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Review of The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (2025)

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Martin Nesvig’s newest book, The Women Who Threw Corn, offers a novel approach to the cultural view and development of sorcery and magical practices in sixteenth-century Mexico, as seen through the lens of acculturation, or cultural assimilation between groups. This is the first book in an upcoming two-part series called Xolotl Rite, and whereas this book highlights women, the second will focus on the acculturation of non-Indigenous men. Organized into three parts, “Witches and their Enemies in the Early Modern World,” “Magic in the 1520s and 1530s,” and “The Cultural Hybrid Healer-Witch,” the book’s structure enables readers to engage directly with whichever section most interests them. Through a detailed analysis of previously unexamined magic-related investigations (p. 153), Nesvig demonstrates that the acculturation of the non-Indigenous population to Nahua culture occurred more quickly and at an earlier stage than earlier scholarship has suggested.

Using a methodology of “reverse ethnohistory,” he inverts the traditional historiography of studying Indigenous responses to Spanish customs and their imposition through colonialism, instead looking into how non-Indigenous women adapted healing and spiritual concepts taken from Nahua culture. In this way, he flips the focus of “histories of discovery, women, witchcraft, the Inquisition, and the social history of settler-colonialists” (p. 20).

The first three chapters comprise Part I, which examines the “legal, theological, and cosmological ideas about magic and sorcery in both Spain and Mexico” (p. 25). The primary methodology here is a linguistic analysis, analyzing how certain terms relating to magic were translated both into Spanish and into Nahuatl and how false equivalencies were established between the Spanish “witch” and the Nahua “nahuallis,” how the Spanish “sorcery” became the Nahua “tlaphohualiztli.” The following section analyzes early sorcery trials and investigations in Mexico City, unpacking how the women on trial rapidly acculturated themselves to Nahua ideas of magic across class and ethnic boundaries. Part III rounds out the narrative by exiting the geographical scope of Mexico City and extending the time frame to the latter half of the sixteenth century. In this part especially, Nesvig investigates the more physical and visual aspects of magic, such as tattooing, the evil eye, and the use of peyote and patle. By the end of the book, Nesvig recounts a story of a non-Indigenous woman using Mesoamerican forms of magic without the use of a Nahua intermediary, demonstrating a far greater extent of acculturation for the time period than has previously been understood.

The deep and complex analysis of previously unexplored sorcery investigations makes Part II the highlight of the book. Here, Nesvig pays particular attention to the variety of ways that different populations in colonial Mexico City incorporated Nahua ideas of magic based on their own cultural background. For example, Nesvig demonstrates that Spanish women adopted Mesoamerican iconography, powders, roots, and yerbas to conduct love magic and the Nahua language to conduct spells, and Indigenous healing rites. On the other hand, women of African descent utilized freedom magic that drew upon Nahua materiality, while the Spanish witches did not. Nesvig also sheds light on the unequal ways that the courts treated Spanish and African women on trial for witchcraft. Finally, Canarian, Morisca, and North African women, who were seen as oversexed, understood the stereotypes associated with their ethnicities and used sex and love magics as survival strategies. Nesvig argues that their own liminal position in Spanish society allowed them to quickly adapt and acculturate to Mesoamerican forms of magic. Each of the case studies analyzed across the chapters helps Nesvig demonstrate that the process of acculturation in the capital city was both immediate and rapid among women from many different ethnicities and social classes.

Flowers, incense burners and perfumes. Florentine Codex. Source: Wikimedia Commons

One area of potential confusion lies in the text’s near-synonymous use of the terms “witch” and “sorcerer.” In Inquisition historiography, scholars typically emphasize that Spanish authorities distinguished between the two: witches were those who entered into an explicit pact with the devil, while sorcerers practiced magic without such a pact. Nesvig acknowledges this distinction, yet often employs the two terms interchangeably, which at first can appear imprecise. On closer reading, however, this choice proves consistent with his broader aims. Because Nesvig approaches magic-related practices primarily through an Indigenous lens, retaining the Spanish-imposed differentiation would have distorted that perspective. The Nahua themselves likely would not have marked such a rigid boundary between witchcraft and sorcery, and the fluidity of Nesvig’s terminology reflects this. Whether entirely intentional or not, the effect is to demonstrate how non-Indigenous women engaged with and absorbed Nahua understandings of magic, for which the Spanish categories would have been ill-suited.

