Notes: The Modern Witch — Concept, History, Context

The Witch Hunts

• The European witch hunts occurred in three phases:
  • Initial phase of scattered trials from 1435 to 1500.
  • A near cessation in trial activity until 1560.
  • A great wave from 1560 to 1750, lasting for about two centuries.
• Estimates of victims vary; commonly cited range is 60{,}000 to 200{,}000, with 100{,}000 as a frequently accepted figure.
• Between 75\% and 90\% of those executed were women.
• Germany had the largest share of trials (roughly half of the European total), with the majority of trials occurring during the third phase (the “witch craze”).
• The wave featured mass trials of up to 300 women in some instances.
• Some German regions were spared entirely; where trials did occur, waves were often panic-driven and sporadic.
• Explanations for timing include spiraling inflation, crop failures, the rising role of university law in state legislation, and efforts to police potentially troublesome populations by absolutist states; the precise mechanisms and totals remain debated until a comprehensive history is written.

The Modern Witch: Origins of the Concept

• The Malleus maleficarum (The Hammer of Witchcraft), published in 1487 by Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, is the first work to describe the specific characteristics of the modern witch.
• Before the fifteenth century, witchcraft was not gender-specific; women were not considered more likely than men to be witches.
• Kramer and Sprenger argued that the female body (the insatiable womb) led women to consort with devils and practice witchcraft, whereas men were supposedly spared from such crimes by God.
• Their depiction redefined witchcraft for the modern age as a specifically female practice posing an unprecedented threat to God’s holy order.
• The combination of their demonological framework and gendered image helped fuel a long series of persecutions from 1435 to 1750.
• The rise of a gender-specific imagery of the witch has been discussed by scholars like Norman Cohn and Joseph Hansen, but Brauner argues that the specifically female character has been largely overlooked.
• This study focuses on gender in the concept of the modern witch as it emerged between 1487 and 1560 in German-speaking Europe (excluding Switzerland, which requires separate treatment).
• Two types of literature contributed to the spread of the modern witch concept:
  • Type I: Laws, demonologies, legal treatises on witchcraft, and books on learned magic (magia naturalis); mostly in Latin for university-trained specialists (lawyers, scientists, physicians, theologians, learned magicians).
  • Type II: Vernacular literature aimed at lay audiences, including plays, poems, sermons, and satirical texts; vernacular print culture spread the concept to ordinary people, aided by the spread of printing and by the Reformation.
• The author will examine samples of both types to assess social stereotypes of women and witches; the Malleus is the prime example of Type I, while Luther’s sermons, Rebhun’s Wedding Play (1538), and Sachs’s Shrovetide play (1545) represent vernacular forms with significant treatment of the modern witch.
• The early 16th century saw a shift: vernacular literature helped disseminate modern notions of witches beyond educated audiences, while learned texts continued to shape the technical understanding.
• The period from 1500 to 1560 shows a hiatus in many learned demonological writings and witch trials in Germany, but popular and vernacular witch renditions surged in number and variety.
• The emergence of the modern witch concept depended on humanist and Protestant reinterpretations of the social role of women and the family; Brauner argues that understanding the social construction of gender is crucial to understanding witch victimization.

The Types of Literature and Their Impact

• Type I literature (Latin, learned audience):
  • Includes demonologies, legal treatises on witchcraft, and works on magia naturalis.
  • Primarily intended for lawyers, scientists, physicians, theologians, and learned magicians.
  • Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus belongs to this category and is the earliest text to address witch gender in a systematic way.
• Type II literature (vernacular, general audience):
  • Includes sermons, plays, poems, and satirical texts dealing with witches, often with didactic aims.
  • The spread of vernacular texts is linked to the printing press and the religious reforms of the period.
  • Vernacular works accelerate the diffusion of modern witch ideas among ordinary people in German-speaking regions.
• The book selection includes:
  • Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus maleficarum (Latin, learned audience).
  • Martin Luther’s sermons and commentaries on modern witches (vernacular impact through Protestant preaching).
  • Paul Rebhun’s Wedding Play Based on the Wedding at Cana (1538) and Hans Sachs’s Shrovetide play (1545) as portrayals of the modern witch within family and marital contexts.
• Note on authorities and perspectives:
  • The Malleus is the first technical text to explain why “modern witches” are women, and it set a foundation for later gendered demonology.
  • Vernacular writers and Protestant authors contributed to popular conceptions of the witch, with some arguing for a diabolic threat and others urging more tolerant or differently framed punishments.
• Between 1500 and 1560, the number of learned treatises declined, but vernacular witch literature flourished due to printing, woodcuts, and reform-era discourse.

