After taking power in a coup in 66 AD, the Zealots, a collection of radical Jewish factions, launched an uprising against the Roman Empire. Their ruthlessness was not enough to prevent the defeat of the Jewish forces and the sacking of the city of Jerusalem.

The Rise of the Zealots

From the year 66 AD to 73 AD, the Romans were embroiled in a brutal war with the Jewish population of Judaea after subjugating them in the 1st century BC. After a period of client rule, Judaea came under direct Roman authority. There were routine riots against the authorities and demands from leaders of the Jewish community to restore their autonomy. The Romans responded with brutal crackdowns, further alienating the Jewish people.

Tensions increased with a string of assassinations of anyone suspected of collaborating with the Romans. This was done by a group of men known as the Sicarii. More Jews began to embrace certain forms of religious fanaticism, believing that only total obedience to God and the Torah could save them from total domination by Rome. One such figure, Theudas, even tried to claim that he could part the waters of the Jordan River before he was executed.

In 64 AD, when Gessius Florus became the Governor of Roman Judaea, he faced a rising challenge in maintaining control over the territory. When Florus attempted to seize funds from the Temple in Jerusalem, riots broke out that forced him to leave the city. King Herod Agrippa II failed to stop the unrest and Jewish rebels took control of the city and repulsed a Roman counterattack. They formed the Judean provisional government. However, internal chaos led to the rise of hardline factions led by Eleazer Ben Simon. These factions, known as the Zealots, united and overthrew the provisional government, executing several of its leaders and forming a tyrannical government.

Jerusalem on the Eve of the Siege

For the next couple of years, the Zealots ruled over Jerusalem until the Romans returned. Initially, the Roman General Vespasian held off from attacking the city, believing that the Jews would destroy themselves through a civil war. This enabled Ben Simon to tighten his grip on the city. The Zealots created a tribunal that executed members of the former government, including Niger the Perean and Joseph Ben Gurion. They even left the corpses of their rivals unburied in violation of Jewish law and customs.

Notwithstanding the turmoil gripping the city, Jerusalem remained the major center Jewish culture and society. The city and its environs covered several hundred acres and may have had a population of 100,000 inhabitants. The Herodians and Hasmoneans had built walls around and within the city, but many of them were too weak to withstand a serious attack. Managing affairs in the Temple Mount was the Sanhedrin, a High Court originally formed in the Hasmonean period. It was the Sanhedrin’s defiance of Roman orders that led to Florus’s theft of Temple funds.

Some of the Jerusalemite Jews decided to embrace Roman rule in the theory that they would benefit from collaborating. Most notable of these people was Josephus, a Jewish rebel leader who was captured and later became a trusted advisor to Vespasian and his son Titus. He is best known as a historian and he left an account of the Siege of Jerusalem and the Zealots. Before the siege began, the Zealots cracked down on anyone they believed was a collaborator, often having them executed. Their rule helped tarnish Jerusalem’s reputation as a cosmopolitan center of life in the region.

Zealot Factions and Internal Conflict

After leading campaigns in Galilee and Judaea, Vespasian returned to Rome to become emperor in 69 AD. He ordered his son, Titus, to completely crush the Jewish revolt. Titus marched on Jerusalem with an army of 50,000 men and began besieging the city from Mount Scopus in April 70 AD. His forces carried a formidable complement of siege equipment and heavily outnumbered the defenders. However, the walls of the city prevented him from overrunning Jerusalem immediately.

Inside the city, the Zealots vowed to fight to the death. However, they were undermined by internal divisions that fatally weakened their ability to resist. In control of the outer courts of the Temple complex and parts of the city was John of Gischala and his supporters. He had fled to Jerusalem after resisting the Romans in Galilee. Once they massacred Eleazar Ben Simon’s supporters in the inner courts, they took control of the entire Temple complex. Simon bar Giora, who had been invited into the city to stop the other Zealots, took control over large parts of the rest of the city and fought intense battles with both the Romans and John’s men.

Throughout the siege, the Zealots engaged in brutal internecine warfare. Both John of Gischala and Eleazar Ben Simon tried to wipe each other out and destroyed most of Jerusalem’s food stores in the process. Simon bar Giora had the largest contingent of defenders under his command, but was still unable to take control of the rest of the city. All three Zealot leaders brutally murdered anyone standing in their way, including people they suspected of helping the Romans.

The Zealots’ Battle Tactics

Titus’s army managed to establish siege works that surrounded the entire city, preventing the Jewish garrison from receiving supplies or reinforcements. The Romans were skilled practitioners of siege warfare, having captured many cities before, and they had little difficulty this time. Titus ordered deserters executed publicly to maintain discipline and staged parades outside the city as a show of force to intimidate the defenders. Instead of assaulting the city directly, they methodically captured one strongpoint after another. By steadily making progress, they took the Temple Mount and destroyed it, enabling them to prepare for the final conquest of the rest of the city.

Despite their internal divisions and the catastrophic supply situation in Jerusalem, the Zealots proved to be tough fighters for the Romans to defeat. Early in the siege, some of the Jewish defenders snuck out from the walls and launched a surprise attack on Roman positions in the Kidron Valley. Only after Titus personally rallied his troops were the Romans able to repel this attack.

When the Romans brought up siege towers, the Zealots dug tunnels underneath them to set them aflame. Their ruthlessness slowed down the Romans’ progress and they used the formidable city walls to their advantage. However, they lacked the weaponry to destroy all of the Romans’ siege engines. This meant that they could not break the siege from within. Furthermore, as the siege went on, they struggled to replace their losses and could not drive the Romans out of the positions they captured.

The Messianic Fervor Behind the Zealot Movement

Notwithstanding the intense rivalry between the different Zealot factions, they were all unified behind a common ideology and ruthlessness. One of the main reasons that Eleazar Ben Simon had toppled the Judaean provisional government was his belief that the moderates were insufficiently devoted to God. The other Zealot leaders shared this belief. Like all Jews, the Zealots believed that the Israelites had been elected by God to serve as his chosen people. For them, any support for the Romans was a direct violation of the will of God and an apostasy, as they were not chosen by God.

In the Torah, there is a story about a man named Phinehas, who killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman for engaging in illicit sexual behavior. God rewarded Phinehas by preventing the divine plague against the Israelites. For the Zealots, Phinehas’s story was a powerful motivator and they brutally cracked down on any Jew who was perceived to not be sufficiently obedient to God’s will.

As the siege went on, the Zealots’ brutality towards their own people increased. In an attempt to motivate Jerusalemites to fight, they burned most of the foodstuffs in the city, causing a famine. According to Josephus, a woman named Mary ate half of her son, fearing that he would be enslaved by the Romans or starve to death. After the city fell, several hundred Zealots fled to a fortress outside of the city called Masada, which they held for a couple more years. When the Romans finally took the fortress, they found that the defenders had all committed suicide. Their ideological fervor did not waver even as it became clear that the Romans were on the verge of winning.

The Fall of Jerusalem

Once the Romans seized the Temple Mount, they slaughtered thousands of Jews that they found inside the compound and plundered the whole area. This was the second time the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed; the First Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar over six centuries earlier. In other parts of the upper and lower cities, the Zealots hung on, but were short of food, water, and had lost a lot of men.

In order to increase pressure on the Jews still resisting, Titus ordered his army to burn and sack what remained of the city. They set fire to parts of the city where the rebels remained ensconced, hoping to burn them out of their positions. At the same time, they promised mercy to any Jew that fled the Zealots, especially the Idumaeans. This was met with additional violence by Zealot holdouts, who condemned any deserter as a traitor.

By September, the rest of the upper city had fallen and the Romans destroyed the rest of the city. Only three towers of Herod’s palace and part of the Western Wall remained; the rest was completely devastated. Titus showed little mercy; 11,000 Jewish prisoners starved to death on his watch. Vespasian allegedly ordered all the members of the Davidic line massacred. For the Jews, the destruction of the temple was a traumatizing event commemorated on Tisha B’Av.

Following Josephus’s historiographical tradition, scholars have long argued that the Zealots helped bring catastrophe upon the Jews with their cruelty and savagery. Their actions served as a warning for those that embraced religious extremism. Additionally, the collapse of the revolt and the Zealots’ failure led to the rise of Rabbinic Judaism.

Between the years 772 and 804, the Frankish King Charles (most notably known as Charlemagne) waged war against his northeastern neighbors. Centuries before, the Saxons and Franks had been tribes migrating and fighting together for or against Rome. Now their paths had diverged. The Saxons were pagans with tribal leaders, while the Franks were Christians with a charismatic, strong king. By the late 8th century, the inevitable had come, and war ensued. This conflict would result in the eventual absorption of most of Saxony into Francia, the decline of paganism, and the migration of Saxons across the kingdom.

The Path to Charlemagne’s Wars Against the Saxons

“You love the lilies of peace and the roses of war; thus you are resplendent in white and red.” 

To fully understand the wars between Charlemagne and the Saxons, it is necessary to revisit the time of his grandfather. This war, which lasted approximately 30 years and took most of Charlemagne’s time and energy, was not a religious war. Though religion, like all things at that time, played a large part in the story. It was primarily a territorial war. Charles Martel (Martel means “the hammer”) first engaged the Saxons in 718 AD because three years previously they had attacked Austrasia (the province Charles was lord over). Until that time, the Saxons and the House of Charles, known as the Carolingians, had been at peace. Charles was, in fact, in prison during their raid and waited until his position had improved to attack.

It is harder to understand the Saxons’ aggression when factoring in Charles’s father, Pepin II. During his entire time as Mayor of the Palace (the person who ruled for the king), Saxony and Francia had been at peace. Now that the situation had changed, and the Saxons thought that Charles was weaker than his father, they most likely thought they could take advantage of the situation.

While Charles was sick in 723, the Saxons once again took the initiative and invaded Francia. The following year, Charles led a large force to punish them. Little is known from the sources of the time, but it is clear that the peace that Charles formed did not last long after his death.

