The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) by John M. Taylor
page 19 of 180 (10%)
page 19 of 180 (10%)
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precedents; the Roman law, the Twelve Tables, and the Justinian Code,
the last three imposing upon the crimes of conjuring, exorcising, magical arts, offering sacrifices to the injury of one's neighbors, sorcery, and witchcraft, the penalties of death by torture, fire, or crucifixion. Add to these classics some of the later authorities: the _Dæmonologie_ of the royal inquisitor James I of England and Scotland, 1597; Mores' _Antidote to Atheism_; Fuller's _Holy and Profane State_; Granvil's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 1681; _Tryal of Witches at the Assizes for the County of Suffolk before Sir Matthew Hale, March, 1664_ (London, 1682); Baxter's _Certainty of the World of Spirits_, 1691; Cotton Mather's _A Discourse on Witchcraft_, 1689, his _Late Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions_, 1684, and his _Wonders of the Invisible World_, 1692; and enough references have been made to this literature of delusion, to the precedents that seared the consciences of courts and juries in their sentences of men, women, and children to death by the rack, the wheel, the stake, and the gallows. Where in history are the horrors of the curse more graphically told than in the words of Canon Linden, an eye witness of the demonic deeds at Trier (Treves) in 1589? "And so, from court to court throughout the towns and villages of all the diocese, scurried special accusers, inquisitors, notaries, jurors, judges, constables, dragging to trial and torture human beings of both sexes and burning them in great numbers. Scarcely any of those who were accused escaped punishment. Nor were there spared even the leading men in the city of Trier. For the Judge, with two Burgomasters, several Councilors and Associate Judges, canons of sundry collegiate churches, |
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