Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live!

[joedonjj]

As far as I understand -- mind you, sadly, I don't actually speak Hebrew -- a terminal He (ה) generally means a feminine form in Hebrew. English tends to not have such word genders, but almost any other language has. The word used in Exodus 20:18 is "מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה", roughly "mekasepah", clearly a feminine.

So, yes, it's clearly an admonition against FEMALE uh, whatever that word means. It's the only instance in the OT of it.

It helps if you understand that pretty much for as long as we had a written history, well, as the quote goes:

"Remember when you were a kid and the boys didn't like the girls? Only sissies liked girls? What I'm trying to tell you is that nothing's changed. You think boys grow out of not liking girls, but we don't grow out of it. We just grow horny. That's the problem. We mix up liking pussy for liking girls. Believe me, one couldn't have less to do with the other." — Jules Feiffer​

Pretty much sums up 99.95% or so of the existence of the human species. We liked pussy lots. And I mean LOTS. We even went to war for pussy, demanded pussy in war settlements, and even have documents where pussy was a part of the settlement in a lawsuit between two guys. Oh we loved it.

But we seriously didn't want the ones with a pussy in our tree house. And especially those who think they have rights or are equals or can run a business just like the guys or some other silly girl notion like that. Or not put out. Oooh, we really hated those.

As soon as we find skeletons, we find evidence (e.g., in the different density bands formed in the bones by malnutrition, plus the extreme height variance) that women got less food, sometimes severely less food. And were twice as likely to be killed at birth. As soon as we have a written word, women are blamed for every bleedin' thing going wrong.

As in literally, as soon as you have guys figuring out how to press a stick in wet clay to write stuff in Mesopotamia or draw funny animal shapes in Egypt, you get stories where invariably the FEMALE spirits are the bad ones, and women magician are responsible for the propagation of what we nowadays call airborne diseases, and witches coat their broomsticks in hallucinogens before putting their, you know, on that broomstick, and such stuff.

Some almost 5 millennia before the European burning craze... yeah, we were already blaming the women for the exact same things. It can't possibly be a man who does that stuff. It's got to be a woman that sees to it that plague moves from house to house.

Or in the Hebrew tradition, arguably THE most evil spirit, THE one who kills babies just to spite their parents and stuff like that, is... Adam's first wife, who thought she has rights and is rightfully his equal. Ever wonder why Eve was created from a rib? Well, some rabbis figured out that there was one created from dirt too, but she thought that that makes her equal to Adam. She was evil like that, see?

Oh, and even when we had goddesses, they really liked wartime rape and such. See, Inanna, serial force-rapist extraordinaire. Heh.

I really don't know what the <beep> is wrong with this world...

So, I guess, to more clearly answer the question, OF COURSE the witches were female. Who else were they going to blame everything on? The guys? Don't be ridiculous

*********** beautiful post man! Wow that was great!

 

[RobDegraves]

Well.. I'm going to disagree with Hans a bit.

There are a number of good books written on the subject of matriarchal societies vs patriarchal societies. It's somewhat more complex and nuanced than a simple statement could encapsulate.

If you look at various ancient societies, there were a number of variances on how women were treated, often based on religious or societal differences. For example, women in Spartan society had a remarkable number of rights. So did Norse women. I can give specifics if you wish.

One big proviso in ancient societies, which weighed heavily on the side of patriarchal societies is that men tend to be stronger and larger than women. This was an advantage in warfare and, since many societies lived or died based on their ability to wage war either defensively or offensively, meant that men tended to take top roles in warrior societies.

Sadly, often the societies that were more peaceful simply didn't survive contact with the societies that were not.

However, the middle ages were a completely different deal.

Christianity has always been strongly patriarchal. With a strong bias for seeing sexual pleasure as an abominable sin, it was inevitable that women would get the short end of the stick... or sometimes the heavy end of the stick, literally.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, that WAS painting it with a bit a broad brush, to drive the point home. Sure, variance and nuances existed, and exceptions existed and exist.

But I'm not just talking about patriarchy. But really how does one look at an epidemic and just know that specifically a WOMAN did it? There seem to be a lot of societies that came to that idea even without Xianity. I mean, apparently in Germany it was actually Christianity that stopped them from burning witches in the first place... before rediscovering that it's fun after all, some hundreds of years later. Heck, Rome was killing women for stupid stuff like stealing the children's bone marrow to make potions, long before Christ was even allegedly born.

But, I mean, I can even sorta understand how one would come to ideas like SOMEONE did it, before they had a microscope. But exactly what about it gives one the idea that it kinda looks like what specifically women do?

Or take cattle, mostly because there's a curious generalization in the chapter on it in the Malleus Maleficarum which I linked to before.

For so was Job stricken by the devil and lost all his cattle. So also there is not even the smallest farm where women do not injure each other’s cows, by drying up their milk, and very often killing them.​

Instead of just a couple of witches in a city of thousands, now suddenly every farm, even the smallest one, has women sneaking in the night to harm each other's cows. Holy cow, are all women evil for these guys or what? And I really mean, ALL. The smallest farm was just a family, and even that had a woman going harming another's cow.

It's not just about patriarchy, as in the guys owning the farm and having more rights and all. But how does one look at a cow who, say, stopped giving milk, and come basically to the conclusion, "yep, that's clearly a woman's handiwork. That's what women do."? How can one tell that kinda stuff?

I mean, come on, it's not like we guys couldn't be sneaky and backstabbing all across history too. Why do the women get all the credit there? It can almost make one give up villainy altogether, I tell ya. You can practice your evil laugh and twirling your moustache all you want, and then someone will come to the crime scene and say, "nah, a guy can't do that." I want some recognition, dammit

 

[Leumas]

This video says it nicely

 

[RobDegraves]

Holy cow, are all women evil for these guys or what? And I really mean, ALL.

Well, you really do need to differentiate between what is written by obviously insane people like Kramer and what was going on in societies in general.

Of course Christianity has always had a harder time than most religions in dealing with women because of their difficult stance on sex. Taking a basic drive and considering it evil makes life more difficult than it needs to be and blaming women seems like an alternative to going gay. In many societies, men ruled because of their greater ability to kill. When reason fails, brute force does tend to prevail. Something that still applies today and that I think that people in this forum might want to keep in mind, in case it becomes an issue in the future.

In societies built on war, men ruled and women were often considered a prize to be taken. This certainly affected the general status of women, however one might also consider that status often affected them even more.

Let's take Rome for example...

Heck, Rome was killing women for stupid stuff like stealing the children's bone marrow to make potions, long before Christ was even allegedly born.

Actually Roman women enjoyed a high level of freedom and rights even compared to men. Status and wealth had a far greater influence on freedom and inherent rights than gender did. Your example of women witches had more to do with a specific trade than with a general attitude towards women.

To begin with, all Romans of either gender owed their primary duties to the Pater Familias. That would of course put the power in a man's hand.. but only one. When a woman married, she still remained under the rule of the Pater Familias rather than under her husband. This applied to both genders, sons and daughters. Typically, once married, a woman had relative freedom since the Pater rarely intervened.

More significantly, women had the right to own property and money, write their own wills and appear in court in their own defense. Since Rome was for all practical purposes a plutocracy, having money meant having power. For poor people, life sucked... for both genders. If you were a slave, it was even worse, though it could be argued that female slaves were treated a bit better. I guess it depends on whether you consider being raped or working in the mines as a worse fate.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, for a start, since we are talking over a thousand years even for Rome alone, it probably helps to look at more exact periods.

