![]() ![]() A few have gone further and identified certain regions in which men were more likely be suspected than women, as David Gentilcore has for southern Italy and Kevin Robbins for western France. This is not to say men were never believed to do magic for purposes related to love and sex, and many of the scholars mentioned above also discuss cases in which men were accused. 4 Studies of the inquisition and witch trial records surviving from the early modern period make many of the same points in more detail: women were more likely to be put on trial for using love magic than men knowledge about love and sex magic was transmitted through female networks and the women most likely to be tried were those involved in illicit relationships, notably prostitutes. ![]() Doggett have argued that it is usually women who use magic for erotic purposes in medieval English and French literature. 3 More recently Corinne Saunders and Laine E. Thus, Richard Kieckhefer has pointed out that “a disproportionate number of the people tried for use of erotic magic were women,” and this is true of the fifteenth-century trial records from Lausanne and Lucerne studied by Susanna Burghartz. 2 Research based on other evidence often presents a similar picture. Historians working on ecclesiastical writing in particular argue that many medieval churchmen viewed erotic magic as a female activity, as indeed they did some other kinds of magic. ![]() Recent studies have suggested that the Malleus was not alone in associating magic connected with love and sex with women. Toward the end of their notorious discussion of why women were more likely to be witches than men, the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum described how magic could be used to affect love and sex by “diverting the minds of men to irregular love” and “impeding the procreative force.” Not surprisingly, given the subject matter of the chapter, the people they described as most likely to do this were women, especially women who were engaged in illicit sexual relationships: “those who are more inflamed with the purpose of satisfying their base lustings, like adulteresses, female fornicators and the concubines of powerful men.” 1 ![]()
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