1. Witchcraft, Gender and the Body
The Historian’s Toolkit: Block 2 Lecture
Witchcraft, Gender and the Body
Naomi Pullin

2. Jean Bodin, De la Démonomanie des Sorciers (first published 1580)
'When we read books by those who have written about witches, it is to find fifty female witches, or even demoniacs, for every man'.

3. The witch in modern imagination
© Naomi Pullin 2018

4. Focus of this lecture
Will question why women were most likely to be accused of witchcraft?
1. Outline of the gender divide within European witchcraft trials
2. Early modern gender relations in theory and practice
3. Women and witchcraft accusations in early modern communities

5. 1. The gender divide within European witchcraft trials

6. Was witch hunting woman hunting?
Interest in witches emerged with second wave feminism in 1960s and 1970s:
- aimed to recover women from historical obscurity: to tell ‘herstory’
stress on subordination and inequality of women in past societies
Majority of individuals tried for witchcraft in Europe were women (75-85%) > c. 30,000 out of an estimated 40,000.
At least 90% of known witches were women in England, Hungary, and Denmark.

7. The gendering of witchcraft
Emerged in 1980s and 1990s to address complexities of women’s experiences not addressed by feminism.
Joan Scott, Gender as ‘a useful category of historical analysis’ (1986): woman/women = very different from ‘gender’.
‘Women’ and ‘men’ were cultural constructs: identified in relation to each other or to the culture around them.

8. The gendering of witchcraft
Moved away from viewing witches as victims (Diane Purkiss, Christina Larner, Malcolm Gaskill)
Christina Larner: witch hunts in early modern Europe were sex-related but not sex-specific > witches were not accused because they were women ‘but because they were witches’.
The North Berwick witch trials in C16th Scotland

9. Witchcraft and psychoanalysis
Pioneered by Lyndal Roper and Diane Purkiss
Aim to hear the voices of early modern women
Show that women invested in identification, accusation and prosecution of suspected witches.
Accusers projected unspeakable fears and desires.
Those accused could craft their own personal history > ‘used the elements of their culture to create narratives which made sense of their lives: of their unbearable hatreds, agonies, jealousies’ (Roper).

10. The male witch
Since 1990s historians started to observe experiences and identities of male witches (e.g. Lar Apps and Andrew Gow, Alison Rowlands and Ralph Schulte).
Nothing in legal definition of a witch that excluded men > could also practise harmful magic, make demonic pacts and attend Sabbath.

11. Sex of accused witches = low rate of female prosecution
From Brian P. Levack, The witch-hunt in early modern Europe (4th ed., 2016)

12. Early modern gender relations in theory and practice
© Naomi Pullin 2018

13. The Malleus Maleficarum (1486)
Linked witchcraft to unchecked female sexuality.
Everything [I have been talking about happens] because of fleshy lust, which in [women] is never satisfied… Consequently they rouse themselves to vigorous action with evil spirits in order to assuage their sexual appetites. I could produce more [arguments] of this kind, but it is clear enough to those who understand what I am saying that it is not a matter for astonishment that one finds more women than men have been infected with the heresy of those who do works of harmful magic.’

14. Patriarchy
Social system in which men have more power and access to resources to women.
For feminists, patriarchy = historical constant in the domination and oppression of women.
Female susceptibility to lust and sin was underpinned by the teachings of the Church:
Eve made from Adam’s rib; her weakness brought about the Fall of mankind – her uncontrollable passions came to represent those of all women.

15. Explaining difference: the early modern body
Bible viewed menstruating women as profane (couldn’t take sacrament during monthly bleed).
Understanding about the body = derived from ancient philosopher Galen:
- Body made up of 4 humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile).
Different balance for men and women / right balance determined health and temperament
Women were moist and cold = more emotional and passionate and less rational than men.

