THE WOMEN’S HOLOCAUST

"Hundreds of years after the Witch-craze, the archetype of the horrific hag continues to hold tremendous power as a repository for modern culture’s fear of women, sexuality, and individual freedom." Book of Shadows, Phyllis Curott

"Do not allow a sorceress to live." However, there is no mention of the opposite sex. This line was the inspiration behind thousands of murders throughout Europe; eighty-five to ninety-five percent of which were women. In 1486, Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer published their book, the Malleus Malificarum. A Papal Bull was issued two years before the publication. Meaning, the patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church gave full consent to the publication of this deplorable manuscript. The Malleus was filled with such violent sexism that we see where some might view the Witch burning era as a period of angry misogyny, and even why it is termed the woman’s holocaust.

PART ONE: In The Beginning…

The word witch derives from the Anglo-Saxon word wicce, meaning wiseone. The main reason behind the "burning times" was to instill fear among any persons still practicing this Old Religion. In order to achieve this, the Catholic Church set up a crusade to bring down women, who were once held in the highest regards among followers of the Old Ways.

The major difficulty inherent in witchcraft studies is to

discover how this relatively harmless presence of sorcery

within and parallel to the medieval Church suddenly erupted

into a phenomenon of enormous dimensions that terrorized

much of Europe for nearly three centuries.

Prior to the late fifteenth century, witchcraft trials appear to be fewer and of a less intense nature. Depending on whom you read, some authors will argue that two million women were killed in the dark ages. Sometime between 1435 and 1500 a major change within

these trials occurred. The Devil and other demons were said to have appeared to witches in animal form, and many other common stereotypes of the witch that we continue to carry with us today. A great example is that of the old hag flying on her broom in search of UN-baptized children to eat. Around this time, " . . . two features of later witch trials do appear: . . . ritual feasting and sexual orgies, and the ritual murder of children." One other occurrence during the late fifteenth century was the publication of Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus Malificarum. Although just a book, the results of this publication wielded tremendous power.

PART TWO: Kramer and Sprenger, Professors of Misogyny

"Kramer: Why is a greater number of witches found in the fragile feminine sex than in men? . . . ‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.’ Ecclesiastes."

Excerpt from VINEGAR TOM

There are many references in the Bible stating that women are the weaker sex:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

This and other such sciptures became the basic arguments that The Malleus Malificarum used against women. As du Barry indicates in The Malleus Malificarum – A Commentary, this weaker sex notion played an essential role during the Witchcraze:

Women are the weaker sex, imperfect having been created from the bent rib of Adam . . . the root of all woman’s vices is avarice. Kramer and Sprenger … name three general vices which "appear to have special dominion over wicked women, namely infidelity, ambition and lust.

Otherwise, saying that women are addle-minded fools who can not help but to give into the seductions of the Devil. The Malleus does go on to say that: "[w] omen are intellectually like children." As Walker points out, there is a major flaw in this line of thought, that is: " . . . If a man was strong enough to resist the mighty power of Satan, how was it that he couldn’t resist the weaker vessel woman?"

This inconsistency reveals the deep-seeded fears that set off a murderous rampage against the mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives of western man. The one thing people today often forget is that the women who were so sadistically murdered were real people and it was their fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands who held most of the responsibility for the hangings.

However, Jenny Gibbons argues that, too many authors depict the Malleus as a guide for all witch-hunters. That the Inquisition rejected the recommended legal procedures and that only secular courts resorted to the Malleus. The fact is, although Gibbons' states that Church courts did not impose life-threatening penalties, the courts that followed the Malleus did. To say that the Malleus was not as influential as commonly thought is ludicrous. The Malleus outsold every other book, except the Bible, which only strengthened Sprenger and Kramer’s work.

Witchcraft, which was not always thought of as a female dominant evil, went through a major image change when the Malleus was published. The authors placed all blame on the female, saying that women were more susceptible to the Devil and his seductions. This is a common stereotype that we are still suffering from today. This comes from a fear of women and lust which is clearly seen in such claims as:

Witches . . . have the power . . . to render any man impotent at anytime with any woman . . . She is able to make a man’s penis appear to disappear or to disappear entirely and reappear in a bird’s nest or box. Indeed, "There is no doubt that certain witches can do marvelous things with regard to male organs!"

