Weird Things Unearthed by Research

[sunstruckdream]

I had to move the setting of one of my stories, and I decided to move it to the coast of Chile. For accuracy's sake on a few of the MC's comments, I included in my research the time difference between EST (where my MC's from) and the zone Santiago's in.

Ready for some weird knowledge?...

There's no difference! It's the same time in Chile as it is in New England!!

Ever learn weird, unexpected things through story research?

Okay, I'm gonna go eat my soup. I hope the people in Chile are enjoying their lunch as well...

 

[Kokopelli]

I had to move the setting of one of my stories, and I decided to move it to the coast of Chile. For accuracy's sake on a few of the MC's comments, I included in my research the time difference between EST (where my MC's from) and the zone Santiago's in.

Ready for some weird knowledge?...

There's no difference! It's the same time in Chile as it is in New England!!

Ever learn weird, unexpected things through story research?

Okay, I'm gonna go eat my soup. I hope the people in Chile are enjoying their lunch as well...

I have found some weird, interesting, and useless information while researching topics. Some of it has even led to me pursuing other novels to read to acquire more information and ideas on how to present my thoughts. (or how not too present it)

 

[Christianfantasy]

I once did months of research for a historical fantasy set in Puritan New England. I came away from it feeling creepy. For instance, they called any baby born with a birth defect a "monster", and tried to find out what kind of sin had led to the deformity.

They only took communion once a year, and the entire emphasis was on not eating and drinking to their damnation [i.e.: they tried to purify themselves completely so as not to eat or drink with sin on their conscience]. That led to actual neuroses, with people cracking under the mental strain. One mother tried, unsuccessfully, to kill her own child because she said it would resolve, once and for all, whether she was one of the "elect" or not. (Yeah, it would have resolved it the wrong way, but at least she wouldn't live in the constant torment of wondering if she was doomed to hell anyway, and there was nothing she could do about it.)

They stayed on constant alert for "frippery" - i.e.: anyone dressing up in fancy clothes or jewels (or just dressing more nicely than those around him or her) - so that they could condemn the offender.

Anything, absolutely anything, could be used in evidence against another person in court. For instance, suppose Person A goes to visit Person B. On the way, Person A sees a black dog. After the visit, Person A returns home to find that four of his chickens have died. He then takes Person B to court and accuses him of witchcraft, of having a 'familiar', and of killing his chickens. And as often as not wins.

Comets in the sky were referred to as "prodigies" and were seen as powerful omens from God. There was more, but I've forgotten a lot of it. I did the research a long time ago.

 

[NeoScribe]

Just some slight research into what life was like in the middle ages made me realize why they were also called the dark ages. Just reading about their bathing habits (and their politics, food, lifestyle - fuedalism in general) made be rewrite my fantasy story so the world was a few hundred years post-middle ages.

 

[shirono]

Finding there were multiple types of Gaelic and then trying to figure out which fit my setting better; Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic.

Researching some of the creepier aspects of Druidic culture for one of my stories in which the druids are an ancient evil race trying to destroy humanity. (Yes, I do know that I'm morbid. Thanks for noticing.)

Finally realizing that Norse mythology is my favorite, despite the absolute irrelevance of any human or deities action in it. I mean the whole world is gonna be destroyed no matter what they do. I enjoy a good fatalistic story where the good guy can't possibly win. Also I find it amusing to think about all that incest going on....

Hmm, and perhaps researching pirates and finding out how truly disgusting they really were. (I love you Captain Jack, but I'd choose a Ninja over a normal pirate any day....)

 

[Lessien]

I once did months of research for a historical fantasy set in Puritan New England. I came away from it feeling creepy. For instance, they called any baby born with a birth defect a "monster", and tried to find out what kind of sin had led to the deformity.

They only took communion once a year, and the entire emphasis was on not eating and drinking to their damnation [i.e.: they tried to purify themselves completely so as not to eat or drink with sin on their conscience]. That led to actual neuroses, with people cracking under the mental strain. One mother tried, unsuccessfully, to kill her own child because she said it would resolve, once and for all, whether she was one of the "elect" or not. (Yeah, it would have resolved it the wrong way, but at least she wouldn't live in the constant torment of wondering if she was doomed to hell anyway, and there was nothing she could do about it.)

They stayed on constant alert for "frippery" - i.e.: anyone dressing up in fancy clothes or jewels (or just dressing more nicely than those around him or her) - so that they could condemn the offender.

Anything, absolutely anything, could be used in evidence against another person in court. For instance, suppose Person A goes to visit Person B. On the way, Person A sees a black dog. After the visit, Person A returns home to find that four of his chickens have died. He then takes Person B to court and accuses him of witchcraft, of having a 'familiar', and of killing his chickens. And as often as not wins.

Comets in the sky were referred to as "prodigies" and were seen as powerful omens from God. There was more, but I've forgotten a lot of it. I did the research a long time ago.

Just curious...what sites did you go to to research the Puritans? Because I had to write a report on them for my US History class, and they were nowhere near as cruel/ ignorant as your research makes them out to be. For example, they usually wore dark colors to hide dirt because...well, it was colonial New England and baths were something of a luxury, but they enjoyed dressing in bright colors for special occasions. Actually, some other Christian sects criticized them for their "frippery."

Their passionate love for God drove them to do things we might consider insane--like spend 3 hours in church--but I don't think it would have driven a mother to kill her own child. Unless, of course, she was mentally ill, but that's another story.

Puritans kept jounals of things God showed them during the day, not only to "make their calling and election sure," but as prayer journals. One Puritan kept his journal with him at all times because he had interesting revelations at odd times during the day, such as when he was out farming.

America's first poet was a Puritan named Anne Bradstreet.

