Re: Taliban hatred for women?

I"ve read another explanation for "who" was persecuted for witchcraft in
the Soc of religion lit - don't have cite.  Writer compared # of
prosecutions in Britain vs the Continent.  As I recall, was much higher on
the Continent because laws there allowed the prosecutors to
take home the "witch's" seized property.  They were, therefore, also
especially interested in prosecuting the rich - both men and women - for
the bounty.  Kind of like current drug prosecution scandals.

On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, Austin, Andrew wrote:

> -----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
>
>
>