#6477 - Gender - Optional 8: Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in early modern Europe

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) 2^nd 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 the stereotype of a good woman.

• Chaste, e.g. mentions that Ursula had ‘fleshly conjunction’ with Devil.

• Provider of children, e.g. Barbara Kurzhalsin taking first husband’s manhood.

Female sexuality and fertility were central parts of WC belief:

• Was “a society where virtually every aspect of life was gendered” (Briggs), so sexuality shown = distinctly female.

• Natalie Zemon Davis talks of “the inevitable association of the female with reproduction [and]… the contemporary definition of the female as the lustier sex”.

• ‘Wandering womb’ = an accepted theory.

• E.g. France – Queens X rule.

• Pop culture – plays, festivals – highlighted centrality of issues about fertility, and of women to these issues.

• E.g. France, St Stephen’s Day – men dressed as beasts and women, danced around streets.

• Many rituals/ideas centred on female sexuality:

• “Husband-dominators are everywhere in popular literature” (Davis).

• E.g. wife in ‘Quinze joies de mariage’ – clever, manipulative and tricks husband.

• Malleus Maleficarum: ‘she is more carnal than a man’.

• Robert Burton: ‘women’s unnatural, insatiable lust’.

• In punishments, women = often partially naked. Looking for marks etc. also. “It is difficult not to view them as at least partly motivated by sexual sadism” (Wiesner).

• E.g. Maria Hollin, 1593 – forced to confess making pact w/ Devil who took blood from her vagina.

• In male witch trials, there was much less focus on the sexual.

• Devil = male – could not have same dynamic if witch was a man. Dependency of witch on male Devil highlighted by M E Wiesner.

There were other categories of accused: men, children:

• Interesting to look at cases where both husband and wife accused.

• Briggs: “it is certainly not obvious that the wife was the prime suspect”.

• E.g. 1616 trial of Nicolas Herteman of Brouvieleures, 6 months after execution of wife, said animals killed attributed to her equally his responsibility.

• CA: Normal patterns did not apply as strongly in male/child cases: not about archetypal ‘witch’?

• Could be about religion, politics or finance.

• Had some cases of exceptional magicians.

• Mentioned in ‘consultation of father Pierre Lalement, Chancellor of the Uni of Paris, about WC accusations in Normandy’.

• Lalement: ‘there is a real diff between these men and the witches we are dealing with’.

• Said were worse: ‘patriarchs and heresiarchs in magic’.

• E.g. M Gaulmin, burned by Paris parl.

• Children in Augsburg cases did not tend to be paupers: they were from middling families, e.g. butchers, brewers.

• As the witch hunt went on, the focus shifted less from the mother and more to the child (see below).

• Was still a focus on fertility. E.g. putting powder in parents’ bed, e.g. Maria Steingruber attacked while in childbed – work of stepson.

3. Why were men accused of witchcraft? [Was it because they went against ‘masculine’ norms?]

• In Briggs’ Lorraine study, 28% cases = male.

• “Enough to destroy the common assumption that WC was a feminine crime”.

• *not the point – stereotype = what’s important.

• Christina Larner’s sex-related but not sex-specific idea could suggest yes, it was because of going against norms.

• When men were charged, it was for different crimes than women:

• “The most obvious and predictable difference… was the rarity of charges about the misfortunes of babies and small children” (Briggs).

• Much less focus on the sexual.

• E.g. Colas Hardier of Mulcey, Lorraine, Dec 1599: said had been seduced by man on horseback and went to the Sabbath but as far as we can tell does not enumerate anything sexual.

• In Scotland, no man was...