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A Sabbat of Demonologists: Basel, 1431–1440

2003; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 65; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.0018-2370.2003.00057.x

1540-6563

Michael D. Bailey, Edward Peters,

Religious Freedom and Discrimination

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. Erich Meuthen, Das Basler Konzil als Forschungsproblem der europäischen Geschichte (Düsseldorf, 1985); Johannes Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil 1431–1449: Forschungsstand und Probleme (Cologne‐Vienna, 1987); Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church (Leiden, 1978); idem., "Christian Unity from the Perspective of the Council Fathers at Basel and that of Eugenius IV," in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara‐Florence 1438/9–1989, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo (Louvain, 1991), 57–73; Loy Bilderback, "Eugene IV and the First Dissolution of the Council of Basle," Church History 36 (1967): 243, 53; Antony Black, "The University and the Council of Basle: Collegium and Concilium," in The Universities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Ijsewijn and Jacques Paquet, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series I, Studia VI (Leuven, 1978): 511–23; idem., Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth‐Century Heritage (London, 1979); Heribert Müller, Die Franzosen, Frankreich und das Basler Konzil, 2 vols. (Paderborn‐Munich‐Vienna‐Zurich, 1990); Paul Lazarus, Das Basler Konzil. Seine Berufung und Leitung, seine Gliederung und seine Behördenorganisation (Berlin, 1912; rpt. Vaduz, 1965). Conciliar documents are printed in Johannes Haller et al., eds., Concilium Basiliense. Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte des Concils von Basel, 8 vols. (Basel, 1896–1936), several in English in C. M. D. Crowder, Unity, Heresy, and Reform, 1378–1460: The Conciliar Response to the Great Schism (New York, 1977), 146–81. On the importance of councils generally, see Margaret Aston, The Fifteenth Century: The Prospect of Europe (London‐New York, 1968), 78–81, 134–39.2. There is no adequate study of reforming activities at Basel along the lines of Phillip H. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–1418) (Leiden, 1994), but Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, 129–32, 327–52, is devoted to the subject of reform. An overview of the general importance of concepts of reform in this period is Gerald Strauss, "Ideas of Reformatio and Renovatio from the Middle Ages to the Reformation," in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1994–95), 2: 1–30.3. Essential on the Hussite movement, though not covering Basel, is Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley‐Los Angeles, 1967); also Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 2002), 306–82, on Basel, 367–69. To their critics, the Hussites represented a visible, collective conspiracy against Christendom; later witches an invisible collective conspiracy. On Free Spirits, the standard is Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Notre Dame, Ind., 1991), esp. 168–77 on Basel.4. See, for example, the lively letter describing life at the Fourth Lateran Council edited in Stephan Kuttner and Antonio Garcia y Garcia, "A New Eyewitness Account of the Fourth Lateran Council," Traditio 20 (1964): 123, 29; or some of the sources for the Council of Constance translated in Louis Ropes Loomis, The Council of Constance: The Unification of the Church, ed. J. H. Mundy and K. M. Woody (New York, 1961); or sources, contemporary with Basel, from the Congress of Arras in J. G. Dickinson, The Congress of Arras, 1435: A Study in Medieval Diplomacy (1955; rpt. New York, 1972). Cf. Timothy Reuter, "Assembly Politics in Western Europe from the Eighth Century to the Twelfth," in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London‐New York, 2001), 432–50.5. Müller, Die Franzosen, as above, n. 1. In a review of this book in Speculum 68 (1993): 846–48, Howard Kaminsky has pointed out some of the virtues and some of the problems raised by a more prosopographical approach like Müller's.6. On the central importance of this decade, see Martine Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Kathrin Utz Tremp, with Catherin Chène, eds. and trans., L'Imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430c.