Scholars Look at Forgotten Male Witches By Khrysso Heart LeFey, MTS

A feminist and a Jew have collaborated to examine men at the margins of European witch persecutions.

Early this year (2003) Manchester University Press published a study by historians Lara Apps and Andrew Gow entitled, Male Witches in Early Modern Europe.

The book, says the publisher, "critiques historians' assumptions about witch-hunting as well as their explanations for this complex and perplexing phenomenon. Large numbers of men were accused of witchcraft in their own right, [and] in some regions, more men were accused than women."

The authors "insist on the centrality of gender, tradition and ideas about witches in the construction of the witch as a dangerous figure." Pointing out that men as well as women suffered persecution in patriarchal societies, they examine primary sources such as trial records and demonological literature to challenge the marginalization of male witches by feminist and other historians.