Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials: Volhynia, Podolia, and Ruthenia, 17th–18th Centuries 9786155053122

Citation preview

Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials

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

Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials Volhynia, Podolia, and Ruthenia 17th–18th Centuries

 Kater yna Dysa

Central European University Press Budapest–New York

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Copyright © by Kateryna Dysa 2020 Published in 2020 by Central European University Press Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com 224 West 57th Street, New York NY 10019, USA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-615-5053-11-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-615-5053-12-2 (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940851

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 To A l i s a

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Table

of

C onte nts 

Acknowledgements



ix

Introduction



1



17

Legal Foundations



18

The Queen of Evidence: The Use of Torture and the Figure of the Executioner

 26

In the Realm of Gossip: The Role of Everyday Communication in the Legal Process



Actors of the Witchcraft Trials

 44

Chapter 1 Constructing the Ukrainian Witchcraft Trial

36

Chapter 2 Ukrainian Orthodox Demonology: The Learned Elite and Perceptions of the Devil and Witches



51

Iconography of the Devil, Demons, and Witches



53

The Demonic in Ukrainian Orthodox Writings

 60

Specificities of Demonic Possession and Exorcism



75

The Pact with the Devil



82

Demonization of Neighbors, Opponents, and Enemies

 88

Chapter 3 Beyond the Trials, or the Anatomy of Witchcraft Accusations



95

“Peaceful” Coexistence

 96

Family and Witchcraft

 113

Inheritance of Witchcraft within the Family

 114

vii

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Accusations within the Family

 122

Family Support

 127

Rivalry and Bewitchment

 133

Dangerous Proximity: Master-Servant Relationships

 141

Bewitching a Master: Trials about the Bewitchment of Social Superiors

 142

Demonstration of Loyalty to a Master in Witchcraft Cases  151 Subtle Love Matters

 155

Witchcraft and Medicine: Power to Take Away and Restore Health

 164

Bewitching Animals, Spoiling Harvests

 180

Magic Practitioners and Actual Magic Practices

 187

Local Magic Practitioners

 188

Amateur Magic Practices

 200

Chapter 4 A Case of Witchcraft and Infanticide in Szczurowczyky

 207

Infanticide in Szczurowczyky: Iewka Stanorycha

 208

A Witchcraft practitioner: Orzyszka Liczmanicha

 214

Night Flights and Coven

 217

Verdicts

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Further Romanticization, Forgetting, and Resurrection of Ukrainian Witches: An Afterword

 227

Bibliography

 233

Index

 249

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Ac k nowled ge me nts 

T

his book appeared as a result of many years of research, thinking, writing, and re-writing. It would have never come out if not for all those wonderful, thoughtful and caring people whom I would like to thank here. First of all, I am extremely grateful to my professors Katalin Péter, Natalia Yakovenko, and Robin Briggs, for long hours of conversation, feedback, and attentive listening to my thoughts and ideas. You were the best teachers one can only wish for! I deeply appreciate those who at the early stage of my research recommended me some valuable sources. Thank you to Wanda Wyporska, Natalia Starchenko, and Natalia Bilous. The initial encouragement to start this book project came from Nancy Kollman and I am very grateful to her for this nudge. I am most indebted to my colleague and friend Valerie Kivelson for her invaluable help with this manuscript, for her insightful comments and suggestions. She was so kind to offer her help in the moment when I was almost desperate and ready to give up. Without her I would have never finished this book. I would like to thank my colleagues from the project The “Center” and the “Periphery” in the Religious History of Early Modern Eastern Europe Aleksandr Lavrov and Elena Smilianskaya for their feedback and some interesting ideas. ix

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Allow me to thank Russel Zguta and Michael Ostling for their helpful feedback and critical suggestions at the stage of final revision. It was a pleasure and privilege to be edited by Tertia Davis from CEU Press. And thank you to József Litkei who for several years was leading this project on behalf of the press. At National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy I have the pleasure and honor to teach the course about witchcraft trials. I have always been lucky to have wonderful, thoughtful, and imaginative students in this group who induced me to look at this subject from fresh perspective. Thank you for this opportunity to learn together with you and be inspired by you. Special thanks to Tetiana Onofriichuk and Maryna Pilkiw. I want to acknowledge my extraordinary colleagues and dear friends Olena Betlii and Christine Worobec for their unfailing support. Thanks to my mom, Natalia Stebikhova who is always there to help. Finally, thank you to my daughter Alisa for her wisdom, optimism, and encouragement. This book owes all of you. Yet, any failures are my responsibility only.

x

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I ntro duction 

O

ne day Kateryna Martynovska, a resident of the small town of Lypovets in Podolia, then part of the Russian Empire, was summoned to court where she found herself accused of witchcraft. The object of her alleged attack was the local priest, Fedir Blonsky. In the court the priest told the story of how he had once visited the house of another priest, Father Maksym. While there, he had seen Kateryna passing by the house in a cart, and noticed that she took a handful of straw and cabbage leaves from the cart and threw it in his direction, an act he understood to be malevolent. The court accepted the complaints of Father Fedir and initiated an investigation, which lasted for almost two years. During this time as many witnesses were interrogated as possible, and all the participants stated and repeated their positions many times over. In the end the accused, Martynovska, convinced the judges of her innocence, and the court recognized that all of Father Fedir’s accusations were nothing but slander and forbade him to bother the court with “his nonsense” in the future.1 Such a decision presents the judges as rather rational people. However, it is worth noting that this “rational decision” was rendered in 1829—more than fifty years after laws against the persecution of witchcraft were adopted in the Russian Empire. Un1 Tsentralnyj Derzhavnyj Istorychnyj Archiv Ukraininy v Kyievi [Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kyiv], further on TDIA (Kyiv), fond 127, op. 297, n. 92 (1829), fol. 1–15.

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Introduction

der such circumstances the “rationality” of the judges who accepted the complaints about witchcraft from the “superstitious priest” and for two years tried to investigate the incident, might be questioned. This was the last witchcraft trial in Ukrainian lands (although the lynching of alleged witches continued well into the early twentieth century) and the attentive reader will have the opportunity to observe that this case was quite typical for Ukrainian witchcraft trials, especially in its curious intertwining of belief in witchcraft and skepticism. This book is about the accusations and beliefs lying beneath the Ukrainian witchcraft trials of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The main characters here are the accused witches and those who brought accusations against them to the courts. However, I also pay attention to certain phenomena that lay at the background of witchcraft accusations, such as notions of law and order, ideas of punishment and appeasement, sin and crime, the sense of support and conflict within the community of neighbors and in the family, etc. Modern historians have imagined the witches of the past in many ways: they have been described as oppressed rebels with no other choice, mysterious Sibyls, preservers and priestesses of an ancient fertility cult, drug-addicts, heretics, innocent victims of malicious authorities, hysterical women, scapegoats, healers, midwives, old deviant vagrants, and finally just ordinary people, “one of us.” This is not even a complete list of the roles prescribed to witches by historians. The historiography of witchcraft trials has come a long way since the second half of the twentieth century, “from Trevor-Roper to Lyndal Roper,” to quote a quip by Wolfgang Behringer. However, I will not discuss the evolution of the Western historiography of witchcraft trials here. Interested readers may turn to the detailed overviews of existing studies (which already amount to nearly several thousand).2 2 See Robin Briggs, “‘Many Reasons Why’: Witchcraft and the Problem of Multiple Explanation,” in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Jonathan Barry and Owen Davis, eds., Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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The works that have most influenced my thinking about witchcraft and witchcraft trials were written in the 1990s and early 2000s when the subject attracted the largest amount of scholarly attention. These include, among others, studies by Robin Briggs, Wolfgang Behringer, Marion Gibson, and Lyndal Roper, which were made within the frameworks of social and cultural history, historical anthropology, and psychohistory.3 Throughout this book I reference their studies, and the work of others. Perhaps it makes more sense to focus on the history of witchcraft studies in Ukraine, but before turning to this subject I would like to briefly discuss the historiography of witchcraft trials in the two neighboring countries, Poland and Russia. This is important for contextualization, because for a long time the fate of Ukraine was closely connected with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire. The historiography of witchcraft trials in these two countries has a long history. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Nikolaj Novombergskij published materials on seventeenth century Russian witchcraft trials.4 Western readers first learned about these events from an article by Russell Zguta based largely on the materials of Novombergskij.5 In the last couple decades more scholars have turned to the problem of Russian witchcraft trials. Valerie Kivelson’s recent study of seventeenth century Muscovite witch trials ranges across a variety of themes, from the uses of magic for trivial aims to the unconventional gender pattern of witchcraft accusations and the role of hi3 See e. g., Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004); Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (London: Fontana Press, 1997); Robin Briggs, The Witches of Lorraine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Marion Gibson, Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches (London: Routledge, 1999); Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994); Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). 4 Nikolaj Novombergskij, Koldovstvo v Moskovskoj Rusi XVII veka [Witchcraft in Muscovite Russia of the seventeenth century] (St. Petersburg: Tipografia Al’tshulera, 1906). 5 Russell Zguta, “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-century Russia,” American Historical Review 82, no. 5 (1977): 1187–1207.

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erarchical relations in witch trials.6 William Ryan incorporates folklore materials into his encyclopedic study of magic and witchcraft in Russia; however, the result is not very successful because trial and folklore materials were taken from different periods and thus could not support each other.7 Some historians have expanded the time span to the eighteenth century such as the Russian scholars Aleksandr Lavrov and Elena Smilianskaia who concentrate on several aspects of eighteenth century witch trials.8 Christine Worobec has done some excellent research on the lynching of witches in nineteenth century Russian and Ukrainian villages, as well as on late cases of demonic posession.9 For several decades Bohdan Baranowski was the key author for the study of Polish witchcraft trials.10 The French summary of his Procesy czarownic w Polsce w XVII i XVIII wieku (Witchcraft trials in Poland in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) was the main source of knowledge about Polish trials for several generations of Western historians. However, one of the main problems with Baranowski’s study was his frivolous treatment of statistics. For example, in his calculations of executed witches Baranowski used data for non-existent trials, speculating that these trials could have existed but that many sources were destroyed during World War II. In this way he counted more than 20,000 executed witches in Poland. However, research has moved ahead and some authors have managed to part with the old6 Valerie Ann Kivelson, Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013). 7 Willaim Francis Ryan, “The Witchcraft Hysteria in Early Modern Europe: Was Russia an Exception?” The Slavonic and East European Review 76, no. 1 (1998): 49–84; Willaim Francis Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (London: Sutton Publishing, 1999). 8 Aleksandr Sergeevich Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii: 1700–1740 gg. [Witchcraft and religion in Russia: 1700–1740] (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2000); Elena Borisovna Smilianskaia, Volshebniki. Bogokhulniki. Eretiki [Magicians, blasphemers, and heretics] (Moscow: Indrik, 2003). 9 Christine Worobec, “Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Prerevolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages,” The Russian Review 54 (1995): 165–187. 10 Bohdan Baranowski, Procesy czarownic w Polsce w XVII i XVIII wieku [Witchcraft trials in Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] (Łodź: Wydawn, 1952).

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fashioned, persecution-centered approach, among them Małgorzata Pilaszek with her monograph about Polish witchcraft trials, and Leszek Zygner and Joanna Adamczyk with their studies of medieval Polish witchcraft cases.11 Two excellent monographs devoted to Polish witchcraft trials have been recently published in English, one by Michael Ostling and another by Wanda Wyporska.12 Some general studies have attempted to incorporate the materials of Ukrainian trials; however, quite surprisingly, their conclusions are often contradictory. For example, if the Ukrainian lands are studied from the perspective of the Russian Empire, authors tend to assume that, because Ukraine was in the sphere of Polish—and thus Western—influence, Ukrainian witchcraft beliefs and witchcraft trials shared many features with their Western counterparts.13 This presumption is at least partly true, because Ukrainian courts were using the same laws and legal codes as Polish courts. From the Polish perspective, the Ukrainian lands seem to have been under the strong influence of the Orthodox Church and thus the persecutions were of a

11 Małgorzata Pilaszek, “Procesy czarownic w Polsce w XVI–XVII w. Nowe aspekty. Uwagi na marginesie pracy B. Baranowskiego” [Witchcraft trials in Poland of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: new aspects. Notes on the margins on B. Baranowski’s work], Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 42 (1998): 81–103; Małgorzata Pilaszek, “Litewskie procesy cza rownic w XVI–XVIII w.” [Lithuanian witchcraft trials in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries], Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 46 (2002): 7–35; Małgorzata Pilaszek, Procesy o czary w Polsce w wiekach XV–XVIII [Witchcraft trials in Poland in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries] (Kraków: TAiWPN Universitas, 2008); Leszek Zygner, “Kobietaczarownica w świetle ksiąg konsystorskich z XV i początku XVI w.” [Female witches in the light of consistory books of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century], in Kobieta i rodzina w średniowieczu i na progu czasów nowoźytnych, ed. Zenon Hubert Nowak and Andrzej Radzimiński, 91–101 (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 1998); Joanna Adamczyk, “Czary i magia w praktyce sądów kościelnych na ziemiach polskich w późnym średniowieczu (XV-połowie XVI wieku)” [Witchcraft and magic in practice of ecclesiastical courts on Polish lands in the late Middle Ages (fifteenth and mid–sixteenth centuries)], in Karolińscy Pokuticy i polskie średniowieczne czarownice, ed. Maria Koczerska, 91–253 (Warszawa: Wydawictwo DIG, 2007). 12 Michael Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Wanda Wyporska, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500–1800 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 13 For example see Zguta, “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-century Russia,” and Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight.

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much milder character.14 This is also partly right, though Church influence was not the decisive factor, as will be seen. Baranowski states that Ukrainian witchcraft trials were not much different from the Polish ones.15 However, most of these claims are not supported by indepth research. Witchcraft studies in Ukraine have quite a long history of their own. Most of the research was done in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century and was written under the influence of ethnography. The key work for the study of Ukrainian witchcraft was the book Koldovstvo: Dokumenty-processy-izsledovanie [Witchcraft: documents, trials, analysis] by Volodymyr Antonovich, published in 1877.16 This is a publication of trial materials collected by the author and accompanied by his introductory article. A brilliant historian and the founder of the first historiographic school in Ukraine, Antonovich managed to find approximately 70 cases of witchcraft in the court books of a dozen towns, which in itself was quite an achievement given that those cases were buried among hundreds of other cases about property, debts, slander, petty theft, adultery, and so on. Antonovich wrote his introduction to these materials based on contemporary Western studies of witchcraft trials that emphasized the horrors of witch-hunts. He found that from this perspective the Ukrainian trials were quite different from the Western trials, and furthermore he argued that Ukrainian witchcraft beliefs were of a pantheistic nature and had no connection with demonology.17 My own research qualifies Antonovich’s findings. Ukrainian witchcraft persecutions were indeed less horrific than Western ones with only a handful of cases culminating in execution, however witchcraft beliefs were in no way “more pantheistic” than Western beliefs as both were connected to everyday problems and misfortunes and shared a certain 14 Such claims can be found in Brian Paul Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1993). 15 Baranowski, Procesy czarownic w Polsce, 28. 16 Vladimir Antonovich, Koldovstvo: Dokumenty-processy-izsledovanie [Witchcraft: documents, trials, analysis] (St. Petersburg: Tipografia Kirshbauma, 1877). 17 Ibid., 7.

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connection to demonology (in the Ukrainian case this connection was much weaker than, for instance, in German ones, but about the same as in English trials). Nevertheless, all subsequent research, my own included, owes much to Antonovich as a pioneer of Ukrainian witchcraft studies and a collector of trial materials. Antonovich’s study provoked considerable scholarly interest in the topic of Ukrainian witchcraft beliefs and witchcraft trials by ethnographers and historians alike. Many materials were published in the magazine Kievskaia starina (first published in 1882), which was the key periodical for the study of Ukrainian history and traditions. Kievskaia starina published ethnographic materials about witchcraft, such as folk stories and legends about witches and their deeds, by scholars such as Aleksandr Kistiakovskij, and Vasyl’ Miloradovich, and also studies of the history of Ukrainian witchcraft trials by Nikolaj Ohloblin and Petr Yefimenko.18 Some of these authors, such as Yefimenko, attempted to compare witchcraft beliefs from folk stories to those reflected in the trial materials published by Antonovich. There were other publications of ethnographic materials about witchcraft as well, for example by Volodmyr Hnatiuk, Petr Ivanov, and Antin Onyshchuk.19 In the Soviet period little was done in the development of witchcraft studies. From the 1920s on, it was only possible to write about witchcraft beliefs as superstitions of the ancient regime.20 In the Soviet Union witchcraft and magic, just like sex, officially “did not exist,” 18 Aleksandr Kostiakovskij, “K istorii verovaniia o prodazhe dushi chertu” [The history of selling the soul to a devil], Kievskaia starina 7 (1882); Vasyl Miloradovich, “Ukrajins’ka vid’ma” [The Ukrainian witch], Kievskaia starina 2 (1901); Nikolaj Ohloblin, “Ocherki iz byta Ukrainy kontsa XVIII v. Sozhzhenie ved’my” [Sketches from the everyday life of Ukrainian village at the end of the eighteenth century: burning of the witch], Kievskaia starina 5 (1887); Petr Yefimenko, “Sud nad ved’mami” [Witch trial], Kievskaia starina 11 (1883). 19 Volodymyr Hnatiuk, “Kupanie i palenie vid’m u Halychyni” [Witches being drowned and burned in Halychyna], in Materialy do ukraїns’koi etnolohiї 15 (1912); Volodymyr Hnatiuk, “Znadoby do ukrajins’koji demonolohiji” [Materials about Ukrainian demonology], Etnohrafichnyj zbirnyk 34, no. 2 (1912); Petr Ivanov, “Narodnyye rasskazy o ved’mach i upyryach” [Folk stories about witches and warlocks], Sbornik Khar’kovskogo istoriko-filologicheskogo obshchestva 3 (1891); Antin Onyshchuk, “Materialy do hutsul’s’koї demonolohiї” [Materials on demonology of the Hutsuls], Materialy do ukraїns’koi etnolohiї 11 (1909). 20 For example, Boriys Manzhos, Viruvannia ta zabobony nashoho sela [Beliefs and superstitions of our village] (Kyiv: Knyhospilka, 1926).

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or at least they were not among the topics that had any chance of being studied at the academic level. From the first decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukrainian witchcraft has attracted new scholarly interest, initially among ethnographers and anthropologists.21 Moreover, the materials of Ukrainian witchcraft trials are now being incorporated into studies of legal history.22 However, an in-depth analysis of the trial materials has not yet been done.23 The history of Ukrainian witchcraft trials remains a lacuna in the context of broader European history. Historians of previous generations were not interested in detailed research on the topic because, following Antonovich’s declaration, it was taken for granted that large-scale persecutions were nonexistent. Moreover, the lack of scholarly interest reflected the general lack of development of social and cultural history in Ukraine. Now, however, with a greater integration with European historical research and in keeping with the new tendency in the contemporary historiography of witchcraft trials of examining the trials not solely through the prism of persecution, there is an opportunity to approach Ukrainian 21 For example, Aleksandr Kurotshckin, “Hexengestalt in der Ukrainischen Folklorentradition,” Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 37 (1991–2): 191–200; and more recent studies: Olena Boriak, “Baba-povytukha v konteksti ‘poliuvannia na vid’om’: ukrajins’ko-zakhidnoievropejs’ki paraleli” [Midwives in the context of “witch-hunts”: Ukrainian-West European similarities], Socium 3 (2003): 249–262; Oksana Kis, “Vid’ma: zhyttia na marhinesi” [Witch: a life on the margins], in Zhinka v tradytsijnij ukrains’kij kul’turi [Woman in traditional Ukrainian culture], 237–248 (Lviv: Instytut narodoznavstva NAN Ukrajiny, 2012). 22 Yurij Hoshko, Zvychaeve pravo naselennia ukrajins’kykh Karpat ta Prykarpattia XIV–XIX st. [The common law of the population of Ukrainian Carpathia and pre-Carpathia fourteenth– sixteenth centuries] (Lviv: Instytut narodoznavstva NAN Ukrajiny, 1999); Andrij Kozyts’kyj and Stepan Bilostots’kyj, Kryminal’nyj svit staroho L’vova [Old Lviv’s criminal world] (Lviv: Afisha, 2001); Andrzej Karpiński, “Criminality in Lwow at the End of the 16th and in the 17th Century,” Acta Poloniae Historica 77 (1998): 59–77. 23 In the last decade some of my articles on Ukrainian witchcraft trials have been published: Kateryna Dysa, “Orthodox Demonology and the Perception of Witchcraft in Early Modern Ukraine,” in Friars, Nobles and Burghers—Sermons, Images and Prints: Studies of Culture and Society in Early-Modern Europe; In Memoriam István György Tóth, ed. Jaroslav Miller and László Kontler (Budapest—New York: CEU Press, 2009), 341–360; “A Family Matter: The Case of a Witch Family in the Eighteenth-Century Volhynian Town,” in “Witchcraft Casebook: Magic in Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, 15th–21st Centuries,” ed. Valerie Kivelson, special issue, Russian History/Histoire Rus 40, no. 3–4 (2013): 352–363; see also my entry “Ukraine, Witchcraft Trials,” in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard Golden (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2006): 1140–1142.

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witchcraft trials from a fresh perspective. Briggs, in his article “Many Reasons Why: Witchcraft and the Problem of Multiple Explanation,” suggests that in order to better understand witchcraft trials one has to differentiate among trials of various scales;24 one cannot simply apply the same principles deduced from large-scale persecutions to individual cases. I believe that this was the main problem with the studies of Ukrainian witchcraft trials by previous generations of historians, who attempted to compare individual cases to large-scale persecutions. They frequently overlooked the fact that Western European witchcraft trials were not only endemic, but that there were many individual cases. These cases can be used as a proper unit of comparison for the study of the Ukrainian events. Research on Ukrainian witch trial cases is an endeavor too ambitious to be realized by one person in one work, so there is a need to determine the practical, temporal, and geographic limitations of the research presented in this book. Foremost is the extent of document preservation; the second half of the seventeenth century is the beginning of the period under research because only from this time onwards can one find a quantity of sources appropriate for analysis. The late eighteenth century is the end of the period examined here because it was at this time that witchcraft trials were officially abolished in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire. I do refer to some cases from an earlier period—from the late sixteenth century—as well as to some late trials from the nineteenth century; still, the majority of cases cover the period from the second half of the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. There is also a need to define geographical limitations. Though the term “Ukrainian” is used quite frequently in the text, I must stress that this is just a conventional term that has nothing to do with the reality of the early modern period. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the territories of modern Ukraine were divided between several states—the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Princi24 Briggs, “‘Many Reasons Why,’” 53.

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pality of Moldova, Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Muscovy (later the Russian Empire). I will focus on those territories that belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which were mostly multiethnic and multi-confessional and whose cities operated under the so-called Magdeburg law (discussed in more detail in Chapter 1). The Hetmanate—a Cossack domain on the left-bank side of the Dnipro which was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the second half of the seventeenth century, when it became part of Muscovy—was mostly Orthodox and well into the eighteenth century preserved some legal autonomy, though over the course of that century it gradually fell under Russian imperial law. In fact, I focus primarily on the three so-called “Ruthenian” palatinates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Podolia, Ruthenia, and Volhynia. These three palatinates were chosen because of the comparatively high level of document preservation there. However, for the sake of comparison, I also frequently refer to cases from the Hetmanate. There are several methodological problems that one must almost inevitably face when dealing with the history of witchcraft trials. The first problem is connected to terminology. In the mid-twentieth century historians adopted the division, coming from anthropology, between witchcraft and sorcery, according to which witchcraft was presented as an inherited quality, whereas sorcery was something that could be learned.25 Some researchers found this division useful and applicable to the classification of types of magic offenses. For example, Gustav Henningsen, in his study of witchcraft in the Basque Country, claims that the anthropological division of magic practices between witchcraft and sorcery is reflected in the Spanish terms hechicería (sorcery) and brujería (witchcraft).26 However, there is no evidence in the source materials that early modern people were aware 25 Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard was among the first anthropologists to mention this difference: Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 1–17. 26 Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609–1614) (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980), 10.

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of such a clear-cut division between sorcery and witchcraft, and thus French historians (for example) use only the word sorcier to define a whole range of magic practices. The Ukrainian trial records use the Polish term czary to cover all kinds of magic activities. If one analyzes the magic practices described in the sources with these anthropological terms in mind, it becomes clear that in some cases czary would indicate sorcery and in others witchcraft. It is quite clear that there was no distinction between sorcery and witchcraft either for the people coming to court or for the judges. I should say a few words about the specificity of my sources. All in all, during my research I managed to find 198 cases about witchcraft, and I have used all of them for the analysis (see Chapter 1 for the details). Though I use various sources, such as visual sources, sermons, and treatises, my main sources are trial records. Every town court of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth kept their registers (aktovi knyhy). In bigger cities different types of official documentation were compiled in different types of registers, but in smaller towns most of the documents were compiled into the so-called town magistrate books which included various kinds of documentation: testaments along with trial records, inventories side by side with complaints. There was a special type of register called a “black book” (acta nigra) or criminal book, into which criminal cases, among them cases about witchcraft, were written down. However, very few of these black books have survived because magistrates did not preserve them for a long time. Unlike registers about land and property, information about criminal cases was not valuable, and when magistrate archives came short of storage space they were the first to be destroyed. This is unfortunate because the black books are more scrupulous and detailed in regards to witnesses’ testimonies. The trial records and complaints about witchcraft that were recorded in the town magistrate books in most cases were rather short, incomplete, and lacking details, because the court often considered several different cases in one day, and if one of them was not finished (if for instance the accuser did not have enough witnesses), the record (as well as the case) could 11

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be discontinued. I would like to emphasize that many trial records of witchcraft cases in town magistrate books have abrupt endings. Indeed, I was frequently frustrated and unable to figure out what ultimately happened to a certain person accused of witchcraft. Most of the records are written in Polish with some insertions of legal terms in Latin, though some of them are entirely in Latin. It is important to remember that in multi-cultural towns some people spoke Ruthenian (old Ukrainian), which means that scribes had to translate what was said. We know about this because occasionally the scribe would write down a Ruthenian term when unable to find a proper Polish translation. How should we deal with witchcraft trials? Like any other historian, the historian of witch hunts faces the problem of applying a thick description to their sources. The narrative reaches us after passing through many filters; it is in fact a collective work by a person giving testimony, a scribe taking notes, and often also a court representative posing questions. Marion Gibson has formulated five major problems connected with the texts of English witchcraft trials, most of which are applicable to the Ukrainian case as well: First, the report is in third person, so the witch’s own words are rewritten by a clerk. Second, knowing for certain whether questions elicited this statement is impossible. Third, how many questions might have produced this passage? Fourth, what were their exact words and tone? Last, since examinations could be written up to two days after they had been conducted, are these “answers” a summary, revised into coherence?27

The clerk played an important role in formulating the trial records as they have come down to us. An inexperienced researcher can forget about the presence of the clerk in the narrative, however there are many indications of him in the record, most importantly the use of le27 Gibson, Reading Witchcraft, 14.

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gal formulas and idioms intertwined into the “direct speech” of the people in the court. Some are easy to spot in the text, especially Latin phrases, but many of them may pass unnoticed, hidden behind seemingly simplistic “popular” language, and thus can be taken for a “genuine” part of the narration. Marion Gibson delineates the role played by clerks in the following way: They are not supposed to produce new material, but in codifying what has been produced they may substantially alter it: if the clerk is not an author—which he may be—then perhaps the most suitable analogy for the role of the clerk is with adaptation. Clerks record material in a way that makes it suitable for public use in court, and thus produce another layer of interpretation between us and the original process.28

When working with materials on witchcraft trials, one has to find a middle path between trusting every word of the testimonies and being skeptical and critical of the fantastic contents of the stories about bewitchment. One has to accept that it is impossible to recreate an entire picture of the events. These stories are not the product of reality but the result of people’s fears, fantasies, anxieties, and suspicions. If stories about the bewitchment of children and animals seem naïve and unbelievable to the modern reader, this does not mean that the same was true in the perception of contemporaries. As Lyndal Roper rightly puts it, “the story was credible in the context of that culture. Its credibility, not its accuracy, is important to the historian.”29 I believe that a sensible study of witchcraft trials can be written with a combination of methods, including both statistical and textual analysis, and applying both quantitative and qualitative methods to the sources. As outlined previously, studies of witchcraft trials that use a one-sided approach are quite ineffective. In this respect William Monter writes: 28 Ibid., 35. 29 Roper, “Stealing Manhood: Capitalism and Magic in Early Modern Germany,” in Oedipus and the Devil, 127.

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Anyone who tries to investigate the sociology of European witchcraft without a thorough grounding in the theological, medical, legal, and philosophical opinions of early modern Europeans cannot possibly understand his sources; while anyone describing only the opinions of this articulate minority misses much of the real drama of witchcraft in Europe.30

In order to construct a complex picture of witchcraft trials, I focus on three dimensions of the subject, which are reflected in the structure of my work. Chapter 1, “Constructing the Ukrainian Witchcraft Trial,” concentrates on the most obvious level of witchcraft trials— the trials themselves. I discuss laws and the specificity of legal procedures, and examine the roles played by legal prescriptions concerning the crime of witchcraft, judicial torture, and gossip in cases of witchcraft. I compare prescribed laws to actual legal practices, providing an overall analysis of those cases that constitute my sample. I also consider the social, religious, and gender breakdown of the participants. Thus the aim of the first part is to picture a very broad landscape of Ukrainian trials and relate them to some European cases. In Chapter 2, “Ukrainian Orthodox Demonology: The Learned Elite and Perceptions of the Devil and Witches,” I concentrate on another dimension, that of the religious worldview behind the witchcraft trials. The reason for choosing Orthodox demonology as a focal point—though in the case of Ukrainian lands, Catholic demonology was no less important—is that Catholic demonology, and its Polish version in particular, is already well researched, while Orthodox demonology, especially in the interpretation of Ukrainian preachers and theologians, has been neglected. In this chapter I examine the roles attributed to the Devil and his servants, concentrating on topics closely connected to demonology such as the view of demonic possession and the attitude toward a pact with the Devil.

30 Monter, “The Historiography of European Witchcraft,” 435.

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I attempt to go behind the curtains of witchcraft trials in Chapter 3, “Beyond the Trials, or the Anatomy of Witchcraft Accusations.” In this part, which I consider central to my work, I examine the essence and origins of the conflicts that led people to accusations of witchcraft, the environments that proved to be most fertile for generating such conflicts, and the subjects of those conflicts that ended with suspicions or accusations of witchcraft. In this part I also concentrate on the people who were involved in actual magic practices, examining who they were, what their reputation was based on, and what their magic practices were like. The final chapter, called “A Case of Infanticide and Witchcraft in Szczurowczyky,” is a case study of the events that happened in 1753 in a village near Kremenets. It is an opportunity to compare official attitudes toward two “female crimes,” witchcraft and infanticide, and to test the notion of witch fantasies.31 While it may seem that in the first half of the book I follow the steps of the positivist historians of the nineteenth century by concentrating on the scope of persecutions, this book differs from the existing works on Ukrainian witchcraft trials in that persecutions and even trials per se are not the central points of my book. Instead, they provide the basis for a discussion of “the anatomy of witchcraft accusations,” the backstage stories of everyday fears and affections of the people who found themselves involved in conflicts about witchcraft. These backstage stories are what make Ukrainian witchcraft cases quite similar to European ones, since people from Podolia or Volhynia, just like people from Kent or Lorraine, were prone to suspect witchcraft at work when their children got sick or died or when their cows stopped giving milk. At the same time, they allow us to see the nuances of difference. For example, unlike many of their European counterparts, people from Volhynia, Podolia, or Ruthenia could 31 Modern historiography of witch trials addresses the notion of witch fantasy as one of the central topics for understanding of fears that led to accusations of witchcraft. They include (but are not limited to) such nightmarish things as secret night gatherings of witches, devouring of babies, attacks on fertility, etc.

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easily turn to the court in order to clean their reputation if they were slandered as witches. In order to understand these similarities and differences, I take closer look at the environments surrounding the conflicts, suspicions, and accusations of witchcraft, such as family, economics, medicine, and so on. In sum, the goal of this book is to study what was going on in Ukrainian witchcraft trials, and then, stepping beyond the trials, to look at the multi-faceted situations that preceded the accusations and the trials.

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Ch apte r

I



Constructing the Ukrainian Witchcraft Trial

A

n analysis of witchcraft trials must begin at the most obvious level—that of the trial itself. Before going behind the scenes and looking at the complex situations that led to the accusations, we should first get acquainted with what was occurring on the stage— that is, in the courts. In this chapter I present the laws against witchcraft and the specific legal procedures prescribed by the legal manuals used in Ukrainian magisterial courts, before analyzing the actual legal practices to see if these prescriptions were implemented. How different or how similar were these prescriptions to Western European witchcraft laws? Next I turn to the procedures accompanying the witchcraft trial, including the practice most firmly associated with them: judicial torture. Hardly any study of regional witch trials has escaped the discussion of the use of torture, and mine will not be an exception. I ask if torture was prescribed by law, and if it was actually used as part of the investigation of cases of witchcraft. I also investigate local gossip, as I consider it to be an essential element that “constructed” witchcraft trials as a means of spreading information about the crime that would then be retranslated by witnesses at court. Last but not least, I would like to discuss the main actors participating in the trials: Who were the accusers and defendants? What was the gen17

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der pattern of the accusations? From what social background did the participants come? This will enable me to outline the context for a further analysis of what was going on behind the scenes of the courts.

Legal Foundations In Europe, witchcraft was identified as a crime in the late Middle Ages, and in early modern times most European legal codes included certain laws about witchcraft. However, there was always a problem with this fantastic crime, especially when the concept of the demonic witch1 (suggesting a pact with the Devil and the Sabbath) was developed: it could be a crime with no victims or witnesses, because a mere connection with the Devil was a crime grave enough to sentence the accused to death. For example, in many German territories laws were passed in which a pact with the Devil was the most important part of the crime of witchcraft,2 but since there could hardly be witnesses to the pact it was difficult to prove the guilt of an alleged witch. For this reason, in some European countries the use of torture was allowed in order to extract a confession from people accused of witchcraft.3 Nevertheless, court records show that there were not many cases in which pacts with the Devil or the Sabbath were a central or moving force. The majority of witchcraft cases were, in fact, initiated as accusations of maleficium, or simply harm, and included victims and witnesses. English witchcraft trials are the best illustration of this. While the role of the pact with the Devil and especially the Sabbath was marginal, alleged witches were accused in the courts on a large scale. Most European law codes prescribed the death sentence as the punishment for witchcraft, though this does not mean that all accu1 This concept appeared as a result of late medieval and early modern demonologists’ efforts. According to this concept a witch was not an independent actor but a servant of the Devil bound by a compact. 2 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 118. 3 Judicial torture is discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

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sations of witchcraft ended with an execution. There were many factors that made the character of witchcraft trials vary from country to country even if laws against witchcraft were more or less similar. Before turning to the laws against witchcraft, it is worth looking at the legal system that existed in early modern Podolian, Volhynian, and Ruthenian towns, since most of the cases of witchcraft I have investigated took place in town courts. The majority of these towns lay under of Belz city council. The drawing is the jurisdiction of the so-called Fig.1. Meeting from the Lviv magistrate book (1703) (TDIA (Lviv), fond 22, op. 1, n. 7, f. 490 v). Magdeburg law, which meant that they were independent and had the right to self-government without interference from the royal administration. There were two bodies of municipal self-government: the rada (council) and the lava (bench). A rada consisted of several elected members called rajtsias, who had administrative functions and were supervised by the burmystrs. A rada was a higher administrative body and had to oversee the work of a lava. A lava, on the other hand, was a body of magistrates that functioned as a jury called lavnyks, who were elected from among the residents. The head of a lava was called the wójt or vijt and had a wide range of powers, but as a rule did not have the right to issue a verdict on his own—this was the prerogative of the lavnyks. Most criminal cases, including witchcraft cases, were the concern of the magisterial courts, the lavas. Cases involving peasants were considered by the gromadskyj or kopnyj sud, the community court of the local village. Sometimes peasants could also fall under the jurisdiction of nearby towns. 19

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The town courts in the three palatinates employed various legal compilations in their work. Many towns and cities used manuals based on German laws, such as the Saxon law and the Carolina. The former— Speculum Saxonum or Sachsenspiegel (Mirror of the Saxons)—was the medieval German legal code, compiled between 1220 and 1235 by Eike von Repgow. The latter—Constitutio Criminalis Carolina or just Carolina—was the first criminal code ratified by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (that is why it is sometimes referred to as the “Imperial code”) in 1532 at the Diet of Regensburg. However, in most cases town magistrates used legal manuals based on the Speculum Saxonum and the Carolina written by a jurist, Bartłomej Groicki. His manuals were compilations of those German laws that were compact and easy to use. Town courts consulted Groicki’s manuals for almost three centuries— from the second half of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. What did these laws say about the crime of witchcraft? Groicki’s manuals include several chapters with recommendations about dealing with witches. One chapter from the book Ten postępek wybran jest z praw cesarskich (The articles chosen from the imperial law code) is entirely devoted to witchcraft. This chapter is called “Against Witches and All Those Who Use Witchcraft and Sorcery.” In this chapter we read: When it is claimed that someone wanted to teach other people of such things [witchcraft]; or that someone was threatening to use it against another person and after some time the one who had been threatened suffered because of it; or that someone is suspected of it on the basis of his or her words, behavior, actions, etc. that are usually used by such people—it has to be announced [to the authorities] and such people have to be accused; and on the basis of such accusations they can be sent to be tortured, since all this knowledge is abominable to God; Christians are not allowed to use it; it is forbidden by law and should be punished.4 4 Bartłomej Groicki, Ten postępek wybran jest z praw cesarskich (Kraków: Lazarus Andreae impresit, 1565), 12 r–13 v.

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These recommendations were adopted from the imperial law code, the Carolina. One can see that witchcraft is depicted as a crime that is abominable to God and to be prosecuted by secular authorities. This chapter enabled people to come to the courts with an accusation of witchcraft in the event that they were cursed and later felt harmful effects attributable to the curse (as we shall see, many accusations of witchcraft Fig.2. Cover of Groicki’s Porządek sądów (1562). were made by people who believed themselves to be cursed). It also allowed accusations against people whose behavior seemed suspicious, and who were believed to be involved in some magic rituals (in court materials one encounters many accusations of this type as well). Groicki lists questions which an alleged witch had to be asked during the interrogation: The accused has to be asked about reasons and circumstances of using witchcraft; and also which instruments were used, in what manner, and at what time or what words were spoken, and what was done: in cases where it is said that tools of witchcraft, charms, or other similar things are hidden somewhere or buried in the ground, the accused has to be interrogated about it with all possible severity and then a precise search must be done to find them. If these objects are found, the accused has to be asked which words were said and how those objects were used. Furthermore the accused has to be asked who taught him/her such things, in what way the accused practiced this knowledge, how many times, against what people, or what harm was ever done to anyone.5 5 Ibid., 17 v.

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It is worth noting that these recommendations were hardly ever used by Ukrainian town courts. A detailed interrogation of alleged witches and search for magic objects was used in very few cases of the analyzed sample. Finally, in cases where the guilt of the person accused of witchcraft was proven, Groicki recommends that magistrates use the norm adopted from Saxon law: “One who has disclaimed the Christian faith is to be burnt. The same penalty should be used against witches and those who have poisoned someone.”6 This penalty seems to have been rarely applied in Ukraine; out of my sample of 198 trials, there is documentary evidence for only 13 executions. This number is very low in comparison to other lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; Pilaszek estimated that in ethnic Polish lands 30 percent of such cases ended with the death penalty. But if we consider that each case could have more than one person accused of witchcraft, the fraction is even higher—42 percent of the accused were burnt at the stake.7 Among other harsh punishments used for those accused of witchcraft were flogging and, more rarely, exile. More often, people whose guilt was proven had to pay a fine to the court or to the church. All such verdicts were not based on any legal prescriptions, but rather on the common sense of the judges, since in practice legal manuals were often used by judges as basic legal recommendations that were open to interpretation. Thus it is worth focusing on those few surviving cases in which judges made direct references to the above-mentioned laws and trying to analyze what use they made of them. For instance, in 1730 the town court of Kremenets decided the fate of a peasant woman, Maryna Perysta, who was accused of attempting to bewitch her master. The court decreed that, “according to the opinion of the Saxon Magdeburg law, she must be executed by a hangman with a sword.”8 The judges, basing their verdict on Saxon law that in6 Bartłomej Groicki, Porządek sądów i spraw miejskich prawa majdeburskiego (Kraków: Lazarus Andreae impresit, 1566), 128. 7 Pilaszek, Procesy o czary w Polsce w wiekach XV–XVIII, 291–292. 8 No. 34 (1730), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 78–79.

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deed recommended the death penalty for witches, nevertheless felt free to change the method of execution to beheading instead of burning alive. Coming to a verdict in the case of Wincent Rużanski and Waj­ sek Węgrzynec, accused in Kremenets in 1748 of attempting to bewitch their masters, the jury decided that Wincent Rużanski as the initiator of bewitchment was to be punished with all severity: “Since investigation confirmed the crime, the jury turned to the Magdeburg law which says in Porząndok and in references to Saxon law… that for such crimes of witchcraft and as a witch, he should be burnt alive. However, the jury showed mercy… and he will be executed by the master [hangman] with a sword.”9 The second accused, ­Wajsek Węgrzynec, was sentenced to be flogged since he was under age, but he was warned that if he were accused of witchcraft in the future, and if the investigation proved the accusation to be true, he would be burnt alive.10 The jury of the same city delivered a similar verdict in 1753 when several peasant women from the villages near Kremenets were arrested under the suspicion of witchcraft. Due to lack of evidence their guilt was not proven—only one of them was sentenced to flogging since she changed her confession several times—however, they all were warned: “Since our court opposes all kinds of witchcraft and all witches, we order that if [these women] are caught practicing witchcraft at any time—in several years or in several decades… or even should their descendants do this, according to the articles of the Magdeburg law they will be burnt alive.”11 Verdicts constructed this way were quite common: on the one hand, juries were able to demonstrate their mercy and clemency toward the accused and, on the other hand, they threatened them with actual sanctions for the crime of witchcraft prescribed by the Magdeburg law. It is worth noting that the character of these references is always abstract, because in most cases the judges referred not to a specific ar 9 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958), f. 67 v. 10 Ibid., f. 68 v. 11 Ibid., f. 129 v.

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ticle or paragraph of the law code, but to some unspecified “articles of the Magdeburg law,” the Magdeburg law in general, or as “it says in Porząndok and in references to Saxon law.” The same uncertain style of reference can be found in the neighboring territory of the Hetamanate (under Russian rule). The Hetmanate courts preserved the legal tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth even after their incorporation into Muscovy, in particular the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There we can observe a similarly carefree attitude toward the accurate citation of legal prescriptions. For example, the article against witchcraft from the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was mentioned in the verdict of a case that took place in the town court of Lokhvytsia in July 1675. The judges appealed to part 14, article 38 of said Statute,12 however while an article about witches is indeed mentioned in the Statute, it is not article 38 nor is it in part 14. Judges referred to laws about witchcraft only in a handful of cases. However, this does not mean that court members (at least in bigger towns) were ignorant or did not know the legal prescription, because in certain specific cases they were able to show good knowledge of the laws, as the cited cases demonstrate. Still, in the vast majority of witchcraft trials, juries were prone to make decisions on the basis of their own intuition and following an established tradition in the majority of Ukrainian courts, according to which the appropriate punishment for witchcraft was a fine or flogging. It was a specific feature of Ukrainian courts that judges were reluctant to investigate cases of witchcraft. As a rule, they dismissed such cases on the basis of the lack of evidence to confirm the accusation. If one compares witchcraft trials to the records of other sorts of trials, one can see that the judges’ skepticism toward poorly supported accusations was not specific to witchcraft. They were equally unwilling to investigate other cases if the evidence seemed unconvincing. Verdicts were in general lenient in the courts of this region; only in cases of infanticide did 12 No. 192 (1675), in Lokhvyts’ka ratushna knykha druhoij polovyny XVII st. [The town-hall book of Lokhvytsia of the second part of the seventeenth century] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1986), 170.

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judges demonstrate a special severity, as discussed in the last chapter of this book. From the sixteenth century onwards there were critics of witchcraft trials in Europe, and the first legal steps were taken against them in the seventeenth century. In Central and Eastern Europe, however, laws abolishing the trials appeared only in the second half of the eighteenth century. The fate of witchcraft trials in the Ukrainian lands was connected to the legislation of the Polish Crown and the Russian Empire, both of which introduced laws against the trials in the second part of the eighteenth century. The Diet of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth accepted a law prohibiting witchcraft trials in 1776, which was also applied in the Podolian, Volhynian, and Ruthenian palatinates. After its incorporation into Muscovy in 1654, the territory of the Hetmanate remained partly autonomous in judicial terms and continued to use Polish-Lithuanian statutes, but over the course of the eighteenth century it gradually fell under Russian imperial law and thus local courts followed Russia’s successive efforts to put an end to witchcraft trials. Witchcraft was declared to be an instance of fraud during the reign of Empress Anna in 1731, but witchcraft trials were abolished by a series of legal edicts only during Catherine the Great’s rule in the 1770s.13 This did not mean that the trials ceased immediately. As in most other places in Europe, witchcraft trials in the Ukrainian lands continued even after the authorities legally abolished them.14 After some time, they transformed into trials against people who had lynched witches (and therefore we know that 13 For a discussion of difficulties related to the abolition of witchcraft persecutions in the Russian Empire see Elena Borisovna Smilianskaia, Volshebniki, Bogokhulniki, Eretiki: Narodnaya Religiooznost i “Dukhovnye Prestupleniya” v Rossii XVIII v. [Magicians, blasphemers, and heretics: Popular religiosity and “spiritual crimes” in eighteenth century Russia] (Moscow: Indrik, 2003), 187–200; and Christine D. Worobec, “Decriminalizing Witchcraft in Pre-Emancipation Russia,” in Späte Hexenprozesse: Der Umgang der Aufklärung mit dem Irrationalen, ed. Wolfgang Behringer, Sönke Lorenz, and Dieter R. Bauer (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2016), 281–308. 14 For European examples of late trials about witchcraft see: Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian P. Levack, and Roy Porter, eds., The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, vol. 5 (London: The Athlone Press, 1999); Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 345.

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people still believed in witches and persecuted them); however even in the nineteenth century there were cases where people came to the courts with accusations of witchcraft.15 By the second half of the nineteenth century, witchcraft finally disappeared from the courts, to become one of the main subjects of interest for folklorists researching Ukrainian popular beliefs. Despite the existence of severe legal prescriptions for dealing with witches, Ukrainian town courts rarely appealed to these prescribed laws when deciding upon a verdict. In fact, laws against witchcraft were similar to those that existed in most Western European countries. However, the extremely low execution rate shows that there was a serious gap between laws and actual legal practices.

The Queen of Evidence: The Use of Torture and the Figure of the Executioner In the popular mind, as well as in much of the scholarly literature on the subject, witch trials are nearly synonymous with horrific scenes of inquisitional torture. The Ukrainian material serves as a powerful counterweight to the idea that the figure of the witch was formed in the crucible of torture. Very few—only 7 out of the 198 Ukrainian trails that I have investigated—involved the application of torture. Judicial torture came to European laws from Roman law, though it was not unknown even before the institution of Roman law. It was not until the late fifteenth century that torture began to have a noticeable impact on legal procedure.16 Torture was used only in exceptional cases, when in the judges’ opinion no other option to extract 15 The most curious case happened at the late date of 1829 in the town of Lypovets’ when priest Fedor Bloski accused Kateryna Martynivs’ka, the wife of the local lawyer, of attempts to bewitch him. The accuser was not able to prove Kateryna’s guilt and was warned by the judges to be careful with false accusations in the future: TDIA (Kyiv) fond 127, op. 297, no. 92 (1829), 1–15. 16 Kathy Stuart, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honour and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 26.

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a confession was left. Judges would usually approve the use of torture when there was enough evidence of a delinquent’s guilt, when two witnesses confirmed the crime, and when even the second interrogation did not lead to a confession. However, even then a suspected criminal was not immediately subjected to torture. There were three main stages of torture. In the first stage, the executioner would usually show the tools for torturing. In many cases this made a sufficient enough impression and people chose to confess. If it did not, the second stage would follow during which the criminal had to take off his or her clothes. Nakedness was also a powerful tool to make the accused confess. Only after that did the actual torture begin. The normal procedure here was to use thumbscrews or to stretch the suspected malefactor on the rack (the level of torture applied to a criminal was related to the graveness of the crime). However, many people were able to withstand torture, in which case the accused was announced innocent and set free. According to court regulations even those who confessed under torture had to repeat their confessions freely the next day outside the torture chamber.17 Authorities have always realized that torture was a dangerous tool that had to be applied carefully and with many precautions. Despite control from authorities, torture was sometimes misused and could become the expression of an excess of power. It was obvious that confessions extracted by torture could have been made under the influence of pain, which is why torture has always had its critics.18 Judicial torture was used by Ukrainian town courts as well as in the courts of Central and Western Europe. Recommendations about the procedure and precautions about its use were mentioned in legal manuals, the most popular of which was the manual by Bartłomej Groicki, who devotes an essential part of his writing to the theme. 17 For a detailed account of torture see Richard van Dülmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990). 18 Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions,” in The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian P. Levack, and Roy Porter, vol. 5 (London: The Athlone Press, 1999), 20.

