Eradicating the Devil's Minions: Anabaptists and Witches in Reformation Europe, 1535–1600 9781442684317

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ERADICATING THE DEVIL’S MINIONS: ANABAPTISTS AND WITCHES IN REFORMATION EUROPE, 1525–1600

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GARY K. WAITE

Eradicating the Devil’s Minions Anabaptists and Witches in Reformation Europe, 1525–1600

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9155-0

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Waite, Gary K., 1955– Eradicating the Devil’s minions : Anabaptists and witches in Reformation Europe, 1525–1600 / Gary K. Waite. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9155-0 1. Anabaptists – History – 16th century. 2. Witchcraft – Europe – History – 16th century. 3. Dissenters, Religious – Europe – History – 16th century. 4. Persecution – Europe – History – 16th century. 5. Reformation. 6. Anabaptists – Controversial literature – History and criticism. I. Title. BX4930.W33 2007

284c.309031

C2006-906736-8

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

To Kate

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Contents

List of Figures and Maps List of Tables

xi

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix

xiii

3

1 The Devil’s Minions? Anabaptists, Magic, and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 8 2 Blackened Tongues and Miraculous Hosts: Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 34 3 Shamans and Soothsayers: The Persecution of Anabaptists and Witches in the Northern Netherlands 63 4 Rebaptism and the Devil: Anabaptists and Witches in the Southern Netherlands 97 5 The Devil’s Sabbat: Nocturnal Anabaptist Meetings, Hailstorms, and Witchcraft in Southern Germany 130 6 Eliminating the Desecrators of Hosts: Anabaptists and Witches in the Austrian Tirol 166 Conclusion

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Notes 207 Bibliography Index 291

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List of Figures and Maps

Figures follow p. 160 Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Map 1 Map 2 Map 3

The naked runners of Amsterdam Images of witch activities in Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum Images of the witches’ sabbat in Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum Anonymous broadsheet image of an Anabaptist meeting Anabaptist attack on Amsterdam Execution of Anabaptists on the scaffold in front of the Old City Hall, Amsterdam, 14 May 1535 Image of diabolical rebaptism in Guazo, Compendium Maleficarum Anabaptist baptism The bodies of David van der Leyen and Levina Ghyselius at Ghent, 1554 Anneken van den Hove buried alive, 1597 Jews desecrate a host in Passau, 1477 Burning of three witches at Derneburg, 1555 The ‘Society of Anabaptists’/bathhouse scene The Habsburg Netherlands 64 Anabaptism in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Low Countries in the Mid-Sixteenth Century 131 Austria 167

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List of Tables

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.1 4.5 6.1

Witch trials in Namur, by decade 76 Heresy trials and executions in Namur, by decade 77 Witchcraft accusations and trials in Holland, 1500–1650 79 Execution of Anabaptists and trials of witches in Amsterdam 82 Trials of Anabaptists and witches in Utrecht (city) 90 Execution of heretics/Anabaptists and trials of witches in Bruges 108 Persecution of heretics, Anabaptists, and witches in Ghent 110 Heresy and witch persecution in Kortrijk 115 Execution of heretics and persecution of witches in Brussels 118 Persecution of heretics and witches in Antwerp 122 Anabaptist and witch persecution in the Vorarlberg 191

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Acknowledgments

Although the specific form of this study originated in 1992/3 as a grant proposal for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, in many respects I have been working on it for my entire academic career. My interest in the Anabaptists was developed while I was an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Waterloo, where Professors Kenneth R. Davis and Walter Klaassen instilled in me a sympathetic appreciation for these oft-persecuted religious dissidents. For Professor Klaassen I composed an MA cognate paper on the subject of Anabaptists and the Lord’s Supper, and while it has since lain in deserved obscurity, the topic of Anabaptists and the sacraments has remained at the back of my mind. My PhD work, under Professor Werner O. Packull, introduced me to the broader social and intellectual histories of the Reformation. When I took up research for my dissertation on the early Anabaptist career and ideas of David Joris, it was with the intention of applying the approaches of social history and the new intellectual history to the study of this much-maligned but littleunderstood Dutch religious dissenter. I therefore gave scant attention to his later writings, which were almost entirely spiritualized and frustratingly obscure, or at least that is what I thought at the time. In the meantime, I began teaching medieval and early modern European history, joining the University of New Brunswick in 1987. In the process of teaching my first medieval course I chanced upon Jeffrey Russell’s Witchcraft in the Middle Ages and delivered a lecture based largely on it. There was strong student interest in the subject, and I developed an honours seminar on the subject of heresy and witchcraft in early modern Europe. I now find myself in agreement with William Monter, who suggests that the lack of serious analysis of the intersec-

xiv Acknowledgments

tions of Reformation and witchcraft scholarship is partly a result of the division of scholarly labour and the difficulty in reading extensively in fields other than one’s own. This book seeks to fill this gap. It was in the early stages of my research on the Anabaptism/witchcraft project that I got in touch with Professor Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra of the University of Amsterdam, who was coordinating a scholarly work group on the interrelated subjects of magic, witchcraft, and medicine. Professor Gijswijt-Hofstra and Dr Willem de Blécourt gave my preliminary proposal a thorough critique and invited me to participate in what would prove to be a wonderfully intensive and fulfilling colloquium, entitled ‘Healing, Magic and Belief in Europe, 15th–20th Centuries,’ at Zeist, The Netherlands, in September of 1994. Professor Gijswijt-Hofstra also encouraged me to submit a paper on the subject of Anabaptists and sainthood to a 1998 conference in Dordrecht, ‘Confessional Sanctity in North-Western Europe,’ and in the course of writing that paper I was alerted to the ways in which saintly behaviour could quickly become identified as diabolical. I therefore owe a great debt of gratitude to Marijke. I must of course thank the anonymous readers of the manuscript for their perceptive criticism, which has forced me to rework the entire manuscript and clarify my conclusions. There are many others who need to be thanked for their contribution to this study, even if it was only by taking the time to discuss the topic with me. Professor Hans de Waardt, the leading scholar of witchcraft in early-modern Holland, on numerous occasions shared his vast knowledge, his unpublished archival material, his wit, and, on one memorable occasion, his culinary expertise. Others who have shared their own insights and research include Professors Benjamin Kaplan, David Harley, Jonathan Barry, Willem de Blécourt, Mary Sprunger, Stephen Snobelen (who also helped introduce me to the wonders of Cambridge), Sigrun Haude, Gerhild Scholz Williams, and Sarah Ferber. Piet and Janny Visser’s friendship and hospitality have made my research trips to Amsterdam doubly enriching. Dr Adriaan Plak, curator of the Zaal Mennonitica at the University Library, University of Amsterdam, has many times gone above and beyond the call of duty in helping me find material and suggesting possible avenues of investigation. I have also been assisted in my research by the staffs of the Gemeente Archief Amsterdam and the Universiteits-bibliotheek of Amsterdam, as well as by the extremely efficient staff of UNB’s Document Delivery department. In the last stages, Ellen and Richard Delange helped immensely in finding and preparing several of the images used in the book. I would also like to thank the

Acknowledgments xv

University of Toronto editors and staff, especially Suzanne Rancourt, Barb Porter, and copy editor Charles Stuart, for their marvellous assistance and support. There are many more, of course, who over coffee between conference sessions raised points that have sharpened my focus, and I only wish that I could thank all of them by name. One section of chapter 3 includes material drawn from ‘Between the Devil and the Inquisitor: Anabaptists, Diabolical Conspiracies and Magical Beliefs in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands,’ in Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer, ed. Werner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple, St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT, 1999), 120–40, now reprinted in Darren Oldridge, ed., The Witchcraft Reader (London and New York, 2002), 189– 200. An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared in Dutch translation in the Doopsgezinde Bijdragen n.r. 27 (2001), the untimely death of whose editor, Dr Samme Zijlstra, has left a gaping hole in the field of Dutch Mennonite history. A portion of chapter 4 will appear in Dutch also in the Doopsgezinde Bijdragen. My colleagues at the Department of History of the University of New Brunswick have created the congenial and research-supportive environment that is the background to this monograph. Professor R. Steven Turner graciously took time out of his own research schedule to read an earlier draft of the whole manuscript. Our secretaries Carole Hines and Elizabeth Arnold have shown great patience and good humour with my many requests. A special debt of thanks is owed to the chairs of my department, Professors Turner, D. Gillian Thompson, and Marc Milner, who have been marvellous advocates on behalf of my work and generously provided departmental funds for research travel. Major funding was also provided by the University of New Brunswick, including sufficient funds for a publication subvention. In 1993 the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded the project a three-year Standard Research Grant. To my family, however, belongs the greatest credit. Kate, my most supportive friend and critic, has at times shown extreme forbearance at my research preoccupations and the time these have taken away from home, whether literally, during research or conference trips, or figuratively, when I wasn’t altogether present in mind even if physically proximate. Our almost daily discussions about life and religion and our shared abhorrence of prejudice in all forms have enriched my understanding of early modern attitudes. Without her patience, love, and encouragement, and that of daughters Jessica and Eleanor, this work

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Acknowledgments

would not have been possible. Together, all who have in one way or another contributed to this monograph deserve whatever credit it may receive, although blame for any errors remains entirely mine. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are also my responsibility.

ERADICATING THE DEVIL’S MINIONS: ANABAPTISTS AND WITCHES IN REFORMATION EUROPE, 1525–1600

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Introduction

On 2 December 1562 in the small southwestern German town of Wiesensteig, twenty women were burned at the stake for allegedly causing a hailstorm four months earlier that destroyed many crops in the vicinity. They were also accused of blasphemy, cannibalistic infanticide, and robbing children of their ‘holy baptism.’ During the following year the city’s lord, Count Ulrich of Helfenstein, approved the burning of fortythree more witches, reviving witch panics after they had lain dormant for over sixty years. Once begun, the great European witch-hunts would consume thousands of women and men for their alleged participation in diabolical acts, such as causing bad weather, sterility, illness, and death by incantations or demonic magic; flying on broomsticks to diabolical meetings called sabbaths or sabbats; engaging in sexual congress with evil spirit beings; and worshipping the devil and plotting with Satan to overthrow Christendom. Although the idea of the witches’ sabbat had originated in the fifteenth century, many princes, judges, and bishops had remained sceptical, and witch-hunting was on the wane on the eve of the Reformation.1 Why, then, did rulers such as Count Ulrich decide to believe in this fantastical concept of a massive diabolical conspiracy and command his judicial machinery to destroy it? And why did so many other princes and magistrates elsewhere give in to the demands of their people to burn witches? One immediate trigger was the worsening weather that was destroying crops and sparking fear of diabolical connivance or divine wrath.2 Another was the discovery, just weeks before the hailstorm, of a nocturnal gathering of Anabaptists on a secluded mountain. This book will show that this was no mere coincidence but goes directly to the heart of why witch-hunting was revived: the demonizing rhetoric against and vicious judicial persecution of a group of real

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Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

heretics immediately preceded the witch-hunts, helping to convince authorities of the veracity of preachers’ claims of a diabolical, sectarian threat. The leap from persecuting a real heretical threat to believing in and attacking an imaginary one was not great; indeed, it had happened before in the imaginary conversion of Waldensian heretics into a demonic witch sect at the start of the fifteenth century. In most places by 1500 the union of the two heresies had largely come apart, and the term ‘Waldensian’ or ‘Vauderie’ was only rarely used for a witch cult. With the rise of Anabaptism in the 1520s, however, a number of inquisitors, preachers, and writers tried to encourage the same kind of fusion, this time associating Anabaptists with demonism. They largely failed. Even so, this demonizing rhetoric helped revive fears of a witch sect and increased the pressure on local courts to eradicate the Anabaptists. Without the governmental assault on Anabaptists, it is argued here, they would have been less likely to have turned to annihilating organized sects of witches with such determination. This book therefore compares polemical characterizations and judicial treatment of two heretical groups that so terrified magistrates, princes, and populace that they relaxed the normal judicial rules and arrested, tortured, and executed them in large numbers. The major difference between these two groups was that only one of them – Anabaptism – was a real dissident sect, while the other was an elaborate, terrifying, but largely fictitious creation of two centuries’ worth of polemical discourse and inquisitorial and judicial compulsion. Many contemporaries viewed these two heresies as linked together in a grand, diabolical plot to undermine true belief and spread fear, discord, and atheism. Both were accused of bringing down God’s wrath upon Europe. And, the moment persecution of the one died down, the judicial burnings of the others began. This study shows that this temporal conjunction was no mere coincidence, but reflected a strongly held belief that the devil was behind both. Some of the Anabaptists, especially those who asserted special charismatic authority or visionary contact with the supernatural realm, unintentionally contributed to this demonizing by inspiring comparisons with the earlier Waldensians, whose claims to shamanistic powers and special sanctity, as well as their rejection of Catholic sacramentalism, led inquisitors to view them as witches and to force confessions from them that accorded with this image.3 This study examines learned and governmental opinion regarding the Anabaptists in the light of this previously intertwined history of heresy and witchcraft, looking especially at reactions to several

Introduction

5

charismatic incidents that might have drawn comparisons to the Waldensians. The central attitude behind persecution of heresy of any sort was the conviction that the public expression of heretical or blasphemous notions about God or his agents on earth angered the divinity. This sentiment, in an environment wherein the secular and sacred were intertwined and religious uniformity remained a key component of political unity and social stability, resulted in scapegoating during crises, plagues, and famines, which, according to Benjamin J. Kaplan, ‘were moments of special peril for religious dissenters, who might be blamed either as concrete agents or as spiritual causes. Popular opinion saw in their opposition to the dominant church an enmity extending to the community and to the entire established order, which that church embodied spiritually. This made them notoriously vulnerable to accusations of conspiracy and sedition.’4 As Kaplan suggests, as ‘long as this mentality prevailed, toleration could only be grudging.’ Many feared that by tolerating a single heretic in their midst, divine wrath would remain unassuaged. This book examines the rhetoric used against Anabaptists and their specific treatment by churchmen, interrogators, and executioners in the light of the magical world view that we know dominated the culture of the sixteenth-century populace. To comprehend fully what possessed the secular and ecclesiastical authorities of early modern Europe to shift from persecuting real dissidents to attacking witches will require engaging a very different mental world from our own. The devil, magic, and witchcraft were important components of the early modern belief system, and will be seriously evaluated here.5 The torture and execution of people for having in some way joined the devil’s service is explicable only if we take at face value their persecutors’ belief system. It may be a frightening and strange mental world, but it has not altogether left us, as seen in the notorious recent trials of individuals accused falsely of participating in the Satanic ritual abuse of children.6 Up to now there has been very little integration of research into the realm of magical beliefs with that of Anabaptism, in large measure because the Anabaptists themselves had come to reject much of the preternatural or ‘superstitious’ beliefs of their contemporaries. Yet this does not mean that their persecutors had done the same, nor that the Anabaptists themselves were completely successful in this endeavour. We must therefore do justice to the magical and demonic beliefs that provided at least part of the explanation for the often irrational viciousness of the heresy persecutions. Comparing the sixteenth-century persecu-

6

Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

tion of real religious dissidents with that of the largely fictitious sect of devil-worshipping, magic-performing witches, this book focuses on how the educated leadership portrayed Anabaptists and how these beliefs intersected with older notions about magic and witchcraft. Efforts to demonize the Anabaptists largely failed as Anabaptist prisoners refused to admit to diabolical doings. Moreover, Netherlandic judges who faced the largest group of charismatic/shamanistic Anabaptists were generally sceptical of the demonic witch stereotype. Anabaptists and witches were therefore treated distinctly, with an alternating pattern of persecution, although there was much crossover in beliefs and fears. Most importantly, however, news of Anabaptist activities in one region were spread to others, while the demonizing rhetoric against them helped escalate anxiety about sectarian conspiracies in general, soon encompassing suspected witches. Not fusing the Anabaptist and witchcraft heresies also meant that the pursuit of a demonic sectarian menace was not restricted to areas of suspected Anabaptist cells, but could spread far and wide, undeterred by the need to find real heretics. In an earlier work I have described the witch-hunts in the broader context of the religious confusion and conflict of the Reformation, showing how the religious prejudices and fears aroused contributed to the diabolical conspiracy theories.7 This study provides a detailed analysis of how the propagandistic portrayal and judicial treatment of Anabaptists helped specifically to lay the groundwork for the witch-hunts. It also shows that in those areas where Anabaptists were still being persecuted through the second half of the sixteenth century, rising fear of witchcraft diverted the authorities’ attention away from the religious sectarians. In the Dutch Republic, however, spiritualistic arguments depreciating religious confessions and externals and the disgust over the bloody Anabaptist hunting convinced many magistrates that burning blasphemers was no solution to divine anger, and they refused to continue it, becoming even more sceptical about the reality of a demonic witch sect.8 Magistrates and jurists elsewhere moved seamlessly from attacking Anabaptists (without popular support) to the witchhunting for which the people had been clamouring for some time. Across the Holy Roman Empire between the 1540s and 1560s there was a subtle shift in attitudes about Anabaptists in particular and heresy and the devil in general. Fears of underground, secretive heretical plotting increased with the virtual suppression of real Anabaptists, while preachers continued to warn their congregants of diabolical dangers. By 1560, several visitation instructions were including magical offences

Introduction

7

among the lists of the ‘superstitions’ of Anabaptists and spiritualists, while the discovery of nocturnal forest or mountain meetings of Anabaptists provoked rumours of diabolical dealings and perhaps helped make more believable the old stories of Waldensian witches, witch dances, and sabbats. This coincidence was starkest at the critical moment when Count Ulrich approved the first major witch-hunt in Reformation Europe in 1562, which was immediately preceded by the news of the nocturnal Anabaptist gathering. In other regions, the governmental battle against Anabaptist sectarians and supposedly seditious spiritualists intersected in a number of ways with the growing concern about harmful magic (maleficium). That Archduke Ferdinand of Austria applied exorcisms and soothsaying techniques upon his captured Anabaptists shows too that the magical world view was very much an aspect of Anabaptist hunting, and that in the Alpine regions especially the inquisitorial tactic of transforming allegedly shamanistic heretics into demonic witches was not dead; it failed in this case because the Anabaptists refused to cooperate. The people, moreover, wanted their rulers to attack the ‘real’ performers of maleficia. This study does not pretend to be comprehensive in scope. It touches down on several important regions, largely under the suzerainty of the Habsburg monarchs, where charismatic Anabaptism had been most prevalent, such as the northern Netherlands, southern Germany, and the Austrian Tirol, all regions of sustained persecution. Deserving of a monograph of its own, the subject of the persecution of Anabaptists and witches in the Swiss cantons – where both fifteenth-century Vauderie witch-hunting and sixteenth-century Anabaptist persecution had originated – is only lightly touched upon here, largely because the cantons were outside of the direct control of the Habsburgs.9 Moreover, the sharp turn in 1527 away from charismatic forms of leadership by the surviving Anabaptist leaders at Schleitheim was one factor that made the Swiss sources potentially less rich for this analysis. Instead, this book compares the persecution of Anabaptism in the urban Low Countries – which eventually split between a Catholic south and a Calvinist north – with that in largely Lutheran parts of southern Germany and the Catholic Tirol.

1 The Devil’s Minions? Anabaptists, Magic, and Witches in the Sixteenth Century

They claim that the child has inherited sin ... and set about to exorcize the devil from it. It is a cruel blasphemy against God to condemn God’s good creation ... Now if the child is possessed by a devil Christ has certainly unwisely admonished his own, because it means that he really told them to be like the devil. That is impossible ... Antichrist has no Scripture, example, or command of God or his holy apostles, not a single letter of Scripture for the baptism and chrism of children and other invented rituals used with small children. He wants to grant them salvation with magic, otherwise they would be unredeemed. Confession of Anabaptists imprisoned at Falkenstein castle at the command of King Ferdinand of Austria, 15391

Medieval Heresy and the Witches’ Sabbat During the later Middle Ages the concept of heresy was expanded to encompass a grand diabolical conspiracy which by the middle of the fifteenth century claimed that a vast horde of people, mostly women, made pacts with Satan in exchange for magical powers, flew to secluded sabbat meetings where they worshipped him, banqueted, danced, and engaged in perverse sexual orgies, and conspired to harm neighbours and destroy Christian society. Secular and ecclesiastical rulers had already developed several means of enforcing conformity of belief, principal among these the office of inquisitor against depraved heresy, which, with secular support, led to the creation of what R.I. Moore has described as ‘a persecuting society.’2 In the fourteenth century popes turned loose the ‘hounds of God’ (Dominican inquisitors) on those believed to be magically fomenting intrigue in the papal court. Charges

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 9

of diabolical sorcery were thus used to eradicate political enemies, while those who disputed the reality of demonic sorcery could simply be discounted as agents of the devil themselves.3 Ordinary people were rarely involved in these early incidents. The political nature of accusations of sorcery are revealed in the struggle between conciliarists and papal supremacists, which came to a head at the Council of Basel in the 1430s, during which several influential demonological treatises were disseminated more broadly.4 The image of the demonic witch was therefore formed at the crossroads of elite and popular cultures, especially in the inquisitorial courts, as learned churchmen imposed their notions about the devil upon political and religious dissidents, Jews, sodomites, magicians, and witches.5 There was, for example, a great deal of overlap between popular beliefs about Jews and those about witches, as both were connected to ‘inchoate fears about magic, blood and sacrifice,’ and Jews were believed to be ‘a magical people who knew how to work wonders with the Word and practised secret cabbalistic rituals.’6 The witch stereotype was developed, moreover, at a time when the locus of religious authority was in dispute and when criticism of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was at a high level, causing church leaders to worry about any expression of scepticism or blasphemy. Even so, what concerned most ordinary people about heretics and practitioners of magic was the actual threat to their lives and livelihood that the accused offered. If heretics menaced society by sowing religious confusion and incertitude, fomenting sedition, or risking the wrath of God, then they had to be dealt with. If witches were causing harm to neighbours by magically inducing sterility, destroying crops with hailstorms, spoiling butter and beer, or likewise offending God, then they had to be stopped. By 1400 these alleged conspiracies were merged when inquisitors successfully wrung confessions of devil worship and maleficia out of Waldensian heretics.7 Under similar circumstances, the old stories of Jewish ritual murder and use of Christian blood in their rites were reworked into stories of witchcraft.8 This book suggests that a comparable process transpired when the many stories about demon-inspired Anabaptists fed into growing concerns about witchcraft, although instead of fusing Anabaptist heresy and witchcraft, inquisitors and jurists kept the two as separate wings of the devil’s assault on Christendom. The fear aroused by the anti-Anabaptist propaganda was easily projected onto witches. The learned writers of demonological treatises seem to have had an additional agenda. Comparable to the analysis of medieval anti-

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Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

Semitism by Gavin Langmuir, the recent study by Walter E. Stephens on the sexual aspects of witchcraft theory suggests that what lay behind demonologists’ obsession with attacking witches was fear of doubt. Langmuir’s works clearly delineate the transition in the thirteenth century from Christian anti-Judaism (religious animosity towards Jews) to anti-Semitism (irrational hatred of Jews). Religious antipathy towards the Jews on the part of Christians was based on the latter’s need to explicate why most Jews refused to acknowledge Jesus as their messiah. Accusations that Jews had committed deicide were part of the very fabric of medieval Christian culture, and Langmuir suggests that these ‘camouflaged Christian awareness that the continued existence of Jewish disbelief challenged Christian belief ’ and helped to suppress generalized doubts about the resurrection of Jesus.9 Periodically Christians attempted to prove the veracity and superiority of Christianity by forcing Jews to convert and undergo Christian baptism. The intellectual renaissance of the twelfth century made Christian theology more sophisticated but much less comprehensible to the masses. Hence Christians increasingly used the Jews as a prop for dispelling scepticism. These efforts became encapsulated in two irrational charges brought against Jews: ritual murder of Christian boys and desecration of consecrated Hosts. The first known instance of an accusation of ritual murder arose about 1150 when a young boy’s mutilated body was discovered in Norwich. This atrocity was later explained to have been the work of local Jews who supposedly had kidnapped and crucified him in an effort to replay their deicidal moment. Accusations spread throughout England and across to the continent, revealing a profound yearning on the people’s part for tangible proof of the death and resurrection of Christ.10 This need increased as scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle’s philosophical framework to explain the great mystery of the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during Mass. Following Aristotle’s argument that the ideal form of a thing resided within its particular, Aquinas asserted that when the priest said the words of consecration, the inner essence of the bread was transformed into the true body of Christ, while the outer ‘accidents’ of bread – its taste, texture, appearance, and so on – remained those of bread. Formally approved by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, this doctrine of transubstantiation proved a tough sell to the unlearned, whose daily experience and common sense told them that the bread remained bread. The dramatic rise in eucharistic devotion, centred in the Corpus

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 11

Christi processions, was the positive side of this fevered quest for proof that consecrated Hosts were in reality Christ himself.11 Eucharistic miracles abounded in the late Middle Ages, and the city of Amsterdam had its own shrine and pilgrimage business devoted to an incombustible Host. On the negative side, heretics, Jews, and magicians who supposedly sought to harm or use consecrated wafers for malicious purposes also provided proof of the doctrine of the Real Presence. Although others were charged with misuse of the sacrament, ritual Host desecration became tightly linked with anti-Semitism. Stories abounded of Jews stabbing consecrated Hosts that then bled, confirming the guilt of the offenders and tangibly proving transubstantiation and clerical control over divine power. Despite several efforts by popes to reduce antiSemitic violence and to dispel accusations of ritual murder or Host desecration, the sermonizing and story-telling of local priests and friars continued to spread these noxious suspicions.12 Did such stories and trials of Jews dispel uncertainty? Not entirely, and many Christians, fearful of divine punishment for disbelief, looked for other targets upon whom to project their doubt and guilt. Many heretics, such as the Waldensians and Cathars, openly disputed Catholic sacramental realism, and the concerted persecution of these groups by crusade, inquisition, and secular trial reveals widespread fear of religious dissent. Cathar belief in a powerful god of evil, according to Malcolm Lambert, ‘helped to fabricate the image of a heretic as a servant of Satan.’13 Cathars did not actually worship Satan, but their opponents accused them and other heretics of doing so, and in their campaign to counteract Cathar teaching Catholic preachers made the devil a more prominent figure in their propaganda and story-telling. Heretics had therefore to be demonized, and in such a way that the devil became ultimately responsible for spreading uncertainty. Around 1231 the German inquisitor Conrad of Marburg created virtually ex nihilo the sect of Luciferans, whose alleged rituals and beliefs were a precise inversion of Christian ritual. With this increasing emphasis on the diabolical nature of heresy, learned writers began projecting ideas about illicit magic – especially clerical necromancy, which relied on the summoning of demons for its efficacy – onto learned beliefs about heretics.14 After Conrad’s assassination in 1233 by an enraged nobleman, Pope Gregory IX proclaimed in his papal bull Vox in Rama that the Luciferans were real. Heretics were not merely dissenters but members of a secretive diabolical conspiracy who, outward appearances of piety notwithstanding, secretly committed vilely blasphemous acts, culminating in the worship

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Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

of the devil. That this veneration climaxed with the obscenity in which devotees kissed Lucifer’s anus offered tangible proof of the existence of Satan, and by implication, of God and the Catholic faith. Shortly thereafter Waldensians (Vauderie) were accused of devil worship and, around 1400, of performing illicit magic with the aid of demons. When arrested heretics proved reluctant to confess to the alleged diabolical elements of their faith, intimidation and torture usually produced the desired results. As William Monter has noted, the Vox in Rama established ‘the notion that religious dissenters – generally Waldensians, who, in fact, led exemplarily plain and sober lives – were really Devil-worshipers who engaged in nocturnal orgies.’15 Trials of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century heretics – Vauderie, Beguines, and the largely fictional Brothers of the Free Spirit – reveal how inquisitors could transform pious Christians who may have diverged on one or two points of Catholic dogma, or idiosyncratic individuals with messianic complexes, into members of an underground, devil-worshipping, and dangerous sect.16 The most complete transformation occurred ironically with the least likely sect – Waldensians – and Arno Borst and others have revealed the linkages between the inquisition against Waldensians in the Savoyard Alps in the late 1380s and the first sectarian witch trials in the region around 1400.17 In several very important respects the transformation of Waldensians into witches provides a critical precedent to the efforts of sixteenthcentury polemicists to tie Anabaptists to demonic activity. Why did a movement of pious, biblicist, and pacifist individuals elicit comparisons with demonic witches? Wolfgang Behringer answers that on several levels the Waldensians were indeed unlikely candidates to be transformed into witches, in particular since they rejected all capital punishment, including that of sorcerers. He reminds us, however, that ‘protectors of suspected witches can easily be associated with witchcraft themselves.’ Moreover, the Waldensians’ need to hold secretive nocturnal meetings to avoid persecution could easily ‘arouse suspicions aside from their religious practices.’ His most important point, however, is worth reiterating here in full: ‘I would suggest that the most important factor making it possible to equate them with witches was the Waldensian clergy’s ability to get in to contact with the Otherworld. Almost unnoticed by scholars of Waldensianism, and unconnected to Waldensian theology, we find in trial records from the Baltic region to Southern France that the common folk believed firmly that the Waldensian leaders were visiting otherworldly places, which they identified as paradise, and gaining superior

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 13

spiritual power from their direct encounters with angels, or even God himself.’18 Hence we have two seemingly contradictory factors leading to the demonization of Waldensians: one, that Waldensian anticlericalism and scepticism toward the religious magic and demonology of the Catholic Church was distorted and deflected back onto the heretics by church leaders who charged the Waldensians with the crimes the latter denied were possible; and second, that a number of Waldensian masters cultivated a charismatic authority that included supernatural powers superior to the Catholic clergy’s, an image that the latter transmuted in the torture chamber into confessions of sorcery. Moreover, the prominence of women in the Waldensian movement may, in Behringer’s words, ‘have been associated with the importance of women in the magical arts.’19 It will be argued here that all three of these elements were also present in the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement, hence the logical question to raise is why the effort to demonize Anabaptists largely failed. Before turning to this query, it must be remembered that the fusion of Waldensian heretics and witches eventually came apart, so that in most places by 1500 Waldensians were once again generally regarded as pious heretics and witches as individual malefactors rather than as members of a diabolical sect. Behringer’s evidence is drawn from the Alpine region where the demonic witch sect first originated, and relates most directly to the belief system of the inhabitants of that area. Certainly the urban culture of the northern Netherlandic and Germanic realms was less prone to shamanistic claims of wandering prophets than were the Alpine villages. Yet in the fifteenth century news of charismatic heretics and devilworshipping witches was spread by preachers and participants in the Council of Basel, hence many elements of these beliefs could be found across Europe.20 Learned clergy and inquisitors examining Anabaptist suspects were certainly aware of such fifteenth-century precedents, seen in the references to diabolism and heretical magic that sprinkle the surviving interrogation records that will be the focus of this study. While most princes cooperated in the suppression of heresy, seeing religious dissent as ultimately a form of treason against the state, many were sceptical about the fantastical diabolic elements. Even such a famous anti-witch inquisitor as Heinrich Kramer was deeply frustrated over his inability to convince bishops and princes of the extreme threat of the witch cult.21 Despite the Malleus Maleficarum’s carefully constructed image of its author as a terrifying witch-hunter, Kramer had only moderate success in this regard, and spent his last years in Bohemia

14

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promoting the cults of bleeding Hosts and miraculous crosses and fighting against deniers of transubstantiation.22 Given this general scepticism toward the existence of a sect of devil worshippers, persecution of both heretics and witches in the fifteenth century ebbed and flowed with the activity of inquisitors or preachers and the connivance of rulers.23 For the rest of the time, ordinary people had recourse to alternative remedies to bewitchment in the persons of local soothsayers, cunning men, and wise women, or in sacramentals – the blessed objects of the church used in the sacraments, saints’ relics, and priestly blessings. Successful application of these in protective magic also helped reassure parishioners of the supernatural power contained therein. Failing these antidotes, they often resorted to threats or violence to compel a suspected witch to remove a curse. At the very least a witch’s confession offered some proof of the supernatural realm. For this reason local priests usually cooperated with this ‘misuse’ of sacramentals and often participated in a variety of preternatural rituals to restore health to persons or chattel.24 Through a process of clerical communication aided after 1450 by the printing press, the image of the diabolical witch was well known by 1500 among both the learned and illiterate folk and there had been several trials against supposed sects of diabolical witches, especially in the Alpine regions of Switzerland, France, and the Holy Roman Empire.25 Without belief in a diabolical sabbat, trials of witches would not have proceeded past the judicial treatment of individual performers of maleficium who had been denounced by their neighbours. With the conviction that witchcraft was sectarian, and with the liberal application of torture to extract confessions, such trials were expanded to encompass the witch’s alleged co-conspirators. For many inquisitors, such as Kramer, the malicious presence and scheming of witches with the devil could be blamed for why, in Walter Stephens’s words, ‘the ideals of Christianity remained unfulfilled.’26 Fearing that their elaborate conception of the supernatural realm might be wrong, writers on witchcraft spent tremendous energy testing to see if their theories corresponded with reality.27 ‘They were intensely worried,’ Stephens asserts, ‘for they were striving to resolve contradictions that, for them, threatened the credibility of witchcraft, demonology, and Christianity itself.’28 This explains, he suggests, why theologians became so obsessed with proving that witches could sexually interact with demons. Stephens describes the early modern attitude of Christian thinkers therefore as ‘an uncomfortable halfway point between belief and skepticism’

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 15

and explains that witchcraft theorists of the era were not so much asserting beliefs as resisting scepticism in a ‘desperate attempt to maintain belief.’29 One need not go as far as Stephens in suggesting that puerile fascination with female sexuality played no role in Kramer’s writings. Yet both Stephens and Langmuir pursue arguments that help explain the intensity of the persecution of Jews, heretics, and witches, and why the sacraments were so prominent in so many of their confessions. Heresy and Witchcraft in the Sixteenth Century Despite the efforts of fifteenth-century inquisitors and witchcraft writers, witch-hunting had waned considerably by the start of the Reformation. Even the Malleus Maleficarum, which had already gone through at least fourteen printed editions by 1521, stopped being of interest to printers thereafter, at least until after the revival of witch-hunting.30 One reason for this is simple: the Reformation movements provided plenty of work for inquisitors and secular courts and furnished cases of real dissenters who disputed orthodox dogma about the supernatural realm and whose arrests, trials, confessions, and executions could be used to reinforce traditional belief. Between 1525 and 1570 over three thousand individuals were executed as heretics by judicial authorities, and thousands more were granted lesser but still severe penalties for their religious dissidence. These figures attest to a major effort to eradicate heresy on the part of secular and ecclesiastical authorities. What should also be considered are the additional massacres of some twenty thousand Calvinist heretics at the hands of Catholic mobs in France in 1572, a form of ‘state terrorism’ tacitly approved by the French crown, and the execution of over one thousand heretics (of twelve thousand tried) by the Council of Troubles in Spanish-controlled Netherlands during the Revolt against Spain.31 Taken together, the number of heretics whose death was sanctioned, formally or informally, by the state reaches close to thirty thousand between the years 1520 and 1575. This half century of heresy persecution therefore corresponds in both degree and kind to the witch-hunts, during which some thirty to fifty thousand accused witches were sent to the scaffold or stake for their diabolical heresy during the following hundred years.32 This considerable assault on Protestants and Anabaptists oiled the judicial anti-heresy machinery, making it easier for magistrates and judges to heed the accusations of neighbours against local witches, superimpose a demonic and sectarian template over them, and provide

16

Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

the necessary modifications to jurisdiction and process to speed prosecutions of heretical witchcraft, processes evident in Charles V’s secularization of heresy trials.33 Moreover, court officials gained valuable experience in interrogating heretics and extracting confessions and names of accomplices from their Anabaptist victims, including quite a number of women. Many church leaders pressed hard for such action and preached countless sermons to their parishioners on the dangers of heterodoxy and of the reality of diabolical plots. The extremes to which propagandists (particularly Catholic and Lutheran) would go to demonize their theological opponents (especially Calvinists and Anabaptists) shows how seriously they perceived the danger to their sacramental conception of the supernatural realm. What happened between 1520 and 1560 parallels to a certain extent the transformation of devout Waldensians into devil worshippers centuries before: a sect of radical religious dissenters, feeding off popular anticlericalism and rejecting sacramental realism, were portrayed as a demonic threat to the religious unity and civic peace of Christendom. Since Calvinists and Anabaptists so thoroughly desacralized Catholic objects and spaces, they were the groups most demonized by their opponents.34 But with their secretive nocturnal meetings, rejection of their original infant baptism and of sacramental realism, and deep anticlericalism, it was the Anabaptists who were most readily demonized. In addition, there were many examples of visionary Anabaptist prophets, a few of whom claimed to have visited or to have special knowledge of the Otherworld, which might have inspired comparisons with the Vauderie devil worshippers of the past. One of the clearest examples of this comes from an anti-heresy mandate of 1527 from the Swiss Protestant cities of Zurich, Bern, and St Gall, which claimed that these heretics ‘have also in previous times to certain ends in our city and countryside claimed, under the appearance of the godly order and miracles, that they were enraptured [vertzuckt] and become dead and had seen godly secrets and revelations in the spirit.’ They apparently also taught that the devil would be saved.35 Had some Anabaptists been making claims of otherworldly visitations and preternatural abilities? Hans Hut, one of the major leaders of southern German Anabaptism until his capture in September 1527 in Augsburg, baptized hundreds of converts by making the apocalyptic sign of Tau on their foreheads, teaching a deeply mystical theology that highlighted the ‘possibility of direct knowledge of God attainable even by the poor and illiterate.’36 In a work on baptism attributed to him Hut describes the rite as a symbol of the inward suffering

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 17

that every believer must endure, noting that ‘God allows no one to sink in this baptism. As it is written, “He leads into hell and out again; he kills and revives.”’37 Passages such as these could easily have been misconstrued as supporting claims to visiting the Otherworld, just as Hans Denck’s mystical notions about salvation led many to believe he was a universalist who taught the ultimate salvation of the devil.38 Both of these leaders were arrested in 1527, but despite harsh questioning and torture, neither confessed to diabolical doings. Instead, in one of his major works Denck had condemned the Catholic clergy as ‘Satan catchers who go about with their ruses (I mean the slaves of the mass), who bewitch not a few so that they think bread to be flesh.’39 Was the Swiss mandate then simply mistaken in its declaration that some Anabaptists were proclaiming shamanistic abilities? There were indeed groups influenced by Denck and Hut whose actions were reminiscent of shamanistic Waldensians. One need only consider the behaviour of one obscure southern German Anabaptist group whose charismatic prophet in 1532 claimed powers ‘to turn water into wine, heal the sick, and even resurrect the dead.’ Defending themselves by throwing cheese at their opponents, they were arrested and in prison made animal noises and experienced visions during which they fell ‘paralyzed to the ground’ and were ‘flooded by intense light.’40 Court officials were deeply puzzled at their behaviour, since these heretics despised the sacrament of the altar, denied the validity of any authority other than God’s, and confronted Abbot Johannes von Fulda by ‘singing and laughing as if they were going to a dance.’ Torture produced nothing further, and at midnight one of the prisoners awoke the others with the announcement that ‘the deliverer comes!’ The Abbot described the women members as ‘even more diabolical than the men’ as they laughed in his face. When they began barking and braying, the Abbot reported that it sounded like ‘the prison was full of devils!’41 Count Wilhelm von Henneberg’s opinion was even harsher: in their secretive, obscure meetings, they evidenced a ‘diabolical nature,’ since the spirit with which they were dealing was ‘the devil’s spirit’ that has misled and blinded them. He went so far as to call them ‘servants of the devil [teufelsknecht].’42 After further interrogations the Abbot reported that these individuals had practised a form of ritual resurrection, as during their ecstatic gatherings some of them would fall down as if dead and their prophet would raise them up again.43 It seems that the authorities were confronted by at least a handful of shamanistic Anabaptist prophets. How they dealt with them will be one of the topics of this study.

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Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

Several comparisons between Waldensians and Anabaptists will be explored here. First, given the prehistory of dealing with allegedly pious heretics such as the Waldensians, it should come as no surprise that even without otherworldly visitations, Anabaptist claims to special piety, to a particularly close and direct relationship with the divine, were construed by orthodox writers as a mere cover for diabolical intent. The more popular sympathy they elicited, the harder the authorities worked to blacken them. Second, since the Anabaptists, like the Waldensians, rejected the clerical hierarchy, the miracles of saints, the veneration of relics, the sacramental system, indeed the whole religious-magical construct of the late medieval church, the orthodox had to demonize them in order to counteract such propaganda. Third, the nocturnal, secretive meetings that Anabaptists were forced to hold in field and forest, in caves or on mountains, were, like those of the Waldensians, readily conflated with demonic synagogues. Fourth, women were very active as religious leaders among their Anabaptist contemporaries, eliciting comparisons with both Waldensianism and with the traditional association of women with village magic. And finally, many early Anabaptist groups, especially the followers of Hut in southern Germany and of Melchior Hoffman in Strasbourg, northern Germany, and the Low Countries, emphasized a form of charismatic authority that relied on visions and special communication with the divine reminiscent of otherworldly experiences of some Waldensian brethren. However, this particular element decreased dramatically with the fall of the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster in 1535, and tortured Anabaptists consistently and courageously refused to be turned into members of a diabolical sect. For example, during his interrogation in Marburg in 1528, the Anabaptist leader Melchior Rinck was presented with a summary of his teachings prepared by the Lutheran preacher of Hersfeld, Balthasar Raidt. In this document Rinck was alleged to have taught that Luther, having now become the Antichrist, was leading the people to the devil; that the Lutheran Eucharist was a meal of demons; and that baptizing infants was in actuality sacrificing them to the devil. Rinck, given the opportunity to read and respond to these and other scandalous articles, not only rejected them point by point, but was able to write his own confession of faith devoid of diabolical references and filled with biblical citations. Then followed a debate between the two, instead of an effort to forcibly extract admissions to the original charges and a descent into the demonic.44 The major exception here was the Dutch Anabaptist David Joris,

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 19

whose spiritualistic writings were filled with discussions of special supernatural authority for himself and of the inferiority of other forms of religion or magic. It is therefore not at all remarkable that he should be the most demonized of all Anabaptist leaders and the subject of numerous preternatural rumours long after his death in 1556. We do not know, of course, how Joris would have been questioned had he been caught, or whether his captors would have tried to turn him into a sorcerer. If the published propaganda is anything to go by, there would likely have been a serious effort. Regardless, some of Joris’s diabolical reputation rubbed off on other Anabaptists as well.45 Even though the medieval inquisition against heresy laid the groundwork for the fifteenth-century witch trials, little attention has been paid to a correlation between heresy and witch-hunting in the sixteenth century, at least since Hugh Trevor-Roper’s controversial essay of 1967.46 Even the means of execution – burning – was identical, and in his study of the persecution of French Protestants, William Monter argues that burning criminals was not merely intended to dissuade others from heresy, but was linked to ‘very ancient notions about ritual purification occurring through fire.’47 Crimes for which this purification was necessary were those believed to infect or pollute a community with their ‘enormous’ sin: heresy, witchcraft, sacrilege, blasphemy, infanticide, homosexuality, the murder of a spouse, incest, and poisoning. In Rouen, Monter discovered that four or five accused were burned per year, mostly infanticides, while heresy burnings stopped after the 1550s. No witches were burned in the 1550s, while two were so treated in the 1570s and seven more in the 1590s. Ten infanticides were burned in the 1550s, thirty in the 1570s, and twenty-six in the 1590s. Five desecrators of holy objects and two blasphemers who verbally desecrated God or the saints were likewise sent to the flames.48 Surprisingly, Monter discovered that comparable patterns were found in other Parlements, and that the burning of heretics virtually disappeared after the start of the wars of religion in France in 1562. Thereafter concerns arose about demoniacs and witches, leading to a number of infamous cases, including the possession of entire convents in the first half of the seventeenth century.49 In this book I present a comparable and unexpected pattern of heresy persecution between Anabaptists and witches, leading one to ask if the regular burning of heretics contained an expiatory element of communal purification. Uniting both sets of persecutions was the need to appease God’s wrath by the burning of those believed responsible for angering the divine by their blasphemous, sacrilegious, or heretical

20

Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

behaviour.50 Interestingly, in the French examples most cases of extreme sacrilege leading to burning involved the desecration of consecrated Hosts, a subject of considerable import for our own study. In his pioneering work of 1972, Claus-Peter Clasen counted 845 executions of Anabaptists in the surviving records for the Holy Roman Empire excluding the Low Countries, the majority of these before 1533.51 Taking into account the loss of records, it seems safe to suggest that some one thousand Anabaptists were judicially executed in the Empire. Moreover, the vast bulk of the roughly six hundred heretics executed in the Low Countries between 1525 and 1539 were Anabaptists, while a significant proportion of the 705 heretics executed in those provinces between 1540 and 1564 were Mennonites, while some southern Netherlandic towns, such as Ghent, continued to kill them until the 1590s. Again, it is estimated that around one thousand Anabaptists were executed in the Habsburg Netherlands. Hence about two-thirds of the approximately three thousand religious martyrs in these parts of Europe belonged to the various groups of Anabaptists.52 This was a bloody persecution indeed, as most executions occurred in small regions and over relatively brief periods, such as the over two hundred executions in Holland between 1534 and 1537 or the equally bloodthirsty persecution of Anabaptists in Archduke Ferdinand’s Tirol between 1527 and 1533. It was in the midst of these efforts to eradicate the Anabaptists that the Habsburg brothers began to secularize heresy trials, paving the way for the later secular trials of demonic witchcraft.53 Why were Anabaptists so viciously persecuted? The most commonly cited reasons are the origin of Anabaptism in the popular reform movement that also led to the Peasants’ War, its intense anticlericalism, and its practice of rebaptism, which at the 1529 Diet of Speyer was declared a capital offence. This study approaches the question from a new angle by taking seriously the magical beliefs of the people that often underlay such decisions. Considering preternatural attitudes toward baptism, exorcism, and blasphemy will reveal deeper, less rational reasons for the persecution. For the Habsburgs especially, Anabaptists were a severe threat to incurring divine wrath, while some propagandists used terrifying images of Anabaptists as unbaptized agents of the devil, hence in Habsburg regions, such as the southern Netherlands and Austria, periodic executions continued to the end of the sixteenth century. Elsewhere, most authorities had stopped serious persecution by around 1560, and most executions were clustered in the years between 1525 and 1540.

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 21

Just as the embers were cooling from the Anabaptist heresy fires there was a sudden resurgence of persecution of demonic witchcraft, while the first known major witch trial in Reformation Germany (i.e., one involving more than a few accused) was the Wiesensteig panic of 1562– 3. Thereafter, mass trials of witches occurred with increasing frequency across Germany and the rest of Europe, peaking between 1580 and 1630. In the Wiesensteig case, governmental concern about sectarian, diabolical gatherings was first focused on Anabaptists but turned in a matter of weeks to witchcraft (see chapter 5, below). In many regions, as we shall see, the transition in persecution from heresy to witchcraft was sudden and clear. Those polemicists with a strong apocalyptic disposition expected this since in the Last Days the devil was sowing the seeds of atheism through Anabaptism or Calvinism, preparing the way for his final magical assault. Disbelief in the devil’s existence, such as that promoted by the spiritualist Joris, was identified as diabolical. Across Europe Catholic theologians sought to counteract the relatively tolerant attitude of many people by arguing that Protestantism was a demonic heresy and that ‘scepticism and unbelief in demons and witches’ were equivalent to ‘an attack on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul’ or that ‘unbelief in demons was the equal of unbelief in God.’54 Several scholars have noted the intensely pessimistic, apocalyptic mood of the second half of the sixteenth century and have suggested that the witchhunt was in some measure ‘a product of the general apocalyptic mood’ of Reformation Europe.55 On this point Stuart Clark has commented that the ‘eschatological view that witchcraft flourished because the world was in a state of terminal decline was as common among French Catholic authors ... as among the writers of Lutheran Germany and Calvinist England – in this case reflecting the popularity of apocalyptic history in both Reformations.’56 Even though Anabaptism was intensely apocalyptic in its early history, after the destruction of the ‘New Jerusalem’ of Münster at the end of June 1535 most Anabaptists abandoned their eschatological fervour and militance in favour of a pacifistic, sectarian, biblicist faith. Even so, many opponents continued to portray them as seditious and diabolical and to call for their suppression or extermination as a threat to the state and a cause of divine anger. These opponents, however, were frequently frustrated by the inaction of local authorities or the resistance of local populations, many of whom saw their Anabaptist neighbours as non-threatening. Once governments became caught up in hunting alleged witches, they gave up concerted efforts to suppress or eradicate Anabaptism, if

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they had not already done so. The northern provinces of the Netherlands, which eventually seceded from the Spanish crown, ended heresy persecution shortly after joining the anti-Habsburg side. They also ended judicial executions and secular trials of witches quite early as well, shortly after the turn of the seventeenth century.57 As I have argued elsewhere, a major reason for this latter move was the former; that is, by turning their backs on state-mandated conformity to religious orthodoxy Dutch magistrates turned down the path to formal tolerance of religious dissidence and competition. Several of the Republic’s leaders were influenced by the spiritualism of Hendrik Niclaes or David Joris to be sceptical of the stories of the devil and witchcraft swirling about them.58 In this environment diabolical conspiracy theories lost their effective power to mobilize state and judicial action to suppress supposed blasphemers, heretics, or witches. Anabaptists and Popular Culture The efforts to link Anabaptism to diabolical witchcraft is deeply ironic, since Anabaptists evidenced, especially after Münster, a very strong if imperfect scepticism toward many popular religious beliefs and ritual practices, such as belief in sacred spaces and objects, devotion to saints, and fear of the devil.59 Much of their opposition to Catholic supernaturalism contained a common-sense scepticism that was also a feature of popular culture, such as their argument that Christ could not be in the bread if he was also in heaven. Robert Scribner has described the mental world of Europeans on the eve of the Reformation as an ‘economy of the sacred,’ wherein the sacred manifested itself in a variety of ways within the profane world, providing a principle of order. The sacraments demarcated the major stages of each Christian’s life, providing a sense of protection from the evil forces ranged against him or her. Those holy objects associated with the sacraments, such as bells blessed by priests, holy water, or the consecrated communion wafers (the Host), provided other links with the supernatural world, making religious and magical rituals more effective, although, unlike the sacraments, the efficacy of sacramentals depended on the disposition of the user. Their great advantage, however, was that they were not confined to holy spaces but could be readily transported to profane places, with or without the approval of the parish priest.60 Although some of this preternatural use of sacramentals was frowned upon by church leaders, they could hardly condemn it out of hand, for

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 23

they encouraged devotion to such sacred objects as the relics of the saints. Bishops should not have been surprised to discover, for example, that many parishioners were covertly placing profane objects under the altar before Mass in the hopes that they would acquire healing power or believed that looking into the chalice after Mass would cure jaundice, that touching the altar cloth could heal epilepsy or expel demons, that the consecrated Host could extinguish fires (a comprehensible belief given the number of officially approved stories of incombustible Hosts), or that blessed bells could repel bad storms.61 Conversely, the church’s teaching that disorder in the world was a by-product of diabolical interference was widely accepted, making it essential that people find a means to summon divine power to assist them. No wonder then that it was widely believed that consecrated Hosts ‘kept the Devil at bay.’62 The sacraments therefore furnished common folk with a means to direct sacred power and a sense of control over their environment.63 Three of the sacraments especially – baptism, the Eucharist, and extreme unction or last rites – were believed to provide special supernatural power against the devil’s various afflictions. Apart from its theological and social function of introducing infants into the Christian community, baptism protected the initiate from evil, primarily through the exorcism of demons, which was conducted immediately prior to entering the church’s sacred space. Several sacramentals were used to expel the devil, including holy oil, blessed candles, holy water, and the words of the priest, who, by the sacrament of holy orders, had been given unique power as Christ’s representative over the spiritual realm. The implication of this act was that prior to receiving the sacrament infants might be possessed by a demon, a frightening thought that helps explain the desperate sense of urgency parents felt to have their infant baptized as soon as possible after birth regardless of the risk to the baby’s health.64 Anabaptists often referred to such fears, such as Thomas Spiegels of Ostheim, who in 1527 confessed in prison in Schmachtenberg, Franconia (west of Würzburg on the Main River), that ‘children are pure, having no devil in them; they have no need of baptism, but the devil is in the priests, but they cannot drive it out from themselves.’65 However, many others feared that if infants were not baptized they remained in the clutches of Satan and could become the object of the evil machinations of witches and a threat to the godly realm. As the Jesuit Martín Del Rio wrote in his famous treatise on magic, ‘very frequently evil spirits lay traps for those who have not yet been cleansed by the water of baptism and rejoice in their destruction.’66 Without sacra-

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mental baptism an individual was often suspected to be an agent of evil, a suspicion that constantly dogged the Jews.67 That infant baptism was linked in the popular mind to magic is seen in the large witch panic of the bishopric of Würzburg, where a large number of priests were accused of baptizing infants in the devil’s name, while in Normandy priests were accused of abusing sacramentals for weather magic.68 For their religious devotion the people expected divine assistance in return. Saints who did not provide the requested service, such as relief from drought, were often scolded by angry monks or villagers who in extremis might even humiliate the saint’s relics by throwing them onto the road and swearing at them. Pragmatism was front and centre in the rural world, and in some cases blessed weather bells that proved futile in diverting storms would be blessed anew, this time in the name of the devil!69 For most people living on the eve of the Reformation there was no clear distinction between the sacred and profane, between magic and religion. To varying degrees the reformers sought to change this, to separate the spiritual from the secular. The Anabaptists joined in this crusade, pressing the battle more vigorously than most. After the fall of Münster in 1535, Anabaptists largely repudiated their apocalyptic, charismatic, and visionary past and condemned many preternatural aspects of the prevailing world view, in ways comparable to the Calvinists, who purified Catholicism of idolatrous images.70 In the process they took out of the hands of ordinary people a multitude of sacred objects and rituals that they had used to protect themselves from harm or demonic interference. Sacramentals were completely done away with, and the spoken and read word became the centrepiece of religious experience.71 Time and again Anabaptists stood before learned judges and clergy to denounce priestly power as corrupt hocuspocus, consecrated Hosts as mere baker’s bread, and infant baptism as a superstitious and useless practice of the Antichrist, whom they identified with the ecclesio-secular authorities that persecuted them. For example, while awaiting his execution in a Dordrecht cell in 1569, the Mennonite Henrick Alewijnsz wrote: ‘No particular, worldly, ceremonial holy sacrament, baptism, nor Lord’s Supper, nor command, nor song of praise, can make a Christian without a pure heart [and] the spirit’s inward calling, renewal and drive.’72 The outward ceremonies of the Catholic Church were instruments of the devil’s kingdom, used by the Antichrist to compel allegiance to his false worship by robbing Christ of his ‘name, word, praise and miracles [wonderen].’73 God is in heaven, while the devil resides in the air, ‘working now in the children of unbe-

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 25

lief’ to rule the world. There was therefore a strong dualistic strain within Mennonite thought, a logical consequence of its complete rejection of sacramental realism. It is on the subject of baptism, in fact, that Anabaptists proved themselves to be the most radical of reformers when it came to the disenchantment of religious ritual. As long as parents could still baptize their infants it remained possible for them to believe that the baptismal water, prayers, and/or exorcisms provided a certain amount of spiritual power and protection against the malevolent forces arrayed against them. Although many reformers, including Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, toyed with the idea of doing away with paedobaptism, only the Anabaptists did so, and the reaction against them was swift and vicious. Most parents just could not risk allowing their children to go without baptism’s spiritual protection. Not only was eternal salvation at stake, but unexorcized and unbaptized children were believed susceptible to diabolical interference. Anabaptists and the Devil Very few early modern Europeans openly questioned the devil’s existence.74 By 1500 there were two major schools of thought about the devil’s interaction with humans: providentialists, who followed the tenthcentury Canon episcopi by arguing that while the devil was real, God did not permit him to contravene the laws of creation or to provide real magical powers to witches; and realists, such as Kramer, who argued that the devil gave witches real powers to cause magical mischief. Both sides, however, assumed the devil to be a real, powerful creature, a fallen angel who ruled over a host of demons and sought to entrap as many human souls in hell.75 Until the late Middle Ages the providentialist position remained dominant, especially in the Netherlands, where theologians frequently denied the ability of people to perform preternatural acts even with diabolical assistance.76 Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469–1536) reinforced this Netherlandic sceptical tradition by ridiculing what he called superstition: witchcraft, alchemy, divination, and any form of ‘Christian-religious magic’ such as indulgences, pilgrimages, blessings, and the like.77 Other humanists, such as Jacob Vallick, a priest of Groessen, Gelderland, in 1559 continued this tradition by asserting that bewitchment was merely the result of hallucinations caused by excesses of melancholic humour, possibly initiated by diabolical illusion.78 This position was made most famous by the physician Johann Weyer (Wier), whose De praestigiis dae-

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monum (The Deceits of Devils) first appeared in 1563. In this work Weyer (1515–88), court physician to the Duke of Cleves, drew on both his humanist learning and practical medical experience to argue that old women who confessed to witchcraft were really suffering from physiological and psychological disturbances, which he termed melancholy, and should be treated by a physician, not a judge. Although Weyer seems to have left demons with considerable power to influence human imaginations, he denied that demons could do anything contrary to the divinely established order, and they certainly did not need help from female witches.79 Even the limited role he allowed them may have merely been a rhetorical device to avoid severe censure. Weyer’s position was therefore in accordance with the providentialist school, although his religious notions fell much more into the spiritualist camp, as seen from correspondence from his spiritualistic brother, Matthias Wier, and from Joris.80 Another sceptic of witch beliefs, the English gentleman and Justice of the Peace Reginald Scot (c.1538–99), author of the Discoverie of Witchcraft of 1584, was a much more explicit spiritualist who denied any physical role for demons.81 Scot, like Weyer, seems to have had spiritualistic friends, in his case the English Familists, the followers of Hendrik Niclaes.82 As Hans de Waardt has discovered, several of the leading jurists and professors who advised the Dutch Republic’s government to ban the water test for witchcraft and to give up witch-hunting entirely were spiritualists with Familist connections.83 Many Anabaptists and spiritualists also developed a sceptical tradition toward diabolical activity. Menno followed Erasmus in depreciating the power of a corporeal devil while emphasizing human responsibility for evil, renouncing all forms of ‘religious magic,’ and denouncing infant baptism as a ‘ceremony of Antichrist, a public blasphemy, a bewitching sin.’ While it may be true, he continued, that at their baptism as infants his readers may have had ‘the adorable exalted name of God ... pronounced over’ them, it was ‘not otherwise than over bells’ and other sacramentals.84 On the charge that Anabaptists were demon possessed, Menno replied, ‘we consider those possessed of the devil who speak the devil’s words, who teach the devil’s falsehood instead of truth, steal God’s glory from Him, and sadly deceive souls ... If we were of the devil as we are reviled, we would walk upon a broader road and be befriended by the world and not so resignedly offer our property and blood for the cause of the Word of the Lord.’ Because of such slander, he and his followers would be ‘considered a perverse, ungodly people by the great mass who walk upon the broad way, so long as the world shall stand.’85

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 27

This antidiabolical trend was heightened by Menno’s more spiritualistic brethren such as Joris. Spiritualists emphasized the dichotomy between spirit and flesh, stressed an immediate experience with the ‘inner Word’ or voice of the Holy Spirit, concentrated on the inner significance of the scriptures, and depreciated external religious observance. By 1540 Joris was espousing a quite unusual position on spirit beings, considering angels as the spiritual inspiration of humans, while Adam was the angel of light who fell from grace and became a devil, hence the devil is really humanity’s fallen nature.86 Instead of the terrifying creature of demonology, art, and legend, Joris’s devil became impotent when believers asserted their faith, ultimately vanishing ‘to nothing.’ Each person was therefore solely responsible for both temptation and sin. Joris’s disparagement of the devil was perhaps the most extreme position within a sixteenth-century Christian context, utterly undercutting the rationale for witchcraft prosecution, a point he made explicit in a letter to a supporter.87 Joris justified his position by proclaiming that he had received it directly from the Holy Spirit. Other Dutch spiritualists expressed notions about the devil similar to those of Joris. These include Herman Herberts (1540–1607), a former monk who became the spiritualistic Reformed preacher of Dordrecht and Gouda who was investigated by Reformed consistories for his support of Joris’s writings.88 Another was Niclaes, who also taught there was no agent of evil to tempt Adam and Eve prior to their fall from grace. Instead, after creation, there was only ‘one God and one man’ and neither hell nor devil to impede the union of God and man. When man turned his eyes away from God to himself and sought the knowledge of good and evil to become God, humanity became bound to the ‘devil, darkness, and hell.’89 Another spiritualizer of the demonic was one of Niclaes’s former associates, Hendrik Jansen Barrefelt, or Hiël, who gained the support of other prominent Familists, such as the famous Antwerp printer Christophe Plantijn (1514–89) and the Utrecht ‘libertarian’ preacher Hubert Duifhuis (c.1517–81).90 Both Niclaes and Barrefelt believed that the worst devil was the ‘earthly lusts in the desires of the flesh.’91 Barrefelt furthermore affirmed that ‘there is no mightier witchcraft [toouerije] in the human than the ensnared holiness that he received in the flesh,’ in other words, the preoccupation with religious ceremonies.92 It appears, then, that these three prominent Dutch spiritualists regarded the true devil as the inner sinful disposition of the human. The most important Dutch spiritualist from the second half of the six-

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teenth century was Dirk Volkerts Coornhert (1522–90), who in 1572 was made William of Orange’s secretary of state and urged the prince to adopt a practice of religious toleration. Although not a close friend, Coornhert knew Niclaes personally and met with him several times to come to some kind of intellectual agreement, the last time in 1564 in Antwerp, but these discussions apparently came to naught.93 Even so, the two were in general agreement about the true spiritual nature of religion, and Coornhert criticized Niclaes precisely because the latter had created another sect against spiritualist principles. In a similar fashion Coornhert had read Joris’s writings, and recent research has demonstrated his general affinity for the latter’s ideas.94 Like Joris, Coornhert condemned dogmatism, intolerance, and sectarianism. He also emphasized that the devil’s true work was in causing people to mistake lies for the truth.95 Even so, Coornhert seems to have differed from Joris in believing that Lucifer’s fall had occurred prior to that of Adam and Eve,96 although he too affirmed that the devil’s central goal was to seduce people into ‘misuse of things as necessary and good in themselves, to the suppression of the good seed of the divine word in us,’ mostly by causing people to heed doctrinal precision that led only to confessional strife.97 Interestingly, while Coornhert opposed some of Joris’s notions, he nowhere mentions the latter’s views on the devil, presumably because the two were so close on the issue.98 With the rise of witch prosecutions in the second half of the sixteenth century, the issue of diabolical activity became much more controversial for the spiritual descendants of Menno and Joris than it had been for the earlier Anabaptists. In the Netherlands there were several groups of Mennonites, ranging in views from those who maintained the biblical literalism and emphasis on the restoration of the apostolic church that had characterized Menno’s circle, to the Waterlanders (who broke away from the others in 1557), many of whom were spiritualistic, emphasizing inward piety and depreciating confessionalism and doctrinal rigidity.99 All Mennonites, however, continued to reject infant baptism and its attendant rites and blessed objects, such as oil, salt, ‘font water,’ godparents, and the like. What use are these things, the imprisoned Mennonite Henrick Alewijnsz asked, when Simon Magus, ‘a child of the devil,’ had been baptized? Water baptism meant nothing without an inner, wholehearted faith.100 Despite their disagreement over the nature of the church, there was not a great divide between the Mennonites and the Davidites on the subject of the devil. For example, the Mennonite Jacob de Roore wrote

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 29

from his Bruges cell in 1569 that while God had made Adam in his own, perfect image, ‘the man did not remain in his creation, but he has become like the devil in sin,’ not terribly far removed from Joris’s position.101 Several Mennonites also published works on the devil and magic: the elder of the conservative Old Frisian Mennonites in Hoorn, Pieter Jansz Twisck (1565–1636); and the more liberal Mennonites Jan Jansz Deutel (d. 1657), Abraham Palingh (1588/9–1682), and Antonius van Dale (1638–1708). While Twisck wavered between belief in and scepticism regarding visible diabolical activity, he linked most of his devilish or magical stories polemically to Catholic religious practice and the clergy.102 Deutel was a printer of Hoorn who in an anti-witch-hunt treatise of 1638 emphasized the ‘impotence’ of the devil and rejected claims that the devil could assist witches to do things contrary to nature. Instead, the devil was a mere spirit whose major work was to make lies appear as truth.103 Similarly, Palingh, a Haarlem Waterlander Mennonite and cloth merchant who in 1659 agreed with Weyer that old women maliciously accused of witchcraft should be treated medically, not criminally, suggested that Satan was impotent to contravene the laws of nature.104 Finally, Van Dale, a Haarlem physician, in 1683 published a work seeking to cleanse the Republic of the superstition of belief in demonic witchcraft.105 This Anabaptist school of thought also influenced the controversial De Betoverde Weereld (The Bewitched World) of 1691–3 composed by the Reformed preacher Balthasar Bekker (1634– 97), which asserted that the devil had no physical reality but was instead a symbol of evil within humans.106 While these Mennonites were undoubtedly influenced by broader intellectual currents, Andrew Fix has also shown that the ideas of their forebears flowed into the rationalistic streams of the seventeenth-century Collegiants, which became a major carrier of scepticism within the Dutch Enlightenment.107 On the whole, then, Anabaptists relegated the function and ultimate identity of the devil to a largely rhetorical purpose: the condemnation of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities that persecuted them. Up to 1535, and in a few isolated cases thereafter, the conception of Satan as the apocalyptic commander behind the imminent rule of the Antichrist was prominent, but it carried within it the seeds of scepticism once the eschatological expectations were left unfulfilled. Anabaptists thus developed a conception of Satan that de-emphasized his and his fellow fallen angels’ material interference in human affairs, and in the examples of spiritualists cited above, virtually denied their very existence. And yet the Anabaptists were demonized by their opponents. Why was this so?

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What was it about these pious individuals that so inflamed learned theologians and the authorities alike, and so puzzled their neighbours? Anabaptists: Saints or Demons? Anabaptists strongly rejected the veneration of saints, asserting that all believers were saints who needed to live morally pure and spiritually intense lives and, when necessary, suffer the pains of martyrdom without complaint.108 They also firmly rejected the notion that sacredness could be attached to special objects or persons.109 Even so, they transferred some aspects of the medieval cult of saints to their own living leaders, while martyred Anabaptists were given special esteem by the persecuted living saints.110 This is readily apparent in the Mennonite martyrology Het Offer des Heeren,111 as well as from confessions of arrested Anabaptists, such as Leonard Rumer, who under torture confessed in September 1533 in St Michelsburg, Tirol, that ‘the saints in heaven are those, the Anabaptists, who have suffered for the word of the Lord.’112 Contemplating his impending martyrdom, Henrick Alewijnsz wrote in 1569, ‘the saints will help judge the world on Judgement Day.’113 Such martyrs were held up as examples to inspire steadfastness on the part of the living, as Joos Verkindert wrote to his wife in 1570 shortly before his own execution: ‘oh my dearest wife, keep the poor saints (which are many) and me in your remembrance.’114 In spite of their ‘laicization’ of sainthood, certain Anabaptist leaders and prophets became the objects of quasi-religious adoration as living saints. Their words were tinged with divine authority, their persons protected to the death by devoted followers; the case of Joris is exemplary, as dozens of his supporters preferred death to divulging his whereabouts to their interrogators.115 Menno Simons condemned Joris’s spiritualizing of sanctity, instead linking sainthood to open association with the people of God who are ‘crucified to the world’ and who lead godly lives and suffer persecution when necessary.116 After 1535 most Mennonites gave up their charismatic past and moved toward a more rationalistic, Protestant form of piety, although there remained a dissident tradition that promoted some charismatic phenomena and depreciated dogmatic conformity.117 In the end the interaction among the various Mennonite groups led to the creation of a unique concept of sanctity that kept alive the powerful martyr tradition as well as emphasizing communal ethics and personal holiness. On these points Mennonites can be seen as pushing the Dutch Reformed

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 31

Church in the direction of enforcing high personal standards of sanctity and a voluntaristic model of membership. On the whole, however, the self-designation of Anabaptists as saints and their depreciation of diabolical activity did little to improve their image in the broader society. As Richard Kieckhefer, Peter Dinzelbacher, and others have noted, it was the individual’s associates, neighbours, and general social and cultural mores that determined whether a particular ‘holy’ individual was to be identified as a saint or, conversely, as a witch.118 In one unusual case, an Anabaptist woman seems herself to have been confused about her status. In 1526 Verena Baumann, a maidservant of St Gall, Switzerland, told a couple of girls that she was Christ. Many people flocked to see her, confessing their sins; but then ‘Verena herself told the people that she was to bear the Anti-christ, but shortly afterward she said she was to bear the child mentioned in Revelation 12. She called herself at one moment the great whore of Babylon, but immediately afterward the living Son of God. She also appeared naked in front of the crowd, and reproved them for having lewd ideas.’ When brought to the town hall, witnesses described her face as distorted, her mouth covered with saliva, and her fingers and body writhing while she tore at her clothing. Such bipolar behaviour was often seen in demoniacs, but here the authorities regarded her as mentally ill and expelled her.119 Not only is she an example of an Anabaptist woman making claims to special access to the Otherworld, but a few decades later she would probably have been treated as a demoniac or tried as a witch. Instead, the local magistrates did not think to force a confession of diabolical witchcraft from her, probably because she was so clearly unstable, and perhaps because her gender made her less of a threat than a male shamanistic heretic. The very criteria used by the individual seeking sainthood (or for whom his or her followers sought the designation) could very readily be turned against him or her and used as signs of diabolical influence. Extreme fasts, visions, hearing voices, physical convulsions, levitation, stigmata, claims to having visited the Otherworld, and the like, could just as easily support a charge of witchcraft or demonic possession as they could of sainthood, as seen in a number of cases later in the sixteenth century of young women whose seemingly miraculous fasts and godly experiences were ultimately credited to demonic possession.120 In other words, those of Joris’s followers who sought to portray their leader as ‘saint David of Delft’ should not have been surprised when the very standards they used in support of his godliness were used instead to discredit him as the ‘devil of Delft.’ This polarization in reputation was

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quite evident in Basel shortly after Joris’s death in 1556. Faced with a storm of rumours that the recently deceased gentleman Johann van Brugge was a heretic whose embalmed corpse his followers were venerating in their Binningen chateau, the city fathers ordered the disinterment and public display of his remains. One of the rumours had it that an unidentified countess from Holland had travelled to Basel enquiring after the whereabouts of the gentleman’s remains so that she could ‘receive the Holy Spirit by intercourse with his corpse.’121 Once the authorities were satisfied about the nature of the cadaver they ordered it returned to holy ground. Unfortunately for the city fathers the rumours gained strength with the public revelation of the real identity of the gentleman as the ‘devil of Delft.’ In 1559 they conducted a heresy trial against Joris and his followers, in the end burning the still-recognizable corpse at the stake, along with his writings and pictures, scattering the ashes to the wind to eradicate possible relics. In a similar, if less spectacular, fashion, Anabaptist and Mennonite claims to special sanctity were transformed by Protestant and Catholic theologians and the authorities into evidence for their diabolical nature.122 This was a process astutely observed by the Jesuit Friedrich Spee in his 1631 treatise against witch-hunting when he observed that in the midst of a witch-hunt, anyone who displayed any signs of extra piety ‘immediately comes under the suspicion of witchcraft.’ He explained: Recently I heard from prominent men that in some places such malevolence has descended that if anyone there dares in the manner of very pious Catholics to say his rosary more diligently or carry it with him, to sprinkle holy water more frequently, to pray in church more diligently, and to display just a little more genuine devotion, he immediately comes under the suspicion of witchcraft. It is as if those people who wish to be more pious then [sic] others have succumbed to the crime, or, as others say, as if the devil does not let them rest otherwise. So it has happened that in a region near us ruled by an excellent and praiseworthy prince, everyone protects himself as diligently as possible against displaying any sign of piety. Even priests who used to celebrate mass daily have now either ceased completely or say it only in private with the church locked up, lest people begin to spread rumors of magic. So when we proceed recklessly under the appearance of justice, we prepare the way for impiety and atheism.123

One of his major targets for criticism were in fact his fellow preachers, who ‘with their exceptional eloquence ... persuade the rulers that they

Anabaptists and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 33

should devote all their severity to banishing this plague of witches from the state,’ for they instead need to ‘use the greatest caution possible by which they might accurately distinguish weeds from wheat and remove all danger from the necks of the innocent,’ an argument based on Jesus’ parable of the wheat and tares (Matt.13:29–30), which was central in debates about tolerating heresy as well.124 The vigorous attack against pious heretics and then witches had the unintended and ironic effect of making people fearful of exhibiting any tokens of special piety. In this way the polemical view of and opposition to the Anabaptists not only led to the martyrdom of hundreds of Anabaptists, but helped pave the way for the even more horrific persecution of suspected witches starting in the 1560s.125 The orthodox feared that if Anabaptists were successful in wresting the concept and practice of sainthood from the religious authorities and applying it to themselves, there was a real threat that they could achieve a considerable level of popular support if ordinary people transferred their devotion from dead saints, relics, and images to these new living saints. Even without any preternatural allegations, the godly living of Anabaptists and Mennonites was as much a threat to the ecclesiastical status quo as were their supposed seditious tendencies. Many princes therefore continued the persecution of the peaceable people of God well past mid-century. In the following chapter we will pursue this theme of the rhetorical demonization of Anabaptists, after which we will turn to its practical and devastating effects.

