Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities   Page 1 Wolfgang Behringer On 3 August 1562 a thunderstorm hit central Europe. At noon the heaven darkened as if it were night and a severe storm began, destroying roofs and windows. After some hours the thunderstorm turned into a hailstorm, lasting until midnight, destroying crops and vineyards, and killing birds and other animals, including some unprotected horses and cows. The next day trees without leaves and branches could be seen, the fields were a picture of devastation (Warhafftiger und gruendlicher Bericht, 1562). Travellers recognized the unusual strength of the hailstorm. A nobleman, riding from Vienna to Brussels, reported that he had seen the severe damage throughout the postal route (Weyer 1586, 189). The meteorological front must have covered an area of several hundred kilometers in diameter. A printed newsletter reported that many people feared the beginning of the last judgement. Since observers of the period had no memory of similar climatic desasters "for a 100 years", many considered this thunderstorm as "unnatural" and looked for explanations. Three possible interpretations arose: The hailstorm could be a sign of God, a work of the devil, or a result of witchcraft. Though a number of decisions of councils since the early middle ages had anathemized the idea of weathermaking by human beings, there had always been reluctance to accept this negation of human influence on the climate. In my article I want to propose, that it was the influence of the climatic deterioration known as the Little Ice Age, which contributed decisively to the development of a new species of crime, which was previously rarely accepted by the authorities: Witchcraft. Unfortunately, the concept of the Little Ice Age seems not yet well defined. Since its invention by F. E. Matthes in 1939 its proposed endurance has shrunk to an epoch between 1300 and 1860 (LeRoy Ladurie 1971; Lamb 1981). Some scholars suggested that the beginning of the Little Ice Age occurred around 1430 (Webb 1980) and ended around 1770 (Ladurie 1971), well aware of the fact that the period of more than 550 years of coldness was interrupted several times by warmer periods. Christian Pfister identified a core phase of the Little Ice Age between 1570 and 1630 (Grindelwald-Schwankung). Since all researchers based their periodisations upon indicators drawn from physical environment (dendrochronology, glaciology, etc.), in my essay I want to propose another approach. My suggestion is to take into account the subjective factor and consider human reactions to climatic changes as an important indicator for an assessment of the beginning, the periodisation, and the end of the Little Ice Age. Though persecutions for heresy were known already in high medieval Europe (Moore 1987), persecutions of inner enemies for their supposed influence on the physical environment began around 1300 (Pfister 1996), when lepers and jews collectively were made responsible for the return of the Black Death, especially after the europe-wide epidemics of 1348-1350, and subsequent epidemies of the later 14th century (Graus 1987). During these decades, when a sequence of cold and long winters indicated the return of Little Ice Age conditions the interdependance between climatic factors, crop-failure, rise in prices, hunger and the outbreak of epidemics, and the classical pattern of subsistence crises of Old Europe became more visible. Thus attention shifted from epidemics to weather, and it is striking to see that the gradual emergence of a new crime was closely connected to the waves of climatic hardship during the earlier phases of the Little Ice Age (Pfister 1996). Though witchcraft in popular imagination has traditionally been seen as one of the major causes for hailstorms (Gesemann 1913; Fiedler 1931; Blöcker 1982), christian theological authorities in early and high middle ages had refused to accept such accusations (Agobard of Lyon; Hoffmann 1907). It was only in the 1380ies that magic and weather-making in inquisitorial trials became increasingly prominent. During the 1430ies the first systematical witch-hunts occured in some Alpine valleys of the duchy of Savoy by papal Inquisitors and secular judges in the Dauphiné and parts of Switzerland (Blauert 1989). During the 1480ies the image of the weathermaking witch was finally accepted by the church. Urged by the Alsatian dominican friar Heinrich Kramer, Pope Innocence VIII. in 1484 acknowledged weathermaking as a reality in his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus. Kramer himself tried to incite witch-hunts for religious purposes, using the popular demands for eradication of the suspected witches who were made responsible for the destruction of the harvests. Kramer summarized this ideas in his notorious Malleus maleficarum, the Witches Hammer (Hansen 1900). Between the 1480ies and the 1520ies there were endemic witch-hunts in parts of central and southern Europe, still confined to Italian, French and Swiss Alpine valleys, parts of the French and Spanish Pyrenees, Southwestern Germany, and the Rhine Valley down to the Netherlands. Harsh criticism of the practice of the Inquisition by humanists like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Andrea Alciati, or Agrippa von Nettesheim, and the beginning Reformation stopped these inquisitorial witchcraft persecutions. Even the Spanish Inquisition forbade to use the Witches Hammer as an authority und suppressed local witch trials. The Imperial Law, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532, ignored the supposed crime of witchcraft (Hexerei) altogether, imposing sanctions only against the traditional crime of sorcery (Zauberei), strictly limiting the judicial procedure to ordinary measures (processus ordinarius) which made accusations of weather-making almost unprovable. Many contemporaries therefore considered times of witchcraft persecutions as being over, part of the past or of dark pre-reformatory times (Weyer 1563, preface). This was the situation when the impact of the Little Ice Age began to be felt again. Contemporary chroniclers like Johan Jacob Wick from Zurich reported that the summer 1560 was unusually wet. The following winter was the coldest and longest winter since 1515/16. For the first time since generations large Alpine lakes like the Lake Constance (Bodensee) froze ("Seegfrörni") and the vegetation period shortened decisevely (Pfister 1988, 68). The following winter 1561/1562 was not only of similar coldness, but surprising with its immense snowfall mentioned in a broadsheet printed in Leipzig 1562. According to an orthodox Lutheran theology these events were interpreted as signs of God who was thought to be furious due to the sins of the people (Uber die grossen und erschrecklichen Zeichen am Himmel 1562). The coincidence of coldness and wetness struck the agrarian-based society and damaged the harvest. An increase of prices deteriorated the living conditions of the poorer people (Pfister 1988, 118-127). During the spring and summer of 1562 thaw and heavy rainfall caused inundations in different parts of Germany, poisoned the fields and led to cattle diseases, rising infant mortality and the outbreak of epidemics. The unusually severe thunderstorm hit Central Europe on 3. August 1562 in a state of progressive sensibilisation for meteorological events. Though most theologians - lutheran as well as catholic or calvinist - still blamed the sinful people for having caused gods fury, under the pressure of meteorological desaster this traditional embankment began to collapse (Midelfort 1972). While the larger territories and Imperial Cities remained stable, small political entities turned out to be more susceptible to the popular demands for witchcraft persecution. In the small barony Illereichen the pesants made their count, who never before had tried a case of witchcraft, uncertain by means of demonstrations and petitions. Finally count Rechberg conceded to imprison some women suspected for weathermaking, having caused crop-failure, inundations, and cattle disease. Here and elsewhere the mechanism of torture, confession, and denunciation led to an extension from singular cases to witch-hunts. The largest hunt occurred in the small territory of Wiesensteig, belonging to the Lutheran counts of Helfenstein, where within a year 63 women were burned as witches. Since a contemporary newsletter reported over this event, the witch-hunt became well-known throughout the Empire (Warhafftige und Erschreckhenliche Thatten 1563). The Wiesensteig witch-hunt served as an example for radical eradication of "the evil", and between 1562 and 1565 an interesting debate emerged about the possibility of weather-making. In the small Imperial City Esslingen the populistic evangelical preacher Thomas Naogeorgus supported the popular demands for witch-hunts and urged the magistrate to extend its persecution, which had already begun, as a kind of regulation of the weather (Jerouschek 1992, 73-88). At the same time in Stuttgart, the capital of the duchy of Württemberg, the lutheran orthodoxy had managed to stop the local witchcraft-persecutions after one burning. The leading theologians of the territory, Matthäus Alber and Wilhelm Bidenbach, bitterly attacked Naogeorgus and his idea that witches could be responsible for hailstorms or other meteorological events. In accordance with Württembergs reformator Johannes Brenz, who had given a similar sermon on hailstorms before, they insisted that only God was responsible for the weather, and not human beings. On the other hand, they agreed in principle that witches should be condemned to death due to their compact with the devil as a spiritual crime of utmost severity (Alber/Bidembach 1562). The debate on weather-making witches escalated when Johann Weyer, the Erasmian court physician of duke Wilhelm of Jülich-Kleve, attacked Johann Brenz and his followers for their inconsequence. In his famous volume De praestigiis daemonum, written as a response to the resumption of witch-burning, Weyer argued that witchcraft as a crime was physically impossible and the performance of witch-trials in general and for weather-magic in particular was a bad mistake (Weyer 1563; Weyer 1586, 182-192). He agreed with Brenz that it was impossible for witches to change the course of nature. But if witches by definition could not at all be responsible for hailstorms, as Brenz and the Lutherans conceded, then why should they be punished? Even if they wished to do harm, according to the Imperial Law Code it was not possible to impose capital punishment. There was no article which defined spiritual deviance as a capital crime. So Weyer asked Brenz as opinion leader of the orthodox Lutherans to change his attitude. After a negative reply by Brenz, whose sermon on hailstorms was reprinted twice in 1564 and 1565 (Predigt vom Hagel, Donner und allem Ungewitter, 1565), Johann Weyer published their correspondence in the 1565-edition of his book and accused the famous reformer of injustice and bloodthirsty cruelty, a reproach ususally uttered against dominican Inquisitors (Weyer 1586, 485-502). http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/hist/staff/wmb1 NEXT PAGE