This year there was news about the memorial cross to the last witch who was burned in 1657 in the Scottish city of Petra. Not finding answers to the question why, we delved into this topic and collected a lot of interesting information about why monuments are erected to witches.
Scotland is considered the leading country in Europe where the persecution of witches is at its peak. In the 17th and 18th centuries, more than 4,000 people were recognized as witches and sorcerers and executed. At first, they were burned, but since the end of the 17th century, "fashion" has changed and they began to be hung. The last execution took place in 1728. In 1563, under the influence of the church, the Scottish Parliament passed a law that made it illegal to be a witch or use the services of a witch. This law was repealed in 1763, but during this time more than 4,000 people were executed as a result of a witch-hunt on charges of witchcraft. This does not include those who died of torture in dungeons or committed suicide, unable to withstand the torture.
And there were probably no less of those executed.
This picture shows a small well in one corner of the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. In this very place, over 250 years, 300 women were burned, accused of witchcraft.
There is a certain stereotype of a witch. Usually it was a woman who did not have a family to protect her - widows or young unmarried girls. Any woman who was not like everyone else, not part of a respectable and church-going society, could be accused of witchcraft in certain moods in the country. The category of sorcerers immediately fell into those who had a squint, which was considered a "devil's" eye, or those who suffered from epilepsy, allegedly possessed by the devil. The same applied to women who knew how to heal with herbs.
A typical case of a witch hunt is the case in the town of Forfar in the 17th century, where 42 people (almost half of the town!) Were suspected of witchcraft at once, and at least 9 of them were definitely executed.
Promotional video:
It was a small, typical 17th century town, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world on three sides by swamps and a lake. It had only 2 streets, High Street and Caste Street. At their intersection was the city prison. The population was about 1000 townspeople (that is, every fiftieth - solid witches!). A dirty, smelly and cramped town, where there was still no running water and other amenities of modern civilization, and where all the contents of chamber pots and feces of domestic animals were simply thrown into the street. Everyone knew everything about each other's affairs, and mutual hostility was passed on from generation to generation. In the case of a witch hunt, everything depended very much on the local priest. In Forfar it was the young and energetic Alexander Robertson. If the priest did not attach importance to the accusations of witchcraft, then it all ended there. But if he agreed that witches existed and should be exterminated, then he turned the case over to the city council, which set into motion the heavy, clumsy, but terrible legal machine of the 17th century.
The epic of the witch-hunt began in Forfar with Helen Guthrie, an incident that sparked a long and dreadful history of prejudice and intolerance in the town. Helen, by her own admission, was a drunkard and wicked woman who killed her half-sister when they were still children. Helen and her 13-year-old daughter Janet were charged with witchcraft along with 11 other people of both sexes. Helen helped the "hunters" find other witches by claiming that she could identify a witch or sorcerer just by looking at a person. She agreed to help the "witch hunters" if they would not rush her. She became, in modern language, the main witness for the prosecution, who provided a lot of material. She told stories about drunken midnight sabbaths in the city cemetery, desecration of graves, eating the bodies of people,drowned in shipwrecks and washed ashore, destruction of bridges in the area. She boasted that the devil wanted to save her from prison by lifting her into the air and carrying her through the fence, prevented by the vigilance of the guards. The only reason Helen “helped” was to get attention, to become famous. True, it is possible that she wanted to prolong her life and the life of her daughter as long as possible, making herself an indispensable assistant for the “hunters”.making yourself an indispensable helper for "hunters".making yourself an indispensable helper for "hunters".
The Hunters believed there were 4 ways to identify a witch.
If a person confesses to meeting the devil. It was believed that witches met with the devil to drink, dance and tell him about their evil deeds. According to tradition, the Sabbath took place on Friday night at the city cemetery or other uncrowded places.
The witches did not recognize and denied baptism. This meant that they had different names from their birth data. So, Helen Guthrie was called White Witch (White Witch), possibly indicating a knowledge of medicinal herbs.
The witch received a mark on her body from the devil, which did not hurt or bleed if pricked with something sharp.
The witch, through supernatural powers, committed evil deeds. Witches were accused of destroying crops, causing damage to people and animals.
In order to accuse and execute a witch, a confession was required from her. Indeed, many talked about something seemingly unimportant, for example, about meeting a man in black clothes who could be the devil. Only a few of them confessed to something supernatural or some kind of atrocities, such as Helen, or another "witch" from Forfar - Isobel Shyrie, who confessed that she had killed one of the neighbors by mixing powder obtained from skulls and dead flesh.
