Women, witchcraft, and public perception
I went to a talk on the history of witchcraft and feminism by Dr Laura Kounine, senior lecturer in Early Modern History at University of Sussex, this week. I am fascinated by the representation of the witch but what I took away from the lecture was how little I actually know about the persecution of witches.
You probably have an image in your head of what a witch looks like. My favourite childhood film is Bedknobs and Broomsticks so my fictional witch is Angela Lansbury. The first image of a witch on a broomstick was created in the 1440s, and it’s interesting that that’s stuck.
We’ve long believed in magic but it wasn’t until the 1400s that people got serious about persecuting witchcraft. Before, magic was seen as a male, learned pursuit. That image changed and the new printing press enabled wide distribution of texts about women and witchcraft.
A monk called Heinrich Kramer published the Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of Witches) in 1486. While witchcraft could be practiced by men or women, this book made witches female and promoted the bonkers theory that witches stole penises and kept them in nests. The book was salacious, so obviously, it became a best seller.
This idea of women stealing masculinity persists to this day. I read a profile of David Beckham today which contains this line: “Beckham donning a sarong was taken as incontrovertible proof that Posh had somehow managed to steal him from the world of men, by witchcraft.”
Prosecutors had specific ideas of how people should act. If a woman defended herself too well, she was a witch. If a woman didn’t cry when accused, she was a witch. But if she went too far and became hysterical, well, she was a witch. You had to tread a fine line if you were accused to avoid conviction.
We all think we know about witches. Older women, subjected to a legal process they couldn’t possibly survive, and then burnt at the stake.
But actually, many men were accused of witchcraft. In some countries, more men were accused than women.
Anyone could be accused of witchcraft. Age and social standing were no barrier to you facing the charge. Witches didn’t fit a specific demographic.
Half the people accused of witchcraft were acquitted so it wasn’t an immediate death sentence. And while we all think of witches as being burned at the stake, most were hanged.
Interestingly, if a group of high powered men found they were being accused and counter-accused, they dropped the charges so they didn’t all end up being convicted.
So where do all of our ideas about witches come from? People like Kramer who were given a platform that enabled them to spread their ideas quickly. The images Kramer and those who came after him, illustrating what witchcraft looked like, caught the imagination and stuck. They gave people someone to blame when things went wrong in their lives.
Most of us have never studied the history of witch trials, but we all think we know about it because we’ve read about witches in stories, or seen them represented in films. Dr Kounine’s talk made me realise I’d made many assumptions about both the victims and the persecutors in these trials.
As with so many things, the history of witchcraft is complex but there are many parallels to things we see today. The ‘othering’ of people who don’t fit social norms, the populism of quick fix ideas, and gender myths and stereotypes being used to discriminate against others and gain power.
