Witch hunters

Whylom there was dwelling in my country
An archdeacon,
a man of high degree,
That boldly did execution
Or punishing of fornication
Or witchcraft

- Chaucer, 'Friar's Tale', Canterbury Tales

Instrumental to the torture and inevitable punishment of witches were the witch-finders. A witch hunter could be someone who meticulously searched villages for individual witches, or it could be someone who devoted much of their time to the persecution of witches. Matthew Hopkins was decidedly the most famous of witch-finders, but there were numerous others, many of whom we shall never know much of. Although some of the following people may not have physically sought out witches, they wrote treatises which strongly encouraged others to do so.

Pascual de Andagoya - Conquistador, witch-finder of Alava
de Andagoya (1495-1548) was both an explorer and a witch-finder of Alava. While exploring the region of Darien, he claimed to have discovered many witches and sorcerers among the native population. These evil-doers caused much harm to both elderly people and to animals "at the Devil's command." They also used ointments given them by the Devil himself.

In his accounts, Andagoya says,

When questions were asked about the form in which the Devil appeared to them, it was discovered that he took the shape of a beautiful child in order not to frighten these simple-minded people but to win their confidence. Whenever the witches caused harm to others, the Devil went with them and entered the houses of those they wished to hurt in their company. It was also revealed that a witch, who was in a certain town one night with many other women, was seen the very same hour in a room a league-and-a-half distant from that place, where other servants of her Master were gathered.

Angelo of Verona - Inquisitor of Lombardy
Inquisitor of Lombardy. In 1501, Angelo of Verona was sent a letter by Pope Alexander VI. The letter instructed Angelo to seek out and destroy all the witches of Lombardy.

S:t Thomas Aquinas - Anti-witch writer
Although not specifically a witch-hunter, St. Thomas Aquinas provided many philosophies and writings which were eagerly snatched up by witch-hunters and prosecuters.

St. Thomas Aquinas insisted on the rights of the individual conscience but then went on to argue that heresy was a sin because such ignorance must be the result of criminal negligence. All pacts with demons, whether explicit or implicit, were tantamount to apostasy from the Christian faith, Aquinas argued, and this doctrine of 'implicit' pact became a favourite of the witch-hunters.

Bartolo - Lawyer of Sassoferrato
One of the most prominent lawyers of the 1330s, Bartolo of Sassoferrato considered witchcraft to be the religious transgression of idolatry. When a woman was charged with being a witch in the diocese of Novara, Bartola said she was an idolater since through her use of magic she had renounced baptism and Christ. For the crime, she deserved death via the "law of the gospel," which was considered the highest law of all.

"Furthermore, Bartolo found grounds in Roman and canon law for executing a woman who has committed offenses against God." Nevertheless, if she repented of her crimes and the judge deemed her repentance sincere, her life could be spared. In this way, Bartolo left the sentencing to the judge's discretion. Bartolo was one of the least rabid of witch-hunters.

Friar Bernardino - Witch-finder of Sienna
Friar Bernardino (d. 1444), an intinerant preacher, made a decisive contribution to the later treatment and identification of witches. He railed against the old women who supposedly accompanied Herodius on Epiphany night. (Herodias, also known as Aradia, Diana, or Holda, is a lunar goddess who theoretically flies through the air at nights with cannibalistic witches.) What these elderly women actually did was help women who were sick, women in labour, and children who were bewitched. Bernardino claimed these women were instead subjects of Satan, and cases to be treated individually.

In 1427, Bernardino was charged with heresy, not because of his witch beliefs, but because he wanted to create a cult based on the name of Jesus. Pope Martin V ordered him to Rome. There, Bernardino's beliefs were ruled orthodox and he was released. He was allowed to preach again on the condition that he did not exhibit tablets with Jesus' name on them for worship.

Later on in the same year, Bernardino was able to find a woman who collaborated his Herodias stories. Her name was Finicella, and she claimed to have killed over thirty babies by sucking their blood. Bernardino then commenced preaching of an organized sect that killed babies and transformed themselves into animals, a belief fueled by the popular notion of conspiracies led by the Devil. The sabbat concept implies conspiracy: witches gather together to share veneration of Satan.

Bernhard Bitterlin - Witch-hunter of Obermarchtal
Witch-hunter of Obermarchtal. A harsh man, judge Bernhard Bitterlin was hugely responsible for the wave of witch trials between 1586 and 1589. Eighty-four or more people (mostly peasant women) were executed: around seven percent of Obermarchtal's inhabitants. Bitterlin continued as judge of Obermarchtal well into the seventeenth century. In 1627-28, he condemned at least another seven people for witchcraft.

Jean Bodin - Legal witch-finder of Paris
Go to "Jean Bodin".

Henry Boguet - The witch-finder of Burgundy
Witch-finder of Burgundy. Author of the French witch-finder's bible, Discours des Sorciers, and Supreme Judge of Burgundy's St. Claude district, Boguet was France's most cruel inquisitor. Hundreds found themselves at the mercy of his torturers.

Boguet employed many tortures and punishments, including the rack, the wheel, crucifixion, whipping, branding, and the tearing of flesh with red or white-hot pincers. He disposed of countless accused witches, sorcerers, and werewolves by burning them to death at the stake. One of the more peculiar theories Boguet held was that sorcerors could "shed no more than three tears from their right eye."

Many of those tortured were so terrorized that their tear ducts remained dry. Boguet kept phials to measure the tears of his victims, but even if they wept rivers, they might still be tortured. Boguet was known to have discreetly disposed of the collected tears and then resumed the tortures.

Regarding the tear philosophy, Boguet claimed in his Discours des Sorciers,

The doctors esteem it one of the strongest presumptions that exist as a test of the crime of sorcery. I wish to report what has come to my knowledge. All the sorcerers whom I have examined in quality of Judge have never shed tears in my presence: or, indeed, if they have shed them it has been so parsimoniously that no notice was taken of them. I say this with regard to those who seemed to weep, but I doubt if their tears were not feigned. I am at least well assured that those tears were wrung from them with the greatest efforts. This was shown by the efforts which the accused made to weep, and by the small number of tears which they shed.

