Historical Events that Depicted Misogyny in The 1650s

Misogyny might not have reached its apex in the Renaissance era, but with the generally accepted idea that women were imperfect, immoral, and responsible for the downfall of humankind, it is heavy competition for other time periods. On a line graph, the witch-craze would certainly peak as an example of legalized violence against women. When King James VI of Scotland wrote Daemonologie (1597), a treatise on witches and sorcerers, he was drawing on stereotypes of women that had been put in place by philosophers such as Aristotle and Galen. Reginald Scot, one voice of reason, wrote

Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, which logically debunks the idea of supernatural powers, but it could not overcome earlier fallacies about women and witches from such texts as The Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) (1486), nor could it compete with the policies of James when he ascended the throne of England in 1603. Every era has its scapegoat, but from the subjugated women in Greek society to the women burned or hanged in the Renaissance, females have experienced more than their unfair share of blame.

There is no pivotal point that can be specified as the beginning of misogyny; some feminist historians state that most ancient societies were matrifocal, if not matriarchal, in origin, and that the fall of women from prominence occurred when the patriarchies established themselves. Of pre-Hellenic Greece, Robert Graves states that “invaders from

Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel the myths to justify social change” (10). Graves is speaking specifically of myth, but the status of women in society is reflected in the dominant religious ideology of the day.

Under the influence of the invaders, the goddesses lost their importance and power, and this loss was reflected in the treatment of mortal women.

By the Golden Age, Greek society was highly male dominated; women were cloistered and considered little better than vehicles for producing heirs. Aristotle, when he stated that women are inferior replicas of men, helped establish misogyny as a tenet of Western philosophy. In “The History of Animals,” he delineates the characteristics of males and females: “For man has the most perfect nature of all animals [. . .] Woman is more compassionate than man [. . .] [but] She is also more envious, more querulous, more slanderous, and more contentious [. . .] more given to falsehood [. . .] more easily deceived.” A male is “more disposed to give assistance in danger, and is more courageous” (qtd. in Aughterson 44).

Aristotle predates the advent of Christianity’s distrust of females, but his assessment of women fall in line with the commonly held views of the Christian era. The sparse pro-woman faction of the Renaissance points out that Adam is more at fault than Eve because he was fully cognizant of his action when eating the fruit, but Eve continues to be the prime example of a woman who is easily deceived. Aristotle overlooks the Eve myth of his own time, that of Pandora. Pandora is blamed for releasing the ills of humankind not because she was deceived, but because she was curious and opened the box that she had been admonished not to touch. Epimetheus (hindsight), her husband, was the one who was deceived; he was cautioned by his brother Prometheus (foresight) to havenothing to do with the lovely Pandora because she would bring ruin to men. Epimetheus ignored his brother’s advice and played his own part in allowing death, illness, and a myriad of other woes loose in the world (Morford and Lenardon 67).

Pandora, like Eve, received the blunt of the criticism for her part in cursing humankind--regardless of the fact that both were acting on impulses implanted within them; Pandora was created curious, and Eve was predestined to be disobedient. In the matriarchies, goddesses held the highest position of power in the pantheons but were demoted when men took over. Hera went from being a figure of stature and power to a nagging harridan as the wife of Zeus (Spretnak 88). Artemis, originally a patroness of childbearing, became the eternal virgin, a priggish goddess who had a man torn apart for glimpsing her while she bathed (75). Even the goddesses who appear to retain importance do so only through circumnavigation; Athene is born from the head of Zeus after he ingests her mother. She is the goddess of wisdom, but only because she is issued from the head of the supreme god who is the repository of all knowledge.

Interestingly enough, the women who did have some degree of independence in Greece were the hetaerae, a form of high-class prostitute or concubine. Hetaerae were not citizens, but they were protected by law, could own property, could be seen in public, and often attended dinners and other functions with their patrons; they were usually better educated than the Greek matron and trained in the fine arts. Their services were for the wealthy and powerful, and Aspasia, a famous hetaera, was the consort of Pericles for many years. No link has been made between these ancient courtesans and the negative images applied to women, but the hetaera, independent and educated, able to pick her partner, is the embodiment of the bad girl stereotype promulgated in the Renaissance and other eras.

