In the last text, we wrote about the beginnings of state control over reproduction and women's bodies. But we cannot write about these events without also addressing the persecution of witches. During our research and while writing the text, however, we realized that the complex social processes of this time and their connection to misogyny - as is so often the case - are far too complex for a Telegram message. As we still aim to make our texts as accessible as possible and not too long (even though we have received an increasing number of requests for more complex and theoretical texts), we have decided to give only a brief outline of the events of the time and the connections to misogyny in the following message. We will publish a more detailed version with more references to the present on our website at the following link. Even though the text is somewhat longer and more complex, it is well worth a look:
⬇️ Click here to go down to the full version ⬇️
Short version
During the witch hunts that took place in Europe between 1450 and 1750, alleged witches - mostly women - were arrested, tortured, executed and burned alive. It took place at the same time and in the same place as the events of the development of state control over reproduction (see last text). For Silvia Federici, this is by no means a coincidence: she notes that the disempowerment of women and the removal of their control over reproduction was only possible because a brutal, misogynistic state terror campaign against women - the burning of witches - was being carried out at the same time. This campaign took hatred against women to extremes and led to the murder of tens of thousands (some estimates say hundreds of thousands) of women and queers. Yet we rarely talk about it today. And when we do, it's usually not in the context of misogyny, but rather in a fairytale, distant narrative. And much less as something that has left a deep imprint on society and generations of women.
It is difficult to pinpoint when the image of the evil witch who must be persecuted originated. However, it can be traced back to when a superstition about evil witches manipulating the weather arose, when crop failures and illnesses increased in Europe in the 14th century due to the Little Ice Age. And while Jews had previously been blamed for diseases, missing children and general misery in the Middle Ages due to widespread anti-Judaism¹, they were not believed to manipulate the weather. Some anti-Judaic stereotypes were directly transferred, and so the crooked-nosed, pointy-haired, bald-headed, child-eating, well-poisoning witch was created.
However, pure superstition alone does not lead to the murder of tens (hundreds) of thousands of women. Rather, it requires political will and a lot of misogyny, which was spreading rapidly at the time - but has also shaped European societies since time immemorial. One testimony to the misogyny of the time is the so-called Hammer of Witches. Among other things, the book explains that witches existed, that to deny this was itself a sin, how these witches gained their power, how they were to be identified and how a trial against them was to be conducted. The book reads like a single outpouring of misogyny under the guise of theology and science. It shows very clearly how an image of women had to be created that declared them to be so evil that it justified their mass, cruel torture and murder.
The Hammer of Witches portrays women as physically and mentally weak, naive and lacking in willpower. At the same time, it insinuates that women are greedy, so that they resort to deceitful means because of their supposed weakness: witchcraft. They would also manipulate and seduce men for their own purposes.
The authors also describe female rage as a force of nature and warn of the danger of women exchanging ideas and joining forces - presumably because they feared this rage and the union itself. After all, this often meant that women were defending themselves against the injustice they had suffered.
Die Hexenverbrennungen und die massenhaften Ermordungen, sowie der allgemeine Frauenhass führten also logischerweise zur Entmachtung der Frauen. Wenn wir uns das Ausmaß und die Heftigkeit dieser Ereignisse von damals vor Augen führen, verwundert es auch nicht, dass vieles, wenn auch nicht alles, von dem damals gezeichneten Bild der Frau erschreckend aktuell bleibt. Und es erklärt, warum die Wiederaneignung des Bildes der Hexe Bestandteil vieler feministischer Bewegungen ist. We are the granddaughters of the witches you were never able to burn!
ℹ️Explanation of terms:
¹Anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages in Europe refers to hatred and hostility towards Jews on Christian-religious grounds. It is regarded as the basis for the ethno-culturally based modern anti-Semitism that emerged in the middle of the 19th century and is still prevalent in anti-Semitic narratives today.
Full version
Secondly, we want to tell a story about the persecution of witches: A phenomenon that not only led to the murder of tens of thousands (according to some estimates, hundreds of thousands) of women and queers within a few decades, but also significantly shaped the modern image of women in Europe. Important for our history are the so-called enclosures in Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries, i.e. the surrounding of land with hedges.
In this way, previously communally used strips of land¹ were turned into private property. This development displaced many dispossessed people and led to a strong, new vagrancy: people lost their homes and began to move around. They were labeled "vagrants" by the courts, which was a crime almost everywhere. Unmarried women were particularly affected. If they had to leave the land on which they lived and from which they had previously been able to support themselves², they were generally unable to find paid work.
