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History of European Ideas 30 (2004) 167182

Terrorists and witches: popular ideas of evil in the

early modern period
Johannes Dillinger
FB III Neuere Geschichte, Universitat
. Trier, 54286 Trier, Germany

Abstract
In the early modern period (1618th centuries), churches and state administrations alike
strove to eradicate Evil. Neither they nor society at large accepted a conceptual differentiation
between crime and sin.
The two worst kinds of Evil early modern societies could imagine were organized arson and
witchcraft. Although both of them were delusions, they nevertheless promoted state building.
Networks of itinerant street beggars were supposed to have been paid by foreign powers to set
re in towns and villages. These vagrant arsonists can be regarded as the terrorists of the early
modern period. Witches were persons who had allegedly made a compact with the devil. They
were thought to randomly use malecent magic to harm individuals as well as whole regions.
When law enforcement agencies and suspicious peasants or townspeople tried to identify
persons who might be arsonist terrorists or witches they used the category Evil. Anyone who
ignored the behavioral standards of society ever so slightly could be suspected of being utterly
evil. The concept of Evil linked petty, commonplace immorality and the worst crimes
imaginable to each other and to the mindless hatred of demons. This pre-modern concept of
the banality of Evil was called into question by the legal reforms of the 17th century. It was
nally rejected by the enlightenment that negated the imagined continuum of Evil.
Witches and arsonist terrorists shared a number of characteristics. They were both said to
form conspiracies that mirrored everyday society like an evil twin. The crimes they perpetrated
lacked any purpose or reason, they were motivated by sheer malice. The worst forms of Evil
had certain qualities of an epidemic: Witchcraft and terrorism were supposed to be always on
the rise. The evil people were victimizers as well as victims. The imagery of Evil even implied
that the evildoers resembled those they were supposed to have harmed.
The fear of terrorist vagrants and witches as well as other conspiracy theories can be traced
back to the Black Death. The plague of the 14th century not only sparked anti-Semitism. It

E-mail address: dillinge@uni-trier.de (J. Dillinger).

0191-6599/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2004.03.001

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lend force and credibility to the idea of an irrationally destructive, ever-growing secret
organization as the epitome of Evil.
r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Evil; Terrorism; Witchcraft; Bundschuh; Arson; Plague

When Schulte published a history of the concept of Evil in Western philosophy in

1988, he argued that Evil was a topic contemporary philosophy no longer dealt with.
After Kants secularization of Evil it had lingered on, mostly in aesthetical contexts.
However, by the end of the 20th century, Schulte claimed, Evil had vanished from
the agenda of the philosophical debate.1 Even theology no longer considered Evil as
a useful category. Without too much controversy, the devil disappeared from
theological literature.2 At the beginning of the 21st century, Evil seems to have come
back. The mounting fear of terrorism facilitated a re-integration of moral Evil in the
language of politics.3 Reputable newspapers discuss mental illness again in terms of
Evil.4 Philosophers accept Evil as a topic once again.5 Neiman went so far as to
describe Evil as the central problem of modern philosophy. Nevertheless, even she
was criticized for underestimating Evil as a very real, very political phenomenon.6
Pre-modern Europe developed certain concepts of moral Evil and of evil people
that inuence our culture to the present day. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss
these popular concepts of Evil in the early modern period. The focus is on moral Evil
as an interpretative category and as a set of imaginations. How did the common
men of early modern Europe, peasants and townspeople, imagine Evil? What was
Evil and who was evil? In what ways did Evil work?
This paper only deals with Evil in the sense of malum morale. Even if Evil as
malum naturale is a priori excluded, it is next to impossible to dene Evil.7 As we
need to keep an open mind for the concepts of Evil presented in the source materials
a exible common sense denition is more useful than an elaborate attempt to dene
moral Evil in modern theoretical terms. Evil is antisocial and destructive in the
highest degree, it is a form of behaviour that violates the basic principles of social
conduct. Evil is based on the free will of the individual. Renaissance and Baroque
Europe believed in demons and other spirits who were essentially evil, their whole
nature centred on their hatred of the human race. However, I will concentrate on
human Evil. In the Christian culture of the early modern period, Evil was regarded
1
Christoph Schulte, Radikal bose.
Die Karriere des Bosen
von Kant bis Nietzsche (Munich, 1988),
.
.
323364.
2
Herbert Haag, Teufelsglaube (Tubingen
.
2nd ed. 1980).
3
Noam Chomsky, 911 (New York 2001), 2738. John Collins and Ross Glover, Collateral Language. A
Users Guide to Americas New War (New York 2002).
4
. bleibt, Die Zeit (July 17, 2003), 3.
Martin Klingst, Wenn das Bose
5
Maria Pia Lara, Rethinking Evil. Contemporary Perspectives (Berkeley, 2001).
6
Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought. An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton 2002). Erin
Leib, Earthquakes. Rev. of Evil in Modern Thought by Susan Neiman, in New Republic (7 April 2003),
35.
7
Neiman, Evil, 89.

