This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more

History Notes Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe Notes

Gender Notes

Updated Gender Notes

Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe Notes

Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe

Approximately 38 pages

These notes provide comprehensive cover of the Optional Subject 8 paper on Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in Early Modern Europe. They were the sole resource that I used for my preliminary examination revision, in which I was predicted a high 2:1 or 1st. Sadly (particularly as this was the paper I most enjoyed and expected to do well in) I was absent for 40 minutes of the prelim because of illness, but still achieved a mark of 58%. They include a wealth of examples spanning across Europe, informat...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

REVISION NOTES:

WITCHCRAFT:

GENDER:

1. Which features characterized the early modern witch?

  • Stereotypes were important:

  • “Witchcraft in the early-modern period was very much in the eye and the imagination of the beholder” (Alison Rowlands).

  • Many of accused were old women.

  • C16th and C17th witch hunt had “offered a clear way of dealing with evil, by locating the source of evil in an old woman” – Lyndal Roper.

  • 75-85% executed 1500 = women.

  • CA: takes time to build up rep.

  • Rowlands’ study showed many first accused 20s and 30s.

  • Many were menopausal.

  • Roper highlights images of witches as having sagging breasts, shrivelled wombs.

  • “Reflected a misogyny directed… against old women in particular” (Alison Rowlands).

  • Often widowed.

  • 50% in Briggs’ Lorraine study.

  • Comes through strongly in trials:

  • E.g. Ursula Götzin, Marchtal 1627 – Hans Bettinger ‘always thought she was a witch’, mother had been accused, trial mentioned ‘it should be reported that the arrested Ursula aged 72 has never had a husband’.

  • E.g. in trial of Euphame McCalzean, June 1591, Edinburgh, Janet Cunningham (whom Euphame had consulted with) described as ‘an old indicted witch of the finest champ’.

  • Often linked to mother e.g. Barbara Kurzhalsin apparently taken by mother to Sabbath on pitchfork at Holder-Stauden at Ebenhausen. Mother already executed.

  • Highlighted in pop culture.

  • E.g. early-C16th poem, ‘The Tunning of Elynor Rummyng’ – sold bad drink, bad prices, grotesque old woman.

  • Evil stepmother was already “a stock figure in fairytales” (Merry E Wiesner).

  • Were often poor.

  • 1970s: Alan MacFarlane, Keith Thomas blamed this.

  • Eva Labouvie’s study of Saar region – 43% = lowest class. 3.5% land-owning.

  • Prob = pre-existing rep could be reason for refusing aid. Also, soc structured in way that could make young resent old. (Rowlands).

  • Exceptions e.g. Diedrich Flade and Christoph Wendler von Bregenoth.

  • Mad?

  • Argued by Sona Rosa Burstein, 1949 (linked to senility).

  • Crit by Edward Bever – said ages ranged 40-80 and that it was instead because of socio-economic difficulties.

  • In city of Rothenburg, main mad people = accusers.

  • From Rowlands’ study.

  • E.g. 1709 – Maria Appolonia Schumaker – had to hit head on wall as so full of WC.

  • Accused = more “indignant and tenacious denial” (Rowlands). E.g. Maria Hollin.

  • Grumpy?

  • Keith Thomas’ argument.

  • Rothenburg again suggests not (Rowlands).

  • Appolonia Glaitter commended by pastor of Leuzendorf. Also nursed Michael Klenckh’s wife.

2. How relevant is the idea of the witch as a bad mother or wife?

[Can also use for witch hunting = woman hunting questions].

Many of accused were old women:

  • See above points.

  • Menopausal pt = important.

  • “Her post-menopausal body was understood as the negative inverse of the childbearing woman’s body” (Rowlands).

  • Did contemps really understand this?

  • CA: blood, milk seen as negative substances anyway.

  • E.g. Rothenburg 1641 trial – man claimed wife tried to poison by filling mouth with post-partum vaginal discharge.

  • Marital status was important.

  • No. of unmarried women increasing at time.

  • Briggs’ Lorraine study: 50% widowed.

  • CA: It did take time to build up rep as a witch, and many women outlived their husbands.

  • E.g. In Rothenburg, many women first accused 20s and 30s.

  • CA: just because men could play protective role?

  • E.g. Appolonia Glaitter’s (1671) 2nd husband, Hans Kern, told by her before they married, that he should protect her were she accused. He had a tavern quarrel with a rumour-spreader in 1653.

  • CA: Could this be because they were in a particularly vulnerable position?

  • Christina Larner – used ev. like the trial of Bessie Wilson, to whom the Devil allegedly said ‘thee are a poor overworked body’.

  • Keith Thomas blames village conflicts e.g. over neighbourliness.

  • Worsened by Reformation – closure of convents (Marianne Hester).

  • E.g. Lorraine case of Appoline Belz, Ste Marie – said 5 years earlier, husband away, no means to provide, approached by ugly black man who told her her husband was dead, said if she believed in him she would have enough to eat, she agreed on condition he would protect the child in her womb.

  • May have become more developed over time as ideas of elites filtered through – Wiesner talks of “a greater feminisation of WC”.

  • In Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Russia, there were no demonologies and no big focus on female witches.

  • Note: some argue that the accused woman had to fit the stereotype, or that men could be accused if they did:

  • “Witch-hunting was not simply woman-hunting, but the tracking down of a certain type of woman” (Wiesner).

  • Christina Larner: sex-related but not sex-specific idea.

Witchcraft-related crimes usually linked to children/animals:

  • “One important… way in which WC was imagined… was as a set of skills which were the malevolent inverse of the positive nurturing and productive skills expected of the dutiful housewife and mother” (Rowlands).

  • Witch “perverted the maternal function of nourishment and…. impeded fertility” (Roper).

  • Was way of dealing with worry about lack of care:

  • “Such women became lightning conductors for a wider cultural ambivalence towards mother figures, while protecting the actual mothers themselves” (Roper).

  • “The witch was the inversion of the good mother as well as the good woman” (Wiesner).

  • Evidence from trials:

  • Good case study = the trial of Ursula Götzin, Marchtal 1627:

  • Blamed for loss of 2 year old bull.

  • Also horses falling down and not getting up.

  • Girls given drinks at party, one died, other sick.

  • Jerg Getz’s 3 yo child made lame, had got ‘most of her food from Ursula’.

  • Hans Vicher given stomach pains from glass of wine she gave him.

  • Ursula was ‘no use’ to Hans Bettinger because she was a witch.

  • Also Barbara Kürzhalsin (1629) – accused of killing several children inc. George Worle’s child, with powder. Confessed to having dug up 7 children. Stole manhood of first husband.

  • WC cases are interesting for revealing...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe Notes.

More Optional 8: Witch Craft And Witch Hunting In Early Modern Europe Samples