Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) (7 page)

Whether
Benandanti
, flamboyant visionaries, or wise women of the village, all were aligned with the Devil in countless sermons, tracts, and ordinances.
⁴⁹
The Elizabethan pastor George Gifford, writing in
1593
, decried all popular magic as witchcraft:

I might reckon up her that deals with the sieve and the shears, and a number of such trumperies, in all which the most holy name of God is polluted, and if any thing be done, it is done wholly by the effectual working of Satan. God hath given natural helps, and those we may use, as from his hand against natural diseases, but things besides nature he hath not appointed.

Across the confessions of early modern Europe, this diabolization of everyday magic and superstition recast popular and elite views of the night; Ginzburg and Behringer both provide revealing studies of common people caught in the authorities’ diabolization of the night. Gifford represented the diabolization as a foregone conclusion, asking: “Those which have their charms, and their night spells, what can they be but witches?”
⁵⁰
As we will see below in
chapter 7
, villagers maintained a rich nocturnal culture despite the authorities’ diabolization of the night.

Because most prosecutions for witchcraft began with local accusations, witness testimony appears frequently in trial records. In contrast with the testimony of the accused, extracted by torture or its threat, witnesses testified under less coercion and showed themselves more strategic. Their testimony often provides clear evidence of popular beliefs despite the leading questions they were asked.
⁵¹
Bernard’s guide to the investigation of witchcraft advised the prosecutor to ask “the suspected witch’s whole family” whether “they have heard the suspected … speak of their power to hurt this or that, or of their
transportation, to this or that place, or of their meetings in the night there?”
⁵²
This line of questioning sought to pair daytime
maleficia
with night-time gatherings. But witnesses often presented a more benign view of the night, seen for example in the 1603 witness testimony of the young Caspar Johann of Hüttersdorf.
⁵³
At the trial of 60-year-old Schneider Augustin, he testified that after his evening meal

he laid himself down to sleep on the hay in his master Meyer’s barn. He awakened after his first sleep and saw that it was quite light in the barn; soon a great dance broke out on the threshing floor of the barn: the people danced back-to-back. In this company he, the witness, actually saw and recognized among others Schneider Augustin of Honzrath; this Schneider Augustin was by a wagon, which had been loaded with hay and stood on the threshing floor, and sat on a windowsill and blew on a huge, hideous instrument, making a terrible sound. The company discussed whether to move the wagon out, but after discussion decided to let it stay there. The whole thing lasted almost an hour and then disappeared with a great whoosh, and then it was dark in the barn again. He the witness could neither move nor spoke during all this time.
⁵⁴

As Eva Labouvie has observed, the scene described here is hardly diabolical. The dancing back-to-back to hideous music resembles an inverted peasant dance rather than a black mass or witches’ sabbath. There is no reference to the Devil or to
maleficia
practiced or planned, and no emphasis on the late hour of this gathering (after the “first sleep”) as particularly wicked. The relatively tame nocturnal gathering in this testimony is reflected by an English woodcut of the mid-seventeenth century showing a witches’ dance by the light of the moon (
Figure 2.1
). This image, illustrating the chapbook tale of Robin the cobbler, “punish’d bad as Faustus with his devils” for making a diabolical pact, nonetheless resembles a peasant dance more than any diabolical witches’ sabbath.
⁵⁵

Figure 2.1
Woodcut showing a witches’ dance, from
The Witch of the Woodlands; or the Cobler’s New Translation
(London, n.d. [early eighteenth century]), p. 2.

However described or represented, the sabbath was key to witch trials. In Caspar Johann’s testimony we see incrimination through “participation” at the gathering, which was the focus of all discussions of the dance or sabbath in trial testimony. Witchcraft persecutions needed accounts of the Sabbath to extend the chain of accusation, and this witness obliged. The protocol records that he “actually saw and recognized” Schneider Augustin of Honzrath.

Confessions extracted through torture confirmed and consolidated the authorities’ view of witchcraft.
⁵⁶
These coerced accounts went beyond witnesses’ testimony to construct a description of witchcraft from within. The true crime of witchcraft was service to the prince of darkness, and so the questions posed to accused witches and the confessions elicited focused on two typically (though not necessarily) nocturnal events: the initial agreement with the Devil (often consummated sexually), and the witches’ sabbath. These confessions appear like palimpsests on which popular and legal views of witchcraft and the night overwrite one another. Their references to the night fuse the traditional sense that the Devil might appear at any time with the authorities’ belief in the ubiquitous power of the Devil. Attitudes toward the night appear more
uniformly negative in the testimony of accused witches, reflecting the more structured demonological writings and interrogation manuals. The Westphalian jurist Heinrich von Schultheis provided in his
1634
treatise on
How to Proceed with Interrogations into the Gruesome Blasphemy of Witchcraft,
a list of questions designed to elicit the whole nocturnal fantasy:

Questions for interrogating the witches regarding

their teacher

the body of the Devil

how they test their arts

maleficia

the place of dancing

the worship service

what they do after the dance

eating and drinking

honoring the Devil

praying to the Devil

blasphemy.

