Europe has underwent various changes during its long history, but the shifts that were made during the Reformation were particularly on a big scale. Thus this was a factor which played a big part in nurturing the influence of the many secondary effects from these transitions. These aftereffects had lain low until the end of the Medieval times, when a spark suddenly alit into flame which in turn speedily grew, devouring elements, some of which had lain around harmless, creating a raging inferno of fear and hate. These were the witch trials, which rampaged through Europe in the 15-18th century due to stereotypes, environmental elements and authority structures already existing in society. This severely threatened what little rights women held, such as free speech and knowledge.
Witch trials rampaged in Europe between the 15th and 18th century. This was not any coincidence, on the contrary it was a result of a carefully set stage: Medieval Europe. Europe at this time was the stage set just right and like most masterpieces, it had taken an incredibly long time to construct; in a way this started when Earth was born. As a result a “little ice age”, not big enough for mammoths or glaciers but big enough to shake the climate, continued from the 14th century to the 18th century, making “the temperature over the period…about two degrees Fahrenheit lower than it had been in previous centuries”(Oster, 2004, pg. 218). For Europe, this was serious, for most people’s livings were made by agriculture. The fact that their main source of income was dairy produce and farming also created another gateway for witch trials to establish itself into the community as David Underdown states from his comparison of communities which tend to lean to either business.
“Arable parishes tended to be smaller in area, with compact, nucleated village centres, often with resident squires and strong manorial institutions – effective mechanisms for social control … they also tended to retain strong habits of neighbourliness and cooperation”(Underdown, 1985, p.125).
Meanwhile the wood-pasture parish would often be larger, with the settlements scattered and their manorial institutions would also be far weaker in means of control, concepts of neighbourliness less binding, and farming took place on “individually owned, enclosed farms rather than the more cooperative systems that prevailed in open-field villages”(Underdown, 1985, p.125). The weaker system of control and more power given to women from the needs of the job suggests that they could have seemed more threatening than in other areas(Underdown, 1985). The needs of the job had prevented farmers from learning to read(Image 1) and this created barriers of knowledge between farmers and the literate. Yet from this period that changed. The press had been invented and “even the wholly illiterate still lived in a ‘culture of literacy’” in which texts were disseminated orally to those who could not read them”(Fay, 2012, pg. 2).
The development of the press played a big role in other aspects as well. For example, Malleus Maleficarum, commonly known as The Hammer of Witches and the main handbook for witch trials, was reprinted again and again, becoming the second bestselling book after the Bible in Europe for more than 2 centuries, spreading propaganda about witches to people who otherwise have never come into contact with it. This book was one of the most influential books about witch trials and used religion as an excuse to do anything to victims deemed to be witches such as stating that “the judge may safely promise witches to spare their lives, if only he will later excuse himself from pronouncing the sentence and will let another do it in his place”(Kramer, 1500). It came out in 1486 at the request of Pope Innocent VIII and was by Austrian and German priests, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger. The mentioned pope was an enthusiastic believer and supporter of witch trials, and also issued the papal bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus, which is Latin for “desiring with supreme ardor,” on December 5, 1484. This official order was a response to Kramer’s request after being refused assistance by the local authorities in prosecuting witchcraft in Germany, and had the same kind of colour as Malleus Maleficarum concerning religion, giving those who prosecuted them “full and entire liberty to propound and preach to the faithful word of God…and to do all things necessary”(Pope Innocent VIII, 1484). Numerous, similar documents had also been released before, but the power of the printing press enabled Summis desiderantes affectibus to hold much more influence. Although somewhat obvious, the presence of the Church heavily shadowed these matters, and definitely managed to make people fear them. An incident found in the fifteenth century manuscript Dives and Pauper shows this well with a man who came upon two friars on a path being “so insistent that the friars pass to his left, even if it required them to step onto the muddy main roadway”(Fay, 2012, pg. 1). In this case the man had literally read and taken an excerpt from a bible, and had managed to become so frightened of getting caught on the left side of God’s earthly representatives that he thought nothing of making them walk in mud. In such an environment, it causes no wonder that there was “neither bishop nor prelate nor curate nor preacher that will speak against these vices and errors that are so high against God’s worship”(Fay, 2012, pg. 2). With the authoritative figures of what little direction the peasants had in their lives, instead of speaking out against the wrongs, urged them to, “through the witch trials, to blame much of their malaise on their local witches”(Horsley, 1979, pg. 714). It is no hard task to imagine the eagerness most people, already driven by fear and anxiety, must have gone forward with. Christianity also promoted an ideal image of women which was so unrealistic that it really was no more than a dream. Furthermore women were presented with a few models which they would be judged by and would judge themselves by – the good wife, the witch, and the scold. These combined accordingly created a social expectation almost impossible to meet, since if you were not a good wife you could only be a witch or a scold, making women more vulnerable towards persecution.
