The mixed traits of knowledgeable Renaissance magic : approaches to sorcery and witchcraft beliefs and the Malta Inquisition tribunal

Abstract

An in-depth analysis of the Inquisition trials suggests that Maltese witchcraft practitioners adopted the universal European popular beliefs to Malta's peculiar circumstances, leading to the emergence of two particular traits. The first of these arises from the geographical position of the island. Witchcraft trials leave one with the impression that they were the result of an infusion of cultures, a unique hybrid resulting from the confluence of popular values from both shores of the Mediterranean. These beliefs often resulted from a combination of South European witchcraft practices, local lore passed from one generation to the next, and carefully chosen Sephardic and Muslim sorcery rituals. The concoction of rituals resulted directly from Malta's attachment to the Catholic religion and its frontier fortress role vis-a-vis the neighbouring Islamic states. In short, one may argue that the presence of a predominantly Muslim North African and a Middle Eastern Muslim/ Jewish slave community in the staunchly Catholic state of Malta left its imprint on many aspects of Maltese culture, not least in witchcraft practices. Therefore Muslim, and to a lesser extent Jewish, beliefs were often mixed with local and other imported rituals from Christian Europe, resulting from which Maltese witchcraft came to contain distinctively unique characteristics of its own. There was also a close degree of contact between the different classes of Maltese urban society. The rich and poor often lived side by side, and the flow of ideas and beliefs between them appear to have been considerable. The fine distinction between the learned and popular elements of witchcraft beliefs in Malta are not always easy to distinguish, although one may argue that popular and learned elements of society shared a set of beliefs and were culturally much closer than is usually assumed. They did not only share day-to-day views about healing methods, but they even shared views on the necromantic elements of witchcraft that, by the early seventeenth century, pervaded the lower levels of society.