On the Wrong Side of the Law: States, Legal Codes, and the Witch-Hunt

Thus far, we have studied papal documents, church penitentials, and religious views on everything from sex with the devil to the everyday uses of magic in the medieval period. Undoubtedly, as Levack argues, the non-secular development of perspectives on witchcraft contributed fundamentally to the propelling force of demonology and accusations of witchcraft moving into the early modern period (Levack 89). However, the foundational aspect of religion did not impede a secular appropriation of these techniques for use in the other political arena: among kings, emperors, and rulers of states, that were becoming both more nationalistic and bureaucratic. Although earlier rulers utilized inquisitorial techniques in the political sphere, like Philip the Fair of France in the 1300s against the powerful Templars, both state power and the inquisitorial processes were not yet defined, centralized, or coordinated as they would appear in the 1500s to 1600s. Not to mention, church authority became the lesser, as the state became the overseer of both the religious and secular realms in the sixteenth century (Levack 91). Overall, Levack’s ideas demonstrate that the legality or more appropriately, illegality of witchcraft in the sixteenth-century had been absorbed by the growing secular domain in general.

Therefore, for me, one interesting representation of the secular domain mentioned in the reading was the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina or as Levack refers to it, the Carolina code of 1532 (Levack 90). In her article, Joy Wiltenburg suggests that the sixteenth-century code of the Holy Roman Empire reflected societal changes. For one, it was an effort at reform of legal practice, yet still employed Roman inquisitorial procedures. Two, it had an “educative goal,” one that eased and encouraged the employment of standard legal processes at local levels of justice. Lastly, the author stressed the text indicates that courts had become places of “public business,” prone to an intermingling of rationality and emotion (Wiltenburg 713-734). Wiltenburg’s study shows how the Carolina code both connects to secular power and to witch-hunts. In effect, the Carolina is evidence that people were far more steeped in a background of acceptable legal/non-legal actions, while legality became a public concept tied inextricably to standards of state and power. Witches became a link in the ties between people, justice, and state. The secular influence took hold in the witch-hunt at hand. However, secular power was just one consideration in the continued heightening of witch-hunts, as the Carolina is just one example of how witchcraft was translated into standards of state power.  

Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. London: Rutledge, 2013.

Wiltenburg, Joy. “The Carolina and the Culture of the Common Man: Revisiting the Imperial Penal Code of 1532.” Renaissance Quarterly 53.3 (2000): 713-734.