In addition to cataloguing the spiritual and emotional faults of women, Aristotle also outlined the physiology of the female. As did doctors and laymen for centuries after him, Aristotle subscribed to the humoral theory set forth in the Hippocratic Corpus (circa 600-300 BCE) (Antiqua Medicine). The humors were aligned with the four elements that composed the universe--earth, air, fire, and water--and ruled the human body. This theory was further promulgated by the philosopher/physician Galen (130-210 CE) who diagnosed that diseases, both emotional and physical, came about from an imbalance in the elemental states. Galen’s humoral pathology dominated the medical field well into the nineteenth century (Briggs 162).

In Galen’s, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, he wrote:

Now just as mankind is the most perfect of all animals, so within Mankind the man is more perfect than the woman [. . .] her workmanship is necessarily more imperfect, and so it is no wonder that the female is less perfect than the male by as much as she is colder than he.

(qtd. in Aughterson 47)

Men, as perfect creatures, were hot and dry and able to burn out bad vapors that resulted from humoral fluctuations. Women were cold and moist; their bodies were unable to facilitate unhealthy vapors, as were men‘s. Women were made imperfect “mutilations” of men by god, so their inferior status had the stamp of approval from the highest authority (48).

Illnesses were blamed on humoral imbalances into and beyond the Medieval era. During the “Dark” Ages, women did not reassume much of the power they wielded in the matriarchies, but they were not as reviled as they would be in the ensuing Age of Enlightenment. Females were still considered largely incompetent and even evil (the snake in the Garden of Eden was often portrayed in medieval art as having the face of a woman), but they were allowed to practice the healing arts that had been their domain for centuries: dispensing herbal remedies and acting as midwives. There were Marian cults who revered the Virgin, and Mary Magdalene was a hugely popular figure as well. Wives still fell under the jurisdiction of their husbands, but in England, widows could pay fees to the crown to keep from remarrying someone not of their choice; some took liberal advantage of this option (Coss 25).

In the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, a disciple of the German physician, St. Albertus Magnus, penned De Secretis Mulierum (The Secrets of Women). This disciple, aptly coined “pseudo-Albert,” who drew heavily on Aristotle, the Arabian physician and philosopher, Avicenna, and Averroes, another Arabian philosopher, perpetuated centuries old fallacies concerning female physiology and spiritual inferiority (Lemay 3-4). Like Galen’s humoral theory, the inaccuracies in De Secretis Mulierum would have a long lasting effect on how females were perceived; it was still being reprinted in 1580 with comments from two concurrent but unnamed authors (2). The commentators defer to Aristotle, but point out the differences between the beliefs of the ancient philosopher and those of physicians in the sixteenth century, but as the beliefs on both sides were highly inaccurate, it becomes a moot point as to whom one should give credence.

De Secretis Mulierum deals with the female body and how it works; it details such problems as defects of the womb, why deformed children are conceived, and how astrology determines the disposition and health of the unborn child. It is a book written by a man, to be read by men; by the fifteenth century male doctors attending women in childbirth was a common practice (34). It draws on the misogynistic tradition that had been in existence for centuries; pseudo-Albert writes, “old women [. . .] who do not menstruate, poison the eyes of children lying in their cradle by their glance” (129). It is demonstrated that beliefs did not change substantially from Aristotle or pseudo-Albert’s times; one sixteenth century commentator writes, “according to Aristotle [. . .] woman is a failed male, that is, the matter that forms a human being will not result in a girl except when nature is impeded in her* actions [. . . ] it has been said woman is not human, but a monster”.

The misogynistic tone of De Secretis Mulierum, built upon historical ideologies, in turn, influenced later literature that was harmful and degrading to women, namely the Malleus Maleficarum, written in the late fifteenth century by two German priests, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Although the books are from two different genres, Helen Rodnite Lemay claims that the authors of the Malleus used the Secretis “as an ideological basis for concluding that women are prone to witchcraft, for which they deserve death.”

On an intellectual level, both texts employ Aristotelian and medieval natural philosophy to arrive at the same conclusions about women. Pseudo-Albert and the priests also shared similar intellectual training gained in a religious community, combining science, medicine, and theology which all supported their misogynistic views (50-51).

