Download Controlling Women`s Bodies: Violence and Sadism

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Witchcraft Notes
Anne Llewellyn Barstow
“Controlling Women’s Bodies”
November, 2007
This Reading:
Anne Llewellyn Barstow
“Controlling Women’s Bodies: Violence and Sadism” (CP pp97-105).
Bridging Point – Klaits and Barstow
Elite Ideas Imposed on Commoners:
Pierre de Lancre:
“His informants about the witches’ sabbats were about 500 boys and girls ranging in age from
10-19, who had been recruited to attend the sabbats and bring back detailed reports. Plainly, de
Lancre and his assistants were eliciting these accounts from suggestible children and
adolescents.” (Klaits, 84)
Barstow’s Thesis: CP p.98R
How does one analyze the witchcraft persecutions of the 17th Century?
 “By accepting that in this instance women were victimized and by accusing those who were in
power. It is only by learning what happened to the bodies of the accused and naming the agents
of their torment, by “acknowledging the imbalance of power in a male-dominated society,” that
we can move ahead in analyzing this particular explosion of patriarchal power.”
Barstow’s Discourse:
Concerned with the differential in power that existed between women and men, and probably
intends for us to ask whether or not this imbalance still exists, and in what ways.
This is the framework in which she examines the witchcraze – the premise from which she
proceeds.
She focuses on the effects of the power differential as it was deployed on the bodies of the
accused.
Understanding Power:
Everyone has a certain amount of power to act or to choose.
We have a certain amount of power over ourselves, and a certain amount of power to influence
others.
Others have a complimentary power to resist, and over themselves.
The witchcraze is an example of men’s power without women’s complimentary power.
It is a case of simple “Power Over”
Understanding Power: CP p.98R
“Though it is essential to pursue, as we have, what power women exercised in early modern
Europe, as workers, healers, even as witches, a study of women’s power will not take us to the
heart of the witchcraze. In matters involving violence, there is no complementarity, there is
only “power over.”
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Motives:
It is difficult to understand the torture deployed during the witch trials without including
observations of the psycho-sexual nature of the acts.
What were men after?
Information alone – or were there other motives?
Victims were People:
Nisette de Pas-de-Calais, 1573
During her fourth marriage she was convicted of witchcraft.
Had her head flamed with a chapeau d’étoupe (burning circle of flax or hemp)
Then flogged and banished.
Victims were People:
Eunice Cole
Was stripped to the waist, breasts bared in public
Publicly whipped.
Victims were People:
Aldegonde de Rue
Had her “interior parts”, mouth and “parties honteuses” (shameful parts) probed by Jehan
Minart de Cambrai, Inquisitor.
Victims were People:
Catherine Boyraionne
A priest tried to force a confession from her.
Had boiling fat poured on her eyes, armpits, stomach, elbows, thighs, and “dans sa nature”
(into her vagina).
She died in prison.
Victims were People:
Catharina Latomia of Lorraine
Pre-pubescent child suspected of witchcraft
Raped twice in her cell and nearly died from it.
Victims were People:
Magdalena Weixler, from Ellwangen
Tried to exchange sexual favours for exemption from torture.
She was tortured and executed anyway.
Publicity and the Torture Chamber:
Mental Torture: Inquisition concerning a woman’s supposed sexual contact with the devil,
and with their husbands and lovers as well.
Physical Torture: Stripping, shaving, probing the genitals, whipping the naked body, fondling
and beating, molestation, repeated rape by jailors and inquisitors.
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Public Humiliation: Answers to questions, and physical abuse, were made public.
Who was at Fault?
“When one woman was raped and murdered in jail, blame was placed on the devil. Women,
sex, and the devil were constantly mixed in with witch lore.” CP p.99L
Bodily Marks:
The Witch’s Mark
Location was suspected always to be near or on the genitals
 “secret parts”
“the contrary part”
 “parties honteuses”
“dans sa nature”
Analogs – Sabbats and Marks:
Imagery of the witch’s sabbat reflects an inversion of the sacred images of the sacraments and
of the natural functions of the body.
–Holy Kiss, Consecrated Bread, Stigmata
“The very concept of the devil’s teat is based on the female function of providing breast milk;
it is an inversion of a natural female function, a parody turned into a deadly jest.” (CP p.97)
Legal Parallels – Witchcraft and Rape
Geis notes that both work against women.
