Horsley WitchesSocialRoles 1979

Who Were the Witches?
The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials

Author(s): Richard A. Horsley
Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History , Spring, 1979, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Spring,
1979), pp. 689-715
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/203380
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Ix:4 (Spring 1979), 689-715.
Richard A. Horsley
Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the

Accused in the European Witch Trials Despite the
significant resurgence of scholarly interest in witchcraft and the
great European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, few efforts have been made to determine what sorts of
persons were tried and burned as witches. Both medical historians
and feminists have argued, from virtually opposite points of view,
that the victims of the witch-craze were really the midwives and
healers of peasant society.' Until now, however, such arguments
have been based on Murrayite reconstructions of European witch-
craft which, despite their long reign in Britain, are discredited by
most new researchers.2 Recent studies, including some basic and
largely quantitative sociological analyses of witch hunts and
witchcraft, have proven very helpful. Each study confirms the
now familiar generalization that the vast majority of witches were
poor, elderly women. Yet, with two or three notable exceptions,
recent historians, especially the American scholars, appear rela-
tively uninterested in a more qualitative analysis of the social
status, roles, and relationships of the victims of the great witch
hunts.3 The principal difficulty is that, although professional his-
torians of witchcraft are aware that the official concept of witch-
Richard A. Horsley is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion Program, University

of Massachusetts, Boston.
The author would like to thank Ritta Jo Horsley for assistance in deciphering the
dialects of peasant depositions, and David Landy and Alan Harwood for advice on an-
thropological issues.
I For example, Thomas R. Forbes, "Midwifery and Witchcraft,"Journal of the History

of Medicine, XVII (1962), 417-439; Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches,
Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Old Westbury, I973).
2 The basic statement was by Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
(Oxford, 1921). For opposing views see esp. E. William Monter, "The Historiography
of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, II
(1972), 438-439; Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons (London, 1975), I07-125.
3 Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland (Ithaca, 1976), chs. 3-5; H. C. Eric Mi-
delfort, Witchhunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684 (Stanford, 1972), 165-192; Cohn,
Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 6, 12; Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England
(London, 1970); Keith V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 197I). Like
Midelfort and Monter, Thomas can also be criticized for his reliance on the compilation
of quantitative data, as in E. P. Thompson, "Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical
Context," in Midland History, I (1972), 50.

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690 | RICHARD A. HORSLEY
craft was a composite theory formulated out of elements ori

nally pagan but transformed by Christian theological an
ecclesiastical interests, they nevertheless fail to distinguish a
quately between the official theory and the popular realities. Inve
tigation of the available fragmentary evidence for the popul
realities suggests that many of those executed as witches we
folk healers. But it is first necessary to make crucial distincti
which some historians have not adequately discerned.
THE OFFICIAL CONCEPT OF WITCHCRAFT VS. THE POPULAR REALITIES:
SOME METHODOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS In increas

ticated recent scholarship, historians have reached t
that the official concept of witchcraft among the eccles
secular ruling groups of the sixteenth and seventeen
was a composite which had developed over several ce
the risk of oversimplification we can, with Cohn, sc
official theory of witchcraft as it emerged in contin
late in the fifteenth century into four components: (I)
or causing harm through supernatural means; (2) fly
the air at night to desolate places for evil purposes s
babies; (3) participating in a sect or cult which met
"sabbats" to worship the Devil and engage in sexual
(4) making a pact with the Devil. In a Christian s
witchcraft could only be apostasy from the true reli
had therefore been seduced by Satanic forces and
formal contract with the Devil. Hence, also, all m
(non-Christian) supernatural powers, beneficent as
ficent, was viewed as diabolism.4
Here we have the final fusion of heresy and sorcery
and second components had been traditional ideas in
least since classical antiquity. As for the third and fourt
Midelfort, "the late Middle Ages did indeed make two funda-
mental contributions to the witch hunt, notably the idea that all
magic involved a pact with the devil, and the idea that a massive
witch cult threatened Christendom." The fears expressed in these
ideas became powerful factors in the great witch hunt, an enter-
4 This scheme is informed by the work of Midelfort, Witchhunting, I4-25; Monter,

Witchcraft, I7-41; and esp. Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 6, 8, II.

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EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS | 691
prise in which many of the most distinguished intellectuals of the

age took an active part.5
However, some of the very historians who explain that this
late medieval view of witchcraft was a composite theory proceed in
their own expositions as if it were neither composite nor a theory
but a common social fact. Russell exhibits the most blatant con-
fusion of concept and phenomenon. Even Monter uses language
and formulates arguments in such a way as to obscure the issue,
referring to those who were accused as witches and to their activ-
ities as witchcraft. Such scholars leave us with the impression that
despite the overlay of Christian demonology and the distortions
of inquisitorial tortures, those burned were essentially witches-
that is, malevolent sorceresses and enemies of fertility and soci-
ety.6
Recent American historiography has enhanced our under-
standing of the cultural background of the witch-craze and of the
witch hunts in particular areas. However, there is a need for a
more interdisciplinary approach to the subject, especially a more
systematic application of sociological and anthropological analy-
ses. More precisely, there is a need to distinguish between the
official concept of witchcraft and the particular realities of popular
life (in what were still largely peasant societies). The scholarly
investigation I am suggesting might be broken down further into
four closely related aspects:
a) We require a more comprehensive sociological analysis,
in particular a class analysis, in which the difference in beliefs,
interests, and actions between the ruling groups and the peasants
are discerned. When Monter confronts the Essex material studied
by Macfarlane in which "there was no mention of the Devil at
5 Midelfort, Witchhunting, 20; Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, I969), 122, 151-155.
6 Even Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches (Chicago, 1965), who explicitly raises
epistemological issues, proceeds as if the witch-theorists' concepts were credible descrip-
tions of actual witches. Also, apparently unawares, Caro Baroja shifts and broadens his
own definition of witchcraft in the middle of his book (cf. 82 with 24). He appears to
handle his material throughout as if it referred to those practicing witchcraft, i.e. "black
magic," even though he is aware of the existence of "white magic"; thus all "feminine
magic" is associated with the black arts (77). Jeffrey B. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle
Ages (Ithaca, 1972); cf. Cohn's critique, Europe's Inner Demons, 12I-124. Monter, Witchcraft;
the same lapse in the use of language is exhibited by Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch
Trials (Berkeley, 1976), e.g., 95.

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all," he comments: "The Devil was fundamental to the witchcraft

concept nearly everywhere in Christendom; the fact that he plays
such a small role here indicates that Essex witchcraft was primi-
tive."7 Perhaps this is so, but the more obvious explanation had
already been stated by Macfarlane and Thomas: whereas the
learned Christian demonologists on the continent believed the
devil fundamental to witchcraft, the common people in Essex
held no such belief.
It is surely useful to note the age, sex, and economic distri-
bution among those tried for witchcraft.8 But it would be far
more significant to understand the differences not only in beliefs
but also in interests and practices between the ruling class who
carried out the witch trials and the peasants or townspeople who
suffered them. Kieckhefer's investigations, parallel to those of
Cohn, take the crucial step of establishing more precisely how
different the popular concept of sorcery was from the official,
learned concept of witchcraft as diabolism. Kieckhefer writes the
intellectual history of witch-beliefs on the basis of the best written
documents available, but he does not attempt to reconstruct the
social realities behind the documents.9 Thus for most of Europe,
as it bears on the great witch hunts, the critical social history
remains to be written. A more precise sociological analysis is
needed to determine the substantial differences between the offi-
cial beliefs and the popular realities, followed by careful anthro-
pological analysis of popular practices such as folk-religion and
folk-medicine.
b) In a task barely begun, historians should seek out and
consider evidence for the realities of popular life and beliefs.
American historians of European witchcraft appear to be uninter-
ested in exploring a distinction of which even some of the witch-
hunters were aware. The demonologists feared beneficent magic
as much as maleficent magic, and did not hesitate to prosecute
white witches along with black witches. In his examination of the
popular belief in maleficent magicians or sorceresses, Kieckhefer
7 Monter, "Patterns of Witchcraft in the Jura," Journal of Social History, V (I971), I5,
33n.
8 Such helpful data are presented by Midelfort, Witchhunting; Monter, Witchcraft, esp.
ch. 5.
9 Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, chs. 3-5; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 8, II,
12; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 7, 93.

