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ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
Figure 1. Jan Ziarnko, 'The witches' banquet'. Etching, detail from 'Description et
Figure du Sabbat des Sorciers', in Pierre de Lancre, 'Tableau de l'inconstance des
mauvais anges', Paris 1613.
Figure 3. Jacqutesde Gheyn II, 'Four witches cooking body parts', early 17th century.
Drawing, pen and brown ink, brown wash on brownish paper. New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest
Cannibalismand Witchcraft 81
.' t
* :N ) 7
Figure 4. Franz Francken II, 'An assembly of witches', early 17th century. Drawing,
pen and ink, gray/brown wash. London, British Museum, Department of Prints and
Drawings
84 History Workshop Journal
Figure 5. Matthaeus Merian the Elder, after Michael Herr, 'Witchcraft' (detail),
1626. Etching. London, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings
basket. The child has been dismembered or the basket also contains a limb
from another child. Yet there is little visual communication as to the par-
ticular significance of this child and the viewer would most likely connect it
to the body-parts nearby, clearly used in ritual magical practice. The texts
located below the etching, on the other hand, do make reference to acts of
cannibalism: while the German verses simply refer to 'the misuse of chil-
dren in baskets, the result of premature births', the Latin hexameters speak
of 'the limbs and half-eaten body-parts of children'.19The visual references
to cannibalism, in distinction to the literary, are again rather implicit, allud-
ing to infanticide and dismemberment rather than consumption, and
playing with notions of evil motherhood.
There is one quite unique image from the early seventeenth century
which makes a fairly explicit statement about witches as a cannibalistic
group. This is a drawing by Jacques de Gheyn (fig. 6)20 which represents the
vampirism of witches and is probably related to the literary and possibly
oral tradition of witches as lamiae, night-flying and cannibalistic harpies. A
female witch, half naked and hair tied back, is depicted enfolding and biting
the neck of a limp boy in a smoky room. The candle, the Hand of Glory and
Cannibalism and Witchcraft 85
Figure 6. Jacques de Gheyn II, 'Witchcraft scene with a vampire', c. 1600. Drawing,
pen and brown gall ink over black chalk. Washington, National Gallery of Art, Ailsa
Mellon Bruce Fund
86 HistoryWorkshopJournal
3-11~~~~~~
Figure 8. Jacob Bink, after Rosso Fiorentino, 'Saturn', 1530. Engraving [from
Walter L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 16. Early German Masters,
New York 1980, p. 26.1
Cannibalismand Witchcraft 91
The explicit basis for this association between witch and cannibal is the
figure of the classical anthropophage Saturn, the planetary divinity and
Roman god of agriculture, who from the late classical period had been
widely identified with the Greek god, Kronos. The cannibalism of
Saturn/Kronos, and also his sexual violence, was well known to the six-
teenth-century educated viewer, even though it is not represented explicitly
in the de Passe print. But in numerous other representations Saturn is
shown devouring the head of one of his children while another cringes fear-
fully before him; in an engraving by Johann Ladenspelder he rips skin from
the body of a child; or in the case of Jakob Bink (fig. 8), he sinks his teeth
into the child's flesh.33Late medieval mythographers and also the fifteenth-
century translators of Arabic sources had transmitted the classical story of
Saturn's castration of his father Uranus and the devouring of his children.
By the late middle ages, the sinister characteristics of the mythical Saturn -
his old age, malevolence, violence, tyranny and so on - were stressed. These
characteristics were then also attributed to his 'children', those who lived
under his planet - criminals, cripples, beggars, the elderly and low-born, the
poor and those involved in vulgar and dishonourable trades. Increasingly
from the late fifteenth century, Saturn's children also included the dead,
magicians and witches; and these relationships were given pictorial form in
the Planetenkinder images disseminated through popular almanachs, calen-
dars and astrological handbooks. But while witches were the children of the
anthropophage Saturn, they were seldom represented as physically devour-
ing their children, as was their father.
Striking models for the visual imaging of cannibalism were also available
to sixteenth-century artists in forms more common within contemporary
public culture. The common image of hell in various visual narratives, and
in particular those of the Last Judgement, was a huge mouth, devouring the
sinners led in by demons. By the sixteenth century this hell-mouth took on
other quite spectacular forms. In a stunning anti-clerical broadsheet which
was part of the Reformation's propaganda attack on the Roman church, for
instance, the clergy are shown feasting within the huge mouth of a monstrous
bird-like she-devil. They receive food which is being prepared on fires above
them on the monster's head. And some of the food which is being prepared
looks very much like human limbs.34This image of the devouring hell-mouth
was also transferred to representations of the figure of Satan or Lucifer, poss-
ibly under the influence of the literature associated with the eleventh-century
Vision of Tundale. As a result, Satan was often depicted as a huge monster
who grabs sinners and stuffs them into his vast devouring mouth - or in the
case of representations influenced by Dante's Inferno, into his three mouths.