One woman who was prosecuted was Ann Foster. She appears in a pamphlet published by an unknown writer in London in 1674, describing her accusation and conviction which occurred mostly in the town of Eastcoat and was executed in Northampton in detail. The series of events start when a rich and substantial Grazier, Joseph Weeden, slaughters a sheep and Foster comes to his house asking for some of his mutton. Weeden, not willing to give away some mutton for free, refuses when Foster is unwilling to pay for it. Foster goes away grumbling and murmuring and because this was behaviour frequently displayed by her, the incident was forgotten by the time “when it happened, that going into his Pasture he found thirty of his sheep in a condition dead, and in a strange and miserable manner, their Leggs broke in pieces, and their Bones all shattered in their Skins”(Unknown, 1674). Upon this Weeden’s neighbours, who suspected witchcraft, talked him into burning one of the sheep, claiming that this would bring the Witch to the place. According to the pamphlet, Weeden then threw one of the sheep into the fire and although it did not burn however much he tried, Foster made an appearance. This aroused his suspicion more than anything and “having a knife in hand, and led, perhaps by that general opinion, that fetching blood of the witch takes away her power of doing any harm, he gave her a little cut over the hand”(Unknown, 1674) deep enough to draw blood. Foster appeared to neglect applying any remedy to the wound and it swelled a lot until she came again, threatening Weeden with arrest and trouble. Upon this he gave her twenty shillings hoping not to make it into a big deal, but “she had no sooner received of him, but she returned these of the link words, that that was the Divils money, and that now she had power enough to punish him”(Unknown, 1674). Soon after, a barn of Weeden’s burnt down and Foster came to where he and his neighbours were trying to put it out. There she told some people that their actions were in vain, and this made the neighbours very sure that she was the witch. They carried her before the next Justice and Peace where she confessed freely to having committed all the crimes and even boasted that she would bring death to many more including herself. As she had confessed, she was committed to Northampton Goal. There the Devil often came to her “about the dead time of the Night in the likeness of a Rat, which at his coming, made a most lamentable and hideous noise which affrighted the people”(Unknown, 1674), and resulted in many coming to see her out of curiosity. Yet to these people only things like rats and horrible noises could be seen and heard when the Devil supposedly was there. A little while after, when Foster was called to affirm her punishment, she suddenly pleaded not guilty and even after it was unavoidably proved that she had been the culprit, her attitude had changed greatly
“and said that the Devil did provoke her to do all those mischiefs, and seeing that sentence of death was past upon her, she prayed to God to forgive her, and desired the Man (on whom she had so much spent her Malice, which was to the Ruine of him) to forgive her likewise, for she could no way make him amends but only by satisfying the Law, according to the sentence which was pronounced against her. She said that she could bring out many more that were as bad as her self”(Unknown, 1674).
She also desired to be burned but she was hung at the Common place of Execution on Saturday, August 22th.
Another said to be a witch whose crimes and prosecution is detailedly written on a pamphlet is Sarah Griffith. As the pamphlet tells us, this woman had long been suspected to be a bad Woman, but had not been arrested, for nothing could be proved for sure to identify her. It was because “some of the Neighbour Children would be strangely effected with unknown Distempers, as Vomiting of Pins, their Bodies turn’d into strange postures and such like, many identified were frighted with strange apperitions of Cats, which of a sudden would vanish away”(Unknown, 1704) that she was suspected and she was arrested following a series of incidents. These started off when an apprentice of a shop which Griffith visited laughed, causing the woman, who had thought he mocked her, to run out threatening revenge. That night a strange noise was heard and the goods were found all mixed up in the shop, and the apprentice who had laughed was troubled with strange diseases although prayers of some Divines were able to cure them. The next incident in this chain occurred when a group of young men including the apprentice came across Griffith near the river. Wanting to try her, one of them suggested tossing her into the river because he had heard that witches could float. The young men carried it out and according to what is recorded, Griffith swam like a cork and when they let her out she hit the apprentice on the arm, saying that he would pay dearly. Immediately afterwards he felt a strange pain and found a clear black mark of Griffith’s hand on his arm, whereupon he went home and soon died. The owner of the shop and whom this victim was apprenticed to, fearing more mischief on Griffith’s part, visited her with a constable and took her to the Justice House although she tried very hard to escape, even trying “to leap over the Wall and had done it had not the Constable knocked her down”(Unknown, 1704). When she inevitably reached the Justice she pleaded innocent but the shop owner was able to guarantee that his apprentice “had unaccountable fits, vomited up old nails, pins and such like, his body being turned into strange postures, and all the while nothing but crying out of Mother Griffith that she was come to torment him, his Arm rotted almost off Gangreen’d and kill’d him”(Unknown, 1704), so Griffith was committed to jail.
Also an accused witch, Susanna Stegold was mentioned in a printed pamphlet, A True Relation of the Araignment of Eightteene Witches, which is of the witch trials in Bury St. Edmunds, listing the names of eighteen people who were executed on 27 August 1645. She also comes up in Louise Jackson’s “Witches, Wives and Mothers: witchcraft persecution and women’s confessions in seventeenth-century England” which concentrates on examining the topic from the perspective of women. In it Stegold is used as an example of a witch for she was proclaimed guilty and confessed to using witchcraft to kill her husband. She had confessed that her husband was a ‘bad husband’ and Stegold seems to have had an unhappy marriage. Her hatred was so strong that from her confession below it seems like she believes that she killed him with her thoughts.
