Welcome back to the Witch Hunt Podcast. This is the final episode in the four part series: The Evolution of Diabolical Witchcraft Belief. If you're just joining us, we recommend checking out the previous series episodes first, though this episode can certainly stand on its own.
This completes our Evolution of Diabolical Witchcraft conversation with Professor Richard Raiswell of the University of Prince Edward Island, expert on Devil lore.
In Part 1, we began examining the critical relationship that developed between demons and witchcraft specifically in the 15th century. In Part 2, we delved deeper into how this connection became the driving force behind the witch hunts that devastated communities across Europe. In parts 3 and 4 we reveal shocking and informing details on the Malleus Maleficarum and its authors Heinrich Kramer, aka Institoris, and Jacob Sprenger. Thank you for joining us as we conclude this chilling and fascinating exploration of how demonology fueled witch persecution.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to Witch Hunt Podcast.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. And I'm Sarah Jack, you're
joining us for the conclusion ofour Devil Witchcraft and
Malley's Maleficarum series withProfessor Richard Raiswell.
That's right. This is part four of our
conversation with Professor Raiswell from the University of
Prince Edward Island, continuingour exploration of the Malleus
(00:22):
Maleficarum. Professor Raisewell, who many of
you will remember from our Speakof the Devil episode, brings his
expertise in medieval devil loreto help us understand this
pivotal historical development. In parts one and two, we began
examining how beliefs about demons became intrinsically
linked with witchcraft accusations in the 15th century.
(00:47):
In Part 3, we began looking at the men behind the philosophy
shaping the book, the Malleys Mafakar.
Now we're going to delve into the text and structure of the
book itself. If you haven't listened to the
previous episodes yet, we recommend you go back and enjoy
the beginning of the series first, although this episode can
(01:07):
certainly stand on its own. All series episodes are
available now wherever you get your podcasts.
So let's rejoin our conversationwith Professor Raiswell as we
conclude our examination of demonic and witchcraft beliefs
and the Maleus Malfocaro. What does the Maleus actually
have to say? If you're going to open up a
(01:28):
copy of the 15th century printing of the Maleus
Malfocaro, the first thing you see is a papal bull entitled
Sumis Desert Durham Terrace thatis desiring with the greatest
yearning. This is issued by the Pope of
the day, Pope Innocent the 8th. It's issued on the 5th of
(01:49):
December 1484. So that's before Innsbruck and
it's before Ravensburg. If it's this papal bull, that
is. The Taurus uses to justify
trying to get the Bishop in Innsbruck to help him.
The papal bull is printed at thestart of the malaise Malficaru
(02:12):
to make the book look it's been approved by the Pope.
It hasn't. The bull was issued before the
book was printed. The Pope hasn't even read the
damned thing when the bull is issued.
The bull says that the Pope has recently received reports about
(02:32):
people who've committed abuses with demons to work spells and
incantations. But guess what?
Who gave him these reports of these people working spells and
incantations? Well, it was in Sartoris.
This bull is written in responseto a letter in Sartoris writes
to the Pope. The Pope just copies that bit
out and uses it as the preface to his bull.
(02:58):
But the bull is not a condemnation of witchcraft at
all. What it does is it directs local
bishops to cooperate with inquisitors like Instatorus and
Springer. They're showing up in these
bishops diocese, and the Pope wants the Bishop to work with
(03:20):
the inquisitors. The Bishop of Vensbrough had
initially cooperated with Instatorus.
So the bill, the bull, is actually an administrative
thing. It's trained to make the
jurisdiction between a Bishop and an inquisitor clear.
The inquist as an outsider is coming into a Bishop's diocese.
Bishop, you've got to cooperate with the inquista.
(03:42):
That's what the bull's about. But it's printed right at the
front of the malaise to make it look as if this gives the book
some sort of authority. It doesn't.
The book has no authority whatsoever.
How is the malaise set up and organized?
So it's divided up into three very, very different sections.
(04:07):
Part 1. It looks like a 15th century
university style textbook. And after all, both Instatoris
and Spranger were university trained men.
It's written in a very formal, structured style, what's called
scholastic style. This is a very common style of
(04:30):
argumentation in the Middle Ages.
It's developed in the 12th, 13thcentury.
The way it works is you ask a question like can witches turn
people into animals? And then you go through all of
your books and find all of the points which suggest that
witches can turn people into animals.
Then you go through all of your books and find all the points
(04:50):
which seem to suggest that they can't.
Then the author states his own position, and then he argues why
his possession is correct. And then he goes back and he
explains away why all the pointswhich seem to contradict him are
actually either misunderstood ortaken out of context or
(05:10):
whatever. So the first part uses this
formal university style of argumentation to make the case
that the cumulative or elaborative conceptual
witchcraft is real, that a witchis actually in league with
demons and engaged in schemes and stratagems intended to
(05:34):
subvert God and creation. And the key idea here is that
witches make a pact with demons.The pact is real.
It doesn't happen in the imagination.
As we discussed in the previous episode, demons have great
powers beyond ordinary people. They're great powers because
(06:00):
they're not created like people.They're created completely
differently. They are aerial creatures, so
then can do things that we can'tdo.
They're perfectly natural thingsfor demons to do because they're
made that way. But they're different from us.
They've got sort of the ability to alter people's senses, to
(06:21):
create illusions, to present themselves to people in people's
sleep, to bring disease, to cause harm, to appear like
angels, all sorts of different things.
So when a witch makes a part with a demon, the demon becomes
the power working the magic for the witch.
(06:42):
If a witch dips a twig in water and then spins the water around
and the water evaporates up intothe air and later causes a freak
weather event, as was the accusation in Ravensburg, what
the witch day was actually oigorous.
It was the demon who did all of this, which is only able to work
(07:07):
a harmful magic by virtue of therelationship that she has
through this part with the devil.
But what is striking about Part 1 of the Malleys is it's clear
that the authors are aware that they're trying to argue that
something that is new and controversial, as we saw in
(07:28):
Ravensburg and in Innsbruck, in Cetoris's Inquisitions, are not
wholly successful. It's a flop in Innsbruck and in
Ravensburg, at least one person is acquitted or released.
And printing this papal bull at the front of the book isn't a
sign that you're secure the power of your argument.
(07:52):
You're trying to actually suggest, hey, the Pope's have
proved that there's book. Oh, it is.
And that's also clear in how thebook really begins.
The very first of these scholastic style questions that
starts off the text. The first question of the book
is not what is a witch or is a witch real?
(08:17):
It's really, really contrived. This is the first question.
It is claiming that witches exist and he's using the
masculine form here. Is claiming that witches exist
such a Catholic position that todefend the opposite is heresy?
(08:38):
What convoluted and bizarre way of framing the question.
He's not trying to prove the reality of witchcraft, rather,
he's arguing that not believing in witches is heresy.
So his strategy in this questionisn't to try and find evidence
(09:01):
pointing to the reality of witchcraft, it's to show that
any sources that suggest that witchcraft isn't real have
either been misunderstood or don't actually deal with
witchcraft. So if there's no evidence to
show that witchcraft isn't real,it must be real.
(09:24):
It's completely convoluted way to start the text, because
there's a really important source right up front that
suggests that there's a real problem with what Instatoris is
proposing in terms of the cumulative consumption of
witchcraft. And that's our old friend the
(09:46):
Canon episcopy. This is the Canon which said
that women who believe that theyfly through the nights on the
backs of beasts when summoned bythe goddess Diana are deluded.
The Canon says this is rubbish, it's just not possible and
anybody who thinks that it is isworse than a Pagan or an
(10:07):
infidel. Now when the canon's written
it's that's meant to be a slander against the women who
believe that they are transported like this.
But in Sartoris and Springer saying this is actually what's
happening, this is real stuff, their position is contradicted
immediately by the Canon episcopy.
According to the Canon episcopy,Instatoris and Schreyer are
(10:31):
worse than pagans or infidels. But there are other problems
with the idea of witchcraft. They're arguing here.
If the devil really has the kindof prowess that he seems to have
in the Maori's, why does he justmuck around doing these petty
(10:53):
little things? He's making somebody's child so
peasant's child become sick or die.
He's causing a professional hailstorm in places like
Ravensburg. Yeah, it's people in Ravensburg
are pretty annoyed, but really that's all you've got.
