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Doubting Witchcraft: Theologians, Jurists, Inquisitors during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2016

Matteo Duni
Matteo Duni*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University Florence
*
*Syracuse University Florence, Piazza Savonarola 15, 50132 Firenze, Italy. E-mail: mduni@syr.edu.
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Abstract

The theory of diabolical witchcraft attracted serious doubts from its first formulation early in the fifteenth century. This essay focuses on the writings of a few lay jurists and lawyers who rejected the witch-hunters’ claim that witchcraft was made possible by the Devil's ability to operate physically in the world, and argued instead that such acts as consorting sexually with demons, or being carried through the air to the Sabbat, were visions and dreams produced by the Devil. In this heated debate, both doubters and believers frequently crossed their respective disciplinary boundaries as they sought to prove their point. The essay analyses the works of lawyers who confuted the witch-hunters’ interpretation of key biblical passages, using them to demonstrate that witchcraft was physically impossible, and that believing otherwise was unsound from both a legal and a religious point of view. It argues that their specific contribution was notable both for its content, as a particularly radical attack on demonological theories, and in itself, as an explicit challenge to ecclesiastical hegemony in the discourse on metaphysics. It concludes that their doubts had a significant, if belated, impact on the Roman Inquisition's policy vis-à-vis witchcraft.

Keywords

canon lawdemonologymetaphysicsRoman Inquisitionwitchcraftwitch-hunt [remove one]
Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 203 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Frances Andrews for her kind invitation to present a paper at the Ecclesiastical History Society Winter Meeting, and the anonymous reviewer and the editors of Studies in Church History for having helped me improve my article with their valuable comments and critiques.

References

1 Institoris, Henricus and Sprenger, Jacobus, Malleus maleficarum, ed. and transl. Mackay, Christopher S., 2 vols (Cambridge, 2006), 2: 43Google Scholar. Mackay holds on to the traditional idea of a double authorship of the Malleus maleficarum, but recent studies unanimously exclude the possibility that the prominent Dominican reformer Jacob Sprenger had any such role: cf. Golden, Richard M., ed., Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition [hereafter: EoW], 4 vols (Santa Barbara, CA, 2006)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Malleus Maleficarum’.

2 The best and most up-to-date treatment of Institoris's life and works is Herzig, Tamar, Christ Transformed into a Virgin Woman: Lucia Brocadelli, Heinrich Kramer, and the Defense of the Faith (Rome, 2013)Google Scholar. See also EoW, s.n. ‘Kramer (Institoris), Heinrich’.

3 For the annotated English text of the bull, see Kors, Alan C. and Peters, Edward, eds, Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700: A Documentary History, 2nd edn, rev. Peters, Edward (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), 177–80Google Scholar.

4 Institoris, Malleus maleficarum, ed. and transl. Mackay, 2: 73, 91.

5 Cf. Stephens, Walter, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago, IL, and London, 2002)Google Scholar; Ostorero, Martine, Le Diable au sabbat. Littérature démonologique et sorcellerie (1440–1460) (Florence, 2011)Google Scholar. Many of these issues continued to be debated in the following centuries: cf. Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar, especially 195–213; EoW, s.v. ‘Skepticism’. On Episcopi, see below, 215–16.

6 Cf. Broedel, Hans-Peter, ‘Fifteenth-Century Witch Beliefs’, in Levack, Brian P., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford, 2013), 32–49Google Scholar. One of the first inquisitors to articulate clearly this alarming theory was the French Dominican Nicolas Jacquier (see below, 213) in his tract of 1458, Flagellum fascinariorum haereticorum (Frankfurt am Main, 1581), 37–51.

7 Mammoli, Domenico, Processo alla strega Matteuccia di Francesco (Todi, 20 marzo 1428) (Spoleto, 2013; first publ. 1969), 26–8Google Scholar. Translations from Latin or Italian are mine, unless otherwise specified.

8 Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The First Wave of Trials for Diabolical Witchcraft’, in Levack, ed., Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft, 159–78.

9 On early Italian authors, see Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 681–94; Flaction, Astrid Estuardo, ‘Girolamo Visconti, un témoin du débat sur la realité de la sorcellerie au xve siècle en Italie du Nord’, in Ostorero, Martine, Modestin, Georg, and Tremp, Kathrin Utz, eds, Chasse aux sorcières et démonologie. Entre discours et pratique (XIVe–XVIIe siècles) (Florence, 2010), 389–406Google Scholar. On early Italian witch-hunts, see Behringer, Wolfgang, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA, 2004), 72–9Google Scholar; Tamar Herzig, ‘Italy’, in Levack, ed., Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft, 249–67.