After Charles died in 741, the war continued sporadically through Pepin III’s (also known as “The Short”) reign until 758, after which he secured peace with the Saxons. After many campaigns in Saxony, Pepin made the Saxons surrender, promising a tribute of three hundred horses annually. After 758, the troublesome Saxons would not become a problem until 772, when Charlemagne began his conquest of the provinces of Saxony.

Charlemagne’s War Begins

The border between Francia and Saxony runs primarily along a plain with small sections of mountains and forests. This border created tension between the villages closest to the border. Einhard (the close friend and biographer of Charlemagne) wrote that raids were common in both directions. Neither he nor the Royal Frankish Annals (a semi-official yearly chronicle from the 740s to the 810s) mention who fired the first shot, but what we do know is that Charlemagne was ready to channel his namesake and bring the hammer.

He started in 772 by invading Saxony, taking Castle Eresburg, and burning the Irminsul (an important religious structure in Saxony). He was so confident that this would deter any future attacks that in 773-774, he led a campaign against the Lombards, besieging their capital, Pavia, and installing himself as their king. However, in 773, a Saxon army invaded Francia and attacked the castle of Buraburg, burning homes and striking fear into the hearts of the locals. Einhard would later add, “never was there a war more prolonged nor crueller than this, nor one that required greater efforts on the part of the Frankish people.”

As a prelude to his invasion, Charlemagne sent four detachments into Saxony in 774. Three found battle while one only returned with treasure. The following year, Charlemagne assembled in Duren and launched his invasion of Saxony. He captured Castle Syburg and restored Castle Eresburg, which the rebels had attacked during the last Saxon incursion. Charlemagne continued his invasion until he reached the bank of the Weser near Braunsberg, where he encountered a Saxon force. A battle ensued, and the Franks, most likely due to superior numbers and weapons, defeated the Saxons.

After the battle, Charlemagne divided his army and marched his men toward the River Oker. There, Hassi, an Austreleudi or Eastphalian Saxon lord, gave hostages and swore oaths of fealty to Charlemagne. More Angrian Saxons, under Bruno, also gave hostages. After taking these hostages, Charlemagne went back to the other part of his army, still defending the River Weser. Near Lubbecke, the Franks and Westphalian Saxons fought another battle where the Saxons again lost and were forced to give Charlemagne hostages. An addendum to the Royal Frankish Annals adds that before Charlemagne returned, a group of Saxons was able to enter the camp at Lubbecke and slaughter many soldiers while they were sleeping.

The War Continues

While campaigning in Saxony, Charlemagne heard that Hrodgaud was inciting Italy to rebellion. Once again, thinking that he had subdued Saxony, and with winter approaching, thus ending the campaigning season for 775, Charlemagne waited until the following year to handle him. In 776, Charlemagne entered Italy and killed Hrodgaud before Easter. Alas for Charlemagne, the Saxons took this opportunity to attack Castle Eresburg and destroy its walls. They sought to destroy Castle Syburg as well, but they could not enter inside like they had done previously, and their attempts at siegecraft proved futile. As the Saxons labored to destroy Syburg, the Franks regained their courage and launched an attack. They drove the Saxons back to the River Lippe and slaughtered many of them. Once Charlemagne heard of the Saxon attack, he gathered his forces in Worms and launched an attack.

The Royal Frankish Annals suggests that Charlemagne’s reaction was becoming increasingly aggressive. Charlemagne’s anger burned brighter than before, and he drove the Saxons back, instilling great terror into their hearts. They surrendered, handed over hostages, and converted to Christianity. Conversion was a new stipulation most likely to encourage assimilation into the empire.

No battles took place in 777, but Charlemagne did host an assembly in his newly constructed palace at Paderborn, which lay in the heart of Saxony. There, many Saxons came to be baptized (except for Widukind, a Saxon who was still in rebellion and had fled to the Danes). The calm between Saxons and Franks would not last long. For a third time, Charlemagne thought that the Saxons would no longer be a bother. Because of this, he led a campaign over the Pyrenees Mountains into Umayyad Spain to wage war against the Arabs. While he was gone, Widukind led a rebellion against the Franks, burning churches and monasteries. As soon as Charlemagne heard of this breach of loyalty, he raced back to Saxony and met an army near the River Eder. Once again, he was victorious, though he took no hostages. Summer was quickly turning to fall, forcing the king to return to Francia for the winter.

The War Intensified

In 779, Charlemagne assembled in Duren and launched another Saxon campaign. This time, the Saxons put up resistance near Bocholt, but once again, Charlemagne put the Saxons to flight. Being early in the year, Charlemagne was able to continue deeper into Saxony, moving into Westphalia, where he received hostages from those on the other side of the River Weser. This battle concluded his campaign for that year. The years 780-781 proved to be peaceful years with Saxon lords submitting to baptism and fealty.

The year 782 proved to be a turning point in the Saxon wars. Not because the war would turn in either the Saxons or the Franks’ favor, but because King Charlemagne would unleash his harshest measures to subdue his most significant thorn. The year began well with the king assembling Saxons, Avars, and Norsemen. The only face that was wanting was Widukind. When the assembly was over and Charlemagne had headed home, Widukind showed his treachery and launched another rebellion in Saxony. In fact, Charlemagne had already sent an army to deal with some unruly Slavs. However, they turned aside to deal with Widukind, and in the engagement with Widukind, he nearly annihilated the Frankish army. Their actions would unleash the full wrath of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne rushed into Saxony and met the rebels near the Aller and Weser rivers. Though Widukind was not present, the Saxons met Charlemagne, and he killed many in battle. He took many captives, and Charlemagne ordered 4,500 Saxons beheaded for their treachery.

Peace at Last

In the winter of 784-785, Charlemagne did not return to Francia but instead stayed in Eresburg, where he summoned his wife and children. From there, he continually engaged the Saxon rebels and eventually routed them. By the end of the winter season, Widukind entered Charlemagne’s presence and submitted to baptism, swearing fealty.

From this point on, the Saxons were part of the Frankish kingdom. They participated in wars with the Franks, such as in 789, when they led a campaign against the Slavs. However, the Saxons would rise again. In 794, a group of Saxons gathered in Sindfeld against two Frankish armies. Charlemagne led one, and the Chronicler did not mention who led the other. Once they knew that they were outnumbered and surrounded, the Saxons surrendered and swore oaths.

Another revolt occurred in 798, and Charlemagne caused much destruction between the Elbe and the Weser. Thus ended the Saxon Wars for Charlemagne. For the rest of Charlemagne’s life, the Saxons remained pacified, and Saxon lords became increasingly integrated in Francia.

“Correction (April 19, 2026): An earlier version of this article misidentified the date of the painting of Emperor Charlemagne by Albrecht Dürer. It has been updated to reflect the correct dates. We regret the error.”

Europe in the Early Middle Ages was a place of change and uncertainty. The order that Rome provided had vanished, and many smaller states jostled for power as they capitalized on new opportunities, creating upheaval in their wake.

Into this chaos was born a man who would shape the future of Europe for centuries, a man who promoted community-based ascetic virtues and built the foundation for monastic living, which survives to this day. Saint Benedict was not a military leader or a powerful king. He was a hermit and a monk. And he shaped the future of an entire continent.

A World Without Rome

The decline and fall of Rome in the 5th century AD signaled a change in the political and social fabric of Europe. Centralized governance and authority disappeared and were replaced by many proto-feudal societies existing in close proximity. As Rome declined in the 5th century and eventually collapsed, there was a massive shift from urban life to agricultural life. This was due to many factors, such as the disruption of trade networks and the inability of cities to sustain large populations.

As a result, Europe suffered a major decline in literary pursuits. Books and libraries were neglected and sometimes intentionally destroyed either by those with little regard for literacy or by those who feared the religious aspects of certain texts. Pagans destroyed Christian works and Christians destroyed pagan works, although the primary cause of the loss of literacy and literary works was the breakdown of the institutions that supported them. This dynamic needed a remedy, and a hermit from Nursia provided it.

Benedict the Hermit and Holy Man

According to the Dialogues, the account of Pope Gregory I, written around 593 AD, Benedict was born into a noble family around 480 AD and was sent to study in Rome. Dissatisfied with what the academic life offered him, Benedict left Rome and traveled eastwards, whereupon he met a monk, Romanus of Subiaco. Romanus had a profound impact on Benedict; so much so that Subiaco gave him his habit, and Benedict spent the next three years living in a cave overlooking a lake.

Although he lived the life of a hermit, Romanus visited him frequently, and word of his life spread through the local communities. When the abbot of a local monastery died, the community asked Benedict to take up the position, which he reluctantly agreed to. According to the Dialogues, the monks resented Benedict’s stricter rule and put poison in his glass cup. When Benedict made the sign of the cross, the glass shattered, revealing the monks’ treachery. Benedict calmly resigned his position and went back to his life as a hermit. Although this story is likely an invention or an exaggeration, it speaks to the image of Benedict that was cultivated.

Around this time, disciples were drawn to him, and he is said to have founded several small monasteries in or near Subiaco. His fame grew, and patricians and noble families sent their sons to him to become monks under his care. Benedict, with a few disciples, then traveled south and founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, where he instituted his guide for monastic life, known as the Rule.

Benedict’s “Rule”

The life of Saint Benedict is largely characterized by the rules he instituted for monks under his authority. Through this dynamic, he has come to be seen as a wise and benevolent figure; strict, yet fatherly, loving, and calm. Of primary importance in his Regula Benedicti is the sense of community. This “life in common,” or “cenobitic” way, was seen as the most reliable way to God, in contrast with the life of a hermit, which Saint Benedict believed was suitable only for those who had mastered community life, although it was not a necessary culmination of the path to godliness.

Benedict established a process for those living the monastic life. It began with a year’s probation wherein a novitiate took part in the monastic community to fully appreciate what the life entailed and whether it really was appropriate for the individual. This ensured that monks were dedicated to the way of life rather than it being a choice based on a passing phase or a whim.

