Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland

Out in November from palgrave macmillan: Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 by Wanda Wyporska, who has studied the documents from witchcraft trials stored at Polish court archives. According to the publishers, 'Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 is the first comprehensive study of Polish demonology examined together with the records of witchcraft trials in Wielkopolska. Wyporska's detailed exploration reveals many different versions of the witch: from harbinger of evil to much-admired housewife, shattering the assumption that the witch was universally loathed. Contemporary voices reveal an awareness of the dynamics behind the persecution and an intensely critical attitude towards abuses rife in the courtroom. This groundbreaking new work looks at the many reasons why individuals used witchcraft, accused each other and admitted to carrying out witchcraft. It goes behind the trials to discover narratives of abuse, power struggles, and the relationships between men and women in the early modern period.'

America Bewitched

Owen Davies, Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire and author of a.o. The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, has written America Bewitched: Witchcraft after Salem that has just been published by Oxford University Press. According to the publisher, it 'explodes the myth that the story of witchcraft in America ended with the Salem witch trials', and 'reveals how the story of witchcraft continued to sour the American dream for many until well into the twentieth century':

'The infamous Salem witch trials of 1692 are etched into the consciousness of America. Nineteen people executed, one tortured to death, four others perished in jail--the tragic toll of Salem remains a powerful symbol of the dangers of intolerance and persecution. As time passed, the trials were seen as a milepost measuring the distance America had progressed from its benighted past. Yet the story of witchcraft did not end in Salem. As Owen Davies shows in America Bewitched, a new, long, and chilling chapter was about to begin.

Davies, an authority on witches and the supernatural, reveals how witchcraft in post-Salem America was not just a matter of scary fire-side tales, Halloween legends, and superstitions: it continued to be a matter of life and death. If anything, witchcraft disputes multiplied as hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured into North America, people for whom witchcraft was still a heinous crime. Davies tells the story of countless murders and many other personal tragedies that resulted from accusations of witchcraft among European Americans-as well as in Native American and African American communities. He describes, for instance, the impact of this belief on Native Americans, as colonists-from Anglo-American settlers to Spanish missionaries-saw Indian medicine men as the Devil's agents, potent workers of malign magic. But Davies also reveals that seventeenth-century Iroquois--faced with decimating, mysterious diseases--accused Jesuits of being plague-spreading witches. Indeed, the book shows how different American groups shaped each other's languages and beliefs, sharing not only our positive cultural traits, but our fears and weaknesses as well.

America Bewitched is the first book to open a window on this fascinating topic, conjuring up new insights into popular American beliefs, the immigrant experience, racial attitudes, and the development of modern society.'

Witch-hunting

Readers residing in or visiting Switzerland, may wish to go to Chateau Chillon, famous for its literary connections, to attend the exhibition Witch-hunting in the Pays de Vaud, from the 15th to the 17th centuries.

'The Pays de Vaud was the site of major witch-hunts between the 15th and the 17th centuries. During this period, there were more than 2'000 death sentences!

On a larger scale, Switzerland within the current borders if the time holds not only the record for the longest-lasting repression of witchcraft but also for the largest number of people persecuted fro this crime, in relation to the population. In almost three centuries, 5,000 people were accused and 3,500 of them were put to death, mainly by fire, with 60 - 70% being women.

Chillon Castle was an important detention centre for individuals suspected of witchcraft, either when awaiting trail or carrying out their sentence. During the term of the Bernese bailiff, Nicolas de Watteville, from 1595 to 1601, some forty-odd people were executed at Chillon, La Tour-de-Peilz and Vevey. And 27 more in 1613! Their Excellencies of Bern noted «with regret and sadness» «the extent to which the negation of God and submission to the evil spirit was growing among our subjects in the Romand (French-speaking) country».


Given these facts, the renowned Vaudois fortress is an apt location for this exhibition. Based on documents primarily related to Chillon, then to the region (Riviera-Vaud-Western Switzerland), the exhibition highlights this little known facet of Vaudois history.