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appears to be aware that there were other types of women burned

as witches, yet does not explore the evidence for this belief in the
very documents that he is using. Monter dismisses as isolated and
fragmentary evidence such as that presented by Ginzburg, who
shows that profertility beliefs among the peasantry were trans-
formed by the Inquisition into their opposite. Yet there is consid-
erable evidence already available-and certainly much more wait-
ing to be analyzed-for the variety of popular beliefs and activities
(not just sorcery) which were officially defined as witchcraft.10
A few records of depositions by peasants at legal proceedings
before the witch hunters (magistrates and churchmen) entered into
the act have been examined for England, Lorraine, Bremen, and
Schleswig-Holstein. Several decades ago folklorists had published
similar records from Lucerne and Austria. These provide a picture
different from the official witchcraft theory. Especially in the
collections of material from Lucerne and Austria we are reading-
insofar as we can discern the peasant dialect and decipher the
linguistic and orthographic peculiarities of the court scribe-state-
ments by peasant villagers themselves as they brought accusations
against their neighbors. Such depositions bring us about as close
as we can hope to come to the popular beliefs and practices. Such
"superior" (as Kieckhefer labels them) documents indicate that
the peasants, when left to speak for themselves, accused their
neighbors merely of certain maleficia. It is especially striking that
there is little or no mention of the Devil in these depositions.
Night-flying, cannibalism, sabbat, and the pact with the Devil
are introduced into such trials only by the witch hunters-or by
victims in fearful anticipation of, or painful subjection to, various
degrees of torture.11
Io Midelfort, Witchhunting, 17-18; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 46, 56-he also
cuts off his investigation somewhat arbitrarily at I500oo (right in the midst of some of his
best sources, such as the peasant depositions from Lucerne); Monter, "Historiography,"
443-444; Carlo Ginzburg, I Benandanti (Turin, I966).
II Thomas, Religion; Macfarlane, Witchcraft; Etienne Delcambre, La Concept de la sorcel-
lerie dans le duche de Lorraine au XVIe et XVII siecle (Nancy, 195 ), III: Devins et Guerisseurs;
Herbert Schwarzwalder, "Die Formen des Zauber- und Hexenglaubens in Bremen und
seiner weiteren Umgebung, vor allem wahrend des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts," Heimat und
Volkstum: Bremer Beitrdge zur niederdeutschen Volkskunde (1958), 3-68; Richard Heberling,
"Zauberei und Hexenprozesse in Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburg," Zeitschrift der Gesells-
chaftfir Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte, XLV (1915), II6-247, esp. II7-I25. E. Hoff-
mann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten zum Hexen- und Zauberwesen," Schweizerisches Archiv

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694 I RICHARD A. HORSLEY
From examination of such material, it becomes increasingly

clear that the concept of witchcraft among the learned and ruling
classes was not current among the peasantry. Left to themselves,
the peasants may well have lynched a few suspects-such as the
two Austrian women burned for "causing" a hail storm in 1675-
but they would never have produced the great witch hunts in
which hundreds of thousands were burned. The discrepancy be-
tween the peasant depositions and the official hunt for an orga-
nized cult of Satan makes all the more important an inquiry into
just what the realities of peasant life were that the ruling classes
defined as witchcraft. Historians might well take a few clues from
ethnologists, folklorists, and historians of religion concerning ad-
ditional kinds of evidence which might prove helpful in the re-
construction of popular realities. It would then be possible to
apply well-established anthropological methods more thoroughly
and precisely to the peasant depositions already available as well
as to additional evidence. More explicit use of anthropological
methods should lead to a more precise determination not merely
of peasants' beliefs about their neighbors' maleficia, but of the
relationships, roles, and practices of the victims of the witch trials.
c) We require clarification of our analytical concepts of
witchcraft and sorcery. Although, like their British counterparts,
the American historians of European witch trials claim to be
learning from anthropology, they have apparently not chosen to
adopt the relatively precise analytical concepts of witchcraft, sor-
cery, and magical healing developed by Evans-Pritchard and oth-
ers. As ethnographic data on witchcraft and related phenomena
become more abundant and complex, anthropologists such as
Turner and Douglas are challenging their colleagues in the disci-
pline to strive toward ever greater clarity and precision in their
conceptual framework. Historical studies of European witchcraft
might well benefit from the anthropological struggle for clearer
analytical terminology. For example, even though Kieckhefer has
a clear sense of the considerable difference between the learned
fuir Volkskunde, III (1899), 22-40, 80-I22, 189-224, 291-329; Fritz Byloff, Volkskundlich
aus Strafprozessen der Osterreichischen Alpenldnder mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der Zauber
und Hexenprozesse 1455 bis 1850 (Berlin, 1929); Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 27-
"Inferior" documents, as Kieckhefer insists, must be evaluated with extreme care to
determine the effect of the application or threat of torture before they can be used as
evidence for the people's own beliefs and practices.

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concept of witchcraft or diabolism and the popular belief in mal-

eficent magic or sorcery, his concept of sorcery is not appropriate
to the very material which he uses to illustrate it. For in the
"superior" texts, those accused of harming their neighbors in
some way are not necessarily being accused of sorcery as he had
defined it.12
Evans-Pritchard evolved his distinctions between witchcraft
and sorcery on the basis of language used by the Azande of the
Sudan. As Marwick and Macfarlane have pointed out, however,
not all societies make the same clear terminological distinctions.
Thus, in the English material investigated by Macfarlane and
Thomas, people use terms such as "cunning folk," "wizard,"
"conjurer," and "witch" almost interchangeably. In the Jura,
Monter found extreme variation in the use of terminology from
valley to valley, town to town. In the "Luzerner Akten," the
explicit use of terms for "witch," "witchcraft," or "sorcery"
(Hexe, Hexerei) is extremely rare. Similarly in the Austrian ma-
terial collected by Byloff, the people seldom use Hegx in their
depositions. So there is apparently little popular terminological basis
for a clear designation of a concept of witchcraft.13
Yet in all of these different sets of material the substance of
the accusations, the relationship between accuser and accused, is
that for which the English peasants used the term "bewitched."
By some mysterious power the accused (allegedly) has malevo-
lently done harm to the accuser in some way. Occasionally this
has been accomplished by some magical technique, but usually-
if we attend carefully to what the peasants said in their deposi-
tions-it has been done by virtue of an inexplicable power which
is inherent in or possessed by the accused, perhaps manifest only
in a glance or a strange comment.14 Besides the occasional use of
more explicit magical techniques by the witches, however, we
12 The now classic statement is E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic

Among the Azande (London, 1937); see also the excerpts from idem reprinted in Max
Marwick (ed.), Witchcraft and Sorcery (Hammondsworth, 1970); Victor Turner, "Witchcraft
and Sorcery: Taxonomy versus Dynamics," Africa, XXXIV (I964), 3 14-324; Mary Doug-
las, "Witch Beliefs in Central Africa," Africa, XXXVII (I967), 72-80; Kieckhefer, European
Witch Trials, 5-6 vs. the material he discusses in ch. 4.
13 On English material, see Macfarlane, Witchcraft, Appendix 2.
14 See, e.g., Thomas, Religion, 436-437, 511-512; on the similar function of the "evil
eye" in Ethiopia, see Ronald A. Reminick, "The Evil Eye Belief Among the Amhara of
Ethiopia," Ethnology, XIII (I974), 279-291.

