Malleus Maleficarum

*Note, this blog contains some obscenities. If you find that offensive, please do not continue reading.

When it comes to fictional witches on our television screens (or our computers or tablets, come to think of it) there is often a simple dichotomy: good sisters of an ancient wiccan-style religion, or evil, licentious backstabbers using harmful magic to get ahead whatever the cost.

Over this post, and the next two, ending with the post on November 1^st (All Saints Day), I want to examine some of the common tropes used to portray witchcraft in our contemporary media, and contrast these with early modern examples and concepts. Next week I intend to discuss the use of age and vanity as a trope in depictions of evil witches, and on November 1st I want to examine the 1990s obsession with witches of the first kind described above - witches who owe a great deal to the fertility cult conception of Margaret Murray adopted by many modern wiccans.

But this week and next week I want to discuss popular depictions of witches that have far more in common with how most people in early modern Europe would have conceived of them: members of a satanic cult which sought personal gain at the expense of their souls.

In 1928 the occultist, Priest, and early modern drama enthusiast Montague Summers translated the Malleus Maleficarum, a late fifteenth-century work on demonology and witchcraft. The Malleus is most famous (or infamous) for serving as a practical guide to discovering witches in early modern Europe. Summers endorsed the content of the Malleus, and by increasing its availability, and translating it into English he obviously extended the reach of its ideas.

For example when a group of young drama students (including me) went looking for rituals associated with witchcraft and Satanism at the university library, the Summers 1928 edition of the Malleus was still available (sadly it lacked the sort of things we were looking for).

In the last century wicked witches have often taken the form of hags: older, warty, suffering from an unfortunate case of verdigris, cackling and mean to children.

However there is another popular conception of witches as attractive women, often promiscuous, treacherous, vengeful and driven by their lusts (with a sub-category of extremely vain witches, I will examine next week).

Unsurprisingly the CW channel show Supernatural (2005-present) has tended to use witches of youthful, attractive sort. The first truly witch-centric episode of the show came in Season Three, with the amusingly titled “Malleus Maleficarum”.

via

One of the opening scenes shows the two heroes of the show, brothers Dean and Sam, discussing witches in a rather long piece of exposition which both rhetorically references and dispenses with the concept of the old hag:

DEAN
So we're thinking witch?

SAM
Uh, yeah, and not some new age wicked water douser either. This is Old World black magic Dean, I mean, warts and all.

The exposition continues with:

DEAN
So what are we thinking, we're uh, looking for some old craggy blair bitch in the woods.

SAM
No it could be anyone. Neighbor, coworker, man, woman that's the problem Dean, they're human, they're like everyone else.

In the end the brothers discover a coven of women, three of whom were driven by petty desires to do better materially.

In brief, one of the witches committed the first murder seen in the episode, in order to get revenge against her ex-lover (she kills his wife). That witch is then killed by another member of the coven, in order to protect them from her ‘instability’ – this other member of the coven is later revealed to actually be a demon disguised as their friend, and the instigator of the women’s decision to use witchcraft by providing them with the spellbook they use.

The kind of witches that appear most commonly as antagonists in Supernatural owe their trajectory to the real witches of the early modern period. They have made a deal with the Devil in return for powers in order to gain the things they desire in life. The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde (1566), described how an accused witch called Elizabeth Francis was offered material wealth by an evil spirit, who came to her in the form of a cat:

this Elizabeth desired firste of the sayde Cat (callinge it Sathan) that she might be ryche and to haue goodes, and he promised her she shoulde, askinge her what she would haue, and she sayde shepe […] & this Cat forthwith brought shepe into her pasture to the nu[m]ber of .xviii blacke and whyte, whych continued wyth her for a tyme, but in the ende dyd all weare awaye she knewe not howe[…]

[W]hen she had gotten these shepe, she desired to haue on Andrew Byles to her husband, which was a man of some welth, and the cat dyd promyse she shold, but that he sayde she must fyrste consent that this Andrew shuld abuse her, and she so did.

And after when this Andrew had thus abused her he would not mary her, wherfore she willed Sathan to waste his goodes, which he forthwith did, and yet not beyng contentid with this, she wild him to touch his body, whych he forthewith dyd whereof he died.[i]

The comparisons with the witches in the episode of Supernatural are easy to spot. These are witches who would not have surprised the early modern observer.  

The other aspect of this episode that is of interest is the presence of a demon as a member of the coven. The use of a human figure who introduces a witch to the diabolic arts, but who may also be the Devil appeared in the famous case at Warboys, in the late 1580s and early 1590s.

After the guilty verdict and executions were announced at the trial of the Warboys witches (the Samuel family), the elderly Alice Samuel pleaded that she should be reprieved as she was pregnant, and a jury of women was therefore appointed to examine her. Given her advanced years, the women appointed to examine her determined ‘that she was not with childe, unlesse (as some saide) it was with the Diuell, & no marueile’.[ii]

This part of the case was discussed in detail in Philip Almond’s The Witches of Warboys. Almond suggests that the idea that the Devil may have impregnated Alice may have been put to the women by Henry Pickering, who was both involved in trial, and had some knowledge of continental cases where witches claimed to have copulated with Devils and been impregnated by them.[iii] The extent of Pickering’s influence may perhaps also be seen in Alice’s confession that she had allowed William Langley, from whom she received her spirits, to have ‘carnall knowledge of her bodie’ when he handed over her familiars.[iv] The pamphlet goes on to suggest that: ‘Some are of opinion, that [Langley] was the Diuel in mans likenesse.’[v]

So the idea that the Devil could masquerade as a witch in order to tempt others into becoming witches also has precedent in early modern Europe.

