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Images and Witchcraft Studies: a Short History

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Images and Witchcraft Studies: a Short History IMAGES AND WITCHCRAFT STUDIES: A SHORT HISTORY Charles Zika Our understanding and use of witchcraft images has changed dramatically over the last four decades. The two editions of the source collection edited by Alan Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700, published almost thirty years apart, clearly exemplify some of these changes.1 The first edition of 1972 contained seventy-two illustrations, and of these more than one-third were only very loosely related to the theme of witchcraft. Many depicted the origins, temptations and other activity of devils, their role at the last judgment and in administering the punishments of hell, and their exorcism by Christ and the saints. Of the remaining two-thirds, approximately half (twenty-three) were illustrations from three witch- craft treatises: Francesco Maria Guazzo’s A Compendium of Witches of 1608 (fifteen), Olaus Magnus’ History of the Northern Peoples of 1555 (four) and Ulrich Molitor’s On Female Witches and Fortune-tellers of 1489–1500 (four).2 As the introduction to the later 2001 edition openly admitted, this was a very limited image base, one based on the very limited investiga- tion by art historians and others of the visual lexicon of magic, sorcery and witchcraft. The earlier edition of Kors and Peters’ collection was alert to the importance of media in the development of this lexicon, arguing that a basic pictorial vocabulary was created in the twelfth to the four- teenth centuries, and developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies largely through the greater circulation, synthesis, standardization and repetition of images facilitated by the newer media of woodcuts and 1 Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100–1700: a documentary history (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 17–21; 2nd ed., (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 30–40. 2 Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum (Milan: 1608), which Kors and Peters misdate 1610 (in 1972 & 2001, 31); Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrion- alibus, (Rome: 1555); Ulrich Molitor, On Female Witches and Fortune-tellers (1489–1500). Molitor’s work was titled De Laniis [or Lamiis] Phytonicis [or Pythonicis] Mulieribus in the sixteen Latin editions that appeared before 1500. There is an urgent need of a detailed and comprehensive study of these different editions. For an informative and detailed study, but one which largely ignores the variations in the different editions, see Anita Komary, “Text und Illustration. Ulricus Molitoris ‘De laniis et phitonicis mulieribus.’ Die Verfest- igung und Verbreitung der Vorstellungen vom Hexereidelikt in Bildern um 1500” (Diplo- marbeit, Universität Wien, 2000). 42 charles zika Figure 3.1. Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700: A documentary History, 2nd edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Cover illustration: Hans Baldung Grien, A group of female witches, woodcut, 1510. engravings.3 It limited an understanding of that development, however, in a number of fundamental ways. Firstly, it ignored the novelty and new visual vocabulary used to create images of witchcraft around the turn of the sixteenth century. Secondly, it failed to draw attention to any particu- lar artist who played a critical role in that development, having limited the choice of images fairly much to woodcut illustrations in the works cited above. Thirdly, it failed to identify any development in this imagery over the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 3 Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 1972, 18–19. .
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