In Forfar, suspected witchcraft were held in the city jail in appalling conditions. In winter in the cold, without heat and light - weeks, if not months, deprived of sleep, pricked with needles in search of devilish marks. For this "acupuncture" people were hired, promising them every benefit for this disgusting job. For example, one of them was promised membership in the city council. Some of these people were charlatans, they used false needles, like today's magicians, in order to "identify" the witch. Naturally, it was not easy to obtain a voluntary confession to witchcraft, and violent methods, more correctly called torture, were widely used in Scotland. In any Scottish city museum you can find a finger vise or a “curse bridle” - a special device for clamping the tongue so that the tortured person cannot scream. There were many more sophisticated methods of torture, such as deprivation of sleep and light. The guards woke the man up as soon as he fell asleep and forced him to march through the prison yard. Or pitch darkness around the clock in a cold cell without windows. And so on until the suspect confesses to witchcraft.
Then, when the confession was obtained, there was a trial, or what was called a trial. A quick, formal hearing with an inevitable guilty verdict. Convicted of witchcraft, she was still happy if she was simply expelled from the city. The less fortunate were executed by one of the most “merciful” methods in Scotland at the time: the witch was first hanged, then her body was burned in a tar barrel. The first in Forfar was Isobel Shyrie.
The witch-hunt in Forfar ended with the dismissal of the local priest, Alexander Robertson, for being overly zealous in the witch-hunt. The last to be executed was Helen Guthrie herself. By this time, 8 witches had been executed, and two were whipped and driven out of the city. Some were still at that time in the city prison, among them Helen's daughter, Janet, who, most likely, were later released.
The very history of the persecution of witches in Scotland with its thousands of victims testifies only to the excessive zeal of the church authorities of that time, to which there were always “well-wishers” to help. And the real witches and sorcerers remained only in folklore. And about that already on another page.
And that is not all.
In the Norwegian city of Vardø, there is a memorial dedicated to the victims of the witch hunt.
Its authors are the architect Peter Zumthor and the sculptor Louise Bourgeois.
Vardø is located in northern Norway, near the Russian border, and occupies half of a small island separated from the mainland by a narrow strait. This area is called Finnmark, its indigenous population is the Lapps akin to the Finns. Vardø is the northernmost city in Norway, from which Amundsen's polar expeditions started.
The city is known as one of the largest centers of such "hunting" in Europe. In Norway in the 17th century, the central government had little control over the provinces, where officials, often foreigners, ruled arbitrarily. Many Lapps, who were the indigenous population of this area, at that time observed their pagan rites and often practiced witchcraft.
In addition, in fishing villages, men went to sea for a long time.
Officials doubted the abstinence of their wives and suspected that, due to the lack of men, they entered into contact with evil spirits. According to the historian Rune Blix Hagen from the University of Tromsø in his publications, in one century - from 1593 to 1692 - about 140 trials of witches took place in Vardø, and about 100 people were sentenced to death and burned.
The memorial is located on the site where executions took place in the past. It consists of a long wooden gallery with windows equal to the number of those executed, and a free-standing cubic pavilion of black glass.
In the inner corridor, on the sides at different levels, there are either small loopholes through which rays of light break through, or lamps smoldering with dim light hanging from the ceiling on long wires.
Memorial plaques with the names and stories of the "witches" are fixed on the walls.
Contrary to stereotypes, the courts often passed acquittals, there were many men among the defendants, most of the convicts were Norwegians, not Lapps (in particular, all the executed women were Norwegians).
In the glass pavilion, there is an installation by Louise Bourgeois - a chair with tongues of flame escaping from it and seven oval mirrors above it. As Per Riezler of National Tourist Routes explains, “The bourgeois was referring to women and their social environment. They were mothers, wives, and a chair with five flames should symbolize their family members. Mirrors symbolize witnesses to their brutal murder."
And another interesting fact: now the Norwegians can find their relatives in the unique Witchcraft database, which was compiled by the Repository of Ancient Documents at the University of Oslo.
And now about our beloved United States of America without the Stalin Strait.
In January 1692, Pastor Samuel Parris' daughter and niece - 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 12-year-old Abigail Williams - were diagnosed with symptoms of an unknown disease. The girls screamed, made strange sounds, hid under furniture, their bodies took unusual poses. The children complained that someone had pricked them with a pin and a knife, and when Parris tried to preach, they plugged their ears.
Dr. William Griggs decided that the cause of the disease was the influence of a witch. In his "diagnosis", he drew on Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689), which described a similar case: in 1688 in Boston, an Irish laundress was accused of witchcraft on the children of the owner and was hanged. Cotton Mather was a Harvard graduate and priest of the North Church of Boston.
The girls pointed to the alleged witch - a slave maid in the Parris household named Tituba. According to some sources, Tituba was of African descent, according to others - Indian. According to the children, the maid taught them about witchcraft. Soon the number of sick girls and girls increased, in particular, 12-year-old Anna Putnam fell ill.
