After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Real Witch Hunts: Persecution & Panic

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Witch hunts blazed across Europe from the 1400s right into the 1700s. Their terror has been burned into the collective memory. But how accurate are the pictures we have in our heads?For this episode, Anthony and Maddy are joined by Suzannah Lipscomb, host of Not Just the Tudor. She helps them delve deep into the realities of witches and witch trials in Early Modern Europe.Edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Annie Coloe and Rob WeinbergDiscover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

Hi everyone, Maddy here. Just to let you know that in this episode we do discuss very briefly the issues of infertility and miscarriage. Hello there and welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. Today we are talking about witches. You may have noticed but witches and witchcraft are pretty much everywhere these days, from the halls of Hogwarts to witch talk. Yes, that's witchy TikTok. The idea of witches, what they mean to us today and who they were in the past, is on the lips of everyone. But today we want to establish some of the basics and take you back to early modern

Europe and the heyday of so-called witches, the panic and persecution of those accused of witchcraft and the mechanics of the trials that followed. Our incredible guest today is the wonderful Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And she, of course, as well as being an expert on all things early modern, is a fount of knowledge on all things related to witchcraft in the early modern period. And she is also, of course, the host of our sister podcast, Not Just the Tudors, which is about the Tudors, obviously, and much, much more. So give your cauldron a stir, pour yourself a mug of witch's brew, get your familiar settled on your lap and enjoy today's episode. Hello and welcome to this episode of After Dark,

Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. With me, Dr. Anthony Delaney. And me, Dr. Maddy Pelling. Now, today we are delighted to welcome one of our label mates at History Hit, the one and only Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And Susanna is the presenter of not just the Tudors here on History Hit and has written widely on the early modern period, including on today's topic, which is witchcraft. Susanna, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure to be here. It's interesting you called us label mates. I thought you might call us stable mates, but the same is applied, you know, whether we're horses or records. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking more along the lines of we're now in a band or something, but yes, we could be stable mates. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm notoriously cool, Susanna. That's what you'll find out in the course of this chat. To begin with, for our listeners then, it's very interesting when we talk about witches, because almost everybody will be coming to this interview, this podcast episode with an idea of what a witch is. Now, whether or not that's based in fact is a whole different conversation. But when we're talking about witches in the 16th and 17th century, let's say, how do we quantify or qualify a world in which witchcraft is not something that's abstract?

So let's start with the world more generally. This is not an idea of fun or ridicule. It's potentially, am I correct in saying, a genuine threat to life? It's potentially, am I correct in saying, a genuine threat to life? Yes, although I think actually where the idea we have of a witch is a bit of a clue, because many of us have an idea of a witch as a sort of elderly old crone, the hat, the cat, the broomstick. all come from elements of demonologies, which were books written about demons and witches and that sort of thing in this period,

and stereotypes about what a witch was like. So they all have their roots in very real fears. And the fear was that there was a being, a creature living amongst you who looked the same as everyone else, but who could draw on a supernatural power to destroy crops at a time when that really mattered, because you'd go hungry if a harvest failed, who could lame animals, who could even kill humans. And there's a hugely high rate of infant mortality at this time. And so this sense that amongst you, there is an agent of the devil is this idea that's really developing in the 16th

and 17th century. I mean, people believed in witches for thousands of years, but from the late 15th century onwards, it gets associated with this idea of a diabolical pact, a pact between the witch and the devil. And so it's heresy, but it's worse than heresy because it's actually going to the point of trying to destroy the people of God. And so it certainly is something that's terrifying. Susanna, you're speaking there about the devil and heresy. Now, I think we have an idea, a sense in this period that the witch hunts that erupt in Europe in the early modern period are tied to the church. Is that necessarily the case? How does fear of witches and belief in witches intersect with religious belief and religious administration

in this period? There's so many interesting things about this. So in some ways, there's a tie. so many interesting things about this. So in some ways, there's a tie. And part of that comes from a very influential book called the Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of the Witches, published by a crazed monk called Heinrich Kramer, writing at the end of the 15th century, who sets out a manual on how to find witches, how to exterminate them, how to identify them. And he publishes at the front of his book a papal bull, so an order by the Pope, which draws on biblical texts like Exodus, saying thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and makes this connection to the Diabolical Pact.