2 Blackened Tongues and Miraculous Hosts: Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature

These ministers, who are known as ‘beards’ or ‘uncles,’ go from one place to another without staying long anywhere; and to console and encourage the unfortunate people, they usually assemble at night, sometimes in a pit or quarry, for fear of persecution. These clandestine assemblies have given wicked people occasions to vent all kinds of calumny upon them. They have had the reputation among common folk of practising incest, sorcery and enchantment and of being completely devoted to the Devil, meeting in conventicles as much to indulge in lewd behaviour and do other execrable things as to conduct their ‘Sabbat’ (I use their terminology) with the Devil who is present on that occasion. Anonymous, Histoire memorable de la persecution et saccagement du peuple de Merindol et Cabrieres (1555)1

The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were critical to the religious conflict, intolerance, persecution, and moral policing that led to the infamous witch-hunts.2 On its own, the Jesuit strategy of promoting miracles and exorcisms as proof that the Catholic Church controlled access to the supernatural realm and that Protestants were in league with the devil was key in raising fears of the diabolical.3 In response, as Philip Soergel has shown, Protestants depicted Catholic miracles as diabolical magic and priests as sorcerers, in a tradition that had begun with Luther himself, who had depicted the papacy as the Antichrist.4 Similarly, Gerhild Williams has shown that a growing concern over so-called libertines, dissimulators (Nicodemists), and atheists led Protestant and Catholic leaders alike to suspect ‘that Satan and his demons might be part of a plot to rob the people of the reconciling power of religious observance.’ During the second half of the sixteenth century, she con-

Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 35

cludes, ‘the intellectual and social environment of early modern Europe erupted with symptoms of religious diversity and dissidence that, together with information about the New World and the renewal of the witch menace, led to a profound crisis in representation that fostered the dogmatization of discourses on all fronts.’5 Since many Anabaptist communities in Germany and Switzerland survived into the seventeenth century by practising Nicodemism, ‘orthodox’ polemicists became even more insistent on the need to counter the baneful effects of harbouring secret sceptics within a community.6 Violent rhetoric often begets violent acts, or, as Miri Rubin expresses it in her study of Host desecration stories, ‘once violent intolerant language is about, increasingly heard, spoken with impunity, then violent action is almost sure to follow. Words are thus never “only words.”’7 One need only glance at the writings of French Catholic demonologists composed in the broader context of the battle against both the Protestant minority and the moderate Catholic majority that desired to maintain French Gallicanism. Natalie Zemon Davis recounts one story from Tours about the origin of the name Huguenot in the local term for ghosts – le roi Huguet – implying that ‘Protestants were thus as sinister as the spirits of the dead, whom one hoped to settle in their tombs on All Souls’ Day,’ while their nocturnal conventicles were depicted as scenes of sexual orgies.8 Particularly influential in the Jesuit campaign was Jean Maldonat (1543–83), professor of the Jesuit College of Clermont in Paris. Maldonat affiliated Protestant heresy with demons, arguing that witches always accompany heretics, as in ‘Bohemia and Germany, [where] the Hussite heresy was accompanied by such a storm of demons that witches were busier than heretics,’ as ‘magical arts follow heresy.’ Jonathan Pearl neatly summarizes Maldonat’s theory: ‘demons live with heretics; after a violent outburst, heresy degenerates into atheism and magic; the “curious arts” follow heresy like a plague; demons use heretics to deceive mankind. All this was made possible and worsened through the negligence of unfit or undedicated priests.’9 Those who deny the reality of demons or of demonic witchcraft were atheists, as were those who rejected transubstantiation.10 Such polemical demonization contributed to the bloodshed of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, and disciples such as Martín del Rio carried the linkage between heresy and magic further afield.11 Elsewhere, both Catholic and Protestant propagandists were depicting Anabaptists in similar terms and complaining about the lack of persecutory zeal on the part of the rulers.12 As John S. Oyer has remarked,

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describing Anabaptists as ‘devils in human form’ was ‘a very serious charge for people who viewed the world of nature and the world of spirit as one and indivisible, not yet separated by natural science.’13 It is the contention of this chapter that the popular literature, learned propaganda, and court proceedings against Anabaptists and spiritualists heightened eschatological anticipation and fears of secret, diabolical plots, making it easier for the authorities and populace to believe in a widespread demonic witchcraft confederacy. At the same time the antiAnabaptist writings of Dutch Calvinists were surprisingly moderate in tone, even compared to the polemics of their founder, John Calvin. Instead of demonizing the Anabaptists, Dutch Calvinists considered them as erring, yet capable of engaging in rational discussion. And while the meetings between the two did not lead to the hoped for mass conversions, Reformed participants expressed grudging respect on a few fronts, especially toward the Mennonite emphasis on discipline and voluntarism in church membership. Dutch Reformed magistrates therefore permitted Mennonites to practise their faith in the private spaces of the schuilkerk.14 In order to investigate the relationship between the persecution of religious dissent and that of witches, this study takes references to the devil and magic in the anti-Anabaptist polemical literature as seriously as modern witchcraft scholars do in their appraisal of demonological literature. For if magistrates and judges could burn thousands of witches based on their belief in the devil’s conspiracy with witches, then why should the polemical references to the devil or stories of preternatural activities of Anabaptists not be similarly regarded? This discussion will therefore concentrate on how the rhetoric of Catholic and Protestant anti-Anabaptist propaganda – with the exception of Dutch Calvinists – helped set the stage for the even larger persecution to come. It will suggest that this influence occurred at several levels: first, in heightening fears of further secret, seditious groups and of diabolical conspiracies in general; second, in redirecting Anabaptist anticlericalism away from Catholic priests and Protestant clergy back upon the accusers or onto a more easily demonized target; third, in characterizing the godly living of Mennonites as a demonic deception, hence heightening suspicion of the ‘hyper godly’ mentioned in the previous chapter; fourth, in raising fears of Anabaptist women, who, like the Waldensian women before them, were believed to break gender and sexual restrictions, seek freedom from marriage, and aspire to positions of religious or social leadership; fifth, in seeking to give a demonic spin to charismatic claims of

Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 37

Anabaptists; sixth, in labelling Anabaptist or believers’ baptism as a demonic inversion, one which, after the rise of Anabaptism, became more prominent in descriptions of the witches’ sabbats; and finally, in providing a plausible eschatological scenario for Catholics, who expected a transition from Lutheranism to Anabaptism and finally to magical heresy. Anabaptist Anticlericalism Anabaptists were virulently anticlerical, and both Catholic and Protestant clergy sought to deflect their criticism back onto this supposed demonic sect.15 Such deflection of anticlericalism was not uncommon; Kevin Robbins has shown how Catholic dogmatists frequently ‘demonized and often feminized practitioners of the black arts, in the process shielding and exculpating a celibate male priesthood from public accusations of magical turpitude.’16 In some locales, such as western maritime France, anticlerical sentiment included charges that both Catholic and Protestant clergy used harmful sorcery against their parishioners – for example, destroying crops by hail or impeding the consummation of marriage by magical means – to maintain a monopoly over the sacraments.17 From the movement’s early days Anabaptist leaders had accused the clergy of complete corruption and of practising sorcery. For example, in 1534 the Anabaptist leader Adriaen ‘the One-eyed’ Pieterszoon challenged his listeners to bring him fifty consecrated Hosts which he would stab to prove they could not bleed. When the orthodox countered his shocking comments by pointing to the miracles performed by the Host at Amsterdam’s most famous shrine, the Holy Place (de Helige Stede), Adriaen replied ‘the devil can perform these miracles as well as God.’18 In another example, reported by the Lutheran preacher of Hersfeld, the Hessian Anabaptist Melchior Rinck supposedly charged that Luther’s teaching ‘leads the people to the devil’ and that if Luther at first possessed the Holy Spirit, ‘he now has become a devil and the true antichrist.’ According to Rinck’s Lutheran opponents, the Anabaptist had also written that he would have nothing to do with the baptism and Eucharist of either the Lutherans or the papists, ‘because in baptism all children were sacrificed to the devil and everyone who took the sacrament [of the Lord’s Supper] received a devil.’19 In 1532 some Hutterites remarked that paedobaptism was a ‘dog’s bath’ through which ‘the priest claimed to “drive demons out of the pure child while he, himself, is full of demons.”’20 For Anabaptists everywhere, those who persecuted

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the true believers were faithfully playing the part of the devil or the Antichrist. In a classic case of tit for tat, the Catholic authorities explained Anabaptist refusal to recant by suggesting diabolical influence or control, and at times they turned the tables upon the Anabaptists by using ‘clerical magic’ to compel their confessions; Werner O. Packull cites cases from the southern Holy Roman Empire when sacramentals were applied to Anabaptist prisoners to break the devil’s grip over them (see chapter 6, below).21 Torture was more typically applied to loosen the grip Satan had on the accused’s tongue. Well into the seventeenth century mainstream propagandists linked Anabaptists and Mennonites to the devil and insurrection, a tactic originating in the anti-Anabaptist mandate issued in 1529 by Charles V and renewed in 1544 and 1551.22 Even as late as 1588 a theologian of the Tirol, Christoffen Erhard, compared the communitarian Hutterite Brethren to the infamous Münsterites and warned Moravians about the rebellious intentions of the seventeen thousand Brethren who resided in the region.23 Heresy was long associated with sedition and diabolism; as the courtly astrologer Johann Carion put it in his 1543 chronicle, ‘all heretics are rebels who seek to spread their heresy by force, for their master the devil is a liar and a murderer.’24 Dutch polemicists linking heresy with diabolical sorcery in fact predated the Anabaptists, as seen in a pamphlet published in 1524 addressed to the Duke of Guelders and Groningen, Karel van Egmond (1492–1538), who was one of the most prominent prosecutors of Lutherans, Anabaptists, and witches in the northern Netherlands. Composed by one of the duke’s clergy from the eastern Netherlands, this anonymous tract sought to counter Luther’s identification of the pope as the Antichrist. While the author shared Luther’s conviction that the end of the world was near (setting February 1524 as the likely date) and the Antichrist was already alive, he turned Luther’s interpretation of that evil figure on its head.25 Luther’s heresy, he suggested, was the precursor to the devil’s final assault on Christendom, which would culminate in a horrific increase in black magic, practised by witches who had made a pact with the devil and who already were terrifying the people of the eastern Netherlands by their frequent bewitchment of milk.26 Willem Frijhoff asserts that it can be no mere coincidence that it was in the same year as the appearance of this tract that Karel van Egmond began his serious anti-witch offensive. One can only imagine how our anonymous author might have responded to the even greater heresy of Anabaptism, with its own apocalyptic program and rejection of infant baptism. We have a clue to the

Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 39

duke’s response in the mandate that was issued on 13 February 1535 by his bastard son Karel van Guelders, the stadholder of Groningen, on the insistence of his father. Although the stadholder softened the duke’s attempts to eradicate the heretics by allowing a period of grace, the duke’s attitude toward the Anabaptists comes through very clearly in the description of the Anabaptists as a ‘devilish sect’ and their leaders as ‘false diabolical preachers and prophets’ who deceived the simple people against the holy Christian Church. The duke regarded both heretics and witches as agents of the same diabolical conspiracy auguring the arrival of the Antichrist, and meriting the most severe penalty. The surviving court records of both accused Anabaptists and witches within his domains underscore the seriousness with which Karel van Egmond took this threat.27 Catholic Propaganda: The Anabaptists as the Devil’s Minions Thanks to Peter Nissen’s fine study of Dutch Catholic anti-Anabaptist writers we need only examine Catholic polemicists who made explicit comparisons between Anabaptists and the diabolical realm.28 In their quest to find antecedents for contemporary movements, scholastic theologians provided Anabaptists with a heretical pedigree in a variety of classical and medieval heresies, including Waldensians and the fictional Luciferans, whose alleged doctrine that Lucifer would ultimately attain salvation found its echo in the supposed universalism of Hans Denck.29 Ironically, these presumed sixteenth-century Luciferans or ‘devilists’ also included spiritualists who essentially denied the existence of the devil.30 Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism was viewed as particularly diabolical, for, as the German Catholic theologian Johann Fabri (1478– 1541) put it, refusal to baptize infants was the equivalent of sacrificing children to the devil, one of the central charges made against witches.31 Such opinions were often expressed ‘on the ground,’ as in one incident when the Protestant authorities compelled a local pastor to baptize the child of an Anabaptist and the father ‘instructed the pastor to announce in church that neither the father nor the mother wished to have their child baptized. Then, losing his temper, he called the pastor a seducer and murderer of souls, to which the enraged pastor responded that the Anabaptist was the devil’s spawn.’32 In effect, Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism was characterized as a spiritual form of ritual infanticide, performing on the soul of the infant the same kind of diabolical damage inflicted by witches on its body.33

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Such attitudes were propagated in works aimed at a popular audience as well as a learned one. In the Netherlands, during the height of the Münster kingdom and apocalyptic excitement, one Reynier vanden Putte composed an anti-Anabaptist play entitled An Allegorical Play on the Incarnation of Christ that attacked the Anabaptist doctrine of the ‘heavenly flesh of Christ.’34 The play’s evil sinnekens or Vices are Melchiorite preachers who, inspired by Lucifer, desire to ‘do more evil / in the world than all the sorcerers together.’35 They prey particularly upon simple Catholic believers, who are easily confused by the multitude of new beliefs, the horrible blaspheming of the sacrament, assertions that the Host was no more than ‘baker’s bread,’ and the despising of religious images as idolatry.36 The Melchiorites encourage the protagonists – a simple peasant couple – to ‘leave this evil generation’ with its pagan ways, abandon possessions and family, and separate from one’s unbelieving spouse. The peasants are rescued from heresy by two friars who warn the couple that the miracles of the Anabaptists are mere hypocrisy.37 We do not know how popular vanden Putte’s dramatic effort was, nor where or to whom it was performed. In their presentations to the wider populace, Catholic polemicists focused on discrediting the alleged miracles that Anabaptists claimed proved their charismatic authority. As we shall see below, Catholic preachers followed the well-worn path of associating heretical charisma with demonic sorcery. Moderate Catholics sought to counteract the Reformed and Anabaptist scepticism toward the sacraments by asserting that the church did not teach the people to trust in the ceremonies themselves, but to use them merely as signs of the supernatural power inherent in the sacraments.38 For example, Martin Duncanus (1505–90), a learned Catholic priest who had parishes throughout Holland, composed a treatise against Anabaptism and three books defending the Catholic sacrament of infant baptism. Described by Nissen as the foremost Catholic polemicist against the Anabaptists,39 Duncanus generally followed a rational approach, counteracting the Anabaptist/Mennonite ideas with arguments drawn from Catholic history, the Bible, and reason. Only at points where he believed Mennonites blasphemed the Catholic Church did he characterize them as diabolical, and then not to any significant degree.40 Moreover, despite the incredible length of his multi-volume discussion of baptism, there is no explicit defence of exorcism, except where he championed the ceremonies associated with baptism as aids assisting the faithful to comprehend the sacrament itself.41 Zealous Counter-Reformation churchmen asserted a more combative

Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 41

strategy by arguing that the Catholic Church alone performed true miracles. Cunerus Petri van Brouwershaven (c.1530–80) provides a case in point. This highly educated bishop (rector of the University of Louvain since 1568) was installed by Philip II in the difficult bishopric of Leeuwarden, a position made untenable when that city signed the Pacification of Ghent in 1576.42 Writing in the vernacular, Petri sought to counteract the pernicious effects of Anabaptist teaching on the ‘simple folk.’ The formulaic story he describes in his 1568 booklet Shield against the Anabaptists about the Reformation begins with Luther, but moves quickly to the ‘unlearned Bernardus Rothmannus,’ the kingdom of Münster’s chief propagandist, who allegedly converted to Anabaptism after reading a letter addressed by Luther to the Waldensians and later became the father of the Mennonites. Fuming that many people were ignorant of the true evil intent of Anabaptists, Petri warned: ‘I believe indeed that some of them imagine themselves to be good; but wait for the hour of their freedom, their spirit will then teach otherwise and according to the opportunity of the time they shall change their judgement and opinion,’ i.e., to return to their revolutionary heritage.43 Petri’s central argument was that a religion had to be established on true miracles, something that only the Catholic Church could claim. While Anabaptists may have a deceptive appearance of purity and mortification, their true nature was diabolical. Their success at winning converts was merely a sign of the apocalypse, as in the ‘last days’ some will turn from the faith and listen to the devil’s lying inspiration.44 Against the Mennonite teaching that children born to Christians were pure, requiring no baptism until they reached the age of decision, Petri asserted that the ‘wrath of God abides over the unbaptized.’45 With their rejection of exorcism at baptism, both Mennonites and Calvinists left their children at the mercy of the devil, who ‘cannot be driven out without great might.’46 Such ceremonies may not be biblical, he admitted, but they were necessary in order to rescue children from the devil’s grasp.47 Consecrated salt was essential, he contended, in part to free the infant from the ‘stink’ of original sin, and it was commonly known that the unbaptized ‘physically stink,’ a belief that has dogged the Jews throughout most of Christian history.48 Even after baptism the devil remained a powerful threat to the Christian, who must pray frequently that he be kept far away.49 The unbaptized therefore remained particularly vulnerable to the devil’s power, although Petri’s suggestion that one could deal with Anabaptist baptism in the same fashion as emergency baptisms conducted by midwives, suggests that there remained a

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remedy against this diabolical power. As the notorious ‘pure blood laws’ of the Spanish Inquisition revealed, confidence in the power of Catholic baptism was not always prominent.50 There were similar fears about the Protestant and especially Anabaptist challenge to sacramental power, which many Catholics, following the approach of Heinrich Kramer in the previous century, countered by asserting the miraculous aspects of sacramentals. Most illustrative of this approach is the unpublished daybook of the chaplain of the Limburg village of Kuringen, near Hasselt, then in the bishopric of Liège. Maintained between 1529 and 1545, Christiaan Munters’s chronicle reflected a more popular Catholic perspective by noting several spectacular miracles that allegedly took place as means to counteract the propaganda of the Anabaptists, which our chaplain calls ‘Lutherans.’ Munters seems not to have had a high education and was deeply disturbed by the blasphemy expressed by the heretics toward saints, the Virgin Mary, and especially ‘our Lord’ on crucifixes and in the consecrated Host. During the height of Anabaptist activity and its persecution, i.e., between 1533 and 1536, Munters describes several miracles that showed precisely whose side God was on. His first story is that of a ‘Lutheran’ priest burned at Liège for his depreciation of the Virgin Mary; as the wood was being lit, he apparently declared that he would come back to life three hours after he was burned, a pledge Munters happily reported as unfulfilled.51 Turning to reports of iconoclasm, his stories become more miraculous with the rebaptized ‘Lutherans.’ In one such story, for example, two men stand in front of a Münster church in 1534 just as the bells ring announcing Mass. One says to the other, ‘I will go to Mass to watch and pray,’ while the other responds, ‘why should you do that, it is nothing but bread.’ They enter regardless, but when the Host is elevated, the sceptical one announces, ‘now I will never look at that again,’ at which instant he becomes blind, dumb, and deaf, and nor could he eat anything unless ‘someone tickled him with a feather.’52 This story is followed by a brief reference to the siege of Münster and the iconoclastic sacrilege performed by the ‘Lutherans’ of the city.53 After mentioning the expulsion from Münster of all those who refused to be rebaptized and the city’s adoption of a community of goods, Munters reports on a group of people in a village near Utrecht who climbed up trees to await their ‘heavenly bread,’ ten of whom were arrested and beheaded.54 At the end of March Munters describes the interrogation and burning in Kuringen of a ‘Lutheran’ named Simon, a key maker from Tongeren. Even Munters’s brother, the inquisitor Joris,

Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 43

could not turn this one from his errors, and the accused blurted out that he could never believe that a priest who ‘sat with women’ could possess the power to consecrate ‘God our Dear Lord’ and that his people would soon be strong enough to ‘destroy all churches and cloisters, and to kill all priests and clerics.’55 Then Munters discusses a miracle in April involving a rich ‘Lutheran’ of Holland, whose brother, a priest, convinced him to give up his heresy. Falling ill, the ‘Lutheran’ expressed his desire to confess and receive the sacrament. After much supplication, his wish was granted, and he received the last rites before dying. When his family attempted to lift up his coffin in the church, however, it was too heavy, so they removed the lid, discovering nothing left of the corpse apart from its blackened head. To their amazement, they saw the Host still on his tongue, and when they reverently removed it, the head suddenly disappeared. Munters’s conclusion is that the man had only feigned repentance, and the preserved Host’s vengeance on the corpse testified to the divine judgment for that sacrilege.56 After turning to the persecution in the region of accused Anabaptists for the remainder of 1534 and 1535, Munters discusses the great disturbance caused by the Anabaptists in Maastricht, recounting how one woman suddenly received the ability to read after only a few hours with a heretical bookseller but lost the ability the moment she confessed her sin to a priest (we will return momentarily to this account).57 Moreover, Munters claims that in the cellars of the Maastricht Anabaptists there were troughs filled with water awaiting the baptizands, each of whom received three drops under the tongue and one on the head. Thereafter they were instructed to eat meat for three Fridays, then ‘they could know all things.’ They also exchanged their Christian names for new ones: ‘fly net, stuiver, white.’58 Munters therefore offers a preternatural depiction of Anabaptist baptism as magically providing literacy and knowledge that could be removed through confession and penance; the new names strike one also as similar to those used by juvenile demoniacs when asked for the names of their demons.59 He also ascribes such beliefs to Anabaptists themselves, such as the woman arrested in Antwerp whose infant was baptized against her will and who, taking up some water to scrub off the ‘holy baptism’ and chrism from the child, ‘rebaptized’ it.60 In a similar tone is another story from Maastricht about a ‘Lutheran’ who tells a ‘Christian’ that ‘if you follow my advice, you will know all things.’ First, he has to abandon his ‘Christian faith,’ since what the lords and cloisters say is just deceit. ‘What must I do?’ asks the Christian.

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‘Eat meat for three Fridays,’ replies the heretic. This the man does, but it makes no difference, so he returns to the heretic to complain. The heretic advises his compatriot to ‘take this booklet and lay it under your head while you sleep, and when you wake up you will know everything.’ However, when the Christian follows these instructions he becomes as thick as a barrel, and his wife runs for a priest. When attempting to hear the afflicted man’s confession, the priest sees that his tongue and mouth are ‘black as coal,’ nor can he make out what the victim is trying to say. The priest therefore chastises him for receiving heretical notions and admonishes him to confess, which he does. Immediately the affliction passes, and he is determined to live evermore ‘as a Christian man.’61 Is there any evidence that Anabaptists claimed miraculous powers arising from their version of baptism? Certainly nothing like this appears in known Anabaptist writings, yet there are a few scattered references drawn from trial accounts elsewhere. For example, Cunrad Fridrich, an associate of Hans Romer, during his 1528 trial in Saxon Etzleben confessed that it had been his hope that upon allowing himself to be baptized ‘he would know all things, and nothing would remain hidden,’ and so he would be able to interpret dreams.62 It is impossible to know how interrogators extracted this admission from Fridrich, but there may have been a few Anabaptist converts who had expectations of preternatural powers upon rebaptism. Whether aware of such admissions or not, Munters is clearly deeply concerned about the attack of Anabaptists, including a number of women, upon the veracity of the sacramental transformations, and these ‘miracles’ he thought would offset any doubt on the part of the faithful. Still the Anabaptist propaganda worked its wonders. At the end of February 1535, Munters records the burning of a woman heretic in Kuringen for denying the Real Presence in the bread, the veneration of the saints, and sacramental confession. A few days later a man was burned, one who not only described all priests as deceivers, condemned belief in the sacraments, and argued that Mary was no different from any other woman, but also refused to ‘carry the blessed cross’ during his punishment, telling the inquisitor Joris Munters to ‘carry it himself.’63 A ‘Lutheran’ named Goerken van Wiemertinghen, beheaded on 24 July 1535 at Kuringen, similarly confessed to having denied the saints, priestly confession, the real presence, and to having proclaimed that ‘priests smear stuff on the heads of the images, then say that they did miracles.’ The pope and priests, he declared, were ‘all devils’ seeking to deceive the people.64

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Some relief for Munters came at the end of June when the Anabaptists were defeated in Münster. Even so the confessions of Anabaptists arrested after that event continued to disturb him, and on 19 February 1536 he describes his penultimate miracle, that involving an Anabaptist women in Acken.65 Having fallen ill, the woman initially turned away the priest carrying the consecrated Host who sought to give her last rites. Then, as her suffering increased, she asked that he return, and she confessed. But she was not sincere, and when she received the Host, it stuck to her tongue – ‘or it had been imprinted thereupon’ – and she died. When the church assistants tried to remove the wafer with ‘small instruments,’ it would not budge, and they had to cut off that portion of the tongue displaying the Host. This they carried to the church ‘with great reverence’ and encased it in glass. The cardinal of Liège then apparently declared it to be a true miracle and ordered it to be proclaimed ‘to all places.’66 If not unique, this anti-Anabaptist relic is a rarity, providing tangible evidence of the evil nature of Anabaptists and the verity of the Catholic sacraments. The numerous recantations of radical Anabaptists served a similar function, such as that of Peter Keerselaers in Kuringen at the end of February 1536, who confessed to having been rebaptized in Münster and to believing that Jan van Leiden ‘had been as pure as if he had just come out of his mother’s body.’ Now, however, Keerselaers wished to die as a ‘Christian man’ and he had many masses performed for him.67 These attitudes, and more, were reiterated in 1567 in the anti-heresy writings of William Verlinde or Lindanus (1525–86), bishop of Roermond and inquisitor of South Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. The year after achieving his doctorate in 1556 at the University of Louvain, Verlinde was commissioned by Philip II as Inquisitor of Friesland, in part as a further means to reduce the independent spirit of the Frisians. The Frisian pastors were opposed to the decrees of Trent, and many refused to give up their concubines and children, while many local magistrates were dragging their heels about implementing the anti-heresy mandates posted throughout their cities as placards. In his early cases Verlinde showed considerable restraint, and he struggled hard to convert Mennonites. Yet his efforts were constantly frustrated by priests, who were sympathetic to reform and cloisters that refused to open their doors to him. In the summer of 1559 he conducted a visitation of Friesland, discovering to his horror that conditions were worsening for the true faith. He wrote to Regent Margaret of Parma and King Philip that he feared the religious situation in the province was getting so bad

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that God’s wrath would soon wash over the region.68 He finally quit Friesland in frustration in 1560, turning instead to Holland, where he was given the authority of a papal inquisitor (much less comprehensive than that of a Spanish inquisitor) and embarked on several visitation tours. Again he faced considerable opposition, finding a very strong presence of heresy in the Delft region and much resistence on the part of Holland’s magistrates to cooperate with his ventures. After overseeing several trials of heretics, he again quit his office after another jurisdictional conflict with the Court of Holland; according to Verlinde’s modern biographer, P. Th. van Beuningen, Verlinde was too moderate for the king’s religious counsellor, Fra Lorenzo de Villavicentio.69 The former inquisitor turned to writing about the state of religion in the Low Countries, but was forced to flee to Roermond with the onset of the iconoclastic fury of 1566. Overall, no executions can be credited to him, nor sentences of exile, although his victims certainly described him as a ‘papal wolf’ and ‘servant of the Romish beast.’70 Interestingly, Verlinde was also active in trying witches and magicians, including a priest he had defrocked in 1584, as part of his larger campaign to counteract Protestant incursions by improving the moral condition of the clergy.71 Verlinde’s writings do not display this supposed moderation in his treatment of heretics. In a letter to the citizens of Weerdt, he wrote that ‘there is no greater pestilence or murderer of souls under the sun than to allow the common person the freedom of faith, or Free-Religion.’72 Most of his criticism against the various reform groups focuses on their theological heresies until he turns to the Anabaptists, where the demonic and magical become prominent. This is a remarkable fact, since he wrote his tracts in the shadow of the iconoclastic riots orchestrated by the Calvinists.73 Verlinde did suggest that Luther learned to despise the Mass through his teacher the devil, and that Calvin’s doctrine of predestination had generated a whole host of evil sects, including, ironically, Michael Servetus’s anti-Trinitarianism.74 For Verlinde, Anabaptists and spiritualists were the most pernicious of sectarians, originating from the infamous prophet of the militant peasants Thomas Müntzer and his dreams and supposed miracles.75 These inspired the Swiss Anabaptists, who claimed to have had visions of Ulrich Zwingli in hell.76 For Dutch examples, he happily cites the incident of the naaktloopers of Amsterdam who in 1535 ran naked through the streets proclaiming the wrath of God (see fig. 1; see also chapter 3, below), and, like Munters, he recounts a story of rich Anabaptists who in that same year gave up their possessions and clothes and climbed naked into trees

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to await ‘the heavenly bread’ but who ended up dying there instead.77 Interestingly, another chronicler had applied this story to David Joris, who in 1544 ‘regarded himself to be the new God who led the simple folk to believe that he could speak with all tongues to the wild beasts and birds and that he received his food from them ... Through which heresy many people are deceived, and have died of hunger in trees.’78 While saints could levitate and comprehend animal language and the ‘good people’ or benandanti similarly claimed such powers,79 whether magicians could do so was widely debated. The Jesuit Martín del Rio wrote at the end of the sixteenth century that while God sometimes gave animals the ability to speak, most recent cases were either produced by angels or demons, with God’s permission. He suggests that ‘as for whether magicians understand animal speech, one must suppose they do so with the help of an evil spirit, not an angel, although they may also be able to interpret the movements of animals.’80 This chronicler therefore implies that Joris was aided by a demon. In this one story we see the projection of popular beliefs about saints, shamans, and ‘good people’ onto Joris’s reputation. More to the point, Verlinde also claimed to have interrogated some Anabaptists who apparently confessed that ‘as soon as they had given their oath [i.e., joined the Anabaptists], they felt in themselves the singular power of the devil so that they could begin to read the Scriptures when before they could not read a letter, and once they returned to the church they could no longer do so.’81 Verlinde was not the first to explain Anabaptist literacy by reference to diabolical and heretical agency. As already noted, Munters had told a story about a Maastricht woman who was taken to the home of a heretical bookseller where she learned to read ‘all things’ and returned home with some heretical books. Her shocked husband immediately fetched his pastor, who had the woman confess her sin. After absolution, the woman ‘could not read a single letter.’82 In other words, suddenly achieved literacy on the part of women was explained as a result of diabolical assistance requiring immediate sacramental action by a priest. As Gerhild Williams notes, ‘knowing without reading, which was thought to be characteristic of witches, was tantamount to knowing beyond authoritative control and orthodox hermeneutics’ and was part of the ‘struggle for control over woman and was part of her persecution as a witch.’83 Hence, by linking the seemingly preternatural literacy of Anabaptists with demonic magic, Munters and Verlinde implicitly linked Anabaptists and witches (see fig. 2b). Verlinde’s ironic reference to Anabaptist baptism as an oath – most

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Anabaptists refused to swear oaths because of Jesus’ proscription against swearing in Matthew 6 – may have been Verlinde’s method of tying these heretics more closely to demonic witchcraft wherein witches were supposed to have made a pact with the devil. In trying to demonize Anabaptist claims to special spiritual authority reinforced by visions and heavenly signs, Munters and Verlinde were imitating their inquisitorial predecessors in their treatment of shamanistic Waldensians.84 Stories similar to Munters’s were frequent in medieval and early modern witchcraft accounts. Setting the stage was Pope Gregory IX’s bull Vox in Rama of 1233 in which he asserted that when a novice witch kissed the devil (see fig. 3b), ‘the memory of the catholic faith totally disappears from his heart.’85 Witches were long believed to have rejected their original baptism, but no known accounts of diabolical sabbats refer to a demonic rebaptism prior to the sixteenth century, although the Aragonese inquisitor Nicolau Eymeric in 1376 referred to magicians ‘contracted to heretics ... who rebaptize children.’86 Stories comparable to Munters’s and Verlinde’s were also common in witch treatises, as in a seventeenth-century account wherein Spanish witches who had renounced their baptism but continued to attend church to avoid suspicion claimed that when the priest elevated the Host during Mass they ‘could not see it; instead they perceived a black object in the priest’s hands. But as soon as they broke with the witch sect, confessed their errors, and went to Communion, they were again able to see the Blessed Host.’87 To tell such stories about Anabaptists was therefore to make them intimates of the devil. Verlinde’s worst venom, however, was reserved for David Joris and his followers, for Joris not only deceived many people by means of his visions, but he also denied the reality of the devil. Verlinde suggested that the Davidites had ‘their origin from a false or straying [verdoelden] sorcerer, who around 1545 sowed his malicious teaching from the old cisterns or pools of stinking heresies, reawakening the Sadducee errors of denying angels, devils and baptism, and also the Last Judgement.’88 What was even more appalling, according to the learned inquisitor, was Joris’s reputation as a miracle worker, miracles that Verlinde believed were possible only through evil sorcery (toouerien), such as transforming water into wine, turning himself invisible to avoid detection, and levitating six or seven feet above the ground, ‘through the power of the quicksilver.’ Clearly Verlinde believed Joris to be a diabolical sorcerer, as were the Münsterites who supposedly spread news of strange apparitions, such as a rain of bloody water, in order to strengthen their ‘false gospel.’

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Of course Joris purported to do none of these things, although he did claim supreme spiritual knowledge superior to the biblicists and occultists both, an assertion easily bent by churchmen into diabolical sorcery.89 These attitudes toward the Anabaptists and Mennonites were reinforced with the rise of a more aggressive, Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation strategy in the southern Netherlands. One of the most active Jesuit polemicists of the last decades of the sixteenth century was Franciscus Costerus (1532–1619), who rose to become the order’s provincial for the Netherlands and a major figure in the introduction of the Mary brotherhoods into the Netherlands.90 In his Shield of the Catholics against the Heretics, a Dutch version of which appeared in 1591, Costerus confirmed the diabolical nature of Anabaptism by placing it in a broader history of the devil’s nefarious attempts to destroy the Catholic faith, which would culminate in the imminent apocalyptic battle. According to the tract’s foreword, composed by the translator and pastor Godevaert vanden Berghe, the founder of such diabolical heresy was Simon Magus, whose disciples had continued his errors: Arius, Muhammad, and now ‘Luther and his disciple Calvin.’91 Costerus himself argued that ‘Satan, seeing that the time is short and that he has been driven out of the lands of India and Japan (where very many people have joined the holy Church),’ had now turned to the Netherlands to re-establish his kingdom. The devil might be unable to restore the idol worship of the pagan lands, but he would do his best to eradicate godliness and true divine worship.92 By rejecting the veneration of the saints, heretics furthermore seek to ‘rob the dead of their necessary assistance and help’ and to steal from the living their remedies against sin and the fear of hell; some go so far as to deny the reality of hell itself.93 In contrast to the reformers’ rejection of the saints, sacraments, and sacramentals, the true Church was founded on the miracles of the saints, while heretics who follow Simon Magus seek to replicate miracles by the devil’s assistance. What better way to illustrate the necessity of the Catholic priesthood than by having priests defeat the devil in dramatic public exorcisms or in miracles involving the relics of saints or the Host?94 Catholic success in this regard often left the Protestants scrambling for a response.95 Appearances of morality were not enough, Costerus asserts, for there were many moral people among the heathen; instead, only miracles were proof of divine power and approval.96 Costerus therefore demonizes Anabaptist miracles such as the preternatural literacy stories recounted above. He explains these stories by saying that

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Eradicating the Devil’s Minions It was said that the Anabaptists gave the knowledge of reading to the simple and unlearned people once they received the baptism; thereafter they were robbed of it the moment they rejected the heresy. But those who are possessed by the devil are able to perform greater things, to speak foreign languages and to reveal hidden and absent things. For these things are not to be regarded as miracles which are not above the power of the devil. Antichrist shall do miracles, but through the ability of the devil, and entirely without profit. For it is to no one’s profit that he will send fire down from heaven and make the images of the beast speak. Similar things occur by the witches, to the great harm of the community.97

Thus the supposed miracle of the Anabaptists – one rarely claimed by the Anabaptists themselves98 – was used as proof of their connection to the devil, and here Costerus compared them to both the possessed and witches. This contention that Mennonite leaders used magic to lure the unsuspecting into their diabolical conspiracy was a commonplace of Catholic propaganda by the 1590s. Richard Verstegen, an English Catholic of Dutch roots who in 1580 fled England during Elizabeth I’s reign and moved in 1587 to Antwerp, reveals this point quite nicely in a single-page broadsheet from 1590. In this Latin work, which contains illustrations of the four major confessions – Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Mennonite – the engraving of the Mennonite meeting shows in the foreground a baptism and a man lying prostrate on the floor (see fig. 4). The text underneath links the Mennonites very clearly to the Münsterites and to the devil, while Menno Simons is claimed to have ‘bewitched his followers.’99 Writing as they were in the 1590s, at the start of one of the great peaks of witchhunting in the Holy Roman Empire, Verstegen and Costerus made plain their belief that the devil was afflicting torments upon Europeans through a number of means, most prominently the heresy of Anabaptism, demonic possession, and witchcraft. The prediction of the anonymous Guelders’s author noted above seems to have been fulfilled. Costerus and Verstegen were not alone in promoting reform heresy as the leading edge of the devil’s assault on the true church. Cornelius Loos (1546–97), the famous Dutch priest who during the 1592–3 witch panic in Trier was forced to recant his manuscript De vera et falsa magica (The true and false magic) opposing belief in diabolical witchcraft, wrote his work not in a spirit of tolerance or scepticism, but out of a concern that the stupid persecution of supposed diabolical witches was distracting Europe’s authorities from the real diabolical menace threatening

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his native land: Protestant and Anabaptist heresies.100 Sorcery, he argued, might be able to harm the human body, but heresy’s damage was much more profound, for it inflicted an eternally deadly wound on the immortal soul.101 For Loos, the devil’s real assault on the church was in bewitching people’s minds to believe error instead of truth, and to fear flying and shape-shifting witches instead of real heretics. Despite Loos’s opinions, most Catholic polemicists followed the rhetorical approach of the author of the Guelders’s tract, Petri, Verlinde, and Costerus: the devil was using both heresy and witchcraft to attack the true faith. Even in moderate tomes such as the anonymous Anabaptist Succession (Successio anabaptistica), first printed in 1603 and composed, it seems, by the Dutch priest Simon Walraven, comparisons were made between the Anabaptists/Mennonites and the devil’s activity.102 In this book Walraven replies to a Mennonite treatise by Jacob Pietersz vander Moelen, entitled Apostolic Succession, which had accused the Catholic Church or ‘synagogue of Satan’ of being in league with the devil and performing priestly magic with its saints, images, and sacramentals.103 According to Pietersz, the practice of godparents lifting the child up to the font and renouncing the devil on its behalf was ridiculous, as was believing that infants might be possessed by a demon prior to baptism.104 In the end, Pietersz contended, the holiness of the Catholic faith relied entirely on ‘such conjurations of sorcery,’ pretending thereby to prove its authenticity by supposed miracles.105 In response to Pietersz’s scandalous charges, Walraven portrays the morality of the Mennonites as a mere cover for their true inner nature as diabolical agents (Satan himself appears as an angel of light) to deceive the simple folk. After their failure to fulfil their goal with the sword, they turned, Walraven insists, to ‘feigned holiness.’106 The followers of Hofmann (who died as a ‘devil’s martyr’)107 and Jan Matthijs sometimes used ‘devil’s spookery’ to convince their adherents of their apostolic office and to ‘lead many people with their baptism to a scandal of Satan.’108 Moreover, their infamous divisiveness and banning and their shunning even of marriage partners were clear enough signs that they were of Satan, not God.109 Evidently the attempts of Mennonites to capture the high moral ground in saintliness was a clear threat to the Catholic hierarchy, which closely guarded the admission to sainthood. By the 1590s, the rhetoric had therefore come full circle, so that the language and imagery of the even more spectacular activities of satanic witches could now be applied to further demonize the Mennonites, despite their apparent reputation as highly moral people.

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Lutherans, Exorcism, and Possessed Infants While less likely to use the ‘miracle’ arguments of Catholic writers, Lutheran polemicists readily demonized Anabaptists, in large measure because they too maintained a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the elements of communion and in the transformational powers of baptism.110 In his 1535 Lectures on Galatians, Luther wrote: ‘Thus in our day we, too, must labor with the Word of God against the fanatical opinions of the Anabaptists and the Sacramentarians ... For we have recalled many whom they had bewitched, and we have set them free from their bewitchment ... So great is the efficacy of this satanic illusion in those who have been deluded this way that they would boast and swear that they have the most certain truth.’111 Those who have ‘heard the Gospel preached once or twice’ and become overconfident in their understanding of the faith ‘are tools that are ready for the devil to bewitch and to drive to despair.’ This bewitchment, then, ‘is nothing other than a dementing by the devil, who inserts into the heart a false opinion, one that is opposed to Christ. A bewitched person is one who is taken captive by this opinion ... For the mind is corrupted by spiritual witchcraft as the senses are by the physical sort.’112 In the same year Luther wrote a foreword to a news-sheet report on the Münster debacle, in which he declared that the recent events in that city prove that ‘the devil himself lived there.’ He also compared Anabaptist polygamy to Islam, concluding that ‘there was no craftier devil that the one at Münster.’113 This was a sentiment shared by many observers of the Münster episode, such as Herman von Wied, the reformist Archbishop of Cologne, who commented that ‘the rebels had already cast a spell on the ignorant people around Münster.’114 Believing as he did that the devil was raging insanely against God’s people at the Last Days, Luther suggested that some who were spiritually possessed by the devil were indeed mad and yet still responsible for their evil acts.115 Other Lutheran preachers followed the Wittenberg reformer’s approach. For example, in 1531 Nikolaus Maurus, superintendent and pastor at Zwingenberg, Hesse, and Bernhardus Wigersheim, pastor at Darmstadt, reacted with disgust to the anticlerical tirades of some local Anabaptists who apparently had suggested that Luther, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius were false prophets, deceivers of the people, and servants of the devil, while all who followed their teaching belonged in Satan’s church. Maurus and Wigersheim replied that these Anabaptists merely misused the scriptures to promote their error and ‘satanic gath-

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ering,’ all proof that they had given themselves over to the devil.116 Moreover, in their 1530 contribution to the anti-Anabaptist propaganda, the Lutheran pastors of Ansbach, Andreas Althamer and Johann Rurer, condemn the spiritualistic Anabaptists together with the so-called ‘Dreamers,’ who were a non-Anabaptist group in the neighbouring village of Uttenreuth that likewise relied on visions and held unorthodox views on marriage. Such groups, the pastors assert, relied on ‘dreams, visions, and other similar spirits of the devil,’ and were responsible for calling down God’s wrath on all Germans.117 Because they rejected proper preaching and an authoritative scripture, they were ‘not of God but of the devil,’ alluring the people with the ‘lying, devilish and seducing spirit.’118 Althamer and Rurer describe spiritualizers as ‘poisonous seducers and dreamers’ and ‘servants and messengers of the devil.’119 And they allege that the spiritualizers are plotting even worse crimes: ‘Therefore let everyone be warned of these devilish spirits and avoid them, for one may justifiably be concerned that they will not stop with this fanaticism. As soon as their devilish voice drives them they will begin to murder, kill and shed blood. They will undertake to destroy the government, cause all kinds of grief, and say that God’s voice told them to do it.’120 All pastors and preachers, they conclude, ‘should admonish the people most earnestly in their preaching to avoid such horrible sects and fanaticisms.’121 The long-term effects on the minds of parishioners of such a vigorous preaching campaign against members of an alleged diabolical plot can readily be imagined, especially as it harked back to the anti-Waldensian polemic of the previous century. However, not all Lutheran leaders took this hard-line approach, at least not in the early years. Luther’s major lieutenant, Philip Melanchthon, did not once mention the devil or bewitchment in his 1528 condemnation of Anabaptist theology, perhaps because his work was composed before the rise of the Münster kingdom.122 After Münster, however, more Lutherans characterized the Anabaptists as diabolical agents. For example, in his 1536 advice to Landgrave Philipp of Hesse regarding Anabaptists, Adam Krafft (1493–1558) describes them as ‘blinded by the devil,’ possessed of such ‘a heathenish abuse and diabolical mixture’ that ‘no one can tell what they are, Christian, Jew, papists, or Turks.’ As ready proof that they were ‘blinded and possessed by the devil,’ Krafft points to the fact that they ‘hate God’s word and the church,’ and that ‘they so willingly go to death, to fire, to water.’ Were they as ‘physically possessed by the devil,’ he attests, as ‘they are spiritually possessed, then one would have to place them in chains and shack-

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les and keep them in a hospital until they die,’ a remedy Krafft still recommended for them. In other words, the only way Krafft could explain the behaviour of Anabaptists was by a diagnosis of madness brought on by intense, spiritual demonic possession.123 This seems to have been an interpretation shared by the controversial physician Paracelsus. According to Erik Midelfort, among other things Paracelsus believed that plagues resulted from the abuse of faith, such as the cult of saints that the devil used to increase belief in the divinity of saints rather than in God. With their fixation on particular verses of the Bible, Anabaptists were just as bad, becoming mad by their heretical obsession. By baptizing each other two or three times, heeding visions, and eagerly dying for their beliefs, Paracelsus suggested they had gone insane, a madness he compared to that of ‘St Vitus’s dance,’ which caused those unfortunates afflicted by it to dance uncontrollably for hours, even days, on end: ‘Those who are possessed of the [St Vitus’s] dance have so completely lost their reason that they are reduced to nature, like the Anabaptists, and from their enthusiasm they (both) allow themselves to be burned.’124 For these cases Paracelsus prescribed music as a means of driving away ‘the spirit “Afernoch”’ from whom, Paracelsus believed, ‘the Anabaptists and similar sects of melancholics arose – those who thought that they had seen heaven and God.’125 In their preternatural quest to visit the Otherworld and their fanatical quest for martyrdom, Paracelsus judged the Anabaptists to be as insane as those persons whose symptoms aped those of the possessed and who ‘run back and forth, not knowing in their stupidity where they are going, and flying into rages, some running into fire, others into water. Thus these “believers” have themselves drowned or burned to death because of their deeply bestial understanding.’126 Although many of his contemporaries rejected a diagnosis of mental illness for Anabaptist men and women, Paracelsus’s opinions reflect the perplexity of his contemporaries over the singular behaviour of these radical reformers. At the same time, Paracelsus’s own religious views were hardly orthodox and he happily criticized all confessional orthodoxies, especially with their hidebound tradition or insistence upon literal interpretations of the scriptures. In an unpublished work he wrote about the devil’s assistants, ‘whom we see publicly in the papists and in the Lutherans, Zwinglians, [and] Anabaptists, who allow so many Jewish ordinances to survive.’127 Some of Paracelsus’s religious notions, moreover, parallel those of spiritualists such as Joris, for they both tended to spiritualize ‘the personal devil out of existence.’128

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Perhaps the most thorough justification for the furious assault on Anabaptists penned by a Lutheran came from the quill of Urbanus Rhegius, the major reformer of Lüneburg, in 1536. Rhegius opens this work with the assertion that since the state is ordained by God to protect its subjects from ‘error in the faith,’ it must ‘prevent, with the sword, the slandering of the most holy name of God through heresy,’ for ‘heresy, the devil’s own work, has brought with it revolt and murder.’129 Court officials were to try to convert the errant first in case they had been ‘enticed into error by the seducers’ out of ignorance or ‘pure simplemindedness’ and may instead be misled members of the elect.130 However, if they prove resistant to correction, then the government must surgically remove the offending member, for heresy is worse than murder as it leads people to the devil.131 Anabaptists, moreover, ‘do things in secret and conspire’ and seek to destroy matrimony, all through the inspiration of the evil spirit.132 The unfortunate experience of Münster was, for Rhegius, the natural outcome of Anabaptism: ‘It is known with what cunning and hypocrisy Satan with a thousand tricks misled poor Münster in Westfalia, and if he had shot false teaching in one or two articles into the heart of people, he would have won. He continued so pitifully to seduce and blind people that they became raving animals, and that normal understanding, which even the heathen have, was extinguished in them. Finally, no error was too great, no unchastity too shameful, but Satan led them into it, so that, indeed we could see, yes, actually grasp the same evil spirit in our Anabaptists that drove the senseless Circumcellions into all their wickedness.’133 Finally, Rhegius urges his lord of Lüneburg to attend seriously to this matter, for ‘what the Anabaptist devil (we do not now want to accuse the poor misled people of desperate wickedness) has in mind with his rebaptism, your princely grace’s neighbours, the Westfalians, may well indicate.’134 Paracelsus’s belief that there was a specific demon for Anabaptism seems to have been widely shared among Lutherans after Münster. Even Melanchthon changed tack after 1535, as seen in a 1557 declaration of Lutheran leaders condemning the Anabaptists, which affirmed that despite their possessing some truth, Anabaptists presented only a false holiness and were in truth a ‘devilish seduction’ that must be opposed from the pulpit and, because of their essentially rebellious nature, by the state.135 Among those features of Anabaptism condemned by Melanchthon were its alleged claims of special enlightenment; true believers were thus diligently to flee this ‘devil’s spookery.’136 The declaration then provided Lutheran pastors with the procedures to

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follow if they came across any Anabaptists in their parishes, a process not unlike Catholic inquisitorial formularies and one that would lead to a fiery death for the obdurate. For those Lutherans who felt squeamish about burning people for their faith, the signatories reminded them that the ‘devil was openly seen in Münster, with rebellion, lewdness, robbery, and blasphemy.’137 Referring to the Hutterites, the authors avowed that a new, even more dangerous ‘devil’s work’ had arisen in Moravia, where children were taken away from their parents to be raised by the community.138 The image of parents handing their children over to the devil had by the fifteenth century become a stock element of the witch stereotype (see fig. 2c), and while the Lutheran ministers did not make the comparison explicit, there is little doubt that their parishioners, and perhaps the authorities, would have.139 The importance for Lutherans of the protective powers of infant baptism is seen also in a seventeenthcentury story told by the Lutheran preacher Tobias Wagner about a ‘doctor of medicine’ who, while attending a baptism of an infant, was reminded of his own baptism and came to believe that from henceforth he would no longer need to fear the devil. Of course Satan soon afterwards appeared to him in the form of a horned ram, and when the emboldened doctor grabbed the ram, the demon disappeared, leaving only the horns in the doctor’s hands, thus proving the power of infant baptism over Satan for those who faithfully remembered their baptism.140 Another story linking rejection of infant baptism with magical deviance appears from Lutheran Württemberg, where ‘not taking the sacrament was put on the same plane as anabaptism and magic, suggesting an association with heresy or superstition, both directly subversive of the public cult.’141 Just as condemnatory was Justus Menius, Lutheran preacher at Eisenach, who in 1544 depicted the Anabaptists as rejecters of the Bible, baptism, and the sacrament and hence as members of the devil’s church.142 Menius then strengthened the importance of bringing children ‘through baptism to the Lord’ so that they could be ‘purified from sin, delivered from eternal death and from the devil’s dominion’ and become children of life.143 For orthodox Lutherans, exorcism and infant baptism were key means to deliver infants from the kingdom of Satan. Even when Lutheran writers were opposing Catholic miracles, Anabaptism could provide useful propaganda. For example, according to Philip Soergel, in the polemical debate of the 1560s and 1570s regarding the miracles of the Regensburg shrine, Protestants suggested that the Jews, working through the devil, had cast a spell on the site

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(their former synagogue), and then Satan worked through the city’s priest, Balthasar Hubmaier, whose preaching against the Jews had forced their expulsion. In one version of the story, the chronicler Enoch Widmann made Hubmaier into a sorcerer, who created the pilgrimage through black magic. Although not mentioned by Soergel, Hubmaier’s bad reputation had at least as much to do with his later activity as an Anabaptist leader and mass baptizer as with his role as an anti-Semitic Catholic priest. Activities at the Regensburg shrine, such as frenzied dancing, provoked considerable debate among Protestants, and in one case the Lutheran physician Wolfgang Reichart described such phenomena as ‘collective melancholia.’ He also diagnosed the prophetic activities of the group around the southern German Anabaptist leader Augustin Bader in similar terms.144 Around mid-century a new conflict arose that intensified the rhetoric considerably: whether or not to exorcize infants as part of the baptismal ceremony. In general, Calvinists rejected the practice as a remnant of Catholic magic while Lutherans accepted it as a useful ritual if only to comfort parents. However, by the 1550s many Lutheran pastors were dropping it from their services as a result of Calvinist influence. As Adam Crato, a Lutheran pastor in Magdeburg, warned in a treatise against the Calvinist reforms in neighbouring Anhalt, to remove the rite of exorcism from Luther’s baptismal book implied that ‘Christian children prior to holy baptism are not heathens, nor under the authority of Satan, nor physically nor spiritually possessed.’145 The power of the devil must not be underestimated, he cautioned, for demons were everywhere, wishing ‘to establish their dwelling in the children.’146 For their part, Calvinistminded Lutherans accused their more orthodox brethren of teaching that a pregnant woman might carry a possessed fetus or ‘physical devil,’ something that Crato and many others had frequently to contradict.147 A comparison between the Calvinist practice with the even worse Anabaptist heresy of rejecting infant baptism along with exorcism therefore became an obvious polemical ploy, so that those who opposed exorcism were accused of spiritualistic or Anabaptist sympathies.148 For example, in 1552 the Lutheran reformer of northern Germany, Johan Bugenhagen (1485–1558), wrote on the fate of children who died before baptism. Here he argued that the devil was using Anabaptists to trap unbaptized children into joining his hellish mob. The result, he added, is that in a household run by pious parents, if the children are not baptized, the angels in the house would soon be outnumbered by demons, and all would be drawn into the devil’s kingdom.149 Given the wide-

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spread belief that witches produced and used unexorcized children in their nefarious rituals and potions, it is possible that news of Anabaptists steadfastly refusing to protect infants from diabolical influence would increase fears of such infanticide. That Lutheran leaders also sought to contain fears that unbaptized infants who died would become revenants plaguing the living reveals the substratum of popular beliefs that often resisted efforts at reform.150 The opinions of Bugenhagen were seconded by Erasmus Alberus, Lutheran superintendent of New Brandenburg, who in 1553 composed a treatise against the teachings of Andreas Karlstadt and his supposed followers, the Anabaptists and ‘sacramentarians,’ who had been created by the devil and who rejected baptism and promoted adultery as a ‘work of mercy and brotherly love.’151 Despite this opposition, Luther delivered thousands ‘possessed by the devil’ and lost in the clutches of the papacy.152 In a 1565 tract Alberus yoked together the Calvinist baptismal rite with the Anabaptist, despite the fact that like the Lutherans, Calvinists baptized infants. Even his Calvinist-minded confreres, he argued, would have to admit that Anabaptist baptism was the same as being ‘baptized a second time in the name of the devil.’ 153 He also uttered the opinion that ‘Turks, Jews, heathens, Anabaptists, Calvinists, baptism mockers [Tauffschender], do not bring their children to Christ but prevent them from coming into the kingdom of heaven; they are infanticides, placing their own children into the hellish dragon in wrath.’154 Like Crato, Alberus was forced to contradict the Calvinist criticism that Lutheran exorcism was merely an ‘adjuration of sorcerers’ leading parents to fear that expectant mothers carried in their wombs a demon-possessed fetus, showing once again how widespread this belief was.155 It is quite possible that some people believed that the Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism contributed to increased cases of demonic possession or diabolic infanticide. As noted, these polemical treatises by Alberus and Bugenhagen were part of a much larger pamphlet and pulpit war on the question of paedobaptismal exorcism. Around the same time (the 1550s and 1560s) Lutherans were linking particular vices to specific demons, encompassed in a new popular literary genre, the Devil books (Teufelbücher).156 To many contemporaries, Robert W. Scribner notes, it seemed ‘as though the devil and demonic spirits had become wilder and more incalculable, attested by the remarkable efflorescence of Protestant demonology, which by the second half of the sixteenth century attained the level of an obsession.’157 Conterminously with this learned fascination with the diabolical and the polemical battle over

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exorcism there was a dramatic rise in demonic possession cases in Lutheran Germany, some of them quite spectacular events involving large groups of afflicted people.158 The propaganda campaign among Lutheran pastors was carried by sermon and pamphlet to the populace at large, and the rhetoric of the diabolical dangers of not exorcizing or baptizing infants led many to expect an increased level of demonic possession. Midelfort summarizes one contemporary example of prodigy literature, Job Fincel’s Wunderzeichen, as ‘entirely conceived in the spirit of proving that the rising tide of monstrous births, fiery signs in the heavens, and devilish interventions in the shape of storms, disasters, and demonic possessions gave proof of the imminent end of the world.’159 Pastors also used the increased interest in demonic possession as a means of chastizing their flock, which they thought were ‘full of Sadducees, Epicureans, and self-satisfied worldlings, who refused to recognize the reality of the spirit world.’160 These pastors were assisted by Satan, for several possessions resulted in ‘revival sermons and angelic visions,’161 a parallel to Catholic exorcisms wherein the devil apparently performed a similar didactic service for the gathered audience. Calvinist Propaganda: ‘All the Devils of Hell Have Been Loosed’ In contrast, most Calvinist propagandists did not make magical allusions when writing about the Anabaptists, for both the Reformed and Anabaptists rejected Catholic ritual as religious magic or hocus-pocus.162 The Reformed position on this subject is illustrated quite clearly by the anonymous The fall of the Roman Church, with all of its idolatry, whereby one may know and mark the difference between the first church ... and the damned church, published in 1556. In this sharply polemical work the author strongly averred that the Catholic priests who have persecuted the true church were worse than sorcerers when they claimed to transform bread into Christ himself. He argued, ‘what difference is there between these sorcerers who make an evil spirit enter a crystal, or on their fingernail, or some in a mirror, when you [priests] will conjure Christ to enter into a piece of bread, and you say that you could have him as quickly as you were able to speak these words, “Hoc est corpus meum” [this is my body].’163 The hypocrisy of a church that persecuted magicians for trying to conjure spirits while at the same time it performed similarly magical or demonic conjurations in the Eucharist was a popular theme in Calvinist anti-Catholic propaganda. Against Mennonites, however, Calvinist writers generally attempted to

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use rational and biblical arguments to show that the Mennonites were wrong in their rejection of infant baptism and maintenance of Hoffman’s and Menno’s heavenly flesh of Christ doctrine. In the Dutch Republic, moreover, there was some acknowledgment that many Mennonites were living godly lives.164 Such pious reputations, when combined with the stinging anticlerical rebukes directed by Anabaptists against Protestant ministers for their educational elitism, close association with oppressive governments, and lax disciplinary standards, presented a real problem for Reformed clerics. In their efforts to distinguish Mennonites from themselves, some Calvinists used demonizing rhetoric against their Mennonite opponents. For example, Guy de Bres (d.1567), Reformed pastor in the French-speaking Low Countries, attempted to persuade both the Habsburgs and William of Orange to support the Calvinists, composing in 1565 an anti-Anabaptist treatise entitled La Racine, source, et fondement des Anabaptistes ou Rebaptizes de Nostre Temps, as a means of identifying the true heretics.165 He happily passed on the stories of the Amsterdam naaktloopers who proclaimed the ‘naked truth’ on Amsterdamers and other infamous actions of visionary Anabaptists to prove that they were ‘driven by a strange spirit’ and that they had ‘abandoned God’s Word for the Devil’s deceit.’166 Interestingly, one of his complaints about the naaktloopers was that the women participants had broken Paul’s stricture against women appearing in the ‘church or community’ with uncovered heads.167 The well-known divisiveness among the Anabaptists further proved that they were inspired by the ‘spirit of lies’ rather than the spirit of truth.168 Such sentiments were seconded by the fiery Calvinist preacher Hermannus Moded (1520?–1603), a prominent reform leader who later also acted as a spy for the States of Holland.169 In his Thorough report of the first origins of the Anabaptist sects, Moded especially condemned the spiritualists, such as David Joris, Hendrik Niclaes, and the ‘miracle man’ Robert Robertson. According to Moded, Joris was correctly named the ‘devil of Delft,’ a ‘devilish man’ who had promoted a ‘godless, devilish freedom’ and whose opinion that the devil was nothing more than an individual’s evil thoughts contributed to Niclaes’s belief that the demons would be saved at the end. Robertson’s supposed miracles were frauds duping other Mennonites into joining his sect over the dozens of others.170 Their hairsplitting and banning were in themselves signs of the diabolical origins of the Anabaptists, and in any event, ‘each one of these sects is of the devil’s synagogue,’ an inflammatory phrase given its earlier application to the witches’ sabbat.171

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While he linked sorcery and the devil primarily to the Catholics, Philip Marnix van Saint Aldegonde, Calvinist associate of William of Orange, concluded in his 1569 The Beehive of the Holy Roman Church that with the rise of Anabaptism, the debacle of Münster, and the persecution of believers, ‘so much confusion has been instituted that it appears that all the devils of hell have been loosed in order to turn the world upside down.’172 Even so, most Dutch Reformed writers accused Mennonites and spiritualists of misinterpreting the scriptures, and only rarely depicted them as demonic. Conclusion Apart from performing a self-fulfilling function when it came to apocalyptic expectations of demonic attacks on the church, the Catholic and Lutheran depiction of Anabaptism as a demonic heresy succeeded in keeping the heresy fires burning nearly to the end of the century. Many magistrates and princes became convinced that Anabaptists and Mennonites were a sufficient threat to the state and church to treat their offences as a crimen exceptum that allowed for the relaxation of normal judicial procedures and the heavy application of torture. For both Catholic and Lutheran theologians, moreover, the Anabaptist and Calvinist denial of any form of sacramental realism was depicted as a libertine challenge ultimately leading to atheism. Thus, as we shall see, Catholic magistrates of some southern Netherlandic regions could ignore the blatant heresy of large Calvinist minorities while they persecuted the small, hardly visible Mennonite fellowships with a fervour completely out of keeping with any real political threat. One important reason for this was the polemical rhetoric promoting belief in the threat of small, nearly invisible groups of radical heretics. In the northern Netherlands, Dutch Calvinist writers were much more restrained in the use of demonizing rhetoric against Mennonites, and were far more moderate than Calvin himself.173 They in fact engaged in dialogue with Mennonites that would have been unthinkable to a Verlinde, Munters, or Menius. Most important were the discussions held between Menno Simons and the Reformed leader Martin Micron in February 1554 in Wismar. This disputation was continued by pamphlet in 1556 after Micron had printed his version of the debate and Menno responded quite angrily, believing that Micron had intentionally twisted his meaning at several points. Menno’s fuming aside, it seems that Micron was not as guilty of distortion as his opponent

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claimed, while Micron accused Menno of unfairly imputing evil intentions to him.174 Even though tainted by misunderstanding and polemical requirements, these published summaries of the Wismar debate reveal again that Calvinists were engaged in much more vigorous theological battles against Catholics and Lutherans than against the Mennonites, and many of these theological disagreements with Catholic and Lutheran foes actually led to bloodshed. This too was illustrated at the Wismar meeting, for just days after the meeting ended in an acrimonious shouting match, the Wismar magistrates, incited by the fervent Rostock Lutheran preacher Henrich Smedenstede, drove both the Mennonite and Reformed groups out of town because they were ‘desecrators of the sacraments.’175 Micron’s incredible efforts to keep the discussions going despite Menno’s frequent complaints and threats to leave reveal that at least some Netherlandic Reformed leaders believed the Mennonites to be very close to their own position and that a serious dialogue between the two camps could bring them together. That said, many ultra-Calvinist Dutch preachers strenuously pushed their regents severely to restrict the religious freedom of the Mennonites, but to little avail. These ministers continued also to agitate for a Genevan style of supervision over religion and morals, and this too the regents were unwilling to grant. Yet no Reformed preacher (of which I am aware) advocated the death penalty for Anabaptists, and while the other restrictions they pushed for were still oppressive, the end of criminal trials and executions was a major boon to the Mennonite and spiritualist communities.176 We will now turn to the practical results of these varying levels of demonization in the next several chapters as we survey the intriguing record of Anabaptist and witch persecutions, first in the northern and southern Low Countries, and then in Lutheran and Catholic areas of the Holy Roman Empire.

3 Shamans and Soothsayers: The Persecution of Anabaptists and Witches in the Northern Netherlands

Oh Babylon, Babylon, all the blood of the witnesses of Jesus Christ from the creation of the world to its end shall be demanded of you and of your servants. For the sorcerers who conjure up demons are more holy than you who are the whorish church. What difference is there between these sorcerers through whom an evil spirit enters into a crystal and from there into their [finger]nail or some into a mirror; but you command Christ to enter into a piece of bread and believe that you could have him as often as you say the words, ‘this is my body.’ The Fall of the Romish Church, with all its idolatry, attributed to the Reformed preacher Martin Micron, 15561

In his survey of the witch-hunts Brian Levack notes several regions where witchcraft trials began at the same time that heresy trials ended, a correspondence seen in France and Catholic Cologne, where the bishop ended prosecution of Anabaptists and began trials of witches in 1605.2 Although this pattern is not always discernible, he argues that heresy and witchcraft trials both aimed to eliminate ‘individuals who were believed to be in league with Satan and corrupting society.’3 Levack’s suggestion has been confirmed by William Monter, who notes that the apparent rise of Anabaptism from the ashes of the German Peasants’ War of 1525 and the fear of further sedition provoked by these religious dissenters led princes to secularize heresy trials in the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, and eventually elsewhere in Europe.4 Monter then asks, If European witchcraft doctrine was quite well developed by the late fifteenth century, with an acceleration of recorded trials and deaths in several

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Map 1: The Habsburg Netherlands.

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places and with the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486, why was this doctrine largely kept on the shelf until the final third of the sixteenth century? Why was the Malleus never reprinted between 1520 (a pregnant date!) and 1585? Why was the theoretical secularisation of most of the doctrines in the Malleus only completed after 1580 by such legally-trained demonologists as Jean Bodin? And, when witch-hunting revived across western Europe after 1560, why did it spread so far and accelerate so quickly? One crucial part of the answer is that so many governments had previously secularised heresy trials by the 1530s.

While leafing through the 1562 criminal records for Toulouse, Monter found the death sentences for two Huguenots on one page and on the next ‘the first two death sentences from France’s earliest known major witch-hunt.’5 The transition from the persecution of Anabaptists and other heretics to that of ‘old women’ accused of diabolical magic was one that was noticed already in 1567 by the perceptive physician Johann Weyer, who in his German translation of De praestigiis daemonum described the principal effect of the manifold deceptions of Satan as religious intolerance: ‘So it is that the matter has developed among us to the point that each one in his received religion cannot tolerate the meaning of the other (even though he is normally quiet, charming and gracious toward everyone, not rebellious, but godfearing), and even though there is no divisiveness in the chief articles of our Christian faith but only in the form or time or some changes of the ceremonies or religion or words or matters that do not touch the saving Articles of the true, established faith.’ He then comments on ‘these last troublesome times’ that have been ‘fomented by Satan through the rebellious Anabaptists’ against godly people such as the magistrates of Bremen to whom he had dedicated this edition. This bloodthirstiness has not ended, but has escalated with ‘many terrifying, gruesome murder-benches among all our fellow Christians against the well-meaning [arbeitsaligen], old, mistaken women, which people call old sluttish [Altvetlische] witches, monstrous [unholdsalige] sorcerers.’6 For Weyer, religious persecution was being transformed into witch-hunting by those infected with bloodlust. Unlike heresy, witchcraft has been an endemic feature of human culture, especially in the interpersonal conflict among neighbours within small communities.7 However, what escalated local conflicts into the infamous witch-hunts was the development of belief in a diabolical conspiracy between Satan and a sect of followers who met secretly at night

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to perform perverse religious and sexual rites and plot the overthrow of Christian society (see figs 2 and 3).8 By the early fifteenth century the learned rhetoric against pious Waldensians had been fused with popular and learned beliefs about witches, leading to the elaboration of this sectarian diabolical conspiracy. One of the key triggers in this development was the ability to extract confessions of diabolism from a number of Waldensian masters who had claimed preternatural powers and the ability to visit the Otherworld.9 Although by the start of the Reformation the fusion of Waldensians and witches was breaking apart and interest in witch-hunting waning, the Reformation’s intense apocalyptic fervour revived fears that Satan was redoubling efforts to destroy the church prior to the return of Christ.10 Until roughly the 1560s the focus was on eradicating religious heretics as Satan’s minions, while witches were tried only as individuals or in small groups. We have already seen how many Catholic and Lutheran propagandists tried to demonize the Anabaptists by associating them with sorcery. We will now consider how jurists, magistrates, and preachers responded to those Anabaptists who actually made charismatic claims comparable to the fifteenth-century Waldensians. In the Netherlands learned jurists did not consider charging their accused with witchcraft, suggesting that the intellectual climate of the region was quite distinct from that of the fifteenth-century Alpine valleys. Since the theory of witchcraft now already included a potentially sectarian component, jurists may not have felt any compulsion to create a new fusion. Anabaptists in the Interrogation Room An initial answer to the question of how the diabolical rhetoric influenced the judicial treatment of Anabaptists can be found in a survey of the published court records relating to Dutch Anabaptism.11 These official documents summarize the interrogations as recorded by the prosecutors, while the Anabaptist martyr writings, particularly Het Offer des Heeren (The Sacrifice of the Lord, 1570) and other prison writings, offer something of the perspective of the arrested Anabaptists.12 As with most secular court materials, the Anabaptist records present very skimpy summaries of the proceedings; however, several things can be gleaned from them. What court officials wanted most were confessions regarding the Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism and transubstantiation and the practice of adult baptism, which was typified as a renunciation of one’s original baptism and Christian society, while the

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accused admitted to regarding infant baptism as ineffectual and consecrated Hosts as ordinary bread. Some Anabaptist parents were discovered because they had illegally refused to have their infants baptized.13 During the height of Anabaptist activity in Amsterdam in 1534 a rumour arose that midwives were smuggling newborn infants out of the city. When asked about this by the Habsburg’s stadholder Count van Hoogstraten, Amsterdam’s magistrates denied any knowledge of the crime, doubting that such duplicity was even possible.14 The ability of many Anabaptists to hide their unbaptized infants from the authorities, however, may have led to increased suspicion regarding midwives, who, perhaps not surprisingly, figured largely in demonological treatises, such as the Malleus Maleficarum, although they were not as prominent as accused in witch trials.15 As with the case of midwives suspected of witchcraft, the presumed collusion between midwives and Anabaptist parents finally led the Groningen authorities in 1569 to issue a decree ordering that all midwives be examined by the States General to see ‘if they are Catholic and of good reputation’ before being allowed to perform their work in the region.16 Especially after Anabaptists had come to dominate Münster in late 1533, authorities sought to uncover the conspiracy of Anabaptism, to extract from the accused the names of all others who had attended the ‘seditious’ secret meetings to plot insurrection.17 The imperial warrant against Menno Simons of 7 December 1542 described him as deceiving the simple people with his false teaching during secret, nocturnal meetings.18 Like diabolical witchcraft, the crime of rebaptism was treated as an exceptional crime of ‘lese majestatis,’ of treason against both divine and human authority.19 The concern over heresy had therefore been heightened to the level of a secret and dangerous conspiracy. Mandate after mandate ordered local officials and clergy to uncover people hiding in attics or cellars,20 to keep their eyes on any who did not attend yearly confession or Mass, and to report on the kind of lives they led, those with whom they associated, any ‘secret meetings’ at their homes, as well as to relate the presence of any strangers in their midst.21 To underscore the authorities’ seriousness regarding the presumed Anabaptist threat, those convicted of such heresy were burned at the stake, although under certain conditions the accused might be accorded the mercy of a drowning or beheading. Charles V went to the extreme of establishing in 1545 a form of the Spanish Inquisition in the Low Countries, coinciding with the zealous proselytizing of both Calvinist and Counter-Reformation activists, espe-

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cially the Jesuits, and together the rhetoric and reality of persecution left their marks on the local populace.22 As we saw in chapter 2 above, Anabaptists were frequently suspected of diabolical leanings, yet the devil figures hardly at all in the published court records. In the four volumes examined, the terms ‘devil’ and ‘diabolical’ appear only seven times, and in two volumes, not at all. Only in one case was the term used by an accused Anabaptist. One of the reasons for the apparent neglect of the devil was the accused’s open rejection of the religious magic of Catholic ritual and demonology. Most revealing is the confession of the Anabaptist leader Adraien ‘the Oneeyed’ Pieterszoon, who on 12 May 1534 admitted to the Amsterdam magistrates that he had told some people processing to the ‘Holy Place’ (Helige Stede) shrine memorializing the city’s miracle of an incombustible Host that the bread and cheese in his hands were as good as the bread preserved in the shrine’s monstrance. He offered to stab consecrated Hosts to prove they could not bleed, asserting that the Host was merely baked bread and priests could not make gods, for God was in heaven. When challenged by the city’s bailiff (schout) with the daily miracles performed at the shrine, Adriaen replied, ‘the devil can perform these miracles as well as God.’23 This, the only reference to the devil recorded from the lips of an Anabaptist in these sources, clearly reveals how Anabaptists renounced belief in sacred objects and places. At the same time, Adraien’s threat to stab eucharistic bread to see if it bleeds is shockingly identical to the accusations of Host desecration made against Jews, which confirmed the reality of transubstantiation in the face of sceptics.24 Adriaen and his cohorts were able to tap into growing suspicion of the veracity of the Catholic miraculous tradition; in the same year as Adriaen’s boast, city fathers heard several complaints about Amsterdamers who closed their doors and windows when the processional priests carrying the blessed Host to the ‘Holy Place’ passed by.25 Adriaen’s comments were a direct challenge not only to official theology, but to popular religion and magical thinking. That Anabaptists were not altogether successful in severing themselves from a magical universe is seen from the other references to the devil in these volumes, all of which came from interrogators or hostile chroniclers. Several events revealed the importance of visions and miraculous portents for Anabaptists, such as the apparition in the sky over Münster of a man with bloody hands reported on 17 May 1535 to Amsterdam’s magistrates by the Anabaptist Jacob van Campen. In Amsterdam some Anabaptists expected the sign of a three-day cloud of

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darkness that was to divide the city between the old and new sides and herald the bloodless victory over the godless. The validity of such ‘signs and wonders,’ however, was determined by established criteria of authenticity relating to the movement’s apocalyptic framework; i.e., a vision was bona fide if it conformed to the teachings of the prophet, whether Melchior Hoffman or Jan Matthijs, and confirmed the nearness of the end and the righteousness of the Anabaptist cause. Within this structure, however, there could be considerable room for interesting developments.26 We will look at only a couple of the more notorious incidents of early Dutch Anabaptism: the ‘naked runners’ of Amsterdam and the ’tZandt affair. On the evening of 11 February 1535 a small group of eleven Anabaptists (seven men and four women) was led by their prophet, the tailor and Chambers of Rhetoric actor Heynrick Heynricxz – who had already been sent on a pilgrimage for participating in a scandalous play – to remove and burn their clothes in an upper room and then run out into the streets of the city crying ‘woe, woe over the world and the godless,’ proclaiming the ‘naked truth’27 (see fig. 1). Prior to this act the prophet had claimed not only to have seen and spoken to God, but to having visited heaven and hell, assertions identical to those earlier shamanistic Waldensian masters.28 Inspired by his words, one disciple placed a burning coal in his mouth, believing it would not burn him and that by doing so he would no longer require food. During their interrogation, the defendants refused to put on any clothing and said strange things that puzzled Gerrit van Assendelft, president of the Court of Holland in The Hague, who wondered if the accused were possessed: ‘It is a strange thing to see these naked people, springing like wild folk. It leads one to think that some of them are possessed by the devil, although they speak pertinently, with good understanding, and say strange, unheard-of things that would take too long to write.’29 Evidently the province’s chief jurist considered a diagnosis of diabolical possession, but ultimately rejected it because not all of the accused exhibited all of the known characteristics of possession, and some appeared instead to maintain their faculty of reason.30 It must also be noted here that if the Anabaptists had been declared possessed, they would have been treated with exorcisms. Yet Van Assendelft decided against turning these Anabaptists into witches. Why? As a follower of Erasmus it seems Van Assendelft was predisposed to be sceptical of diabolical conspiracy theories, instead considering extreme Anabaptist behaviour to be a result of delusion or disturbance

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from ignorance, poverty, and hardship.31 While he went so far as to suggest that this particular group might have been possessed by demons, he did not take the next step either to test this possibility, nor to ponder if their behaviour was caused by a more sinister, explicit diabolical pact. Van Assendelft was not alone here, as many Netherlandic humanists and theologians were sceptical of the full-blown demonic witch stereotype. Instead, this jurist treated many Anabaptist women with considerable mildness, although his rationale for doing so – because of female ‘simplicity’ – was not far removed from the misogyny of witch persecutors.32 There was no pressure in this case to reinterpret the strange preternatural behaviour of Heynrick Heynricxz and his followers as evidence of witchcraft. Judging from these published accounts, suspicion of diabolical possession came up only once more, this time in the reports about the supposed ‘Son of God’ of ’tZandt, Cornelis int Kershof, and the ‘Father,’ Herman Schoenmaker. These two managed to take over leadership of the Anabaptists who had gathered in early 1535 at a farmhouse in ’tZandt, Groningen, waiting for a messenger to lead them into Münster. According to the later account of the Reformed preacher of East Frisia, Gerardus Nicolai, Schoenmaker had told Cornelis to take the mug of beer from his hand and to drink in the Holy Spirit. Upon doing so, Cornelis sprang from his bed and ran among the believers, shouting ‘kill your flesh, kill your flesh, your flesh is your devil, your flesh is your devil.’33 Eventually an old woman came into Cornelis’s room and, witnessing his leaping and ranting, went out to the people crying, ‘oppose the possessed man.’34 However, she was consequently convinced and became another spokesperson of the Son, telling the people to get rid of all fancy clothes, money, and weapons, for God would defeat the godless without the assistance of material supports. When some doubters kept back possessions, she told the audience to ‘cast out the oppressing devil’ – that is, reliance on gold and silver. However, the sceptics could not be silenced and apparently one of them grabbed the Son and shoved him ‘up to his ears in dung’ in the barnyard, saying, ‘now you lay in the pit of hell.’35 When the Münster messenger Antonis Kistemaker arrived, he was dismayed at the turn of events and kicked Cornelis out of the house. Nicolai records that Cornelis flew so quickly over the frozen watering hole that some said ‘the devil must have carried him over.’36 The Anabaptists dispersed with the news that an armed force under the command of the stadholder of Groningen, Karel van Guelders, was on its way.

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Can these reports of strange activities be believed? Certainly Nicolai was no friend of Anabaptists and sought to portray them in the darkest possible colours. Learned writers were clearly at a loss to interpret such unusual religious behaviour without recourse to theories of possession; Phillip Melanchthon too explained the behaviour of the Münster Anabaptists, with their strange kingdom, polygamy, and community of goods, by a diagnosis of demonic possession.37 However, like Van Assendelft, Melanchthon did not go any further and apply witchcraft theory to Münsterite Anabaptism. At the same time there is little doubt about the veracity of the naked runners’ account and there seems no reason to dispute Nicolai’s report out of hand. However, what is most important for our purposes is not to determine if the accounts are completely accurate, but to learn from them what the authorities believed about Anabaptists and their supposed connection with the devil. Based on Nicolai’s story it appears that the Anabaptist tendency to internalize the devil as the inner flesh or allegorize it as reliance on ungodly aids was well known. It does not appear, moreover, that the Erasmian-minded authorities of Amsterdam (at least before the notorious Anabaptist assault on the city hall on 10 May 1535) took very seriously a diabolical conspiracy (see fig. 5). The elite judges were not predisposed to turn Anabaptist heretics into witches, despite the strange, ‘possessed-like’ behaviour of some of their number. Instead, to be a demoniac was to be regarded as a victim of a demon, rather than a willing partner. Had Van Assendelft’s Catholicism been of a hard-line variety rather than Erasmian, he may have been more inclined to pressure Heynricxz and his fellow naked runners into confessions of sorcery and diabolism. The Anabaptists’ Perspective The accounts of Mennonite trials composed by the victims and collected by an anonymous editor as Het Offer des Heeren offer a glimpse into the perspective of the victims of judicial trials. Unfortunately, merely a handful of Het Offer’s martyrs appear in the published sources surveyed above, and only one of these, the trial of Lysbet Dircxdochter in Leeuwaarden, Friesland, in 1549, adds considerable new detail.38 In this account the officials ask Lysbet, a former nun, what she believes about the ‘most worthy, holy sacrament.’ She responds that she has read in the scriptures nothing of a holy sacrament, only of a Lord’s Supper. To this the gentlemen of the court expostulate, ‘silence, for the devil speaks from your mouth!’ Preparing her for torture, they strip her against her

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will in order to force her to confess the names of her associates.39 She holds firm and is drowned as a heretic. Like many Anabaptist women, Lysbet’s experience in the interrogation room was comparable to that of accused witches; questioned according to a set script, she was stripped and tortured to compel her to reveal the names of her cohorts, and accused of diabolical inspiration. Why was she stripped naked? This cruel act undoubtedly removed any remnant of social status and humiliated the victim, thus breaking down her resistance, but if we take seriously the interrogators’ fear of diabolical interference, we can discern another motive. Witches were almost always stripped, either as a means of finding the devil’s mark on their body or of removing the demon who may have secreted itself in the folds of the cloth.40 Even though Lysbet’s interrogators did not seek to extract a confession of sorcery from her, their utterance about the devil speaking through her suggests that her stripping was similarly linked to fears that a demon may have hidden among her clothing. As we noted in chapter 2 above, her literacy may also have been behind the accusation of diabolical involvement. As seen in this example, and a few more from Het Offer that we will examine now, accusations of diabolical guidance provided one common thread between the two sets of judicial victims. Take, for example, Claesken Gaeledochter, who was executed by the Court of Friesland on 14 March 1559. Claesken recorded that she was asked the standard questions – what she believed about baptism, who had baptized her, why she had not baptized her children. Then she added ‘these are the questions which he [the inquisitor] asked me. But he had many more words, and when I did not answer him well, then he said that I had the devil of muteness in me, for the devil places himself as an angel of light in us, which was true of all heretics.’41 When two monks were brought in to convince her of her errors, Claesken noted that because of her stubbornness they too insisted she was controlled by the devil: ‘The beginning and end was that I had the devil in me, and that I was deceived.’42 After the inquisitor compared her rebaptism with the baptism of a Jew – which by this time was believed to be of little effect43 – Claesken wrote that ‘all he kept saying was that we had it all from the devil, and that we had the devil of pride in us.’ Faced with Claesken’s intransigence, the inquisitor concluded that the devil had called her. She refuted this conclusion by asking, ‘is the devil now of such a nature that he rejects the evil and does the good?’ For that was what she and her colleagues had done in their baptism.44

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That by the middle of the century the authorities took very seriously the rumour that Mennonites were possessed by the devil is seen also in the case of Jan Geertszn, tried in The Hague in 1564 and burned there on 15 December. Hanging on the infamous strappado by his wrists, which were tied behind his back, Jan refused to give the names of his coreligionists. The interrogator ordered him lowered to the floor, so that the ‘mute devil might speak more easily.’ When that failed to loosen Jan’s tongue, the president of the court apparently exclaimed, ‘Have you no stout guards who can drive out this demon of muteness?’45 Evidently believing that this heretic was possessed by a devil of muteness in order to withstand the torture, Jan’s interrogators were puzzled that even further pain could not cast out this stubborn demon. Such explanations were commonplace in witch interrogations. Jan instead credited his silence to divine assistance. One of the fullest interrogation accounts was provided by Jacques, a Mennonite interrogated in Leeuwarden several times in January and February 1558 by William Verlinde, whose views about Anabaptists we have already examined. Here the issue of the presence of the body of Christ in the consecrated wafer evoked a heated discussion, with Jacques calling the Host an idol and Verlinde affirming the power inherent in the sacrament.46 From the beginning the commissioner of the court told Jacques that Mennonite leaders such as Menno and Leonard Bouwens had deceived him and his co-religionists, ‘leading them all to the demons and damnation.’47 When the inquisitor argued that the sacrament worked by virtue of the power inherent in the words spoken originally by Christ, regardless of the moral state of the priest, Jacques argued that ‘the power does not lay in the words, for that would be sorcery.’48 Exasperated, the inquisitor – consistent with his published views – blurted out that Jacques’s words were from Satan, not God, a charge that the accused regarded as blasphemy. The real work of Satan, the Anabaptist later mentioned, was to get people caught up in ‘vain disputations’ in order to lead them into foolishness.49 While often accused of being under the lordship of the devil, even to the degree of possession, Anabaptists do not seem to have been pressed into confessing to witchcraft. Instead, they firmly rejected any diabolical influence, asserting that their godly lives gave the lie to this allegation and casting such charges back into the faces of their accusers. Their heroic resistance was undoubtedly another factor in explaining why Anabaptists did not suffer the same fate as Waldensians.

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Such themes are apparent in the Mennonite writings by and about the last Anabaptist heretic to be executed in the northern Netherlands, Reytse Ayssesz van Oldeboorn, drowned in Leeuwarden on 23 April 1574 by order of the bishop, who apparently had personally interrogated Ayssesz. The short sentence report in the court records merely recounts that the accused was an unrepentant heretic, although Ayssesz’s own letters sent from his months-long imprisonment are more revealing.50 As a song memorializing his suffering put it, the priests had insisted that ‘God was in their Sacrament,’ to which Ayssesz had argued ‘he does not come between your teeth,’ leading one priest to expostulate that ‘he knew that he [i.e., God] was therein’ even more than he knew his own fingers were real. When Ayssesz was able to rebut the bishop’s arguments ‘with God’s clear word,’ the ecclesiastic apparently became extremely angry, while to another priest Ayssesz asserted that he could have nothing to do with a Lord’s Supper that includes whores and rebels.51 The reality of the sacramental transformations and clerical control over them was the central battleground between these unequal opponents. It was also the major issue behind so much writing by learned theologians on witchcraft. The Persecution of Anabaptists and Witches: Broad Patterns Moving from individual cases to broader patterns we can better discern to what extent the polemical rhetoric influenced governmental opinion or the practice of local courts. As noted above in chapter 2, in Lutheran Germany the polemical strategy of demonizing theological opponents inspired interest in and fears of diabolical possession and other Satanic activity.52 Is there evidence for similar results with respect to the antiAnabaptist rhetoric? To answer this question, we will look at statistics relating to heresy and witch persecutions in Holland, Amsterdam, Friesland, Groningen, and Overijssel for the northern Netherlands and, in the following chapter, the Flemish cities of Bruges, Ghent, and Kortrijk, and the Brabant cities of Brussels and Antwerp for the southern Netherlands. However, to provide a contrast for both south and north, we will first survey the unusual record of heresy persecutions in the French-speaking Duchy of Namur, which followed a late-medieval model of Vauderie persecution and which had a much milder record of heresy persecution compared to its Flemish neighbours. Although such statistical work can tell us little about specific cases, it can help reveal broad patterns that hint at subconscious collective attitudes or social trends.

