Witchcraft Magic and CUlture

            I did not particularly like this book especially because I thought that the placement of the chapters was not extremely well thought out.  However, it was extremely informative even if it was a little jumbled and quite dry.   Something I did like about this reading was that Davies focused solely on witchcraft in England, which was a nice change of pace from many of our other more general readings which tended to skip from place to place which could get quite confusing.  The book starts in 1736 right after Parliament had decided that witchcraft was no longer a criminal.  Much of what Davies says after this has already been summarized in other readings so I am going to focus on the topics that were addressed in this book that we have not really seen elsewhere. 

            Although witchcraft in literature was briefly discussed in Ankarloo and Clark, Davies gives a much more in depth explanation of what role magic and witches played in fantasy after 1736.  Witchcraft played a large role in chapbooks, which were popular from the 18^th century up until the mid-19^th century.  Publishers of these books realized the market for books about fortune telling and the supernatural, so they catered greatly to this audience.  Another interesting type of literature which magic played a role in was the Almanac, which made predictions of the future based on the stars, which the public seemed to hunger for.  There were also books used in order to denounce the belief in magic, although these often failed to get their point across to the reader. 

            Davies also focused on the practitioners of the occult.  These included cunning-folk, who people turned to when they needed help with a bewitching, finding lost items, medical treatment, and other such maladies.  These were often charlatans who knew how to string people along in order to get paid and they were often responsible for pointing our witches who violence later was used on.  Fortunetellers were also considered occult practitioners.  These people were not just seen by the lower class.  In fact, the elite often liked to use fortunetellers as a type of entertainment, somewhat similar to how many “physics” are used today at parties.  

The Second Half of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe

The thing that struck me most from this part of the reading was the extreme and terrible cases in which the community took violent action against supposed witches in their midst.  Often times they were even more brutal in their punishment then the secular or religious courts had been.  The instances I found the most appalling were those in which women were trapped in their homes, which were then set on fire, causing them to be burned alive.  Even thought some witches were burned alive as punishment set forth by the courts when the witch trails were still occurring, there were many who were simply beheaded or at least strangled before they were subjected to such a horrific fate.  The fact that members of a community could be personally responsible for the death of someone they had known their whole life baffles me.  However, they would not have taken such drastic actions if they had not truly believed that they were in danger and that the supposed witch was causing their misfortunes.

Until this class, and more specifically this reading, I always thought that the Enlightenment and other such intellectual movements had caused an end to the belief in witchcraft, and that was why the witch-trails had stopped.  It is somewhat disconcerting to realize that something you had always held to be true is actually not at all factual.  In reality, the decline in the prosecution of witch-trails led to the decline in the belief in witchcraft, although this belief never came to a total end as there are still people today who believe in magic and witchcraft.  It was quite interesting to see how different countries and regions throughout Europe handled the decline in witch-trails as well as the continued belief by many in witchcraft afterwards.  There were many similarities of events that all these places shared, but it was the difference in time in which these events occurred that I found the most interesting.  For example, the Dutch Republic had their last government sanctioned execution in 1609 while Spain did not have their last execution until 1781. 

I think that the continued belief in witchcraft, especially by the rural lower class, makes a great deal of sense.   The problems that had caused witchcraft allegations in the first place had not simply disappeared so how could a belief that had been held for so long disappear over night.  Even members the elite class who publicly claimed to no longer believe in the uneducated superstition about witchcraft still often privately believed in magic.  A disbelief in witchcraft allowed the elite to feel superior, especially intellectually, from the country bumpkin who still put horseshoes on their door.  

Information from Davies and Ankarloo/Clark For the Third Essay

1.     Judicial Reasons (Don’t persecute as much)

a.     Ankarloo

                                               i.     Chapter 1 and 2

1.     Growing awareness of judicial people that witches were being convicted for crimes they didn’t commit – led to criticism of how trails were being conducted  - this led to stricter procedural rules for conduct of witchcraft trials including more restraint on torture and more demanding standards for evidence

2.     Courts became more reluctant to prosecute in the first place

3.     Judicial skepticism – not really a skepticism about witchcraft existing but in whether the people being charged were actually guilty – led to “general uncertainty whether the crime could even be proved by law “ (7)

4.     Wurzburg – mass witch hunt 1627-29 – led to the breakdown of the stereotypical witch which led to a lack of confidence about how trails were done

5.     Cautio ciminalis – written by a Jesuit priest – Friedrich Spee – exposed the judicial pressures to which the accused was subject and the unreliability of their confessions

6.     Sweden – 1668-1676 – mass witch hunt – lots of child witnesses – eventually some admitted to making it up and they were persecuted

7.     Basque country- Spanish Inquisition (1609-1611) – didn’t involve extensive use of torture – Alonso Salazar de Frias – became skeptical about all the confessions – especially children – came to the conclusion that is was made up – but didn’t deny that witchcraft was used – led to strict set of procedural rules for the Inquisition

8.     Four changes that had a bearing on the number of witchcraft trails, convictions, and executions

a.     “the tighter control, supervision and regulation of local witchcraft trials by central or superior courts”

b.     “The restriction and in some cases the prohibition of torture in witchcraft cases”

c.      The adherence of trial judges to more demanding standards of proof”

d.     “The admission of more lawyers to represent witches and their trail” (13)

9.     Implication of necessary judicial review of witchcraft convictions and punishing volatiors of procedural norms = decline

10. Rules of Spanish Inquisition kept executions in Spain low – some major lapses

11. Roman Inquisition also had strict rules – had the Instructio – had all aspects of criminal procedure because of “grave errors” (17) – had influence over secular courts too

12. Restraining influences of the Holy Roman Empire – central courts of various duchies and principalities and law faculties at universities (not really till late 17^th c.)

13. Main criticism of torture wasn’t that it was inhumane – it was that evidence obtained under torture was unreliable – these critics weren’t new

14. The end of torture normally came after the end witchhunt and sometimes not till after decriminalization

15. “the decline of witch persecutions therefore had more to do with the regulation and limitation of torture then with its formal elimination” (22) 

16. people began to be reluctant about the evidence presented in order to justify the conviction and execution of a witch

17. Growing reluctance among judges and legal people to accept confessions

18. Burden of proof began to rest on the prosecution – had to show that there couldn’t have been natural causes

19. Revelation of frauds in possession cases = “greater caution in the handling of all witchcraft accusations” (29)

20. Witches started to gain more legal assistance in 17^th c.

21. Lawyers could quite easily call attention to faulty evidence

22. Trials became longer

23. Skeptics in the 16^th c. didn’t deny witchcraft existed – just different parts of what they did

24. “Until the late 17^th c. the philosophical systems that prevailed in academic, theological, and judical circles made the existence of witchcraft possible, even likely” (35)

25. Critics never denied the existence of the devil – just of his power in the natural world and his pacts with humans

26. Prosecutions became too costly and the financial burden fell on the whole community – 46

27. Recognition that people were being executed -46

28. Hungary – the decline here “also involved much of the same judicial skepticism that accompanied the decline of witch-hunting in virtually all Western European countries” – 70

                                              ii.     Chapter 3

1.     De jure decriminalization did not happen in most places until the end of the 18^th c (and when it did most of the time there were still parts of witchcraft that were prohibited and in some it never happened) – de facto decriminalization was when judicial authorities imply stopped prosecuting and executing witches – this one was more common (74)

2.     As the witch-hunt declined, there was more prosecution of the people who made false claims or lynched a person they thought was a witch – shows a change in the relationship of the courts and the witch – the were “serving now as their protector rather than their prosecutor” (79)

3.     Counter-prosecutions shifted the criminal responsibility from the witch to her attacker or accuser - 83

2.     Political Reasons (Stronger central government= more control especially over mobs)

a.     Ankarloo

                                               i.     Chapter 1

1.     The most severe witch-hunts happened under local officials who weren’t very controlled by the state – this changed an led to change in persecution

2.     Local judges prosecuted more/ fiercer because gripped by community fear and had less training and less committed to due process

3.     France- a country with an increasingly powerful central government- could use an appellate system to reduce the intensity of witch-hunting – 1590’s was when parlement started to insist on its formal right to review the death sentences passed by local judges (48) – parlement also banned water ordeals and made appeals to the higher court automatic which meant that local courts had to send the appellants themselves to the high court which they had to pay for – in 1587 parlement became to only body able to torture (49) – this didn’t have an effect on the other 8 parlements in France(50) – edict of 1682 – witchcraft was reclassified as pretended magic and therefore no longer associated with diabolism  - had little effect on the actual volume of witchcraft persecutions (52) - “their reluctance to sentence witches to their death had much more to do with adherence to increasingly rigorous French standards of judicial proof than with some new philosophical or theological misgivings about the extent of Satan’s power” (53

4.     England – torture was prohibited in all English criminal trials but it was used illegally in the great witch hunt of 1645-47 when witchcraft became extremely linked with diabolism – lack of inquisitorial procedure like other countries (53) – because assize judges were committed to due process and they lacked personal knowledge of the witch they were a restraining influence during the trail (54) – Anne Gunter and her father Brain Gunter were prosecuted in 1606 in Star Chamber b/c they had conspired through a supposed deomn possession? To indict two women of witch craft who were innocent – the beginning of the decline – the witch-hunt of Matthew Hopkins and John Stearned put a hold on the end of witchcraft prosecutions with their witch hunt that took 200 lives – this “can be attributed in large measures to the breakdown of central government control over the judicial process” (55) – elimination of charges of Devil – worship after 1664 – last execution (alice Molland) took place in 1684 in Devonshire – the last conviction (Jane Wenham) was in Hertforshsire in 1712 – formal decriminalization of witchcraft wasn’t until 1736 (56)

