Barthélemy Poignare - Two Waldensian Witches, “Le Champion des Dames”, 1451.
This illumination depicts two women, one astride a broom and the other sitting upon a stick. The figures of the women adorn the margins of a fifteenth-century manuscript of Martin le Franc’s poem “Le Champion des Dames”, a defense of virtuous women. The inscription above their heads identifies them as vaudoises, or Waldensians. Named heretics in 1215, Waldensians followed the teachings of Peter Waldo, a layman who began preaching in Lyon in the late 1170s. Waldensians adhered to vows of poverty and, perhaps most threatening to church authority, allowed preaching and consecration of the sacrament by any layperson, including women. Conflict arose between the Church and Waldensian believers over the next two centuries, with the Church accusing Waldensians of practicing witchcraft and holding illicit Sabbath celebrations. Lorenzo Lorenzi suggests that this image of Waldensian witches represents a transition from imaging witches as demonic and hypersexual to a more disconcerting depiction as humble, everyday women whose depravity is not immediately perceptible in their appearance.
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