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also encounter-in evidence such as the Lucerne depositions-

various forms of counter-magic employed by the accuser-victim
in retaliation against the accused. There would appear to be in
European folk practices, therefore, a basis for making the same
analytical distinction made by many anthropological treatments
of non-European cultures, i.e., a basic distinction between witch-
craft and sorcery, and between witches and sorcerers. Witchcraft is
done by means of an inherent or implicit power possessed by the
witch, whereas sorcery is performed by means of explicit technique
learned or acquired by the sorcerer.15
Marwick and Macfarlane adhere closely to Evans-Pritchard's
original formulations when they confine both witchcraft and sor-
cery to the pursuit of harmful ends, by implicit and explicit means,
respectively. But there is certainly no general agreement among
anthropologists on this narrower definition. As Landy and others
have insisted, "the sorcerer can, and in many instances does, use
his abilities for good as well as bad ends." And Harwood suggests
that "witchcraft" cannot be viewed "simply as the anti-social use
of occult powers." 16
Partly because of the heavy theological and moral influence
of Christianity on European peasant societies, the powers and
techniques we are calling witchcraft and sorcery were usually
viewed as harmful and anti-social. Nevertheless, our analytical
framework should be kept open in order to accommodate occult
powers which may have been relatively ambiguous or amoral in
their social context. The particular uses and evaluations of these
powers can then be examined precisely in the dynamics of their
social context. In any case, the analytical concepts of witchcraft as
the pursuit of ends (usually harmful) by implicit means, and of
sorcery as the pursuit of ends (usually harmful) by explicit means,
are helpful in an analysis of European material. It is only by
following the relatively precise conceptual distinction between
witchcraft and sorcery made by Evans-Pritchard and other an-
I5 Similarly, for example, John Middleton and E. H. Winter, Witchcraft and Sorcery in
East Africa (London, I963), 2-4, 8; David Landy, Culture, Disease and Healing: Studies in
Medical Anthropology (New York, 1977), I95-i96.
I6 Evans-Pritchard (193I), in Marwick, Witchcraft, 24-26; Macfarlane, Witchhunting, 44;
Landy, Culture, Disease, and Healing, I95; Alan Harwood, review of Mary Douglas (ed.),
"Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations," in Journal of the Polynesian Society, LXXX
(1971), 523-524.

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thropologists that we will avoid the demonologists' confusion

over what were apparently distinct popular beliefs and practices.
d) In order to deal adequately with the realities spoken of by
European peasants in their depositions in what Kieckhefer calls
the "superior" texts, we must make yet another crucial distinc-
tion-again following the lead of anthropology. Not all magic
was maleficent, as even the witch hunters knew. Thus we must
have a concept of beneficent magic corresponding to that of male-
ficent magic or sorcery.
A practitioner of beneficent magic was called variously a wise
woman, a cunning man, wizard, conjuror, white witch, or, in
French, more descriptively, devin etguerisseur, a diviner and healer.
Whether in early modern English or Austrian peasant societies or
in Andalusian peasant society surviving into the twentieth cen-
tury, the functions of the wise woman or man include primarily:
divination and the finding of lost objects, disclosure of the thieves,
healing through folk-medicine and enchantments, love magic,
protective magic, and often midwifery. Sometimes they draw on
Christian religious language for incantations and prayers, but at
other times their practices had no relation to established religious
belief. There is a great deal of similarity in the magical practices
and formulas used by the wise women or devins-guerisseurs from
area to area in Europe. For example, Thomas found the English
magical formulas used in folk-healing almost identical to some of
those used on the Continent, such as Delcambre printed at the
end of his discussion. It is estimated that the "cunning folk" were
at least as numerous in sixteenth-century England as the parish
clergy. Moreover, in their divinatory, medical, and religious func-
tions they were far more important in peasant society than were
the official clergy.17
There was a certain "grey" area of overlap between "white"
magic and "black" magic which poses an interesting problem for
scholarly concepts just as it did for peasant perceptions. Not all
love magic was benevolent in its intent, and some love magic
17 Thomas, Religion, 178, 181-182, 244-245; anthropologist Hilda Geertz has provided
a very helpful critique of Thomas' interpretation of "magic" and "religion" in "An
Anthropology of Religion and Magic,"Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI (1975) 71-89;
on the wise women or sabia in twentieth-century peasant society in Andalusia, see Julian
Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra (Chicago, 1971; 2nd ed.), 189-201; Delcambre, Devins
et Guerisseurs, 229-238.

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could be beneficent to one party while being maleficent to a

Certain forms of protective magic provide an even clea
tration of how magical action intended as beneficial for
could be harmful to others. Apparently some peasan
conjure the storms or weather spirits to avoid striking t
fields-but to strike someone else's instead. An analogou
magic is the charm in an Austrian deposition in which
hancement of the productivity of one person's cows in
curse against others' cows. Here are forms of protectiv
which would appear maleficent in the eyes of neighbor
ants as well as to the officials. Thus, as noted already wit
to sorcery, some of the magical powers and the purposes fo
they were used were clearly ambiguous. This ambiguity
instances may be what led Kieckhefer to his inconsisten
the concept of sorcery, under which he subsumes a num
cases of beneficent magic. Although he defines sorcery
ficent magic, he nevertheless includes all "love magic" un
concept and refers to those accused of practicing love m
sorceresses. It seems somehow inappropriate thus to cla
sorcery love magic which was clearly benevolent in its
even if the effects were fatal.l8
Generally speaking, however, on the basis of the abundant
evidence produced by Thomas for England and by Delcambre for
Lorraine, we can conclude not only that wise women (cunning
folkldevins-guerisseurs) and witches "were believed to be two sep-
arate species," but that the wise women (men) and the sorcerers were
generally different persons as well.19
Although they did not work with precisely the same concepts
suggested here, the investigations of Heberling and Schwartz-
walder provide evidence from northern Germany which supports
the distinction just made.20 They do not analyze their evidence to
determine the social roles or statuses of the accused. It is all the
more striking, therefore, that the different forms of magic- and
witch-beliefs into which their material falls-consorting with the
I8 Byloff, Volkskundliches, #40, 30-31; Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 5-6, 56-59;
Hoffmann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," #2-3.
I9 Thomas, Religion, 437, 266; Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 216-217; this European
evidence thus parallels the common situations observed by anthropologists, e.g., Middle-
ton and Winter, Witchcraft and Sorcery, 3, 8.
20 Heberling, "Zauberei"; Schwartzwalder, "Zauber- und Hexenglauben."