The purpose of the museography and the catalogue is not to make people shudder – although shudder one does when contemplating the terrible suffering the poor souls had to undergo. Through texts and images, the exhibition illustrates a portrait of simple madness, madness that at times leads to making pacts with the Devil and, on the other side of the coin, the madness of the inquisitors who could consider a hollow tooth housing for an impure spirit!'

Accompanying the exhibition, a series of films is screened by the Swiss cinemateque Sorciers and sorcières au cinéma, which includes several well-known films somehow related to the subject, even featuring Mario Bava's vampire film, La Maschera del Demonio.

Not included is Otakar Vávra's Czech Kladivo na carodejnice from 1970. Known in English as The Witches' Hammer and in German as Hexenjagd, it is the interesting and at the same time unpleasant story of the witch hunter Heinrich Franz Boblig's infamous persecution of supposed witches in Groß-Ullersdorf (Velké Losiny) in Northern Moravia in the 1680's. Worth watching in its own right, and no doubt the persecution resembles the paranoia people may have experienced on that side of the Iron Curtain, the film is also interesting because it is set in the vicinity of the areas where incidents of magia posthuma were encountered (and only a few years before von Schertz published his book on the subject). So you may imagine that some of the persons involved may at other times have heard of or dealt with corpses suspected of harming the living...

The film is available on DVD in Germany and in the USA, but it can currently be watched in toto on youtube with English subtitles.

Historical Library of Witchcraft and Magic

As this app is so far only available for the iPad, and I do not own one, I am unable to tell you how this app really works. But according to this favourable review, it works very well as a 'virtual book shelf'.

The Historical Library of Witchcraft and Magic app is made by Bibliolife, and includes a number of out of print and obscure books on the subject of witchcraft. According to Bibliolife's own promotional material, the texts include The Magic Staff: An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis, The Witch, The Magic of Jewels and Charms, Modern Magic, A Short History of the Salem Village Witchcraft Trials, Mysticism and Magic in Turkey, and many more, probably including a number of those available from Bibliolife subsidiary Bibliobazaar.

It looks like an interesting app, and possibly a brilliant ressource of a mix of fictional and non fictional books on the subject that may be worth reading or at least having at hand if you are particularly interested in older books on the subject. In that respect, I suppose it could be very interesting if a similar app was made that included various books and texts relating to the subject of vampires, e.g. the rarely seen first English translation of Calmet's Dissertation which is available as a print on demand book from Bibliobazaar.

However, if the library app does not include any current information on the books and the subject, I am somewhat worried that the casual reader will be more misinformed than informed on the subject. This is apparently still a relevant issue in certain circles that have a particular interest in the subject, as a so-called 'Neopagan' writes in an interesting essay on Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt:

‘We Neopagans now face a crisis. As new data appeared, historians altered their theories to account for it. We have not. Therefore an enormous gap has opened between the academic and the “average” Pagan view of witchcraft. We continue to use of out-dated and poor writers, like Margaret Murray, Montague Summers, Gerald Gardner, and Jules Michelet.

We avoid the somewhat dull academic texts that present solid research, preferring sensational writers who play to our emotions. For example, I have never seen a copy of Brian Levack’s The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe in a Pagan bookstore. Yet half the stores I visit carry Anne Llewellyn Barstow’s Witchcraze, a deeply flawed book which has been ignored or reviled by most scholarly historians.

We owe it to ourselves to study the Great Hunt more honestly, in more detail, and using the best data available. Dualistic fairy tales of noble witches and evil witch hunters have great emotional appeal, but they blind us to what happened.’

I heartily welcome any new technological advance in making books and information easily available, but at the same time I find it paramount to stress how important it is that outdated information and views are not presented as if they are still valid. The easier it gets to find all sorts of old books and material, the more important it is to be able to view this material in a contemporary and informed perspective.

Austrian devils and witches

Here is a couple of interesting books that I saw while I was in Vienna.