But more importantly, again, I'm not talking about patriarchy per se. I'm talking about blaming women for witchcraft. When you're being put on a pile of wood, it's not much consolation that other women don't have it all that bad

Anyway, this is really my whole problem, in case it wasn't clear the first couple of times: how does one look at a cow whose milk dried out, or a kid who's just got the sniffles, and conclude that specifically women did it? Why not some guy? Why not "heck if we know, it could have been anyone"? Exactly what is it about a sick kid that has to have been done by a woman?

Yes, women might have rights and all otherwise. In fact it seems to be what causes the woo against women. Or at least happens in the same interval, anyway.

But even while recognizing that woman X can indeed inherit her late husband's business and run it herself, people get sure that misfortune Y was caused by some woman. How did they know it was a woman, really? Next time I get a flu, exactly by what symptoms would I know that it was a witch, and not that guy sneezing and coughing in the train?

 

[Craig B]

Leumas

I like your post #9 re the real Ten Commandments. Have you noticed this?

1 The LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. ... 27 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

So much for God's promises!

But the authentic Exodus 34 Ten Commandments are great fun. Concocted by a bunch of priests for the purpose of ensuring the most effective exploitation of a dozen clans of ignorant goatherds. "No one is to appear before me empty handed." Magnificent. Straight from the gospel according to Jimmy Swaggert.

 

[bikerdruid]

I had heard that the original proscription was against "poisoners" rather than witches, and that this, like much else, was changed much later to reflect the Dark-Ages bias against "witches".

king james, of KJV fame fancied himself an expert on witches.
he even published a book on demonology.
they wished to cater to him in this regard.
shakespeare,wrote macbeth for him as well, since james was his patron..

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, you guys are on to something, so maybe it can't hurt to talk about it in more detail.

1. In the Vulgate, the text says, "maleficos non patieris vivere". Which stands out for two reasons,

1.a. It's been turned into a masculine, from the feminine in the original Hebrew. ("Maleficus", as opposed to a feminine "Malefica.") Which, in Latin like in most other languages actually doubles as a gender-neutral form. Sorta like when you talk about the Actors' Guild, you don't have to mention actresses separately.

(Later witch-hunters would generally revert to the sexist version. E.g., the Malleus Maleficarum title is specifically about female witches. The male or gender-neutral version would have been Maleficorum.)

1.b. While we know that later the word was taken to mean "witch", the original meaning of "maleficus" is more like "evil-doer", with evil magic being just a sub-case of doing evil.

On the whole this isn't a very good translation, and it creates the even more disturbing problem that it prescribes the death penalty for EVERY crime, if we take that meaning of the word. You should be shot for jaywalking, for example.

2. In the Septuagint, the verse is actually 22:17, and it says pretty literally "get the pharmacists." But, as far as I can tell with a dictionary, it leaves one in the dark about what to do with them after one got the pharmacists. Sorta like a dog catching a car: now what?

I suspect that this is why Bikewer says it originally meant poisoners. Or together with #1, why some would blame it specifically on King James.

Unfortunately, while I can see how one would get that idea, the problems that remain are:

- the original Hebrew doesn't say that, as far as anyone can tell.

Unfortunately, the septuagint is really the kind of translation you'd expect if you got a text translated from Chinese to Arabic by a native French speaker. In its case, it's something translated from Hebrew to Greek by some native Aramaic or even Coptic speakers. The distortions are occasionally so big, that people who went by that left us with such NT stupidities as the virgin birth and some even worse.

The problems with the Septuagint are nothing new though. They were known all along, and trying to get a better translation by getting closer to the sources is actually what a lot of Bible translations tried to do in the first place. Jerome himself with the Vulgate bypassed the Septuagint completely, for example. The KJV too goes directly to Hebrew, and even uses rabinical commentaries to try to figure out what it actually says in Hebrew.

One doesn't need to ask, basically, "why did they change word X compared to version Y", when basically they didn't use version Y as a source in the first place.

- the places where the King did instruct them to use certain translations for certain words -- even to the extent of retrofitting stuff from the LXX into the more correct translation from Hebrew -- was more like stuff that had to do with established Christological dogma or stuff like wanting "church" instead of "congregation". I'm not aware of witchcraft having a similar status even for James as to warrant explicitly altering the bible.