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as the driving force behind sin. Sin was the form Evil took in human relations. After
a brief look at the concepts of Evil the churches and state organizations developed in
the late Middle Ages I will describe imaginations of Evil using as examples the two
worst kinds of early modern Evil: terrorism and witchcraft. Both concepts had
several characteristics in common. These characteristics are the dening qualities of
Evil in modern Western culture. Having established the most signicant traits of
early modern and modern Evil, I will try to trace them back to their medieval origins.
Evil had gathered strength in the late Middle Ages. Whereas the medieval church
had predominately used the Seven Deadly Sins as a guideline to discuss ethics,
Ockham and Gerson replaced this ethical master narrative with the Ten
Commandments.8 The Decalogue dened Good as the Seven Deadly Sins had
dened Evil. Good, virtue, piety were narrowed down. Whereas Good was
increasingly conned within the boundaries of fullling the commandments, Evil
became potentially ubiquitous. The reformation did not solve the problem. The new
denominations of the 16th century as well as Tridentine Catholicism emphasized the
importance of the Decalogue even more. The Decalogue was the guideline and
structuring principle of all the catechisms that were to become the cornerstone of
Christian learning. Luthers insistence on the Scripture, faith, and grace even found
Evil where Catholicism had seen Good: The traditional piety of works and the
hierarchy of the papal church were criticized as superstitious and ungodly. As a
breach of the Commandments of the rst table of the Decalogue they were just
another form of Evil.9
The zest for Christian orthodoxy provoked the emerging states to reject a
distinction between crime and sin. All political and ecclesiastical organizations strove
to ght any kind of Evil, crime as well as sin, in words, deeds and thoughts, in
everybodys life. Europe and the American colonies were ooded with police laws,
disciplinary regulations and catechisms.10 Early modern society considered Evil and
sin as highly plausible interpretative categories. The concept of Evil was a supremely
effective way of reducing complexity as it allowed to view misfortune, the behaviour
of others, even social tensions as part and parcel of the same phenomenon.
It might seem anachronistic to talk about terrorism in the early modern period.
Indeed, it took the dramatic developments of the early 21st century to alert
historians to the fact that from the 14th century onwards Western Europe had feared
terrorist attacks. There are various denitions of terrorism by sociologists,
criminologists, and members of law-enforcement agencies. Most of these authors
8

John Bossy, Christianity in the West 14001700 (Oxford 1985), 3538, 116125. John Bossy, Moral
Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments, in Edmund Leites (Ed.), Conscience and casuistry
(Cambridge 1988), pp. 214234.
9
Stuart Clark, Thinking the Demons. The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford 1997)
.
489508. Helga Schnabel-Sch.ule, Uberwachen
und Strafen im Territorialstaat. Bedingungen und
Auswirkungen des Systems strafrechtlicher Sanktionen im fruhneuzeitlichen
Wurttemberg
(Cologne 1997)
.
.
201211.
10
Am!elie Oksenberg Rorty (Ed.) The many Faces of Evil (London 2001). Harriet Rudolph and Helga
Schnabel-Schule
. (Eds.) Justiz=Justice=Justicia? Rahmenbedingungen von Strafjustiz im fruhneuzeitlichen
.
Europa (Trier 2003).

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agree on the basic characteristics of the phenomenon: Terrorism is dened as

violence or the threat of violence used to achieve political ends either by nongovernment agencies or by government agencies working secretly.11 Even though the
word terrorism was of course not used prior to the French Revolution when the
terreur of the Jacobines implanted it into modern parlance, the concept of terrorism
was well known and much feared in late medieval and early modern Europe. Early
modern terrorism appeared in some cases in the form of mass poisonings but mostly
in the form of arson. Villages and towns were largely built from timber and straw. As
the abundance of reports about devastating res from all over Europe from the
Middle Ages till the 19th century eloquently proves all settlements were extremely
vulnerable to conagration. With only rudimentary forms of organized re ghting a
simple re could be a weapon of mass destruction. Europe feared networks of small
groups of arsonists. Almost all of these arsonists were supposed to be vagrants, most
of them simple itinerant street beggars. In the 16th and 17th centuries hundreds of
homeless people were arrested as members of arsonists gangs.12 Under torture most
of them confessed to belong to huge conspiracies. There were rumours about
arsonists organizations consisting of several hundred persons. It was said that a
conspiracy involving no less than 10,000 people was responsible for the grand feu
that had destroyed 300 houses in the town of Troyes in 1524. More than 20 years
later, the bishop of Troyes was warned that 1000 arsonist plotters had returned to
nish their work of destruction.13
The organizations of arsonist vagrants were supposed to work for foreign powers.
The list of authorities who allegedly engaged in secret warfare against their enemies
by hiring vagabonds as arsonists is long and impressive. A few examples shall sufce.
In 16th century France, the Flemish and the Spanish were said to have paid for the
conagration of various towns. During the protracted tensions between France and
the Empire in the 16th century, French and German authorities suspected each other
of planning arsonist attacks. The London re of 1666 was mostly blamed on
foreigners such as Dutch and Frenchmen who lived in Britain.14 In German Catholic
territories, tramps supposedly paid by German Protestant princes were accused of
re-raising. In German Protestant territories, tramps supposedly paid by German
Catholic princes or even by the pope himself suffered the same fate. In 1540, the
Protestant authorities even demanded that the Emperor took action against the
alleged Catholic plot.15 In German Habsburg countries there were rumours about
arsonist attacks organized by the Hussites in the 1420s, by the Venetians in early
11

Dilip Hiro, War without End (New York 2002). Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism. (New York1998).
Karl Helleiner, Brandstiftung als Kriegsmittel, Archiv fur
. Kulturgeschichte 20 (1930), 326349. Penny
Roberts, Arson, Conspiracy and Rumour in Early Modern Europe Continuity and Change 12 (1997),
920. Bob Scribner, The Mordbrenner Fear in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Political Paranoia or the
Revenge of the Outcast? in Richard Evans (Ed.), The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in
German History (London 1988), 2956.
13
Roberts, Arson, 20.
14
Monika Spicker-Beck, Rauber,
Mordbrenner, umschweifendes Gesind (Freiburg 1995), 126129.
.
Roberts, Arson, 12, 14, 1718, 22. Helleiner, Brandstiftung, 341343.
15
Scribner, Mordbrenner, 2930.
12