What Is a Modern Witch? Four Defining Characteristics

• The modern witch is defined by four interrelated, nontraditional characteristics drawn from demonology and trial records:
  • Night flying or flight through the air at night.
  • Attending secret Sabbath meetings.
  • Using harmful magic (maleficia).
  • Sealing a pact with the devil, usually through copulation.
• These four elements are not all new in themselves but are fused and reinterpreted in a way that singles out women as witches.
• In medieval demonology, a pact with the devil was typically described as a male scholar’s transaction; male demons (incubi) could seduce women and female demons (succubae) could seduce men. The modern witch, however, is primarily a female figure associated with Sabbath, night flight, and parasitic sexual contact with the devil.
• Night flying and flying-related beliefs originated in folk lore; harmful magic (maleficia) was committed by both sexes, but the modern witch is primarily linked to women after the fifteenth century.
• Historically, these characteristics appeared separately or in various combinations in clerical and popular traditions; the modern witch consolidates them into a single, gendered image.
• The transition from a traditional witch image to a modern, gendered witch involved a shift from beliefs about innate powers to the idea that witches derive power from a devil’s pact; thus the witch’s power is inherently linked to the pact rather than to possession or traditional folk magic alone.
• The term used to denote the modern witch evolved: Hexe, Unhulde, Zauberin (vernacular), and Latin terms such as lamia, malefica, pythonica, striga, venefica; by the sixteenth century these terms increasingly referred to the modern witch rather than to a broad set of sorcerous figures.
• The “devil’s mark” (wart or other physical peculiarity near private parts) served as a key piece of evidence during trials, though many witches appeared normal; confessions, often under torture, established guilt and often defined the accused as witches in a public sense.
• The devil’s pact often involved material incentives (e.g., shoes, money) and produced a subservient relationship to the devil, with the witch using sorcery to harm others and to recruit others.
• The modern witch’s activities included harming cattle, spreading diseases, causing impotence, killing infants, stealing milk and butter, and summoning or causing storms; these acts were described in trial records as maleficia and often remained invisible to ordinary observation.
• The witch’s life cycle in trials typically ends with ritual acts at Sabbaths and a final sexual encounter with the devil; the witch’s confessions often include details of recruitment and ritual activities.
• Despite fear, many people consulted witches for healing and personal assistance; however, historians now argue that the “diabolical powers” described in trial records did not exist in reality and were constructed during interrogations and tortures.
• The process of creating a witch involved three elements:
  • A special form of trial that used forced confession to prove guilt (influenced by Roman and Inquisitorial law).
  • A concept of the witch created by theologians, drawing on scholastic demonology, folklore, classical myths, and the late medieval Inquisition.
  • A social consensus on the existence of witches and their diabolical powers.
• This fusion of elements between 1435 and 1750 produced a historically unique basis for persecution in the early modern period in Europe and North America.
• There was a period of hiatus in Inquisitorial witch trials in Germany from around 1520 to 1550; secular courts continued sporadic proceedings, and print culture declined for a time (no reprints of the Malleus between 1520 and 1563, despite ten printings in the first thirty years).
• However, on the eve of the Reformation, the interplay between learned and popular culture produced a flood of popular witch renditions: woodcuts showing witches with the devil, Baldung Grien’s paintings of witches as powerful figures, and broader media descriptions of witches.

