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.