Please find below four examples from the 20 displays exhibition, “The European Witchcraze”. It has been made by one of the world's most prominent experts in the field, professor Gustav Henningsen of The Danish Folklore Archives in Copenhagen.

“The European Witchcraze” is probably the most comprehensive exhibition on the theme of witch persecutions, and gives a most fascinating insight into the historical background.

The 20 displays cover different aspects of the European witchcraze, and contain illustrations (pictures and drawings) courtesy of some of the world’s foremost museums and art collections. The exhibition will normally induce great media interest, especially when linked to one of the “witch dates”, i.e. 30. April (Walpurgis Night); 23. June (Midsummer Night); 31. October (All Hallows’ Night – Halloween).

The displays are in the format 120 x 100 cm, and are transported in two specially designed flight cases. Total weight is in the region of 400 kg.

For information on the availability of this exhibition, please see Contact.





Display 1

THE WITCHLESS MIDDLE AGES (- c. 1450)

In the Middle Ages, only a minority listened to the strict demands of hellfire preachers and the reforming monastic orders for poverty and the ascetic life. From the lowest levels of society all the way up to the courts of princes and the Pope, people indulged in love, dancing and the joys of the table in the assurance that they were all gifts of God.

Nor did the people of medieval times listen to the vicious attacks of the Church Fathers on the deceitfulness of women. On the contrary, people listened to stories of the woman above all women, the Virgin Mary, and her miraculous interventions in the daily life of mortals to save sinners from the clutches of the Devil.

They also listened to stories of women who had ridden long distances by night in the goddess Diana's train. But the Church condemned these ancient ideas of witchcraft as sinful, pagan superstition.


The Virgin Mary at the Creation. Painted illustration in a manuscript of the eleventh century (Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid).

The theocratic society of the Middle Ages recognized only God as the source of power and knowledge. If certain men and women had supernatural powers, these powers came from God, so such people were revered as saints. The period was especially a Golden Age for female saints, whose prototype was the Virgin, who was identified with the woman who in the Book of Revelations (12.1) appeared "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" as a "great wonder in heaven".

In this picture she is seen against a background symbolizing eternity, overseeing the Creation. Artists continued to represent her this way until as late as the mid-sixteenth century. They called her "the Eternal Virgin", and in this connection the words of the Book of Proverbs (8.22-23) were often quoted:

"The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way,
before his works of old;
I was set up from everlasting,
from the beginning,
or ever the earth was."


The pleasures of May. North Italian fresco of the 13th century.

At the well outside the city walls an aristocratic group is picnicking. Meanwhile a young couple is enjoying the pleasures of May.

Around 1500 the Humanists rejected the hedonism of the Middle Ages and its harmony with nature. In the new thinking the "picnic" was censured as dissipated, profligate behaviour in a "nature" that was dangerous and uncultivated.

The words of the prophet Amos (4.1-3) to the pleasure-seeking women:

Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan,
that are in the mountains of Samaria,
which oppress the poor, which crush the needy,
which say to their masters,
Bring, and let us drink.
The Lord GOD hath sworn by his holiness,
that, lo, the day shall come upon you,
that he will take you away with hooks,
and your posterity with fishhooks.

Display 3

ELEMENTS OF THE WITCHES' SABBAT (II)

Four drawings by Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545). The artist, who was born in the year of the "Witch Bull", came from a haute bourgeois family in Strasbourg and had a Humanist education.

All but one of the drawings of witches, clearly private art meant for friends, were done in the Freiburg period 1512-18, when Hans Baldung - "Grün Hans", as his friends called him - was designing an altarpiece. ("Green Hans" was a popular name for the Devil in the shape of a fine gentleman.)

In his drawings the artist has kept some of the positive heathen sensuality that was characteristic of the notion of the witch before the propaganda of the Church had diabolized the popular ideas.


Witches making New Year magic. Drawing, 1514 (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna).

Helped by two others, the young witch is straining to press her head down between her legs so she can see the world upside down. If you did this on New Year's Eve you could see into the future.

