Schiff presents no new evidence either way. Pulitzer Prize winner Schiff spends time on the issue, but seems quite disdainful of Cleopatra’s contemporary critics who try to make her into a seductress who used whatever beauty she had for immoral purposes. That is also the case with Cleopatra: A Life. Still, writers from Cleopatra’s day up to the present make much of the queen’s supposed looks. Indeed, the face of the last ruler of Egypt (69 BC–30 BC), remains a mystery. Almost in shadow, an elegant woman is looking away from the viewer. In this case, however, Stacy Schiff chose an appropriate image for her work. And he is the person many of the witchcraft justices will turn for advice, because when the court has assembled to try these cases, the justices are uncertain as to how to weigh the evidence and how to, in some way, analyze this plague of witchcraft.We are told not to judge a book by its cover. But he is at that moment one of the most eminent of Massachusetts ministers. I hesitate to make him in some way responsible for what happened because he's by no means single-handedly responsible. On Cotton Mather, the man most identified with the Salem witch huntĬotton Mather's all over this story. It is no longer just the girls who seem to share this idea that something supernatural is at foot. So the chill goes down the spine all around. And when they get close to it, it seems to them to materialize as three women, who then fly swiftly away. Stacy Schiff's other books include Saint-Exupery: A Biography and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.Įlena Siebert Photography/Courtesy of Little BrownĪnd at one point, two men who've heard her testimony that day see a strange unnatural creature making unearthly noises by the side of the road. And you can imagine how that went over in a place where women were meant to be submissive and meek and silent." "And one of their first acts after the witchcraft has been diagnosed is to interrupt a minister in meeting. "Their limbs are paralyzed, they contort, they're going into trances, and they're screaming - night and day, screeches," Schiff tells NPR's Renee Montagne.
The witch trials were set in motion by two young Salem girls in the grip of strange and disturbing symptoms. In her book The Witches, author Stacy Schiff follows the buildup of fear and outrageous tales of consorting with the devil.
How?įor the pious Puritans of early America, witchcraft was a crime of the highest order.īack then, the term "witch hunt" was not just an expression: In 1692, 19 women and men were hanged and one pressed to death with stones after being found guilty of witchcraft.
Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Witches Subtitle Salem, 1692 Author Stacy Schiff
0 kommentar(er)
