Medieval manuscripts blog

While we were developing our exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, the most common question we were asked was, “Will you be including witches?” Although many people think of the Middle Ages as a time when women were widely persecuted as witches, in fact witchcraft trials were rare before 1500. The European “witch craze” only reached its peak in the early modern period, during the late 16th and 17th centuries. Still, the late Middle Ages was the time when many myths about witchcraft first developed. We always aim to please, so this Halloween we’re pleased to announce: yes, we’re including witches!

Witches using magic to cause a storm, from Ulrich Molitor, De lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus (On Witches and Female Soothsayers) (1495)

In 1486, notorious inquisitor Heinrich Kramer published a book called Malleus Malificarum (Hammer of Witches). This guide to identifying and prosecuting witches codified many ideas about witchcraft that became influential in later witch trials: that witches are predominantly women, that they enter pacts with demons, that they use magic to cause impotence, crop failure, disease and death of livestock and people. Yet the Malleus Malificarum was the culmination of a development that took place throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, when several strands of thought about magic, spirituality and women came together into one disastrous stereotype. In this blogpost, we explore these various strands as well as the stories of some of the earliest accused witches.

Midwives and herbalists

From the earliest times, women were important healthcare providers. In the absence of any formal healthcare system, informal networks of female practitioners provided medical cures and assisted women during pregnancy and childbirth. Methods of treatment ranged from blood-letting to herbal remedies to magical charms. Sometimes they would use their skills for non-medical purposes, such as supplying love charms, finding lost objects and predicting the future.

A female medical practitioner performing cupping therapy on a man, Sloane MS 6

The male medical elite looked down on female practitioners. The English surgeon and medical writer John Arderne (d. c. 1377), for example, wrote dismissively of “þe medycinez of ladiez” (the medicines of ladies), which, he said, made patients worse. We can see how the woman healer whose practices spanned the medical and the occult became a figure of distrust and derision in John Lydgate’s The Pilgrimage of Man. In this moralising verse account of an allegorical journey, the pilgrim “everyman” meets an old hag who, it turns out, is the personification of sorcery. This unpleasant character is peddling inscriptions, images, ointments, herbs and astrological readings, which she uses for malicious ends. The pilgrim asks her, “Tell on without more tarrying, where learnest thou all thy cunning?” She replies, “Soothly as I rehearse can, I learned my cunning off Satan”.

The pilgrim meets the personification of Sorcery, in John Lydgate, The Pilgrimage of Man: Cotton MS Tiberius A VII, f. 69r

Sorceresses and the devil

In the Middle Ages witchcraft was not a secular crime, but from the 14th century it came to be regarded as a form of heresy making it punishable by the Church. The heresy trials of the Order of the Knights Templar beginning in 1307, designed by Philip IV of France as a means to destroy the powerful order, included trumped-up accusations of sorcery, devil worship and performing sexual acts with demons. Many Templars confessed under torture, the order was disbanded and the leaders burned at the stake. These trials set an important precedent for establishing sorcery as evidence of heresy and paved the way for the persecution of women associated with magic.

Burning of the Templars, from the Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, BL Royal MS 20 C vii, f. 48r

In 1324, perhaps inspired by the trials of the Templars, one of the earliest known witchcraft trials in Europe took place. The accused was Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny in Ireland, whose three wealthy husbands had all died mysteriously leaving her with a great fortune. Richard Ledred, bishop of Ossory, pursued the case after Alice’s stepchildren accused her of using sorcery to infatuate and kill her husbands. Seven lurid charges were made against her, including that Alice summoned demons, brewed potions and had a sexual relationship with a demon incubus named Robin Artisson. Alice fled to England and evaded punishment, but her maidservant Petronella of Meath was tortured and burned at the stake as an accomplice.

Visionaries and demons

The association between women and supernatural influences was also informed by their prominent role as spiritual visionaries in medieval religious culture. It was believed that visionaries were able to witness glimpses of the supernatural world and communicate with spiritual beings such as God, saints or angels to gain hidden knowledge. While visionaries could be male or female, women were particularly attracted to the visionary path as it was one of the few ways that they could claim individual religious authority. Some female visionaries recorded their experiences and created important works of religious literature, including Hildegard of Bingen, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Julian of Norwich.