Here is an excerpt from a Puritan man's diary of what happened as he sat by his dying wife's bed:

I spent much Time, with my lovely Consort...I endeavored her most consummate Preparation for the heavenly World, but suitable Questions and Proposals. I comforted her, with lively Discourses upon the Glory of Heaven...
Two Hourse before my lovely Consort expired, I kneeled by her Bed-Side, and I took into my two Hands, a dear Hand, the dearest in the World. With her then in my Hands, I solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto the Lord; and in token of my real RESIGNATION, gently put her out of my Hands, and laid away a most lovely Hand, resolving that I would never touch it any more!
This was the hardest and perhaps the bravest Action, that ever I did...And tho' before that, she call'd for me, continually; she after this never asked for me any more.
She continued until near tow a clock, in the Afternoon. And the last sensible Word, that she spoke, was to her weeping Father, Heaven, Heaven will make amends for all.

He loved his wife, but knew God could take better care of her than he could, so he gave her up to God. Now tell me that the Puritans were cruel, vindictive, psycho-religious people, I dare you.

 

[Christianfantasy]

Hi, Lessien. There was no need to “dare” me to substantiate my comments. A simple request would have sufficed. For a good starting place, you should check out Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment, by David D. Hall. It is a magnificent piece of scholarship, chocked full of truly excellent and very detailed documentation. You shouldn’t skip even a single paragraph; it’s wall to wall primary source material, and a real eye-popper. You’ll find firsthand quotes substantiating everything I mentioned, including frippery (and the mother who tried to kill her child). I relied on some other sources, including one that was virtually nothing but reproduced primary documents, but iirc the bulk of what I mentioned in my post came from Hall.

For a specific, you might consider the Salem Witch Trials. Don’t imagine they were an aberration off in one corner of Puritan New England. They weren’t. Cotton Mather, a leading figure in the Puritanism Movement, actively supported the trials, and even leant weight to the abominable use of ‘spectral evidence’ [explanation to follow]. Or I should say, he actively supported the proceedings until the wife of his political ally, Governor Phipps, was accused. Then, in a profile in courage, Mather reversed himself on the issue of spectral evidence.

I don’t have time to go into a full account of those grisly proceedings, but here are some highlights. Most of the men and women who were convicted and hung, or in one case tortured to death over a two day period, had no evidence against them of any kind. They were just people who were disliked, or whose property was desired by certain Puritans. In either case, their accuser would come forward, claiming to have been “afflicted” by the “spectre” of the person in question. The Puritan theory being that the accused had been approached by the devil who requested the use of his or her body. The accused would allegedly cede the request, and the devil would use said spectral body to afflict the person who would then make the accusation. In some cases, the accusations were put forth by children. It didn’t matter—just as it didn’t matter that many of the accused were godly, God-fearing men and women with not a shred of evidence to connect them to witchcraft. The juries of Puritan men and women eagerly convicted them [often taking less than an hour to deliberate] and later gathered to watch the execution as if it was first rate entertainment.

More particulars. One of the women accused had a four-year-old daughter. The magistrates grilled the little girl, and construed her childish answers as evidence against her mother. The little girl was confined in prison—in horrible conditions—with her condemned mother. When the child was five years old her mother was executed by hanging. The daughter was left in prison for months afterward because the magistrates suspected that she too was a witch. She was mentally ruined for life by the experience. [Question: how could a community of even semi-decent people treat a child that way?] [Second Question: Lessien, do you remember what it was like to be five? Can you imagine being thrown with your mother into a filthy prison, and to wait with her there for her murder? Can you imagine seeing her led away—knowing she would be hung by the neck until dead—and being left ALL alone, at age five, in a terrible place, thinking you might be next? How on earth can you defend a religiosity that would do such a thing to a little child??? Don’t you remember how much Jesus loved children, and what He said about those who would cause them to stumble?? I have had a five year old child. The thought of leaving him behind in a hellhole, ***all alone*** while I was led away to be hanged on a false charge is about the worst nightmare I can think of. Since you haven’t had a five-year-old, maybe it’s not as vivid to you. For me, all I can say is that it would almost take a demon to do that to a little, helpless, innocent, terrified child. I honestly believe that.] [And how about the obscenity of forcing a four-year-old child to give testimony against her own mother, and then using that testimony to send the poor woman to the gallows? Is this ***anybody’s*** idea of what Jesus died on the cross to bring about? By some accounts the little girl cried herself into insanity after her mother was hanged, and can anyone blame her?]

Two other women were pregnant when arrested and convicted. They were allowed to give birth and then were hung. I guess you’d have to be a mother to comprehend how almost demonically cruel it would be to wrench an INNOCENT woman away from her newborn and murder her on the gallows. [Note: the issue of innocence is NOT in question. All the murdered men and women were totally and completely exonnerated on charges of witchcraft…AFTER they were dead, and it couldn’t do them any good.]

One of the accused men recited the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly on the gallows, prior to his murder/hanging. A witch could not do this, according to Puritan teaching. The gathered spectators were so moved, they wanted to free the man. BUT, sadly for the condemned, Cotton Mather [a very big wheel in seventeenth century Puritanism] was present to witness (dare I say, based on some of C. Maher’s own writing, to gloat over?) the murder, and persuaded the people to go ahead with the ‘execution’ anyway. Mather certainly had the influence to stop at least this one tragic miscarriage of justice. Unfortunately, he was more desirous of seeing the man die than of throwing him a crumb of mercy.

One of the accused, on zero evidence, was an eighty-plus year old man. Since he refused to enter a plea, he was tortured, against the law, in a manner that required two full days to induce death. Can’t you just feel the love of a religiosity that will torture an old man to death over a two-day period? An innocent old man, it should be emphasized. [His wife was later hanged, so as to further clear the way for the confiscation of his farmland.]

One wealthy man, John Proctor, whose possessions other Puritans coveted, spoke up against the way certain women were being accused and prosecuted. He was promptly arrested himself, convicted and hanged. I guess only evil, ungodly witches dare to speak up on behalf of poor (monetarily-speaking), wrongly accused women. [Proctor’s possessions were confiscated even before his murder/hanging. A nice touch, that: legalized theft in the name of religion.]

Five accused ‘witches’ (along with one newborn baby) died in the squalid conditions that existed in the Puritan prisons before they could be executed/murdered. Whatever happened to, “I was in prison, and you visited Me”? How about, ‘I was in prison, and died from fear, hunger, neglect, hardship and unsanitary conditions while awaiting execution/murder on false charges’? [The prisoners were made to pay for their room and board, incidentally; needless to say, it was hardest on the poorest of the accused.]

