbain Grandier
had manipulated evidence and public opinion in ways that Huxley’s contem-
poraries would have easily recognized. See Rapley, A Case of Witchcraft, 219.
2. Sönke Lorenz, Dieter R. Bauer, Wolfgang Behringer, and Jürgen Michael
Schmidt, eds., Himmlers Hexenkartothek: Das Interesse des Nationalsozialismus an
der Hexenverfolgung (Bielefeld, 2000), viii.
3. Isak Niehaus, with Eliazaar Mohlala and Kally Shokane, Witchcraft, Power and
Politics: Exploring the Occult in the South Africian Lowveld (London, 2001).
 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The subject matter of this book is a vast one that encompasses several major
historical fields. This bibliography will therefore point the reader to only a selec-
tion of the more accessible recent literature from which to pursue more detailed
reading; more specialized literature and primary sources are cited in the Notes
section. Only a handful of the extensive non-English language works is included
here. Most of the contemporary pamphlets cited in the text come from two
sources: IDC Microform collection of pamphlets published in the Netherlands:
W. P. C. Knuttel, ed., Catalogus van de pamfletten-verzameling berustende in de
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 9 vols. (Utrecht, 1978); and Early English Books Online,
accessed at the University of Cambridge. On the web there are some valuable
sites, and a lot that tend toward myth making and the expression of uninformed
opinion. A very helpful site is The Witchcraft Bibliography Project at
www.hist.unt.edu/witch.htm

The Devil, Heresy, and Magic in the Later Middle Ages

For the medieval cosmos, see the concise description by Peter Burke, The Italian
Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy (Cambridge, 1986). Burke’s Popular Culture
in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978) is still an authority on the subject
of popular and elite cultures, while a good introduction to popular medicine
is John Henry, “Doctors and Healers: Popular Culture and the Medical Profes-
sion,” in Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe, eds. Stephen
Pumfrey, Paolo L. Rossi, and Maurice Slawinski (Manchester, 1991), 191–221.
Although ostensibly narrowly focused, Caroline Walker Bynum’s Holy Feast and
Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987)
provides a revealing glimpse into how medieval folk conceived of the intersec-
tions of the material and immaterial worlds. For clerical conceptions of female
sexuality and how this was demonized through the late Middle Ages, see
Dyan Elliot, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, & Demonology in the Middle Ages
(Philadelphia, 1999). Johan Huizinga’s classic study of belief and culture in the
late Middle Ages has been recently retranslated as The Autumn of the Middle Ages,

253
254 Annotated Bibliography

trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago, 1996). John Bossy’s
“Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments,” in Edmund Leites,
ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1988), has proved
a widely influential interpretation of the transformation of attitudes toward sin
and guilt.
On specific aspects of the medieval/early-modern cosmos, see Miri Rubin,
Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991); Philippe
Ariès, The Hour of our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York, 1981); Nancy Caciola,
“Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” Past and Present,
152(1996), 3–45; and the several works of Piero Camporesi, esp. The Fear of Hell:
Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lucinda
Byatt (Oxford, 1990), and Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern
Europe, trans. David Gentilcore (Oxford, 1989). Illuminating discussions of
medieval popular religion are found in Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture:
Problems of Belief and Perception, trans. János M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth
(Cambridge, 1988). For saints, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and
Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981), and Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
and Timea Szell, eds., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1991). On
Purgatory, see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer
(Chicago, 1984). Although controversial, the works of Lionel Rothkrug raise
important questions about the nature of popular religion and the cult of saints;
most recently “German Holiness and Western Sanctity in Medieval and Modern
History,” Historical Reflections 15(1988), 161–249; but see also Steven D. Sargent,
“A Critique of Lionel Rothkrug’s List of Bavarian Pilgrimage Shrines,” Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte, 78(1987), 351–8.
The importance of the Devil to the medieval understanding of the cosmos
is not always appreciated, but see esp. Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan
(New York, 1995); and Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle
Ages (Ithaca and London, 1984). For magic in the early Middle Ages, see Bengt
Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient
Greece and Rome, The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe
(London, 1999); and Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe
(Princeton, 1991). For medieval magic in general, see Richard Kieckhefer, Magic
in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), and his response to Flint, “The Specific
Rationality of Medieval Magic,” American Historical Review 99(1994), 813–36.
Kieckhefer has also provided a comparison of medieval saints and witches in
“The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, Magic in Late Medieval
Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24(1994), 355–85. Elizabeth
M. Butler’s highly readable 1949 study, Ritual Magic, has been recently reissued
as part of the “Magic in History” series (University Park, PA, 1998). In this series
is also an excellent collection of essays, Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts
and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (1998). See also Alberto Ferreiro, ed., The
Devil, Heresy & Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell
(Leiden, 1998), and Charles Burnett’s more specialist Magic and Divination in the
Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Hampshire,
UK, 1996). P. G. Maxwell-Stuart’s The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A Documentary
History (Basingstoke, 1999) provides an illuminating collection of translated primary
sources, while Richard Kieckhefer has published a fascinating description and
 Annotated Bibliography 255

critical edition of a necromancer’s manual in Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s

Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park, PA, 1997).
A helpful overview of Renaissance magic is Wayne Shumaker, The Occult
Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in Intellectual Patterns (Berkeley, 1972). See also
Anthony Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer
(Cambridge, MA, 1999), while the classic is still Frances A. Yates, The Occult
Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London, 1979).
For medieval antisemitism, see especially Gavin Langmuir’s History, Religion,
and Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990) and Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley,
1990). On the stranger elements of Christian belief about Jews, see Joshua
Trachtenburg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and its
Relation to Modern Antisemitism (New York, 1966). For the role of preachers in
stirring up antisemitic sentiment, see Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The
Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, 1982). On the 1321 leper/Jew conspiracy,
see Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (New York, 1991),
33–86. For the perception of Jews in an apocalyptical framework, see Andrew
Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600 (Leiden,
1995). The best study of ritual murder charges is R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of
Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, 1988), along
with his account of one episode, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New
Haven, 1992). On the Christian use of the Cabala, see most recently Allison P.
Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought
of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–1698) (Leiden, 1999).
Good surveys of the medieval Inquisition are Bernard Hamilton, The Medieval
Inquisition (London, 1981), and Edward Peters, Inquisition (Berkeley, 1989). There
is a vast literature on the Spanish Inquisition; for a highly readable account, see
Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (London, 1997); also
E. William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands
to Sicily (Cambridge, 1990). For a concise summary of the history of the pure
blood laws, see Jerome Friedman, “Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood
Laws and Reformation: A Revisionist View of Racial and Religious Antisemitism,”
Sixteenth Century Journal 18(1987), 1–30. Bernard Lewis’ Cultures in Conflict:
Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery (New York and Oxford, 1995)
provides an accessible discussion of the interaction of the three religious cultures
around 1492.
For the perceived threat of heretics, see R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting
Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987), and Jeffrey
Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London,
1991). An excellent introduction to the Waldensians is Gabriel Audisio, The
Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival c1170–c1570, trans. Claire Davison
(Cambridge, 1999); while Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc
in the High Middle Ages (Harlow, UK, 2000), and Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars
(Oxford, 1998) are good places to start for the Cathars. On the Free Spirits, see
Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley,
1972). An excellent collection of primary sources is Walter L. Wakefield and
Austin P. Evans, eds., Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969, 1991).
Although its argument that sects of Devil-worshipers existed as forms of
popular protest against the church is debatable, Jeffrey B. Russell’s Witchcraft in
256 Annotated Bibliography

the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1972) still contains much useful information on medieval
witchcraft. An influential interpretation which sees the witch stereotype arising
primarily out of elite, clerical culture is Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons
(London, 1975). The best, detailed account of medieval trials is still Richard
Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned
Culture, 1300–1500 (London, 1976); while J. R. Veenstra’s Magic and Divination at
the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s “Contre les
Devineurs” (1411) (Leiden, 1998) uncovers a great deal about magic and witch-
craft in French courts; for early French trials, see also Martine Ostorero, “Folâtrer
avec les démons”. Sabbat et chasse aux sorciers à Vevey (1448) (Lausanne, 1995).
Franco Mormando’s The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social
Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1999) is excellent on the role of
preachers such as St. Bernardino of Siena in inciting anti-witch sentiment. Other
important studies of medieval witch trials are: Edward Peters, The Magician, the
Witch, and the Law (Philadelphia, 1978); Arno Borst, Medieval Worlds: Barbarians,
Heretics, and Artists in the Middle Ages, trans. Eric Hansen (Chicago, 1991); and
Andreas Blauert, Frühe Hexenverfolgungen: Ketzer-, Zauberei- und Hexenprozesse des
15. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1989).
On Krämer, witchcraft and Conciliarism, see Eric Wilson, “Institoris at Inns-
bruck: Heinrich Institoris, the Summis Desiderantes and the Brixen Witch-Trial
of 1485,” in Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson, eds., Popular Religion in Germany
and Central Europe, 1400–1800 (Basingstoke, 1996), 87–100, and his dissertation,
“The Text and Context of the Malleus Maleficarum (1487),” Ph.D. Diss. (Cambridge
University, 1991); the specialist study is Jürgen Petersohn, “Konziliaristen und
Hexen: Ein unbekannter Brief des Inquisitors Heinrich Institoris an Papst
Sixtus IV. aus dem Jahre 1484,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters
44(1988), 120–60. For Krämer and doubt, see Walter E. Stephens, “Witches
Who Steal Penises: Impotence and Illusion in Malleus Maleficarum,” Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28(1998), 495–529, and his Demon Lovers: Witch-
craft, Sex, and Belief (Chicago, 2002). The major collection of primary sources
relating to the medieval witch-hunts is Joseph Hansen, ed., Quellen und Untersu-
chungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn,
1901). A number of important sources have been translated in Alan C. Kors and
Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100–1700: A Documentary History
(Philadelphia, 1972).

The Reformation and the End of the World

The Reformation is a massive field with an impressive number of scholarly

conferences and journals devoted to it and to its many subfields, particularly
The Sixteenth Century Journal and the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for
Reformation History, which publishes a yearly literature review. The four-volume
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (New York and
Oxford, 1996), presents excellent summaries of research on virtually every topic
relating to the Reformation. Also helpful is Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman,
and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History 1400–1600: Late Middle
Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1995).
 Annotated Bibliography 257

Two excellent recent surveys of the subject are Carter Lindberg, The European
Reformations (Oxford, 1996) and Euan Cameron, The European Reformation
(Oxford, 1991), although neither devotes much attention to the question of
magic and witchcraft. For early-modern Europe, see most recently Euan Cameron,
ed., Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (Oxford, 2001). Christopher R.
Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 1450–1750 (London, 1995) provides an
evocatively written description of urban life in the era.
On the importance of anticlericalism in the Reformation, see Peter A. Dykema
and Heiko A. Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Europe (Leiden, 1993), and Kevin C. Robbins, “Magical Emasculation, Popular
Anticlericalism, and the Limits of the Reformation in Western France circa
1590,” Journal of Social History 31(1997), 61–83. On the Reformation and the end
of the world, refer to Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge,
2000); Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination
with Evil (New York, 1994); Walter Klaassen, Living at the End of the Ages: Apocalyptic
Expectation in the Radical Reformation (Lanham, 1992); Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy
and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1990); and Robin Barnes, Prophecy
and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, 1988).
For apocalyptical thought and witchcraft, see esp. Stuart Clark’s magnificent
Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997),
321–74, a massively important work on many fronts.
Two recent biographies of Luther highlight the Reformer’s battle against
death – Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death
(Cambridge, MA, 1999) – and the Devil – Heiko A Oberman, Luther: Man
Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven, 1989).
For the “mature” Luther and his more noxious views, see Mark U. Edwards,
Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, 1983).
On images and iconoclasm, see Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent
Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (New York, 1995);
Bryan D. Mangrum and Giuseppe Scavizzi, eds., A Reformation Debate: Karlstadt,
Emser, and Eck on Sacred Images. Three Treatises in Translation (Toronto, 1991); and
Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to
Calvin (Cambridge, 1986). On the Reformation and the “people”, a good start is
Lorna Jane Abray, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in
Strasbourg 1500–1598 (Oxford, 1985). The literature on the Peasants’ War of
1525 is massive; for the relationship between it and the Reformation, see James
M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal
and Kingston, 1991). An excellent collection of sources has been collected by
Tom Scott and Bob Scribner, eds., The German Peasants’ War: A History in Documents
(New Jersey, 1991), who also provide a concise summary of its history. The most
important influential interpretation has been Peter Blickle, The Revolution of
1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective, trans. Thomas A. Brady,
Jr. and H. C. Erik Midelfort (Baltimore, 1981).
For a clear and fairly comprehensive survey of Anabaptism, refer to C. Arnold
Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, 1995); while
George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 2nd English ed. (Kirksville, 1992) is
encyclopedic in its scope. For Anabaptist women, see C. Arnold Snyder and
258 Annotated Bibliography

Linda A. Huebert Hecht, eds., Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century

Reforming Pioneers (Waterloo, 1996); and Sigrun Haude, “Anabaptist Women –
Radical Women?” in Max Reinhart, ed., Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder, and
Reorder in Early Modern German Culture (Kirksville, 1998), 313–28. The best work
on Melchior Hoffman is Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and
Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation, trans. Malcolm Wren, ed. Benjamin
Drewery (Edinburgh, 1987). Werner O. Packull’s Hutterite Beginnings: Communi-
tarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore, 1995) is the best place to start
for the communitarian Anabaptists.
Good introductions to the Catholic Reformation are found in John Bossy,
Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985); John W. O’Malley, Catholicism
in Early Modern History: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, 1988); and Jean Delumeau,
Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation
(London, 1977); while Craig Harline provides an excellent survey of recent
research in “Official Religion – Popular Religion in Recent Historiography of the
Catholic Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 81(1990), 239–62. For
the Reformations in particular national contexts, see Andrew Pettegree, ed., The
Early Reformation in Europe (Cambridge, 1992). For the Reformation in France
and its persecution, see William Monter, Judging the French Reformation: Heresy
Trials by Sixteenth-Century Parlements (Cambridge, MA, 1999).