Yet if I spoke to them in private they shed tears and wept with all possible vehemence. The same happened when they confessed. They then showed themselves more lively and joyous than they had previously been, as if they had been delivered from a great burden. Besides it is probable that sorcerers do not shed tears, since tears serve principally to penitents to wash away and cleanse their sins.

Nevertheless, if you demand of sorcerers why they do not shed tears, they answer you that it is impossible for them to weep because they have the heart too much oppressed at seeing themselves disgraced by the imputation of a crime so detestable as that of sorcery.

Robert le Bougre - Cathar-cum inquisitor
Robert le Bougre was a converted Cathar-cum who became an Inquisitor. In 1239 he convicted 183 perfecti (fully instructed Cathars) and burnt them en masse. He was later arrested and died in prison.

Jacques du Boys - Dominican witch-hunter
Dominican witch-hunter. Like Jean, Bishop of Beirut, Jacques du Boys was a Dominican friar who tutored the Inquisitor of Arras. Dean of the general chapter of the Order of Preachers, du Boys believed that many Cardinals and Bishops were secretly witches. He also believed that fully one-third of Christian Europe's population practiced witchcraft. Du Boys was a rabid witch-finder indeed. Anyone who opposed the burning of any witch was herself or himself a worshipper of the Devil.

A Church service preceded Arras' first mass burning of witches in 1459. All convicted witches confirmed the accuracy of the Inquisitor's Sabbat descriptions. Nonetheless, when it came time for the convicts to be burned, all recanted their confessions. While tied to the stake, the victims cried out that they had been induced to say they had attended the Sabbat "by means of torture and lying promises--they had been assured that if they confessed their only penance would be an obligation to go on a short pilgrimage." The Inquisitor showed no mercy and all were killed.

The Duke of Burgundy, feudal overlord of Arras, eventually intervened and the witch trials ground to a halt. Thirty years after they had been burned to death, the witches of Arras were posthumously granted a full pardon. A memorial was "erected on the site at which they had died, protesting their innocence as the flames rose around them."

Franz Buirmann - Witch-finder of Cologne
Witch-finder of Cologne - the chivalrous Franz Buirmann was so kind as to arrest a woman on charges of witchcraft when she refused to warm to his sexual advances. She was henceforth tortured, "raped by the torturer's assistant and then burned alive."

Lambert Daneau - Anti-witch writer of Geneva
Anti-witch writer of Geneva. In his lifetime, Lambert Daneau (1530-1595) was one of the most famous Calvinist theologians in Europe. He was the Professor of Theology at Geneva and the chair of Theology at Leyden. In 1564, Daneau wrote Les Sorciers, Dialogue très utile et très necessaire pour ce temps. In 1575, an English version was published with an immensely long title: A Dialogue of Witches, in foretime named Lot-tellers, and now commonly called Sorcerers. Wherein is declared breefly and effectually, whatsoever may be required, touching that argument. A treatise very profitable, by reason of the diverse and sundry opinions of men in this question, and right necessary for Judges to understand, which sit upon life or death.

The Dialogue was written after the Paris executions of "almost an infinite number" of witches. Daneau was led to write an explanation for the high number of witches. He declared the increase of witch activity directly parallelled the increasing wickedness of humanity. This increase in wickedness increases Satan's power to win souls from God.

Daneau wrote at length about witches' marks, physical attendance at sabbats, and the necessity of pitiless extirpation of witches. Like so many others, Daneau condemned any judge who allowed a witch to live:

I marvel therefore that at this present there be some Iudges so parciall, or rather so unfreendly to all mankynde, that they be affearde, or rather wil not ryd away out of the worlde, such horrible and cruell beastes, as Sorcerers bee, and punish them when they come into their handes...they declare by this fondnesse of their owne mynde, howe much they contemne God, and are great and manifest despisers of his honour and glory, whose mortall and sworne enemies when they have founde, and taken: yet do they let them goe and suffer them to live.

Martin Antonio del Rio - Anti-witch writer of the Netherlands
Anti-witch writer of the Netherlands. In 1599, Jesuit Martin Antonio Del Rio wrote a study of witchcraft entitled Disquisitionum magicarum libri VI. This work reached Munich in the spring of 1600 in a Louvain print, and aroused much interest among Bavarian lawyers.

Del Rio was a well-known and well-respected scholar, having published impressive volumes since his teens. In his Disquisitionum he wrote:

To omit to destroy the wicked when you can what is that but to cherish them? To fail to oppose error is to approve it: to fail to defend truth is to oppose it. Those who do so are strengthening the tyranny of the devil in the Church of Christ. By their deeds is the security of the commonweal betrayed. They are accumulating lucre at the cost of the destruction of the community. Their pleasure it is to sleep soundly (in utramque aurem dormire) while the cunning Dragon occupies the whole body; and the poison of apostacy, idolatry and of unspeakable lusts, incredible cruelty and of daily and execrable crimes against those of tender age and against the sustenance of men, to the injury of their fatherland and that of the whole human race and the structure of society - this is gradually spreading throughout the whole Body of Christ.

Who would not agree that such are guilty of the greatest possible disservice to the state and to the Church? Who would not hate and destroy them? For, if we can see anything, this is obvious: that impunity makes the witches grow in wickedness and enables them readily to enlist, all the time, more and more accomplices - and nothing do they desire more than to accomplish the constant requirement of the Devil by infecting the part that yet remains sound with the same cancer. By sparing the evil-doer the safety of the innocent is endangered.

If this old saying is true of any accusatinon it is surely most true of all in this instance. God himself openly declared to the Babylonians by Isaiah that he would never show favour to any land in which witches were spared, but that on the contrary he would extract from it the severest penalties.

'Those two things' he saith 'shall come to thee (Babylon) in a moment in one day, the loss of children and widowhood. They shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee. Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly.'

