CLIMATIC CHANGE AND WITCH-HUNTING:

    THE IMPACT OF THE LITTLE ICE AGE 
    ON MENTALITIES

By Wolfgang Behringer, 1999

 HYPERLINK "http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/hist/staff/wmb1" \o "Open URL: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/hist/staff/wmb1" \t "linkWin" http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/hist/staff/wmb1

On 3 August 1562 a thunderstorm hit central Europe. At noon the heaven
darkened as if it were night and a severe storm began, destroying roofs and
windows. After some hours the thunderstorm turned into a hailstorm, lasting
until midnight, destroying crops and vineyards, and killing birds and other
animals, including some unprotected horses and cows. The next day trees
without leaves and branches could be seen, the fields were a picture of
devastation (Warhafftiger und gruendlicher Bericht, 1562). Travelers
recognized the unusual strength of the hailstorm. A nobleman, riding from
Vienna to Brussels, reported that he had seen the severe damage throughout
the postal route (Weyer 1586, 189). The meteorological front must have
covered an area of several hundred kilometers in diameter. A printed
newsletter reported that many people feared the beginning of the last
judgment.

Since observers of the period had no memory of similar climatic disasters
"for a 100 years", many considered this thunderstorm as "unnatural" and
looked for explanations. Three possible interpretations arose: The hailstorm
could be a sign of God, a work of the devil, or a result of witchcraft.
Though a number of decisions of councils since the early middle ages had
anesthetized the idea of weather making by human beings, there had always been
reluctance to accept this negation of human influence on the climate. In my
article I want to propose, that it was the influence of the climatic
deterioration known as the Little Ice Age, which contributed decisively to
the development of a new species of crime, which was previously rarely
accepted by the authorities: Witchcraft.

Unfortunately, the concept of the Little Ice Age seems not yet well defined.
Since its invention by F. E. Matthes in 1939 its proposed endurance has
shrunk to an epoch between 1300 and 1860 (LeRoy Ladurie 1971; Lamb 1981).
Some scholars suggested that the beginning of the Little Ice Age occurred
around 1430 (Webb 1980) and ended around 1770 (Ladurie 1971), well aware of
the fact that the period of more than 550 years of coldness was interrupted
several times by warmer periods. Christian Pfister identified a core phase
of the Little Ice Age between 1570 and 1630 (Grindelwald-Schwankung). Since
all researchers based their periodisations upon indicators drawn from
physical environment (dendrochronology, glaciology, etc.), in my essay I
want to propose another approach. My suggestion is to take into account the
subjective factor and consider human reactions to climatic changes as an
important indicator for an assessment of the beginning, the periodisation,
and the end of the Little Ice Age.

Though persecutions for heresy were known already in high medieval Europe
(Moore 1987), persecutions of inner enemies for their supposed influence on
the physical environment began around 1300 (Pfister 1996), when lepers and
Jews collectively were made responsible for the return of the Black Death,
especially after the Europe-wide epidemics of 1348-1350, and subsequent
epidemics of the later 14th century (Graus 1987). During these decades, when
a sequence of cold and long winters indicated the return of Little Ice Age
conditions the interdependence between climatic factors, crop-failure, rise
in prices, hunger and the outbreak of epidemics, and the classical pattern
of subsistence crises of Old Europe became more visible. Thus attention
shifted from epidemics to weather, and it is striking to see that the
gradual emergence of a new crime was closely connected to the waves of
climatic hardship during the earlier phases of the Little Ice Age (Pfister
1996).