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Devil, maleficent magic, prophecy and divination of thieves and

lost objects, and magical protection and healing-correspond to
some of the sociological types being suggested here. Consorting
with the Devil was an integral part of the official theory of witch-
craft, in contrast to peasant beliefs. Maleficent magic was the
content of sorcery, whereas prophecy and divination of thieves and
lost objects as well as magical protection and healing were pre-
cisely the functions of the wise women or the devins-guerisseurs.
Again, to avoid the confusion of distinct peasant realities made
by witch-theorists and even in some recent studies, it is essential
to follow anthropology in maintaining the conceptual distinction
between beneficent magic and maleficent magic or sorcery.
In sum, the interdisciplinary investigation which I am sug-
gesting, and which I will sketch below, entails a set of more
precise and thorough-going distinctions than those manifested in
recent, primarily historical studies. More precise sociological anal-
ysis (a) will reveal more clearly the substantial differences between
the official theory of witchcraft and the popular realities of Eu-
ropean peasant societies. This suggests (b) that historians might
well follow the lead of ethnologists and folklorists in devoting
greater attention to evidence helpful in analyzing the relationships,
roles, and practices of those accused in European witch trials.
Anthropology, with its tradition of cross-cultural analysis of so-
cial roles and relationships, can provide considerable assistance to
the historical study of the popular realities behind the European
witch trials, in particular assistance toward greater conceptual
clarity. It is thus possible to discern, even with the limited sources
for European peasant beliefs and practices, the differences (c)
between witchcraft and sorcery, and (d) between sorcery and
beneficent magic. Anthropological studies have been generally
clear regarding these distinctions, whereas the vast majority of
our historical sources for European witchcraft and witch hunts-
i.e., the official and learned documents-have not. Moreover,
while building on the ground-breaking work of Evans-Pritchard
and Kluckhohn, which concentrated on witchcraft beliefs, an-
thropologists have extended their analysis to include the interre-
lation of such beliefs with social structures and roles. By attending
to the distinctions observed in anthropological studies and by
following anthropologists' lead in moving beyond consideration
of popular witch beliefs to analysis of social realities, historians

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may be able to discern more clearly the social roles and relation-
ships of the people who became caught in the official definition
of "witchcraft"-and thus became the victims of the great witch
hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
SORCERESSES AND WISE WOMEN Although it is generally agreed

that English witchcraft itself is atypical, Thomas and Macfarlane
have pioneered the kind of sociological analysis of the English
material that should be helpful in analyzing continental material
as well. They have begun to identify-beyond the usual gener-
alizations that most were poor old women-the types of persons
who were accused of witchcraft, their social roles, and their re-
lationships with their neighbors in English villages and towns.21
The same extensive and close analysis should now be attempted
for the more "typical" witchcraft of continental Europe, at least
in areas such as the Jura, Lucerne, and Austria, for which some
of the requisite source material is already available. Obviously
only a rough sketch can be attempted here. Nevertheless, there
is sufficient evidence available from various areas to show (I) that
some, but not many, of the victims of the witch hunts were
sorceresses, and (2) that a large number of the victims were wise
women (and men), i.e., healers and diviners.
(I) Some, but not many of those tried for witchcraft were
sorceresses. As Caro Baroja points out, each social class had its
own particular brand of magic. Among the sophisticated elite,
alchemy and astrology had been practiced throughout the Middle
Ages. Among the middle strata who could read, magicians used
handbooks of formulas and incantations since at least late antiq-
uity. The use of such books expanded with the increase in literacy.
The common people also believed in the efficacy of magic,
whether in love charms and protection against sickness or in the
more harmful variety of causing illness or death. A general con-
sensus is emerging among historians, following many anthropol-
ogists, that the term sorcery should be used for maleficent magic,
2I In what is surely the most astute social and intellectual analysis of witchcraft in the
Middle Ages, Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, ch. I2, has made similar suggestions regarding
the general social types of people who became the victims of the witch hunts; more
comprehensive and systematic presentation of the evidence, however, fell beyond the
scope of his monumental investigation, which, like Kieckhefer's, does not go beyond the
fifteenth century.

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EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS I 701
for the combination of"harmful ends with explicit means." Cohn

and Kieckhefer have both provided abundant illustrations of the
kinds of maleficia which were current and culpable in the late
Middle Ages-such as the organized "protection racket" of tem-
pestarii touring the countryside extorting payments from the cred-
ulous peasants to spare their fields from storms (and blast their
neighbors' instead).22
Actual accusations of sorcery, however, were far less impor-
tant in the witch trials and popular witch-beliefs than implied by
Kieckhefer, who views sorcery as the content of the "popular
tradition."23 Most of the peasant accusations did not even mention
sorcery of any kind. Perhaps this is best illustrated from the
Lucerne material, both because these depositions provide some of
the best evidence that we have for popular beliefs and practices,
and because they offer a basis for at least a statistical estimate in
one area. Less than a third of the Lucerne cases included any
accusations of sorcery. In fact, in these depositions the peasants
claimed to have performed counter-magic in more cases than they
made accusations of sorcery-and there was no indication that the
maleficent effects of the counter-magic were of concern to the
authorities. In the usual case, villagers accused a woman merely
of causing harm to themselves or their animals, often following
a quarrel, but without mention of any technique. In the majority
of these cases the peasants accused their women neighbors of
witchcraft, not of practicing sorcery.
Although it occurs in less than a quarter of the cases, the
most frequent accusation for sorcery in the Lucerne area was for
hail-making, which caused damage to crops. However, there are
nearly as many cases in which the accused women are said to
have predicted or caused rain-storms which seem not to have
been harmful in any way. To the peasants, the prediction or
causing of these storms appears to indicate the unusual power of
the accused rather than any skill in sorcery. There are also a few
cases in which women accused of harming persons or animals
(apparently by inherent powers) are also accused, not of actually
performing sorcery, but of suspicious behavior, again an indica-
22 Baroja, Witches, 47; cf. Monter, Witchcraft, 126. Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, chs. 9,
Io; Thomas, Religion, chs. Io-i2; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, I47-I60; Kieckhefer,
European Witch Trials, 48-56, 6i-62, 64-69.
23 Ibid., 5-6.

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tion of their unusual power and ambiguous character. That is,

even particular peasant accusations which might at first glance
appear to be evidence of sorcery, when examined more carefully
indicate rather that the peasants suspected the accused of being
witches, not sorceresses.24
With regard to the Lucerne material it is most important to
observe that none of those accused in the peasants' statements can
be described as sorceresses. That there were sorcerers in the Swiss
villages is clearly indicated in the peasants' stories of their attempts
at counter-magic. Thus, for example, there was a sorcerer in the
Lucerne area known as Der Riitiweger, who helped Tomann
Bophart with a means of counter-magic to bring illness upon a
woman who (Bophart believed) had bewitched his milk. But
accusations of acts of sorcery in the Lucerne depositions are rel-
atively few and low in significance in comparison with other
accusations. And even if a few of the accusations of sorcery were
true and some of these women indulged in specific acts of male-
ficent magic, it is evident from these depositions that their fellow
peasants did not regard them primarily as sorceresses.25
Although it is not possible to make the same kind of statistical
analysis of the other peasant material currently available, it is
possible to draw similar conclusions. In the Austrian cases selected
by Byloff, acts of sorcery appear more frequently in the accusa-
tions, yet they are by no means the primary subject of accusation.
The same holds for the material in Lorraine studied by Delcambre,
and for the situation in Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein during
this period-judging from the cases cited by Heberling and
Schwartzwalder.26 Thus the continental material available paral-
lels the English material studied by Thomas and Macfarlane in
showing that, at the popular level, although a few persons were
accused of maleficent techniques, people whom we could call
sorceresses did not figure prominently in the accusations. Sorcer-
esses and sorcerers there were among the people, but there appears
little evidence that those tried as witches practiced sorcery.
24 Hoffman-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," e.g., ##i6, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32. One must
be cautious not just with Cohn's summaries of these cases but with Hoffmann-Krayer's
summaries as well. Like Kieckhefer, neither Cohn (e.g., Europe's Inner Demons, 242) nor
Hoffmann-Krayer is careful in his use of terminology, and writes that the accused did
certain maleficia "by sorcery" (or through "Zauber" or "Hexerei") in several cases where
the peasant depositions say or imply no such thing.
25 Hoffman-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," #24.
26 See note ii for references.

