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The Ordeal by Water (Swimming of Witches) in the East Slavic World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Russell Zguta
Russell Zguta*
Affiliation:
Department of History at the University of Missouri, Columbia
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Extract

During the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, much of Western Europe was caught up in the phenomenon known as the witch craze. Before it finally ended in the early eighteenth century this mass hysteria had claimed a goodly number of victims, mostly women, who were seized, tortured, tried, and executed, sometimes on the flimsiest of evidence, for alleged maleficia against their neighbors and heresy against the church.

Once the accusation of witchcraft was leveled against someone the judicial process, either formal or informal, was set in motion to determine whether the suspect was indeed a witch. On the Continent this was facilitated by torture and the Malleus Maleficarum, a manual of procedure compiled by the two German Dominicans Sprenger and Krämer and published in 1486.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 220 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1977

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References

1. Among the best general treatments of the witch craze in Western Europe is H. R. Trevor-Roper's controversial “The Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries “ in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (London, 1967). This article also has been published separately, under the same title, in a paperback edition. More recently, Norman Cohn has attempted a reevaluation of the European witch phenomenon in his thoughtful monograph, Europe's Inner Demons : An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (New York, 197S).

A word of explanation is necessary about the terms “witch” and “witchcraft” as they will be used in this paper. In the later sources, the terms vcdun (warlock) and ved'ma (witch) are common, while “witchcraft” is frequently rendered as koldovstvo or charodeistvo. Earlier references to what may be construed as witches and witchcraft cover a broad range of pagan and occult practices including magic, spell casting, fortunetelling, divination, dream interpretation, weather manipulation, herb medicine, and so forth. Basically, however, in the eyes of the people a witch was a person of either sex who could mysteriously injure another. The damage a witch might do was technically called maleficium in the West. The Russian equivalent of maleficium was porcha, a term which in Old Russian denoted “damage” or “injury” of any sort ( Sreznevskii, I. I., Materialy dlia slovaria drcvncrusskogo iacyka, vol. 2 [Graz, 1955], p. 1756 Google Scholar). As we shall see below, the most common form of porcha attributed to those who were tested for witchcraft by swimming was drought and crop failure.

2. The Malleus Maleficarum, no doubt reflecting the church's official position on judicial ordeals, rejected trial by fire and water in the prosecution of witches. For a discussion of the church's attitude toward ordeals in general, see John W., Baldwin, “The Intellectual Preparation for the Canon of 1215 against Ordeals,” Speculum, 36, no. 4 (October 1961) : 613–36.Google Scholar

3. The swimming of witches was also practiced in other West and East European countries, particularly Germany, Spain, and Poland. On Germany and Spain see Baroja, Julio Caro, The World of the Witches, trans. Glendinning, Nigel (London, 1964), pp. 202–3 Google Scholar. In Poland the cold water ordeal became quite popular as an unofficial test for witchcraft by the late seventeenth century. It was apparently brought to Poland from Germany ( Bohdan, Baranowski, Proccsy czarownic w Polscc XVII i XVIII wieku [Lodz, 1952], pp. 89–96Google Scholar).

4. Lea, H. C., Superstition and Force, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1870), p. 247.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., pp. 253-55.

6. Keith, Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), p. 551.Google Scholar

7. The complete title reads : Witches Apprehended, Examined and Executed, for notable villanies by them committed both by Land and Water. With a strange and most true trial how to know whether a woman be a Witch or not (London, 1613), no pagination. The illustration appears on the cover of the pamphlet. It is reproduced in Briggs, K. M., Pale Hecate's Team (London, 1962), following p. 56.Google Scholar

8. Described by Brand, John in his Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (London, 1855), p. 21–22.Google Scholar

9. Dubler, C. E., Abu Hamid el Granadino y su relation de viaje por ticrras curasiaticas (Madrid, 1953), p. 129 Google Scholar; see also map following page 132. Another source (Ukrains'ka radians'ka entsiklopediia, vol. 1 [Kiev, 1959], p. 17) maintains that Abu Hamid actually visited Kiev on three separate occasions between 1150 and 1153, and that he was received by Prince Iziaslav Mstislavovich.

