Showing posts with label witchcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label witchcraft. Show all posts

Friday, December 16, 2016

First Recorded witchcraft Confession and top 10 Salem witchcraft trials "So-called witches were forced to admit confessing to being involved in witchcraft"

Mary Johnson Photo credit: witchcraftandwitches.com


Update today 19/05/2020 

While nowhere near as famous as the Salem witchcraft trials that took place in 1692, the great Connecticut witchcraft panic, which lasted intermittently from 1647 until 1697, set a precedent in American history. Of course, these trials presaged the later series of events in Salem. But the manner in which the trials came to an end opened the door for more rational and logical examinations of supposed supernatural phenomena.


10
The First Recorded Confession


In the mid-17th century, a single witness was all it took to get someone tried for witchcraft. Sometimes, all that was needed was one accusation from a prominent member of society. In 1648, Mary Johnson was tortured into confessing that she was involved in witchcraft. Two years earlier, Johnson, a servant, was accused of theft. 


Mary Black Arrest Warrant image wikipedia

A local minister named Samuel Stone believed that Johnson was guilty of much more, so he whipped her until she said that she had trafficked with the Devil. In particular, Johnson claimed that she had conspired with the Devil to complete her household chores, sleep with several men, and even kill a child.


Samuel Stone Sr. photo: wikitree.com

 In December 1648, Johnson was executed for these crimes. While in prison awaiting her trial, Johnson gave birth to a son who was quickly indentured as a servant to Nathaniel Rescew. The boy would remain under Rescew’s tutelage until he turned 21.



The First To Die

It is widely believed that Mary Johnson was the first accused witch to die in Connecticut (if not America). However, a woman named Alse (Alice) Young is the rightful holder of this ignominious title. On May 26, 1647, Young was hanged at Meeting House Square in Hartford (the site of today’s Old State House) following her brief trial. Little is known about Young.

Mary Johnston - Wikipedia

Old State House Hartford Connecticut photo: wikimedia.org

It is believed that she was born in England around 1600. Her husband was a man named John Young, who settled in the town of Windsor sometime between 1630 and 1640. It likely that Young was executed for the crime of making herbal folk remedies for her fellow settlers. Alice Young Beamon, Young’s daughter, would later be accused of witchcraft while living in Springfield, Massachusetts.


8
The Peculiar Town Of Wethersfield
Photo credit: connecticuthistory.org


During the early 1650s, several individuals were hanged for supposedly practicing witchcraft throughout Connecticut. The convicted included:


John and Joan Carrington (both executed in 1651), 

Goodwife Bassett and Goodwife Knapp (executed in 1651 and 1653, respectively), 
Mary “Goody” Paine Bassett (1620-1651) - Find A Grave Memorial


Lydia Gilbert (executed in 1654), Rebecca and Nathaniel Greensmith,
Lydia Gilbert – History of American Women
Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith – Hartford, Connecticut Witches Legends of America

Mary Sanford and Mary Barnes (all hanged in 1662).

Although some of these individuals came from places like Hartford, Fairfield, and Windsor, some came from or had connections to the town of Wethersfield. A later “witch,”  Katherine Harrison, was a medical practitioner in Wethersfield. 


More on Connecticut's Witch Trials | You're History!

Because of this fact and because Wethersfield was the hometown of Mary Johnson, the term “Wethersfield witches” has been used by historians and amateur scribes alike. Interestingly, the Carringtons and Johnson, all of whom were from Wethersfield, were active members of their community prior to the allegations levied against them.In colonial America, many accused witches were neither fringe members of their community nor easily classifiable as “outcasts” or “misfits.” This was certainly the case in Wethersfield.




The Great Hartford Panic
Photo credit: damnedct.com

Between 1662 and 1663, the city of Hartford fell under the spell of an intense anti-witchcraft hysteria. Beginning in March 1662

Anne Cole found widespread support from her community when she accused Rebecca Greensmith and Elizabeth Seager of using magic to torment her. 


Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith – Hartford, Connecticut Witches Legends of America

When an eight-year-old Elizabeth Kelly died after suffering prolonged stomach pains, her parents accused a woman named Goody Ayres of strangling their daughter through the use of black magic. Many of the stories from Hartford were incredibly bizarre.


 One woman claimed that Satan had caused her to speak with a Dutch accent, while one eyewitness claimed that she saw her neighbors transform into large black hounds during the nighttime. All told, three accused witches were executed.


