Staging Witchcraft Before the Law
Skepticism, Performance as Proof, and Law as Magic in Early Modern Witch Trials

This Element describes the dramatic staging of witchcraft in modern witch trials that served as proof for skeptics of witches.

Julie Stone Peters (Author)

9781009469708, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 January 2025

78 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.249 kg

'While the judicial machinery of early modern witch-hunting could work with terrifying swiftness, Peters argues that skepticism and evidentiary barriers often made conviction difficult. Seeking proof strong enough to overcome skepticism, judges and accusers turned to performance … But performance sometimes overflowed the demands of doctrine, behaving in unpredictable ways, shown in a detailed examination of two cases - the 1591 case of the French witch-demoniac Françoise Fontaine and the 1593 case of John Samuel of Warboys.' Howard S. Erlanger, Law & Social Inquiry

While the judicial machinery of early modern witch-hunting could work with terrifying swiftness, skepticism and evidentiary barriers often made conviction difficult. Seeking proof strong enough to overcome skepticism, judges and accusers turned to performance, staging 'acts of Sorcery and Witch-craft manifest to sense.' Looking at an array of demonological treatises, pamphlets, documents, and images, this Element shows that such staging answered to specific doctrines of proof: catching the criminal 'in the acte'; establishing 'notoriety of the fact'; producing 'violent presumptions' of guilt. But performance sometimes overflowed the demands of doctrine, behaving in unpredictable ways. A detailed examination of two cases – the 1591 case of the French witch-demoniac Françoise Fontaine and the 1593 case of John Samuel of Warboys –suggests the manifold, multilayered ways that evidentiary staging could signify – as it can still in that conjuring practice we call law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. Introduction
2. Performance as proof of the 'Hidden Crime'
3. Doing battle with Satan in a Louviers Courthouse: devil versus law in the trial of Françoise Fontaine (1591)
4. Staging possession in the trial of John Samuel: Witchcraft at the Huntington Assizes (1593)
5. Conclusion: Law as magic
References.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA]