Any scholar devoted to the study of the witch figure in Early Modern Spain will soon realize that the Iberian bruja is a peculiar character in European folklore. The Spanish bruja was a malevolent agent specialized, almost exclusively, in the murder of newborn babies. Her infanticide compulsion was associated with vampirism. She possessed the extraordinary capacity to enter rooms through the smallest chinks in doors or walls. She had amazing metamorphic powers. When she attacked the sleeping adults, she threw herself upon them, crushing them with her weight. On occasions, she was considered the victim of a tragic destiny from which it was impossible to escape. Some specific behavior, such as drinking the wine kept in cellars or washing clothes at the side of rivers, was also attributed to her. In these traits, the specialist in Mediterranean folklore and comparative mythology inmediately discovers the basic characteristics of a series of clearly identified mythical figures: the child-killing demon, the vampiric revenant, the fairy society and the Nightmare, specific avatars of the archaic mythology of the Double and the nocturnal spirits of the mahr-type. We can postulate, then, that the Spanish bruja, before embodying in Spain the figure of the satanic worshipper at the sabbat, gave name to a Pyrenean variant of the pan-European nocturnal demon. The evidence provided by diverse peninsular testimonies about the original meaning of the terms bruxa and xorguina, between the decades of 1280 and 1480, cover in an almost perfect way the spectrum of activities attributed to those fiends of the night. The historical evidence reinforces, then, the elements provided by the morphological analysis and by comparative mythology.
From November 1, 1395, until August 25, 1396, Ermine de Reims, a peasant widow from Northern France, was systematically beaten and tortured by the devil almost every night. This is at least what the woman told her confessor, Jean le Graveur. This story takes place only thirty years before the formal beginning of the witchcraft repression in the Continent. For that reason I have opted to explore in this article a historical problem that lies at the very heart of the strange case of Ermine: the image of the devil on the eve of the great European witch-hunt. In particular, Jean le Graveur's narration can provide new evidence for assessing the continuities and ruptures between radical demonology and the previous theological conceptions of the devil. The overlap we find in Jean's manuscript between different traditions, contributes to demonstrate that the image of the devil that prevails in times of the early modern witchcraft persecution was not necessarily built in opposition to previous demonological paradigms. The new science of demons that began to emerge during the thirteenth century merely remarked certain traits of the devil of the Fathers, and therefore the differences between both mythologies arose from the decision of emphasizing different components of the very same demonological complex. The Satan of scholasticism, then, was not only an enhanced, revised and expanded version of the Augustinian devil, but the true consummation of the Patristic model, its fullest expression: one that would begin to emerge only at the end of time, on the eve of the Second Coming of Christ.
Homo superstitious was just one of the many mirrors used by the intolerant late Middle Ages and early modem Europe. However, the superstitious man was a very particular kind of mirror : he was an other-between-us (otro-entre-nosotros). According to Christian theology the homo superstitious was not a redeemable, statical subject, a construct built once and forever - like figures such as the heretic, the jew, the witch The homo supersititious was a close but different being, a difforming, omnipresent, ambiguous mirror which produced a permanent pressure of the hegemonie System over the homo catholicus and the members of the orthodox community.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.