Colonial Woman and Religion-?Woman and Witchcraft? :: essays research papers

It was at staid capital of Massachusetts that Anne Hutchinson marshaled her forces it was at peace-loving Salem that the incommode marshaled his witches in a last despairing onslaught against the saints. To many of its readers in that location seemed to be little or no connection between witchery and religion but an investigation of the facts leading to the death sentence of the conglomerate martyrs to superstition at Salem will convince the skeptical that at that place was a most intimate relationship between the Puritan article of faith and the theory of witchcraft.Looking back by and by the passing of more than 2 hundred years, it was said to believe the bizarre explanation, skilled and thoroughly intellectual folk as the Puritans could have believed in the possession of this evil power. It curiously appeared incredibly when it was remembered that here was a people that came to this country for the exercise of phantasmal freedom, a citizenship that descended from men trained in the universities of England, a well-built band that downstairs extreme privation has created an institution within sixteen years after the settlement of wilderness. It was borne in the mind that the Massachusetts colonies were not alone in this belief in witchcraft. It as common throughout the world, and was as olden as humankind. Deprived of the aid of modern science in explaining droll methods and activities, man had long been adapted to f on the whole back upon incommodes, witches, and evil spirit up as premises for his arguments. While the execution of the witch was not so common an event elsewhere in the world, during the Salem period, yet it was inexplicable among so-called open-minded people. In 1712, a woman was burned near London for witchcraft and s of all timeal city clergymen were among the prosecutors. The religion of Salem and Boston was well fitted for developing this very theory of hateful power in possessed persons. The teachings that there was a p ersonal devil, that God allowed him to tempt mankind, that there were myriads of devils under Satans control at all times, ever watchful to trap the innocent, that these devils were rulers over certain territory and certain types of people. These teachings by nature led to the assumption that the goblins chose certain persons as their very own. The constant reminders of the hazard of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea that Satan was all times seeking to weaken the Puritan church also make it easy to believe that anyone living outside of that church was an agent of the devil or bewitched.