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In this chapter he examines possible situations in which the use of torture is justified. Groicki stresses that no one should be subjected to torture without persuasive proof of guilt, however he expresses doubt that there could be absolutely definitive evidence that someone should be sent to the torture chamber. This decision depends on the consciousness and wisdom of judges, and he provides many examples taken from the practice of Saxon law that demonstrate that proof of guilt is relative to the circumstances of the arrest, the testimonies of witnesses, and so on.19 The words of a witness of the crime alone are not enough to subject the accused person to torture; a story told by a witness is worth paying attention to only when it is supported by “firm facts.”20 Groicki also warns judges to be careful with such seemingly evident confirmations of guilt as contradiction in testimony, lies, fear, and impediment in the suspected person’s speech as there could be many reasons for these and, in case a judge was mistaken, later on they could be accused of sending an innocent person to torture without good motives.21 However, he considers an attempted escape by the suspect explicit evidence of his or her guilt.22 Another of Groicki’s concerns is the trustworthiness of the information extracted by torture. He considers confessions made under torture insufficient to sentence a person to death. Much depends on the nature of the tortured person and his or her ability to resist pain; some can withstand extensive torture, while others will say anything in order to stop the suffering. Consequently, many innocent people were executed.23 In order to avoid this, Groicki recommends that magistrates use a practice adopted from the German laws: when someone has confessed under torture and is about to be sentenced to death, the judges must wait until the following day before announcing the final verdict, and the culprit has to repeat his or her confessions freely in 19 Groicki, Porządek sądów i spraw miejskich prawa majdeburskiego, 123 v. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 124 r. 22 Ibid., 124 v. 23 Ibid., 122 v.

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front of the judges once again. If this free confession does not contradict the one given under torture, it is to be written down by the secretary and then read out to the culprit, who must then confirm it.24 Furthermore, the author addresses questions concerning the procedure itself. He makes a list of particularly cruel torture methods of which he does not approve, considering them to be the product of a judge’s excessive sick fantasy and/or executioners’ blood-thirst. Among these he mentions the following: torture with water; vinegar or oil poured into the throat; torture by burning sulfur; starvation; and applying poisonous insects.25 He recommends that the body not be overly mutilated, so that no bones are broken and no visible signs of torture are left on the body.26 All of these recommendations echo corresponding practices used at that time in Western Europe. Groicki also mentions those crimes for which, in case of a refusal to confess, the suspected person is to be subjected to torture. Witchcraft is among those crimes.27 Groicki highly recommends judges shave all the hair from the culprit’s body before starting torture, another procedure adopted from the German practices. Groicki explains this necessity in the following way: some secret magic charms could be hidden in hair, which would help the alleged criminal withstand torture by not feeling any pain.28 One case illustrates the statement by Groicki that charms could be hidden by the criminal to help him or her withstand torture. In 1724, Vasil Hucul was sent to the torture chamber. He was tortured on the rack and by fire, but did not show any sign of suffering. It was announced that he did not feel pain because he used some magic charms.29 However, this is all only theory. The question at hand is how torture was used in Ukrainian courts. First of all, one has to keep in mind that in Western Europe and the Ukrainian lands alike, torture was not used 24 Ibid., 122 r. 25 Ibid., 125 r. 26 Ibid., 126 v. 27 Groicki, Ten postępek wybran jest z praw cesarskich, 17 v. 28 Ibid., 126 v. 29 Arkhiv Iugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, part 5, vol. 1 (Kyiv: v universitetskoj tipografii, 1869), 302.

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everywhere. The reason for this was simple—executioners, especially skilled ones, were too expensive to be kept in every town. For example, at a time when justice was applied in a notoriously brutal fashion, there were only five skilled executioners in Bavaria.30 In one of the legal manuals used in the lands of the Polish Crown we find recommendations to the magistrates to save on the costs of an executioner by signFig.3. Instruments of torture. Ladder. From Encyclopedia of Brokgauz and Efron (1890–1907). ing a bloodless sentence.31 Executioners were kept by very few cities in Podolia, Volhynia, Ruthenia, and the Hetmanate; for instance, out of sixteen cities and towns from the sample under analysis, an executioner was kept in just three cities: Lviv, Kamianets-Podilskyi, and Kremenets. Until the late eighteenth century there was no executioner even in such a comparatively large city as Kyiv.32 In cases of emergency, other cities and towns could hire an executioner from one of the other cities. It is thus unsurprising that torture was not frequently used in the Ukrainian town courts, and most of the examples come from those cities that kept their own executioner. The executioner, however marginal to the judicial process in early modern Ukraine, has been little studied.33 However, there are com30 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 187. 31 Jakub Kazimierz Haur, Skład abo skarbiec znakomitych sekretów oekonomiey ziemiańskiey (Kraków: w drukarni Mikołaia Alexandra Schedla, 1693), 237. 32 When necessary the Kyivan authorities invited an executioner from the town of Zhytomyr. 33 Some general observations about popular attitudes toward the figure of the executioner were made in Orest Levyts’kyj, “Vzgliad na remeslo palacha v staroj Malorossii” [Attitude toward the executioner’s craft in old small Russia], Kievskaia starina 12 (1899): 395–398; and in Natalia Yakovenko, “Pro dva mental’ni stereotypy ukrjins’koji shliachty: ‘cholovik dobryj’ i ‘cholovik zlyj’’ [About two stereotypes of Ukrainian nobility: “good man” and “evil man”], in Paralel’nyj svit. Doslidzhennia z istoriji uiavlen’ ta idej v Ukrajini XVI–XVII st. [Parallel world:

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paratively detailed descriptions of the life and work of Lviv executioners.34 According to these studies, the craft of the executioner in Ukrainian lands was considered dishonest and defiled, as it was in most countries of Western Europe. Even the word “executioner” itself was taboo and to call someone an “executioner” was considered an offense. One can find a reflection of this attitude in some materials from witchcraft trials. For example, when in 1728 Piotr Pozniewicz quarreled with the wife of the Jew Meusz Leyzorowicz, he accused her of attempts to bewitch his household and beat her. She in turn answered him with an insult, saying that he was like an executioner. It is curious that the incident happened in Olyka, a town that did not have its own executioner.35 From some cases we learn that those touched, or worse, tortured by the executioner were considered to be defiled and it was an insult to mention that someone had been in the executioner’s hands, as happened with Martynicha Winniczka from Vyzhva in 1728.36 At the same time, the executioner was the one who had access to the bodies of those executed for possessing magical qualities and to other mystical objects, and thus it is not surprising that in the popular imagination he was associated with magic activities as well. In 1717, for example, the executioner from KamianetsPodilskyi, Michałko, gave or sold to the tavern-keeper Mankowska a rope with which a criminal was hanged. The townspeople believed that this rope was magical and would bring good luck and success to its owner.37 In materials on witchcraft trials, we also come across mentions of the executioner intended to scare alleged witches. In 1719 Jacub Wolincki from Kovel accused Wasyl Oxętyiowicz and his wife of

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research on the history of beliefs and ideas in Ukraine of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2002), 137–138. Kozyts’kyj and Bilostots’kyj, Kryminal’nyj svit staroho L’vova, 8–21. TDIA (Kyiv) fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, f. 80 v–80 r. A similar case took place in Olyka two years later with a certain Łazienik, who was called an executioner’s assistant in 1730: TDIA (Kyiv) fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 323 r, 338 v, 339 v. TDIA (Kyiv) fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 124 v. No. 25 (1717), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 68.

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witchcraft. He came to their house, calling them witches and threatening them with the executioner.38 In a similar way, a resident of Vyzhva, Łomazianka, was accused by Łukasz Supruniukow of bewitching several people in 1716. He came to her house with accusations and threats, saying that a carriage was ready to take her to the executioner.39 These threats were frightening because, as we can see from the records of Ukrainian town courts, torture was indeed sometimes applied to alleged witches. In 1634 three women, Eva Grubarka, Doroti Smoliczka, and Eva Pytłocha, were accused of causing death by means of witchcraft in the city court of Lviv. The women were arrested and kept in prison for several weeks. Since they did not confess their guilt, the judges decided that they should be tortured. Under multiple torture sessions (probably stretching on the rack) they confessed to what they were accused of—using witchcraft to harm people, consulting with evil spirits, and so on. Later they all appealed to the court asking the judges to have mercy, saying that they had not done any of those terrible things but had only confessed because of the torture. Eva Grubarka complained that she was tortured nine times. Despite this appeal, the women were pronounced guilty and executed.40 This case is quite exceptional, for in no other Ukrainian witchcraft trial do we find mention of torture repeated so many times or come across this kind of appeal on behalf of alleged witches. In another case from Lviv, in 1672 Katarzyna Rybiarka and Katarzyna Dubaska were accused of bewitching a local man named Krauzer with the help of magic powder. Rybiarka was the main suspect and since she did not confess to her crime she was sent to the torture chamber, but she did not change her testimony even there. The trial record emphasizes that she had to repeat her testimony freely after the torture and that these two testimonies had to match.41 38 39 40 41

TDIA (Kyiv) fond 35, op. 1, no. 15, f. 307 v. No. 21 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 64. TDIA (Lviv) fond 52, op. 2, no. 302, pp. 145–156. TDIA (Lviv) fond 52, op. 2, no. 311, pp. 408–433.

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Another city where torture was applied to people accused of witchcraft was Kamianets-Podilskyi. In 1716 the beggar woman Marina was accused of attempting to bewitch the Armenian vijt (an elected head of the town magistrate) by pouring magic powder which contained “some bones and a tooth of a dead man” on the threshold of his house. Marina tried to explain that it was only love magic, which was not meant to harm anyone. However, the victim of her alleged crime was of high social position and that is why she was sent to the executioner. The results of the interrogation under torture were not recorded, however the case concluded with the execution of Marina at the stake.42 Most cases in our sample where torture was applied come from the court records of the Volhynian city of Kremenets. In 1730, the peasant woman Maryna Perysta was accused by her master, Łukasz Jeło Maliński, of attempting to bewitch him and his family. Five witnesses testified that she had threatened to use witchcraft against her masters, but Maryna herself did not confess, saying, “No matter if I confess or not, I will perish in any case.”43 After that, she was sent to the executioner and her master was present at her torture and interrogation. At first she was tortured by stretching on the rack, but she did not confess. The judges decided that torture should be applied for a second time, this time by fire. But Maryna still did not confess, and she repeated that the accusations were only gossip. Despite the fact that legal manuals prescribed that someone who withstood torture should be pronounced innocent, the judges decided that there were enough witnesses who confirmed the accused woman’s guilt and she was sentenced to death.44 Also found in the court records of Kremenets are details of the accusations and trial against Hapka Petrykowa, a resident of Lesniowtsy. In 1747 Hapka was accused of causing the death of the governor by witchcraft. She was arrested, her personal possessions were searched for suspicious objects, and later she was interrogated because some 42 No. 22 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 65–66. 43 No. 34 (1730), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 78. 44 Ibid., 77–79.

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of the objects found in the search were pronounced to be tools of bewitchment. However, she would not confess her guilt, saying that she had never used witchcraft. Probably because the victim was of high social standing, Hapka was interrogated under torture. This trial contains some details of the torture procedure. It was recorded that Hapka was tortured three times by two methods of torture: burning by candles and stretching on the rack. However, under torture she only repeated what she had already said, that she was innocent, knew nothing of witchcraft and was accused out of malice. This time the judges followed the recommendations of the manuals and set the accused woman free.45

Fig.4. Instruments of torture. Rack. Nineteenth-century engraving.

Torture was also applied to Orzyszka Liczmanicha from the village of Podlisci near Kremenets. She was accused of practicing witchcraft in 1753. It is curious that she started confessing her witchcraft practices during the interrogation even before torture was mentioned. She also told of many fantastic things such as witch covens, lessons in witchcraft, and night flights. However, her confessions contradicted confessions made by another accused woman, Iewka Stanorycha Tyniurczuczka. The torture applied to Orzyszka was stretching on the rack. The interrogation during her torture was recorded in detail (which was quite unusual). She was asked three questions: whom 45 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958), ff. 42 v–49 v.

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she harmed by her witchcraft; who her clients were; and who taught her magic. Orzyszka answered only the last question (or at least only the answer to this question was recorded) and named four women who taught her how to steal milk from cows, and how to cause rain, hailstorms, and other mischief. She also changed some of her previous testimonies. Since she had changed her statements, the judges did not trust her confessions. She was sentenced to flogging and was warned that, in case she ever practiced witchcraft again, she would be burnt as was prescribed by law.46 The role of torture in Ukrainian witchcraft trials was marginal, and torture had little influence on the course and outcome of the trial. It was used in only seven cases out of the sample of 198. This can be partly explained by the lack of skilled executioners in most towns and cities, which led to torture playing a marginal role not only in cases of witchcraft, but in most criminal cases as well. The role of torture in witchcraft trials was also marginal because the results of the interrogation under torture did not have much influence on court decisions. In some cases, those who did not confess their guilt even after being tortured multiple times were pronounced guilty and sentenced to death. In other cases, those who made the most fantastic confessions were sentenced to rather mild punishments. This suggests that a serious revision is needed to the idea that torture was central to producing the fantastic confessions of accused witches, and that without its encouragement witch trials would not have spread. In fact, suspects were much more likely to be convicted of witchcraft in the Ukrainian lands based on local gossip and rumor than from confessions made in the torture chamber. Even though Groicki writes that mere words are not sufficient proof of guilt, “quia fama est res fragilis et perniciosa”47 (for a rumor is an unsure and dangerous thing), it was the common practice of plaintiffs and witnesses to lodge complaints on the basis of overheard conversations or gossip, the form of speech devalued in the eyes of the law. 46 Ibid., ff. 119 v–129 v. Since this case is in many respects exceptional, I will explore it as a case study in the last part of my work. 47 Ibid., 124.

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In the Realm of Gossip: The Role of Everyday Communication in the Legal Process In June 1718, on behalf of his wife, Jacko Potapowicz brought charges of slander against Anna Traczowa to the magisterial court of the town of Vyzhva. His wife, he said, had agreed to give Anna a bit of whey for her children as payment for some (unmentioned) services rendered. Not only had Anna refused to take it, but, ungrateful, she had also spread a rumor that his wife had wanted to bewitch her by means of that whey. Potapowicz’s wife had learned about this one evening when she was passing the house of Anna Traczowa and saw her chatting with four older women. She thought she heard them saying that she had attempted to make a child of dough (an act with obvious magical significance). Indignant at such misinformation about herself, Potapowicz’s wife had intruded into the discussion and declared to all those present that everything that was being said about her was nothing but lies. However, the five other participants in this event had their own versions of what had gone on that evening. Anna said that she had good reason to suspect that the whey was bewitched since she had seen, with her own eyes, Potapowicz’s wife wash her private parts with it. She could only explain this strange behavior or ritual as an attempt to bewitch her and her family. Having consulted with Potapowicz’s sister on the subject, Anna had decided that it would be reasonable not to take the whey, but that if Potapowicz’s wife insisted it should be given to the pigs. When questioned by judges, Anna tried to deny that she had spread this rather unsavory rumor, and what she had said was in fact true. In contrast to the story of the accuser, she claimed that one evening she had been quietly discussing the “latest news” with four other women—there had been a big fire in Kyiv, somebody had been trying to produce a child from dough, and some other things—when Potapowicz’s wife had approached them and out of the blue started to aggressively defend her reputation, saying that the women should not believe a single word that Traczowa said. The 36

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latter answered that all she had said about Potapowicz’s wife was true since she had seen what was going on with her own eyes. After this, Anna said, she was pushed and a fight began between the two women. The four witnesses, on the other hand, were much more interested in the details of the quarrel and the fight that followed. Each of them started her testimony with an almost idyllic depiction of a quiet summer evening and their peaceful “forum,” which had been interrupted by the violent intrusion of Potapowicz’s wife. Then each of them, with great pleasure, described the events that followed including much trivial information (the words they had used to insult each other, which parts of their bodies had been hit, etc.), each of them adding more color to the story. In the end the court authorities had heard enough, and they put an end to this quarrel by simply ordering the women to apologize to each other.48 This trial resembles a comedy rather than the grim witchcraft trials of Western Europe as they are usually imagined. The lenient attitude of the judges sometimes made it possible to turn a municipal court into a farce, a scene for the discussion of local gossip and the resolution of petty personal conflicts. However, this case also demonstrates that gossip was a powerful tool in initiating witchcraft accusations. For a long time, the notion of gossip had a primarily negative moral connotation, but since the 1960s it has become a subject of discussion and analysis for anthropologists, and more recently for sociologists and historians. Social anthropologists who studied how gossip operates in tribal societies arrived at the conclusion that it has at least two important functions. On the one hand, the danger of becoming the subject of local gossip creates a moral restraint on people’s behavior; on the other hand, certain specificities of it, such as the use of local names and events, keep the uninitiated at a distance and thus create a feeling of communal unity against outsiders.49 Furthermore, sociological discussions of gossip are mainly centered around 48 No. 28 (1718), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 69–72. 49 Max Gluckman, “Gossip and Scandal,” Current Anthropology 4, no. 3 (1963): 307–316.

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gendered roles in gossiping. They note that in many societies communication among women, which involves more personal matters such as children, family, and love life, is commonly described as “gossip,” whereas men’s more abstract communication about politics, sports, or cars is described as “discourse.”50 Thus, sociologists ascribe to gossip the function of differentiation between prescribed gender roles: even if women start talking about politics, a pejorative attitude toward female communication will not let them rise above mere gossiping. Sociologists also distinguish between three levels of everyday communication: the exchange of information, storytelling, and gossiping.51 If the first level, exchange of information, is based on the retelling of factual events happening in the locality while the second level, storytelling, is a product of creative fantasy, then gossip stands in between these two levels. It combines the subject matter of the former, taken from the events of real life, with the creative approach of the latter. If one views these levels of communication from a historical perspective, it becomes obvious that it is often impossible to make such a clear-cut division between the exchange of information and gossiping. The boundaries between them are blurred to such an extent that it becomes necessary to come to some conventional agreement about the use of the term “gossip.” In addition, turning to Ukrainian trial records, one can see that both men and women readily participated in gossiping. This can be supported by Ulinka Rublack, a historian of early modern Germany, who states: Gossip was a collective process of gathering and exchanging information. It tried to assess the likelihood of someone’s delinquent behavior and was far from being uncontrolled. Conventions determined who would talk to whom, when, and in which way, according to rank, the nature of leisure, work, and individual relationships. Gender hardly made any difference, despite the persistent cliché of female gossip (al50 Cheryl Benard and Edit Schlaffer, “Männerdiskurs und Frauentratsch: Zum Doppelstandard in der Soziologie,” Soziale Welt 1 (1981): 119–136. 51 Ibid., 124.

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though it is apparent that except for family and kin, gossip took place in gender-differentiated groups).52

Gossip played a considerable role in many criminal proceedings. In conditions of close coexistence, in villages as well as towns, where many details of the life of neighbors were open to observers and where there was a hunger for news, gossip was not only unavoidable, but also an indispensable and acceptable part of everyday life. The evidence of criminal proceedings provides us with the opportunity to trace the spread of gossip, since many witnesses were in fact not eye-witnesses, but ear-witnesses of criminal incidents. By such means gossip had a function of not allowing the crime to pass unnoticed and making as many people as possible aware of the impending danger. The role of gossip is especially important in witchcraft trials. To use James Sharpe’s words: The early modern village was not the closed, static community of sociological myth; but it was a place where reputation and “credit” in its symbolic rather than its financial sense mattered and were evaluated, a place where gossip and story-telling were important aspects of sociability. In such an environment, it is easy to see how a burgeoning reputation for deviance might help feed that process which Keith Thomas has described as “the making of the witch.”53

In fact, many witchcraft trials in Western Europe as well as in Ukraine could change their course and turn into trials for slander. In her early paper about new aspects of witchcraft trials in Poland, Pilaszek claims that slander cases in which witchcraft accusations were involved constituted a considerable part of all witchcraft cases, and they were largely ignored by previous generations of scholars (in par-

52 Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 26. 53 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 64.

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ticular she made reference to Baranowski).54 In cases of slander, gossip would become a force damaging a person’s reputation. A bad reputation was detrimental to both business and communal affairs (this is discussed further in the chapter “Rivalry and Bewitchment”). That is why it was important for someone rumored to be a witch to make a public act of cleansing the stain from their reputation by initiating a slander case. The distinction between eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses is clear in one case that began in April 1746 in Kamianets-Podilskyi. Officials initiated an investigation of the lynching of the szlachticz (noble)

Fig.5. Kamieniec Podolski (Kamianets-Podilskyi) by Cyprian Tomaszewich (1673–79).

Michał Matkowski by the peasants of the village of Humenets. This trial is rather mysterious: it is one of the best documented trials, yet the gaps and omissions in the information are so unbridgeable that there are more questions to be asked than answers to be found in the 54 Pilaszek, “Procesy czarownic w Polsce,” 81–103.

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records. Michał Matkowski was severely tortured and killed by a furious crowd of peasants led by gentry and a priest in 1738, the year that a mysterious epidemic claimed the lives of many people and animals. The peasants went out to the field at night to perform a ritual and met Michał Matkowski with a bridle in his hands. He was pronounced to be a vampire who had caused the epidemic by his witchcraft.55 It is not clear why it took Matkowski’s relatives eight years before they came to court. But it is clear that the event was so exceptional that even after eight years people could still speak clearly about the details as if it had happened just the day before. Twelve “trustworthy witnesses” were questioned, though out of these twelve, only a handful had actually witnessed any of the events in question. The rest, as a rule, started their testimonies with the phrase “as I have heard,” without further reference to the source of their information. Evidently in early modern culture, a culture hungry for news and events, storytelling, and local opinion, such stories of witchcraft and vampirism were not easily forgotten (as they would probably impress people even today). As this incident shows such stories were discussed and remained the subject of local gossip for a long time, until finally they became a part of local folklore. Witchcraft trials can also provide us with information about the means through which gossip spread. In many cases witness testimonies were based on things heard from other people in church, on the streets and squares, in taverns, and in more private settings. This pattern of gossip dissemination can be traced, for example, in the case of Kośt Łobodziński, who believed himself to be bewitched by the wife of a certain Piotr Derczeski. This case took place in 1700 in Kamianets-Podilskyi. From the testimonies we learn that the source of the witnesses’ information was in most cases street conversations. One witness, Sobestian Łuczyński, testified that he met a woman named Marcinowa, a soldier’s wife, on Dominikanska Street where they spent some time chatting. From her the witness learned that the 55 No. 55 (1746), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 105–112.

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wife of Dreczeski had sent an evil spirit to torture Łobodziński. From other witnesses’ testimonies it becomes clear that the wife of the bewitched man had used every opportunity to spread gossip about her husband’s bewitchment and especially about the person who caused it.56 She talked about it to every guest who came to her house, and to people on the streets and in church. This desire to make information about bewitchment known to as many people as possible without resorting to the court of justice makes one suspect that gossip could have been used as a countermeasure against the bewitchment. This could have been achieved by making a witch aware that her victim and his or her relatives knew that it was she who had caused the illness—for it was almost certain that a rumor would finally reach the ears of a suspect—and in this way force her or him to take away the illness (in this particular case to take away an evil spirit). There are some cases that demonstrate that people under an alleged witchcraft attack did not want to interact with the suspected person directly, but would rather use the services of a mediator, usually one of the neighbors, who would be asked to see and talk to the alleged witch, asking her or him to undo the bewitchment.57 Behringer describes such a situation in the Bavarian cases that he studies: When the suspicion of a certain person had been confirmed, the next step was by no means to go directly to the authorities; in fact this was probably very rare, and not only because of the frequently observed unwillingness of the authorities to entertain such accusations, but also because of the position of the suspects. Sorcerers and witches were powerful, and taking action against them might well bring down even greater afflictions on the accuser’s head. Moreover, a sentence in the courts would not remove the existing harm done. For this reason the victim did not go to the court, but to the witch or 56 No. 1 (1700), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 43. 57 For example, TDIA (Kyiv) fond 35, op. 1, no. 13, ff. 102 r–103 v (1706); fond 50, op. 1, no. 3, ff. 123 v–126 v (1730); TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, pp. 60–61 (1693).

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sorcerer presumed to have caused the harm, who could “turn” it and render it harmless again.58

On the other hand, the purpose of gossip could be to make other people aware of the danger represented by a witch, and possibly, in cases of extreme danger, to initiate a lynching. The third possibility seems to have been to damage the reputation of the alleged witch, for such rumors did not pass unnoticed. In fairness, it should be mentioned that the use of gossip in this way was not unknown in Ukrainian witchcraft trials. The best examples of this are cases involving business rivalry, where gossip about witchcraft was spread in order to undermine the reputation of business rivals in the eyes of their customers and the wider public.59 Though gossip was among the necessary elements for initiating a legal process, judges sometimes demonstrated their disapproval of gossiping. If the case was started on the basis of someone’s words and later these words were not proven to be true, the judges could decide to punish “the gossiper.” For example, in 1747 the town court of Lesniowci had to release two women accused of witchcraft on the basis of what turned out to be “gossip” because it was impossible to prove their guilt. At the end of the verdict, the judges admonished those who had dared to gossip about every matter imaginable.60 Gossip as it is mentioned in the materials of early modern Ukrainian courts served as an important instrument for the spread of information and an integral part of everyday communication, and it aimed to alert the community about the danger represented by the alleged witch or to let a witch know that the victim knew about bewitchment. On the other hand, in trials for slander in which witchcraft was mentioned, gossip often functioned as a means to spoil someone’s (for example, a rival’s) reputation. In terms of gender, the 58 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 86. 59 Such cases are the subject of a separate chapter, “Rivalry and Bewitchment,” in the third part of this work. 60 AGAD, Księga czarna Krzemieniecka 1747–1777, mf 18958, 55.

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example of witchcraft trials reveals that women and men alike were engaged in gossiping, which was generally accepted in most of the cases. Only in a handful of cases did judges articulate a slight disapproval of gossiping, without any hint at association of gossip with the female sphere. The judges’ occasional condemnations of gossip are noteworthy, given a pattern found in most Ukrainian municipal courts where the judges were in general not prone to reflect or moralize. The fact that they were moved to condemn gossip without attaching a particular gender stigma to it is also worth underscoring, since in European contexts it is so sharply condemned and so strongly associated with women. If gossip was still occasionally labeled a vice by Ukrainian judges, it was viewed as a product of human social interactions, and not as a particularly reprehensible or particularly female activity.

Actors of the Witchcraft Trials Now that we have discussed the laws, procedures, and processes behind Ukrainian witchcraft trials, it is worth having a look at the people who played the parts of defendants and accusers during the trials. But before doing so I would like to say a few words about the information that we can find in the court records. First of all, I want to repeat that the number of surviving court records is rather low, in addition to which the tradition of keeping records was stronger in some Ukrainian palatinates than in others. Moreover, some of the trial records lack endings with court decisions and some courts did not even reach a decision because of the lack of evidence or for some other reason unknown to us. For these reasons the sample may be not very representative and thus the data must be handled carefully with these limitations in mind. We should also remember that the majority of the records come from municipal courts and only a handful of witchcraft cases that involved szlachta (nobility) were dealt with in the grodski sąd (special court for the nobles). That is why it is not surprising that 44

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the majority of the actors under analysis are town dwellers and, to a lesser extent, peasants from the neighboring villages that were under municipal jurisdiction. This situation is by and large similar to that in the Polish Crown lands in general; Pilaszek has found that formal witch persecutions in trials there primarily occurred in urban environments (more than 83 percent occurred in towns and cities).61 Even scholars of European countries with a much better document survival rate have serious doubts about the value of statistical analyses of witchcraft trials. In the English case, for example, Sharpe writes, “The investigation of the prosecution of witchcraft in the English courts can, therefore, provide only incomplete and in some respects contradictory results. To some extent this is a consequence of the exigencies of record survival.”62 Further on, he explains that the low level of survival “renders any attempt to calculate the numbers of persons tried and executed for witchcraft in England little more than an exercise in educated guesswork.”63 However, despite these limitations there are some important findings that can be extracted from the sources that survived. “Yet such documentation as does survive provides a solid basis from which a number of important matters can be investigated: the relative proportions of male and female witches; the frequency with which witches were convicted and punished; and the nature of the offenses for which witches were indicted.”64 Some of these things can be investigated on the basis of Ukrainian trial materials as well. Due to the laconic nature of Ukrainian court records, there is not much we can learn from them about the participants of the cases. Most of the entries have very few details; sometimes all we have is a complaint by someone who feared that witchcraft had been used but could not prove it. In such situations the scribe would write down the grievance without asking for more details or additional witnesses. 61 Pilaszek, Procesy o czary w Polsce w wiekach XV–XVIII, 268. 62 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 125. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid.

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But even from these terse texts we can learn a few things, such as the names and genders of the people suspected or accused of witchcraft, their victims, and their accusers (who were not necessarily the same people), as well as the actions that led to suspicion of witchcraft. Some of the complaints and longer accounts of the witchcraft trials can provide us with more information, such as the marital status and social standing (but never the age) of the accuser and defendant, and their relationship to each other (family or household members, neighbors, etc.). Sometimes we also find mention of the profession or religious denomination of the actors involved. The data from our sample allows us to start with a discussion of the gender distribution of accusations of witchcraft. Due to the efforts of several generations of demonologists (from Malleus Maleficarum by Henrich Kramer-Institoris on), witchcraft has been strongly associated with women (at least in western Christianity). And since witchcraft was definitely a gendered phenomenon, researchers have long analyzed the male to female ratio of witchcraft accusations to demonstrate that in most instances witch-hunting looked like woman-hunting. Others have tried to refute this by demonstrating that although women composed the overall majority they were not the exclusive target of persecutions, because even in countries such as Denmark, England, and Hungary, where the percentage of women tried for witchcraft was greatest, eight to ten percent of the accused were men.65 In most European countries the number of men accused of witchcraft was around 20 to 30 percent, but in some places this pattern was quite different. For example, in Finland 50 percent of the accused were men, in Estonia 60 percent, in Russia 75 percent, and in Iceland their number grew to 90 percent.66 In this respect the Ukrainian pattern of witchcraft accusations, at least according to the sample under discussion, is female-oriented. 65 See for instance, Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 226. 66 These numbers are taken from Geoffrey Scarre, Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1987), 25; and Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 261.

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At the same time, 22 percent of those accused were men, which interestingly corresponds to the average result for Europe. It is also worth noting that in the ethnic Polish lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the distribution was slightly different; Pilaszek estimated that only 10.6 percent of those accused were men.67 However, we should also look closely at the gender of those who brought the accusations of witchcraft. Some historians have attempted to analyze not only the gender composition of the accused but of the accusers as well, in order to refute the theory that witch trials were “men against women.” For example, based on data for England (one of the countries where witchcraft was most “female-oriented”), Sharpe comes to the conclusion that women were the main participants of witchcraft trials—not only did they face the judges as the accused, but they also constituted the majority of those who brought accusations of witchcraft to the courts. Moreover, women took an active part in some parts of the legal procedures, as witnesses and also as those who inspected the bodies of the accused for marks of witchcraft.68 At first glance, the Ukrainian trials may lead one to the conclusion that the situation was different. As a rule, it was a man who brought the accusations to the court. However, upon closer inspection it is evident that this was only a tribute to legal prescriptions (which did not allow women to present accusations to a court) because as we can see from the narratives of the accusers in the court, in the vast majority of cases these men brought charges on behalf of their wives or other female relatives who were in fact the main initiators of the accusation. Usually it was a woman who initially had a quarrel, spread gossip, or was insulted, and her male relative only represented her in court in front of the judges. Seen this way, witchcraft trials in Ukraine seem to be women’s business. We will find a certain logic in this if we look at those spheres around which the accusations were constructed. 67 Pilaszek, Procesy o czary w Polsce w wiekach XV–XVIII, 297. 68 James Sharpe, “Women, Witchcraft and the Legal Process,” in Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, ed. Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker (London: UCL Press, 1994), 106–124.

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The demonic component was less than marginal in witchcraft accusations in the Ukrainian lands, only about four percent of cases include any mention of the devil or an evil spirit. A few more cases (ten to eleven percent) were about a business rivalry or success in some enterprise such as winning a trial, or searching for hidden treasure or stolen things. In all other cases the matter of conflict was within the domestic sphere: the bewitchment of children or other family members, love magic, or an assault on fertility or the community’s wellbeing and security (these subjects will be discussed in detail in Part 3). All of these were in some way associated with women’s sphere of interest and influence, which is why it is not surprising that women were the main actors of witchcraft trials on both sides. However, if we look at the witnesses we find that men constituted the majority of them, because according to the law men were considered to be more trustworthy witnesses than women. Further I propose to discuss the social standing of the people who participated in witchcraft trials. Kivelson, in her study of Muscovite witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century, finds that there were factors in witchcraft accusations more decisive than gender, for instance, itinerants and people of non-Russian origin constituted a considerable number of defendants, while the biggest group at risk—those most likely to be accused of witchcraft—included people practicing healing.69 Because of the nature of the Ukrainian sources (which are mostly records of the municipal courts) most of the cases (approximately 90 percent) involved people of roughly equal social status: neighbors, colleagues, and family members. In the rest of the cases, accusations were made by people of different social strata, mainly by social superiors against people of a subordinate status. Accusations against representatives of minorities and marginalized groups, such as beggars and vagabonds, were not unknown, however they constitute a very small number of trials. For example, there is 69 Kivelson, Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013), 114–126.

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only one accusation of witchcraft against a Gypsy, one against a Turk and five against Jews. Even though the records do not provide us with detailed information about the people involved in the trials, it is possible to trace some professional groups, representatives of which were mentioned among the participants. Given that most witchcraft trails came from urban environments it is not surprising that the most numerous professional group mentioned in the trial records is that of craftsmen. Craftsmen and their wives are mentioned in sources as both accusers and defendants. It is more curious that Orthodox and Uniate priests along with their wives (these denominations allowed priests to marry) constituted a second noticeable group, mostly mentioned in sources as being accused or suspected of witchcraft. Strange as it may seem at first, this can be explained. Priests were commonly associated with access to supernatural power, they belonged to the tiny group of literate people, and they were considered bearers of knowledge, to whom the community would often turn for advice. Of course not every piece of advice was good, and in situations when it went wrong, priests could be accused or at least suspected of witchcraft. Additionally, priests were public figures in small communities and their misdeeds and vices were noticed by everyone. Finally, the last and least numerous professional group registered in the trial records was that composed of soldiers, who also took part in the trials as both defendants and accusers. To sum up, most of the accusations of witchcraft in early modern Ukraine were made against women, but they were also brought to the courts by women. The majority of accusations were directed against people who were equal in status and well known to the community, rather than against desperately poor, alien, wandering types without status. Witches thus were conceptualized as “the enemies within,” to use the term coined by John Demos.70

70 John Demos, The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World (New York: Viking, 2008).

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2



Ukrainian Orthodox Demonology: The Learned Elite and Perceptions of the Devil and Witches

T

he study of demonology, the sum of knowledge about the Devil and demons, has long been established as a part of witchcraft research in Western Europe, since it is impossible to grasp the logic of witchcraft trials without a proper understanding of demonological discourses of the time. From the late Middle Ages and throughout the early modern period, Western theologians, lawyers, and even politicians were involved in debates about the nature of the demonic. It was during the late Middle Ages that the Devil began to play a noticeable role in European art and literature. Demonological discourse relied on both learned and popular tradition, giving birth to such concepts as diabolical pacts and witches’ Sabbaths, which in turn led to the creation of the idea of the diabolical witch, a member of a secret conspiracy who denied God’s supremacy and accepted the Devil as master. These notions were well known, not only to the educated elite but to the wider public as well. Across much of continental Europe these concepts shaped the basic framework for the interrogations of witches, who, from this period onwards, were asked not only about the alleged harm (maleficium) they had done through witchcraft, but also 51

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about the names of other members of the secret sect of Devil-worshippers. They would sometimes be asked about specifics of their relations with the Devil, night flights, and sabbaths.1 There was a close connection between demonology and legal practices that was not a one-way street, with lawyers referring to demonological treatises and demonologists drawing examples from legal practices in their works. Paradoxically, Ukrainian scholars have generally associated Ukrainian demonology not with a learned tradition, but rather with popular beliefs. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Ukrainian ethnographers collected data on popular beliefs about witches, imps, mermaids, and other fantastic creatures. This folklore, not the works of theologists, contributed to what is today considered Ukrainian demonology.2 At the same time demonology proper—learned demonology—has been disregarded and remains almost unstudied. Because of the multicultural and multi-confessional nature of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukrainian learned demonology of the early modern period included the works of both Orthodox and Catholic authors. The Catholic demonological treatises that were known in Ukrainian lands, which were copies of books which circulated in the Polish lands, are already well studied.3 The Orthodox side has received less attention, although in recent decades there have been some works exploring Orthodox demonology in the Russian context. 4 1 English trials were the exception, for the idea of the sabbath and a pact with the devil was not generally accepted there. 2 An already classical example of this attitude is the collection of studies by nineteenth century ethnographers published in 1991: Ukrajinci: narodni viruvannya, povirya, demonolohiya [Ukrainians: popular beliefs, superstitions, demonology] (Kyiv: Lybid, 1991). 3 The most detailed account of Catholic demonology is the study by Michael Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 4 Fedor Alekseevich Riazanovskij, Demonologiia v drevne-russkoi literaturie [Demonology in the literature of ancient Rus] (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1974). More recent studies of Orthodox demonology in the Russian context include: Olga Dmintrievna Zhuravel, Siuzhet o dogovore cheloveka s diavolom v drevnerusskoj literature [Motif of the pact between human and the devil in old Russian literature] (Novosibirsk: Sibirskij khronograf, 1996); Simon Franklin, “Nostalgia for Hell: Russian Literary Demonism and Orthodox Tradition,” in Byzantium—Rus—Russia: Studies in the Translation of Christian Culture (Ashgate: Vatiorun, 2002), 31–58; Dmitrij Igorevich Antonov and

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The main sources for the following chapters are the writings of Ukrainian Orthodox preachers and theologians of the early modern period, in particular the seventeenth century, a period in which Ukrainian Orthodox sermon writing flourished. Only by taking into account these writings—most of which were reprinted several times during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and were widely disseminated— are we able to explain the influence, popularity, and relevance of demonology in the contemporary context. In my study of demonology, I refer to both visual (icons, sculptures, book engravings) and written sources (treatises, books of sermons, books of miracles, town chronicles, and literary sources—especially poems). I focus on the common trends mentioned in the sources, how great the demonic powers were considered to be, and what their place was in the Orthodox doctrine. I also analyze all relevant references to witchcraft and witches, looking for possible connections between witches and the Devil, and evaluate the attitude of Church representatives to witchcraft. Furthermore, I discuss some aspects of diabolical mythology that were quite important in the European tradition, including demonic possession and pacts with the Devil. Finally, I examine how demonology became a convenient tool for dealing with opponents and enemies.5

Iconography of the Devil, Demons, and Witches In many cultures the notion of evil could not exist as a mere abstraction; in order to be more understandable and approachable to the broader public it was personified. In the Christian world evil was emMikhail Romanovich Maizuls, Demony i greshniki v drevnerusskoj ikonografii: Semiotika obraza [Demons and sinners in old Russian iconography: semiotics of the image] (Moscow: Indrik, 2011); Ryan, Bathhouse at Midnight; Valerie Kivelson “Lethal Convictions: The Power of a Satanic Paradigm in Russian and European Witch Trials,” in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 6, no. 1 (2011): 34–61; Valerie Kivelson and Jonathan Shaheen, “Prosaic Witchcraft and Semiotic Totalitarianism: Muscovite Magic Reconsidered,” Slavic Review 70, no. 1 (2011): 23–44. 5 This chapter investigates not only how Ruthenians looked at their opponents but also includes the view from the outside, demonstrating how Ruthenians were seen by their neighbors and enemies.

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bodied in the image of the Devil and his many servants. Though this image was never standardized in artistic tradition, there were certain features assigned to the Devil and his servants that were easily recognizable. In the early Middle Ages, the image of the Devil absorbed features of certain pagan gods (the satyrs and Pan): the cloven feet, the horns, the claws, and the goatee. However, other features, such as wings, came from the Christian tradition and emphasized the primordial angelic nature of demons, since by origin they were fallen angels. Visual imagery served as one of the major conduits that disseminated Christian notions of the Devil. In the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition, too, the iconography of the Devil and his servants was among the main sources of transmission of the Christian perception of evil to the majority of the Orthodox community. In this respect the Ukrainian lands were no exception to the wider European context. But there was a major difference. Many scholars have drawn attention the so-called “demonic invasion” of Western Europe that began in the fifteenth century and continued well into the sixteenth, in which the terror of the Devil was transmitted through many sources, including religious art, sermons, and books.6 No traces of an equivalent extreme “demonization” is evident in Orthodox iconography. The Devil and his servants almost never constituted a separate subject of either icons or woodcuts, and the Devil only appears as a character in a very few iconographic subjects, such as the Fight of the Archangel Michael with the Devil, and the Harrowing of Hell. On most icons representing the deeds of the Archangel Michael the Devil is portrayed as a man with wings whose appearance does not differ much from that of the Archangel.7 A different, “more demonic” portrait of the Devil appears in a sculptural version of the same scene that formed a part of the seventeenth cen6 David Nicholls, “The Devil in Renaissance France,” in The Witchcraft Reader, ed. Darren Oldridge (London: Routledge, 2002), 234. 7 For example, no. 2, The Deeds of Archangel Michael, in Ukrajinske narodne maliarstvo XVIII– XX st. [Ukrainian popular art of the thirteenth–twentieth centuries], ed. Vira Svientsits’ka and Vasyl Otkovych (Kyiv: Mystetstvo, 1991).

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tury decoration of the town hall of Lviv (presently exhibited in the Lviv Arsenal of the collection of the Museum of Arms). This Devil is a creature prostrate under the feet of the Archangel Michael, and is presented as half-human and half-beast: he has the body of a human, but with little wings, a tail, and the head of a beast with small horns and a goatee. A hand and a foot on one part of the body have human fingers and toes, while on the other they have long claws. However, this sculpture has distinct features that indicate a strong Baroque influence and most probably represents a borrowing from the Western art tradition of the period. In the rare cases when the Devil appears on an icon picturing Christ descending into Hell, in the scene known as the Harrowing of Hell, he is portrayed as a horrible dark beast with horns whose contours are only roughly outlined in the darkness of the threshold beneath Christ’s feet (as a rule the threshold is dark and empty).8 Another image of the Devil can be observed on the woodcut enriching the cover of The Spiritual Sword, an influential book of sermons by the celebrated preacher and bishop of Chernihiv, Lazar Baranovich, published in Kyiv in 1666. Here the Devil is depicted as the leader of a ship of heretics and enemies of Christianity. He has a human body and is dressed as a human, but has the head of a beast, with big ears, a goatee, and horns. Unlike their master, the Devil’s servants, smaller demons or bisy, are prolifically represented on Ukrainian icons. They can be found in depictions of episodes from the lives of such saints as Saint Nicolas, Saint Mykyta, Saint Kozma and Damian, and Saint Anthony, and on paintings of the Last Judgement and The Ladder of the Saints. As a rule, the demons are shown acting in pairs or larger groups. Their depiction is quite uniform. They are portrayed as black or sometimes green anthropomorphic creatures, half adult size, typically with little wings and short tails. This type of demon depiction is the so-called demon-eidolon, characteristic of the early Christian tradition, in par8 For example, a horrible image of the Devil under Christ’s feet can be seen on plate no. 50, The Harrowing of Hell, the second part of the icon Passions of Christ (16th or 17th century, Museum of Ukrainian Art in Lviv), in Ukrajinske narodne maliarstvo.

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Fig.6. Fragment from the cover of Lazar Baranovych The Spiritual Sword (1666).

ticular the Byzantine tradition.9 Often they do not have horns but rather long shaggy hair. They are always naked and their features are unclear. When depicted in large groups they resemble a mass of huge insects. One of the most popular subjects of these icons is the healing of the possessed, where demons are expelled from humans through the mouth.10 On icons with episodes from the life of Saint Nicolas the demons are shown in the process of causing a storm at sea—several of them sitting under the boat and shaking it. Distinct from other icons are those of Saint. Mykyta, the Demon-Fighter. On these there is only one demon, quite large, with very distinct features: he has a goatee, cloven feet, and a long, comic nose. The saint holds him tightly with

9 For more about this and other types of demonic images in Orthodox iconography see Antonov and Maizuls, Demony i greshniki v drevnerusskoi ikonografii: 35–43. 10 For more on the depiction of demons in scenes of exorcism see Christine Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 44; and Ekaterina Mel’nikova, “Otchityvanie besnovatykh: Praktiki i diskursy,” Antropologicheskii Forum 4 (2006): 220–63.

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Fig.7. Fragments from Deeds of S. Nicolas from the village Horlytsi (second half of the fifteenth century).

his hands and is about to flog him with a lash.11 On some engravings, for example, in an illustration in the book A Wonderful Story About the Devil, published in Kyiv in 1627, the demons are depicted as satyrs, with hairy legs, cloven feet, and goatees. In most of these images the demons look comical rather than terrifying to the modern spectator. To be sure, one cannot dismiss the possibility that these quite schematic images might have been differently perceived by those living in the early modern period, and that what seems amusing today may have been fearful in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, the comicality of demons might have been part of the artist’s plan; a demon placed alongside a saint could provide a comic contrast. This was a major difference to the Western tradition, in which by the middle of the sixteenth century the Devil and demons had lost all of their comical features.12 11 The example of the icon depicting Saint Mykyta can be found in the Museum of Ukrainian Art in Lviv. 12 See, for example, Darren Oldridge, The Devil in Early Modern England (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), 31.

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Fig.8. St. Antony and the Devil. Engraving from the book A Wonderful Story About the Devil I (1627).

Despite casual borrowings from Western art, the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition of demonic depiction remained largely unchanged for many centuries. While images of the Devil and demons were abundant and quite diverse in Reformation Europe—where they were presented as dragons, beasts of many forms, and even humans—the demons in Ukrainian Orthodox iconography from the eleventh century onwards never became diverse in the manner of their depiction. Nor did the Devil and the demons ever develop as a separate subject of paintings and woodcuts. They were portrayed in such a way that they were recognizable but not significant, and the forms and appearance of the demons did not change through time. Their deeds were not brought to the foreground and were not especially terrible or fearful. Here art most likely reflected the attitude of the Orthodox Church itself. The existence of such infernal creatures was accepted, but attributed only marginal meaning. Hence minimal attention was paid to them in art. 58

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Given the fact that witches were usually ignored as a subject of discussion by Orthodox preachers, it is surprising that they constituted a subject of Orthodox iconography. Yet one can find witch figures in some images, notably those depicting the Last Judgment. These commonly feature the torture of the sinners in Hell in the lower left corner, where several mutilated figures (their numbers vary) represent the punishments for different sins. As a rule, one can find among them a drunkard, a tavern frequenter, a murderer, an envious person, a robber, and a witch, who is depicted as a woman stretched on the rack and entwined by two snakes that bite her breasts.13 The latter motif is discussed in detail by John-Paul Himka in his study of Last Judgment icons from the Carpathian region.14 On occasion, for example in the painting by Master Dymytrij from the town of Dolyna, dated 1560, these motifs include a bucket attached to

Fig.9. Demons with sinners. Fragment from The Last Judgment from the village Trushevychi (second half of the sixteenth century).

Fig.10. A witch bitten by snakes. Fragment from The Last Judgment from the town Dolyna (second half of the sixteenth century).

13 No. 10, The Last Judgement (fifteenth or sixteenth century the Museum of Ukrainian Art in Lviv), in Ukrajinske narodne maliarstvo. 14 John-Paul Himka. Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 66.

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the neck of the witch.15 The witch figure on these paintings signifies that in the Orthodox tradition witchcraft was considered to be a sin no less serious than murder or envy. These were believed to be grave sins deserving of eternal punishment, even though according to secular laws some of these sins, such as murder, were regarded as crimes, while others, such as envy, were not. Though the image of witches in traditional Ukrainian art was marginal, at closer examination this very marginality reflects the attitude toward witchcraft accusations at town courts. Though witchcraft was pronounced by law to be a grave crime, as we have seen, in practice judges were unwilling to prosecute alleged witches and often issued acquittals, as they considered witchcraft only a marginal problem. Comparing religious art and court records, one gets the picture that witchcraft was, like envy, a serious sin but not necessarily a serious crime—a picture that is reflected in the writings of Ukrainian Orthodox theologians and preachers.

The Demonic in Ukrainian Orthodox Writings In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Devil and his assistants became significant narrative characters in the literature of various countries of Western Europe. Among the results of this process were the so-called “demonization of literature” and the tradition of the “preaching of fear.” Demons were ubiquitous in literature at all levels, from broadsheets and wonder books to sermons and treatises. In the German lands books about demons even formed a separate genre—the Teufelsbücher.16 The demonization of literature in German lands coincided with another noteworthy process: the transfor15 This painting is exhibited in the Museum of Ukrainian Art in Lviv. The bucket in this case probably symbolizes the ordeal by water that was used in the Ukrainian lands to test witches. 16 Erik Hans Christian Midelfort, “The Devil and the German People,” in Oldridge, The Witchcraft Reader, 242.