Two dogs were also executed—a gruesome detail not many people are aware of. Another little known fact is that after the survivors were cleared of all charges, their previously seized goods and lands were not returned to them. Rather, their false-accusers were allowed to keep all their ill-gotten gain, which in many cases had been the goal all along. This was the Puritan idea of ‘justice’. Finally, one cleared defendant, Mary Watkins, was unable to pay her prison fees and so was sold into slavery in Virginia. What Biblical parable does that remind you of??? [It takes hypocrisy on a massive, Pharisaical order not to see the parallels between that parable and the way the Puritans treated their exonerated victims.]

The Salem ‘witches’ were not the first people in the Puritan colonies to be ‘tried’ and hung/murdered for the crime of witchcraft. My point in singling them out is to show the correlation between some of the most influential leaders of Puritanism and the vicious manner in which they hunted down and slaughtered innocent people. Given Puritanism’s focus on legalism and judgment, the Salem Witch Trials were the natural culmination. Certainly there were exceptions. But the Witch Trials were not the exception; they were part and parcel of the mindset that both inspired and enabled them. If there had been any kindness or mercy in the Puritan system, community outrage would have saved at least some of the hapless victims. I think especially of that one brave man who managed, despite the terror of standing on the scaffold with a noose around his neck, to perfectly recite the Lord’s Prayer, would have been pardoned. I couldn’t have done it; I’d have been shaking too bad. (Then again, I have a birthmark that would automatically have made me a witch in Puritan society, so I’d have been hanged regardless.) Sparing the man would have been in keeping with the Puritan teaching, and a pastor with even a shred of mercy would have seized upon it as a pretext for setting the wrongly condemned man free. But Mather used his influence to persuade the crowd to go through with the murder [where have we seen religious leaders like that before?] and stood there self-righteously watching while a man more righteous than himself choked to death. With but a single exception, every other person involved in the ‘witch’ murders publicly repented of their part in the abominable proceedings, but not Cotton Mather. He chose instead to pen a treatise defending the trials—even after the hype and hysteria had died down. Disgusting.

 

[Christianfantasy]

I’m curious, Lessien, if you’re at all familiar with the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritans? The Puritans imprisoned Quakers in horrific conditions, tried to starve them, wouldn’t even allow them sunlight, whipped them, branded them, cut off an ear in one case, and executed/murdered others. Do you know what the big offense of the Quakers was? Not being Puritans. For that, they had to suffer, and suffer horribly. The Puritans were very—some might say obsessively—intolerant people, both of their own who dared not to conform to every nuance of Puritanism, and of others who didn’t share the Puritan worldview. I don’t know about you, Lessien, but I’m appalled at the idea of so-called Christians murdering innocent people for the crime of not embracing their particular denomination. That’s not the kind of ‘Christianity’ I want any part of. I’m not a Quaker; I just don’t think people should be whipped, imprisoned, mutilated and murdered for the ‘crime’ of not being my brand of Christian.

 

[Lessien]

I’m curious, Lessien, if you’re at all familiar with the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritans? The Puritans imprisoned Quakers in horrific conditions, tried to starve them, wouldn’t even allow them sunlight, whipped them, branded them, cut off an ear in one case, and executed/murdered others. Do you know what the big offense of the Quakers was? Not being Puritans. For that, they had to suffer, and suffer horribly. The Puritans were very—some might say obsessively—intolerant people, both of their own who dared not to conform to every nuance of Puritanism, and of others who didn’t share the Puritan worldview. I don’t know about you, Lessien, but I’m appalled at the idea of so-called Christians murdering innocent people for the crime of not embracing their particular denomination. That’s not the kind of ‘Christianity’ I want any part of. I’m not a Quaker; I just don’t think people should be whipped, imprisoned, mutilated and murdered for the ‘crime’ of not being my brand of Christian.

Yes, I am familiar with the fact that Puritans executed Quakers for being Quakers. I'm not blind to their faults or atrocities. But it makes me mad that the world has decided to focus only on the atrocities committed by the Puritans and completely ignore the good things they did. To me, it's not unlike the fact that some secular historians ignore all the good things Christians have done throughout history and instead focus on their most brutal act--the Crusades.

Religious zeal, when not tempered with knowledge, leads to erroneous mistakes. That's why I believe the Crusades occurred: because in the Middle Ages, most people didn't have access to Bibles, missed some important teachings about loving your enemies, and decided to reclaim the Holy Land. The result was a huge black stain on Christian history that we're still trying to live down.

The same goes for the Puritans. They wanted to create a completely Christian society. Yes, their goal was a theocracy. They wanted a society where they could worship God in their own way. Unfortunately, they missed some essential teachings on mercy and ended up executing Quakers and suspected witches without giving them fair trials.

Don't you see that the problem here wasn't Puritans? The problem was Satan. He's the one who went around, whispering lies and telling them "Kill the witches. Show no mercy. Execute the Quakers. Show no mercy." The result was a huge black stain on Puritanism that historians are still trying to clear up.

 

[Lessien]

Hi, Lessien. There was no need to “dare” me to substantiate my comments. A simple request would have sufficed. For a good starting place, you should check out Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment, by David D. Hall. It is a magnificent piece of scholarship, chocked full of truly excellent and very detailed documentation. You shouldn’t skip even a single paragraph; it’s wall to wall primary source material, and a real eye-popper. You’ll find firsthand quotes substantiating everything I mentioned, including frippery (and the mother who tried to kill her child). I relied on some other sources, including one that was virtually nothing but reproduced primary documents, but iirc the bulk of what I mentioned in my post came from Hall.

For a specific, you might consider the Salem Witch Trials. Don’t imagine they were an aberration off in one corner of Puritan New England. They weren’t. Cotton Mather, a leading figure in the Puritanism Movement, actively supported the trials, and even leant weight to the abominable use of ‘spectral evidence’ [explanation to follow]. Or I should say, he actively supported the proceedings until the wife of his political ally, Governor Phipps, was accused. Then, in a profile in courage, Mather reversed himself on the issue of spectral evidence.