- James didn't need to do that, really. The witch-hunt craze had been already in full swing in Europe for more than a hundred years (and for example the Malleus Maleficarum was published a full 125 years before James even commissioned the new translation), and was approaching its apex by now. And the narrowing down that word to mean specifically witches is arguably even older than that. James isn't doing anything special to start the witchcraft hysteria, nor does he need to. He's more a product of that benighted age than a cause.

- finally, to go on a bit of a tangent, the word used in the Septuagint doesn't specifically damn just the poisoners. What they mention there is more generally anyone who makes potions, ointments, or generally herbal remedies. IF that "get the pharmacists" was understood as an admonition, then really, it's so blanket, it's more akin to the modern God-peddlers who tell you to pray to God instead of taking your insulin. Those guys wanted their congregation to pray to God when they get some infection, not to go apply some ointment made by a herbalist. I.e., it still doesn't make it a rational non-woo restriction. It's still just as bogus and pernicious.

 

[Nogbad]

I am currently reading the Bible (I'll put up a post on that sometime soon, although I know there are plenty of posts by previous gluttons for punishment intrepid readers), and I'm still only working my way through Exodus after three days.

I'm reading through what I had understood to be the Ten Commandments although it seems there are in fact something like 4789 Commandments that appear while Moses is up Mount Sinai in which God is bursting forth with a Torrent of Commandments, most of which are to be observed on pain of death. But one of them (Exodus 22:18) is a bit eye-catching because of its abruptness and lack of context:



(Exodus 22:19, on the other hand, is standard fare: "Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.")

Now, I don't expect there is anything written in the Bible that hasn't been endlessly picked over and examined and even used by someone for all manner of excuses, but was this particular passage used in the Church's persecution of witches?

And am I right in suggesting that Ten Commandments is a bit of a misnomer. I understand that Leviticus also has a Ten Commandments as well and that there are some variations.

Sorry, for asking a question which I am sure is well-known to seasoned Bible bashers. (Of both varieties! )

In actual fact that bit got smudged. The full text is "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live in poverty"

All a bit of a misunderstanding really.

 

[angrysoba]

I had heard that the original proscription was against "poisoners" rather than witches, and that this, like much else, was changed much later to reflect the Dark-Ages bias against "witches".

I understand that there is some evidence that the word "witch" was used to placate King James VIII.

I get some support on this via Google but I am not interested enough to do a thorough analysis.

king james, of KJV fame fancied himself an expert on witches.
he even published a book on demonology.
they wished to cater to him in this regard.
shakespeare,wrote macbeth for him as well, since james was his patron..

Well, you guys are on to something, so maybe it can't hurt to talk about it in more detail.

1. In the Vulgate, the text says, "maleficos non patieris vivere". Which stands out for two reasons,

1.a. It's been turned into a masculine, from the feminine in the original Hebrew. ("Maleficus", as opposed to a feminine "Malefica.") Which, in Latin like in most other languages actually doubles as a gender-neutral form. Sorta like when you talk about the Actors' Guild, you don't have to mention actresses separately.

(Later witch-hunters would generally revert to the sexist version. E.g., the Malleus Maleficarum title is specifically about female witches. The male or gender-neutral version would have been Maleficorum.)

1.b. While we know that later the word was taken to mean "witch", the original meaning of "maleficus" is more like "evil-doer", with evil magic being just a sub-case of doing evil.

On the whole this isn't a very good translation, and it creates the even more disturbing problem that it prescribes the death penalty for EVERY crime, if we take that meaning of the word. You should be shot for jaywalking, for example.

2. In the Septuagint, the verse is actually 22:17, and it says pretty literally "get the pharmacists." But, as far as I can tell with a dictionary, it leaves one in the dark about what to do with them after one got the pharmacists. Sorta like a dog catching a car: now what?

