The Great Witch Hunt

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The great witch hunt

Introduction

Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a witch hunt was installed causing the death of thousands of innocent victims. The great witch hunt was essentially a judicial operation. The entire process of discovery and elimination of witches, from the complaint to punishment, occurred under the gaze of the judges. But, we know that on some occasions, the population took justice by their hand, although there is no way to determine how many people died illegally. The judges probably did not feel guilty of torturing innocent people because, either they thought that God would protect the innocent, or did not believe in the innocence of the accused. The torture was compensated by the magnitude of the crime and with the confession said torture was justified. On the other hand, torture facilitated the dissemination of the cumulative concept of witchcraft.

The Inquisition only showed signs of vitality in Spain and Italy, where he retained the main jurisdiction on witchcraft. In both countries, execution rates according to the data we currently have are remained relatively low compared to the rest of Europe. Local courts acted with a certain margin of central, political and judicial control. It was common for the central authorities to initiate witch hunt and grant local officials the authority to process witchcraft cases. But most were directed by judicial officials of administrative sections lower than the State or the Church. These judges executed more witches when they were not supervised by higher instances.

Developing

 

The presence of witchcraft in the novel

Urtubi’s lady exposes the world of witchcraft during the seventeenth century in the Basque Country. Describe the people’s attitude towards witchcraft, superstition, respect and fear. The figure of the sorguiñas in the Basque and Navarras lands is important, witches that gather and celebrate spooky Aquelarres. Parallel to the history of witchcraft there is a love story starring Leonor, the lady of Urtubi’s house, and Miguel Machain, who although it is from another world has much in common with her. Baroja describes the inquisitorial processes of Pierre Lancre, terrifying inquisitor in the French Basque Country of the XVII. And it also staged the Aquelarre, with an old woman dressed in black, angry and sinister that raised on a stone peroraba in Basque against religion and the church, while the teacher of ceremonies began to feel the effects of the mandragora and the strman.

Basque traditions

The fame of Basque witchcraft is mainly due to two fundamental things. First, to the process of the witches of Zugarramurdi of the year 1610, and on the other hand to the writings of Pierre de Lancre, judge of the land of Labourd who made a brutal simultaneous repression and that is also the author of several works of superstitions inthose that criticize the customs of the Basque-French society of the time. Zugarramurdi process numbers are overwhelming. Three hundred accused, of which more than fifty were sentenced, being burned at the bonfire eleven. This process will mark a before and after regarding the vision of witchcraft. He was criticized, starting with the own of one of the three inquisitors who take the case and always vote against the sentences.

It should be noted that from the first cases of Basque witchcraft, until it disappears, there was much more interest in their persecution by local authorities than of the Inquisition itself. These authorities are those that foster terror, which causes peoples to live in tension and accuse some families to others. So much was the local interest in the matter that there were occasions, in which the civil authorities acted on their own, ignoring the opinion of the Inquisition, which already used to act prudence over the north and in the Foral lands. An example of a municipal process against witchcraft in northern Spain, in which we can observe what we have just targeted was the 1611 Fuenterrabía process. 

In this case, the innocent mayors were Sancho de Ubilla and Domingo de Abadía who made a statement to Isabel García, a girl of just thirteen yearsThing that the girl accepted, but instead of introducing herself in the afternoon at home, she did it at night, starting her from her bed and putting another girl in her place so that her mother, who slept next to her, did not notice. Then he took it to Mount Jeziquibel where there was a diabolical joint in which the demon, enthroned with lit eyes, three horns and tail, made it renegar of the Virgin and Christ. He also said that he spoke in Basque and Gascon, and that he carnally met women, girls and boys.

The most serious of this accusation was in the names that the girl gave. In addition to María de Ilarra, 69, he accused of seeing three French neighbors in the town: Ines de Gaxen, 45, María de Echegaray of 40 and María de Garro of 60. Isabel also said that it happened in a similar way in the successive days and that she even heard Mass to Ines de Gaxen with the demon.

