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La sorcellerie et la ville

 | 
Antoine Follain
, 
Maryse Simon

Witchcraft and the City — postface

Carlo Ginzburg

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11. Historical research on the urban dimensions of the persecution of witchcraft in late medieval and early modern Europe has been going on for decades, as Rita Voltmer points out in her insightful contribution to this volume. Its title—Witchcraft and the City—would surprise only those scholars who still assume that witchcraft was a phenomenon intrinsically (and exclusively) connected to the countryside. But neither “sorcellerie” nor “ville” are self-evident categories. On the one hand, as Antoine Follain and Maryse Simon convincingly argue in their introduction, a purely juridical definition of “ville” fails to account for the social differences between small and large cities, which are extremely relevant in this context. On the other, the word “sorcellerie” can refer either to the object of the persecution or to the persecution itself—or to both.

  • 1 C. Ammann-Doubliez, G. Modestin, M. Ostorero, K. Utz Tremp, “Dénoncer un crime imaginaire. Le cas d (...)
  • 2 On this dichotomy, see my essay “Our Words, and Theirs: A Reflection on the Historian’s Craft, Toda (...)
  • 3 M. Valente, Johann Wier. Agli albori della critica razionale dell’occulto e del demoniaco nell’Euro (...)
  • 4 C. I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels. Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, Leiden, 20 (...)

2The conflation of the two dimensions is at the heart of the notion of “crime imaginaire”, put forward by C. Ammann-Doubliez and other scholars (p. 63, note 12).1 Following their lead, the essay “La Sorcière de ville et la Sorcière des champs en Lorraine aux xvie et xviie siècles” argues: “pour notre propre enquête, on ne doit pas craindre de privilégier les points de vue de la répression et les critères de jugement des officiers, puisque la sorcellerie n’existe qu’en tant que crime poursuivi par la justice” (p. 70). This choice is perplexing. The observer’s (etic) categories are supposed to be identical with the actors’ (emic) categories—shared, in the context of witchcraft trials, by judges, defendants, denouncers, witnesses, and so forth.2 But none of them would have been able to make sense of the notion of “crime imaginaire”, as well as of its late 20th-century nuances (“le crime de sorcellerie n’existe pas en dehors de la sphère du discours”). In fact, the notion of “crime imaginaire” takes for granted that the defendants always met the judges’ expectations—either spontaneously or, more often, following torture and suggestive questioning. Obviously, this was often the case—but not always. No judge would have been able to anticipate (or suggest) the words pronounced by Nicolas Noël dit Le Bragard, a soldier accused of having healed people by magical means: “A veu aussy un libvre intitulé Docculta philosophia que le fils aisné du feu sieur Baruet luy a eu monstré, et est comme il croit le quatrieme libvre d’Agripa”. The statement is unequivocal: the soldier was familiar not only with the three books of Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia, but also with the existence of a fourth book, whose apocryphal nature had been denounced by Johannes Wier in his De praestigiis daemonum (1563).3 The relevance of Le Bragard’s words would not be lost on scholars interested in the long-term reception of Agrippa’s works, whether authentic or fictitious (the latter sometimes endorsed by the authority of Pietro d’Abano).4 Undoubtedly, a case like this “ne pourrait pas être trouvé à la campagne” (p. 115). But for the officers of Nancy who questioned Le Bragard, the border between a self-confessed magician and a sorcerer was uncertain and porous. Le Bragard himself seemed to have been aware that his customers also perceived this contiguity—including the fellow soldier to whom he had apparently said: “Diable, diable quand j’auray guéry ton enfant tu diras que je suis un sorcier et me feras brusler!” (p. 119). Le Bragard’s case is a blatant refutation of the conclusion that “en Lorraine et ailleurs? – il n’y avait aucune différence dans les mentalités, dans l’imaginaire des populations, entre les Gens de ville et les Gens des champs et en tout cas dans leurs propos” (p. 138). Admittedly, Le Bragard, the soldier who had enough Latin to read Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia and to make sense of it (to what extent? who knows?), confronts us with an anomaly. But a comparative approach that is unable to take anomalies into account will necessarily be confined to proving its initial assumptions—whatever they may be.

 

32. Any historical research on the persecution of witchcraft is faced with a range of phenomena that display convergent and divergent traits. A comparative approach, either explicit or implicit, is therefore inevitable. The same can be said about historical research focusing on the target of the persecution—the beliefs and practices of the defendants, as they emerge from the archives of repression. Through its richly diverse content, this collection of essays, which focuses mostly on the former element, invites the reader to reflect upon comparison and its methods and implications. Two essays, by William Monter and Rita Voltmer, prove particularly helpful in this regard.

4Voltmer’s comparative survey of the persecution of witchcraft in the cities of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th and 17th century starts with a straightforward (and utterly convincing) rejection of monocausal explanations. Conversely, the constructive side of her argument is full of nuances. On the one hand (Voltmer argues, quoting Dillinger and Rowlands), variations in witch-trials patterns were not linked “to the confessional context of the urban settings”. On the other, “large cities saw relatively few scattered trials and executions, whereas small towns showed a greater disposition for witch hunts” (p. 156).

