Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany.

Russell, Jeffrey Burton

Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. By Lyndal Roper. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. xiv + 362 pp. $35.00 cloth.

This book ranks among the most important works on witchcraft ever published at any time. The author has done intense and prolonged research in German archives, and, synthesizing what she discovered there with her own previous work and with that of other scholars in the field, she expands our understanding of the subject hugely. The exact subject is witchcraft in Germany from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century; but students of early modem thought, early modern Germany, and the Reformation and Counter Reformation will find their own fields well served. Roper also provides insights into the theory and practice of studying social and psychological phenomena in worldviews quite different from that of modern materialism (physicalism), to which the world of witchcraft "seems strange and foreign" (xi). The book is characterized by a beautiful prose style and admirably clear organization. By no means least, the author shows deep empathy with the victims of the craze and even a degree of understanding of their persecutors. Her analogy to the Stalin show trials is apt: wherever restraints on power--whether secular or religious--are weak, atrocities are inevitable.

The preface sets forth her methodology. While drawing upon anthropological and sociological works, she seeks to go deeper; earlier work, she says, allowed "too little space for the unconscious, or for individuality" (xi). Some of the cases she presents really do "cry out for a psychoanalytic exploration" (x). But she declares her intention to move beyond the hyper-Freudian view in her earlier work to a more nuanced and broader psychology, and she succeeds in doing so.

Throughout the book, she pursues an extremely effective method of presenting each individual case thoroughly and sensitively before analyzing the case and then going on to synthesize the information. She never loses sight of the human beings involved in these cases. And, like Natalie Zemon Davis, she starts us right off in the prologue, "The Witch at the Smithy," with a vivid description of a particular case: that of Ursula Gotz in 1627. By the way, this book evinces the enormous advantage to the scholar of spending time at the sites where the events actually occurred: it makes the prose livelier and the empathy stronger.

A list of the chapters indicates the wide scope of her study: "The Baroque Landscape; Interrogation and Torture; Cannibalism; Sex with the Devil; Sabbaths; Fertility; Crones; Family Revenge; Godless Children; A Witch in the Age of Enlightenment." The last, concentrating on the case of Catharina Schmid, points out the disturbing fact that witches were still being burned in 1747, well within the lifetime of Immanuel Kant.

Among the many aspects of witches that Roper investigates, she particularly focuses on the targeting of postmenopausal women as victims of the craze. Her concentration on this question, particularly in the latter half of the book, reminds historians of its importance. We have long known that approximately a quarter of witches executed were men; that some were children; and that many were young women. But Roper demonstrates that old women were greatly overrepresented, leading of course to the stereotype of the witch-hag that lingers into the twenty-first century. She goes beyond the usual social explanations (women in traditional societies unprotected by men) to some deep--and to a point convincing--psychological explanations. One example of these is that men tended to project loathing and fear upon women past child-bearing age who continue to have libidos, perversely (as they saw it) engaging in unfertile sexual acts and even endangering young men with their allegedly uncontrollable lust.

Since I consider the book a masterpiece of early modern history, I may point out some limitations. Precisely because its approach is entirely that of modern physicalism, it lacks spiritual understanding. Roper does not, for example, seem to understand the long and deep history of theology behind early modern views. She fails to confront the radical nature of human evil, leading to naive remarks: "It is difficult to comprehend the sheer viciousness of the way villagers and townsfolk attacked those they held to be witches" (3). Cambodia? Abu Ghraib? Columbine? Any German village in the 1930s-40s? Had she drawn upon Jung as well as upon Freud, she would better understand the archetype of woman as virgin/mother/hag/whore that is found in many societies, even today in cultures bordering the Mediterranean. She is rightly puzzled by the fact that some of the witches seem (even discounting all the evidence produced by torture and threat of torture) to actually have believed that they were witches. Her explanations by Freudian transference and countertransference, the nexus in which interrogations and confessions reinforce one another, are largely persuasive, but they do not address another element: the possible validity of at least some of the confessions. Putting aside bizarre elements such as flying through the air, other elements of the confessions might actually have occurred. This does not require a supernatural explanation, for in a society where it was generally taken for granted that one could gain wealth, power, and sexual thrills by practicing evil rites, it is not unlikely that some persons would actually do so. Ritual orgy and cannibalism, for example, are well attested in a wide variety of societies. Deep as Roper has gotten into human nature, one can get still deeper.

To end on an acclamation: no matter what one's worldview or interests, everyone will learn a great deal from this truly magnificent study.

Jeffrey Burton Russell

University of California, Santa Barbara