Modern-day researchers find it difficult to comprehend how people who were otherwise thoroughly rational, and capable of making important discoveries in the natural sciences, could stubbornly continue to believe in witchcraft and witches. However, witchcraft was seen as a scientific problem. According to one sixteenth-century theory, witchcraft was linked to a surfeit of black bile within the body, which caused the witch to experience illusions. This was the view advanced by Johann Weyer in his book De praestigiis daemonum (On the illusions of demons). Although the author did not deny the existence of demons or Satan, he generally believed that witches were sick people who were mentally deficient in some way, and saw visions. Evidence that this view was also held in Estonia and Livonia comes from the so-called Thies Werewolf Case of 1692, in which an old man’s claim to be a werewolf was ridiculed by the judges, who passed a verdict of “devilish deception”. It was not rare for so-called witches to believe that they flew to witches’ sabbaths and transformed themselves into various creatures, and they would sometimes even try to prove it to sceptics. In the early modern context witchery was therefore a far more multifaceted and complex phenomenon than our modern-day conceptions of witchcraft. It was an integral part of the world view of the period, which was linked to all conceivable kinds of social ills, from the rejection of established local customs to heretical theology, as well as sickness and madness. This was the context for the widespread belief that it was the old and sick who were most likely to be witches—it was their sickness which was seen as a threat to society, and therefore led to accusations of witchery. Just as outbreaks of infectious disease cause mass hysteria to this day (the saga of “swine flu”; HIV), in the early modern period social tensions, infectious diseases, famine, and so on were often categorized with the non-scientific term “witchery”. The witch’s ugly appearance confirmed the presence of sickness—according to Aristotle a human’s essence was expressed by his form, the soul. If his soul was sick or damaged in some way, then that would be reflected in his outward appearance. This belief was represented in paintings of the time, in which the traitor Judas was depicted as ugly, for example. Thus a person whose soul was ugly was also seen as physically ugly. This was how the philosopher Thomas Aquinas described it in his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (On the soul):
As he says, there is no more reason to ask whether soul and body together make one thing than to ask the same about wax and the impression sealed on it, or about any other matter and its form. For, as is shown in the Metaphysics, Book VIII, form is directly related to matter as the actuality of matter; once matter actually is, it is informed.
Since the eyes provided the most direct link to the soul (“the window on the soul”), the acts of seeing and watching were effectively seen as an extension of the soul. Just as a seal leaves an impression on wax, so, according to Aristotle’s theory of perception, external experiences leave a trace (an impression) on our soul, causing it to resemble our experiences. If those experiences were sufficiently traumatic, then this could negatively affect the soul, leading to (physical) degradation and sickness. Sometimes this degradation of the soul would manifest itself as the “evil eye”.
The phenomenon of the evil eye had been recognized since Antiquity, and descriptions of it can be found in the works of authors of the period, who generally linked it to jealousy. In Greek the phenomenon came to be described with the technical term baskaino, which in the Latin-speaking world turned into fascino. In the third of Virgil’s Eclogues, for example, it is described as follows:
These truly—nor is even love the cause—
Scarce have the flesh to keep their bones together
Some evil eye my lambkins hath bewitched.
During Antiquity belief in the evil eye was widespread, and laws were even passed to punish people who used it to cause damage of various kinds (an example can be found in Leges decemvirales, the codex of Roman law dating from 449 BC). A similar popular belief in the harmful effects of the evil eye persisted into the Middle Ages. There were cases of people believing that the evil eye could be used to blunt a sword or cause harm to unborn or newborn babies. Such a case was described by St Gregory of Tours, who wrote that the Frankish king Chilperic was afraid to show his son in public lest some kind of misfortune befall him. It was similarly considered dangerous for pregnant women to look out of the window for fear that they might catch sight of a crippled or degenerate person, which might affect their unborn child in some way. Children and sick people were seen as particularly vulnerable to bad experiences, since their souls were weak and certain kinds of impressions could distress them. Various theoretical explanations were also developed for the evil eye, based on Antique philosophical ideas and biblical traditions. The thirteenth-century French philosopher Peter of Limoges described the workings of the evil eye or fascination as follows:
A rabid dog has poison in its brain. A bite from such a dog, irrespective to which part of the body, will later infect the brain or a similar part of the body. It is therefore likely that the lustful vapours which rise from a woman’s heart into her eyes also infect her gaze—if we observe the emissions of the gaze which infect a man’s eyes and later his heart, we find that they are the same as those which left the woman’s heart.
