Woman, thy name is witch

The Malleus Maleficarum is one of those texts that, when I was reading it, I was thinking that it deserved to have its own blog post. So…TA-DA! Here it is.

The thing that struck me the most about the text was how misogynistic it was. Many of the past texts that we read targeted women, but never to this scale that the Malleus Maleficarum reached. To me, the other texts referred to witches as being either men or women. And looking back, we can sort of see a slow evolution from men and women being involved in witchcraft to rampant misogyny. In this text, witches are identified primarily as women. Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, say that “a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft” (Kors and Peters 185). This statement shows that they believe that a woman is not dependable or able to be faithful, so therefore a woman is more likely to turn to witchcraft.

Kramer and Sprenger use a lot of historical “facts” and Biblical sources to back their claims up. At one point, they bring up ancient history with their claims that “The kingdom of the Jews suffered much misfortune and destruction through the accursed Jezebel, and her daughter Athalia…who caused her son’s sons to be killed, that on their death she might reign herself…Therefore it is no wonder if the world now suffers through the malice of women.” (187) It’s really easy to take historical events out of context, as these two so obviously did just so they could point the finger at women in general.

And, of course, Heinrich and Sprenger have to bring up the sexuality of women. They say that “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.” (188) And then they whip out a Biblical quote from Proverbs and conclude: “Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils. More such reasons could be brought forward, but to the understanding it is sufficiently clear that it is no matter for wonder that there are more women than men found infected with the heresy of witchcraft.” (188) Oh, well, doesn’t that just make absolute, complete sense! When I was reading this, all I could think was: “Wow, they clearly put a lot of thought and effort to this! And this makes perfect sense to them!”

Anyway, the reason I bring up this sexuality of women is that the authors went into is so extensively that I was just kind of surprised, and I felt like it definitely needed a mention.

 

Kors, Alan Charles and Edward Peters. Witchcraft in Europe: 400-1700. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001. Print.

Surgeons, Stars, & So Much More....

Jessica Morales
Blog Post #1

Ah where to begin with the topic of magic.... With all the topics being covered; I wanted to talk about some of the readings with did from Kieckhefer. Throughout chapter 6, there was a strong emphasis on the use of astronomy and horoscopes. On pages 120-122, it stated "The most basic use of astrology was in making horoscopes, which would indicate the influence that the stars and planets had on a person at birth or at any other juncture in life.....Astrology had implications for medicine. A surgeon or barber- surgeon was supposed to know which signs of the zodiac governed which parts of the body, because it was dangerous to operate or bleed a patient when the wrong constellation was dominant." I thought that this definitely showed the emphasis that magic was an active role. The barber and or surgeon was definitely capable of performing such surgery, yet he did not act upon it because he or she knew it might not have been a good idea to go against the stars. It also revealed how much this magic and even simple things like astrology took apart in a big role in their lives at the time.