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mation of the image of the Devil, who now became a less comic and more powerful and dangerous character. The range of sources for the study of Ukrainian Orthodox demonology (as well as theology) of the early modern period is not as rich as, for example, the German or French, so in order to analyze the image of the Devil and his servants we must turn to that sector of the literature which includes the texts of sermons (I have used about a dozen of them), books of miracles, and short treatises written by popular Orthodox preachers of the seventeenth century. Ivan Vyshenskyj,17 Metropolitan Petro Mohyla,18 Ioanykij Haliatovskyj,19 Antonij Radyvi­ lovskyj,20 and Dmitrij Rostovskij (Tuptalo)21 are the authors chosen for this analysis. They were the most influential Ukrainian preachers of the time, and their works were hand-copied and reprinted several 17 Ivan Vyshenskyj, “Oblichenie diiavola miroderzhtsa” [Denouncement of the Devil, the owner of this world], in Arkhiv Iugo-Zapadnoj Rossii [The archive of south-western Russia] Part 1, vol. 7 (Kyiv, 1887) 19–24. 18 Petro Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily o chudesnykh i zamechatel’nykh iavlieniiakh v tserkvi pravoslavnoj (iuzhno-russkoj, moldo-vlakhskoj i grecheskoj)” [The sermons of Petro Mohyla about the wonderful and remarkable events that happened in the Orthodox Church (SouthRuthenian, Moldavian-Volachian and Greek)], in Arkhiv Iugo-Zapadnoj Rossii Part 1, vol. 7 (Kyiv: v universitetskoj tipografii, 1887): 49–132. 19 Ioanykij Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii” [The pagan gods]; “Hrikhy rozmaityij” [Different sins]; “Niebo novoie” [New heaven]; “Skarbnitsa potriebnaia” [The needful treasurer], in Ioanykij Haliatovskyj, Kliuch Rozuminnia [The key to understanding] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1985). 20 Antonij Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov z propoviedij nedelnykh aki z tsvietov rozhanykh na uktrashenie Pravoslavno-katolicheskoj S-toj Vostochnoj Tserkvi spletenyj. Ili Kazania niedielnyi na Vieniets vsego svieta, z Pisma S-togo, i z roznykh uchitelej, na polzu dushevnuiu pravoslavnykh sobranyj [The crown of Christ made of Sunday sermons as if of different flowers to enrich Holy Eastern Orthodox-Catholic Church. Or the Sunday sermons for the Crown of All the World collected for the soul’s sake from the Holy Scriptures and various teachers] (Kyiv: Tipograpfia Kyivo-Pecherskoj lavry, 1688); “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji, mify, kazky, bajky, dysputy, paraboly” [Legends, anecdotes, myths, fairytales, fables, disputes, paraboles], in Opovidannia Antonia Radyvilovskoho: Z istoriji ukrajinskoji novelistyky XVII st. [Sermons of Antonij Radyvilovskyj: to the history of Ukrainian story-writing of the seventeenth century], ed. Volodymyr Ivanovych Krekoten (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1983). 21 Dmitrij Rostovskij, Runo oroshennoie, prechistia i preblagosloviennaia Dieva Mariia; ili Chudesa obraza Presviataia Bogoroditsy, byvshiia v Monastyrie Iljinskom Chernigovskom s biesisdami i nravoucheniiami bogovdokhnovennymi, sochinienia Dimitriia Mitropolita Rostovskago [The dewed fleece, the most chaste and blessed Virgin Mary, or the wonders of the icon of Our Lady that happened in the Chernigov Monastery of Saint Ilia, along with the conversations and moral admonitions inspired by God, written by Dmitrij, the Metropolitan of Rostov] (Chernigov: Tip. Sviato-Trotskogo monastyria, 1683).

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times, circulated across vast territories for many years, and listed in the library catalogues of many convents and churches. Another popular work is the anonymous Poviest udivitielna, o diavolie or A Wonderful Story about the Devil.22 This book, along with Pagan Gods by Ioanykij Haliatovskyj, can be considered an exclusively demonological work. In the Ukrainian lands, as in many other places in Europe, educated elites portrayed the seventeenth century in their works as an ominous time, due to the numerous long-lasting wars, uprisings, and epidemics. They noted every unusual event: monstrous births, eclipses, comets, invasions of insects, and natural disasters, all of which were interpreted as foreshadowing wars, epidemics, and hard times in general. Antonij Radyvilovskyj (d. 1688)—a famous preacher and archdeacon from Chernihiv who became father-superior of one of Kyiv’s convents (Nikolo-Pustynnyj) and eventually the deputy of KyivoPecherskaia Lavra—bemoaned that the current (seventeenth) century was overflowing with many evil things including the invasion of pagans (Tartars), fires, pests, and other horrible illnesses and epidemics. The explanation of God’s wrath was clear to him: “people have never before committed as many sins as nowadays.”23 Other theologians went further in explaining the general corruption of the century. Ivan Vyshenskyj (b. 1550, d. between 1621 and 1633)—an active religious writer at the turn of the century and part of a conservative, mystical branch of Orthodox polemicists—wrote a dialogue in which the Devil explains why he is called the master of the Earth. In the dialogue the Devil says that contemporary Christians are much worse than those who lived in the times of Christ, and are in fact no better than pagans since they treasure bodily pleasures and an unchaste life even more than the pagans did, making it easy for the Devil to attract them into his net through deception, dreams, and the promise of the pleasures and beauties of this world. Those who love 22 Poviest udivitielna, o diavolie, iako pridie k Vielikomu Antoniiu, v obrazie chloviechestie, khotia kaiatisia [A wonderful story about the Devil, as he came disguised as a man to Anthony the Great, asking for penitence] (Kyiv: napechatano v Kyivopecherskoj tipografii, 1627). 23 Radyvilovskyj Vieniets Khristov, 56 v.

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the beauty, brightness, and pleasures of the Devil’s earthly kingdom include people of all walks of life, from the most powerful to miserable slaves, and the Devil gloats that they are so attached to their earthly life and so enamored with it that only death can separate them from this love. He boasts that his power lies in his ability to fulfill all wishes—whatever people ask of him, the master of the Earth, he can give to them—and he lists all the possible wishes he can fulfill, such as all secular and spiritual offices, all earthly treasures, and all kinds of love. All that people have to do in return is to fall down at his feet and accept him as their master.24 Generally, Ukrainian Orthodox theologians of the seventeenth century based their stories about the Devil and demons on the early Christian and Byzantine tradition, though some features were adopted from the Western tradition, and that is why most of the stories cited below are similar to some plots popular in Byzantine or later Western Christianity. The brief history of the Devil and demons is expressed by Ioanykij Haliatovskyj (1620–1688)—a graduate of Kyiv Mohyla collegium and its rector from 1659, and from the late 1660s father-superior of the Ielets monastery in Chernihiv—who wrote a pamphlet about pagan gods in which he explains that when the Devil and the demons were expelled from heaven, they appeared on earth and decided to become the gods of earth, thus becoming the pagan gods. Since they were once angels and learned many things while in heaven they are wise, but they are also evil and use that knowledge to cause harm on earth.25 The Devil strives to become a god on earth and to imitate God; he even has his own trinity that includes such things as “the lust of the body, the lust of the eyes, and pride.”26 These preachers used many epithets and comparisons to describe the Devil. He is often called the damned one,27 the damned snake,28 24 Vyshenskyj, “Oblichenie diiavola miroderzhtsa,” 19–21. 25 Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 393. 26 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 93 v. 27 Ibid., 15 v. 28 Ibid., 59 r.

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the Prince of Demons,29 and the Prince of Darkness.30 He is also the ancient evil,31 the enemy of souls,32 and a hellish outlaw.33 Sometimes the Devil is compared to a cruel lion who first finds a person’s weaknesses, then terrifies them, and finally swallows them;34 to a bird catcher who hides in wait for people’s souls;35 or to a predatory hawk hunting for souls.36 Most of these epithets were not exclusively Orthodox, but belonged to a wider Christian tradition. These Ukrainian preachers wrote that God and the Devil were the two masters whom people may choose to serve, though since they were so different one could not serve both simultaneously. Radyvilovskyj suggests that the difference between them is that God is kind and makes kind things, while the Devil is evil and can do evil things to people, albeit only when God allows. People serve God by penitence and the Devil by immoral behavior; they serve God by being alert, waiting for the Devil’s attack, and serve the Devil by being somnolent and indifferent to God.37 To Radyvilovskyj the Devil is not equal to God in might and power, for he can do only those things which God allows him to do, yet he is not as weak and helpless as he may seem because he has many helpers and servants, the most powerful of which are Death, Sin, and Hell.38 His other obvious servants are the minor demons, and he also has many servants among the people. Radyvilovskyj takes for granted that the servants are like their masters, so since the Devil is evil his servants are evil as well.39 Asking who these people are who become servants of the Devil, and what attracts them to him and away from God Radyvilovskyj’s 29 Ibid., 120 r. 30 Ibid., 412 v. 31 Poviest udivitielna, o diavolie, 4. 32 Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 392. 33 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 322 v. 34 Ibid., 138 r, 424 r. 35 Ibid., 95 v, 183 v. 36 Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 345. 37 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 120 r. 38 Ibid., 15 v. 39 Ibid., 121 v.

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answer is sin; the Devil’s true servants are sinners and can be recognized by their sinfulness.40 Those who commit sins are no longer God’s children but automatically become the Devil’s children.41 The Devil turns a person into a sinner by first making the person blind, and then tempting him or her to commit sins through which the person becomes his servant.42 Haliatovskyj agrees that sin is indeed the Devil’s strongest weapon, writing that the task assigned to the demons is to attract more new servants to their master’s side, and to do this they attempt to persuade people to sin as much as they can. However, he claims that they are not able to make people sin unless people themselves want to;43 people choose to sin and by this they willfully serve the Devil. The Ukrainian preachers’ emphasis on sin was neither original nor new, but what is significant is the nearly exclusive association of the Devil with sins and sinners, a deliberate rhetorical strategy employed by these authors to help disseminate their moral teachings and to make them more accessible to their audiences. A simple way to visualize sin was to associate, compare, or even equate it to the Devil. They claimed that sin was worse than the Devil,44 that sin was the Great Devil himself, and that the Devil can torture only the body, but sin can torture body and soul alike.45 Stressing that all sinners were the Devil’s servants, preachers were able to demonstrate where sin led and how dangerous it was. Besides encouraging sin, the Devil and the demons were understood to have other functions as well. According to these preachers, one of their main roles is to torment people, causing plagues, invasions, fears, and all sorts of failures, illnesses, and epidemics.46 Physical ailments and illnesses in particular were considered some of the demons’ main tools to torment people. This was especially true for possession, 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid., 122 r. Ibid., 20 v. Ibid., 48 r. Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 392. Ibid., 243. Ibid., 49. Haliatovskyj, “Skarbnitsa potriebnaia,” 369.

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Fig.11. The Devil tormenting sinners. Fragment from The Last Judgment from the village Medenychi (1662).

the illness most associated with demonic influence (discussed in the next section). The belief in the demonic origin of illnesses is ancient and was already present in the first centuries of Christianity.47 Ukrainian preachers too shared this belief, but they stressed that even when people are tormented by various illnesses their souls remain untouched by the Devil.48 Moreover, they emphasized over and over again that demons are able to torment people only if God allows it.49 Stories about the Devil as a seducer of hermits began to appear in the sixth century along with the appearance of the first monks.50 In such stories, the Devil usually comes to visit hermits in the desert, which is considered the Devil’s territory. Every hermit should thus be prepared to meet the Devil and his seduction face-to-face. Hermits, however, were not the exclusive target of the Devil-as-seducer, 47 Riazanovskii, Demonologiia v drevne-russkoi literaturie, 61. 48 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 35 r. 49 Ibid., 335; Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 389. 50 Riazanovskii, Demonologiia v drevne-russkoi literaturie, 11.

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as he also came to monks and other pious people to lure them away from God. This image of the Devil was frequently used by Ukrainian preachers.51 Moreover, most of the negative impulses of the pious were interpreted as the result of the Devil’s bad influence, as in a story about a monk who threatened to kill himself if he was not given some meat. Petro Mohyla explained this scandalous behavior as being due to the Devil’s seduction.52 The third role ascribed to the Devil and demons was the punishment of sinners after their death. The most popular stories in sermons are those of the punishments of persons guilty of sacrilege. In one story, a man throws a stone at the statue of the Mother of God, and when he dies, “his soul is given to demons for eternal tortures.”53 A similar fate befalls another man who while alive had said that his life was so good that he did not need heaven.54 Some stories depict the specific actions of demons after a sinner’s death. Sometimes they bring the dead sinners to their relatives, as they do in a story about a man who lived a seemingly virtuous life, but when he died was sent to hell. In the story the man comes back to visit his wife and tells her that he was being punished because he had done good things not out of love but out of pride. While talking to her, “the devil was attending outside, waiting for him.”55 More often the demons in these stories brutally torture sinners. In one such story we read of a man who is so greedy that in his testament he asks to have one-third of his gold put into his coffin, for which he is punished after death: the demons melt the gold and pour it down his throat.56 A number of important stories come from the work of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla (1596–1647), who was educated in France and the Netherlands, became Metropolitan of Kyiv, Galicia, and Ruthenia in 1632, and founded the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegi51 For example: Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 243, 437rev; Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 391; Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily,” 87. 52 Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily,” 76–78. 53 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 437 r. 54 Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 242–243. 55 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 146 v. 56 Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 255–256.

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um. Mohyla wrote a story about a Uniate bishop, Afanasij, who leads a vicious and evil life and after death is “terribly and unmercifully” tortured by demons who tear his head from his neck.57 Stories in which the lives of the Devil and the demons are described in great detail are very rare, but from such stories we learn that demons were believed to have a social and sometimes Fig.12. Petro Mohyla. Fragment from the fresco even a political life. In A Wonderin the church of the Savior at Berestove in Kyiv (1644). ful Story about the Devil demons gather for councils and entertain feelings of brotherhood and friendship toward each other.58 In one story in Antonij Radyvilovskyj’s book of sermons concerning the social life of demons, the demons gather from all over the world in front of the Devil, “their highest master,” to tell him of their evil deeds. One demon boasts that he managed to seduce a very pious man who was then ready to commit all manner of sins. “The highest master” immediately orders the other demons to flog this demon because in his opinion the demon had wasted his time seducing that pious man.59 This story shows demons participating in an organized society with a hierarchy and peculiar laws and rules, the breaking of which was grounds for punishment. In some stories the Devil and the demons are compared to earthly rulers. For example, in one story by Haliatovskyj a magician, one of the Devil’s subordinates, wants to lure another man to become the Devil’s servant. He takes this man to a palace with iron gates and when they enter it they see a golden lantern, many candles, and many servants. The description of the evil master 57 Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily,” 116. 58 Poviest udivitielna, o diavolie, 2. 59 Antonij Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 274 v.

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reads as follows: “The Devil disguised as a king was sitting on a high place. Evil demons were sitting by his right and left sides as if they were senators.”60 In a similar story by Radyvilovskyj, a man is taken by a magician to meet the Devil. The two men are greeted by lesser demons who accompany them to their king, the Devil, who promises to fulfill the man’s desires.61 The preachers entreat their readers to remember that the Devil is an expert in cheating people—no matter what he says or promises it is always a delusion. For example, Radyvilovskyj writes that the Devil cheats people by saying that they can freely sin, and that all they need to do is to confess at the end of their life to wipe the slate clean, but that those who believe this may end up in hell.62 Haliatovskyj claims that demons are specialists in predicting the future, having learned the art of prediction when they were angels.63 Even though their predictions are accurate, they tell these predictions to people in such an unclear manner that those who trust them are deceived.64 Another way of cheating people is to create an illusion that includes shapeshifting, since it is easier for demons to make people trust them when they turn into someone pleasant. They can turn themselves into kings, young boys, and beautiful girls, and are even able to transform into angels, priests, and Christ himself.65 Most often, however, they turn into simple people, believing that in this manner they will not scare people away.66 Haliatovskyj tells a story about a man named Andrej Prokopovich who tries to kill his wife but is stopped and taken to a monastery, where he explains: “Two unknown men came to me and told me to kill my wife.” When asked where those men were he said, “They are right here in the church standing by my side.” The demons had turned themselves into men to cheat him and were not even 60 Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 409. 61 Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 226–227. 62 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 147 v. 63 Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 393. 64 Ibid., 395–404. 65 Ibid., 407; Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 320 r. 66 Poviest udivitielna, o diavolie, 2.

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afraid of being in a church.67 Sometimes demons may also turn into fearful creatures: “naked and horrible” Moors, lions, bears, wolves, dogs, boars, bulls, dragons, and other beasts.68 In such forms they usually come to people in order to scare them. As we can see, Ukrainian preachers were not prone to present the Devil or the lesser demons as comic figures, but approached them quite seriously, recognizing them as dangerous creatures. This is reinforced by the ascription of royal attributes to the Devil, and his depiction as a king with many demons at his service—a motif, I would suggest, that was borrowed from Western Christianity. Despite the power and cunning of the Devil and his servants, people were not seen to be entirely helpless. The preachers confirm that there are methods to resist demons, who are afraid of such things as the names of the Trinity and the Mother of God, prayers, obedience, the sign of the cross, relics, holy water, and confessions.69 Concerning confessions, the preachers warn their parishioners that it is not enough to confess and then go on sinning. Those who act this way only make the power of the Devil over them stronger, because “if the Devil loses [control of] a man whom he held within his power and made commit sins, as soon as that man confesses and repents, then when the same man commits the same sins the Devil will find him once again and will hold him more strongly in order not to lose him a second time.”70 The preachers add that not every confession is good enough to scare the demons away, writing that demons are happy when people prefer to go to sympathetic confessors rather than to more demanding ones, since the demons know that people who followed overly forgiving confessors lack good leaders and are therefore easier to attack.71 As dedicated servants of Satan, witches also receive attention from the Ukrainian preachers. In the sermons and treatises, witches 67 Haliatovskyj, “Skarbnitsa potriebnaia,” 369. 68 Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 407–408. 69 Ibid., 408–410; Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 453 v. 70 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 24 r. 71 Ibid., 36 v.

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are most frequently mentioned among grave sinners, similarly to their representation in Orthodox art. While lists of grave sins vary from preacher to preacher and can even differ within the works of a single author, witchcraft almost inevitably appear among the top offenses. For example, Radyvilovskyj lists drinking, adultery, murder, robbery, perjury, and witchcraft,72 while Rostovskij lists adultery, murder, witchcraft, and paganism.73 In one sermon by Radyvilovskyj Fig.13. A witch and other sinner. Fragment from a woman is said to deserve hell The Last Judgment from the village Trushevychi (second half of the sixteenth century). for being “a drunkard, an adulteress, and a skillful witch.”74 Ioanykij Haliatovskyj also includes witchcraft in his list of grave sins and states that witches, along with fortune-tellers, worship the Devil as their God.75 Dmitirj Rostovskij (1651–1709)—a graduate of the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium, preacher in Ukraine, and later Metropolitan of Rostov and Iaroslavl who was canonized in 1757—names witches among those sinners who were the Devil’s subordinates.76 However, in most cases the preachers do not set witchcraft aside from other sins. In order to become the Devil’s subordinate there is no need to sign a special contract or perform any rituals; all sinners are automatically considered to be his servants.

72 73 74 75 76

Ibid., 355 v. Runo oroshennoie, 65. Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 261–262. Haliatovskyj, “Hrikhy rozmaityij,” 387. Runo oroshennoie, 65.

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Whereas in iconographic depictions witches were exclusively depicted as among the most dreadful sinners, textual sources provide us with a richer variety of ideas about witches. Magicians and witches are among the most common characters in sermons, where their moral threat is identified in ways ranging from concern about the spread of their evil practices to the dismissal of belief in witchcraft as superstition. In some sermons, preachers complain about the growth of popular interest in witches. Radyvilovskyj writes that more Fig.14. Dmitrij Rostovskij by unknown artist (late eighteenth century). and more people were seeking to learn how to harm others, and when they were not able to do it directly they found other ways, “they harmed their property, cattle and fields, using witchcraft.”77 Haliatovskyj complains that many people suffering from health problems were seeking help from magical healers and witches, and that those who were asking Our Lady of Ielets monastery for assistance were also going to witches at the same time.78 These preachers tell stories illustrating the harmful activities of magicians and witches, including how they create illusions to cheat people,79 and how they can bewitch other people80 or use love magic for seduction.81 Demons can be seen manipulating witches and ma77 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 135. 78 Haliatovskyj, “Skarbnitsa potriebnaia,” 362. 79 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 410 r; Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 405. 80 Haliatovskyj, “Niebo novoie,” 295. 81 Ibid, 281; Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 28rev.

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gicians for their own purposes, because it is easier for them to entrap people through human agency. Alternatively, magicians are sometimes depicted as mediators between people and the Devil who seduce people, promising them the realization of their dreams, and take them to meet the Devil and fall under his sway.82 In return for their assistance, the Devil helps witches and magicians in many ways. For instance, when witches need to know something they can ask the demons, who can reveal forbidden things to them with the help of fire, water, rings, dead people, or mirrors. That is why witches can predict the future.83 Not only do demons answer witches’ questions, they also assist them in their evil deeds. For example, they can create illusions by turning people into other creatures and bewitching objects.84 Demons can thus be seen as using witches or being used by them. The sermons of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla call on the trope of witchcraft to illustrate an even broader array of moral themes. Many of his exempla mention witchcraft with the aim of dismissing excessive belief in witchcraft as nothing but superstition, which can be as sinful as witchcraft itself. Mohyla criticizes immoderate credulity, which he ascribes to Orthodoxy’s “superstitious” religious opponents. At the same time, Mohyla addresses the tendency of these same wrong-headed religious opponents to misunderstand “real miracles” and attribute them to witchcraft. He tells a story about Bishop Afanasij, a Uniate priest, who consults magicians on many questions and relies on witchcraft to accomplish his wicked goals.85 One day he goes to an Orthodox church in order to seize it for his Uniate faith, but some force prevents him from entering; he is rejected from the gates of the church because God is protecting it. But Bishop Afanasij interprets this accident in his own way, as a manifestation of witchcraft. At the end of the story, Mohyla writes, “in such a way distrustful people with hearts made of stone assign God’s miracles, by which 82 83 84 85

Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 226–227; Haliatovs’kyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 409. Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 399. Haliatovskyj, “Bogi poganskii,” 405. Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily,” 115.

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He uncovers their infidelity and cruelty, to witchcraft.”86 In some stories Muslims are accused of a similar infidelity. For example, in one story a Muslim who has converted to Orthodoxy is tortured by other Muslims, but when he is to be executed an earthquake strikes. The people think that it is witchcraft, but Mohyla writes that they erroneously mistake God’s miracle for witchcraft.87 Another curious exemplum told by Mohyla demonstrates how demons and witches could be used in religious polemics. The story tells of a Polish nobleman whose wife, Anna, has died. After her death, the nobleman begins to hear a voice from behind the stove, which announces that it is his wife’s soul and that it is suffering in purgatory. The voice asks the nobleman to call Jesuits to the house to pray for Anna. In fact, it is the voice of a demon who has managed to deceive everyone. The Jesuits come and pray while the voice thanks them and asks them to pour holy water all over the house (which seems to be a very strange request from a demon). Pilgrims even start visiting the house. However, the voice always demands that Ruthenians and Orthodox people not be let into the house. One day a certain Martyn Hrabkovych, an assistant to the Orthodox prince of Ostrog, comes to the house, and immediately understands that this is a trick, and that the demon is deceiving them all. The voice falls silent, and the Jesuits say that it is because it did not want to speak to the Orthodox man, who does not believe in purgatory. Martyn prays and eventually the voice admits that it is a demon. Martyn then asks the master of the house if someone in his household might be practicing witchcraft, understanding that this demon is the personal demon of some witch. It turns out that the household cook is a witch, and she confesses under torture that she is a witch and has brought this demon from Poland.88 Despite his variable assessment of the particular threat of witchcraft, Mohyla’s moral exempla consistently sets forth an equivalence between demons, witchcraft, and religious others. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., 130. 88 Ibid., 105–109.

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Specificities of Demonic Possession and Exorcism Witches were not the only people thought to have dealings with demons. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Western Europe, especially in France and the German lands, are notorious not only for persecutions of witches, but also for epidemics of demonic possession. It was during this period that the most infamous cases of demonic possession and exorcism took place. From time to time the crime of witchcraft was mentioned in connection with possession, but not because the two phenomena were understood as equivalent. On the contrary, witchcraft and possession represented opposite sides of the same coin where the former was the cause and the latter the outcome. In the past few decades, European possession cases have been thoroughly studied and analyzed, so it is possible to outline their main features. In popular opinion across Europe and England demonic possession was caused by bewitchment.89 Such an interpretation of the nature of demonic possession was far from the official, theological explanation of this phenomenon. Theologians considered demonic possession to be of divine origin, which could signify divine punishment for great sinners or God’s testing of the most virtuous people. Thus, the victims of demonic possession were not always seen as innocent sufferers. Sermons about such cases of God’s punishment were a powerful device for European preachers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who “thought their congregations full of Sadducees, Epicureans, and self-satisfied worldlings, who refused to recognize the reality of the spirit world.”90 Throughout Europe, women predominated among the possessed. Cases of group possession were sometimes connected with nunneries, the most famous of which was that of Loudun. Moshe Sluhovsky notes that possession was “the means whereby young women acquired a voice to express their religious concerns.”91 89 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 67. 90 Midelfort, “The Devil and the German People,” 247. 91 Moshe Sluhovsky, “A Divine Apparition or Demonic Possession?” in Oldridge, The Witchcraft Reader, 261.

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Children and adolescents constituted another large group of the possessed. Possession gave them a chance to become the center of adult attention, to express feelings and thoughts which were otherwise prohibited or repressed, and to break societal discipline, and because their afflicting demons were held responsible for their infractions their bad behavior went unpunished. Epidemics of demonic possession were not a specifically Western phenomenon. In Russia this phenomenon, known as klikushestvo, is well studied and described.92 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so many possession epidemics took place in the Russian Empire that they became a subject that even attracted the attention of the emperors, who continuously declared the possessed to be shams and demanded the clergy to denounce such frauds. Further we will see how seventeenth-century Ukrainian Orthodox preachers apprehended the nature of demonic possession and explained its causes, and what they recommended as a cure for it. Biblical stories about encounters between Jesus and people possessed by the Devil were some of the most popular topics for sermons in the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition. These stories were usually followed by a theological discussion of the nature and function of demonic possession and, like most of the sermons, were adorned with bright and instructive examples. Antonij Radyvilovskyj and Dmitrij Rostovskij provide us with the clearest theoretical background for an understanding of the phenomenon of demonic possession. “God, our Lord, permits demons to enter some people, because He has His own, to us unclear, reasons for this,”93 writes Radyvilovskyj at the beginning of his sermon on demonic possession. Nevertheless, he and other preachers attempt to explain those “unclear” reasons. First, they define the role of God and the Devil in possession: God punishes people for their sins. This punishment is performed on God’s sufferance by “the evil angels or de92 For example: Worobec, Possessed; and Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii. 93 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 138 v.

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mons” that worm themselves into human bodies and torment them. Possession is not the only punishment that these evil angels can execute, as they also cause illness, oppression, and famine.94 In comparison to other punishments, however, possession is considered to be a particularly harsh form. Rostovskij writes, “God, when He wants to reclaim someone, may call many plagues upon him. Among other allowed plagues demonic possession is one of the most severe.” Giving comfort to those frightened by the alleged powers of the Devil over people, he writes, “one has to remember that the Devil does not have power over people at all, unless he is allowed from above. When God orders him, he accepts this authority and possesses people.”95 However, the demons possessing people’s bodies do not just obediently fulfill God’s will. According to some preachers, while living within a sinner the demons experience certain joys and pleasures. In Radyvilovskyj, for example, the Devil claims, “My luxury and joy is to live with sinners.”96 Rostovskij supports this emphasis on the special attractiveness of the souls of sinners to demons, asserting that people suffer from demonic possession because “the evil spirit loves to inhabit erring souls most of all.”97 As already mentioned, stories about demonic possession constitute a conspicuous part of Ukrainian sermons, so sooner or later preachers had to explain the causes of demonic possession to the congregation. Though these causes varied in number and detail, they are all bound together by the same idea of divine interference. In his sermons Rostovskij provides two reasons why God allows demonic possession: by giving demons power over people’s bodies, God either seeks to test people’s loyalty and tolerance or “to punish them for their sins and thus to lead to correction.”98 Radyvilovskyj gives four explanations for demonic possession. The first is pride and disobedience, “which are the most comfortable refuge 94 Ibid., 181. 95 Runo oroshennoie, 56rev. 96 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 297 r. 97 Runo oroshennoie, 46 v. 98 Ibid., 56 r.

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for the arrogant demons.”99 The second is that through possession God shows his grace by sometimes not punishing sinners immediately, but rather warning those who commit minor sins so that they learn a lesson and will not be punished after their deaths for larger sins. The third reason is to let the Devil curse and inculpate himself. The last reason is an instructive one: to let people witness the sufferings of a sinner possessed by the Devil, so that they understand that the same affliction might happen to them if they lead a similarly sinful life.100 Both preachers more or less echo the vision of demonic possession already circulating in Western theology, their main message being that demonic possession is not caused by another’s curse but by the will of God. However, the sermons maintain this lofty conception only in their theoretical exposition. When it comes to examples, the preachers are less coherent. These examples represent the reverse side of the explanation. One of Radyvilovskyj’s sermons relates a story of a man who becomes angry with his wife and tells her, “Go away in the name of the Devil,” at which very moment she is possessed by the Devil.101 Elsewhere, Radyvilovskyj tells a story of a girl who does not want to eat, and when she is forced by her mother says, “I will eat in the name of the Devil.” As she utters these words she is immediately possessed by the Devil.102 With these memorable tales Radyvilovskyj undercuts the theory of divine will and instead transmits the idea that cursing, and sometimes even self-cursing, can cause demonic possession. Unlike Radyvilovskyj, who uses popular examples from the Christian tradition for his sermons, most of the possession cases described by Petro Mohyla, Ioanykij Haliatovskij, and Dmitrij Rostovskij are miracle stories, sometimes even written in the form of reports eyewitnessed by the authors themselves. All of these miracle stories about demonic possession and exorcism are connected to some famous 99 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 472 r. 100 Ibid., 472 r–473 v. 101 Ibid., 473 v. 102 Ibid.

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shrine, relic, or icon. This direct and immediate link between shrines and exorcism is a typical attribute of possession narratives in the Ukrainian lands. In the vast majority of the cases described by these authors, the possessed people are healed without the obvious involvement of a priest. The role played by the priest is that of a guide who can direct and accompany a possessed person to a shrine. This priestly advice reflects the belief that only Christ and Christian saints, and the holy relics and images that represented them, could successfully fight demons and heal those who were possessed. The preachers stress that possession can be punishment for some sin or sacrilege. Mohyla claims that he was present at the miraculous healing of one man, a Catholic, who had come to an Orthodox church where the relics of the Martyr Joann were kept and made fun of those who knelt in homage near the shrine of the martyr and laughed loudly in the church. Immediately, an “unholy spirit came into him and let out a horrible shriek, so that everyone around became scared, and the demon threw him on the ground and severely tortured him.”103 Only when this man was taken to the shrine of the saint and the saint forgave him did the demon abandon his body. At the end of the story, Mohyla adds the take-home lesson: the man was so grateful that he decided to convert.104 Haliatovskyj describes a case that is said to have occurred in the church of Ieliets in Chernihiv, which possessed a miraculous icon of the Mother of God. A man hides his treasure under the walls of the church, but when this treasure is stolen he becomes angry with the Mother of God who, he claims, has not adequately watched over his treasure. In anger, he hits the miraculous icon and is immediately punished and possessed by an evil spirit.105 In some of these stories, the topic of a rivalry between the confessions to provide a cure for possession is rather important. For instance, one of the sermons of Petro Mohyla is about a man from the village of Zarubiniets who has suffered from demonic possession for a long time. 103 Ibid., 79 v. 104 Ibid., 80 v. 105 Haliatovskyj, “Skarbnitsa potriebnaia,” 356.

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First, he asks Catholic priests to help him and they persuade him to convert to Catholicism and to confess according to its rules. However, the Catholic methods prove powerless and the Devil does not leave his body. On the contrary, Mohyla writes, his sufferings become worse, so he decides to go to the famous Kyivo-Pecherskaia Lavra. He arrives there on the day of the Assumption of the Mother of God (the monastery’s main holiday) and attends the service. During the service, the Devil “cried out to him in a terrible voice, ‘Mary, do not torture me any more for I am leaving him.’”106 Obviously, the main emphasis of this story is the impotence of the Catholic Church to heal demonic possession and the corresponding power of Orthodoxy. In stories where two neighboring churches of the same confession find themselves in competition for preeminence the rivalry takes a much gentler and less poignant form. In this situation, when the success of an exorcism depends on the sanctity of the place (supported by relics or holy images kept there), mild rivalry between neighboring holy places is inevitable. Rostovskij tells a story about a man called Demian who is possessed and taken from Chernihiv to the monastery of Saint Illia. On his way, he passes the monastery of Ieliets (which is not functioning at the time), where the Devil starts to “severely torture him, throwing him on the ground and forcing foam out of his mouth.”107 His sufferings end only when he comes to the monastery of Saint Fig.15. St. Illia Monastery in Chernihiv. Engraving from Abrys chernihivskyj (1706). Illia, where he is healed. 106 Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily,” 89. 107 Runo oroshennoie, 49 r.

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The descriptions of the symptoms of possession are always similar. A possessed person falls or is thrown to the ground, crying, foaming at the mouth, and shrieking in a terrifying inhuman voice. Less frequently, the authors notice that possessed people acquire unbelievable strength. For example, in one story a possessed man, Iarmola, demonstrates such strength that he has to be bound.108 In another a man named Parkhom becomes so strong that even four people are not able to hold him, since he keeps “slipping out of their hands, letting out evil cries.”109 Some of the preachers report that people become depressed, melancholic, or suicidal when possessed. Haliatovskyj mentions one possessed man who wanders around naked, trying to kill himself. When monks attempt to help him they dress him and take him to the monastery, but when he is put in an enclosed room, he starts to bang his head against the door, wounding himself, so that the monks have to bind him. After that, he begins “crying out in a demonic voice for the whole day, and his voice was heard not only in the monastery but far beyond it.”110 Rostovskij tells a similar story of possession about a man named Foma who suffers so much that he wants to kill himself, so he goes to the river and attempts to jump from the bridge. When people try to save him he becomes so strong that they barely manage to hold him.111 These four Ukrainian churchmen demonstrate the lack of a single comprehensive understanding of demonic possession, its causes, and its cures. Even within the works of each individual writer, one notes contradictory explanations and recommendations. Yet the emphasis on possession as the direct result of and punishment for sin unifies most of the accounts and surpasses even the evident effort to make a case for the awesome spiritual authority of the Orthodox Church relative to its rivals, or of one monastic or ecclesiastical establishment relative to its local competitors. As we can also see, witches were not a necessary part of the picture, and in this respect Ukrainian discussions of 108 Ibid., 40–40 r. 109 Ibid., 58 v. 110 Haliatovskyj, “Skarbnitsa potriebnaia,” 363. 111 Runo oroshennoie, 92 v–92 r.

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demonic possession are similar to Western ones. In both of them possession is sometimes seen to be caused by witchcraft and other times to come directly from the Devil, and yet in other cases sinners themselves inflict it directly upon themselves or other innocent people.

The Pact with the Devil The diabolical pact is an essential component of European witchcraft mythology. It is a pact with the Devil that enables people to become witches and harm others. A pact with the Devil, by which alleged witches change allegiance from God to the Devil, was considered treason against God. It is the pact that made witchcraft a capital offense, deserving of the death sentence. Without this, their crime would not be considered as serious and they would not be considered heretics or apostates. In most European courts, in order to demonstrate the guilt of a witch, it was necessary to make her confess her connection with the Devil. Stories of alleged witches and their meetings with the Devil are abundant. They might differ in their details, but in general they follow the same scheme. Usually the Devil comes to those who are desperate or angry with someone. The prince of darkness, as a rule, is kind to them, offering assistance, comfort, and the power to hurt the offenders and their property. After that, he wants to settle their relationship. Naturally, a written contract would be an absurd detail in stories of mostly illiterate people, so instead the Devil brands his subordinates with a special mark, that is usually not sensitive to pain. Finally, if the person is a woman, the Devil copulates with her. English witchcraft cases are a noteworthy exception to this, as witches were primarily held guilty of causing harm to others and did not need to have established a contract, written or otherwise, with the Devil. However, some similar motifs can be found in the English stories, for instance the so-called “familiars,” witches’ personal imps, who assist them and ask for care in return. These familiars were also said to “brand” English witches with special marks or teats from which they suck blood. 82

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The Ukrainian situation conforms more closely with the English scenario than with the general continental one. According to Orthodox theologians, there is no need to sign a compact with the Devil in order to become his servant since, as mentioned previously, all sinners are automatically understood to be the Devil’s subordinates. Since witchcraft was considered a grave sin, it was enough to regard witches as the Devil’s servants, and from an official theological point of view witches were considered to be no better or worse than other sinners. They were not seen to change allegiance to the Devil by establishing a personal relationship with him, and their only crime against God was their sinfulness, not personal treason or heresy. However, the idea of a pact with the Devil was not unknown in the Ukrainian lands. Most probably it was adopted from the early Christian tradition through the agency of texts. The most popular story, used in many interpretations, was that of a Faustian type of intellectual signing a contract with the Devil with his own blood. Some of these stories were popularized by preachers in their sermons, but with their happy endings these stories are closer to folk stories. Their aim was to ensure people of God’s mercifulness rather than threaten them with the Devil’s cruelty and tricks. One such story, mentioned by Radyvilovskyj in his sermons, tells of a senator’s secretary who turns to a magician for assistance. The magician writes a letter to his master, the Devil, asking him for an audience. When they go to the Devil, he greets the young man with the following words: “Do you believe in me?” To which the man answers, “Yes, I do.” His second question is, “Do you renounce Christ?” And the answer is the same. The Devil goes on, reflecting, “You turn to me whenever you need something. But when you get what you want, you run away back to Christ.” To secure his interest, the Devil makes the young man sign a contract with him, “Write down with your own hand that you give up Christ and baptism and give yourself to me for eternal service.”112 This story has a happy end, for the young man repents to Saint Vasilij, who prays for him, and 112 Radyvilovskyj, “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji,” 227.

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when the Devil comes to take the young man, saying, “it was he who came to me not I who came to him, and there is a paper confirming it,” the contract disappears. The Devil complains that he has been cheated once again.113 A story told by Rostovskij has a more moralistic ending. A man signs a contract with the Devil in which the latter promises to give him riches in return for his and his pious wife’s souls. At the end of the story the man is punished and taken to Hell but his wife is saved by the Mother of God, so the Devil does not get what he wants according to the pact.114 The idea of a pact with the Devil is reflected not only in theological texts and moralizing sermons but also in trial records. In the trial materials, there are three cases involving a pact with the Devil (one from the mid-seventeenth and two from the mid-eighteenth century), none of them directly connected to witchcraft. Although these three cases differ in place and time, they have many common features. In one, from September 1757, a sixteen-year-old novice from Kyiv, Hrytsko Serdiukovskij, who was in a desperate financial situation, got drunk and decided to write a letter to Lucifer asking him for assistance. He cut his little finger with a razor and wrote a letter with his blood. In that letter, he promised Lucifer his soul in return for 50 rubles. When he woke up sober the next morning he got scared about what he had done, so he did not send the letter and kept it without showing it to anyone. Eventually, he decided to show it to his superior, Father Alimpij. A special committee studied his case and determined that if he had caused harm or bewitched someone he would have been burned, but since none of this happened he was to be punished for his superstitious deed according to monastery rules with public penitence.115 A similar thing happened to another young, poor man in 1749 in Hlukhiv.116 Ivan Robota was a twenty-two-year-old man who worked 113 Ibid., 227. 114 Runo oroshennoie, 27 v–28 v. 115 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 59, op.1, no. 3088 (1757), 1 v–8 v. 116 This case was described in Aleksandr Kistiakovskij, “K istorii verovaniia o prodazhe dushi chertu,” Kievskaia starina 3, no. 7 (1882): 180–186.

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Fig.16. Students of Kyiv Academy. Fragment from Triumphant Flag in Honor of the Rector Prokop Kalachynski by Ivan Shchyrskyj (1698).

as a secretary in the General Military Chancellery in Hluhiv. He was quite educated, having graduated from the Kyiv Academy specializing in rhetoric and Latin. His salary was insufficient and his life was full of hardships. One day Robota decided to ask for supernatural assistance. He wrote a contract according to which he gave up his body and soul “to the dark master of hellish plagues and to his demons”; in return he asked them to provide him with “help,” i.e., a supplement to his low salary.117 Then he cut his little finger and signed the contract with his blood. He brought this contract to the field and left it there. Some time later, this paper was found and because his signature was on it he was arrested. After Robota was questioned in 117 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op.3, no. 9500 (1749), 6 v.

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Hlukhiv he was sent to the Spiritual Consistory in Kyiv where he complained that his confessions made in Hlukhiv were not true for they had been forced out of him by beating. He claimed that despite the fact that his name was written on the contract, it was not he who had written it and it was not his handwriting. A special commission was gathered to identify whether it was his handwriting or not. After they confirmed that it was Robota’s handwriting, he was sent back to Hluhiv. It was decided to send him to a distant monastery to live for a year to live under monastic supervision. After one year, he was sent back to his parents.118 The most scandalous case concerning a pact with the Devil happened in Lviv, one century earlier in 1641. Albert Wierozemski, a novice at the Bernardine monastery, signed a contract with the Devil.119 He stole a seal from the head of the monastery and with it forged a document confirming that he was a priest who was allowed to lead church services such as weddings, confessions, baptisms, and oblations. With this document he traveled from one village to another, leading church services. When he was caught and incarcerated in the monastery, it was decided that his case had to be sent to the civil court, since he was only a novice and did not count as an ecclesiastical person, and therefore was not entitled to have his offense tried in an ecclesiastical court. According to spiritual law, the most severe verdict for his crime was the deprivation of all the prerogatives of a man of the cloth, but the sentence of a secular court for the same crime would be execution. Knowing this, Wierozemski decided to take a last chance to save his life. As he recounted the story later, one night a demon disguised as an attractive young man came to the prison right through the wall. The demon introduced himself as Weglik Bortula and attempted to lure him. At first, the demon recommended that Wierozemski deny all the accusations against him, and then he told him that he should kill himself. Finally, they arrived at another solu118 Ibid., 12–17. 119 Kozyts’kyj and Bilostots’kyj, Kryminal’nyj svit staroho L’vova, 126–128.

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tion: Wierozemski should sign a contract and sell his soul to the devil. He cut his finger and wrote the text of the pact on the walls of his cell: I sign this with my own blood and give myself to the power of prince Lucifer. I ask twenty years of life in return for this, after this period he can take me with my body and soul. According to this compact I give up God and the Virgin Mary. I am signing this contract with Weglik who will take me away from this prison. I sign this with my own hand and give myself to all the demons, I promise to serve them and hail them. They must give me all that I should need. I will serve them, according to this compact. I give my soul to Weglik Bortula and to others, [and] for this I ask to be released from this prison tonight.120

The text was found by the prison warden. At first it was taken as a demonic ruse, as if the demons wanted to discredit Albert and to this end created this text on the wall. However, when Albert was inspected, court representatives found the wound on his finger and his guilt was proven. He was sentenced to be burned at the stake. There are many explanations as to why the last case ended with the death sentence, unlike the two previous ones that concluded with more lenient verdicts. The first explanation is the time; in the eighteenth century, signing a contract with the Devil was taken as superstition rather than a dangerous crime. Although I do not have a sample wide enough to confirm or deny it, my assumption is that in the seventeenth century the attitude to such actions was harsher than in later times. Another possible explanation is in the confessional difference; the two eighteenth century cases took place in Orthodox communities, while the earlier case was enacted in a Catholic jurisdiction. However, I would also argue that it is likely that in the latter case it was inevitable that Albert Wierozemski would have been sentenced to death in any case for his original crime of impersonating a priest, so signing a pact with the Devil only worsened his situation. 120 Cited in ibid., 127.

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Despite their differences, there are many common features in these three cases. The main characters in all of them are young men who were educated enough to be able to read and thus become acquainted with stories about the diabolical pact. All of them were in a state of despair (whether because of financial problems or danger to their lives) when they decided to ask for demonic assistance. They all asked for the fulfillment of material needs; even in the last case, Wierozemski did not forget to ask the demons to give him all that he might need in addition to saving his life. To conclude, the cases about a pact with the Devil are rare but seem to reflect actual practices. The idea of the pact with the Devil circulated in a rather stable form, as all three young men decided to turn to the Devil in similar circumstances and used the identical trope of a blood-signed compact. As these cases demonstrate, the authorities were more preoccupied with superstition and maleficium then with heresy. Finally, and most importantly, the pact with the Devil was in no way associated with witchcraft. In the consciousness of the educated elites (and, as we will see in the last chapter, uneducated people too) there was no need to sign a pact to become a witch and such a pact did not turn a person into a witch, but was just intended to provide the one who signed it with what that person wished. The need for a pact with the Devil to become a witch is not articulated in learned treatises or in trial records.

Demonization of Neighbors, Opponents, and Enemies The tendency to ascribe demonic features to an enemy is inherent in almost every Christian culture. This is not surprising, because demons and demonic creatures are dangerous and their main aim is to lead humankind to perdition. The reasons for the demonization of the “Other” are less obvious, but nevertheless the connection between the “Other” and the demonic is quite common. Demonization of the “Other” is reflected in representations of the Devil and demons as for88

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eigners. Such images could be adopted from another culture, such as for example the image of the Devil as a Moor which came to the Ukrainian lands from Byzantine. However, this representation was not the most popular one. The Moor, for obvious reasons (because Moors were not common in the region), was not a relevant character. Instead, in many countries of Eastern and Central Europe the Devil was frequently depicted as a German. For example, in Poland, Belarus, and Estonia, one of the disguises taken by the Devil was that of a German nobleman.121 In the book of miracles of Zhyrovychy from the beginning of the seventeenth century there is an inscription about a man who meets two demons in the forest where he is lost and has wandered for several days. The demons come from the marshes, one of them dressed in green and the other in grey, and the man immediately understands that they are Germans.122 On the other hand, in Muscovy in the early modern period demons were sometimes described as liachs (Poles) or Lithuanians.123 This is reciprocated in some Polish sources, for example in Sejm piekielny—satyra obyczajowa (1622) there is a demon that speaks the Ruthenian language, and whose brother controls Muscovy and the Podolian palatinate. The “Other” was not necessarily associated with a foreigner or an enemy. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a neighbor could also be the “Other” and could acquire demonic characteristics. Neighbors were often perceived as friends and brothers but they remained different, distant, and a little bit dangerous. This attitude can be traced in the poem Roxolania, a poetic description of Ukrainian geography and customs by Sebastian Klonowicz, a Polish author of the late sixteenth century who spent considerable time in the Ukrainian lands. Klonowicz devotes one part of this poem to “Ruthenian witchcraft” and the outstanding powers of local witches: 121 For example, Ulo Valk, The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the Devil in Estonian Folk Religion (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2001), 28–33. Baranowski, Procesy czarownic w Polsce w XVII i XVIII wieku, 156. 122 LB NANU VR. Fond of the Library of the Order of St. Vasylij in Lviv. MB–393. Zhyrovyts’ka knyha chud. 123 Riazanovskii, Demonologiia v drevne-russkoi literaturie, 51.

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Magic charms grow everywhere in Ruthenian lands, You can meet different witches in every village over there. I myself saw those old witches, as they flew away at night And disappeared, quick as the wind, on their wings. Frequently they send us rains from clear skies With their wonderful spells—I swear, I saw it myself! They make storms on rivers, fill clouds with thunder, Destroy crops with hail—so strong is the power of those spells! I witnessed as they were milking ropes, letting white liquid out, Not a single cow is able to produce so much milk.124

The attitude toward neighbors in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became even more cautious in the times of the religious controversies of the beginning of the seventeenth century. Stories about dangerous “Ruthenian witchcraft” became more common and some unusual events were explained by witchcraft, such as for example in the chronicle of the city of Ostrog in 1633. According to the chronicle, one night three huge candles appeared on the dome of the castle church, which several people saw over the course of three hours. The Poles who saw them decided that this phenomenon was caused by Ruthenian witchcraft.125 In the same year another strange event happened. This time demons were said to be hunting for the Catholic Princess Anna Aloisa of Ostrog, and her house in Zviahel was thought to be bewitched, a fact proven by the discovery of dry frog legs hidden in the princess’s pillow.126 Religious opponents were not only demonized but also accused of excessive faith in witchcraft, as in another example from a story by Mohyla, in which the Uniate

124 Sebastian Fabian Klenovych, “Roxolania,” in Ukrjinaska poeziia XVI st. [Ukrainian poetry of the sixteenth century], trans. Kateryna Dysa (Kyiv: Radianskyj pysmennyk, 1987), 160–161. 125 “S krojniki belskogo rechi potrebniji vybrani (Ostrozkyj litopysets)” [Some useful things selected from the chronicle of Belzky (The Chronicler of Ostrog)], in Oleksandr Arefiyovych Bevzo, Lvivskyj litopys i Ostrozkyj litopysets [The Chronicle of Lviv and The Chronicler of Ostrog] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1971), 139. 126 Ibid.

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Bishop Afanasij is accused of using the help of magicians on many occasions and mostly for evil ends.127 All of these tendencies reached their peak during the war of 1648– 1654. The Cossacks, previously brothers-in-arms to the Poles, were suddenly on the opposite side and their actions, especially those that were successful, were often interpreted as the result of demonic aid.128 Two accounts of this war written by Polish baroque authors—Samuel Twardowski’s 1681 poem Wojna domowa z Kozaki i Tatary, z Moskwą, potym Szwedami i z Węgry (A civil war with the Cossacks and Tartars, Muscovy, and later with the Swedes and Hungarians) and Marcin Kuczwarewicz’s 1650 poem Relacyja ekspedycyjej zbaraskiej w roku Pańskim 1649 przeciw Chmielnickiemu (An account of Zbarazh campaign of 1649 against Khmelnytsky), the latter produced immediately after the events described—show the Cossacks actively using the services of witches, practicing witchcraft, and using various divinations.129 Both poets claim that the Cossacks knew how to use witchcraft to find buried treasures,130 and that the Cossacks kept witches in their council and used their help in battles and sieges. They also wrote that the Poles lost the Battle of Pyliavtsi (September 1648) because Bohdan Khmelnytsky used witchcraft to scare them,131 and that the Cossacks tried to use witchcraft in the Battle of Zbarazh (July 1649); at least this is how the Poles interpreted a bolt of lightning that broke the flagstaff in the Polish camp.132 The main anti-hero for the Poles during this period was the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky. According to Twardowski and Kuczwarewicz, he was one of the most active users of witches’ assistance, even keeping his own personal witches whom he asked for recommen1 27 Mohyla, “Skazaniia Petra Mogily,” 115. 128 Unfortunately there are no smilar sources written from the Cossack point of view to analyze their judgements about witchcraft used by the Poles. 129 Such materials, mostly poetic descriptions of war by contemporaries, were collected by Ivan Franko in his study “Khmelnychchyna 1648–1649 rokiv u suchasnykh virshakh” [The movement of Khmelnitskij of 1648–1649 in contemporary poetry], in Ivan Franko, Zibrannia tvoriv u 50 tomakh [Collection of works in 50 volumes], Vol. 31 (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1981). 130 Cited in ibid., 232. 131 Cited in ibid. 132 Cited in ibid., 233.

