Devil’s Bride Film Highlights Male Witches Persecution
A film, set in 1600s Finland, Devil’s Bride tells the dark story of a girl who falls in love with a married man and to remove his wife from the portrait, the girl accuses the innocent woman of witchcraft, later to discover to her horror how 17th-century churchmen dealt with witches.
The majority of Finns followed the established religion during the 17th-century witch hunts, which was the majority of the population at the time, with the exception of a tiny minority of Orthodox Catholics in the east. As a result, institutionalized religion had the power to greatly influence everyday thoughts. According to the paper by Marko Nenonen and Timo Kervinen, at the start of the early modern era (1500-1800), Finland was famous for its witches and its great shamans who inhabited Lapland. Between 1520 – 1750 charges of witchcraft, magic, and evil were held against at least 2,000 people.
In the 17th century, the first trials in which the word ‘Drabolics’ was charged occurred in 1666 on the island of Åvenåås (and the name; Åvenä ), located between Sweden and Finland. Witch trials in Finland were held in courts that were run according to standard procedures, and were recognized as ordinary legal processes. In Finland, torture has historically been prohibited under Swedish law, and has only been used in very exceptional instances. Unlike other western European countries, in Finland, witches were predominantly male, with over half of the accused being men, as was the case in Iceland, Estonia and Russia.
The vast majority of the men accused of witchcraft were farmers, and their wives frequently became entangled in the proceedings, but one should bear in mind that witches and their accusers were almost always from the same community, and many historians believe the trial served as a social tool to get rid of one’s adversaries and rivals. The men were subsequently killed as a consequence of the ‘scientific method’ that emerged during the Enlightenment. In the bright light of day, the accusers, were often more demonic in their activities than the poor folk they were accused of witchcraft.