Though witchcraft in popular imagination has traditionally been seen as one
of the major causes for hailstorms (Gesemann 1913; Fiedler 1931; Blöcker
1982), Christian theological authorities in early and high middle ages had
refused to accept such accusations (Agobard of Lyon; Hoffmann 1907). It was
only in the 1380ies that magic and weather-making in inquisitorial trials
became increasingly prominent. During the 1430ies the first systematical
witch-hunts occurred in some Alpine valleys of the duchy of Savoy by papal
Inquisitors and secular judges in the Dauphiné and parts of Switzerland
(Blauert 1989). During the 1480ies the image of the weather making witch was
finally accepted by the church. Urged by the Alsatian Dominican friar
Heinrich Kramer, Pope Innocence VIII. in 1484 acknowledged weather making as
a reality in his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus. Kramer himself tried
to incite witch-hunts for religious purposes, using the popular demands for
eradication of the suspected witches who were made responsible for the
destruction of the harvests. Kramer summarized this ideas in his notorious
Malleus maleficarum, the Witches Hammer (Hansen 1900). Between the 1480ies
and the 1520ies there were endemic witch-hunts in parts of central and
southern Europe, still confined to Italian, French and Swiss Alpine valleys,
parts of the French and Spanish Pyrenees, Southwestern Germany, and the
Rhine Valley down to the Netherlands.

Harsh criticism of the practice of the Inquisition by humanists like Erasmus
of Rotterdam, Andrea Alciati, or Agrippa von Nettesheim, and the beginning
Reformation stopped these inquisitorial witchcraft persecutions. Even the
Spanish Inquisition forbade to use the Witches Hammer as an authority und
suppressed local witch trials. The Imperial Law, the Constitutio Criminalis
Carolina of 1532, ignored the supposed crime of witchcraft (Hexerei)
altogether, imposing sanctions only against the traditional crime of sorcery
(Zauberei), strictly limiting the judicial procedure to ordinary measures
(processus ordinarius) which made accusations of weather-making almost
improvable. Many contemporaries therefore considered times of witchcraft
persecutions as being over, part of the past or of dark pre-reformatory
times (Weyer 1563, preface).

This was the situation when the impact of the Little Ice Age began to be
felt again. Contemporary chroniclers like Johan Jacob Wick from Zurich
reported that the summer 1560 was unusually wet. The following winter was
the coldest and longest winter since 1515/16. For the first time since
generations large Alpine lakes like the Lake Constance (Bodensee) froze
("Seegfrörni") and the vegetation period shortened decisively (Pfister 1988,
68). The following winter 1561/1562 was not only of similar coldness, but
surprising with its immense snowfall mentioned in a broadsheet printed in
Leipzig 1562. According to an orthodox Lutheran theology these events were
interpreted as signs of God who was thought to be furious due to the sins of
the people (Uber die grossen und erschrecklichen Zeichen am Himmel 1562).
The coincidence of coldness and wetness struck the agrarian-based society
and damaged the harvest. An increase of prices deteriorated the living
conditions of the poorer people (Pfister 1988, 118-127). During the spring
and summer of 1562 thaw and heavy rainfall caused inundations in different
parts of Germany, poisoned the fields and led to cattle diseases, rising
infant mortality and the outbreak of epidemics.

The unusually severe thunderstorm hit Central Europe on 3. August 1562 in a
state of progressive sensibilisation for meteorological events. Though most
theologians - Lutheran as well as catholic or Calvinist - still blamed the
sinful people for having caused gods fury, under the pressure of
meteorological disaster this traditional embankment began to collapse
(Midelfort 1972). While the larger territories and Imperial Cities remained
stable, small political entities turned out to be more susceptible to the
popular demands for witchcraft persecution. In the small barony Illereichen
the peasants made their count, who never before had tried a case of
witchcraft, uncertain by means of demonstrations and petitions. Finally
count Rechberg conceded to imprison some women suspected for weather making,
having caused crop-failure, inundations, and cattle disease. Here and
elsewhere the mechanism of torture, confession, and denunciation led to an
extension from singular cases to witch-hunts. The largest hunt occurred in
the small territory of Wiesensteig, belonging to the Lutheran counts of
Helfenstein, where within a year 63 women were burned as witches. Since a
contemporary newsletter reported over this event, the witch-hunt became
well-known throughout the Empire (Warhafftige und Erschreckhenliche Thatten
1563).