Note that nature is a “she,” a seeming contradiction since nature abhors females. Lemay draws parallels between De Secretis and the Malleus, pointing out that the latter is more “vituperative” in tone. Pseudo-Albert and his commentators state that women are not suited for learning because of the coarseness of their brains (52). Heinrich and Kramer claim that women “are feebler in both mind and body,” “intellectually like children,” “have weak memories; and it is a natural vice in them not to be disciplined”

(Kramer & Sprenger 44-45). The elderly woman who can harm infants by looking at them turns into the spiteful, vengeful midwife of the Malleus who harms babies intentionally; “certain witches [. . .] are in the habit of devouring and eating children” and “this form of homicide is associated rather with women than with men” (66).

The list of associations between the two texts goes on, but the Malleus Maleficarum stands at the pinnacle of hate literature against women; not even King James is as violently verbal in his assault against witches as are Kramer and Sprenger. The Malleus was written in a response to a papal bull issued by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 calling for a means to stop people from “straying from the Catholic Faith” when they, among many other evil practices, “abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, and other accursed charms and crafts.” Although Pope Innocent specified “many persons of both sexes” as being at fault, when the final draft of the Malleus was published, men were somehow omitted in the vast majority of charges brought against witches (xliii).

The antifeminist rhetoric from ancient Greece was now reinforced with arguments from the Hebrew Scriptures, plus Christian and Roman rhetoricians. Kramer and Sprenger quote their sources: Ecclesiastes 25, “All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman”; St. John of Chrysotom, “What else is woman but [. . .] inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger”; Cicero, “The many lusts of men lead them into one sin, but the lust of women leads them into all sins; for the root of all woman’s vices is avarice”; and Seneca, “When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil.” The two priests grudgingly allow that there are some women who deserve praise, but warn that even “a good woman [is] subject to carnal lust” (43).

Ordinary women were merely stupid and carnal, but the woman who was in league with the Devil overreached him in the scope of her sin; “So heinous are the crimes of witches that they even exceed the sins and fall of the bad Angels.” Of the fourteen species of magic, witchcraft was the worst; practices such as ceremonial magic* or Astrology and

Augury may be found lawful upon inspection, “But the works of witches are never lawful” (82). Males who employed much of the same tactics as witches were excused; alchemists were deemed as performing scientific experiments, and astrologists such as John Dee cast horoscopes in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The bias against earth magic outlasted the Renaissance period by centuries; until the witchcraft laws were repealed in 1952, it was against the law to practice the Craft of the Wise in England.

All women are suspect in the world painted by the Malleus, but among witches, midwives are the most dangerous of the lot; “No one does more harm to the Catholic Faith than midwives” (66). In addition to eating babies or rendering them for fat to use in potions, midwives were also notorious for offering their kills to the Devil as sacrifice. In

Eve’s Herbs, John M. Riddle offers an explanation why the Catholic Church emphasized the killing, rather than the delivering, of babies by midwives; women who practiced *Ceremonial or high magic is connected with wizards and magicians; words and stylized ritual are more important than potions and working with herbs. Earth or low magic was practiced by witches who drew from earthly power or sources. herbalism would not only have known how to perform abortions, but would have been able to prescribe birth control for their patients (112-113). The doctrine of the Church was clearly against this; by the thirteenth century there was to be no human interference in the process of procreation (92). The midwife cum witch was trespassing in God’s territory by plying certain aspects of her trade.

The fear of women interfering with procreation was manifest in other foul deeds performed by witches. De Secretis Mulierum speaks of “certain women” who know how to affect the penis by placing iron in their vaginas during sex, resulting in “large wounds” on the male’s member (88). In the Malleus, the fear of being emasculated by women reaches a psychological peak when it is described how a witch can cast a “glamour” and make the penis appear to disappear altogether (58, 119). The misogynistic fallacies, which began centuries earlier, have evolved into the sublimely ridiculous, but with the earnest credence that the population of Western Europe and England gave to such tales, women were not laughing.

In addition to describing the habits and abilities of witches, Kramer and Sprenger give advice on how to conduct the interrogations and trials of the accused; the hypocrisies of those who espoused misogyny are never so clearly delineated. A woman “is a liar by nature,” is “more credulous [. . .] and impressionable,” and has “a defect [. . . ] since she was formed from a bent rib,” but both ecclesiastical and civil courts were enjoined to use whatever means possible to insure a witch‘s confession and execution--even if it meant lying and preying upon her supposed credulity (43-46). A defamed man could hope for purgation to escape excommunication and being labeled a heretic; there was no such hope for a witch (242).

