Morgan, S

English

Historians agree that those accused of witchcraft during theearly modern period were predominantly women. Yet not all of thosebrought before the assize courts in England were female. Approximatelytwenty-five percent of those accused were men. However, they havegenerally been dismissed as by-products of the witch hunts, accused onlythrough relationships with a woman or else as part of the mass hysteriacreated by witch panics in which traditional stereotypes often broke down.This work seeks to challenge these assumptions and ask how men foundthemselves to be accused of witchcraft when there was such a strongassociation with magic and women in the learned demonology of the period.Were they just by-products of a campaign directed against women or werethey legitimate targets for accusations of witchcraft? Through anexamination of the major demonological texts of early modern England,popular witchcraft pamphlets and records from the secular and ecclesiasticalcourts of England this work argues that male witches could be independent,legitimate targets of witchcraft accusations and that the learneddemonologists and theologians of early modern England possessed noconceptual barrier to the idea of a male witch. It is not the aim of this thesisto challenge the place of women within witchcraft historiography. Rather itsuggests that our current theory needs to integrate the idea of male witchesand examine how they fit within the wider context of witchcraft beliefsduring the early modern period in an effort to advance further ourunderstanding of the early modern English mentalities to witches andwitchcraft

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Perspectives on Male Witches in Early Modern England

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/202770028/SMorganThesisMay2019.pdf

Perspectives on Male Witches in Early Modern England

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