12/08/2026
Pen*ses kept in birds’ nests. Witches riding goats. Cats and toads as magical familiars… yes, really.
The stories and imagery surrounding witchcraft in the late medieval and early modern period could be fantastical, bizarre and sometimes almost absurd.
In this reel, artist Olivia Plender tells us one particularly strange story from the Malleus Maleficarum, the notorious 15th-century witch-hunting manual. Witches were accused of making men’s pen*ses disappear and keeping them in birds’ nests, where they moved as though alive and were fed oats and corn. Olivia explains why this story resonated with her and how it connects to Little Fennel’s Complaint.
These ideas also found their way into the art and visual culture of the period – sometimes with a satirical edge. Around 1500, Albrecht Dürer depicted a witch riding backwards on a goat, while Hans Baldung’s Witches’ Sabbath (1510) mocked the macabre and s*xualised image of witches found in texts like the Malleus, filling the scene with frogs, a cat and a witch flying through the air on a goat.
It might sound ridiculous now, but the ideas behind these stories had very real consequences. Fantastical accusations about witchcraft were bound up with anxieties around s*x, gender and power, and used in the persecution of women.
See Little Fennel’s Complaint at Modern Art Oxford until 16 August. Friends go free!