5.     Scotland – criminal justice system was a combo of features from England and France – no system of appeals- trail by jury- “difficulty in controlling the excesses of local justice and the strength of religious sentiment in favour of witch-hunting” – central government didn’t have the administrative resources to enforce its will and it was also inconsistent in its attitude towards witchcraft which delayed the end (60) – the Privy Council granted most requests for witchcraft trails – almost all accused witches would be convicted and executed – local trails were conducted by untrained magistrates who were convinced of their guilt and had a lot of procedural abuses especially in regaurds to torture (61) – the central government even initiated some of the witch hunts (62) – skeptical judges could disqualify certain witnesses – the successful implementation of an effective circuit court system after 1671 helped the decline of Scottish witch-hunting (62) – the “determination on the part of officials in the central government to control the administration of local justice” also helped (63)

6.     Germany- “because of the multiplicity and variety of the jurisdictional areas within the Holy Roman Empire and the weaknessof central imperial control, the decline of witch-hunting followed different patterns in the various duchies and principalities that constituted the Empire” Focused on Wurtemberg – (66) the decline “can be attributed in large measure ot the efoorts of a skeptical and legally demaning central government to restrain the determination of local magistrates to extirpate witchcraft from their communities” (66)

7.     Hungary –  declined after 1750’s mass trails – in 1756 Empress Maria Theresa “ordered that all witchcraft cases be submitted to her conciliar appellate court for confirmation before sentences could be carried out” (69)- came to a total end in 1777 – people who defamed their neighbors or who made fraudulent accusations were supposed to be prosecuted and others (the supposedly mentally ill) were sent to hospitals – 71

8.     In England, group violence was only restrained when after 1856 a paid and uniformed police force came into existence – in part because they were not orginially from where they were policing – so after 1880 collective ciolent actions against witches rarely happened although this was nt always the case with individual violence – 147

                                              ii.     Chapter 1

1.     “Louis XIV’s edict of 1682, an eloquent testament to centralizing absolutism, had virtually ended witchcraft persecutions in the secular courts” -211

2.     Frederick William I of Prussia in 1728 brought an end to witch-hunting

b.     Davies

                                               i.     Constables were more responsible to the will of the community then to the will of the state- 113

                                              ii.     The purpose of the new police force was to enforce the laws of the state and were not beholden to the community like the constable (who was normally from that location) was 114

                                            iii.     “With the inception of a full-time, uniformed police force and increasing numbers of stipendiary magistrates, the popularly perceived right to mob ans swim witches was hindered and suppressed”-288-289

3.     Reasons People still believed in witches

a.     Ankarloo

                                               i.     Groups of people (even after prosecutions stopped) took illegal action against suspected witches still – 46

                                              ii.     England- sometimes even though judges recommended acquittal the jury would still return a guilty verdict in the 17^th c (54) – few educated men (especially those in the legal profession) didn’t express open disbelief in the reality of the crime (58)

                                            iii.     “During the later centuries there are numerous scattered accounts of lynchings or maltreatment of supposed witches and of the actions of unwitching specialists” 114

                                            iv.     people in the country who still believed in witchcraft were probably frustrated that the judges would not cooperate and therefore took matters into their own hands – “Dupont-Bouchat mentions some ten, mainly Walloon, cases of lynching or maltreatment, two of which are from the end of the 17^th c, one from the beginning of the eighteenth and the rest form the 19^th c up to 1882” -115

                                              v.     In France “witchcraft continued to belong to the cultural repertoire of misfortune after the end of the witch-trails” -118

                                            vi.     1771 Anne Fousset was branded and thrown in the fire by her fellow villagers – 121

                                           vii.     in Italy around Perugia in 1911 an old woman who was supposed to be a witch was burnt in a limekiln by farmers

                                         viii.     Briget Cleary in Ballyvadlea in 1895 was killed by her husband who was trying to drive the fairy changeling out of her and bring back the real her – 143

                                            ix.     In Denmark – a woman named Dorte in 1722 was tied down in her house which was then set on fire

                                              x.     In Russia in 1879 – in Vrachevo a 50 year old woman was burnt alive in her hosue

                                            xi.     “For those concerened, witchcraft remained a useful, culturally accepted and therefore rational strategy for dealing with certain problems” 175

                                           xii.     even after the witch-trails had ended – witches were often still held responsible for misfortunes 184

                                         xiii.     a decline in wc accusations led to a decline in wc belief and not the other way around 185

                                         xiv.     “Rejection of belief in witches opened the door the atheism” 198

                                           xv.     To believe too little was atheism, too much was superstition” 199

                                         xvi.     “Addison and Huntenson were of a mind: gentlemen no longer believed in witches” 208

                                        xvii.     “At the dawn of the 20^th c, villagers in remote rural Essex still believed in magic; witches brought on illness and even paralysis and visited victims with plagues and lice.  Witchcraft worked within a wider cosmology helping people to make sense of existence and handle adversity” 257

b.     Davies

                                               i.     “Many educated men and women continued to believe that witchcraft had existed and could exist, but ceased to believe that it continued to exist in their own times” – 8

                                              ii.     Rev. William Ettrick was originally skeptical of witchcraft until a series of misfortunes befell his house – 17

                                            iii.     Some made reference to the Bible in order to defend their belief – didn’t have the patience to listen about the mistranslation of the bible 105

First Part of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe

            I thought that this reading, although informative, was very dry and extremely difficult to get through.  However, it did give a very detailed analysis of the reasons for the decline and eventual end of organized witch hunting in Europe.  The first of these reasons, and what I believe to be the most important, is that officials began to prosecute the crime of witchcraft less and less.  This was caused in part by a growing awareness that many of the witches that were being tried and executed had not actually committed the crimes they were convicted of.  This does not mean that officials stopped believing in witchcraft, it just means that they became aware of how hard it was to truly prove the crime.  I really liked that the authors did not argue that the witch-hunts came to an end because people stopped believing in witches and instead show that the belief in witches declined because prosecution declined.  It never made sense to me that a mass amount of people could go from believing in something one day and then the next day thinking that it was simply a made up story.  This reading really helped to track the progress of this type of thinking and what factors lead to such a drastic change. 