10. Charmoy, M, “Relation de Mas'oudy et d'autres musulmans surs les anciens Slaves” in Memoires de I'Akadetnie des Sciences de S. Petersbourg (Series 6), 2 (1834) : 342–43Google Scholar. See also Hnatiuk, Volodymyr's “Kupanie i palenie vid'm u Halychyni,” Matcrialy do ukrains'koi ctnol'ocjii, 15 (1912) : 189.Google Scholar

11. Cross, S. H. and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, O. P., eds. and trans., The Russian Primary Chronicle (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 134 Google Scholar. It is not clear from the sources whether or not these “old people” were of both sexes or women only. Unlike Western Europe, where women predominate as victims of the witch hunts, in Russia men were as frequently implicated as women. In fact, surviving court records show that during the seventeenth century there were more men (fifty-nine) than women (forty) actually tried for witchcraft in the Muscovite courts (see note 37 below). In the West women were singled out as witches because, according to scholastic tradition, as members of the “weaker” sex they were far more susceptible to Satan's wiles. In medieval Russia no such distinction between the sexes existed, except in cases of drought or famine, where women, especially those who were old and barren, were apparently looked upon as the antithesis of fertility and plenty and were thus singled out for unofficial persecution. Generally speaking, the church looked upon witchcraft as a manifestation of surviving paganism to which all the people were equally prone.

12. Ibid., pp. 150-51.

13. This was a phenomenon by no means unique to the Eastern Slavs. As Alan Macfarlane has recently written : “It is recognized, both by anthropologists and their informants, that periods of stress are likely to increase witchcraft suspicions” ( Alan, Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England [New York, 1970], p. 249 Google Scholar).

14. Serapion had been abbot of the Pecherskii monastery in Kiev. He was made bishop of Vladimir in 1274. He died a year later (E. V. Petukhov, Serapion Vladimirskii, russkii propovcdnik XIII veka, in Zapiski istoriko-filologicheskago fakul'teta Impcratorskago S.- Pctcrburgskago univcrsitcla, 17 [1888] : 1).

15. Arcadius, Kahan, “Natural Calamities and Their Effect Upon the Food Supply in Russia (An Introduction to a Catalogue),” Jahrbiicher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas, 16, no. 3 (September 1968) : 368.Google Scholar

16. Petukhov, Serapion Vladimirskii, pp. 11-13 (Appendix, text of sermon), pp. 63-68 (commentary on text).

17. Ibid., pp. 11-12.

18. Vernadsky, George, ed. and trans., Medieval Russian Laws (New York, 1969), p. 1969 Google Scholar. V. B, Antonovich also traces the origins of witch swimming in the East Slavic world to Germany (and France) ( Antonovich, V. B., Koldovstvo : Dokumenty, protsessy, issliedovanie [St. Petersburg, 1877], p. 26 Google Scholar).

19. Ibid., p. 38.

20. Ibid., pp. 38-39. The ordeal by iron is also mentioned in article 87 of the Expanded Version of the Pravda (ibid., pp. 50-51).

21. S. V. Iushkov, ed., Pamiatniki russkogo prava, vol. 1 : Pamiatniki prava kievskogo gosudarstva X-XH w., comp. A. A. Zimin (Moscow, 1952), article 7, p. 238.

22. J., Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1961), p. 159–60.Google Scholar

23. Driver, G. R. and Miles, J. C., eds. and trans., The Babylonian Laws, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar. The water ordeal is also prescribed in cases of alleged adultery. If the accused woman has not been caught in the act, her husband can demand that she clear herself by means of the water ordeal (ibid., p. 53, article 132).

