| | |
|
OnWitchraft 4 - 05 Dec 2019 - Main.IsraelRodriguezRubio
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="ArticlesInProcess" |
|---|
The Community's Peace: Witchcraft, Popular Culture, and the Law during the Early Modern Period | | | As to the actual evidence introduced, confessions, whether forced or otherwise obtained, “unnatural” body marks, and witness testimony became popular methods to substantiate the accusations of witchcraft. The records that remain of the processes are troublesome: not just because they are few but also because it is difficult to extract from them what the accused believed. Confessions should be analyzed with a healthy degree of skepticism as evidence of the accused’s actual beliefs. After all, demonologists and witch hunters advocated the use of trickery and false promises of leniency to extract confessions “from those who [were] obviously guilt but [would] not say so.” Gibson at 25. Though judicial torture was formally disallowed in England (unlike continental Europe and Scotland), it sometimes made its way into witch investigations by way of sleep deprivation and ordeals, such as “swimming a witch.” Witch hunters, like Matthew Hopkins, used these practices that verged on torture to obtain confessions. Hopkins, for example, popularized the use of “dunking” and “walking” the witch as means to extract confessions during the period of the Civil War. | |
<
< | As indicated, little remains of the thoughts and beliefs of those accusers, but far is less remains of the unmitigated thoughts and beliefs of those accused of witchcraft. Though much is speculated about the minds of the accusers, far less is known about the accused. Gaskill notes, if merely in passing, “most suspects were marginal women whose confessions reflected the misery of hardship, anxiety of moral guilt, and fear of damnation.” Gaskill at 53. Thomas hints of similar circumstances in theorizing as to the origin. Ironically, though the cases hung on what the accused confessed to, we know less about what they thought. | >
> | As indicated, little remains of the thoughts and beliefs of those accusers, but far less remains of the unmitigated thoughts and beliefs of those accused of witchcraft. Though much is speculated about the minds of the accusers, far less is known about the accused. Gaskill notes, if merely in passing, “Most suspects were marginal women whose confessions reflected the misery of hardship, anxiety of moral guilt, and fear of damnation.” Gaskill at 53. Though the outcome of these cases largely turned on what the accused confessed to, we can discern far less about what they thought, even from their supposed own words. As Geertz has remarked, “Men, of course, can lie, and, especially in the presence of judges, often do....” Geertz at 189. | | |
PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |