[Malediction and healing of mothers and children reflected in Hungarian witch-trial acts]

The witch-trials of the 17th and 18th centuries expressed special aspects of the religious perceptions and atmosphere of the society all over in Europe (so in Hungary as well). Documents of this colourful social notion, i.e. the records and reports of the trials, are published here together with an investigation of the processes. The author chose those cases which were related to the conjectured bewitching and magical curing of mothers and young babies. This paper provides new approaches for both ethnography and medical history. The defenceless position of pregnant women against diseases always gave way for allegations, that when they became actually ill, it was someone who had cast a spell on them. There are different sorts of examples from cases that describe simpler symptoms to more extreme ones, which sometimes label almost appalled and even horrified mental and body pains of the patients. There are processes in which delactation is attributed to bewitching. This reflects the deep fear of the mother, since lack of milk easily ended with the death of the baby in those days. Another widely accepted fact was that the puerpera could attract the attention of diabolical, satanic creatures and people. The excruciating pains and the haunting of these women also appear often in the documents. Their contrasting, reverse desires and determined passions laid behind the induced abortions and the curing of infertility. Sometimes, in the latter, magical love stimulants were used. Probably, it was owing to the presumed defenceless of babies against evil forces that the inquiries of seduction occupy a strikingly big part in the documents. Sometimes parents could not produce any reliable explanation of the unpredictable illness of their child. In cases of falling into fire, trismus (lockjaw), limb deformation, or complete somatopsychic reduction they were led to suppose that it had been caused by transcendental powers. Almost each document mentions such instances. ...