The Serpent in the Garden: How Early-Modern Writers and Artists Depicted Devils and Witches

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The Serpent in the Garden: How early-modern writers and artists depicted devils and witches

A thesis submitted to the Graduate School Of the University of Cincinnati In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

In the Department of German Studies Of College of Arts and Sciences

Jennifer A. Goff

B.A. Agnes Scott College May, 1996

Committee Chair: Dr. R.E. Schade, PhD.

Abstract

The early-modern period was a time of political, social, religious, and philosophical transitions. This thesis seeks to explore early-modern witchcraft within the framework of these transitions, using ecclesiastical treatises, contemporary art, witch trial transcripts, and literary depictions of witchcraft to ascertain the changing role of the devil in the early-modern conceptualization of witchcraft. At the beginning of this period, the devil was a ubiquitous and concrete presence in virtually all early-modern witchcraft discourse, whether textual or visual.

As the period evolves, textual and visual representations develop nuances that reflect the changing philosophical and religious discourses. By the end of this period, texts and art indicate a spectrum of beliefs about the devil’s role in witchcraft, from the concrete and dominant presence he had at the beginning of this period, through a middle-ground of equality with the witch in her/his apostasy, through to a growing disbelief in his corporeal existence or influence on human behavior. The images of the devil and witch during this period remain the dominant images of the devil and witch into and throughout the modern period.

Acknowldgements

I must first thank Dr. Sigrun Haude and Dr. Richard Schade, my thesis advisors, without whose assistance, expertise, critique, and guidance this paper would never have succeeded. If any errors of fact or writing remain, they are my own.

Thank you also to Dr. Tanja Nusser, the German Studies graduate student advisor, who always wanted the German answer when she asked me how I was doing. I appreciate your constant concern and genuine interest. And to Dr. Todd Herzog, who did not look at me cross- eyed when I expressed my determined interest in early-modern witchcraft. You gave me the confidence to pursue my curiosity.

I am grateful to those teachers from my younger days, whose influence in my academic life has not waned over the years. If I have neglected to give proper thanks, this acknowledgement is my expression of gratitude to Dr. Kim Mallett, Dr. Ingrid Wieshofer, Dr. Katharine Kennedy, Dr. Michael Brown, and Dr. Robin Huff. Thank you for helping me love German and History.

I can never express enough love and thanks to my parents, Kristy Miller and Jim Langston, from whom I have felt nothing but unconditional love and support my entire life. Thank you both for showing me that there is never a wrong time to work toward your goals, and that a person is never too old to learn. I hope I have the capacity to teach my children the same.

To my wonderful children, Meredith and Sam, whom I love more than is imaginable, who are my light and my inspiration, thank you for putting up with endless nights and weekends of watching Mommy study, read, and write. Please know that I did this just as much for you as for myself, and I hope you learned how gratifying it can be to work hard to achieve your dreams. Just as you were with me every day for this journey, so will I be with you every day on whatever journeys you both choose in your lives.

Last, but certainly not least, there are not words to express my thanks to my husband, Jim Goff, who patiently put up with my divided attention for two years. Thank you for agreeing that this was a sacrifice we could manage, and for having faith that pursuing my dreams could be the right choice for our family. Thank you for all the energy you put into cleaning house, making dinner, getting kids to ball practice, and stepping over the piles of books and papers that were the tools of my trade, all while attending to your own vocation. I love you with all my heart.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 5

Introduction 6

Historiography of witchcraft 8

Witchcraft in early-modern period 10

Late 1400s to early 1500s

Overview 11

Documents and treatises 14

Art and visual depictions 16

Trial documents 27

Late 1500s to early 1600s

Overview 30

Dr. Faustus 32

Witch trials 38

Art and visual depictions 41

Late 1600s to early 1700s

Overview 46

Texts and documents 47

Art and visual depictions 51

Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus 55

Witch trials 60

Conclusion 61

Works cited/Bibliography 63

List of Illustrations

1. Albrecht Dürer, Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, 1500 17

2. Hans Baldung Grien, Witches’ Scene, 1510 19

3. Ulrich Molitor, Female Witches Eating Together, 1489 22

4. Ulrich Molitor, Witch’s Demon Lover, 1489 23

5. Ulrich Molitor, Demonic Temptation, 1489 23

6. Hartmann Schedel, The Devil Abducts the Witch of Berkeley, 1493 25

7. Woodcut from Part II, Dr. Faustus, c. 1580 35

8. Woodcut from Christmas scene, Dr. Faustus, c. 1580 36

9. Woodcut from Disputation of Hell, Dr. Faustus, c. 1580 36

10. Jacques de Gheyn, Witches’ Sabbath, late 16th-early 17th century 42

11. Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, Old Witch, early 16th century 45

12. Elias Welhöfer, Hexenprozeß in Augsburg, 1669 52

13. Johannes Praetorius, Blockes-Berges Verrichtung, Frontispiece, 1669 54

Introduction to the early-modern period

The early-modern period of European history was a time in which medieval conceptualizations about the world were in tension with increasingly diverse influences on the status quo of religion, politics, and philosophy. The years of roughly 1500-1750 were marked by the synthesis of these competing pressures, exacerbated by the significant challenges faced all across Europe as a result of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the incredible hardships visited on populations in the path of the Thirty Years War. Added to this state of affairs were years of atypical and disruptive weather patterns, which led to crop failures, which led to famines, coupled with the occasional outbreak of plague or other illness, and the early-modern period could certainly not be considered one of the easier times to be an inhabitant of Europe.

The beginning of the period was barely discernable from the Middle Ages, though the recent advent of the printing press would prove a catalyst for steady, if slow increases in literacy rates, and Gutenberg’s invention would become the vehicle for exponential increases in the dissemination of information. The modern propaganda machine can be said to have begun during this period, as evidenced by the tightly controlled cult of personality around Martin

Luther. As during the Middle Ages, Catholicism was the dominant European confession at the onset of the early-modern era, but the Church faced an enormous challenge in the Protestant

Reformation, and never truly recovered. The early-modern period marked the decline of the

Catholic Church as the sole mechanism of religious thought and worship opportunities.

It is the goal of this thesis to consider some of the significant ideologies and beliefs about witchcraft within the framework of the early-modern period, and show how writers and

6 artists manifested these ideas in their work. By the beginning of this period, most scholars agree that European beliefs about witchcraft were already in place. Sorcery and magic were by no means new concepts during the early-modern period in Europe. There had been a long tradition already of supernatural beliefs, many of which developed from a mixture of pre-

Christian pagan nature cults and influences from Greco-Roman mythology, all influenced by the nuances of Catholic Christianity as it gained converts throughout the earliest years of the

Middle Ages. It was not until the later Middle Ages that the ideas about witchcraft that would come to dominate the early-modern period really found their roots. The Church had been working to root out heresies and a number of zealous ecclesiastics wrote treatises codifying canon law vis-à-vis these heresies.

One heresy against which the church grew in concern was witchcraft. Until this time in central Europe, as elsewhere on the continent, folk magic had been an accepted part of medieval life. Folk remedies, potions, and spells were commonly accepted as methods for treating illness, ensuring a good crop, bringing luck to a household, and so forth. However, in considering the concept of heresy in a new way, and as a result of pressures on the Church from within and without to reform, elements of folk magic came to be regarded as evidence of a manifestation of demonic influence and, therefore, related to black magic. Witchcraft was not a new concept; rather, the church refined its way of defining and dealing with witchcraft, and among practitioners of black magic could be found a new group of marginalized individuals within European society.

In this paper, I focus on text and visual representations of witchcraft and witches, and how these representations reflected contemporary ideas about the role of Satan in witchcraft.

The late medieval trend of associating some common magical behaviors with witchcraft, combined with the association of witchcraft with heresy resulted in a strong association of witchcraft with the devil. I want to explore these text and visual representations to determine how early-modern people specifically viewed the role of the devil in witchcraft. What type of relationship did they believe the devil had with the witch, and how deeply did they consider his influence and power to extend in that relationship? My geographic area of interest, roughly speaking, is southern Germany, and my sources will be those that either originate from this area or were available to readers and viewers in this area. Some of my sources originate geographically from a point outside of southern Germany but, as a result of the invention of the printing press, copies were (or were believed to be) available in that region.

Historiography of witchcraft

While my interest is primarily in text and visual representations of Satan and his influence on witchcraft, I believe it is useful to have a sense of twentieth century research about witchcraft in general, because quantitative data from this research, as well as research regarding established knowledge of social relationships and political hierarchies, informs my analyses of texts and visual art. I will also provide a brief overview of the history of early- modern witchcraft.

Although European witchcraft remained of interest to gothic writers and several nineteenth-century artists, scholarly research tended generally to ignore witchcraft, thinking it

8 too rustic and non-academic. Without research to uncover the truth about magic during this period, fallacies came to be accepted as salient facts regarding medieval and early modern witchcraft. Beginning in the early 1900s, however, a few scholars began collecting and evaluating documentation of witchcraft. For several decades in the 1900s, analyses of witch hunts and trials were studied through feminist, Marxist, and Freudian lenses, and subsequently resulted in conclusions about witchcraft that supported the politico-philosophical views of academics, but little represented extant data or documents that dealt with witchcraft.

H.C. Erik Midelfort’s and Wolfgang Behringer’s twentieth-century studies of early modern European witch hunts turned traditional historiography of this topic on its head.

Suddenly it became apparent that witchcraft scholarship was rife with fallacies, many based on conjectures and theories that had never been supported by verifiable data. In the introduction to his groundbreaking 1972 study, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684,

Midelfort warned his reader not to “expect to encounter arcane lore or the details of obscene rites,” (Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany 1562-1684, The Social and

Intellectual Foundations 1) but rather a detailed investigation of the factual evidence of witchcraft during that time. Behringer similarly focused his research in Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, in which he stressed the need to consider witchcraft as a local phenomenon, citing both Midelfort’s intensive study of witchcraft in Baden-Württemberg and A. MacFarlane’s in

Essex, England, each of which used primary sources from the same time period to arrive at what Behringer characterizes as “disparate conclusions.” (Behringer 11) As a result of their research, and the subsequent research their studies inspired, witchcraft studies developed into a thriving academic field, which has stimulated new generations of scholars. One example is

Linda C. Hults, an art historian whose book The Witch as Muse is an interdisciplinary study of visual representations of witchcraft that simultaneously confronts the misinterpretations of the feminist lens, admonishing early feminist historians for putting forward insupportable statistical data, while at the same time acknowledging that gaps remain in the documentary evidence that can allow for estimations upward in the numbers of female executions. (Hults 1)

Witchcraft in the early-modern period

Cultural expressions of witchcraft ran along a continuum of unmitigated belief versus skepticism in the early-modern period. To fully believe in witchcraft meant to accept the satanic relationship to the witch, to accede that witches engaged in cannibalism, rubbed salves on their bodies, and flew on animals, pitchforks, or broomsticks to their mountaintop orgies with the devil. Skepticism of witchcraft was informed by ideas that simultaneously developed within the Scientific Revolution. Witchcraft skeptics believed in the existence of God and the devil, and that the powers of good and evil represented by God and the devil were in constant tension. Skeptics also believed in demons, sorcery, and witches; they were not convinced, however, of the scope of witchcraft, as it was reflected through interrogations and executions.

Many skeptics were aware of the abuses in the trial system, and that witches were often convicted and executed for the monetary profit these executions earned the judges; generally, the witchcraft skeptic asked for a better trial procedure that relied on scientific proof for conviction. During the period of transition from the medieval to the early-modern, roughly around 1500, both writing and visual art expressed a balance between God and Satan. There was no question of God’s omnipotence and infinity, but God allowed Satan a certain amount of

10 latitude to bring individuals into Satan’s power as a way of testing people’s faith.1 While there were nuances within this concept, based on a person’s geographic location or confessional doctrine, for the most part this was generally accepted as theological fact throughout Christian

Europe. What did change over the course of the early modern period was the idea of precisely how much latitude God granted Satan. As this epoch evolved, theologians and scholars questioned just how much power Satan really had over individuals’ choices regarding sinful behavior and, by around 1700, there was a growing skepticism regarding Satan’s power and even his existence.

Late 1400s to early 1500s: overview

This section deals with the late 1400s through roughly 1510. These years mark the transition from medieval to early modern Europe and the establishment of early-modern associations of witchcraft, including the specific role Satan played in enticing witches into his service. I will refer to a selection of primary documents and some examples of contemporary print art to examine just how these associations were understood and expressed by the educated elites. Later sections of this paper will explore the similarities and differences between elite and popular ideas about witchcraft, but evidence regarding popular ideas about witchcraft is less available from these years. Despite the advent of the printing press, access to written documents was still not widespread; a typical villager would likely never have seen a demonological treatise and, if s/he happened to have had experience with such a document, it

1 For an excellent and detailed discussion of the medieval Christian logic of the role of the devil in witchcraft, as well as how this logic framed many early demonological treatises, as well as the treatises and tracts of witch hunters, see chapter two, ‘An Anatomy of Witchcraft’ in Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria.

11 would likely have been through its citation in a sermon or a similar performative method.

Ulinka Rublack reminds us that, even during Luther’s publishing period in Germany, ”only 30 per cent of the male urban population could read” (45) The period considered in this section was more than a quarter century before Luther; unquestionably, literacy rates were similar or even lower.

Nonetheless, throughout the 1400s theologians and scholars wrote a variety of demonological treatises to explain witchcraft: its origins, adherents, victims, habits, etc. This section focuses on three of the most influential of these documents: the papal “witch” bull,

Summis desiderantes, (1484); Malleus Maleficarum, the Witches’ Hammer, (1486/7); and the

De lamiis et pythonicis mulleribus, On Female Witches and Soothsayers, (1489). Additionally I will examine a short series of witch trials that took place in 1505 in the Ansbach/ Bayreuth region. In addition to these textual examinations I will highlight specific pieces of print art that accompanied or were influenced by the demonological treatises, to show how art from this period reflected ideas about witchcraft. Taken together, the documents and artistic renderings exhibit many of the themes that influenced and resulted from the witchcraft discourse of that time. The visual depictions, in particular, reflect tropes that will continue throughout the early modern period, even when the visual depictions themselves were not original.

These were the years that directly preceded the Reformation. There was widespread concern about the wealth and immorality of the Catholic Church; tension permeated all stations of society regarding the administration of the Church. The leadership of the Church was aware of these criticisms and, to a certain extent, attempted to respond to them. At

12 various times during the previous centuries, popes authorized inquisitions of varying intensity and duration throughout parts of western Christendom that intended to root out local heresies and expel undesirable populations from the Church’s realm. The demonological treatises written during the 1400s conceived of a new heresy: witchcraft. Much of what became associated with “witchcraft” through these treatises had been simply “popular magic,” or what might be referred to as “folk medicine” or even mild superstititions. Popular magic was an accepted and integral component of medieval society, allowing for the knowledge of midwives, wise women, and shaman types to provide services and therapies to people when they were unable to obtain satisfactory results from physicians or were unable to procure the services of a physician. Midwives, in particular, performed useful medical services for women; it was inappropriate for a male physician to have any sort of intimate contact with a woman who was not his own wife. Even in the interest of providing medical care, it was absolutely unacceptable for a man to provide any assistance to a woman in labor. The miracle of childbirth was marred by superstitions and religious beliefs regarding concepts of original sin.2 The Church’s shifting attitudes regarding this type of folk medicine coincided with social and cultural changes that marked the transition to the early modern period.

During this time of transition, some aspects of popular magic came under greater scrutiny. In the 1400s, as undercurrents of religious dissatisfaction began to take hold, the

Roman Catholic Church reacted to what it perceived as heresies. The church analyzed certain habits associated with popular magic, and began to question whether, or in what ways, magic

2 The process of labor itself rendered a woman ritually “unclean” for a period of 40 days after childbirth. In order to return to active membership, the Church required a process of spiritual cleansing to culminate in communion, which rendered her clean enough to return to the Church. A clear and instructive narrative description of the process can be found in Thomas Robisheaux.

13 could fit into the Christian culture. During this century, a number of treatises were written by various ecclesiastical parties, which codified ideas about witchcraft: its practitioners, habits, nature, as well as its potential dangers. What had been localized, regionally discrete practices of popular magic developed into pan-European perceptions associated with witchcraft. Notions about witchcraft and the lifestyles and practices of witches became universal. People began to think concretely about witchcraft, and to question whether witchcraft had a legitimate place in

Christian society. Just as theological writers began codifying concepts of the witch and witchcraft through ecclesiastical documents, artists began to produce visual images of the witch that simultaneously manifested in the European imagination.

Late 1400s to early 1500s: documents and treatises

These documents classified the behaviors and habits associated with witchcraft; inspired by these documents, artists produced images of witches based in part on the documents’ content. The advent of the printing press allowed for a greater dissemination of these images than had been previously possible, and suddenly there were concrete representations of witches proliferating throughout early modern Europe. This section explores some of these early images, as well as the texts that inspired them, in an effort to identify the tropes and symbols that will continue to appear in witch imagery throughout the early modern period.

Although Summis desiderantes did not specifically delineate the time of the change in the Church’s response to witchcraft, it did indicate the determination of the Pope to singularly direct the process of Inquisition against witchcraft. “Pope Innocent VIII was moved by the complaints of two Dominican Inquisitors, Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, that local

14 ecclesiastical authorities in Germany refused to aid them in their pursuit of heretical witchcraft.” (Kors and Peters 107) The bull provided validity to Krämer and Sprenger, not only in their inquisitorial pursuits in southern Germany, but also in the publication of their witchcraft treatise, Malleus Maleficarum.

As with Summis desiderantes, Malleus Maleficarum did not mark the beginning, per se, of Christian attempts to understand and codify witchcraft, but it came to be considered as a primary resource of information and methodology regarding witches and witch-beliefs.

Although originally published in 1486, the usefulness of Malleus Maleficarum outlived that of many other fifteenth-century demonological treatises, and it continued to be published through the seventeenth century and cited well into the eighteenth. (Kors and Peters 113;

Levack 57) The Malleus Maleficarum drew explicitly on biblical references to underscore its primary point: that Satan was the ultimate source of witchcraft, and that he seduced followers to commit acts of evil; its scholarly importance can be inferred through Krämer’s and Sprenger’s repeated references to the writings of earlier theologians on demonology, magic, and sorcery, most notably Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Among the biblical references cited by Krämer and Sprenger3 were allusions to witchcraft and wizards in Leviticus,4 prohibitions against child- sacrifice, divination, and magic in Deuteronomy,5 as well as a number of references from the

Apocryphal Ecclesiasticus.6 The biblical reference that most prominently connected to nearly

3 A number of scholars question the likelihood of dual authorship of the Malleus Maleficarum. Brian P. Levack, in particular, asserts that Kramer was the primary author, adding Sprenger’s name despite Sprenger’s possible objection to the book. (Levack 57) 4 Leviticus 19:26; 20:6; 20:27 5 Deuteronomy 18:9-14 6 The Gospel of Jesus of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, chapters 19, 25, 29.

15 every major association of witchcraft was the story in Genesis of the Fall of Man.7 Ideas about knowledge and intellect, the satanic origin of temptation, even the central European tendency to focus charges of witchcraft primarily against women, all these can ultimately trace their origins to this story. Additionally visual and literary representations were shaped by the components of this story: the serpentine characteristics with which Satan was often depicted, as well as the association of snakes with witchcraft practices; the seduction of women by demons, as Eve was “seduced” by the serpent into eating the fruit of the tree; the nature of

Satan and his witches to disrupt the natural order. This is by no means an exhaustive list; rather, it means to show the theological nature of the medieval interpretation of witchcraft.

Late 1400s to early 1500s: art and visual representations

One particularly graphic depiction of a witch was an engraving from 1500 by Albrecht

Dürer, called Witch Riding Backward on a Goat.8 Although this was a relatively early depiction,

Dürer’s image contains a number of elements that would continue to appear throughout early modern witch depictions. Hults describes the image as a “significant…prototype for the witchcraft genre.” (73) The dominant image is of a hag, with drooping breasts that emphasize her age and signify her infertility. She is bent, but strong and muscular, with wild, flying hair.

She appears to speak through parted lips and, because the viewer sees rain9 beginning to fall ahead of the witch, the viewer presumes that the witch utters a weather spell. She holds a

7 Genesis 3:1-24 8 (Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe 28), attributed to collection of National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (?) 9 Charles Zika interprets this as “an elemental disruption represented by the shooting rock or hail” (Zika, Exorcising Our Demons 307); in any case, this “element” clearly refers to weather magic, a disruptive magic employed by the early modern witch.

16 broomstick in one hand, in such a way as gives the impression of a phallus rising up from her thighs. She rides, as the title of the print suggests, backwards on a goat. The combination of the backward position and the goat work together to imply a deviant sexuality; an early modern viewer would have assumed that she was a concubine of the devil. She grasps one of the goat’s horns, a reference to her sinfulness. The goat itself was symbolic of sexual impurity, particularly as it related to adultery. Both Hults and Charles Zika concur that Dürer’s witch provided a significant visual perspective of early modern witchcraft conventions. Both discuss the print at length, focusing, as I have done, on the physical depiction of the witch and Dürer’s use of obvious witchcraft symbols.