While witches had – until Season 10 – played a minor role in the show, the problems over the show's treatment of women have been raised by quite a few different writers, fans, and even a member of the show’s cast. Many of those questioning the simplistic characterisations - and often violent demises - of the show's female characters have described the show as blatantly sexist and misogynistic. However, Supernatural is part of a genre that is quite famous for its misogyny. The punishment of women in horror for sexual behaviour, or for being anything other than virtuous and/or maternal figures is quite well-recognised (and even has a Wikipedia page).

Hence the use of early modern conceptions of witches as women who are either promiscuous, greedy, venal, vengeful servants of the Devil or so stupid as to get involved in such clearly diabolic schemes, is unsurprising. The failure in this case is that Supernatural has shown so little desire to play with these tropes – as shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones have – and therefore create a dialogue with their audience’s preconceptions of gender and witchcraft. And I don’t see that happening any time soon.

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[i] John Phillips, The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde in the countie of Essex, pp.13.

[ii] [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three Witches of Warboys, p. 51.

[iii] Almond, The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three Witches of Warboys, p. 101.

[iv]  [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three witches of Warboys p. 112

[v]  [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three witches of Warboys p. 112                          

The Long Shadows of Montague Summers and Margaret Murray

Over the next few weeks I want to discuss some modern representations of witchcraft or uses of the term witch. I want to compare and contrast them with early modern examples. In order to do this, I want to briefly air some of my thoughts on the figure of ‘the witch’ in modern culture. I have been working on a piece on witches in a television series for publication elsewhere, and the process has caused some related thoughts to coalesce.

It could be witches
Some evil witches -
Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

~ Xander Harris, “I’ve Got a Theory”, from  “Once More with Feeling”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 7

In the early twentieth century two authors wrote a series of works which argued that the idea of a secret cult within Christian Europe - often found in early modern witchcraft tracts and trials - had a basis in fact. The eccentric author and clergyman, Montague Summers believed that ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and witches were real.[i] While the folklorist Margaret Murray argued that early modern witches were part of a pre-Christian fertility cult.[ii]

Though this idea has been roundly dismissed by modern witchcraft historians,[iii] the idea still has great popular currency, not least because it suits a number of different agendas.

From genre fiction, to popular television shows, to modern wiccans, some feminist authors, and some atheists, the idea that witchcraft trials were the persecution of a religious minority by an oppressive Christian church is a rather appealing idea. Modern Wiccans and Satanists often believe their traditions extend from antiquity, not that they were inventions of the last two centuries (like so many other ‘traditions’), so calling those who died during ‘theBurning Times’ their sisters and brothers has some appeal.

In America associations between witchcraft and Satanism remain fairly strong compared to other countries, and modern day panics about satanic cults and secret religious societies are still a recurring theme of both public life and popular culture. Although I have noted another correlation with another popular conspiracy: alien abduction. For some people it seems that the Devil has been replaced by little green (or grey) men who may or may not be here to extract you organs, and may or may not be in league with Uncle Sam (their very own modern day Antichrist).

For some feminists the ‘gendercide’ of witchcraft remains a rallying cry against the patriarchy. While I am myself a feminist, I do wish people would at least attempt to get their facts right before explaining to me (again) that a million women burned, or that no men died in the witch trials. Or, worst of all, that witches were members of Margaret Murray’s female fertility cult.

And some atheists have pointed to the European witch trials as part of Christianity's oppression of those who think differently, or are different. Quite often you can find these ideas connected to one another, with the oppressive church targeting women, who were the last remnant of an oppressed religion with its own healing practices.

For Joss Whedon’s TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) witches got one of their many outings in genre television in the 1990s. The first appearance of a witch on the show was an evil, deceitful, and vain mother. But regular characters who had ‘wicca’ powers were, for the most part, portrayed more favourably.

Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

Is part of a verse from song “I’ve Got a Theory” in the musical episode “Once More with Feeling”, which captures the ‘wicca-fertility-cult/real-witches-that-were/are-empowered-women’ concept that underlay some representations of witches in the 1990s. This idea has ongoing resonance for some people, and continues to affect the way in which some people conceive of men and women killed for witchcraft in the early modern period.

 Around this time of year I am regularly reminded of David Mitchell's amusing discussion of the way in which distance removes the sting of actual historical events. Mitchell pointed out that the term "Rape and Pillage" has become an amusing term even though we would not find either rape or pillage amusing today. I don't wish to sound like a stick in the mud, nor do I find most genre depictions of witchcraft in anyway offensive. But occasionally I find the way people casually make some correlation between their own situation with that of early modern people who actually died for a crime that most likely they didn't commit (diabolism), or which from my point of view, they couldn't have committed (maleficium), somewhat problematic.  

I cannot count the number of times this concept has been raised by people when I tell them about the topic of my dissertation. In the past I have occasionally directed people to a few places where they might find facts to replace common misconceptions.

This post is not meant as a replacement for that, but as background for future posts on modern representations of witchcraft, particularly in genre fiction and television between now and Halloween.

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[i] Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, (1956).

[ii] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921); Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The Divine King of England, (1954).

[iii] See James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, (1995): pp. 7-8; Brian P. Levack,  The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (2006): pp. 19, 294-295.