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16th century and the Turks from the 16th to 18th centuries.16 Obviously, the political
or denominational adversary could always be suspected to engage in covert warfare
using terrorist groups as a secret army. The same holds true for civil wars or
revolutions. Rivalling petty aristocrats in Germany were said to use arson as a
weapon against each other.17 Probably the best-known arsonist conspiracy is the one
French aristocrats were accused of during the revolutionary period. They were said
to have enlisted the help of vagrants to spread terror and confusion.18 Prior to the
Great Peasants War (15241526) the German Southwest experienced a number of
peasant rebellions, the so-called Bundschuh upheavals. Of the last Bundschuh, that
of 1517, only sketchy evidence survives. All we know about it today rests on the
confession of one single vagabond: a Michel from Dinkelsbuhl
. had been arrested for
vagrancy. Without any tortureor so at least his interrogator claimedMichel
confessed to belong to an organization of vagrant jugglers, beggars, and tramps that
was used by the Bundschuh as a communication network. In addition to that,
peasant rebels had allegedly paid them to raise res in various villages in order to
cause confusion while the peasant troops gathered for a surprise attack. Michel
confessed that the Bundschuh and his vagabond fth column were active in about
one hundred villages on both sides of the Rhine in a variety of principalities.19 If that
was the truth it was an event unprecedented in German history up to that date. Even
during the Great Peasants War peasants from different principalities were slow to
unite. In addition to that, peasants were notoriously suspicious of homeless people.20
Why they should trust them in so vital a matter remains a mystery. As a rule,
vagrants did not take part in peasant rebellions.21 Although these wild claims were
never substantiated and the contemporaries seem to have been sceptical about them,
the Bundschuh of 1517 is accepted as a part of Germanys hidden democratic
tradition today.22
The records of trials against alleged re-raisers present them as a kind of
mercenaries. The culprits confessed that they were addressed by some shadowy
emissary of a foreign potentate. This person told them to commit arson in a certain
region, mostly without giving any particulars concerning the exact location, time or
reason for the arsonist attack. The foreigner provided the beggar with tools such as
gunpowder and slow-matches and paid him immediately. In other versions of that
story, the person making contact with the would-be arsonist was another vagrant
who had earlier been hired by foreign agents to form a gang of re-raisers. Most
source materials reveal no further organizational structures of the alleged terrorist
16

Scribner, Mordbrenner, 3233. Helleiner, Brandstiftung, 327335.

Spicker-Beck, R.auber, 137138. Scribner, Mordbrenner, 35.
18
Georges Lefebvre, La Grande Peur de 1789 (Paris 5th ed. 1988), 81155. Jean Delumeau, La Peur en
Occident (Paris 1978), 178179.
19
Gunter
.
Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg (Darmstadt 10th ed. 1975), 7579. Albert Rosenkranz, Der
Bunschuh, 2 vols. (Heidelberg 1927), ii, 265309.
20
Robert Jutte,
.
Arme, Bettler, Beutelschneider. Eine Sozialgeschichte der Armut (Weimar 2000),
.
209210, 215. Bernd Roeck, Aubenseiter, Randgruppen, Minderheiten. (Gottingen
1993) 6771, 138141.
21
Jutte,
.
Arme, 248251.
22
Thomas Adam, Job Fritz. Das verborgene Feuer der Revolution (Ubstadt-Weiher 2nd ed. 2002).
17

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groups. All contacts were said to have been established quite by chance. Out of
organizational difculties further meetings did not take place, in many cases they
had not even been planned. The suggestion that foreign powers paid vagabonds in
advance for dangerous and criminal acts appears to be highly questionable. The near
complete lack of organizational structures would have left the arsonists principal
without any effective means of control.
The mercenary system of the early modern armies worked in an absolutely
different way. First of all, mercenaries as a rule knew the recruitment ofcer who
contacted them or at least the military leader they agreed to work for. Before they
joined the ranks of the respective army they did not receive any pay aside from a
small sum that enabled them to get to the mustering place. After that, they were
under strict military control.23
Some of those suspected as terrorists in the early modern period were not said to
have raised re but to have spread poisonwe will have to return to that point later
on.24 However, the central trait of the early modern fear of terrorism was that is was
directed against vagabonds.25
The idea of vagrants belonging to terrorist organizations was supported by
another popular imagination of vagrancy: Beggars and vagabonds were supposed to
form secret societies. The source materials allude to fraternities of vagabonds,
societies of beggars and even kingdoms of vagrants. The legendary monarchie
dargot was even supposed to have their own estates and diets.26 The organizational
structure of the vagrant population itself was thought to provide the framework for
the terrorist network. The idea that beggars, especially vagrant beggars are organized
in secret groups is still part of popular lore. On closer inspection, most beggar
organizations of the past turn out to have been mere ctions, literary fantasies that
mingled with reports of a sensation-seeking early modern yellow press. All
organizations of beggars and vagrants that really existed were state or church
institutions that were used to control the lowest stratum of society. So-called beggar
kings that appear in the source materials were ofcials who policed vagrants. Even
the well-known vagabonds court on the Kohlenberg near Basel was by no means
autonomous but under the close supervision of the city magistrate.27
There are no records to prove that any of the supposedly aggressive powers ever
really invested money in tramps as re-raisers. It is therefore safe to assume that
organizations of arsonist vagabonds never existed. The international terrorism that
became a reality in our time was in the early modern period still the delusion of overeager law enforcement agencies and a crisis-shaken, paranoid public.

23

Reinhard Baumann, Landsknechte (Munich 1994) 4862, 7286. Siegfried Fiedler, Kriegswesen und
Kriegfuhrung
im Zeitalter der Landsknechte (Koblenz 1985) 5683.
.
24
Delumeau, Peur, 270, 413. Scribner, Mordbrenner, 4445.
25
Scribner, Mordbrenner, 41.
26
Jutte,
.
Arme, 237241.
27
.
Frantisek Graus, Organisationsformen der Randst.andigen. Das sogenannte Konigreich
der Bettler,
. Gilomen, Peter Moraw and Rainer Schwinges (Eds.) Frantisek Graus: Ausgewahlte
in Hans-Jorg
Aufsatze
.
.
(19591989), (Stuttgart 2002), pp. 351368. Jutte,
.
Arme, 219221, 239241.

