Why no Warlock Hunts?

Most of the stories in Deal with the Devil have male protagonists. Even those set in The Dung Ages. So why are there witch hunts, but no warlock hunts? I know the term "witch" was originally gender-neutral, but AFAIK all the trials were about women. Why?

Weren't most of the people tried in the Witch Trials actually men, though?

I mean, in actual history; not fiction, where it is indeed almost always women.

They were. Anyway, very few people got executed on grounds of witchcraft, and it wasn't very gender-centric. Heresy, on the other hand, was something you *could* easily get killed for.

And the reason why male wizards and female witches (used) to be treated so differently in fiction is because the first set of stories concern powerful men learning to accept that power has costs, and the second set of stories involves powerless people being persecuted by religious authorities.

Google gave me this article, on the site of a respected Catholic College in Pennsylvania, and apparently written by one of their professors, about common misconceptions about the witch hunts.

According to this thing (which I'm willing to accept as an authority) some witch hunts were specifically targeted on women, while others had a majority of male suspects.

Also, professional estimates of the number of casualties are way lower than the oft-cited "9 million women." At most about 200 000 people died in the various Witch Hunts that went of for 4 centuries or so.

Also also, most of the victims were hanged, rather than burned. Sometimes the corpses were burned after the hanging but the point is that they weren't burned alive.

Well, not that that's a very major difference; innocents died, anyway. But it's a very small (but still perhaps relevant) consolation that their death was usually swift and relatively painless. Still wrong; but at least they weren't usually tortured to death.

Also, it is a common misconception that Inquisition all did was kill as many suspicious women as possible. Firstly, Protestants were more into hunting alleged magicians than Catholics, and Inquisition had better things to do, like rooting out political enemies of the Pope or Spanish King, depending which Inquisition we mean.

Quick wikipedia search reveals that the infamous Salem Witch Trials had both men and women executed, (although it's like an (80/20 split women to men.) If I had to guess about why the reason it's always or nearly always women in fiction:

• "Witch" is pretty much exclusively feminine now and "wizard hunts" or "warlock hunts" isn't nearly as ingrained in the public consciousness. If you say "witch hunts" people know exactly what you mean, but a warlock hunt hasn't got that definition. You could just as well mean warlocks preying on muggles or something.

• Stories with warlocks tend to have them as the main (or a major) villain, so it makes no sense to have them dragged out, tried, and killed by the villagers. Outside of fairy tales, witches tend to just be a thing that some women naturally are, not necessarily a huge looming threat, so they're more human.

• In addition to that, when the witch being hunted is someone on the protagonist's side, making them a female witch is basically an extension of the Distressed Damsel trope.

• Finally, most protagonists are dudes and the way these "trials" work, you can't really do a Clear My Name story with them, since they don't rely on evidence.

Ask the Netherlands about how that was "better things to do". The Spanish conquistadors got the template for subjugating South America and spreading Catholicism from somewhere. <_<

But, I agree: the witchcraft angle has been blown way out of proportion.

edited 7th Jun '13 12:05:22 PM by Euodiachloris

What you need to do is look for witch hunts that suddenly vanished.

Those were the successful ones.

In Spanish definition, better things to do was expanding and keeping control over their empire than chasing female peasants because of local superstitions.

Also, depending on the region and period, accusing someone of witchcraft could get you into trouble with the church, on the grounds of spreading heresy.

edited 7th Jun '13 2:03:42 PM by blauregen

Offtopic: Why did the Spanish empire get so much resistance? A unified, pacified Europe, struggling together against the Turk, seems like an attractive deal, compared to a war-torn Europe struggling together, period.

On Topic: Why is witch so associated with females nowadays?

Also, nine million? In Europe alone?

Also, wasn't heresy extremely common in Protestant movements, and, in fact, the way by which they came to exist, technically?

So... it's heretical and wrong to point out when an institution is rotten at the core and being hypocritical as well as self-destructive? Good to know... After all, shooting the messenger is always good.

It only took almost 500 years for the Catholic Church to acknowledge that maybe Martin Luther had made some valid points. And, perhaps they could have handled it all a bit better.

edited 7th Jun '13 2:38:56 PM by Euodiachloris

Haven't you seen that figure before? It's pretty wide-spread - especially in feminist and New Age circles, apparently.

I looked it up on Wikipedia. The estimate of 9 million women killed seems to be derived from a historical study of the 16th-century records of a particular German town. The person doing the study had an agenda: he wanted to establish that the previous couple of centuries (before the Age of Enlightenment) had been utter cruelty and barbaric terror. I'm sure you've seem similar attempts to rewrite history - the Iron Maiden, etc.

Anyway, this historian basically took the records of a couple of decades, counted how many people got tried and killed as witches, then extrapolated those figures on the whole century, multiplied it by the number of centuries, and then multiplied that by estimates of the population of Europe in the relevant centuries.

