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”.

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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.

Daemoni, etiam vera dicenti, non est credendum

Even when the Devil tells the truth, he must not be believed.

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One of the interesting Latin phrases my father taught me was Daemoni, etiam vera dicenti, non est credendum. The idea that the Devil is so deceitful that even his use of the truth is tainted by association has always interested me. This was an idea the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins seems to have agreed with, arguing that the Devil used facts over which he had no power (the truth) to deceive witches into believing they had actually harmed their victims with his help.

In 2014 I attended the Early Modern Women, Religion, and the Body conference at Loughborough University. At that conference I presented a paper which focused on how on Matthew Hopkins used ideas found in earlier demonological works to underpin his arguments on the Devil’s deceit of witches in The discovery of vvitches (1647).

I argued that a key passage in Hopkins text described how when witches, the Devil’s ‘deare and nearest children’,[i] believed that the Devil was granting their desire to harm their enemies, he was actually tricking them into worshipping him in return for the deaths of people who were already ill and going to die in the near future:

‘[The Devil] is of a long standing, above 6000. yeers, then he must needs be the best Scholar in all knowledges of arts and tongues, & so have the best skill in Physicke, judgment in Physiognomie, and knowledge of what disease is reigning or predominant in this or that mans body, (and so for cattell too) by reason of his long experience. This subtile tempter knowing such a man lyable to some sudden disease, (as by experience I have found) as Plurisie, Imposthume, &c. he resorts to divers Witches; if they know the man, and seek to make a difference between the Witches and the party[.]’[ii]

This recourse to the idea that the Devil understands human beings and their natures, and has studied then for his work also appears in the earlier text of George Gifford. However for Gifford, his learning is not just about the Witch’s victim, but about the witch herself:

‘WHen Satan at the first enterprised the ruine and destruction of man, he did not vnaduisedly set vp on the worke, but in great subtilty chose him a fit instrument for the purpose, euen the serpent who was more subtill then any beast of the field. He is now an old serpent, & long practised, and hath increased his subtilty by much approoued experience. He doth not nowe attempt his wicked worke, but [...] all y^[...] fittest waies & meanes that hée can: hée doth obserue time & place, with all other circumstances: and looke of what sort soeuer his worke shalbe, he séeketh co~uenient persons as matter to work vpon; he chuseth out fit instruments to worke withall·when he raiseth vp some heresie to destroy y^[...] true faith, which is with subtill shew to be defended: he suggesteth not the same into the minde of a blunt vnlearned foole which is able to say litle: but if it be possible, he espieth out a subtil minde, which is also proud, vaine glorious, & stiffe to maintain any purpose[.]’[iii]

The idea that the Devil tailors his temptation to the victim was a common theme, and my own favourite discussion on who the Devil chooses, and how he them fits his temptation to them, comes from King James VI & I’s Daemonologie. For King James there were witches who did not need to be deceived, as they were of the “grosser sorte, [who]runnes directlie to the Deuill for ambition or desire of gaine”.[iv] In my thesis I argue that:

King James did not see this plain and knowing contract as the only way in which people came into the Devil’s service, also citing two other forms. In some cases ignorant people could be deceived by the Devil into magical practices, without understanding that doing so was apostasy and diabolism.^[v] And some learned men were tempted by knowledge into attempting sorcery, believing that they could control the Devil. In both cases King James emphasised the Devil’s use of deceit, and his desire to entice both the learned and the ignorant into the same grave error as the wilful, sinful witch: making a contract with the Devil that damned their soul.^[vi] So for King James, witches could be divided into the sinfully greedy, the woefully ignorant, and the learned who, through pride, were deceived by the Devil.

The importance of the Devil’s understanding of human desires and the human body are central to Hopkins’ work. Therefore I have always argued that Hopkins’ The discovery of vvitches presents a complex demonological argument about the corporeality of the Devil, and his interaction with witches and the bewitched. And though he only cites James VI & I, it is easy to trace many of his ideas in George Gifford, William Perkins and Richard Bernard’s seminal demonological texts. Hopkins brief (comparatively it was extremely short for a treatise on demonology or the account of a witchfinder) work presents its reader with a mixture of popular beliefs around familiars, and elite demonology.[vii] There are several signs in both Hopkins’ and Stearne’s pamphlets that they consulted with demonological texts, magistrates and others in formulating their method of finding witches, for example at one point Hopkins claims his methods in one case were ‘upon command from the Justice’. ^[viii]

These links to others place Hopkins and Stearne firmly within English demonology – not without as claimed by Wallace Notestein.[ix]

At Loughborough I pointed out that Hopkins himself opened his pamphlet with the injunction from Exodus 22:18 cited by both Gifford and Richard Bernard: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, and likewise follows the paths laid down by earlier demonologists in ascribing to the Devil only a limited role in God’s work:

‘God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt, and the devill doth play many times the deluder and impostor with these Witches, in perswading them that they are the cause of such and such a murder wrought by him with their consents, when and indeed neither he nor they had any hand in it[.]’