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Namur The small southern Duchy of Namur provides an interesting and rare example of ‘old style’ witch-hunting that persisted through the sixteenth century. It appears from the surviving court records that between 1509 and 1646 the courts of the duchy tried some 366 individuals for sorcery or witchcraft, many described as ‘valdoise,’ including a mother and daughter tried in 1537. Since the linkage between Waldensians and witches had more or less broken by the sixteenth century, this is a rather late use of this term.53 Of the victims, 152 (42%) were burned at the stake, while a further 69 (19%) were exiled. The majority of these cases concentrated on maleficia, especially using diabolical powders. Most accused were old and poor women, although a number of them were servants and concubines of priests. All of these features fit into the fifteenth-century stereotype of a witch, with some old-style anticlericalism thrown in (e.g., attacking priestly immorality through their partners). References to sabbat activities were relatively rare, although many were accused of renouncing their faith in God and the church, and sacrilegious actions against the sacramental Host were frequent enough. Morever, in 1612–13 the lord of Baulet, Charles de Hosden, was convicted of a variety of crimes, including being baptized in the name of the devil and acting as leader of the band of Satanists.54 Apart from rebaptism, even this case is much more reminiscent of the early political trials against presumed sorcerers than of the later witch-hunts. Over the fourteen decades of witch persecution in Namur, there was an average of just under 26 cases per decade, or 2.59 per year (see table 3.1). In only 36 years of this 136-year period were there no known trials. The obvious high points were the decades of 1600–9 with 64 trials, followed by 1610–19 with 44; then 1550–9 with 39, 1560–9 with 35, 1540–9 with 33, and 1620–9 with 30. The rate of executions generally followed this trend, with an average of 10.86 per decade, rising to 32 during the worst period of 1600–9, followed by 1590–9 with 15, 1610–9 with 14, and the 1550s and 1560s with 13 each. There were also 12 executions each in the 1520s and 1620s. Not surprisingly, given Europe-wide trends, the period from 1590 to 1629 was something of a major persecution, with 162 individuals tried and 73 of them burned in these four decades (an average of 40.5 trials and 18.25 burnings per decade).55 Relative lulls in witch persecution seem to have occurred during the 1530s, 1570s, and 1580s, possibly related to governmental distraction with the new Reformation heretics in the 1530s and events surrounding the war against

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Table 3.1 Witch trials in Namur, by decade, 1510–1649 Decade

Burned

Exiled

Other (includes release)

Total

1510–19 1520–9 1530–9 1540–9 1550–9 1560–9 1570–9 1580–9 1590–9 1600–9 1610–19 1620–9 1630–9 1640–9

11 12 2 11 13 13 6 2 15 32 14 12 8 1

0 4 6 7 8 15 5 1 2 5 7 13 0 1

9 8 7 15 18 7 1 3 7 27 23 5 2 4

20 24 15 33 39 35 12 6 24 64 44 30 10 6

Spain in the 1570s and 1580s. On the whole, however, Namur engaged in a fairly consistent and continuous pattern of witch persecution. For the first half of the sixteenth century, Namur’s witch-hunting followed the older ‘heretical’ model of witchcraft against ‘sorcières et vaudoises,’ such as the infamous trials of Arras during the 1460s.56 What is most telling about the records of persecution for this small territory is that while there was a strong Reformed presence in the city of Namur (until its capture by Don Juan in 1577), and 64 accused ‘Lutherans’ or ‘heretics’ were prosecuted by the Namur courts, only 13 were known to have been executed (25% of 53 cases), 3 by fire, between 1522 and 1589 (see table 3.2).57 Not a single Anabaptist is known to have been tried in the county, never mind executed. The only reference to Anabaptists in the court records discovered by Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat was the April 1534 edict warning parish priests of the growing sect of Anabaptists, and the judges’ efforts in 1545 to discover if Colin Villain had been rebaptized (apparently not).58 There was therefore no persecution of Anabaptists or Mennonites in Namur, probably because there were so few of these dissidents in this French-speaking region. Hence, there was no perceived need on the part of Namur’s authorities to switch their judicial persecution efforts from one diabolical threat to another, and they continued to eliminate the traditional blasphemous enemies of God at a fairly regular rate. Already dealing with a diabolical sect and

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Table 3.2 Heresy trials and executions in Namur, by decade, 1522–1589 Decade

Number (and type) of accused

1522–9 1530–9 1540–9 1550–9 1560–9 1570–9 1580–9

11 (3 ‘Lutherans’; others ‘heresy,’ blasphemy, 11 denial of real presence, etc.) 9 (‘Lutherans’) 11 (‘Lutherans’ or ‘heretics’) 18 (‘heretics’) 11 (‘heretics’) 3 (‘heretics’) 2 (1 ‘Lutheran,’ 1 ‘heretic’)

Totals

64

Executions (s = sword; b = burning) 0 1(s), 2 unknown 2(s), 2(b), 3 unknown 4(s), 3 unknown 3(s), 2 unknown 0 1(b) 10(s), 3(b)

without the new Anabaptist threat, there was also no compelling reason for Namur’s jurists to adopt the full sabbat conspiracy view of witchcraft. Namur’s persecution pattern is distinctive in another regard: the hunting of witches and heretics ebbed and flowed together, whereas in other regions with a significant Anabaptist hunt and without ‘Waldensian’ witches, persecution of heretics and witches alternated. Holland The Dutch province of Holland was the centre of radical, apocalyptic Anabaptism, and the scene of the naaktlooper incident with its shamanastic characteristics. While in 1535 Gerrit van Assendelt had felt no need to turn their otherworldly visits into sorcery, there were a few other moments of convergence between trials of Anabaptists and witches that will require careful attention. Were Holland’s officials able to keep the two forms of heresy – Anabaptism and witchcraft – distinct in all cases? There are two instances discovered by Hans de Waardt where categories are somewhat blurred, as in Beverwijk in 1537 when Lubburch Pietersdr was burned because of a ‘reputation (for being rebaptized) for witchcraft.’ The crossed-out parenthetical statement evidently referred to Lubburch’s earlier identification as an Anabaptist who had fled Texel for Beverwijk because of her religious convictions during the height of anti-Anabaptist investigations there. It appears that Pietersdr’s reputation as an Anabaptist played some part in her identification as a witch, perhaps because witches were typically identified through their reputation for assertiveness or cantankerousness.59 This, the ‘oldest verified

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death sentence for witchcraft in Holland,’60 seems to have reflected a moment of fusion of the two heresies. While it did not snowball into a panic, it may have set something of a precedent for the harsher treatment of witches, and the next execution was in 1542 in Amsterdam, a year in which two Anabaptists were also executed. There are, however, no other known examples of Anabaptists executed for witchcraft. The second case arose in 1539 when the Leiden Anabaptist Claes Claeszn was tried by the Court of Holland, presided over by none other than the same Gerrit van Assendelft who had contemplated demonic possession for the naaktloopers. At the start of Claeszn’s trial Van Assendelft managed to extract from the accused the admission that he was a deacon of the Anabaptist sect, but thereafter Claeszn refused to say a word, despite the application of severe torture. The judge wrote to the Council of the States in Brussels expressing his astonishment that during the course of one interrogation the suspect suddenly stopped making any noise whatsoever. Such, he wrote, ‘seems very strange to all of us and not possible to occur except with the devil’s help or other incantations.’61 We therefore see, four years after the naaktloopers, a movement toward considering diabolism or sorcery as part of the Anabaptist arsenal. Even so, the jurists were unsuccessful in extracting a confession of such from Claeszn. The two crimes were therefore kept distinct. As far as witch-hunting is concerned, Hans de Waardt’s masterly account of witchcraft belief and persecution in the province reveals the political rivalries and familial and neighbourly conflicts that lay behind accusations. Before the 1560s, the magical activities of soothsayers who were hired by the afflicted to identify the individual responsible for the presumed maleficia were prominent features in the origins of legal action. However, there was in this province no hunt for the heretical ‘Vauderie’ that had preoccupied Namur’s inquisitors. Instead, Holland’s secular judges were primarily concerned with the crimes that fell under their jurisdiction, and generally ignored demonological propaganda about a larger conspiracy. In this they seem to have been influenced by Erasmus. For the period of persecution comparable to that of Namur, between 1500 and 1650, De Waardt found a total of 242 cases that made it into the court records (criminal, civil, and ecclesiastical; see table 3.3). Excluding the libel cases and those dealt with by the church authorities, there were 101 individuals brought before the courts on accusations of witchcraft; of these, 37 were executed. Holland’s witch persecution averaged about 6.7 trials and just under 2.5 executions per decade. The difference in population density between urban Holland

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Table 3.3 Witchcraft accusations and trials in Holland, 1500–1650 Decade 1501–10 1511–20 1521–30 1531–40 1541–50 1551–60 1561–70 1571–80 1581–90 1591–1600 1601–10 1611–20 1621–30 1631–40 1641–50 Totals

Criminal cases 4 1 3+ 4 14 11 20 1 22 11 7 1 1 1 0 101

(Executed)

Civil Purge, etc. (libel)

Other (church)

1 1 (1) (5) (7) (8) (10) (5) (1)

(37)

1 1 1 7 3 8 19 9 9 7 5 7 76

3 1 2 1 3 6 3

1

5 2

5 1 12 9 4 4

28

37

Total 5 1 4+ 5 18 13 29 6 30 38 23 25 17 15 13 242

and largely rural Namur was enormous, so that Holland’s moderation stands in clear contrast to Namur’s fairly vigorous witch persecution. Even so, Hollanders witnessed minor peaks of witch-hunting corresponding to economic difficulties in 1540, 1564, 1585, and 1591.62 De Waardt argues that since Holland remained prosperous throughout the later sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century, it did not see the witch panics of its southern neighbour, Brabant.63 De Waardt’s list of witch accusations, however, reveals something else quite interesting: there were five witchcraft trials in Holland between 1528 and 1530, just prior to the appearance of Melchior Hoffman’s brand of Anabaptism, followed by a break until 1537, when trials were renewed and proceeded on an almost yearly basis. This gap between 1530 and 1537 was precisely the period of the greatest Anabaptist activity in the Netherlands and attempts to suppress it, and it seems safe to suggest that the authorities saw in these religious dissidents a serious enough demonic threat to ignore accusations of witchcraft, at least until after the furore over Münster had died down. Moreover, between 1500 and the rise of Anabaptism in the Netherlands around 1530, there were only nine trials of witches in Holland, none of whom are known to have been executed. After 1537, however, persecution of Anabaptists and

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witches continued together, although until 1566 the number of Anabaptists executed dwarfed the comparable figure of witches (thirty-three witches compared to hundreds of Anabaptists). While Holland’s regents may have been reluctant to demonize Anabaptists to the point of turning them into a witch sect, news of the strange doings of the naaktloopers and Münsterites spread abroad, helping convince princes and jurists elsewhere that the demonic threat to social order was serious enough to compel them to execute Satan’s minions.64 Amsterdam More detailed analysis of regional persecution patterns is therefore called for. The chronology of executions in Amsterdam reveals that there were no known witch trials until 1541, when Engel Dirksdr was arrested for witchcraft. While the city fathers had by this time developed considerable expertise in extracting confessions from Anabaptist women who proudly affirmed their unorthodox beliefs, they were caught off guard by new cases involving charges of maleficia, presumably because they had not ‘Waldensianized’ their Anabaptists. Amsterdam’s magistrates therefore sent two aldermen to the court of The Hague for advice, although the jurists there could provide no help except to recommend they approach the religious specialists in Utrecht, who had considerable expertise in trying witches.65 In response, the Utrecht authorities sent to Amsterdam its city secretary, Dirk van Zuylen, and a Franciscan friar, the latter performing an exorcism over the suspect to break the power of the devil and the former assisting in her interrogation and torture. On 7 January 1542 Dirksdr confessed to having made a pact with the devil and performing maleficia; three days later she was burned alive. The following year Amsterdam’s magistrates, again with Van Zuylen’s assistance, came to a different conclusion about another accused witch, Hessel Gerytsdr of Harderwijk, deciding that the accusations of malicious witchcraft were false and that she was guilty merely of soothsaying and of practising counter-magic. She was therefore banned from the city.66 During the height of Anabaptist activity in the Netherlands, c.1531 to 1535, the city’s magistrates and mayors, like Van Assendelft, opposed the rigorous mandates of the Habsburgs and attempted to proceed moderately with suspected Anabaptists. Even so, the first death sentences for rebaptism in the Netherlands were issued in 1531 by the Court of Holland against nine men arrested for proselytizing and rebaptizing in

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Amsterdam; another Anabaptist was executed early in the following year. As a result of this tragedy, Melchior Hoffman, the founder of Dutch Anabaptism, proclaimed a two-year suspension in baptisms, and while over a dozen suspected Anabaptists were given lesser sentences, no one else was executed in Amsterdam until 1534, after the future prophet of Anabaptist Münster, Jan Matthijs, lifted the suspension. Attempts to suppress the militant Anabaptism behind the attempted putsch on the government of Amsterdam led to the judicial slaughter of 13 Anabaptists in 1534 (at least 11 more were banned) and 54 the following year (with a further 27 sent into exile) (see fig. 6). The moderate policy of the city’s mayors was blamed for encouraging the attempted coups, and in 1536 these fairly tolerant patricians were replaced by more hardline Catholic ones. These kept a sharp eye out for Anabaptist activity thereafter, leading to executions of Anabaptists and Mennonites in almost every year until 1553, when there was a break until 1569 (see table 3.4). Major group executions occurred in 1540 (seven, with one suicide in prison); 1549 (ten); 1550 (four); 1552 (six); 1553 (five); and 1569 (eleven). In total, the city was responsible for the judicial deaths of at least 137 Anabaptists (two more died in prison), an execution rate of 3.3 per year over the forty-two years, with clusters of executions in 1534– 5, 1540, 1549, and 1569. There was a major chronological gap in executions between 1554 and 1569 partially due to the unusual actions of the city’s bailiff, Willem Dircxzn who held this office between 1542 and 1566. Although he periodically prosecuted heretics in his early career, his true beliefs came into the open during the last dozen years of his office, when he constantly refused to permit the Catholic magistrates to view the hearing books. In one incident he allowed his Anabaptist daughter to view a judicial document and warn her co-religionists of an impending arrest. The year of the iconoclastic riots (1566–7) did not see a single Anabaptist executed, although the Spanish government (1569–76) revived the practice with a vengeance, and the last two victims were executed in 1572. When Amsterdam joined the Dutch Republic in 1576 it ended secular trials for heresy. During this vicious assault on religious dissidents, Amsterdam’s magistrates were relatively lenient in cases of sorcery. After the execution of Engel Dircksdr in 1542, the city handed out the death sentence to only five more suspected witches, four of them in 1555 and the other in 1564, both autos-da-fé occurring during Dircxzn’s tenure as sheriff, a period when no Anabaptists were executed. Was the sheriff seeking to redirect demonizing attention away from Anabaptists onto witches? We cannot

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Table 3.4 Execution of Anabaptists and trials of witches in Amsterdam, 1531–1573 Year

Execution of Anabaptists Year

1531 1532 1534 1535 1536 1537 1539 1540 1542

9 (burned at The Hague) 1 13 54 1 3 3 7 & 1 suicide in prison 2 1542

1543 1544 1545 1547 1549 1550 1552 1553 1555

1560 1564 1566 1569 1571 1572 1573

Trials and execution of witches

1543

1 – Engel Dirksdr executed (trial began in 1 – Dec. 1541) 1 – Hessel Gerytsdr released

1547

1 – Marie Holleslooten recanted

1555

3 – Meijns Cornelisdr, Anna Jansdr, Lysbeth 1 – Pietersdr, and Jannetgent Pietersdr, 1 – executed 1 – Femme Lubbertsdr banned 1 – Volckgen Harmansdr executed 2 – Jacoba Bam and Fye Jansdr released

2 1 10 4 6 5

1560 1564 1566 11 & 1 death in prison 3 2 – the last 1573

1 – Gysbertgen Jansdr, recanted (the last process in Amsterdam until single trials in 1614, 1616, 1621, 1627, 1637, etc. No more executions, apart from a lynching in 1624)

know, although even if this was his motivation, it did not lead to major persecution, as only one more witch was exiled in 1560, while others were released in 1543, 1547, 1566 (two), and 1573. No witches were executed thereafter, and there were only occasional trials during the first half of the seventeenth century (one witch was lynched in 1624). Those released in 1566 were two prominent women accused by the inmates of the city’s orphanage of causing their demonic possession.67 For the century as a whole, there was only year – 1542 – in which both an Anabaptist

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and a witch were executed, although even in this case the witch had been arrested and interrogated at the end of 1541 (see table 3.4). In the trial from 1555, one of the three accused, Meijns Cornelisdr, confessed that a woman who previously had been hostile to her came up to her and said ‘God bless you’ and asked for Meijns’s forgiveness for what evil she had done to her in the past, something that a recently converted Mennonite would have been expected to do.68 Joke Spaans suggests that this accused witch and another, Volckgen Harmansdr of Blokzijl, changed their accounts of a meeting with a Mennonite leader to conform their confessions to their interrogators’ views of the devil, and a reading of the sources supports this interpretation.69 In her first testimony, Volckgen described this ‘enemy’ as a weaver from the Waterland, which, given the relatively high proportion of both Waterlanders and weavers who were Mennonites, lends credence to Spaans’s interpretation. In the Amsterdam court records from this period there were also numerous reports of Waterland Mennonites proselytizing in the port city, such as Willem Jansz, who was charged in 1569 in Amsterdam with neglecting his soul’s salvation and ‘the obedience which he owed our mother the holy church ... disdaining the ordinances of the holy church ... attending the meetings of the reprobate and damnable sect of the Mennonites or Anabaptists ... disdaining and departing from the baptism which he had received from the holy church in his childhood, allowing himself to be rebaptized ... remaining in his obstinacy and impertinence ... having committed the crime against the divine and human majesties [crimen lese majestatis divine et humane] and through this same sect disturbing the common rest and welfare of the land.’70 The parallel in language with that used in the nearly contemporary record of the witch interrogation is striking. Volckgen was finally executed in 1564 because ‘before the enemy she had denied her baptism and chrism [doopsel ende chrisdom].’ Rejection of infant baptism was a major element in both Anabaptist and witch confessions, and after the 1520s witches were commonly charged with having undergone a ‘rebaptism’ in the devil’s name (see fig. 7). It appears, therefore, that while Amsterdam’s post-1535 rulers took accusations of demonic witchcraft seriously, they exhausted their antiheresy activity with the Anabaptists, and happily gave up such persecution once they had gained their freedom from their Habsburg overlord. In this case, Amsterdam’s jurists followed Van Assendelft in not fusing the two crimes, hence the alternating pattern of prosecution, and there was no serious witch-hunt in the city following the informal tolerance

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granted the Mennonites. Instead, witchcraft remained an individual crime of maleficia, and not a demonic, sectarian heresy. Friesland and Groningen The largely rural northern provinces of Friesland and Groningen had very different experiences when it came to the prosecution of the presumed minions of the devil, although in both regions fear of blaspheming the divine led to an alternating pattern of persecution. In Friesland, the central court strongly encouraged severe measures against Anabaptists, while in Groningen the stadholder and local officials vigorously opposed the higher rulers’ efforts to demonize and eradicate both Anabaptists and witches; there are no surviving records of Anabaptist executions in this region, despite the activity of Münsterite emissaries there in 1535. On the other hand, Anabaptists were executed in Friesland in nearly every year of the 1530s and periodically through to 1574. As in Amsterdam, the attitude of a single official could be determinative; the president of the Court of Friesland between 1548 and 1557, Hippolytus Persijn, unlike his counterpart at the Court of Holland, believed very strongly that Mennonites remained a danger to the state and persecuted them heavily. In 1553, under his direction the Court of Friesland issued a warrant denouncing the increase in dangerous heretics hiding in the region who reject the sacraments, steal from people and churches, and secretly plot a godless revolt to expel and exterminate Christians. To accentuate the danger of this threat, Persijn used language reminiscent of anti-witch propaganda by calling Anabaptist heretics ‘an evil race of men and monstrous creatures.’71 Of course, part of Persijn’s concern was to counteract the violent Batenburgers.72 Yet, unlike many of his learned colleagues on the Court of Friesland, Persijn made no distinction between militant Anabaptists and the peaceful Mennonites, presumably wishing to keep the size of the fearful conspiracy as large as possible. Persijn’s successor did not share this perspective, and persecution waned. As in Amsterdam, the peak of persecutions occurred in 1535 in the aftermath of the Anabaptist capture of the Oldeklooster monastery. In this frightening year no fewer than 57 Anabaptists were executed by the court – 23 men beheaded, 32 women drowned, most of them survivors of Oldeklooster. The years 1539 with eight executions, 1549 with seven, and 1553 with nine (seven by burning) were also noteworthy for the scale of court-mandated violence. The last victim, a Men-

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nonite woman, was drowned in 1574. In total a minimum of 109 Frisian Anabaptists were put to death (16 by fire) and dozens more whipped, exiled, or fined.73 Yet not a single witch is known to have been executed in Friesland, even though its eastern neighbour, Groningen, was convulsed by two fairly significant witch panics, the first in 1547. The example of these two provinces reveals that without a fusion of heresy and sorcery in the torture chamber the authorities would regard either Anabaptism or witchcraft as the major diabolical threat to Christendom, rarely both at the same time. Three years later the stadholder of Philip II attempted to force the city of Groningen to fall in with the king’s policy of harsh suppression of Anabaptism, telling the city fathers that the Anabaptists and related sects were gaining the upper hand in the city and would soon overthrow it. The city council responded in a very interesting fashion: its members knew of some women who refused to baptize their children, but they did not consider these to be dangerous, nor were they aware of any portentous build-up in militant Anabaptist forces.74 Here the local authorities knew their Mennonite residents to be no diabolical threat to law and order, whereas the more distant royal government continued to propagate a conspiratorial vision of them. Instead, the local Groningen courts became caught up in prosecuting witches, resulting in one of the worst outbreaks of witchcraft executions in the Netherlands in the Groningen Ommelanden, the rural area surrounding the city, where twenty executions took place in 1547 and another five in 1562.75 Unlike Friesland, where the Court of Friesland kept a firm hand over local courts and controlled heresy hunting, completely suppressing potential witch-hunts, the local Ommelanden courts had a relatively free hand and were more easily manipulated in favour of prosecution by foreign pressures, such as the royal government or advocates of witch-hunting from East Frisia, where witch trials were begun in 1543.76 At the same time it seems both Groningen’s and the Ommelanden’s officials strongly resisted royal pressure to prosecute Mennonites, forcing the stadholder in 1567 to hire, without the approval of the local authorities, a band of mercenaries to ‘rob, disturb and hunt down’ Mennonites in the Ommelanden.77 Very clearly, then, Groningen’s jurists viewed witches rather than Anabaptists as the real demonic threat to social order, royal propaganda notwithstanding. In neighbouring Friesland, however, judicial officials focused their anti-diabolical efforts on Anabaptism alone.

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The Eastern Provinces The eastern Netherlandic provinces experienced some limited witchcraft trials before the rise of the Reformation and persecution of Anabaptists. The Duchy of Guelders, for example, had a few scattered trials of suspected witches in the fifteenth century, but no known burnings until the execution of a pastor’s maid in 1472 in Almen, and then no more until a small witch panic consumed up to fifteen victims in the bishopric of Cologne and Gulik between 1499 and 1504. During his reign Duke Karel van Egmond strongly urged witch-hunting, and there were a number of trials and several executions up to the 1530s, including a witch burned in Zutphen in 1512 and the 1519 trial in Nijmegen of two accused who were exorcized by a ‘brother Arnt from Arcen.’78 Uncertain of how to proceed with these suspects, local magistrates turned to priests, monks, and even soothsayers to assist them in loosening the tongues of the accused. The duke in fact encouraged magistrates to compel suspects to drink holy water, as in 1515, when he was asked by the Kampen council how to extract confessions from two accused witches. In their request the councillors commented that they had heard that the duke was in the habit of using soothsayers to gain confessions, but Karel responded that this was merely a rumour. Instead he proffered the following recipe for success: first seek background information on the accused’s reputation and that of their families; second, have a priest sprinkle them with holy water; third, hang a variety of sacred objects on them, and have the priest give them holy water, reciting ‘this I will drink through the bitter passion and suffering of Jesus Christ and the virgin heart of Mary the mother of God, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.’ Then the investigators could expect the accused to tell them the location of the witches’ dance and the name of their demon lover. If this failed, they could turn to torture.79 Other of Karel’s local officials hired soothsayers to extract confessions.80 Elsewhere in Catholic regions interrogators made frequent use of blessed objects in their efforts to glean witch confessions. In the south German city of Eichstätt the blessed bells were rung during questioning, while the accused was stripped naked and forced to consume consecrated salt, holy water, and baptismal water; any sign that these worked in acquiring information was seen as miraculous proof of the power of these sacramentals. The approach was applied elsewhere; Lyndal Roper refers to the case of Ursula Götz, who was given holy water in cooked food to see if she would vomit it up, a clear sign that she was a witch.81 As

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we will see below in chapter 6, Austrian court officials used virtually identical means to extract confessions from Anabaptists. Duke Karel was also a fervent opponent of Anabaptism, but his efforts were seriously hampered by reluctant officials and his bastard son Karel van Guelders. While stadholder of Groningen, van Guelders had battled with militant Anabaptists, and on 6 January 1536 he ordered his clergy to conduct a visitation in Drenthe and the region of Groningen to discover any heretical beliefs.82 After his removal from office, however, van Guelders became interested in spiritualistic Anabaptism, read Joris’s Twonderboek, and married a refugee Anabaptist woman.83 In the province of Utrecht, Ghijsbrecht van Baeck, the governor of IJsselstein (Overijssel was for a time a part of the bishopric of Utrecht), was an Anabaptist sympathizer who, along with many other Overijssel nobles, strongly resisted Habsburg interference in local religious issues. While van Baeck was no friend of the Batenburgers, his wife was a known supporter of David Joris and her husband tolerated peaceful Anabaptists.84 There were, however, several trials of witches during his governorship, including single witches executed in 1533 and 1537 and other single cases leading to banishment or unknown sentences in 1538, 1539, 1545, and 1546.85 It seems, however, that the worst era of persecution for both Anabaptism and witchcraft ended with the death of Duke Karel, even though Charles V, who took over control of most of his domains, similarly pushed local authorities to suppress Anabaptism. Another reason for the relative moderation toward Anabaptists in Overijssel were the efforts of the magistrates of Deventer, Kampen, and Zwolle to protect their privileges against Habsburg centralization, although they occasionally caved in to the unrelenting pressure to conform to the heresy mandates.86 When initially confronted by Anabaptists, Zwolle’s magistrates were shocked that these heretics ‘openly confess how that they have departed from our holy faith and are rebaptized anew, so that the same is very dangerous and amazing to hear in Christian ears.’ The aldermen therefore requested advice from their colleagues in Deventer and Kampen on how to proceed.87 All levels of government were shocked by the 24 March 1534 discovery near Hasselt of thousands of men, women, children, and weapons on twenty-seven ships seeking to reach Münster. Even though only the ringleaders were arrested, the magistrates really did not know how to cope with such a vast number of seemingly ‘poor, innocent,’ but potentially dangerous people.88 Reports in January 1535 that the Anabaptists were plotting to take over the Overijssel towns of Steenwijk and Deventer further raised

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the alarm.89 And yet most accusations made against imprisoned Anabaptists focused primarily on their challenge to sacramental realism, as the magistrates of Deventer revealed in their opening line in a letter to Kampen of that same month: ‘We have imprisoned in our jail some of our citizens and residents, defiled by the fallacies of the Anabaptists or rebaptizers, also one who does not believe that the true flesh and blood of Christ Jesus is comprehended and preserved under the figure and appearance of the bread when consecrated by the priest in the Mass, with many other false beliefs.’90 The import of this particular point was evident, for example, in the confession of Jacob van Herwerden (or van Antwerpen), who stated prior to his execution on 17 February 1535 that ‘when he was baptized, he had to forsake the worthy, holy sacrament, [and] all regulations and ceremonies of the holy church,’ a formulaic statement evidently placed into his mouth and similar to that extracted from accused witches. Suspicions that Anabaptist rebaptism was in some respect an initiation into a diabolical sect seemed confirmed in the comments of one woman who told Zwolle’s jurists that when she had asked Johan Tant Kremer why he had suddenly lain down in front of the ‘holy sacrament,’ he replied, ‘here I lay and pray to the devil.’91 Most shocking of all were the confessions of Anabaptist women. When Zwolle’s magistrates explained to Goert Poeck, the rentmaster of Nijenhuis, why his sister-in-law Fenna could not return to the city, they said that since she had confessed in 1534 ‘without torture’ to having been rebaptized and to persuading her daughter to join her, these Anabaptist women had been known to prefer the devil to God, as one unnamed woman declared when offered the sacrament, ‘saying that she would prefer to tear out her own heart [oir herthe affstoten] rather than receive the great Baal.’92 After the flurry of arrests and panicked requests for instructions from local officials in the wake of the Münsterite episode of 1535, the surviving records from the region suggest that many Anabaptists recanted in order to avoid severe punishment, while many others remained in exile.93 Of growing concern were the Batenburgers, who committed acts of theft and destruction of property and desecrated the silverware housing consecrated Hosts and holy oil.94 When Jan van Batenburg himself was arrested in late 1537 and confessed in February 1538, he admitted at the outset that the ‘teaching and ordinance’ of the Anabaptists was ‘to ruin cities, castles, and lands’ and to ‘reject and despise all ceremonies and sacraments of the church.’95 Batenburg’s confession was widely disseminated, helping to cement in the minds of court officials the fusion of

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insurrection, sacrilege, and Anabaptist heresy. Batenburg’s testimony led to a major revival of persecution and to the execution of dozens of nonBatenburg Anabaptists as well. In 1544 two of Batenburg’s key successors, Cornelis Appelman and Willem Dircksz Zeilmaker, were arrested and interrogated in Utrecht, and their confessions set off another farflung investigation that led to trials in Leiden, The Hague, Münster, and Antwerp.96 In the 1540s concern over the criminal activities of small groups of radical Anabaptists or quasi-Anabaptists such as the ‘children of Emlichheim’ preoccupied local governments and courts in the eastern provinces of the Netherlands, especially Groningen, Guelders, Overijssel, Utrecht, and neighbouring Westphalia, well into the 1560s. Most of the Anabaptists executed in these regions after 1538 were indeed either the followers of David Joris (fifteen of whom were executed in Utrecht in 1539) or Batenburgers and other religious arsonists. Most infamous was the execution in 1544 in Delden, Overijssel, of noble sisters-in-law from Twente, Ursula van Werden and Maria van Beckum. Their deaths so enraged friends and family that in 1548 some of them set fire to haystacks and even the village of Billerbeck as acts of vengeance. Another group, the ‘children of Emlichheim,’ turned their anger at the authorities upon livestock, in 1548 and 1551 stabbing dozens of horses and cattle near Zwolle, justifying their actions in letters to local civic officials (they were never caught). Similar arsonists plagued Overijssel, Guelders, and the area of Münster through the 1550s, culminating in the burning of hay and grain near Deventer in October, 1559 by a group avenging the execution of two alleged Batenburgers in 1542 in Deventer. Similar revenge tactics confronted the Flemish authorities in 1560 and 1561 as several cloisters were robbed and set alight by those seeking to oppose the inquisitorial activities of Pieter Titelmans. The last such incidents seem to have been the actions in the 1570s of a group around the Wesel shoemaker Johan Willems, who planned to revive the Münsterite dream of eradicating all false preachers and authorities on the eve of inaugurating the kingdom of God on earth.97 How then did the persecution of Anabaptists compare to that of witches in these eastern provinces? There are sufficient data from Utrecht to make possible some preliminary conclusions (see table 3.5).98 First, the pattern noted above (and in the following chapter) is seen here: starting about 1519 there was growing concern over witchcraft in Utrecht, fed largely by the news of trials of witches elsewhere in the duchy and by Duke Karel van Egmond’s pressure. By the early 1520s confessions of participating in diabolical sabbats and having sex with

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Table 3.5 Trials of Anabaptists and witches in Utrecht (city), 1514–1614 Date

Anabaptists

1514 1515 1519

1 woman banished 1 woman acquitted 1 woman executed; husband & son acquitted 1 woman acquitted 1 woman fined/penanced 3 or 4 women executed (including the acquittal above) 1 woman ? 2 women executed; 1 banished

1519–25 1521 1526–7 1527 1533 1535 1537

5 Anabaptists (2 citizens) executed 2 women and 1 man executed; 1 acquitted 2 women executed; 1 woman banished

1538 1539

1540 1541 1544–5 1549 1562 1568–70 1577 1593 1595 1596 1598 1614

Witches/sorcerers

15 foreign Jorist Anabaptists executed (9 men by sword, 6 women by drowning) Number of Batenburgers executed Number of Batenburgers executed

1 woman executed 1 woman acquitted or banished (1544) 1 woman acquitted

Several Mennonites punished, 1 executed 6 foreign Mennonites executed Utrecht joins United Provinces; no further persecution 1 man tried ? 2 women executed; 4 women acquitted 4 women tried ? Slander case 2 men tried ?

demons were appearing with greater frequency in individual trials in the region, and the number of burnings increased, reaching something of a peak in Utrecht in 1526/7, with at least three executions, 1533 with two more (plus one banishment), 1537 with three executions, and two more (plus another banishment) in 1538. Thereafter, only two more incidents of witch executions disturbed the city: one woman killed in

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1541 and two more in 1595, when witch-hunting was at its height elsewhere in Europe. The early 1530s also witnessed burnings elsewhere in the area, as a witch was executed in Tiel and two others in Zutphen in 1530. Yet only once did a trial of a witch in Utrecht coincide in any way with trials of Anabaptists, and that was in 1544, when an accused witch was acquitted and, later in the winter of 1544/5, a number of Batenburgers were executed. Second, it appears that interest in witch-hunting declined at the same time as concerns over the Anabaptist guerrilla groups reached their height, and only Mennonites were executed for heresy thereafter. In the eastern provinces during the critical decades between the end of the severe persecution of Anabaptists around 1540 and the revival of witch-hunting elsewhere in Europe in the 1560s, Utrecht’s magistrates were dealing with a very real and clearly identifiable sect causing livestock deaths, arson, and destruction of property (see Fig. 2d). A rising tide of witch persecution, vigorously pursued by the ruling lord, was derailed by the greater need to eradicate Anabaptist heretics, and there was little desire to return to witch burnings thereafter. Similarly, the apparently growing acceptance of the diabolical sabbat conspiracy of the 1520s and early 1530s was subsumed by the efforts to surprise groups of Anabaptists at their nocturnal meetings. Thus the actions of radical Anabaptists may have helped to squelch the rising fears of sectarian witchcraft during these critical decades. In the published sources collected by S. Elte, there are no further references to witch accusations in Zwolle after the 1549 case. When each region joined the United Provinces of the Netherlands, persecution of Anabaptists was ended, slandering others for their religious beliefs discouraged,99 and trials for witchcraft soon ended. Persecution and Toleration Although the assault on Anabaptists was ordered by the Habsburg authorities, who constrained local princes and magistrates to obey the mandates, there are far too many cases of regional or civic courts pursuing Anabaptists with vigour and severity to exempt them entirely from the persecution mania. However, when freed from their Spanish masters the Dutch looked back upon their prosecutory past with at least a measure of shame, and decided upon a different approach. Several of them were influenced by spiritualistic notions. This resulted not only in an end to most heresy trials, but also in a very clear renunciation of belief in diabolical conspiracies, which reinforced the regents’ generally sceptical pos-

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ture toward the witch stereotype. Building on the Erasmian scepticism of a Gerrit van Assendelft, Dutch magistrates continued to resist fully demonizing their Anabaptist prisoners, although they came close in a few early cases. The Erasmian and later spiritualistic attitudes of several of Holland’s leading jurists and intellectuals continued to inform the policies of the province’s regents, especially Prince William of Orange, and Holland increasingly became home to an unrivalled degree of religious toleration and a centre of moderately sceptical attitudes toward diabolical conspiracy thinking, as long as this did not cross the boundary of explicit disbelief toward the essentials of Christian theology.100 When the regents signed the Union of Utrecht in 1579 they stipulated that ‘nobody shall be persecuted or examined for religious reason.’101 There was therefore no transition from heretic to witch-hunting, and the Dutch Republic’s record after the 1570s certainly demonstrates that it deserves its reputation as a place of religious tolerance and refuge, at least compared to its neighbours. Anabaptists no longer faced the stake for their beliefs. And while having to keep their ‘house churches’ hidden behind secular facades may seem disingenuous by modern standards, it was a definite improvement upon having to meet in barns, fields, or caves with the threat of sudden discovery and arrest hanging over one’s head. While the regents of the embattled Dutch Republic acknowledged the Reformed or Calvinist Church as the only officially approved confession of the realm, they did not require all citizens to become members, nor did they grant the Reformed Church the powers of compulsion. Instead, they insisted on keeping a close watch over the decisions and activities of this church, implying that the church was not coterminous with the state and that the state was ultimately responsible for the spiritual affairs of its people. As Christine Kooi comments, the result of this situation was ‘a society with one official church and a host of smaller confessional subcultures.’102 This unique posture guaranteed that the Reformed ministers were forced to make a number of unhappy compromises. Even so, they ended up with the best church buildings and considerable religious and social privileges, and forced William of Orange to back off from his original desire to create a fully functioning religious peace for the realm that would have included Catholics as well. Instead, in 1573 he agreed to ban the Mass from the Netherlands and officially joined the Reformed community in Delft.103 As Benjamin Kaplan astutely notes, the Dutch magistrates were quite happy to wink at all manner of dissident religious practice as long as it was kept behind the fiction of private space.104

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In these circumstances there were many devout Catholics, Mennonites, and, to a lesser extent, Lutherans, along with the Calvinists, while many people refused to adhere to any of these confessions, preferring instead a form of spiritualism or confessional compromise.105 As Willem Frijhoff suggests, most Dutch ‘simply wanted freedom, either to maintain the specific federative organisation that characterised the political structure of the Low Countries, or to be able freely to exercise a form of religion whose ecclesiastical or doctrinal outlines did not necessarily correspond to the religious order favoured by the Protestants.’106 Such attitudes had been expressed frequently before the Revolt, illustrated in the drama of the Chambers of Rhetoric.107 As a result, there was no uniform practice of toleration across the Republic. Kaplan notes how the struggle between the forces for and against Calvinist confessionalism contributed to both the development of the Dutch Reformed into a highly disciplined and intensely Calvinist church, and the relative religious freedom outside of it.108 The distinction in the polemical characterization of Anabaptists by mainstream writers that we noted above in chapter 2 is extremely important. Compared to Lutheran and Catholic polemicists, Calvinist writers rarely demonized their Mennonite opponents and preferred instead to dispute with them, using biblical and rational arguments. They were certainly more moderate than Calvin, who had composed a ‘furious’ reply to a 1560 manuscript by Coornhert that advocated religious toleration.109 Calvin and his devotees had their hands full, for even many Dutch Reformed leaders cautioned against taking a strong line on the question of ecclesiastical discipline and confessional rigidity, while it appears that Coornhert’s views were much better received in the Netherlands than Calvin’s.110 Calvinists and Mennonites arguing over theological niceties around a table is a far cry from cajoling Anabaptists in a prison cell with the threat of further torture and execution hanging over their heads. There are several reasons for this near rapprochement between Calvinists and Mennonites. During the 1530s both confessions had suffered persecution from the Catholic Habsburgs, developing self-images as a suffering, righteous people.111 Many Reformed knew of Anabaptists at first hand and conversions from one to the other were not uncommon. Dutch Reformed polemicists adapted earlier ‘sacramentarian’ and Anabaptist reform propaganda to rapidly build a following in the Low Countries. This is evident in the Dutch Calvinist depiction of their young nation as the New Israel, led by a David or Gideon (William of

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Orange) against the forces of the Antichrist. Anabaptists had propagated similar eschatological imagery as the children of Israel in the 1530s (with several King Davids in the mix), so Calvinist preachers were tilling well-prepared soil.112 By mid-century, spiritualism had infiltrated all confessions, much to the chagrin of their more orthodox leaders, and not a few Reformed wished to keep confessional distinctions as fuzzy as possible. Finally, both the Reformed and Mennonites had desacralized holy spaces and objects, holding more in common on this front with each other than with Catholics and Lutherans.113 Several times Reformed leaders met with their Anabaptist counterparts, most famously in 1554 when the Reformed minister Marten Micron met with Menno Simons at Wismar (just across the German border) to debate the latter’s unusual incarnation doctrine and the few other theological issues that divided them: the authority of the rulers; divorce; baptism; Lord’s Supper; swearing of oaths; and ‘calling of preachers.’114 In reading the accounts of these debates one sees little of the demonizing typical of Catholic and Lutheran propaganda and a limited measure of mutual respect, despite moments of derision or misunderstanding. The debates between Calvinists and Mennonites were often more civil in tone than some of the contentious meetings of rival Mennonite factions. Calvinist writers, moreover, frequently castigated the Spanish overlord for its bloody persecution of Anabaptists. One in 1566 wrote that instead of violence, the authorities should ‘meet in public disputations and discussions with them and overcome their errors and heresy with God’s word.’115 In fact, he continued, it is time to rethink the belief that a unified state requires a unitary religion, for there are many different religions and sects living among the Turks, but all are obedient to that empire. It is a mistake to think that unrest is the necessary result of allowing a variety of religions to coexist, for not all conflict is the result of religion.116 On some points, moreover, the Reformed ministers may have been influenced by Mennonite attitudes and practices, most especially on the subject of voluntarism and high standards for church membership and disciplining errant members. As Alastair Duke suggests, ‘the Anabaptists’ reputation for virtuous living put the Reformed on their mettle. In this respect the presence of the Anabaptists probably reinforced the sectarian tendencies latent in Dutch Calvinism.’117 Some Reformed leaders such as Johannes à Lasco, the Reformed superintendent of East Frisia, went so far as to conduct civil discussions with both David Joris’s lieutenant Nicholaas Meyndertsz van Blesdijk in January 1544 and then with

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Menno Simons a few days later.118 While à Lasco rejected Joris’s spiritualism, he thought that Mennonites could benefit from further instruction, and Countess Anna of East Frisia therefore resisted persecuting them, despite the emperor’s harsh edicts. Where Calvinists were still struggling to achieve civic respectability, such as in Lutheran Wezel (just to the east of the Dutch Republic), they held respectful meetings with Mennonites, aiming at winning them over Lutheran orthodoxy that insisted on the doctrine of the Real Presence.119 Moreover, Reformed leaders were constantly perturbed by critical comparisons between Reformed laxity and Mennonite discipline, while Mennonites increasingly adopted the Calvinist penchant for elaborate confessions of faith.120 That said, few Dutch Reformed ministers openly advocated full recognition of Mennonites as brothers, as did the preacher Adriaen van Haemstede, who was in the end excommunicated for his belief.121 Mennonites, excluded from any form of political activity, did not fully share equal rights with their non-Mennonite neighbours. But they did not want them, at least initially. One of the principal tenets of Anabaptism was its withdrawal from the political realm. Refusing to take oaths to civic authorities or to engage in political activity, they were quite happy to remain separate from the world. In fact, as Samme Zijlstra noted, the Mennonites were ‘very pleased with their position as a tolerated minority,’ especially since they were thereby responsible for the moral supervision of their own members and not subject to the governmental monitoring that often irritated Reformed ministers.122 Dutch tolerance therefore became based on maintaining confessional boundaries among the various religious groups, and each was treated differently by the state.123 William of Orange had wanted to go further, creating a religious peace based on legal guarantees of religious freedom, but the urban magistrates and upper citizenry resisted.124 Jews and Lutherans were permitted to construct public synagogues and churches, while Catholics, Arminians, and Mennonites had to keep theirs hidden. Even so, without any significant social and economic restrictions, Mennonites were able to prosper. Those that had suffered the most at the hands of unitary confessional states – the Anabaptists and Jews – were also the most thankful for the Dutch regents’ relative ‘hands-off’ approach.125 Reformed and non-committed citizens could adjust to the presence of Mennonite and spiritualistic neighbours, although there continued for some time public and private expressions of antipathy among the various religious groups. The earlier diabolical rhetoric depicting Anabaptists as secret agents of Satan became part of the pack-

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age of ‘Catholic superstitions’ that the Reformed rejected. It also was proven to be unwarranted, and the reputation of Mennonites as pious people with whom it was safe to do business grew. Moreover, the ideas of these dissidents, including their relative scepticism toward the diabolical notions of their day, had the opportunity to be printed and disseminated in the Dutch Republic. Anabaptist and spiritualistic ideas therefore intermingled with the common religious discourse of the Republic, influencing people on a variety of fronts. It should therefore not be a surprise that this relatively open religious discourse should influence attitudes toward witchcraft. Of course, the Dutch continued to believe in and fear witchcraft and sorcery, but in general most renounced fear of diabolical, sectarian witchcraft.126 They did so, I suggest in part, because in their accommodation with supposedly demonic Anabaptists and spiritualists they had given the lie to the demonizing anti-Anabaptist propaganda. They were also influenced by spiritualism’s scepticism toward the diabolical, which, growing from Erasmian roots, eventually formed a many-branched tree that cast its shade over all aspects of society, helping to undercut the rationale for both heresy and witch-hunting.127 This will be made clearer by contrast as we now turn to the southern provinces.

4 Rebaptism and the Devil: Anabaptists and Witches in the Southern Netherlands

It is well known, dear and godly reader, how that for these neighbours [southern Netherlands] a great bitterness had arisen in the hearts of all potentates and princes against the Christians, who gave their confession of the only true baptism of the believers ... and therefore had rejected the Antichrist’s baptism, and were scolded as Anabaptists and declared as the most gruesome sect. By which slanderous reputation and bloody writing the bloodthirstiness of those [authorities] has been increasingly aroused ... The great imprudence of these writers has placed the innocent in great fear of their lives and this raging Tyranny and bloodshed has heavily grieved many attentive hearts. Editor’s foreword to the Haarlem edition of the last writings of the Mennonite martyr Christiaen Rijcen, executed in Hondschoote, Flanders, in 15881

If the persecution of Anabaptists was at times intense in the northern Netherlands, it was even more so, and longer lasting, in the southern provinces, a fact noted by the anonymous editor cited who blamed the current ‘troubles’ in Flanders on Philip II’s acceptance of the slanderous rhetoric of anti-Anabaptist writers. While royal officials had some justification for their oppressive measures during the heyday of militant Anabaptism in the 1530s, it is puzzling that until the 1590s Philip continued to pressure local officials to eradicate peaceable Mennonites to the last member, even though they did not participate in the iconoclastic fury of 1566. In several southern cities the number of Mennonites burned at the stake far exceeded executions of Calvinists, who actually led the revolt. Here the polemical demonizing of Anabaptists succeeded in encouraging the Habsburg rulers to treat them as a diabolical danger incurring the wrath of God. What saved the few Mennonites who sur-

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vived this brutal policy was not so much a turn to religious tolerance but growing concern over demonic witchcraft. Just as the heresy fires were dying down Philip began demanding pursuit of witches as part of his Counter-Reformation strategy, leading to several witch panics across the Spanish Netherlands beginning in the 1590s. The rhetoric portraying Anabaptists as diabolical blasphemers both maintained the heat on the Anabaptists and gave credence to other demonic conspiracies. Only in a few locales did the magistrates discover that burning Anabaptist blasphemers did nothing to appease the Almighty, and gave up the game entirely. There is as yet no single, comprehensive study of witch persecution in the southern Netherlands, although F. Vanhemelryck’s 1981 overview remains useful. He concluded that other than Namur, major episodes of witch burning did not begin until towards the end of the sixteenth century.2 Previous to 1500 most local jurists did not take seriously the notion of a diabolical witch sect, and most of the accused witches to reach the courts were let off relatively lightly, although there were a small number of executions of individual witches and one small cluster of burnings at Borgloon in French Brabant in the early 1540s.3 One of the reasons for this relative moderation was that the 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina making maleficia causing death a capital offence was not published in the Netherlands until 1570, and Philip II issued his more stringent law in 1592, renewing it in 1595 and 1601. After a period of relative calm corresponding to the period of severe Anabaptist persecution, witch-hunting was revived with a vengeance around 1570 in the French-speaking territories and in 1589 in the Flemish, with the former accounting for the vast majority of panics and executions, which may have totalled between two and three thousand.4 Demonologists and Rebaptism Religious persecution and witch-hunting were linked in the writings of polemicists such as the Spanish-Brabantic Jesuit Martín del Rio (1551– 1608), author of the Disquisitiones Magicae of 1599/1600, which sought to defend the church’s sacraments and sacramentals against the blasphemy of Calvinists and Anabaptists, who characterized Catholic ritual as magic.5 The final pages of the Disquisitiones are, in fact, taken up with a vigorous defence of holy orders and transubstantiation against the heretics who afflict Brabant, attacking especially the scepticism of Johann Weyer and Cornelius Loos. Del Rio counters Calvinist icono-

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clasm by claiming that Geneva itself is filled with atheism and idolatry, while all who dispute the reality of evil spirits and their malicious work are atheists.6 Del Rio moreover blames the recent increase of evil magic on the ‘faintness of and contempt for the Catholic faith,’ while idolatry and witchcraft went together, for ‘magic follows heresy, as plague follows famine.’7 On top of the specific maleficia committed by witches, demonic magic combined heresy, apostasy, sacrilege, blasphemy, perverse sexual acts, and hatred of God, requiring the easing of restrictions in gathering evidence and using torture.8 For this writer, then, the trials of both heretics and witches and the exorcism of demoniacs were major weapons in the battle to dispel incertitude and confusion and to reinforce the importance of the priests’ control over the supernatural realm through the sacraments.9 Even the attacks of witches helped confirm the truth of the Catholic faith and confound ‘those who say there are no spirits or angels, such as Calvinists in whom atheism once again puts forth shoots.’ ‘Every day,’ he concludes, ‘we see that evil spirits, workers of harmful magic, and heretics, as if to vent their common anger and hatred, bring to bear upon Catholics the most relentless assaults and injuries which magicians and the Devil can perform; and we see that these are either rendered ineffectual or that they are completely destroyed through Catholic prayers, benedictions, holy objects, and the sacraments.’10 Certainly the terms of battle between Reformed and Catholic revolved around the reality of priestly power and sacramental reality. While he only rarely mentions them – probably because by 1600 they had been so thoroughly suppressed in the Spanish Netherlands – del Rio believed Anabaptists were taught by the devil: ‘modern Anabaptists, for example, eat and drink Holy Scripture and yet continue to think they are right to persist in their errors. Who teaches them, unless it be the Devil?’11 They were, he continued, part of a diabolical, apocalyptic triumvirate seeking to destroy the true faith: We have seen the once flourishing Gueux of Belgium devouring everything with Calvinism, Lutheranism and Anabaptism, like caterpillars. We have seen these ‘three unclean spirits coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the Beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet’ (Apocalypse 16.13). Now that these are withering away and almost expiring through the passage of time, we see various swarms of locust-witches ravaging the whole of the North. We see elsewhere the number of atheists or politicians increasing with the result that since so few true and fervent

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Catholics remain, none can be seen distinctly because their numbers are so small.12

Hence the very success of the Counter-Reformation in driving out heresy from the southern provinces merely led the devil to send out wave after wave of witches. For del Rio, rebaptism was an essential component of the witches’ sabbat, believing that once witches had renounced their Christian faith, the devil forced rebaptism upon them, compelling them to rub off from their foreheads the chrism or holy oil used in infant baptism, after which the evil spirit ‘re-baptises them with water, gives them a new name, forces them to deny their Christian god-parents and assigns them others.’13 In his list of questions that a confessor was to ask people suspected of witchcraft, del Rio includes one regarding whether they have dishonoured sacred images, and, most to the point, ‘About the pact – to which ceremonies do they have recourse? Have they been rebaptised?’14 When in 1529 Charles V had declared rebaptism a heretical act worthy of a fiery death, he established it as part of the devil’s arsenal. By 1600 the rhetorical demonizing of Anabaptists had caused theoreticians such as del Rio to incorporate elements of Anabaptist heresy into his discussion of diabolical witchcraft.15 The concerted Anabaptist attack on Catholic baptism moved the issue of rebaptism front and centre in polemical debates and court trials. Other writers of demonological treatises also included diabolical rebaptism among the crimes committed during the sabbat; as the eminent jurist Jean Bodin put it in his infamous 1580 tome against witches, ‘It is stranger still that most witches are not satisfied to renounce God, but also have themselves rebaptized in the name of the Devil, and given another name.’16 In his 1608 Compendium Maleficarum the Italian monk Francesco Maria Guazzo included a woodcut picture of the practice strikingly similar to illustrations of Mennonite practice (see figs. 7 and 8).17 The anti-Protestant aspect of Guazzo’s treatise is clear from his description of the vows witches supposedly make to the devil, which include that they will never adore the sacrament, ‘that they will both in word and deed heap continual insults and revilings upon the Blessed Virgin Mary and the other Saints; that they will trample upon and defile and break all the Relics and the images of the Saints; that they will abstain from using the sign of the Cross, Holy Water, blessed salt and bread and other things consecrated by the Church; that they will never make full confession of their sins to a priest; that they will maintain an obstinate silence concerning

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their bargain with the devil,’ as well as pledging to fly to the sabbat and recruit others.18 Apart from the sabbat flying, most of the listed acts were those actually committed by Calvinists and Anabaptists. Guazzo also asserts that witches use something of religion in healing sickness, since Satan masked his magic ‘under the appearance of religion.’19 Among his deceptions was sending false revelations or apparitions to lay people, hence Guazzo warned against giving any credence to the visions of ‘devilworshippers or heretics.’ Women were especially susceptible to such delusions, he continued, and the only safe way to determine whether a visionary was orthodox or demonic was by her attitude toward the sacraments of the Church.20 The witch-hunting treatise of Nicolas Rémy, the jurist of Lorraine, likewise affirms that the devil could do nothing with his minions until they had broken their baptismal pledge and made a new one with him.21 Female witches, he continues, wrap themselves up in a cloak of pretend godliness, but are really like the Anabaptists, who, to Rémy’s mind, provide a ‘third form of counterfeit saintliness [that] consists in self-torture as it was formerly practised by the Donatists, and now by the Anabaptists and certain others of no account, who set far greater store by such a false ostentation of sanctimoniousness than by any true observance of Christian discipline and self-denial. It is manifest that this also is an invention of Satan, the destroyer of life.’22 He also chastises those who requested a second application of sacramental baptism as a means of purging themselves of the taint of witchcraft: ‘There are even some who ask to be purged by a second baptism, thinking that by such means they can again be accepted into the family of Christ.’ For example, in July 1582, Joanna Granaint repeatedly made such a request, but the devout judge ‘rightly exposed the folly of and rejected her plea. For, alas! What madness it is to ask for such a repetition, when everybody knows that it has always been condemned and forbidden by the Church! Yet in our time this error has found its advocates; but so far as I know, and deservedly, no one has hitherto thought it worth while to refute them.’23 Rémy cites other cases, including that of Agathe, the wife of François Tailleur, who in 1590 was rebaptized in a vain effort to end her ‘demon’s harshness.’24 Guazzo confirms the magically protective powers of baptism when he asserts that ‘it is proved by experience that they who are known not to have been baptized are freed from magic spells by means of unconditionally administered baptism.’25 So too does Rémy, who believed that in cases of infants conceived through intercourse with demons, the child would likely be deformed, since the demon has ‘inde-

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pendently of the mother’s will ... entered into the living child in the womb or into such as are untimely born through abortion.’ Thus the Church ‘considers them unfit to receive Christian baptism, and we take care to smother them to death as soon as they are born; doubtless because they carry suspicion of the hidden presence of a Demon lurking within them.’26 If Rémy is recording a popular belief, then we can see just how frightening the Anabaptists’ refusal to baptize infants could be. The notion of demonic rebaptism was a clear carry-over from Anabaptism to the witches’ sabbat.27 English polemicists similarly conflated English Baptists’ denial of infant baptism with the witch’s rejection of Christian baptism.28 The assault on Anabaptists was also part of the broader effort to defend sacramental realism against empirical challenge and scepticism. Catholic theologians argued that just as the sacrament of the Mass actually transformed the inner essence of bread into the body of Christ, baptism truly transformed initiates. Many writers described this effect as a mark or letter left on the soul of the baptizand that God could read; rebaptizing someone therefore involved overwriting this original mark and hence making the original message unintelligible.29 Baptism promised some protective power against diabolically caused harm, since, according to late-medieval theology, all matter, including the bodies of infants, ‘was infested with demons.’30 Exorcism of the infant was absolutely necessary prior to baptism, ritually reassuring parents that their children were protected. Many demonologists explained the illness and death of baptized infants by recourse to the popular belief that witches, aided by demons, magically caused their deaths.31 Walter Stephens notes that the most potent ingredient in the witches’ salves was the rendered remains of unbaptized infants, because the ‘crucial sacramental energies of baptism were absent.’ While witch unguents were also important in witch trials as a form of forensic proof, Stephens’s point that they reinforced sacramental power by inversion helps explain why Anabaptist baptism elicited such a violent reaction on the part of orthodox churchmen.32 Persecution of Anabaptists in the Southern Netherlands The question now is to what extent the demonizing rhetoric of antiAnabaptist propagandists fanned the flames of persecution, inspiring a broader search for demonic minions. In most cases the judges and interrogators of the southern Netherlandic cities did not confuse Anabaptists

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with witches. Christiaan Munters, the chronicler of Kuringen, Limburg, referred to above in chapter 2, provides us with an intriguing episode. On 3 September 1540 an unidentified Anabaptist leader of Maastricht was brought into the Kuringen prison, the ‘Homperlepomp.’ The next day two individuals, Geertruyt ‘Non Facis the Old’ and Peter Hammelarts were imprisoned in the Homperlepomp for witchcraft (tovery). Two days later another accused witch, Geert Sceytens, was also imprisoned. All three were interrogated ‘in the question of this summer,’ presumably the extreme heat of the season and a strange illness ‘in their head and in their heart’ that afflicted the populace at that time.33 On the same day as the arrest of Sceytens the prison officials released a priest and a servant who had been suspected of ‘Lutheranism.’ Unfortunately, that is all that Munters tells us about these cases. Here then we have a singular case of an Anabaptist leader kept in a small prison at the same time as it housed accused witches. Did he have the opportunity to speak to the alleged magical transgressors? We don’t know, but we do know that Munters made a clear distinction between the two sets of prisoners, and it is likely that the interrogators did so do. It is also apparent that there was no inclination to blame Anabaptists for bad weather and disease, despite Munters’s earlier stories about anti-Anabaptist miracles. That said, there is a very clear progression in Munters’s accounts of evil doings and blasphemy. The iconoclasm of ‘Lutherans’ is the first object of his ire, followed in 1534 by the Anabaptists, especially those thousands who in March 1534 took ships to Bergklooster, just next to Hasselt, to meet a Münsterite emissary. The proximity of this scandalous assembly clearly shocked Munters. After a few more stories about the confessions or ungodly deaths of more Anabaptists and ‘Lutherans,’ he records the destruction of the reprehensible Anabaptist kingdom of Münster at the end of June 1535 with relief. His account turns increasingly to the bad crops, weather, and pestilence that struck the region in the late 1530s, the efforts to suppress blasphemy against God and the saints, and then the arrest of those witches believed responsible for the devastation. The excessive heat and strange illness that struck the region in the summer of 1540 was particularly troublesome, and throughout the year Munters participated in a series of processions with the body of Christ seeking to avert the displeasure of God. Munters’s first reference to sorcery is in July 1539, when he mentions the burning of nine or ten witches at the Limburg town of Montenaeken.34 Then follows the arrest of the witches of Kuringen in 1540. As elsewhere, a clear association is made between the worsening weather, famine, and pestilence with

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witchcraft. Penitential acts seemed not to appease God, inspiring the search for scapegoats. Blame ultimately focused on the two female accused (Peter Hammelarts, the alleged male accomplice, was later released, and he won a countersuit for false imprisonment and torture).35 These two were still in the prison when the pestilence of September (den bocksieckden vanden rocyne) killed off many, and several people suspected of spreading it were arrested too, all of whom were released a couple days later after paying a fine for being in public while infected, the same day as the first general procession.36 On 21 October the second procession preceded by two days the transfer to the Kuringen jail of another witch from Alken, Elen Achten. One week later, the third procession was conducted. Then, on November 9, Achten was tortured, but all her interrogators discovered was that she was ignorant of her Paternoster and of her faith. On 22 November the pastor of St Hubrechts chastized, exorcized, and examined Geertruyt ‘Non Facis’ and the Alken suspect to see if they were witches, but they refused to confess, and they were therefore tortured. The next day the pastor exorcized them again, and on the 24th for a third time, this time availing himself of the sacrament. On that very day, the Anabaptist leader from Maastricht was beheaded in Kuringen, receiving the merciful sentence because he had recanted all of his heresy and ‘died as a Christian man.’37 The two witches were then tortured some more, now by the more skilled executioner of Liège, and Achten confessed that both she and Geertruyt were witches. Achten was burned on 7 December in Kuringen after confessing to having caused much magical harm and to keeping a demon lover.38 Her former cellmate was sent to Liège, where she died in prison in January and was buried in the churchyard. This, the first local witch trial recorded by Munters, did not snowball into a panic (Munters refers to the burning of five witches at Borgloon in June of 1541),39 while the Anabaptist who recanted and was executed during the witch process was the last to be judicially killed in Kuringen. Over the last five years of his chronicle (1541–5), Munters provides no further stories of local miracles, nor do the frequent destructive storms or a deadly plague in the region in 1543 and 1544 lead to suspicions of witchcraft. Instead, most of his concern is with the horrible plundering of the Guelders troops of Martin van Rossum. Even a 1543 story from Maastricht about a man who rose up from his grave is explained matter-of-factly as Munters makes it clear that the man had only appeared to be dead.40 The discovery in 1544 of the Loyists of Antwerp – followers of the spiritualist Loy de Pruistinck who apparently

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rejected belief in hell, eternal punishment, and the resurrection – earns a mention, and Munters seems to have blurred the teachings of the Loyists with those of David Joris and militant Anabaptists, suggesting that the Loyist leader rejected the resurrection and considered himself the ‘third David’ who planned to kill all priests.41 No mention is made of heavenly or demonic signs. It seems, therefore, that supernaturalism was strongest in Munters’s account when it was most under attack by the Anabaptists. As fears of demonic conspiracies concocted by Anabaptists swirled about the bishopric of Liège, a conjunction of bad weather and disease struck the region, leading to accusations of witchcraft. When later storms and plagues struck without the anxiety raised by Anabaptist scepticism toward the sacraments, no witches were accused. As elsewhere, the southern Netherlands’s Habsburg officials were preoccupied for much of the century with attempting to suppress reform heresies. Trials of Anabaptists were conducted in Flanders and Brabant throughout the sixteenth century. In the three great cities of Flanders, Anabaptist martyrs outnumbered other Protestants; for example, in Ghent, 58 per cent of martyrs were Anabaptists, while in Bruges and Kortrijk, the figure was even greater: 67 per cent for the former and 60 per cent for the latter. In other cities the Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) were the main victims, such as Flemish Oudenaarde (62% Protestant) and Brabantish Brussels (60%).42 Antwerp, the major economic centre of Brabant, had a singular record of heresy persecution. Between 1530 and 1577, the city authorities prosecuted 1,188 heretics, including 318 Anabaptists (26.8%) and 489 Protestants (41.6%) of both Lutheran and Calvinist stripe (80 more had been tried between 1521 and 1529). Most telling, however, is the execution rate in that city. Of 275 sentences of death between 1530 and 1577, 239 were handed out to the Anabaptists (87%). Similarly, the proportion of Anabaptists/Mennonites executed during the second half of the sixteenth century compared to all other dissidents is remarkable: between 1556 and 1573, 87 per cent of executed heretics in Bruges were Mennonites, while Mennonites accounted for 78 per cent of martyrs in Ghent between 1556 and 1592, and 91 per cent of those in Kortrijk from 1556 to 1586.43 Such bloodshed virtually wiped out the Mennonite communities from the southern Netherlands. These statistics raise the obvious question of why relatively small groups of pious Mennonites were hunted out so ruthlessly when the real threat to religious orthodoxy and civic harmony were the Calvinists. Brad S. Gregory suggests that ‘a changed judicial climate, in which heresy was freshly associated with disobedience and destruction’ in the

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wake of the iconoclasm, the arrival of the Duke of Alva’s army of occupation, and the establishment of the Council of Troubles around 1567 ‘also made Mennonites vulnerable to both local and royal authorities.’ 44 True, but this fact does not explain the scale of persecution of Mennonites compared to Calvinists, nor why Mennonites were the primary heretics to be burned at the stake. Many arrested Anabaptists/Mennonites were fugitives from other regions, hence there might have been some concern about the conspiracies of foreigners and transients, and the Anabaptist immigrants tended to be poorer than their Reformed counterparts.45 Whatever the reason, the persecution of Anabaptists and Protestants in general ended on the eve of the witch-hunt. Bruges In Bruges there were a number of trials against soothsayers, sorcerers, and witches leading up to the moderate witch panic of 1596, just a few years after Philip II’s anti-witchcraft law of 1592.46 However, the city had witnessed the execution of witches prior to this legal change, when three accused witches were burned for maleficia in 1468. The next witchburning did not occur until 1532, with the execution of two women who apparently had ‘given themselves over to the enemy of hell’ and had received his help in robbing their neighbours. The male soothsayer involved in this case, who had claimed the ability to recover stolen property, was beaten with rods and banned from Flanders for fifty years. After this there were no known executions until the 1596 hunt, which led to at least twenty-three denunciations and as many as eight executions. From then on, major trials continued in the seventeenth century, with an even larger epidemic in 1634. Between 1532 and 1596 at least thirty individuals were prosecuted for soothsaying, ritual magic, love magic, or countermagic, but none of them received the death sentence, although a few were tied to a stake with straw and faggots piled around them as a reminder of the punishment they might have received were a torch applied to the incendiary material. None of these accused were charged specifically with demonic witchcraft.47 During these decades of moderate treatment of magical practitioners, the faggots were lit beneath other minions of the devil: heretics, especially Anabaptists and Mennonites. Between 1527 and 1573 a total of seventy religious dissidents were executed in Bruges: eight Lutherans, thirteen iconoclasts and Calvinists, two vaguely identified heretics, and forty-seven (67%) Anabaptists. Of the fifty-one victims receiving the sen-

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tence of a fiery death at the stake, forty-three (84%) were Anabaptists or Mennonites, while another two Mennonites were buried alive. Only in one year, 1538, was there an overlap in the trials of Anabaptists and magical transgressors. In the 1538 case, seven Anabaptists were burned at the stake while two women, Jacquemine de Bazelaere and the widow Katelyne Onbaert, were whipped and banned for performing ritual magic to find stolen goods (in 1543 and 1545 the execution of heretics or Lutherans occurred in the same year as trials of sorcerers). More Mennonites were executed in 1552, 1558 (seven), 1561 (twelve), 1568 (eleven), 1569 (two), 1570 (five), and 1573, the year that the last two Anabaptists were executed in the city. In the 1561 and 1568 cases all the victims were executed in a single, spectacular auto-da-fé. In 1569 Jacob de Roore was among those Mennonites executed in the city, and his memorialist records that ‘Jacob willingly professed and bloodily sealed God’s word before the world, in Bruges placed alive in the fire, giving up his offering to God in heaven.’48 De Roore left behind an account of his interrogation by the Provincial of the Augustinian order and other monks who told him that they had not come to dispute with him but to teach him the truth, yet the result was an extended debate on several theological issues, such as the nature of the church, the veracity of infant baptism, and the reality of the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. On the last point, the Augustinian asserted that ‘the wine which Christ gave to drink from the cup was no wine, nor the material of wine, but it was blood,’ and refused to hear any rebuttals, even though they had debated at length on the question of baptism.49 The defence of sacramental reality and power was therefore front and centre in the unequal debates and interrogations of Anabaptists in Bruges, just as it would become in a number of trials of accused witches. For his part, de Roore saw his interrogation as merely one of the many methods by which the devil sought to deceive the world, as seen in the woman riding the beast of Revelation 17 and 18 who had a golden chalice in her hand from which the heathens and kings drank. De Roore instead regarded ‘God’s word’ as his chalice.50 One cannot drink from both God’s and the devil’s chalice, hence Christians must keep themselves pure from participating in the idolatry of the devil’s church.51 Given the preoccupation of clerical interrogators to defend sacramental realism against the challenges of the Anabaptists and the supposed desecration of witches, it is very interesting that at no time were both Anabaptists and witches executed in the same year in Bruges (see table 4.1).52

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Table 4.1 Execution of heretics/Anabaptists and trials of witches in Bruges, 1522–1594 Year 1522 1527 1529 1531 1532

1534 1538 1541 1542 1543 1544 1545 1546 1550

Execution of heretics and Anabaptists

1529

1 given penance for ritual magic

1532

2 executed for demonic pact and witchcraft; 1 whipped and banned for soothsaying (5 more accused tried in the Bruges region; none known to have been executed). 2 punished for magic/soothsaying 2 banned for ritual magic

2 Lutherans

7 Anabaptists 1 Lutheran 1 Lutheran 1 heretic 2 Lutherans

1 Anabaptist; 1 Calvinist

1553 1554–6 1556

1 Lutheran; 4 Calvinists

1557 1558 1561 1566 1567 1568

1 Calvinist 5 Mennonites; 1 heretic 12 Mennonites 2 Calvinists burned 1 iconoclast 11 Mennonites; 3 Calvinists; 1 iconoclast 2 Mennonites 5 Mennonites

1594 1596

Trials & executions of witches 1 necromancer granted penance

1 Lutheran

1552

1569 1570 1571–4 1573 1584 1586 1589 1590 1592

Year 1522

1534 1538 1543 1544 1545 1546 1550 1552

2 arrested for witchcraft; 1 for countermagic 4 banned for ritual magic 1 given penance for ritual magic 2 beaten for superstition 1 banned for alchemy (3 others in the Bruges region beaten for magic) (1 person in the Bruges region banned for magic)

1554–6 1556

1 placed on scaffold for enchanting 1 placed on scaffold for sorcery and books burned

1571–4

1 beaten for sorcery

1584 1586 1589 1590 1592

2 tried for ritual magic 3 tried for soothsaying 3 given penance for magic 1 tried for soothsaying 1 tried for healing animals; 1 abjured pact with devil 1 arrested for witchcraft Witch panic: 23 denunciations, up to 8 executions

2 Mennonites – the last

1594 1596

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Ghent Like its sister city, Ghent prosecuted both Anabaptists and witches, although its heresy executions were more numerous and were conducted over a longer period. The Ghent authorities executed their first heretic in 1530, a Lutheran knight, and did not stop until 1592, when one iconoclast and two Mennonites were hanged, while another heretic died in prison in 1595 (see table 4.2). In the process a total of 252 heretics were executed, 146 (58%) of them Anabaptists/Mennonites. Most of the remainder were the Calvinists and other dissidents arrested in the aftermath of the iconoclastic riots of 1566. Of all the heretics, the Mennonites were treated the most harshly, as over 70 per cent received the horrific penalty of being burned at the stake, while only 10 per cent of the Calvinists and iconoclasts were so executed. A few Mennonite reports of interrogations from Ghent reveal that the line between Anabaptist heretics and diabolical witchcraft could be crossed in the intense environment of judicial interrogation, both by the accused and by their accusers. For example, when interrogated in 1550 by some monks who were demanding that he swear on his baptism and faith to tell the truth, Hans van Ouerdamme apparently answered: ‘What, will you swear much? I regard not your swearing, for it is a craft of the sorcerers [toouenaers] who swear against the truth.’ He bemoaned the fact that three of his co-religionists had been returned to the Catholic fold in the course of their trials, something that Hans blamed on the monks’ ‘bewitched swearing, that they did not keep themselves from the devil’s deception,’ for they did not have the gift of disputation.53 He compared his opponents to the Egyptian sorcerers who opposed Moses, and concluded his remarks to the gentlemen of the court with this warning: ‘now understand, you noble sirs, the misuse and abuses of your state or ministry, for we confess it not to be of God, but of the devil, and that the antichrist has so bewitched and blinded your eyes, through the deceit of the devil, that you do not perceive yourselves to be what you are.’54 Another Anabaptist, Claes de Praet, who was eventually executed in Ghent in 1556, was told by Pieter Titelmans, the infamous inquisitor of Flanders, that he had been deceived by the devil and misled by artisans and that he should now be instructed by the learned. Claes responded, ‘why then do they [the learned] lead the life of a devil?’55 Similarly, after his interrogation in the prison of Antwerp, Brabant, in August 1551, Jeronimus Segersz wrote to his wife that ‘we must oppose the princes

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Table 4.2 Persecution of heretics, Anabaptists, and witches in Ghent, 1459–1595 Year

Execution of heretics and Anabaptists

1459–60

1530 1534 1535 1536 1538 1539 1540 1545 1549 1551 1552 1555 1556 1557 1558 1559 1560 1561 1562 1563 1564 1565 1566 1567 1568 1569 1570 1571 1572 1573 1574 1576 1577

1 Lutheran

Year

Trials and executions of witches

1459–60 1469–70 1511–12 1516–17 1530 1534

3 women – all on scaffold 1 man on scaffold 3 women banned 1 man, finger cut off, banned 1 banned 1 woman, unknown result

1539

1 whipped, banned; 1 freed; 1 unknown 1 fined

3 Anabaptists 2 Anabaptists 4 Anabaptists; 1 heretic

1540 6 heretics 1 Calvinist 13 Anabaptists 1 Anabaptist 1 Calvinist 2 iconoclasts; 1 Mennonite 6 Mennonites; 3 heretics 1 Mennonite; 2 heretics 10 Mennonites 10 Mennonites 2 Mennonites 15 Mennonites 3 Mennonites 7 Mennonites 1 Mennonite 4 iconoclasts; 1 Calvinist 18 iconoclasts 19 iconoclasts; 6 Calvinists; 11 Mennonites; 1 heretic 4 iconoclasts; 9 Calvinists;12 Mennonites 1 iconoclast; 2 Calvinists; 7 Mennonites 1 iconoclast; 1 Calvinist 4 Calvinists; 5 Mennonites; 1 heretic 1 iconoclast; 4 Calvinists; 16 Mennonites 2 heretics 6 Mennonites; 1 heretic 1 Calvinist

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Table 4.2 (Concluded ) Year 1582 1585 1586 1588 1589 1591 1592 1595

Execution of heretics and Anabaptists

Year

Trials and executions of witches

1585 1586 1588

1 released 1 placed on scaffold 1 honourably discharged

1591

1 banned; 1 whipped

1595 1598 1599 1600 1601

1 burned 1 burned 2 released 1 released 7 accused: 4 burned, 3 freed

2 heretics

3 Mennonites 1 iconoclast; 2 Mennonites 1 heretic died in prison

and mighty of this world, yes the spirits that work in the air, which is the old serpent and Satan.’56 He warned her of the devil, which sought to damn their souls, and of the false prophets, who had only the teaching of the demons.57 Joos Verkindert, executed also in Antwerp in September 1570, warned his wife that the Lord ‘must above all be feared, so that Satan has no entry and power,’ for the devil ‘rests neither day nor night,’ attacking him with so many ‘diverse roguish lies,’ that he often cried out.58 He too was told by a priest to ‘think it over, and fight against the devil who has you bound in your unbelief.’59 The Antwerp magistrates ordered him executed on 12 September for rejecting his original baptism and allowing himself to be rebaptized, as well as attending illegal conventicles.60 Peter van Weruick, imprisoned in Ghent in 1552, wrote to his sisters and brothers that they must distinguish between that which is the worship of God and that which is really the worship of the devil and idolatry. Those who performed righteousness were the children of God, he continued, while those who sinned were from the devil.61 Peter was not reticent to make his opinion known to his interrogators; he related that he told them ‘perhaps your teaching is the teaching of the devil, for it is against the truth.’62 In the infamous case of David van der Leyen, who was executed in February 1554 in Ghent along with Lievine Ghyselins (whose execution had been delayed due to her pregnancy), the burning caused a commotion among the audience. To increase his personal profit the executioner had bought less wood for the fire, so that when the flames died

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out the throng of viewers was horrified to see David nod his head (see fig. 9). Shouts and cries resounded through the square, including rumours of sorcery. The executioner rushed to the body and finished off the job with a pitchfork, but news of this grisly event continued to haunt the authorities, who decided thereafter to conduct many executions early in the morning so as to avoid public scrutiny.63 Apart from this unusual incident, the pattern of heresy persecution in Ghent reveals much about the particular attitude of the authorities toward the Anabaptists. There were seven years in which ten or more Mennonites were executed: 1551, 1559, 1560, 1562, 1568, 1569, and 1573, and in each of these years groups of four or more victims were burned at one time. Moreover, the Duke of Alva’s government persecuted the pacifistic Mennonites as harshly as the Calvinists. In 1577 Calvinist forces gained control of the city, and heresy executions and trials against magicians ceased, only to restart shortly after the restoration of Catholic governance in 1584. Despite the threat they presented to the Catholic authorities during the revolt, only one Calvinist was executed after this date, compared to five Mennonites. Ghent therefore possesses one of the longest records of bloody suppression of Anabaptist heresy. Although there was a sizeable Mennonite community there for most of the century, reaching perhaps as high as several hundred members, this was a very small group compared to the city’s population of over sixty thousand people, and the much more influential Calvinist congregations. Yet the Catholic authorities continued to hunt down Mennonites with great cruelty. We do not know how often the official clergy preached about the diabolical nature of these seemingly benign heretics, but given the evidence in the Het Offer des Heern, such sermonizing and confessional commentary was likely frequent, as it was during the trials and executions themselves. As we have seen in several trials from midcentury Ghent, Mennonites denounced their clerical inquisitors as diabolical sorcerers, while the inquisitors blamed the heresy of their judicial victims on the devil, as in the case of Claes de Praet. The courage of many of these Anabaptist martyrs puzzled their interrogators, who often explained such unusual behaviour by reference to diabolical agency, much as persecutors blamed the seeming inability of witches to cry or their reluctance readily to confess their guilt under torture to diabolical magic. The psychological effects on the populace of witnessing the gruesome judicial slaughter of dozens of seemingly pious individuals cannot, of course, be determined. We do know that many of the citizens became

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sickened by the spectacles and sympathetic toward the victims. By the last decades of the sixteenth century most citizens knew full well that the Mennonites were of no danger whatsoever. No doubt decades of demonizing Anabaptist heretics elevated anxiety about other diabolical agents who lived within the community without arousing obvious suspicion but who were secretly plotting revenge. The first recorded execution of a witch in Ghent, that of Elisabeth Vlamincx, occurred in December 1595, a mere three years after the last two Mennonites had been martyred, although another heretic, Anne Dhanens, died in prison earlier in 1595. The city experienced only one incident comparable to a small panic when a total of seven women from the suburb of Sint-Peters were executed in the summer and fall of 1601. Single victims were burned in 1598, 1603, and 1604, and none thereafter. Ghent seems to have exhausted its anti-diabolical actions with its exceptionally vigorous assault on Anabaptists. As in Bruges, there was virtually no overlap between the prosecution of Anabaptists/heretics and that of witches on a year-by-year basis, except for 1530, which witnessed the first execution for Reformation-era heresy with the burning of the Lutheran Joos de Backere and the banning of a male sorcerer by the name of Jan Coune, and 1595, when the first execution of a witch coincided with the last death of a heretic in prison. In between those dates, for any year that a witch/sorcerer was prosecuted there were no corresponding trials of heretics of any sort. The 1530s, the most militant decade of Anabaptist activity, saw a number of executions of Anabaptists in 1535 (three), 1536 (two), and 1538 (three), while magical transgressors were tried (none executed) in 1534 (one), 1539 (three), and one more in early 1540. No sorcerers or witches appear thereafter in the court records until the mid-1580s, while the decades of the 1550s to 1570s (up to 1576) saw a bloody campaign against heretics, especially Mennonites. Although the persecution of 1567/9 was directly related to the crushing of the iconoclastic rebels, it is difficult to comprehend why the peaceable Mennonites figured so largely as victims in these later decades. Again, it would appear in hindsight that the city’s authorities had developed a need to burn some diabolical agents responsible for incurring God’s anger (see table 4.2).64 There is another interesting correspondence. In 1539 the city was rocked by a major uprising of the artisanal and labouring groups against the privileged elites and their prince, Charles V. Exasperated by a perceived unfair tax burden and the loss of some of the city’s freedoms, the rebels may have been inspired also by the actions of radical

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reform agitators and the presentation of plays supportive of the Reformation during a dramatic contest held weeks before the uprising.65 It is also interesting that there were four individuals tried for magical transgressions during the rebellion: Jan de Fay was whipped and banned on 9 July, one day after the craft guilds had forbidden the tax payment to the emperor; two women, Kateline Paens and Josyne Arents, were tried and freed during the time that the rebels controlled government; and another accused male magician, Jan Jacob Cornelis, was released upon the payment of a fine in January of the next year, just as Ghentenaars heard the terrifying news that Charles V was marching to his birth city with a large army to restore his authority. The precise relationship between these trials and the rebellion is not evident, yet it is extremely suggestive that during the height of the revolt in mid- to late August the rebels forced the sheriff to arrest the elderly former guild deacon Lieven Pien and have all of the hair on his body shaved off in their search for the devil’s mark.66 In this case it appears that the lower orders of the city suspected that Ghent’s old patrician order had plotted against them not only with the emperor but also with the devil, and that they had used diabolical means to maintain their positions of authority.67 As part of his punishment for the rebellion Charles V rescinded many of the remaining privileges of the commune, forbade any unapproved gatherings of the populace, and in 1540 stipulated that, since all plagues had come through the great sins of people, ‘in order to better protect this city from the same plagues,’ harsh punishment would be meted out to ‘any one who from henceforth is found to have sworn any evil oaths to the blasphemy of God or the kingdom of heaven, his dear mother the Virgin Mary or his saints, or furthermore who has committed adultery or coupling or who has kept a dishonourable public house outside of the places approved for them.’68 In other words, religious blasphemy and immorality were directly responsible for both rebellion and the outbreak of epidemic disease that struck the city in May 1540. Even though Mennonites were now outwardly peaceful and pious, their very presence in the city was believed to be bringing the wrath of God upon the populace and they had to be eradicated, a rationale comparable to the earlier pogroms against Jews during times of crisis and plague. However, once the Mennonites had been throughly suppressed by the 1590s, Ghent’s woes did not end, and attention turned quickly to the other agents of the devil whose blasphemy was obviously impeding God’s pleasure: witches.

