Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation page 169

What fears instigated such concerted policy of genocide? Why was so much violence unleashed? And why were its primary targets women?...

It must be immediately stated that, to this day, there are no sure answers to these questions. A major obstacle in the way of an explanation has been the fact that the charges against the witches are so grotesque and unbelievable as to be incommensurable with any motivation or crime.¹² How to account for the fact that for more than two centuries, in several European countries, hundreds of thousands of women were tried, tortured, burned alive or hanged, accused of having sold body and soul to the devil and, by magical means, murdered scores of children, sucked their blood, made potions with their flesh, caused the death of their neighbors, destroyed cattle and crops, raised storms, and performed many other abominations? (However, even today, some historians ask us to believe that the witch-hunt was quite reasonable in the context of the contemporary belief structure!)

12. There is also evidence of significant shifts in the weight attributed to specific accusations, the nature of the crimes commonly associated with witchcraft, and the social composition of the accusers and accused. The most significant shift, perhaps, is that in an early phase of the persecution (during the 15th-century trials) witchcraft was seen predominantly as a collective crime, relying on mass gatherings and organization, while by the 17th century it was seen as a crime of an individual nature, an evil career in which isolated witches specialized--this being a sign of the breakdown of communal bonds brought about by the increasing privatization of land tenure and the expansion of commercial relations in this period.

[Endnote on page 211]