It is striking that many of the details that the girl has seemed inspired by the Logroño relationship, about the Zugarramurdi process, published that year. For Mary Echegaray’s misfortune, another town girl, María Alzueta also 13 years old, did a similar testimony that also accused her. Given this, the authorities intervened.

In principle, the four defendants refused in resounding to confess guilty. But after the interrogations and the increase in the harassment of the people, appearing more and more testimonies, only Inesa would remain in its negative. She had already been accused previously in France. The rest all confessed to be witches and each of them told a story, each one more unusual, how many barbarities had committed.

The process was sent to Salazar and Frías, one of the inquisitors who had led the case of Zugarramurdi, tried to dismembered the matter and sent to free and return the requisitioned goods to the defendants. While the defendants ended up being banished.

The serious thing of the case is not the sentence, which compared to others is almost insignificant, but the pointing is how the testimony of some girls could cause the imprisonment of several women only by blaming them how much popular tradition attributes to witches and sorcerers, despiteEven the opposition of the inquisitor itself.

Witchcraft today

Witches are not a thing of the past, they do not live in remote or hidden places. Actually, we are more surrounded by them than ever. Women with mystical powers, with healing remedies from nature or who simply help us face threats and problems, are no longer repudiated by our society.

No one pursues them or punishes them at the stake, although some hide more than others. What is certain is that witches continue to exist: they form a large group and formed by very different women. On the one hand are healers who pay secret money in cash. They usually attend in private clubs, far from curious looks.

There are also television pythonis that hunt viewers whose problems do not let them sleep. The pythonis are able to fix your life with a summary of the horoscopes of the day, or throwing the cards from the screen you lie you pay a money for every second call. However, there are other witches. The true heirs of those free women, who generated their own knowledge and remedies to face the ramks of life. Katarzyna Majak is a photographer and originally from the world’s most Catholic country: Poland. Majak wanted to explore the lives of those women who are also defined as witches, druids or alternative healers.

So modern witches are not strange beings, and we should not fear them, at least not all. Many are simple healers who move away from general doctrine: psychologists, herbalists, Buddhists, massage gurus, yoga and thai-chi. With Christianity, women lost their female networks and matriarchal cults, access to pagan wisdom and sources of power, sexuality, art and contact with nature. It seems that many fought to maintain it, and today their descendants occupy the small place they always deserved.

Personal assessment

The word witch in our daily use has a negative connotation in this and other countries, that is, it is generally used to insult or offend. The term has a negative and derogatory cultural stigma that labels these women as evil and perverse beings. Witches were historically related to evil, darkness, devil, black cats, warts, brooms, hats, cauldrons, and so on. They were accused of situations as absurd as causing storms that spoiled the crops, making cattle sterile, causing diseases to other people or being able to fly on the back of wild beasts;To make pacts with the devil, kill girls and boys to make potions with them, eat human flesh, desecrate corpses, drink blood, poison, make priests and more.

Therefore, in the Middle Ages thousands of women were persecuted, tortured, raped, burned in bonfires and hanged. All framed in a religious context. To kill these women it was not necessary.

María Mies qualifies these facts such as the largest institutionalized feminicide in history. There were people like the Jesuit Friedrich von Spee and the humanist Pedro de Valencia, who said that the Aquelarres (meeting places of the witches), were only parties in search of pleasure, thus denying all intervention of the devil in them in them. They were wise, empowered, free women, who wearing plants healed and helped other women to give birth or interrupt a pregnancy. They were also pagan women who exercised their sexuality fully without reproductive purposes, and met with other women to chat, dance without shame and have fun in a kind of female community.

The problem was that for the religious and misogynist system the behaviors of these women left the acceptance parameters, so that they judged them as immoral, bad and heretics only for acting, thinking and living with a mind too open for the time, which, whichHe made them feel and be freer than his contemporaries were prepared to accept. 

conclusion

In conclusion, the witches fought for the rights of women (even to death), revealing themselves to oppression and refusing to the submission of what we call today patriarchy, thus being the first feminist in history. And if by possessing these characteristics they were called witches, how many women are we not. 

 

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