European Witch Trials

The overwhelming majority of those accused of witchcraft during the early modern European witch-hunt were women. 80-percent of the accused were female with some regions seeing figures as high as 96 percent. The stereotype of the witch as a woman therefore has statistical merit, but this was not the case in all regions. The most remarkable contrary example was in Iceland where between the years 1625 and 1685 only ten of the recorded 120 witch-trials targeted a woman while only two, with one in debate, of the 22 known executions were of women. 1 With the witch-hunt coming to Iceland via Denmark where 90-percent of the accused witches were women, why Iceland was immune to the European witch-hunt's misogyny is a lingering question. 2 I argue that masculinity held its prominence in Icelandic magic and refuted continental influence for two reasons. The first is the entrenchment of masculinity in the Icelandic magical world view dating to the Viking Age and evidenced in the language, literature, and mythology of Old Norse culture. The second reason is the absence of a relationship between magic, sexuality, and the demonic.

mit fl ehenlich bitten man soll ir einen tod anthüen» Selbstbezichtigungen während der frühneuzeitlichen Hexenverfolgung als ‹suicide by trial› Masterarbeit Teil I -Text Abstract Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit einem eigenartigen, bisher kaum beachteten Phänomen der frühneuzeitlichen Hexenverfolgung: der Selbstbezichtigung aus eigenem Antrieb und mit der Absicht, aus dem Leben zu scheiden. Die Grundlage bilden drei Fallbeispiele aus Ellwangen (Maria Ostertag, 1613) und Reutlingen (Margaretha Schirm, 1637; Catharina Schmid, 1644), alle Quellen wurden transkribiert und als Anhang beigegeben. Untersucht werden unterschiedliche Aspekte des Themas. Zum einen fragt die Arbeit nach der individuellen Ebene: Wie wurde im Prozess über Emotionen gesprochen, wie der Wunsch zu sterben kommuniziert? Was offenbaren die Protokolle über menschliche Wahrnehmungs-und Denkmöglichkeiten? Hier fassen wir die Ebene der Diskurse. Insbesondere das reichhaltige Reutlinger Quellenmaterial erlaubt Zugriff auf verschiedene Stränge der theologischen, juristischen sowie medizinischen Argumentation und bringt die erstaunliche Erkenntnis, dass Selbstbezichtigung als möglicher «Suizid durch fremde Hand» von Beginn an mitgedacht wurde. Von den Diskursen geprägte Sinnzusammenhänge eröffneten schließlich in der lebensweltlichen Praxis konkrete Handlungsräume. Suizidabsichten konnten im Hexerei-Narrativ verschleiert, selbstzerstörerische Wünsche auf diese Weise denk-und sagbar, die Todsünde des Selbstmords zu einem versöhnten, «guten Sterben» umgewertet werden. Die mikrogeschichtliche Untersuchung beleuchtet Fälle, die sich den gewohnten Täter-Opfer-Zuschreibungen entziehen, und wirft damit grundsätzliche Fragen nach der Wahrnehmung von Realität und der Agency der als Hexen Angeklagten auf.

In Palermo at the end of the 18th century, an old woman, a widow and a beggar, sells her "miraculous water" to some women who want to get rid of their husbands. A strange form of non-consensual divorce, interpreted as witchcraft and widely tolerated by the surrounding society. The judicial action of the court, influenced by enlightenment ideas, transforms magic into a crime of poisoning and condemns the witch to be hanged.

About fifty to sixty thousand people died in the witch-hunt of Early Modern Times. Among them were women, men, and children. The illustrated broadsheets helped to spread the contemporary ideas of witchcraft, and consequently drove the persecution, as they presented witchcraft as reality. Since not only names, but also faces of the witches and sorcerers were given, the notions of the pact with the devil, harmful spells, the witches' flight and Sabbath, as well as the transformation into werewolves became reality.
Moreover, the broadsheets on the witch-hunt appeared at a time of crisis, triggered by social, political, economic and – most of all – climate changes. It was claimed that the rising number of 'evil witch-rot' in addition to other unusual phenomena from this crisis, were 'prodigia' (Wunderzeichen). They were regarded as a sign and proof of the ultimate end in the Christian conception of the world: the apocalypse. At the same time their presence strengthened consciousness of the crisis.In this sense the broadsheets also served the purpose of stabilizing the authorities rule.
All of the twenty-four broadsheets underlying this thesis pay in word and image particular attention to the punishments for witchcraft, imposed by authorities. On the one hand these punishments demonstrated the power of authorities in criminal prosecution, and on the other hand 'the subjects' received recompense for their sufferings, which they had – in case of sorcery at least imaginary – gone through. This confirmed the power of authorities from 'top' and 'bottom'.

