1437: The Year the Women Became Witches

Friday, April 15, 2022 - 4:30pm to 6:00pm

Memorial Union Building Theater I

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The association of witchcraft with women is paradigmatic, both in modern usage and in many historical periods. During the period of the major European witch-hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fully 75 percent of those executed as witches were women. Yet for much of the preceding medieval era, many kinds of magic were gendered male and authorities were often most concerned about male practitioners. This lecture will examine the changing nature of those gendered concerns, culminating in the startling shift of concern toward women as witches that occurred only in the fifteenth century. Focusing on a critical moment of transition in the early part of that century, the lecture will also trace connections forward in time to the infamously misogynist Malleus maleficarum in the late fifteenth century and the witch trials of the early modern period.

*Free and open to the public