The Salem witch trials occurred during the 14th century. During this century the puritans beliefs were very strong in supernatural areas, in other words this means the belief in the devils practice of giving certain humans the power to harm others. If you were a puritan living at this time and you committed the crime of witchcraft the punishment for this would be death. The religion and beliefs during this time had a big role on how the puritans dealt with the so called witches, although christian rule stated that no one shall kill. Killing was still involved in the trials causing the rules and laws to be broken, because of this the acception for breaking this rule was unknown. Most citizens during the 14th century when the trials took place were christian and very religious. Massachusetts bay, where the trials took place, were highly populated by puritans. Some of the puritans beliefs were a combination of christianity, gnosticism and manichean dualism. Other beliefs of these puritans consisted of the belief that …show more content…
If a citizen was accused for participating in witchcraft in any way they would first be brought to court to be interrogated . If the victim did not confess they would tell the individual to “ confess to god “. Once the victim was found guilty they were immediately sentenced to death. Although not all of the accused were excited or tortured a total of 14 women and 5 men were hung for either participating in witchcraft or for being accused in participating in witchcraft. With this being said no one should of ever been executed for this so called crime. Puritans did not have an expanded education on how to deal with conflict so they turned to the only thing they knew, which sadly was death. On one occasion of witchcraft assumption the son of the president of Harvard college protested that the punishment for witchcraft should not be any more extreme than any other