–1440c.), Cahiers lausannois d'histoire médiévale 26 (Lausanne, 1999).7. Richard Kieckhefer, Early European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500 (London, 1976); Arno Borst, "The Origins of the Witch‐Craze in the Alps," in Borst, Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists, trans. Eric Hansen (Chicago, 1992), 101–24; Andreas Blauert, Frühe Hexenverfolgungen. Ketzer‐, Zauberei‐ und Hexenprozesse des 15. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1989); idem., ed., Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen. Die Anfänge der europäischen Hexenverfolgung (Frankfurt, 1990); Pierrette Paravy, "À propos de la genèse médiévale des chasses aux sorcières: Le traité de Claude Tholosan, juge dauphinois (vers 1436)," Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Moyen Age-Temps modernes 91 (1979): 333, 79; eadem., De la Chrétienté romaine à la Réforme en Dauphiné. Evêques, fidèles et deviants (vers 1340‐vers 1530), 2 vols., Collection de l'École française de Rome 183 (Rome, 1993), 2: 771–905; Ostorero et al., L'Imaginaire; Michael D. Bailey, "The Medieval Concept of the Witches' Sabbath," Exemplaria 8 (1996): 419, 39; idem., "From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Later Middle Ages,"Speculum 76 (2001): 960–90; idem., Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, Pa., 2003). Summaries of the work of the Lausanne group in Georg Modestin and Kathrin Utz Tremp, eds., "Hexen, Herren und Richter: Die Verfolgung von Hexern und Hexen auf dem Gebiet der heutigen Schweiz am Ende des Mittelalters / Les socrières, les seigneurs et les juges: La persecution des sorciers et des sorcières dans le territoire de la Suisse actuelle à la fin du Moyen Age,"Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 52 (2002): 103–62.8. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), viii; see also Richard Kieckefer, "The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic," American Historical Review 99 (1994): 813, 36.9. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca‐London, 1972), 234; E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca‐London, 1976), 21–22; Émile van Balberghe and Jean‐François Gilmont, "Les théologiens et la 'vauderie' au XVe siècle: A propos des oeuvres de Jean Tinctor à la bibliothèque de l'Abbaye de Parc," in Miscellanea Codicologia F. Masai Dicata, ed. Pierre Cockshaw, Monique‐Cécile Garand, and Pierre Jodogne (Ghent, 1979), 393–411, rpt. as "Les oeuvres du théologien Jean Tinctor," in van Balberghe, Les manuscripts médiévaux de l'Abbaye de Parc (Brussels, 1992), 123–53; Blauert, Frühe Hexenverfolgungen, 56–59; Werner Tschacher, Der Formicarius des Johannes Nider von 1437/38: Studien zu den Anfängen der europäischen Hexenverfolgungen im Spätmittelalter (Aachen, 2000), 329–33; Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago, Ill., 2002), 158–59.10. On Nider, see Bailey, Battling Demons, and Tschacher, Der Formicarius; on the theologians from the University of Paris, see Müller, Die Franzosen, 2: 765–75; on Pignon, see Jan Veenstra, Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France: Text and Context of Laurens Pignon's Contre les devineurs (1411) (Leiden, 1998); on Le Franc, see L. Barbey, Martin Le Franc, prévot de Lausanne et avocat de l'amour et de la femme au XVe siècle (Fribourg, 1985); on Amadeus VIII, see Bernard Andenmatten and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, eds., Amédée VIII‐Félix V, premier duc de Savoie et pape (1383–1451) (Lausanne, 1992); on Tostado, see Stephens, Demons Lovers, 146–59; on Charlier, see below, n. 53.11. Heinz Thomas, "Jeanne la Pucelle, das Basler Konzil und die 'Kleinen' der Reformatio Sigismundi,"Francia 11 (1981): 319–39; see also Miri Rubin, "Europe Remade: Purity and Danger in Late Medieval Europe,"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series 11 (2001): 101–24, and Dyan Elliot, "Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc," American Historical Review 107 (2002): 26, 54, here 52–54.12. On Nider, see sources cited in n. 10 above; on the Formicarius, see Henry Charles Lea, Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. Arthur C. Howland, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939, rpt. New York, 1957): 260–72 (hereafter cited as Lea, Materials I); Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia, Pa., 1972; 2d. ed. Philadelphia, Pa., 2001), 155–59 (hereafter Kors‐Peters 2); Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 99–266.13. On manuscript and early printed editions of the Formicarius, their circulation, and their influence, see Tschacher, Der Formicarius, 83–124.14. Nider, Formicarius 5.8, ed. G. Colvener (Douai, 1602), 387.15. On Nider's life, see Bailey, Battling Demons, 11–28.16. No marked concern over witchcraft is evident in Nider's writings before his time at the Council of Basel. Moreover, the full stereotype of diabolical witchcraft was just beginning to develop in Europe at this time, and was largely limited to regions surrounding the western Alps. Before coming to Basel, Nider operated close to but outside of these regions — in the Rhineland, Cologne, Vienna, and Nuremberg. Although his writings from that period reveal an interest in demonology and demonic activity, accounts of witchcraft only appear in writings after he had been at the council.17. Nider, Formicarius 5.3, 349.18. Three men named Peter have been identified as potentially being the Peter of Bern referred to in the Formicarius— Peter von Greyerz, Peter Wendschatz, and Peter von Ey, or Eyg (Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 223–24). None can be placed with certainty at the council, although interestingly, Peter von Greyerz had a son of the same name who attended the council in 1433 as a representative of the Bern city council (Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 228).19. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 261–62. Elliot, "Seeing Double" (as above, n. 11), examines Joan's case in relation to late medieval concern over proper discernment of good from evil spirits.20. Veenstra, Magic and Divination, 48–96; Ronald C. Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI, 1392–1420 (New York, 1986). On similar problems in other courts and the role of faculties of theology in ecclesiastical discipline, see the references in Kors‐Peters 2, 127–29.21. Nider, Formicarius 5.8, 387: "Ispa [Joan] fassa est se habere familiarem dei angelum qui iudicio literatissimorum virorum iudicatus est esse malignus spiritus ex multis coniecturis et probationibus, per quem spiritum velut magam effectam."22. See the insightful analysis in Tschacher, Der Formicarius, 435–36.23. Nider, Formciarius 5.8, 387.24. Ibid., 385, 387–88. Of the two in Paris, Nider writes specifically, "velut magae vel maleficae per inquisitorem Franciae captae sunt" (388).25. Wilhelm Altmann, Studien zu Eberhart Windecke. Mitteilung bisher unbekannter Abschnitte aus Windeckes Welt‐Chronik (Berlin, 1891), 42–43: "ein zauferrin rettersehin aptgötterin, anrüferin der tüfel, versmeherin gottes und siner heiligen, abtrünige und irrende zu dickem male an dem glouben Jhesu Christi."26. Thomas Prügl, Die Ekklesiologie Heinrich Kalteisens OP in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Basler Konziliarismus (Paderborn‐Munich‐Vienna‐Zurich, 1995), 10–11.27. Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleuwen. Studie over Levens‐ en Gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Haarlem, 1919; 21st ed. Antwerp‐Leuven, 1997); English translation as The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago, Ill., 1996). On the shortcomings of this translation, see Edward Peters and Walter P. Simons, "The New Huizinga and the Old Middle Ages,"Speculum 74 (1999): 587–620. See also Huizinga, "Bernard Shaw's Saint," in Huizinga, Men and Ideas, trans. James S. Holmes and Hans van Marle (New York, 1959), 207–39.28. Veenstra, Magic and Divination, 33. The 1398 declaration is in Kors‐Peters 2, 127–32.29. Bailey, Battling Demons, and Stephens, Demon Lovers.30. See Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 10–15.31. Françoise Bonney, "Autour de Jean Gerson: Opinions de théologiens sur les superstitions et la sorcellerie au début du XVe siècle," Le Moyen Age 77 (1971): 85, 98. 32. Tschacher, Der Formicarius, 453–54.33. For sections from Eymeric's handbook, see Kors‐Peters 2, 120–27. For sections from Gui's handbook, see Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969), 444–45. For a discussion of both Gui's and Eymeric's place in the development of concern over demonic sorcery and witchcraft, see Bailey, "From Sorcery to Witchcraft," (as above, n. 7), 967–77.34. Blauert, Frühe Hexenverfolgungen, 118–19, draws a connection between preachers like Vincent and Bernardino and the earliest witch trials in western Switzerland. Paravy, De la Chrétienté romaine, 2: 904, notes the role Ferrer and other Dominican preachers played in early trials in the Dauphiné. On Bernardino and early witch trials, best is Franco Mormando, The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago, Ill., 1999), 52–108. Johannes Nider did not explicitly link his concern with witchcraft to these men, but certainly knew of