>Thanks for the info Jenny. Couple questions.
>
>1. How was their population pressure in Europe in the
>late 1400s? It was only a century after the Black
>Death wiped out half of the pop?
Right, so if the lord wanted more serfs, he might want to get rid of the wise woman who was telling women about how to stop conception. Women, in turn, might not want to constantly bear children, since they were probably not getting much food to begin with.
>2. I don't see allusions to abortion or contraception
>in the MM, at least in Innocent's Bull. He says things
>_that could be interpreted as_ allusions to abortion
>or contraception. (I translated the Bull into Russian
>last night for the benefit of the workstaff at the bar
>where I was. ;) )
Making women sterile. Temporary sterility is the result of taking various of the herbs which are recorded as used for contraception and abortion. (In other words, these abortifacients also have the property of making you sterile.) And, there's a fine line between an early miscarriage and a late menstrual cycle. Might all look like sterility.
>3. Why were these wise women only women, why were
>there no wise men? (Or perhaps there were, and the
>witch-hunters didn't target them.) BTW the old woman
>in the village with the arcane lore is still around in
>Eastern Europe -- my ex-girlfriend saw one when her
>son was born sick.
Men were killed, in very small numbers. Men are supposed to be resistent to the Devil's advances because Jesus was, by reputation, a man. And women are weak that way, when it comes to the devil. Why really? That goes to Justin's question. Midwifery and its attendant herbal expertise in this period is a female occupation.
Jenny Brown