This provides very clear evidence that the evil eye was believed to function like an infectious disease. Illness, manifested by some form of degeneration or demonic behaviour, was considered socially detrimental and had to be rooted out. Efforts to combat witchery were therefore intended to keep society healthy, and could be seen as serving a sanitary or prophylactic purpose. While good health was associated with moderation, balanced elements and gold, for example, sickness was linked to everything dark, to black bile and to demons. A person’s entire mortal existence was even seen as a form of sickness, with death being welcomed as a release. This is one interpretation given to the final words of Socrates’ dialogue Phaedo, in which Socrates mentions that he owes Asclepius a cockerel; with his death he will finally be cured of the sickness known as life. Life itself was often seen as sick, degraded, horrific, demonic.
The horrors of everyday existence were demonstrated particularly vividly during the famines which struck at the end of the seventeenth century. During the summers of 1695–97 there was constant rainfall across northern Europe (including in Estonia), destroying the crops and causing the price of hay to rise exorbitantly. The city of Tartu (known at the time as Dorpat), where the Swedish army’s grain stores were situated, established a refuge for penurious women and children. However, the initiative came to an end when it became clear that there were too many people in need of assistance. During the early spring of 1697, at the height of the famine, the misery and wretchedness of the peasantry was said to be so severe that no one could bring themselves to describe it. The situation was said to be even worse than the starvation which was witnessed during the siege of Jerusalem (cf. Lamentations 4: 4–5). There were cases of parents eating their own children, and the children who fled home or were thrown out could themselves end up eating corpses they found lying by the roadside. Faced with a choice between starvation and cannibalism, many people chose suicide, and their bodies could be found hanging from the forest trees, or drowned in the rivers.
In the same period in which Estonia suffered a series of major crop failures which took the lives of around 70,000 people, professor of mathematics Sven Dimberg was working at the Gustavo Carolina Academy in Dorpat. He was one of the first people in the Nordic region to teach Newtonian mathematics, and he was familiar with Robert Boyle’s theories on chemistry. Professor of philosophy Gabriel Sjöbergh was also well informed on the theories of Descartes, and professor of medicine Jakob Friedrich Below, who had been educated in Holland, organized anatomical dissections of animals and humans for instructional purposes and to “satisfy public curiosity”. Pietist pastors had established schools for the peasantry, and only a dozen or so years had passed since Bengt Gottfried Forselius’ initiative in that area. Throu
ghout the course of the seventeenth century a total of fifty-three people were sentenced to death for witchcraft in Estonia, half of them men.* The complainants were normally other peasants who claimed that the suspected witch had caused them, their family or their property some kind of damage. Around fifty years had passed since the Võhandu uprising, which resulted in the burning down of the local mill. According to folk memory this had angered the river spirit, thereby causing crop failure.
* Between 1400 and 1750 around 40,000 people accused of witchcraft were put to death across Europe.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The extract from Dante’s Paradiso in the chapter ‘Thursday Evening’ is from The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975).
The extract from Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (On the soul) in the ‘Author’s Note’ is from Aristotle’s De anima, in the Version of William of Moerbeke, and the Commentary of St Thomas Aquinas, trans. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007).
The extract from the third of Virgil’s Eclogues in the ‘Author’s Note’ is from Eclogues and Georgics, trans. James Rhoades (New York: Dover, 2005). The quotation from Aristotle on p. 246 is from The Works of Aristotle: De Anima. Translated by J. A. Smith, M.A., LL.D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1931).
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Original text © Meelis Friedenthal 2012
Translation © Matthew Hyde 2017
First published in Estonian as Mesilased in 2012
This translation first published by Pushkin Press in 2017
This book has been supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, Traducta programme
ISBN 978 1 782272 83 0
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