The exercise of authority to punish, without accountability for the consequences of the punishment.

The expectation that certain people — women in her era, others in other contexts — cannot survive without the structures and protections of the system they are being expelled from.

The surprise — or the refusal to acknowledge — when the person who was supposed to be destroyed demonstrates the capacity to endure.

These patterns did not disappear with the sixteenth century.

They take different forms, operate through different mechanisms, affect different people.

But the underlying structure — authority exercised against the vulnerable, followed by the survival of the supposedly vulnerable — is a pattern that the historical record shows repeatedly.