Fig. 1

Alternatively, the preceding image has been called Witch as an evocation of the world turned upside down,10 and Lorenzo Lorenzi offers an interpretation of this woodcut as a visual metaphor for the witch. Considering the new classification of witchcraft as a heresy, this title presumes the cherubim to be agents of God, struggling to preserve the Christian status quo in the face of human apostasy. This interpretation also requires that one consider the power assigned to witchcraft by the early modern Church, or at least the perception of that power on the part of the Christian community. Lorenzi interprets the witch, not as an object of sexual temptation, but as an adept11 on her way to the witches’ Sabbath. He picks up on the trope of the wild, flying hair, which Lorenzi suggests is a further symbol of the witch’s subversion of the natural order. Lorenzi disagrees that the cherub figures on the ground are angelic agents of

God; rather, he supposes them to be “occupied with magic tricks. These figures form what was called the ludus puerorum, a fairly common iconographic topos in illustrations of witches, though derived from an earlier alchemical tradition.” (Lorenzi 78) The alchemical tradition to which Lorenzi alludes provides a connection to the sensibilities about witchcraft and the occult expressed in Dr. Faustus in the later 1500s, which will be discussed in the next section.

Albrecht Altdorfer, in his 1506 pen and ink drawing, Witches’ Scene (Fig. 2), explores the communal nature of witchcraft. In this print, we see a group of witches, unabashed in their nudity, but appearing to be women at different life stages. Two witches are depicted in full- frontal nudity; one has the sagging breasts of a hag, the other’s breasts appear, if not fuller,

10 (Lorenzi 76), attributed to the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. 11 An adept was a new witch convert; at her first Witches’ Sabbath she would have been initiated into the ranks of Satan’s followers. Presumably this initiation would have culminated in a sexual rite between the adept and the devil; it is for this reason that she is naked. Nakedness can also indicate that the witch leaves her bed at night (bodily or through a dream) to attend Sabbath or other rituals.

18 certainly younger. Several witches stand or sit on the ground, their gazes focused on several more witches who are flying through the air on the backs of goats. Altdorfer drew the flying witches smaller and with less detail, giving the impression of height and destination. At least one of the flying witches looks very masculine, and the ink lines suggest both a hairy body and wing-like protrusions. These give this “witch” the appearance of being a demon or fallen angel.

The witches on the ground have the unkempt, wild hair reminiscent of Dürer’s Witch Riding

Backwards on a Goat. Scattered among them on the ground are the tool of the trade of the witch: protective circle, animal skull, vessels/dishes, and other assorted implements associated with malefica. Zika interprets these accoutrements as providing recognizable elements, which early modern viewers would have easily associated with witchcraft, and functioning as symbols of the behaviors and characteristics associated specifically with witches. The protective circle and animal skull referenced spells and “necromantic rituals,” while the vessels and dishes

“probably refer to the salves and oils which witches rubbed on their bodies in preparation for the wild animal ride to which they direct the viewer with raised arms.” (Zika, The Appearance of

Witchcraft, 30)

Fig. 2

The preceding images appear to have been inspired primarily by the Malleus

Maleficarum and similar treatises that treated witchcraft as a highly deviant lifestyle that not only damned the soul of the witch, but also endangered the souls and lives of those who had contact with her. I say “her,” because the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum considered witchcraft as a primarily female sin.12 Their treatise focused on the susceptibility of women to the sins of witchcraft, and they structured nearly their entire document to presume the guilt of women in this regard. The authors’ logic stems from what was becoming a common concept at that time; namely, the chief method by which the devil brought believers into his domain was through a contractual agreement validated through copulation, and that women were the more susceptible sex to this influence:

Therefore let us now chiefly consider women; and first, why this kind of perfidy is found

more in so fragile a sex than in men. And our inquiry will first be general, as to the

general conditions of women; secondly, particular, as to which sort of women are found

to be given to superstition and witchcraft; and thirdly, specifically with regard to

midwives, who surpass all others in wickedness. (Kors and Peters 114)

Both Lorenzi and Zika concur that the Malleus Maleficarum was likely instrumental in providing inspiration to Dürer and other artists in this period around 1500. Linda Hults reminds us that

“Dürer’s godfather, Anton Koberger, published editions [of the Malleus Maleficarum] in 1494 and 1496.” (66) In his discussion of Altdorfer’s Witches’ Scene, Zika argues that the visual texts from this time appear to interpret the Malleus Maleficarum through the lens of German

12 Primarily, but not exclusively; Part I, Question VI: “Why it is that women are chiefly addicted to Evil Superstition” (Kors and Peters 114; Levack 61); later parts of the treatise do refer to specific cases of male witches.

20 folklore; he specifies that “the resilience of the image of the riding witch and its broad acceptance as a visual code for witchcraft could not simply depend on the iconographic models of Dürer and Baldung.13 It was also linked to the Wild Ride and Furious Horde of Germanic

Folklore.” (Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 30)

In contrast, there were artists whose depictions of witches reflected their own skepticism of certain aspects of witchcraft. For example, the woodcuts that accompanied

Ulrich Molitor’s treatise De Lamis were tame, particularly in comparison with the images discussed above. In fact, at first glance many woodcut images from this document are difficult to associate with witches, sometimes even after a careful examination. The artist, not definitively identified as Molitor himself,14 seems to have been careful to intentionally present witches as acceptable and harmless, even as he employed certain tell-tale symbols to identify the subjects of the woodcuts as witches. De lamiis was originally commissioned to present an alternative view of witchcraft and witches to that presented by the Malleus Maleficarum. Like the Malleus Maleficarum, De lamiis described witchcraft from the perspective of the witch’s inherent sinfulness, but De lamiis did not agree in all aspects with Malleus Maleficarum; namely, it expressly denied the capability of witches to perform these acts, suggesting instead that the power was with the devil, who “tricked” believers into “thinking that they could harm people, transform or travel to the Sabbath by supernatural means.” (Kwan 494-495) De lamiis also viewed witchcraft with slightly more compassion than the Malleus Maleficarum,

13 Hans Baldung Grien, an apprentice of Dürer’s who also depicted witches and witchcraft, often with the same tropes and structure as Dürer. 14 There does not appear to be consensus as to the identity of the woodcut artist, and Natalie Kwan, in a very compelling argument, asserts that Molitor is, in fact, unlikely to have been the artist, even for the earliest printings. For her complete analysis explanation, please refer to her article, Woodcuts and Witches: Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, 1489-1669”

21 encouraging clergy to deal with witchcraft prayerfully. One should note the limits of the compassion of De lamiis, however, which still recommended that a confessed witch be put to death.

Fig. 3

Like Altdorfer’s Witches’ Scene, the woodcut, Female Witches Eating Together (Fig. 3), published in De lamiis presents the communal nature of witchcraft. In this woodcut, however, the tone is much less belligerent. Upon first glance this appears simply to be a presentation of a picnic, a simple outdoor meal among friends. It requires a closer examination to note the witchcraft symbolism. The shape of the table, with a protrusion on the underside, is reminiscent of a cauldron, and the marks under the table, ostensibly tufts of grass, stand in for the flames under the cauldron. Owing perhaps to the nature of woodcut art, the witches themselves are highly stylized. Each raises her hand in a gesture, two of which are associated with the casting of spells. The third witch holds a knife in one hand while holding an object in her other hand, with which she gesture. Charles Zika interprets this object as a sausage, suggesting that “[the] sausage held up by a woman with a knife may also allude to the attested power of witches to castrate.” (Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 25) This image, taken as a

22 whole, does not acquit the witch of her demonic powers but, by its tone, seems to reflect the assertion put forth by De lamiis that the Church deal prayerfully with witches.

What follows is a comparison of two woodcuts from De lamiis, both of which deal with essentially the same content, but handled in markedly different ways. The two woodcuts in question are Witch’s demon lover (Fig. 4) and one referred to simply as “Demonic Temptation.”

(Fig. 5) Both woodcuts represent a woman and a partner.

Fig. 4 Fig. 5

Upon first look, this partner appears to be a man and, as the figures in both pieces embrace one another, this is a natural assumption; Lorenzo Lorenzi describes the Witch’s demon lover as being “treated with great delicacy, depict[ing] reciprocal, and quite normal emotions,” a description equally applicable to “Demonic Temptation.” (Lorenzi, 62) A closer examination reveals distinctly demonic features on each partner, however. In both cases, the demon, as the

“partner” naturally turns out to be, has talons where his hands and feet should be, a

“rapacious” indication of satanic origin. (Lorenzi, 62). In the Witch’s demon lover, the demon looks otherwise perfectly human; the woman he embraces appears old, but this is the only visual characteristic indicating her witch-hood. The woman in “Demonic Temptation” is young and voluptuous, with full and prominent breasts; her face expresses trepidation, not longing, and the placement of her hands in contrast to those of the demon show tension in their embrace; besides his talons, he sports wolfish teeth and a tail, and he seems to be pulling the young woman to himself by her hips; she appears to be pushing him away. The title “Demonic

Temptation” also suggests that it is the devil who engages in the seduction, and that he has not convinced this woman to give in to him. On the other hand, in the Witch’s demon lover, both the witch and the demon are willing participants in a mutual seduction.

The Devil Abducts the Witch of Berkeley (Fig. 6), alternatively known as Witch on horseback in the company of the devil, accompanied the 1493 printing of the Nuremberg

Chronicle. Like “Demonic Temptation,” The Devil Abducts the Witch of Berkeley deals with the devil’s intimidation of a woman, though in this case, the devil dispenses with seduction and, as the title suggests, more straightforwardly kidnaps a woman. This woman appears young, voluptuous, clearly in the prime of her life. The devil appears more clearly demonic, with a bestial visage, horns, and, again, talons for hands and feet. He spirits the woman away on a horse; for the time period, the intention of this depiction may be to juxtapose the earlier medieval image of a dashing knight rescuing a beautiful, innocent damsel. The devil, of course, is not kidnapping an innocent; rather, the title reminds the viewer of the fate that awaits a devious woman who has made a pact with Satan. Unlike the Molitor woodcuts, this depiction of the devil and witch display characteristics that are becoming key elements of witchcraft in

24 the early modern imagination. The witch’s bare breasts and strategic drape flaunt her nakedness and intimate a sexual relationship with the devil. She and the devil literally mount and ride a horse; woodcuts from a few years later will begin to depict certain animals as being particularly associated with devilry and witchcraft, but in this particular woodcut, the horse functions in this capacity. The naked witch’s hair is also loose and flying; a woman’s loose hair represented her loose morals, especially early in this period.