St. Augustine decreed that sentence could not be pronounced upon a person unless she or he has been proven guilty or has confessed (235). Kramer and Sprenger agree that a witch should not be put to death without her own confession, so the purpose became to assure the court of an admission of guilt. Since witches could be stubbornly silent, call on their master for help, and able to, “with God’s permission,” bewitch the judge, “torture must not be neglected” as a means to procure the confession. It was also a well-known fact that witches could not cry; the judge had to be particularly on guard to make sure that his charge did not rub spittle on her cheeks and eyes to simulate tears (223-228).

The priests are very succinct in how to assume the appearance of concern when applying torture:

the Judge shall uses his own persuasions and those of other honest men to induce her to confess the truth voluntarily; and if she will not . . . bind her with cords, and apply her to some engine of torture; and let them obey at once but not joyfully, rather appearing to be disturbed by their duty. ( 225)

Another means to procure a confession was to promise the witch that if she admitted her crime she would not die, but when she admitted guilt, “after a certain period she should be burned.” It was also admissible for one judge to safely promise the witch that he would not sentence her to death if she confessed, then with a clean conscience pass the sentencing over to another judge who had made no such promise (226).

In his 1948 introduction to the Malleus Maleficarum, Montague Summers says of the book, “It was implicitly accepted not only by Catholic, but by Protestant legislature. In fine, it is not too much to say that the Malleus Maleficarum is among the most important, wisest, and weightiest books in the world” (viii). Summers continues, calling the book by the two Dominicans, Kramer and Sprenger, as giving “seemingly inexhaustible wells of wisdom” from which to draw (ix). Considering that the admiration for the Malleus continued on into the twentieth century, it is no wonder that it was used as a handbook for witch hunters and judges during the Renaissance.

Not all writers of the Age of Enlightenment subscribed to the theories of Kramer and Sprenger; in Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, Protestant Reginald Scot scoffs at the idea of magic and likens such beliefs to “popish charms and conjurations”. Scot can see no difference between the working of supposed witches and sorcerers and the exorcisms and rituals of the Catholic Church. He fills page after page with designs, diagrams, and incantations then declares that they do not work because he tried them with no avail; “I for my part have read a number of their conjurations, but never could see anie divels of theirs, except it were in a plaie”.

Scot’s main argument against the effectiveness of witchcraft is biblical. Unlike Kramer and Sprenger who maintain that God allows evil “magic” to occur for his own means, and to not believe in witches is heresy, Scot claims that all miracles--both on the godly and satanic sides--ceased with the apostles. Miraculous workings were only

“performed in the primitive church, for the confirmation of Christ’s doctrine.” Scot points out that God saw that all of his works were good, so it would be impossible for a sorcerer to conjure devils out of “holsome creatures; such as salt, water, &c”. He also delineates the differences in miraculous wonders performed in the Old Testament as being from God (the acts of Moses) and those of magicians (the Egyptians who emulated Moses by using illusion) Witches, according to Scot, are “poore and needie, [and] go from doore to doore for releefe”(53). Naming Sprenger as a proponent of the idea, Scot refutes the Malleus claim that witches should be punished by death while conjurors should not; if such creatures exist, both would draw their power from the Devil. He is particularly vehement against what he sees as the trickery of the Catholic Church in taking advantage of the uneducated and weak. The lies of the papists are revealed: the story of St. Margaret and her victory over the devil is a fable; a woman’s dead body being revived by sorcery was actually “reanimated” by a couple of priests who were angry over being cheated out of money for the funeral; and “moonks and preests have abused and bewitched the world with counterfet visions”. As for papists, conjurors and witches’ miracles, “one is as grosse as the other”.

