The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft by John Webster
The History of Witches and Wizards, 1720. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.
The Book of the Month for May, 2024 is John Webster’s (1611-82) The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft which was published in London in 1677 and bought by John Worth (1648-88), dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, theologian, and father of physician and book collector, Edward Worth (1676-1733). John Worth’s shelfmark is on the head of the spine, the book itself bound in contemporary dark mottled calf with marble-edged pages. John Webster was a schoolmaster and polemicist born in Yorkshire, England on the 3rd of February, 1611. He went on to study chemistry in the 1630s, making chemical science along with teaching and medicine his lifelong occupations.[1] In 1632, Webster was made minister of the Parish of Kildwick, North Yorkshire, where he advocated for the reconstruction of religious and social life and the ability to interpret the scriptures freely. He was known to openly criticize traditional learning techniques, recommending that people learn from experience rather than by automatically believing what others say to be true. He was likewise notable for his perception of the Devil.[2] To Webster, the Devil was not a physical being that could tempt humans on earth as many clergymen believed, but was rather a mere metaphor for the evil inside all human souls. As a progressive minister of Kildwick, an advocate of experimental learning, and a natural-born sceptic, John Webster realized that there was deceit associated with the witch hunts of his time and wrote The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft to crack down on ‘ignorant’ believers of witchcraft.[3]
John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft… (London, 1677), title page.
John Webster spent much of his time in The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft criticizing the absurd physical evidence used to prove the existence of witches. It was believed that a formal ceremony took place after the Devil revealed himself to a witch where she would reject her Christian faith and baptism, trample over a cross, and bend over backwards before the Devil to kiss his buttocks in allegiance to him.[4] In return, the Devil would give the witch a ‘distinctive mark’ on a ‘concealed’ spot of her body before equipping her with the power and potions she needed to wreck havoc on humanity.[5] Thus, examiners would check for the witches’ mark on the bodies of the accused in order to achieve physical evidence that proved guilt. John Webster stated that if every human body was to be examined for a witches’ mark, ‘few would go free’.[6] He expressed that there are ‘Nodes, Knots, Protuberances, Warts, and Excrescences’ upon the bodies of all men and women, some ‘from their mothers wombs’ and others becoming more prevalent with old age.[7] Strange occurrences were also attributed to witchcraft such as those who vomited up ‘pins’, ‘needles’, ‘hair’, and ‘nails’; the person who vomited thought to be bewitched and the situation used as more physical proof of witchcraft’s existence.[8] According to Webster, the peculiar objects could have somewhat easily been inserted down a person’s throat in an attempt to trick authorities and should not be used as credible evidence to prove the existence of witches.[9]
John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft… (London, 1677), Chap. V, p. 63 (detail).
Webster understood that testimonies, which were used as evidence to prove witchcraft in trials, were biased and not credible pieces of evidence. Testimonies from two eye-witnesses or the confession of the accused was the ultimate form of proof needed to convict and condemn a witch to death.[10] All other physical evidence could not condemn the accused without the addition of either the two testimonies from eyewitnesses or confession from the accused. Webster stated that ‘there is neither Reason, Law, nor Equity that allows the testimony or confession of an Idiot’, calling into question the mental state of those who gave testimonies or confessed to being a witch.[11] He argued that those who gave such testimonies were of ‘unsound understandings’, ‘mad’, and not governed by rationality.[12] Judicial torture, or the punishment of the accused or witness before anyone was proven guilty, was employed in order to obtain a confession from the accused or other secret information from a reluctant eye-witness. Often times, torture was brutal and unbridled. One popular torture method was the use of the rack where a victim’s body would be stretched until their limbs dislocated from their sockets.[13] Amidst these horrific torture sessions, even the most courageous individuals succumbed to torture, in their agony confessing to whatever crimes of maleficia the inquisitor wanted them to admit.[14] Webster realized that such extreme torture methods were producing false confessions and that the words of eye-witnesses and the accused should be found ‘null and false’ and should never be viewed as reliable proof to witchcraft’s existence.[15]
A central theme in witch trials of the early modern period was the idea that the Devil bestowed power on the witch after she had carnal relations with him. The origins of the satanic pact are not clear although some suggest that there are parallels between it and the alliances God made with figures such as Noah and Abraham in the Old Testament. Other scholars argued that the covenant between witch and Devil originates from the feudal system where vassals made pacts with their masters and pledged their undying loyalty.[16] While men were thought to seek out the Devil to gain access to his infinite wisdom, women were thought to make a pact with the Devil because they were sexually voracious and more tempted to stray from the righteous path than men.[17] Webster rejected the idea of the carnal pact between witch and Devil and stated that ‘there is no authority [evidence] of Scripture’ to prove that the act had ever taken place.[18] Webster brought up the fact that scholars who had written of the carnal pact between witch and Devil were never eye-witnesses to the crime, only transcribing false, fictitious texts about the pact written by others before them.[19] Because none of the scholars had seen the perverted covenant with their own eyes, Webster was adamant that they should not believe such distorted information blindly.
