Abstract
In his stimulating article ‘Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society (c.l520–c.l630)’, Stuart Clark highlights the existence of an early modern Protestant pastoral demonology qualitatively different from that of its Catholic counterpart. It was a demonology which downplayed the significance of maleficent witchcraft and the power of witches and instead reserved its ire for popular magic, or the wide range of rituals used for healing, divination, detection and counter-witchcraft. This emphasis, Clark argues, sprang from a pastoral concern to persuade the layperson that to regard misfortune as the work of witches ‘undervalued the spiritual function of misfortune as a retribution for sin and a test of faith, and questioned God’s providential control over affairs’. To counter misfortune with beneficent magic ‘ignored the need for repentance … and attributed specious powers to the supposedly protective or curative properties of persons, places, times, and things’.1
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Notes and References
The author wishes to thank the following for their help in the preparation of this chapter: Bob Scribner, Brian Ward and all those who attended and offered helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper at the 2 June 1993 meeting of the Institute of Historical Research Seminar series on ‘Evil’. Clark’s article appears in Early Modern European Witchcraft, ed. B. Ankarloo and G. Henningsen (paperback edition, Oxford, 1993). See especially pp. 59–60, 69–70, 73–4, 77.
K. Borchardt, Die geistlichen Institutionen in der Reichsstadt Rothenburg ob der Tauber und dem Zugehörigen Landgebiet von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation (Neustadt/Aisch, 1988) vol. I, p. 15;
P. Schattenmann, Die Einführung der Reformation in der ehemaligen Reichsstadt Rothenburg ob der Tauber (1520–1580) (Gunzenhausen, 1928) pp. 124–9; H. W. Bensen, Historische Untersuchungen über die ehemalige Reichsstadt Rothenburg (Nuremberg, 1837) chs 22–4.
See, for example, the Franconian prince-bishoprics of Bamberg and Würzburg in the late sixteenth/early seventeenth centuries, F. Merzbacher, Die Hexenprozesse in Franken (Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte, vol. 56, Munich, 1957) pp. 30–6;
H. H. Kunstmann, Zauberwahn und Hexenprozeß in der Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Schriftenreihe des Stadtarchivs Nürnberg, Nuremberg, 1970) p. 17.
RStA A875, fols 187r-7v, 202v (Seitzin’s claims); 211v, 221v-2r (jurists’ comments). On witchcraft as a diabolic illusion, see C. Zika, ‘The Devil’s Hoodwink: Seeing and Believing in the World of Sixteenth-Century Witchcraft’, in C. Zika (ed.), No Gods Except Me (University of Melbourne, 1991), pp. 153–98.
As suggested by C. Larner in ‘Crimen Exceptum?: the Crime of Witchcraft in Europe’, V. A. C. Gatrell et al. (eds), The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980) pp. 49–75, and by H. C. E. Midelfort in ‘Heartland of the Witchcraze: Central and Northern Europe’, History Today (February 1981) pp. 27–31.
J. H. Langbein, Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance (Harvard, 1974) pp. 180–1.
RStA A875, fol. 223r. For an account of the Wiesensteig hunt, see H. C. E. Midelfort, Witch-hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684 (Stanford, Cal., 1972) pp. 88–90.
There were hunts in Bamberg, Würzburg, Bad Windsheim and Nördlingen, see note 4; Kunstmann, Zauberwahn und Hexenprozeß, pp. 23–4; C. W. Schirmer, Geschichte Windsheims und seiner Nachbarorte (Nuremberg, 1848) pp. 151–2.
By which the accuser was liable to a charge of false accusation if the accused proved his innocence, see B. P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London, 1987) p. 149. Punishments for making false accusations of witchcraft could be harsh in Rothenburg: pillory and banishment (Hans Lautenbach, 1561, RStA A846, fols 438v-441v); banishment (Barbara Röestin, 1629, RStA B665, fols 21r-23v); flogging and banishment (Margareta Härterin, 1629, RStA, fols 618r-619v).
For examples of ordinances, see L. Schnurrer, Die Rechtssatzungen der Reichsstadt Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Rothenburg, 1988) nos. 400, 440, 464, 478, 503, 525, 528, 569, 626, 641, 695, 730, 724, 743, 762 etc. These ordinances aimed chiefly to ensure that people went to church, stopped
H.-P. Ziegler, Die Dorfordnungen im Gebiet der Reichsstadt Rothenburg (Rothenburg, 1977) pp. 122–3;
H. Woltering, Die Reichsstadt Rothenburg ob der Tauber und ihre Landschaft über die Landwehr, vol. 2, (Rothenburg, 1971) pp. 52–8.
So they had to act selectively. See also G. Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör (Bonn/Berlin, 1991) p. 27.
Supporting the idea that the Lutheran Reformation had failed to reform popular belief, see G. Strauss, ‘Success and Failure in the German Reformation’, Past and Present, 67 (1975) pp. 30–63;
H.-C. Rublack, ‘Success and Failure of the Reformation’, in A. C. Fix and S. C. Karant-Nunn (eds), in Germania Illustrata (Kirksville, 1992) pp. 141–65.
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© 1996 Alison Rowlands
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Rowlands, A. (1996). Witchcraft and Popular Religion in Early Modern Rothenburg ob der Tauber. In: Scribner, B., Johnson, T. (eds) Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24836-0_6
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