The Accusation Remains (Erin Jean Warde)
Not enough has changed. I’d be charged a witch today if we still said it so plainly. Now we accuse women of being witches in different ways—but the accusation remains.
The Accusation Remains
Friends,
Today will be part 1 of a 2 week exploration of this incredible text—Witches, Midwives and Nurses a History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English—which I unsurprisingly purchased from the Salem Witch Trials Museum.
Let me preface this by saying: I really wish researching witch trials did not feel so very relevant to my life in 2024, but here we are. Today’s exploration will focus on witch trials and their history, but specifically outside of the United States. The Salem Witch Trials are only one part of a long history of subjugation. Primarily, we’ll be focused on how the violence of the witch trials is founded on misogyny and classism.
In order to delve into this history, we must first note that the issue of “witches” is inextricably tied to the work of healing. The history of witches is not about haunted houses and curses—it’s about who was privileged enough to receive healing and who was allowed to offer it.
Ehrenreich and English write (all quotes in today’s blog come from this text and will from here be denoted in block text):
“... the suppression of women health workers and the rise to dominance of male professionals was not a ‘natural’ process, resulting automatically from changes in medical science, nor was it the result of women’s failure to take on healing work. It was an active takeover by male professionals. And it was not science that enabled men to win out: The critical battles took place long before the development of modern scientific technology.
The stakes of the struggle were high: Political and economic monopolisation of medicine meant control over its institutional organizations, its theory and practice, its profits and prestige. And the stakes are even higher today, when total control of medicine means potential power to determine who will live and will die, who is fertile and who is sterile, who is ‘mad’ and who sane…
The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment was a political struggle, first, in that it is part of the history of sex struggle in general… It was a political struggle, second, in that it was part of a class struggle. Women healers were people’s doctors, and their medicine was part of a people’s subculture… Male professionals, on the other hand, served the ruling class–both medically and politically. Their interests have been advanced by the universities, the philanthropic foundations and the law. They owe their victory–not so much to their own efforts–but to the intervention of the ruling class they served.”
I don’t think I have to tell you that the medical industry (yes, industry) continues to perpetuate in 2024 this same classism in the United States. History will continue, past the time of witch trials in Europe, to disenfranchise marginalized healing arts, to privilege a way of understanding healthcare—which should be a basic human right—in such a way that it is something that must be bought and paid for. In short: those who can afford health have access to it with less burden; those who cannot afford it will die without it, or if given the chance at life, at least die indebted to it.
“The great majority of them [witches] were lay healers serving the peasant population, and their suppression marks one of the opening struggles in the history of man’s suppression of women as healers…
The witch-hunts left a lasting effect: An aspect of the female has ever since been associated with the witch, and an aura of contamination has remained–especially around the midwife and other women healers. This early and devastating exclusion of women from independent healing roles was a violent precedent and a warning: It was to become a theme for our history…
The witch craze took different forms at different times and places, but never lost its essential character: that of a ruling class campaign of terror directed against the female peasant population. Witches represented a political, religious and sexual threat to the Protestant and Catholic churches alike, as well as to the state.
The extent of the witch-craze is startling: In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were thousands upon thousands of executions–usually live burnings at the stake–in Germany, Italy, and other countries. In the mid-sixteenth century the terror spread to France, and finally to England. One writer has estimated the number of executions at an average of 600 a year for certain German cities–or two a day, ‘leaving out Sundays’. Nine-hundred witches were destroyed in a single year in the Wertzberg area, and 1000 in and around Como. In Toulouse, four-hundred were put to death in a day. In the Bishopric of Trier, in 1585, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant each. Many writers have estimated the total number killed to have been in the millions. Women made up some 85 percent of those executed–old women, young women and children.”
When it comes to the crimes of witches, there were many leveled against them, but they are all founded upon a deadly mix of misogyny and classism.
And, as religion was wielded against women who were healers, the irony is biting: the witches offered a way of understanding healthcare that was more akin to the witness of Jesus, as it allowed healthcare to extend to those who were poor—with caring for the poor being one of Jesus’s most pressing callings. So in this, we see the clear ways in which the Church can find itself more interested in power, control, and patriarchy than the scriptural calling of Christ.
And the charges against witches are not unlike some of the same charges leveled against women, especially within fundamentalist Christian sects.
“... the charge of ‘witchcraft’ came to cover a multitude of sins ranging from political subversion and religious heresy to lewdness and blasphemy. But three central accusations emerge repeatedly in the history of witchcraft throughout northern Europe: First, witches are accused of every conceivable sexual crime against men. Quite simply, they are ‘accused’ of female sexuality. Second, they are accused of being organised. Third, they are accused of having magical powers affecting health–of harming, but also of healing. They were often charged specifically with possessing medical and obstetrical skills…
In the eyes of the Church, all the witches’ power was ultimately derived from her sexuality… As the Malleus [Maleficarum] makes clear, the devil almost always acts through the female, just as he did in Eden.”
The history of the witch craze in Europe looks startlingly like the same ills I find both on the ballot box and spewing from some pulpits. Much to my depression, little seems to have changed. Certainly, we have made progress, for which I am deeply grateful to the ancestors who fought for that progress. And yet, I would hope for more. Not enough has changed. I’d be charged a witch today if we still said it so plainly.
Now we accuse women of being witches in different ways—but the accusation remains.
Witches were burned alive for offering healing care.
I’ll have to vote for my right as a woman to medical care.
Witches were burned alive for simply being women with a calling.
Men on the internet still tell me I’ll burn in hell for being a female priest.
Witches were blamed for men’s sexual sin.
I was taught from the pulpit to police what I wear, because it was my job to keep men from sinning.
I will always be grateful for the progress we have made as a people. And I will continue to fight for even more, because lives depended on it during the time of witch trials, and lives still depend on it today.
With care,
EJW
P.S. Come back next week for part 2 of our exploration of this incredible text! <3
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Ho yeah. The professionalization and masculinization of something that had been a very feminine and very nurturing profession was deeply intentional and rolls straight on today. (And at the time did get cast as "science vs suspicion." While we didn't have yet what we would call science we absolutely had what THEY called science which was deeply male and suspicious of the natural world and women's inherited wisdom.
One of the things I find myself most suspicious of in my new training as a therapist is the medical model of mental health. It is DEEPLY tied to the professionalization of health, to the male as normative (literally in the first 100 years ALL of the studies used male subjects), and to a very narrow definition of "sanity." And we continue to see it in pay in that field. The highest paid, highest respected members? PhD (a scientific degree) psychiatrists and psychologists focused on *scientific research* and operating out of major medical corporations such a hospitals. They're also the most likely to be men. The lowest paid? Therapist and social workers who tend to work independently or in small group practices tend to serve the least wealthy and most marginalized and are... you guessed it overwhelmingly women and paid a less than living wage in many cases.
It is vitally important to me to take what is wise from the scientific literature (because there is much that is) AND the deep more indigenous, feminine knowing of the ineffable and bring those two together as a therapist.
Thank you for speaking Truth. I had not heard of some of the historical aspects of this movement to silence women healers outside the accepted channels of the day. I appreciate the insight and challenge here.