The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials

Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch TrialsAuthor(s): Richard A. HorsleySource: Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Spring, 1979), pp. 689-715Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/203380Accessed: 12/08/2010 18:00

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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Ix:4 (Spring 1979), 689-715.

Richard A. Horsley

Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials Despite the significant resurgence of scholarly interest in witchcraft and the great European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, few efforts have been made to determine what sorts of persons were tried and burned as witches. Both medical historians and feminists have argued, from virtually opposite points of view, that the victims of the witch-craze were really the midwives and healers of peasant society.' Until now, however, such arguments have been based on Murrayite reconstructions of European witchcraft which, despite their long reign in Britain, are discredited by most new researchers.2 Recent studies, including some basic and largely quantitative sociological analyses of witch hunts and witchcraft, have proven very helpful. Each study confirms the now familiar generalization that the vast majority of witches were poor, elderly women. Yet, with two or three notable exceptions, recent historians, especially the American scholars, appear relatively uninterested in a more qualitative analysis of the social status, roles, and relationships of the victims of the great witch hunts.3 The principal difficulty is that, although professional historians of witchcraft are aware that the official concept of witch-

Richard A. Horsley is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion Program, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

The author would like to thank Ritta Jo Horsley for assistance in deciphering the dialects of peasant depositions, and David Landy and Alan Harwood for advice on anthropological issues.

I For example, Thomas R. Forbes, "Midwifery and Witchcraft,"Journal of the History of Medicine, XVII (1962), 417-439; Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Old Westbury, I973). 2 The basic statement was by Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921). For opposing views see esp. E. William Monter, "The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, II (1972), 438-439; Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons (London, 1975), I07-125. 3 Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland (Ithaca, 1976), chs. 3-5; H. C. Eric Mi- delfort, Witchhunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684 (Stanford, 1972), 165-192; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 6, 12; Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1970); Keith V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 197I). Like Midelfort and Monter, Thomas can also be criticized for his reliance on the compilation of quantitative data, as in E. P. Thompson, "Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context," in Midland History, I (1972), 50.

690 | RICHARD A. HORSLEY

craft was a composite theory formulated out of elements origi- nally pagan but transformed by Christian theological and ecclesiastical interests, they nevertheless fail to distinguish adequately between the official theory and the popular realities. Inves- tigation of the available fragmentary evidence for the popular realities suggests that many of those executed as witches were folk healers. But it is first necessary to make crucial distinctions which some historians have not adequately discerned.

THE OFFICIAL CONCEPT OF WITCHCRAFT VS. THE POPULAR REALITIES:

SOME METHODOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS In increasingly sophisticated recent scholarship, historians have reached the consensus that the official concept of witchcraft among the ecclesiastical and secular ruling groups of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a composite which had developed over several centuries. At the risk of oversimplification we can, with Cohn, schematize the official theory of witchcraft as it emerged in continental Europe late in the fifteenth century into four components: (I) Maleficium, or causing harm through supernatural means; (2) flying through the air at night to desolate places for evil purposes such as eating babies; (3) participating in a sect or cult which met in periodic "sabbats" to worship the Devil and engage in sexual orgies; and (4) making a pact with the Devil. In a Christian society, since witchcraft could only be apostasy from the true religion, witches had therefore been seduced by Satanic forces and had made a formal contract with the Devil. Hence, also, all magic done by (non-Christian) supernatural powers, beneficent as well as maleficent, was viewed as diabolism.4

Here we have the final fusion of heresy and sorcery. The first and second components had been traditional ideas in Europe at least since classical antiquity. As for the third and fourth, to quote Midelfort, "the late Middle Ages did indeed make two fundamental contributions to the witch hunt, notably the idea that all magic involved a pact with the devil, and the idea that a massive witch cult threatened Christendom." The fears expressed in these ideas became powerful factors in the great witch hunt, an enter-

4 This scheme is informed by the work of Midelfort, Witchhunting, I4-25; Monter, Witchcraft, I7-41; and esp. Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 6, 8, II.

EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS | 691

prise in which many of the most distinguished intellectuals of the

age took an active part.5 However, some of the very historians who explain that this

late medieval view of witchcraft was a composite theory proceed in their own expositions as if it were neither composite nor a theory but a common social fact. Russell exhibits the most blatant confusion of concept and phenomenon. Even Monter uses language and formulates arguments in such a way as to obscure the issue, referring to those who were accused as witches and to their activities as witchcraft. Such scholars leave us with the impression that

despite the overlay of Christian demonology and the distortions of inquisitorial tortures, those burned were essentially witches- that is, malevolent sorceresses and enemies of fertility and soci-

ety.6 Recent American historiography has enhanced our under-

standing of the cultural background of the witch-craze and of the witch hunts in particular areas. However, there is a need for a more interdisciplinary approach to the subject, especially a more

systematic application of sociological and anthropological analyses. More precisely, there is a need to distinguish between the official concept of witchcraft and the particular realities of popular life (in what were still largely peasant societies). The scholarly investigation I am suggesting might be broken down further into four closely related aspects:

a) We require a more comprehensive sociological analysis, in particular a class analysis, in which the difference in beliefs, interests, and actions between the ruling groups and the peasants are discerned. When Monter confronts the Essex material studied

by Macfarlane in which "there was no mention of the Devil at

5 Midelfort, Witchhunting, 20; Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, I969), 122, 151-155. 6 Even Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches (Chicago, 1965), who explicitly raises

epistemological issues, proceeds as if the witch-theorists' concepts were credible descrip- tions of actual witches. Also, apparently unawares, Caro Baroja shifts and broadens his own definition of witchcraft in the middle of his book (cf. 82 with 24). He appears to handle his material throughout as if it referred to those practicing witchcraft, i.e. "black magic," even though he is aware of the existence of "white magic"; thus all "feminine magic" is associated with the black arts (77). Jeffrey B. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1972); cf. Cohn's critique, Europe's Inner Demons, 12I-124. Monter, Witchcraft; the same lapse in the use of language is exhibited by Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials (Berkeley, 1976), e.g., 95.


all," he comments: "The Devil was fundamental to the witchcraft

concept nearly everywhere in Christendom; the fact that he plays such a small role here indicates that Essex witchcraft was primi- tive."7 Perhaps this is so, but the more obvious explanation had

already been stated by Macfarlane and Thomas: whereas the learned Christian demonologists on the continent believed the devil fundamental to witchcraft, the common people in Essex held no such belief.