The Rule can be defined as having three pillars that form a core value of its practice. These were exemplified in the three vows that monks took upon dedicating themselves to the order. These core vows were those of stability, fidelity to the monastic way of life, and obedience.

Stability meant a lifelong commitment to the monk’s community and dedication to the monastery. It meant not looking elsewhere for change or for other sources of pleasure or enlightenment. It represented rootedness, endurance, and loyalty born out of faith in a single community.

The dynamics of fidelity to the monastic way of life and obedience meant becoming part of the monastic community and following the laws that governed it. It was a structured life that demanded a schedule of prayer and work (known as Ora et Labora), and of communal life. This schedule was adhered to by the power of the vow.

Of course, these weren’t the only virtues upheld by the Rule. Other aspects included moderation, humility, stewardship, learning, discipline, hospitality, and love, amongst other things. Through all of these tenets, monks were encouraged to follow similar paths, all devoted to God, and in stark contrast to the chaotic and violent world that existed outside the monastery walls. In this, the monastery offered stability and permanence in an uncertain time.

Monasteries and Their Role in Rebuilding Society

The decline and fall of Rome had a huge effect on the socio-political structure of Europe. Urban life decreased, as did central authority and the academic arts. Monasteries, such as Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict, adhered to the Rule and helped preserve much of what was lost. They played a crucial role in guiding Europe through the chaos of a tumultuous era and into an era of greater stability and certainty.

In an era heavily reliant on agriculture, monasteries made significant contributions to society. These institutions came to own vast tracts of land and became extremely productive farms in their own right. Monks dedicated much of their lives to their communities, and as such, monasteries were an invaluable aspect of medieval life.

Monks worked the fields, pioneering new techniques in agriculture, such as crop rotation. They drained swamps, cleared forests, initiated selective breeding for healthier herds, and improved soil with better irrigation techniques. Through these practices, monks played a major part in providing food for communities and offering a source of comfort during uncertain times.

The preservation of knowledge was another hallmark of monastic life. Monasteries were centers of learning, and as the Rule highlighted learning through study and literacy, monks spent large parts of their lives hunched over desks copying books and other important manuscripts. Before the invention of the printing press, this was the primary method for replicating the written word. Monastic labor proved invaluable for preserving the ancient knowledge that would have been lost otherwise.

This extended not just to texts compatible with Christian doctrine, but to many of the old pagan texts as well, including ancient poetry, plays, and epics. Plato, Virgil, Aristotle, and Ovid all had their works preserved by monks for future generations.

This dedication to academic pursuits extended to the education of others, and monasteries took up the mantle of schools, providing an environment of learning for noble and common children alike. Apart from training the future clergy, monasteries were schools for other pursuits as well. Grammar and arithmetic were taught, along with music and astronomy. In an era when education was a privilege rather than a necessity for the common folk, monasteries emerged as centers of academia. As academic institutions, they had a huge influence on education in the Middle Ages, resulting in the establishment of major universities such as Oxford and Bologna.

Monasteries also served as guesthouses, and during a time when there was little in the way of accommodations for visitors and pilgrims, this was an important aspect. Monks and nuns took great pride in being hospitable and providing respite to weary travelers. Hospitality also extended towards the poor, and monasteries proved to be shelters of kindness and humanity.

Similar in nature, convents had the same effect, operating as centers of prayer, charity, and learning. According to the traditional stories, the female branch of the order was founded by Saint Benedict’s sister, Saint Scholastica.

It is unsurprising that monasteries and convents were popular with people from all walks of life. As the Christian faith spread throughout Europe, thousands of such establishments were built, and Saint Benedict’s Rule found common ground all over the continent.

Through his works, Saint Benedict provided a foundation for the rebuilding of Europe in a chaotic time. His Rule resulted in the preservation of knowledge, the progression of agricultural techniques, the rebuilding of social order, and a devotion to God, which left a lasting legacy on the continent. It is reasonable to assume that without this one humble man, living a hermit’s life in a cave above Subiaco, Europe would have turned out very differently, and would have been a lot poorer for it.

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, a leader of the French Resistance, stands apart from her compatriots for being the only woman to hold such a position. Known as “Hedgehog” for her resilience in the face of a powerful regime, Fourcade played a crucial role in gathering intelligence and orchestrating dangerous missions. The Alliance network, guided by Fourcade and dubbed “Noah’s Ark” by the Gestapo, supplied the Allies with the necessary information to perform military operations, such as those on D-Day. At extreme risk to herself and those she loved, Fourcade took on the Nazis and emerged as one of WWII’s greatest underground legends.

How the French Resistance Got Started

The French Resistance did not begin as the network that it later turned into. It began with quiet, defiant acts and a refusal to accept fascism as the new norm within France. In the summer of 1940, Charles de Gaulle, then a lesser-known general, made a six-minute speech from a BBC studio in London. He spoke words of encouragement to the disheartened French in their homes, rejected Marshal Pétain’s armistice with Nazi Germany, and reframed the fall of France as a setback, not a surrender.

However, this rallying cry did not fully acknowledge how grim the situation at home actually was. The German occupation of the north and the establishment of the Vichy government in the south left the French population demoralized.

Before pointing fingers backward in condemnation of history’s mistakes, it is important to remember that France had lost a generation of men in WWI and wasn’t eager to do so again (though, after the second world war, it would be estimated that France lost over half a million people). Pétain’s Vichy administration, a puppet regime masquerading as a neutral entity, left little reason for those yearning to resist to believe their voices would be heard. The French military’s famed Maginot Line, touted as an unbreachable defense, had been bypassed almost effortlessly by the German forces seeking to occupy France.

Yet even amidst all these defeats, acts of personal defiance began to appear. Flyers appeared denouncing Nazi policies, graffiti defiled Nazi images, and words of rebellion were spread. These early seeds of resistance sprouted, watered by a refusal to become part of the fascist regime and faith in France’s honor, bruised as it may have been. The movement would soon grow into more organized cells, each tasked with constructing chaos behind enemy lines.

How Ms. Fourcade Became Involved

Born into privilege in Marseille to a family made wealthy in the steamship industry, and raised partly in cosmopolitan Shanghai, Fourcade seemed destined for a conventional socialite’s life. By the 1930s, however, she was a divorced single mother of two with a pilot’s license and a career in the burgeoning radio industry. First in Shanghai, then in Morocco, she experienced the freedoms denied to many women in the world and became accustomed to free thinking.

During her short time as a military wife, she met Georges Loustaunau-Lacau. He was a young French intelligence officer with suspicions about Germany’s fast-growing military might. Loustaunau-Lacau recognized Fourcade’s sharp intellect and recruited her for his covert information gathering. The two stayed in contact even after her marriage fell apart. By 1940, with France reeling from the Blitzkrieg and the fall of the Maginot Line, Loustaunau-Lacau became the father of the Alliance spy network. Fourcade, with her knack for persuasion and intelligence, became the network’s secret weapon. Working alongside Loustaunau-Lacau, Marie-Madeleine was kept busy recruiting agents and gathering intelligence.

Fourcade’s spying and coordinating of spies meant her children were deeply endangered. Eventually, when her son was twelve and her little girl ten, Marie-Madeleine realized she had to get them out of France before she was caught or they were used against her. Marie-Madeleine sent her children to Switzerland, although they had to make the last bit of the perilous trek on their own. Later in life, Marie-Madeleine would claim it was her son, the eldest of the two children, whose bravery got them over the line and to safety.

The Resistance’s Greatest Successes

The French Resistance was absolutely not a military might (too many French soldiers had already been captured or killed). But what it lacked in brute force, it more than made up for in cunning and creativity. Operating under the radar and often against impossible odds, Marie-Madeleine and her ragtag group of unsung heroes made life miserable for the occupying Nazis.

The Resistance excelled at sabotaging Nazi supply lines, communications, and infrastructure. They derailed trains, cut telephone lines, and blew up bridges, all while doing everything they could to avoid the Gestapo. These seemingly small acts of rebellion forced the Germans to spread their troops thin, diverting resources that could have otherwise been deployed on the front lines. A thin line of defense is a weak line of defense, making life (and the odds) much better for the Allies.

One notable victory was the surrender of Column Elster, where 18,500 German soldiers laid down their arms to the Americans. Months of relentless and unpredictable harassment by Resistance operatives had diminished German morale, both on the battlefield and back home.

Imagine being a German soldier, knowing that the people whose country you were in hated you. You do not know if the vehicle you have will stop (the Resistance may have put tin shavings in your brake lines) or if the munitions coming to you on train tracks will ever make it to you (the Resistance often removed bolts from the railways), or if you’ll be driving away and suddenly stuck in enemy territory (French factories that made vehicles for the Germans may have encouraged workers to tamper with the fuel gages). It was exhausting, and it sapped the German will to win.

There were quieter but no less important acts of information gathering as well. Resistance agents mapped supply routes, tracked troop movements, and even provided the Allies with a stunningly detailed, 55-foot-long map of Normandy’s beaches. That map became crucial to the success of the D-Day landings. The Resistance, a group of women and amateurs, was punching well above its weight.

It was these same women that carried secret documents in baby carriages, hid weapons under loaves of bread, and delivered life-saving supplies to those in hiding, often right under the noses of Nazi occupiers. They took downed Allied airmen into their homes, facing the threat of being killed or sent to a work camp if they were found out.

Julia Pirotte, a Polish-Jewish immigrant, led attacks on Nazi targets in Marseille and documented her efforts through photography. Women like her, Germaine Tillion, and Geneviève de Gaulle (Charles’s niece) shattered stereotypes, proving that resistance came in many forms and every gender.

Many of the ladies living under Nazi oppression had never wielded a weapon but had picked up a pen. This is why underground newspapers and pamphlets circulated anti-Nazi propaganda, letting other dissenters know they were not alone. These efforts nurtured the earliest seeds of defiance.

