Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts

by Anne Llewellyn Barstow

A brilliant, authoritative feminist history that examines the unrecognized holocaust--an "ethnic cleansing" of independent women in Reformation Europe--and the residual attitudes that continue to influence our culture.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Witches, Witchcraft, Womens, Religion

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Shanika · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author tells us a part of witch-hunt history that has been ignored by historians in the past-namely, the fact that the witchcraze was indeed an attack on women, a blatant gender oppression and a means by which male authority was stictly imposed and reinerated.

[Orsolya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Witches have contradictory reputations: they are either feared, ugly, demonic, broom-flying old hags; or they are “cool” like Samantha Stephens or Sabrina. How much do we REALLY know about witches? Anne L. Barstow goes beyond the typical lore to explain the mass panic and witch hunts which plagued Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with “Witchcraze”.

The witch hunts spanning Europe were intense (to say the least). Although marginally discussed, they resulted in 200,000 deaths, suicides, accusations, torture cases, etc. In Witchcraze, Barstow discusses the factors which caused these witch hunts (social, legal, gender, economic, theological, ecclesiastical); demonstrating much of the misogyny and fear of female sexuality which led to the craze.

Witchcraze is an easy and smooth read with a fast pace. Even though it is a history work, it reads more like a logical essay. Much of the information is very thought-provoking and flows well, divided into country/region discussions. However, Barstow’s thesis is lost at points and she offers to many opinionated phrases such as, “I predict…”, “ I suggest…”, etc. At times, Witchcraze simply reads like a college-level paper. The text is also intermingled with true stories of witch accusations/trials which can be gruesome and often times unbelievable (they are true, however: the book is well documented). These stories help provide context but analysis of the witch hunts in the text (minus the stories) are more compelling.

One of the positive notes is the lack of over-feminist view which the reader would expect; as Barstow sticks more to the facts in terms of gender analysis. Regardless, her sense of urgency when discussing the topics, does allow the reader to realize that these witch hunts are a major statistic in women’s history. Yet, there is a lack of proper research on the topic or subsequent museum exhibits, memorials, holidays, etc; commemorating the victims like other holocausts or genocides. The reader truly realizes the magnitude of these events as the heavy oppression.

Also explored are the social class effects on witch hunts (accused witches weren’t always poor peasants or elderly widows: there were children and even wealthy elite, in many cases); and the reasons why some regions had narrower witch hunts than others.

Slightly absent from the text, was extensive depth into the psychological factors relating to the witch hunts but this is due to the nonexistent research available. An annoying factor? Barstow (on numerous occasions) begins to discuss a topic but then abruptly ends it, stating that studies are currently underway and thus, she can’t say much more about the topic. It’s like the cliffhanger ending on a TV show: stay tuned, folks!

The ratio of history to analysis in Witchcraze is, however, informative while being entertaining. The book is a great introduction to the topic and inspires further reading. The text is well put-together for the amount (and lack thereof) of research available. Barstow never over speculates, which is tends to occur with some historians.

The end was weaker than expected as Barstow tried to web the witch hunts with other historical persecutions (i.e. African slave trade and the treatment of Indians by Spanish conquistadors). The impact wasn’t as strong and fruitful as Barstow certainly intended.

Overall, Witchcraze is quite a fascinating read which uncovers interesting facts such as that the fear and disgust toward menstrual blood led to the belief that sex during menstruation can kill a man, the statistics that children as young as 3 were imprisoned while being executed at the tender age of 8, and that in different countries with different governments, social systems, and economic systems; it was STILL about 90% or more women who were persecuted. Whether you are interested in witches or are just a history buff, Witchcraze is an informative but entertaining read.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps the best known play about witch trials in the United States is Miller’s The Crucible. Its popularity is not only due to the connection to the McCarthy Hearings, but also because it is taught in what seems to be almost every American school. It says much about our culture that the play about witch trials is a plot about a jilted lover getting revenge on the married man who jilted her.
Witchcraft trials wouldn’t really about that at all.
The connection between misogyny and witchcraft trials is pretty much obivious, but what Barstow does in this study is present numbers to prove it. Some numbers are not shocking, such as more women being accused and executed in general, and some numbers are shocking, such as the information from Finland.
Besides numbers, Barstow also shows how the investigation could destroy a village, at least the female population of a village (some villages only had one woman left) or the voyeurism of the witch finders. Apparently the witch finders were paid to feel up women and touched their most private areas. Of course, the witch finders did this would the best interest of everyone at heart.
It is this close look at not only accusations in terms of gender and class but also on the investigation of such charges that Barstow brings the trials back to where they should be seen – as an attack upon women.