It is surely useful to note the age, sex, and economic distri- bution among those tried for witchcraft.8 But it would be far more significant to understand the differences not only in beliefs but also in interests and practices between the ruling class who carried out the witch trials and the peasants or townspeople who suffered them. Kieckhefer's investigations, parallel to those of Cohn, take the crucial step of establishing more precisely how different the popular concept of sorcery was from the official, learned concept of witchcraft as diabolism. Kieckhefer writes the intellectual history of witch-beliefs on the basis of the best written documents available, but he does not attempt to reconstruct the social realities behind the documents.9 Thus for most of Europe, as it bears on the great witch hunts, the critical social history remains to be written. A more precise sociological analysis is needed to determine the substantial differences between the official beliefs and the popular realities, followed by careful anthro-

pological analysis of popular practices such as folk-religion and folk-medicine.

b) In a task barely begun, historians should seek out and consider evidence for the realities of popular life and beliefs. American historians of European witchcraft appear to be uninterested in exploring a distinction of which even some of the witch- hunters were aware. The demonologists feared beneficent magic as much as maleficent magic, and did not hesitate to prosecute white witches along with black witches. In his examination of the

popular belief in maleficent magicians or sorceresses, Kieckhefer

7 Monter, "Patterns of Witchcraft in the Jura," Journal of Social History, V (I971), I5, 33n. 8 Such helpful data are presented by Midelfort, Witchhunting; Monter, Witchcraft, esp. ch. 5. 9 Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, chs. 3-5; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 8, II, 12; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 7, 93.


appears to be aware that there were other types of women burned as witches, yet does not explore the evidence for this belief in the

very documents that he is using. Monter dismisses as isolated and

fragmentary evidence such as that presented by Ginzburg, who shows that profertility beliefs among the peasantry were transformed by the Inquisition into their opposite. Yet there is considerable evidence already available-and certainly much more wait-

ing to be analyzed-for the variety of popular beliefs and activities

(not just sorcery) which were officially defined as witchcraft.10 A few records of depositions by peasants at legal proceedings

before the witch hunters (magistrates and churchmen) entered into the act have been examined for England, Lorraine, Bremen, and

Schleswig-Holstein. Several decades ago folklorists had published similar records from Lucerne and Austria. These provide a picture different from the official witchcraft theory. Especially in the collections of material from Lucerne and Austria we are reading- insofar as we can discern the peasant dialect and decipher the

linguistic and orthographic peculiarities of the court scribe-statements by peasant villagers themselves as they brought accusations

against their neighbors. Such depositions bring us about as close as we can hope to come to the popular beliefs and practices. Such "superior" (as Kieckhefer labels them) documents indicate that the peasants, when left to speak for themselves, accused their

neighbors merely of certain maleficia. It is especially striking that there is little or no mention of the Devil in these depositions. Night-flying, cannibalism, sabbat, and the pact with the Devil are introduced into such trials only by the witch hunters-or by victims in fearful anticipation of, or painful subjection to, various

degrees of torture.11

Io Midelfort, Witchhunting, 17-18; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 46, 56-he also cuts off his investigation somewhat arbitrarily at I500oo (right in the midst of some of his best sources, such as the peasant depositions from Lucerne); Monter, "Historiography," 443-444; Carlo Ginzburg, I Benandanti (Turin, I966). II Thomas, Religion; Macfarlane, Witchcraft; Etienne Delcambre, La Concept de la sorcellerie dans le duche de Lorraine au XVIe et XVII siecle (Nancy, 195 ), III: Devins et Guerisseurs; Herbert Schwarzwalder, "Die Formen des Zauber- und Hexenglaubens in Bremen und seiner weiteren Umgebung, vor allem wahrend des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts," Heimat und Volkstum: Bremer Beitrdge zur niederdeutschen Volkskunde (1958), 3-68; Richard Heberling, "Zauberei und Hexenprozesse in Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburg," Zeitschrift der Gesells-

chaftfir Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte, XLV (1915), II6-247, esp. II7-I25. E. Hoff-

mann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten zum Hexen- und Zauberwesen," Schweizerisches Archiv

694 I RICHARD A. HORSLEY

From examination of such material, it becomes increasingly clear that the concept of witchcraft among the learned and ruling classes was not current among the peasantry. Left to themselves, the peasants may well have lynched a few suspects-such as the two Austrian women burned for "causing" a hail storm in 1675- but they would never have produced the great witch hunts in which hundreds of thousands were burned. The discrepancy between the peasant depositions and the official hunt for an organized cult of Satan makes all the more important an inquiry into

just what the realities of peasant life were that the ruling classes defined as witchcraft. Historians might well take a few clues from

ethnologists, folklorists, and historians of religion concerning additional kinds of evidence which might prove helpful in the re- construction of popular realities. It would then be possible to

apply well-established anthropological methods more thoroughly and precisely to the peasant depositions already available as well as to additional evidence. More explicit use of anthropological methods should lead to a more precise determination not merely of peasants' beliefs about their neighbors' maleficia, but of the

relationships, roles, and practices of the victims of the witch trials.

c) We require clarification of our analytical concepts of witchcraft and sorcery. Although, like their British counterparts, the American historians of European witch trials claim to be

learning from anthropology, they have apparently not chosen to

adopt the relatively precise analytical concepts of witchcraft, sor-

cery, and magical healing developed by Evans-Pritchard and others. As ethnographic data on witchcraft and related phenomena become more abundant and complex, anthropologists such as Turner and Douglas are challenging their colleagues in the disci-

pline to strive toward ever greater clarity and precision in their

conceptual framework. Historical studies of European witchcraft

might well benefit from the anthropological struggle for clearer

analytical terminology. For example, even though Kieckhefer has a clear sense of the considerable difference between the learned

fuir Volkskunde, III (1899), 22-40, 80-I22, 189-224, 291-329; Fritz Byloff, Volkskundliches aus Strafprozessen der Osterreichischen Alpenldnder mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der Zauberei- und Hexenprozesse 1455 bis 1850 (Berlin, 1929); Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 27-45. "Inferior" documents, as Kieckhefer insists, must be evaluated with extreme care to determine the effect of the application or threat of torture before they can be used as evidence for the people's own beliefs and practices.


concept of witchcraft or diabolism and the popular belief in maleficent magic or sorcery, his concept of sorcery is not appropriate to the very material which he uses to illustrate it. For in the "superior" texts, those accused of harming their neighbors in some way are not necessarily being accused of sorcery as he had defined it.12

Evans-Pritchard evolved his distinctions between witchcraft and sorcery on the basis of language used by the Azande of the Sudan. As Marwick and Macfarlane have pointed out, however, not all societies make the same clear terminological distinctions. Thus, in the English material investigated by Macfarlane and

Thomas, people use terms such as "cunning folk," "wizard," "conjurer," and "witch" almost interchangeably. In the Jura, Monter found extreme variation in the use of terminology from

valley to valley, town to town. In the "Luzerner Akten," the

explicit use of terms for "witch," "witchcraft," or "sorcery" (Hexe, Hexerei) is extremely rare. Similarly in the Austrian material collected by Byloff, the people seldom use Hegx in their

depositions. So there is apparently little popular terminological basis for a clear designation of a concept of witchcraft.13

Yet in all of these different sets of material the substance of the accusations, the relationship between accuser and accused, is that for which the English peasants used the term "bewitched."

