Customer Reviews

Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

"Witchcraze" has been justly ignored by the academic community. It's a testament to the human mind's ability to ignore data. Most of Barstow's information is reasonably accurate (though her listing of the death tolls in various countries is severely flawed -- some areas are omitted, others counted twice, and several of the numbers are inaccurate). Unfortunately, Barstow doesn't USE her data! Her theory is that Witch-hunting was caused by misogyny. Her own data shows that a country's level of misogyny bears no correlation to the intensity of its Witch-hunting. Misogyny won't explain where or when Witch-hunting occurred, but Barstow ignores this. She also ignores any evidence that doesn't support her theories. Example: she claims that Iceland didn't persecute Witches. In fact, Iceland killed more Witches than Russia and Ireland, two countries that Barstow does discuss. The difference is, in Iceland 95% of the victims were men. Since Barstow thinks that Witch hunting was women-hunting, she carefully deletes Iceland from the picture. The worst aspect of this book, though, is that it is chock-full of blatant ethnic and sexual stereotyping. Spain didn't kill many Witches because Spaniards are too chivalrous to do that. Doctors accused wise-women of Witchcraft because male and female healers are "natural enemies". (Barstow quickly glosses over the fact that wise-women did this too -- she certainly doesn't suggest that women were each other's "natural enemies"!) I strongly recommend people to avoid this book. Some of the information is accurate, but you can get better info -- without the stereotyping.

Most historians have soundly rejected Barstow's theories and methods (in fact, I know a professor who uses one of her books as an example of poor scholarship). Like so many authors today, she simply ignores any evidence which might contradict her viewpoint while "creatively" interpreting the rest.

I can't begin to explain my disappointment with this book. What was I thinking? Buying a book specifically written from a very vocal feminist's perspective is going to give one a very biased feminist's point of view. The writer loves to give a snippet of someone else's book - then give the reader a mulititude of reasons they miss the mark in their theories. Yet this woman is so determined to prove her point she makes untrue statements and misses the very big picture.

In one instance, she claims England did not use torture. They most certainly did. In another instance she claims a witch trial happened in a Catholic German town. While it certainly was Catholic at one time, during the trial of this individual it had been taken over by Swedes. All evidence of Catholicism burned to the ground.

Which brings us to the REAL reason for the witch hunts. Religious intolerance. All of this happened during the "reformation." All of these killings happened in places of major Protestant reform. Germany, England, France and Switzerland.

Martin Luther himself was completely taken over by the idea of witches and stated that he would dearly love to burn all Franciscans at the stake. In England, the robes of Catholic priests were called garments of conjuring. Candles and incense thought by the Puritans to be tools of the devil. Many of these bigotries carry over still today.

The writer fails to mention that so many of these women who were isolated were anchoresses. Not "diviners and spell casters" as she calls them. But prophets and healers. Solitary consecrated women flourished prior to Protestant Reform. They were stamped out. Tortured and murdered. Only to begin making their come back recently. Read the book Ancrene Wisse - for a better idea. Even the term "Blessed be..." comes from a prayer used by the anchoresses and anchorites (there were a few men).

That's not to say the Catholic church didn't participate in the persecution of innocents. It most certainly did. But if you compare maps and dates - you'll see the bulk went on during times and in places of Protestant Reformation.

Let me begin by stating I am no authority on the history of witch burnings. However, I do find the subject fascinating and wish I had more time to devote in the reasearch of this subject. I've read some of the reviews here and will say it's difficult for me to come to the conclusion if Barstow's book is nothing more than a feminist slant on a macabre period in European history. Her book, in my opinion, did tend to focus only on women who were accused of witchcraft. I can't say if this is right or wrong. I only have the unscientific knowledge of these events from Hollywood movies stored in my memory. All I can say is I found the book's description of the women who were burned at the stake horrible and cruel. It just goes to show you man has changed very little and makes me more of a believer that "might makes right" which is why these atrocities have stopped. Go ahead and read the book and judge for yourselves. I found it, at the minimum, to be a good primer on the subject.

This is a book that focuses on the witch-hunt from the female perspective. Ms Barstow writes well and with a nice fluent style that makes history readable rather than `dusty' or `dry'. There is no doubt she paints a vivid picture of the witch craze in early modern Europe and there are references that point to further reading for those who are interested.
However the author writes from an extremely feminist viewpoint which I found a little overpowering (and I class myself as a feminist). Her prologue focuses on violence against women in modern society and uses that as a comparison for what happened in the witch hunt. There is scant attention paid to the fact that 20% of those accused of witchcraft were men, a significant number. Indeed, in Eastern Europe there were more men accused than women.
Whilst there is no doubt that some misogyny came into play during that time, and that there were awful consequences for women accused of being witches, I would have liked a more balanced view of the witch-hunt rather than one that assumed all judges, witch finders and jailers were sexually abusive toward the (female) accused. The author particularly criticises the notoriously misogynystic `Malleus Maleficarum' whilst seemingly oblivious to the fact she is as guilty of sexism as the authors of that book were.
Ms Barstow does refer to the work of many eminent historians who have written on this topic, but seems to find fault in all of their findings, giving the impression that she is the only one with a `realistic' view of what the witch-hunt was about. This is quite a useful book for the undergraduate studying this period, so long as they balance it with plenty of other reading matter rather than taking this as a definitive text.

I first read this book last year when I began studying Early-Modern Witchcraft at Monash University. Barstow's work was misleading then when I knew little on the topic, and laughable now that I know much, much more. Barstow had a pre-conceived idea of what she she wanted to say, and either didn't bother to find, or omitted anything that didn't fit in with her theory. This book says more about feminist politics than Witchcraft history. Gender was the primary focus of her study, and Barstow's world is only understandable in terms of gender (as opposed to the equally important socio-economic, religious and racial factors). Furthermore she believes that only women have gender, this shows an appaling lack of study for more and more accounts are appearing, not only of male witchcraft, but of male gender history.

