A Brief History of Christianity
• Tradition holds that the religion was
founded by Jesus Christ, a young rebellious
rabbi from Nazareth
• The three main groups that became
followers of Christ and establish the
Christian faith are the Israelis, the Greeks,
and the Romans
Christ's Teachings
• Christ advances the status of
women is several significant ways
as he travels and preaches
– Does not them as sex objects
– Rejects the blood taboo
– Teaches them scripture
• Allows them to be disciples
• Trusts them as witnesses
The New Testament
is structured in two
parts: The Gospels
and the Epistles
There are no
negative statements
about women in
the Gospels
Historical Context
• As Christ begins attracting followers, each of the
cultures near him are experiencing great social
change, as a result of the wars
– Hebrews have been conquered by the Romans and must
follow the Roman laws; women are becoming
priestesses
– Romans have lost many men, and so women are
educated and become leaders with economic and social
authority
– Greeks have been conquered by the Romans and have a
shortage of women; women begin to have doublyexpanded roles
Christians Want to Differentiate
Themselves From Other Religions
• Epistles will dictate
– No adornment
– Believers will be associated with home and
family, peaceful lifestyles
– Restricted in sexual behavior, for both sexes
– Return to traditional gender roles
Gradual Lessening of Women’s
Power in the Church
• Women, initially, are missionaries and
disciples, and as such preach and celebrate
mass
• Women can be abbesses and manage abbeys
and villages, educate the people, hold
surplus food stores, and make a profit,etc.
• Women can be wives of priests, as well
The Age of Reformation
• Women can be nuns in seclusion, but almost
all other ‘public’ participation in the church
has been rescinded other than going to
church
Witches: The European Invasion
• In the sixteenth century Europe experienced two
reformations, not one, and both Protestants and
Catholics persecuted witches.
• New ideas alone cannot explain why such a
misogynistic mood pervaded Europe.
– Neither the Protestant Reformation or the Catholic
Counter-Reformation introduced any significant new
theories about the nature or role of women.
– During this period, however, the states of early modern
Europe increased patriarchal authority in both religious
and secular life.
• Gender definitions, solidified by centuries of
custom and now reinforced by the Renaissance
revival of classical values, strengthened the grip of
patriarchal ideology after 1500.
– Renaissance education, neoclassical in orientation and
normally confined to boys, persisted until the
nineteenth century and probably did more to influence
official male opinion about women than did religious
instruction.
– Given those conditions, “reforms” often took a
patriarchal and, for women, disadvantageous direction.
Tragic consequences result when these “reform” laws
against witchcraft and infanticide are zealously
enforced.
Women and Protestantism
• Martin Luther successfully defied the Pope,
creating Protestantism, and making at least one
change in women’s roles.
• He challenged the papal insistence on clerical
celibacy, contradicting the traditional Christian
assumption that virginity (of both sexes) was the
ideal condition.
• There was still, however, an assumption on
Luther’s part that sex was somehow sinful.
• Protestants saw marriage as a responsibility for both
men and women, following the biblical tale of Adam
and Eve.
– Leaders wanted to promote the dignity and importance of
marriage but leave male supremacy untouched. At best
Protestantism offered a differentiated “equality,” in which
spouses were expected to work together under the male’s
leadership.
• Other Protestant reforms attempted to treat men and
women symmetrically, although with less success.
– Protestants accepted the possibility of complete divorce
(while Catholicism allowed only separation).
– Protestants, however, actually granted few divorces.
Calvinist Geneva averaged fewer than one a year from 1600
until after 1750. There still existed a double standard in this
too, as husbands obtained the divorces.
• In 1566 Geneva had passed edicts requesting
equal punishment for men and women found
guilty of sexual misconduct:
– Prison terms with only bread and water for
fornication
– Banishment for adultery with an unmarried person
– Death for adultery between two married people
• Only women were ever executed for adultery;
males managed to avoid banishment if the
adultery was committed with their servants.
• These edicts were finally repealed in 1610.