Crossposted at Booklikes.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a fairly slim volume this tackles a huge subject: the 16th and 17th century witch hunts which preoccupied the religious and civic authorities across Europe. The author puts forward various suggestions as to why this burgeoned into such a holocaust after many centuries of low level persecution of witches, and certainly has a point in linking it to the adoption of the theories in Malleus Maleficarum and similar witch hunting manuals that women were supposedly more lustful, more open to persuasion by the devil and that witchcraft was a pact with Satan, in effect making it a replacement for the heresy which had been viciously persecuted on the continent previously. This point is made by contrasting the much lower level persecution in countries such as England, where witchcraft was looked on as a crime to be punished according to the level of harm done to others and where the ideas about the devil's pact, witches sabbat (meeting) and other elements were only introduced late on from the continent. The legalised use of extreme tortures in European countries ensured that persecutions became widespread, as victims named further victims in a spiral of torture and judicial murder, in contrast with England where torture was illegal, the legal system was not inquisitorial, and witchcraft outbreaks were generally small scale as a direct result.

The book roams around very widely in its ambition to cover not only the countries with well-known witchcraft persecutions, but others including Russia. Its underlying theme is that of seeing the witchcraft persecutions as a war on women. Women certainly were greatly disadvantaged, in a period where employment laws were pushing women into more marginal, poorly paid work, where the continent was riven by religious conflict and wars, and where certain officials in both church and state viewed women as more potentially evil than men due to their perceived moral weakness. Certainly a large element of 'blame the victim' went on. The descriptions of appalling torture in this book are also harrowing.

Ultimately, I'm not sure how much use this is as a real guide to the development of the hunts, as opposed to a whistle stop tour with some anecdotes of sad victims. The cruel and even sadistic treatment inflicted on the victims was deplorable, but I wasn't sure if I really learned anything from this book that I didn't already know from others. Although this was published in the 1990s, I'm pretty sure there were others written around the same time which drew the same inferences about gender bias in the numbers of victims of the persecutions, despite the claims in the book to be unique in this. So I would rate this at 3 stars.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating: 3.5 stars. While I found this book to be informative and eloquent, I also struggled with the author's extremely slow pacing and several troubling elements in her writing, namely her belief in the existence of the practice of witchcraft, whether it be so-called "folk magic" or actual, ritual magic, and her problematic comparisons of rising racism/imperialism and misogyny. Barstow seemed to take it for granted that not only was the belief in magic widespread, so was its practice, giving no evidence or justification for this eyebrow raising claim. She also seemed to imply at parts that their magic was actually effective, that they really did cause their enemies to sicken or die; I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for solid evidence if she expects the reader to believe in magic. Also, while her comparisons of the condition of slaves and women in the 16th to 18th centuries are insightful and hold water, she fails to recognize how misogyny and racism were separate entities that could intersect in the condition of women of color, specifically Native American/Black women during this period. At times she seems to imply that it was no more difficult to be a black/Native American woman in this period than it was to be a white woman or a Native American/Black man. The rape and sadistic violence she rightfully condemns when it's against European women during the witch hunts is portrayed as equal or even "not as bad" when inflicted against Native American woman in particular during the Spanish conquest, despite its increased brutality. Overall, this is a good introduction to this topic with new evidence and insightful conclusions, but outside information about the topic and a healthy dose of skepticism are needed to understand the topic better.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not a traditional narrative history, Barstow's analysis of the Witch hunts in Europe is a cultural examination of a multi-century genocide of women. Using a keen feminist lens, Barstow is able to observe how women became the center of a cultural disaster, and more importantly how women's role in society shaped this disaster.

This book wasn't always as coherent as I would have liked, but I still loved it for the way Barstow was able to demonstrate through specific examples of how this cultural trend emerged. Rather than hyperbolize or sensationalizing the violence, Barstow instead allowed the actual facts and data to demonstrate her argument. The Witch trials of Europe were one of the darkest examples of humanity's behavior, and the victimization of women becomes a cultural, religious, and economic event. Any reader or scholar of witchcraft needs to read this book to observe how thw Witch trial, one of the most sensational images in our culture, became an established function in the culture.

[Isabelle Gillett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book for my A-Level history coursework, and whilst it was useful in getting a well rounded look- I didn’t find it particularly helpful in investigating specific events.