The Evolution of Witchcraft Literature: Learning and Popular Culture in Tension

• The Reformation era saw prominent figures — including dukes, emperors, and scholars — engaging with witchcraft debates and commissioning studies from learned men:
  • Ulrich Molitor (De laniis et phitonicis mulieribus, 1489).
  • Johann Trithemius (Antipalus maleficiorum, Liber octo quaestionum, 1508).
  • Martin Plantsch (Opusculum de sagis maleficis, 1505).
  • Johann Butzbach (De sex maleficis, 1514).
  • Hieronymus Braunschweig (Liber de arte destillandi, 1500).
• In satires and literature, several writers attacked or mocked witch theory:
  • Sebastian Brant (Narrenschiff, 1494).
  • Thomas Murner (Narrenbeschwörung, 1512).
  • Johann Neuber von Schwartzenberg (Teütsch Cicero, 1531).
  • Johannes Pauli (Schimpf und Ernst, 1533).
  • Anonymous Epistolae obscurum virorum (1510).
  • Eccius dedolatus (1520).
• Intellectuals who challenged or nuanced the witch discourse:
  • Agrippa von Nettesheim (De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarium, 1527) criticized inquisitorial procedures.
• Protestant authors who treated witches were notable: Luther, Melanchthon, Capito, Bucer, Hedio, Brenz, Spreter, Rebhun, Sachs, and others.
• The dominant view after 1500 split into two camps:
  • Some argued witches represented a diabolical threat to be exposed and eliminated (aligned with Malleus and demonology).
  • Others (Plantsch, Brenz) favored a Canon episcopi-based view, treating witchcraft as idolatry rather than diabolic, suggesting tolerance or limited punishment.
• Despite divergent views, by the early 16th century most writers agreed that witches were women, marking a shift from earlier periods when men could be charged with witchcraft as well.
• The general consensus that witches were female did not appear instantly; it took decades and was reinforced by learned and popular texts alike.

Why Witches Were Women: Explanations and Debates

• There are five common explanations cited by scholars for the sex-specificity of witch accusations:
  • Misogyny in Judeo-Christian and post-medieval thought.
  • Women’s participation in folk healing and traditional magical practices.
  • Changes in perceptions of female nature during the early modern period.
  • Shifts in women’s economic and family roles (e.g., entry into wage labor, changes in marriage patterns, decline of guild participation).
  • Changes in women’s social behavior and moral expectations.
• First explanation: Misogyny
  • Early historians (19th/20th c.) attribute witch hunts to religious zeal, superstition, and the church’s association of female bodies with sin.
  • Kramer and Sprenger are often cited as exemplar misogynist clerical authors; Hansen emphasizes clerical asceticism; Paulus emphasizes popular and classical beliefs in female sorcery.
  • Critique: Such views oversimplify by treating medieval and early modern periods as continuous in terms of attitudes toward women; the interplay of humanism and Protestant thought altered the social meaning of gender and witchcraft.
• Second explanation: Folk healing and traditional women’s power
  • Romanticists and some feminists (Ginzburg, Duerr, Dross) argue that many women engaged in traditional, nature-aligned folk magic and that the witch represents a defense of pre-Christian or pagan values against modern rationalism.
  • Evidence for a unified, organized opposition to Christianity among folk practitioners is lacking; many accused witches did not view their practices as inherently deviant from Christian belief and many rites persisted under coercion or duress.
  • Friulian fertility cults studied by Carlo Ginzburg illustrate a clash between Christian and pre-Christian practices but often show a mix of beliefs with Christianity still central.
• Third explanation: Psychology, materialism, and the history of ideas
  • The witch represents a projection of tensions during capitalist transition: women as bearers of old social orders linked with nature and fertility, contrasted with rising patriarchal and rationalized society.
  • Critics note that such analyses can reduce women to passive objects rather than agents of social change, and they require examining women’s actual roles and responses to changing conditions.
• Fourth explanation: Deteriorating conditions for women in the early modern period
  • Economic marginalization contributed to increased accusations: urban women in guildless trades, spinsters, and midwives faced new restrictions and surveillance.
  • The “putting-out” system displaced independent artisans and women into low-paid work; guild restrictions barred women from certain professional avenues; midwives faced tighter control and surveillance, including accusations of witchcraft.
  • Demographic shifts (more widows, delays in marriage, rising age of first marriage) worsened women's economic vulnerability and social standing in some regions.
• Fifth explanation: Collapse of traditional community structures
  • Capitalist expansion and rising individualism reduced communal support for the poor and marginalized, making witches scapegoats for broader social tensions.
  • English trial records illustrate a typical sequence: a poor woman’s grievance leads to a denial, followed by curses and then accusations of witchcraft.
  • A woman’s use of language and social defiance could provoke persecution when scarce resources and social protections eroded.
• Critique of these explanations:
  • The explanations should be read as contextual analyses rather than universal laws.
  • It is essential to connect gender debates to changing social and cultural dynamics, including the new discourses of marriage, family, and state formation.