Attempts to blame "equipment" problems on magical evil curses, laughable though they may be, are great examples of a misogynist society. Not only did men in general hate women, but also they feared women; hence man’s urgent need to find ways to suppress women.

Part Three: THE HEALERS

During the late fourteenth century, a new form of heresy was invented, the practice of midwifery.

Medicine was almost exclusively in the hands of old women for countless thousands of years…

During the Middle ages Christianity provided men’s primary rationale for taking the practice of healing away from women and converting it into a lucrative male-dominated profession.

Midwives knew of ways to ease a woman’s pain during childbirth, which was against God’s will due to Eve's original sin. They also knew of birth control methods, which challenged the common belief that women were to be kept pregnant. The Church made it known that: "no one does more harm to the Catholic Faith than midwives." In order to enforce the statement the Church declared that if a woman cures without a degree, then she must be a witch, and therefore must die. As Walker points out, there was however a catch to this:

The catch was that women were not admitted to universities, which were largely controlled by the Church and patronized only by men. Therefore, any female practitioner was without a degree. These restrictions did not apply to the men who cured without a degree and through magical means.

Although Gibbons tries to argue that: "midwives were more likely to be found helping witch-hunters than as victims of their inquiries." It is clear, female practitioners, for the most part, lived in fear and that the ones who did help the witch-hunters likely did so in order to save themselves from the Church’s allegations.

PART FOUR: The Torture

"they have thumbscrews and racks and the bootikens which is said to be the worst pain in the world, for it fits tight over the legs from ankle to knee and is driven tighter and tighter till the legs are crushed as small as might be and the blood and marrow spout out and the bones crushed and the legs made unserviceable forever. And very few continue their lies and denials then." Excerpt from VINEGAR TOM

The images of witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were products of the perverse fantasies "of a sexually repressed and celibate clergy." Clearly, this was a time of sexual terror for women throughout Europe. The tortures used to extract a confession were highly perverse and deplorable. As seen in Barstow’s Witch-craze:

Searching an accused woman’s body for the devil’s teat was one of the chief proofs of witchcraft. Though the investigation was normally done by woman. . . the sessions were often witnessed by male court officials. Women were always naked for these "tests", and often raped and victimized: When the executioner Jehan Minart of Cambrai Prepared the already condemned Alge gonde de Rue For the stake, he examined her interior parts, mouth, and "parties honteuses" (shameful parts). When a woman was whipped, she had to be stripped to the Waist, her breasts bared to the public. To try to force a Confession, a priest applied hot fat repeatedly to Catherine Boyaionne's eyes and her armpits, the pit of her stomach,  Her thighs, her elbows, and "dans sa nature' in her vagina. She died in prison, no doubt from injuries. As Walker points out when talking of the gender specific tortures, "the witch-killers were sadists without limit. There was no point where they would voluntarily stop torturing." This is clearly seen with the introduction of mastectomy in 1599. Women were stripped and then their breasts were cut off.

Aside from the cruelty of these witch tortures, women lived in fear throughout their daily lives. The Church actually encouraged wife-beating: "not in rage but out of charity and concern for her soul, so that the beating will redound to your merit." With "charity" such as this, it is no wonder why women so easily confessed to the heresy of witchcraft! Taking into close consideration the sort of fears that went along with being a woman without the added threat of an accusation, one can only imagine the horrors that the accused went through.

One common statement throughout the torture induced female confessions was that the Devil promised "that his witch would be free from want." Confessions such as these indicate the low social standard of women during the time, and the desire for equality. Without a man, women were nothing; Women had no possessions of their own, and as indicated earlier, their bodies were not even their own. ". . . A man who commits a rape does this for the sake of pleasure, . . ." Certainly, the pleasure is not a shared one.

CONCLUSION:

. . .Look in the mirror tonight.

Would they have hanged you then?

Ask how they’re stopping you now.

Where have the witches gone?

Ask how they’re stopping you now.

Here we are. - Excert from Vinegar Tom

Across the ocean, in 1692, the witch-hunt mania swept across a small town in Massachusetts. Salem was a definite result of the hysteria in Europe, still more than half of the victims were women. What is appalling is the fact that, even across the Atlantic, the female image of evil was still more readily accepted than its male counterpart.

Today, nearly five hundred years after the burning times, women are still facing some of these views. People may argue that society has progressed. However, every Halloween, in people’s windows society is still accosted with the sight of an ugly old hag riding her broomstick. Why?