24. Rostovtzeff, M. I., Iranians and Greeks in South Russia (Oxford, 1922), pp. 54–55, 208Google Scholar, passim.

25. It has also been suggested, by an anonymous reader of this essay, that the lack of surviving sources on church law during the Kievan period may account for the lack of specific references to use of the ordeal by water.

26. P. I., Efimenko, “Sud nad ved'mami,” Kievskaia starina, 7 (November 1883) : 386.Google Scholar

27. Akty sobrannye Kavkazskoiu Arkheograficheskoiu Kommissieiu, vol. 4 (Tiflis, 1870), no. 146, pp. 958-59. Reprinted in Zhivaia starina, nos. 1-4 (1894), pp. 122-23.

28. Ann M. Kleimola, Justice in Medieval Russia : Muscovite Judgment Charters ( “Pravye Gramoty “) of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., vol. 65, part 6 (October 1975), p. 66.

29. Nasonov, A. N., ed., Pskovskie letopisi, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1955), p. 36.Google Scholar

30. Novombergskii, N. la., Vrachebnoe stroenie v do-Petrovskoi Rusi (Tomsk, 1907), pp. 17–18 Google Scholar. It is also possible that this execution of witches in Pskov was a consequence of Metropolitan Fotii's letter of 1410, urging the people of Novgorod and the surrounding area to rid themselves of all vestiges of paganism, including witchcraft ( “Poslanie mitropolita Fotiia v Novgorod o sobliudenii zakonopolozhenii tserkovnykh, ” Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, vol. 6 [St. Petersburg, 1880], p. 274).

31. The conspiracy and its aftermath are detailed by Fennell, J. L. I. in Ivan the Great of Moscoiv (London, 1963), p. 315–57.Google Scholar

32. Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisci, vol. 6 : Sofiiskiia letopisi (St. Petersburg, 1853), p. 279.

33. Ibid., vol. 13, part 2, sec. 2 : Tak nacyvaemaia tsarstvennaia kniga (St. Petersburg, 1906), p. 456. See also Smirnov, I. I., Ocherki politicheskoi istorii russkogo gosudarstva 30-50kh godov XVI veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1958), pp. 122–27.Google Scholar

34. Solov'ev, S. M., Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1960), p. 394–95.Google Scholar

35. Borisov, V. A., Opisanie goroda Shui i ego okrestnostei (Moscow, 1851), pp. 339–40 Google Scholar. See also A. A., Levenstim, “Sueverie i ugolovnoe pravo,” Vcstnik prava, part 1, no. 1 (1906), p. 329.Google Scholar

36. This question will be addressed in a forthcoming essay entitled “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia. “

37. More than half of these court records have been published by N. la. Novombergskii in Koldovstvo v Moskovskoi Rusi XVII veka (St. Petersburg, 1906). The rest appear in the appendixes to the following by the same author : Materialy po istorii meditsiny v Rossii, vol. 4 (Tomsk, 1907), Appendix nos. 5, 7, 10, 11, 46, 47, 51; and Vrachebnoe stroenie v do-Petrovskoi Rusi, nos. 16-20, 28, 35, 37-41, 44, 47, 55, 60, 151, 155, 171, 172.

38. Efimenko, “Sud nad ved'mami, ” p. 383; and Antonovich, Koldovstvo, p. 27.

39. Antonovich, Koldovstvo, p. 27.

40. Ibid., p. 59, n. 15. '

41. G. Danilevskii, Osnoi/ianenko (St. Petersburg, 1856), p. 91.

42. Hnatiuk, “Kupanie i palenie vid'm u Halychyni, ” p. 190.

43. Ibid., p. 191.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Fedotov, G. P., The Russian Religious Mind : Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, chapters 1 and 12.

47. Efimenko, “Sud nad ved'mami, ” p. 383.

48. Boyer, Paul and Nissenbaum, Stephen, Salem Possessed : The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).Google Scholar