Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia
Valerie Kivelson
Published online:
18 August 2016
Published in print:
21 October 2013
Online ISBN:
9780801469381
Print ISBN:
9780801451461
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Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia
Valerie Kivelson
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Valerie Kivelson
Pages
198–232
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Published:
October 2013
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Kivelson, Valerie, 'Trials, Justice, and the Logic of Torture', Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia (
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Abstract
This chapter discusses the role of torture in witchcraft investigations. In most witchcraft trials, testimony “led to torture” and suspects and witnesses were hoisted on the strappado, stretched with weights, burned with hot pincers, beaten with knouts, and, more rarely, subjected to water torture. Some cases refer to a torture chamber in which the ordeals took place, but they may have been applied in public at other times. Indeed, investigations for witchcraft prove particularly relevant to a consideration of the meanings of torture, because torture was routinely applied in such cases, and applied with an intensity paralleled only in trials for treason, heresy, and rebellion. In investigations of any lesser offenses, voluntary testimony and material evidence sufficed, but for murder and other major felonies such as witchcraft, Muscovite law favored coerced testimony.
Keywords: torture, witchcraft investigations, witchcraft trials, Muscovite law, water torture
Subject
Russian and Slavic History
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