I know many people in my course who are using Anne Barstow as their historian and found this to be really helpful, but for me I found it to not be relevant to my question- choosing to investigate Christina Larner as my historian.

If someone finds this book at a library, get it out and read it. If someone is considering buying it, I wouldn’t bother.

[phoebe rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this along with several other books on a similar subject when writing an essay on the role of gender in the witch hunts. Although Barstow provides a lot of insight into this subject, her statistical evidence is often a stretched estimate that’s debated by other historians. It’s argued that she cherrypicks these facts to support her preconceived theory that gender is the ultimate, if not only, factor in this very complex moment in history. However, it is accessible and a great introduction to the misogyny embedded within Europe’s history.

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read a pure monograph in several years. Barstow draws the reader in with her historiography and feminist lens of looking at the early modern European witch-hunts, putting them in context with misogyny and world history.
My only complaint: endnotes. I prefer footnotes.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

how absolutely crazy is it that before 1994 (with this book) no historian would conclude that the witch hunts had anything to do with the fact that they were women

[khentkawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book stands at a juncture of feminist thought and historical study. It is a concise, clearly-written summation of witch hunts across a wide span of European countries, approached through the lens of gendered violence, and for that reason it might not appeal to all readers. Generally, a certain amount of waffling is preferred in historical writing, a kind of, "well, yeah, most executed witches were women, and they were tortured in ways specific to the female body, and witchcraft as a whole was understood as a specifically female crime, but that doesn't mean anyone was a MISOGYNIST or anything..." Barstow dispenses with this immediately at the beginning of her book; she also, to her credit, dispenses with the inflated numbers of deaths and analyses of the witch hunts performed by feminists who are not historians. She walks a middle line, never yielding her feminist analysis, but also not losing sight of specific historical fact.

I found the book easy to read in a technical sense, unlike many other, denser works on history; I found it difficult to read given its subject matter, which is frankly brutal. Barstow does not shy away from blunt descriptions of the inhumane violence experienced by accused witches. She also never apologizes or hesitates when it comes to criticizing the witch-hunting phenomenon as a specifically misogynist construction designed to attack and control women as a class. This is particularly satisfying for those of us exhausted by the above-described waffling on the part of other authors.

Her book does, however, have limitations, one of which being its length: it is a brief book that is attempting to cover a very large geographic range and to touch on complex developments in history. For that reason, her arguments do feel thin, and the conclusion of the book is frankly not well-developed. She attempts to approach European colonialism, the slave trade, and the genocide of Native Americans as an outgrowth of the cultural phenomena among the European ruling class that produced the witchcraze, but the subject is not fully dealt with--it gets a chapter at most. She frankly accords colonized people a minimum of sympathy and attention, while making equivalences between the positions of white European women and colonized or enslaved peoples that simply do not hold under examination, especially given the role white women have played as slave-owners (see They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South) and as perpetuators of brutality against the colonized.

It's a disappointing conclusion; given the firecracker quality of the earlier parts of the book, one would hope it would end with a bang. Given its limitations, I wouldn't make this the only book you read on the European witch hunts, although I think it certainly has its place in a fuller library on the subject.

[Judas Machina · Rating 1 out of 5]

The amount of historical misinformation is astounding in this book.
The concept of the modern witch and the persecution actually comes from beer, drugs, and purity laws.
Crazy, I know.

The idea of our contemporary witch has its source in actual historical cultural expressions. The facts as they are presented seem to draw correlation between brooms the alewomen (as the beer sellers were called) used, the tall hats they wore, and the beer they produced by cauldron.
Certainly, that appears to be the case, it’s so obvious!
Pointy hats? Check.
Made brews in cauldrons? Check.
Made money from selling beer? Check.
Used brooms to make beer and advertise they sold it? Check.
Men made beer too but burned women for sorcery because they wanted to make money and it’s all a conspiracy to keep women down? Cheeee….but hang on…there’s more to it than that.
Hallucinogens and alcohol may be a famously unfriendly mix, but that hasn’t stopped brewers throughout the ages from going to great lengths to get high. Historically, herbs were used to stabilize beer, to retard spoilage, to increase palatability and cover brewing failures, to imbue the beer with medicinal qualities, and finally to make beer ‘stronger’ or even hallucinogenic, according to The Oxford Companion of Beer.
The Vikings were some of the first to spike their brews with wormwood they found in Finland, and there is evidence they may have also used opium as far back as the third century.
In what is now the Czech Republic, a town was named for beer. Yes, the same Pilsen in which the Bavarian brewer Josef Groll invented the now-ubiquitous pilsner back in 1842, may in fact, have contained a hint of deadly nightshade.
Some brewers talked about how the whole town of Pilsen was redolent of the smell of hops and narcotics. There was this association with something criminal about it, which fed into the nationalist rivalry in Europe at the time.
Then we have the introduction of purity laws. These laws came into effect for several reasons: to protect the crafting of beer, and to protect the consumer. In 1516, William IV, Duke of Bavaria, adopted the Reinheitsgebot (purity law), perhaps the oldest food-quality regulation still in use in the 21st century, according to which the only allowed ingredients of beer are water, hops and barley-malt. Before then, you could put in anything you wanted, and the alewomen did. Anything and everything that gave the beer a kick, or encouraged repeat customers

