Witch trials in the Netherlands

Last updated

The witch trials in the Netherlands were among the smallest in Europe. The Netherlands are known for having discontinued their witchcraft executions earlier than any other European country. The provinces began to phase out capital punishment for witchcraft beginning in 1593. The last trial in the Northern Netherlands took place in 1610.

Contents

164 to about 200 people were killed in Dutch witch trials, rising to potentially 300 victims including casualties from regions that were under Spanish jurisdiction but eventually became part of the Netherlands. The victims were overwhelmingly women.

Belief in witches persisted in some areas into the nineteenth century and in 1823 one woman underwent the water ordeal on her own request with the support of the authorities to prove her innocence to her superstitious neighbours.

History

Northern Netherlands prior to independence

Despite significant losses of archival material, it seems that the Northern Netherlands saw most of their trials for sorcery and witchcraft between 1550 and 1575, when prosecutions in the Southern Netherlands were only just beginning. The province of Groningen's first trials were in 1457, leading to the executions of twenty women and a man.[ citation needed ] In the 1550s the area between Rhine and Meuse was hit hard, while in the 1560s, and particularly in 1564, prosecutions peaked in the County of Holland. [1]

Early in the sixteenth centuries when witch trials were still in the initial stages in the Low Countries, authorities often sought advice and "expertise" from abroad, such a Cologne and Cleves. An executioner from Cleves, master Symon, was contracted for several trials for his skill in breaking victims and extracting a confession from them. [2]

Northern Netherlands after independence

The Netherlands became an independent country after the Dutch War of Independence in 1579. During the late 16th century, the Netherlands did experience a couple of high-profile witch trials.

The provincial courts in Zeeland and Frisia maintained strict central control, were staffed by trained jurists and insisted on due process. Their academic jurists observed the procedural rules for a high standard of evidence before torture was allowed. [3]

In June 1593, the High Court (Hoge Raad) repealed a death sentence for witchcraft from Schiedam in the Province of Holland. This became a case of precedence which was henceforth followed as common practice in Holland, thereby de facto abolished the death penalty for witchcraft in the province. [4] This case of precedence was followed by the Province of Utrecht from 1596, by Groningen from 1597 and by Gelderland from 1603 onward. [4]

The total number of victims from witch trials in the Northern Netherlands is estimated at 164 (minimum figure of documented victims but almost certainly an undercount) to about 200 people killed in the Northern Netherlands; this figure includes executed victims, victims who died of torture before execution and victims who died in prison. The figure rises to at least 200 to potentially 300 victims if one includes casualties from parts of the Spanish Netherlands that the Republic conquered later (such as Staats-Overmaas and Staats-Brabant). Out of 164 documented victims, 155 were women. In the western provinces only women were accused and killed. [3] About half of the accused in the eastern provinces were men, chiefly accused of being werewolves, but very few men were executed. [5]

The number of casualties and the period in which witch trials peaked varied considerably per province. Victims numbered 50 in Groningen (peaks in 1540s and around 1590), 46 in Guelders (peak in 1540s and 1550s), 39 in Holland (peaks in mid 1560s, 1585 and 1591), 23 in Utrecht (peak in 1520s and 1530s), 4 in Zeeland, 1 each in Drenthe and Oversticht and none in Frisia. [3] The mid-1560s peak in Holland, the most populous province, home to roughly a third of the population of the Northern Netherlands, was a relatively urban phenomenon inspired by an economic crisis due to a drop in Baltic grain imports (the most important facet of foreign trade for Holland during the entire early modern period). [6] A few other witch trials were linked to plague outbreaks and the accused in these cases were often people who nursed plague victims, although pestilence never became a significant cause for trials. In the province of Groningen witch trials proliferated in outlying regions where local official had a free rein, but they were by contrast very rare in the jurisdiction of city of Groningen. Record keeping in Guelders was especially poor. The total number of victims was therefore quite probably higher than 164. [3]

Cunning folk were not commonly among the accused or victims of witch trials, there are only very few examples known. [7] There are no known cases of midwives being tried.

The last person executed for witchcraft in the Northern Netherlands has often been referred to as Anna Muggen of Gorinchem in 1608. [8] She had repeatedly declared herself to be a witch. In reality, however, the Bredevoort witch trials resulted in the execution of ten people as late as 1610, two years after the execution of Anna Muggen. The famous Roermond witch trial of 1613, resulting in 64 executions, took place in a part of present-day Netherlands which belonged to present-day Belgium (then the Spanish Netherlands) at the time, and thus does not actually belong to the history of witch trials on the Netherlands.

