Revenge. Revenge caused them to be feared of people being witches. This is because some people might have had a conflict, and they maybe still do not like each other. Witches then were an excuse for people to blame their problems on. They think that the witches were causing these problems so in order to “get back” at them, they would blame everything on them.
Historiographical Review: Witchcraft When studying witch craft over the past 500 years or so, authors have covered a lot of material. , the In Carlo Ginzburg’s work, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, he attempts to locate the origin of the ‘Benandanti’ belief and how it came to be in the Friuli region of Italy. The Benandanti were a group of people who believed that during the Ember Days of the year, after they fell asleep, that their souls left their bodies and went off to fight witches in the night. Ginzburg goes into great detail on the many trials associated with the benandanti during this time. In Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s work, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft,
1. The irony in that statement is that their church actually did some wrong doings. 2. They were a time of “general revenge” because people would blame each other for supposedly doing witchcraft and then being punished by the church even if there was no actual evidence to consider them guilty. 3.
After reading “Devil in the Shape of a Woman: The Economic Basis of Witchcraft “by Carol Karlsen I was intrigued by Karlsen’s interpretation, and upset about the ways women were treated. During these witch hunts women and men alike were accused of the crime, but the majority were women. I found it interesting that she related the commonly known Puritan beliefs, which lead to accusations of witchcraft, with gender roles. She ultimately says that Puritans feared these accused women because they symbolized female independence. I found it shocking that women, often the wealthier, had a greater chance of being let go of their accusations if they had a husband to spoke on their behalf.
At some point during the 15th century, Witchcraft was a normal part of everyday life. Witches accompanied religious ministers to help the ill or to deliver a baby. They were regarded as having spiritual power in their communities. When something went wrong, no one questioned the ministers or the power of the witchcraft. Instead, they questioned whether the witch intended to inflict harm or not.
The infamous Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts took place between of 1692 and 1693. They involved the execution of fourteen women and five men within the the brief time period (Salem Witch Museum). New England at the time had been established by a homogenous Puritan population which emigrated from England (Taylor 165, 169). Abiding by a strict set of beliefs, the Puritans did not accept people of other backgrounds, therefore it might follow that the Salem Witch Trials of New England were a result of the strict Puritan society, which was actually primarily untrue. The Salem Witch Trials were not enacted as a result of Puritanism, but rather as a result of circumstance.
Like being gay, being a witch was considered a major crime. People thought that if you were a witch you were unholy and you needed to be saved by Christ. People still had the same sort of problem in the rebellion. The stonewall and the Human Rights Society for human rights was shut down by the police. In salem if you did not confess to being a witch you were shut down also by execution.
Because religion had a major impact on this society, it made people go crazy when the word witchcraft got brought up within the Salem village. In The Crucible the girls started dancing around a fire and being rowdy and this behavior was unusual so it was just assumed that they were practicing witchcraft because Betty lie unconscious
If anyone was to speak out against them they were accused immediately of being a witch. This is when opposition to collective injustice needed to
Lakes froze over, crops failed, and populations declined. This period of abnormal climate was known as the Little Ice Age. They did not have the resources to understand why they could have been undergoing such frigid weather. Therefore, to the people, witches could have been easy targets to point the finger at what they didn’t know in
In his book, “A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702),” clergyman John Hale comes forth to confront the recent events going on at the time. Initially, Hale alludes to the questionable actions and activities of the townspeople being accused of witchcrafts, and being imprisoned as punishment. In addition, he discloses how everyone suspicious will be accused, not even young children are safe from the hands of this fate. Hale’s purpose of publishing this book was to describe the incident of the Witch Trials, and to reveal his experience of the trials, since his own wife was accused. By employing a didactic tone, Hale relays the actions of the past that targeted the Puritans and those wrongly accused of witchcrafts, so this occurrence
Witches were viewed negatively and as followers of the Devil. According to the documents, the three major reasons for the persecution of witches were the religion, the social prejudices, and the economic hunger of the people. At the time of the witch craze, the Protestant Reformation was going on. These leaders of the religions played an important role in the development of the witch trials because
Witchcraft. The Epidemic In the summer 1692 the town of Salem, Massachusetts spiraled into a witchcraft epidemic, 19 people were hanged and 1 person was pressed to death. People started to get marks and rashes on their body and when a doctor couldn 't even explain it they started accusing people of witchcraft. Bridget Bishop was the first victim of hanging during the epidemic. Then after that it went downhill.
The people believed that the word of God was the only way of life and needed to be followed. They believed that the witches were trying to “breakdown God.” Any person who was accused of being a witch was first checked to see if they had the devils mark and if they did they would poke it with a needle and if they showed pain or drew blood then it wasn’t considered the devil’s mark. They were put on trial but no one ever wanted to stand up for the witches because if you did then you would then get interrogated and people then thought you were a witch also. Many people believe that things are good how they are but they don’t realize how much more needs to still be done.
The Beginning of it all Several hundred years ago, many Christians and other religious persons, had a strong belief that the Devil could give people, known as witches, the power to harm others in return for their loyalty to him. A "witchcraft craze" spread throughout Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly
