Abstract
The essential steps in the process of witch hunting — the accusation, arrest, trial and execution of witches — all involved the operation of the law. Ever since the scholarly study of witchcraft began with the publication of Wilhelm Soldan’s monumental work in 1843, the main sources for the history of witchcraft have been trial records.1 Witchcraft historians therefore have always had to deal with the law in their work, even when their interest in witchcraft might lie in other dimensions of the subject, such as the content of witch beliefs, the gender of witches or the religious zeal of witch hunters. Somewhat surprisingly, however, very little witchcraft scholarship has focused exclusively on the law.2 The subject has usually been dealt with indirectly, as part of a broader narrative or as an explanation of the prerequisites for prosecution.
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Notes
W. G. Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse: aus den Quellen dargestellt (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1843).
Two exceptions to this general pattern are P. Hoffer, The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1997) and G. Durston, Witchcraft and Witch Trials: A History ofEnglish Witchcraft and its Legal Perspectives, 1542 to 1736 (Chichester: Barry Rose Law Publishers, 2000).
J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1900); Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns im Mittelalter and der Hexenverfolgung (Bonn: C. Georgi, 1901).
H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force (Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea, 1866).
H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan Co., 1908–11).
H. C. Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. A. C. Howland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939).
G. L. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade (d. 1589) (New York: G. P. Putman’s, 1891).
G. L. Burr (ed.), The Witch Persecutions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1897).
G. L. Burr (ed.), Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648–1706 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1914). Another historian in the liberal-rationalist tradition who wrote about witchcraft in colonial America was J. M. Taylor, The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (New York: Grafton Press, 1908).
The last significant work on witchcraft written in this tradition is H. R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969). Trevor-Roper’s dismissal of popular culture as ‘the rubble of peasant superstition’ and his perpetuation of the word ‘craze’ to describe the irrationality of the great witch hunt place it squarely in the tradition of Hansen, Lea and Burr.
R. Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture 1300–1500 (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1976).
N. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975).
H. C. Lea, The Ordeal, ed. E. Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973); Edward Peters, Torture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985); Peters, The Magician, the Witch and the Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978).
On torture in England during the early modern period see J. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
D. Unverhau, ‘Akkusationsprozess-Inquisitionsprozess: Indikatoren fur die Intensitat der Hexenverfolgung in Schleswig-Holstein’, in C. Degn, H. Lehmann and D. Unverhau (eds), Hexenprozesse: Deutsche und skandinavische Beitrage (Neumunster: K. Wachholtz Verlag, 1983), pp. 59–143. On the Carolina and the controversy regarding the nature of inquisitorial procedure see J. Langbein, Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).
C. R. Unsworth, ‘Witchcraft Beliefs and Criminal Procedure in Early Modern England’, in T. G. Watkin (ed.), Legal Record and Historical Reality (London: Hambledon, 1989), pp. 71–98; Langbein, Prosecuting Crime. 17. B. P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1995); Levack, ‘State-Building and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe’, in J. Barry, M. Hester and G. Roberts (eds), Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
B. Ankarloo, ‘Sweden: The Mass Burnings (1688–1676)’, in B. Ankarloo and G. Henningsen (eds), Early Modern European Witchcraft (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 285–317. On changes in Swedish legal practice after 1600 see Per Sorlin, ‘Wicked Arts’: Witchcraft and Magic Trials in Southern Sweden, 1635–1754 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 47–50.
Alison Rowlands, ‘Eine Stadt ohne Hexenwahn: Hexenprozesse, Gerichtspraxis und Herrschaft in friihneuzeitlichen Rothenburg ob der Tauber’, in H. Eiden and R. Voltmer (eds), Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis (Trier: Spee, 2002), pp. 331–47.
W. Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976); A. Soman, ‘The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch-Hunt (1565–1640)’, Sixteenth Century Studies 9 (1978) 30–44.
B. P. Levack, ‘Judicial Torture in Scotland during the Age of Mackenzie’, in H. MacQueen (ed.), Miscellany IV (Stair Society, Vol. 49, Edinburgh, 2002), pp. 185–198.
Etienne Delcambre, ‘La Psychologie des inculpés Lorrains de sorcellerie’, Revue historique de droit francais et etranger 4, 32 (1954) 383–403; Delcambre, ‘Les proces de sorcellerie en Lorraine. Psychologie des juges’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgesciednenis 21 (1954) 389–419.
L. Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994), esp. chapter 9.
L. Silverman, Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); E. Scarry, The Body and Pain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
J. O. Rogge, Why Men Confess (New York: T. Nelson, 1959); P. Brooks, Troubling Confessions; Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
H. C. E. Midelfort, ‘Johann Weyer and the Transformation of the Insanity Defense’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia (ed.), The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 234–61.
R. Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVIlesiecle (Paris: Plon, 1968).
G. Henningsen, The Witches’Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 1609–1611 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980).
J. Tedeschi, ‘Inquisitorial Law and the Witch’, in Ankarloo and Henningsen, Early Modern E uropean W itchcraft, pp. 83–118; Tedeschi, The P rosecution of Heresy (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991).
On the inclusion of this set of instructions in a treatise by Cesare Carena see R. Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 71–3.
S. Lorenz, Aktenversendungund Hexenprozess. Dargestelltam Beispiel derJuristfakultaten Rostock und Greifswald (1570/82–1630), 2 vols (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1982–83); ‘Die letzten Hexenprozesse in den Spruchakten der Juristfakultaten: Versuch einer Beschreibung,’ in S. Lorenz and D. R. Bauer (eds), Das Ende der Hexenverfolgung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995), pp. 227–47; G. Schormann, Hexenprozesse in Nordwestdeutschland (Hildesheim: Lax, 1977).