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But it is not even very important for our argument if there were any terrorist
organizations of vagrants. The decisive fact was that the authorities believed in their
existence. The consequences of their fear of terrorism were real enough: Europes
princes passed severe laws against vagrants collectively suspected as re raisers.
Harmless beggars were apprehended and executed.28 The organization of reghting as well as policing, even state building itself made considerable progress
under the assumption that cities and whole countries were in danger of being burnt
down.
The ridiculously small sums of money shadowy agents of some foreign potentate
allegedly offered the vagrants for burning down defenceless towns were no sufcient
motive for their crimes. Time and again we nd in the sources the conviction that
itinerant beggars were evil.29 They were supposed to hate society with a mindless
hatred the Christian charity they were offered could never quench. Tramps who were
arrested as re raisers were even forced to repeat the condemnation of vagrants as
evil persons themselves: When the itinerant street beggar Hans Spydelin confessed
before the criminal court of Urach (Dukedom Wurttemberg)
.
in 1526 that he had
belonged to a gang of re raisers he said by way of explanation: There is no more
accursed and no more evil man or beast than a beggar.30 The indiscriminate, and
irrational destruction caused by huge res was thought to be the expression of their
all-consuming, evil vileness. In this set of imaginations, the Evil that was really at
work in the arsonist terrorism was not that of the hostile forces which were supposed
to pay the vagabonds. The beggars will to destroy was not the result but the
precondition of all the machinations of foreign powers. Whereas in the popular mind
these powers were exchangeable and never came to the fore, the evil organization of
vagrants was the centre of attention and constituted the salient feature of the premodern terrorist delusion.
There was only one kind of evil person worse than the arsonist vagabond: the
witch. Very like their measures against vagrants, the authorities attempts to
eradicate the witches hardly ever met with any opposition from the population. On
the contrary, both were appreciated or even demanded by the common people.31
Late medieval theologians had dened a witch as a person that had made a pact
with the devil, met with accomplices at secret gatherings, and practised malecent
magic. The witches themselves suffered from the cruelty of their demonic lords who
used magic and violence to tyrannize them.32 The utter malice of witches was
supposed to know neither limits nor any reason. Witches harmed and killed
28

Helleiner, Brandstiftung, 337349. Spicker-Beck, R.auber, 187271. Roberts, Arson, 2024.

E.g. Bronislaw Geremek, Les Fils du Ca.n. L Image des Pauvres et des Vagabonds dans la Litt!erature
Europ!eenne du XVe au XVIIe Si"ecle (Paris 1991), 357362. Bronislaw Geremek, Les Marginaux Parisiens
aus XIVe et XVe Si"ecles (Paris 1976), 340348. Delumeau, Peur, 92193. Helleiner, Brandstiftung, 344.
Roberts, Arson, 16. Jutte,
.
Arme, 209219.
30
State Archives (Hauptstaatsarchiv) Stuttgart, A 43 Bu. 3.
31
Johannes Dillinger, Bose
osterreich
und Kurtrier im
. Leute. Hexenverfolgungen in Schwabisch.
.
Vergleich (Trier 1999), 234244. Roberts, Arson, 1014. Delumeau, Peur, 191194.
32
. 112118. Wolfgang Schild, Die Maleficia der Hexenleut (Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Dillinger, Bose,
1997), 6480.
29

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randomly. When they conjured up bad weather to destroy the crops of a whole
region including their own they even harmed themselves.33 The witches evil is hard
to understand. The imagination of the human witch was partly derived from
mythical ideas about non-human evildoers, malevolent spirits and revengeful dead
that were dened as essentially evil.34 Of course, the learned demonologists of the
early modern period explained the irrational behaviour of witches as the
consequence of their being Satans servants: The devil wanted destruction and
despair for its own sake and his followers obeyed his commands. Thus, the witches
were just the instruments of a transrational hatred against all of creation.
Neither this explanation nor in fact the whole of demonology served to solve the
main problem of early modern witch belief: How could one recognize a witch? At
least to a 21st century mind the idea that the witches were the epitome of Evil does
not help but hinder their identication. How could anyone be suspected of being in
league with the Evil One himself? To be sure, witches were supposed to be poor
rather than afuent and female rather than male. However, the court ofcials and
suspicious peasants who wanted to see the witches punished needed more specic
information. What patterns of behaviour triggered witchcraft suspicions? Among the
suspects of witch trials we nd again beggars and vagrants:35 But we also nd sexual
deviants and felons already convicted of some other crime.36 Numerous rich people
were suspected as witches. Many of them were male, and almost all of them were
social upstarts, corrupt careerists serving the emerging bureaucracy or nouveau riche
who had proted from the economical crisis of the late 16th century.37 The largest
group of alleged witches by far consisted of people who were known to have engaged
in lengthy conicts with their relatives or neighbours.38 These petty struggles were
not spectacular or out of the ordinary but they were by no means insignicant. It was
of tremendous importance for the reputation of a person if she or he was considered
troublesome or overtly competitive. We might be tempted to think that accusations
of witchcraft were just a means to get rid of personal enemies. However, in the
sources as well as in modern anthropological materials concerning witchcraft, we
nd a completely different mode of perception. The contemporaries did not make
essential distinctions between harm done by magic and other kinds of harmful
actions. They regarded records of aggressiveness and immorality as clues when they
.
Dillinger, Bose,
119120, 127129.
Norman Cohn, Europes Inner Demons (Frogmore 2nd ed. 1976.), 206224.
35
.
Dillinger, Bose,
202206. Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan (Bloomington 1985). 86103. Keith
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth 4th ed. 1991) 659667. Norbert Schindler,
Die Entstehung der Unbarmherzigkeit in Norbert Schindler (Ed.) Widerspenstige Leute. Studien zur
Volkskultur in der fruhen
Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main1992) pp. 258314. esp. 306311.
.
36
.
Dillinger, Bose,
200203. Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London 3rd Ed.
1988). 137138.
37
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem possessed. The social origins of witchcraft (Cambridge
.
1974) 189202. Dillinger, Bose,
206229. H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany
(Stanford 1972), 190194.
38
.
Dillinger, Bose,
196199. Levack, Witch-Hunt, 135139. Gerd Schwerhoff, Hexerei, Geschlecht und
Regionalgeschichte, in Jurgen
.
Schefer, Gerd Schwerhoff and Gisela Wilbertz (Eds.), Hexenverfolgung
und Regionalgeschichte (Bielefeld 1994) pp. 325353, esp. 344349.
33
34

