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The Persecution of Witches as Restoration of Order: The Case of Germany, 1590s–1650s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Hartmut Lehmann
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From the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century many of the territories and cities in Central Europe were the scene of witchcraft trials. As recent research shows, it was especially in the years around 1590, 1610, and 1630, and again in the 1650s, that many parts of Germany were overwhelmed by what might be called a tidal wave of witch-hunting, with thousands upon thousands of victims: women mostly, yet also men and children. So far, despite a large number of detailed studies, there is no convincing explanation of why witch-hunting should have played such a prominent role in Germany from the 1590s to the 1650s.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 107 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1988

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References

1. See especially Merzbacher, Friedrich, Die Hexenprozesse in Franken, 2d ed. (Munich, 1970)Google Scholar; Midelfort, H. C. Erik, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1648 (Stanford, Calif., 1972)Google Scholar; Schormann, Gerhard, Hexenprozesse in Nordwestdeutschland (Hildesheim, 1977)Google Scholar; Lehmann, Hartmut, “Hexenverfolgungen und Hexenprozesse im Alten Reich zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung,” Jahrbunch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte der Universität Tel-Aviv 7 (1978): 13–70Google Scholar; Schormann, Gerhard, Hexenprozesse in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1981)Google Scholar; Degn, Christian, Lehmann, Hartmut, and Unverhau, Dagmar, eds., Hexenprozesse: Deutsche und skandinavische Beiträge (Neumünster, 1983)Google Scholar; Kunze, Michael, High Road to the Stake (Chicago, 1987)Google Scholar. All with very helpful bibliographical notes.

2. Best short description by Trunz, Erich, “Weltbild und Dichtung im deutschen Barock,” in Aus da Welt des Barock (Stuttgart, 1957), 1–35.Google Scholar

3. It should be mentioned here that Clark's, Stuart use of the concept of order, in his “Inversion, Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft,” Past and Present 87 (1980): 98–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is somewhat different from my approach. Clark's concept is a philosophical one, comprising order and disorder, rule as well as misrule, so that the parody of order and rule (through transvestism or charivari, during carnival and in court festivities) is just as important and revealing as the order as such. By contrast in my paper order is used to characterize the foundations of the very existence of Man; specifically, the term “order” stands for the daily sustenance of life, threatened by crop failure, by famine, by disease, above all the plague, and by war. My view is close to that of Imhof, Arthur E., Die verlorenen Welten, Alltagsbewältigung durch unsere Vorfahren (Munich, 1984), 91–135Google Scholar, where Imhof writes about the old prayer: “Vor Pest, Hunger und Krieg bewahre uns, oh Herr!”

4. See Ladurie, Emanuel Le Roy, Histoire du Climat depuis l'An Mil (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar; Parry, M. L., Climatic Change and Agricultural Settlement (Folkeston, Kent, and Hamden, Conn., 1978)Google Scholar; Lamb, Hubert H., Climate: Present, Past and Future, vol. 2, Climatic History and the Future (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10, no. 4 (1980)Google Scholar, with contributions by Appleby, Andrew B., Bell, Barbara, Fischer, David Hackett, Pfister, Christian, Post, John D., Rabb, Theodore K., and Vries, Jan de; Wigley, T. M. L., Ingram, M. J., and Farmer, G., eds., Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar. Perhaps it should be added that research on the “Little Ice Age,” at least so far, seems to be characterized by two things: by an impressive amount of data supporting the theory, and by the hesitation of most of those colleagues engaged in historical meteorology to draw further conclusions. While they have assiduously concerned themselves with collecting data, they have hardly begun to ask what their findings may mean for the historical analysis of the European society of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries—economically, socially, politically, also psychologically.

5. Edited by Behringer, Wolfgang in Oberbayerisches Archiv 109 (1984): 339–60Google Scholar. Translated, the quotation (see 346–47) reads as follows: “In our times the number of magicians and of supporters of the devil is growing rapidly, so that almost all towns and villages in the whole of Germany, not to mention other people and nations, is full of this vermin. These servants of the devil not only do harm to the precious crops in the fields which the Lord has made grow through the power of his blessing, but also try to do harm as much as possible through thunder, lightning, showers, hail, storms, frost, flooding, mice, worms, and in many other ways which God is permitting and for which they use the support and help of the devil. In this way they take the food away from the people, they do harm to cattle, to cows, calves, horses, and sheep, as much as they can, and not only to cattle and crops, but also to our neighbors and relatives, which is a special cause for pity. They do not even let alone young children who are not yet baptized, but attempt to use these small, fragile bodies for magic purposes and their own sensual pleasures. They also try hard to inflict illness on old people, by making them lame, imposing pain, and causing death. Through all of this they cause much pain and sorrow among the people.”