Hartford Witch Trials of 1662 Learn Religions



The Saga Of Katherine Harrison
A Modern Witch Trial photo credit: city-journal.org

As previously mentioned, Katherine Harrison was a practicing physician in Wethersfield at the time that she was accused of being a witch. Harrison was accused of practicing astrology and using her spectral familiars (including a black dog and a calf’s head) to visit the houses of her neighbors on moonlit nights. Harrison was formally indicted in May 1669




Amazingly, despite being accused of witchcraft by approximately 30 witnesses, Harrison was acquitted after a jury could not reach a verdict. She returned to Wethersfield, but several residents signed a petition urging that she be sent back to prison. Finally, in May 1670, Harrison was once again released from prison after the colonial governor and several clergymen challenged the evidentiary standards used in Harrison’s case


5
The Importance Of John Winthrop Jr.
John Winthrop, often known as "John Winthrop, Junior" or "the Younger", was the eldest son of John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Mary Forth, his first wife. His father left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the spring of 1630, and John stayed behind to care for his stepmother, Margaret (Tyndal) Winthrop, and the Winthrop children, as well as his father's businesses. He was governor of the Colony of Connecticut in 1657, and from 1659 to 1676. photo: wikipedia.org

Also known as John Winthrop the Younger, Winthrop was the son of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Prior to becoming the governor of the Connecticut Colony, the younger Winthrop had been educated in England and had traveled extensively in Europe. According to one historian, Winthrop learned alchemy in Europe and practiced folk magic for much of his life. 


John Winthrop Jr. (1606-1676) Connecticut History

As such, Governor Winthrop knew firsthand how difficult practicing “natural magic” could be. As governor, Winthrop began to question the flimsy evidentiary standards of his colony’s witchcraft trials. In particular, Winthrop grew to question the legitimacy of “spectral evidence,” or eyewitness claims about being “tormented” by spirits or seeing spectral familiars.


4
New Standards Emerge


Because of Governor Winthrop’s hesitancy to accept “spectral evidence,” he played a major role in the two acquittals of Katherine Harrison. Indeed, following the conclusion of the Hartford panic in 1663, Winthrop, along with several magistrates and clergymen, established new guidelines for future witchcraft trials.First and foremost, Winthrop clearly defined what constituted diabolism. Winthrop believed that only pacts, or sealed contracts made with the Devil, made someone a witch. 


New-York Historical Society

Pact in Backwards Latin photo: wikipedia.org

Crop failures or sudden deaths did not necessarily mean that witchcraft was afoot. More importantly, Winthrop decreed that for a witchcraft trial to proceed, two people had to see a witch’s specter at the same time. This ruling drastically reduced the number of witchcraft panics for almost three decades.



Witch Hunting Moves To Massachusetts
Photo credit: legendsofamerica.com
The standards set by Connecticut held for many years. In 1688, however, a new witchcraft panic gripped Boston, the largest and most important city in Puritan America. Following the death of Winthrop in 1676, New England lost the greatest champion of a rational approach to the supernatural.Winthrop was replaced by Increase Mather, a Harvard-trained theologian and the author of “Remarkable Providences.” Mather believed strongly in the existence of witches. 


Massachusetts Puritans Quote of the Day

Although he accepted many of the dictates established by Winthrop and the Connecticut magistrates, he nevertheless oversaw the execution of Goodwife (“Goody”) Ann Glover. Ann Glover and her daughter worked as housekeepers for the family of John Goodwin. Following a dispute over some missing laundry, the Goodwin children began acting strangely.

A local doctor diagnosed them as being bewitched. Soon enough, Glover, an Irish Catholic who probably only spoke Gaelic, was accused of being a witch. Mather himself deduced that the Goodwin children were bewitched. Glover was hanged in November 1688. She would be the last “witch” to be hanged in Boston.



The Stamford Panic Of 1692
Photo credit: stamfordadvocate.com

During the same year as the Salem witchcraft trials, a servant named Katherine Branch mysteriously fell ill. For weeks, she suffered convulsions and mused wildly about her affliction. At one point, Branch began telling people that a cat often spoke to her about possessing the finer things in life. 

Branch also said that this cat would sometimes transform into a woman. Following a flurry of accusations, two women—Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford and Mercy Disborough of Fairfield—were formally accused


Case of Elizabeth Clawson (Elizabeth Clauson). Testimony of Sary Connecticut State Library

Fortunately, many people were suspicious of Branch’s story. Following a series of experiments (including dunking the accused witches in a Fairfield pond), both Clawson and Disborough were ultimately acquitted.




