By the extremity of the Middle Ages, it was a broadly accepted information that women were moving astir Europe who had been seduced by Satan and past enabled to execute wicked magic successful his stead. Numerous treatise writers began to importune that anyone who doubts the diabolical empowerment of women-as-witches is self-deluded and dangerous. Witches are successful league with the devil, they said, beyond immoderate doubt. In their dealings with him, they are empowered to enactment each kinds of mischief and magic successful his spot and connected his behalf. Because of their confederation with Satan, these women witches indispensable beryllium condemned to death, irrespective of the information that they clasp nary intrinsic powerfulness themselves.
William Perkins, an influential proponent of witch fever successful precocious sixteenth-century England, notes that immoderate miraculous powerfulness a witch oregon her objects appears to person is simply borrowed from Satan. Much of Perkins’s enactment simply describes the quality and powerfulness of Satan; the monstrosity of the evil women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is borrowed, tenuous, and ascribable solely to the devil. Witches person nary innate power. Again, this is the bequest of Christianity playing retired successful depictions and understandings of pistillate monstrosity. Tiamat, Lamashtu, Lamia, the Furies, Medea, the Bacchae, Erichtho: These were each autonomously almighty entities of varying degrees of super-natural powerfulness that belonged to them. Now, with the emergence of the epoch of the witch and its lethal correlative the witch hunt, determination was nary much autonomous Monstrous Bitchery, lone vessels for the supervening volition of Satan.
At the basal of witch persecution was the conception that witches’ sexuality was the happening astir to beryllium feared astir them, the happening astir urgently to beryllium tested, chastened, and destroyed.
As Jean Bodin puts it successful his enormously influential 1580 treatise, The Demon-Mania of Witches, “A witch is idiosyncratic who knowingly tries to execute thing by diabolical means.” All you had to bash was marque an statement with Satan, and you could imbibe of his powerfulness and deploy it against the unsuspecting populace. Lamia presumption was present thing you could simply opt into, implicit with its infanticidal violences. Indeed, arsenic Bodin states, 1 of the astir communal crimes of witches was to execution their ain children, earlier baptism. They are besides notorious, Bodin says, for murdering the babies and children of different women, successful bid to portion their humor and devour their flesh. A witch is diabolical and evil, and indispensable beryllium killed, and yet she has nary existent powerfulness of her own, lone accomplishing things done devilish intercession. Evil yet strangely powerless: a tidy duality to invoke erstwhile seeking to termination disconnected a full swath of the quality population.
Once witch fever had gripped Europe tightly successful the sixteenth century, the mechanisms that states developed for eliciting confessions from accused women became precise precise, and precise brutal. Accused women were routinely stripped bare and shaved. Apparently, inquisitors often raped the accused to assistance find whether the pistillate was a virgin—if she was, it pointed toward her innocence. Obviously, erstwhile the rape had happened, it would beryllium overmuch much hard for a pistillate to assertion she was a virgin, oregon so to beryllium she had been one. The accused were grotesquely tortured successful different ways besides: They were pierced with needles oregon made to beryllium connected robust chairs positioned implicit fires. The tortures were often either explicitly oregon implicitly intersexual successful nature, due to the fact that astatine the basal of witch persecution was the conception that witches’ sexuality was the happening astir to beryllium feared astir them, the happening astir urgently to beryllium tested, chastened, and destroyed.
This appalling and dehumanizing torture wasn’t, however, constricted to the accused herself. Quite the contrary, witches were burned publicly, astatine the stake. The explicit constituent of doing truthful was to dissuade different women from being “bad” successful the mode that witches were “bad.” The daughters of burning witches were sometimes made to basal adjacent to the pyre, being whipped by locals portion watching their mothers dice successful agony. Take that successful for a moment, due to the fact that I’m honestly not definite I’ve ever heard thing much sadistic successful my full life. When I deliberation astir the girl of an accused witch, I ideate her fearfulness and her wracking affectional symptom astatine seeing her parent dice successful slow, brutal carnal agony. I ideate her carnal symptom astatine being flogged, and her humiliation astatine being flogged successful public. I ideate her watching her neighbors jeer astatine her parent and precise apt mock her, too. Then I ideate the intelligence gymnastics she indispensable person had to bash successful bid to survive, some socially and psychologically, aft watching her parent shriek her last, agonized scream. She would astir surely beryllium a semi-outcast: Who would spell to play astatine the location of the small miss whose parent had been burned arsenic a witch?
To person immoderate anticipation of being socially accepted, she would surely person to disavow her mother—the parent who had birthed her, nursed her, fed her, and raised her, and whom she had watched being tortured to decease successful public. Very likely, the girl would person to determine that, yes, her parent had been a witch, and she had deserved to die. If the girl didn’t determine that, however could she perchance past the chaos of her ain mind, the accusation that she would person to walk the remainder of her beingness among radical who had unjustly executed her wholly guiltless mother? She would astir apt person to determine that her parent was guilty. And deserved it. Which would entail the young miss acceding to a world successful which women sometimes deserved to beryllium tortured to death. Honestly, I cannot ideate surviving that benignant of intelligence injury.
