The History of Witchcraft and Demonology/Introduction

by Montague Summers

INTRODUCTION

The history of Witchcraft, a subject as old as the world and as wide as the world,—since I understand for the present purpose by Witchcraft, Sorcery, Black Magic, Necromancy, secret Divination, Satanism, and every kind of malign occult art,—at once confronts the writer with a most difficult problem. He is called upon to exercise a choice, and his dilemma is by no means made the easier owing to the fact he is acutely conscious that whichever way he may decide he is laying himself open to damaging and not impertinent criticism. Since it is essential that his work should be comprised within a reasonable compass he may elect to attempt a bird’s-eye view of the whole range from China to Peru, from the half-articulate, rhythmic incantations of primitive man at the dawn of life to the last spiritistic fad and manifestation at yesterday’s séance or circle, in which case his pages will most certainly be thin and often superficial: or again he may rather concentrate upon one or two features in the history of Witchcraft, deal with these at some length, stress some few forgotten facts whose importance is now neglected and unrealized, utilize new material the result of laborious research, but all this at the expense of inevitable omissions, of hiatus, of self-denial, the avoidance of fascinating by-ways and valuable inquiry, of silence when he would fain be entering upon discussion and exposition. With a full sense of its drawbacks and danger I have selected the second method, since in dealing with a topic such as Witchcraft where there is no human hope of recording more than a tithe of the facts I believe it is better to give a documented account of certain aspects rather than to essay a somewhat huddled and confused conspectus of the whole, for such, indeed, even at best is itself bound to have no inconsiderable gaps and lacunæ, however carefully we endeavour to make it complete. I am conscious, then, that there is scarcely a paragraph in the present work which might not easily be expanded into a page, scarcely a page which might not to its great advantage become a chapter, and certainly not a chapter that would not be vastly improved were it elaborated to a volume.

Many omissions are, as I have said, a necessary consequence of the plan I have adopted; or, indeed, I venture to suppose, of any other plan which contemplates the treatment of so universal a subject as Witchcraft. I can but offer my apologies to these students who come to this History to find details of Finnish magic and the sorceries of Lapland, who wish to inform themselves concerning Tohungaism among the Maoris, Hindu devilry and enchantments, the Bersekir of Iceland, Siberian Shamanism, the blind Pan Sus and Mutangs of Korea, the Chinese Wu-po, Serbian lycanthropy, negro Voodoism, the dark lore of old Scandinavia and Islam. I trust my readers will believe that I regret as much as any the absence of these from my work, but after all in any human endeavour there are practical limitations of space.

In a complementary and companion volume I am intending to treat the epidemic of Witchcraft in particular localities, the British Isles, France, Germany, Italy, New England, and other countries. Many famous cases, the Lancashire witch-trials, the activities of Matthew Hopkins, Gilles de Rais, Gaufridi, Urbain Grandier, Cotton Mather and the Salem sorceries, will then be dealt with and discussed in some detail.

It is a surprising fact that amongst English writers Witchcraft in Europe has not of recent years received anything like adequate attention from serious students of history, who strangely fail to recognize the importance of this tragic belief both as a political and a social factor. Magic, the genesis of magical cults and ceremonies, the ritual of primitive peoples, traditional superstitions, and their ancillary lore, have been made the subject of vast and erudite studies, mostly from an anthropological and folk-loristic point of view, but the darker side of the subject, the history of Satanism seems hardly to have been attempted.

Possibly one reason for this neglect and ignorance lies in the fact that the heavy and crass materialism, which was so prominent a feature during the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England, intellectually disavowed the supernatural, and attempted not without some success to substitute for religion a stolid system of respectable morality. Since Witchcraft was entirely exploded it would, at best, possess merely an antiquarian interest, and even so, the exhumation of a disgusting and contemptible superstition was not to be encouraged. It were more seemly to forget the uglier side of the past. This was the attitude which prevailed for more than a hundred and fifty years, and when Witchcraft came under discussion by such narrowly prejudiced and inefficient writers as Lecky or Charles Mackay they are not even concerned to discuss the possibility of the accounts given by the earlier authorities, who, as they premise, were all mistaken, extravagant, purblind, and misled. The cycle of time has had its revenge, and this rationalistic superstition is dying fast. The extraordinary vogue of and immense adherence to Spiritism would alone prove that, whilst the widespread interest that is taken in mysticism is a yet healthier sign that the world will no longer be content to be fed on dry husks and the chaff of straw. And these are only just two indications, and by no means the most significant, out of many.

