One of the problems of much witchcraft historiography, especially that available in English, is the tendency to concentrate on individual trials and small-scale witch panics rather than systematically examining large-scale witch-hunts. By large-scale hunts, I do not mean episodes of prosecution involving the rather low figure of ten or more arrests popularized by Brian Levack. If one compares supposed local witch sects to other marginalized groups persecuted by early modern authorities—recusants, gypsies or vagrants, for example—this figure appears small in scale. In 1582, the year in which the Essex magistrate Brian Darcy conducted his witch-hunt in St Osyth and its neighbouring villages, sixty-two other inhabitants of the county were presented at just one of the many quarter sessions for non-attendance at church, many of them known recusants with strong connections to one another. This figure dwarfs the total number of suspected witch-felons (just ten, most arrested on Darcy's authority) tried at both Essex assizes of that year. I mean, rather, the hunts in Cologne and Westphalia, Würzburg, Bamberg, Ellwangen or Eichstätt in which hundreds of people found themselves arrested and executed for witchcraft over a short span of time.
Author(s): Jonathan B. Durrant
Series: Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions,
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 316
City: Leiden; Boston
Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany
Copyright
Contents
List of tables, maps and illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I
Chapter One Witch-hunting in Eichstätt
The background
Witch-hunting in Eichstätt, 1590–1616
Witch-hunting in Eichstätt, 1617–1631
The pattern of witch-hunting in Eichstätt
Chapter Two The witches
The authorities and the gender of the witch
The interrogatory and the course of the witch interrogations
Denunciations
Denunciations—the role of the interrogators
Denunciations—the role of the witch-suspect
The social status of the witch
Conclusion
Part II
Chapter Three Friends and enemies
Methodology
The witch and her denouncers
Barbara Haubner and her denouncers
Michael Hochenschildt and his denouncers
Margretha Geiger and her denouncers
Walburga Knab
Christoph Lauterer
Conclusion
Chapter Four Food and drink
Food and drink
Feasting
Chapter Five Sex
Diabolical seduction
Same-sex sexual relations
Fornication and adultery
Prostitution
Bestiality and incest
Conclusion
Chapter Six Health
Healing
Midwives
Conclusion
Chapter Seven The abuse of authority
The investigation
Georg Mayr’s visit
Maria Mayr’s infidelity
The warders’ abuses
Fear
Conclusion
Witchcraft
Gender and society
Appendix 1 The interrogatory of 1617
Appendix 2 Occupations of suspected witches or their households
Bibliography
Index