“In rape cases, the accuser (the woman) finds it difficult to prove her allegations, because the
very law suspects her of having invited the assault; in witchcraft, the defendant (the woman)
must prove that there is no causal connection between her action (cursing, attempted healing,
etc.) and the misfortune she is charged with – but the court is operating on a belief in that
causality.” (CP p.99L) *f.n.13
Geis, “Lord Hale, Witches, and Rape.” F.N. 13 to Text CWB p132, on Barstow p213-214.
Geis points out that the same man, Matthew Hale, presided over a witch trial that condemned
two women to death (at Lowestoft, 1662) and wrote the basic legal strictures on rape that are still
followed in English Law.
The reply to Geis’s article by Hugh McLachlan and J.K. Swales, in the same journal, denies, in
effect, that the witch hunts were gender-specific and argues that rape is difficult to prove.
Geis, “Lord Hale, Witches, and Rape.” F.N. 13 to Text CWB p132, on Barstow p213-214.
The latter point (that allegations of rape are difficult to prove) may be granted, given the bias
against women in sex-related cases, but to claim that witch-hunts were not women hunting is to
deny the most obvious fact about them.
Why did they do it?
“It appears that jailers, prickers, executioners, and judges all could take their sadistic pleasure
with female prisoners.”
And so could respectable ministers and judges.
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Puritan official Cotton Mather at Salem, in trying to calm a 14 year old suspect/victim, exposed
and fondled her breasts publicly.
Why did they do it?
“The prurient interest priests took in possessed women’s bodies and sexual fantasies while
exorcising these women was demonstrated clearly at the public exorcisms of Sister Jeanne of the
Angels at Loudun, and of Elisabeth de Ranfaing at Nancy.” CP p.99L
More to come in Klaits, and in the 2nd Term.
Torture as Socially Approved Assault:
Men took advantage of positions of authority to indulge in pornography sessions, didn’t just
want convictions.
Wanted “unchallengeable sexual power over women”. (CP p.99L)
Men had never before had access to a large number of imprisoned, helpless women to
experiment on.
Public Shows:
“The popular appeal of sexually related torture went beyond the courtroom and jail house. All
executions for witchcraft were public events and often drew huge crowds.”
CP p.99R
Barstow’s Thesis on 16th Century:
Witchcraze was powered by an obsession with deviant sexual conduct.
Among legal charges were:
–Adultery
–Bearing illegitimate children
–Abortion
–Infanticide
–Incest
Gender Issue:
These crimes were broadly speaking, specific to women.
Only charge levied more often against men than women was sodomy.
Sodomy (qua lesbianism) was also a charge levied against women.
Greatest Sexual Sin:
BIRTH CONTROL.
Teaching women how not to get pregnant, using herbs as preventative measures, procuring
abortions…
Midwives taunted and abused, more to be said on this by Klaits, upcoming.
Case Study: Nuremberg
Unwed mothers who were suspected of killing newborns would be arrested.
Brought to prison in chains, her breasts were examined for milk to confirm a recent pregnancy.
Midwife would be sent to bring the infant’s corpse to the jail, no matter how long it had been
dead.
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Case Study: Nuremberg
Corpse was shown to the mother in hopes of shocking her into confessing to infanticide
Between 1576 and 1617 nineteen women were subjected to this form of interrogation.
Subsequently drowned or beheaded.
What was the Motive?
Perhaps this was all meant to protect the infant, or the fetus.
After all, the Malleus contends that there was a movement afoot to depopulate Christendom.
So: Was it protective?
Barstow’s Reply: NO
Cannot really characterize the policies as being protectionist where infants were concerned.
Enough cases are recorded in which pregnant women were victimized.
In Nuremberg as the panic progressed pregnant prisoners were no longer spared from torture
(they had been exempt before).
Nuremberg is also noteworthy for the fact that they had no executions on charges of witchcraft,
but did on related charges of infanticide.
Anti-Protectionistic:
Pregnant women could be imprisoned
Pregnant women could be forced to give birth in jail
Pregnant women could be tortured to the point of miscarriage
Pregnant Pregnant women could be executed
Case Study: France, 1556
French Parlement was so concerned over infanticide that it passed an edict in an attempt to
prevent it:
“Every expectant mother must register her pregnancy and have a witness to the birth. If she did
not, and the infant died, she was liable for the death sentence on a murder charge”(CWB 135).