I don’t have time to go into a full account of those grisly proceedings, but here are some highlights. Most of the men and women who were convicted and hung, or in one case tortured to death over a two day period, had no evidence against them of any kind. They were just people who were disliked, or whose property was desired by certain Puritans. In either case, their accuser would come forward, claiming to have been “afflicted” by the “spectre” of the person in question. The Puritan theory being that the accused had been approached by the devil who requested the use of his or her body. The accused would allegedly cede the request, and the devil would use said spectral body to afflict the person who would then make the accusation. In some cases, the accusations were put forth by children. It didn’t matter—just as it didn’t matter that many of the accused were godly, God-fearing men and women with not a shred of evidence to connect them to witchcraft. The juries of Puritan men and women eagerly convicted them [often taking less than an hour to deliberate] and later gathered to watch the execution as if it was first rate entertainment.

More particulars. One of the women accused had a four-year-old daughter. The magistrates grilled the little girl, and construed her childish answers as evidence against her mother. The little girl was confined in prison—in horrible conditions—with her condemned mother. When the child was five years old her mother was executed by hanging. The daughter was left in prison for months afterward because the magistrates suspected that she too was a witch. She was mentally ruined for life by the experience. [Question: how could a community of even semi-decent people treat a child that way?] [Second Question: Lessien, do you remember what it was like to be five? Can you imagine being thrown with your mother into a filthy prison, and to wait with her there for her murder? Can you imagine seeing her led away—knowing she would be hung by the neck until dead—and being left ALL alone, at age five, in a terrible place, thinking you might be next? How on earth can you defend a religiosity that would do such a thing to a little child??? Don’t you remember how much Jesus loved children, and what He said about those who would cause them to stumble?? I have had a five year old child. The thought of leaving him behind in a hellhole, ***all alone*** while I was led away to be hanged on a false charge is about the worst nightmare I can think of. Since you haven’t had a five-year-old, maybe it’s not as vivid to you. For me, all I can say is that it would almost take a demon to do that to a little, helpless, innocent, terrified child. I honestly believe that.] [And how about the obscenity of forcing a four-year-old child to give testimony against her own mother, and then using that testimony to send the poor woman to the gallows? Is this ***anybody’s*** idea of what Jesus died on the cross to bring about? By some accounts the little girl cried herself into insanity after her mother was hanged, and can anyone blame her?]

Two other women were pregnant when arrested and convicted. They were allowed to give birth and then were hung. I guess you’d have to be a mother to comprehend how almost demonically cruel it would be to wrench an INNOCENT woman away from her newborn and murder her on the gallows. [Note: the issue of innocence is NOT in question. All the murdered men and women were totally and completely exonnerated on charges of witchcraft…AFTER they were dead, and it couldn’t do them any good.]

One of the accused men recited the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly on the gallows, prior to his murder/hanging. A witch could not do this, according to Puritan teaching. The gathered spectators were so moved, they wanted to free the man. BUT, sadly for the condemned, Cotton Mather [a very big wheel in seventeenth century Puritanism] was present to witness (dare I say, based on some of C. Maher’s own writing, to gloat over?) the murder, and persuaded the people to go ahead with the ‘execution’ anyway. Mather certainly had the influence to stop at least this one tragic miscarriage of justice. Unfortunately, he was more desirous of seeing the man die than of throwing him a crumb of mercy.

One of the accused, on zero evidence, was an eighty-plus year old man. Since he refused to enter a plea, he was tortured, against the law, in a manner that required two full days to induce death. Can’t you just feel the love of a religiosity that will torture an old man to death over a two-day period? An innocent old man, it should be emphasized. [His wife was later hanged, so as to further clear the way for the confiscation of his farmland.]

One wealthy man, John Proctor, whose possessions other Puritans coveted, spoke up against the way certain women were being accused and prosecuted. He was promptly arrested himself, convicted and hanged. I guess only evil, ungodly witches dare to speak up on behalf of poor (monetarily-speaking), wrongly accused women. [Proctor’s possessions were confiscated even before his murder/hanging. A nice touch, that: legalized theft in the name of religion.]

Five accused ‘witches’ (along with one newborn baby) died in the squalid conditions that existed in the Puritan prisons before they could be executed/murdered. Whatever happened to, “I was in prison, and you visited Me”? How about, ‘I was in prison, and died from fear, hunger, neglect, hardship and unsanitary conditions while awaiting execution/murder on false charges’? [The prisoners were made to pay for their room and board, incidentally; needless to say, it was hardest on the poorest of the accused.]

Two dogs were also executed—a gruesome detail not many people are aware of. Another little known fact is that after the survivors were cleared of all charges, their previously seized goods and lands were not returned to them. Rather, their false-accusers were allowed to keep all their ill-gotten gain, which in many cases had been the goal all along. This was the Puritan idea of ‘justice’. Finally, one cleared defendant, Mary Watkins, was unable to pay her prison fees and so was sold into slavery in Virginia. What Biblical parable does that remind you of??? [It takes hypocrisy on a massive, Pharisaical order not to see the parallels between that parable and the way the Puritans treated their exonerated victims.]

The Salem ‘witches’ were not the first people in the Puritan colonies to be ‘tried’ and hung/murdered for the crime of witchcraft. My point in singling them out is to show the correlation between some of the most influential leaders of Puritanism and the vicious manner in which they hunted down and slaughtered innocent people. Given Puritanism’s focus on legalism and judgment, the Salem Witch Trials were the natural culmination. Certainly there were exceptions. But the Witch Trials were not the exception; they were part and parcel of the mindset that both inspired and enabled them. If there had been any kindness or mercy in the Puritan system, community outrage would have saved at least some of the hapless victims. I think especially of that one brave man who managed, despite the terror of standing on the scaffold with a noose around his neck, to perfectly recite the Lord’s Prayer, would have been pardoned. I couldn’t have done it; I’d have been shaking too bad. (Then again, I have a birthmark that would automatically have made me a witch in Puritan society, so I’d have been hanged regardless.) Sparing the man would have been in keeping with the Puritan teaching, and a pastor with even a shred of mercy would have seized upon it as a pretext for setting the wrongly condemned man free. But Mather used his influence to persuade the crowd to go through with the murder [where have we seen religious leaders like that before?] and stood there self-righteously watching while a man more righteous than himself choked to death. With but a single exception, every other person involved in the ‘witch’ murders publicly repented of their part in the abominable proceedings, but not Cotton Mather. He chose instead to pen a treatise defending the trials—even after the hype and hysteria had died down. Disgusting.

