The Witches of Innsbruck Strike Back

Witchcraft trials are hardly known for their happy endings, so I am pleased to share with you a tale where one remarkable woman took on a notorious witch-hunter--and won.

The villain of our piece is Heinrich Kramer, monk and self-appointed witch inquisitor.  Kramer was a staunch advocate of a theory which emerged in the late fifteenth century--that the practice of witchcraft was not harmless pagan superstition, but a religious heresy practiced by evil minions of Satan himself.  Kramer was anxious to stage a well-publicized trial to showcase his pet belief, and in 1485, he found his opportunity in Innsbruck, Austria.

Kramer called on Innsbruck’s ruler, Archduke Sigismund, presented him with papal decrees formally sanctioning his witch-hunting work, and informed the Archduke that he intended to set up shop.  This put Sigismund in a bind.  He was not fond of the idea of this bossy little fellow interfering in the life and work of his seemingly law-abiding subjects, but on the other hand, well, orders from the Pope are orders from the Pope.  In what I imagine was a somewhat grumpy manner, Sigismund told Kramer to get on with it already.

We know very little about the other major figure in our story.  This is a great pity, because Helena Scheuberin was clearly a person that History would have liked to have known better.  About all that is recorded about her biography is that she was a native of Innsbruck who, in 1477, married a merchant named Sebastian Scheuber.  (As was the custom in those days, when Helena wed, she took on the feminized version of her husband’s surname.  Her family name is unknown.)  

Helena was an attractive woman from what was evidently a prosperous background, so Sebastian had less fortunate rivals for her hand.  Among them was the head manager of Archduke Sigismund’s kitchens (his name is unrecorded.)  After Helena and Sebastian married, our high-level cook consoled himself by taking a Bavarian woman as his bride.  In October 1485, things took a startling turn when the cook and his wife paid a visit to Kramer in order to accuse Helena of being a witch.  The cook explained that before Helena married Sebastian, she had been the cook’s lover.  After their split, things remained so friendly between them that Helena attended the cook’s wedding.  However, at the reception afterwards, Helena made an ominous comment to the bride:  “You shall not have many good and healthy days here.”  The cook’s wife assured Kramer that, sure enough, in the seven years of her marriage, she had enjoyed only one month of well-being.  Well, what additional proof of witchcraft do you need?

Kramer picked up more local gossip about Helena.  Some of her neighbors said that since her marriage, Helena had an “intimate friendship” with a knight named Jorg Spiess.  After she rejected Jorg’s suggestion that they take things to a more physical level, the knight suddenly and mysteriously died.  Jorg’s family told Kramer that on the day Spiess died, he had dined with Helena.  Afterwards, he took ill, wailing, “I have eaten something I can’t get over…the reason why I’m dying is that woman killed me!”  Jorg sent for his doctor, but he died soon after the physician’s arrival.  (As a side note, Helena’s husband Sebastian was having an affair with one of Jorg’s relatives, which could conceivably give the Spiess family a motive for wanting Helena permanently out of the picture.)

Helena herself, meanwhile, was not shy about treating the witch-hunter with the contempt she felt he deserved.  Kramer whined in a letter that “not only did she harass me with constant rebukes from the start (I had scarcely been in town for three days)” but “one time when I passed her and did not acknowledge her, she spat on the ground, publicly uttering these words: ‘Pah—you! You lousy monk! I hope you get the falling sickness!’”  As a bonus insult, Helena not only refused to attend Kramer’s sermons, she encouraged others to boycott him as well.  She found his obsession with demons and witchcraft “heretical,” adding, “When the devil leads a monk astray, he spouts nothing but heresy. I hope the falling sickness knocks him on the head!”  As Marion Gibson noted in her recent book, “Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials,” Helena’s reaction to the witch-finder was remarkably sane: “She was not overreacting,” Gibson wrote, “nor was she ignorant of the risk--the lives of women in her town were in danger, so she spoke up. Far from being a witch, she was an intelligent, engaged Christian.”  Helena argued theology with Kramer in a way he probably had never experienced before--certainly not from a woman.