And by putting this at the front of his book, it looks as if his book has the kind of imprimatur of the Catholic church. It has the strength and power of the church behind it, but he's just published it there. But in practice, and I think this is perhaps the most fascinating thing of all, witches are not pursued by the churches of the time. And of course, this is a period where we've got the Reformation happening. We've got a split happening in the church, a schism between what will ultimately be known as the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. And the Reformation is important because it creates an atmosphere of apocalyptic angst. It makes people feel that they're living in the end

days, just before the second coming of Christ. And obviously, there's lots of talk in the Bible about those days being filled with disaster, which they can see. They've got epidemics, they've got famines, they've got disastrous environmental conditions, and also being filled with the presence of the Antichrist. And so they're also expecting to see that. So there's this sense of seeing the devil at work everywhere. But what doesn't happen is that we don't see Protestants calling Catholics witches or Catholics calling Protestants witches. And, as I say, most interestingly of all, to my mind, is that this isn't something that's done by the church. So we have this idea that it's the church that's pursuing witches, but it's not.

What happens in the 16th century that's so crucial is that witchcraft becomes a crime under law. And so witches are pursued by legal authorities. They are tried. And it's that judicial process that leads to the mass execution of people as witches. Nothing to do with the church, really. And so when you're talking about this kind of legislation against witchcraft in England, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think we're talking about laws in 1542, and again in 62, and again then I think in 1604. So it's not just this one old dormant law, it's a very active legislative thing that's happening

across the 16th and early 17th century. Why was there a need to legislate? Yes, so you're right. So it's 1542, we have the first act against witches, which then is repealed. And so in 1563, under Elizabeth, there's a new act, which is then made more robust under James. James will probably talk about it, he's a little obsessed with witches. And so the 1604 legislation is one which really puts the diabolical pact into the law. So the earlier laws in terms of answering your question about why it's needed are to do with what is known as maleficium, which is evil magic. So that's the things I talked about, like destroying crops, causing storms that destroy

ships or doing damage to livestock, that sort of thing. And so it's harm, but by magic. So in the same way as doing criminal damage to someone's property would be a crime under law, this is criminal damage. It's just that you are using magic to do it. And so that's what the law is policing. And that's so interesting because it means that it becomes a crime that is prosecuted as any other crime. It's not a heresy. It's not being treated as a heresy. It's being treated as a crime. It's under James that that is extended to be about the making of the diabolical pact. And that will have implications of treason as well. So it's really because they think that there are criminal acts being done that just need to be dealt with under law. It's hard for us, I think, in a modern mindset to accept and to understand this

real investment and belief in magic in terms not only of religious or spiritual belief, but in the sort of administration of the state. And this goes right to the top levels. So you've mentioned James Susanna. Can you tell us a little bit about James I of Scotland famously legitimizes witchcraft as a threat to patriarchal power and royal power in particular. So could you tell us a little bit about his relationship with witchcraft? Yes. So James VI of Scotland in the 1590s, when he decides to marry, he travels in the end to pick up his wife, Anne of Denmark. And she hasn't been able to travel to him because of various storms which are thought to be caused by witchcraft. And there's quite a lively set of beliefs around witchcraft present in Scandinavia at the time, which he sort of imports back with her.

And so he's convinced that there's been a kind of threat against him. and so he's convinced that there's been a kind of threat against him. I mean, this is kind of flattering in some ways because he is obviously God's agent at work in the world and therefore the witches are going to try and attack him. And he's heavily involved in the Berwick witch trials that take place in the 1590s. He hears testimony himself from some of those who are accused witches and one of the things that

one of the witches says is a comment that was made between the couple on their wedding night. And of course, this could have been learned through servants gossip, but it convinces him that actually she must be a witch because she can be somewhere she was not, right? She has that supernatural power to translate herself into another place. And so he becomes entirely convinced by the reality of witchcraft as a result of his face-to-face encounter. And that's a particularly horrible trial in which many people, mostly women, but not all, are executed for witchcraft and burnt at the stake outside Edinburgh Castle. And when he becomes King of England in 1603, he brings that down with him. And so this idea of belief in witchcraft, that sense of the diabolical pact being added to the law. And it's under James that we have the Pendle witch trials.

being added to the law. And it's under James that we have the Pendle witch trials. And I, crucially, after the 1590s witch trials in Scotland, James sat down and wrote a book about it. He's the only reigning monarch that I know of who has written a book about witchcraft. And it has ideas about the glamour of the witches. I don't know if you ever saw that show. Is it called True Blood? About vampires and the idea that vampires can glamour their victims. So that idea comes straight from James's demonology. And you've got ideas about how you deal with a witch,

that you need to put them to an ordeal, a swimming ordeal, that is quite famous. And various techniques to how to identify them. And there's a lively debate happening in the late 16th century about whether witches are real or not. There are sceptics. There's Reginald Scott who's writing his discovery of witchcraft where he's saying, you know, come on now, not really real. But there are many people of authority.