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dations before each battle. For example, a witch called Marusia foretold for him his victory at the siege of Zamostia (November 1648).133 The most vivid episode of witchcraft chronicled in connection with the war took place at the Battle of Zaslav (May 1649). According to many contemporaries, Donets, the Cossack leader who occupied Zaslav, had a sister who was a witch. This woman foretold the future to the Cossacks and helped them in every battle. Twardowski, writing about the Battle of Zaslav, stated that when the Polish army was approaching the town, Donets’s sister told him that he would lose the battle unless he ran away. Her brother ignored her advice, engaged in battle, and suffered a terrible defeat. In the aftermath of the loss, according to the same contemporary sources, the witch was arrested along with another witch called Solokha. The latter was formerly the personal witch of Khmelnytsky, whom she protected from the evil eye and bewitchment. The two witches were executed by the Poles with a sword.134 Kuczwarewicz provided a slightly different description of the same event. He wrote that the sister of Donets was indeed a witch, that she went into battle in front of everyone else, and the outcome of her encounter was a sign of how further events would develop. Before the Battle of Zaslav began she went to fight and was defeated. She shouted to her brother, “Run away quickly, otherwise you will be killed.”135 She herself was killed soon thereafter. The Cossacks lost the battle and left the town, taking away another witch. When the Poles entered the town, they caught a third witch named Solokha, who was tortured and confessed that she was Khmelnytsky’s lover and assistant, and had helped him achieve victory in the Battle of Piliavtsy. During torture she fell unconscious, and later she was executed at the stake.136 While we have no way to sort out the accuracy of the various versions, the convergence of the stories supports the idea that the var133 Cited in ibid., 232. 134 Samuel Twardowski, Woyna domowa z Kozaki i Tatry, Moskwą, potym Szwedami, i z Węgry, przez lat dwadziescie, za parowania nayjasnieyszego Jana Kazimierza, krola Polskiego tocząca się (Kalist: Typis Kollegij Kalissiensis Soc., 1681), 49. 135 Cited in Franko, “Khmelnychchyna 1648–1649 rokiv u suchasnykh virshakh,” 251. 136 Cited in ibid., 252.

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ious parties to the conflict frequently associated their enemies with witchcraft. Unlike the demonology of Western Christianity, Ukrainian Orthodox demonology was minimally elaborated and played only a marginal role in theological, polemical, or legal thought. Although in sermons and other religious literature the Devil and his servants were mentioned quite frequently, they never received attention as subjects to be explored or examined in their own right, and there are few instances in which demonic creatures are the subject of a whole book. Demonic creatures were represented without distinct features in art, and their image was standardized and displayed little variation. As a rule, they were only an addendum to the depictions of particular saints, in comparison to whom the demons looked quite insignificant. Some preachers claimed that the presence of the Devil was more noticeable in their era than ever before; he made his presence felt in wars, epidemics and the dissolution of morals in general. Stories about the Devil, demons, and witches were often used by Ukrainian preachers as a rhetorical tool, for example when dealing with religious opponents who were accused of using demonic practices and excessive trust in magic. This same weapon was used by the Poles, who during the civil wars accused the Ukrainians (and the Cossacks in particular) of the same vices. However, the main targets of Ukrainian Orthodox preachers were not witches but rather sin and sinners generally. The Devil was associated with sin, and in denouncing the Devil preachers were denouncing sin, calling all sinners the Devil’s servants, and including witches and sorcerers among them. The status of witches did not differ much from that of other grave sinners, who automatically became the Devil’s subordinates merely by practicing witchcraft. That is why there was no need for the elaborate concept of a diabolical pact nor of secret night meetings, the sabbaths. Witches, like other sinners, worshipped their master simply by their sinful actions. Despite the absence of elaborate demonological notions such as the sabbath or a diabolical pact which developed in the West, some sources indicate that these 93

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ideas were known (probably from European texts) at least to the educated public of the Ukrainian lands. The odd individual even tried to conclude such a pact, willingly swearing away his Christian allegiance in a contract written in blood. In trial materials one often comes across the branding of witchcraft as a practice “abominable to God” or “forbidden by God.” However, it is doubtful that such phrases point to the judges’ deep knowledge of religious concepts, but rather reflect a generally held understanding of witchcraft as a sinful practice. Moreover, these formulas were used in legal manuals, so the use of these stock phrases by Ukrainian town court members indicates their familiarity with the law rather than religious discourse. In fact, religious authorities displayed consistent reticence when it came to intervening against witchcraft. As noted above, the practice of exorcism in the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition differed in some important respects from that of Western Christianity. While in Catholic Europe exorcism was performed by a priest, in Ukrainian lands holy images, relics, and shrines more commonly received credit for releasing people from the thrall of demons. As for trials of witches themselves, I found no references to legal actions against witches in the works of Ukrainian Orthodox preachers, except for the one case described by Petro Mohyla noted previously. This suggests an indifference on the part of the Orthodox Church representatives to the problem of dealing with the crime of witchcraft in judicial terms. Though preachers held strong opinions about witchcraft, at the same time they stood aside, not interfering in the judicial process and not encouraging any actions against alleged witchcraft.

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3



Beyond the Trials, or the Anatomy of Witchcraft Accusations

W

hile reading the materials on Ukrainian witchcraft trials, I was struck by the fact that, despite the absence of encouragement by secular or spiritual authorities, there was never a shortage of accusations of witchcraft brought by the people to the town courts. This cannot be explained simply by studying laws, demonology, verdicts, and statistical ratios; one needs to go beyond the trials in order to understand the origins of witchcraft accusations, to explore those environments that provided fertile ground for the emergence of suspicions, quarrels, and accusations. By examining the stories of bewitchment that people told each other and to the courts, the essence of these conflicts is revealed to be conflicts about basic anthropological structures such as the neighborhood, family, power, and the economy, and consequently those environments, along with the subjects of the quarrels that formed the heart of these accusations, are the subject of this chapter. Stories of witchcraft told by village- and town-dwellers of early modern Ukraine are accessible to us through narratives, presented in trial records, with two nested levels, one inside the other. On one level we have a narrative of individual—or, rarely, collective— bewitchment, which usually ends with the afflicted person turning to the courts; on the other level this first narrative is contained with95

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in another narrative, that of the trial about witchcraft. Because these second narratives often lack conclusions, due to the specificities of record-keeping in Ukrainian town courts mentioned earlier in the Introduction, we have wonderful, often detailed stories of what preceded the official accusation but unfortunately quite frequently we do not know the fate of the people involved. In this chapter I mention the ultimate fate of the participants if it is known.

“Peaceful” Coexistence The notion of a witch is, at least to a certain extent, a social construct. Quite frequently actual magical practices were only marginally relevant to community members, witnesses, or authorities, because in most cases it was not black magic that created the reputation of the witch, but specific personal characteristics. This phenomenon is reflected in the modern use of the word; when someone is called “a witch” nowadays it is not because she is a magic practitioner but because this person is a nuisance to other people, quarrelsome, gloomy, evil, aggressive, or unpleasant. Anthropologists confirm this connection. Andrew Sanders writes, “Witchcraft is associated with evil feelings. It is associated with jealousy, quarrelling, and antisocial behavior. Consequently persons who consistently behave antisocially may be in danger of becoming identified with witchcraft and accused of being witches.”1 In many African tribal societies, Alan Macfarlane notes, “witches tend to be those whose behavior is least in accordance with social demands.”2 Witches are distinguished by their antisocial features: they are bad and unfriendly characters, who are stand-offish and not eager to help others. They can also be greedy, rude, and jealous, and ready to criticize and threaten other people.3 1 Andrew Sanders, A Deed without a Name: The Witch in Society and History (Oxford: Berg, 1995), 83. 2 Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1991), 227. 3 Ibid., see also Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic.

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The comparative study of the phenomenon has brought to light the finding that witchcraft accusations occur only in certain types of societies. For instance, while the idea of the witch was well known among pastoralists of East Africa, witchcraft accusations were extremely rare and the role played by witchcraft in social life was not important. Anthropologist Paul Trevor William Baxter connects this particular conjunction of beliefs and practices in East Africa to a nomadic way of life and the specificities of property relations. He argues that while in sedentary agricultural societies people are bound to the land and thus to their neighbors, with whom they are forced to interact in different situations that may give rise to conflict, pastoralists can easily move away and sever unwanted relations. Only those pastoral societies whose members most depend on agriculture advance significant numbers of witchcraft accusations.4 Contemporary western urban societies, with their weak sense of community and neighborhood, do not provide fertile ground for witchcraft accusations either. Thus the shaping of witchcraft accusations was possible in societies whose members were bound to the land and to each other. They depended on nature as well as on each other’s good will and help, lived in close proximity, knew each other quite well, and had the opportunity to observe sometimes very intimate aspects of each other’s lives. These people could not easily leave the conflict behind and move away. Briggs writes, “over most of Western Europe the steady flow of cases which marks the period from the 1570s to the 1630s was made up of people accused of maleficium by their immediate neighbors, with only occasional encouragement from above.”5 Neighborly life had many aspects that directly or indirectly led to suspicions and accusations of witchcraft, some of which are the subject of this section. Many expectations governed social interactions within neighborhoods, especially in villages and small towns. First, neighbors were 4 Paul Trevor William Baxter, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Some Suggestions Why Witchcraft Accusations are Rare among East African Pastoralists,” in The Allocation of Responsibility, ed. Max Gluckman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972). 5 Briggs, “Many Reasons Why,”54.

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expected to live in peace, they were not to fight with each other or to trespass on their neighbors’ property or territory. Also, neighbors were expected to provide help and support to those in need, which also meant that they were expected to share their resources during hard times. Quite often, neighbors engaged in common economic activities. This nominal harmony was not always stable and could easily strain, giving way to negative emotions and conflicts; nevertheless, collectives of neighbors were apt to unite in the face of dangers that could come from outside or inside. Many cases demonstrate how eagerly communities drew together in search of witches (who were readily cast as the enemy within the collective) in times of droughts and epidemics.6 Sometimes neighbors who suffered from witchcraft would gather their forces and bring a collective accusation against an alleged witch to the court. For example, in December 1628 four neighbors, Iesko Cieciera, Jacko Koszyn, Karp Krublik, and Jasko Rybałka, brought collective accusations against Barbara Cierhowa to the town court of Oster. They testified that because of her, “their families and livestock suffer from illnesses, they have a lot of grief and troubles.”7 Barbara denied her guilt, saying that she had never practiced witchcraft and never even thought about it. The accusers then swore that all their troubles were because of the accused. The judges interrupted this exchange and, demonstrating a lenient attitude, let the accused woman swear that she was not practicing witchcraft. The judges also warned her that that should she practice witchcraft in the future, they would have to burn her alive. Accepting this verdict, she turned to her neighbors. She “in tears asked them to stop the persecution.”8 They agreed “out of the kindness of their hearts” but on one condition: that she would take an oath that she would never use witchcraft against them or against­ 6 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 99, op. 2, no. 104, f. 3 v (1749); fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 16 v–16 r (1727), fond 1336, op. 1, no. 3327, ff. 1 v–6 v (1799); and also: no. 15 (1711), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 59. 7 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1471, op. 1, no. 1, f. 23 v–24 v. 8 Ibid., 24 v.

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other neighbors. All of her neighbors were authorized to inform the judges if they saw her do anything suspicious. In February 1652, several neighbors from the village of Chukva in the Ruthenian palatinate brought charges against Zuzanna Żołnyrczanka, who was born in the village but had married a man from the Podolian palatinate, and after his death she had returned to her native village. Her neighbors were sure that in that alien land she had learned witchcraft, and their suspicions were confirmed when one woman from the neighborhood asked Zuzanna to help her when she had some troubles (she did not specify the nature of those troubles). Whatever Zuzanna did while helping that woman was interpreted as witchcraft, and she was sentenced to banishment from the village.9 Neighbors, however, would unite not only in order to persecute alleged witches, but also to support those neighbors who, in their opinion, were unfairly accused of witchcraft. Malcolm Gaskill writes that in England it was not “unknown for neighbors to testify to the good character of a suspect, thereby dividing local opinion or exposing existing divisions.”10 Court records contain many trial materials that demonstrate that people from the neighborhood readily gave positive testimony about those with whom they had lived in proximity for many years, and who one day found themselves accused of witchcraft. Some of those accused may have actually engaged in magical practices, but were still trusted by a majority of their neighbors and enjoyed their support in the face of formal accusations coming from one or even several of their other neighbors. In these cases, if the number of those who demonstrated support was large enough the judges could be persuaded of the good reputation of the accused. For example, in September 1728 a woman from the village of Metelen, Ustymia Dudczycha, was accused of witchcraft. When questioned in the town court of Olyka Ustymia said that she was not practicing witchcraft, although she knew how to take away harm done to children and adults, 9 TDIA (Lviv) fond 142, op. 1, no. 1, pp. 241–243. 10 Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 52.

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and how to heal livestock. Two court representatives were sent to the village to question Ustymia’s neighbors about her reputation. Most of her neighbors readily supported her, saying that she was not a witch and had not harmed anyone, and that she could only heal people and animals when someone requested. Then the representatives asked the neighbors to sign a guarantee of her good reputation.11 There are many other examples of people coming to the defense of their neighbor. After Małanka Sysłowa from the village of Wieselec in the Podolian palatinate was accused of witchcraft in June 1730, court representatives from the town of Sataniv were sent to the village to ask Małanka’s neighbors about her reputation. One of the neighbors said that he had lived close to her for eight years and had never seen her practicing any witchcraft. Other people from the neighborhood confirmed that Małanka had never practiced any witchcraft or sorcery. The judges decided that this was enough and asked Małanka to swear that she would never use witchcraft again in the future.12 A similar procedure took place in the village of Chukva in the Ruthenian palatinate in July 1696, when Anna Zubyika was accused of bewitching the livestock of her neighbor, Roman Kwic. As in the previous case, Anna’s other neighbors were asked about her reputation. A neighbor named Marusza, the wife of Hrynko Kusznir, said, “I have been living close to that woman for about nine years and I have never seen her doing anything evil and have never heard anything bad about her.”13 Hrynko Bumbicz, another neighbor, also said that neither he nor his wife had ever seen their neighbor doing anything like the things she was accused of.14 In another case, neighbors confirmed the good reputation of Iwan Telepian from the village of Bereznicza in the Ruthenian palatinate, who was accused of witchcraft in 1616. They testified that neither he nor other members of his family knew anything about witchcraft or practiced it.15 11 12 13 14 15

TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, f. 86 v–86 r. TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 3, f. 123 v–126 v. TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, f. 174 v. Ibid., 173 v. NBLDU VR, no. 518iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1614–1632), f. 91 v.

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A case in the village of Ilnik in the Ruthenian palatinate in 1664 might seem a bit unusual. Wasil Toruwnicz accused a woman named Wołoszynka of bewitching his sheep, as a result of which the animals had died. In the course of the investigation it was revealed that Toruwnicz was not the only one whose sheep had died; many other neighbors had lost their sheep as well. However, instead of uniting their forces against one neighbor suspected of witchcraft, other neighbors declared that since many people had lost their sheep it was a sign that witchcraft had nothing to do with it. As a result, there was no further investigation of the case.16 Collective accusations, as well as (to a lesser extent) substantial collective support from neighbors, occurred mostly in villages and small towns. In most of the cases taking place in bigger towns no more than two neighbors were involved in the conflicts leading to witchcraft accusations. Other people might be mentioned in court records, usually as curious or indifferent witnesses, but urban cases usually involved only a few individuals and rarely drew in larger groups. In order to understand the interpersonal dynamics of this kind of individualized case involving two main actors, addressed in more detail below, we will consider the issue of witchcraft accusations and personal offenses, visible in the records of defamation cases. In adjudicating defamation cases and attacks on personal honor or reputation, the law of the land differentiated between insults spoken in anger and those based on some knowledge about the person who allegedly offended. Slander cases must be studied with caution for it is not always clear if the offender had an ulterior motive in calling someone a witch.17 However, it is noteworthy that unlike other offenses, as for example calling someone a “whore” or “the son of a whore,” which were automatically taken as slander and an offense to 16 NBLDU VR, no. 514iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1659–1665), f. 235 r. 17 There are several slander cases which are very brief and it is not clear from the context if the person was called a witch for some actual practices or cursing, or not: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 39, op. 1, no. 53, ff. 6 v–6 r (1714); fond 39, op. 1, no. 53, f. 174 v (1716); fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 65 v–65 r (1728).

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the subject’s dignity, calling someone a witch was usually taken more seriously by the judges. They could demand proof that the person was called a witch for actual witchcraft practices, and if the charges were not proven the accusers could be severely punished.18 In Vyzhva in June 1728 several neighbors witnessed a quarrel between the wife of Martyn Winnik and the wife of Daniel Sawicki. Daniel Sawicki, who brought charges on behalf of his wife, attempted to present the situation as a case of defamation. He stated that Martynicha Winniczka had become angry in public and called his wife a whore and a witch. However, according to the witnesses of this quarrel, the situation was not so simple and Martynicha’s words were not mere insults. One of the neighbors, Iwan Wiermeyczyk, testified that he heard Martynicha tell Sawicka that because of her witchcraft “all the prosperity had left Martynicha’s house.” Another witness, Hryc Samos, said that Martynicha had insulted Sawicka because Sawicka had bewitched her house. And the third witness, Pałaszka Mikitycha, said that one time she was sitting on a bench with several young men, and Sawicka joined them. They were joking and laughing when Martynicha looked out the window of her house. She was anxious and shouted to Sawicka, “Why are you staying here? Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you leave us in peace, you witch? You took away all the milk from my cow and now this milk goes to your house via a rope.”19 This catalogue of previous episodes established for the court that Martynicha’s allegation was not an insult uttered in the heat of the moment but the product of a long and deeply held suspicion that Sawicka was actually practicing witchcraft. Long quarrels between neighbors were not taken as merely the private affairs of the parties involved. There are examples demonstrating that authorities did not approve of such quarrels and were ready to intervene to stop them. In October 1728, authorities in the town of Oly18 For example: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 39, op. 1, no. 53, ff. 7 r, 9 v (1714); TDIA (Lviv), fond 48, op. 1, no. 4, ff. 10 v–10r (1785); fond 43, op. 1, no. 162, ff. 258 v–259 v (1773); NBLDU VR, no. 572iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1763–1779), p. 12 (1764). 19 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 115 r–116 v.

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ka compelled two women, Tomaszowa Zabłocka and Antoniowa Budkiewiczowa, to apologize for their behavior in front of the court and told them to live in peace in the future. Before that, Zabłocka and Budkiewiczowa had had many quarrels, with some of them ending in physical confrontation. In order to explain the cause of these quarrels, Budkiewiczowa told the court that her house was under constant attack by Zabłocka, who was putting curses on her and her house.20 In April 1731, Jan Leonczyk and Troczycha Chilkewiczowa from Kremenets were ordered to install a fence between their plots and to live in peace. This order was issued after the two neighboring families were engaged in an ongoing feud accompanied by accusations of witchcraft.21 In June 1768, authorities in the village of Zadzielskie in the Ruthenian palatinate decided to punish the wives of Michał Ripiawyteszyn and Paweł Ripiawytczyn with flogging for their constant quarrelling. The women were accused of “having evil feelings toward each other, constant quarrelling despite living in the neighborhood, and using witchcraft against each other.”22 Their husbands were also condemned by the authorities and had to pay a fine for not controlling their wives. The two couples were threatened with further punishment in case their quarrels continued. Many of the quarrels between neighbors that led to witchcraft accusations were connected to an expectation of neighborly help that went wrong, or with problems connected with mutual economic activities. Zuzanna Żołnyrczanka, from the village of Chukva, testified that she had agreed to help her neighbor, the wife of Hryszko Kurdziel, but she did not know that she would end up being accused of witchcraft. She admitted that she knew some magic to solve her neighbor’s problem but had doubts about using such means. However, Kurdziel’s wife asked her so insistently that she could not refuse; as a result, other neighbors learned about their magical practices and accused them both of witchcraft. Unfortunately, we do not know what happened to them after this.23 20 21 22 23

TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 91 v–91 r. No. 36 (1731), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 79–80. NBLDU VR, no. 572iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1763–1779), p. 33 (1768). TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 1, pp. 241–243 (1652).

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Sometimes when misfortune followed neighborly assistance, the neighbor who provided help took it as bitter ungratefulness and suspected that witchcraft was at work (for there was a belief that witches were ungrateful and could answer good with evil). It also happened that even good intentions might have a bad outcome. As well known from Western European witchcraft trials, sometimes accusations of witchcraft were made after the alleged witch presented some object to the person to whom, after some time, a misfortune had happened. Such a case took place in the village of Wieselec. In 1730, one of the participants of the quarrel, Agnieszka Olszewiczowa, came to the town court of Sataniv accusing her neighbor Małanka Sysłowa of bewitching her cow. According to Olszewiczowa, in 1727 her daughter had forgotten a pot by the river, and later some people told Agnieszka that they had seen the children of Małanka Sysłowa, her neighbor, taking a pot to their house. When Agnieszka went to Małanka’s house, she recognized her pot and asked her to return it, which Małanka kindly did. For some time afterwards Agnieszka used it to make butter, which she took to the fair, and eventually she decided to present a pot to Małanka (later it turned out that it was a new pot which presumably looked like the original pot). However, shortly afterwards Małanka came to her house stating that since she had started to use the new pot to milk her cow, the cow had fallen ill and did not give milk any more. It is clear that Małanka suspected Agnieszka of bewitching her cow, for when Agnieszka later came to her neighbor with recommendations on how to heal the cow and even sent her some herbs, Małanka refused to accept her help. Some time later the cow began to produce foul-smelling milk and gave birth to a deformed calf. Subsequently, the milk, with which the cow was feeding the monstrous calf, once again became clean. Małanka had a different version of what happened and presented a counter-accusation against Agnieszka. She said that the pot was hers and that Agnieszka had borrowed it from her. When the time came to bring it back, Agnieszka had brought her another pot, saying that she sold the previous one along with butter at the fair. From then on the story was the 104

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same—the new pot spoiled the cow and the cow did not give milk for an entire year after that.24 It is of course impossible to find out which of the two versions, if any, was true, but this is not essential. What is more important is that each of the two women considered herself to be the victim of her ungrateful and evil neighbor. One can see from some cases that even if a certain person was the victim of community gossip and was accused of being a witch, not everyone who was in contact with that person may have believed it. However, interpersonal conflicts could lead people to switch their positions, from doubting to endorsing local gossip. Accusations might arise on the basis of a combination of information circulating in the community and personal experience. The following example from the town of Vyzhva in the 1730s is illustrative. The wife of Łukian Zaderyczuk was known to come from a family of witches,25 but nevertheless some of her neighbors engaged in regular economic activities with her family. For example, the Zaderyczuk family shared the same piece of land for pasturing their cows with the family of Paweł Ohorolczuk. Ohorolczuk and his wife knew about the reputation of Zaderyczuk’s wife, but they still maintained a relationship with her and her family. However, their anxiety about the Zaderyczuk’s behavior grew, and eventually flared into a quarrel and then an accusation. Ohorolczuk grew angry with the Zaderyczuks since they did not want to pay for a professional herdsman, preferring instead to let a boy look after the herd; he turned out to be quite bad at the job and always mixed up the cows. One day Ohorolczuk refused to let Zaderyczuk’s herd into the meadow, and when Zadereyczuk’s wife came to Ohorolczuk and his wife asking for an explanations, they attacked her, calling her a witch.26 Thus they began sharing the general opinion about their neighbors only after they had a conflict with them.27 24 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 3, ff. 123 v–126 v. 25 The family history of Zaderyczuk’s wife is discussed in more detail in the section “Family and Witchcraft.” 26 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 263 v–263 r (1732). 27 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 266 v–266 r (1732).

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Most conflicts leading to an accusation of witchcraft between neighbors were the result of the close proximity of living conditions of early modern life. As Gaskill wrote in his study of early modern English witchcraft, “Any invasion of space could precipitate an accusation. Indeed, one is struck by the very physical proximity, and apparent social parity, of many accusers and accused.”28 There are many examples from the Ukrainian trial records that confirm the applicability of this statement to the situation there as well. Due to their close proximity, people were often able to observe what was going on in the houses of their neighbors and might on occasion deem some of their neighbors’ activities suspicious. This could lead to witchcraft accusations, especially if the suspicious actions of the neighbor coincided with some misfortune. In 1731 a resident of Olyka, Jacenty Zdaniewicz, accused the mother-in-law of his neighbor, Neczypor Romanczuk, of witchcraft. His accusations were based on the fact that one night he saw Romanczuk’s mother-in-law walking around the garden naked and with loose hair— as we know from the ninteenth century evidence, people in Ukraine believed that women practice various magical rituals, such as rain-calling, naked and with their hair down—soon after which his vegetable garden suffered some damage. He immediately put the two events together and accused the woman of witchcraft. In court, the suspect said that Jacenty must have seen something different; perhaps he had seen her one night as she was returning with a herd of pigs.29 One year earlier, in a different case, another woman from Olyka, the wife of Sawa Dowhopolicz, was accused of witchcraft because Mikołay Jarywonowicz saw her welcoming other alleged witches into her house. He also claimed that he saw three of them wandering around the house barefoot at night.30 In another case, after the cow of a villager from Chukva, Mikołai Ozdzak, stopped giving milk in 1693, he suspected that some witchcraft was at work. Since he had seen some suspicious women visiting the house of his neigh28 Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities, 60–61. 29 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 483 v–483 r. 30 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 367 v–369 v.

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bor Woycech Papayły, and he had also seen the wife of Papayły doing something strange in the field, he accused her of witchcraft and asked another neighbor, Andrzej Jabłonski, to go to Papayły’s house to persuade his wife to reverse her witchcraft.31 The proximity of living conditions also meant that domestic animals could trespass on the territory of a neighbor. If this trespass continued it could lead to a quarrel involving the exchange of insults and occasionally even fights. If, after such a quarrel, these animals died or became ill, the neighbor might be suspected of bewitching them. This happened in 1699 in the village of Chukva, when the hens of Stefan Krawec died after they had gotten into the courtyard of his neighbor Iwan Kunaszow. Krawec accused the neighbor’s wife of witchcraft. In this case, we only have the record of complaint but there was no record about further investigation or trial.32 The situation could also be reversed; if the animals of someone with the reputation of being a witch trespassed on the territory of their neighbors, the latter might suspect an attempt to bewitch their house. In 1716 a resident of Vyzhva, Łukasz Suprunow, came to the house of his neighbor Łomazianka after her hens had wandered into his courtyard. Łomazianka was already rumored to be a witch and even to have killed several people. Suprunow threatened her with legal actions after the hens’ intrusion because he and his family feared that the birds had brought evil and misfortune to their house.33 Most commonly, suspicions that witchcraft was at work arose when people discovered strange objects on their land and suspected their neighbors had placed them there. In 1706, a town dweller of Kovel, Trochim Hrehorowicz, brought charges of witchcraft against his neighbors, Michał Maximowicz and his wife. Hrehorowicz and his wife had found a strange round loaf of bread on a tree in their garden. From other people, they had heard that this bread had been hung in their garden by Michał Maximowicz and his wife. The Hrehorow31 TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, pp. 60–61. 32 TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, f. 208 v. 33 No. 21 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 64–65.

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iczes were afraid that some misfortune would follow and sent a delegation to their neighbors, asking them what it meant. The Maximowiczes said that there was nothing to be scared of because the bread was there not to harm them but for some other purpose. Nevertheless, the Hrehorowiczes still went to court and asked the scribe to write the whole incident down so that in case anything bad happened to them, the authorities would be aware of the cause.34 In 1745, Semen Fursik brought charges against his neighbors, Bazyl Bednarczuk and his wife, in the magisterial court of Kremenets. Fursik accused his neighbors of attempts to bewitch his household because he found a dirty pot on his land, and a witness, Teodor Zatowski, claimed that he had seen the Bednarczuks pouring something from that pot. As it turned out, some of Bednarczuk’s relatives were already suspected of witchcraft, so he had to take an oath that neither he nor anyone else in his family practiced witchcraft.35 More than twenty years later, in 1767, another resident of Kremenets, Michał Czeczel, also found a suspicious object on his land, this time a bottle filled with dirty liquid. Since it was found buried in the ground close to the house of his neighbor Ahafia Bozkiewicz, Czeczel accused her of attempting to bewitch his household. When asked about the bottle in the court, Ahafia stated that it was not she who had buried it, but that some time earlier an old woman, named Hanuska Krzywa, who used to live in Kremenets, had hidden that bottle on their land before she left the city. Ahafia’s husband, Bazyl Bozkiewicz, said that he also knew about that old woman, and attested that she indeed had left the city. The judges decided that they could not make a final verdict before they heard Hanuszka Krzywa, so they ordered her to come to the court under the threat of eternal damnation. Since there is no further mention of Hanuszka Krzywa in this town-book, it is possible that the old woman never came back to Kremenets and to its court.36 34 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 13, ff. 102 r–103 v. 35 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 20, op. 1, no. 3, ff. 83 v–84 v. 36 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 20, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 115 r–116 v.

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When in 1732 a resident of Dubno, Stefan Gębarzowski, a former soldier, became ill, his family suspected bewitchment. Gębarzowski’s wife had heard from Tekla, the mother of her neighbor Andrzej Dębski, that her daughter-in-law had mixed some charms and put them on the fence between their plots. She stressed that her daughter-in-law chose to put it on the fence on the border with the Gębarzowskis, not with the other neighbor. Gębarzowski’s wife searched for the charms and found them. Yet in court, the witnesses who searched for the charms along with Gębarzowski’s wife stated that they were not sure that any of this was connected with witchcraft. Indeed, the supposed witch, Anna, the wife of Dębski, explained in court that the purported charms that her accusers had advanced as evidence were not charms at all. She asserted that her child was ill and since dry mustard could heal the child she had put some mustard on the fence to let it dry under the sun, and that no witchcraft was involved in her actions. The court ruled in her favor and compelled the Gębarzowskis to apologize for their accusations.37 Throwing rubbish on the neighbors’ land was not only considered a sign of a hostile attitude but was also often taken as a means of bewitchment. In 1731 an inhabitant of Kremenets, Jan Leonczyk, and his wife accused the family of Troczycha Chilkewiczowa, their neighbors, of witchcraft. They had seen Troczycha’s daughter collect rubbish and then later they had seen Troczycha dump it on their property. In court, Troczycha answered that it was not witchcraft, just rubbish. Judges considered these events to be a disturbance of peaceful neighborhood coexistence, and ordered the quarrelling parties to build a fence between their lots to avoid such conflicts in the future.38 Not only solid garbage but also dirty liquids poured on to the territory of a neighbor could cause suspicions of witchcraft. In 1728, a resident of Olyka, Piotr Pozniewicz, beat the wife of Meusz Leyzorowicz, a Jew. When he was summoned to the court, he explained his aggres37 No. 38 (1732), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 81–82. 38 No. 36 (1731), in Ibid., 79–80.

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sive behavior, saying that Meucz’s wife had provoked his assault when she insulted him, calling him a hangman, and then attacked his household using witchcraft. He testified, for instance, that she had poured some dirty water, in which she had bathed her children, on to his land, after which his child had fallen ill.39 In July 1729 Iwan Pawłowicz from the town of Vyzhva accused his neighbor, Sytko Oliferowicz, of slander, because Oliferowicz had been spreading a rumor that Pawłowicz and his wife had bewitched him. When summoned to court, Oliferowicz answered that he had never said anything bad about Pawłowicz himself, but he did suspect Pawłowicz’s wife of putting an evil spell on his household. A soothsayer had told him this, and moreover he had seen Pawłowicz’s wife bathing her child and then discarding the water on his land; soon after one of his children had become ill. The judges took the side of the slandered party and made Oliferowicz apologize.40 Likewise, the judges of the town court of Kremenets did not support Stefan Półtoracki who, in September 1746, accused the wife of Wierzbicki, his neighbor, of bewitching him by pouring dirty liquid on to his land at night. Półtoracki’s daughter had seen Wierzbicki’s wife standing at the gateway and pouring something near their house. However, when Wierzbicki and his wife took an oath that Wierzbicki’s wife did not want to bewitch anyone and did not practice witchcraft, was found guilty of slander and had to pay a fine.41 The most extensive case involving the pouring of dirty water grew out of a series of conflicts among people from the same neighborhood in the town of Olyka in 1746 and 1747. The records from this episode allow us to examine the dynamics of neighborhood hostilities and witchcraft suspicions as they gained steam and ultimately reached the city court. The first conflict began in October 1746, when Omelian Jędrzeiowicz and his wife were suspected of bewitching the family of their neighbor, Dmitr Ostapowicz, by means of pouring dirty water on his land. Ostapowicz came to Jędrzeiowicz’s house in the evening and 39 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 80 v–80 r. 40 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 163 r. 41 No. 57 (1746), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 113.

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stood under his window shouting accusations of witchcraft and evil intents. Jędrzeiowicz considered this slander against him and his wife and turned to the town court. In court, Omelian Jędrzeiowicz confirmed that his wife really had poured dirty water on the property of his neighbor but provided an interesting explanation: she had bathed her child in this water because he was ill from fright after an encounter with a boar, and people had recommended he be bathed so that the fright would go into the water. Then the water had to be poured on a dog and the fear would disappear. When it came to the pouring of water, the chosen dog happened to be lying on the land of their neighbor, Dmitr Ostapowicz, so the child’s mother had no choice but to pour the water on the property of her neighbor. Ostapowicz’s story was different. He said that his wife had seen Jędrzeiowicz’s wife come out of her house in the evening with a bottle in her hands. At first she had seemed uncertain about where to go, but then she had approached their house and poured out the contents of the bottle. When Ostapowicz’s wife asked what she was doing, Jędrzeiowicz’s wife had answered, “It won’t do any harm.”42 Dmitr was away at that moment, but when he came back and his wife told him what had happened, he went to Jędrzeiowicz’s house asking him what it could all mean. Instead of explaining, Jędrzeiowicz had attacked him, abusing and insulting him. In the course of the investigation, it became clear that there were witnesses to the incident, neighbors of the accuser and accused. Eudokia Tarasicha heard both versions of the story and when the wife of Omelian Jędrzeiowicz complained to her that she was being slandered, Eudokia condemned her, saying that it was not good to pour “God knows what” on a neighbor’s house.43 The second witness, Opanas Moysieiowicz, came to court several days later. He said that after the incident, he had seen Fiłonczuk’s wife and children going to the house of Dmitr Ostapowicz. When the wife of Jędrzeiowicz saw them, she had said, “Do not go there with the kids, because I poured some42 No. 59 (1746), in Ibid., 114. 43 Ibid., 115.

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thing there.”44 Ostapowicz’s wife had also heard it and had come out of her house saying, “So it is true.”45 Having heard all of the witnesses, the judges of the town court decided that Jędrzeiowicz’s wife did not have the right to pour that water on to the land of her neighbors, and the Jędrzeiowiczs were ordered to go to their neighbors and apologize. Furthermore, for their superstitious practices they were ordered to pay a fine to the church and the court. Even though this story was over, it was not forgotten, at least not by the second witness, Moysieiowicz. One year later, in 1747, he saw Jędrzeiowicz’s wife pouring some liquid onto his land near the cowshed and went to the town court with an accusation of witchcraft. He had one witness, Jan Szawałkiewicz, who testified that after his wife and children had walked over the spot where the suspicious liquid had been poured spots broke out all over their bodies. Szawałkiewicz noted that his wife expressed some uncertainty about whether the rash was caused by that liquid or not.46 Jędrzeiowicz’s wife answered these accusations by stating that the liquid she poured was just dirty water used for washing some shirts and that there was no witchcraft involved. She also called on two witnesses, who confirmed that they had lived on her street for many years and had never seen her practice witchcraft. The judges asked both sides to find more witnesses because there was not enough information to reach a final verdict, however, none of the parties were able to find more people to bring to the court. Finally, the court decided that the accused should swear that she had not poured that dirty water in order to practice witchcraft. After that, both sides had to pay fines. Moreover, Jędrzeiowicz’s wife received a warning that she should never pour anything on her neighbors’ land, or else she would be flogged. The judges added that “both sides must live in peace; if one of them starts a quarrel, they will have to pay a fine.”47 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 No. 62 (1747), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 117. 47 No. 66 (1747), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 118.

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The life of the neighborhood could create an atmosphere in which accusations of witchcraft were shaped. That is why it often attracted the attention of the authorities, who condemned neighborly quarrels and demanded neighbors live in peace without disturbances. However, if neighborly proximity tended to generate hostility and suspicion, there was another, even more intimate environment that proved equally conducive to quarrels leading to witchcraft accusations, the family.

Family and Witchcraft The family has long been a subject of study for scholars dealing with the issues of gender, economic and social history, and the history of everyday life. Since the late 1970s family history has been integrated into the study of European witchcraft trials. Some scholars have noticed that there is a connection between the marital status of the accused women and their reputation as a witch.48 Some researchers have established connections between family history and witchcraft, and attempted to outline the history of witchcraft accusations as a metaphor for family life. Deborah Wills in her book Malevolent Nurture: Witch-hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England compares the witch with the bad mother who uses her power to harm those close to her, who gave her love and care to the familiars—animal-shaped demon who allegedly helped a witch—while ignoring her own children (if they existed at all).49 This section traces the connections between accusations of witchcraft and family life in Ukrainian witchcraft trials. I focus on three aspects of the problem: the succession of witchcraft abilities from gen48 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London: Penguin Books, 1991); Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England; Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). 49 Deborah Wills, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 14, 34.

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eration to generation, accusations of witchcraft within the family, and family support as it is reflected in the materials of witchcraft trials. Inheritance of Witchcraft within the Family The belief that witchcraft can be inherited is almost as universal as the belief in witches. The handing down of magical abilities constitutes one of the key elements of witchcraft mythology in many cultures in Africa, Europe, Siberia, and North and South America, so it is not surprising that anthropologists were the first to research this phenomenon. Some of the conclusions made by anthropologists have also been applied by scholars of European witchcraft trials. In his classic study of witchcraft among the Azande of central Africa, the English anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard states that for the Azande witchcraft is a physical substance in the shape of an oval swelling or a sack filled with little objects placed somewhere in the stomach, the so-called mangu. Since witchcraft is seen to be something material, the Azande believe that it can be passed genetically from one generation to another. However, it can only be inherited in a rather specific way: men could only pass their witchcraft on to their sons and women only to their daughters.50 The people of another African tribe, the Gusii, also believe that witchcraft can be inherited by birth. However, people of some other tribes have claimed that witchcraft cannot be inherited. For example, the Lovedu (or Lobedu) people who live in South Africa believe that witchcraft is passed on from the mother’s milk (thus a man could be a witch, but his children would not inherit witchcraft). In order to become a witch in the Mbugwe tribe, one has to commit incest with a relative who is witch.51 The belief that witchcraft can be passed on within the family was widespread in Western Europe as well. However, it was widely believed that simply being born into a family of witches was not enough, 50 Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, “Witchcraft amongst the Azande,” in Witchcraft and Sorcery, ed. Max Marwick (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 29–30. 51 Examples are taken from Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 212.

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but that one of the parents or older relatives had to teach the child the tricks of the trade in order for them to become a witch. Although William Perkins, an English preacher of the late sixteenth century, wrote in his Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft that witchcraft was “an art that may be learned,”52 according to popular opinion this art could be passed on only within the family.53 That is why in England accusations against multiple members of the same family were not unusual.54 The tendency to understand witchcraft as an inherited characteristic within a family also existed in other countries. Henningsen wrote about a situation observed by the inquisitor Salazar, the “witches’ advocate,” in the Basque country in 1609: Zugarramurdi [one of the centers of seventeenth-century Basque witches’ alleged activities] followed the general European pattern of witch belief; witchcraft was an art that had to be learned. However, what we know about the mutual family relationships of those making confessions to the Inquisition suggests that the occupation of witchcraft was thought to be handed down within certain families. Six out of the ten on the list were related to each other either by blood or by marriage.55

On the other hand, from the materials from the witchcraft trials of New England we can see that belief in the succession of witchcraft had only a marginal value. Here, most of the collateral accusations were brought against the husbands of witches, not against their children, although some children and grandchildren were swept up as well.56 As Briggs writes:

52 Cited in Clive Holmes, “Popular Culture? Witches, Magistrates and Divines in Early Modern England,” in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Steven L. Kaplan (Berlin, New York: Mouton, 1984), 96. 53 Ibid.; see also: Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities, 57. 54 For example Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 197. 55 Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate, 34. 56 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 70–71.

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European witchcraft was not conceptualized like that of the Azande, as a physical substance one might inherit quite unaware; the idea that the witch deliberately chose to serve the wrong master was an established part of popular belief… Nevertheless, the idea of a taint in the blood was just as firmly rooted, so that the children and siblings of convicted witches were always in danger of being drawn in after them.57

Was the situation in the Ukrainian lands different? Until now, the issue of the succession of magical abilities has been studied only within the context of ethnography. According to Ukrainian popular stories witchcraft could be handed down to the next generation. This belief was primarily associated with the rodyma vidma or the “natural-born witch” who acquired her magic abilities by birth, along with some physical defect, most often a little tail and a strip of dark hair on her back. In this sense the Ukrainian understanding of witches reminds one of the Azande witches with their witch-substances in their abdomens. However, it was believed that along with the naturalborn witch another kind existed, the vchena vidma (learned witch), or sometimes the roblena vidma (made witch), who consciously chose to become a witch. She learned witchcraft from a natural-born witch or through a ritual of initiation and further study of witchcraft.58 Is this modern ethnographic classification of witches reflected in the materials of the early modern Ukrainian trials? At the risk of destroying the intrigue too early, I argue that the division of witches into natural-born and learned cannot be traced in the Ukrainian town court books. However, it is possible to find cases that echo popular belief about acquiring magic abilities within the family, whether by birth or by learning. People who were actual magic practitioners— magic healers, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, sorcerers—are f­ requently 57 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 215. 58 For examples of popular stories about natural born and learned witches see Hnatiuk, “Znadoby do ukrajins’koji demonolohiji,” 98–100, 106; and Ivanov, “Narodnyye rasskazy o ved’mach i upyryach,” 432, 438, 441.

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mentioned in the materials of the trials. It is noteworthy that they were not necessarily the accused. It is possible that they did not come to court in person at all, though they were mentioned by the opposing sides as a source of information about lost or stolen things, the identity of the witch who caused the illness, drought, or other misfortune, the place where a treasure was hidden, and so on. Fortunately, these magic practitioners were not silent and faceless extras. Sometimes it is possible to hear fragments of their personal histories. And it is from these stories that one can learn that these people acquired their extraordinary abilities and/or knowledge from one of their parents or grandparents. In February 1710 the town court of Kovel studied the case of Hryhori Kozlowski, who was accused of magical healing—his former patients and their relatives testified against him. As follows from their testimonies, Kozlowski had been practicing magical healing in Kovel for at least four years. Moreover, some witnesses stated that his attempts to heal were not always useless, because some of his patients did recover. Kozlowski, answering the accusations, confessed that he had learned magical ways of healing insomnia and fever from his father who recommended this method to him in order to help people. Asked if he also learned anything about exorcism or the infliction of demons, his answer was negative.59 Another magic healer Ustymia Dudyczycha from the village of Metelen, accused of witchcraft in 1728, confessed in the town court of Olyka that she had learned the art of healing from her late father.60 From Barbara Kostecka, who was a witness against her mistress, Wiktorya Rabczyńska, in May 1742, we learn about several magic practitioners from different villages around the town of Vinnytsia. According to Barbara, Wiktorya had been attempting to get rid of her husband, Roch Rabczyński, with the help of witchcraft, and she had sent Barbara to find a practitioner who could help her. During this quest, 59 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 13, ff. 234 v–236 v. 60 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 86 v–86 r.

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Barbara had met several magic practitioners, some of whom reacted to Barbara’s proposition in rather curious ways. One woman, for example, refused to bewitch Roch Rabczyński, explaining, “I am not able to poison or bewitch him, because he has a personal devil who is older than mine and that devil brings him soil from the borderline each night.”61 Even more interesting for our purposes is a man from the village of Svyniukhy who was recommended to Barbara Kostecka by a man from the village of Dobryvody. That man told her, “Such a man lives in the village of Svyniukhy, but that man did not heal me, it was his mother who did. However, he knows everything from his mother who has already died. And the name of that man is Liekarczuk.”62 Wiktorya Rabczyńska decided to visit this Liekarczuk personally, and she promised him money, and a couple of oxen and a cow, if he agreed to inflict an evil spirit on her husband. However, as Barbara Kostecka testified, she had managed to reach that man first and persuaded him not to harm the innocent man, and for this reason Liekarczuk refused to help Wiktorya, referring to the unsuccessful experience of his mother in this area of magic, “I do not want to do it, because I remember that my mother once inflicted the evil spirit on a girl, and that evil spirit tortured not only that girl, but my mother as well. So I am afraid to do it, since I have a wife and children.”63 Turning to examples from the Hetmanate, one can find similar tendencies. For instance, one woman, Motrena, from the village of Zhuravky which belonged to the Pereiaslav monastery of St Michael, was surprised to learn one day that she was able to undo zakrutkas, specific knots on spikes found in cornfields that were considered to be made by evil people or witches, without any danger to her life. This had happened when a widow named Levchykha “came to her and announced that she had a knot on the grain in her field, asking Motre­ otrena “had reana to come to her field and unbind it.”64 However, M 61 No. 49 (1742), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 94. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 95. 64 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 990, op. 1, no. 535, f. 8 v (1765).

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soned that such knots were usually made by people who know some kind of witchcraft, so in order to prevent any harm which could have been caused to Levchykha or to herself, Motrena, in case she unbound that knot not knowing what kind of witchcraft was used, refused, saying that she was afraid to unbind such knots and did not want to do it.”65 Nevertheless, Levchykha was able to persuade Motrena, claiming that Motrena’s late mother had had a gift and that it had been passed on to Motrena. Her mother, Levchykha claimed, “knew how to unbind such knots and thus it is not possible that she, Motrena, was not able to unbind it.”66 In another case in June 1773, Prokop Prasolenko, a fortune-teller, was called to the town court of Hadiach where he confessed that he had learned how to find stolen things and thieves by looking at the stars “twenty years ago from his own grandfather, a Cossack of the Niezhyn regiment from the village of Popovka, Pavel Prasol who has already died.”67 On the basis of these examples, we can assume that a person who was a magic practitioner had to prove their credibility to their potential clients, and one way to do that would be to rely on the magical authority of one of their parents. For individuals who openly engaged in quasi-magical enterprises such as fortune-telling or healing, a hereditary claim was a solid support and it also added a hint of legitimacy to the actions of the magic practitioner in the eyes of the community. In some cases, a bad reputation could infect an entire family for generations. It is usually very difficult to trace the history of an entire family from the Ukrainian materials, so the story of the “witch family” from the town of Vyzhva which included Łukianycha Zaderejczuk and her son Olexa Zaderejczuk, her sister Olianuszka Koładyczowa, and the mother of the two women, Łomazianka, should be considered exceptional rather than typical. In this case, three generations of a family struggled against a reputation for witchcraft. In January 1731, Łukian Zaderejczuk came to the town court of Vyzhva with charges 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 127, op. 1076, no. 135, f. 9 r.

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of slander against the wife of Fedor Koładycz, Olianuszka, who was the sister of Zaderejczuk’s wife. He claimed that once during a quarrel Olianuszka had accused her sister, Łukianycha, of bewitching a certain Suproniuk, who had died as a result. Moreover, at another time she had called Łukian’s children narod czarownicki, “witch-people.” A witness to this quarrel, Beiła Beskowa, told the court officers that one time Olianuszka had come to her complaining that her sister was conspiring against her and had even managed to involve a priest in her dark plan, so that during church service the priest had turned the chalice upside down in order to harm Olianuszka. Olianuszka had taken fright and was unsure if she would survive this bewitchment. Beskowa was struck by this story and had even attempted to reason with Łukianycha when she met her in the town, trying to persuade her that it was not good to do harm to her own sister. Łukianycha had answered her, “I have heard from other people what my sister has been saying about me and it is not true.”68 Cases like this, where relatives accused each other of witchcraft, were not rare and will be studied in more detail later in this section. These unofficial accusations of Łukianycha practicing witchcraft continued in May 1732, when a neighbor, Paweł Ohorelczuk, had a quarrel with the family of Łukian Zaderejczuk about the pasturing of cattle. As a result, the relationship between the two families was spoiled and a mutual summons to the court followed. According to a report in one of the court records, Ohorelczuk’s wife had called Łukianycha a witch when she met her in the town.69 In another context, this episode could have easily been taken as mere slander, however from the further development of events it is obvious that Ohorelczuk’s wife had a clear basis for calling Łukianycha a witch. The accusations moved to another level when the son of Łukianycha, Olexa, became involved. One day he came across Ohorelczuk’s wife, who immediately started to insult him, “calling him an evil witch68 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 216b r. 69 Ibid., ff. 263–263 rev.

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person, saying that his grandmother, Łomazianka, ate Tokaryk and Chilczuk, and his mother, also a witch, ate Suproniuk.”70 One can see that the reputation for witchcraft was firmly assigned to Łukianycha after the death of Suproniuk, whose alleged bewitchment had already been mentioned by Olianuszka in 1731. The fact that Ohorelczuk’s wife traced her accusation of witchcraft back three generations, from Olexa to his mother and then all the way back to his grandmother demonstrates that she felt it meaningful to remind the community that witchcraft ran across generations within the family line. In this particular case, we are unusually fortunate to have evidence to support her claim that the family was already associated with witchcraft in the grandmother’s generation. In July 1716, sixteen years before the incident with Olexa, a resident of Vyzhva, Łomazianka, had brought charges against Suproniova and her family, complaining that Suproniova’s children had come to her house several times and insulted her. Once the son of Suproniova said to Łomazianka, “you have already eaten Tokaryk and Chiłczuk and now you are trying to eat our mother. Beware, you witch! You won’t escape; we are harnessing oxen and will send for the hangman. You shouldn’t have sent your hens to our house, making them call up misfortunes.”71 As suggested by the prior accusations, all of the later accusations had a long history. The memory of the magical “eating” of Tokaryk, Chilczuk and Suproniuk proved to have a long life and haunted three generations of the family, solidifying their reputation as “witch people.” The last victim of the bad family reputation ironically enough was Olianuszka Koładyczowa, the woman who had circulated rumors of witchcraft against her own sister and as a result had faced charges of slander in 1731. In August of the following year, she was summoned to the court to face a complaint lodged by a man named Daniel, who accused her of bewitching his child during a quarrel. The cursed infant died soon afterwards and there were certain signs that the child 70 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 266 r. 71 Here by “eaten” they meant that an alleged witch made a person sick, thin, and as a result, he or she faded away and eventually died; No. 21 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 64.