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Table 4.3 Heresy and witch persecution in Kortrijk, 1536–1586 Year

Executions of heretics and Anabaptists

1536/7

1 Anabaptist

1553 1556 1559 1560 1561

1 Anabaptist 2 Anabaptists (1 died in prison), 1 other 4 Anabaptists 1 Anabaptist, 1 other 2 Anabaptists

1566 1567 1568 1569 1573

1 iconoclast 4 Anabaptists, 1 iconoclast 1 Anabaptist 9 Anabaptists, 1 iconoclast 4 iconoclasts

1580 1581 1582 1586

1 Calvinist 1 Calvinist, 2 iconoclasts 1 iconoclast 1 iconoclast, 1 other

Year

Trials and executions of witches

1540/1 1544 1546

1 man, 1 woman, unknown result 1 person released 1 man released

1565

1 woman released

1573 1577

1 man banned 1 man whipped and banned

1587

3 men and 3 women sent on pilgrimage 1589 1 woman released 1597 1 woman released 1598 1 man penanced 1599 2 women banned 1602–65 a total of 6 men and 15 women tried, 2 died in prison, 8 banned, the rest released

Kortrijk Another Flemish city provides interesting comparisons and contrasts. The southeastern Flemish city of Kortrijk (Courtrai) had a record of heresy persecution comparable to that of Ghent, but an altogether different history of witch persecution. As seen in table 4.3, the Kortrijk magistrates approved the execution of forty-one heretics, twenty-four (59%) of them Anabaptists (one more died in prison), and only two (roughly 5%) of them identifiably Calvinist, although it seems likely that

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the eleven identified by A.L.E. Verheyden as iconoclasts or rebels were also Reformed in perspective.69 Moreover, apart from an iconoclast/ rebel executed in 1573, only Anabaptists were burned at the stake, and all Anabaptists who were executed were killed in this grisly fashion. Again, apart from one year, 1573, when four iconoclasts were executed and one man banned from the city for illicit magic, there was no overlap in executions of heretics and trials of magicians/witches. The first execution of an Anabaptist took place in 1536/7, but burnings then ceased until 1553. In the meantime, four individuals were tried for witchcraft during the 1540s. From 1553 to 1561, the authorities were exclusively concerned with Anabaptism. Once again, the diabolical loomed large in the interrogations of these devout Mennonites. For example, in 1553 Joos Kint was interrogated by Inquisitor Titelmans. She confronted him bravely, responding to his demand that she renounce her rebaptism by stating ‘my faith and baptism I know, but I have nothing to do with your swearing [besweeringe], I would then confess to you sorcerers [Ic soude daer aen v toouenaers bekennen].’ She then cautioned him not to tell others that she had recanted or that she had a devil in her, not to mention that she was damned among the simple folk. Several times, in fact, she told her accusers to ‘get behind me Satan.’70 Very clearly Kortrijk Anabaptists believed that Catholic baptism was a form of sorcery that could taint their children with the diabolical. Her testimony, as presented by the author of the Het Offer, also reveals the intensity of confrontations between inquisitor and accused during this period of grim persecution. For these courageous souls facing their own destruction, it was quite clear those who were truly in league with the devil. After 1561 Kortrijk’s courts switched briefly to witchcraft, trying one suspect in 1565, and then returned to heretics. And while one might presume that the magistrates’ attention would turn entirely to Calvinists and iconoclasts after 1566, this was not the case, for the later 1560s witnessed the worst persecution of Anabaptists in the city, with fourteen burned, compared to seven iconoclasts executed. Clearly Kortrijk’s rulers viewed Anabaptists as a much more serious threat to civic harmony than the actual perpetrators of religious violence. In fact, the most significant moment of persecution of any kind occurred in 1569 when ten heretics, nine of them Anabaptists, were executed. Thereafter, no Anabaptists were killed, although there were a few executions of other heretics until 1586, when the judicial killing of heretics ceased. Then, in the following year and after a hiatus of a decade, witch perse-

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cution began again with a trial involving five individuals, all of whom were ultimately ordered on a pilgrimage. What is most remarkable is the fact that, as far as we know, the Kortrijk authorities did not execute a single magician or witch, not even during the late 1580s and 1590s, nor during the seventeenth century when twenty-one were tried and, apart from two who died during their trial, the harshest penalty meted out was whipping and banning. In other words, Kortrijk’s leaders had reserved their harshest punishment – burning at the stake – for Anabaptists and Mennonites, and seem also to have given up trying to appease God’s wrath by this means. Brabant Unfortunately, the literature on witchcraft trials in neighbouring Brabant is not nearly as full as it is for Flanders. However, there are significant records for the persecution of heresy in both Brussels and Antwerp. In clear contrast to the examples from Flanders that we have cited above, the authorities of Brussels found the Anabaptists/Mennonites of relatively little concern compared to the serious challenge of Lutherans and then Calvinists (see table 4.4). Of a total of 168 individuals executed for heresy, 81 (48%) were Calvinists, 57 (34%) iconoclasts, 20 (12%) Lutherans, and only 10 (6%) of the victims were Anabaptists or Mennonites.71 These statistics could be taken to imply that the Brussels magistrates had a clearer picture of the real threat to Catholic orthodoxy and responded accordingly. Or, it is possible that the Mennonite community was much smaller or less significant in this city than it was elsewhere. As far as witchcraft persecution in Brabant is concerned, until the 1580s legal action against witches was restricted to the southern Walloon region, while the Dutch-speaking region was hardly touched. The first execution for this part of the duchy did not take place until 1589. Hans de Waardt has shown that this sudden upsurge in witchcraft persecution was linked to economic and social crises, especially the damaging siege and conquest of Antwerp in 1585 and severe periods of famine in 1586 and 1593–5. The worst persecution started in 1595 when thirty-four people, twenty-nine of them women, were executed across the duchy. The resulting panic caused the Court of Brabant to investigate the legality of such proceedings, especially the notorious water test and use of torture to extract confessions. It quickly ordered a suspension of trials, and the central government forbade use of the water test thereafter.72 Brussels was also involved in this moment of witch persecution,

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Table 4.4 Execution of heretics and persecution of witches in Brussels, 1523–1574 Year 1523 1528 1534 1536 1538 1541 1543 1544 1545 1548 1552 1553 1558 1559 1567 1568 1569 1571 1572 1573 1574

1597

Executions of heretics and Anabaptists

Year

Trials and executions of witches

1587 1595

1 woman fined for sorcery 1 woman burned, 4 women tortured and banned 1 woman tortured and banned

2 Lutherans 1 Lutheran 3 Lutherans 1 Lutheran 2 Lutherans 1 Anabaptist 1 Anabaptist (died in prison) 2 Lutherans 3 Lutherans 2 Calvinists 1 Lutheran 4 Lutherans 1 Calvinist 2 Calvinists 1 Anabaptist, 5 Calvinists 1 Lutheran, 2 Anabaptists, 40 Calvinists, 47 iconoclasts 22 Calvinists, 2 iconoclasts 4 Anabaptists, 6 Calvinists 5 Calvinists, 3 iconoclasts 2 Calvinists 1 Calvinist

1 Anabaptist (buried alive)

1597–1600

although not until well after its major campaign against heretics had ended. In 1587 Leysken vande Hoecke was fined 150 gulden for ‘soothsaying, chiromancy ... and other superstitions of witchcraft.’73 In 1595 five women were arrested and tried for witchcraft, and one of these, Jozyne de Wasselaere, was burned on 13 September 1595 for her ‘witchcraft and other offences,’ while the others, whose crimes included witchcraft, ‘superstition,’ and soothsaying, were tortured into confessing and exiled from the city. Another woman, Cathelyne Hulsternesse, ‘famous for witchcraft,’ was tortured and exiled sometime between 1597 and 1600.74 Del Rio reports of the activity of a charlatan, Mirabiliarius Caesarius the Maltese, who pretended to make prognostications in the city in 1599.75 It is interesting indeed that, after a pause of twenty-three

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years, the magistrates executed another heretic in 1597, an Anabaptist named Anna Utenhove, although this time they buried her alive instead of burning her (see fig. 10).76 One wonders if the trials against demonic witchcraft added any impetus to this last and seemingly anomalous act of judicial brutality towards a heretic. Antwerp’s rulers probably had the greatest difficulty when it came to dealing with the heretical threat.77 By 1566 it was the major centre for reform of all stripes in the southern Netherlands. For a brief time in 1566 William of Orange acted as governor of the city, until news of the arrival of Spanish troops under Duke Alva forced his retirement to his German lands. When the Spanish forces were withdrawn in 1577 (as a result of the Spanish Fury of the previous year), the city fell again into the hands of William of Orange and it became a Calvinist republic. Even so, it is estimated that at the time of the final Spanish conquest in 1585, more than half of the city’s eighty thousand souls remained Catholic, less than a third were Calvinist, around 15 per cent Lutheran, and perhaps 2 per cent Mennonite.78 It was by far the largest and most prosperous city of the Low Countries, with a population peaking at over one hundred thousand in the 1560s (dropping to about forty-seven thousand by 1595). Thus, even if estimates of two thousand Anabaptists residing in the city in 1566 are accurate (and these came from inquisitors who were notorious for inflating numbers of dissidents in order to win the greatest support for their anti-heresy efforts), they pale in comparison to the figures for Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans. The city had also housed a variety of other unorthodox religious groups, including significant numbers of spiritualists, although these had suffered greatly from a series of investigations, trials, and executions in 1544 that decimated the Loyist leadership and drove David Joris and his noble patrons out of Lier. Prior to 1550 the city justices had four Lutherans, six heretics (including the five Loyists), and twenty-four Anabaptists executed. A number of others were exiled, ordered to complete a pilgrimage, or forced to perform some other form of penance or pay a fine for their heretical activities. Thus, during the twenty-eight years between 1521 and 1549 the city executed heretics at a rate of 1.2 per year, on the face of it a very moderate record indeed. However, the vast bulk of these executions occurred during the second half of the 1530s when the twenty-four Anabaptists were killed, many by burning. Apart from the execution of the Loyists (who had already in 1526 publicly recanted their beliefs) in 1544, there was only one other heretic so punished during the 1540s; despite the

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rumours that Anabaptists were plotting in 1542 to cooperate with Maarten van Rossum should his siege of the city succeed, there were no known executions of Anabaptists for the next few years.79 Even the fears that recently arrived conversos from the Iberian Peninsula might be secretly practising Judaism did not spark an inquisition against them, although ten of their number were arrested briefly in the early 1530s and a warrant against Judaising New Christians was issued by the city in December 1540 stipulating that such ‘simulating’ Christians who were really ‘Jews or Maranos, secretly holding within their houses the law and ceremonies of the Jews’ must be punished.80 Guido Marnef’s excellent account of the Reformation in Antwerp from 1550 to 1577 illuminates much about the prosecution of heresy after mid-century. Over this period 214 Anabaptists/Mennonites were put to death, compared to 36 Calvinists and 40 iconoclasts/rebels. This results in an annual rate of 10.4, roughly ten times more severe than the earlier period. A further 364 Calvinists were exiled, as were 155 Anabaptists, 43 iconoclast rebels, 13 Lutherans, and 40 others. Obviously, these figures in no way describe the actual size of each dissident group, as the Calvinists in Antwerp numbered in the thousands and the Anabaptists in the hundreds. Prior to the iconoclastic fury of 1566 the ratio of executions of Anabaptists to Calvinists was over 8 to 1 (117 to 14), and while that figure moderated somewhat to 4.4 to 1 (97 to 22) for the period 1567–77, it is still evident that Antwerp’s magistracy viewed the Mennonites as a greater threat than the Calvinists. Even if we lump together Calvinists and iconoclasts/rebels, the ratio of executions is still disproportionate to the real size of dissident communities in the city: 1.56 to 1 (97 Anabaptists to 62 Calvinists/iconoclasts). Marnef also discovered that of the 228 Anabaptists persecuted at Antwerp between 1567 and 1577, 60 per cent were men and 40 per cent women, with a slightly higher proportion of women executed (43% of the victims). Earlier studies of the proportion of women to men in Anabaptism always floundered on the statistics arising from court records, which generally depicted women in a decided minority among Anabaptist defendants (about 30%). In this case we seem to be coming closer to the truth, and it is fair to conclude that the presumed disparity was due to the reluctance of many authorities to prosecute women on heresy charges. Less than 10 per cent of the Calvinists tried (8 of 86) during this same period in Antwerp were women.81 If nothing else, the trial, torture, and execution of hundreds of Anabaptist women helped acclimatize civic governments and court officials to treating large numbers of accused women

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with extreme judicial harshness. It may also have raised their suspicion of unruly women in general, and made them more likely to believe accusations of maleficia and diabolism against female witches, an argument to which we shall return later. Antwerp’s record of witch persecution, however, is like Kortrijk’s. After a very severe persecution of Anabaptists that ended in 1577, Antwerp’s magistrates resisted further pressure to burn either heretics or witches, although there was a noticeable rise in trials for illicit magic starting the year after the last executions of Anabaptists (see table 4.5). Between 1577 and 1585 the Calvinist forces controlled civic governance and ended heresy persecution, although they did suspend Catholic Church activities in 1581. After the recapture of the city by the Spanish forces in 1585, thousands of reform-minded citizens fled, many to Amsterdam.82 The Catholic rulers then began re-Catholicizing the city, with considerable success. The first record of judicial action against witchcraft is from 1491, when three women were ordered on a pilgrimage to Einsiedeln for some rather grisly magical practices – stealing the head of an executed criminal and the hands of a punished thief and using these as a means to protect their house of ill repute from evil spirits.83 In 1499 two professional female soothsayers were allowed to pay a fine in lieu of corporal punishment, while in 1532 the strange death of several sheep in a butcher’s stall was blamed on the magic of an unknown woman, possibly a Jew. This case occurred during the same year that a number of newly arrived conversos were examined by the court on suspicion of secretly maintaining their Jewish beliefs. In 1541 a soothsayer named Yken Vits was branded and commanded to complete a pilgrimage to Cyprus for her misdeeds and, like the Loyists, required also to wear a mantle with devils painted on it during her time on the scaffold, for she was accused of having used demons in her conjurations, although she was no demonic witch.84 Interestingly, this trial occurred in a rare year of no apparent heresy prosecution. There then appears to have been no further judicial action against sorcery until the 1570s. As Alfons K.L. Thijs points out, during this decade the struggle over religious dissidents raised governmental and church concern over ‘superstitious practices.’85 Philip II’s July 1570 ordinance reorganizing the justice system in the Low Countries lamented the leniency accorded witches and soothsayers and pushed local authorities to greater severity. The Catholic bishop of Antwerp, Franciscus Sonnius or Frans van der Velde (1506–76), likewise encouraged the civic leaders to deal more

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Table 4.5 – Persecution of heretics and witches in Antwerp, 1521–1603 Year

Executions of heretics and Anabaptists

1521 1525 1531/2

1 Lutheran monk 1 Lutheran (several others punished)

1533 1535 1536 1537 1538 1539 1541

2 Lutherans 9 Anabaptists 2 Anabaptists 8 Anabaptists 2 Anabaptists 3 Anabaptists

1544 1545 1550 1551 1552 1553 1555 1556 1557 1558 1559 1560 1561 1562 1563 1564 1565 1566 1567 1568

5 heretics (Loyists) 1 heretic 2 Anabaptists 1 Calvinist, 8 Anabaptists 6 Anabaptists 5 Anabaptists 7 Anabaptists 3 Anabaptists 13 Anabaptists 2 Calvinists, 22 Anabaptists 5 Calvinists, 17 Anabaptists 17 Anabaptists 2 Calvinists, 6 Anabaptists 11 Anabaptists 2 Calvinists 1 Calvinist 1 Calvinist (38 Anabaptists exiled) 4 Anabaptists, 12 rebel/iconoclasts 5 Calvinists, 3 Anabaptists, 5 rebels or iconoclasts 5 Calvinists, 20 Anabaptists, 5 rebels or iconoclasts 2 Calvinists, 6 Anabaptists, 1 rebel 7 Calvinists, 10 Anabaptists, 2 rebels 1 Calvinist 38 Anabaptists 2 Calvinists, 5 rebels 8 Anabaptists, 10 rebels 2 Anabaptists 6 Anabaptists

1569 1570 1571 1572 1573 1574 1575 1576 1577

Trials and executions of sorcerers and witches

1 Jewess suspected of magic – unknown result

1 woman ordered on pilgrimage and branded for magic

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Table 4.5 (Concluded ) Year 1578 1584 1585 1587 1589 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1600 1602 1603

Executions of heretics and Anabaptists

Trials and executions of sorcerers and witches 1 woman exiled, 1 woman falsely arrested 1 woman chastised 1 woman chastised 1 man executed for magic, 1 woman exiled 1 witch executed, 4 exiled from Lier 1 woman cleared 1 man died in prison 1 woman released 1 man chastised 1 woman chastised 1 woman chastised 1 woman released 1 woman released 1 woman executed for demonic witchcraft (the first and last)

severely with such offences and to bring accused soothsayers to the ecclesiastical court. Sonnius, a former rector of the University of Louvain and then from 1549 one of Charles V’s most important inquisitors for the northern provinces, had become a major advisor for Philip II’s extremely controversial efforts to reorganize the Netherlandic church in the early 1560s. As a participant at the Council of Trent, he was a strong opponent of Protestantism and published several works defending Catholic beliefs and practices, gaining recognition as the ‘epitome of the Tridentine ideal.’86 It is therefore not surprising, given the preponderance of Tridentine Catholics among prominent demonologists and witch persecutors, that Sonnius should have seen the eradication of illicit magic as the next step in purifying Antwerp of heresy. The first victim of Sonnius’s plans was one Tanneken van Hamme, who, on 3 August 1578, was banned for three years from Antwerp. In another case, the undersheriff of the city, Jeronimus Michielsz, found himself in great danger in early 1580 because he had arrested a woman, Yda Beaumont, ‘under the pretext that she was a witch,’ keeping her in prison without reason and then leading her personally out of the city after he had confiscated from her a considerable amount of money, jewels, and valuable clothing. He was initially condemned to a six-year imprisonment, but

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received grace during the Joyous Entry of the Duke of Anjou.87 Evidently this official had found in the spreading news of witch trials an opportunity to enrich himself. In 1578 Antwerp’s magistrates managed to work out a religious peace of sorts that allowed Protestants to worship openly in the city. Calvinists were able to enter the inner corridors of civic government, helping to reinforce the Protestant position in the city. Of course, Protestants could be just as concerned about heresy and illicit magic as Catholics, and in 1581 the Lutheran preacher Koenraad Schlüsselberg began encouraging the magistrates to suppress magical practices, although he had no desire to spark a witch persecution. Both Catholic (by the Jesuit Peter Canisius) and Calvinist catechisms spoke out against witchcraft and soothsaying as diabolical practices.88 The Reformed city council acted in 1584 against the widow of an English merchant, Averina Yvers, who was accused of fleecing money from soldiers and other outsiders by claiming to heal and to find lost property by magical means, but she was not harshly treated. Similarly, a Margriet Bastyns was chastised for magical practices the following year. Then came Philip II’s decree of 17 August 1585 ordering the Protestants to return to the Catholic faith or leave the city. Coinciding with Tridentine Catholicism’s drive to bring full conformity to Catholic beliefs and practices in Antwerp, the goal was to reassert the Catholic Church’s monopoly over the supernatural realm by removing both heretics and magicians.89 There soon followed the first known execution of a magical practitioner in the city, the ex-soldier Artus Martelli, who was found in possession of magic books and confessed to directing his malicious magic at Spanish soldiers especially. He was condemned for his idolatrous incantations and conjurations, and was strangled and burned in March 1587. This was followed in September by the banning of Janneken Coren for ‘witchcraft and other unbelievable superstitious matters.’90 A small witch-hunt broke out in nearby Lier in 1589, which saw one of the accused, Catlyne vanden Bulcke, executed in November, while a mother and her fifteen-year-old daughter were released from imprisonment after making an ‘honourable amend.’ Another mother and daughter team and a mother and her son were similarly arrested, interrogated, and released. After an imprisonment of five months, Anna Coops was banned on 19 April 1590 for seven years from Lier.91 This minor hunt in Lier (already infamous for providing refuge to Joris and his followers between 1539 and 1544), however, does not seem to have significantly raised fears of witches in Antwerp itself, at least among the magistrates.

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Even in 1591, when many other cities in the southern Netherlands were conducting witch-hunts, Antwerp’s authorities still proved reluctant to follow suit. One woman, Tanneken Vermeulen, approached the justices to clear her name after her neighbours accused her of witchcraft, and they declared her innocent.92 In December the council tried the elderly Jan Portant for a variety of magical services that he had performed for clients, including procuring abortifacients, healing, performing love magic, conducting exorcisms, and practising necromancy and other ‘devilish superstitions.’ He died the following year in jail. The unfortunate Portant was one of the victims of the Antwerp old sheriff Jan Bacx (Baxius), who seems to have made witch-hunting something of a speciality. His zealous efforts helped inspire Philip II to write to the local authorities in July of 1592 and November of 1595 to encourage them to act more fervently against magical offences. Bacx urged Antwerp’s magistrates to join the rising tide of witch persecution, otherwise the entire region would be engulfed by divine punishment. He therefore sent accused from the ecclesiastical to the secular court in the hopes that the latter would confirm the former’s sentences. Such was not to be the case. Instead, the Antwerp court officials either released Bacx’s victims without punishment (Gommaryne de Clerck in late 1592 and Bette van Brugge in early 1593) or gave them lesser punishments than death (Jan Gascon in August 1594, Jonatas Best in August 1595, Agnata Vrancx in January 1596), something that Bacx protested heartily, but to no avail. Oddly, Jonatas Best, who was accused of having performed ‘diverse superstitious acts smacking of witchcraft’ and who was a foreigner (from London) without a passport and whose wife ‘was clothed as a man,’ was only whipped and eternally banned from the city.93 In total, fourteen soothsayers were released without severe punishment by the Antwerp civil court.94 Even Elisabeth Willekens, who had been accused in 1598 of bewitching a man and confessed to having had a demonic lover, was released in 1600. How can this apparent anomaly be explained? After achieving some measure of coexistence between Catholics and Protestants in 1577, Antwerp’s magistrates had evidently decided that under no circumstances would it return to the earlier pattern of persecution. They generally ignored Philip II’s heresy mandates and were by no means prepared to endorse a witch persecution. Local priests continued to press hard for an anti-witch campaign, such as Father Goudanus, who in 1599 preached a sermon encouraging the magistrates to uproot witch-

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craft and, of course, del Rio, who lived at times in Brabant and who published his Disquisitionum in 1599/1600.95 As noted earlier, del Rio pushed as fervently as possible for a concerted effort to eradicate all forms of blasphemy, linking Protestant heresy with witchcraft as parts of the same diabolical conspiracy to destroy Catholicism. Such polemical rhetoric seems to have had some effect, for while in January 1602 the justices of Antwerp cleared a woman of witchcraft, the following summer they had a woman from Strasbourg, Clara Joossen, strangled and burned for having signed a diabolical pact in her own blood, taking on a demon lover, attending nocturnal sabbats, and there worshipping the devil, charges that Antwerp’s magistrates had not taken very seriously just a few years earlier. Even so, Clara’s execution was the last ordered by the court, although once again many pastors and monks kept pressing the city fathers to return to witch persecution. As Thijs notes, Clara’s death was both an anomaly to Antwerp’s mildness and an end point of persecution.96 In this way, Antwerp’s judicial record mirrored that of Holland – an intense persecution of religious dissenters, especially Anabaptists, and a fairly mild persecution of witches that ended quite early by European standards. Thijs suggests that this was on account of Antwerp’s magistrates’ unwillingness to sow the seeds of panic during a time of severe stress for the city and region. As I have shown elsewhere, those rulers who had given up on efforts to enforce a strict religious conformity and to remove all traces of blasphemy from the realm, persecuted neither heretics nor witches.97 The moment the local authorities of both Antwerp and Holland turned to an effort to tolerate the religious other, they lost their heart for antidiabolical bloodshed. Conclusion The most obvious conclusion to be made from the patterns of persecution noted here is that it was extremely rare for both Anabaptists and witches to be executed in the same year. Authorities either alternated persecution of the two or did not begin seriously trying or executing witches until after they had finished their efforts to exterminate the heretical threat. Since this pattern is found in several regions or cities, it is unlikely to be mere coincidence. Instead, it reveals the major reason why civic authorities persecuted such dissidents in the first place: they believed that both heresy and sorcery were polluting the community and had to be excised as a means of diverting God’s wrath. Ridding a community of blasphemous pollution was a primary motivation for reli-

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gious violence – judicially approved or not – across Europe. As Natalie Davis has cogently observed, ‘pollution was a dangerous thing to suffer in a community, from either a Protestant or a Catholic point of view, for it would surely provoke the wrath of God.’ She continues that ‘Catholics, moreover, had also to worry about offending Mary and the saints; and though the anxious, expiatory processions organized in the wake of Protestant sacrilege might temporarily appease them, the heretics were sure to strike again.’98 This fear of pollution, of scandalizing God or the saints, also explains why small numbers of peaceable Mennonites were so harshly treated during the second half of the sixteenth century. Plagues, fires, and economic and social crises were often blamed on the presence of even a small group of individuals believed to be incurring God’s wrath by their very existence within the community. As the learned professors of the University of Louvain noted in 1545, not only did they fear the blasphemous evil of Lutherans, Reformed, and Anabaptists, but there were arising ‘many other damned, strange, monstrous, and unheard of sects’ which must be brought into the open.’99 When, however, these targeted dissidents were virtually eradicated, and God’s displeasure continued to be displayed through an assortment of communal disasters, it was necessary to seek out those others responsible in the understanding that the devil had merely switched tactics in his campaign to destroy Christendom. With a worsening climate after midcentury and major economic woes in the southern Netherlands after the fall of Antwerp in 1585, it is not surprising that attention shifted from religious dissidents to supposed witches. Under these conditions, the harsh rhetoric that had demonized the Anabaptists for several decades was readily marshalled against witches. We have noted that after the northern provinces seceded from their Spanish Habsburg masters both heresy and witch persecution were suppressed quite early. Stuart Clark suggests that the two were linked: ‘One of the reasons, we may suppose, for the decline of witchcraft prosecutions and of witchcraft beliefs in general was the coming of a religious pluralism that permitted the members of all types of churches to coexist and spelt the end of the confessional state.’100 Using the experience of the northern and southern Netherlands as a test case, Clark’s proposition shows considerable validity. In the south, the Spanish Catholic rulers vigorously defended Tridentine Catholicism and continued to attack all alternatives. They also promoted witch persecution. Some local authorities, such as the magistrates of Kortrijk and Antwerp, found ways to resist or mitigate royal pressure to hunt witches. Others did not. The

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rulers of the northern Republic, on the other hand, agreed that the Reformed Church would be a voluntary one and that the state would enforce neither attendance at its services nor conformity to its creed, hence explicit persecution of dissenters ceased. Most investigations into heresy and blasphemy were then handed over to religious disciplinary bodies that meted out much milder forms of chastisement than their secular counterparts. The rulers also decided that each religious community would be responsible for disciplining its erring members, including both Mennonite and Jewish fellowships. Witch-hunting was also generally discouraged by the authorities, and executions for witchcraft were made illegal shortly after the turn of the seventeenth century. Unlike many southern cities, the severe persecution of Anabaptists did not in this case lead to witch-hunting. This should not be taken to imply that Calvinist governments elsewhere did not persecute witches, as the case of Scotland alone shows that in their drive to transform a region into a godly commonwealth with a single confession Calvinist rulers could be quite vigorous in expunging a realm of the godless.101 Calvin’s Geneva was not free of witch panics either, as several times during the sixteenth century individuals were accused, convicted, and executed for spreading the plague by magical means.102 The most important difference, however, between Calvinism in the Dutch Republic and elsewhere was that the Reformed Church of the Netherlands did not possess coercive powers, nor were the civic leaders enamoured of the goal to create a unitary religious state or a kingdom of God, as were the Reformed in Geneva, Scotland, and the New World. Several points can be highlighted from the case studies presented here. First, the contrast between Namur, which continued a latemedieval style of sectarian witch persecution into the sixteenth century and conducted no known Anabaptist persecution, and Holland, Brabant, and Flanders is highly instructive. Where religious heresy and sorcery were kept distinct, persecution of the two crimes alternated, unlike in Namur, where the image of witchcraft centred on an older sectarian ‘Waldensian’ conspiracy. The question before us, then, is whether or not persecution of Anabaptists and other heretics had anything to do with the revival of witch-hunting in the second half of the sixteenth century in other regions where the rulers were not inclined to adopt religious tolerance as a state policy or informal practice. Certainly the case of the southern Netherlands, where in many cities heresy hunting was almost immediately replaced by witch-hunting toward the end of the

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century, is a case in point, as both persecutions were identified as necessary to restore Catholicism to its traditional monopolistic position by crushing expression of any form of religious incertitude, dissidence, and scepticism toward the sacraments in the minds and hearts of all residents. Among those who followed the reasoning of a del Rio was Philip II, who evidently believed that a concerted assault on witches would help reinvigorate the flagging zeal of Catholics, just as he had hoped that attacking Anabaptists and other reform heretics would dispel scepticism. However, not all magistrates cooperated zealously, and where they had come to believe that their persecution of Anabaptists had been unwarranted or that the purging of Anabaptist heretics had not ameliorated divine punishment, they gave up on the effort to uncover a secret, diabolical plot, and did not turn to witch burning. In this respect, it was the fear of God, rather than terror of the devil, that drove magistrates to such bloodshed. The Habsburg re-Catholicization program encompassed a range of activities that reinforced belief in the Catholic world view and control over the sacred, including the elaboration of diabolical conspiracies and accompanying persecution of witchcraft. With this in mind, we will now turn to some largely Lutheran principalities in the Holy Roman Empire in chapter 5 and the Catholic Tirol in chapter 6.

5 The Devil’s Sabbat: Nocturnal Anabaptist Meetings, Hailstorms, and Witchcraft in Southern Germany

All errors, heresies and factions are a punishment and a plague of God against the thankless children who do not accept the healing Word with joy, delight, fear and thanksgiving. For God wants us to accept and use his grace and gifts with thankfulness. If, however, we do not accept them with thankfulness but despise them, he becomes angry at us and takes away from us again those same gifts ... He gives us error, heresy, and blindness aplenty and upon these will follow war, dearth, bloodshed, and devastation of land and people ... Since therefore we despise the pure Word of God and will not accept it with thanks God permits Satan to plant weeds, and instigates and awakens one new faction, fanaticism, and sect after another. Andreas Althamer and Johann Rurer, Lutheran pastors in Ansbach (between Heilbronn and Regensburg) ‘Instructions Concerning Anabaptists,’ 15301

These two Lutheran pastors enunciated the widely held belief that the very existence of Anabaptist heresy was sufficient cause for God to severely punish Europeans. The fervour to extract detailed confessions from Anabaptists arose from the need to publicize, ridicule, and demonize their heresy both to discourage imitation and to reinforce the verity of sacramental realism for Catholic and Lutheran churchmen. Earlier Catholic story-tellers had used the forced confession of Jews and witches to dispel scepticism and dissuade the curious from conducting their own experiments on sacramentals to determine if they really possessed tangible power.2 Of course Jews did not desecrate Hosts, while Calvinists and Anabaptists did, and only Anabaptists rebaptized themselves. As Claus-Peter Clasen has shown, Catholic regions of the Holy Roman

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Map 2: Anabaptism in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Low Countries in the Mid-Sixteenth Century. From Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (New York and Oxford, 1966) 4: 335. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

Empire accounted for the vast majority of known Anabaptist executions: thirty-eight of fifty-six governments that executed Anabaptists were Catholic, while only eight Protestant governments were known to do so; of those areas with a clear religious identity, Catholic governments accounted for 90 per cent (709 of 790) of Anabaptist executions. The majority of the Protestant executions for Anabaptism occurred in only two territories: Lutheran Saxony (north of Thuringia) and Zwinglian Bern (southwest of Zurich), and Swiss Protestants condemned Anabaptists primarily for breaking civil laws and fomenting insurrection, rather

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than heresy.3 Only Catholic governments burned Anabaptists at the stake, some continuing to do so until 1618. Judicial Overlap The anti-Anabaptist mandate of Charles V, issued in 1529 and revised and confirmed in 1544 and 1551, dominated the approach of Catholic territories toward the crime, while his revised law code of 1532, the Carolina, set the groundwork for the later judicial persecution of witches. Clasen was puzzled by one aspect of the 1544 Anabaptist mandate in which the authorities ‘were given the right to arrest Anabaptists without prior denunciation – a measure also used in the prosecution of witches. Actually, it is strange that this measure was adopted only after the Anabaptist danger had largely subsided.’4 This apparent enigma actually gets to the heart of the matter, for it was during the period between the heyday of Anabaptism (up to 1535) and the rise of major witch-hunting after 1562 that there was a transition from the fear of a real heretical threat with insurrectionary possibilities, to that of a largely imaginary diabolical menace involving sectarian witchcraft. In these decades, what was left of Anabaptism had been driven underground or into exile (especially to Moravia for the Hutterites or East Frisia for the Mennonites) and was extremely difficult to uncover. This was also the era of the growth of spiritualism and Nicodemism, whose advocates could deny heretical beliefs if arrested. The notorious case of David Joris, who spent the last dozen years of his life in Basel as Johann van Brugge and whose true identity was discovered in 1559, three years after his death, is merely one example of a heretic living undetected by outwardly conforming to approved social and religious practices, even though he continued to publish his unorthodox notions. News of the discovery so disturbed chroniclers across Europe that some depicted him as a wouldbe sorcerer with a preternatural control over his followers.5 Calvin’s well-known battles with the libertines of France and the Netherlands, not to mention the growing anxiety about the Familist followers of Hendrik Niclaes in England and the Netherlands, similarly raised concern about the virtually undetectable heresies infecting even the higher echelons of society.6 In this context, fear of secret diabolical plots increased with the virtual disappearance of the visible threat, while the anxiety raised by the demonizing rhetoric of preachers and pamphleteers was readily directed by parishioners onto practitioners of illicit magic, especially as hailstorms, crop failures, and pestilence convinced them of the danger of God’s wrath and no other heretics were available. Similarly,

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testimony received in one set of heresy trials was often incorporated into the questions asked of other heretics, a process that had transpired in the thirteenth-century creation of the fictional Luciferans and in the fourteenth century with the transformation of heretical Waldensians into maleficent Vauderie.7 Although the process of instituting criminal proceedings was distinct for Anabaptists and witches – the former pursued by the authorities, often without the support of the populace; the latter denounced by neighbours, often against the wishes of the authorities – governmental support for and clerical propaganda promoting such trials were absolutely necessary for both. Yet the common folk clearly had no stomach for the torture and execution of peaceable Anabaptists, hence the judicial anti-heresy machinery was retooled to purge communities of witches, popularly viewed as the real threat. To develop this argument, we will explore several regions of significant Anabaptist presence and whose court records are readily accessible: Strasbourg, Württemberg, Thuringia, and Hesse. Strasbourg: The Demonizing of ‘Atheists’ Given its strong connection to Dutch Anabaptism, it is appropriate to begin our analysis with the southern German city of Strasbourg, where Dutch Anabaptism’s founder, Melchior Hoffman, was imprisoned, presumably until his death in 1546.8 In the 1530s and 1540s the city’s Reformed preachers were faced with a revival of interest in soothsaying and bewitchment, inspired perhaps by the presence of Schwenckfeldian spiritualists, by the Melchiorite Anabaptist emphasis on special revelation and visions, and by the claims of a few Anabaptists to having special access to the Otherworld.9 Moreover, the interest of the Strasbourgeois in witchcraft was enhanced by the city’s reputation as a publishing centre for witchcraft literature10 and by the residence of Hans Baldung Grien (1484/5–1545), a famous visual illustrator of witches and member of Strasbourg’s civic government.11 Between 1515 and 1535 the neighbouring bishopric of Strasbourg persecuted a number of witches, undoubtedly encouraged by the 1508 Lenten sermons of the famous city preacher Geiler von Kaysersberg, more than half of which were devoted to the subject of witchcraft and which were being printed in the city until 1522, as was Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum.12 However, in the 1530s the city’s Reformed preachers tried to blame the sectarians for the panic, for in 1535 they asked the council to extend its disciplinary measures against sectarians and soothsayers into the countryside in an attempt to eradicate superstitious notions

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and recourse to prognosticators. These efforts were intensified between 1543 and 1544 as the result of the activity of the soothsayer priest Ott von Hagenau. The reformers ascribed his alleged powers to a pact with the devil, advising the council to prohibit such activity. In September 1544 Martin Bucer delivered a sermon on the dangers of soothsaying and Ott was expelled.13 Strasbourg’s pastors soon found themselves in a two-front battle, having increasingly to counter Jesuit propaganda regarding the validity of Catholic miracles and exorcism. In these circumstances, suspicion of witchcraft saw a pronounced rise, first in the countryside around Strasbourg (both before 1535 and especially after 1550) and in the city proper in the early 1560s.14 During this time the villages around the city were infamous as safe havens for Anabaptists, as was the city, and here persecution of witches and Anabaptists did not overlap.15 Also increasing fears of diabolical activity was a perceived rise in radical religious activity in the city starting in the winter of 1544/5, which the Reformed preachers suggested ‘coincided with articles promulgated by Jorists.’ In their February 1545 petition for council action the preachers Martin Bucer, Caspar Hedio, and Matthias Zell warned the council that some ‘openly maligned Strasbourg’s church and religion, some denied the existence of the devil, and others argued that one should tolerate all citizens whether Jew, Turk, or Catholic.’ In addition, they noted that David Joris was in the area with ‘a large following who plan to drive out the godless.’16 In April 1544 Joris had indeed made arrangements to repair to Basel (a mere one hundred kilometres south of Strasbourg) and moved there permanently in August. His major noble patron, Cornelis van Lier, lord of Berchem, did not reside long in the Swiss city but returned the following year to Strasbourg. Joris had earlier visited the city in 1535 in search of refuge and again in 1538 to debate with Hoffman’s supporters. Joris’s supporters disseminated his views in and around the city. These would have included his pleas for religious toleration (although he did not openly promote the toleration of Jews and Muslims per se) and denial of the independent reality of the devil. 17 While Joris emphasized individual responsibility for evil and sought to depreciate fear of witchcraft, his ideas ironically led to greater attention paid to the diabolical. Adding fuel to fears over a new sect of Satan worshippers was the assertion that followers of Hans Denck believed in the ultimate salvation of the devil; among a number of Anabaptist writings confiscated by the Strasbourg council in 1537 there was a booklet entitled True declaration that satan, death, hell, sin and eternal damnation did not originate from God.18

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Governmental distress over this idiosyncratic notion of the salvation of fallen angels is witnessed in a 1559 ducal ordinance regarding Schwenckfeldians and Anabaptists in Württemberg (the region around Esslingen north of Swabia) wherein interrogators were to ask an Anabaptist suspect ‘if he holds that the devil and all the damned will also be saved.’19 Further, in a 1557 document composed by some of the duchy’s theologians describing how best to deal with the Anabaptists, it was stipulated that ‘the Anabaptist sect is not a Christian church, but a devilish seduction.’20 Not only Protestants but also Catholics were concerned, and in his list of sects that he sent to the Bishop of Speyer (north of Bruchsal) in 1556, the Speyer imperial messenger Wendel Artzt included the category of Anabaptistae demonisalvi – those who believed that the demons would be saved.21 That there may not have been a single proponent of this idea of the devil’s salvation did not stop the authorities from becoming concerned about such devilish sects and, by ingenious interrogations, finding one where none existed.22 Distress that residents of Strasbourg might have been swayed by atheistic teaching – to deny the devil was akin to atheism – led the reformers to preach fervently on the evil activities of Satan. As Midelfort notes, many Lutheran pastors described their congregations ‘as full of godless materialists, Sadducees, swinish Epicureans, and self-satisfied worldlings who refused to recognize the power of God and the reality of the spiritworld.’23 In 1556, during an investigation into an Anabaptist gathering, Strasbourg’s magistrates discovered that a Lumpen Barthlin had been unsuccessfully attempting to ply his magical skills among some of the religious dissenters.24 We do not know why he chose to do so, but he may have assumed that, like the Waldensians before them, the Anabaptists’ reputation for ecstatic and visionary experiences made them likely customers for shamanistic services.25 Fears about the influence of religious dissenters and of religious scepticism about the devil were helping to stoke popular interest in special forms of revelation, prognostication, and diabolical activity, while preachers often used reputed preternatural diabolical activity as evidence to counteract popular scepticism toward the spirit world. Soon witch persecution increased in the city, as did publication of works on the subject.26 The denial of the reality of the devil was closely tied to accusations of witchcraft in the Reformed tradition.27 For example, the most important jurist involved in sixteenth-century Genevan witch trials (western tip of the Swiss Cantons) was Germain Colladon, who advised Geneva’s court on some fifty-four witchcraft cases. Depreciating the more traditional charges of maleficia, Colladon concentrated instead on asking the

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accused two questions: ‘Does the Devil exist?’ and ‘Do witches exist?’ E. William Monter relates that if ‘a suspect answered “no” to either of these, he was in deep trouble, for this was an indice urgent: Colladon assumed that anyone who was so “poorly informed and instructed in the Christian religion” was probably in the Devil’s clutches already.’ Several accused witches who denied the reality of the devil were therefore put to torture to force confessions from them.28 In this context, Joris’s position on the devil and witchcraft could have been indirectly responsible for increasing demands for witch prosecution in Reformed centres. After mid-century the Strasbourgeois continued to tolerate the sectarians informally, but the demonizing rhetoric of the Lutheran clergy was merely redirected to Catholics and Calvinists; as in several Catholic bishoprics, Strasbourg’s church leaders ‘felt themselves under siege ... in the second generation and tried to develop a fortress mentality in their congregations.’29 The second half of the sixteenth century was not an easy time for Strasbourg’s preachers as they fought their own magistrates to eradicate the remnants of Catholicism and superstition from the city, but to no avail. In 1555 the city had been mandated by the Augsburg Reichstag to tolerate both Catholicism and Lutheranism, but the magistrates, pressured by the Protestant preachers, found various means to end the celebration of the Mass by 1560.30 Yet this merely drove Catholicism underground, and in 1564 the magistrates recorded that the Catholics were once again meeting in ‘secret conventicles,’ practising idolatry, and clandestinely baptizing infants.31 In some ways the Catholics of Strasbourg had taken on the traditional role reserved for Anabaptists as fearful undercover heretics, and popular violence against priests broke out in 1559. As Lorna Abray notes, hostility toward Catholics ‘was kept alive by the steady repetition of anti-Catholic sermons, by the frightening revival of Catholicism in the Empire, and by the pro-Huguenot propaganda that poured off the Strasbourg presses.’32 Abray continues: The fate of the Catholics, like that of the sectarians, illustrates the importance of political factors in decisions about the limits of religious toleration. When the sectarians were thought to be a menace to the established power structure the magistrates feared them; in the latter part of the century this fear ebbed. Catholics, on the other hand, became more frightening after mid-century ... There is some evidence that lay Strasburghers found the laws against the Anabaptists too severe; and there is considerable evidence, particularly from the late 1540s and early 1550s, that they found the 1549 compromise and the Catholic restoration difficult to accept.33

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These religious tensions and rising anxiety over demonic witchcraft merged in the writings of the lay Calvinist Johann Fischart, brother-inlaw to the Strasbourg printer Bernard Jobin who from 1572 to 1590 published a flood of controversial broadsides and news-sheets depicting ‘the dangers of the Catholic revival, in particular the threat offered by the Jesuits and the war policies of the French and Spanish monarchs.’34 Fischart’s virulent antipapalism depicted the Jesuits as a secretive, dangerous sect that was ‘part of a long-planned campaign of the devil to regain control on earth from Jesus Christ.’35 In his translating work Fischart connected the religious anxiety to witchcraft fears by translating Bodin’s Demonomania, which appeared off Jobin’s press in 1581, 1586, and 1591.36 Why did this fervent anti-Catholic translate a work by an unconventional French Catholic that was written against the Protestant Johann Weyer? In the preface to the second edition he explained it as a matter of balancing the many theological and medical treatises on the subject with a tome written by a jurist. Fischart was also deeply concerned about purifying the righteous realm of the devil’s agents, whether Jesuits or witches.37 The first witch trial in the city after mid-century involved the wife of Peter Aller, who was suspected of witchcraft because of her cantankerous reputation, and another was burned in 1564. More executions are recorded in 1579, 1581 (with two), 1587, and 1588, while several more suspected witches were arrested in 1593.38 Not all of Strasbourg’s magistrates were convinced by Fischart’s efforts and sought to reduce tensions by stopping the printing of other reports of diabolical activities, such as a book on Faust in 1587.39 Yet other preachers and writers succeeded in getting the news of diabolical activities out, such as Johann Marbach, who in 1571 argued that the Jesuit Peter Canisius’s alleged success in performing exorcisms was the work of the devil. Marbach also promoted Lutheran ‘miracles’ of exposing the Antichrist, but these, Abray rightly suggests, were ‘perhaps not very effective against the Strasburghers’ craving for horrors, supernatural tales, and visible manifestations of God and the Devil.’ She comments astutely that a preacher’s desire to warn off residents from ‘superstition’ by describing in detail the specific heresies or superstition could ‘backfire when it stimulated curiosity and speculation.’40 As the preachers regularly proclaimed the diabolical evils of the religious ‘Other’ – first Anabaptists, then Jesuits – at critical moments they added similar declamations against soothsaying and magic, blurring the boundaries between these heresies and making it likely that the fear raised from the anti-heresy sermons would be applied to alleged witches.

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Nocturnal Anabaptist Meetings and the Sabbat in the Holy Roman Empire Considerable anxiety was also raised by stories of secret meetings of Anabaptists in ways parallel to popular suspicion about the meetings of Huguenot ministers in France, as one pamphleteer wrote in 1555: ‘These ministers ... usually assemble at night, sometimes in a pit or a quarry, for fear of persecution. These clandestine assemblies have given wicked people occasions to vent all kinds of calumny upon them ... They have had the reputation among common folk of practising incest, sorcery and enchantment and of being completely devoted to the Devil, meeting in conventicles as much to indulge in lewd behaviour and do other execrable things as to conduct their “Sabbat” (I use their terminology) with the Devil who is present on that occasion.’41 While our pamphleteer sneers somewhat at such misconceptions on the part of the common people, he implies that these opinions were widespread throughout France, where the major dissident group was the Calvinists, rather than the Anabaptists. Such misunderstanding seems also to have been commonplace with respect to Anabaptist meetings in the Holy Roman Empire. The Strasbourg magistrates heard several times of large nocturnal Anabaptist meetings, such as that of three hundred Anabaptists in the forest in 1538 and of several hundred in 1541, 1545, 1557, and 1576.42 Curious residents sometimes followed suspected Anabaptists out to these meetings; in the 1545 gathering of July 25/6, the teenage son of pastor Johann Steinle and a friend followed some dissidents to a gathering in the Eckbolsheim forest. There they endured hours-long sermons by a number of lay preachers who stood next to an open fire or to colleagues with burning torches in order to be seen, although it was at some moments so dark ‘believers did not even know who else was present.’43 The lectures criticized the approved churches, both Catholic and Protestant, and proclaimed that God was not to be found in stone churches but ‘in the wilderness and in the darkness.’ After the sermons five or six sisters were expecting to be baptized, although this act was not carried out that night. Long and intensely emotional prayers followed, with crying and weeping, and finally the meeting ended in the early morning with a communal meal of beer and bread. This report caused considerable consternation among the city council’s members, who conducted further investigations. Pastor Steinle made no reference in his report to diabolical activity and instead portrayed the meeting as rather mun-

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dane, if hard on the patience, and Strasbourg’s council apparently made no diabolical inferences.44 At this rather innocent Anabaptist gathering we see many of the basic elements of the sabbat: a large, nocturnal meeting of heretics; a leader who harangues the group around a fire; ecstatic religious experiences; and a communal meal. In Hesse in 1578 separate forest meetings of a handful of Hutterites and Swiss Brethren garnered so much publicity that over two hundred people came at midnight to witness the goingson, an incident to which we shall return in a moment.45 Clasen recounts another incident of village curiosity during a July evening in 1596: When late one evening in July 1596 a man was seen outside the village of Ötisheim with food and a bottle of wine, but declined to say where he was going, the peasants immediately followed him and ended up in a Hutterite meeting. There was so little excitement in village life that the peasants were intrigued by the many wild rumors they heard about the Anabaptists. No fewer than 150 curious peasants stood looking on at a nocturnal meeting of fifteen Swiss Brethren in the forest near Alsfeld. Called to account by the officials, the peasants cleverly argued that they had only followed the Anabaptists to find out who they were and report them to the authorities. Curiously enough, even the pastor of a nearby village appeared at this meeting – to acquaint himself, as he later claimed, with the life and doctrines of the sectarians.46

What were the ‘wild rumors’ that caused these individuals to follow Anabaptists into the hills? By the 1590s witch trials of demonic, sabbat-meeting witches were well under way across the Empire. It would take no stretch of the imagination to suggest that many people suspected Anabaptist meetings of diabolism. Ecclesiastical Visitations, Anabaptism, and ‘Superstition’ in Southwestern Germany Such incidents suggest that the fine distinction made by learned theologians between Anabaptist and witch heresies were blurred at the popular level, just as the line between demonic possession and witchcraft was frequently crossed in popular culture.47 Such blurring is evident in the Visitation Protocols, as in the 1531 Discipline Ordinance of the city of Constance (above Zurich on the north shore of Lake Constance) wherein the entry regarding ‘Of rebaptized, extortionists, [improper]

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sales, sorcery, and the like’ records the city’s command to those responsible for overseeing discipline in Constance to look carefully into any cases involving Anabaptists, extortion, ‘unseemly sales,’ improper contracts, or anything that touched on the ‘error of sorcery and superstition’ or smacked of disobedience to the civic authorities.48 In the November 1556 Church Visitation report for the Pfalz region, the sixth question asked the visitors to see if there were any in the community who abstained from church, kept an unchristian and dishonourable (ergerlich) house, carried on adultery, practised sorcery or witchcraft (hexenwerk), publicly opposed church services, abstained from the holy sacraments, or were Anabaptists, Schwenckfeldians, or other sectarians. It also strictly commended the pastors to diligently watch out for Anabaptists and sectarians before they were strengthened in their error or spread it widely among other people.49 Similarly, in the November 1556 Visitation Protocol of the now Lutheran margravate of Baden (east of Strasbourg), the seemingly disparate categories of Anabaptism and sorcery were brought together. In the entry for Badenweiler (north of Basel), in response to the ninth question of the ecclesiastical visitor, ‘if in your area there are present anabaptists, sorcerers, necromancers, or similar people,’ the community of Hügelheim affirmed ‘there is nothing like this among them,’ although, the report concluded, the neighbouring territories of Haitersheim and Mauchen might have some. This the leaders of the latter two villages denied.50 Two years later, the Visitation Protocol for Hochberg and Badenweiler asked the visitors to answer whether or not there were any Anabaptists in their midst, and most regions responded, ‘we have no anabaptists or such necromancers, sorcerers’ and so forth.51 In 1593 the pastor of Mettenheim (Duchy of Leiningen, above the Rhine from Bruchsal) reported happily that in his parish he had uncovered no members of the damnable Anabaptist sects with their ‘godless lives and unchristian conduct,’ but then followed this with detailed complaints about the practice of witchcraft, sorcery, and necromancy (Teufelbeschwörung) among his flock. The conjunction naturally leads to the implication that the now-suppressed Anabaptist heresy had been in some vague fashion partly responsible for the current unseemly behaviour of his parishioners.52 State officials and learned theologians in the south and central Lutheran principalities were in the second half of the 1550s also expressing distress that the Anabaptists were increasing in number and influence in some regions, leading to the general disdain of local pastors, church services, and attendance at the sacraments.53 The ecclesiastical official of Neustadt (north of Esslingen) reported that there were Anabaptists and

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Schwenckfeldians in his region who met in crowds in the forests and corners and were gaining the upper hand, having ‘corrupted the people to them, giving them no little reason to oppose their pastors, all of whom they have be-smirched as unlearned priests and as public fornicators and similar scandal.’54 Other rulers, such as Count Wilhelm of Henneberg in Thuringia, noted in 1531 that some of their subjects regarded the Anabaptists as ‘not so diabolical.’55 Many visitors noted the strong anticlerical sentiment of Anabaptists they questioned. The official of Stromberg remarked that some Anabaptists whom he had managed to convince to return to the Lutheran Church gave their major reason for falling away in the first place as their inability to comprehend how their godless and adulterous pastor could have possessed the Holy Spirit and taught anything good. In 1557 Johannes Marbach (1521–81), president of the Compagnie des Pasteurs in Strasbourg, warned the Strasbourg city council that Anabaptists were multiplying in Alsace, meeting in large crowds at night, making threats ‘as if they will create a new Münsterite business.’56 This news the Strasbourg pastors relayed to the other Lutheran principalities as well, for example, alerting the Palatinate authorities in Ötthein about the new Münsterite threat, illustrated by a recent forest gathering of a thousand Anabaptists. In the following year the Palatinate authorities issued a general mandate against the Anabaptists and also warned their local officials about this new assault of Satan upon the true church and the godly state ‘in these last times.’ The Anabaptists were deceived by the devil into rejecting infant baptism and the doctrine of the Trinity, ‘as the Jews reason,’ promoting community of goods, divorce, and rebellion.57 It is also important to note that Marbach was engaged at this time in a two-pronged battle against Anabaptist anticlericalism on one side and Jesuit promotion of miracles at the Marian shrine near Freiburg im Breisgau (south of Strasbourg) on the other.58 It is not difficult to understand why Lutheran officials and ministers became frustrated with the anticlericalism directed at them by Anabaptists. In 1563 a number of civic notables and theologians attended the interrogation of the Hutterite Paul Glock at Hohenwittlingen Castle (near Stuttgart) where they were told that ‘you, on the other hand, both groups, Lutherans and popish priests together with your godless congregations, are worse and more godless from day to day following your baptism ... Therefore it is manifest that both of you, Lutherans and papists, are wrong, and not a church of Christ, but a church of the devil ... Your teaching, preaching, church and assembly is a mob and an assembly of fornicators, adulterers, liars, blasphemers, drunkards, proud, usurers, and all unclean spirits in whom the devil has and does his work.’59

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Appearances of piety notwithstanding, such clergy were, Glock concluded, the children of the devil who hid their true, diabolical nature behind the fence of false preaching, baptism, Lord’s Supper, and ‘outward ceremonial show and walk.’60 To counteract such anticlericalism, Lutheran clergy continued to blacken the reputation of the Anabaptists. Even as late as 1590 the Lutheran superintendent of Stuttgart was castigating Anabaptists as ‘hedge preachers, inciters and seducers. You seduce the people, separating the man from his wife, the wife from the man and the children from the parents.’ His victim was the Hutterite missionary Hans Schmidt, who, while imprisoned in the monastery of Lorch, was alternately threatened with torture and treated gently, but all to no avail. Finally the pastor in charge expostulated, ‘the living devil disclosed that to you and if you do not forsake it, you are the devil’s body and soul.’ To this Schmidt merely warned the pastor to be aware of his own responsibility on the Last Day.61 Those who persecute the true Christians, Schmidt continued, are ‘Turks in spirit.’62 After he was brought to another prison, Schmidt was tortured on the strappado, but his resistence led his interrogator once again to assert that the ‘devil has taught you. He is closing your mouth; you belong to him.’ Even a rough mercenary imprisoned with him interceded for him, saying that he could ‘see nothing wrong in him except that he prays day and night.’63 Schmidt refused to yield, but was released and exiled from Württemberg in December. Anticlericalism was also prominent in witch trials. Harald Schwillus’s study of the many clerical victims of witch-hunts within the Catholic bishoprics such as Bamberg has revealed that charges often focused on the contrast between the popular notions surrounding conception and ‘first’ birth, which was generally regarded as a female domain, and the magical interpretation of the ‘second’ birth, the process of incorporation into the church. The rituals for the latter were controlled by the clergy, and baptism especially was the first means of protection against diabolical assault. Thus, just as when something went wrong in the first birth lying-in maids were often accused of witchcraft, priests could quickly come under suspicion of being in league with Satan when unbaptized infants were said to be handed over to the devil or when baptism was shown to have been ineffective in protecting the faithful.64 Governments of course could not tolerate the missionizing or clandestine meetings of the Anabaptists even though it was the authorities’ own policy of violent suppression that had forced Anabaptists to take to the woods in the first place. In 1556 the Heidelberg Church Council

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decided that such secret meetings were not tolerable, for they resulted in both speciem schismatis in the church and speciem seditionis in civil society, producing disobedience and unchastity among the populace.65 In 1558 the Duke of Württemberg’s government issued another ordinance describing how to deal with ‘Anabaptists and other sectarians,’ the latter including Schwenckfeldians and those who denied the Real Presence. What is most significant about this document, one in a long line of antiAnabaptist mandates, is that it concludes with a section on how to proceed against ‘sorcerers, necromancers [teufelsbeschwerer], soothsayers, and speakers of blessings [segensprecher].’ There is no transition indicating that the reader has moved to a distinctly different topic. Instead, the language of the proceedings for both Anabaptists and magicians was remarkably similar, as if the Anabaptist ‘errors and superstitions’ were responsible for the discovery of magical offences.66 The same questions were to be raised of both groups of suspects, in order to discover their personal history in the forbidden heresy, their associates, meeting places, beliefs, potentially harmful acts (sedition for the Anabaptists, maleficia for the magicians), and the like. Torture to extract confessions was to be used only in clear cases of the wilful and unrepentant; both Anabaptism and sorcery involved horrible blasphemy against God. The Lutheran authorities here clearly distinguished between Anabaptists who, like the Münsterites over twenty years earlier, sought to overthrow the government, and those who were merely ‘works devils [werkteufel]’ deceiving the people with their ‘outwardly radiant appearance.’67 Such a suspicion was widely shared, as in 1537 when the Mühlhausen interrogators of several Anabaptists – who kept calling infant baptism a ‘sow’s bath’ – concluded that ‘the Anabaptists can spruce themselves up with an outward radiance’ but their ‘apparent holiness is mere duplicity and a diabolical apparition,’ showing that they are of the devil.68 The 1558 ordinance seems to have presented clear evidence to the authorities that not only a goodly number of Württemberg’s ordinary subjects were infected with superstitious and magical practices, but so too were a considerable number of local officials, despite the daily sermons against such. The authorities were also confronted with increasing numbers of denunciations of seemingly innocent Christians who were accused of being the devil’s allies or covenanters (teufelsbundsgenossen). It was important to clear the innocent and to suppress such superstitious and magical practices from the duchy. A vigorous campaign of preaching against magical idolatry was commanded, and the means of interrogating suspected magical heretics laid out. In other words, intentionally

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or not, the drive to expunge Anabaptist heresy from the duchy by sermons, visitations, arrests, and expulsions seems to have led to the discovery of an even more frightening form of heresy: diabolical sorcery. Anabaptists and the Witch Panic of Wiesensteig, 1562 Like its neighbours, the Duchy of Württemberg was a scene of considerable religious conflict and change for most of the sixteenth century. The emperor had confiscated it from Duke Ulrich and kept it as a Catholic territory until Landgrave Philipp of Hesse restored it in 1534/5 to his relation Ulrich. Ulrich gradually moved his territory into the Lutheran camp, but steered away from the dogmatic approach of Electoral Saxony.69 The region faced its harshest persecution of Anabaptists during the years of Catholic rule, with peaks in numbers tried in 1528 (38), 1529 (22), 1532 (15), and 1535 (22). The 1528/9 trials were inspired by the discovery of a conspiracy, led by Hans Zuber, to capture Reutlingen in the spring of 1528. As a result, the city magistrates questioned their suspects about the precise nature of secret greetings among the conspirators, their attitude towards a common purse, and details of their plot against the government.70 Since Ulrich followed the opinions of Lutheran preachers Johannes Brenz (1490–1570) and Jakob Andreae (1528–90) to treat Anabaptists mildly, relatively few trials were conducted after 1535.71 That changed in 1562 when a sudden discovery of a large, nocturnal forest meeting of Anabaptists provoked the arrest of over two dozen participants. In early July the ducal court at Stuttgart pressed the Esslingen magistrates to arrest the Anabaptists, who were regularly meeting in a wooded ravine near Katzenbühl fortress outside of Esslingen. Twentyeight were captured, although the seven women among them were later released without interrogation. The twenty-one men were closely questioned, and the officials were shocked to discover that some of them lived from eight to twenty-five kilometres from Esslingen, while one had travelled over sixty kilometres to participate in the meeting. Throughout July and August the captives were interrogated, while the ducal court and local officials from around the region exchanged correspondence about this case.72 Anabaptists who were arrested were imprisoned in Esslingen while the details of their background were checked by the relevant local officials across the duchy, and reports sent back to Esslingen. The hearings revealed a strong anticlerical sentiment held by the accused against the Lutheran pastors, whose supposedly ‘godless lives’ belied their preaching of the Gospel.73

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In the midst of this suddenly revived governmental anxiety about secret meetings of Anabaptists, there occurred on 3 August 1562 a ruinous hailstorm that destroyed many crops in the vicinity of Esslingen, Stuttgart, and Tübingen. On 10 August, one week after the horrific hailstorm, Matthias Stehelin, the bailiff (Vogt) of Güglingen (southwest of Heilbronn), complained to Duke Christoph of Württemberg about one of the captured Anabaptists, Margret Biererin, who lived in his district, that she was ‘blinded and made stubborn’ by Satan and too influenced by the Anabaptist ‘corner preacher’ (winkelprädiger) to return to the true saviour, Jesus Christ. This heretical preacher Stehelin described as ‘Satan’s true minister,’ who, ‘if he knows the holy scripture, it is not to the increase of God’s kingdom, but to that of his hellish, pernicious kingdom through false cunning and deceptive appearance,’ teaching in dark corners instead of in the light of the common church, and leading his hearers to hell instead of to salvation.74 News of the nocturnal Anabaptist meeting and of the interrogations therefore had spread quickly through the duchy not only through the legal process of background reports, but surely also in the story-telling and rumour mongering typical of early modern communities. The infamous 1562 nocturnal forest meeting of Anabaptists outside of Esslingen became a frequently cited example of the secret strength of Anabaptism in later reports, confirmed every time a new outdoor Anabaptist gathering was uncovered.75 Although lacking conclusive evidence that stories about the Anabaptist gathering helped revive interest in the witches’ sabbat after that fateful August storm, we do know that for some time the region’s preachers, armed with the new devil books (teufelbücher), had been encouraged to preach against the devil in his various guises. Blame for this particular hailstorm was therefore laid at his feet and at those of witches working with his aid. Some Lutheran preachers sought vigorously to dispel such fears, following the lines of Brenz, who disputed the ability of witches and the devil to alter the weather.76 Other preachers, however, supported belief in demonic magic’s real power. Meanwhile, the Duke of Württemberg’s neighbour, Count Ulrich of Helfenstein, was during the 1560s struggling to return his small duchy to the Catholic camp. The counts of Helfenstein (Ulrich and his brother, Sebastian, together ruled the estate) turned to the Lutheran Reformation in 1555 when they asked Duke Christoph to send them a pious minister who would preach the pure word of God. One suspects that the main impetus for this move was Sebastian, for after his death in 1564 Ulrich began to restore his lands to Catholicism, which he succeeded in doing in 1567. Earlier, he

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had expressed concern about the ‘idolatrous abuses’ in the Catholic teaching and embarked on something of a search for an alternative, which seems to have encompassed virtually all reform movements, including Lutheranism, Reformed Protestantism, Anabaptism, and Schwenckfeldian spiritualism. The count read Schwenckfeld’s writings and personally attended the interrogations of Schwenckfeldians and ‘members of other sects,’ eventually finding in them nothing more than ‘errors and obstinate opinions.’ After considerable arguments with advisors and his wife and sisters, Ulrich was persuaded that the Lutherans as well had become racked with divisions and disputes, and after a visit by the prominent Jesuit Peter Canisius in 1566, he finally agreed to return to Catholicism.77 In the midst of this religious confusion and search for verity, Count Ulrich accepted the rumours of witchcraft and in the wake of the disastrous hailstorm immediately arrested a number of witches from the vicinity of Wiesensteig. He was supported in this godly campaign by the Lutheran pastor of Esslingen, Thomas Naogeorgus or Kirchmeyer (1508–63), whose enthusiastic witch-hunting sermons forced the city council on 18 August to warn him not to agitate the people.78 Naogeorgus seems to have had his own personal reasons for condemning witches, for he had for some time been suspected by his orthodox Lutheran compatriots of harbouring fanatical ‘schwärmerischer ’ beliefs.79 Since perceived blasphemers were usually blamed for personal and communal disasters, Naogeorgus may have sought to deflect suspicion against him onto supposed witches, an act not unlike that of St Bernardino of Siena a century earlier.80 Duke Christoph and the authorities in Esslingen were less certain about the guilt of the suspects and wrote to Count Ulrich for further information. They were informed that Count Ulrich had already ordered the deaths of six witches and that a number of Wiesensteig’s witches had confessed to seeing some citizens of Esslingen (some forty kilometres northwest) at their notorious sabbat. The Esslingen authorities arrested three individuals, but soon released them, perhaps because they already had their hands full with ‘real’ heretics. Ulrich, however, showed no such leniency, ultimately approving the execution of sixtythree accused witches, the first large-scale witch-panic of the Reformation era. About this case Midelfort comments, ‘here we see the perfect illustration of why the concept of a witches’ sabbath was of such grave structural importance. With information of this sort, a witch panic might spread from an original location to disturb all of the surrounding

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countryside.’81 As cathedral preacher of Augsburg Canisius did what he could to duplicate a similar witch-hunt in Augsburg, and the resulting diabolical afflictions of the Fugger family are well known.82 In the Wiesensteig case, news of a witches’ sabbat was transmitted from Wiesensteig to Esslingen, just as immediately preceding news of an Anabaptist meeting had travelled quickly from Esslingen to the surrounding regions, surely reaching the ears of Count Ulrich himself. According to a contemporary news-sheet, Count Ulrich’s witches ultimately confessed to a nightmarish set of crimes, including murdering twenty-nine adults and robbing children of their ‘holy baptism,’83 the latter a charge made against Anabaptists. The coincidence between the discovery of a real Anabaptist meeting and the sudden fear of sectarian witchcraft is striking. As news of nocturnal religious gatherings of Anabaptists filtered through the popular magical culture, there was a likelihood of a projection of belief about Anabaptists onto alleged performers of weather magic. The count was therefore determined to punish not just a handful of witches but to crush their diabolical conspiracy as well. It is noteworthy that around the same time as the 1562 incidents, ‘the rich [Anabaptist] interrogation reports of earlier decades disappear and the records consist largely of church visitor reports to ecclesiastical headquarters,’84 a possible sign that the authorities switched very quickly to trying witches instead of Anabaptists, leaving treatment of the latter to the church courts. Another source providing tantalizing clues as to the interplay between beliefs about Anabaptist heretics and witches is the contemporary chronicle of Dionysius Dreytwein (1498/1504–c.1585), a citizen of Esslingen who recorded a variety of events, both far and wide, that he considered newsworthy.85 Although a Lutheran, Dreytwein lamented the religious division of Christians which was worse than this ‘evil, devilish world,’ but he contended that the Anabaptists were ‘the best, the most pious; they do not swear or charge interest, they do not let each other fail or go under as [does] the miserable multitude.’86 And while he had little positive to say about an Anabaptist whom followers adored and dressed as a king in 1525 in Stuttgart, nor about the Münsterite Anabaptists, he did not rail against them either.87 After the execution of several Anabaptists in Esslingen in 1529, he described the victims as ‘pious Christians.’88 However, Dreytwein could only go so far in this tolerance of Anabaptists, for in 1559 it came to his attention that the notorious heretic and ‘false religious’ David Joris had been discovered post mortem in Basel. According to Dreytwein, Joris had proclaimed himself a prophet, had predicted his own res-

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urrection after three days in the grave, had died in jail, and had been a promoter of arson, theft, and murder. His prophecy had been fulfilled ‘not as a Christian but as a scorner of the almighty,’ our chronicler continued, since his embalmed corpse had been disinterred, bound to the stake, and burned three years after his demise.89 In this and many other examples, Dreytwein proved himself a less-than-critical judge of his sources of information, although other chroniclers depicted Joris as a would-be sorcerer or shaman.90 Dreytwein was probably no more or no less credulous than his contemporaries. Heavenly signs, such as comets, he believed were harbingers of disaster, although their precise meaning was often open to interpretation. He reports with horror the ‘devilish portent’ in 1544 involving a young woman of Esslingen whose stomach became unnaturally enlarged, as if pregnant, and who supposedly neither ate nor excreted any food for quite some time. He then describes how her mother interrogated the demon ‘Satan Asmodeo’ inside her and herself became the demon’s lover. He notes approvingly that the mother was burned, the daughter imprisoned, and their house demolished.91 Another admonitory tale comes from Silesia in 1550 when a man refused to share his bread with his own widowed sister and her six children. Turning to his own loaf, he cut into it only to see it bleed profusely, as did a second loaf. This, according to Dreytwein, was a ‘great miraculous sign which shows that we should share our daily bread with one another and show each other brotherly love.’92 Closer to home in the same year Dreytwein reported that on 24 March it rained bread over a vicinity of three square miles near the city.93 From a news-sheet of 1555 Dreytwein learned that at Siebenbergen, northern Germany, a dead girl being carried to her grave had come briefly back to life to preach a message of repentance to the grieving, then died again, after which golden letters appeared in the sky spelling out ‘Jesus Nazareth a king of the Jews.’94 In other words, Dreytwein believed these and many other examples of the supernatural world intersecting with the natural. This will become important as we turn to the events of 1562. Based strictly on his chronicle, it appears that the weather was indeed worsening around 1560, with increased references to harmful storms. There are in Dreytwein’s work several earlier references to harsh or unusual weather, floods, and famines, but he acknowledges that divine providence was responsible, either as an example or a form of punishment. When in 1552 a tremendous thunderstorm caused flooding and considerable damage in the region, Dreytwein noted that by this ‘God

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knocked and warned us, but it didn’t help at all.’95 Hailstorms in the summer of 1558 that damaged many vineyards and crops around Esslingen he described as opportunities to see God’s grace and mercy, although one can sense his increasing puzzlement over divine actions.96 The following year was no better as storms continued to inflict great harm on the region, leading to a scarcity of meat and bread for the population. The year 1560 brought a horrible famine ‘whereby God hunts the world and sets the devil on his mother.’97 It is precisely at this time that references in the chronicle to trials of witches increase, including the burning of two witches, on 13 July 1560 near Mulbrun, charged with making a pact with the devil and a variety of acts of maleficium, especially magically causing so much bad weather that residents thought that it must be the end of the world.98 Even so, there is no apparent concern about a larger conspiracy or sect of weather-magic witches. Hailstorms continued to ravage the area in 1562, with a pre-Easter storm destroying the church tower of Gepingen and again raising fear of the Last Judgment.99 There followed the arrest of twenty-eight Anabaptists at the hands of, in Dreytwein’s words, ‘the constables and godless heathens.’ The result, he continues, was that ‘the pious are driven out of the land and the godless sacrament swearers [die gotlosen sacramentt schwerer] are left in, the devil is completely restless, piety has no place.’100 In Dreytwein’s mind, it was the mistreatment of these godly individuals and tolerance of those who superstitiously revered the sacramental elements that had loosed the devil on the world and brought God’s wrath to bear. Others evidently sought an alternative target. The next entry in Dreytwein’s chronicle is entitled ‘Of [the] sorcery of the godless women in this year heard in many regions, also punished by the executioner, first, as follows, in 1562.’ The first case occurred between Pentecost and Easter in the Duchy of Helfenstein, hence just prior to the Anabaptist discovery, and involved two women who had used magic to kill the younger woman’s husband, a very traditional witch trial. Then was heard news of such sorcery in many other places (he names six towns), so that the image of women fell into lamentable disrepute.101 The severe hailstorm of 3 August he reports a couple of entries later, along with a notice that it was said that some women had been seen holding an incredible dance on Frauenberg near Stuttgart; many were arrested and executed already.102 Fuller reports of the Wiesensteig witches follow, with details as to their demon lovers, maleficia, and weather magic (although one group refused to confess to the last crime).103 Dreytwein clearly believed these reports, describing the accused as ‘godless women’ and reporting their horrific

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torture and execution without criticism. In fact, during his detailed description of the burning of twenty of the Wiesensteig witches on 2 December, he lists among their crimes blasphemy, sorcery, killing, cooking infants and disinterred corpses, and weather magic, and reports that as some three thousand people were witnessing the setting of the fire, they suddenly saw the sky turn red and an angel appear, which warned the viewers to abstain from such godless activity. The witches replied to the angel that ‘the devil’s kingdom is greater than his God’s kingdom,’ causing the angel to disappear, an action that deeply disturbed Dreytwein.104 Several things are apparent from this fascinating chronicle. Perhaps most important is the fact that in his several reports of magical doings there is no reference to collective or sectarian witch activity – a sabbat or witch dance – until after the discovery of the nocturnal Anabaptist meeting in July 1562. Prior to this moment, Dreytwein does not seem to have even entertained the thought that witchcraft was anything more than individual acts of ultimate godlessness. Thereafter, he was convinced of a conspiracy. At the same time, Dreytwein himself did not view the Anabaptists themselves as in any way diabolical, or a threat, but as unfairly treated godly folk. He was not alone, as John Oyer notes, ‘Church visitors frequently remarked about that influence; and rank-and-file dwellers in villages were reluctant to accept their officials’ condemnation of the Anabaptists because of their holy, righteous lives,’ although their reluctance to participate in community activities did cause some resentment.105 By 1562 it seems that the authorities’ efforts to demonize groups of Anabaptists were failing. Their warnings about the existence of a secretive diabolical sect that met nocturnally and whose members rejected their Christian baptism in favour of a diabolical version, however, seem to have been readily redirected from Anabaptists to witches during a period of severe communal distress, especially in regions where Anabaptism had been suppressed or that bordered areas of significant Anabaptist presence. How did Anabaptists themselves react to this witch panic? We have one oblique reference to this event in the confession of the Hutterite leader Paul Glock, imprisoned in the Hohenwittlingen Castle near Bad Urach, some thirty kilometres southeast of Stuttgart, and only twenty kilometres southwest of Wiesensteig. Gloch was in this prison between 1558 and 1576, with conditions alternating between near freedom and abject misery (he nearly died of scurvy). His Lutheran captors were desperate to extract a recantation from him, but his jailers released him in 1576 after he helped to put out a fire in the jail, and Glock returned to

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Moravia, where he became a Hutterite minister. The year following the Wiesensteig witch panic Glock’s warden supplied him with paper and ink and allowed him to correspond with his co-religionists.106 Glock was therefore privy to information outside of his cell. On 7 June 1563, he wrote the following in a letter to another Anabaptist leader, Leonhard Lanzenstiel: We also hear from you that few become Christian, that concern about it has virtually gone, and that faith has grown cold. We must commit it to God. God has severely attacked the false Lutheranism with punishment and plagues, with death, hunger, and hail and storms, almost like Egypt. There has also been sorcery and fires. There is misery in many places in Württemberg ... Indeed, God has created such a scarcity in the land of Württemberg among the common people that we must say that we still have plenty. For many godless people are dying of starvation.107

Thus Glock provides clear evidence of the devastating storms and famine that afflicted the region. His explanation for these is not all that distinct from that of his Lutheran contemporaries, although the target for blame is not heresy or witchcraft, but the godlessness of the Lutherans. The witch-hunts he lumps together with the other plagues, and while he does not explicitly deny the veracity of sorcery here, he views it as merely one of several punishments sent by the divine. When a few years later he was permitted by the lord and lady of Urach to work outside the dungeon in the neighbouring villages, Glock happily spoke about his faith to the ‘unbelieving people, admonishing them to repentance and saying that they would not be saved in their false opinions and superstitions.’ That so few responded positively he put down to the influence of the ‘false priests.’108 In Glock’s almost offhand comments about the first great witch-hunt of the Reformation era we have distilled the essential attitude of Anabaptists toward the preternatural beliefs and fears of their neighbours: an almost ‘above it all’ posture of one caught up completely in living the biblical life separate from the godless. There is no place for the superstitions of the world, whether these be the religious magic of Catholic priests, the insistence of Lutherans to baptize ignorant infants, or the popular fears of witchcraft. They are all of a piece with the Antichrist’s tools, which must be shunned by the godly, the persecution of whom was of far greater import to Glock, naturally, than the burning of witches. Yet, there are hints that some Anabaptists were not entirely immune

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from preternatural perspectives, such as a case from 1598 in Heinbach, Württemberg, wherein the authorities uncovered a large number of locals who were inclined to Anabaptism, one of whom, Walter Liechtenstein, chastised the Lutheran pastor for preaching ‘an easy religion’ and for not being worthy to baptize anyone, infant or adult. Liechtenstein, however, found himself on the wrong side of the law in this dispute, and his infant was baptized against his wishes. He then threw the money for the godfather out the window and rewashed his son. Oyer wonders whether by this act Liechtenstein was reverting ‘to some folk religious mentalité in the expectation that a ritual, ceremonial rebath could wash away any tincture of evil that might have enveloped his son in the act of infant baptism? Was infant baptism really in his mind, as some Anabaptists occasionally said, a bath of the devil?’109 There are many more examples illustrating powerful, popular beliefs about baptism and rebaptism, such as the 1628 witch panic in Würzburg when ten children, aged between eight and thirteen, confessed that their parents had initiated them into witchcraft, which included renunciation of God, rebaptism in the devil’s name, and attendance at the witches’ dance.110 Unfortunately, we have neither the space nor the available sources to do a detailed comparison of other parts of southwestern Germany. Quickly scanning locales listed as centres of witch-hunting compared to those regions with significant numbers of Anabaptists, there is again no significant overlap.111 Instead, regions with a noticeable Anabaptist presence did not persecute witches until after the Anabaptists were gone, if they did so at all. For example, in the spring of 1527 the neighbouring towns of Horb and Rottenburg (both on the Neckar River) were the scenes of major Anabaptist trials. Dozens were arrested, convicted, and executed (including the famous framer of the Schleitheim Confession, Michael Sattler), while a group of two dozen more were forced publicly to recant in July.112 Until this moment there had been no known witch trials in these locales. The following year, however, the authorities of Rottenburg executed one witch, and three more (of five suspects) in 1530. There was then a lull until significant witch-hunting was revived in 1578, when Rottenburg joined much of the German southwest in persecuting witches on a grand scale, with a height of executions reached in 1596 with thirty-six, while Horb’s first executions took place in 1559, with peaks in 1583 with thirteen victims and 1605 with sixteen.113 Both of these towns remained within the Habsburg orbit, and with Ferdinand’s help were restored to the Catholic fold after some Reformed incursions. It was here in 1589 that Catholics were accused of using

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witch persecution to get rid of Protestantism, while one accused witch in 1596 rationalized her seduction into the devil’s service by asserting that ‘not everything they say about God is true.’114 In these later witch panics, then, Counter-Reformation strategies were central to the high level of witch executions, although as elsewhere the immediate trigger was destructive storms.115 News of large Anabaptist trials surely helped spark persecution of the devil’s other minions. Even after witch-hunting was in full swing, Anabaptists could still find themselves associated with the diabolical. For example, in the midst of his 1590 interrogation of the Württemberg Anabaptist Hans Schmidt, the ‘special pastor [spezialpfaff ]’ Anshelm Pflüger blurted out, ‘the living devil has given you to know this, and so if you do not abstain from it, then you are the devil’s in body and soul,’ a phrase by this date implying a diabolical pact.116 Schmidt of course denied the charge, replying with the typical biblical references to a good tree bearing only good fruit.117 The following year in Fellbach (ten kilometres north of Esslingen) there was a report of an Anabaptist’s terrifying death when the sixty-five-yearold Hans Wägner, called Klausenhans, became mortally ill. During his last week this locally well-known Anabaptist suffered physical torments that caused him to bellow like a cow, and thereafter ‘in an insensible fashion he screamed nothing than “devil,”’ something the pastor related to his never having received communion in his life.118 In another Visitation Order of 1600 from Leignitz, Silesia, it was stipulated that no one was to house overnight ‘any Anabaptist, Schwenckfelder, and especially those who do not enter the Church, sorcerers, gipsies, soothsayers, or similar superstitious people and evil scoundrels.’119 When in 1602 a severe frost and subsequent famine struck the region of Schorndorf, Württemberg, the subject of Anabaptists and superstitious sects was deleted from the Visitation Protocol. Yet it was widely acknowledged that the frost was God’s punishment for sin in the region, which included, one suspects, tolerating even a single heretic in the vicinity.120 Thuringian Anabaptists and Witches Group nudity also provides another parallel between Anabaptists and witches. Along with the 1535 Amsterdam naked-runners (naaktloopers), there were some quasi-Anabaptist groups in the Holy Roman Empire that practised unusual forms of religious nudity or sexual behaviour, such as the ‘Dreamers’ of Franconia who in the late 1520s allegedly wed on orders from the Holy Spirit,121 or followers of the Thuringian peasant