The adopted and questionable theory says that it was this event that caused women to be considered witches, with the tools of their trade being used as propaganda. Some historians deny the veracity of this association, such as Dr. Christina Wade of the blog Braciatrix, devoted to the history of women in brewing and bartending. She argues that during the later Middle Ages, when images of brewsters in such tall hats come into the historical record, witches weren’t yet associated with them. (Let alone the fact that it's unlikely that brewsters across Europe, a rag-tag assembly of home-spun brewers to begin with, collectively agreed on the tall hats as a form of marketing). but let's assume that tall hats were a thing; they weren't all pointy....or even tall.
What is the mythos of the Witch Trials against our contemporary social understanding?
Wearing a tall hat she creates potions; advertises brews beer laced with narcotics and hallucinogens.
Keeps familiars; cats keep away mice, which eat the hops
Enthralls people with spells; people are addicted to the beer.
Summons demons and dances in the moonlight; gets high on her own supply.
Seduces men from their bed chambers; the cliché of the drug addict offering sex.
Can create infertility or reduce women to birthing monstrosities; we all know about drug use in pregnancy.

And how were rivals dealt with? Well, the housewife down the road makes beer that outsells you…there’s got to be a way to get rid of her….right? How about selling her out to the law?

Knowing now that the home brewing woman would spike her brews with addictive drugs, that she would be able to make the connection between her ingredients and the people’s willingness to buy more and more of her product, what can we conclude? What modern similarities do we have for this?
Drug dealers.
Addiction leads people to do terrible things. Most of us have seen a Requiem For A Dream (a movie based on a book regarding the authors lived experiences), but for those of you that haven’t; drugs and their addictive effects lead to prostitution, crime, sometimes murder, all to appease the fix.
So what we have here, essentially, is drug dealers selling people addictive hallucinogenic beers. The buyers become enthralled with the seller. They need their fix. They become “harassed” by demons as invisible bugs crawl across their skin.

But now you also have many issues that is brewed together for an interesting concoction.
You have the ingredient of government who is not collecting taxes on these drug sales, first off. With that you have the issue of your citizens upsetting the peace with theft, acts of violence and sexually transmitted diseases via intercourse outside of marriage (syphilis was a new disease that was spreading right around the time the purity laws were coming into effect and at the height of the “burning times”. And no, syphilis wasn’t from sex with sheep, don’t get me started). As a person where science is still in its infancy, yet you can still see cause and effect, what conclusions can you make?
The monasteries produce beer as well, yet their adherents do not react the same way as those who buy from the alewives….
There must be a spiritual malaise that is causing this, right?
So now you have drug dealers hiding from taxes, harming people either by ignorance or intent. Laws are put into effect that place preference over the safer manufacturing methods of monks (and taxable) and larger breweries, the alewives move into black market territory.
(Keep in mind that the Catholic Church considered a belief in witches before the 13th century a form of heresy. Witches were not real and it was wrong for you to believe so.)
Witch hunts begin. And over the course of two hundred years 40,000 people are killed for witchcraft (or heresy, they were interchangeable in many courts of the time. And contrary to public opinion, the Church didn't perform the executions, the local government did). Mix in plagues and famines and you have breeding ground for massive paranoia, poverty, and increased drugged beer sales. All of this culminates into a cultural icon today; appropriated by modern pagans and Wiccans as the pointy hat witch.
So it is true, men forced beer brewing housewives out of business. Because they were drug dealers, and based on the consequences of events, these drugs destroyed lives, both physically and metaphysically. And while the method of burning is abhorrent (the protestants hadn’t gained enough political clout to stop torture laws), witches were not the innocent persecuted women touted today. Like in any black market system, there are going to be bodies piling up eventually. Obviously, #NotAllWitches or housewives did this through the centuries. Yet enough of them did to create a cliché, and enough situations happened to warrant for public safety. So there you have it. Societal warnings against home brew drug dealers and food safety laws culminated in persecution (some would say rightfully).
The fact that it was women seems to be arbitrary when you look at the cultural scope of what was happening: men worked the land and gave their efforts to the local government, what was left over was used by the wives in a free market.
According to Anne Llewellyn Barstow, 80% of those accused and 85% of those executed in Europe were women. Because they were the ones selling drugs.