It is a myth that the Resistance was one cohesive, all-powerful force. Instead, it was a myriad of individuals and groups, united by a shared goal: to defy tyranny. And in doing so, they showed the world that courage isn’t always found on a battlefield; it’s also found in churches, around kitchen tables, and over a glass of wine.

What Happened to the Resistance at the End of the War?

When France was finally liberated and began piecing itself back together, the Resistance found itself pushed aside. Women, who had been indispensable during the war, were quickly shushed. The call to “repopulate France” rang loud, as the nation sought to replenish the workforce lost to two devastating wars. The wartime heroines, many of whom had risked their lives for their country, were now expected to trade their ambitions for aprons and their espionage for strollers. Their sacrifices, if spoken out loud, only served to remind collaborators of their own failings.

Simultaneously, the myth of a grand, unified Resistance took hold. Known as “résistancialisme,” this post-war narrative allowed France to rebuild its shattered national identity. By painting the Resistance as a vast, collective effort, it helped to obscure uncomfortable truths about the widespread acceptance of the Vichy regime and the shocking moral compromises made under Nazi rule. This myth, though comforting, often overlooked the fact that active resisters were a small minority, leaving the majority of the population to navigate survival under occupation in ways that surely weren’t heroic.

Worse, there were “war babies,” living proof of a more complicated reality. As the Nazis departed, they left behind, among other things, evidence of relationships, both consensual and coerced, between German soldiers and French women. These innocents, who couldn’t have picked who fathered them, were sometimes referred to as “enfants de Boches,” (not a nice term). For women who hadn’t acted with the Resistance like Marie-Madeleine had, fraternizing with the enemy was seen as the ultimate cowardice, and public shaming (such as head-shaving) was often their punishment. France would rather believe every one of its people had resisted instead of making the Nazis comfortable in any way.

In the end, the Resistance’s legacy became a double-edged sword: its legend became both a source of immense pride but also a repository for national guilt and selective memory. Women’s contributions were often sidelined in favor of a male-dominated narrative that was mostly myth. The complexities of survival under occupation were brushed aside in favor of tales of glory. What remained was a fiction of a shadow army and of heroism that helped France move forward, even as it left many of the actual stories of brave resistors untold.

An orphan from minor nobility and rising from relative obscurity, Irene of Athens became one of the most powerful people in the world. She claimed the title of Empress of the Byzantine Empire, and ruled as the sole monarch—an incredible feat in a deeply patriarchal world at the time—and was even canonized and revered as a saint in the Greek Orthodox Church. However, the cost she paid to get there was unquestionably horrific, ordering the blinding of her own son, who was a political opponent to her rule.

Irene of Athens and Her Path to the Throne

Born into the noble Sarantapechos family sometime between 750 and 756 AD, Irene of Athens is said to have been orphaned at a young age (the records are sparse). Her age at the time, and the nature of her parents’ death, is unknown, but it is likely she became a pliable political tool in the hands of other family members as they jostled for power in the charged political climate of the time.

The circumstances surrounding her marriage to Byzantine Emperor Leo IV are a subject of debate. It has been suggested that she was selected as part of a bride-show, in which eligible women were paraded for selection. Whatever the truth is, she married the 19-year-old co-emperor in 769.

Leo IV was the son of the Emperor Constantine V, who served as the senior emperor at the time. This was an era of turmoil for the Byzantine Empire. Muslim Abbasids threatened from the south and east, while Slavic forces threatened from the north and west. Meanwhile, within the Byzantine military, ethnic and regional tensions, as well as ambitious generals, created a situation that demanded constant attention. To add to this dynamic, the empire was being divided from a religious perspective due to the iconoclastic controversy, wherein iconoclasts (like Constantine V) viewed icons as idolatry and took measures to wipe out iconophilia, further increasing factionalism within an already shaky empire.

Irene and Leo had a son in 771, named Constantine. His birth occurred in the Porphyra Chamber, a room lined with purple marble reserved as the place for royal births in the Great Palace of Constantinople. Purple, as was tradition, was a color associated with nobility and wealth, and this room turned out to be a significant setting for the drama that unfolded in the years that followed.

Emperor Constantine V died in 775, leaving his son Leo IV as the sole emperor, who crowned his son Constantine VI as co-emperor. Leo, an iconoclast who supported the removal of iconography, was at odds with his wife, who was a secret iconophile. When Leo discovered she had smuggled icons into the palace with the help of courtiers, he had the courtiers whipped and rebuked his wife, causing a very public scandal. The drama did not go much further, as Leo died shortly thereafter, in September 780, from tuberculosis at the age of 30, and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son. With Constantine still a child, the rule of the Byzantine Empire came under the control of Irene, who ruled as regent, aided by the chief minister, the eunuch Staurakios.

Imperial Challenges

Irene was now a young widow in a precarious position. Her rule was threatened by rebellions and coup attempts as she navigated the murky and extremely dangerous waters of being a regent and a woman in charge of the Byzantine Empire. After Leo died, plans were immediately concocted to remove Irene and the child emperor from power in favor of one of Leo’s half-brothers, Nicephorus. The plot was uncovered, and moving swiftly, Irene had five of Leo’s brothers arrested and forced to take up the cloth, thus barring them from any imperial ambitions. Such was the swiftness and vigor of Irene’s response that it earned her a great deal of respect as a decisive ruler.

From this solid foundation of ruthlessness, Irene began her own reforms, winning political support from within the court and replacing iconoclasts with iconophiles, reversing the policies of her imperial predecessors. She took more power than was expected, as evidenced by the coins that were minted, clearly showing her in a position of power over that of her son. In practice, she denied him any say in public affairs.

She was driven to upset expectations of her weakness. A female regent before Irene, Empress Martina ruled for less than a year before her tongue was mutilated, and she was sent into exile on the island of Rhodes. By showing a powerful hand, Irene avoided a similar fate. In 781, she took swift military action against those who defied her. She accused the general in charge of Sicily, Elpidius, of plotting against her, and when his troops in Sicily failed to surrender him, Irene sent a fleet to deal with the problem. Elpidius and his supporters were crushed, and Elpidius fled to the Abbasid Caliphate.

During her rule, however, Irene found mixed military success, with Staurakios achieving victory against the Sclaveni, a Slavic tribe that had invaded Greece. Byzantine forces, however, struggled against the Abbasids, and Irene was forced into a position where she had to pay an annual tribute to secure the borders.

Nevertheless, Irene’s most notable achievements were not in the realms of military action but in restoring the veneration of icons within the empire.

The Restoration of Iconophilia

Irene’s husband and father-in-law had been iconoclasts, and with their passing, Irene pressed for icons to be accepted again. The biggest obstacle was Paul IV, who was Patriarch of Constantinople. When he died in 784, Irene elevated her former secretary, Tarasios, to the position. Despite opposition and the disruption of councils, Irene and Tarasios were able to convene with bishops in Nicaea in October 787, whereupon they formally reversed imperial policy and restored the veneration of icons as an article of faith.

The factionalization that the issue created was tense, but through careful politicking and diplomatic efforts with iconoclast and formerly iconoclast religious figures, Irene and Tarasios were able to avoid a civil war. Irene was even able to secure the consent of the Pope in Rome. Within the Greek Orthodox Church, Irene’s efforts afforded her a place of great reverence, and she was later canonized as a saint.

Irene and Her Son

Despite the political victories, Irene’s biggest threat persisted in the form of her son and his imperial ambitions. It was expected that Irene would step down as regent when her son came of age, but she refused to do so, and a great rift opened as the two fought for ultimate control of the Byzantine Empire.

Constantine VI, however, was not free from scandal. He rejected his mother’s attempts to marry him into the Carolingian dynasty through Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne, and the engagement was broken off by Irene. She then selected Maria of Amnia to be his wife, and the couple was wed in 788. Despite having two children (two daughters, Euphrosyne and Irene), Constantine was not fond of Maria and forced her to become a nun. He took his mistress, Theodota, Irene’s lady-in-waiting, as his wife (in 795) after having her crowned Augusta (Empress). This move was highly unpopular with the church, and Constantine lost much political and religious support.

It is suggested, and certainly likely, that Irene was aware of the fallout from this scandal and encouraged her son into such dangerous waters. His removal from power would be easier, and Irene would be able to consolidate her hold on the throne.

While being major factors, these marital events were not the catalysts for the distrust between the two. In 790, Constantine had tried to assert his power and had had Staurakios arrested. Irene responded by having her son and his entourage arrested, but she lacked support from the military. When Constantine was sprung from prison, Irene was removed from the court, but Constantine proved ineffective and suffered military defeats. He allowed his mother back into the imperial court in 792.

Further eroding his public image, he dealt disproportionately with perceived threats. After an attempt at usurpation by Nicephorus, he not only had him blinded, but had his other uncles’ tongues cut out as well. This action led to a revolt, which Constantine crushed with particular cruelty. By the time he remarried, he was already suffering from poor support, and ended up being labeled as an adulterer. Meanwhile, his marriage to Theodota produced a son, Leo, in 796, but the infant died a year later.

Constantine and Irene’s Fates

While Constantine was stricken with grief over the death of his son, Irene took the opportunity to retake power. She had garnered military support by bribing several generals who agreed that Constantine was running the empire into the ground. She also bribed palace guards to remain neutral. Constantine became aware of the plot and attempted to flee, but was captured and dragged to the Porphyra Chamber, where he had been born. And it was there that Irene ordered her son’s eyes to be gouged out.

Irene was now unopposed, but she inherited an empire with severe challenges, and the issue of blinding her own son lost her much support. Facing military threats and being forced to pay tribute to the Abbasids, the empire was under financial strain. She was now in her forties, and she had no heir, and refused to marry. When Charlemagne was proclaimed Emperor of the Romans by the Pope, it sent shockwaves through the Byzantine Empire, as many viewed Byzantium as the rightful successor of Rome. According to legend, there was a marriage proposal from Charlemagne, but it was overturned before it could be properly considered. Nevertheless, Irene managed to strengthen diplomatic ties between the Byzantines and the Franks.

