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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 10 page analysis of Joseph Klaits' book Servants of Satan: the Age of the Witch Hunts. The writer demonstrates that Joseph Klaits is an unusual scholar. Most historians, particularly male ones, have discounted the fact that most of the victims of the witch hunts were women. Klaits says straight out that 'witch craze's slaughter of women was the result of the spread of woman-hatred in the spiritually reformed elites and its application in the reformers' campaigns against folk religion' (44). No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
10 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Klaits.doc
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thousands of people who were executed as witches over hundreds of years, the vast majority were women. The fact that this topic has been ignored, in and of itself,
speaks eloquently as to the relative position of women in society even today. As a society we have grieved for the Holocaust, and acknowledged our guilt toward the Native
America, but no where has anyone-with the exception of some feminist scholars-expressed outrage over the wholesale torture and slaughter of thousands of women for hundreds of years! Quite
often the scholarly attitude, particularly among male scholars, is that misogyny is such a feature of Western civilization, such a stable item in the cultural background, that it must be
discounted as a crucial element in the causes behind the witch hunts. Joseph Klaits is an exception. He states straight out that the "witch crazes slaughter of women was the
result of the spread of woman-hatred in the spiritually reformed elites and its application in the reformers campaigns against folk religion" (44). The folk religion of Europe, what is
generally referred to under the all-encompassing title of "paganism" or sometimes as "wicca,"was woman-centered. It was not "matriarchal" in that this term implies that women dominated men, but rather women,
as the givers of life, held a respected place in society. In order for Christianity to spread, with its firm emphasis on patriarchy, this native religion had to be completely
stamped out and the position of women as subservient and less then men had to be established. What Klaits has called the "new misogyny" appeared (60). This was the result
of increasing emphasis on the exclusively male control of the family which was so characteristic of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation culture. As part of this change, women were forced
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