The reviewer was concerned with two issues when reviewing the volumes. The first is actually a matter of rhetoric and not so much a real issue. If the documents of the witch trials of Szeged and Kolozsvár have already seen a number of publications and have been a decisive factor in Hungarian and international witchcraft research for a long time, why it is necessary to republish these sources? After all, the Urban History series has published mostly as yet unexplored source materials. The editors themselves provide convincing arguments to this eff ect in the preface. They believe the revision of previous editions and the results of recent archival research justify the republishing of the Kolozsvár and Szeged witch trial documents supplemented by the latest documents. The fact that the texts that have already been published need to be revised in many places, such as for incompleteness or an erroneous transcription, supports the need for republishing. If we take into account the Kolozsvár cases published so far, we find that the 88 cases published in the present volume are more than double of the 36 cases published by Andor Komáromy. In the case of Szeged, the number of new documents may not reach the level that the Kolozsvár materials did, but the 62 files published by János Reizner and later by Ferenc Oltvai have been supplemented by 27 newer ones, which is also a considerable quantity. And if we consider that – for the first time in the history of the publishing of witchcraft sources – the editors of the Szeged edition have published the Hungarian translation of a vast amount of Latin texts, including a glossary of frequently occurring Latin terms, their intention of making these sources accessible to a much wider community of readers and researchers than ever before becomes quite clear. The monographic treatment of the history of witch trials in Szeged or Kolozsvár has yet to be written, but these two new text publications with their related aids could be a good starting point for such a big endeavor.

Exploring the tales of many of the mysterious and captivating Faerie Queens, this exceptional anthology contains eighteen essays exploring the diverse accounts and themes associated with the Faerie Queens and their influence in magic, literature and folklore. From the Arthurian mythos to Scandinavia, from ancient Greece to Renaissance poetry and beyond, the awesome power of the Faerie Queens to inspire, challenge and transform is investigated and discussed from both scholarly and personal perspectives.

The main goal of this paper is to present the transcription of the protocol of the witch-trial that took place in 1689 before the town court of Kleczew. Text is preceded by a short discussion of the issue, in which the most important information about the penal book, containing the protocol and circumstances that led to the case, are presented.

Matthew Hopkins, England’s most notorious witch hunter, rested his reputation on his experience in confronting the supernatural. To this end, he greatly exaggerated the intensity of his first encounter with an accused witch, Elizabeth Clarke. In Hopkins’ account, Clarke mentioned a familiar named Grizzel Greedigut. But earlier publications show that this did not happen, and that Hopkins appropriated the name from the dubious confession of another woman, Joan Wallis. Today, we have largely accepted Grizzel Greedigut as a bizarre, nonsensical name, but it would not have been all that absurd at the time. Grizzle often described grey animals, and Grissel was a fairly popular name, an abbreviation of Grisilde. Greedigut meant ‘glutton,’ and was the name English colonials used for the American anglerfish. Without knowing more about the name’s historical context, we fall for Hopkins’ cynical ploy to maximize the strangeness of his encounter.

In 1969, E. W. Monter postulated that both Jean Bodin’s treatises on money, the Response to Malestroit (1568), and on witchcraft, the Démonomanie (1580), were models of rationality. Yet he failed to detect the rationale behind the latter. Its core can be deciphered by analyzing three historical enigmas of late 15th century Europe: (i) the transformation of the Population Catastrophe of  1348-1352 and its aftermath into a demographic explosion, (ii) the Great Witch Hunt, and (iii) the sudden disappearance of birth control. They can be solved by a political-economic explanation: The Great Witch Hunt was initiated as the most cruel and terrible measure to eliminate birth control to repopulate Europe.  Bodin was still aware of this catastrophe and declared birth control as witchcraft which he carefully distinguished from traditional magic. Like the Malleus Maleficarum (1487), Bodin blamed the midwives, the experts of birth control, as witches. Population policy, executed as extermination of birth control, defined ”political economy”, a concept elaborated by him. Like combating the danger of inflation by controlling coinage out of the influx of gold and silver from the Americas, the state should prevent the danger of an under-supply of working people by forcing its citizens to boost their number of children.