            The reading had a lot of examples, which helped to illustrate the authors’ points, but after awhile I had a very hard time concentrating on the specific people and places.  I like this specific examples in micro-histories, but in an overview like this I think that it was quite overwhelming and that the examples eventually lost their effect because there were so many of them.  One of the examples I did think was useful however was when the authors talked about the mass witch-hunts that happened in Sweden after 1668-1676.  I thought it was a good decision to use this event because it truly illustrated what the authors had been talking about, from mass witch-hunts fizzling out, to a lack of belief in child witnesses, unwillingness to persecute, and eventually the persecution of those who falsely accused others.  I enjoyed this reading because I learned a lot, but I really hope that the next chunk we read is a little bit more captivating.

The Devil in the Convent

The Devil in the Convent

Sorry it took so long to post this I have been extremely sick this week and I did not check the facebook page in time to realize that we were have supposed to have read this for last week.   This has been my favorite reading so far that we have done for the class.  I really enjoyed the writing style, the topic, and the writer’s arguments.  Until I read about this and saw The Devils on Monday I had no idea that there had even been mass possessions in convents, which really surprised me. 

What I really found the most interesting was why these mass possessions happened in the places they did and why they only happened to female religious orders.  It makes a lot of sense that these possessions often happened in convents that were experiencing change and reform that made the strict lives of the nuns even more severe.  It must have been hard to adjust and adapt to the new rules that were enforced, so being possessed was a way to except or rebel against these reforms depending on where they happened.  Another main factor that played a role in the possession of these groups of women was that they were, to put it simply, women.  These types of possessions never happened to large groups of religious males, although a single man could be possessed.  This was because, supposedly, “immune to such lack of control over their bodies (and souls) and to the risk of a penetrability of their bodies.”  So, like in most other aspects of life, especially religious life, women were presumed to be more easily tempted and easy to control.  Women were thought to have “excessive” spirituality, which made them so susceptible to demonic possession simply because they worshipped in a way that was different then that of most men.

While demonic possessions were not good, apparently God condoned them.  This is the part of the article and the history that really confused me.  If the Devil and God were enemies then why would the Devil need God’s permission to possess people? And why would God let him?  I just think that is extremely convoluted reasoning but since I am not a contemporary of the time I cannot judge.  The part of this that I do understand is that by having these mass possessions convents actually gained glory and validation for their order.  If the Devil and demons supposedly attacked those that were a threat to them, then having the forces of evil attempt to harm you showed that you were doing something right.  It must have almost been a relief for the cloistered nuns, who could not physically help people outside their walls, to believe that their prayers were having such an impact that the Devil considered them advisories. 

Finally, the last thing that I thought was fascinating from this reading was that there were actual contemporaries who believed that it was not the actual Devil who was causing these possessions but that they were caused by a “devil of the flesh.”  I really never thought anyone would have admitted such a thing during that time period, but I am glad they did because I think that it is probably true.  Young women who were cloistered before they had a chance for any type of physical interaction and had no hope of ever having one must have often wondered about such things.  And, the fact that they stared for hours at Jesus’ almost naked body and had to contemplate themselves and their sins almost endless would not have helped very much either.  

The Last of Roper

I really liked this weeks reading.  It was short, to the point, and I thought it was a good conclusion to Roper’s ideas that she reiterated throughout the book.  Catharina Schmid’s story was really heartbreaking because she was such a strong woman until the very end.  She had to go through so much and it is just sad that they did not let her off after everything she went through, and also because according to many people she was extremely devout.  I thought it was really interesting how even a century after the largest of the witch hunts how people could still be accused, even during a time of supposed Enlightenment.  I do not understand how people could consider themselves rational and yet still consider witchcraft a threat to them and to society.  Although, even today we still have similar types of situations, maybe not with witches but with other groups.  It is much easier to have someone that you can blame and punish for the things that are hurting you and that you cannot understand, then to have no one to use as a scapegoat.  I also thought, that having her daughter confess to witchcraft as well made the story even sadder.  The Story of Hansel and Gretel in the Epilogue, and how Roper related it back to stories about witchcraft, was very interesting.  I thought that was a good portrayal of what people were afraid of, and the awful things that happened during that time - stepmothers, food shortages, and the terror of witchcraft.  And the old woman who was trying the eat the children, was truely the typical witch that many people picture witches as being.