(11:13):
It's because it's men. Do they make a big deal of this
in the Maoist? It's quite an amazing section.
He makes a big deal of talking about how witches sometimes make
men think the penises disappeared.
Surely the devil should try and destroy God's creation entirely.
(11:33):
Why does he muck around with these petty sort of tricks or
annoyances? Related to that?
Is the idea that if the devil working through witches has
prower, is the devil's prower actually comparable to God's?
Where's God in all of this? Is God able to stop the devil
(11:59):
doing this or not? How does this fit in with God's
will? Well, it's a real problem, and
in fact, you see Instatorus and Springer and the Malleus arguing
all the time that the devil's pride is limited.
The devil has enormous pride to destroy all sorts of things, but
(12:22):
God's power is greater and doesn't let God off the hook,
right? I mean, why doesn't God actually
step in and stop all of this? Well, the ultimate answer is
that in the end, this evil devil's doing is ultimately
good. We just can't see it from our
vantage points. Stuck in time, Science tourists
(12:44):
have to try and get around episcopy, which says that what
they're asserting is impossible,and they have to do something to
reconcile the devil, which is doing all sorts of nasty things,
with the power of God. And it's quite a tricky
balancing act. How do they get around this?
(13:10):
Well, they get around it by listing a pile of sources.
Firstly, they list the old passage from Exodus which serves
in Latin maleficos, nonpadiennes, vivere, which
means that you ought not suffer A sorcerer to live instant.
(13:30):
Tourists would be using a Latin Bible and in the Latin Bible the
word which is used is maleficos,which is masculine plural.
It's changes in Protestant Bibles, it's feminine in
Protestant Bibles, and that's isactually a better reflection of
the original Hebrew. But nevertheless, they say that
(13:51):
the Bible says that you shouldn't allow witches to live.
Any points to a Roman law code from the 6th century which says
that Sayers should be executed, they should be ripped, they
should have their flesh ripped from them by iron, heated iron
claws. So both scripture and secular
law agree that witchcraft shouldn't be tolerated.
(14:14):
And it obviously must be something if these sources are
going out of their way to say that he shouldn't be tolerated.
But there's still the problem ofepiscopy.
To get around that, they turned to the 7th century encyclopedia,
written by a man named Isidor Seville.
(14:35):
Back in 1997, Pope John Paul theSecond considered making Isidor
Seville the patron St. of the Internet, presumably because
both are enormous repositories of information.
It's hard not to conclude sceptically that the reason for
this was because Isidor's encyclopedia is full of all
(14:57):
sorts of made-up rubbish. It is.
That's to be unfair to Isador. He's writing at the time when he
has access to very, very few books.
Centralised authority is fallingaway, learning is falling away.
He's doing the very best that hecan.
It's just there's an awful lot of made-up stuff in Isador.
(15:17):
It's the tourists. And Shranger turn to Isador to
see what he has to say about witches.
Has nothing at all to say about witches, but he does describe 14
different types of magician. One of them is a soothsayer,
which he refers to under the category of a Python.
(15:38):
This is an allusion to the Old Testament story of the witch of
Endor, who is described as having a spirit who's able to
predict the future. So what is the Tourist of
Shpranger claim is that Episcopywas just referring to women who
had this pythonic spirit in them.
(16:02):
Episcopy says that women are deluded by demons into thinking
that they're fine. Sure, that's fine, they say.
But when the Canon is talking about these women who are
deluded, it's actually talking about these women who have this
through, saying this pythonic spirit in them.
It's got nothing to do with witches.
We're safe. So they've introduced some sort
(16:25):
of really flimsy pretext to get around episcopy.
It's pretty weak by 15th centurystandards.
All they've done is assert that episcopy isn't relevant if
you're discussing demonic witchcraft, but they never
properly address the problem of what demonic witchcraft means
(16:50):
for the power of God. As I suggested, God is either
unable to stop demons making pacts with women to wreak havoc
on creation, in which case God is not all powerful, he can't do
it, Or God is happy to see demons make pacts with women, in
(17:11):
which case he's not merciful, he's a tyrant.
It's a real theological conundrum.
So in the end, they fall back onthe position that we just don't
know. Whenever they're talking about
the power of the devil to cause harm, they always add the
(17:34):
proviso that this happens with God allowing it to happen.
The implication is that God allows this to happen for some
reason or another. We don't really know why, but we
can be sure that ultimately it'sgood.
We just can't see why it's good because we're stuck down here,
stuck in time. It's not a philosophically or
(17:57):
emotionally satisfying position at all.
But if you don't add some proviso, like with God
permitting this to happen, you run into the very real danger of
making the devil a very, very powerful figure, almost a rival
of God. Really is heresy.
It's as bad as you can get in heretical terms.
(18:21):
How do they? Justify the idea that witches
are women. As I said earlier, the title of
the text highlights the fact that the people they think
they're talking about are women.Malleus Maleficardum is a
feminine now. Even when they get their grammar
mixed up in the actual text, it's quite clear that they're
talking about women. To justify the idea that women
(18:47):
are more naturally prone to witchcraft than men, the authors
draw upon a lot of contemporary literary debate about the
capacity, the ability of women. This is known as the Quan al
defend, or the Dispute about women.
It's a literary debate which really begins in the 14th
(19:08):
century about the nature of women, their capacity, their
capability, their ability to study, their ability to write,
their ability to perform rational thoughts, to engage in
the pursuit of knowledge. There are a host of texts
written in praise of women in this debate, but obviously Insta
(19:28):
tourists in spring aren't particularly interested in that
side of the debate. They're interested in the other
side of it. So the misogyny that they draw
upon is not particularly new. They just pick it out from the
sources of the time. And for them, what they argue is
(19:52):
that women inherently A destabilizing force in the
world. They cite various biblical
passages that suggest that women.
Are naturally angrier than men. They cite some early Church
authorities. One 4th century source they
(20:12):
quote John Chrysostom says what else is a woman but an enemy to
friendship, an inescapable punishment in necessary evil and
natural temptation, A desirable disaster?
Women are naturally weaker. They are feebler in mind and
body. They draw on other sources that
(20:35):
say that women are naturally intellectually more like
children. They have no ability to
understand philosophy. They draw on some of the tropes
in the Bible. The book of Proverbs describes a
woman as a beautiful and foolishwoman is like a gold ring in a
pig's nose. Women, they continue, are
(20:59):
naturally more emotional. They won't be governed by
authority or reason. They are fundamentally
irrational creatures, and because of that, they'll think
about what they do. They go with their base wants
and desires. Everything they write at one
(21:19):
point in the Malleys, everythingin women is governed by carnal
lusting, which is insatiable in them.
They seduce men readily, they make themselves irresistible to
men. And men becoming trapped by
women, by their beauty, by the sounds of their voice, men are
unable to resist. Most extreme example of that, of
(21:43):
course, is Eve in the Garden of Eden.
It was Eve who was tempted by the devil, who then tempted Adam
into sin. But of course, women lead men
into fornication as well. And here they quote Proverbs
3015, which says that there are four things that are never
(22:04):
satisfied. One of them is the mouth of the
womb, women's multiple orgasms. A woman's lust is never
satisfied, they note. So ultimately, because a woman's
lust is never satisfied after she's worn out all of the human
lovers, she turns to supernatural ones, she turns to
(22:27):
demons to satisfy her lust. And of course, because women are
irrational, because they're emotional creatures, because
they're driven by their lusts and desires, they're fickle as
well. So just as quickly as they set
their sights on seducing a man, their love quickly turns to
hatred. So because of this, women are
(22:50):
much more likely to seek out demons.
They seek out demons because demons are better sexual
partners than their meagre humanlovers, but also because when
their love turns to hatred, theywant to get revenge.
They want to get revenge on the men who they feel and run them,
or the women who are married to these men who they fix their
(23:14):
eyes on. And this for instant tourists.
And Springer is summed up by theetymology of the Latin word
Femina. That's the Latin word for woman.
And they say that the word Femina is a compound word
comprised of fee and minos, which they take to mean less
(23:40):
faith. So for them, the word Femina
points to somebody who is of less faith.
This is a false etymology. It's not where the word feminine
comes from, but nevertheless it sums up their position.
