The Devil in the Flesh

This article focuses on the body of the witch as her bond to the Devil. Witches were identified and punished through the guidance of the Malleus Malleficarum, a key text of the Inquisition, and based on Aristotelian ideas and demonology borrowed from Augustine and other ideas from Scholasticism. A kind of alternative anthropology that also included a gender analysis that women were particularly susceptible to such evil was a part of this system. They also personified a hidden and heretical connection with nature. Following De Certeau and Foucault, this article looks past these ancient concepts to distinguish witchcraft and possession as two frameworks explaining the relation between body and soul.