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(2) A substantial number of the witches were wise women.

The most abundant and accessible evidence to date comes from
England. Just as English witchcraft was atypical generally, so als
wise women were not as numerous in English witch trials as on
the Continent. Moreover, in England their divination, rather tha
their magical healing, was prosecuted. Nevertheless, the Englis
material is important for what it reveals about the prominent ro
of wise women (and men) in European peasant societies-and the
witch trials-of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
Special credit should be given to Notestein for his concise
treatment of the scarce evidence on this subject seventy years ago.
More recent research has confirmed his observation that
"throughout the records of the superstition are scattered e
of wise women upon whom suspicion suddenly lighted, an
were arraigned and sent to the gallows." Officials and their
were only too ready to believe the worst of the "cunning
as in the case of Alice Prabury in 1563, of whom the
wardens of Barnsley, Gloucestershire, reported that she
herself suspiciously in the likelihood of a witch" in her e
merely to heal people and animals. It did not matter if
woman such as Ursley Kempe (hanged in I582) protest
"though she could unwitch, she could not witch." It was
even for a woman such as Joan Warden of Stapleford, Cam
shire, to plead that "she doth not use any charms, but th
doth use ointments and herbs to cure many diseases." For
a woman was liable to be charged merely with being a "c
woman.27"27
Ironically but understandably enough, the cunning folk
played a key role in focusing witch-suspicions on fellow conju-
rors, perhaps even their rivals. Just as they were asked to diagnose
diseases in animals and people, cunning folk were also called upon
to detect and interpret signs of witchcraft. Suspicions probably
began with the ill words of a neighbor, "words that started an
attack upon the woman's reputation that she was unable to repel."
Macfarlane argues that the role of the cunning folk in the Essex
trials was more as detectors of witches and directors of suspicions
than as victims of the craze. But he also provides several specific
cases which illustrate the peril in which the cunning folk stood.
27 Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 (Washington,
D.C., I9II), esp. 20-23, 256-259. See currently Thomas, Religion, esp. chs. 7-9; Macfar-
lane, Witchcraft, 126-140. For the cases cited, see Thomas, Religion, 182, 548, 19I-192.

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Ursley Kempe, Margery Skelton, Catherine Reve, and Edwin

Hadesley were all persons known to be cunning folk and were
even tried on charges of beneficent magic but were later tried also
for maleficent witchcraft. As Thomas points out, "a witchcraft
accusation was more plausible . . . when levied against a person
who already had a reputation for magical prowess as a white
witch or cunning man." And he claims to have encountered over
forty such cases in his English materials.28
Prior to Thomas' and Macfarlane's research on England,
Delcambre had gathered and interpreted a great deal of similar
evidence from Lorraine. It is clear from Delcambre's work that
large numbers of peasant devins-guerisseurs were burned for witch-
craft in Lorraine.29
Monter has argued that wise women are similarly numerous
and prominent in the Jura witch trials. It is clear from his argu-
ment that he has misread Delcambre at points and misinterpreted
his own material in this regard. The misunderstanding centers
around the relation between the realities of peasant practice and
the concepts of the witch hunters. He argues that "all the evidence
agrees that belief in magical cures as an index to maleficium was
something deeply rooted in local folklore, like belief in witches'
hailstorms, and ultimately absorbed into written de-
monologies."30 As part of his evidence he quotes Remy, the
illustrious demonologist, who personally had sent approximately
900 witches to the stake:
The people of our country, especially the peasants, have an old and
pernicious custom. When one of them falls ill of some strange and
unknown sickness, he at once sets about getting something to eat
or drink from the house of the witch whom he suspects to have
caused the sickness; and this he eats or drinks in the greatest con-
fidence that it will restore him to perfect health. Not a few have
maintained that they have found a perfect cure by this means; and
this is not denied by the witches who have been questioned with
regard to this matter.31
28 Notestein, History, 22; Macfarlane, Witchcraft, I27-I28; Thomas, Religion, 567.

29 Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs.
30 Monter, Witchcraft, 179-181.
31 Quoted from Nicolas Remy (trans. E. A. Ashwin), Demonolatry (London, 1930), I43.

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EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS 1 705
It is difficult to understand how Monter can take this state-

ment at face value since the information comes from peasant
women whom Remy had tortured. Monter believes that Remy's
statement is somehow proof that the peasants believed "in the
witch's ability to cure her own maleficia." But it does not prove
that at all; it shows merely that Remy (like other demonologists,
surely) believed that those who could heal a disease had also
caused it in the first place.32
Thomas' research on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
England, like Delcambre's on Lorraine, suggests that the peasants
distinguished between the "wise woman" who healed and the
"witch" who might have bewitched or caused a sickness. Unfor-
tunately Monter only partially analyzed the Jura evidence, and
also partly obscured it, thus conforming the popular views to
those of the demonologists.33
From his evidence, however, it would appear that for the
Jura peasants, as for the peasants in Lorraine, wise women and
men worked at diagnosing witchcraft as well as healing sickness-
and for precisely these reasons were suspect to officials. The
situation in the Jura and Lorraine was thus similar to that in
England. As Thomas points out, "Most demonologists taught
that white witches could impose spells as well as lift them, and
many cunning folk found themselves accused of maleficent witch-
craft." Monter could surely show us several from the Jura as well.
To take only two examples which he himself finds paradigmatic:
Clauda Bruyne, burned at Neuchatel in 1568, and Marie Joly,
who held up under torture at Biel for two days, would both
appear to have been primarily wise women, knowledgeable in the
healing capacities of roots and herbs and the techniques of divi-
nation.34
The peasant depositions from Lucerne and especially those
from Austria reveal the same situation with regard to the wise
women's vulnerability as potential victims of the witch trials. As
was the case in England, the peasant diviners played an important
role in the initial accusation, confirming the peasant suspicions
regarding a given woman. We meet with a "witchfinder" (Hex-
32 Cf. Thomas, Religion, 567.

33 Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 217, as translated in Monter, Witchcraft, 176.
34 Thomas, Religion, 567; Monter, "Patterns of Witchcraft in the Jura," I8-I9, 23-24.

