1. For a few comments on early modern Wilno demography and the literature on the topic, see Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 428-29. On Kraków and Prague, see Belzyt, Leszek, Kraków i Praga okolo 1600 roku: Porównanie topograficznych i demograficznych aspektów struktury społecznej i etnicznej dwóch metropolii Europy środkowo-Wschodniej (Toruń, 1999), 73–135 Google Scholar, which gives an estimated total of about fifty thousand for the Prague conurbation in 1600 and about thirty-five thousand for Kraków and its suburbs. On Gdańsk, see the collected edition Cieślak, Edmund, ed., Historia Gdańska, vol. 2, 1454–1655 (Gdańsk, 1982), 444 Google Scholar, in which Jerzy Stankiewicz, in his “Urbanistyczny i przestrzenny rozwój miasta,” suggests a population of about fifty thousand in 1600 but with much fluctuation over the century.

2. See Łowmiańska, Maria, Wilno przed najazdem moskiewim 1655 roku (Wilno, 1929), 164–65.Google Scholar

3. My topography of seventeenth-century Wilno is based on two surveys of the city made in preparation for the visits of King Władysław IV in 1636 and 1639. They are to be found in the Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego (BUJ), Berlińskie zbiory (B) slav. folium (f.) 12 and B slav. f. 15. The maps accompanying this article were created on the basis of these documents. The first manuscript has now been transcribed and translated into Lithuanian with an extensive commentary in Paknys, Mindaugas, Vilnaius miestas ir miestieciai 1636 m.: Namai, gyventojai, sveciai (Vilnius, 2006).Google Scholar See also Paknys, Mindaugas, “Wilno roku 1636 według ‘Rewizji Gospód,'” Lituano-slavicaposnaniensia: Studia historica 12 (2007): 87–107 Google Scholar; and Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, which draws heavily on these surveys, especially 20-76, on the topographies and their socioconfessional significance.

4. On the distribution of power in early modern multiconfessional, multiethnic Lwów, see Myron Kapral', Natsional'ni hromady L'vova XVI-XVIII st. (sotsial'no-pravovi vzaemyny) (L'viv, 2003), especially 95-157. On the practice in the imperial parity city of Augsburg, see François, Etienne, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, 1648-1806 (Sigmaringen, 1991).Google Scholar

5. On this statute, see Łowmiański, Henryk and Łowmiańska, Maria, eds., Akta cechów wileńskich, 1495-1759, 2 vols. (Vilnius, 1939; Poznań, 2006), 1:451–59.Google Scholar A1666 royal decree limited Roman and Greek seats in the magistracy to Roman Catholics and Uniates, but the principle of parity stood, and the model for broader sharing in the guilds remained that of the highest municipal corporations. See Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 8-9,249-73.

6. On the Jewish settlement, see Frick, David, “Jews and Others in Seventeenth-Century Wilno: Life in the Neighborhood,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12, no. 1 (2005): 8–42;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Frick, “Jews in Public Places: Chapters in the Jewish-Christian Encounter in Seventeenth- Century Wilno,” in “Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-modern Poland,” ed. Teller, Adam, Teter, Magda, and Polonsky, Antony, special issue, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 22 (2010): 215–48.Google ScholarSee also Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 37-41. On Wilno architecture and the lack of privacy, see ibid., 69-76 and, for an overview of property ownership by confession and neighborhood, 59-68.

7. The term is Muir's, Edward (see his “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 [January 1999]: 379–406)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and he credits the phenomenon with helping create a sort of civil society in early modern northern Italy. See, in this regard, the detailed attention to litigation, specifically protestations, as a means of preserving honor in witchcraft trials in Małgorzata Pilaszek, Procesy o czary w Polsce w wiekach XV-XVIII (Kraków, 2008), especially 371-72.

8. Elected officials to the magistracy were “benchers” ﹛ławnicy, scabinii), councilors, and burgomasters. That was the ladder up which a career in municipal government progressed in Wilno. At the peak was the wójt, elected by the magistracy and presented to the king for confirmation. The archives offer two sets of legal books for the magistracy as a whole: the acta of the lower court of the bench, and those for the higher court of the councilors and burgomasters. Unfortunately, there is much confusion in the ordering of these sets of acta. On the functioning of the Wilno magistracy, see Ragauskas, Aivas, Vilniaus miesto valdantysis elitas XVII a. antrojoje puseje, 1662-1702 m. (Vilnius, 2002);Google Scholar and Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 14-16,431n56.