By some mysterious power the accused (allegedly) has malevo-

lently done harm to the accuser in some way. Occasionally this has been accomplished by some magical technique, but usually- if we attend carefully to what the peasants said in their depositions-it has been done by virtue of an inexplicable power which is inherent in or possessed by the accused, perhaps manifest only in a glance or a strange comment.14 Besides the occasional use of more explicit magical techniques by the witches, however, we

12 The now classic statement is E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande (London, 1937); see also the excerpts from idem reprinted in Max Marwick (ed.), Witchcraft and Sorcery (Hammondsworth, 1970); Victor Turner, "Witchcraft and Sorcery: Taxonomy versus Dynamics," Africa, XXXIV (I964), 3 14-324; Mary Doug- las, "Witch Beliefs in Central Africa," Africa, XXXVII (I967), 72-80; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 5-6 vs. the material he discusses in ch. 4. 13 On English material, see Macfarlane, Witchcraft, Appendix 2.

14 See, e.g., Thomas, Religion, 436-437, 511-512; on the similar function of the "evil eye" in Ethiopia, see Ronald A. Reminick, "The Evil Eye Belief Among the Amhara of Ethiopia," Ethnology, XIII (I974), 279-291.


also encounter-in evidence such as the Lucerne depositions- various forms of counter-magic employed by the accuser-victim in retaliation against the accused. There would appear to be in

European folk practices, therefore, a basis for making the same

analytical distinction made by many anthropological treatments of non-European cultures, i.e., a basic distinction between witch-

craft and sorcery, and between witches and sorcerers. Witchcraft is done by means of an inherent or implicit power possessed by the witch, whereas sorcery is performed by means of explicit technique learned or acquired by the sorcerer.15

Marwick and Macfarlane adhere closely to Evans-Pritchard's

original formulations when they confine both witchcraft and sor-

cery to the pursuit of harmful ends, by implicit and explicit means, respectively. But there is certainly no general agreement among anthropologists on this narrower definition. As Landy and others have insisted, "the sorcerer can, and in many instances does, use his abilities for good as well as bad ends." And Harwood suggests that "witchcraft" cannot be viewed "simply as the anti-social use of occult powers." 16

Partly because of the heavy theological and moral influence of Christianity on European peasant societies, the powers and

techniques we are calling witchcraft and sorcery were usually viewed as harmful and anti-social. Nevertheless, our analytical framework should be kept open in order to accommodate occult

powers which may have been relatively ambiguous or amoral in their social context. The particular uses and evaluations of these

powers can then be examined precisely in the dynamics of their social context. In any case, the analytical concepts of witchcraft as the pursuit of ends (usually harmful) by implicit means, and of

sorcery as the pursuit of ends (usually harmful) by explicit means, are helpful in an analysis of European material. It is only by following the relatively precise conceptual distinction between witchcraft and sorcery made by Evans-Pritchard and other an-

I5 Similarly, for example, John Middleton and E. H. Winter, Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa (London, I963), 2-4, 8; David Landy, Culture, Disease and Healing: Studies in Medical Anthropology (New York, 1977), I95-i96. I6 Evans-Pritchard (193I), in Marwick, Witchcraft, 24-26; Macfarlane, Witchhunting, 44; Landy, Culture, Disease, and Healing, I95; Alan Harwood, review of Mary Douglas (ed.), "Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations," in Journal of the Polynesian Society, LXXX (1971), 523-524.


thropologists that we will avoid the demonologists' confusion over what were apparently distinct popular beliefs and practices.

d) In order to deal adequately with the realities spoken of by European peasants in their depositions in what Kieckhefer calls the "superior" texts, we must make yet another crucial distinc-

tion-again following the lead of anthropology. Not all magic was maleficent, as even the witch hunters knew. Thus we must have a concept of beneficent magic corresponding to that of male-

ficent magic or sorcery. A practitioner of beneficent magic was called variously a wise

woman, a cunning man, wizard, conjuror, white witch, or, in French, more descriptively, devin etguerisseur, a diviner and healer. Whether in early modern English or Austrian peasant societies or in Andalusian peasant society surviving into the twentieth cen-

tury, the functions of the wise woman or man include primarily: divination and the finding of lost objects, disclosure of the thieves, healing through folk-medicine and enchantments, love magic, protective magic, and often midwifery. Sometimes they draw on Christian religious language for incantations and prayers, but at other times their practices had no relation to established religious belief. There is a great deal of similarity in the magical practices and formulas used by the wise women or devins-guerisseurs from area to area in Europe. For example, Thomas found the English magical formulas used in folk-healing almost identical to some of those used on the Continent, such as Delcambre printed at the end of his discussion. It is estimated that the "cunning folk" were at least as numerous in sixteenth-century England as the parish clergy. Moreover, in their divinatory, medical, and religious functions they were far more important in peasant society than were the official clergy.17

There was a certain "grey" area of overlap between "white"

magic and "black" magic which poses an interesting problem for

scholarly concepts just as it did for peasant perceptions. Not all love magic was benevolent in its intent, and some love magic

17 Thomas, Religion, 178, 181-182, 244-245; anthropologist Hilda Geertz has provided a very helpful critique of Thomas' interpretation of "magic" and "religion" in "An Anthropology of Religion and Magic,"Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI (1975) 71-89; on the wise women or sabia in twentieth-century peasant society in Andalusia, see Julian Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra (Chicago, 1971; 2nd ed.), 189-201; Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 229-238.


could be beneficent to one party while being maleficent to another. Certain forms of protective magic provide an even clearer illus- tration of how magical action intended as beneficial for one party could be harmful to others. Apparently some peasants would

conjure the storms or weather spirits to avoid striking their own fields-but to strike someone else's instead. An analogous type of

magic is the charm in an Austrian deposition in which the en- hancement of the productivity of one person's cows involved a curse against others' cows. Here are forms of protective magic which would appear maleficent in the eyes of neighboring peasants as well as to the officials. Thus, as noted already with regard to sorcery, some of the magical powers and the purposes for which

they were used were clearly ambiguous. This ambiguity in some instances may be what led Kieckhefer to his inconsistent use of the concept of sorcery, under which he subsumes a number of cases of beneficent magic. Although he defines sorcery as maleficent magic, he nevertheless includes all "love magic" under this

concept and refers to those accused of practicing love magic as sorceresses. It seems somehow inappropriate thus to classify as

sorcery love magic which was clearly benevolent in its intent- even if the effects were fatal.l8

Generally speaking, however, on the basis of the abundant evidence produced by Thomas for England and by Delcambre for Lorraine, we can conclude not only that wise women (cunning folkldevins-guerisseurs) and witches "were believed to be two sep- arate species," but that the wise women (men) and the sorcerers were

generally different persons as well.19

Although they did not work with precisely the same concepts suggested here, the investigations of Heberling and Schwartz- walder provide evidence from northern Germany which supports the distinction just made.20 They do not analyze their evidence to determine the social roles or statuses of the accused. It is all the more striking, therefore, that the different forms of magic- and witch-beliefs into which their material falls-consorting with the

I8 Byloff, Volkskundliches, #40, 30-31; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 5-6, 56-59; Hoffmann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," #2-3. I9 Thomas, Religion, 437, 266; Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 216-217; this European evidence thus parallels the common situations observed by anthropologists, e.g., Middle- ton and Winter, Witchcraft and Sorcery, 3, 8. 20 Heberling, "Zauberei"; Schwartzwalder, "Zauber- und Hexenglauben."


