Witchcraft, Female Aggression and Power in Early Modern Community
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| Author(s) | Bever, Edward |
|---|---|
| Abstract | Almost a generation ago the study of European witchcraft was revolutionized by a “paradigm shift,” as Wolfgang Behringer has termed it, that involved the adoption of anthropological and sociological methodologies, a greater attention to archival sources, and an interest in focusing on history “from below.” Part of the larger shift to social, and more recently cultural, history, it has led to the emergence of a broad consensus on many aspects of the topic over the past three decades. The early modem discourse on witchcraft, it is generally agreed, developed out of the interplay of Europe’s learned and popular cultures. Individual trials, too, involved an interplay between government officials and local communities; while some spectacular hunts may have been driven by officials obsessed with a diabolical conspiracy, most trials took place because of complaints brought to the authorities by ordinary peasants and townspeople– rumors uncovered in local or church courts, requests that such rumors be quashed, or outright accusations. These complaints manifested both long-standing folk beliefs and the hard times that stemmed from population pressures, socioeconomic change, and the climatic downturn of the “Little Ice Age.” Once started, witch trials took on a life of their own because the tortured testimony appeared to validate the discourse as the victims constructed narratives corresponding to the expectations of their interrogators. Sometimes torture resulted in an ever-expanding chain of denunciations, however, and as the accusations spread farther and farther from the stereotyped suspects and closer and closer to the magistrates and their families, the elite suffered a crisis of confidence that brought the trial to an end. On a larger scale, a similar sort of “crisis of confidence” is thought to have been at work as well, supported and stimulated by growing legal concerns, religious scruples, and an increasing propensity to medicalize the problem. The resultant decline in prosecutions reflected not a sudden denial that witchcraft was possible but a gradually increasing skepticism within the elite about its power and importance. While the traditional belief in malevolent (as opposed to diabolical) witches survived among the peasants, the change began a more fundamental paradigm shift that set the basic framework for educated understanding of witchcraft down to today. |
| IssueNo | 4 |
| Pages | 955-988 |
| Article | Access to Article |
| Source | Journal of Social History |
| VolumeNo | 35 |
| PubDate | Summer 2002 |
| ISBN_ISSN | 0022-4529 |
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