From 1435 to 1750, between one hundred and ten thousand and two hundred thousand Europeans were accused of witchcraft, and sixty thousand to one hundred thousand were executed by burning or hanging. Nearly 80 percent of the accused were women. This was not the work of irrational mobs, but rather involved all ranks of society, including the educated elite, who feared that witches, in league with Satan, were threatening their Christian way of life. Prosecution peaked in the decades from 1580 to 1650, and some 75 percent of prosecutions occurred in Western and West Central Europe, i. e., the Germanic states, France, Switzerland, and the Low Countries. For the most part, the prosecution of witches ended in the mid-eighteenth century when elites, who controlled the judiciary, abandoned their belief in diabolic witchcraft.
Causes
A number of factors contributed to witchhunting, and historians debate their relationship and relative importance. The development of the idea of the diabolical witch and legal changes that fostered torture were preconditions, while religious change and conflict, socioeconomic change, and political crises made it more likely by creating a mood of anxiety, which was expressed and relieved in witchhunting. Traditional misogyny and the defense of patriarchy at a time of great social change also played a substantial role. But the triggers for accusations were usually personal or communal misfortune. such as illness or the death of family or livestock, the loss of crops through a hailstorm, and occasionally episodes of demonic possession. Thus, while many conditions conducive to hunting witches might be in place, varying local circumstances and actions were decisive.
The Concept of the Witch Although the definition of a witch had been unstable, by the beginning of the fifteenth century a cumulative concept of the witch had emerged. This joined the idea long held by the common people of a witch as someone who practiced low, black magic (maleficia) to that of the elite who focused on witches’ service to the
Engraving of a witch riding backward on a goat accompanied by putti. Albrecht Durer. (Library of Congress)
Devil (diabolism) and the pact in which the witch gave her soul to the Devil in return for his help. Her body was marked with the Devil’s mark, called in England the witch’s teat, from which demons sucked blood. Witches were said to fly on broomsticks, fence posts, spits, animals, or of their own accord to attend meetings called Sabbaths, where they worshipped the Devil in a black mass, participated in a sexual orgy, practiced cannibalism, and created magical ointments from the bodies of dead infants. In some areas of Europe ideas about the Sabbath were not prominent, and in England demons, known as familiars or imps, tended to replace Satan as the diabolic feature. As the idea of the witch as a sorcerer came to be linked more strongly with the Devil, it became more feminized. This was particularly true after 1550,when the idea of the witch became more sexualized and witchcraft came to be defined as a secular crime rather than heresy.
The Significance of Gender A majority of those who were accused of witchcraft were women who were poor, old, and unmarried. However, not all witches fell into these categories; over 20 percent were men. Many men were charged when witchcraft was closely related to heresy or to political sorcery, during panics, or when their wives were already charged. A number of men, however, were accused under circumstances similar to women. So it is clear from this angle, at least, that witch-hunting was not the same as woman hunting. However, that accusations of women at times constituted over 90 percent of all those indicted for witchcraft testifies to the targeting of women. Even though the idea of the witch was not limited to one gender, witch-hunting was used to attack women, especially women who in some way threatened gender hierarchy.
Beliefs about both women and witches made witch-hunting a powerful tool against women. Long-standing misogynistic beliefs that women were inferior to men physically, intellectually, morally, and emotionally and were sexually insatiable were crucial. Reflected in early modern witchcraft treatises, such as the intensely misogynistic The Hammer of the Witches and in the works of reformers such as Martin Luther, these beliefs indicated that women were more susceptible to the Devil’s temptations. Additionally, witches, like women, were socially constructed as vengeful, lusty, and full of pride.
A second reason for the focus of accusations on women was patriarchy, the gender hierarchy, which misogynistic ideas supported. Because women’s access to power was limited, people believed women would more readily use witchcraft. This, too, would be even more true for poor, unmarried, older women. Indeed, the threat of black magic could command respect from neighbors who otherwise showed disdain.
Additionally, a number of accusations arose in the context of women’s relationships with women, still in a patriarchal context. In early modern Augsburg, the mothers accused the lying-in servants who cared for them and their newborns, projecting their socially unacceptable negative feelings about motherhood onto the poor, older, and unmarried servant rather than acknowledging these negative feelings to themselves. A mother’s hostility to her older servant may also have been linked to her position of authority in the household during this time and the new mother’s unresolved ambivalence toward her own mother. Anxieties incurred by the vulnerability of women’s bodies and their households may also have been related to women’s accusing other women when their household duties went awry rather than admitting to incompetence in areas that marked their social identities.