John Dick - Scottish witch-finder
John Dick was a Scottish witch-finder prosecuted along with John Kincaid in 1662 by the Privy Council. Both were tried for "fraud and deceit in their work of pricking witches for the Devil's mark."

Prince Bishop von Dornheim - Witch-hunter of Bamberg
Witch-hunter of Bamberg. In the 1620s, greed and obsession with witchcraft led Prince Bishop von Dornheim to establish an overly efficient witch-finding bureaucracy. This enterprise was headed by a suffragan bishop, Friedrich Forner, and was staffed by full-time executioners, torturers, and lawyers.

Von Dornheim had a special witches' prison erected, called the Hexenhaus or Witches' House. The torture applied therein was devastatingly effective. Not even one person housed in the Hexenhaus failed to confess to diabolical activities. Around 600 people were executed for witchcraft. (For a first-hand account of the torture, read accused witch Johannes Junius' letter to his daughter.)

Anyone who expressed sympathy for the witches met with dire consequences. No leniency was tolerated. Dr. Haan, Vice-Chancellor of the diocese, had been suspected of showing some sympathy to accused witches. As a result, he "was denounced as a witch and burned with his wife and daughter."

Eventually word made it to von Dornheim's overlord (the Emperor) that "victims of the hunt were popularly regarded as innocent and worthy of sympathy." In response, the Emporer decreed that personal and familial property of the accused must not be confiscated. With no more money and properties rolling in, von Dornheim's witch hunt was squelched within two years.

Jean Duprat - Inquisitor of Carcassonne
Jean Duprat, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, was instrumental in a witch trial of the mountains of Alaric. The 1435 examination was concerned with eight people and the leader of their band, a woman by the name of Mabille de Marnac.

Pienille Roland, Matheline Figuier, Armande Robert, and Paul Viguirer boasted about the Sabbat they had attended in the mountains near Alaric. Andre Ciceron, a Black Mountains shepherd, claimed to have parodied the mass in order to cast a spell. Catala and Paul Rodier, two other shepherds, were accused by Duprat of being both magicians and poisoners. "They had summoned the Devil by night, at a cross-roads, by sacrificing a black hen, in order to promote strife in the district."

Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg - Witchhunter of Wurzburg
Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg ruled over Wurzburg. From 1623 until his death in 1631, von Ehrenberg had "tortured, beheaded and burned 900 persons, including at least 300 children three to four years of age."

Dr. Matern Eschbach - Witch-hunter of Baden-Baden
A zealous witch eradicator, Dr. Matern Eschbach was one of the most important councillors of Baden-Baden in the early to mid-1600s. From September 16, 1627 to October 3, 1628, he ferreted out witches in the town of Baden. After building a reputation as a witch hunter,

he was called repeatedly, from October 3, 1628, through April 10, 1631, to the towns of Bühl and Steinbach as well as Baden, where he conducted examinations, advised on the amount of torture to apply, and heard ratifications of confessions (Besiebnungen). During this time, Eschbach and his colleagues established a fierce reputation as unrelenting tortureres and left a trail of some 200 reports by which we can at least gauge their activity.

In 1628, for example, Eschbach found 33 witches in Steinbach, nine of whom were men. One was even the Margrave's appointed supervisor (Stabhalter), Hans Heinz, in Steinbach, a man who became suspect after his mother and sisters were executed as witches. One can only speculate whether political or religious motives also played a part in the elimination of this government official. In addition, hundreds of denunciations were registered, the inevitable result of asking suspects under torture to name all persons they had seen at the witches' dance.

In Bühl, a short distance from Steinbach, Eschbach was even more successful. There during 1628 and 1629 he found at least 70 persons guilty of witchcraft, including the wife of a member of the Bühl district court. Twenty-three of the toral executed, or one-third, were men. Denunciations during these trials implicated the local supervisor, the scribe's wife, the Spitalmeister in Baden (director of the city hospital, which usually served as a geriatric nursing home as well), the church superintendent of Baden, and other honored persons.

The trials were noteworthy for bringing denunciations of children by their own parents, and of parents by their children, thus heralding the last phase of massive witch hunts in which children were common participants.

For the town of Baden itself, where Eschbach started, our secondary sources become unaccountably vague. By computation, however, it would seem that Baden tried 97 persons between 1627 and 1630 and executed some 90 of them. Baden was the only town of the three to conduct torture in such a way that at least six could withstand the repeated pain. Even so, an overall average of 3 per cent acquitted must be a near record for efficiency or brutality.

Nicholas Eymeric - Papal Inquisitor of Aragon
Papal Inquisitor Nicholas Eymeric of Aragon (1320-1399) was instrumental in the relaxation of torture regulations, circumventing "the prohibition of repetition by allowing its continuation at a later time." A Catalan Dominican, in 1376 Eymeric wrote an inquisitorial manual called Directorium Inquisitorium. This work read like a scholastic disputation, and was a forerunner of the Malleus Maleficarum.

In Directorium Inquisitorium, he pointed out three types of witchcraft:

"The witchcraft of those who practise Devil-worship, making sacrifices, prostrating themselves, singing prayers, lighting candles and burning incense, etc."

"The witchcraft of those who merely respect the devils and mention them in litanies along with the saints, asking for their intercession with God."

"The witchcraft of those who summon up devils by tracing magical signs, by placing a child in the middle of a circle, by using a sword or a mirror."

Eymeric firmly believed that all forms of demon conjuration and Satanic pacts were to be condemned. Before this, it had been popularly believed that even saints would occasionally sign pacts with demons and devils for the greater good of humanity. St. Theophilus signed one such contract with the Devil and gained magical powers as a result.

Ulrich Felger - Corrupt prison guard
Ulrich Felger was a corrup prison guard in Ellwangen. He participated in low-level corruption and mismanagement. He illegally divulged trial details and other secret information to other witch suspects and to the general public. He admitted to raping a number of female suspects in prison, and to committing extortion and blackmail.

After excaping custody, Felger was "extradited from Limpurg in 1614, and executed on November 6."

