Earliest Manuscript Broomstick Witches August 15, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
A few months ago Beach offered the evidence for early images of broomstick riding witches. There are three important manuscript sabbats that come down to us from the period 1450-1500 and that offer the best early visual evidence for the belief that witches attended sabbats by broom. The first of these images dates to about 1450. Note that this may be the earliest image anywhere of a witch riding a broom, now that the Schleswig witch has been redated to the same generation. In it there are two women riding through the sky. They are labelled interestingly as Waldensians, the proto-Protestant heresy that got every kind of mud thrown at it in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. Between the two women is written the word ‘passe martin’ that has caused some confusion. Charles Zika suggests (64-65) in his excellent Seeing Witchcraft that Martin could refer to St Martin’s night or it could refer to the rod (martin) mount (passe), or some such (citing Ostorero and Schmitt).
The next images are more promising. Both appear in a book against the Waldensians: Tinctor’s Invective. Both show a group of witches at the sabbat. Both show the witches gathering around a goat and preparing to kiss its anus: witch’s contracts were, as we have seen before on this blog, sealed with a kiss on the devil’s bottom; animals, particularly goats and cats were also mentioned in this role. What is interesting for present purposes are the witches in the sky behind. In the first (c. 1470) there is a broom, a distaff and, according to Zika (resolution too small for this blogger’s eyes) a thresher. Zika also suggests that the objects in the foreground – the staff, the broom and the tongs – had also been ridden to the sabbat: an image of something like a sabbat umbrella holder where members could rest their mounts comes to mind . Crucially a witch is coming up the chimney to fly to the sabbat. The second image dates to about the same time. Here demons also figure. In one case a demon seems to be riding a woman who is clinging to a pitchfork (?); another demon rides a woman on a broom, in another a woman seems to be riding a cow.
So what do we learn from these images. Well, first, the association with the Waldensians can be dismissed: fifteenth-century witch beliefs had been applied to a heretical sect, but it is the beliefs that are interesting for our purposes not the sect. Second, witches left their houses via the chimney. Third, brooms were the preferred mode of transport but not the only one. Third, demons rode with the women, perhaps their familiars. Fourth, on the ground there are men, in the air there are only women (?): men, as judicial records show, were believed to fly, but in the popular imagination the woman was most easily pictured on a broomstick. Fifth, we have the curious fact that prior to 1450 there is no record of these flying broomsticks, then they come in a rush. Was the broomstick a flying mount for witches and somehow this never made its way into the visual or written record prior to 1450? Or was it rather that the broomstick became the mount for a new kind of witch as the Church took its war to little old women and their cats: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Cheese writes, 31 Aug 2016, You have to remember, these manuscript illustrators were the medieval equivalent of comic book artists. They would take joy in any commission, that allowed them to illustrate fantastic or obscene subjects. All of these phallic-looking broomsticks between the legs of the women, and the goat-butt-kissing, have to be taken in the context of boys who love jokes about farts and anal sex. I don’t know if you’ve spent time reading modern comic books (now, we are to call them “graphic art” to take the genre more seriously), but anyway, you get some very intelligent guys (take Kevin Smith of “Clerks” fame) who spend an incredible amount of artistic ability and IQ points, glorifying the fart joke and jokes about alternative sexuality. What I mean to say is, that some of this “folklore” (in my opinion) was a bunch of artists leg-pulling the Christian clerics (sense of humor surgically removed) who commissioned the art for these ridiculous books. I hope you don’t mind the irreverent take on this subject. I continue to love reading your posts, and I love real folklore. (By that, I guess that I mean pre-Christian survivals, and not stuff made up by horny repressed Christians with a paintbrush.)
The great KMH writes, 31 Aug 2016, ‘Pictures are one thing, but are there any actual accounts of witches physically seen flying in the air on a broomstick? You would think that with all the witch trials there would be witnesses testifying to physically seeing this phenomenon. What do you think?’ [Beach replies] we have lots of witches admitting to flying brooms, but I can’t think, off the top of my head, of any witnesses saying that I saw Mrs Jones on a broom… Strange.
