Anne Boleyn in London by Lissa Chapman6/23/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() This paper specifically examines a multitude of cases spanning the Middle Ages and early modern period, each involving women in positions of social visibility and power who were accused of witchcraft as a means of removing them from a seemingly unnatural and threatening gender role. Further study concerning the use of witchcraft charges as a political tool aimed at socially prominent women is needed to better inform scholarly understanding of the full breadth of the European witch craze. While advances in the study of witchcraft have greatly informed the fields of history and anthropology, such scholarship has up until this point largely focused on witch hunts targeting women of the lower classes. For medieval and early modern people, accusations of heresy and witchcraft served to reinstate control over elements of society that were perceived as dissident to the established order. ![]() Since the mid-twentieth century, scholarship on European witchcraft has proved critical in understanding the relationship between gender, sexuality, and power in pre-modern Western society. ![]()
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