Johann Baptist Fickler - Bavarian anti-witch writer
Dr. Johann Baptist Fickler (b. May 1534) - a Bavarian anti-witch writer - was a well-educated councillor who "demanded the ruthless persecution and eradication of witches and sorcerers throughout the land."

The mischief wrought by such spawn of the Devil was one of his favorite topics, the academic and legal implications of which he had often discussed. [...] He was an expert in the field. It is true that his instructions to judges and lawyers on the punishment of witches and magicians, worked out in his nocturnal sessions, were numbered among those works for which no publisher could be found. Nevertheless, he was to list them in his autobiographical notes along with all his other works, no doubt concerned that nothing should be lost to posterity.

Fickler was responsible for the records of the Pappenheimer trial, and had been the personal tutor of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria.

Girolamo Folengo - Anti-witch writer
In 1519, Girolamo Folengo - anti-witch writer - wrote the decidedly paranoid Macarronea. In it, Folengo says:

Not only do old hags bestride cats and goats and pigs, but many dignitaries too, and civic officials and those who administer justice to the people in the august senate range themselves to be governed under Gulfora's sway. They observe the days of Jupiter; they anoint their limbs, hurrying to pay court to the Mistress, who is called Gulfora.

Folengo goes on to describe a so-called academy of witchcraft:

There is another spot, thrice one hundred arms long, where a swarm of old hags teach alas! how many maidens. A thousand old witches, as instructors do, reveal the rites that must be learned: how to achieve their wishes by yielding to Venus: how to anoint themselves and produce thunder in the sky; how to blight crops and vines by hailstorm; how to change their bodies into different forms.

Edmund Grindal - Witch-hunter of Canterbury
Witch-hunter of Canterbury. Like John Jewel, Edmund Grindal had left England at the accession of Mary Tudor. While in exile, he lived amongst the "witch-hunting Calvinists of Strassbourg, Speier, and Frankfort." On April 17, 1561, well after his return to England, Grindal wrote to the Queen's Secretary Sir William Cecil regarding a matter of great import. Grindal enclosed a confession of "magic and Conjuration" made by a priest called John Coxe or Devon.

In the letter, Grindal begged the Council to offer "some extraordinary punishment for example. My Lord Chief Justice sayeth the temporal law will not meddle with them. Our ecclesiastical punishment is too slender for so grievous offences."

While Grindal headed the diocese of Canterbury, there were forty-eight recorded indictments and at least seven executions of witches.

Francesco Maria Guazzo - Italian Demonologist
Go to "Francesco Maria Guazzo".

Bernard Gui - Inquisitor of Toulouse
Inquisitor of Toulouse. Although Bernard Gui's main concern was with heretics rather than with witches, in the first quarter of the 14th century, he set out methods for dealing with witches and sorcerors in his Practica Inquisitionis Haereticae Pravitatis.

Sir Matthew Hale - Witch-hunter of Bury S:t Edmonds

In 1662, Sir Matthew Hale presided over trials that led to the condemnation and execution of two witches based on the flimsy spectral evidence of two hysterical, "possessed" children.

Hans Georg Hallmayer - Witch-hunter of Rottenburg
Once the Schultheiss (village magistrate or mayor) of Rottenburg, Hans Georg Hallmayer was a severe witch-hunter. It was rumoured that in the 1570s, he had 180 witches consigned to the stake. Ironically, in 1602, Hallmayer himself was accused of being a witch.

He was charged with having sexual relations with the Devil "in the assumed form of a hospital maid." Hallmayer was thrown into prison where he eventually confessed his pact with Satan. He died in his cell.

Alexander von Haslang zu Haslangsreut, Grosshausen und Reid - Bavarian witch-finder
Hasland (d. 1620) was the prefect of Altmannstein and Abensberg - Bavaria. A one-time lieutenant-colonel, Haslang was a "swashbuckler, 'Captain of the Bodyguard," a born warrior, colonel, and cavalryman."

Haslang had the responsibility of turning the Pappenheimer family into an example of extreme justice. After their capture, Haslang arranged for the interrogation and torture of the Pappenheimers. Although the Pappenheimers declared their innocence of crime and of witchcraft at first, a bit of carefully used torture made them change their plea.

Fundamentally, Haslang was not terribly interested in the case, and thought that an accusation of witchcraft would remove the Pappenheimers from his custody. His assumption proved correct, and the Pappenheimers were shipped elsewhere to their painful demise.

Melcher Hauber - Corrupt prison guard
Melcher Hauber was a corrupt prison guard in Ellwangen. He participated in low-level corruption and mismanagement. He illegally divulged trial details and other secret information to other witch suspects and to the general public. He admitted to raping a number of female suspects in prison.

"For his crimes, Hauber was sworn to absolute secrecy, with death as the threatened punishment for perjury."

Ulrich von Helfenstein - Witch-hunter of Wiesensteig
Ulrich von Helfenstein lived a life of religious turmoil and was a witch-hunter of Wiesensteig. A one-time Catholic, Helfenstein was the target of many Reformists. The attempts of the Reformists were fruitless, however, and in 1567 Helfenstein returned to Catholicism.

In the mid-1500s, Helfenstein's town of Wiesensteig was going through not only religious turmoil, but also war, severe hailstorms, and epidemics. Needing a scapegoat, Helfenstein began to lash out against witches.

On August 3, 1562, there was a huge hail-storm. Damages were extensive. Within a couple of days, Helfenstein had arrested several women, an action which appears to have met with wide approval. Six of the arrested women were executed as witches, and a number of these claimed to have seen citizens of Esslingen at their sabbat. In no time, the witch panic had spread over thirty miles to Esslingen.

Nevertheless, all three arrested in Esslingen were let go. Helfenstein was appalled at the lenience, and executed another forty-one female witches from Wiesensteig. And, "on December 2, 1562, he approved the execution of 20 more. In some such way we reach the total reported in a sensational pamphlet of 1563, which described 'the true and terrible acts and deeds of the sixty-three witches and sorceresses who were burned at Wiesensteig'."