8. Elected officials to the magistracy were “benchers” ﹛ławnicy, scabinii), councilors, and burgomasters. That was the ladder up which a career in municipal government progressed in Wilno. At the peak was the wójt, elected by the magistracy and presented to the king for confirmation. The archives offer two sets of legal books for the magistracy as a whole: the acta of the lower court of the bench, and those for the higher court of the councilors and burgomasters. Unfortunately, there is much confusion in the ordering of these sets of acta. On the functioning of the Wilno magistracy, see Ragauskas, Aivas, Vilniaus miesto valdantysis elitas XVII a. antrojoje puseje, 1662-1702 m. (Vilnius, 2002);Google Scholar and Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 14-16,431n56.

9. The standard handbooks on the history of medieval and early modern Polish- Lithuanian law remain Bardach, Juliusz, Historia Państwa i prawa Polski do roku 1795, vol. 1, Do polowy XV wieku, 2nd ed. (Warsaw, 1964);Google Scholar and Zdzisław Kaczmarczyk and Bogusław Leśnodorski, Historia Państwa i prawa Polski do roku 1795, vol. 2, Od polowy XV wieku do r. 1795 (Warsaw, 1966). On the peculiar institution of the Horodnictwo, see Łopaciński, Euzebiusz, “Horodnictwo wileńskie w latach 1470-1794,” Wilno: Kwartalnik poświęcony sprawom miasta Wilna 1, no. 2 (1939): 73–88.Google Scholar

10. For a guide to the extant sources produced in the courts of the patchwork of seventeenth-century Wilno jurisdictions and their lower instances, see Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 13-15 and the related footnotes.

11. I borrow the phrase “use of justice” from Smail, Daniel Lord, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423 (Ithaca, 2003), 19.Google Scholar Both his and Muir's arguments are highly suggestive for work on the context of litigation, in general, and that devoted to witchcraft, in particular, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

12. The literature on early modern European witchcraft is, of course, vast. In general, for these particular stories, I found most useful Levack, Brian P., The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, and, particularly for its focus on the local social contexts of accusations, Briggs, Robin, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York, 1996)Google Scholar. Although it says little about Poland-Lithuania and was published before the best new work on witchcraft in those territories appeared, Ankarloo, Bengt and Henningsen, Gustav, eds., Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar, offers much food for thought about comparisons across a broader European spectrum. New work that benefits greatly from these predecessors and looks more closely at the general area of focus here include Pilaszek, Procesy o czary; Pilaszek, Małgorzata, “Litewskie procesy czarownic w XVI-XVIII w.,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 46 (2002): 7–35;Google Scholar Ostling, Michael, Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (Oxford, 2011);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dysa, Kateryna, Istoriia z vid'mamy: Sudi pro chary v ukra'ins'kykh voievodstvakh Rechi Pospolyto'i XVII-XVIII stolittia (Kiev, 2008).Google Scholar Jurginis, J., Raganu gaudymo simtmetis (Vilnius, 1984)Google Scholar, offers a brief overview of the age of the witch-hunt, paying particular attention to Poland-Lithuania. Jablonskis, K. and Jasas, R., eds., Ragani( teismai Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 1987)Google Scholar, provides an annotated collection of primary sources on witchcraft trials in early modern Lithuania. Of the five documents treated here, only no. 3, the source for which has been printed elsewhere, is mentioned and given a brief summary in Lithuanian in that work. See most recently the survey article on pan-European witchcraft (including Poland-Lithuania) in Pilaszek, Małgorzata, “Procesy czarownic w Europie wczesnonowożytnej,” in Karpiński, Andrzej, Opaliński, Edward, andWiślicz, Tomasz, eds., Gospódarka, społeczeństwo, kultura w dziejach nowożytnych: Studia ofiarowane Pani Profesor Marii Boguckiej (Warsaw, 2010), 347–68.Google Scholar Kivelson, Valerie A.'s long-awaited and recently published study of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Muscovy, Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth- Century Russia (Ithaca, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, offers new and highly suggestive comparative cases.

