#6475 - Law And The State - Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe

REVISION NOTES:

WITCHCRAFT:

LAW AND THE STATE:

1. What was the impact of the law and legal processes upon witchcraft prosecutions?

• Big debate = did the law, encouraged by the rise of the state, facilitate WC prosecutions.

• Yes, to an extent, it did facilitate it. However, this depended on interpretation.

Accusation:

• Prev ‘accusatorial’ system made prosecution diff.

• Criminal procedure initiated and prosecuted by private person (usually injured).

• Formal, public statement made trial with judge.

• Admission of guilt/sufficient proof = guilty.

• Doubt = appeal to God to provide proof of guilt/innocence.

• Most common way = ordeal. E.g. carrying hot iron a certain distance and have flesh miraculously healed, e.g. being thrown into cold water and sink to bottom = innocent.

• Could be through duel with injured party.

• Or trial by compurgation – have trial with certain number of ‘oath-helpers’ who would swear to innocence.

• “Man in effect abdicated his own responsibility” (Brian Levack).

• Key prob = if defendant proved innocent, accused could be liable to prosecution – Roman trad of lex talionis.

• “A fundamentally non-rational process” (Levack).

• New, inquisitorial system made accusation more likely:

• Trials could (many were) still be initiated by private persons.

• Inhabitants of community could denounce suspected criminal to authorities.

• Also allowed officers of court to initiate cases based on their own info, e.g. rumours: “made individuals vulnerable to frivolous, malicious, politically motivated or otherwise arbitrary prosecutions” (Levack).

• “The main effect… was the elimination of the liability of the accuser” (Levack).

• Not the case in England; kept much of old system. Could be reason for relatively low rate.

• E.g. Hathaway, 1702 – accused Sarah Morduck of Southwark of bewitching him so that he could not eat. She was trialled and acquitted. Judged guilty.

Torture and investigation methods:

• New inquisitorial system had impact by ^ requirements for evidence (no longer used divine influence):

• Standard = testimony of 2 eye-witnesses or confession.

• Also, crimes like going to Sabbath = only proven once another witch had confessed.

• In some cases, jurisdictions used torture to get around this.

• Rise of torture:

• Since WC was a ‘crimen exceptum’.

• “The concept of crimen exceptum allowed a ragbag of assorted rumours to become evidence justifying torture” (Briggs).

• Re-introd in C13th: had been used in ancient Greece and Rome.

• First evidence = Verona, 1228. Many other Italian states soon followed.

• 1252: Church allowed use of torture in ecclesiastical courts (Pope Innocent IV) – esp for suspected heretics.

• Was governed by a set of rules:

• Original, strictest rules said that judge had to prove that a crime had been committed. Had to be only way to establish facts. Repetition (on diff days) = forbidden. Use of leading q’s forbidden. Had to repeat ‘freely’ w/in 24 hours.

• Levack argues that these were not followed: if they had been, “the European witch-hunt would not have taken place”.

• Is not a problem inherent in the law itself, but in its interpretation.

• Most jurisdictions did have laws limiting intensity, hence utility of items like the ‘strappado’ and thumbscrews.

• In some areas, were freq suspended.

• E.g. trial of Maria Höllin, 1593: kept torturing with boots, rope and thumbscrews (22 times total) despite repeatedly confessing some knowledge, saying killed a boy once, made pact w/ Devil, then professing innocence.

• E.g. Doctor Fian, ‘News from Scotland’ – tortured by having nails ripped off by device called a ‘Turkas’ or pincers, needles stuck under nails. Put in ‘bootes’ – ‘his leges were crushte and beaten togeather as small as might bee, and the bones and flesh so brused, that the bloud and marrowe spouted forth in great abundance’.

• E.g. Barbeline Wanesson found dead in her cell after several rounds of torture, Lorraine, 1593.

• Further interesting impact = “torture facilitated the formulation and the dissemination of the cumulative concept of WC” (Levack).

• E.g. in Eng, ideas about Sabbath less widespread (esp amongst elite) – for this reason acc to Levack.

• Sometimes, “confession was virtually dictated to the wretched suspect, alone in the face of a pitiless judicial process” (Briggs).

Centralisation of organisation:

• Link to growth of the state: encouragement by central authorities:

• Get idea that “witches were in a certain sense victims of the advance of that emerging leviathan” (Levack).

• Attempt to control society:

• Robert Muchembled talks of “cultural conquest of the humble”.

• V limited: argues that they aimed to make people better Tridentine Catholics “by defining precisely the diabolic figure” (Muchembled). Ignores fact that most cases involved simple maleficia – separation demonology – pop belief.