Fig 6

This is in contrast to the women depicted in the De lamiis woodcuts, whose hair (even in the case of the witch) was covered. The image of a covered head in and of itself does not necessarily imply innocence or morality. The facial features of the women and the demons in the De lamiis woodcuts are very similar and the covered head, taken together with her clothing, differentiates the woman as female; long, loose hair certainly could have been employed as a method of differentiation, as well, in addition to enhancing the concept of her inherent maleficum. A covered female head also implies that a woman is married, or at least old enough to be so, which suggests that she is capable of seducing others into the cult of witchcraft.

However, the witch of Berkeley does possess long, loose hair. To interpret this as showing the looseness of her morality works particularly well in the context of the Malleus Maleficarum. In

Part I of that treatise, Krämer reminds his ecclesiastical reader “…that since [women] are feebler both in mind and body, it is not surprising that they should come more under the spell of witchcraft…a logic vouched for by the logic of authorities, backed by various examples from the Scriptures.” (Kors & Peters, 120-121) The loose hair motif and its association with immorality would not have been lost on an early modern viewer, who, Lorenzi argues, would have had no problem understanding the explicit connection between female carnality and witchcraft presented by the woodcut.

Charles Zika presents a slightly different interpretation of this woodcut, which accompanied a version of the story of the witch of Berkeley that was published in the

Nuremberg Chronicle of the late 1400s.15 The story was first recounted in England in the twelfth century, and appeared at various times in the writings of other cultures. It holds that

“…a woman addicted to witchcraft and augury … sought to prevent the devil taking her

body when she knew her death was near. She asked her children to sew her corpse in a

stag’s skin, to place it in a stone coffin and to fasten the lid with lead and iron, bound

round with iron chains; she arranged to have local monks sing psalms and say masses

around her body for 50 days. But despite the precautions the devils broke through the

doors of the church, and the largest and most terrible of them burst the coffin’s chains

and stamped through its lid. He then abducted the body of the woman, riding off on a

15 The Nuremberg Chronicle: The Liber chronicarum, a universal history compiled from older and contemporary sources by the Nuremberg doctor, humanist, and bibliophile Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514), is one of the most densely illustrated and technically advanced works of early printing. It contains 1809 woodcuts produced from 645 blocks. (Source: The World Digital Library, http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4108/)

black horse, its back bristling with iron hooks, while the horrified onlookers continued to

hear the woman’s pitiable cries.” (Zika, 59)

That this story, and the accompanying contemporary woodcut, appeared in the influential

Nuremberg Chronicle supports the conjecture that ideas about witchcraft were solidifying during this period. Although the story was already centuries old by the time of its appearance in the Nuremberg Chronicle, its inclusion provided evidence that witches were associated with the devil. Viewers may or may not have known the story, and therefore may or may not have understood the allusion. Regardless of whether the viewer was familiar with the original story or no, the woodcut itself contained symbolic elements that were becoming regular tropes in early modern witchcraft depictions. The witch’s bare breasts and loose, flowing hair; the devil and witch riding away on a pack animal; the apparent pending flight: all these are details which would continue to inform visual representations of witches, in some cases well into the 19th century.

Late 1400s to early 1500s: trial documents

One aspect of witchcraft “lore” was not well represented in visual depictions from the years around 1500: the torture of witches. Interestingly, neither was it represented in the selection of trial transcripts which I investigate for this section. Later in the 16th century, trial transcripts from this region will provide evidence of torture: its existence, methods, and outcomes. In 1505, however, the trial scribe made no mention of torture. The trial record does indicate that Kaplan Johann Pürkel (court/ church scribe?) knew both the Malleus Maleficarum

27 and Formicarius.16 The Malleus Maleficarum contained an entire section devoted to the application of torture in the case of witchcraft accusations. Granted, this transcript contains trial records from only one town in one margrave in the Holy Roman Empire, and only deals with the trials of four women. However, the lack of evidence of any use of torture in the four transcripts (and with the foreknowledge that trials from this same area beginning the second half of the 16th century will show evidence of significant use of torture) suggests that torture was not yet considered a necessary (or perhaps, useful?) method of discerning guilt. As Kaplan

Pürkel was known to be familiar with the Malleus, including presumably its section regarding torture, it would be logical to assume that ideas about the role of torture in witch interrogations had not yet become definitive in the early modern consciousness. The lack of torture depictions in visual art supports this assumption. There are, however, depictions of witchcraft punishment.

One particularly grisly example of this came from a 1492 manuscript, illuminated by

Hans Baldung Grien, a former apprentice of Albrecht Dürer’s. Grien’s illumination, Witches being burnt at the stake on the orders of King Childeric, intended to provide an illustration for a historical event, much as the Witch of Berkeley woodcut, above. Like several others of the visual depictions discussed in this thesis, Witches being burnt referred to an event in the past, and one assumes that this was a visual instructional technique meant to emulate Christian parables. The witches in question appear to be quite young, still in the throes of adolescence.

They have loose, red hair, a common visual trope associated with sinfulness. The kindling around the witches’ legs creates a visual impression that refers to the Germanic myths of sirens

16 The Formicarius was a Viennese witchcraft treatise from the 14th century, written by Johannes Nider

28 and mermaids, beautiful women-creatures who use their beauty to lure men to their deaths.

Royalty is represented in what can only be construed as the figure of King Childeric, accompanied probably by his son and heir. They look on this scene of punishment and their gestures indicate a final denunciation of the women at the point of their death. The viewer almost feels the searing heat of the fire; the executioner turns his face in a protective stance, even as he stokes the fire. Witches being burnt provides a particularly poignant picture of witchcraft not least because, of the visual art discussed to this point, it is the only one in color.

It also depicts an interesting contrast. The witchcraft treatises discussed in this section are all of an ecclesiastical nature, implying that the discovery and punishment of witchcraft were primarily the domain of the church. This print, however, reminds the viewer that secular powers are equally invested in its obliteration.

Though the documents cited in this section, with the exception of the trial transcripts, precede 1500 by more than a decade, I posit that they heavily influence visual expressions of witchcraft made in the early years of the 16th century. The bull and the Malleus were definitive in their classification and description of witchcraft; De lamiis evidences the tensions that already existed vis-à-vis witchcraft and its area of concern. The details of the trials examined here show how deeply emerging ideas about witchcraft are beginning to embed in early modern social consciousness. Later in the 16th century two pivotal events will shift and deepen discourses regarding witchcraft. Martin Luther’s actions will begin the dual process of institutionalized Reformation and schism, and the Constitution Criminalis Carolina will be established as the new law in the Holy Roman Empire.

These images also foreshadow the century of particularly intense witch hunts and executions, known retrospectively as the “witch craze,” roughly the years of 1550-1650. During this time, some individual cities and communities developed intense paranoia regarding witches and their craft. With these points in mind, the next section will explore witch depictions from the late 1500s.

Late 1500s to early 1600s overview

In the last section, we focused on depictions of the devil in text and visual representations of witches and witchcraft in the late 1400s and early 1500s as central Europe and the Holy Roman Empire transitioned from the medieval into the Early Modern era. During this transitional period writers and artists depicted the predatory sexual nature of the devil, and focused on his exploitation of female lust to lure women into his sphere of influence and use them to wreak havoc on their communities. The devil retains his carnality throughout the early modern period, but as time passes, writers and artists refine their depictions and the devil becomes more nuanced. In the later years of the 1500s the intellectual elements of witchcraft become more important, and Satan becomes an instrument of melancholia. The concept of melancholia is not new at this time, nor is it novel to associate melancholia with witchcraft.

Many early demonological and witchcraft treatises discussed melancholia as a potential cause or effect of apostasy and devil-worship. Melancholia established the link between the “original sin” of seeking to know the world as God knows it and the pursuit of illicit knowledge. There existed a tension between ideas about licit and illicit knowledge, and these mirrored the

30 tension between traditional wisdom and the epistemological changes that were developing through the ideas of the Scientific Revolution:

Broadly speaking, intellectuals in medieval Europe recognized two forms of magic:

natural and demonic. Natural magic was not distinct from science, but rather a branch

of science. It was the science that dealt with “occult virtues” (or hidden powers) within

nature. Demonic magic was not distinct from religion, but rather a perversion of

religion. It was religion that turned away from God and toward demons for their help in

human affairs. (Kieckhefer 9)

Thus were intellectual methods associated with the pursuit of illicit knowledge considered heresy; consequently they were associated with Satan and witchcraft and it was easy for writers and artists to associate this type of intellectualism with the depressive nature of melancholia.

The growing association of witchcraft with intellectualism created a kind of separation between popular and elite ideas about witchcraft. Writers and other representatives of elite culture channel their energy into an exploration of the devil as the provider of illicit wisdom.

Associating the devil with knowledge is not new, but the boundaries of that knowledge are changing. Older concepts of the devil that showed hags causing hailstorms and killing livestock began to be seen by elites as provincial. That is not to say that witches ceased to be seen as agents of disruption as they had been earlier in this period. The trial transcripts later in this section are evidence that these types of accusations continued to be levied against witches; however, the association with intellectual aspects of witchcraft began to be fostered more

31 extensively than it had been prior to 1600. Scholars and theologians struggled with ideas about the universe and our place in it in ways that were never considered during the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the older, provincial aspects of witchcraft were still concerns in discourse.

Circumstances surrounding witch trials are changing, as well. A new law of the land impacted the way magistrates and bishops conducted trials, and confessional doctrines appeared to be determining the distribution and frequency of trials. The year 1600 marks, roughly, the midpoint of the early modern “witch craze.”

In this section, we will examine texts and visual art from the years around 1600 show how early modern ideas about the devil’s role vis-à-vis witchcraft and witches began to change.

The association between women and witchcraft ultimately traces its roots to the Garden of

Eden, Eve’s temptation by the serpent, and the subsequent potential of all women to continue to succumb to Satan’s temptation. The previous section looked exclusively at portrayals of women as witches for this very reason, but in this section we will consider the case of witchcraft against one of the most famous apostates in western European literature: Dr.

Faustus. We will also revisit the witch trials in Franconia to show evidence of changes in legal methods and outcomes. Finally, we will analyze visual texts to compare the depiction of the demonic in these various genres.

