If you were a woman living inSalem , Massachusetts , during the early 1690s , virtually anything couldland you on trial for witchcraft . You have a birthmark ? You ’re a beldame . Your milk went moody ? You ’re a witch . Your neighbors are having trouble getting fraught ? It ’s your fault … because you ’re awitch .
This hysteria played out over several 100 across Northern Europe , too , where tens of thousands of purported “ witch ” wereexecutedfor everything from causing failed harvest time to simply not stick to to social convention . The overwhelming majority of the victims were women , and the witch hunts are widely take to exemplify misogyny in the extreme .
Now , asVice reports , the governance of Catalonia , Spain , is making emblematical amends by issuing a posthumous pardon to roughly 700 women killed for witchery between the 15th and 18th centuries .
“ We are the inheritrix of the witch , the poisoners and the healers , ” Catalonian fantan member Jenn Díaz said , per Vice . “ We need mend and an understanding that the past tense is not as remote as we suppose . ” The resolution also call for local leaders to pass judgment opportunity to rename streets in honor of the victims .
According toThe Guardian , some of Catalonia ’s enchantress trials began as grassroots effort , where a village would enlist its own witch hunting watch . One of these was Joan Cazabrujas — a moniker that basically means “ John Witch - Hunter”—whose investigations result in the death of more than 30 convict enchantress in Sallent , a town bordering the Llobregat river . Those women were hang , the execution method acting of alternative in Catalonia at the time . But as poetical justice would have it , Cazabrujas himself was later burned at the wager after the Spanish Inquisition determine that many of his victim had n’t in reality been guilty of witchery .
Catalonia is n’t the first region to cipher with its history of witch test . In 2008 , Switzerlandpardoned a “ witch”executed for supposedly causing the death of an 8 - year - old girl in 1782 . Three years later , theSteilneset Memorialwas erected in Vardø , Norway , as a testimonial to the 91 victims—77 women and 14 men — of the area ’s 17th - century witch trials .
[ h / tVice ]