If we presume that the immense bulk of executed witches were women of reproductive property oregon older, and we presume that a important fig of executed women had astatine slightest 1 daughter, we’re talking astir a genuinely monolithic standard of societal trauma befalling young women—and this is beyond the contiguous carnal fearfulness enacted connected convicted witches themselves. Hundreds of thousands of small girls, successful each likelihood, had to determine that sometimes women—including their ain mothers—deserved to beryllium tortured to decease successful nationalist due to the fact that of thing a small chaotic oregon a small unruly astir their sexuality oregon astir however they talked, oregon possibly due to the fact that the women successful their vicinity appeared to person amended luck astatine spacing pregnancies and less unwanted births. The religion and authorities utilized the nationalist execution of accused witches to inflict abject panic and trauma connected helpless young girls, connected the brink of losing their ain mothers, who were told that their mothers had been excessively loud, excessively sexy, oregon convulsive toward unborn children. Witch fever, by this constituent successful history, had go a mechanics for brutally regulating and disciplining pistillate behavior, and doing truthful intergenerationally.
Accusations of witchcraft were then, and person ever been, astir demonizing and controlling pistillate reproductive power, due to the fact that if you tin power women’s reproduction, you tin power the patriarchal, linear descent of spot betwixt generations. As Silvia Federici has argued, the systematic persecution of witches is intimately tied to the consolidation of backstage spot during the aforesaid period.
If you look astatine England successful the sixteenth century, and absorption connected areas wherever determination was a precocious grade of enclosed land—which is to say, onshore that was taken and privatized by a peculiar affluent landholder—you find a precocious grade of witch persecution. If you look astatine areas wherever privatization wasn’t happening, you find astir nary witch persecution. If radical are trying to laic exclusive assertion to land, they’ve got to person clear, implicit cognition astir the lines of inheritance. No bastards successful households, sired by different men. No sterile marriages. No promiscuous women. To power the land, you person to power the women—or, much precisely, you person to power their uteruses. If Patriarchy can’t power the wombs, it’s got to demonize and termination the women who incorporate them, arsenic good arsenic those women who person the temerity to effort to power wombs successful a mode that Patriarchy doesn’t o.k. of.
Witch fever, by this constituent successful history, had go a mechanics for brutally regulating and disciplining pistillate behavior, and doing truthful intergenerationally.
The persecution of witches accelerated successful lockstep with the expanding privatization of spot successful the sixteenth century. In fact, the earliest instrumentality that made witchcraft punishable by decease passed successful 1532: the alleged Carolina, an imperial Spanish code. England made witchcraft punishable by decease somewhat later, but by 1604, a pistillate could beryllium executed for witchcraft successful England adjacent successful the lack of hard grounds that she had caused harm to radical oregon harm to property. Scotland, the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland made witchcraft a superior discourtesy astir 1550. Hundreds of thousands of women were tried, tortured, and executed for witchcraft successful the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many of these women were midwives; galore others utilized the services of midwives. Some were simply a small excessively sexy, oregon a small excessively loud. Maybe the men astir them experienced erectile dysfunction and were looking for idiosyncratic to blame. Maybe their neighbors had miscarriages oregon stillbirths.
Despite the rabid fury of witch fever, however, determination were counternarratives, mostly successful the signifier of treatises that sought to shingle immoderate consciousness into European populaces by reminding radical that women were not simply conduits for diabolical interference. One of the astir celebrated of these witch-skeptical treatises, from the sixteenth century, was Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), which forcefully denies the beingness of witches. Scot insists successful his treatise that the making of contracts with the devil is simply a implicit fiction. Witches, helium confirms, bash not beryllium and truthful cannot and should not beryllium prosecuted for witchcraft. He goes yet further to reason that those who persecute and prosecute witches are themselves corrupt, preying connected elderly, depressive, and superstitious people—and chiefly connected women.
Specifically, helium points retired that “manie poore, olde women” are disproportionately persecuted, and for nary bully reason. He refers specifically to the Malleus arsenic “fables” and to Jean Bodin’s sixteenth-century Demon-Mania arsenic “Bodin’s bables.” He’s work the aforesaid texts arsenic everyone else, but he’s not convinced that this vilification of women arsenic predatory, hypersexual, baby-slaying, bloodsucking, loudmouthed monsters is warranted. In fact, helium thinks it’s a fiction, and 1 contrary to due Christian belief. Why? Because it arrogates excessively overmuch powerfulness to the devil. The devil, successful his view, is simply not that strong. And women are not that easy seduced.
This book, The Discoverie of Witches, was precise fashionable successful its time. In fact, it influenced immoderate of the astir important literate writers astir witches successful the seventeenth century. Most importantly, it influenced William Shakespeare, who work the Discoverie earlier penning his celebrated witch play, Macbeth, successful 1606. But of course, famously, Macbeth is astir arsenic acold arsenic imaginable from a witch-skeptical play. Instead of penning a play captious of the thought of witchcraft, Shakespeare wrote a play that takes arsenic fixed that witches could beryllium and that, if they did, they would prey connected the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of those astir them. Indeed, to spot however witch fever propagated itself crossed the remainder of the seventeenth century, it’s utile to crook from humanities documents and treatises and walk immoderate clip with literature, and successful peculiar with drama, since melodramatic signifier had a uniquely wide, nationalist scope passim this period.
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From Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women by Eleanor Johnson. Copyright © 2026. Available from Princeton University Press.
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