At first glance, the ‘witch craze’ in the Southern Low Countries seems to have been thoroughly researched. Numerous scholars and local historians have mined the archives to map out the dynamics of witchcraft persecution. The basic facts are clear: contrary to popular belief, prosecutions for witchcraft were very rare in the Middle Ages, and did not become a frequent occurrence until the end of the sixteenth century.¹⁷ From around 1596 onwards, witches were burned at the stake across almost the whole of the Southern Netherlands.¹⁸ According to recent estimates, 202 witches were executed in the County of Flanders between 1450 and 1685, while 57 were sentenced to death in the Duchy of Brabant during the same period. In other principalities, such as Hainaut, Namur, and Luxembourg, the death toll was even higher and increased to circa 1,150-1,250.¹⁹ Witchcraft turned out to be mainly a rural phenomenon, although cities such as Bruges or Ghent also had their ‘witch years’, namely 1595 and 1601 respectively.²⁰ In fact, Adriaene was just one of thirteen individuals in Ghent accused of witchcraft in 1601. During the seventeenth century, the Southern Netherlands became a central region for witchcraft persecution, as opposed to the Northern Netherlands, where witchcraft trials hardly occurred in the early modern period.²¹

In spite of several inspiring studies that re-examine witchcraft trials within a gendered framework, this phenomenon has mainly been studied from a legal-historical perspective and by scholars whose primary concern was with legal procedures, such as the difference between preliminary investigations and criminal interrogations.²² Other points of interest for legal scholars include the difference between the intellectual concept of demonological witchcraft and the popular notion of harmful sorcery, and the legal consequences of that difference.²³ These legal studies were also occupied with the balance of power between different judicial courts in the region, such as the local benches of aldermen, the ecclesiastical courts, or central courts such as the Council of Flanders.²⁴ This dominant legal perspective focuses heavily on the outcome of witchcraft trials, in particular cases where a death sentence was pronounced. However, the example of Ghent shows that the majority of witch trials did not lead to such executions. Between 1364 and 1713, at least forty-four women and sixteen men (including one boy in his minority) were accused of witchcraft in Ghent. Most of these cases occurred at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Only twelve out of sixty individuals were executed, although the significant disparity between female and male victims is immediately noticeable (tab. 1). Additionally, five women died during their interrogation, or later in prison.

While the horrific experience of banishment or corporal punishment should not be downplayed, it is noticeable that these were the types of punishments handed down in the majority of cases instead of the death penalty. Furthermore, twelve individuals – the vast majority of whom were women – were released without punishment. To determine whether these women deliberately employed strategies to avoid the harshest penalties, we need to let these women speak for themselves and pay attention to their statements in these trial records.

Although trial records were drawn up by the authorities with the intention to penalise the conduct discussed in the sources, and contained testimonies of defendants who often moulded their stories into narrative constructions and persuasive arguments, it is exactly the subjective nature of these sources that gives them such value.²⁵ These records reveal how ordinary men and women actively turned (gendered) societal expectations to their advantage during their pleas in court, and as such they offer us a unique resource from which we might examine contemporary social and cultural phenomena.²⁶ Moreover, the value added to historical research into crime and agency by considering emotions has recently been recognised by several researchers, including historians working on the Low Countries.²⁷ Current research themes include examining the access of elite women to civil justice through petitions and lawsuits, the ‘invisibility’ of women in criminal history, the specifics of male and female criminality, and emotions expressed by women in the early modern courtroom. For instance, late medieval and early modern women could assert legal agency in matters such as illegitimacy, elopement cases, instances of judicial separation, or same-sex acts.²⁸ These insights, however, have yet to be implemented into the research of witchcraft in the Low Countries. Several scholars have pointed out that individuals accused of witchcraft rationally ‘worked the law’ by incorporating their emotions in their own defence.²⁹ Others have claimed that emotions gave victims a language through which they might better describe traumatic experiences that were perceived by bystanders as acts of witchcraft.³⁰ In doing so, these studies move beyond stereotypes of the (female) witch and suggest new ways of thinking about early modern gender relations.

To what extent did women acquitted of witchcraft accusations in early modern Ghent use such gendered, emotional language to rationally explain these charges, thus exerting agency during their trial? Unfortunately, not every witchcraft case in Ghent contains sufficient information to determine why the accused was released, or whether they consciously pursued a strategy to obtain acquittal. In 1601, for instance, the trial records briefly mention that Lynken Bernaerts was released because she was considered ‘weak-minded’.³¹ In other cases, scribes simply noted that there was ‘insufficient evidence to support a conviction’.³² Other examples show that enduring multiple torture sessions without confessing, or shedding heartfelt tears of repentance, was often seen as proof of innocence.³³ Distinctions could still be made in such cases, however. Some suspects, like a woman named Pieryne, who was accused of attending the witches’ sabbath, were released costeloos ende schadeloos, meaning she did not have to reimburse legal expenses.³⁴ Others, like Adriaene Schepens, were forced to pay compensation for their imprisonment. It is not always clear, especially in these earlier, less well-documented cases, whether the paying of such compensation merely implies that these people had endured a prolonged, and therefore more expensive stay in prison, or that this indicates a remaining degree of doubt among the civic authorities.