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had been “eaten.”72 It is likely that Olianuszka had been suspected of being a witch for some time (moreover, she belonged to the family of witches), but in this instance it was the concrete evidence of the child’s death that proved her guilt beyond a doubt. Accusations within the Family In her essay “Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany” Roper writes: “As with all witchcraft, it was the powerful ambivalence of feeling which nourished witchery: witchcraft was to be feared not from those indifferent to you, but from those whose relationship was close and whose intimate knowledge of your secrets could be turned to harm.”73 Indeed in popular opinion witchcraft was a secret crime made especially dangerous because in most cases the witch was not an outsider, but the person who lived very close to the victim, the so-called Enemy Within. Anthropologist Philip Mayer has compiled a list of the most common features of witchcraft mythology in the world, one of which is that witches usually attack their neighbors and relatives and do not harm unfamiliar people or people who live far away.74 A similar statement was made by Macfarlane: “There is no doubt that witchcraft prosecutions were made between people who knew each other intimately. Very few accusations were made against people who lived far away.”75 Sometimes, however, the danger was even closer. Occasionally the enemy was not just an acquaintance or neighbor but one’s own family member, since “the closest bonds and the most bitter hostilities are linked, as opposite but inseparable polarities: if the ties of blood bind people together, it is often with a special intensity of mutual hatred.”76 In Europe and New England most accusations were made against neighbors, but accusations against family members were nu72 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 229 v–230 v. 73 Roper, “Witchcraft and Fantasy,” 229. 74 Philip Mayer, “Witches,” in Marwick, Witchcraft and Sorcery, 56. 75 Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 168. 76 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 195.

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merous enough to constitute a separate group.77 Accusations of witchcraft against relatives were classified into a separate group by Aleksandr Lavrov, a scholar of Russian witchcraft of the eighteenth century.78 Cases in which relatives accuse each other of witchcraft were not rare in the Ukrainian materials (cases of accusations against husbands and wives make up a distinct group and they will be studied in the sub-chapter about love magic below). It is not surprising that most accusations of witchcraft were made between in-laws. One can assume that this was due to the intense interaction and communication, more so than with the neighbors; but, on the other hand, inlaws were trusted less than blood relatives. According to the Ukrainian court records, the majority of accusations against relations were made against in-laws. For example, in August 1746 Jan Ziniewicz came to the town court of Kremenets, complaining that his father- and mother-in-law had tried to bewitch him by pouring some magic powder into his boots. However, it turned out that his in-laws had nothing to do with the magic powder, since it was his wife who had poured the powder into her husband’s boots. At this intriguing moment, this record abruptly stops, and we do not know what happened to this married couple.79 The same year, Mateusz Podczaszynski, also a town-dweller of Kremenets, shared his suspicions about his father-in-law, Prokop Fedorovicz, who was a priest. Podczaszynski complained that his fatherin-law was trying to bewitch him and to this end had hired a woman, Romanicha Apkia, whom Podczaszynski had seen preparing some charms that his father-in-law had told her to put into Podczaszynski’s food. However, the suspected party had a different version of events; when summoned to court, Romanicha said that those charms were prepared not for Podczaszynski but for her own husband.80 77 Ibid., 169; Demos, Entertaining Satan, 284. 78 Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii: 1700–1740 gg. [Witchcraft and religion in Russia: 1700– 1740] (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2000), 374. 79 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 20, op. 1, no. 4, f. 9 v. 80 No. 58 (1746), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 114.

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It was not necessary to bring charges against one’s in-laws in order to show a dislike for them. Family tensions and latent antipathy could be revealed in indirect ways, for example by bearing witness in court against one’s in-laws. In 1767 the town court of Dubno heard testimony of the bewitchment of the miller Karp. Hanna Dukhinska was among those who were suspected of causing the bewitchment, and the first witness who testified against her was her daughter-in-law Petrykha. In court Petrykha said that in the house of her mother-in-law she had seen “two kinds of charms, one, red in color, immersed in a flask, and another one, like ginger, in a box.” Later Petrykha changed the tone of her testimony and went on as if unsure, referring to gossip, “I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard from a lot of people that my mother-in-law bewitched Karp.”81 Another case arising from hostility among in-laws took place in 1732, when a resident of Dubno named Tekla spread a rumor that her daughter-in-law Hanna was a witch, eventually leading to an official accusation of Hanna by her neighbors, the Gębarzowskis. In her testimony, the wife of the bewitched man, Hapka, recalled that Tekla had once told her, “Hapka, my daughter-in-law, prepared some charms and she did not put them on the fence on the side of the blacksmith, but on yours.”82 In yet another incident, in 1722 Matvijowa, a widow from Kovel, complained in the town court about her son-in-law Matwij Tkacz. After the death of her daughter they had had many quarrels concerning the property of the deceased, so finally Tkacz stated publicly that Matvijowa was a witch.83 Sometimes when relatives accused of witchcraft needed help their in-laws would spurn them. For example, Hryhori Babizenko, a resident of Kamianets-Podilskyi, rejected his mother-in-law when she was accused of bewitching the house of Jan Stawicki in 1710. Witnesses reported that Babizenko’s mother-in-law “waved some rope, causing bewitchment.”84 Answering these accusations, Babizenko reason81 82 83 84

No. 69 (1767), in Ibid., 132. No. 38 (1732), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 81. TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 17, f. 105 r. No. 11 (1710), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 56.

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ably announced, “concerning my mother-in-law, I have no idea what she does, and I am not interested in it.”85 Accusations against stepmothers constitute a classic manifestation of witchcraft anxieties. Second marriages were a common phenomenon in light of the high death rate, and the coexistence of stepmothers with adopted children (especially when they grew up) under one roof was rarely easy and without problem. As Briggs rightly stated: “The folkloric commonplace of the wicked stepmother was an exaggeration based on a well known phenomenon.”86 In May 1726, Jacko Potapowicz came to the court of the town of Vyzhva with charges against his own daughter Maruszka Stepanowa Herasymowiczowa, who had slandered her stepmother, calling her a witch. Potapowicz asked for justice, stating, “that it is a shame for me to hear such things.”87 Maruszka responded to these accusations by stating that it was her stepmother who had started this conflict by always scolding and abusing her. She admitted that she really had called her stepmother a witch, but she had not made up the charge since she had heard it from other people. Moreover, eight years before these events, her stepmother had already been accused of witchcraft.88 Everyday conflicts could be avoided if they happened between a mother and her children, but conflicts about property left after the death of the head of the family could easily stimulate a deterioration of the relationship, and in certain situations could even lead to accusations of witchcraft. Property left after the death of the head of the family was the reason for the conflict between Ludwika Adamowa Jetkiewiczowa and her stepmother Anastazyia Zaleska. In 1732, Ludwika came to the town court of Kremenets complaining that her stepmother was threatening to bewitch her and her husband if they went to court to claim her late father’s property. Since there are no other re85 Ibid. 86 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 206. 87 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 397 r. 88 Previous accusations against the wife of Jacko Potapowicz can be found in no. 8 (1718), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 69–72.

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cords about this family conflict, it seems that the court wrote down the complaint without initiating any further actions.89 Quarrels about property could also lead to conflicts between closer relatives, most often between siblings, who would sometimes use threats of bewitchment. In June 1755, Hryhori Kabrowski, a resident of Kremenets, brought charges against his brother Ostap. The two brothers could not agree about the division of property left after the death of their mother. Hryhori claimed that one time he had gone to the house of his brother to talk about their mother’s property, when Ostap’s wife, Agaficia, had attacked him, shouting at him and trying to hurt him; she had even thrown a pot at him. Then she had used some charms to try to bewitch him, and had wanted to poison him. Ostap answered these accusations stating that he had nothing to do with his wife’s aggression against his brother. He announced that once he had heard about her bad behavior, he had punished his wife and promised to watch her in the future.90 As one can see, in this case the main aggressor was again the in-law, though the main conflict was between the brothers. However, blood siblings too could accuse each other of witchcraft as a result of banal everyday conflicts caused by close co-existence. The brothers Stefan and Jurko Ochrymczuks, from Kamianets-Podilskyi, brought mutual accusations in 1729. Stefan complained that his brother, along with his family, had attempted to bewitch him and his family with the help of some fumes and rubbish. Jurko, the younger brother, in turn claimed that his brother and his family had tried to bewitch him with spells.91 Accusations of witchcraft against siblings could also be made because of the bad reputation of that person within the family. Olexa Mykytiuk, a resident of Vyzhva, came to the town court in June 1726 complaining that Stefan Herasymowicz had slandered Chrystia, Mykytiuk’s wife and his own sister.92 According 89 90 91 92

No. 37 (1732), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 80–81. TDIA (Kyiv), fond 20, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 84 r, 85 r. No. 32 (1729) in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 76. It is curious that in May of the same year Stefan’s wife, Maruszka, was also summoned to court because of the accusation of slandering her step-mother. This case is discussed above.

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to Mykytiuk, Herasymowicz had come to their house, where he had insulted Chrystia and even spit on her. Another time, Herasymowicz had attacked his sister publicly on the street, calling her a witch and accusing her of bewitching and “eating” their father and her first husband. Herasymowicz, when summoned to the court, refused to discuss his family problems, and blamed his aggressive behavior on drunkenness and agreed to a public apology.93 Family life generated many conflicts that resulted in suspicions or even official accusations of witchcraft. It was most often in-laws and step-parents who became objects of these suspicions and accusations, but in some rare cases people also accused their siblings of using witchcraft against them. Next we turn to the opposite situation, those cases in which people provided support and protection to their family members who either became victims of an alleged witchcraft attack or were accused of witchcraft. Family Support Although there were numerous cases in which family members accused each other of witchcraft, the number of cases in which people expressed concern and love for those who became victims of alleged witchcraft was still greater. The main object of people’s concern, in most of the cases of witchcraft accusations in Western Europe and Ukraine alike, were children. This fact contributes to the destruction of the myth according to which parents of the early modern era attempted not to invest a lot of emotions into the process of raising children, and, because of the high mortality rate, remained relatively indifferent to a child’s death. Sources from early modern England and elsewhere demonstrate that the contrary is true, and that adults readily invested their emotions, time, and money when their children became ill. Conflicts between people who were trying to “teach a lesson” to their neighbor’s children (which usually meant a beating) 93 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 14 v–14 r.

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were not rare. A child’s sickness or death often led to suspicions that this sickness was caused by somebody’s evil will and that witchcraft was involved.94 Examples from Ukrainian witchcraft trials confirm this. In August 1730 a resident of Vyzhva, Ostap Pawlowicz, saw the children of his neighbor, Olexa Mykytiuk, secretly enter his vegetable garden to steal beans. They had already collected many beans, putting them into their shirts, when Ostap caught them. He took the beans along with the shirts and punished the children by beating them. When the mother of the children, Mykytiuk’s wife, met Pawlowicz’s wife, she attacked her, calling her a witch, and claiming that she was guilty of causing her children’s sickness. She also accused Ostap of cruelty. Even though the obvious reason for the sickness of the children was the beating, the parents were still apt to suspect the offenders of having used witchcraft.95 This case can be considered rather exceptional, for usually witchcraft was suspected when no other reason for the child’s sickness could be found. For example, in 1747 in the town of Lisniowcy, two children of the miller Iwan Buteluric saw two women, Maruszka Petrykowa and Iwanycha Melnyczka, lying naked in the cemetery. The children ran to their father and told him what they had seen, but he was busy at that moment and did nothing. Later he heard noises and saw a mob taking the two women to the castle. As follows from the testimonies, even though neither the miller nor his children had had anything to do with the arrest of the two women, whose strange conduct had led some witnesses to identify them as witches, the women had seen the children at the cemetery and suspected that the children had initiated their arrest. When a couple of days after these events one of Buteluric’s sons found he was unable to walk, his father suspected that it was the witches’ revenge and that the child had been bewitched. The family’s consequent behavior was perfectly correct from 94 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 177–178. 95 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 204 v–206 r.

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the point of view of the Church; the parents did not turn to magical healers but went straight to the church where they prayed, and the boy recovered.96 In July 1727 the members of a furriers’ guild in the town of Olyka brought collective complaints concerning the wife of Macej Suchowicz to the town court. When the treasury box of the guild had been taken from the house of Suchowicz, his wife had become upset and aggressive. She had cursed all of the guild members and their families, “she took sand from the ground and threw it into air, saying: ‘like the wind blows this sand away, let you, your wives and children be blown away,’ and added whatever came to her mind, cursing Jews and Christians alike.”97 Some of the guild members were scared of such threats and after some time they raised a second complaint, which stated that some of the children had become ill and for obvious reasons they connected the children’s ailment with the curses of Suchowicz’s wife.98 The death of a child could result in even more vigorous and decisive behavior by the parents. Jakub Wolinski, a clerk from the town of Kovel, lost his child, presumably not later than in early 1717. We do not know the details of the conflict that led him to such a conclusion, but Wolinski was sure that his child’s death was the result of bewitchment caused by the wife of Wasyl Oxętyiowicz. From 1717 to 1719 Wolinski pressured the family of Oxętyiowicz emotionally and psychologically, reminding them of the death of his child and threatening them with the hangman and burning. It is curious that he never filed an official complaint but acted exclusively on the level of psychological pressure. In September 1717, a drunken Wolinski came to the house of Oxętyiowicz with a dog, and accused and threatened him: “my child died and I will call for the hangman, for it was you who ate my child, evil witch!”99 He continued to remind Oxętyiowicz’s fam96 AGAD, Księga czarna Krzemieniecka 1747–1777, microfilm 18958, pp. 53–55. 97 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, f. 20 v. 98 Ibid., 20 r–21 v. 99 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 15, ff. 222 r–223 v.

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ily of his dead child for the next two years each time he passed their house. We learn this from Oxętyiowicz’s complaint, dated July 1719, in which he says, “each time when he passed my house or met my wife on the street, he called her a witch… telling her that she was to be burnt ‘for my daughter passed away because of your witchcraft.’”100 The parents of a child who died of alleged bewitchment could go to court with an official accusation, as Daniel Czyźewski did in August 1732. His child had died after Czyźewski had had a quarrel with Olianuszka Koliadyczewa, who “was uttering curses, and people heard her say that my child will not survive even a couple of days.”101 Soon her curse had come true, “on the fourth day after her curse, the child, who was still healthy the whole day on Monday, without any reason got so ill in the evening that on the third day the child passed away.”102 Many of the people in the town learned about this case and some recommended that Czyźewski go to the town court. The court sent an investigator to find out what had happened. A local Jewish woman, Elowa Sysła, recommended that the investigator and the father of the dead child look at the child’s body, “Misters, there must be a sign on the child’s body in case the death was caused by evil people: you will find blue stains on the child’s back, however, if it was God’s will that the child died, you won’t find anything.”103 In European witchcraft trials, it was a normal procedure to inspect the body of a child who had died of alleged bewitchment. Signs of bewitchment were unusual wounds, bruises, or scratches, or the body could be dried as if all the life juices had been sucked out of it.104 When the body of Czyźewski’s child was inspected, the signs of which the Jewish woman had warned them were indeed found. After the inspection when the dead child was still in the house Czyźewski, the father, left the house crying and saw Koliadyczewa passing by. He attacked her, 100 Ibid., 307. 101 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 229 r. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Roper, “Witchcraft and Fantasy,” 219.

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telling her to leave him and his family in peace. She answered with a new curse, “I wish the same thing had happened to you or to the rest of your children.”105 After this, Czyźewski rushed up to Koliadyczewa, beat her up and then went with his grievances to the court once again, since he was seriously concerned about the health of his other children. Unfortunately, the town court book does not contain any mention of the continuation of this dramatic conflict. Sometimes parents who were upset about the death of a child might suspect even those from the upper social stratum. As a rule, in such cases the parents did not ask for official justice, but preferred to share their suspicions with other community members or even accuse those whom they suspected directly. However, these attempts were not successful. In May 1739, a town-dweller of Olyka, Hanna Skopilycka, was sentenced to flogging for she, according to the court had falsely accused the wife of a member of the town court, Olexandr Rajski, of bewitching her child, resulting in the child’s death.106 In January 1726, Hryhori Borochowski brought charges against his subordinate Chrystia Mikitiuk who had slandered his wife. Several witnesses confirmed that Chrystia had once come to the tavern and accused her mistress of causing the death of Chrystia’s child, adding that she would never forgive her mistress for this.107 When called to court, however, Chrystia denied having ever said such a thing about her mistress. Her version of what happened was this: “when my child died I came to the tavern and met some women who were asking me about my dead child. I said that if it happened because it was God’s will, let it be so, but if it was caused by evil people let God be their judge.”108 Cases of children’s sickness and death are examples of a critical force majeure where parents proved able to show their care and quick reaction. In comparison to such situations, the support of a spouse may seem to be rather usual and does not necessarily attract the research105 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 230 v. 106 No. 44 (1739) in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 88–89. 107 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 392 r. 108 Ibid., 393.

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er’s attention, especially because it was standard judicial procedure that a husband represented in court the interests of his wife who was wrongly accused of witchcraft. On the other hand, it could also be a sign of trust in the partner’s innocence, a demonstration of loyalty, and defense the family’s reputation. Such cases are abundant.109 Some people, however, showed special concern for their spouses. In April 1741, Jan Michajluk turned to the town court of Dubno with accusations against the healer Demko Haliczuk, who had promised to heal Jan’s wife, Oryna, who was infertile. After some time, Oryna had seemed to become pregnant and the healer had begun wandering around boasting that he had been able to heal her, but when Oryna had turned to doctors and female healers it turned out that her pregnancy was not real. Moreover, the woman began feeling worse, so her husband had invited a doctor from another city (which was quite expensive). Despite this Oryna died, and her husband decided to take the unfortunate healer—whom he held responsible for her death—to court.110 Sometimes even in-laws could expect support.111 The best example is a case that happened in 1720 in the town of Krasyliv. During a period of drought and epidemics the residents of Krasyliv lynched an old woman, Kapłunka, whom they suspected of being a witch and causing the disasters. Kapłunka’s son-in-law, Fedir Melnik, risked his life attempting to help his mother-in-law escape; the night before the lynching, he tried to take her away from the town, but unfortunately they were caught. He also tried to persuade the mob to have mercy on Kapłunka, but his attempts did not succeed. However, Melnik did not give up and brought charges against the initiators of the lynching to the town court of Dubno.112 Unfortunately further court records of 109 Here are some of them: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 1, ff. 128 v–129 v (1715); fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 14 v–14 r (1726); fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 115 r–116 v (1728); fond 32, op.1, no. 5, f. 163 r (1729); fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 397 r–398 v (1726); fond 35, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 307 v–307 r (1719); fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 80–90 r (1728); fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 617 r–618 v (1733). 110 No. 46 (1741) in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 90. 111 For instance: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 483 v–483 r (1731); TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 7, ff. 260 v–262 v (1730). 112 No. 30 (1720) in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 73–74.

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this case did not survive and we do not know how successful his second appeal was. As we can observe, in Ukraine as elsewhere in the world, the family was the second largest setting linked to witchcraft accusations, after the neighborhood. Records of witchcraft trials are amazing sources from which we can learn about various aspects of family life in early modern times. Witchcraft accusations laid bare the best as well as the worst sides of relationships within families. Mostly, families were the locus of care and support in cases of danger from bewitchment on the one hand, and under the threat of witchcraft accusation on the other. Among other things, such cases provide us with the most persuasive arguments that early modern parents did in fact worry about their children, whose illnesses and deaths were perceived as tragedy. Yet in some cases families produced a rather toxic environment that generated mutual rivalry, envy, and suspicion, forcing people to accuse members of their own families (usually siblings, step-siblings or step-parents, and in-laws) of witchcraft. Finally, the Ukrainian lands were not an exception and shared the nearly universal belief that witchcraft runs in the blood and can be inherited or transferred to other family members. From a sphere of family relationships which proved to generate a great number of witchcraft accusations, let us move on to a sphere of even greater envy and competition—that of professional rivalry.

Rivalry and Bewitchment The business sphere generated another fertile environment for the generation of witchcraft accusations. People frequently used witchcraft accusations to deal with their business rivals. However, in order to better understand the nature of these accusations, we must turn first to such notions as conflict, competition, and modes of human aggression. Conflict is inevitable when there is a clash of interests between groups or individuals. Such clashes of interests can be the result of competition for acquiring superior status, control over phys133

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ical force, different types of resources, etc.113 The more limited the resources in any given society, the sharper the competition for them is likely to become. Any study of human development must consider the various modes for coping with rivals worked out by people in different societies. These range from the physical elimination of rivals to the peaceful division of spheres of influence. In early modern societies aggression was a common choice when dealing with political, economic, and romantic rivals. Aggression itself can take different forms, which can be roughly arranged into three main groups: physical, moral, and spiritual.114 From Ukrainian legal sources of the eighteenth century it appears that the use of physical aggression against rivals was prevalent among those coming from a higher social stratum—i.e., among the szlachta—and was used against their social equals. In everyday business matters involving common townsfolk, such a direct approach would have been futile, for the punishment inflicted on the aggressor would have ensured that he or she gained nothing from the physical removal of a business rival. Thus they were left with two options, the use of either moral or spiritual aggression, which required them to develop more imaginative approaches. Moral aggression against rivals might include—among other ploys—spoiling their reputation by spreading gossip or bringing charges against these rivals before the courts. Spiritual aggression in its turn could involve threatening or attacking rivals by means of witchcraft. Both options were reflected in eighteenthcentury witchcraft trials. Since the process of witchcraft accusation was relatively uncomplicated, residents would use formal denunciations from time to time to spoil the reputation of their business rivals. On the other hand, those who could not afford to pay the costs of a trial would spread gossip about their rivals among their customers and 113 More on conflict theory see Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York and London: The Free Press, 1964), 132–135; Sanders, A Deed without a Name, 5–6. 114 For the concept of human aggression see Davydd J. Greenwood, “Human Aggression,” in Nature, Culture, and Human History: A Bio-Cultural Introduction to Anthropology (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).

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the wider community, which was not a difficult task in small towns where people knew each other relatively well. Accusations were often the result of tensions between rivals, whether competing individuals, corporate groups, or institutions (taverns, guild workshops, etc.), as well as between members of the same corporate group or institution. Frequently, accusations did not require much inventiveness, but were based on the common assumption that the wealth, luck, and financial success of one’s rival were acquired by means of witchcraft. Such explanations of success are far from unknown in other societies, for example the Navajo Indians believed that using witchcraft was a means to become wealthy.115 Yet it would be wrong to suggest that such accusations could have carried much weight unless they were supported by common sense evidence that real practices of this kind did exist. Although the guild workshops remained the main production unit in eighteenth century Ukraine, certain indications of a crisis in the guilds could already be detected. The prevalent problem of most guilds was a lack of customers. As underemployed guild members took to heavy drinking, the guild masters desperately sought ways out of such a disastrous situation. Recourse to the advice of a well-intentioned local wise woman was one obvious possibility for reversing the unfavorable trends. The trial records indicate that Ukrainian weavers in particular can be said to have had a favorite, maybe even fashionable, practice that originated from the repertoire of the wise women. This practice required them to steal the rope from the bell in the local church-tower, and then carry out a magical ritual with this rope,116 in which the rope was wound around a loom while saying a magic formula. It was also preferable that the ritual be performed by a woman, most often by the master’s wife. Some other practices of a similar kind will be mentioned later. One trial that took place in Kamianets-Podilskyi in the summer of 1704 provides an excellent illustration of how the complicated re115 Sanders, A Deed without a Name, 89–90. 116 Examples of this practice are described in detail in cases no. 5–7 (1704), no. 8 (1707), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 51–54.

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lationships between members of the same weavers’ guild workshop might ultimately generate an accusation of witchcraft. A lower guild member named Wasyl Fiałkowski brought accusations to the town court against another member of the same guild workshop, Jan Zatwardziewicz. Fiałkowski testified that Zatwardziewicz used the services of a wise woman, named Mikitycha, in order to improve the situation of the workshop and attract more customers. It might seem illogical that someone belonging to the same workshop would oppose improvement when the betterment of conditions must surely serve the common interest of all the members. An explanation for this paradox could have lain in Fiałkowski’s personal disgust at the use of witchcraft, no matter how positive the supposed results. This, however, was not the case. As the trial moved on, it became clear that the relationships between the accuser and the accused had a long history. Some time before, when Fiałkowski had just joined the guild, he had also shown an interest in the refinement of workshop practices and had been eager to share his previous experience about how to accomplish this through witchcraft. It was he who had originally advised Zatwardziewicz to try the magical practice with a rope and he was actually the one who stole the rope from the bell of the local church.117 As the witnesses testified, earlier that year certain indications of hostility between the two men had become apparent. Fiałkowski, as a newcomer who possessed a lower status than Zatwardziewicz in the workshop, was prone to see the latter as his rival, and his attempts to be helpful did not result in any kind of promotion. Moreover, the two men had begun to quarrel and had once fought over financial matters. It took Fiałkowski several months to find an appropriate moment to take his revenge, which came when he discovered that Zatwardziewicz had connived to have some magic powder put into his boots. The method apparently proved effective, since Zatwardziewicz even recommended it to the weavers from other workshops who were experiencing a time of crisis as well (this latter point indicates that the spir117 No. 6 (1704), in Ibid., 52–53.

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it of rivalry did not always prevail, but that there was some space left for mutual aid and sympathy). The town court took the accusations with a high degree of seriousness. The judges expressed intense disapproval that guild members should resort to such an “ungodly thing” as witchcraft, and the accused guild members were heavily penalized. Fiałkowski must have been satisfied with the results of the trial—according to a part of the final verdict, Zatwardziewicz was removed from his higher position in the guild.118 The results of the trials were not always so favorable for those who sought the weakening of a rival’s position. In July 1717, the magisterial court of the same city considered the case of two tavern-keepers, in a case that has almost archetypal fairy-tale characters representing the “poor-rich” axis. A poor tavern-keeper, Anna Kołecka, whose business was doing poorly and whose family could hardly make ends meet, came to another, more successful and obviously richer tavernkeeper, the wife of Adam Mankowski, seeking advice. Later Anna confessed that the advice that she received was too shocking and ungodly to follow. “You are silly,” she was told, “I would have also been doing poorly in my tavern, if I hadn’t taken this rope from Michałko, the executioner: this rope was left after a thief was hanged.”119 One might suspect, however, that Anna rejected her mentor’s advice not so much because of pious disapproval, but because she would have been unable to put the suggestion to use. Anna was in fact too poor either to employ such an expensive thing as the executioner’s rope or to start a legal procedure against her successful business rival. For these reasons she probably thought that the best and least costly option was to spread the rumor that witchcraft was the real source of her rival’s wealth and success. Such gossip was indeed a serious threat to a person’s reputation, and in order to restore their good name, the Mankowskis had to strike back by starting a trial for slander. The court did not completely reject the statements of Anna Kołecka. On 118 No. 7 (1704) in Ibid., 53–54. 119 No. 25 (1717) in Ibid., 68.

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the contrary, they gave her a chance to prove her testimony by providing at least one witness to the conversation about the rope. She swore that her story was true, but that the only witness to their conversation refused to come to court since he had been bribed by the Mankowskis. Her attempt to damage her rivals was most unsuccessful. She was found guilty of slander, and since her family lacked the means to pay the high fine at once her husband was imprisoned until the family had paid the entire fine. However, people used more than just accusations of witchcraft to undermine the reputation of their business rivals; sometimes they would resort to spiritual aggression and attempt to use witchcraft to harm their rivals’ health. In 1767 and 1768, many residents of the town of Dubno witnessed a conflict between the two millers, Karp and Jacko. This was not an open conflict, but rather a secret war waged by Jacko against Karp with the help of witchcraft. Some of the details of these hostilities were revealed during the official investigation, which lasted for two years. In 1767, Karp was suddenly struck by some mysterious illness—his legs stopped functioning—so he and his relatives initiated an investigation. The existence of the rivalry between Karp and Jacko was probably well known to the most of their neighbors, which is why Jacko and his wife were the main suspects in this case. Some of the witnesses testified that Jacko used the services of the local magic practitioner Tymko Sereda in order to harm Karp. For example, Gabryel Szybunia, a tailor, testified he had met Sereda in the center of the town and the latter had invited him for a drink. When they had mentioned Karp, who at that moment was recovering, Sereda had told Gabryel that Jacko had asked him to “take away” Karp’s legs. However, he had added with regret that his witchcraft had probably not had enough effect on Karp.120 Jasrzębski, another witness, was interrogated in 1768. According to him, Gabryel Szybunia had stated that Tymko Sereda had told him that he received mon-

120 No. 69 (1767), in Ibid., 133.

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ey because “one was asking to harm the other one of the same kind.”121 This conversation had been overheard by Karp, who had asked if it was not him who was the object of this attack; the next day Karp’s wife had announced that his legs did not function. Some witnesses claimed that they had seen the potion that was used to harm Karp in Sereda’s house.122 One of the witnesses, Petrycha, the daughter-in-law of Jacko, said that she had those potions in the house of her in-laws. She also said that her in-laws had been just about to buy a new mill (which could be the basis of the conflict with Karp).123 It is curious that some witnesses testified that Petrycha herself was afraid of malevolence from her in-laws. For example, in 1768 Chyma Semenicha said that she had once been traveling with Petrycha to some place to buy wheat and had mentioned to Petrycha that since bread was becoming so expensive it would be very profitable to own a mill, because Petrycha had the opportunity to start her own mill business. Petrycha had answered that she would be happy to do so, however she was afraid of her in-laws, who might inflict the same evil on her as they had on Karp.124 While some of the people were persuaded that witchcraft was at work, others, like Semenicha, thought that witchcraft had nothing to do with Karp’s illness. To them it was God’s will to punish him because he was not always good to his relatives. Nonetheless, it is important that for many people the idea that one can use witchcraft against a business rival was credible. When we leave the milieu of the burgers and examine some trial records which involve the szlachta, we find similar, but not quite identical, means of dealing with rivals. Accusations of witchcraft among the szlachta were relatively rare, partly because it was absolutely impossible for those belonging to the lower social stratum to bring witchcraft charges against the szlachta with success. For the representatives of the szlachta it was a sign of finer manners to accuse the 121 No. 70 (1768), in Ibid., 133. 122 For example the soldier Jan Łaszkiewicz, No. 69 (1767), in Ibid., 133. 123 No. 69 (1767), in Ibid., 132. 124 No. 70 (1768), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 133.

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servants of rivals—not those rivals themselves—of using witchcraft. One example of this tendency occurred in the Lutsk castle court. In April 1700, two szlachta families were involved in a long trial against each other. The hostilities between different branches of the families of Sękowskis on the one hand and Fig.17. Szlachta by unknown artist of the seventeenth century (from Natalia Yakovenko, Narys Kościszkiewiczis on the other istoriji serednovichnoji ta ranniomodernoji Ukrajiny (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2005), 250. had been ongoing for at least four years before the trial started. The parties produced long lists of accusations and counter-accusations, in which many means of channeling aggression were mentioned. Over these four years both families had frequently suffered violence at the hands of their rivals. For my purposes, the most interesting point is that the Kościszkiewiczis placed the use of witchcraft against them at the head of their list of charges. They claimed that one of their rivals’ servants, a woman called Chwedonicha, had bewitched them several times in 1696, 1697, and 1698, naturally acting on behalf of her masters. In this example of spiritual aggression employed against rivals, Chwedonicha’s witchcraft was allegedly designed to undermine the economic activities of the Kościszkiewiczis. She was accused of spoiling their crops, making their livestock die, and preventing their bees from producing honey. The Sękowskis, her masters, refused to surrender to demands that they pass Chwedonicha into the hands of the judges. She and her “art” had become a support for her masters’ power, and they could generously afford to use that power in order to protect one of their loyal subordinates.125 The business sphere was one of the environments that produced witchcraft accusations in Ukraine. As one can see from the trial ma125 No. 2 (1700), in Ibid., 44–50.

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terials, business rivalry and witchcraft accusations were intertwined with the topic of reputation, because it was possible for rivals to undermine clients’ faith in a craftsman, tavern-keeper, or miller by producing even fake accusation of witchcraft against him or her. On the other hand, burgers and noblemen sometimes tried use witchcraft to harm their business rivals and thus get rid of them physically. If this happened, the interested party would often ask one of his servants to practice witchcraft on his behalf, and such a situation allows us to move on to the topic of master-servant relationships as they were reflected in witchcraft trials.

Dangerous Proximity: Master-Servant Relationships Witchcraft is in many ways firmly connected to the notion of power. For instance, the assumption that witchcraft could become a weapon used by those who did not have any political, social, or economic power against their superiors was already common in the early modern period. Demonological treatises reflected this view, depicting witches as representatives of the most miserable and impotent stratum. There was a certain logic to this concept, as according to the European demonological tradition it was easier for the Devil to subvert those who were powerless, promising them treasures and the power to take revenge on their abusers. Demonologists also stressed that witchcraft provided power not only for those who were weak due to economic or social reasons, but also because of their gender. However, contemporary historians have revised this view of witchcraft as “the weapon of the weak.” For example, Behringer writes: Remarkably, the threats [of witchcraft cursing] cannot be classified in a particular social context, as some anthropologically oriented historians have appeared to accept. Even if we are unwilling to dismiss as implausible Stone’s suspicion that “witchcraft was the weapon of the weak against the strong,” we must conclude from the sources we have inves141

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tigated, that a difference in social level between the person uttering the threat and its intended victim was by no means a precondition.126

Indeed, most accusations of witchcraft in Europe were made among people of equal or almost equal status, and in most cases people did not need much pressure from above to initiate a witchcraft trial. This is also the case in the Ukrainian lands, and we have already seen many instances of accusations of witchcraft made by people of the same status as the alleged witch. Nevertheless, this does not mean that other social patterns of accusation were absent; indeed, many cases exist with a social difference between accuser and accused. Moreover, to a certain extent they differed from the majority of cases with socially equal participants. In this section I discuss the relationship of masters and servants as they were reflected in the trial records, focusing on how these cases differed. In many cases, masters brought the accusations against their servants, but there were other scenarios of master-subordinate relationships which have been ignored by researchers. For example, masters were not only the persecutors but also the grateful employers of magic services provided by their servants. There were also other possible scenarios, which are discussed in the second part of this section. Bewitching a Master: Trials about the Bewitchment of Social Superiors In the Ukrainian context judges proved to be quite lenient and reasonable when it came to reaching a verdict about witchcraft accusations that were made between neighbors and family members. Punishments for witchcraft practices, as well as for slander, were relatively mild. Most of the cases ended with apologies, payment of a fine, or penitence, while burning at the stake was mentioned only as a threat in case of further violations. Torture was rarely used. However, the at126 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 170.

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titude of the judges to accusations of witchcraft changed as the gap between the accuser and the accused grew. To begin, I argue that those cases in which a person of superior status was accused of witchcraft (usually unofficially) by a subordinate usually either ended in disaster for the subordinate or were ignored by the judges. If such accusations were made indirectly and unofficially the person who was accused of witchcraft would turn to the court with an accusation of slander and would often win the case.127 However, cases where the roles were reversed could develop differently. In September 1634 a woman, Siemionowa, came to the house of the vijt of the town of Oster, Nester Zopol. At that moment, the vijt had summoned a council to discuss the delegation to the king. It is not clear from the text of the trial if the woman already had a reputation of being a witch or if there was some other reason for this, but when Siemionowa entered the vijt’s house the people who gathered there felt threatened and thought it was a bad sign. They told her, “You are a witch and you came to bewitch us. You want to spoil our trip, because we want to go to His Majesty.”128 The enterprise they were planning was probably quite important, and it would be rather undesirable for it to fail. Moreover, the representative of the town authorities—namely the vijt—was among them and that is why they decided to get rid of the alleged witch as soon as possible, without turning to the court of justice. They tied her down and said they would burn her, and to this end some of them even brought straw and wood. Nestor Zopol answered Siemionowa’s pleas for leniency that there was no need to go to court for they could have a trial themselves and burn her. The woman was saved at the last moment, by a Cossack, Żmaiło Dziewicky, who came in and took her under his protection, appealing to the fact that she was the widow of a Cossack. People in the house 127 For example, Chrystia Mikitiuk from the town of Vyzhva had to ask her mistress for forgiveness when she accused her of bewitching her child: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, 392 r–393 r (1726). Anna Szkopilicka, from Olyka, was to be flogged because she unofficially accused the wife of a court member of bewitching her child: no. 44 (1739), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 88–89. 128 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1471, op. 1, no. 1, ff. 76 r.

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of the vijt unwillingly agreed to release her only after she, also unwillingly, took an oath that she was not a witch and had not bewitched anyone. This case is quite unique, because it was not someone’s life or health that was under threat of bewitchment but an enterprise. The situation was rather dangerous for Siemionowa, because when someone of superior status was making the accusation the results could be dire. It was Siemionowa’s misfortune that among those who felt threatened by the potential bewitchment was the representative of the town authorities, who felt that he had right to make verdict without appealing to the court. We do not know the reaction of the judges in the case, since it was written down post factum as a complaint by Siemionowa but no further actions were taken. However, it is quite interesting to look at the reaction of the judges in other cases of the bewitchment of superiors. In November 1747, Francisk Legostewicz brought charges against Hapka Petrykowa, an old woman, to the town court of Lisniowtsy. He accused her of bewitching the governor. One day, he said, he had taken the governor to the brick manufacture, and they had seen Hapka standing on the road. She had taken a handful of soil, he stated, thrown it at them and spit, then repeated this action three times. The same week the governor had fallen ill and had died soon after that. On the basis of this accusation Hapka was arrested and was searched for any suspicious objects. Everything found in her pockets was considered poisonous or interpreted as a tool for witchcraft practices, including a handkerchief, a few white threads, and some roots. In her defense, Hapka said, “I do not know anything because I haven’t bewitched anyone. I have never used witchcraft and have never given poison to anyone. I have not carried charms in my pockets and I haven’t hid anybody’s hair.”129 Since she did not want to confess, the court decided to send her to the executioner for torture. Usually it was enough to take an oath that someone did not practice witchcraft, but this time, probably because the victim of the alleged bewitchment 129 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (microfilm 18958), p. 48.

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was not an ordinary man, it was decided that torture should be inflicted. Hapka was tortured three times and was asked about witchcraft, but during the torture she only confirmed everything that she had said voluntarily, stating that she was accused out of malice. Since no further reports about this case can be found, one can presume that the old woman was probably released.130 However, in certain cases judges were ready to take even more drastic measures. In July 1716, a beggar woman named Marina was caught in Kamianets-Podilskyi in front of the house of the Armenian vijt, pouring some powder on the threshold. Not only was she living on alms, but she was also not local, since she had come to Kamianets from the town of Brody in the Ruthenian palatinate after the death of her husband. Explaining what she had done, Marina said that she had gone to the house of the vijt because she wanted to help a girl who could not get married. So she had collected some powder on the road before being caught with it near the house of the vijt. When that powder was examined, it was found to contain some “bones and a tooth of a dead man.”131 One can presume that if the object of the alleged bewitchment was only a commoner this case might have ended with the payment of a fine or at most with a flogging, as happened many times before and after. However, in this case the target was the household of one of the highest town officials and the person accused of witchcraft was not a respected citizen but a miserable beggar and vagabond. That explains why the court decided that Marina had to be tortured, and after that she was sentenced to be burned at the stake.132 Cases that reflect the relationships between masters and their servants follow a specific pattern. Servants could play various roles in witchcraft trials. They could be a witness on the side of their masters accused of witchcraft or they could be accused themselves. In the latter case there were two possible scenarios for the development of events. If a servant was accused by an outsider the master would usu130 Ibid., 49. 131 No. 22 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 66. 132 Ibid., 65–66.

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ally protect his servant. However, sometimes servants were suspected of bewitching their masters. One cannot judge how frequently such cases happened, especially as far as szlachta families and their serfs are concerned, since punishment of a disloyal serf was a matter for the manorial court which did not keep records, and there was no need to turn to the town or castle court. I can only suggest that if people occupying subordinate positions were suspected of daring to use witchcraft against their masters for their own ends, the power of the latter would be directed with all its weight to punish the offenders. Fortunately for us, a couple of such cases were registered in court books. In the court book of the grodski sud (castle court) of the town of Volodymyr, we find charges brought in March 1588 by Prince Roman Romanowicz Sanguszko against his serf, Arnolz Wyrikowski. According to the court record, Wyrikowski had attempted to poison and bewitch the prince’s servant, Fedor Dorohoteski, and the prince himself. The prince and Fedor Dorohoteski had fallen seriously ill and had not been sure if they would survive. They suspected bewitchment because several signs of witchcraft had been found in the house, such as a strange paper with mysterious inscriptions that was found hidden in a split in the wall. To the prince’s knowledge another serf, Ian Czernski, had hidden it to harm the prince. At first sight it might seem strange that the prince turned to the court with an accusation against his serfs, because he was the judge over his subjects and could punish them himself. However, at the end of the report there is an explanation: the serfs guilty of bewitching their master had run away when they felt they were in danger. This means that the prince was not able to deal with his subjects himself for they were beyond his reach, and his reason for turning to the court was to announce that they had escaped and were to be tracked down.133 Another representative of the szlachta who turned to official justice to deal with his servant was the owner of the village of Werby, Łukasz Maliński. In June 1730 he brought charges of witchcraft 133 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 28, op. 1, no. 21, ff. 112 r–113 r.

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against one of his serfs, Maryna Perysta, before the magisterial court of the city of Kremenets. She was charged with an attempt to bewitch the family of her master. Other peasants testified that in a conversation about competing for the favor of the master she had boasted in front of other peasants that she had some secret means to subdue her master as she had already done with her mistress. Once she managed to achieve this, she had said, she would be able to rule her masters and they would do whatever she wished. Such claims by a subordinate were probably considered a direct attack on the prestige and power of the superior. The need for Łukasz Maliński to reinforce his position by showing how he could exercise his power over his subordinates must account for the severity with which Maryna Perysta was treated, which was otherwise disproportionate to her offense. The master was not satisfied with the local village trial, so he took the case to a nearby town court, where he was present in person at all the hearings. This included his attendance at two sessions of torture used to extract a confession from Maryna. Although Maryna did not confess even under torture, she was still found guilty because five trustworthy witnesses testified against her and the court, alluding to the articles of the Saxon law code, sentenced her to death.134 In July 1748 two servants of Michał Zebroszek from Kremenets, Wincent Rużanski and Wajsek Węgrzynec, who had attempted to bewitch their master, attempted to run away but were caught by other servants. Michał Zebroszek and two other servants, Jedłecki and Gładysz, accused Wincent Rużanski and Wajsek Węgrzynec of attempting to bewitch Zebroszek and his wife with the help of a poisonous potion. Rużanski was the initiator of this enterprise. When questioned in court, he said that he had in fact taken magical steps, but they were to avenge himself on a fellow servant, not on his master. He claimed that he had been angry with another servant, Gładysz, who had attempted to bewitch him several times. They hated each other and Rużanski had decided to take revenge. In the shop kept by 134 No. 34 (1730), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 77–79.

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a Jewish woman he had seen some magic potion in a small box with Jewish inscriptions on it (though it is not clear how he had understood what was in that box). Since he did not have the money to buy it, one day he had stolen it from the shop and put it in the drink of his enemy, but to his surprise nothing bad had happened to him. The testimony of his accomplice, Wajsek Węgrzynec, was different. According to him, Rużanski had acquired three pieces of a magic potion and he had wanted to use one of them to poison the wife of their master. To this end, he had told Węgrzynec to add it to her coffee, but Węgrzynec stated that he had refused to do so. Then he said that Wincent had also stolen money from their master and forged his signature. After this, they had both planned to run away to the town of Mohyliov but had been caught and taken to court. Since Rużanski’s and Węgrzynec’s confessions were so different and the crime of breaking loyalty to the master was so grave, it was decided that Rużanski, whose confession seemed to be less credible and did not fit the officially accepted version, had to be questioned once again under torture. Rużanski did not change his confession even in the torture chamber, but the judges still proclaimed him guilty. It is possible that a decision to punish the servant who had dared to use witchcraft to harm his master had already been determined when the charges were brought to the court, and all further procedures—including questioning and even torture— were just a performance. It was announced that Rużanski deserved to be burned alive for his witchcraft, but the judges were merciful and changed the sentence—he was to be beheaded. It was also said that his accomplice, Węgrzynec also deserved death but since he was too young he was pardoned and was sentenced to flogging. Afterwards, he was to be sent to his master who was allowed to decide whether to keep him under arrest or not. If he repeated his witchcraft practices, he was warned, next time he would be burned alive.135 Several authors have written about what is certainly the most renowned episode in the history of Ukrainian witchcraft trials, the 135 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (microfilm 18958), pp. 63–68.

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“witchcraft panic” initiated by Hetman Ivan Martynovich Briukhovetskyj in 1667.136 In this case, the victim of an alleged witchcraft attack held the highest position in the leftbank side of Ukraine. Unfortunately, very little information about it is available to us, as materials from the trial either did not survive or, more likely, did not exist. We know of what happened from the reports of some witnesses who were present in Fig.18. Ivan Briukhovetskij by unknown artist (seventeenth century). Hadiach (the residence of the Hetman) at that time. It is known that Daria, the Hetman’s wife, became pregnant in 1666, but in 1667 she had a miscarriage and it was suspected that witchcraft was at work. Five women were declared to be the witches who had snatched the baby from Daria’s womb. They were also accused of bewitching Ivan Briukhovetskyj and his wife (both of whom had fallen ill as a result of alleged bewitchment). According to one rumor mentioned in the report, some small animals were observed visiting the women who were under arrest. So, the five women whose names were not mentioned, along with a sixth, the wife of military officer Semen Ostrenko, were burned according to the Hetman’s order. (It is not quite clear if the wife of Semen Ostrenko was executed for witchcraft or for some other crime against the Hetman, but her name was mentioned separately). Zguta, who used this case in his study of witchcraft in Muscovite Russia, was so stunned by some of its details that he finished his analysis of it with the assumption that it bears “strik136 Zguta, “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia,”; Viktor Horobets’, “Khochiu… poniati b za sebia moskovskaga naroda vdovu’ (Zhinky v politychnij biohrafiji Ivana Briukhovets’koho)” [“I would like to marry a widow from the Muskovi” (women in the political biography of Ivan Briukhovets’kyj)], Socium 2 (2003); Novombergskij, Koldovstvo v Moskovskoj, 94; Sergej Yegulov, “Get’manstvo Briukhovetskogo” [Ruling of the Hetman Briukhovetskij], Kievskaia starina 12 (1885), 579.

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ing resemblance to the witchcraft tradition of the West. Satanism, familiars, infant body snatching, multiple burnings—the records of European witch trials are replete with these. They may reflect Western influence seeping into Muscovite Russia from Poland.”137 However, if one looks at this case from a different perspective it becomes clear that it is much closer to the Russian model of witchcraft accusations. In Russia many accusations of witchcraft were taken seriously because the victims of the alleged bewitchment were members of high standing aristocratic families or sometimes even royal family. What is interesting in this story for our purposes is not the details of the accusation (stealing an infant from a mother’s womb and harm to health) or the mention of familiars, but the scale of the event. Hetman Briukhovetskyj was often mentioned as a maniacal, suspicious ruler who saw spies and conspiracies hiding in every corner.138 Thus, it is not surprising that when misfortune struck his house, he suspected that witchcraft was at work; the same thing could happen in any other family, as we have seen in previous sections. However, unlike most people in the same situation the Hetman held real power, which enabled him to execute the alleged witches. Therefore, in cases involving accusations made by people in a superior position against their subordinates, we are not dealing with a different attitude toward witchcraft but rather a different balance of power. The fact that this case resulted in multiple burnings is not evidence of Western influence, but rather the product of a common pattern, found in the Ukrainian lands and more broadly wherever witches are feared and persecuted. Persecution and punishment intensify when the persecutors exercise significant power and the persecuted wield none. In all the cases discussed in this section, especially those that ended in execution, it was not the crime of witchcraft itself that made the judges impose severe sentences—we have already considered cases in which accusa137 Zguta, “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” 1205. 138 Horobets’, “‘Khochiu... poniati…,” 160–161.

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tions of witchcraft made by town-dwellers were no less serious. The accusations brought by masters against their servants could have been based on pure suspicions, when no real harm was done to anyone. What is important is that it was not a witch who was to be punished and executed, but rather a disloyal servant who had undermined his or her master’s trust. For while witchcraft cases involving townspeople accusing other townspeople were treated less severely by courts, those cases in which the social order was undermined were treated more harshly. Demonstration of Loyalty to a Master in Witchcraft Cases The character of relationships between masters and servants depended on many factors. The keeping of a servant was not necessarily a sign of a high social position. Most residents, and even free peasants, could afford to keep a servant or two. Their servants could be adolescents from families of similar status who were earning their dowries and acquiring some experience, or, as in towns and cities, they could be people coming from villages. These servants were usually treated by their masters almost as family members. Well-off noble families had a more differentiated system of subordinates; from peasants and servants doing routine everyday work to servants of a close circle, usually representatives of poor gentry families or even poor relatives kept at the courts of their richer relations. These latter were often treated as companions. Regardless of the master’s social position, servants could count on protection from their masters if they were wellmeaning, loyal servants. We can find several examples of protection in the materials of the Ukrainian witchcraft trials. Protection could be demonstrated in several ways. In case of the bewitchment of a servant, the master could show his care by turning to the court with an accusation against the alleged witch, though this was not common.139 More often a master would protect a servant accused of witchcraft by an outsider by be139 For example, TDIA (Kyiv), fond 28, op. 1, no. 21, ff. 112 r–113 r (1588).