James is one of them. If you go over to France, you've got someone like Jean Baudin, who's a royal prosecutor, who's writing his demonology, who are setting out a case for how witches are real. And some of this means doing some strange things with evidence as we would understand it, because Baudin describes witchcraft as being a cremum exceptum. So it's an exceptional crime because it takes place, but the evidence is hidden because the devil conceals it. So normally speaking, for example, in French law, you have to have two witnesses, but the devil is obviously concealing that evidence. So you

need to have a confession in that case. Anyway, so the point is there's someone who therefore is very adept in the law, is doing workarounds to deal with the fact that this is a special sort of crime and that the evidence is not present. It doesn't mean that it didn't happen. It just means that you need to deal with it in a different way. And James is doing a similar thing for England and Scotland. someone like James and people in his court and other influential people in a world where they believe in the truism of absolute monarchy, then the jump to a belief in witchcraft is tangential. It lives in that same world in many ways. But I wanted to ask you about this idea of witches as individuals and as people or as collectives sometimes, there is an idea of accusations of witchcraft. And then there's this idea that maybe people, or did they, this is a question I suppose, did they identify as witches themselves? And who are those people? Who are the witches

in this early modern world? It's such a fascinating question, because this goes to the heart of it really. When we look at people accused of witchcraft, we say, and I think with some confidence, that they are innocent, that these are people who are accused of being witches and doing things by magic, doing evil magic, who are falsely accused. But the evidence is very interesting.

So we have to think about how confessions are obtained. We'll come back to England in a minute because it's a bit unusual. But in Europe, generally speaking, under the inquisitorial system of justice, because you need to get a confession, because there aren't two witnesses, because the devil's hidden the evidence from eyewitnesses, you need a confession to prove it. And confessions are extracted using torture. First of all, the threat of torture. And there's a kind of procedure of torture. So there are steps that you would use. First of all, you show the implements and then you start on one and so on and so forth. And you put them to the question as described as. And they believe that that will produce the truth. Now, modern research into torture suggests that it produces anything but, but they think pain is a guarantor of truth.

So then you have people confessing things. And this is where it gets really fascinating because in the interrogations, quite often what is happening is that a question is put to an alleged witch. And at this time, throughout the judicial system, it's normal to use leading questions. Did you go to so-and-so's house on the 6th of October and there you saw the devil and he presented himself to you in the form of a black goat and you say, yes. And then the testimony says, she says she went to the so-and-so's house on the 6th of October and she saw the devil in his form of a black goat, which does not say any of those things necessarily. But the trial records often are cleaned up versions where we don't see the questions and we don't see the interventions and we don't see the changing of direction or the sort of slips or inconsistencies. inconsistencies. When we can see those, when we have the actual written testimonies, then you can start to pick that apart and you can pull apart what's being said and what's not being said by the actual alleged witch. But there are instances where people confess freely to witchcraft,

where they're not tortured. And that opens up a whole different avenue because there you've got a sense that they are picking up on a current of ideas. So most of these people aren't going to be reading the demonologies that are being produced by elite men. But that doesn't mean they don't know the ideas because at this time, I think it was Keith Thomas who famously said, you don't need to know how to read, but you just need to know someone who can. Or you've gone to other witch trials and you've heard what was said there and you've picked up on these ideas. And there are all sorts of reasons why someone might start to believe them we have to imagine that there are people who genuinely thought they were witches and who were trying to use magic

to do evil to their neighbors and to take revenge quite a lot of these people who are accused are poor and we can talk about that perhaps but there's a sense of righting wrongs and dealing with injustice and socioeconomic deprivation and that sort of thing. And some of it's the illusion of power, how nice it would be to think that you could damn that person who wouldn't give you money when you really needed it or whatever it is. And there are all sorts of other explanations we can look at. But when we look at the confessions of people who confess freely, then we can pick out themes about their desires and their fantasies and their psychological state. And there's been really interesting work done on that by people like Professor Lyndall Roper and others, where they're really investigating that realm of the imagination, I suppose.

