In this second excerpt from “Women, Power and Danger,” we go into some of the most detailed accounts about secular witch hunts in the late 1300s. They center on sexual politics: jilted women, love magic, the sorcery of male impotence, wife-battering —and abusive men using the charge of witchcraft to get rid of unwanted wives. The women’s testimony shows how they struggled to overcome their oppressed status, while the judges used torture and burning to uphold it.