By that sort of reckoning you could take a town of 1 000 people where 10 people were executed as witches last year, and calculate from that that 70 000 000 witches were executed last year around the world. This is so wrong that it's not even wrong.

edited 7th Jun '13 2:52:05 PM by kzickas

I answered Handle's off-topic by PM.

Then I'll do the on-topics (except the one Best did already):

Witches and women: It's being used by the entertainment industry as a code for "Magical Girl". I personally first noticed this with "The Witches of Eastwick" but I'm sure it started before that. Popular witchcraft and feminism have had a relationship that goes back to the 1960's.

Heresy and Protestantism- Are you aware that Lutherans and other protestant sects burned people for heresy? Back then, everyone bought the "everybody in a kingdom must worship the same religion or complete anarchy" theory, so when the local prince committed to a particular religious affiliation, all his subjects were expected to convert, often on pain of death.

There's a (hopefully) interesting example of this in Finland's history.

A Finnish priest named Mikael Agricola was a student of Luther's. Back then Finland was part of Sweden. The king of Sweden wanted to nationalise (or steal, whichever term you prefer) the assets of the Catholic Church in Sweden, so he launched a Reformation in Sweden, making it (and by association Finland) Lutheran. Luther's doctrine was useful in taking the Church's luxuries to the King's coffers so it seemed to work.

So, back to Agricola: when Finland became Lutheran he was at a great position to become the head of the Lutheran Church in Finland (as the Bishop of Turku, which was the regional capital.) He was very enthusiastic about the idea that Church services should be available in the language of the common people, which led him to translate various religious texts into Finnish, effectively setting the first ever standards for written Finnish and becoming the father of our language in a way.

So a radical clergyman, a greedy king, and an impressed student of said clergyman combined to change the religion of a country and establish the written language of a part of that country that would later become an independent nation in its own right.

According to the other wiki, apparently the idea of witches being mainly female was first started by the publication of The Malleus Maleficarum, The infamous Hammer of the Witches.[1].

As noted the term was originally gender neutral. So is warlock for that matter. It originally meant oathbreaker.

edited 7th Jun '13 4:26:15 PM by joeyjojo

@De Marquis: Yes, sadly... I do know about the wonderful Protestant obsession with heresy (not just Lutherans), as well. <_< All part and parcel of worrying about prosecution on the one hand... and having a distressing tendency to schism at the drop of a hat on the other. And, on the gripping hand: being typically human and sore losers in arguments.

It might all have been preventable at the very start, if dialogue had actually been attempted, and concessions made, though. <_< Mind you, maybe also not: Luther wasn't... the most... reasonable of people. Heck, "stubborn" was practically his middle name. As for Calvin... <shudders>

edited 7th Jun '13 4:39:36 PM by Euodiachloris

You know, there probably is a problem with the content of what you're saying if you need to constantly add smiles and grins to soften the blow.

Huh? <quizzical>

Actually, mate, I usually use smilies to replace the body-language I'd actually use. <shrugs> And, TV Tropes doesn't give me a full range to play with. -_- It's quite depressing, in a way.

I know Euo well enough to know that she means everything in the best possible way.

Anyway- I'm afraid I'm not as optimistic regarding the possibility of everyone having gotten along back then- if the fight had only been over hearts and minds, then common ground can be found. Unfortunately, they were also competing for territory- no common ground there!

There were some good guys, sincere Christians who advocated tolerance. Erasmus, obviously, but also a guy named Sebastian Castellio, who published a book called "Should Heretics be Persecuted?' (the answer was no). He suffered exile and poverty for his views. Another set of good guys were the early Unitarians- they had some unusual beliefs but were very tolerant.

But these were the exceptions. The tenor of the time was intolerance.

People still hunt witches, and have always hunted warlocks. Not in those exact terms but things like the "Evil Eye" or "Skin Walkers" are basically the same thing and most of them are male. Navajo I guess would be a good place to start for Warlock hunts because most of their "witches" are male too.

In fact, prior to Christianity female magic users were about the only acceptable "witches" in the German regions. Male Seidhr would be ostracized at best in most places, and while that might not have in fact lead to much hunting, it could probably be used to set up a hunt in a historical fiction I guess if one wanted to invoke some dramatic irony.

[—The Spanish Empire's opposition only seems strange if one has an idea of a unified "western civilization", an idea that was lost with the divide of the Roman empire and only started to return around France&England's entrance into the colonial frenzy. Back then the idea in Europe was US over THEM. Turks were MORETHEM than fellows in Chritendom but Spain was still THEM! There were a limited amount of resources in the world and they were for US, not THEM! Not to mention Spain came off to a lot of people as Sultan Jr: see Charles Petrie and Louis Betrand's The History of Spain.—]

[—Now we have weird ideas about creating wealth where there is none and lots of silly ideas of common humanity, the atheistseparation states follow that Bible better than "Christendom" ever did.—]