To be continued... I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm always fascinated by the sort of sheer messiness of the accusations that get thrown around and how accusations seem to get more and more accusations. I'm thinking in particular of the Pendle witch trials and the fact that you have children testifying against adults in that and you have sort of warring families. And the other thing, of course, about that particular case is that a lot of the people who are accused of witchcraft are outsiders in that society in some way. Is that always the case with people who are accused of witchcraft? Is it always outsiders?

And we typically think of witches as being female. So are we looking at women who are on the edges of society exclusively? Is it actually a mixture of people? What's going on there? Is it actually a mixture of people? What's going on there? So lots to unpack there. I mean, we certainly see that testimonies and denunciations do tumble over each other. And quite often in the process of being interrogated, they may be asked, who else did you see? An idea that's put to them is that they've met witches at a sabbat for example which is an evening nighttime gathering of witches that the demonologists are kind of fascinated by then they have the opportunity to name people and they perhaps think that by naming people they themselves will be released they perhaps have that opportunity to avenge themselves against

someone who's particularly nasty to them in the village. So you do see an interesting pattern in terms of who else is named. And maybe they're just saying the names that come to their mind, you know, make the pain stop, I'm going to say whoever. So what we find is in some of the worst witchcraft crazes in Germany, for example, Scandinavia, you get a ridiculous number of people named. And at some point, they start naming people who are outside the usual category of which. So as you said, the usual category of which tends to be someone that no one else is going to stand up for, tends to be, say, a widow who doesn't have a husband who's going to come and intervene on her behalf. Someone who is perhaps a bit of a drain on the community because they're poor and needy.

Maybe somebody who has disabilities of various sorts. Often they're older women. They're not just women. I'll come back to that in a second. But across Europe, it's something like 70% of all alleged witches are women. And the figures are higher in some places and lower in others, very high, for example, in Essex and East Anglia in the 1640s, where it's about 92% women. Whereas you've got places like Normandy or Iceland or Russia, where it's actually at least equal, if not a preponderance of men. But the sense that they're outsiders is often part of it. But the sense that they're outsiders is often part of it. But when we get these big witch crazes, then they often stop when they start naming too many people who are respectable.

And then the elites who are the ones who have to be gullible, we'd say, you have to believe what is being said, start to disbelieve it. And that's when these things stop. That's when the Salem witch trial stops, for example, and just too many people are named. But some of those respectable, inverted commas, people get caught up in these things. There's a case in Germany where a judge's wife is named and he protests and he gets named. So you don't know how it's going to turn out. But on the question of gender, so the ultimate thing is about how they see gender at the time. So they see women in this patriarchal age as more credulous than men and more liable to sin. Eve, according to the church fathers, is the devil's gateway. It therefore means that women are more likely to succumb to the temptations put to them by the

devil than men. It doesn't mean men won't succumb, some will, but women are more likely to. And they're more lustful than men as well. And one of the ideas that comes up quite a lot is that witches are having sex with the devil, whose semen is apparently intolerably cold. witches are having sex with the devil, whose semen is apparently intolerably cold. So there's this powerful sense that women are likely to be tempted. But also what seems to be going on is that a lot of the women who are accused are over 40 and therefore are menopausal or post-menopausal. They aren't producing children in a society that really elevates the culture of motherhood. That phase of their lives is over and they're not often under authority as they see it at the time because often they're widowed. And so it's been suggested that something

about it is also about an antagonism towards those unfertile women, because the witch is often held up as an anti-mother. So she's a kind of inversion of what a woman should be in this society. So there's loads of complicated stuff here and there's lots to unpack, but these are some of the themes that emerge. Once those women, mostly, are taken up then, and they are identified, You've talked about torture, you've talked about interrogation, you've talked about accusations arising from other members of the community. But once it's identified that we are dealing with a witch, and that's established and accepted, what can we expect to happen to that so-called witch?