John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft… (London, 1677), Chap. VI, p. 106 (detail).
When Webster went to publish The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, his book was denied a license to print by church authorities who disapproved of his argument that witches do not exist and his condemnation of the church’s corrupt tendencies and biblical mistranslations.[20] Webster argued that ‘instead of following the true and genuine signification’ of the original Hebrew Bible’s words, translators re-wrote the Bible in vernacular languages using their own ‘pre-conceived’ opinions of witchcraft, infusing their bias into their translations of the Bible.[21] According to men who were ‘Masters’ of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin tongues, ‘Praestigiatores’ in Latin should be translated as ‘Juglers’, not ‘witch’ as the King James Bible translated it.[22] Another story used to prove witchcraft’s existence was I Samuel from the King James Bible which Webster said had been misinterpreted by biased translators and clergymen. In I Samuel, Saul, King of Israel, faced the threat of the Philistine army who he needed to fight in battle the next day and, when God did not offer him guidance, he sought help from a woman whose name over time became the ‘Witch of Endor’.[23] Webster believed that the Witch of Endor was nothing more than a ‘lying cheater’ who used ‘Imposture’ to trick Saul into thinking she could summon the prophet Samuel and tell him his fate.[24]
One of the primary authors who John Webster criticized in his book was Joseph Glanvill (1636-80), a witchcraft-believer who used mistranslations of the Bible to authenticate his own opinions and validate the existence of witches.[25] According to Webster, Glanvill was a ‘witchmonger’ on the hunt to incriminate innocent people on witchcraft charges based on biblical mistranslations and ‘general accusations without particular proofs’.[26] Joseph Glanvill fought back against Webster in his book, Sadducismus Triumphatus, which defended the reality of witches and supported the continuation of the witch hunts.[27] While Webster stated in his book that words such as ‘maleficus’, ‘magus’, ‘prastigias faciens’, and ‘Incantator’ had been mistranslated from the original languages the Bible was recorded in to mean ‘witch’ in the vernacular languages, Glanvill stated that the translations were correct as there are ‘several names of a Witch’.[28] Glanvill used the King James Bible, quoting Exodus 22:18: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.[29] The King James Bible, sponsored by King James VI and I of Scotland and England (1566-1625) and written by clergymen, emphasized European understandings of witchcraft, the Devil, and magic.[30] Although Webster argued that many of the biblical terms had been mistranslated, he does admit that the word ‘Wizzard’ had been translated correctly between versions of the Bible.[31] In response, Glanvill attacked Webster’s masculinity in Sadducismus Triumphatus, mocking him for saying that the term ‘Wizzard’ had been translated correctly but not the word ‘witch’.[32] Glanvill stated, ‘Wizzards then Webster will allow, that is to say, He-Witches, but not She-Witches. How tender the Man is of that Sex!’.[33] Here, Glanvill implied that Webster is too soft on women and that his lack of masculinity is why he refused to believe in witchcraft, later calling witches Webster’s ‘beloved Hags’.[34]
A witch at her cauldron surrounded by monsters. Etching by Jan van de Velde II, 1626. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Webster faced serious condemnation from both Glanvill and church authorities who believed that the existence of witches was inherently connected to the existence of God and angels. Glanvill asserted in his book that if a person denied the existence of a God-created being such as a witch, that same person was also denying the validity of God for there could not be a creator if the beings the creator was said to design were never made.[35] On the other hand, Webster argued that the belief in God and angels was deeply rooted in and proven by religious scripture while the belief in witches was based only on superstitious fear and the misinterpretation of reality.[36] Webster thought that demonologers, or ‘witch-mongers’ as he called them, did not resort to the original words of God to obtain wisdom and instead heaped ‘together all the lying, vain, improbable, and impossible stories’ from a variety of unreliable authors and biblical mistranslations.[37] Webster even went so far as to call Glanvill and witch believers atheists for their stance that God could not exist if witches were not real and for relying on biblical mistranslations.[38]
John Webster did not believe that human testimonies and biblical translations into vernacular languages were equal to the original words of God in the Hebrew Bible that, according to Webster, did not speak of witchcraft. Webster was different from other clerics as he sought to rid society of the idea that the Devil had immense power over mortal lives. Webster’s scepticism and critical examination of witchcraft contributed to the gradual shift in societal beliefs, paving the way for the use of science and rational thought over misconceptions and superstitious fear.
