It could be argued that the main reason why so many of the accused were women is due to widespread misogyny in the 16th and 17th century. This can be supposed by the statistics of people persecuted during the period of 1550-1660. Trial records within Hungary and Essex show that the gender of a witch was traditionally a female as 91%-92% of women were convicted of being witches. Other larger countries such as France and Germany were thought to have 80% of female witches , whilst the Holy Roman Empire consisted of 82% . Such statistics support the view that witches were more commonly identified as women over men. This is supported by Callow who goes on to state that a witch I “generally expected to be women” as some areas saw prosecutions which
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This series of wars in central Europe consisted of conflicts between Roman Catholic and Protestant states meant that people were put in a hysterical state as they were struggling to survive and were clutching for an explanation at such a difficult time. Therefore, fragile and vulnerable women were used as scapegoats as priests were blaming women in the opposite churches in order to sustain dominance over the other, thus being the most powerful form of Christianity. Furthermore, there was a “direct connection between religious affiliation and those involved in witchcraft prosecutions” as “Roman Catholics were often the victims of witchcraft prosecutions” . The religious position of an individual correlated with whether or not they would serve the role as persecutor or victim. From this, it can be inferred that the majority of prosecutors were of the protestant faith which thus exemplifies a dividing conflict between the two forms of Christianity. This is due to the fact that the Reformation had fragmented the ‘religious uniformity’ of the middle ages and prompted a greater degree of self-conception, identity and cynicism among the ranks of the elite’ . Therefore, rivalries between Roman Catholic and Protestants became more prevalent during the 16th century which only intensified the witch hunts rather than the hysteria being purely misogyny based. Although many historians would argue that the reformation was a catalyst for the witch hunts, Brian Levack as provided evidence as to why this interpretation is flawed. One critique includes the fact that the witch hunts began almost a century before the start of the reformation as the infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692 and the reformation began in 1527 of which even when this was present in society, there were relatively few witch hunts in the first
This series of wars in central Europe consisted of conflicts between Roman Catholic and Protestant states meant that people were put in a hysterical state as they were struggling to survive and were clutching for an explanation at such a difficult time. Therefore, fragile and vulnerable women were used as scapegoats as priests were blaming women in the opposite churches in order to sustain dominance over the other, thus being the most powerful form of Christianity. Furthermore, there was a “direct connection between religious affiliation and those involved in witchcraft prosecutions” as “Roman Catholics were often the victims of witchcraft prosecutions” . The religious position of an individual correlated with whether or not they would serve the role as persecutor or victim. From this, it can be inferred that the majority of prosecutors were of the protestant faith which thus exemplifies a dividing conflict between the two forms of Christianity. This is due to the fact that the Reformation had fragmented the ‘religious uniformity’ of the middle ages and prompted a greater degree of self-conception, identity and cynicism among the ranks of the elite’ . Therefore, rivalries between Roman Catholic and Protestants became more prevalent during the 16th century which only intensified the witch hunts rather than the hysteria being purely misogyny based. Although many historians would argue that the reformation was a catalyst for the witch hunts, Brian Levack as provided evidence as to why this interpretation is flawed. One critique includes the fact that the witch hunts began almost a century before the start of the reformation as the infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692 and the reformation began in 1527 of which even when this was present in society, there were relatively few witch hunts in the first