In 802, her finance minister (also named Nicephorus) led a coup and ousted the empress from power. Irene was exiled to the island of Prinkipo. While there, she was suspected of plotting to retake the throne, and was subsequently banished to Lesbos where she died on August 9, 803. There are no records of what caused her death, but while in exile, she lived in considerable hardship, having to spin thread in order to support herself.

Apart from having her own son blinded, Irene is remembered as an iconophile who restored the veneration of icons. Her support of monasteries also won her significant support from the religious community, and today she is remembered as a saint within the Greek Orthodox Church. Her feast day is August 9.

While Jewish communities have been the targets of antisemitic violence for much of European history, pogroms in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century encouraged Jewish intellectuals to consider solutions to the Jewish people’s problems. This process inspired the political Zionism movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which called for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. This article focuses on six prominent Zionist thinkers and their ideas about what a Jewish homeland in Israel would look like.

1. Leon Pinsker

While the idea of the return to the Land of Israel is one dating back to the start of the expulsions of Jews from the Holy Land, modern political Zionism started to develop at the end of the 19th century. The first Jewish thinker to write about the creation of a Jewish state was Leon Pinsker. Born in 1821 in the town of Tomaszow Lubelski in Congress Poland, Pinsker grew up with the belief that Jews must seek to become part of the societies they lived with in order to fight antisemitism.

Despite efforts to gain emancipation for Jews in Europe during the 1848 Revolutions, Jewish rights were still infringed upon. In the Russian Empire, Jews faced legal restrictions and discrimination. When Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a cell of socialist revolutionaries in March 1881, Russian monarchists blamed the Jews. Riots against Jewish communities known as pogroms broke out all over the Russian empire.

Pinsker was horrified and became convinced that Jews needed an alternative option to trusting the Gentiles with giving them full equality. He wrote a book called Autoemancipation! which promoted the idea of Jews pursuing a state or entity outside of Europe where they could govern themselves. He initially thought that America was the best place for a Jewish autonomous homeland, but began to embrace the idea of a Jewish state in Ottoman Palestine. In 1881, he helped form the group Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), the first proto-Zionist organization in Europe. In 1891, he died in Odesa, Ukraine, and was reburied in Israel in 1934.

2. Theodor Herzl

Despite Pinsker’s writings and activism, he never achieved the fame that Hungarian Jewish editor and philosopher Theodor Herzl attained. Herzl was born in Budapest in 1860 to German-speaking Jews who moved to Vienna when he was a boy. He became a law student at the University of Vienna. However, he had little interest in law and became a journalist, working for Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse. According to scholars, he was initially ambivalent about his Jewish identity. That changed when he came to witness European antisemitism firsthand.

It has long been alleged that Herzl was radicalized by watching the Trial of Alfred Dreyfus while serving as the Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse. Dreyfus, a French Army officer, had been accused of spying for Germany during the Franco-Prussian War in a case that was laced with antisemitism. However, some scholars believe that it was the election of avowed antisemite Karl Lueger as Mayor of Vienna that caused Herzl to embrace Zionism. Austria-Hungary was supposed to be a welcoming place for Jews; seeing an antisemite win an election in cosmopolitan Vienna horrified much of the liberal intelligentsia. Herzl moved away from assimilation and vowed to build a new homeland for Jews elsewhere.

Herzl wrote his seminal work, Der Judenstaat, in 1896. He proposed the idea of a Jewish homeland outside of Europe, arguing that the “Jewish question” was not a social or religious question, but a national question. In his pamphlet, he identified sites in Ottoman Palestine, Uganda, or Argentina as suitable locations for a Jewish homeland. The new state would be a liberal utopia with equal rights for all of its inhabitants and German would be the main language. He went around Europe hoping to gain support for his idea from different leaders including the German Kaiser, the Russian Tsar, and the Ottoman Sultan. Notwithstanding opposition from officials across Europe and other Jewish community leaders, he persevered in his vision and organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897.

In Basel, around 200 delegates arrived to confer with Herzl and his colleagues about his vision. They came from all over the world, demonstrating how Zionism appealed to Jews everywhere. The conference created the World Zionist Organization, with chapters in multiple countries. However, there was no consensus on what exactly a new Jewish state would look like. After traveling to Palestine to see the land for himself, Herzl wrote a novel called Altneuland in 1902 about the creation of a utopian Jewish state in Palestine. He died in Vienna in 1904 and was reburied in Israel in 1949.

3. Ber Borochov

The Zionist cause appealed to Jews across the political spectrum. One of the founders of left-wing Zionism was Dov Ber Borochov, more commonly known as Ber Borochov. Borochov was born in the city of Zolotonosha, Ukraine. He embraced socialist ideas to support working-class people around the Russian Empire. Being denied the chance to study at any prestigious Russian universities opened his eyes to anti-Jewish discrimination in the empire.

For many socialists around Europe, the idea of a Jewish state seemed chauvinistic and contrary to socialist ideas of internationalism. Borochov argued that the Jewish people needed a homeland in light of the antisemitism they faced. He also believed that Jews were kept poor when they did not have the freedom to develop their own land and homes. He embraced the idea of a socialist state in Palestine inhabited by Jewish and Arab working people. This became the platform of Poale Zion, a Marxist Zionist political party.

During the First Zionist Conference in Basel, Borochov argued against attempts to create a Jewish state in Uganda, arguing that it would not benefit Jewish working class people. After the Revolution of 1917, he returned to Ukraine to speak publicly about the importance of Poale Zion’s work. Unlike Herzl and Pinsker, Borochov promoted the Yiddish language and argued that it should be the language of the independent Jewish state. After serving as a delegate to the All-Russian Democratic Conference, he died of blood poisoning in 1917. Borochov was one of the most prominent leftist Zionists in history and much of early Israel’s politics was influenced by his work.

4. Ze’ev Jabotinsky

Borochov faced opposition from right-wing Zionists who did not believe in socialist principles. Vladimir Jabotinsky was born into a middle-class Russian Jewish family in Odesa, Ukraine, in 1880. He was ambitious and cosmopolitan, hoping to become a journalist like Herzl. For several years, he wrote a series of articles for different Russian-language newspapers until 1903, when he learned of the Kishinev Pogrom.

Like many other Jewish intellectuals, Herzl became a fervent Zionist in response to pogroms in the Russian empire. He became a believer in the creation of Jewish self-defense militias, especially in places with large Jewish communities like Odesa. He also became a major proponent of the Hebrew language and changed his first name to Ze’ev (Wolf). He traveled all over Europe to promote the Zionist cause, believing that Jewish life in Europe was in peril. When World War I broke out, he joined the British Army along with other Russian Jewish immigrants in Britain and fought to eject the Ottoman Army from Palestine. The Allies succeeded and the British Mandate of Palestine was created.

He was furious about Britain’s decision to assume control of the region and the division of Transjordan from Palestine. He became a leader in the newly-formed Haganah, a Jewish militia in Palestine, only to be arrested by British authorities when found illegally carrying a weapon. When it became clear that Palestine’s Arab population was violently opposed to Jewish settlement in the land, Jabotinsky became an advocate of very aggressive measures to create the state of Israel. His essay, Iron Wall, written in 1923, promoted a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River and insisted that an “Iron Wall” be created to separate the Jewish and Arab populations. That same year, he founded Betar, the first Revisionist Zionist organization created with the intent of challenging the mainstream Jewish Agency in Palestine.

As Jewish settlement increased and fascism rose in Europe, Jabotinsky became more alarmed and convinced that Jews needed to flee to Israel. He foresaw catastrophe for Jews around the world and demanded that Britain allow unlimited immigration to Palestine. Events like Kristallnacht made him insist on a global Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany, which was rejected by most Jewish organizations. When he died in 1940 in New York, he was actively aiming to recruit an army of Jews from around the world to fight the Axis armies in Europe.

5. Ahad Ha’am

The Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, played a role in the development of different forms of Zionism. Cultural Zionism embraced many Haskalah teachings in promoting the creation of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine. The main proponent of this ideology was Ukraine-born Ahad Ha’am. He was originally known as Asher Ginsburg and born in 1856 to a Hasidic Jewish family. His admiration of the Land of Israel did not come from politics; rather it was from his religious upbringing.

Ha’am shed much of his religious practices later but did become an admirer of Leon Pinsker. While in Odesa, he joined Hovevei Zion. However, he began to criticize the practice of establishing Jewish settlements. In his mind, a Jewish state in Palestine would not be able to absorb all of the diaspora and provide a decent standard of living for its inhabitants. In 1891, he wrote an article called Truth From Eretz Israel based on his first visit to Palestine. It noted the problems with living in the region and the fact that the Arabs were absolutely opposed to the Jewish settlement.

In later years, he continued writing pieces for newspapers like Ha-Shilo’aḥ about the impracticality of establishing a Jewish polity in Palestine. He grew publicly combative of other Zionist thinkers like Max Nordau and Herzl. Notwithstanding his concerns about mainstream Zionist thought, he still promoted a Jewish presence in Palestine and helped advise the British government on the Balfour Declaration. After serving five years on the Tel Aviv city council, he died in the city in 1927.

6. Henrietta Szold

Most people assume that Zionism was promoted exclusively by male thinkers. However, Jewish women played a prominent role in the development of Zionism. Born in Baltimore in 1860, Szold came from a middle-class Jewish family and was deeply committed to Jewish values and teachings. In 1904, she became the first woman to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Her commitment to Zionism made her stand out in the American Jewish community, where support for Zionism was initially limited.

When she visited Palestine several times in the early 1900s, she was horrified at the living conditions there and vowed to do something about it. In 1912, she founded Hadassah, a medical service, to help Jews in need of assistance. Hadassah expanded over time as more immigrants arrived in Palestine. Additionally, she was a secretary for the Jewish Publication Society. From 1918 to 1920, she led the Education Department of the Zionist Organization of America.