Unlike John Gaule’s assessment that the witchfinders and those who employed them had no respect for God’s providence, Hopkins was demonstrating an understanding of how the world was supposed to work, with the Devil’s ‘power’, such as it was, primarily lying in deception and illusion. When Hopkins argues that “God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt”, he does not mean physical hurt, in terms of acts of maleficium or harmful magic, rather he means that the Devil is allowed to do much hurt to the witch.

This idea came to mind when I recently read Verena Thiele’s “Demonising Macbeth” in Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage (2014), which argues that the demonic, tangible, transferable evil of the witches is contrasted with the temporary, localised evil of the human Macbeth who is a ‘bad man’ made worse by the influence of the witches. As I was reading her work I was struck by the way in which the three witches seem to do more than represent evil, they seem to embody the Devil (an inversion of the Holy Trinity?). While Macbeth himself stands in the place of the early modern witch. Macbeth is a bad man whose faults are manipulated. But the witches use truths (and half-truths) to deceive Macbeth, and to engender his ‘fall’.

This is an idea I am just wandering around the edges of – and I wager there may well be someone in the vast wealth of Shakespearian literature who has thought of it before me! Yet it seems to be playing on my mind, and I keep returning to Macbeth’s terrible declaration in Act V, that nothing can harm him because he has been told it cannot.

‘Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:

'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman

Shall e'er have power upon thee.'[x]  

But Birnam did come to Dunsinane, and Malcolm was not ‘born of woman’. The witches (as the Devil) knew how to manipulate Macbeth, knew how he would interpret their prophecies, and so they used they used truth to deceive him.

For Hopkins, the Devil used ‘the truth’ of a person’s illness to deceive a witch into believing she was able to cause physical harm to another human being through him. Hopkins representation of the Devil’s knowledge and ability to deceive, and its interaction with the witch’s malice, vanity, and pride, has become one of the key points I keep in mind when I think about witchcraft in early modern England.

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[i] Matthew Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, (1645): p. 9.

[ii] Matthew Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, p. 9.

[iii] George Gifford, A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by vvitches and sorcerers (1587): p. 32.

[iv] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three books, p. 12.

^[v] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three books, pp. 7-8

^[vi] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three bookes, pp. 9, 12,

[vii] See Richard Bernard, A guide to grand-iury men, (1627); George Gifford, A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by vvitches and sorcerers; William Perkins, A Discourse of the damned art of witchcraft, (1610).

[viii] Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, p. 2.

[ix] Wallace Notestein. A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, 127-129

[x] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene III

   

Crayfish and Monkeys and Dogs! Oh My!

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L.P. Hartley wasn’t wrong when he said ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’; he was just woefully understating the case. When you first encounter many aspects of early modern culture and belief systems it can sometimes be as disorienting and disturbing as passing through the looking glass, going down the rabbit hole, or being carried off by a tornado. Like Alice and her adventures in Wonderland, the unwary traveller through a topic like witchcraft and diabolism in early modern England can encounter strange new ideas and images that don’t quite make sense at first – and sometimes never do.

Coming to grips with witchcraft and demonology is one thing, understanding the double entendres, in-jokes, and colloquialisms found in my source material is quite another. It leads to a multitude of baffling questions, some of which are simply unanswerable. For example, why would Prince Rupert potentially be mortally offended by a the title of a pamphlet called An exact description of Prince Ruperts malignant she-monkey (1643)? And while we are on Prince Rupert, what, if any, is the connection between kissing and dog-training methods? Why would referencing a crayfish possibly be a crude joke? Is there something in the frequent references to lavish food in the major Lancashire witch trials of the early seventeenth century?

