Abstract
In the mid-sixteenth century, the Habsburg Low Countries were highly variegated. For most of the sixteenth century the northern, Dutch-speaking parts of Flanders and Brabant saw very few witchcraft trials and executions, whereas Luxembourg in particular became the scene of massive and exceptionally bloody witch-hunting. The seafaring province of Holland had a middle position in the sense that the numbers of executions there tended to rise when trade or fishing was blockaded. But after Antwerp had fallen to the Spanish in 1585, the numbers of executions there rose steeply, while they completely stopped in economically booming Holland. This relative mildness of prosecutions under normal circumstances and the susceptibility to economic and political crises were also a characteristic of the prosecutions in south-eastern England.
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Notes
- 1.
National Archives in The Hague (hereafter NA), Archive 3.03.01.01 (Archive Hof van Holland), inv. nr. 5211.9.
- 2.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1978), 633–4, 649.
- 3.
For more general discussions of this practice see Orna Alyagon Darr, Marks of an Absolute Witch: Evidentiary Dilemmas in Early Modern England (Farnham, 2011), 173–84; Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni, Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine (Basingstoke, 2017), 19–21. See also Stephen Mitchel, ‘A Case of Witchcraft Assault in Early Nineteenth-Century England as Ostensive Action’ in Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies (eds.), Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in Modern Europe (Manchester and New York, 2004), 17–19, 27–8, n. 44; Susan Hoyle, ‘The Witch and the Detective: Mid-Victorian Stories and Beliefs’, in ibid., 52–5; Owen Davies, ‘Newspapers and Popular Belief in Witchcraft and Magic in the Modern Period’ in Brian Levack (ed.), New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, vol. 6, Witchcraft in the Modern World (New York and London, 2001), 4–5; Owen Davies, ‘Hag-Riding in Nineteenth-Century West Country England and Modern Newfoundland: An Examination of an Experience-Centred Witchcraft Tradition’ in ibid., 38–9.
- 4.
Noord-Hollands Archief (Provincial Archives of North-Holland), archive nr. 3111 inv. nr. 54/2 folio (hereafter fol.) 15, 19, 20; inv. nr. 66/1 fol. 74.
- 5.
Gisbert Brom and Lambregt van Langeraad (eds.), Diarium van Arend van Buchell (Amsterdam, 1907), 471–2.
- 6.
Municipal Archive of Amsterdam, Archive 5061 inv. nr. 310 fol. 21v–24v; Manuscripts Collection inv. nr. 31 fol. 151–2.
- 7.
NA, Archive 3.03.01.01 inv. nr. 5657 fol. 29v–30v.
- 8.
Two cases that occurred in Poland in 1880 and 1907 and a third one that happened in Prussia in 1883 are discussed in Davies and Matteoni, Executing Magic, 21 . For a case that took place in in Denmark in 1863, see Gustav Henningsen, ‘Witchcraft Prosecutions after the End of the Era of the Witch Trials: A Contribution to Danish Ethnology’ in Levack, New Perspectives, 184. A Polish example from 1924 is in Aldona Christina Schiffmann, ‘The Witch and Crime: The Persecution of Witches in Twentieth-Century Poland’ in ibid., 218.
- 9.
On this see Willem de Blécourt and Hans de Waardt, ‘Das Vordringen der Zaubereiverfolgungen in die Niederlande: Rhein, Maas, und Schelde entlang in Andreas Blauert’ (ed.), Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen: Die Anfänge der europäischen Hexenverfolgungen (Frankfurt a.M., 1990), 182–216.
- 10.
Judicial records from the localities where the trials took place are absent. Two chronicles in which these executions are mentioned give different figures. One claims that fifteen or sixteenth witches were burnt in the village of Montenaken and another one in Sint Truiden and that another five went to the stake in June 1541 in nearby Borgloon: S. Balau and É. Fairon (eds.), Chroniques Liégeoises, vol. 2 (Brussels, 1931), 135, 138. Another contemporaneous chronicle puts the number of the Montenaken executions at ten or eleven. According to this second chronicle yet another witch was executed in 1540 in the nearby village of Kuringen: J. Grauwels (ed.), Dagboek van gebeurtenissen opgetekend door Christiaan Munters 1529–1545 (Assen 1972), 107–8. See also Léon-Ernest Halkin, Histoire religieuse des règnes de Corneille de Berghes et de Georges d’Autriche, princes-évêques de Liège. Reforme protestante et Reforme catholique, au diocèse de Liège (1538–1557) (Liege, 1936), 116, who states that between 1539 and 1541 almost twenty people were executed in the northern half of the episcopal principality of Liege. Apart from Montenaken, Sint Truiden, Kuringen and Borgloon, Halkin also mentions Sint Huiberchts Hern. Another witch was executed in Rutten and yet another woman from Kuringen died in January 1541 after repeated torture: Grauwels, Dagboek, 131. Six more were burnt in Kuringen in 1555: Ingrid Evers, ‘Maaslandse heksenprocessen: Honderd jaar Limburgse regionale geschiedschrijving’ in Willem de Blécourt and Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra (eds.), Kwade mensen: Toverij in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1986), 87. See also B. Indekeu, ‘Heksenvervolging in het gebied van de huidige provincie Limburg’, Het Oude Land van Loon 34 (1979), 229–62.
- 11.
On Namur and Luxemburg see de Blécourt and de Waardt, ‘Das Vordringen’, 194. On Luxembourg see also Rita Voltmer, ‘… ce tant exécrable et détestable crime de sortilège. Der “Bürgerkrieg” gegen Hexen und Hexenmeister im Herzogtum Luxemburg (16. und 17. Jahrhundert)’, Hémecht. Zeitschrift für Luxemburger Geschichte, 56 (2004), 57–92. For the French Ardennes see Alfred Soman, ‘Le rôle des Ardennes dans la décriminalisation de la sorcellerie en France’, Revue historique ardennaise, 23 (1988), 23–45.
- 12.
De Blécourt and de Waardt, ‘Das Vordringen’, 194, and the literature mentioned there.
- 13.
On this see Voltmer, ‘…ce tant exécrable’, 71.
- 14.
De Blécourt and De Waardt, ‘Das Vordringen’, 201–3.
- 15.
Willem de Blécourt, ‘Four Centuries of Frisian Witch Doctors’ in Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Witchcraft in the Netherlands (Rotterdam, 1991), 158.
- 16.
Peter Priester and Anton Barske, ‘Vervolging van tovenaars(en) in Groningen, 1547–1597’ in de Blécourt and Gijswijt-Hofstra (eds.), Kwade mensen, 50.
- 17.
De Blécourt and de Waardt, ‘Das Vordringen’, 203.
- 18.
Ibid., 187.
- 19.
On Gelderland see Willem de Blécourt and Hans de Waardt, ‘“It is no sin to put an evil person to death”: judicial proceedings concerning witchcraft during the reign of Duke Charles of Gelderland’ in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Frijhoff (eds.), Witchcraft, 66–78; Willem de Blécourt and Hans de Waardt, ‘De regels van het recht. Aantekeningen over de rol van het Gelderse Hof bij de procesvoering inzake toverij, 1543–1620’, Bijdragen en mededelingen ‘Gelre’, 80 (1989), 24–51.
- 20.
A.M. van der Woude, ‘Demografische ontwikkeling van de Noordelijke Nederlanden, 1500–1800’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 5 (Haarlem 1980), 131, 135.
- 21.
They turned round a sieve while mumbling magical words. After the sieve had come to a standstill its position was interpreted as an answer to the question that had been posed.
- 22.
On this transition see Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy of the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (New Haven and London, 1974), 119–36.
- 23.
E. Hélin, ‘Demografische ontwikkeling van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1500–1800’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 5 (Haarlem, 1980), 175.
- 24.
Cf. Lex Heerma van Voss, ‘North Sea culture, 1500–1800’ in Juliette Roding and Lex Heerma van Voss (eds.), The North Sea and Culture (1550–1800) (Hilversum, 1996), 37–8.
- 25.
J.L. Price, ‘Regional Identity and European Culture: the North Sea region in the early modern period’ in ibid., 82.
- 26.
Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt 1560–1700 (Cambridge, 2013), 138. The reaction of the local population to this influx was not always positive. In 1580 Englishmen from Colchester complained in a petition to Queen Elizabeth about the number of foreigners who were settling in their town: Christopher Joby, The Dutch Language in Britain (1550–1702): A Social History of the Use of Dutch in Early Modern Britain (Leiden, 2015), 36.
