SUMMA DÆMONICA BIBLIOGRAFIA

CLARE 2016 (7SDB2018)

Lisa Dawn St. Clare

As the Crone Flies:

The Imagery of Women as Flying Witches in Early Modern Europe

(Teză de doctorat)

University of Oklahoma, 2016, 208 p. (pdf.)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; Abstract; Introduction – 1; Chapter One: The Church, Heresy, and the Question of Flying Witches – 10; Chapter Two: Waldensian Heresies and Night-Riding Women – 22; Chapter Three: Nider’s Formicarius (1437-8) and Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum (1486) – 60; Chapter Four: Flight and Metamorphosis: Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulierbus – 77; Chapter Five: Dürer’s Witch and Its Significance to Witch Iconography – 92; Chapter Six: Altdorfer’s and Hans Baldung Grien’s Flying to the Witches’ Sabbath – 115; Conclusion – 150; Bibliography – 153; Appendices – 171; List of Illustrations Fig. 1 Unknown Artist, Champion des dames, c. 1451. Illumination. Ms fr. 12476, fol. 105, Rothschild 466. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris -  192; Fig. 2 Unknown Artist of Flemish School, Invectives Against the Sect of Waldensians Frontispiece of the Invectives, 1468. Illumination. MS Fr 96 f. 1. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris – 193; Fig. 3. Unknown Artist, “Metamorphosed Witches”, De lamiis et pythonicis Mulierbus, 1489. Woodcut. Quarto Sp. Coll. Ferguson An-y. 34. University of Glasgow, Scotland – 194; Fig. 4. Albrecht Dürer, The Witch, 1500. Engraving. British Museum, London – 195; Fig. 5 Anton Woensam, The Wise Woman, c. 1525. Schematic woodcut. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna – 196; Fig. 6 Albrecht Altdorfer, Witches Preparing for the Sabbath Flight, 1506. Chiaroscuro pen drawing on paper. Cabinet des Dessins, Musée du Louvre, Paris – 197; Fig. 7 Hans Baldung Grien (?), Witches, 1517. Woodcut. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collection, 2B Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University – 198; Fig. 8 Hans Baldung Grien, Witches Preparing for the Sabbath Flight, 1510. Chiaroscuro woodcut. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – 199; Fig. 9 Frans Francken II, Witches’ Gathering, 1607. Oil on panel. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna – 200; Fig. 10 Jacques De Gheyn, Preparations for Witches’ Sabbath, N.D. Pen and brown ink, brown wash. Metropolitan Museum of Art New York – 201.

Abstract

Early modern European images of women as flying witches present fantastical scenes that were initially associated with the Waldensian heresy. Originally these subjects featured both men and women but they came increasingly to depict only women, who were represented in grotesque and horrific scenes associated with the Devil and his demons. Women frequently became the main subject matter of these witch images because they were consistent with ideas about women’s wicked and weak nature as taught by classical philosophers such as Aristotle and Church Fathers such as Jerome. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, women were identified by the Church as being particularly susceptible to the sin of lust and were often found guilty of drawing others into their lives of sin, and only within the confines of a convent or the patriarchal home were women considered safe from these impulses. Without these Christian boundaries women were thought to be dangerous, which made them perfectly suited to falling under the spell of the Devil and becoming the witches that terrorized their neighbors. These women were increasingly depicted in prints and paintings beginning in the fifteenth century. One of the most well-known images of flying witches from the early modern period is a small chiaroscuro woodcut entitled Witches Preparing for the Sabbath Flight by Hans Baldung Grien from 1510 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). This print is often found in introductory art history books, where it has always seemed strikingly out of place among the other works of the era that include restrained portraits, idealized altarpieces, and beautiful landscapes. It is this image that sparked my interest in this study of flying witches.