Women and Witchcraft

CLICK HERE TO BE TAKEN TO WELSH WITCHCRAFT

Women and Witchcraft. A Warm Welcome or "Croeso Cynnes Cymraeg!" This is an on-line source of free information about the old religion of Europe and it's connection with the women of the thirteenth century. This easy to use site allows you to obtain guaranteed results. Welcome and thank you for stopping by. Find ancient spiritual sources of Health, Love and Money.  See the following thesis:

Gendering Witchcraft, Endangering Women:  The Malleus Maleficarum and Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe  by Elisabeth Carnell, Undergraduate Thesis, Western Michigan University, Department of History, 1995

From the early thirteenth to the late seventeenth centuries Europe was fascinated with Witchcraft and demonology.  Definitions of Witchcraft varied from country to country and claims for it's effectiveness grew in scope as the period progressed.

Literature on witchcraft grew in size and influence until the printing of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1485.  The text was actually based on texts such as the Directorium Inquisitorum, written by Nicholas Eymeric in 1369 and considered the earliest book on witchcraft.  It did not add anything significant to the existing beliefs about witches, for the specific actions blamed on witches had been developing over time and were already known to a great extent.

The superior organization of the work, however, caused it to be considered the definitive work on the subject and  placed those who would oppose the idea of witchcraft at a disadvantage for centuries.

Women, were placed at a disadvantage.  The Malleus, was a misogynistic and vitriolic text whose influence sent many women to their graves. The late Middle Ages was a time of fear and confusion caused by the great social and economic changes that moved quickly through Western Europe. The fourteenth century showed signs of deterioration in medieval society. The long series of wars, like the Hundred Years War, and plagues, especially the Black Plague of 1347-49, severely reduced the population and forced a total restructuring of social and economic institutions. Poor harvests and numerous famines created a mood of anxiety. Inhabitants of farms and villages immigrated to urban areas as they abandoned feudalism as a remnant of the old economy. The community that had remained stable throughout the earlier Middle Ages was now uprooted, alienating individuals and encouraging a general cynicism about the sudden economic crises of the state and about power of the church to protect its faithful.

The reduced power of the Holy Roman Empire destroyed the idea of the unified Christian society for which it had been striving. This reduction in power was brought on by the increased localism of the French and English kings, German princes, and Italian city-states, who worked to create individual sovereignty at the expense of unity. The papacy, along with pressures from the more powerful monarchs, suffered a loss in authority with the move to Avignon 1309-78 and the nepotism and corruption of the Babylonian Captivity . Another massive reduction in power and respect came with the Great Schism of 1378-1417. The rise of skeptics like William of Ockham and Marsiglio of Padua undermined the reign of rational scholasticism and created the underpinning that encouraged the breakdown of the large, unified kingdoms for the creation of representative institutions.

These institutions, based on ideas found in Roman law and stemming from the use of these ideas in the church, rose in areas where a strong feeling of community expressed itself through political structure, allowing representation within the old model of the three estates of society; clergy, nobility, and commons.  As rational scholasticism lost adherents, empiricism and mysticism often took its place.   The resulting upheaval both politically and intellectually made the population more susceptible to the machinations of a persecuting state and church. The leaders of both church and state encouraged witchcraft accusation, and exacerbated by the secrecy of the procedure that allowed accusations to be made without fear of retaliation, this combined with the popular fear of witchcraft to give instant credibility to any accusation.

The secular and Episcopal courts vied with the papal Inquisition for jurisdiction over the witch trials at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The secular and episcopal courts, who were interested in the wealth that could be gained through the confiscation of guilty parties goods, tried to forbid the Inquisition, established by Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) between 1227 and 1235 by a series of decrees, from taking control of the cases. The Inquisition, however, wanted control of them as well, and attempted to do this through declaring witchcraft a heresy by connecting it with heretical groups like the Gazarii, the Fraticelli, and the Waldensians. By recognizing witchcraft as a heresy, it would then be under the Inquisition s jurisdiction, as outlined by Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261).