For them, they don't actually add much that's new to the
misogynistic tradition itself. What they do do is they link it
(24:04):
directly into this conception ofwitchcraft that they're promote.
And that is just the first part.How is the second part
different? So the second part is comprised
of, it's much more readable because it's comprised of
evidence that they feel that they have garnered from the
(24:29):
confessions and testimony of people who have confessed to
witchcraft. It's evidence that's been got
from trials. The structure is very different.
It's not like it's not organisedlike the university debates
style system that was Section 1.Instead, what they've got as the
(24:49):
evidence from themselves as inquisitors, the evidence from
Ravensburg and from Innsbruck shows up here and from other
inquisitors who've conducted trials.
They're not trying to make an argument, a theoretical argument
here, as they've done in the first part.
Rather, what they're doing in this section is saying that
(25:13):
they've got good, solid evidencefrom confessed witches
testifying to the kinds of things that they've done.
Good, solid, reliable trial evidence.
People have confessed witches have confessed to making pacts
(25:33):
with the devil. They've confessed to having
intercourse with demons. They've confessed to being able
to make it seem as if men have lost their penises.
They've confessed to being able to manipulate the weather, to
kill infants, to kill animals. What they think they've got are
facts. Facts gathered and proven
(25:56):
through the most rigorous means for gathering and assessing
facts that there is at this point, that is through the legal
process. You think about it today, if you
think about how we talk about court cases today, when the
media talks about so and so arrested for murder and the
media says and the alleged killer was brought to court
(26:19):
today, the alleged killer, then the trial process happens and
afterwards we can say that so and so killed so and so else.
It's become a fact, a legal fact.
We don't need to hedge anymore. It's not an alleged killer.
No, we know that X killed Y. The legal process turns this
(26:39):
stuff into facts. So as far as instatoris is
concerned, we've got a growing mountain.
A broadly consistent evidence from trials of people who
couldn't possibly have known each other then attest to the
reality of demonic witchcraft and some of the things the
(27:03):
witches claimed they'd be capable of doing once allied
with demons. Now the Maleus Bell for Karen's
authors don't go this far, but later witchcraft authors do.
The Maleus authors don't argue this, but their position is that
(27:25):
if some of the things that thesewitches are confessing seem to
contradict the theology theology, that's the problem.
The theology needs to be reworked because we've got the
evidence, the facts reduced fromwitches.
This is what they say has happened and.
(27:48):
What happens in the final part of the Malleus?
Well, given that the oath has placed so much weight on the
value of evidence garnered through the legal process, Part
3 describes how witches should be detected and then prosecuted.
It's a legal manual. And as we saw, one of the
(28:09):
problems that Instatoris had hadin Innsbruck was that some of
the things he was trying to do were not standard legal
procedure. That's what caused him to fall
out with the local Bishop. Then Instatoris points in the
third part of the text is that witchcraft is a special type of
(28:29):
crime. Technically it's what's called a
creman excaptum. It's a technical term which is
lifted from Roman law, used in Roman law to describe really
series of crimes which are very difficult to prove.
Because they're very difficult to prove.
(28:50):
You use slightly different legalprocedures to prosecute people.
When the Romans used this term, they used it in the context of
treason charms. Obviously it's a vital to the
health of the state to root out a conspiracy against the
emperor, and conspiracies are usually secret and they often
(29:11):
involve many people. So we can use a different legal
procedure for those sorts of crimes.
Instatoris's point is that prosecuting witches is not like
prosecuting a normal suspected murderer.
As I said before, when you arrest a murderer, the murdering
(29:33):
stops. The murderer is no longer a
threat. They're in a jail cell.
They're waiting to be sentenced or waiting for their case.
They're waiting to be sentenced.That's not the case with the
witch. The witch remains dangerous even
while she's in jail. She can use her pract with
demons to harm all those people who sworn out depositions
(29:56):
against them. She can use her power against
the judge in the trial. She can use her power to make
herself immune from pain under torture.
We're in the world of the Inquisition here now.
There's nothing wrong per SE with Inquisition as a method of
(30:17):
trial. The word inquisitio in Latin is
related to the word Cuero, whichjust means to ask or to inquire.
I mean, the modern word inquiry comes from Inquisiti.
It's just not the legal procedure that we're used to in
the Anglophone world, which is based upon common law,
ultimately English common law. We use common law in the US, we
(30:40):
use it in Canada. But that's not the procedure
that's used in inquisitorial trials.
Art Pretrials are adversarial. You've got lawyers on one side
for the state and lawyers on theother side for the accused, and
they make arguments from their perspective positions about the
(31:02):
guilt of the innocents of the accused before an impartial
judge, who then gives the evidence to a jury.
But that's not what's happening here.
What is satirist setting out to do in this section?
It's to describe how an inquisition should be run.
(31:23):
It's a process with a fact finding exercise in it, and also
a prosecutorial style of a a part of process as well.
It begins with the inquisitive asking anybody in the town if
there's anybody who has any suspicion about witchcraft.
(31:45):
And just as he did in Innsbruck and in Robinsburg, people
invited to give depositions before the Inquisitor.
These secrets, they're meant to be secret.
So the people deposing of feel free to depose what they know or
what they suspect and they've secret in order to protect the
(32:07):
people making the depositions from any retaliation by the
suspected witch. The Inquisitor then compiles all
of these and they then he reviews them and when there's
enough plausible accusations levelled against a particular
(32:29):
person, he begins a formal inquisition against them.
This is the first part of the Inquisition problem called the
Inquisitio Generales, the general Inquisition.
Some of the people who've made these depositions against
particular women are called backand they're asked to elaborate
(32:53):
on their deposition. The Inquisitor asked them
questions, specific questions about it.
What did you mean when you said this?
Did you see this sort of person as well?
Because the acquisitor's now gotall the depositions from the
various people, some of which ofall points towards person X.
So he's collating them and trying to get more out of it.
It's a fact finding. It's meant to be a fact finding
(33:16):
exercise. And he's trying also to work out
the weight that should be given to each of the various
depositions. And he also wants to find out
the relationship between the people making the deposition and
the people they're accusing. Are these people enemies of each
other, for instance? In which case maybe you don't
trust the deposition. But once he's got strong
(33:40):
indications against a particularperson that they're a witch,
they then are arrested. And this arrest marks the second
phase of the Inquisition, the Inquisitio Spechialis.
That is what's often called the trial problem.
(34:02):
The problem is that's actually really quite confusing.
The process has been going on for a while by this point.
The judge, the inquisitor, has been gaining facts, gaining the
evidence, and now the accused, only now as the accused brought
forward. But the problem is, by this
point the inquisitor already hasvery strong suspicion that the
(34:24):
accused is guilty. If he didn't have that, he
wouldn't be bringing the accusedin.
So this is what people often label as the trial problem, but
it's been going on for a while. But this is the part that
centres on determining whether the accused is guilty or
innocence. Guilt or innocence is left of
(34:48):
the determination of the inquisitor himself.
He's the one who weighs all of the evidence and determines if
the accused is guilty or not. Is the accused allowed a lawyer?
Yes, she is. The accused is permitted a
lawyer. As we saw in Innsbruck, it was
(35:09):
the Bishop who hired the best lawyer around.
But The thing is, Instatoris is very keen to limit what the
lawyer can do. I mean, you can imagine he was
not impressed with what happenedwith the liar in Innsbruck.
So he has little time for liars.Firstly, a liar, he says, is not
allowed to defend a hopeless, open and shut case.
(35:33):
We'll know that turns those guilty.
You can't defend them. You'll be milking the system.
You're just looking to get paid.That's, that's, that's not all
hopeless case. No, you're not allowed a lawyer
and we don't want some grandstanding lawyer who's just
tried to spin things out with all their tricks and their
delays. Can't burden the court with all
(35:55):
these sorts of delaying. Again, this is what happened in
Innsbruck. And the lawyer can't just keep
calling all sorts of irrelevant witnesses.
That's not on. But crucially, the text also
says that a lawyer can't defend heresy because if a lawyer
(36:17):
openly defends somebody who is found to be a heretic, the
lawyer too is a heretic. By definition.
You've defended A heretic, that makes you a heretic.
So the lawyer himself would be real at risk of being prosecuted
if he defends somebody who's found guilty.
