Great job explaining your answers in great detailed. I found it very captivating how they viewed the witchcraft craze as evil and unsafe. How the people who practice it were severely punish. This was a craze that quickly spread from the big cities to the smaller towns. How it was mostly associated with women because they consider them as inferior. However, by the mid 17th century it had decrease as people became more educated and the government became stronger.…
For hundreds of years, the word “witch” has been associated with innumerable negative images. Witches were considered devil worshipers who committed scores of evil deeds toward society. By the 14th Century, a law was passed outlawing any practice of witchcraft or sorcery; anyone in Europe accused of witchcraft was subject to the torture and execution. In the 1450’s there was a breakout of violent persecutions against people accused of being witches. “During this time more than 100,000 people (mostly woman) were killed for allegedly practicing witchcraft” (Kallen 33) . Witches were viewed by the public as dangerous and uncontrollable menaces to society. They were believed to have relationships with the devil, this relationship was developed because of the church demonizing the witches in the 1450’s. During this time, people lacked medical knowledge about sickness and disease. When the witches were healthy during many of these wide spread diseases, the people believed they were the ones that cursed everyone with it. The people believed that witches could curse people that they did not like. In the city, It was common for old beggars to be on the side of the street asking for change but when people refused to give the beggars coins, they would angrily curse at the passersby. If the people that the…
It was extremely easy to be accused of being a witch in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century. During this time period, Europe was going through many changes such as the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of many national governments. Although all of these changes were taking place, many people were stuck in their ways and did not approve of these new changes. The people that did not follow the social and political norm of the time were often accused of witchcraft.The most common reasons of persecutions of individuals as witches were if you were a female, if you were middle age and not married(widowed), or if you were not practicing Christianity.…
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18), this was a passage that the Puritans lived by. The Salem Witch Trials took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692 and claimed the lives of many innocent people. It led to the hangings of almost twenty, leaving more than one hundred in prison. A group of young girls in Salem Village accused several local women of witchcraft while being claimed of being possessed by the devil. This is causing a wave of hysteria to spread throughout colonial Massachusetts.…
Witches are known to be very dangerous, evil, and made deals with the devil. They were even killed, tortured and jailed, but nowadays we treat them completely differently. We invite them into our house, give them candy, and strike conversations with them, that is at least on halloween. In the late 1600s many older men and women were being caught as being “witches” in Salem, Massachusetts.These witch trials were being caused by young girls who were pretending just to get ergotism, attention, and eventually after one lie they got out control really quickly.…
The Salem Witch Trails started in Massachusetts from 1692 and lasted until 1693. There was about 200 people who were accused of practicing witchcraft, or Devil’s Magic, and about twenty of them were executed. Soon after the trials, the colonist admitted the trials were a mistake and the families of those who were executed were paid or compensated for their loss.…
What people often fail to recognize about witch hunting is that it had occurred in Europe on a much larger scale for a longer period of time before Salem was even granted its first charter. It is estimated that the Great European Witch-hunt was responsible for anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 executions. Witches were often held responsible for many unfortunate events that befell communities and individuals and many…
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 was a time of panic and bedlam. Men and women of all ages were being “inhabited by the Devil” in turn making them witches. During the 1600s, English immigrants arrived in New England, a number of them being Puritans. The Puritans were Protestant Christians who were unhappy with the way England practiced Christianity so they moved to New England for a fresh start. However, once it was the 17th century, witchcraft became more well known and people became more worried about their well being. There were three causes to this panic: people were afraid of being accused so they accused others, girls who were bored and messing around, and Western Salem Village’s loss of political influence.…
The common association to witchcraft is that women mainly perform witchcraft. As shown in document D2 an average of 80% of executed witches are women. This is evident because women are generally easier targets to convict because they are too weak to fight back. So an old senile woman would obviously be the easiest target to pursue. Apparent in document D1, typically accused witches are found with low education. For example the majority are laborers, which typically demand the lease amount of thinking, therefore making them unable to protect themselves in a debate. Torture is also very commonly used amongst the society in order to forcibly make the accused witch to confess. The major of Bamberg in Document A7 have seen the innocent being tortured. Without any hope of escape, the innocent end up confessing just to stop the pain. For example the witches in Macbeth were perfectly believable and began to stir the thinking of the people. These rituals became the necessary requirements in the execution of witches, in order to fulfill their duty to the…
Tempel Anneke was accused of witchcraft in 1663, not because of what she did for her community but because she was an elderly female in a man’s world that was set on freeing society of witches. The Christian church which was run by men viewed witchcraft loosely as a way to lump together all practices that could not be explained through the church. It was also demonized by the Church who had no good response to give its people. The Church believed it wasn’t coming from God, so it must be evil. This led to insecurities throughout towns and villages that feared a group of non-believers or witches wanted to destroy them.…
Witch Trials were a time of torment and suffering for those living in Salem Village, Massachusetts 1692.…
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the year 1692 and lasted more than a year. The popular witch hunt took place in colonial Massachusetts. Demos (2009), explains that during the late 1600’s witch trials were actually not as popular as most people thought in regards to historical significance (p.1311). He also explains that even though the witch hunt was not considered a big event, the trials still involved and affected many different people in both age, sex, and social status (Demos, 1970, p. 1315). Most people in our society now have common misconceptions about the people who stood trial and the people who were blamed during these witch trials. The common misconceptions were that they were female, young and in good families, and women with…
The Salem Witch Trials was a historic event that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1692 and lasted until 1693. It’s known to be a dark time in American History (Brooks, Historyof Massachusetts.org). It first began when a group of teenage girls were exposed of practicing witchcraft and it then lead to bigger things Innocent people were killed and others were treated poorly. More than 200 individuals were wrongfully blamed and 20 were executed for denying the accusations (Blumberg, Smithsonianmag.com ). To this day no one is sure as to why the trials even started. There are numerous theories that state the causes of the infamous witch hunt but only a few of them are quite convincing. Many historians believe that religion is the main…
In Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, author Rosalyn Schanzer discusses the outbreak of the Salem witch trials and tells about the murderous colonial period of 1692. The trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts when the Puritans of England migrated to New England. The accusations of witches started when two girls began having fits, and a doctor tried to use elixirs and everything he could to cure them. He then diagnosed the two girls of being plagued by witches. After these events, the first 3 accused witches were arrested on February 29,1692, and the Salem witch trials began. When the accused were tried at the courthouse, they were already walking into death’s gate. Exodus 22:18 says, “ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” This scripture set the tone for the Salem witch trials..The Salem Witch trials indirectly helped change the American legal system due to moral and ethical issues with spectral evidence, lack of legal representation, and how the accusers only…
The witch craze in Europe lasted from the fifteenth century through the seventeenth century. Women were targets to persecution. Witchcraft had already been considered evil but religious conflicts from the Reformation started another uprising. People, women in particular, were being persecuted as witches for suspicious behavior, fear of the unknown and religious beliefs along with ignorance. People being suspicious and accusing of others was a main source for persecution.…