Schultheis also related several accounts of travelers and others who stumbled across nocturnal sabbaths.
⁵⁷
A manuscript interrogatory used in the prince-bishopric of Eichstätt in 1617 included questions on “strange gatherings,” asking of the accused witch “where she travelled to, and how they could get away in the dark night?” Interrogators were instructed to ask “whether and how they saw in the dark night; [and] what kind of light was present?” at the sabbath.
⁵⁸

The official narrative of witchcraft began at night. As Thomas Nashe asked in 1594: “When hath the devil commonly first appeared unto any man but in the night?” The expectation of a nocturnal encounter was ubiquitous but not rigid. Across Europe, confessed witches reported first meeting the Devil whenever they were alone, often at night but also by day.
⁵⁹
The account of the widow Feylen Suin, convicted of witchcraft in the jurisdiction of the imperial abbey of St. Maximin (near Trier) in 1587, can stand for many others. “Once upon a time,” her testimony began, “she was at home, sitting by the fire and her children were sleeping.” She thought back on her inability to buy grain to feed her family earlier that day when
“suddenly the Devil, in the form of a young apprentice with a long black robe, came to her.” He consoled her and offered her money. She gave in to his temptations, denied God and “all his dear saints and the Mother of God” and had sexual relations with him (“Coitum exercuit membro frigidissimo etc.”) to consummate their agreement.
⁶⁰
Among the ninety-seven women and men from two villages (Longuisch and Kirsch) in the same region tried for witchcraft in the period 1587–1640, all but three confessed to first encountering the Devil alone, typically at night. Over half first met the Devil at home, including ten who encountered him in their beds at night. The interrogators of these accused witches focused relentlessly on the sexual consummation of their agreement with the Devil: all ninety-seven confessed witches in the Longuisch and Kirsch sample admitted to sexual relations with the Devil immediately upon their first encounter with him.
⁶¹

The place of the night in these narratives varied. As the accused witch Niclas Fiedler, former mayor of Trier, confessed after repeated torture in 1591: “twelve years ago a black man came to him behind his house, between day and night, when his wife was suffering a long-lasting illness and he was very sad.”
⁶²
The accused witch was almost always described as being alone when first tempted by the Devil, and when the physical (usually sexual) consummation of the agreement between the Devil and the witch took place. This isolation, usually at night, supported narratives that confirmed the learned view of witchcraft and provided the evidence necessary for conviction, i.e., a confession of succumbing to the Devil’s temptation and entering physically into an agreement with him. Two confessions from Guernsey from 1617 reveal the relative unimportance of the night in the first encounter with the Devil: Collette Du Mont confessed that “she was quite young when the Devil, in the form of a cat, appeared to her in the Parish of Torteval as she was returning from her cattle, it being still daylight, and that he took occasion to lead her astray by inciting her to avenge herself on one of her neighbors.” Her co-defendant Isabel Becquet first met the Devil “in the form of a hare. [He] took occasion to tempt her, appearing to her in broad daylight in a road near her house.” Isabel Becquet then confessed that the Devil
later sent Collette Du Mont to her house to fetch her for the sabbath “during the ensuing night.”
⁶³

Accounts of the witch’s first encounter with the Devil stressed the physical and spiritual isolation of the accused more than a specific time of day. In contrast, the other key element in the witch’s confession, the witches’ dance or sabbath, was almost universally described as a gathering by night. Again, the confession of the widow Feylen Suin is representative. “Not long after [her first encounter with the Devil], on a Thursday night” the Devil returned to her “as she sat by the fire to spin and the children were asleep.” Again he “had his way with her,” then Suin climbed on a black dog and rode to a field beside the Mosel where “many came together … including many important people. She danced there, leaping to the left into the air in the Devil’s name.”
⁶⁴
In her 1617 confession Isabel Becquet of Guernsey described repeated visits to “the usual place where the Devil kept his Sabbath,” but explained that “she never went to the Sabbath except when her husband remained all night fishing at sea.”
⁶⁵

One cannot easily distinguish between “popular” and “learned” elements in accounts of the sabbath elicited by torture. Confessions shift between descriptions of a full-fledged “black mass,” accounts of gatherings to harm crops through weather magic, and simpler accounts based on a rural dance seen in the witness testimony above. Within this range, accounts of a witches’ dance far outnumber the more demonocentric confessions.
⁶⁶
This suggests that despite the use of torture and leading questions designed to elicit accounts of a diabolical night, the more benign view of the night as a time for dance and sociability had deep roots. This is confirmed by the examination of rural night life below in
chapter 7
.

In the demonology and witch-lore of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the diabolization of the night and its association with sin and temptation reached its peak. This was not a foregone conclusion, however. The influential
Malleus maleficarum
(i.e. “Hammer of sorceresses”) first published in 1486 by Heinrich Institoris with Jakob Sprenger put relatively little emphasis on the night. Although Institoris felt he was writing “as the evening of the world is now
declining toward sunset and the evil of men increases,” the association of witchcraft with the night is quite limited in the
Malleus
.
⁶⁷
The authors argue for the reality of noctivagation and include examples of nocturnal encounters with demons, but they do not attempt to theorize the night within their exposition of witchcraft. They were concerned with long-standing folk belief in nocturnal female spirits identified in canon law with “Diana, goddess of the pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, [who] ride on certain beasts and traverse great distances … in the silence of the dead of night,” as an eleventh-century confessors’ guide put it. Medieval authorities stressed that Diana and the nocturnal flight were an illusion of the Devil; Institoris argued that although