Redefining Gender and the Social Construction of Women

• The witch trials reveal a broader shift in how gender was understood, especially among educated elites who sat in judgment:
  • The typical ideal for women in sixteenth-century German urban centers was chastity, piety, marriage, public silence, and submission to the husband.
  • The self-assertiveness of accused witches clashed with this ideal, intensifying the perceived threat and affecting judicial decisions.
• Theoretical framework: gender as social construct and discourse
  • Gender identities are formed through power relations that assign masculinity to the public/political sphere and femininity to the private sphere.
  • Gender is a product and process of representation; texts shape gender relations and social norms.
  • Foucault’s concept of discourse broadens the scope beyond texts to include images, institutions, and interpersonal relations; meaning is produced within discursive fields and is inherently ideological.
  • Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) treats woman as the other in relation to man; Derrida’s deconstruction highlights how terms like woman, eros, and sexuality are not fixed biological categories but are shaped by social and historical contexts.
  • Joan Wallach Scott’s work on deconstructing equality and difference shows how gendered meanings serve to maintain power relations in historical discourse.
• The implications for the witch discourse include: power relations, the politics of knowledge, and the way social meanings about women are constructed and used to justify persecution.

Changing Gender Roles in Early Modern Europe

• The medieval household (famÍlia) allowed some women to exercise economic and legal authority when the male head of household was absent; this was known as feminine subsidiarity.
• In the early modern period, the ideal shifted to gender complementarity: men in public, women in private; the husband provides and represents the family in public, while the wife manages the home and raises children.
• This shift was linked to humanist and Protestant discourses and the professionalization of men as urban magistrates and civil servants; the public-private division was used to justify male authority and female subordination.
• Despite the shift, women continued to work outside the home in various capacities (piecework for put-out manufacturers, domestic service, health care, education, and care for orphans).
• Professional and educated work became associated with masculinity and formal training, while informal, unpaid, or domestic work remained devalued and feminized.
• The new discourse provoked conflict and contradictions; women sometimes asserted their rights to property, business, or legal representation, while male courts often limited such rights.
• Literate women from urban elite circles sought equal access to education and the opportunity to write; some imagined heroic female identities or utopian female societies; others argued for integrating female virtue into legitimate marital roles to contribute to the state.
• The convent could provide opportunities for intellectual development and independence (e.g., Caritas Pirckheimer’s resistance to closing her convent; nuns pursuing humanist studies).
• Protestant women activists, like Katharina Schützin, offered alternative marital identities that framed marriage as a vehicle for reform and public service; she defended her marriage to a reformer and argued for spiritual equality with men.
• The shift to complementary gender roles contributed to the social context in which women could be labeled witches: the new regime framed female agency as deviant or dangerous when it diverged from expected domestic roles.
• The Protestant moral imperative reinforced the stigma against single women and may have contributed to their vulnerability to witch accusations during the great witch craze after 1560.

