Reformation and Counter-Reformation than we could in a short

Such was the state of medical “science” at the time when witch-healers were persecuted for being practitioners of “magic.” It was witches who developed an extensive understanding of bones and muscles, herbs and drugs, while physicians were still deriving their prognoses from astrology and alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold. So great was

The real issue was control: male upper-class healing under the auspices of the Church was acceptable, female healing as part of a peasant subculture was not.

many of those who were prosecuted for witchcraft were in fact wise-women.”He

The witch was a triple threat to the Church: She was a woman, and not ashamed of it. She appeared to be part of an organized underground of peasant women. She was a healer whose practice was based in empirical study. In the face of the repressive fatalism of Christianity, she held out the hope of change in this world.

but prayer was Church-sanctioned and controlled while incantations and charms were not. Thus magic cures, even when successful, were an accursed interference with the will of God, achieved with the help of the devil, and the cure itself was evil. There was no problem in distinguishing God’s cures from the devil’s, for obviously the Lord would work

But we do have to get beyond some common myths about the witch craze—myths that rob the “witch” of any dignity and put the blame on her and the peasants she served.

There is now a wealth of information about women as lay healers, midwives, and “doctresses”

According to these accounts, (male) science more or less automatically replaced (female) superstition—which from then on was called “old wives’ tales.”