I suspect that this is why Bikewer says it originally meant poisoners. Or together with #1, why some would blame it specifically on King James.

Unfortunately, while I can see how one would get that idea, the problems that remain are:

- the original Hebrew doesn't say that, as far as anyone can tell.

Unfortunately, the septuagint is really the kind of translation you'd expect if you got a text translated from Chinese to Arabic by a native French speaker. In its case, it's something translated from Hebrew to Greek by some native Aramaic or even Coptic speakers. The distortions are occasionally so big, that people who went by that left us with such NT stupidities as the virgin birth and some even worse.

The problems with the Septuagint are nothing new though. They were known all along, and trying to get a better translation by getting closer to the sources is actually what a lot of Bible translations tried to do in the first place. Jerome himself with the Vulgate bypassed the Septuagint completely, for example. The KJV too goes directly to Hebrew, and even uses rabinical commentaries to try to figure out what it actually says in Hebrew.

One doesn't need to ask, basically, "why did they change word X compared to version Y", when basically they didn't use version Y as a source in the first place.

- the places where the King did instruct them to use certain translations for certain words -- even to the extent of retrofitting stuff from the LXX into the more correct translation from Hebrew -- was more like stuff that had to do with established Christological dogma or stuff like wanting "church" instead of "congregation". I'm not aware of witchcraft having a similar status even for James as to warrant explicitly altering the bible.

- James didn't need to do that, really. The witch-hunt craze had been already in full swing in Europe for more than a hundred years (and for example the Malleus Maleficarum was published a full 125 years before James even commissioned the new translation), and was approaching its apex by now. And the narrowing down that word to mean specifically witches is arguably even older than that. James isn't doing anything special to start the witchcraft hysteria, nor does he need to. He's more a product of that benighted age than a cause.

- finally, to go on a bit of a tangent, the word used in the Septuagint doesn't specifically damn just the poisoners. What they mention there is more generally anyone who makes potions, ointments, or generally herbal remedies. IF that "get the pharmacists" was understood as an admonition, then really, it's so blanket, it's more akin to the modern God-peddlers who tell you to pray to God instead of taking your insulin. Those guys wanted their congregation to pray to God when they get some infection, not to go apply some ointment made by a herbalist. I.e., it still doesn't make it a rational non-woo restriction. It's still just as bogus and pernicious.

So, the idea that King James I (or VI if you wish, but not VIII, if you please!) was rather obsessed with witches might be one of the reasons for its inclusion, some are saying. However, does anyone know if the versions by John Wycliff or William Tyndale also translated the phrase as witch? Or perhaps that of Martin Luther?

I suppose all of these men were also living in the witch-burning epoch (although Wycliff only just with heretics being burnt more commonly in those days, I think).

 

[angrysoba]

In actual fact that bit got smudged. The full text is "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live in poverty"

All a bit of a misunderstanding really.

Oh, I hate it when that happens.

I remember reading something in Dairmaird MacCulloch's book about an order of Russian Orthodox monks called the castrati, who had mistranslated "Go forth and multiply" into "Go forth and castrate yourselves!"

So they...er...did.

 

[pakeha]

In The Silver Bough, F. Marian McNeill discusses witchcraft in Scotland and what it took to be a witch.
In one case she cites, a woman (Marian Grant) was tried and executed for witchcraft in 1597 because she had 'cured ailing cattle in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost' p. 157.

'Unwarrantable healing' is the term given for this.

 

[Craig B]

I understand that there is some evidence that the word "witch" was used to placate King James VIII.

I get some support on this via Google but I am not interested enough to do a thorough analysis.

Scotland has not yet had a James VIII. May Heaven spare us one! James Stuart was James VI of Scotland from 1567, and became also James I of England in 1603.

