During the 15th and 16th centuries a craze swept across Europe, it was a craze as deadly for its tens of thousands of mostly female victims as was the plague bacillus to the population as a whole. It was not a new phenomenon, but this time it would reach the point of hysteria. It was the witch craze.

The term craze is a tendentious and provocative one, and some people prefer to use the term witch-hunt, for craze suggests that the persecution of witches was the result of some form of mental disorder, but then perhaps it was, for there is no doubt that it was primarily driven by a fear of women. This was not the only cause, as is the case with all social phenomena there were a combination of reasons: economic instability, a fear of the unknown, religious tensions, increased social paranoia. At such times someone or something has to be held to blame. During a period of history when the Devil was believed to be proactive on Earth and the war between Christ and AntiChrist was fought not in theological textbooks but everyday on every farm, in every workplace, and in every home, witchcraft was believed to be a real and prevalent menace.

The witch would invariably be a social outsider, an elderly widow, a single woman, a herbalist, an itinerant, a beggar. They would exercise their maleficia (malevolent magic) through touch, by an invisble but potent emanation from the eyes known as fascination, by prounouncing a malediction or curse meaning that the victim had been forespoken, they could also stick pins in images of their victims, bury a piece of their clothing, or write the name of the victim on a piece of paper and burn it. They could also harm a man by manipulating those parts of his being that were believed to hold his vital spirits, his hair, his excrement. Witches were thought to be responsible for failed crops, the death of farm animals, sickness and disease, and for still-born children. In time they would even be blamed for the weather, and male impotence.

Witchcraft, or magic, was widely practised and believed in during the middle ages. At a time when the medical profession seemed to hold few answers, and the use of narcotics and mind-altering agencies was high, people would regularly visit herbalists for a cure, sorceresses for a spell, and fortune-tellers for a prediction. This White Witchcraft was highly regarded and part and parcel of life particularly in the countryside. However, when times were hard, and when any area or village might be undergoing a local trauma, witchcraft would often be blamed. So the persecution of witches would often come in great waves of activity but then quickly die out. All this changed, however, with the increased activity of the Church. It was when witchcraft ceased merely to be malevolent and instead became diabolic, and associated with the work of the Devil, that local persecutions would become a continent wide, judicial, pogrom. So the witch persecutions that started around 1420 wouldn’t die out but instead increase in vehemence and ferocity for another 200 years. 

On 9 December, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII published the Papal Bull Sumnis Disiderantes (Desiring With Supreme Ardour) demanding the hunting down and prosecution of all witches in northern Germany. This followed fast in the wake of his appointment of two Domincan Friars Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger to produce a manual for the right and proper prosecution of witches according to the law and based upon the Biblical pronouncement taken from Exodus 22.18, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The fact that God had acknowledged their existence by making reference to them in the Bible and had proscribed against them was all the justification and legitimacy the Church needed to unleash a storm of persecution, torture, and execution. Kramer and Sprenger were to provide the legal framework for these persecutions. 

The Malleus Malificarum was one of the most hateful and overtly misogynistic books ever written. Women it was said were vulnerable to Satan and prone to witchcraft. They are unreliable and mercurial creatures, weak, distracted by vanities, and superstitious; they are naturally spiteful; they are more concerned with matters of the flesh than men, and they use sex to cast a spell over men so they can do the Devil’s work. They then went on to establish rules to be followed for the identification of a witch and how they should be tried. For example, prior to trial the witch should be shaved of all hair because the hair held magical properties, they should then be stripped naked and made to walk backwards towards the judges so they were unable to give them the evil eye.

By the end of the 15th century witches had ceased to be the peddlars of magical potions, harmless eccentrics, or merely wicked old women, and had become devil worshippers who had committed heresy by denouncing God and who attended nocturnal meetings, the “Witches Sabbath” where they would copulate with the Devil. This Covenant with Satan soon became the essence of witchcraft and as such all witches had to be killed without exception.

Most witches were denounced by their neighbours, once the denunciation had been made they would be arrested by the Authorities and the process of compiling evidence against them would begin. Did she have animal familiars, a cat or a dog for these would be agents of the Devil, did she possess a broomstick for witches were believed to use them to fly, did she have the “Witches Mark” on her body, a wart or a pimple from which her familiars would suck her blood. Did it bleed when pricked. if not she was a witch. Did she possess needles or other sharp objects that were the instruments of the Devils work. If so then she would be put to the torture to force a confession. One of the most common ways of discovering the truth, so to speak, was ”Swimming.” The witch would be taken to a river or lake where she would be tied to a chair and immersed in the water. If she drowned she was innocent, if she survived, escaped, or managed to swim away, she was a witch and would be put to death. 

The Witch Craze, which was to spread from northern Europe to very corner of the continent, was between 1420 and 1650 believed to have taken as many as 250,000 lives. It was always at its most ferocious at times of social dislocation, religious schism, and economic uncertainty. In Britain the persecutions peaked during the Civil War when the self-appointed Witchfinder- General Matthew Hopkins and his assistant John Stearne, executed some 300 witches between 1645 and 1647, mostly in Essex.

The hysterical response of a male dominated society to the possibility of witches in their midst was just another manifestation of a fear of women. That fear of women that has for so long kept them as second class citizens, and tried to reduce them to no more than the placid, child-bearing helpmates of man. A fear even to this day to be found eloquently expressed in legal statutes, and in religious texts that demand women remain at home, cover themselves up, or have no need of education.