Pope John XXII (1316-1334) attempted to bring the episcopal courts and the Inquisition together to strengthen the force working to try witchcraft cases through an order to the Inquisitors of Carcassonne and Toulouse to prosecute all sorcerers as heretics.  Subsequent popes and agents of the court also worked to solidify the definition of witchcraft and which portions of it were specifically heretical. Witchcraft was, while the Inquisition was trying to define it as a heresy, working to become more heretical itself. In areas where heretical groups were strong, witchcraft also thrived and began to take on attributes of local heresies, such as the Luciferans, an offshoot of Catharism and antinomianism. These attributes contained such elements as the wild ride, which was the idea that some women dreamed or fantasized that they went off in the night and flew through the air with Holds or Diana, flight on sticks or strange animals, and sexual orgies.

The Inquisition's efforts to mate simple sorcery, which was automatic magic involving the performance of a specific action to get a specific result considered separate from high magic like divination and astrology, with heresy led to an increase in the number of trials and the severity of the punishment during the fourteenth century, though in the cases, the definition of witchcraft varied anywhere from mostly sorcery to mostly heresy. Also, during the fourteenth and even as late as the fifteenth century, more stereotypical details of witchcraft developed from borrowed elements of folk-tales, like familiars, first seen in 1303, or from the revival of the slave trade, like the appearance of the devil as a black man with African features in one trial in 1440.

These arise slowly through the trials until these rare appearances become standard elements of the accusations. Curiously, the common perception that witches met to perform black masses that purport to mimic Christian observances is not medieval in origin, but dates to the reign of Louis XIV of France, and is largely a literary phenomenon. Jeffrey Burton Russell suggests that the absence of black masses in the Middle Ages is a strong point against those who argue that witchcraft originated as an explicit distortion of Christian rite. 

Eventually the Inquisition, protected and supported by the papacy, would dominate the witch trials. The Inquisition s role in the trials enlarged in scope very rapidly due to the vagueness of canon law regarding witches and witch trials, and the Inquisitors ability to coerce local authorities into compliance. Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447) took witchcraft completely from the realm of simple sorcery and superstition through four bulls.

These placed the prosecution of magicians and diviners, as demon worshipers, under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Continuing Eugenius agenda, Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) placed even those cases with the most tenuous connections to heresy under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition as well. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) issued a Bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus, calling for Inquisitors to apply "potent remedies to prevent the disease of heresy and other turpitudes diffusing their poison to the destruction of many innocent souls." Professors of Theology Heinrich Kramer (more often seen in the Latin form, Institoris)and Jakob Sprenger of the Order of Friars Preachers, or Dominicans, were designated by this Bull as the chief Inquisitors, especially in regard to Northern Germany and the Rhineland, where heretical groups were particularly active.

Kramer and Sprenger wrote The Malleus Maleficarum, an Inquisitors manual that was the culmination of the literature on witches that had begun to appear in greater numbers by 1427. With the invention of the moveable-type printing press in 1445 by Johannes Gutenberg, these discourses began to circulate, but none with the popularity of the Malleus, which had thirty-four editions between 1486-1621; fifteen were printed in the period between 1486-1520 and nineteen in 1574-1621. There were even editions printed in pocket format, a very rare occurrence in this period, for the convenience of the Inquisitors. The number of printings shows how immediately successful and influential this work was, moreover, it had a circulation that, at the time, exceeded everything except the Bible.

The Malleus also brought a culmination to the way witchcraft was perceived and articulated. It joined the many ideas that had been separate, like folklore elements and heresy, as a whole so that no difference in the nature of the accusations or trials could be ascertained. It also worked to join separate commentaries together to create a whole that would identify witches almost solely as women, and women in general as unfortunate necessities at best, and the darkest evil the remainder of the time. The Malleus states explicitly that the majority of witches are women.

