The witch trials were conducted by the state to consolidate national, secular power (the power of the kings); the witch trials were instigated and conducted by the elite, judges, lawyers, priests, etc.

      Some witch hunters were paid by the church or state for each convicted witch.

      Women were searched mostly by men for witch marks, often they were raped at the same time.

      Women (witches) were tortured, sexually abused, and viciously killed (burned at the stake).

      All women were dehumanized, made subhuman, made to hate their own bodies, their own sexually, themselves, made to feel that they were evil, that her very nature was demonic.

      Fearing that they would be accused of being a witch, women learned to hold their tongues, that silence and gentility were keys to remaining alive. By the 19th century, women had become totally docile.

      Witches could be characterized by any or none of the following:

• were healers using folk medicine, herbal cures, spells (these women were generally out spoken and were relatively influential)

• provided gynecological services; midwife, contraception, abortion

• (some) practiced infanticide

• (some) practiced the old fertility cult religions

      The church viewed witchcraft was as treason against God: in some places, the state viewed witchcraft as treason against the state.

Miscellaneous note: Exodus 20:18 reads "You shall not allow a witch to live."

      1) A quote from Pat Robertson regarding the Equal Rights Amendment:

Feminism is a "socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." page xiii

      3) Rgarding earlier studies of witchcraft by men: " Historians were denying that misogyny and patriarchy are valid historical categories and were refusing to treat women as a recognizable historical group. Reading these works is like reading accounts of the Nazi holocaust in which everyone would agree that the majority of victims were Jewish, but no one would mention anti-Semitism or the history of violent persecution against Jews, thereby implying that it was "natural" for Jews to be victims. Without mention of a tradition of oppression of women, the implication for the sixteenth century is that of course would be attacked-and that it must somehow have been their fault. This is what historians conclude when they have no awareness of traditional misogyny or traditional oppression of women." page 4

      4) Who were accused as whiches and why were they accused? - Women who were a threat to the patriarchal order or to religion as "relentlessly patriarchal." page 8

      5) Regarding a summary of earlier studies by other historians: "The patriarchal system also explains why many women accused other females: if a woman displeased or threatened the men of her community, she would also be seen as dangerous by the women who depended on or identified with those men. The internalization of "who is not acceptable" goes even deeper than that. Women-and other oppressed groups- sometimes try to outdo their oppressors in scorning persons perceived as outsiders, in hope of being accepted, or tolerated, themselves. In the witchcraft trials, the poor attacked those even poorer; marginalized women attacked those women even further out of power than they. Women accusers often acted at the behest of their menfolk, as part of a family strategy of accusation." page 10

      6) "That torture and execution took place before large crowds shows not only the blood-thirst of the age but even more the desire of church and state, local and national, to control their citizens through intimidation."

Chapter 1: Why Women? Gender, Numbers, and Class

      1) Numbers & gender:Conservative estimates: 200,000 accused witches, 100,000 deaths

      Survivors lead shattered lives, exiled from homes, reputations destroyed, unable to earn a living.

      On average, women were 80% of the accused, 85% of those killed. page 23

      2) Most accused men where related to women who were previously convicted of sorcery, as husbands, sons, or grandsons. page 24

      3) Those men unrelated to convicted witches had a previous criminal history for crimes such as theft, highway robbery, murder, heresy (religious crime), or sexual crimes such as rape, incest, fornication, adultery, or sodomy. page 25

      4) Often the accused was the village healer, dispenser of folk remedies, and hence a powerful and respected person. They were perceived as people who had the power to cure and also had the power to kill.

      Most of the accused were poor although some powerful men sometimes tried to destroy other powerful men through their wives page 26

      5) The accused were women who spoke out, held to their convictions, were independent of mind and spirit, or refused to be put down, and of course, older women - women over age 50. page 27

      6) "Traditionally, peasant women in bad marriages had complained of how they were treated, but increasingly now when they did so they were regarded as "traitors" to their husbands." page 28

      7) Conclusion on demographics of witches

      In short, independent, strong-minded women who outlived their economic usefulness and who made good role models for younger women

      "The old woman was and ideal scapegoat: too expendable to be missed, too weak to fight back, too poor to matter." page 29

Chapter 2: The Structure of a Witch Hunt

      1) The benefits to accuser include destruction a woman reputation, her banishishment, or her death, perhaps even gain part of her property. page 31

      2) Why did the witch trials happen at this time in history?

      a) The goal of legal system changed from restoring the harmony of the village through restitution and reconciliation to punishing the criminal through fines, punishments, and the death penalty.

      b) Justice was initially administered by local community. The system changed to one where justice was administered by magistrates in far-off towns and cities, resulting in justice becoming an impersonal matter. Torture became an accepted way of "ascertaining the truth"

      c) The medieval system of lex talionis disappeared, encouraging accusations that could not be proven (one could falsely accuse with impunity). (Under lex talionis if the accused if found innocent, the accuser suffers the penalty that would have gone to the accused if he had been found guilty.)