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ing a witness on the servant’s side in the court in cases initiated by the servant-victim or his or her family. Such testimonies were more valued in comparison to the testimonies of people of lower status—other servants, for example. Masters protected their servants who were accused of witchcraft, especially if the alleged witchcraft was aimed against their rivals. For instance, in 1700 a servant of the Sękowski szlachta family was accused by another family, the Kościszkiewiczis, of using witchcraft against them. They claimed that Chwedonicha, the alleged witchcraft practitioner, had consistently caused harm to the accusers’ house and property over several years. She was blamed for spoiling their crops, killing their livestock by means of witchcraft, and bewitching their bees. All of these activities were beneficial for Chwedonicha’s masters, who had a long lasting conflict with the Kościszkiewiczi family. Finally, when the accusers demanded that the Sękowskis give up their peasant, they refused. They did not try to persuade anyone that Chwedonicha was not practicing witchcraft, but simply refused to pass their loyal servant into the hands of their enemies, since her activity served their interests and was probably even carried out at their orders.140 A case that happened in February of 1715 in the town of Pryluky on the left-bank side of Ukraine, also involved servants and their masters. The servant of the wife of Andrej Gorlenkov, Olenka, was accused of attempting to bewitch the butler of the officer Piatov, who, with his servants, was quartered with Andrejeva Gorlenkova. As follows from the testimonies, the mistress of the house, along with her servants, had to live in conditions that were not very comfortable due to the presence of the guests,141 so it is not surprising that a conflict arose between them. Petr Kurpinskij, the officer’s butler, accused Gorlenkova’s maid-servant of bewitching him, saying that one evening she had met him in the kitchen, they had had a quarrel and she had cursed him, saying that the next morning he would run around 140 No. 2 (1700), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 44–50. 141 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op. 3, no. 133, f. 8 v.

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the town barking like a dog, frightening people. The officer Piatov, his master, supported his butler’s complaints. However, when Olenka was asked what happened, she said that one late evening she had come to the kitchen to get some bread and had met Petr there, who was angry and had told her to get out. She was insulted and had asked him, “Why do you send me out as if I were some pig?”142 After this he had become even angrier and beat her severely. During this incident she had also become angry and had told him, “If you are beating me, you better go to the street tomorrow and beat some dogs there instead.”143 She said that other servants of Gorlenkova had witnessed this quarrel and could confirm her words. She was asked if she “knew any sorcery or witchcraft art” and she swore that she had never practiced anything like that and had never even heard of how it was done. However, she was placed under arrest. Gorlenkova’s other four servants were questioned in the court and they all supported Olenka’s version. Later on, the officer Piatov returned with new charges to the court. He said that Olenka had been released from prison after a visit by Gorlenkova’s butler and, probably being angry, she had set fire to the building where all the important documents of Piatov’s regiment were. When Gorlenkova’s butler was asked how he had managed to release Olenka, he answered that his mistress, Andrejeva Gorlenkova, had written a petition in which she stated that she, along with all her household including the servants, were under the protection of the Hetman himself, and demanded that her servant be released from prison. This conflict between the local population and the army quartered among them involved not only servants but their masters as well, which is why Olenka was not left on her own to face the accusations of witchcraft and arson. Andrejeva Gorlenkova took these accusations against her servants quite personally and at a certain moment she entered the stage herself. She testified that since the officer Piatov and his servants were living in her house, her household was exclud142 Ibid., 3. 143 Ibid.

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ed from the kitchen and had to use a small room in the bathhouse for cooking. Since this room was not meant to be used as a kitchen, it was not surprising that one day (which coincided with Olenka’s return) the wall of the bathhouse had caught fire. She ended her testimony saying, “In case you are going to arrest my servant Olenka, then take me under arrest as well.”144 These cases demonstrate that some masters readily protected their servants who were accused of witchcraft by an outsider, and that the master was especially willing to take a protective position if this outsider had a conflict with the master. It could well be that the accusation against the servant was actually aimed at the master and that the master, by defending the servant, was in fact defending themself. Not only were masters able to support their servants; there were also situations in which the latter, in their turn, could prove their loyalty. Sometimes servants could serve as witnesses confirming the good reputation of their masters who were accused of witchcraft. This was the situation for the servant of Małanka Sysłowa from the village of Wieselec in 1730. Her mistress was accused of bewitching the cow of her neighbor, and in the accusation, among other things, it was mentioned that Małanka had sent her servant to the house of her neighbors to ask if the milk of their cow did not stink. After this, the neighbors’ milk had indeed become spoiled. However, according to Małanka she had never sent her servant to their house to spoil their cow. Whether the mistress’s account was true or not, the servant supported her mistress, confirming her version of the event, at the same time trying to clear her own reputation.145 Servants could also demonstrate their loyalty to their masters by playing the role of intermediary between master and witchcraft practitioner. Sometimes the servant was called to the court only as a witness. For example, when the wife of the burmystr (mayor) of the town of Nizhyn was accused of using the services of a witchcraft practitio144 Ibid., 8. 145 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 3, ff. 123 v–126 v.

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ner in July 1719, her servant, Pazia Marchykha Shkolovna, was questioned in court as a witness. However, in this case the servant’s loyalty had an ambiguous character. The burmystr’s wife had sent Pazia to the market to find a woman from the village, a well known witchcraft practitioner. Pazia had obediently done what her mistress wanted of her, and had even agreed to be the intermediary between her mistress and the witchcraft practitioner in the future and help them in their practices. However, in court, Pazia did not try to support her mistress by hiding the details of what happened.146 It was not always safe to play the role of the intermediary. In May 1759, Daria Ieshchenkova from the village of Gutenivka was arrested, even though she was only the intermediary between the wife of the officer Liegostaiev and women who were allegedly involved in witchcraft. Liegostaiev’s wife was not even called to the court, probably because of her superior social position, though she was by all accounts the main customer and the only one who had an interest in using witchcraft.147

Subtle Love Matters Love magic is one of the most universal kinds of magic. Though in early modern Europe this practice was considered primarily the tool of popular magic practitioners, it was a must for specialists in high and low magic alike to know how to handle matters of love. Moreover, recipes of love magic have proven to be long-lived, even until today, and recommendations for them can be found in many popular witchcraft manuals. Sometimes they even constitute the central part of those manuals. The sphere of services provided by practitioners was broad: divinations to assist one in learning about a future spouse or the feelings of a particular person, spells and potions to arouse love, to attract attention, to spoil relationships between lov146 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op. 3, no. 393, ff. 1 v–4 v. 147 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1819, op. 1, no. 132, ff. 1 v–20 v.

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ers, and to make someone fall out of love. The range of people using the benefits of love magic included representatives of all social strata: peasants, townspeople (consumption of love magic services was more of an urban phenomenon and left only scant traces in villages), servants, and high society. In some places in Europe, cases of love magic were the main focus of witchcraft trials. For example, in Venice witchcraft was almost exclusively associated with this practice.148 Cases in which men sought love magic were not unusual, but women were the main consumers of the service. In fact, every woman could become a specialist in love magic if she wished. Briggs rightly argues that “Although no area of magical power was totally or consistently gendered, large parts of folk medicine and (not surprisingly) love magic tended to become feminine specialties.”149 The reason for this is that love matters were a part of the private sphere that was associated with women’s activities. It is also possible that through love magic women were able to access power and control men. In early modern times, the belief that women, by means of magic, could influence men’s emotions, manipulate their feelings, and initiate and take away love when they wished, was perceived as being a compensation for the lack of power in other spheres.150 Love matters form an essential part of the Ukrainian witchcraft trials. Not surprisingly, these cases demonstrate the most powerful passions connected with marital expectations: love, hatred, and even revenge. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the use of divination about future husbands in Ukrainian trial records. One way of controlling matrimonial trouble was recorded in Kamianets-Podilskyi. The reader will recall one of the cases mentioned earlier that describes how on July 1716, a beggar, Maryna, was accused of bewitching the house of the Armenian vijt by pouring some magic powder on the threshold of his house. The powder was examined and was found to contain ingredients such as the “bones and the tooth of a 148 Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). 149 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 278. 150 A similar interpretation of body magic was made in Roper, “Stealing Manhood,” 136.

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dead man.”151 In her defense, Maryna answered that she had meant no harm by using the powder, and explained that once, in the house of some Pawieł Swiatowicz, she had met a girl who had complained that she was afraid she would never get married. Maryna had been sympathetic to her and told her that she knew how to help. That is why she had taken dust from the road and poured it near the house of the v­ ijt.152 However, the people in court were not sympathetic to Maryna’s attempts to help the poor girl, instead interpreting her actions as constituting an immediate danger to the local vijt’s household, and so she was burned at the stake. Food often played an important role in love magic. Since women had access to food they were able to use it for their purposes—for example they could easily add a love potion to it. This method was especially popular among married women who appealed to love magic in order to restore their husbands’ love and attention, which they felt had weakened with time. In 1746, Romanicha Apkia was called to the court of Kremenets by Prokop Fedorowicz, who suspected that she wanted to poison him by means of some charms. To these accusations Romanicha answered that she had not been concocting a poison for him, but for her husband. Perhaps the court members were satisfied with this explanation, for no further actions were taken.153 Sometimes the situation could be complicated by the appearance of another woman in the husband’s life. In such cases, some women used love magic for two purposes: to take revenge either on the unfaithful husband or his lover, or to restore the husband’s feelings and thus restore family life. In 1675, Iatsycha Polivejchykha from the town of Lokhvytsia discovered that her former maid-servant was claiming to be pregnant by her husband, and decided to correct the situation with magic. To this end she asked Iatsykha Tkachykha, who was the godmother of the illegitimate baby, and who had a mother living in a nearby village with a reputation as a wise woman, to help 151 No. 22 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 65 152 Ibid., 65–66. 153 No. 58 (1746), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 114.

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her. According to Polivejchykha, she was sure that her husband was innocent and the maidservant was lying and sought to slander him. Her main aim was “to shut her mouth, so that she would not say those things about my husband.”154 That is why she went to the village and met Tkachykha’s mother. The latter took her to the garden and left her under the apple tree with a knife in her hands. After some time, Tkachykha’s mother went back and gave her a handful of soil, a part of which she said was to be poured into her boots and the boots of her husband. Another ingredient to be added was vodka. Polivejchykha did as she was instructed and sent the vodka to the house of her husband’s alleged lover whose family was about to celebrate the baptism of the baby. In the court she naively added that she was not sure if the vodka was meant “for good or for evil.”155 As a result, most of the people who drank that vodka at the celebration became sick and later accused Polivejchykha and Tkachykha of witchcraft. Subsequently, they were found guilty but the town court members decided to save their lives, so instead of killing them they ordered that “the town’s assistant drive them through town, flog them, and banish them from the town.”156 Men were aware that women could be adept at love magic and eagerly practice it, and, as some cases demonstrate, they were not very enthusiastic about the possibility that love magic could be used on them. One reason for this was a straightforward fear of the danger associated with love potions, which could easily turn out to be poison. As Levack has noticed, “The crimes of witchcraft and poisoning had always been closely linked, even though they were often prosecuted separately. Charges against witches often included the use of poisons, which could be viewed as either natural or magical.”157 Jacko Grekowicz, a town-dweller of Sataniv, complained to the town court 154 No. 192 (1675), in Lokhvyts’ka ratushna knykha druhoij polovyny XVII st. [The town-hall book of Lokhvytsia of the second part of the seventeenth century] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1986), 169. 155 Ibid., 169–170. 156 Ibid., 170. 157 Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Persecutions,” 79.

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in 1717 about his wife, Anna, saying that she was a bad wife, who did not keep up the house, and that she liked to attend dances where she would stay until midnight dancing, joking, and flirting. When he attempted to reason with her about her immoral behavior, she did not change it. Moreover, she had prepared a magic potion and Jacko was afraid that she would use it against him and that it might be poisonous. He brought that potion to the court as evidence. Anna answered to the accusations that it was not a potion or poison but a medicine, which she had prepared for herself. One of their neighbors confirmed her words and stated that Anna had told her about her illness. She had been afraid to prepare the medicine at home since she thought her husband would suspect that it contained some witchcraft charms. This testimony did not persuade the judges, and they demanded an investigatory experiment in the court, and Anna had to drink her medicine in front of the judges. When she did so and nothing bad happened she was set free, but before that she was instructed to live in peace with her husband and if she continued the libertine life style she had led before she would be publicly flogged.158 It was not just the danger of poisoning which made men so hostile when women indulged in love magic; it was also the dread of being manipulated by a woman. A young peasant, Jędrzy, complained in 1749 in the court of Kamianets-Podilskyi about his mistress, Ruszkowska, who had made him become her lover. Jędrzy was a herdsman for Ruszkowska’s husband and she had approached him and they had “committed a sin.” Several times he had attempted to escape, only to return later in spite of his best intentions. He claimed that each time he had been pulled back against his will to Ruszkowska, who had immediately given him a drink with a love potion, after which he had “sinned” with his mistress again. He depicted the entire situation as a conspiracy against him. His father had never approved of his running away from the situation. Even his master did not want him to leave—he was willing to close his eyes to the adulterous behavior of 158 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 3, f. 156 v.

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his wife, but unwilling to lose a good herdsman. He also claimed that each time he had escaped, Ruszkowska, along with her nanny, had used witchcraft to bring him back. Among other things, one of the devices they used was to throw burning coal under his threshold and put hot coal on his shirt, and if there was no hole in the shirt it meant that he would soon return. In order to enchant and make him fall in love with her, his mistress would perform a magic ritual by running around his house naked.159 The unfortunate herdsman depicted himself as utterly stripped of choice and free will through the woman’s magical manipulation. The use of love magic did not know social limits. Even people of the highest social origin would use it. Probably one of the most famous Ukrainian cases is that of Princess Maria, the second wife of Prince Andrej Kurbskij. In 1578, someone attempted to rob the house of the prince, and the servants of the princess were suspected. At that time, the prince and princess were living separately, waiting for permission to get a divorce. One of the princess’s servants, Rajka, mentioned that in 1577 the prince found in his wife’s private chest “a sack with sand, hair, and other witchcraft things: all those objects were given to our princess by an old woman from Pavlovichi… But that is not a poison, only a potion prepared in order to make the prince love the princess.”160 The princess probably believed that those charms had their effect because later on she sought the old woman again “in order to get such charms that she could use not for love but for something different.”161 Several years later, in 1581, the princess was involved in another investigation, registered in a court book. This time it concerned adultery that had allegedly happened when she was still living with the prince. One of the witnesses, Timofej Zyk, stated that he had been present in the house of Prince Kurbski when the adultery had occurred and he 159 No. 66 (1749), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 127–130. 160 Zhizn’ kniazia A. M. Kurbskogo v Litve i na Volyni [The life of the prince A. M. Kurbskij in Lithuania and Volhynia], vol. 1 (Kyiv: V Lito-tipograficheskom zavedenii V. K. Valnera, 1849), 98. 161 Ibid.

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had heard what the servants had said about the situation in the house. The prince was ill at that time and most of the servants felt sorry for him, since they believed that his illness was the result of a bewitchment caused by his wife, the princess, who they believed hated him.162 The attraction of love magic was not only in its power to make someone fall in love, but also in the ability to reverse this process when required. Indeed, the entire palette of amorous feelings, in this regard, seem to have been under its control. The wife of Jan Ziniewicz from Kremenets was forced by her parents to marry her husband against her will, so after a time she attempted to use anti-love magic to make her husband fall out of love with her. In August 1746, Jan Ziniewicz found some powder in his boots and bed and suspected witchcraft, though his suspicions did not fall on his wife. He believed that his in-laws sought to bewitch him and called them to court. There his wife confessed to what she had done. She said, “I wanted my husband to leave me in peace, so that we would start living separately.”163 The court decided that this case was beyond their jurisdiction and advised the couple to appeal to consistory court, probably in order to start the divorce process.164 Sometimes, however, methods of anti-love magic proved ineffective, but the desire to get rid of an unwanted husband was so strong that women turned to more radical remedies, as in the aforementioned case of Princess Kurbskaia. In 1742, another noble woman, Wiktorya Rybczyńska from Vinnytsia, decided to use magic to get rid of her husband, Roch Rybczyński, who was a military officer and was absent from home for long periods of time. In order to realize her plan, Wiktorya needed a partner but her choice was not a good one, since her servant of noble origin, Barbara Kostecka, was sympathetic toward Wiktorya’s husband from the very beginning. Wiktorya took Barbara as her companion to the village that belonged to her mother, since she knew that a woman who was an expert in charms lived there. But before those charms were ready, Barbara, who felt sorry for Wik162 Ibid., 209. 163 No. 56 (1746), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 113. 164 Ibid., 112–113.

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torya’s husband and thought that he did not deserve to be bewitched, went to the village practitioner again and persuaded her not to harm the innocent man and not to prepare the charms. Consequently, Wiktorya had to search for other magic practitioners in the region, and each time her companion went with her, meanwhile hiding her involvement in the circumvention of Wiktorya’s plans. When Wiktorya figured out that she was just wasting her time and could not get rid of her husband by means of magic, she decided that it would be quicker and safer to poison him. Still blind to the role played by Barbara in her failures, she sent her to find some poison. Barbara said that she had found a good one and showed her some breadcrumbs. After that, they had to find Roch Rybczyński, probably not an easy task since he was constantly on the road—hence why it was much more comfortable to influence him from a distance with the help of anti-love magic. When Barbara finally found Roch’s regiment she told him everything about the felonious and maleficent intentions of his wife and a trial was initiated.165 Harmful magic was often used to take revenge on those who proved to be unfaithful in questions of love, such as men who broke a promise to marry, or former lovers. In situations when a man was courting a woman but later chose to marry another, the latter would keep her eye on the former love rival just in case, and if something suspicious happened, she and her relatives knew where to look for the guilty party. In 1733 a resident of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Katarzyna Głombowiczowa, complained about Helena Kozicka to the magisterial court. Katarzyna’s husband was deadly ill and she suspected that his sickness was the result of Helena’s bewitchment. The reason for this suspicion was that Katarzyna’s husband had lived with Helena some time before, and when he had finally married Katarzyna, his former lover had become angry and several people had heard her cursing him, saying that he would not live long after his marriage. So it was natural that Katarzyna put the two events, cursing and illness, 165 No. 49 (1742), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 93–96.

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together and accused Kozicka of bewitching her husband. Helena’s answer to these accusations was that she really had been angry with Katarzyna’s husband since he had lived in her house and eaten her bread but proved so ungrateful in the end. She admitted that she really had been cursing him, but said she had not really meant to bewitch him or cause his death by those curses.166 A different case took place in the same city a couple of decades earlier. In 1702 Biernacki had to choose between two brides: a girl from the Chrzanowski family and another from the Bachczyński family. When he married the latter, the former went insane and her family accused the mother of Biernacki’s wife of bewitching the poor girl. However, in court it turned out that the Bachczyńskis also suspected witchcraft. They said that the Chrzanowskis were angry with Biernacki for his choice and so they had decided to take revenge on him and his wife. To this end they had cursed Biernacki’s wife, saying that she would not live long after marriage. As for Biernacki, the Chrzanowskis had sent him some bewitched dumplings. After three weeks, the relationship between Biernacki and his wife soured and they accused the Chrzanowskis of causing this with their dumplings.167 One can see that in Ukraine, as elsewhere in early modern Europe, for many women witchcraft and love magic in particular became a source of power. In this respect Sharpe has argued: For there evidently was, in everyday life, such a thing as female power. The whole concept of “power” was, as I have argued, central to popular notions of witchcraft, yet how it operated in the context of interpersonal, familial or community relations remains a difficult problem, which has so far been little investigated by historians.168

The trial materials demonstrate that love magic was popular with women and, to a lesser extent, men as a means to win someone’s love, 166 No. 41 (1733), in Ibid., 84–85. 167 No. 4 (1702), in Ibid., 51. 168 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 184.

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reanimate the fading feelings of a marriage partner, keep away love rivals, and get rid of an annoying lover or even spouse. We can also see that in court men would display their fear and disgust at love magic, they were afraid to fall prey to women’s manipulations and thus risk losing control and power over their wives and lovers. Finally, some of the cases show that (anti-)love magic was a useful and simple explanation for the failed relations between spouses—it was easy to look for the cause of the interpersonal problem elsewhere, saying that someone had used love magic to take away the benevolence of one’s spouse and in that way ruined their family.

Witchcraft and Medicine: The Power to Take Away and Restore Health It is difficult to overstate how closely witchcraft is connected to the history of medicine. The Dutch historian Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra has even claimed that in early modern period the realm of bewitchment was sometimes limited to only one domain—human health.169 For early modern people, the learned elites and common folk alike, most events, including illnesses, could have natural as well as supernatural causes—as mentioned before, religious authorities in the Ukrainian lands considered every sickness to have a demonic origin. However, in practice a supernatural explanation for illness had its limitations. The method of dealing with illnesses could also be supernatural, however the natural method was not seen to be much different from the supernatural, and even contemporaries had a problem distinguishing between the two. This section is devoted to two aspects connecting witchcraft with medicine: first, illnesses allegedly caused by witchcraft, and second, magical healing.

169 Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, “Witchcraft after the Witch-trials,” in The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Stuart Clark and Bengt Ankarloo (London: Athlone, 1999), 178.

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In the Ukrainian lands, bewitchment could cause illness and even death. In some cases witches were even accused of causing epidemics.170 However, the concept of witchcraft as an explanation of misfortune had its limits, since not every kind of sickness and not every death was necessarily connected with witchcraft. People were able to read signs that enabled them to judge the likely causes of misfortune, and even in situations when the misfortune seemed quite mysterious witchcraft was not among the frequently used explanations.171 Witchcraft was not suspected in situations where old people died and, as was the case in seventeenth-century Germany, so too in the Ukrainian lands “murder was usually just murder and not witchcraft.”172 The attitude toward the death of young people, and especially children, was different; bewitchment was often pronounced as its cause. Yet again, witchcraft was suspected only in specific cases, in which the involved parties suspected that someone, “an evil person,” or “a witch,” was implicated in causing the particular illness or death. Without such a figure with whom the victim of bewitchment or the victim’s relatives had tensions, the sickness would have been interpreted as having been of natural origin, caused “by God’s will.” Moreover, there is evidence from all over early modern Europe that bewitchment itself was considered a specific type of illness. The existence of this alleged witch disease has even led some researchers, Leland Estes in particular, to the conclusion that “It was this stereotypical witch disease, and not a witch figure, as has often been supposed, that stimulated the hunt for witches. European civilization

170 For example, no. 30 (1720) and no. 55 (1746) in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 73–74, 105–112; an epidemic caused by witches is mentioned under the year of 1624 in “S krojniki bel’s’kogo rechi potrebniji vybrani (Ostroz’kyj litopysets’)” [Some useful things selected from the chronicle of Belzky (The Chronicler of Ostrog)], in O. A. Bevzo, L’vivs’kyj litopys i Ostroz’kyj litopysets’ [The Chronicle of Lviv and The Chronicler of Ostrog] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1971), 136. 171 Thomas Robisheaux, “Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Germany,” in Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, ed. Stuart Clark (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001), 198. 172 Ibid., 206.

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was not really trying to uproot a certain type of human being but was instead looking for the ‘spreaders’ of a certain type of illness.”173 That the disease rather than the witches themselves was the focus of witchhunts remains speculative; however, it is certain that the witch disease constituted one of the main components of witchcraft mythology. Many Ukrainian sources confirm that bewitchment was Fig.19. Women drying herbs. From Hieronim Spiczyński, O Ziołach (1556). considered a specific illness. In the eighteenth century, many handwritten books on medical and household recommendations circulated in the Ukrainian lands. As a rule, they were re-written from other books of a similar type and were kept by the same family for several generations. These books may be quite chaotic in their organization, but they may also be well structured, so that pieces of advice on how to preserve milk are separate from recommendations concerning headaches, hernias, and diarrhea—though in fact the preservation of milk and dealing with illness were equal household problems for the mistress of the house. Medical books usually include some advice concerning diagnosis, recipes for some medicines, useful information about the medical properties of certain substances (for example coffee and vodka),174 recommendations about the treatment of the sick, and different incantations or “prayers” against various ailments. Sometimes these medical books include information about the treatment of bewitchment. Here is a sample:

173 Leland Estes, “The Medical Origins of the European Witch Craze: a Hypothesis,” Journal of Social History 17 (1983): 274. 174 NBLDU VR, no. 396i, A Collection of Medical Recommendations (Eighteenth Century), ff. 2 r, 6 r.

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Common mugwort [Artemisia vulgaris] is a good treatment against bewitchment, and the one who carries it with them is not afraid of witchcraft and is protected from evil women.175 When someone has been bewitched, one has to take wood split from a pear or apple tree and has to cook it for quite a long time. Then the sick person has to be bathed in this concoction and the one who caused the bewitchment will suffer.176 If one wants to feel safe from bewitchment, one should leave a little bit of each dish after the Shrovetide. All these should be put into one pot and hidden under the threshold of the house. On Easter one will find a worm in that pot. Keeping this worm will help to recognize all the witches.177 One who carries the root of sagebrush is protected from bewitchment.178

Though these recommendations are quite simple, they all regard bewitchment as an illness that can be prevented if one follows the given advice. Along with these recommendations some medical books contained incantations that could be spoken to cure bewitchment.179 Trial records also reflect a belief in a witch disease. Reading into the stories that stood behind accusations of witchcraft, one can understand what defined a witch disease. In seventeenth-century Germany, according to Thomas Robisheaux, “What was critical in perceiving witchcraft at work was the conjuncture of several separate 175 “Kniga liechebnaia ot mnogikh liekarstv” [The medical book against many ailments], in Likars’ki ta hospodars’ki poradnyky XVIII st. [Medical and household manuals of the eighteenth century], ed. Viktor Peredrienko (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1984), 100. 176 Ibid., 113. 177 Ibid., 110. 178 Aleksandr Potebnia, “Malorusskie domashnie liechebniki XVIII v.,” [Domestic medical books of Malaia Rus of the eighteenth century] Kievskaia starina 28, no. 1 (1890): 91–94, see also 1–32, 27. 179 For example, “Kniga liechebnaia,” 102.

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cognitive perceptions of the events within their specific contexts.”180 In Ukraine as elsewhere, there were two essential components that made people suspect that illness or death was caused by witchcraft. These two components needed to coincide in time and place, and if one was absent bewitchment was rarely suspected. First, the illness had to be sudden. In most of the cases it struck people who were not old and who were healthy, so that the illness seemed to be “for no reason.” It could also have strange, unusual symptoms, though not every case has detailed descriptions of these symptoms. Second, witchcraft illness had to have been preceded by a quarrel, an open conflict, latent tension or, sometimes, by some mysterious and suspicious event. There are several examples of how this scheme worked in practice. We have already mentioned the case in 1733 of the husband of Katarzyna Głombowiczowa of Kamianets-Podilskyi who suddenly fell deadly ill. It is important to note that a quarrel was the catalyst. The former lover, Helena Kozicka, was angry with the husband because he used to live with her but had chosen to marry Katarzyna. Several people testified that they had heard Helena cursing Katarzyna’s husband, saying that he would regret it and would not live long.181 In another case from 1747, two children of the miller Iwan Buteluric, from the town of Lisniovtsi, saw two women doing some strange things in a cemetery near a dam. The women also saw the children. When after some time these women were arrested on the basis of Buteluric’s accusation, one of his sons suddenly fell very ill. His arms and legs stopped functioning. Because this sickness was so sudden and so strange, the parents of the child suspected witchcraft illness and interpreted it as the revenge of the two arrested witches. As a result of this accusation, the town magistrate carried out the investigation that confirmed the guilt of the accused, and they were sentenced to flogging.182 In another case a resident of Vyzhva, Daniel Czyźewski, had a bitter quarrel with Olianuszka Koladyczewa in 1732. During the quarrel, the latter 180 Robisheaux, “Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine,” 203. 181 No. 41 (1733), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 84–85. 182 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958), pp. 53–55.

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cursed Czyźewski’s children. Shortly afterwards, one of his children “who was absolutely healthy in the evening, fell so ill at night without any obvious reason and in three days the child departed this life.”183 The coincidence of quarrel, cursing, sudden illness, and death became evident signs for the father that his child had been bewitched. Children’s ailments and especially death were among the main reasons for arousing suspicions of bewitchment.184 These suspicions could grow into resentment against an alleged witch, and in case of a mass illness among children it could unite people in punishing the accused witch. In 1628, four men, Iesko Cieciera, Jacko Koszyn, Karp Krublik, and Jasko Rybałka, from the town of Oster, suspected bewitchment when their children suddenly became ill. They accused their neighbor Barbara Cierhowa of causing it and brought collective charges against her in the town court. The woman swore that she was not guilty and “in tears” asked the accusers to stop the trial process against her. She obviously managed to persuade the court members, because they only urged her not to practice witchcraft in the future.185 In 1727 several members of the furrier’s guild of the town of Olyka ascribed the sickness of their children to bewitchment. It followed an event that, in the parents’ eyes, was obviously connected to the problem of their children’s health: some time before the children had fallen ill their parents had had a quarrel with the wife of Maciei Suchowecz in which most of the guild members had been involved. The woman, being upset and angry, had cursed the guild members and their children.186 However, a quarrel preceding an illness was not a necessary condition for suspecting bewitchment. It was enough to see or even hear from other people that someone (usually close to home, most often one of the neighbors) was doing something strange, inexplicable, and 183 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op.1, no. 5, f. 229 r. 184 A child’s death made people especially sensitive and suspicious, for example: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 392 r–393 r (1726); TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 268 r–269 v (1730). 185 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1471, op.1, no. 1, ff. 23 v–24 v. 186 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 19 r–21 v.

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mysterious. In 1730 the children of a resident of Olyka, Ihnatovicz, fell ill and this illness was ascribed to bewitchment since a woman, Mikitycha Bezpuczka, had seen the wife of Stefan Kaminski taking a handful of soil from under the windows of the Ihnatowicz’s house some time before the illness struck. This strange action in the residents’ opinion was the reason for the children’s ailments.187 In 1739 another woman from Olyka, Anna Szkopilicka, suspected that her child had fallen ill and then died because of bewitchment. She came to this conclusion after Gabriel Lemkiewicz and his wife told her that Anna Rajska had been preparing some charms to bewitch her child. However, Anna Rajska’s husband brought charges of slander against Anna Szkopilicka and her husband, and won the trial.188 We can see from the trial records that in popular opinion suspicious and mysterious actions could precede and thus cause the illness or death of adults as well. Ihnat Telepnin, from the village of Bereznicza in the Ruthenian palatinate, was ill for several years and spent a lot of money attempting to find a cure. In 1616 he recalled that before he had fallen ill, Iwan Telepianow had poured some magic powder on him, so he decided to accuse Iwan of bewitching him.189 In 1717 the sickness of the master of Gregori Kruczynski from Kamianets-Podilskyi was connected to the suspicious actions of Marcin Szczurkowski, who had left a horse leg on the furnace of Kruczynski’s master’s house a few days before the illness struck.190 There is also the case of Hapka Petrykowa, who threw some soil and spit after the carriage of the governor in 1747 and was accused of spreading witch disease when, later that week, the governor fell ill and shortly afterwards died.191 Sometimes the actions that preceded the illness were more explicit and saturated with danger and menace. The case of the two millers, Karp and Jacko, from 1767, is a prime example. In order to bewitch Karp, Jacko invited two more 187 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 346 r–347 v. 188 No. 44 (1733), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 88–89. 189 NBLDU VR, no. 518iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1614–1632), f. 91 v (1616). 190 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 39, op.1, no. 53, f. 309 r. 191 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958), pp. 42–49.

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people, his wife Anna and the magic practitioner Tymko Sereda. He asked the latter “to take away” the legs of Karp. Soon after, the victim “lost his legs,” as Jacko intended.192 We also have several similar cases from the Hetmanate. In one of them, one of the provincial chancelleries reported to the center in Kyiv that the mother of the officer Martsev, named Praskevia Ivanova, from the village of Gutenivka, suffered from a strange and horrible illness in 1759. Eventually she died, allegedly of this disease. Her son considered this to be the result of bewitchment since someone had sent her a hare leg some time before she fell ill.193 In the Hetmanate the witchcraft disease was often connected to the zakrutkas, the knots found in fields. Finding such a knot in one’s field was taken as a bad sign. People were afraid to untie these knots since it was believed that only the one who made them or a mighty healer could undo it. According to popular wisdom a zakrutka could effectively blight an entire harvest, and if people dared to use the crops from a bewitched field they were expected to fall ill and die quickly. In 1785, a report conveyed to the board of the Kyiv vice-regent the news that several residents of the village of Gaturovka had fallen ill with a mysterious sickness, their arms and legs had stopped functioning, and eight people had died. It was reported that witchcraft was probably the cause of this illness. Among those who died was the family of Vasilij Chernoded, who was known as a witch. When a knot had been found in his cornfield, he had said that he was not afraid to undo it since he had a special power. After he had harvested the crops and his family had eaten bread made from those crops they had fallen ill and died. The family of another villager, Ivan Budila, also died. A trained physician who inspected the corpses announced that the sickness was indeed mysterious and that he could not discern what had caused it.194 These records all leave a similar impression about the witch disease—it was sudden (although in some rare cases it could be excruci192 No. 69–70 (1767–1768), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 132–134. 193 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1819, op.1, no. 132, ff. 1 f–20 v. 194 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 193, op.1, no. 603, ff. 41 v–42 v.

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ating and long lasting) and it could well be lethal. Not all the trial records contain explicit descriptions, or any descriptions at all, of the symptoms or specific signs of bewitchment, but occasionally we find some mention of the characteristics. For example, Kośt Łobodziński, a resident of Kamianets-Podilskyi who suffered from bewitchment in 1700, stated that he felt a pain that was burning him from inside.195 When the child of Daniel Czyźewski from Vyzhva died in 1732, a blue spot on the child’s back and a white spot somewhere on the abdomen were found.196 The mother of the officer Martsev, mentioned above, became unrecognizable after bewitchment—her body swelled and her skin burst.197 Another symptom often attributed to bewitchment was when the victim’s arms and/or legs stopped functioning.198 Doubts about the link between witchcraft and disease can also provide us with some hints as to what constituted the witch disease. For instance, in 1747, the wife of Omelko Jendzeiowicz from the town of Olyka, who had previously been accused of witchcraft and of spreading illness, was accused for the second time of the same actions—of pouring dirty water on the street in order to bewitch her neighbors. One of the witnesses in this trial, Jan Szawałkiewicz, testified that some time earlier his wife and children had passed the place where that bewitched water had been poured and after that the children had broken out all over with strange spots, though he noted that he was not sure if those spots were the result of bewitchment. In popular opinion spots were probably not exactly an illness associated with bewitchment, and Szawałkiewicz thought of witchcraft only because he knew for sure that something mysterious and witchcraft-like had happened on that place where his children had passed.199

195 No. 1 (1700), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 43. 196 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 229 r–230 v. 197 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1819, op.1, no. 132, f. 2 v. 198 For instance, AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958), pp. 53–55 (1747); No. 69–70 (1767–1768), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 132–134; TDIA (Kyiv), fond 193, op.1, no. 603, ff. 41 v–42 v (1785). 199 No. 62 (1747), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 117.

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Reading the trial materials, we often come across a reference that the witch has “eaten” (ziadła) someone. This phrase was used to describe the witchcraft’s effect on the victim’s health. It was probably used as a synonym for, or variation of, the witch disease. If someone was mentioned as having been “eaten” by a witch, it meant that this person had fallen ill, the illness had been long lasting, this person’s health had gradually decayed, and they had eventually died. In 1732, the wife of Paweł Ohorelczuk from Vyzhva, while quarrelling with Olexa Koladęcz, mentioned that Koladęcz’s grandmother, Lomazianka, had “eaten” several people and that his mother had also “eaten” a man.200 In the materials of the trial concerning Koladęcz’s grandmother Lomazianka we find the same term used by the accusers to describe harm done by Lomazianka, when Lukasz Suproniuk told Lomazianka, “You have already eaten Tokaryk and Chilczuk and now you are going to eat our mother.”201 In 1731 the wife of Daniło Szawatkiewicz, a resident of Olyka, accused the wife of Kaspar Koszczei of using witchcraft in order “to eat” the wife and daughter of Marko Czuchelewicz.202 Demian Semenowicz, also a resident of Olyka, who was accused of “eating” a man in 1730, managed to find the humorous side of such an accusation and answered that the man was too big to be eaten. The court members took the side of the accused and ordered the accuser to apologize for false accusations.203 On the basis of many Ukrainian trial materials, we may conclude that people in the eighteenth century were disposed to associate witchcraft with filthiness, and with willing or unwilling attempts to spread illnesses.204 In 1728 the wife of Meusz Leyzorowicz was beaten by Piotr Pozniewicz, both residents of the town of Olyka. Piotr 200 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 266 v–266 r. 201 No. 21 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 64. 202 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 394 v–394 r. 203 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, f. 310 v. Other examples of accusations of “eating” someone can be found: TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 14 v–14 r (1726); fond 32, op.1, no. 5, ff. 229 v–230 v (1732). 204 This belief was probably also spread in earlier times, but Ukrainian sources do not provide materials to support this claim.

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explained his behavior by saying that his daughter had fallen ill after Leyzorowicz’s wife had poured dirty water from her children’s bath onto his land.205 A similar event happened in Olyka one year later: a child of Sytko Olifierowicz fell ill and the infant’s illness was attributed to the evil will of Olifierowicz’s neighbor’s wife, who had poured used bath water under Olifierowicz’s house. The latter even turned to a soothsayer to confirm his suspicions.206 Some people who were constantly creating unhygienic situations in towns excited displeasure on behalf of their neighbors who might take this as an attempt at bewitchment and sometimes even evoked the displeasure of town authorities. This happened with the wife of Omelian Jędrzeiowicz, a resident of Olyka, who was involved in several suits during the years 1746–1747. To recap the details of this case: at first, she was accused by Dmitr Ostapowicz of attempts to bewitch his family by pouring some dirty liquid on his territory. Jędrzeiowicz’s wife explained that she had just been trying to cure her child of cold sweats, and to this end she had bathed the child and then poured that water on a dog, who happened to be lying on a neighbor’s property.207 The next year the same woman was accused of the same actions—pouring dirty liquid on her other neighbor, Opanas Moysieiowicz’s, land. Though Moysieiowicz was not quite sure if it was done for good or evil, he still suspected witchcraft because some people had already fallen ill, and so he did not let anyone pass that spot where the strange liquid had been poured.208 In 1750 the daughter of Adam Sędkiewicz, a resident of Kremenets, was suspected by Paweł Marczenko and his wife of witchcraft and an attempt to spread contagious disease by pouring dirty water on the street. Adam Sędkiewicz claimed that it was only water used for bathing and that his daughter was ill with rheumatism, which was not dangerous for other people. The authorities felt that both sides were wrong. On the one hand, they claimed 205 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, ff. 80 v–80 r. 206 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, f. 163 r. 207 No. 59–60 (1746), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 114–116. 208 No. 61–62 (1747), in Ibid., 116–118.

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that Sędkiewicz’s daughter was endangering the hygienic situation of the city, since no matter what was in that bath it was not a good idea to pour it on the street where people and animals traversed, and on the other hand, Paweł Marczenko was wrong to state that Sędkiewicz’s daughter was spreading illness if the information was not confirmed.209 An accusation of witchcraft would often include an accusation of poisoning, since poison could function as a magical charm. Poison was already being studied by Italian physicians in the seventeenth century, and this knowledge constituted a subfield of forensic medicine.210 However, the popular mind did not differentiate between chemistry and magic, poison and charms. In some European countries, witches were still tried as poisoners even after they ceased to be persecuted as magic practitioners.211 One can find this close association of poisoning and bewitchment in the Ukrainian trials as well. For example, in 1717 Anna Grekowiczycha from Sataniv was accused by her husband, Jacko, of an attempt to bewitch and poison him with some magic charms.212 And in July 1748 Wincent Rużanski was tried and executed for endeavoring to bewitch his master, Michał Zebroszek, and his wife, with the help of some poison which he had stolen from a shop kept by a Jewish woman.213 After someone’s health had been harmed by natural or supernatural means, there was a need to find a cure. Official medicine was still in a poor condition, best described by Briggs: The learned medicine of humanist physicians was firmly rooted in this seedbed of error. Its practitioners had no real understanding of reproduction, the digestive system, the function of the blood or the lungs, the nervous system or indeed anything much else. Most of their pre209 No. 68 (1750), in Ibid., Koldovstvo, 132. 210 Robisheaux, “Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine,” 207 211 Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions,” 80. 212 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op.1, no. 1, ff. 156 v. 213 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958), pp. 63–68.

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scriptions were useless, disgusting or potentially lethal. To preserve the illusion that they were doing something useful they commonly subjected patients to a regime of emetics, purges and bleeding, the only form of intervention readily available. It would have taken some ingenuity to devise better methods of undermining strong constitutions and finishing off weak ones; slavish obedience to orthodox medical theory was the quick way to the grave.214

In light of Briggs’s assessment, it was perhaps fortunate that not everyone could afford to use a doctor’s service, as consultations were still extremely expensive. Antonij Radyvilovskyj mentions greedy doctors in one of his Sunday sermons: “when doctors work with ill people, they ask a lot of money, and it does not depend on whether they heal them or not: you have to pay them well anyway.”215 It is thus not surprising that most people preferred to go to magic healers. The personalities of healers and their activities constitute a significant field of witchcraft studies and are discussed in the subsection on magic practitioners. For my purposes here I will only make a couple of comments. Most information about magic healers originates from trial materials about healings that proved ineffective. Since very little is known about successful cases, it is impossible to estimate how many healings were effective and how many were not. However, even if there were many unsuccessful attempts, it did not prevent people from turning to magic healers. As follows from trial materials, some healers had their practices for many years and had many clients.216 Moreover, when called to the court, magic healers usually claimed that they were able to heal only certain kinds of illnesses and not others. One can assume that magic healers were prone to take money from their clients, however one learns about this only from those few

214 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 57. 215 Radyvilovskyj, Vieniets Khristov, 340. 216 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 13, ff. 234 v–236 v (1710); fond 1237, op.1, no. 8, f. 86 v–86 r (1728); fond 990, op. 1, no. 535 (1765).

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cases when the healer took money but did not cure the ill person.217 Some healers managed to kill even healthy people with their cures, as did Demko Chaliczow, a healer from the town of Dubno whose story has already been related; he claimed to be able to cure the infertility of Oryna Michajlukowa, but she died not long after.218 Many people preferred to practice healing on their own without turning to a doctor or healer, assuming the role of the doctor at least for their own family. I have already mentioned the medical books used by some families in the Ukrainian lands. Another way of discovering the best method of healing for a sick family member was to consult with other people. Methods used for healing varied. They included methods that would seem rational from the point of view of the modern observer, and in most cases they involved the use of different herbs and ointments. Prayers and incantations were another kind of healing practice. From the point of view of the church prayers, attending church, and visiting shrines were the most effective medicine. At least some of the “prayers” used in popular tradition were in fact specific magic incantations using the names of Christ, the Mother of God, some saints, and angels. Because this was considered magical practice and condemned by the Christian church, priests did not approve of it. Finally, there were magic methods used in popular medicine. The popular mind did not differentiate between all these methods, and people were willing to attempt anything that might be effective. John Henry wrote in this respect, “Curing disease by magical means was always popularly regarded as being at least as effective as any other kind of treatment.”219 Even those methods that might seem strange to 217 For example, TDIA (Kyiv), fond 39, op. 1, no. 53, f. 728 r (1721) and fond 35, op. 1, no. 13, ff. 234 v–236 v (1710). 218 No. 46 (1741), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 90. 219 John Henry, “Doctors and Healers: Popular Culture and the Medical Profession,” in Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe, ed. Stephen Pumfrey, Paolo Rossi, and Maurice Slawinski (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 215. It can be compared to assumptions made by Roper: “Exorcism and the Theology of the Body,” in Oedipus and the Devil, ed. Lyndal Roper, 184.

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modern people were taken quite seriously by contemporaries. Here are several medical recommendations mentioned in medical books: If someone has a wound on the lips, collect several green toads, common ones, those which live in water, put some butter into the mouth of every toad then put those toads into a new pot in which you have already made several holes, cover this pot and bury it into the soil but leave the top above the ground so that it would be possible to pour some oil into it. This is the way to use the oil: collect more of those toads, dry them in a furnace and make a powder, mix it with that oil when it is ready. It can be applied to the sick person. Though, before that it is worth using purging charms.220 If someone has headaches, take the milk of a woman and mix it with oil and with good vinegar, apply it to head.221

I would suggest that some of these methods were considered suspicious even by contemporaries, while others looked plainly superstitious. In 1734, three villagers from Chukva in the Ruthenian palatinate were summoned to explain their strange behavior. During a Christian holiday they had climbed the bell tower and rang the bell. One of them, Anna, said that they had not meant to do any harm but had done it only in the hope that by this she would be cured of infertility.222 Many cases demonstrate that quite often the actions of people practicing healing were taken by observers as attempts to bewitch someone. This indicates that the methods used for healing and bewitchment were similar and perhaps merged together in popular perception. For example, Anna Stanisławowa was accused of witch220 “Liekarstva opisanniie, kotorymi biez miedika v domu vsiak poratovatsia mozhet” [The description of medicines which everyone can use at home without the doctor], in Likars’ki ta hospodars’ki poradnyky XVIII st. [Medical and household manuals of the eighteenth century] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1984), 31. 221 Potebnia, “Malorusskie domashnie liechebniki XVIII v.,” 4. 222 TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 7, pp. 384–386.

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craft by the criminal court of Lviv in 1673. She had been caught at the time of the Corpus Christi procession collecting soil that had been walked on by the procession. It was suspected that she was going to use that soil for witchcraft purposes, but she explained before the court that she had collected that soil “not to harm people but for a cure of “falling sickness” (epilepsy) from which she suffered each day. She took that soil following the advice of an old woman.”223 In 1700 two Jews, Abraham Irszeiwicz and Pesia, were accused of witchcraft by a resident of Kovel, Chwedor Andrzeiowicz. He had seen Pesia taking a cat to Abraham’s house where he claimed the cat had been circumcised, so he assumed, for some witchcraft purpose. In court, the accused denied that they were using the cat for witchcraft; quite the contrary, they claimed they were attempting to use it for healing.224 In 1710 Hryhory Babiczenko from Kamianets-Podilskyi was suspected of practicing witchcraft by Fedor Jacew, because he was seen secretly cooking some suspicious concoction in his house. Hryhory later explained that he had been cooking a medicine for his sick child and that no witchcraft was involved.225 In 1718 a poor Jewish woman named Chajka Szmujlicha from the town of Dubno was suspected of witchcraft when somebody saw her on the road burying a pot in the dirt. When asked in the court about that pot, Chajka said that another Jewish woman, Josiowa, had given her money to bury that pot. After this, Josiowa was summoned to the court, who explained that she had done it not for witchcraft but for healing, as her daughter had been sick for several days, was getting paler and refused to eat. So she had consulted with other women about ways of healing her child, and one woman had recommended that she mix together eggs, wax, farina, and poppy seeds, cook it all together, and then put it into a pot and bury it in the ground where no people would walk.226 In another case, in 1729 Łukasz 223 TDIA (Lviv), fond 52, op. 2, no. 311, p. 496. 224 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 12, ff. 18 r–19 v. 225 No. 13 (1710), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 57. 226 No. 27 (1718), in Ibid., 69. Antonovich by mistake wrote that this case happened in Kamian-

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Łasiński, a cooper from Kamianets-Podilskyi, accused Feśka Andrzeiowa Czumakowa of attempting to bewitch him. He said that she had taken a knife and a cup of beer from him, after which he had seen her doing something mysterious—dropping the beer from the edge of the knife on the staircase. Feśka confessed that she had done all those strange things in order to heal her husband.227 One can see that the border between natural and supernatural was very thin, and that the methods for harming people’s health and recovery were so similar that even contemporaries were often not able to distinguish one from the other. It is also clear that people in court strove to present their seemingly dangerous and mysterious actions in the best light, calling them healing rather than cursing. In the next section, I focus on the attitude of early modern Ukrainian people toward the bewitchment of their helpers—domestic animals.

Bewitching Animals, Spoiling Harvests Domestic animals were among the most common targets of witchcraft, for in the list of early modern people’s concerns, their animals’ health occupied a second position after concerns about family health, a scale of values that survived in the countryside long after it ceased to be relevant in towns and cities.228 In the countryside and small towns of the Ukrainian lands, this attitude survived long into the nineteenth century and could be found even at the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when ethnographers were actively collecting materials about Ukrainian witchcraft. In the stories about witches told by peasants and town-dwellers one of the most popular motives was that of witches spoiling domestic animals, especially by stealing milk from cows, but also other animals, for example hens. Many stories featured a witch who visited the cowsheds of other people at night. ets’-Podil’ski. 227 No. 33 (1729), in Ibid., 76–77. 228 Compare to Gijswijt-Hofstra, “Witchcraft after the Witch-trials,” 177.

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Fig.20. A woman stealing milk from a cow. From Hans Vinler, Tugendspiegel (1486).

She could shape-shift for this visit or could come in her normal appearance but with loose hair.229 In one story, the quite rational recommendation is given to wait for a witch at night in the cowshed to catch her and take to court. When this witch is taken under arrest, she will be made to pay a fine for all the harm that she has caused to the cows.230 In some stories, witches are described as being able to steal milk from a distance without actually approaching cows, and sometimes they are mentioned doing harm to cows even after their death.231 Many recommendations about combating witches were connected with the protection of cows, for instance it was recommended to boil milk from a “spoilt” cow to make the witch feel pain or feel the urge to come to the house of cow’s owners. A cross drawn on the doors of a cowshed with tar was believed to protect from witches.232 Some ethnographers even argued that the belief in witchcraft was partly root229 Ivanov, “Narodnyye rasskazy o ved’mach i upyryach,” 448–450, 453, 457. 230 Hnatiuk, “Znadoby do ukrajins’koji demonolohiji,” 103. 231 Ibid., 104, 110, 115–123. 232 Ibid., 98, 101, 102, 111; Ivanov, “Narodnyye rasskazy o ved’mach i upyryach,” 439, 450.

