The Witchcraze

The Witchcraze: Analyzing the Changing Roles of Women in Early Modern Society

One cannot begin to understand the European witch-hunt without recognizing that it displayed a burst of misogyny without parallel in Western history.

The ‘witchcraze’ is a popular topic of historical discourse which has provided the impetus for many academic debates. Historians, for the most part, agree that women were the primary target of the witchcraze. Here, however, is where the consensus ends. The current issue historians are exploring is why early modern European society selected women in particular to persecute. Various methodologies and schools of thought have been applied to this question resulting in numerous theories of single causation: religious upheaval, economic instability, environmental factors, state building, and social control. Attributing a sole factor to the persecution of women, which Anne Llewellyn Barstow describes as “the greatest [European] mass killing of people by people not caused by war,” creates a disturbing fallacy.[i] Historians must reassemble the witchcraze from a multi-causal perspective, including non-traditional approaches of analysis, such as contemporary views on gender and sexuality. The early modern period, for example, was an era of regression for women. Females found their sphere of influence shrinking; a new “misogynic-paternalism” emerged which forced women into subservient, confined roles. Examining how the deteriorating status of women evolved may reveal why a “world view” developed which held females responsible for the catastrophes plaguing early modern Europe.

Gender analysis of the witchcraze first received scholarly attention during the early 1970s. While research has confirmed that the majority of witches persecuted were female, few historians have acknowledged gender as a significant factor in determining who was tried as a witch. Alan Macfarlane’s case study of the Essex trials in England, for instance, “confirmed that ninety-two percent of victims were women . . . but there is no evidence that hostility between the sexes lay behind their prosecutions.”[ii] Keith Thomas furthers the anti-gender argument by stating that women were selected as victims because they “were the most dependent members of the community, and thus most vulnerable to accusation,” not merely because they were female.[iii] The most radical denial for gender as a basis of execution is argued by historian Robin Briggs: “A feminist myth has come into existence, usually accompanied by wild inflation of the numbers, in which women were the real target . . . . In many cases it is easy to see how personal convictions have shaped interpretations” [emphasis mine].[iv] Limiting the field of historical inquiry, which Briggs’s jilt at feminist scholars suggests, dismisses any new possibilities or approaches to the study of the witchcraze.

Robert Muchembled’s 1972 case study of the witch trials, however, helped lay the foundation for future research on gender analysis. Muchembled tied “female oppression to the sexual repression of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations” by pointing to harsher laws enacted to discourage “prenuptial pregnancy, bastardy, and adultery, with heavier penalties against women than men.”[v] Muchembled’s research reveals contemporary views on female sexuality: women incurred stiffer punishments for promiscuity than men, which indicated that males believed females to be less trustworthy, unable to curtail emotions, and therefore more prone to intimate liaisons. Further, tougher disciplinary measures for women may have implied a sexual insecurity among males, which could be dealt with by controlling female actions under the guise of the judicial system. Historians, for the most part, have neglected to connect the increased subjugation of women during the early modern period to the witch trials. The trials were public, presided over by men, and were, in part, a way to condition female behavior. “During this era, more women were killed for [practicing] witchcraft than for all other capital crimes put together,” which indicates the degree of power women were thought to possess.[vi]

The disparity between male and female executions requires interpretation. In the southwestern German-speaking regions of the Holy Roman Empire, for example, 1,050 female witches were executed in fifteen towns compared to 238 male practitioners between the years 1562 and 1684.[vii] In 1586, two towns in the diocese of Treves “was so scoured and purged of sorceres [sic] and witches that in two villages only two women were left alive.”[viii] The majority of male victims were often the relatives of condemned women and, therefore, not perceived as originators of practicing maleficium.[ix] Males having no affiliation with the accused were often involved in some form of criminal activity, and were consequently put to death on the premise of performing harmful magic.[x] The overwhelming number of female victims suggests an acceptance among early modern Europeans that women readily succumbed to the influence of the devil. The example of Treves indicates that females were considered the primary host of a contagious, immoral disease which had to be stamped out en toto. That only two females were spared death may have been the result of three possible factors: one, to provide an example to citizens in neighboring towns of the proper place of women; two, that female righteousness was limited to the select few; and three, the women were of some significance to the men in the community, such as local officials’ wives. The misogynic character of the witch-hunt is numerically difficult to refute--simply put, more women were burned at the stake than men. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, it should be noted that confession techniques--the application of torture to procure a witches’ testimony--were significantly more humiliating (women were stripped bare and probed in the genital area before a panel of male judges) and often more lengthy (such as public mastectomy before death by fire) than what men accused of practicing witchcraft experienced. What is significant about the chronology of the witchcraze is that the connection between ‘woman, witch, and Satan,’ was solidified during a period of history which underscored the value of education and, above all, placed great emphasis on the concept of humanism. The personification of the witch acquired a new diabolical character during the Renaissance, an era often referred to as one of “great progress and learning--for men.”[xi]

