Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts

by Anne Llewellyn Barstow

Book Overview

"In the sixteenth century, a rise in sexual violence in European society was exacerbated by pressure from church and state to change basic sexual customs...As the centuries since have shown escalating levels both of violence, general and sexual, and of state control, the witchcraze can be considered a portent, even a model, of some aspects of what modern Europe would be like." Over three centuries, approximately one hundred thousand persons, most...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006250049X
• ISBN13: 9780062500496
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

An excellend feminist perspective

Barstow's history examines feminist concerns relating to the witch hunts without succumbing to a prejudicial bias. Though her focus is the persecution of women as witches, the text realistically examines the sources of the problem without devolving into a feminist tirade or resorting to man- or church-bashing. The text addresses a variety of issues significant to the study of the fairy tales, particularly in defining the methods of characterization that were used to identify and to stereotype women as witches. The same characteristics, both real and projected, that were used to identify and persecute witches during the European witch hunts can be clearly seen in the characterization of witches in fairy tales. Barstow identifies "the witch" as a hostile stereotype by which "Women who challenge patriarchal structures... will be made to pay." This is as true in fairy tales as it was during the witch hunts. Barstow's text is indispensable to understanding how the witch character developed as well as examining the purpose of gender roles in fairy tales.

Excellent

This book is a major contribution to the field. It's well researched and presents some fascinating angles I was not aware of before. As for the statement of the earlier reviewer that the witch burnings couldn't have been prompted by mysogyny since "only" 80% of the victims for women, that's rather like saying that the Klu Klux Klan isn't racist since "only" 80% of their victims are black, the rest being uppity whites they don't like. When bullies have access to a weapon as terrible as a witch burning or a lynching, it would be going against human nature to expect them to confine its use to one group of victims. They'll use it against anyone and eveyone who crosses their path that they can get away with using it on. _Witchcraze_ presents a wonderful record of the diversity of life in Europe before the witch burnings, and a chilling account of a multicultural society's confrontation with a terror weapon forcing them to conform. I especially enjoyed the glimpses into the indiginous lifestyles of various European peoples before their enforced "standardization" and the detailed description of the difference between village justice and imperial justice.

Absolutely essential historical reference

This book is quite simply the best book on the 16th & 17th century witchhunts that I have ever read. Well researched and easy to read (no plowing through dry academic treatises here!) it is one of the few books (besides Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet vs. the Goddess) to link the witch persecutions with the decline in status of women in the 17th century and the decrease of women's contributions to society. Also, many of Barstow's points regarding the scapegoating of poor women are all too relevant to 1990's society (witness "welfare mom bashing".) A must read not only because of the subject matter but because it is well written.

A desperate portrait of the great witch hunts.

I took a course that investigated witch trials, and found this book to be the absolute most informative and responsible investigation.While Barstow is not claiming misogyny to be the single cause of the European "witchcraze" (as some would believe), she looks at misogyny as key feature of the trials. Her claim is that the arrival of witch trials in Europe presented a means for misogynist acts to take place. In many regions (particularly central Europe) women were specifically targetted for their sins: lustfullness, weak-mindedness, greed, temptresses, sexual infidelity, etc. Women were being targeted in large numbers because they were women. Widows and spinsters were seen to be the most dangerous by the people in charge (men). In areas (Russia) where women weren't so highly targeted, there were other societal mechanisms of misogyny. Also, women weren't seen as capable to perform magic as men.Barstow sees the witch trials as a past expression of the ! continuing woman-fearing and hating that occurs in our world. Though more subtle forms continue today, she cites that we remain in a world with female-genital mutilation in Africa and wife-burning in India. Widespread rape and wife-beating in the USA would be another form of this. The witch trials were a particularly disturbing form of historical misogyny in early modern Europe.The witch trials were a phenomenon in which the majority of victims were women. Most scholarly accounts tend to ignore or gloss-over this fact. This original account offers much of which is missing in the rest of the literature.

An official torture cult

Well, I'm aware there are some more scholarly, "drier" studies on the subject. But what propels Barstow's volume is its sense of urgency - one that refuses the comfort of modernity and invites us to wonder how it felt to be surrounded by neighbors who were bent on "exorcisms", in what amounts to an official torture cult. Clearly misogyny has many faces (I could do without some of the lesser evils dragged in here for comparison), but its use as a marketing tool for the greedy and ambitious Yuppiedom of the 16th & 17th centuries (England's Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, was only 25) leaves an especially foul aftertaste, well deserving of more attention like hers.