• Protestants abolished convents wherever they
could, often against the wishes of the women and
nuns there.
– Few nuns left convents to convert to Protestantism, and
more men than women left cloistered Catholic life for
the new Christian religion.
– Protestantism had no special place for an ex-nun and
offered no all-female community for unmarried women.
• Likewise, Protestantism abolished traditional
festivities where women played key roles.
– It destroyed the worship of male and female saints
– It removed the Virgin Mary from her position as mother
of God, depriving her of her nearly equal rank with the
Trinity.
• Because of these factor, perhaps, individual
women rarely converted to Protestantism.
– Only about 4 percent of the converts to Protestantism
are women, given prosecution records, whereas about
half of the Jewish followers prosecuted were women.
– Most women’s levels of commitment to the new
religion corresponded to the commitment of their
husbands or sons.
– This increased patriarchal control applies to children,
too. Fathers could contest or invalidate their children’s
marriages if they did not approve.
• Catholics use this to reform their laws, changing
the age of consent to 30 for men and 25 for
women.
Advances for Women in Protestantism
• An innovation in women’s roles occurs through
Protestantism, perhaps because of the idea of
complementary roles and its theology which
believes that all people have equal access to God
through the Bible (although many more men are
literate than women at this time).
• Women are allowed or tolerated as speakers or lay
preachers, and many begin to speak out on social
injustice and well as religious issues.
Women and the Catholic Reformation
• By thirteenth century male monasticism had
successfully combined communal life with public
service
• Female monasticism, however, which had enjoyed
similar success in earlier centuries, was hampered
by strict enclosure demands and was only partially
successful by 1700.
• A genuine reformation in female
religious life occurs in 1535 with
the founding of the Ursulines by
Angela Merici.
– Her Institute marked the first time
in European history where women
gathered formally to teach girls,
and eventually these orders were
made to obey the enclosure laws,
which weakened their reach
considerably
The Ursuline Sisters’ Coat of Arms
• Vincent de Paul, a humble French
priest and Louise de Marillac, a
widow, established the Daughters
of Charity in 1633.
– They provided women with
education and nursing skills. Paul
practiced “holy cunning” in his
mission, calling the women
daughters rather than sisters, he
avoided any suggestion of religious
motivations and so did not go against
canonical law.
Other Experiences of Women in Europe
• The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic
Counter-Reformation bring an end to public
brothels.
– Like with the nuns and their monasteries, the
Protestants close brothels and provide no place in
society for the former prostitutes.
– Catholics are slower to close brothels, but they set up
homes for “reformed” prostitutes.
• Many Protestants also did not hold with Women
rulers, and so they denied the Divine Right of
Kings (and Queens) and saw that as another proof
against the corruption of Catholic Christianity.
One of History’s Ironies
• Protestants and then Catholics begin teaching their
children catechisms.
• The first generations of children subjected to
religious education belong to the generations that
conduct the massive witch-hunts.
Frans Francken’s An Assembly of Witches, ca 1600
Witch-Hunts
• Fear permeated the sixteenth-century society and
helped turn the attacks on “superstition” into an assault
on witches.
– Most reformers saw the remnants of paganism as diabolical
and evil, and many texts discussing the nature of the devil
were published.
– In the widely used catechisms of Martin Luther and the
Jesuit St. Peter Canisius, the Devil was mentioned more
often that Jesus Christ.
– Protestants and Catholics provided theological justifications
for two of the largest tragedies of the early modern Europe:
• the witch-hunts
• the infanticide trials
Characteristics of Defendants
Witches
• Old, past child-bearing
• Rural
• Quarrelsome personality,
Smeddum (Scottish for
Feistiness)
• Lower-class
Infanticide Defendants
•
•
•
•
Young
Towns and cities
Unmarried
Lower-class
• Between the two crimes, this age gets the
distinction of being an era where people execute a
remarkably large number of women.
• These “misogynistic campaigns of unique
savagery,” according to historian William Monter,
were “justified not only by Christian beliefs about
the powers of the Devil, but also by Renaissance
attitudes about gender roles and very ancient
assumptions about women’s nature.”