It is quite impossible to appreciate and understand the true lives of men and women in Elizabethan and Stuart England, in the France of Louis XIII and his son, in the Italy of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reaction—to name but three countries and a few definite periods—unless we have some realization of the part that Witchcraft played in those ages amid the affairs of these kingdoms. All classes were concerned from Pope to peasant, from Queen to cottage gill.

Accordingly as actors are “the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time” I have given a concluding chapter which deals with Witchcraft as seen upon the stage, mainly concentrating upon the English theatre. This review has not before been attempted, and since Witchcraft was so formidable a social evil and so intermixed with all stations of life it is obvious that we can find few better contemporary illustrations of it than in the drama, for the playwright ever had his finger upon the public pulse. Until the development of the novel it was the theatre alone that mirrored manners and history.

There are many general French studies of Witchcraft of the greatest value, amongst which we may name such standard works as Antoine-Louis Daugis, Traité sur la magie, le sortilège, les possessions, obsessions et maléfices, 1782; Jules Garinet, Histoire de la Magie en France depuis le commencement de la monarchie jusqu’à nos jours, 1818; Michelet’s famous La Sorcière; Alfred Maury, La Magie et l’Astrologie, 3rd edition, 1868; L’Abbé Lecanu, Histoire de Satan; Jules Baissac, Les grands Jours de la Sorcellerie, 1890; Theodore de Cauzons, La Magie et la Sorcellerie en France, 4 vols., 1910, etc.

In German we have Eberhard Hauber’s Bibliotheca Magica; Roskoff’s Geschichte des Teufels, 1869; Soldan’s Geschichte der Hexenprozesse (neu bearbeitet von Dr. Heinrich Heppe), 1880; Friedrich Leitschuch’s Beitræge zur Geschichte des Hexenwesens in Franken, 1888; Johan Dieffenbach’s Der Hexenwahn vor und nach der Glaubensspaltung in Deutschland, 1886; Schreiber’s Die Hexenprozesse im Breisgau; Ludwig Rapp’s Die Hexenprozesse und ihre Gegner aus Tirol; Joseph Hansen’s Quellen wnd Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns, 1901; and very many more admirably documented studies.

In England the best of the older books must be recommended with necessary reservations. Thomas Wright’s Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, 2 vols., 1851, is to be commended as the work of a learned antiquarian who often referred to original sources, but it is withal sketchy and can hardly satisfy the careful scholar. Some exceptionally good writing and sound, clear, thinking are to be met with in Dr. F. G. Lee’s The Other World, 2 vols., 1875; More Glimpses of the World Unseen, 1878; Glimpses in the Twilight, 1885; and Sight and Shadows, 1894, all of which deserve to be far more widely known, since they well repay an unhurried and repeated perusal.

Quite recent work is represented by Professor Wallace Notestein’s History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, published in 1911. This intimate study of a century and a half concentrates, as its title tells, upon England alone. It is supplied with ample and useful appendixes. In respect of the orderly marshalling of his facts, garnered from the trials and other sources—no small labour—Professor Notestein deserves a generous meed of praise; his interpretation of the facts and his deductions may not unfairly be criticized. Although his incredulity must surely now and again be shaken by the cumulative force of reiterated and corroborative evidence, nevertheless he refuses to admit even the possibility that persons who at any rate affected supernatural powers held clandestine meetings after nightfall in obscure and lonely places for purposes and plots of their own. If human testimony is worth anything at all, unless we are to be more Pyrrhonian than the famous Dr. Marphurius himself who would never say, “Je suis venu; mais; Il me semble que je suis venu,” when in 1612 Roger Nowell had swooped down on the Lancashire coven and carried off Elizabeth Demdike with three other beldames to durance vile in Lancaster Castle, Elizabeth Device summoned the whole Pendle gang to her home at Malking Tower, in order that they might discuss the situation and contrive the delivery of the prisoners. As soon as they had forgathered, they all sat down to dinner, and had a good north country spread of beef, bacon, and roast mutton. Surely there is nothing very remarkable in this; and the evidence as given in Thomas Potts’ famous narrative, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the countie of Lancaster (London, 1618), bears the very hall-mark and impress of truth: “The persons aforesaid had to their dinners Beefe, Bacon, and roasted Mutton; which Mutton (as this Examinates said brother said) was of a Wether of Christopher Swyers of Barley: which Wether was brought in the night before into this Examinates mothers house by the said Iames Deuice, the Examinates said brother: and in this Examinates sight killed and eaten.” But Professor Notestein will none of it. He writes: “The concurring evidence in the Malking Tower story is of no more compelling character than that to be found in a multitude of Continental stories of witch gatherings which have been shown to be the outcome of physical or mental pressure and of leading questions. It seems unnecessary to accept even a substratum of fact” (p. 124). In the face of such sweeping and dogmatic assertion mere evidence is no use at all. For we know that the Continental stories of witch gatherings are with very few exceptions the chronicle of actual fact. It must be confessed that such feeble scepticism, which repeatedly mars his summary of the witch-trials, is a serious blemish in Professor Notestein’s work, and in view of his industry much to be regretted.

