Journal of Women's History

Abstract:

This article reconstructs the lives of Agnes the Bathkeeper and Anna of Mindelheim, who exemplified how women become witches and how witches do magic in the demonological treatise, The Hammer of Witches (1486). It does so based both on this demonological treatise and archival documents, reading them "against the bias grain" in an effort to bring Agnes and Anna some epistemic justice. In addition to urging us to view Agnes and Anna in their full humanity rather than exclusively as heretical criminals or victims as this treatise's authors and modern scholars have done, this article provides a case study of the relationship between gender, magic, and witchcraft in a time period when magic had recently been associated with women. It also offers an example of how historians can use fragmentary evidence to reconstruct aspects of the past, keeping women such as Agnes and Anna from historical erasure.