Devil, maleficent magic, prophecy and divination of thieves and lost objects, and magical protection and healing-correspond to some of the sociological types being suggested here. Consorting with the Devil was an integral part of the official theory of witchcraft, in contrast to peasant beliefs. Maleficent magic was the content of sorcery, whereas prophecy and divination of thieves and lost objects as well as magical protection and healing were precisely the functions of the wise women or the devins-guerisseurs. Again, to avoid the confusion of distinct peasant realities made

by witch-theorists and even in some recent studies, it is essential to follow anthropology in maintaining the conceptual distinction between beneficent magic and maleficent magic or sorcery.

In sum, the interdisciplinary investigation which I am suggesting, and which I will sketch below, entails a set of more

precise and thorough-going distinctions than those manifested in recent, primarily historical studies. More precise sociological anal-

ysis (a) will reveal more clearly the substantial differences between the official theory of witchcraft and the popular realities of Eu-

ropean peasant societies. This suggests (b) that historians might well follow the lead of ethnologists and folklorists in devoting greater attention to evidence helpful in analyzing the relationships, roles, and practices of those accused in European witch trials.

Anthropology, with its tradition of cross-cultural analysis of social roles and relationships, can provide considerable assistance to the historical study of the popular realities behind the European witch trials, in particular assistance toward greater conceptual clarity. It is thus possible to discern, even with the limited sources for European peasant beliefs and practices, the differences (c) between witchcraft and sorcery, and (d) between sorcery and beneficent magic. Anthropological studies have been generally clear regarding these distinctions, whereas the vast majority of our historical sources for European witchcraft and witch hunts- i.e., the official and learned documents-have not. Moreover, while building on the ground-breaking work of Evans-Pritchard and Kluckhohn, which concentrated on witchcraft beliefs, an-

thropologists have extended their analysis to include the interre- lation of such beliefs with social structures and roles. By attending to the distinctions observed in anthropological studies and by following anthropologists' lead in moving beyond consideration of popular witch beliefs to analysis of social realities, historians


may be able to discern more clearly the social roles and relationships of the people who became caught in the official definition of "witchcraft"-and thus became the victims of the great witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

SORCERESSES AND WISE WOMEN Although it is generally agreed that English witchcraft itself is atypical, Thomas and Macfarlane have pioneered the kind of sociological analysis of the English material that should be helpful in analyzing continental material as well. They have begun to identify-beyond the usual gener- alizations that most were poor old women-the types of persons who were accused of witchcraft, their social roles, and their re-

lationships with their neighbors in English villages and towns.21 The same extensive and close analysis should now be attempted for the more "typical" witchcraft of continental Europe, at least in areas such as the Jura, Lucerne, and Austria, for which some of the requisite source material is already available. Obviously only a rough sketch can be attempted here. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence available from various areas to show (I) that

some, but not many, of the victims of the witch hunts were sorceresses, and (2) that a large number of the victims were wise women (and men), i.e., healers and diviners.

(I) Some, but not many of those tried for witchcraft were sorceresses. As Caro Baroja points out, each social class had its own particular brand of magic. Among the sophisticated elite,

alchemy and astrology had been practiced throughout the Middle

Ages. Among the middle strata who could read, magicians used handbooks of formulas and incantations since at least late antiquity. The use of such books expanded with the increase in literacy. The common people also believed in the efficacy of magic, whether in love charms and protection against sickness or in the more harmful variety of causing illness or death. A general consensus is emerging among historians, following many anthropologists, that the term sorcery should be used for maleficent magic,

2I In what is surely the most astute social and intellectual analysis of witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, ch. I2, has made similar suggestions regarding the general social types of people who became the victims of the witch hunts; more

comprehensive and systematic presentation of the evidence, however, fell beyond the

scope of his monumental investigation, which, like Kieckhefer's, does not go beyond the fifteenth century.

EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS I 701

for the combination of"harmful ends with explicit means." Cohn and Kieckhefer have both provided abundant illustrations of the kinds of maleficia which were current and culpable in the late Middle Ages-such as the organized "protection racket" of tem-

pestarii touring the countryside extorting payments from the cred- ulous peasants to spare their fields from storms (and blast their

neighbors' instead).22 Actual accusations of sorcery, however, were far less impor-

tant in the witch trials and popular witch-beliefs than implied by Kieckhefer, who views sorcery as the content of the "popular tradition."23 Most of the peasant accusations did not even mention

sorcery of any kind. Perhaps this is best illustrated from the Lucerne material, both because these depositions provide some of the best evidence that we have for popular beliefs and practices, and because they offer a basis for at least a statistical estimate in one area. Less than a third of the Lucerne cases included any accusations of sorcery. In fact, in these depositions the peasants claimed to have performed counter-magic in more cases than they made accusations of sorcery-and there was no indication that the maleficent effects of the counter-magic were of concern to the authorities. In the usual case, villagers accused a woman merely of causing harm to themselves or their animals, often following a quarrel, but without mention of any technique. In the majority of these cases the peasants accused their women neighbors of

witchcraft, not of practicing sorcery. Although it occurs in less than a quarter of the cases, the

most frequent accusation for sorcery in the Lucerne area was for

hail-making, which caused damage to crops. However, there are

nearly as many cases in which the accused women are said to have predicted or caused rain-storms which seem not to have been harmful in any way. To the peasants, the prediction or

causing of these storms appears to indicate the unusual power of the accused rather than any skill in sorcery. There are also a few cases in which women accused of harming persons or animals

(apparently by inherent powers) are also accused, not of actually performing sorcery, but of suspicious behavior, again an indica-

22 Baroja, Witches, 47; cf. Monter, Witchcraft, 126. Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 9, Io; Thomas, Religion, chs. Io-i2; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, I47-I60; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 48-56, 6i-62, 64-69. 23 Ibid., 5-6.


tion of their unusual power and ambiguous character. That is, even particular peasant accusations which might at first glance appear to be evidence of sorcery, when examined more carefully indicate rather that the peasants suspected the accused of being witches, not sorceresses.24

With regard to the Lucerne material it is most important to observe that none of those accused in the peasants' statements can be described as sorceresses. That there were sorcerers in the Swiss

villages is clearly indicated in the peasants' stories of their attempts at counter-magic. Thus, for example, there was a sorcerer in the Lucerne area known as Der Riitiweger, who helped Tomann