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looked for witches. This way of reasoning was made possible by the interpretative
category Evil. When secular crimes or the petty aggressiveness of everyday
experience was interpreted as a form of Evil this behaviour was linked to the
demonic sphere.39
In a way, we can thus nd a peculiar banality of Evil in early modern concepts of
Evil. Commonplace misbehaviour, banal in every respect, led to suspicions of
witchcraft, the most fundamental Evil. Vagrant beggars who were an equally banal
part of everyday social experience were suspected as terrorists. Any kind of antisocial
behavior or the mere fact that somebody lived on the margins of society and
therefore was unable to uphold all its behavioural standards were seen as evidence
for a persons being utterly evil. The categories of Evil and sin had linked all kinds
of unwanted actions, thoughts and life styles to each other and to the devil. For the
early modern mind neither Evil nor Good could ever be banal, one-dimensional or
profane: The Christian world-view did not allow that anything existed outside Gods
order and that meant outside of the categories Good and Evil. The sacred
epistemology of traditional Christianity had made all perceptions religious and
therefore moral ones. Within this system, it was socially and culturally plausible to
regard even the most banal Evil as evidence when the perpetrators of most heinous
Evil were searched for.
The decline of this social logic of Evil began in the late 17th century. This was to a
large extent due to administrative changes. The complex and impersonal legal
bureaucracies of the newly established states could no longer use the category of
Evil to interpret behaviour. Or to be more precise, they needed other evidence for
Evil. As soon as state building had developed far enough to effectively subordinate
the small communities, the individual towns and villages to a much larger
bureaucratic territorial system, this system methodically replaced local ties and
personal relations with an anonymous bureaucratic exchange. This exchange was
based on rules and patters that were abstract and could be used universally. A new
kind of reasoning had to be established that was as free of personal, local, and nally
even denominational dispositions and prejudices. It was based on transpersonal
veriability and comprehensible causality. Criminal justice needed hard facts, and
material evidence, not morally or religiously informed plausibility.40 Thus, tying
banal Evil to fundamental Evil became increasingly difcult. The whole concept of
Evil lost at least a large part of its argumentative power: It was no longer
convincing to regard a vagabond as the enemy of society or a person of questionable
moral values as a minion of demons. The secularisation or rather demystication of
banal Evil was completed by the Enlightenment. Today, many people experience
amazement or exasperation when they learn that a person guilty of severe crimes is
blatantly normal, banal and totally devoid of any demonic malice. They expect
somebody who is guilty of an awful crime to be of grandiose vileness, or at least
.
Dillinger, Bose,
229233. John Beattie, Other Cultures. Aims, Methods and Achievements in Social
Anthropology (London 5th ed. 1992). 209213.
40
.
.
Sonke
Lorenz, Der Hexenprozeb, in Sonke
Lorenz (Ed.) Hexen und Hexenverfolgung im deutschen
Sudwesten,
2 vols. (Ostldern 1994) i, 6784.
.
39

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obviously different from anybody else. Even though this kind of reasoning might
appear naive it is derived from enlightened thinking and thus entirely modern. In
contrast to that, pre- and early modern culture had looked for the perpetrators of the
worst Evil among undistinguished everyday people and had suspected evil people
everywhere.
The most extreme embodiments of Evil, the witch and the terroristarsonist, were
closely related to each other. They could even merge into one: Learned demonology
as well as popular witch belief knew and feared arsonist witches.41 The common
characteristics of witches and vagrant arsonists were numerous and signicant: Both
were supposed to form their respective secret organizations. Neither of the imagined
evil organizations had any characteristics of a utopia. The terrorist groups had
hardly any structure. However, they depended on their aristocratic or at least
afuent principals. As a rule, the vagabonds were contacted by middlemen. These
middlemen were employees or ofce holders of a rich, powerful person or of a
government. Within the group of vagrants themselves there were ofcers of
seemingly undisputed power over a distinctive clientele. Even though they belonged
to the vagrant population women were not given any signicant role in the imagined
community of arsonists.42 Michelets romanticism depicted the witch as a
revolutionary and the witches sabbath as an alternative world that deed the class
structure of everyday life.43 In the source materials however, we nd a completely
different image of the witches organization. Poor and old persons were supposedly
marginalized at the witches sabbath. The witches were led by persons from the
upper strata of society. It is most signicant that even though the majority of witches
was thought to be female at least in the popular mind the leaders of the witches were
male. Among these alleged leaders we nd the rich witch type: Wealthy merchants
and princely ofce holders, at times even the princes themselves. These rich witches
could be paralleled with the devil himself. Their power over the poorer witches was
absolute. Far from being a world turned upside down the witches sabbath was a
mirror image of everyday society.44 Both the imaginations of the witches and of the
vagrant arsonists did not provide an alternative to the social realities of everyday
experience, they were no visions of a better or at least signicantly different world.
The evil peoples conspiracies were the doubles, the evil twins of everyday society.
Evil was not passive or static, Evil was supposed to be always on the rise. Demon
worshippers as well as re raisers used seduction and threats to swell their ranks. The
organizations of arsonists and witches were both said to grow constantly.45

