Inquisition - Treatment of Women

Treatment of Women

All prisoners were initially kept together and this led to violations of women by other prisoners and their guards. Later orders were given that the sexes be separated. Pregnant women as a vulnerable group became frequent prisoners especially in Spain,with special accommodation but without the help of midwives or other women, consequently many endured extreme suffering and did not survive childbirth. Many babies were confiscated before their mothers were subjected to torture.

  • Danger of witchcraft accusation: In 1484 the Innocent VIII papal bull summis desiderantes affectibus was issued to Heinrich Kramer the author of the Malleus Maleficarum, in defiance of his bishop, and Kramer included it in the preface to the book. Women were then open to arrest by the inquisition on suspicision of witchcraft. Although men as well as women could be open to this charge, the title of the book itself is feminine in gender and Kramer writes in section I of his misogynist work that: "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust which is in women insatiable". Although in 1490 the Vatican decided that the book was false, in the face of the inquisition, and in fact in 1538 the Spanish Inquisition cautioned against using it, the damage had been done, and by means of printing the book went through sixteen editions up until 1669. Spreading from the Kramer's Tyrol where it originated to other Germanic States helping to fuel the witch hunts in amongst Protestant countries in the seventeenth century as well.

Read more about this topic:  Inquisition

Famous quotes containing the words treatment of, treatment and/or women:

    The treatment of the incident of the assault upon the sailors of the Baltimore is so conciliatory and friendly that I am of the opinion that there is a good prospect that the differences growing out of that serious affair can now be adjusted upon terms satisfactory to this Government by the usual methods and without special powers from Congress.
    Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.
    Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

    Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.
    —Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)