The image of the early modern witch differed substantially from her medieval predecessor. During the Middle Ages, witchcraft and “the belief in magic represented a ‘normal part of village life, widespread and regular.’”[xii] The local wise-woman performed various services for the community: she provided information on the where-abouts of lost loved ones, concocted love potions, located lost or stolen property, cast spells for good weather, and offered medical services ranging from prescribing special elixirs for the ill to performing abortions.[xiii] Although it was considered common knowledge to avoid a confrontation with a witch, consulting an elderly woman versed in the arts of witchcraft was a typical way to find solutions to life’s mysteries or problems.

During the later half of the fifteenth-century, the traditional folk-healing witch was replaced with a devil-worshiping, lustful witch whose ultimate purpose was to deprive God of Christian souls. The character transformation of the witch, from sought-after advisor to feared malicious practitioner, cannot be understood without first analyzing the changing roles of women during the early modern period. Five factors should be taken into account while evaluating the image of the early modern woman: environmental conditions, religious conviction, altered demographics, economic shifts, and contemporary viewpoints on female sexuality. Taken together, these factors provided the background for the new ‘mental portrait’ superimposed on the early modern women and, consequently, on the witch.

The early modern European economy was primarily agrarian. Any disruption in the production of foodstuffs could have long-term, disastrous effects on all levels of society. Few circumstances caused farmers a higher degree of anxiety than an unusual shift in weather patterns. The effects of crop destruction, however, moved far beyond rural areas: “agricultural difficulties affected artisans and merchants in towns; not much could be sold [or] traded” between the peasantry and urban dwellers.[xiv] The lack of comestibles for consumer purchase placed a burden on state and church finances by reducing taxable income.[xv] Those on the margins of society--the poor and the elderly--were “immediately affected by price-inflation” induced by the shortages of victuals, and “literally [died of hunger] in the streets during substance crisis.”[xvi] Social tensions resulted from poor yields. The destitute “begged from door to door fearing for their lives, while the rich feared to go out in public.”[xvii] Authorities found themselves faced with pressures and unrest from all sectors of the public.

A shift in weather patterns began in Europe during the last two decades of the fifteenth century and remained for well over a century. The German-speaking regions of the Holy Roman Empire, the territory with the highest recorded execution rate, experienced cycles of “severe crop failures, inflation, and a very high rate of mortality.”[xviii] Wolfgang Behringer’s 1995 climatic study of early modern southwestern Germany concluded that large-scale witch hunts--those which resulted in execution of twenty or more victims--correlated with adverse weather conditions. According to Behringer’s research, “A climatic deterioration occurred in early modern Europe,” often referred to as the “Little Ice Age, which was marked by falling annual temperatures, a curtailed growing season, extreme winters, a lowering of the snowline on mountains, and the advance of Alpine glaciers.”[xix] Abnormal weather conditions altered the physical landscape: extensive flooding occurred after 1560, damaging forests and pastures; erosion coupled with soil exhaustion added to declining yields; and, milk production fell as farmers were forced to reduce the amount of fodder for livestock.[xx] The fear of famine, death, and disease, wreaked havoc on the mental attitudes of early modern Europeans. In a culture in which the belief in magic was common place, and which lacked the technological means to provide an explanation in the shift of meteorological conditions, it is not difficult to conceive how contemporaries connected the concept of “witch” and “weather” to a diabolical attack on mankind. A pamphlet written in 1590 by an anonymous author in southern Germany interpreted depressed environmental conditions as a result of demonic sortilege:

So many kinds of magic and demonic apparitions are gaining the upper hand in our time that nearly every city, market and village in Germany, not to mention other peoples and nations, is filled with vermin and servants of the devil who destroy the fruits of the fields, which the Lord allows to grow with his blessing, with unusual thunder, lightening, showers, hail, storm winds, frost, flooding, mice, worms and other things . . . causing them to rot in the fields and also increase the shortage of human subsistence by spoiling livestock, cows, calves, horses, . . . using all their power, not just against the fruit of the fields and livestock, but yes, not even sparing kinsfolk and close blood-relatives, who are bent, lamed and suffer painful illnesses ending in death, and they direct all their industry in order that all kinds of woe and death arise among the people.[xxi]

Long periods of famine created a need among early modern society to seek causality. God had created a world based on true harmony and order.[xxii] In the eyes of contemporaries, this balance had been disturbed by humanities’ corrupt and sinful nature. In order to return to God’s good grace, it was necessary to find the evil plaguing the earthly kingdom and root-out the culprits.

