How violent were women ? Court cases in Amsterdam, 1650-18101

Abstract

I n his «Black Register of a Thousand Sins» of 1679, Jacobus Hondius, minis­ ter at Hoorn, indeed discusses exactly 1000 sins. Many are committed by spe­ cific categories of people. Sin nr. 970 involves «such women, who are members [of the Reformed Church] and nevertheless do not refrain from fighting and flinging publicly and to tear the cap from the head». This behavior is a disgrace upon the community: «as men are not allowed to be fighters,... much less are women» 2. The first of the quoted sentences sounds a little awkward, but it has been translated lite­ rally on purpose: Hondius' formulation can refer to women who attack persons of either sex, but it is clear, especially from the reference to removing someone's cap, that he primarily thinks of inter-female fights 3. No doubt, he shared the judgment, that it was especially unbecoming for women to fight, with many of his contem­ poraries. Did Hondius find female violence also uncommon? We cannot infer this from the fact that it is one of the last sins he discusses; that is merely a conse­ quence of the alphabetical order of his book. But we may take the harmlessness of the one concrete act he cites to mean that he considered serious female violence uncommon. Like Hondius, historians have found female aggression to be uncommon. When the title of a publication has the words «women» and «violence» in it, the focus is often on women as victims rather than as perpetrators. Historians as well as crimi­ nologists have paid ample attention to male-on-female crime. Alternatively, typi­ cally female offenses have been studied, such as, for the period under discussion here, infanticide. These two perspectives are frequently combined. For example, in an overview article entitled «Women and Violence in Early Modern Europe» two third of the text is devoted to a discussion of infanticide, wife-beating and rape 4. This emphasis on victimization and special offenses is understandable, since the subject of women and violence leaves few other choices. Every quantitative study available tells us that among prosecutions for homicide and assault women consti­ tute a tiny minority.