The Wiesensteig witch-hunt served as an example for radical eradication of
"the evil", and between 1562 and 1565 an interesting debate emerged about
the possibility of weather-making. In the small Imperial City Esslingen the
populistic evangelical preacher Thomas Naogeorgus supported the popular
demands for witch-hunts and urged the magistrate to extend its persecution,
which had already begun, as a kind of regulation of the weather (Jerouschek
1992, 73-88). At the same time in Stuttgart, the capital of the duchy of
Württemberg, the Lutheran orthodoxy had managed to stop the local
witchcraft-persecutions after one burning. The leading theologians of the
territory, Matthäus Alber and Wilhelm Bidenbach, bitterly attacked
Naogeorgus and his idea that witches could be responsible for hailstorms or
other meteorological events. In accordance with Württembergs reformator
Johannes Brenz, who had given a similar sermon on hailstorms before, they
insisted that only God was responsible for the weather, and not human
beings. On the other hand, they agreed in principle that witches should be
condemned to death due to their compact with the devil as a spiritual crime
of utmost severity (Alber/Bidembach 1562).

The debate on weather-making witches escalated when Johann Weyer, the
Erasmian court physician of duke Wilhelm of Jülich-Kleve, attacked Johann
Brenz and his followers for their inconsequence. In his famous volume De
praestigiis daemonum, written as a response to the resumption of
witch-burning, Weyer argued that witchcraft as a crime was physically
impossible and the performance of witch-trials in general and for
weather-magic in particular was a bad mistake (Weyer 1563; Weyer 1586,
182-192). He agreed with Brenz that it was impossible for witches to change
the course of nature. But if witches by definition could not at all be
responsible for hailstorms, as Brenz and the Lutherans conceded, then why
should they be punished? Even if they wished to do harm, according to the
Imperial Law Code it was not possible to impose capital punishment. There
was no article which defined spiritual deviance as a capital crime. So Weyer
asked Brenz as opinion leader of the orthodox Lutherans to change his
attitude. After a negative reply by Brenz, whose sermon on hailstorms was
reprinted twice in 1564 and 1565 (Predigt vom Hagel, Donner und allem
Ungewitter, 1565), Johann Weyer published their correspondence in the
1565-edition of his book and accused the famous reformer of injustice and
bloodthirsty cruelty, a reproach usually uttered against Dominican
Inquisitors (Weyer 1586, 485-502).

The resumption of witch-hunting in the 1560ies was accompanied by a debate
about weather-making, because this was the most important charge against
suspected witches. Though witches were certainly made responsible for all
kinds of bad luck, in an agrarian society weather is especially important.
Crop failure caused increases in prices, malnutrition, rising infant
mortality, and finally epidemics. Through sources we can observe that while
individual "unnatural" accidents resulted in individual accusations of
witchcraft, in case of "unnatural" weather and collective damage whole
peasant communities demanded persecution. In comparison to individual
accusations, which tended to lead to trials against individual suspects,
collective demands for persecution - when accepted by the authorities -
regularly resulted in large-scale witch-hunts (Behringer 1995). Without
going into details, the fundamental interdependence of meteorological
disaster, crop failure, and a popular demand for witch-hunts can be
demonstrated by two further examples: the largest witch-hunt of the
sixteenth century, and the largest witch-hunt of the seventeenth century,
which occurred between 1626-1630 and was the climax of European witchcraft
persecutions. The mechanisms detected in the background of these
persecutions can be applied to all large witchcraft persecutions in
traditional Europe.

Starting in the 1560ies a series of witch-panics shook the European
societies, followed by attempts to legalize witchcraft persecutions (e.g.
the English and Scottish witchcraft statutes of 1563). After the initial
witch-hunts of 1562/63 a wave of persecutions followed the hunger crisis of
the years around 1570 (Bidembach 1570), resulting from the catastrophic
coldness of the previous two years (Pfister 1988, 119f.). But a totally new
persecutory zeal can be observed during the 1580ies. In the end of the
1570ies crop-failure and price rise again caused a hunger crisis in parts of
central Europe (Rhode 1580) with the effect of witch-burnings in many places
(Zwo Newe Zeittung, was man für Hexen und Unholden verbrendt hat, 1580).
After 1580 the persecutions began to reach a previously unknown extent.
Between 1580 and 1620 in the Pays de Vaud, subject of the reformed Swiss
town of Berne, more than 1000 persons were burned for witchcraft (Kamber
1982). Between 1580 and 1595 more than 800 witches were burned in the duchy
of Lorraine, subject to the Catholic dukes so heavily involved in the
struggle for power in the French religious wars. If recent estimations are
true that until 1620 ca. 2.700 persons had been legally killed as witches,
this was the largest witch-hunt in European history in one territory (Briggs
1989, 67; Behringer 1998, 61). The Lorraine witch-hunts were closely
connected with those in the neighboring prince-archbishopric of Treves
where 350 witch-burnings occurred between 1581 and 1595. A local chronicler
gave an account over the reasons for that witch-hunt which was the biggest
one in German-speaking territories in the 16th century. Johann Linden, canon
at St. Simeon in Treves, explains in his Gesta Treverorum the tremendous
persecutions under Archbishop Johann VII. von Schönenberg (gov. 1581-1599)
as follows:

"Hardly any of the Archbishops governed their diocese with such hardship,
such sorrows and such extreme difficulties as Johann (...). During the whole
period he had to endure with his subjects a continuous lack of grain, the
rigors of climate and crop failure. Only two of the nineteen years were
fertile, the years 1584 and 1590 (...). Since everybody thought that the
continuous crop-failure was caused by witches from devilish hate, the whole
country stood up for their eradication ..." (Behringer 1988). Until recently
this explanation was not taken seriously, but new research demonstrates that
the persecution was indeed not only demanded but also organized by the
population. Since the legal administration of the territory was rather
inefficient and the officials were reluctant to persecution, village
committees began to extend their competence and organized the witch-hunts
themselves. Elected committees collected information, captured and tried
the suspected persons, and delivered them to the authorities only after they
had already confessed. The persecution thus resembled a popular uprising
where the people usurped functions usually reserved to state authorities.
It was only in 1591, when the popular acceptance of the persecution in the
Archbishopric declined, that the Electoral Prince tried to deprive the local
committees of their power and to recover authority (Rummel 1991). A woodcut
on a contemporaneous broadsheet gives an impression of the reason for these
persecutions: It shows a panoramic landscape with three tremendous
thunderstorms, coming down on villages and fields while witches are flying
through the air, casting their spells (Sigfriedus, sine dato, ca. 1590).
Similarly a 1590 printed broadsheet about the witch-hunt in Southern Germany
reads like a collection of meteorological disasters and their consequences
on physical and mental health (Erweytterte Unholden Zeyttung 1590).

Traditional historical explanations certainly drew on the impact of the
counter-reformation during these years, but it seems necessary to mention
that since 1586 the long and cold winters were complemented by cold and wet
springs and summers, thus causing hunger and epidemics and creating an
enormous psychological stress among the contemporaries. In 1586 the famous
news-collection of the Fuggers (Fugger-Zeitungen) reported explicitly of a
"great fear" among the people, a term which reminds us of "la grand peur" in
advance of the French Revolution. The beginning witch-hunts indeed grew into
revolutionary dimensions, involving for the first time members of the ruling
oligarchies: magistrates as well as clerics or noblemen (Behringer 1988).
Unlike the hunger-crisis of 1570, the crisis of the 1580ies carried on for
ten or more years. Socio-economic explanations of the crises pointed out
that since the 1560ies a general decline of living standards was due to a
conflict between the demographic movement, continuous population growth on
the one hand, and the narrowing of food supply by reasons of ecological
crisis on the other side (Pfister 1988, 2nd book). In addition, in the
vine-growing areas of Central Europe, from Hungary, Austria, Switzerland,
Germany into Northern France, there was a permanent decline of income due to
the deterioration of wine harvests (see Landsteiner, this volume).
Basket-of-goods-calculations on the basis of statistical data of the
Imperial City Augsburg have demonstrated that since 1586 an average
craftsman with a family of four was no longer able to achieve the necessary
living costs without help from other members of his family (Saalfeld 1971).

