Europe's inner demons

The picture that emerges from this document is clear enough. A dozen witnesses voice accusations or suspicions against a family — in effect against a mother and her daughter, though with some suggestion that the father too may be implicated. All the accusations and suspicions are concerned with maleficia—eight of them with making storms by means of homeopathic or imitative magic (splashing the water in the river), two with causing the death of a human being, two with causing mysterious illness (a spell of unconsciousness, a permanent crippling) one with causing the death of an ox, one with destroying property by thunderbolt. The elder woman is a midwife; and where a motivation for the

maleficia is mentioned, it is her jealousy of rivals in her profession.

The picture can be completed from other depositions in the Canton of Lucerne. In 1454, in the town of Lucerne itself, Dorothea, the wife of Burgi Hindremstein, was accused by several witnesses.⁽³³⁾

When her child was knocked over by another child, Dorothea brought illness upon the latter. When her daughter became involved in a quarrel with another woman, Dorothea cursed the woman so that she was covered in sores. When a creditor of her husband’s demanded payment of an overdue debt, Dorothea killed his cow by sorcery. When Dorothea herself quarrelled with a woman, she made her enemy’s cow give blood instead of milk, until she was mollified with a gift of flour. The case was aggravated by the fact that Dorothea’s mother had been burned as a witch and that she herself had had to flee from the Canton of Uri. Weighing the evidence, the council of Lucerne decided that such a woman was better dead than alive, and accordingly sentenced her to be burned.

Very similar is the case of the woman known as “the Oberhauserin”, accused by a number of her neighbours in Kriens in 1500.⁽³⁴⁾ When a neighbour stole this woman’s cherries, she bewitched his milk; and when by means of counter-magic he made her ill, she did the same to him. In the end he had to win her favour, whereupon she cured him. On another occasion the Oberhauserin enticed a maid away from her employers; in the resulting quarrel, she used sorcery to bring further misfortunes upon the household — sickness in the cattle. A man who had a small difference with her was thrown by his horse, fell sick and finally died — protesting that he was being killed by sorcery. Two brothers refused her the loan of a hoe: they were deluged with hail. Rightly or wrongly, people accused the Oberhauserin of boasting of her powers; at least she seems to have reacted to the accusations by threatening those who made them. And here, too, as in the case of Dichtlin, not only the woman but her daughter and her husband were regarded with fear; she was expected to perform

maleficia on their behalf as well as on her own. When, after talking with her husband, a man lost two head of cattle, he at once assumed that he must, unwittingly, have caused offence by his remarks.

Harmful storms, sickness in man and beast — these were the commonest accusations; but it was not unknown for a villager suffering from impotence to attribute it to maleficium

In 1531 one Sebastian, of the village of Rüti in the Willisau, felt himself persecuted by a woman called Stürmlin, because he had married the girl whom Stürmlin had chosen for her own son.⁽³⁵⁾ His account of the woman, her actions and her power, is full of real dread. He was impotent with his wife, and had no doubt that this was Stürmlin’s doing. He told how Stürmlin would often come, unannounced, into his room, and depart without saying a word, leaving him and his wife terrified. Once in church Stürmlin shot him such a glance that his hair stood on end; and later that day, when he set out to visit her, he developed such a pain in the neck that he could hardly speak. When he took a bath with his wife, in the hope that this might cure their trouble, Stürmlin appeared and said that the bath might prove too strong for one or other of them; whereupon his wife was seized with violent cramps. Sometimes the man would forbid Stürmlin the house, and then the results were disastrous; all the cattle died, while the horses over-ate till they were unfit for work. Yet at other times the couple would ask the woman to help them. Stürmlin seems in fact to have been a “wise woman”, specializing in magical cures, and by no means an irreconcilable enemy of the young people. When Sebastian reproached her with his misfortunes, she merely asked him not to slander her, as it might make it harder for her to help him with her prayers. She gave the couple all kinds of magical devices— a notched stick to help with prayer, a special candle to light on Maundy Thursday. Nevertheless it is clear that Sebastian and his wife worked themselves into such a state of hysteria that the mere thought of Stürmlin was enough to produce all kinds of disorders.