As the clouds of war loomed over Europe in the 1930s, she became committed to getting as many young Jews to move to Palestine in defiance of British efforts to limit Jewish immigration. Szold founded Youth Aliyah and helped an estimated 20,000 Jewish children escape before the Nazis occupied Europe during World War II. Even as she promoted Jewish settlement in Palestine, she was sympathetic to Arab concerns and insisted that Hadassah help Arab communities too. She also was a member of Ihud, an organization promoting binationalism. She died in the Hadassah hospital that she created in Jerusalem in 1945.

When Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, was promised land by his father, he proceeded to formulate plans for marching an army west across what is now southern Russia. After years of conquest by Batu Khan, Jochi’s son, the Mongols managed to dominate Eastern Europe, where they left a major footprint on the region.

The Mongols Arrive in Europe

The arrival of the Mongols in Eastern Europe during the 13th century was one of the most transformative episodes in the region’s history. They first appeared in the early 1220s, when Genghis’ generals Jebe and Subutai launched their Great Raid into the Rus’ following the conquest of the Khwarezmian Empire.

Some 15 years later, Genghis’s grandson Batu Khan swept westward after conquering much of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Between 1237 and 1241, they devastated the principalities of Rus’, destroyed Kyiv, and advanced into Hungary and Poland. Their actions caused fear and devastation amongst anyone unfortunate enough to encounter them.

Though their westward push halted after the death of the Great Khan Ögedei in 1241, the Mongols established a lasting power base on the steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas. This empire would become known as the Golden Horde. Their power enabled them to dominate Eastern Europe for more than two centuries.

The appearance of the Mongols shattered the fragile balance among Slavic states, Turkic tribes, and steppe peoples. Local rulers were forced to reckon with a new actor that demanded submission and tribute.

However, the cities and rulers that submitted to Mongol rule enjoyed considerable political, cultural, and religious autonomy. The Golden Horde brought the benefits of the Pax Mongolica to Eastern Europe, tying the region into networks of commerce, diplomacy, and cultural exchange that stretched from the China Sea to the Mediterranean.

At its height, it controlled six million square kilometers, used three different types of currency, and helped fuel the rise of Turkic tribes in the region. The legacy of Mongol rule in Eastern Europe endures to the present day.

Political Realignment and Vassalage

The most immediate political consequence of the Golden Horde’s arrival was the subjugation of the Rus’ principalities. The fragmentation of Kyivan Rus’ made it easier for the Mongols to advance through Eastern Europe.

The Mongol rulers imposed a system of vassalage and tribute. Princes were required to travel to the Horde’s capital at Sarai to receive a patent of authority, the yarlyk, which confirmed their legitimacy as rulers. This ensured that political survival depended not only on local support but also on the khan’s favor. The system transformed regional power dynamics, empowering some princes while undermining others.

The rise of Muscovy is a good example of this. Initially a relatively minor principality in northeastern Rus’, Muscovite princes skillfully navigated the politics of tribute collection. By serving as reliable tax collectors for the Mongol khan, they gained favor and expanded their influence. Over time, this arrangement gave Moscow the financial resources and military power to eclipse rival centers like Tver and Novgorod. In this sense, Mongol oversight laid the foundations for the future Russian state.

For other principalities, Mongol rule meant instability and decline. Kyiv, once the capital of Kyivan Rus’, struggled to recover from its sacking in 1240. Galicia-Volhynia, on the western frontier, went back and forth between submission to the Horde and alliances with neighboring Poland and Lithuania. Across the region, rulers faced the challenge of balancing internal ambitions with the demands of their Mongol overlords. Thus, the political map of Eastern Europe was redrawn under the shadow of the Golden Horde.

Economic Transformation

Mongol domination of Eastern Europe brought both devastation and integration. The Golden Horde imposed a heavy burden on its European provinces through tribute. The peasantry was taxed to sustain the Horde’s armies, while regular demands for resources plunged communities into hardship. Raids and conscription compounded the strain, disrupting local agriculture and trade. For many, Mongol rule symbolized relentless extraction.

Yet alongside exploitation, the Golden Horde also opened doors to unprecedented economic connections. The Horde’s dominion stretched across the Eurasian steppe, linking the Slavic lands with Central Asia, Persia, and China. Merchants from Genoa, Venice, and the Muslim world established trading posts in Black Sea ports such as Caffa and Tana, which flourished under Mongol protection.

Through these routes, Eastern European merchants gained access to luxury goods like silk, spices, and precious metals, while exporting furs, slaves, and grain. The Mongols also provided some security along the trade arteries of the Silk Road, ensuring that caravans and envoys could pass through their territory with fewer risks. This stability benefited urban centers in Rus’, where new markets and crafts took root. The Golden Horde promoted prosperity even as it drained wealth through taxation.

The economic legacy of the Horde was contradictory. On the one hand, it integrated Eastern Europe into a wider trade network, fostering commercial growth, while conversely keeping the region politically subordinate and financially dependent. The tax burden exacted by the Golden Horde would encourage Muscovite princes to rebel against Mongol rule and establish an independent Muscovite state.

Cultural and Religious Significance

The Golden Horde’s rule over Eastern Europe was marked by an unusual degree of religious tolerance for the time. The Mongols themselves practiced shamanistic tradition, but they allowed subject peoples to maintain their faiths so long as they paid tribute.

For the Orthodox Church, this arrangement was very beneficial. While princes were humiliated by their dependence on Mongol authority, the church often enjoyed protection and exemptions from taxation. As a result, Orthodoxy not only survived but expanded under the Horde’s watch, strengthening its role as a prominent force in Eastern European society. Jews throughout the Horde were also protected by the Horde before and after the Mongols’ mass conversion to Islam.

Cultural exchanges also flowed through Mongol influence. The Horde’s elite lived in steppe cities such as Sarai, where Turkic, Persian, and Mongol customs mingled. European diplomats and merchants who traveled there encountered new styles of governance, dress, and art. Elements of steppe culture filtered back into Eastern Europe, visible in language, military organization, and even architecture. At the same time, Eastern Slavic culture absorbed influences from Islamic and Central Asian traditions.

Yet the relationship was not entirely harmonious. Mongol domination also fostered stereotypes of the “Asiatic horde” in European imagination, casting the steppe as a land of despotism and barbarism. Many people in the former territories of Kyivan Rus’ felt deeply humiliated by being ruled over by the Mongols and hoped to overthrow them. To this day, many Europeans make comparisons between modern Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Georgia and the Mongol conquests. The Golden Horde’s rule reshaped cultural and religious life, reinforcing Orthodoxy’s authority while embedding East Asian influences deep within Eastern Europe’s identity.

Military and Administrative Legacy

One of the most enduring impacts of the Golden Horde on Eastern Europe was the implementation of military and administrative practices. The Mongols were experts at fighting in the steppe. Their armies relied on highly mobile cavalry, disciplined formations, and the devastating use of composite bows. European armies, forced to fight both with and against the Horde, adopted aspects of these methods. The emphasis on cavalry raids, siege tactics, and strategic mobility became embedded in Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish military culture.

The Golden Horde’s administrative model also left an impactful legacy. Mongol rulers organized their empire around census-taking, taxation, and a system of relay messengers for communicating across their land. These practices were introduced to the Rus’ lands through the collection of tribute and the issuance of special charters.

Over time, Muscovite rulers began to adopt similar systems to strengthen their own control. The practice of centralized taxation and the integration of church privileges into governance provided a template for consolidating rule. This borrowing extended to statecraft itself. The Muscovite princes, particularly Ivan I and his successors, learned from the Horde how to balance coercion with patronage, using both military force and administrative efficiency to overcome rival principalities. The same mechanisms that secured Mongol dominance in Eastern Europe were later turned against them by their former vassals.

The Mongols inadvertently provided the tools with which Moscow would eventually overthrow the Horde’s authority and establish itself as the nucleus of a powerful Russian state. Even today, Russia’s model of relying on friendly rulers in the ethnic republics such as Tatarstan or Chechnya is modeled on the Golden Horde’s practices.

Long Term Consequences

The legacy of the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe endured long after its political decline in the late 15th century. Their most profound influence lay in the political culture they left behind. Under Mongol suzerainty, rulers of Muscovy learned the art of centralized government, collecting tribute, and military tactics. These methods, initially imposed by the Horde, became cornerstones of the emerging Russian state. The autocratic rule of Muscovite princes and later Russian tsars bore the imprint of the Golden Horde’s rule.

The Horde also affected Eastern Europe’s geopolitical orientation. While Muscovy was influenced by the Renaissance in Europe, it remained embedded into networks that drew them eastwards across the Eurasian steppe. Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the mid-16th century set the stage for the Russian conquest of Siberia.

The image of the Mongol as both overlord and outsider contributed to a lingering ambivalence toward Asia and Europe, a tension that continues to shape Russian identity to this day.

The memory of devastation left by the Mongols became a powerful historical narrative. For Russians, the “Tatar yoke” is remembered as a period of humiliation and suffering, even as it also laid the foundations of state power. This dual legacy of occupation and development impacted Russian nationalism and justified later imperial expansion into the steppe as a reversal of past subjugation. As a result, the Golden Horde changed Eastern Europe forever, casting a long shadow that still influences the region today.

Eight months of siege annihilated the garrison of Saguntum in present-day Spain. This brutal siege opened the door for the Carthaginians to march across the Pyrenees with the intention of crossing the Alps into Italy. While not well known today, it set in motion a dramatic sequence of events that threatened the survival of the Roman Republic.

The Road to War: Rome, Carthage, and the Iberian Question

After Carthage’s defeat in the First Punic War, the once-powerful maritime republic lost its empire in Sicily and much of its prestige. To rebuild its wealth and influence, the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca turned to the Iberian peninsula, where rich mineral resources and manpower offered a new base for expansion. His son-in-law, Hasdrubal the Fair, continued this policy, founding the city of Carthago Nova (present-day Cartagena) and forging alliances with local tribes.

