Europe's inner demons

The employment of torture makes these cases atypical: Fredegond was after all both a monarch and an outstandingly ruthless politician. But in themselves the killings hardly offended against traditional norms.⁽³⁾ It was an ancient custom for people who believed that maleficium was being used against them or against their kin to take personal retaliation. Amongst the Lombards in northern Italy and the Alamanni along the upper Rhine the private killing of suspected witches was a common practice down to the seventh century, and it was still common amongst the Saxons when they were conquered by Charlemagne towards the end of the eighth century.⁽⁴⁾ In the archaic society of Iceland it was regarded as normal as late as the tenth century. This emerges clearly from the sagas which, though first written down between 1140 and 1220, portray society as it had existed some two centuries earlier. Thus Eyrbyggia, describing events around 980, tells how a widow, having brought serious illness on a young man by means of maleficium

, was stoned to death by his kin.⁽⁵⁾ Laxdaela, which covers the period 910-1026, tells how a married couple, both witches, killed a twelve-year-old boy by magical incantations; again, the victim’s family caught them and stoned them to death.⁽⁶⁾

There was however another way of dealing with such matters. In all early Germanic law a crime was treated less as an offence against society than as an offence against an individual and his kin. But where the community or the central authority was strong enough, the injured individual or kin were not permitted simply to take retaliation on the offender; instead, the offender had to pay them a fine in compensation (wergild). This arrangement applied to offences of all kinds, including maleficium

. Already the law of the Salian Franks, the Pactus legis Salicae, which was written down early in the sixth century but which reflects the attitudes of a still earlier period, fixes the wergild to be paid it someone is killed by maleficium, and the smaller sum to be paid if he is merely injured in his health.⁽⁷⁾ Similar provisions are to be found in the law of the East Franks, the Lex Ribuaria

, which was written down a century later;⁽⁸⁾ and this way of regarding maleficium continued to exert an influence almost throughout the Middle Ages. Yet death, usually by burning, continued to be recognized as a proper penalty for lethal maleficium in certain cases — for instance when the offender was a slave or serf, or when he or she pleaded guilty, or when the wergild was not forthcoming.

Whatever the penalty, it was designed to provide either revenge or compensation to the supposed victim or his kin; and — save at certain times and places, where religious considerations intervened — that remained its main purpose right down to the thirteenth century. In England under Æthelstan (925-40) it was decreed that the death penalty was to be exacted where guilt was too manifest to be denied. Where the accused asserted his innocence, he must face a three-fold ordeal. If the outcome was unsatisfactory, he must spend 120 days in prison; after which his relatives might secure his release by paying a fine to the king and wergild

to the victim’s kin, and also standing surety for his future good behaviour.⁽⁹⁾ In twelfth-century England anyone convicted of murder by maleficium was supposed to be handed over to the victim’s kin, to be disposed of as they thought best.⁽¹⁰⁾ A Swedish law of 1296 still speaks a similar language. A woman convicted of causing a man’s death by maleficium is to be burned, unless the victim’s kin decide to spare her life; in which case she is to pay them a sum in compensation, as well as fines to the royal treasury and the local community.⁽¹¹⁾