The devil's mark: a socio-cultural analysis of physical evidence

Abstract

AbstractThis article discusses the search for ‘the devil's mark’ as an example of the social embeddedness of evidentiary methods. The belief in early modern England was that the devil branded the bodies of witches with symbolic yet concrete corporeal malformations such as marks and growths. Thus a bodily search for the devil's mark became a common procedure in witch-trials. The analysis here of the fierce debate about the probative value of this allegedly direct physical evidence demonstrates an affinity between the evidential dispositions of the participants and their social position. The meaning of this method of proof emerged in the context of different, sometimes inconsistent or even competing, cultural concepts.