Helena was brave, of course, but bravery is an excellent way to put a target on your own back.  And that was exactly what happened.  “For this reason,” Kramer went on, “I had to investigate her name and life for the first time.”  He suspected her of being guilty of “double heresy, namely a heresy of Faith and the heresy of Witches.”  Kramer accused Helena of being not only promiscuous, but “deceitful, spirited, and pushy.”  There were other Innsbruck women Kramer believed guilty of various heresies:  Rosina Hochwartin, her mother Barbara, Barbara Pflieglin, Barbara Hüfeysen, Barbara Selachin, and Agnes Schneiderin. Kramer saw them as a literal coven of witches, with Helena as their leader.  Although a total of 63 people were investigated by Kramer, these women were the only ones to be formally charged.  Gibson found it an “inescapable conclusion” that Kramer “was looking almost exclusively for female witches.”

Their trial began on October 29, 1485.  It was a church court, with Kramer acting as judge.  Helena was the first defendant to be questioned.  It is safe to say that it did not go as Kramer had hoped.  His interrogation went off the rails almost immediately when he bluntly asked Helena if she had been a virgin when she married.  Onlookers were shocked.  Witch or not, one did not ask the wife of a respectable Innsbruck merchant that sort of question.  Christian Turner, who was in court as the representative of the local bishop, rebuked Kramer that such things were “secret matters that hardly concern the case,” and ordered him to change the subject.

Turner was not finished.  He demanded to know why Kramer had not presented the court with formal written articles detailing the charges against the women.  Caught off guard by this unexpected resistance, Kramer muttered that the proceedings would be suspended until 11 a.m. while he prepared the articles.  At eleven, Kramer received another nasty surprise.  When Helena reappeared in court, she was accompanied by Johann Merwart, a highly-respected expert in church law.  It was announced that Lord Merwart would be acting as legal representative for the defendants.

Yes.  The witches had lawyered up.

Even going by the dry historical record, Merwart clearly had fun tearing Kramer’s case into judicial ribbons.  He questioned the technical legitimacy of the whole proceedings.  He mocked Kramer for focusing on “hidden sins” rather than focusing on “articles of bad reputation”...but, whoops, Kramer hadn’t even bothered writing those articles.  Merwart declared that Kramer “just seized the women before he instituted the proceedings in the proper setup.”

Merwart was just getting warmed up.  He dismissed Kramer “as being a suspect judge in this cause,” and asked the Lord Commissary to toss the witch-hunter into the nearest jail cell.  Merwart advised his clients to not answer any of Kramer’s questions “because he was no longer their judge.”

Kramer responded to this onslaught by angrily declaring that he was indeed competent to judge the case.  Merwart cheerily replied that he would bring that question to the Pope, and have him decide.

Christian Turner then intervened, suggesting that the trial be adjourned for two days, to let everyone cool off.  He, Turner, would then give his judgment on whether Kramer was competent to try the case.

Coincidentally or not, when the court reconvened, it was on the evening before All Saints--what we today usually call “Halloween.”  When everyone had gathered together, Turner announced his decision: That the trial had been “instituted in violation of the legal system.”  He ordered that the accused women be immediately released from custody.  It was also revealed that Archduke Sigismund had paid the women’s legal bills, as well as the expenses Kramer had run up in Innsbruck.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  Everyone was now free to go on their merry way.  Court officials strongly suggested that Kramer not let the door hit him on the way out.

Unfortunately for the world, Kramer got revenge for his defeat by writing “Malleus Maleficarum,” intended as a training manual for other witch-hunters.  It is one of the most cruel and misogynistic books ever written.  Kramer described all women--going back to Eve--as stupid, sex-obsessed, dishonest, and generally dangerous.  Little wonder, he argued, that nearly all practitioners of the black arts were female.  He declared that these witches must be sought out and destroyed.  Oh, and don’t bother with “legal niceties.”  Just round up those devil worshipers, and torture them until they confess.  His arguments, deranged as they sound, were appallingly influential, resulting in the persecution and death of uncountable numbers of people, largely women.

Although Kramer lost the Innsbruck battle, you could say he won the war.