Heresy, Doubt, and Demonizing the “Other”

The effects of the polemical battles of the Reformation era have provoked consid-
erable debate; an excellent beginning point for the French conflicts are Jonathan
Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620 (Waterloo,
1998); Carleton Cunningham, “The Devil and the Religious Controversies of
Sixteenth-Century France,” Essays in History 35(1993), 34–47; and of course
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence,” in her Society and Culture in Early
Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 152–85. Bodo Nischan, “The Exorcism Controversy
and Baptism in the Late Reformation,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 18(1987),
31–51, details the polemical debate over exorcism in northern Germany, while
H. C. Erik Midelfort, “The Devil and the German People: Reflections on the
Popularity of Demon Possession in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” in Religion and
Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Steven Ozment (Kirksville, MO, 1989),
99–119, explores its potential impact in the rise of demon possession cases.
On diabolical conspiracies as applied to Anabaptists, see Sigrun Haude, In the
Shadow of “Savage Wolves”: Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation during
the 1530s (Leiden, 2000); Gary K. Waite, “Between the Devil and the Inquisitor:
Anabaptists, Diabolical Conspiracies and Magical Beliefs in the Sixteenth-Century
Netherlands,” in Radical Reformation Studies: Essays presented to James M. Stayer, eds.,
Werner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation
History (Aldershot, 1999), 120–40; also Gary K. Waite, “Talking Animals, Preserved
Corpses and Venusberg: The Sixteenth-Century Worldview and Popular
Conceptions of the Spiritualist David Joris (1501–1556),” Social History, 20
(1995), 137–56. For Guillaume Postel, see William J. Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi:
The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) (Cambridge, MA, 1957);
 Annotated Bibliography 259

on the Family of Love in the Netherlands, see Alastair Hamilton, The Family of
Love (Greenwood, SC, 1981); while for the English Familists refer to Peter Lake,
The Boxmaker’s Revenge (Stanford, 2001) and Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of
Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge, 1994).
For Protestant polemics against Anabaptism in general, see John S. Oyer,
Lutheran Reformers Against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the
Anabaptists of Central Germany (The Hague, 1964); for Calvin, see Willem Balke,
Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals (Grand Rapids, 1981). On the question of
religious tolerance, see Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner, eds., Tolerance and
Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge, 1996), esp. the chapter by
E. William Monter, “Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565,”
48–64. On the polemical battle around miracles and saints, see Philip M. Soergel,
Wondrous in his Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, 1993).
On the Genevan Calvinists and the Devil, see “Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–
1662,” Journal of Modern History 43(1971), 179–204, reprinted in E. William Monter,
Enforcing Morality in Early Modern Europe (London, 1987).

The Reformation, Magic, and Witchcraft, 1520–1600

For the classic discussion of religion and magic, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic (New York, 1971). See also the sources in Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult
in Early Modern Europe. On the crisis of Renaissance thought in the second half of
the sixteenth century, see William J. Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance, ca.
1550–1640 (New Haven, 2000).
On the Reformation and the efforts to transform popular culture, see Gerald
Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation
(Baltimore, 1978); David W. Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture & Village
Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984); and Robert W. (Bob) Scribner,
Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987).
See also Scribner and Johnson, Popular Religion in Germany; and C. Scott Dixon,
The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach,
1528–1603 (Cambridge, 1996). The various works of Natalie Zemon Davis on the
beliefs and culture of early-modern Europe continue to inspire new approaches
to the field: Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century
France (Stanford, 1987), The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA, 1983), and
the stimulating essays in Culture and Society in Early Modern France. “Microhistory”,
or using a close examination of a single case to comment on popular culture has
proved helpful, at least to a limited extent. See the pioneering effort of Carlo
Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Middlesex,
1982). On the Reformation’s impact on the concept of death and accompanying
ritual practices, see Craig M. Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead: Death and
Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450–1700 (Basingstoke, 2000); and Susan C.
Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany
(London, 1997). On images and popular culture, see Keith Moxey, Peasants,
Warriors and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation (Chicago, 1989); and Robert
W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation
(Cambridge, 1981).
260 Annotated Bibliography

For Protestants and magic, see especially Clark, Thinking with Demons, 489–508,
and “Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society (c. 1520–1630),”
in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, eds. Bengt Ankarloo
and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford, 1990), 45–81; Darren Oldridge, “Protestant
Conceptions of the Devil in Early Stuart England,” History Today 85(2000), 236–46;
Moshe Sluhovsky, “Calvinist Miracles and the Concept of the Miraculous in
Sixteenth-Century Huguenot Thought,” Renaissance and Reformation 19/2(1995),
5–25; and J. L. Teall, “Witchcraft and Calvinism in Elizabethan England: Divine
Power and Human Agency,” Journal of the History of Ideas 23(1962), 21–36. While
focused primarily on the English colonies, Richard Godbeer’s The Devil’s Dominion:
Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge, 1992) is insightful on Protestant
notions of magic and the Devil in general. On the intersection of apocalyptical
and demonological beliefs, see Clark, Thinking with Demons, 315–434. The best
work on Luther and witchcraft is Joerg Haustein, Martin Luthers Stellung zum
Zauber- und Hexenwesen (Stuttgart, 1990).
For Agrippa, see Charles G. Nauert’s Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance
Thought (Urbana, 1965); also Frank L. Borchardt, “The Magus as a Renaissance
Man,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 21(1990), 56–76; and Michael H. Keefer,
“Agrippa’s Dilemma, Hermetic ‘Rebirth’ and the Ambivalences of De vanitate and
De occulta philosophia,” Renaissance Quarterly, 41(1988), 614–53.
Johann Weyer’s book has been translated and edited in George Mora, gen.
ed., Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer “De praestigiis
daemonum” (Binghamton, NY, 1991); while Jean Bodin’s rebuttal has appeared
as Randy A. Scott and Jonathan L. Pearl, eds., Jean Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of
Witches (Toronto, 1995). Further on Weyer, see H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of
Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Stanford, 1999), esp. 182–227; Gerhild
Scholz Williams, Defining Dominion. The Discourses of Magic and Witchcraft in Early
Modern France and Germany (Ann Arbor, 1995); Hartmut Lehmann and Otto
Ulbricht, eds., Vom Unfug des Hexen-Processes: Gegner der Hexenverfolgungen von
Johann Weyer bis Friedrich Spee (Wiesbaden, 1991); and Clark, Thinking with
Demons. Hans de Waardt has debunked several myths about the life and ideas
of Weyer in “Johan Wiers De Praestigiis: Mythes et Motivatie,” in Jan Jacob
Cobben, ed., Duivelse Bezetenheid: Beschreven door dokter Johannes Wier, 1515–1588
(Rotterdam, 2002), 17–74.
On the Devil in the New World, see especially Fernando Cervantes, The Devil
in the New World. The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven, 1994); Mary
Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz, eds., Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inqui-
sition in Spain and the New World (Berkeley, 1991).
For the Nicole Aubrey possession, see Cunningham, “The Devil and the Reli-
gious Controversies,” and Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 43–5. For contemporary pamphlets
about the case, see Irena Backus, ed., Guillaume Postel et Jean Boulaese: De summo-
pere(1566) et Le Miracle de Laon (1566) (Geneva, 1995), and Le Miracle de Laon:
Le Deraisonnable, Le Raisonable, L’Apocalyptique et le Politique Dans Les Récits du
Miracle de Laon (1566–1578) (Paris, 1994).
For Protestant visionaries, see Jürgen Beyer, “A Lübeck Prophet in Local and
Lutheran Context”, in Scribner and Johnson, Popular Religion, 166–82; and
Willem Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz. Een Hollands weeskind op zoek naar zichzelf
1607–1647 (Nijmegen, 1995).
 Annotated Bibliography 261

On the early witch trials in the Spanish Inquisition, see Julio Caro Baroja, The
World of the Witches, trans. O. N. V Glendinning (Chicago, 1964); and Stephen
Haliczer, ed., Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (London and Sydney,
1987).
On the Reformation and antisemitism, see Hsia, Ritual Murder, as well as Heiko
A. Oberman, The Roots of anti-Semitism in the age of Renaissance and Reformation,
trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia, 1984); Maria R. Boes, “Jews in the Criminal-
Justice System of Early Modern Germany,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History
30(1999), 407–35; and David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The
Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, MA, 1988).
On popular magical and medical traditions in early-modern Europe, see Marijke
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Hilary Marland, and Hans de Waardt, eds., Illness and Healing
Alternatives in Western Europe (London, 1997); and Willem de Blécourt, “Witch
Doctors, Soothsayers and Priests: On Cunning Folk in European Historiography
and Tradition,” Social History 19(1994), 285–303, which notes the ongoing
importance of soothsayers for their clients. On Paracelsus and the Reformation,
see esp. Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early
Reformation (New York, 1997). For later Paracelsianism and alchemy, see Allen G.
Debus and Michael T. Walton, eds., Reading the Book of Nature: The Other Side of the
Scientific Revolution (Kirksville, MO, 1998); and Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah.

Religious Conflict and the Rise of Witch-Hunting, 1562–1630

The subject of the witch-hunts has had a shorter period of scholarly attention
compared to the Reformation, yet in the last four decades its scholars have
produced an overwhelming number of studies and an equally daunting range of
interpretations. Helpful surveys in English are led by Brian P. Levack’s very fine
The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 1995),
which concentrates on the judicial process, especially how the beliefs and practices
of the local judiciary were a major determinant in the severity of witch-hunting in
a particular region; it also contains an excellent chapter on the subject of the
effects of the Reformation upon witch-hunting. Robert W. Thurston’s, Witch,
Wicce, Mother Goose (Harlow, England, 2001) discusses the transformation of
medieval conspiratorial fears into the persecution mania of the sixteenth century,
but dispenses with the Reformation in a single paragraph. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart’s
concise Witchcraft in Europe and the New World, 1400–1800 (Basingstoke, 2001) is
an excellent starting point. An influential interpretation that debunks many
myths surrounding the witch-hunts and which points out its rather mundane
aspects is Robin Briggs’ Witches and Neighbors (New York, 1996). Anne Llewellyn
Barstow’s Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (New York, 1994)
reasserts the case for the primacy of misogyny in the selection of victims, but see
Briggs’ caveats. Several older surveys remain important on specific aspects of the
witch-hunts: Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloom-
ington, 1985) is good on demonic possession in France and the sexual dimension
of witch trials; G. R. Quaife, Godly Zeal and Furious Rage: The Witch in Early Modern
Europe (London, 1987) is still a useful survey; Geoffrey Scarre, Witchcraft and
Magic in 16th and 17th Century Europe (Houndmills, 1987) is extremely concise.
262 Annotated Bibliography

The recent anthropological interpretation of H. Sidky’s Witchcraft, Lycanthropy,

Drugs, and Disease: An Anthropological Study of the European Witch-Hunts (New
York, 1997) suffers from a tendency to make caricatures of the perspectives of
important historians, such as Keith Thomas. A less polemical anthropological
effort is Andrew Sanders, A Deed without a Name: The Witch in Society and History
(Oxford, 1995), which uses the early-modern hunts to condemn modern “witch-
finders” who seek to persecute minority groups. Stuart Clark’s Thinking with
Demons intricately reveals the belief structure of the educational elites who sought
to comprehend the function of demons and magic in the natural world and to
suppress superstition or demonic practices. A scholarly encyclopedia of witchcraft is
in the works: ABC-CLIO Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard
Golden (Santa Barbara).
Along with these monographs, there are also several excellent collections of
essays that have moved scholarship ahead by leaps and bounds: Kathryn A.
Edwards, ed., Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief and Folklore
in Early Modern Europe (Kirtsville, MO, 2002). Stuart Clark, ed., Languages of
Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (Houndmills,
2001); Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, eds., Witchcraft in
Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (Cambridge, 1996); Bengt
Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, eds., Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres
and Peripheries (Oxford, 1990); and now the multi-volume series edited by Bengt
Ankarloo and Stuart Clark for the series Athlone History of Witchcraft and
Magic in Europe. Brian Levack has also edited two series of volumes collecting
important essays on the subject, many of them difficult to find elsewhere, the first
a twelve-volume set entitled Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology: A Twelve
Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles (New York, 1992), and now a six-volume
collection, Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology (New York, 2001).
On the role of children in the witch-hunts, see Lyndal Roper, “‘Evil Imaginings
and Fantasies’: Child-Witches and the End of the Witch Craze,” Past and Present
167 (2000), 107–39, which presents a psychological interpretation of the phe-
nomenon; and Robert S. Walinski-Kiehl, “The Devil’s Children: Child Witch
Trials in Early Modern Germany,” Continuity and Change 11(1996), 171–89,
which relates trials of children to moral crusades imposing social and moral discip-
line. On confessional conflict and witch-hunting, see also his “‘Godly States’,
Confessional Conflict and Witch-hunting in Early Modern Germany,” Mentalities
5(1988), 13–24. On a more macabre theme, see Charles Zika, “Cannibalism and
Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images,” History Workshop
Journal 44(1997), 77–105. Edward Bever has offered an intriguing psychological
perspective on how magical curses may have “worked” in “Witchcraft Fears and
Psychosocial Factors in Disease,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30(2000), 573–90.
Studies of witch-hunting in specific regions multiply daily. A good survey of
the German research is provided by Wolfgang Behringer, “Witchcraft Studies in
Austria, Germany and Switzerland,” in Barry, Hester, and Roberts, Witchcraft in
Early Modern Europe, 64–95, and, of course his important analysis of Bavarian trials,
Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and the Reason of
State in Early Modern Europe, trans. J. C. Grayson and David Lederer (Cambridge,
1997), a nice companion piece to H. C. Erik Midelfort’s essential Witch Hunting in
Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford,
 Annotated Bibliography 263