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enkenner) named Miller in the case of the Riischellerin in 1480, a

"diviner" (Wahrsager) in the case of the Oberhauserin in I500, and
a "quack-doctor" (Quacksalber) in the case of four women, also
in 1500. Most interesting in the latter case and two others is the
key role of one accuser named Hans Tscholi. He claims that he
was regularly in touch with the spirits of the dead, a power which
had been traditional in his family.35
Besides the diviners who are among the accusers, however,
we find several wise women among the accused in the Lucerne
cases. Thus, in such cases as those of Margaret Jeger (1450), the
Oberhauserin and four others in I500, Dichtlin in 1502, Sturmlin
in 1531, and Els Adams in 1543, these women would appear to
have been primarily peasant healers. In depositions regarding their
activities, their neighbors mention such things as teaching other
women enchantments to make their husbands love and not beat
them, and protective magic of various kinds, as well as healing
by means of folk-medicine. Table I, an analysis of the Lucerne
cases for which there is sufficient evidence for adequate judgment,
shows that those accused of bewitching were likely to have been
diviners and healers, but not sorceresses. It is worth noting, in
regard to the Lucerne material, that all of the healers/diviners who
were accused of witchcraft were women, whereas nearly all the
others who were not being accused-even though they may have
been involved in the same illegitimate magical healing, or may
have conversed with the dead or worked counter magic-were
men.36
The Austrian material collected by Byloff reveals an even
larger percentage of accused persons who appear to have been
primarily folk healers and diviners. These cases include, besides
the usual instances of herbal and magical healing, love charms,
cures for headaches or a husband's drunkenness, several instances
of recovery of stolen goods, protective magic, and fertility magic,
such as rainmaking. Some of these reports include a virtual cat-
alogue of herbs used in folk-medicine. Also, in contrast with the
Lucerne cases, a number of the diviners and healers accused are
35 "Luzerner Akten," ##i6, 24, 23, 22.

36 Ibid., ##IO, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 32; Reo F. Fortune, Sorcerers of the Dobu: the Social
Anthropology of the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific (London, 1932), ch. 3.

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EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS 1 707
Table 1 Luzerner Akten Zum Hexen- und Zauberwesen: An Analysis

of the Evidencea
21 OF 47 CASES ACCUSED OF ACCUSED OF EVIDENCE OF
BEWITCHING MALEFICENT BENEFICENT MAGIC
(PEOPLE MAGIC (HEALING, DIVINING,

AND/OR (SORCERY) LOVE AND PROT.
ANIMALS) MAGIC, HERBAL

LORE, WEATHER
MAKING)
io. MargaretJeger (1450) (hail) love-, protective-,
& weather-magic,
herbs
I I. Dorothea (1454) several
I6. Riischellerin (ca. 1480) several (weather magic)
I9. Hans Spenis Weib (1486) (bad reputation) (hail)
20. Peter Kiindigs Mutter (1489) 2 X
21. Die Lusterbergerin (1599) 2X
22. five women (ca. i5oo) 3 protective and

weather magic
23. (same) four women 3 x divining, healing, &
(ca. 1500) weather magic
24. Oberhauserin (I5oo) several X divining, healing
25. Dichtlin (I502) 4 healing, midwifery.
weather magic
28. Barbara im Herd (I53I) several (implied) divining, protective
magic
29. Stiirmlin (ca. 1531) I X divining, healing
31. Magdalena Nessler (154I) I X (divining)
32. Els Adams (I543) I X (implied) healing
36. Margret Cher (1544) several
37. Margret Elsener (1546) 4 x divining, healing
38. Margret Hunzinger (1547) I X + ?
39. Lena Eggler (1548) 4 x

44. Barbara Knopf (I549) several
45. Margret Bodenmann (I55I) several (implied)
46. Anna Demut (1551) (hail) weather magic
Summary:
a I9 of the cases are too brief for adequate judgment: ##1-7, 9, 12-15, 17-I8, 30, 34-35, 40
7 further cases provide unreliable information: ##8, 26-27, 33, (41), 42-43, 47.
In the 21 cases which provide sufficient and reliable information for adequate judgment:
in all but 3 cases women are explicitly accused of bewitching;
in I case explicitly and in 5 cases by implication, women are accused of an act of sorcery;
in o1 cases clearly and in 3 further cases implicitly there is evidence that the women accuse
known as diviners and healers, etc.

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men, including a few marginal figures in the society such

beggars.37
Investigations of witch trials and beliefs in magic in areas of
northern Germany present a picture remarkably similar to that in
Austria, Lucerne, Lorraine, and England. Richard Heberling con-
cluded that it was a salient feature of the witch trials in Schleswig-
Holstein that they dealt with women devoted to magical healing.
Schwartzwalder similarly received the impression that many of
the trials in the Bremen area resulted from the miscarrying of
harmless magical healing which was then interpreted as evil work
of the Devil. The I 575 Bremen case of Kattrine Statlander, who
tried unsuccessfully to heal a young man with her "evil powder,"
provides a good example of a magical healer whose art was
interpreted, instead, as a magical means of causing sickness and
death. Heberling cites a similar example of a wagiertes Weib from
Bordesholm who, in I617, was imprisoned despite the statement
of doctors that nothing could have been done anyhow to save the
poor fellow that she had attempted to heal. Such victims believed
firmly that their own folk-medicine was the only true and indis-
pensable means of healing.38
In contrast to Monter's (questionable) claim regarding the
Jura, but similar to Delcambre's findings in Lorraine, Heberling
and Schwartzwalder agree that it was the official Christian view-
point which was responsible for attributing maleficent (and Sa-
tanic) power and effects to the very healers and midwives who
could cure and help. There is also from Bremen a typical example
of how the officials, by the use of torture, could transform the
healers and diviners into the very accomplices of Satan they were
looking for. In I575 Gesche Meier, who could perform love
magic and divination, stated before the application of torture that
her attempts at discovery of a thief were performed by addressing
God; under torture she indicated that it had been done in the
Devil's name.39
37 Byloff, Volkskundliches, ##23, 28, 38, 40, 50, 55. #46 is the case of a beggar name
Simon in i666. Monter, Witchcraft, found marginal male figures such as beggars accuse
of witchcraft also in the Jura, although he mentions nothing to connect such beggars wit
folk-healing and divination.
38 Heberling, "Zauberei und Hexenprozesse," 120, 120-121, 122-123; Schwartzwalder
"... Zauber- und Hexenglauben," 5, 42.
39 Heberling, "Zauberei," 120-121; Schwartzwalder, "Zauber- und Hexenglauben,
esp. 36.

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Just as many a wise woman in early modern Europe provided

services of midwifery along with divining and healing, so some
of the wise women who fell victim to the witch hunts were also
midwives.40 This was clearly the case with Dichtlin, one of the
wise women accused in the Lucerne depositions. In their testi-
mony her neighbors mention anxiety about their having called in
a rival midwife instead of Dichtlin herself. It is not at all surprising
to find midwives among the victims of the witch hunts, for the
demonologists and ecclesiastical officials were absolutely obsessed
with the potential evil which they believed midwives could per-
form. Malleus Maleficarum and other learned Christian demonol-
ogical treatises, provide lurid sketches of"Satan's whores" dedi-
cating unbaptized babies to devils or killing them and using their
fat to make flying ointment.41
During this same period the Church launched an intensive
campaign to control the practices of midwives. Midwives were
required to take oaths pledging, among other things, that they
would "not use any kind of sorcery or incantation in the time of
the travail of any woman"; and that they would "not destroy the
child born of any woman." Thus it is not surprising, since as
scholars we have been dependent largely on the official viewpoint,
to find medical historians and feminist scholars, and most recently
Cohn concluding: "it is striking how often the village midwife
figures as the accused in a witchcraft trial."42
Midwives, however, are nowhere near as prominent in the
peasant depositions. The peasantry did not share the learned belief
that midwives were instruments of the Devil. In another contrast
with the official theories, moreover, the popular depositions do
not include charges of infanticide. It is thus unclear, in the evi-
dence for popular beliefs and realities, what certain women's
40 Forbes' discussion of "Midwifery and Witchcraft" is of limited usefulness and relia-
bility because of his uncritical use of what Kieckhefer would call the "inferior" learned
texts as well as his Murrayite presuppositions, although he does bring together a wealth
of pertinent material which provides a solid basis for a reexamination of this issue.
41 Hoffmann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," #25; Malleus Maleficarum, quoted from Alan
C. Kors and Edward Peters (eds.), Witchcraft in Europe 1100-1700, A Documentary History
(Philadelphia, 1972).
42 W. H. Frere, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation (London,
1920), III, 5, 221, 270, 383; cf. the similar "articles" concerning midwives and baptism in
II, 23, 58-59, 292, 356-357; John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of
Religion (Oxford, 1824), I, 242-243; Hans Kern, Zur Geschichte des Hebammenwesens in
Basel (Basel, 1929), 34; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, 249.

