Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials

Abstract

Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials Despite the significant resurgence of scholarly interest in witchcraft and the great European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, few efforts have been made to determine what sorts of persons were tried and burned as witches. Both medical historians and feminists have argued, from virtually opposite points of view, that the victims of the witch-craze were really the midwives and healers of peasant society.' Until now, however, such arguments have been based on Murrayite reconstructions of European witchcraft which, despite their long reign in Britain, are discredited by most new researchers.2 Recent studies, including some basic and largely quantitative sociological analyses of witch hunts and witchcraft, have proven very helpful. Each study confirms the now familiar generalization that the vast majority of witches were poor, elderly women. Yet, with two or three notable exceptions, recent historians, especially the American scholars, appear relatively uninterested in a more qualitative analysis of the social status, roles, and relationships of the victims of the great witch hunts.3 The principal difficulty is that, although professional historians of witchcraft are aware that the official concept of witch-