Read my argument in the post above this one. The Salem Witch Trials were horrible, I'll give you that. But remember: You have to judge people in the context of their time. The Puritans had escaped from England, where burning religious dissenters at the stake was a common threat. So, too, was hunting down and killing supposed witches. Should they have abandoned those practices in the name of Christlike mercy? Absolutely. But remember: You have to judge people in the context of their time. While some things--like the Salem Witch Trials--are horrible in any era, you have to understand what led to them.

The Salem Witch Trials started about twenty years before the actual witch-hunts. A young woman in Groton, Mass. started acting strangely, seeing apparitions and experiencing violent "fits" over a period of about three months. During one, she "spoke in a hollow voice" and called the minister "a great black rogue" who "tell the people a company of lies."
After counselling her, the minister found out that she wasn't content with her position as a servant, and because of inward doubts as to her own sincerity, she blamed her confusion on the Devil. The girl eventually healed spiritually, and no witch-hunts erupted in Groton.

However, witch-hunts arose in Cambridge, Hartford, Boston, and, of course, Salem. In Salem, one minister named Deodat Lawson saw a 12-year-old girl as she "hurried with violence to and fro in the room" and "sometimes making as if she would fly." From there, everything snowballed, and people began putting forth the names of supposed witches.

You're right--Puritanism did put a strain on some people. Some weren't sure whether or not they were sincere--like the girl who inadvertantly started it all--and so blamed their confusion on Satan. What were the people to do but run with it? Instead of learning from the example in Groton, they started hunting down and killing supposed witches.

The trials were unfair, I won't argue with that. If the "witches" confessed, they were released. If not, they were killed. You see, confession was an important part of Puritanism. When men and women entered the church, they were required to confess their sins. Because of the anti-witch ferver that ran so high, people were inclined to believe that if "witches" confessed, they recognized their sin for what it was. They believed that if a "witch" didn't confess, she thought she wasn't sinning or didn't want to be caught. I guess it never occurred to them that those women who refused to confess might have been innocent.

Although Cotton Mather defended the judges when the people accused them of victimizing the innocent, he and his father, Increase, helped end the trials through their criticism of certain procedures. Samuel Parris and the other judges were just acting according to widely held expectations of their time.

FYI, witch-hunting occurred in Catholic and Protestant regions of Europe, and the Salem Witch Trials claimed far fewer victims than the witch-hunts in France, Scotland or Germany.

I am not defending the Trials. Not at all. I'm simply saying that we shouldn't judge the Puritans solely on that. Nor should we judge them solely on the fact that they hanged Quakers. We should simply take the good with the bad and judge them on that.

 

[aaronchall]

So, do we want theocracy? Do we want democracy with full participation of religious citizens? We exclude felons, should we exclude others? Maybe athiests? Illiterate? Muslims? The Unpatriotic?

 

[Lessien]

So, do we want theocracy? Do we want democracy with full participation of religious citizens? We exclude felons, should we exclude others? Maybe athiests? Illiterate? Muslims? The Unpatriotic?

I never said I wanted a theocracy. Ever. Stop putting words in my mouth. I was simply acknowledging that the Puritans' goal was to create a theocracy.

 

[Christianfantasy]

Hi again, Lessien. I carefully read both of your thoughtful replies, and I have some additional thoughts of my own. In all candor, however, it's probably going to be a week at least before I can post them. I have hit one of my periodic busy patches, and I can't see things letting up much before the fifth or sixth of July, Lord willing. I appreciated your responses, however, and look forward to replying.

Blessings.

 

[Lessien]

I look forward to more debates with you!

 

[NeoScribe]

Before that, shouldn't we move this to the 'Debate' Section on the Forums?

 

[Christianfantasy]

Hi, Neoscribe. I can understand your concern re: debating. This isn’t the place for it, at least when it comes to history. The OP posed the fascinating question as to whether anyone had turned up weird facts in the course of doing research for story-writing. I took the opportunity to share that I was appalled and yes, weirded out, by much of what I learned about life within the Puritan community. I wasn’t expecting a counter post, but I don’t mind sharing more on the subject. I do refuse to debate, however. This is for several reasons. First, I have witnessed too many online debates, and I can honestly say I have never yet seen one in which facts and logic counted for beans. Usually it’s just two or more ideologues ramping up the rhetoric until the ‘winner’ emerges as the participant with the most aggression and stamina. No thanks.

Otoh, as mentioned above I don’t mind sharing a bit more of what I learned re: Puritan New England, while researching a historical fantasy novel. If the Moderators feel this is going over the line, then I will ask Lessien if she would care to take the discussion private. I won’t, in any case, go over to the debate forum of CF; a topic like this would have people screaming within a few posts, ignoring all facts, and getting more and more worked up by the minute. Nothing good would come of it, and a great deal of harm could easily be done.

I would; however, like to point out one area in which this topic touches directly on writing. Namely, how do we read history unless someone writes it? Lessien correctly pointed out that some non-Christian history writers take a deliberately anti-Christian stance. Should Christian historians to the opposite? In other words, should they white-wash the most egregious and heinous of abuses simply because they were committed in the name of Christianity? I don’t think so. I think the only way Christian history writers can compete in a market in which they are a minority is to write better, more accurate history than anyone else. This means being open and honest about evil done in the name of religion, no matter how repulsive the facts may be. At least that is my opinion, and it is certainly writing-related.

