Male Witches in Early Modern Europe

Male witches in early modern Europe provides a critique of historians' assumptions about witch-hunting and the many explanations for the origins of this complex and perplexing phenomenon. The authors insist on the centrality of gender, tradition and ideas about witches in the construction of the witch as a dangerous figure. In doing so, they challenge the marginalisation of male witches by many historians, in particular those writing with a feminist agenda. The book shows that large numbers of men were accused of witchcraft in their own right, and in some regions men were accused more often than women. The authors analyse ideas about witches and witch prosecution as gendered artefacts of patriarchal societies, under which both sexes suffered. They challenge recent arguments and current orthodoxies by applying crucial insights from feminist scholarship on gender to a selection of statistical arguments, social-historical explanations, traditional feminist history and primary sources, including trial records and demonological literature. This important critique of current practices in witchcraft studies will be of particular interest to scholars and students in undergraduate and graduate courses in early modern history, religion, culture, gender studies and methodology. Book jacket.

Lara Apps is Graduate Student Ombudsperson, and Andrew Gow is Associate Professor of History, both at the University of Alberta.