This study is the first examination of Jesuit prison ministry in the Holy Roman Empire during the period of witch trials. It provides new insights into the prisons where the persons detained for witchcraft were incarcerated, as well as into their trials, including their torture and executions — as seen through Jesuit eyes. In this context, the Cautio Criminalis appeared, written by Friedrich Spee SJ (1591–1635), dealing with the question of the legality of these trials and the related prison ministry, and printed pseudonymously in 1631 and again in 1632. For the first time, the book offers a complete biography of Spee, who was nearly forced to leave the Society of Jesus; it outlines the book’s publication, and provides a detailed analysis of the Jesuit prison visits. The book also details Spee’s criticism of prison ministers, as well as his arguments about the guilt or innocence of the imprisoned, tortured and executed women and men of this tragic period in European history.

It is well known that the historiography of early modern European witchcraft has been enriched by adopting a social/sociological approach during the last three decades. 1 I myself have made use of a similar perspective in my book analyzing the social and cultural background of witch hunting in forty-five Hungarian Calvinist communities from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. While having studied the witnesses' testimonies from a sociological point of view, I have almost entirely neglected this aspect in my examination of the confessions of the accused witches themselves. I drew only data of the yes-or-no-type from the latter: whether the accused witches accepted the charges, or rejected them, whether Calvinist demonology influenced popular imagination, or not (Kristóf 1998).

Hans Baldung Grien, the most famous apprentice and close friend of German artist Albrecht Dürer, was known for his unique and highly eroticised images of witches. In paintings and woodcut prints, he gave powerful visual expression to late medieval tropes and stereotypes, such as the poison maiden, venomous virgin, the Fall of Man, 'death and the maiden' and other motifs and eschatological themes, which mingled abject and erotic qualities in the female body.

Το κυνήγι των μαγισσών υπήρξε ένα πανίσχυρο όπλο ενάντια σε κάθε μορφή κοινωνικής ανυπακοής. Υπάρχουν κάθε άλλο παρά περίεργες συμπτώσεις μεταξύ της επανεμφάνισης των διώξεων κατά των γυναικών, του κυνηγιού των αιρετικών και της έκρηξης των μεγάλων εξεγέρσεων, τόσο των αστικών όσο και των αγροτικών, που έβαλαν φωτιά στην Ευρώπη για σχεδόν τρεις αιώνες.

Το κείμενο της Michela Zucca «Αιρετικές επαναστάτριες γένους θηλυκού: Γυναίκες των δασών και των βουνών» [L’eresia delle femmine ribelli: Donne delle foreste e delle montagne] γράφτηκε στα ιταλικά και αρχικά δημοσιεύθηκε από τις εκδόσεις Derive Approdi της Ρώμης, το 2004, στο συλλογικό έργο “Eretici dimenticati. Dal Medioevo alla modernità” [Λησμονημένοι αιρετικοί. Από τον Μεσαίωνα στη σύγχρονη εποχή] το οποίο επιμελήθηκαν οι Corrado Mornese και Gustavo Buratti.
Λίγα χρόνια μετά, τον Σεπτέμβριο του 2007, συμπεριλήφθηκε, επίσης, σε μια μπροσούρα, η οποία κυκλοφόρησε στο Βαλ ντι Σούσα του Πιεμόντε της Ιταλίας, στο πλαίσιο τριήμερης εκδήλωσης με θέμα “L’ eresia e la rivolta” [Αίρεση και εξέγερση] του κινήματος «No Tav στο Ve-naus» (Τορίνο), κίνημα που δραστηριοποιείται ενάντια στην κατασκευή υπερσιδηρόδρομου στην εκεί κοιλάδα, εξαιτίας των καταστρεπτικών συνεπειών, σε οικολογικό, κοινωνικό και οικονομικό επίπεδο, για τις κοινότητες της περιοχής. Από τον Ιούνιο του 2010, η μπροσούρα αυτή, διατίθεται τόσο σε έντυπη όσο και σε ηλεκτρονική μορφή από το κέντρο πληροφόρησης και εκδόσεων Porfido του Τορίνο.

Στην παρούσα έκδοση, η οποία είναι και η πρώτη στην ελληνική γλώσσα, η μετάφραση ακολουθεί την έκδοση του Porfido του 2010, λαμβάνοντας όμως υπόψη της και την αρχική του 2004. Οι σημειώσεις τέλους ανήκουν στην μεταφράστρια, όπως και οι σημειώσεις εντός αγκυλών σε όλη την έκδοση. Η εικονογράφηση είναι πρωτότυπη και έγινε αποκλειστικά για την ελληνική έκδοση. Οι υδατογραφίες ανήκουν στην Αθηνά Μιχοπούλου ενώ το εξώφυλλο φιλοτέχνησε η Αγγελική Ρελάκη.