This is also expressed by identifying the witch as female in argument through the almost exclusive use of the feminine pronoun when describing the attributes and actions of witches, such as: ... a contract with the devil, by which contract the witch truly and actually binds herself to be the servant of the devil and devotes herself to the devil, and this is not done in any dream or under any illusion, but she herself bodily and truly co-operates with, and conjoins herself to, the devil. (emphasis added)

The Malleus, emphasizing the idea that all women are (or can certainly be made to appear) witches, also uses the words woman and witch interchangeably at certain points in the text, and a description of the actions of witches is often later described as the actions of women overall. The statement is made that witches "distract the minds of men, driving them to madness, insane hatred, and inordinate lusts," yet women in general have this same ability, for "if she be the wife of a rich man, she does not cease night and day to excite her husband with hot words, to use evil blandishments and violent importunations. And if she have a poor husband she does not cease to stir him also to anger and strife."

The Malleus states that "there are three things, in nature, the Tongue, an Ecclesiastic, and a Woman, which know no moderation in goodness or vice." Although the authors mention the praise given such good women as appear in the Bible, like Judith and Deborah, and saints like Clotilda, they treat them as aberrations, for "the word woman is used to mean lust of the flesh. As it is said: I have found a woman more bitter than death, and a good woman (is) subject to carnal lust." They give the vices of women, moreover, a lengthy treatment. The Malleus points out that ... the wickedness of women is spoken of in Ecclesiasticus xxv: There is no head above the head of a serpent: and there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman. I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman...All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. It appears that the Malleus wholeheartedly suggests avoiding keeping house with a woman at all, for it agrees with Cato of Utica, who suggested that "if the world could be rid of women, we should not be without God in our intercourse. For truly, without the wickedness of women, to say nothing of witchcraft, the world would still remain proof against innumerable dangers."

It is certainly not only the wicked woman that is at risk, however, for many imperfections of women are cited as contributing to their downfall. Women have weak memories and "are both feebler in mind and body, (and) it is not surprising that they should come under the spell of witchcraft...Women are intellectually like children." Related to this mental imperfection of women, there are three reasons given why "there are more superstitious women found than men": ... the first is , that they are more credulous; and since the chief aim of the devil is to corrupt faith, therefore he rather attacks them. See Ecclesiasticus xix: He that is quick to believe is light-minded, and shall be diminished.

The second reason is, that women are naturally more impressionable, and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit...The third reason is that they have slippery tongues, and are unable to conceal from their fellow-women those things which by evil arts they know; and, since they are weak, they find an easy and secret manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft.

Woman is also described as defective. The Malleus notes that "there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man.  Also relating to the first woman, Eve and the apple are used to illustrate that woman has little faith. This absence of faith is explained in an etymological breakdown of the word for woman, "for Femina comes from Fe and Minus, since she is ever weaker to hold and preserve the faith."

Another defect of women is described as a "defect of inordinate passions," and because of this defect, they search for, brood over, and inflict various vengeances, either by witchcraft, or by some other means." This natural will among women encourages jealousy and anger. The Malleus states that ... when she hates someone whom she formerly loved, then she seethes with anger and impatience of her whole soul, just as the tides of the sea are always heaving and boiling ... And Seneca (Tragedies, VIII): No might of the flames or of the swollen winds, no deadly weapon, is so much to be feared as the lust and hatred of a woman.

The text gives numerous examples of jealous women, including the Biblical characters Sarah, Miriam, and Martha. This natural will is also suggested as the culprit for demanding and domineering wives. Husbands are warned that If you hand over the whole management of the house to her, but reserve some minute detail to your own judgement, she will think that you are displaying a great want of faith in her, and will stir up strife; and unless you quickly take counsel, she will prepare poison for you, and consult seers and soothsayers; and will become a witch.

Apparently, now it is clear who to blame for women who turn to witchcraft: henpecked husbands! This, however, is not the conclusion by the Malleus authors, for they recall the natural will of women when they state that "a woman will not be governed, but will follow her own impulse even to her own destruction."

