Walter Stephens discussed the motives of Renaissance witch hunters in a lecture yesterday afternoon celebrating his inauguration to a professorship.
Stephens gave a speech titled "Interrogating the Witch Hunt, 1400-1700. Why Then, Why There, Why Women?" as part of his appointment to the new Paul D. Paganucci Associate Professorship of Italian Language and Literature.
Dean of Faculty James Wright introduced Stephens' speech, which focused primarily on the system of beliefs witch hunters used to justify their acts of torture, coercion and murder.
The men who hunted witches were educated and part of a "literate culture,"Stephens argued, and they did not truly believe in the elaborate myths about witches of the time.
Rather, he argued, they hunted witches because they were seeking to prove to themselves the existence of the devil and God.
Although most witches were accused of causing harm like crop failure or male sterility, Stephens said they were not the real reasons for the hunts. Instead, Stephens said most witches were punished because they were 'proven' to have copulated with the devil.
Stephens said this method of punishment showed that the hunters' primary concern was the existence of the devil, not the damage done to humans by witches.
By seeking the devil, Stephens said men could use a "negative theology" to prove the existence of God.
When discussing why witch hunts primarily sought out females - about 80 percent of accused witches were women - Stephens said witches were thought to subvert sexual order by copulating with the devil and causing male sterility. All women could have been considered potential witches, he said.
The only way to prove the existence of God was belief in the presence of sexual relations between women and the devil, Stephens said.
Stephens said other factors of witch hunting, such as the places it occurred and its historical timing, had to do with the slower philosophical evolution of Western Christianity than Eastern Christianity or Islam.
About 90 people, mostly faculty members, attended the speech in 3 Rockefeller Center.
