Witches: a personal addendum

[selenak]

In Britain, England and Scotland alike, I'm told, witches were mostly hanged. In my hometown of Bamberg, and in a great many of the German principalities during the worst waves of persecution, they were burned. Our most infamous era of town history, not counting More Recent Events (i.e. 1933 - 1945), was smack in the middle of the Thirty-Years-War, when in addition to bad weather, sickness and the Swedes coming, the years between 1626 and 1631 saw roughly a 1000 people of a town population o f 8000 executed as witches. In other words, every eighth person. It's also one of the best documented eras, and not just because the local authorities kept files. From it, we have one of the few documents written by a victim after various torture sessions and before his execution, describing what happened during a witch trial.

The man in question was none other than the mayor, Johannes Junius. His wife had been the first of the family to be accused of witchcraft, and she'd already been burned when they arrested him. He was tortured four times, confessed, but managed to write a letter to one of his daughters, Veronica. It never reached her - she'd already fled to Nuremberg -, which is probably why it survived; it was caught and ended up with the rest of the files. This is what it looks like:



This letter is also a big reason why I'm always a bit touchy when stories use "real" witches. It's incredibly raw and devastating to read, especially considering Junius was but one of many. A complete transcription of the German original is here, and a translation of the majority of it into English is here. From the first sentence onward - "Many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die" it wrecks me, every time. Even the executioner showed more compassion than the judges: When at last the executioner led me back into the prison, he said to me: “Sir, I beg you, for God’s sake confess something, whether it be true or not. Invent something, for you cannot endure the torture which you will be put to; and, even if you bear it all, yet you will not escape, not even if you were an earl, but one torture will follow after another until you say you are a witch. Not before that,” he said, “will they let you go, as you may see by all their trials, for one is just like another.”

Here are excerpts read in the original Baroque German, with documents shown:

"EIN BEDRÜCKENDES ZEITDOKUMENT - DER BRIEF DES JOHANNES JUNIUS" (Watch on YouTube)

The families of the people burned in Bamberg, if there were still families, had to pay for the wood used for the execution, because wood had become rare with so many burnings.

Comments

[oracne]

That is even more horrifying than I could imagine - they had to PAY for the WOOD?!!!

[selenak]

They did indeed. After a certain point, it was used as an excuse to confiscate the victim's belongings, whether or not they had a family. Had to pay for all that wood, you know.

[lotesse]

Thank you for the long, informative post on the subject -- it can be hard to keep track, at least for me, of which of the "witch burning" accounts are historically attested and which are contemporary pagan folklore. To speak for myself, it's very possible that my 90s kid kneejerk eyerolling about pagan "never again the burning times" memes has steered me away from serious engagement with events like these.

Are you familiar with Zilpha Keatley Snyder's "The Witches of Worm?" It's a children's novel centered on the Salem witches, a horror/fascination object for me as a young reader, precisely I think because of the vivid depiction of the psychological devastation of not being believed under persecution.

[selenak]

No, I haven't, but thanks for the tip!

re: pagan memes, I steered away from them. I once for research had to read the Malleus Maleficarum, and also the Cautio Criminalis (very different in spirit and writing, of course, since where Institoris & Sprenger were the vilest misogynists you can imagine, Spee wanted the trials to be stopped). It's stomach turning throughout, but it ensures one doesn't see witch hunting as quaint folklore.

[kore]

Holy crap, that's like the families of people assassinated in South America having to pay for the bullets.

[selenak]

Don't give Bolsanaro any ideas. I bet he'd do it.

[ratcreature]

Yikes. 1000? That is a lot of people. Around here in Hamburg far fewer were killed. There are only about a hundred documented in total from when they first included in the legal codes until the last execution 1642. There were still trials later but they were found inncocent, the last in 1676. And before that here around 80% of the accused were executed, but there were innocent verdicts, even if your chances were pretty bad. Some were punished with beatings or banishment too.

But we now have two streets named after known victims (if rather small ones) and a memorial stone on the main city cemetery.

[selenak]

They had to build an extra prison just for the witches, the Drudenhaus, and then that wasn't enough and the prisoners were outsourced to nearby Zeil (= small town between Bamberg and Würzburg). Mind you, the other persecution waves demand far fewer victims, too, but in this particular era, Bamberg had the bad luck of being governed by a Prince Bishop who got the nickname Hexenbrenner because he was so eager, and the Weihbishop who did most of the actual governing of the principality, Förner, was basically the chief ideologue for German witch trials of his era. It only ended when the approaching Swedes caused the Prince Bishop to hightail it out of there, leaving Bamberg to the Swedes and removing himself to Brixen (which he also owned). When the Swedes conquered the city and freed the last surviving prisoners in the Drudenhaus, they were in a terrible state.

[ratcreature]

It probably helped that we were governed by citizen traders and their economic interests not clergy or nobles, and killing off too many people too zealously would have been probably bad for business. And generally things seems to have been just less horrible here at that time compared to the general catastrophe all around, though it took plenty of ransom payments not to be ransacked all the time and such. But I think if you had to pick a spot in German areas in the 17th century, Hamburg would have been one of the better choices.

[selenak]

Oh, so much agreed, for all those reasons. I mean, the Dutch were probably an even safer bet, but Hamburg was easier to reach than Amsterdam. In fact, googling tells me Hamburg was one of the only places which had more, not fewer citzens when it was all over. All hail the merchants, I say.