• C Larner:

• Cites the fact that 95% accused = peasants, due to state’s perception of own role as being in shaping Godly society.

• Needs to take into account fact that people could occasionally take into own hands.

• E.g. Basque (1610) – 1 woman killed, many tortured; e.g. 1453 French village of Marmande.

• Particular Kings could make special efforts to adapt law in order to prosecute witches.

• E.g. James VI of Scotland, after witchcraft ‘plot’ 1590.

• Was esp. worried – esp after Berwick trials. Agnes Sampson took him aside and told him the words that he had said to his wife on their wedding night.

• 1597: WC added to King’s writ (‘four pleas of the crown’ – robbery, rape, murder, arson).

• E.g. Christian IV of Denmark, 1626 (Copenhagen, Elsinore).

• CA: centralisation of organisation does not always result in biggest witch-hunts.

• In Scotland, the system was not that centralised.

• Were some elements: Privy Council and Justice Ayres (later Circuit Courts) = travelling courts.

• E.g. Hugo Arnot, C18th Edinburgh lawyer/historian: ‘there is no system of criminal jurisprudence in Scotland’.

• Regalities “in a sense represented the abandonment of royal control” (Larner) – King’s writ appointed by officials.

• Local authorities were in actual fact often more lenient.

• Had more intense, immediate fear (more aware of close proximity and threat).

• Briggs stresses how courts were simply “in tune with pop feeling”.

• “Scepticism developed more quickly at the centre” (Levack).

• Central judges usually more committed to appropriate application of judicial system.

• E.g. England:

• Levack argues that the Eng judicial system was actually quite centralised (due to semi-annual assizes), and effective.

• Examples of wider prosecution = when supervision lapsed, e.g. 1640s (1645-7 = work of self-app’td witchfinders Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, used questionable methods like forces sleeplessness); Essex 1645 (judges from Westminster not present at assizes in summer – court convened under Earl of Warwick), 1682.

• Central court of Star Chamber had role in disciplining local authorities and accusers, e.g. prosecuted accusers Anne and Brian Gunter, 1606-7.

• Spain: was decentralised, but had Spanish Inquisition. Had central tribunal, the Suprema, in Madrid; upheld strict set of rules.

• Most intense hunts = in distant localities, e.g. Catalonia 1618.

• France = also useful e.g., since could appeal to Paris Parl – complete dismissal in 36% of cases, v. only 24% confirmed.

• Alfred Soman: talks of “the wide disparity between the prestige and intellectual stature of the Paris court… and all the subordinate jurisdictions” (Soman).

• Uses prison records of Conciergerie du Palais held at Archives de la Préfecture de Police. Data on 80-90% cases.

• Total figures 1565-1640: 115 executions (24% 474 initially condemned).

• Showed concern about abuses by magistrates – e.g. 1583, judge summoned to Paris after an appellant described how he had been kept in a dungeon and forced to pay bribes.

• Also careful about torture: 61/160 only subject to the presentation de la question – “merely… an elaborate pantomime in the torture chamber” (Soman).

• 1682 = first mention of sorcery in a royal edict.

• Bodin’s book aimed to convince Parle to relax standards for evidence. E.g. by allowing prostitutes to be witnesses – since he saw these as loopholes.

• Lorraine (dukes had certain degree of authority) = harsher.

• Area sees “a distinct local tonality” (Briggs).

• Denmark:

• Just under 90% local cases resulted in convictions, v 50% at royal county courts.

• Even Scot gov’t resisted pressures of local presbyteries to issue further commissions during 1640s (under Charles I).

2. How far was witchcraft persecution encouraged by authorities? How and why did persecution differ in different places?

• STRUCTURE:

• Facilitation by law.

• Link to demonology (is very tenuous).

• Local courts actually much more zealous.

• Major lawyers/courts toned down.

• Christina Larner argues yes:

• “Witch-hunting was an activity fostered by the ruling class” (Larner).

• Required their official organisation and administration (*no – local courts actually quite independent).

• Believes state had new perception of own role as creating godly society.

• Witch = embodiment of ultimate deviance.

• “Witchcraft… represented enmity in its purest form to the two swords of God: the secular and the ecclesiastical”.

• “Nurtured the attack on deviance of which witchcraft was the supreme example”.

• May be true to an extent: Ref had renewed ideologies (Muchembled highlights impact of Counter-Ref), structures like Inquisition.

• *However, this did not automatically lead to ^ persecution: often quite the opposite.

• Robert Muchembled...