Spirits In The Elizabethan Era

Thesis: Goodman Brown’s state of mind between good and evil could have been caused by a combination of Puritanism obsession with the devil, its resemblance, and other prejudices such as ergot poisoning.

William Shakespeare’s character Hamlet once said, “To be or not to be: that is the question whether tis nobler in mind to suffer…”. Music, poetry, and plays were important parts of entertainment during the Elizabethan era. Musicians composed new types of music, poets expressed their feeling through poetry, and playwrights wrote plays of different types of genres. Social classes and gender roles also contributed to the entertainment culture. During the Elizabethan era, people were entertained by sources of entertainment, such as plays, music, and poetry.

The Elizabethan time period emphasized the dominance of men in society and family ties. Women had no choice but to depend on their families and the man the family picked for them to marry. All the money comes from the husbands income. Family was essential to Elizabethan time, because everyone in the household depended on one another. Men and women both could not function without their immediate family.

One of the oldest dilemmas in philosophy is also one of the greatest threats to Christian theology. The problem of evil simultaneously perplexes the world’s greatest minds and yet remains palpably close to the hearts of the most common people. If God is good, then why is there evil? The following essay describes the problem of evil in relation to God, examines Christian responses to the problem, and concludes the existence of God and the existence of evil are fully compatible.

Several centuries ago, for most, Christianity was becoming very widespread. Although there are a number of religions to choose from, most have a few features in common. One example might be the belief in the Devil. People thought that the Devil could grant evil powers to specific people. The European craze was finally winding down and local towns like Salem were just getting started. In 1692, a woman named Tituba admitted to having the Devil himself come to her by saying “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” Eventually,

Queen Elizabeth had to be harsh and strict with Catholics, more than she would have preferred in order to maintain peace in England (Elizabeth R). Although Queen Elizabeth was nice, she could also be very strict. When Catholics rebelled she reacted quickly, she had them killed, took away their properties, or imprisoned them. After years of rebellion and fighting, England became a Protestant Country in the early 1600’s (Pitchard 103). “The significance of the Elizabethan religious settlement is that it was able to hold the vast majority of the people together, despite being a compromise few would have chosen” (Elizabeth I).

Witchcraft, the practice of magic with the use of spells, herbs, and satanic work, was fairly prominent in Elizabethan England. The Elizabethan Era reign lasted from 1558 to 1603, and was during Queen Elizabeth's reign. Witches and witchcraft were usually the target of blame during this time, because they were the outcasts. Witches, the Chelmsford Witch trials, and many superstitions are all based off of witchcraft.

The Elizabethan Era Protestants beliefs were similar to modern day non-denominational Christians. They believed that a personal relationship with God was only attainable through a personal relationship with themselves and God. Alchin stated the Protestant beliefs by saying, “Elizabethan Protestants believed that people could find God without a priest or a pope” (2). Protestants also believed in reaching the ordinary people by believing that “the Bible should be in the language of the people so that the ordinary people could understand them” (Alchin 1). The Elizabethan Catholics believed in keeping their ancestors Catholic traditions in their everyday religion.

Important aspects of Elizabethan life were the frequent holidays, festivals, and celebrations. During the Protestant Reformation, a movement to disestablish Catholicism in England, King Henry Ⅷ banned religious holidays that were based on the Catholic Church. As a result of this, Queen Elizabeth I introduced secular holidays to make up for the lack of festivities. Holidays were looked forward to by the common people as they were a break from work and hardships in life. Celebrations in the Elizabethan Era had great significance since they had an important impact on religious lives, they brought people together during holiday seasons, and they were incorporated into everyday life.

As indicated by the sarcastic title of her book “Those Terrible Middle Ages!” French historian Régine Pernoud addresses this commonly held misconception. She argues this time in history spanning approximately a thousand years as well as the image of the Church, have been irresponsibly represented. Her examination of this time period reveals that it is not the Church, but modernism that generates a return to the classical ideology of antiquity. These ancient pagan beliefs of the distant past are not as distant as we may think. They have resurfaced and are present in our own age.

To be superstitious means to have or show belief in superstitions. Superstitions are unjustified beliefs in supernatural causation leading to a specific action or event. Most everyone knows of the more popular superstitions that have stuck around for decades; such as if a black cat crosses your path it’s supposed to represent bad luck or saying “God bless you” after someone sneezes. People develop their own superstitions for example if someone has a piece of jewelry that means something to them they might touch it or wear it often in hopes that it will provide good luck. Different time eras held different kinds of superstitions like the Elizabethan age had a lot of superstitions about witches and magic whereas Roman’s superstitions had a lot to do with phenomena and omen’s, an event that was regarded as a “bad sign”.

The third Elizabethan belief in ghosts was that people were believed to be hallucinating if they believe they had seen a ghost. “Persons affected by mania or melancholy are most commonly subject to receive false imaginations

Superstitions and Witches in the Elizabethan Era In 2017, most people are familiar with the thought of witches. Witches today are often portrayed as old ladies with scraggly hair, worts, and a pointy nose. Little do we know that witches didn’t actually look like that. People today are also familiar with superstitions. A very well known superstition is about spiders being good luck.

The abstract concept of evil has vastly transformed throughout human history, ranging for the supernatural and mystical to the very humans amongst whom we live. In modern times, evil has become an entirely ambiguous term. Who is evil? What is evil? Men like Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein have been garnered with the term ‘evil’ for their atrocities against fellow humans. Now it seems evil has a solely human significance; when a person violates the individual rights of others on a massive scale, he/she is evil. In Shakespeare’s time – the Elizabethan era – evil had a similar, but somewhat altered connotation in the human mind. Evil was an entity that violated the English Christian

Over the years, society has created and recreated different ideas of what is considered socially acceptable and what customs to follow on a daily basis. These ideas are constantly changing and renewing themselves, making even last year’s behavioral habits seem crude. For instance, life in Elizabethan England contrasted with how life is now because people acted differently, dressed differently, spoke differently, and in a general, broader sense, they lived differently. Because people grow and change and learn from their previous mistakes, Elizabethan customs are practically obsolete due to their lack of effectiveness or rather the lack of need for them to continue.