Late 1500s to early 1600s: Dr. Faustus

The story of Dr. Faustus has been reincarnated many times in European literature, but for this section, I worked with the original text from 1587. The Historia von D. Johann Fausten presents an interesting commentary on the nature of witchcraft. Overall, statistical analyses of

32 witch trials during the early modern period indicate that it was primarily women who were accused of, and punished for, witchcraft. However, witchcraft was not solely the domain of women, and the literary Faustus provides one example of the male witch. Faustus is a frustrated intellectual, a learned homo novis who posesses an insatiable Curiositas about the world and desires answers to all his questions. Faustus’ intellectual nature and natural curiosity bring him to a point of Melancholia, a depressive mental condition believed to afflict intellectuals and scholars during this period. “The devil can produce the symptoms of distraction, but this needs to be subtly differentiated from madness itself…The boundary between the darkness of the soul and the darkness of the mind was widely acknowledged to be doubtful.” (Hodgkin 229) Although Katharine Hodgkin is describing the mental disturbances of an early modern English woman accused of witchcraft, but assumed now to be suffering from mental illness, hers is an excellent way of explaining the susceptibility Faustus had to the devil’s seductions of knowledge.

This literary Faustus presents an interesting case of witchcraft, because he plays with tropes about the devil and witches that were well understood in the late 1500s at the time of the chapbook’s publishing. First and foremost, the author disrupts the connection of women to witchcraft. Not only is Faustus not a woman, he is not old or suffering apparently from any sort of physical deformation. Retrospectively we can interpret that witchcraft charges were often levied against women (sometimes men) who were marginalized within their communities; witchcraft charges have been interpreted by scholars as being one method by which villagers might make sense of an otherwise difficult neighbor. Alternatively, it could be because of the witchcraft accusations that a member of the community was marginalized. In the case of

Faustus, however, although he is disliked by his classmates for his vanity,17 he does not appear to be otherwise marginalized. In fact, he engages in what seems to be an authentic way with his community, adopting the title of “physician…for respectability” (Letters from the Dust

Bowl).

The second trope the author flouts is the method through which the witch engages in relationship with the devil. Trial records and other text evidence show that the devil normally instigates the master-servant relationship. Women relate stories of the devil assuming human form and seducing them, usually in a place and/or manner that prevents detection; it is as a result of this seduction that the woman enters the devil’s service.18 Faustus, however, conjures the devil and, in his own mind at least, rules over the devil, subverting the typical bond altogether. One can certainly interpret this subversion as existing only in the mind of Faustus, that the devil plays along with Faustus to maintain possession of Faust’s soul, but without ever giving Faustus real power in the relationship.

Finally the author of Faustus subverts the nature of the sexual relationship of the devil to the witch. The significant discrepancies between the numbers of men versus the numbers of women who were accused of, tried for, and executed for, witchcraft may owe to the sexual relationship that was assumed to exist between the devil and the witch. In the early-modern imagination, the devil assumes a masculine identity, no matter the form he takes at any given time. The lack of accounts of sexual intercourse between men and the devil allow for the

17 This could also be interpreted as the “sour grapes” response of jealous, underperforming classmates. In either case, the larger point is that Faustus suffers from the sin of vanity, and from this develops his apostasy. 18 In some trial records and narrative accounts, a “witch” will recall youthful liaisons, and interpret these indiscretions under torture as being liaisons with a transfigured demon. See Thomas Robisheaux’s The Last Witch of Langeburg for Anna Schmieg’s confession of this nature.

34 interpretation that early modern Europeans could not conceive of homoeroticism in this context. Faustus’ author deals with this problem in a way that a few other sources do. Lesser devils assume the form of irresistible human women to satisfy Faustus’ lusts. Unknowingly,

Faustus, in his copulation with these “women” seals his pact with the devil.

Fig. 7

The symbols of witchcraft are not confined to the Faustus text. Woodcuts that were printed with the original version also offer intriguing evidence which points to Faustus’ witch nature, as well as offering visual cues of “typical” witchcraft. A woodcut that appeared in Part II

(Fig. 7) shows Faustus standing within the boundaries of a witch’s circle, a silhouetted black form in the background. (Letters from the Dust Bowl) The circle was an obvious commentary on the illicit nature of his nighttime activity, and the black form in the background has typical devil characteristics: horns, a serpentine tail, and angular, bestial limbs. Together, the symbols imply the conjuring of a hellish spirit. The woodcut that accompanied the chapter of the

Munich wedding shows Faustus and other beings flying through the air. (Letters from the Dust

Bowl) Flight of this sort was so unnatural as to be indisputable evidence of witchcraft. Many of the earliest associations with witches, and one that continued to dominate early-modern imagination, was the concept of weather magic. The chapter that deals with the Christmas feast at Faustus’ home, along with its woodcut (Fig. 8), present an episode of weather magic:

Faustus bewitches his garden to be sunny and green in the middle of a snowy Christmas.

Interestingly, Faustus invokes his benign weather magic out of a vain desire to show off his ability; in contrast, weather magic was typically associated with crop infertility and famine, and was decidedly not benign in the early-modern imagination.

Fig. 8

Because Faustus’ witch pact with the devil sprang from an overdeveloped intellectual

Curiositas, one can interpret Faust as melancholic. Faustus was ruled by his ardent desire to know, to be privy to special knowledge outside the realm of the expected and the accepted.

The woodcut which accompanied the Dispuatio concerning Hell (Fig. 9) depicts this Melancholia very clearly. (Letters from the Dust Bowl)

Fig. 9

Faustus sits behind a desk, the accoutrements of learning and study around him, and in his depressive state, he ignores these tools of his desire. Instead, he inclines his head, resting it on his hand, while the devil stands near Faustus, seeming from his position to offer Faustus

36 instruction. Faustus’ despair could not be more palpable, however. He is the very incarnation of the early modern concept of Melancholia, and the devil, whom Faustus has summoned to assuage his misery, appears only to deepen it. The message is clear: there are limits to learning and knowledge one should not seek. The Faustian conceptualization of Melancholia, and its relationship to the devil, is not unique in this period; the woodcuts serve both to illustrate the text and perform an instructive function.

A discussion of the relationship between witchcraft and melancholia would be lacking without referencing Johann Weyer, who based his skepticism regarding witchcraft, in part, on his interpretation of melancholia and of witchcraft as a form of knowledge seeking. Weyer characterized the “person [who is] more vulnerable to the demons’ art and illusions” as one who has “such a temperament or who is so moved by external or internal causes…that as a result of specious inducements he will readily present himself as a suitable instrument of the demon’s will. Melancholics are of this sort, as are” other distressed persons. (Levack 281) I have not come across documentary evidence in the trials I have researched that indicate any connection between accused witches and dabblings in astrology or alchemy; however, while I do not conjecture that a lack of evidence indicates that witchcraft was never associated with this type of illicit knowledge, I will suggest that witchcraft is beginning to be overtly connected to the obtaining of special knowledge. The idea that witches seek wisdom outside of acceptable social parameters is not new; in the transitional period between the medieval and early modern, however, the church concerned itself more with issues related to subversion of religious and social norms. By 1600, documentary evidence exists that suggests the ways people conceptualize knowledge are widening.

Influenced by the German skeptics, Reginald Scot, in his treatise Credulity and

Witchcraft (1584), responded to the English “witch craze” of the late 1500s with disbelief regarding the efficacy of torture and execution, going so far as to express doubt regarding the established biblical origin of witchcraft beliefs. Although Scot was English, his critique of witchcraft beliefs was in part a critique of the arguments made by such witch hunters as Jean

Bodin, as well as a support of the skepticism expressed by Weyer and others. In the next section, we will see that many of Friedrich Spee’s arguments reflected similar logic and convictions as Scot’s; therefore it makes sense to see their documents as occupying a sort of continuum of skepticism.

Late 1500s to early 1600s: witch trials

Trial records from around 1600 do not indicate social engagement in skepticism, though the Franconian witch trials from this time do indicate a contrast to the trials from the early years of the 16th century. In addition to the four trials in Schwabach discussed in the first section, transcripts show an additional trial in Schwabach (1535), as well as an earlier trial in

Feuchtwangen (1524). In the Feuchtwangen case, authorities arrested both a woman and the priest who accused her of witchcraft; the woman was acquitted and the priest forced to pay a fine for accusing her of witchcraft. The Schwabach trial ended with the witch in pillory, but allowed to live. Within the context of these particular early sixteenth century trials, women were accused of engaging in various behaviors with devils, including “marriage”, nighttime flying, attending the witches’ Sabbath, and causing sickness to people and animals. There were

38 two particularly remarkable details in these early trials: one, the nature of the accusations; and, two, the lack of executions.

The nature of the accusations gives the reader insight into the relationship between the devil and the witch in the early modern imagination. Witches engaged in rites with the devil that, at their core, perverted the meanings of Church rituals. For example, Satan baptized witches at the Sabbath as a symbol of their apostasy; naming this unholy gathering a Sabbath itself lampoons the holy Sabbath. People believed that a witch’s renunciation of Christ and the acceptance of Satan as a Savior constituted a contract sealed via an act of sexual intercourse with Satan or one of his demon horde. It is noteworthy that, in the course of these six trials, only one accused woman was actually executed as a result of a guilty witchcraft verdict. In one other case, non-lethal punishment was administered; in the Feuchtwangen case described earlier, the court fined the priest for falsely accusing a woman of witchcraft. The charges against the remaining four women were dismissed. This was remarkable because as the sixteenth century progressed, the pace of the trials picked up exponentially, the accusations became more sinister, and the likelihood of acquittal plummeted. In retrospect, this ratcheting up of accusations and trials was simultaneous with the mid-century start of the so-called “witch craze,” a time during which thousands of women and men from across southwestern Germany faced trial and execution for witchcraft.

The Franconian trial records show the continuing pervasiveness of transitional ideas about witchcraft, such as those found in De lamis and Malleus Maleficarum. While representations, such as Faustus, showed that at least some literary discourse about witchcraft

39 connected Satan to the sin of intellectual hubris, trial records show that popular culture, at least at the level of magistrates and local church officials, continued to harbor a late medieval view about witchcraft. Beginning in the 1550s, trial records suddenly referred to “Kindsmord”19 as an accusation against witches. In 1552, for example, a housewife and her mother in

Crailshaim were arrested, accused of infanticide and public expressions of witchcraft.