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and former Anabaptist Claus Ludwig, who established his own sect in the 1540s which led to the circulation of rumours about secret orgies in the area around the imperial free city of Mühlhausen (Thuringia; about 100 kilometres northeast of Spahl). These were dismissed by the theologians as mere gossip until around 1550 when some writings of former ‘Bloodfriends,’ as Ludwig’s followers called themselves, appeared. Dozens were arrested and tried, most of them recanting. They claimed that Ludwig portrayed himself as the Son of God who would soon exterminate the godless, and taught that sexual freedom was the only sacrament for the saved, one which would produce pure children. His biblical lectures usually ended with the commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ and then the brethren would find a saved woman with whom to fulfil the injunction, although not at the meeting place itself. What particularly disturbed the authorities was that this group could operate for several years without detection, in large measure because Ludwig told his followers to attend approved church services and participate in communion to avoid suspicion.122 It is quite possible that news of this secretive cult, which met at night and practised something that could easily be construed as orgiastic ritual sex, helped revive thoughts of witches’ sabbats with their notorious nudity and perverse sexuality. Why were such sectarians not forced to confess to sorcery? The example of George Gross Pfersfelder, a nobleman of Bamberg, is instructive. Attempting to protect accused Anabaptists, Pfersfelder not only described these folk as pious, but condemned the Lutherans for replacing the papists’ avarice with their own and helping to inaugurate the great persecution on the eve of Christ’s return.123 And, against those who would assert that the Anabaptists’ willingness to die at the stake for their beliefs ‘happened through the devil,’ the nobleman affirmed that they were merely following the example of Christ. In another case, however, an Anabaptist terrorist named Hans Krug admitted in his widely disseminated confession of 1533 that not only had he committed murder and arson in the area of Fulda, but his actions were ‘caused by bad religion, since their faith was from the Devil’ and not from God.124 Just after the Wiesensteig witch-hunt, the authorities of Niederdorla and neighbouring villages a few miles southwest of Mühlhausen discovered in September 1564 another group of quasi-Anabaptists whose confessions provided very disturbing information. For example, the wife of the ‘captain’ of the group, Cristoffel von der Eichen, not only denied the validity of baptizing infants before they had reached the age of accountability, but ‘would also not concede that the young children

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could believe, since they are possessed by the devil, which is exorcized in baptism and banned from them.’125 Since none of these suspects admitted to being rebaptized, affirming instead the need for an inner ‘baptism by spirit and fire,’ they were hardly orthodox Anabaptists. Yet their opinions seem only extreme versions of Hans Hut’s mystical ideas.126 Another of these women, Osanna Siebenaugin, further upset the pastors because she was ‘wilfully and diabolically dumb,’ apart from her affirmation that she prayed the ‘our father’ and regarded infant baptism of little consequence.127 Even more extreme were the opinions of the itinerant shepherd Hans Don (or Dohn or Thon). His views went far beyond Anabaptism, striking the reader as more akin to the deeply unorthodox musings of Carlo Ginzburg’s Miller of the Friuli, Domenico Scandella (Menocchio), or of late-medieval Catharism, although there is no evidence of Catharism surviving into the sixteenth century.128 Described by the court documents as ‘a true organ of the devil’ (ein recht organum diaboli), Don may have found some of his notions while on his shepherding peregrinations. He apparently believed in two gods, a good one who created everything pure and spiritual, and an evil god or devil who created the evil, perishable realm; the human body, animals, heaven and earth, the sun, moon, and stars, ‘even the child in the mother’s womb’ were ‘created by the evil master, the devil, as they are visible and perishable.’ Marriage and government were similarly from the ‘evil master.’ Jesus was not God, but only a human, the Holy Spirit merely another name for God, the written scriptures were useless, and there was no resurrection of the dead. Since one of the other women prisoners also confessed that God was not triune but merely had three names and that the scriptures were of little import compared to the living word communicated by God directly to the heart, Don may have had some influence on the group.129 Given his disregard for the scriptures and insistence that he received his instruction directly from God by means of fervent prayer, the pastors interrogating him quickly became disgusted with what they called his ‘horrible blasphemy.’ Fearing that his words would bring down the punishment of God upon them, they refused to question him further at this stage, unfortunately silencing this unorthodox commoner’s voice.130 They tried again in November, but he clung stubbornly to his hateful opinions and his captors recorded nothing new.131 While some of the others were ordered to be burned after their third hearing in January 1565, the authorities held on to Don for another eighteen years, finally deciding in 1583 to deal with this ‘Manichean’

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once and for all, especially since they could not afford to release this ‘terrifying and unimaginable delusion [wahn]’ upon the citizenry. Over the years the preachers had tried very hard to convert him, but he steadfastly rejected ‘all the articles of the christian faith.’ On 6 November 1583, he was given one last hearing during which he made a few more unorthodox statements, such as ‘God is the word himself,’ that ‘one must be faithful only to a pure God,’ not the Ten Commandments, and admitted that he attended no church. When asked where he had heard these opinions, he said that he ‘heard them in the woods from some people’ whom he would identify only by adding that ‘they had said that Christ had suffered on account of our sin,’ a common enough topic for clandestine sermons in the Reformation era. Once again he affirmed the existence of ‘an eternal devil’ who had created all that is evil, and he now added that water baptism provided no power, that it was forbidden to swear oaths, that there was no authority on earth, and that since the flesh remained earthly, only the spirit was raised from the dead. When asked if the devil would also be saved, he refused to respond. He did admit, however, to believing that angels were pious humans.132 He was therefore ordered to the flames. In the records of the Thuringian witch-hunts there is intriguing evidence for Don’s influence on the jurists hearing witch confessions. In a list of questions inquisitors in Gotha were to ask witch suspects were the following: ‘if they had not made a covenant [Bund] with Satan against God and their baptismal covenant [Tauffbund]; if they had not allowed themselves to be rechristened [umbtauffen – rebaptized] by Satan; if they had not practised unnatural fornication with the devil; if they had not misused the holy Lord’s Supper; and if they had not attended the witches’ dance,’ the last taking place on a number of local mountains. More to the point, another typical inquisitorial list from 1676 included the question, ‘if they had not renounced the Holy Trinity?’ A rare question in witch trials elsewhere, its inclusion here suggests that in the minds of Thuringian clergy, Don’s anti-Trinitarian views had been adopted by witches.133 Since the territory of Gotha is just south of Mühlhausen, it was well within the range of Mühlhausen reports about the anti-Trinitarian Anabaptists. The practice of formulating standard lists of questions based on previous trials means that elements of one heresy were easily transmuted onto another; in this case from anti-Trinitarian Anabaptism onto witchcraft. Comparing statistical and geographical information on Anabaptists and witches in the region of Thuringia reveals further interesting corre-

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lations. According to Ronald Füssel there was no major witch-hunting in Thuringia until after 1590, when most of the over fifteen hundred accused were tried, many in the mass trials common in witch panics. Yet, there were a number of trials of individuals or small groups scattered about the territory for the second half of the century, including Eisenach in the west (40 kilometres northeast of Spahl), Georgenthal in the centre, Jena and Eisenberg in the east, Coburg in the south, and Gotha in the north, while neighbouring territories of Erfurt (Archbishopric of Mainz), Nordhausen, and Sangerhausen (northeast of Mühlhausen) all conducted a few trials between 1550 and 1590.134 While there were a number of towns and villages with small clusters of Anabaptists across much of western Thuringia in the first half of the century, there were virtually none after 1550, apart from the group already mentioned in Niederdorla and a small cluster in Eisenach.135 Put very crudely, major witch panics in this region of the Holy Roman Empire occurred where Anabaptists had been, but were no longer present, as was the case in the neighbouring archbishoprics of Würzburg to the southwest and Bamberg to the south, regions which had successfully suppressed Anabaptism by the 1530s and which became scenes of the worst excesses of witch-hunting of any region in Europe. In the case of the anti-Trinitarian Anabaptists of Niederdorla, information from their interrogations was spread across the region, appearing in the questions to be asked of accused witches. There were no known witch trials in Mühlhausen, which was still dealing with the infamous Don in 1583, until 1624. The discussion of visitation accounts and the singular case of Wiesensteig and Württemberg presented here point to a closer relationship between the persecution of Anabaptists and witches in the Holy Roman Empire than has heretofore been noticed. There is no dispute that the Wiesensteig witch panic was a critical moment in the history of European witch-hunting. News of this fearful case spread by official reports, pamphlets, sermons, and word of mouth to inspire similar fears of witch sects elsewhere in the empire. Hence the coalescing in 1562 of concerns about secretive, nocturnal, potentially seditious Anabaptist gatherings and fears of weather magic performed by Satan-worshipping witches became part of the common discourse of diabolical witchcraft thereafter. We can test this suggestion further by turning to other regions, both Protestant and Catholic, to see if there were other correlations between governmental concerns about Anabaptists and the revival of witch-hunting. Such an analysis will also shed light on the question of confessional differences (or religious attitudes) and witch persecution. We have space only for two

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more examples, the Lutheran landgraviate of Hesse, which we will discuss only briefly here, and, in a following chapter, Catholic Austria. The Prosecution of Anabaptists and Witches in Hesse Like the Duchy of Württemberg, the Landgraviate of Hesse was a significant Lutheran territory for which there are now excellent studies of both later Anabaptism and the witch-hunts.136 Here we will see the authorities investigating large nocturnal, forest meetings of Anabaptists at the same time that they begin showing interest in sectarian witchcraft. Yet, unlike neighbouring Thuringia to the east, there was no major witch panic in Hesse, but a significant cluster of Anabaptists surviving until the eve of the Thirty Years War;137 here, too, governmental concern about even a small number of Anabaptists delayed action about alleged witches. In order to trace these complex developments clearly, we will need to follow a generally chronological approach, weaving together events relating to confessional conflict, Anabaptism, and witchcraft. Landgrave Philipp of Hesse (1504–67) was the most prominent Lutheran prince of the Reformation era; deeply influenced by Johannes Brenz, he opposed the execution of heretics and was cautious in dealing with complaints of witchcraft. Under his reign, Hesse conducted neither purges of Anabaptists nor witch-hunting, and he had many detractors on both scores. Many of Philipp’s pastors could similarly display sympathetic attitudes toward imprisoned dissidents, such as Theodor Fabricius, pastor of Allendorf (eastern Hesse), who in 1538 pleaded with the landgrave on behalf of some Anabaptist heretics being maltreated by a local official of Eisfelde.138 Other of Philipp’s pastors pressed him to attack Anabaptists more vigorously. For example, in 1531, Nikolaus Maurus, the superintendent of Zwingenberg, and Bernhardus Wigersheim, a pastor in Darmstadt, reported their frustration in trying to lead two Anabaptists ‘from their error and satanic assembly [satanischen versamlung] to the true knowledge and Christian community,’ concluding that the Anabaptists were irrevocably ‘given over to Satan.’ For their part, the accused identified the secular authorities as the ones in Satan’s pocket, decried Luther and Zwingli as false prophets, deceivers of the people, and servants of the devil, and asserted that all who listen to these reformers belong to ‘Satan’s community [satans gemein].’139 The flood of Melchiorite refugees into Hesse and the arrest of about thirty of their number at a May 1536 meeting near Gemünden, north-

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east of Marburg (30 kilometres northwest of Landenbach), forced Philipp to gather opinions on the effectiveness of his Anabaptist policy. In response Philip Melanchthon composed his Whether Christian Princes are Obligated to Apply Physical Punishment and the Sword Against the Unchristian Sect of the Anabaptists, advocating severe measures to suppress Anabaptism as a clear danger to the political and social order. Describing the teaching of Anabaptists as devilish and seditious and their ‘seeming holiness’ as ‘pure hypocrisy and a devilish apparition,’ he concludes that their sect was ‘from the devil.’140 Another contributor to this debate was Adam Krafft (1493–1558), theologian at the University of Marburg and the major reformer of Hesse. He contended that the Anabaptists were so blinded and possessed by the devil that the landgrave had no option but to persecute them harshly, for if they were allowed to grow any stronger, the realm would become a devilish mixture of faiths where it was impossible to tell if someone was a Christian, Jew, papist, or Turk. That Anabaptists were possessed by the devil was clear from their hatred of the true church and their willingness to die for their beliefs. ‘If they were as physically possessed by the devil as they are possessed spiritually,’ Krafft concluded, ‘they would be placed in fetters and chains and kept up in a hospital until they die. Although they are spiritually possessed, it is my opinion that one must treat them in similar fashion.’141 While none of the hardliners convinced the landgrave to resort to executions, he did issue his Visitation Order of 1537 describing Anabaptism as a ‘foreign sect’ of Münsterite intent.142 Even so, he arranged in late October 1538 for the ‘Marburg disputation’ to give Martin Bucer the chance to turn Anabaptists from their errors. Bucer, who, like Zwingli, preferred a symbolic interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, actually listened to the Anabaptist Peter Tasch’s complaints about lax discipline and moral improvement among the Lutheran clergy and populace. Bucer then encouraged the landgrave to ensure that the forthcoming synod at Ziegenhain (25 November 1538) would turn seriously to the issue of increased discipline. In his report to Philipp, Bucer wrote that since ‘we preachers are so distrusted by this rabble, I truly wished that we could use these people [Anabaptists such as Tasch].’143 After considerable deliberation, Tasch was allowed to meet with the clergy at Ziegenhain (east of Marburg), and while the resulting Ziegenhain Order was one in a long line of state ordinances seeking to further centralize Hesse, many of its decrees were influenced by fears that the common people were susceptible to Anabaptist anticlerical propaganda. This desire to improve the moral order of Hesse found another outlet

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in efforts to discourage illicit magic. When in 1535 Philipp had the Hessian law code revised, he modelled it on Charles V’s Carolina.144 The next surviving reference to illicit magic is a 1538 report of a Ziegenhain official about the arrest of some soothsayers (Wahrsagers) and crystalgazers (Kristallsehers). Whether or not this action was promoted by the Ziegenhain Synod of the same year is not known, although we have seen how Lutheran clergy often linked Anabaptism and ‘superstitious’ practices in their visitation reports. In the following two decades there were scattered reports about and arrests of Anabaptists, with special concern over large Anabaptist meetings in 1540 and 1543 leading to another mandate in 1544 against the ‘devilish’ preaching of the Anabaptists, their practice of rebaptism, and secret nocturnal meetings.145 Over the next few years news of Moravian Hutterite communal living caused some consternation, while 1550/1 saw the trial of the Thuringian ‘Bloodfriends’ referred to above. In 1555 the writing of the Anabaptist Hans Raiffer of Nidda provoked a series of responses by local pastors, including Gaspar Hune of Echzell, who feared that the poor people were being grievously misled by Raiffer’s ‘devil’s dirt.’146 Even so, Philipp continued to follow his policy of moderation, as he did in a case involving a man accused of sorcery in 1557 in Immenhausen. The following decade again witnessed only a little serious activity against either Anabaptism or sorcery, including the exile of three men for soothsaying and treasure divination in 1560 and the interrogation of the Anabaptist Leonhard Schneider in 1561. Relying heavily on dreams, Schneider asserted that the Holy Spirit was found in everyone, including Jews, heathens, and Turks.147 The following year six women were arrested from Budingen and Großendorf on charges of witchcraft; four were released and the fate of the other two is unknown; since these arrests occurred in the same year as the Wiesensteig panic, there may have been some cross-border influence. In 1564 Margarete, the wife of Brodt Hansen of Budingen, was accused of joining the ‘society of the devil’ and with the magical powers received at her diabolical rebaptism hexing several children in the devil’s name.148 She was condemned to die at the stake as an example to the populace, but it is not known if the sentence was carried out. In the same year Philipp became involved in the witch trial of a woman of Katzenellenbogen (part of a disputed region claimed by both Philipp and the Count of Nassau), who confessed under duress to having given herself to the devil and to attending the notorious witches’ dance.149 The learned professors of the University of Marburg advocated that the accused be burned in this case, but

1. The naked runners of Amsterdam. Copper etching after a painting by Barent Dirksz, destroyed in 1652, in Lambertus Hortensius, Het boeck van den oproer der weder-dooperen (Amsterdam, n.d. [c. 1600–50]). Courtesy of the Unversiteit van Amsterdam, Kerkelijke Collecties.

a. The Devil and his minions

b. The obscene kiss

c. The Devil blesses his minions

d. The Sabbat banquet

2. Images of the witches’ sabbat. From Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum (1608). The Montague Summers Edition (1929). New York, 1988. Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.

a. Desecrating the cross

b. Exchanging the ‘book of life’ for the ‘book of death’

c. Parents offer their child to the devil

d. Witches set fire to a town

3. Images of witch activities. From Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum. Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.

4. An Anabaptist meeting. Anonymous, La foi des heretiques (n.p., n.d. [16th century]). Courtesy of the Collection of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. BdH 15257.

5. Anabaptist attack on Amsterdam. Title page of Pieter Adriaanse Codde, Herdoopers anslagh op Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1641). Courtesy of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Kerkelijke Collecties.

6. Execution of Anabaptists, Amsterdam, 1535. Copper etching after a painting by Barent Dirksz, destroyed in 1652, in Hortensius, Het boeck van den oproer. Courtesy of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Kerkelijke Collecties.

7. Diabolical rebaptism. From Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 14. Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.

8. Anabaptist baptism. Copper etching after a painting by Barent Dirksz, destroyed in 1652, in Hortensius, Het boeck van den oproer. Courtesy of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Kerkelijke Collecties.

9. The burning of David van der Leyen, Ghent, 1554. Jan Luyken, copper etching, in Tieleman van Bracht, Het bloedig tooneel, of Martelaers spiegel (Amsterdam, 1685), part 2: 161. Courtesy of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Kerkelijke Collecties.

10. Anneken van den Hove buried alive, 1597. Jan Luyken, copper etching, in van Bracht, Het bloedig tooneel, part 2: 793. Courtesy of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Kerkelijke Collecties.

11. Jews desecrate a Host in Passau, 1555. Anonymous woodcut broadsheet, Ein grawsamlich geschicht Geschehen zu passaw Von den Juden als hernach volgt (n.p., n.d. [c 1477]). Courtesy of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Hochfelder 118307.

12. Burning of three witches at Derneburg, 1555. Woodcut broadsheet (detail), Anonymous, Ein erschröckliche geschicht/ so zu Derneburg in der Graffschafft Reinsteyn/ am Hartz gelegen/ von dreyen Zauberin/ vnnd zwayen Mannen/ Inn ettlichen tagen des Monats Octobris Im 1555. Jare ergangen ist (n.p., n.d. [1555]). Courtesy of the Germanisches National Museum, Nürnberg.

13. The ‘Society of Anabaptists’/bathhouse scene. Virgil Solis, copper etching, ‘The Society of Anabaptists.’ Courtesy of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1963.30.1494).

Anabaptist Meetings and Witchcraft in Southern Germany 161

Philipp seems to have demurred. Many years earlier he had referred to a case of witchcraft as a ‘doubtful thing,’ and, despite his mandates outlawing soothsaying and sorcery, he did not encourage execution for the crime. Moreover, in 1566, a year before his death, the landgrave boasted that he had not executed one Anabaptist in his territory, a remarkable record indeed. This situation was soon to change. Prior to his death Philipp had divided Hesse among his four sons: the eldest, Wilhelm IV (d. 1592), received the northern half centred around Kassel, and while he joined neither the Lutheran nor Reformed side, his son Moritz V made HesseKassel a Reformed territory in 1605. Ludwig IV (d. 1604) was given the central region of Hesse with its capital of Marburg. Ludwig, who was in Württemberg from 1561 to 1565, was influenced by the Lutheranism of Duke Christoph. The third son, Philipp II (d. 1583), received HesseRheinfels and seems to have had little interest in religious issues and like Ludwig died without heir. The last son, Georg I (d. 1596), was given Hesse-Darmstadt and unobtrusively sympathized with the Lutherans. According to David Mayes, the rising religious conflict between Lutherans and Calvinists led to a rigorous tightening of confessional identity, seen especially in the Formula of Concord in 1577. While Ludwig and Duke Christoph aligned their territories with Lutheran orthodoxy,150 Wilhelm hesitated, but was quickly confronted by the issue of Anabaptism in the person of a miller who refused to have his infant baptized, and Wilhelm asked his theologians about to the legality of forcing the baptism of Anabaptist children. The noted theologian Johannes Pistorius Niddanius advised Wilhelm that the true church never should persecute the false church.151 The June 1569 General Synod provided reports on some Anabaptists who refused to attend public worship services, while in May 1571 Wilhelm became insistent that the miller’s child be baptized. The General Synod in July of that year renewed Philipp’s 1537 anti-Anabaptist ordinance, while the following year it issued another one, stipulating that all pastors and parishioners be on the lookout for secret conventicles of any kind.152 It also issued an ordinance against crystal-gazing, soothsaying, and superstition, and urged all pastors to preach vigorously against these sins.153 The Hesse Reformation Ordinance of 1572 likewise approved the water test as a means of determining guilt in witchcraft cases, although only cases of harmful magic were to be punished as a crimen exceptum, later adjusting this decree to include cases involving a pact with the devil, a point that was made in 1572 in the Saxon Constitution, which condemned to death

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those who, ‘forgetting their Christian faith, set up a covenant with the devil.’154 Despite their dissonance on what constituted orthodoxy, Wilhelm and Ludwig agreed that they needed to be vigilant against the threat of sectarians. However, Ludwig’s attention was diverted in 1575 by a mother and daughter from the Blankenstein region who were accusing each other of sorcery. Uncertain of how to handle it, he sent the matter to the General Synod at Marburg. Several of the delegates pushed for stringent measures against the growing threat of witchcraft, but Wilhelm was aghast at this display of fear mongering on the part of many of the synod’s pastors, and he issued an order to all the clergy of lower Hesse ‘“to teach their souls” that sorcery could harm only those who believe in it.’155 Despite the increasing number of cases of supposed ghostly apparitions brought to his attention, Wilhelm remained sceptical throughout his reign, and in 1580 he bemoaned how the ‘untimely zeal’ of witch belief ‘is so miserably disrupting the dear church of God and abominably prostituting the pure religion.’156 Earlier he had asked the opinion of the Lutheran humanist and professor of Leipzig, Joachim Camerarius (d.1574), who sharply attacked persecution of witchcraft and the water test as a means of determining a witch’s guilt. While the landgrave eventually legalized the test, he oversaw no known witch-hunt.157 Brother Georg thought differently, being the first of the four to issue a meticulous ordinance against witchcraft as ‘an atrocious, strange, ungodly, most punishable vice, which at this present time is spreading everywhere among women through God’s righteous wrath and doom,’ and ordering his officials to investigate the moment ‘any person gives signs of this vice and a clamour resounds, so that if it is considered a public voice and rumour, to take them into custody.’158 There followed almost immediately a series of witch trials and burnings in Georg’s territory, with ten executions in 1582, three in 1583, and a further thirty arrests in 1585; most or all of the victims were women. Ludwig seems to have shared Georg’s concern on this issue, with the first witch execution in his domain occurring on 25 May 1582 in Marburg. Ludwig was evidently influenced by the Marburg jurist Abraham Saur’s publication, which promoted harsh measures against the witch menace.159 Witch persecution spread quickly thereafter, leading to several trials and executions during the 1590s. This rise in witch-hunting corresponded chronologically with the last trials of Anabaptists. In early 1577 Wilhelm received word of an Anabap-

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tist in Kassel, Martin Richter, who still had not baptized his child, as well as of a Hans Pauli Kuchenbecker of Hatzbach, whose wife and daughter were also Anabaptists. The daughter had left the sect for a few years, but returned after an angel appeared to her threatening her with damnation if she did not leave her husband and return to her father’s faith. Mayes comments about this that ‘[f]or reasons that are unknown, these accounts must have sparked a concern in several pastors.’160 The reason was surely the contemporaneous rise in reports of ghostly apparitions and dreams to which we have referred above. Kuchenbecker was interrogated by a couple of Marburg academics who got him to agree to attend his local church for a period of two months and leave Hesse if he remained unsatisfied. To Ludwig, Wilhelm expressed considerable bewilderment over how the Hatzbach Anabaptists could have remained hidden for so many years. While the 1577 visitation found only a few Anabaptists, on 16 May 1578 Ludwig was informed of a large meeting of Anabaptists east of Marburg. Reproaching the local official for not having acted against these ‘raving spiritualists’ and deceivers of the common folk, he commanded that the leaders be found. The next day the landgrave warned his government agents about the danger of Anabaptist preachers and their ‘secret conventicles.’161 The chastened local official soon provided news of an Easter Monday meeting of several Hutterites and a nocturnal meeting of over a dozen Swiss Brethren in the same place on Pentecost Tuesday. The official found the Anabaptists recalcitrant and exiled them from Hesse. In June Kuchenbecker described himself as a Swiss Brethren and denied any ‘association with the Anabaptism seen at Münster.’162 Soon rumours of a large meeting of Anabaptists on the evening of 19 May in the forest near Alsfeld reached the ears of the landgraves, and when it became known that Tileman Nolte, Lutheran pastor at Schwartz, had been in attendance, he was called in as a material witness. Nolte claimed that, invited by an Anabaptist, he had gone merely out of curiosity, but was shocked to see a crowd of three hundred attendees, some of them his own parishioners, who had obviously adopted the stance of Nicodemites. During the assembly Kuchenbecker preached a long sermon, after which several women wished the pastor peace and the congregation concluded with the Lord’s Prayer. Once in his own pulpit, Nolte preached an incendiary sermon against the false believers and sarcastically commended his flock to turn to Anabaptism ‘since nobody listened to him any more,’ a comment that resulted in an official complaint to the authorities.163 The Anabaptists and the pastors of

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Eradicating the Devil’s Minions

Marburg then exchanged documents, and the pastors admitted considerable agreement on major doctrines, apart from the Lord’s Supper and baptism.164 This agreement on many essentials the Marburg pastors explained as expected, since it was hardly likely that Satan would grow his noxious weeds in his own back garden, but rather in the midst of the garden of God.165 In August Nolte apologized before the General Synod at Marburg, and was ordered to do likewise before his congregation; an alternate preacher was sent to Schwartz to preach against Anabaptism. The identified Anabaptist culprits were to be fined, and the Anabaptist commotion settled down, although several more comments about Anabaptists were made in the next year’s synod meeting and there were a few scattered reports of individual Anabaptists in 1580 and 1584, the latter again involving the uncovering of a nocturnal meeting of Anabaptists in the forest near Ulrichstein (in the Vogelsberg south of Alsfeld) on 27 May. By this time Ludwig was less interested in Anabaptism but increasingly so in witchcraft. Both heresies served princes with a tool to help define confessional and moral orthodoxy and to centralize jurisprudence and governance. Especially in the confessional struggle between Ludwig and Wilhelm, action against Anabaptism was a unifying factor as both brothers sought in the 1570s to defuse its anticlerical bite. In contrast, Ludwig and Wilhelm disagreed sharply on the danger of witchcraft, and this issue was a much more useful one to delineate confessional boundaries between Ludwig’s orthodox Lutheranism and Wilhelm’s Calvinist inclinations. As the confessional struggle between the brothers increased, concern about Anabaptism waned while witch persecution increased. As sermons and gossip spread word about large numbers of rebaptized individuals meeting nocturnally in forests, they intersected with the growing number of reports and rumours about spectral phenomena, diabolical witchcraft, and nocturnal witch dances – many of them undoubtedly arising from neighbouring Würzburg and Thuringia – feeding the escalating fear of diabolical conspiracies. While full witchhunting would not engulf the various principalities of Hesse until the seventeenth century, the ground was laid in the suspicions and scapegoating of Anabaptists and then witches in the later sixteenth century.166 Conclusion We have seen here how the discovery of secluded nocturnal meetings of Anabaptists coincided with the first large-scale trials of sectarian witches

Anabaptist Meetings and Witchcraft in Southern Germany 165

in the German lands. However, while some Anabaptists claimed supernatural visitations by angels, none of these were turned into witches, such as had happened to Chonrad Stoeckhlin, Wolfgang Behringer’s ‘Shaman of Oberstdorf,’ whose trial in the bishopric of Augsburg set off a witch-hunt there in 1587.167 Once witch-hunting was in full swing, attention was diverted away from Anabaptists and their persecution waned. In both Württemberg and Hesse, Lutheran princes attempted to secure Lutheran orthodoxy against Catholicism and Calvinism by purifying their realms of ungodly blasphemy, whether in the persons of Anabaptists or witches, although they generally treated the former more mildly than the latter. In several incidents rumours about clandestine Anabaptist meetings and unbaptized infants merged with escalating fears of weather magic to heighten anxiety over individual witches into a hysteria about groups of witches who were rebaptized by the devil during nocturnal sabbats or dances. Some princes, such as Philipp of Hesse, maintained a cautious attitude to the calls of pastors to eradicate both Anabaptists and witches, although not all of his heirs were willing to do so. In many respects it was easier to attack witches, whose image was a terrifying one and who did not elicit the sympathy that pious Anabaptists did among their neighbours. The relative mildness toward Anabaptists of these Lutheran princes stands in stark contrast to their Catholic neighbours to the south, especially the Tirol, which will be the subject of the next chapter. In this region, we shall see the Habsburg authorities treating their Anabaptist prisoners in an almost identical fashion to witches, although here again the two crimes remained theoretically distinct.

6 Eliminating the Desecrators of Hosts: Anabaptists and Witches in the Austrian Tirol

Moreover, she could see no use for either the mass or the sacrament of the altar, which monks or priests lift above their heads, nor for the church building, which was nothing but a ‘pile of stones’ [gemaurten steinerhauffen], or for the baptism of infants, which was nothing more than a bath in dirty water [ain sudlwesch]; and the sacrament was nothing more than an abomination and a stench before God. All this was from the devil. Confession of Katharina Hutter, wife of Jacob Hutter, at Klausen in 15351

So said Katharina Hutter, wife of the great leader of communitarian Anabaptism Jacob Hutter, to her captors. Such antisacramental comments inspired a vicious response from the Habsburg rulers to defend belief in sacramental realism. Like Württemberg and Hesse, the Tirol had a sizeable Anabaptist population, but was ruled by the arch-Catholic Habsburg Ferdinand of Austria (r. 1521–64), who commanded the harsh treatment of heretics in ways parallel to his brother and nephew in the Habsburg Netherlands and to the later persecution of witches. Even before the rise of Anabaptism in the 1520s, the need to defend the Real Presence in the consecrated Host had led to a number of trials through the late Middle Ages. For example, a priest named Rudolf was questioned in 1340 about his beliefs after he had spilled the consecrated wine, apparently confessing to denying transubstantiation, believing in the salvation of Satan, and asserting that Jews and heathens could be saved without baptism, charges that would be reiterated later against Anabaptists.2 Rumours of spilled consecrated wine or Hosts consumed by worms were deeply disturbing to many Austrians, while the pernicious influence of Waldensians led to vicious inquisitorial repression. In

Map 3: Austria. From Cornelius Krahn, ed., The Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, 1955) I: 194. By permission of the Mennonite Publishing Network.

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the town of Steyr more than one thousand people were tried and nearly one hundred burned as Waldensians in one inquisition from about 1397.3 Waldensians occasionally responded to the persecution with acts of violence against inquisitors, although they soon became underground spiritualists, giving up distinctive ritual or sacred practices that would have identified them as heretics.4 Parallel to this concern about heretical denial of sacramental reality was the prevalence of charges against Jews in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of ritual desecration of the Host (see fig. 11).5 Such accusations were part of widespread affection for ‘blood miracles’ (Blutwunder) involving not only consecrated wine but also crucifixes, images of Jesus or saints, and reliquaries that bled when desecrated and which became extremely popular sites of pilgrimage and devotion.6 Times of crises often increased the frequency of such incidents. The rationale for the execution of two hundred Jews in 1420 was built upon charges of Host desecration. The ruling duke, Albrecht V, blamed the Jews for arming the insurgent Hussites, while the year before the University of Vienna’s theologians had declared that there was ‘a confederation of Jews, Hussites and Waldensians.’7 By the middle of the fifteenth century Austrian princes and theologians had melded together their images of heretical and Jewish threats into one overarching conspiracy. Along with sedition and rebellion, church leaders expressed concern over the challenge that both heretics and Jews offered the church’s position on the intersection of the supernatural and natural worlds in the consecrated species of the Eucharist. Charges of Host desecration were a means of confirming for anxious Christians the veracity of their sacramental beliefs. Charles V’s 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina stipulated the death penalty not only for harmful sorcery but also for the theft of monstrances housing consecrated Hosts. Although Helfried Valentinitsch notes that there is no direct link made between the two crimes, it is very interesting indeed that both were to be punished with a fiery death.8 When Anabaptists began doing to monstrances and Hosts what Jews had been accused of, there arose a strong possibility that anti-Semitic attitudes would be superimposed upon beliefs about Anabaptists. Miri Rubin has suggested that the Protestant and Counter-Reformation critique of the popular religiosity that lay behind the myth of Jewish Host desecration led to the disappearance of such stories west of the Elbe River, ‘and although the Austrian Counter-Reformation gloried in sumptuous wall-paintings which depicted host desecrations and mira-

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cles of yore, these were never re-enacted, even in those regions – Bavaria, Franconia, Austria – where the telling of the tale had been most virulent.’9 While undoubtedly correct when it comes to stories of Jewish Host desecration, tales of other ‘evil persons’ desecrating Hosts were inspired by the need to defend sacramental realism against Protestants, and they therefore remained a prominent element of Austrian religiosity, seen especially in the confessions of Anabaptists and then of witches. In the course of the sixteenth century the connection between sorcery and Host desecration was made, so that in Inner Austria, for example, the first witch trial that included abuse of Hosts in the list of charges took place in 1602, and such accusations became relatively common thereafter. Valentinitsch, intrigued by the lack of Host desecration charges in witch trials prior to 1600, finds the answer in the re-Catholicization efforts that began in the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the growth of Corpus Christi confraternities in the first half of the seventeeth.10 We shall see in a moment how the very real challenge to sacramental orthodoxy provided by Anabaptists in Austria also featured in this development. The Archduke and the Anabaptists Archduke Ferdinand’s extraordinary persecution of Anabaptists was motivated by the threat of rebellion and the need to confirm supernatural realism. Ferdinand had much to prove when it came to religious questions. Educated in the Spanish tradition and unfamiliar with his own subjects’ culture, Ferdinand fanatically supported the Habsburg goal of a unitary Catholic Europe. As part of this mission, he sought to eradicate the ‘damned, seditious, pernicious, heretical sect’ from his realm.11 In 1527 he ordered death by burning for all who ‘questioned’ any aspect of orthodox teaching about Christ, while anyone who promoted community of goods was to be beheaded.12 The following year Ferdinand went so far as to gift four special anti-Anabaptist ‘commissioners’ with the right to bypass normal judicial process in the case of Anabaptists, and the actions of one of these, Dietrich von Hartisch, who in one day alone rounded up and summarily executed eighteen Anabaptists, are reminiscent of those of the notorious thirteenth-century inquisitor Conrad of Marburg and of later witch finders.13 Reluctant local officials were also to be penalized. In 1528 the arrest in Kitzbühel of scores of Anabaptists led to a mass trial and, thanks to Ferdinand’s efforts, the execution of a dozen of their number.

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Such discoveries of large groups of Anabaptists helped fan ‘the hysteria at Ferdinand’s court,’ leading to rumours that some four thousand Anabaptists were plotting a major rebellion in a replay of the Michael Gaismaier-led peasant rebellion that had convulsed the Tirol until 1526. In response Ferdinand created a secret council to coordinate heresyhunting efforts and demanded that local parish priests act as spies, relaying information about local suspects to Ferdinand’s officials. These judicial measures were supported by, in Werner Packull’s terms, ‘an ideological propaganda campaign that targeted the Anabaptists as scapegoats for contemporary misfortunes, war, famine, and other disasters.’ For, by ‘their “dishonor, blasphemy of, and disrespect for the holy sacrament of divine office” they had offended God and brought His wrath on the land.’14 In his heresy mandate of 10 February 1532 Ferdinand put it this way: Since the punishment of almighty God, which for some years has raged throughout the whole German nation and Christianity with war, inflation, deaths, bloodshed and in other ways, unfortunately with the result that in many regions his divine worship, honour, and praise has fallen and met with much and great evil, while blasphemy and disgrace of his holy name, martyrdom, and sufferings, also amply and in many ways have taken over, so that the Holy Sacrament and its divine service are dishonoured and forgotten, and otherwise countless outrageous heresies have arisen. We desire as a Christian king that since God has not ceased such punishment and plagues, to return the Christian community to his divine grace through true, certain peace and penitential [pueßwertigem] life and to pray, with inwardly righteous hearts, that he turn graciously away from such punishment and plagues ... and that he will turn us from evil to good, and give us grace, goodness and mercy and cease his divine wrath.15

This mandate, the archduke commanded, was to be read during every Lenten service, so as to increase Christian devotion and penance, while parish priests were to record every absence from confession and the Eucharist during Easter. Although Anabaptists are not mentioned by name in this decree, it is clear from the other records that Ferdinand viewed them as the greatest danger to devotion to the sacraments in the Tirol. In this anxious climate, persecuting those who criticized the sacraments, most especially the Anabaptists, was the principal means of averting God’s anger. William Monter estimates that by 1533 over four hundred Anabaptists had fallen to Ferdinand’s heresy trials, a remark-

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ably bloody campaign that was equalled only in his brother’s Netherlandic realms.16 This cautious estimate results in an average of fifty-seven executions per year between 1527 and 1533, a profoundly terrifying record of persecution comparable to many witch panics. Despite Ferdinand’s efforts at social control, local Austrians and Tirolese proved quite reluctant to cooperate in his ventures. For example, on 11 January 1532 the council of Brixen reported that the ‘whole village of St Georgen, in the region of St Michelsburg, was infected with Anabaptism.’17 Reports of large numbers of parishioners who avoided going to confession and Mass at Easter continued to hound Ferdinand’s officials.18 Moreover, the Anabaptists, with the connivance of neighbours and family, were able to establish a partially effective ‘underground network’ that ultimately assisted many to reach refuge in Moravia. When rising costs of judicial action compelled the authorities to confiscate Anabaptist properties, many rumours arose that some officials were cooperating in the persecution as a money-making business.19 Even after years of vicious, state-sponsored persecution, Tirolese Anabaptists continued to enjoy considerable popular support, a ‘people’s heresy’ that offered ‘the only successful alternative to the Roman Catholic Church’ in the region.20 Anabaptism’s anticlericalism continued to target Catholic priests, rather than turning against the ‘Lutheran scribes’ as Swiss and German Anabaptists had.21 Captured Anabaptists enthusiastically asserted their belief that both the Habsburg government and the Catholic hierarchy were of the devil.22 In 1534 Ferdinand admitted that most Anabaptists did not hold revolutionary views, although he argued that this was so only ‘because they had not yet been taken into confidence by their leaders, who realized that they would not be able to attract converts if they revealed their true intentions.’23 And yet, in mandates of May and November 1536 he states that he has been too lenient in treating the ‘false, seductive, damned sects,’ for they are still increasing, gathering in large numbers, ‘bringing misery, need, injury, and destruction’ to the ‘common man.’ Their supposed good appearance is only a front, and it was his duty to protect his people from being seduced [verfueren] by such false teaching and to strengthen them in the true Christian faith.24 He therefore commands all clergy to preach against the ‘superstitious’ ideas and ‘evil doings’ of this ‘false, damnable sect,’ and he stipulated severe punishments for those who house or hide Anabaptists.25 These documents reflect the archduke’s profound fear of Anabaptists. Discovery in April 1537 of a meeting of nineteen Anabaptists in the

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woods of St Michelsburg was seen as confirmation of the seditious intent of the suspects.26 In May Ferdinand sent a request to the provincial synod of the Archbishop of Salzburg commenting that on account of the ‘errors, heresies, misuses’ and ‘sacrileges and unheard of blasphemies’ that plagued his realm, he should encourage a ‘reformation of head and members’ to drive out sin. The top issues for discussion he identified as the doctrines of the Trinity and the seven sacraments, the adultery of priests, and the withholding of the eucharistic wine from laypeople. The priests needed to improve their lives and develop a seriousness about their work that had been lacking. Pastors needed to preach from the Holy Gospels and to explain clearly to the common people the church’s ceremonies and rites.27 Evidently Ferdinand was blaming the strength of Anabaptism on the laxity and immorality of the priesthood, a point shared by the Anabaptists themselves. In 1540 the magistrates of Brixen reported that Anabaptism was growing and that some of its adherents anticipated the moment when God would send them weapons, as ‘had happened at Münster.’28 Ferdinand’s harsh approach seems to have worked for most of his Austrian territories; in December 1539 his officials surprised a large meeting of Anabaptists in Steinabrunn, Lower Austria, imprisoning 136 of them in the Falkenstein castle and eventually selling most into galley service. Three more Hutterite leaders were executed in Vienna in 1545, and more men were imprisoned for extended periods before their execution (the women were released). Robert Friedmann blames the arrival of the Jesuits in the 1550s and the renewed Counter-Reformation campaign for the final decline of Anabaptism in Lower Austria.29 Similarly, in 1554 the Estates of Upper Austria reported that their region was free of the ‘deceptive sects of Anabaptists, Sacramentalists, and the like,’ although Anabaptist missionaries continued to be caught and executed as late as 1605.30 In the Tirol after 1535 Ferdinand’s persecution drove Anabaptism underground, although the charge of rebellion appears in later mandates. Taking an alternate tack, Ferdinand now ordered galley service (for men) and expulsions (for women) rather than executions, so that when in 1535 and 1548 his officials were expecting an influx of Anabaptist refugees from Moravia, they ordered executions only for recalcitrant leaders. Evidently not even torture could compel many of these ‘ignorant folk’ to recant; so hardened had they become from this blasphemous sect that they preferred martyrdom instead. Such displays of courage on the scaffold sent the wrong message to the ordinary people,

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hence Ferdinand explained on 1 June 1543 that having a skilful pastor instruct these poor, misled heretics would have less dangerous fallout than public executions. The public were to be warned about the dangers of Anabaptism, while residents were encouraged to observe their neighbours to determine whether they were seen with suspected persons.31 To scare people away from supporting the heretics, in 1544 Ferdinand described Anabaptism as a ‘seductive [verfuerischen], heretical, and by all divine scripture damned sect’ and its adherents as by ‘the incitement of the evil spirit miserably led astray and aroused,’ even to the point of abandoning spouses and children.32 In the 1550s Ferdinand discovered that his efforts were still not effective as reports filtered to his court that the number of Anabaptists was continuing to increase and the threat of popular heretical rebellion remained.33 In the late 1550s Ferdinand began reconsidering his milder approach, especially after Archbishop Michael Graf reported that his officials’ efforts to extract recantations from two Anabaptists, Wolff Huebver and Wolff Mayr, had failed despite the application of torture, evidence that this heresy was growing so quickly that there would soon be a situation ‘like that seen in Münster.’34 In January 1559 the magistrates of Innsbruck reported to their prince that there was a general ‘hue and cry’ from spiritual and secular leaders alike over the spread of such damnable sects.35 They also reported in 1560 that in the region of Schlander a large number of Anabaptists had gathered, protected by many unemployed landsknechts!36 News the following year of Anabaptist preachers attracting large audiences in woods, fields, and barns in the Tirol and Bavaria added impetus for Ferdinand to act more rigorously against the threat.37 He had good reason, however, to ignore such advice. In March 1561 he stated that even the best priests would have difficulty in converting many of the Anabaptists, and now many of his subjects viewed capital punishment as far too harsh a measure. A life sentence of servitude in the galleys was, he asserted, as harsh a punishment as execution, and it did not risk raising the ire of sympathetic audiences to the public execution of heretics.38 Even so, the magistrates of Innsbruck warned against this milder approach, for ‘the people are much better deterred if the punishment is executed before their eyes, as it had happened for years before, when the sect was fought with blood and fire. Thereafter it was quiet.’39 Ferdinand had no reason to feel ashamed of his record of harshness, yet he insisted that local judges follow his orders.40 His mandates were to be read regularly from all pulpits, along with the threat of capital punishment for the rebaptized and

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despisers of the sacraments, as a means of protecting the ‘common, ignorant man’ from such seductive teaching. Sermons on the true faith and sacramental practice were also to be preached frequently.41 Ferdinand’s successor, Maximilian II (1564–74), continued this procedure and until the end of the sixteenth century the authorities in Lower and Upper Austria almost never sentenced Anabaptists to death. Tirol was something of an exception in this regard, since three prominent Anabaptist leaders were executed in the closing decades, Andreas Purchner in 1584 and Georg Wenger and Jacob Patzer in 1591, yet these were exceptions, since by the end of Maximilian’s reign little remained of Anabaptism in the region.42 Anabaptists and Host Desecration The kinds of confessions that Ferdinand’s jurists heard from captured Anabaptists in some ways confirmed the worst fears of the Habsburg ruler. For example, in 1532 St Michelsburg officials interrogated a servant named Sigmund from Kiens (in Schöneck) who admitted to being rebaptized and believing that ‘the sacrament of the altar belongs to the devil,’ that everything taught by Luther, Zwingli, and the pope was ‘from the devil,’ and that ‘his flesh belongs to the devil and is of no need.’43 Another confessed that although he had partaken of the Eucharist in the previous Lent, ‘it was nothing but bread; he had eaten nothing other than a slice of bread.’44 The expression of scepticism toward the eucharistic elements was so frequent in Tirolese Anabaptist confessions that it must be called a commonplace.45 What terrified both the Habsburg and ecclesiastical authorities most were incidents of Host desecration committed by Tirolese Anabaptists. Most notable was an incident that took place in the parish church of St Andreasberg (in Rodeneck). Parishioners had heard rumours that on Sunday, 28 January 1532 they would witness a remarkable event in church, and they were not disappointed. Brazenly interrupting the Mass, Jacob Gasser ran up to the altar, grabbed the plate of wafers out of the priest’s hands, threw it onto the floor, and trampled upon the bread. He then tossed the chalice with the consecrated wine against the church door. Two men helped him escape. Most in the congregation seem to have tacitly supported Gasser’s action, although the two priests and some women appeared shocked. Expectations of divine judgement upon Gasser were unfulfilled, something that some of the observers saw as a ‘great miracle [großes Wunder].’46 This disturbing act, committed by

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a brother of one of Gaismaier’s peasant leaders (Hans Gasser), had followed close on the heals of the iconoclastic actions of Tirol’s rebellious peasants. It was also performed in consideration of magical beliefs and a long history of eucharistic miracle legends. Stories of Hosts that bled or turned into flesh when desecrated were the most powerful antidote to doubtfulness regarding transubstantiation, because ‘desecration made the eucharist declare its nature: the effects of its consecration by a holy man were imperceptible, but they became perceptible through the violence of an unholy person.’47 When a stabbed Host bled, incertitude was banished far more effectively than through the repetition of miracle stories, although such narratives themselves also raised questions, requiring ever-increasing vigilance.48 Each confession of a Host desecrator was meticulously recorded and quickly disseminated as another example of ‘empirical confirmation of eucharistic reality.’49 Hence by 1500 it was a widely accepted fact that eucharistic Hosts would bleed in accusation of their attackers and as a sign of divine displeasure. If, as in Jacob Gasser’s case, the abused Host did not bleed, then there was a potential for a crisis of belief on the part of the viewers.50 The intended effect was not unlike the feelings aroused in Catholics who witnessed the desecration of saints’ images by Calvinists or Protestants watching a successful Catholic exorcism; in many cases these observers lost confidence in their own beliefs and showed a greater willingness to acknowledge the veracity of the opinions of the ‘performers.’51 Such acts of Host desecration naturally inspired comparisons with Jews (see fig. 11), and more than once Anabaptist meetings were called synagogues.52 For example, included in the 1560 list of new questions to ask a captured Anabaptist, Hanns Mändl, was ‘what have they taught in their sinagog about Christian freedom, that all goods are common, and that they should not be obedient to their authorities, also of the denial of the sacraments of infant baptism and other innovations?’53 The difference, of course, is that while the religious reformers actually committed the acts of desecration, the Jews did not. Only in the case of the Anabaptist and Protestant attack on Catholic sacraments were people able to see that abused Hosts did not bleed. Jews and witches, however, were compelled by torture into confessing to the crime and to how the sacramental bled when desecrated. Catholic realists therefore had to find other means to counteract the empirical evidence of the unreality of transubstantiation provided by Calvinists and Anabaptists, and did so in the use of Hosts to expel demons.54 Lyndal Roper has recently pro-

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vided further clues as to how beliefs and prejudices about one despised group, the Jews, could ‘mutate, forming new lethal combinations,’ seen especially in the stories of Jews stealing and killing Christian children that reappeared in confessions of German witches, as did accusations of Host desecration.55 While Jews were not turned into witches, many elements of anti-Semitism were accredited to witches as to Anabaptists, especially in governmental fears that Jews were behind the Anabaptist plotting.56 The most important witch trial in the Tirol prior to the Reformation was that conducted by the German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, author of the Malleus Maleficarum. In 1485 he was in Innsbruck, trying some fifty witches from the region of Brixen, when the bishop and the archduke of Austria ordered his suspects released.57 Furious, he composed his witch manual, but also a number of other works strenuously defending the reality of sacramental miracles.58 In his Malleus he repeated stories of how desecrated Hosts proved the reality of sacramental transformations, such as that of a witch who, having smuggled a Host out of Mass, followed the bidding of the devil by placing it in a jar with a toad, hiding it with other magical ingredients under the floor of her stable. The following day, Kramer insists, a workman heard the crying of a child coming from under the floor, and thinking that the witch was on the verge of committing infanticide, he fetched local officials, who discovered the noise to be coming from the Eucharist hidden in the jar.59 In other treatises from the 1490s he asserted the reality of Augsburg’s miraculously bleeding Host against the slanders of a sceptical preacher.60 These stories of desecrated Hosts make more remarkable Jacob Gasser’s ability to abuse the Host without such a reaction and underscores the very dramatic effect that this simple action could have had. How, then, did Ferdinand’s officials deal with Gasser’s challenge? Taking it very seriously, they first arrested Gasser and his wife, imprisoning them in Rodeneck (they released his wife because she was not a ‘relapsed’ heretic [relapsa] and performed the requisite penance to receive grace). They next sent a list of questions that the local officials were to use in interrogating the pair, apparently tying together their sacramental challenge to rebellion.61 Third, on 9 March they extracted from Gasser the name of his leader – Jacob Hutter – and on the following day, the archduke issued a letter to the mayors and judges of several towns describing Hutter’s appearance and asking them to be on the lookout for this prominent Anabaptist who had apparently fled to Moravia.62 Hence, it

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appears that the infamy of Gasser’s attempted Host desecration was the immediate trigger for the manhunt for Hutter, who would fall into the Habsburg net on 29 November 1535. Fourth, they asked the Bishop of Brixen to send two learned priests to Rodeneck to participate in Gasser’s interrogations. These then reported what for them was comforting news: although Gasser had indeed intentionally spilled the consecrated wine, he was apparently unaware of the fact that the eucharistic wafer had not yet been consecrated, hence it was not yet the true body of Christ.63 This of course did nothing to allay his guilt in the matter, but these priests evidently thought that this point would make it easier to explain to the common folk why the Host did not bleed as a result of Gasser’s effrontery. Evidently the clerical investigators were much more concerned about the desecration of the eucharistic bread than the wine, presumably because since the common folk had been long denied the blood of Christ, there were few miraculous stories regarding the wine. Fifth, the authorities rounded up everyone who had been in St Andreasberg Church at the time and ordered them to complete a penance of imprisonment on bread and water for eight days, to process around and into the church with lit candles, and then to assist in Mass for the following three Sundays, all because they had done nothing to stop Gasser’s ‘outrage’ ( fräfel ) or had assisted him in escaping.64 Thus every possible witness to the lack of action on the part of the desecrated Host was chastised and, perhaps more to the point, forced to participate in the miracle of the sacrament. By these various means, Ferdinand’s officials sought to quell rumours that the Host was merely bread. Despite such official actions of suppression, Anabaptists – both men and women – continued to attack the notion of eucharistic reality. For example, a year after the punishment meted out to the observers of Gasser’s sacrilege, Margreth Puchls confessed happily to being a member of the Anabaptists and affirmed that she would gladly face martyrdom for the true faith, while describing the Mass as a horror (greil ) and a stink before God, and the sacrament as an idol that she regarded as nothing but bread. The previous year she had been arrested with ten others, two of whom had been burned. She then apparently commented that ‘she had fulfilled the work of the devil and given an oath of peace [Urfehde] for her, but she will not swear, except that she never [did] his will or desire in the faith and has for some time long served the devil, until first now on the evening of Palm Sunday, when Petter Schneider from Sarntal, who lies imprisoned at Guffidaun, took her up to the summit of

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Praittenberg, where they were hunted and afterwards now in the forest, where they also were recently hunted. In the same there had been about 100 among them, the Hutter and others.’65 If we have interpreted Margreth’s obscure testimony correctly, she considered her giving the Urfehde, the oath of peace demanded of first-time convicted Anabaptists guaranteeing that they will abstain from further heretical involvement, as a work of the devil, and the time when she was separated from her Anabaptist convictions as ‘service to the devil.’ Then she met Schneider, who took her to a large Anabaptist meeting at the top of a forested mountain, where she regained her faith and renounced her diabolical duplicity. This is a remarkable statement for an Anabaptist woman to have made in the sixteenth century, since confessing to having done the devil’s work was a commonplace in witch testimonies. This suggests that fears of diabolical witchcraft had not yet come to the foreground in Tirolese courtrooms, and, indeed, the date of her interrogation precedes the revival of massive witch-hunts by three decades. Even so, we have in this courageous woman’s confession to relapsing into Anabaptist heresy a potentially explosive combination of real heresy, references to serving the devil, and admission of attending a large meeting of heretics on a secluded mountain. Soothsayers and Anabaptists The Habsburg ruler’s efforts to suppress such noxious heresy and to track down its leaders led to the application of some rather unorthodox judicial methods. On 31 May 1533 Ferdinand’s Innsbruck officials sent a missive to Adam Prew, guardian (Pfleger) of Guffidaun, on how to deal with seven recanted and eleven recalcitrant Anabaptists. Before the former were released and the latter executed, Prew was to enquire of all of the imprisoned heretics the source of their leaders’ fervour to convert more and more to their beliefs, their beliefs about the authorities, and where the prominent leaders, such as Hutter and Hans Amon, were. For the stiff-necked, the information was to be beaten out of them, ‘eight or ten times in one day’ with rods. If this and other measures did not work, then ‘they will be placed under criminal [malefitz] law, the same malefitz law not proclaimed publicly, but the same to the jury.’66 In the reading of the charges, these accused were to be noted as having ‘fallen from the holy Christian faith into the seductive [verfuerisch, which can imply “bewitching”] sect of the Anabaptists, holding nothing of the revered sacrament nor the praiseworthy ceremonies and

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usages of the Christian churches.’ And finally, Ferdinand’s officials ordered Prew over a period of several days to sprinkle holy water into the prisoners’ water and to cook their food with blessed salt, and to ensure that none of them were aware of it.67 Here the archduke has turned to the methods of soothsayers, who used preternatural means to discover witches, in his efforts to extract the proper confession from accused Anabaptist heretics. This was undoubtedly an act of desperation on Ferdinand’s part, driven to frustration by the resistance of so many arrested Anabaptists publicly to give up their errors and their leaders and to reconfirm the reality of the Catholic faith and sacraments. Even so, that this technique was widely used to discover witches – i.e., those who vomited up the blessed water – suggests very strongly that many officials regarded Anabaptists as servants of the devil in a very clear parallel to witches.68 Many other Anabaptists continued, over the next several decades, to resist the pressure to recant. In June 1533 Ferdinand advised the judge of Gries and Bozen how to deal with three Anabaptist women who had remained recalcitrant, encouraging him to beat them with rods not once, but two and even three times, and then to try persuasion. Belief in the reality of the Mass was the most critical concession to extract from them.69 In the same month in Brixen a mother and daughter were interrogated and both asserted their belief that the Mass was a horror and stink to God,70 while in September in St Michelsburg, a Niclas Velder admitted to his captors that ‘the sacrament of the altar is heresy and sorcery [zauberey]; the churches are a whores’ temple and temple of idols; one finds therein only silver and gold idols ... Infant baptism is a child’s bath and a bath of sorcery, and the pastor seeks to exorcize demons out of the infant, who is truly pure, while he, the pastor, is himself full of demons.’71 Another young Anabaptist named Augustin in the same hearing similarly affirmed that a co-religionist named Hans Tuechmacher (or Tucher) told him that church buildings were ‘temples of idols of the stinking whore of Babylon’ and the Mass was a ‘devil’s apparition [teufflsgspenst],’ and Augustin’s four co-defendants reiterated these points, one of them calling the Mass a ‘clear devil’s work.’72 In October, Valentin Luckner confessed in Brixen that he regarded the sacrament as nothing more than ‘a meal, a bread, and the devil’s hocus-pocus [teuffls gaugl werch],’ while the priests are servants of the devil.73 Throughout the court records, Anabaptist after Anabaptist denied the efficacy of the church’s sacraments and many refused to recant their pernicious ideas.74 The archduke’s frustration boiled over again in February 1534

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when he commanded the magistrate of Freundsberg to send learned monks of the Observant cloister of Schwaz to interrogate three imprisoned Anabaptists, one youth and two women, and if they did not convert, to beat them with rods; if this didn’t help, then the monks should ‘exorcize [beschwören] them with the word of God, and sprinkle them with holy water, as if they were possessed by the devil, [using] similar exorcism and sprinkling with holy water, also chastisement with the rods, which has here and in other regions borne fruit in such cases, that the people will be turned away from such Anabaptist error and whatever clings to it.’75 By recommending this combination of exorcism and physical punishment Ferdinand implied that Anabaptists were literally under the devil’s control, and that this was the only way to explain the intransigence of youths and women to give up their heresy. Similarly, on 5 March 1534 he decreed that two women of Rattenberg, possibly possessed by the evil enemy because they refused to abstain from their error, should be exorcized by priests and sprinkled with holy water. If the beating with rods still produced no effect, then they were to be placed before the criminal court (Malefizgerecht).76 In the August 1540 trial of Leonhard Raiffer-Schmidt, the judge of Brixen, Hans Egle and four jurors extracted a partial confession from Raiffer-Schmidt, then sent him to a female soothsayer (Wahrsagerin), who ‘assisted’ the suspect in providing a very detailed confession of Anabaptist activities, hiding places, secret greetings, and cohorts. The soothsayer’s techniques, which usually included forms of torture as well as magical spells, seemed quite persuasive, and Raiffer-Schmidt concluded his remarks by saying that he was happy to have been caught and imprisoned, otherwise he would never have ceased believing these ‘superstitions [Mißglauben],’ for now he recognized these Anabaptist ways as not good. At this point his interrogators sent him once more to the soothsayer to squeeze more details from him about the sect and its members, but he claimed to know no more. When they threatened to send him back for a third time, he cried out to God, the Virgin Mary, and the saints that they not continue such torture, pledging never again to fall away from the true faith.77 It seems that Ferdinand’s local officials were taking the archduke’s procedural suggestions noted above to mean that they could use magical specialists. The employment of soothsayers to extract confessions from heretics implies that some magistrates saw Anabaptism as a form of diabolical sorcery requiring countermagic.78 As noted above in chapter 3, priestly exorcisms and compelling the accused to drink holy water were used earlier by Duke Karel van Egmond against witches.79

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Anabaptists and Demoniacs Suspicions that Anabaptists were under demonic control were reinforced by the singular case of Gilg Schneider (Preindle). During Lent of 1536 Schneider attempted to partake of the Eucharist but at the moment of reception of the real body of Christ his jaws clamped shut and he could not receive the wafer. Shaking from dread and with eyes bulging, Schneider presented a terrifying image to his fellow communicants, and he apologized afterward. Yet his further attempts to take the sacrament failed in similarly dramatic fashion. He was sent for examination to the bishop’s court at Brixen, where it was discovered that he had heard Hutter preach but had not joined his group, offering instead criticism of Hutter’s anticlericalism. He affirmed his faith in Catholic dogma and sacramental practice, telling his interrogators that he regarded the Eucharist to be a sacrifice to God and a necessary food for the soul. In June 1536 the suffragan heard his confession and Schneider received absolution, and everyone looked forward to a successful reception of the Host. Such was not to be, as Schneider’s jaws locked up again and he remained kneeling by the altar in terror until the suffragan arrived. Efforts at further confession and the prayers of the other communicants failed to help, and each time the Host was brought forth all Schneider could do was to shake and sweat in horror. The witnesses were terrified. Schneider was sent out to perform five weeks of penance, but in the meantime he joined the Anabaptists and in August was caught with eleven others in the mountains around Sterzing. His later confession confirmed that while in the mountains he had been baptized and that he had heard Hutter ‘explain that the consecrated host was not the body of Christ at all but rather an idol and that those who swallowed it sold their soul to the devil,’ this last a prominent feature of witch confessions.80 In prison he recanted and performed sufficient penance that he was able to receive the consecrated Host without difficulty. The authorities realized that they had to calm what must have become widespread fears about sacramental reality and diabolical interference in the Mass, and he was commanded to perform public recantations from pulpits in Brixen and Lüsen. As Packull notes, this case reveals the ‘psychological struggle of a simple layman caught between competing truth claims and loyalties, resulting in an inner conflict rarely captured in either Anabaptist or official documents.’81 It also provides a remarkable parallel to stories about demoniacs and witches confronted with consecrated Hosts, and it was these that surely inspired so much terror in the

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minds of Schneider’s neighbours. Violent tremors and bulging eyes were among the well-known symptoms of demonic possession, and Martín del Rio tells a story of a young Jesuit, Nicholas Prutenus, who in 1600 similarly suffered from violent shaking and inability even to mention the word Eucharist without becoming temporarily speechless and blind, because he had been enticed into signing a pact with the evil one. When after confession the sacrament was offered to him, he suddenly collapsed, grinding his teeth, although he eventually succeeded in taking communion.82 In all such stories the consecrated Host evoked great awe in the minds of believers, so that when in a state of religious confusion or guilt the fear of participants could result in spectacular physical effects.83 Schneider was not alone in experiencing difficulty in receiving the consecrated Host, and given the prevalence of Tirolese Anabaptists to demonize participation in the Mass, this is not surprising. In April 1545 the Council of Innsbruck examined Michel Zeller because he had not been to Mass for the last couple of years. When asked why, he replied that ‘he could not find any improvement in himself, nor had he died to sins,’ hence he felt too unworthy to partake of the sacrament. Interrogators found no evidence of Anabaptist influence, hence they merely fined him.84 More difficult was the case of Ursula Dornin, who in her initial hearings in August 1549 had denied the ‘blessed sacrament of the body and blood of Christ’ and other ‘Christian ordinances.’ The Bregenz officials were encouraged by Innsbruck diligently to restore her to the ‘old, true, Christian faith.’ To help in this endeavour, the jailor was to reduce her food ration and permit her children to visit her to appeal to her maternal instincts to help convert her.85 Despite further pressures in October, Dornin still denied being rebaptized, hence the bishop’s advocate now required of the local officials proof of rebaptism or a full confession to the other charges; to proceed further without direct evidence of rebaptism was dangerous. During the proceedings Dornin had asked for grace from the court because she had been seriously ill, and the advocate pointed out that there was therefore the necessity of discovering if her heretical beliefs had originated ‘out of her melancholia [melancolei].’ If it could be shown that she had been ill when she first began expressing these hateful notions, then she was to be treated mercifully, especially if she was willing to renounce her ‘heretical, seductive superstitions’ and be restored to the Catholic Church.86 It was precisely this ‘melancholia’ defence on behalf of older women accused of witchcraft that was promoted with great effect by the famous opponent of witch-

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hunting, Johann Weyer, in his 1563 De praestigiis daemonum.87 As in so many trials of witchcraft, however, such moderate opinions had only a limited effect in Dornin’s case. On 18 October 1549 Innsbruck’s magistrates instructed the officials of Bregenz to toughen up. Dornin’s heresy was ‘severe and terrible’ and the punishment to date ineffective. Thus, the Bregenz jailors were to restrict access to the old woman even further, so that only guards and priests would be permitted to visit her for fear that she would ‘infect’ others with her heresy.88 Evidently the higher authorities were deeply worried of the potential harm that this one elderly, possibly melancholic woman could inflict on her neighbours. The language of infection was likewise one used in witch trials, as witches were believed to be able to spread disease and their diabolical practices to others with a mere glance or touch of a hand. Despite Ferdinand’s efforts to eradicate the antisacramentalism of the Anabaptists and to isolate them from their neighbours, cases of individuals denying the validity of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ continued to vex Ferdinand’s officials.89 In 1553 and 1554 Ferdinand issued more mandates to suppress Anabaptist proselytizing on behalf of the bewitching Anabaptist sect, commanding that all printed material be investigated for heresy.90 What made matters worse was his apparent discovery by 1555 that even priests were mixing forbidden ideas with the word of God in their sermons, while many people were heading off into the woods of St Michelsburg to listen to Anabaptist preachers.91 Far too many of the archduke’s subjects were escaping with family and goods to Moravia, where they joined with the Hutterites. Some of these were returning to the Tirol as missionaries and, despite the severe measures of the Austrian government, winning a great number of inhabitants to the heresy as late as 1563.92 The result was further orders to uncover the heretics’ secret practices and a new debate over how to eradicate the sect.93 The use in Ferdinand’s mandates of the term ‘superstition’ (aberglauben) to describe Anabaptist beliefs reveals that the Habsburg ruler linked Anabaptist heresy with false and magical religious practices. Time and again Anabaptists were forced to recant their ‘heretical, seductive [verführerisch] superstitions,’ as Ursula Dornin did in October 1549.94 These supposed superstitions were actually the Anabaptist attacks on the preternatural beliefs of the Catholic Church, such as the mediation of the saints and the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Host. Hence to counteract the appeal of such sacramental antirealism, the authorities labelled it as superstitious.

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One reason why Ferdinand turned away from mass executions around 1560 was the propagandistic value of Anabaptist recantations. Increasing numbers of captured Anabaptists recanted their heresy and publicly performed penance while their recantation was read aloud to the entire congregation.95 When the Anabaptist Peter Zeller recanted in September 1561 he was ordered to perform the requisite penance, participate in the sacrament of the Mass, and provide an oath of good conduct. Having former despisers of the Mass kneeling before the altar to receive the body of Christ proved an excellent antidote to antisacramental and anticlerical propaganda.96 Execution was therefore reserved only for defiant leaders who preferred death to recantation. This change in policy led to some confusion on the part of local judges, who wrote frequently to Innsbruck for clarification.97 Some local officials found themselves in hot water for appearing to treat their Anabaptist suspects too mildly, and the case of Dr Matthias Alber, guardian (Pfleger) of Vellenberg, reveals the judicial chaos. Having released from his custody some Anabaptist women, he was accused by Innsbruck of lacking diligence. Alber argued that both he and the local priest had interrogated the suspects, but the resulting confessions were inconclusive. However, he managed to extract a couple of interesting comments from one of the suspects, the forty-year-old Thomas am Ort, who claimed to have been enticed to an Anabaptist meeting with the promise of ‘hearing about wonders [von wunders wegen hörn]’ and that the devil, working through a woman, Magdalena Keltzin, had led him to the gathering, but he denied having anything to do with such people either before or since. He also stated that he couldn’t understand a thing of what the strange men read from their book.98 Here is another case of a suspected Anabaptist sympathizer distancing himself from the heresy with the claim of having been misled by the devil and by implicating the devil in the literacy of the Anabaptists. Ferdinand remained on the lookout for diabolical and magical elements among Anabaptist practices. For instance, on 23 January 1546 he sent a letter to the council of Cardinal Otto Truchseß von Waldburg, Bishop of Augsburg, concerning Andre Perckhmüller, imprisoned in Berchtolzhofen for helping Anabaptists to escape to Moravia. One of Ferdinand’s attending officials, Erasm Offenhauser, reported back that Perkhmüller ‘is a real rabble-rouser, who had a bottle [fläschl] which he had given to his cousin to drink, which had perhaps possessed some kind of sorcery. Such sorcery might have been used by other ringleaders. He should therefore be interrogated.’99 Unfortunately, we are not

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told the precise nature of the suspected sorcery, although we do know that many types of magic required mirrors or glass, or it may be that the bottle was believed to have contained a magical potion or a captive spirit.100 In any event, we can be fairly sure that Ferdinand’s officials would have done their best to get to the bottom of Perkhmüller’s magical offence and to add questions about magical paraphernalia to the interrogations of other ‘ringleaders,’ hoping to discredit Anabaptist leaders by associating them with sorcery.101 Ferdinand’s efforts, however, failed, as the people remained unmoved by the alleged Anabaptist threat, and many fewer Anabaptists were executed after mid-century than before. Ferdinand also had his hands full with increasing support for Lutheranism among his nobility outside of the Tirol.102 Forced by military need to compromise with his vassals, Ferdinand was willing to grant communion in both kinds to his subjects should this prove necessary. His successor, Emperor Maximilian II (1564–76), continued this conciliatory policy, although there remained no formal tolerance for either Anabaptists or Calvinists. By the start of the reign of Emperor Rudolf II (1576–1612), Lutheranism had achieved in parts of Austria (outside of Inner Austria and the Tirol) near equality with Catholicism in terms of religious freedom, although this was never enshrined in law. However, the tide began to turn against such relative tolerance, first in Inner Austria where ‘re-Catholization’ was made official policy in 1599, and then elsewhere by the start of the Thirty Years War in 1618, by which moment Emperor Ferdinand II had commanded the restoration of Catholicism and the outlawing of public Lutheranism. These policies met with fierce resistance from both the Protestant nobility and the commoners who in 1625/6 rose up in a new peasants’ war. When that was crushed, the fate of Protestantism was sealed in Austria. Lutherans remained, but as a secret, underground movement until the Edict of Toleration was proclaimed in 1781.103 Witch-Hunting in Tirol and Austria It was therefore not until after the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 that the Austrian rulers were able to turn with any real concert to the inculcation of Catholic orthodoxy and fervour among their subjects. This also proved to be the moment when concerns about diabolical witches rose to the fore. Yet, popular pressure in the Tirol and elsewhere in Austria for witch persecution had been applied much earlier, and Archduke Ferdinand had had to act decisively to punish those peas-

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ants responsible for the lynching of some witches in Styria in 1538.104 In the Tirol, moreover, the central authorities had consistently resisted demands by villagers in the Prättigau valley for witch burnings throughout the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries until the region freed itself from Austrian jurisdiction and joined the Swiss Canton of Grison around 1652. The result was predictable: without the central government’s moderating hand, the local authorities immediately began a series of deadly witch-hunts that consumed over one hundred victims.105 Such judicial caution when it came to witch persecution was also evident in the region’s legislation, which made no mention of capital punishment for the crime until Emperor Ferdinand III’s criminal code of 1656. Instead, Ferdinand I’s national law codes (Landesordnungen) for the Tirol of 1526 and 1532 ignored sorcery, while the police ordinances of 1544 and 1552 referred to sorcery only as deceit and superstition, not worthy of execution. Maximilian II’s code of 1568 specified public derision for the crime, while Ferdinand II’s legislation of 1573 ordered only fines for sorcery and soothsaying.106 The situation began to change during Emperor Rudolph II’s reign because he believed himself the victim of bewitchment. The lack of central legislation commanding capital punishment for witchcraft does not mean, of course, that regional and local officials did not think the crime worthy of death. In 1594, for example, Reichart von Starhemberg warned the judge of Hellmonsödt (just north of Linz) of many sorcerers, soothsayers, and ‘similar devil’s apes [teufels affen]’ in the region, and that those who refuse to recant must be regarded not as ‘members of Christ but of the devil’ and punished ‘in body and life.’107 There were in the Tirol a few scattered trials against individuals accused of sorcery during the period of Anabaptist persecution, but there was no witch-hunt, and no known cases where a group of accused was charged with any of the elements of the diabolical conspiracy.108 Elsewhere in Austria we see references to diabolism, as in the 1583 case of the sixteen-year-old demoniac Anna Schlutterbauer from Mank that came to the attention of Rudolf II, who encouraged the Bishop of Vienna to intervene since her exorcisms were failing to provide relief from her demonic fits. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Anna’s grandmother, Elsa Plainacher, on charges of bewitching the girl, and royal pressure applied on her Protestant lord to send her to Vienna. Despite horrific torture Plainacher refused to confess, and on 14 August the Jesuit exorcists took centre stage. Thousands of spectators were

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shocked to discover that the poor girl was possessed by a ‘legion’ of over twelve thousand demons, which finally departed the girl ‘with a terrifyingly great cry’ heard by all. Unfortunately for the grandmother the authorities insisted that the old woman confess to the crime as well. She was harshly tortured and in the end confessed to having made a pact with the devil, engaging in sexual congress with him in the form of a ball of thread, participating in the witches’ dances, performing weather magic, and desecrating Hosts. She was burned on 27 September.109 Heide Dienst suggests that the Catholic bishop insisted on extracting a full confession from Plainacher to send a message to the Lutheran princes, for she had confessed to taking Anna to Lutheran services, while Anna’s father had been said to condemn Catholic priests. In the campaign to deflect anticlerical criticism, the exorcisms scored impressive propagandistic points, while in his accompanying sermons the Jesuit exorcist Georg Scherer noted that Lutheran pastors were unable to drive out demons.110 Of great concern for Catholic officials was the charge of Host desecration. Shortly after the execution of the grandmother, Melchior Khlesl, the cathedral prior (Dompropst) of St Stephan in Vienna, was sent on a general reform mission and in November found himself in the region of Mank. Referring to Elsa Plainacher’s tribulations, he described how she had claimed that with other Christians in the Mank church she had received the sacrament from the priest but only pretended to consume it, later taking it out of her mouth, dishonouring it, and burying two pieces of it under the boards in her barn, where it still lay.111 Building on earlier stories of Jews and of Kramer’s witches committing horrible sacrilege to Hosts, and deeply disturbed by actual Anabaptist desecrations, Austria’s clergy used the current witch-hunt to prove the reality of sacramental transformations against Protestants. In Plainacher’s case, the bishop and judges refused to give up until she had confessed to both diabolical witchcraft and Host desecration. In sixteenth-century Tirol the ecclesiastical and secular officials did not feel the same pressure to extract confessions of Host desecration from witches because they already had their hands full with Anabaptists who openly admitted to stomping on consecrated wafers. As Dienst points out, there was no witch panic in the Tirol as long as the state was persecuting Anabaptists.112 For the Catholic archdukes, the confessions and burnings of Anabaptists offered a useful corrective to incipient scepticism. Like Cornelius Loos, Ferdinand regarded the true diabolical threat to Christendom to be heresy, especially Anabaptism, not the

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superstitious fears of ignorant peasants, and he therefore suppressed popular demands for witch burnings. His successors maintained this stance until the new Catholic Counter-Reformation attitudes had fully penetrated the minds of the Austrian royal house. As Wolfgang Behringer notes, the Tirolian government in Innsbruck refused to permit witch-hunting, even though the Austrian territories in Swabia and the Alsace were engulfed by significant witch trials between 1570 and 1630.113 After Kramer’s infamous inquisition at Innsbruck in 1485/6, there were only a few more witch trials in the first decade of the sixteenth century, and a couple of cases in Gries in 1521 and Tiers in 1524. No further examples are known until the 1540 trials in Innsbruck, Wengen im Felsental, and Auf dem Ritten, followed by another break until 1550/1, with recorded trials in Velturns, Meran, and Fleims, and again in Velturns and Villanders in 1558. The next known trial is not until 1568 in Schwaz, until 1560 a major centre of Anabaptism, followed by a case in Brixen in 1573, the first trial since 1510 to involve charges of making a pact with the devil. Starting in the 1580s the number of trials increased, climaxing with clusters of trials in the 1620s and the 1680s.114 There were, however, a number of scattered witch trials during the sixteenth century elsewhere in Habsburg Austria, such as those that arose periodically in the Vorarlberg, part of Anterior Austria (Vorderösterreich). Vorarlberg was to the immediate west of the Tirol and generally shared its geographical and cultural features. While under the general suzerainty of the Tirol government, it was further removed from Innsbruck’s immediate control, hence some witch-hunting was permitted by the local authorities, although Innsbruck intervened after a series of trials and executions in the 1540s and early 1550s. The first recorded witch trial in this century occurred in 1528 in Bluden, about twenty kilometres southeast of Feldkirch, and involved a married woman who was released after giving an oath (Urfehde) of good behaviour, while ten years later another woman was sent on a pilgrimage.115 This was followed in the mid-1540s by a fairly severe witch-hunt in Feldkirch and Bregenz that between 1546 and 1551 consumed over twenty diabolical witches believed responsible for bad weather and impoverishment. There was, however, an extremely important religious-political element to these trials, especially when two of the accused from Bregenz – located at the western end of Vorarlberg, ten kilometres from Lindau – confessed that the devil had told them that the Zwinglian and Lutheran faiths greatly pleased the demons since these sects allowed them greater freedom of action, while the Catholic Church remained their implacable enemy.116

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At this moment Bregenz and Lindau were confessional enemies, as the latter had joined the Protestant camp during the Schmalkaldic war. In February 1551 the main preacher of Lindau, Mathias Roth, mounted the city’s pulpit to denounce these accusations as bald religious propaganda. Shortly thereafter Innsbruck moved in to stop another witchhunt in Feldkirch, despite the local official’s appeal to the Carolina, and the Innsbruck authorities sought to suppress witch-hunting altogether.117 Even so, there was in the Vorarlberg a small number of individual trials again between 1570 and 1590, before the onset of another significant witch-hunt around 1600.118 Altogether Manfred Tschaikner estimates a total of about three hundred accused witches between 1528 and 1657, although he could find only 165 names in the surviving records. Of these 165, 23 persons were tried (17 executed) before 1555 and another 86 tried (48 executed) between 1570 and 1605. In one trial from 1588, the blesser and healer Peter Schoder testified that God was punishing the people with evil spirits and witchcraft ‘on account of our sins.’119 Given these attitudes and local pressure to attack witches as a means of diverting divine wrath, the lack of contemporary witch trials in the Tirol is even more striking. Presumably the Tirolese shared the poor weather and crop failures experienced by their neighbours, but Ferdinand refused to bend to their demands to pursue witches, continuing his emphasis on eradicating the Anabaptists as a means of appeasing God. One thing that the Voralbergers lacked that the Tirolese experienced was any major Anabaptist persecution: there was very little Anabaptist activity in this region prior to 1577, when some Anabaptist missionaries began to baptize a few converts under the benign neglect of local officials who resented Innsbruck’s persecutory pressure. In 1580 a number of Anabaptist books were burned and a number of Anabaptists left the region for Moravia. As R.F. Loserth notes, ‘time and again one reads in archive records of “suspect people,” their secret meetings, and of sectarian books all over this district.’120 Before his arrest one of the missionaries, Melchior Platzer, was active in the Bregenz forest region between 1581 and 1582. In an attempt to convert Platzer in the Feldkirchen castle dungeon, a priest from Bregenz was sent in, but apparently failed, expostulating, ‘did the devil bring me here and deceive me with this Anabaptist?’ Platzer was tortured but refused to promise to stay away; during his public execution he exhorted the audience to repentance.121 After 1590, however, references to Anabaptists decrease dramatically, with a number of recantations recorded in 1613, 1617, and 1618. Aside

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from Platzer’s, only two other executions of Anabaptists are known for the county, those of Joss Wilhelm and Christine Brünneren in 1618, both of whom had been caught trying to leave the region for Moravia. Neither Wilhelm nor his wife Elsa had been baptized, but under torture both admitted to being Anabaptists, although they refused to divulge the names of their accomplices. The Vorarlberg therefore reveals a reverse pattern to the Tirol: a number of witch trials throughout the sixteenth century and very little Anabaptist activity. After a series of witch executions in 1575, there was a brief gap as the authorities became concerned about Anabaptism in 1577, executing Platzer in 1583, and then returned to witch executions after 1585 (see table 6.1).122 Similarly, no witches were executed during 1618 when three Anabaptists were tried, although witch trials were conducted in 1616 and in 1622. Moreover, the most intense region for witch-hunting before the rise of Anabaptism c. 1577 was the area of Bregenz and the Bregenzerwald, where the few Anabaptist missionaries were most active, while none of the victims of witch-hunting in the Vorarlberg were from that area during the height of Anabaptist activity, although attention returned to the region thereafter. One can therefore presume that those court and ecclesiastical officials who interrogated the few Anabaptists they had managed to capture had had some experience with questioning and trying witches, although how this experience shaped their approach to Anabaptist suspects is not clear. In both the Vorarlberg and the Tirol, trials of minions of the devil were conducted on a regular basis, but in the former witches were presumed responsible for divine anger, and Anabaptists in the latter. How does this pattern of witch-hunting correspond to the persecution of Anabaptists? The worst period of Tirolese Anabaptist persecution fell between 1527 and 1539, with at least four hundred executions and hundreds more trials, years when there were no known witch trials anywhere in the Tirol, and only three trials in 1540. While there were few witch or sorcery trials across the Austrian domains during these decades, there seems to have been considerable popular pressure for witch persecution prior to Anabaptism in only a few of the provinces: the Tirol, with three trials in the fifteenth century and two in the early sixteenth century; the Duchy of Kärnten with trials in 1465, 1492, and 1511; the Duchy of Krain with one in 1513; and Austria below the Enns with trials in 1435, 1498, and 1528. There were no known trials in the Steirmark until a case in 1546 in Marburg.123 In broad terms, governmental concern over Anabaptist heresy helped to suppress witchhunting for several decades, while Jesuit efforts to eradicate popular

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Table 6.1 Anabaptist and witch persecution in the Vorarlberg, 1528–1657 Year

Anabaptists

1528 1538 1546 1550 1551

1570 1575 1583

Punishment

1 w from Latz bei Nenzing 1 w from Mittelberg 7 w, 1 m from Bregenzerwald 1 w from Bregenz region 2 persons from Bregenz 5 persons from Bregenzerwald Some persons from Feldkirch region 2 w (Dornbirn and Feldkirch regions) 1 w from Gamprätz 3 w (2 from Montafon, 1 from Gamprätz)

released released all executed executed ? executed 3 executed (2 others?) executed

1 w from Dornbirn 3 w from Dalaas 1 w from Dalaas 1 w from Tannberg 3 w (1 from Bregenz region) 9 w (3 from Bregenz) 21+ (16+ w, 2 m; 5 from Bregenz) 7+ (4+ w from Dornbirn) 23 (22 w from Dornbirn) 8 w (various locales) 19 (14 w, 5 m) 1 m from Buch 13 (9 w, 4 m, most from Hard & Lauterach) 2 w from Alberschwende

executed 2 executed, 1 released released executed 1 executed, 2 released 3 executed, 3 released, 3 ? 15 executed, 6 released

released released executed

1 Anabaptist – executed in Rankweil

1585 1586 1588 ? 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1604 1609 1614 1615 1616 1618

Witches

all executed 9 executed, 8 released, 6 ? 2 executed, 3 released, 3 ? 16 executed, 3 released released 10 executed, 3 released ?

