Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft

Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century

Marina Montesano, Marina Montesano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000430271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Europäische Geschichte

This volume offers 18 studies linked together by a common focus on the circulation and reception of motifs and beliefs in the field of folklore, magic, and witchcraft.

The chapters traverse a broad spectrum both chronologically and thematically; yet together, their shared focus on cultural exchange and encounters emerges in an important way, revealing a valuable methodology that goes beyond the pure comparativism that has dominated historiography in recent decades. Several of the chapters touch on gender relations and contact between different religious faiths, using case studies to explore the variety of these encounters. Whilst the essays focus geographically on Europe, they prefer to investigate relationships over highlighting singular, local traits. In this way, the collection aims to respond to the challenge set by recent debates in cultural studies, for a global history that prioritises inclusivity, moving beyond biased or learned attachments toward broader and broadening foci and methods.

With analysis of sources from manuscripts and archival documents to iconography, and drawing on writings in Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages, this volume is essential reading for all students and scholars interested in cultural exchange and ideas about folklore, magic, and witchcraft in medieval and early modern Europe.

PART I

Interpreting folkloric beliefs

1
THE TREE OF THE BOURLÉMONTS

Gendered beliefs in fairies and their transmission from old to young women in Joan of Arc’s Domrémy

Andrea Maraschi

et alias oves habeo quae non sunt ex hoc ovili

(Jn 10:16)

Story of fairies and of a tree

Wednesday, 28 January 1456, village church of Domrémy. Jean Morel, a 70-year-old labourer from Greux, tells church dignitaries that he has heard about the beech tree. It is called the “Ladies’ tree” because women and certain supernatural spirits known as “fairies” used to gather under said tree and dance beneath it. But – he adds – they no longer did so, not since verses from the Gospel of John were read aloud before it.¹

It was day one of the Rehabilitation trial of Joan of Arc. Jean Morel, though probably an honest man, was hardly unsympathetic towards Joan (he had been her godfather) and after 25 years since the girl’s death, he likely wanted to distance himself from any suspicions about beliefs in demonic beings at his village. The aforementioned tree was still a burning issue, in fact, and had represented one of the key charges against the Pucelle. The reason was that in 1431, after inquests in Joan’s native region, the clerics at the trial were acquainted with the existence of a famous beech tree near her village,² around which locals (especially young kids) used to sing and dance at certain times of the year. Joan’s prosecutor Jean d’Estivet mentioned the tree in his list of articles of indictment: he described it as magna, grossa, and antiqua (“large,” “thick,” and “ancient”), and noted that the folk called it l’arbre charmine faee de Bourlémont, that is, “the enchanting fairy-tree of the Bourlémont.” Furthermore, near this tree was a spring, and maligni spiritus (“evil spirits”) called Fata, in French faees, allegedly used to encounter utentes sortilegiis (“sorcerers”) at night near the tree and the fons to dance and to do – presumably – abominable things.³

In the last winter days of 1431, however, the Church was not too concerned about local magicians or, at least, not as much as it was worried about the girl who in the last couple of years had saved France from the English disrupting social hierarchies, emerging as a leader of men and soldiers in patriarchal Christendom, and boasting her exclusive and privileged relationship with God. Joan had to face several charges, among which were her cross-dressing and her voices;⁴ the involvement with rituals around the tree, though, was one of the more problematic accusations to dismiss, and offers the opportunity to delve into the mentalities and habits of common people in fifteenth-century Europe. The Church took advantage of this same opportunity, and emissaries were sent to collect information about the inhabitants of Domrémy, as well as about Joan. The village in question was hardly different from many others at the time: on the contrary, just like many others, Domrémy was a Christian village with a “residual stratum of pagan religiosity”⁵ which had survived since ancient times. In this specific case, I argue, there also surfaces an even more dangerous circumstance: the tree drew particular interest from the women of the village, who seemed to have preserved the knowledge of its worship and secrets for generations, up until Joan’s generation at least. In the following pages I will try to explore such a possibility, and how it was perceived by members of the secular and of the ecclesiastical elite at the time.

It is first important to start from d’Estivet’s description of the tree and of its visitors.⁶ The tree, which would still look impressive to Edmond Richer in 1628,⁷ was called “of the Bourlémont” because it was located inside the property of the aristocratic family of the Bourlémonts, in the middle of the bois chesnu, a grove of oaks, which was visible from the door of Joan’s father. It had two more epithets as well, as Joan herself stated: she knew it as Arbor Dominarum, “the Ladies’ tree,” whereas “others call it Arbor Fatalium, in French des Faées,”⁸ “the Fairies’ tree.” There apparently was a simple reason behind such names as well: according to the 60-year-old Jeannette Thiesselin (who also testified at the Rehabilitation process and had been Joan’s godmother herself), a lady named Fée and the knight Pierre Gravier, lord of Bourlémont, used to meet under the tree: it was written in a romance which she heard read aloud.⁹ The “ladies” were thus noblewomen, the word “fairy” was a proper noun, and the tree was a locus amoenus where aristocrats practiced courtly love.¹⁰ The coincidence would be curious, however, for – even though there is evidence of bynames such as Fay and Fee in medieval France,¹¹ the same cannot be said about its use as a name. Pierre Champion was not persuaded:¹² in his opinion, Jeanne Thiesselin may have mistaken her memories and mixed them with a reading of the Romance of Mélusine.¹³ After all, many years had passed since Joan’s trial, and it is fair to assume that Jeanne was as reluctant to get involved in any issue with the Church as Jean Morel. In her defence, however, it is worth noting that a few other testimonies as well did not associate the tree with the fairies, but simply stated that the tree was so beautiful that many lords used to go there to spend a pleasant time with their ladies.¹⁴

