Abstract
I begin with the silence that haunts the rest of this book. The erasure of the witch from European depictions of widowburning invites this question: When European witnesses of sati watched a woman burn—in ways that I will argue were very similar to the manner in which witches were burned—why didn’t they seize the analogy of burning witches in their own countries in order to better explain the unfamiliar event of sati to their audiences at home? Despite the dissimilar cultural encoding of the two scenes that constructed a Hindu widow’s burning as the sacrifice of a heroic martyr and a witch’s burning as the punishment of an extremely wicked woman, there must have been extraordinary consonances between the two forms of burning; enough, at least, to call forth a comparison. This correlation between the two forms of burning I will discuss in this chapter was not that unusual; much later, in 1928, Edward Thompson employed exactly this analogy in his history of sati. The silence appears to relate specifically to early modern responses to sati. The following pages will test if such an analogy was linguistically or even realistically feasible for early modern Europeans; that is, could the Europeans who watched incidents of Hindu widowburning have known about similar burnings in Europe in order to have the conceptual frame of reference necessary to make such a connection? Were they in a position to seize the analogy?
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Notes
See Louis Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” in New World Encounters, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 180.
Emphasis added, John Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, ed. H. G. Rawlinson (London, 1929; rpt. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1994), 151, 179.
See John Francis Gemelli Careri, A Voyage Round the World by Dr. John Francis Gemelli Careri. Part III. Containing the most Remarkable Things he saw in Indostan, in Surendranath Sen, ed. Indian Travels of Thévenot and Careri (New Delhi: National Archives of India, 1949), 154–277, esp. 202.
Francesco Carletti, My Voyage Around the World, trans. Herbert Weinstock (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), 189, emphasis added.
See C. L’Estrange Ewen, ed., Witch Hunting and Witch Trials (London: Kegan Paul, 1929), 112. Pieter Spierenburg, The Broken Spell (London: Macmillan, 1991), 101–3; Allison P. Coudert, “The Myth of the Improved Status of Protestant Women: The Case of the Witchcraze,” in Brian P. Levack, ed., Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, Vol. 10 of 12 vols., Witchcraft, Women and Society (New York: Garland, 1992), 85, n. 2; Anne L. Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (San Francisco: Pandora, 1994), 20–3; and Sigrid Brauner, Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany, ed. Robert H. Brown (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 5. The lack of Indian records discourages an accurate estimate of the number of widow burnings between 1500 and 1723. Bernier notes a decrease in the instances of sati due to Mughal restrictions (1526–1707). See François Bernier, Travels in the Moghul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, trans. Archibald Constable on the basis of Irving Brock’s version, 2d ed. revised by Vincent A. Smith (Oxford, 1934; rpt. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992), 306. But in 1818, eleven years before sati was officially banned in India, an increase was noted in the number of satis, from 378 in 1815 to 839 in 1818. See Edward Thompson, Suttee, 69; Julia Leslie, “Suttee or Sati: Victim or Victor?” in Institutions and Ideologies, eds. David Arnold and Peter Robb (Richmond, U. K.: Curzon Press, 1993), 46; and Ainslee T. Embree, “Widows as Cultural Symbols,” in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Women in India, 155. Ashis Nandy has noted that “the epidemic of sati in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries was mainly a product of British colonial intrusion into Indian society.” See Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980), 1.
Henry Boguet, An Examen of Witches, trans. Allen Ashwin, ed. Montague Summers (Bungay: John Rodker, 1929), xxxii–xxxiii.
Nicolas Remy, Demonolatry, 2 vols., trans. E. A. Ashwin, ed. Montague Summers (Secaucus, NJ: University Books, 1974), 1: 5.
See Jean Bodin, Traité de la Démonomanie des Sorciers, in Witchcraft in Europe 1100–1700: A Documentary History, ed. Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 213–15, esp. 215.
The quotations from Conrad Dietrich and George Pictorius occur in H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 53, 59.
Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. 4 of 6 vols. (London, 1587), 914–15.
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 28.
Nicholas Withington, A Briefe Discoverye of Some Things Best Worth noteinge in the Travells of Nicholas Withington (London, 1735), in William Forster, ed., Early Travels in India, 1583–1619 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), 188–233, esp. 219.
See Thomas Bowrey, A Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay Of Bengal, 1669–1679, ed. R. C. Temple (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1905), 36–7.
John Albert de Mandelslo, The Travels of John Albert de Mandelslo, in Olearius, Adam Oelschlaeger, called The Voyages & Travels of the Ambassadors, 2nd ed. (London, 1669), 31–32.
Kramer and Sprenger are cited from The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, trans. Montague Summers (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 47. Quotations from Scot and Remy appear in Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Vol. 1, introduction by Montague Summers (New York: Dover Publications, 1972), 4; and Nicholas Remy, Demonolatry, 2: 109.
See Christina Larner, “Crimen Exceptum? The Crime of Witchcraft in Europe,” in Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe: General Studies, Vol. 3, ed. Brian P. Levack (London: Longman, 1987), 100. See also Clarke Garret, “Women and Witches: Patterns of Analysis,” Signs 3 (1977), 461–70; Alan Anderson and Raymond Gordon, “Witchcraft and the Status of Women—the Case of England,” British Journal of Sociology 29 (June 1978): 171–84; and Brian P. Levack, “The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–1662,” Witchcraft in Scotland, ed. Brian P. Levack, Vol. 7, 256–74; and Anne Barstow, Witchcraze, 15–29. There is an important exception in the Jura dioceses of Geneva, Lausanne, and Sion, where heresy and witchcraft were entwined: “The most spectacular example is fifteenth-century Neuchâtel, where only seven of thirty six accused were women.” Since heresy was not specifically linked to gender, women did not seem to be singled out. See E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, 22–23.
