What did the Salem witches practice? Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil's practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. Click to see full answer.
What were the Witches of Salem accused of?
Jan 06, 2020 · What did the Salem witches practice? Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil's practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. Click to see full answer.
What really happened during the Salem witch trials?
Nov 15, 2021 · What did the Salem Witches believe in? Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty –had emerged in Europe as early as the …
Who finally ended the Salem witch trials?
Jan 05, 2022 · What did the Salem witches believe? The belief in the supernatural, and especially in the devil’s practice of giving certain people (wizards) the power to harm others in exchange for their loyalty, appeared in Europe in the 14th century …
Who were the accused witches in the Salem witch trials?
Nov 04, 2011 · Context & Origins of the Salem Witch Trials Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their...
What did witches do in Salem?
The Witches of Salem. Diabolical doings in a Puritan village. In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed fourteen women, five men, and two dogs for witchcraft. The sorcery materialized in January.Sep 7, 2015
What religion were the Salem witches?
PuritanBut what caused these Puritan people of Salem to execute their fellow friends and neighbors in the name of witchcraft? We have discovered that the lost lives of the accused witches were the direct result of the Puritan religious fanaticism of the day.
What options did an accused witch have in Salem?
What options did an accused witch have in Salem? They could admit they were witches, and they would be hanged. The other choice was deny it and go through a trial and usually end up in cases where they were killed. 1 person denied being a witch and he was prest to death.
How were the Salem witches treated?
Many of these victims were hanged or beheaded first, but their bodies were typically incinerated afterwards to protect against postmortem sorcery. Other condemned witches were still alive when they faced the flames, and were left to endure an excruciating death by burning and inhalation of toxic fumes.Aug 13, 2014
What beliefs led to the Salem witch trials?
The Puritans were desperate to get back on the path to righteousness that they started the witch trails in order to cleanse the town. They believed what they were doing was morally correct and it was their duty to God to rid of the witches that had possessed their community.Aug 12, 2021
How did gender play a role in the Salem witch trials?
Approximately 78% of witches were women. Women were believed to have bonded with the devil and were more susceptible to sin. Puritans apparently didn't agree with the common European viewpoint that women were more evil than men. Historians believed that these trials were aimed at women who did not stay in their role.
Who confessed to witchcraft in Salem?
TitubaTitubaOther namesTituba the WitchOccupationSlaveKnown forAccused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. She confessed for survival.Criminal charge(s)Witchcraft7 more rows
Do witch hunts still happen?
Witch-hunts are practiced today throughout the world. While prevalent world-wide, hot-spots of current witch-hunting are India, Papua New Guinea, Amazonia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Who was the first child to be accused of witchcraft?
Dorcas Good, four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, became the first child to be accused of witchcraft when three of the girls complained that they were bitten by the specter of Dorcas.
How many witches were actually burned?
300 years on, will thousands of women burned as witches finally get justice? It spanned more than a century and a half, and resulted in about 2,500 people – the vast majority of them women – being burned at the stake, usually after prolonged torture.Sep 13, 2020
Who did the Salem witch trials target?
womenBeing homeless, poor or childless was cause for concern, and these were the women targeted by the trials. Such was the situation for two of the initial Salem accused witches: Sarah Osborne, a poor elderly woman, and an Indian slave named Tituba.Jun 10, 2018
Who burned witches?
The Spanish Inquisition executed only two witches in total. More accused witches were executed in the last decade of Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603) than under her successor, James I (1603–25).
What was Salem known for?
Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) was known for its fractious population, who had many internal disputes, and for disputes between the village and Salem Town (present-day Salem ). Arguments about property lines, grazing rights, and church privileges were rife, and neighbors considered the population as "quarrelsome." In 1672, the villagers had voted to hire a minister of their own, apart from Salem Town. The first two ministers, James Bayley (1673–79) and George Burroughs (1680–83), stayed only a few years each, departing after the congregation failed to pay their full rate. (Burroughs was subsequently arrested at the height of the witchcraft hysteria and was hanged as a witch in August 1692.)
Who was the first Quaker to say that the witches should live?
The first indication that public calls for justice were not over occurred in 1695 when Thomas Maule , a noted Quaker, publicly criticized the handling of the trials by the Puritan leaders in Chapter 29 of his book Truth Held Forth and Maintained, expanding on Increase Mather by stating, "it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a Witch". For publishing this book, Maule was imprisoned twelve months before he was tried and found not guilty.
What evidence was used against the accused?
