Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [8]
was an integral feature of the judicial system on the European continent, which was based on Roman law; in contrast, the English common law system used torture infrequently.) Accused witches, on the other hand, tended to confess more easily to core elements of popular beliefs about maleficia, animal familiars, and charms and potions. Anna Roleffes (known as Tempel Anneke), tried in Brunswick in the Holy Roman Empire in 1663, confessed to several practices that she clearly regarded as harmless white magic, including a divination ritual designed to help her find stolen goods, and making a concoction of berries, salt, leaves, hops, and sage to cure sick sheep. Rituals required words to give them power, as any Christian knew, and so Tempel Anneke called on God. Sometimes she needed a more elaborate prayer. If, for example, one was blessing a man, she explained to the court, one might say, “John and the Holy Evangelists, they pluck a branch in Paradise.”
Tempel Anneke was understandably confused about her ability to use words and actions together. Rituals and sacraments endorsed by the Catholic Church and performed by priests did, indeed, seem magical. Priests transformed wine into blood and bread into flesh. Clerics uttered prayers and suggested that their words could be heard and acted upon by a remote deity. In all these actions, human activity intersected with the divine. Is it any wonder worshipers might believe that their spells were nothing but prayers? Tempel Anneke’s potions sounded harmless, and her words Christian, but her interrogators knew better. When they consulted physicians about her herbal concoctions, the doctors denied that the medicines could cause any benefit, so any cure could only be achieved through magic and thus through the aid of the Devil. Tempel Anneke adamantly denied this charge. Under torture, however, when the torturer took her to a new interrogation chamber in the jail’s cellar, blindfolded her, and tightened a leg screw, Tempel Anneke confessed to apparitions from a “black man” who threatened to avenge Tempel Anneke on those who insulted her. With leg screws then fastened on both shins, eyes covered, encased in darkness, and with no advocate by her side, only the company of her torturer who exhorted her to acknowledge her crimes and end her ghastly misery, Tempel Anneke confessed to making a pact with the Devil to serve him twelve years, to having sex with him on her bed, to becoming pregnant with salamanders as a result of this intercourse, and to bewitching people and causing injury. She confessed on October 22; just over two months later, on December 30, she was beheaded, and then her body was burned.10
As a woman, Tempel Anneke was typical of most executed witches in Europe, where women represented 75 percent of executed witches in most regions.11 This sex ratio was especially pronounced in England, where some 93 percent of accused witches in the county of Essex were women. There was, however, considerable range within Europe. In Iceland, for example, only 10 percent of accused witches were women; in Poland, 96 percent were.12 There could also be great variation within a single nation. Take France. In the Department of the Nord, a territory in the far north of the country, 81 percent of accused witches were women. But in one part of Normandy, the Pays de Caux, men were especially likely to be accused of witchcraft, and the region was the “epicenter of male witchcraft in western Europe.”13 Of 381 people accused of witchcraft in Normandy between 1560 and 1660, 278 (73 percent) were men, and 103 (27 percent) were women.14 Seventeen men from this region—and one woman—were executed as witches. The occupations of the accused were male occupations: half of the accused were shepherds, and the next most frequent occupational category was clergy. Thus, in many places witchcraft might be commonly associated with women (a sex-linked crime) but not associated only with women (and thus not a sex-specific