The study of witchcraft in Europe is an enduring period of fascination for scholars, and has been so since the incidents began. While the attitudes of those who write about the topic have undergone cycles and changes throughout the centuries, that has not changed their fundamental interest in why Europeans were so deathly afraid of what were, after all, ordinary men and women. Historiography on the subject has gradually evolved to include a large variety of contexts and viewpoints on the topic. This paper will examine many lenses through which witchcraft has been seen, including socio-culturally, religiously, psychologically, artistically, politically, and legally. While academics still debate many issues about continental European witchcraft, the rich and varied amount of scholarship is a great asset to any historian hoping to catch a glimpse into a lost realm of spirits, demons, and outcasts.
A note on definitions is necessary. The term “witch-hunt” I will take to mean the search for persons in society who seek to cause harm to their neighbors through non-natural means. The hunt refers to the judicial process of determining if a member of society could be deemed a “witch,” not necessarily any physical pursuit of that individual. The term “witch-craze,” while similar to a witch-hunt, has the added connotation of judicial and social members obsessively pursuing those believed to be witches to such an extent that it results in a community panic. These are largely Brian Levack’s definitions, and allow for a meaningful discussion of these events.
The first approach to witch craft that will be examined is one of the largest and most popular among historians. Recounting the witch-hunt as a result of socio-cultural pressures and beliefs, a great deal of scholarship has been written to explain the reasons behind the persecutions and executions of so many European men and women. Brian Levack, one of the most prominent voices in the academic community of witchcraft historians, writes about the intellectual and social contexts of the period in an effort to understand the trials. In The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, Levack blames the development of the stereotype of witches on popular beliefs being influenced and enhanced by the legal proceedings of the trial. It was effectively strengthened by preexisting social and cultural beliefs. In Levack’s view then, the dichotomy between elite and popular views work to strengthen each other. Popular superstition is reinforced by educated men during a trial, during which the leaders use their knowledge to confirm the attitudes of the peasants toward witches. In the same way, peasants then see witchcraft through the eyes and knowledge learned from the elite, further reinforcing the views of both sides of the community. He goes on to establish that many trials were held in rural areas, far from centers of learning, in small communities that prevent marginalized members of society from withdrawing from public sight. Levack’s history deals with the witch-trial as a direct result of the social and cultural context in which it arose.
Historian Melton Meltzer, in his brief history Witches and Witch-hunts: A History of Persecution, attributes the idea of the witch hunt to the rapidly change and deterioration of the European society and economy during the time period. Citing the Reformation, plague outbreaks, and other catastrophes, Meltzer argues that this increased the willingness of society to look outside the natural realm for a cause of these troubles. The extent of the poverty and calamity fueled an inherent belief in the supernatural, and witches were used as a scapegoat to absorb the cultural and economic shock in Europe.
Robin Briggs’ account, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft, is clearly focused on socio-cultural explanations for the trials. Briggs’ arguments center around the idea that the witch is a common figure in European communities in the sense that she is a well-known, often respected member of the community. Over years and decades, evidence and feelings build up around her, until suspicion is created that she is, in fact, a witch. Only a very tightly organized community that kept its members in such close physical proximity would provide the necessary “evidence” of witchcraft. Over time, these feelings would coalesce into suspicion and fear of betrayal, rather than promoting protective relationships. At this point, her neighbors, the men and women that have known her for years, accuse her of witchcraft, and attempt to have her executed.
Briggs includes a number of reasons why this phenomenon occurred. Often, accusations were the result of accidents, misfortunes, or perceived social slights within very close communities. Indeed, Briggs asserts that these close-knit relationships are necessary for the accumulation of evidence that most accusations required, and that only by spending years among the same group of people could such familiarity foster such contempt.
Focusing more on the cultural aspect, and specifically its legal codes, is Erik Midelfort’s article “Heartland of the Witchcraze.” Using the term “craze” here illustrates his point that medieval law codes, especially in the Holy Roman Empire, allowed learned men to function as legal counselors. These men were educated in demonological texts, and had very certain preconceived notions about what the causes and roots of witchcraft were. They then reflected their fantasies about demonic witchcraft in court proceedings that consumed the minds of peasants. Midelfort argues that the idea of Satan as the inspiration and chief agent of magic had not entered the popular conscious until these men were allowed to advise the courts, at which point the popular culture began associating witchcraft with the diabolic.
