Europe's inner demons

It is true that the witch of Orta does not stand entirely alone. Around 1508 one Bernardo Rategno, who was then inquisitor for the neighbouring diocese of Como, wrote that “the sect of witches began to pullulate only within the last 150 years, as appears from the old records of trials by inquisitors, in the archives of our Inquisition at Como”.⁽⁵⁷⁾This seemed to confirm that inquisitorial witch-hunting in that neighbourhood could indeed be traced back to the 1350s. However, no later writer has found any trace of the documents in question, though the archives of Como have been searched by historians who had these matters in mind.⁽⁵⁸⁾

The earliest witch-hunts established as having taken place in that area date from a full century later — from the 1450s in the Val Leventina, from the 1480s in Como itself. As for Rategno, otherwise known as Bernard of Como, he was appointed inquisitor only after a lifetime spent as a preacher, but during the years left to him he earned himself a reputation as a ruthless hunter of witches; indeed, the passage in question comes from a tract written specially to prove that witches exist and ought to be burned.⁽⁵⁹⁾ No serious modern historian would have taken the statement at its face value if it had not appeared to be supported by other evidence, Italian and French. With that evidence discredited, and no other evidence forthcoming, the fourteenth-century witch-hunt at Como loses all credibility.

Nevertheless Rategno’s comment is not irrelevant to the matter in hand. Though he himself died in 1516, his tract remained unknown for half a century. It was first published as an appendix to a larger work, also by Rategno, on the procedure to be adopted by inquisitors in dealing with heretics; and that was in 1566, at Milan. In the tract, witches are described as women who, in addition to killing adults and children, bow down to the Devil and — not an invariable characteristic of witches — trample on the cross. Now, Piotto lived and worked in Milan. As a lawyer who himself wrote several consilia

about the treatment of heretics, he would hardly have overlooked an inquisitor’s manual published in that very city. In the manual he would have found an assurance that 150 years earlier — i.e. in Bartolo’s time — witch-hunts were taking place in the neighbourhood. Is it mere coincidence that that same year 1566 saw the publication of his pseudo-Bartolean consilium about the witch of Orta who killed children, bowed down to the Devil, trampled on the cross, and must pay for it by being burned alive? Instead of confirming the story of the witch of Orta, Rategno’s statement may very well have inspired it.

Between them, Bardin in the fifteenth century, Rategno and Piotto in the sixteenth, and Lamothe-Langon in the nineteenth opened up what for long looked like a royal road to the origins of the great witch-hunt. It has turned out to be no such thing but, on the contrary, a false and decidedly muddy track. Once that is fully accepted it becomes possible to recognize other and better sign-posts, even when they point in unexpected directions.

8. MALEFICIUM BEFORE 1300

— 1 —

The stereotype of the witch as it is described at the beginning of Chapter Six, and as it existed in some parts of Europe in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was an amalgam of four notions. A witch was imagined as (1) an individual who practised maleficium, i.e. who did harm by occult means; (2) an individual who was bound to the Devil as his servant; (3) an uncanny being who flew through the air at night for evil purposes, such as devouring babies, and who was associated with wild and desolate places; (4) a member of a society or sect which held periodical meetings or sabbats, where the Christian religion was systematically parodied and where the Devil was worshipped and also had sexual intercourse with his human servants.

Originally these four notions were quite distinct: and despite all the excellent work that has recently been done on the history of witchcraft beliefs and witch trials, it is still not clear how they came together. How did so complex a stereotype come into being — by what stages, in what circumstances, under whose auspices, in response to what needs and desires? The rest of this volume will be given over to trying to answer those questions.