Heksejagt er et makabert kapitel i dansk historie. Ord og billeder har påvirket vores opfattelse af hekse – både lokalt og landsdækkende.
Heksejagtens ord og billeder handlede om at definere det farlige – det, der forstyrrede samfundets orden og gudfrygtige menneskers fred. Definitionerne på dette væsen, heksen, kom ud til folket igennem lovord og fjendebilleder, der advarede om den djævelske fare.
I 2017 markerede Kulturmuseet Spinderihallerne og Vejle Kunstmuseum 400-året for Christian den Fjerdes forordning om troldfolk, udsendt 12. oktober 1617. I forordningens kølvand blussede heksebålene op landet over, og heller ikke Vejleegnen gik fri. Dette udstillingskatalog udfolder de lokale fortællinger i den store historie.

Projet de thèse :
CONSTRUIRE LA FIGURE DE LA SORCIÈRE EN FRANCE À LA FIN DU MOYEN ÂGE (XIVe-XVe siècles)
Justice, représentations, circulations des savoirs et des imaginaires

Par Maxime Gelly-Perbellini
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles

Direction de thèse :
Alain Dierkens (ULB)
Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (EHESS / CNRS)
Alexis Wilkin (ULB)

Resum: Com en altres comarques de Catalunya, la cacera de bruixes al Va-llès es va produir de manera especialment intensa en els anys 1619-1622. La repressió va afectar prop d'una vintena de viles i llocs. S'han pogut do-cumentar cinquanta persones processades, la majoria de les quals van ser penjades a la forca en processos incoats per les corts dels batlles locals. L'article identifica algunes coincidències entre aquests processos pel que fa als procediments processals i a la presència d'uns mateixos professionals, com ara jutges ordinaris, cirurgians, escrivans o torturadors, vinculats a les batllies reials o a la mateixa cort del veguer de Barcelona. També s'analitza el paper del Tribunal de la Inquisició de Barcelona, que va intentar reiterada-ment l'avocació dels casos. D'aquesta manera es pretén relacionar les dinà-miques locals i les dinàmiques generals, a càrrec de la justícia reial inferior (veguers i batlles) i del Sant Ofici. Paraules clau: cacera de bruixes, història moderna de Catalunya, Inquisi-ció, justícia reial. Abstract: As in other regions of Catalonia, witch hunts in the Vallès were particularly intense in the years 1619-1622. The repression affected about twenty villages and locations. Fifty people were prosecuted, most of whom were hanged in trials initiated by the local mayors' courts. This article identifies some correlation between trial procedures and the presence of the same professionals, such as regular judges, surgeons, scribes or torturers, linked to the royal courts or to the royal delegate's court in Barcelona. It also analyzes the role of the Inquisition Court in Barcelona, which repeatedly sought to take on cases. In this way the intention is to relate local and general dynamics, by the low royal justice (vicars and mayors) and the Inquisition.

The article analyses the conceivable flying of witches that were mentioned by judges and defendants in the legal cases on witchcraft of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the 17th–18th centuries.  Attempts were made to discover witches’ flying destinations, distances, who flied and when, and what means were used.
The analysis of the empirical data related to witches and described in legal cases on witchcraft (there were 16 implemented prosecution cases in total, largely in the Žemaitija Region in 1641–1746) is based on Gustav Henningsen’s insights into the witchcraft in Easter Europe in the 17th century. It has been determined that similarly to several other European countries, such as Poland and others, Žemaitija had a well-known Mount Šatrija, to which witches travelled as far as 64 km. Such a centre did not exist in Aukštaitija, witches confined themselves to objects located a few or a dozen kilometres away, like hills, swamps, oaks, and others. The data reveal that among the flying persons were mostly women. They flew not only on the Day of St. John’s, but also on various other occasions and at different frequencies. Such objects as “magic” ointment, porridge or wings were used for flying; occasionally, people turned into magpies to fly.
Following G. Henningsen, it is maintained that these statements occurred in legal acts concerning witchcraft due to indoctrination and forced confessions; the flights were treated as real and considered as empowered by the devil; only the souls flew, whereas the bodies stayed. The legal acts also contained descriptions of dreams, as well as mixed and conflicting interpretations.
The appendices of the article present two documents of witchcraft cases that are unknown to historiography and date back to 1740 and 1758.