3 Anabaptists – 2 executed, 1 w exiled

1622 1628 1630 1640 1641 1645 1649 1651 1656/7 w = women m = men ? = unknown result

1 m from Hohenems/Reute 1 w from Wolfurt 1 w from Bregenz 4 (3 w, 1 m from Hard) 2 w of Montafon 1 w of Feldkirch 6w 1 w of Hard 2 w, 1 m

executed executed released all released ? executed in Rankweil 1 died, 1 released, 4 ? died released

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‘supersititions’ and reliance on countermagic were similarly delayed by the efforts to defend Catholicism against Anabaptism and ‘Lutheranism.’ It was therefore not until the end of the Thirty Years War that the authorities could tolerate large-scale witch accusations. A constant thread throughout the history of heresy persecution in the Austrian lands, however, was the need to counteract sacramental scepticism and to find individuals who could do so by confessing to the abuse of Hosts. As long as the Anabaptists played their part on stage, there was no need to search out diabolical witches who had to be forced by torture into confessing to Host desecration. Anabaptist Women and Witchcraft In the Holy Roman Empire, as in the southern Netherlands, the antiAnabaptist polemics and actions contributed to increasing suspicions towards women, helping to revive the older misogynistic stereotype of female witches. Already the Reformation had helped broaden the potential witch to include any woman who was not behaving as a duly submissive housewife.124 Anabaptism, with its large number of activist women who broke with traditional gender roles by acting like preachers, visionaries, prophets, missionaries, and informal house-churches leaders; divorcing non-Anabaptist husbands; abandoning families; participating in polygamy; and, in at least one extreme case, running naked through the streets to proclaim their message – all this provided ammunition for those men who feared the effects of loosening the strictures placed upon proper female behaviour. Even when Mennonite leaders disallowed their female members from formal preaching, the authorities inadvertently provided them with other pulpits: the scaffold and the martyr testimonies, letters, and songs that were central to proselytizing efforts. By these and other means Anabaptist women asserted considerable independence and religious leadership, especially among the visionary and spiritualistic groups.125 While elsewhere the percentage of Anabaptist women appearing in the court records is relatively low (a little above 30% in the Netherlandic sources), Linda Huebert Hecht has noted that of 455 Anabaptists appearing in the court records for the Tirol between 1527 and 1529, close to half (46%) were women, while 40 per cent of those Anabaptists executed in these three years were women; Hecht furthermore noted ‘seven lay leaders, ten lay missioners, and 49 martyrs from among the 210 Anabaptist women identified.’ This figure, however, drops to the more typical 29 per cent after 1532.126

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In the Tirol, male Anabaptist elders (vorsteer) allowed women to act as readers, while there were many women ‘corner preachers’ (Winkelpredigern) whose missionary zeal on behalf of the movement became legendary.127 Across the Holy Roman Empire many women Anabaptists recanted their heretical errors by excusing their actions as that of a simple, ignorant woman, while others shocked their judicial or pastoral interrogators with their assertive defence of their beliefs, knowledge of the Bible, and anticlerical rebuttals. In 1553 the Lutheran pastor of Dorrenbach (Pfalz-Zweibrücken) reported that he had questioned two women Anabaptists who had replied with anti-paedobaptismal and anticlerical comments, one of them exclaiming that she was amazed that when the preachers were about to baptize an infant, they said ‘depart, you unclean spirit,’ for if an impure spirit were in the infant, she argued, then the infant must have faith.128 In 1566 a local official of Kinzigtal, Fürstenberg, reported about a stubborn and cheeky Anabaptist woman who had ‘spoken so impudently to the new pastor, that she amazed me.’129 A Württemberg Anabaptist woman, Anna Möllen was a constant thorn in the flesh of the local church authorities, arrested in 1584, 1588, 1591, 1616, while at other times she was chained in her house. Despite these actions, she still managed to attend numerous Anabaptist meetings in the countryside and in the infamous forest site near Esslingen. Her church interrogators never got the better of her, and she used every visit to complain about the immorality of Lutherans and their clergy.130 In 1620 the officials of Cannstatt, Württemberg, expressed their frustration with the Anabaptist Katharina Mergentaler, who insisted on listening to the preacher only insofar as he agreed with her reading of the Bible.131 Such literate and assertive Anabaptist women radically broke with their society’s gender expectations, while the authorities’ chagrin over their norm-breaking behaviour was a frequent subject of comment running throughout the trial records of Anabaptist women. The authorities, of course, maintained the traditional prejudice against women, often in ways that benefited female Anabaptists. In many cases women suspects were treated more mildly than their male cohorts; for example, in October 1543, Archduke Ferdinand’s government ordered Innsbruck’s officials to release Ursual Hellrügel (Hellrigel), who had spent a number of years in prison, on account of the ‘female sex’s foolishness [umb weiplichen geschlechts blödigkhait willen],’ although she was exiled permanently from the realm. However, in the worst years of persecution, such as the Tirol in 1527–9, many women Anabaptists were tortured and burned at the stake alongside their

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brothers. For many local officials and executioners, this was their first time dealing with women heretics in such a harsh manner; this experience undoubtedly helped them to overcome any squeamishness they might have felt in torturing and executing women in large numbers.132 While most local jurists dealt with these women as a problem distinct from witches, there was certainly potential for a crossover in image from witches to Anabaptists; for example, in 1583 the authorities of a village in the vicinity of Cannstatt represented Gertrud, widow of Marx Ziegler, as one who had ‘an anabaptist spirit’ stuck inside her and whose son would quickly join the Anabaptists himself were it not for the fact that he led such an ‘epicurean life.’133 Suggesting that Gertrud was possessed by ‘an anabaptist spirit’ is a parallel to Paracelsus’s view that Anabaptism ‘and similar sects of melancholics arose’ from the ‘spirit “Afernoch.”’134 Like witches, Anabaptist women were occasionally accused of achieving literacy by magical or diabolical means and were generally seen as unruly and quarrelsome. For example, in the witch-hunt in Rottenburg on the Neckar of 1596, among the thirty-six victims of that year was one woman who explained her actions by asserting that ‘not everything they say about God is true.’ As Erik Midelfort notes, it ‘would overstrain the evidence to see this remark as symptomatic of covert Protestantism, but the remark does support the contention that the most suspect women were independent in both habits and thoughts.’135 Conclusion With the Anabaptists, the authorities had hard evidence of heretics who rejected their original baptism and practised ‘rebaptism,’ met at night in fields in large groups, and were perceived to allow women prominent leadership roles. The image as distorted through the mental filters of theologians, inquisitors, and jurists added diabolical elements to these real features, and also emphasized, long after the real threat had waned, the seditious intent of these dissenters. The transition, then, from fear of an Anabaptist to a demonic witch conspiracy was not a great one. The judicial authorities, however, kept the two sorts of criminals distinct, and only rarely were Anabaptists actually charged with anything approximating witchcraft, in large measure because of the resistence of many jurists to accepting the full demonic witch theory, at least until destructive storms and popular pressure convinced them otherwise. Moreover, Anabaptist prisoners consistently refused to admit to any of the diabolical charges made against them, and with their strong self-image as God’s

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chosen people they possessed psychological resources to resist such pressure not typically found in the usual witch suspect. However, if the rise in belief in a demonic heresy conspiracy in the late Middle Ages teaches us anything, it is that beliefs and practices of a ‘real’ heretical group could be readily transferred to another. The constant propaganda and persecution aimed to spread fear about a profound heretical threat that renounced every aspect of normal Christian affiliation (especially baptism), held large and mysterious nocturnal gatherings, was presumed to plot the destruction of Christendom, and was frequently linked to Satan. However, those neighbours who had the closest contact with Anabaptists, Mennonites, or Hutterites after the 1530s did not perceive them as a real threat. With increasing storms wreaking havoc on the German countryside in the second half of the century, fear of demonic agency behind these crises increased, merging with the rhetoric of churchmen who blamed Anabaptists for incurring divine wrath, while the people turned instead to witches whom they traditionally suspected as responsible for community or personal catastrophes. They were tacitly encouraged to do so, given what preachers had often said about a demonic sect and the governments’ decades-long burning of sectarians for blasphemy. In this way, the anti-Anabaptist efforts of the elites helped create an atmosphere conducive to conspiratorial thinking and a need to uncover the particular agents of the devil responsible for incurring the wrath of God. Those propagandists who characterized Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism as a form of spiritual infanticide or as parallel to the witches’ sacrifice of unbaptized infants to the devil should not have been surprised if their warnings led to renewed fear of witches instead. William Monter here has suggested that ‘the widespread popular acceptance of the doctrine of the witches’ Sabbath during the great persecutions of the confessional century – a relatively obscure concept among the laity at the time of the Malleus Maleficarum – owed more to fresh and vivid memories of clandestine conventicles uncovered by heresy-hunters during the preceding decades than to recycled tales about the orgies of medieval heretics.’136 In his fascinating analysis of the preternatural beliefs of the Alpine Bavarian herder Chonrad Stoeckhlin, Wolfgang Behringer has revealed how the unusual ideas of this simple man in 1586/7 sparked the first major witch panic in the bishopric of Augsburg, largely because popular notions of ‘the good people,’ fairies, and magical flight were merged with elite concerns about diabolical gatherings. He concludes: ‘Real conventicles of heretics, as well as surviving notions of fairies (in both cases, groups

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who were known as “good people”) thus provided a conceptual basis for the witches’ dance. Although this thesis has been criticized and the old idea that the sabbath was invented by the Inquisition has even been revived, there is much evidence in favor of the view that popular beliefs played an important role in the construction of the idea of the witches’ dance.’137 Chronrad’s home of Oberstdorf, located on the southern tip of the narrow prince bishopric of Augsburg, was incidently in a direct line between Austrian Bregenz and Innsbruck, and while in a different legal jurisdiction, its inhabitants existed in the same geographical and cultural environment as the Tirolese.138 As popular beliefs about magic and supernatural visits to the Otherworld inspired rumours about nocturnal Anabaptist gatherings, the learned anti-Anabaptist propaganda of preachers and rulers reinforced in the minds of the populace the reality of a demonic witch sect. All that was required were the destructive hailstorms to blend the two images, leading to the revival of witchhunting on a major scale.

Conclusion

In the sixteenth century, a scapegoating attitude, feeding off major tragedies, escalated anxiety over the plotting of secretive organizations that could not be rooted out by normal means and led to judicial changes that reduced the rights of suspects and allowed the application of horrific forms of torture upon suspects. Based on the historical example presented in this study, there are grounds for concern that demonizing rhetoric against a threatening group, once it is proclaimed from pulpit and press (and now on television and the Web), and at least obliquely countenanced by governmental spokespersons, might again penetrate the mindset of the populace and be readily redirected to other ‘outsiders.’1 In the medieval and early modern eras, many princes used this adaptable popular suspicion to rid themselves of ‘enemies of the state.’2 Of all the major sectarian streams that found their source in the headwaters of the Reformation, the Anabaptist/Mennonite and spiritualist currents were the most critical of the preternatural or ‘superstitious’ beliefs and practices of their contemporaries, and yet it was these groups that were most sharply demonized by their opponents. There are many reasons for the immense hatred expressed towards these radical reformers, such as Anabaptism’s murky origins during the period of the Peasants’ War of 1525, or its involvement in the ignominy of the Kingdom of Münster, or the refusal of most Anabaptists to swear oaths of allegiance, which was regarded as incipient civic disobedience.3 But the contention of this work is that the Anabaptist rejection of sacramental realism and especially of infant baptism inspired great fear and loathing on the part of the orthodox. All other reform groups maintained infant baptism because parents believed it clothed their children with supernaturally protective powers. Even Calvinists, who in theory gutted

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sacramental theology of its preternatural underpinnings, maintained infant baptism, permitting Calvinist parents to take comfort in the belief that as baptized members of the elect their children were protected in some fashion from the devil’s assaults. To deny young children of this defence for the sake of a particular interpretation of biblical passages was a radical step indeed, for it could inspire nightmarish fears that children might be possessed by demons or that witches would fulfil their diabolical pacts by kidnapping and killing unbaptized children.4 Anabaptists, like the Waldensians before them, also offered examples of lay heretics who emphasized charismatic and visionary authority, were virulently anticlerical, offered a more pious alternative to the formal clergy, encouraged lay reading of the Bible, and allowed women a measure of religious leadership. Given these parallels, why were Anabaptists not turned into a witch sect as the Waldensians had been? While not able to provide a definitive answer, this book has suggested that in the cases of charismatic Anabaptists most closely corresponding to Waldensian shamans, jurists such as Gerrit van Assendelft were predisposed by their humanistic leanings to be sceptical of the diabolical witch stereotype. The strange behaviour of the accused in prison, moreover, tended to elicit comparisons with demoniacs rather than with sorcerers, while the Anabaptists’ belief that they alone were following the gospels gave them, even in the torture chamber, an incredible level of confidence that shocked their interrogators. Using biblical passages to deflect charges of diabolism back onto their accusers, Anabaptists were in this regard much more confident of their righteousness than was the case with the unfortunate ‘shaman of Oberstdorf,’ Chonrad Stoeckhlin, who eventually caved in to his interrogator’s assertions that his otherworldly visits were diabolically caused and whose confessions led to a major witch-hunt.5 Even those Anabaptists who did recant were forced to provide magistrates with confessional material to help combat anticlericalism and scepticism toward the sacraments. Interrogators and propagandists tried to demonize Anabaptists in a wide variety of ways, ranging from direct accusations of diabolical activity to suggestions of magical activity and rumours of secretive sabbat-like gatherings. As a result of the notoriety gained by the polemical depiction and persecution of Anabaptists, the act of rebaptism became a prominent aspect of the witches’ sabbat, allowing demonologists and inquisitors to characterize the crime of witchcraft once again as that of a conspiratorial sect. Even so, the vast majority of learned writers and jurists kept the two heresies distinct in theory, despite the popular blurring noted in

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this work, such as the miracle stories of Hosts consuming their Anabaptist desecrators told by Christiaan Munters or Archduke Ferdinand’s magical use of sacramentals and soothsayers in Anabaptist interrogations. The pattern of judicial prosecution of the two, however, only rarely intersected, and judicial punishment of witches either alternated with that of Anabaptists or succeeded it. In hindsight, the persecution of Anabaptism proved to be a practice run for the assault on witches, and both were punished as incurring the wrath of God on the eve of the Last Judgment. The interplay between these two variants of the devil’s apocalyptic assault on the ‘true church’ helps explain why after it had fallen out of favour by 1520, witch-hunting was revived, starting in 1562 in Wiesensteig when concerns over a nocturnal Anabaptist mountain meeting immediately preceded new stories of groups of witches dancing and beating water to produce hail in the vicinity. Princes had inadvertently prepared the ground for the massive witch trials by secularizing heresy trials to deal more effectively with the crimen exceptum of Anabaptism.6 Between 1530 and 1580, Catholic and Lutheran propagandists associated Calvinists, Anabaptists, and spiritualists with demonic control and evil magic, while Anabaptists and Calvinists depicted Catholic priests as diabolical sorcerers. As Jonathan Pearl notes of France, ‘that the Protestants were also described as allies of the Devil, and participants in witchcraft, must have helped to focus and solidify the hatred that many Paris Catholics felt.’7 The result, of course, was the infamous St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572. Such polemical demonization was brought down to a worried populace by pamphlets, woodcut drawings, sermons, dramas, and staged exorcisms, convincing the multitudes that the devil was running amok. It is well known how the learned ideas of the reformers were reshaped for popular consumption by early modern commoners, such as the fateful ‘misinterpretation’ of Luther’s slogans of the ‘freedom of the Christian’ and ‘godly law’ that encouraged the peasants to rise up in protest against their lords in the 1524/5 Peasants’ War.8 As ordinary parishioners heard over and over again about the secret machinations being hatched by the devil’s minions, they quite naturally associated these exertions with those neighbours they had long suspected of performing harmful magic against them and their community. Simply replacing ‘witches’ for ‘Anabaptists’ as they listened to their pastors’ sermons, they were convinced that these witches were not working alone, but were part of a major demonic sect that, like the Anabaptists, met in groups at night in isolated forest clearings or on

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mountains. Thus the solitary witch was incorporated into a seemingly boundless web of conspiracy overseen by Satan. In this way, the authorities’ efforts to identify and eradicate Satan’s Anabaptist minions were reinterpreted and applied to other forms of demonic heresy and seen as implicit permission to throw suspected witches into the judicial pot. The people, inspired especially by a worsening climate in the 1560s, increased the pressure on local lords to conduct witch trials.9 If the authorities had ceased persecuting Mennonites and spiritualists when it became clear to most that they were no threat whatsoever to civic stability (i.e., by the 1540s), then perhaps there might not have been such a massive revival of witch-hunting after 1560. But such was not the case. Instead, polemicists escalated the demonizing rhetoric against these pious dissenters precisely because they were increasingly tolerated by ordinary folk and magistrates. In response, zealously orthodox writers depicted them as the devil’s secret minions infiltrating the upper echelons of Christian society to effect its destruction.10 A similar process had transpired in Spain, where the conversos’ integration into Christian society resulted in fears of a secret Jewish plot to take over the country, leading to the anti-converso riots, the Spanish Inquisition, and the pure-blood laws of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.11 A projection of suspicion from one hated foe to another occurred also in France during the 1560s, when, as Henry Heller puts it, the ‘French turned their anger not only against one another, but also against the Italians living in their midst.’12 Thus, as Mennonites developed a growing reputation as pious and peaceable folk, and the spiritualists’ promotion of religious toleration reached an ever-widening audience, their enemies demonized them even more harshly. To depreciate confessional orthodoxy or to deny the reality of the devil himself was made the equivalent of atheism, the spread of which was the ultimate goal of Satan. Those who therefore denied the devil were in truth the agents of the devil; those whose godly living was seen as exceptional and outside the approved confessional framework must likewise have been servants of the evil one, appearances to the contrary. It is quite interesting to note that the confusion over the identification of witches and Anabaptists continues to this day, as many popular books on the witch-hunts and one film documentary have mistakenly identified pictures of Anabaptists as those of witches.13 One can easily see that these are images of Mennonites and not witches by the pious gestures of the victims and the lack of demons hovering about the fire (cf. fig. 12). Since according to inquisitors all heretics committed per-

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verse sexual acts in their secret meetings, Anabaptists, like witches, were often depicted in the nude (see fig. 1). This reputation seems to have been sufficient for a 1536 engraving by Virgil Solis to be long mislabelled as the ‘Society of Anabaptists’ when it was instead a bathhouse scene (see fig. 13).14 Such blurring of the identity of Anabaptists and witches by modern writers illustrates the kind of confusion that was possibly – I’d suggest likely – in the minds of sixteenth-century people. Learned theologians and jurists usually made clear distinctions between the two types of heresy, but given what we know about early modern popular culture and mentalité, it would be a stretch to assume that common folk kept those distinctions clear when viewing a heretic being consumed by the flames. Although male Anabaptists and Mennonites eventually found ways to restrict the public exercise of spiritual gifts or of a religious calling on the part of women, those women within the spiritualistic streams, such as the apocalyptic Melchiorites, the followers of David Joris, or the Waterlander Mennonites of Hans de Ries, for example, frequently found ways to express a form of ecstatic or visionary religious leadership that deeply worried male clerics and authorities. As was the case with the late medieval Waldensians, Beguines, and Joan of Arc, to mention only a few famous examples, women who so transgressed the normal bounds of female religious and vocational conduct were readily demonized. Many of those unfortunate Anabaptist women who were convicted of heresy and executed found ways publicly to proclaim their faith, with their last breath preaching impromptu sermons to curious audiences or writing moving letters from their cells that would later be published. By their very courage in arguing with trained theologians, clerics, and jurists, Anabaptist women seemingly confirmed their learned opponents’ assumption that they had received assistance from the devil; how else, the clerics argued, could these unlettered women have learned the Bible so well that they could dispute with monks and priests, or endure horrific torture without recanting? This fear of women who broke traditional gender barriers to religious authority was a powerful one that fed into growing fear of female witches. As we have seen in the examples from both the Low Countries and a few of the Germanic principalities, as long as the authorities were preoccupied with battling the ‘real’ threat of Anabaptism, they resisted popular pressures to attack witches. In many of the worst witch-hunting regions, such as the Franconian bishoprics, western Thuringia, and portions of the southern Netherlands, for example, Anabaptism had been

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successfully suppressed by the start of the witch persecution. In those regions where significant numbers of Anabaptists had survived into the second half of the sixteenth century, witch-hunting was forestalled, as in Hesse, the Tirol, or Moravia, or abandoned altogether, as in Holland. There seem to have been several factors at work in this interesting correlation: first, while a lack of resources or jail space could make it impossible to deal with both sets of heretics at one time, local officials applied what they had learned from questioning Anabaptists onto witches, in the process refining their interrogation techniques and reshaping their lists of questions for extracting detailed confessions. Second, the governmental mandates issued and reissued by the Habsburgs describing the horrible and diabolical crimes of Anabaptists, and which were read at least periodically from pulpits, helped to keep the threat of diabolical heresy vivid in the minds of the people. Third, only when Anabaptists were no longer perceived by governmental officials as a direct threat to civic order and sacramental reality were magistrates and judges permitted or encouraged to accede to increasingly strident demands to attack the witches in their midst. Fourth, the diabolization of Anabaptist (and to a lesser extend Calvinist) heresy and its public presentation as a diabolical conspiracy helped make the revival of the demonic witch conspiracy more believable, especially to those princes and magistrates who needed convincing the most. Finally, some regions did not make the transition from heresy to witch-hunting, having exhausted their judicial bloodlust on the Anabaptists or Calvinists. Where a significant religious truce was declared or where rulers and intellectuals concluded that the supposedly diabolical Mennonites and spiritualists were not a real threat, they tended to apply that conclusion to the stereotype of heretical witches, perhaps seeing that this diabolical conspiracy theory was equally false. Why some took this direction while others merely turned from Anabaptist to witch burning presumably had much to do with individual psychology and the particular crises faced by a community. The worst locales for witch panics – the Franconian bishoprics – were dominated by intensely pessimistic, Counter-Reformation–minded rulers who saw religious deviance as the principal reason behind God’s punishments. They also had vigorously crushed Anabaptism well before the 1540s, so the image of diabolical heretics could remain in force without any living Anabaptists to give the lie to the rhetoric. Other learned writers, such as Johann Weyer, or rulers, such as Philipp of Hesse or the magistrates of the Dutch Republic, learned the lesson that overblown demonizing rhetoric could pervert the course of justice and refused to

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carry on the judicial bloodshed. Elsewhere, rulers gave in to the panicked cries for the burning of scapegoats to avert divine wrath. In these places, the stench of burning Anabaptist heretics was replaced by that of witches as means of appeasing God. At critical junctures, such as the moment of the fateful hailstorm in the region of Württemberg, the fears of Anabaptists and witches intersected, adding a special urgency to the hunt for the devil’s minions and persuading many erstwhile sceptical rulers of the reality of diabolical plotting. Thereafter, the witch-hunts took on a life of their own. This correlation leads us to consideration of the broader question of the relationship between rhetoric and action, between the antiAnabaptist propaganda we discussed in chapter 2 and the persecution of Anabaptists in chapters 3 through 6. Comparing, for example, the Dutch Mennonite depiction of their own interrogations with the records of the Anabaptist persecution from Archduke Ferdinand’s domains, we see clear evidence that the obsession with the demonic of the Netherlandic clerical inquisitors was a feature also of Austrian clergy involved in interrogations. Ferdinand’s recommendations to use countermagic, sacramentals, and exorcisms to force confessions out of recalcitrant Anabaptists reveals that many governmental leaders and interrogators viewed their judicial victims in a diabolical light. Such views were undoubtedly shaped by a whole host of confessors, writers, professors, and preachers who constantly reiterated the diabolical nature of these heretics. Although not directly responsible for the rise of witch-hunting, the writings of demonologists and other theologians and the sermons of antiwitch preachers likewise were essential for the elaboration of the witch conspiracy and promotion of its persecution.15 Discovery of large, nocturnal forest or mountain gatherings of Anabaptists in some cases sparked rumours and discussions that helped rekindle fear of diabolical sabbats. The popular folk beliefs regarding the banquets and dances of the ‘good people’ or ‘phantoms of the night,’ which were commonly believed to take place on mountains during the Ember days, or of Venusberg, may similarly have inspired speculation about what was actually going on during the nocturnal Anabaptist meetings.16 Certainly Anabaptist rebaptism was retooled for inclusion in the witches’ sabbat. What marked the Anabaptists off very clearly from the witches, of course, was that the Anabaptists actually believed and practised what they confessed to the authorities, while witches confessed to deeds patently impossible, and, despite the number of voluntary confessions, most believed themselves entirely innocent of the charges but

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could not withstand the judicial pressure and torture to keep themselves from confessing.17 There were, fortunately, exceptions to such trends. For example, we have discussed the importance of spiritualistic ideas in the Netherlands, suggesting that these contributed both to the intellectual debate about tolerance and to the unique, pragmatic compromises made by the Dutch, which undercut the rationale for belief in diabolical conspiracies of ‘the Other,’ especially as Calvinists regarded Mennonites as erring rather than demonic. Here, spiritualists achieved such a critical mass in numbers and influence that they were able to shape public policy in favour of religious tolerance and scepticism toward diabolical conspiracies. In many other regions, however, spiritualists remained a small, virtually invisible minority group on the periphery of political power, and their beliefs depicted by their foes as a profound threat to princely goals of confessional conformity. The zealous were therefore able to arouse fear in the populace about the insidious, secretive intentions of such insipient sceptics. The unusual ideas of the notorious spiritualist David Joris, for example, provoked shortly after his posthumous trial in 1559 a storm of controversy on the part of orthodox Protestants and Catholics, compelling them to write and preach more strenuously about the reality of Satan and of the real dangers he posed to Christians. In this way, then, Joris’s denial of the independent existence of malevolent supernatural beings contributed most immediately not to a rising scepticism, but to a backlash of officially mandated credulity. To deny the devil was made akin to atheism, and since Lucifer wished to spread such disbelief, ‘atheists’ were Satan’s minions. A similar argument was used by zealous witch-hunters to undercut the arguments of moderate sceptics who disputed the ability of witches to fly or disturb nature by diabolical means. They were able to do so in part because such sceptical opinions had already been associated with the notorious David Joris, the ‘devil of Delft,’ or other heretical dissidents. In general, then, the varied opinions of Anabaptists and spiritualists had a contradictory reception. In the short term, they were condemned, demonized, and opposed with a vigour all out of proportion to the real threat they posed. Turning the quasi-universalist Hans Denck into the founder of a sect of demon-worshippers or the lofty-minded Joris into a diabolical sorcerer were only two examples of this process. The reputation of Münsterite Anabaptism lingered long after Mennonites had repudiated any form of militance, so that their pious, peaceable demeanour became proof that they were covering their secret insurrec-

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tionary goals with feigned godliness in order to lure the unsuspecting into a false sense of security. In the long term, however, the position of Roland Bainton and George Williams that the Radical Reformation contributed to the rise of religious toleration is confirmed for the Netherlands.18 The writings of Anabaptists and spiritualists on religious tolerance were printed, and reprinted, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, becoming central for the rationalistic Collegiants of the Dutch Republic.19 Unfortunately, the tolerant Dutch Republic was in many respects an anomaly within northern Europe. For a variety of reasons, early modern society was not ready to give up its fascination with diabolical conspiracies until over a century of flames had consumed thousands of victims, first Anabaptists, then witches. One wonders if such proclivities have left us completely.

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Notes

Abbreviations ARG BRN II

DAN

DB EOW ME MQR OER QGT 1

Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte / Archive for Reformation History. S. Cramer, ed., ‘Dit Boeck wort genaemt: Het offer des Heeren ... ,’ 1570 (first published in 1563), Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica, (The Hague, 1904), II. Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica, 1: Albert F. Mellink, ed., Friesland en Groningen 1530-1550 (Leiden, 1975); 2: Albert F. Mellink, ed., Amsterdam, 1536-1578 (Leiden, 1980); 3: W.F. Dankbaar, ed., Marten Mikron: Een Waerachtigh Verhaal der t’Zamensprekinghen tusschen Menno Simons ende Martinus Mikron van der Menschwerdinghe Iesu Christi (1556) (Leiden, 1981); 5: Albert F. Mellink, ed., Amsterdam, 1531-1536 (Leiden, 1985); 7: Albert F. Mellink, ed., Friesland (1551–1601) and Groningen (1538–1601), completed by S. Zijlstra (Leiden, 1995); 8: Brad S. Gregory, ed., The Forgotten Writings of the Mennonite Martyrs, Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica (Leiden, 2002). Doopsgezinde Bijdragen Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden (Santa Barbara, CA, 2006), 4 vols. Mennonite Encyclopedia, 5 vols. Mennonite Quarterly Review Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (New York and Oxford, 1996), 4 vols. Gustav Bossert, Sr, and Gustav Bossert, Jr, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, I Band, Herzogtum Württemberg (Leipzig, 1930, rep. New York, 1971).

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Notes to pages 3–6

QGT 4 QGT 14 QGT 16

QGTS 2 RRB SCJ TA Hesse

Manfred Krebs, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, IV Band, Baden und Pfalz (Gütersloh, 1951, rep. New York, 1971). Mecenseffy, Grete, ed. Österreich, volume III; vol.14 of Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer (Gütersloh, 1983). Marc Lienhard, Stephen F. Nelson, and Hans Georg Rott, eds., Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, vol. 16, Elsass IV, Stadt Straßburg 1543– 1552 (Gutersloh, 1988). Heinold Fast, ed. Ostschweiz. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 2 (Zürich, 1973). Rekenkamer Rekeningen Brussel Sixteenth Century Journal Günther Franz et al., eds. Urkundliche Quellen zur hessischen Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 4, Wiedertäuferakten 1527–1626 (Marburg, 1951).

Introduction 1 See Gary K. Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke, UK, and New York, 2003), 22–51. 2 Wolfgang Behringer, ‘Climatic Change and Witch-hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities,’ Climatic Change 43, no. 1(1999): 335–51. 3 Wolfgang Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy, or How Waldensians Became Witches,’ in Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution, ed. Barry Coward and Julian Swann (Aldershot, UK, 2004), 13–34. 4 Benjamin J. Kaplan, ‘Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,’ American Historical Review 107 (2002): 1031–64, here 1037. 5 See also Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds (London and New York, 2005). 6 In December 2003 Richard Klassen won a malicious prosecution suit because his prosecutors had relied on the now discredited testimony of disgruntled foster children (http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/klassen/). Comparing early modern and modern witch-hunting is Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Cambridge, 2004). 7 Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft. See now also Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, CT, 2004), esp. 18. 8 On the links between spiritualism and the decline of witch-hunting, see now Hans de Waardt, ‘Religie, duivelspact en toverij,’ Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 118 (2005): 400–15.

Notes to pages 7–11

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9 For a study revealing the potential fruitfulness of the Swiss sources for this subject, see Sydney Penner, ‘Swiss Anabaptists and the Miraculous,’ MQR 80 (2006): 207–28. 1. The Devil’s Minions? Anabaptists, Magic, and Witches in the Sixteenth Century 1 ‘Confession of the Brethren, Taken to Trieste as Prisoners (1539),’ in Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, ed. and trans. Walter Klaassen, Frank Friesen, and Werner O. Packull (Kitchener, ON and Scottdale, PA, 2001), 264–6. 2 R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987); Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Inquisition, Medieval,’ EOW 2: 553–6. 3 Moore, Formation, 141; also Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch and the Law (Philadelphia, 1978); Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500 (London, 1976); J.R. Veenstra, Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les Devineurs (1411) (Leiden, 1998). 4 Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 39–42; Michael D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2003). 5 See esp. Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 1991); Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York, 1991), and Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (New York and Middlesex, 1983); also Kathrin Utz Tremp, ‘Heresy,’ EOW 2: 485–8. 6 Roper, Witch Craze, 40. Since anti-Semitism was long associated with the veneration of the Virgin Mary, Protestant or Anabaptist criticism of the latter could attract similar emotional fury. On Jews and magic, see J.H. Chajes, ‘Jews, Witchcraft, and Magic,’ EOW 2: 592–5. 7 Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy.’ See also Michael D. Bailey, ‘Origins of the Witch Hunts,’ EOW 3: 856–60. 8 Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy,’ 41–3. 9 Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA, 1990), 288; see also his Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA, 1990). 10 Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 299. 11 Miri Ruben, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), 113.

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Notes to pages 11–14

12 Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, CT, 1988), and Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, CT, 1992). 13 Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford, 1998), 315. 14 Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c1170–c1570, trans. Claire Davison (Cambridge, 1999), 73; Michael Bailey, ‘Conrad of Marburg (ca. 1180–1233),’ EOW 1: 208–9. 15 Willam Monter, ‘Witchcraft,’ OER 4: 276–7. 16 Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1972). 17 Arno Borst, ‘The Origins of the Witch-craze in the Alps,’ in Arno Borst, Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists in the Middle Ages, trans. Eric Hansen (Chicago, 1991), 101–22, esp. 116. See also Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Obersdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, trans. H.C. Erik Midelfort (Charlottesville, VA, 1998), 128–32, and ‘Vaudois (Waldensians),’ EOW 4: 1160–6. 18 Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy,’ 15. 19 Ibid., 22. 20 On the Council of Basel and witchcraft, see Bailey, Battling Demons, esp. 28, 96, 120–2, 141, and ‘Basel, Council of,’ EOW 1: 92–3; and Edward Peters, ‘The Medieval Church and State on Superstition, Magic and Witchcraft: From Augustine to the Sixteenth Century,’ in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia, 2002), 175–245, esp. 227–8. On the awareness of such Germanic myths as Venusberg in the Low Countries, see, for example, Gary K. Waite, ‘Talking Animals, Preserved Corpses and Venusberg: The Sixteenth-Century Worldview and Popular Conceptions of the Spiritualist David Joris,’ Social History 20 (1995): 137–56; also Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf, 56–7. 21 See Eric Wilson, ‘Institoris at Innsbruck: Heinrich Institoris, the Summis Desiderantes and the Brixen Witch-Trial of 1485,’ in Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800 , ed. Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson (Basingstoke, UK, 1996), 87–100. In 1485 the local bishop and the archduke of Austria released all of the suspects he had arrested in Innsbruck. 22 Ibid., 96. 23 For a preacher causing a witch-hunt, see Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1999). 24 Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989). 25 See Borst, ‘The Origins of the Witch-craze in the Alps’; Martine Ostorero, ‘Folâtrer avec les démons.” Sabbat et chasse aux sorciers à Vevey (1448) (Lausanne,

Notes to pages 14–17

26 27 28 29 30 31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38

39

40

41

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1995); Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (London, 1975); and Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials. Walter E. Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and Belief (Chicago, 2002), 9. See also Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997). Stephens, Demon Lovers, 11. Ibid., 27. It went through another sixteen editions thereafter. Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, IL, 1985), 46. Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Oxford, 1996), 292. As Natalie Zemon Davis observes, the ‘mass executions of Protestants’ in Provence in the 1540s were ‘ordered by the Parlements of Aix and of Paris as punishment for heresy and high treason and anticipate crowd massacres of later decades,’ while ‘official acts of torture and official acts of desecration of the corpses of certain criminals anticipate some of the acts performed by riotous crowds.’ Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence,’ in her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA, 1975), 162. See Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (London and New York 1995), 21–5; and Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors (New York, 1996), 8. William Monter, Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-Century Parlements (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 28–54. See Jonathan Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620 (Waterloo, ON, 1998). QGTS 2: 3. Werner O. Packull, Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525–1531 (Scottdale, PA, and Kitchener, ON, 1977), 69. Hans Hut, ‘On the Mystery of Baptism,’ in The Radical Reformation, ed. Michael G. Baylor (Cambridge, 1991), 163. Packull, Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 40–7; Morwenna Ludlow, ‘Why Was Hans Denck Thought to Be a Universalist?’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 257–74. ‘Reflections on the Book of the Prophet Micah,’ with L. Haetzer, in Selected Writings of Hans Denck, 1500–1527, ed. E.J. Furcha (Lewiston, NY, 1989), 147. Those promoting the veneration of saints he called soothsayers. Werner O. Packull, ‘In Search of the ‘Common Man’ in Early German Anabaptist Ideology,’ SCJ 17 (1986): 62. See also James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 2nd ed. (Lawrence, KS, 1976), 196–7. Paul Wappler, ed., Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1526–1584 (Jena, 1913), 338–44.

212 42 43 44 45

46

47

48 49

50

51 52

Notes to pages 17–20

Ibid., 341–2. Ibid., 343. Ibid., 294–302. See my ‘Anabaptist Anticlericalism and the Laicization of Sainthood: Anabaptist Saints and Sanctity in the Netherlands,’ in Jürgen Beyer et al., Confessional Sanctity (c.1550–c. 1800) (Mainz, 2003), 163–80; ‘An Artisan’s Worldview? David Joris, Magic and the Cosmos,’ in Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull, ed. C. Arnold Snyder (Scottdale, PA, and Kitchener-Waterloo, ON, 2002), 167–94; and ‘Talking Animals.’ Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Harmondsworth, UK, 1969), a work criticized for neglecting that pressure for witch persecution arose from the common people, not the elites. See Robert W. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the “Disenchantment of the World”,’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993): 475–94. In his otherwise fine study of the witch-hunts Robert W. Thurston discounts the potential impact of the Reformation in a single paragraph. Robert W. Thurston, Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose (Harlow, UK, 2001), 90. Monter, Judging the French Reformation, 11. This preternatural reason for heresy burnings was not unlike the need to burn the corpses of recidivist revenants who refused to remain in their graves even after they had been staked. Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven, CT, 1988); see also Oldridge, Strange Histories, 56–75, and Nancy Caciola, ‘Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,’ Past and Present 152 (1996): 3–45. Monter, Judging the French Reformation, 11–12. See Pearl, The Crime of Crimes; Carleton Cunningham, ‘The Devil and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century France,’ Essays in History 35 (1993): 34–47; Robert Rapley, A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Montreal and Kingston, 1998); and Moshe Sluhovsky, ‘A Divine Apparition or Demonic Possession? Female Agency and Church Authority in Demonic Possession in Sixteenth-Century France,’ SCJ 27 (1996): 1039–55. Margaret Murray’s infamous theory that pre-Christian fertility religion had survived into the early modern period and that Joan of Arc had been a propitiatory sacrifice to the fertility god made scholars understandably reluctant to consider the sacrificial quality of heresy burnings. See Margaret A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921); for the critique, see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, and Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials. Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 (Ithaca, NY, 1972), 370. See Monter, Judging the French Reformation, 32–51, especially the chart on

Notes to pages 20–3

53 54 55

56

57

58

59

60 61

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p. 44; see also Samme Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531–1675 (Hilversum, 2000), esp. 232–47; James M. Stayer, ‘Numbers in Anabaptist Research,’ in Snyder, Commoners and Community, 51–73; and Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1999). Monter, Judging the French Reformation, 33. Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 30–1. Barnes, ‘Apocalypticism,’OER 1: 66; also Robin Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, CA, 1988); and Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 9. Stuart Clark, ‘Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society (c.1520–c.1630),’ in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford, 1990), 45–81, here 47–8. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, ‘The European Witchcraft Debate and the Dutch Variant,’ Social History 15 (1990): 181–94; and Hans de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving: Holland 1500–1800 (The Hague, 1991). De Waardt, ‘Religie, duivelspact en toverij’; also Gary K. Waite, ‘Radical Religion and the Medical Profession: The Spiritualist David Joris and the Brothers Weyer (Wier),’ in Radikalität und Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert / Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Hans-Jürgen Goertz and James M. Stayer (Berlin, 2002), 167–85; and David Wootton, ‘Reginald Scot/Abraham Fleming/The Family of Love,’ in Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, ed. Stuart Clark (Houndmills, UK, 2001), 119–38. See also Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge, 1994). The sceptical ideas of some humanistic scholars perhaps indirectly influenced the Anabaptists through the translated writings of Erasmus. Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA, 1979). See also Abraham Friesen, Erasmus, the Anabaptists and the Great Commission (Grand Rapids, MI, 1998), and Cornelis Augustijn, ‘Erasmus and Menno,’ MQR 60 (1986): 497–508. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages. Robert W. Scribner, ‘Cosmic Order and Daily Life: Sacred and Secular in Pre-Industrial German Society,’ in his Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London and Ronceverte, 1987), 1–16, esp. 11. See also Stephen Wilson, The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in PreModern Europe (London, 2000).

214

Notes to pages 23–5

62 Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 10. 63 Scribner, ‘Cosmic Order,’ 12. 64 Nancy E. Atkinson, ‘When Miracles Become Magic: Witchcraft and the Effort to Reform Religious Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern England,’ (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1997), 3–12. 65 Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 230. 66 P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, ed. and trans., Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic (Manchester and New York, 2000), 132. 67 See Joshua Trachtenburg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (New York, 1966); Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder; and Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism. 68 Roper, Witch Craze, 32, 18. 69 Scribner, ‘Cosmic Order,’ 14. On the desecration of relics see Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, trans. János M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge, 1988), esp. 39–77. 70 See Carlos M.N. Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986); and Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (New York, 1995). 71 See Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London and New York, 1997), esp. 71. For Calvinists and magic, see J.L. Teall, ‘Witchcraft and Calvinism in Elizabethan England: Divine Power and Human Agency,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 23 (1962): 21–36; Clark, Thinking with Demons, 438–508; Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge, 1992); and Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 118–50. 72 DAN 8: 33. 73 Ibid., 8. 74 The Italian humanist and Aristotelian Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) – who doubted that demons ever existed – is the exception that proves the rule; Michaela Valente, ‘Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525),’ EOW 3: 911–12. See Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (London, 1983), 96–112. 75 On Kramer, see Stephens, Demon Lovers, and his ‘Witches Who Steal Penises: Impotence and Illusion in Malleus maleficarum,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 495–529; and Wilson, ‘Institoris at Innsbruck.’ 76 Marcel Gielis, ‘The Netherlandic Theologians’ Views of Witchcraft and the Devil’s Pact,’ in Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff (Rotterdam, 1991), 37–52, esp. 45–6. See also Marcel Gielis, ‘Hekserij en heksenvervolging in

Notes to pages 25–7

77

78

79

80

81

82 83 84

85

86

87

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het licht van de leer van Jacob van Hoogstraten over toverij en duivelspact,’ Taxandria, n.r. 59 (1987): 5–52; and de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 222. Gielis, ‘Netherlandic Theologians’ Views,’ 48–9; The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago, 1965). Also Popkin, The History of Skepticism, 1–8. Willem Frijhoff, ‘Witchcraft and its changing representation in Eastern Gelderland, from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries,’ in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Frijhoff, Witchcraft in the Netherlands, 167–81, esp. 169–75. Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum in Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance, ed. George Mora, trans. John Shea (Binghamton, NY, 1991), esp. 31–6, 81–9. Also H.C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Stanford, CA, 1999); and Hans de Waardt, ‘Johan Wiers De praestigiis. Myths en motivatie,’ in Duivelse bezetenheid. Beschreven door dokter Johannes Wier, 1515–1588, by Jan Jacob Cobban (Rotterdam, 2002), 17–74. See Waite, ‘Radical Religion and the Medical Profession.’ Hans de Waardt is preparing a study tentatively entitled ‘Witchcraft, Spiritualism and Medicine: The Religious Backgrounds of Johan Wier’ which suggests that Weyer’s affirmation of a real devil was primarily rhetorical. Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584; rep. Amsterdam and New York, 1971), 539–41; also Robert H. West, Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings on Witchcraft (Boston, 1984), 90. Wootton, ‘Reginald Scot/Abraham Fleming/The Family of Love.’ De Waardt, ‘Religie, duivelspact en toverij.’ The Collected Writings of Menno Simons c.1496–1561, ed. J.C. Wenger, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, PA, 1956), 133, 140. For the original, see Menno Simons, Opera Omnia Theologica of alle de Godtgeleerde Wercken van Menno Symons, 1681 ed. (Amsterdam, 1989); esp. Een fundament en Klare Aenwysinge van de Salighmakende Leere Jesu Christi, 19. ‘Reply to False Accusations,’ Menno, Collected Writings, 571–2; original: ‘Een Weemoedige ende Christelycke Ontschuldinge ... in Simons, Opera Omnia, 513. Joris, Neemt Waer. Dat boeck des leuens/ is mi gheopenbaert (n.p., n.d. [Antwerp, c.1541]), reprinted during the witch panics as Een Cort ende Leerlijck Tractaat: waer in verhandelt wert/wat dat woort Duyvel sy/ende hoe men ’tselvighe in die H. Schrift verstaen sal (n.p., 1616). For a more detailed analysis of Joris’s position, see Gary K. Waite, ‘ “Man Is a Devil to Himself”: David Joris and the Rise of a Sceptical Tradition towards the Devil in the Early Modern Netherlands, 1540–1600,’ Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 75 (1995): 1–30. ‘Vrage. Of God wel toelaten solde, dat een Tovenaer macht hadde/die

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95 96 97 98

Notes to pages 27–8

Geloovigen aen hare haeve of lichaem te bekrencken?’ In bound bundle, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Universiteit van Amsterdam, HS 65–82. Herman Herberts, Een corte ende grondige verclaringe van den Antichrist ... (Vianen, n.d. [c.1584]), esp. Aiiiiv–Aviv. For Herberts’s defence of Joris, see his Verantwoordinghe ende onpartijdich onderscheyt: gedaen teghen Dirck Volckhertsen Cornherts Kleyn Munster/ wtghegheuen teghen Dauid Jorissens Wonderboeck ... (n.p., n.d.). Hendrick Niclaes, Van des Minschen Heerlickheit im Anuangk: Van synem affal/ dodt/vnde van syne Wederuyrichtinge in syne vorige Heerlickheit/Eine grundige Berichtinge (n.p., n.d.), 2v–4r, 5r; Niclaes, Euangelium offte eine Frolicke Bodeschop (n.p., n.d.), 123r–124r; also Epistolae HN. De Vornompste Epistelen HN, die he dorch den hilligen Geist der Lieften; am dach geguen (n.p., 1577), esp. Eine vnderwisende Vormaninge an de Goedt-willigen/die sick to de Gehorsamheit der Lieften gantzelick ouer-geuen, 153r–154r. Barrefelt opposed Niclaes’s sectarian tendencies and declaration of himself as ‘pope’ in 1573. Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Greenwood, SC, 1981), 88–9; Benjamin J. Kaplan, ‘Hubert Duifhuis and the Nature of Dutch Libertinism,’ Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 105 (1992): 1–29; and H. ten Boom, De reformatie in Rotterdam 1530–1585 (Amsterdam, 1987), 98–110. For the division between Niclaes and Barrefelt, see DAN 6: 5–205. [Hendrik Jansen Barrefelt], Sendt-brieven wt Yverighe Herten, ende wt Afvoorderinghe, schriftelijck aen de Lief-hebbers der Waerheyt, deur den wtvloedt vanden Gheest des eenwesighen Leuens wtghegheuen ... (n.p., n.d. [Antwerp, c.1580]), 75. Hiël [Hendrik Jansen Barrefelt], Het Boeck Der Ghetuygenissen vanden verborghen Acker-schat: Verklaerende De verborghen wonder-daeden Godts begrepen in den grondt des herten der menschen ... (n.p., n.d., [Antwerp, c.1580]), 94. H. Bonger, Leven en werk van Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert (Amsterdam, 1978), 264–72; also Gerrit Voogt, Constraint on Trial: Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert and Religious Freedom (Kirksville, MO, 2000), 122, 137–41. Mirjam G.K. van Veen, ‘Spiritualism in the Netherlands: From David Joris to Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert,’ SCJ 33 (2002): 129–50, and ‘Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye’: De polemiek van Calvijn met nicodemieten, in het bijzonder met Coornhert (’t Goy-Houten, 2001). See also Voogt, Constraint on Trial. Oorsaken ende Middelen vander Menschen Saligheyt ende Verdoemenisse, in Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, Wercken (Amsterdam, 1630/31), vol. 1, 89r. Ibid., 91r. Coornhert, Dat des Duyvels wet swaar is ende lastigh, in Coornhert, Wercken I, 232v. Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, Kleyn-Munster, des groot-roemigen David Jorisens roemrijcke ende wonderbaren schriften (Gouda, 1590).

Notes to pages 28–9 99 100 101 102

103

104

105

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See Piet Visser, Broeders in de Geest, 2 vols. (Deventer, 1988), 1: 82–133. DAN 8: 27. Ibid., 70. See Pieter Jansz Twisck, Chronijck vanden onderganc der tijrannen ofte Jaerlycksche Geschiedenissen in Werltlycke ende Kercklijke saecken, 2 vols. (Hoorn, 1620); also Gary K. Waite, ‘From David Joris to Balthasar Bekker? The Radical Reformation and Scepticism towards the Devil in the Early Modern Netherlands,’ Fides et Historia 28 (1996): 5–26, and ‘Demonic Affliction or Divine Chastisement? Conceptions of Illness and Healing amongst Spiritualists and Mennonites in Holland, c.1530–c.1630,’ in Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe, ed. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Hilary Marland, and Hans de Waardt (London, 1997), 59–79. By the time of Een kort tractaetje’s composition in 1638 many Netherlandish jurists were coming to similar positions. See Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, ‘Doperse geluiden over magie en toverij: Twisck, Deutel, Palingh en van Dale,’ in Oecumennisme. Opstellen aangeboden aan Henk B. Kossen ter gelegenheid van zijn afscheid als kerkelijk hoogleraar, ed. A. Lambo (Amsterdam, 1989), 69–83, here 75–6. See also Jan Jansz Deutel, Een kort tractaetje tegen de toovery, als mede een verklaringe van verscheyden plaetsen der H. Scrifture (Hoorn, 1670), esp. 12, 24–5, 36. See also Hans de Waardt, ‘Abraham Palingh en het demasqué van de duivel,’ DB n.r. 17 (1991): 75–100, and his entry ‘Mennonites,’ EOW 3: 750–1. Abraham Palingh, ’tAfgerukt Mom-aansight der Tooverye: Daar in Het bedrogh der gewaande Toverye, naakt ontdekt, en met gezonde Redenen en exemplen dezer Eeuwe aangewezen wort (Amsterdam, 1659), 3r. Anthonis van Dale, Verhandeling van de oude Orakelen der Heydenen (Amsterdam, 1687), afterword, a1v, a5v; Gijswijt-Hofstra, ‘Doperse geluiden,’ 79–82. Balthasar Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, zynde een Grondig Ondersoeck van’t gemeen gevoelen aangaande de GEESTEN, derselver Aart en Vermogen, Bewind en Bedryf: als ook’t gene de Menschen door derselver kraght en gemeenschap doen (Amsterdam, 1691–3). See also G.J. Stronks, ‘De betekenis van De betoverde weereld van Balthasar Bekker,’ in Nederland betoverd: Toverij en Hekserij van de veertiende tot in de twintigste eeuw, ed. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff (Amsterdam, 1987), 207–11; W.P.C. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker: De Bestrijder van het Bijgeloof (The Hague, 1906), 193. Bekker highly valued Van Dale’s book. Gijswijt-Hofstra, ‘Doperse geluiden,’ 83, n.37. See Andrew Fix, Fallen Angels: Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief, and Confessionalism in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic (Dordrecht, 1999). On the Enlightenment, see Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy

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112 113 114 115 116

117

Notes to pages 29–30 and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001). On the Collegiants, see Andrew C. Fix: Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1991); ‘Angels, Devils, and Evil Spirits in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Balthasar Bekker and the Collegiants,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 527–47, and ‘Radical Reformation and Second Reformation in Holland: The Intellectual Consequences of the Sixteenth-Century Religious Upheaval and the Coming of a Rational World View,’ SCJ 18 (1987): 63–80. They were no longer examples for imitation but, as Brigitte Cazelles notes, ‘exceptions to be admired.’ Brigitte Cazelles, ‘Introduction,’ in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, and Timea Szell (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1991), 2; Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981), 1, 3. Walter Klaassen, Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant (Waterloo, ON, 1973), 11–14; C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, ON, 1995), 48–9. For Protestants, see Jürgen Beyer, ‘A Lübeck Prophet in Local and Lutheran Context,’ in Scribner and Johnson, Popular Religion, 166–82, esp. 168–9, 172–4; Carol Piper Heming, Protestants and the Cult of the Saints in GermanSpeaking Europe, 1517–1531 (Kirksville, MO, 2003); Robert Kolb, For All the Saints: Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation (Macon, GA, 1987), esp. 103–38; and Willem Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz. Een Hollands weeskind op zoek naar zichzelf 1607–1647 (Nijmegen, 1995). Nicole Grochowina, ‘“Het Offer des Herren.” Das Martyrium als Heiligenideal niederdeutscher Täufer um 1570,’ in Beyer et al., Confessional Sanctity, 65–80. See also Gregory, Salvation at Stake. QGT 14, 161. DAN 8: 12. Ibid., 204. For details, refer to Waite, ‘Anabaptist Anticlericalism.’ Menno Simons, ‘The Cross of the Saints (c.1554),’ in Menno, Collected Writings, 581–622. For Menno’s theology, see Gerald R. Brunk, ed., Menno Simons: A Reappraisal (Harrisonburg, 1992); and S. Voolstra, ‘True Penitence: The Core of Menno Simons’ Theology,’ MQR 62 (1988): 387–400. On Menno’s views of Joris, see Samme Zijlstra, ‘Menno Simons and David Joris,’ MQR 62 (1988): 249–56. Cornelius J. Dyck, ‘Hans de Ries and the Legacy of Menno,’ MQR 62 (1988): 401–16; P. Visser, ‘Het dopers mirakel van het onverbrande bloempje. Terug naar de bron van een onbekend lied over martelaar

Notes to pages 31–4

118

119 120

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122

123 124 125

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Leonhard Keyser (H1527),’ DB 17 (1991): 9–30. See Waite, ‘Anabaptist Anticlericalism.’ Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic in Late Medieval Europe,’ Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24 (1994): 355–85; Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Echte und Falsche Mystik aus Historischer Sicht,’ in Paranormologie und Religion, ed. Andreas Resch (Innsbruck, 1997), 503–33, and ‘Holiness,’ EOW 2: 502–3. Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 127. For demonic possession and madness, see esp. Midelfort, A History of Madness, 25–79. H.C. Erik Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People: Reflections on the Popularity of Demon Possession in Sixteenth-Century Germany,’ in Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Steven Ozment (Kirksville, MO, 1989), 99–119. In a letter between Swiss Calvinists cited by Roland Bainton, David Joris. Wiedertäufer und Kämpfer für Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1937), 103– 4, 126; see Waite, ‘Talking Animals.’ D. Jonathan Grieser, ‘Seducers of the Simple Folk: The Polemical War against Anabaptism (1525–1540)’ (ThD dissertation, Harvard University, 1993). Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials, ed. and trans. Marcus Hellyer (Charlottesville, VA, 2003), 24. Ibid., 47. William Monter, ‘Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565,’ in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (Cambridge, 1996), 48–64.

2. Blackened Tongues and Miraculous Hosts: Anabaptists and Miracles in the Polemical Literature 1 As cited by P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, ed., trans., The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A Documentary History (Basingstoke, UK, 1999), 168. 2 For recent surveys, see Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (London, 1989) and The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 1998). On the Reformation and witchhunts, see Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft; and Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 100–24; and Jörg Haustein, ‘Protestant Reformation,’ EOW 3: 936–8. 3 See esp. Gernot Heiß, ‘Konfessionelle Propaganda und kirchliche Magie: Berichte der Jesuiten über den Teufel aus der Zeit der Gegenreformation in den mitteleuropäischen Ländern der Habsburger,’ Romische Historische

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7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14

15

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Mitteilungen, 32–3 (1990–1), 103–52; see also Rita Voltmer, ‘Jesuits (Society of Jesus),’ EOW 2: 586–9. Philip M. Soergel, ‘From Legend to Lies: Protestant Attacks on Catholic Miracles in Late Reformation Germany,’ Fides et Historia 21, no. 2 (1989): 21–9; Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, CA, 1993). See also Cunningham, ‘The Devil and the Religious Controversies,’ 34–47. Gerhild Scholz Williams, Defining Dominion: The Discourses of Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern France and Germany (Ann Arbor, MI, 1995), 130 and 125 resp. On dissimulation and Nicodemism, see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1990). John S. Oyer, ‘Nicodemites among Württemberg Anabaptists,’ MQR 71 (1997): 487–514; Mark Furner, ‘Lay Casuistry and the Survival of Later Anabaptists in Bern,’ MQR 75 (2001): 429–70; and David Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists? State Policies toward Anabaptists in Sixteenth-Century Hesse,’ SCJ 32 (2001): 1003–26. Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late-Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT, 1999), 194. Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence,’ in her Society and Culture, 158. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes, 66–7, also his ‘Maldonado, Juan (1534–1583),’ EOW 3: 710–11. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes, 68. As cited by ibid., 71. Clark, Thinking with Demons, vii–viii. See also Briggs, Witches and Neighbors; Bob Scribner, ‘Witchcraft and Judgement in Reformation Germany,’ History Today (April 1990): 12–19. John S. Oyer, ‘They Harry the Good People Out of the Land’: Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites, ed. John D. Roth (Goshen, IN, 2000), 14. Kaplan, ‘Fictions of Privacy.’ See also his ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Devotion: Embassy Chapels and the Toleration of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,’ Journal of Early Modern History 6 (2002): 341–61; both articles are part of his larger study: ‘Divided by Faith: A Social History of Religious Toleration in Europe, 1500–1800.’ For late-medieval attempts to deflect anticlericalism, see esp. Lionel Rothkrug, ‘Religious Practices and Collective Perceptions: Hidden Homologies in the Renaissance and Reformation,’ Historical Reflections 7 (1980): 109; František Graus, ‘The Church and Its Critics in Time of Crisis,’ in Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and

Notes to pages 37–8

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19 20 21 22 23

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Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 1993), 65–82, and the other essays in this volume. See also Hans-Jürgen Goertz, ‘Anticlericalism,’ OER 1: 46–51. For Anabaptist anticlericalism, see D. Jonathan Grieser, ‘Anabaptism, Anticlericalism and the Creation of a Protestant Clergy,’ MQR 71 (1997): 515–43; Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Die Täufer: Geschichte und Deutung (Munich, 1980); and C. Arnold Snyder, ‘Biblical Text and Social Context: Anabaptist Anticlericalism in Reformation Zürich,’ MQR 65 (1991): 169–91. Kevin C. Robbins, ‘Magical Emasculation, Popular Anticlericalism, and the Limits of the Reformation in Western France circa 1590,’ Journal of Social History 31 (1997): 63. See ibid., 62 and passim. For the Holy Roman Empire, see the works of Lionel Rothkrug, esp. ‘Holy Shrines, Religious Dissonance and Satan in the Origins of the German Reformation,’ Historical Reflections 14 (1987): 143– 286. In 1616 in Saxony an elderly Lutheran minister had his lower face blackened by his erstwhile hosts, possibly as a means of linking him by satirical means to the magical and superstitious actions that he decried from the pulpit. Karant-Nunn, ‘Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, 1555– 1675,’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24 (1994): 615–37, esp. 632–3. See also Roper, Witch Craze, 25–6, 32. Gary K. Waite, ‘Between the Devil and the Inquisitor: Anabaptists, Diabolical Conspiracies and Magical Beliefs in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands,’ in Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer, ed. Werner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple (Aldershot and Brookfield, UK, 1999), 120– 40, here 130–1. In another, later case, a Mennonite known as John the Monk (Jan de Monick) was accused of calling the Host ‘white Jan’ and of smearing holy oil on his shoes, DAN 2: 263. For sacramentals and magic, see Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements, 1–47, 257–75. TA Hesse, 4–5. Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore and London, 1995), 173. Ibid., 194. Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 375–6. Christoffen Erhard, Gründliche kurtz verfaste Historia. Von Münsterischen Widertauffern: vnd wie die Hutterischen Brüder so auch billich Widertauffer genent werden/ im Loblichen Marggraffthumb Marbern/ ... (Munich, 1588). Een Chronijcke van al tghene datter gheschiet is vant beghinsel des weerelts totten iare M.CCCCC.ende xliii. met groote neersticheyt tot profijt van allenmenschen beschreuen doer den hoochgeleerden M. Joannem Carionem Astronomijn des Kueruorsten van Brandenborch ... (Antwerp, 1543), 62v. He reported favourably on the rumour that Luther had been born of a

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Notes to pages 38–9

Christian mother and a Jew (who personified the devil in medieval antiSemitic culture) and was thus fit to be the Antichrist’s forerunner. See also Robert Bonfil, ‘Aliens Within: The Jews and Antijudaism,’ in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 1, Structures and Assertions, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Jr, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (Leiden, 1994), 263–302, esp. 270–1. Willem Frijhoff, ‘Het Gelders Antichrist-tractaat (1524) en zijn auteur,’ Archief voor de Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland, 28 (1986): 192– 217, esp. 206–7. Stuart Clark (Thinking with Demons, 333) comments that in ‘early modern demonology, magicians and witches were in fact the precursors of the Antichrist.’ For the former, see DAN 1 (although his efforts were hindered by the local authorities); for the latter, see Hans de Waardt and Willem de Blécourt, ‘“It is No Sin to Put an Evil Person to Death”: Judicial Proceedings Concerning Witchcraft During the Reign of Duke Charles of Gelderland,’ in GijswijtHofstra and Frijhoff, Witchcraft in the Netherlands, 66–78; see also Willem Frijhoff, ‘Witchcraft and Its Changing Representation in Eastern Gelderland, from the Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries,’ in ibid., 167–82. Peter Nissen, De katholieke polemiek tegen de dopers: Reacties van katholieke theologen op de doperse beweging in de Nederlanden (1530–1650) (Enschede, 1988); see also Christoph Dittrich, ‘Katholische Kontroverstheologen im Kampf gegen Reformation und Täufertum,’ Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter, 47/48 (1990/1), 71–88. Hans Denck’s unusual view was described by Sebastian Franck as a revival of Origen’s teaching, Sebastian Franck, Chronica, Zeÿtbüch vnd geschÿchtbibel von anbegyn biß inn diß gegenwertig M.D. xxxj. jar (Strasbourg, 1531), 410v. According to Morwenna Ludlow, Denck was not a true universalist, but was characterized as such by his opponents. Ludlow, ‘Why Was Hans Denck Thought to Be a Universalist?’; see also James Beck, ‘The Anabaptists and the Jews: The Case of Hätzer, Denck and the Worms Prophets,’ MQR 75 (2001): 407–27, who argues for strong Jewish influence on Denck’s theology. See, for example, Georgius Eder, Euangelische Inqvisition Wahrer vnd falscher Religion (n.p., 1573), 58r–59v; 95r. David Joris’s denial of the independent reality of the devil was cited by Eder (ibid., 58v). Instead of ‘Luciferans’ Eder uses ‘Teuflischen.’ Johann Fabri, Christenliche vndterweisung an die Widertauffer von dem Tauff der Jungen Kindlein. Vnd von der Gaistlichen vnnd weltlichen Oberkait/ an die Widertauffer (Ingolstadt, 1550), Biiv–Biiir. For the Fabri-Hubmaier debate, see Dittrich, ‘Katholische Kontroverstheologen,’ 79–83. Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 401. See also Grieser, ‘Seducers of the Simple Folk,’ 88.

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34 S. Voolstra, ‘Een spel van sinnen van de menswerdinge Christo,’ DB 9 (1983): 53–103. See also Nissen, De katholieke polemiek, 135–9; and Gary K. Waite, Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515–1556 (Toronto, 2000), 119–21. 35 Voolstra, ‘Een spel van sinnen,’ 65. 36 Ibid., 74–5. 37 Ibid., 80. 38 [Anonymous] Een corte Confutatie ofte Wederlegginghe: Gheschreuen teghen een ketters boecxken, ghenoempt: Corte Belijdinghe des gheloofs, 4th ed. (Louvain, 1567), 28v–29r. 39 Nissen, De Katholiek polemiek, 109–21, esp. 109. 40 Martinus Duncanus, Van die Kinderdoop. Het tweede Boeck sprekende van die cracht ende vrucht des doops/ ende van die nyeuwe gheboorte (Antwerp, 1572), Ji v. In the third volume, Duncanus suggested that with their blasphemy against the Catholic Church, the Mennonites have shown ‘dat sy uyt den Duyvel spreken ... een Duyvels/ ende calumnioos woort.’ Martinus Duncanus, Van die Kinderdoop/ Het derde Boeck (Antwerp, 1591), 277. For Duncanus, see Nissen Katholiek polemiek, 109–21. 41 Duncanus, Van die Kinderdoop/ Het derde Boeck, 279. 42 He was imprisoned for refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Reformed community and while he was released (or escaped), he died a few years later. See Nissen, De katholieke polemiek, 125–30. 43 Cunerus Petri, Den schilt teghen die Wederdoopers (Louvain, 1568), 6v. 44 Ibid., 11r–v. 45 Ibid., 68v. He suggested the Calvinists share this view with their belief that children born into the covenant are saved without baptism. Ibid., 42r–46r. 46 Ibid., 85v–86r. 47 Ibid., 90r–91r, especially where he writes about the practice of blowing upon infants at baptism. 48 Ibid., 92r. See esp. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews, 47–50. It was also believed that the Jew ‘loses his odor after he is baptized’ (ibid., 48) and that one of the reasons the Jews were believed to need Christian blood was to remove this stench (ibid., 149). See also Lionel Rothkrug, ‘Peasant and Jew: Fears of Pollution and German Collective Perceptions,’ Historical Reflections 10 (1983): 59–77. 49 Petri, Den schilt teghen die Wederdoopers, 97v–98r. 50 These laws stipulated that baptism was not sufficient to eradicate the taint of Jewish blood. See Jerome Friedmann, ‘Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation: A Revisionist View of Racial and Religious Antisemitism,’ SCJ 18 (1987): 1–30.

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Notes to pages 42–6

51 J. Grauwels, ed., Dagboek van Gebeurtenissen, opgetekend door Christiaan Munters, 1529–1545 (Assen, 1972), 16–17. 52 Ibid., 18–20. 53 The next entry, for 19 March 1534, recounts the burning at Kuringen of a ‘Lutheran’ named Andries. Interrogated by Munters’s brother, Marsilius, the town’s sheriff, he confessed only to rejecting priestly power over the sacrament or to absolve sin. When Munters’s other brother, the inquisitor Joris, tried his hand, the suspect admitted his illiteracy and desired now to ‘die in the holy Christian faith.’ Ibid., 21; for Munters’s brothers, see ibid., 2–3. 54 Ibid., 22. 55 Ibid., 22–3. 56 Ibid., 23. Stories of Hosts causing insincere communicants to choke to death were commonplace. Rubins, Corpus Christi, 336. 57 Grauwels, Dagboek, 26–7. 58 Ibid., 27. 59 See, for example, Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 165. 60 Grauwels, Dagboek, 28–9. 61 Ibid., 27–8. 62 Wappler, ed., Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 286. 63 Grauwels, Dagboek, 29–30. 64 Ibid. 33–4. 65 Munters’s final miracle was in the following year, when three pregnant women who made disparaging remarks about the Virgin Mary all suddenly fell dead. Grauwels, Dagboek, 46. 66 Ibid., 37–8. 67 Ibid., 38–9. 68 P. Th. van Beuningen, Wilhelmus Lindanus als inquisiteur en bisschop: Bijdrage tot zijn biografie (1525–1576) (Assen, 1966), 73. The details of Verlinde’s career are from this book. 69 Ibid., 168, 182. 70 Ibid., 195. 71 Nienke Roelants and Dries Vanysacker, ‘“Tightrope Walkers on the Border between Religion and Magic”: A Study of the Attitudes of Catholic Clerics North of the Linguistic Frontier within the Southern Netherlands towards Superstition and the Crime of Witchcraft (1550–1650),’ Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 100 (2005): 769. 72 As cited by van Broningen, Wilhelmus Lindanus, xiv. 73 ‘Valsche leerijnghe t’ghemeen te bedroghen.’ He complains that the damage done by Reformed preachers in just three months is a sign of God’s wrath. Willem Verlinde, Een Claer betooch vanden oorspronck der Lutherie, Van die

Notes to pages 46–9

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menichvuldicheyt der Secten ... (Bruges, 1567), †4v, ††2v. 74 For the former, see ibid., 121; for the latter, ibid., 151. 75 Ironically Verlinde happily cites the Swiss Reformed preacher Heinrich Bullinger, who wrote several works against the Anabaptists, including a German treatise of 1531 and his Latin work defending infant baptism against the Anabaptists, a work that was published in English in 1548 as An Holesome Antidotus or Counterpoysen agaynst the pestylent heresye and secte of the Anabaptistes (London, 1548; repr. Amsterdam and New York, 1973). For Bullinger and the Anabaptists, see Heinold Fast, Heinrich Bullinger und die Täufer: Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie und Theologie im 16. Jahrhundert (Weierhof, 1959). Bullinger also composed a tract against sorcery: ‘Wider die Schwartzen Kuenst,’ in Theatrvm de Veneficis. Das ist Von Teuffels gespenst Zauberern vnd Gifftbereitern (Frankfurt am Main, 1586). 76 Verlinde, Een Claer betooch, 161. 77 Ibid., 162. 78 Waite, ‘Talking Animals,’ esp. 146. The story seems to have blended real events such as the ‘Great Trek’ of March 1534 and the naaklooper incident with medieval myths relating to heterodoxy. 79 See Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf, 67, 142–3; also Gabor Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 95–110, 129–50. 80 Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 102. 81 Verlinde, Een Claer betooch, 262–3. 82 Auke Jelsma, ‘De positie van de vrouw in de Radicale Reformatie,’ DB 15 (1989): 27–8; Grauwels, Dagboek van Gebeurtenissen, 26. 83 Williams, Defining Dominion, 69. 84 Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy.’ 85 Pope Gregory IX, ‘Vox in Rama,’ in Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100–1700: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 2001), 115. 86 Nicolau Eymeric, ‘The Directorium inquisitorum (1376),’ in ibid., 122. 87 Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (Reno, NV, 1980), 78. Interestingly, another of the acts these witches confessed to was breaking into a church on Midsummer Night to ‘tear down all the statues of the saints and throw the great cross to the floor with the reliquaries downwards.’ Ibid., 83. 88 Willem Verlinde, Oprecht Tryakel Teghen t’venijn alder dolinghen onser tijdts. Tafeslchewijs/ als in eenen spiegel allen beminders der Euangelischer waerheyts voorgestelt/ ... (Antwerp, 1567), 121r. 89 See Waite, ‘An Artisan’s Worldview?’; also Kieckhefer, ‘The Holy and the

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92 93 94 95

96 97 98

99 100

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102 103

Notes to pages 49–51 Unholy’; Dinzelbacher, ‘Echte und Falsche Mystik’; and Clark, Thinking with Demons, 83. See Nissen, De katholiek polemiek, 202–15. As Lyndal Roper observes, many monks, such as the Jesuit Peter Canisius, promoted exorcisms for women possessed by the devil as proof of the verity of the cult of the Virgin against Protestant challenges. Roper, Witch Craze, 136. P. Franciscus Costerus, Schildt der Catholijcken/ Teghen de Ketterijen: Inhoudende de principaelste gheschillen die in onsen tijden opgeresen zijn in t’gelooue/ Met een oprechte verclaeringhe der seluer (Antwerp, 1591), 2r–4v. Ibid., [1v]. Ibid., [2–3]. Ibid., [29–30]. He later (ibid., 274) supported the belief that Hosts desecrated by Jews actually bled. D.P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1981); Pearl, The Crime of Crimes. For Germany, see Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People’; and Heis, ‘Konfessionelle Propaganda.’ For the Netherlands, see Benjamin J. Kaplan, ‘Possessed by the Devil? A Very Public Dispute in Utrecht,’ Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996): 738–59. Costerus, Schildt der Catholijcken, [89–90]. Ibid., [91]. Possibly some recanted Anabaptists used such miraculous stories to explain their seduction to the Anabaptists, and in the uniquely pressurized environment of the interrogation room victims could come up with some remarkable stories when pressed by an inquisitor or judge. In 1560 in Amsterdam, Cornelis Pieterssen was accused of having in his possession forbidden books that he was intending to sell, despite the fact he could not read or write. DAN 2: 267. Daniel Horst, ‘Een doperse bijeenkomst op een katholieke propagandaprent,’ DB 25 (1999): 23–40. P.C. van der Eerden, ‘Cornelius Loos und die magia falsa,’ in Vom Unfug des Hexen-Processes: Gegner der Hexen verfolgungen von Johann Weyer bis Friedrich Spee, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Ulbricht (Wiesbaden, 1992), 139–60, esp. 150; also Rita Voltmer, ‘Loos, Cornelius (1540 to 1546–1596?),’ EOW 3: 666–7. Van der Eerden, ‘Cornelius Loos und die magia falsa,’ 151. Van der Eerden (ibid., 155) describes Loos’s description of the devil as a spiritualizing motif, for Loos denied that demons could take on corporeal form and argued that their effects were purely illusory. Nissen, De katholieke polemiek, 152–6. Jacob Pietersz vander Moelen, Svccessio Apostolica. Dat is/ Naecominghe/ oft de

Notes to pages 51–3

104 105 106

107 108 109

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111 112

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115 116

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Naetredinghe der Apostelen/ waer in dat die bestaet/ nae dat ghetuyghenisse der H. Schriftueren (Alkmaar, 1600), 7r–7v, and 49v–50r, where he argues that Catholic bishops use sorcery. Pietersz vander Moelen, Svccessio Apostolica, 57v–58v. Ibid., 59r. [Simon Walraven], Svccessio anabaptistica, Dat is Babel der Wederdoopers/ eensdeels in Duytsland/ maer principael in Nederlandt/ In welcke de opgheworpen oorsprong/ de rasende voortganck/ ende bittere verstrovinghe in t’cort verhaelt wort (n.p., 1612), 3–7. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 9. What is more, Walraven compared deceitful Anabaptists to the seductive woman of Proverbs 7 who captured men with her outward beauty only to lead them to ruin. Ibid., 3. Lyndal Roper notes that in the witch trials in Lutheran Nördlingen ‘the issue of receiving the Host emerges as a theme in nearly all the testimonies.’ Roper, Witch Craze, 73. Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., Luther’s Works, American Edition (St Louis, MO, 1955– 86), vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, 194–5. Ibid., 196–7. While those who have been ‘taken captive by a milder bewitchment’ can be saved, the ‘leaders and authors of the bewitchment’ cannot. Newe zeytung von den Wydertaufferen zu Münster (Nuremberg, 1535) fol. Biiir. That Luther’s comments on Münster were quoted by Johan Sleidanus twenty years after the fall of that kingdom reflects the powerful grip that Anabaptist Münster had on the imagination. See Johan Sleidanus, Warachtighe Beschryvinghe, Hoe dattet met de Religie ghestaen heeft: Ende oock met de ghemeyne welvaert/ onder den grootmachtighen Keyser Carolo de vijfste, 1555 (Leiden, 1596), 135r–136r. Only when citing Luther did Sleidanus use the devil’s name with any frequency. As summarized by Sigrun Haude, In the Shadow of ‘Savage Wolves’: Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation during the 1530s (Leiden, 2000), 81. Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 92–7. TA Hesse, 38–40. On Luther and the devil, see Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven, CT, and London, 1989); Joerg Haustein, Martin Luthers Stellung zum Zauber- und Hexenwesen (Stuttgart 1990); and Sabine Holtz, ‘Der Fürst dieser Welt: Die Bedrohung der Lebenswelt aus lutherisch-orthodoxer Perspektive,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 107 (1996), 29–49. Andreas Althamer and Johann Rurer, ‘Instructions Concerning Anabaptists

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128

129

130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

Notes to pages 53–6 (1530),’ in Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, 173. Ibid., 176–7. Ibid., 180–1. Ibid., 182. Ibid., 183. Philip Melanchthon, Unterricht Philip. Melancht. Wider die Lere der widertauffer aus dem latein verdeutschet/ durch Just. Jonas (Wittenberg, 1528). TA Hesse, 102–3. On Luther, heresy, and madness, see Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany. As cited by Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 123. As summarized by ibid., 123. Ibid., 128–9. Ibid., 135. For Paracelsus’s medical and religious notions, see Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early Reformation (New York, 1997). Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 135; for Joris, see Waite, ‘Man Is a Devil to Himself.’ Martín del Rio labelled Paracelsus as a magician inspired by the devil. Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 37. Urbanus Rhegius, ‘Justification for the Prosecution of Anabaptists, 1536,’ in Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, 215. The government has the duty to ‘induce its subjects to hear the Word of God,’ even if they do not choose to believe it. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 216, 219. Ibid., 220. Ibid., 225. The Circumcellions were extreme ascetics opposed by St Augustine. Ibid., 227. Procesß/ wie es soll gehalten werden mit den Widertäuffern (Worms, 1557), AiirAiiir. Ibid., Aiiir-Aiiiir. Ibid., Biir. Ibid. According to Sabine Holtz, Lutheran theologians described adultery and divorce especially as works of the devil. Holtz, ‘Der Fürst dieser Welt,’ 33. Ibid., 41. David W. Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), 58. He furthermore notes that for

Notes to pages 56–9

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such ‘scorners of the sacrament’ no funeral bell was to be rung, for ‘all of them are outside the political community as such.’ See also Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 138–89. Justus Menius, Von dem Geist der Widerteuffer (n.p., 1544), 4v. Ibid., 46v–47r. Philip Soergel, ‘Protestant Attacks on Catholic Miracles,’ 24–5; and Walter Ludwig, ‘Philosophische und medizinische Aufklärung gegen evangelischen Biblizismus und Teufelsglauben: Der Artzt Wolfgang Reichart im Konflikt mit dem Theologen Ambrosius Blarer,’ Medizinhistorisches Journal 32 (1997): 121–77, esp. 152–9. Adam Crato, Rettung Des Christlichen Tauffbuchleins Heern D. Martini Lutheri vnd der Augspurgischen Confession verwandten Kirchen ... (n.p., 1591), 3. For this controversy, see Bodo Nischan, ‘The Exorcism Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation,’ SCJ 18 (1987): 31–51. Crato, Rettung Des Christlichen Tauffbuchleins, 8. Ibid., 10. Nischan, ‘The Exorcism Controversy,’ 49–50. Johannem Bugenhagen, Von den ungeborn Kindern/ vnd von den Kindern/ dir wir nicht teuffen können/ vnd wolten doch gern/ nach Christus befehl/ vnd sonst von der Tauff/ etc. (n.p., 1552), Fiiijr. Roper, Witch Craze, 141. Erasmus Alberus, Christlicher/ nützlicher/ vnd nohtwendiger Tractat/ vnd Bericht Von der Kinder Tauff ... (n.p., 1591), ?ir. Ibid., ?iv. Ibid., Hiv(r). Italics added. Ibid., JIiii(v). Ibid., Aiv(r)–Biii(r). Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People,’ esp. 102; also Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 51–5. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic,’ 487. See Nischan, ‘The Exorcism Controversy’; and Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People,’ 118. The epidemic of possessions seems to have begun around the same time in France, presumably as a result of the propaganda campaigns between Catholics and Huguenots. See Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 112–14, 139–45 and the literature cited there. Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People,’ 105–6. For prodigy literature, see esp. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998). Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People,’ 111. Ibid., 115.