The socio-economic disaster affected the society as a whole. But
meteorological disfavor was hardest felt in the disadvantaged areas like
the Bernese highlands, the Scottish highlands, the mountainous regions of
Lorraine, the Archbishopric Treves, the Alsatian Vosges or the Ardennes in
Northern France. It was foremost in these regions that the growing of
cereals or wine was in danger through increasing wetness, decreasing
temperature, shortening vegetation periods, and the enhanced frequency of
hailstorms. Since 1586 the impact of a series of cold and prolonged winters
was sharpened by a period of wet and cold springs and summers. In
Switzerland in 1587 snow covered the surface until late spring, snowfall
returned on the 4th of July down to 400 meter (Schweizer Mittelland), and
again in the middle of September. 1588, when the invincible Armada failed in
heavy storms, was one of the most rainy years in history. Swiss chronicler
Renward Cysat reports, that there were severe thunderstorms starting in June
almost every day (Pfister 1988). It was during these two years that
witchcraft accusations reached their climax in England and France, while the
large-scale witch-hunts in Scotland and Germany started (Behringer 1998).

The synchronicity of accusations and persecutions in these far-away
countries, not connected by dynastic, confessional, economic or other links,
demonstrates the importance of the climatic factor climate for explanation.
It can be shown from many individual witch-trials that meteorological events
contributed decisively to many individual suspicions and accusations, and as
we know now from climatic history, these events often had super-local,
super-regional, or "super-national" character. Areas of low pressure could
cover large regions; the advance of arctic air could harm at least the
northern part of the continent or even the northern hemisphere. What we can
learn from this is that contemporary lamentation about decreasing
fruitfulness of the fields, of the cattle, and even of men where far from
being just rhetoric devices, but rested on empirical observation (Lehmann
1986). The rising tide of demonological literature did in no way ridicule
such lamentations, but was written by members of the contemporary elites
like the famous French jurist Jean Bodin, the suffragan bishop of Treves
Peter Binsfeld, the chief public prosecutor of Lorraine Nicolas Rémy, or the
king of Scotland James VI. who was about to become James I. of England. They
all shared the idea that witches could be responsible for the weather
theologically based on the theory that on the basis of the evil compact, the
devil could exercise his wishes (Clark 1996).

According to the status of scientific theory, however, these demonologists
did not draw their theories from dogma, but from experience. James in 1590
had suffered severe storms during his return from Denmark and had
interpreted the "unnatural" dangers as an attack by evil powers. In his
Daemonologie, in forme of a dialogue this Calvinist monarch claimed, that
witches "can raise storms and tempests in the air either upon the sea or
land, though not universally, but in such a particular place and prescribed
bounds, as God will permit them so to trouble. which likewise is very easy
to be discerned from any other natural tempests that are not natures, in
respect to the sudden and violent raising thereof, together with the short
enduring of the same. And this is likewise very possible to their master to
do" (James VI. 1597, 46.- Larner 1984, 3-22). Rémy, like an ethnographer,
reported detailed weather-magic from Lorraine witch trials: the trials, he
himself had performed. Binsfeld certainly accentuated theological reasons
but his best arguments were the empirical dates from his persecution in the
prince-bishopric of Treves (Binsfeld 1589; Rémy 1595).

In the end of the sixteenth century some European countries managed to
escape the circle of witch belief and witchcraft persecution, since the
elites of consolidated territorial states stopped to feel endangered and
were strong enough to suppress popular demands for witch-hunts (Behringer
1998). In Central Europe however, where demographic pressure and economic
depression lingered on, unstable governments were prone to new demands for
persecution with every change due to the Little Ice Age. Large-scale
witch-hunts were for instance performed in Burgundy and some ecclesiastical
territories in Germany around 1600 (Ein warhaffte Zeittung 1603; Schopff
1603), in the Basque region and parts of Germany between 1608-1612 (Hossmann
1612), and in Franconia between 1616-1618. Contemporary court records and
broadsheets tell us about the importance of meteorological events as
triggering factors in the background of these persecutions (Zwo
Hexenzeitung. Die erste aus dem Bisthumb Würzburg, 1616; Hossmann 1618).
During the third decade of the 17th century when the Thirty Years War
occupied the governing elites the organized witch-hunts in the
ecclesiastical territories of the Empire reached their peak. The climax of
witch-hunting again coincided with some extraordinarily dramatic
meteorological events.