“Her husband being a bad husband she wished he might depart from her meaninge as she said that he shold die and presently after he died mad … she cryed out, oh! my deare husband, but being asked whither she bewitched him or noe and said she wished ill wishes to him and what so ever she wished came to pas”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 74).
A different woman who appears in Jackson’s document, Margaret Benet also confessed of witchcraft through troubles with a man. She confessed “that “the divell in the shape of a man … carried her body over a close into a thicket of bushes and there lay with her and after scratched her hand with the bushes”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 74). Although this does not clearly tell of what kind of confirmations were exchanged, if they were, from the way it is told, readers may assume that this is a form of rape represented as an act with the Devil. Widow Thomazine Ratcliffe, who again appeared in Jackson’s document “confessed that a month after the death of her husband there came one to her in the shape of her husband and lay hevy upon her and she asked him if he wold kill her and he answered in the voice of her husband no I will be a loveing husband”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 74). Since it is hard to believe that such a thing really happened and her dead husband came back, this is also more easily thought upon as rape.
Likewise Margaret Benet was among the numerous witches mentioned in Jackson’s work. She “confessed that ‘when she was at work she felt a thinge come upon her legs and go into her secret parts and nipped her in her secret parts where her marks were found’”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 72). As she does not elaborate, it is unclear what the thinge was, but the secret parts were probably her genitalia. With a similar confession, “Goody Smith confessed that “her imps hange in her secret parts in a bag and her husband saw it””(Jackson, 1995, pg. 72) On the other hand Anna Ushur confessed of a slightly different experience although inevitably connected to witchcraft. “Usher confessed to making a covenant with a pole cat and that ‘she felt 2 things like butterflies in her secret parts with witchings dansings and suckinge & she felt them with her hands and rubbed them and killed them’”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 72).
An end soon came to these witch trials, although the reason and the specific date of when is still very much debated. “Examples frequently cited are the rise of secular rationalism or social trends that led to the discounting of devilry. It has been suggested that witchcraft simply became too old hat for the intelligentsia of the early Enlightenment to countenance and that they were wont to sneer at such outdated nonsense so as to reassure themselves of their own intellectual superiority”(Hannam, 2003, L25-26). This new rise in the support of rationalism is quite supported and it is definitely true that “Demonic possession, for example, was only possible in a society which believed it”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 68), making it hard for witch trials to thrive in such a society. Another view or way taken is to try to identify the conditions which had caused the trials in the first place. If that can be done it is thought that
“the subsequent decline might simply be explained by their later disappearance. An example of this would be the religious confusion and violence of the Reformation that had largely worked itself out after the Treaty of Westphalia in the mid-seventeenth century. It has also been widely noticed that hunts tended to take place in areas and periods where central control had largely broken down or during interregnums between regimes. For example, the activities of Matthew Hopkins took place in the chaos of the English Civil War, the Great Hunt in Scotland in 1661 when English justices were replaced, and even the Salem of 1692 outbreak occurred in a temporary vacuum of authority. When control was restored, goes this theory, the witch hunts largely ceased.”(Hannam, 2003, L20-24)
Another reason these trials started and spread so easily could be the natures and attitudes of the majority of the accused. Many of the first accused were old women, who didn’t mingle with society, childless, and sometimes with jobs like if they were a midwife or folk healer; in short they were loners and nuisances in society.(Image 2) Alongside that they could have nasty tempers and be quick to threaten, being childless essentially meant that there was noone to support them. A feature of witchcraft narratives which back this up “is that the type of activity in which participants were most frequently involved was verbal in nature”(Culpeper and Semino, 2000, pg. 101), creating a renewed importance for using words correctly. These victims were also the ones which became the base to witches seen today in fairytales and stories.
Additionally it may have helped that the accused and their crimes were usually “a direct inversion of the traditionally accepted roles for women”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 72). For instance most deeds used as proof of witchcraft were direct opposites of normally feminine jobs, some examples being child-rearing and infanticide, healing and harming like Griffith did to the apprentice, birth and death. Since the original roles of women were potentially extremely powerful as jobs which gave life, the persecutions could very well have been to minimize this threat and reassert male authority as well. Another element often seen in confessions are sexual aspects. “Female libido and sexual desire seem to have been associated with the temptings of the devil in Puritan as well as Catholic minds and this is reflected in the confessions”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 72). Many of the women already mentioned confessed of rape and inclinations of sexual desire. As Jackson mentions, this may be that “some accused witches were, within their court confessions, contextualising their own insecurities and experiences within the linguistic framework of demonology”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 64). It tells a lot about the attitude of society towards women then, when these women who have been abused feel like and assume that they are actually the guilty ones as a result(Jackson, 1995) although the events surrounding the time helped as well; “as Hopkins very visibly and openly hunted through Suffolk, it is likely that more and more women began to question their own behaviour in terms of witchcraft”(Jackson, 1995, pg. 79)