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ed in the reality of the crime of stealing milk, and they explained the belief in witches by the actual existence of women who were stealing milk in every village.233 Returning to earlier times, animals, especially cows that provided their owners with milk and meat, were often the main support and at the same time the main property of many families. If human illnesses frequently seemed strange and unexplainable, ailments of domestic animals must have been even more mysterious, and difficult to anticipate, diagnose, and cure. Even though the illness and death of animals was quite common, witchcraft was often used to explain problems with domestic animals. Just like in cases of human ailments, witchcraft was considered the cause of an animal’s disease if symptoms were strange and if the owner had reasons to suspect somebody of evil feelings and intents. On the basis of the cases under analysis it appears that the bewitchment of animals in Ukrainian towns had already ceased to be an issue worthy of attention by the eighteenth century, even though most of the towns still depended on agriculture. This is why the majority of cases of the bewitchment of animals are connected with the life of the Ukrainian villages. A cow that stopped giving milk was one of the main problems connected to the bewitchment of animals. When the cows of Mikołai Ozdzak, a peasant from the village of Chukva in the Ruthenian palatinate, stopped giving milk, he suspected that the wife of one of his neighbors, Woyciech Papayły, was stealing milk from them. Mikołai and his wife came to such a conclusion since they learned that Woyciech’s wife had been doing something strange in their field and that some suspicious women, reputed to be witches, were regularly visiting her house, leading Mikołai believe that Woyciech’s wife was one of them.234 In 1696 Roman Kwic, a peasant from the same village, brought charges of witchcraft against his neighbor Anna Zubyika, whom he believed to be the reason that his cows had stopped giving 233 Ivanov, “Narodnyye rasskazy o ved’mach i upyryach,” 437. 234 TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, pp. 60–61 (1693).

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milk. Their cows pastured together and for some time Kwic’s cows had not wanted to go straight home but would first visit Anna’s yard. Since then, “something happened to the cows and they did not have milk anymore.”235 Anna said in her defense that she had never seen Kwic’s cows in her yard and had never done any harm to them, but that one day Kwic’s wife had come up to her and shouted at her, throwing accusations and insults. Anna had attempted to persuade Kwic’s wife that she was innocent, proposing to milk Kwic’s cows in her presence, but her neighbors had not been convinced and had turned to the court (unfortunately, there is no further mentioning of this case in the records). As one can see from this case, the alleged witch did not necessarily have to approach the cows at night to steal milk from them; it was enough if the cows passed through the yard near her house. One can find a similar belief in the materials of the town court of Sataniv. In 1715, Theodosya Pirogowa accused two old women of bewitching her cows. These cows had stopped giving milk when one day they had passed the yard belonging to these women.236 According to some accusations, the alleged witches were indeed visiting other peoples’ animals to steal milk from them. Liesiowa, a peasant woman from the village of Lipic in the Ruthenian palatinate, was accused of such actions in 1660.237 In another case, Martynicha Winniczka, a resident of Vyzhva, was convinced that her cow did not give milk because of her neighbor, the wife of Daniel Sawicki. Martynicha was upset over the absence of milk since the cow was the main support of the family, and for some unmentioned reason she suspected Sawicki’s wife of bewitching her cow. Among other things—for instance, she said that Sawicki’s wife drank vodka twice a day—she mentioned that Sawicki’s wife was stealing milk from her cow using a cord stretched between their houses.238 Similar motifs still circulated in nineteenth-century popular tales. 235 Ibid., p. 173. 236 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 1, ff. 128 v–129 v. 237 NBLDU VR, no. 514iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1659–1665), f. 65 r (1660). 238 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 115 r–116 v (1728).

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Since veterinarians were non-existent in early modern times, in the case of animal sickness people turned to those who had dealt with animals almost every day on a more or less professional level—to herdsmen and blacksmiths. If there was a local healer in the village, people would also go to the healer. However, the methods used to cure animals often seemed magical, no matter who was curing them. In 1672 two residents of the village Ivanitsa near Lokhvytsia, Paviel and Ostapikha, bought a cow. After some time, the cow stopped giving milk. One of the owners, Ostapikha, went to Nastia, the wife of the other owner, and called on her to go to dig up a certain root that would return milk to the cow. Nastia agreed and they found that root. Ostapikha also told her to take a goose and cut it in four parts, which had to be left in four corners, after which Nastia had to say, “My dear parts, take four horses and let them run in four direction to get us four favors.”239 When Nastia fed the cow with that root, it went to the pasture and swelled up. Nastia went to Ostapikha asking for help, since her magic cure turned out to be poison, but Ostapikha answered her, “I cannot help you with this, quickly run to Kuzma. He will help you.”240 The record does not say if Nastia went to Kuzma (who was probably a blacksmith), but we know that she complained to the village community and they turned to the town court of Lokhvytsia to accuse Ostaphikha. As in many other cases, we do not know if this one was investigated because the town records contain only this complaint. In popular opinion healing animals, even by magic means, was often differentiated from witchcraft, except in cases in which the cure turned out to be harmful, such as what happened to Ostapikha. People accused of witchcraft could claim in their defense that they were only taking away harm from the animals. When Ustymia Dudczycha from the village Metelen was accused in 1728, she stated that she was 239 No. 180 (1672), in Lokhvyts’ka ratushna knykha druhoij polovyny XVII st. [The town-hall book of Lokhvytsia of the second part of the seventeenth century] (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1986), 159. 240 Ibid.

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not practicing witchcraft; she only knew how to take away harm from children and how to heal livestock. Her words were confirmed by her fellow villagers and the judges were convinced and set her free.241 There is no doubt that in the early modern Ukrainian lands the cow was the most important domestic animal and the basis of most households, but other animals could also become victims of alleged witchcraft. In the Ukrainian trial records, we find mention of at least two other domestic animals in connection with bewitchment. In the mountain areas of the Ukrainian lands sheep played a role comparable to that of cows in the lowlands, so one might expect that in those areas conflicts over the bewitchment of animals would concern sheep rather than cows. However, the archives contain only one case about the bewitchment of sheep, when in 1664 Wasil Toruwnicz, a resident of the village of Ilnik in the Ruthenian palatinate accused Wołoszynka of causing the death of his sheep by bewitchment.242 Hens were not as common as they are nowadays. Their meat was more precious than veal and they were kept mostly for their eggs. This is why the loss of hens was often taken quite seriously. For this reason, it is not surprising that the wife of a peasant from Chukva, Stephan Krawiec, cried over her three dead hens in the 1690s. The hens died at night. The previous day they had gone into the yard of Stephan’s neighbor Iwan Kunaszow, who was not very happy about other people’s animals trespassing on his land. Stephan and his wife connected the two events and decided that the hens must have died as a result of Kunaszow’s bewitchment.243 In popular opinion witches were not only able to harm animals, but they could also spoil harvests, thus making people suffer from shortages. Witches could do so either by means of magic rituals or just by looking at a neighbors’ harvest with an evil eye. In May 1710 the wife of Mikita Weremejczyk, a town-dweller of Vyzhva, was accused by her neighbor, Daniło Olifirowicz, of spoiling his harvest of cabbag241 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 86 v–86 r. 242 NBLDU VR, no. 514iii Akta ekonomji Samborowskiej (1659–1665), f. 235 r (1664). 243 TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, p. 208 (1699).

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es by means of witchcraft. Olifirowicz and his wife had thought Weremejczyk’s wife must have an evil eye since they noticed that each time she passed the border of their vegetable garden and looked at it, the harvest of cabbages (which probably grew along the borderline with the neighbors) became extremely poor.244 Similarly, Jacenty Zdaniewicz from Olyka had a quarrel with the mother-in-law of his neighbor, Nyczypor Romańczuk, in 1731. He was persuaded that this old woman was doing harm to his vegetable garden because once he had seen her wandering naked at night and thought that by this she was bewitching his household.245 On the left-bank side of Ukraine, witches mainly caused harm to harvests by means of making knots in fields. As mentioned previously, if a witch had made a knot of spikes, people were afraid to harvest the entire field since they believed that all the crops would be spoiled and bewitched. In 1627 Jacko Koszin made a complaint to the town court of Oster that Iewchim Lubieczanin was bewitching him in many ways, among them by making knots of rye-spikes in his field.246 Alexej Litvin from the village Godunovka experienced a lot of problems because of knots on his rye field in 1765. When he discovered these knots he became scared, for he was sure that they were meant to bewitch the harvest. He was afraid to harvest the rye, but he was also concerned about the wellbeing of his family, so he found a woman from a neighboring village, named Matrona, who was famous as an expert in untying such knots. After Matrona had removed the knots from the field Litvin harvested the rye and later baked bread. However, when they ate the bread most of his family members became ill, his children died, and he barely escaped death himself.247 From the same record we learn about a woman, Lievchykha, who also found knots in her wheat field and came to ask Matrona for assistance, saying in tears that “all her wheat will be lost for she does not want to harvest it be244 No. 10 (1710), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 55. 245 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 483 v–483 r. 246 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1471, op. 1, no. 1, f. 12 v. 247 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 990, op. 1, no. 535, f. 5 v.

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cause of fear of bewitchment.”248 Several peasants from the village of Gaturovka were afraid to harvest their crops in 1785 when knots were found in their fields. However, two of them, one of whom was famous as a witch, dared to remove those knots. After their families used the harvested crops to make bread they all fell ill and soon died.249 A person who has read at least some nineteenth- or early twentieth-century Ukrainian ethnographers’ works would expect that Ukrainian witchcraft accusations should be filled with cases about stealing milk from the cows and spoiling harvests, for such cases are abundant among the popular stories of Ukrainian witches. Against all expectations, however, only a minor fraction of the Ukrainian witchcraft cases mentioned harm to harvest or cattle. We can assume that at least some of such problems were solved in extrajudicial settings, and that in such situations—unlike those involving threats to people’s lives or health—people were able to find help or resolve a conflict without turning to the court. Some of the situations when people sought help in their everyday life problems from magic practitioners will be addressed in the next section.

Magic Practitioners and Actual Magic Practices Many societies shared the belief that witches were not the only magic practitioners, but merely represented the extreme of the dark, evil side of magic practices. People believed that there were also magic practitioners who were able to protect the community against witchcraft, who were able to recognize, resist, and fight witches, or at least diagnose bewitchment and undo its disastrous results. In some places these practitioners were called white witches. However, anthropologists prefer to call them anti-witches, for as a rule they were ascribed the same powers as witches but in most cases they chose to use them 248 Ibid., f. 8rev. 249 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 193, op. 1, no. 603, ff. 41 v–42 v.

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for good.250 Certainly, the real situation with magic practitioners was more complicated. First, the palette of specializations in magic practices was quite rich. Second, not only “professionals” were engaged in these practices; at certain moments common people also felt an urge to use a particular kind of magic for their own ends. And finally, the borderline between witchcraft and other magic practices was frequently so thin that people considered to be witches in their local communities could well be consulted as anti-witches by representatives of other communities, and vice versa. In the first part of this section, I discuss different magic practitioners apart from witches who are mentioned in the Ukrainian trial materials. I examine the specificity of their activities, and explore what kinds of relationship they had with their clients. Then I discuss the most popular magic practices used by amateurs. Local Magic Practitioners I have already suggested that witchcraft was often associated with certain personal characteristics rather than with its actual practice; however, in many cases witches were credited with magic activities as well. In the early modern Ukrainian trial records, we find mention of many magic practitioners who were not considered witches. It seems that in popular opinion, the main difference between witches and other magic practitioners was that the former usually did not advertise their supernatural abilities to other people and used them secretly for evil personal ends out of envy, anger, or revenge, while the latter kept their practices only half-underground and were ready to offer their services to others. However, the magic services that they provided were often ambivalent and could be used to harm someone equally as much as witchcraft. I have already discussed some magic practitioners in connection with a succession of magic abilities, love magic, and magical healing, but a closer study of these people and their activities is necessary. 250 Sanders, A Deed without a Name, 20.

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Before turning to Ukrainian magic practitioners, a few examples from the broader European context are enlightening. People who had supernatural abilities were well known in most European countries, though it is known that they did not actively advertise their abilities and attempted to stay in the shadows, for there was always a danger of being accused of witchcraft. Briggs writes that “The majority of operators claimed limited or specialized powers, functioned intermittently as demand allowed and made their main living by more ordinary means. They were thus largely invisible to outside authority unless specific complaints were made against them.”251 Sharpe has distinguished four main areas of magic practices in which English cunning folk were involved: The first was help in finding lost or stolen goods, and in the latter case of helping identify those who had taken them. The second was offering remedies for a wide range of illnesses, among both humans and farm animals. The third was the general area of fortune-telling, taking in such matters as predicting the sex of unborn babies or (a major concern among serving maids) providing the identity of future husbands. The fourth…was help in identifying witches and then in dealing with witchcraft.252

These activities, with slight variations, were connected to magic practitioners all over Europe, and the Ukrainian lands were no exception. Ukrainian magic practitioners could specialize in all of these areas, but our knowledge of these activities is limited to incidents that were for some reason considered by the town courts. In some of these cases magic practitioners played the role of those accused of witchcraft, as frequently happened with other European magic practitioners, but in many cases such practitioners were mentioned as secondary participants in the events. 251 Briggs, Witches and Neighbours, 148. 252 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 67.

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Despite their specialization as magic operators, their supernatural abilities had to have a shade of legitimacy in the eyes of their potential clients. This legitimacy could be based on genealogy, connected to the belief in the inheritance of magic aptitude, where the practitioner’s activities were supported by his or her parents’ authority. Otherwise, when they did not have ancestors with magic abilities, they probably began their practices in a way described in many popular stories about witches: they learned about their supernatural powers by chance, and there were witnesses to support this. Of all the magic specializations, magic healing was probably the most popular, most universal, and best paid. In the Ukrainian trial records, we find several cases where magic healers were mentioned. As a rule, these were cases where their healing went wrong and they had already been paid for it, or where their practices became too active and caused discontent. From the magistrate book of Kamianets-Podilskyi we learn about a healer, Jozef Szydlanski, who was originally a tailor by occupation. In 1721 he failed to heal the wife of Jan Krasnopolski, but nevertheless took money for his services.253 Demko Chaliczuk, a healer from the town of Dubno, agreed to cure the wife of Jan Michajluk, but his healing was very unsuccessful. In 1741, his patient died as a result of his practice and Chaliczuk had to flee in order not to face court charges.254 These examples turn into a list of the failures and inconsistencies of magic healers, and that is why we have to admit that trial records reflect mostly those cases in which healers proved to be unable to heal their patients. Some magic healers were called to the court because they were suspected of witchcraft due to their magic activities. This happened to Ustymia Dudczycha from the village of Metelen. In 1728, she was accused of witchcraft by one of her fellow villagers, who was for some (unreported) reason unhappy with her magic practice, and summoned to the town court of Olyka. There she tried to prove her inno253 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 39, op. 1, no. 53, f. 729 r. 254 No. 46 (1741), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 90.

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cence, confessing that she was only a healer, curing children, adults, and sometimes livestock. Her authority was so reliable and respected that when the wife of one villager, Zeskiel, had fallen ill, Ustymia had been invited to heal her because the villagers believed that even her visit would help the sick woman. Other villagers confirmed her good reputation as a benevolent healer, and the judges were persuaded by this collective support.255 Another healer, Anastazya Iwanowa from the village of Gurnik near Dubno, was accused of witchcraft in 1747. She said in her defense that she was only a healer and admitted that she knew about different charms and herbs. When she was young, her mother-in-law had taken her to dig different herbs that she used to cure people, and since that time she had also become a specialist in healing people. She knew how to heal such ailments as headache, rheumatism, hernia, and stomach ache, and she also knew some magic tricks, for example how to make people amiable. However, she said that she did not know how to do harm, how to bewitch, how to injure people, or how to curse them with evil words.256 One trial record contains a detailed description of the methods used by a magic healer from Kovel, Hrehory Kozłowski, who was summoned to the town court in 1710. Some of his former patients were interrogated concerning his practices, from which we learn that three out of six healings were successful. The witnesses said that Kozłowski would usually come to the house of the ill person and lock himself in a room with the patient. Further descriptions were quite confusing. Some said that he made a hole in the doorframe and fumigated the sick person; some said that he tied the legs and hands of the sick, cut their hair and then made a hole in the doorframe that he filled with a wooden peg. Court representatives inspected the houses of the witnesses and indeed found holes filled with pegs in the doorframes of each house. Later Kozłowski himself was asked about this practice and freely confessed that he had learned the method of healing fever 255 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 86 v–86 r. 256 No. 61 (1747), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 116–117.

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and insomnia from his father, and he described his method. First, he would cook up a potion of wormwood roots, some unnamed grasses, and gold shavings, and then fumigate the patient with it. Then he would wet several ropes with the potion, and use these ropes to tie the patient’s hands and legs together. He would then cut the client’s nails and hair, divide the waste materials into four parts, and hide them in the hole in the doorframe and fill it with a peg. He added that he knew nothing about witchcraft or about demons and how to inflict them on people. His actions were taken as superstitious (especially the fumigation and the hole) and he was ordered to repent in church and pay a fine to the church and to the court.257 Another area in which magic practitioners were actively engaged was treasure hunting. This was not considered to be a crime in most European countries, however treasure-hunters were persecuted if they used ungodly, magical means in their pursuits.258 Behringer has described the crime of treasure hunting in the following way: “The crime of treasure seeking is characterized by the existence of an actual group of people, mostly middle-aged men, who acted in common. Most groups were led by an ‘educated’ individual, a schoolteacher, town councilor, etc., and usually included a person acquainted with magic, perhaps a white witch, fortuneteller or executioner.”259 I have found only two examples of the use of magic for treasure hunting in the Ukrainian lands. Both cases indicate that people first attempted to find hidden treasures on their own, but after several failures they preferred to turn to magic practitioners for help. For instance, in 1725 the widow Horpyna Ivanovna from the village Budyshche on the left-bank side of Ukraine brought complaints against her sister-in-law, Maria Sukontseva. Among other things, Horpyna blamed her sister-in-law for the illegal invasion of Horpyna’s late husband’s house and land. Ostensibly Maria had been seeking a treasure hidden many years earlier somewhere on her father’s land, and at first 257 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 13, f. 234 v–236 v. 258 For example: Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 87. 259 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 338.

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she had searched for the treasure on her own in the pit near the buckwheat field. Then she had employed a magic practitioner, who had come to her house and they had tried to find the treasure together. He had told her to dig in the cellars and then in the field near the pear tree. Since only Horpyna’s version of what happened is mentioned in the record, we do not know the details; it does not even state whether the treasure was found. The emphasis in the initial accusation was not on treasure hunting itself, but rather on the fact that the services of a sorcerer were employed.260 The second case of treasure hunting is more detailed. It gives an impression of and helps to explain some of the popular ideas about treasures and treasure hunting, the moment when the magic practitioner came into the picture, and how they could help. This case took place in the village of Pudłowci, which belonged to the Dominican convent near Kamianets-Podilskyi, in the spring of 1749. Three peasants, Michajło, his stepson Wasyl, and Petro Bojcun were returning home after a night service in the church when they saw a fire in the distance. The flash burst out three times over the same place and the men decided that it was a sign that a treasure was hidden there and that “it was money burning.”261 At first they decided to dig on their own, at night, but later they invited two more people, Procko and his brother Iwan, to help. They all agreed that they would tell other people and the authorities about the treasure later, when they found it, for “silver and gold is impossible to hide.”262 Later in court they claimed that this decision to wait before announcing their find was determined by a fear of ridicule in case of failure. In the beginning, they seemed to be quite sure of quick success. They relied on God’s assistance and even raised money within their small group and gave it to the church so as to invoke divine blessing for their enterprise. However, the enterprise turned out to be more complicated than they initially thought. First, it was still quite cold and they had to break the frozen 260 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op. 3, no. 1660, ff. 3 r, 4 v, 12 v. 261 No. 64 (1749), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 119. 262 Ibid.

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ground before digging. Sometimes they were too tired and reluctant to work at night. After several weeks of digging they did not find anything; only once did they feel a block of stone under a bush, but when they removed the bush the stone mysteriously disappeared. At this stage, when they were losing hope, Procko proposed that they visit the wise woman Popadiuczka, from the neighboring village of Porajówka, saying, “we have to turn to wiser people, that is, to sorcerers.”263 They agreed that Procko himself would go there to see her. Procko described his visit to the wise woman in the following way: I came to her not revealing the aim for which I came. That is why she started talking herself, but before that she used divination by pouring wax, and asked me if my household was suffering from evil attacks. Then, when I still said nothing concerning this, she mixed another portion of wax and poured it. She put that wax on the table and covered it with a tablecloth. Then, after the wax had dried, she studied it closely, and having studied it, told me “you came to me because of a treasure. Money is in a copper caldron, on top of which an iron hoop rests. But that money is a little bit to the west from that place where you have been digging, right under the beginning of the hill.” She also said that there would be a sign: to the south from it there would be a stone buried in the ground…one step from there would be some black shells. Leaving her, I asked what was the best time to start searching. She told me that we had to start before the cock’s crow, after the second hen’s cry, since if there was something evil to disturb us, it would not do any harm after that time.264

We can assume that the company was struck by the knowledge of the wise woman who could guess about their enterprise without being told. After Procko returned, they started digging as she advised and even managed to find all the signs in the landscape that she had de263 Ibid., 120. 264 Ibid., 122.

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scribed, with only one discrepancy, they did not find the money. Soon they also learned that not far from where they were digging, two other groups of treasure-hunters had started their own digging. How did this treasure-seeking epidemic spread? First, two soldiers had seen a fire at night and had decided that it was a treasure declaring itself (as was discovered later, this fire had in fact been produced by the first group of treasure-hunters who had been working at night). The soldiers had pierced the ground with their swords. Looking at their work, the third group, consisting of the szlachticz Antonius Wolanowski and two peasants, Pańko and Andryj Darmorezows, had decided to start their digging. These two groups had started their work shortly after the first group, and after some time, the entire field was covered with holes and little hills of soil, but none of them had managed to find the treasure. Gossip of all sorts was circulating in the neighborhood: for example, that two people from the first group had found the treasure and had hidden it somewhere away from the rest of the treasure seekers; someone had seen them carrying a barrel full of gold.265 Soldiers from the second group had even tried to blackmail people from the first group.266 Everyone seemed to know that the services of a wise woman were being used. Eventually, the gossip reached local officials and an investigation was begun.267 A third kind of activity practiced by magic practitioners was connected with different forms of divination that were aimed primarily at detecting the location of stolen items and the identity of the alleged thief, but could also be used for other purposes. Theft, even petty theft, was a real problem for early modern people, since objects that are seemingly insignificant to the modern eye, such as old socks, kerchiefs, pieces of fabric, or rusty kettles, not to mention such possessions as money and livestock, were highly valued by their owners and their loss was costly and difficult. However, although such apparently small losses and petty thefts hit households hard causing 265 Ibid., 122–123. 266 No. 65 (1749), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 124. 267 No. 64 (1749), no. 65 (1749) in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 119–127.

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dismay and hardship, the courts proved uninterested and ineffective in addressing such small scale crime, and it was nearly impossible to find stolen possessions by turning to the official justice system. This is how a researcher of female criminals in Germany, Ulinka Rublack, describes the analogous situation in the region she studies: “It hardly made sense to turn to the authorities if there was no suspect. Searches only targeted gangs of professional thieves. Most victims thus had to detect offenders independently, if they had no clear knowledge of who had committed the crime. This was bound to be an almost impossible undertaking.”268 Since criminology was of little help, many people found magic more useful in finding stolen items and identifying thieves. It was possible for victims of theft to practice divination on their own, however it was safer for those who had the means to pay for the help of those perceived as professionals. In 1738 Jan Wasiliewski, a szlachticz from the town of Bar, turned to a soothsayer when his horse was stolen. As it turned out, Wasiliewski’s mother-in-law had recommended the services of a magic practitioner, who identified the thief with the help of card divination, and he named another szlachticz, Samuel Skorzewski, as the thief. The latter brought a complaint to the castle court, considering himself slandered. It is curious that though the court found the culprits guilty of “turning to alien gods and to the assistance of sorcerer, against God’s will and church laws,” it decided that they had to pay a fine only to the court, not to the church.269 In 1742 Paweł Sawonowicz from Olyka brought a wise woman to his house to identify the person who had stolen some items from him. In the course of the divination, the names of Hrehory Czaykowski and his sister came up. However, Czaykowski turned to the town court demanding justice, and Sawonowicz was sentenced to one week of imprisonment for the use of witchcraft, and the wise woman was to be flogged for her practices.270 The next example is from the Hetmanate, where a 268 Rublack, The Crimes of Women, 28. 269 No. 43 (1738), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 88. 270 No. 48 (1742), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 93.

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soothsayer, Prokop Prasolenko, was accused of using magic practices in 1773. He was questioned about his activities by the town court of Hadiach. Prasolenko confessed that his grandfather had taught him the art of star-divination which helped him to discover the location of stolen items and what was going on with them at the moment—if they were being used by the thief himself or had been sold to another person, and if the item was going to be returned. He described his rather elaborate method of divination that involved counting stars, analyzing their arrangement, color, and so on. He claimed to have helped many people from different places who had turned to him asking for assistance.271 There is one example that demonstrates that sometimes even officials were ready to use the assistance of a magic practitioner to investigate a crime. In 1740, in the course of an investigation of suspected arson, the judges of the court in Olyka summoned a wise woman and questioned her about the cause of the fire, to which she answered that no one was guilty since the fire had started from a spark.272 Another service offered by early modern Ukrainian magic practitioners was assistance in various business and legal enterprises. Moreover, magic practitioners could also offer their clients the ability to harm their rivals, which meant that the magic power of some of them could be used for evil ends as well—as long as they were well paid. For instance, in 1710 Francisk Rogoziński, a servant of Piotr Łaska, having stolen money from his master, fled to the village of Michlin where he hoped to use the services of the local wise women, who were supposed to help him cover up his crime.273 The use of magic practitioners’ assistance in similar kinds of enterprises was popular not only in Volhynia, Podolia, and Ruthenia, but also in the Hetmanate. For example, in 1719 the wife of a high-standing town-dweller of Nizhyn, Kuzmovich, sent her servant, Marchykha Shkolovna, to find her a wise woman from the village of Lypovyj Rih named Mikhailikha Korzhykha. She needed her assistance in a lawsuit she had with the ­vijt. 271 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 127, op. 1076, no. 135, ff. 9 v–9 r. 272 No. 45 (1740), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 89. 273 No. 14 (1710), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 57–58.

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Mikhailikha was quite glad to help, saying that Marchykha should not have to worry or search for anyone else since she would take care of everything. The magic ritual involved the use of an herb from the grave of a dead man and some hemp seeds, which Mikhailikha took to the house of the vijt and poured them there while pronouncing spells. She also used sympathetic magic: she performed a ritual with a lock that was intended to keep the vijt silent during the trial.274 Sometimes magic practitioners could use their power not to serve one particular client but “for the common good” of the community. For example, in 1721 one magic practitioner from the village of Sluchka near Hadiach, Mojsej Zhorava, announced to other villagers that he had used his power to make their master, Vasil Romanovich, who was currently away in Moscow, stay there for at least ten years. For this reason, all of the villagers of Sluchka could consider themselves temporarily free.275 Finally, one of the most important activities in which magic practitioners were involved was detecting witches and resisting them if needed. The practice of identifying witches by specialists can be found in all places where people believe in witches. This specialist could be an oracle, as in the case of the Azande, or a “doctor,” as in the case of the Shona, or a diviner, as in the case of the Navajo and Hopi, or a shaman, as in the case of the Paiute.276 According to Ukrainian folk stories, the magic operator who specialized in detecting witches and neutralizing bewitchment was called a znakhar (healer or wiseman), or sometimes a vorozhbyt (diviner).277 This is how Behringer describes the process of identifying the perpetrators of witchcraft in the Bavarian material that he studies: Either the victim (and there was no sexual preferences here) already knew the person who had caused the harm, usually a case of sickness 274 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op. 3, no. 393, ff. 1 v–4 v. 275 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op. 3, no. 790, f. 10 v. 276 Sanders, A Deed without a Name, 54–59. 277 For example, No. 30 (1720), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 73; and TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 163 r (1729).

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of human or animal, or damage to crops, or he did not. In the first case the existing suspicion had to be substantiated, and in the second the perpetrator had to be found. Frequently, the victim went to a competent outsider, perhaps a doctor, a midwife or an executioner, to confirm that it was a genuine case of sorcery. If their cures did not work, they often diagnosed sorcery (“unnatural illness”). Another form of diagnosis involved the use of oracular and soothsaying techniques.278

In other words, people as a rule would come to the magic practitioner with ready suspicions, pronouncing the names of the alleged witch while answering the questions of the practitioner, who would usually confirm these suspicions. Otherwise, the practitioner would have to use divination. Unfortunately, there are no records depicting the work of Ukrainian magic practitioners detecting witches. However, the practice itself is mentioned. For instance, during a fierce epidemic in 1720, people from the town of Krasilov delegated several representatives to visit a wiseman living in the neighboring village to ask him who had caused the plague. The practitioner came up with the name of Kapłunka, a 120-year-old dweller of Krasilov. Inspired by this information people caught the alleged witch and later burned her, following the specialist’s advice.279 In 1729, Sytko Olifierowicz from Vyzhva suspected that his house was bewitched, so he went to a soothsayer asking him to identify the witch. Some time earlier Olifierowicz had seen the wife of his neighbor, Iwan Pawłowicz, pouring dirty water near his house, so he was probably not very surprised when the soothsayer named her as the cause of his misfortune.280 In concluding this discussion of local magic practitioners, I would like to focus on one curious nuance. It is noteworthy that in many of the cases people chose to turn to practitioners from outside their own 278 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 85. 279 Since people performed an extra-legal lynching of the alleged witch, later they had to face a court investigation. No. 30 (1720), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 73–74. 280 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 32, op. 1, no. 5, f. 163 r.

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community, to someone from a neighboring community. There are several explanations for this phenomenon. First, the abilities of the practitioner might seem more powerful from a distance. Second, according to many researchers, “people who are regarded as defenders of the community in one context may come to be regarded as witches in another,”281 or “one man’s white witch might have been another man’s black.”282 People probably preferred to go to magic practitioners from distant places, even though they had a local practitioner, because they feared the power possessed by the local one.283 And finally, people could go to magic operators from distant places because they did not want to advertise their visits to their neighbors and the wider public. Although consultation with magic practitioners was absolutely standard practice and even court officials themselves occasionally relied on it, nonetheless it stood on a hazy border between licit and illicit conduct. Wise clients used the services of healers and diviners quietly, and kept their visits to themselves. Amateur Magic Practices Rationalist historians used to pronounce the innocence of the victims of witch hunts absolute. However, they have forgotten that early modern people practiced magic on both a “professional” and an amateur level. The paraphernalia associated with witchcraft can provide an interesting illustration of the degree to which there were amateur and professional practitioners. Those who practiced magic attempted to persuade the authorities that their activities were harmless; however, the records of what was found in the houses of some practitioners prove that they were actively exercising black magic.284 Behringer gives a list of some of these objects—in all, there were forty-eight 281 Sanders, A Deed without a Name, 20. 282 Scarre, Witchcraft and Magic, 5. 283 Robert Muchembled, Culture Populare et Culture des Elites dans la France Moderne (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), 112–115. 284 Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, 174.

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of them—found during the search of the house of one of the witches in Schongau: Dozens of amulets, magic bags, salves, roots, oddly shaped stones, hosts, a small wooden horse whose legs were bound with twine, wax dolls, cryptic characters on slips of paper, papers of powders, bundles of herbs, magical plants, feathers, human skin, animal bones, coal, pitch, old iron, axle grease, roots knotted in leather, rotten wood sewn into bags, pots, pans and buckets full of objects whose purpose was not recognizable, and which therefore could only be of magical significance.285

We have already seen that in the Ukrainian lands magic was used on a massive scale on a “professional” level. However, there are records that suggest that many people turned to magical means directly, without the intercession of magic practitioners. People could have many reasons for this: they might not have enough money to pay for magic services; they might not know any good magic practitioner in close vicinity; and they might also have a good advisor who told them about a “well-working and proven” magical method for dealing with their problem. Areas in which amateurs tried to use magic were similar to those used by “professionals” such as divinations and magical assistance in business and other enterprises. Some of the trial records concerning amateur magic practices have quite detailed descriptions of these practices. It is likely that people did not see anything bad in those methods and for this reason they readily described what they were doing. Divination was one of the magical practices that was used on a massive basis by amateurs. People mainly used two kinds of divination—the first was divination of a future husband (already discussed in the section on love magic) and the second was divination of lost or stolen objects. In 1717, a resident of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Mar285 Ibid., 174–175.

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cinowa Furkiewiczowa, was invited to the house of the wife of another resident, Grzegorz Faranowski, for divination. The method of divination they used involved measuring water, and the aim was to discover where Faranowski’s wife’s lost kerchief was located. However, the divination probably went wrong, since something unusual happened—a flame burst from the water. Marcinowa Furkiewiczowa became scared and left Faranowski’s house, spreading gossip around the city. Eventually, Faranowski turned to the court accusing Marcinowa Furkiewiczowa of slandering his wife, and the judges supported his complaint and made Marcinowa apologize.286 The wife of Stefan Kaminski from Olyka used divination to find out who had stolen a piece of fabric from her. This divination involved the use of soil. In the course of this divination, she managed to quarrel with Mikitycha Bezpuczka, who had noticed that Kaminski’s wife had taken soil from near the house of Ihantowicz, and on this basis later came to the conclusion that she was using this soil to bewitch Ihnatowicz’s children who indeed fell ill at that time.287 In 1743, a resident of Hoholiv, Domnikia Ivanova Merochnichka, was caught by the local priest, Kondrat, when she was painting the bell of the local church with tar. After being arrested she confessed that the night before she had gotten drunk and fallen asleep in the local market. When she woke up in the morning, she realized that her necklace was gone. She walked around the market looking for it and asked people about it, but did not learn anything. So, she said, since she was still a little bit “under the influence,” she thought about a magic method a woman had taught her many years before, when she lived in Kyiv and someone had stolen many of her possessions. She described the magical method of locating her stolen things: one had to take some tar and garlic cloves and climb a bell-tower. There one had to cover the bell with tar and garlic, saying, “This bell has a famous 286 No. 24 (1717), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 67. It is curious that Marcinowa Furkiewiczowa was already summoned to court the year before because of gossip. That time she suspected bewitchment by Janowa Czerniechowska. No. 23 (1716), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 66. 287 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 346 r–347 v (1730).

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voice and tar with garlic cannot be hidden, so let my lost thing be famous and not hide.”288 However, Domnikia said that the last time it was not of much help and she did not see any witchcraft in it, and, anyway, this was the only magic method she knew.289 Nevertheless, we see Domnikia’s name mentioned in court records once again four years later. Despite her previous assurances that she knew only one magic method, in 1747 she was accused of the use of a different magic practice. If previously Domnikia had used a variation of divination, this time she used magic for assistance in an enterprise. This kind of magic practice was the second most popular among “nonprofessional” magic operators. When Domnikia was arrested for the second time she recounted the incident with the bell and tar. From this story, we learn the outcome of the previous case, which was not mentioned in the trial material—she was kept under arrest for one week.290 After that incident, she moved to a bowery closer to Kyiv. Once she was called to the house of a military officer where she was asked for assistance in a court suit. Domnikia said that she had been taught such a method of assistance some twenty years before by her neighbor, Ievdokia Matveikha. She described this method: one had to take some soil from a grave and leave some water in a pot on that grave for one night. After that, one had to wash him or herself with that water before going to court. Then the soil had to be poured into the pot with the leftover water, while saying that the rival should be silent in court like that soil from the grave. Local authorities wrote a report about this incident and sent it to their superiors in Kyiv, so we know nothing about the further fate of the participants of this case.291 However, amateurs used magic not only in order to win a court suit. Some people were forced to use magic as a last resort in times of crisis. When in 1704 a tailoring workshop in Kamianets-Podilskyi suf288 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 59, op. 1, no. 1082, f. 2 v. 289 Ibid., f. 2 r. 290 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 59, op. 1, no. 1539, ff. 2 v–2 r. 291 We have already seen similar methods of dealing with opponents in court while discussing “professional” magic practitioners. See TDIA (Kyiv), fond 51, op. 3, no. 393, ff. 1 v–4 v.

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fered from a lack of clients, some members searched for a remedy. For example, Jan Zatwardziewicz and Jan Felicki—two junior guild masters—at first tried to use the services of a magic practitioner, Mikitycha. She gave some magic powder to Zatwardziewicz, which he was to pour into his boots. Later he shared this powder with Jan Felicki.292 When this method did not work, one of the junior guild members of the same workshop, Bazyl Fiałkowski, recommended a method to Zatwardziewicz which he had seen his former master’s wife use when their workshop had problems. She would send her son to cut the rope from the bell of the church bell tower, then take that rope and twirl it around, repeating some incantations. Fiałkowski did not remember the incantations but agreed to go and fetch a bell rope at night. After that, Zatwardziewicz twirled the rope, without any incantations, though he tried to support his magic actions with the help of holy water. He wetted the rope in holy water and then put it under a bench. All the involved guild members were found guilty of superstition (zabobony) and had to pay a fine.293 In 1707 another resident of Kamia­ nets-Podilskyi, the widow Hapka, was caught cutting a rope from the bell tower of the church of St. Nicholas. The people of the church brotherhood were convinced that she sought to use it for some magic purposes, and indeed she may have needed the rope for a similar purpose as the people from the previous case.294 A rope was one of the most common objects in popular magical practices aimed at achieving success in business. The wife of Adam Mankowski from Kamianets-Podilskyi, who kept a tavern, decided to use a magic remedy when her business was doing poorly. She went to the executioner Michałko and bought a rope that had been used to hang someone. Due to this rope her business fared much better.295 Other objects could be used for magic means as well. For example, in 1742 a resident of Dubno, Odarka Michałowa Mielnikowa, attempted 292 No. 5 (1704), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 52. 293 Ibid., and also No. 6 (1704), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 53. 294 No. 8 (1707), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 53–54. 295 No. 25 (1717), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 67–68.

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to consecrate a spindle in the church.296 And a resident of Kamia­netsPodilskyi, Hapka Mielniczka, used a piece of iron, which she buried in the ground under the threshold to attract good luck and health to the house.297 We can see that in the Ukrainian lands magic was practiced on a massive scale by both “professional” operators and by amateurs who might use magic only once or twice in their lifetime. The former usually either inherited or learned certain magical powers and practices from someone in their family. They were not perceived as anti-witches in most cases; at least from the documents it does not follow that undoing witchcraft was their main function. Instead they were engaged in such magical practices as healing, divination, and assistance in various business and judicial enterprises. Some of the magic operators were ready to trade their services to achieve evil ends, while others would refuse to harm anyone—or at least they would swear that was the case when they testified in court. Magic on the popular level was mainly used for two of those same purposes: divination and assistance with business and law. On the basis of the examples from the Ukrainian trial records we can conclude that in cases of major loss, like that of a cow or a sheep, people would turn to “professionals,” while if the lost or stolen object was less significant, like a handkerchief or a piece of fabric, they preferred to deal with it on their own. The contexts which generated accusations of witchcraft in the Ukrainian lands prove to have been the rather banal quotidian spheres of relationships between family members, neighbors, lovers, business rivals, masters, and servants. Though learned culture cultivated a mild demonological discourse, as we saw in the previous chapter, and the Devil and demons populated the sermons and tales that circulated in Ukraine, the magic mentioned in witchcraft accusations had little to do with demonology; rather it was a practical magic of love and hate, illness and health, failure and success. In this sense, 296 No. 50 (1742), in Antonovich, Koldovstvo, 96–97. 297 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 39, op. 1, no. 50, f. 267 v (1705).

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the Ukrainian witchcraft cases were quite similar to those in Western Europe, especially initial accusations of witchcraft coming “from below.” In Ukraine, as elsewhere in Europe, people suspected and reported witchcraft to the authorities when they thought that it represented a danger to their or their loved ones’ health, prosperity, or general security. Neither common people nor town authorities in Ukraine associated witchcraft with heresy in any way. In most of the cases witchcraft was a matter of practices which seemed suspicious and dangerous to observers, and were not even necessarily magical, as in the cases when people poured dirty water or rubbish on their neighbor’s or public premises. Yet in some instances, witchcraft accusations were provoked by tense situations and conflicts and exacerbated by rude, quarrelsome, and grouchy conduct, thus making people with these negative personal characteristics vulnerable to charges of witchcraft.

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4

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A Case of Infanticide and Witchcraft in Szczurowczyky

A

s a way of concluding, I would like to comment on one case reported in the black books of the town of Kremenets. The incident happened in the village of Szczurowczyky in 1753 and involved residents from several other neighboring villages. This case is quite exceptional from several points of view. First, it is one of those few cases that can be found in the handful of surviving black (or criminal) books. Black books were kept by town courts to keep records of criminal cases, and cases reported in these books were considered to be more serious offenses and were depicted in more detail than those reported in the numerous town court books. This suggests that cases from such a source may provide details that are missing from the proceedings reported in town court books. Second, this case represents an investigation about two crimes that were considered almost exclusively female offenses, infanticide and witchcraft, and as such it provides a unique opportunity to compare official attitudes toward these two crimes. Moreover, it includes witch confessions with elements of “witch fantasies,” an analysis of which allows for a better understanding of Ukrainian popular beliefs about witches of the early modern period.

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Infanticide in Szczurowczyky: Iewka Stanorycha In the winter1 of 1753, the children of Iwan Petrowicz, a resident of Szczurowczyky, discovered a dead newborn child in their pigsty. The children ran to their father and told him of their find. When Iwan entered the pigsty and approached the dead body, he saw that pigs had already eaten the infant’s chest and neck. Iwan reported the crime of infanticide to the elder of the village, and then attempted to discover who the criminal mother of the dead baby was. People told him that it must have been Iewka Stanorycha, from the village of Podlisci, who had come to Szczurowczyky several weeks ago. A crowd went to the tavern and discovered Iewka there, and they tied her down and took her to the local authorities.2 However, the crime was too serious for the local court so the villagers had to turn to the authorities of the town of Zaslav for justice. The authorities of Zaslav in turn appealed to a still higher authority, the court in Kremenets, to deal with this case. On February 9, Iewka Stanorycha was interrogated. In her confession, she outlined her life story and her version of what had happened. Iewka originated from the village of Podlisci, and approximately eight years before the incident her parents had arranged her marriage to Tymko Tyniurczuk. They had two children who had both died at a very young age. Iewka said that after six years of marriage, Tymko had left her. However, she had not intended to remain alone, and “fell in love with a boy named Lesko Romanczuk, a resident of the village of Podlisci.” This Lesko was the father of her illegitimate child, since they had been having an affair for almost two years. According to Iewka, her lover had tried to persuade her many times to leave her husband, and run away to Ukraine with him.3 She, however, did not want to do this. This was the first inconsistency in Iewka’s testimony. 1 Though it is difficult to reconstruct the date of the event, it follows from further confessions that it took place in mid-December, which means that the main character of the case was kept under arrest for almost two months before the trial started. 2 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 120. 3 Ukraine was the name used for the territories to the east of the Volhynian palatinate. It included the Kyiv and Bratslav palatinates and lands further to the East.

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First she claimed that her husband had left her and then she had fallen in love with Lesko; but she later claimed that she had been asked by Lesko to leave her husband. In connection with this discrepancy she was questioned about the reasons her husband had left her. She answered that her husband had left because he had seen her having intimate relations with her lover several times. It was the usual practice for women accused of infanticide to put the blame for their shame initially on someone else or on some specific conditions. Women could justify their decision to have intimate relations with men in several ways, for example because their partners promised to marry them, because they were drunk when they first agreed to have intercourse and then it became a habit, or because the first time they were taken by force.4 In the Ukrainian lands as well as in other European countries, these explanations were rarely taken into consideration by the jury. In the case of Fig.21. A witch, a baby-killer and other sinners Iewka, it was obvious that none from The Last Judgement from the village Medenychi (1662). of these justifications fit her situation, so she decided to say that it was her husband’s departure that had provoked her to start an affair. However, as it turned out later, she had been involved in the affair before separating from her husband, and indeed it was this liaison that had caused his departure. Iewka also said her husband had come to her several times asking her to return, but she refused, explaining, “I had a better heart toward Romanszuk.”5 4 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 15, ff. 6 r–7 v (1712); fond 35, op.1, no. 15, f. 253 v (1718); fond 35, op.1, no. 15, ff. 269 v–270 v (1718); fond 50, op. 1, no. 3, ff. 104 v–111 v (1730); fond 64, op. 1, no. 244, ff. 176 v–177 v (1729); fond 64, op. 1, no. 244, ff. 165 r–167 v (1720); and also Dilova I narodno-rozmovna mova XVIII st [Judicial and colloquial language of the eighteenth century], ed. Viktor Peredrienko (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1976), no. 60, 156–157 (1723). 5 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 121.

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Like in many other cases of illegitimate children and infanticide, the father of the baby was not involved in the trial, so we have to be satisfied with only one version of this story, Iewka’s. This had to do with a specific early modern view of women’s chastity and motherhood. Since the seventeenth century, Europe had witnessed a gradual process of the idealization of motherhood, and the simultaneous appearance of the archetype of the evil mother. Because of the substantial losses to the population in numerous wars, society had come to emphasize the protection of fertility and any attack on it was considered criminal.6 A mother who killed her own offspring was thus considered a highly unnatural creature. Theologians and lawyers held the opinion that a mother’s instinct was divine and that was why mothers had to protect their children even at the cost of their own lives. This natural and divine law was to be obeyed not only by people, but also by animals. Women who committed infanticide were pronounced to be worse than animals, who do not kill their offspring.7 At the same time, social opinion about bastards and unchaste women did not change; it was the objective of every woman to guard her chastity and abstain from premarital or extramarital relationships. Men’s behavior was never taken into consideration. Even if the seducer was a soldier, who was forbidden to marry and whose behavior was subject to control, the only person responsible for the “shameful fruits” of an affair with a soldier was the woman, branded either as a “soldier’s whore” or as a “baby murderer.”8 Coming back to Iewka’s confessions, we read that she confessed that she had diagnosed the pregnancy quite late. This might sound strange, since Iewka was an experienced woman who had already given birth twice. However, there is a possible explanation for this. The human body, especially the female body, remained a mystery in many respects, even for physicians who maintained fantastic theories about 6 Roper, “Witchcraft and Fantasy,” 233. 7 Rublack, The Crimes of Women, 172. 8 For more about punishments of those having affairs with soldiers, see Rublack, The Crimes of Women, 183–185.

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fluid circulation9. Missed menstruation periods could be interpreted as a stagnation of blood flow; a growing belly was often explained by the same reason. Iewka did not explain her reasoning and the judges were not especially interested in it, but it is quite possible that she could have mistaken a missed period for some ailment. She defined her situation as “shameful,” and it is probably for this reason that she had decided to leave her native village for some time and go to the neighboring village of Szczurowczyky. She had been staying there for three weeks when the baby was born. During this time, people had constantly asked her if she was pregnant, but Iewka had been defensive, saying, “I was trying to hide my shame and so denied it.”10 While in Szczurowczyky she had spent most of her time in the tavern owned by the Jewish tenant Szander Kiezmanowicz. On several occasions, the latter had witnessed quarrels between Iewka and her mother, Maruszka Tymczycha, who had probably followed her daughter to Szczurowczyky. Once she had said to Iewka, “There must be a reason for you to be so fat: you must be pregnant.” Iewka had become angry with her mother and had yelled and cursed at her. Another time, Maruszka had expressed an opinion which she had heard in the village as gossip, “You must be pregnant, my daughter, for most of the people think so.” Iewka’s reaction to this was, again, quite aggressive.11 The judges decided that Maruszka Tymczycha was partly responsible for the crime of her daughter. In other trials we also come across this attitude that parents, especially mothers, were responsible for the wrongdoings of their children, which were attributed to a bad upbringing. For example, in 1717 the mother of Anna Grekowiczycha was summoned to the town court of Sataniv along with her daughter. The latter was accused of immoral behavior, of being a bad wife, and even of attempting to bewitch her husband. The judges consid9 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the medical theory of four humors remained influential in the Ukrainian lands, judging from the medical texts, both printed and handwritten, that were in use. 10 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 121. 11 Ibid., 120.

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ered that her mother was no less guilty than her daughter, since she was not able to teach her the responsibilities of a good wife.12 Maruszka Tymczykha is recorded as one of the accused in this trial and was questioned about her knowledge of what had happened. She confirmed what Szander Kiezmanowicz had already said, that she had asked Iewka about being pregnant several times, but each time Iewka had become angry and yelled at her. However, she added that her daughter had not shown or admitted any evil intentions during those three weeks she had spent in Szczurowczyky.13 Iewka described further events the following way. She said that she had been in the tavern when she felt that she was about to deliver the baby, so she had gone to the pigsty and there had given birth to the baby. Iewka claimed that it was stillborn; she had held it in her hands, then put it on the ground, covered it with some rags, and returned to the tavern, leaving the baby in the pigsty. She also asserted that at the time when she was in the pigsty, there were no pigs around. After some time, a girl had come to the tavern, reporting the news about a dead baby found in Iwan Petrowicz’s pigsty whose chest and neck had been eaten by pigs. Iewka said that she herself had freely agreed that it was her baby. After that, she had been taken to the authorities.14 After giving birth and after the dead body of the baby was discovered, Iewka, like many other women accused of infanticide, no longer hid the fact that she had delivered a baby. As a rule, the signs that a birth had taken place were obvious, especially if people had suspicions concerning a pregnancy. People put two and two together when the dead infant was found.15 However, the situation might have been different. For example, in 1723 Hanna Mierochnichka, from the village of Tomashivka near Lokhvytsia, felt that she was about to deliver a baby during harvesting. She left the other people in the field and 12 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 50, op. 1, no. 1, f. 156 v. 13 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 122. 14 Ibid. 15 For example, TDIA (Kyiv), fond 64, op. 1, no. 244, ff. 176–177 (1729); fond 35, op. 1, no 15, ff. 6 r–7 v (1712); fond 35, op. 1, no. 15, ff. 269 v–270 v (1718).