So the ideal lawyer instator says in the malleus is an
(36:40):
upright person who is not suspected of being fussy about
legal niceties. So we're suspending some of the
lawyer's abilities. So the scope allowed by the
accused to try and defend herself against the accusations
(37:03):
is limited by what a lawyer can do.
She also still doesn't know the names of the people who've
accused her, or even very much about the nature, the specific
nature of the charges that she'saccused of.
So how do they suggest that an Inquisitor get a conviction?
(37:23):
So the accused wouldn't be there.
She wouldn't be in front of the Inquisitor.
There was not a strong suspicionof guilt, but strong suspicion
under the law. The Roman law, the kind of law
that they're using is not adequate to convict.
The legal standard that they have to follow is what's
(37:45):
described as proof clearer than daylight.
That's the legal standard. It's the standard that they
picked up from Roman law and is widely applied across Europe in
jurisdictions that don't use common law.
This is formally defined as the testimony of two eyewitnesses or
(38:06):
a confession. The problem is in witchcraft
cases, how do you get eyewitnessevidence against witches?
Firstly, witches by definition are members of a secret sect.
Secret sects are all pledged together by members who pledge
not to rat each other out. So that's a problem.
(38:31):
But what's more, what suspected witches are accused of doing
operate in a secret way. Think about the Ravensburg
example. The witch swirling her finger
with a twig in a pool of water, and then an hour later a storm
begins. So what is it that the witness
needs to have seen? Some woman standing and sitting
(38:52):
on the heath playing in a puddle.
What's the causal connection between that and hailstorm,
which all of the testimony said happened an hour later?
What did the witness need to seein order for that to be
eyewitness testimony of witchery?
Yeah, I mean, she probably shouldn't have been sitting on
(39:12):
the heath playing in puddles, but that's not a crime.
But you need two of these people, and So what do both of
them need to have seen? So you saw the woman playing
with a puddle and you've decidedthat that's witchcraft.
But Delly, do you actually have to see how that somebody else
(39:33):
who also saw the same woman playing in the same puddle on
the same day, Is it adequate to say that eyewitness one saw the
woman playing in the puddle and the hailstorm happened and
eyewitness 2 saw the woman cursing somebody in the village
and then her child got sick two days later?
(39:56):
What constitutes consistent evidence?
Well, what Instatoris argues in this is what you need for your
eyewitnesses is eyewitness testimony of witchcraft.
So that is, you don't actually need them to see the same event
if they're both attesting to thefact that this suspect.
(40:18):
Has seems to have caused witchcraft in two separate
instance that is consistent evidence of witchcraft.
So you're not actually being charged or prosecuted for
causing the hailstorm, but you're being charged with
witchcraft. And so you need 2 eyewitnesses
who could testify to seeing somebody engaged in some sort of
(40:40):
nefarious spell casting or something.
But the problem with some of this is, again, much of the
eyewitness testimony will actually come from people who
might have been involved in this.
The woman who is summoned to theheath to cause the hailstorm,
(41:05):
nobody else is really going to be following her.
She's not going to be bringing her friends around with her.
If somebody else is there with her witnessing it, chances are
pretty good that they are another witch.
Now, maybe she'll turn on a friend.
That's possible. But can you really trust the
(41:25):
testimony of somebody who's pledged herself to the devil,
that is, who's made a pledge to the father of lies?
Surely that person necessarily would lie in court because that
would be what the devil would want her to do.
Can you use the testimony of other witches against the witch?
(41:46):
Well, you absolutely shouldn't, because somebody who's pledged
themselves to a liar obviously can't be trusted.
But insta tourists acknowledge Chrome.
Yeah, No, you can use them. In fact, you can use the
testimony of somebody's enemy. You can use the testimony of
children. Under Roman law, you can't use
the testimony of children. But no, that's fine.
Yeah, pretty much anybody, unless somebody's a sworn enemy
(42:08):
of yours. And even changes what a sworn
enemy means, it's somebody who you've actively got a blood feud
with. Not just the woman in the rival
sauerkraut selling booths in themarket who you shout at every
other day because she's taking in your trade, but somebody
you've actually got a blood feudwith that is the only person who
(42:29):
can't testify against you. So in practice, what this means
is eyewitness testimony is goingto be difficult.
Despite all the relaxations on eyewitness testimony, it's going
to be difficult to get eyewitness testimony which is
going to be trustworthy. So if witness says will be so
(42:50):
hard to come by, how does Insta Taurus recommend that an
Inquisitor proceed? Well, that's why confessions
become so very, very important. If it's going to be difficult to
get eyewitnesses to testify, particularly in the beginning,
in early trials, remember you begin with the easiest cases and
(43:10):
move to the harder cases. Particularly when you're
starting off one of these processes, eyewitnesses are
going to be hard. So you put a lot of emphasis on
getting a confession. And here is where torture comes
in. Torture is not meant as a form
of punishment. It is technically an evidence
(43:32):
gathering technique. In theory, what they're looking
for is that the accused admit elements of the crime that only
the accused would know. That's often not how it works in
practice. It's used to extract a
confession. But the thing about these
(43:54):
confessions is a confession madeunder torture is not admissible
under law. So the witch is taken into the
torture chamber. She's tortured.
She's asked, do you confess to having made a pact with the
devil? Do you confess to having caused
these sorts of evil deeds? She eventually says yes, that's
(44:17):
not good enough. She's then taken back upstairs
before the Inquisitor, and she has to make her confession again
freely, without duress. Now by this point she's had her
limbs dislocated. She's in a very bad way, and
obviously she knows that if she doesn't freely confess, she's
(44:39):
back downstairs into the torturechamber.
Only then, if the Inquisitor gets the confession, does he
have adequate evidence under lawto secure conviction, and then
the accused is handed over to the secular authorities for
punishment. And as I said this, it's the
(45:01):
secular authorities who do the execute, who torture, who
execute. Suf the Malleus is such a poorly
argued book. Why is it so important?
Maleus is an important book not because the authors make a good
and effective case for witchcraft.
(45:24):
There are many other authors whomake much more sophisticated and
clever arguments, authors who don't shy away from some of the
difficult questions that are implied in what Instatoris and
Springer are doing. The importance of the Maleus
really stems from the fact that it appears when it does.
(45:45):
It appears right at the beginning of the first
information revolution. It takes this elaborated notion
of witchcraft that's floating around from the 1430s, fourteen
40s where people are talking about in church circles and
writing about in manuscript. And it gives it a full scale
(46:07):
treatment which is then printed and circulated quite widely.
As I said, it's printed 16 timesbetween his first appearance in
14861487 and then 1519, and thenit's printed another 16 times
between 1580 and 1650. By 1580, you've got more
(46:31):
sophisticated texts floating around, a lot more sophisticated
text written by people, frankly quite a lot cleverer than
instant tourists. But I think, and I can't prove
this, that these later printingsare printed because not for the
theology or for the evidence section, but for the legal
(46:54):
section, because the legal section remains very useful.
In fact, when you look through the legal section, he almost
gives you sample forms to fill in.
You want to begin a deposition? Here's the language that you
use. Write this down.
Post it to the church door. This is how you begin a
(47:15):
deposition. That's useful, and it even
includes templates for the inquisitors to use during trials
for particular parts of the trial as well, I think.
But as I said, I can't prove that these later printings
because the text is still legally useful, even if the
(47:39):
theology has been superseded by most sophisticated thinkers.
With Emelius, then, we're on theverge of full scale witch hunts.
Even if the theological arguments are not very robust,
we have a definition of a witch.The second part in particular
(48:00):
gives us lots of evidence of what witches have confessed in
the past to have done. It gives us a sense of their
powers, even if the theology hasn't kept up with us.
We've got a sense of what the witches say that they've done,
and we've got a clear sense of the scale of the conspiracy that
(48:22):
we've got. And we've got a streamlined
legal process set up to deal with this very special type of
crime, would remove some of the normal legal protections for the
accused at the time. We're not going to entertain the
normal style legal defence and as the removal of these
(48:43):
protections helps create more successful prosecutions, so we
have more good evidence of the depravity and malice The witches
show Trials create proof, popular proof.
We still use that sort of idea today.
(49:04):
And what all of this evidence shows us, and there is more of
it with every single prosecution, is that witchcraft
poses an existential threat to society and to everybody in it.
