As Thomas Robisheaux recounts the origins of this fine work, readers conversant with early modern studies over the past generation may already sense the ingredients for a great success. An accomplished modern researcher serendipitously stumbles upon a curious tale; an archival hunt then turns up a stunningly rich cache of documents, nearly or entirely forgotten, that tell a sensational story about a long-lost world. That story, engagingly and innovatively told, becomes the heart of a blockbuster with the potential to reshape an entire field. Combining the good fortune of archival discovery with the skills and sensitivity of a mature historian, Robisheaux's latest book will hold lasting appeal for both specialists and general readers alike.
The story centers on the gruesome and mysterious death of a young peasant woman on Shrove Tuesday, 1672. The setting is the small village of Hürden, near Langenburg in the Lutheran county of Hohenlohe, part of the Swabian-Franconian borderlands. Suspicions of poisoning soon fall on the sharp-tongued wife of the local miller, Anna Schmieg. But the careful investigation led by Dr. Tobias Ulrich von Gülchen, a key advisor to the Langenburg court, is frustrated by a lack of clear evidence. As the interrogations proceed, we are quickly engulfed in an immensely complex world of peasant families, village rumors, social tensions, and fears of witchcraft. Inescapably, this world runs up against matters of administrative protocol, princely authority, Protestant theological teaching, and learned legal debate, among other concerns.
Robisheaux labels his approach “microhistory,” meaning his focus is primarily on the everyday experiences of a limited number of persons in a specific setting. The voluminous court records and other reports have indeed allowed him to construct a thickly detailed narrative that presents a multi-dimensional view of several main actors, including Anna Schmieg, her daughter Eva, and von Gülchen. He paints a sensitive picture of conditions in a central German village and region still struggling to recover from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. His care is evident in numerous, often subtle ways, as in moves to familiarize us with the geographical setting of the hamlets scattered in the Jagst River valley, overlooked by the town of Langenburg and the residence of Count Heinrich Friedrich. Yet the term “microhistory” may be misleading for a study that backs off at just the right moments to provide broader social and intellectual contexts. The discussion moves easily from peasant quarrels to regional history and politics, and to learned deliberations of university medical and legal faculties at Altdorf and Strasbourg.
We are led nearly day by day through the intense psychological drama that unfolded in 1672, between the suspect death of Anna Fessler (February 20) and the burning of the convicted witch and poisoner Anna Schmieg (November 8). Until a few days before her execution, Schmieg adamantly maintained her innocence, but under repeated torture, and with her daughter turned against her, she finally broke down completely. Robisheaux illuminates not only the crushing pressures on the accused but also those weighing on her interrogators, especially von Gülchen. He also effectively analyzes the place of this case in a broader wave of witchcraft fears and persecutions that overcame the Langenburg region between 1668 and 1672. Although Anna Schmieg was the last witch executed here, the affair continued to reverberate in the total disintegration of her family, in ongoing suspicions and accusations, and in literature and folklore right down to the present.
The picture of witch persecution that emerges here will seem in some ways typical. Local, village-level conflicts led to accusations of malevolent and harmful actions or rites. Authorities with theological and legal training fitted such charges into broader assumptions about satanic forces and an evil cosmic conspiracy. The resulting trials, far from combating the perceived threat, only deepened and widened the pall of fear. Individual confrontations between prosecutors and accused revealed profound psychological complexities; we cannot simply regard them as the oppressive fallout from perverse superstitions. One might well be tempted to see powerful gender stereotypes at work, or even to discover deep psychic drives to fulfill unconscious desires in both the judges and their victims.
Yet, astonishingly enough in light of countless efforts to develop historical models to explain witch hunting, Robisheaux makes virtually no generalizations along any such lines. Instead he works to show us that early modern witch persecutions must be investigated first and foremost at the local, personal level, in their particular instances. How can any theory, he asks implicitly, no matter how subtle or finely honed, subsume the limitless variety of human assumptions, motives, and emotions that came into play in any given witch scare or trial? No doubt some critics will balk, arguing that any meaningful history must make generalizations and construct explanatory models. But Robisheaux's work is likely to serve as a potent reality check, a reminder that good history can never be reduced to social science. The story of Anna Schmieg and the Langenburg witch trials was ultimately unlike any other; the historian can have no higher goal than to expand our sense of what it means to be human by working to understand such an affair on its own, in its full and sobering uniqueness.
