Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe

Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic

Series Editors: Jonathan Barry, Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies

Titles include:

Edward BeverTHE REALITIES OF WITCHCRAFT AND POPULAR MAGIC IN EARLY MODERN EUROPECulture, Cognition and Everyday Life

Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin and Joyce MillerWITCHCRAFT AND BELIEF IN EARLY MODERN SCOTLAND

Jonathan Roper (editor)CHARMS, CHARMERS AND CHARMING

Alison Rowlands (editor)WITCHCRAFT AND MASCULINITIES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

Rolf SchulteMAN AS WITCHMale Witches in Central Europe

Forthcoming:

Johannes DillingerMAGICAL TREASURE HUNTING IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICAA History

Soili-Maria OlliTALKING TO DEVILS AND ANGELS IN SCANDINAVIA, 1500–1800

Laura StokesTHE DEMONS OF URBAN REFORMThe Rise of Witchcraft Prosecution, 1430–1530

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Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern EuropeEdited by

Alison RowlandsSenior Lecturer in European History, University of Essex

Palgravemacmillan

Editorial matter, selection and Chapter 1 © Alison Rowlands 2009All remaining chapters © contributors 2009

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ISBN 978-1-349-36311-7 ISBN 978-0-230-24837-3 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230248373

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v

Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii

Preface ix

Series Foreword x

Notes on the Contributors xi

1 Not ‘the Usual Suspects’? Male Witches, Witchcraft, and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe 1

Alison Rowlands

2 Male Witches in the Duchy of Lorraine 31 Robin Briggs

3 Men as Accused Witches in the Holy Roman Empire 52 Rolf Schulte

4 Witch-Finders, Witch-Hunters or Kings of the Sabbath? The Prominent Role of Men in the Mass Persecutions of the Rhine-Meuse Area (Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries) 74

Rita Voltmer

5 Why Some Men and Not Others? The Male Witches of Eichstätt 100

Jonathan Durrant

6 Giandomenico Fei, the Only Male Witch. A Tuscan or an Italian Anomaly? 121 Oscar Di Simplicio

7 Men and the Witch-Hunt in Scotland 149 Julian Goodare

8 Masculinity and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century England 171

Malcolm Gaskill

vi Contents

9 The Werewolf, the Witch, and the Warlock: Aspects of Gender in the Early Modern Period 191 Willem de Blécourt

10 Possession and the Sexes 214 Sarah Ferber

Index 239

vii

Figures and Tables

Figures

2.1 Bewitchments attributed to Lorraine witches: data from trials of 96 men and a sample of 96 women 40

3.1 Duchy of Carinthia: Witchcraft persecutions by sex, 1540–1729 (numbers accused) 57

3.2 Duchy of Carinthia: Witchcraft persecutions by sex, 1540–1729 (percentage) 57

3.3 Bishopric of Bamberg: Witchcraft persecutions by sex, 1610–1635 (numbers accused) 60

3.4 Bishopric of Bamberg: Witchcraft persecutions by sex, 1610–1635 (percentage) 60

3.5 Duchy of Holstein and Saxony-Lauenberg: Witchcraft persecutions by sex, 1530–1730 (numbers accused) 63

3.6 Duchy of Holstein and Saxony-Lauenberg: Witchcraft persecutions by sex, 1530–1730 (percentage) 63

6.1 Number of cases of Maleficia and magic tried before the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena, 1580–1721 125

Tables

3.1 Proportion of men accused in Witch-Trials in the Holy Roman Empire, by region (1480–1760) 55

3.2 Proportion of men involved in Witch-Hunts in selected territories of the Holy Roman Empire 56

3.3 Proportion of men accused of Witchcraft in selected Catholic and Protestant territories of the Holy Roman Empire (by percentage) 66

6.1 Numbers of men and women investigated by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena for love magic, 1580–1721 126

6.2 Numbers of men and women investigated by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena for conjuration, 1580–1721 126

6.3 Numbers of men and women investigated by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena for invocation of the Devil, 1580–1721 126

viii Figures and Tables

6.4 Numbers of men and women investigated by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena for therapeutic magic, 1580–1721 126

6.5 Ages of women investigated on charges of Witchcraft by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena, 1580–1721 127

6.6 Marital status of women investigated on charges of Witchcraft by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena, 1580–1721 127

6.7 Occupations of women investigated on charges of Witchcraft by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena, 1580–1721 128

6.8 Targets of the Maleficia of women investigated on charges of Witchcraft by the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Siena, 1580–1721 128

ix

Preface

This book is the result of a conference, Witchcraft and Masculinities in the Early Modern World, held at the University of Essex from 21–23 April 2006. All the chapters in the book were presented on that occa-sion. The conference would not have been possible without financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the German History Society, and the Department of History at Essex University: my grateful thanks to them all. I would also like to express particular thanks to my co-organizer, Jenni Grundy, without whom the confer-ence would have been much harder (and much less enjoyable) to plan; to Jenni, Herbert Eiden and Cathryn Wilson for acting as session chairs during the conference; and to all the paper-givers and conference par-ticipants for their lively input. Many thanks also to Belinda Waterman for technical assistance in preparing the manuscript.

