O Malleus Maleficarum e o discurso cristão ocidental contrário à bruxaria e ao feminino no século XV

• Autor(a) principal: Portela, Ludmila Noeme Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (riUfes)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/6343
• topic: História; Idade Média - História - Europa; Feitiçaria; Mulheres; Inquisição; Cristianismo; 93/99

Throughout the human history a lot of search instruments where used for insight and understand the reality beyond the most palpable facts and logic. The attempt of man to control the universe and the search for transcendence materiality resulted in the affirmation of sensory elements directly related to the belief in the supernatural. Magical practices, under the sign of witchcraft, became over time an object of curiosity and disgust. With the expansion and affirmation of Christianity in the medieval European, witchcraft were stigmatized as a sign of infamy and evil. An examination of the document entitled Malleus Maleficarum, produced and published in the fifteenth century, is possible to find a severe speech against the practice of witchcraft, noting the proximity of magic with evil. The document attributed to women wickedness and lists the fight of witchcraft as an instrument against the devil. The Discourse Analysis, as a methodology, proposes the discovery of the political intention of a text and its author. The religious discourse, specially, has as main feature the voice of authority that stands the author of the text, that can be understood as the voice of God. The Christian discourse is the place of the absolute truth of the Church and the fight against witchcraft. In a troubled time in the Europe history the hunger, wars and the Black Death contributed to the spread of a generalized feeling of insecurity among the population. The crisis within the Church came to be seen as a reflection of evil’s action, a reflection of God's anger. To the Church, the nature of women and the diabolical influence of the evil’s allowed the spread of witches' sabbath services throughout the Western European continent in order to stain the principles of faith, and it has to be summarily combated by the Inquisition.