Witch-hunts were thoroughly interconnected with misogyny and the patriarchal society of medieval to early modern Europe. Misogyny is a heavily underlying feature within interpretations of witchcraft, as evidenced by sources at the time. Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum and Henry Bouget’s An Examen of Witches both contain explicit references to women as witches, thus allowing women to be more widely persecuted. Early modern misogyny is most exemplified in the fear of women’s sexuality, which remains an overtone of many witchcraft trials and witch hunts throughout early modern Europe. Women’s sexuality was a major factor of misogyny in early modern Europe. Much of the fear surround women’s sexuality stemmed from Biblical interpretation. …show more content…
Eve’s sexuality is then projected onto all women. To celibate theologians, all women posed a threat to their devotion to God, and were seen as “the Devil’s gateway”. While this is an extreme view, it was certainly held by prominent figures at the time. Heinrich Kramer wrote that women are “an imperfect animal, she always deceives” and Martin Luther gave a sermon saying that “it is the nature of women to be timid and to be afraid of everything”. These ideas were thus embedded within the church, and aimed to teach female subservience. Female subservience was another factor of early modern misogyny, also stemming from the Bible and interpretations of Eve. Since Eve was created from Adam’s rib, it was interpreted that Eve was made in Adam’s image, making her subservient to him, just as Adam was subservient to God, as Adam was made in His image. Many biblical passages refer to the subservience of women, such as Ephesians, saying, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your …show more content…
Some of these torture methods were often based in sexual masochism, requiring women to be shaved or stripped of all their clothes and pricked with needles , with even one report of women being forced to sit naked upon a red-hot stool. These unusual torture methods were often used to induce fear, and to establish guilt and implicate other women. Fear and guilt were induced by using male power, and to shame women. For many cases of witchcraft, torture was carried out by the town’s executioner, an already shunned member of society who carried out the torture alone, and would intimately know a woman’s body in a society where nudity was extremely rare. Women would also be searched vaginally for any talismans, paper or charms that could indicate protection from the Devil. Witch-pricking was also considered a legitimate form of torture, with varying degrees of success. An executioner named Kincaid would prick women all over until they failed to react, and another unnamed witch-pricker once lost a needle in a woman’s buttock, so it was no longer retrievable. Some women were further sexually assaulted while imprisoned. The torture that accused witches were forced to face stemmed from fascination with women’s bodies, as well as a sense of sexual humiliation, and severely impacted the course of their trial, which was further tinged with