10 On Nider, see Bailey, Michael, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2005)Google Scholar. A selection from the Formicarius (with facing French translation) is in L’Imaginaire du sabbat. Édition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430 c.–1440 c.), ed. Martine Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Lausanne, 1999), 99–265.

11 On Vineti and Jacquier and their works, see Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 81–116, 117–64 respectively; EoW, s.n. ‘Jacquier, Nicolas (ca. 1400–1472)’. On Rategno, see Prosperi, Adriano, Lavenia, Vincenzo and Tedeschi, John, eds, Dizionario storico dell'Inquisizione [hereafter: DSI], 4 vols (Pisa, 2010)Google Scholar, s.n. ‘Rategno, Bernardo’. On Mazzolini, see Tavuzzi, Michael, Prierias: The Life and Works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio (1456–1527) (Durham, NC, and London, 1997)Google Scholar. On Spina, see DSI, s.n. ‘Spina, Bartolomeo’; Stephens, Demon Lovers, especially 159–64.

12 On Torquemada, see Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 634–7. On Tostado, see EoW, s.n. ‘Tostado, Alonso’. On Nicholas of Cusa and witches, see Ginzburg, Carlo, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbat (Chicago, IL, 1991), 94–5Google Scholar. On De Vio and his opinion of the witches’ flight as an illusion, see Lavenia, Vincenzo, ‘“Anticamente di misto foro”. Inquisizione, stati e delitti di stregoneria nella prima età moderna’, in Paolin, Giovanna, ed., Inquisizioni: percorsi di ricerca (Trieste, 2001), 35–80Google Scholar, at 41–2.

13 Cf. Boureau, Alain, Satan the Heretic: The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West (Chicago, IL, 2006), 10–12Google Scholar; Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 236–7.

14 Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 721–3.

15 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 61–8; Cameron, Euan, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, & Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford and New York, 2010), 94–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bailey, Michael, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 205–8.

16 See the text of Episcopi with commentary in Kors and Peters, eds, Witchcraft in Europe, 61–3. On its impact on the debate on witchcraft, see EoW, s.v. ‘Skepticism’.

17 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 127–34.

18 L’Imaginaire du sabbat, 207.

19 Ibid. 178.

20 Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 634–7.

21 Ibid. 650–65.

22 A short selection from the Flagellum (in English translation) is in Kors and Peters, eds, Witchcraft in Europe, 169–72.

23 Jacquier, Flagellum haereticorum fascinariorum, [1–3] (unpaginated).

24 Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 329–41.

25 Jacquier, Flagellum haereticorum fascinariorum, 3–38.

26 Ibid. 44–6.

27 Ibid. 74–166 (chs 10–25).

28 Ibid. 171–4.

29 Ibid. 182–3.

30 Stephens, Demon Lovers.

31 Cf. Duni, Matteo, ‘Le streghe e i dubbi di un giurista: il De lamiis et excellentia iuris utriusque di Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio (1511)’, in Hermanin, Camilla and Simonutti, Luisa, eds, La centralità del dubbio. Un progetto di Antonio Rotondò, 2 vols, Studi e testi per la storia della tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI–XVIII 13 (Florence, 2011), 1: 3–26Google Scholar; idem, ‘Law, Nature, Theology, and Witchcraft in Ponzinibio's De Lamiis (1511)’, in Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Raisa Maria Toivo, eds, Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York and Basingstoke, forthcoming); Martino, Federico, Il volo notturno delle streghe. Il sabba della modernità (Napoli, 2011)Google Scholar.

32 See DSI, s.n. ‘Vignati, Ambrogio’. To the best of my knowledge, Vignati's text was preceded only by Claude Tholosan's tract Ut magorum et maleficiorum errores (c.1436), as far as works by non-ecclesiastical jurists are concerned. On Tholosan, see L’Imaginaire du sabbat, 357–60.

33 Vignati, Ambrogio, Quaestio unica de lamiis seu strigibus, et earum delictis, cum commentariis Francisci Peñae sacrae theologiae et iuris utriusque doctoris, in Malleus maleficarum, maleficas et earum haeresim framea conterens, ex variis auctoribus compilatus, & in quatuor tomos iuste distributus (Lyon, 1669), vol. 1/ii, pt II, 131–62Google Scholar.