Again it seems necessary to accept accounts in contemporary reports, which
almost never connected the pogromes with war, confessional strife,
state-building, changes in the medical or judicial system, gender relations,
or whatever historians might imagine. Instead, court records dwell upon
disease and death of children and cattle, destruction of crops and
vineyards. Chroniclers relate these individual misfortunes to more general
meteorological developments. And historians of climate must confirm their
observations, in general as well as in particular. The 1620ies were
characterized through long and cold winters, late springs, cold and wet
summers, and autumns, leading to crop-failure and increases in prices. Into
this atmosphere of enhanced tension broke a climatic event of unusual
severity, In 1626, during the last week of May, in the middle of the
vegetation period, winter returned. Temperatures declined to a degree, lakes
and rivers froze, and trees and bushes lost their leaves. Severe frost
destroyed the cereals and the grapes, and in some areas even the grapevines.
As Christian Pfister points out this was an unparalleled event within the
last 500 years. This uniqueness und of course the devastating effect of the
climatic anomaly affirmed contemporaries in their impression that it was an
"unnatural" event, caused by evil human agents in alliance with demonic
power.

Diaries allow introspection into the subjective perception of this
particular climax of the Little Ice Age. The unexpected return of winter
caused panic and anxiety among the peasants who could not remember ever
experiencing such destruction of their fields. Again the interpretation of
an "unnatural" climate emerged. And again the consequence was the search for
scapegoats. A chronicler in the Franconian town Zeil reported: "Anno 1626
the 27th of May, all the vineyards were totally destroyed by frost within
the prince-bishoprics of Bamberg and Würzburg, same as the dear grain which
had already flourished. ... Everything frozen which had not happened as long
as one could remember. And it caused a big rise in prices ... As a result
pleading and begging began among the rabble, questioning why the authorities
continued to tolerate the witches and sorcerers destruction of the crops.
Thus the prince-bishop punished these crimes, and the persecution began in
this year ...". Broadsheets of the following years demonstrate the supposed
responsibility of the witches for the particularly severe frosts in May
1626, adding later events like hailstorms, cattle diseases and epidemics
(Hesselbach 1627; Druten Zeitung 1627). Confessions under torture claimed to
have detected the devilish plan to destroy vineyards and grains for several
years in order to create hunger and disease at an extent that people would
be forced to cannibalize each other. Only the drastic measures of the
authorities stopped these attempts. And the measures were indeed dramatic.
In the tiny prince-bishopric of Bamberg, 600 persons were burned for
suspected witchcraft (Kurtzer und wahrhafftiger Bericht und erschreckliche
Neue Zeitung von sechshundert Hexen 1629), in the neighboring
prince-bishopric Würzburg 900, in Electorate Mainz 900, and under the rule
of prince-archbishop and Elector Ferdinand of Cologne in the Rhineland and
Westphalia nearly 2.000.

All these prince-bishoprics were rather weak political structures. The
Archbishop of Cologne for instance had mortgaged almost all his high courts
to local nobles as a compensation for debts. Like the previous two
generations, they were still prone to the persecutory demands of their
peasant communities. While larger towns like Amsterdam, or Hamburg, Venice,
or Vienna never developed any persecutory zeal against witches, and the
larger and more stable territories with their complex administrative
structures like France, or in the Empire territories like the Palatinate,
Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, Austria, etc. refused to participate in the
big witch-killing, many independent feudal lords, small counts,
prince-abbots or rural towns supported the persecutions, sharing the
superstitious beliefs of their peasants. The agrarian segment of society
which was most directly affected by climatic deterioration could decide
through self-administered justice about the procedure of scape-goating.

In large regions Europe the interdependence between climate and
witch-hunting remained intact until the era of Enlightenment. During the
well-known climax of the Little Ice Age witchcraft in the late 17th century
persecutions were reached its climax in Austria, the Baltic region and
Scandinavia, and only in the first decades of the 18th century in Eastern
European countries like Poland or Hungary (see the statistics in:
Ankarloo/Henningsen 1987/1990). In parts of Central Europe every
little-ice-age-year lead to an increase of witch trials or even waves of
persecution. So it is more than a mere metaphor that the sun of the
Enlightenment ended the era of witch-hunting (Behringer 1995). From the
1730ies on the climate - though cold - indeed was more stable than during
the decades before. Only in some backward areas of Germany, France, and
Austria, witch-trials were performed into the 1740ies and in southwestern
Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and Poland into the 1770ies.