Matthew Hopkins - The witch-finder General of Essex
Go to "Matthew Hopkins"

King James I - The royal witch-hunter of England
Branded "the wisest fool in Christendom" by France's Henry IV and known for his poor personal hygiene, King James I of England held much legal influence of the witch-hunts of the late 1500s. He greatly feared the power of witches. He believed wholly that a storm which threatened to sink his ship and drown both him and his 15-year-old wife, Queen Anne, was summoned by witches. As a result of this belief, the two women "responsible" were burned at the stake (one still alive at the time).

Although James believed witches were to be destroyed, he did find some court procedures to be conscientiously objectionable. "He ended one of the most dubious forms of condemnation, that of denunciation by children at a time when the courts were prepared to accept any flight of fancy by impressionable children as evidence." This injunction occurred after James took time to investigate two cases involving children.

In the first, nine-year-old Jennet Device testified against her eleven-year-old sister and against her mother who were both then hanged in 1582. The second case regarded the young John Smith of Leicester. Smith "feigned fits and the vomiting of pins to frame old women for casting a spell on him. Nine were already hanged on his evidence when James I intervened. At the King's behest, the boy was dispatched to the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Within weeks he broke down and confessed." Denunciation by children would no longer be accepted in court.

In his later years, James came to realize that many witchcraft accusations were maliciously falsified. Regardless, it was James I who authorized the translation of the King James Bible. Under his control, the soon to be oft-quoted Exodus 22:18 was changed from "Thou must not suffer a poisoner to live" to "Thou must not suffer a witch to live." In addition, in 1597 he wrote Daemonologie to counter Discoverie of Witchcraft written by the skeptic Reginald Scot.

Jean - Instructor of Inquisitor of Arras
The Dominican friar Jean was deputy to the Bishop of Arras, instructor of the Inquisitor of Arras, and the bishop of Beirut. In 1459, Jean worked in conjunction with Jacques du Boys, Dean of the general chapter of the Order of Preachers. Jean believed an insidious and diabolical conspiracy was taking place within the Church.

John Jewel - Witch-hunter of Salisbury
A Protestant and witch-hunter of Salisbury, John Jewel (1522-1571) fled the country after the accession of Mary Tudor. In 1555, Jewel left England for Frankfurt-on-Maine, "one of the most noted centres of witch-mania." In July 1556, he went to Strassbourg, yet another witch-craze capital. In 1559, he returned to England where he was soon made Bishop of Salisbury and "one of Elizabeth's most trusted advisers." Sometime between November 1559 and March 1560, he made a sermon before the Queen in which he urged action against the many witches which occupied England. Jewel said:

This kind of people (I mean witches and sorcerers) within the last few years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. These eyes have seen the most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects' most humble petition to your highness is, that the laws touching such malefactors may be put in due execution.

On November 2, 1559, Jewel wrote a letter to his friend Peter Martyr after a visit to the West of England. In the letter he wrote, "The number or witches had everywhere become enormous."

Nonetheless, Jewel's fanaticism began to die out. Only four Windsor women were hanged for witchcraft in his diocese: Elizabeth Stile or Rockingham, Mother Dutten, Mother Deuell, and Mother Margaret. By the time Jewel died, he had abandoned his extreme Calvinist position for the less manic Anglican system.

Dr Leonard Kager - Witch-hunter of Gmünd
Go to "Dr. Leonard Kager".

Carl Kibler - Witch-hunter of Ellwangen
A princely advisor and witch-hunter of Ellwangen, Carl Kibler was responsible for the drafting up of a list of thirty questions to be asked of a witch. The questions began by asking

if the accused could say the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, but then moved on directly to the question of who seduced her into witchcraft. How did this seduction occur? Why did she give in? Where? When? What was the devil like? What did he promise? What was it like to have sexual relations with him? Why did she not break off the relationship when she realized that he was a devil? And so on and on.

John Kincaid - Scottish witch-finder
The Scottish national witch hunt of 1661-1662 ended when John Kincaid, a Scottish witch-finder, along with John Dick, was tried for fraud and deceit in his witch-finding techniques.

The Knights of the Teutonic Order - Witch-finders of Ellingen
Go to "The Knights of the Teutonic Order.

Lewes Lavater - Anti-witch writer of Zürich
Lewes Lavater (1527-1586) was the Chief Pastor of the Calvinist Church of Zürich. In 1572 he wrote Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyght. "The main argument of his book is that, after making the fullest allowance for ocular illusion, hallucination, and jugglers' tricks, there can be no doubt that genuine ghosts do really appear. All literature, sacred and profane, as well as an abundance of experiences among men now living, put this beyond all possible doubt."

Lavater says that ghosts are not the dead, but are in fact devils. He says the power of the Devil is proved by fact of witchcraft. He quotes from the Chronicles of Johannes Tritenhemius:

Hagges, witches and Inchaunters are sayde to hurt men and cattell, if they do but touch them or stroake them, they do horrible things whereof there are whole bookes extant. . . . Magicians, iugglers, inchanters and Necromanciers, are no others than servants of the Diuel: you do not thinke their mayster reserveth some cunning to him self?

Paul Laymann - Anti-witch writer
Regarding the application of torture, "Munich Jesuit Paul Laymann [1575-1635] suggested...a repetition of the examination under torture was always possible on the grounds that 'the judge had not pursued the first application of torture to its conclusion, either because the accused had fallen ill or because the judge had realized that he meant to persist in his contumacious attitude, and would not confess.'"

Martin Luther
Martin Luther (1483-1546) is most famously known for shattering Christian theology in Catholic Europe and for destroying the unity of the Christian Church. Luther also held an immense hatred for witches. When describing the actions of witches, he would ofter ascribe to them the misdeeds of his rivals.

Although Luther had complete faith in the ability of Jesus to triumph over the Devil and his cohorts, he believed that witches had awe-inspiring powers. He once wrote, "I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them."

In his A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, Luther wrote:

When I was a child, there were many witches and sorcerers, which bewitched both cattle and men, but specially children, and did great harm also otherwise; but now, in the light of the gospel, these things be not so commonly heard of, for the gospel thrusteth the devil out of his seat, with all his illusions. But now he bewitcheth men much more horribly, namely, with spiritual sorcery and witchcraft.

Paul reckoneth witchcraft among the works of the flesh, which notwithstanding, as all men know, is not a work of fleshly lust or lechery, but a kind of idolatry. For witchcraft covenanteth with the devil; superstition or idolatry covenanteth with God: albeit, not with the true God, but with a counterfeit god. Wherefore idolatry is, indeed, a spiritual witchcraft. For as witches do enchant cattle and men, so idolaters, that is to say, all justiciaries, or justifiers of themselves, go about to bewitch God, and to make him such a one as they do imagine.

Now they imagine him to be such a one as will justify them, not of his mere grace and mercy, and through faith in Christ, but in respect of their will-worshippings, and works of their own choosing, and in recompence thereof will give them righteousness and life everlasting. But whilst they go about to bewitch God, they bewitch themselves: for if they continue in this wicked opinion which they conceive of God, they shall die in their idolatry and be damned. The works of the flesh are well known for the most part, therefore they shall not need any further declaration.

Luther was also a misogynist, and claimed, "If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it."

Walter Map - Anti-heretic writer
Anti-heretic writer. In 1182, Walter Map wrote an anti-Semitic description of the heretics' meetings. His description was an early predecessor to the stereotypical description of witches' sabbats. Up to the end of the fifteenth century, the word "synagogue" was used to describe witches' and heretics' gatherings. After that point, they were referred to as the equally anti-Jewish "sabbat." Here is what Map wrote about heretics:

About the first watch of the night, when gates, doors, and windows have been closed, the groups sit waiting in silence in their respective synagogues, and a black cat of marvellous size climbs down a rope which hangs in their midst. On seeing it, they put out the lights. They do not sing hymns or repeat them distinctly, but hum through clenched teeth and pantingly feel their way toward the place where they see their lord. When they have found him they kiss him, each the more humbly as he is the more inflamed by frenzy - some the feet, more under the tail, most the private parts.

Konrad von Marburg - German Inquisitor General and heretic-finder
German Inquisitor General and hereteic-finder. Konrad (or Conrad) von Marburg was a learned, pious, and sadistic fanatic. Actually a hunter of heretics and of the dubious Luciferans (Devil worshippers) rather than of witches, he is worth mentioning here because of his search techniques. He would rouse up a mob, round up suspects, and tell them to recant their heresy or die.

He accepted all evidence. Those who recanted their heretical ways would have their heads shaved. Those who maintained their innocence would be sent to the stake.

"The archbishop of Mainz felt constrained to address a letter of complaint to the pope: the inquisitor was forcing the most innocent of people to make untrue confessions by the use of torture. The accused were intimidated, and induced to denounce respectable people by the promise that their lives would be spared."

Konrad was later forced to resign. Before Gregory IX could reply to the archbishop's complaint, some knights took matters into their own hands. On July 30, 1233, Konrad was assassinated on the road from Mainz to Paderhorn. His probable murderers were vassals of Henry of Seym. Seym was "a nobleman whom Conrad had falsely accused of taking part in satanic orgies at which he had been seen riding a demon who had taken on the form of a gigantic crab."

It ought perhaps to be mentioned, however, that the deed was prompted less by love of justice than by concern for their worldly goods. If Konrad von Marburg had not been seduced by greed into choosing his heretics mainly from the ranks of the affluent, so as to confiscated their possessions in the course of the trial - who knows whether he would have been so promptly dispatched by a gang of armored thugs?

Cotton Mather - The witch-finder of Salem
Cotton Mather, born in 1663, was a man of simple but odd beliefs. He believed that an "unsupported confession after due examination was adequate evidence on which to find guilty those accused of witchcraft." He wrote:

Among the sufficient means of Conviction, the first is the free and voluntary Confession of the Crime, made by the party suspected and accused, after Examination...taken upon pregnant assumption. What needs now more witness or further Enquiry?

Throughout the 1692 New England witch trials, Mather's viewpoint dominated the courtroom proceedings. So-called voluntary confessions sent many to their deaths. These confessions were aided by sleep-, drink-, and food-deprivation, of course.

Although the number of victims was small by continental European standards, the trials became famous. Nineteen were hanged to death and one man was pressed to death after refusing to plead. By October 1692, the trials were over. Public opinion changed. A day of public mourning was held as residents struggled to comprehend what they had done. Reverend John Hale, one who had given fatal evidence against a witch, said, "We walked in clouds and could not see our way."

Duke Maximilian I - Witch-hunter of Bavaria
Witch-hunter of Bavaria. When Maximilian I was only seventeen years old, he took an informed interest in a witch trial staged in Ingolstadt. On March 1, 1590, he wrote, "Yesterday a woman was apprehended, that was in the judgment of many and by general repute reckoned to be a witch." On May 14 he wrote to his father, William V,

As concerns the woman that was her imprisoned, Your Grace commanding that I should inform Your Grace most humbly how the matter might turn out, I herewith most humbly inform Your Grace that it has not proved possible, neither with soft nor harsh words, nor yet with torture or by other means, to draw from her as much as one word. As I myself have seen, she was pulled up in due form twice, and also burned the once, and notwithstanding not only did not make confession but mocked us, neither crying out Oh nor Woe, nor seeming to suffer any pain. Only when she once more touched the ground she did once cry out. Those that pulled her up say that when she was lifted from the earth she grew so light as if they were lifting up an empty sack. Who makes her so light, only God knows. It seems plain that she does not feel any pain. Should the fire not serve its turn, then it will not be easy to draw anything from her.

Last Friday there was taken into custody another woman who is answerable to the townsfolk. Her son, who is but a small boy, told many fair and honest pranks concerning his mother, such that I do believe they will soon put her to the question as well, albeit the town council have little stomach for it. What reasons they have, I do not know...

On August 12, Maximilian wrote, "With these wicked monsters they go forward apace, and, as I understand, five of them are already ripe for the fire." Maximilian became Duke of Bavaria in 1595.

