Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [7]
Sorcerers, in contrast, used magic, but did not rely on the assistance of evil spirits. That was the defining feature of the witch—that he or she joined with Satan and with his assistance performed evil acts in the world. In North America, however, this distinction eroded, and European observers used the terms witch and sorcerer and wizard and demon interchangeably to describe those (universally Native Americans) whom they saw as engaging in malevolent practices (see documents 1 and 2). Europeans also distinguished “high” magic from “low” magic, another blurred line that ensnared some unfortunate practitioners. High magic included alchemy (transforming metals) and divination (finding out secret or hidden information through astrology and other methods). Although witchcraft statutes banned divination (see document 6), practitioners of high magic were infrequently charged with witchcraft; however, those who had unnatural knowledge of the future or about the location of lost objects might well be accused of witchcraft. So Goodwife Wright’s
accusers claimed in court in Virginia in 1626. Rebecca Grey testified that Wright predicted the deaths of numerous people (see document 8).
This connection between witchcraft and the Devil emerged over centuries and was solidified in the middle of the fifteenth century, and then circulated in a range of published tracts, all more easily dispersed in the wake of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in 1439. The most famous such tract, Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches), was written by two Dominican friars, James Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, both inquisitors in the Holy Roman Empire and the first men to be commissioned by the pope to hunt witches. It provided graphic accounts of witches’ behavior, describing their crimes, their sexual relations with the Devil, their demonic progeny, and their devious ways, and it helped elaborate a complex demonology for readers. Published in 1487, it was widely disseminated in Europe among educated elites, and during the Reformation was popular with Protestants, too.8
Witches made a pact with the Devil and agreed to serve him. Thus, witchcraft was also diabolism, or worship of the Devil. Europeans emphasized that witches had made a free choice in their service to the Devil. The particulars of this relationship varied by region, but there were some common features. Witches signaled their allegiance to the Devil by signing a book with their signature or, more typically in this era of pervasive female illiteracy, their mark. In the course of doing so, witches acquired a distinctive mark on their bodies. It was allegedly impervious to pain and unable to express blood, and it featured prominently in witch trials as bodies were examined, pricked, and prodded for evidence of the tell-tale sign (see documents 9 and 10). Witches often flew through the air, sometimes many thousands of miles, to meet with other witches at Sabbaths, as witches’ assemblies were called. Witches in the Labourd (on the French and Spanish border and the site of a major witch hunt in 1609–1610), a region whose inhabitants made their living from the sea and especially from the fisheries in Newfoundland, confessed to flying across the ocean to Newfoundland at night.9 Sometimes witches rode on beasts, and sometimes they rode on sticks, with the broom the most common form of nocturnal transport. The larger the gathering, the farther witches needed to fly to reach it. There, witches engaged in all sorts of unusual sexual and social practices. They had orgies, danced naked, and even killed and consumed unbaptized babies. Some Sabbaths included blasphemous practices, including reciting prayers backward, or performing a mock Eucharist (see figure 2). Tortured witches also confessed to having sex with the Devil and bearing his offspring.
Educated, elite men, often the lawyers, judges, and church officials who prosecuted witchcraft in court, expected to hear about