Teuflisches Österreich: Geschichten aus einem höllischen Land by Dr. Reinhard Pohanka (Pichler Verlag, € 24.95), published in the same series as Unheimliches Wien, claims that Austria is a Devil's country with a devilish topography, and includes a number of examples with many all colour illustrations: 'Österreich ist ein Land des Teufels. Er begleitet den heiligen Nikolaus als Krampus, tritt uns im Volksbrauch der Perchtenumzüge und im Fasching entgegen und treibt sein Unwesen in einer ganzen Reihe von Sprichwörtern. Österreich hat auch eine „teuflische“ Topografie, sie reicht vom Höllental bei der Rax über den Teufelsturm im Gesäuse bis zum Stephansdom mit seinem Meister Puchsbaum, der vom Teufel in den Tod gestürzt wurde. Zahlreiche Teufelsbrücken, Teufelsmühlen und Teufelssteine gibt es in Österreich und zu allen weiß der Volksmund Sagen zu erzählen. Als Herr der Hexen verführte der Höllenfürst unschuldige Männer und Frauen, Zauberer und Alchemisten gehörten zu seinen Anhängern. Auch die Kirche kämpft weiter gegen ihn und fast jeder von uns hat an einem Beschwörungsritual gegen den Teufel schon teilgenommen: Nämlich als wir getauft wurden. Kurz gesagt, der Teufel lebt in Österreich, wir begegnen ihm täglich – er ist Teil unseres kollektiven Gedächtnisses.'

Als die Scheiterhaufen brannten: Hexenverfolgung in Österreich by Isabella Ackerl (Amalthea, € 22.95) is a history of witch persecutions in Austria which also debunks the popular myths on the subject in general: 'Die Hexenverfolgung in Österreich ist ein emotional aufgeladenes Thema, das von unzähligen Legenden umrankt ist. So ist in der Literatur die Rede von sechs bis neun Millionen Menschen, die diesem Wahn geopfert wurden - eine Zahl, die einer Entvölkerung Europas gleichgekommen wäre. Dieser Mythos entstand vor allem durch die feministische Forschung, die sich mit großer Solidarität diesem Thema widmete und die Zahlen subjektiv deutete. Außerdem wurde argumentiert, dass sich die Verfolgungen fast ausschließlich gegen die sogenannten "weisen" Frauen und gegen die Hebammen richteten.

Die Autorin geht mit ihrer fundierten Kenntnis wissenschaftlich an dieses Thema heran und widmet sich den zahlreichen, sich aufdrängenden Fragen so objektiv wie möglich:
Wie viele Prozesse gegen Hexen wurden tatsächlich geführt? Wer waren die Ankläger und Richter? Welches soziale und wirtschaftliche Umfeld begünstigte diese grausamen Verfolgungen? U.v.m.'

Witchcraft Reader sans Klaniczay

I recently needed to quote Gabor Klaniczay’s paper on The decline of witches and the rise of vampires, and decided to refer to the edition in Darren Oldridge’s The Witchcraft Reader. I then found out that a second edition of this anthology of witchcraft papers was published in 2008, and that Klaniczay’s paper is no longer in it.

Having now had the chance to look at the second edition, I can see that Oldridge has not only replaced some of the papers in the first edition but has also thoroughly reworked the introductory texts. In particular, the general introduction has changed quite a lot, as Oldridge apparently no longer feels the need to explicitly distance current research from previous efforts like those of Margaret Murray or ‘reprints of eccentric but still popular publications like Montague Summers’ History of Witchcraft’. Instead he simply introduces the reader to ‘the magical beliefs that saturated pre-modern communities’ and ‘the interaction between ordinary people and educated demonologists and lawyers’, before confronting the present-centredness (‘the tendency to explain the past in terms that relate mainly to the present’) and moral judgements with which the subject is frequently approached.

Of particular interest here is part nine of the book, the one dealing with the decline of witchcraft. In the first edition it contained Brian P. Levack’s The decline of witchcraft prosecutions, Klaniczay’s paper, and Owen Davies’ Urbanization and the decline of witchcraft: An examination of London. In the new edition Klaniczay’s paper has been replaced by The decline of the witchcraft pamphlet by Marion Gibson and Witchcraft after the witch trials by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra. I suppose that by doing so, a more general picture of the decline is drawn than in the original.