One question that should be considered is why early modern Europeans refused to place sole responsibility for humanities sufferings squarely on the shoulders of the devil. Why were witches a necessary component of catastrophes? Contemporaries held the belief that the devil was indeed a powerful adversary, yet no single entity save God could create such widespread misery and chaos. The devil had to have accomplices, and lots of them.[xxiii]

The origins of the conspiracy theory can be traced to the 1487 publication of Malleus Malefic Arum (The Hammer of Witches), authored by two Dominican priests, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger. The purpose of the Malleus was two fold: first, to re-establish the authority of the Church; and second, to punish the perpetrators who threatened change. The Dominicans shared a commitment to “papal supremacy and aesetic monastic reform at a time the Holy See was under attack from humanists, theologians, and popular social and religious movements.”[xxiv] The threat to church primacy, in the Dominican’s view, could only be a ploy instigated by Satan in order to destroy the kingdom of Christ. A second and perhaps equally important element may have persuaded the two Dominicans to take up the pen against Lucifer. In the years 1481-82, the Alpine region suffered extensive crop failure. It is highly probable that Kramer witnessed first hand the devastating effects of ecological change on the early modern environment. The earliest recorded witch-trials in Germany “specifically targeting women involved forty-eight defendants in the area near Constance between 1482 and 1486, and fifty women in Innsbruck in 1485.”[xxv] Kramer was personally in charge of the interrogations of both cases, and purposely selected women for persecution.[xxvi] The Dominicans view of the opposite sex was based on the ancient Christian belief that women were inherently defective and naturally imbued with tendencies of evil, and therefore could be connected to, and held accountable for, the practice of malicious magic.[xxvii]

The Malleus is significant in our understanding of the evolution of the sex-specific nature of witch-craze. The text was a “phenomenal success, becoming one of the most reprinted works in the early history of printing, with most of its editions published in Germany.”[xxviii] To many theologians, university professors, and trial judges, the Malleus was considered a credible, substantially documented text, which offered extensive research on the subject of witches. The Malleus contained explicit information, for example, on what characteristics determined a witch, what magical powers a practitioner possessed, specialized procedures to extract a truthful confession, and thorough execution techniques. The most significant feature of the Malleus, however, was that it “marked a watershed in the history of the witch-hunts: for the first time, a work on the heresy of witchcraft argued that most witches were women” [emphasis mine].[xxix]

The Dominicans view of female sexuality laid the groundwork for the misogynic nature of the witchcraze. The authors of the Malleus argued that women were overtly sexual creatures, and lacked the mental capacity to restrain their naturally sensual instincts. The desire to practice witchcraft, in the Dominicans view, “comes from carnal lust, which is in women, insatiable.”[xxx] The devil, according to Kramer and Sprenger, capitalized on the sexual vulnerability of women. In order to increase his following, the devil promised

prospective converts various riches in exchange for an oath of loyalty.[xxxi] Once the pact

with the devil was secured, the witch was ordained with extraordinary powers which could leave individuals or entire communities defenseless. For men, witches posed a serious threat to the established social order: the male’s traditional role as protector and provider of the family was challenged; and the power bestowed upon the ‘weaker sex’ usurped that held by men. Males were confronted with a loss of authority--the ability to control the social hierarchy--and equally significant, the masculine identity was put into question.

The virility of manhood was undermined by the witch. Kramer and Sprenger devoted a substantial amount of discussion to the witches ability to prohibit the reproductive capabilities of men. In a society that experienced a highly volatile birthrate, coupled with a short life span, any interference in the propagation of the human species was cause for alarm. The Dominicans were keenly aware of what factors could stir up their audience into aggressive action. The Malleus described in explicit detail what man could expect from the devil’s advocate:

The devil’s main objective in witchcraft is to obstruct marital procreation by making married men impotent. The devil cannot directly tempt a married man, because marriage is protected by its sacramental nature; therefore, he uses the witch to do so. After seducing a married man, the witch becomes jealous of his wife and enchants the man’s penis so that he cannot have sexual intercourse with his spouse. Impotence and childlessness are thus products of witchcraft, which is designed to prevent the creation of new souls for the Lord.[xxxii]

If impeding procreation was not enough to stimulate a campaign of extermination, the Dominicans added further incentive for men: “Witches,” could willingly project the “illusion that the male organ appeared to be entirely removed and separate from the body.”[xxxiii] Certainly more than a few eyebrows raised at the thought of dismemberment. One purpose of the Malleus may have been to create a reactionary measure against the proponents of change. A common enemy--the witch--could remove, at least in the Dominicans view--the religious division among early modern society. The priests expertly played on the fears of men in hopes that society would forgo its theological quarreling and band together to rekindle a union of Catholic brotherhood. The Dominicans of course lost their battle; the Reformation thwarted the attempts of religious unity. What the Malleus left to future generations of early Europeans, however, was an internal belief system which propagated and solidified women as the bearers of misfortune and grief.