1972). Behringer’s study of a single soothsayer, Shaman of Obersdorf: Chonrad

Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort (Charlottesville,
1998), is another very successful microhistory that reveals much about the early-
modern mentality. Important essays on the subject are provided by Robert W.
Scribner’s “The Reformation, Popular Magic and the ‘Disenchantment of the
World,’” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23(1992–3), 475–94, and “Witchcraft
and Judgement in Reformation Germany,” History Today, 40(1990), 12–19. The
standard German survey is Gerhard Schormann, Hexenprozesse in Deutschland
(Göttingen, 1981). Other good discussions of religion and witchcraft in Germany
are offered by Alison Rowlands, “Witchcraft and Popular Religion in Early Modern
Rothenburg ob der Tauber,” in Scribner and Johnson, Popular Religion, 101–18;
and Edmund Kern, “Confessional Identity and Magic in the Late Sixteenth
Century: Jakob Bithner and Witchcraft in Styria,” Sixteenth Century Journal
25(1994), 323–40. Behringer has edited a valuable collection of sources from
Germany in Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland (München, 1988). Although
there is no English work on the subject, Harald Schwillus’s Kleriker im Hexenprozeß.
Geistliche als Opfer der Hexenprozesse des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland
(Würzburg, 1992), shows that a large number of clergy were themselves accused
of witchcraft in Germany.
For the witch-hunts in France, see the brief summary in Robin Briggs, Early
Modern France, 1560–1715, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1998), 192–6, as well as his Communities
of Belief: Cultural and Social Tension in Early Modern France (Oxford, 1989) and
Witches and Neighbors. Refer also to E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and
Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca, 1976). For religious
conflict and witchcraft in France, see Cunningham, “The Devil and the Religious
Controversies,” and Pearl, The Crime of Crimes. On demon possession cases, see
also D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the
Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1981). Anita M. Walker
and Edmund H. Dickerman sympathetically interpret the story of individual
French “witches” or demoniacs in several essays: “Magdeleine des Aymards:
Demonism or Child Abuse in Early Modern France?” The Psychohistory Review
24(1996), 239–63; “The Haunted Girl: Possession, Witchcraft and Healing in
Sixteenth Century Louviers,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society
for French History 23 (1996), 207–18; and “‘A Woman under the Influence’: A
Case of Alleged Possession in Sixteenth-Century France,” Sixteenth Century Journal,
22(1991), 535–54. See also Charlotte Wells, “Leeches on the Body Politic: Xeno-
phobia and Witchcraft in Early Modern French Political Thought,” French Historical
Studies, 22(1999), 351–77.
The most comprehensive recent survey of English witch trials is James Sharpe,
Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1560–1750 (London, 1996), and now
a more concise summary, Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Harlow, 2001).
Sharpe has also produced his own gripping microhistory of a particular case in
The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft,
Murder, and the King of England (New York, 2000). Alan Macfarlane’s Witchcraft in
Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study, 2nd ed. with intro-
duction by James Sharpe (London, 1999) is still required reading. A very useful
collection of primary sources is found in Barbara Rosen, ed., Witchcraft in
England, 1558–1618 (Amherst, 1991, 1969).
264 Annotated Bibliography

On English women and witch trials, see Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History:
Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London, 1996); and Deborah
Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern
England (Ithaca, 1995). On the witch-trial pamphlets and their “closeness to
events,” see esp. Marion Gibson, Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches
(London and New York, 1999). For Scotland, Christina Larner’s Enemies of God:
The Witch-hunt in Scotland (Baltimore, 1981), and Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics
of Popular Belief, ed. Alan Macfarlane (Oxford, 1984) are still the standard,
although refer also to Julian Goodare, “Women and the Witch-Hunt in Scotland,”
Social History 23(1998), 288–308; P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, “Witchcraft and the Kirk
in Aberdeenschire, 1596–97,” Northern Scotland, 18(1998), 1–14; Lawrence
Normand and Gareth Roberts, eds., Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI’s
Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (Exeter, 2000); and P. G. Maxwell-Stuart,
Satan’s Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (East Lothian,
2001). For Ireland’s distinctiveness in this regard, see Joan Hoff and Marian
Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary (New York, 2000).
For the southern Low Countries, see Dries Vanysacker, “Het aandeel van de
zuidelijke Nederlanden in de europese heksenvervolging,” Trajecta 9 (2000),
329–49, which also highlights the very strong contrast between the southern and
northern provinces. See also his study of witchcraft in the Flemish city of Bruges,
Hekserij in Brugge: De magische leefwereld van een stadsbevolking, 16de-17de eeuw
(Brugge, [1988]). Also good on the legal dimensions is J. Monballyu, Van hekserij
beschuldigd: Heksenprocessen in Vlaanderen tijdens de 16de en 17de eeuw (Kortrijk-
Heule, 1996). There is little in English, but see Robert Muchembled, “Witchcraft,
Popular Culture, and Christianity in the Sixteenth Century with Emphasis upon
Flanders and Artois,” in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred: Selections from the Annales,
Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations vol. 7, eds. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum,
trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore, 1982), 213–36. Influential
studies of three regions are provided in M.-S. Dupont-Bouchat, W. Frijhoff and
R. Muchembled, Prophètes et sorciers dan les Pays-Bas, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1978).
For the northern provinces, see Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, “The European
Witchcraft Debate and the Dutch Variant,” Social History 15(1990) 181–94; Marijke
Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff, eds., Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the
Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century (Rotterdam 1991); and Hans de Waardt, Toverij
en samenleving. Holland 1500–1800 (Den Haag 1991), which contains a concise
summary in English.
On the gender of witch suspects, a topic barely touched upon in this study,
there is a vast and growing literature. Apart from the surveys of witch-hunting
cited above, see also Sigrid Brauner, Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The
Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany (Amherst, 1995); Jean R. Brink,
Allison P. Coudert, and Maryanne C. Horowitz, eds., The Politics of Gender in Early
Modern Europe (Kirksville,1989); Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft,
Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 1994); Willis, Malevolent
Nurture; Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century
Representations (London, 1996); Elspeth Whitney, “The Witch ‘She’/The Histor-
ian ‘He’: Gender and the Historiography of the European Witch-Hunts,” Jour-
nal of Women’s History 7(1995), 77–101; Robin Briggs, “Women as Victims?
Witches, Judges and the Community,” French History 5 (1991), 438–50; and Stuart
 Annotated Bibliography 265

Clark, “The ‘Gendering’ of Witchcraft in French Demonology: Misogyny or

Polarity?” French History 5(1991), 426–37. David Harley has essentially demolished
the myth that the witch-hunts were an attack on midwives in “Historians as
Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch,” Social History of Medicine
3(1990), 1–26; see also Jane P. Davidson, “The Myth of the Persecuted Female
Healer,” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association
14(1993), 115–29; and Malcolm Gaskill, “The Devil in the Shape of a Man:
Witchcraft, Conflict and Belief in Jacobean England,” Institute of Historical
Research, 71(1998), 142–71. On the images of witches see most recently Margaret
A. Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien,” Renaissance Quarterly
53 (2000), 333–41.

Religious Pluralism and the End of the Witch-Hunts

On the subject of skepticism, see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from
Erasmus to Spinoza, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1979); D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell:
Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago, 1964); and Perez
Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern
Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1990). For the Netherlands, see Andrew C. Fix, Prophecy
and Reason. The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton, 1991) and
“Angels, Devils, and Evil Spirits in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Balthasar
Bekker and the Collegiants,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50(1989), 527–47.
On spiritualism and skepticism, see Samme Zijlstra, “Anabaptists, Spiritualists
and the Reformed Church in East Frisia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review, 75 (2001),
57–73; Gary K. Waite, “From David Joris to Balthasar Bekker?: The Radical Ref-
ormation and Scepticism towards the Devil in the Early Modern Netherlands
(1540–1700),” Fides et Historia 28 (1996), 5–26; and the several works of Benjamin
J. Kaplan, especially Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht,
1578–1620 (Oxford, 1995), “Remnants of the Papal Yoke: Apathy and Opposition
in the Dutch Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 25(1994), 653–69, and
“Confessionalism and Popular Piety in the Netherlands,” Fides et Historia
27(1995), 44–58.
An excellent survey of witchcraft in the later period is Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart
Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(Philadelphia, 1999). See also Sönke Lorenz and Dieter R. Bauer, eds. Das Ende
der Hexenverfolgung (Stuttgart, 1995).
For the ending of witch-hunting in England, see especially Ian Bostridge,
Witchcraft and Its Transformations c. 1650–1750 (Oxford, 1997), and his “Witch-
craft Repealed, ” in Barry, Hester, and Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe,
257–87; also Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester,
1999), as well as his “Methodism, the Clergy, and the Popular Belief in Witch-
craft and Magic,” History Today 82(April 1997), 252–65, and “Urbanization and
the Decline of Witchcraft: An Examination of London,” Journal of Social History
(1997), 597–617. For the religious polemics, see Peter Elmer, “‘Saints or Sorcerers’:
Quakerism, Demonology and the Decline of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century
England,” in Barry, Hester, and Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 145–79;
T.L. Underwood, Primitivism, Radicalism and the Lamb’s War: The Baptist–Quaker
266 Annotated Bibliography

Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1997); and Jerome Friedman,

The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press during the
English Revolution (New York, 1993).
Good introductions to the Mediterranean Inquisitions and witchcraft are, for
Italy, John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in
Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, 1991); John Tedeschi, “Inquisitorial Law and
the Witch,” in Ankarloo and Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 84–118;
Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650 (Oxford, 1989);
and Carlo Ginzburg, Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth &
Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (New York, 1983).
For Spain, the best is still Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque
Witchcraft & the Spanish Inquisition (Reno, Nevada, 1980). See also Kamen, The
Spanish Inquisition; Perry and Cruz, Cultural Encounters; Haliczer, Inquisition and
Society; Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi, The Inquisition in Early Modern
Europe. Studies on Sources and Methods (Dekalb, IL, 1986); and Baroja, The World of
the Witches.
Alfred Soman has revealed profound judicial skepticism with respect to witch
trials on the part of the jurists of the Parlement of Paris in Sorcellerie et justice
criminelle (16–18e siècles) (Guildford, 1992) and “The Parlement of Paris and the
Great Witch Hunt (1565–1640),” Sixteenth Century Journal 9(1978), 31–44. On
French demoniacs and exorcisms, see Walker, Unclean Spirits; Robert Rapley, A
Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Montreal and Kingston, 1998);
and Moshe Sluhovsky, “A Divine Apparition or Demonic Possession? Female
Agency and Church Authority in Demonic Possession in Sixteenth-Century
France,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 27(1996), 1039–55. On demonic possession in
a Reformed context, see also Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Possessed by the Devil? A
Very Public Dispute in Utrecht,” Renaissance Quarterly 49(1996), 738–59.
Good English language introductions to witch-hunting in Scandinavia are: Per
Sörlin, “Wicked Arts”: Witchcraft & Magic Trials in Southern Sweden, 1635–1754
(Leiden, 1999); and Bengt Ankarloo, “Sweden: The Mass Burnings (1668–1676),”
in Ankarloo and Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft, 285–319.
For Eastern Europe, begin with the intriguing studies by Eva Pocs, Between the
Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age (London,
1999); and Gabor Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformation of
Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe (Princeton, 1990). On the
vampire epidemic, see also Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and
Reality (New Haven, 1988).
On skeptics of witchcraft, see Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Ulbricht, eds., Vom
Unfug des Hexen-Processes. Gegner der Hexen verfolgungen von Johann Weyer bis
Friedrich Spee (Wiesbaden, 1992).
 INDEX

Aberdeenshire 189 anti-Communist hearings 233

abortifacients 134 anti-Judaism 19–20 (see also
Absalon, Anna Pedersdotter 212 anti-Semitism; Jews)
Acts, book of 70 anti-Semitism 20–2, 29–31, 38, 96–9,
Adam 15, 17, 69, 122 206, 215 (see also Jews)
Adeline, William 41 Antwerp 71, 85, 91, 143, 170
ad extirpanda 24 (see also Innocent IV) apocalypse 8–9, 25, 52–3, 58–60, 62, 66,
adultery 113 69, 81, 90, 94–5, 101, 114, 117, 121,
Advent 107 125, 156, 174, 179, 191, 200, 220,
Africa 224 230, 232 (see also Christ, return of;
Agnus Dei 142 Last Judgment)
Agricola, Franz 202 apocalyptical beast 177, 192
Agrippa, Cornelius of Nettesheim 14, apostasy 33, 35, 45, 59, 70, 104,
118–23, 125, 128, 130, 138 125–6, 149, 162, 170, 205, 213
Aguilar, Francisco de 100 apostles 16, 144, 184
air 124 Apostles Creed 159, 182
Aix-en-Provence 219–20 appeals, judicial, see judicial process
Alba, Duke of 85 Aquinas, Thomas 4–5, 17
Alan of Lille 23 Aquitaine 28–9
Albert of Brandenburg 151 Aristotle 4, 17, 22, 53, 123, 217
Albigensian crusade 23 Arles, Martín de 147
Albrecht of Brandenburg 56 Armageddon 81 (see also apocalypse)
alchemy 14, 49, 95, 122–4, 200 Armagnac, Jean d’ 221
Alexander IV, pope 33 Arminians 196
Alexander VI, pope 176 Arras 41–2, 47, 134
Alps 36–7 ars notoria 15 (see also magic, books)
Alsatte, Tristan de Gamboa d’, art, artists 50, 58, 61, 113;
lord of Urtubie, 207–9 and witches 115, 202
Alumbrados 78, 80 Assendelft, Gerrit van 73
American colonies 89 Aston, John 190
Amsterdam 67–8, 73, 75, 92, 137–8, astrology 14, 60, 95, 111, 120, 154, 175
142, 144, 195, 200, 207; demonic Asverus (wandering Jew) 98
possession in 144–5; witch atheism 9, 69, 93, 105–107, 114–16,
trials in 145 143, 152–3, 177, 187, 217
amulets 14 (see also God, reality of)
Anabaptists (Anabaptism) 8–9, 59, 64–77, atheists 3, 140, 185, 191, 232
79, 81–4, 86–9, 93–4, 96, 99, 101–2, (see also atheism)
114–18, 138, 145–7, 150, 153, 155, Aubrey, Nicole (Obrey) 140–1, 203, 217
169, 190, 193, 197, 201, 203, 231; Augsburg; 44; bishop of 42;
as diabolical 108–12, 152, 177, 225 Peace of 82, 231
(see also Münster, Anabaptist kingdom) Augustinians 47, 55
angels 3, 12, 15–16, 18, 49–50, 79, 102–3, Aureloyes 134
120–1, 155, 181; denial of 110, 200 Austria, Archduke of 43
(see also magic, angelic) Austria-Hungary 215, 227–8
Antichrist 57, 60, 81, 87, 94–5, 104, 108, (see also Hungary; Maria Theresa)
178, 192, 220–1, 231 (see also pope, auto-da-fé 31, 66, 80, 155, 157, 159,
as Antichrist) 206, 209, 229
anticlericalism 2, 23, 29, 40, 45, 47, 61–2, Auvergne, Guillaume d’ 25
68, 76, 80, 103, 110, 118, 149, 230 Avellaneda, Inquisitor 148