The suspects were questioned and examined for signs that would indicate they were witches. All three women were convenient targets for accusations: Tituba was of a different nationality, Sarah Goode was a beggar, Sarah Osborne was a lonely, seriously ill widow who was also involved in a legal dispute with the Putnam. They were opposed by the fact that women did not attend church for a long time. They had no defenders, and public opinion was inclined to believe that the charges were fair.
In March, other arrests were made: Sarah Good's 4-year-old daughter, Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse and Rachel Clinton. Martha Corey from the very beginning did not trust the words of the girls and mocked the court, thereby drawing attention to herself. 4-year-old Dorothy Goode, due to her age, made statements that were interpreted against Sarah Goode. To be closer to her mother, she confessed to being a witch and was imprisoned. However, these accusations were already troubling the community, since Corey and Nurse were churchgoers.
In April, Sarah Clois (sister of Rebecca Nurse), Elizabeth Proctor and her husband John Proctor, Martha Corey's husband Gilles Corey and several others, including former pastor George Burroughs, were arrested. Sarah Osborne dies in prison on May 10.
In May 1692, the Court of Oyer and Terminer begins. Governor Phipps appointed justices, three of whom were friends of Cotton Mather and one as Lieutenant Governor. William Stoughton, who has no legal education, has been appointed as president of the court. Cotton Mather is monitoring the trial.
The main evidence was the testimony of the victims that they saw the spirit of the accused who came to them. The theological controversy surrounding the use of this evidence was whether a person should have given consent to the Devil to use his image. Opponents believed that the Devil could use the image of a person without his consent, while the court argued that the person's consent was required.
On June 2, the court found the elderly woman Bridget Bishop guilty, and on June 10 she was hanged. According to some of the girls, the spirit of Bishop appeared to them. Other witnesses testified that the devil visited her. On July 19, 1692, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Goode and several other women were hanged.
It is noteworthy that before the execution, already with a noose around her neck, Sarah Goode turned to the priest Nicholas Noes, who was involved in the trial, with the words: “You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a sorcerer. Take my life away, and the Lord will give you blood to drink. The words turned out to be prophetic: 25 years later, Noes, struck by a cerebral hemorrhage, died, choking on his own blood.
Several others were hanged on August 19, 1692, including the former Pastor Burroughs. About 30 residents filed a motion to commute Burroughs' sentence, but the sentence was upheld. At the gallows, Burroughs, without hesitation, read a prayer, hoping for salvation (it was believed that sorcerers were not able to read a prayer without hesitation).
On September 19, 80-year-old farmer Gilles Corey, who refused to give any testimony, was subjected to a special peine forte et dure procedure. Heavy stones were placed on Corey's chest to squeeze out an admission of guilt. According to one of the versions, the refusal to testify was due to the fact that the property of the sorcerers who gave any testimony was subject to confiscation. Corey wanted to keep his farm and land for his family, so he refused to speak after the procedure. Two days later, he died while tortured under the pressure of a heavy load.
On September 22, his wife Martha Corey and 7 other people were hanged.
Among the accused were not only residents of the village of Salem, but also residents of neighboring Topsfeld, as well as Boston. There were also trials of witches in Andover, where, at the invitation of local resident John Ballard, girls from Salem came to expose witchcraft.
In Boston, John Alden was convicted of witchcraft, who is the hero of Longfellow's poem "The Marriage of Miles Stayndish". Alden was one of the city's most respected citizens, a naval captain and a participant in the Indian Wars. He escaped from prison after 5 weeks in prison.
Meanwhile, Cotton Mather's father, Inkris Mather, head of Harvard College, said the court should not consider the victims' "visions" as evidence. Inkris Mather, in particular, said that "it is better for ten witches to escape punishment than one innocent be punished." Another priest pointed out that the devil can deliberately appear in the form of a spirit, assuming the image of an innocent person in order to accuse the latter. After learning of these views, the governor ordered not to use the "visions" as evidence, stop arrests and release 28 of the 33 remaining defendants arrested on the basis of "visions."
The Massachusetts Supreme Court was established to try the remaining defendants, which is still in force. In May 1693, the governor pardoned the accused.
In total, 150 people were imprisoned during the anti-Vedic hysteria. 31 people were convicted. Of these, 19 people were hanged, two died in prison, one was crushed to death, seven received a suspended sentence, one was held in prison without trial, then sold into slavery for debts, one fled.
In 1697, the judges admitted their mistake, in 1702 the court's decision was declared illegal. In 1706, prosecutor Anna Putnam claimed to have been deceived by the devil into testifying against innocent people.
In 1957, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts finally decided to overturn the sentences of all those convicted during these trials.
In 1992, a monument to the victims of the witch hunt was erected in the city.
In 2001, State Governor Jane Swift confirmed the innocence of the accused.
Do you think this offends the feelings of believers?