At this time, the Romans were expanding their own sphere of influence in the western Mediterranean. Concerned by Carthaginian activity in Iberia, Rome signed the Ebro Treaty in 226 BC. This established the Ebro River as the northern limit of Carthaginian control. However, the agreement left some ambiguity. For instance, the city of Saguntum, situated south of the Ebro but allied with Rome, found itself cut off from Rome.

The tension between legal boundaries and political realities created fertile ground for conflict. Carthage viewed Saguntum’s Roman alliance as a violation of the treaty’s terms, while Rome saw any interference as an act of aggression. The stage was set for confrontation, one that would reignite the rivalry between the Mediterranean’s two great powers. When Hamilcar’s son Hannibal turned his attention to Saguntum, war was not far away.

Hannibal in Iberia

When Hannibal Barca assumed command of Carthaginian forces in Iberia in 221 BC, he inherited a very volatile political landscape. Still in his twenties, Hannibal had already proven himself in battle and enjoyed strong loyalty from his troops, many of whom had served under his father and his brother-in-law. His appointment was approved by the Carthaginian army in Spain and later confirmed by the Carthaginian Senate. At the time, different factions in the Senate debated the wisdom of continued expansion abroad.

Under Hannibal’s leadership, Carthage’s Iberian territory expanded rapidly. Through a combination of military skill, diplomacy, and intimidation, he secured alliances with local tribes, extended control inland, and reinforced Carthago Nova as the regional capital. This consolidation alarmed both Rome and its Iberian allies, as Carthaginian territory extended ever closer to the Ebro River.

At the heart of this tension stood Saguntum, a prosperous coastal city with strong economic ties to Rome. Though technically south of the Ebro and within Carthage’s sphere, Saguntum’s alignment with Roman interests was a direct challenge to Hannibal’s authority. The city refused to submit to Carthaginian rule and instead appealed to Rome for protection.

To Hannibal, Saguntum’s defiance represented Roman interference into Carthaginian affairs. His decision to confront the city was both strategic and ideological. He wanted to secure his rear in Iberia and to strike a blow at the treaty system Rome used to contain Carthage. This heralded a major confrontation.

The Siege

In 219 BC, Hannibal marched south from Carthago Nova and laid siege to Saguntum, The city’s location, perched on a defensible hill near the Mediterranean coast, made it a strategic stronghold. For Hannibal, capturing Saguntum would secure his rear in Iberia and send a clear message to Rome: Carthage would no longer tolerate interference south of the Ebro.

According to the Roman historian Livy, the siege lasted roughly eight months. Hannibal’s forces used siege towers, battering rams, and mining operations to breach the city’s formidable walls. The Saguntines, though heavily outnumbered, resisted fiercely, relying on their strong fortifications and Roman promises of aid. However, their appeals to the Roman Senate faced diplomatic delays, as Rome was preoccupied with conflicts elsewhere and uncertain whether to risk another conflict with Carthage.

Inside the city, famine and exhaustion took a devastating toll. When Saguntum’s defenses finally collapsed, the outcome was catastrophic. The inhabitants were slaughtered or enslaved and the city itself was plundered and burned. Some of the accounts written by Roman chroniclers describe acts of collective suicide by citizens unwilling to surrender.

Hannibal’s victory at Saguntum was militarily decisive but caused serious political problems. While it eliminated a potential Roman foothold in Iberia, the siege also gave Rome the moral justification it needed to declare war. After the city fell to the Carthaginians, the Roman political elite demanded a military response.

The Roman Ultimatum to Carthage

The destruction of Saguntum sent shockwaves through the Mediterranean world. News of the city’s fall reached Rome later that year, provoking outrage in the Senate. The Romans viewed the attack as a blatant violation of the Ebro Treaty, which they interpreted as protecting their ally south of the river. To Hannibal, however, the siege had been entirely justified. Saguntum, he argued, lay within Carthage’s sphere of influence and had provoked hostilities by executing pro-Carthaginian leaders.

Rome initially sought a diplomatic solution. A group of envoys was dispatched to Carthage early in 218 BC to demand Hannibal’s surrender and reparations for Saguntum’s destruction. Within the Carthaginian Senate, debate raged between two factions. On one hand, the hawkish faction supported Hannibal’s expansion in Spain. On the other hand, the moderate aristocrats favored an accommodation with Rome. The moderates argued that another war would be disastrous so soon after the First Punic War, while Hannibal’s supporters insisted that Rome, not Carthage, had violated the treaty.

The Roman envoys, led by Quintus Fabius Maximus, delivered their final ultimatum to the Carthaginian council. When asked to choose between peace and war, Fabius apparently declared that he carried both in the folds of his toga and invited the Carthaginians to choose. The Carthaginians were defiant and they chose war. This exchange formally ended the fragile peace that had lasted for nearly two decades and the fighting was set to commence.

From Saguntum to the Alps

Following Carthage’s rejection of Rome’s ultimatum, both powers prepared for renewed conflict. In spring 218, Rome formally declared war on Carthage. The Romans assumed that the main fighting would take place in Iberia or North Africa, where Carthaginian power was concentrated. They dispatched one army under Publius Cornelius Scipio to Spain and another under Tiberius Sempronius Longus to Sicily and Africa, expecting to attack Carthaginian possessions swiftly.

Hannibal, however, did not act as the Romans expected. Rather than waiting to be attacked, he launched one of the most audacious military campaigns in ancient history. Leaving his brother Hasdrubal to hold Iberia, Hannibal marched north with an estimated 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and several dozen war elephants. He planned to carry the war into the Italian peninsula, using speed and alliances with Rome’s enemies to destabilize the Roman Republic.

Before setting out, Hannibal secured his rear by consolidating control over Iberian tribes and ensuring the loyalty of local garrisons. This was a direct outcome of his victory at Saguntum. That siege had not only removed a Roman ally from the map but also freed Carthage’s hands for the fight with the Romans. By the fall, Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenees and the Rhone River, heading toward the Alps for his fateful campaign against Rome. The fall of Saguntum enabled Hannibal to undertake one of the most famous military campaigns in history.

The Legacy of the Siege

The siege of Saguntum left a lasting mark on both Roman and Carthaginian memory. For Rome, the city became a symbol of innocence and victimhood and was used to rally support for the war against Hannibal. Livy echoed contemporary chronicles in portraying the Saguntines as brave and loyal, suffering a cruel fate at the hands of a vicious Carthaginian army. Their destruction was framed as a moral justification for Rome’s intervention and a warning of what would happen if Carthage remained untamed.

From the Carthaginian perspective, Hannibal’s actions were a matter of strategy and principle. He argued that Saguntum had provoked hostilities and needed to be subdued because of its ties to Rome. While he may not have wanted to annihilate the whole city, he did seek a decisive victory to ensure Carthaginian dominance over Iberia and to threaten Rome’s western flank.

The siege also influenced later historical and military thought. Polybius, writing a century later in the second century BC, emphasized the legal and diplomatic ambiguities surrounding Saguntum. For Hannibal, the city’s fall was both a practical victory and a moral precedent, signaling that Carthage would defend its interests by force when necessary. Ultimately, the siege of Saguntum serves as a case study of how localized conflicts can spark larger wars. Its destruction not only triggered the Second Punic War but also became a touchstone in discussions of justice, responsibility, and the causes of conflict.

Sheela-na-gigs are stone carvings found in churches across Western Europe, most of which exist in Ireland. They depict women exposing their genitalia, mainly dating to the 11th to 14th centuries when Christianity was the predominant religion in Western Europe. This makes Sheela-na-gigs a bit of a mystery, but the carvings have been recognized as rare examples of positive depictions of women’s sexuality in Medieval art.

Where Can Sheela-na-gigs Be Found?

Many Sheela-na-gigs can be found in museums in Ireland, England, and Scotland, but many also exist in their ancient locations—on town walls, built into churches, in piles of stone at ruins, or laid in fields. Due to this, many of the examples of Sheela-na-gigs are slowly disintegrating.

Sheela-na-gigs are shrouded in mystery and even their name is uncertain. The term Sheela-na-gig has Irish origins, but the meaning is unknown. The old hag of the Breasts is offered as a possible translation by Irish archaeologist and historian Eamonn Kelly. Other names have also been given to Sheela-na-gigs over the years, such as Hag of the Castle or Devil Stone. Feminist researcher Barbara Walker suggests that gig in Sheela-na-gig was related to jigs or gigues, which were orgiastic dances in the pre-Christian era. Opinions on the etymology of the name vary by region and family.

Folk Etymology

The Sheela-na-gig’s origin story varies just as much as its folk etymology. There is an Irish story of Queen Medb. The Queen goes to battle, only to find she is outnumbered on the battlefield. In response, she raised her skirts to the enemy army and displayed her vulva, as a Sheela-na-gig does, and the enemies were so confused by the gesture that they turned around and went home to their mothers. 

There were many stories to go with the Sheela-na-gigs. While some historians believe that Sheela-na-gigs were used to warn churchgoers against the lustful sins of sexual pleasure, others believe that Sheela-na-gigs were the product of a resurgence of an ancient Greek belief that a female exposing her vaginal area to a demon would scare it away, and therefore were a symbol for warding off evil. 

It seems likely that Sheela-na-gigs have pre-Christian, pagan origins that got carried into early Christianity as it swept across the continent. There are historical accounts of Irish farmers guarding the Sheela-na-gigs with their lives when priests threatened to have them removed from the church walls. Many were removed, but the efforts of those farmers who saw value in the past allow us to revel in the mystery of Sheela-na-gigs today.

These carvings also serve as a testament to women’s involvement in culture and art throughout the ages when their voices and sexuality were usually stifled. Today, the effort of saving the Sheela-na-gigs has shifted somewhat to fit modern problems, such as misinformation and unconscious biases based on the historical treatment of women.

ProjectSheela

In 2021, there was an online group project called ProjectSheela, in which Irish feminists reclaimed the Sheela-na-gigs to create solidarity amongst women by placing artistic renditions of the carvings in areas of Dublin that held significance in terms of women’s history. The Sheela-na-gigs that were placed around the city were created with clay, covered in gold luster with glazed vulvas. 