267
268 Index

Ave Maria 159 (see also children, bewitched; demonic

Avignon 220 possession; magic; witchcraft)
Beyer, Absalon Pedersen 212
Baalberith 19 (see also Beelzebub; demons) Bible 22, 73, 77, 104, 123–4, 133, 184
Babington, Anthony (Babington plot) 180 (see also New Testament, Old Testament)
Babylon 74, 102; whore of 178 bigamy 80
Ballard, John 180 Bijns, Anna 72
Bam, Cornelis Jacobszn 138 Binsfeld, Peter 157
Bam, Jacoba 145 Blåkulla panic 212–13
Bamberg 156, 160–2 blasphemy 18–19, 33, 45–7, 75, 80, 88, 96,
ban 70 99, 133, 146, 152–3, 155, 164, 169,
baptism 19, 30–1, 33, 45, 56, 59, 100, 172–3, 185–6, 188, 191, 198, 201–2
103, 127, 139, 144–5, 159, 213; adult Blendec, Charles 217
(believer’s) 64–8, 70, 109–10, 204, blessings 130, 137, 142, 182 (see also
224–5; diabolical 159–60, 203–4; conjurations; God, blessing of )
infant 64, 76, 98, 109–11, 131, blood 13, 18, 22, 26, 29, 31, 36–7, 91,
225; magical 142 96, 101–2, 124, 136, 143, 161,
Baptists, English 192, 225 182–4, 215; menstrual 17
Barnes, Robin 94–5 Bodin, Jean 118, 128, 131–4, 139–40,
Baroja, Julio Caro 148 150, 166, 171, 232
Barrefelt, Hendrik Jansen 199 Boerhave, Herman 228
Barthlin, Lumpen 115 Boguet, Henri 165–8, 172
Basel 70, 91, 94, 115; Council of 8, Bohemia 53, 81, 106, 151
35, 40, 42 Boleyn, Anne 176
Batenburg, Jan van 68–9, 74, 86 Boltingen 36
Batenburgers 68–9 Boniface VIII, pope 27, 32
Bauhin, Jean 91 Bossy, John 19, 46
Bavaria 65; witch-hunts in 162 Bostridge, Ian 226
Beauvais 32 Bouvignes 134
Beauvolz, Marye de 134 Boys, Jacques du 41–2
Becerra Holguin, Alonso 208–11 Brabant, 84–5; court of 46
Bee, Jesse 184 brainwashing 208
Beelzebub 28, 131, 140–1, 161, 180, Brandenburg 97
218 (see also demons) Braunschweig 99
Beguines 26–7 Brazil 78
beheading 46 (see also execution) Brenz, Johannes 60, 127, 133, 154
Behringer, Wolfgang 36, 114, 126, Brethren of the Free Spirit 26–7, 45
156–7, 162 Briggs, Robin 153
Bekker, Balthasar 198, 200–1 Brigidines 220
Belgium, see Netherlands, Southern Brossier, Marthe 217–19
bells, blessed or weather 104; Brownists 177
funeral 112 Bruges 46
Benandanti 147, 201 Bucer, Martin 99, 115
Benedict XII, pope 29 Büchsenschütz, Johan 163
Benedict XIII, pope 31 Burgundy, 32, 34, 166
Bergen, Henry of, bishop 48 burning, of heretics 25, 27–8, 38, 65,
Bergerus, Johannes 197–8 69, 73, 82, 174; of sorcerers 34;
Bern 36, 65; witch-hunts in 164 of witches 39–40, 42, 122, 132, 134–5,
Bernardino of Siena 37–9, 41–2, 201, 230 142, 147, 158–9, 166–7, 173–4, 188,
Berwickshire 189 195, 208, 210, 215, 220–2, 227
bewitchment 87, 91, 112, 114, 134, 136, (see also death penalty; execution;
138, 142, 150, 166, 169, 181–3, 188, witch-hunts)
197, 207, 217, 219, 221; of beer 138; Burton-upon-Trent 181
of butter 142; of dye pots 135–6;
of livestock 158, 173, 223, 232; Cabala 15, 95, 97, 119–22, 200
spiritual 87, 112, 128 Cajetan, Cardinal 56
 Index 269

Calvin, John 76, 83, 89, 91–4, 98; and China 78, 100
witch persecution 134, 164 chrism 103, 137, 159
Calvinists 76–7, 79, 83, 85–6, 95–6, 102–3, Christ 16, 18, 45, 53, 54, 58–9, 62, 69, 102,
105–9, 115, 142–4, 151–2, 154, 169–70, 124, 126, 143, 184; blood of 54, 121,
231; and exorcism 112–14, 185, 194, 178 (see also blood); body of 108
203; and witch-hunts 163–71, 189, (see also real presence); death or passion
195–201, 213 (see also Huguenots, of 19, 45, 99, 179, 230; divinity of
Puritans) 45; kingdom of 60; merits of 186;
Cambrai 47 resurrection of 20–1, 45, 230; return
candles 136, 176 of 60, 66–8, 94–6, 125, 178, 212
cannibalism 26, 68, 100; and (see also apocalypse; Last Judgment);
witches 35–6 (see also infanticide) temptation by Satan 183; wounds
Canon episcopi 32–3, 41, 45, 125, 127, 147 of 99 (see also Jesus)
Capeau, Louise 220 Christendom 50, 86, 94, 110, 125,
Capestrano, John 37–8 150, 163
capital punishment, see burning; Christianization 211
death penalty; execution Christians, Old 30, 206; New 30, 206–7
Capito, Wolfgang 96 (see also conversos)
Capuchins 218 Christmas 25, 57, 219
Carion, Johann 111 Christoph of Württemberg, duke 154–5
Carnival 63 (see also inversion) church, conceptions of 76, 108
Carolina 91, 155 Church, Devil’s 90, 112; Eastern
Cartesianism 200 (see also Descartes, Réné) Orthodox 216; of England 76–7,
Casaubon, Isaac 15 83, 174, 185; of Scotland 226; Roman
Castellio, Sebastian 91–2, 94 Catholic 1–5, 22–3, 37, 44, 47, 49, 78,
Castile 147 80, 94, 109, 142, 145, 203–4, 207–9,
cat 181–3 220, 229–31, 233; state 196
catechisms 79, 89, 110 church fathers 91, 113
Cathars, Catharism 22–3, 25, 83, 89, church type 193–4
109, 150, 229 Cicero 53
Catherine of Aragon 76–7 circumcision 98
Catholics, and witchcraft 142, 159–62, Clark, Stuart 6, 95, 110, 131, 162, 193
175, 190, 203, 213, 222–4; as Clement V, pope 28
minority 85–6, 92, 99, 106, 115, clergy, Anglican 225; Protestant 62, 76,
174, 177–80, 194, 196–7, 212 79, 97, 99, 110, 112–14, 167, 174, 185,
(see also Church, Roman Catholic; 187–9, 196, 199, 212–14
Tridentine Catholicism) (see also preachers, priests)
Cautio criminalis, see Spee, Friedrich Cleves, Duchy of 128, 202
Ceberio 148 climate, worsening 119, 193–4, 222
celibacy, clerical 50, 219 (see also weather)
certitude, doctrine of 55, 178 Coeck, Willem 138
Cervantes, Fernando 18–19, 100 Cohn, Norman 7, 12
Charles I, king of Castile 148 Coimbra 206
Charles IV, king of France 29 Coles, Thomas 174
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Colladon, Germain 116
(Charles I of Spain) 47, 56–7, 60, Collegiants 200
65, 76–7, 81–2, 84, 91, 101, 155–6, Cologne 145, 157; Archbishop of 120,
164, 168–9 (see also Carolina) 156; Archbishopric of, and
Charles VI, king of France 34 witch-hunts 162–3
Charles VII, king of France 32 common people 38, 215 (see also culture,
Chelmsford 186 popular; peasants)
Chevreau, Anne 217–18 community of goods 67–8, 70, 75, 111
children 44, 76, 98, 103, 107, 111; abuse conciliarism 8, 39–40, 42–3, 52, 56,
of 234; bewitched 38, 59, 145, 79, 230
161, 167, 183, 213; testimony of concubine, of priests 176
165–6, 168, 208–13 Conduit, John 226
270 Index

confession, of heretics 66; of witches cross (crucifix) 11, 38, 43, 45, 54, 66, 99,
116, 126, 129, 131, 134, 157–62, 104, 107, 165, 179; desecration of 28,
167, 172, 188, 208–10, 216, 222; 47; of suffering 62; sign of 48–9,
sacramental 11, 24, 47, 55, 103, 142, 203, 210 (see also Christ,
89, 161, 203, 208, 219, 222 death of)
confessions (of faith, confessionalism) 5, cross-dressing 217 (see also Joan of Arc)
69, 90–3, 99–100, 104, 153, 196; and crusades 100; Crusader States 28
witchcraft accusations 158, 171, crystal balls 102, 163
193–4, 215–17 culture 2; popular or oral 5, 9, 19, 153,
confirmation, sacramental 131 166, 196, 208, 213, 224, 230
(see also sacraments) cunning men (and wise women) 4, 91, 135
conflict, village 41, 193 (see also magic, popular)
confraternities 2 Cunningham, Andrew 95, 125
conjurations 16, 18, 46, 48, 102, Cunningham, John (Doctor Fian) 188
126, 136, 142, 185, 197 Cunny, Joan 186
Conrad of Marburg 25–6
consolamentum 23 (see also Cathars) Daniel 62, 67
conspiracies, 28–9, 148, 180, 225, 230; Dante 103
diabolical 1, 8–9, 12, 25, 36–7, 48–9, Darcy, Brian 174
51, 53, 86, 88, 90, 94, 100–1, 106, Darcy, Lord of Chiche 174
111, 116, 118–19, 132–5, 146–7, 150, Darling, Thomas 181–5
154–5, 157, 164, 169–70, 172, 190–2, Darrel1, John 180–1, 184–5
195–6, 202, 205, 211, 214, 231–4 Dauphiné 37
Constance 44; Council of 40; David, king 68
Lake 61, 66 Dávila, Juan Arias 31
conventicles 112 Davis, Natalie Zemon 71
convents 18, 47–8, 71, 217–21 dead 16, 102–3, 107, 143, 215–16, 227
conversion, religious 108, 211 (see also revenants; vampires)
(see also conversos) death 18, 55, 59, 112, 124, 179, 227;
conversos 30–1, 79, 92, 100, 196, eternal 112
201, 206–7, 230 death penalty 33, 131–3, 168, 201, 205–6,
Cooper, Thomas 187 210, 212, 221, 227 (see also beheading;
Coornhert, Dirck Volkerts 92, 199 burning; execution)
Copernicus, Nicholas 13 Decalogue (Ten Commandments) 19, 46,
Corpus Christi 21 126, 159
correspondence 13, 50, 121, 229 deicide 21, 30, 96 (see also anti-Semitism;
cosmos (universe), beliefs about 3, Christ, death of; Jews, as Christ killers)
11–13, 15, 50, 105, 120–1, 124, Deism 224
200, 225, 229, 233 Delft 136
Council of Troubles (Council of Del Rio, Martin 108, 152, 202, 224
Blood) 85, 154 Delumeau, Jean 6
counterfeit body 203, 209 Demandols de La Palud, Madeleine
countermagic 136, 179, 181–2, 197 219–20
Counter Reformation, see Reformation, demoniacs 88, 130, 139–45, 165–6, 171,
Catholic 180–7, 190, 198, 217–21, 232; and
courtroom 172, 220 denunciation of witches 165, 217–21
courts, secular 90–1, 150, 155, 167, demonic familiars 122, 182–4, 186
169, 176, 187–8, 193, 211–12, demonic possession 47–8, 63, 73, 93, 95,
216, 221, 223, 227 119, 129, 139–45, 178–9, 189; and
Coxe, Francis 175–6 witch accusations 164–7, 171, 180–7,
Cranach, Lucas 81 213, 217–21; of infants 112–14;
Crato, Adam 112 of teenagers 184
Craynensis, bishop of 42 demons 16–18, 34, 36, 50, 102, 106–7,
criminal 75 112–13, 120, 125, 129, 148, 152, 155,
Cromwell, Oliver 83, 173, 189, 225 165, 167, 182, 184, 193, 198, 203, 209,
Cromwell, Thomas 77 213, 219–20, 224; invocation of 33,
 Index 271

