Witchcraft and Witch-Hunting Theories

The Issue on discussion here is the different theories on why the witch-hunts took place. This is a topic that has a lot of different views and opinions. It is doubtful we will ever truly understand the exact reasons but historians can make educated and logical conclusions based on supporting information and evidence. Not all ideas have as much evidence as others and some theories have pretty much been ignored or disproved.

Hester‘s ideas in “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting” takes the feminist attitude and relies on the theory of Misogyny to explain what the possible reasons behind the witch-hunts were. Hester argues quite simply that one aspect is that witch-hunts were a way of social control of women and a way of reaffirming the authority of a patriarchal society; a way of restoring and keeping the male status quo in the changing social order (Hester). Hester’s theory at least in part is true; generally speaking the accusation of ‘witch’ was brought against women far more often than those against men. In the Holy Roman Empire they accused around 24,000 people of being witches, 76 percent of those were women. Germany and Hungary also had a large amount of accused with the majority being women, above 80 percent.

There are exceptions to this in countries such as Russia, Normandy, Estonia and Iceland where the main victims of witch-hunting were men. There are also places where the witch-hunting was relatively equal for both genders such as in France and Finland. These exceptions lend strength to one of Holmes’s ideas about the witch-hunts. Holmes argues that it wasn’t so much misogyny but more to do with the fact that women, more often than men, held attributes that during this period led to people thinking ...

... middle of paper ...

....

Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentith-Century Representations. London: Routledge, 1996.

Scarre, Geoffrey and John Callow. Witchcraft and Magic in Sixthteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Europe. 2nd Edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.

Sharpe, James. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. Paperback Edition. Philiadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Wills, Deborah. Malevolent Nurture: Witch Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Oldridge, Darren. The Witchcraft Reader. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge, 2008.

Holmes, Clive. “Women: Witnesses and Witches.” Past and Present 140 (1993): 45-78.

Hester, Marianne. “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting.” Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (1996): 288-306.