The Idea of Maleficia
• The idea that maleficia, evil spells, could be
carried out when one entered a pact with the devil
preceded the Reformation, but some of the crucial
developments linking witchcraft to women
occurred only during the fifteenth-century.
• The Malleus Maleficarum, a handbook published
in 1486 by two German Dominicans proved to be
very influential.
– Unlike most other writers on the subject at the time,
these two had actually tried 50 people for witchcraft, 48
of them women.
– In their writings, they used a feminine noun in the title
to describe witches.
The Malleus Maleficarum
• The Malleus contained a
lengthy discussion on why
women were especially
prone to witchcraft
– Women are more credulous
and more impressionable than
men
– Women have “slippery
tongues and cannot conceal
from other women anything
they have learned by the evil
arts.”
The Malleus Maleficarum
– Women had greater
sexual appetites, so
their lust leads them to
accept even the Devil as
a lover
– Women are defective
and cannot control their
affections or passions
and so they “search for,
brood over, and inflict
various vengeances,
These images could be very sexual, as
either by witchcraft or
these works by Hans Baldung Grien show
by some other means.”
Evidence that a Witch is a Witch
–
–
–
–
–
–
The water-test
The pricking-test, or evidence of a devil’s teat
The tear-test
The fire-test
The bier-test
The weight-test
T. H. Matteson’s The Examination of a Witch, 1853
The water-test: the most know and most commonly used method
– It was practiced by having the accused witch tossed into a
lake to see if she would float or not. It was said that the water
would refuse to accept the witches. This meant that if one
were to drown, one was not guilty; if one floated, on the other
hand, one was a witch and would therefore be burned at the
stake.
– There existed methods to keep the "witches" floating
– If people were so unfortunate that they held their breath the
moment they were thrown in, they might stay afloat for a
second, and that was enough to be mistaken for a witch.
Those who sank were supposed to be pulled out of the water,
but usually they were not.
A lot of people believed in the water-tests, and a great
number of those who had been victims of gossip insisted that
they should go through the water-test, strong in their belief
that God (and the water) would accept them, thus proving
their innocence.
The pricking-test: widely used
– A known fact was that witches had an mark on their body
that did not feel anything. To find this mark, they would
prick them with long needles. After a while, the "witches,"
nearly stung to death, would be so numb that they could
not tell one sting from another. Since they would not cry
in pain during this particular prick, the accusers had found
the mark, and the accused were, therefore, witches.
– The marks they found might have been mole or any kinds
of small wounds.
– One would not want to have a third nipple when the
hangman did his work (someone had to do the inquisitor's
dirty work ).
The Devil's mark was said to be the mark from the
Devil's hoof.
The tear-test: simple but not as commonly used as a decisive
test
– It was a known fact that Witches cannot cry.
– If a "witch" stops to cry after a few hours of torture, it was
a solid proof saying she was a witch.
– If she did cry, it was perhaps because the Devil had helped
her, and thus she was a witch.
The fire-test: not very common
– The accused had to carry red-hot coal in their hands. Their
hands would later be bandaged, and after a few days the
bandaging would be removed.
– If there were no wounds or the skin was clean, she was not
a witch.
The bier-test: macabre and not widely used
– The accused was supposed to touch the body of a newly
deceased, and if blood came out of the person's nose, she was
a witch because blood does not float in dead bodies.
This test was not widely used, probably because the results
were not what they had hoped for.
The weight-test: another very common one
– Witches were considered to have a low body-weight, thus
having the ability to fly. One judge would guess the weight of
an accused person, and that person would then be weighed. If
he/she weighed less than the guess, he/she was a witch.
In the Netherlands you could get a certificate that showed
that you had enough body-weight, and you could therefore
not be in the service of the Devil.
