Servants of Satan

Joseph Klaits

Description

This is the first book to consider the general course and significance of the European witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries since H.R. Trevor-Roper's classic and pioneering study appeared some fifteen years ago. Drawing upon the advances in historical and social-science scholarship of the past decade and a half, Joseph Klaits integrates the recent appreciations of witchcraft in regional studies, the history of popular culture, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to better illuminate the place of witch hunting in the context of social, political, economic and religious change.

"In all, Klaits has done a good job. Avoiding the scandalous and sensational, he has maintained throughout, with sensitivity and economy, an awareness of the uniqueness of the theories and persecutions that have fascinated scholars now for two decades and are unlikely to lose their appeal in the foreseeable future." —American Historical Review

"This is a commendable synthesis whose time has come. . . . fascinating . . . " —The Sixteenth Century Journal

" . . . comprehensive and clearly written . . . An excellent book . . . " —Choice

"Impeccable research and interpretation stand behind this scholarly but not stultifying account . . . " —Booklist

"A good, solid, general treatment . . . " —Erik Midelfort

"Servants of Satan is a well written, easy to read book, and the bibliography is a good source of secondary materials for further reading." —Journal of American Folklore

Preface IX
Introduction I

1. The Witchcraft Enigma – 8
2. Medieval Witches - 19
3. Sexual Politics and Religious Reform in the Witch Craze - 48
4. Classic Witches: The Beggar and Midwife - 86
5. Classic Accusers: The Possessed - 104
6. In the Torture Chamber: Legal Reform and Psychological Breakdown - 128
7. An End to Witch Hunting - 159

Notes - 177
Bibliography - 196
Index - 207

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Religión
• General officer
• History of the Americas
• Christianity
• Religion
• General
• United States
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 février 1987
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253013323
• Langue: English

Extrait

Servants of Satan
Servants of Satan
The Age of the Witch Hunts
Joseph Klaits
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [e-mail]
1985 by Joseph Klaits All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klaits, Joseph. Servants of Satan.
Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Witchcraft-History. I. Title. BF1566.K53 1985 909 .0982105 ISBN 0-253-35182-0 cloth ISBN 0-253-20422-4 paperback.
11 12 13 14 15 08 07 06 05 04 03
For Frederick and Alexander
Contents
Preface
Introduction