The 14th century also saw the onset of the so-called Little Ice Age in Europe, which led to crop failures and disease, particularly around the Alps. At the same time, a superstition about evil witches who manipulated the weather arose in the same regions. This went hand in hand with the hatred of women and their devaluation, which we already reported on in the last story. And while Jews had previously been blamed for illnesses, missing children and general misery in the Middle Ages due to widespread anti-Judaism³, they were not believed to manipulate the weather. So, in line with the growing misogyny, foreign women, often unmarried and therefore already living unconventionally due to expulsions and enclosures, became a new target of hatred. Some anti-Judaic stereotypes and narratives from the Middle Ages were directly transferred and thus the crooked-nosed, pointy-haired, bald-headed, child-eating, well-poisoning⁴ witch emerged, who spread diseases and manipulated the weather with supernatural powers and conspired with the devil to destroy Christianity⁵. Federici emphasizes, however, that pure superstition was not the cause of the witch hunts, but the political creation of a fantasy of the "dangerous woman".
Contrary to popular narratives, the church and the ecclesiastical inquisition⁶ were not central to the witch trials. However, the "Hammer of Witches", written in 1487 by the clergymen Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, was. This long work, originally in Latin, is a single outpouring of misogyny and descriptions of violence in the guise of theology and science. Among other things, the two explained that witches existed, that to deny this was itself a sin, how these witches gained their power, how they were to be identified and how a trial against a witch was to be conducted.
Above all, the text was used legally to guide trials against witches, which were usually conducted by secular⁷, local authorities. Under its guidance, many tens of thousands of women were cruelly murdered and many more imprisoned and tortured within a few decades in Central Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries in a campaign of state and church terror.
We need to realize how the ideas about what women are that were written in this book with the aim of breaking female power and organizing femicide are still shaping our ideas of gender and femininity today. And that the violence that emanates from this has not ended to this day. It is important to note here that the misogyny of the Hammer of Witches did not arise in a vacuum, but was based, among other things, on misogyny that can already be found in the Bible or in the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Both are quoted in detail.
First of all, the Hammer of Witches claims that women are mentally and physically weak. A series of narratives about the nature of women are then derived from this, such as that they are vulnerable, that their thoughts and feelings are easily influenced, that they are therefore naïve and lack willpower and that they are unbalanced, "emotional" or "hysterical".
At the same time, Sprenger and Kramer claim that it is in the nature of women to be greedy. A conflict then arises from these two narratives about female nature: women supposedly want influence and wealth, but are too weak and stupid to achieve them. In the logic of the Hammer of Witches, the consequence is that women resort to devious means to satisfy their greed. One of the first means mentioned is magic - that they enter into a covenant with the devil. The woman would therefore become evil because she would be in conflict between her greed and her inability. Another form of cunning explicitly mentioned in the Hammer of Witches is the manipulation of men: because they were dependent on gaining influence and wealth through others, they had perfected the ability to manipulate men. It was therefore in their nature to lie, seduce and take advantage of men.
Where we can see this narrative in action on a daily basis is in the insinuation that women are "sleeping their way up" professionally or socially, which always stems from the supposed certainty that women cannot achieve positions through their own abilities while denying the real patriarchal hurdles that stand in their way. We can also observe these ideas wherever men cheat on their partners with another woman, who is then accused of seducing the men. The men's cheating is pushed into the background, as they were seduced and could not have done anything. This is already very close to the ubiquitous perpetrator-victim reversal⁸, which tells us that rapists are "victims of their impulses" and that victims have behaved or dressed too seductively.
The Hammer of Witches emphasizes that especially when women show pain or grief, they are usually dishonest and manipulative. The fact that pain is still not taken seriously by feminized people⁹ is not only told by the many millions of people with endometriosis¹⁰ and those affected by violence in obstetrics. The accusation that pain or emotions shown by women are strategic and not to be taken seriously can be found, for example, in the frequent, perpetrator-protective accusation that FLINTA*¹¹ are inventing rapes or assaults in order to gain advantages.
However, the last building blocks of the image of women in the Hammer of Witches are the most perfidious: here, every form of female power or self-empowerment is narrated as a danger: Sprenger and Kramer write a lot about female rage. It is a destructive, dangerous force of nature. It is true that an angry woman is a dangerous woman. Because she will take action against the violence and oppression that make her angry. The fact that female socialization to this day means for many not feeling anger, not showing it, or directing it at themselves, makes it clear how deeply this cementing of oppression and violence is rooted in us and inhibits us from being resistant.
And finally, another supposed danger is mentioned: The danger of women sharing secrets with each other. The Hammer of Witches justifies this danger primarily by saying that they would tell each other the devil's secrets because they couldn't keep anything to themselves. But it doesn't take much imagination to see the consequences of the idea that women would talk about everything among themselves if they were left alone and that this was dangerous: women must be monitored. They must be prevented from exchanging ideas and organizing themselves. A moral tool that continues this control to this day is the accusation of gossiping, slandering or blaspheming. These almost exclusively female gendered pejorative or condemnatory terms for conversations effectively combat the exchange of shared experiences of violence and injustice. 'Blasphemy' in particular, i.e. explicitly speaking badly about others, is framed as a malicious, emotionally charged practice for women and as justified, rational criticism for men. However, it can form the basis for talking about assholes, such as your own husband, boss or perpetrators in your social environment. The aim of preventing this exchange through surveillance by men and the strong condemnation of blasphemy has been implemented very successfully for 550 years. So much so that the awareness of women and queers of their shared membership of a gender class and the shared experience of violence and injustice at the hands of cis men is far too little present. Collective, resistant practices are therefore the exception.