The status of women was further undermined during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as Europeans witnessed demographic changes on an unprecedented scale. War, rebellion, and famine, as well as shifting economies, displaced many of society’s traditional modes of behavior. The stress of multiple crises produced a disruption, for example, in customary marriage practices. Men and women married later in life, if they married at all. The average male married between the ages of 29 and 35, while “30 to 55 percent of all daughters were still single at the age of 50.”[xxxiv] “For the first time in European history,” according to H. C. Erik Midelfort, in Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany 1562-1684, “a large group of women [emerged which] remained spinsters.”[xxxv] “In a society accustomed to placing 95 percent of all women in marriage,” the increased number of single women threatened established social relations between the sexes.[xxxvi]

The early modern guilds provide an excellent illustration of gender conflict. During the medieval period, for example, women were active, participating members of guilds. Women were subject to the same rules and regulations as their male counterparts. Many female producers held high status jobs in cities throughout medieval Germany. In Nuremberg, for example, “10-15 percent of all iron-work shops were headed by widows

or other women.”[xxxvii] The increasing number of single females seeking means of support in the early modern period, along with a shift in production techniques, prompted male guild members to close rank and establish new regulations which prohibited the inclusion of women. Merry Wiesner, in “Guilds, Male Bonding and Women’s Work in Early Modern Germany,” follows the deteriorating position of female business owners:

Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, many crafts expanded their ordinances and began to use more exclusively male language: the words ‘female master,’ and ‘girl apprentice’ were often simply dropped with no explanation of why this was done. General restrictions followed, such as a widow was allowed to continue operating a shop for only a short period of time, or only if she had a son who could take over; she was not allowed to take on or retain apprentices or journeymen.[xxxviii]

Male guild members banned together to put women out of business, which suggests that there was “a struggle between the sexes around making a living.”[xxxix] The catalyst was the changing economic structure of the early modern period. The piece-meal system began to replace the traditional apprentice-journeymen-master relationship. Fewer opportunities were therefore available for men to obtain their own trade businesses. The break down of the established economic cycle forced “journeymen to compete against women for the few master positions left.”[xl] Throughout early modern Germany, journeymen pressured business owners not to hire women. Journeymen would boycott a shop if hiring practices did not conform to their specifications. If a shop refused to comply and refrain from hiring women, the owner’s name would be ‘listed’ and banned from within the ranks of journeymen; and “such banning often lasted for decades.”[xli] Furthermore, according to Wiesner, “Journeymen forced one another to comply with [a] ‘code of honor’ by refusing to work next to any journeyman,” who had worked along side a woman.[xlii] As females found their numbers swelling, the misogynic nature of the early modern guilds produced fewer economic opportunities for women, forcing them into the margins of society.

Early modern Europe was one of the most turbulent periods of modern history. International war, peasant rebellions, population shifts, economic instability, religious movements, environmental change, as well as occasional outbreaks of the plague, each played a part in creating a “new image” for the early modern European women. Catastrophes became synonymous with the female sex; the Malleus provided a solid, viable explanation for the ills plaguing early modern Europe. The shift in weather patterns were associated with women; it was well known among contemporaries that witches had the ability to manipulate atmospheric conditions. Large numbers of women found themselves without the protection of male patronage. The Reformation further reduced women’s security; “the founding of Protestant regions closed the door to many women who sought refuge in the convents as a means of protection.”[xliii] To survive, females were forced to compete in the market place with men for employment. Sporadic pockets of the plague also helped weaken the position of women. A disproportionate number of females survived epidemics while “men sometimes suffered and died at a rate 6 to 10 times that of women.”[xliv] The structure of the social hierarchy was at risk. Witches’ power surpassed that held by men, leaving males with a sense of inadequacy and insecurity. Witches’ were deemed overtly sexual creatures, yet one popular mode of male dress--codpieces--were worn to enhance male sexuality. In the view of contemporary males, women were moving into their world domain. Traditional order could be restored by public executions: women witnessed the brutal death of women--the trials were a reminder to females to think twice before moving beyond their assigned sphere of influence.