35, 122–3, 176; expulsion of 121 Dominicans 24, 30, 34–5, 37, 41–2,
(see also exorcism); power over 44–5, 56, 100, 140, 207
127, 230; sacrificing to 33, 39 Donne, John 124
(see also demonic possession; Doopsgezinde 86, 92 (see also Mennonites)
Devil; devil worship) Dordrecht 142
demonology 69, 93, 100, 105–6, 113, doubt 1, 5, 9, 12, 19–20, 22, 29, 31, 41,
125–33, 139, 149, 153, 166, 172, 180, 46–8, 51, 55, 59, 88–9, 94–7, 105, 118,
194, 202, 204, 207, 213, 216, 222, 224, 150, 153–4, 156–7, 160, 164, 166–8,
226 (see also witchcraft, treatises) 173, 178, 185, 187, 190, 196, 216, 222,
Denham 181 229, 231–4 (see also skepticism)
Denmark 113, 188, 195, 212 dragon, apocalyptic 152
Derby 181–2 drama 2, 18–19, 34–5, 48–9, 77, 79
desacralization 102, 112 Duifhuis, Herbert 92, 199
Descartes, Réné 92, 200 Duncane, Geillis 188
desecration, acts of 9, 21, 45–6, 51, 85, Durier, Jaquet 40
107, 143–4, 203 Dutch Republic 9, 85–6, 89, 92, 168–70,
Deutel, Jan Jansz 199 173, 193–201, 214, 223, 228, 232; and
Devil 1, 5, 9, 12, 19, 32–3, 44–5, 58–9, 73, war with Spain 194–5; States General
75, 81, 86–7, 92–3, 95, 97, 100–4, of 196 (see also Netherlands, Northern)
106–9, 118, 126–33, 136, 141, 145,
149, 152–3, 157, 177–8, 181, 185, 187, earthquakes 46
202, 205, 209–10, 229, 234; agents or East Anglia 153
minions of 90–1, 105, 109–12, 130–3, East Lothian 188–9
146–7, 157, 170, 177, 188, 193, 209, Easter 28, 65, 68, 136, 182
226, 231; and heresy 23–6, 36–7; Eastern Europe 10; witch trials in
as a calf 169–70; as a goat 132, 170; 190, 193–4, 211, 214–17
as head of witch sect 1, 8, 38, 159–62, Eck, Johann 56, 96–7
169, 204–5, 230; as character in drama Edict of Faith 208–9
18–19, 34, 48–50; as a liar 192, Edict of Nantes 218
205; children of 97; denial or Edward I, king of England 27
spiritualization of 69, 93, 106, 110, Edward VI, king of England 83, 176
113, 115–16, 128, 140, 199–200, Edwards, John 30
217, 223, 225–6; fear of 108, 133; Eeke, Mathijs van der 46
in Islam 206; power of 129, 204; Eisenach 112
power over 180; realm of 119, 168; Eisleben 97, 203
temptation of 50, 203, 223 (see also elect, divine 178–9, 185, 197
demons; devil worship; Satan, Lucifer) (see also predestination)
Devil books 113–14 elements (four) 13
Devil’s mark 116, 148, 158, 161, Elizabeth I, queen of England 83,
165, 167, 170, 220 91, 173–6, 179–80, 186
devil worship 8, 12, 19, 25, 35–6, 41, 45, Ellwangen 158–62, 222
89, 116, 126, 132, 147, 178, 183, 212 Elmer, Peter 225
Devotio moderna 53 elves, see fairies
diabolism 50 (see also demons, devil Emden 67
worship) Emperor, Holy Roman (German) 26
Diana 32 (see also Charles V; Holy Roman Empire)
Dier, Michael (Dirren) 222 empiricism 92
Dirksdochter, Elisabeth 73 end of time, see apocalypse
Dirksdr, Engel 142 Enemy of Securitie, The 184
disease 123–4, 154, 181, 209, 230, 232 England 9, 19, 32, 95, 151, 195; witch
(see also health; medicine; plague) trials in 153, 171, 173–87, 190,
divination (diviners) 14, 31, 33, 126, 193–4, 223–6; Civil War in 173–4,
136, 223 177, 222; Reformation in 76–8
divorce 76, 117 enlightenment, Dutch 93
doctors, see physicians Entertainment of the Apple Tree 18
dog 183, 220 (see also demonic familiars) epidemics 28 (see also plague)
272 Index

Erasmus, Desiderius 53–4, 91, Ferdinand of Bavaria, archbishop of

122, 128, 130, 197, 228 Cologne 156–7
Erfurt 27, 66 Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor 156
Erhard, Christoffen 111 Ferdinand, king of Aragon 30
Errores Gazariorum 40 Ferrer, Vincent 30
Erskine, James 226 fertility, goddess of 32; preserving 17
Essex 173–4, 177–9, 232 fertility religion 6, 211 (see also Murray,
Esslingen 155 Margaret)
Estonia 213–14 fetus, possessed 113 (see also demonic
ether 13 possession)
Eucharist 4, 17, 33, 38, 44, 46, 56–7, 64, feudalism 62
103, 108, 112, 203; miracles of 21, 44; Feyerabend, Sigmund 113–14
processions of 46, 104 (see also Host, Ficino, Marsilio 120
Mass, monstrance, real presence, Filmer, Robert 224
sacraments, transubstantiation) Finck, Johann 159
Eve 17, 69, 166 fingernail (magical use of) 102
evidence, legal 177, 205, 208–11; Finicella 39
spectral 224 Finland 213, 224
Evora 206 flagellants 18, 29
excommunication 44, 89, 209 Flanders 46, 84–5, 146, 149, 169
excrement, in magic 165, 198 flight, magical or demonic 16, 32, 39, 41,
execution 65, 72–3, 80, 85, 100, 116, 126, 45, 49, 107, 125, 131, 135, 147–8, 165,
155–6, 159–60, 163, 167, 171, 180, 186, 172, 203 (see also witch sabbath)
199, 212; rates of 154, 163, 169–71, Flint, Valerie 4
188, 195, 202, 205–6, 212, 231 Fludd, Robert 124
(see also burning) Fluerus 134
executioners 161–2 (see also torture) Forner, Friedrich, bishop of
exile 46–7, 89, 126, 138, 167, 176 Bamberg 104, 162
Exodus 22:18 88 Fournier, Jacques, see Benedict XII
ex opere operato 3, 31, 44, 204 Fourth Lateran Council 21, 24
(see also sacraments) France 9, 19, 29, 31–2, 34, 69, 71, 79,
exorcism 9, 15, 47–8, 55, 79, 102, 104, 83–4, 89, 93, 95, 105–8, 110, 133,
106, 111, 139–45, 165–7, 180–1, 233; 143, 151, 154, 169, 230–1; demonic
books 142; of infants 19, 76, 110, possession in 140–1, 180, 217–21;
112–14, 141, 159, 217–21 (see also witch-hunts in 34–5, 40–2, 145, 153,
baptism, infant); Protestant 180–7, 171–3, 193, 207, 209, 212, 217–21,
197–8 (see also demonic possession) 232; Estates General of 27
eyes 137, 142, 148, 182 Franche-Comté 164–8, 170
Eytsen, Paulus von Eytsen 98–9 Francis I, king of France 60, 82
Francis II, king of France 106
Fairfax, Helen 178 Franciscans 24, 27, 100, 142, 197, 217
fairies 18, 190 Francisco, Matteuccia 39
faith 55, 60–1, 69, 73, 79, 88, 122, 126, Franck, Sebastian 69, 92
133, 178, 197, 207; assertion of 187; Franconia 157–62, 232
assured 186, 191 (see also certitude); Frankfurt 37
biblicist 119; inner 131 (see also Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony 56, 58
spiritualism); true (Christian) 101, freedom 62; of a Christian 56–7, 61
118–19, 131, 157, 202; unitary 196 (see also Luther, Martin)
familiars, see demonic familiars Freiburg 110
Family of Love 78, 91, 177, 192–3, 223 friars 22, 209 (see also Dominicans;
(see also Niclaes, Hendrick) Franciscans; preachers, mendicant)
famine 5, 18, 28, 60, 105, 127, 152, friends of God 26–7
155, 157, 215, 230, 232 Friesland 70
Far East 60 Friuli 147, 201
Faust 49, 120, 122 Fründ, Johannes 40
Feicken, Hille 74 Fulda 25
 Index 273

Gaismaier, Michael 63 gospel 59–60, 101, 104, 111; ministers

Galen 123 of 184 (see also preachers)
Galen, Katherina 136 Granada, 206; sultan of 28
Galileo, Galilei 124 Grandier, Urbain 221
Gallicanism 105–6 grave diggers (Totengräbern) 215–16
Gansbrouck 169 Grebel, Conrad 64
Gaufridy, Louis 219–20 Greece, ancient 53
Gautier of Flos 21 Greek 57, 140
Gelaudens, Clara 198 Gregory VII, pope 103
gems 14 Gregory IX, pope 24–6
gender norms 74, 117 Gregory X, pope 22
Geneva, 91, 98; and witches 106, 115–16, Gregory XV, pope 205
134, 164, 167; Lake 40 Grell, Ole Peter 95, 125
Genevan Academy 94 Greyerz, Peter von 35–6
Georg of Saxony 63 Grien, Hans Baldung 115
Gerobulus, Johannes 198 Grierson, Robert 188
German, language 57 Grindal, Edmund, archbishop
Germany, see Holy Roman Empire of Canterbury 179
Ghent 45–6, 87 Groningen 135, 196–7
ghosts 18, 102, 224 Gruber, Michael 63
giants 100 Guazzo, Francesco 202–4
Gifford, George 177–9, 186, 192 Gui, Bernard 28
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke 199 guilds 65
Ginzburg, Carlo 38 Guillaume, Arnaud 34
Glanvill, Joseph 224 guilt, projection of, 2, 28, 38, 50,
God 11, 13, 15–16, 19, 30, 32, 46, 48, 55, 108, 173, 185, 189
58, 62–3, 73, 75, 79, 87, 96, 99, 108, Guise, Francis of, duke 83–4, 106
112–13, 119, 121–2, 141, 146, 154,
159–60, 165, 168, 178, 182–3, 185, 189, Haan, Georg Adam 160
199, 203, 210, 216–17, 219, 223, 225, Haarlem 136, 199
232; blessing of 175; children of 95, Habsburg 67–8, 84, 169, 197
178; covenant of 112; fear of 161; (see also Charles V; Philip II)
judgment of 19, 177; kingdom of Hagenau, Ott von 115
62, 65, 68, 155; of the Jews 97, 124; Hague, The 67
permission of 125, 129–30; hail, sermons 104; storms 105,
protection of 187, 204; reality 110, 127, 154–5, 158, 232
or existence of 104, 132, 234 Haliczer, Stephen 206
(see also atheism); sovereignty of Hallau 65
104 (see also providence); will of hallucinations, see visions
175; word of 58–9, 87, 104, 113, Hamburg 98–9
126, 133, 163, 175, 181–2, 186 Harold of Gloucester 20–1
(see also Bible, Scriptures); wrath of Hartmann, John 27
18, 29, 46, 51, 76, 84, 105, 114, 127, Harvillier, Jeanne 131
147, 149, 153, 157, 170 Haude, Sigrun 75
Godbeer, Richard 179 healing 18, 104 (see also medicine)
goddess of the hunt 38 health 17–18 (see also disease)
(see also Diana, Holda) heaven 41, 75
godless, destruction of 62, 66, 73, 115 Hebrew 15, 57, 98, 120–1, 124, 140
godlessness 45, 154 (see also Cabala; Jews)
godliness, feigned 109 Hedio, Caspar 115
Godly and comfortable treatise, A 185 Heilbronn 71
godly state 88–91, 177, 189 hell 41, 103, 111, 113, 182, 184
golden bough 103 Helmont, Francis Mercury van
Golden Fleece, Order of 45 124, 200–1
Gonor, Nicholas 47 Henningsen, Gustav 6, 207–11
Gooderidge, Alice, of Stapenhill 181–4 Henry II, king of France 105
274 Index