13. Lietuvos valstybes istorijos archy vas (LVIA), Senai Aktai (SA) 5337,397r-v; printed in Frick, David, Wilnianie: Żywoty siedemnastowieczne (Warsaw, 2008), 117–18.Google ScholarIn spite of the use of honorific titles (in this case, “famous“), which was a part of the norm in the forensic rhetoric of the time, the participants in all these stories were non-nobles—simple residents of Wilno, who in some cases lacked even full burgher status.

14. LVIA, SA 5337,119r-120r; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 118

15. For a classic statement on the notion that, until the architectural changes of the eighteenth century, “nobody was ever left alone” (including the king), see Aries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Baldick, Robert (New York, 1962), 398–99.Google Scholar

16. For a translation of part of the 1644 inventory of the Winhold house, a Calvinist family at Castle Street 1.16, see Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 72. The original is printed in its entirety in Akty, izadavemyje Vilenskoju komissieju dlja razbora drevnikh aktov, vol. 20 ﹛AVAR; in earlier volumes, Akty, izadavemyje Vilenskoju arkheograficheskoj komissieju, Vilnius, 1893), 339-41.\

17. The protestation is preserved at LVIA, SA 5333, 287r-289r. It has been printed three times: in AVAR, vol. 10 (Vilnius, 1879), 282-85; AVAK, vol. 20, 360-61; and Frick, Wilnianie, 546-48. The story presented here is drawn entirely from this text. I deal with linguistic aspects of this document in Frick, David, “The Councilor and the Baker's Wife: Ruthenians and Their Language in Seventeenth-Century Vilnius,” in Ivanov, Viacheslav V. and Verkholantsev, Julia, eds., Moskoviia, Iugo-Zapadnaia Rus’ i Litva vperiod pozdnego srednevekov'ia (Moscow, 2005), 44–67.Google Scholar A Lithuanian summary of the text is in Jablonskis, Raganif, 47-48.

18. On this pervasive problem, see Meilus, Elmantas, “Apierastą lobį, paslėptą žemeje ar kitoje vietoje, arba 1655-1661 m. Vilniuje paslėptų lobių ieškotojo pradžiamokslis,” in Rimsa, Edmundas, ed., Istorijos akiraciai (Vilnius, 2004), 241–54.Google Scholar

19. The phrases given in bold are the Ruthenianisms in Latin script that Filipowicz introduced into his standard Polish-Latin macaronic text in order to assign ethnicity to his tormenters by their speech patterns.

20. There are two extant copies of the testament in the acta, one in the court of the bench, the other in the magistracy's councilors’ court. LVIA, SA 5334, 58v-62r, and SA 5099, 459r-462v. It has been printed twice, in AVAR, vol. 9 (Vilnius, 1878), 492-96; and Frick, Wilnianie, 549-53.

21. LVIA, SA 5115,262r-280v; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 201-12.

22. LVIA, SA 5112,244r-v; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 199-200.

23. For the confessional identifications, see, on Romanowicz, LVIA, SA 492r-493r; on Gawlowicki, LVIA, SA 5112, 242r-243r and 306r-308v; and on Piotrowicz, LVIA, SA 5113, 492r-493r.

24. See LVIA, SA 5115, 276v; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 209. In accounting, Lithuanians used both Polish złotys (1 zł equaled 30 Polish groszy [gr]) and Lithuanian kopy or “schocks” (units of 60 Lithuanian gr).

25. Lietuvos mokslii akademijos biblioteka (LMAB), f. 43-590, 32v, 33v-34r, 46r; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 405-7.

26. Wińska, once accused of horse theft, seems to have been a strong presence in the neighborhood. See Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 184-85.

27. For an overview of the state of the available sources, see ibid., 13-15.

28. See, among others, Pilaszek, Procesy o czary, 152; Ostling, Michael, “Konstytucja 1543 r. i początki procesów o czary w Polsce,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce, vol. 49 (Warsaw, 2005), 93–103 Google Scholar; and Teter, Magda, Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (Cambridge, Mass., 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. LVIA, SA 5337, 417r; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 101-2.

30. For simular formulae, see Bartlomiej Groicki's Polish-language handbook on Magdeburg law, first published in Kraków in 1559, available in a modern critical edition in Groicki, Bartlomiej, Porządek sądów i spraw miejskich prawa majdeburskiego w Koronie Polskiej, ed. Koranyi, Karol (Warsaw, 1953), 60–61,150-51.Google Scholar

31. Vilniaus universiteto biblioteka (VUB), F57-B54-3; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 211-12.

32. LVIA, SA 5337,159r; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 361-62. Thirteen years later, the “victim” would leave his modest estate to his allegedly poisonous wife, thanking her for her ministrations. See LVIA, SA 5340,202r-203v; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 363-64. See also Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 219-21.