41
Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, Ed. Montague Summers (New York 2nd ed.
. 187, 432. Thomas Fritz, Hexenverfolgungen in der Reichsstadt Reutlingen,
1988), 9596. Dillinger, Bose,
in Johannes Dillinger, Thomas Fritz, Wolfgang M.ahrle (Eds.) Zum Feuer verdammt (Stuttgart 1998), pp.
163324, 208212.
42
Helleiner, Brandstiftung, 338340. SpickerBeck, R.auber, 165182.
43
Jeanne Calo, La Cr!eation de la Femme chez Michelet (Paris 1975).
44
.
Dillinger, Bose,
120134. Richard van Dulmen,
.
Imaginationen des Teuischen, in Richard van
Dulmen
.
(Ed.) Hexenwelten (Frankfurt am Main 1987), 94130.
45
.
Dillinger, Bose,
240243. Spicker-Beck, R.auber, 6793.

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This idea is linked to another, much more complex one. The evil people strangely
resembled their own victims. The witches were mostly poor, deceived by demons and
caught in a net of magic, they were as much the devils victims as his disciples. The
arsonist terrorists were homeless and reduced to begging: They themselves might
have been taken for victims of a disastrous re. Indeed, some arsonist tramps
claimed that they had lost their respective homes to res.46 When Evil was linked to a
certain way of life it was thought of as quasi-contagious, evil people were victimizers
and victims at the same time. Witches and arsonists suffered from the Evils they
helped to spread. This leads us to two important ndings. First, Evil was visualized
in the form of the miseries caused by Evil. The iconography of Evil seems to illustrate
the medieval theological concept of Evil as a privation, as the absence of all that is
good.47 The rare visions of a European world overcome by Evil we can nd in the
source materials point in the same direction: They speak about a degeneration into
pagan barbarism, the loss of culture.48 European colonial propaganda denounced
Indian America as a realm of Evil where all that was regarded as good and ordered
was still lacking and had to be imported by Europeans.49 The strange fact that
European art depicts Deathin the form of the Grim Reaper certainly an evil
personage - itself as a corpse seems to have to do with this specic imagery of Evil.
Second, those who fell prey to evil people came to resemble them closely. They
became part of their system. Thus, even tough senseless destruction and murder were
the main aims of the evil peoples conspiracies, they also aimed at assimilating
others. The victims of Evil were either killed or absorbed into the conspiracy. In that
way, Evil spread by assimilation. This observation holds true for all groups that were
dened as fundamentally evil. When we look at imaginations about evil conspiracies
in the 20th century we encounter the same motive: The Nazis phantasized about a
Jewish conspiracy that aimed at destroying the master race by crossbreading i.e.
the Jews supposedly wanted to turn Aryans into an inferior race very like the Jews
themselves. In a Cold War context, the victory of the respective opponent was
supposed to spell either death or assimilation into the victorious system. In the long
run, the losers would become very like their former enemies and might in turn spread
their Evil even further. The modern fascination with vampires might be partly due to
the fact that they are a nearly perfect embodiment of this trait of Evil.50
It goes almost without saying that society had to eradicate witches as well as
arsonists to ensure its own survival. There could never be any compromise between
them and their victims or opponents. Especially the persecution of witches was
described as part of the apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil. The ght against
46

Municipal Archives (Stadtarchiv) Freiburg, B 5 (P) XI Nr. 10 fol. 118v, 121r123r.

.
.
Ludwig Hodl,
Die metaphysische und ethische Negativit.at des Bosen
in der Theologie des Thomas
von Aquin, in Carsten Colpe and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Eds.) Das Bose
. (Frankfurt am Main
1993), pp. 137164.
48
Delumeau, Peur, 244246, 268272.
49
Hans-Dieter Metzger, Heiden, Juden oder Teufel? Millenniarismus und Indianermission in
Massachusetts 16301700 Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27 (2001), pp. 118148.
50
Caroline Joan Picard and Cecil Greek, The Compulsion of Real/Reel Serial Killers and Vampires:
Toward a Gothic Criminology Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 10 (2003), pp. 3968.
47

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Evil always called for the most drastic measures. As there could be no peace or
compromise with them, not only justice but self-defence demanded the elimination of
evil people. The idea of eradicating owns evil opponent was of course present in
Nazism and at least an accepted possibility in Cold War strategies.
For men of the early modern period the epitome of Evil was a conspiracy, an evil
twin of everyday society that was motivated by nothing but sheer malice, constantly
recruited new members, and strove to destroy the social order. Witches and terrorists
are just the most extreme examples, we might add numerous others.51 But when and
why did this concept of Evil originate? In order to answer this question we have to
look for the earliest reports about witches and the vagrant terrorists i.e. we have to
return to the Middle Ages.
The rst group that comes to mind when we look for the predecessors of evil
conspiracies are the sects of the Middle Ages. Popular heresies such as the Cathars or
the Waldensians that had been driven underground by princes and bishops certainly
accustomed medieval society to the idea of large secret organizations.52 There were
rumours about groups of demon-worshippers, sometimes called Luciferans from the
11th century onwards. It goes almost without saying that modern historiography
was unable to substantiate any of these rumours.53 The Luciferans were said to
engage in Satanism and promiscuous sex, sometimes also in magic. However, they
were not explicitly said to entertain plans to kill and destroy indiscriminately. In
contrast to witches, vagrant terrorists and other early modern conspiracies the
Luciferans were imagined as small secluded groups consisting mostly of clerics that
were unlikely to spread. Even the best-known group of alleged Satanists in the
Middle Ages, the Knights Templars were mainly condemned as blasphemers and
sexual deviants, not because they constituted a direct threat to society in the same
ruthlessly aggressive way witches and arsonists did. During the Templars scandal in
the rst two decades of the 14th century, a lot was said about the Satanic rites
allegedly used to initiate new members to the order. However, nobody seems to have
suspected the Knights Templars to swell their ranks secretly and uncontrollably. In
the 14th century, the rst law suits some historians have called witch trials took place
in France, Italy and Ireland. Even though these trials already involved groups of
culprits, these groups still lacked the characteristics of the witches: They did not
constantly recruit new members and did not aim at random destruction and murder.
The papal bull Super illius specula of 1326 regarded by some as the birth
certicate of the witches sect did not even specify clearly whether the demonic
magicians constituted a group at all.54 It was in the second half of the 14th century
51
Delumeau, Peur, 171180, 189194. Dieter Groh, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? The
Temptation of Conspiracy Theories. Carl Graumann and Serge Moscovici (Eds.) Changing Conceptions of
Conspiracy (New York 1987), pp. 137.
52
Cohn, Demons, 1659. Bossy, Christianity, 7687.
53
Cohn, Demons, 5462. Alexander Patschovsky, Zur Ketzerverfolgung Konrads von Marburg
Deutsches Archiv 37 (1981), pp. 641693.
54
.
.
Bernd-Ulrich Hergem.oller, Krotenkub
und schwarzer Kater. Ketzerei, Gotzendienst
und Unzucht in
der inquisitorischen Phantasie des 13. Jahrhunderts (Warendorf 1996). Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the
Middle Ages (Cambridge 2nd ed. 1990), 151200. Edward Peters, The Medieval Church and State on

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that the interest in and the fear of the newly discovered witches sect grew and the
idea of a secret magical organization spread. Folklore about nightly gatherings and
contact with spirits that seems to have been considered nonsensical or unimportant
in earlier years was now taken seriously and regarded as proof for the existence of an
organized group of demonic magicians. Even though the late 14th century
experienced nothing that could be compared to the massive witch hunts of the
16th and 17th centuries the idea of a secret magical organization took root.55 In the
early 15th century, we encounter the witches sect fully edged with its characteristic
combination of secrecy, growth and a mindless determination to destroy in
demonological writings as well as in trial records.56
Concerning terrorist vagrants there seem to be hardly any sources at all prior to
the 16th century. To be sure, already in late antiquity theological authors considered
vagrants as sinful or even as beyond salvation. They lived outside of the parishes and
were therefore not subject to the cura animarum and the church discipline.57 The
rst conspiracy of poor itinerant people said to have aimed at causing a major
disaster is mentioned in source materials from the 1320s. In Southwestern France,
there were rumours about lepers who strove to infect or poison as many people as
possible. The lepers were supposed to cooperate with Jews. This alleged conspiracy
of Jews and lepers was aimed at the weakening of Christendom. It was argued that
the Jewish or leper terrorists operated on behalf of Muslim leaders.58 Even though
this episode let to violent persecutions of Jews and lepers alike it was short-lived and
conned to the French territories. More than 20 years later, in 1348, a group of
beggars was apprehended near Narbonne. The beggars confessed that they had been
hired by the English to wreak havoc in France. They confessed that they had been
paid to spread poison randomly.59 Not in its re-raising but in its poison-spreading
variant, the pattern of the terrorist vagrant gang had clearly been established. The
rst terrorist vagrants appear roughly at the time when the idea of the witches sect
as an organized group took shape. It seems as if the early modern idea of Evil came
into being in the middle of the 14th century.
The Narbonne trial that centred on the idea of mass poisonings by terrorists, the
date 1348, and the fact that the second half of the 14th century saw a spread of
conspiracy theories points to a specic background from which the imagery of Evil
emerged. The image of Evil that is still with us today rst gathered force and
(footnote continued)
Superstition, Magic and Witchcraft: From Augustine to the Sixteenth Century, in Bengt Ankarloo and
Stuart Clark (Eds.) The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages (London
2002), pp. 173245, esp. 223228.
55
Johannes Dillinger, Das magische Gericht. Religion, Magie und Ideologie in Herbert Eiden (Ed.)
Hexenprozesse und Gerichtspraxis (Trier 2002), pp. 545593, esp. 560562. Kieckhefer, Magic, 187194.
.
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. Geschichte der abendlandischen
Hexenverfolgung, in Sonke
Lorenz (Ed.) Hexen
.
und Hexenverfolgung im deutschen Sudwesten,
2 vols. (Ostldern 1994), i, pp. 4958, esp. 4952.
.
56
Martine Ostorero (Ed.), LImaginaire du Sabbat (Lausanne 1999).
57
Ernst Schubert, Fahrendes Volk im Mittelalter (Bielefeld 1995), 111121.
58
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches Sabbath (New York 1992), 4775.
59
Jean-No.el Biraben, Les Hommes et la Peste en France et dans les Pays Europ!eens et M!editerran!ees, 2
vols. (Paris 1975), i, 5859.

