A Dark Look Into Our Past:

1
A Dark Look Into Our Past
The Crucible
2
The Puritans

• HolyServitude
• Fire Brimstone
• Work God
• One of the most strict religions ever formed.
• Left Europe to form their own colony where sin
  was not allowed.

3
Lifestyle of a Puritan

• Rise and pray
• Work
• Go to church
• Work
• Pray
• Sleep

No Time For Sin
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No-nos in Puritan Life

• Brightly colored clothing
• Making yourself pretty
• Being individual
• Music
• Dancing
• Gathering of women
• Working on Sunday (praying and reading- Bible
  ONLY)

5
The Witch Trials
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The targeted

• The Midwives
• Too much power for a woman
• Men not included
• The Gypsies
• The Poets
• The Jews
• The Old Women
• The wives of men with property

7
Reasons for the Spread

• Ergot Poisoning
• Financial gain
• Fear of God
• Lust
• Old rivalries
• Property ownerships
• Revenge

8
Why believe in witches?

• Whether the Belief that there are such Beings as
  Witches is so Essential a Part of the Catholic
  Faith that Obstinacy to maintain the Opposite
  Opinion manifestly savours of Heresy

9
In other words...

• Christians believe in witches, that explains the
  evils that happen to them
• To not believe in witches is going against your
  religion (a.k.a. heresy)

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European Witch Craze
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The brutality!

• HUNTS note the difference!
• Regardless of your confession, you were burned
• Trials were NOT necessary
• Often used inhuman torture devices
• Skin the witch alive
• Spear the witch from legs to top of head, then
  burn the body rotisserie style

12
Less trials more hunting...

• Malleus Maleficarum
• Written by two ministers
• Science not known make sense of the unknown
  embellish
• Used on every judges bench
• Many owned it
• How to spot a witch!
• What witches were capable of...

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Things that the Malleus says

• Women are prone to be witches
• Fragile, weak minded, easily corrupted
• Made from Adams rib, therefore bent
• Ambitious women evil
• Midwives plan what babies are born dead and then
  sacrifice them to the devil
• Witches steal members to get back at lost loves

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What happened to the witches?

• TORTURE
• Hanging
• Burning
• Thumb Screws
• Spanish boots
• The Rack
• Whatever would make them admit their guilt

15
Why would people do this? If you could persecute
another person, would you? Why? How far would you
go to save your own skin? The Puritans claimed
themselves to be the purest of the pure, the
quintessence of virtuehow did a society built on
faith turn against each other?