[HPforGrownups] Re: a lot of Names, interrupted with a lot of Traitors, L...

[MadameSSnape at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 154772

 
In a message dated 7/2/2006 3:52:12 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
willsonkmom at msn.com writes:

Still--I never realized in RL so many women were 
executed as  witches!!!


------------------------------------
Sherrie here:
 
The numbers depend on your sources - and of course, they weren't all  women.  
Of the nineteen hanged at Salem, just as one of the  best-documented 
examples, five were men; another man died under torture, and at  least one died in 
jail.  (And one of the accused was a five-year-old  child.)  For the period of 
the witchcraft executions (which is dated from  approximately 1100 AD and by no 
means ended in the 17th century -  Scotland's last recorded legal execution 
for witchcraft took place in 1727,  about 600 years, all told), estimates run 
from a low of about 600,000 to a high  of nine million.  Given that Prince 
Bishop von Dornheim of Bamberg tortured  and executed some 600 in two years in one 
city alone...well, I won't go with the  9,000,000, but 600,000 seems a bit 
low.  One estimate for Scotland only  (SCOTTISH REVIEW, 1891) says that some 3400 
were burned in the 16th and 17th  centuries in Scotland alone.
 
Most of these people weren't witches by ANY definition of the word - they  
were misfits, or those whose accusation profited the witch-hunters, or sometimes 
 women who'd refused the advances of powerful men.  But - that's in  RL.  
Twist it into the Potterverse - if even some of those were truly  witches or 
wizards, tortured and murdered by Muggles, well, you wouldn't invite  Muggles to 
your birthday party, either. The Knights of Walburgis might  have begun as a 
defensive organization - but Tommyboy twisted it into  something entirely other.
 
Sherrie
 
 


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