Abstract
Shortly after the fall of the Bastille, a London newspaper was scandalized that people had been imprisoned there for mere trifles. Among the prisoners listed was a certain Girard, allegedly a treasure seeker.1 Was treasure seeking indeed merely a trifling offence? What had the courts and law enforcement agencies of premodern Britain and Europe to say about it? As we have seen in Chapter 1, treasure hunting as such was hardly ever illegal. It was, however, riddled with legal difficulties. What percentage of his find would the treasure hunter actually get? What would the fisc demand for the prince’s coffers? In addition to these juridical problems, an important part of pre-modern treasure hunting — magic — was never lawful. However, pre-modern treasure lore was so deeply steeped in magic that it is difficult to imagine treasure hunters not using the forbidden art. In this chapter, we will examine how the authorities dealt with treasure seekers in practice.
We command you to let them dig where they want to…but watch them closely.
(Order of the Duke of Württemberg to a bailiff concerning treasure hunters, 1711, Staatsarchiv Wertheim, F-Rep. 148a_33)
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Notes
E.g. R. B. Smith (1970) Land and Politics in the England of Henry VIII (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 129, 300.
E. Gönner and G. Haselier (1975) Baden-Württemberg (Würzburg: Ploetz), p. 41.
The following account according to Beaune, “Sorciers”. H.C. Lea (1986), Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1939, reprinted New York: Yoseloff), vol. 3, p. 1305 (to do justice to Lea, his notes went to press after his death; he never meant to publish them).
J. McManners (1985) Death and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 549; W. Behringer (2004) Witches and Witch-Hunts (Cambridge: Polity), p. 188.
more detailed I. Bostridge (1997) Witchcraft and Its Transformations (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 227–228. Bostridge was surprised to find people from a bourgeois background among the defendants. We may safely say that in trials against treasure hunters, this was the rule rather than the exception, see also the next chapter. Strangely enough, Bercé, Découverte, did not even mention this case.
W. Behringer (1989) “Kinderhexenprozesse” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, XVI, pp. 31–47.
J. Dillinger (2009) Evil People. A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier (Charlottesville/London, Virginia University Press), pp. 104–106, 121, 160–161, 166, 170, 173; problematic H. Sebald (1995) Witch-Children: From Salem Witch-Hunts to Modern Courtrooms (Amherst: Prometheus).
J. Haustein (1990) Martin Luthers Stellung zum Zauber- und Hexenwesen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer), pp. 91–94, 98–100.
J. Bodin (1973) Vom außgelasnen wütigen Teuffelsheer (Paris: DuPuy 1580, translated Strasbourg: Jobin 1591, reprinted Graz: Akademische Druck), pp. 165–166.
See, for example, P. de Lancre (2006) On the Inconstancy of Witches (Paris: Berjon 1612, translated Turnhout: Brepols 2006), pp. 377–379. Dillinger, Hexen, pp. 128–136.
H. Cunnington (1932) (ed.) Records of the County of Wiltshire being Extracts from the Quarter Sessions Great Rolls of the Seventeenth Century (Devizes: Simpson), p. 278.
Anonymous, Brideling; Thomas, Religion, pp. 732–733; R. Buccola (2006) Fairies, Fractious Women, and the Old Faith. Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press), pp. 110–112.
W. Hazlitt and J. Ritson (1875) (eds.) Fairy Tales, Legends and Romances Illustrating Shakespeare and Other Early English Writers (London: Kerslake), pp. 223–238, Thomas, Religion, pp. 733–734;Buccola, Fairies, pp. 109–110.
K. Rug (1980) Das Köllertal erzählt (Püttlingen: SZ), p. 37.
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Dillinger, J. (2012). The Authorities’ Attitude Towards Treasure Hunting. In: Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230353312_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230353312_6
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