The fact that the common practice of repealing death sentences ended witchcraft executions in the Netherlands, however, did not mean that there were no witch trials. Witch trials still occurred in the Netherlands the entire first half of the 17th century, though they were relatively few and no longer resulted in executions. Aagt Germonts was judged guilty of witchcraft in 1660, but her sentence was commuted to pillorying. [9] [8]

End of the witch trials

The lack of witchcraft executions in the Netherlands attracted attention in contemporary Europe. It was also a cause of misplaced national pride as well as political propaganda, as the Dutch pointed to the severe Witch trials in the Spanish Netherlands and stated that in contrast to the case of their Catholic neighbor, there was no need of witch trials in the Netherlands as no one had been proven guilty of sorcery and claimed sorcery had been proven to be illusions. [4]

The common belief in witchcraft among the public did however persist despite the lack of interest from the authorities to conduct such trials. Witchcraft accusations as part of defamation cases occurred during the entire 18th century, and as late as in the 19th century there were lynchings of people pointed out as witches. [8] Some women would continue to seek ordeals to clear their names, which could however have negative consequences. Aaltje Brouwer from Eibergen underwent a water ordeal in 1694 and subsequently a weighing ordeal in Oudewater (where there was a weigh house) when her accusers were unpersuaded. The classis of the Reformed church, which never regarded her as a witch, decided then to deny her the Lord's Supper for tarnishing the name of the Reformed religion and indulging in "superstitious popery". [10]

In 1823 a woman, Hendrika Hofhuis famously demanded that the authorities allowed her to be subjected to the ordeal of water to clear her name in her community after she had been accused of being a witch. The authorities agreed in order to solve this defamation dispute, and she passed the test and cleared her name in the eyes of her neighbors. While not actually a witch trial, as the authorities merely allowed her this to end the harassment from her neighbors, this can nevertheless be regarded as the last time that something resembling a witch trial took place in the Netherlands. [10]

Areas of the Netherlands under Spanish control after 1581

For witch trials in the Southern Low Countries, see Witch trials in the Spanish Netherlands

The last witch trials on the territory of the modernday Netherlands took place near Roermond in 1613, a region that was controlled by Spain at the time. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witch-hunt</span> Search for witchcraft or subversive activity

A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.

Marigje Arriens or Marichgen Ariaens was an alleged Dutch witch, long thought to be the last to be executed for sorcery in the Dutch Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Werewolf witch trials</span> Historical witch trials combined with werewolf trials

Werewolf witch trials were witch trials combined with werewolf trials. Belief in werewolves developed parallel to the belief in European witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland during the Valais witch trials in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century. The persecution of werewolves and the associated folklore is an integral part of the "witch-hunt" phenomenon, albeit a marginal one, accusations of lycanthropy involved in only a small fraction of witchcraft trials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doruchów witch trial</span>

The Doruchów witch trial was a witch trial which took place in the village of Doruchów in Poland in the 18th century. It was the last mass trial of sorcery and witchcraft in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Anna Klemens (1718–1800) was a Danish murder victim and an alleged witch. She was lynched and accused of sorcery in Brigsted at Horsens in Denmark, a lynching considered to be the last witch lynching in her country and, most likely, in all Scandinavia.

Krystyna Ceynowa, also spelled as Cejnowa, was an ethnic Polish victim of murder by lynching and an alleged witch. Accused of sorcery, she was subjected to the ordeal of water and drowned in Ceynowa. She was the last person in Poland and among the last people in Europe to be subjected to lynching on the grounds of sorcery and witchcraft.

Anna Jansdochter Muggen, was an alleged Dutch witch. She was the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Holland, then the most influential province of the Netherlands. She has been referred to as the last person to be executed for witchcraft in the Netherlands.

Hendrika Hofhuis (1780–1849), was a Dutch woman, famous for being put on trial for witchcraft in 1823. While this was not a real witch trial, she was the last person to be formally charged with such a crime in the Netherlands.

Witch trials and witch related accusations were at a high during the early modern period in Britain, a time that spanned from the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witch trials in the Holy Roman Empire</span>

In the Holy Roman Empire, witch trials composed of the areas of the present day Germany, were the most extensive in Europe and in the world, both to the extent of the witch trials as such as well as to the number of executions.

The Witch trials in Spain were few in comparison with most of Europe. The Spanish Inquisition preferred to focus on the crime of heresy and, consequently, did not consider the persecution of witchcraft a priority and in fact discouraged it rather than have it conducted by the secular courts. This was similar to the Witch trials in Portugal and, with a few exceptions, mainly successful. However, while the Inquisition discouraged witch trials in Spain proper, it did encourage the particularly severe Witch trials in the Spanish Netherlands.