Hans Baldung's inscription "A Good Year for Choircap" shows that the drawing was used as a New Year greeting to a cleric with this nickname.


Witches' brew. Coloured woodcut, 1510.

"Weather witchcraft" was done in a magic triangle formed by pitchforks. Here a woman is sitting naked, brewing up a storm, while two others help her with the ritual.

Up in the air a young witch whizzes away on her goat. She is riding backwards, holding a newly-brewed storm between the prongs of the pitchfork, ready to release it somewhere else. Note the trance-like expression on her face and the body floating as in a dream.


The flying ointment. Drawing, 1514 (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna).

The room where these buxom young women are is filled with vapours from the poisonous ointment, made from (among other things) the fat of children. The witch at the front is anointing herself, the second, lifting up the ointment jar, is in a kind of ecstasy, and the third is completely in a trance, with no will of her own. But the old witch who is to lead her to the Sabbat is wide awake.


Young witch fornicating with the Devil. Drawing, 1516 (Stadtlische Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe).

The cupids are probably meant to symbolize the gloomy aspect of the witch fantasies, but it is difficult for modern eyes to see anything but pornography in the drawing.

However, we must not forget that between us and this picture stands what one scholar has called one of the greatest mental revolutions in history: the transformation of woman from a defenceless victim of her "insatiable lust" to the sexless "angel of the home" of the Victorian era.

Display 6

A DUTCH WITCH SCHOOL (c. 1610)

Seven witch paintings by the Dutch painter Frans Francken the Younger are known - all variations on the same theme: a great meeting of witches with two young, fully-dressed women in the foreground. The witches are occupied with various rituals, and some of the magical inscriptions are authentic, thus revealing that the artist must have been familiar with this forbidden literature.

The pictures were painted over a period of five years (1606-10). It is unlikely that they are evidence of any obsession on the part of the artist. Such pictures simply sold well; they were highly topical because at just this time witch hunting was at its peak - if not in Holland, at least in many other parts of Europe.

Artists like Frans Francken, with their detailed, realistic pictures, helped to convince the powers-that-be in society that the Witches' Sabbat was a fact, not, as scholars of the old school claimed, a figment of the imagination.


Witches' Sabbat. Frans Francken 1607 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

The scene is laid in some ruins by the sea (note the beached whale at the top left, in whose mouth two demons sit playing dice.)

The picture has two axes. One goes through the young girl who has just arrived and is shamelessly stripping off her fine dress. Up in the air behind her hovers a naked woman in a Crucifixion pose, and below her is an old witch anointing the young women on the back with flying ointment.

On top of a post stands a witch ready to fly off, half-metamorphosed into a cat. Below her we can make out a row of giant toads which are crawling up the post.

The right side of the picture centres on the other newly-arrived witch, who is also undressing. She has a toad-like demon on her shoulders. In front of her an old woman is teaching children the art of sorcery. To the right of this group some women are lying on a couch completely drugged by the substance that some demons are pouring down their throats.

The big cauldron with the witches' brew has been moved up on an elevation in the background of the scene. At the top right a woman is busy decapitating some girls who have been sacrificed to the ape-like golden idol on the pedestal.


Witches' Sabbat. Frans Francken 1606 (Victoria & Albert Museum, London).

The meeting, which is being held indoors, is both a witches' kitchen and a Sabbat. Below the window in the background stands a large cauldron of witches' brew. To the right of this some witches are on their way up the chimney (obviously a motif borrowed from Peter Brueghel the Elder - see Display 4). At the centre of the picture stand two young girls, rather frightened, as if they do not know whether they should join in the proceedings.


Witches' Sabbat. Frans Francken, c. 1610 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).

Again, the meeting has been moved indoors. Through a window in the background we see a gallows hill where the witches practice their abominations. Two young witches, newly-arrived, have now been placed in the centre. Up in the air behind them we see the woman hovering in "crucified" position, and being worshipped by some women standing on the ground. Here we are close to a parody of the Catholic Mass.

Display 15

TRIAL METHODS

Witchcraft is an imaginary crime. A human being can neither fly through the air on a broomstick nor kill small children by looking at them with "the Evil Eye". To procure confessions in cases like these, the authorities as a rule had to resort to torture.

