16th Century Witch Hunts

The label ‘gendercide’ is very appropriate to the European witch-hunts of the sixteenth century, but not 100% appropriate. Although the majority of people persecuted during these great witch-hunts were women, we’ve learned that 25% of those persecuted were men. This clearly shows that the witch-hunts weren’t just focused on a war on women. From the publishing of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger’s book, Malleus Maleficarum however, we are led to believe that the witch-hunts were in fact, a war on women.
"All wickedness, […] is but little to the wickedness of a woman. […] What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, …show more content…
Women couldn’t hide their sexual natures. They menstruated and gave birth. At this time, people had negative attitude toward sex, so this led them to have a negative attitude towards women as they believed women were objects of sex. In the time of the witch-hunts the church which was made up of men, as I’ve said before, associated women with temptation. They led those who listened to the church to believe that women were obstacles on the path from man to god. Again, this shows how much the church influenced the European witch-trials. Referring to the point I made in a previous paragraph, those who listened to the church listened to the Malleus Maleficarum which was full of bias towards women. The Malleus Maleficarum was the main object used to persecute women in the pursuit of witches in early modern Europe. This shows how ‘gendercide’ was a factor in the European witch hunts.
Those accused of being witches were often accused for a very obvious reason. During the time of the European witch-hunts women suspected of being witches were often unattractive and very old. During this time people didn’t live to be very old so it was unusual to see a much older person. The only ‘logical’ explanation for this was that there had to be another power at work, it had to be …show more content…
The European witch-hunts were all about the church gaining power. The men of the church wanted to wipe out any women that would stand in their way. They wanted their religion to be the supreme religion. They wanted men to remain powerful. From the research presented in this essay, it is clear that the Malleus Maleficarum was the main object used in the demolishing of women and stopping them from having any sort of power. The term ‘gendercide’ is very appropriate when speaking of most countries in early modern Europe as man early modern European countries killed more females than males, however in the case of Iceland, that is not the