The Malleus Maleficarum: Context, Authorship, and Editions

• The Malleus maleficarum is treated here as the foundational text for the modern witch’s gendered image.
• Authorship and publication:
  • Heinrich Kramer is identified as the primary author; Joseph Hansen provides evidence supporting this view, with some discussion about Sprenger’s role.
  • There is debate about the extent of Sprenger’s contribution; some sources discuss collaboration, others attribute most of the writing to Kramer alone.
• Endorsement and authenticity:
  • There exists controversy over a Cologne university endorsement for the Malleus; some claims were forged or contested in later editions.
• Editions and dissemination:
  • Between 1487 and 1750, there are reports of numerous editions and printings:
  • Estimates range from 25 editions (Hansen), 29 editions (Behringer), to 35 editions (Robbins).
  • The Malleus was especially influential in Bavaria during the period 1520–1574; copies were widespread in regional libraries.
• The Malleus’s role in shaping the witch’s gendered image:
  • The Malleus is frequently cited as the first work to articulate that modern witches are women, and to provide a systematic explanation for this gendered pattern.
  • The work situates witches in a demonological framework that merges scholastic thought with folk beliefs; it becomes a reference point for subsequent debates about witchcraft and gender.
• Relationship to earlier witch literature and to later discussions:
  • Although the Malleus is pivotal, many post-1500 writers (Protestant and Catholic) engaged with witches in different ways, including debates about whether witchcraft constitutes diabolic heresy, pagan superstition, or mere sorcery.
  • The Malleus influenced both the legal persecution of witches and popular culture, contributing to the durable stereotype of the female witch as a figure of social danger.

Appendix: Terms and Etymologies

• Hexe (German) / Unhulde / Zauberin: Vernacular terms used to denote female witches; these terms eventually were used to refer generally to the modern witch.
• Striga (Latin): A term originally used for night-flying female spirits in Roman folklore; redefined in the sixteenth century to refer to witches, linked with night flight and harmful sorcery.
  • Derivations and variations include: strigimaga, strigae; associated with Styx (Styx-like descent) and with the Greek stigma/“sadness” derivations to emphasize harmful sorcery.
• Venefica (Latin feminine): From veneficus meaning “poisonous” or “magical.” In medieval glossaries, venefica referred to poisoners or sorceresses; in the sixteenth century it came to be associated with the modern witch’s power and characteristics, particularly in connection with poisoning.
• Lamia / Pythonica / Venefica / Striga: Terms used in various sources to describe witches or magical practitioners; by the sixteenth century, these terms gradually lost their distinctions and were used to refer to the modern witch.
• The terms reflect the evolution from spirits and male sorcery to female witches with a diabolic pact and social influence.

Notes to the Malleus Maleficarum (Selected Highlights)

• The Malleus maleficarum is often cited as the source of the modern witch’s gendered picture.
• The Latin title is Malleus maleficarum; in translations, Summers’s English rendering is often used, but the Latin original is cited for key passages.
• Key passages discuss the claim that “omnia per carnalem concupiscentiam, quae quia in eis est insatiabilis” (all things through carnal lust, which in them is insatiable).
• The Malleus emphasizes that modern witches are exclusively women and that their sexual contact with the devil is part of their damning pact.
• The Malleus is described as a foundational text that influenced early modern witch trials and demonology, shaping perceptions of female susceptibility to diabolic temptation.
• Additional notes:
  • The Canon episcopi (906) is cited as a source for earlier views that sorcery was a form of superstition or idolatry rather than diabolical heresy; some later writers argued against this, supporting the Malleus’s more punitive stance.
  • The Malleus’s reception and usage differed regionally; Behringer and other historians document its prevalence in Bavaria between 1520 and 1574 and its role as a reference work in legal proceedings.

Summary of Central Claims and Connections

• The modern witch represents a key shift in how witchcraft is conceptualized, moving from a broader, gender-neutral fear of sorcery to a gendered stereotype that centers on women, as codified by the Malleus and reinforced by Protestant and Catholic writers alike.
• This gendered representation emerges within a broader transformation of European society: literacy, printing, vernacular culture, Protestant reform, and evolving theories of gender and social order.
• The social construction of gender, rather than mere biological sex, is central to understanding why women became disproportionately accused and punished as witches during the early modern period.
• The witch hunts were not solely a religious phenomenon but also a political, legal, economic, and cultural process shaped by shifting power relations, changing family structures, and evolving ideas about women’s roles in society.
• The study of these texts and formats (learned treatises, vernacular plays, sermons) reveals a complex interplay between elite discourse and popular belief, showing how the concept of the modern witch was produced and disseminated across social strata.