Like his father, Maximilian was a staunch anti-Semitic. He renewed the decree set out by his grandfather Duke Albrecht V, saying, "Whereas our respected predecessors and sovereign princes, with the gracious consent of His Majesty the Roman Emperor, and on the advice of our Council, have removed the Jews, their wives, and children... from our Principalities, so We herewith desire and ordain most solemnly that no Jew or Jewess may enter our Principality to have their residence nor to pursue any trade or profession, nor may they be tolerated by anyone whatsoever, or be given shelter."

Simon de Montfort - Heretic-hunter of Albigenses
Heretic-hunter of Albigenses. In 1207, Pierre de Castlenau, the Chief Legate to Pope Innocent III, was murdered. The major suspect was Raymond, the Count of Toulouse. Since Albi was a very rich area, Catholic knights needed no further invitation to attack.

Simon de Montfort led the crusade against the Albigenses. He led an estimated 200,000 foot soldiers and 20,000 knights through the Albigenses. To spare his people, the falsely accused Raymond gave himself up. Without trial, he was tortured and executed.

Raymond's sacrifice was for naught. Under orders of the Pope, the knights began another crusade in 1214. "Women and children were once again stoned to death and cast down deep wells in the pitiless rampage."

Thomas Naogeorgus - Witch-hunter of Esslingen
1562 was not a peaceful time for the town of Esslingen. A witchcraze had recently broken out in Wiesensteig, a town a little over thirty miles away. Pastor Thomas Naogeorgus, upon hearing of the so-called misdeeds of witches, "took up the hue and cry against witches." He became so adamant in his beliefs that the Esslingen city council gave him a warning not to be so irresponsible in his stirring up of the people's emotions. However, the council members were sufficiently unsure of themselves so as to write to Wiesensteig for advice.

The reply was less than reassuring. Witches of Wiesensteig claimed they had seen citizens of Esslingen at their sabbats. Upon hearing this, a panic broke out in Esslingen. Surely Naogeorgus felt vindicated in his beliefs.

It would seem, however, that sermons encouraging moderation had had an effect on the people of Esslingen. Only three people were arrested, and they were eventually let go.

Naogeorgus was greatly embittered by the release of the prisoners, just as was Ulrich von Helfenstein of Wiesensteig. After the witch panic, Naogeorgus "was dismissed for his theological irregularity and died a year later, in December of 1563, in Weissenlohe in the Palatinate."

John Parkhurst - Witch-hunter of Norfolk and Suffolk
John Parkhurst (of Norfolk and Suffolk), like John Jewel had been exiled during the reign of Mary Tudor. Parkhurst spent his exile amongst the witch-hunters of Zürich. By 1590, Parkhurst was back in England and had headed up at least five executions and fourteen recorded indictments. One of the witches executed was Margaret Read. She was burned alive at King's Lynn.

King Philip IV - Royal Templar-hunter
Needless to say, the Inquisition was corrupted by kings. One such king was Philip IV - a royal templar-hunter. In 1291 Acre, most of the Knights Templar were killed. The remainder retired to their estates where they became one of the wealthiest groups in Europe. They became bankers and provided loans to Philip IV.

Not feeling the burning desire to honour these loans, in 1307 Philip IV officially turned on the Knights Templar. He accused the Templars of Devil worship, and set the Inquisitors upon them.

Every Templar was arrested. Torture was applied, and ample proof of the charges was soon after discovered. Pope Clement sent commissioners to try the Templars, but the Templars repudiated their confessions before these commissioners. Philip IV ordered fifty Templars burnt as an example, resulting in the complete recantation of their prior repudiation.

Pope Clement dissolved the Knights Templar and Philip IV took all of their money. The Pope said to give the money to the Hospitalers, which Philip IV did after first "deducting expenses."

Pope Alexander VI
In 1501, perhaps spurred on by the Malleus Maleficarum, Pope Alexander VI wrote a letter to Angelo of Verona, the Inquisitor of Lombardy. Alexander VI was concerned with the rumours of witches in Lombardy. This concern was "possibly inspired by the evils the Malleus had palpably demonstrated, and certainly by the notorious reluctance of northern Italian prelates to allow the authority of the Inquisition into their districts."

The letter to Angelo of Verona, called the Bull Cum acceperimus, went as follows:

As we have learned that in the province of Lombardy many people of both sexes give themselves over to diverse incantations and devilish superstitions in order to procure many wicked things by their venery and vain rites, to destroy men, beasts, and fields, to spread great scandal, and to induce grievous errors, we decree, in order both to fulfill our pastoral office from our high commission and to restrain these evils, scandals, and errors, that they shall cease. That is the reason why we send to you, commit to you, and order you and your successors appointed in Lombardy our full confidence in the Lord, that you may seek out diligently those people of both sexes (either by yourself or with the aid of a company which you shall choose) and secure and punish them through the medium of justice.

And so that you may be better able to fulfill this commission, we give to you against them full and sufficient powers, notwithstanding all other constitutions and apostolic orders, indulgences, and ordinary concessions which have been accorded at other times, and notwithstanding all other orders to the contrary of these, whatever they may be.

Pope Gregory IX
In 1233 Pope Gregory IX accused the Waldensian heretics--really evangelical moralists--of attending assemblies where the Devil incarnate presided over orgies.

Pope Innocent VIII
Pope Innocent VIII (1484-92) was moved by the compaints of two Dominican Inquisitors, Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, that local ecclesiastical authorities in Germany refused to aid them in their pursuit of heretical witchcraft. Sprenger and Krämer described some of their cases to the pope and elicited from him the famous Bull called, from its opening Latin words, Summis desiderantes. The similarity in terminology of this and earlier papal documents, its particular emphasis upon preaching, and its lack of dogmatic pronouncement on the subject of witchcraft place it squarely in the tradition of papal concern for heresy and disbelief. Its circulation with Sprenger and Krämer's later handbook, the Malleus Maleficarum, gave it both a wider circulation and a more direct role in subsequent witch persecutions than it might otherwise have had.

