My Inner Experience
The inner experiences that formed the core of this part of the book were clear in most dimensions: historical period (around 1600); location (near Freiburg im Breisgau, in southwestern Germany); life situation (the twins lived as teenagers in the forest near a village after losing their parents); crisis (the girl works secretly as a midwife, a baby she delivers dies, and she is eventually burned at the stake for it).
About the Location
The house where they lived and the nearby village correspond to the area around the village of Horben. Feudal landlords associated with the abbey, the “Lords of Horwen”, are mentioned in 12th century documents and were reported as having a castle on “Horben Mountain”. The feudal rights over the village were held by various landlords before being acquired by the city of Freiburg in 1582. However the village was not incorporated into the city then, or since. In 1525 Horben consisted of 24 farms in scattered locations, three houses of widows and an orphanage. It is near the area that is known in modern times as Hexental, that is, Witches’ Valley. By 1600 there are records of an inn and a chapel being located there. The current church in the village was built in the 1700s on the site of the previous chapel.
About the Persecution of “Witches”
My descriptions of the persecution of persons as witches and related details rely heavily on the historical record that I researched.
Two books that were especially helpful were In tausend Teufels Namen – Hexenwahn in Oberrhein (In the Names of a thousand Devils – Witchhunts in the Upper Rhine Area) by Ingeborg Hecht, Rombach, Freiburg, 2004 and Das Verschwinden der Hexen aus Freiburg (The Disappearance of the Witches from Freiburg) by Hillard von Thiessen, Arbeitskreis Regionalgeschichte Freiburg, 1997 (both available only in German).
I discovered in my research that between 1599 and 1604, 25 women were tried, found guilty, and executed as witches in Freiburg. During this same time 22 women and 4 men were tried as witches in Freiburg but found not guilty. The high-point of persecution in the region was between 1622 and 1631 in which at least 979 persons were executed as witches (von Thiessen, pages 20 and 44) Most persons charged as witches were accused of using magic to damage crops or livestock or for manipulating the weather in a way that caused damage. Due to the high infant mortality rate and the ambivalence of the church toward their profession, midwives were sometimes prosecuted as witches, but almost always for their part in the deaths of infants which they had helped deliver and their purported dedication of the souls of the deceased newborn to demonic purposes. In one spectacular case a midwife in the Basel area (30 miles south along the Rhine from Freiburg) admitted under torture that she had killed forty babies by sticking a needle in their heads and had then dedicated the souls so harvested to the devil (Hecht, page 58).
Another accusation against midwives was that they used parts of babies or other material associated with birth as ingredients in the magical salve that was said to be important in their ceremonies and was used to invoke various powers, including flying. An astonishing amount of official material of the time was given over to investigating what this salve might be, and suspects were often questioned about it. Hecht writes that the most-often listed herbs said to be used in the salve almost all contained alkaloids and were therefore to one degree or another consciousness-altering (Hecht, page 58).
The historical period of the witch hunts in this region was quite long, from 1500 to 1700. Most of the persons condemned as witches in Freiburg were executed by having their heads cut off. Death by fire was less often used but did happen in special cases. The prison conditions described and the route from the prison to the Cathedral in Freiburg where public executions took place are approximately correct. There was a prison near the center of the old city dedicated to housing suspects in witch trials, logically named the Witch Prison. A feature of the prison was that suspects held there who had financial resources were required to pay all costs associated with their imprisonment. An extravagant trial in the area (not in Freiburg but in the region) began in 1662. It took three years, had 188 accused, and called 100 witnesses (Hecht, page 49).
Christina would have disappointed if she had managed to get into the nunnery at Rupertsberg. After Hildegard’s death the life there became more and more similar to other nunneries of the time. In 1632 the nunnery complex was destroyed by invading Swedish soldiers and never rebuilt (though nuns of her order did continue in settlements in other locations including across the Rhine opposite Bingen where their work continues to this day).