And faced with such an enormous threat to society, we all need
(49:26):
to be protected and so witchcraft must be rooted out at
any cost possible. Thank you so much.
This has been a really great experience learning all of this
today. Thank you.
Well, thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
(49:47):
We'd like to say a special thankyou to Doctor Wayswell for
crafting this wonderful series for Witch Hunt Podcast.
And we thank you for joining us as we explored the influence of
demonology on the European witchhunt.
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome back to Witch Hunt Podcast.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. And I'm Sarah Jack, you're
joining us for the conclusion ofour Devil Witchcraft and
Malley's Maleficarum series withProfessor Richard Raiswell.
That's right. This is part four of our
conversation with Professor Raiswell from the University of
Prince Edward Island, continuingour exploration of the Malleus
(00:22):
Maleficarum. Professor Raisewell, who many of
you will remember from our Speakof the Devil episode, brings his
expertise in medieval devil loreto help us understand this
pivotal historical development. In parts one and two, we began
examining how beliefs about demons became intrinsically
linked with witchcraft accusations in the 15th century.
(00:47):
In Part 3, we began looking at the men behind the philosophy
shaping the book, the Malleys Mafakar.
Now we're going to delve into the text and structure of the
book itself. If you haven't listened to the
previous episodes yet, we recommend you go back and enjoy
the beginning of the series first, although this episode can
(01:07):
certainly stand on its own. All series episodes are
available now wherever you get your podcasts.
So let's rejoin our conversationwith Professor Raiswell as we
conclude our examination of demonic and witchcraft beliefs
and the Maleus Malfocaro. What does the Maleus actually
have to say? If you're going to open up a
(01:28):
copy of the 15th century printing of the Maleus
Malfocaro, the first thing you see is a papal bull entitled
Sumis Desert Durham Terrace thatis desiring with the greatest
yearning. This is issued by the Pope of
the day, Pope Innocent the 8th. It's issued on the 5th of
(01:49):
December 1484. So that's before Innsbruck and
it's before Ravensburg. If it's this papal bull, that
is. The Taurus uses to justify
trying to get the Bishop in Innsbruck to help him.
The papal bull is printed at thestart of the malaise Malficaru
(02:12):
to make the book look it's been approved by the Pope.
It hasn't. The bull was issued before the
book was printed. The Pope hasn't even read the
damned thing when the bull is issued.
The bull says that the Pope has recently received reports about
(02:32):
people who've committed abuses with demons to work spells and
incantations. But guess what?
Who gave him these reports of these people working spells and
incantations? Well, it was in Sartoris.
This bull is written in responseto a letter in Sartoris writes
to the Pope. The Pope just copies that bit
out and uses it as the preface to his bull.
(02:58):
But the bull is not a condemnation of witchcraft at
all. What it does is it directs local
bishops to cooperate with inquisitors like Instatorus and
Springer. They're showing up in these
bishops diocese, and the Pope wants the Bishop to work with
(03:20):
the inquisitors. The Bishop of Vensbrough had
initially cooperated with Instatorus.
So the bill, the bull, is actually an administrative
thing. It's trained to make the
jurisdiction between a Bishop and an inquisitor clear.
The inquist as an outsider is coming into a Bishop's diocese.
Bishop, you've got to cooperate with the inquista.
(03:42):
That's what the bull's about. But it's printed right at the
front of the malaise to make it look as if this gives the book
some sort of authority. It doesn't.
The book has no authority whatsoever.
How is the malaise set up and organized?
So it's divided up into three very, very different sections.
(04:07):
Part 1. It looks like a 15th century
university style textbook. And after all, both Instatoris
and Spranger were university trained men.
It's written in a very formal, structured style, what's called
scholastic style. This is a very common style of
(04:30):
argumentation in the Middle Ages.
It's developed in the 12th, 13thcentury.
The way it works is you ask a question like can witches turn
people into animals? And then you go through all of
your books and find all of the points which suggest that
witches can turn people into animals.
Then you go through all of your books and find all the points
(04:50):
which seem to suggest that they can't.
Then the author states his own position, and then he argues why
his possession is correct. And then he goes back and he
explains away why all the pointswhich seem to contradict him are
actually either misunderstood ortaken out of context or
(05:10):
whatever. So the first part uses this
formal university style of argumentation to make the case
that the cumulative or elaborative conceptual
witchcraft is real, that a witchis actually in league with
demons and engaged in schemes and stratagems intended to
(05:34):
subvert God and creation. And the key idea here is that
witches make a pact with demons.The pact is real.
It doesn't happen in the imagination.
As we discussed in the previous episode, demons have great
powers beyond ordinary people. They're great powers because
(06:00):
they're not created like people.They're created completely
differently. They are aerial creatures, so
then can do things that we can'tdo.
They're perfectly natural thingsfor demons to do because they're
made that way. But they're different from us.
They've got sort of the ability to alter people's senses, to
(06:21):
create illusions, to present themselves to people in people's
sleep, to bring disease, to cause harm, to appear like
angels, all sorts of different things.
So when a witch makes a part with a demon, the demon becomes
the power working the magic for the witch.
(06:42):
If a witch dips a twig in water and then spins the water around
and the water evaporates up intothe air and later causes a freak
weather event, as was the accusation in Ravensburg, what
the witch day was actually oigorous.
It was the demon who did all of this, which is only able to work
(07:07):
a harmful magic by virtue of therelationship that she has
through this part with the devil.
But what is striking about Part 1 of the Malleys is it's clear
that the authors are aware that they're trying to argue that
something that is new and controversial, as we saw in
(07:28):
Ravensburg and in Innsbruck, in Cetoris's Inquisitions, are not
wholly successful. It's a flop in Innsbruck and in
Ravensburg, at least one person is acquitted or released.
And printing this papal bull at the front of the book isn't a
sign that you're secure the power of your argument.
(07:52):
You're trying to actually suggest, hey, the Pope's have
proved that there's book. Oh, it is.
And that's also clear in how thebook really begins.
The very first of these scholastic style questions that
starts off the text. The first question of the book
is not what is a witch or is a witch real?
(08:17):
It's really, really contrived. This is the first question.
It is claiming that witches exist and he's using the
masculine form here. Is claiming that witches exist
such a Catholic position that todefend the opposite is heresy?
(08:38):
What convoluted and bizarre way of framing the question.
He's not trying to prove the reality of witchcraft, rather,
he's arguing that not believing in witches is heresy.
So his strategy in this questionisn't to try and find evidence
(09:01):
pointing to the reality of witchcraft, it's to show that
any sources that suggest that witchcraft isn't real have
either been misunderstood or don't actually deal with
witchcraft. So if there's no evidence to
show that witchcraft isn't real,it must be real.
(09:24):
It's completely convoluted way to start the text, because
there's a really important source right up front that
suggests that there's a real problem with what Instatoris is
proposing in terms of the cumulative consumption of
witchcraft. And that's our old friend the
(09:46):
Canon episcopy. This is the Canon which said
that women who believe that theyfly through the nights on the
backs of beasts when summoned bythe goddess Diana are deluded.
The Canon says this is rubbish, it's just not possible and
anybody who thinks that it is isworse than a Pagan or an
(10:07):
infidel. Now when the canon's written
it's that's meant to be a slander against the women who
believe that they are transported like this.
But in Sartoris and Springer saying this is actually what's
happening, this is real stuff, their position is contradicted
immediately by the Canon episcopy.
According to the Canon episcopy,Instatoris and Schreyer are
(10:31):
worse than pagans or infidels. But there are other problems
with the idea of witchcraft. They're arguing here.
If the devil really has the kindof prowess that he seems to have
in the Maori's, why does he justmuck around doing these petty
(10:53):
little things? He's making somebody's child so
peasant's child become sick or die.
He's causing a professional hailstorm in places like
Ravensburg. Yeah, it's people in Ravensburg
are pretty annoyed, but really that's all you've got.
(11:13):
It's because it's men. Do they make a big deal of this
in the Maoist? It's quite an amazing section.
He makes a big deal of talking about how witches sometimes make
men think the penises disappeared.
Surely the devil should try and destroy God's creation entirely.
(11:33):
Why does he muck around with these petty sort of tricks or
annoyances? Related to that?
Is the idea that if the devil working through witches has
prower, is the devil's prower actually comparable to God's?