David Nicholls, writing about France instead of the Holy Roman Empire, chooses to look at ideas of the supernatural and demonic forces, and how they were used in medieval culture. His research indicates the existence of strong beliefs in the supernatural world. In the popular imagination, beings from that realm could cross over to the natural world, and influence events and people as they saw fit. Witches were, therefore, a concept not outside the realm of possibility for many peasants, and one in which they were particularly prepared to believe. This cultural idea of superstition, at odds with reformers of both Protestant and Catholic leanings, lent weight to the idea that witches were an actual phenomenon (in the minds of peasants), and one that must be dealt with harshly, in order to protect society at large. Thus, accusations were made against those that fit the stereotype of the witch prevalent in superstition.
These writers have chosen to focus on socio-cultural causes of European witchcraft. They represent a large portion of the historiography of witch-hunts, but are far from the only interpretation. Another context that garners much support among historians is the idea that witch-hunting was based on religious ideas, and that due to the renewed religious fervor of the time period, many men and women were seen as having chosen the wrong side in the spiritual war consuming Europe.
For Stuart Clark, the confession of those persecuting witches is of seemingly little difference. Both Catholic and Protestant groups agreed with the basic machinations of demonology, primarily the ability of the Devil to interfere with events in the natural world. While Protestants had no strict doctrine about witchcraft, as Catholics did, both sides were opposed to the practice of demonology, and there were witch-hunts in both confessional areas in Europe. Differences arose due to doctrinal differences, specifically remedies to witchcraft. Catholics were allowed a large arsenal of anti-witch practices and weapons, such as Mass attendance, crucifixes, holy water, and exorcism. Protestants, however, were at a loss to combat these perceived evils.
More helpful to explaining the reasons for witch-hunting is Jeffrey Russell’s work, A History of Witchcraft: Sorcery, Pagans, and Heretics. Russell draws links between sorcery practices common to almost all societies, and European-style witchcraft. Popular superstition in Europe held no wide-scale fear of sorcery, having lived beside it for hundreds of years. He concludes that Christianity took until the fifteenth century to completely convert Europe, and transform these popular notions about sorcery. Christianity made sorcery heretical, proclaiming that it had Satanic roots, and imposed this view on the populace of Europe. Coupled with the religious fervor that resulted from the Reformation, Christianity effectively began the fear of witchcraft in the population.
The primary historian for the religious conceptualization of witchcraft is the Italian Carlo Ginzburg. His writings, mainly focusing on individual cases of deviancy in medieval Europe, illustrate a number of ways that witchcraft was religiously influenced.
In The Night Battles, Ginzburg tells the story of the benandanti, anti-witches from Italian communities that believed they entered trances, and did battle with evil witches for the safety and prosperity of the harvest. When investigated by the Inquisition, the only way that the Church could make sense of the practice was by putting it in a demonic context. That is, the Church effectively rewrote the common beliefs about fertility protection and white witches. While popular superstition held these white witches to be guardians of the harvest and reproduction, the Church was able to paint any supernatural being as evil. This top-down view of demonology posits that the Church itself was responsible for the paranoia and hysteria that led to witch crazes, by forcibly transforming popular beliefs about supernatural events.
In a similar vein, Ginzburg’s book Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbat looks at the link between heresy and witchcraft, specifically Manichean beliefs. Holding up a Manichean view of the world was deemed heretical, because it presumed the Devil to have power equal to God’s. Over time, the Inquisition successfully linked Manichean heresy to witchcraft by focusing the populace on the idea of Satan influencing the world. Since both heretical beliefs and witchcraft inherently gave undue power to Satan, the Church could attempt to limit the popular notions that were not under Catholic control. By linking these two in the minds of Europeans, they could harness the religious fervor and use it to cement the power and authority of the Church over the people. Ginzburg uses extensive primary documents to demonstrate his ideas, and crafts an argument that religion fueled Europe’s witch-hunting.