It is impressive to read how much Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer were afraid of women. Clearly, women were a real threat to the church, but also to individual men in positions of power. They were angry, they conspired with each other, they were strategic and resistant. Even if historically the power of the church and the nobility was only shaken in a few places and usually only for a short time, a real fear of prosperity and influence had seeped into all their pores - it was the fear of women.
Soon, the persecution of witches and the disempowerment of women in Europe had progressed so far that control over reproduction and the new economic order were stabilized. The previously legitimized practice of burning witches was then turned into a narrative about a superstition from the Dark Ages that the modern era had inherited. In reality, however, it was precisely this modern era and its economic and theological reorganization that first demanded and then legitimized the persecution and murder of tens of thousands of women.
However, just like the underlying ideas of femininity, the phenomenon of witch-hunting did not only spread in Europe. During the colonial era, the religions and medical practices of abducted and enslaved African and indigenous women in the Americas were placed under general suspicion of witchcraft and led to the persecution of influential women. The same techniques that the Inquisition had perfected in Europe in the fight against the power of women were also used against resistance from slaves on the plantations.
A look at the European history of witch hunts therefore shows us that much, though not all, of the image of women painted at the time remains frighteningly relevant. And it explains why the reappropriation of the image of the witch is part of many feminist movements. We are the granddaughters of the witches you were never able to burn!
ℹ️Explanation of terms and footnotes:
¹Communally used land, the commons, and other common goods, generally summarized as commons, formed a basis for pre-capitalist economic activity and survival.
²In this labor system of the European Middle Ages, known as feudal labor, the workers were seen as part of the landownership. They had to keep themselves alive by cultivating the land, while at the same time having to pay taxes to the landowners.
³Anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages in Europe refers to hatred and hostility towards Jews on Christian-religious grounds. It is regarded as the basis for the ethno-culturally based modern anti-Semitism that emerged in the middle of the 19th century and is still prevalent in anti-Semitic narratives today.
⁴A crooked nose and a bald head were the main characteristics of anti-Judaic images. The pointed hat with a wide brim ("Jewish hat") originates from a traditional costume worn voluntarily and then became an antisemitic marker, while poisoning wells and stealing children to eat them are still key elements of antisemitic incitement and conspiracy myths today. If you compare this with the Grimm witch from Hansel and Gretel or the witches in "Witches" (1990), the film by Nicolas Roeg based on the children's book "Witches" by Roald Dahl, it becomes clear that to this day many witch stories come from antisemitic agitation.
⁵This underlying motif of conspiracy against the world also corresponds to the anti-Judaic and antisemitic conspiracy narratives that can be found everywhere.
⁶The ecclesiastical inquisitions were the persecution apparatus of the Catholic Church to track down unbelievers, convert them to the "right" faith and punish them. The Inquisition was particularly directed against poor sects and their members (so-called heretics), who often developed their own religious doctrines against the Roman Church in displeasure at their own economic situation.
⁷secular - In the medieval estate-based society, the church (i.e. the pope, bishops and other members of the so-called clergy) competed and collaborated with the "secular" power of the nobility, led by the emperor, kings and lords.
⁸ Perpetrator-victim reversal refers to actions and narratives that reverse the roles of perpetrator and victim in acts of violence. Responsibility or guilt is attributed to the victim, while the perpetrator is portrayed as passive and receives sympathy for "what happened to him". This extremely violent strategy is particularly common after rape and usually protects the perpetrator from consequences, while those affected experience additional violence.
⁹Feminized people refers to all those who are gendered as women by state institutions, the healthcare system or in everyday situations and treated accordingly. This particularly affects cis and trans women, some trans men and many non-binary people who experience misogyny as a result.
¹⁰Endometriosis is a complex, under-researched condition in which uterine tissue forms outside the uterus, which can lead to extreme menstrual pain, pain during sex and other physical and psychological symptoms. Many sufferers wait more than ten years for a diagnosis because their symptoms are dismissed as "normal" and many doctors are not trained. Endometriosis affects around 10-15 % of all people with a uterus.
¹¹FLINTA* - German acronym for: Women, lesbians, inter people, non-binary people, trans people and agender people. The * asterisk indicates the constructed nature of the categories and shows that it is a term in progress and incomplete. It is a collective term for people who are oppressed by patriarchy and/or experience patriarchal violence.