Another point of confusion is Nesvig’s use of the term “cultural syncretism,” or the merging and blending of multiple cultures, as a factor in the process of acculturation. While Nesvig does not fall into the most serious critique of “syncretism,” it is still important to be aware of how its use might impact the work. The framework of syncretism has been heavily contested, especially among scholars of religious studies, mostly due to its connotations indicating that each of the cultures in the melding process could be distilled to a “pure” version that existed before their contact. However, especially when looking at religion and spiritual beliefs, cultures are continually changing due to both internal and external factors, and the idea of a “pure” version of a culture is reductive. Therefore, while Nesvig’s framework of acculturation is convincing and helps develop his argument, his use of cultural syncretism to demonstrate it is something that must be carefully unpacked so as to not fall into the term’s contested history.

The tamal and tortilla seller. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Despite this minor point of contention, The Women Who Threw Corn is a fascinating and accessible read for anyone interested in the history of magic, European-American contact, or histories of gender. Seen primarily through the evolution of magic practices in New Spain in the sixteenth century, Nesvig demonstrates how non-Indigenous women utilized Nahua words, materials, and spiritual iconography in the creation of their spells. Beyond this, the methodology of a reverse ethnohistory is intriguing, and can be useful for future histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous contacts. If The Women Who Threw Corn is any indication, the second book in the Xolotl Rite series promises to be equally impressive.

Chloe Foor is a Phd student in History at the University of Texas at Austin. Her current project focuses on how physical spaces impacted gendered, racial, and religious identities in the New Kingdom of Granada in the seventeenth century, as well as how historical actors manipulated those identities to claim space for themselves. Currently, she is working with the JapanLab/History Games Initiative to develop a video game highlighting Cartagena Inquisition’s witchcraft trials during the early seventeenth century.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Brian Levack on Possession and Exorcism

By Brian Levack

Ever since the beginning of Christianity, the belief has existed that demons can enter the bodies of human beings and take control of their physical movements and mental faculties. Those people who reportedly have experienced such possessions, known as demoniacs, have displayed a wide variety of symptoms, including convulsions, rigidity of the limbs, and vomiting extraneous substances such as pins, nails, or stones. A few demoniacs were reported to have levitated. The possessed also reportedly conversed in languages of which they had no previous knowledge, spoke in deep voices that were different from their normal voices, displayed contempt for sacred objects, uttered blasphemies, went into trances, and foresaw the future. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period of the Reformation, there was an “epidemic” of such possessions. Some of them were group possessions in which many people in small communities, such as convents and orphanages, displayed the same symptoms.

The challenge for historians is to make sense of this bizarre, pathological behavior. For most people living at the time, the afflictions experienced by demoniacs made perfect sense, since they believed that the Devil or one of his demonic subordinates had the power to enter people’s bodies against their will. Others, however, including many who believed in the existence of the Devil, posed alternative rational, natural explanations why these demoniacs acted the way they did. The most common “rational” explanation of what was “really happening” to the possessed was that they were either physically or mentally ill: either epileptics or victims of hysteria. In the view of most modern psychiatrists, demoniacs were simply experiencing some sort of disorder, such as dissociative identity disorder, commonly known as multiple personality syndrome. Another rational explanation was that demoniacs were faking their possessions so that they could engage in anti-social or anti-religious behavior without being prosecuted for a criminal or religious offense. They were able to do so because demoniacs were not legally or morally responsible for anything done or said while possessed, since the Devil was believed to have forced them to speak or act.

The only human being who could be held responsible for causing a possession was a witch who commanded the Devil to enter the body of another person. Many of the cases of witchcraft in the Reformation era began when demoniacs accused a person of causing their possession by means of witchcraft.

Medical and other rational explanations of possession can contribute to an explanation of some possession cases, but they cannot account for all the symptoms displayed by demoniacs, especially those that reflected the religious views of the possessed. The key to understanding this phenomenon is to recognize that all demoniacs, either consciously or unconsciously, were following scripts that were encoded in their religious cultures. They were, in a sense, performers in a sacred drama. Demoniacs learned their scripts from observing other demoniacs or by reading the many published narratives of other possessions or by hearing sermons that related the details of famous possessions. Some of them acquired knowledge of possession scripts from their exorcists, who suggested things they might say or do while in the state of possession. Nuns in convents often imitated the symptoms of those who had already exhibited some of the signs of possession. In the most famous case of possession in seventeenth-century Europe, the nuns in a convent at Loudun in France, after witnessing the convulsions and sexual gestures of the Mother Superior, Jeanne des Anges, began to act in a similar manner. This group possession resulted in a mass exorcism, and it led to the execution of a parish priest, Urbain Grandier, in 1634 for having caused their possession by means of witchcraft.