The pressures facing early modern European society were profound. To attribute a single factor to the misogynic nature of the witchcraze--the specific persecution of women--neglects the underlying currents of change over the long duree. The changing role of women can only be understood as a series of components or elements of a greater whole. It is within this context, analyzing women from various perspectives, can we begin to understand why females were associated with the hostile conditions confronting early modern European society. In conclusion, the historian Anne Llewellyn Barstow offers an astute observation: “Not until the mid-nineteenth century did the status of Western women begin to recover from the hunts . . . . It can be argued that we have never entirely recovered since.”[xlv]

[i]Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch

Hunts (New York: Pandora, 1994), 1.

[ii]Ibid., 3.

[iii]Ibid.

[iv]Robin Briggs, Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of

European Witchcraft (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), xii.

[v]Barstow, Witchcraze, 4.

[vi]Joseph Klaits, “Sexual Politics and Religious Reform in the Witchcraze,” in

Social History of Western Civilization: Readings from the Ancient World to the Seventeenth Century, ed. Richard M. Golden 2nd ed.,, vol. I., (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 263.

[vii]H. C. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany 1562-1684: The

Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 183.

[viii]Montague Summers, The Geography of Witchcraft (Evanston: University

Books, 1927), 486.

[ix]Anne Llewellyn Barstow, “A Historiography of the European Witch

Persecutions,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion vol. 4 (Fall 1988): 7-19.

[x]Ibid.

[xi]Dr. Judy Ford, Class Lecture, 29 November 2000, Texas A & M

University-Commerce.

[xii]Wolfgang Behringer, “Witchcraft Studies in Austria, Germany, and

Switzerland,” in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, eds.

Jonathan Berry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 79.

[xiii]Scott C. Dixon, “Popular Beliefs and the Reformation in Brandenburg-

Ansbach,” in Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400-1800, eds.

Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 121.

[xiv]Harmut Lehmann, “Heartland of the Witchcraze: Central and Northern

Europe,” History Today vol. 31 (February 1981): 27-31.

[xv]Ibid.

[xvi]Wolfgang Behringer, “Weather, Hunger, and Fear: Origins of the European

Witch Hunt in Climate, Society, and Mentality,” German History vol. 13 (1995): 1-27.

[xvii]Ibid.

[xviii]Ibid.

[xix]Ibid.

[xx]The first abnormal weather patterns were recorded in the Alphine region

between 1480-81; consequently, witch trials followed suit. The year 1560, however, is generally accepted among historians as the pivotal date of massive, wide-scale witch-hunts.

[xxi]Behringer, “Weather, Hunger, and Fear,” 1-27.

[xxii]Lehmann., 6.

[xxiii]Behringer, “Weather, Hunger, and Fear,” 1-27.

[xxiv]Sigrid Brauner, Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction

of the Witch in Early Modern Germany (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 48.

[xxv]Brauner., 6.

[xxvi]Ibid.

[xxvii]Barstow, “A Historiography of the European Witch,” 7.

[xxviii]Brauner, 7.

[xxix]Ibid., 31.

[xxx]Ibid., 3.

[xxxi]The Dominicans make it quite clear that Satan never kept his word in providing

what the converts requested. It is interesting to note that Kramer and Sprenger provided detailed information on the sexual activities between Satan and his followers. Women, according to the Dominicans, were driven by their lustful nature to have intercourse with the devil, and once this occurred, women were shocked that the encounter was ‘cold and painful,’ not the pleasurable experience they had anticipated. The witch deserved her due reward for copulating with the devil, (deception as well as a tortuous death) and pleading ignorance or begging for mercy would not achieve a reprisal.

[xxxii]Brauner, 35.

[xxxiii]Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Malefic Arum, trans. and

ed. Montague Summers 2d ed. (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970), 58.

[xxxiv]Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 184.

[xxxv]Ibid.

[xxxvi]Ibid., 185.

[xxxvii]Merry Wiesner, “Guilds, Male Bonding, and Women’s Work in Early Modern

Germany,” in Feminist and Renaissance Studies, ed. Lorna Hutson (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1999), 414.

[xxxviii]Ibid.

[xxxix]Marianne Hester, “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting,” in

Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, eds.

Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1996), 302.

[xl]Brauner, 16.

[xli]Wiesner, “Guilds, Male Bonding,” 418.

[xlii]Ibid.

[xliii]Brauner, 18.

[xliv]Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 183.

[xlv]Barstow, Witchcraze, 12.

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