“The Precious Gifts of Faith, Repentance, and the Feare of God”: Court Confessions and Emotions in Old and New England Witch Trials (ca. 1560–1692)
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Agustín Méndez
Abstract
This article examines the role of emotions in confessions during witchcraft trials in Old and New England between approximately 1560 and 1692. Drawing on the reading and analysis of primary sources – including demonological treatises, pamphlets, and court records – it argues that religious and judicial authorities expected the confessions of those accused of witchcraft to unfold within an emotional framework centred on guilt, repentance, shame, and fear of God. This expectation, which remained consistent throughout the period on both sides of the English Atlantic, was not only linked to the need for the accused to acknowledge the reality of the crime, but also aimed at their rehabilitation before both the divinity they had offended and the community they had harmed. Yet the documents reveal not only what members of the judicial bureaucracy and the theological establishment sought from the accused, but also the forms of resistance and challenge that defendants posed to these emotional demands.
Funding source: This article was funded by the National University of La Matanza as part of the CyTMA 2 (C2DER-082) project titled “Law and Justice between the Fourteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Role of Norms and Institutions in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period”, carried out during the 2024–2025 period.
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Research funding: This article was funded by the National University of La Matanza as part of the CyTMA 2 (C2DER-082) project titled “Law and Justice between the Fourteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Role of Norms and Institutions in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period”, carried out during the 2024‐2025 period.
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Religious Women and Liturgy in a Fifteenth-Century Portuguese Codex: Gendering the Reception and Profession Ceremonies in the Dominican Convents
- Memory and the Cloister: Mapping the Architecture of Observant Franciscan Identity in Brescia, 1422–1610
- La Babilonyke Meretrice Romaine: Roots and Character of Guillaume Postel’s Anti-Papalism
- Translating Women’s Silence: Erasmus’ Translation and Paraphrase of 1Corinthians 14:34–35
- Maritime Networks: Priests, Mariners, and Their Landing Places in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
- “The Precious Gifts of Faith, Repentance, and the Feare of God”: Court Confessions and Emotions in Old and New England Witch Trials (ca. 1560–1692)
- Pascal’s Wafer: The Concept of Piety in Blaise Pascal’s Theological Anthropology
- Dossier: Text, Textile, and Theology 1
- Making the Bible a Fashion Accessory in Seventeenth-Century England: Materiality, Market, and the Present-Tense Protestantism of Embroidered Book Covers
- “And I Shall Give to Thee the Crown of Life”: The Utstein Antependium and the Visual Religious Culture in Early Modern Norway (ca. 1680–1700)
- Les ornements liturgiques des Carmes dans les anciens Pays-Bas du XVIIe siècle: un outil au service de leurs thèses
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Religious Women and Liturgy in a Fifteenth-Century Portuguese Codex: Gendering the Reception and Profession Ceremonies in the Dominican Convents
- Memory and the Cloister: Mapping the Architecture of Observant Franciscan Identity in Brescia, 1422–1610
- La Babilonyke Meretrice Romaine: Roots and Character of Guillaume Postel’s Anti-Papalism
- Translating Women’s Silence: Erasmus’ Translation and Paraphrase of 1Corinthians 14:34–35
- Maritime Networks: Priests, Mariners, and Their Landing Places in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
- “The Precious Gifts of Faith, Repentance, and the Feare of God”: Court Confessions and Emotions in Old and New England Witch Trials (ca. 1560–1692)
- Pascal’s Wafer: The Concept of Piety in Blaise Pascal’s Theological Anthropology
- Dossier: Text, Textile, and Theology 1
- Making the Bible a Fashion Accessory in Seventeenth-Century England: Materiality, Market, and the Present-Tense Protestantism of Embroidered Book Covers
- “And I Shall Give to Thee the Crown of Life”: The Utstein Antependium and the Visual Religious Culture in Early Modern Norway (ca. 1680–1700)
- Les ornements liturgiques des Carmes dans les anciens Pays-Bas du XVIIe siècle: un outil au service de leurs thèses
