The Witch of Endor Before the Witch Trials

Abstract

In the sixteenth century the biblical story of the Witch of Endor and her raising of the prophet Samuel for King Saul became one of the key texts in demonologies to demonstrate the existence of witches and condemn their necromancy and fortune telling. By the later seventeenth century, the witch of Endor had become one of the most common visual codes for the practice of witchcraft. The purpose of this essay is to explore the many visual images of the story that appear before the period of epidemic witch trials in the sixteenth century. It will survey the manuscripts where these images appeared; the extent to which they drew on the early textual discourse of this woman as ventriloquist, sorcerer, master of demonic illusion and trickster; the critical texts for its transmission; the nature, extent and timing of changes in the woman’s representation from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries; and the break-down of long-standing continuities in the later sixteenth century when this female figure became the Witch of Endor.