The cover illustration is reproduced by courtesy of the Satdtbibliothek in Trier, and shows a detail from the so-called Witches’ Sabbath in Trier, an engraving attached to Thomas Sigfrid, Richtige Antwort auff die Frage (Erfurt, 1593: 1594 edition), Signatur 1/34 8 .̊

This book is for Herbert, Susannah, and Sebastian (who thankfully waited until just after the conference to be born!)

ALISON ROWLANDS

Wivenhoe, September 2008

x

Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic

Series Foreword

The history of European witchcraft and magic continues to fascin-ate and challenge students and scholars. There is certainly no short-age of books on the subject. Several general surveys of the witch trials and numerous regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership. While the quality of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years. The aim of this series is to help illuminate these lesser-known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It will also encourage the development of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural, such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination. To help fur-ther our understanding and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, the series will include research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also explores their relevance and influence from the medieval to the modern period.

xi

Contributors

Willem de Blécourt is an historical anthropologist and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Huizinga Institute and the Meertens Institute, both in Amsterdam. His research interests include the histories of witch-craft, shape-shifting, popular culture, folk- and fairy-tales, irregular healers, and deviant sexuality. He is the co-author (with R. Hutton and J. La Fontaine), of The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Volume 6: The 20th Century (London, 1999); ed. (with O. Davies), Beyond the Witch Trials. Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester and New York, 2004); ed. (with C. Usborne), Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine (Basingstoke, 2004); ed., Sisters of Subversion: Histories of Women, Tales of Gender (Amsterdam, 2008); and Werewolves, which was not published (London, 2005). He refrains from eating meat.

Robin Briggs is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. His research interests centre on the social and religious history of France under the ancien régime. Major publications include Early Modern France, 1560–1715 (Oxford, 1977; 2nd edn 1998); Communities of Belief (Oxford, 1989); Witches & Neighbours. The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (London, 1996; 2nd edn Oxford, 2002); The Witches of Lorraine (Oxford, 2007). He was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy in 2009.

Oscar Di Simplicio, a former Professor of Modern History at the University of Florence, has published extensively on the history of Italian witchcraft. Major publications include Inquisizione, stregoneria, medicina (Siena, 2000), and Autunno della stregoneria. Maleficio e magia nell’Italia moderna (Bologna, 2005). His new book, La stregoneria in Italia. I caratteri originali (secc. IX–XVIII) will be published in 2010.

Jonathan Durrant is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Glamorgan. He is the author of Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany (Brill, 2007) and editor of the Witchcraft Bibliography Project Online. His other research interests include mas-culinity and warfare in the seventeenth century, and the representation of early modern history on screen.

Sarah Ferber is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wollongong. She is the author of Demonic Possession and Exorcism in

xii Contributors

Early Modern France (London and New York, 2004) and was a contributor to the 2006 ABC-Clio Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, edited by Richard M. Golden.

Malcolm Gaskill is a Reader in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000), Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches (London, 2001), and Witchfinders: a Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (London, 2005). He is currently writing Witchcraft: a Very Short Introduction for Oxford University Press.

Julian Goodare is a Reader in Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh. He works on government, finance and politics in early mod-ern Scotland, and the witch-hunt in Scotland and Europe. He is the author of State and Society in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1999) and The Government of Scotland, 1560–1625 (Oxford, 2004); his edited books include The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002) and Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland (Basingstoke, 2008) (as co-editor with Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller). He was Director of the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, which went online in 2003.

Alison Rowlands is a Senior Lecturer in European History at the University of Essex. Her publications on the history of witchcraft in early modern Germany include Witchcraft Narratives in Early Modern Germany: Rothenburg, 1561–1652 (Manchester, 2003) and several art-icles. She is currently writing Witch Hunts in the Early Modern World for Blackwell. Other research interests include gender in early modern Europe, and representations of early modern witchcraft in modern tour-ism and public histories.

Rolf Schulte is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Kiel. His research interests include early modern witch-hunts, and German and European history of the nineteenth and twentieth century. His publications include Hexenmeister. Die Verfolgung von Männern im Rahmen der Hexenverfolgungen von 1530 bis 1730 im Alten Reich (Frankfurt, 2000; 2nd edn, 2001); ed. (with B. Schmidt), Hexenglauben im modernen Afrika. Hexen, Hexenverfolgung und magische Vorstellungswelten/Witchcraft in Modern Africa. Witches, Witch-Hunts and Magical Imaginaries (Hamburg, 2007); Man as Witch. Male Witches in Central Europe (Basingstoke, 2009).

Rita Voltmer is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Pre-Modern History at the University of Trier. Her research interests include the European

Contributors xiii

witch-hunts; urban history; the history of criminality; and medieval and pre-modern communication media. Her publications include: ed. (with F. Irsigler), Hexenwahn. Ängste der Neuzeit (2002); ed. (with H. Eiden), Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis (Trier, 2002); ed., Hexenverfolgung und Herrschaftspraxis (Trier, 2005); (with W. Rummel), Hexen und Hexenverfolgung in der Frühen Neuzeit (2008).