 

[Christianfantasy]

Hi again, Lessien. I’ve read both your posts twice, and here is my reply. First, if the problem with the Puritans was Satan, why don’t we see more of that type of rhetoric in the Bible? I.e.: when Jesus confronted the Pharisees, why didn’t He say, ‘The problem is not with you; it’s with Satan.’ Jesus said no such thing, of course. He systematically indicted the Pharisees for appalling, doctrinally driven behavior that so closely resembles the behavior of the Puritans it’s scary. [More on this below.] Jesus said the Pharisees had set aside the Word of God in favor of the traditions of men. Furthermore, in following those traditions, He said they had ridden roughshod over the most important part of God’s teaching: love, mercy, kindness and forgiveness. The same could be said for Puritans—word for word.

Next consider the idea that people must be ‘judged’ in the context of their time. I would phrase it differently. Christians’ behavior should be evaluated based on Jesus’ example and teachings, and on the whole of the New Testament. My Bible is the same one used by the Puritans. I have a slightly different translation, but on every point of significance, our texts are the same. Similarly, I too have a context. My historical context is that many churches in America are ordaining practicing homosexuals as pastors and priests, and are performing homosexual marriages. If you’re right about all this, then in three hundred years people should say, ‘What else could they do? It was the Age of Tolerance, Acceptance and Non-Judgmentalism. Homosexuality had been normalized in their culture, so they had to go along with it. The pronouncing of moral judgments was the closest thing they had to blasphemy, so of course they couldn’t suggest that one person was more qualified to be a pastor than anyone else.’ If I’m right, people will say, ‘They should have been salt and light in the world, no matter what the culture was doing. In fact, a misguided culture is all the more reason for Christians to swim against the tide, and honor God’s teaching above man’s. How else will the unchurched be able to tell the difference between God’s people and secular people?’

As to what led to the witch trials, that is probably our greatest point of disagreement. You note a few instances where strange behavior by children led to suspicion of witchcraft. No question but that some children behaved oddly. Otoh, on any given day, a significant number of children behave oddly the world over. Most often, especially in Christian societies, this doesn’t lead to the imprisonment of hundreds of people, and the deaths of many. Nor was it oddly behaving children that led, in Puritan society, to the murder of innocent people on the basis of zero evidence; rather, it was the very fabric from which Puritan culture had been fashioned.

It began with one of the worst misinterpretations of the Bible any person has ever both committed and managed to widely disseminate. (I won’t go into the specifics on a Writer’s Guild thread, but if anyone wants more information feel free to PM me.) It advanced from there to the stage of total and complete legalism—the very same ism the Pharisees were famous for. Recall that the Pharisees could act abominably, even toward their own parents, and still maintain their position at the top of the religious hierarchy [which I realize they had to share with the Sadducees, but that is a corollary not a contradiction]. This is because their ‘tradition’, when interpreted legalistically, made it perfectly all right to abuse one’s own parents. [Anyone who needs more information should study the doctrine of “Corban”; Matt:15.]

The companion problem of the Pharisees, and which the Puritans replicated in spades, was spiritual pride/self-righteousness/superiority. The Pharisees were turning poor widows and orphans out of their houses and using arcane legalistic procedures to steal the land of the most vulnerable Judeans. Yet they considered themselves the most righteous, God-pleasing/God-serving people in Judea. The Puritans considered themselves the only true Christians, and fully justified themselves when it came to persecuting, torturing, mutilating, exiling and/or murdering Christians whom they deemed inferior, AND in confiscating the lands and possessions of innocent yet powerless men, widows and orphans. Add to that the fact that Puritans controlled all political and legal offices, and you have the ingredients for a breathtakingly tyrannical and abusive culture.

To illustrate my point I’ll focus on two of the instances I cited in my first reply, and with which you did not deal in your response. First, the case of the four-year-old-child the Puritans sent to prison with her mother, and then kept in prison after they had hung her innocent mother. The child had turned five by then, but was so frightened and traumatized by the horrors her Puritan captors put her through that she lost her sanity and was mentally debilitated for the rest of her life. She is alternately listed as Dorcas and Dorothy Good, so I’ll refer to her as Dorcas.

Now let me ask you something, Lessien. Do you have any idea what kind of a heart it takes to subject a sobbing, terrified little child first to the hanging death of her own mother—based on the child’s own misguided and misinterpreted testimony—and then to an existence in a filthy, sordid prison with no parent or guardian to care for her at all? I realize that in every age there have been a few psychopaths who actually enjoy tormenting and abusing children, but the vast majority of people never have. Can you really imagine that the human beings of Puritan times were so different from those of us who live today that they considered it normal and decent to scare and abuse a little child into insanity? If so, what passage in the New Testament do you cite to bolster that view?

My view is that it isn’t easy to harden one’s heart to the degree required to lock a five-year-old up in a horrible prison and keep her there until she loses her mind. It takes hard and concerted work to drain oneself so fully of kindness, tenderness, mercy and compassion as to be able to do something like that. There are plenty of non-Christians who absolutely couldn’t bring themselves to torment a very small child to the point of irrecoverable mental and emotional anguish. Before I reveal how the Puritans accomplished the feat, I’ll move on to my second example.

Mary Watkins was thrown into the same stinking prison on the basis of no evidence. She was kept there long enough to run up a debt—since the supposedly Christian Puritans charged the inmates of their prison for their own horrible room and board—and was eventually declared innocent of all charges. But there was still that pesky debt to be paid. Many Watkins didn’t have the money [she had been deprived of the ability to work due to having been locked up on false charges]. What is more, nowhere in the large, so-called Christian community could there be found a single soul either to forgive or else to pay the debt for her. So she was sold into a lifetime of slavery to cover the payment for a crime which she’d never committed in the first place, and was later fully absolved of. Again I ask, Lessien, where in the New Testament do you find any justification for that kind of unjust and actively hateful behavior?

I will tell you how the Puritans managed it: legalism. They had, by the time of the Salem Witch Trials, so fully and completely substituted legalism for love, mercy and kindness that their hearts and consciences no longer rejected even the torture of a four or five yo child. A magistrate had ordered her into prison, ordered her innocent mother hung, and ordered Dorcas to continue to be imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft after she’d been orphaned by the same ‘legal’ system. Well, if the Puritan magistrate ordered it then it must be right, good and just. Case closed.