The Last In Line


photo: pinterest


While Sarah Spencer and an unknown individual named Norton were the last accused witches in the history of Connecticut (they were accused in 1724 and 1768, respectively), Winifred Benham and Winifred Benham Jr. were the last two accused witches of the 17th century. 


Almost five years after the conclusion of the witchcraft panic in Salem, the Benhams of Wallingford (some documents say that they were from New Haven) were tried for making a pact with the Devil to gain the power of transformation. 


A Modest Inquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft" by John Hale Pinterest

Similarly, both Benhams were accused of using their spirits to inflict bodily harm on their neighbors.Luckily, both Benhams were acquitted. It’s likely that early criticisms of the proceedings in Salem helped to save these two women from the gallows.



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Sunday, December 11, 2016

A brief history of Witches ( Generally persecuted by the Church following Exodus 22.18, “You shall not allow a asorceress to live.“ )

A witch being tortured. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Updated Today: 04/06/2021

Between 1482 and 1782, thousands of people across Europe were accused of witchcraft and subsequently executed. But why were so many innocent people suspected of such a crime, and what would they have experienced?


Witches are everywhere. In fairytales, fantasy and satire, they appear time and again as a versatile synonym for evil and transgression. But, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, men and women of both high and low status believed in witches ubiquity in a far more disturbing way. Lord chief justice Anderson noted in 1602: “The land is full of witches… they abound in all places” – not as a symbol or figure of fun, but as a deadly threat to life, livelihood and divine order.


Sir Edmund Anderson (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The large-scale persecution, prosecution and execution of witches in these centuries was an extraordinary phenomenon. It is also an episode of European history that has spawned many myths and much inaccuracy. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is one of the purveyors of such erroneous hype, stating: “The church burned at the stake an astounding 5 million women”, which would be astounding if true. 

The history of witch hunts in America and Europe - The Washington Post


The actual numbers are far lower, but still striking: between 1482 and 1782, around 100,000 people across Europe were accused of witchcraft, and some 40–50,000 were executed.

Photo: brh.org.uk

Neither were witches (with the exception of some targeted by the Spanish Inquisition) generally persecuted by the church. Although belief in witches was orthodox doctrine, following Exodus 22.18, “You shall not allow a asorceress to live.“ the 16th and 17th-century witch trials were the result of witchcraft becoming a crime under law, and witches were prosecuted by the state. In England, witchcraft became a crime in 1542, a statute renewed in 1562 and 1604. As such, most witches across Europe received the usual penalty for murder – hanging (though in Scotland and under the Spanish Inquisition witches were burned).

The history of witch hunts in America and Europe - The Washington Post


(Photo: theodysseyonline.com)

Nor were all witches women – men could be witches too. Across Europe, 70–80 per cent of people accused of witchcraft were female – though the proportions of female witches were higher in certain areas: the bishopric of Basel; the county of Namur (modern Belgium); Hungary; Poland; and Essex, England. But one in five witches were male across Europe, and in some places, males predominated – in Moscow, male witches outnumbered women 7:3; in Normandy 3:1.


(Photo: pinterest.com)

Nevertheless, because women were believed to be morally and spiritually weaker than men, they were thought to be particularly vulnerable to diabolic persuasion. Most of those accused were also poor and elderly; many were widows, and menopausal and post-menopausal women are disproportionally represented among them.

North Berwick witch trials - Wikipedia

Although witchcraft trials happened in every county in the country, the best evidence survives from three major witch crazes in the British Isles – in 1590s Edinburgh; 1612 Lancashire; and 1640s Essex and East Anglia, and we focus on those.

Diabolical Act Of Persuasion Art Print By Jon Macnair (Photo: keyword-suggestions.com

Above all, we have tried to consider the perspective of the victims – that is, those who were accused of witchcraft. We consider the circumstances in which alleged witches were accused, and the power of both neighbourhood accusation and elite sanction (James VI and I’s book on the subject of witchcraft, Daemonologie, published in 1597, is a case in point)

Daemonologie: A Critical Edition. Expanded. In Modern English with Notes (9781532968914): King James, Warren, Brett R: Books

James (right) depicted beside his mother Mary (left). In reality, they were separated when he was still a baby. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)









It is a sad, sorry and often harrowing tale – but it is one that needs to be heard.

