What did a witch look like

• Malleus: acts on what witches could do

  1. Generate lust
  2. Impotence in men
  3. Disappearing penis trick
  4. Turning men into animal
  5. Making women barren
  6. Abortions
  7. Sacrificing Children to the devil
• Malleus: Why women were more likely to be witches

  • Eve's temptation
  • No discretion
  • Signs - infidelity, ambition, lust
  • Carnal lust that is insatiable in women
  • CUCKOLD = man whose wife has an affair
  • Easily tempted
  • Vengeful and wicked
  • Feeble intellect like children
  • Deceiver
• Mainly women over the age of 50

  • Seen as loosing societal value
  • No longer fit the demographics
  • May have been widows -- drain on the state
• Widowed or single


  • due to war, famine or plague -> 1:3 men to women in Germany
  • no place outside the family unit
  • drain on the state
  • no job - beggers
• Female but this was not always the case. In Iceland, over 80% were male. Women more likely targeted perhaps due to being midwives or the misogynistic connotations from the Malleus
• The stereotype was subverted in some trials with accusations against men, younger women and children, individuals from the elites and married people being accused.
• Poor


  • Increase in taxes
  • Drain on the state
  • Begging ---> cursing
• Difficult/ Direct

  If they went against key belief e.g. enclosure act and or were outspoken