16. Diagram of a vagina from Vesalius, Fabrica (1544)
Explaining difference: the early modern body
BUT male and female bodies physiologically the same
Thomas Lacquer (1990), Making Sex: up until C18th = one-sex model. Woman is imperfect version of man.
Diagram of a vagina from Vesalius, Fabrica (1544)

17. Politics of patriarchalism: household and sexual relations served as metaphor for the state

18. Deciphering the witchcraft trials
© Naomi Pullin 2018

19. Trial of Ursula Haider, Nördlingen, 1589
Accused of killing two children under her care
Confesses under torture of having watched the Devil dig up the bodies of children. She claims to have eaten their flesh at secret banquets
Identifies a number of prominent townswomen participating in these Sabbaths.
No evidence yet results in ‘guilty’ verdict because of power of devil to deceive.
Self-accusation (confession) = the only sure and acceptable evidence that crime of witchcraft.

20. Trial of Agnes Heard, Essex 1582
Accused by John Wade of bewitching to death a cow, 10 sheep and 10 lambs (valued at £4)
Accused by a number of female neighbours who cite examples of domestic and familial accidents in her presence.
Neighbour Bennet Lane of bewitching objects she had borrowed, e.g. a borrowed dish makes her spinning goes wrong; the milk won’t churn and goes rotten after Agnes collects some money from Bennet.

21. Witchcraft examined
Accused witches = often older women (many poor and widowed)
Widows lack legal protection > married women don’t have separate legal identity from husband or fathers
Accusations of witchcraft developed over a number of years > took time to amass evidence and find witnesses/judges willing to testify/prosecute.

22. Trial of Agnes Heard, Essex 1582
Accused by John Wade of bewitching to death a cow, 10 sheep and 10 lambs (valued at £4)
Accused by a number of female neighbours who cite examples of domestic and familial accidents in her presence.
Neighbour Bennet Lane of bewitching objects she had borrowed, e.g. a borrowed dish makes her spinning goes wrong; the milk won’t churn and goes rotten after Agnes collects some money from Bennet.
= her actions = threat to domestic sphere and everyday functioning of the household

23. Women as witnesses
Usually female friends and neigbours would act as witnesses at their trials
Female witnesses would be involved for 3 main reasons:
1. Testify as ‘possessed victims’ of the witch’s malice
2. Testify to their experience of maleficium
3. Conducting a physical search of the witch’s body for the ‘witches mark’ [juries of matrons, appointed by the court]

24. Mark = teat sucked by Satan and his minions (allegedly painless and incapable of bleeding)
No specific criteria about the location/identity of the mark, so much rested on women’s experience > their testimony could determine whether a woman was convicted of witchcraft or not

25. Loudon Possessions: Urbain Grandier sentenced 1633
Accused of possessing the nuns in Loudon
‘Devil’s pact’ = used as evidence at trial
Possible that one of nuns, Jeanne de Anges, feigned possession to secure his conviction
Grandier = unpopular in the community
Nuns’ accounts of possession = highly sexualised. Nuns were subject to a mass exorcism, with 7,000 in attendance.
Grandier convicted and burned.

26. Portrait of possessed nun Jeanne de Anges (Joan of the Angels)
The Weaker Vessel
Women were known to be more receptive to visions and prophecy, as well as demonic possession
Women’s bodies = more porous and more emotionally charged > more receptive to both ‘divine’ and ‘satanic’ influences.
Portrait of possessed nun Jeanne de Anges (Joan of the Angels)

27. Conclusions?
Witchcraft = generally, but not exclusively, a woman’s crime
Ideas about the female body = linked to the figuration of the witch (unbalanced humors could lead to corruption and pollution)
Witchcraft and its accusation = processes of power and exchange
Female ‘victims’ = often most vulnerable members of their communities (poor, elderly, widowed).
Women = not simply victims of patriarchal system of male dominance
- convicted witches used their trials to shape their lives, reputations and confessions
- accusation = enabled women to assert dominance over other women > tells story of deep antagonisms and enmities