Tears

Tears and Witchcraft

According to old folk belief, witches were unable to shed tears. This strange and cruel idea became one of the many “tests” used against accused witches during the witch trials, especially in medieval and early modern Europe.

The belief may have its roots in Christian ideas about holy tears. Tears shed over the crucifixion of Christ were considered sacred, and St Bernard of Clairvaux (1091–1153) wrote that the tears of the humble could penetrate heaven and conquer the unconquerable. From this, witch-hunters developed a grim piece of logic: if tears were holy, then they must be offensive to the Devil. Therefore, the Devil would prevent his witches from crying.

What began as religious symbolism became a weapon in the courtroom.

Tears as Evidence of Innocence or Guilt

This “truth” was repeated in medieval witch-hunting manuals, including the Malleus Maleficarum (1486), and later by influential demonologists of the 16th century.

Jean Bodin, in De la Demonomanie des Sorciers (1580), claimed that witches and wizards could neither cry nor look a man directly in the eye. King James I of England, who was also James VI of Scotland, repeated the same idea in Daemonologie (1597):

. . . threaten and torture them [witches] as ye please, while first they repent; (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime,) albeit the woman-kind especially be able otherways to shed teares at every light occasion, when they will, yea, although it were dissembingly, like the crocodiles.

In other words, a woman’s tears were treated with suspicion even when she did cry. If she wept, she might be pretending. If she did not weep, she was probably a witch.

The accused was trapped either way.

The Cruel Logic of the Witch Trials

An accused witch’s inability to cry during interrogation, torture, or trial was taken as proof of guilt. The possibility that terror, exhaustion, shock, pain, or despair might leave a person beyond tears was rarely considered.

A defendant was damned if she cried and damned if she did not.

The Malleus Maleficarum specifically instructed judges to pay close attention to tears:

For we are taught both by the words of worthy men of old and by our own experience that this is a most certain sign, and it has been found that even if she be urged by solemn conjurations to shed tears, if she be a witch she will not be able to weep.

This meant that something as human and involuntary as crying could be twisted into evidence. A woman standing before her accusers, terrified and possibly tortured, was expected to perform grief in a way that satisfied men who had already been taught to suspect her.

The Fear of False Tears

Judges were also warned that witches, knowing the importance placed upon tears, might attempt to fake crying. Some manuals claimed that accused witches might smear their cheeks with spittle in order to appear tearful.

Defendants were therefore watched closely. Their faces, eyes, hands, gestures, and emotional reactions were scrutinised. Every movement might be interpreted as deceit. Every silence might be interpreted as demonic stubbornness.

The Malleus Maleficarum also claimed that witches might not cry before judges or during interrogation, but would weep in their cells. Even this was dismissed as suspicious. Such tears were not to be trusted, because they could be another trick of the Devil, “since tearful grieving, weaving and deceiving are said to be proper to women.”

This reveals not only the demonological thinking of the time, but also the deep misogyny that shaped many witchcraft trials. Women’s tears were natural when convenient, deceitful when inconvenient, and demonic when necessary.

The Final Test

If an accused witch managed to cry, she might theoretically be discharged, unless there remained a “grave suspicion” that she was guilty. In reality, many defendants who cried were still convicted. There were always other accusations, other signs, other rumours, other “proofs.”

At the moment of sentencing, a judge might give the accused one final chance to prove her innocence by crying. According to the Malleus Maleficarum, he would place his hand upon her head and pronounce:

I conjure you by the bitter tears shed on the Cross by our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world, and by the burning tears poured in the evening hour over His wounds by the most glorious Virgin Mary, His mother, and by all the tears which have been shed here in this world by the Saints and Elect of God, from whose eyes He has now wiped away all tears, that if you be innocent you do now shed tears, but if you be guilty that you shall by no means do so. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

By the time sentence was passed, many victims were already incapable of tears. Some had been tortured until they were barely conscious. Others had been broken emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

For some, crying might only mean more torture. Refusing to cry might bring a swifter death.

The Occult Meaning of Tears

In folk magic, religion, and occult symbolism, tears are powerful. They may represent grief, purification, repentance, release, devotion, or spiritual truth. Yet during the witch trials, this sacred human expression was twisted into a tool of persecution.

The belief that witches could not cry shows how easily spiritual ideas can become dangerous when placed in the hands of fear, authority, and fanaticism. It also reveals how witch-hunters turned the human body into evidence: a glance, a mark, a silence, a tremor, a tear, or the absence of one.

The accused witch was not judged as a person. She was judged as a symbol of evil before she ever entered the courtroom.

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