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The accused was Anna Roleffes, known as Tempel Anneke. She was arrested on the charge of witchcraft in June of 1663. She was found guilty and was executed on December 30th that same year. Her trial was long and involved, with many witnesses from several towns and villages.
Consisting of direct translations of the trial testimony, The Trial of Tempel Anneke portrays a large and varied cast of characters including trades people, farmers, local nobility, village drunkards, and Tempel Anneke herself. Tempel Anneke was in several ways typical of those accused of witchcraft, yet from the testimony she emerges as a complex and controversial figure. She was literate and owned a few books and herbals; she prided herself on her medical and pharmaceutical knowledge and until the final stages of the trial when her confession was extracted under torture, she was sharp, assertive, and even witty in her responses to questioning. This English translation offers direct archival insight into the workings of 17th century law, contemporary understandings of justice, perceptions of natural and magical causes, and above all, the social history of the period.
While other witchcraft materials exist, this is the only text available in English that allows students to follow a witchcraft trial from beginning to end. Highly readable, this astonishing narrative is perfectly suited to being read as a complete document. The useful additions of introduction, appendices, glossary, and index provide readers with important background information so that they can engage directly with the material.
"This is a fascinating and important book." - Moshe Sluhovsky, California State University, Long Beach
- Imprint: University of Toronto Press
- Published: December 2005
- Pages: 176
Peter A. Morton is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal University.
‘Most, if not all, readers will come to this book seeking accurate information about a trial that deals with an event and a mindset very distant from our own. The translation offers exactly that: it affords us a glimpse at the judicial and legal complexities that governed this witch trial, the interrogations, and the final prosecution of the accused. Helpful footnotes shed light on some of the more obscure procedures, provide names not immediately familiar, and enlighten us about unfamiliar colloquialisms. All this makes the book an excellent primary source for undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as for scholars who may not have access to the archive or who cannot read German.’
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
‘Peter A. Morton's edition of the papers relating to [Tempel Anneke's] case, which are ably translated by Barbara Dahms, provides an excellent insight into how the dynamics of a witch-trial operated. The subject matter is not sensationalized, and, as Morton makes clear in his introduction, The Trial of Tempel Anneke is not going to revolutionalize our understanding of the European witch-hunts. But the reader willing to stay with the texts of Anneke's trial will be left with a clear impression of how suspicions could build against a supposed witch, how the evidence of witnesses demonstrated that witchcraft and magic were firmly imbricated in the popular culture of the period, and how the accused witch would find her certainty in her innocence destabilized and eroded, a process aided by but not entirely attributable to torture.’
The Times Literary Supplement