Malefica |best| <PROVEN>

With the rise of Christianity, the perception of maleficium shifted dramatically. Church Fathers like Augustine of Hippo argued that all pagan magic was inherently demonic. However, the crucial legal turning point came with the and later the Justinian Code (529 CE) . These laws began to conflate malefica with apostasy.

Economic historian Alan Macfarlane and others have argued that accusations of maleficium nearly always occurred after a wealthy person refused charity to a poor old woman. When the wealthy person subsequently suffered a misfortune (a cow died, a beer went sour), they accused the poor woman of being a . The word served to criminalize poverty, female aging, and economic desperation. Malefica

In agrarian Europe, a sudden hailstorm that destroyed a single family’s crop while leaving the neighbor’s untouched was proof of a Malefica. She was believed to sail through the air in a sieve or on a distaff, raising storms that would drown livestock. With the rise of Christianity, the perception of