CRIME AND SOCIETY, 1550-1750

LECTURE 5: WITCHCRAFT

Next Week’s reading

Laura Gowing, ‘Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 156 (1997), pp. 87-115.

Read the article by Laura Gowing listed in the Core Reading. I would like you to compile a list of TEN intelligent questions which, if you were the tutor, you would ask your students to consider while working on the reading. At least one of the questions must concern the types of evidence used by Gowing.

One of the question must relate to the language used by early modern men and women talking about pregnancy and birth.

Other questions might concern the information contained within the articles, the sources used, the arguments put forward by the author and the methods she uses to make those argument.

Outline of the lecture

Not Paganism or WiccansOrigins of our cultural

preconceptionsWitchcraft as a crime

4Witchcraft is not illogical

5What is a witch?

What does a witch look like? What characteristics does he or

she have? Where do we get those ideas

about witches?

6Witches of our Childhood

‘The Queen’, Disney’s Snow White (originally 1937)

7Beautiful Witches

Maleficent, 2014 Frozen, 2013

(Sleeping Beauty – c.1330) (The Snow Queen, 1844)

8Beautiful Witches

‘Vivien’, by Frederick Sandys, 1863‘The Four Witches’, by Albrecht Durer, 1497

9The Hag

‘Invidia (Envy)’ by Jacques de Gheyn II (1597)

‘Bewitched Groom’ by Hans Baldung Grien (1545)

10Witches and the supernatural

‘Linda maestra! (Pretty Teacher!)’, Francisco de Goya Y Lucientes

(1799).

‘Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat’By Albrecht Durer, (1500).

11Magical Powers over nature

‘The Witches’ Rout (The Carcass), by Agostino Veneziano (c. 1520).

12The Tempting Hag

Hansel and Gretel, the Brothers Grimm, 1812.

Praying on the innocent (children)

Plays on fears of kidnapping.

But German.

13European Influence

Hans Christian Andersen (Danish)

The Snow Queen

The Little Mermaid

The Brothers Grimm (German)

Sleeping Beauty

Hansel and Gretel

Snow White

‘Invidia (Envy)’ by Jacques de Gheyn II (1597)

14The Distribution of Witches

Germany: Estimated 50,000 trials

Scotland: Estimated 3,200 indictments

(1,500 executions)

England: Estimated 2,500 indictments

(500 executions)

15The Era of Witches

First major trials: 1420s

Last European execution: Anna Göldi, 1782 (Switzerland)

Last Scottish executions: Janet Horne, 1727

Last English executions: 3 women in Devon, 1682

Europe: From the late medieval period to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

England: from the early modern period to c. the Restoration of the Monarchy.

16Temporal - Scotland

Scottish Data by Anna Mitschelle

17Geospatial - Scotland

Scottish Data by Anna Mitschelle

18Matthew Hopkins

19English Religious Upheaval

Reformation (mid 16th c) Devil a force in the world

Catholic remedies no longer work

Religious uncertainty (Mary, Elizabeth)

Civil War (mid 17th c) 1640s-1660s.

Battle on (largely) religious grounds

Puritans vs Arminians

Austere vs Lavish religion

Oliver Cromwell executes Charles I (1649)

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector

20Witchcraft as a Crime

3 Statutes:

1542, Maleficium

1563, Conjuring spirits

1604, Destroying property, digging up graves, feeding spirits.

1736, Witchcraft repealed

Private Accusation Required

Everyone had a suspect

Malleus Maleficarum, 1490.

21Neighbourliness

‘Charity Scorned’

Keith Thomas and Alan MacFarlane

The Logic of Magic

22Misogyny?

23Summary

Separating our stereotypes from historical reality.

Role of women in society.

Religious strife and unexplained phenomena.

Power politics.