Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities   Page 3 Wolfgang Behringer   According to the status of scientific theory, however, these demonologists did not draw their theories from dogma, but from experience. James in 1590 had suffered severe storms during his return from Denmark and had interpreted the "unnatural" dangers as an attack by evil powers. In his Daemonologie, in forme of a dialoge this calvinist monarch claimed, that witches "can raise storms and tempests in the air either upon the sea or land, though not universally, but in such a particular place and prescribed bounds, as God will permit them so to trouble. which likewise is very easy to be discerned from any other natural tempests that are not natures, in respect to the sudden and violent raising thereof, together with the short enduring of the same. And this is likewise very possible to their master to do" (James VI. 1597, 46.- Larner 1984, 3-22). Rémy, like an ethnographer, reported detailed weather-magic from Lorraine witch trials: the trials, he himself had performed. Binsfeld certainly accentuated theological reasons but his best arguments were the empirical dates from his persecution in the prince-bishopric of Treves (Binsfeld 1589; Rémy 1595). In the end of the sixteenth century some European countries managed to escape the circle of witch belief and witchcraft persecution, since the élites of consolidated territorial states stopped to feel endangered and were strong enough to suppress popular demands for witch-hunts (Behringer 1998). In Central Europe however, where demographic pressure and economic depression lingered on, unstable governments were prone to new demands for persecution with every change due to the Little Ice Age. Large-scale witch-hunts were for instance performed in Burgundy and some ecclesiastical territories in Germany around 1600 (Ein warhaffte Zeittung 1603; Schopff 1603), in the Basque region and parts of Germany between 1608-1612 (Hossmann 1612), and in Franconia between 1616-1618. Contemporary court records and broadsheets tell us about the importance of meteorological events as triggering factors in the background of these persecutions (Zwo Hexenzeitung. Die erste aus dem Bisthumb Würzburg, 1616; Hossmann 1618). During the third decade of the 17th century when the Thirty Years War occupied the governing élites the organized witch-hunts in the ecclesiastical territories of the Empire reached their peak. The climax of witch-hunting again coincided with some extraordinarily dramatic meteorological events. Again it seems necessary to accept accounts in contemporary reports, which almost never connected the pogromes with war, confessional strife, state-building, changes in the medical or judicial system, gender relations, or whatever historians might imagine. Instead, court records dwell upon disease and death of children and cattle, destruction of crops and vineyards. Chroniclers relate these individual misfortunes to more general meteorological developments. And historians of climate must confirm their observations, in general as well as in particular. The 1620ies were characterized through long and cold winters, late springs, cold and wet summers, and autumns, leading to crop-failure and increases in prices. Into this atmosphere of enhanced tension broke a climatic event of unusual severity, In 1626, during the last week of May, in the middle of the vegetation period, winter returned. Temperatures declined to a degree, lakes and rivers freezed, and trees and bushes lost their leaves. Severe frost destroyed the cereals and the grapes, and in some areas even the grapevines. As Christian Pfister points out this was an unparalleld event within the last 500 years. This uniqueness und of course the devastating effect of the climatic anomaly affirmed contemporaries in their impression that it was an "unnatural" event, caused by evil human agents in alliance with demonic power. Diaries allow introspection into the subjective perception of this particular climax of the Little Ice Age. The unexpected return of winter caused panic and anxiety among the peasants who could not remember ever experiencing such destruction of their fields. Again the interpretation of an "unnatural" climate emerged. And again the consequence was the search for scapegoats. A chronicler in the Franconian town Zeil reported: "Anno 1626 the 27th of May, all the vineyards were totally destroyed by frost within the prince-bishoprics of Bamberg and Würzburg, same as the dear grain which had already flourished. ... Everything frozen which had not happened as long as one could remember. And it caused a big rise in prices ... As a result pleading and begging began among the rabble, questioning why the authorities continued to tolerate the witches and sorcerers destruction of the crops. Thus the prince-bishop punished these crimes, and the persecution began in this year ...". Broadsheets of the following years demostrate the supposed responsibility of the witches for the particularly severe frosts in May 1626, adding later events like hailstorms, cattle diseases and epidemics (Hesselbach 1627; Druten Zeitung 1627). Confessions under torture claimed to have detected the devilish plan to destroy vineyards and grains for several years in order to create hunger and disease at an extent that people would be forced to cannibalize each other. Only the drastic measures of the authorities stopped these attempts. And the measures were indeed dramatical. In the tiny prince-hishopric of Bamberg, 600 persons were burned for suspected witchcraft (Kurtzer und wahrhafftiger Bericht und erschreckliche Neue Zeitung von sechshundert Hexen 1629), in the neighbouring prince-bishopric Würzburg 900, in Electorate Mainz 900, and under the rule of prince-archbishop and Elector Ferdinand of Cologne in the Rhineland and Westphalia nearly 2.000. All these prince-bishoprics were rather weak political structures. The Archbishop of Cologne for instance had mortgaged almost all his high courts to local nobles as a compensation for debts. Like the previous two generations, they were still prone to the persecutory demands of their peasant communities. While larger towns like Amsterdam, or Hamburg, Venice, or Vienna never developped any persecutory zeal against witches, and the larger and more stable territories with their complex administrative structures like France, or in the Empire territories like the Palatinate, Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, Austria, etc. refused to participate in the big witch-killing, many independant feudal lords, small counts, prince-abbots or rural towns supported the persecutions, sharing the superstitious beliefs of their peasants. The agrarian segment of society which was most directly affected by climatic deterioration could decide through self-administered justice about the procedure of scape-goating. In large regions Europe the interdependance between climate and witch-hunting remained intact until the era of Enlightenment. During the well-known climax of the Little Ice Age witchcraft in the late 17th century persecutions were reached its climax in Austria, the Baltic region and Scandinavia, and only in the first decades of the 18th century in Eastern European countries like Poland or Hungary (see the statistics in: Ankarloo/Henningsen 1987/1990). In parts of Central Europa every little-ice-age-year lead to an increase of witch trials or even waves of persecution. So it is more than a mere metaphor that the sun of the Enlightenment ended the era of witch-hunting (Behringer 1995). From the 1730ies on the climate - though cold - indeed was more stable than during the decades before. Only in some backward areas of Germany, France, and Austria, witch-trials were performed into the 1740ies and in southwestern Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and Poland into the 1770ies. http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/hist/staff/wmb1 NEXT PAGE