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acquired credibility in the years that experienced the arguably worst crisis of
European history: The Black Death. During the Great Plague between 1347 and
1351 more than one third of Europes population died. The idea of an evil conspiracy
emerged out of the frantic search for the ones that were guilty for the Black Death. It
is well-known that the plague sparked persecutions of Jews. Jews were supposed to
have poisoned wells all over Europe to satisfy their alleged hatred against
Christianity.60 It took the impact of the Black Death to proliferate the idea of
mass poisonings committed by Jewish organizations. The plague not only brought a
wave of anti-Semitism that was unparalleled up to that date. It also promoted an
image of Evil as a conspiracy that was not necessarily linked to Jews. The vague
ideas about secret criminal groups of magicians, Jews or vagrants that had existed
earlier were given a new emphasis: These groups were now supposed to kill and
destroy randomly and to grow constantly.
The disaster of the plague was the root of Evil. The very concept of Evil that is still
with us today inherited certain characteristics of an epidemic: Evil grows and
spreads, it is mindlessly destructive and operates in unfathomable ways. The Black
Death demonstrated that Evil was possible. Only after Europeans had experienced
this epidemic they were ready to accept witchcraft as a real threat. The organization
of quarantine drove home the need for policing agencies.61 What is more, the fear of
contagion invigorated social control, the informal but close surveillance of ones
neighbours.62 The banal Evil that later was considered evidence for serious crime and
deadly sin was only brought to the fore by strict social control. Quarantine seemed to
demand to keep foreigners out of ones town during outbreaks of the plague.63 This
development implied a deep distrust of all strangers, especially vagrants. From now
on, vagrants and migrants were suspected to be the carriers of epidemics.64
The turmoil on the labour market caused by the plague reinforced the need for
control. After the plague many town councils were taken over by the guilds that
replaced the old patricians. In contrast to the merchant patricians the guilds were
determined to control the communal labour market. In order to keep wages and
prices stable, the guilds closely watched labourand labourersfrom outside and
were always ready to exclude them from the towns. The vagrant who posed a
potential threat to the economic balance of a town became the undesirable person
par excellence.65 This situation did not change much in the years after the plague.
The fact that many vagrants were Jewish or Jews converted to Christianity
instigated still more hostility. During pogroms, Jews were driven from their homes or
forced to submit to baptism under the condition that they gave up all their worldly
possessions. Many of them ended up as itinerant beggars. Two suspicious groups,
.
Frantisek Graus, PestGeiblerJudenmorde. Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit (Gottingen
2nd ed.
1988) 159352. Klaus Bergdolt, Der Schwarze Tod in Europa (Munich 1994),119151.
61
Bergdolt, Tod, 183190.
62
Delumeau, Peur, 112113, 131. Bernd Zaddach, Die Folgen des Schwarzen Todes (13471351) fur
. den
Klerus Mitteleuropas, (Stuttgart 1971), 7084.
63
Delumeau, Peur, 112, 131133.
64
Delumeau, Peur, 190191.
65
Bergdolt, Tod, 191196, 199202.
60

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Jews and vagabonds, mingled.66 It is easy to see why suspicions of being evil and
hostile to society fell on vagrants. Here, we have one of the deepest layers of
xenophobia.
Apart from several exception, most notably some cases in Silesia where the
witchcraft imagination had mingled with the vampire folklore and the fear of
poisonings committed by Jews, witches were not supposed to spread epidemics.
However, the anxiety and social tensions caused by outbreaks of the plague often
were the driving forces behind witch hunts.67 The medieval imagination of the
plague-spreading criminal lingered on into the early modern period. Alleged
Plaguespreaders were persecuted in Geneva in the 1530s and 1540s. The outbreaks of
the plague in Lyon in the 1560s were blamed on the Hugenots, the London plague of
16651666 on the French.68
Cohen observed that from the utter devastation of the plague a new, more
condent and optimistic world view sprang forth. The Renaissance hailed the
progress of medicine and administration. Renaissance mentality appears to have
rediscovered worldly fame and glory, the connection of personal and public virtue.69
This development might be seen as a parallel to the emergence of Evil as a
conspiracy. If Evil was faceless and hidden, Good was the achievement of the
individual that proved itself in the public sphere. Individuality and Evil seem to be
incompatible in early modern and modern Western thought. It is a lot easier
andat least for someone who is willing to basically accept Evil as a
categorymore convincing to address an obscure conspiracy, an anonymous group
as evil than an individual. Even ctional characters or pop culture icons that were
meant to be embodiments of Evil, like Shakespeares Jago and Richard III. or Count
Dracula and Hannibal Lecter change into tragic heroes when we look at them more
closely.
The Nazi propaganda lm Der ewige Jude presented Jewish migration as the
spread of a disease and the Jews themselves as plague-spreading rats. Thus, it gave
the concept of Evil that had emerged in the late Middle Ages a most consequential
form that was close to its origins. The persecution of heretics and anti-Semitism
provided the early modern imagery of Evil with the form of a conspiracy. The
experience of the Black Death lent credibility and strength to it. Experiences of
uncertainty and danger always helped to intensify the fear of conspiracies of evil
people, in the early modern period most signicantlyapart from pandemicsthe
Little Ice Age that triggered the culmination of the witch hunts.70 Major crises or at
least the fear of crises make the category Evil plausible. They tend to bring back the
imagery of evil people that the Black Death implanted in our culture. Even today
66

Bergdolt, Tod, 132133, 144145. Delumeau, Peur, 296298.

Karen Lambrecht, Hexenverfolgungen und Zaubereiprozesse in den schlesischen Territorien (Cologne
1995), 353358, 361382.
68
William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland (Ithaca 1976),47. Roberts, Arson, 24.
69
Samuel K. Cohen, The Black Death. End of a Paradigm, American Historical Review 107 (2002), pp.
703738.
70
Wolfgang Behringer, Weather, Hunger and Fear. The Origins of the European Witch Persecution in
Climate, Society and Mentality, German History 13 (1995): 127.
67

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political rhetoric compares extremism with a virus71 or terrorism with a pandemic.72

The mere thought of peaceful coexistence is plainly ridiculous, Evil must be
eradicated.73 This imagery and the concept of Evil itself is apt to produce delusions.
It minimizes complexity where the utmost attention to details and circumstances is
needed.74 Insofar, the present revival of the concept of Evil in philosophy and
political rhetoric seems to be even more questionable.

71

E.g. Peter Wyden, The Hitler Virus (New York 2001).

E.g. George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003. The White House http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/2003012819.html. Eric Pooley, No, its not over Time (May
26, 2003), 2427.
73
Omer Bartov. Did Hitlerism Die with Hitler? He Meant what He Said. The New Republic Online.
February 2004. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040202 &s=bartov020204
74
Cf. the criticism of Philipp Jenkins, Images of Terror (New York 2003).
72