Thus far, we have seen two major areas of witchcraft interpretation. Historians have made cases for the trials being a result of both socio-cultural conditions that made witchcraft not only normal, but a daily reality, and of a religious tradition that was trying to cement its own authority onto popular belief and superstition. Turning from the external influences, historians begin to examine the internal. Psychological evaluation has come to the forefront in historical research about witchcraft trials, and especially the idea of the witch craze. While easy to dismiss as “insanity,” historians are attempting to use primary evidence to evaluate the psychological conditions that may have allowed such trials to take place in such large numbers.
Robin Briggs has done a great deal of research and theorizing on the psychological aspect of witch crazes. His book, Witches and Neighbors, discussed above, also treats its topic from this context, and arrives at interesting conclusions. The witch hunt, for him, was focused on power. Peasants were driven by a deep-rooted, psychological need to control their surroundings. This search for power by an effectively disenfranchised lower class resulted in exploration and experimentation with supernatural abilities, or the perception thereof. It is largely in areas without authoritarian, centralized states that the largest numbers of trials are held, reflecting the idea that power was more spread out and held by the populace in these areas. In Briggs’ argument, this diffusion of power satisfied the psychological needs of the lower classes, who were desperate for any ability to control their lives.
In addition, Briggs also offers the suggestion that witchcraft accusations, made by one’s friends and family, were often the result of projected emotions onto the person being accused. Slight social oversights could result in feelings of intense guilt, leading to the conclusion that surely the wronged person was seeking revenge through black magic. Indeed, Briggs goes out of his way to assert that most trials were based on vengeance, not offensive magic. The fact that most “witches” were women who lived on the edge of poverty, and were thus reliant on charity to survive, lends credence to Briggs’ supposition. Should a woman beg for alms and be refused, the natural perception of the person that refused her would be to assume that she felt anger towards him. If this viewpoint is coupled with the fundamental propensity for accidents to happen in life, it is easy to see how so many on the fringe of society could be accused of maleficia.
Historian Lyndal Roper writes about the psychological underpinnings of the witchcraft trials as an extreme reaction to an innate fear about fertility. With the decimation from plague not yet over, as well as overpopulation in the late 1500s, and finally the horror of the Thirty Years’ War, the future of Christian society was far from secure. In Roper’s view, witchcraft trials stemmed mainly from an innate fear about fertility, expressed through human reproduction or agricultural harvests. Most accusations were made after a poor yield, or the death or illness of a mother or her child. As women aged, their ability to reproduce waned, and they were seen as less of an asset to society. Ergo, any suspicious activity or misfortune that happened to a younger woman was presumed to be the work of a jealous, older witch. In addition, more than one year of failed harvests would have had severe repercussions on the populace. Farming was still largely subsistence-based, and the constant threat of starvation would have dire psychological consequences. Roper’s argument seems to take into account most of the common conceptions of witchcraft trials, and addresses the idea of the witch craze by demonstrating that fears about fertility, both agricultural and human, were the psychological basis upon which many trials were founded.
Roper also includes in her work the idea that art and popular culture were driving agents behind the witch trials. While closely linked to the psychological context, artwork in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries was exceedingly visual and explicit. Roper traces the obsession of artists with graphically and realistically portraying images of fertility and motherhood. Artwork of both confessions, Catholic and Protestant, constantly held up pregnancy and childbirth as the culmination of womanhood. Children being torn from their mothers’ breast were often portrayed in paintings as well, reflecting the innate cultural fear about fertility.
Many artistic works of the time period focus on the idea of Jesus welcoming small children. Often present in these paintings were the mothers, again held as the paragon of womanhood, and showcasing the importance the artist placed on fertility. Artists such as Hans Bock or Albrecht Durer created an entirely new genre when they began displaying secular and non-classical images of women in the nude, many of whom were visibly pregnant. This idealizing of the pregnant female form is a clear sign of the importance that medieval European culture placed on human fertility. Fear of the loss of this fertility, according to Roper, was the driving force behind the witchcraft trials, and indeed the witch crazes. This fear was both created and enhanced by the obsession with motherhood and fertility that artists displayed during this time.