It depends where you are. I mean, not everyone is found guilty. That's really important to say. So about 90,000 people, we think, it's really hard to get the figures, but the estimate is about 90,000 people across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries are accused of witchcraft. About half of them die. So not everyone's found guilty. Although the experience of being tortured in mainland Europe is enough to mar your honor for life because the touch of the executioner is thought to be dishonorable. So I'm not sure how those women reintegrate into society or those people reintegrate into society after that experience. There's so little evidence. after that experience. There's so little evidence. We just don't have the ongoing story of those people's lives, but it's certainly a question of over how much they could really reintegrate into

that particular community. But those who were found guilty, so they've obviously been tortured, possibly quite horribly. I mean, the rack is most commonly used. Thumb screws are used, leg irons, heated seats, all sorts of horrible things are done. And then they'll be executed. So in Scotland and in Europe, they generally are burnt because it's a heresy and heretics are burnt. In England, they're hanged because it's a crime and they're hanged just like a thief or a murderer would be. And it's just a fascinating distinction in law. I mean, I think it's probably worse to be burned alive perhaps, but it's a very near run thing, frankly, because there's no long drop at the time. So hanging is pretty awful as well. Neither are preferable, I would say.

In terms of how the remains of these executed are dealt with afterwards, are they dealt with in similar ways across Europe and across Britain? Is there a sense that they may be able to continue their magical powers beyond death, that they'll be sort of revenants in some way and come and punish the people who've executed them? That's a really interesting question. I don't think I've come across that idea of them being revenants particularly. I don't think I've come across that idea of them being revenants particularly. They wouldn't be buried in consecrated ground. They may not have had a marker to their graves. So not with respect is the answer. And I suppose there's a sense of not wanting to make martyrs or relics out of them.

But that idea of them being revenants, no, I haven't ever come across that in the sources. I'd be really interested to hear if anyone has, but it's a fascinating idea. Yeah, I'm just thinking about people who are killed for other crimes and sometimes buried at crossroads and that kind of thing. I suppose with a sense not only of not wanting to bury them in consecrated ground, but also confusing them if they want to find their way back or something. And I wonder if witches were ever treated like that. want to find their way back or something. And I wonder if witches were ever treated like that. So Susanna, we talk about English exceptionality in terms of the women and some of the men who are accused in England. They are, for example, hanged instead of being burned. Are there any other differences in terms of the accusations that are leveled at people for witchcraft and the processes that they are taken through in terms of being caught,

in terms of being investigated and punished. So one really interesting thing that comes out of the English cases that you don't see in Europe are the familiars. So we have the idea of the witches having a black cat. That comes largely from the accusations in the 1640s in East Anglia, where there were a lot of accusations. And they were gathered by Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed witchfinder general, and John Stern, his associate. And they get particularly obsessed with the idea of familiars, that witches have a kind of companion, could be an insect or a frog or a ferret or a cat, that have a kind of companion, could be an insect or a frog or a ferret or a cat, that is a kind of demon, I suppose, conversing with them. And this is a peculiarly English phenomenon. And of course, it's so big in our myth-making about witches now,

because it's largely this English culture of witches that is exported to America. And so it's a central part of our idea of witches. Interestingly, also, just as an aside, we've got witches flying on broomsticks. That comes out of some of the sources as well. But witches also, I said, to fly backwards on goats and to fly carried by a great wind and things like that to the Sabbath. And on vacuum cleaners, if hocus pocus is to be believed.

Yes, and that's a modern version. Of course, a broomstick is a phallic implement, right? So it's a domestic implement, but it's also kind of phallic. The sex thing coming in there again. But the other thing that's different in the 1640s is that Matthew Hopkins and John Stern are using sleep deprivation. So it's illegal under English law to use torture. So they're not technically using the torture that is used elsewhere,

like using the rack. Because they also have no official powers. This is something we need to really clarify. They are self-appointed. In the anarchy of the Civil War, they go around saying, we can find you a witch's you, just give us some money. And communities do, because this is particularly in East Anglia and Essex. I just did a podcast with Joanna Carrick,

who's written a great play called The Ungodly, which is showing in Suffolk at the moment, about the sort of formation of Matthew Hopkins and this sense of coming from a deeply Puritan culture where they very much have this sense of the devil at work, this very piebald sense of black and white. So they're keen to exterminate witches in their midst. They go ahead and do this in the anarchy of the Civil War. And the method they use is to keep the witches awake.