(Kleinöder-Strobel 152) Separately, in Heilsbronn/ Müncherlbach, authorities accused a woman of infanticide.20 (Kleefeld, Gräser and Stepper 424; Kleinöder-Strobel 153) One of the

Crailshaim witches was assumed to have been burned; evidence regarding the punishment of the other two accused child-murderesses has been lost. Interestingly, the scribe indicated no evidence as to the women’s direct relationship to the devil, though the transcripts showed that the interrogation process included questions related to typical behaviors: flights to the Sabbath, copulation with devils, baptism at the hand of the devil, and various subversions of Christian rituals. Additionally, the scribe referenced Folter21 as a method of interrogation within individual trials. There were approximately eighty-five documented witch interrogations/ trials in the territory of Ansbach between 1505 and 1600; eighty of these took place between 1552 and 1600, with 1582 and the 1590s being the most active years. Of these, thirty-six directly indicated the use of torture. Interestingly, no torture was indicated in the records of trials that occurred after 1600. (Kleefeld, Gräser and Stepper 424-433)

There was a practical reason for the increase in the numbers of trials and the increase in the use of torture as part of the interrogation process, but there were also strong social

19 Kindermord, infanticide 20 For the complete transcript, including all details related to the specific charges of infanticide and public expression of witchcraft, see Kleefeld, Gräser, and Stepper, pg. 152-154. 21 torture

40 concerns that supported these increases. In 1532 Emperor Charles V adopted a new legal code, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina,22 which after that time served as the law of the land in the

Holy Roman Empire. Since the 1400s the Catholic Church had considered witchcraft a heresy; now witchcraft ranked among the severest of secular crimes as well. In contrast to the former legal standard, whereby an accuser faced charges and penalties if the person accused of witchcraft was found innocent, witchcraft had become a crime against the community, territory, and Emperor.23 The new law code also required a confession for a proper guilty verdict, although this idea did not originate in the Carolina. Part I of the Malleus Maleficarum referred to the need for confession.24 At this time people believed that truth could manifest itself physiologically, and that the devil exerted a psychological force on the witch that prevented her from truthfully responding during an interrogation. Torture was an effective way of releasing the devil’s hold on the accused’s body to “allow” her to confess and, in the process, save her soul. It was incumbent upon the interrogator to “encourage” a witch by whatever means necessary; ergo, torture was an effective method of interrogation. These methods corresponded to the early modern belief in witchcraft.

Late 1500s to early 1600s: art and visual representations

While there were broadsheets, emblems, and other prints, such as those included in editions of Fausus, which reflect some elements of evolving beliefs about witchcraft, much print

22 Explanation here of Carolina 23 Witchcraft remained a concern within the Catholic Church; the Carolina allowed, however, for a certain level of consistency in the management of trials, a problem that Charles V faced during a time of growing confessional divisions within the Empire, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. 24 “For common justice demands that a witch should not be condemned to death unless she is convicted by her own confession.” Malleus Maleficarum, part I, question XIII; Levack, 123.

41 art from around 1600 continued to reflect traditional sensibilities about witchcraft. These sensibilities remained rooted in the earlier traditions of witch-lore as it was described in the

Malleus Maleficarum and De lamiis. There was, however, a concurrent expression of intellectual ideas about witchcraft, which at this time increasingly reflected skepticism. I do not suggest that the established connections between the devil and witchcraft had disappeared; rather, layers of interpretation began developing and a richer culture of witchcraft depictions emerged. Dutch artist Jacques de Gheyn II, for example, produced several pieces inspired by witches and witchcraft, the thematic elements of which were tempered by his own training in natural science and informed by the dominant politico-religious sensibilities of the Dutch

Republic.

Fig. 10

One such painting, Witches’ Sabbath (Fig. 10), contained tropes recognizable as late medieval conceptualizations of witchcraft. At the center of the drawing is a cauldron, bubbling and steaming, the ultimate lingering symbol of witchcraft. The viewer initially presumes the

42 cauldron to be heated by fire, but a closer inspection of the ground beneath the cauldron shows a space littered with bones and bone fragments, while the platter above the cauldron holds sinister looking ingredients which are also reminiscent of body parts. The bones and loose body parts signify two distinct early-modern popular beliefs regarding witches: first, that they cannibalized humans, particularly unbaptized babies and fresh corpses; second, that they cooked human remains together with other sinister ingredients, to prepare a salve, which they applied to their bodies to enable flight. De Gheyn painted a cat in the bottom corner of this scene, to reference the concept of animal familiars; cats were also considered generally untrustworthy animals. The women themselves, barely discernable as individuals, are undoubtedly witches. In the early 1500s witches were often portrayed with loose hair and sagging breasts to identify them as hags and set them apart from young, maternal women; by the time de Gheyn created this piece, these physical characteristics have developed into regular tropes in witch art.

De Gheyn intentionally wanted the viewer to identify these women as stereotypical hags, the traditional witch “type”: aged, past fertility, motivated by an evil desire to deny others the youth and vigor the witch no longer has. What is interesting about this work is the lack of a specified devil figure. All evil and otherworldliness emanates from the bent and wizened crones; the devil, so to speak, was in the details. “[De Gheyn’s] witchcraft images [reveal] a profoundly naturalistic artist paradoxically captivated by the fantastic and the grotesque.”

(Hults 148) We must remember that de Gheyn lived, was educated, and worked in the Dutch

Republic, an area of Europe which never experienced a “witch craze” on the scale of southern

Germany; in fact, witch trials disappeared from the Dutch Republic altogether after 1600. De

Gheyn was well-connected with Dutch humanists in the Erasmian tradition, and was solidly engaged in scholarly elite culture. Hults believes that de Gheyn was familiar with contemporary skeptical writings, particularly Reginald Scot and Johann Weyer. (145) Charles Zika interprets the lack of a devil figure in de Gheyn’s art as reflecting a return to pre-Christian myth and lore, particularly that of the Furies and Saturn. (The Appearance of Witchcraft, 164 and 231) Zika agrees that the bones symbolize cannibalism, but he argues this act as showing witches as the inheritors of Saturn, not Satan. Zika’s interpretation suggests that de Gheyn’s piece provides evidence of a shift in the discourse of witchcraft. The viewers of Witches’ Sabbath may have been interested in conceiving of witchcraft from its earlier classical roots, rather than as a sin in the Christian church.

Another important expression of witchcraft during these years comes from Nikolaus

Manuel Deutsch. His drawing Old Witch (Fig. 11), attributed to the early sixteenth century, functions almost as a photograph of one concept of witchcraft. Deutsch’s Old Witch is clearly just that: old. She stands naked before the viewer, her breasts sagging and flaccid, with loose skin and scraggy arms and legs, the effect of which Deutsch highlighted with white pencil strokes. The details that stand out most in this drawing are the pose of the witch’s body and the qualities of her hair. She stands with her hip to the side, one hand resting on it, with a pseudo-seductive look on her face, a “contrapossto stance.” (Hults 19) This position suggests at once the sexual deviance ascribed to the hag-witch, but her demon lover is not to be seen in this picture. She lusts, but no longer needs the presence of the devil to fulfill her carnality.

Witches were forced to strip as part of the interrogation process, an act that normally resulted in shame and fear, but this Old Witch shows neither.

Fig. 11

Most importantly are the characteristics of her hair. As is typical of witch portrayals of this period, her hair is loose and flying. The texture, though, hearkens back to the pre-Christian myths that inspired the earliest of European Christian ideas about witchcraft. This Old Witch is a Medusa figure; the long, loose hair appears wild and serpentine in its movement and thickness, and frames the prematurely aged, once beautiful face. This Medusa interpretation is not without basis. Zika’s analysis of Deutsch’s art shows a strong correlation to mythological themes; Zika further connects the mythological tropes to a “conflation of physical and moral death and its representation through” a naked figure. (The Appearance of Witchcraft, 112-113)

Zika’s analysis in this case refers to Deutsch’s drawing A Witch Bearing Manuel’s Skull through the Air (1513) and the witch’s likeness to Venus, but it establishes mythology as a source of visual inspiration for Deutsch, and clarifies the lack of a devil in this piece. The serpentine

45 nature of her hair also alludes to the Garden of Eden. The Old Witch represents both Eve, the mother of mankind and the progenitor of mankind’s sinful nature, and the serpent, the animal incarnation of Satan. Deutsch’s Old Witch could be argued to express nearly every major stylistic symbol of witchcraft up to this point in the early modern period, while its absence of a specified devil prefigures later representations of the witch.

Late 1600s to early 1700s: overview

In considering the philosophical changes that began to manifest in these later years of the early modern period, this section will deal with witchcraft texts and trial records from the later years of the seventeenth century, as well as literary works, most notably excerpts from

Grimmelshausen’s Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, and Johannes Praetorius’ Blocksberg stories and woodcuts. It is important to note that witchcraft discourse regarded these writings alongside the rich selection of texts from previous centuries. Ideas about witchcraft, Satan, and licit versus illicit knowledge were not new in 1700; rather they evolved and developed out of the tapestry of ideas that informed witchcraft beliefs since the 1400s, and even before.

Before looking at the state of witchcraft ideas around 1700, it is useful to consider the preceding two centuries to provide an appropriate context for this section of the discussion. By roughly 1600 tension was growing between the avowed witch investigators and the skeptics.

Skepticism regarding witchcraft did not originate in 1600, nor could it be considered an early modern phenomenon. However, it was a point of view that became more widely expressed after 1500 and by 1600 had developed as a vigorous counterargument to lingering medieval ideas about witchcraft. By 1700, this skepticism continued to develop alongside the intellectual

46 ideas of the Scientific Revolution; coupled with the disillusionment felt by many in the wake of the Thirty Years War, witchcraft skepticism began to overtake older, conservative views, at least among the educated elite. The old views were not yet dead, even as late as 1700; in fact, relatively isolated witch trials and executions would continue to take place into the nineteenth century in Europe, though the frequency of trials and executions had diminished significantly by the early 1700s.

On the other hand, later editions of both Malleus Maleficarum and De lamiis continued to be published until the end of the seventeenth century, and recent editions of both were in circulation in 1700. Consequently, I will not argue that belief in witchcraft or socio-political concerns about it had ceased to exist. However, I do argue that the substance of these concerns had shifted by 1700, and discourses about witchcraft were skewed toward the skeptical, if not outright disbelief. This shift was related in part to the occurrence of the Thirty

Years War, when, rather obviously, central European powers had far more pressing concerns than witchcraft. The years at the end of the seventeenth century into the beginning of the eighteenth in Europe marked a time of transition. While these years are still considered retrospectively to be part of the early modern period, there existed scholarly and philosophical movements that ushered in the modern era.

