Witch Prosecution in Early Modern Hungary (16th–18th Century)

The witch-hunts swiping across late medieval and early modern Europe were always caused by many different legal, political, economic and socio-cultural factors. My doctoral thesis explores the various reasons behind the witch prosecution in early modern Hungary under Habsburg rule (between the 16th and 18th centuries). By putting the causes in relation and investigating how they were intertwined, this study argues that – contrary to previous research – neither widespread popular beliefs nor the reception of demonological ideas about witchcraft as a crime against secular and sacral law, conceptualized in Western Europe in the 15th century, were sufficient to instigate a persecution. The decisive factor was rather the transition from the former accusatorial to the new inquisitorial method in secular jurisdiction. As a vast amount of trial documents reveals, most city courts held a critical approach towards witchcraft allegations during the 16th century. On the basis of the accusatorial principle, plaintiffs were obliged to provide substantial evidence for their claims, mainly by pointing out reliable witnesses able to provide incriminating testimonies. If such attempts failed (as was not surprisingly the case with most witchcraft allegations), the court officials dismissed the charges and the accusers could face sanctions for making false statements. However, once the inquisitorial procedure was introduced into secular jurisdiction and became established as the regular form of criminal trial, court officials took on the role of the plaintiffs themselves. In the course of the 17th century, various judicial institutions, especially the Hungarian counties (vármegye), participated in witch persecutions, carrying out public hearings on a regular basis to identify potential malefactors. In addition, most courts started hiring an official prosecutor, the so called fiscalis, who gathered incriminating evidence against the suspects, compiled the charges and took part in the court proceedings. Although there was still the possibility for regular citizens to initiate a trial by denunciation, the pattern of persecution was gradually reversed from bottom-up to top-down. The conviction rate also raised rapidly, since torture was introduced as a legitimate method of obtaining a „confession“ from the accused as well as information about their alleged accomplices. At the end of such trials, the first death sentences for witchcraft were issued in Hungary. Contrary to the judicial practice in some other areas (e.g. in the Holy Roman Empire, following the so called Carolina, a criminal codex from 1532) a confession was not deemed necessary to impose a capital punishment, if incriminating testimonies seemed sufficient.

Despite the expansion of prosecutions caused by the establishment of secular inquisition, in an overall comparison with other territories in pre-modern Europe, Hungary was still not vastly affected. It does therefore not seem plausible to postulate that the inquisitorial procedure was incorporated into secular jurisdiction due to the new crime of witchcraft in particular, as recent studies have suggested. The historical corpus rather implies that the highly effective inquisitorial method was regarded necessary by secular courts because of a significant raise in crime from the early 16th century onward. This in turn was caused by various domestic and external political conflicts (uprisings against the Habsburg rule, conflicts with the Ottoman Empire) as well as crises like the Little Ice Age, the impelling effect of which on the persecutions in the Holy Roman Empire has been well proven by Wolfgang Behringer.

To outline the tremendous impact of the abovementioned shift in judicial practice on the expansion of the witch prosecution across the Hungarian territory, the accusatorial and inquisitorial trials are analysed by setting them in contrast in the two main chapters of the dissertation. The historical corpus at the core of this study consists mainly of court documents from eight selected neighbouring counties located in the western part of present-day Slovakia (Pozsony/Prešporok, Nyitra/Nitra, Bars/Tekov, Trencsén/Trenčín, Turóc/Turiec, Zólyom/Zvolen, Árva/Orava, Liptó/Liptov). The language of these trial records reflects the ethnic variety in the early modern kingdom, including not only Hungarian, but Slovak, German as well as the Latin lingua franca.

With regard to the ethnic and religious diversity, the final research question is adressed, whether there were certain predicators in the profile of the victims, making them particularly susceptible to witchcraft allegations and if it is possible to discern any patterns indicating an instrumentalization of the trials to target certain, perhaps marginalized, ethnic and/or religious groups. As the council minutes reveal, each trial is based on a different story: There is an elderly woman accused of using black magic to win a legal dispute against her neighbours. Then there is a young girl claiming to have obtained the gift of divination after being visited by a messenger from God. In this respect, there was no clear pattern of prosecution. Once the fear of bewitchment has shaken society and the legal frame has been established, anyone could be denounced a witch.