Introduction and Research Process
Malleus Maleficarum was written 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger concerning the prosecution of witches. The purpose of the work was to prove that witchcraft was indeed real, and that it was primarily practiced by women. It is widely believed that approximately 60,000 people were executed and somewhere around twice that number were put on trial.
The question is why did witchcraft become such a common crime, and why did women become prosecuted for being witches? Tamar Herzig is a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University, specializing in gender history and in her article Flies, Heretics, And The Gendering Of Witchcraft she explains the influences on Heinrich Kramer that led to his points of view that he expresses in the Malleus Maleficarum. The article Witchcraft Beliefs and Witch Hunts by Niek Koning, a senior lecturer in agricultural economics and rural policy for the University of Wagenigen, provides socio-economic and rural views of the prosecution of witches in early modern Europe. He explains the evolution of witchcraft belief that coincided with agricultural and societal development. Brian Levack takes an in-depth look at all aspects of witchcraft in his Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology: a Twelve Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles, from which I chose to examine his volumes on the general studies of witchcraft and on women. Levack is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specializes in legal history and the history of witchcraft. A professor of history and religious studies at the University of Virginia, H.C. Erik Midelfort wrote the article Witch Craze?: Beyond the Legends of Panic, which provides a religious perspective, especially in...
... middle of paper ...
... prosecution is something that should be studied further in order to properly understand it, as it is a major instance of injustices towards women.
Works Cited
Herzig, Tamar. "Flies, Heretics, And The Gendering Of Witchcraft." Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 5, no. 1 (2010): 51-80.
Koning, Niek. "Witchcraft Beliefs and Witch Hunts." Human Nature 24, no. 2 (2013): 158-181.
Levack, Brian P. Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology: a Twelve Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles. New York: Garland Pub., 1992.
Midelfort, H.C. Erik. "Witch Craze?: Beyond the Legends of Panic." Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 6, no. 1 (2011): 11-33.
Scribner, Bob. "Witchcraft and Judgement in Reformation Germany." History Today 40, no. 4 (1990).
Suhr, Carla. "Portrayal of Attitude in Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets." Studia Neophilologica 84, no. 1 (2012): 130-142.
Edward, Bever, 'Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of Magic', Journal of Interdisciplinary History vol.11 no.2 (Autumn 2009)
Hinds, Maurene J. Witchcraft on Trial: From the Salem Witch Hunts to the Crucible. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
Kocic, Ana. (2010). Salem Witchcraft Trails: The Perception of Women In History, Literature And Culture. Linguistics and Literature, Vol. 8 (Issue N1), 1-7. http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/lal/lal201001/lal201001-01.pdf
Spanos, Nicholas P., and Jack Gottlieb. "Ergotism and the Salem village witch trials." (1976) Google Scholar. Web. 26 Feb 2014.
1 Nachman Ben-Yehuda The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist’s Perspective. The University of Chicago, 1980. 15. 2 Levack! 123.3 Levack 164.
Suddenly people seemed very paranoid and soon residents were placing blame on one another and accusing each other of witchcraft. In a fifteen month period between 1691 and 1692 nearly twelve dozen people were accused of witchcraft in or near Salem (Norton, p8).
Witchcraft is said to be the most widespread cultural phenomenon in existence today and throughout history. Even those who shun the ideas of witchcraft cannot discount the similarities in stories from all corners of the globe. Witchcraft and its ideas have spread across racial, religious, and language barriers from Asia to Africa to America. Primitive people from different areas in the world have shockingly similar accounts of witchcraft occurrences. In most cases the strange parallels cannot be explained and one is only left to assume that the tales hold some truth. Anthropologists say that many common elements about witchcraft are shared by different cultures in the world. Among these common elements are the physical characteristics and the activities of supposed witches. I will go on to highlight some of the witch characteristic parallels found in printed accounts from different parts of the world and their comparisons to some famous fairytales.
In the Malleus Maleficarum, Sprenger and Kramer’s basic argument about the origins of witchcraft is that witchcraft is found chiefly in women due to several reasons that focus on characteristics of women. Sprenger and Kramer argue that witchcraft in women is more probable because women were very naïve and impressionable, carnal lust is never satisfied in women, and they are of lower intelligence and weaker memories than men.
According to Jones, modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials took place between 1450 and 1750, with an estimated execution total ranging between 40,000 and 50,000. This death toll was so great because capital punishment was the most popular and harshest punishment for being accused of witchcraft. Fear of the unknown was used to justify the Puritans contradictive actions of execution. Witch trials were popular in this time period because of religious influences, manipulation through fear, and the frightening aspects of witchcraft.
Were the witch-hunts in pre-modern Europe misogynistic? Anne Llewellyn Barstow seems to think so in her article, “On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions”. On the contrary, Robin Briggs disagrees that witch-hunts were not solely based on hatred for women as stated in his article, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community”. The witch craze that once rapidly swept through Europe may have been because of misconstrued circumstances. The evaluation of European witch-hunts serves as an opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of misogyny.
The book begins with a brief history of the colonial witchcraft. Each Chapter is structured with an orientation, presentation of evidence, and her conclusion. A good example of her structure is in chapter two on the demographics of witchcraft; here she summarizes the importance of age and marital status in witchcraft accusations. Following this she provides a good transition into chapter three in the final sentence of chapter two, “A closer look of the material conditions and behavior of acc...
Syracuse University Press, 2002. 221-223. The. Sidky, H. Witchcraft, lycanthropy, drugs, and disease: an anthropological study of the European witch-hunts. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1997.
HIST303 Witch Hunting 1400-1700 Essay 1: Describe the nature of "witchcraft"and explain why it was threatening to Christianity. Prepared by: Sikiki Angela Lloyd Due: 4 April 2014 Student Number: 203139861 Image: The Witches' Sabbath.
Lehmann A. C. & Myers J. E. Magic, Witchcraft and Religion – An anthropological Study of the Supernatural (Fourth Edition) (Mayfield Publishing Company, 1997)
III. Smithson, Jayne. “Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion.” Class lectures. Anthropology 120. Diablo Valley College, San Ramon 2004.