Bophart with a means of counter-magic to bring illness upon a woman who (Bophart believed) had bewitched his milk. But accusations of acts of sorcery in the Lucerne depositions are rel-

atively few and low in significance in comparison with other accusations. And even if a few of the accusations of sorcery were true and some of these women indulged in specific acts of maleficent magic, it is evident from these depositions that their fellow

peasants did not regard them primarily as sorceresses.25

Although it is not possible to make the same kind of statistical

analysis of the other peasant material currently available, it is possible to draw similar conclusions. In the Austrian cases selected

by Byloff, acts of sorcery appear more frequently in the accusations, yet they are by no means the primary subject of accusation. The same holds for the material in Lorraine studied by Delcambre, and for the situation in Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein during this period-judging from the cases cited by Heberling and Schwartzwalder.26 Thus the continental material available parallels the English material studied by Thomas and Macfarlane in

showing that, at the popular level, although a few persons were accused of maleficent techniques, people whom we could call sorceresses did not figure prominently in the accusations. Sorcer- esses and sorcerers there were among the people, but there appears little evidence that those tried as witches practiced sorcery.

24 Hoffman-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," e.g., ##i6, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32. One must be cautious not just with Cohn's summaries of these cases but with Hoffmann-Krayer's summaries as well. Like Kieckhefer, neither Cohn (e.g., Europe's Inner Demons, 242) nor Hoffmann-Krayer is careful in his use of terminology, and writes that the accused did certain maleficia "by sorcery" (or through "Zauber" or "Hexerei") in several cases where the peasant depositions say or imply no such thing. 25 Hoffman-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," #24. 26 See note ii for references.


(2) A substantial number of the witches were wise women. The most abundant and accessible evidence to date comes from

England. Just as English witchcraft was atypical generally, so also wise women were not as numerous in English witch trials as on the Continent. Moreover, in England their divination, rather than their magical healing, was prosecuted. Nevertheless, the English material is important for what it reveals about the prominent role of wise women (and men) in European peasant societies-and the witch trials-of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

Special credit should be given to Notestein for his concise treatment of the scarce evidence on this subject seventy years ago. More recent research has confirmed his observation that

"throughout the records of the superstition are scattered examples of wise women upon whom suspicion suddenly lighted, and who were arraigned and sent to the gallows." Officials and their agents were only too ready to believe the worst of the "cunning folk," as in the case of Alice Prabury in 1563, of whom the church wardens of Barnsley, Gloucestershire, reported that she "useth herself suspiciously in the likelihood of a witch" in her efforts

merely to heal people and animals. It did not matter if a wise woman such as Ursley Kempe (hanged in I582) protested that

"though she could unwitch, she could not witch." It was in vain even for a woman such as Joan Warden of Stapleford, Cambridge- shire, to plead that "she doth not use any charms, but that she doth use ointments and herbs to cure many diseases." For such a woman was liable to be charged merely with being a "cunning

"27 woman.27

Ironically but understandably enough, the cunning folk

played a key role in focusing witch-suspicions on fellow conju- rors, perhaps even their rivals. Just as they were asked to diagnose diseases in animals and people, cunning folk were also called upon to detect and interpret signs of witchcraft. Suspicions probably began with the ill words of a neighbor, "words that started an attack upon the woman's reputation that she was unable to repel." Macfarlane argues that the role of the cunning folk in the Essex trials was more as detectors of witches and directors of suspicions than as victims of the craze. But he also provides several specific cases which illustrate the peril in which the cunning folk stood.

27 Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 (Washington, D.C., I9II), esp. 20-23, 256-259. See currently Thomas, Religion, esp. chs. 7-9; Macfar- lane, Witchcraft, 126-140. For the cases cited, see Thomas, Religion, 182, 548, 19I-192.


Ursley Kempe, Margery Skelton, Catherine Reve, and Edwin

Hadesley were all persons known to be cunning folk and were even tried on charges of beneficent magic but were later tried also for maleficent witchcraft. As Thomas points out, "a witchcraft accusation was more plausible . . . when levied against a person who already had a reputation for magical prowess as a white witch or cunning man." And he claims to have encountered over

forty such cases in his English materials.28 Prior to Thomas' and Macfarlane's research on England,

Delcambre had gathered and interpreted a great deal of similar evidence from Lorraine. It is clear from Delcambre's work that

large numbers of peasant devins-guerisseurs were burned for witchcraft in Lorraine.29

Monter has argued that wise women are similarly numerous and prominent in the Jura witch trials. It is clear from his argument that he has misread Delcambre at points and misinterpreted his own material in this regard. The misunderstanding centers around the relation between the realities of peasant practice and the concepts of the witch hunters. He argues that "all the evidence

agrees that belief in magical cures as an index to maleficium was

something deeply rooted in local folklore, like belief in witches' hailstorms, and ultimately absorbed into written de-

monologies."30 As part of his evidence he quotes Remy, the illustrious demonologist, who personally had sent approximately 900 witches to the stake:

The people of our country, especially the peasants, have an old and

pernicious custom. When one of them falls ill of some strange and unknown sickness, he at once sets about getting something to eat or drink from the house of the witch whom he suspects to have caused the sickness; and this he eats or drinks in the greatest con- fidence that it will restore him to perfect health. Not a few have maintained that they have found a perfect cure by this means; and this is not denied by the witches who have been questioned with regard to this matter.31

28 Notestein, History, 22; Macfarlane, Witchcraft, I27-I28; Thomas, Religion, 567. 29 Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs. 30 Monter, Witchcraft, 179-181. 31 Quoted from Nicolas Remy (trans. E. A. Ashwin), Demonolatry (London, 1930), I43.

EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS 1 705

It is difficult to understand how Monter can take this statement at face value since the information comes from peasant women whom Remy had tortured. Monter believes that Remy's statement is somehow proof that the peasants believed "in the witch's ability to cure her own maleficia." But it does not prove that at all; it shows merely that Remy (like other demonologists, surely) believed that those who could heal a disease had also caused it in the first place.32

Thomas' research on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, like Delcambre's on Lorraine, suggests that the peasants distinguished between the "wise woman" who healed and the "witch" who might have bewitched or caused a sickness. Unfor- tunately Monter only partially analyzed the Jura evidence, and also partly obscured it, thus conforming the popular views to those of the demonologists.33

From his evidence, however, it would appear that for the Jura peasants, as for the peasants in Lorraine, wise women and men worked at diagnosing witchcraft as well as healing sickness- and for precisely these reasons were suspect to officials. The situation in the Jura and Lorraine was thus similar to that in England. As Thomas points out, "Most demonologists taught that white witches could impose spells as well as lift them, and many cunning folk found themselves accused of maleficent witchcraft." Monter could surely show us several from the Jura as well. To take only two examples which he himself finds paradigmatic: Clauda Bruyne, burned at Neuchatel in 1568, and Marie Joly, who held up under torture at Biel for two days, would both appear to have been primarily wise women, knowledgeable in the healing capacities of roots and herbs and the techniques of divination.34

