The Devil's Mark: When the Body Becomes Evidence

In our last post, we journeyed a little into the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and explored some of the Malleus Maleficarum, and its influence on the concept of the Devil, women, piety, and sex. We also explored who controlled all of those narratives: men.  

Women’s bodies were examined for witches' or Devil's marks - where their familiars (a demonic animal that helped a witch in their harmful magical workings against people, animals, and property) suckled blood for sustenance. A witch’s teat was a small, nipple-like projection that witch-hunting claimed could be found somewhere on a witch’s body. Unlike an ordinary breast, it might appear in an unexpected place, sometimes amongst folds of skin or in an intimate area.

In early modern Europe, the answer could have disturbing consequences, particularly for women accused of witchcraft. Again, it is important to understand that their definition of witchcraft referred to harmful magic. That is why it was both taken seriously and feared. The search for the Devil’s mark offers us a glimpse into a world where religious beliefs, ideas about women, and the authority to judge another person’s body could collide.

Investigators sometimes stripped accused women and searched them for evidence of demonic allegiance. Witchcraft writers described the so-called Devil’s mark in unsettling detail. In The Tryal of Witchcraft (c. 1700), John Bell described marks that might resemble “a blew [blue] spot, or a little tate [teet], or reid [red] spots, like flea biting.” He also noted that some appeared in “the most secret parts of the body.” Other early modern accounts described a further test: pricking the suspected mark with a pin. According to the account of Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth (1691), he describes a witch's mark as: "a Spot that I have seen, as a small Mole, horny, and brown-coloured", and "the supposed mark could be insensitive to pain and might not bleed when pierced.”

Think about what that meant for an accused woman. With or without her consent, her body could be exposed and probed by others, and the results interpreted through the beliefs about the Devil. The examination was about more than finding a mark. It was about who had the authority to touch and inspect a woman’s body and interpret what they found according to their theocratic laws. Accused women could lose control over their own bodies in the name of uncovering an invisible spiritual crime.

These beliefs crossed the Atlantic to New England. During the infamous and tragic Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692, six accused women - including Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, and Elizabeth Proctor - were subjected to a physical examination on June 2, ordered by Essex County Sheriff George Corwin. The surviving record lists the women who conducted the search and includes a person identified as "J Barton Chyrurgen." That historical term does not map exactly onto a modern-day surgeon, and the document does not tell us precisely what Barton personally did.

Think about what that meant for an accused woman. The degrading experience of having to strip naked in front of women who were not members of your family would be distressing enough. The possibility of a man closely inspecting the most intimate parts of your body, with or without your consent, adds another dimension to that indignity.

The examiner recorded supposed abnormal growths on three women's bodies. A second examination, conducted about three or four hours later, produced different observations. Rebecca Nurse later challenged the examination process. In a petition dated June 28, she asked the court to appoint other women to examine her, specifically naming two midwives among these she considered knowledgeable and skilled. Her petition also recorded that one of the original examiners had believed the feature found on her body might have had a natural cause. These documents reveal more than the search for a supposed Devil's mark. They show that the interpretation of a woman's body could be contested, even among those involved in the examination. Yet the accused women had limited control over who examined them and how those observations were used. Bodily autonomy is one of the wider cultural contexts for my forthcoming book, Puritans & Sex. Witchcraft is not the subject, but these episodes illuminate the intersections of gender, religious authority, equality, and bodily autonomy. It begs the question: when people believe the body can reveal the state of the soul, who gets to interpret the evidence?

A Little Death & Damnation will return with another journey into the darker corners of early modern history. Until next time, keep questioning the past. It normally has receipts.

Notes & Sources

1. John Bell, The Tryal of Witchcraft,: Or, Witchcraft Arraign’d and Condemn’d (c.1700), discussion of the witch’s mark. Digitized copy catalogued by the Wellcome Collection.

2. William Perkins. The Damnable Art of Witchcraft. London: Cantrell Legge, 1618. Internet Archive.

3. Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (London: Kagan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1926), chapter 2, “The Worship of the Witch”.

4. Salem Witchcraft Examination, June 2, 1692. Examination of Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Proctor, and other accused women for supposed witch’s marks, conducted by surgeon J. Barton and nine local women at the direction of Essex County Sheriff George Corwin. Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, University of Virginia.

5. Petition of Rebecca Nurse to the Court, June 28, 1692. Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, University of Virginia.

6. Robert Kirk. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies: A Study in Folk-Lore & Psysical Research. London: David Nutt, In the Strand, 1691. Pp. 76.