Sexual Appetite – CP p.101LR
“all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable” - Malleus
Common medieaval view that women were so overassertive sexually that they wanted to be
raped.
Consider this in light of the suspicion that women would even have intercourse with the devil,
or indiscriminately at sabbats (omnisexual).
Bodily Weakness:
The devil could seduce a woman to his service when she was unsatisfied sexually, or under
depression (melancholia).
Demonologists (like K&S) often reported the witch’s ability to immasculate men, to the point
of apparently magically castrating them.
Inherited Weakness:
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Because the acquired sin from Eden was passed down through the ‘generative act’ it was
thought that all women were the inheritors of Eve’s defect.
Thus, the practical leap that the sins of the mother were the sins of the daughter was not a long
one.
“Mother-daughter pairs were especially suspect, and many were burned or hanged together.”
CP p.142L
Case Study: Bavaria
Anna Pappenheimer, husband Paulus, and their sons.
Duke Maximilian was concerned with presence of witchcraft and general disobedience in his
Duchy, needed a large scale public trial to instill fear in his subjects.
A convicted criminal accused Anna (poor family, Lutherans in a Catholic Duchy) with
witchcraft.
She, Paulus, and the two adult sons were executed at the stake while her 11 year old child
watched and screamed. He was executed three months later.
Women’s Bodies as Unnatural:
Menstruation called a “sickness” or “monthly disease or infirmity” and was understood to be
proof of the physical inferiority of women’s bodies.
Case of Stevenote de Audebert and Pierre de Lancre, CP p.136L.
De Lancre claimed to have tortured 600 persons and executed 80 in one four month tour of
France
Belief was that menstrual blood had some kind of power that could be employed magically.
Womens Behaviour as Unnatural:
All women seen as oversexed.
Women could not be satisfied by a mortal man, therefore a widow was all the worse off.
Widows did not fit into the normal social order - independent, no man to “rule and guide them”
View that men were in fact afraid of widows to begin with.
Natural Teleology:
Sexual congress had one appropriate goal, to make more Christians.
Once a woman was past child-bearing age, she could not make more Christians, so
“postmenopausal sexual activity was, in that light, inappropriate and illicit in any case” CP
p.101R
Barstow’s Social History:
What were women doing sexually?
They were asserting themselves more and taking more responsibility for their sex lives
Premarital sex was the norm and premarital pregnancy not condemned until the seventeenth
century
Young people had been freer to experiment, sexual contacts were arranged for children.
Official Attitudes:
Among institutions and authorities there was a much less open attitude.
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Were prosecuted cases of homosexual and lesbian activity.
Even within religious communities.
In the Convent:
At Auxonne - Abbess charged with Lesbianism, courts dismissed charges.
Cases of mass possession among nuns was well documented (Marseilles, Loudun, Louviers)
Elsewhere, the charge was laid against the local Priest Confessor.
Case Study: Tuscany
Pescia, Tuscany, 1619-1623
Abess Benedetta Carlini
Experienced trances in which Jesus praised her, and engaged with her bodily.
To save the town from plague, she had a public marriage to Jesus with a proper processional.
Authorities approved her “ecstasies”
Case Study: Tuscany
She was not without her troubles.
Sister Benedetta was occasionally possessed an Angel.
The Angel would then seduce and have intercourse with one of her companion nuns.
Relationship lasted for several years.
Case Study: Tuscany
She was not without her troubles.
Sister Benedetta was occasionally possessed by an Angel.
The Angel would then seduce and have intercourse with one of her companion nuns.
Relationship lasted for several years.
Q: Was this sodomy, or not?
The Facts:
The angel was male.
Benedetta was in a trance every time she seduced the other nun.
Benedetta looked like a male when she was having sex with the other nun.
Benedetta was known to flirt with priests at the abbey gate, evidently heterosexual.
She was, after all, a married woman.
The Trial:
Was she a witch with a demon lover?
Was she bewitched by someone else?
Could have been burned as a sodomite.
Commission ruled that her “voices” were demonic but passed no sentence on the charge of
lesbianism.
She was sentenced to life imprisonment…in the abbey.
Not sure that solves the problem…
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Next Class: Dawn of Humanism (a.k.a. ‘Trouble on the Horizon’)
END.