33. On the vulnerability of cooks (including wives) to charges of witchcraft, see Briggs, Witches and Neighbors, 82, 229-30. On the “refusal of charity” as an opening to such allegations, see ibid., 137-46.

34. “For good or ill, people could not easily escape one another, something which played a vital role in breeding charges of witchcraft. This was the case because the core of the belief lay in the notion that witches had peculiar powers to harm their neighbours and the community at large Those who accused their neighbours could easily become suspects in their own turn, caught up in the same remorseless machinery of local conflicts and rumours.” Briggs, Witches and Neighbors, 4,19.

35. See, among the many others, Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host, 67.

36. See Pilaszek, Procesy o czary, 228; and Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host, 67-68, 87.

37. See LVIA, SA 5337,397r-v; printed in Frick, Wilnianie, 118.

38. One magistracy record included counterprotestations of bodily harm and a decision against the first plaintiff, requiring him to sit in the town hall prison for a while, pay all the court costs, and ask forgiveness of the counterplaintiff. See Frick, Wilnianie, 175-77; and Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 281-83. The other was the case of the poor furrier whose wife and in-laws attempted to poison him. See again LVIA, SA 5337,159r; printed in Frick Wilnianie, 361-62. In both cases we see “rehabilitations.” The man who sat out his term in the town hall prison went on to have an illustrious career as a Wilno burgomaster, and, as we have seen, the purported poisoning “victim” remained with his second wife and left her many things in his will, thanking her for her diligence. The question remains whether these alleged witches were similarly “rehabilitated.“

39. On the lack of fervor in the prosecution of witchcraft trials in the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see, for example, Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 194-95; and Pilaszek, Procesy o czary, 241,273-74. On Ukrainian Palatinates specifically, see Dysa, Istorija. On the Grand Duchy, see Pilaszek, “Litewskie procesy,” 17-18.

40. On the rhetoric of litigation in the Wilno courts (and the comments there have wider applicability to the many courts and jurisdictions of the commonwealth), see Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, 274-89.

41. A reading of Valerie Kivelson's new study of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Muscovy, Desperate Magic, prompts considerations of whether the Grand Duchy of Lithuania occupies a transitional space between eastern and western Europe in these matters, among others (e.g., the prevalence of male rather than female witches, or the relative lack of wide-spread fervor in the prosecution of witchcraft allegations).

42. They begin with LVIA 458.1.12 (for 1647) and continue in numerical order through the century, with few gaps after 1661.

43. On the Wilno executioner, see Obst, Jan, “Kat miasta Wilna,” Litwai Ruś: Miesięcznik ilustrowany,poświęcony kulturze, dziejom, krajoznawstwu iludoznawstwu 2, nos. 1-3 (1913): 12–40,96-110,163-83.Google Scholar Most recently, the data published by Karpiński, Andrzej, “Wilenscy 'mistrzowie sprawiedliwosci’ w drugiej polowie XVII i w pocza.tkach XVIII w.,” in Karpiński, Andrzej, Opaliński, Edward, and Wiślicz, Tomasz, eds., Gospódarka, społeczeństwo, kultura w dziejach nowożytnych: Studia ofiarowane Pani Profesor Marii Boguckiej (Warsaw, 2010), 385–403 Google Scholar, give detailed numbers to support my claim. (Although, Karpiński seems unwilling to accept my suggestion that German names are disproportionately represented among Wilno executioners and their wives for this period. Ibid., 387.) This general picture of a largely unoccupied mistrz stands in stark contrast to the impression the reader takes away, for instance, from Teter, Sinners on Trial, that the stakes were constantly burning and the blades constantly swinging in early modern Poland-Lithuania.

44. Hoszowski, Stanislaw, Ceny we Lwówie w XVI i XVII wieku (Lwów, 1928), 223, 275,276.Google Scholar

45. LVIA 458.1.35, 55v.

46. See Dysa, Istorija, 34-35; and Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host, 16-17.

47. On the roles of ritualized violence in creating community, see Nirenberg, David, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1998).Google Scholar For the felicitous phrase “background static of violence,” see ibid., 127.