Whatever the penalty, it was designed to provide either revenge or compensation to the supposed victim or his kin; and — save at certain times and places, where religious considerations intervened — that remained its main purpose right down to the thirteenth century. In England under Æthelstan (925-40) it was decreed that the death penalty was to be exacted where guilt was too manifest to be denied. Where the accused asserted his innocence, he must face a three-fold ordeal. If the outcome was unsatisfactory, he must spend 120 days in prison; after which his relatives might secure his release by paying a fine to the king and wergild to the victim’s kin, and also standing surety for his future good behaviour.(9) In twelfth-century England anyone convicted of murder by maleficium was supposed to be handed over to the victim’s kin, to be disposed of as they thought best.(10) A Swedish law of 1296 still speaks a similar language. A woman convicted of causing a man’s death by maleficium is to be burned, unless the victim’s kin decide to spare her life; in which case she is to pay them a sum in compensation, as well as fines to the royal treasury and the local community.(11)
Maleficia could be performed to produce other effects in individuals besides sickness or death. Women performed them, or got others to perform them on their behalf, for the purpose of influencing erotic feelings in men. In the ninth century, under the Carolingian dynasty, maleficia of this kind figured in political struggles. In 817 Charlemagne’s son, the emperor Louis the Pious (Louis I of France), divided his vast dominions amongst his sons by his wife Irmengarde; but in 829, having remarried, he tried to provide a kingdom for his son by his second marriage also. His sons by his first marriage took up arms in revolt; and the story which they put about was that their father’s second wife, Judith, was using maleficium to keep him helplessly infatuated. As a first step they demanded that all dealers in magic should be driven from the royal palace.(12) More drastic measures followed when, in 834, the eldest son, Lothair I, captured the town of Châlon-sur-Sâone. There he found Gerberga, who was the sister of Count Bernard of Barcelona— the favourite of his step-mother Judith and his father’s most powerful ally. Lothair had Gerberga drowned in the river “as is the custom with sorcerers”. This seems to have been an act of private vengeance, comparable with Fredegond’s killings; but in any case, there is little doubt that it was linked with the emperor’s supposed infatuation.(13)
In due course Lothair’s son, also called Lothair, became king of the district which was to be called after him, Lotharingia, or Lorraine. His reign was chiefly occupied by his efforts to divorce his wife Thietberga in order to marry his mistress Waldrada. This issue dictated his relations with his uncles, who ruled the vast kingdoms to the east and west of his own; with the Frankish bishops; and even with the pope. About 860, in the course of the interminable discussions about the projected divorce, Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims and one of the greatest scholars of the age, was asked to write an expert opinion. Amongst other things he was asked whether sorcery could make a man impotent with his wife and full of detestation for her; and whether it could provoke irresistible love between man and woman. He replied that it was generally believed that certain women could work such sorcery; he himself was convinced of it, and was even able to describe the techniques. He suspected Waldrada of practising maleficium: and this strengthened him in his view that the divorce should not take place.(14)
Such preoccupations were by no means confined to royal courts— country priests came across them amongst their peasant parishioners. Around the year 1000 canon law was becoming a recognized branch of scholarly study; and one of the first major compilations was the enormous Decretum or Collectarium composed by Burchard, bishop of Worms, and a few collaborators around 1008-12. The nineteenth book of the Decretum is called the Corrector or Medicus, because it teaches priests how to provide “corrections for bodies and medicines for souls”. And one of the chapters of the Corrector — the fifth — is in effect a penitentiaclass="underline" it consists of a long series of questions to be addressed by the confessor to his penitent, each question dealing with a different sin and being followed by a note of the appropriate penance.(15) This fifth chapter is known to be based on earlier penitentials, and the nature of the questions shows that it is designed for a congregation of peasants. To the historian it offers some fine insights into the popular mentality of the early Middle Ages.
Now this source shows quite clearly that many men — ordinary peasants of the tenth century or earlier — were afraid of being bewitched into impotence.(16) In particular, when a man left his mistress to marry another, he was apt to find himself impotent with his new wife. The modern psychologist knows that such things do happen, and so did the author of the Corrector; only he attributed them to a different cause. From his experience as a confessor he knew that deserted women sometimes practised maleficium against their ex-lovers; and whereas he was sceptical about the efficacy of some forms of maleficium, he had no doubts at all about this one. From other sources we know the technique employed: during the wedding, the outraged woman would make three knots in a lace or a string. This was intended to block the way to orgasm — and no doubt when the bridegroom knew or suspected what was afoot, it often worked.
It was when some unforeseeable, unaccountable disaster occurred that people looked to maleficium as an explanation. But whereas mysterious illnesses and deaths, or sudden impotence in marriage, could happen to anyone in any stratum of society, some kinds of disaster were peculiar to peasant life. There were accordingly some beliefs about maleficium, and also some techniques of maleficium, that flourished amongst the peasantry in particular. Here again the fifth chapter of the Corrector provides valuable insights. The confessor’s questions show that peasants often practised sorcery to improve their own position at their neighbour’s expense. Swineherds and cowherds would say spells over bread, or herbs, or knotted cords, which they would then deposit in a tree or at a road-fork; the object being to direct pest or injury away from their own animals and on to other people’s.(17) A woman would use spells and charms to draw all the milk and honey in the neighbourhood to her own cows and bees, or else to appropriate other people’s property for herself.(18) This is the reality behind Runeberg’s sweeping generalizations about “magical exchange”;(19) but they constitute only a small part of the world of maleficium. Even amongst the peasantry of the early Middle Ages, centuries before the full stereotype of the witch came into being, it was recognized that the motive for maleficium was often sheer malice. The Corrector refers to women who actually boasted that they could remove or kill chickens, young peacocks, whole litters of piglets, by a word or a glance.(20)