6. Niess, Walter, Hexenprozesse in der Grafschaft Büdingen (Büdingen, 1982)Google Scholar; Behringer, Wolfgang, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern: Volksmagie, Glaubenseifer und Staatsräson in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1987).Google Scholar

7. This is not the place to enter more deeply into the controversial matter of the “crisis of the seventeenth century.” For a discussion of the different positions see Lehmann, Hartmut, Das Zeitalter des Absolutismus: Gottesgnadentum und Kriegsnot (Stuttgart, 1980), 105–14Google Scholar. It should be pointed out, however, that my usage of the term “crisis” is far more general than that applied, tested, and elaborated in the various contributions to Clark, Peter, ed., The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London, 1985).Google Scholar

8. For a more detailed discusson of this argument see Lehmann, Hartmut, “Hexenglaube und Hexenprozesse in Europa um 1600,” in Degn, Lehmann, and Unverhau, Hexenprozesse, 14–27Google Scholar. See also Delumeau, Jean, La Peur en Occident, XIVe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar, whose approach is, in contrast to mine, very wide and who does not discuss specifically the conditions in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Germany (German translation: Angst im Abendland: Die Geschichte kollektiver Ängste im Europa des 14. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Frankfurt a.M., 1985).Google Scholar

9. Barnes, Robin B., Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, Calif, 1988).Google Scholar

10. The various interpretations of the Fettmilch Uprising are discussed by Friedrichs, Christopher R., “Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History,” Central European History 19 (1986): 186–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Johann Arndt, 1555–1621, Lutheran theologian, since 1611 Generalsuperintendent at Lüneburg. Most influential and very widely read were his Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1606–10), published in many editions from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, also translated into many foreign languages. Using themes of late medieval mysticism, Arndt attempted to teach individual Christians how to improve their spiritual life. See Wallmann, Johannes, “Johann Arndt und die protestantische Frömmigkeit,” Jahrbuch der Hessischen kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 35 (1985): 371–79.Google Scholar

12. Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart, 1590–1642, Lutheran theologian, since 1616 professor at the Gymnasium Casimirianum at Coburg, since 1633 professor of theology at Erfurt. In 1635 Meyfart published his famous Christliche Erinnerung / an Gewaltige Regenten und Gewissenhafte Praedicanten / wie das abschewliche Laster der Hexerey mit Ernst auszurotten / aber in Verfolgung desselben auff Cantzeln und in Gerichtsheusem sehr bescheidentlich zu handeln sey. About Meyfart see Hallier, Christian, Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart: Ein Schriftsteller, Pädagoge und Theologe des 17. Jahrhunderts (Neumünster, 1982)Google Scholar. According to Meyfart—writing in German and not in Latin; using his proper name and not a pseudonym—all trials against witches should be stopped. In his view, in these trials more innocent than guilty people were convicted. As long as this was the case, Meyfart argued, all those involved in these trials committed a terrible sin. Moreover, as Meyfart wrote, the return of Christ was rapidly approaching and Christ would issue all necessary verdicts in the last judgment. It is very likely that Meyfart borrowed some of his arguments from Friedrich von Spee's famous Cautio Criminalis seu de processibus contra sagas liber (anonymously published in 1631; German translation in 1649; new ed. by J. F. Ritter, 1939).

13. Weyer, Johann (also Weier, or Wier), De Praestigüs Daemonum (1563; 6th ed. 1586; new ed. Amsterdam, 1967)Google Scholar. About Weyer, 1515/16–1588, a disciple of Agrippa of Nettesheim, from 1550–1578 personal doctor of Duke William V of Jülich-Kleve, see Binz, Carl, Doctor Johannes Weyer, ein rheinischer Arzt, der erste Bekämpfer des Hexenwahns (Bonn, 1885; 2d ed., Berlin, 1896)Google Scholar; Cobben, J. J., Johannes Wier (Assen, 1960)Google Scholar; see also the very critical account given by Baxter, Christopher, “Johann Weier's De Praestigüs Daemonum: Unsystematic Psychopathology,” in Anglo, Sydney, ed., The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (London and Boston, 1977), 53–75.Google Scholar

14. See Baxter, Christopher, “Jean Bodin's De la Démonomanie des Sorciers: The Logic of Persecution,” in Anglo, The Damned Art, 76–163.Google Scholar

15. See Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 121–63.

16. See Lehmann, Das Zeitalter des Absolutismus, 114–69.

17. Lehmann, “Hexenverfolgungen und Hexenprozesse,” 61–64.