Characteristics of a Witch-Trial
• The trials were rapid, often
lasting two weeks or less,
• They were usually
conducted by a group of
male judges, sometimes
experts who toured the
countryside to “help”
communities eradicate evil
• Evidence was
circumstantial and not
scientific
The Peak of the Witch-Hunts
• It was only in the sixteenth century that large
amounts of women were put to death as witches;
however, this occurred in virtually every corner of
Europe.
• The peak lasted from 1560-1670, and we will
never know the exact number of executions.
– Germany was clearly the center
– Nazi records indicate almost 30,000 in the Holy Roman
Empire during this period
– Surviving evidence lists about 3,500 deaths for
witchcraft in the southwestern corner of Germany
• Allowing for inaccuracies in
record-keeping most historians
estimate that 100,000 people
probably went on trial for
witchcraft, about a third of them
being convicted and executed.
• Although the rates of trials and
executions vary across Europe,
everywhere women were the
majority of the victims.
• The Dutch Republic and Spain
were the first countries to stop
the witch trials.
Another by Hans Baldung
Grien, circa 1492
Infanticide Trials
• Very few women were prosecuted for this before
the sixteenth century
– It was very difficult, especially given a relatively low
degree of scientific knowledge, to prove whether a
child was murdered or stillborn.
• France decreed new laws in 1556, and England
followed in 1624.
– These laws placed the burden of proof on the mothers,
many of whom were often unwed.
– Because stillbirths among married women were not
recorded, no control group exists to show how many of
these accused might have been guilty.
– Conviction rates were extremely high.
• Fewer women were tried for
infanticide than for
witchcraft, possibly because
there still were not as many
developed towns, but the
accused were almost always
women. The English county
of Essex executed two-thirds
of the 51 women accused of
bastard infanticide between
1575 and 1650, but hanged
only one-fourth of the 267
women accused of
witchcraft from 1560-1670.
Antoine Wiertz’s Hunger, Madness,
Crime, 1864
Conclusions
Historians cite three causes for the large number of
women executed for the “un-provable” crimes of
witchcraft and infanticide
– Public institutions were increasingly interfering in people’s
everyday lives. Behavior was increasingly regulated.
– These increasingly active public authorities inhabited a fearridden world. Strangers were suspect to villager who’d lived in
the same places their ancestors lived. Also the reformations did
away with the influence of benevolent superstition but did not
replace them with anything.
– The patriarchal theories of late-Renaissance Europe determined
which groups of women would be victims. Both groups lived
outside direct male supervision in an age which reinforced
patriarchal nuclear families. Their “unnatural” position aroused
suspicion and fear; neighborhood rivalry did the rest.
Witches
Now a secularized image, a joke, or a fun “tradition”
From a 1914 Greeting Card
From a modern photo
Wicca
• Wicca is a modern recently created, Neopagan
religion. It is based largely on symbols, seasonal
days of celebration and deities from ancient Celtic
society, fleshed out with Masonic and ceremonial
magickal components.
• A follower of Wicca is called a Wiccan.
– Wiccans generally consider themselves to be Witches,
Neopagans, and Pagans.
– However, not all Witches, Neopagans and Pagans are
Wiccans.
– The terms Witch, Neopagan and Pagan can also refer to
followers of many other faith traditions.
• Wicca and other Neopagan religions are currently
experiencing a rapid growth in the U.S., Canada,
and Europe. Many North Americans of European
descent, who are keen to discover their ancestral
heritage, are being attracted to this religion.
• Because of religious propaganda dating from the
late Middle Ages, Wicca has often been
incorrectly associated with Satanism. Wiccan
beliefs and practices are no closer to Satanism
than they are like Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam.
Wiccan sources from http://www.religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm
Wiccan Symbology
The Celts believed that the pentacle
was the sign of the Goddess of the
Underground, who they called
Morgan (a.k.a. Morrigan). The
concept of five points seems to have
permeated at least one of the Celtic
lands. "Ireland had five great roads,
five provinces and five paths of the
law. The fairy folk counted by fives,
and the mythological figures wore five
fold cloaks."
A Pentacle
•Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_pent.htm