Witches and Neighbors
Dec. 14th, 2004 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyjadwigaAt one time I contemplated doing some research and writing on the subject of 'witches' in medieval times, which is a lot more complicated that modern pagans, modern feminists, or the Enlightenment scholars ever saw it. (Yeah, I know, earth religions may be my mythology but that's another story.) The trouble is, I haven't had the time to work on this too much, except as it relates to herbalism and medicine. However, here are a few of my thoughts on this...
The quintesscential medieval healer of modern mythology is the herbwoman/midwife. A good examples of her show up in Furlong's _Wise Child_, Cushman's _Midwife's Apprentice_, and Lackey's _Owlsight_. This is the healer in the cottage with the garden of herbs who treats everyone with an array of very effective herbal potions-- sort of a medieval district nurse/ parish doctor type, in a skirt.
Of course, we are told, the herbal healer was driven out of society in the witch trials of the 14th-17th centuries, because the church believed that women healers were all witches and so was anyone who used herbs to heal. (Curious since the U.S Pharmacopeia through about 1930 was mostly herbal preparations). We are told repeatedly that the witch persecution targeted midwives specifically.
However, when you read modern studies of the witch persecution, you get a rather different picture. For instance, the book _Witches and Neighbors_ by Robin Briggs, suggests few midwives were persecuted, and that in fact up to 25% of those persecuted were men. Briggs goes on to construct a social reality in which witchcraft accusations were not made randomly or merely in order to attack women in general, but as a result of longstanding social chafing within a small community. In other words, if you annoyed your neighbors for long enough, you were likely to be suspected, and later accused, of witchcraft.
Some reviews of the book:
FindArticles.com - Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. - Review - book reviews
Historian, Fall, 1999, by Kathryn A. Edwards
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=158889132860
Reviewed by: Charlotte C. Wells , University of Northern Iowa.
Published by: H-France (February, 1998)
He also points out that a number of the stories brought out at trial _by the accused_ seem to be the vengeance fantasies of the dispossessed-- people who for whatever reason felt outcast, and comforted themselves with the delusions that they could in fact wreak revenge on their neighbors.
There are other cases and other sources.
Roper, Lyndal. "Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany," in Lorna Hudson, ed., Feminism and Renaissance Studies. (NY: Oxford University, 1999)
talks about a number of cases where the lying-in nurse (NOT the midwife, who was a valued member of the community and besides, if you got rid of the midwife, where would you be?) was accused of witchcraft when something happened to the baby. To me, this seems to be the same impulse that causes the huge number of malpractice suits in obstetrics today: if something goes wrong with the baby, the parents have to find someone to blame in order to process their own distress. Babies who failed to thrive or who succumbed to unrecognized birth defects often provoked fear; add that to the mechanisms of post-partum depression and you've got a fertile breeding ground for fantasies that 'someone' caused the problems. Lying-in nurses were often old women who had noplace to go, and who had no children of their own, thus were safe targets for fear and fantasy on the part of the parents. Nowadays, parents focus their anxieties on babysitters and daycare. :)
The quintesscential medieval healer of modern mythology is the herbwoman/midwife. A good examples of her show up in Furlong's _Wise Child_, Cushman's _Midwife's Apprentice_, and Lackey's _Owlsight_. This is the healer in the cottage with the garden of herbs who treats everyone with an array of very effective herbal potions-- sort of a medieval district nurse/ parish doctor type, in a skirt.
Of course, we are told, the herbal healer was driven out of society in the witch trials of the 14th-17th centuries, because the church believed that women healers were all witches and so was anyone who used herbs to heal. (Curious since the U.S Pharmacopeia through about 1930 was mostly herbal preparations). We are told repeatedly that the witch persecution targeted midwives specifically.
However, when you read modern studies of the witch persecution, you get a rather different picture. For instance, the book _Witches and Neighbors_ by Robin Briggs, suggests few midwives were persecuted, and that in fact up to 25% of those persecuted were men. Briggs goes on to construct a social reality in which witchcraft accusations were not made randomly or merely in order to attack women in general, but as a result of longstanding social chafing within a small community. In other words, if you annoyed your neighbors for long enough, you were likely to be suspected, and later accused, of witchcraft.
Some reviews of the book:
FindArticles.com - Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. - Review - book reviews
Historian, Fall, 1999, by Kathryn A. Edwards
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=158889132860
Reviewed by: Charlotte C. Wells , University of Northern Iowa.
Published by: H-France (February, 1998)
He also points out that a number of the stories brought out at trial _by the accused_ seem to be the vengeance fantasies of the dispossessed-- people who for whatever reason felt outcast, and comforted themselves with the delusions that they could in fact wreak revenge on their neighbors.
There are other cases and other sources.
Roper, Lyndal. "Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany," in Lorna Hudson, ed., Feminism and Renaissance Studies. (NY: Oxford University, 1999)
talks about a number of cases where the lying-in nurse (NOT the midwife, who was a valued member of the community and besides, if you got rid of the midwife, where would you be?) was accused of witchcraft when something happened to the baby. To me, this seems to be the same impulse that causes the huge number of malpractice suits in obstetrics today: if something goes wrong with the baby, the parents have to find someone to blame in order to process their own distress. Babies who failed to thrive or who succumbed to unrecognized birth defects often provoked fear; add that to the mechanisms of post-partum depression and you've got a fertile breeding ground for fantasies that 'someone' caused the problems. Lying-in nurses were often old women who had noplace to go, and who had no children of their own, thus were safe targets for fear and fantasy on the part of the parents. Nowadays, parents focus their anxieties on babysitters and daycare. :)