The peasant depositions from Lucerne and especially those from Austria reveal the same situation with regard to the wise women's vulnerability as potential victims of the witch trials. As was the case in England, the peasant diviners played an important role in the initial accusation, confirming the peasant suspicions regarding a given woman. We meet with a "witchfinder" (Hex-

32 Cf. Thomas, Religion, 567. 33 Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 217, as translated in Monter, Witchcraft, 176. 34 Thomas, Religion, 567; Monter, "Patterns of Witchcraft in the Jura," I8-I9, 23-24.


enkenner) named Miller in the case of the Riischellerin in 1480, a "diviner" (Wahrsager) in the case of the Oberhauserin in I500, and a "quack-doctor" (Quacksalber) in the case of four women, also in 1500. Most interesting in the latter case and two others is the

key role of one accuser named Hans Tscholi. He claims that he was regularly in touch with the spirits of the dead, a power which had been traditional in his family.35

Besides the diviners who are among the accusers, however, we find several wise women among the accused in the Lucerne cases. Thus, in such cases as those of Margaret Jeger (1450), the Oberhauserin and four others in I500, Dichtlin in 1502, Sturmlin in 1531, and Els Adams in 1543, these women would appear to have been primarily peasant healers. In depositions regarding their activities, their neighbors mention such things as teaching other women enchantments to make their husbands love and not beat them, and protective magic of various kinds, as well as healing by means of folk-medicine. Table I, an analysis of the Lucerne cases for which there is sufficient evidence for adequate judgment, shows that those accused of bewitching were likely to have been diviners and healers, but not sorceresses. It is worth noting, in

regard to the Lucerne material, that all of the healers/diviners who were accused of witchcraft were women, whereas nearly all the others who were not being accused-even though they may have been involved in the same illegitimate magical healing, or may have conversed with the dead or worked counter magic-were men.36

The Austrian material collected by Byloff reveals an even

larger percentage of accused persons who appear to have been

primarily folk healers and diviners. These cases include, besides the usual instances of herbal and magical healing, love charms, cures for headaches or a husband's drunkenness, several instances of recovery of stolen goods, protective magic, and fertility magic, such as rainmaking. Some of these reports include a virtual cat-

alogue of herbs used in folk-medicine. Also, in contrast with the Lucerne cases, a number of the diviners and healers accused are

35 "Luzerner Akten," ##i6, 24, 23, 22.

36 Ibid., ##IO, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 32; Reo F. Fortune, Sorcerers of the Dobu: the Social

Anthropology of the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific (London, 1932), ch. 3.

EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS 1 707

Table 1 Luzerner Akten Zum Hexen- und Zauberwesen: An Analysis of the Evidencea

21 OF 47 CASES ACCUSED OF

BEWITCHING

(PEOPLE AND/OR

ANIMALS)

ACCUSED OF

MALEFICENT

MAGIC

(SORCERY)

EVIDENCE OF

BENEFICENT MAGIC

(HEALING, DIVINING, LOVE AND PROT.

MAGIC, HERBAL

LORE, WEATHER

MAKING)

io. MargaretJeger (1450)

I I. Dorothea (1454) I6. Riischellerin (ca. 1480) I9. Hans Spenis Weib (1486) 20. Peter Kiindigs Mutter (1489) 21. Die Lusterbergerin (1599) 22. five women (ca. i5oo)

23. (same) four women (ca. 1500)

24. Oberhauserin (I5oo) 25. Dichtlin (I502)

28. Barbara im Herd (I53I)

29. Stiirmlin (ca. 1531) 31. Magdalena Nessler (154I) 32. Els Adams (I543) 36. Margret Cher (1544) 37. Margret Elsener (1546) 38. Margret Hunzinger (1547) 39. Lena Eggler (1548) 44. Barbara Knopf (I549) 45. Margret Bodenmann (I55I) 46. Anna Demut (1551)

several several

(bad reputation) 2 X

2X

3

3 x

several 4

several

I X

I X

I X

several

4 x I X + ?

4 x

several several

(hail) love-, protective-, & weather-magic, herbs

(hail) (weather magic)

protective and weather magic

divining, healing, & weather magic

X divining, healing healing, midwifery.

weather magic (implied) divining, protective

magic divining, healing (divining)

(implied) healing

divining, healing

(implied) (hail) weather magic

Summary:

a I9 of the cases are too brief for adequate judgment: ##1-7, 9, 12-15, 17-I8, 30, 34-35, 40-4I.

7 further cases provide unreliable information: ##8, 26-27, 33, (41), 42-43, 47. In the 21 cases which provide sufficient and reliable information for adequate judgment: in all but 3 cases women are explicitly accused of bewitching; in I case explicitly and in 5 cases by implication, women are accused of an act of sorcery; in o1 cases clearly and in 3 further cases implicitly there is evidence that the women accused were known as diviners and healers, etc.


men, including a few marginal figures in the society such as

beggars.37 Investigations of witch trials and beliefs in magic in areas of

northern Germany present a picture remarkably similar to that in Austria, Lucerne, Lorraine, and England. Richard Heberling con- cluded that it was a salient feature of the witch trials in Schleswig- Holstein that they dealt with women devoted to magical healing. Schwartzwalder similarly received the impression that many of the trials in the Bremen area resulted from the miscarrying of harmless magical healing which was then interpreted as evil work of the Devil. The I 575 Bremen case of Kattrine Statlander, who tried unsuccessfully to heal a young man with her "evil powder," provides a good example of a magical healer whose art was

interpreted, instead, as a magical means of causing sickness and death. Heberling cites a similar example of a wagiertes Weib from Bordesholm who, in I617, was imprisoned despite the statement of doctors that nothing could have been done anyhow to save the

poor fellow that she had attempted to heal. Such victims believed

firmly that their own folk-medicine was the only true and indis-

pensable means of healing.38 In contrast to Monter's (questionable) claim regarding the

Jura, but similar to Delcambre's findings in Lorraine, Heberling and Schwartzwalder agree that it was the official Christian view-

point which was responsible for attributing maleficent (and Sa- tanic) power and effects to the very healers and midwives who could cure and help. There is also from Bremen a typical example of how the officials, by the use of torture, could transform the healers and diviners into the very accomplices of Satan they were

looking for. In I575 Gesche Meier, who could perform love

magic and divination, stated before the application of torture that her attempts at discovery of a thief were performed by addressing God; under torture she indicated that it had been done in the Devil's name.39

37 Byloff, Volkskundliches, ##23, 28, 38, 40, 50, 55. #46 is the case of a beggar named Simon in i666. Monter, Witchcraft, found marginal male figures such as beggars accused of witchcraft also in the Jura, although he mentions nothing to connect such beggars with folk-healing and divination. 38 Heberling, "Zauberei und Hexenprozesse," 120, 120-121, 122-123; Schwartzwalder, "... Zauber- und Hexenglauben," 5, 42. 39 Heberling, "Zauberei," 120-121; Schwartzwalder, "Zauber- und Hexenglauben," esp. 36.


