Supreme art is
a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth,
passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius,
but never abandoned.
William Butler Yeats
"When Shall We Three Meet Again"
Europe swept by witch-burnings
Now I come to speak of the greatest of all heresies: of the mischief
wrought by witches and fiends. By night they fly through the air on
broomsticks, stove forks, cats, goats or other such things. Witchcraft is
the most accursed of all errors - and it must be mercilessly punished by
fire.
Mathias von Kemnat, Chronicle of Frederick the Victorious of the
Palatinate, с. 1480;
heading: William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene1
They concocted devilish ointments of toads'
eyes, choke cherries, peppercorns and spiders. They
poisoned the air with powders ground from intestines. They caused
cataclysmic deluges to fall from the heavens. They set off avalanches and
turned themselves into red-eyed goats. Their favourite food was pickled
children. Imagination knew no bounds when it came to describing the
monstrous things done by witches and their evil powers. Some early tales
are inadvertently funny. Witches blew up storms by vigorously fanning them
with their slippers or slid down into valleys on the backs of avalanches,
the tails of their scarves flapping in the wind. In early Modern times,
however, witches were no laughing matter. Enlightened bishops — who
castigated belief in ghosts, witches and black magic and regarded it as
utter nonsense that represented a revival of pagan practices — were not
heeded. Most theologians not only promoted dark superstition; they were
convinced that sorcery was a reality and the result of pacts with the
devil. Witchcraft was heresy, which made it doubly important to prosecute
it and to persecute practitioners. In 1487 a compendium of horror stories
was published in Strasbourg, the Hexenhammer (Witches' Hammer),
which continued to be read in Europe until the seventeenth century. Both
Protestant and Catholic judges consulted it as a penal code for dealing
with witchcraft. One can imagine King James, famously obsessed with
witchcraft, having been sent a copy by his daughter from the Palatinate.
At any rate, the book may be said to have sparked off much of the
witch-burning madness of the early Modern age. Its authors approved of
torture, maintaining that women in particular were inclined to the sin of
witchcraft. Of course women who gave themselves up to "lust and
carnal desire or even sodomy" were prime targets for persecution. The
German painter
Hans Baldung Grien,
who from 1509 lived in Strasbourg — where Hexenhammer had been
published not long before — most likely wanted to get in on the act with
his Two Witches. Despite the continued call for moderation
and reason, witch-burnings — which had ceased in England by 1685 — were
still common practice on mainland Europe as late as 1749. Trials however
continued until 1717 in England, whereas the last recorded trial of a
witch took place in 1793 in Germany.
Hans Baldung Grien
(1484/84—1545) Zwei Wetterhexen (Two Witches) 1523
Stadelches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
Discuss Art
Please note: site admin does not answer any questions. This is our readers discussion only.