Examples of women who would not be governed are listed, including Laodice and Medea. This second defect is also given as a reason why "nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women." The destruction of cities and empires caused by Helen of Troy, Jezebel and her daughter Athliah of Judah, and Cleopatra of Egypt are all given as examples of this theory of political causation. The Malleus concludes that "it is no wonder if the world now suffers through the malice of women."

There are also colorful analogies given to describe women overall, like Valerius' comment to Rufinus that "woman is the Chimaera, but it is good that you should know it; for that monster was of three forms; its face was that of the radiant and noble lion, it had the filthy belly of a goat, and it was armed with the virulent tail of a viper."

The Malleus authors conclude that this means "a woman is beautiful to look at, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep." Touching a woman is bad, but listening to her is much worse, even if the listener is not a henpecked husband. The Malleus states that woman is "a liar by nature, so in her speech she stings which she delights us. Wherefore her voice is like the song of the Sirens, who with their sweet melody entice the passers-by and kill them."

Outside of the imperfections of woman exhorted by the Malleus, scholars of the witch craze offer many social reasons suggested for the identity of the accused, the rise in perceived witchcraft, and the witch craze itself, including the numerous plagues and political pressures of the time. Class demarcation of the accused shows that the greater number of the accused were poor: in the Genevan trials of 1571 "half of all suspects for whom we have such information were unskilled laborers or their wives, the others came from families of artisans or fishermen, with a locksmith and ironmonger at the top of the group. None of them belonged in an elite occupation or social category."

Also notable is the number of elderly present in the ranks of the accused. The records kept from the Genevan trials 1537-1662 (omitting 1571), whose results are typical of rural areas as well, show that the accused were of a median age of sixty, with only one suspect in four under age fifty. Records from the trials of 1571 show that the accused (whose ages we know) still fell in a median age of sixty, with only three under fifty accused. The Malleus states that "certain old women have an occult knowledge which enables them to bring about extraordinary and indeed evil effects," and "bewitchment is sometimes caused by an old woman evilly looking at a child." More marked is the connection between gender and witchcraft. Overall, women were the greatest number accused of witchcraft, and throughout the entire witch-craze, accusations against women double that of men. The trials sponsored by the Archbishop-Elector of Trier, between 1587 and 1593, burned 368 witches from twenty-two villages. Two of these villages were left with only one female apiece.

Available data from the whole of southwestern Germany shows that, from 1562-1684, out of 1288 executed, 82% were women, while the same period in the bishopric of Basel in Switzerland had 95% of the accused as women. Combining the nearly standard gender of the accused with the median age of the accused and her class status, the stereotype of the witch as a poor, old woman seems easily confirmed. Curiously enough, the evidence from the fifteenth century, before the publishing of the Malleus, does not show an overwhelming percentage of women accused. In fifteenth century Neuchâtel only 19% of the accused were women. According to E. William Monter, "the explanation seems clear: heresy itself was not sex-linked, and..witchcraft was no originally sex-linked either."

The Malleus states explicitly, however, that witchcraft was sex-linked, and even the six pages devoted to the ways that "men and not women may be discovered to be addicted to witchcraft describe a phenomenon very unlike heresy and witchcraft. The "archer-wizards" described are not common and do not seem to appear outside the Malleus. This is unsurprising, for in the re-telling of the William Tell myth to describe their archer-wizards, the Malleus's authors did nothing short of declaring their position in a current political situation that would have been commonly known to the readers of the day. The archer-wizards are explicitly described as being Swiss (through example given of a Rhineland prince besieging Imperial territory), and having mastery in archery and other weaponry that can only be explained through a pact with the Devil in return for this skill. This description fits the Swiss peasants who stood against Charles the Bold in the 1470s, and finally killed him at Nancy in 1477.