This, however, means that the word ‘vampire’ no longer is in the book. Whatever one may think of Klaniczay’s theory – Peter Mario Kreuter reiterated his critique of it at the conference in Vienna – it has established a link between beliefs in witchcraft and revenants or posthumous magic, cf. e.g. the volume 5 of The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, that might lead to more research on the connection. This link now is no longer evident from Oldridge’s anthology.

But there is plenty of interesting reading anyway, and I find it well worth quoting the view of 17th century witchcraft sceptic Friedrich Spee as mentioned by Oldridge in his general introduction: ‘the threat of appalling and secret conspiracies requires the highest standards of justice from those who seek to defeat them. If the crime ‘is difficult to prove then there is need for stronger, not weaker proofs’, and ‘if it is hidden and shrouded in shadows, then there is need for more light, not less, in order to illuminate it’.

Halloween

So, it's Halloween, and unlike last year I haven't done anything in particular for the occasion. But numerous other blogs and web sites have been warming up for Halloween, and here is apropos of my recent posts on books about the witch hunt a post on another blog that shows numerous examples of representations of witches. Another post from the same blog shows further examples, and here you'll also find a painting of the ghost of Samuel conjured up by the witch of Endor. This Old Testament tale of necromancy (1. Samuel, chapter 28) played a key role in some of the early debates on revenants.

Incidentally, this post is the 250th that I have written during nearly one and a half year since my first post on May 2nd 2007.

Black and white myths and the not so clear-cut facts

Unlike the talkative and humorous book on vampires mentioned recently, Rita Voltmer's Hexen. Wissen was stimmt (Herder) is succinct and to the point. It is short - just 128 pages - and practically layouted in two colours to make it easy to find and understand the information you need. In that sense, it's an exemplary example of how to communicate the current knowledge of a historical topic.

A majority of the book focuses on debunking a number of myths, misperceptions and manipulations. Voltmer exposes and confronts each of them with a short overview of current knowledge and explains the practice and thinking of contemporary experts and laymen of the early modern period.

Typically, the myths are very clear-cut, but the facts are not. However, in many cases we are familiar with the myths from comics, novels or movies about witches or from e.g. feminist neopaganist literature. But precisely our familiarity with the more or less fictional constructs about witches and the witch hunters is all the more reason why Voltmer's book is a welcome chance to disseminate a more correct understanding of the subject.

Some of the myths concern the pretty fantastic claims that several millions were accused of witchcraft and executed, that it was a medieval phenomenon, that the persecutions were largely of a misogynistic nature, that a witch was easily identifiable as either an old hag with warts or as a sexy midwife with red hair etc. etc.

Although debunking some of the more ridiculous myths about the torture - as seen in e.g. torture museums - it is quite unpleasant to read about this aspect of the judicial procedures against serious crimes like witchcraft. Voltmer provides a brief explanation of the views that justified the procedures, namely concerning the transcendent aspect of the torment, because the court was not only fighting the witch, but also the Devil by saving the witch's soul from eternal damnation.

Voltmer also questions the simplified explanations that have been provided for the whole phenomenon, yes, she even debunks the construction 'witch hunt'. For the purposes of this blog, it is particularly interesting to note that the Enlightenment (itself a construct) did not expose the witch hunt as a miscarriage of justice, and that it was not disbelief in witchcraft or fear of witches that stopped the witch hunt, but rather other concerns like e.g. considerations concerning the judicial use of torture. She also discards with the simple way of opposing rationalism and belief that is still so common, but not very useful when applied to history, cf. also my posts on the rationality of the past.

Finally, people might think that there is no witch hunt today, but Voltmer reminds us that, although not a witch hunt per se in the Christian sense, around the world, e.g. in some parts of Africa, people are still being persecuted for various sorts of witchcraft or magic, including vampirism!

However, Voltmer is worried that the historians who are researching the history of the early modern witch hunt may suffer the fate of a Don Quijote fighting wind mills in their attempt to put an end to all the popular myths, manipulations and conspiration theories about witches that are prevalent in movies, novels and the media in general. Hopefully, her book will be read and help fight the common myths. I heartily recommend it to anyone who needs a brief, but precise overview of the subject.