Late 1600s to early 1700s: texts and documents

Perhaps one of the most important skeptical writings by a German in the seventeenth century was Frederick Spee’s criticism of witch trials. He wrote his Cautio Criminalis25 in

25 Translated by Brian Levack as “A Condemnation of Torture”; see (The Witchcraft Sourcebook, Levack)

47 response to his experiences as a witch interrogator during the 1620s. Spee felt an enormous sense of futility as a result of these interrogations, and questioned whether the German princes and judges who oversaw the trials “had sinned in their treatment of witches.” (Kors and Peters

351) Spee argued that the use of torture created a judicial situation lacking legitimate due process, in which all accused individuals would ultimately be found guilty. Spee criticized in particular the obvious impropriety of those responsible for demanding and carrying out the trials. For example, he questioned the haste with which trials were expected to be planned and carried out, implying that such haste was in the selfish interest of the prince, rather than in the interest of real judgment. Spee alluded to this concern when he argued that “[i]n Germany it is a serious matter to offend the princes and not obey them immediately. Most people, even clergymen, excessively approve of almost everything as long as it pleases the prince[…]Therefore the judges finally accede to the princes’ will and at least find some way to begin the trials.” (Levack 147) Spee did not allow the will of the German princes to mitigate the culpability of accusers and interrogators; however, he questioned the likelihood of justice within a system that provided financial compensation to judges “per head for each witch burned, besides the fees and assessments which he is allowed to extort at will from the peasants” declaring that “zeal for justice is no whit diminished by the prospect for gain.” (Kors and Peters 352) He further decried the disproportionate number of impoverished and marginalized individuals who were tried for witchcraft, lamenting that the poor were easy prey for this corrupt judicial process, “that it may seem that no opportunity of defense has been

48 given to Gaia26, she is brought out and the proofs are first read before her and examined.” (Kors and Peters 354)

Spee’s critcisms were important, not only because they shed light on the realities of these trials from the perspective of a former interrogator, but also because they expressed some of the main characteristics of early modern skepticism. Spee was a Jesuit priest, he believed in Satan and Satan’s ability to delude humans, drawing them away from God and into apostasy. He also believed in witchcraft and the existence of witches. He was skeptical, however, of the magnitude and scope of witchcraft, and he focused his “wrath” on criticizing

“the way in which trials were conducted”; Levack classifies Spee as a judicial skeptic for this reason. (Levack 146) While Spee was by no means the only skeptic, nor the only Catholic skeptic, Caution Criminalis was translated into every European language and enjoyed a much wider audience than many other skeptical writings, which meant that its arguments were more widely disseminated throughout Europe. Levack contends that its publication “contributed to a reduction in the intensity of witchcraft prosecutions in Germany.” (Levack 145)

Dutch Calvinist pastor Balthasar Bekker suggested in his own tract, The Enchanted

World, that, while Satan was real, God’s power rendered Satan powerless. Like the medieval scholastics, Bekker based his argument on scripture; unlike those authors, Bekker’s interpretation treated the Devil as a symbol of evil, rather than as a demonic being with powers of evil. In contrast, Bekker posited that the potential for evil resides within the human soul.

26 Spee’s generic name for the accused, used as “Jane Doe” would be today.

We then having taken off the imaginary spirits, I come to those which we certainly know

to exist, that is, our souls that are a part of ourselves and which by consequence are

better known to us by our own experience. (Levack 315)

I limit my explanation to the exclusion of the Devil, without seeking to deny, by virtue of

this, any kind of Magic, if one wants to give that name to it…[b]ut those who preserve

the ordinary meaning (of magic, or witchcraft) make use of this expedient: they do not

deny that many things attributed to the Devil occur following the proper but secret

course of nature, or occur from the trickery of men, but deny that it follows from this

that they are all of the same order. (Kors and Peters 373-374)

Bekker’s critique was important because he based his arguments on biblical texts in the

Christian, if Protestant, tradition. It is important to note that early modern skepticism rarely went so far as to express disbelief in witchcraft or in Satan, although Baruch Spinoza27 rather famously (or in his own time, infamously) wrote a tract arguing against the existence of the devil and denying, by extension, the existence of witchcraft. I found no evidence to suggest that Spinoza’s viewpoint gained widespread support during his lifetime, but this type of radical skepticism—considered by some in the early modern period to be heresy—was voiced at this time. While Bekker’s arguments were slightly less radical than Spinoza’s, both men’s ideas

“prepar[ed] the conceptual and intellectual path for a complete renunciation of the demonological beliefs that had stood the tragic test of time for centuries.” (Levack 369)

27 An excommunicated Dutch Jew, he is also known by the name Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677). Excerpts of his tract can be found both in Kors & Peters’ documentary collection Witchcraft in Europe 1100-1700 and in Levack’s Witchcraft Sourcebook.

The ideas of Spinoza and Bekker did not dominate the end of the early-modern period.

Even the skeptical beliefs of Spee, Weyer, and others did not deny the corporeal existence of evil in the form of Satan. The medieval ideology and beliefs represented in treatises such as the

Malleus Maleficarum continued to exist side-by-side with these growing movements of incredulity in a sort of transitional tension. The dichotomy between visual and textual expressions of, and social responses to, witchcraft that began to be expressed around 1600 was deepening. In the meantime, witchcraft continues to be an established component of early- modern reality.

Late 1600s to early 1700s: art and visual depictions

Even in the face of increasing, and increasingly radical, skeptical debate among intellectuals, there remained strong traditional belief in witchcraft. A broadsheet printed in

1669 by Elias Wellhöfer of Augsburg presented the trial of a witch, Anna, also of Augsburg (Fig.

12). The broadsheet combined images of Anna’s alleged crimes, coupled with images of her trial and execution; the text at the bottom of the broadsheet described her crimes and the trial, and contained a key to clarify the content of the images. The broadsheet provided information to both the educated and uneducated members of society. Unquestionably, the content and symbolism within the images would have been adequate on their own not only to provide the viewer with information about the trial, but also to instruct the viewer against the dangers of witchcraft. This broadsheet was not an anomaly; others like it were in circulation, and its very existence impresses upon us that concerns about witchcraft were still very much alive. The accompanying text served two purposes: one, it intellectualized the message of the broadsheet,

51 allowing the broadsheet to serve as propaganda for literate individuals; two, it served to a bridge the divide between the literate and illiterate.

Fig. 12

The year 1669 also saw the publication of Johannes Praetorius’ Blockes-Berges

Verrichtung, a collection of narrations and images of witchcraft; the title refers to Brocken, the highest mountain in northern Germany and the presumed location of the Walpurgisnacht witches’ Sabbath, as Praetorius himself describes in Die Sage vom Blocksberg:

Der Blocksberg oder Brocken ist ein hoher Berg in Thüringen und wird alleszeit bis auf 16

Meilen Weges ringsherum gesehen. Dieser ist sehr berühmt in ganz Deutschland wegen

der Hexen und Unholden, die da alljährlich in der Walpurgisnacht oder den ersten Mai

ihren Konvent und Hof halten sollen, von fernen Orten dort zusammenkommen, mit

ihren Teufeln dort buhlen, die Nacht zubringen mit Spielen, Zechen und Tanzen, wie aus

ihren Aussagen kundbar.28 ( (Praetorius 19)

Accompanying the text were many woodcut images.29 Together the text and images expressed and reinforced traditional beliefs about witches and witchcraft; the allusion to Brocken functioned as a shibboleth to readers and viewers. This image-text combination served, as did the broadsheet described above, both literate and lliterate viewers/readers.

Moreover, both works’ texts and images established a sort of snapshot of ideas about

Satan vis-à-vis witchcraft. In the section of the broadsheet which depicted the Satanic rituals of witchcraft, the demons are presented alongside Anna and her sister-witches in such a way as to be construed as co-equals with the women. Neither the witch nor the Satan figures dominate,

28 “The Brocken is a high peak in Thüringen, that can be seen from a distance of 16 miles in all directions. This peak is famous in all of Germany for its association with witches, who arrive from distant locations to meet there annually on the eve of May 1 to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, to copulate with their devils, and spend the night carousing and dancing, as they declare to do.” (translation by the author) 29 The edition I cite also contains images from previous centuries, some of which had been published in Molitor’s De lamiis.

53 suggesting that Wellhöfer, in any case, did not impugn the domination of satanic influence over witchcraft; rather, the broadsheet presented the viewer with a moral instruction against engagement with witchcraft. Wellhöfer, or his patron, can be presumed to have had a didactic intention with this broadsheet, in addition to its apparent newsworthy and entertainment values.

Fig. 13

The frontispiece that originally accompanied the Blocksberg book (Fig. 13) symbolized the satanic-demonic nature of witchcraft similarly. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the figure of

Satan in the upper third of the artwork, and to the goat30 directly in the center. This indicated the centrality of Satan to witchcraft, but his size in comparison to the witches indicated his shared, not dominant, culpability in the witches’ sinfulness. Satan was still relevant, the leader and most important member of the witch-cult. These visual depictions represented his waning dominance, however.

30 The goat was a typical symbol of Satan and the foolishness of sin. The goat’s horns were the inspiration for the Narrenkappe; a goat’s horns also served as symbols for the cuckolded husband. Additionally, the goat frequently served as the witch’s animal mount during her flight to the Sabbath.

Late 1600s to early 1700s: Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus

Grimmelshausen’s novel, Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, also reflected contemporary beliefs about witchcraft and the devil. The character of Simplicissimus experienced the world of early modern Germany in a very unique way. He lived within his society, but without being corrupted by its mores or ethics. Therefore he was able to experience the major events of that time as both a participant and an unbiased observer.

While his name is often translated as being related to the word “simpleton,” I find it more appropriate to think of him as being “simplified,” in the sense that he engaged in his culture without prejudice or self-consciousness. Simplicissimus was not a work that could be classified as being part of a witchcraft genre. There is no compelling reason to interpret this, the first

German novel, as intentionally expressing beliefs about witchcraft; however, there were scenes that incorporated witches, and Grimmelshausen’s treatment of these scenes expressed one early modern viewpoint about witches.

Unlike the author of Faustus, Grimmmelshausen did not deal with metaphysical concepts of licit and illicit knowledge, or of Satanic influences as the driving plot force of the novel, although certain scenes did deal at least somewhat with these notions. In Book II,

Chapter xvii, Grimmelshausen posited Simplicissimus within situations in which he performed acts of satanicm and devilry, without understanding what he was doing. As a first person narrator, Simplicissimus perceived himself to be frightening to the people he encountered who

“[sind] aber alleszeit vor mir geflohen, nicht weiß ich, wars die [Ursache], daß sie ohnedas durch

55 den Krieg scheu gemacht, verjagt.”31 (Grimmelshausen 180) He engaged in behavior that, by one less ignorant than he, would have been known to be associated with Satan. For example, upon encountering a pair of woodcutters, Simplicissimus attempted to provide them with gold in exchange for assistance and food. Simplicissimus was too naïve to understand, but his early modern readers would have believed, or at least been aware of the lore, that the devil would hide himself, then appear to lone individuals, offering them false promises of gold and riches to join him. By offering the woodcutters gold coins, in the woods, Simplicissimus mistakenly presented himself as a demon to these men, while Grimmelshausen may be construed to be satirizing the concept that Satan would simply hang around the woods, pretending to hand people money.