Characteristic of witch trials was the widespread use of supernatural evidence (ordeals) to determine whether the accused was guilty or innocent. In witch trials both the ordeal by water (ducking) and the ordeal by fire (carrying red-hot iron) were used, and there are several examples of people voluntarily undergoing these ordeals to prove their innocence.

More sophisticated methods included the "needle test" (see below) and the "tear test". The latter involved establishing whether the accused was able to weep, since witches, according to the general view of the age, were incapable of this.


"The torture chamber of the Inquisition" (Copperplate print by Bernard Picart, 1722).

The print, claiming to depict the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, is full of historical inaccuracies. The Inquisition in Spain hung its victims up with their hands tied behind their backs and used the rack, as well as rope and water tortures; but never methods like burning the accused with red-hot irons under the soles of their feet. Nor did they torture several people at once.

During the torture all the judges of the tribunal had to be present, along with the representative of the Bishop and a doctor, whose job was to ensure that the accused was not subjected to more than he or she could bear. Rather than the Inquisition, the picture must be said to fit the witch trials at some of the secular or clerical courts in Germany.


The ordeal by water (Anonymous drawing. Pierre Lebrun, Histoire critique des practiques superstitieuses, Rouen 1702).

The citizens of a small French town look on curiously as the public executioner carries out the ordeal by water. The woman he has ducked in the river floats on the surface, which is a sign that she is a witch. Her hands and feet have been tied together and the executioner is holding a rope so he can pull her up afterwards.

In the boat stands another woman who has been subjected to the same ordeal. Both are quite naked, and have had their hair shaved off. This was done to witches so they would have nowhere to hide their magical accessories.


A witch-burning at Derneburg, Harzen, 1555 (Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliotek, Zürich).

"A dreadful story of three sorceresses... and two sorcerors" is the title of this broadside with an eye-witness account of how the Devil came and took one of the women - or rather her soul - as she expired at the stake. Sensational pamphlets like this helped to spread the witch mania. They were printed in editions of many thousands and sold at markets, but only a few examples of these broadsides have been preserved.


"Stigma diaboli" (Water colour by Clovis Trouville, c. 1950).


The witches' mark (Manuscript in the Bibliothèque de la Ville de Bordeaux).

The photograph shows witches' marks revealed in a trial held by a secular court in the Pyrenees in 1633. The accused, a middle-aged beggar woman, was completely undressed and shaved all over her body.

The marks found were tested one by one with a needle, which the executioner pricked the accused with without her being able to see where the needle was inserted. As they proceeded they asked her if she could feel anything. If not, it was a sign that they had found a witch mark. It was believed that the Devil marked his devotees, and that the point where he had touched them with his claw would forever be dead to all feeling.

Excerpts from the Final display.

THE EUROPEAN WITCHCRAZE • FACT AND MYTH

An Exhibition Commissioned by Notabene Theatre Productions Ltd. in connection with the Operamusical Which Witch. Editor: Gustav Henningsen.

An earlier version of this exhibition was produced by the Danish Folklore Archives in collaboration with the art historian Bettina von Meyenburg, Zürich, and the folklorist Marisa Rey-Henningsen, the editor's wife. This exhibition was first presented at the Royal Library of Copenhagen in 1984 and later adapted as a travelling exhibition which went the rounds of Danish museums, libraries and schools during seven years.

More than twenty different collections have contributed to the present version by lending us colour transparencies of their original works of art. They have all been credited in connection with the respective titles. A number of maps and graphs have been reproduced from a special supplement, "The European Witchcraze Revisited", to the magazine History Today (Nov. 1980). The photographer John Moss, Camera Press, should be acknowledged for the photograph of a witch wedding (Display 11).

The editor wishes to express his gratitude to Notabene Theatre Productions for generous support in the preparation of the greatly enlarged English version of the exhibition. Thanks too to Benedicte Adrian for looking up paintings in London Museums, and to the German witchcraft scholar Wolfgang Behringer for his critical comments on the exhibition manuscript.