1. The Witchcraft Enigma
2. Medieval Witches
3. Sexual Politics and Religious Reform in the Witch Craze
4. Classic Witches: The Beggar and the Midwife
5. Classic Accusers: The Possessed
6. In the Torture Chamber: Legal Reform and Psychological Breakdown
7. An End to Witch Hunting
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
This book is an extended essay, reflecting on and synthesizing the extensive recent literature on the witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chapters began as a series of course lectures designed to help bridge the gap between the interests of undergraduates and the concerns of scholars. I owe a great deal to the students at Oakland University and Catholic University of America whose questions and suggestions forced me to clarify my thinking and improve the presentation.
Many others contributed comments on earlier chapter drafts or led me to materials I otherwise might have overlooked. I especially want to thank for their encouragement and good advice Donald Bailey, Jack Censer, Richard Golden, B. Robert Kreiser, Lawrence Orton, Orest Ranum, Dan Ross, and Timothy Tackett, and to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the late Marian Wilson. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and sabbatical and research support from Oakland University gave me the leisure and resources necessary to complete the project.
Throughout the years of research and writing, this book has been a family project in our household. It began when Alexander was small enough to take witchcraft even more seriously than did his father. The writing ends with Frederick old enough to do the bibliography. For their inspiration, and for Barrie s, my deepest thanks.
Columbia, Maryland
April 1984
Servants of Satan
Introduction
Belief in witchcraft-harm inflicted by someone employing supernatural means-is one of the most widespread of cultural traits. Our modern skepticism about the efficacy of witchcraft can easily blind us to its importance in the past and in many contemporary societies. 1 Even in the late twentieth century, witch beliefs continue to flourish in Latin American voodoo, among the satisfied patients of African witch doctors, and, not least, in the stories we in the West tell our children.
To most Americans, however, witchcraft suggests a specific and isolated historical event, the Salem witch trials. In fact, the great Massachusetts witch hunt of 1692, which resulted in the death of twenty people, is the one episode between Plymouth Rock and the Boston Tea Party that seems to stand out in our national collective memory of colonial times. Fueled by fictional accounts and an inexhaustible stream of reinterpretations, remembrance of Salem appears perennially adaptable to society s shifting concerns, from McCarthyite inquisitions to hallucinogenic drugs. It is hard to imagine a new theory about a witch trial other than Salem s featured on the front page of the New York Times, for this is the only witch panic still vivid in American cultural tradition. 2
Yet the Salem witch hunt was merely the tip of an immense iceberg, whose shape and substance we are just beginning to appreciate. Thousands of people were tried for witchcraft during the craze that swept over Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and crossed the Atlantic with the first white settlers. Exact statistics are unobtainable because of gaps in the records, but over ten thousand cases have been verified. 3 Estimates of the actual total range much higher. Salem, then, was very far from a unique event. The Massachusetts panic closely resembles a multitude of far less famous witch trials. This book explores the core of the great witch craze that lies buried far below our images of Salem. It attempts to map and interpret the social, political, and intellectual dimensions of the age of the witch hunts.
During the era of the witch trials, the Halloween witch we know today had not yet been domesticated, commercialized, and trivialized. Instead, she lived in the imagination as a supremely dangerous, uncontrollable menace. The stereotypical witch evoked the same emotions of fear and horror that satanic cults like Charles Manson s have inspired in contemporary society. The terrifying witch stereotype current at Salem held that the accused had made pacts with the devil. In return for their allegiance, Satan supposedly granted his servants awesome powers to inflict harm on their neighbors. In the form of spirits or specters, witches could travel through the air over long distances, pass through strong walls, and attack their helpless victims. Even at their trials, it seemed, the witches dared to send forth specters to torment their accusers. Anguished shrieks and convulsive seizures in open court were vivid testimony to the dreadful sufferings experienced by the young girls of Salem whose bodies ostensibly were possessed through witchcraft.
As frightening as the abilities of the Salem witches seemed to their contemporaries, witches in Europe could apparently do worse. Witches regularly were held responsible for sudden death due to illness or accident. In the overwhelmingly agricultural society of the time, they were apt to be accused of devastating crops with bad weather or destructive pests. Thus, witches were charged with blighting the grain, raining down hail on the vines, or visiting disease on domestic animals. Within the household, witchcraft might be invoked to explain difficulties between husband and wife, particularly when sexual and reproductive matters were involved. Impotence, failure to conceive, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death were conditions likely to be attributed to the witch s curse. In short, witches were blamed for nearly every kind of personal calamity.
Still more alarming were the other consequences of the witch s imagined allegiance to Satan. Generally the witch was pictured as a woman, usually middle-aged or older, often poor and a widow. By signing the demonic pact, thereby renouncing God and Christianity, she became the devil s servant, a partner in his universal war against all that was good in the world. Specifically, it was thought in many parts of Europe that these women showed their subservience to Satan by becoming his willing sexual slaves. Flying through the air at night to join others of their kind at mass meetings known as witches sabbats, the devil s human servants were said to worship him by blaspheming against God, copulating with their master, and indulging in orgies of sexual promiscuity with everyone present. Once returned home, the witch could shelter an animal familiar, a demon in animal form, and suckle him at her witch s tit, the extra nipple given her when she entered Satan s service. A young witch might receive the sexual attentions of an incubus, a devil who assumed human shape in order to impregnate her and thus bring forth a new generation of witches.
Such, briefly stated, was the stereotype of the witch. However unlikely it may appear today, it was a powerful image in the era of the witch craze. Between about 1560 and 1700, thousands of witch trials and executions in Europe and her American colonies were based on this idea of the witch as Satan s servant and accomplice in evil.
Our modern point of view may make us question the sincerity of accusers who maintained this stereotype. Witness our usage of the term witch hunt to connote an unfair judicial proceeding of the McCarthyite type, undertaken for cynical political purposes. Were the judges of the witch trials consciously fabricating accusations? In a few instances the answer undoubtedly is yes. The great majority of those charged with witchcraft were poor and powerless, however, and little material gain or political advantage could be hoped for in most trials. The evidence produced in this book will show that the typical judges and accusers sincerely believed that by executing witches society was cleansing itself of dangerous pollution.
Witch-hunting judges were not alone in their acceptance of the idea of witchcraft. It was part of the dominant world-view during the era of the craze. Nearly everyone-from intellectuals to peasants-believed in the reality of invisible spirits, both angelic and demonic. Hardly anyone challenged the universal opinion that supernatural forces constantly intervened in everyday life, rewarding and punishing, blessing or cursing. Most people were likely to attribute to God or to the devil responsibility for events that we are more inclined to ascribe to human actions, natural forces, or sheer coincidence. 4
Because educated people today generally associate witchcraft with ir