They watch them and they walk them and they make them stay awake for long periods of time. They also use the swimming ordeal. But they therefore get confessions out of these poor individuals. There's a woman called Bess Clark who's disabled. She's an older woman. She's said to be pretty cantankerous. pretty cantankerous, but she gets really badly treated by Hopkins and confesses to the devil coming to her in the form of a black man, which doesn't mean a black man, it means a man dressed in black, who wants to lie with her six or seven times a night. So again, back to the sex and also back to this idea of companionship and touch and these things that are missing from the life of a

widowed older woman. And of course, she's executed and many other witches are executed. So sleep deprivation and familiars are two of our English specialities. Susanna, you mentioned the fact that people of higher class weren't immune from these kinds of accusations. And perhaps the most famous figures of the early modern period is herself accused of some form of witchcraft, and that's Anne Boleyn. Inevitably, she's not executed for witchcraft, but it comes into her downfall. Can you tell us a little bit about that? It's a really interesting one. So yes, as you say rightly, she's accused and convicted of adultery, incest, and conspiring the king's death, not witchcraft. Witchcraft is in a letter from Eustace Shapri, who's the imperial ambassador, the ambassador

from the Holy Roman Empire. And he's writing to Charles V, the emperor, about what's going on in 1536. And I think the letter dates from March 1536. I could look it up. But it's a letter in which he reports that the king had recently said, and the letter's in French, he says that the king has recently said that he was attracted to Anne by sautillage, by sorcery. What's interesting is that Chapuis says that he was told this by someone who heard it from someone who heard it from the king saying it.

It's at least three degrees removed. So it's a sort of Chinese whisper thing going on. And Chapuis doesn't speak English. So whether Henry VIII said that or not is an open question, and whether it was in the formation that we hear it. And I've always wondered whether it actually is anything to do with witchcraft at all, or whether it's the equivalent of saying, she bewitched me, she enchanted me, her beauty beguiled me, we might say. But we use those words in exactly that same way today.

Her beauty was bewitching. Whether it actually means sorcery or not is not clear because there's no other mention of it. You'd think that if actually she's going to be accused of witchcraft, there'd be a bit more of an imprint on the documentary evidence than this one, you know, rumor of several people away from Chapuis that he's writing. I mean, Chapuis is just this amazing source. He writes these incredible letters, mostly in cipher that he sends back to Charles V. But he does write down every rumor and every bit of gossip, which means they're fantastic to read. But it also means you've got to kind of filter them a bit and weigh them up. But it has got associated with Anne. And there are some historians who've associated with Anne and attached it to a couple of other rumours. So just around this time, Anne has miscarried. It may be her first, it may be her second miscarriage, or even third,

it's very unclear. But she certainly miscarries. And it's a boy, they can tell. So she's about three and a half months pregnant. So just about the stage where you can identify the sex of the child. And 50 years later, a really hostile source, a Catholic called Nicholas Sander, writing under Elizabeth I, the Protestant queen, Anne's daughter, writes this really salacious story about Anne Boleyn. He says that she's the product of Henry VIII's affair with Anne's mother. So it's incest on several levels. And he says that she gave birth to a shapeless mass of flesh. A deformed fetus is what it's been called by some historians and then they've made that link to the witchcraft charge and suggested that therefore she

was thought of being a bit witch because she gave form to a deformed fetus but it's not a deformed fetus in the sort of sense of the works there are works going around at this time which talk about monstrous births where there are children who are born with severe disabilities and they're thought of as monsters it's it's not that it's just a miscarriage and if anyone's had a miscarriage at that late stage they'll know you miscarry a fetus and it's not in the shape of a baby yet it seems to me that even if anne isn't being accused of witchcraft what these accusations share with the accusations that are levelled at Anne's door. The common thread there is misogyny and the sort of punishment of women's bodies when they behave in ways that aren't productive in a patriarchal society.