34 ‘[I]t is evident that demons cannot have sexual intercourse, even in the case that they – by divine permission – take up bodies made of air, for a medical reason: since physicians say that semen is what remains after the final digestion, those who do not transform food cannot emit semen, either’: ibid. 136.

35 ‘Furthermore, although we can say that both good and reprobate angels may sometimes take on a body by divine permission, nevertheless as a rule they are detained in the dark prison of lower air, until Judgement Day . . . Thus, if demons sometimes take on a body in order to do harm, this happens by a special permission’: ibid. 137.

36 Augustinus, De genesi ad litteram libri XII 3.10 (PL 34, col. 285). The question was addressed and given its definitive solution by Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia q. 64 a. 4, who argued that those angels trapped in the lower air until Judgement Day had the crucial function of putting humans to the test by tempting them; cf. Cameron, Enchanted Europe, 95–6.

37 Vignati, Quaestio, 153–7.

38 On the sixteenth-century edition of Vignati's work, see Duni, Matteo, ‘The Editor as Inquisitor: Francisco Peña and the Question of Witchcraft in the Late Sixteenth Century’, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. Israëls, Machtelt and Waldman, Louis A., 2 vols, Villa I Tatti 29 (Florence, 2013), 2: 306–12Google Scholar.

39 Cf. Mercier, Frank, La Vauderie d'Arras. Une Chasse aux sorcières à l'automne du Moyen Âge (Rennes, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Ostorero, Le Diable au sabbat, 678–9.

41 EoW, s.n. ‘Molitor, Ulrich’; DSI, s.n. ‘Molitor, Ulrich’; Stephens, Demon Lovers, 139–40.

42 Institoris, Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and transl. Mackay, 2: 259–62 (Pt II, q. I, ch. 4). Stephens, Demon Lovers, 61–9.

43 On this, see, in this volume, Frances Andrews, ‘Doubting John?’, 33.

44 Institoris, Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and transl. Mackay, 2: 260.

45 Cf. Herzig, Christ Transformed, 36–48.

46 The Gloss, Molitor writes, ‘speaks dubiously and is not conclusive’ (opinative loquitur et non concludit). That is why he proposes a radically different understanding of gigantes as ‘homines potentes et magnifici, qui propter eorum potentiam et magnanimitatem dicti sunt gigantes’: De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, in Malleus maleficarum, maleficas et earum haeresim framea conterens, 1/ii, pt I, 41–2.

47 ‘Nec unquam inventus est homo qui ex spiritu et muliere natus sit praeterquam Salvator Dominus noster Iesus Christus, qui summi Dei Patris misericordia dignatus est, sine commistione virili, de Spiritu Sancto ex gloriosissima Virgine Maria in mundum nasci. Absit igitur apud me quod homo sine homine de spiritu et maledicta muliere debeat nasci’: ibid. 41.

48 Ibid. 42. On the virtus cordialis as essential to procreation, Molitor's source (duly acknowledged) is Peter of Abano's Conciliator controversiarum (Venice, 1565), ‘Differentia’ 35, fol. 54v.

49 Molitor, De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, 43–4.

50 The success of De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus was probably due also to the fact that it was the first printed book on witchcraft to include illustrations: see Zika, Charles, ‘Fears of Flying: Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality in Early Sixteenth-century Germany’, in idem, Exorcising our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003), 237–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an analysis of some of them.

51 See DSI, s.n. ‘Ponzinibio, Giovanni Francesco’.

52 Cf. Duni, ‘Le streghe e i dubbi di un giurista’, 11 and n. 21.

53 Ponzinibio, Giovanni Francesco, Tractatus utilis et elegans de lamiis et excellentia utriusque iuris, in Tractatus duo: unus de sortilegiis D. Pauli Grillandi . . . Alter de lamiis et excellentia juris utriusque D. Joannis Francisci Ponzinibii (Frankfurt on Main, 1592), 234Google Scholar. A short selection from De lamiis was published in Hansen, Joseph, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn, 1901), 313–17Google Scholar.

