Women, the devil, and a cat's head: The trial of Anna and Tobbe Mall in Reval, 1594

Abstract

This article reconstructs and analyzes the trial of two women in the Reval Lower Court in 1594: Anna, a young woman of Swedish extraction from Finland, and an old Estonian woman, Tobbe Mall, both arrested on suspicion of infanticide. Over the course of repeated interrogations, some of which were conducted under torture, the dark outlines of a crime emerge, along with the relationships between the two women and their social milieu. Although the circumstances of the birth and death of two of her other children form part of the context, the trial is focused around the ostensible killing of Anna's child from her liaison with Bodt Schröder, an old member of the Reval City Council and former judge from a long and distinguished local lineage.

In the court records allegations are raised that the two women might have had dealings with the devil, that is to have been involved in witchcraft. These aspects reflect changes in the social climate of Reval at the end of the sixteenth century, when witchcraft trials increased in frequency. The period following the end of the Livonian Wars was a time of general social crisis and deteriorating economic circumstances, weakening the boundaries of the traditional class society. The article considers a range of specific methodological and source-critical problems raised by the interpretation and analysis of a trial as an event, and calls attention to the need for more extensive research on court documents in the future.