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went to the garden where she gave birth to the baby. Then she took it to the cesspit and buried it there alive. When she came back to the field, people suspected something was wrong with her and initiated an official investigation of infanticide.16 The methods of murdering babies in the Ukrainian lands and Western Europe were uniform. Most often, babies were suffocated, drowned, buried alive, or taken to the forest where they were left helplessly exposed to animals and insects. In rare cases, a woman would twist a baby’s neck or stab it with a knife.17 In cases where no physical damage was seen on the baby’s body, the woman would often claim that it was stillborn. Iewka did exactly this and there was no one who could confirm or deny it. There is one disturbing feature that unites Iewka’s case with many other Ukrainian and European cases of infanticide. Unless the baby was drowned or buried alive, its body was left where it was killed, unburied; in the best scenario wrapped in some rags. Whether Iewka’s baby was born alive or dead, leaving its corpse on the ground of the pigsty exposed to animals was considered an unchristian act. In cases like this, the comparison with animals was brought up once again, for only animals did not bury their dead. When Iewka’s mother was questioned about what she knew of the baby, she said that she had heard from Iewka that the infant was stillborn. Iewka had also told her that she had this baby with Lesko Romanczuk. In the end, Maruszka added that neither she nor her daughter had ever done anything evil.18 At this point, the first court session was over. The trial resumed three days later. Something must have influenced Iewka during those three days because when she came to the court again she decided to make a new confession, adding more details to what she had already said. This confession brought a new character to the story, a woman named Orzyszka Liczmanicha. 16 Dilova i narodno-rozmovna mova XVIII st., no. 60, 156–157. 17 In the cases from our sample, stabbing with a knife was not done; in most cases women either suffocated babies or drowned them. 18 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 122.

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A Witchcraft Practitioner: Orzyszka Liczmanicha On February 12, Iewka Stanorycha announced that she wanted to make a new confession. This time she said that at a certain moment she had decided to terminate her pregnancy. However, as follows from her confession, originally it was not her idea. She said that she had told her troubles to a woman named Orzyszka Liczmanicha, who had reassured Iewka, telling her, “I will give you a potion that will help you lose your baby.”19 She said that she had received the potion on the holiday of the Birth of Our Lady Mary (at the beginning of September); however, she had not used it at once but waited until the beginning of December before drinking it. She also claimed that three days after she had drunk the potion, she had given birth to the dead infant and buried it in the dirt in the pigsty. This time she added that the dead infant had been found two days after she had given birth to it. This second confession differed from the first in several details. Now the stillborn baby was the result of a terminated pregnancy. This was not unusual. According to Rublack, about one quarter of women tried for infanticide attempted to terminate their pregnancy, and because of this stillbirths were quite frequent.20 In her second confession, Iewka also claimed that she had buried the dead infant, which contradicted her previous testimony in which she stated that she had left it in the pigsty wrapped in a rag. These new details were probably aimed to ameliorate Iewka’s situation in two ways. First she was attempting to prove that she was not guilty of murdering a newborn infant but rather of terminating a pregnancy; second, by referring to the burying of the infant’s corpse, she was attempting to prevent accusations of unchristian behavior. However, the most important change in Iewka’s confession was the mention of Orzyszka Liczmanicha. According to Iewka, Orzyszka Liczmanicha was the initiator of the pregnancy’s termination. By introducing this new figure to the 19 Ibid., 123. 20 Rublack, The Crimes of Women, 164.

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court, Iewka transferred responsibility for the crime to another person. Iewka gave only the name of the woman who motivated her to get rid of the baby. However, we can immediately ask many questions concerning this mysterious figure. Iewka decided to go and share her troubles with a woman, who, without any hesitation, proposed to her a means to get rid of the baby with the help of a potion. It is unlikely that Iewka went to Orzyszka looking for consolation; she probably went looking for exactly what she got. It was not an unusual practice for people to go to the local magic practitioners with their secrets which they did not even dare, or risk, sharing with their close ones. In cases of unwanted pregnancy or family troubles, they would frequently prefer to turn to wise women rather than to friends or relatives. In the case of Iewka, Orzyszka was that local magic practitioner. The judges considered the mention of Orzyszka to be the most important part of Iewka’s new confession, but they still had doubts concerning the reliability of the second confession. Changes of testimony were always perceived with suspicion and there was a need to prove which of the testimonies was closer to the truth. In such cases, the only method to find this out was interrogation under torture. Although very few towns in the Ukrainian lands could sustain their own hangman, Kremenets was among those few. Accordingly, the next day Iewka was sent to the mistrz, the hangman. Torture was undertaken according to the legal prescriptions of the Magdeburg law. She was stretched on the rack three times and her limbs were burned with candles. However, she did not change her last confession; instead she repeated that she had committed her crime because she had been incited by Orzyszka, who had given her a potion. For this reason, her last confession was taken into consideration and it was decided to summon Orzyszka Liczmanicha to the court. Orzyszka was interrogated on February 14. She was asked about the potion that she had given to Iewka. The potion was both magical and poisonous (at least for the baby) and, as previously mentioned, knowledge of poisons was often equated with knowledge of witch215

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craft. In Ukrainian and European courts alike, witchcraft was frequently associated with poisons, and in later periods (the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) in some European courts it was also linked to infanticide (witchcraft could have been suspected in cases of infanticide because of the belief that infants were allegedly sacrificed during the sabbaths). In Europe, however, the persecution of witches for poisoning and infanticide was a sign of the rationalization of legal actions taken against alleged witches. Unlike witchcraft, a crime that was mysterious, unclear, and hard to prove, crimes of poisoning and infanticide at least had an obvious victim.21 In the Szczurowczyky case, the three crimes were bound together in a rather direct way: infanticide was caused by poison given by a local witchcraft practitioner22. However, let us return to Orzyszka Liczmanicha, who was interrogated about the potion. She answered that she knew the potion very well, and that it was called pilip ziele (ziele is a polysemantic term that can signify “herb,” “potion,” and “poison”; in the present trial record the word is used in all three meanings depending on the context). Orzyszka said that the herb pilip ziele did not grow in their locality and one had to go to Ukraine to find it, and that it could be used “for many evil things.” For example, when a pregnant woman takes it, she immediately loses her baby. Alternatively, it could be used in cases where a husband abandons his wife and she wants him to return. In this case, Orzyszka said, one had to put that potion on a fire and say, “Cook up, cook up, and come to help me.” And after that, a voice would answer from that potion, “Say what you want.” One had to name the request 21 Levack, “The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions,” 80–81. 22 Iewka’s case is unusual but not unique. One can find a similar case in the same court book. For example, in May 1755 a maidservant, Anna, was accused of infanticide. The father of her baby was the son of her master, Lipka. The mother of her lover and her mistress supplied her with different objects of witchcraft which were meant to make her lose the baby. Among these objects were some magic charms which she had to wear around her neck and a potion that she had to drink. However, the baby was born alive and Anna, who by that time was apparently utterly distraught, suffocated and crushed the infant with her own body. She lay on the dead baby for the whole day and would not let anyone touch it. See: AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (May 1755), 174.

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and add, “Do it for me.”23 Orzyszka said that she had learned all this from people in Ukraine when she was in a village near the town of Berdychev. They “have shown me that herb (or potion) that is good for many evil things and deeds and now I am an expert.”24 She said she had given this potion to Iewka to kill the infant and added that Iewka had also asked her to give her a potion to kill her husband. By this time the judges had already formed their opinion about Orzyszka. They noted that she was one of those people who were prone to various evil things, who knew everything about potions and spells.25 She was taken for what she in fact was—a local witchcraft practitioner. However, the judges were not satisfied with Orzyszka’s free confession because there was one point which contradicted Iewka’s testimony: Orzyszka claimed that Iewka had asked for a potion to kill her husband. This claim was made openly in Iewka’s presence; it was said “right into her eyes” and not secretly behind her back, and Iewka in return denied it. Moreover, the judges had more questions for Orzyszka, so they decided to interrogate her under torture. The confession made by Orzyszka adds a new dimension to our knowledge about Ukrainian witchcraft beliefs.

Night Flights and Coven Witchcraft, as reflected in the materials of Ukrainian trial records, appears to be quite a practical endeavor with very little, if any, space left for demonic fantasies. It was first of all connected with maleficium: witches were believed to cause harm to the health of humans and animals, spoil harvests, and prepare potions and poisons. Other magic practices could be practical as well, and were aimed at healing, locating lost or stolen items, finding places where treasures were buried, and benevolent love magic. In none of the previous accounts were 23 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 124. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 125.

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such things as night flights or relationships with the devil so much as mentioned. Orzyszka’s testimony, however, demonstrates that these kinds of fantasies, familiar from European witchlore, may well have lain under the surface of Ukrainian witchcraft belief. The torture applied to Orzyszka was the same as that applied to Iewka and she was asked the same questions. The scribe even used the same formalized phrases to write his report. During the interrogation under torture, Orzyszka spoke of many things. First of all, she confessed that Iewka had not asked her for a potion to kill her husband, but had only asked for a potion to get rid of her baby. However, Orzyszka did not stop at this, but went on confessing that she knew different ways of witchcraft and that she was not the only one practicing witchcraft in their locality. There were at least four more witches in the village of Duńkowcy: Motra Onyszczycha Tkaczycha, Nastia Dzierycka, Handzia Hurkowska, and Elzbita Zawadska. Orzyszka claimed that these practitioners did not act separately, but were involved in common activities, that is, in collective witchcraft practices. According to Orzyszka there was a “witches’ coven” (though she never used this term) in their locality involving women from two villages. The idea of small-scale “societies of witches” was not new, even in the Ukrainian lands. Witch gatherings were mentioned in at least two other cases. In 1693, a villager from Chukva, Mikołai Ozdzak, declared that the house of his neighbor, Woycech Papayły, was a gathering place for witches, because several times he had seen suspicious women visiting him, and that his wife was a witch who had put a hex on his cow.26 Mikołay Jarywonowicz from Olyka had similar suspicions concerning his neighbor Sawa Dowhopolicz’s wife, in 1730. He also claimed in court that he had seen witches gather at the house of his neighbor; a few times he had even seen them wandering barefoot in the garden.27 It seems safe to assume that ideas about the elementary organization of witches were rooted in popular beliefs, since many 26 TDIA (Lviv), fond 142, op. 1, no. 5, ff. 60 v–61 v. 27 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 1237, op. 1, no. 8, ff. 367 v–369 v.

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popular stories about this practice written down by nineteenth-century ethnographers include this element. According to these stories, several witches would come to the house of one witch (usually the most knowledgeable one) where they would be engaged in magic practices. However, Orzyszka’s case is different from previous accounts concerning witch gatherings, because it was the first time that such a gathering was described from the point of view of an insider. Moreover, Orzyszka did not limit her depiction of a coven to the mere mentioning of it. She recounted many details. For example, according to Orzyszka, Motra Onyszczycha Tkaczycha, Nastia Dzierycka, Handzia Hurkowska, and Elzbita Zawadska were very powerful witches who were experts in stealing milk from cows, and producing rains, hailstorms, and “other evil things” as well.28 Orzyszka said that they had taught her all their witchcraft. We can see that the activities mentioned by Orzyszka were the usual activities ascribed to witches in popular tradition all over Europe. They were probably present in the back of her mind and when torture was applied, all these details came to the surface. However, Orzyszka also spoke about witchcraft activities that were never mentioned elsewhere in the materials of the Ukrainian witchcraft trials, though they were an accepted part of the witchcraft mythology frequently mentioned in the trial records in the West. Orzyszka said that besides the aforementioned activities, they used to fly over the border.29 She said that every first Thursday of each month they would go to the house of Elzbita Zawadska (Orzyszka considered her to be the most knowledgeable of the four women) and start their flights from there. She also described the “flying technique” they used. Zawadska, she said, would give her a birch stick and bast, and she would bind the bast to the birch stick as if it were a tail. Orzyszka called this flying device “a horse.” She said that she herself had used it only twice. It is curious that exactly the same kind of “birch stick flying device” is mentioned in the popular nineteenth-century stories about witches. 28 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 125. 29 From further explanations it follows that it was the border with the Ukrainian lands under the Russian rule, and with the Kyiv palatinate in particular.

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Based on Orzyszka’s case, it is possible to suggest that some of the popular beliefs about flying witches told by nineteenth-century peasants can be found, in retrospect, at least one century earlier. So far all of the seemingly fantastical information provided by Orzyszka was in fact based on her background knowledge of popular beliefs about witches. However, the next story told by Orzyszka can be considered a product of her own fantasy. She probably made this story up in order to prove that she herself was not very experienced in witchcraft. She said that once when she was flying with the rest of the coven, she fell off her “horse” because she did not know how to fly properly. “I fell down from that horse, broke my nose and wounded my back.”30 That is why she could not fly with her coven any more, but had to join witches from Ukraine, from the village near Berdychev. She added that in case of need, she could recall their names as well. Since the village near Berdychev had already been mentioned by Orzyszka in her previous confession, it is possible to suggest that she may have had a chance to visit that village and learn some of her practical magic there. Though Orzyszka did not say it explicitly, we can assume that the goal of their regular flights was the Sabbath held in Ukraine, probably in Kyiv, on Bald Hill (Lysa hora) which for many centuries was believed to be the gathering place of the witches from Ukrainian lands. It is a mystery why Orzyszka Liczmanicha decided to talk about night flights during the interrogation, since according to the report on the trial, which records the questions addressed to her, she was not specifically asked about it. Marion Gibson has described the mental state in which alleged witches confessed in the following way, “Witches under examination seem to enter a state of detachment from reality, in which their imagination is freed from many usual constraints, yet retains an acute consciousness of real events and material context.”31 In the case of Orzyszka, we have to deal with a “witch fantasy” that definitely differed from the “witch fantasies” of Western 30 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 126. 31 Gibson, Reading Witchcraft, 35.

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European witches, who would frequently include stories about meetings with the Devil. Orzyszka did not mention the Devil because he was not a necessary part of the stories she had heard about witches. The Devil and witches did not form an indissoluble bond in her mind. This is also true of nineteenth-century popular stories about witches, in which the Devil is never mentioned as an important character. Looking back at what was said in the chapter about learned demonology, it is not surprising that the Devil never made his way into popular beliefs about witches. In this respect learned and popular demonologies were unanimous. After Orzyszka’s second interrogation, the judges ordered the four alleged witches to come to court on the fifteenth of February. However, by then they had made their decision concerning the case of Iewka Stanorycha.

Verdicts On February 14, the judges announced their verdict to Iewka Stanorycha. Even though the judges accepted the fact that Iewka’s infant was stillborn, they still considered her case to be infanticide for two reasons: first because she had drunk a magic potion to get rid of the baby, and second, more importantly, “she left her own infant to feed the pigs.”32 This was enough to sentence her to death. The judges cited the Magdeburg law, according to which Iewka was to be tortured with red-hot tongs and then buried alive with a stick stuck into her heart. However, the court decided to be merciful and sentenced her to beheading.33 The attitude of the Ukrainian judges toward infanticide did not differ from that of their Western European counterparts, best described by Rublack:

32 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 127. 33 Ibid., 127.

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Only when the authorities began to systematize their legal policy during the second half of the [seventeenth] century were harsh exemplary punishments such as drowning or burying alive abandoned; but so was mercy for those who had killed a living child. Infanticide had become a totally unforgivable crime, and women were almost certain to be beheaded for having killed a living child.34

In the eighteenth-century Ukrainian lands, judges rarely showed mercy toward women who killed their infants. They were not willing to investigate the details of the circumstances that led women to such a decision. There is one case from the left-bank side of Ukraine where the judges demonstrated an understanding of the situation. In 1729, Harpyna Derevianchenkova was accused of infanticide in the town court of Lokhvytsia. Her story was not an unusual one, she was a widow with several children and one night she was raped by Hrytsko Kletchenko. Later, he again forced her to have intimate relations with him, promising to marry her and help feed her children. However, when he learned that she was pregnant, he ran away, leaving her alone in a desperate situation. This was a rare case, where the judges decided to spare the life of a woman guilty of infanticide. They took into consideration that she was a Cossack’s widow and had several children, who in case of her death would become orphans.35 Otherwise, the courts were not lenient. It was not uncommon that Ukrainian town courts would sentence a woman to be buried alive for infanticide even in the eighteenth century.36 Maruszka Tymczycha, Iewka’s mother, was found partly guilty of the crime of her daughter. However, since she herself did not do any evil things, she was sentenced to a long-lasting church penitence. Now that we have had the opportunity to observe the end of a story about infanticide, it would be interesting to compare it to the end of a story about witchcraft. On February 15, only two of the women 34 Rublack, The Crimes of Women, 164. 35 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 64, op 1, no. 244, ff. 176 v–177 v (1729). 36 TDIA (Kyiv), fond 35, op. 1, no. 15, ff. 6 r–7 v (1712); fond 35, op. 1, no. 15, ff. 269 v–270 v (1718).

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named by Orzyszka as witches, Elzbita Zawadska and Motra Tkaczycha, came to the court. They were both interrogated, though torture was not used. In the course of interrogation neither of them admitted guilt. For example, Motra Tkaczycha said, “I am not an expert and I do not know anything about witchcraft. And I have never seen that woman, Orzyszka, except once when she came to my house to ask for fire.”37 Elzbita Zawadska, whom Orzyszka named as the most experienced of the four, also denied her guilt, “I also do not know anything about those evil deeds and I was falsely accused of them. However, I have heard from people, from Roman Tkacz in particular … that Handzia Hurkowska after the holiday of the protection of Our Lady collected dew and then turned that dew into milk.”38 It is noteworthy that Handzia Hurkowska was one of the witches named by Orzyszka; she probably had a reputation as a witch in her locality, so that Elzbita Zawadska decided to share this gossip about her. A cross-examination of the two women with Orzyszka was arranged. During this process, Orzyszka told the two women, “You both are witches.”39 However, at this point the judges decided to stop the investigation. Orzyszka’s confessions were discredited because of numerous changes to her testimony and the other women were found not guilty. Orzyszka was accused of giving a potion to Iewka, slandering other women, and giving false confessions to the court each time she was interrogated. She did not deserve the death sentence for these crimes, however the punishment was not a mild one. Orzyszka was to be flogged by the mistrz Antoni Kądrutski with fifty strokes. This procedure was to be repeated every month for four months; altogether she would receive two hundred strokes. At the end of the case, the court announced that it opposed any kind of witchcraft. That is why Orzyszka, Motra, Elzbita, and Handza were warned that if they—or their children—ever, even after several years or after several dozen years, dared practice witchcraft, they 37 AGAD, Księga Czarna Krzemienieckie 1747–1777 (mf 18958) (February 1753), 128 v. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid.

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Chapter 4

would be burned alive as prescribed by the Magdeburg law. The Szczurowczyky case provides us with a better understanding of the official attitude toward two female crimes: infanticide and witchcraft. In the case of infanticide, judges were not prone to consider mitigating circumstances. Even though it was proven that the infant was stillborn, the judges did not find it possible to justify the behavior of the mother who left the body of the dead infant unburied, to be eaten by pigs. This behavior was so fundamentally unchristian and inhuman that the only possible punishment for this behavior was the death penalty. In this respect, the attitude of Ukrainian judges toward infanticide was identical to that of their Western counterparts. By the mid-eighteenth century Russian courts were also required to punish all murderous mothers with death, whereas in the previous century mothers who killed their illegitimate children were dealt with more severely than those who killed legitimate ones.40 This case of witchcraft was rather unusual in comparison to the rest of the Ukrainian witchcraft cases. Orzyszka was among the very few witches to whom torture was applied. Moreover, she was almost the only one who confessed to practicing evil deeds with the help of witchcraft, such as distributing dangerous potions, causing hailstorms, and stealing milk from cows. Her confession is unique in the respect that it includes elements of “witch fantasies” that allow us to understand the nature of popular witchcraft beliefs of that period. While Orzyszka spoke of such things as “evil,” the existence of an elementary organization of witches, and their regular meetings and organized night flights “to the Ukraine,” probably to attend the sabbaths, she never mentioned the Devil. On this basis, I suggest that unlike night flights, covens, and even sabbaths, the Devil was not an essential part of Ukrainian witchcraft beliefs. Returning to the official attitude, it has to be emphasized that even though Orzyszka’s testimony, in which she confessed to all sorts of possible and impossi40 M. M. Borovitinov, Detoubijstvo v ugolovnom prave [Infanticide in criminal law] (St. Petersburg: Tipografia Sankt-Peterburgskoj tiur’my, 1905), 13–14.

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ble deeds, provided the judges with an ideal opportunity to declare her guilty of witchcraft and apply prescriptions of the Magdeburg law, they nevertheless did not do so.

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

Further Romanticization, Forgetting, and Resurrection of Ukrainian Witches: An Afterword

T

he belief in witches did not disappear immediately after the decriminalization of witchcraft, which, as we have seen, took place in the 1770s in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire. Decriminalization merely meant that legal prosecution for witchcraft was banned and people could no longer bring their suspicions and accusations to the courts. Yet people did not stop fearing witches, believing in witchcraft, and suspecting their neighbors of causing harm. This is clear from the cases of witch lynchings that continued throughout the next hundred years.1

1 In his early study of the ordeal by water among the Eastern Slavs, Russell Zguta noted that this practice was probably of indigenous origin and that it continued as late as the mid-twentieth century. Ukraine was especially afflicted by water ordeals, which after temporarily disappearing reappeared in the early eighteenth century. The specificity of the phenomenon in Ukraine was its restriction to instances of drought and famine—to which a largely agricultural society such as Ukrainian was rather sensitive. See Russell Zguta, “The Ordeal by Water (Swimming of Witches) in the East Slavic World,” Slavic Review 36, no. 2 (June, 1977).

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However, during the nineteenth century Ukraine, like many other regions (Germany would be the most vivid example), witnessed a new stage in the attitude toward witches. As the intellectuals of the age embarked on the project of their day—finding, defining, and if necessary inventing a Ukrainian nation and an “authentic” Ukrainian folk culture—witches became an integral part of popular culture, one of the most appealing topics in folklore. The writers and ethnographers of the nineteenth century created powerful images of Ukrainian witches which still dominate Ukrainian art, literature, film, and the popular perception of witches in general. The most influential images of Ukrainian witches were created by Nikolai Gogol in his early volumes of Ukrainian stories, written in a peculiar mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831) and Mirgorod (1832). In Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka witches are featured in two stories: “Christmas Eve” and “May Night or the Drowned Maiden.” It is important to stress that although the stories were written in the early nineteenth century, the action takes place in the second half of the eighteenth century, meaning that Gogol in a way was referring to historical memory. In both of these stories witches are depicted as powerful, middle-aged, attractive women, who can easily manipulate men. There are also some differences between the two: Solokha, a witch from “Christmas Eve,” has a demon friend who carries her through the air and helps her to steal the moon from the sky, Fig.22. A witch Pannochka from Gogol’s Viy. Illustration by R. Shtein (1901). while the evil witch from “May 228

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An Afterword

Night,” does not have a demon, but can shape-shift into a black cat that attacks people at night. Mirgorod featured only one witch-story, “Viy,” which became one of the most influential and well known Ukrainian stories about witches. The witch depicted in “Viy” is beautiful, terrible, and extremely powerful and dangerous. Gogol makes her able to change her age: she is young during the day and old at night; and he makes her immortal: she resurrects after she is killed by the main character Khoma Brut (an obvious reference to the vampire stories that were popular at that time). She seeks vengeance using the demonic powers of the terrible night creatures she calls for assistance. Another author who wrote about witches under the influence of Ukrainian folktales was Orest Somov. His early stories such as “Haidamak” (1826) and “Mermaid” (1829) influenced Gogol. However, the theme of witches appeared in his stories after the formerly mentioned stories of Gogol. The novella Witches of Kyiv (1833) does not present such powerful images of witches as Gogol’s, but Somov uses the topic of the witches’ Sabbath, which he depicts in minute detail. Somov’s witch is a victim of circumstances who was born as a witch and does not have any choice but to go to regular demonic gatherings. Last but not least, Hryhory Kvitka (Osnovianenko), one of the first authors who wrote in the Ukrainian language, also made a witch the main character of his novella The Witch of Konotop (1837). Kvitka’s witch is probably the least mysterious of the romantic era Ukrainian witches: she is old, engaged in divinations, healings, weather, and love magic. There are no references to demons, sabbaths, or night flights in the text. The most peculiar scene of the book is the watertesting of the women, which the Cossacks organize to discover the witch who stole the rain and caused drought. The people of the town of Konotop bring seven older women (all of whom have reputation of mingling with sorcery) to the pond and throw them one by one into the water, since a witch is not supposed to drown. The romantic witch of nineteenth-century literature, the witch of Gogol and Somov, has little in common with the witch from the records of Ukrainian witchcraft trials, primarily because of the demon229

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ization of the fictional witch, who rules demons, flies at night, and attends night dances at sabbaths—none of which were part of the witchcraft beliefs reflected in actual witchcraft accusations. By the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Ukrainian historical and literary almanacs and ethnographic magazines were inundated with materials related to Ukrainian witches and witchcraft: they published fiction stories, folk tales, and materials from witchcraft trials.2 The topic was extremely popular. Ethnographers and fiction writers did not express any ridicule or skepticism toward popular witch beliefs in their writings, for them it was an essential part of popular culture (not only Ukrainian but Slavonic in general). At the same time, other representatives of the educated public, in particular medical doctors, lawyers, and teachers had different attitude: for them witchcraft beliefs were associated with people’s superstition, a sign of backwardness and underdevelopment that needed correction. Articles about the terrible outcomes of superstitious medical healing were regularly published in newspapers. For instance, in 1875 the Kyiv doctor Ivan Pantiukhov mentioned the damage from a magical healing in his article for Kievskie gubernskie vedomosti (News of Kyiv province): “one female healer was healing a boy of tuberculosis: she put him in a bag, went to the cemetery and while rolling the kid along a grave, she said thrice: ‘holy relics, give this boy some meat on his bones, if you don’t give meat on his bones, accept him as your guest.’”3 The doctor added that the boy died as a result of such barbarous treatment and provided further examples of people’s superstitions: “There is no such muck they would not give to people: they give lice with bread to heal jaundice, urine to heal dropsy, they give earthworms, clay, soil and other things 2 Miloradovich, Ukrajinska vidma [The Ukrainian witch]; Yefimenko, “Sud nad vedmami” [Witch trial]; Hnatiuk, “Kupanie i palenie vidm u Halychyni” [Witches being drowned and burned in Halychyna], in Materialy do ukrajinskoji etnolohiji 15 (1912); Ivanov, “Narodnyye rasskazy o vedmach i upyryach” [Folk stories about witches and warlocks], Sbornik Kharkovskogo istoriko-filologicheskogo obshchestva 3 (1891); Onyshchuk, “Materialy do hutsulskoji demonolohiji” [Materials on demonology of the Hutsuls]. 3 Ivan Pantiukhov, “Besedy o zdorovie” [Talks about health], Kievskie gubernskie vedomosti, January 4, 1875.

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for various ailments… If someone has fever, they take him to the forest, bind two bushes over him and say: if you do not leave me, you will perish yourself…”4 After the Bolsheviks came to power, a skeptical attitude toward magic and witchcraft triumphed over the romantic one. In fact, everything that concerned not only magic but also religion was criticized and ridiculed. The last study of Ukrainian witch-beliefs by Borys Manzhos was published in 1926 and already revealed a skeptical approach in its title: Beliefs and Superstitions of our Village.5 The Soviet period was a time of forgetting, and witches were forced out from academic studies, fiction, and people’s minds and into the sphere of children’s fairy-tales. So, it is not surprising that after more than half a century of silence, forgetting, and prohibition, the topic of magic has become trendy in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The early 1990s witnessed a revival of interest in the occult in Ukraine, which remains high to this day. This interest was most probably connected both to the previous prohibition of the topic, and to the lack of knowledge or dissatisfaction with scientific explanations of many phenomena— magic and the occult filled this gap. There are many indicators of a growth in popular interest in the occult. Most bookshops now have a section on the topic. Ukrainian readers can find among them recommendations of healers, mages, sorcerers, and even white witches, and manuals of palmistry, Tarot-divination, magic spells, and charms. Some newspapers contain numerous advertisements for the services of magic practitioners who promise to “take away harm,” “heal,” “remove the crown of inability to marry” (snimaiu venets bezbrachiia), “foretell the future,” and solve other problems by magic means. Visitors to Kyiv can even enjoy a guided tour entitled Mystic Kyiv where they hear all possible myths about witches and the Bald Hill, the Kyiv witches’ favorite gathering place for Sabbath. Renewed interest in witches has encouraged the production of 4 Ibid. 5 Manzhos, Viruvannia ta zabobony nashoho sela [Beliefs and superstitions of our village].

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works of all genres on the topic. Cinematographers and fiction writers were the first to revive the image of the Ukrainian witch in their works. Witches were already depicted in several films in the early 1990s, for example in Vidma (Witch, 1990) by Halyna Shyhaieva and Holos travy (The voice of grass, 1992) by Natalia Motuzko. Both films are set in the eighteenth century and have heavy references to the nineteenth century works of Gogol and Kvitka (Osnovianenko). Motuzko’s film was inspired by the mystical novellas of Valeriy Shevchuk from the book Dim na hori (The house on the hill, 1983). Valeriy Shevchuk is one of the authors who has made witches something like a trademark, they later appear in his stories Chortytsia (A female demon, 1992), and Zhinkazmiia (Woman-serpent, 1998). Unlike Shevchuk, whose witches inhabit the early modern world, some authors put their witches into contemporary Ukraine, for example the Kapranov brothers (Kobzar 2000, 2001) and Lada Luzina, who wrote a cycle of novels entitled Kievskaia vedma (The witch of Kyiv, 2005–2011). It is noteworthy that the image of witches in all of the pieces mentioned thus far is obviously inspired by romantic depictions of witches by nineteenth-century authors and ethnographers, with little resemblance to the people actually accused of witchcraft in early modern courts. As this and many other studies of witch trials demonstrate, the early modern perception of witchcraft was far from romantic. In the case of Ukrainian witchcraft trials, witchcraft was not even demonic, as it became in the fictional literature of later times. On the contrary, witchcraft was a normal and even routine and banal part of the everyday life of people from towns and villages. They needed it to solve their quotidian problems, and at the same time they feared it would be used secretly against them, their families, or their households. The trial records show that in most cases a witch was not a powerful and sexually appealing adherent of magic, as she is usually portrayed in literature, but rather a quarrelsome neighbor with a grudge who dabbled in sorcery and magic.

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Bibl iog r aphy 

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Primary Published Sources Antonovich, Vladimir. Koldovstvo: Dokumenty-processy-izsledovanie [Witchcraft: documents, trials, analysis]. St. Petersburg: Tipografia Kirshbauma, 1877. ________, ed. Arkhiv Iugo-Zapasnoj Rossii [The archive of south-western Russia]. Part 5, vol. 1. Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii gorodov i mestechek v IugoZapadnoj Rossii (1432–1798) [Documents about history of cities and towns of south-western Russia (1432–1798)]. Kyiv: v universitetskoj tipografii, 1869. Franko, Ivan. “Khmel’nychchyna 1648–1649 rokiv u suchasnykh virshakh” [The movement of Khmelnitskij of 1648–1649 in contemporary poetry]. In Zibrannia tvoriv u 50 tomakh [Collection of works in 50 volumes]. Vol. 31, edited by Ivan Franko, 188–253. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1981. Groicki, Bartłomiej. Artykuły prawa maydeburskiego, które zowę Speculum Saxonum. Cracow: Lazarus Andreae impresit, 1565. ________. Porządek sądów i spraw miejskich prawa majdeburskiego. Cracow: Lazarus Andreae impresit, 1566. ________. Ten postępek wybran jest z praw cesarskich. Cracow: Lazarus Andreae impresit, 1565. Haliatovs’kyj, Ioanykij. “Bogi poganskii” [The pagan gods]. In Kliuch Rozuminnia [The key to understanding], 388–410. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1985. Klenovych, Sebastian Fabian. “Roxolania.” In Ukrjinas’ka poeziia XVI st. [Ukrainian poetry of the sixteenth century], 160–161. Kyiv: Radians’kyj pys’mennyk, 1987. “Kniga liechebnaia ot mnogikh liekarstv” [The medical book against many ailments]. In Likars’ki ta hospodars’ki poradnyky XVIII st. [Medical and household manuals of the eighteenth century], 92–113. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1984. “Liekarstva opisanniie, kotorymi biez miedika v domu vsiak poratovatsia mozhet” [The description of medicines which everyone can use at home without doctor]. In Likars’ki ta hospodars’ki poradnyky XVIII st. [Medical and household manuals of the eighteenth century], 19–75. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1984. Lokhvyts’ka ratushna knyha [The town-hall book of Lokhvytsia]. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1986. Potebnia, Aleksandr, ed. “Malorusskie domashnie liechebniki XVIII v.” [Medical books of Little Russia of the eighteenth century] Kievskaia starina 28, no. 1 (1890): 91–94. Poviest udivitielna, o diavolie, iako pridie k Vielikomu Antoniiu, v obrazie chloviechestie, khotia kaiatisia [A wonderful story, about the Devil, as he came disguised as a man to Anthony the Great, asking for penitence]. Kyiv: napechatano v Kyivopecherskoj tipografii, 1627. Radyvilovskyj, Antonij. “Lehendy, anekdoty, fatsetsiji, mify, kazky, bajky, dysputy, paraboly” [Legends, anecdotes, myths, fairytales, fables, disputes, parabolas]. In Opovidannia Antonia Radyvilovs’koho. Z istoriji ukrajins’koji novelistyky XVII st. [Sermons of Antonij Radyvilovs’kyj. To the history of Ukrainian sto-

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I nde x 

accusation 1, 2, 16–18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 32, 33, 42, 47, 48, 49, 86, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 105, 106, 109, 112, 115, 117, 120–127, 130, 132, 135–137, 140, 142–144, 146, 150, 151, 153, 156, 157, 159, 163, 167, 168, 173, 175, 183, 187, 193, 214, 227 - of poisoning 175 - of witchcraft 2, 3, 15, 16, 21, 26, 37, 39, 46–49, 60, 95, 97, 101, 103, 104, 106, 111–114, 121, 123, 125–127, 133, 134, 136, 138–143, 150, 153, 167, 175, 187, 205, 206, 230 Africa 114 - East 97 aggression 126, 133–134, 138, 140 animal 13, 41, 100, 101, 107, 113, 149, 175, 180, 182–185, 189, 199, 201, 210, 213, 217 Anna (Russian Empress) 25 Antonovich, Volodymyr 6–7 anthropologist 8, 37, 96, 97, 114, 122, 187 anthropology 3, 10 Archangel Michael 54–55

Baranowski, Bohdan 4, 6, 40 bath 110, 174, 175 bathhouse 154 Behringer, Wolfgang 2, 3, 42, 141, 192, 198, 200 Berdychev 217, 220 Bereznicza 100, 170 bewitchment of animals 13, 101, 180–185 black book 11, 207 Briggs, Robin ix, 3, 9, 97, 115, 125, 156, 175, 176, 189 Briukhovetskyj, Ivan 149–150 business 40, 47, 134, 137, 139, 140, 197, 204, 205 - assistance in 201 - rival 43, 133, 134, 137, 138, 139, 141, 205 - rivalry 43, 48, 133–141 Byzantine 63, 89 - tradition 56, 63 Carolina 20–21 Catherine the Great 25 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 20 charms 21, 29, 90, 109, 123, 124, 126, 144, 157, 159–162, 170, 175, 178, 191, 231 Chernihiv 55, 62, 63, 79, 80 children 36, 38, 76, 99, 104, 110,

Bald Hill 220, 231 Baranovich, Lazar 55

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111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 125, 127, 128, 133, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174, 185, 191, 202, 208, 210, 211, 222, 223, 224 - bewitchment of 13, 48, 65, 128, 131, 169, 202 - death of 15, 122, 127, 129, 131, 165, 169, 186 Chukva 99, 100, 103, 106, 107, 178, 182, 185, 218 confession 18, 23, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 70, 86, 115, 147, 148, 207, 208, 210, 213, 214, 215, 217, 220, 223, 224 conflict 2, 15, 16, 37, 48, 93, 95, 97, 98, 101, 105, 106, 109, 110, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 133, 138, 139, 152, 153, 154, 168, 185, 187, 206 Cossack 10, 91, 92, 93, 119, 143, 222, 229 coven 34, 217, 218, 219, 220, 224 craftsman, craftsmen 49, 141 crime 2, 17, 18, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 39, 60, 82, 83, 86, 87, 149, 182, 192, 196, 197, 208, 211, 214, 215, 216, 222, 223 - female crime 15, 207, 224 - of witchcraft 14, 18, 20, 21, 23, 75, 94, 122, 148, 150, 158, 216 curse 21, 78, 103, 129, 130, 131, 163, 169, 191

demonization 54, 60, 88, 230 - of enemies 88 - of neighbors 88 demonology 6, 7, 14, 51, 52, 53, 61, 93, 95, 141, 205, 221 Devil 14, 18, 48, 51–55, 57–58, 60– 71, 73, 76–78, 80, 82– 84, 86–90, 93, 118, 141, 205, 218, 221, 224 - as a seducer of hermits 66 - in art 53–55, 57–58 - in Orthodox writings 57, 60, 62–64, 66, 67, 68, 84, 89, 90, 93 - pact with 14, 18, 53, 82–84, 87–88 - servants of 55, 64, 65, 68, 70, 83, 93 - worshipper 52 dirty water 110, 112, 172, 174, 199, 206 disease see also illness 165–167, 170–174, 177, 182 divination 91, 155, 156, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202, 203, 205, 229, 231 doctor 132, 176, 177, 198, 199, 230 Dubno 109, 124, 132, 138, 177, 179, 190, 191, 204 epidemic 41, 62, 65, 75, 76, 93, 98, 132, 165, 195, 199 Europe 14, 18, 25, 46, 58, 62, 75, 94, 114, 122, 142, 155, 156, 163, 165, 189, 206, 210, 219 - Eastern ix, 25, 89, - Western 27, 29, 31, 37, 39, 51, 54, 60, 75, 97, 114, 127, 206, 213, 216 evil 53, 54, 64, 104, 107, 139, 158, 174, 224 - angels 76, 77 - eye 92, 185, 186, - spirit 32, 42, 48, 77, 79, 118 execution 6, 19, 22, 23, 26, 33, 86, 150 executioner 26, 27, 29, 30–33, 35, 137, 144, 192, 199, 204

death 32, 33, 63, 64, 67, 68, 74, 78, 99, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 145, 148, 163, 165, 168, 169, 170, 181, 182, 186, 222, 226 - penalty 22, 23, 224 - sentence 18, 28, 33, 35, 82, 87, 147, 221, 223 defamation 101, 102 demon 53, 54, 55–60, 63–70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 113, 117, 192, 205, 228–229, 230, 232

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exile 22 exorcism 75, 78–80, 94, 117

Harrowing of Hell (icon) 54–55 harvest 171, 185–187 - spoiling of 180, 185–187, 217 healer 2, 132, 171, 176–177, 184, 190–191, 198, 200, 230, 231 - magic 72, 116, 117, 129, 176, 190–191 healing 48, 79, 117, 119, 176–180, 184, 188, 190, 191, 205, 217, 229, 230 - animals 184 - magical 117, 164, 188, 190, 230 - of possessed 56 hell 54, 55, 59, 64, 67, 69, 71, 84, herb 104, 177, 191, 198, 201, 216, 217 hermit 66 Hetman 149, 150, 153 Hetmanate 10, 24, 25, 30, 118, 171, 196, 197 Hluhiv 85, 86 Humenets 40

familiar 82, 113, 150 family 2, 16, 33, 36, 38, 39, 46, 48, 95, 100, 105, 107, 108, 110, 113, 114, 115, 119–122, 124–126, 129, 131, 133, 137, 138, 142, 147, 150, 151, 152, 157, 158, 163, 164, 166, 171, 174, 177, 180, 186, 205, 215 - of witches 105, 114–115, 119, 121–122 - support 114, 126, 183 fantasy 15, 29, 38, 122, 220 flight 219, 220 - night 34, 52, 217–220, 224, 229, flogging 22, 23, 24, 35, 103, 131, 145, 148, 168 fortune-teller 71, 116, 119 gender 3, 14, 38, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 113, 141 Gibson, Marion 3, 12–13, 220 God 20, 21, 51, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 94, 111, 130, 131, 139, 165, 177, 193, 196 - Mother of 67, 70, 79, 80, 84, 87 gods 63 - pagan 54, 62, 63 Gogol, Nikolai 228–229, 232 gossip see also rumor Grand Duchy of Lithuania 24 - Statute of 24 Groicki, Bartłomej 20–22, 27, 28, 29, 35, - Groicki’s manuals 20 guild 129, 135, 136, 137, 169, 204 - member 129, 135, 136, 137, 169, 204 Gypsy 49

icon 53–56, 59, 73, 79 iconography 53–54, 58, 59, 72 Ielets monastery (Chrnihiv) 63, 72 illness see also disease 42, 62, 65, 66, 77, 98, 117, 133, 138, 139, 159, 161, 162, 164–176, 182, 189, 199 Ilnik 101, 185 infanticide 15, 24, 207–210, 212– 214, 216, 221–222, 224 interrogation 21, 22, 27, 33–35, 51, 215, 218, 220, 221, 223 Jew 31, 49, 109, 129, 130, 148, 175, 179, 211 Kamianets-Podilski 30, 31, 33, 40, 41, 124, 126, 135, 145, 156, 159, 162, 168, 170, 172, 179, 180, 190, 193, 201, 203, 204, 205 Kievskaia starina 7 Kivelson, Valerie ix, 3, 48

Hadiach 119, 149, 197, 198 Haliatovskyj, Ioanykij 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 71, 72, 79, 81

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maleficium 18, 51,88, 97, 217 Malleus Maleficarum 46 master 22, 23, 33, 51, 55, 59, 62–65, 68, 74, 83, 85, 93, 116, 135, 140, 141–142, 145–148, 151–154, 159, 170, 175, 197, 198, 204, 205 medical book 166, 167, 177, 178 medicine 16, 156, 159, 164, 166, 175, 177, 179 Metelen 99, 117, 184, 190 milk 15, 90, 102, 104, 105, 106, 114, 154, 166, 178, 181–184, 223 - stealing 35, 180, 181–183, 187, 219, 224 miracle 73, 74, 78 - book of 53, 61, 89 misfortune 6, 104, 106, 107, 108, 117, 121, 144, 150, 165, 199 Mohyla, Petro 61, 67, 68, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80, 90, 94 monastery 69, 80, 81, 84, 86, 118 - of Saint Illia (Chernihiv) 80 monk 66, 67, 81 Muscovy 10, 24, 25, 89, 91

klikushestvo 76 Klonowicz, Sebastian 89 knot (on spike) see also zakrutka 118–119, 171, 186–187 Kovel 31, 107, 117, 124, 129, 179, 191 Krasilov 199 Kremenets 15, 22, 23, 30, 33, 34, 103, 108–110, 123, 125, 126, 147, 157, 161, 174, 207, 208, 215 Kurbskij, Andrej 160 Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium 63, 67, 71 lava 19 the Last Judgement (icon) 55 Lesniowtsy 33 Lokhvytsia 24, 157, 184, 212, 222 love magic 33, 48, 72, 123, 155–164, 188, 201, 217, 229 Lviv 30, 31, 32, 55, 86, 179 lynching 2, 4, 40, 43, 132, 227 Lypovets 1 Lypovyj Rih 197 Magdeburg law 10, 19, 22–24, 215, 221, 224, 225 magic 3, 4, 7, 10, 29, 32, 33, 35, 48, 72, 93, 96, 103, 117, 118, 155–164, 175, 184, 188–193, 196, 198, 200, 201, 203– 205, 217, 220, 229, 231 - powder 32, 33, 123, 136, 156, 170, 204 - practice 10, 11, 15, 103, 136, 177, 187–190, 197, 200, 201, 205, 217, 219 - practitioner 96, 116, 117, 118, 119, 138, 162, 171, 175, 176, 187–189, 192, 193, 195–201, 203, 215, 231 magician 68, 69, 72, 73, 83, 91 magisterial court 17, 19, 36, 108, 137, 147, 162 magistrate 11, 12, 19, 20, 22, 28, 30, 33, 168, 190 male to female ratio 46

neighbor 2, 39, 42, 46, 48, 88–90, 97–113, 120, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 138, 142, 154, 159, 169, 172, 174, 182, 183, 185, 186, 199, 200, 203, 205, 206, 218, 227, 232 Novombergskij, Nikolaj 3 Olyka 31, 99, 106, 109, 110, 117, 129, 131, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 186, 190, 196, 197, 202, 218 Orthodox 10, 49, 52, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 71, 73, 74, 76, 87, 93, 94 - Church 5, 58, 73, 79, 81, 94 - demonology 14, 51, 52, 61, 93 - theologian 60, 63, 83 Oster 98, 143, 169, 186 Ostling, Michael х, 5 Ostrog 74, 90

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99, 100, 101, 105, 107, 113, 119, 121, 126, 132, 134, 137, 138, 141, 143, 154, 157, 191, 223, 229 rivalry 40, 43, 48, 79, 80, 133, 137, 138, 141 Roman law 26 Roper, Lyndal 2, 3, 13, 122 Rostovskij, Dmitrij 61,71, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84 Ruthenian palatinate 10, 15, 25, 30, 99, 100, 101, 103, 145, 170, 178, 182, 183, 185, 197 rumor see also gossip 35, 36, 42, 43, 110, 121, 124, 137, 149

peasant 19, 22, 23, 33, 40, 41, 45, 147, 151, 152, 156, 159, 180, 182, 183, 185, 187, 193, 195, 220 Pilaszek, Małgorzata 5, 22, 39, 45, 47 Podolia 1, 10, 15, 19, 25, 30, 89, 99, 100, 197 poison 22, 118, 144, 147, 148, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 175,184, 215, 216, 217 Polish Crown 25, 30, 45 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 3, 9, 10, 11, 22, 24, 25, 47, 52, 89, 90, 227 - Diet of 25 possessed 56, 75, 76, 78–81 possession 66, 75–79, 81–82 - demonic 14, 53, 75–82 potion 139, 147, 148, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 192, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 223, 224 powder 32, 33, 123, 136, 145, 156, 157, 161, 170, 178, 201, 204 prayer 70, 166, 177 preacher 14, 53, 55, 59–67, 69–72, 75–79, 81, 83, 93, 94, 115 priest 1, 2, 41, 49, 69, 73, 79, 80, 86, 87, 94, 120, 123, 177, 202, Pryluky 152 punishment 2, 18, 22, 24, 35, 59, 60, 67, 68, 75–77, 79, 81, 103, 134, 142, 146, 150, 222–224

Sabbath 18, 51, 52, 93, 216, 220, 224, 229, 230, 231 Saint Anthony 55 Saint Mykyta 55, 56 Saint Nicolas 55, 56 Satan 2 Sataniv 100, 104, 158, 175, 183, 211 satyr 54, 57 Saxon law, see also Speculum Saxonum 20, 22, 23, 24, 28, 147 scribe 12, 45, 108, 218 sermon 11, 53–55, 60, 61, 67, 68, 70–73, 75–79, 83, 84, 93, 176, 205 servant 14, 54, 55, 61, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 83, 93, 140, 141, 142, 145–148, 151–157, 160, 161, 197, 205 shapeshifting 69 sin 2, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 76, 77, 78, 93, 159 sinner 59, 65, 67, 71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 82, 83, 93 slander 1, 6, 36, 39, 40, 43, 101, 110, 111, 120, 121, 137, 138, 142, 143, 170 soldier 41, 49, 109, 195, 210 Somov, Orest 229 sorcerer 42, 43, 93, 116, 193, 194, 196, 231

quarrel 37, 47, 95, 102–105, 107, 112, 113, 120, 121, 124, 126, 130, 136, 152, 153, 168, 169, 186, 202, 211 rada 19 Radyvilovskyj, Antonij 61, 62, 64, 68, 69, 71, 72, 76, 77, 78, 83, 176 rack (instrument of torture) 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 59, 215 Reformation 58 reputation 15, 16, 36, 39, 40, 43, 96,

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sorcery 10, 11, 20, 100, 153, 199, 229, 232 Speculum Saxonum, see also Saxon law 20 Statute (of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) 24 superstition 7, 72, 73, 87, 88, 204, 230 support 2, 98, 99, 101, 114, 119, 127, 131, 132, 133, 140, 182, 183, 191 Szczurowczyky 15, 207–208, 211, 212, 216, 224 szlachta 44, 134, 139, 140, 146, 152

vampire 41, 229 verdict 221, 19, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 43, 86, 87, 95, 98, 108, 112, 137, 142, 144, vijt see also wójt 19, 33, 143–145, 156, 157, 197, 198 Vinnytsia 117, 161 Volhynia 10, 15, 19, 25, 30, 197 Volodymyr (town) 6 Vyshenskyj, Ivan 61, 62 Vyzhva 31, 32, 36, 102, 105, 107, 110, 119, 121, 125, 126, 128, 168, 172, 173, 183, 185, 199

Tartar 62, 91 tavern 41, 59, 131, 135, 137, 204, 208, 211, 212 - keeper 31, 137, 141 torture 17, 18, 26–30, 32–35, 42, 59, 65, 67, 74, 80, 92, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 215, 217, 218, 219, 223, 224 - judicial 14, 17, 26–27 treasure 48, 63, 79, 91, 117, 141, 192–195, 217 - hunting 192, 193, 195 Turk 4

Werby 146 Wieselec 100, 104, 154 witch disease 165–167, 170–173 witch fantasy 15n, 220 witch (image of) 60, 232 witchcraft accusation 2, 3, 15, 37, 39, 46, 48, 60, 95, 97, 101, 103, 106, 113, 127, 133, 134, 140–142, 150, 187, 205, 206, 230 witchcraft mythology 82, 114, 122, 166, 219 Worobec, Christine х, 4 wójt see also vijt 19

Ukraine 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 22, 30, 39, 47, 49, 71, 95, 106, 127, 133, 135, 140, 149, 152, 163, 168, 186, 192, 205, 206, 208, 216, 217, 220, 222, 224, 227, 231, 232

Zadzielskie 103 zakrutka see also knot (on spikes) 118, 171 Zguta, Russel х, 3, 149 Zhuravky 118

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