Where's God in all of this? Is God able to stop the devil
(11:59):
doing this or not? How does this fit in with God's
will? Well, it's a real problem, and
in fact, you see Instatorus and Springer and the Malleus arguing
all the time that the devil's pride is limited.
The devil has enormous pride to destroy all sorts of things, but
(12:22):
God's power is greater and doesn't let God off the hook,
right? I mean, why doesn't God actually
step in and stop all of this? Well, the ultimate answer is
that in the end, this evil devil's doing is ultimately
good. We just can't see it from our
vantage points. Stuck in time, Science tourists
(12:44):
have to try and get around episcopy, which says that what
they're asserting is impossible,and they have to do something to
reconcile the devil, which is doing all sorts of nasty things,
with the power of God. And it's quite a tricky
balancing act. How do they get around this?
(13:10):
Well, they get around it by listing a pile of sources.
Firstly, they list the old passage from Exodus which serves
in Latin maleficos, nonpadiennes, vivere, which
means that you ought not suffer A sorcerer to live instant.
(13:30):
Tourists would be using a Latin Bible and in the Latin Bible the
word which is used is maleficos,which is masculine plural.
It's changes in Protestant Bibles, it's feminine in
Protestant Bibles, and that's isactually a better reflection of
the original Hebrew. But nevertheless, they say that
(13:51):
the Bible says that you shouldn't allow witches to live.
Any points to a Roman law code from the 6th century which says
that Sayers should be executed, they should be ripped, they
should have their flesh ripped from them by iron, heated iron
claws. So both scripture and secular
law agree that witchcraft shouldn't be tolerated.
(14:14):
And it obviously must be something if these sources are
going out of their way to say that he shouldn't be tolerated.
But there's still the problem ofepiscopy.
To get around that, they turned to the 7th century encyclopedia,
written by a man named Isidor Seville.
(14:35):
Back in 1997, Pope John Paul theSecond considered making Isidor
Seville the patron St. of the Internet, presumably because
both are enormous repositories of information.
It's hard not to conclude sceptically that the reason for
this was because Isidor's encyclopedia is full of all
(14:57):
sorts of made-up rubbish. It is.
That's to be unfair to Isador. He's writing at the time when he
has access to very, very few books.
Centralised authority is fallingaway, learning is falling away.
He's doing the very best that hecan.
It's just there's an awful lot of made-up stuff in Isador.
(15:17):
It's the tourists. And Shranger turn to Isador to
see what he has to say about witches.
Has nothing at all to say about witches, but he does describe 14
different types of magician. One of them is a soothsayer,
which he refers to under the category of a Python.
(15:38):
This is an allusion to the Old Testament story of the witch of
Endor, who is described as having a spirit who's able to
predict the future. So what is the Tourist of
Shpranger claim is that Episcopywas just referring to women who
had this pythonic spirit in them.
(16:02):
Episcopy says that women are deluded by demons into thinking
that they're fine. Sure, that's fine, they say.
But when the Canon is talking about these women who are
deluded, it's actually talking about these women who have this
through, saying this pythonic spirit in them.
It's got nothing to do with witches.
We're safe. So they've introduced some sort
(16:25):
of really flimsy pretext to get around episcopy.
It's pretty weak by 15th centurystandards.
All they've done is assert that episcopy isn't relevant if
you're discussing demonic witchcraft, but they never
properly address the problem of what demonic witchcraft means
(16:50):
for the power of God. As I suggested, God is either
unable to stop demons making pacts with women to wreak havoc
on creation, in which case God is not all powerful, he can't do
it, Or God is happy to see demons make pacts with women, in
(17:11):
which case he's not merciful, he's a tyrant.
It's a real theological conundrum.
So in the end, they fall back onthe position that we just don't
know. Whenever they're talking about
the power of the devil to cause harm, they always add the
(17:34):
proviso that this happens with God allowing it to happen.
The implication is that God allows this to happen for some
reason or another. We don't really know why, but we
can be sure that ultimately it'sgood.
We just can't see why it's good because we're stuck down here,
stuck in time. It's not a philosophically or
(17:57):
emotionally satisfying position at all.
But if you don't add some proviso, like with God
permitting this to happen, you run into the very real danger of
making the devil a very, very powerful figure, almost a rival
of God. Really is heresy.
It's as bad as you can get in heretical terms.
(18:21):
How do they? Justify the idea that witches
are women. As I said earlier, the title of
the text highlights the fact that the people they think
they're talking about are women.Malleus Maleficardum is a
feminine now. Even when they get their grammar
mixed up in the actual text, it's quite clear that they're
talking about women. To justify the idea that women
(18:47):
are more naturally prone to witchcraft than men, the authors
draw upon a lot of contemporary literary debate about the
capacity, the ability of women. This is known as the Quan al
defend, or the Dispute about women.
It's a literary debate which really begins in the 14th
(19:08):
century about the nature of women, their capacity, their
capability, their ability to study, their ability to write,
their ability to perform rational thoughts, to engage in
the pursuit of knowledge. There are a host of texts
written in praise of women in this debate, but obviously Insta
(19:28):
tourists in spring aren't particularly interested in that
side of the debate. They're interested in the other
side of it. So the misogyny that they draw
upon is not particularly new. They just pick it out from the
sources of the time. And for them, what they argue is
(19:52):
that women inherently A destabilizing force in the
world. They cite various biblical
passages that suggest that women.
Are naturally angrier than men. They cite some early Church
authorities. One 4th century source they
(20:12):
quote John Chrysostom says what else is a woman but an enemy to
friendship, an inescapable punishment in necessary evil and
natural temptation, A desirable disaster?
Women are naturally weaker. They are feebler in mind and
body. They draw on other sources that
(20:35):
say that women are naturally intellectually more like
children. They have no ability to
understand philosophy. They draw on some of the tropes
in the Bible. The book of Proverbs describes a
woman as a beautiful and foolishwoman is like a gold ring in a
pig's nose. Women, they continue, are
(20:59):
naturally more emotional. They won't be governed by
authority or reason. They are fundamentally
irrational creatures, and because of that, they'll think
about what they do. They go with their base wants
and desires. Everything they write at one
(21:19):
point in the Malleys, everythingin women is governed by carnal
lusting, which is insatiable in them.
They seduce men readily, they make themselves irresistible to
men. And men becoming trapped by
women, by their beauty, by the sounds of their voice, men are
unable to resist. Most extreme example of that, of
(21:43):
course, is Eve in the Garden of Eden.
It was Eve who was tempted by the devil, who then tempted Adam
into sin. But of course, women lead men
into fornication as well. And here they quote Proverbs
3015, which says that there are four things that are never
(22:04):
satisfied. One of them is the mouth of the
womb, women's multiple orgasms. A woman's lust is never
satisfied, they note. So ultimately, because a woman's
lust is never satisfied after she's worn out all of the human
lovers, she turns to supernatural ones, she turns to
(22:27):
demons to satisfy her lust. And of course, because women are
irrational, because they're emotional creatures, because
they're driven by their lusts and desires, they're fickle as
well. So just as quickly as they set
their sights on seducing a man, their love quickly turns to
hatred. So because of this, women are
(22:50):
much more likely to seek out demons.
They seek out demons because demons are better sexual
partners than their meagre humanlovers, but also because when
their love turns to hatred, theywant to get revenge.
They want to get revenge on the men who they feel and run them,
or the women who are married to these men who they fix their
(23:14):
eyes on. And this for instant tourists.
And Springer is summed up by theetymology of the Latin word
Femina. That's the Latin word for woman.
And they say that the word Femina is a compound word
comprised of fee and minos, which they take to mean less
(23:40):
faith. So for them, the word Femina
points to somebody who is of less faith.
This is a false etymology. It's not where the word feminine
comes from, but nevertheless it sums up their position.
For them, they don't actually add much that's new to the
misogynistic tradition itself. What they do do is they link it
(24:04):
directly into this conception ofwitchcraft that they're promote.
And that is just the first part.How is the second part
different? So the second part is comprised
of, it's much more readable because it's comprised of
evidence that they feel that they have garnered from the
(24:29):
confessions and testimony of people who have confessed to
witchcraft. It's evidence that's been got
from trials. The structure is very different.