The witch mania here in Scotland was far more extreme than in England: in proportion to the population the numbers persecuted and executed for witchcraft were several times higher than in England, and victims were more likely to be tortured and burned than merely hanged for the offence, as they frequently were in England. With this background, James must have appeared like a maniac to his new English subjects. For more detail see http://www.shc.ed.ac.uk/Research/witches/introduction.html, from Edinburgh University. The last execution for witchcraft in Scotland was as late as 1727; in England 1682.

http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/libraries/rare/witchcraft/w-england16&17/w-england16.html gives a figure of about 1,000 executions for witchcraft in England. The Edinburgh University study indicates between 3,000 and 4,000 cases in Scotland, about two thirds resulting in executions, say around 2,000 in total. These figures must be treated with great caution, but the much higher prosecution and execution rates in Scotland are very evident, particularly when we note that in the 1750s the populations of Scotland and England were around 1.3m and 5.8m respectively. See http://www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/population/british.htm .

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

So, the idea that King James I (or VI if you wish, but not VIII, if you please!) was rather obsessed with witches might be one of the reasons for its inclusion, some are saying. However, does anyone know if the versions by John Wycliff or William Tyndale also translated the phrase as witch? Or perhaps that of Martin Luther?

I suppose all of these men were also living in the witch-burning epoch (although Wycliff only just with heretics being burnt more commonly in those days, I think).

Luther's translation from 1545 reads, "Die Zauberinnen sollst du nicht leben lassen." If I'm allowed to translate it to English in a way that's less poetic but IMHO captures the nuances of the original German better, it says pretty much, "You are forbidden to let female magic-users live." I guess Luther's D&D party was really boring

Well, really, it says the same as the KJV, with the main differences being an explicit feminine form for the witches (true to the Hebrew original), while English just doesn't have such forms, and the somewhat more imperative nuance of "sollst nicht" in German than "shall not" in English. Though I'm not a linguist of 17'th century English, so I might be mistaken about that.

So, as I was saying, King James is by far not the first to translate it that way.

 

[Craig B]

The Edinburgh University research indicates that 84% of those accused of witchcraft in Scotland were women. James would have taken this gender predominance for granted and would presumably have been inclined to retroject this observation into his understanding of the source texts.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

That the vast majority of those accused of sorcery were women, was true just about everywhere, though, as I was mentioning earlier.

And considering what IMHO the whole BS was about, it HAD to be women. Just like it's not surprising in the least that the hatred and terror tactics in 1865 in southern USA would explode against specifically blacks, nor that the hatred and terror tactics would explode specifically against successful conversos in Spain in the 15'th century... well, when you look at how gender relations and judicial proceedings had evolved since Charlemagne's time, a campaign of hatred and terror against women is just about what I'd expect around that point in Germany and France.

Every time that the privileges of group A over group B start to erode, out come the hate speeches and eventually the terror tactics to keep them in line. And that's really what had happened there. You don't see much hatred against women in the Dark Ages, when they had no rights, couldn't inherit anything, and could be made to go up in smoke or be subject to a cruel trial by ordeal on just an unsupported accusation of infidelity. Then what happens by the late middle ages? Well, there's increasingly a return to Roman law instead of ecclesiastical courts and ancient German customs (note how the Malleus Maleficarum happens within decades of the Poor Barons' Rebellion), and even more importantly women start to have SOME rights. We see women inheriting stuff, running businesses as long as they stay unmarried, etc. And predictably out comes the hatred and out come the terror tactics against women.

And a terror campaign it was indeed. If some terror group had brutally murdered -- to keep the proportions -- about a million or two USA citizens in the 20'th century alone, well, you get the idea. Think the equivalent of a WTC every frikken year, and with victims in every town.

And it worked too. The profession of midwife is decimated, for example, and child-birth is largely transferred to male doctors. That's one profession that had been dominated by women, and where women actually had a job other than pussy on legs and housekeeper for a husband. And it's among the most targeted for witchcraft accusations. And quite successfully too.