The very year that the Malleus was published, another band of rebellious peasants, called the Bundschuh, expressed the wish to also stand against the South Germans with the same success as the Swiss the decade before. A more concrete link to the political machinations of the Malleus authors come from the Bundschuh's vehement protest of relic veneration, and the work of the Rosary Confraternity (introduced in Germany by Jakob Sprenger in 1475)58 to combat this particular danger to the "faith." The description of males, therefore, has little that relates to witchcraft and the charges leveled against women, and no connection to carnal lust, though the Malleus states that "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust." The males are not specifically described as witches, but only as "addicted to witchcraft"; this seems not to make them witches themselves, as the modern crack addict does not become the cocaine, but is only addicted to it. Women are still described as the sole bastions of carnal lust, for "she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations," and this leads invariably to witchcraft on her part.

The Malleus states that "it is no matter for wonder that there are more women than men found infected with the heresy of witchcraft...And blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the male sex from so great a crime: for since He was willing to suffer for us, therefore He has granted to men this privilege.   Perhaps what is more surprising is not the changed perception of witches, and to a somewhat lesser extent the quality of women, in witch trials after the printing of the Malleus, but that men were accused, and the accusations against them taken seriously at all. To attempt to understand why women were so expressly singled-out as witches, one must look at the intellectual and theological influences on the authors for the roots of the burgeoning misogyny expressed so vehemently in the Malleus. The Malleus was not the first book to contain many negative references to women. It finds some of its material in the writings of classical authors, but the majority of material quoted or made reference to in the Malleus comes directly from the Bible. Aside form the many disparaging quotes from Ecclesiasticus, other passages referred to or quoted include the writings of Paul and numerous chapters from Proverbs. Proverbs XXX is restated, for example, and expanded in the Malleus as: There are three things which are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which says not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb. Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils.

There was no dearth of misogyny in the Bible, nor in medieval or early modern Christianity and culture. The Malleus does, however, show an expression of misogyny far more direct and violent than is found in other witchcraft literature or writings of church fathers: while the roots of the ideas and hatred of women can be traced to other sources, the extreme expression of these ideas can only be traced back to the authors. Sprenger was a well respected professor of theology at Cologne. His reputation was an important reason why the Malleus was given such weight within the church and with Inquisitors. It is likely that without his responsible tempering of Kramer s ideas, the Malleus would have been far more sinister. Kramer was the moving factor behind the work, and authored the largest portion of the text. His ideas were never known to be moderate, and they grew more extreme over time, until Sprenger and the Dominican Order condemned him and his activities, including embezzlement, and irregular procedures like those recorded at an early incident at Innsbruck in 1485, where he offended the lay population and the bishop with his overly sexual questioning and illegal seizure and imprisonment of many women. The attack on women through the accusation of witchcraft can be partially explained through the intense misogyny of the Reformation (particularly in regards to sex and sexuality) and the sixteenth century, "one of the most bitterly misogynistic periods over known, and the factors that lead, in part, to such a virulent display. The sixteenth century, the height of the witch craze, "seems to have brought a profound shift in marriage patterns" that likely contributed a great deal to this misogyny. The modern European marriage pattern dates back to the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. This pattern is characterized by late marriage for both men and women, and many of both sexes who ultimately never marry. The marriage ages rose to the highest in Western history, both sexes not marrying until their late twenties compared with the early fourteenth century that found young women entering marriage contracts typically between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.

The percentage of those who never marry rose to upwards of 20%, with some areas the percentage of women who never married reached 45%. This trend was exacerbated by the tendency of families to only place their eldest sons in marriage, leaving their younger sons to an ecclesiastical career and large numbers of women without potential husbands. This pattern would have left many women, perhaps upwards of nearly half, without the legal and social protection of men. Unmarried women and widows may have found homes with other relatives, but certainly the number of women living alone increased.

The patriarchal family was the basis of society, and this basis would have seemed to be in jeopardy in light of the imbalance created in this sudden proliferation of women not within a man's control. Previous to this time, 95% of women were ultimately placed in marriage. This radical shift may have appeared a move away from marriage, and would have affected social attitudes and created an environment in which women could be considered a problem in society and were at risk for attack.

