E cert te molt gran fama de bruixa e se fa metgessa e fa medecines. La demonización de las prácticas mágico-medicinales femeninas (siglos XIV-XVI)

Abstract

The Late Middle Ages witnessed a change of perception regarding some health practices performed mostly by women. These practices, condemned over centuries by both ecclesiastical and secular elites, would acquire gradually a heretical and diabolical nature giving birth to the image of the witch in the early fifteenth century. The steps of this change are perceptible through the Catalan documentation; wich allows us to present a development that connects the actions against folk magic in the fourteenth century, the first witchcraft accusations in the early fifteenth and the great persecutions in modern times.