THE DROP OF THE HAMMER

A novel based on true events

available at Amazon.com in both Kindle and Paperback format

It is the year 1599 in the Spa-Creppe region of what is now Belgium. Kramer and Springer’s Malleus Maleficarum has enflamed the minds of both the nobility and the peasants. It doesn’t take much to be accused. In fact, it doesn’t take anything at all.

Summary:

Françoise Mathieu is a young widow who lives with her in-laws in Creppe. One day, as she is listening to the Town Crier in Spa, she learns she is being accused of not only witchcraft, but also of having physically attacked Remacle Le Rosy, her husband’s cousin. A call for witnesses is being made.

From one day to the other, her life turns into a nightmare and her life hangs by a thread.

PREFACE

The Drop of the Hammer is a fiction, but its roots are grounded in true events that took place in the village of Creppe in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

Creppe, located in the Ardennes of what is now Belgium, was at the time of the original events, part of the Ban de Spa.

The Inquisition and The Burning Times arrived in the Ban de Spa on August 23rd 1581, when the Chatelain, Robert de Linden, in the presence of his two aldermen, Collard and Lambert, ordered an official inquiry into the problem of witches in the Ban de Spa.[1]

Armed with Kramer and Springer’s Malleus Maleficarum, the authorities ushered in a reign of terror fed by: ignorance, fear and especially greed.

It is a fact that a large number of people living in Creppe at that time, as well as a good number of their animals (cattle and horses among others), seem to have been afflicted by a mysterious illness.

Even today, what is not understood creates fear.  All we need to do is look at the Covid-19 pandemic, which is raging at the time of this writing, and the fear that is being created around it . . . mostly by people who do not know what they are dealing with.

To be fair, De Linden’s worries were not unfounded. Something was causing a “mysterious illness” in the area and it was not something new. The only problem is that his ordered inquiry threw the spotlight onto a group of innocent people.

To understand this “mysterious illness”, it is necessary to know something about the geography of the area, and the type of work the people of Spa did . . .long before and long after The Burning Times reached the Ban de Spa.

Belgium is an old mining country. For coal? Yes, for coal, but not only for coal.  The Spa-Creppe area was especially known for its zinc and lead mining.  In fact, its exploitation of zinc-lead deposits dates back to the Prehistoric times.

The name of this “Mysterious illness that seems to have haunted de Linder was/is none other than Lead Poisoning.[2]

It would be unfair to put all the blame of The Burning Times onto Lead. There was another reason why the witch trials took like wildfire and it was called self-interest.

The most incriminating fuel was “greed”, a common denominator in all the cases during The Burning Times. How easy it was to get rid of a bothersome wife, a hated neighbor, a way to speed up an inheritance, and anyone who for some reason or the other was just in the way. No one was asking witnesses to prove anything. All a witness had to do was present to the court what they:

  • thought
  • could have seen
  • would have seen
  • might have hear
  • and what the cousin of their friend’s mother-in-law thought and the list goes on.

On February 3rd 1582, not six months after de Linden ordered the inquiry, various “witnesses” accused Jehenne, the daughter of Henry Jehan Anseau of being a witch.  The first witness was Father Leonard who accused her of not attending church and, last but not least, the fact that several members of her family were also witches. The second witness was Mathieu, son of Mathi of Creppe who claimed that she had made a child die simply by sitting and eating at the same table. These witnesses are only two of several who ran to the Sergeant-at-Arms to testify. They were successful. Jehenne was burned at the stake, being duly strangled beforehand at Jonkeu. According to Albin Body in his Spa, Histoire et Bibliographie, Jehenne was burned along with her three children.[3]

In 1610, two other women from Creppe were accused of being witches by a long parade of so-called witnesses who testified in court against them. The first was Catherine, the wife of Parmentier. The second was Françoise, the widow of Le Grand Henry.

The main witness to testify against Catherine was François Le Rosy (also called Remacle in other documents), from Creppe. He claimed she had used magic to not only kill his first wife, but also several of his farm animals.

Françoise was accused by Gilson Froidville of Spa of having been seen gathering mushrooms while another witness accused her of having given an apple to a little girl who died soon afterwards.

Catherine and Françoise were spared the horrors of Jonkeu, but not of the inquisition. Because both women were accused of homicide, their cases had to be tried by the Court of Justice of Spa and then presented to the Court of Justice of Liège before the sentencing could be carried out. Fortunately, the members of this court were more advanced than their colleagues in Spa and Creppe. They requested additional information as they were not convinced that either one of these women was guilty.

Both Catherine and Françoise were acquitted but had to pay the expenses.[4]

As I have already stated, the roots of The Drop of the Hammer, are grounded in what happened in Creppe so long ago. It tells the story of a young, rather naïve, widow from Creppe (also called Françoise) who, like the real Catherine and Françoise, is accused by a herder called Remacle Le Rosy de Creppe and who like the real Françoise becomes a strong woman, ready to fight for her life in a patriarchal society.

[1]  Pierre Den Dooven, Sorcellerie dans le Ban de Spa

[2]  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health – http://www.cdc.gov “It does not matter if a person breathes-in, swallows, or absorbs lead particles, the health effects are the same; however, the body absorbs higher levels of lead when it is breathed-in. […] Within our bodies, lead is absorbed and stored in our bones, blood, and tissues. It does not stay there permanently, rather it is stored there as a source of continual internal exposure. As we age, our bones demineralize and the internal exposures may increase as a result of larger releases of lead from the bone tissue. […] Because these symptoms may occur slowly or may be caused by other things, lead poisoning can be easily overlooked. Exposure to high levels of lead may cause anemia, weakness, and kidney and brain damage. Very high lead exposure can cause death.

[3] Albin Body Spa, Histoire et Bibliographie

[4] P. Gendarme and J Lohest Creppe, Sur la Voie du Temps Passé