Joseph Hansen (historian)

In his work on witchcraft, Hansen relied on a vast number of sources and typically included lengthy quotations. These quotes are most often in the original ecclesiastical Latin, the lingua franca of Europe since the time of Jerome. In Zauberwahn these quotes are often placed within the footnotes, and they are featured prominently in the companion work Quellen ("sources"). With regard to one source, Baron Lamothe-Langon, Hansen writes that he consulted with Professor Ch. Molinier "the best expert on the inquisition in the south of France" who confirmed that archives used by Lamothe-Langon can no longer be found (nicht mehr aufzufinden sind). Under these circumstances (Unter diesen Umständen mussen) Hansen laments that he can therefore only provide the full extracts in French, as Hansen seems to believe that, before they were lost, the original Latin documents written by the inquisitors were roughly translated into French by Lamothe-Langon as he compiled a three volume work on the inquisition.[16]

Writing in 1972, JB Russell follows Hansen in lamenting the missing Latin originals, and that "we must rely upon a summary translation, and though Lamothe-Langon was a careful scholar, we have no way of knowing what was the word he translated as 'sabbat'." The Latin word "sabbatum" occurs frequently in Jerome's Latin vulgate and would have been familiar to all within the medieval Church. Twelfth century inquisitors who were operating in Toulouse France sometimes referred to Waldensiens as Inzabbbatos.[17] Use of the word "sabbatum" as a shorthand to represent a gathering of more than one witch seems most traceable to Francophone writers such as Pierre de Lancre (1612). Lamothe-Langon, also writing in French, may have helped spread the use of the word as shorthand, and Hansen uses it frequently writing in German. But most fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century writers who joined in the witchcraft debate seem to rarely, if ever, use the Latin "sabbatum" or vernacular derivatives thereof.[18]

Writing in 1976, R Kieckhefer cites Russell's work and seems to have become intrigued by his comment regarding the word 'sabbat' but he departs from Russell's view of Lamothe-Langon as a reliable source: "What historians have failed to recognize, however, is that there is serious reason to believe that Lamothe-Langon's texts are forgeries." Kieckhefer bases this on "certain inaccuracies and anachronisms... In particular, Lamothe-Langon uses the word 'Sabbath' in rendering documents for fourteenth-century diabolical assemblies, though this word did not begin to displace the term 'synagogue' of 'synagogue of Satan' until well into the fifteenth century." Kieckhefer cites Russell (as quoted above) but does not provide other sources to support his claims regarding "Sabbath" or "synagogue" or "synagogue of Satan" or whether he means in Latin or a vernacular language. In a 2002 reprint of the same passage from the 1976 work by Kieckhefer, the citation of Russell is removed and replaced with a broad statement: "The Lamothe-Langon texts are now generally regarded as fakes."[19] Kieckhefer points out that Norman Cohn shares his opinion (see below), and is careful to note their conclusions were reached independently. A citation that helps explain the serendipity is not included in the 2002 reprint but appeared in 1976: "Cohn and I both based our discoveries in large part on the biographical data in [Richard] Switzer's book of 1962."[20]

Writing in 1975, Norman Cohn seems to go further than Kieckhefer. For Cohn, questions about the unreliability of Lamothe-Langon, originally based on a biography, seem to have moved from an intriquing and speculative theory into established fact, and Cohn broadens the issue from pertaining to a handful of documents into what he deems a "spectacular historical hoax."[21] Under the heading "How the Great Witch-Hunt Did Not Start," Cohn lists a number of trials from 1275 to 1360, many of which are included in the work of Hansen (and Soldan), and Cohn claims they are all "false from start to finish. None of these things happened."[22] However, a couple pages later, Cohn concedes that there was a "sole contemporary mention" of a witch trial around 1275" but this trial was for "simple sorcery." (Cohn doesn't provide the Latin term for "simple sorcery.")

Further on, Cohn again qualifies his initial statement and concedes yet another trial from the list did happen, "In 1329, the inquisitor of Carcassonne did sentence a monk to life imprisonment for practicing love magic..."[23] Cohn doesn't provide his source for this "love magic" trial but it can be found in Quellen where Hansen cites the work of HC Lea and Lea includes the entire 1329 sentence reprinted in the original Latin.[24] The 1329 sentence refers to...multas et diversas daemonum conjurationes et invocationes... and frequently uses the same Latin synonym for witch -- sortilegia -- found on the title page of Nicolas Rémy's work from 1595 where it is claimed that 900 persons were executed for sortilegii crimen. A Francophone writer and contemporary of Remy, Lambert Daneau, considers "sortilegus" to have been shortened to become the French "sorcier"[25] and indeed sorciers was the term used in the title of another contemporary Jean Bodin in a witch-phobic work written in French in 1580.[26]

Hansen notes that he verified Lea's transcription of the 1329 sentence in the archives at Paris: befinden sich in der Pariser Nationatalbibliothek Msc. Doat col. 27 p. 177, vol. 28 p. 161.[27] In this same Paris archive, Hansen verified, via a separate trial, that the inquisitor named by Lamothe-Langon was operating in Carcassonne in 1276.[28] Operating within Cohn's theory, such corroboration is unhelpful because Lamothe-Langon may have lifted the name from "a standard list of the inquisitors for Toulouse."[29] Whereas Kieckhefer claims his skepticism is based in "anachronisms in the reports," Cohn seems to suggest the opposite: appearances of authenticity in Lamothe-Langon's accounts could be indicators he was selectively culling details from proper sources.

It is not clear that withdrawing the Lamothe-Langon records in question would have a significant impact on Hansen's lengthy works from 1900-1901 or his broader thesis. Institutional partisans or those historians of witchcraft who share an affinity with the bottom-up view of Jakob Grimm, and oppose the top-down view of W.G.Soldan might have reason to highlight any potential embarrassment to Hansen due to his focus on the culpability at the top-- the "kirche und staat" (church and state)-- and his selection and compilation of the surviving written record on the subject which almost exclusively comes from those sources.

A theory not based in the written record is difficult to source and will tend toward the speculative, as Kieckhefer notes:

"it is notoriously difficult to glean the beliefs of the illiterate masses..."[30]

Following his critique of Lamothe-Langon, Norman Cohn seems to briefly advance a bottom-up view: "To the creation of the imaginary sect of witches, written works contributed very little."[31] But on the following page Cohn qualifies this: "The origin of the new stereotype of the witch lay.. in the evidence extracted during the trials themselves." Cohn considers these confessions extracted under torture to have contained, at least on some occasions, a certain amount of real belief, but which he quantifies as a mere "grain of truth" while "the rest came from the imagination of certain inquisitors bishops and magistrates, who used and abused the inquisitorial procedure to obtain all the confirmation they needed."[32] After a great deal of attention to Lamothe-Langon, Cohn seems to arrive a position that would not appear to be anti-thetical to the views expressed by Hansen.