[monanotlisa]

Oh, God, I always forget our own murder of so many women and some men too. It's easy to focus on the flashy actors, the inquisitors of Spanish provenance and the hysterical Salem prosecutors. But we have all been there; I just checked my own home region, and just the length of this document is stunning: http://www.anton-praetorius.de/opfer/orte.htm

[selenak]

It is indeed. And yes. Unless I misremember, about two thirds of the German speaking population died in the Thirty-Years-War era, and yes, a lot of those died in war related circumstances, but the fact that the witch hunting was at its all time high in German states at this very point also played a role. It was mass slaughter not repeated in our part of the world until the 20th century.

[jesuswasbatman]

The Spanish Inquisition actually worked against witch-hunting most of the time - they were more concerned about crypto-Jews and Protestants and generally saw witch-hunting as a superstitious distraction.

[monanotlisa]

Ah, thanks for chiming in. That makes (sad) sense.

[princessofgeeks]

Wow; thanks for that. I was not aware of the situation in Germany at the time. Makes me want to read up on it.

[selenak]

It was a terrible time in every sense but for literature. Starting with the climate, which went through what's referred to as a "small ice age", resulting in snow in August and not much food. Then there was the Thirty-Years-War which was the most brutal war fought in Europe until the 20th century. And I'm not sure it doesn't still win in terms of percentages, because at the end, two thirds of the pre war population at least in the German states were dead. And in the middle of all of this, and very much connected because of course people wanted to know why all these evil things were happening, why was God punishing them etc., the execution of witches reached an all time high.

[watervole]

Truly terrifying.

I suspect the shortage of food was a partial factor. When things get scarce, people look to reduce the competition. Especially if the competition has other resources they can seize...

[rivendellrose]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeah. As a pagan, I get really uncomfortable when other pagans start talking about the "real witches" who were burned, because... most of the victims of witch trials were on this level. They weren't witches, in any sense of the word, and it is seriously disingenuous and, frankly, rude, to pretend that they were.

I'm descended both from someone who was accused of witchcraft in Salem and from the family one of the judges in that whole debacle, so I've done a lot of reading on that side of the issue, and while it's obviously not as agonizing as this in terms of numbers, there's a similar feeling of "Holy shit this is just wrong on so many levels."

Thanks for posting this; it's really heart-rending and important for people to be reminded of.

[selenak]

You're very welcome, and yes, all of this.

[trobadora]

This letter is also a big reason why I'm always a bit touchy when stories use "real" witches.

Yeah, pretty much exactly this. It makes me twitchy every time.

[selenak]

*solidarity fistbump*

[maidenjedi]

Wow - that is rough to read, to say the very least. This isn't something I was remotely aware of, in terms of the concentration/amount of persecution in such a specific time. Thank you for sharing.

[selenak]

You're welcome. It's dark history, but I think important to know.

[sculpturelle]

How gruesome and revelatory of human nature (the need to attribute blame for misfortune). Thanks for sharing information about something I literally knew nothing about. You got me googling about witchcraft in my neck of the woods, and I came across this article: https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/second-draft-new-france-didnt-share-new-englands-hysteria-about-witches (sorry, I don't know how to post links yet on DW). I have to say that the attitude described in the article still prevails today (regarding immigrants for example), partly as a result of geography, low population density and historical/cultural factors. I think you need the right ingredients bubbling away in the 'cauldron' to create a flare. Quite fascinating!

[selenak]

True, and thank you for the story about Anne Lamarque!

Re: links: okay, attempt to demonstrate did not work as it made another link. :) Never mind, though, I'm fine with the direct URL!

[reverancepavane]

It wasn't just wood was rare, it was that all the wood was owned and spoken for. The right to collect wood was valuable and an important part of rental agreements. [After all, it didn't just grow... hang on.] So someone had to pay for it, and it wasn't going to be the Church. So user pays isn't as modern an idea as the neoliberals would have you believe.

Interesting aside: The Latin for "witch" ( venefica ) is also the Latin for "poisoner." [After all, it was often said that poison was always the Roman woman's traditional weapon (and the Thessalian witches, whose tradition is very much the archetype of the European witch, had a great knowledge and tradition of the uses of herbs and poisons that they seem to have passed on to the Roman matronae according to some legal histories), so there is a definite association.] Earlier (pre-Latin) versions of the biblical text seem to indicate that the original text which in the King James would be "thou shall not suffer a witch to live" is more accurately translated as "thou shall not suffer a poisoner to live" (which is actually pretty good advice for a society that practised communal dining out of a common pot).

Still, it made a good excuse for the persecution of a lot of women. =8(

[msilverstar]

Thank you for the additional information, it's a terrible tragedy.

In slight mitigation, apparently newer historical research says that the Thirty Years War death toll was more like 20%. Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century, Smithsonian: Researchers Catalogue the Grisly Deaths of Soldiers in the Thirty Years’ War, and History Doctor The Thirty Years War.

(To make links on DW, use the HTML <a href="url here">label text</a> format. I'd foegotten what a pain in the ass that is.)

[lokifan]

Wow, yeah. What a fascinating (and upsetting) post.

[rheasilvia]

I was not aware of this letter - thank you for linking to it. It truly is horrible to read - and for me, this is all the more true because it seems so familiar to me.

It's just so human, and that is the worst thing about it.

[selenak]

Yes. It's when a statistic becomes a person, when you read a document like that. In the case of Johannes Junius, it's also that I recognize several of the last names of the witnesses, and of all the places, because families with those last names still are around and every place he mentions is still called that in Bamberg. It's that odd "I breathe the same air this man breathed" feeling.