their activities and he praised both men: Vincent Ferrer alone in Formicarius 2.1, 130–35, both Vincent and Bernadino in Formicarius 4.9, 311–12.35. On the Errores, Kors‐Peters 2, 159–62; Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 267–338; Richard Kieckhefer, "Avenging the Blood of Children: Anxiety over Child Victims and the Origin of the European Witch Trials," in The Devil, Heresy, and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden, 1998), 91–109, esp. 102–03.36. On Alexander's commission, see Kors‐Peters 2, 152–53; Latin text in Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (1901; rpt. Hildesheim, 1963), 16–17.37. On location and dating of the Errores, see Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 272–74, 330–34. On Fougeyron, see Martine Ostorero, "Itinéraire d'un inquisiteur gâté: Ponce Feugeyron, les juifs et la sabbat des sorciers," Médiévales 43 (2002): 103, 17.38. On Ulrich, see Bernard Andenmatten and Kathrin Utz Tremp, "De l'hérésie à la sorcellerie: L'inquisiteur Ulric de Torrenté OP (vers 1420–1445) et l'affermissement de l'inquisition en Suisse romande," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique Suisse 86 (1992): 69, 119.39. Mormando, The Preacher's Demons, 54–72; Polecritti, Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena and His Audience (Washington, D.C., 2000), 181–236. Bernardino's sermon is in Kors‐Peters 2, 133–37.40. Lazarus, Das Basler Konzil, 353; Lea, Materials I, 224–25; Kors‐Peters 2, 153–55.41. Hansen, Quellen, 18.42. Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 301–04; Gabriel Audisio, Les vaudois: Histoire d'une dissidence XIIe–XVIe siècles (Paris, 1998), 105–12; Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford‐Malden, Mass., 2000), 180, 300; idem., The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldenses of the Alps, 1480–1580 (Oxford, 1984), 111–13.43. Statuta sabaudie (Geneva, 1512), fols. 1v‐2r.44. Lea, Materials I, 177; Kors‐Peters 2, 166–69; Barbey, Martin Le Franc (as above, n. 10); Ostorero, et al., L'Imaginaire, 439–508.45. On the canon, see Kors‐Peters 2, 60–63; on the effect of the canon on later witchcraft literature, see Werner Tschacher, "Der Flug durch die Luft zwischen Illusionstheorie und Realitätsbeweis. Studien zum sog. Kanon Episcopi und zum Hexenflug,"Zeitschrift der Savigny‐Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 116, Kan. Abt. 85 (1999): 225–76.46. Nider, Formicarius 2.4, 123–24.47. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolominus (Pius II), De Gestis Concilii Basiliensis Commentariorum Libri II, ed. and trans. Denys Hay and W. K. Smith, 2d. ed. (Oxford, 1992), 17, 93–95. It is ironic that, later in the century, Heinrich Institoris, author of the Malleus maleficarum, condemned conciliarism as stoutly as he condemned witchcraft: Jürgen Petersohn, "Konziliaristen und Hexen. Ein unbekannter Brief des Inquisitors Heinrich Institoris an Papst Sixtus IV aus dem Jahre 1484," Deutsches Archiv 44 (1988): 120, 60.48. The relevant section is edited in Hansen, Quellen, 112–18.49. Hansen, Quellen, 105–09; extensive discussion in Stephens, Demon Lovers, 146–53.50. Hansen, Quellen, 109, n. 1; comparison of Tostado's account to Nider's in Stephens, Demon Lovers, 154–59.51. Nider, Formicarius 5.4, 354; Nider, Praeceptorium divinae legis 1.11.h and 1.11.r (Milan, 1489, no pagination).52. The only detailed studies of Basel's membership are two unpublished dissertations, Michael Lehmann, "Die Mitglieder des Basler Konzils von seinem Anfang bis August 1442" (Ph.D. diss., Vienna, 1945), and Dean Loy Bilderback, "The Membership of the Council of Basle" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1966).53. van Balberghe, Les Manuscripts (as above, n. 9), and idem., with Frédéric Duval, eds., Jean Tinctor, Invectives contre la secte de vauderie (Louvain‐la‐Neuve, 1999).Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichael D. BaileyMichael D. Bailey is an assistant professor of history at Iowa State University and this year is a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Edward Peters is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. An earlier version of this article was originally delivered by Edward Peters at the New College Medieval and Renaissance Conference at Sarasota, Florida, in March 2002. The authors have fully collaborated on the present version. Peters is grateful to Lee Daniel Snyder for his customary and famous hospitality, to Howard Kaminsky for his very helpful comments, and to the anonymous readers for The Historian.