Miss M. A. Murray does not for a moment countenance any such summary dismissal and uncritical rejection of evidence. Her careful reading of the writers upon Witchcraft has justly convinced her that their statements must be accepted. Keen intelligences and shrewd investigators such as Gregory XV, Bodin, Guazzo, De Lancre, D’Espagnet, La Reynie, Boyle, Sir Matthew Hale, Glanvill, were neither deceivers nor deceived. The evidence must stand, but as Miss Murray finds herself unable to admit the logical consequence of this, she hurriedly starts away with an arbitrary, “the statements do not bear the construction put upon them,” and in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) proceeds to develop a most ingenious, but, as I show, a wholly untenable hypothesis. Accordingly we are not surprised to find that many of the details Miss Murray has collected in her painstaking pages are (no doubt unconsciously) made to square with her preconceived theory. However much I may differ from Miss Murray in my outlook, and our disagreement is, I consider, neither slight nor superficial, I am none the less bound to commend her frank and courageous treatment of many essential particulars which are all too often suppressed, and in consequence a false and counterfeit picture has not unseldom been drawn.

So vast a literature surrounds modern Witchcraft, for frankly such is Spiritism in effect, that it were no easy task to mention even a quota of those works which seem to throw some real light upon a complex and difficult subject. Among many which I have found useful are Surbled, Spiritualisme et spiritisme and Spirites et médiums; Gutberlet, Der Kampf um die Seele; Dr. Marcel Viollet, Le spiritisme dans ses rapports avec la folie; J. Godfrey Raupert, Modern Spiritism and Dangers of Spiritualism; the Very Rev. Alexis Lépicier, O.S.M., The Unseen World; the Rev. A. V. Miller, Sermons on Modern Spiritualism; Lapponi, Hypnotism and Spiritism; the late Monsignor Hugh Benson’s Spiritualism (The History of Religions); Elliot O’Donnell’s The Menace of Spiritualism; and Father Simon Blackmore’s Spiritism: Facts and Frauds, 1925. My own opinion of this movement has been formed not only from reading studies and monographs which treat of every phase of the question from all points of view, but also by correspondence and discussion with ardent devotees of the cult, and, not least, owing to the admissions and warnings of those who have abandoned these dangerous practices, revelations made in such circumstances, however, as altogether to preclude even a hint as to their definite import and scope.

The History of Witchcraft is full of interest to the theologian, the psychologist, the historian, and cannot be ignored. But it presents a very dark and terrible aspect, the details of which in the few English studies that claim serious attention have almost universally been unrecorded, and, indeed, deliberately burked and shunned. Such treatment is unworthy and unscholarly to a degree, reprehensible and dishonest.

The work of Professor Notestein, for example, is gravely vitiated, owing to the fact that he has completely ignored the immodesty of the witch-cult and thus extenuated its evil. He is, indeed, so uncritical, I would even venture to say so unscholarly, as naïvely to remark (p. 300): “No one who has not read for himself can have any notion of the vile character of the charges and confessions embodied in the witch pamphlets. It is an aspect of the question which has not been discussed in these pages.” Such a confession is amazing. One cannot write in dainty phrase of Satanists and the Sabbat. However loathly the disease the doctor must not hesitate to diagnose and to probe. This ostrich-like policy is moral cowardice. None of the Fathers and great writers of the Church were thus culpably prudish. When S. Epiphanius has to discuss the Gnostics, he describes in detail their abominations, and pertinently remarks: “Why should I shrink from speaking of the things you do not fear to do? By speaking thus, I hope to fill you with horror of the turpitudes you commit.” And S. Clement of Alexandria says: “I am not ashamed to name the parts of the body wherein the fœtus is formed and nourished; and why, indeed, should I be, since God was not ashamed to create them?”