Linguistic factors played a significant role in the origin and spread of accusations of witchcraft in Early Modern Spain. The preoccupation with witches' words is at its root a preoccupation about the power of speech and, to a great extent, of female speech. Studies in some Early European countries have connected aggressive female speech styles with accusations of witchcraft, and this article offers evidence to this effect for Early Modern Spain. The speech of women with 'ungoverned tongues' is stigmatized as masculine, and the power it conveys is regarded with suspicion. Rumor, gossip, and reputation also played a key role in accusations of witchcraft in these oral societies. Once the accusation is launched, public reputation was often adduced as 'proof' of culpability. Rooted in the specific reality of the northern provinces of Early Modern Spain, this study shows how assumptions about women's 'linguistic place', along with certain forms of linguistic performance played a significant role in transforming a woman into a witch.

Nations like narratives, lose their origins in the myth of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind's eye. Such an image of the nation-or narration-might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west. Homi K. Bhabha / Nation and Narration Abstract In the quadricentennial of the founding of Plymouth Plantation, recent challenges in the United States politics and society raise critical questions on American identity and American democracy. Thus, calling for a revisit on the seventeenth century northeastern American experience of English colonizers, contemporary academia is engaged in new approaches and perspectives on American history and historicism, whereby a peculiar sense of past and act of remembrance count for present day cultural and political dilemmas across the United States. The legacy of early founders and pioneers of New England colonies provides a host of historicism on Anglo-American identity, which was elaborately imprinted in colonial accounts on material culture, legal, military, political and religious practices in the nexus of intra-and extra-imperial encounters of metropole and the colony itself.

Contents:
Preface—Kimberly B. Stratton and Dayna S. Kalleres ix
Contributors xiii
1. Interrogating the Magic–Gender Connection
—Kimberly B. Stratton 1
Part I: Fiction and Fantasy: Gendering Magic
in Ancient Literature
2. From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and the Roman Witch
in Classical Literature—Barbette Stanley Spaeth 41
3. “The Most Worthy of Women is a Mistress of Magic”:
Women as Witches and Ritual Practitioners in 1 Enoch
and Rabbinic Sources—Rebecca Lesses 71
4. Gendering Heavenly Secrets? Women, Angels, and the Problem
of Misogyny and “Magic”—Annette Yoshiko Reed 108
5. Magic, Abjection, and Gender in Roman Literature
—Kimberly B. Stratton 152
Part II: Gender and Magic Discourse in Practice
6. Magic Accusations against Women in Tacitus’s Annals
—Elizabeth Ann Pollard 183
7. Drunken Hags with Amulets and Prostitutes with Erotic Spells:
The Re-Feminization of Magic in Late Antique Christian Homilies
—Dayna S. Kalleres 219
8. The Bishop, the Pope, and the Prophetess: Rival Ritual Experts
in Third-Century Cappadocia—Ayşe Tuzlak 252
9. Living Images of the Divine: Female Theurgists in Late Antiquity
—Nicola Denzey Lewis 274
10. Sorceresses and Sorcerers in Early Christian Tours of Hell
—Kirsti Barrett Copeland 298
Part III: Gender, Magic, and the Material Record
11. The Social Context of Women’s Erotic Magic in Antiquity
—David Frankfurter 319
12. Cheating Women: Curse Tablets and Roman Wives
—Pauline Ripat 340
13. Saffron, Spices, and Sorceresses: Magic Bowls and the Bavli
—Yaakov Elman 365
14. Victimology or: How to Deal with Untimely Death
—Fritz Graf 386
15. A Gospel Amulet for Joannia (P.Oxy. VIII 1151)
—AnneMarie Luijendijk 418
Bibliography 445
Index 491

