The Werewolf, the Witch, and the Warlock: Aspects of Gender in the Early Modern Period

Abstract

It has been suggested that the figure of the malevolent witch developed historically not merely in opposition to, but ‘in part, from’ that of the male sorcerer, or the practitioner of ritual magic.1 This idea should be questioned, however, or at least qualified. In the context of the early witch-trials, witches were obviously closely related to heretics; in terms of imagery, they seem to have possessed traits in common with fairies.2 In the context of medieval Europe, sorcerers have to be situated vis-à-vis clergymen, physicians, prophets, and mystics, although these were all categories of masculine power and expertise that frequently overlapped, even during this period. Moreover, the figure of the sorcerer himself was complex and in need of differentiation: it might denote a court astrologer, a necromancer, an occult philosopher, a fortune-teller, a local cunning man, or merely an occasional dabbler in the hidden arts, to name just a few possibilities. Did the figure of the sorcerer slip ‘in and out of various categories in disconcerting fashion, making it difficult to pin down exactly what makes him different from any other kind of magical practitioner’?3 Was a magician, to use another term, always necessarily male? The oppositions inherent within, and the constellations of, particular figures — their so-called ‘person fields’ — have to be carefully considered in terms of their historical viability, which is always situated in a particular historical context, and in terms of their usefulness for the present-day historian’s task of elucidating past practices.