Just as many a wise woman in early modern Europe provided services of midwifery along with divining and healing, so some of the wise women who fell victim to the witch hunts were also midwives.40 This was clearly the case with Dichtlin, one of the wise women accused in the Lucerne depositions. In their testi-

mony her neighbors mention anxiety about their having called in a rival midwife instead of Dichtlin herself. It is not at all surprising to find midwives among the victims of the witch hunts, for the

demonologists and ecclesiastical officials were absolutely obsessed with the potential evil which they believed midwives could perform. Malleus Maleficarum and other learned Christian demonol-

ogical treatises, provide lurid sketches of"Satan's whores" dedi-

cating unbaptized babies to devils or killing them and using their fat to make flying ointment.41

During this same period the Church launched an intensive

campaign to control the practices of midwives. Midwives were

required to take oaths pledging, among other things, that they would "not use any kind of sorcery or incantation in the time of the travail of any woman"; and that they would "not destroy the child born of any woman." Thus it is not surprising, since as scholars we have been dependent largely on the official viewpoint, to find medical historians and feminist scholars, and most recently Cohn concluding: "it is striking how often the village midwife

figures as the accused in a witchcraft trial."42

Midwives, however, are nowhere near as prominent in the

peasant depositions. The peasantry did not share the learned belief that midwives were instruments of the Devil. In another contrast with the official theories, moreover, the popular depositions do not include charges of infanticide. It is thus unclear, in the evidence for popular beliefs and realities, what certain women's

40 Forbes' discussion of "Midwifery and Witchcraft" is of limited usefulness and relia- bility because of his uncritical use of what Kieckhefer would call the "inferior" learned texts as well as his Murrayite presuppositions, although he does bring together a wealth of pertinent material which provides a solid basis for a reexamination of this issue. 41 Hoffmann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," #25; Malleus Maleficarum, quoted from Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters (eds.), Witchcraft in Europe 1100-1700, A Documentary History (Philadelphia, 1972). 42 W. H. Frere, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation (London, 1920), III, 5, 221, 270, 383; cf. the similar "articles" concerning midwives and baptism in II, 23, 58-59, 292, 356-357; John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion (Oxford, 1824), I, 242-243; Hans Kern, Zur Geschichte des Hebammenwesens in Basel (Basel, 1929), 34; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, 249.

710 RICHARD A. HORSLEY

service as midwives had to do with popular accusations of witchcraft against them. Although it is abundantly clear that midwifery was a social role highly relevant to the official witch-beliefs and witch trials, it is not clear that it was a social role with any special relevance to popular witch-suspicions. It is also not entirely clear how different midwives were from the wise women. Not all wise women offered services of midwifery and not all midwives were also diviners and healers. But judging from what we know about the wise women, many of them were apparently also midwives; there was clearly some overlap in these social roles. There is no question that a few of those executed for witchcraft were midwives. But a great deal of research remains to be done in order to determine more adequately the importance of midwives in the European witch trials as well as the relationship between midwives and wise women.43

Before concluding this examination of evidence for wise women/diviners-healers as victims of the witch trials, we should explore the possible overlap between wise women and sorceresses among those accused of witchcraft. Since wise women and sorcerers were generally different persons, as noted above, it is not surprising to find that the wise women who came to be accused of witchcraft were rarely accused of acts of sorcery. This is manifested in the material collected by Thomas and Delcambre from England and Lorraine, respectively. The evidence from the Lu- cerne cases is similar. A few of the wise women were suspected of knowing how to cause impotence and to poison. Only one, however, was actually accused of an act of sorcery, causing damage by hail-making; and none of these wise women (nor any of the other women accused in the Lucerne cases) could be described as a sorceress.44

The Jura and Austria do appear to provide us with a few cases in which wise women (diviners-healers) were also practicing sorcery regularly. According to Monter, Clauda Bruyne's confes- sion presents a picture of a kind of wandering witch-doctor who regularly poisoned animals and people in addition to her curing

43 Monter, Witchcraft, 126; Midelfort, Witchhunting, 187; Sigmund von Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern (Darmstadt, I968; orig. pub. 1896), 145, i66. For an extensive

bibliography see Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch. 44 Thomas, Religion, 437, 266; Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 216-217; Hoffmann- Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," ##23, 28, 32; vs. #24.

EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS 711

and divining activities. However, it is difficult to evaluate this case since Monter does not indicate what portions of her "confes- sion" may have been obtained under torture. Byloffs collection of depositions from Austria contains at least three instances of folk-healers accused of practicing sorcery. In a 1672 case, a magical healer of considerable reputation is accused of causing im-

potence at the wedding of the son of the Supan (i.e., Gemeinde- vorsteher, or chairman of the district council). The other two cases reveal wise women who used their special powers and tech-

niques to fight back (or get even) when they were wronged or even beaten by a local authority. The women purport to have caused illness in the men who mistreated them, and then to have healed their own maleficia. At least in Austria, therefore, there

appear to have been people who were both healers and sorcerers. But apparently this was not the case elsewhere in European peasant societies.45

Throughout those parts of Europe for which adequate evidence is already available-from Lorraine to Austria, from Lu- cerne to Schleswig-Holstein-a goodly number of the victims of the witch hunts were simply the wise women (and men), the folk healers and diviners of peasant society. Such wise women may have been suspected because of the failure of their attempted cures or perhaps because they had been named by someone else under torture.46 But the peasants themselves do not appear to have believed that if a healer could cure a disease she also must have caused it in the first place. This was the doctrine of the

demonologists. And it was this view, as an integral part of the official concept of witchcraft as consorting and collaborating with Satan, which caused the "wise women" to be caught in the witch hunters' dragnet.

WHY WERE WISE WOMEN AND OTHERS ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT?

It becomes increasingly clear that the realities of popular life and belief do not accord at all with the official concept of witchcraft. The victims of the witch hunts were not witches in the sense of the official demonologists' definition, although once subjected to tor-

45 Monter, "Patterns of Witchcraft in the Jura," I8-I9; Byloff, Volkskundliches, #50, 40, 48.

46 See Monter, Witchcraft, I84.


ture many victims may have come to believe in the witch hunters' definition of themselves as night-flying witches in pact with Satan. Investigation of the types of persons accused, of the statuses or roles they occupied in peasant society, has also revealed that some, but very few of them, were sorceresses. A substantial number of the accused, however, were "wise women" of the peasant society. In some areas of Europe, judging from available evidence, these diviners and healers would probably account for nearly half the victims.