Likewise with poor Mary Watkins. She had been ‘legally’ imprisoned, had ‘legally’ accrued a debt, and was ‘legally’ obligated to pay it off. She couldn’t come up with the money? Well then, into slavery for her! All of it legal, all of it right, all of it good—at least in the collective eyes of the Puritans. [Or if it wasn’t, then where was even one decent soul, ready to step forward and at a minimum object? I can find no historical record of even a single protest of this nasty treatment—and I can say categorically that intervention didn’t happen because she was in fact sold as a slave.] [And ditto, btw, for all the land and possessions that were confiscated from innocent men and women, and who were later found innocent. None of the possessions were returned. Why? Because they had been ‘legally’ awarded to others, and so the new owners felt fully justified in keeping their ill gotten gain. Words fail me to describe that level of darkness, hypocrisy and downright and evil. The Bible speaks of that degree of evil, and it has terrifying things to say about it.]

Now consider the parable of the slave who owed his master a fortune [Matt:18]. His master forgave him everything, and what did the slave do? He went and found a fellow slave who owed him a small amount—miniscule in comparison to the debt he’d just been forgiven. When the second slave couldn’t pay, the first slave had him thrown into prison. When the master found out about it, He was furious, and retaliated against the first slave.

Lessien, the Puritans had that parable in their Bible the same as you and I do. Now you explain to me, please, how someone who calls themselves a Christian can be so blind as to not realize they were acting out that very parable? God had forgiven the Puritans everything, yet they couldn’t even forgive the prison debt accrued by an innocent and falsely accused person! Do you really believe that people operating on that level of blindness/hypocrisy are just slightly misguided, either by the devil or by the age in which they live? As far as I can tell from reading my Bible, it reflects a level of spiritual blindness all but impossible to achieve, and which is evil to the core.

A couple of quick wrap-ups. If you read my first reply, you know that Cotton Mather did not help to bring an end to the witch hunts. He encouraged the entire proceeding with ghoulish gusto, and only backed off when the wife of his dear friend, Governor Phipps, was accused of being a witch. Yet even after that, he wrote a treatise defending the witch hunts and trial, and if you don’t believe me then believe his father. Increase Mather burned his son’s book in Harvard Yard, he was so disgusted by it. Again, however, I don’t see where or how Increase lifted a finger to actually stop the executions or even release people from prison. The witch hunts only started to fall apart when the accusers reached too high, and accused someone with sufficiently powerful connections to bring the whole putrid travesty to an eventual halt.

Finally, you said that confession by falsely accused ‘witches’ got them off the hook. It absolutely positively did not. The only way an accused stood a chance was if he or she confessed AND named other witches: i.e.: implicated other perfectly innocent people, sending them into the ghastly prisons and possibly to the gallows. A person who tried to confess but who refused to name fellow witches got nowhere. It was assumed if you were a witch you would know other witches, and so if you tried to make a confession while holding back/covering for your fellow evildoers, you were unrepentant and deserving of death. The only way to get around that was to put multiple innocent people into prison, and possibly see them hanged. Nice choice.

Well that winds up my input on this subject. I hope it was helpful. If it would be better to have a private discussion from this point forward, that would be fine with me. Either way, I wish you all the best.

 

[Lessien]

Hi again, Lessien. I’ve read both your posts twice, and here is my reply. First, if the problem with the Puritans was Satan, why don’t we see more of that type of rhetoric in the Bible? I.e.: when Jesus confronted the Pharisees, why didn’t He say, ‘The problem is not with you; it’s with Satan.’ Jesus said no such thing, of course. He systematically indicted the Pharisees for appalling, doctrinally driven behavior that so closely resembles the behavior of the Puritans it’s scary. [More on this below.] Jesus said the Pharisees had set aside the Word of God in favor of the traditions of men. Furthermore, in following those traditions, He said they had ridden roughshod over the most important part of God’s teaching: love, mercy, kindness and forgiveness. The same could be said for Puritans—word for word.

Satan is the root cause of evil, but it was the Pharisees who unwittingly chose the way of Satan--trading God's love and mercy for judgment--so Jesus confronted them. They were, after all, the ones corrupting the Temples and refusing to let Jesus heal people on the Sabbath. God convicts people, not Satan, so that is why Jesus confronted the Pharisees instead of Satan.

Next consider the idea that people must be ‘judged’ in the context of their time. I would phrase it differently. Christians’ behavior should be evaluated based on Jesus’ example and teachings, and on the whole of the New Testament. My Bible is the same one used by the Puritans. I have a slightly different translation, but on every point of significance, our texts are the same. Similarly, I too have a context. My historical context is that many churches in America are ordaining practicing homosexuals as pastors and priests, and are performing homosexual marriages. If you’re right about all this, then in three hundred years people should say, ‘What else could they do? It was the Age of Tolerance, Acceptance and Non-Judgmentalism. Homosexuality had been normalized in their culture, so they had to go along with it. The pronouncing of moral judgments was the closest thing they had to blasphemy, so of course they couldn’t suggest that one person was more qualified to be a pastor than anyone else.’ If I’m right, people will say, ‘They should have been salt and light in the world, no matter what the culture was doing. In fact, a misguided culture is all the more reason for Christians to swim against the tide, and honor God’s teaching above man’s. How else will the unchurched be able to tell the difference between God’s people and secular people?’

I never said that what the Puritans did wasn't wrong. It was VERY wrong. But when I said we need to judge the Puritans in the context of their time, I did NOT mean that we should forget all the bad things they did, writing it off as "Oh, it was the Age of Murdering People For the Heck of It." What I MEANT was that we should take into consideration that the culture they came from was merciless and cruel, and as much as we would like to think that in their position, we would act differently, we probably wouldn't. Cultural ties that strong are hard to sever, and it took the Revolutionary War to help the Puritans' decendants embrace the idea of freedom of religion.

By the way, your comparing homosexuality to Puritanism is erroneous. Puritans wanted to get so close to God that they could become perfect like he is; homosexual preachers want to disregard the verses in Leviticus that call homosexuality an abomination. In other words, Puritans wanted to wipe sin out while modern homosexual preachers want to embrace it. There's a HUGE difference between them.

