There is almost no question that the lifeblood of the Roman state was war, and that the decisions made by Roman politicians were usually in the interest of keeping this blood flowing. Through all of the endless warfare Rome managed to conquer most of the territory surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, and ruled most of this large swath of land by the proxy of co-opted local elites. Therefore it is difficult to imagine how Rome managed to keep its citizenry in check without instilling a powerful sense of fear in them. Despite being such a war like nation the Romans did not run a police state. They did brutally police their citizenry when they saw a threat to the state from within regarding cult like behavior from religions they would have considered strange. Enter Livy and the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186BCE. Livy was an historian who was living during the Augustan period of Rome, and is widely considered the chief source of information when it comes to the Bacchanalia. Livy was clearly no big fan of the idea of Bacchanalia as he writes: “To their religious performances were added the pleasures of wine and feasting, to allure a greater number of proselytes. When wine, lascivious discourse, night, and the intercourse of the sexes had extinguished every sentiment of modesty, then debaucheries of every kind began to be practiced, as every person found at hand that sort of enjoyment to which he was disposed by the passion predominant in his nature.” Aside from the likely Roman sentiment toward Bacchanalia, Livy’s testimony gives some background into what the religion was like. They were probably a bunch of sex crazed drunkards whom lived with a very loose moral code. A religion like Bacchanalia that is based on wine and ... ... middle of paper ... ... crime other than getting them to admit it? Furthermore the litmus test was obviously weak or non-existent when it came to determining whether or not someone would be a Bacchanalian as well considering it involved a reward for all those whom were turned in. Between Pliny’s letter and Livy’s account it’s pretty easy to get the impression that Romans were fairly tolerant of many different religions up until they got in the way. The Christians were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and doing the wrong things. The Bacchanalians were converting elites with a religion that the Romans considered unsavory to say the least. Both the Christians and the Bacchanalians suffered horrendously at the hands of the Roman authorities, and it goes to show that they were only going to tolerate so much from either group before going out on a witch hunt for them.
Some people say that the Salem Witch Trials were less a religious persecution than economic in purpose, using religion as a guise to gain property. I believe that the Salem witch trials were less a religious persecution than economical. I believe this for several reasons; one being that the accused witches were using their witchcraft on other people in the town and it was affecting them. Many people were accused of performing witchcraft and were persecuted for doing so. But I believe that people in towns accused others of "witchcraft" whenever something went wrong, because "witchcraft" was such a common thing back than. When the witches that were accused of this so called witchcraft, usually the rest of their family, if they had one, would have to sell their house and this gave the people in the town more land and gave other people outside of the town to move into the town. Since there were two distinct parts to Salem, it is believed that the rich people of Salem accused the poorer people so they could take over their land.
Salem Village, a small town in Massachusetts, is a very peaceful society. There are small fights, like when half of the village agreed to have a church there and half of the hoi polloi who doesn’t like the idea. Still, it was a very tranquil village. People there are Puritans. Puritans are strict Christian believers. They believe that women and children are to be seen, not heard. They believe that the devils and witches have specters, and specters can attack people. Puritans blame bad crops, death of others, and dreadful events on witches. It was still a halcyon village, until in 1692, when madness arrived in Salem Village, Massachusetts.
Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem-vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! (p73, The Crucible)
As flawed people, achieving perfection is an impossible task. Yet, despite this inevitability, individuals strive for perfection only to reveal and witness imperfections. The Puritan lifestyle attempted to achieve this unattainable mission by setting strict morals upon the people of Salem, Massachusetts, however they struggled to do so. Salem faced a major change as a result of the Puritan ambition. Because of their thought on the ideal community as a straitlaced society, those who portrayed an imperfect model were to be isolated. Suspicion flooded the holy Puritan town, and led to accusations of innocent people. After a close analysis, it may be relevant to look at the Puritan belief system as a possible catalyst for the events that occurred during the Salem witch trials.
