Notes on witchcraft

by George Lyman Kittredge

But, Bekker hastens to admit, there remains a huge mass of recent testimony which is regarded by almost everybody as sufficient to establish the existence of sorcery and witchcraft, whether such things are recognized in the Bible or not. To this testimony Bekker devotes the Fourth (and last) Book of his treatise.

He first points out that all such testimony is prejudiced, since it comes from persons who have a fixed and, so to speak, an inherited belief in the truth of the marvels whose very existence is in question. He then examines a great body of material, with splendid sobriety and common sense. This is perhaps the most interesting part of his work to us,—though in fact it is less original than much of what precedes, since all opponents of the witch dogma, beginning with Wier, had attacked the evidence in many particulars, and since even those scholars and theologians who supported the dogma most effectively—like Glanvill—had granted without hesitation that fraud and delusion played a large part in the accumulation of testimony. Bekker’s treatment of the subject, however, is better than anything of the kind that had been written before. Fraud, terror, hysteria, insanity, illusion of the senses,—due to disease or to what we should now call hypnotic or semi-hypnotic conditions,—unknown laws of nature—these are the sources from which he derives his interpretation of the evidence. This part of his work, then, has a singularly modern tone, and gives the author a valid claim to rank as an enlightened psychologist.

It has seemed advisable to give particular attention to Bekker’s Enchanted World because of its singular merits, as well as on account of the distinguished position which it deservedly holds among the books which oppose the belief in witchcraft. In strictness, however, we are not bound to include this work in our survey of seventeenth-century opinion, since it did not appear in season to exert any influence on New England at the time of the Salem prosecution. The first two Books of Bekker’s work were published in 1691; the second two, which deal specifically with witchcraft, in 1693. The trouble in Salem began in February, 1692, and the prosecution collapsed in January, 1693. It is certain that New England scholars knew nothing about the first two Books when they were engaged in witch trials, and the last two were not published until the trials had come to an end. But this matter of dates need not be insisted on. Even if our ancestors had received advance sheets of The Enchanted World, their opinions would not, in all probability, have been in the slightest degree affected. Indeed, the reception which Bekker’s treatise met with in his own country is a plain indication of the temper of the times in this business of witchcraft. The publication of the first two Books in 1691 was the signal for a storm of denunciation. The Dutch press teemed with replies and attacks. Bekker was instantly called to account by the authorities of the Reformed Church. Complicated ecclesiastical litigation ensued, with the result that the Synod of North Holland issued a decree declaring Bekker “intolerable as teacher in the Reformed Church” and expelling him from his ministerial office (August 7, 1692).[96] Soon after, the Church Council of Amsterdam voted to exclude him from the Lord’s Supper (August 17),[97] and he was never admitted to communion again. He died on June 11, 1698.[98]

Another reason for going so fully into Bekker’s arguments is that they give us an excellent chance to take up a question which is of cardinal importance in weighing the whole matter of witchcraft. I refer, of course, to the question of Biblical exegesis.

If we wish to treat our forefathers fairly, we are required to criticise the few opponents of the witch dogma in a really impartial way. We ought not to commend such portions of their argument as chance to square with our own ideas, and ignore the rest. We must review their case as a whole, so as to discover how far it was right or reasonable on the basis of their own postulates. We must test the correctness of their premises, as well as the accuracy of their logic.

This process we have gone through with already in several instances. We have seen that all the opponents of witchcraft so far examined struggle to maintain a position that is strategically indefensible, either because they admit too much, or because they ignore certain difficulties, or because they are frankly eccentric. It does not help their case to contend that what they admit or what they ignore does not signify from our present scientific point of view. It did signify then. The only man whose argument covers the ground completely and affords a thorough and consistent theory on which a seventeenth-century Christian was logically justified in rejecting witchcraft and demoniacal possession as facts of everyday experience is Balthasar Bekker.