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162 As the moderate Calvinist Adrianus van Haemstede put it in his martyrology, Historien ofte Gheschiedenissen der vromer Martelaren ... (Dordrecht, 1585), 342, the Catholics committed a great wrong against the state of marriage when they claimed to exorcize the devil from children. For Protestants and magic, see especially Clark, Thinking with Demons, esp. 489–508, and ‘Protestant demonology.’ However, Moshe Sluhovsky (‘Calvinist Miracles and the Concept of the Miraculous in Sixteenth-Century Huguenot Thought,’ Renaissance and Reformation 19, no. 2 [1995]: 5–25) reminds us that the shift away from a miraculous understanding of the world on the part of most Calvinists was not as sharp or quick as Calvin may have liked. 163 Den val der Roomscher Kercken/ mer al hare afgoderie/ waerby een yeghelijc mach kennen ende mercken het onderscheyt tusschen de yerste kercke ... ende de vermaledide kercke verscheyden (n.p., 1556), Bivv–Bvr. 164 For examples, see Bernardum Buwo, Een vriendelicke tsamensprekinghe, van twee Persoonen, van der Doope der iongher onmonidgher kinderen/ ... (n.p., 1564), 3v; and Hermannvm Faukelium, Babel, dat is Verwarringe der Weder-dooperen onder malcanderen/ over meest alle de stucken der Christelijcker leere ... (Hoorn, [1621]), A2v–A3r. See also F.S. Knipscheer, ‘De Nederlandsche gereformeerde synoden tegenover de Doopsgezinden (1563–1620),’ DB 50 (1910): 1–40, and 51 (1911): 17–49. In general, see John S. Oyer, ‘Bucer Opposes the Anabaptists,’ MQR 68 (1994): 24–50, and Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany (The Hague, 1964); for Calvin, see Willem Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals (Grand Rapids, MI, 1981). 165 For De Bres, see James D. Tracy’s entry in the OER 1: 215–16. The French original was published in Rouen in 1565. 166 Guy de Bres, Den Wortel, den Oorspronck en het Fondament der Wederdooperen (n.p., 1570), 35r, 36r. 167 Ibid., 36r. 168 Ibid., 232v. 169 Benjamin J. Kaplan, ‘Moded, Hermannus,’ in OER 3: 69–70. 170 Hermannus Moded, Grondich bericht, van de eerste beghinselen der Wederdoopsche seckten/ ende wat veelderley verscheyden tacken/ ... Item van haer ydele Visioenen/ Droomen/ Prophetien/ sendinge/ leere/ grooten twist/ etc. (Middelburg, 1603), esp. 92–178. 171 Ibid., 185. 172 Philip Marnix de Saint Aldegonde, De Byencorf der H. Roomsche Kercke (Emden, 1569), 12v; Marnix, Ondersoeckinge en grondelijcke wederlegginge der geestdrijvische leere (The Hague, 1595), foreword. 173 Van Veen, Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye.

Notes to pages 62–6

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174 DAN 3, viii–x. For some of the earliest Reformed-Anabaptists discussions, see Werner O. Packull, ‘Peter Tasch: From Melchiorite to Bankrupt Wine Merchant,’ MQR 62 (1988): 276–95. 175 DAN 3, xxvi–xxvii. For the sad end of the debate, see Micron’s account in DAN 3: 127–8. 176 See Samme Zijlstra, ‘Anabaptism and Tolerance: Possibilities and Limitations,’ in Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (Cambridge, 2002), 112–31, esp. 114. For Mennonites, see Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Visser, eds, From Martyr to Muppy: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands – The Mennonites (Amsterdam, 1994). 3. Shamans and Soothsayers: The Persecution of Anabaptists and Witches in the Northern Netherlands 1 Anonymous, Den val der Roomscher Kercken, Bivv–Bvr. 2 Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 120. See also Robert Muchembled, ‘Witchcraft, Popular Culture, and Christianity in the Sixteenth Century with Emphasis upon Flanders and Artois,’ in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. 7, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore and London, 1982) 213–36. 3 Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 120. 4 Monter, ‘Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe,’ esp. 49–50, and E. William Monter, ‘Witchcraft,’ OER 4: 277. See now his fuller analysis in Judging the French Reformation. For comparisons between Anabaptists and witches, see Heiko A. Oberman, ‘The Travail of Tolerance: Containing Chaos in Early Modern Europe,’ in Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance, 13–31; and Hans J. Hillerbrand, ‘The “Other” in the Age of the Reformation: Reflections on Social Control and Deviance in the Sixteenth Century,’ in Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture, ed. Max Reinhart (Kirksville, MO, 1998), 245–70. 5 Monter, ‘Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe,’ 62–3. 6 Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonvm. Von Zauberey/ ...(n.p., 1567), Avv–-bir. 7 Briggs, Witches and Neighbors; see also Behringer, Witches and Witch-hunts; Edward Bever, ‘Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease,’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30 (2000): 573–90. 8 Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Avenging the Blood of Children: Anxiety over Child Victims and the Origins of the European Witch Trials,’ in The Devil, Heresy

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13

14 15

16 17

Notes to pages 66–7

and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden, 1998), 91–109. Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy’ and ‘Vaudois,’ EOW 4: 1160–6. See Cunningham and Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For apocalyptic thought and witchcraft, see esp. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 321–74. DAN 1, 2, 5, 7. Brad S. Gregory suggests that these accounts fairly reliably record the martyrs’ voices, DAN 8: xxvi–xxvii. Piet Visser suggests that a more nuanced posture is required, since these writings were revised as part of the ‘living, dogmatic and denominational dynamic’ of the Mennonite culture. Visser, ‘Het bedrieglijk onbewogen bestaan van brieven,’ 88. For example, see the cases of Uulbe Claeszoon, of 8 May 1538, in the Court of Friesland, who was executed for refusing to baptize his infant, who unfortunately had died in an unbaptized state (and hence damned) seventeen weeks after birth, DAN 1: 55; and Pieter Pieterszoon (Beckgen), of 11 January 1569, in the Amsterdam court, who abducted his newborn daughter from her mother so that she could not be baptized, DAN 2: 272–87. See also DAN 7: 13, where on 10 January 1553 Joucke Sible was arrested for having allowed her seven- or eight-year-old child to die unbaptized, claiming she had been forced to do so by her husband; also p. 26 where on 27 April 1553 Aucke Sieurdtsdr was arrested for not having her infant ‘christianized.’ DAN 5: 52 (point 40), and the response, 61. Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (San Francisco, 1994), 113; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 139–40. The Malleus Maleficarum had, in fact, already argued that midwives frequently offered up unbaptized infants to the devil. However, David Harley (‘Historians as Demonologists: the Myth of the Midwife-Witch,’ Social History of Medicine 3 [1990]: 1–26) and Robin Briggs (Witches and Neighbors, 77–8, 279–81), have shown that midwives were instead under-represented in the trials. Lyndal Roper (Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe [London, 1994], 199–225), moreover, has shown that in Augsburg, lying-in maids, not midwives, were accused as witches when newborn infants died. Even so, Roper’s most recent study reveals that midwives were frequently mentioned in German trial accounts, and a number executed; Roper, Witch Craze, 9–10, 33, 173. DAN 7: 129. This is seen, for example, in the case of Andries Claeszoon of Doonrijp, tried on 16 March 1535 by the Court of Friesland, who freely confessed to rebap-

Notes to pages 67–70

18 19 20 21

22

23 24

25

26

27

28 29 30

31

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tism, holding conventicles in his house, and for being a member of the ‘rebellious’ sect of Anabaptists in Münster. DAN 1: 27. Ibid., 65. DAN 2: 296. DAN 5: 66, from 21 November 1534. On 2 February 1535, the Amsterdam authorities forbade any further ‘mummery’ or masking activities usually enjoyed during Carnival or similar frivolous events in order to ensure Anabaptist conspirators did not take advantage of such opportunities to disguise their identities. Ibid., 108. For a cautionary note regarding the role of the inquisition in the revolt, see esp. F.E. Beemon, in ‘The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition and the Preconditions of the Dutch Revolt,’ ARG 85 (1994): 246–64. DAN 5: 6–9, 40–1; as related by one of the city’s now deceased aldermen, Pieter Aemszoon. R. Po-Chia Hsia, ‘Jewish Magic in Early Modern Germany,’ in Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia (London & Ronceverte, 1987), 81–97; see also his Myth of Ritual Murder. DAN 5: 7–8. For another anticlerical example, see ibid., 43. Even so, attempts to build a wool house next to the Heilige Stede resulted in a protest by 300 women on behalf of the Holy Sacrament guild at the end of May 1531. Several of the ringleaders were lightly punished, although a handful appealed directly to Charles V in Brussels and were pardoned. J.E.A. Boomgaard, Misdaad en straf in Amsterdam: Een onderzoek naar de strafrechtspleging van de Amsterdamse schepenbank 1490–1552 (Zwolle, 1992), 112. DAN 5: 156 and 88 resp. For Hoffman, see Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation, trans. Malcolm Wren, ed. Benjamin Drewery (Edinburgh, 1987). DAN 5, 109–16; see also A.F. Mellink, Amsterdam en de Wederdopers (Nijmegen, 1978); Gary K. Waite, ‘Popular Drama and Radical Religion: The Chambers of Rhetoric and Anabaptism in the Netherlands,’ MQR 65 (1991): 227–55. Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy.’ DAN 5: 112. Signs of possession included convulsive movements or seizures, speaking in a voice different from one’s own, expressing horrible blasphemies, and exhibiting eyes that bug out, a grossly extended tongue, and a head wrenched to face nearly backward. See Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People,’ esp. 112; Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 46–8; and Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (London, 2004), 26. On Van Assendelft, see James D. Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 1506–

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39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46

47

Notes to pages 70–3

1566: The Formation of a Body Politic (Berkeley, CA, 1990), 161–2, and 170, where van Assendelft was accused by some Catholic hardliners of ‘not being sincere in his conscience.’ See also H.F.K. van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten: De Hollandse adel in de zestiende en de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1990). Boomgaard, Misdaad en straf in Amsterdam, 44. DAN 1: 115–22. Ibid., 116. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 118. Grieser, ‘Seducers of the Simple Folk,’ 321–2. BRN 2: 91–4; DAN 1: 85. See also Hermina Joldersma and Louis Grijp, eds, trans., Elisabeth’s Manly Courage: Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women in the Low Countries (Milwaukee, 2001), 16–17, 31, 112–21. See also Gregory, Salvation at Stake. Mayken Boosers, burned at Doornick on 18 September 1564, was at least allowed to strip herself before her torture. BRN 2: 412. Roper, Witch Craze, 54. BRN 2: 324. A specific demon responsible for causing its servants to remain mute when questioned by the authorities, one of dozens of demons noted in the various ‘devil books’ of the sixteenth century. See Ria Stambaugh, ed., Teufelbücher in Auswahl (Berlin, 1970–80) 5, vols. BRN 2: 328. Friedman, ‘Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation.’ BRN 2: 336. Ibid., 408. In an interesting aside, Jacques castigated his Catholic opponents for allowing midwives to conduct emergency baptisms of infants but then officially ‘rebaptizing them once more’; they were therefore ‘Anabaptists.’ Ibid., 284. In his defence of the Mass Verlinde apparently expostulated ‘Al waert de erchste mensche vander werelt, iae al waert een Turck, oft een Heyden, waert dat hy quame tot dat Sacrament, hy soude ontfangen dat lichaem ende dat bloet Christi, soo wel als een ander, ia dat meer is, al waert oock een Beeste.’ (If the worst man of the world, even if he were a Turk or heathen, came to the Sacrament, he should receive the body and blood of Christ, just as any other, yes, what is more, so too should a beast.) Ibid., 290. Verlinde’s defence of sacramental realism is reminiscent of Heinrich Kramer’s. See Stephens, Demon Lovers, 207–40. BRN 2: 274.

Notes to pages 73–9 48 49 50 51 52

53

54 55 56

57

58 59 60

61

62

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Ibid., 292. Ibid., 311. DAN 7: 133–4; DAN 8: 261–324. DAN 8: 318–19. See Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany; Midelfort, ‘The Devil and the German People’; and Nischan, ‘The Exorcism Controversy.’ Emile Brouette, ‘La sorcellerie dans le comté de Namur a début de l’époque moderne (1509–1646),’ Annales de la Société Archéologique de Namur 47 (1954): 413. Ibid., 367. These figures are based on ibid., 389–411. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 95; Willem de Blécourt/Hans de Waardt, ‘Das Vordringen der Zaubereiverfolgungen in die Niederlande Rhein, Maas und Schelde entlang,’ in Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen: Die Anfänge der europäischen Hexenverfolgungen, ed., Andreas Blauert (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 182–216, esp. 194, 209n.27. Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat, ‘La répression de l’hérésie dans le Namurois au XVIe siècle,’ Annales de la Société Archéologique de Namur 56 (1971–2): 208–9. Ibid., 187. For witches, see Briggs, Witches and Neighbors, 238–47. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 96. The court entry reads in part: ‘Van Lubburch Pieters die oick berufft (herdoept te zyne) van toverye, ende daerumme zy in de Beverwyck mitten brande geexecuteert is, die welcke zeeckere goeden achter gelaten heeft die de voorn. schout van de K.M. wegen angevaert heeft als verbuert’ (Concerning Lubburch Pieters who was also reputed [to be rebaptized] for witchcraft, and for this reason she was executed by fire in Beverwyck, leaving behind certain goods which the aforementioned sheriff has taken possession of as confiscation on behalf of the Imperial Majesty). ARA3 AGRK Rekeningen inv.nr. 4382 f01.3. I am thankful to Hans de Waardt for providing me with a transcription of this record. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 96: ‘ons allen zeer vreempt dunct te wesen ende nyet geloeflicken te mogen geschien dan by duvels hulp ofte andere Incantacien’ (which was thought by us all to be very strange and not believed to be possible except by [the] devil’s help or other incantations). De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 106–38. The last execution occurred in 1608 and the last formal indictment for witchcraft in 1614. See also Hans de Waardt, ‘Netherlands, Northern,’ EOW 3: 810–3. The correlation between

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64 65

66 67

68

69

70 71 72

Notes to pages 79–84

socio-economic crises and large-scale witch accusations is quite clear. See esp. Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and the Reason of State in Early Modern Europe, trans. J.C. Grayson and David Lederer (Cambridge, 1997), 400–15, and his ‘Weather, Hunger and Fear: Origins of the European Witch-hunts in Climate, Society and Mentality,’ German History 13 (1995): 1–27. Hans de Waardt, ‘Verlöschen und Entfachen der Scheiterhaufen: Holland und Brabant in den 1590er Jahren,’ in Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis, ed. Hebert Eiden and Rita Voltmer (Trier, 2002), 315–29. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, Bijlage 1, 293–304, and Bijlage 4, 312. Hans de Waardt and Willem de Blécourt, ‘“Het is geen zonde een kwaad mens ter dood te brengen”: De berechting van toverij tijdens de regering van hertog Karel van Egmond,’ in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Frijhoff, Nederland betoverd, 22; Janny Steenhuis, ‘“In een quaad geruchte van toverye”: Toverij voor Utrechtse rechtbanken, ca. 1530–1630,’ ibid., 40–56. De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 96–8. Ibid., 70–4; A. Querido, Storm in het weeshuis: De beroering onder de Amsterdamse burgerwezen in 1566 (Amsterdam, 1958); and Joke Spaans, ‘Toverijprocessen in Amsterdam en Haarlem, ca. 1540–1620,’ in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Frijhof, Nederland betoverd, 69–79, esp. 73. Gemeente Archief Amsterdam 5061, Rechterlijk Archief 271, ‘Confessieboek’ (1553–64), 42v. See esp. Joke Spaans, ‘Toverijprocessen in Amsterdam en Haarlem, ca. 1540–1620,’ in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Frijhof, Nederland betoverd, 69–79, esp.76–8; also De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 66, 218, 294; and Gemeente Archief Amsterdam, Rechterlijk Archief, 5061: 567 – ‘Justitieboek’ (1523–66), fol. 228v; and 271 – ‘Confessieboek’ (1553–64), fol. 38r–51r. For Volckgen Harmansdr of Blokzijl (1564), see Spaans, ‘Toverijprocessen in Amsterdam en Haarlem’; De Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 68, 99, 111, 119, 135, 199, 295; and Gemeente Archief Amsterdam 272 – ‘Confessieboek’ (1564–67), fol.32v–33r. ‘Vonnis van Willem Jansz., 12 maart 1569,’ DAN 2: 295–6. ‘boose geslachte van menschen ende monstreuse creatueren,’ DAN 7: 14–21, from 10 January 1553. Bands of Anabaptist guerillas founded by Jan van Batenburg in 1535. Even after his arrest in late 1537 fear of Anabaptist rebellion spread since some Batenburgers confessed to plotting to recapture Münster in 1538, while small groups of religious terrorists continued to steal and burn in the name of Christ well into the 1560s. See DAN 1, 158; also Gary K. Waite, ‘From Apocalyptic Crusaders to Anabaptist Terrorists: Anabaptist Radicalism after Münster, 1535–1545,’ ARG 80 (1989): 173–93.

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73 Based on a review of the surviving court records in DAN 1 and 7. 74 DAN 7: 153–64. 75 P. Gerbenzon, ‘De vervolging van toverij in Groningen en Friesland, zestiende eeuw. “Buitenlandse” invloeden en de invloed van rechterlijke organisatie en procesrecht,’ in Nederland betoverd: Toverij en hekserij van de veertiende tot in de twintigste eeuw, ed. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff (Amsterdam, 1987), 124–32. 76 Ibid., 124–32. See also Levack’s discussion of the role of centralized courts in the witch-hunts, in Levack, The Witch-hunt, 84–99. 77 DAN 7: p. 206. 78 De Waardt and De Blécourt, ‘Het is geen zonde,’ 16–19. 79 Ibid., 20. 80 Ibid., 18–20. 81 Roper, Witch Craze, 55. 82 DAN 1: 140. For another example, see the missive from the Stadholder of Friesland to the local officials of 24 May 1544, ibid., 69. 83 Gary K. Waite, ‘The Dutch Nobility and Anabaptism, 1535–1545,’ SCJ 23 (1992): 458–85. Joris’s magnum opus, Twonder Boeck, was printed in two editions, one in 1543 in Deventer and the second, revised in 1551, around 1584. 84 Waite, ‘The Dutch Nobility,’ 464–6. 85 Janny Steenhuis, ‘In een quaad geruchte van toverye.’ 86 For their correspondence to each other and to the stadholder, see J. de Hullu, ed., Bescheiden betreffende de Hervorming in Overijssel (Deventer, 1897). 87 Ibid., 151. For the Reformation in Zwolle, see S. Elte, ‘Godsdienstige Conflicten in Zwolle in het tijdvak van 1530–1580,’ Verslagen en Mededeelingen van de Vereeniging tot Beoefening van Overijsselsch Regt en Geschiedenis, 2nd reeks 28 (1936): 1–70. 88 De Hullu, Bescheiden, 157–61, esp.159. 89 Ibid., 185. 90 Ibid., 189–90. See also the summaries of the confessions of Willem Glaesmaker, Johan Lubelei and several other Anabaptists who were executed in Deventer in February, in ibid., 191–201. 91 S. Elte, ed., ‘Bescheiden betreffende de hervorming in Zwolle,’ Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap (gevestigd te Utrecht) 58 (1937): 66. 92 Ibid., 81. In another case from 1537 Derick van Bathman, a notary of neighbouring Vosken, complained that his wife Phenna preferred the company of Anabaptists to his own, travelling with Anabaptist men and conversing constantly with them about Anabaptism. She would not be freed of this sect, he feared, until the entire heresy was eradicated. Ibid., 85–6. 93 For a recantation, see the case of Hans Bonettemaker, who in February 1538

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99 100

101 102 103

104 105

106

Notes to pages 88–93 was released from prison after he renounced his blasphemy against the Virgin Mary and, with uncapped head, carried a burning candle during a procession. Ibid., 242–3. Albert F. Mellink, De wederdopers in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, 2nd ed. (Leeuwarden, 1981), 238. De Hullu, Bescheiden, 246. Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente, 200. Ibid., 201. The data for witch trials are from Steenhuis, ‘In een quaad geruchte van toverye,’ and the list of known witchcraft trials for the northern Netherlands in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Frijhoff, Nederland betoverd, after page 332; that for Anabaptists is drawn from Mellink, De wederdopers in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, 231–41; and the ME. See, for example, de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving, 126. For spiritualism and the ending of witch-hunting, see de Waardt, ‘Religie, duivelspact en toverij.’ For scepticism and tolerance, see Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration; C. Berkvens-Stevelinck, J. Israel, and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, eds., The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden, 1997); Andrew Pettegree, ‘The Politics of Toleration in the Free Netherlands, 1572–1620,’ in Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, 182–98; and Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, ed., Een schijn van verdraagzaamheid: Afwijking en tolerantie in Nederland van de zestiende eeuw tot heden (Hilversum, 1989). As cited by Hsia, ‘Introduction,’ in Hsia and Van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 2. Christine Kooi, ‘Converts and Apostates: The Competition for Souls in Early Modern Holland,’ ARG 92 (2001): 195. Andrew Pettegree, ‘Coming to Terms with Victory: The Upbuilding of a Calvinist Church in Holland, 1572–1590,’ in Calvinism in Europe, 1540– 1620, ed. Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke, and Gillian Lewis (Cambridge, 1994), 160–80, here 162. Kaplan, ‘Fictions of Privacy.’ Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford, 1995), 29, where he discusses the available figures for membership in the Calvinist Church. See also Wiebe Bergsma, ‘Religious Diversity in the Netherlands of the Sixteenth Century: The Impression of a Northern Dutch Land Owner,’ in Anabaptistes et dissidents au XVIe siècle, ed. J.G. Rott and S.L. Verheus (Baden-Baden, 1987), 215–32. Willem Frijhoff, ‘Religious Toleration in the United Provinces: From “Case” to “Model,”’ in Hsia and Van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 38.

Notes to pages 93–5

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107 Gary K. Waite, ‘Rhetoricians and Religious Compromise during the Early Reformation (c.1520–1555),’ Urban Theatre in the Low Countries, 1400–1625, ed. Peter Happé and Elsa Strietman (Turnhout, 2007), 79–102. 108 Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 13. See also R. Po-Chia Hsia, ‘Introduction,’ in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 2; Frijhoff, ‘Religious Toleration,’ 30, 40; Christine Kooi, ‘Paying off the Sheriff: Strategies of Catholic Toleration in Golden Age Holland,’ in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 87–101, and Henk van Nierop, ‘Sewing the Bailiff in a Blanket: Catholics and the Law in Holland,’ in ibid., 102–11. 109 Van Veen, ‘Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye,’ 180. 110 Ibid., 192–200, where she shows how mild many Dutch consistories were in chastising members of the Reformed Church caught attending Catholic social events. As Frijhoff puts it, ‘at the end of the sixteenth century Coornhert, for his part, clearly reflected the opinion of the majority of Dutch people.’ Frijhoff, ‘Religious Toleration,’ 46. 111 Pettegree, ‘Coming to Terms with Victory,’ 160. 112 For the Dutch Reformed usage, see Frijhoff, ‘Religious Toleration,’ 50–1. See also Alastair Duke, ‘Towards a Reformed Polity in Holland, 1572–78,’ in Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London and Ronceverte, 1990), 213. While Johannes à Lasco may have derived his disciplinary model from Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, the latter had been strongly influenced by the Anabaptists there in the development of his church system. Duke, ‘The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism, 1561–1618,’ in Duke, Reformation and Revolt, 283–5. See also Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals. 113 Arnold Snyder, ‘The (not-so) “Simple Confession” of the Later Swiss Brethren, Part II: The Evolution of Separatist Anabaptism,’ MQR 74 (2000): 87– 122. 114 Micron’s summary of the issues in DAN 3: 163. 115 Een Corte verhalinge gesonden aen Coninc Philips/ onsen genadigen ende ouersten Heere/ ... om tweedrachticheyt der Religien wille/ ... (n.p., 1566), Avv–Avir. 116 Ibid., Dviiv–Dviijr. 117 Duke, ‘The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism,’ 276. 118 For discussions between Bucer and Melchior Hoffman, see Laas Terpstra, ‘De disputatie tussen Melchior Hoffman en Martin Bucer op de synode van Straatsburg (1533),’ DB 29 (2003): 11–42; for a Lasco, see Piet Visser, ‘“Ick vreese uwer sielen seer.” Johannes a Lasco kruist in 1544 vreedzaam de degens met Menno Simons en een vertegenwoordiger van David Joris,’ DB 29 (2003): 43–64. 119 Jesse A. Spohnholz, ‘Overlevend non-conformisme: Anabaptistische tradi-

240

120

121 122 123

124 125 126

127

Notes to pages 95–8 ties en hun reguliering in laat zestiende-eeuws Wezel,’ DB 29 (2003): 89– 109. Karl Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions Of Faith: The Development of a Tradition (Scottdale, PA, Kitchener-Waterloo, ON, 2003). See also Hamilton, Voolstra and Visser, From Martyr to Muppy. Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente, 72–3. Zijlstra, ‘Anabaptism and Tolerance,’ 114. See, for example, Peter van Rooden, ‘Jews and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Republic,’ in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 132–47. Israel, ‘The Intellectual Debate,’ 4. On the Jews, see van Rooden, ‘Jews and Religious Toleration,’ 143–4. Willem de Blécourt, Termen van toverij: de veranderende betekenis van toverij in Noordoost-Nederland tussen de zestiende en de twinigste eeuw (Nijmegen, 1990). See, for example, Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London, 1987), 221–88.

4. Rebaptism and the Devil: Anabaptists and Witches in the Southern Netherlands 1 DAN 8: 329. 2 F. Vanhemelryck, ‘Bijdrage tot de studie van de heksenwaan in de zuidelijke Nederlanden van de 15de tot de 17de eeuw,’ Volkskunde 82 (1981): 31–41. See also Dries Vanysacker, ‘Het aandeel van de zuidelijke Nederlanden in de europese heksenvervolging,’ Trajecta 9 (2000): 329–49; also J. Monballyu, Van hekserij beschuldigd: Heksenprocessen in Vlaanderen tijdens de 16de en 17de eeuw (Kortrijk-Heule, 1996). For attitudes of Flemish clergy, see Roelants and Vanysacker, ‘Tightrope Walkers on the Border between Religion and Magic.’ 3 Witches were burned in 1517 in Oosterhout, North Brabant; in 1525 in Roermond, Limburg, with two accused and another in the region in 1522; in 1532 at Borgloon; in 1538 with one victim each in Oudenburg and SintNiklaas in Flanders; between 1540 and 1543 when witches were executed in Grez and Geldenaken in Walloon Brabant (near Borgloon), and in 1541 five more at Borgloon. Vanhemelryck, ‘Bijdrage,’ 32–4. 4 Dries Vanysacker, ‘Netherlands, Southern,’ EOW 3: 813–18. 5 Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 19. His concluding chapter is taken up with heated defences of Catholic sacraments, sacramentals, and priestly power, ibid., 261–9. Del Rio also wrote a collection of

Notes to pages 99–101

6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13

14 15

16 17

18

241

sermons praising the Virgin Mary in 1598 and an account of the conflict in Flanders, ibid., 16–17. Ibid., 228, 237, and 275. Martín del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicae, in Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 165, and Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 28, resp. Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 189. Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 151–91. Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 134. Del Rio also argued that heretics used magic, citing the story of a Luxembourg Calvinist countess who supposedly magically afflicted her husband, for this woman was ‘enslaved to the sect of Calvin.’ Ibid., 128. Ibid., 104. Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 167. As summarized by Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 75. The illustration is from Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, ed. Montague Summers, trans. E.A. Ashwin (New York, 1988; 1929 ed.). According to del Rio, even those who attempted to cure a child by rebaptizing it were guilty of heresy ‘if they think the shape or matter of the thing or person baptised can become anything other than that which Christ instituted.’ Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 223–4. Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 240–1. Fifteenth-century writers on witchcraft explained how novice witches had to renounce their Christian faith and baptism before worshipping their new master, but there are few, if any, descriptions of a diabolical form of baptism before 1525; see Stephens, Demon Lovers, 202, where he quotes an initiation ritual from the 1430s Errores gazariorum. Heinrich Kramer does not mention a diabolical rebaptism in his Malleus Maleficarum, nor is there a reference to rebaptism in Norman Cohn’s overview of the witches’ sabbat (Europe’s Inner Demons, 99–102). Jean Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of Witches, trans. Randy A. Scott, ed. Jonathan Pearl (Toronto, 1995), 113. See also Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 27. Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum. Since he composed his treatise at the court of Duke John William of Cleves and Jülich, a duchy that bordered the Dutch Republic and the very place where Johann Weyer had earlier written his sceptical tome, Guazzo likely became acquainted with aspects of Mennonite practice while there. John William had ended the irenical atmosphere of his predecessors and committed himself to a fierce Tridentine Catholicism and to the extermination of witchcraft. Ibid., 16.

242

Notes to pages 101–4

19 Ibid., 123. 20 Ibid., 136–7. He recounts an incident illustrative of the interlacing of heresy and witchcraft in the story of the ‘virgin of Ghent,’ whose supposed pregnancy Guazzo credited to her having had sex with a demon pretending to be an angel, but when she told a man that she had conceived miraculously, he did not believe her, but hid her nonetheless ‘for the Sectarians were just then gaining ground, and he feared that if this matter were made public it would give rise to blasphemous and injurious utterances by the heretics.’ Ibid., 146–7. 21 Nicolas Rémy, Demonolatry by Nicolas Remy, Privy Councillor to The Most Serene Duke of Lorraine, and Public Advocate to his Duchy, in 3 Books, Drawn from the Capital Trials of 900 Persons ... who within the last Fifteen Years have in Lorraine paid the Penalty of Death for the Crime of Witchcraft, ed. Montague Summers, trans. E.A. Ashwin (London, 1930), 1. 22 Ibid., 36. 23 Ibid., 162–3. 24 Ibid., 166–7. 25 Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 177. 26 Rémy, Demonolatry, 26. 27 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 139. As paraphrased by Clark, the Italian lawyer Gianfrancisco Ponzinibio argued in the 1520s that ‘just as in baptism the devil was really, expressly, and publicly renounced, so in re-baptism he must be really, expressly, and publicly worshipped.’ See also ibid., 142. 28 Peter Elmer, ‘ “Saints or Sorcerers”: Quakerism, Demonology and the Decline of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century England,’ in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (Cambridge, 1996), 167. 29 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 242–4. 30 Ibid., 252. 31 Ibid., 245–6. 32 Ibid., 251. 33 Grauwels, Dagboek van Gebeurtenissen, 119 for the arrests, and 117 for the illness. 34 Ibid., 107. 35 Ibid., 142, 146–7. 36 Ibid., 122–3. 37 Ibid., 128. 38 Ibid., 129. 39 Ibid., 137–8. 40 Ibid., 179.

Notes to pages 105–14

243

41 Ibid., 187–8. 42 Aline Goosens, ‘Karel V en de onderdrukking van de wederdopers,’ DB 27 (2001): 25. 43 Ibid., 26–7. 44 DAN 8: xvi. 45 Jan Materné, ‘Antwerp,’ OER 1: 62–3. 46 Monter, ‘Heresy executions in Reformation Europe,’ 63. 47 For the trials of witches and sorcerers, see Dries Vanysacker, Hekserij in Brugge: De magische leefwereld van een stadsbevolking, 16de–17de eeuw (Bruges, [1988]). 48 DAN 8: 49. 49 Ibid., 98–100, here 95. 50 Ibid., 96. 51 Ibid., 108. 52 For the execution of heretics in Bruges, see A.L.E. Verheyden, Het Brugsche Martyrologium (12 October 1527–7 Augustus 1573) (Brussels, 1944). For the Mennonites in Bruges, see Ludo Vandamme, ‘Doopsgezinden in Brugge, 1555–1575,’ DB 24 (1998): 9–24. For the Reformation and its persecution in the southern Low Countries, see Johan Decavele, De Dageraad van de reformatie in Vlaanderen (1520–1565), 2 vols. (Brussels, 1975). 53 BRN 2: 110. 54 Ibid., 114. 55 Ibid., 244. 56 Ibid., 134. For more on Segersz, see Piet Visser, ‘Zes onbekende martelaarsbrieven van Jeronimus Segers (†1551),’ DB 29 (2003): 195–249, which includes six previously unknown letters composed by this martyr. 57 BRN 2: 145–6. 58 DAN 8: 204 and 234. 59 Ibid., 240. 60 Ibid., 242. 61 BRN 2: 188. 62 Ibid., 190. 63 A.L.E. Verheyden, Het Gentsche Martyrologium (1530–1595) (Bruges, 1945). 64 The figures for the persecution of heretics in Ghent come from ibid.; those for the persecution of witchcraft from the compilation of J. Monballyu, posted on his web site www.kulak.ac.be/facult/rechten. See also his Van hekserij beschuldigd, which unfortunately does not contain the list. 65 See Waite, Reformers on Stage, 134–64. 66 Johan Decavele, ed., Keizer tussen stropdragers. Karel V, 1500–1558 (Louvain, 1990), 162.

244

Notes to pages 114–20

67 For witch-hunting in Ghent, see W. Braekman, ‘Belezers, waarzeggers en heksen te Gent in de zestiende en zeventiende eeuw,’ Oostvlaamse Zanten 65 (1990): 3–12; W. Braekman, Spel en kwel in vroeger tijd. Verkenningen van charivari, exorcisme, toverij, spot en spel in Vlaanderen (Ghent, 1992); and Monballyu, Van hekserij beschuldigd. On taking seriously popular suspicion of ‘devilish intrigues’ on the part of princes, see Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 68–70. 68 Stadtsarchief Gent, Reg. BB, ‘Eersten bouck vanden voorgheboden der stede van Ghendt beghinnene Int Jaer 1482,’ 279r. 69 A.L.E. Verheyden, Le Martyrologe Courtraisien et Le Martyrologe Bruxellois (Vilvoorde, 1950), 14. 70 BRN 2: 224–6. 71 Verheyden, Le Martyrologe Courtraisien, 46. 72 De Waardt, ‘Verlöschen und Entfachen der Scheiterhaufen.’ 73 ARAB Rekenkamer, Rekeningen Brussel, Inv. nr. 12.710, Rekening van de amman van Brussel, ‘Rekening 1585/05/01–1589/01/04,’ f01.47v. I am thankful to Hans de Waardt for providing me with transcriptions of these and the following sources from Brussels. 74 ARAB Rekenkamer, Rekeningen Brussel, Inv.nr. 12711, ‘Rekening amman van Brussel St Jansmis 1594–St Jansmis 1597,’ fols. 162v–163r, 232r–v, 238v– 239r, 241r; ibid., ‘Rekening St Jansmis 1597–St Jansmis 1600, 232v; and Inv.nr. 12756, ‘Rekening meier van Campenhout 31/03/1594–1602/03/18,’ 1v–2v, 11v–12r. 75 Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 41. 76 For Utenhove’s case, see Craig Harline and Eddy Put, A Bishop’s Tale: Mathias Hovius among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders (New Haven, CT, 2000), 43–8. Harline and Put seem to suggest that burying women heretics alive was regarded as so gruesome that no civil courts were willing to apply it after the collapse of Duke Alva’s regime in the 1570s, yet, as is shown here, they showed no compunction about burning women alive instead. 77 Statistics from 1550 to 1577 are taken from Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis, 1550–1577, trans. J.C. Grayson (Baltimore and London, 1996), and those between 1521 and 1549 from P. Génard, ‘Personen te Antwerpen in de XVI eeuw voor het “feit van religie” gerechtelijk vervolgd,’ Antwerpsch Archievenblad, 1st Series 13: 2–19. The witch cases are from Alfons K.L. Thijs, ‘Toverij in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen,’ in Liber amicorum Prof. Dr. Josef van Haver (Brussels, 1991), 391–401. 78 Materné, ‘Antwerp,’ 63. 79 A.F. Mellink, ‘Antwerpen als Anabaptistencentrum tot ± 1550,’ Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 46 (1963/4): 161–6.

Notes to pages 120–8

245

80 P. Génard, ‘De nieuwe Christenen te Antwerpen in de XVIe eeuw,’ Antwerpsch Archievenblad, 1st Series 2, 224. Another was issued in 1544. 81 Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 78–9. See also Joldersma and Grijp, Elisabeth’s Manly Courage, 12–13. 82 Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation. 83 Thijs, ‘Toverij in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen,’ 391. 84 On the rather theatrical punishment of the Loyists, see Waite, Reformers on Stage, 67. 85 Thijs, ‘Toverij in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen,’ 392. See also his Van Geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk: Maatschappelijke betekenis van de kerk in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen (Turnhout, 1990), 127–36. I am thankful to Hans de Waardt for alerting me to these works. 86 Guy Wells, ‘Sonnius, Franciscus,’ in OER 4: 88. 87 RRB, Inv. nr. 12.908, ‘Rekeningen schout van Antwerpen 1580–1611,’ Rekening 1580/01/01 – 1582/12/06, fol. 9v–10v. I am thankful, again, to Hans de Waardt for transcriptions of these records. 88 Thijs, ‘Toverij in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen,’ 393–4. 89 Ibid., 394–5. 90 RRB, Inv. nr. 12.908, ‘Rekeningen schout van Antwerpen 1580–1611,’ Rekening 1585/09/17–1588/09/17, fol. 7v–8r. Transcription by Hans de Waardt. 91 Ibid., Rekening van de stad Lier 1585/09/17–1599/11/06, fol. 1r–4r. Transcription by Hans de Waardt. 92 Thijs, ‘Toverij in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen,’ 395. Transcription by Hans de Waardt. 93 RRB, Inv. nr. 12.908, ‘Rekeningen schout van Antwerpen 1594/09/17– 1597/09/17,’ fol.7v. Transcription by Hans de Waardt. 94 Thijs, ‘Toverij in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen,’ 396–7. 95 Ibid., 398. 96 Ibid., 399. 97 Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 192–228. 98 Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence,’ 159. 99 Articvlen. Van onsen oprechten Christen ghelooue, dewelcke van allen Menschen die Godtlijck ende Christelijck willen leven ... ghelooft moeten zijn, tsamenghestelt vande Doctoren der Heyligher Godtheyt in die Vniversiteyt van Loven (Louvain, 1545), Aijv. 100 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 545. 101 See Clark, ‘Protestant Demonology,’ 46; for witch-hunting in Scotland, see Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland (Baltimore, 1981); Julian Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002); Julian Goodare, ‘Women and the Witch-Hunt in Scotland,’ Social

246

Notes to pages 128–33

History 23 (1998): 288–308; and P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, ‘Witchcraft and the Kirk in Aberdeenshire, 1596–97,’ Northern Scotland 18 (1998): 1–14. For Calvinism and witchcraft in general, see also Clark, Thinking with Demons; Sluhovsky, ‘Calvinist Miracles;’ and Teall, ‘Witchcraft and Calvinism in Elizabethan England.’ For Puritanism in the New World, see Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion. 102 E. William Monter, ‘Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–1662,’ in Enforcing Morality in Early Modern Europe, ed. E. William Monter (London, 1987), 179–204. 5. The Devil’s Sabbat: Nocturnal Anabaptist Meetings, Hailstorms, and Witchcraft in Southern Germany 1 In Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, 173–4. 2 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 240. While Stephens has been criticized for depreciating the misogyny of Kramer, his central point about the battle against doubt remains an important one. 3 Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 374, 381. 4 Ibid., 376. 5 For examples, see Waite, ‘Talking Animals’ and ‘An Artisan’s Worldview?’ 6 See Zagorin, Ways of Lying. 7 See esp. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons. 8 Hoffman may have recanted and been released; Werner O. Packull, ‘Melchior Hoffman: A Recanted Anabaptist in Schwäbisch-Hall,’ MQR 57 (1983): 83–111. 9 On the Schwenckfelders, see R. Emmet McLaughlin, ‘The Politics of Dissent: Martin Bucer, Caspar Schwenckfeld, and the Schwenckfelders of Strasbourg,’ MQR 68 (1994): 59–78. On magical attempts to experience angelic visions, see Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (University Park, PA, 1998). 10 Thurston, Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose, 109. 11 Charles Zika, ‘Baldung (Grien), Hans (1484–1545),’ EOW 1: 80–2; Linda C. Hults, ‘Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: The Evidence of Images,’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (1987): 249–76; for the interpretation of Baldung’s images, see also Roper, Witch Craze, 151–3. For witch images, see Charles Zika, Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2003). 12 Roper, Witch Craze, 152; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of SelfPortraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago and London, 1993), 324, 327.

Notes to pages 134–5

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13 John D. Derksen, ‘Strasbourg’s Religious Radicals from 1525 to 1570: A Social History’ (PhD diss., Univ. of Manitoba, 1993), 289–96; QGT 16, 537. 14 For the countryside, see Derksen, ‘Strasbourg’s Religious Radicals,’ 293; for the city, see Lorna Jane Abray, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Oxford, 1985), 170–4. 15 John D. Derksen, ‘Research Note: Religious Nonconformists in the Village of Wasselnheim, 1533–1551,’ MQR 65 (2001): 517–23. 16 Derksen, ‘Strasbourg’s Religious Radicals,’ 351; also QGT 16: 119–21. See also John D. Derksen, From Radicals to Survivors: Strasbourg’s Religious Nonconformists over Two Generations, 1525–1570 (’t Goy-Houten, 2002), 198. 17 This idea of tolerance for all Christians, Jews, and Turks was a prominent idea of the French religious non-conformist and spiritualist Guillaume Postel, with whose ideas Joris was acquainted. See Roland H. Bainton, ‘Wylliam Postell and the Netherlands,’ Nederlandsch Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 24 (1931): 161–72; William J. Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) (Cambridge, MA, 1957); Marion L. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things, His Life and Thought (The Hague, 1981). 18 QGT 4: 425–6. 19 QGT 1: 195. On Schwenckfeld’s real beliefs, see R. Emmet McLaughlin, Caspar Schwenckfeld, Reluctant Radical: His Life to 1540 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1986). 20 QGT 1: 162. 21 Ibid., 511. See also chapter 2 above. 22 In a 1570 discussion of Stuttgart theologians about Anabaptism, the Abbot of Adelberg commented, ‘es seien vielerlei widerteufer greulich und gemain. Ad primos ut Servetiani, David Georger, Hoferische, [i.e., Hutterites], Moserische [i.e., Swiss Brethren] etc., darzue der henker recta via gehör’ (there are many types of Anabaptists, horrible and common. To the first [are] Servetus, David Joris, Hoferish [i.e., Hutterites], Moserish [i.e., Swiss Brethren] etc., thus to the execution directly via hearing). Ibid., 276. For example, a 1574 visitation report from Marbach discussed the case of Hans Hottmann, an old, quarrelsome man whom the visitor described as a Servetianer because he disregarded the doctrine of the Trinity and refused to attend communion. Ibid., 433. 23 Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 71. 24 Derksen, ‘Strasbourg’s Religious Radicals,’ 294. 25 Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy,’ 22.

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Notes to pages 135–9

26 Abray, The People’s Reformation, 171. 27 ‘Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–1662,’ originally published in the Journal of Modern History 43 (1971): 179–204, esp.189; reprinted with original pagination in Monter, Enforcing Morality in Early Modern Europe. 28 Monter, ‘Witchcraft in Geneva,’ 190–1. Monter notes that this ‘Colladon test’ was later replaced by the more typical search for the devil’s mark. 29 Abray, The People’s Reformation, 175. 30 Ibid., 121–2. 31 Ibid., 122. 32 Ibid., 124. 33 Ibid., 126. 34 Miriam Usher Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480–1599 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1982), 55. 35 Ibid., 267. 36 Stefan Janson, Jean Bodin, Johann Fischart: De la démonomanie des sorciers (1580), vom aussgelassnen wütigen Teufelsheer (1581) und ihre Fallberichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1980). 37 Jean Bodin, De Magorvm Daemonomania: Vom Außgelasnen Wütigen Teuffelsheer Allerhand Zauberern, Hexen vnnd Hexenmeistern ... Gegen des Herrn Doctor J. Wier Buch von der Geisterverführungen / durch ... Johann Bodin ... außgangen. Vnd nun erstmals durch ... Johann Fischart ... auß Frantzösischer sprach trewlich in Teutsche gebracht, vnd nun zum andernmahl an vilen enden vermehrt vnd erklärt (Strasbourg, 1591), foreword, iir–iiiv. 38 Abray, The People’s Reformation, 171. 39 Ibid., 172. 40 Ibid., 173. 41 Histoire memorable de la persecution et saccagement du peuple de Merindol et Cabrieres (1555), as cited by Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 169. 42 See Derksen, From Radicals to Survivors, 94, and with more detail, 164–7. 43 Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 69. 44 QGT 14: 143–6; Derksen, From Radicals to Survivors, 164–5. 45 C. Arnold Snyder, ‘The Confession of the Swiss Brethren in Hesse, 1578,’ in Anabaptism Revisited, ed. Walter Klaassen (Scottdale, PA, and Waterloo, ON, 1992), 29–49, esp. 31; the original records are in TA Hesse, 393–404, esp. 400. 46 Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 72–3. 47 In theory, the possessed were unwitting victims of the devil while witches had

Notes to pages 140–4

48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67

68 69 70 71

249

made a voluntary pact with him. Midelfort, A History of Madness in SixteenthCentury Germany, 77. ‘Von widertoufer, wucher, furkouf, zoubery vnd derglichen,’ QGT 4: 469. Ibid., 145. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 21. Ibid. There follows, according to the editor Manfred Krebs, ‘ausführliche Klagen über Hexerei, Zauberwerk, Teufelbeschwörung und andere Mißbräuche’ (detailed complaints about witchcraft, sorcery, invoking demons and other abuses). For example, see the Superintendent’s comments in 1556, QGT 4: 148–9. Ibid., 145–6. Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 325. QGT 4: 153. Ibid., 155–6; see the mandates of Count Palatine Wolfgang of 23 April 1556 in ibid., 259–63, and June 1557 (ibid., 265), which use similar inflammatory language to describe Anabaptists. James M. Kittelson, ‘Marbach, Johannes,’ OER 3: 1–2. The Palatinate was largely free of witch panics. Paul Glock, ‘First Defense (1563),’ in Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, 313. Ibid., 318–19. ‘Hans Schmidt’s Experiences in Württemberg, after December 4, 1590,’ in ibid., 369 and 371. Ibid., 372. Ibid., 377. Harald Schwillus, Kleriker im Hexenprozeß: Geistliche als Opfer der Hexenprozesse des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Würzburg, 1992). For lying-in maids, see Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 74. Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 311. QGT 1: 1025. The section on magic takes up pp. 1042–7. On Lutherans and demonized vices, see Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 53–5. Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 437. Oyer, ‘They Harry the Good People Out of the Land,’ 195. Ibid., 202–6. Ibid., 216, 257. On Brenz, see James M. Estes, Christian Magistrate and State Church: The Reforming Career of Johannes Brenz (Toronto, 1982); and James M. Estes, ‘Brenz, Johannes,’ in OER 1: 214–15.

250

Notes to pages 144–8

72 QGT 1: 206–25; see also Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 361; and Oyer, ‘Nicodemites among Württemberg Anabaptists.’ 73 See the anticlerical comments of the imprisoned Bastian Weber, spoken in justification of his departure from the ‘common church,’ in QGT 1: 213. 74 Ibid., 224. 75 For example, in 1570 Stuttgart’s theologians referred to it in their discussions about the dangers of secret conventicles, ibid., 293. Another Anabaptist forest meeting was discovered in 1574, ibid., 415–18; and another near Otisheim in 1596, ibid., 684–90. 76 Anita Raith, ‘Brenz, Johann (1499–1570),’ EOW 1: 144–5. 77 H.F. Kerler, Geschichte der Grafen von Helfenstein nach den Quellen dargestellt (Ulm, 1840), 142–6. On Canisius, see also John Patrick Donnelly, ‘Canisius, Peter,’ OER 1: 253. While in Wiesensteig Canisius apparently took the opportunity to prepare two witches for burning; four years earlier he had helped to convert some Anabaptists of Augsburg and he was a source for Franciscus Agricola’s negative comments about David Joris; Nissen, De Katholieke Polemiek, 198; New Advent: The Catholic Encyclopedia Online, www.newadvent.org/cathen/11756c.htm. 78 On Naogeorgus see Dieter Fauth, ‘Kirchmeyer, Thomas,’ OER 2: 378. 79 Karl Pfaff, ‘Die Hexenprocesse zu Esslingen im sechszehenten und siebenzehenten Jahrhundert,’ Zeitschrift für deutsche Kulturgeschichte (1856), 257. 80 See Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons; and Waite, Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft, 37–43. 81 H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford, CA, 1972), 89. Unfortunately the Wiesensteig witch-hunt trial records are no longer extant. 82 Wolfgang Behringer, ‘Canisius, St. Peter (1521–1597),’ EOW 1: 161–2. 83 ‘Warhafftige und Erschreckhenliche Thatten und Handlungen der 63 Hexen unnd Unholden, so zu Wiesensteig mit dem Brandt gericht worden seind (1563),’ in Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland, ed. Wolfgang Behringer (Munich, 1988), 137–9. 84 Oyer, ‘They Harry the Good People Out of the Land,’ 193n.10. 85 Dionysius Dreytweins Esslingische Chronik (1548–1564), ed. Adolf Diehl (Tübingen, 1901). 86 Ibid., 97, as translated by Oyer. ‘They Harry the Good People Out of the Land,’ 194. 87 Dreytweins Esslingische Chronik, 19, 22–3. 88 Ibid., 104. 89 Ibid., 200–1. 90 Waite, ‘An Artisan’s Worldview?’; Joris’s reputation was akin to that of the

Notes to pages 148–53

91 92

93

94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

111 112 113 114 115

251

Waldensian Masters who were turned into witches; Behringer, ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy,’ 15, 22. Dreytweins Esslingische Chronik, 83–7. Ibid., 89–90. This story seems to have been a Protestant version of Host desecration, one that is turned to social improvement and without Jews as perpetrators. Ibid., 72. He happily reported the 1553 rumour that Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz had been publicly approached by a beautiful woman who said ‘Elector, you are mine,’ to which he replied ‘yes, I am yours,’ by which Dreytwein took it to mean that he was the devil’s. Ibid., 137–8. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 192–4. Ibid., 214: ‘darmit jagt got die welt und hetzt den teuffel an sein muter.’ Ibid., 216–17. Ibid., 228–9. Ibid., 233–4. Ibid., 235. Ibid., 237–8. Ibid., 240, 242–3, 244–8, 252. Ibid., 246. Oyer, ‘They Harry the Good People Out of the Land,’ 280 and 274 resp. Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism, 295–6. Ibid., 326–7. Paul Glock, ‘Letter to Peter Walpot (1566),’ in ibid., 330. Ibid., 300–1. Robert S. Walinski-Kiehl, ‘The Devil’s Children: Child Witch-Trials in Early Modern Germany,’ Continuity and Change 11 (1996): 175. The charge appears in both Catholic and Protestant territories; see ibid., 177, 179. For witch-hunting, see Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany; for Anabaptist persecution, see Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History. See C. Arnold Snyder, The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler (Scottdale, PA, and Kitchener, ON, 1984), 100–3. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 90–4, 201–21. Ibid., 91–2. When the region of Baden-Baden was similarly restored to Catholicism as a result of Jesuit activity in 1622, witch-hunting began, while an Anabaptist had been beheaded in Bühl here in 1571. Ibid., 132; Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 381.

252

Notes to pages 153–8

116 QGT 1: 656. On the rhetorical device of discrediting the dead by ascribing to them beastly behaviour at the moment of death, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 170. 117 In 1561 Ferdinand forbade anyone from making a sales ‘pact’ with Anabaptists to stop them from disposing of their property before fleeing to Moravia. QGT 14: 691. 118 QGT 1: 666–7. Bellowing like a cow or another animal was also thought to be a sign of demonic possession. See Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 259–61. 119 Karen Lambrecht, Hexenverfolgung und Zaubereiprozesse in den schlesischen Territorien (Cologne, 1995). 120 QGT 1: 763–4. 121 Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 131–4. 122 Ibid., 136–9. 123 ‘Georg Gross, called Pfersfelder, to Hans von Seckendorf, Nuremberg Jubilate, April 30, 1531,’ in Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German, 187–8. While rejecting belief in Jewish Host desecration, he said that the ‘Jews did not torture the bread but this same body [i.e., Christ’s],’ revealing still a measure of anti-Semitism. Ibid., 189. 124 Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 198. 125 Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 512. 126 The Lutheran pastors tried several times in vain to convert them. See ibid., 494–516. 127 Ibid., 505. 128 Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms. 129 Margereta Bartholfin of Niderdorla, in Wappler, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen, 506. 130 Ibid., 503–5. 131 Ibid., 511–12. 132 Ibid., 516–21. A position comparable to that of Joris; see Waite, ‘An Artisan’s Worldview?’ 133 Ronald Füssel, Hexen und Hexenverfolgung in Thüringen (Erfurt, 2001), 43 and 48; see also his more detailed Die Hexenverfolgungen im Thüringer Raum (Hamburg, 2003), esp. 158. See also Ronald Füssel, ‘Thuringia,’ EOW 4: 1120–2. 134 Füssel, Die Hexenverfolgungen, 232–55, map at p. 330. 135 Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, maps at pp. 19, 23, and 25. 136 For Anabaptism, see Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’; Werner O. Packull, ‘The Melchiorites and the Ziegenhain Order of Discipline, 1538– 39,’ in Klaassen, Anabaptism Revisited, 11–28; Snyder, ‘The Confession of

Notes to pages 158–63

137 138

139 140

141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

160

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the Swiss Brethren in Hesse’; and the sources in TA Hesse; for the witchhunts, see Reinhold Neeb, Hexen, Folter, Scheiterhaufen: Hexenverfolgungen und Hexenglauben im alten Oberhessen (Gießen, 1991); Karl Heinz Spielmann, Die Hexenprozesse in Kurhessen, 2nd ed. (Marburg, 1932); and Kurt Liebelt, ‘Geschichte des Hexenprozesses in Hessen-Kassel,’ Zeitschrift des Vereins für hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde 58 (1932): 1–144. For the Reformation in Hesse, see William John Wright, Capitalism, the State, and the Lutheran Reformation: Sixteenth-Century Hesse (Athens, OH, 1988), and his several entries in the OER. See Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, map at p. 25. Fabricius added that they had said that ‘they did not believe that the fornicating priests with their five words were able to conjure Christ out of heaven into the bread.’ TA Hesse 195. Ibid., 38–41. Leonard Gross, ed., trans., ‘Whether Christian Princes Are Obligated to Apply Physical Punishment and the Sword against the Unchristian Sect of the Anabaptists,’ MQR 76 (2002): 318 and 321. I follow Gross’s translation of Melanchthon’s title. TA Hesse, 101–4. Ibid., 12–13. Packull, ‘The Melchiorites and the Ziegenhaim Order,’ 15. Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, 162. TA Hesse, 275, 283–4, 295–6, 304. Ibid., 338. Ibid., 342–6. Neeb, Hexen, Folter, Scheiterhaufen, 40. Liebelt, ‘Geschichte des Hexenprozesses,’ 27. Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’ 1018. TA Hesse, 350–72; Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’ 1008–9. TA Hesse, 374–7; Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’ 1009. Liebelt, ‘Geschichte des Hexenprozesses,’ 30. Spielmann, Die Hexenprozesse in Kurhessen, 217. Neeb, Hexen, Folter, Scheiterhaufen, 39. Spielmann, Die Hexenprozesse in Kurhessen, 54. Ibid., 66. Neeb, Hexen, Folter, Scheiterhaufen, 39. Abraham Saur, ‘Ein kurtze, treuwe Warnung, Anzeige und Underricht, Ob auch zu diser unser Zeit uns Christen Hexen, Zauberer und Unholden vorhanden etc ...’ as cited by Liebelt, ‘Geschichte des Hexenprozesses,’ 35. Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’ 1011.

254

Notes to pages 163–70

161 162 163 164

Ibid.; TA Hesse, 389–90. Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’ 1012. Ibid., 1013–14; TA Hesse, 400–1. Kuchenbecker also noted the irony that the authorities permitted the Jews, ‘who despise Christ and the Christian faith,’ to remain in the landgraviate, but were so willing to expel Anabaptists ‘over two or three articles.’ Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists?’ 1015. 165 TA Hesse, 445–6. 166 For the Hesse witch-hunts, see also Thomas Lange, ‘Hesse,’ EOW 2: 491–2. 167 Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf. 6. Eliminating the Desecrators of Hosts: Anabaptists and Witches in the Austrian Tirol 1 ‘Testimony of Katharina Hutter, given before 3 December 1535 at Klausen,’ in Klaassen, Friesen, and Packull, Sources of South German, 195. 2 Werner Maleczek, ‘Die Ketzerverfolgung im österreichischen Hoch- und Spätmittelalter,’ in Wellen der Verfolgung in der österreichischen Geschichte, ed. Erich Zöllner (Vienna, 1986), 23. 3 Ibid., 31. 4 Ibid., 32. 5 Klaus Lohrmann, ‘Die Judenverfolgungen zwischen 1290 und 1420 als theologisches und soziales Problem,’ in Zöllner, Wellen der Verfolgung, 40–51, here 44. 6 Ibid. Lohrmann counts more than one hundred locales c. 1300 for these ‘blood miracles’ in the German-speaking regions of Austria. 7 As cited by ibid., 47. 8 Helfried Valentinitsch, ‘Der Vorwurf der Hostienschändung in den innerösterreichischen Hexen- und Zaubereiprozessen (16.–18. Jahrhundert),’ Zeitschrift des historischen Vereines für Steiermark 78 (1987): 5. 9 Rubin, Gentile Tales, 191–2. 10 Ibid., 7–9. 11 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 188. 12 Ibid., 190–1. 13 For heresy persecution, see Monter, Judging the French Reformation, esp. 33–7; for witch-hunters, see P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, Witch Hunters: Professional Prickers, Unwitchers and Witch Finders of the Renaissance (Stroud, UK, 2003). 14 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 192–3. 15 QGT 14: 18.

Notes to pages 171–3

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16 Monter, Judging the French Reformation, 35. The figure is based upon Clasen’s (Anabaptism: A Social History) statistics of 80 per cent of the 845 known executions occurring before 1533, and that about two-thirds of these were Austrian Anabaptists. The Hutterite chronicle alone admits to 386 executions up to 1542, while a contemporary chronicler reported 1,000 executions by 1530 and an imperial court prosecutor boasted of 600 executions by 1539. R.F. Loserth, ‘Tirol,’ ME 4, 724–8, here 725–6. 17 QGT 14: 13. 18 Ibid., 348, where the authorities dealt with the problem of the delinquent parishioners of St Laurentz (9 April 1537); and ibid., 355 (13 April 1537) and ibid., 369 (23 October), where they heard that nine hundred of the two thousand communicants in the region of St Michelsburg had not taken the sacrament during Lent. The reason, they suggested, was the large number of Anabaptists in the area of Schöneck. On 5 May 1539 the archduke warned the magistrates of several towns and regions to be more diligent in their search for Anabaptists, ibid., 404. On 20 October 1540 the chancellor of Innsbruck reported to the Bishop of Brixen that there were some one thousand Anabaptists in the village of Schäbitz (Schäckowitz?) alone, ibid., 469. 19 Ibid., 195. 20 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 162–3; see also Elke Park, ‘Untereinander gleich und alle Ding gemein: Täuferische Bewegungen in Tirol 1527–1534,’ Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 59 (2002): 13–42, here 13, 16; and Heinz Noflatscher, ‘Heresy and Revolt: The Early Anabaptists in the Tyrol and in Zurich,’ MQR 68 (1994): 291–317. See the report of 17 October 1539 (QGT 14: 420–3), where the knight Caspar Kunigl complains that it harder now to spot Anabaptists because they no longer refused to travel armed, now carrying daggers and muskets; ibid., 421. Also, on 5 June 1540 it was reported that many in Hall were assisting Anabaptists; ibid., 442–3. 21 Park, ‘Untereinander gleich,’ 34. 22 Ibid., 29. 23 Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 378. 24 QGT 14: 252. 25 Ibid., 253 and 337. 26 Ibid., 347. 27 Ibid., 361–3. 28 Ibid., 460. 29 Robert Friedmann, ‘Austria,’ ME 1: 196–7. 30 Ibid., 198. 31 QGT 14: 507, 509 (from the Brixen magistrates, 2 July 1543).

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Notes to pages 173–5

32 Ibid., 527 (18 April 1544); ibid., 443 (5 June 1540 and 5 June 1541). Similar language was used about Anabaptists in an 8 August 1544 missive from Ferdinand to the ruler of Laudegg. 33 Ibid., 659 (22 December 1558). 34 Ibid., 662–3 (18 September 1559). 35 Ibid., 660 (11 January 1559). 36 Ibid., 667 (12 November 1560). 37 Ibid., 674 (6 February 1561) and ibid., 678 (27 February 1561). 38 Ibid., 681 (13 March 1561). 39 Ibid., 681–2 (28 March 1561). 40 Ibid., 683 (7 April 1561) and ibid., 684 (14 June 1561). 41 Ibid., 688–92 (5 July 1561) and ibid., 705 (22 September 1561). 42 R.F. Loserth, ‘Tirol,’ ME 4: 724–8, here 728. 43 QGT 14: 20–2. 44 Trial of Michael Ebner, in ibid., 22–3. 45 Erhard Urscher added that he did not believe that ‘our lord would let himself be transformed in the hands of priests.’ Ibid., 105. 46 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 172; Park, ‘Untereinander gleich,’ 27; From QGT 14: docs. 2, 4, 16, 25, 50, 55, and 58. A similar act of Host desecration occurred in Tournai when a weaver seized the wafer from the priest, shouting ‘deceived people, do you believe this is the King, Jesus Christ, the true god and Savior? Look!’ as he crumbled it up and escaped. Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence,’ 156. 47 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 207–8. 48 Rubin, Gentile Tales, 194. 49 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 209. 50 Stephens, reflecting on the intentional Host desecration of Swiss Protestants in the 1520s and 1530s, comments: ‘This behavior of real-world Christians, on the same territory that produced witches, increased the likelihood that desecrating Jews and witches in earlier narratives were vicariously acting out the repressed desires of medieval Christians for confirmation of eucharistic reality. Surely not all desecrators of the 1500s were completely convinced that the hosts could not respond to their provocation. Even if they were, their desecrations must have had a powerful effect on bystanders. After so many centuries of stories about hosts that responded instantly to desecration, what could it mean if nothing happened?’ Ibid., 215. 51 See Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 41–5; Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 108, 142–4. 52 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 183. This tendency continued into the decades after the major persecution of the late 1520s. For examples, see QGT 14: 29

Notes to pages 175–9

53 54 55

56 57

58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72

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(1532), and 92 (January 1533), where Erhart Urscher was asked ‘Wo diese ihre Versammlungen und Synagogen halten’ (where they held this their gatherings and synagogues). QGT 14: 670–4, here 672 (2–4 December 1560). Also of concern was whether or not they were plotting a rebellion (ibid., 673). I discuss these incidents in greater detail in Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 139–42, 165–7, and 180. A stained-glass window commissioned for Nuremberg’s city council in 1598 depicts a Jew about to stab a child while a witch assists him. Roper, Witch Craze, 40–1. Packull, ‘In Search of the “Common Man,”’ 58. Wilson, ‘Institoris at Innsbruck,’ 100. For the Malleus, see now Heinrich Kramer (Institoris), Der Hexenhammer. Malleus Maleficarum, ed. Günter Jerouschek and Wolfgang Behringer, trans. Wolfgang Behringer, Günter Jerouschek, and Werner Tschacher, 3rd ed. (Munich, 2003). Stephens, Demon Lovers, 224; and 32–57; see also Tamar Herzig, ‘Witches, Saints, and Heretics: Heinrich Kramer’s Ties with Italian Women Mystics,’ Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 1 (2006): 24–55. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 209–10. Wilson, ‘Institoris at Innsbruck,’ 96. QGT 14: 30–1. Ibid., 36–7. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 120–1. Ibid., 122. See, for example, Roper, Witch Craze, 55. Throughout the Tirol court records, the term malefitz is also used to describe the crime of Anabaptism, while the Latin term maleficia was much more commonly used to refer to harmful witchcraft. For example, on 26 April 1537 fourteen Anabaptists were described by the local judge of Mölten as ‘malefizig’ and some had already been executed. QGT 14: 359. In 1561 the Innsbruck rulers advised the lord of Rettenberg to build secure prisons to house such malefitzpersonen after some Anabaptists escaped from their improvised confinement. Ibid., 705 (22 October 1561). QGT 14: 123. Ibid., 126–7. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 152, 154.

258

Notes to pages 179–84

73 Ibid., 171–2. 74 For other examples, see the report from St Michelsburg on 22 November 1535, in ibid., 287–8; Klausen, 3 December 1535 (which included the interrogation of Katharina Hutter, wife of Jacob Hutter), ibid., 300–1; and the report of the confession of Jakob Moser in the district of Flaas, 15 May 1537, ibid., 363–4. The similarity in terminology suggests that Hutter and the other leaders were successful in indoctrinating their followers in the precise language to use against their interrogators; see Hutter’s own comments, ibid., 305. 75 Ibid., 222. 76 Ibid., 230. 77 Ibid., 448–59, esp. 454 and 458–9. 78 For soothsayers and witch trials, see Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 137– 8 and 183. 79 De Waardt and de Blécourt, ‘ “Het is geen zonde een kwaad mens ter dood te brengen,”’ 20. 80 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 274–5; QGT 14: 326–7. 81 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 275. 82 Martín del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicae, as cited by Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 52–7. 83 For demoniacs, see Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism, 28–39. 84 QGT 14: 556–61. 85 Ibid., 595. 86 Ibid., 597. 87 See Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 128–33; Mora, Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance. Weyer promoted religious tolerance, hence he may have drawn some of his observations from the trials of women Anabaptists. 88 QGT 14: 598–9. 89 See, for example, ibid., 595 (28 August 1549). The year after Dornin’s trial, a group of Anabaptists were interrogated in the castle of Schöneck. Ibid., 604– 6 (24 August 1550). 90 Ibid., 614–15 and 622, the latter a mandate of 22 October 1554. 91 Ibid., 624, mandate of 2 March 1555; and ibid., 636, 21 August 1556. 92 For example, see ibid., 647, report of 23 June 1557 of the escape of some nineteen persons; also the report from Innsbruck of 7 August 1563, ibid., 715–16; and the report from Nauders of 25 October 1564, ibid., 721–2. 93 Ibid., 716–18 (Ferdinand’s mandate of 2 October 1563). 94 QGT 14: 596–8, here 598. 95 For examples, see ibid., 650–1 (20 December 1557); ibid., 678–9 (27 February 1561), where the confessions were so long that only the summaries were to be read aloud; ibid., 714 (7 July 1562); and ibid., 719–20 (28 June 1564).

Notes to pages 184–6

259

96 Ibid., 695 (7 September 1561). See also ibid., 708 (14 February 1562), which provides the precise wording to be used in Anabaptist recantations. 97 Ibid., 692–4 (7 July 1561), from the city judge of Bruneck to the bishop’s court in Brixen. 98 Ibid., 700, 703. The dispute with Alber encompasses documents in ibid., 696–704. 99 QGT 14: 569–70. 100 Maxwell-Stuart, Martín del Rio: Investigations into Magic, 116, where del Rio denies that evil spirits can be trapped in bottles. In 1586, Pope Sixtus V condemned a variety of magical practices as necessarily requiring a pact with the devil, including capturing evil spirits in bottles. Maxwell-Stewart, The Occult in Early Modern Europe, 60. 101 Ferdinand’s officials were also frustrated by the apparent saintliness of the movement’s ordinary members. For example, in November 1548 Agnes Gellerthin told Brixen’s judge, Hans Egle, that about ten years earlier she had been with a now-deceased Anabaptist woman who had prayed so fervently through the night, confessing her sins, that Agnes became certain that the woman’s faith was the right one. QGT 14: 590. 102 Some 90 per cent of the nobility in Austria below the Enns were Protestant. Paula Sutter Fichtner, ‘Austria,’ OER 1: 102–7, here 105. 103 This discussion is based on ibid., ‘Austria,’ 105–7. 104 Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts, 79. On the Styrian witch trials, see the unpublished PhD dissertation by Edmund Kern, ‘The Styrian Witch Trials: Secular Authority and Religious Orthodoxy in the Early Modern Period’ (University of Minnesota, 1995), and his ‘Confessional Identity and Magic in the Late Sixteenth Century: Jakob Bithner and Witchcraft in Styria,’ SCJ 25 (1994): 323–40. See also Edmund Kern, ‘Tryol, County of,’ EOW 4: 1137, and ‘Austria,’ ibid., 1: 70–5. 105 Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts, 128–9. 106 Heide Dienst, ‘Magische Vorstellungen und Hexenverfolgungen in den österreichischen Ländern (15. bis 18. Jahrhundert),’ in Zöllner, Wellen der Verfolgung, 73. 107 As cited in ibid., 75. 108 See the appendix to Heide Dienst, ‘Hexenprozesse auf dem Gebiet der heutigen Bundesländer Vorarlberg, Tirol (mit Südtirol), Salzburg, Nieder und Oberösterreich sowie des Burgenlandes,’ in Hexen und Zauberer: Die große Verfolgung – Ein europäisches Phänomen in der Steiermark, ed. Helfried Valentinitsch (Graz, 1987), 286. There seems to have been a trial of a witch accused of making a pact with the devil in 1573 in Brixen. The book by

260

109 110

111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

124

125

126

Notes to pages 187–92 Hansjörg Rabanser, Hexenwahn: Schicksale und Hintergründe die Tiroler Hexenprozesse (Innsbruck-Vienna, 2006) appeared too late for this study. Dienst, ‘Magische Vorstellungen,’ 80. Ibid., 82. Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 46, notes that in 1598 the Bordeaux Jesuit Louis Richeome wrote that Luther had tried to exorcize a demoniac but had failed, because ‘not he, nor any heretic has ever been able to do such exploits as our exorcists do against Devils – believe that this is an evident sign that the spirit of God is not with you and is with us ... if you cannot chase devils and we do chase them, then your religion is vain ... Recognize the truth of our religion by the expulsion of Devils.’ Ibid. A remarkable parallel to a story told by Kramer a century before, see Stephens, Demon Lovers, 209–10. Dienst, ‘Hexenprozesse auf dem Gebiet,’ 281. Behringer, Witches and Witch Hunts, 122, 128. Drawn from the list in Dienst, ‘Hexenprozesse auf dem Gebiet,’ 286–7. Manfred Tschaikner, ‘Damit das Böse ausgerottet werde’: Hexenverfolgungen in Vorarlberg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Bregenz, 1992), 47–9. Ibid., 53–4. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 57–64. See also the appendix, 208–9. As cited in ibid., 62. R.F. Loserth, ‘Voralberg,’ ME 4, 853–4, here 853. Christian Neff, ‘Platzer, Melchior,’ ibid., 189. See the appendix in Tschaikner, ‘Damit das Böse ausgerottet werde,’ 197–211. Helfried Valentinitsch, ‘Die Verfolgung von Hexen und Zauberern im Herzogtum Steiermark: Eine Zwischenbilanz,’ in Valentinitsch, Hexen und Zauberer, 298–300. Sigrid Brauner, Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany, ed. Robert H. Brown (Amherst, MA, 1995), and ‘Martin Luther on Witchcraft: A True Reformer?’ in The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jean R. Brink, Allison P. Coudert, and Maryanne C. Horowitz (Kirksville, MO, 1989), 29–42; see also Allison P. Coudert, ‘The Myth of the Improved Status of Protestant Women: The Case of the Witchcraze,’ ibid., 61–92. For Anabaptist women, see also C. Arnold Snyder and Linda H. Hecht, eds., Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers (Waterloo, ON, 1996). Sigrun Haude, ‘Anabaptist Women – Radical Women?’ in Reinhart, Infinite Boundaries, 313–28. English Quakers faced similar opposition for their allowance of women leadership. See esp. Elmer, ‘“Saints or Sorcerers”.’ As cited by Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, 259 and 270n.28, from

Notes to pages 193–8

127 128 129 130 131 132

133 134 135 136 137 138

261

Hecht’s unpublished 1990 University of Waterloo History MA cognate, ‘Faith and Action: The Role of Women in the Anabaptist Movement of the Tirol, 1527–29.’ For one case study, see Linda Huebert Hecht, ‘An Extraordinary Lay Leader: The Life and Work of Helene of Reyberg, Sixteenth Century Noblewoman and Anabaptist from the Tirol,’ MQR 66 (1992): 312–41. Park, ‘Untereinander gleich,’ 20. QGT 4: 258. Ibid., 368. Oyer, ‘They Harry the Good People Out of the Land,’ 191–2. QGT 1: 897. Monter (Judging the French Reformation, 12) notes that infanticide ‘was exclusively a woman’s crime, and almost the only “enormous” crime for which women were convicted and burned.’ Executions for infanticide reached new heights during the period of the witch-hunts. Roper, Witch Craze, 132. Ibid., 563. Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, 123. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 92. Monter, ‘Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe,’ 64. Behringer, Shaman of Obersdorf. A comparable example of popular beliefs about ‘heresies’ merging with the magical arises in 1756 when the enlightened Empress Maria Theresa put a stop to witch-hunting after receiving reports from her court physicians regarding the embarrassing phenomenon of the ‘vampire epidemic.’ Thereafter, Gábor Klaniczay concludes, the ‘magical mystery of vampirism was dissipated by reinvoking the scapegoat mechanism of witch persecution. And within a few decades it was no longer the blood of the exhumed corpses, but that of the “social bloodsuckers” that was going to flow.’ Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power, 188.

Conclusion 1 For one modern American example, see Peter Singer, The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush (New York, 2004), 79. 2 The techniques were nicely honed by the French monarchs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries against popes, Knights Templar, lepers, and Jews. See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 1–86. 3 Edmund Pries, ‘Oath Refusal in Zurich from 1525 to 1527: The Erratic Emergence of Anabaptist Practice,’ in Klaassen, Anabaptism Revisited, 65–84. 4 Kieckhefer, ‘Avenging the Blood of Children.’

262 5 6 7 8

9 10 11

12 13

14

15 16

17

18

19

Notes to pages 198–205

See Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf and ‘Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy.’ Monter, ‘Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe.’ Pearl, Crime of Crimes, 69. See, for example, Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective, trans. Thomas A. Brady, Jr, and H.C. Erik Midelfort (Baltimore and London, 1981), 155–61; James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal and Kingston, 1991). See esp. Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria. See esp. Andre Seguenny, ‘Why Bucer Detested the Spiritualists: Some Reflections on Reading Bucer’s Dialogus of 1535,’ MQR 68 (1994): 51–8. Among others, see Friedman, ‘Jewish Conversion’; E. William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (Cambridge, 1990); Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Bloomington, 1985). Henry Heller, Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France (Toronto, 2003), 7. For example, see the use of Jan Luyken’s Mennonite martyr prints as images of witches in Arie Zwart and Karel Braun, Heksen, ketters en inquisiteurs: Geloofsvervolging en heksenprocessen door de eeuwen (Haarlem, 1981), 127–8 and 134. See also the National Film Board of Canada’s The Burning Times. Even the scholarly Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (2006) is not immune; in its entry on the Netherlands (3: 811), it mistakenly identifies one of Jan Luykens’s Mennonite martyr images as that of a witch (Ann Hendricks, burned in Amsterdam in 1571). See, for example, Zwart and Braun, Hexen, ketters en inquisiteurs, 136; and Pierre Chaunu, The Reformation (Gloucester, 1989), 115. My thanks to Samme Ziljstra (d. 2001) for bringing the correct attribution to my attention (email correspondence, 2 April 2001), based on information in the Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster. On the role of preachers, see especially Clark, ‘Protestant Demonology.’ Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf, esp. 138. For Venusberg, see ibid., 56–7, 66, 102; for Anabaptists and Venusberg, see Waite, ‘Talking Animals’ and ‘An Artisan’s Worldview?’ 180. Bever (‘Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease’) has suggested that witchcraft may have ‘worked’ on its intended victims by the impact of stress. Roland H. Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty: Nine Biographical Studies (Philadelphia, 1951); George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, MO, 1992). The writings of Sebastian Franck and Sebastian Castellio were translated into Dutch and reprinted several times in the second half of the sixteenth

Notes to page 205

263

century. See, for example, Sebastian Franck’s Van het Rycke Christi ... door den verlichteden ende van Godt-gheleerden Sebastian Franck van Werdt/ Vriendt van Christo/ Beminder sijns Rijcks/ ende Liefhebber der eewigher ende onpartijdigher Waerheyt (Gouda, 1611). On the Collegiants, see Fix, ‘Radical Reformation and Second Reformation in Holland.’