      4) On antifeminism and witch trials: "That European women first emerged into full legal adulthood as witches, that they were first accorded independent legal status in order to be prosecuted for witchcraft, indicates both their vulnerability and the level of antifeminism in modern European society." page 41

Chapter 3: Witchcraze in the Central Region

      1) Why? (referring to Germany and German speaking regions): "Religious upheaval, the precedent of heretics and Jews, centralization of power within many duchies without the restraint of an effective overlord, the weakening of women's economic and social position-each of these explains part of the puzzle but not the whole." page 68

      2) Why? (referring to France): "As the gap between rich and poor increased, social tensions rose and were dealt with by the powerful families via witchcraft charges against the indigent. Always the accusers were better off, even if only slightly, than the persons whom they accused." page 70

Chapter 4: Witchhunts on the Periphery

Chapter 5: Women and Work

      1) Page 99-103 give explanations for the increasing vulnerability of working women in the 16th century:

      Inflation caused by gold and silver flooding into Spain from New World

      Overpopulation created land shortage with attendant food shortages, hunger, unemployment, unrest, and increase in crime

      Women driven from jobs so men could have them

      Beginnings of capitalism result in peasants being driven from the land and into wage labor; women's farm incomes had stemmed from selling excess garden produce (veggies, dairy products, eggs) and were not available to residents of cities, i.e., women's economic contribution to the family declined when the family moved to the city

      "Though economic motives are important in many trials, they seem to have played an inordinate role in New England. Carol Karlsen analyzed the social and financial destruction of a well-to-do widow of Wethersfield, Katherine Harrison, who was singled out by her neighbors as a witch not only because who owned valuable land but also because she did not remarry; that is, because, in spite of having no sons and, apparently no brothers, she chose to charge of her lands herself. Nearby farmers showed her what they thought of this affront to Puritan patriarchy by beating her oxen, boring a hole in the side of her cow, killing her heifer, breaking the back of her steer, destroying her corn crop, and cutting her hops. The court apparently refused to protect her, and even gave her a heavy fine. Already suspect as a fortune-teller and healer, she was driven our of Wethersfield as a witch. The final disposition of her property is not known, but it is clear that Harrison was not allowed to enjoy it. The point had been made: land was to be inherited and controlled by males." page 104

Chapter 6: From Healers into Witches

      Trained doctors, priests, folk heakers, and midwives all used the same techiniques to cure illness- herbal remedies and prayers (spells). This put priests in direct financial competition with (women) folk healers for business. page 113

Chapter 7: Controlling Women's Bodies

      Page 135-139: women's sexuality: "The classic statement from the Malleus Maleficarum, "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable." summed up the widespread belief that women were by nature oversexed, wicked, and therefore dangerous to men."

      "Women were seen as overassertive sexually, even to the point of wanting t be raped, a belief widely held in the medieval period. The later idea that women wanted the devil to seduce them was based on the medieval literary formula in which women seek and enjoy rape."

      "Because premarital sex was the norm and premarital pregnancy not condemned until the seventeenth century, young women and men were freer to learn about themselves, to experiment sexually, and to try out partners than they would be again until the 1960's."

      "Furthermore, women were encouraging their young daughters to take lovers, were arranging this for them, and not, apparently, with marriage yet in mind; the intention must have been to supervise their sexual initiation. "

Chapter 8: Keeping Women in Their Place

      1) Women's reactions: "In much of western Europe in the peak years of the craze, any woman might have felt like a hunted animal. When we narrow the focus from the national level to that of village or town, we see the real horror of this period form women. In an attack that ultimately cut across lines of age, class, and income, women found themselves alone. With few exceptions, their families did not speak up for them out of fear and, in some cases, turned against them. Accused by their neighbors or named under duress by their friends, usually they faced the court without any support. Faced with legal procedures they did not understand and threatened with torture, they struggled to say what they thought the judges wanted to hear. But many were not let go, and the hopelessness of the voices that speak through the trial records from prison underlines the fact that they realized there was no way out for them.

      Women learned to live with a fear far greater than our current dread of rape or assault., If a woman could be cried out a witch for telling someone's fortune or speaking back to a neighbor, well then, one had better stay to oneself, mind one's business- obey one's husband. Women learned especially not to trust other women, for what woman might not be called up before the judge and start blabbing?" "...The chief sixteenth-century device for teaching both sexes about men's ultimate control over women, however, was the public execution of witches."

      "...witchcraft was quintessentially the crime of women." Page 148-149

      2) "The saying went " there is something of the witch in every woman." "page 157

      3) "As the sociologist Richard Horsely observed, accusations of witchcraft were "a highly effective means of social control." "

      "These events [intolerance and massacres of women, Jews, Moors, Indians, Africans, and all other conquered peoples] hold up a mirror to European men of power, and the image reflected is an ugly one, deeply disturbing for the future of any less powerful group whom they might control. Todoros'v chilling comment is apt: "The 'barbarity' of the Spaniards has nothing atavistic or bestial about it; it is quite human and heralds the advent of modern times." " page 165

Appendix A: Early Modern Sources for the Witch Hunts

      "Asserting that no punishment was cruel enough, he [Bodin, died 1596] advocated torture, especially for children and delicate persons, and advocated encouraging children to give evidence against parents. Believing that death penalty was warranted even if normal evidence was lacking, he concluded that it was better to kill innocent persons than to allow a witch to live." page 175

Return to Booknotes Menu

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net