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Critical Analysis of the Study of Popular Magic and Witchcraft
‘Witch-hunting… helped to unite men by demonstrating the ultimate evil was female, not male.’
The study of popular magic and witchcraft tells us that early-modern European society was a wholly misogynistic one that demonized and persecuted women. The patterns of popular magic and witchcraft can be traced throughout most of Europe from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The idea that ‘Witchcraft was not sex-specific but sex related’ according to Christina Larner, is arguable. The study of popular magic and witchcraft shows that the nature of early-modern society was prejudiced against women and sought for a way to suppress and get rid of a fraction of the female population. By the end of the seventeenth century, there was a notable shift in certainty about the existence of popular magic and witchcraft or maleficium. In Reginald Scott’s book ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’, he is a skeptic, his message is intended to cast doubt on the people. He determines through reason the improbability of witchcraft and uses religion in order to back it up (an unusual feat at the time where religion was prominent and was often used to encourage the belief of witchcraft). He determines that the belief in witchcraft and witch-hunting was wholly un-Christian. His accusations against the Catholic church, reportedly led to King James I in England in 1603 to burn all available copies of the book at the time. 2 This document and its brief demise is significant as it is reports the realities of witchcraft. Despite James’ supposed burning of his book, Scott’s suspicions gradually evolved into truth held by leading members of the social and cultural powers across Europe over the next hundred years, that magic was insolent, and the Devil was nothing more than a parable to serve as a moral influence. The disbelief was so extensive that those who believed in the physical reality of either were considered to be mentally ill. 3 An article published in Britain in 1671 by John Wagstaffe deeply criticised the belief in witchcraft demeaning it to mere ‘superstition having over-run the world… taking its advantage from the frailty of man’ 4
Examples of alternative explanations for witchcraft and those who confessed to being a part of it are seen all across Europe from as early as the fifteenth century. In France, in the 1490s, humanist physician Symphorien Champier was apparently the first to suggest that people who thought that they had participated in a Sabbat were suffering from a mental illness that called for medical treatment.5 In Germany, Agrippa von Nettelsheim in 1509, also denounced the cruelty and highlighted the greed of inquisitors as an ulterior motive for witch-hunting.6 Girolamo Cardano, an Italian physician and mathematician, further depicted witches as ‘poor, malnourished women whose black bile and melancholic humor made them susceptible to delusions and hallucinations.’ 7 So, the question is, if the disbelief in magic was so widespread, why did the witch-hunts continue for another approximately two hundred years?
It is no coincidence that witch-hunting took place in a firmly patriarchal society. The social, political, and economic dominance of men was essential for the belief in popular magic and witchcraft and resulted in witch-hunting. Larner argues that the relationship between the witch-hunts and patriarchy is only an indirect one. However, that seems futile considering it is undeniable that the connection exists all the same.8
It is unreasonable to say, perhaps, that the sole reason for the massacre of women during this time was purely economic reasons although it is no coincidence that most women accused of witchcraft were poor, marginal women. It is obvious that wives were less economically vulnerable than single or widowed women at this time. In Scotland, for example, the increase of witchhunts rose proportionally with the emigration of young men. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (peak witch-hunting years) over 35,000 men, more than twenty percent of the young male population, emigrated resulting in the increase of single, young women. 9 Maybe the ‘belief’ in popular magic and witchcraft demonstrates an extremely resourceful society that decided to eliminate societal and economic burdens while at the same time spreading fear and establishing control over the entire population of women.
From an ulterior perspective, the ‘belief’ in popular magic and witchcraft, and the witch-hunts as a result, were an effort to control women. ‘Witchcraft was part of a broader pattern of moral offenses for which women were given increased criminal responsibility for during the Reformation.10 Adultery was criminalized in 1563, followed by fornication and incest in 1567.11 These moral offenses were all related to sex, as was witchcraft, as the stereotype of a witch was a sexual deviant. This is clear from the concept of how a woman becomes a witch. It was said that in order to become a witch a woman must make a pact with the devil. In order to do this, she must have sex with him. Prosecuting these women for witchcraft (which typically stemmed from sex crimes) reflects a society that was outraged and disgusted by the perception of female sexual freedom and sought to impose a new moral order.
Although people accused of practicing magic and witchcraft were tried in secular courts, this does not excuse the obvious involvement of the Church. The Church also played a role in this sexual oppression of women, which is essentially what this was, in the physical form of accusations of witchcraft. Charges of sexual deviancy were usually made by religious and secular authorities who feared sexual conspiracy, as the Devil was a symbol for forbidden sexuality and desire of any kind. The state and the Church were ultimately intertwined, as their values and beliefs influenced one another. In the primary source ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, Kramer and Sprenger divulge through biblical connotations an extremely anti-female attitude. They claim with reference to Eve, the first woman, that she is a defect, ‘an imperfect animal’. They state that in regards to the tale of Eve and the serpent ‘it is clear in the case of the first woman that she had… little faith in the word of God. This document demonstrates the influence of the Church on citizens and how its beliefs fed into the prejudices against women and why the Church was heavily involved in the systematic executions of women. The study of popular magic and witchcraft shows us a society that was heavily influenced and controlled by the Church. This is further seen as the decline in religious influence across Europe was proportional to the decline in the belief of popular magic and witchcraft. ‘Witch-hunting came to an end, not when alternative methods of controlling women emerged, but when the state ceased to demand such a high level of godliness (and especially sexual morality) from its citizens’12
Another stereotype of a woman accused of witchcraft was one that was seen as a terror to societal norms, a woman with a quarrelsome voice. It is often that before a woman was accused of witchcraft if she did not hold any sexual offenses, she was accused of verbal crimes such as scolding and slander. Women were forced to conform to a certain ‘code of behavior’ in this patriarchal society. As Larner put it: ‘Witch-hunting is woman-hunting or at least it is the hunting of women who do not fulfill the male view of how women ought to conduct themselves.’13 This lead to the efforts of women to live up to the patriarchal standards of men, if they did not, they would be accused of witchcraft, tried, and potentially persecuted.
Of course, the ultimate component that negates the entire notion that the study of popular magic and witchcraft reflects a patriarchal, misogynistic society, a society that orchestrated the deaths of thousands of less than desirable women, is that naturally, men were accused of practicing witchcraft too. The statistics, however, are outrageous, of the thousands of people accused of witchcraft all over Europe, the average percent of those that were women was at least eighty-five. 14 Most of the men accused of witchcraft were also somehow connected to a woman who had been accused of being a witch, or they worked in healing or held some other feminine trait. Yes, although the connections between misogyny and the witch-hunts are indirect, it holds a great deal of significance all the same, ‘it was still an attack on women as women; in a sense, it got a little out of hand in attacking men as well.’15 Witch-hunting was an example of woman-hunting, even if it is only indirectly.
The study of popular magic and witchcraft tells us that the nature of early modern European society was patriarchal and misogynistic, and shows a state that hid behind a façade in order to inflict a higher moral standard for its citizens.
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