The image features in a number of late medieval frescoes of the Last Judge-
ment, such as those by Taddeo di Bartolo and Giusto da Menabuoi. And in
the sixteenth century it is more broadly disseminated through the medium
of print. One well-known image of Satan then, is of a devouring cannibal
from whose mouth hang the mangled limbs and bodies of his victims.35
92 History Workshop Journal
MSt9,
Stadtbibliothek, Nor.K. fo.5I
I''1
StadtbiliothekMS No.K.44 o5
Cannibalismand Witchcraft 93
Figure 10. Unknown artist, 'Cannibalism in Reuss and Littau'. Woodcut, from a
broadsheet, Ein Erschrockenliche doch Warhaftige grausame Hungers nott Und
Pestilenzische kiag so im Landt Reissen unnd Littaus furgangen im 1573 Jar
(Munich: Adam Berg 1573) [from Max Geisberg, The German Single-Leaf
Woodcut, 1550-1600, ed. Walter Strauss, New York 1975, vol. I, p. 102.]
Figure 11. Jacques de Gheyn II, 'Witches at work under an arched vault', 1604.
Drawing, pen and brush with brown and grey ink, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum
Cannibalismand Witchcraft 95
CANNIBALISTICWITCHESAND CULTURAL
MEANINGS
Althoughthe relationshipbetweenwitchesandcannibalsis well attestedin
the visual representationsof the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
witches are seldom depicted engagingin the oral aggressionand physical
consumptionfound in other contemporaryrepresentationsof cannibalism.
Rather, it is the violence, bodily dismembermentand mutilation,which
seem to attractartiststo iconographicalanalogiesbetweenwitchesandcan-
nibals. And in some cases as that of Saturnthis mutilationalso includes
sexual castration.Jacquesde Gheyn's representationof witchcraftin his
drawingentitled 'Witchesat workunderan archedvault' (fig. 11) exempli-
fies the broadsixteenth-and seventeenth-centuryinterestin this theatreof
cruelty.Here the highlystylizedpose of the corpse, almost a figuredrawn
from the contemporaryrepresentationsof the anatomytheatre,is counter-
actedby the crouchedfiguresof the crones,the macabrehumanhead in the
foregroundandthe elongatedHandof Gloryat the back,by the horseskull
and the frog nailed to the floor.The vieweris likely to associatethis scene
of bodily dissectionwith other contemporarydepictionsof cannibalism,46
but the artistholds back,more concernedto concentratefocus on the rep-
resentationof cruelty.
This primaryemphasison destructionand crueltyin the visualimagesof
witchcraftin this period leads me to make the first of three conclusions
aboutthe culturalmeaningsto be drawnfromthe iconographicallinkingof
cannibalismand witchcraft.The iconographysuggests that the threat of
witchcraftthroughthe sixteenthandseventeenthcenturiesis associatedless
with external forces than with a threat experienced as internal, within
society in general and withinparticularindividuals.Witchcraftas external
threatis not totally absent,of course,and this is expressedmost spectacu-
larly in the imagingof the witch as werewolf.It is Georg Kress who pro-
vides us with a strikingbroadsheetfrom 1591 which presents300 witches
from the territoryof Julich who made a pact with the devil to transform
themselvesinto werewolves.47And the woodcut shows the wolves attack-
ing theirprey,tearingtheirlimbsapartanddevouringthem.Suchfearswere
visualizedin LucasCranach'ssingle-leafwoodcutof the werewolfandwere
also found in later broadsheets.48But for the most part the witch'sdanger
was related not to the oral aggressionof the wolf, but to the poisons,
Cannibalismand Witchcraft 97
1 _~~~~~~~~~~~~1
~~~~~~~~~~U-
_. _lt
Figure 12. Christoph Murer, 'Allegory on good government and the justice of the
Nuremberg city councillors', 1598. Stained glass (originally in the Nuremberg Town
Hall) Nuremberg, Stadtgeschichtliche Mu'seen,Fembohaus
Cannibalismand Witchcraft 99
NOTES
This essay first appeared in German in Hedwig Rockelein (ed.), Kannibalismus und euro-
paische Kultur, Forum Psychohistorie 6, edition diskord, Tubingen 1996. For assistance with
various parts of it I thank Adrienne Cameron, Elisabeth Kent, Helen Penrose, Hedwig
Rockelein, Lyndal Roper and Heidi Zogbaum.
102 History Workshop Journal