Denomination
Reformed
The Reformed (Calvinist) tradition includes the Presbyterian, Congregational, Continental Reformed, and historically the New England Puritan churches. Documented episodes in this archive include the Salem witch trials of 1692, conducted under the doctrinal authority of the Puritan Congregational ministry of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The continental witch panics of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly the Geneva and Scottish cases, are within scope and will be added to the archive as the corresponding entries are written. The post-Reformation Reformed churches' involvement in colonial residential-school systems (the Presbyterian Church in Canada was responsible for a number of Indian Residential Schools) is similarly within scope.
Filed
5 entriesCanadian Indian Residential Schools
For 165 years, Catholic, Anglican, United Church, and Presbyterian institutions operated a network of federally-funded residential schools in Canada that separated approximately 150,000 Indigenous children from their families; the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report concluded the system constituted "cultural genocide."
FILED · 1819–1969 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALUS Federal Indian Boarding Schools
United States Department of the Interior investigative reports released in 2022 and 2024 established that the federal government had operated, or funded religious institutions to operate, 408 Indian boarding schools across 37 states between 1819 and 1969, with at least 973 documented child deaths confirmed across both volumes of the investigation.
FILED · 1692 · REFORMED · HISTORICALThe Salem Witch Trials
A nine-month panic in colonial Massachusetts produced more than 200 accusations of witchcraft and the executions of twenty people — nineteen by hanging and one pressed to death — before the colonial governor halted the proceedings.
FILED · 1572 · CATHOLIC · HISTORICALThe St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Beginning before dawn on 24 August 1572, an organised killing of French Huguenot Protestants by Catholic mobs and royal troops in Paris spread over six weeks to provincial cities, killing an estimated 5,000 to 30,000. Pope Gregory XIII struck a commemorative medal of celebration.
FILED · 1553 · REFORMED · DOCTRINALThe Execution of Michael Servetus
The Spanish anti-trinitarian theologian and physician Miguel Serveto was burned at the stake at Champel, outside Geneva, on 27 October 1553, under the prosecution of the city's Reformed magistracy with the active participation of John Calvin. The case is the founding moment in modern Protestant arguments for religious toleration.
