Bridget Bishop, a 60 year-old tavern-keeper in Salem, Massachusetts, was hanged for witchcraft today in 1692. She was accused of being a familiar of the Devil, and bewitching several young women, who said that her apparition had pinched, choked and bitten them. But her flamboyant personal style was also a factor, as it stirred up judgmental and gossipy comment among her Puritan neighbours, who said she quarrelled loudly with her husbands, stayed up late drinking and playing shovel board, and wore ‘a black hat and a red paragon bodice bordered and looped with different colors’. Bishop was the first person to be executed in the Salem witch trials (her modern memorial in Salem is seen above), and 19 others, 13 of them women, were put to death before the hysteria ended the following year.
Bishop: I am innocent to a Witch. I know not what a Witch is.
Hathorne: How do you know then that you are not a witch?
Bishop: I do not know what you say.
Hathorne: How can you know you are no Witch, and yet not know what a Witch is?
Courtroom examination of Bridget Bishop by the trial judge, John Hathorne
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was founded in Akron, Ohio, today in 1935. The date marked the last time Robert Smith, a surgeon, drank alcohol. He had been meeting with Bill Wilson, a former stockbroker and fellow alcoholic, and their conversations were life-changing for Robert Smith. The AA international fellowship grew from this meeting, with its 12 step program, regular meetings run by and for alcoholics, and its non-dogmatic idea of God as a ‘higher power’.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Serenity Prayer used in AA meetings
Archbishop Ignatius Maloyan of the Armenian Catholic Church was murdered today in 1915 during the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Maloyan, with his clergy and people, were sent on a death march into the desert, where Turkish troops killed them in the caves. The Archbishop was offered his life if he converted to Islam. He replied: ‘I shall live and die for the sake of my faith and religion. I take pride in the Cross of my God and Lord.’
Napoleon and the Pope got into an almighty scrap today in 1809. Bonaparte had invaded Italy (most of which belonged to the Pope) and then occupied Rome, and annexed them to the French Empire, and Pope Pius VII responded by excommunicating him. Napoleon was so furious that a few weeks later his military took matters into their own hands and kidnapped the Pope.
Today in 1540, Thomas Cromwell was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The chief political architect of the English Reformation under Henry VIII, his fatal mistake was to recommend Anne of Cleves as Henry’s fourth wife, and a portrait of Anne by Hans Holbein, which Cromwell had commissioned, was blamed for being too flattering. Henry was humiliated when it became known that he had failed to consummate his new marriage, and Cromwell became the target of his wrath. His final appeal to Henry – ‘Most gracious Prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy’ – fell on deaf ears, and he was executed the following month.
The liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack died today in 1930. He believed that the original teaching of Jesus had been polluted by the Greek philosophy of the early church fathers, and then by centuries of church legalism and ritual, which he detailed in his The History of Dogma. He saw Protestantism as a rejection of this process, and as a way to get back to Jesus and the early church.
Image: bossdoss1