women in the middle ages and people thinking women were wiches? need info fast?

a lot of women who just didn't fit into the tight up society or dared to speak their mind were considered witches.

Also midwives were considered witches because it was considered supernatural to ease the pain of delivering a baby ( according to the catholic church ( which ruled over almost everything) women have to suffer while giving birth as a form of punishment. Punishment because it was a womans fault that humans had to leave Eden).

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/5112/50732

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/witches/Witches_...

www.halloweenhowl.com/article-history-witches.shtml

There wasn't actually much interest in witches during the middle ages until right at the end of the period. The main period of witch hunts was from 1450-1750, with the peak period being the 1580s-1620s, in other word it was the era of the so-called 'Renaissance' that was the time when witches were being hunted. Between 1450-1750, about 40-50,000 people are estimated to have been executed.

Witch hunts tended to be spasmodic and localised, they would arise at times when traumatic things were happening in a community, like outbreaks of disease, bad harvests, etc. Commonly people would be accused by other members of the community they lived in. People would commonly be accused of having caused illness or other misfortunes. Women were most often the accusers and the accused. courts were generally reluctant to try witchcraft cases because of the difficulty of proving accusations, overall about 50% of those tried for witchcraft were acquitted. About 25% of those put to death for witchcraft were men, and in some areas there were more men than women accused of witchcraft.

On the continent, people who were condemned to death for witchcraft were burnt, but in England and in the American colonies they were hanged. In Europe, torture was sometimes used to extract confessions from accused witches, but in England and the colonies this does not seem to have been the usual practice.

it is not true, as a comment above states, that midwives were accused of witchcraft. On the contrary, when midwives were involved in witch trials they were generally employed to search the bodies of female suspects for incriminating marks, suspicious warts and marks which were considered to be signs of the devil.

Nor were witches any more likely to be persecuted in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones. Some Catholic countries, like Spain and Italy, had a very low rate of persecution. The largest number of witch trials were in Germany.

It means you should either learn to like the cougars, or get a better style. Just be yourself. The only thing that could be wrong with you is not accepting yourself. Just do WHATEVER you want. I have never cut my hair, shave with a beard trimmer once a week, and wear ripped jeans and a t-shirt, and i get by just fine. If you REALLY want compliments from a chick, give them something obvious to compliment you about: A unique hat. A tattoo... anything unusual. That'll break the ice

During the early Middle Ages, the Church did not conduct witch trials. The Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches, and Charlemagne later confirmed the law. The Inquisition conducted trials against supposed witches in the 13th century, but these trials were to punish heresy, of which belief in witchcraft was merely one variety.

http://www.summerlands.com/crossroads/remembrance/...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15674a.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20060206211452/http://w...

http://www.bede.org.uk/decline.htm

http://www.visualstatistics.net/East-West/Witch%20...

http://www.geocities.com/stevenedw/alicekyteler.ht...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm

http://www.catholic.com/library/inquisition.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Inquisition

Sometimes, when a woman had good knowledge of herbal medicine, or was really smart and intuitive, she might get labeled a witch.

I would probably get labled a witch if I lived back then because I am pretty good at "reading" people and seeing past the surface, and they might think I'm a witch because of that.

A woman who was smarter than most was suspected, because it made other people jealous, and everyone probably wanted women to "stay in their place" and stick with traditional roles for a woman.

Also, if a woman did anything that was considered something for a man to do, like practice medicine, they might think she got her "power" through witchcraft.

Many times, these women were just very smart, very wise, very spiritual, artistic, and not hung up on what other people thought, so people didn't understand them. Women like that today have a lot more options, but still many of us just get looked at weird by a lot of people and have to keep a lot of things to ourselves except when in the company of equally unusual people!

"For three centuries of early modern European history, diverse societies were consumed by a panic over alleged witches in their midst. Witch-hunts, especially in Central Europe, resulted in the trial, torture, and execution of tens of thousands of victims, about three-quarters of whom were women. Arguably, neither before nor since have adult European women been selectively targeted for such largescale atrocities. "

http://www.gendercide.org/case_witchhunts.html

"The Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally believed, but it also sought renewed forgiveness for sins committed by Roman Catholics in the name of church doctrine."

http://www.hellblazer.com/archives/2004/06/the_cat...

you mean salem witch trials??

the village burned them at the stake and had this water floating test: they tied a rock on your leg and if you floated then you were a witch, and if you drowned; too bad for you.

Throughout the Middle Ages one sure fire way to keep women in line and to punnish them was to accuse them of being witches. Women who chose to live alone, women with knowledge of herbs & healing, women who simply looked 'weird' by the standards of the time were all easilly condemed and put on trial. Often it was an easy way for a man to snag a bit of p^ssy; either put out or I'll give out a shout to the authorities that you are a witch!! And when a woman inherited property and refused to remarry once again it was a handy excuse. Also women's odd health woes contributed to the belief that they were Witches. For example a woman whose undetected cancer caused her to stop m^nstrating or who had early m^nopause found themselves accused of being witches. And when some man felt anger at not being able to sire a child instead of blaming himself for being infertile he would either accuse the wife of being under an evil spell, often condeming any old woman suspected of being 'strange' or accusing his wife of being a witch. In other words then as now (see American political race 2008) accusing a woman of being a witch was a way to keep women 'in their place.'