The scripts followed by Catholic and Protestant demoniacs and by the exorcists who tried to dispossess them were different. Catholic demoniacs, for example, were repulsed by the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, which is the most distinctive feature of Catholic sacramental culture. Protestant demoniacs on the other hand often reacted violently to hearing or even seeing a copy of the Bible, which was the foundation of Protestant faith. Catholic exorcists appealed to the Virgin Mary and other saints to help them expel the invasive demons, whereas Protestants, who emphasized the sovereignty of God to whom individuals prayed directly, left that task to God alone. Catholic demoniacs, especially young Catholic women, tended to display unconventional or prohibited sexual behavior during their possessions, whereas Protestants, who did not believe in a hierarchy of moral offenses, exhibited a wide range of sinful activities, including disobedience and playing cards. In more general terms, Catholics emphasized the innocence of demoniacs, whereas Protestants stressed their sinfulness. This helps explain why there were far more Catholic than Protestant demoniacs, since admitting one’s guilt might lead to the assumption that they were predestined to eternal damnation.

The incidence of demonic possession declined notably in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but in the late twentieth century the number of reported cases increased dramatically. Celebrity exorcists in Italy, Poland, and Latin America have been in large part responsible for this increase. The demoniacs who have flocked to these exorcists have not, however, displayed many of the classic symptoms of possession. They have not, for example vomited pins or blasphemed. In most cases they were plagued by medical or psychological problems and have sought the assistance of exorcists who promised to cure them. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries remain “The Golden Age” of demonic possession.

Day of Wrath (1943)

By Brian Levack

The film Day of Wrath, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, is in my opinion the finest film ever produced on the subject of witchcraft. Dreyer, who is best known for The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), adapted the film from a drama by the Norwegian playwright Hans Wiers-Jenssen. The film is based on the accusation and trial of Anne Pedersdotter, the wife of the Lutheran theologian Absalon Pedersen Beyer, for witchcraft. Anne, who was Norway’s most famous witch, was burned at the stake at Bergen in 1590.

Day of Wrath takes many liberties with the historical record of Anne’s trial. The film nonetheless illustrates many of the sources of witchcraft trials in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Europe, when approximately 45,000 individuals—most of them women—were executed for this crime. The film introduces a second witchcraft prosecution, that of an older woman, Herlof’s Marthe, who is identified as a friend of Anne’s deceased mother. Marthe conforms much more closely than Anne to the stereotype of the old, poor unmarried witch. The film also illustrates how tensions within families, especially between mothers and daughters-in-law, could result in witchcraft accusations. In the film Anne’s mother-in-law, Merete, had never approved of her son, Absalon’s second marriage to the young and beautiful Anne. When Anne falls in love with Martin, Absalon’s son by his first marriage, the relationship between Anne and Merete deteriorates. When Absalon dies suddenly upon discovering that his wife and son are having an affair, Merete charges Anne with having caused Absalon’s death by witchcraft. The film also shows how Anne gradually comes to believe that she is a witch. Having learned from Absalon that her mother had once been accused of witchcraft, Anne begins to believe that she had acquired her mother’s occult powers. Her success in winning Martin’s affection and in bringing about her husband’s death by wishing it to happen reinforces her belief that she is a witch, leading her to confess at the end of the film. Very few people accused of witchcraft confessed voluntarily in early modern Europe, and there is no evidence that the historical Anne Pedersdotter did so. But those few witches who did confess freely usually did so after they became convinced that they had the special powers attributed to them.

The film, which has become a classic, displays many of the features of Dreyer’s skill, most notably his willingness to hold close-ups much longer than most other directors. The film also gained political significance for what could be seen as its criticism of the Nazis, who occupied Denmark during the war, when the film was made. The Nazis banned the film, presumably for its depiction of unauthorized searches, the use of torture, and the efforts of authorities to create fear within society. The enduring historical value of the film, however, lies in its powerful depiction of the dynamics of witchcraft accusations in early modern Europe.

Norwegian actress Lisbeth Movin as the witch Anne Pedersdotter in Day of Wrath.

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