54 Ibid.

55 Ponzinibio, De lamiis, 234.

56 See Duni, ‘Le streghe e i dubbi di un giurista’. Lack of space precludes detailed discussion here.

57 Ponzinibio, De lamiis, 266 (partially in Hansen, Quellen, 314–15).

58 ‘[S]ince such persons are deluded, as it is said [in the canon], we must thus conclude that their confession, too, is erroneous and should not be accepted . . . as a matter of fact, a confession should include true and possible things . . . whereas both law and nature reject those things [confessed by the witches]. Hence it cannot be argued, that since those women confessed such things, they must be true; indeed such a confession is far removed from the facts, and whatever is against nature is lacking in its own principles, and therefore is impossible by nature’: Ponzinibio, De lamiis, 271.

59 Ibid. 281–2.

60 Ibid. 274.

61 ‘[E]t quia fuit portatus ab ipso diabolo, sive assumptus, ex permissu eius, potest inferri et dici quod si non constat de permissu Dei, nullo modo possit vel debeat concedi talis delatio’: ibid. 275–6.

62 ‘As a result of the death of God, the Devil has been deprived of power over the world, and has been confined in hell, where he will be chained until the times of the Antichrist’: ibid. 274. The reference is to Rev. 20: 1–10, especially vv. 1–2: ‘Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years’ (RSV).

63 ‘If the Devil were able to do that [carrying witches], why would he do it only with a few persons, and of lowly status, as he is impartial, being the tempter of the whole world? And again, if he really does it, why does he not do it only with those who would be trustworthy witnesses?’: Ponzinibio, De lamiis, 275.

64 ‘[I]t does not follow [that] ‘the Devil goes at great lengths to be worshipped, therefore he transports those people really and bodily to the place of the game [i.e. the Sabbat] so that he may be really worshipped', since he may well be worshipped in their [the witches’] homes actually and truly, and indeed there are some of them who said they worshipped him in their homes at night . . . he just needs to have men's minds entrapped, so that men may be deceived': ibid. 276.

65 On Spina, see n. 11 above. On the complex figure of Pomponazzi and his philosophical controversies, see Poppi, Antonino, ‘Fate, Fortune, Providence and Human Freedom: Pietro Pomponazzi’, in Schmitt, Charles B. and Skinner, Quentin, eds, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge and New York, 1988), 641–67Google Scholar; DSI, s.n. ‘Pomponazzi, Pietro’. On Pomponazzi's stance regarding magic and witchcraft, see Zambelli, Paola, ‘Magia e sistemi. Platonici ed aristotelici di fronte a divinazione, prodigi, stregoneria ed eresia’, in eadem, L’ambigua natura della magia. Filosofi, streghe, riti nel Rinascimento (Milan, 1991), 211–48Google Scholar; Bertolotti, Maurizio, ‘Pomponazzi tra streghe e inquisitori. Il De incantationibus e il dibattito sulla stregoneria intorno al 1520’, in Pietro Pomponazzi: tradizione e dissenso. Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi su Pietro Pomponazzi, Mantova 23–24 ottobre 2008, ed. Sgarbi, Marco (Florence, 2010), 385–405Google Scholar.

66 These were the so-called deliberations of Granada (1526), which had a long-lasting effect on the Spanish Inquisition's policy vis-à-vis witchcraft: see EoW, s.v. ‘Inquisition, Spanish’. See also the text of the deliberations (in English translation) in Homza, Lu Ann, ed. and transl., The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, 2006), 153–63Google Scholar.

67 The adoption of the Spanish guidelines was probably due to the mediation of Spanish inquisitors and jurists, such as Diego de Simancas and especially Francisco Peña, who had prominent roles in the Roman Inquisition. The new policy of the Holy Office was detailed in an informal internal document, Instructio in formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum et maleficiorum (‘Instruction on how to conduct a trial in cases of witches, enchantments and spells’), probably written in the 1590s but officially printed only in 1657: see DSI, s.v. ‘Instructio’. On Peña, see Duni, ‘Editor as Inquisitor’.

68 Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Stanza storica, Q 3–d, fols 267v–268r, 1 October 1593.

69 Ponzinibio, De lamiis, 281.

70 On the new policy of the Roman Inquisition towards witchcraft, see Tedeschi, John, The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghampton, NY, 1991)Google Scholar; Romeo, Giovanni, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia del Cinquecento (Florence, 1990)Google Scholar; Prosperi, Adriano, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin, 1996)Google Scholar, especially 368–99; for a synthesis of the findings of current scholarship, see Duni, Matteo, Under the Devil's Spell: Witches, Sorcerers and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Florence, 2007), 32–8Google Scholar.