User:Jcblumha/Matilda Joslyn Gage

Witch Trials
Gage also strongly opposed the witch hunts that took place throughout the 1600s, interpreting them as a church-supported means of dominating and intentionally killing women. Gage uses her book Woman, Church & State: The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex, to highlight the connections between the churches core beliefs, restriction of women by both the church and state, and the extremes of the witch trials. She highlights this connection by arguing that we are able to understand the oppression of women that stemmed from the church on a deeper level if we substitute the term 'women' for 'witches'. Gage also asserted that educated women who opposed the patriarchy were viewed as a threat to the church and thus more likely to be accused of witchcraft. In 1893, she wrote:

"The witch was in reality the profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist of those ages. The persecution which for ages waged against witches was in reality an attack upon science at the hands of the church. As knowledge has ever been power, the church feared its use in woman’s hands, and leveled its deadliest blows at her." Gage also advocated against ageism, claiming that elderly women deserve the Christian church to be held accountable for the extreme violence they faced throughout the seventeenth century. Gage used exaggerated numbers to further her arguments that older women were so commonly accused of witchcraft that they did not receive the affection and attentiveness they merit. Instead implying that those accused were subject to a life of humiliation and tribulation, making it rare for an elderly woman to die of old age. Although not historically accurate with numbers in her assertions, Gage used her interpretations of the witch hunts to denounce the Christian church's treatment of women and advocated for justice.