Europe's inner demons

Plate 1 reproduces a miniature in a manuscript, dated about 1460, of a Latin tract or sermon by Johannis Tinctoris, Contra sectam Valdensium. Tinctoris was a former professor of theology and rector of Cologne University. In 1460 he was living in retirement, as a canon at Tournai; and the “Waldensians” whom he attacked were the victims of the witch-hunt in 1460 at Arras. The miniature shows how the witches’ sabbat was imagined at the time when the fantasy was just taking shape. The witches fly to the sabbat on monstrous beasts, they worship the Devil in the form of a goat, but they clearly belong to the upper strata of society and include as many men as women.

Plate 2 reproduces an illustration in the second edition of Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de I’inconstance des mauvais anges, Paris, 1613. De Lancre was a distinguished magistrate of Bordeaux who in 1609, at the behest of King Henry IV, carried out a major witch-hunt in the Basque country. The illustration shows how the sabbat was imagined at the height of the great witch-hunt. Lancre explains the details: Satan in the likeness of a goat, preaching from a golden pulpit; a witch presenting a child she has abducted; witches and demons feasting, chiefly on human flesh, including that of unbaptized children; obscene dances of witches and demons, with musicians providing the accompaniment. He also points out the witches on the extreme right are poor folk and are not admitted to the banquets, while those on the left are lords and ladies and are responsible for the high ceremonies of the sabbat — a further proof that where witch-hunting was at its most intense, it was by no means directed solely against poor old women. The witches in the foreground are preparing maleficia, while the flying witches are supposed to be raising storms at sea.

The first two illustrations are both the work of people who believed in the reality of the happenings they portrayed. This was no longer the case with Goya. In an unpublished introduction to the series of Caprichos he described his aim: to conjure up “forms and movements which have

1. “Waldensians” adoring the Devil in the form of a he-goat. From a manuscript of a French translation of a Latin tract or sermon by Johannis Tinctoris, Contra sectam Valdensium. Copyright Bibliothequc royale Albert I^er, Brussels (MS 11209, folio 3 recto). Date about 1460.

2. The witches’ sabbat as imagined at the height of the great witch-hunt.

From Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais auges

, second edition, Paris, 1613.

3. Goya: Capricho No. 71, with the caption: “Si amanece, nos vamos” (“When day dawns, we have to go”).

4. Goya: Painting of witches, often known as El aquelarre (The witches sabbat), in the Museo de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

5. Goya, Painting of witches, often known as El hechizo (The bewitching), in the Museo de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

6. Goya: Capricho No. 45, with the caption: '‘Much hay que chupar” (“There’s plenty to nibble at”).

7. Goya: Saturn devouring one of his sons, in the Prado, Madrid.

8. Rubens: Saturn devouring one of his sons, in the Prado, Madrid. Reproduced from the Mansell Collection, London.

hitherto existed only in our imagination”. The paintings and engravings reproduced in Plates 3, 4, 5 and 6—all of which belong to the period 1795-9—are satirical in intention. As Edith Helman has shown in her book Trasmundo de Goya (Madrid, 1963), they were inspired by an eye-witness account of a famous witch-burning held at Logroño in 1610; and they mock the witches’ confessions that were read out on that occasion. Goya knew perfectly well that there were no such things as witches’ sabbats. Nevertheless, thanks to his extraordinary powers of imagination and intuition, he was able to re-create the phantasmagoria with all the compulsive vividness which it possessed for earlier generations.

Plate 3, which reproduces a Capricho entitled “Si amanece, nos vamos” (“When day dawns, we have to go”), shows a senior witch instructing junior colleagues. It has been suggested that the sack is meant to be imagined as full of dead infants; and the presence of the two children in the background seems to point in the same direction. Certainly Plates 4, 5 and 6 show what a large place the killing and devouring of infants occupied in the traditional notion of witchcraft. The Capricho reproduced in Plate 6 actually bears the caption “Mucho hay que chupar” (“There’s plenty to nibble at”). Together with Goya’s famous painting of Saturn devouring one of his sons (Plate 7), and the painting by Rubens which probably inspired it (Plate 8), they provide inconographical support for the argument of the Postscript that follows.

POSTSCRIPT:

PSYCHO-HISTORICAL SPECULATIONS