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710 RICHARD A. HORSLEY
service as midwives had to do with popular accusations of

craft against them. Although it is abundantly clear that mid
was a social role highly relevant to the official witch-bel
witch trials, it is not clear that it was a social role with any
relevance to popular witch-suspicions. It is also not entire
how different midwives were from the wise women. Not all wise
women offered services of midwifery and not all midwives were
also diviners and healers. But judging from what we know about
the wise women, many of them were apparently also midwives;
there was clearly some overlap in these social roles. There is no
question that a few of those executed for witchcraft were mid-
wives. But a great deal of research remains to be done in order
to determine more adequately the importance of midwives in the
European witch trials as well as the relationship between mid-
wives and wise women.43
Before concluding this examination of evidence for wise
women/diviners-healers as victims of the witch trials, we should
explore the possible overlap between wise women and sorceresses
among those accused of witchcraft. Since wise women and sorcerers
were generally different persons, as noted above, it is not sur-
prising to find that the wise women who came to be accused of
witchcraft were rarely accused of acts of sorcery. This is mani-
fested in the material collected by Thomas and Delcambre from
England and Lorraine, respectively. The evidence from the Lu-
cerne cases is similar. A few of the wise women were suspected
of knowing how to cause impotence and to poison. Only one,
however, was actually accused of an act of sorcery, causing dam-
age by hail-making; and none of these wise women (nor any of
the other women accused in the Lucerne cases) could be described
as a sorceress.44
The Jura and Austria do appear to provide us with a few
cases in which wise women (diviners-healers) were also practicing
sorcery regularly. According to Monter, Clauda Bruyne's confes-
sion presents a picture of a kind of wandering witch-doctor who
regularly poisoned animals and people in addition to her curing
43 Monter, Witchcraft, 126; Midelfort, Witchhunting, 187; Sigmund von Riezler, Geschichte
der Hexenprozesse in Bayern (Darmstadt, I968; orig. pub. 1896), 145, i66. For an extensive
bibliography see Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch.
44 Thomas, Religion, 437, 266; Delcambre, Devins et Guerisseurs, 216-217; Hoffmann-
Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," ##23, 28, 32; vs. #24.

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EUROPEAN WITCH TRIALS 711
and divining activities. However, it is difficult to

case since Monter does not indicate what portions o
sion" may have been obtained under torture. Bylof
of depositions from Austria contains at least three
folk-healers accused of practicing sorcery. In a 1672
ical healer of considerable reputation is accused of
potence at the wedding of the son of the Supan (i.
vorsteher, or chairman of the district council). Th
cases reveal wise women who used their special pow
niques to fight back (or get even) when they were
even beaten by a local authority. The women pur
caused illness in the men who mistreated them, and
healed their own maleficia. At least in Austria, the
appear to have been people who were both healers
But apparently this was not the case elsewhere in E
ant societies.45
Throughout those parts of Europe for which adequate evi-

dence is already available-from Lorraine to Austria, from Lu-
cerne to Schleswig-Holstein-a goodly number of the victims of
the witch hunts were simply the wise women (and men), the folk
healers and diviners of peasant society. Such wise women may
have been suspected because of the failure of their attempted
cures or perhaps because they had been named by someone else
under torture.46 But the peasants themselves do not appear to
have believed that if a healer could cure a disease she also must
have caused it in the first place. This was the doctrine of the
demonologists. And it was this view, as an integral part of the
official concept of witchcraft as consorting and collaborating with
Satan, which caused the "wise women" to be caught in the witch
hunters' dragnet.
WHY WERE WISE WOMEN AND OTHERS ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT?
It becomes increasingly clear that the realities of popular life and

belief do not accord at all with the official concept of witchcraft
The victims of the witch hunts were not witches in the sense of the
official demonologists' definition, although once subjected to tor
45 Monter, "Patterns of Witchcraft in the Jura," I8-I9; Byloff, Volkskundliches, #50
40, 48.
46 See Monter, Witchcraft, I84.

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ture many victims may have come to believe in the witch h

definition of themselves as night-flying witches in pact with
Investigation of the types of persons accused, of the statu
roles they occupied in peasant society, has also revealed that
but very few of them, were sorceresses. A substantial num
the accused, however, were "wise women" of the peasant so
In some areas of Europe, judging from available evidence,
diviners and healers would probably account for nearly h
victims.
For the majority of those accused we lack adequate evidence
to determine whether they belonged to any particular social status
or played any particular role in the society. Many were apparently
seen by their neighbors as quarrelsome, others merely as eccentric.
The most typical circumstance, whether of wise women or of
ordinary women, was that the accused had happened to quarrel
with or place demands upon their neighbors. The prominence of
the wise women among the accused, therefore, can be explained
by the special role which they played in the peasant society. As
Kluckhohn discovered in his incisive study of the Navaho, the
"witch" was often an outcast or a deviant.47 But why did the
persecution of these deviants escalate to such proportions in Eu-
rope during the sixteenth century?
Several provocative explanations have been offered for the
dramatic rise of the witch-craze and, particularly, for why the
principal victims of the witch hunts were elderly women. How-
ever, once we discern the important differences between the of-
ficial beliefs and interests and the popular beliefs and practices,
these explanations appear to be relevant to only one or another
aspect of the complex historical context of the witch trials. Mon-
ter, for example, interprets accusations of witchcraft "as projec-
tions of patriarchal social fears onto atypical women, . . . who
47 Thomas, Religion, 552-557; most of the Lucerne material fits this pattern, "Luzerner
Akten"; similarly on the Lorraine cases, Delcambre, "Psychologie des inculpes lorrains de
sorcellerie," Revue historique de droitfrancais et etranger (Paris, 1954), 521-522; and although
Monter is at pains to emphasize the differences between England and the Jura, the patterns
are really very similar, as he suggests in Witchcraft, I36-I37. Similarly, in non-European
ethnographic material, witchcraft and sorcery are very often related to quarrels and sus-
picious behavior, as illustrated in Fortune, Sorcerers of the Dobu, ch. 3; or in Paul R.
Turner's study of some Chontal villages in Oaxaca, Mexico, "Witchcraft as Negative
Charisma," Ethnology, IX (1970), 366-372. Clyde Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft (Cam-
bridge, Mass., I944).