An anonymous ceramicist involved with the project stated, “Some scholars thought the Sheela was an image of evil, or the embodiment of sin, but we see the sexuality of the Sheela as positive and empowering.” A notable location for one of their Sheela-na-gigs was the last of the Magdalene Laundries which closed in 1996. Magdalene Laundries were institutions created by the Irish government and the Catholic Church for unmarried mothers.

At these institutions, the mothers and their young children would be horrendously abused and even killed. Mass graves for neglected babies associated with the Magdalene Laundries were only recently discovered ProjectSheela commemorates the pain those women and children went through with their work by using a symbol of female empowerment associated with sexuality. 

Sheela-na-gigs and Feminist Art

Sheela-na-gigs have become a powerful symbol in art once again, this time helping create awareness for a movement as women voice their opinions against patriarchal structures across the world and take control of their bodies and sexualities in leaps of progress like never before. A 20th-century feminist artist, Nancy Spero, was interested in the comparison between mythological women and realistic women. 

Spero created a print of a Sheela-na-gig in her series of goddesses using bold complementary colors that give the Sheela-na-gig an experience and personality of her own. This way the Sheela-na-gig isn’t presented as an object that exists simply for the male gaze to which nearly all women and their bodies are often subjected, especially in art. The Sheela-na-gig, possibly once a symbol of fertility before it became a warning against lust, has now taken on a new meaning in the 20th and 21st centuries as feminist artists reclaim the symbolism of the Sheela-na-gig to combat oppressive ideas about women. 

References:

• Bedworth, Candy. The Intriguing Tale of the Shocking Sheela-na-gig and its Art References. DailyArt, 2023.

• Graf, Stefanie. Nancy Spero: 7 Essential Works. TheCollector, 2023.

• Rhoades, Georgia. Decoding the Sheela-na-gig. Feminist Formations, 2010.

• Sheela-na-gig at Balgeeth, Ardcath. Knowth by Boyne Valley Tours, accessed 2023.

• Stevens, Jenny. Big Vagina Energy: The Return of the Sheela-na-gig. The Guardian, 2021.

From the mid-15th to the mid-18th centuries, Europe was in the grip of a fanatical obsession with rooting out perceived witches and heretics. During this time, the hunts intensified. Anyone accused of sorcery or any practices involving diabolical arts could be sentenced and executed on short notice, as inquisitors, government officials, ordinary people, and even friends and neighbors eyed others with deep suspicion.

At the heart of this dynamic was the Malleus Maleficarum, “The Hammer of the Witches,” a book that justified the craze. And at the heart of the book was its author, Heinrich Kramer, who also went by his Latinized name Henricus Institoris, a misogynistic madman with a dangerously popular following.

Malleus Maleficarum: A Foundation for Madness

As a Dominican inquisitor and right-hand man of the Archbishop of Salzburg, Heinrich Kramer wielded considerable influence. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull, Summis desiderantes, which gave Kramer and his fellow inquisitor Jacob Sprenger jurisdiction to prosecute witch hunts in Upper Germany. Kramer, however, was not given a warm welcome there. Although his sermons drew crowds, there were those who acquired a distaste for his zealous methods and his firebrand preaching.

Specifically, his arrival was met with disgust by a woman named Helena Scheuberin, who spat at him in the street. She encouraged people not to attend Kramer’s sermons and disrupted one sermon, claiming that Kramer was in league with the Devil. Thus, she made an enemy of the inquisitor, who subsequently leveled charges of witchcraft against her, along with six others. Seeing this scandal, and the zealous conjecture spouted by Kramer, Bishop of Brixen, Georg Golser ordered the inquisitor to leave the diocese. Kramer relented and returned to Cologne. In response, Kramer wrote the Malleus Maleficarum as a treatise to give himself and others like him the authority to persecute witches.

Kramer published his work in 1486 and added authority to it in later editions, citing Jacob Sprenger as a co-author and using the papal bull as a preface (a role for which it was not intended). With the recent invention of the printing press, Kramer’s work spread quickly and found fertile ground in Europe.

Defeating Diabolism: The Doctrine of the Malleus Maleficarum

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

From Exodus 22:18, this was the premise around which Kramer’s entire doctrine was written. He divided his book into three parts, with each covering a key aspect of dealing with witches.

The first part explains that witchcraft is real, drawing on biblical and classical texts, as well as established church doctrine. The section further explains that not only is witchcraft heresy, but not believing in witches is heresy as well!

Other statements include the idea that witches make pacts with the Devil in order to gain magic powers, and that witches cause harm around them through their magic.

The second part of the book is a collection of stories detailing the activities of witches. In this, it acts as a field guide. It describes their diabolical pacts, the sexual encounters with incubi and succubi, and the supernatural abilities that witches have, such as metamorphosis and transvection (flying through the air). Kramer claimed they bewitched fertility, destroyed crops, killed babies, summoned demons, and created curses and hexes.

The third section details the legal procedure for obtaining confessions and putting the accused on trial. This process includes methods of torture, which became the standard practice for dealing with supposed witches. Lying to the accused was also acceptable and justifiable because of the perceived danger that witches posed to society.

A Weapon Against Women

Of note is the misogyny contained within the Malleus Maleficarum. The resultant dynamic saw significantly more women being prosecuted than men. Indeed, Kramer wrote that women were far more susceptible to being deceived by the Devil.

Kramer was quite scathing of women, with many passages of his book citing such in no uncertain terms. He clearly stated that since women “are feebler both in mind and body, it is not surprising that they should come more under the spell of witchcraft.”

Kramer further accused women of being like children intellectually (by quoting Roman dramatist Terence), with weak memories, and prone to acts of impulse. He even claimed they were more carnal than men, describing their lust as “insatiable.” His astonishing logic is that women were made from a rib (which is bent), as opposed to men being made from “straight” dust, and therefore women are made with a defect, and always deceive. He added, after this claim, that the word “femina” comes from “fe” (faith) and “minus” (less), a “fact” which suggests women are weaker in preserving faith. As a result, women in society, Kramer argues, are unable to govern themselves.

Of particular importance to Kramer was the subject of midwives, whom he accused of causing miscarriages, procuring abortions, and offering newborn children to devils or even devouring them upon birth. As such, midwives represent the nadir of witches and witchcraft, and receive significant attention within the pages of the Malleus Maleficarum.

According to historian Robin Briggs, from 1450 to 1750, there were an estimated 100,000 witch trials resulting in 40,000 to 50,000 executions, and it is estimated that between 75% and 80% of them were women.

The Law of the Malleus Maleficarum

Such was the authority the book achieved that it was seen not just as a guide, but as a legal text for the implementation of activities against witches. It was perceived as justifying methods of torture and execution and was used by secular and church authorities for initiating and conducting trials, as well as torturing the accused and procuring confessions and testimonies from witnesses.

There was a low bar for evidence, and suspicion and bad reputations were admitted in court as half-proofs to substantiate other claims. This much is stated as an acceptable procedure in the book. If multiple sources could be ascertained, even in the form of suspicion from the suspect’s enemies, this counted as strong suspicion. Various proofs could be compounded, and torture could be used to convert semi-proofs into a full proof confession. Once accused, it was extremely difficult, and in most cases, simply impossible, to prove one’s innocence. Ultimately, speculation was enough for a trial and an execution in an era that can be described as Europe’s harshest period regarding capital punishment.

If execution wasn’t the final outcome, the torture was enough to leave the victims highly traumatized. While not going into any depth about specific torture devices, Kramer endorses the methods used at the time and suggests their frequent use. This would have included contraptions such as the strappado (used for hoisting victims), thumb screws, and the rack, which were all common.

Unrepentant heretics, or those who had repented before and found to have relapsed, were generally convicted and sentenced to death. To preserve its non-involvement in killing, the Church and its inquisitors handed the duty over to secular courts, which would carry out the punishment. Secular courts that failed to do so were subject to excommunication and being labeled heretics.

The Decline of the Madness

For centuries, the Malleus Maleficarum was a staple of legal recourse against accused witches. It was reprinted dozens of times and was widespread throughout the continent. As a result of this book, tens of thousands, mostly women, were killed, and untold suffering was inflicted upon the populations of Europe, especially in places like Germany and Switzerland.

It was, however, also subject to widespread criticism in its own time, especially for the brutality it endorsed and caused. After its first printing, it was condemned by theologians at the Faculty of Cologne for being inconsistent with Catholic doctrine in demonology.

When the witch hunts were in full swing, the book drew the disapproval of a physician and pioneer in psychopathology, Dutchman Johann Weyer, who published “De Praestigiis Daemonum” (On the Illusions of Demons) in 1563. While he did not deny the existence of witchcraft, he argued that those who were thought to be witches were, in fact, suffering from mental disorders. His groundbreaking work was pivotal in ending witchcraft trials in the Netherlands, and the country slowly abandoned the practice of witch hunts, trials, and executions; a progressive dynamic at the time.

Another critic was Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, a Jesuit priest who witnessed first-hand the horror wrought on the accused. He comforted many of those who were charged with witchcraft and accompanied over 300 people to their executions. He published his work “Cautio Criminalis” in 1631, and although it received criticism from peers in theological circles, it helped move society towards a path of justice and human rights. He published the work anonymously, but his authorship was suspected. He argued that through the methods of the Malleus Maleficarum, no one could escape accusation, and as such, the treatise was completely unreasonable.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, societies in Europe were influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, and an age of reason was born. Armed with new ideologies on the rights of human beings, society shifted away from the hysteria of hunting witches. To this, the judicial systems started demanding more concrete evidence, casting aspersions on confessions gained while victims were under duress.

The Malleus Maleficarum exists as a lesson on how easily populations can be swayed by populist nonsense calling for the mistreatment of the “other.” It was one of the most destructive works in history, especially from a feminist perspective, and it drove a continent into fear and hysteria as it chased supernatural illusions. Ultimately, it was defeated by rational thought and the vision of human rights. By the 19th century, the reign of this terrible book had come to an end.