These women out of patriarchal control and protection were largely a defenseless group, which not only left them open to attack, but they may also have been considered at risk for taking magical revenge in a society that allowed them no other means of redressing wrongs, whether real or imagined. Also, the weakness of women socially and legally, particularly in the case of women not under the control of a male, "made it safer to accuse them than to accuse men, whose political, financial, legal, and even physical strength rendered the accuser more liable to reprisals." The widowed women would likely have been very poor, as governments and families often worked to restrict her claims upon the property of her husband and her own ability to acquire other possessions. Statutes of Pisa from the middle of the twelfth century complain about the widows' demands for the return of their dowries while the late sixteenth century showed the commune of Correggio restricting the ability of women to gain property "for the public good and for the conservation of families and of male lines." The poverty of these women would have likely found them an unhappy lot who were often left to begging and grumbling. In rural areas, accusations usually arose between neighbors. In most areas of Europe, the accusers were richer than those they accused.

A perceived resentment on the part of the woman for their social situation by neighbors (perhaps already feeling guilty for some slight they had committed or for a lack of charity toward the accused) at a time when a farm animal or child takes ill could result in a witchcraft accusation. The age of the accused women can explain their strange behavior, anti-social tendencies, or flights of imagination as manifest at the onset of senility. H. C. Erik Midelfort has identified two attributes of these women that would have increased the likelihood of accusation against them. The first attribute was melancholy, which is a "depressed state characterized occasionally by obscure or threatening statements and odd behavior."

The second attribute was isolation, which would have made these women, living in a society geared to the patriarchal family "automatically peculiar, unprotected, and suspect."  Also suspect, and connected to the large number of older women living alone, would have been the tendency of women to live longer than men. Women also survived plagues in much higher numbers than men, having a recovery rate at least 600% higher. This may be due to women staying primarily within the home or village, therefore not encountering the plague in the same numbers as men. Similar to the scapegoating of Jews when disaster struck a community, these women would have appeared responsible for the disaster, or at least of using magic to save themselves.

There is no single reason why women in particular were targeted for these accusations: the Malleus alone is not responsible. It seems clear that a number of factors were at work, although it remains obvious that the misogyny in the Malleus affected the numbers of accused and the percentage of women accused as opposed to men. The Malleus did not invent misogyny, however, and it did not invent the social upheaval of the period. The misogyny of the period, exacerbated by the Malleus, combined with the unanticipated changes in society to form a framework wherein women could be blamed for societies ills and controlled from within. A scapegoat is one who is blamed for the actions or faults of others. In a society undergoing massive change, there is confusion and distrust. Those individuals undergoing the greatest change may be held responsible for causing it. As the marriage, and societal, norms shifted to absorb the sudden glut of women, these same women can be held responsible for being so numerous, so long-lived, or so independent. Society also held a woman responsible for her behavior in the face of this change, and expects her to uphold the prescribed traditions. When a woman failed to maintain this societal standard she faced not ostracism - that was practically impossible in the village or the packed urban neighborhood - but distrust, animosity, and even fear. Unless the woman left, or was driven out, years of distrust and suspicion might culminate in accusations of witchcraft, first perhaps in anger in the street, but then to an Inquisitor or magistrate.  A woman who failed to maintain the societal standard herself, however, must be controlled. Without a man for every woman to make sure she is under control and maintain societal expectations, as the population pressures suggest, the males in charge of maintaining the dominant paradigm must control her. It could not have taken long to discover that a woman could be frightened into submission through these accusations. Anne Barstow suggests that witchcraft accusations were often used to control unruly women, and those not accused could watch the proceedings and take heed. The chief sixteenth-century device for teaching both sexes about men s ultimate control over women, however, was the public execution of witches.