American history is a collaboration of all of the wonderful events and the not so successful ones that make up this great country that we call the United States. Records of this fabulous nation date back all the way to dates way before our original founding fathers. However, few episodes of American history have aroused such intense and continuing interest ad the trials and executions for the witchcraft which occurred in Salem Massachusetts in 1692. Historians have scrutinized the event from many perspectives; novelists and playwright from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Arthur Miller have capitalized upon its inherent dramatic possibilities. The value, then, of a collection of primary documents relating to this event would seem to be clear, or would it.
In Rosalyn Schanzerś “Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem”, a Puritan religion filled Salem takes the Bible literally. The town starts to find witches which causes hysteria to spread across town causing people to accuse friends of witchcraft. Communism’s Red Scare, internment camps, and the Holocaust are just like these witch hunts because they all caused histeria and actions by people that should not have been taken.
deliberate, formal pact with Satan and would do all in her in power to aid
In 1692 events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts led to the best known witch trial in America. Today these witch trials are known as the Salem Witch Trials. More than two-hundred people were accused of practicing witchcraft. A witch to them was someone who could do harm through magical means, they could curdle milk, hobble animals, and even cause young children to sicken and die (Aronson, Witch Hunt 31).
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 was a tragic set of events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts (Salem is now Danvers, Massachusetts.) It began with a “witchcraft craze” from 1300-1600 in Europe, when thousands of people were murdered, accused of performing witchcraft, the devil’s magic.
“Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.” (2.3.27-35) (pg 61)
Evaluate the role of gender in early modern witch-hunting. During the early modern period Europe experienced a phase of vicious prosecution of the people accused of the crime of ‘Witchcraft.’ There has been an estimated death toll of up to 50,000 people during these Witch-hunt crazes, although the exact figures are unknown. What is known is that overall 75-80% of those accused were women, although this varies in different states.
St. Augustine's sordid lifestyle as a young man, revealed in Confessions, serves as a logical explanation for his limited view of the purpose of sexuality in marriage. His life from adolescence to age thirty-one was so united to passionate desire and sensual pleasure, that he later avoided approval of such emotions even within the sanctity of holy union. From the age of sixteen until he was freed of promiscuity fifteen years later, Augustine's life was woven with a growing desire for illicit acts, until that desire finally became necessity and controlled his will. His lust for sex began in the bath houses of Tagaste, where he was idle without schooling and "was tossed about…and boiling over in…fornications" (2.2). Also during that time, young Augustine displayed his preoccupation with sexual experience by fabricating vulgarities simply to impress his peers. In descript...
In particular, he examines how the “slow formation in antiquity of a hermeneutics of the self” (pg. 6) set the process for morality being conceived of having a fundamental relationship with human self-formation as an ethical subject (pg. 28). In order to demonstrate his thesis that there is a relationship of transfer of the ideas and practices that posit the individual as an ethical subject of sexual conduct between classical antiquity and Christianity (pg. 32), Foucault presents a number of textual examples from Greek philosophers and medical practitioners from the 4th Century BC (pg. 12). He structures his genealogy through engagement with and discussion of these texts, which he examines using the baseline notion of pleasure. In this historical analysis, he attempts to reveal the authors’ and texts’ attitudes towards sexuality as a domain of
Christianity, originally, was thought of as an outsider religion, and wasn’t accepted by most Romans. The Romans could learn to live with other religions, but not when they were harmful to public order. At one point, Romans viewed it to be just that. Christians tended ...
Dever (1996) recounts that attitudes towards prostitution in the medieval period shifted “away from the strict condemnation and uncompromising intolerance of prostitution by the early Church Fathers to a view of a accommodation” (p. 39). This shift in thinking did not dissuade society from viewing prostitutes as sexual temptresses. It did, however, recognize the prostitute’s function in society. St. Thomas Aquinas justified this function using St. Augustine’s De ordine. “Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain evils be incurred: thus Augustine says [De ordine 2.4]: If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust” (Dever, 1996, p. 43). Prostitutes were thus a necessary evil, entities that prevented society from being consumed by lust for worldly pleasures. This rationale perhaps contributed towards the doctrinal shift regarding