It's not like it's not organisedlike the university debates
style system that was Section 1.Instead, what they've got as the
(24:49):
evidence from themselves as inquisitors, the evidence from
Ravensburg and from Innsbruck shows up here and from other
inquisitors who've conducted trials.
They're not trying to make an argument, a theoretical argument
here, as they've done in the first part.
Rather, what they're doing in this section is saying that
(25:13):
they've got good, solid evidencefrom confessed witches
testifying to the kinds of things that they've done.
Good, solid, reliable trial evidence.
People have confessed witches have confessed to making pacts
(25:33):
with the devil. They've confessed to having
intercourse with demons. They've confessed to being able
to make it seem as if men have lost their penises.
They've confessed to being able to manipulate the weather, to
kill infants, to kill animals. What they think they've got are
facts. Facts gathered and proven
(25:56):
through the most rigorous means for gathering and assessing
facts that there is at this point, that is through the legal
process. You think about it today, if you
think about how we talk about court cases today, when the
media talks about so and so arrested for murder and the
media says and the alleged killer was brought to court
(26:19):
today, the alleged killer, then the trial process happens and
afterwards we can say that so and so killed so and so else.
It's become a fact, a legal fact.
We don't need to hedge anymore. It's not an alleged killer.
No, we know that X killed Y. The legal process turns this
(26:39):
stuff into facts. So as far as instatoris is
concerned, we've got a growing mountain.
A broadly consistent evidence from trials of people who
couldn't possibly have known each other then attest to the
reality of demonic witchcraft and some of the things the
(27:03):
witches claimed they'd be capable of doing once allied
with demons. Now the Maleus Bell for Karen's
authors don't go this far, but later witchcraft authors do.
The Maleus authors don't argue this, but their position is that
(27:25):
if some of the things that thesewitches are confessing seem to
contradict the theology theology, that's the problem.
The theology needs to be reworked because we've got the
evidence, the facts reduced fromwitches.
This is what they say has happened and.
(27:48):
What happens in the final part of the Malleus?
Well, given that the oath has placed so much weight on the
value of evidence garnered through the legal process, Part
3 describes how witches should be detected and then prosecuted.
It's a legal manual. And as we saw, one of the
(28:09):
problems that Instatoris had hadin Innsbruck was that some of
the things he was trying to do were not standard legal
procedure. That's what caused him to fall
out with the local Bishop. Then Instatoris points in the
third part of the text is that witchcraft is a special type of
(28:29):
crime. Technically it's what's called a
creman excaptum. It's a technical term which is
lifted from Roman law, used in Roman law to describe really
series of crimes which are very difficult to prove.
Because they're very difficult to prove.
(28:50):
You use slightly different legalprocedures to prosecute people.
When the Romans used this term, they used it in the context of
treason charms. Obviously it's a vital to the
health of the state to root out a conspiracy against the
emperor, and conspiracies are usually secret and they often
(29:11):
involve many people. So we can use a different legal
procedure for those sorts of crimes.
Instatoris's point is that prosecuting witches is not like
prosecuting a normal suspected murderer.
As I said before, when you arrest a murderer, the murdering
(29:33):
stops. The murderer is no longer a
threat. They're in a jail cell.
They're waiting to be sentenced or waiting for their case.
They're waiting to be sentenced.That's not the case with the
witch. The witch remains dangerous even
while she's in jail. She can use her pract with
demons to harm all those people who sworn out depositions
(29:56):
against them. She can use her power against
the judge in the trial. She can use her power to make
herself immune from pain under torture.
We're in the world of the Inquisition here now.
There's nothing wrong per SE with Inquisition as a method of
(30:17):
trial. The word inquisitio in Latin is
related to the word Cuero, whichjust means to ask or to inquire.
I mean, the modern word inquiry comes from Inquisiti.
It's just not the legal procedure that we're used to in
the Anglophone world, which is based upon common law,
ultimately English common law. We use common law in the US, we
(30:40):
use it in Canada. But that's not the procedure
that's used in inquisitorial trials.
Art Pretrials are adversarial. You've got lawyers on one side
for the state and lawyers on theother side for the accused, and
they make arguments from their perspective positions about the
(31:02):
guilt of the innocents of the accused before an impartial
judge, who then gives the evidence to a jury.
But that's not what's happening here.
What is satirist setting out to do in this section?
It's to describe how an inquisition should be run.
(31:23):
It's a process with a fact finding exercise in it, and also
a prosecutorial style of a a part of process as well.
It begins with the inquisitive asking anybody in the town if
there's anybody who has any suspicion about witchcraft.
(31:45):
And just as he did in Innsbruck and in Robinsburg, people
invited to give depositions before the Inquisitor.
These secrets, they're meant to be secret.
So the people deposing of feel free to depose what they know or
what they suspect and they've secret in order to protect the
(32:07):
people making the depositions from any retaliation by the
suspected witch. The Inquisitor then compiles all
of these and they then he reviews them and when there's
enough plausible accusations levelled against a particular
(32:29):
person, he begins a formal inquisition against them.
This is the first part of the Inquisition problem called the
Inquisitio Generales, the general Inquisition.
Some of the people who've made these depositions against
particular women are called backand they're asked to elaborate
(32:53):
on their deposition. The Inquisitor asked them
questions, specific questions about it.
What did you mean when you said this?
Did you see this sort of person as well?
Because the acquisitor's now gotall the depositions from the
various people, some of which ofall points towards person X.
So he's collating them and trying to get more out of it.
It's a fact finding. It's meant to be a fact finding
(33:16):
exercise. And he's trying also to work out
the weight that should be given to each of the various
depositions. And he also wants to find out
the relationship between the people making the deposition and
the people they're accusing. Are these people enemies of each
other, for instance? In which case maybe you don't
trust the deposition. But once he's got strong
(33:40):
indications against a particularperson that they're a witch,
they then are arrested. And this arrest marks the second
phase of the Inquisition, the Inquisitio Spechialis.
That is what's often called the trial problem.
(34:02):
The problem is that's actually really quite confusing.
The process has been going on for a while by this point.
The judge, the inquisitor, has been gaining facts, gaining the
evidence, and now the accused, only now as the accused brought
forward. But the problem is, by this
point the inquisitor already hasvery strong suspicion that the
(34:24):
accused is guilty. If he didn't have that, he
wouldn't be bringing the accusedin.
So this is what people often label as the trial problem, but
it's been going on for a while. But this is the part that
centres on determining whether the accused is guilty or
innocence. Guilt or innocence is left of
(34:48):
the determination of the inquisitor himself.
He's the one who weighs all of the evidence and determines if
the accused is guilty or not. Is the accused allowed a lawyer?
Yes, she is. The accused is permitted a
lawyer. As we saw in Innsbruck, it was
(35:09):
the Bishop who hired the best lawyer around.
But The thing is, Instatoris is very keen to limit what the
lawyer can do. I mean, you can imagine he was
not impressed with what happenedwith the liar in Innsbruck.
So he has little time for liars.Firstly, a liar, he says, is not
allowed to defend a hopeless, open and shut case.
(35:33):
We'll know that turns those guilty.
You can't defend them. You'll be milking the system.
You're just looking to get paid.That's, that's, that's not all
hopeless case. No, you're not allowed a lawyer
and we don't want some grandstanding lawyer who's just
tried to spin things out with all their tricks and their
delays. Can't burden the court with all
(35:55):
these sorts of delaying. Again, this is what happened in
Innsbruck. And the lawyer can't just keep
calling all sorts of irrelevant witnesses.
That's not on. But crucially, the text also
says that a lawyer can't defend heresy because if a lawyer
(36:17):
openly defends somebody who is found to be a heretic, the
lawyer too is a heretic. By definition.
You've defended A heretic, that makes you a heretic.
So the lawyer himself would be real at risk of being prosecuted
if he defends somebody who's found guilty.
So the ideal lawyer instator says in the malleus is an
(36:40):
upright person who is not suspected of being fussy about
legal niceties. So we're suspending some of the
lawyer's abilities. So the scope allowed by the
accused to try and defend herself against the accusations
(37:03):
is limited by what a lawyer can do.
She also still doesn't know the names of the people who've
accused her, or even very much about the nature, the specific
nature of the charges that she'saccused of.
So how do they suggest that an Inquisitor get a conviction?
