Contact: Rick Peterson, 920/832-6590 (office); 727-1055 (home) [email protected]
For Immediate Release
October 23, 1998
Lawrence University Historian Says Halloween Witches Annually Perpetuate Inaccurate Stereotypes
APPLETON, WIS. --Thousands of trick-or-treaters will take to the streets next weekend, perpetuating a stereotype one doorbell at a time. Armed with brooms and decked out in black capes, wide-brimmed pointy hats and perhaps a fake wart on their nose or cheek for affect, they will personify the modern essence of "a witch."
Lawrence University witch trial researcher Edmund M. Kern says today's depiction bears little, if any, semblance to the historic profile of witches.
"The Halloween witch is a stereotype. The accused were a much more diverse lot," says Kern, associate professor of history, who teaches one of Lawrence's most popular classes, "Religion, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe."
Not only were those accused of being a witch not all elderly women, some were not even female and many were young children. The commonality shared by witches rested not in their gender or age, but in being "new or different."
During the height of the European witch-hunt period -- roughly 1450-1750 -- it was the belief in the supernatural powers of both God and the devil that people attributed to events with dire consequence according to Kern.
"It became easy to interpret the unexplainable such as storms or illnesses or unexpected death as the result of unearthly powers," says Kern. "People would claim witches had caused these things to occur.
"They would look to their neighbors or outsiders, vagabonds, anyone who didn't fit the norm, as the possible source. Often the finger of guilt would be pointed toward the most suspicious women in the village, perhaps a widow or someone who had never married. But the accusations during witchcraft panics often would spread from the older women to younger women, children and even male relatives of the women in the community."
Once accused of being a witch, a person would be subjected to interrogation and most likely torture by the local magistrate in the hope of getting them to admit to other activities, including having intercourse with the devil or flying through the air.
"If the accused confessed and were sorrowful, recanting their 'sins,' then the torture would stop," Kern explains. "They would be absolved, but then they were executed. It was tremendous quandary: continue to be tortured or lie and be put to death. There were some people who refused to confess to what they were accused of and they were released."
It's estimated 100,000-200,000 people were tried as witches in Europe, with roughly half of those convicted and killed. The numbers in Colonial America were about 200-250 accused and 20 executed.
Hanging, burning at the stake, drowning and the use of large rocks or stones to crush a person were all typical methods of administering the sentence of death.
Kern says witches were believed to be the sex slaves of Satan, and as such, were often nude in early depictions. There are numerous sexual overtones attached to witches, such as the broomstick, which is often interpreted as a phallic symbol according to Kern.
In the late 1600s and early 1700s, when science began providing logical explanations for unusual phenomena, governments slowly came to the realization that witch-hunts were based on ignorance, not the supernatural.
A specialist in early modern Europe and religious culture, Kern's research on witch trials has been published in The Sixteenth Century Journal and this coming January, he will deliver the paper, "Women as Witches, Women as Witnesses: Experience, Story-Telling, and the Exercise of Authority in Trials for Witchcraft" at the American Historical Association Conference.
-30-
RSS