ABSTRACT
Between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, nearly 50,000 people across Europe were tried and executed for the crime of witchcraft. Though, in theory, anyone could be a witch, in reality 80 percent of the accused were women. For commentators of the time, it was ‘a fact that it were idle to contradict’ that ‘chiefly women are addicted to evil superstitions’ (Kramer, H., Malleus Maleficarum, translated by C. Mackay, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 160). This chapter considers the role of gendered stereotypes in the persecution and prosecution of early modern women. It examines the beliefs and attitudes of the period and applies to recent scholarship in law and the social sciences, demonstrating that the defendant’s demographics plays a major part in the outcome of trials, and that the decisions of judges and jurors are heavily influenced by stereotypes of both crimes and defendants. By applying this research to the witch trials of early modern Europe, this chapter presents a case study of the pernicious and enduring effects on criminal justice from treating women as ‘the fragile feminine sex’ (Kramer, H., Malleus Maleficarum, translated by C. Mackay, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 160).
