Re: Taliban hatred for women?

-----Original Message-----
From: Shahijm2@aol.com [mailto:Shahijm2@aol.com]

"Witchcraze" about the persecution of witches in Europe during the 15th/16th

centuries, which, on the face of it was religious persecution but she argues

convincingly that it was a holocaust against women associated with the rise 
of capitalism.  

* * *

The problem with this thesis is that the persecution of out-groups in Europe
by the church began long before capitalism - by over a millennium. It is
true that much of the war on heretics and witches was piecemeal for some
time, even after Charlemagne fused canon and civil law in 800 AD. Indeed,
the cultural-ideological system necessary for widespread persecution of
enemies of the church was not really in place until the 12th and 13th
century. This happened in a big way with the edicts of the Lantern Council
and the aggressive posture of Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV in the mid
13th century. Even after the ideological basis had developed and the charge
was made, the centralization of legal machinery and the network of
inquisitors required for systematic mass murder would not become fully
developed until the 14th and 15th centuries. It is almost certain that the
inquisition was fed by the emergence of capitalism, for it would reach its
peak between the 15th and 18th centuries, and it required a great deal of
wealth to fed its expansion. Also during this period, the tortures of the
inquisition would creep beyond the church into the emerging criminal law
(which was much more obviously associated with the rise of capitalism). But
these facts, and the inquisition's association with the crusades, are quite
damaging to any thesis that attempts to explain the persecution of witches
with capitalism's rise in Europe. The desire to consolidate the religious
community, which involved the need to control women who lived beyond the
direct control of the household dominus (under the principle of
paterfamilias), lead to the construction of the machinery necessary to
prosecute a war on the devil - and all this occurred before capitalism. Why
women were targeted by the church in feudal Europe is rather obvious if you
stop and think about it: they needed to be controlled by the greater dominus
in the community, which at the time was the church. Other indications of the
importance of religion in mass murder: Jews were the primary targets (they
were collectively guilty of deicide), and so were homosexuals (who engaged
in sex with no creative purpose, in contradiction of the transcendental
imperative). Such oppressions intersected, for it is quite likely that many
of the women singled out as witches were lesbians who had organized their
own households.

Andrew Austin