These articles might help (at the risk of ^hles bewailing cut & paste )

http://medieval.etrusia.co.uk/witch/

""Court depositions in 16th century English witch trials

It is unlikely that the reported cases of witchcraft represent reliable evidence on the practices of "witches." However, court depositions in witch trials can contribute to a study of the history of beliefs about witchcraft.

The European anti-witch paranoia of the time was found to a much lesser degree in England, with about a thousand executions between 1542 and 1684[1]. English witch trials became increasingly prevalent from the 1540s, peaked in the last two decades of the 16th century, then declined generally, with a brief revival in the 1640s in East Anglia, as well as occasional localised outbursts of persecution. Even in 1584, there was evidence of some scepticism that witches were anything other than despised old women.[2]

The chronology of the relevant legislation reflected the growth of concern over witchcraft from the 1540s onwards. The main relevant Acts were passed in 1542 (repealed in 1547) 1563 and 1604. They prescribed a range of punishments, of which death by hanging was the most extreme. The last execution in England (Alice Molland) took place in 1684 and the last trial (Jane Wenham) in 1712

Witchcraft cases were prosecuted in a range of courts: church courts, borough courts, quarter sessions or assizes. The assizes were most significant - six circuits meeting twice annually, with both criminal and civil courts. Each type of court had its own procedures and rules of evidence and standards of evidence varied widely from one court to another. Survival of the records is geographically uneven and only about three quarters of files from before 1645 remain. The records cannot therefore be seen as comprehensive or even representative of the trials in general.

Formal trials were only one of many ways to take activity against witches. A court case was beyond the means of most people who felt themselves threatened by a local witch and would be more likely to resort to "community action." Hence, the legal evidence represents only a sample of a much wider range of anti-witch activity.[3]

Nevertheless, legal records can provide insights as to the characteristics that could lead to an individual being branded a witch; to the time scale of persecution; to local variations in the level of persecutions; to the outcomes of trials and to the modes of thought that underpinned the trials.

The Home Circuit (the assizes in Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex) saw 785 cases involving 474 "witches" between 1558 and 1709. Only 44% of accused witches were convicted (209) but half of those convicted were hanged (104).The cases were concentrated in Essex, where 60% of prosecutions took place. The first major English trial took place in Essex, near Chelmsford, in 1566.

No evidence of pagan practices had been presented In an earlier (1563) Essex case tried in an archbishop's court. According to the witness, Philippa Gale, Elizabeth Lewis had killed John Barnard's wife by witchcraft after Mistress Barnard had referred to the rumour that Elizabeth was a witch. One accuser, Agnes Devenishe, reported that she had actually sought Elizabeth's advice about a sore arm, on the basis of these rumours. In this case, the evidence had consisted of a combination of rumours and a list of misfortunes suffered by people who had commercial quarrels with Elizabeth.[4]

However, by the time of the 1566 case (Elizabeth Francis, Agnes Waterhouse, Joan Waterhouse) the "witches" were producing "confessions" that matched general beliefs about witchcraft. These included calling for Satan's aid; having a cat as a familiar; causing financial ruin and death as revenge on an unwilling suitor; causing lameness to her husband. These features - the familiar and the acts of maleficium (personal spite) were common to both English and continental trials. [5] However, in contrast to the usual pattern in European trials, no reference was made to a pact with the devil or a sabbat. Elizabeth Francis was imprisoned for 12 months, on the sole evidence of her confession. She was later twice charged with witchcraft and was hanged in 1579, in another major witch trial. However, the justification for the hanging was that she had caused personal injury rather than that she had committed heresy. [6]

By 1583, in the Chelmsford trial of the St Osyth witches, it was becoming routine to search for "witch marks" and to accept hearsay, rumour and the testimony of children as young as six as constituting proof.

In 1604, James I's new anti-witch law made hanging mandatory, introduced trial by torture and stressed the idea of a covenant with the devil as the central issue, more closely following the Catholic European approach. However, even James came to recognise the falsity of accusations. In the last 9 years of his reign, only 9 people were hanged. By this time, scepticism was more widespread, although some of the worst excesses of English witch hunting took place after this time, in 1645, in Essex, when Matthew Hopkins carried out numerous tortures and hangings.

Witchcraft trial records have little value for determining the existence of any self-identified witches but they can provide illuminating evidence of the implications of particular current belief systems. They show how sophisticated legal mechanisms may be brought to bear to scapegoat unpopular individuals. They raise questions about which social, political, religious, economic, cultural or legal factors differentiated the English trials from the far more horrific Scottish and German equivalents, given that all European countries shared general beliefs derived from the Malleus Malficarum. ""

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/witches1.htm...

http://members.aol.com/Skyelander/witch1.html

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