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Index

abortion (abortifacients), 102, 125 Abray, Lorna, 136–7 absolution, 47. See also confession, of sin; extreme unction; penance Achten, Elen, 104 Acken, 45 Adam, 27–9 Adelberg, Abbot of, 247n22 adultery, 58, 114, 140–1, 172, 228n139. See also divorce; marriage; sex Aemszoon, Pieter, 233n23 Afernoch (demon), 54, 194 Agathe, wife of François Tailleur, 101 Agricola, Franciscus, 250n77 air, as devil’s abode, 24 Alber, Matthias, 184 Alberus, Erasmus, 58 Albrecht V of Austria, 168 alchemy, 25, 108 Alewijnsz, Henrick, 24, 28, 30 Alken, 104 Allendorf, 158 Aller, Peter, wife of, 137 All Souls’ Day, 35 Almen, 86 Alpine (Alps), 7, 12–14, 66

Alsace, 141, 188 Alsfeld, 139, 163–4 Althamer, Andreas, 53, 130 altar, 23, 174, 181, 184. See also Mass; sacraments Albrecht of Mainz, 251n93 Alva, Duke of, 106, 112, 119, 244n76 Amon, Hans, 178 Amsterdam, 11, 37, 46, 60, 67–71, 74, 78, 80–4, 122, 226n98, 232n13, 233n21, 262n13; attack on city hall, 71 Anabaptism, 16–17, 61, 63, 79, 85, 99, 132–3, 145–6, 152, 155, 159, 161, 164, 166, 172–4, 188, 190, 192, 197 199, 201, 237n92; Melchiorite, 133–4, 158–9, 201; militant (radical), 77, 85, 87–91, 97, 105, 113, 236n72. See also Anabaptists; Münsterites Anabaptists, 7, 28, 65, 76, 97, 101, 103, 115, 120, 127, 129, 137, 155, 161, 178, 181–2, 189, 213n59, 225n75, 250n77, 251n115, 255n16; and the devil, 25–30, 135–6; and Jews, 168, 175–6; and magic, 143, 165, 184–5; and popular culture,

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22–5, 105; and rebellion, see rebellion; and Waldensians, 16–18; as agents of the devil, 20, 95–6, 99– 100, 179; as children of Israel, 94; as chosen people, 195; as mad, 54; as pious, 149–50, 154, 165, 198, 200, 204; as possessed, 69–71, 73, 116, 159, 181–2, 194, 198; as saints, 30–3, 259n101; as superstitious, 160; children of, 39, 67, 72, 85, 87, 116, 152, 161, 163, 182, 232n13; compared to witches, 4–7, 19, 21–2, 62, 69, 74–8, 80, 91, 102–4, 106, 109, 113–14, 133–4, 139–65, 190–2, 194, 200–5, 231n4; demonization of, 4, 6, 9, 12–13, 16–17, 29–62, 66– 71, 79, 81, 84, 92–3, 97, 100, 102, 112–13, 127, 141, 150, 153–4, 158, 180, 189, 194–205; ideas of, 96; leaders (elders, missionaries), 19, 30, 36–7, 57, 103–4, 151, 163, 171– 2, 174, 179, 184–5, 189–90, 193; nocturnal meetings of, 3, 7, 16–18, 21, 52–3, 67, 91, 135, 138–43, 150, 154, 157–60, 163–5, 170–3, 181, 184, 193–6, 199–201, 203; persecution of, 4–5, 7, 15, 20–1, 29, 36, 38, 42–3, 74–192, 203; ‘Society of,’ 201; Swiss, 46, 171, 209n9; terrorists, 154; women, 16–18, 31, 36, 43–5, 47, 54, 60, 70, 80, 85, 87–9, 109, 120–1, 144, 155, 163, 172, 179–80, 182–4, 190, 192–4, 198, 201, 258n87; writings, 134. See also Anabaptism; baptism; Batenburgers; Davidites; executions; heresy, mandates; Hutterites; Mennonites; Münster, kingdom of; Münsterites; piety; persecution; rebaptism; Swiss Brethren; Waldensians

Andreae, Jakob, 144 angels, 13, 27, 47–8, 57, 150, 156, 163, 165, 242n20; fallen, 25, 29, 135; of light, 51, 72 Anhalt, 57 animals, 55, 155; bellowing like, 153, 252n118; speaking to, 47 Anjou, Duke of, 124 Anna, Countess of East Frisia, 95 Ansbach, 53, 130 Antichrist, 8, 18, 24, 26, 29, 31, 38–9, 50, 94, 109, 137, 151, 221–2nn25, 26; as papacy, 34, 38 anticlericalism, 13, 16, 20, 75; and witch trials, 142, 187; of Anabaptists, 36–9, 43, 52, 60, 141–2, 144, 159, 164, 171, 181, 184, 193, 198, 220n15, 233n25, 250n73 anti-Judaism, 10. See also anti-Semitism; Jews antisacramentalism, 183–4. See also sacramentalism, reality of anti-Semitism, 9–11, 57, 168, 176, 209n6, 252n123. See also Host, desecration of; Jews; Judaising; ritual murder anti-Trinitarian, 46, 141, 156–7. See also Trinity, renunciation of Antwerp, 27–8, 43, 50, 74, 89, 104–5, 109, 111, 117, 119–27 apocalypticism (apocalyptic), 21, 24, 29, 38, 40–1, 49, 61, 69, 99, 199. See also Antichrist; Babylon, whore of; beast, apocalyptic; eschatology; Jesus Christ, return of; Last Days; Last Judgment apostasy, 99. See also baptism, renunciation of; blasphemy; faith, renunciation of; sacrilege apparitions, 48, 68, 101, 143, 159,

Index 162–3, 179. See also dreams; visions Appelman, Cornelis, 89 Aquinas, Thomas, 10 Arents, Joseyne, 114 Aristotle, 10 Arius, 49 Arminians, 95 Arnt from Arcen, 86 Arras, 76 arson, 89, 91, 148, 154 art, 27. See also iconoclasm; images Artzt, Wendel, 135 Assendelft, Gerrit van, 69–71, 77–8, 80, 83, 92, 198 astrologers, 38 atheism, 4, 21, 32, 34–5, 61, 99, 133, 135–6, 200, 204. See also devil, denial of; scepticism Auf dem Ritten, 188 Augsburg, 16, 147, 165, 176, 195–6, 232n1; Reichstag of, 136 Augustin, 179 Augustine, 228n133 Augustinian Order, 107 Austria, 20, 87, 131, 158, 166–96, 203 Ayssesz van Oldeboorn, Reytse, 74 Baal, 88 Babylon, 63; whore of, 31, 107, 179 Backere, Joos de, 113 Bacx, Jan (Baxius), 125 Baden, 140, 251n115 Badenweiler, 140 Bader, Augustin, 57 Baeck, Ghijsbrecht van, 87 Bainton, Roland, 205 Baldung Grien, Hans, 133, 246n11 Bam, Jacoba, 82 Bamberg, 142, 154

293

ban (banning, shunning), 80, 82, 87, 106–8, 110–11, 114–15, 117–18, 124–5; of Mennonites, 51, 60. See also exile banquets, 8, 203. See also sabbat baptism, 17, 20, 23, 25, 37, 39, 42, 52, 57, 72, 94, 109, 142, 164, 166; and Jews, 10, 24, 72, 223n50; and witches, 3, 241n15; as diabolical, 18, 24, 26, 37, 39, 152; as magical, 43–4, 50, 116, 179; believers’ (adult or Anabaptist), 16, 37, 41, 43, 48, 50, 54, 66, 88, 97, 138, 181, 190; books, 57; in devil’s name, 58, 75, 83, 100, 152; infant, 8, 16, 24–6, 28, 38–43, 56, 59, 100, 102, 107, 136, 147, 151–2, 193, 197–8, 223n47, 225n75, 234n46; inner, 155; pledge, 101; of Antichrist, 97; renunciation of, 39, 48, 58, 60, 66–7, 72, 83, 85, 101, 141, 143, 150, 154–5, 161, 163, 166, 175, 193–5, 197, 232n13; second, 101; suspension of, 81; water, 28, 156. See also Anabaptism; Anabaptists, children of; children; rebaptism Baptists, English, 102 Barrefelt, Hendrik Jansen (Hiël), 27, 216n90 Basel, 32, 132, 134, 140, 147; Council of, 9, 13, 210n20 Bastyns, Margriet, 124 Batenburg, Jan van, 88–9, 236n72 Batenburgers, 84, 87–91, 236n72 bathhouse, 201 Bathman, Derick van, 237n92 Baulet, 75 Bauman, Verena, 31 Bavaria, 169, 173, 195 Bazelaere, Jacquemine de, 107

294

Index

beast, apocalyptic, 46, 50, 99, 107 Beaumont, Yda, 123 Beckum, Maria van, 89 beer, 70, 138 Beguines, 12, 201 beheading, 42, 67, 84, 104, 169, 251n115 Behringer, Wolfgang, 12, 165, 188, 195 Bekker, Balthasar, 29 Belgium, 99. See also Netherlands, southern bells, 42, 228–9n141; blessed, 22–4, 26, 86 Berchtolzhofen, 184 Berghe, Godevaert vanden, 49 Bergklooster, 103 Bern, 16, 131 Best, Jonatas, 125 Beuningen, P. Th. van, 46 Beverwijk, 77 bewitchment, 14, 25, 50–3, 109, 125, 133, 178, 183, 186, 227n112. See also magic; maleficium; sorcery; witchcraft Bible (biblical), 18, 40, 54, 56, 153, 193, 198, 201. See also scriptures biblicists, 49 Biererin, Margret, 145 Billerbeck, 89 birth, first, 142; second, 142 bishops, Catholic, 23, 41, 74, 121, 176, 187 Blankenstein, 162 blasphemy (blasphemers), 5–6, 8–9, 11, 19–20, 22, 26, 40, 42, 73, 76–7, 84, 98–9, 103, 114, 126, 128, 141, 143, 146, 150, 155, 165, 170, 172, 195, 223n40, 237–8n93. See also sacrilege

Blesdijk, Nicholaas Meyndertsz van, 94 blessings (blessers), 14, 25, 143, 189 Blokzijl, 83 blood, 9, 26, 49, 53, 63, 68, 126, 168, 173, 223nn48, 50. See also Jesus Christ, blood of; miracles, of blood; wine, consecrated Bloodfriends, 154, 160 bloodshed, 97, 130, 170, 203. See also execution; persecution; torture Bluden, 188 Bodin, Jean, 65, 100, 137 Bohemia, 13, 35 Bonettemaker, Hans, 237–8n93 books, heretical, 47, 108, 184, 189; magical, 124 booksellers, 47 Boosers, Mayken, 234n39 Borgloon, 98, 104, 240n3 Borst, Arno, 12 bottle, magical, 184–5, 259n100. See also magic; mirror; sorcery Bouwens, Leonard, 73 Bozen, 179 Brabant, 79, 98, 105, 117–19, 126, 128; Court of, 117. See also Antwerp; Brussels bread, 24, 40, 42, 44, 68, 107, 138, 149, 174, 177, 179, 252n123, 253n138; consecrated, 22, 59, 63, 100, 102; heavenly, 42, 47; miracles of, 148 Bregenz, 182–3, 188–91, 196 Bremen, 65 Brenz, Johannes, 144–5, 158 Bres, Guy de, 60 Brixen, 171–2, 176, 179–81, 188, 259– 60n108; Bishop of, 177, 255n18

Index Brothers of the Free Spirit, 12 Bruchsal, 135, 140 Bruges, 74, 105–8, 113 Brugge, Bette van, 125 Brugge, Johann van, 32. See also Joris, David. Brussels, 74, 78, 105, 117–19 Bucer, Martin, 134, 159, 239nn112–13 Budingen, 160 Bugenhagen, Johan, 57–8 Bühl, 251n115 Bulcke, Catlyne vanden, 124 Bullinger, Heinrich, 225n75 Bünneren, Christine, 190 burial, alive, 107, 119, 244n76. See also execution burning, of heretics/witches, 19–20, 32, 42, 44, 53–5, 61, 67, 75–7, 80, 82, 84, 86, 90–1, 97–8, 100, 103–4, 106–9, 111–13, 115–19, 121, 124, 126, 131, 137, 148–51, 155, 160, 162, 168–9, 177, 186–8, 193, 200–2, 212nn47, 50, 224n53. See also execution Cabbalah, 9 Caesarius the Maltese (Mirabiliarius), 118 Calvin, John, 36, 46, 49, 61, 93, 132, 230n162, 240n10 Calvinism, 94–6, 165; demonization of, 16, 21, 202. See also Calvinists; Church, Reformed Calvinists, 15–16, 24, 36, 41, 46, 57, 59, 61, 67, 93, 97–9, 101, 105–6, 110, 112, 115–22, 124, 127–30, 136–8, 161–4, 175, 185, 197–9, 223n45, 230n162; and Anabaptists/Mennonites, 59–62, 204–5, 239n112. See also Calvinism; clergy,

295

Reformed; preachers, Reformed; propagandists, Calvinist Camerarius, Joachim, 162 Campen, Jacob van, 68 candles, 23 Canisius, Peter, 124, 137, 146–7, 226n90, 250n77 Cannstatt, 193–4 Canon episcopi, 25 capital punishment, 186. See also death sentences; execution Carion, Johann, 38 Carnival, 233n21 Carolina. See Constitutio Criminalis Carolina Castellio, Sebastian, 262–3n19 catechism, 124 Cathars, 11, 155 Catholics, 16, 61, 119, 124–5, 127, 152–3, 175, 204, 229n158; as minority, 92–6, 134–7. See also Church, Catholic; clergy, Catholic; preachers, Catholic; priests; propagandists, Catholic Catholicism, 126, 129, 136, 145–6, 165, 185, 192. See also Catholics; Church, Catholic Cazelles, Brigitte, 218n108 ceremonies, Catholic, 24, 172; religious, 27, 40–1, 65, 88. See also ritual chalice, 23, 107, 174. See also sacramentals; wine, consecrated Chambers of Rhetoric, 69, 93 charismatic, 18, 24, 30, 36, 40, 66, 198, 201. See also Otherworld; shamanism; visions Charles V, 16, 38, 67, 87, 95, 98, 100, 113–14, 123, 132, 144, 160, 168, 171, 233n25

296

Index

childhood, 83. See also children children (infants), 8, 23, 31, 45, 51, 57, 102, 130, 154–5, 193, 198; abandonment of, 173, 192; diabolical, 101–2, 142; hexing of, 160; in witch trials, 152; murder of, 176, 198; of God, 111; of life, 56; pure, 154, 179; satanic ritual abuse of, 5; sacrificed to devil, 37, 39, 56, 142, 195, 232n15; robbed of their baptism, 147; unbaptized, 23, 25, 41, 67, 72, 102, 142, 163, 165, 195, 198, 223n45, 232n13; unexorcized, 58. See also Anabaptists, children of; baptism, infant; exorcism, baptismal; infanticide chiromancy, 118 chrism, 8, 43, 83, 100 Christendom, 9, 16, 38, 85, 127, 187, 195 Christians, 97, 142, 159, 204 Christoph of Württemberg, Duke, 145–6, 161 chronicles, 42, 104, 132, 147–9 church, 53, 100, 145, apostolic, 28; as whore’s temple, 179; avoidance of, 156; building, 166; Catholic, 18, 34, 39–40, 51, 121, 124, 138, 171, 182– 3, 188; Christian, 179; false, 161; hidden, 95; holy, 49, 83, 88; leaders, 168; of Christ, 141; of devil/ Satan, 52, 56, 63, 107, 141; of God, 162; leaders, 22, 78, 130, 136, 193; Lutheran, 141; membership, 36, 94–5; Netherlandic, 123; public, 95; Reformed (Calvinist), 30–1, 92– 6, 128, 238n105, 239n110; services, 140; true, 141, 159, 161, 199 Circumcellions, 55 Claeszn, Claes, 78

Claeszoon, Andries, 232–3n17 Claeszoon, Uulbe, 232n13 Clark, Stuart, 21, 127–8, 242n27 Clasen, Claus-Peter, 20, 130–2, 139, 255n16 Clerck, Gommaryne de, 125 clergy, 272; Catholic, 13, 17–18, 29, 37, 46, 112, 203; Lutheran, 136, 142, 159–60, 171, 221n17; Protestant, 36–7; Reformed, 60. See also pastors; preachers; priests; propagandists Cleves, Duchy of, 26 climate, 127, 200. See also weather cloisters, 43, 45, 89 Coburg, 157 coffin, 43 Colladon, Germain, 135–6 Collegiants, 29, 205 Cologne, 63, 86 common people, 138, 151, 159, 163, 171, 174, 177, 201. See also culture, popular; simple folk common purse, 144 commonwealth, godly, 128 communion, avoidance of, 153; in both kinds, 185. See also Eucharist; Lord’s Supper community of goods, 42, 141, 160, 169, 175 conciliarists, 9 concubines, 45, 75 confession, of faith, 50, 93, 95, 97; judicial, 9, 14, 16, 18, 175; of Anabaptists, 30, 38, 45, 47, 66–9, 72–4, 80, 87, 89, 103, 130, 143, 154, 169, 174, 177–80, 182, 184, 192, 202–3; of diabolism, 66, 71, 78; of sin (sacramental), 6, 31, 43–4, 47, 67, 100, 170–1, 181–2; of sorcery or witch-

Index craft, 31, 72–3, 80, 112, 117–18, 154; of witches, 15, 83, 86, 88, 130, 136, 143, 146, 149, 181, 187, 198, 202–4, 225n87 confessionalism (confessional orthodoxy), 28, 94, 127, 157–8, 161, 164, 200, 204 conflict, religious, 34, 144, 161, 189 conformity, 8, 22, 30, 128. See also uniformity, religious confusion, 9, 146, 182 conjurations, 121, 124. See also incantations; magic; sorcery Conrad of Marburg, 11, 169 conspiracy, 84, 144, 168; diabolical, 3–6, 8–9, 11, 22, 36, 39, 50, 55, 65– 7, 69, 71, 77–8, 85, 91, 98, 105, 126, 128–9, 147, 149–50, 164, 186, 194– 5, 198–200, 202–5 Constance, 139–40 Constance, Lake, 139 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, 98, 132, 160, 168, 189. See also Charles V conventicles, 34–5, 111, 136, 138, 161, 163, 195, 232–3n17, 250n75. See also Anabaptists, nocturnal meetings of; meetings, clandestine convents, 19 conversion, 93 conversos, 120–1, 200 convulsions, 31 Coops, Anna, 124 Coornhert, Dirk Volkerts, 28, 93, 239n110 Coren, Janneken, 124 Cornelis, Jan Jacob, 114 Cornelisdr, Meijns, 82–3 corpse, 43, 150 Corpus Christi, 11, 169 Costerus, Franciscus, 49–51

297

Council of the States, 78 Council of Troubles, 15, 106 Coune, Jan, 113 counter-magic, 80, 106, 108, 180, 192, 203. See also magic; maleficia; soothsaying; witchcraft Counter-Reformation, 34, 40–1, 49, 67, 98, 100, 153, 168, 172, 188, 202 courts, central, 237n76; ecclesiastical, 123, 147, 190; secular, 15, 55, 66, 66–8, 74, 78, 87, 91, 190. See also confessions; inquisition; judges covenant, baptismal, 156; with Satan, 156, 162 Crato, Adam, 57–8 creation, 27, 29 crimen exceptum, 61, 161, 199 crisis of belief, 175 cross (crucifix), 42, 44, 225n87; miraculous, 14, 168; sign of, 100 crucified, to world, 30 crusades, 11 cry, inability to, 112 crystal, 59, 63; gazers, 160–1 culture, Christian, 10; elite, 9; popular, 5, 9, 22–3, 139, 147, 168, 196, 201, 203, 261n138 cunning men, 14. See also soothsayers Cyprus, 121 Dale, Antonius van, 29 dances (dancing), 17, 57; witch, 7–8, 86, 149–50, 152, 156, 160, 164–5, 187, 196, 199, 203. See also sabbat Darmstadt, 52, 158 David, King, 93–4; third, 105 Davidites (Jorists), 28, 90, 134. See also Joris, David Davis, Natalie Zemon, 35, 127, 211n31

298

Index

dead, 49, 252n116. See also ghosts; revenants; spirits death, 30, 98, 103, 134, 151, 153, 170; eternal, 56; penalty (sentences), 62, 65, 77–8, 80–1, 98, 105–6, 125, 168, 173–4 deicide, 10 Delden, 89 Delft, 46, 92; devil of, 31–2, 204. See also Joris, David demoniacs, 19, 31, 43, 71, 181–2, 186–7, 198 demonologists, 10, 14–15, 35, 102, 123, 198, 203. See also theologians demonology 13, 27, 58, 68; demonological treatises, 9, 36, 100–2 demons, 26, 35, 43, 47–8, 55, 57, 63, 121, 188; expulsion of, 23, 37, 175, 187; lovers, 86, 104, 125–6, 148–9. See also devil; exorcism; spirits, evil Denck, Hans, 17, 39, 204, 222n29 Deutel, Jan Jansz, 29 Deventer, 87–9, 237n83 devil, 4–6, 9, 11, 18, 21, 32, 34, 36–8, 41, 46, 50–8, 60, 68, 71, 83, 99–101, 107, 109, 112, 114, 127, 137–8, 141–3, 149, 153–4, 160, 166, 174, 176, 181, 186, 189, 198–201, 226n101, 251n93; agents of, 113, 137, 195, 200; and miracles, 37; apes, 186; as fallen human nature, 27, 29, 70; covenanters, 143; deceit of, 60, 109, 141; dirt, 160; disbelief in, 21–2, 25–30, 48, 54, 60, 134–6, 200, 204, 214n74; dominion of, 56; eternal, 156; fear of, 22, 56, 129; help of, 78; in league with, 51; mark, 72, 114, 248n28; minions of, 66, 80, 84, 101–2, 106, 153, 190, 199–200, 203–4; name of, 160; of

muteness, 72–3, 234n41; organ of, 155; painted, 121; power of, 41, 57, 80; renunciation of, 51; salvation of, 16–17, 39, 60, 134–5, 156, 166; servants of, 17, 52–3, 179; service of, 153, 178; society of, 160; pawn, 39; warding off, 23; work, 28, 56, 137, 143, 177–9, 228n139; worship of, 6, 8–9, 11–12, 14, 16, 101, 111, 126, 134, 157, 204. See also demons; diabolism; exorcism; Lucifer; pact; possession; rebaptism, diabolical; Satan; witchcraft, demonic Devil books (teufelbücher), 58, 145, 234n41 Dhanens, Anne, 113 diabolism, 13, 38, 78,121, 139, 186, 198. See also devil Dienst, Heide, 187 Dinzelbacher, Peter, 31 Dircxdochter, Lysbet, 71–2 Dircxzn, Willem, 81 Dirksdr, Engel, 80–2 discipline, 36, 60, 93–5, 101, 128, 159, 239n112; ordinance, 139–40 disease, 105, 183. See also illness divination, 25 divorce, 94, 141, 173, 192, 228n139. See also marriage dogmatism, 28 Dominicans, 8 Don, Hans (Dohn, Thon), 155–6 Donatists, 101 Don Juan, 76 Doornick, 234n39 Dordrecht, 24, 27 Dorenbach, 193 Dornin, Ursula, 182–3, 258n89 drama. See plays Dreamers, 53, 153–4

Index dreams, 44, 46, 53, 160, 163. See also apparitions; visions Drenthe, 87 Dreytwein, Dionysius, 147–50, 251n93 drought, 24 drowning, 67, 84–5, 90. See also death sentence; execution dualism, 25 Duifhuis, Hubert, 27 Duke, Alastair, 94 Duncanus, Martin, 40 Dupont-Bouchat, Marie-Sylvie, 76 Dutch Republic, 6, 29, 60, 81, 92, 95– 6, 128, 202–3; and witchcraft, 26. See also Netherlands, northern Dutch Revolt, 93. See also Spain, war against Easter, 149, 163, 170–1 East Frisia, 70, 85, 94–5, 132 Echzell, 160 Eckbolsheim forest, 138 ecstacy (ecstatic), 139, 201. See also shamanism; visions Egle, Hans, 180, 259n101 Egmond, Duke Karel van, 38–9, 86–7, 89, 180 Eichen, Cristoffel von der, 154 Eichstätt, 86 Einsiedeln, 121 Eisenach, 56, 157 Eisenberg, 157 Eisfelde, 158 Elbe River, 168 elect, 55 Elizabeth I of England, 50 Elsa, wife of Joss Wilhelm, 190 Elte, S., 91 Ember Days, 203

299

Emlichheim, children of, 89 enchantment, 34. See also sorcery end of world, 59, 149 England, 21, 50, 132 enlightenment, special, 55; Enlightenment, 29, 217–18n107 Epicureans, 59, 135, 194 epilepsy, 23 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 25, 69, 71, 78, 92, 96 Erfurt, 157 Erhard, Christoffen, 38 eschatology, 36–7. See also Antichrist; apocalypticism; Last Days; Last Judgment Esslingen, 135, 140, 144–9, 153, 193 Etzleben (Saxony), 44 Eucharist, 23, 59, 168, 170, 174, 176, 181–2; devotion of, 10; Lutheran, 18, 37; miracles of, 11, 175; wafer, 177. See also bread; Corpus Christi; Host; Jesus Christ, body of; Lord’s Supper; Mass; Real Presence; sacraments; sacramentals Eve, 27–8 evil, 29, 83, 134, 152 execution, 5, 19–20, 22, 30, 46, 62, 82–3, 85–90, 93, 111, 116, 126, 131, 133, 150, 158–9, 161, 169, 172–4, 184, 188–90, 191–2, 201, 255n16; rates of, 75–91, 97–8, 105–29, 153. See also burial alive; burning; capital punishment; death sentence; drowning; hanging executioner, 104, 111–12, 149, 194. See also execution; prison; strappado; torture exile, 46, 75–6, 82, 85, 88, 142, 160, 193. See also ban exorcism, 7–8, 20, 23, 25, 34, 40–1,

300

Index

49, 69, 80, 99, 125, 134, 137, 175, 180–2, 186–7, 199, 203, 260n110; baptismal, 56–9, 102, 155, 179, 226n90, 230n162; of witches, 86, 104, 186–7. See also baptism, infant; demoniacs; demons, expulsion of; devil; possession, demonic; Satan extreme unction (last rites), 23, 43, 45. See also sacraments Eymeric, Nicolau, 48 Fabri, Johann, 39 Fabricius, Theodor, 158, 253n138 fairies, 195–6 faith, 28, 104, 151, 178, 193; articles of, 156; assertion of, 27; Catholic, 48–9, 99, 179; Christian, 65, 171; renunciation of, 75, 87, 100, 162, 178, 180, 241n15; true, 99, 174, 177 Falkenstein castle, 8, 172 Fall of the Roman Church, The (1556), 59 Family of Love (Familists), 26–7. See also Niclaes, Hendrik famine, 99, 103, 117, 148–9, 151, 153, 170 fanaticism, 53 fasts (fasting), 31 Faust, 137 Fay, Jan de, 114 Feldkirch, 188–9 Ferdinand of Austria, 7–8, 20, 152, 166, 169–74, 176, 178–80, 184–6, 193, 203, 252n117, 255n18, 256n32, 259n101 Ferdinand II of Austria, 185–6 Ferdinand III of Austria, 186 fetus, 57. See also children; exorcism, baptismal; women, pregnant Fincel, Job, 59

fingernail, 59, 63 Fischart, Johann, 137 Fix, Andrew, 29 Flaas, 258n74 Flanders, 97–8, 105–17, 128 Fleims, 188 flesh, 27, 156, 174; inner, 71; mortification of, 70 flight, of witches, 3, 8, 51, 101, 195, 204 floods, 148 food, 100, 139, 179, 182 Formula of Concord, 161 Fourth Lateran Council, 10 France, 12, 14–15, 19, 63, 132, 137–8, 199–200, 229n158 Franciscans, 80 Franck, Sebastian, 222n29, 262–3n19 Franconia, 153–4, 169, 201–2 Frauenberg, 149 freedom, Christian, 175, 199; of faith, 46, 93, 95, 185. See also tolerance Freiburg im Breisgau, 141 Freundsberg, 180 Friday, 44 Fridrich, Cunrad, 44 Friedmann, Robert, 172 Friesland, 45–6, 74, 84–5; Court of, 72, 84–5, 232nn13, 17 Frijhoff, Willem, 38, 93 Fuggers, 147 Fulda, 154 Fulda, Abbot Johannes von, 17 Füssel, Ronald, 157 Gaeledochter, Claesken, 72 Gaismaier, Michael, 170, 175 galleys, 172–3 Gallicanism, 35 Gascon, Jan, 125

Index Gasser, Hans, 175 Gasser, Jacob, 174–7 Geertruyt ‘Non Facis the Old,’ 103–4 Geertszn, Jan, 73 Geldenaken, 240n3 Gellerthin, Agnes, 259n101 Gemünden, 158 gender, 36, 192–3, 201 Geneva, 62, 99, 128, 135–6 Georg I of Hesse-Darmstadt, 161–2 Georgenthal, 157 Gepingen, 149 Germany, 35, 201; Lutheran, 59, 74, 140; northern, 18, 57; southern, 7, 18, 139, 152; witch trials in, 21. See also Holy Roman Empire; witchhunts Gertrud, widow of Marx Ziegler, 193 Gerytsdr, Hessel, 80, 82 Ghent, 20, 74, 109–15; uprising in, 113–14; virgin of, 242n20 ghosts, 35. See also dead Ghyselins, Lievine, 111 Gideon, 93 Ginzburg, Carlo, 155 gipsies, 153 Glaesmaker, Willem, 237n90 Glock, Paul, 141–2, 150–1 God, 13, 29, 37, 42–3, 47, 51, 54–5, 68–9, 73, 99, 102, 107, 109, 130, 134, 137–8, 151, 153–4, 156, 166, 172, 177, 180–1, 194; blessing of, 83; enemies of, 76, evil, 155; fear of, 129; fertility, 212n50; garden of, 164; name of, 26, 55, 86, 155, 170; people of, 30; power of, 135; punishment of, 125, 129, 148–9, 151, 153, 174, 189, 202; renunciation of, 100; Son of, 31, 70, 154; union with, 27; voice of, 53; wrath

301

(anger), of, 4–6, 9, 19, 21, 41, 45–6, 53, 97, 103, 113–14, 126–7, 130, 132, 149–50, 162, 170, 189–90, 195, 199, 203, 224–5n73. See also Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ godless, 70, 128, 134, 140–1, 144, 150–1, 154 godliness, feigned, 205. See also Anabaptists, as pious; piety godparents, 28, 51, 100, 152 gold, 70 good people (benandanti), 47, 195–6, 203 gospel(s), 52, 144, 172; false, 49 Gotha, 156–7 Götz, Ursula, 86 Gouda, 27 Goudanus, Father, 125–6 government, 53, 60, 85, 120–1, 124, 128, 131, 135, 140, 143–5, 163, 171, 186, 190, 195, 197, 203, 228n130; as diabolical, 109, 155; Spanish, 81. See also magistrates grace, 124; divine, 149, 170; period of, 39 Graf, Michael, Archbishop, 173 Granaint, Joanna, 101 Gregory, Brad S., 105–6, 232n12 Gregory IX, Pope, 11, 48 Grez, 240n3 Gries, 179, 188 Grison, 186 Groessen, 25 Groningen, 39, 67, 74, 87; Ommelanden, 85 Großendorf, 160 Guazzo, Francesco Maria, 100–1, 242n20 Guelders, Duchy of, 38, 50–1, 84–7, 89

302

Index

Guelders, Karel van, 39, 70, 87 Guffidaun, 177–8 Güglingen, 145 Gulik, 86 Haarlem, 29 Habsburgs, 7, 20, 22, 60, 80, 83, 87, 93–5, 97, 105 , 127, 129, 152, 165– 6, 169, 171, 174, 178, 188, 202. See also Charles V; Ferdinand of Austria; Philip II Haemstede, Adriaen van, 95 Hagenau, Ott von, 134 Hague, The, 69, 73, 80, 82, 89 hailstorms, 3, 9, 37, 132, 145–9, 151, 153, 196, 199, 203. See also climate; magic, weather; storms; water, beating; weather Haitersheim, 140 Hall, 255n20 hallucination, 25. See also apparitions; visions Hamme, Tanneken van, 123 Hammelarts, Peter, 103–4 hanging, 109 Harderwijk, 80 Harmansdr, Volckgen, 82–3 Hartisch, Dietrich von, 169 Hasselt, 42, 87, 103 Hatzbach, 163 healing, powers, 23, 125 heathen, 58, 107, 149, 160, 166, 234n46 heaven, 24, 30, 50, 155; visits to, 54, 69. See also Otherworld Hecht, Linda Huebert, 192 Hedio, Caspar, 134 Heidelberg, 142–3 Heilbronn, 130, 145 Heinbach, 152

Helftenstein, 149 Helfenstein, Count Sebastian van, 145 Helfenstein, Count Ulrich van, 3, 7, 145–7 hell, 17, 25, 27, 49, 61, 70, 105–6, 134, 145; visions of or visits to, 46, 69. See also demons; devil; Otherworld Heller, Henry, 200 Hellmonsödt, 186 Hellrügel, Ursual (Hellrigel), 193 Hendricks, Ann, 262n13 Henneberg, Count Wilhelm von, 17, 141 Herberts, Herman, 27 heresy, 43, 46–7, 49, 55–6, 67, 78, 94, 100, 105–6, 112, 123, 128, 130–2, 143, 151, 170, 172, 178, 182–3, 187, 200, 202; and witchcraft, 4, 19, 51, 85, 99–101, 126–9, 200–1, 242n20; mandates (edicts), 16, 38–9, 45, 67, 80, 87, 95, 125, 132, 141, 143, 160– 1, 170–3, 183, 202, 249n57; medieval, 8, 39; people’s, 171; persecution of, 4–6, 14, 16, 74, 98, 115, 117, 120–3; trials, 32, 63, 76, 81, 99, 133, 170; secularization of, 20, 63, 65, 199. See also Anabaptism; Cathars; conspiracy; Waldensians; witchcraft heretics, 9, 11–12, 15, 44, 81, 99, 106, 111, 113, 118, 146, 153; and magic, 241n10; and witches, 35, 77; relapsed, 176. See also Anabaptists; Cathars; Luciferans; Waldensians; witches Hersfeld, 18, 37 Herwerden, Jacob van, 88 Hesse, 133, 139, 158–66, 202 Het Offer des Heeren, 30, 66, 71–4, 112, 116

Index Heynricxz, Heynrick, 69–71 Hochberg, 140 hocus pocus, 24, 179. See also magic, religious; sorcery Hoecke, Leysken vande, 118 Hoffman, Melchior, 18, 60, 69, 79, 81, 133–4, 239n118 Hohenwittlingen Castle, 141–2, 150 holiness, 27, 30, 51; false, 55, 143. See also godliness; piety; sainthood Holland, 20, 32, 40, 43, 45–6, 74, 77– 84, 92, 126, 128; Court of, 46, 69, 78, 80, 84; States of, 60 Holleslooten, Marie, 82 holy ground, 32 holy objects, 99. See also sacramentals; sacred holy oil, 23, 28, 88, 100, 221n18 holy orders, 23, 98. See also priests Holy Place (Amsterdam), 37, 69, 233n25 Holy Roman Empire, 6, 14, 20, 38, 50, 62–3, 129–31, 136, 138–9, 153, 157, 192–3, 221n17. See also Germany; witch-hunts Holy Spirit, 27, 32, 37, 70, 86, 141, 153, 155, 160. See also God homosexuality, 19. See also sodomites Homperlepomp, 103–4 Hondschoote, 97 Hoogstraten, Count van, 67 Hoorn, 29 Horb, 152 Hosden, Charles de, 75 hospital, 54, 159 Host, 10–11, 22, 24, 40, 42, 73, 166, 183, 227n110; bleeding, 14, 176; consumed by worms, 166; desecration of, 11 (Jews), 20, 35, 37, 68, 75, 88, 130, 168–9, 174–7, 187, 192,

303

221n18, 226n94, 251n92, 252n123, 256nn46, 50; elevation of, 48; inability to swallow, 181–2; incombustible, 23, 68; miracles of, 43–5, 49, 168–9, 175, 199, 224n56. See also bread, consecrated; Corpus Christi; Eucharist; Jesus Christ, body of; Lord’s Supper; Real Presence; Sacrament; Sacramentalism, reality of; Sacramentals Hottmann, Hans, 247 Hubmaier, Balthasar, 57 Huebver, Wolff, 173 Hügelheim, 140 Huguenot, 35, 136, 138, 229n158. See also Protestants, French Hulsternesse, Cathelyne, 118 humanists (humanism), 25–6, 70, 198, 213n59 Hune, Gaspar, 160 Hussites, 35, 168 Hut, Hans, 16–18, 155 Hutter, Jacob, 166, 176–8, 181 Hutter, Katharina, 166, 258n74 Hutterites, 37–8, 56, 132, 139, 141, 150–1, 160, 163, 172, 183, 195, 247n22, 255n16 iconoclasm, 42, 98–9, 103, 106, 225n87 iconoclastic fury (riots), 46, 81, 97, 109, 120. See also iconoclasm iconoclasts, 106, 108, 110–11, 113, 115, 117–18, 120, 122, 175. See also iconoclasm; iconoclastic fury idol, 177, 179, 181 idolatry, 99, 107, 111, 136, 143, 146. See also iconoclasm; idol IJsselstein, 87 illness, 102–3; mental, 31. See also disease; madness

304

Index

illusions, satantic, 52. See also apparitions; hallucination; visions images, as idolatrous, 24, 40; bleeding, 168; desecration of, 175; of Mennonites, 200–1, 262n13; of saints, 33, 44, 51, 100; of witches, 200–1; speaking, 50; woodcut, 100. See also art; iconoclasm; idolatry Immenhausen, 160 imprisonment. See prisons incantations, 78. See also conjurations; magic; sorcery incarnation, 94. See also Jesus Christ incest, 19, 34, 138. See also sex, perverse India, 49 indulgences, 25 infanticide, 19, 39, 58, 150, 176, 261n132; spiritual, 195 Innsbruck, 173, 176, 178, 182–4, 188– 9, 193, 196, 255n18, 257n68 inquisitors, inquisition, 4, 7–9, 11–15, 19, 45–6, 48, 72–3, 78, 109, 119–20, 123, 166, 168, 194, 196, 198, 203; as diabolical, 112; formularies, 56; Spanish, 42, 46, 67, 200, 233n22 insurrection, 38, 67, 88–9, 131–2, 204–5. See also rebellion; sedition interrogations. See confession intolerance, 28, 34, 65. See also tolerance invisibility, 48 Islam, 52. See also Muhammad; Turks Israel, new, 93 Jacques (Mennonite in Leeuwarden), 73 Jansdr, Anna, 82 Jansdr, Fye, 82 Jansdr, Gysbertgen, 82

Jansz, Willem, 83 Japan, 49 Jena, 157 Jesuits, 32, 34–5, 47, 49, 68, 124, 134, 137, 141, 146, 172, 182, 187, 190, 251n115, 260n110 Jesus Christ, 10, 22, 24, 31, 48, 52, 58– 9, 63, 73, 137, 145, 148, 155, 169, 186, 256n46; blood of, 88, 107, 177, 182–3, 234n46; body of, 88, 102–3, 107, 177, 181–4, 234n46; family of, 101; heavenly flesh of, 40, 60; passion of, 86, 156; return of, 154 Jews, 9–11, 15, 23, 41, 53–4, 56–8, 68, 95, 114, 121–2, 128, 130, 134, 141, 148, 160, 166–7, 175–6, 187, 200, 209n6, 221–2n25, 223n48, 247n17, 251n92, 252n123, 254n164, 256n50, 257n55, 261n2 Joan of Arc, 201, 212n50 Jobin, Bernard, 137 John William, Duke of Cleves and Jülich, 241n17 Joris, David, 18–19, 21–2, 26–32, 47– 9, 54, 60, 87, 89–90, 94–5, 119, 124, 132, 134, 136, 147–8, 201, 204, 237n83, 247n17, 250nn77, 90, 252n132; corpse of, 32, 148. See also Davidites Joyous Entry, 124 judgment, divine, 43. See also God, punishment of; Last Judgment judges (jurists), 24, 26, 36, 66, 76, 78, 80, 85, 88, 92, 98, 102, 126, 135, 137, 156, 162, 173–4, 176, 179–80, 184, 186, 194, 198, 201–2; 217n103, 257n68. See also courts; inquisitors Judaising, 120. See also conversos; Jews Kampen, 86–8

Index Kaplan, Benjamin J., 5, 92–3 Karlstadt, Andreas, 58 Kärnten, 190 Kassel, 161, 163 Katzenbühl fortress, 144 Katzenellenbogen, 160 Kaysersberg, Geiler von, 133 Keerselaers, Peter, 45 Keltzin, Magdalena, 184 Kershof, Cornelis int, 70 Khlesl, Melchior, 187 Kieckhefer, Richard, 31 kingdom, of the devil, 24, 56–7, 150; of God, 89, 128, 145, 150; of heaven, 114 Kint, Joos, 116 Kinzigtal, 193 kiss, diabolical or obscene, 48. See also devil, worship of Kistemaker, Antonis, 70 Kitzbühel, 169 Klassen, Richard, 208n6 Klausen, 258n74 Knights Templar, 261n2 Kooi, Christine, 92 Kortrijk, 74, 105, 115–17, 121, 127 Krafft, Adam, 53–4, 159 Krain, 190 Kramer, Heinrich (Institoris), 13–15, 25, 42, 133, 176, 187–8, 234n46, 241n15, 246n2, 260n111. See also Malleus Maleficarum Kremer, Johan Tant, 88 Krug, Hans, 154 Kuchenbecker, Hans Pauli, 163 Kunigl, Caspar, 255n20 Kuringen, 42, 45, 103–4, 224n53 Lambert, Malcolm, 11 Landenbach, 159

305

Langmuir, Gavin, 10, 15 languages, foreign, 50 Lanzensteil, Leonard, 151 Lasco, Johannes à, 94–5, 239n112 Last Days (times), 21, 52, 141–2. See also apocalyptic Last Judgment (Judgment Day), 30, 48, 149, 199. See also God, punishment of Laudegg, 256n32 laws, godly, 199; of creation or nature, 25, 29. See also heresy mandates Leeuwarden, 41, 71, 73–4 Leiden, 78, 89 Leiden, Jan van, 45 Leignitz, 153 Leipzig, 162 Lent, 133, 170, 174, 181, 255n18 lepers, 261n2 lese majestatis. See treason Levack, Brian P., 63 levitation, 31, 47–8 Leyen, David van der, 111–12 libertines, 27, 34, 61, 132. See also Nicodemites; spiritualists Liechtenstein, Walter, 152 Liège, bishopric of, 42, 45, 104–5 Lier, 119, 122, 124 Lier, Cornelis van, 134 Limburg, 103 Lindau, 188–9 literacy, 193; magical, 43–4, 47, 49–50, 72, 184, 194, 201 literalism, 28 literature, popular, 36 livestock, destruction of, 89, 91 London, 125 Loos, Cornelius, 50–1, 98, 187, 226n101 Lorch, 142

306

Index

Lord’s Prayer, 163. See also prayer Lord’s Supper, 24, 71, 74, 94, 142, 156, 159, 164. See also communion; Eucharist; Host; Mass; sacrament Lorraine, 101 Loserth, R.F., 189 Louvain, University of, 41, 45, 123, 127 love, brotherly, 58, 148 Low Countries, 18, 20, 46, 63, 67, 93, 119, 121, 131, 201; French-speaking, 60. See also Netherlands Loyists, 104–5, 119, 121–2, 245n84 Lubbertsdr, Femme, 82 Lubelei, Johan, 237n90 Lucifer, 12, 28, 39–40, 204. See also angel, of light; devil; Satan Luciferans, 11, 39, 133. See also Conrad of Marburg; heretics Luckner, Valentin, 179 Ludwig, Claus, 154 Ludwig IV, of Hesse-Marburg, 161–4 Lüneburg, 55 Lüsen, 181 Luther, Martin, 18, 25, 34, 37, 41, 46, 49, 52, 57–8, 158, 174, 221–2n25, 227n113, 260n110 Lutherans, 16, 37–8, 42–4, 54, 76–7, 94–5, 99, 103, 105, 108–10, 113, 117–22, 127, 130, 141, 144, 146, 150–1, 154, 161–5, 185, 187–8, 192–3. See also church, Lutheran; clergy, Lutheran; pastors; propagandists, Lutheran Luyken, Jan, 262n13 lying-in maids, 142, 232n15 lynching, 82, 186 Maastricht, 43, 47, 103–4

madness, 54, 219n119. See also illness, mental; possession, demonic Magdeburg, 57 magic, 5–8, 19, 32, 36, 56, 121–2, 137, 185, 196; beliefs, 175; black, 38, 57; clerical, 38, 51, 221n17; demonic, 3, 34–5, 47, 65, 99, 112, 145; evil, 99, 199; harmful, 161; illicit, 11–12, 116, 121–2, 124, 132, 160; love, 106, 125; potions, 185; powers, 160; protective (white), 14; religious, 13, 18, 25–6, 57, 59, 68, 98, 101, 151, 183; ritual, 106–8; spells, 180; weather, 24, 147, 149–50, 157, 165, 187; and women, 13; writings on, 29 . See also books, magic; maleficia; necromancy; sorcery; witchcraft; women, and magic magicians, 9, 11, 46–8, 59, 99, 112, 114, 117, 143. See also soothsayers; sorcerers magistrates, 6, 31, 36, 45–6, 62, 65–6, 69, 80–1, 86–8, 91–2, 95, 98, 111, 116–17, 119–20, 124–7, 129, 135–8, 144, 172–3, 180, 183, 198, 200, 202, 255n18 Maldonat, Jean, 35 maleficia, maleficium, 7, 9, 14, 75, 78, 80, 84, 98–9, 106, 121, 135, 143, 149. See also magic; witchcraft malefitz (criminal law), 178–80, 257n68 Malleus Maleficarum, 13, 15, 65, 67, 133, 176, 195, 232n15. See also Kramer, Heinrich mandates, sorcery, 161–2. See also heresy, mandates Mändl, Hanns, 175 Manichean, 155–6 Mank, 186–7

Index Maranos, 120 Marbach, Johann, 137, 141 Marburg, 18, 159, 161–4, 190; Disputation, 159; Synod of, 162, 164; University of, 159–61 Margaret of Parma, 45 Margarete, wife of Brodt Hansen, 160 Maria Theresa, Empress, 261n138 Marnef, Guido, 120 Marnix van Saint Aldegonde, Philip, 61 marriage (matrimony), 51, 53, 55, 155, 230n162; breaking of, 36, 142; impeding of, 37. See also divorce Martelli, Artus, 124 martyrdom, 30, 33, 54, 113, 170, 172, 177 martyrs, 20, 30, 66, 71, 97, 105, 112, 192, 232n12, 262n13. See also Het Offer des Heeren Mary, Virgin, 42, 44, 86, 100, 114, 127, 141, 180, 209n6, 224n65, 226n90, 237–8n93, 240–1n5; brotherhoods, 49; shrines, 141. See also saints Mass, 10, 23, 32, 42, 45–6, 48, 67, 88, 92, 102, 137, 166, 171, 174, 176–7, 179, 182, 184, 234n46 Matthew, gospel of, 33, 48 Matthijs, Jan, 51, 69, 81 Mauchen, 140 Maurus, Nikolaus, 52, 158 Maximilian II, of Austria, 174, 185–6 Mayes, David, 161, 163 meal, communal, 138–9 meat, eating of, 43–4 medicine, 26; doctor of, 56. See also physician melancholy (melancholic), 25–6, 53–4, 57, 182–3, 194

307

Melanchthon, Philip, 53, 55, 71, 159 meetings, clandestine, 34, 189. See also Anabaptists, nocturnal meetings of; conventicles; sabbat Menius, Justus, 56–7, 61 Mennonites, 20, 24–5, 28–30, 36, 38, 41, 45, 49, 51, 59–62, 76, 83, 85, 94–6, 100, 114, 116–17, 127–8, 132, 195, 197, 200–1, 203, 223n40; execution of, 81–90, 97, 105–20; factions of, 94; leaders, 50, 73, 83, 192; meetings, 50, 61, 83; toleration of, 84, 93–6, 113, 204–5; Waterlander, 28, 201; women, 85, 201; writings, 74. See also Anabaptists Menno Simons, 26–8, 30, 50, 60–2, 67, 73, 95 mental world, 22 Meran, 188 mercenaries (landsknechts), 85, 142, 173 Mergentaler, Katharina, 193 Mettenheim, 140 Michielsz, Jeronimus, 123–4 Micron, Martin, 61–3, 94 Midelfort, H.C. Erik, 54, 59, 135, 146–7, 194 midwives, 41, 67, 232n15, 234n46 milk, bewitchment of, 38 ministers, Dutch Reformed, 95; of Satan, 145. See also preachers, Reformed miracles, 16, 24, 34, 37, 42–6, 51–2, 68, 104, 134, 148, 174, 176–7, 224n65; and Catholics, 41, 56, 141; of Anabaptists, 40, 48, 50, 60, 103, 174, 184, 199, 226n98; of blood, 168, 254n6; of Lutherans, 137; of saints, 18, 49

308

Index

mirror, 59, 63 misogyny, 70, 192, 246n2 Moded, Hermannus, 60 Möllen, Anna, 193 Mölten, 257n68 Monick, Jan de, 221n18 monks, 24, 86, 109, 126, 180, 201 monstrance, 68, 168. See also Host monstrous, 84, 127; births, 59 Montenaeken, 103 Monter, E. William, xiii, 12, 19, 63, 65, 136, 170, 195, 248n28, 261n132 Moore, R.I., 8 Moravia, 38, 56, 132, 151, 171–2, 176, 184, 189–90, 202, 252n117 Moritz V of Hesse-Kassel, 161 Moser, Jakob, 258n74 Moses, 109 mountains, meetings on, 18, 156, 177–8, 181. See also Anabaptists, nocturnal meetings of; dances; sabbat Muhammad, 49. See also Islam Mühlhausen, 143, 154, 156–7 Mulbrun, 149 Münster, 236n72; Anabaptist, 18, 21– 2, 24, 40–2, 45, 52–3, 55–6, 61, 67– 8, 70–1, 79, 81, 87–9, 103, 163, 172–3, 197, 227n113, 232–3n17. See also Anabaptism, militant; Batenburgers; Münsterite Münsterite(s), 38, 48, 50, 80, 8, 103, 141, 143–4, 147, 159, 204. See also Anabaptism, militant; Batenburgers; Münster Munters, Christiaan, 42–8, 61, 103–5, 199 Munters, Joris, 42–4, 224n53 Munters, Marsilius, 224n53 Müntzer, Thomas, 46

murder, 19, 53, 55, 147–8, 154; benches, 65; of souls, 39, 46 Murray, Margaret, 212n50 Muslims, 134. See also Islam; Muhammad; Turks mysticism (mystical), 16, 155. See also shamanism naaktloopers (naked runners), 46, 60, 69–71, 77–8, 80, 153, 192. See also nudity name, new, 43, 100 Namur, 74–9, 98, 128 Naogeorgus, Thomas (Kirchmeyer), 146 Nassau, Count of, 160 necromancy, 11, 108, 125, 140, 143. See also magic; sorcery; priests, as sorcerers news sheets, 52, 137, 148 Netherlands, 25, 28, 40, 64, 66, 79– 80, 127–8, 132, 166, 171, 204–5; eastern, 38, 86–91; northern, 7, 13, 22, 38, 61, 63–97, 123; southern, 7, 20, 49, 61, 74–7, 97–129, 192, 201 Neustadt, 140 New Brandenburg, 58 New World, 35, 128, 245–6n101 Niclaes, Hendrik, 22, 26–8, 60, 132, 216n90. See also Family of Love Nicodemites, 34–5, 132, 163, 220n5. See also Davidites; libertines; spiritualists. Nicolai, Gerardus, 70–1 Nidda, 160 Niddanius, Johannes Pistorius, 161 Niederdorla, 154, 157 Nijmegen, 86 Nissen, Peter, 39–40

Index nobles, 87, 154, 185, 259n102 Nolte, Tileman, 163–4 Nordhausen, 157 Nördlingen, 227n110 Normandy, 24 Norwich, 10 nudity (nakedness), 31, 46–7, 60, 69, 72, 86, 153–4, 201. See also naaktloopers oaths, 48, 94–5, 114, 156, 197, 223n42; of peace (Urfehde), 177–8, 184, 188. See also swearing Oberstdorf, 196 obscene kiss, 12 occultists, 49. See also sorcerers Oecolampadius, 52 Offenhauser, Erasm, 184–5 Oldeklooster, 84 Onbaert, Katelyne, 107 Oosterhout, 240n3 ordinances. See mandates orgies, sexual, 8, 12, 35, 154, 195. See also nudity; sex Origen, 222n29 Ort, Thomas am, 184 orthodoxy, 117 Ostheim, 23 ‘Other,’ 137, 204 Otherworld, 12, 16–18, 31, 54, 66, 133, 196, 198. See also charismatic; good people; heaven, visits to; hell, visits to; shamanism Ötisheim, 139 Ötthein, 141 Oudenaarde, 105 Oudenburg, 240n3 Ouerdamme, Hans van, 109 Overijssel, 74, 87, 89 Oyer, John S., 35–6, 150, 152

309

pacifism, 21, 112 Packull, Werner O., 38, 170, 181 pact, 252n117; demonic, 8, 38, 48, 70, 80, 100, 108, 126, 134, 149, 153, 161, 182, 187–8, 248–9n47, 259nn100, 108. See also conspiracy; devil; plots; sabbat; Satan; witchcraft, demonic Paens, Kateline, 114 Palatinate, 141 Palingh, Abraham, 29 Palm Sunday, 177 pamphlets, 38, 58, 61, 132, 138, 157, 199. See also propaganda papacy, 58 papists, 37, 53–4, 141, 154, 159 Paracelsus, 54–5, 194, 228n127 Paris, 35 Parlement, 19 pastors, 39, 45, 47, 53, 55, 57, 59, 104, 126, 130, 134–5, 138–42, 144, 146, 152–3, 155, 158, 161–5, 173, 187, 193, 252n126; as full of demons, 179. See also clergy; ministers; priests; theologians Paternoster, 104, 155 Patzer, Jacob, 174 Paul, apostle, 60 peace, religious, 124, 202 Pearl, Jonathan, 35, 199 Peasants’ War, 20, 63, 170, 175, 185, 197, 199 penance (penitential), 43, 104, 119, 170, 176–7, 181, 184. See also confession, of sin Perckhmüller, Andre, 184–5 persecution, 6–7, 11, 15, 30, 34, 61, 65, 67, 89, 94, 98, 116, 138, 142, 151, 157, 161, 169–86, 189, 193, 195; apocalyptic, 154; mania, 91;

310

Index

patterns of, 74–91, 105–29, 134, 144–65, 171–4, 187, 190–2, 199– 200. See also Anabaptists, persecution of; executions Persijn, Hippolytus, 84 pestilence, 103–4, 132 Petri van Brouwershaven, Cunerus, 41–2, 51 Pfalz, 140 Pfersfelder, George Gross, 154 Pflüger, Anshelm, 153 Philip II of Spain, 41, 45–6, 85, 97–8, 106, 121, 123–5, 129 Philipp of Hesse, 53, 144, 158–61, 165, 202 Philipp II of Hesse-Rheinfels, 161 physicians, 26, 29, 57, 65. See also medicine, doctor of; Weyer, Johann Pien, Lieven, 114 Pietersdr, Jannetgent, 82 Pietersdr, Lubburch, 77, 235n60 Pietersdr, Lysbeth, 82 Pieterssen, Cornelis, 226n98 Pieterszoon, Adriaen ‘the One-eyed,’ 37, 68 Pieterszoon, Pieter, 232n13 Pietersz vander Moelen, Jacob, 51 piety, 11–12, 18, 28, 30, 36, 60, 96, 105, 142, 147, 149; and witchcraft, 32–3. See also Anabaptists, as pious; godliness; sainthood; saints; sanctity pilgrimage, 11, 25, 57, 69, 117, 119, 121–2, 168, 188 placards, 45. See also heresy, mandates plague, 54, 99, 104, 114, 127–8, 170; of Egypt, 151. See also disease; God, punishment of; illness Plainacher, Elsa, 186–7 Plantijn, Christophe, 27

Platzer, Melchior, 189–90 plays, 40, 69, 114, 199 plots, 87, 197, 200; diabolical, 16, 53, 66, 129, 132. See also conspiracy pluralism, religious, 127. See also freedom, of religion; tolerance poisoning, 19 polemicists, 39–40, 49, 51, 93. See also propagandists; rhetoric pollution, 126. See also sin polygamy, 52, 192. See also marriage; sex Pomponazzi, Pietro, 214n74 Ponzinibio, Gianfrancisco, 242n27 popes, 8–9, 11, 38, 44, 174. See also Antichrist, as pope; papists Portant, Jan, 125 possession, demonic, 26, 31, 50–1, 53, 57–9, 69–70, 73–4, 78, 139, 180–2, 194, 219n119, 229n158, 233n30, 248–9n47, 252n118; of children, 155; of orphanages, 82; spiritual, 52, 54, 159. See also baptism; children; exorcism; demons Postel, Guillaume, 247n17 potions, 58. See also magic powders, demonic or magical, 75. See also magic; sorcery Praet, Claes de, 109, 112 Praittenberg, 178 Prättigau, 186 prayer, 32, 41–2, 99, 138, 155, 170, 181; to devil, 88. See also Lord’s Prayer preachers, 4, 6, 11, 13–14, 32, 66, 132, 137, 159, 176, 189, 193, 195–6, 203, 210n23; Anabaptist, 183; calling of, 94; corner, 145, 193; false, 39, 89; hedge, 142; Lutheran, 18, 37, 56, 62, 124, 144–5; Melchiorite, 40;

Index Reformed (Calvinist), 27, 29, 70, 94, 133–4, 224–5n73; women, 192– 3. See also clergy; pastors; priests; sermons preaching, 53, 142. See also preachers; sermons predestination, 46 prejudice, 6. See also intolerance preternatural beliefs, 5, 14, 20, 33, 151–2, 195, 197–8, 212n47. See also culture, popular; magic Prew, Adam, 178–9 priests, Catholic, 22–3, 32, 36, 43–5, 48–9, 57, 59, 68, 76, 88, 99, 105, 111, 125, 166, 171, 173–4, 177, 183–4, 189, 201, 256n45; as accused witches, 24, 37, 46, 75; as diabolical, 142, 171, 179; as sorcerers, 34, 73, 116, 134, 151, 199, 253n138; as spies, 170; false, 151; immorality of, 172; in witch trials, 86, 142. See also anticlericalism; clergy; monks; pastors; preachers printers, 27, 29 printing press, 14–15, 136–7 prison (imprisonment, jail, prisoners), 38, 66, 74, 81, 88, 93, 103–4, 109, 111, 113, 115, 122–5, 133, 142, 147, 150–1, 176–8, 180–1, 193, 198, 202, 257n68. See also torture processions, 103–4, 127 prodigy literature, 59 professors, 26 prognostications, 118, 133, 135 propaganda, 9, 11, 16, 36, 42, 44, 78, 84–5, 94, 96, 133–4, 170, 187, 189, 195–6, 203, 229n158. See also pamphlets; propagandists; rhetoric propagandists, 20, 35, 38, 198; Anabaptist, 93, 159; Calvinist, 59–62,

311

93–6; Catholic, 39–51, 61–2, 66, 93, 199; Lutheran, 52–9, 61–2, 66, 93, 199. See also polemicists; preachers; propaganda prophets, 17, 30, 69, 81, 147–8, 192; false, 39, 52, 99, 111, 158 Protestants, 15, 39, 46, 51, 105, 123–7, 131, 146, 153, 169, 185, 187, 194, 204; as diabolical, 34–5, 199; French, 19, 35, 211n31. See also Calvinists; Lutherans Proverbs, 227n109 providentialists, 25–6 Pruistinck, Loy de, 104–5. See also Loyists Prutenus, Nicholas, 182 Puchls, Margreth, 177–8 pulpit, 55. See also preachers; sermons Purchner, Andreas, 174 pure blood laws, 42, 200. See also conversos; inquisition, Spanish; Judaising purification, 137; ritual, 19 Putte, Reynier vanden, 40 Quakers, 260n125 quicksilver, 48 Raidt, Balthasar, 18 Raiffer, Hans, 160 Raiffer-Schmidt, Leonhard, 180 ram, 56 Rattenberg, 180 Real Presence, 11, 44, 52, 73, 88, 95, 143, 166, 183. See also Eucharist; Host; Jesus Christ, body of; Lord’s Supper reason, 40 rebaptism, 20, 42–5, 55, 67, 72, 76–7, 80, 83, 87, 100–2, 111, 116, 130,

312

Index

139, 160, 164, 173–4, 182, 194, 198, 203, 232–3n17, 235n60, 240n13; diabolical, 1–2, 48, 75, 152, 156, 160, 241n15, 242n27; of witches, 100–1, 165, 198. See also baptism; sabbat rebellion, 56, 114, 116, 141, 169–73, 176, 257n53. See also insurrection; Peasants’ War; revolt; sedition recantations, 38, 45, 88, 104, 116, 119, 151–2, 154, 172–3, 179, 181, 183–4, 186, 189, 193, 198, 201, 226n98, 237–8n93, 259n96. See also confessions, of Anabaptists re-Catholicization, 185 Reformation, 6, 34, 41, 75, 114, 120, 145–6, 156, 192, 212n46; eve of, 22, 24, 86, 176; Ordinances, 161; Radical, 205 Reformed. See Calvinist; preachers, Reformed Regensburg, 130; shrine, 56–7 regents, Dutch, 62, 91–2. See also government; magistrates Reichart, Wolfgang, 57 relics, 14, 18, 23, 32–3, 45, 49, 100. See also reliquaries; saints religion, 18, 27, 41, 46, 101, 134, 136; bad, 154; popular, 68; pure, 162; wars of, 19. See also magic, religious reliquaries, 168, 225n87. See also Host; relics; saints Rémy, Nicolas, 101–2 repentance, 148, 189; feigned, 43. See also confession, of sin; penance reputation, 86 resurrection, of dead, 17, 105, 147, 155–6; of Jesus, 10; ritual, 17 Rettenberg, 257n68 Reutlingen, 144

Revelation 12, 31, 99, 107 revenants, 58, 212n47. See also vampires revenge. See vengeance revolt (revolution), 41, 55, 84, 171. See also insurrection; Peasants’ War; rebellion; sedition Rhegius, Urbanus, 55 rhetoric, 4–6, 35–6, 51, 59, 61, 65, 74, 98, 126–7, 136, 195, 197, 200, 202. See also polemicists; propaganda Rhine, River, 140 Richeome, Louis, 260n110 Richter, Martin, 163 Ries, Hans de, 201 Rijcen, Christiaen, 97 Rinck, Melchior, 18, 37 Rio, Martín del, 23, 35, 47, 98–100, 118–19, 126, 129,182, 240–1n5, 241nn10, 13, 259n100 ritual, 8–9, 11, 24–5, 57–9, 98, 142, 152, 166, 257n55. See also ceremonies ritual murder, 9–11. See also antiSemitism; children; Jews Robbins, Kevin, 37 Roberston, Robert, 60 Rodeneck, 174–7 rods, beating with, 106, 178, 180 Roermond, 45–6, 240n3 Romer, Hans, 44 Roore, Jacob de, 28–9, 107 Roper, Lyndal, 86, 175–6, 226n90, 227n110, 232n15 rosary, 32 Rossum, Martin van, 104, 120 Rostock, 62 Roth, Mathias, 189 Rothmann, Bernhard, 41 Rottenburg on the Neckar, 152, 194

Index Rouen, 19 Rubin, Miri, 35, 168–9 Rudolf, priest, 166 Rudolf II of Austria, 185–6 Rumer, Leonard, 30 rumour, 7, 19, 32, 67, 73, 86, 112, 120, 139, 145–6, 154, 162, 164, 171, 174, 196, 203, 221–2n25 Rurer, Johann, 53, 130 Russell, Jeffrey, xiii sabbat, diabolical, 14, 34, 48, 89, 91, 203; witches’, 3, 7–8, 37, 60, 75, 100–2, 126, 138–9, 145–7, 150, 154, 165, 195–6, 198, 241n15. See also Anabaptists, nocturnal meetings of; conspiracy; conventicles; dances; mountains, meetings on sacramentalism, 4; reality of, 11, 16, 25, 44–5, 61, 74, 88, 102, 107, 130, 166, 168–9, 175–7, 181–2, 187, 197–8, 202, 234n46, 240–1n5, 256n50. See also supernatural realm sacramentals, 14, 22–4, 26, 42, 49, 51, 86, 98, 130, 149, 199; used to extract confessions, 38, 180, 203. See also holy objects; holy oil; Host; salt, blessed; water, holy; wine, consecrated Sacramentarians (Sacramentalists), 52, 58, 93, 172 sacraments, 15, 22–3, 37, 40, 42–3, 45, 71, 98–101, 104–5, 170, 179; as diabolical, 174; as sorcery, 179; blaspheming of, 40, 228–9n141; desecration of, 62, 175; miracles of, 176– 7; of sexual freedom, 154; renunciation of, 17–18, 49, 56, 84, 88, 129, 140, 173, 178–9; seven, 172. See also altar; Eucharist; holy orders; Host;

313

Lord’s Supper; magic, religious; Mass; miracles; priests; sacramentalism; sacramentals sacred (objects or spaces), 22–4, 68, 94, 129 sacredness, 30 sacrilege, 19–20, 43, 89, 99, 127, 172. See also blasphemy; Host, desecration of; iconoclasm Sadducees, 48, 59, 135 St Andreasberg Church (Rodeneck), 174, 177 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 35, 199 St Bernardino of Siena, 146 St Gall, 16, 31 St Georgen, 171 St Laurentz, 255n18 St Michelsburg, 30, 171–2, 174, 179, 183, 255n18, 258n74 St Vitus’s dance, 54 sainthood, 30–3, 51, 101; laicization of, 30 saints, 22, 30–3, 42, 44, 47, 49, 51, 54, 100, 103, 114, 127, 180, 183, 211n39; humiliation of, 24; living, 30, 33. See also miracles; relics; reliquaries Salzburg, Archbishop of, 172 salt, blessed, 28, 41, 86, 100, 179. See also sacramentals salvation, 8 salve, witches’, 102. See also flight; magic; sabbat; witchcraft sanctity, 30–2. See also Anabaptists, as saints; piety; sacred; sainthood; saints Sangerhausen, 157 Sarntal, 177 Satan, 8, 11–12, 23, 29, 34, 38, 49, 51,

314

Index

56–7, 59,63, 65, 73, 111, 116, 130, 135, 142, 145, 158, 164, 195, 200; Asmodeo, 148. See also devil; Lucifer Satanists, 75 Sattler, Michael, 152 Saur, Abraham, 162 Saxony, 131, 144; Constitution, 161–2 Scandella, Domenico (Menocchio), 155 scapegoat, 104, 164, 197, 203 scepticism, 6, 9–10, 13–15, 21–2, 29, 40, 50, 91–2, 96, 98, 102, 105, 129– 30, 135, 162, 174, 176, 187, 192, 198, 204, 213n59. See also atheism; devil, disbelief in Sceytens, Geert, 103–4 Scherer, Georg, 187 Schlander, 173 Schleitheim (Confession), 7, 152 Schoder, Peter, 189 Schlüsselberg, Koenraad, 124 Schlutterbauer, Anna, 186–7 Schmachtenberg, 23 Schmalkaldic war, 189 Schmidt, Hans, 142, 153 Schneider, Gilg (Preindle), 181–2 Schneider, Leonhard, 160 Schneider, Petter, 177–8 Schoenmaker, Herman, 70 Schöneck, 255n18, 258n89 Schorndorf, 153 schuilkerk (hidden or house churches), 36, 92 Schwartz, 163–4 Schwaz, 180, 188 Schwenckfeld, Caspar von, 146 Schwenckfeldians, 133, 135, 140–1, 143, 146, 153 Schwillus, Harald, 142

science, 36 Scot, Reginald, 26 Scotland, 128 Scribner, Robert (Bob), 22, 58 scriptures, 8, 27, 52–4, 61 71, 99, 145, 155, 173. See also Bible scurvy, 150 sect, 28, 78, 97, 127, 130, 135, 146, 171, 173, 178; diabolical, 13, 37, 39, 65, 88, 150, 195, 199; witch, 98, 157, 196. See also Anabaptists; conspiracy; heresy; heretics; sabbat; witches sectarians (sectarianism), 28, 46, 133, 136, 139–40, 143, 162. See also Anabaptists; Mennonites sedition, 9, 21, 33, 36, 38, 63, 143, 168–9, 172, 194. See also insurrection Segersz, Jeronimus, 109 sermons, 59, 125–6, 134, 136, 138, 143, 146, 156–7, 163–4, 174, 199, 201. See also preachers; preaching; propaganda; pulpit Servetus, Michael, 46 sex, 66, 153–4; perverse, 99, 201; with demons, 3, 14, 89–90, 101–2, 156, 187, 242n20; and witches, 10; and women, 15. See also adultery; nudity; orgies shamanism, 4, 6–7, 13, 17, 31, 47–8, 69, 77, 135, 148, 165, 198. See also charismatic; Otherworld; visions shape-shifting, 51 shepherd, 155 Sible, Joucke, 232n13 Siebenaugin, Osanna, 155 Siebenbergen, 148 Sieurdtsdr, Aucke, 232n13 Sigmund from Kiens, 174

Index signs, heavenly, 48, 59, 69, 105, 148. See also apparitions; visions Silesia, 148 Simon Magus, 28, 49 Simon of Tongeren, 42–3 simple folk, 41, 47, 51, 67, 116. See also common people; culture, popular sin, 27, 49, 114, 153, 156, 172, 189; bewitching, 26; mortification of, 41, 56, 182; original, 41. See also confession, of sin; penance; repentance singing, 17 Sint-Niklaas, 240n3 Sint-Peters, 113 Sixtus V, Pope, 259n100 slander, 55, 91 Sleidanus, Johan, 227n113 Smedenstede, Henrich, 62 sodomites, 9. See also homosexuality Soergel, Philip, 34, 56 soldiers, 124 Solis, Virgil, 201 songs, 24, 74. See also singing Sonnius, Franciscus (Frans van der Velde), 121, 123 soothsaying, soothsayers, 7, 14, 78, 80, 86, 106, 108, 118, 121–2, 124–5, 133–4, 137, 143, 153, 160–1, 179– 80, 186, 199, 211n39. See also counter-magic; magic; sorcery; superstition; witchcraft sorcerers, 12, 40, 48, 57–9, 63, 65, 106–7, 109, 113, 116, 132, 143, 148, 153, 198, 204; of Egypt, 109. See also magicians; priests, as sorcerers; witches sorcery, 9, 13, 34, 37, 51, 61, 66, 77, 81, 103, 112, 126, 128, 138–40, 149–51, 160–2, 168–9, 184–6, 190,

315

249n52; demonic, 40, 49, 180. See also magic; maleficia; preternatural beliefs; superstition soul, 39, 102, 111, 153; immortality of, 21, 51; salvation of, 83; selling to devil, 181 Spaans, Joke, 83 Spahl, 154, 157 Spain, 137, 200; war against, 76 Spanish Fury, 119 spectral phenomena, 164. See also apparitions; signs, heavenly Spee, Friedrich, 32 Speyer, Bishop of, 135; Diet of, 20 Spiegels, Thomas, 23 spirit, and flesh, 27, 156; world, 135 spirits, Anabaptist, 194; captured, 185; evil, 59, 63, 99, 100, 121, 173, 189, 259n100; unclean, 141, 193. See also demons; fairies spiritualism, 6, 22, 57, 91, 93–5, 132, 192, 197, 204, 208n8, 238n100 spiritualists, 7, 26–30, 36, 39, 46, 54, 60–1, 119, 163, 167, 199–202, 205. See also Davidites; Family of Love; Joris, David; libertines; Niclaes, Hendrik; Nicodemites spookery, 51, 55 Starhemberg, Reichart von, 186 state, 55; godly, 141 Steenwijk, 87 Stehelin, Matthias, 145 Steinabrunn, 172 Steinle, Johann, 138 Steirmark, 190 Stephens, Walter E., 10, 14–15, 102, 246n2, 256n50 Sterzing, 181 Steyr, 168 stigmata, 31

316

Index

stink (stench), 41, 166, 177, 179, 223n48 Stoeckhlin, Chonrad, 165, 195–6, 198 storms, 23, 59, 104, 148, 194–5. See also climate; hailstorms; magic, weather; water, beating; weather strappado, 73, 142. See also torture Strasbourg, 18, 126, 133–41; bishopric of, 133–4 stress, 262n17 Stromberg, 141 Stuttgart, 141, 144–5, 147, 150 Styria, 186 suffering, 30, 74; inward, 16 suicide, 81–2 supernatural realm, 14, 34, 124, 137, 148, 168; power, 40 supernaturalism, 22, 99, 105 superstition, 5, 7, 24–5, 29, 56, 96, 108, 118, 121, 124–5, 133, 136–7, 140, 143, 149, 151, 153, 161, 172, 180, 182–3, 186, 188, 192, 197. See also culture, popular; idolatry; magic, religious; soothsaying Swabia, 135, 188 swearing, 109, 116, 177. See also oaths Swiss Brethren, 139, 163, 247n22 Swiss Cantons (Switzerland), 7, 14, 35, 131, 135, 186 sword, 55. See also weapons synagogues, of Anabaptists, 175, 256– 7n52; of devil or Satan, 51, 60; of heretics, 18; of Jews, 57, 95 Tasch, Peter, 159 Tau, 16 Ten Commandments, 156 terrorism, religious, 236n72; state, 15. See also Anabaptism, militant; Batenburgers

Texel, 77 theologians, 38–9, 74, 135, 140, 154, 159, 168, 194, 201, 203; Catholic, 21, 32; Netherlandic, 70; Protestant, 32 theology, 10, 92, 102. See also demonology Thijs, Alfons K.L., 121,126 Thirty Years War, 158, 185,192 Thuringia, 131, 133, 141, 153–8, 164, 201 Tiel, 91 Tiers, 188 Tirol, 7, 20, 38, 129, 165–7, 170–94, 196, 202 Titelmans, Pieter, 89, 109, 116 toad, 176 tolerance (toleration), 5, 21–2, 28, 33, 50, 83–4, 92–6, 98, 126, 128, 134, 136, 147, 185, 200, 204–5, 247n17, 258n87. See also freedom, of faith; Mennonites, toleration of Toleration, Edict of, 185 torture, 5, 12–14, 17–18, 30, 38, 61, 71–2, 78, 80, 85, 93, 99, 104, 112, 117–18, 120, 133, 136, 142–3, 150, 172, 175, 180, 186–7, 189–90, 193– 4, 197–8, 201, 204, 211n31, 234n39. See also confession; executioner; prison; strappado Toulouse, 65 Tournai, 256n46 Tours, 35 transubstantiation, 10–11, 14, 35, 66, 68, 98, 166. See also Host; priests; Real Presence; sacraments treason, 13, 67, 83, 211n31. See also sedition trees, climbing, 42, 47 Trent, Council of, 123; decrees of, 45

Index Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 19 Tridentine Catholicism, 124, 127, 241n17 Trier, 50 Trinity, 141, 172; renunciation of, 155–6, 247n22. See also anti-Trinitarian Tschaikner, Manfred, 189 Tübingen, 145 Tuechmacher, Hans, 179 Turks, 53, 58, 94, 134, 159–60, 234n46, 247n17. See also Islam Twente, 89 Twisck, Pieter Jansz, 29 tyranny, 97 Ulrich of Württemberg, Duke, 144–6 Ulrichstein, 164 uniformity, religious, 5, 94. See also confessionalism; conformity United Provinces of the Netherlands, 90–1. See also Dutch Republic Urach, 151 Urscher, Erhard, 256nn45, 52 usury, 141 Utenhove, Anna, 119 Utrecht, 27, 42, 80, 87, 89–91; Union of, 92 Uttenreuth, 53 Valentinitsch, Helfried, 168 Vallick, Jacob, 25 vampires, 261n138. See also revenants Vanhemelryck, F., 98 Velder, Niclas, 179 Vellenberg, 184 Velturns, 188 vengeance, 89, 113 Venusberg, 203, 210n20. See also good people; magic; sorcery

317

Verheyden, A.L.E., 115 Verkindert, Joos, 30, 111 Verlinde, William (Lindanus), 45–9, 51, 73, 225n75, 234n46 Vermeulen, Tanneken, 125 Verstegen, Richard, 50 Vienna, 172, 187; Bishop of, 186; University of, 168 Villain, Colin, 76 Villanders, 188 Villavicentio, Fra Lorenzo de, 46 violence, religious, 15, 116, 126–7 visions, 17–18, 31, 48, 53–4, 68, 101, 133, 135, 192; angelic, 59, 246n9. See also apparitions; hallucinations; signs, heavenly visitations, 7, 45–6, 87, 139–44, 147, 153, 159–60, 163 Visser, Piet, 232n12 Vits, Yken, 121 Vlamincx, Elisabeth, 113 Vogelsberg, 164 vomit, 86 Vorarlberg, 188–92 vow, 100. See also oath; swearing Vox in Rama, 11–12, 48 Vrancx, Agnata, 125 Waardt, Hans de, 26, 77–9, 117, 215n80, 244n73, 245nn85, 87, 91–3 Wägner, Hans (Klausenhans), 153 Wagner, Tobias, 56 Waldburg, Otto Truchseß von, Bishop of Augsburg, 184–5 Waldensians (Vauderie), 4–5, 7, 9, 11–13, 16–18, 39, 41, 48, 53, 66, 69, 73–8, 80, 128, 133, 135, 166, 168, 198, 250–1n90; women, 13, 36. See also heresy; witch-hunts, late medieval

318

Index

Walraven, Simon, 51 war, 130, 170 Wasselaere, Jozyne de, 118 water, 43, 48–9, 53–4, 100, 177, 179; baptismal (font), 28, 86; beating, 199; holy, 22–3, 32, 86, 100, 179– 80; test, 26, 117, 161–2. See also sacramentals Waterland, 83 weapons, 87, 172, 255n20. See also sword weather, 3, 103, 105, 145, 148, 188–9. See also climate; hailstorms; storms; magic, weather Weber, Bastian, 250n73 weeds, 130, 164. See also wheat, and tares Weerdt, 46 Werden, Ursula van, 89 Wengen im Felsental, 188 Wenger, Georg, 174 Weruick, Peter van, 111 Wesel, 89 Westphalia, 89 Westphalians, 55 Weyer (Wier), Johann, 25–6, 29, 65, 98, 137, 183, 202, 215n80, 241n17, 258n87 Wezel, 95 wheat, and tares, 33. See also weeds Wied, Herman von (Archbishop of Cologne), 52 Wiemertinghen, Goerken van, 44–5 Wier, Matthias, 26 Wiesensteig, 3, 21, 144–51, 154, 157, 160, 199, 250n77 Wigersheim, Bernhardus, 52, 158 Wilhelm IV, of Hesse-Kasel, 161–4 Wilhelm, Joss, 190 Willekens, Elisabeth, 125

Willems, Johan, 89 William of Orange, 28, 60–1, 92–5, 119 Williams, George H., 205 Williams, Gerhild, 34–5, 47 wine, 139; consecrated, 107, 166, 168, 172, 174, 176–7. See also chalice; communion; Eucharist; Jesus Christ, blood of; sacramentals wise women, 14. See also soothsaying Wismar, debate, 61–2, 94 witch, belief, 162; demonic, 121; finders (hunters), 169, 204; interrogations, 73; menace, 35; panics, 50, 85, 98, 106, 108, 113, 128, 146, 150, 157, 187, 202; persecutors, 70, 123; signs of, 86; stereotype, 56, 70, 75, 92, 198; testimonies, 178; treatises, 48, 133, 135 witchcraft, 5–6, 9, 16, 19, 27, 66, 75, 89, 99–101, 103–4, 116, 118, 124–5, 133–4, 139–40, 150–1, 161–2, 164, 189, 235–6n65, 241n17; accusations of, 29, 32, 79–80, 105, 135–6, 160, 192; and medicine, 26; as infection, 183; belief, 78; demonic, 20–1, 29, 36, 48, 50, 67, 83–4, 96, 98, 100, 106, 109, 119, 122, 137, 157, 164, 178, 187; disbelief in, 22, 25–7, 96, 134–6, 161; laws, 186; prosecution of, 27, 75, 132, 157, 162; sectarian, 147, 158; spiritual, 52. See also heresy, mandates; magic; soothsaying; witches; witchhunts witches, 6, 9, 14–15, 19, 29, 31, 33, 47, 50–1, 65–6, 78, 81–3, 85, 101, 114, 127, 153, 156, 166, 175, 178, 181, 186–9, 199, 256n50; and children, 23, 39, 176, 257n55; as assertive, 77,

Index 137; demonic, 9, 14, 35, 185, 188; prosecution of, 28, 33, 38, 46, 106. See also heretics; Waldensians; witch-hunts; women, and witchcraft witch-hunts (trials), 6, 15, 34, 63, 65, 67, 78, 87, 96, 178, 186, 199–200, 203; ending of, 22, 26, 127–9, 202– 3, 208n8, 238n100, 261n138; in Alps, 12; in Amsterdam, 80–4; in Antwerp, 121–6; in Augsburg, 147, 165, 195–6; in Austria, 185–96; in Brabant, 117–19; in Bruges, 106–8; in Brussels, 117–19; in eastern Netherlands, 86–91; in Franconia, 202; in Friesland, 84–5; in Geneva, 135–6; in Ghent, 113–14; in Groningen, 74–5; in Hesse, 158– 65; in Holland, 77–84; in Holy Roman Empire, 3, 7, 50, 132–3, 152–3; in Kortrijk, 115–17; in Lier, 124; in Namur, 75–7; in southern Netherlands, 98, 102–29, 240n3; in Strasbourg, 133–7; in Thuringia, 153, 156–7; in Tirol, 176–96; in Vorarlberg, 188–92; in Wiesensteig, 144–50, 154, 157, 160, 199; in Württemberg, 144–53; in Würzburg, 152; late medieval, 19, 86, 128, 188, 190 Wittenberg, 52 women, 43–4, 47, 83, 88, 90, 101, 154, 174, 192–4, 201, 233n25, 244n76, 261n132; and magic, 18, 122; and witchcraft, 65, 75, 90, 101, 106, 114, 115, 118, 120–6, 137, 149, 160, 162, 182–3, 186–8, 192, 194, 260n125; pregnant, 111, 148, 224n65,

319

242n20; unruly, 121, 194. See also Anabaptist, women; wise women; literacy, magical; Mennonite, women; Waldensian, women; witches wonders, 184. See also apparitions; miracles word, 24; inner, 27–8; of God, 26, 30, 52–3, 60, 94, 107, 130, 145, 180, 183, 228n130 worship, 49, 111, 124, 161, 170; false, 24; of idols, 49. See also devil, worship of; ceremonies; priests; ritual; sacraments; saints Württemberg, 56, 133, 135, 142–53, 157–8, 161, 165–6, 193, 203 Würzburg, 23–4, 152, 157, 164 Yvers, Averina, 124 ’tZandt, 69–70 Zeeland, 45 Zeilmaker, Willem Dircksz, 89 Zell, Matthias, 134 Zeller, Michel, 182 Zeller, Peter, 184 Ziegenhain, 160; Order, 159; synod, 159–60 Zijlstra, Samme, 95, 262n14 Zuber, Hans, 144 Zurich, 16, 131, 139 Zuylen, Dirk van, 80 Zutphen, 86, 91 Zwingenberg (Hesse), 52, 158 Zwingli, Ulrich, 25, 46, 52, 158–9, 174 Zwinglians, 54, 188 Zwolle, 87–9, 91, 237n87