By Carlos Rilova Jericó
Beyond all the controversy aroused by the adoption, already frenetic, of the North American custom of “Halloween” on the Bridge that we previously called All Saints' Day, the historian has to clarify something about this issue.
To begin with, those dates of the Dead, before the “Halloween” marketing arrived, were already fertile in matters of fears, ghosts, witches, etc… Nothing, then, seems to have been invented in that regard with this fashion imported from USA.
Take a look at Bécquer's “Rhymes and legends” and you will see that, in fact, they have nothing to envy of the most “gore” scripts in today's Hollywood. This is the case, for example, of the story “The Mountain of Souls.”
The “Don Juan Tenorio” by another great Spanish romantic, José Zorrilla, is another good example. It was customary – I don't know if it is still today – to perform that play, which dates back to 1844, on these dates and, of course, when Television arrived in this country, it was also customary to retransmit it on All Saints' Eve or on the day following.
That, it seems, had become something as traditional as the candy called “saint bones” and fritters which, by the way, continue to be sold these days with the same zeal as masks and costumes of clear North American inspiration.
So, I suppose, there will be nothing wrong with me telling today in this History email a story about sorcerers – not witches – hoping that this will not be considered a surrender to a fashion imported from the United States that, in reality (there will be need to say it once again), has only given us a commercialized tradition that came from Catholic Europe itself. Specifically, the Irish emigrants who hyperdeveloped the Celtic Night of Samain in the United States. A Christianized tradition like many other reminiscences of that world that we share between that island and this peninsula.
And these stories of witches, ghosts, Samain nights… passed through the filter of North American industrial society and the like, are sometimes full of unexpected paradoxes. Some that show us that what seems so foreign to us, so typical of a culture that would like to invade us, is in the end nothing but something that is part of a common culture. The Christian, in other words, that we share on both sides of the Atlantic and for several centuries.
The story of the (alleged) sorcerer I wanted to talk about today is good proof of that and it is that he is an alleged sorcerer of Anglo-Saxon origin, which makes him even more appropriate for this occasion.
His name was John Godfrey and in Professor David D. Hall's compilation of Witchcraft cases that were brought to court in the Puritan New England of the 17th century (one of the main sources of inspiration for Halloween), he occupies a good number of pages (from 114 to 133) of that book titled “Witch-hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England. A Documentary History 1638-1693”, published by Northeastern University Press in Boston in 1999.
The chapter that Professor Hall dedicates to John Godfrey – number 7 – has a revealing title that translated would be: “The Many Accusers of One Man (1658-1669)”.
That title is revealing because, in effect, as can be seen from the dates it covers, John Godfrey, who arrived in America around 1630 and died around 1675, will spend more than eleven years from court to court for accusations that many of his neighbors.
According to what is recorded in David D. Hall's book, Godfrey, a simple shepherd, a man of low social status, had enough talent, however, to irritate his neighbors with stricter morals and get into various conflicts due to his somewhat harsh and rude.
Among these accusations, one of the most striking (and timely for the case at hand today) was the one that – around 1659 – two of those neighbors – Charles Brown and his wife – were very quick to bring to the attention of the Essex County Court. woman – who claimed to have seen John Godfrey not covering his mouth when he yawned, thus discovering Mr. Brown (or so he said) a small nipple under that cheeky tongue that Godfrey had no problem showing when he yawned…
Perhaps we wonder if those North American colonial courts, so puritanical, so fearsome, with hangings and bonfires as easy as those of our Catholic inquisitions, also condemned for what only seemed like a lack of education and a small deformation of the mouth…
It is a big mistake to believe that these two circumstances put forward by Charles Brown and his wife were truly nonsense, as they seem to our contemporary eyes. The accusation against John Godfrey was truly serious, because in the Christian society of the 17th century, yawning with your mouth open was not only a symptom of poor education… but a sign of being possessed by the Devil or sold to him. Something that would be corroborated by the presence of that strange nipple in John Godfrey's mouth, which was another sign of familiarity with the Devil… because with him, it was believed, witches fed his familiar demons. Those kinds of servants that the Devil gave them in exchange for his soul…
That's how it is. At the time, in Christian Europe, it was believed that, if the mouth was opened and not covered, the Devil would enter the body through that open path and thus take over the soul that was inside, making the unfortunate man or woman who such a fault was committed at his absolute disposal. Without even being necessary for him to come to swear loyalty and step on the Cross in the coven or Sabbath.
That was the seriousness of the accusation against John Godfrey. He yawned with his mouth open, without covering it with his hand (as well-educated people still do today). Therefore, it could be deduced from this that he must already be in the power of the Devil, since he did not care that he could enter through the indiscreet opening where, in addition, the suspicious nipple could be seen to feed the “imps” or familiar demons… .
Was all this another mistake, one more, of those Protestant heretics whose descendants now seem to want to plasticize and trivialize us days like today? Nothing is further from reality. The Catholics of the 17th century shared those same beliefs. Especially when it comes to yawning…
In fact, in the popular and literary speech of the Spanish Golden Age, things such as having hunger well sanctified were alluded to. With this expression it was implied that those who were hungry and, therefore, yawned (this secondary effect of hunger in its beginnings is known) crossed their mouths (instead of covering it) precisely to stop the Evil One from taking advantage of the unfortunate circumstance to enter the body and take possession of the souls of those hungry Christians…
So, as I hope we have seen by the simple union of these two stories of the Protestant and Catholic Baroque, our traditions are not as different or as separate as we might believe. Something that perhaps we can reflect on this new All Saints' Day, or “Hallowmas”, meditating on the story of the reckless John Godfrey, identified as more than a suspected witch, for not having covered, or crossed himself, his mouth when he yawned, in New England in 1659…