In Discoverie of Witchcraft, Scot assigns the weaknesses usually attributed to women to members of the Catholic faith: “And still me thinks papists (of all others) which indeed are most credulous”; “The fathers and ancient doctors of the church were too credulous”. Priests, like women, are faulted with carnality; “[from] restraint of marriage, wherby they grew hot and lecherous, and therefore devised such meanes to compasse and obteine their loves” (58). Catholic clergy are liars and deceivers, men of supposed account who abuse the simple people. Humans need scapegoats; in Scot’s

Protestant vision, Catholics replaced women as the chosen segment of the population to be demeaned and reviled. Scot’s vision was not championed by his peers; although King James professed no love for the Catholic faith in his own work, Daemonologie (1597), he did reassert the belief that witchcraft was a real practice. James did not have a strong view on witches until the

incidents accounted in the pamphlet “Newes from Scotland” (1591) occurred. “Newes” recounts the wrongdoings of several witches in Scotland, beginning with Geillis Duncane. Geillis, after being accused and tortured, gave the name of the elder witch, Agnis Sampson, who confessed when her devil’s or “pruie” mark was found upon her. James, sitting in on the proceedings, was still disinclined to believe in witchery until Agnis took him aside and told him what his queen had whispered to him on their wedding night. He became an immediate believer and penned Daemonologie as a result (1-4).

The three books of Daemonologie, written as a discourse between two men, cover many of the same arguments in the Malleus Maleficarum and reaches many of the same conclusions. To wit, more witches are women than men because “where the Deuill findes greatest ignorance and barbaritie, there assayles he grosselist,” and witches should be put to death regardless of their “sexe, age nor ranck” (Third Booke 9,14). James also claims that witches and sorcerers are able to practice their foul deeds of magic “by the permission of G O D”; for either him or Kramer and Sprenger to say otherwise would put Satan on an equal footing with God (Seconde Booke 9). Despite the obvious influence of the

Dominicans, James denounces Papists as not “professing to the onelie true Religion,” and that the “murmuring of conjurers” is like a “Papist priest dispatching a hunting Masse”

King James and Scot may agree on the heretical state of the Catholics, but they apparently agree on little else; they both accept that that Moses performed real miracles and the Egyptian court magicians were counterfeits, but the consensus stops there (Seconde Booke 1). Scot uses the Bible to prove miracles ceased with the passing of the apostles; James, without totally discounting Scot, gives the same theory a twist; after the apostles established the church, “all miracles, visions, prophecies, & appearances of Angels or good spirites are ceased,” now only “euill” spirits manifest themselves in the world (Thirde Booke 7). Whereas Scot explains how dead bodies only move when manipulated by dishonest Papist priests, James insists that spirits can assume a dead body.

For the purposes of this paper, the most important aspect of Daemonologie is the misogynistic view of King James. When Philomathes asks Epistemon why there are twenty women to every one man who practices witchcraft, the latter responds,

The reason is easie, for as that sexe is frailer then man is, so is it easier to be intrapped in these grosse snares of the Deuill, as was ouer well proued to be true, by the Serpents deceiving of Eua at the beginning. (Seconde Booke 10)

James not only wrote his treatise, but also authorized the King James Version of the Bible that used the word “witch” much more liberally than previous versions, giving a new meaning to “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (the original Hebrew meant poisoner, not witch) (Russell 97). James later revised his ideas on witchcraft after investigating cases that were obviously frauds, but more women were hung as witches in his reign than any other English monarch.

The height of the witch craze in England occurred in the 1640’s during the Civil War when tensions between religious factions and economic factors exacerbated problems. The preeminent “witchfinder general,” Matthew Hopkins, like James, helped establish the continental idea of witchcraft in England; previously English witches had not been associated with devil-worship, they merely poxed cows and caused droughts. Hopkins’fame was brief and bloody; starting his career in 1644, it was over by 1646, and with his fall in popularity, the witch craze began to decline as well.

The Burning Times, as it is called by neo-witches, might have been over, but as it stemmed from misogynistic teachings and beliefs rather than the reverse, women did not immediately gain a new status in the eyes of an anti-feminist world; they would still be viewed as second class citizens. From the time of Aristotle, who claimed women were inferior replicas of men, to the woman hating diatribe of the Catholic Malleus Maleficarum, to Martin Luther who said that all witches were heretics for having made pacts with the Devil and should be burned, women often found little comfort and respite in the world. In the twentieth century, women in the West made great strides toward gaining equality, but misogyny and mistreatment of women is still rampant. Eve, one of the most maligned mythic women in history, is considered by radical feminist theologians as the liberator, the giver of knowledge to an otherwise ignorant humanity; feminists do not advocate a return to the matriarchies, but merely strive for recognition as being one vital half of the human race.