Directions: This document is from AP European History but will still be helpful in learning to read documents critically. Read through this document paying close attention to point of view. After analyzing it, write a paragraph telling me what might have actually happened here. Your answer does not have to be forced by the evidence (deduced) but it must be a reasonable assumption based on the information in and circumstances of the document.
“Walpurga Hausmannin has, upon kindly questioning and also torture, confessed her witchcraft and admitted the following: When she had become a widow, she cut corn for Hans Schlumperger. Him she enticed with lewd speeches and gestures and they convened that they should meet in her dwelling, there to indulge in lustful intercourse. But it was not the said bondsman who appeared to her, but the Devil in the latter’s guise. He made her many promises to help her in her poverty and need, wherefore she surrendered herself to him body and soul. For feed she often had a good roast or an innocent child, which we also roasted, or a suckling pig. The Devil also compelled her to do away with and to kill young infants at birth. This she did as follows: A child of the Governor here she had so infected with salve that he died within three days. Three years ago she had sucked out the blood of citizen King’s child, a twin, so that it died. She ahs also rubbed a salve on a beautiful son of the Chancellor, this child had lovely faire hair and she had given him a hobby horse so that he might ride on it till he lost his sense. He died likewise.”
Court record concerning
the testimony of Walpurga Hausmannnin,
a licensed midwife in Dillingen