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Subject: [JFRR] "Evil People": A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier (Dillinger, Johannes)

"Evil People": A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian
Austria and the Electorate of Trier. By Johannes Dillinger.
Translated by Laura Stokes. 2009. Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press. 312 pages. ISBN: 0-8139-2806-7 (hard cover).

Reviewed by Timothy R. Tangherlini, University of California, Los
Angeles ([log in to unmask]).

[Word count: 1032 words]

Johannes Dillinger's important Böse Leute (1999) is widely regarded
as one of the most comprehensive comparative studies of European
witch hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of
Dillinger's main questions concerns the significant differences long
recognized in both the intensity and the objects of witch hunts in
Europe and the New World. Dillinger's careful reading of
administrative documents and court testimony, his deep understanding
of the tensions between ecclesiastic and secular institutions, both
coupled with a sophisticated understanding of the local political
landscapes of his two study regions -- Swabian Austria and the
Electorate of Trier -- allow him to paint a thick
ethno-historiographic picture of the contours of witch hunts, of the
accusers and the accused in a period of considerable political and
economic change. Although his focus is decidedly on the
particularities of witchcraft persecution in these two regions,
Dillinger keeps his eye on the need for generalizable knowledge and
draws conclusions that have significant importance for the study of
witch hunts in Europe and in America. A folklorist interested in
witch hunts, witchcraft trials, and understanding testimony at these
trials would do well to consider Dillinger's study not only because
of his folkloric insight, but also because of his noteworthy skill in
exploring these decidedly folkloric phenomena in the context of
institutional structures.

Dillinger's opening chapter provides a brief political history of the
two regions, exploring in important and necessary detail the
administrative structures that enabled and, in many ways, gave form
to the witch hunts. The going in this chapter can be quite slow and
it is not until later chapters that the importance of these details
becomes apparent. In his second chapter, Dillinger moves on to the
problematic classification of "witchcraft" and its relationship to
other aspects of folk belief. Laura Stokes, who translated the work,
does an excellent job with the terminological complexity associated
with both witchcraft and belief. A great deal of this terminological
ambiguity derives from conflicting usage in secular and
ecclesiastical works concerning witchcraft. Dillinger traces the
history of witchcraft persecution in both areas back to the
late-fifteenth century, but focuses his main analytic efforts on the
multiple waves of witchcraft prosecutions that took place starting in
the late-sixteenth century. This second chapter includes an excellent
overview of the different types of crimes of which witches were
accused, and the author pays special attention to the accusations of
weather magic that were a prime concern of the largely agrarian
populace. Accretions from folk belief and legend informed the local
conceptions of the witch so that these did not align with stricter
theological conceptions of witches in the broader context of
demonology.

Dillinger's third chapter moves beyond the generalities presented in
the previous chapters and focuses on aspects of local and regional
community structures and power relationships as contributing factors
to the contours of witchcraft accusations and trials. This chapter
and the following ones are perhaps the most engaging. In the fourth
chapter, Dillinger takes up the issue of how accusations of
witchcraft spread and provides details on the various trial
structures that existed in the regions. The fifth chapter traces the
impact of the Swabian and Electorate of Trier trials on other
neighboring territories. In the sixth chapter, he shows how the witch
hunts did not simply peter out, but rather were deliberately stopped.

Dillinger is an excellent storyteller and has been quite successful
in teasing out interesting details from the archival resources that
undergird this study. Dillinger's real strength lies in the
comparative approach that informs these chapters -- having laid out
the institutional and political landscapes of the two regions, he is
able to play the development of the witch hunts in the two areas off
each other. Although the general motivating factors -- such as the
underlying tension between individual gain and community -- might be
similar across regions (and all of Europe for that matter), the local
inflections of these factors set against the varied administrative
infrastructure provides the necessary nuances for understanding the
differences. While similarity is easy to discover and discuss,
differences are far more difficult to account for, yet also far more
interesting. The final chapter of Dillinger's work explores the end
of the witch hunts in the mid-seventeenth century, noting that it was
not the will of the people that ended the witch hunts, but rather
administrative changes that put a stop to them. Dillinger's
concluding chapter is short but helpful.

In both Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier, witch hunts were
not based on theologically sophisticated concepts; rather, they were
directed largely at women who had been accused of harmful magic,
particularly weather magic. The influence of popular belief --
particularly legend -- changed the ecclesiastic conception of the
witch as part of learned demonology into a more complex figure
clearly rooted in folk belief. Legend, in turn, began to influence
aspects of court testimony. Dillinger's concludes: "The range of
behavior that could foster witchcraft suspicions was entirely open.
Witchcraft trials usually embraced this unlimited diffusion of causes
for suspicion, and thus these trials were not so much an exception
within the practice of criminal justice as its structural opposite"
(194). This anti-trial aspect of witch hunts led to a phenomenon
noticed in other parts of Europe, a phenomenon that runs directly
counter to the received notion that most witch hunts tended to focus
on the poor and the marginalized. As Dillinger discovers, "any
conflict at all could generate the suspicion that one's adversary was
actually in league with the Devil" (195). He labels this the "evil
people principle," a principle that is deeply connected with local
politics and power relationships.

Dillinger's work has rightfully been considered a landmark study in
the German-speaking world. The book might be a hard read for many
undergraduates, but should be required reading for anyone interested
in witchcraft and witchcraft trials. It could easily be incorporated
in courses on witchcraft, early modern European history and culture,
and graduate courses focusing on ethnographic history and the study
of folklore processes from a historical perspective. Considerations
of contemporary witchcraft will also benefit greatly from this
historical material. Laura Stokes' translation is excellent, as are
the bibliography and index. Dillinger's masterful fusion of archival
research with historiography and folklore theory is inspiring.

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