[Alyssa Dearborn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin with this book. It was excellent. It was well researched and well written. In terms of academic work, it was great. I am hesitant, however, to say that I love this book. I love how in presents the author's research, but everything I learned in this book left me completely shocked and shaken. It draws connections between the violence of witch trial, sexism, racism, and the social issues of today. As a woman reading this, I was horrified and angry that the events described not only happened, but I am just leaning about these horrors at the age of 23. I feel like I should have learned about how terrible Europe's witch trials--and the effects of those acts of violence--really were. I am glad I read this book, but I suggest that those who decide to read this take their time with it. It is a very heavy book that takes time to process.

[Kharm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched book on the European witch hunts. I would have preferred a few more citations in a few places, but overall it was very well done. It also gives an impressive bibliography and reference list for those that are interested in reading more.

[Jenn Cansler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know that next time I want to learn about facts, I will research a book prior to purchasing it. I could have done with out every bit of the feminist crap.

[Lisa Morton]

Good review of the witch hunts from a feminist perspective.

[Ex Libris Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the writing itself was lacking in my opinion, and the book read like an academic study, which it is, the topic was mesmerizing and illuminating. I knew so little about the European witch hunts and was horrified to learn the history and extent to the violence against women in an effort to subdue and control them and society at large. Spoiler (not really), but they had nothing to do with people being witches and everything to do with fear and control from those in power. Things that are still so prevalent in today’s world. So many factors including political, religious, social, and economic played into how these episodes occurred and what happened next to the victims, especially what country they happened to live in. Knowing that my ancestors came from a region in Germany where the most intense witch hunts occurred has inspired me to look more into my ancestry since it’s almost assured that the women in my extended family would’ve been surrounded by this, at the very least. Such an important read!

[Shayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just wanted it to be better! Content and research is 4.5 stars for meticulously documented historical research. Sadly, quality of writing and analysis were more like 2 stars. She really fell short on analysis, ending multiple sections with some version of, “someone really needs to study that further.”

Bitch, what are we even doing in this book then!

Basically it’s just historical research with an author stating high school level observations for the sake of reader. And honestly I blame the marketing, which describes it as a feminist criticism and it really isn’t. Maybe I’m unfairly judging a 1994 book by 2019 standards. Her conclusions were at the level of pop feminism. Writing style? OVERWROUGHT.

BUT... the content is fascinating and worth the trek. Anyone have suggestions on a better written version of this topic?

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars - slow start, the last handful of chapters (5-8) finally got interesting and laid into some really good theories and stories of how witchcraft ruined the lives of women across Europe. While this book is probably dated at this point, it makes for a quick summary of cases and reasonings for witchcraft persecutions that makes for a good introduction to the study of witchcraft and the witchcraze created in its wake.

[Savannah ୨♡୧ · Rating 5 out of 5]

such an incredible & intersectional nonfiction read about the facets of the social/political/religious misogyny that ignited the witch-hunts of general europe!
definitely definitely would read again

“there is something of the witch in every woman.”
“people turned to witches as well as turned on them.”

[Ace Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I had a solid knowledge base for this but it turns out I really didn't! I learned a lot, even if there were some leaps of logic that didn't fully track for me the info was solid and the synthesis feels like an important piece of the puzzle for how the history fits into the present, and it was damn quotable I read the whole thing with a highlighter in my hand and I mean that literally