As to what led to the witch trials, that is probably our greatest point of disagreement. You note a few instances where strange behavior by children led to suspicion of witchcraft. No question but that some children behaved oddly. Otoh, on any given day, a significant number of children behave oddly the world over. Most often, especially in Christian societies, this doesn’t lead to the imprisonment of hundreds of people, and the deaths of many. Nor was it oddly behaving children that led, in Puritan society, to the murder of innocent people on the basis of zero evidence; rather, it was the very fabric from which Puritan culture had been fashioned.

It began with one of the worst misinterpretations of the Bible any person has ever both committed and managed to widely disseminate. (I won’t go into the specifics on a Writer’s Guild thread, but if anyone wants more information feel free to PM me.) It advanced from there to the stage of total and complete legalism—the very same ism the Pharisees were famous for. Recall that the Pharisees could act abominably, even toward their own parents, and still maintain their position at the top of the religious hierarchy [which I realize they had to share with the Sadducees, but that is a corollary not a contradiction]. This is because their ‘tradition’, when interpreted legalistically, made it perfectly all right to abuse one’s own parents. [Anyone who needs more information should study the doctrine of “Corban”; Matt:15.]

Yes, the Puritans were legalistic. I've admitted that. They misinterpreted several key passages of Scripture and twisted doctrine, but that doesn't change the fact that they came to America to worship God. It doesn't change all the good things they did or believed in. Think of it this way: If Nixon hadn't been involved in the Watergate scandal--which I admit was a HUGE mistake and a great embarassment to our country--he probably would have gone down in history as a pretty good president because he did a lot of good. But that one scandal is all we focus on. Should we do the same with the Puritans? I think not.

Now let me ask you something, Lessien. Do you have any idea what kind of a heart it takes to subject a sobbing, terrified little child first to the hanging death of her own mother—based on the child’s own misguided and misinterpreted testimony—and then to an existence in a filthy, sordid prison with no parent or guardian to care for her at all? I realize that in every age there have been a few psychopaths who actually enjoy tormenting and abusing children, but the vast majority of people never have. Can you really imagine that the human beings of Puritan times were so different from those of us who live today that they considered it normal and decent to scare and abuse a little child into insanity? If so, what passage in the New Testament do you cite to bolster that view?

Would you PLEASE stop insinuating that I condone all the things the Puritans did wrong? It is getting incredibly annoying and I'm getting insulted. So knock it off.

I will tell you how the Puritans managed it: legalism. They had, by the time of the Salem Witch Trials, so fully and completely substituted legalism for love, mercy and kindness that their hearts and consciences no longer rejected even the torture of a four or five yo child. A magistrate had ordered her into prison, ordered her innocent mother hung, and ordered Dorcas to continue to be imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft after she’d been orphaned by the same ‘legal’ system. Well, if the Puritan magistrate ordered it then it must be right, good and just. Case closed.

We've already established that legalism is bad. What I believe I have NOT established, however, is that we could just as easily be as legalistic as the Puritans. If people so desperate for God could fall prey to legalism, couldn't we? And isn't that what you're doing now? Rather than saying "Yes, the Puritans did a lot of bad things. Yes, the Salem Witch Trials were an awful black stain upon the face of Christian history. But instead of focusing on that, I'm going to take the good with the bad, commend the Puritans for what they did well and criticize them for what they did wrong," you're doing exactly what you're bashing the Puritans for doing: You're jumping all over the bad and ignoring the good. That, my friend, is the essence of legalism.

A couple of quick wrap-ups. If you read my first reply, you know that Cotton Mather did not help to bring an end to the witch hunts. He encouraged the entire proceeding with ghoulish gusto, and only backed off when the wife of his dear friend, Governor Phipps, was accused of being a witch. Yet even after that, he wrote a treatise defending the witch hunts and trial, and if you don’t believe me then believe his father. Increase Mather burned his son’s book in Harvard Yard, he was so disgusted by it. Again, however, I don’t see where or how Increase lifted a finger to actually stop the executions or even release people from prison. The witch hunts only started to fall apart when the accusers reached too high, and accused someone with sufficiently powerful connections to bring the whole putrid travesty to an eventual halt.

Finally, you said that confession by falsely accused ‘witches’ got them off the hook. It absolutely positively did not. The only way an accused stood a chance was if he or she confessed AND named other witches: i.e.: implicated other perfectly innocent people, sending them into the ghastly prisons and possibly to the gallows. A person who tried to confess but who refused to name fellow witches got nowhere. It was assumed if you were a witch you would know other witches, and so if you tried to make a confession while holding back/covering for your fellow evildoers, you were unrepentant and deserving of death. The only way to get around that was to put multiple innocent people into prison, and possibly see them hanged. Nice choice.

Witch Trials=bad. Got it.

Can we please move on?

 

[Christianfantasy]

Wow; you totally and completely misrepresented everything I said; used angry, insulting and demeaning language toward me, and accused me of saying things I didn’t say. I didn’t detect a hint of Christian love, kindness or graciousness in your reply. I can no longer continue this discussion with you; I wish you all the very best.

 

[Lessien]

Wow; you totally and completely misrepresented everything I said; used angry, insulting and demeaning language toward me, and accused me of saying things I didn’t say. I didn’t detect a hint of Christian love, kindness or graciousness in your reply. I can no longer continue this discussion with you; I wish you all the very best.

How can I do any differently when you do the same to me? You misinterpret my defenses of the good things Puritans did as condoning the bad things they did; you speak condescendingly toward me about the Salem Witch Trials; and then get mad at me because I defended myself? And then, after that, you cover up every insulting insinuation you made towards me by saying "I wish you the very best."

Look, I was doing my best to correctly interpret what you said, and what I got out of it was that Puritans were evil little demons in human form who terrorized the innocent and loved torturing children. I felt that you twisted EVERYTHING I said to make it sound like I condoned the bad things Puritans did. If I got that wrong, I'm sorry, but you can't dish out sarcasm and then refuse to take it.