Procreatio Interrupta: Reproductive Fear in the Malleus Maleficarum and the Eruption of the Witch as Anti-Mother
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2025-06-17
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en
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This article approaches the European witch-hunt through the lens of reproduction to reveal how fears surrounding fertility constructed a violent mother/anti-mother binary. Focusing on the Malleus Maleficarum, where theological anxieties and material fears converge, I argue that the witch is framed as the dark inversion of the ideal mother exemplified by the Virgin Mary. This binary exposes contradictory expectations placed on women: to be pure yet reproductive, disembodied yet maternal. By analyzing how witches are portrayed as threats to reproduction—through infertility, infanticide, and sexual deviance—I show how reproduction becomes both the symbolic core and material site of persecution, and how this logic extends into contemporary narratives of reproductive control.
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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen