The practice of black magic was in ancient times as grave a crime as rape or murder. Already in the ancient Babylonian code Hammurabi contains provisions against witchcraft. Medieval legal systems regulated specific parameters for determining the signs of a witch in women and men.
Why did they do this?
One of the theories that historians call historians: the Inquisition tried to prevent chaotic related crossings and the rapid degeneration of Europe. Thus, "signs of a witch" in the Middle Ages, as a rule, were simply signs of genetic abnormalities. There is documentary evidence that the "scientific" offices of the Inquisition studied the effects of closely related marriages using mice for experiments.
Main features
Usually the main signs of a witch in a woman are called red hair color, excessive thinness, bright green eyes and hooked nose. But this is more of an image created by the media. "The directory Inquisitorium" contains more detailed signs of a witch in a woman. Weight 55 kg was really considered the maximum for the carrying capacity of a broom. The presence on the body of such obvious signs of a witch, like a hare's lip, a sixth finger, eardrums, tail appendages, etc., naturally meant that the hunters found their prey.
Additional checks
There were other signs in appearance that "betrayed" the witch:
- forms of the female body, fully consistent with the male body (the so-called " masculinity ");
- additional nipples;
- abnormal skin pigmentation;
- the lack of proportionality between the head and the face, in other words, between the size of the mental and chewing apparatus;
- Four forms of the skull are described ("signs of a witch on the face"): a saddle-shaped head, a disproportionate nose, an oblique skull and a skull strongly narrowing toward the crown.