Endor and Amsterdam: the Image of Witchcraft As a Weapon in the Political Arena

CHAPTER 6 Endor and Amsterdam: The Image of Witchcraft as a Weapon in the Political Arena

Hans de Waardt

One of the many works of art Charles Zika discusses in his The Appearance of Witchcraft is a painting the Amsterdam artist Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (c. 1470–c. 1533) produced in 1526: Saul visiting the witch of Endor (Fig. 6.1).1 The story from 1 Samuel 28 is well known. The army of Israel was preparing for battle with the Philistines, but King Saul was afraid that the enemy would be too strong. In his despair he wanted to consult the prophet Samuel, who, however, was dead. He therefore decided to consult a cunning woman, who has become known as the ‘witch of Endor’, even though she was not really a witch but a necromancer. She indeed called up Samuel’s ghost, who prophesied, however, that Saul would lose the battle, that he and his three sons would perish, and that royal power was to pass to David. In the context of this paper the opening lines of the story may be emphasised:

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land.2

1 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, no. SK-A-688: oil on wood, 85.5 × 122.8 cm; see: Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 156–178. On this painting, which is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, see also Jane L. Carroll, “The Paintings of Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen (1472?–1533)” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1987), 90–104; Wilhelmina C. M. Wüstefeld, “ ‘Clavicula Salomonis’ or Occult Affairs in Amsterdam’s Kalverstraat? Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen and ‘Saul and the Witch of Endor’ Revisited,” in Living Memoria. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Memorial Culture in Honour of Truus van Bueren, (ed.) Rolf de Weijert (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011), 347–64. For a colour image of this painting see https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-668. 2 In Van Oostsanen’s days the authoritative version of the Scriptures was of course the Vulgate. However, for the sake of intelligibility quotations from 1 Samuel 28 are here taken from the King James Version.

figure 6.1 Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Saul visiting the witch of Endor, 1526, oil on wood. Photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-688.

So, the King had recently banished all magicians and soothsayers from his land but had decided to transgress his own ruling. It is no wonder then that the necromancer, knowing of his formal ban, had initially refused to help him:

Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die?

On this the King assured her: “As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.” To save his power Saul was willing to put aside his own decision to purge Israel from immoral and blasphemous activities. It is not strange then that Samuel, after he had indeed been conjured up, stated to the King “. . . the LORD is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy.” Van Oostsanen’s painting shows that already in the 1520s much was known in Holland of the demonology that had developed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the centre it portrays the necromancer in a pro- tective circle she has drawn around herself, and on the right side are scenes from a witches’ Sabbath. It is remarkable, however, that the central tenet of the demonological theory, namely the devil’s pact, is absent. Van Oostsanen