The Age of Witch-Hunting thus seems pretty congruent with the era of the
Little Ice Age. The peaks of the persecution coincide with the critical
points of climatic deterioration. Witches traditionally had been held
responsible for bad weather which was so dangerous for the precarious
agriculture of the pre-industrial period. But it was only in the 15th
century that ecclesiastical and secular authorities accepted the reality of
that crime. The 1420ies, the 1450ies, and the last two decades of the
fifteenth century, well known in the history of climate, were decisive years
in which secular and ecclesiastical authorities increasingly accepted the
existence of weather-making witches. During the "cumulative sequences of
coldness" in the years 1560-1574, 1583-1589 and 1623-1630, again 1678-1698
(Pfister 1988, 150) people demanded the eradication of the witches whom they
held responsible for climatic aberrations. Obviously it was the impact of
the Little Ice Age which increased the pressure from below and made parts of
the intellectual elites believe in the existence of witchcraft. So it is
possible to say: witchcraft was the unique crime of the Little Ice Age.

The witch-hunts of the early modern period were continuously accompanied by
discussions about theological interpretations and natural reasons of
meteorological events (Alber/Bidembach 1562; Weyer 1563; Sigwart 1602;
Schopff 1603; Hossmann 1612; Sigwart 1613). Although the theological
discussions followed their own logic, I would like to suggest that the
discussion about witchcraft influenced the emerging science of meteorology.
During the last three decades of the fifteenth century, the question
regarding the possibility to influence the weather by means of witchcraft
counted among the most prominent topics of demonology. The Malleus
maleficarum propagated the idea that hailstorms could be caused by witches
though only with the help of demons and the permission of God. Opponents of
these ideas, like Ulrich Molitoris in his famous and often reprinted De
laniis et phitonicis mulieribus, though containing the first woodcuts of
weather making witches, flatly denied the possibility of artificial
influence on the weather. Since this topic was the center of Molitors
argumentation, his treatise could be seen as one of the first printed books
about weather. It is important to notice that the new science of meteorology
emerged in the context of an ardent theological and demonological debate
about the origins of the weather. In the beginning of the 16th century this
debate was shaped by an Opusculum de sagis maleficis of the nominalist
theologian Martin Plantsch at the university of Tübingen who excluded demons
from meteorology (Plantsch 1507).

When early meteorological treatises like the Nurenberg book Von warer
erkantnus des Wetters (Of true knowledge about the weather), avoid any
allusion to witchcraft and the demonological debate this provides an
implicit comment on the ongoing demonological debate. This publication of an
otherwise little known author, Leonhard Reynmann, contributed with its 17
reprints since 1505 enormously to the secularization and rationalization of
the topic. In Nuremberg with its strong humanist patriciate the possibility
of weather making witches was traditionally ridiculed. Though the Imperial
City like Swiss or Italian City republics owned a considerable rural
territory, nobody was burned there for suspected witchcraft during the 15th
and 16th centuries. The councilor Willibald Pirckheimer ridiculed Dominican
Inquisitors and witch-beliefs in his satires. His friend Albrecht Dürer
produced woodcuts treating the topic as a secularized subject for presenting
attractive naked women, and even the Poet Hans Sachs exposed witch-belief as
a bad dream or demonic illusion without material reality.

Two out of thirteen chapters in Reynmanns book, which since 1514 was simply
titled Wetterbüchlein (weather book), discussed exclusively the natural
causes of thunder- and hailstorms. While preachers of all denominations
talked into the 18th century about demonic causes of climate, they mostly
denied the possibility of witchcraft (Dilherr 1652; Ganshorn 1672;
Stoeltzlin 1692). After the age of the Witches Hammer a tradition of
exclusively secular explanations tried to find an escape from the dangerous
paradigm of scapegoating by simply neglecting demonological items. The
lesson to be learned in the sixteenth century that only God or nature were
responsible for major changes of the climate, seems still of actuality in
our time where in the eyes of many ecological sins substituted the moral
sins of the confessional ages. From the era of the Little Ice Age we should
learn the danger of agitating eschatological fears connected with climatic
changes.