European: "It is the year 1585 in the German town of Dillingham and Anna Hausman is a midwife who cared for countless mothers and newborn children. She is now accused of killing them. Her crime is witchcraft. She will be burned at the stake for it. Under systematic torture, she has confessed to whatever her interrogaters wanted to hear. Her judges believe a tide of Satanism is sweeping Germany. The Devil has been her lover, she tells them, the babies sacrificed to him. Knowing it would mean her death, she says anything to stop the pain."
"There has been such a connection between witchcraft and the processes of life. Women are very connected to the processes of life. Women are the ones who birth the children. The whole question of how that happens throughout history is a great mystery. There is fear connected with women's blood, women's bleeding and women's birthing. The whole profession of midwifery, which ended up being brutally suppressed by the church and also by the medical establishment later, I think has a lot to do with women having some control over this awesome power. Midwives like Anna Hauseman were easy targets, accused of sacrificing babies to the devil. But all female healers pose a threat to the male medical profession, which is struggling to establish itself. They could not qualify as doctors, because women were barred from the universities and medical schools so they had to be unqualified. They had no choice. If they worked as an unqualified healer, or practitioner, or herbalist, they were considered a witch."
The two quotes (above) come from Time Life's World of the Supernatural: The Witch Hunt.
New England History: "In 1629, King Charles the First of England granted a religious splinter group, called the Puritians, a charter to settle and govern an English colony in the MA Bay. The purpose was to create a new, perfect society based on the principles of the Bible, a theocracy, with no seperation of church and state. The goal was a kind of model community, what they called a city on the hill, that would be a kind of light to people all over the world . . . The Puritians remained British citizens and like their countrymen, they were also a community that very much believed witches existed . . . This was central to their beliefs."
"The first witch trial in MA was not is Salem. It was in Charlestown in 1648. A midwife and healer named Margaret Jones was accused of witchcraft. Villagers believed she had a malignant touch that could cause deafness and nausea. Jones was suppose to be able to foretell the future and even had a witch's teat. She was hanged in 1648."
The two quotes (directly above) come from The History Channel (video): The Salem Witch Hunts.
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