Only twenty witches were executed, a microscopic number compared to the tens of thousands who had been put to death in Europe and England in the course of similar outbreaks in the late Middle Ages, and compared to the millions who have died in the species of witch hunts peculiar to our own rational, scientific times.This book was written in 1949, and seems very consistent with what I've said before about why we fetishize 9/11. Surely there are several more examples of this throughout our history.
Yet the Massachusetts affair is possibly the most celebrated of all witch hunts, and people will never be done studying and writing about it. Its numerical modesty is indeed one of its attractions. It is a manageable episode in a way that catastrophes involving astronomical figures are not. The human reality of what happens to millions is only for God to grasp.
(leaving someone else to think of them, flicking at my hogballz for no apparent reason.)
2 comments:
Just like their love of the Pilgrims as America's Founders (who BTW had to use John Smith's handbook to even get to the New World) or Thanksgiving creators (nope, Berkeley in VA) or Paul Revere (didn't even get the job done for Pete's sake), if it ever happened in Massachusetts, Northerners will chime in their annoying accents that it is "real history." Also has something to do with Boston being the center of textbook publishing for decades.
"Massholes" :)
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