Friday, February 6, 2009

The Burning Times

I'm watching a documentary on "The Witch." It talks about the progression of the witch, the concept of the witch in the Bible, mythology, the Burning times in Europe and the witch hunts here in America (The New World.)

Now, I didn't realize this, but in the Burning Times in Europe, scholars estimate that 60,000 to 300,000 people were killed. I had no idea the numbers were so high. There was a town in Germany called Wurzburg where they condemned 600 people to death. The magistrates decided that almost the entire town was possessed by the devil. 19 were priests, 41 were children.

Women were primarily the targets of these crazy killings. In Europe, it was illegal to kill a witch unless they confessed to being one. They used torture methods to get the confessions... those methods I can't even type here; just reading about it makes me sick. It is absolutely horrifying.

Just thought I'd share. It's crazy to think how things used to be.



On a related note, one of my favorite books is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. If you haven't read it, you should. :)


~J

2 comments:

Cheryl said...

That's one of my favorite books, too. Of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne was the hottie of his day. :)


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"4 oz" said...

I used to teach social studies. One thing I always told my students was "history repeats itself". They wouldn't believe me at first, but we always found examples throughout the year of history repeating. As a woman, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the witch trials will never make a comeback!