Of course, often we don’t even know there is a question to be asked, unless a reference to a colloquialism – or crudity – is so out-of-place as to cause your curiosity to be piqued. Or if we have already familiarised ourselves with the detail of early modern colloquialisms, ballads, plays, letters and assorted other cultural reference points – a task which could occupy a lifetime 

But some of these questions can be answered. In the case of Prince Rupert and his ‘she-monkey’ the hard work was done by others. In my paper at the Monsters and the Monstrous conference in 2014, I described this aspect of Prince Rupert’s ‘montrousness’ thus:

An exact description of Prince Ruperts malignant she-monkey describes how the she-monkey ‘Clap[s] her hand on her buttock and scratch it as if it were troubled with the lustfull itch’^[i] and her name is ‘Sunt with a C’.^[ii] John Taylor, the apparent author of this ribald discussion, drives home his double entendre on the monkey and the meaning of its name with ‘sunt written in that manner being often called a Monkey […] thus you sée what prince Ruperts Monkey doth nominally and figuratiuely signifye, she being in all her postures the picture of a loose wanton, who is often figuratively called a Monkey’.^[iii] The suggestion, as Mark Stoyle pointed out, is that Rupert is himself figuratively a woman, and was in possession of a ‘Sunt with a C’.^[iv]  

And Mark Stoyle’s work on the use of the term ‘monkey’ as slang in early modern England thankfully answered a question I hadn’t even asked yet (and put to an end my wondering if Rupert had had some sort of strange menagerie that he was carting around with him…)

And that isn’t even the end of the strange animal-related adventures the Prince Rupert pamphlets have lead me down. In 2012, when I had just begun my thesis and was still bright eyed and bushy-tailed without caffeine, I went to a conference at the University of Southern Queensland on the ‘British World’, where I discussed the massacre of women at Farndon field. In relation to this massacre I mentioned how a woman who became known as the Witch of Newbury had followed the example of Prince Rupert’s dogs when she

caught the bullets in her hands and chew’d them.

I also pointed out that Prince Rupert’s dog was also accused of being:

[…] loose and Strumpet-like. For hee salues and kisses the Prince, as close as any Christian woman would[...]^[v]

Which led Associate Professor Laurie Johnson to ask if the Prince was kissing his dog as part of inducing loyalty during puppy training? … Of course that question led to several entertaining days lost in the realm of book chapters on spit, saliva, and bodily fluid in early modern England – diverting, sure, necessary to my thesis?[vi] Sadly, probably not.

Although that question didn’t really go anywhere for my research, other encounters with slang have caused even greater amusement and consternations. For example, in chapter three of my thesis, I originally included an extensive footnote discussing whether a crabfish is a lobster or a crayfish? And what this might mean for any potential sexual connotations, since a doctor in the 1620s, John Cotta, wrote in his tract that the teats left by the familiar’s suckling: ‘are most commonly found in the priuie parts’.^[vii]  Which raises questions when Elizabeth Southerne confesses that:

her mother Priscilla Collit had sent the Devil to her in the shape of a crabfish which came into the bed to her and nipt her & fetcht blod &c., and afterwards spake to her & demanded of [her] to seale a covenant’.^[viii]

In the final version I decided to cut it down to the brief:

This may mean a lobster or a crayfish, it is unclear. A popular seventeenth-century song related a ‘crabfish’ biting a woman in the private parts after her husband secretly places the ‘crabfish’ in their Chamber pot. See ‘The Crabfish Song’, Thomas Percy, Frederick James Furnivall, John Wesley Hales, Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: Loose and Humorous Songs 99-100.

But I still wonder about whether or not there were connotations of drunkenness or black humour in the idea of the crabfish ‘nipping’ Elizabeth Southerne in her bed.

I hope this post has suggested just a little of the humorous, unusual, and sometimes pointless research avenues one goes up in the course of writing a doctoral thesis on witchcraft in early modern England.

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^[i] John Taylor, An Exact description of Prince Ruperts malignant she-monkey, p. 5.

^[ii] John Taylor, An Exact description of Prince Ruperts malignant she-monkey, p. 5.

^[iii] John Taylor, An Exact description of Prince Ruperts malignant she-monkey, p. 5.

^[iv] John Taylor, An Exact description of Prince Ruperts malignant she-monkey, p. 5; Mark Stoyle, The Black Legend of Prince Rupert’s Dog: 99.

^[v]  ‘T.B.’ [Anon], Observations, p. 5.

[vi] See for example Brett D. Hirsch “The Taming of the Jew: Spit and the Civilising Process in The Merchant of Venice”, in Rory Loughane and Edel Semple (eds), Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England: pp. 136-52.

^[vii] John Cotta. The triall of vvitch-craft she  the true and right methode of the discouery: with a confutation of erroneous wayes. (London,1616): p.84.

^[viii] British Library, Add MS 27402, fs. 111.