D er Inquisitor, Dominikanermönch und spätere Verfasser des "Hexenhammers" Heinrich Kramer, latinisiert Institoris, stieß bei seinen Unternehmungen im südwestdeutschen Raum zu Beginn der Achtzigerjahre des 15. Jahrhunderts zum Teil auf starken Widerstand. 1 Unter dem Datum des 5. Dezember 1484 erlangte er schließlich von Papst Innozenz VIII. Unterstützung der Hexenverfolgungen in Form der Bulle Summis desiderantes affectibus. 2 Zur selben Zeit erfuhr der Inquisitor eine weitere wichtige Förderung seiner Bestrebungen durch Erzherzog Sigmund von Österreich, Graf von Tirol, zu dessen Herrschaftsbereich mit Vorderösterreich zahlreiche Territorien im deutschen Südwesten zählten. 3 Mögliche Motive dafür reichen von frommer Überzeugung über politische Kalküle bis hin zu Schachzügen einflussreicher Räte. Der Erzherzog befand sich damals in großen politischen Schwierigkeiten, wobei es außer um Geld und die internen Machtverhältnisse auch darum ging, ob der große Länderkomplex des kinderlosen Landesfürsten dem Haus Österreich erhalten bleiben oder an Bayern fallen würde. Im Jahr 1485, als der Innsbrucker Hexenprozess stattfand, gewannen die bayernfreundlichen Räte Sigmunds ständig an Einfluss. Zwei Jahre später wurden sie aber nach harten Auseinandersetzungen mit den habsburgischen Verwandten des Landesfürsten und den Tiroler Ständen entlassen. Bald folgte auch Sigmunds Entmachtung und Abdankung. Tirol und die Vorlande blieben bei Österreich. 4 Die im Folgenden skizzierten Vorgänge fanden in der zeitgenössischen Überlieferung keinen breiten Niederschlag. Dennoch wird Kramers Tätigkeit in Tirol aus historischer Sicht zu Recht als eine "sensationelle Episode" 5 bezeichnet, kam den damaligen Ereignissen doch für die weitere Entwicklung der Hexenverfolgungen hohe Bedeutung zu. Der Geleitbrief für Kramer vom Dezember 1484 S chon drei Tage nach dem Datum, das die Bulle Summis desiderantes affectibus trägt, und noch bevor auf eine Anfrage darüber, wie Institoris bei den Hexenprozessen in der Reichsstadt Ravensburg vorgegangen war, 6 eine Antwort vorlag, ließ Erzherzog Sigmund dem Inquisitor auf dessen "demütige Bitte" hin einen Geleitbrief ausstellen, worin er ihm in allen seinen Ländereien für ein ganzes Jahr lang Sicherheit und freies Geleit gewährte, um dort dem päpstlichen Auftrag nachzukommen, Hexen, Unholde, Zauberer sowie andere "Mängel des heiligen christlichen Glaubens" in den "hochdeutschen Landen" ausfindig zu machen und nach dem geistlichen Recht abzustrafen. Zur Förderung dieses Ziels, das der Inquisitor allerdings mit Wissen der zuständigen Diözesanbischöfe verfolgen sollte, trug der Erzherzog in seinem Schreiben allen weltlichen Amtsträgern und den Untertanen 7/8 Heft DER SCHLERN 85 Geschichte mit Nachdruck auf, Kramer beständig zu schützen, ihn bei seiner Tätigkeit nicht zu behindern, niemandem das zu erlauben und auch niemanden dabei zu unterstützen. Der Text des am 8. Dezember 1484 ausgestellten Dokuments lautet:

The construction of ‘sorcerers’ in the Formicarius, Malleus Malificarum, Die Emeis and other treatises presented a comparatively impoverished imagery, whereas imaging the male victims of feminine witchcraft, like the harridan-ridden Aristotle, the mortified Adam, or the stable groom victimized by hippomanes, came near to approaching the affective, abject power of feminized witch iconography—which is to say, the naked and eroticized feminine body.  More importantly, descriptions of male witches in the Malleus were based on specific, formulaic or ceremonial acts and not on grand theories of Natural Philosophy, which painted pictures of polluted physicality or sexually corrupted essential nature. Passages dealing with elite, masculine magic tended to present technical, imagistically boring reading compared to the richer, more dramatically detailed, sensationalistic sections on witches. They feature as less dramatic subjects for visual interpretation with far fewer classical antecedents and a far less universal symbol set. The closest exemplars of masculine iniquity, or ‘pollution,’ were to be found in the tropes surrounding ‘cuckolds,’ Jewish males, and addictive, ‘Faustian’ magicians – men who had lost control to the devil or his prime agent, Woman. And even these tropes relied, for their effect, upon the assignment of ‘effeminate’ attributes and the emotive language of contamination or pollution. Male witches deemed culpable for the usual, feminine stamp of maleficium were figured as woman-like in that they were constructed as ‘weak minded,’ or as ‘fools’ subject to demonic delusions and folly