Much, but not all, of the evidence used against the accused, was spectral evidence, or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence was based on whether a person had to give permission to the Devil for his/her shape to be used to afflict. Opponents claimed that the Devil was able to use anyone's shape to afflict people, but the Court contended that the Devil could not use a person's shape without that person's permission; therefore, when the afflicted claimed to see the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil.
What happens when someone concludes that a loss, illness, or death had been caused by witchcraft?
After someone concluded that a loss, illness, or death had been caused by witchcraft, the accuser entered a complaint against the alleged witch with the local magistrates. If the complaint was deemed credible, the magistrates had the person arrested and brought in for a public examination —essentially an interrogation where the magistrates pressed the accused to confess.
How old was Dorothy Good when she was accused of witchcraft?
Dorothy Good was four or five years old when she was accused of witchcraft.
Who was the first person to be executed for witchcraft?
The earliest recorded witchcraft execution was that of Alse Young in 1647 in Hartford, Connecticut, the start of the Connecticut Witch Trials which lasted until 1663. Historian Clarence F. Jewett included a list of other people executed in New England in his 1881 book.
What was the most infamous application of the belief in effluvia?
The most infamous application of the belief in effluvia was the touch test used in Andover during preliminary examinations in September 1692. Parris had explicitly warned his congregation against such examinations. If the accused witch touched the victim while the victim was having a fit, and the fit stopped, observers believed that meant the accused was the person who had afflicted the victim. As several of those accused later recounted,
What was the Salem Witch Trials?
The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.
Where did the Salem Witch Trials take place?
Context & Origins of the Salem Witch Trials. Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England.
What did Cotton Mather say about the Salem Witch Trials?
Increase Mather, president of Harvard College (and Cotton’s father) later joined his son in urging that the standards of evidence for witchcraft must be equal to those for any other crime, concluding that “It would better that ten suspected witches may escape than one innocent person be condemned.” Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence. Trials continued with dwindling intensity until early 1693, and by that May Phips had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges.
Who led the witch hunts in Salem?
Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti-Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
What is the fungus in Salem?
In an effort to explain by scientific means the strange afflictions suffered by those "bewitched" Salem residents in 1692, a study published in Science magazine in 1976 cited the fungus ergot (found in rye, wheat and other cereals), which toxicologists say can cause symptoms such as delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms.
How many people were arrested in the Salem Witch Trials?
During the course of the trials, 141 people were arrested as suspects, 19 were hanged and one was pressed to death. Those afflicted by the witches were mostly young girls, yet their “child’s play” led not only to the deaths of innocent people but also to total upheaval in the colonial Puritan Church.
Who caused the witch hysteria?
In some ways, rev. Parris caused the witch hysteria, however unknowingly. Before becoming a minister, Parris had worked as a merchant in Barbados; when he returned to Massachusetts, he brought back a slave couple, John and Tituba Indian (Indian was probably not the couple’s surname but a description of their race). Tituba cared for Parris’ nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth, called Betty, and his 11-year-old niece, Abigail Williams. Especially in winter, when bad weather kept the girls indoors, Tituba most likely regaled the girls with stories about her native Barbados, including tales of Voodoo.
Who were the people who were condemned by the Court of Oyer and Terminer?
The next group condemned by the Court of Oyer and Terminer consisted of Elizabeth and John Procter, John Willard, George Burroughs, George Jacobs and Martha Carrier. The court granted Elizabeth Procter a stay of execution because she was pregnant, a delay that saved her life. Carrier’s own sons confessed to witchcraft, but their confessions were obtained after torture. Jacobs’ granddaughter Margaret also testified he was a wizard but later retracted her testimony. No one believed her, but she was later acquitted.
Who was the governor of Massachusetts in 1692?
Finally, in may of 1692, the new royal governor, Sir William Phips, arrived with a charter. Unwilling to concern himself with the witchcraft mess, Phips established a Court of Oyer and Terminer (“to hear and determine”) to try the witches. Sitting on the court were now Lt. Governor William Stoughton as chief justice, Bartholomew Gedney, Jonathan Corwin, John Hathorne, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Peter Sergeant, Wait Still Winthrop, Samuel Sewall and John Richards. All were among the most respected men in the colony, but many were the same men already sending accused witches to prison.
How many Salems were there in the 17th century?
There were two Salems in the late 17th century: a bustling commerce-oriented port community on Massachusetts Bay known as Salem Town, which would evolve into modern Salem, and, roughly 10 miles (16 km) inland from it, a smaller, poorer farming community of some 500 persons known as Salem Village.