Were Jeanne wrong, the alternative was that the Faées could be “fairies,” and the Dominae “ladies.” Unfortunately for Joan, both elements were found particularly relevant in connection with her voices; and there was more. Joan testified that the spring which was near the tree was visited by sick persons who drank its water to recover their health: she had witnessed this herself, even though she did not know “utrum inde sanentur vel non” (which means that she did not exclude that this was possible).¹⁵ She used to go to the tree “with other girls”¹⁶ to make garlands of flowers for the image of Our Lady of Domrémy, which they put on the branches. Sometimes they sang and danced, “but I sang there more than I danced.”¹⁷ The agents of the Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon, who presided over the trial, had already collected information about such rituals,¹⁸ and she was pressed to be more specific: many times, she added, she had heard the old folk (though none of her family) say that “domine Fatales illuc conversabantur,”¹⁹ that is, that “fairies gathered there.” Despite what Jeanne Thiesselin would say many years later, then, the belief in fairies at Domrémy seems to have been quite widespread among the old generation of villagers, if Joan confessed to having pluries heard it – and it would be fair to assume that it dated back to much earlier times. Elders and youngsters thus knew about the connection between the tree and the fairies, and it is no wonder that Cauchon suspected that Joan and her friends visited the huge beech to encounter them. There is one more layer to this account, however: Joan notes that one of her godmothers (Joan, the wife of Mayor Aubery) claimed to have actually seen the fairies nearby the tree, and – again, like in the case of the healing spring – Joan did not distance herself from such a hearsay; she simply stated that she was not aware whether that was true or not, and that she had never seen fairies nearby the tree quod ipsa sciat (“as far as she knew”).²⁰ In other words, she did not deny the existence of fairies, but stated that she did not know whether they gathered at the bois chesnu. Many inhabitants of the countryside did, though, and – most importantly – many thought that she first heard her voices right there, including her brother.²¹

A potential coincidence between the fairies and the voices emerged, which posed a fatal threat to Joan’s life. The reason lay in the theologians’ understanding of such beings as opposed to the villagers’. As seen previously, Joan’s inquisitors considered the fairies as maligni spiritus, since their conception of the supernatural was binary: it could be either divine (like miracles and angels) or diabolic (like magic or demonic entities).²² On the contrary, the inhabitants of Domrémy and its environs had a more syncretic conception of the supernatural, and believed in the existence of a third group of entities, neither angelic nor evil: those who had been thought to live near certain trees, springs, rocks, and hills since pre-Christian times, benevolent (but dangerous) liminal figures.²³ In the specific case of Joan, it was fundamental to establish whether her voices (which the judges did not doubt existed) were or were not the result of her alleged encounter with fairies, where she used to hear them, and why: this, as we shall see, implies examining matters concerning gender as well. Joan repeatedly stated that the voices spoke to her not only when she was under the tree, but also in the fields, in church, in battle, in her cell, and – in general – whenever the church bells were ringing,²⁴ so much so that she was often seen instantly dropping to her knees when she heard the bells. The voices began speaking when she was about 13 years old, and she always held they came from God and – more specifically – from Archangel Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret of Antioch, although she also reported being visited by Archangel Gabriel.²⁵ These saints appeared to her in such a form that she could embrace and kiss them, and that Catherine and Margaret revealed themselves wearing beautiful crowns.²⁶

All of such assertions were extremely dangerous for their implications. Firstly, Joan ended up contradicting Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine on the intellectual and not corporeal nature of angels,²⁷ and, secondly, she admitted placing flowery garlands and chaplets imaginibus seu repraesentationibus earum (“before their images or likenesses”) in churches:²⁸ therefore, it was fair to question whether the crowned saints who appeared to her were in fact saints or the beings for which the people of Domrémy hung flowery garlands on the Fairy Tree. Therefore, since Joan’s description of her saints and of the circumstances of their appearances was consistent with an encounter with fairies, the question remained of whether she would have been able to distinguish between a saint and a fairy when she saw one. Needless to say, the judges were convinced that her cultural background misled her into thinking that her visitations were godly, while they were evil instead.

Cultural transmission of stories about fairies from old to young women

It is common knowledge that Joan’s death was determined by political reasons, by her identification as a witch, and by her behaviour as a woman who upset gender roles and hierarchies. However, a deeper kind of bias concerning women crept over Domrémy. As earlier noted, Joan herself admitted that one of her godmothers saw the fairies, and the judges did not miss the chance to investigate the matter further. They asked whether the aforesaid godmother reputetur sapiens mulier (“was considered a wise woman”),²⁹ but Joan sensed the trap: sapiens could refer to a forbidden kind of knowledge (such as witchcraft), while the Pucelle specified that she was considered a proba (“honest”) woman, not divina vel sortilega (“diviner or fortune-teller”). The question was loaded with centuries of prejudice concerning the alleged involvement of women in magic practice, and especially on the role of old women as active agents in the transmission of magical knowledge and superstitiones across generations of women. This is clear in Article IV of d’Estivet’s indictment, which draws sharp conclusions after the investigations at the village and Joan’s interrogation:

[Joan] learned through custom and the training of certain old women to practice sorcery, divination, and other superstitious works or magic arts. […] Joan herself said that […] especially from her godmother, she heard many things about vis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Endorsements
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Interpreting folkloric beliefs
• PART II Cultural exchange among Christian, Islamic, and Jewish communities
• PART III Preachers as mediators
• PART IV The cultural interpretation of objects
• PART V Trading ideas about witchcraft
• Index