Text: Ms Emily Higgins, Third Year Student, Creative Writing and Literature & Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, USA.
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Bibliography
Clericuzio, Antonio, ‘Webster, John’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Glanvill, Joseph, Sadducismus Triumphatus: Or, A Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions. In Two Parts. The First Treating of Their Possibility. The Second of Their Real Existence, 4th ed. (London, 1726).
Johnson, Niall, ‘Witchcraft and Scepticism in England: A Comparison of Key Texts by Reginald Scot, John Webster and Francis Hutchinson’, MA (Canterbury Christ Church University, 2021).
Levack, P. Brian, The Witch-Hunt of Early Modern Europe, 4th ed. (New York, 2015).
Olli, Maria-Soili, ‘The Devil’s Pact: a male strategy’, in Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt (eds.) Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (New York, 2004), pp 100-16.
Slaughter, Lashonda, ‘King James and the Intellectual Influences of the Witchcraft Phenomenon in England and Scotland’, Ph.D. (Georgia State University, 2020).
Webster, John, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft… (London, 1677).
[1] Clericuzio, Antonio, ‘Webster, John’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Webster, John, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft… (London, 1677), Sig. *3v.
[4] Levack, P. Brian, The Witch-Hunt of Early Modern Europe, 4th ed. (New York, 2015), p. 30.
[5] Ibid., p. 30.
[6] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 82.
[7] Ibid., p. 82.
[8] Ibid., p. 265.
[9] Ibid., p. 265.
[10] Levack, The Witch-Hunt of Early Modern Europe, p. 80.
[11] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 66.
[12] Ibid., p. 66.
[13] Levack, The Witch-Hunt of Early Modern Europe, pp 81 & 84.
[14] Ibid., pp 81 & 82.
[15] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 66.
[16] Olli, Maria-Soili, ‘The Devil’s Pact: a male strategy’, in Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt (eds.) Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (New York, 2004), p. 101.
[17] Ibid., p. 111.
[18] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 47.
[19] Ibid., see Webster’s preface, Sigs. A1r-a3v.
[20] Johnson, Niall, ‘Witchcraft and Scepticism in England: A Comparison of Key Texts by Reginald Scot, John Webster and Francis Hutchinson’, MA (Canterbury Christ Church University, 2021), p. 7.
[21] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 106.
[22] Ibid., p. 113.
[23] Slaughter, Lashonda, ‘King James and the Intellectual Influences of the Witchcraft Phenomenon in England and Scotland’, Ph.D. (Georgia State University, 2020), p. 34.
[24] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 167.
[25] Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus: Or, A Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions. In Two Parts. The First Treating of Their Possibility. The Second of Their Real Existence, 4th ed. (London, 1726).
[26] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 11.
[27] Not bought by either John or Edward Worth.
[28] Ibid., p. 114; Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, p. 14.
[29] Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, p. 114.
[30] Slaughter, ‘King James and the Intellectual Influences of the Witchcraft Phenomenon in England and Scotland ’, Introduction.
[31] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 113.
[32] Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, p. 18.
[33] Ibid., p. 18.
[34] Ibid., p. 21.
[35] Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, p. 38.
[36] Ibid., p. 39.
[37] Ibid., p. 42.
[38] Ibid., p. 38.