Jim Sharpe, “Women, Witchcraft and the Legal Process,” Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, eds. Frank Kermode and Garthine Walker (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994): 106–7. See also C. L’Estrange Ewen, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials; and Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 158–66.
See Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, “Six Centuries of Witchcraft in the Netherlands: Themes, Outlines, and Interpretations,” in Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff, eds., Witchcraft in the Netherlands: Themes, Outlines, and Interpretations. Trans. Rachel M. J. van der Wilden-Fall (Rotterdam: Universitaire Pers, 1991) 1–36, esp. 33.
The phrase is from Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
For a review of the witchcraft literature, see E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, 34–35; H. R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), 151; Anne Barstow, Witchcraze, 169–78.
For the background of some variances, see H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684, 1–66. For an analysis of the extraordinary complexity of a comparative history of European witchcraft, see Jules Michelet, La Sorcière (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1890). See also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribners, 1971); and Lynn White, Jr. “Death and the Devil,” in Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe: General Studies, Vol. 3 of Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, twelve vols., ed. Brian P. Levack (New York: Garland, 1992), 319–46.
J. A. Sharpe, “Last Dying Speeches: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth Century England,” Past and Present 107 (May 1985), 144–67, esp. 148; see also Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, which builds on the evidence from the Essex Assize and Quarter Sessions records, borough and ecclesiastical records, and stresses the importance of the pamphlet literature, 81–93; see also the useful appendix on witchcraft in Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1588 to 1718 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965; rpt. 1911).
Christina Larner, Witchcraft and Religion, ed. Alan Macfarlane (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 69–70.
See Barbara Rosen, ed., Witchcraf in England, 1558–1618 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1969), 20.
Ibid., 52.
See Brian P. Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1987), 132, and Pieter Spierenburg, The Broken Spell, 109–110. Many historians of the European witchcraze have represented Anne Hendriks of Holland as a witch; she was, rather, a victim of religious persecution. A gruesome etching of her burning, done by Jan Luykens and titled “The Martyrdom of Anneken Heyndricks, AD 1571,” appeared in the second edition (1685) of Thieleman J. van Braght’s “Het Bloedig tooneel” [“The Bloody theater, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians”]. Braght, a Dutch Mennonite pastor, described the persecution of the Anabaptists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I am indebted to Laura Linke of the Special Collections and Rare Books Department of Cornell Library for her help in tracking down this elusive image and shedding light on Anne Hendrik’s death.
See Montague Summers, The Geography of Witchcraft (New York: Knopf, 1927), 554.
References to Spanish witchcraft in this passage are from Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609–1614) (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1980), 22–3, 27, 388, and Gustav Henningsen, “The Papers of Alonso de Salazar Frias: A Spanish Witchcraft Polemic 1610–14,” in Brian Levack, ed., Witch-Hunting in Continental Europe: Local and Regional Studies, Vol. 5, Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, 207–40, esp. 208–26.
See E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France, 32–33. On French witch-persecutions, see also Alfred Soman, “The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt (1565–1640),” Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978), 31–44.
See Henry Lea, Materials Towards a History of Witchcraft, ed. Arthur C. Howland, three vols. (New York: Thomas Joseloff, 1939), 1188–89; H. R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze, 156, 157; and Lynn White, Jr. “Death and the Devil,” 330.
George F. Black, “A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland, 1510–1727,” in Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, Vol. 7, ed. Brian P. Levack, 152, 145–46.
Emphasis added, Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, quoted in M. A. Murray, “The ‘Devil’ of North Berwick,” Witchcraft in Scotland, ed. Brian P. Levack, Vol. 7, 285.
See The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant, Viz. Into Turkey, Persia, The East Indies. Newly done out of French, trans. A. Lovell (London: H. Faithhorne, 1687), 85.
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1974), 17: 220.
James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority,” in A Cultural Studies Reader: History, Theory, Practice (London: Longman, 1995), 259.
Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, trans. and ed. Armando Cortesao, two vols. (London, 1944; rpt. New Delhi: Asian Education Services, 1990), 1: 72.
John Jourdain, The Journal of John Jourdain, (1608–17), ed. William Foster (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1905; rpt. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992), 96–97.
Thomas Roe, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615–1619, ed. William Forster (London: Hakluyt Society, 1899; rpt. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1990), 271, 272, 275.
George Percy, “A True Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward W. Haile (Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998), 496–519, esp. 515.
See Jean Mocquet, Travels and Voyages into Africa, Asia, and America, the East and West-Indies; Syria, Jerusalem, and the Holy-Land. Performed by John Mocquet, Keeper of the Cabinet of Rarities, to the King of Fraunce, in the Tuilleries, trans. Nathaniel Pullen (London, Printed for William Newton, 1696), 2: 109. The English translation appeared over ninety years after Mocquet’s travels.
Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 1608–1617, in six vols. ed., Richard C. Temple (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1907–36), 2: 35.
Elisabeth Bronfen, Over her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (New York: Routledge, 1992), xi.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 75, 138, 231, 80, 73; see also Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches, trans. O. N. V. Glendinning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 205.
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© 2003 Pompa Banerjee
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Banerjee, P. (2003). Overlapping Discourses. In: Burning Women. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05204-9_2
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