The Trail of Tempel Anneke

The Trail of Tempel Anneke was, I thought at least, a really dull read but I also do not want to be a lawyer and I’m not very interested in the exhaustive proceedings of trails.  However, once I got past how dry of a read it was, there was a lot of information with in the sources.  The thing that I found the most interesting about this reading was that Tempel Anneke supposedly committed almost all the deeds witches were supposed to.  At the very end, when she has to reaffirm everything she confessed, the list of her admissions is almost like a witch checklist; she harmed animals and people that supposedly crossed her, she tried to give a child food that would harm him, she said threatening things to people, she desecrated the Host, made a pact with the Devil through blood and sex, and attended the Devil’s dances.  However, many of these things she admitted to only when she was being tortured. 

Tempel Anneke actually held up quite well, she did not even change most of her stories when faced with the executioner and all of his instruments. For most of her early questionings, the pre-written questions that were asked of her, which did not take into account her previous answer, did not even trick her.  Also, throughout her interrogations, Tempel Anneke kept saying that God would save her, even towards the end although she did not repeat the phrase as often.  She only altered what she was saying when torture was applied or when she was faced with her accuser.  The lists of questions that were written out to ask Tempel, I think were very interesting because they were set up so that each question seems to be harder then the last and they never take into account that the accused might have answered no to the previous question.  These are very leading questions that would have helped women to come up with their elaborate stories because the interrogators, through these questions, were telling the supposed witches what they were supposed to have done. 

Another thing that struck me, which was not really related to Tempel Anneke specifically, was how the magistrates addressed one another in correspondence.  They use an overload of flattering terms and I am not quite sure why.  It would make sense if only one group was using this to the other group if they were higher in social status, but I cannot think of why they would both do this to each other.  I am assuming it was just custom but I would really like to know why is was necessary.    

Class Notes from Jan. 31

I forgot to post this earlier this week so I'm doing it now.  This week we talked a lot about how in the last reading people really were shocked that so many people believed the tales of children.  But Professor Stuart pointed out that authorities still believe children today (such as in court cases) so the only thing that has really changed is what we are predisposed to believe.  I think it is really interesting that lawyers and other people who are interviewing hcildren for cout cases have to learn exactly how to ask children questions in order to not lead them in a certain path. The reason what we believe has changed so much is in part due to Freud, even though he has been largely discredited, because he changed the rpims through which we see human behavior.  

The arts have always played a large role in expressing the ideas and themes of the time in which it is created.  The picture on the syllabus is very difficult to understand.  I cannot understand if the three women are doing something threatening or if they are doing something to protect poeple form the harm.  The storm in the background could be cause by God or maybe from the devil, which could show how events could be taken either way during these times.  Like visions, events had to be looked at carefully in order to figure out if its divine of diabolical.  They also can help to show if the period it was created in was one of tightening or loosening of control by the church or the state.  

During 1550-1650 there was a drive toward purity, which can be seen not only in art, but also in rules and restrictions that were placed on people.  During this time, after the reformation, sex outside of marriage was a crime and sodomy was a capital offense.  But eventually control loosened and while sodomy was still considered a crime people were no longer executed for it.  

Witchcraft Narratives

Hans Gackstalt was a six-year-old boy who started to tell stories about how he, his mother and several other members of the community flew to witch Sabbaths.   Like the Godless Children that Roper talked about, this young boy was believed by the town council and eventually this tale eventually led to the prosecution of both the boy and his mother, Magdalina.  I still cannot understand how old men believed a story of a six-year-old boy over the testimony of his mother.  I also cannot believe that if Hans had not wavered between the story being true and having the story be told to him by an older boy named Peter, the trail could have had disastrous consequences.  A reason that the council believed him was because they thought that such a young child could not come up with such a story unless it had actually happened to him.  But even at such a young age Hans probably would have heard about witches and what they supposedly did, especially from the older boys in the community.  It makes sense that Hans would make this story up in order to gain popularity among his peers, because he must have thought he sounded so cool and worldly.  However, his story had disastrous consequences. 

It is astonishing that the thumbscrews and lashing were used on Hans because these were adult punishments.  I think this is much to severe a way to attempt and try and pry information out of someone so young, and it would have only frightened and confused them even more.  The punishment that Magdalina had to suffer through was also quite atrocious for there were only the stories her son told and unsubstantiated rumors. 

The author repeats often that even if Magdalina were not a witch she still would have been considered a bad mother, which would also have been terrible.  This would have been mostly because a woman’s main jobs was to take care of the house and to raise her children correctly, which apparently she did not do if her son was telling these types of stories.  The thing I found most interesting about this whole reading was that only the mother, and not the father, was blamed for Hans’ behavior.  I am not sure if this was because he was so young and therefore still associated with his mother, or if this still would have been the case if the boy had been a teenager. 

Purkiss

Purkiss focused on the women’s role in testifying against other women and in the role of the women themselves in their trails for witchcraft.  She believes that, even though many people say that the testimony of women from witch trails cannot be trusted because it was written down by a man, that something can still be learned from these statements.  I think that Purkiss is right in this because even if we do not get what a woman said verbatim, we could still learn something about how society was structured and how these women were viewed by the things that were emphasized in their speeches. 

