Rita Voltmer

Behind the "Veil of Memory": About the Limitations of Narratives

Edward Bevers book The Realities of Witchcraft addresses a fundamental historiographical issue, namely the extent to which early modern magical practices really functioned. Most scholars dismiss the idea that magical rites have real efficacy, or argue that the only reality that should be considered is contingent on historical cultural structures. Bever asserts that magic, and particularly harmful witchcraft, really worked, sometimes by physical means, but often by influencing neurobiology. In this forum section, five scholars respond to and critique Bevers arguments, and Bever responds.

The Mirror of the Witches (1600): A German Baroque Tragedy in Context

In 1600, the quarrelsome Lutheran pastor Thomas Birck from Unterturkheim in the Duchy of Wurttemberg tried to publish a Baroque stage play called The Mirror of The Witches. At first, the Duke of Wurttemberg Friedrich I allowed the printing but subsequently withdrew his imprimatur as part of a political intrigue against the pastor. Only fragments of the play have survived. Historians of German literature have judged Birck an uninspired Lutheran pastor of harsh orthodoxy. However, it is worth revisiting Birck’s play as virtually the only Baroque German play featuring witches and discussing their power. We consider the ideology of the autocratic duke and of Thomas Birck before examining the tragedy’s sources and main arguments and speculating as to why the Mirror of the Witches failed.

Preaching on Witchcraft? The Sermons of Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg (1445–1510)

The famous preacher Johannes Geiler was installed in the Strasbourgian pulpit in 1478. His extensive programme was to bring true purification to the whole body of the urban society. Standing in the reform tradition of the councils of Constance and Basel, Geiler wanted to model Strasbourg into a city of God, ruled by the Ten Commandments. Distracting, infecting elements should be either converted to Christian life or be banished. The sinful and unpersuadable members of the city body like sodomites and witches should be eradicated. In line with Jean Gerson, Johannes Nider and Bernardino of Siena, and knowing the new concepts of witchcraft mediated by Heinrich Institoris, Johannes Geiler battled against all kinds of superstition, against beneficia, maleficia, learned and popular magic. His sermons show how the old scholastic concepts of magic and superstition started to intermingle with the new ideas about diabolic witchcraft. Thus, preachers of reform like Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg acted as mediators of the new concept, even if they were not ardent followers of the Malleus Maleficarum.

Die skandinavischen Königreiche: Dänemark, Norwegen, Schweden, Island und die Färöer, Finnland

In der keineswegs konfliktfreien Kalmarer Union verbanden sich 1397 Norwegen (als Erbreich), Danemark und Schweden (beide zunachst als Wahlmonarchien). 1460 erhoben das Herzogtum Schleswig (ein Lehen der danischen Krone) und die Grafschaft Holstein (ab 1474 Herzogtum als Teil des Heiligen Romischen Reiches deutscher Nation) den danischen Konig zu ihrem Regenten. Beide Territorien blieben bis 1864 bei Danemark.

England (mit Wales), Irland und Schottland

Die politische, religiose und kulturelle Transformation des katholischen Konigreichs England (einschlieslich Wales) in eine uberwiegend protestantische Nation benotigte fast zwei Jahrhunderte, wahlt man mit 1529 (Einberufung des englischen Reformationsparlaments) den fruhesten Anfangs- und mit 1688/89 (Glorious Revolution, Toleration Act) oder 1701 (Act of Settlement) einen der spateren Endtermine.

The Witch in the Courtroom: Torture and the Representations of Emotion

In extending the perspective developed through studies on witch trials in Lutheran regions (e.g. Wurttemberg), the chapter emphasizes the difficulties besetting the attempts to use local witch-trial records stemming from intense, mostly Catholic witch-hunts, to recover the emotions of the persons involved. This chapter argues first that we do not find emotions in the records, but representations of emotions. Second, it cannot be neglected that torture, interrogation, confession and the respective representations of emotion were intrinsically tied together in a threefold legal, religious and political sense. Third, witch-hunts generated different kinds of source material providing us with different perspectives on the lost world of past emotions (e.g. trial records from local courts; records from appeal courts; secret letters of the accused) with their inherent problems of interpretation. Fourth, courts with legally trained assessors formed a certain kind of emotional community. Certain semantics determined the norms of the emotional habits of the accused as well as the judges. Finally, further research into the emotional norms, narratives or labels of alleged witches has to move from appreciating local trial records as ‘windows’ onto lost emotions of the past.

Political Preaching and a Design of Urban Reform: Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg and Strasbourg

In the fifteenth century, the desire of the laity for more convincing religious instruction in the vernacular was not entirely satisfied by wandering preachers like Vincent Ferrer (†1419), Bernardino of Siena (†1444) or Giovanni of Capistrano (†1456). Therefore, north of the Alps, particularly in free cities of the Empire, so-called municipal preaching offices (Stadtprädikaturen) were introduced.3 For the most part, cathedral chapters and their bishops exerted a great influence over these foundations. Subsequently, the newly installed preachers were obliged to discipline the urban population. According to the artes praedicandi, the preachers were expected to avoid any criticism of the religious hierarchy and the ruling magistrates.4 In 1478, such a municipal preaching office was established at the cathedral in the imperial city of Strasbourg.5

Witch-Finders, Witch-Hunters or Kings of the Sabbath? The Prominent Role of Men in the Mass Persecutions of the Rhine-Meuse Area (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)

The early modern witch-hunts can, in one very clear sense, be labelled as a manifestation of legalized male violence against women, given that they were authorized by the writings and opinions of theologians and jurists and conducted by a legal system that was — literally — ‘manned’ by judges, court assessors, jurymen and informers, and supported by local clerics.1 They also targeted women in greater numbers than men: the overall ratio for early modern Europe and New England is 75–80 per cent women to 20–25 per cent men. This point must be stressed before any analysis of male involvement as accused witches is attempted, although we need also to bear in mind that the early modern legal system was generally characterized by a significant level of embedded juridical violence that affected men and women accused of serious crimes other than witchcraft — such as theft, robbery, murder, infanticide, or adultery. Moreover, the proportion of women amongst the victims of witch-persecution ranged considerably both chronologically (from witch-hunt to witch-hunt), and geographically (from region to region), with men even outnumbering women in certain areas — such as Normandy, the Pays de Vaud, Finland, Estonia or Iceland.2 When analysing the gendering of witch-persecution, we must also remember that the apparently simple question of why more women than men were suspected as witches overall still excites great debate amongst historians of witchcraft, who by no means agree on a simple explanatory model in response. Arguably, no such model exists, because witch-trials occurred in so many regionally varied formats (from single trials to mass panics) and in quite different legal systems in Europe and in the transatlantic colonies; because they were based upon regionally and socially different systems of witch-beliefs; and because they were linked to ideas about motherhood, the family, masculinity, and femininity that varied according to religious confession.3 In this context of complexity, ‘grand’ explanatory theories about the gendering of witch-persecution are almost bound to prove inadequate on closer examination, especially if they are based on merely a few case studies or on assumptions made about one region and applied uncritically to another.4