As a counterpoint, Anne Barstow rejects the psychological argument, and focuses instead on womanhood itself being the driving force for the trials. In Barstow’s analysis, the reason that witchcraft trials gained such prevalence was that the inherent ruling society, both clerical and secular, consisted entirely of men, resulting in an inherently sexist and misogynist culture. By marginalizing women from the outset, men could consolidate and enhance their own power at the expense of these disenfranchised women. Barstow examines accounts of trials and executions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to arrive at her conclusions. She cites the fact that up to 75% of witches executed were women, and when tortured and executed, the violence was normally conducted with a large emphasis placed on sexuality. This sexualized violence, Barstow claims, was the result of latent misogynistic views by the ruling patriarchy of men. Her book, however, is largely the result of secondary research, and does not take into account any other contexts that might weaken her own agenda. Nonetheless, using gender analysis to evaluate witchcraft can be a fruitful study.
A further example of using gender as the catalyst for witchcraft trials was performed by Jonathon Durrant. Focusing on the area of Eichstatt, which saw approximately 240 women accused of being witches between 1617 and 1631, Durrant argues that gender and power relations were the main conditions that drove the trials. Analyzing trial testimonies, Durrant concludes that the majority of witches were women, but that instead of Barstow’s overzealous patriarchy, the reason for this was that men and women socialized within gendered spheres. Each ran a portion of the household, and made social relationships based on shared experiences, driving men to cavort with men, and women with women. During witchcraft interrogations, women were encouraged to name accomplices that also attended the nocturnal ceremonies. Under the extreme stress of physical torture, these women simply named their friends and neighbors, whom they saw daily, which resulted in the disproportionate number of women accused. Related to Durrant’s thesis is the idea that political and legal changes brought about the trials.
Christina Larner chooses to examine the idea of legality as a driving agent of the witch trials. Larner defines the “judicial revolution” as the slow change from justice based on individual cases to a judicial process that was rational in its bureaucracy. These courts, in the true fashion of bureaucracy, were incorporating more and more aspects of justice that had previously been under the control of religious courts. Therefore, witchcraft was made a crime under normal state law codes, and included the possibility of the death penalty. By standardizing the legality of witchcraft, trials were much easier to pursue. In addition, as a crimen exceptum, the evidence in such cases was not held to the same standard of rigor as a corporeal crime. Larner cites the appropriation of justice by secular courts as a necessary requirement for the witch trials.
Brian Levack also chooses to examine the topic of witchcraft and the state in his article, “State-building and Witch Hunting.” He outlines a number of theories about the politicalization that overlap with Larner’s thesis, but he also attributes special importance to the idea that newly-emerging state rulers were driven by the need to create a populace that was at once obedient and identified their rulers as belonging to their culture. In an effort to increase the loyalty and “godliness” of the population, rulers often attempted to drive out groups identified as deviants, resulting in mass deaths of witches. This would, the rulers hoped, create a more homogeneous peasantry that looked to the ruling class for protection and authority.
One final approach is worth mention. Thomas Robisheaux writes of the effect that early forms of healing and medicine had on witchcraft trials. In sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, no formalized system of forensic medicine yet existed. Although the early beginnings could be seen, physicians still allowed for both natural and supernatural causes of death. In particular, specific poisons were believed to be demonic inspirations, and Robisheaux argues that physicians drove witch crazes by blaming unknown ailments on satanic influences. This would have further flamed the popular opinions and beliefs of the populace. The legal requirements for a conviction of witchcraft in the Holy Roman Empire required a consensus of opinion of experts. Since physicians were largely slow to confirm witchcraft as a cause of death, many cases faltered and collapsed, suggesting that early modern medicine may have acted as both an enhancer and a deterrent to witchcraft trials.
Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the early seventeenth centuries, Europeans of all social classes participated in a major act of violence against their own. Seeing the power of the Devil at work amongst them, and believing in a supernatural realm populated with a variety of beings both benevolent and malevolent, they accused their friends and family members of the crime of witchcraft. While the numbers of victims and rates of executions are still in doubt, many thousands at least lost their lives in the name of not suffering a witch to live. This period of witchcraft persecution has opened up to countless historians in the recent decades. Writing from a number of perspectives, they have attempted to account for the mysterious rise, surge, and abrupt decline in the number of trials held by courts. While no consensus has yet been reached, the myriad of possibilities offers rich ground for future historians. Whether one looks through the lens of culture, politics, gender, religion, literature, or psychology, there is much historical ground yet to uncover.
