WITCHCRAFT
. The term “witchcraft” (Fr. sorcellerie) can be used for maleficent magic or sorcery, but
in France from the 1430s onward this and related terms were applied to an alleged “sect”
of conspiratorial Devil worshipers bent on overturning the order of Christendom.
This notion of conspiratorial witchcraft arose in southeastern France and southwestern
Switzerland and quickly spread. From ca. 1428 and through the 1430s, large-scale trials
occurred from the Dauphiné across to the Valais. The trial records indicate growing
concern with a new type of conspiratorial witchcraft, and the concept of this offense was
developed especially in writings of the 1430s: the anonymous Errores Gazariorum, the
chronicler Johann Fründ’s report about witches in the Valais, the secular judge Claude
Tholosan’s treatise regarding the witches he encountered in southeastern France, and
(slightly later) Martin Le Franc’s more skeptical report of recent witch beliefs in the
Champion des dames. Also produced in the 1430s was the Dominican friar Johannes
Nider’s highly influential Formicarius, which told of witch trials in Switzerland around
the turn of the century. This literature was followed in the 15th century by other
important writings on witchcraft; especially important works written in France were
Nicolaus Jacquerius’s Flagellum haereticorum fascinariorum (1458) and Johannes
Tinctoris’s Sermo de secta Vaudensium (1460). These writings told how the witches met
at “synagogues” or “sabbaths,” where they paid homage and rendered an obscene kiss to
the Devil (who often appeared as a black cat), made a pact with the Devil in their own
blood, ate their own offspring, had indiscriminate sex with others in attendance. At these
assemblies, they received powders and unguents to be used for destroying people and
crops. The witches of the Valais were said to claim that they had recruited about 700
members for their “sect” and boasted that within a year they would be so powerful that
they could rule Christendom and sit in judgment over it.
The association of witchcraft with the heresy of the Waldensians is reflected in the
term Waudenses or Vaudenses (Vaudois in French), used for witches as early as 1437 in
Pope Eugenius IV’s Ad nostrum, alerting inquisitors to them. The term was used
regularly in the 1450s, particularly in connection with the affair at Arras beginning in
1459, when thirty-four people were arrested and twelve burned for Vauderie. In this case,
the ritual elements of witchcraft were accentuated and the role of sorcery (or maleficent
magic) was negligible. Yet it is difficult to determine whether the witches spoken of as
Vaudois had a genuine link to the Waldensian heresy or whether the term was being
applied loosely; some of the accused in the 1430s may have been Waldensians, but
certainly the Vaudois of the 1450s show little sign of having belonged to this sect.
Although witches are occasionally recorded as having confessed without torture, the
use or threat of torture was often a major factor in obtaining confessions. It was important
in coercing alleged witches to give the names of other people they had seen at the
sabbath. The dynamics of prosecution can be seen clearly in the trial of Pierre Vallin at
La-Tour-du-Pin in 1438. Vallin was convicted by an episcopal official and an
inquisitorial vicar of invoking demons and serving “Belzebut” more than sixty-three
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1856