Witches were early feminists?

Question

The history of the original European witch hunts of the late 16th and early 17th centuries has become politicized. By the early 1900s, they were seen as outbreaks of hysteria fostered by a sinister and oppressive Catholic Church. Then, about 30 years ago, revisionist historians began to claim that the trials constituted a more systematic campaign by the patriarchal church to extinguish the remnants of goddess-worshiping pre-Christian religions by wiping out the people who preserved them: women, specifically folk healers and midwives...

The Inquisition was not greatly involved in witch burnings; it had its hands full with Protestants and other heretics, whom the church shrewdly perceived to be a far more serious threat to its power. In fact, while the justification for condemning witches was religious, and some religious figures joined in witch hunting campaigns, the trials were not run by churches of any denomination. They were largely held in civil courts and prosecuted by local...

...uthorities (some of whom were also religious leaders) as criminal cases.

The old-school take on Europe's witch hunts attributed them to excesses of Catholic fanaticism, but as Roper, who focuses on witch crazes in small German towns, points out, Protestants of many denominations could be just as fervent and murderous in their campaigns. (The need to eradicate witches was one of the few doctrinal things Catholic and Protestant crusaders agreed on.) A witch panic, she writes, was less the act of a ruthless authority stamping out all dissenters than a sign of a power vacuum: "The very fragmentation of political and legal authority in Germany made it possible for panics to get out of hand, while the intensity of religious struggle, with the forces of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation confronting each other directly, nourished a kind of moral fundamentalism that saw the Devil's hand at work in all opponents."

Current popular history holds that the witch hunts were concerted campaigns by a male-dominated church that felt its sway diminished by stubborn pagan and folk traditions that gave too much respect to wise old women...

if you've ever lived in a small community, is it really that difficult to see how they got started in that direction, if not how they managed to get so far? It may take a village to raise a child, but history also keeps telling us that it takes a village to burn a witch.

Whole article:
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/02/01/witch_craze/index.html?pn=1

Answer 1

There was no need for feminism when this stuff started. Women had their own professions and owned property and land. Some small criticism of a man-made project may have caused anger in the monastries, but their main beef the monks had with women was their independence and their spiritual power in the community.

These 300 years have been 'disappeared' - the history of thousands of women burned and drowned has been swept under the carpets of history by the church. It is recent enough for the women's professional feminine agent nouns, to be now used by men: Maltster, Brewster, Webster, Baxter, (baecester OE - baker), Seamster - but not Spinster, or sister.

The monks eyed the wealth of women merchants when they denounced refined sugar as poisonous - maybe that triggered the accusation of consorting with old Nick? Women and their families forfeited their property to the church if they were found guilty of witchcraft -(os poisoning wells and causing cattle to die.) When the hysterical pornography of gynocide burned out, the monks had collected enough money to begin the building of magnificent catherdrals.

"They don't have to lynch the women
very often anymore, although
they used to - the Lord and his men
went through the villages at night, beating and killing every woman caught
outdoors.
the European witch trials took away
the independent people; two different villages
- after the trials were through that year -
had left in them, each
one living woman;
one.

Answer 2

Your information is ever so slightly askew.

If you compare dates and places of the so called burning times, you'll see that they line up with Protestant Reformation.

It wasn't "witches" being burned. It was Catholics. Even today many Protestant denominations call us Pagans.

Many of our greatest saints were adept in things Protestants would later call witchcraft. They were the earliest herbologists, midwives and doctors.

For instance, St. Martin de Porres created the first pet hospital. Had he lived in Germany, rather than Peru, he certainly would have been burned at the stake.

Some of our most beloved visionary women barely escaped being burned as witches. Many of them were wise women. Anchoresses and ascetics who lived alone.

I am a Franciscan. Martin Luther's greatest desire was to burn all Franciscans at the stake. He was also whole heartedly against witchcraft and stated that he would burn them all himself if he could.

However, the largest number of people he burned were heretics. Not those accused of witchcraft.

Elizabeth I had a terrible paranoia of the demonic. She burned both Catholics and Protestants. Any Protestant who refused her particular brand of Protestantism.

It is said that she burned 800 witches a year. Which I find very hard to believe since she was more interested in converting everyone to her own religion.

It was from her that the greatest push that Catholics are witches come. He called priest's robes "garments of conjuring."

The greatest witch hunters were Puritans. It was the Puritan fanatics who launched the horrors of Salem. They persecuted Quakers as well as Catholics. Quakers were often branded.

So before you go pointing fingers at the Catholic Church you may want to do a little bit more homework.

Answer 3

Somewhat.
As women age they gain wisdom and limited power but lose their looks and sex appeal. They either get more or less traditional depending on their intelligence and experience and how they choose to adapt. Men and younger women always respond to this and theres a large number of them that feel threatened. Young women have sex appeal but not alot of experience or accumulated intelligence and are often jealous and confused about older women's power. Men are threatened by older women and don't find them appealing any more and often want to get rid of them for a younger woman. During the witch trials these common dynamics of social life were exagerated in a religious and political climate that allowed the demonizing and murder of anyone they could accuse of not being one of them.
Without exagerating the power that some older women have been able to achieve, we need to acknowledge their wisdom and treat them with the same respect we give to older men, not demonize and scapegoat them.

Answer 4

Actually, women are still murdered by their communities because they are thought to be witches.

