It’s officially fall and Halloween is just a few weeks
away. Halloween means a lot of different things to many different people but an
image that is synonymous with Halloween is the clichéd image of the witch.
Witches have been depicted throughout history in many different forms. However,
the iconic portrayal of the witch, at least in the Western world, is that of an
older woman with a straw broom and a black cat. But where did that depiction
originate?
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his wife, Isabella of
Castile, established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 to combat religions they
felt were a threat to Catholicism. Spain and the Iberian Peninsula had long
been dominated by the Moors who allowed other religions to be tolerated (for a
small fee, of course) since 711 A.D. with the invasion of the Umayyad
Caliphate. By the end of 1492, the last Islamic domino (Grenada) had fallen.
Essentially, by this time, anyone not practicing Catholicism was considered a
heretic and many of them were imprisoned, tortured and executed. But throughout
the Inquisition, many normal facets of European life were being molded by the
Catholic church to equate to acts of what they deemed evil. One of these facets
was the job of the alewife.
For over a century, the job of making and selling ale, or
beer, belonged, for the most part, to women—single women. Most of them were
either unmarried or widowed and brewed ale to pay their debts. And most of
these women kept cats around. This was for two reasons. One, the cats were
great company while you were working alone all-day brewing, but perhaps the
more important reason was to keep the mice at bay. Mice were rampant through
many villages in Europe and could get into the grain used in the ale, so the
cats were most certainly a business asset.
Another essential part of the job of the alewife was to
let people know you are selling. In an era when many citizens could not read,
shops used various symbols instead of the large signs on business awnings we
see today. You may be familiar with three sphere symbols and that it represents
pawnbrokers or pawn shops. For alewives, it had to be something they had on
hand and they chose the broom. A straw broom was leaned against the front of a
home to indicate that there was an alewife here. If the broom was turned upside
down and leaned in the same manner, it meant there was fresh ale. In addition
to this marketing tactic, alewives also commonly wore a tall, wide-brimmed hat
to make themselves more identifiable in public. However, these strategies did
not bode well for these women.
During the Spanish Inquisition, these women were soon
deemed as unholy. An unmarried woman making spirits? Galivanting around town
with no husband or chaperone? There were rumors circulating that the women were
“witch doctors” and were poisoning men with their spirits or were just seen as
unholy for their behavior. The caricatures of these women in newspapers
portrayed them as the pointy-hat-wearing, broom-riding witches that we see in
everything from Looney Tunes to Halloween shops. Soon these women were likened
to the same as the heretics being prosecuted due to the Inquisition.
Eventually, many of these women were tried for heresy or were told they were no
longer allowed to brew ale. Meaning, men soon took over the spirit industry—and
the growing wealth from that practice. Another unfortunate fatality of the
Spanish Inquisition.
Sketch of Mother Louise, a very popular alewife in the 14th century.