[Alyssa Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the study of witchcraft emerged in the face of historical interpretation, historians such as Julio Caro Baroja and Erik Middlefort often overlooked the concept of gender in the causes of witch hunts in Europe. Anne Barstow's Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts challenged the idea that women were at fault for the accusations of witchcraft. She contended that it was strongly ingrained misogyny and patriarchal control that led to the declining status of women throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by methods of social and cultural history.
Barstow began with a historiography to explain what other historians have argued about their interpretation of the witchcraft trials and executions. She shows in her historiography that historians had the tools to approach the concept of gender but failed to do so on every occasion. E. William Monter set the stage in 1976 and finally included that gender played a crucial role in the hunts. Barstow introduced the idea of women hunting and explained that to prove it was a hunt against women, one must analyze the elements of power between the sexes.
Chapters one and two discussed the typical attributes of a targeted witch, such as class, age, gender, and appearance, while also explaining what a typical witch hunt consisted of and how the communities began the hunts. She explained the "complex social matrix" that arose once an accusation went public. She also included that women became a scapegoat for anything in communities that went wrong, especially squabbles over land and illnesses.
The complex history of women in the legal sense also began to unfold. Barstow held that "women first emerged into legal adulthood as witches." The rise of accusations of witchcraft and infanticide proliferated at this time; arguably, it is due to the rise of church presence in Europe.
Chapters three and four explored the various patterns of witch hunts across many countries in Europe and the political, economic, and religious influence each country had, and how that affected women. Focusing on religion, Barstow shed light on the two massive religious reformations in the sixteenth century that unequivocally targeted women. She reasoned that the witch hunts were the most severe in the German-speaking countries of Europe. She focused heavily on the religious aspect in chapter three, including Malleus Maleficarum, which was their justification for wiping out a mass of their female population.
Chapters five and six focused on what women were doing in society and where women's power became an issue. Most women of lower classes took jobs as midwives or village healers, but with the rise of the church's influence, ministers saw them as a threat. Barstow concluded that there was a competition between religious ministers and women in positions such as healers or midwives. The easiest way to rid the competition was to accuse them of witchcraft, even though most healers and midwives used herbal remedies. Women were a threat as they advised other women about fertility and abortion methods which was an "attack against gods will" or "devil's talk."
Chapter seven solidified Barstow's argument that it was an attack against women as she explains the public bodily searches for the "devil's teat." She made it clear that legal torture was sadistic experimentation and was a socially acceptable way to assault women. Barstow used examples such as naked public punishments and cruel torture methods to one's private parts. The most impactful example of these sadistic torments comes from the story of the Pappenheimer family, where there was no reason for the severity of the punishment of the family except that they could do it and get away with it.
The final chapter summarized and explained how the witch hunts eventually caused women to become a shell of themselves out of fear of being cried out. She stated, "if a woman could be cried out a witch for telling someone's fortune or speaking back to a neighbor, well then, one had better stay to oneself, mind one's business, and obey one's husband." With punishments and executions publicized, women dared not give anyone reason to accuse her of witchcraft since she knew the repercussions.
Anne Barstow created such a powerful book that pulls from the personal experiences of many women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries going through what she named the "Witchcraze." Her accounts of the time of accusation to execution show how intense and brutal the accusers sought punishment for the alleged witches. Barstow added a human element that created a new outlook on witchcraft studies in Europe. She made slight references to Salem in North America and provided a foundation of the principles that followed Europeans to the colonies about witchcraft.
Ultimately, she proved her thesis and gave an insightful look into the gender analysis of European witch hunts that eventually transferred to the colonies in North America through misogyny and patriarchal control. She wrote the book with a general audience in mind as it follows a narrative approach and should be a must-read starter for anyone interested in witchcraft history.

[Heidi Bakk-Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative, interesting--but my copy was a misprint missing a significant portion of the book. I got the book in an exchange, so who knows this copy's provenance. I didn't realize until I was more than halfway in.

[Nightkid · Rating 2 out of 5]

這是一本以女性觀點分析歐洲各地獵殺女巫的史書，全書結構鬆散，持續看到各種女性被指控的案例，讓讀者身心疲累。作者在書中一直強調男性統治階層逼迫女性的觀點，質疑這些女性的死亡是由於當時社會資源匱乏，她們的村民不想這些弱勢女性瓜分資源，甚至企圖奪去她們的財產，所以才作出女巫的指控。

全書行文很偏激，我討厭男性沙文主義，但這種極端的女權主義，我也受不了。

[Katy-Fay]

No rating because I read it for a collage research paper.

[Mary Mosley]

I think this is a very important book, especially now that we have become chattel again when Roe v Wade was overturned. She makes the connections.

[Keekee Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing read. I normally take my time when reading anymore, but I consumed this book.

[♡catarina♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

useful thank you

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times too deep for me. It was a slog to get through the intro and a couple of other chapters. Although I do appreciate the importance and edification this book has in women's studies.

[Ladie Labrys · Rating 5 out of 5]

The BEST book on the witch-craze of early modern europe. An absolute must-read, and thankfully Anne Barstow takes a feminist approach to her research, every woman should read this book!