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lived apart from the direct male control of husbands and fathers,"
and finds this rooted in the broad misogynistic streak in European
letters and the Christian tradition. But this helps explain only the
learned belief that women were particularly prone to witchcraft.48
Midelfort has explained that the witch trials may have been
functional, even "therapeutic," in the sense that "until single
women found a more comfortable place in the concepts and
communities of Western men, one could argue that they were a
socially disruptive element. .. ."49 But, we must ask, functional
for whom? If we focus on the peasantry, it is possible to argue
that witch beliefs were functional and, had it not been for the
witch trials, would have continued to be functional in protecting
poor elderly women who seemed eccentric or burdensome. Ap-
parently it was only in response to the witch trials and under
prodding by the officials that people brought accusations against
their neighbors. Otherwise the peasants apparently tolerated their
neighbors whom they suspected of witchcraft. This is surely the
significance of the long lapse of time between the suspects' quar-
rels with their neighbors (and the suspects' supposed malefcia), on
the one hand, and the neighbors' accusations, on the other: "Cun-
rat Kurman says that six or eight years ago .... Kuni Hinter der
Kilchen says that eight or nine years ago ....Jost Meyer says
that ten or twelve years ago .... ." As Cohn pointed out, left by
themselves the peasantry would never have conducted the massive
witch hunts. Their witch beliefs generally served to protect the
helpless or troublesome elderly women suspected of witchcraft.
Because of their fear of the suspects' mysterious power to "be-
witch" them, the peasants might avoid, but would also look after
the witch-suspect.50
With the institution of the inquisitorial procedure and the
conduct of extensive witch trials by secular and ecclesiastical of-
ficials, the people's witch beliefs were transformed into a highly
effective means of social control. The peasants' witch beliefs thus
became functional-if by no means therapeutic-in an utterly
48 Monter, Witchcraft, II8ff., esp. 123-124; Midelfort, Witchhunting, I84.

49 Ibid., 195-196; David Landy, Culture, Disease, and Healing, I96, warns that "equilib-
rium theory" does not explain sufficiently the disruptive consequences of such events as
witch hunts, which may have resulted in "the terrorization of the whole society."
50 Hoffmann-Krayer, "Luzerner Akten," ##25 and others; Cohn, Europe's Inner De-
mons.

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different, almost opposite way. Through a period of great

sions, as Europe made the difficult transition from one eco
political system to another, the peasants were induced, th
the witch trials, to blame much of their malaise on their local
witches and were able to rid themselves of social elements which
appeared burdensome or troublesome.
Perhaps because he has neither the official continental de-
monology nor the use of torture to deal with in his English
material, Thomas shifts the focus away from the officially spon
sored witch trials. Thomas explains the upsurge in witch accu-
sations from the increased tensions in village life. With the ster-
eotypical witch as an elderly widow in mind, he argues that "the
tensions which such accusations usually reflected arose from the
position of the poor and dependent members of the community."
This hypothesis is attractive, since it can be readily extended to
cover the Lucerne depositions and the material from Lorrain
studied by Delcambre.51
However, Thomas attempts to explain too much primarily
on the village level. He rejected the explanation that the facilities
for extensive witch prosecution had not existed until the lat
Middle Ages. As Cohn pointed out, his rejection of this expla
nation was premature, and it does not adequately take into ac-
count the history of legal institutions and practices. Before the
mass witch hunts could begin in England as well as in the rest of
Europe, "the accusatory had to be replaced by the inquisitorial
procedure." Moreover, the use of the inquisitorial procedure
would surely have focused attention on witchcraft and made it
more believable-and thus encouraged witch accusations.52
Besides his failure seriously to consider crucial shifts in legal
practices and patterns, Thomas further narrows the explanation
for the upsurge in witch accusations by focusing on the increased
tensions in village life. His argument that the tensions which
witch accusations reflected "arose from the position of the poor
and dependent members of the community" does not give ade-
quate attention to the broader political and economic factors
which caused the increased tensions in village life in the first place.
Thomas does suggest that the rising spirit of individualism and
5I Thomas, Religion, 561-563.

52 Thomas, Religion, 460-463; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, I60-I63.

131.196.210.2 on Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:47:21 +00:00
the institution of the national Poor Law very likely influenced the
hostility of the common people to their elderly and dependent
neighbors. But, except for his brief references to enclosures and
increasing population, he provides no real explanation of why
tensions were increasing in the villages.53
In his review ofMidelfort, Macfarlane insisted that "it would
be considered ridiculous for an anthropologist to study witchcraft
in a society without knowing something about its kinship system,
rates of geographical and social mobility, ethics of giving, beliefs
in cursing and curing." Turner commented similarly with regard
to the interpretation of witchcraft in East Africa that it was nec-
essary "to estimate the effects on local subsystems of large scale
political processes in the wider system."54
As our studies of European witchcraft and the witch trials
become more interdisciplinary, our explanations for the upsurge
of witch-accusations and massive witch hunts must be more com-
prehensive. It would appear to be impossible to understand witch
accusations and the tensions in village life in isolation from these
broader historical developments which brought pressure to bear
on traditional peasant life.
53 Thomas, Religion, 563-564.

54 Macfarlane, review of Midelfort, Witchhunting, in Journal of Social History, VII (1974),
345; Victor Turner, "Witchcraft and Sorcery," Africa, XXXIV (I964), 314.

131.196.210.2 on Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:47:21 +00:00

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Who Were the Witches?

The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/203380

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Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the

Richard A. Horsley is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion Program, University

I For example, Thomas R. Forbes, "Midwifery and Witchcraft,"Journal of the History

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craft was a composite theory formulated out of elements ori

THE OFFICIAL CONCEPT OF WITCHCRAFT VS. THE POPULAR REALITIES:

SOME METHODOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS In increas

4 This scheme is informed by the work of Midelfort, Witchhunting, I4-25; Monter,

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prise in which many of the most distinguished intellectuals of the

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all," he comments: "The Devil was fundamental to the witchcraft

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appears to be aware that there were other types of women burned

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From examination of such material, it becomes increasingly

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concept of witchcraft or diabolism and the popular belief in mal-

12 The now classic statement is E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic

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also encounter-in evidence such as the Lucerne depositions-

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thropologists that we will avoid the demonologists' confusion

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could be beneficent to one party while being maleficent to a

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Devil, maleficent magic, prophecy and divination of thieves and

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SORCERESSES AND WISE WOMEN Although it is generally agreed

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for the combination of"harmful ends with explicit means." Cohn

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tion of their unusual power and ambiguous character. That is,

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(2) A substantial number of the witches were wise women.

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Ursley Kempe, Margery Skelton, Catherine Reve, and Edwin

28 Notestein, History, 22; Macfarlane, Witchcraft, I27-I28; Thomas, Religion, 567.

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It is difficult to understand how Monter can take this state-

32 Cf. Thomas, Religion, 567.

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enkenner) named Miller in the case of the Riischellerin in 1480, a

35 "Luzerner Akten," ##i6, 24, 23, 22.

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Table 1 Luzerner Akten Zum Hexen- und Zauberwesen: An Analysis

21 OF 47 CASES ACCUSED OF ACCUSED OF EVIDENCE OF

BEWITCHING MALEFICENT BENEFICENT MAGIC

(PEOPLE MAGIC (HEALING, DIVINING,

ANIMALS) MAGIC, HERBAL

21. Die Lusterbergerin (1599) 2X

22. five women (ca. i5oo) 3 protective and

39. Lena Eggler (1548) 4 x

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men, including a few marginal figures in the society such