Witchcraft was too widespread and went on for too long to be so easily pidgeon-holed into terms as obvious or basic as gender. Historical representations of witchcraft should be taken on a case by case basis. Creating "models" for witchcraft (Barstow's elderly, marinalised female among others) does not help the issue, it confuses it.

Anyone starting out serious study in this field would do better to read works by Dianne Purkiss, Deborah Willis or books pertaining to the case in Salem of Hugh Parsons who was the primary witch, his wife the secondary-where does this fit in to Barstow's model? Also, if you must read Barstow- also read the possession at Loudun(Certeau's or Rapley's) to see a witch trial that is the exact opposite of Barstows "norm". To fellow scholars I'd say read Barstow if only to see how one's political agendas or bias can effect your study. Be objective, keep reading and get all sides of the story!

I've read the other reviews which consistantly deny Barstow's premise: that the Witch Craze was the women's holocaust. Just read the book: and any other that attempts to break down by gender the numbers of those tortured and killed. Why gender? Because it is the single most glaring pattern in the witch persecutions!

The Maleficius (handbook for persecuting witches) does not implicate male sexuality as a reason for torturing them, as it consistantly implicates women's sexuality. It does not mention how to 'recognize' male witches, but it begins from the premise that women 'live by the moon and so are able to draw the hearts of men toward the pagans,' and thus, witches are women because only they were 'weak' enough to fall prey to the devil. Interesting, isn't it, how the artists and writers of the period always portray witches as women, from Shakespeare to Holbein? Don't blame Anne Barstow, just look for the overwhelming pattern, as she has done.

That said, there are a few weaknesses in the book. One, although she tries to nail the number of those killed, she still comes up short. Anecdotally, I visited the town of Osnabruck, Germany, this summer and discovered their numbers of murders of women were around 400, give or take, from two eras of persecution in the 16th and 17th Centuries. I returned home to check Witch Craze, and Osnabruck never made it into the index. It's numbers of dead are not included, though it is common knowledge to anyone who visits the tourist center. Huh? What else was left out?

Nor does Barstow adequately plumb the numbers who were tortured and maimed and then released, or those who died in custody. She does not draw a line from the witch persecutions to the rise of the legal profession. We know that women were targeted for political and sexist reasons, but Barstow does not go into detail about who the male witches were: were they shamans, convenient scapegoats for natural disasters, homosexuals, or political enemies of the nobility? Don't know.

I await a book which discusses the intersection of European pagan life and the witch craze. I believe that while Europe's women may not have been sorcerers, they, and small town folk in general, certainly were among the last people of the continent who maintained the pagan folk traditions of pre-Christian Europe. Traditionally, throughout native cultures, men are first to shed their traditional ways, usually for pragmatic economic reasons, while rural women carry the rituals on: though food preparation, childcare and healthcare methods, costuming, commemorating holidays, and so on. Is there some corollary there between native European culture as practiced by householders and the witch craze? Not mentioned, and doesn't have to be. But to my mind, it is an incomplete work that doesn't mention the collision of historical folk culture with the dominant christian culture and how it effected or affected the persecution of women.

Yet Witch Craze is an important book to read and own. Barstow's single most important contribution, I believe, is to paint a picture of how women and men would have reacted to 500 years of mostly female persecution--the resulting fragmentation of society, the housewifeization of women, the entrenchment of ageism, and the suspicion and fear of self-directed mysticism and spirituality--these are the legacies of the Witch Craze that imprint us all still.

This was an interesting book and definitely got me started down the whole path of researching the european witch hunts. However, this is a highly feminist work and because of that, Anne Barstow comes across a little biased at times. Yes, women were the ones mainly persecuted but she completely ignores the fact that men were also the ones accused. It is still a decent read but keep in mind the author is a little biased.

As others have written, Barstow's book lazily glosses over exceptions to her theory of witch-hunting as woman-hunting. I find this book to be disappointing on an academic level and a personal level. The most common figure one will find in this book lies in the quantitative data presented at the back of the book -- 75%. According to Barstow's sources, around 75%-80% of the people tried and killed were witches. Was there a bias against women? Certainly. Much like the bias against women that made them likely to be mystics of affective piety (something which few men ever were declared). Was witch-hunting woman-hunting? No way. Witch-hunting crossed gender lines, class lines, and religious lines. If witch-hunting were woman-hunting, we should see 100% listed for female prosecutions and executions across the board. To claim otherwise is to cheapen the deaths of thousands of men in a way that, quite frankly, disgusts me. In simple terms, Barstow seems to be unwilling to do what talented academics like Ginzburg demand that we do -- discriminate on the basis of microhistory. If you want to get a good grasp on witch-hunting, read Kors & Peters' compilation of primary source materials ("Witchcraft in Europe,") Edward Peters' "Inquisition," Joseph Klaits' "Servants of Satan," Wunderli's "The Drummer of Niklashausen," Hsia's "Myth of Ritual Murder," Ginzburg's "The Night Battles" and any other book that treats the subject with respect.

I, as did others, have a non-academic interest in the witch hunts, and although I have no opinion on whether or not her data is valid, I found that she repeated the same points and examples throughout all the chapters. I couldn't even finish the book because I had felt that I probably read all the new information and that there wasn't much new to add.

Fortunatly, I picked up the book cheaply and didn't have to use it for a class. I think that the idea was appealing, but the execution of the work fell very short.