Europe's inner demons

By its very nature maleficium was almost improvable. Where puppets were produced, stuck full of pins, things might go well enough; but such cases were very exceptional. Other types of proof were far more hazardous. A misfortune — a death or an illness — was never simultaneous with the act of maleficium that was supposed to have caused it. Nor were there likely to be eye-witnesses to an act of maleficium — let alone eye-witnesses who would be prepared to testify on oath. The accused, on the other hand, had very good chances of establishing his or her innocence, whether by ordeal or by compurgation. In such circumstances, to charge anyone with maleficium was to take a very grave risk indeed. Sometimes the risk was taken, with disastrous results — for instance, at Strasbourg in 1451 a man who had accused a woman of

maleficium and failed to make his case was arrested, tried for calumny and drowned in the River Ill.⁽⁶⁰⁾

What was true of maleficium as a secular offence was even more true of maleficium as a religious offence. If the hazards were enough to deter a man from demanding justice even when he felt himself personally wronged, why ever should he concern himself with a matter which in no way involved his own interests? Maleficium

as a religious offence was best left to the priest in the confessional. It was not for nothing that the clerical authors of the famous manual for witch-hunters, the Malleus Maleficarum, deplored the fact that even in the late fifteenth century the accusatory procedure was still in force at Coblenz. There were suspected witches in the neighbourhood, but it was simply impossible to try them under that procedure.⁽⁶¹⁾

It is not really surprising, then, that no tradition ever developed of bringing unsolicited accusations of maleficium; nor does the absence of such a tradition prove that during the Middle Ages the common people were not preoccupied with maleficium. The lynchings listed above are enough to show that

maleficium was feared and that those who practised it, or were suspected of practising it, were hated. Indeed, they may show more than that: for lynchings are just what one would expect in a situation where fear and hatred were widespread but could find no expression through legal, institutionalized channels.

Much had to change before maleficium trials could become frequent, let alone before mass witch-hunts could begin. The accusatory had to be replaced by the inquisitorial procedure, while maleficium itself had to be seen in a new and more sinister light.

9. MAGICIAN INTO WITCH (1)

— 1 —

So long as the forgeries of Bardin, Lamothe-Langon and Piotto remained undetected, it seemed plausible that the great witch-hunt should have developed out of the Inquisition’s struggle, during the fourteenth century, against heresy amongst the common people of southern France and northern Italy. But the demolition of the three forgeries changes everything. Traditional assumptions break down, familiar sources acquire different meanings, perspectives shift, the outlines of a new picture emerge.

It remains true that the first steps towards the great witch-hunt were taken when the inquisitorial procedure was brought to bear on new notions of maleficium. But these new notions of maleficium had nothing to do with heretical movements in southern France or northern Italy but reflected developments in quite different quarters; while the inquisitorial procedure was applied mainly not by professional inquisitors but by quite different authorities.

These bald statements call for elaboration. It is generally believed that ritual magic (or ceremonial magic, as it is sometimes called) had nothing whatsoever to do with witchcraft; and on the face of it that seems obvious. The practitioner of ritual magic operated above all by means of conjuration: he would summon one or more individual demons by name, with the object of persuading or compelling them to carry out a specific task. More often male than female, a commander of demons rather than their servant, a specialist skilled in a most elaborate technique, he was a very different figure from the witch as she was imagined at the time of the great witch-hunt. Yet if, after excluding the fabrications of Bardin, Lamothe-Langon and Piotto, one re-examines the remaining thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources without any preconceptions, one finds that they are practically all concerned with ritual magic, and with that alone. One can also observe how, over a period of generations ritual magic and the struggle against ritual magic helped to produce the fantastic stereotype of the witch. It turns out that the source of the new notions of maleficium lies there.