Pope John XXII
In the 1320s, Pope John XXII "expressed a particular horror of witches and claimed that he feared for his own life at their hands." After being advised by several theologians, John XXII directed papal Inquisitors against magicians and necromancers.

John Stearne - English witch-finder
John Stearne was a witch-hunter alongside Matthew Hopkins in England 1645-1646. The suspicion of fraud seems to have led to the end of his career.

Gervaise of Tilbury - Anti-witch writer of Arles

Writing about 1214, Gervaise of Tilbury tells stories that he claims to have garnered from eye- witnesses. Men and women ride out at night over long distances. Certain people have seen their flight as they passed over land and sea. They are able to fly all over the glove, so long as none of them makes the mistake of uttering the name of Christ while in flight, for this will make them immediately fall and plunge to the ground. At Arles, Gervaise himself saw a woman who had thus been plunged into the Rhone and soaked as far as her navel.

The witches enter people's houses in the course of these nocturnal journeys. They disturb sleepers by sitting on their chests and causing nightmares of suffocation and falling. They have sexual relations with sleeping men. They suck blood, steal infants from their beds, and rummage through baskets and bins for food. They take the form of cats, wolves, or other animals at will.

Johannes Tinctorus - Theologian
Johannes Tinctorus - theologian - wrote a treatise on witchcraft which contains an early depiction of the Sabbat, "with witches venerating the Devil in the form of a goat, and others flying through the air on extravagant woolly monsters."

Thomás de Torquemada - Spanish Grand Inquisitor
Spanish grand inquisitor. Thomás de Torquemada is known more for his persecution of Jews than for his persecution of perceived witches. Nonetheless, the techniques he used are similar to those of the witch hunt and therefore deserve mention.

In 1480, under pressure from the populace, the Spanish Court on Inquisition was established. The aim of this Inquisition was to discover if the Conversos (Jews who had been baptized as Catholic) were really Judaists. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain so they would have no influence over the Conversos. 250,000 Jews left and went to Muslim countries and to the economic merchant centres of Northern Europe.

The Inquisition decided that Jewish ancestry determined secret Jews. If one had a Jewish grandparent, this person had Jewish blood and was therefore a Converso. Although all Conversos had been baptized, washing sin from their souls, it was determined that Jewish blood was so filthy it was impervious to baptism and divine grace (which is in itself a heresy). The Pure Blood Laws were introduced.

In 1484, Grand Inquisitor Thomás de Torquemada declared the Blood Laws official doctrine. Since Torquemada responded only to a council of eight who reported to royalty, there was no possible appeal to the Pope. Since Torquemada had Jewish ancestry (four generations back), he drew the line of the Blood Laws at 1/64 Jewish blood, or three generations back.

Abbot Johann Trithemus - Anti-witch writer
Abbot Johann Trithemus lived in the 16th century and was very concerned with the so-called widespread prevalence of witches. He believed that witches were everywhere, and that no one could know how far reaching their nefarious deeds were. In his Liber Octo Quaestionum he wrote:

Witches are a most pestiferous class, who enter on pacts with demons, and, after making a solemn profession of faith, dedicate themselves, in lasting obedience, to some particular demon. No one can describe the evils of which this class of beings is guilty. Hence they must nowhere be tolerated, but utterly and everywhere exterminated.

In his paranoia, Trithemus wrote other works. The misogynistic Antipalus Maleficiorum states:

By their incantations and unhallowed sorceries they have defiled almost the entire world. Men and beasts perish by the wickedness of these women. Nor does anyone conceive that the source is witchcraft. Many people suffer chronic and serious illnesses without realizing that they have been bewitched.

Dr Wangereck - Bavarian witch-hunter
Wangereck knew from experience that men can be made to talk more easily than women, who usually withstood the pain of torture longer.

William V - Witch-hunter of Bavaria
William V was the abdicated Duke of Bavaria. Father of Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, William V was a very devout man who hated witches and heretics. When his son Maximilian was still childless after five years of marriage, he came to believe the the childlessness was due to some spell cast on Maximilian's wife.

The duchess was bewitched... He had persecuted the heretics in his realm too zealously, shown too little mercy in burning witches, served the cause of Christ too plainly not to incur the bitter hatred of the Devil on himself and his family. William V had faith, nevertheless, that the Cross would prove more powerful in the end than the pentagram. If the spell could not be broken by prayers and devotional exercises, the general of the Barnabite friars, Michael Marrano, might be brought to Munich. He... was a celebrated expert in removing spells from princely personages.

William V knew all about witches. In fact, the bewitching of his daughter-in-law was almost trivial in comparison with the many evil works performed by witches. They ruined harvests, destroyed cattle and crops, brought pestilence, plague, and sickness into Bavaria, and wrought death and destruction. The most horrible thing about witches, however, was that they were an affront to God, and if nothing was done, God might bring down His wrath on Bavaria.

It was for this reason that

William had very early on exhorted his prefects and their officials to root out such vermin. Under his rule there had been epidemic persecution of witches in Schongau and the Werdenfels area, with one hundred and fourteen convicted witches dragged to the stake. He had given the most rigorous order that only those that repented might be strangled before they were burned, while the unrepentant were to be roasted alive in the Spanish manner. The screams of his victims did not rouse him from his sleep; he was better off than France's Catharine de Medici, who had been haunted by the ghosts of murdered Huguenots. He had taken precautions to ward off that sort of fiendish commotion: his palace was linked by connecting passages with churches and monasteries and packed with instuments of salvation - relics, crucifixes, and stoups of holy water. The whole devilish clan might rage before his gates, the holy man's abode was impregnably fortified against Satan.

By the time the pious monarch had abdicated, he had made it clear to his son that he should continue the extermination of witches. It was obvious to William for it was obvious "that his drastic measures would provoke Lucifer, and that the fiendish brood would go on trying to harm his flourishing principality. One reason why he had chosen Dr. Fickler as his son's tutor was that Fickler had written a book about witch trials."

William was also an anti-Semitic who continued a policy of active persecution.