The Witch trials in Portugal were perhaps the fewest in all of Europe. Similar to the Spanish Inquisition in neighboring Spain, the Portuguese Inquisition preferred to focus on the persecution of heresy and did not consider witchcraft to be a priority. In contrast to the Spanish Inquisition, however, the Portuguese Inquisition was much more efficient in preventing secular courts from conducting witch trials, and therefore almost managed to keep Portugal free from witch trials. Only seven people are known to have been executed for sorcery in Portugal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witch trials in Denmark</span>

The Witch trials in Denmark are poorly documented, with the exception of the region of Jylland in the 1609–1687 period. The most intense period in the Danish witchcraft persecutions was the great witch hunt of 1617–1625, when most executions took place, which was affected by a new witchcraft act introduced in 1617.

The Witch trials in the Spanish Netherlands were among the more intense witch-hunts, along with those of the Holy Roman Empire and France. In an area recently affected by a religious war, the Spanish Inquisition encouraged witch trials as a method to ensure religious conformity. In this, it was similar to the Witch trials in Latvia and Estonia.

The witch trials in Norway were the most intense among the Nordic countries. There seems to be around an estimated 277 to 350 executions between 1561 and 1760. Norway was in a union with Denmark during this period, and the witch trials were conducted by instructions from Copenhagen. The authorities and the clergy conducted the trials using demonology handbooks and used interrogation techniques and sometimes torture. After a guilty verdict, the condemned was forced to expose accomplices and commonly deaths occurred due to torture or prison. Witch trials were in decline by the 1670s as judicial and investigative methods were improved. A Norwegian law from 1687 maintained the death penalty for witchcraft, and the last person to be sentenced guilty of witchcraft in Norway was Birgitte Haldorsdatter in 1715. The Witchcraft Act was formally in place until 1842.

Witch trials in Latvia and Estonia were mainly conducted by the Baltic German elite of clergy, nobility and burghers against the indigenous peasantry in order to persecute Paganism by use of Christian demonology and witchcraft ideology. In this aspect, they are similar to the Witch trials in Iceland. They are badly documented, as many would have been conducted by the private estate courts of the landlords, which did not preserve any court protocols.

The Witch trials in Finland were conducted in connection to Sweden and were relatively few with the exception of the 1660s and 1670s, when a big witch hunt affected both Finland and Sweden. Finland differed from most of Europe in that an uncommonly large part of the accused were men, which it had in common with the witch trials in Iceland. Most of the people accused in Finland were men, so called "wise men" hired to perform magic by people. From 1674 to 1678, a real witch hysteria broke out in Ostrobothnia, during which twenty women and two men were executed.

The Witch trials in Hungary were conducted over a longer period of time than in most countries in Europe, as documented witch trials are noted as early as the Middle Ages and lasted until the late 18th-century. During the 16th and 17th centuries Hungary was divided into three parts: Habsburg Hungary, Ottoman Hungary and Transylvania, with some differences between them in regard to the witch hunt. The most intense period of witch hunt in Hungary took place in the 18th-century, at a time when they were rare in the rest of Europe except Poland. The trials finally stopped in 1768 by abolition of the death penalty for witchcraft by Austria, which controlled Hungary at the time. An illegal witch trial and execution took place in 1777.

The Witch trials in the Italian states of present-day Italy are a complicated issue. Witch trials could be managed by a number of different secular courts as well as by the Roman Inquisition, and documentation has been only partially preserved in either case. A further complication is the fact that Italy was politically split between a number of different states during the time period in which the witch trials occurred; and that historiography has traditionally separated the history of Northern Italy and Southern Italy. All of these issues complicate the research of witch trials in present-day Italy, and the estimations of the intensity and number of executions has varied between hundreds to thousands of victims.

Aagt Germonts (1621–?), was a Dutch woman who was accused of witchcraft.

References

  1. Dries Vanysacker, "Prosecutions for Sorcery and Witchcraft in Europe" in: Renilde Vervoort, "Bruegel's Witches. Witchcraft Images in the Low Countries between 1450 and 1700" Bruges 2016, pp. 11–17.
  2. Hans de Waardt, "Witchcraft and Wealth: The Netherlands", The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, pp. 237–238.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Hans de Waardt, "Witchcraft and Wealth: The Netherlands", The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, pp. 239–242.
  4. 1 2 3 Ankarloo, Bengt, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe; Vol. 4: The period of the witch trials, London: Athlone Press, 2002
  5. Dries Vanysacker, "Witch Hunts in the Low Countries", The Routledge History of Witchcraft.
  6. 1 2 Joris van Eijnatten, F. A. van Lieburg, Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis, p. 157.
  7. Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History, p. 167.
  8. 1 2 3 Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra; Brian Levack & Roy Porter. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe; Volume 5
  9. Monika Saelemaekers, Germonts, Aagt, in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland. URL: https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Germonts [13/01/2014]
  10. 1 2 Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 5, pp. 112–113.