Henry IV, king of Castile 147 Honorius of Thebes (Sworn Book of

Henry IV, king of France 84, 207, 218 Honorius) 15
Henry VIII, king of England 72, Hopkins, Matthew 225
76–7, 83, 176 Hosts, bleeding 22, 44, 97, 104, 143;
Herbertsz, Herman 92, 199 consecrated 17, 48, 140–1, 143,
herbs 29, 121, 142 180; desecration of 21, 37, 44, 51,
Hercules 56 96–9, 143, 158–9, 161–2, 220, 230;
heresy (and trials for) 1–2, 8, 22–8, 39, incombustible 75, 104; used in
46, 52, 60, 70, 75, 78, 85, 88, 95, 98, magic 29 (see also Eucharist,
105–12, 124, 207–9; and sorcery monstrance, real presence)
33–4; and witch trials 145–7, 152–91, Hsia, Ronnie 97, 99
201–2, 205, 212, 230, 232–4; Hualde, Lorenzo de 209
diabolical 27, 35, 93, 106, Huberts, Mayken 198
108–9, 118, 149, 151, 193–4 Hubmaier, Balthasar 61, 65–6
heretics 3, 12, 22–8, 35, 38, 80–1, 84, 94, Hughendr, Aechtgen 136–7
101, 104, 106, 119, 128, 131, 140, Huguenots 83–4, 95, 107–8, 111, 133,
149–50, 152, 204, 209, 217, 227, 229; 140–1, 171, 217–21 (see also Calvinists)
deceased 25, 227 (see also Anabaptists; Humani generis inimicus 30
Cathars; heresy; Luciferans; humors (four) 13, 17–18, 123, 127, 129
Waldensians) Hungary 97, 216, 226–8
Hermansdr, Volckgen 145 Hus, Jan 56
Hermersdorf 227 Hussites 53, 106, 151
Hermes Trismegistus (Hermetic Hut, Hans 64, 66
corpus) 15, 120 Hutterites 70, 110–11
Herold, Johann 63 hymnals 104
Het Offer des Heeren 87
hex, hexerye 37, 134, 204 iconoclasm 57–8, 83–5, 102, 108, 143–4,
H[exen]-Sonderauftrag 233–4 176, 203, 212 (see also desecration,
Heynricxz, Heynrick 73 acts of; idolatry; saints, images of)
Hildersham of Ashby de la Zouch 183–4 idolatry 19, 38, 57, 76, 92, 100, 126, 143,
Himmler, Heinrich 233–4 212–13, 224 (see also iconoclasm)
Hobbes, Thomas 200 idols 33, 103, 109, 152 (see also
hobgoblins 59 (see also ghosts, spirits) iconoclasm; idolatry; saints, images of)
Hoffman, Melchior 67, 69 illness, see disease
Holda (Herodias) 32 illusions, demonic 45, 87, 125, 130,
Holland 85, 135–9, 146, 195–201; 132–3, 199, 203–4, 222 (see also
Court of 73, 195 (see also Canon episcopi)
Netherlands, Northern) impotence 44
Holleslooten, Jan Ysbrantzn 138 imprisonment 24, 41, 46–8, 67, 116, 148,
Holleslootendr, Marie 137–8, 145 160–1, 182, 198, 208–9; death in 166,
Holofernes 74 184, 202, 209–10, 218, 222
holy oil 76, 103–4, 143 incantations 121 (see also magic, ritual)
(see also sacramentals) incense 103–4
Holy Orders (see also sacraments, incest 112
priesthood) 15, 50 India 78, 100
Holy Roman Empire (Germany) 9, 19, indulgences 55–6
43, 45, 65–70, 75, 79, 81–3, 94–5, 99, infanticide (cannibalistic) 12, 36–7, 39–40,
106, 111, 114, 141, 151, 168, 179, 126, 134, 155, 159, 203, 215
203, 231; witch-hunts in 135, 146, Innocent III, pope 24
149, 153–63, 167, 188, 193–4, Innocent IV, pope 24
212, 221–3, 226, 232 Innocent VIII, pope 43
Holy Spirit 16, 69, 92, 126, 133, 175, 181 Innsbruck 43
holy water 11, 17, 103–4, 111, 137, 142–3, Inquisition 56, 84, 89, 193, 233;
203, 209, 217 (see also sacramentals) in France 105; in Netherlands 134,
horse 161, 212 (see also betwitchment, 169–71; in New World 100; medieval
of livestock; metamorphosis) 24–7, 38; Portuguese 193–4, 206–7;
 Index 275

Roman (papal) 79–80, 96, 147–9, John, duke of Saxony 62

194, 201–2, 204–5, 211; Sicilian 201; John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy 34
Spanish 10, 30–1, 78–80, 82, 100, John the Monk (Jan de monick) 75
147–9, 193–4, 201, 206–11, 230; John William, duke of Cleves and
Venetian 80, 149, 194, 201 Jülich 202
Inquisitor 5, 7–8, 12, 33, 36, 41–5, 50–3, Joris, David (John of Bruges) 69–70,
109–10, 116, 120, 123, 128, 131, 169, 91–2, 96, 109–10, 115–16, 128,
201, 204, 229; of France 28; of 131, 199–200, 228
Rome 139; of Spain 148–9 Jost, Lienhard 67; Ursula 67, 73
(also see Inquisition) Judaisers 31, 80, 97–8, 201, 207–8,
insurrection, see sedition 211 (see also conversos)
introspection 47, 221 judges 131, 148, 150, 160, 171–2, 187,
inversion 63, 110, 118, 125, 204, 222 197, 203–4, 206, 209, 213, 218,
Ireland 35, 190 222, 224, 233
Isabella, queen of Castille 30 judicial process 41, 109, 119, 135, 154–6,
Islam 75, 96, 100, 201, 206 (see also Turks) 210–11, 216, 221–2, 224; caution
Israel, people of 98 in 192
Italy 79, 81, 95, 132, 218; witch trials Judith 74
in 36–7, 139–40, 201–6 Junius, Johannes 160–2
Jura, witch-hunts in 164–6
Jacopsdr, Anna 137 Jureteguía, María de 208
Jacquier, Nicolaus 42 juries 177, 224
Jägerndorf 215 justice 60
James I, king of England (James V of Justice of the Peace 174, 182, 189, 223–4
Scotland) 83, 176–7, 188–9, 226
James of Molay 28 Karl van Egmond 94
Japan 78, 100 Karl van Guelders 94
Jean, bishop of Beirut 41 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein 56–8,
Jeanne de Brigue 35 64, 75
Jehan de Bar 34 Karsthans 61
Jerusalem 25, 78, 99 Katheline, widow of Willem sLozen 46–7
Jesuits 78–9, 95–6, 106, 115, 139, 152, Katherina von Bora 72, 97
158–9, 169, 180, 205, 222, 225 Kieckhefer, Richard 4–5, 16, 36, 39
Jesus 20, 97, 113, 130 (see also Christ); Knights Templar 28
name of 38, 48, 98, 121, 140, 144, 209 Kortrijk 170
Jewel, John, Bishop of Salisbury 178–9 Krämer, Heinrich 8, 42–5, 53, 59, 90, 114,
Jews, 3, 12, 18–22, 59–60, 81, 88, 92, 94, 117, 125, 166, 197, 202, 204–5, 230
97–9, 101, 115, 143, 164, 190, 196, 201, (see also Malleus Maleficarum)
215–16, 227, 229–30, 232, 234; and Kytler, Dame Alice 35
Antichrist 220; as Christ killers 30,
141; as sorcerers 37, 215; conversion Laarne 169
of 19, 30, 96, 139–40, 230; expulsion Lambert, Malcolm 25
of 27, 29, 37, 215; in Spain 29–31; Lancre, Pierre de 207–8
pogroms against, 1, 8, 25, 28–30, 163; Langmuir, Gavin 3, 20, 22, 29
Portuguese 207; wandering 98–9 languages, foreign 140
(see also anti-Semitism, Host Languedoc 25
desecration, ritual murder) Laon, miracle of 140–1, 145, 217–18
Jezebel 101 (see also Aubrey, Nicole)
Joan of Arc 31–2, 40, 71, 217 Lapland 224
Joan, sister of Loudun 221 Larner, Christina 188
John XXII, pope 33 Last Days 67, 86, 95, 114, 125
John, book of 142, 181–2 (see also apocalypse)
John Frederick, elector of Saxony 82 Last Judgment 53, 60, 99, 110, 146,
John of Capistrano 215 154, 181, 184, 220
John of Cantimpré 21 last rites 140 (see also sacraments)
John, count of Nevers 45 Latin 2, 4, 121, 136, 140, 179, 198
276 Index

law, divine 61–3, 175, 186; of England Luther, Martin 2, 5, 53–64, 72, 75, 77–81,
176–7; of nature 125 87–8, 91, 94, 133, 231; against the
lawyers 80, 153, 206 Jews 81, 97–9; and exorcism 112–14,
Leeuwarden 73 203; and witchcraft 58–9, 127–8, 134;
Le Goff, Jacques 3 Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by
Leiden, Jan van 68, 74 the Devil 81; Against the Robbing and
Leipzig, disputation of 56 Murdering Hordes of Peasants 63;
Lemgo 163 Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 56, 71;
Lent 30, 45, 107, 183 Ninety-Five Theses 55–6; On the Jews
Leo X, pope 56 and their Lies 81, 97; That Jesus Christ
lepers 8, 12, 28–9, 164, 227, 230 was born a Jew 60; To the Christian
Le Quesnay 47 Nobility of the German Nation 56
Lerner, Robert 26 Lutherans 59, 76–7, 80, 82, 84–5, 89, 92,
lése majesté, see treason 94, 97, 105, 109, 128, 134, 149, 151–2,
Levack, Brian P. 6, 88, 214 159, 163, 196–7, 206, 212–13
Leviathan 19 (see also demons) Luxembourg, Duchy of 169
levitation 110 (see also flight)
libertines, libertarianism 27, 92–4, 147, Macfarlane, Alan 7, 173, 177
150, 153, 177 (see also Nicodemism; Magdelena, wife of Georg Weixler 160
spiritualism) magic 8–9, 38, 47, 50, 64, 76, 105–6,
Liechtenstein, Karl von 215 108–12, 118, 129–30, 135, 142, 147,
Liechtenstein, Karl Eusebius von 215 150, 152, 173, 187, 190, 204, 215,
Lier, Cornelis van 115 220, 228–9, 234; angelic 15, 120,
lightning 101 229; astral 120 (see also astrology);
Lille 42, 220 attempts to eradicate 32, 88, 149;
Lindenius, Johannes 198 black or harmful 94, 96–7, 123,
Line, Guillaume de (William Adeline) 132 126–7, 134, 204 (see also maleficia);
Lippe, County of 163 books 97, 136–8, 142, 163, 176;
Lisbon 206 circles 176; clerical 111–12
literacy 89, 230 (see also priests and magic); demonic
literature 50 33, 109, 120, 168, 186, 229 (see also
Livonia 213–14 necromancy, priests and magic);
locusts, rain or plague of 66 earth 233; illicit 201–2, 205–6,
Logroño 207–11 227; learned 119; natural 120–4;
London 37 pagan 79; popular 2, 4–5, 12,
Longdon, Mary 190 16–17, 33, 35, 119, 124–5, 134, 178,
Loos, Cornelius 127, 157, 196, 207 196; ritual 15, 27, 97, 102, 119–22,
Lord’s Prayer 159, 182 125, 230; white 149, 179 (see also
Lord’s Supper, see Eucharist countermagic; Occult Sciences;
Lorraine, 152, 167, 170–3, 219 religion and magic; science and magic)
Loudun 219, 221 magistrates 8, 43, 45–6, 70, 73–4, 142
Louis XIII, king of France 221 magus 120–1, 124
Louis XIV, king of France 221 Maillat, Loyse 165–6
Louise of Savoy 119–20 Mainz, archbishop of 156
Louvais 219 Maldon 177
love magic 17, 34, 40, 134, 149, 223 Maldonat, Juan de 106–8, 152
(see also magic, popular) maleficia (maleficium) 33, 35–6, 40–1, 43–5,
Low Countries 45, 69, 82, 102–3, 118, 49, 91, 105, 116, 126, 130, 137, 145,
176, 231; Reformation in 47, 84–5, 147, 149, 151, 153, 158, 161–2, 167,
142–4 (see also Netherlands) 170, 178–9, 188, 196, 205, 212–13,
Lowys, Elizabeth 174 223 (see also magic, black; witchcraft)
Loyola, Ignatius 78 Malleus Maleficarum 8, 40, 42–5, 48, 50,
Lucerne 37 117, 129, 134, 230 (see also Krämer,
Lucifer 19, 39, 49, 63 (see also Devil, Satan) Heinrich)
Luciferans 25–6, 35, 50, 89 mandrake root 135
(see also Conrad of Marburg) Mantz, Felix 64
 Index 277

Margaret of Parma 84–5 Milan 205, 218

Margaretha 159 milk, bewitchment of 134–5, 223;
Margot de la Barre 34 mother’s 96
Maria Theresa, empress 227–8 Minden 163
Marigny, Philip, archbishop of Sens 28 miracles 18, 51, 75, 79, 88, 97–9, 103–5,
Marion la Droiturière 34 108–10, 115, 125, 144, 166, 224–5;
Marius, Richard 51 diabolical 129; false 184–5
marriage 9, 18, 74–5, 217–18; impeding mirrors, magical 33, 102
of 34, 44–5, 113–14 misogyny 7, 26, 45, 129
Martin V, pope 38 (see also women)
Martínez, Ferrant 29–30 Moldavia 216
Martínez, Hernan 29 Molitor, Ulricus 42, 44–5, 127, 202
martyr, martyrdom 25, 72, 74 Moller von Dippertswald, Hans 135
Mary of Hungary 101 Monk of St. Denis 34
Mary, queen of England 83, 174–6, 179 monks 103, 139, 141
Mary, Virgin 3, 16, 41, 45, 49, 108, 143, monstrous 79, 100
165, 203, 209, 224; immaculate monstrance 4, 17
conception of 220; milk of 53–4 Monter, E. William 6, 26, 115–16,
Mary of Nijmegen 48–50 145, 154, 164, 166
Mass 24, 42, 48, 103, 118, 140, 142, 209 moon 13, 17, 154
(see also Eucharist, Host, priests, Mora, George 122
sacraments) moral panics 234
Masscheroen, play of 49 Moravia 53, 66–7, 70, 81, 111, 227
mathematics 121–2 Moravian Brethren 53
Matthew, book of 113, 130 More, Henry 224
Matthijs, Jan 67–8 moriscos 80
Mauritz, Prince 196 Mormondo, Franco 38
Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor 46–7 Morwood, William 180
Mechelen 101 Mosel 43
Mechtild van Magdeburg 27 Muchembled, Robert 6
Mecklenburg, Duchy of 156 Mühlhausen 62
medicine 123–4, 128, 130, 133, 136, 141, Mumprecht, Christoph 126
144, 228 (see also physicians) Munier, Pierre 40–1
Mediterranean region 19, 190, 206, 233 Münster, Anabaptist kingdom of 67–70,
(see also Italy; Spain) 74–5, 86, 90, 94, 108, 111, 113,
Meister Eckhart 26 146, 149–50, 231
melancholia 129–30 Müntzer, Thomas 62–4, 66, 71
Melanchthon, Philip 57, 203 Murray, Margaret 6 (see also fertility
Memmingen 63, 72 religion)
Menius, Justus 112 mysticism 26–7, 120, 122
Menno Simons 70, 86
Mennonites 70, 73–5, 83, 85–8, 90, naaktloopers (naked runners) 73
102–3, 109–11, 127, 141, 146, naked, nudity 46, 73, 117
170, 196–200, 204, 231 Namur 146, 169
mental world (mentalité) 8, 12 Nangis, Guillaume de 18
mercury 123 Nantes, Edict of 83
Mespelbrunn, Julius Echter von, bishop Naogeorgus, Thomas (Kirchmeyer) 155
of Würzburg 158 natives 100–1
metals 14 (see also alchemy) nature, book of 124
metamorphosis 39 Nauert, Charles G., Jr. 121
Metz 123 Navarre 148, 206
Mexico 100 necromancy 15–16, 33, 35, 49–50,
Michael, archangel 31 102, 122, 175–6, 229–30
Michäelis, Sébastien 220 Neoplatonism 15, 120–4
Midelfort, H.C. Erik 6, 93, 158, 171 Netherlands, 67–8, 81, 92, 101,
microcosm/macrocosm 13 149, 154, 223
278 Index

