Following the writings of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage and others, Margaret Murray, in her 1921 book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe", proposed the theory that the witches of the early-modern period were remnants of a pagan cult and that the Christian Church had declared the god of the witches was in fact the Devil. Without recourse to any specific representation of this deity, Murray speculates that the head coverings common in inquisition-derived descriptions of the devil "may throw light on one of the possible origins of the cult."