C. Thomasius, De Crimine magiae (Halle, 1701); De Tortura ex foris Christianiorum proscribenda (Halle, 1705).
A. Soman, ‘Decriminalizing Witchcraft: Does the French Experience Furnish a European Model?’, Criminal Justice History 10 (1989) 1–22.
B. P. Levack, ‘The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions’, in B. Ankarloo and S. Clark (eds), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1999), pp. 1–93.
W. Trusen, ‘Rechtliche Grundlagen der Hexenprozesse und ihrer Beendigung’, in Lorenz and Bauer, Das Ende der Hexenverfolgung; Thomas Robisheaux, ‘Zur Rezeption Benedict Carpzovs im 17 Jahrhundert’, in Eiden and Voltmer, Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis, pp. 527–43.
For a guide to some of this work see J. A. Sharpe, The History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: A Review of the Field, Social History 7 (982) 169–89; J. Innes and J. Styles, ‘The Crime Wave: Recent Writing on Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century England’, in A. Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570–1920 and its Interpretation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 15–26.
E. P. Currie, ‘Crimes without Criminals: Witchcraft and its Control in Renaissance Europe’, Law and Society Review 3 (1968) 7–32.
Christina Lamer, ‘Crimen exceptum?: The Crime of Witchcraft in Europe’, in Lamer, Witchcrafi and Religion: the Politics ofPopular Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), pp. 35–67.
O. Ulbricht (ed.), Von Huren und Rabenmuttern: weibliche Kriminalitat in der Fruhen Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995).
E. Biesel, ‘Hexerei und andere Verbrechen: Gerictspraxis in der Stadt Toul um 1570–1630’, in Eiden and Voltmer, Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis, pp. 123–69; W. Monter, Frontiers ofHeresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 255–99; M. Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
J. A. Sharpe, ‘Women, Witchcraft and the Legal Process’, in J. Kermode and G. Walker (eds), W omen, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 106–24.
G. Fiume, ‘The Old Vinegar Lady, or the Judicial Modernization of the Crime of Witchcraft’, in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (eds), History from Crime (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 65–87.
S. Loriga, ‘A Secret to Kill the King: Magic and Protection in Piedmont in the Early Eighteenth Century’, in Muir and Ruggiero, History from Crime, pp. 88–109.
E. W. Monter and J. A. Tedeschi, ‘Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, in G. Henningsen and J. Tedeschi (eds), The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe (Dekalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 130–57.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcrajl (London, 1584), pp. 32–9.
Soili-Maria 011i, ‘The Devil’s Pact: A Male Strategy’, in O. Davies and W. de Blécourt (eds), Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers; M. Nenonen, Noituus, taikuus ja noitavainot: Ala-Satakunnan, Pohjois-Pohjanmaan ja Viipurin Karjalan maaseudulla vuosina 1620–1700 [Witchcraft, Magic and Witch Trials in Rural Lower Satakunta, Northern Ostrobothnia and Viipuri Carelia, 1620–1700] (Helsinki: SHS, 1992).
Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Ransformations, c.1650-c.1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 203–31.
U. Krampl, ‘When Witches Became False: Séducteurs and Crédules Confront the Paris Police in at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century’, in K. A. Edwards (ed.), Werewolves, Witches and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief and Folklore in Early Modern Europe (Kirksville, Mo: Truman State University Press, 2002), pp. 137–54.
O. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations Ian Bostridge ‘Witchcraft Repealed’, in Barry, Hester and Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, pp. 309–34.
On this literature see B. P. Levack, ‘State-Building and Witch-Hunting in Early Modem Europe’; R. Walinski-Kiehl, ‘Godly States: Confessional Conflict and Witch-Hunting in Early Modem Germany’, Mentalité-Mentalities 5 (1988) 13–24.
The state can be viewed as a political community, a set of arrangements for rule or an abstraction to which loyalty is owed. I define it as a formal, public and autonomous political organisation, staffed by officials who have the legally sanctioned authority to require obedience from the inhabitants of a specific territory over an extended period of time.
M. Kunze, Der Prozess Pappenheimer (Elsbach: Gremer, 1981); Kunze, High Road to the Stake (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
R. Voltmer, ‘Hexenprozesse und Hochgerichte: zur herrschaftlich-politischen Nutzung und Instrumentalisierung von Hexenverfolgungen’, in Eiden and Voltmer (eds), Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis, pp. 475–525.
W. Behringer, Witchcraft Prosecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason ofState in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
R. Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), esp. chapter 5.
C. Lamer, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Larner, Witchcraft and Religion, esp. chapter 2.
J. Goodare, State and Society in Early Modem Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
B. P. Levack, ‘The Decline and End of Scottish Witch-Hunting’, in J. Goodare (ed.), The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 166–82.
See, for example, S. Ellis, ‘Witch-Hunting in Central Madagascar, 1828–1861’, Past & Present 175 (2002) 90–123; W. Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), chapter 6.
R. D. Waller, ‘Witchcraft and Colonial Law in Kenya’, Past & Present 180 (2003) 241–75; J. Hund (ed.), Witchcraft, Violence and the Law in South Africa (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2003).
C. Fisiy, ‘Containing Occult Practices; Witchcraft Trials in Cameroon’, African Studies Review 41 (1998) 148–51.
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Levack, B.P. (2007). Crime and the Law. In: Barry, J., Davies, O. (eds) Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography. Palgrave Advances. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593480_9
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