Obraz czarownicy w najnowszej polskiej historiografii procesów o czary w czasach wczesnonowożytnych
The image of the witch-woman in the recent Polish historiography of the witch trials during the early modern period

Summary/Abstract: In the paper the author intended to characterize the image of the witch-woman, as it is shown by the Polish historiography of the witch trials during the early modern period, in the light of the current studies, focusing on the female one. In this context, a number of questions present themselves and one of the purposes of this article is to find answers to the following questions, i.e.: on which factors research focus, while characterizing women accused of the witchcraft; was accusing of the doing evil and cooperation with the devil connected with the particular variables (sex, biological feature of a woman), or was it rather an outcome of the belonging to the particular social group, or maybe even a result of the economic situation in those days. In this article there is also raised a question: how much the recent findings overthrow the stereotype of the witch, which is consolidated in the folk memory of the citizens of Poland. The concepts presented in the following paper are intended to be the starting point of the discussion about the said problem. According to that, this article is not the review of the research focused on magic, witchcraft or witch trials, nor the summary of the Catholic Church attitude, which was widely discussed in the past research papers.

• Details
• Contents