Europe's inner demons

From all this a coherent picture emerges. It is clear that many of the forms of maleficium that figure in the witch-trials of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been familiar for many centuries before. Causing death or disease in human beings and animals; producing impotence in men; raising storms and destroying crops — these things belonged to the traditional world of maleficium

, a world that existed already in the early Middle Ages and that had never ceased to exist thereafter. In medieval Europe it was generally believed that these things could be done by those possessed of the necessary occult power; while some individuals believed that they themselves possessed that power and tried to do those things.

The beliefs existed — but how large did they bulk in people’s minds? If we were to judge solely by the number of recorded maleficium trials, we would have to conclude that they hardly bulked at all. Only a couple of cases are known. Around 970, in England, a certain widow was accused by a man called Aelsie of trying to murder him by driving nails into a puppet made in his likeness; the puppet being found in her chamber. After trial the woman was drowned at London Bridge; her son, who was also implicated, fled and was outlawed; and their estate in Northamptonshire passed to the king, who gave it to the intended victim, Aelsie. Property had been in dispute, and the outcome of the trial settled the matter.⁽²⁸⁾

The other case, after starting with a regular trial, ended in a manner Queen Fredegond would have understood. In 1028 Count William II of Angouleme fell ill with a wasting sickness, and rumour spread that he was a victim of sorcery. Suspicion concentrated on a certain woman; and as she refused to admit anything, it was decided to hold a trial by the ordeal of single combat, the count and the suspect both being represented by champions. The count’s champion was victorious; whereupon the woman was tortured and even crucified — but still, “her heart sealed by the Devil”, she uttered not a word. However, three other women made confessions which resulted in the discovery of clay puppets, buried in the ground. The count, who was an unusually devout man, pardoned all four women; but as soon as he was dead, his son had them burned outside the town walls.⁽²⁹⁾

There is little other positive evidence of maleficium

trials before 1300. Nevertheless, it cannot be assumed that people gave little thought to these matters. We shall show later what formidable obstacles the law itself put in the way of anyone who might wish to bring a charge of maleficium—yet even so, one finds indications that the popular fear and anger that became so manifest at the time of the great witch-hunt were by no means absent in earlier centuries. As we have seen, in pre-Christian times it had been customary to kill suspected witches as a matter of private vengeance; but long after such practices were forbidden, witches continued to be killed. When telling how Lothair I drowned the nun Gerberga for sorcery in 834, the contemporary chronicler appends the significant comment: “as is the custom with sorcerers”.⁽³⁰⁾

In 1080 Pope Gregory VII wrote to King Harold of Denmark, complaining that in Denmark storms and pestilence were being blamed on priests and women, and that the latter were being cruelly put to death; and he forbade such practices.⁽³¹⁾ In 1128 the burghers of Ghent disembowelled a suspected witch and paraded her intestines through her village.⁽³²⁾