Later in the scene, after Grimmelshausen has made a few tongue-in –cheek remarks about “guten Leuten,” and “verbotenes Mittel”32 (Grimmelshausen 180-181), Simplicissimus entered a kitchen where he observed a group of women rubbing salve on themselves and flying out the window on various pieces of kitchen equipment. This was an obvious reference to witch flight, which in the late 1600s (the time of the novel’s printing) was one of the primary witch habits questioned by the skeptics. Perplexed because he knew nothing of witches or witchcraft, Simplicissimus sets himself on a bench, and is suddenly carried off to the witches’ gathering himself.

31 “at all times fled from me. I know not if the cause was that they were by reason of the war turned so timid and were so hunted” All Grimmelshausen translations taken from the Gutenberg online library, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33858/33858-h/33858-h.htm (URL address at which The adventurous Simplicissimus can be found.) 32 Honest folk; forbidden tricks; see footnote 28, above.

Ich verwundert mich schröcklich und empfand ein großes Grausen; weil ich aber größerer

Erschröcklichkeiten gewohnt war, zumal mein Lebtag von den Unholden weder gelesen

noch gehört hatte, achtet ichs nicht sonderlich, vornehmlich weil alles so still hergieng,

sondern verfügte mich, nachdem alles darvongefahren war, auch in die Stub, bedachte,

was ich mitnemmen, und wo ich solches suchen wollte, und setzte mich in solchen

Gedanken auf einen Bank schrittlings nieder. Ich war aber kaum aufgesessen, da fuhr

ich samt der Bank gleichsam augenblicklich zum Fenster hinaus und ließ mein Ranzen

und Feurrohr, so ich von mir gelegt hatte, vor den Schmierberlohn und so künstliche

Salbe dahinden.33 (Grimmelshausen 181-182)

After being inadvertently involved in witchcraft, Simplicissimus later (in Book II, chapter xxx) was mistaken for the devil by a priest. This circumstance turned into a moment of situational immorality, when, out of hunger and want, Simplicissimus artlessly took advantage of his mistaken identity to procure bread and bacon for himself and fellow hiding soldiers.

[Der Pfarrer] selbsten aber war mit dem Chorrock bewaffnet, samt den Stollen, und hatte

den Sprengel in der einen und ein Buch in der andern Hand; aus demselben fienge er an

mich zu exorzieren, frangende: Wer ich seie und was ich das zu schaffen hätte: Weil er

mich dann nun vor den Teufel selbst hielte, so gedachte ich, es wäre billich, daß ich auch

wie der Teufel täte, daß ich mich mit Lügen behülfe, antwortet derowegen: „Ich bin der

33 “At this I was horribly amazed, and felt great terror; yet, as being accustomed to greater horrors, and, moreover, in my whole life having never heard nor read of witches, I thought not much of this, and that chiefly because 'twas all so done in such stillness; but when all were gone I betook myself also to the living-room, and devising what I could take with me and where to find it, in such meditation sat me down straddle-wise upon a bench; whereon I had hardly sat down when I and the bench together flew straight out of the window, and left my gun and knapsack, which I had laid aside, as pay for that magical ointment.” For source, please see footnote 28, above.

Teufel und will dir und deiner Köchin die Häls umdrehen!“ Er fuhr mit seinem Exorcismo

weiter fort und hielte mir vor, daß ich weder mit ihm noch seiner Köchin nichts zu

schaffen hätte, hieße mich auch mit der allerhöchsten Beschwörung wieder hinfahren,

wo ich herkommen wäre; ich aber antwortet mit ganz förchterlicher Stimm, daß solches

unmüglich seie, wenn ich schon gern wollte. Indessen hatte Springinsfeld, der ein

abgefeumter Erzvogel war und kein Latein verstunde, seine seltsame Tausendhändel auf

dem Dach; dann da er hörete, um welche Zeit es in der Küchen war, daß ich mich

nämlich vor den Teufel ausgab, mich auch der Geistliche also hielte, wixte er wie eine

Eul, bellete wie ein Hund, wieherte wie ein Pferd, plehckte wie ein Geißbock, schriee wie

ein Esel und ließ e sich bald durch den Kamin herunder hören wie ein Haufen Katzen, die

im Hornung rammeln...“34 (Grimmelshausen 243)

This scene with the devil, as the scene with the witches, provides us with an insight into the mind of the early-modern reader. While this scene was humorous, it also indicated popular ideas about the devil; namely, that he existed and could assume corporeal form; secondly, that he could appear to anyone, even a holy man; and third, that he consorted with, and made use of, animals. Grimmelshausen did not connect this scene to the other, except that both were

34 , he himself being vested in his surplice and stole, with the sprinkler in one hand and a book in the other, out of which he began to exorcise me and to ask who I was and what I did there. So as he took me to be the devil, I thought 'twas but fair I should play the devil's part as the Father of Lies, and so answered, "I am the Devil, and will wring thy neck and thy cook's too." Yet he went on with his conjuring and bade me take note I had no concern with him nor his cook; yea, and commanded me under the most solemn adjuration that I should depart to the place whence I had come. To which I answered with a horrible voice, that 'twas impossible even if I would. Meanwhile my comrade on the roof, which was an arch-rogue and knew his Latin well, had his part to play: for when he heard what time of day 'twas in the kitchen, he hooted like an owl, he barked like a dog, he neighed like a horse, he bleated like a goat, he brayed like an ass, and made himself heard down the chimney like a whole crew of cats bucking in February, and then again like a clucking hen: For translation source, see footnote 28, above.

58 contained in Book II of the series, but their content reflected a sense of the reality of the supernatural to early-modern Europeans.

Because we deal with Simplicissimus as a literary representation of early-modern sensibilities about witchcraft, it is fair to assess his depiction of the witches as expressing a skeptical viewpoint. Superficially this scene represents some of the main beliefs of witchcraft up to this point: namely, the witches’ kitchen; the salve the witches rub onto themselves; the use of everyday items as instruments of flight; and the actual, supernatural act of flying.

Considering the characterization of Simplicissimus in the reading of the literary message of this text, however, strongly suggests that Grimmelshausen meant the witches’ scene to express skepticism, at the very least, and probably downright disbelief regarding these elements of witch-lore. In the chapter following the witches’ scene, Simplicissimus expressed as much, hinting that the witches’ scene could easily be interpreted as a fiction.

Demnach es etlich, und zwar auch vornehme gelehrte Leut darunter gibt, die nicht

glauben, daß Hexen oder Unholden seien, geschweige daß sie in der Luft hin und wieder

fahren sollten, als zweifele ich nicht, es werden sich etlich finden, die sagen werden,

Simplicius schneide hier mit dem großen Messer auf: Mit denselben begehre ich nun

nicht zu fechten, dann weil Aufschneiden keine Kunst, sondern jetziger Zeit fast das

gemeinste Handwerk ist, als kann ich nicht leugnen, daß ichs nicht auch könnte, dann ich

müßte ja sonst wohl ein schlechter Tropf sein.35 (Grimmelshausen 185)

35 Now since there be some, and indeed some learned folk among them, that believe not that there be witches and sorcerers, still less that they can fly from place to place in the air, therefore am I sure there will be some to say that here the good Simplicissimus draws the long bow. With such folk I cannot argue; for since brag is become no

Set against the novel’s placement during and after the Thirty Years War, it would be appropriate to propose that Grimmelshausen believed supernatural fears, such as witchcraft and devils, to be ludicrous in the face of the horrors of human war. The treatment of witches in this novel points to the Thirty Years War as an impetus toward skepticism. As a novel,

Simplicissimus may not have been solely in the domain of the educated. Although there continued to exist a contrast between the literate and illiterate, literacy rates were climbing and the gap, relatively speaking, was narrowing. Therefore, it is not inappropriate to assume that Grimmelshausen’s novel likely had a significant readership. This is not to imply that

Grimmelshausen’s novel was intended as a witchcraft treatise; it most certainly was not.

However, being more accessible than an ecclesiastical treatise, Grimmelshausen’s description of witches can be interpreted as one viewpoint in the popular imagination.

Late 1600s to early 1700s: witch trials

Our final textual sources come from the trial records. Levack reminds us that treatises

“reflect the views and the prejudices of ruling or educated elites,” and “only the trial records allow the voices of the illiterate villagers to be heard.” While “even the trials do not always provide an accurate account of what uneducated villagers believed,” (Levack 1) because so many of the accused confessed under torture and duress, trial records, particularly when the accused denied charges, remain the best source of villagers’ own accounts. A rough sketch of the trial records from around 1600 showed high numbers of trials and a significant use of torture. In contrast to the eighty-five trials in Ansbach during the sixteenth century, only

longer an art, but nowadays wellnigh the commonest trade, I may not deny that I could practise this if I would; for an I could not, I were the veriest fool.

60 twenty-four36 witches were tried in the entirety of the seventeenth century; the majority of those trials (sixteen) occurred before 1623. With the exception of four additional trials between 1704 and 1719, none of which indicated the use of torture, and only one of which ended in execution, the witch trials were essentially over by 1700.

Conclusion

Witchcraft and ideas about witchcraft were not new in the early modern era.

Conceptualizations about magic, sorcery, and the supernatural existed in virtually every civilization before that period, and belief in the occult continues to exist today. What was unique in the early modern period was the tension between the depth of the reality of witchcraft in the early modern imagination and the almost incomprehensible reaction of ecclesiastical and secular authorities to its perceived threat. We can look back at the manifestation of witchcraft and see it, from our own perspective in the twenty-first century, as the early modern period’s ultimate social construction of identity.

Ideas about the appearance, habits, and dangers of witches had steeped in European society for millennia. Fears about witches found new roots in the Christian imagination, which eventually interpreted witches as the devil’s instruments of evil within the community.

Medieval and early modern fears of premature death, lost crops, anomalous weather patterns, and other scientific mysteries were neatly and easily attributable to members of the community whose attitudes or behaviors were strange or difficult or contrary. Witchcraft served to explain the inexplicable, and to provide a way to discard society’s undesirables.

36 An additional, unspecified mehrere Frauen (several women) were tried in Burgbernheim in 1654. (Kleefeld, Gräser and Stepper 432)

As the mythology of witchcraft developed, depictions of witchcraft and witches made their way into texts and visuals. Images and perceptions of witches showed up in treaties, tracts, and, later in the period, fictional writings. Artists produced visual representations of witches and, in the process, created the iconography of witchcraft that still informs the western imagination today. While witchcraft did not originate in the early modern period, it was during the early modern period that written and visual representations of witchcraft coalesced and, in the age of the printing press, became available across the disparate communities of Europe to form the concept of the European witch.

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