Yes. And the punishment is, however, threefold in this case. There's the sort of punishment of Anne for not having the son that Henry wants. And one could certainly argue that her downfall is to do with that, though disassociated from witchcraft. Then there's the misogyny of the writer 50 years later, Nicholas Sander, who's connect these things up and suggest it's witchcraft and that she is in some way giving birth to a deformed fetus are also being pretty misogynistic actually. In that sense, it comes to me as I'm listening to you talk about Anne Boleyn specifically, when we're looking at this particular historical topic, this idea of witchcraft and what we would term supernatural occurrences, particularly associated with women, it sometimes becomes very difficult to disentangle

some of the myths and the fictions that have been layered on top of the archive much later, or even at the same time. I'd be so interested to know, given the work that you have done, specifically in this area, are there any enduring myths around this topic that you find particularly problematic in its endurance? There are so many. There are so many. The numbers are a big one. So like Dan Brown's bestselling book, which talks about nine million women killed by the church in the 16th century. It's like we've already established it's not the Catholic Church, but also nine million women killed by the church in the 16th century it's like we've already established it's not the catholic church but also nine million women i mean that'd be pretty impressive i mean the population of england's two million at the time so like it basically is a substantial portion of the population of europe as a whole if not all of it the stats have been

really high and we've seen that by some feminist historians like Andrew Dworkin was talking about the figures. And these are magnified by an order of magnitude, really. So that is problematic. Any number of people executed for witchcraft is too many people. But it's about 45,000, we think, the good estimates based on the trials. And there are more in some areas. German states particularly have a lot of trials.

You know, the Swiss, the Duchy of Lorraine. And, you know, England doesn't have that many really, except in certain clusters. The hanging and the burning. I'm glad I've mentioned that already. Like the all witches are burnt. It's just not true, particularly for English witches. I just want to set it straight.

And also the ducking of witches. Witches weren't ducked. So it's interesting because the accusations of witchcraft happen at the same sort of time as we have the ducking of scolds. And we can argue these are the same thing, really, the same category of problematic woman. A scold is a woman who is intemperate in her speech and men want her to shut up really. I mean, perhaps other women as well. Women are very complicit in patriarchy. So she gets ducked in the water. The swimming ordeal is where a witch's thumbs and toes are tied together, crossed over. She or he is stripped naked and put into a river to find out if they will float or sink, as we all know. There are plenty others, but that gives you a taste of some of the things that accrue

in terms of these myths about witchcraft. Yes, it's a fascinating topic, but it's absolutely one where we have all these ideas and it's hard often to sort fact from fiction. I think we've managed to do some of that today. Before we wrap up, Susanna, I wanted to ask, I think it's fair to say that there's been a huge increase in a fascination with witches and maybe a reinvention of witches in our own time, in our own moment. Do you see the interest within popular culture? Do you see the study of witchcraft and its history as being relevant to this moment?

Do you see them as evolving as a separate phenomenon at this time? Is it important to hold those histories of witchcraft in our minds when we're engaging with this reinvention in popular culture? I think you're absolutely right. this reinvention in popular culture. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we certainly see this sense of people identifying with witches nowadays and the reclaiming of the word witch, actually, you might say. And yet, I think in some ways, there's some problems with this. There's a sense in which people recognize witchcraft as being about engaging with the natural world and engaging with herbal remedies and this sense that you can have a kind of more grounded relationship with nature and that's all good. But I think some of it is appropriating

these people who were accused of witchcraft in the past and suggesting that you can kind of make a parallel between them and modern women. That being a witch is a form of social protest, perhaps, or that it is a weapon for the disenfranchised. It is a form of power relation. It is a form of power relation. So very much that relationship between magic and power is used, but it doesn't align with the historic reality of the European witch hunts, which is that these are the prosecution and execution of huge numbers of powerless, innocent people who had not used magic. So there's a really interesting thing going on here because to think that witchcraft is making a comeback, you have to believe it was around in the first place. And my sense is that most of these people in the past, there are exceptions that we've talked about, but the vast majority of them were innocent people who were being falsely accused. So the contrast to witches today and witches in the past

is that witches today practice magic, witches in the past didn't. I think that sums it up really nicely. I always enjoy making a link between what the archive is showing us and what we are experiencing today. I think that's vital when we're talking about histories and engaging people in these histories.

So I think that sums up really nicely, Susie. Thank you for that. Well, thank you to our incredible guest, Professor Susanna Lipscomb, for joining us today. We have thoroughly enjoyed having this conversation, which actually is so full of nuance. And it's been really interesting to unpick some of that today. If you enjoyed our discussion today, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and make sure to follow not just the Tudors, which is hosted by Susanna Lipscomb. And there you will hear all kinds of things ranging from Anne Boleyn and other early modern topics, which are thoroughly fascinating. It is one of Maddie and I's favourite. We're constantly chatting about it in our little WhatsApp group. Have a wonderful whatever you're doing, afternoon, evening,

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