Netherlands, Northern 70; demonic pacifism 69–70

possession in 141–2; witch-hunts Packull, Werner O. 111
in 94, 135–9, 193–201 (see also Dutch pact, with Devil 25, 33, 35, 39, 41, 49–50,
Republic, Friesland, Groningen, 94, 105, 115, 125–6, 130, 132, 139,
Holland, Utrecht) 188, 201, 203, 205, 224, 230
Netherlands, Southern 18, 111, 151; pagan (non- or pre-Christian) 9, 32,
witch-hunts in 134, 145, 152, 100, 113, 152, 211–13, 234
168–71, 194–6, 232 (see also Brabant, Palatine 156
Flanders, Namur) Palingh, Abraham 199
Nettelet, Gilles 47 Palladius, Peder, bishop 212
Neuburg, Philipp Ludwig von, pamphlets 57, 61, 71, 77, 99, 114, 141,
count of Palatine 126 175, 181–6, 197, 200, 217, 224, 231
Neuchátel 37 Pamplona 148
New England 179 papal authority (supremacy) 40, 42,
Newton, Florence (Witch of Youghal) 190 53, 56, 79
Newton, Isaac 124, 200, 226 Papal Schism 40, 89
New World 60, 79, 100 Papal States 207
New Year 140 Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombastus
Neyts, Paesschyne 169–70 von Hohenheim 123–4, 200
Nicholas V, pope 30 paranoia 160 (see also witch panics)
Nicholsburg 66 Paris 34, 84, 106–8, 218
Niclaes, Hendrick 78, 91–2, 96, 131, 199 Parlement, of France-Comté 164, 166;
(see also Family of Love) of Paris 34–5, 42, 171, 218, 220;
Nicodemism 69, 122, 130, 150, 231 of Provence 104
(see also spiritualism) Parliament, English 83, 180, 226
Nider, Johann (Formicarius) 35, 40, 151 Patarins of Ferrara 21
night (meetings) 70, 111–12, 155 patriarchalism 117, 164, 231
Nijmegen 48–9 party politics 225–6
Nimrod 62 Paul, apostle 23, 220
Normant, Jean le 221 Paul III, pope 78, 80
North Berwick 188 Paul IV, pope 139
North Sea 195 Pays de Labourd 207
Norway 212 Pays de Vaud 40, 164
numerology 95, 121 Pearl, Jonathan 105–7
nuns 49, 103, 219–21 peasant 61, 64, 191, 195, 213;
(see also convents) parliament 63
Nuremberg 61, 72, 96 Peasants’ War, German 60–4, 68, 71–2,
Nurnberg 43 77, 86, 111, 113, 146, 150, 231
penance 24, 31, 49, 79, 89, 103, 201, 210
oaths 46–7, 109; refusal to swear 70 (see also confession, sacramental;
Oberman, Heiko A. 58 pilgrimage; sacraments)
obscene kiss 25, 170 penis theft 44
Occult Sciences 9, 14, 119–24, 233 people of God 19
(see also alchemy; astrology; perfectionism 200
magic, learned; magic, ritual) Perkins, William 224
Oldeklooster 68 persecution 27, 65–70, 77, 81, 86, 95,
Old Testament 19 (see also Hebrew) 110–12, 131, 134, 146, 150, 169, 174,
Omnipotentis Dei 205 194, 198, 214, 233 (see also execution;
Oostende 170 heresy; witch hunts)
Orleans 32, 34 Petit, Jean 34
orphanages, demonic possession of 144 Philip II, king of Spain 84–5, 168–9, 175
Osiander, Andreas 96–7, 99 Philip III, king of Spain 210
Osnabrück 163 Philip IV, the Fair, king of France 27–8
“Other”, the 10, 88, 98, 100, 193, Philip V, king of France 28
197, 227 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy 34,
Overdamme, Hans van 87 42, 46
 Index 279

Philipp of Hesse, Landgrave 63, 82 148, 153–5, 162, 175, 181, 189, 201,
philosopher’s stone 124 (see also alchemy) 209–10, 230; mendicant 107
philosophy 120; natural 53, 120, 124; (see also Dominicans, Franciscans);
of Christ 53–4 women as 23, 71, 73 (see also clergy,
phlebotomy 13 (see also blood; humors) Protestant; priests; sermons)
physicians 13, 45, 119, 123, 128, 153, predestination (election) 93, 181, 185
181, 188, 200, 217–18, 227–8 Prester John 100
Picardy 140 preternatural 12, 14, 47, 130, 189,
Pico della Mirandola 14, 120–2, 200 215, 228
Pietersdr, Tryn 137 priests, priesthood (Catholic) 12, 19, 22,
Pieterszoon, Adraien 75 24, 26, 48, 50, 57, 65, 75, 79, 85, 103,
Pieterszn, Jan 138 107, 110–11, 113, 126, 140–4, 153, 165,
Pieterszn, Dirck of Nijmegen 137 167, 169, 183, 193, 196–7, 218–19; and
Pietro d’Abano 132 magic 17, 58, 75–6, 102, 136–7, 142,
piety 51, 187 (see also religiosity) 175–6, 197, 229; and witch trials 159,
Pignon, Laurens 34 180–1, 208, 215 (see also exorcisms;
pilgrimage 24, 78, 140; of Grace 77 sacraments)
pillory 46 priesthood of all believers 56–7, 61, 71
Pirckheimer, Charitas 72 (see also Luther, Martin)
Pisa, Council of 31 prince-bishoprics, witch panics in 156–62
Pisenharter, Michael 96 (see also Franconia)
placards, heresy 47, 65, 84–5 princes 8, 24, 52, 62, 64–5, 70–1, 78,
plague 46, 105, 107, 114, 152, 155, 82–3, 89, 100–1, 119, 146, 156,
158–60, 193, 215, 221, 227–8, 232; 162–4, 175, 214
bubonic 5, 18, 29, 60, 75; printing press (printers) 2, 8, 50
spreaders of 134, 164 Privy Council 189
planets 13–15, 120 (see also astrology) processions 106, 140, 143
Plantijn,Christoffel 91 professors 146
Plato 53 prognostication 115 (see also astrology,
Play of Saint Trudo 19 divination)
poison 28–9, 37, 96, 121, 131, 161, propaganda 8–9, 27, 56, 89–90, 93–4,
164–5, 170, 188 103–13, 118–19, 139–40, 146, 149,
Poitou 106 152, 162, 167, 169–71, 181, 189,
Polakin, Rosina 227 191, 193, 197, 232–3
Poland 92, 214, 216, 232 prophecy 95
polygamy 68, 74–5, 117 prophet 69; false 81 (see also visions)
polarity (gender) 17–18, 50 providence 79, 99, 101, 105, 149, 178
pollution, female 51 providentialists 125–33 (see also Brenz,
pope, papacy 8, 22, 26, 39, 49, 57, 60, 65, Johannes; skepticism)
77–8, 101, 176, 183, 185, 218, 229–30; Psalms, 143, 184
as Antichrist 81, 88, 92–3, 95, 175, Psilander, Nils 213
177, 192, 199 (see also papal authority) psychology 178, 181, 185, 208, 219, 221
Portugal 92, 196, 206–7 (see also punishment, divine 13
Inquisition, Portuguese) pure blood laws (limpieza de sangre) 31, 230
possession, see demonic possession purification, magical 107
Postel, Guillaume 96, 141 Purgatory 3, 56, 102–3, 140, 220
Potiere, Johanna 47–8 Puritans 95, 153, 173, 175, 177–87,
potions 17 (see also love magic; 192, 194, 225; women 178
magic; salves) Pyne, John 190
Pourreau, Pierette 134
poverty 137 Quakers 78, 193, 225–6
prayer 11, 102, 133, 165, 175, 179, Quicquat, Catherine 40
181, 184–7, 204; books 104
Praevotte, Catherine 204 rack 24, 151
preachers 37, 40, 51, 57–8, 61–2, 72, 74, Raemond, Florimond de 141
79, 90–1, 108–9, 110, 114–17, 146, Ranfaing, Elizabeth de 219
280 Index

rationalism 200 renunciation, of Christian faith or God

rays, planetary 120 28, 41, 49, 126, 132, 145, 153,
realists 14, 125–33, 144, 197, 203–4, 207, 159–61, 169, 188, 224
211 (see also Krämer, Heinrich; reality) reputation, 188; for witchcraft 112, 116,
reality, of supernatural realm 45, 48, 88, 134–7, 158, 169, 173, 190
104, 112, 114, 132, 155, 162, 167, 171, Restoration, in England 189, 224–5
185, 190, 204, 210, 216, 232, 234 resurrection 227 (see also Christ,
real presence 44, 48, 53, 57, 64, 75, 77, resurrection of )
79, 96, 102, 217, 220, 230 (see also Reublin, Wilhelm 65
Eucharist; Host; transubstantiation) Reuchlin, Johannes 120
rebellion (revolts, uprisings) 5, 25, 40, Revelation, book of 52, 152, 177–8, 181
46, 57, 60–5, 71, 74, 77, 85 revenants 18, 215–16 (see also vampires)
Rebstock, Barbara 67, 73 Rhineland 26, 162
reform 54, 78, 85, 186 (see also Richelieu, Cardinal 221
Reformation) Rindelbach 158
Reformation 2, 8–9, 51, 57–64, 71, 77–8, rings, magical 33, 138
82, 86, 89, 93, 102, 154, 187, 197, 231; ritual murder (see also anti-Semitism) 8,
and anti-Semitism 96–9; and magic 20–1, 36, 96–8, 229; by witches 36–7
118–24; and witchcraft 6–7, 88–90, Rohrbach, Jäcklin 63, 71
118–19, 122–3, 126–39, 146, 152, Romillon, Jean-Baptiste 219–20
190; Catholic or Counter 1, 78–80, Romorantin 217–18
105–8, 149, 154, 156, 170, 175, Rome 38, 60, 139–40; ancient 53
180, 215; failure of 113, 186; Römer, Hans 66
peoples’ 90 Rosa, Jacob Judoci de 138
Reformed, Swiss 77 (see also Calvinists; rosary 45, 165
Zwingli, Ulrich; Zwinglians) Rothovius, Isaac, bishop 213
Regensburg Colloquy 65 Rüfin, Barbara 158
relics, see saints, relics of
religion 46, 95, 104, 187, 193; and sabbath, 188; see also witch sabbath
magic 11, 53, 102–4, 121, 124, 142–4, Sabbatarians 81
150, 153, 229; “new age” 233; sacramentals 4, 45, 79, 104, 142 (see also
popular, 16–19, 22–3, 53 holy oil; holy water; Host; salt, blessed)
religious authority 69, 89; beliefs 1, 44, sacramentarians 87 (see also Zwinglians)
65, 124, 174, 190, 232; competition sacraments 3–4, 12, 17, 19, 22, 24, 44, 56,
85, 124; compromise 170, 196; 65, 71, 75, 77, 79, 88, 96, 103–4, 108,
conflict (confessional) 5, 9, 69, 77, 86, 110, 112–14, 126, 141–2, 144, 149, 157,
90, 101–2, 118–19, 124, 133, 139–40, 162, 178, 203, 220; diabolical 159;
144–5, and witch-hunts 151–91, “houses” 143; inner devotion to 53,
194, 212–28, 232; conformity 89, 80; as magic 102 (see also baptism;
109, 191, 196, 214, 216, 225–6, confession; desecration, acts of; ex opera
232–3; confusion 36, 52, 60, 78, operato; Eucharist; Host; last rites;
89, 233; dissent 71; (see also heresy); marriage; Mass)
freedom 200; indifference 152, sacred spaces/objects 76 (see also
156, 175; pluralism 192–228; sacramentals; sacraments; saints)
toleration 10, 60, 69–70, 81, sacrilege 46 (see also blasphemy)
85–6, 91–3, 96–7, 99, 106, 110, Sadducees 110, 114
115, 122, 130–1, 141, 150, St. Andrews 188
196–228, 232–3; unity 120, St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre 84,
122, 200; zeal (passion) 150, 107–8, 154 (see also Huguenots)
180, 184, 207, 217, 220, St. Clara convent 72
225, 232 St. Claude, body of 166
religiosity 3, 55, 164, 181, 190, 201, 214 St. Lawrence Day 101
Rémy, Nicolas 152–3, 171–3, 202 saints, 3–4, 16, 18–19, 31–2, 46, 49, 54–5,
Renaissance humanists 5, 15, 53, 56, 79, 102, 143, 165, 167; images of 45,
120, 122, 128, 207 57–8, 76, 103, 107–8, 143–4, 203;
Rennerin, Margaret 71 incorruptible bodies of 227;
 Index 281