Clearly scapegoating and control added to the reasons for the identity of the accused, as did the Reformation. According to Jeffrey Burton Russell, many of the intellectuals of the Renaissance and leaders of the Reformation were among the most forceful advocated of belief in diabolical witchcraft.

Protestants and Catholics pursued witches with the same fervor and with the same cruelty, though the active pursuit of witches lingered longer in Protestant areas. The fever pitch of the Reformation did contribute to the witch panic, but nevertheless, the influence of the Malleus cannot be ignored or underestimated. While some historians suggest that the Malleus was an unimportant work regarding witchcraft and witch trials, evidence for the use of the Malleus in trials suggests that it was an important reference work for both Catholic and Protestant Inquisitors. The Inquisitor Nicholas Savin, during a trial in Metz in 1519, quotes the Malleus to prove the guilt of a woman accused of being the daughter of an incubus, and of being a witch, because her mother had been burned as a witch. A reference to this idea can be found in Part II, Question 1, Chapter 4 of the Malleus, which states that "man or woman so born should be strong in the practice of witchcraft." H. C. Erik Midelfort asserts that "the first massive persecutions in Germany are inseparably connected to the author of the famous Malleus Maleficarum ... Heinrich Institoris, O.P." So inseparably connected, that "the period between 1520 and 1550 ... was marked by a rather small number of witch trials - a period which, interestingly enough, coincides with the lack of reprints of the Malleus Maleficarum." The Malleus may also be connected to the spread of the witch craze to the American colonies: portions of the text were printed in a book found in the library of Increase Mather.

The Malleus Maleficarum was an important tool used by the secular and ecclesiastical courts to accuse, condemn, torture, and execute women for witchcraft. Although written and used in a period of unusually great misogyny, it stood apart as a text of particular virulence toward women, and its influence clearly affected the way they were treated and perceived by the courts both in and out of the courtroom. While it had nothing to do with the beginnings of the witch panic in the church and popular culture, it s obvious influence on the trials of the sixteenth century in both substance of accusation and punishment allows the Malleus to be considered indirectly, if not directly, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of women, most of them innocent of the crime of witchcraft.

Click Here to return to the main page

Brief History of the Welsh Faerie Folk	What is the Ogham Alphabet?
What is Welsh Witchcraft?	Are there trees sacred to Witchcraft?
What is the difference between Shamanism and Druidism?	Do Witches perform Human Sacrifice?
What is the Faerie Faith?	What is Wicca?
What God's do Welsh Witches Worship?	What are Druids?
What are the Precepts of Merlin and Taliesin	What is the Difference between Witchcraft and Druidism?
What is Reincarnation?	What were the Sacred animals of Witches and the Druids?
What are the Tylwyth Teg Symbols?	Was Stonehenge built by the Druids?
What are the Welsh Witchcraft Holy Days?	Did the Druids build Glastonbury?
Is there a Welsh Celtic and Druidic Timeline	Did Druids build any of the Sacred Sites?
What is a Seeker?	Are there Modern Druid Organizations?
What is a Neophyte	Are there Modern Witchcraft Organizations?
Is there a List of Witchcraft Words and Terms?	What is a Priest or Priestess
Do Witches worship Nature?	What are the Celtic Nations?
Where are Welsh Resources?

 

There have been 1,678,593 visitors to this page since January 1, 2008

Author: Originally by Taliesin einion Vawr, Revised by Celtic Church of Dynion Mwyn, Inc. Copyright © 1977, 1992, 2003, 2009 by Celtic Church of Dynion Mwyn, Inc.   All rights reserved. Revised: 13 Dec 2011 02:23:53 -0500

This Site was Created by Celtic Church of Dynion Mwyn, Inc. For information on all individuals and organizations listed in this website, or the name of a contact person in your area that can give you further information on the Celtic Church of Dynion Mwyn, Let us hear from you! Click here to contact us.   You may also call us at 000-000-0000 If you access our voice mail, we will call you back collect if long distance. Or, you can write Dynion Mwyn, P.O. Box 673206, Marietta, GA 30006-0036