the witch myth states that witches are worshippers of the devil, greedy, and use sorcery for evil. Europeans were motivated by this idea because they found it unmoral if they didn’t take steps to getting rid of satanic people. Scientific ignorance fueled the growing superstition of witches. During the mid fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages occurred. This refers to a series of events that halted the growth of European prosperity. The creation of the witch myth
community, public officials used forms of torture, humiliation, and capital punishment to punish the person for his or her crime sometimes whether they had been proven guilty or not. Due to strict Puritan beliefs, severe punishments were dealt to those who committed any crime, radical or minor, or who were simply accused of such crimes. In cases of adultery, magistrates and jurors would decide the punishment of the man and woman involved. The result of the trial depended on the morals of
Salem Witch Trials. According to an article, The Salem Witch Trials, “Rampant fear among the Puritans in the New England village of Salem sparked attacks against anyone who was suspected of witchcraft” (The Salem Witch Trials). The thing about the Europeans in early Massachusetts is that they were heavily religious. Witchcraft, in Salem, was considered a crime against Christianity that went beyond the law; normal legal actions were amplified, i.e. death by noose (The Salem Witchcraft Trials). During
The Salem, witch trials began in January of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. When this mass hysteria hit over 200 people were killed because they were thought to be practicing witchcraft. It all began with a group of girls who be came the “Afflicted girls”. They some how became ill after playing a fortune-telling game and they began to act strange. The first girls of the group were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams followed along right after her and then the other girls followed. The symptoms that the”
a supernatural task-such as placing a curse upon a neighbor or telling the future.” Witchcraft was punishable by death coming from the Bible in Exodus 22:18, which says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Although there was more than one, no other witch trial is a popular as the Salem Witch Trials. In the winter of 1691, eleven-year-old Abigail Williams and nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris, niece and daughter of the Salem village
sanctions in the investigation and trial of witches (Levack 128). Understanding that witchcraft was the ultimate sin against God and being so difficult to prove, Bodin sets parameters that were used in order to entrap and prosecute those accused. Some tactics employed are as follows; testimony of any accomplices were allowed, cases initiated in secret by judges as opposed to prosecutors, anonymous accusations by the public, twisting the obscure testimony of a witch into a confession, and a person’s
Godbeer’s Escaping Salem: The other Witch Hunt of 1692, the documented incident of Katherine Branch, conveys the event of a young servant girl who claims she is being tortured by witches. This servant girl falls into different fits of torture, in the Godbeer’s book, she claims to see one of her torturers and that she reveals her name to Katherine. The name was only given to the one suffering, and this woman was seen as an aggressive member of their community. During her trial, other puritans accused her
and sorcery in their communities. “Witch-hunts”, especially in Central Europe, resulted in the trial, torture, and execution of tens of thousands of victims, a large proportion of whom were women . In England alone, more than 90 percent of those convicted of witchcraft were women, and the few men who were accused were generally married to a woman who had already been deemed guilty of the offence . Although there are numerous ideas behind the explanation of this witch-craze, there are few which explain
is the common term used to describe a situation in which various people all suffer from similar hysterical symptoms. Whether it is from a phantom illness or an inexplicable event. This occurred before the colonies were created during the Salem Witch Trials, explained through the story The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller. Other time periods, such as in the late 1950’s during the Second Red Scare, when people worried about the spread of communism through America, and between 1933-1945 during The
Tolerance is something that could have prevented acts of aggression during the 1560s and 1600s. If there was tolerance, there would be no violence. Throughout my reading, I have noticed violence tends to occur due to the lack of religious tolerance. The earlier settlers who inhabited the Americas lacked this tolerance, such as the Europeans. They only saw power and wealth in the New World. The Native Americans were exploited through force and other horrible methods. The settlers used false pretenses