But at any rate, whether you think that explanation has merit or not, nevertheless, we can still say that it being predominantly against women had been the case everywhere, not just in Scotland. King James really fit the pattern of the hysteria across most of Europe, rather than bringing it specifically from Scotland. Basically, sorry, Scots, you didn't invent THAT. We have prior art over here

 

[Craig B]

Hans

If you have prior art in this field, you're welcome to it. That sexually biased witch hunt mania is not to be listed among Scottish inventions is not something I find disturbing. I'll be content with the separate steam condenser, the pedal bicycle, television and penicillin. The Edinburgh University study has this to say about other countries.

A gender division of 85% women and 15% men is seen in most other parts of Europe, but in areas like Estonia, Russia and Finland the percentage of men accused is as high and in some areas higher than of women. In Iceland the percentage of men executed was as high as 90%. It is possible therefore to say that Scotland is quite similar to the rest of mainland Europe, but France and many parts of Germany, where many of the European witch trials occurred, were politically, religiously and culturally quite different from Scotland. The Scandinavian comparison should not be ignored even if it demonstrates very different patterns.

So of course you're right about the general pattern, and I wasn't claiming any peculiarity about the Scottish experience beyond its exceptional intensity. However, the different gender pattern in parts of Scandinavia and the Baltic lands is surprising.

With regard to James Stuart's personal background, is it not interesting that his predecessors in both kingdoms were extremely prominent and politically-active women (indeed in England his two immediate predecessors), and that James was brought up to despise his mother Mary, following her deposition when he was an infant?

 

[Robrob]

It's strange how so many religions spend so much time obsessing over what women get to do or not.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, it's not all that surprising, and you probably know the relevant bits better than me.

The Baltic Countries for a start were pagans that were just being Christened in that interval. The focus wasn't as much on women, as just on getting them to stay christened instead of running to their sacred groves and washing it off. It's not as much trials of witchcraft per se, as of heresy and apostasy. And as such, it shows a pattern more similar to other trials for heresy and apostasy, which too targeted men more than women. See, the inquisition in Spain or Portugal.

Sure, witchcraft was thrown in too as the standard satanism accusation, but basically the focus was on it terrorizing a whole population into submission. In Germany, France or Scottland that just wasn't necessary, really. Those countries hadn't had anyone who even remembered a different deity for many CENTURIES.

The Scandinavian countries, well, it depends on which you mean, but again, they come 2-3 centuries late to the Christ fan-club and especially Sweden and Norway never took it nearly as seriously as, say, the HRE. In the rural areas, there are people using the churches built by the church to worship their own Norse gods for centuries after officially being Christians.

So again, what gets lumped under "witchcraft", is actually often an extra standard charge to trials for apostasy and heresy. Which, again, is something you want to intimidate whole populations over. And then if you make such a show of force, you go after the strong ones that can lead such a defiance: the men.

Add some church conflicts and fights for power -- e.g., the one that resulted in the Stockholm Bloodbath and, again, you don't want to target the powerless women there. If you want to make a point that basically says "you <bleep>ing <bleep>s don't ever get the idea that you're entitled to pick on a clergyman ever again", you don't go after the women who don't get a say in that anyway. You go after those who can: the men.

ADDITIONALLY, in the norse culture, the seidr magic was traditionally OK for women to do. Christianity never managed to do all that much to that idea. Again, we're talking people who were very late-comers to Christianity. However for men it wasn't. Calling a MAN a practicer of seidr magic was like calling a guy gay in Saudi Arabia. Them's fighting words.

ADDITIONALLY, in the aspect I mentioned before, in Norse culture, women had more rights in the first place. In the 11'th to 15'th century there wasn't much of a loss of privilege of men to women, like in Germany and France, but actually the other way around. Christianity worked hard to reduce the rights of women there. You don't have much reason to make hatred and terror campaign against those getting shafted. You make them against those getting rights. See why there wouldn't be much of a reason to terrorize the women into knowing their place?