A few authors have painted the mediæval witch in pretty colours on satin. She has become a somewhat eccentric but kindly old lady, shrewd and perspicacious, with a knowledge of herbs and simples, ready to advise and to aid her neighbours who are duller-witted than she; not disdaining in return a rustic present of a flitch, meal, a poult or eggs from the farm-yard. And so for no very definite reason she fell an easy prey to fanatic judges and ravening inquisitors, notoriously the most ignorant and stupid of mortals, who caught her, swum her in a river, tried her, tortured her, and finally burned her at the stake. Many modern writers, more sceptical still, frankly relegate the witch to the land of nursery tales and Christmas pantomime; she never had any real existence other than as Cinderella’s fairy godmother or the Countess D’Aulnoy’s Madame Merluche.

I have even heard it publicly asserted from the lecture platform by a professed student of the Elizabethan period that the Elizabethans did not, of course, as a matter of fact believe in Witchcraft. It were impossible to imagine that men of the intellectual standard of Shakespeare, Ford, Jonson, Fletcher, could have held so idle a chimæra, born of sick fancies and hysteria. And his audience acquiesced with no little complacency, pleased to think that the great names of the past had been cleared from the stigma of so degrading and gross a superstition. A few uneducated peasants here and there may have been morbid and ignorant enough to dream of witches, and the poets used these crones and hags with effect in ballad and play. But as for giving any actual credence to such fantasies, most assuredly our great Elizabethans were more enlightened than that! And, indeed, Witchcraft is a phase of and a factor in the manners of the seventeenth century, which in some quarters there seems a tacit agreement almost to ignore.

All this is very unhistorical and very unscientific. In the following pages I have endeavoured to show the witch as she really was—an evil liver; a social pest and parasite; the devotee of a loathly and obscene creed; an adept at poisoning, blackmail, and other creeping crimes; a member of a powerful secret organization inimical to Church and State; a blasphemer in word and deed; swaying the villagers by terror and superstition; a charlatan and a quack sometimes; a bawd; an abortionist; the dark counsellor of lewd court ladies and adulterous gallants; a minister to vice and inconceivable corruption; battening upon the filth and foulest passions of the age.

My present work is the result of more than thirty years’ close attention to the subject of Witchcraft, and during this period I have made a systematic and intensive study of the older demonologists, as I am convinced that their first-hand evidence is of prime importance and value, whilst since their writings are very voluminous and of the last rarity they have universally been neglected, and are allowed to accumulate thick dust undisturbed. They are, moreover, often difficult to read owing to technicalities of phrase and vocabulary. Among the most authoritative I may cite a few names: Sprenger (Malleus Maleficarum); Guazzo; Bartolomeo Spina, O.P.; John Nider, O.P.; Grilland; Jerome Mengo; Binsfeld; Gerson; Ulrich Molitor; Basin; Murner; Crespet; Anania; Henri Boguet; Bodin; Martin Delrio, S.J.; Pierre le Loyer; Ludwig Elich; Godelmann; Nicolas Remy; Salerini; Leonard Vair; De Lancre; Alfonso de Castro; Sebastian Michaelis, O.P.; Sinistrari; Perreaud; Dom Calmet; Sylvester Mazzolini, O.P. (Prierias). When we supplement these by the judicial records and the legal codes we have an immense body of material. In all that I have written I have gone to original sources, and it has been my endeavour fairly to weigh and balance the evidence, to judge without heat or prejudice, to give the facts and the comment upon them with candour, sincerity, and truth. At the same time I am very well aware that several great scholars for whom I have the sincerest personal regard and whose attainments I view with a very profound respect will differ from me in many particulars.

I am conscious that the rough list of books which I have drawn up does not deserve to be dignified with the title, Bibliography. It is sadly incomplete, yet should it, however inadequate, prove helpful in the smallest way it will have justified its inclusion. I may add that my Biblical quotations, save where expressly otherwise noted, are from the Vulgate or its translation into English commonly called the Douai Version.

 In Festo S. Teresiæ, V.
⁠1925.