  • 5 J. Tedeschi, “The Roman Inquisition and Witchcraft. An Early Seventeenth-Century “Instruction” on C (...)

5Monter presents his essay on the persecution of witchcraft in Northern Italy and the Low Countries as a “complementary piece” to Voltmer’s. Their respective conclusions may seem different, however one should not be misled by Monter’s opposition between “Gentle Mediterranean and Severe North” (p. 212)—a metaphor which is followed by a telling question mark. In fact, the opposition points to a specific historical trajectory: “in the gentler climate of northern Italy”, the persecution of “urban witchcraft began earlier, [but] it also ended earlier” (p. 223). This early beginning (end of 14th century) may be due to the relative abundance of archival documents in Northern Italy; as for the early ending, it was the outcome of the Roman Inquisition’s growing scepticism towards witchcraft accusations—an attitude which inspired a remarkable document, the well-known Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum et maleficiorum (ca. 1620).5 Since the Spanish Inquisition began to follow a similar path in the same years, one could be tempted to interpret the South/North dichotomy in confessional terms, as an opposition between “mild” Catholics and “stern” Protestants. But Monter’s argument is different, as his analysis of the contrasting cases of Lille and Cologne shows. In the former, the Roman Inquisition succeeded in preventing a wave of witch trials; in the latter, a similar attempt proved unsuccessful, due to the resistance of the Cologne archbishop. A supra-local institution like the Roman Inquisition was tendentially foreign to local “witchcraft policy” (Voltmer). The role played by local religious groups in this context (whether Catholic or Protestant) was not related to religion per se but rather to the context of local politics.

 

63. Should we say, then, that local politics inevitably paved the way for the persecution of witchcraft? This conclusion would be immediately disproven by the variety of urban trajectories, vividly illustrated in the essays collected in this volume. The cultural attitudes of both the judges and the defendants also implied a supra-local dimension, however the importance of local contexts is undeniable. Following a suggestion put forward by Rita Voltmer, it may be worth approaching urban realities through two different, and in fact opposing, analytic models: bottom up and top down. In the former, the crowd may have tried to find a scapegoat for difficulties of different kinds (from the plague to bad crops) pushing local authorities to start a chain of witchcraft trials; in the latter, the authorities themselves may have tried to mobilize the crowd, using witchcraft trials as a weapon for their own goals, including internal feuds.

7Bottom up and top down: these etic categories may be the starting point for comparative analysis. Their emic counterpart, as well as their conflictual relationship, can be seen in a passage of the journal written by Jean Bauchez, a clerk (greffier) from a little village in Lorraine. The judges’ display of authority, embodied by the acquittal of two women accused of being witches, was overthrown by a furious crowd. Two hundred “enfants” from Metz stoned to death “les pauvres malheureuses”, Bauchez commented (Antoine Follain et alii, p. 82). An extraordinary document, which reminds us that witchcraft trials were always a symptom of social and cultural tensions—sometimes evident, as in this case, sometimes concealed by an apparent convergence, either forced or spontaneous. An obvious, although sometimes forgotten, truth: this challenging collection of essays invites us to reflect upon its multiple, often unforeseeable, implications.

Notes

1 C. Ammann-Doubliez, G. Modestin, M. Ostorero, K. Utz Tremp, “Dénoncer un crime imaginaire. Le cas de la sorcellerie démoniaque en Suisse occidentale (xve siècle)”, Dénoncer le crime du Moyen Âge au xixe siècle, Pessac, 2014, especially p. 159 [voir les références complétées dans la version française de la postface – note des éditeurs]. For a “narratological” (in fact, neo-sceptical) approach to judiciary records see ibid., p. 172 note 55.

2 On this dichotomy, see my essay “Our Words, and Theirs: A Reflection on the Historian’s Craft, Today” in Historical Knowledge. In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, ed. by S. Fellmann and M. Rahikainen, Cambridge, 2012, p. 97-119.

3 M. Valente, Johann Wier. Agli albori della critica razionale dell’occulto e del demoniaco nell’Europa del Cinquecento, Firenze, 2003, p. 33-34. Wier’s comment was quoted by Pierre Bayle in his Dictionnaire historique et critique, 6th ed., Basle, 1741, p. 109 (entry “Agrippa, Henri Corneil”).

4 C. I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels. Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, Leiden, 2003.

5 J. Tedeschi, “The Roman Inquisition and Witchcraft. An Early Seventeenth-Century “Instruction” on Correct Trial Procedure”, 1983 (Id., The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisiton in Early Modern Italy, Binghamton, New York, 1991, p. 205-227). See also the entry “Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum et maleficiorum” (by O. Di Simplicio) in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, diretto da A. Prosperi, con la collaborazione di V. Lavenia e J. Tedeschi, II, Pisa, 2010, p. 845-847.

Auteur

Carlo Ginzburg a été professeur d’histoire moderne à l’université de Bologne (Italie) et à l’université de Californie (UCLA, États-Unis) ainsi qu’à l’École normale de Pise. Il a été fait Docteur Honoris Causa de l’Université de Strasbourg (2013).

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