For the majority of those accused we lack adequate evidence to determine whether they belonged to any particular social status or played any particular role in the society. Many were apparently seen by their neighbors as quarrelsome, others merely as eccentric. The most typical circumstance, whether of wise women or of ordinary women, was that the accused had happened to quarrel with or place demands upon their neighbors. The prominence of the wise women among the accused, therefore, can be explained by the special role which they played in the peasant society. As Kluckhohn discovered in his incisive study of the Navaho, the "witch" was often an outcast or a deviant.47 But why did the persecution of these deviants escalate to such proportions in Eu- rope during the sixteenth century?

Several provocative explanations have been offered for the dramatic rise of the witch-craze and, particularly, for why the principal victims of the witch hunts were elderly women. How- ever, once we discern the important differences between the official beliefs and interests and the popular beliefs and practices, these explanations appear to be relevant to only one or another aspect of the complex historical context of the witch trials. Mon- ter, for example, interprets accusations of witchcraft "as projec- tions of patriarchal social fears onto atypical women, . . . who

47 Thomas, Religion, 552-557; most of the Lucerne material fits this pattern, "Luzerner Akten"; similarly on the Lorraine cases, Delcambre, "Psychologie des inculpes lorrains de sorcellerie," Revue historique de droitfrancais et etranger (Paris, 1954), 521-522; and although Monter is at pains to emphasize the differences between England and the Jura, the patterns are really very similar, as he suggests in Witchcraft, I36-I37. Similarly, in non-European ethnographic material, witchcraft and sorcery are very often related to quarrels and sus-

picious behavior, as illustrated in Fortune, Sorcerers of the Dobu, ch. 3; or in Paul R. Turner's study of some Chontal villages in Oaxaca, Mexico, "Witchcraft as Negative Charisma," Ethnology, IX (1970), 366-372. Clyde Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft (Cam- bridge, Mass., I944).


lived apart from the direct male control of husbands and fathers," and finds this rooted in the broad misogynistic streak in European letters and the Christian tradition. But this helps explain only the learned belief that women were particularly prone to witchcraft.48

Midelfort has explained that the witch trials may have been functional, even "therapeutic," in the sense that "until single women found a more comfortable place in the concepts and communities of Western men, one could argue that they were a socially disruptive element. .. ."49 But, we must ask, functional for whom? If we focus on the peasantry, it is possible to argue that witch beliefs were functional and, had it not been for the witch trials, would have continued to be functional in protecting poor elderly women who seemed eccentric or burdensome. Ap- parently it was only in response to the witch trials and under prodding by the officials that people brought accusations against their neighbors. Otherwise the peasants apparently tolerated their neighbors whom they suspected of witchcraft. This is surely the significance of the long lapse of time between the suspects' quarrels with their neighbors (and the suspects' supposed malefcia), on the one hand, and the neighbors' accusations, on the other: "Cun- rat Kurman says that six or eight years ago .... Kuni Hinter der Kilchen says that eight or nine years ago ....Jost Meyer says that ten or twelve years ago .... ." As Cohn pointed out, left by themselves the peasantry would never have conducted the massive witch hunts. Their witch beliefs generally served to protect the helpless or troublesome elderly women suspected of witchcraft. Because of their fear of the suspects' mysterious power to "be- witch" them, the peasants might avoid, but would also look after the witch-suspect.50

With the institution of the inquisitorial procedure and the conduct of extensive witch trials by secular and ecclesiastical officials, the people's witch beliefs were transformed into a highly effective means of social control. The peasants' witch beliefs thus became functional-if by no means therapeutic-in an utterly

48 Monter, Witchcraft, II8ff., esp. 123-124; Midelfort, Witchhunting, I84. 49 Ibid., 195-196; David Landy, Culture, Disease, and Healing, I96, warns that "equilib- rium theory" does not explain sufficiently the disruptive consequences of such events as witch hunts, which may have resulted in "the terrorization of the whole society." 50 Hoffmann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," ##25 and others; Cohn, Europe's Inner De- mons.


different, almost opposite way. Through a period of great tensions, as Europe made the difficult transition from one economic-

political system to another, the peasants were induced, through the witch trials, to blame much of their malaise on their local witches and were able to rid themselves of social elements which

appeared burdensome or troublesome.

Perhaps because he has neither the official continental de-

monology nor the use of torture to deal with in his English material, Thomas shifts the focus away from the officially spon- sored witch trials. Thomas explains the upsurge in witch accusations from the increased tensions in village life. With the ster-

eotypical witch as an elderly widow in mind, he argues that "the tensions which such accusations usually reflected arose from the

position of the poor and dependent members of the community." This hypothesis is attractive, since it can be readily extended to cover the Lucerne depositions and the material from Lorraine studied by Delcambre.51

However, Thomas attempts to explain too much primarily on the village level. He rejected the explanation that the facilities for extensive witch prosecution had not existed until the late Middle Ages. As Cohn pointed out, his rejection of this explanation was premature, and it does not adequately take into account the history of legal institutions and practices. Before the mass witch hunts could begin in England as well as in the rest of

Europe, "the accusatory had to be replaced by the inquisitorial procedure." Moreover, the use of the inquisitorial procedure would surely have focused attention on witchcraft and made it more believable-and thus encouraged witch accusations.52

Besides his failure seriously to consider crucial shifts in legal practices and patterns, Thomas further narrows the explanation for the upsurge in witch accusations by focusing on the increased tensions in village life. His argument that the tensions which witch accusations reflected "arose from the position of the poor and dependent members of the community" does not give ade-

quate attention to the broader political and economic factors which caused the increased tensions in village life in the first place. Thomas does suggest that the rising spirit of individualism and

5I Thomas, Religion, 561-563. 52 Thomas, Religion, 460-463; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, I60-I63.


the institution of the national Poor Law very likely influenced the

hostility of the common people to their elderly and dependent neighbors. But, except for his brief references to enclosures and

increasing population, he provides no real explanation of why tensions were increasing in the villages.53

In his review ofMidelfort, Macfarlane insisted that "it would be considered ridiculous for an anthropologist to study witchcraft in a society without knowing something about its kinship system, rates of geographical and social mobility, ethics of giving, beliefs in cursing and curing." Turner commented similarly with regard to the interpretation of witchcraft in East Africa that it was nec-

essary "to estimate the effects on local subsystems of large scale

political processes in the wider system."54 As our studies of European witchcraft and the witch trials

become more interdisciplinary, our explanations for the upsurge of witch-accusations and massive witch hunts must be more com-

prehensive. It would appear to be impossible to understand witch accusations and the tensions in village life in isolation from these broader historical developments which brought pressure to bear on traditional peasant life.

53 Thomas, Religion, 563-564. 54 Macfarlane, review of Midelfort, Witchhunting, in Journal of Social History, VII (1974), 345; Victor Turner, "Witchcraft and Sorcery," Africa, XXXIV (I964), 314.

The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials

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