- 27.
On this see Keith Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Eugene, OR, 1982).
- 28.
Jan Lucassen and Rinus Penninx, Nieuwkomers. Immigranten en hun nakomelingen in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1985), 46.
- 29.
Between 1575 and 1584 eighteen British students matriculated in Leiden alone, and between 1635 and 1644 this number had risen to 240: Martine Zoeteman, De studentenpopulatie van de Leidse universiteit, 1575–1812. ‘Een volk op zyn Siams gekleet eenige mylen van Den Haag woonende’ (Leiden, 2011), 428. 73 English students matriculated in Leiden between 1590 and 1600, and 213 between 1631 and 1640: Ole Peter Grell, ‘The attraction of Leiden University for English students’ in C. C. Barfoot and Richard Todd (eds.), The Great Emporium: The Low Countries as a Cultural Crossroads in the Renaissance and the Eighteenth Century (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1992), 100. See also Hilde De Ridder-Symoens and J.M. Fletcher (eds.), Academic Relations between the Low Countries and the British Isles, 1450–1700 (Gent, 1989). That a considerable number of Scottish students studied law at Dutch universities when the persecutions for witchcraft had already come to a halt there but, so its seems, actively participated in the trials in Scotland after their return home is a subject that deserves further research.
- 30.
W.J. op’t Hof, ‘Piety in the Wake of Trade: The North Sea as an Intermediary of Reformed Piety up to 1700’ in Roding and Heerma van Voss (eds.), The North Sea, 248–65.
- 31.
William Perkins, Tractaet vande ongodlijcke toover-const (Amsterdam, 1611). For Perkins’s discussion of the scratching of witches, see A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (Cambridge, 1608), 45, 152, 206–7.
- 32.
King James VI/I, Dæmonologia, dat is, Eene onderrichtinghe teghen de tooverie (Amsterdam, 1603).
- 33.
Warachtighe ende verschrickelijcke beschrijvinge van vele toovenaers ende toovenerssen, hoe ende waerom men die herwaerts ende ghentswaerst verbrandt heeft in dit teghenwoordich jaer 1589 (Antwerp, 1598). On this trial see Rita Voltmer, ‘The judge’s lore? The politico-religious concept of metamorphosis in the peripheries of Western Europe’ in Willem de Blécourt (ed.), Werewolf Histories (Basingstoke, 2015), 169–71.
- 34.
Confessie ofte belijdenisse van Louwijs Gaufridi priester tot Marseylle in Vranckrijck (Delft, 1612).
- 35.
Waerachtighe beschrivinge van een rechtveerdighe iustitie die gheschiet is inde vreyheyt Duyts rechts teghen over Ceulen, alwaer dat ghejusticeert zijn twee weer-wolven ende thien toveressen (Arnhem, 1617). There is, as far as I know, no information from other sources that confirms this massive execution, and it is unlikely it actually occurred.
- 36.
Balthasar Bekker, Engelsch verhaal van ontdekte tovery wederleid (Amsterdam, 1689).
- 37.
Great News from the West of England Being a True Account of Two Young Persons lately Bewitch'd in the Town of Beckenton in Somerset-shire (1689). On this case see Jonathan Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640–1789 (Basingstoke, 2012), 54.
- 38.
The quotation is from Anna E.C. Simoni, ‘Balthasar Bekker and the Beckington Witch’, Quaerendo 9 (1979), 135–42, here 135.
- 39.
Balthasar Bekker, The World Bewitch'd or, An Examination of the Common Opinions Concerning Spirits (1695). This edition only contained the first part of the original issue. See A. Fix, ‘What Happened to Balthazar Bekker in England? A Mystery in the History of Publishing’, Church History and Religious Culture, 90 (2010), 609–31.
- 40.
Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study (London, 1970), 168–176, 192–8; Thomas, Religion, 659–69.
- 41.
Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition (Oxford, 1978), 1–2, 59–61.
- 42.
James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550–1750 (London, 1996), 111.
- 43.
Macfarlane, Witchcraft, 135–44.
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de Waardt, H. (2018). The North Sea as a Crossroads of Witchcraft Beliefs: The Limited Importance of Political Boundaries. In: Barry, J., Davies, O., Usborne, C. (eds) Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present . Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63784-6_6
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