This reading focuses a great deal on how a woman’s role was defined in terms of the household.  There has been quite a common thing in most of what we have read about witches and why women were accused more often then men.  Witches were considered to kind of be a anti-housewife and therefore they posed a threat to everything that wives and mothers did for their homes and their families.  Purkiss argues that it was one of the woman’s most important duties to keep a boundary between the outside world and the home, and that when this boundary was crossed that a witch had the chance to enter and cause problems. 

One of these situations of boundary crossing was when women would go to meet each other to exchange gifts or gossip.  I cannot imagine how terrifying life must have been to always be wondering if you neighbor or friend was planning to harm you every time you stepped out of your house or everything that they stepped into your home.  Another situation in witch witches could do quite a great deal of harm when the boundary of the house was down was during childbirth.  The normal boundaries that surrounded the house were not present at this time and by inviting someone to come to your house you were opening yourself up to witchcraft, especially if you had unwomanly emotions during the pregnancy.  However, witches could not just enter your house, they could also punish you for not entering your house.  All of this must have put an immense amount of strain on the mother, and it’s a wonder that they kept having children at all, except it was their place and duty in life.

Godless Children!!! (and Mass Alegations of Satanist Child Abuse)

s old women started to be less of a threat, many young children and adolescents started to call themselves witches, which sparked a fascination with children and their fantasies.  I think it is very interesting that two of the major groups that were accused of with craft because they were thought to be harmful were also two of the least physically threatening groups.  I would be more afraid of a large man then a little old lady of a young child, but they had very different fears back then.  Despite the shift is who was considered a threat, both women and children were closely tied to the home and to the nursery, which was, were a lot of witch craft occurred. 

In the case of children though, they were most often the ones claiming to be witches, unlike older accused witches who were accused mostly by others.  Also, often the odd behavior of the children was much more visible than adult witches.  In the case of Regina, she ate her own excrement, which I think anyone from most times would find quite disturbing.  However, if this event ad happened today and children started to claim that they were witches and that they were flying off to magical Sabbaths than most people and parents would just think that they had an over active imagination.  The fact that so many people truly believed these children’s stories shows that these people still lived in an enchanted world. 

I think it is extremely interesting that parents treated children they thought to be witches like a disease.  They thought that one child could infect their other children and that’s why they sent them away.  Although they also might have unloaded them on the authorities because they thought that they were attacking the marriage bed and the parents sexual union, which as Roper has stated on many occasions, was a very sacred and extremely important place.  I can understand parents not knowing what to do with their children, especially if they did not understand what was happening to them, but the corporal punishment that some parents handed out was extreme.  In one case a father ended up cutting off one of his sons fingers and one mother starved her daughter to death.  Even the town Council, who was simply a father figure before this time, because actively involved in punishing these children believing it would help them. 

Roper ends the chapter talking about how these children were released, but it seems odd that these parents and this society that were so ready to have their children in prison would be pushing for them to be let out.  Although this makes more sense when you take into account that the parents thought that their children had been “cured” of their witchcraft.  Although to me it just seems like the children grew up and out of their fantasies, but this is a modern and jaded view. 
The second reading that was done on these godless children was done from a psychiatric and modren view of the topic, which are both good and bad things.  The thing that I found most interesting from this article, was that the children who claimed to have flown to a witches sabbath then testified against other children.  These other children did not even know that they had been to these sabbaths until they were picked out and had their parents threaten and bribe them until they said they had been there.  All of this just shows how much children's imaginatiosn and fantasies played a role in the idea of beleif in these diobolical children.  I also was surprised to read that many people believe that some of these children were actually kidnapped by cannibalistic satanic sects.  They said that the reason they thought this was because no one could come up with these stories from no where.  Although I think this is false.  I used to be able to imagine anything and everything when I was younger so I don't undertand why children several hundred years ago could not do the same.  Especially when they grew up hearing stories of witches and the devil.

Class Notes 1/24

In class this week we talked mostly about Jews and how before witches they had been the group that the Christian population placed its fears on.
1475 was the Trail of Simon of Trent who was a young boy that was supposedly killed in a blood libel.  The blood libel was a fear of Christians that Jewish people were killing Christian children in order to mimic the death of Jesus Christ.  They also believed that they could accomplish the task of hurting Jesus again by stabbing the Eucharist which supposedly bled until it could find Christians to come avenge it.  Christians thought that they did these things because Jews needed blood for matza and to stop the mentration of their men.  I really do not understand where they got these ideas from.  They seem extremely outlandish to me to say the least.  I can understand them using the Jews as scapegoats for their fears but these fears just seem so out there that I really can not understand what they would have orginated in.
The first instance of a blood libel was in 1180 in England and it later spread to Europe where is increased in the 1300's.  These trails though fizzled out when the witch hunt started in the 1550s and 1560s.  After witch craft emerged as the predominate threat to Christians, Jews sort of fell into the background.  This makes a lot of sense to me because it seems like a natural progression.  The Jews and the witches both had the same place in European socities, which helped Christians to have someone that they could blame for all of the terrible things that they could not explain.  And when the witches started to become the enemy a lot of the terrible things that Jews were believed to do were then passed onto witches.
The Nazi's were not the first people to mark the Jews so that they would be easily recognizable.  this actually started in the early Middle Ages.  In pictures depicting Jews in this time theyw ere always shown as wearing these identifiable markers.  However, they were also portrayed with the things that they rejected in order to wound them even more.  This was a very effective techinque in order to mentally harm the Jewish people.  Especially by placing them in pictures in which they were wearing pictures of pigs or eating a pigs bowel movements or milk.  These images became quite common motifs for artists to use and they often became daily objects.
The markers that Jews had to wear made them easily identifiable to Christians so that they knew who to avoid and who to blame.  With witches however, this was differnt.  There were no visable markers so people could only guess at who was a supposed threat to them.