A woman experiencing a spiritual vision, Yates Thompson MS 11, f. 29r

Yet a career as a female visionary could be risky. Many churchmen were concerned that holy women might be receiving visions not from God but from the Devil. They considered that women were particularly susceptible to supernatural influences, including those of a more malevolent nature. As Heinrich Kramer explained in the Malleus Malificarum:

“Women are naturally more impressionable, and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit; [...] when they use this quality well they are very good, but when they use it ill they are very evil” (translation by M. Summers, 1971).

Church authorities developed elaborate systems to determine whether a reported vision was truly from God. Those whose visions were deemed to be from the Devil, especially those who gained power and knowledge from him, could be accused of witchcraft and heresy.

One of the most famous visionary women to be accused of witchcraft was Joan of Arc. During the Hundred Years War between England and France, the illiterate peasant girl received visions of saints and angels who told her to help the Dauphin Charles accede to the throne of France. She became the hero of the French army at the siege of Orleans, before being captured by the Burgundian-English alliance and tried for heresy. During the trial, the inquisitors accused her of visiting a “fairy tree” near her village of Domrémy, where she supposedly danced and adored the fairies. They concluded that Joan’s visions were not of saints but of evil spirits, such as Belial, Satan and Behemoth. She was found guilty and burned at the stake in 1431.

A decorated initial with an armoured knight, perhaps Joan of Arc, from the Rehabilitation Trial of Joan of Arc: Stowe MS 84, f. 2r

The English were particularly keen to remember Joan as a witch. The Brut chronicle, one of the most popular accounts of English history in the medieval and early modern periods, refers to Joan as “the wicche of Fraunce” (the witch of France), and claims that “By her crafte of sorserie alle the Frensshe men and her compeny trystid for to haue ouyrcome alle the Engelisshe pepull” (By her craft of sorcery, all the French men and her company trusted that they would overcome all the English people).

Political witches

Political motivations also underlie many of the other high profile witchcraft accusations of the period. Perhaps the biggest witchcraft scandal in medieval England centred on Eleanor Cobham (d. 1452), Duchess of Gloucester. Eleanor rose from a position in the lower gentry to become one of the most powerful women in England as the mistress and then wife of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester. Humfrey was the uncle and heir of King Henry VI of England, meaning that he and Eleanor could have become king and queen if Henry had died young.

Eleanor Cobham and her husband Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, from the St Albans Benefactors’ Book, Cotton MS Nero D VII, f. 154r

Eleanor fell victim to court politics in 1441 when she was accused of encouraging a group of scholars to make horoscopes predicting the untimely death of the king, and employing a woman named Margery Jourdemain, “the Witch of Eye”, to perform sorcery for her. At her trial, Eleanor denied plotting against the king, although she did admit to buying fertility remedies from Margery Jourdemain to help her to conceive a child with Humfrey. Both Eleanor and Margery were found guilty of heresy. Eleanor was made to perform humiliating public penance, divorce Humfrey and spend the rest of her life in imprisonment. Margery, who had been in trouble with the authorities for witchcraft before, was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic.

Horoscope of Henry VI, Egerton MS 889, f. 5r

Eleanor Cobham was not the only woman connected with the English royal family who was accused of witchcraft in the 15th century. Earlier in the century, Joan of Navarre (d. 1437), widow of King Henry IV of England, was accused of witchcraft as a thin excuse to confiscate her money and lands to help pay for Henry V’s war with France. Later, the Titulus Regius of 1484 justified Richard III seizing the throne of England from his young nephew by claiming that the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville came about through “Sorcerie and Wichecrafte, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Moder” (sorcery and witchcraft committed by the said Elizabeth and her mother).

These accusations show the great fear directed at women who were active in English politics, particularly those who challenged the status quo by marrying into the royal family for love rather than diplomacy, and — in the case of Eleanor Cobham and Elizabeth Woodville — climbing the social ladder from relatively obscure backgrounds. In each of these examples, including Alice Kyteler and Joan of Arc, accusations of witchcraft proved to be a convenient tactic for discrediting an ambitious and influential woman in a way that was impossible for her to disprove.

Elizabeth Woodville from the Book of the Fraternity of the Assumption of Our Lady of the Skinners of London, The London Archives, CLC/L/SE/A/004A/MS31692

Women healers, visionaries, heretics and accused witches all feature in our Medieval Women exhibition. You can encounter unique historical manuscripts relating to Joan of Arc, Eleanor Cobham and Elizabeth Woodville, and you can even have a go at our digital interactive “Are You a Witch?”, based on criteria from the Malleus Malificarum.

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words is on show at the British Library from 25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025. You can book your tickets online.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

Eleanor Jackson

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