Bedevilment (Anfechtung) is one of these strange, and often failed, attempts by late medieval theologians, legal scholars, judges, physicians, priests, and laypeople to make sense of extraordinary behaviors that accompany contacts with the devil. Witchcraft and demonic possession are, of course, the most common forms of interactions with the Evil One, but the devil and his minions could also obsess, tempt, harass, and seduce. For Lutherans, more so than for Catholics, Anfechtung was a constant struggle. It led Martin Luther himself to a life of doubting his own faith and thence to a deep sense of existential despair. This despair, in turn, led the Reformer to his realization that salvation is solely in the hands of God and that no human effort could determine human’'s fate. Thus, the travails ofAnfechtung were also a source of joy, because it was only due to Anfechtung that individuals could discover God’'s ultimate mercy.Anfechtungen (pl.) are constant; they structure our lives in the forms of daily routine, small misfortunes, and as sinful temptations. They are not external to the Lutheran’'s life but are the very tribulations called Life.
This form of interaction with the devil is light-years away from the dramatic scenes of the killing of innocent babies by evil witches who had signed a pact with the devil, the orgiastic Sabbaths on tops of mountains or in the depths of forests, or the dramatic contractions and shrieks of the possessed woman that are more familiar to us from the literature on witchcraft and possession. And while these dramatic cases often led to trials, executions, miraculous recoveries, and detailed recordings,Anfechtungen were so common and so routine that they are often forgotten in the secondary literature on the interactions of humans and the demonic in late medieval and early modern Europe.
The translation of the 1667 trial records that compose The Bedevilment of Elizabeth Lorentz comes to partially remedy this imbalance. It includes the confession the young maid Elizabeth Lorentz, a resident of the German city of Brunswick, made to her master and mistress and then to the court regarding her interactions with the devil. The records also include the questions, answers, and rulings of the court, the report of the medical examiner, and the legal advice obtained from the Faculty of Law at the University of Helmstedt. The small volume also contains a detailed description of another event that took place in Brunswick in 1596, that is seventy years prior to the trial of Elizabeth Lorentz. This could be a strange choice, but as Peter A. Morton convincingly argues in his detailed and informative Introduction, the earlier case, the demonic possession of Appolonia Stampke, a young woman of the parish of St. Peter, sheds additional light on the width of interactions between humans and demons and on the medico-theological efforts that went into discerning among such interactions. Lest we forget–: not only lives or deaths of individuals were at stake, but also the salvation of humanity itself.
The twenty-year old Elizabeth Lorentz had barely entered service at the house of a brewer and his wife in Brunswick when she started behaving “"melancholically,”" then threatening the family. She confessed to her mistress that she had been arrested in the past, and while in prison, called upon the devil, who appeared and promised to help her. He demanded, in return, that she kill people and have sexual intercourse with him. After her arrest in Brunswick under suspicion of witchcraft, he came to her cell and tormented her further. Calling upon the devil for help and becoming his possession was a common characteristic of a pact with the devil and a clear indication of witchcraft. But Elizabeth Lorentz insisted that she never surrendered to the devil’'s demands of her, never had sexual relations with him, never caused harm on his behalf, and often, in fact, had the upper hand in her negotiations with him. As such, she did not fit the normative expectation of a witch or a witch’'s confession. Nor did she fit the typical young woman who found herself possessed bodily and physically by demons. She was tormented by the devil, who refused to leave her alone, but he never possessed her body.
In her interrogation, Elizabeth Lorentz went into excruciating details describing her interactions with the devil. “"The Evil Enemy came to her in the brew house in the form of a young man with white trousers and a grey jacket, with boots and spurs, a dagger in his side, wearing a black cap of fine linen”" (13). And at another visit he appeared to her as a black cat that “"walked back and forth in the room, stroked itself against her, came at her from behind as if it wanted to jump at her“" (15). Since the trial records also include the very detailed inquisition of the young woman, her entire personal history comes to life. This enables the editor to offer an extremely helpful section in the Introduction on the education of German-speaking young working women in the early modern period, the level of religious instruction, entrance to employment, etc. Other segments of the Introduction set Elisabeth Lorentz’'s bedevilment within the context of Lutheran theology and early modern medical theories of melancholy, and elaborate on the legal codes and judicial procedures that shaped trial culture and trial records in the Holy Roman Empire at the time.
The court found Elizabeth Lorentz not guilty of witchcraft or a pact with the devil, and the physician did not diagnose melancholy. The distinguished members of the Faculty of Law at the local university of Helmstedt ruled that, while she did indeed “"made a pactum tacitum with the Evil Enemy”" (45), the fact that she did not cause harm to anyone and then confessed voluntarily should protect her from torture. They also found her not guilty of witchcraft. Instead, she was found to be “"plagued by strong Anfechtungby the Evil Enemy”" (46). Interestingly, while the legal scholars recommended that she be put under supervision of pious and God-fearing people, who could instruct her “"until she is freed again from the temptation and Anfechtung of the Evil Enemy”" (47), the municipal court ruled to expel her immediately from town “"while the sun is still shining”" (48). As often is the case with lower-class people in late medieval and early modern Europe, the conclusion of her trial also means her disappearance from history, and we do not know what happened to this young woman after sunset on March 12, 1668.
The booklet, as previously mentioned, contains also the short collection of prayers against possessing demons and a brief record of such a delivery from possession, written by the local Lutheran pastor Melchior Neukirch (1540-1597). The same attentiveness to details that characterized the court in its deliberations concerning Elizabeth Lorentz also shaped Neukirch’'s discernment of the young and pious woman who came to his attention. “"I did not want to fall straightaway into the idea (which isn’'t proper) that one should immediately say and believe that the Devil was there in person. For sometimes it happens with severe illness of the head or another pestilence that one notices in the patient’'s strange gestures and talk, but nevertheless it turns out afterwards that it was only confusion in the head and disorder of reason. One should observe if for a while to see how it develops further,”" he warned (52-53). In this particular case, though, it became evident that the devil did indeed possess the young woman, and whenever she was administered Holy Communion he increased his attacks on her, torturing her “"with gruesome, horrible Anfechtungen”" (58). Neukirch prayed daily with her and consoled her, and by so doing mocked the devil’'s blasphemous speech. He also published his collection of prayers for the delivery of energumens, and invited the entire parish to pray with him. These communal efforts slowly weakened the Enemy’'s control over the body of the young woman until her final delivery.
In 2006, Morton and Dähms published the complete text of the trial of Tempel Anneke, a witch, who was executed in the same city of Brunswick in 1663. [1] The current book expends significantly our understanding of the religious culture of late medieval and early modern Germany and the omnipresence of the demonic in people’'s daily life. It is especially the case with the Lutheran sense of sinfulness, Anfechtung, despair, and yet hope. This short book is a major scholarly contribution to the on-going fine-tuning of our understanding of the spiritual climate of the period, while at the same time ideal for classroom use.
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Note:
1. Peter A. Morton (ed.), The Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663, trans. Barbara Dähms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).