(37:23):
So the accused wouldn't be there.
She wouldn't be in front of the Inquisitor.
There was not a strong suspicionof guilt, but strong suspicion
under the law. The Roman law, the kind of law
that they're using is not adequate to convict.
The legal standard that they have to follow is what's
(37:45):
described as proof clearer than daylight.
That's the legal standard. It's the standard that they
picked up from Roman law and is widely applied across Europe in
jurisdictions that don't use common law.
This is formally defined as the testimony of two eyewitnesses or
(38:06):
a confession. The problem is in witchcraft
cases, how do you get eyewitnessevidence against witches?
Firstly, witches by definition are members of a secret sect.
Secret sects are all pledged together by members who pledge
not to rat each other out. So that's a problem.
(38:31):
But what's more, what suspected witches are accused of doing
operate in a secret way. Think about the Ravensburg
example. The witch swirling her finger
with a twig in a pool of water, and then an hour later a storm
begins. So what is it that the witness
needs to have seen? Some woman standing and sitting
(38:52):
on the heath playing in a puddle.
What's the causal connection between that and hailstorm,
which all of the testimony said happened an hour later?
What did the witness need to seein order for that to be
eyewitness testimony of witchery?
Yeah, I mean, she probably shouldn't have been sitting on
(39:12):
the heath playing in puddles, but that's not a crime.
But you need two of these people, and So what do both of
them need to have seen? So you saw the woman playing
with a puddle and you've decidedthat that's witchcraft.
But Delly, do you actually have to see how that somebody else
(39:33):
who also saw the same woman playing in the same puddle on
the same day, Is it adequate to say that eyewitness one saw the
woman playing in the puddle and the hailstorm happened and
eyewitness 2 saw the woman cursing somebody in the village
and then her child got sick two days later?
(39:56):
What constitutes consistent evidence?
Well, what Instatoris argues in this is what you need for your
eyewitnesses is eyewitness testimony of witchcraft.
So that is, you don't actually need them to see the same event
if they're both attesting to thefact that this suspect.
(40:18):
Has seems to have caused witchcraft in two separate
instance that is consistent evidence of witchcraft.
So you're not actually being charged or prosecuted for
causing the hailstorm, but you're being charged with
witchcraft. And so you need 2 eyewitnesses
who could testify to seeing somebody engaged in some sort of
(40:40):
nefarious spell casting or something.
But the problem with some of this is, again, much of the
eyewitness testimony will actually come from people who
might have been involved in this.
The woman who is summoned to theheath to cause the hailstorm,
(41:05):
nobody else is really going to be following her.
She's not going to be bringing her friends around with her.
If somebody else is there with her witnessing it, chances are
pretty good that they are another witch.
Now, maybe she'll turn on a friend.
That's possible. But can you really trust the
(41:25):
testimony of somebody who's pledged herself to the devil,
that is, who's made a pledge to the father of lies?
Surely that person necessarily would lie in court because that
would be what the devil would want her to do.
Can you use the testimony of other witches against the witch?
(41:46):
Well, you absolutely shouldn't, because somebody who's pledged
themselves to a liar obviously can't be trusted.
But insta tourists acknowledge Chrome.
Yeah, No, you can use them. In fact, you can use the
testimony of somebody's enemy. You can use the testimony of
children. Under Roman law, you can't use
the testimony of children. But no, that's fine.
Yeah, pretty much anybody, unless somebody's a sworn enemy
(42:08):
of yours. And even changes what a sworn
enemy means, it's somebody who you've actively got a blood feud
with. Not just the woman in the rival
sauerkraut selling booths in themarket who you shout at every
other day because she's taking in your trade, but somebody
you've actually got a blood feudwith that is the only person who
(42:29):
can't testify against you. So in practice, what this means
is eyewitness testimony is goingto be difficult.
Despite all the relaxations on eyewitness testimony, it's going
to be difficult to get eyewitness testimony which is
going to be trustworthy. So if witness says will be so
(42:50):
hard to come by, how does Insta Taurus recommend that an
Inquisitor proceed? Well, that's why confessions
become so very, very important. If it's going to be difficult to
get eyewitnesses to testify, particularly in the beginning,
in early trials, remember you begin with the easiest cases and
(43:10):
move to the harder cases. Particularly when you're
starting off one of these processes, eyewitnesses are
going to be hard. So you put a lot of emphasis on
getting a confession. And here is where torture comes
in. Torture is not meant as a form
of punishment. It is technically an evidence
(43:32):
gathering technique. In theory, what they're looking
for is that the accused admit elements of the crime that only
the accused would know. That's often not how it works in
practice. It's used to extract a
confession. But the thing about these
(43:54):
confessions is a confession madeunder torture is not admissible
under law. So the witch is taken into the
torture chamber. She's tortured.
She's asked, do you confess to having made a pact with the
devil? Do you confess to having caused
these sorts of evil deeds? She eventually says yes, that's
(44:17):
not good enough. She's then taken back upstairs
before the Inquisitor, and she has to make her confession again
freely, without duress. Now by this point she's had her
limbs dislocated. She's in a very bad way, and
obviously she knows that if she doesn't freely confess, she's
(44:39):
back downstairs into the torturechamber.
Only then, if the Inquisitor gets the confession, does he
have adequate evidence under lawto secure conviction, and then
the accused is handed over to the secular authorities for
punishment. And as I said this, it's the
(45:01):
secular authorities who do the execute, who torture, who
execute. Suf the Malleus is such a poorly
argued book. Why is it so important?
Maleus is an important book not because the authors make a good
and effective case for witchcraft.
(45:24):
There are many other authors whomake much more sophisticated and
clever arguments, authors who don't shy away from some of the
difficult questions that are implied in what Instatoris and
Springer are doing. The importance of the Maleus
really stems from the fact that it appears when it does.
(45:45):
It appears right at the beginning of the first
information revolution. It takes this elaborated notion
of witchcraft that's floating around from the 1430s, fourteen
40s where people are talking about in church circles and
writing about in manuscript. And it gives it a full scale
(46:07):
treatment which is then printed and circulated quite widely.
As I said, it's printed 16 timesbetween his first appearance in
14861487 and then 1519, and thenit's printed another 16 times
between 1580 and 1650. By 1580, you've got more
(46:31):
sophisticated texts floating around, a lot more sophisticated
text written by people, frankly quite a lot cleverer than
instant tourists. But I think, and I can't prove
this, that these later printingsare printed because not for the
theology or for the evidence section, but for the legal
(46:54):
section, because the legal section remains very useful.
In fact, when you look through the legal section, he almost
gives you sample forms to fill in.
You want to begin a deposition? Here's the language that you
use. Write this down.
Post it to the church door. This is how you begin a
(47:15):
deposition. That's useful, and it even
includes templates for the inquisitors to use during trials
for particular parts of the trial as well, I think.
But as I said, I can't prove that these later printings
because the text is still legally useful, even if the
(47:39):
theology has been superseded by most sophisticated thinkers.
With Emelius, then, we're on theverge of full scale witch hunts.
Even if the theological arguments are not very robust,
we have a definition of a witch.The second part in particular
(48:00):
gives us lots of evidence of what witches have confessed in
the past to have done. It gives us a sense of their
powers, even if the theology hasn't kept up with us.
We've got a sense of what the witches say that they've done,
and we've got a clear sense of the scale of the conspiracy that
(48:22):
we've got. And we've got a streamlined
legal process set up to deal with this very special type of
crime, would remove some of the normal legal protections for the
accused at the time. We're not going to entertain the
normal style legal defence and as the removal of these
(48:43):
protections helps create more successful prosecutions, so we
have more good evidence of the depravity and malice The witches
show Trials create proof, popular proof.
We still use that sort of idea today.
(49:04):
And what all of this evidence shows us, and there is more of
it with every single prosecution, is that witchcraft
poses an existential threat to society and to everybody in it.
And faced with such an enormous threat to society, we all need
(49:26):
to be protected and so witchcraft must be rooted out at
any cost possible. Thank you so much.
This has been a really great experience learning all of this
today. Thank you.
Well, thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
(49:47):
We'd like to say a special thankyou to Doctor Wayswell for
crafting this wonderful series for Witch Hunt Podcast.
And we thank you for joining us as we explored the influence of
demonology on the European witchhunt.
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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