In an UPI article published on June 10, 2007, police in the Ugandan district of Kitgum say an angry mob recently killed three women accused of using witchcraft to kill a taxi driver. District Police Chief Charles Oumo said the women were stoned and burned to death at a regional refugee camp after residents blamed them for the mysterious circumstances under which an area taxi driver died. Residents of the East African nation routinely blame deaths on alleged witches.

Here's the UPI article describing how the women were hunted down by the mob, beaten to death, and burned alive: "Mob kills three alleged witches in Uganda":
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20070610-14481100-bc-uganda-witchhunt.xml

The jury is out on whether the alleged witches were feminists, but they were definitely women.

Answer 5

I recently read that during that time women were big bread winners for their families because of their ability to raise crops in gardens and market them, their folk home remedies,
and their alcoholic spirits. History has it that the first brewer-
masters were towns women in Europe. They sat a broom out
as a signal to people that they were brewer masters and herbalists. During this repressive time the clergy began to persecute these women and label them sorcerers. This was due to jealousy of the clout that these women held in the community due to their mystical abilities. In this way they were predecessors of modern feminists. I don't think they labeled themselves as such, but they definitely deserve recognition for their achievements.

Answer 6

Yep, this is what I've always read. They weren't really feminists in the strictest sense, but they were often the squeaky wheels in towns, and also, since they were often midwives and healers, had money of their own, which was against the order of the day.

Answer 7

What do you mean early feminists. Look further back in history. Untill xtains came along women in many cultures enjoyed a seperate but equal status, i call it equivallence. Look at the norse, and celts womens word inside the home was law, they owned all inside property. Men dealt with outside issuses and owned outside property.
Feminism only resulted because women allowed their power to be taken in the first place.

Answer 8

You completely ignore the statistical studies that claim that witch hunts were economically motivated to eliminate the weakest in a community.

I think the problem is that you are going with the "popular" history, which usually has an axe to grind or an interesting theory unsupported by any hard evidence.

Answer 9

While women were conforming to being the property of men in the 15th - 17th centuries, some women were able to eek out a living for themselves as midwives and healers (people and animals). they were busy selling their brews, poultices and other herbal remedies that were harvested from the earth. It was not only supposed witches that were burnt at the stake but others who would not conform. For example Anne Askew (Ayscough) (1521 - 16 July 1546) was an English poet and member of the Reformed Church who was persecuted as a heretic. She is the only woman on record to have been tortured in the Tower of London, before being burned at the stake. Born at Stallingborough into a notable family of Lincolnshire, she was forced by her father, Sir William Askew (Ayscough), to marry the Catholic Thomas Kyme when she was just 15, as a substitute for her sister who had died. Anne rebelled against her husband by refusing to adopt his surname.

The marriage did not go well, not least because of her strong Protestant beliefs. When she returned from London, where she had gone to preach against the doctrine of transubstantiation, her husband turned her out of the house. She then went again to London to ask for a divorce, justifying it from scripture (1 Corinthians, 7.15), on the grounds that her husband was not a believer.

Eventually Anne left her husband and went to London where she gave sermons and distributed Protestant books. These books had been banned and so she was arrested. Her husband was sent for and ordered to take her home to Lincolnshire. Anne soon escaped and it was not long before she was back preaching in London.

Anne was arrested again. This time, Sir Anthony Kingston, the Constable of the Tower of London, was ordered to torture Anne in an attempt to force her to name other Protestants. Anne was put on the rack. Kingston was so impressed with the way Anne behaved that he refused to carry on torturing her, and Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor had to take over.

Askew enlisted her friends at court for support, in particular Catherine Parr, but Parr would not save Askew from charges of heresy; in 1546 the young woman was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured on the rack, in the hopes that she would implicate Parr. Askew did not break under the months of torture, although, as a result, she was too badly crippled to walk to the stake.

To some degree these women were non conformists - they refused to conform to the men at the time that had decided women were chattels and of no real importance. This was Patriarchy. Its not surprizing that these women made a stance - prior to the Romans invading England Matriarchy was normal, and women were not seen as week and dependent but strong and on equal terms with men - their status being higher than men in some environments. For example Between AD 61 and AD 63 Boadicea led her Iceni people to a glorious but bloody war against the Romans. The Iceni Celts had submitted their kingdom in East Anglia to the conquering Romans and the rule of Emperor Claudius in AD 43. In AD 61, Prasutagus, Boadicea's husband and King of the Iceni died. A dispute followed during which Boadicea, was publicly beaten by the soldiers of the emperor, and her two daughters raped. The Iceni were insulted and rose in revolt led by their queen Boadicea. So successful was the uprising that the Romans were almost defeated. Unfortunately for the Iceni and their allies, the military skill of the Roman army finally led to the crushing of the rebellion.After the revolt, Roman rule was re-established. For almost two glorious years, Boadicea pillaged the Roman settlements; she remains to this day, the greatest of the heroines of Britain.

On reflection I think that Feminsm has its roots in non conformity and taking a stand at what is just and right. Its being prepared to fight for ones entitlements. The women burn from the 15h century onwards were willing to make a stand, a lot of innocent men and children were also burnt at the stake for a range of percieved crimes as well. It was basically the order of the day in Social Control. Good question, thanks.

Answer 10

Certainly you aren't serious?

I heavily doubt early witches had anything to do with feminism, and I doubt even further that they were killed/hunted simply because they were women. We already know why those hunts took place- so that the authorities could blame famine/disease/insert unfortunate happening here on scapegoats.

EDIT: vvvvvvvv

Both.