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Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts, by Anne L. Barstow
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"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 of whom were women, were put to death under the guise of "witch hunts", particularly in Reformation Europe. The shocking annihilation of women from all walks of life is explored in this brilliant, authoritative feminist history Anne Llwellyn Barstow. Barstow exposes an unrecognized holocaust -- the "ethnic cleansing" of independent women in Reformation Europe -- and examines the residual attitudes that continue to influence our culture.
Barstow argues that it is only with eyes sensitive to gender issues that we can discern what really happened in the persecution and murder of these women. Her sweeping chronicle examines the scapegoating of women from the ills of society, investigates how their subjugation to sexual violence and death sent a message of control to all women, and compares this persecution of women with the enslavement and slaughter of African slaves and Native Americans.
Ultimately Barstow traces the current backlash against women to its gynophobic torture-filled origins. In the process, she leaves an indelible mark on our growing understanding of the legacy of violence against women around the world.
- Sales Rank: #247423 in Books
- Published on: 1995-06-24
- Released on: 1995-06-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .61" w x 5.31" l, .50 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
From Booklist
A definitive portrait of the witch-hunts that terrorized European women during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though the persecution, torture, and execution of more than seven million women suspected of being witches during this period has been documented in other historical sources, Barstow is the first scholar to offer a convincing gender analysis of the Reformation-era witch craze. According to Barstow, independent and intelligent women often proved to be convenient targets for misogynists seeking scapegoats for every conceivable social ill. Most interesting is the author's credible assertion that the witch-hunts not only paralleled the emergence of a more patriarchal society, but also heralded the disturbing decline in the status of women that continued over the course of the next several centuries. A fascinating historical treatise that provides an evolutionary context for the contemporary proliferation and escalation of violence toward women. Margaret Flanagan
Review
"A definitive portrait of the witch-hunts that terrorized European women during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though the persecution, torture, and execution of more than seven million women suspected of being witches during this period has been documented in other historical sources, Barstow is the first scholar to offer a convincing gender analysis of the Reformation-era witch craze. According to Barstow, independent and intelligent women often proved to be convenient targets for misogynists seeking scapegoats for every conceivable social ill. Most interesting is the author's credible assertion that the witch-hunts not only paralleled the emergence of a more patriarchal society, but also heralded the disturbing decline in the status of women that continued over the course of the next several centuries. A fascinating historical treatise that provides an evolutionary context for the contemporary proliferation and escalation of violence toward women. " -- Margaret Flanagan Booklist
"Anne Llewellyn Barstow has thought long and hard about witchcraft. To Witchcraze she brings a rich historical understanding of Europe during the period of the persecution of witches....The book is a gold mine of information." -- Ms.
"Barstow's careful and committed scholarship gives us a new and important geography of this woman-hating persecution. She recognizes the sadism and terror of the witch hunts while scrutinizing the economic and sociological dynamics that may have been crucial factors in the murders. Surely we must know what happened to these women and why. Witchcraze brings us closer to the truth." -- Andrea Dworkin, author of Intercourse
"Serious scholarship and accessible style combine here for fascinating reading--and for an important contribution to the history of women (and men). This may well be the first--and best--work to dare view The Burning Time through unashamedly feminist, and truthful, eyes." -- Robin Morgan
"Thought-provoking....Gripping." -- New York Times Book Review
From the Author
"This is not a book for weak-stomached patriarchs. But the rest of us--historians of Christianity, feminist theorists, European social and economic historians, theologians, and ethicists--will find reason to be grateful to Barstow for her wide-ranging and provocative comparative analysis of European witchcraze, witch hunters, and their female victims from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century."
"Barstow has reviewed the burgeoning literature on the persecution of women as witches with two purposes: first, to place the "fact" of gender (which she carefuly establishes from the evidence) at the center of her argument, and second, from a rich if necessarily erratic (because of great gaps in the evidence) comparative analysis to uncover the preconditions apparently essential for a society to turn to intense persecutions of witches."
"We are all aware that most witches were women but, Barstow argues very convincingly, we have failed to take that fact seriously in our interpretations and analyses. Scholarly attention has focused on the witch hunters, all male, rather than on the historically silent victims (generally between 80 and 90 percent female). And because the descriptions of what was done to those women is so graphic and gruesome, we have turned aside rather than see clearly the terrifying hatred of women, women's bodies, and women's sexuality in the accusations, confessions, structures of inquiry and judgment, and forms of torture and ultimate execution."
"Why would European society turn against its own women, even the poor and marginal, developing a "theory" of women and a theology, if one can call it that, of the devil and of evil? The work of European male elites in suppressing the last remnants of a lively local folk culture, with its belief in magic, its receptivity to women healers, and its custom-based methods of conflict regulation within local communities, is part of Barstow's complex answer. The jurisdiction of secular courts (more willing to use torture than ecclesiastical officials), weak central authority (as in the regions of the Holy Roman Empire), the two Reformations of the period, and elite belief in diabolism seem to have been central factors. In the last chapter, several extremely interesting linkages are suggested between the persecution of witches and the rapid growth of colonialism, with its concomitant slaughter and enslavement of indigenous populations on several continents. Is witchcraze an early part of the story of the rapid development of the modern state and the spread of individualism (for elite European males only, of course) and market capitalism?"--Church History
"The Christian churches, then as in our own century, were not simply bystanders to this gratuitous violence against a class of people. Equally troubling in Barstow's analysis are the obvious parallels with the practices of Christian anti-Semitism. (Nazi rhetoric ridiculed Jewish men as "effeminate," an ancient and ominous "linkage," now perhps more intelligible.) A fully adequate account of the history of European Christianity must somehow grapple with Barstow's questions."--Penny Gill, Mt.Holyoke College
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Witchcraze
By A Customer
I read a borrowed copy of this book, and have desired to own it myself for months. This book is incredible. That is why I am here now. I just bought it.
I think the reader reviews, for and against, speak loudly in favor of this book. This material will strike raw nerves. I can hardly wait to read it again.
Ms. Barstow's work is excellent. I plan to buy other works by her. Never has a book on this subject been so meticulously documented and supported with research as this one has. I want to hear everything that this woman has to say.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Thought provoking to say the least
By E. Barrios
Let me begin by stating I am no authority on the history of witch burnings. However, I do find the subject fascinating and wish I had more time to devote in the reasearch of this subject.
I've read some of the reviews here and will say it's difficult for me to come to the conclusion if Barstow's book is nothing more than a feminist slant on a macabre period in European history. Her book, in my opinion, did tend to focus only on women who were accused of witchcraft. I can't say if this is right or wrong. I only have the unscientific knowledge of these events from Hollywood movies stored in my memory.
All I can say is I found the book's description of the women who were burned at the stake horrible and cruel. It just goes to show you man has changed very little and makes me more of a believer that "might makes right" which is why these atrocities have stopped.
Go ahead and read the book and judge for yourselves. I found it, at the minimum, to be a good primer on the subject.
14 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
A desperate portrait of the great witch hunts.
By A Customer
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.
See all 25 customer reviews...
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