Daemonologie — in full Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Books: By the High and Mighty Prince, James. Was written and published in 1597 by King James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) as a philosophical dissertation on contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient Black magic



The title page from James VI and I, Daemonologie (London, 1603). (Photo: english.cam.ac.uk)
It included a study on demonology and the methods demons used to trouble men while touching on topics such as werewolves and vampires. It was a political yet theological statement to educate a misinformed populace on the history, practices and implications of sorcery and the reasons for persecuting a witch in a Christian society under the rule of canonical law. This book is believed to be one of the primary sources used by William Shakespeare in the production of Macbeth. 



Title page Rare Books Keywords: Witchcraft (Photo: Wikimedia.org)
We examine the way that torture – though illegal in England – was employed in late 16th-century Scotland and during the upheaval of the Civil War. We explore the role of the witchfinder, but also the willing collaboration of ordinary people in ridding the land of witches. And we look at what someone accused of witchcraft experienced as their fate.

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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Land of The Dead and the Power of Satan in Middle Ages

People in the Middle Ages led certainly lives quite different from ours. But their thinking was so "different" than ours? In many ways, there are undeniable similarities: they had families, society was divided into states (or classes), living the same ambitions for their children as new and evolving into a world of emotions largely similar to ours.

On the other hand, the ratio of those emotions have another chip. Among other things, that superstition which is antechamber distress, kept the souls and minds trapped in some cruel straps. The taste for morbid faith that the world of the dead intersect naturally with the living conviction that between natural and supernatural no borders precise dark at the "mob" (and not only) serenity reason that gave evidence, however, Christian thinkers and mystics of the same period.

St. Bernard, in the late twelfth century, denounced with a gentle authority this train of superstitions and visions borrowed lack of logic of the delusion: "What sense are there in the cells of the brothers settled down to reading all those monstrosities ridiculous? About there monkeys unclean lions grim, terrible centaurs ? But halves of man? You zari under a head multihull and, for the right balance, more heads under one flesh.


This is a quadruped tailed snake a snake-tailed quadruped! Colo horse ends with a goat and beyond, an animal with horns, finish by a body of a horse. from all sides, an entire naval forms wrongheaded, for your coming rather read marble than in the pages of books and to spend days studying those things strange than cumpanesti the law of Upper. My God, My God, if we do not hinder all this nonsense, even to be ashamed of the thoughts that arise " Useless warnings! As you submit to decline moment, medieval thinking will be given a space in increasingly large and violent images that grim fantasy, wanting to arouse anxiety related to spectrum damnation, actually hiding a whole retinue of lust.


Saint Bernard photo: wikipedia.org
In the Netherlands, Alain de la Roche, a Dominican home Breton visionary, fanciful devotion is perfect - devotio modern - and its religious expression ultraconcreta. In his work, largely composed of sermons and descriptions of fantastic visions, comes out strong sexual excess imagination. 

Here it is seeing "beasts symbolizing sins, endowed with fierce genitalia spitting streams of fire which darkened the earth, describes the meretrix apostasia the harlot apostasy, creating apostates, devouring them and vomitandu them take turns hugging him and dezmierdandu them like a mother "(Johan Huizinga, the decline of the Middle Ages).


Ars moriendi


As understood, so our ancestors world in medieval times? According to philosopher Alan of Lille (XII century), "every creature of this world is a book or a painting or a mirror for us." The author of "book" God and the purpose of life is to understand the meaning of this book, so we can lead a higher spiritual and moral existence. 

Starting with the Renaissance, people began to look at the world in a much different way. They were trying to comprehend so they can control and exploit for their benefit. Medieval world, in contrast, did not ask to be dominated, but rather contemplated. That's because at any moment could feats. For medieval consciousness, fear of impending Armageddon's descent represent a continuing threat and dark, and life beyond, as I said, it was not as limited by the obvious here. Death had visited the living without protocol, unpredictable and insidious, as confesses a story widely circulated in age, history of the three youths live and three dead, which describes the meeting of young rich members of some deceased on the edge of a forest . Skeletons keep them frightened young murmur in his ear a reminder lugubrious chorus: "So how are you guys now we have been us, as we will now be made." Testimonials about corpses traveling on the outskirts of towns and fields are so many, that chronicler William of Newburgh (XII century) complains that "you can not count." Frontiers of the natural and the supernatural are extremely fluid, and traffic between the here and the beyond is not, as one might hasten to believe, one way. Because life lasts "blink of an eye," the Middle Ages was looking for an extend beyond the Acheron.