Finally, the primacy of witchcraft accusations against women may have been part of a backlash against changes in the early modern period that threatened patriarchy. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the number of unmarried women, both widows and never-marrieds, grew significantly. Moreover, the age of a women at her first marriage also rose, increasing the overall number of single women. In Protestant areas, the closing of convents added to what was perceived as a social problem related to poverty and the maintenance of the social order. While the situations of widows and never-married women were not identical and the class status among those in either group could vary considerably, these women symbolized independence from patriarchal control. That this was a paramount concern is reflected not only in witch-hunting but also in urban regulations against women’s living together, outside male control, even though this was obviously one solution to the social problem of poverty. In New England witch-hunting was connected to women’s inheritance of land, but whether this holds true in Europe has yet to be examined.
Threats to gender hierarchy also came with the Reformation as both Protestant and Catholic women sought to participate publicly in spite of the gendered social restrictions that religious leaders continued to favor. Moreover, Protestants’ ambiguous view of women as spiritually equal but socially subordinate to men added to the general mood of anxiety that encouraged witch-hunting. The Protestant emphasis on a woman’s role as subordinate wife and mother in the godly household partly answered this anxiety and may have indirectly contributed to witch-hunting as well. Carol Karlsen argues that in New England the contradiction between women as godly wives and as daughters of the disobedient and proud Eve created psychic tension that found expression in witch-hunting (1998, 173-180). Both Protestant and Catholic leaders campaigned for restricting sexuality to patriarchal marriage, which may have created guilt that men projected in witch-hunting and which contributed to the growing number of prosecutions of women for fornication and infanticide.
There is no question that many accusations were leveled against women who in some way got out of their place. This is also an element in Keith Thomas’s theory that witchcraft accusations developed from the growing contradiction between the traditional Christian dictate of helping a neighbor in need and the new demands of capitalist competition and institutionalized poor relief. When uncharitable neighbors refused to grant their needy neighbors’ requests, they projected guilt onto them rather than feeling it themselves (Thomas 1971, 553-560). These needy neighbors were usually female and often expressed anger when their requests were not met. Thus, the developing contradiction in values also entailed a further contradiction between the Christian duty to help a poor, weak woman and the desire to punish a woman whose assertiveness was improper to her gender, class, and age.
Confessions
If only a few of the accused were actually practicing witchcraft, why did so many women confess? Many of the accused confessed only after horrendous torture at the hands of their interrogators. Others believed promises that they would be granted a quick dismissal if they confessed. In some cases, personal tragedies had unhinged the accused emotionally. Some of the accused came to believe that they were witches when interrogations brought to mind the myriad ways they had not lived up to the womanly ideal of the faithful and submissive wife and mother. The witch was not simply a diabolic sorcerer but also the mirror image of a good woman. Thus, the woman identified as a witch was an object onto which women as well as men could project the elements that no “good” woman could admit in herself or allow society to perceive in her. Contrarily, however, a number of women claimed the identity of witch and asserted their pact with the devil and their use of sorcery. For them, the witch was a cultural resource in a society that placed severe constraints on women’s power.
While all the accused, even those who practiced witchcraft or chose the identity of witch, were victims, their agency also is evident in the records. Even within the horror of trials, torture, forced confession, and execution, many accused continued to assert themselves by strategizing, resisting, and preserving a sense of self. Thus, while the story of witch-hunting is a sad testament to the human potential for cruelty and the strength of patriarchy, it also demonstrates the historicity of these elements and the strength of individuals confronted with them.
Martha Skeeters
See also Rape and Violence Against Women; Religious Persecution and Women.
Bibliography
Primary Works
Gibson Marion, ed. Early Modern Witches: Witchcraft Cases in Contemporary Writing. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
Kramer, Heinrich, and James Sprenger. The
Malleus Maleficarum. Translated and edited by M. Summers. London: John Rodker, 1928. (Reprinted in Escondido, CA:The Book Tree,
2000.)
Secondary Works
Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. Male Witches in Early Modern Europe. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press; Palgrave, 2003. Barstow, Anne Llewellyn. Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts. New York: Pandora/Harper Collins, 1994.
Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998.
Klaits, Joseph. Servants of Satan:The Age of the
Witch Hunts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
Levack, Brian. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 2nd ed. London and New York: Longman, 1995.
Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. NewYork: Scribner’s, 1971.
World History