Now the truth or falsity of Bekker’s very radical conclusions hinged—for Bekker himself and for his contemporaries—on the soundness of his Biblical exegesis. If his way of disposing of those passages which mention devils and witches and diviners and familiar spirits is not justifiable—if the Biblical writers did not mean what he thinks they meant—then his whole case goes to pieces. In discussing the witchcraft dogma of the seventeenth century, we must accept the Bible, for the nonce, as the men of the seventeenth century (Bekker included) accepted it—as absolutely true in every detail, as dynamically inspired by the Holy Ghost, as a complete rule of faith and practice. Modern views on this subject have no locus standi.

Now, if we only keep these fundamental principles firmly in mind, we shall have no doubt as to the outcome. Beyond question, the Bible affords ample authority for belief in demoniacal possession, in necromancy, in the ability of Satan and his cohorts to cause physical phenomena, and in the power of sorcerers to work miracles.[99] True, not all the details of the witchcraft dogma rest upon Biblical authority, but enough of them do so rest to make the case of those who uphold the traditional opinion substantially unassailable, except upon the purely arbitrary assumption that all these wonders, though formerly actual, have ceased in recent times.[100] Bekker’s exegesis is erroneous in countless particulars and presents an altogether mistaken view of Biblical doctrines. As interpreters of the language of Scripture, the orthodox theologians of his time, who pinned their faith to witchcraft, were nearer right than he was. And what is true of Bekker’s exegesis, is equally true of that followed by all previous opponents of the witchcraft dogma. My reason for not referring to this point in criticising their books is obvious. Bekker has gone farther, and succeeded better, in explaining away the testimony of Scripture than any of the others. It is more than fair to them to rest this part of the case upon his success or failure. If Bekker falls, all of them certainly fall,—and Bekker falls.[101]

From our cursory examination of the works put forth by some of the chief opponents of the witch dogma, it must be evident that none of these works can have had a very profound influence on the beliefs of the seventeenth century,—their function was rather, by keeping discussion alive, to prepare for the change of sentiment which took place soon after 1700, in what we are accustomed to call “the age of prose and reason.” Such an examination as we have given to these books was necessary to establish the proposition with which we set out,—that our ancestors in 1692 were in accord with the practically universal belief of their day. It has shown more than this, however,—it has demonstrated that their position was logically and scripturally stronger than that of their antagonists, provided we judge the matter (as we are in honor bound to do) on the basis of those doctrines as to supernaturalism and the inspiration of the Bible that were alike admitted by both sides. We may repeat, then, with renewed confidence, the statement already made:—Our forefathers believed in witchcraft, not because they were Puritans, not because they were Colonials, not because they were New Englanders, but because they were men of their own time and not of ours.

Another point requires consideration if we would arrive at a just judgment on the Salem upheaval. It is frequently stated, and still oftener assumed, that the outbreak at Salem was peculiar in its virulence, or, at all events, in its intensity. This is a serious error, due, like other misapprehensions, to a neglect of the history of witchcraft as a whole. The fact is, the Salem excitement was the opposite of peculiar,—it was perfectly typical. The European belief in witchcraft, which our forefathers shared without exaggerating it, was a constant quantity. It was always present, and continuously fraught with direful possibilities. But it did not find expression in a steady and regular succession of witch trials. On the contrary, it manifested itself at irregular intervals in spasmodic outbursts of prosecution. Notable examples occurred at Geneva from 1542 to 1546;[102] at Wiesensteig, Bavaria, in 1562 and 1563;[103] in the Electorate of Trier from 1587 to 1593;[104] among the Basques of Labourd in 1609;[105] at Mohra in Sweden in 1669 and 1670.[106] In the district of Ortenau, in Baden, witchcraft prosecutions suddenly broke out, after a considerable interval, in 1627, and there were seventy-three executions in three years.[107] From the annals of witchcraft in Great Britain one may cite the following cases:—1581, at St. Osith’s, in Essex;[108] 1590-1597, in Scotland;[109] 1612, at Lancaster,[110] and again in 1633;[111] 1616, in Leicestershire;[112] 1645-1647, the Hopkins prosecution;[113] 1649-1650, at Newcastle-on-Tyne;[114] 1652, at Maidstone, in Kent;[115] 1682, at Exeter.[116] The sudden outbreak of witch trials in the Bermudas in 1651 is also worthy of attention.[117]