Herdenkingsring voor Cathelyne Van den Bulcke op de Grote Markt van Lier | Chris Van Rompaey.
Cathelyne Van den Bulcke
Witch Trials in Europe
On 20 January 1590 Cathelyne Van den Bulcke was burnt at the stake in the market-place of Lier. She was one of the many ‘witches’ who between the 15th and 18th century were victims of popular superstition. In 2021 she was formally rehabilitated by the town of Lier. In so doing Lier was following in the footsteps of Nieuwpoort, Diksmuide and many other European towns.
Cathelyne Van den Bulcke had been accused of witchcraft by a thirteen-year-old girl, Anneken Faes. She had also been accused of sorcery. During her torture the girl maintained that Cathelyne Van den Bulcke had seduced her into contact with the devil. The gossip that circulated in Nijlen, where she lived, did her case no good. Moreover, her mother had also been executed as a witch. During the trial, which took place in Lier, her fellow-villagers testified for and against her. She herself denied everything. Then the panel of aldermen ordered her to be tortured, after which Van den Bulcke ‘confessed’, but accused no other women.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 12476, fol. 105v
One of the oldest representations of a witch, from 1451. From Le Champion des dames by the French poet Martin le Franc.
Witch Trials in Europe
Many witch trials took place in the southern part of the Low Countries between the 15th and 18th century. How many people were tortured and executed, we do not know exactly, since many archives have been lost. It does, however, emerge from the trial documents that witches often received a ‘mild’ sentence, such as banishment. Others were released – often cases did not come to trial. Still, in the county of Flanders between 1450 and 1680 at least two hundred ‘witches’ died at the stake. As far as is known, Martha van Wetteren was the last of these. She was burnt at the stake in Belsele in 1684. In Leuven, in the duchy of Brabant, it went on still longer. There, two further executions took place in 1692 and 1695.
Witch trials were found all over Europe, but not everywhere in equal numbers. Present-day Germany had the most executions. In Poland and Russia too there was much persecution, in the Dutch Republic, Spain, Portugal and the Italian city states much less. Within the southern part of the Low Countries the differences were great. Most sorcery trials took place outside the large towns, in areas where there was little control of the courts, as in the south of what is today West-Flanders. In Nieuwpoort, for example, in the first half of the 17th century, 31 witch trials took place.
Focal points
Bruges, Musea Brugge, Prentenkabinet Van Hoorebeke
There are few 16th-century representations of witches. This print by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Witch of Mallegem, is an exception.
Imaginary Crimes in Uncertain Times
Witch fanaticism often peaked in periods of uncertainty, as a result, for example, of war, plundering or epidemics. People looked for a scapegoat to exorcise their fear. The persecution was not a centralised ‘witch hunt’ orchestrated by the government or church. It was a way in which people who lived in a magical-religious world and believed in evil, dealt with setbacks.
In the 13th and 14th centuries Europeans saw witches as people who could use magic to harm other people. For example, they caused the harvest to fail. In the 15th century that view changed. Witches, it was claimed, carried out tasks on the instructions of the devil. They were accused of a compact and sex with the devil, flying through the air, devil’s assemblies (witches’ sabbaths) and killing children. That image was spread mainly through popular stories, and also demonologicaldemonology, theory of demons or malignant beings. writings, such as The Hammer of Witches. This book, written by the German inquisitorinvestigator whose task was to combat heresy. Heinrich Kramer, was a manual for the identification, interrogation and torture of witches. Such writings also appeared in the Low Countries. The Catholic church and the Inquisition however seldom played a direct role in the persecutions. Some clergy, moreover, spoke out against the witch trials.
Washington, Library of Congress, De lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus, Reutlingen, 1489
Witches could influence the weather, according to popular belief. In this woodcut from a treatise by the jurist Ulrich Molitor (1442-1507), two witches are brewing up a storm. For that they need a black cock and a snake.
From Gossip to the Stake
Witches were persecuted when a group of people wanted to expel them from the community and the local authorities pursued the matter. We know little about those who were accused. Some 80% were women. Usually, they were married and somewhat older. Suspected men or children were almost always family members of accused or condemned sorceresses. The legal sources teach us that persecuted witches were not popular with their neighbours. They displayed deviant behaviour, sometimes looked different or were involved in an inexplicable event, sickness or death. That provided a stigmatisation that made persecution possible. For centuries popular stories and illustrations spread a stereotypical and fantastic image of the witch. In 17th-century Southern Netherlandish painting the depiction of witches and witches’ sabbaths actually became a separate genre.
A local court, such as the aldermen’s bench, conducted the trial. Such a court consisted not of professional jurists, but of local people. Those local judges had great freedom in their way of working and in sentencing. Yet things were not, by the standards of the time, totally arbitrary. To be able to pronounce the death penalty, for example, a confession was crucial. That was often obtained after torture. Local courts also regularly asked the advice of a higher court.
Discover more on this topic
Journaal
Bron: VRT archief – 12 nov 1994
Journaal
Bron: VRT archief – 4 nov 2021
Non-fiction
De heksen en de buren. Heksenprocessen in de Lage Landen, 1598-1652
Davidsfonds, 2015.
Met de duivel naar bed. Heksen in de Lage Landen
Van Halewyck, 2002.
Het gevecht met de duivel. Heksen in Vlaanderen
Davidsfonds, 1999.
Fiction
Nelle, de heks van Cruysem
Manteau, 2011. (12+)
Aude
Clavis, 2005. (12+)
Heksenjong
Clavis, 2017. (12+)
Het duivelskind
Davidsfonds, 1991. (13+)
De Rode Ridder. De Vloek van Malfrat
Manteau, 2013. (9+)
De heks van Limbricht
Lebowski Publishers, 2021.
Suske en Wiske: Jeanne Panne (nr. 264)
Standaard Uitgeverij, 2000.
De heks van Axel
Davidsfonds, 2003. (12+)
De amulet
Lemniscaat, 2010. (12+)
Heksen moeten branden: de heks van Nattenhaasdonk
Abimo, 2013. (12+)
De wereld van Sofie – 13 mei 2023
Jef Verscuren (Comité ‘Eerherstel voor Cathelyne’) over Cathelyne Van den Bulcke.