The descriptive travel widely in the world after death is of course performed by Dante in the Divine Comedy. But she's not alone. Thurkell, peasant from Essex, is recovering from a deep coma bringing with him many and overwhelming images of geography Land of the Dead, and Fursey Irishman returns of Hell flames scorched his beard. 

When borders are passed in a sense, when in the other - and not only by humans but also for whole cohorts of spiritual beings: the nine orders of angels on the one hand, Satan and his hideous appearances Armia other. 

Two camps engaged in a merciless struggle, whose stakes represented the souls of the living. Besides angels who do not always have swords sufficiently sharp and I can not prove always the evil people are protected by the Church ( "Every monastery is - wrote on the 1100 monk Orderic Vitalis - a fortress built to protect us from Satan ") by baptism, which is a form of exorcism, through rites of passage are designed to provide effective protection in the dead man's" great journey ".



If Antiquity boasted the famous Ars Amandi of Ovid, late Middle Ages, in almost all northern Europe, he has made one of the first printings of the West, Ars moriendi (written, apparently, by a Dominican monk at the express request of the Council of to Constance, 1414-1418), the most popular book of the time. Widely read and translated into all the languages ​​of Western Europe, the long version of the paper - Tractatus (or Speculum) artis bene moriendi - it has become extremely popular in England, where he created an entire tradition literary that will culminate later in the eighteenth century, the Holy Living and Holy Dying. This "art of dying properly" consisted of six chapters: the first describes the good parts of death and concluded that death should not scare us, the second depicting the five temptations (lack of faith, despair, impatience, pride and stinginess) you assault the dying and described the methods of their ward, the third listed seven questions that must be addressed dying and consolation available thanks to salvation offered by Christian love, the fourth chapter describes the life of Christ, to be taken to any good Christian as a model, the fifth address intimates and family, indicating rules of behavior that need to be followed around his deathbed and, finally, the sixth proposed set of prayers which was entitled read at bedside of the dying.

 The short version of the book, produced in the Netherlands around 1450, is a development of the second chapter (the temptations of the dying) and contains 11 etchings, the first ten are distributed in pairs, one for each temptation. Every pair is the demon that it seeks to deceive the dying and the way to avoid temptation. The eleventh depict dead coming out victorious in harsh trials, the time when i open the gates of Heaven and Hell demon returns.

When it ended the Middle Ages?


For some, in jest, half seriously, it was not until the twentieth century, when civilization Countryside (life rhythm of the seasons, obedience to nature village) gives way to urban civilization (life rhythm of wages, taxes, subjecting nature , the city). 


Darwin as an old man photo: wikipedia.org

For others, just when the man loses, with modernity, central position in the world thanks to Darwin's theories, he will find that is not found in the middle of its own history (Adam and Eve is but a myth) and by Freud is assured that it is not even the center of his own people, can only with difficulty be master of personal destiny (as long as the unconscious governs a large part of our existence).



Historically, things are simpler: Middle Ages ended with the Renaissance. A decisive year, an absolute frontier 1492, the year of the discovery of America, the moment when Europe, Asia and Africa cease to be the only continents of the planet. 1492 manifests its historical vocation limit and if we consider that marks the end of the Arab invasions in Europe (fall of Granada) and gives the signal that the massive integration of Arab culture (astronomy, mathematics, medicine, culinary arts, sciences, etc.) and by it has scientific treasure of antiquity. I mean is where the premises constitute emergence of humanism, individualism of political development, the notion of progress.



Yet when it ended the Middle Ages?


Here's an artistic perspective on the theme of the end of the medieval world, a parable revealing. One day the summer of 1520, riding a stallion with stumpy wrists and croup stately, melancholic Albrecht Dürer penetrate cutting on a rainy day in the city of Hertogenbosch. Received with honors by some of orfevrii vase you place the artist confesses his astonishment at seeing bold cathedral in the heart of the fair, embodied in a late gothic style. That's because her expectations are as of that day mood: gloomy.



About the settlement in question he knew, in advance, two things: that it was just an overlap surly bricks and that perpetrated with little while ago, there had taken his entire existence Hieronymus Bosch, painter all visions medieval illustrator darkest aberrations morphological mad grafting of species and kingdoms, who had given thousands of faces of people fear and demons of ancient times

If seaworthy surprising cathedral delighted him, he Durer, geometrically rational, who draw lines with precision architects man with eyes burned calculations not said a word about the great praise disappeared. It was his way to part with the past tradition dead and obsolete ages, looking for some values over which blew premonition of the future. 1520, the year past was met future, in the central square of Hertogenbosch.


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