There are some elaborate cases, however, in which the defence mechanisms of accused women can indeed be identified. In Adriaene’s case, it is noticeable how she consciously constructed an image of herself as a woman of honour who prays devoutly and obeys her husband. After all, it was at his instruction that she had ‘intruded’ into her neighbour’s houses. At the same time, the power dynamics at work within her marriage apparently raised enough suspicion to convince bystanders that an accusation of witchcraft was warranted. However, Adriaene convincingly dismissed the instances in which she publicly silenced her husband and called out his alcohol consumption as merely domestic disputes. In doing so, she upheld the narrative of a poor yet peaceful household that did not require further investigation, but should instead receive some civic aid in fighting poverty. Throughout her interrogation, Adriaene persisted in using rational arguments to avoid any association with the supernatural: illnesses were simply part of everyday life and her so-called devil’s marks were only the scars that resulted from childhood diseases and domestic violence.

The same strategy was employed by several other women in Ghent, although it was not always successful. When Elisabeth Vlamyncx was interrogated by the Council of Flanders in 1595, for example, she showed the same scepticism as Adriaene towards the charges laid against her. For instance, she insisted that neither butter nor cows could be bewitched and that she considered such ideas mere superstition. Like Adriaene, she offered rational explanations for the devil’s marks found on her body by the local hangman. Moreover, Elisabeth came from a family of notables and officials in the secular and ecclesiastical government. When she was accused, Elisabeth used her influential family circle to hide her from the authorities and even prevent any real efforts being made to arrest her. After a while, however, her co-defendants revolted against this unequal treatment, and Elisabeth was eventually interrogated. The rational defence strategy employed by Adriaene failed Elisabeth, and she was put to death on 23 December 1595.³⁵

Other women appear to have adopted a similar approach and – whether consciously or not – played on negative gendered stereotypes to achieve their acquittal. In 1639, Janneken Blaublomme presented herself as simply a talkative woman who meant no real harm. Everything she had said about the devil, she contended, had been uttered light-heartedly without ulterior motives or any real knowledge of what witchcraft was actually about.³⁶ In the same year, Mayken van de Velde used a similar strategy. When she was accused of having poisoned cakes, she pointed out that she had indeed noticed that these cakes – which she herself had not helped to make – had turned out badly. In fact, she had eagerly told several children how chewy the cakes made by some other women were, as if she took some delight in this culinary failure. By presenting herself as a gossiping woman who was no stranger to schadenfreude, she might have brought negative female stereotyping upon her person, but in doing so managed to release herself from supernatural associations.³⁷ Amidst magical suspicions, these women often opted for rational and worldly explanations to justify their behaviour.

In examining the trials of women accused of witchcraft in early modern Ghent, this essay has highlighted a dimension of female agency often overlooked in traditional legal and demonological analyses. By focusing on the rational, non-supernatural defences employed by women like Adriaene Schepens and others, this research underscores how these women strategically navigated societal and gendered expectations to refute accusations that could lead to their execution. Several of these women used reasoned arguments and carefully constructed personas to undermine the credibility of the charges laid against them. Some exploited gender stereotypes to cast themselves as harmless, while others adopted assertive yet rational defences that defied the supernatural associations tied to witchcraft. This approach sheds light on how accused women exercised agency within the constraints of a superstitious society. Their responses not only reflect individual resilience, but also reveal the broader social and cultural dynamics that influenced the outcomes of these trials.

Unfortunately, much of the source material on witchcraft trials in the Southern Netherlands remains fragmented and dispersed across municipal archives and several regional departments of the Belgian national archives. This fragmentation has encouraged a focus on legal scholarship and has limited scholars’ ability to identify patterns in testimonials from the accused themselves. In order to stimulate future research on witchcraft that addresses the gaps and challenges in the existing historiography, it is necessary to establish an online, publicly accessible database documenting all individuals accused of witchcraft, including those who were acquitted. This will allow for a more nuanced understanding of the cultural and gendered dimensions of witchcraft accusations. In turn, we will be able to distinguish whether the rational responses of Adriaene to her accusers were truly exceptional or part of a larger defence strategy common among women in the early modern Southern Netherlands.