Posted on 06/21/2021 7:46:01 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1749, an aged subprioress of the Unterzell nunnery was beheaded and burnt in Wurzburg for witchcraft … and for the principle of witchcraft.
Maria Renata Singer (or Singerin — here’s her German Wikipedia page) had been a reclusive denizen of the convent for half a century.
A dying nun accused her of working black magic, and everything snowballed in the usual way: other nuns got into the act, often in the throes of exorcism. Confinement and interrogation (torture is not recorded) eventually induced her to confess to having been a witch for more than 60 years. (Details of the unfolding procedure here, in German.)
On this morning 260 years ago, her sentence — moderated from burning alive — was carried out: Singer’s head was struck off and mounted on a pole, and her body burned to ashes.
Nothing so remarkable, really, in the annals of witchcraft. Nothing except the date. Witch-burnings in 1749! Voltaire was in his fifties. Thomas Jefferson was alive. Wurzburg itself hadn’t seen witchcraft executions since the madness of the Thirty Years’ War.
But even in the Age of Enlightenment, the benighted world got its licks in. And in this instance, the case of the witch-nun of Bavaria was bulletin-board material in an unfolding public debate over witchcraft.
Scholars and theologians were burdening the mid-18th century printing presses with treatises on the legitimacy of witchcraft persecutions. Singer herself, when first confronted with the accusation, had not simply denied it: she had denied there was any such thing as a witch.
That same year of 1749, Girolamo Tartarotti‘s influential Congresso notturno delle lammie skewered witchcraft jurisprudence....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
>>On this date in 1749, an aged subprioress of the Unterzell nunnery was beheaded <<
That explains the football part. In the US we call it “soccer.”
(I am I going to H-E-double toothpicks now?)
Accused of ‘witchcraft’....The ORIGINAL CANCEL CULTURE.............
If you let me go, you can use my friend’s head for soccer - Chevy Chase, Spies like Us
In mitigation, is should be understood that the Salem hysteria was only 14 years after King Philip's War, during which one quarter of the white population of New England perished. People were still a little jumpy.
Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa burnt alive at least 42 witches between 1805 and 1808 in Ohio and Indiana.
Where they British North American colonies at the time?
Was this because burning had been a Native American thing to do to supposed witches for centuries?
Or because the Native Americans had heard about what Europeans had done to accused witches?
Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Watters, AOC, Talib, Whitman, Murkowski, et al, makes one wonder if witches are really just superstition.
>>Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Watters, AOC, Talib, Whitman, Murkowski, et al, makes one wonder if witches are really just superstition.<<
I don’t think there is a documented case of anyone throwing holy water on any of them.
If someone does - keep a good distance.
I don’t know. I do know that any savagery of the noble savages is intentionally hidden because only white people are savages. In a similar vein the slaves held by Cherokee wouldn’t have their Juneteenth emancipation until a year later.
Tenskwatawa was once the town drunk, but about 1805, after a stupor so deep that he was believed dead, he awoke and said he had visited the Master of Breath, and been shown a heaven with game and honey for those who lived virtuously and traditionally. Tenskwatawa denounced Euro-American settlers, calling them offspring of the Evil Spirit, and led a purification movement that promoted unity among Native Americans, rejected acculturation to the settler way of life, including alcohol, and encouraged his followers to pursue traditional ways. He was called a Prophet.[1]:6–7He played a major part in history almost unknown nowadays.
On November 7, 1811, while Tecumseh was away, Tenskwatawa ordered the pre-dawn attack on a U.S. military force led by Governor Harrison encamped near Prophetstown that initiated the Battle of Tippecanoe. The Indians retreated after a two-hour engagement and abandoned Prophetstown, which the military burned to the ground. After Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, the Native American resistance movement did not recover and was eventually defeated.The Battle of Tippecanoe got William Henry Harrison the Presidency with his slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" Only to die in office after one month, some say due to the curse Tenskwatawa had put on him.
As of 2021, the curse was regaining prominence due to the age of incumbent president Joe Biden.
From 1738 the mood changed and in the monastery Unterzell there was probably envy and resentment because of her hard work, which is why her cats were taken away from her and from then on she was held responsible for all bad incidents within the village of Zell am Main. When six cases of possession arose in 1744, rumors that Singer was guilty of witchcraft increased. According to the trial files, she is said to have caused pain and illnesses associated with pain and infestation with "infernal spirits" in several of her flatmates in the monastery through magic and roots or herbs. [2] In 1749, assumptions were made that she was moonstruck Which is why one night she was attacked in the face by a nun with a discipline blow (device for chastising, a kind of whip). He was arrested and charged with witchcraft in January of the same year.
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