The massive witch hunt of the early modern period came to be due to the concept of witchcraft becoming more and more present with reality. Religious Reformations officially started the illusion of witches and demons walking among society. This is the case when the concept of the devil gets molded with the gods of norse mythology, which are Pagan gods. This caused society to fear Pagans and view them as devil’s servants walking the earth alongside them. This illusion was vivified when the concept of Sabbath, a ceremonial gathering of witches to worship the devil, was introduced and non-Christian religious groups got targeted for practicing their religion secretly. The witch hunt was taken a step further in the 13th, 14th, and 15th century, when Europe began to adopt inquisitorial law, law that protects the accuser from any responsibility and allows the accused witch to be tortured. All in all, the witch hunt of the …show more content…
The inquisitorial law was a judiciary system that allowed witchcraft trials in the legal system. Inquisitorial law allows for torture to get confessions from the accused witches. The law additionally allows the accuser to be free from all responsibility regarding the case. The Inquisitorial law was adopted all around europe. These prosecutions were excessive and many died, if not by execution, by being tortured to death (Lecture 1/26/23). According to Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany, “alleged witches left no records other than their trial confessions, which were often extorted by means of Inquisitorial procedures ranging from leading questions to torture.” Many confessions that came from the accused witch on trial were from being worn out as torture went on and the prosecuting went on(Brauner 10). To elaborate, the torture additions to the protection of the accusers created a mass witch
In both The Crucible and in modern day witch hunts, witch hunts are caused out of fear or for personal gain. Jill Schonebelen wrote a research paper on Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights. Throughout this article, it mentions the persecution of witches today in communities around the globe, mentioning the flashbacks of similar strategies that were used in the past, doing different types of tortures. In Modern days, recent generations have abandoned wonderful traditions. Rather, recollecting others with distasteful memories such as witchcraft.
With this knowledge, we can start to see the role that the English legal system may have played in keeping the volume of executions for witchcraft lower than that of continental Europe. By giving the accused people a legitimate trial process and requiring evidence to prove guilt, the English may have been able to keep the death toll down by a significant
The first set of witchcraft persecutions occurred during Elizabeth 1st reign, this was Around 1563. Commonly people associated witches with a woman and the beliefs were the following of that they have made a pact with the evil spirit Satan. The rush of the witch persecutions mainly happened after 1563 and by the time period of 1750 roughly 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt, or hung across the whole of Western Europe. Therefore, in this essay, I will be mainly focusing and arguing which of the hysteria surrounding witchcraft and witchcraft trials had a greater impact in Britain or the American colonies in the time period of the 17th century. And I will be arguing it following different factors which could contribute to this such as the social factors geographical factors, religious factors and also control law and order.
What is the definition of witch-trials? The witch trials were a series of persecutions and prosecutions that occurred between the 15th and 17th century in Europe. Thousands of individuals (women) were accused of witchcraft during this time and were subjected to trials, torture, and death. From substantial evidence, the trials frequently featured charges based on hearsay, gossip, and supposition. Several of the accused were subjected to brutal questioning and torture to elicit confessions, and others were killed solely based on their confessions.
Those people who got accused were kept in jail until they been proved free or waiting for their punishment, “hanging to death.” Some people know what the judge wants, so they lied and confess that they were witches and are forced to sign the contract with the devil. In this way, people have pity on them and are willing to forgive them because they believe God will take care of them if they
Accusations of witchcraft began to surface, and soon dozens of people were arrested and put on trial. The trials were deeply flawed, relying on spectral evidence and confessions obtained through torture. Many of the accused were women, and their alleged crimes were rooted in sexist stereotypes. By the time the hysteria subsided, twenty people had been executed and several more had died in jail. The witch trials demonstrated the dangers of mass hysteria and the danger of groupthink, as people were swept up in a frenzy of fear and suspicion.
Throughout history there have been many events which fit into the criteria of a witch hunt, literally and metaphorically. From the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 portrayed in The Crucible and McCarthyism during WW2, to modern day issues such as terrorism witch hunts have plagued history. Today, these “witch hunts” have gotten more realistic and are backed up by actual threats to society. Although, they are still related to the original witch hunts of Salem as there are many people searching for large amounts of a certain type of people. However, modern day witch hunts clearly have the same cause/ effect as the actual Salem witch trials.
There were a variety of Witch Hunts throughout history. From the Holocaust to the KKK, all of the Witch Hunts have something in common, for example genocide and humiliation of innocent people. Witch Hunts are related to the world because they can occur at anytime on small or large scale. For example 127,000 Us citizens form Japanese Decent, 1942 relocation of all of the Japanese Decent were forced to move to concentration camps and not only did the US put Japanese in camps but so did Canada, and Canada places 23,000 Canadians of Japanese decent to camp. The survivors of these camps were paid 20,000 each in reparations.
Witch trials throughout Europe and Salem flourished due to false accusations. In modern times, people are not immune to mass hysteria, people are only creating and spreading it. The European and Salem Witch Trials both started in similar fashion. The Salem Witch Trials started with a young child’s accusation of someone using witchcraft.
Injustice against the Salem Witches Through the years of 1400 and 1800 a series of events took place where there was an injustice toward a group of people that were believed to be witches. These people had to turn on each other in order to survive. The fear of dying only led them to fight for survival even if it meant blaming innocent people. Although there were a lot of religious principles, people also believed witches were real.
Social: 1600s During the 1600s, there were plenty of witch trials and wars regarding religion. In the 1600s, there was a new thing going on. In Europe, people were hunting witches, whether they were men or women. Usually, the ones that were victims, falsely accused were women, for doing witchcraft.
During the fourteenth to seventeenth century, it was a crime punishable by death to be suspected of practicing witchcraft. In Salem, Massachusetts twenty five people were wrongfully executed and jailed for being suspected of this in February of 1692. “The hysteria around witchcraft began in Europe by Christians during the fourteenth century” (New England Law Boston). It was believed witches existed and practitioners could negatively affect the environment and control people's actions. Thousands of people were executed in Europe for suspicions of witchcraft.
The peak of witch-hunting occurred between 1560 and 1630, which saw a drastic rise in hunts, trials, and executions throughout much of Europe. In some cases, witch hunts and trials would escalate into a full-blown witch panic, where entire villages, towns, or regions got caught up in the hysteria and witnessed a large number of hunts and executions within a short period of time. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to establish what specific factors led to any particular witch hunt; it is an even greater challenge to comprehend the complexities behind the outbreak of a complete panic. However, throughout the peak of the witch hunting period it is evident that witches were increasingly perceived as a malevolent threat to the public good,
Over 300 years ago, more than 100 citizens of the colony of Massachusetts were accused of the crime of witchcraft, and many executed. Although this era in history, known as the Salem Witch Trials, lasted only mere months, its impact on the American criminal justice system has lasted until present day. Although both the trials in Salem and modern America are based on a similar justice system, there are vast differences, specifically in the rights of the defense, most notable in the separation of Church and State, the standards of evidence, and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The modern American criminal justice system, in comparison to that of the time of the Salem Witch Trials, has changed drastically. No longer is the rule of law based on
All through history millions of individuals have been shunned, arrested, brutally tortured, prosecuted, and persecuted as witches. One would think that post colonization of the United States these unjust acts to human kind would have ended, but that was not so. In 1692 the Salem Witch Trials took place, an event that was a major catastrophe in United States history. It began when a group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts declared that they were possessed by the devil and made accusations that several older women were practicing witchcraft and fraternizing with the Devil.