Rolands

Ok, so I am pretty sure I have been doing this whole blogging thing wrong because I’ve just been putting up my outlines from what I’ve been reading but after looking at other peoples blogs I’ve decided I should probably attempt to liven things up a bit and actually add some commentary. 

Rolands main focus for his research was Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany and the trial of Appolonia Glaitter.  I liked that he really stuck to these two specifics because although the Roper book is extremely informative its often hard for me to figure out where or who he is talking about because there are so many different places and people included. 

Appolonia Glaitter was 56 years old, was married four times, and was from the countryside around Rothenburg.  Her neighbors the Klenckhsin accused her of witchcraft July 1671.  The reason that this family accused Appolonia of witchcraft was because she supposedly had caused their daughter’s foot to swell up with pus when she had kindly offered them plants from her yard.  This is the hardest thing for me to understand about witchcraft.  How neighbors and family members could say that someone they know so closely is a witch, especially when what they are doing is actually kind, and when they know that such an accusation could lead to that persons imprisonment, execution and torture. 

While Roper talked about why older women were disproportionately represented, Rolands gives slightly different reasons for why these elderly women were so often seen as witches.  When I think of witch today, unless I am thinking about TV shows in which witches are all young, beautiful, and use their powers for good, I usually think of the old, bent, evil witches from Disney movies.  And this apparently is not a new thing.  It must have been easier for someone to think an old, wrinkled, and possibly bitter woman was more capable of the malevolence required to be a witch then young fertile women.  Rolands makes this point, saying that the sagging breasts and shriveled stomach that Roper claimed were the markers of an infertile woman were not really what people would have most often associated with old women.  Instead, he says that it is the hunched over, wrinkled, toothless woman, which closely resembles modern stereotype, would have been the one to be considered infertile and elderly, and therefore have a greater possibility of being accused of witchcraft. 

However, Rolands goes on to say that it was not even truly the appearance of the women that mattered in these witch trails, but their actions.  I think it was terrible how after a woman was accused of witchcraft everyone that knew her then poured over all their memories of her in an attempt to find evidence of witchcraft, even when the woman had often only been helpful or kind to them.

I was quite shocked when I learned that a majority of women accused of witchcraft were married or widowed.  I always had this picture that witches were spinsters who lacked family and were therefore alone in the world.   Rolands says that widows were particularly susceptible to accusations of witchcraft because they had lost the protection of their husband and often these widows had been thought to be witches for years.  The belief that a woman was a witch could also increase with her age if her poverty decreased and she became more dependent on others for assistance.  So, Rolands says that often times poor women were those accused of witchcraft, but this could have been because they had already been suspected of being witches, so their pleas for assistance only fueled an already lit fire.   

Witch Craze Part 2

·      Chapter 6- Fertility

o   Sex was prohibited during the six weeks after giving birth (the lying in) until the woman could be churched

o   The women were susceptible during this time to either becoming witches themselves or to “witches” around them- mostly women close to them that were around them before, during, or after the birth

o   This made being nice to these people an imperative- so they would not hurt the mother or the child through the occult

o   In the 15^th and early 16^th centuries both Catholic and Protestant governments started to control marriage in order to limit population and therefore the amount of poor

o   Council of Trent- said “all marriages must take place in front of a priest, with witnesses, and after banns had been read” (129)

o   Guilds and trade association also started to implement similar rules- only allowing independent masters who had their own workshop to marry

o   Because of all these rules the poor often waited longer to marriage or never married at all

o   Many women waited till their mid to late twenties to marry which resulted in less children

o   Suspected witches in Wurzburg were asked about their reproductive history when they were first being questioned

o   Women who became pregnant but were not married “were punished, exiled and shamed for their sin” (132)

o   During the 16^th century women were beginning to bear more and more of the blame and punishment for baring and illegitimate child

o   The women who killed their illegitimate babies because they were unable to get their seducer to marry them, faced the death penalty

o   Parents were given more authority over who their children married

o   People, and government, at this time had to walk a thing line between insuring fertility for the continuation of lineages and keeping population growth under control

o   Johan Peter Sussmilch – Divine Order in the Transformation of the Human Race, through Birth, Death and the Reproduction of the Same

§  Tried to explain population growth and decline through scientific and statistical means

§  Still very concerned about fertility but did not turn to witches to explain this

§  Said that sexual disease stopped fertility not women tying a not in a string

§  Provided statistics for deaths of children – blamed illness and mother neglect

o   Matrons were largely the ones who reported supposed infanticide and illegitimate births

o   Catholics, despite their belief and elevation of Mary, saw women as Eve- easily corrupted and carnal- Proverbs XXX- “There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which say as not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb.  Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort with devils.” (136)

o   Strong devotion to Mary and witch-hunting often went hand in hand – this was because they could attribute all the honorable ideals of womanhood to Mary and all the traits they did not like to earthy women, who they prosecuted for it

o   Not all witch hunters though were misogynists who hated women

o   Protestants believed Mary to be “a woman like any other” (138)

o   For them “a woman’s destiny was to become a wife and bear children, enduring the subjection to her husband which God had ordained” (138)

o   Although Protestants and Catholics and very different views of women, they had many in common - mainly that women were lustful which was contradictory to the perfect image each religion had created for women (for Catholics this was Mary and for Protestants this was the good wife and mother)

o   For both denominations “marriage was the great social divider” (140) – so the married and unmarried were divided in most social situations

o   They both also celebrated childbirth and pregnancy (this can be seen in the arts)

o   Paintings of children being ripped from suckling at their mother’s breast was one of the most painful and evocative image painters could paint when trying to depict disaster

o   A woman’s fertile body was a theme used by many 16^th and 17^th century artists – they often have large hips, breasts, and stomachs – which was the ideal woman back then because all of this fleshiness showed fertility

o   Fertility, and the protection of that fertility, often had to be prayed for

o   Luther said “Let them bear children to death; they are created for it” (150)

o   Hans Baldung Grien’s Witches’ Sabbath was the first mass-produced woodcut depicting witchcraft

§  He used the same depiction of women’s bodies at the three stages of their fertility and life, in order to depict witches, show contrast, and show that anyone could be a witch

§  Also, all the women have their hair down and loose which is in exact opposite of the hair styles of respectable matrons who always had their hair up

§  From the first two decades of the 16^th century

o   Artists and writers during this time often enjoyed mocking or joking about their subject matter

·      Chapter 7 - Crones

o   Even though witch hunters told people that a witch could be either gender at any age, even they still believed that older women (those who were no longer fertile but many of whom had given birth) were mostly responsible

o   Hatred of older women was shown in “German art, literature, medicine, and popular culture” (162)

o   When who had gone through menopause were thought to be uncleam and full of impurities because they no longer had their period which would get rid of such things

o   Desire and lust (sex) that did not lead to offspring was terrifying – especially the desire of old women which they believed was intensified because she was drying up and needed the mans seed

o   There was a lot of literature about the repugnance of old women – and these stories often helped to shape how people viewed these women

o   Young women accused of witchcraft often said that older women led them down that path and introduced them to the Devil – and even watched while he seduced them

o   This helps to explain the mother-daughter pairs that were often tried in witch hunts – it is also explained by the fact that they believed witchcraft was in the blood (although apparently it only occurred in mother-daughter pairs because rarely was there a mother- son or a father-niece type of situation)

o   The naming of a mother or a daughter as an accomplice was often caused by the questions that interrogators asked – and they asked these questions because they believed that this bond existed

o   Sebastian Sailer wrote plays that were based on religion and village life

§  But he also wrote a satirical love poem about an old woman that was supposedly written by her recently widowed husband

§  Many of his descriptions used in this are similar to descriptions used when talking about witches

§  He was a junior assistant priest at Seekirach which was the parish in which Alleshausen (which experienced a witch hunt in 1745-1747) was in

§  He defended the continuation of the lying in period

·      Chapter 8 – Family Revenge

o   After the end of the heyday of mass witch trails and persecutions was over (in the middle of the 17^th century) withes were still prosecuted, but they were done on a more individual basis and these interrogations “became more thorough, more detailed, and more systematic” (181)

o   So, these trails became extremely well documented

o   Also these persecutions involved young women, youths, and children as witches more often then before

o   Children began to be viewed as separate from their parents and possessing their own imagination, which helped to make them witches

o   Juditha Johannes

§  Her mother died and her father remarried

§  She was taken to her new mothers relatives and then to an orphanage

§  When she was allowed to come back home at 19 she told stories about being a witch and about having killed her 2 half siblings and her step-grandmother and step-uncle who had died when she lived with them – so all those killed were related to her stepmother

§  She also said she had killed 6 children in the orphanage

§  Christele, a relation of Juditha’s mother, was the only one who really paid attention to the girl after her mother died and Juditha eventually said Christele was the one who had led her into witchcraft

§  Juditha, by saying she was a witch, was able to commit suicide, but still go to heaven since she had not technically done it herself

o   Margaretha

§  Juditha’s step grandmother

§  Had married her grandfather, who was over twice her age

§  She supposedly was responsible for Juditha’s mothers death

§  Juditha said she saw her at a witches’ dance

§  “A classic witch” (197)

§  Not tried for 25 years

§  Eventually she was let go under the oath that she would leave and return to her homeland