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Why did people confess to being witches? (Some may have been deluded (Some…
Why did people confess to being witches?
Some may have been coaxed or or bullied by persecutors into confessions
Some may have been deluded
Some women believed they had met the devil and he had persuaded them to use witchcraft
Many poor, often old women realising that their plight was desperate and believing that the devil offered people material pleasures in exchange for adoration, pledged their service and sold their souls to him- allowed inquisitors to convince them they engaged in other forms of devil-worship
John Weyer believed witches suffered from melancholy- psychological disorder- some may have been suffering from disorder such as dementia
Some may have confessed to activities they dreamed of doing- dreams conditioned by cultural traditions
Torture used to secure confession
Collette du Mont
One of three women tried for witchcraft in Guernsey in 1617
Tortured after she'd already been found guilty and sent to death- wasn't until after torture she spoke of a relationship with the Devil, who had appeared to her on many occasions as a cat
Under torture she described how she met a group of 15 or 16 witches and wizards along with devils in the form of either animals either in the local church yard or on the beach
Account of the Sabbath can be dismissed as product of judicial coercion
Already sentenced to death she was perhaps trying to save herself from additional pain and suffering before execution
Content of confession closely relates to ideas about crime of witchcraft in mind of interrogator
Tendency for most confessions to conform to the preconceived ideas of those who extracted them
What an accused witch confessed to was heavily influenced by the attitudes and values of those hearing the confession
Many of the confessions were adduced under torture, the symbols contained in them usually reflect the projected fears of magistrates
Hopkins
Used standard form of interrogation which involved questions that were leading
For the questions he only needed a monosyllabic answer from the victim; the details of the compact and the familiars could be supplied by the questioner
Refusal to confess was sometimes attributed to the fact that a victim had been silenced by the devil, further evidence then of their guilt
In different jurisdictions, the outcomes of confession to the crime of witchcraft could lead to very different outcomes
German Witch Hunts
Confession meant almost certain execution
Salem
Prospects for survival considerably better for those who confessed than for those who refused to do so
Louise Jackson looked at the details of some confessions to witchcraft in England and reached a number of conclusions
Emotional responses to events and concerns were being articulated through the medium of witchcraft confession; demonological language and the conventions of witchcraft belief were used to cover or explain personal traumas
Witchcraft confession was intricately connected with self identity; it specifically required a woman to judge herself and her behaviour within the constraints of demonological language
Image of stereotype of the witch had been defined as the opposite of the good or godly woman (particularly in her roles as wife and mother) These cases show that the accused woman, in her their confessions, were judging themselves as wives and mothers- they were judging their anger, their bitterness, the fears and their failures to live up to the expectation of others
Could accuse others to make case seem better