Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia

Abstract

IN HIS CONTROVERSIAL ESSAY European Witch-Craze of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, H. R. Trevor-Roper noted that, a result of Schism of 1054, the Slavonic countries of Europe-with exception of Catholic Poland, exception which proves rule-escaped participation in one of most disreputable episodes in Christian history. Similarly, in his recent book Europe's Inner Demons Norman Cohn observed that great witch hunt was an exclusively Western phenomenon-Eastern Europe, world of Orthodox Christianity was untouched by it. ' Did Muscovite Russia, that proverbially rude and barbarous kingdom, indeed manage to preserve its innocence while other, ostensibly more civilized nations went mad with witch hysteria? At least one highly respected Russian scholar, Nikolai la. Novombergskii, did not think so. In introduction to his collection of seventeenth-century Muscovite witchcraft trial records published in I906, he wrote, Considering overall significance of historical documents presented here, we find that witchcraft trials were conducted in Russia with same degree of cruelty those in West and that government authorities of Muscovite state cooperated in these trials zealously did their counterparts in Catholic and Protestant countries.2 Keith Thomas has recently defined witchcraft as attribution of misfortune to occult human agency. According to this definition, a witch was someone with ability to injure others mysteriously. The terms vedun