relics of 22, 54, 56, 58, 76, 97, 103, Separatists, English 177, 186, 196
143–4, 166, 179–80, 203; Protestant serfdom 62, 214
181; shrines of 51, 53, 220; sermons 47, 50, 57, 79, 106–7, 114,
veneration of 54, 76, 178, 203 153–5, 175, 177–9, 185, 187,
Salazar de Frías, Alonso 208–11 192, 209, 213, 231
salt, blessed 103–4, 111, 143, 203 serpent 122
(see also sacramentals) Servetus, Michael 91, 98, 124
salvation, 55, 57, 59, 79, 103 seven deadly sins 19, 46
salve (ointment), demonic or magical seven liberal arts 49
113, 155, 159, 208, 210 Seville 30
Salzburg 63 sex, sexual act, orgies 12, 26, 36, 40, 131;
Sampson, Agnes 188–9 repression of 221; with demons 49,
Samson, Hermann 213 125–6, 137, 158–9, 161, 170, 172, 203
Sappenfeld 96 sexual frustration 50
Sarrasin, Jan 47 sexuality, female 117
Satan 8, 10, 28, 40, 51, 55, 76, 110, 114, Sharpe, James 18, 153, 173–4, 178, 185
117, 125, 130, 132, 155, 168, 179, shepherd sorcerers 216
184, 186 (see also Devil, Lucifer) Siena 38
Satanic cults (modern) 1, 234 signs, heavenly 79, 95
Saxony, Electoral 55, 65; witch trials Silesia 214–16, 227
in 135 Simme Valley 35–6
Scandinavia 10, 67, 190, 193; witch Simon of Trent 97
trials in 211–14 sin 13, 19, 56, 60, 101, 105, 149, 177,
scapegoat 215, 227, 232 179, 181, 184, 186, 204
Schaffhausen 61, 65 Sixtus IV, pope 42–3
Scheers, Janneken 170 skepticism 4, 20, 25, 32, 43–5, 47–8, 54,
Schiedam 135–6 79, 92, 109, 113–14, 119–20, 122, 126,
Schleswig 98 131–3, 146, 150, 162, 164, 166, 171,
Schmalkaldic League 82 174, 183, 185, 189, 191–28,
Schönenberg, Johann VII von, 232–4 (see also doubt)
archbishop 157 Slaenders, Janne 169
scholasticism 53–4, 120, 128 Socinians 92, 196, 200
(see also Aquinas, Thomas) Sodom 126
Schormann, Gerhard 163 sodomy 28, 80
Schwäbisch-Hall 67 Soissons 22, 217
Schwarz, George 99 Solomon, king 138
Schwenckfeld, Caspar von 91 Soman, Alfred 171
science and magic 128 (see also Song of Songs 94
Occult Sciences) soothsayers, soothsaying 46, 114–15,
Scientific Revolution 1 137–8, 169, 182–3
Scot, Reginald 223–4 sorcerers 12, 22, 25, 38, 87, 102, 109–10,
Scotland 89, 151; General Assembly 148, 166–7, 201, 207 (see also magic,
of 188–9; witch trials in learned; magic, ritual; sorcery)
187–90, 194, 226, 232 sorcery 31–3, 46, 80, 112, 149, 155, 173,
scratch test 182 176, 179; demonic 35 (see also magic;
Scribner, Robert 104, 113, 134 sorcerers)
scriptures 54, 56–7, 61, 72, 79, 88, 94, soul, 49, 183; immortality of 41, 93, 106
98, 109, 121–2, 172, 181, 223 South Africa, witch-hunts in 234
(see also Bible; God, word of ) Spain 29–31, 78–9, 92, 168, 170, 180, 194,
Seaton, David 188 196, 203, 230; witch trials in 147–9,
Secretain, Françoise 165 206–11 (see also Inquisition, Spanish;
sect 174–5, 193–4 Jews, in Spain)
sectarians 194, 199, 225 (see also Spanish Armada 175
Anabaptists; heretics; Mennonites) Spee, Friederich 156, 158, 222
sedition 46, 70, 74, 93, 107–8, 111, Speyer, Diet of 65, 82
145, 150 Spijkenisse 136
282 Index

Spinoza, Benedict 92, 200 Thompson, Agnes 188

spirit 121, 124 thumbscrews 24, 160 (see also torture)
spirits 15–18, 58, 99, 118, 138, 140, 151, Thuringia 63
223; disbelief in 132 (see also demons) Tiel 138
spiritualism 69–70, 78, 86, 88, 90–3, 96, Todi 39
110, 115, 118, 128, 130–1, 193, 196–9, Torquemada, Tomás de 31
223–4 (see also Nicodemism) torture 24, 34–6, 39–41, 46–7, 65–6,
Sprenger, Jacob 42–5, 151, 205 72–3, 80, 100, 109, 111, 116, 129,
stars 13–14, 120, 123 (see also magic, astral) 134, 146, 157–8, 160–1, 163, 173, 177,
Stayer, James M. 61 183, 188–9, 193, 195, 199, 207, 212,
Stedelen 36 220–2, 231; demons and 160
Stephens, Walter 44 (see also executioner; rack; strapado;
Steinic, Jan 47 thumbscrews)
Stifel, Michael 67 Toulouse 29
strappado 24, 161 transmutation 172
Strasbourg 67, 73–4, 82, 96, 99, 115 transubstantiation 4, 21–2, 44, 57, 65,
stress 17, 127 97, 107 (see also Aquinas, Thomas;
suicide 215 Eucharist; Hosts; Mass; real
sulfur 123 presence; sacraments)
Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan 60 Transylvania 216
Summis disiderantes affectibus 43 treason (lése majesté) 28, 126, 177, 181,
sun 13 186, 188–9
supernatural power 104, 122, 142, 197 treasure hunting 11, 149, 190
superstition 9, 53, 58, 76, 89, 97, 105, (see also divination; magic)
115, 118, 120, 127–8, 147, 150, 158, treasury of merit, see purgatory
175–6, 178–9, 185, 189, 191, 201, Trent, Council of 72, 78–80, 105, 127, 149
203, 207–8, 224, 227–8 (see also Tridentine Catholicism)
Suprema 30, 148, 206–11 (see also Trevor-Roper, Hugh 5–6, 7
Inquisition, Spanish) tribulation, great 60, 220
Swabian League 62–3 (see also apocalypse)
Sweden 113, 212–13 Tridentine Catholicism 85, 106, 156, 158,
Swieten, Gerard van 227–8 167, 169, 196, 201–2, 211, 214, 219–21
Switzerland (Swiss Cantons) 9, 35–7, (see also Reformation, Catholic; Trent,
65–6, 69–70; witch-hunts in 153, Council of)
163–8, 194, 232 Trier 127, 151, 157
symbolic likeness 17 (see also magic) Trincant, Philippe 221
Symon of Rotterdam 136 trinity 16, 98, 196 (see also God)
synagogue, Jewish 20, 30, 81, 107; Troelstch, Ernst 193
Waldensian 36–7, 41; Romish Troppau 215
185; of Satan 175, 220 Troyes 32
(see also witch sabbath) Truchsess von Waldburg, Georg 63
syphilis 60, 123 Turks 52, 60, 81–2, 97, 99, 101, 115,
207, 216 (see also Islam)
talismans 121, 163, 209 Turku Academy 213
Tanner, Adam 205, 222 Twelve Articles 63
Tau, mark of 66 Tyrol 37, 63, 65, 111
Taverijen, Willem vander 46–7
taverns 72 Ulrich of Helfenstein, count 154–5
Ten Commandments, see Decalogue unrest (see also rebellion) 28, 68
Tetragrammaton 98, 121 universal language 96
Tetzel, Johann 56 university 50, 123; of Cologne 43, 119;
Theatre of the Devils, see Feyerabend, Sigmund of Dôle 119; of Giesen 99; of
Thirty Years War 213 (see also warfare) Leiden 195, 228; of Louvain, 42;
Tholosan, Claude 40 of Orléans 128; of Padua 132; of
Thomas, Keith 173, 176, 223 Paris 35, 41, 78, 119, 128, 132;
Thomas of Monmouth 20 of Pavia 119; of Wittenberg 55–7
 Index 283

uprisings, see rebellion Westphalia, witch-hunts in 162–3;

urbanites 2, 45, 48, 63, 89, 92, Treaty of 83
157, 195, 223 Weyer (Wier), Johann (De praestigiis
Urdax 209 daemonum) 92, 118, 124,
urine (test) 29, 136–7, 142 128–34, 140, 149–50, 166,
Ursulines 72, 219–21 171, 202, 223, 231–2
Urtubie, see Alsatte, Tristan de Weyer (Wier), Matthias 92, 131, 228
Gamboa d’ usury 96 Weyts, Jacob 45
utopia 95 whore of Babylon, see Babylon, whore of
Utrecht 197–8; Treaty of 85 Wiesensteig 155, 232
wild men 100
vagabond 75 Wilhelm V of Bavaria 114
Vair, Guillaume du 104 William V, duke of Cleves 128
Valdes, Peter (Waldo) 22 William of Norwich 20
(see also Waldensians) William of Orange 84–5, 92, 199
Valle Alvarado, Juan de 208–10 Willis, Deborah 176
vampires (vampirism) 37, 215–16, Wilson, Eric 43
226–8 (see also revenants) Windsheim 71
Venegas de Figueroa, Antonio, Windsor 186
bishop of Pamplona 209–10 witchcraft 9, 39, 46, 58, 80, 93, 100, 107,
Verlinde, William (Lindanus) 109–10 116, 119–20, 123, 125–39, 151–91,
Vermigli, Peter Martyr 178–9 199, 226; accusations of 41, 115, 123,
vices 113 137, 153, 158, 168, 174, 179–81, 187,
Vienne 98 189, 191, 195, 201, 203, 208–13, 217,
visions, visionaries 67, 74, 76, 103, 228–9, 232, 234 (see also demonic
181–5; angelic 114, 181 possession, and witch accusations;
visitations, ecclesiastical 89, 126, witch-hunts); demonic 12, 40, 44, 50,
155, 179, 209–10, 213–15 53, 59, 105, 111, 119, 127–8, 132, 150,
Viterbo 38 203, 206–7, 212, 216, 226; language
Vox in Rama 25–6 (see also Gregory IX) of 110; reality of 196; statutes
168, 176–7, 179, 188, 190, 212, 226–8
Waardt, Hans de 195–7 (see also Carolina); treatises 35, 40,
Waldeck, Franz von, bishop of 42, 128, 147, 165, 172, 177, 189, 202,
Münster 68, 74–5 208 (see also demonology; Malleus
Waldensians (Vauderie) 22–3, 25, 36–7, Maleficarum; and under specific
41–2, 50, 53, 74, 134, 146, 166, authors or titles)
169, 215, 229 witches 8–9, 12, 22, 25, 32–3, 38, 43, 49,
Waldshut 61, 65–6 59, 71, 73, 86–8, 94, 99, 101, 106, 111,
Wallachia 216 114, 118, 129, 132–9, 147–228;
Walsh, John 176 blood-sucking 37, 39; disbelief
Walshingham, Francis 180 in 93, 116, 122, 222–8; fear of 144,
wands 165 150, 177, 179, 187, 192, 195, 199,
Wardavoir, David 197 202; popular beliefs about 154,
warfare 5, 18, 34, 52, 60, 69, 105, 113, 196, 201
214, 216; religious 82–5, 95, 106, witches’ dance 169 (see also witch sabbath)
140, 163 witches’ mark 182 (see also Devil’s mark)
Wartburg 57 witch-hunters 189, 225
Wassey 84 witch-hunts (trials) 5–6, 8–10, 16, 37,
water test 146, 148, 195 40–2, 44, 88–90, 95, 104, 119, 125,
wax images 176 134–9, 145–50, 152, 154–91, 195,
weather magic 17, 45, 101, 110, 127, 206–8, 232–4; opposition to 129–31,
133–4, 142, 145, 154–5, 165, 167, 149–50, 206–28, 230; secularization
188, 204 (see also magic; witchcraft) of 147; suppression of 10, 190,
Weinsberg massacre 63, 71 192–228, 233 (see also heresy,
werewolves 125 and witch trials)
Westen, William 180 witch mongers 223
284 Index

witch panics 155–62, 171, 173, 177, 50–1, 107, 116–17, 120, 123, 125,
188–9, 194, 196, 207, 211–12, 216, 128–30, 135, 150, 164, 172–3, 177,
221–2 (see also witch-hunts) 182, 199, 205, 230 (see also witches);
witch prison 161 (see also imprisonment) unruly 116, 164, 231
witch sabbath (assemblies) 6, 16, 35, 37, (see also polarity, gender)
39–40, 49, 107, 112, 125–6, 131–2, word, inner 69 (see also spiritualism)
135, 155, 159–62, 165, 167, 172, 188, Worms, Diet of 57
193, 202–4, 208–9, 212–13; Jewish Württemberg, duchy of 127, 154–8
215–16 (see also conspiracies, Würzburg 156, 158
diabolical; witch sect)
witch sect 26, 38, 148, 171, 177, 206, Ximildegui, Maria de 207–8
208–11, 222, 231–2 (see also
conspiracies; witches; witch sabbath) Zeeland 85
Wittelsbach, Ferdinand von 163 Zell, Matthias 115
Wittenberg 55–8, 62, 72, 98, 134 Zomere, Jacob de 47
woman’s holocaust 7, 234 Zugarramurdi 207–8
women 17–18, 47–50, 112, 119; and Zurich 64–5
Anabaptism 68, 109, 111, 117; and Zutfen, Gerrit van 142
heresy 23, 26–7, 47; and reform Zutphen, Hendrik van 71
71–4; and religious leadership Zwickau 71–2
219–20; as demoniacs 139–40, Zwingli, Ulrich 64–5, 75, 89, 98
217–21; as witches 7–9, 38, 44–5, Zwinglians 76 (see also Reformed, Swiss)