Where did the witch hunts take place?
The events in Salem in 1692 were but one chapter in a long story of witch hunts that began in Europe between 1300 and 1330 and ended in the late 18th century (with the last known execution for witchcraft taking place in Switzerland in 1782). The Salem trials occurred late in the sequence, after the abatement of the European witch-hunt fervour, which peaked from the 1580s and ’90s to the 1630s and ’40s. Some three-fourths of those European witch hunts took place in western Germany, the Low Countries, France, northern Italy, and Switzerland . The number of trials and executions varied according to time and place, but it is generally believed that some 110,000 persons in total were tried for witchcraft and between 40,000 to 60,000 were executed.
What was the Salem village?
In the late 1600s the Salem Village community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was fairly small and undergoing a period of turmoil with little political guidance. There was a social divide between the leading families as well as a split between factions that were for and against the village’s new pastor, Samuel Parris.
Who was the woman who was bewitched by Tituba?
Pressured by Parris to identify their tormentor, Betty and Abigail claimed to have been bewitched by Tituba and two other marginalized members of the community, neither of whom attended church regularly: Sarah Good , an irascible beggar, and Sarah Osborn (also spelled Osborne), an elderly bed-ridden woman who was scorned for her romantic involvement with an indentured servant. On March 1 two magistrates from Salem Town, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, went to the village to conduct a public inquiry. Both Good and Osborn protested their own innocence, though Good accused Osborn. Initially, Tituba also claimed to be blameless, but after being repeatedly badgered (and undoubtedly fearful owing to her vulnerable status as a slave), she told the magistrates what they apparently wanted to hear—that she had been visited by the devil and made a deal with him. In three days of vivid testimony, she described encounters with Satan’s animal familiars and with a tall, dark man from Boston who had called upon her to sign the devil’s book, in which she saw the names of Good and Osborn along with those of seven others that she could not read.
Why did Tituba bake witch cakes?
At the suggestion of a neighbour, a “witch cake” (made with the urine of the victims) was baked by Tituba to try to ferret out the supernatural perpetrator of the girls’ illness. Although it provided no answers, its baking outraged Parris, who saw it as a blasphemous act.
How many people were executed for witchcraft?
June 10 marks the anniversaryof Bridget Bishop’s hanging in 1692 for being a convicted witch, the first of 19 hangings in Salem, Mass. (Some accountsput the total at 20 people executed.) Thirteen of those executed for witchcraft and devil worship were women, many of whom made people uncomfortable by being “unruly.”.
Who painted Witch Hill?
We must stop targeting nonconforming, vulnerable women. In this painting, “Witch Hill/ The Salem Martyr” by Thomas Satterwhite Nobel in 1869, the town girl has been found guilty of witchcraft and is now walking to the gallows with the hangman and judges. (AP) . By Connie Hassett-Walker.
Who was Sarah Good?
Sarah Good was another accused woman who did not behave according to the standards expected of proper Puritan women. Like Bishop, Good was unruly. According to some sources, Good and her husband were poor and known to fight with other townspeople, making the couple unpopular in the community.
Does the criminal justice system punish women?
Today, the criminal justice system continues to punish the vulnerable women in society. Most women who end up under supervision of the U.S. correctional system, whether through probation, jail, prison or parole, come from a poor background.
Who was the first woman to be executed in the Salem Witch Trials?
On June 10, Bridget Bishop became the first accused witch to be put to death during the Salem Witch Trials when she was hanged at the Salem gallows. Ultimately, around 150 people were accused and 18 were put to death. Women weren’t the only victims of the Salem Witch Trials; six men were also convicted and executed.
What is the real history of witches?
The real history of witches, however, is dark and, often for the witches, deadly.
Why did King Saul seek the Witch of Endor?
It tells the story of when King Saul sought the Witch of Endor to summon the dead prophet Samuel’s spirit to help him defeat the Philistine army. The witch roused Samuel, who then prophesied the death of Saul and his sons. The next day, according to the Bible, Saul’s sons died in battle, and Saul committed suicide.
How old were Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams?
The Salem witch trials began when 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams began suffering from fits, body contortions and uncontrolled screaming (today, it is believed that they were poisoned by a fungus that caused spasms and delusions).
How many witches were killed in Europe between 1500 and 1660?
Single women, widows and other women on the margins of society were especially targeted. Between the years 1500 and 1660, up to 80,000 suspected witches were put to death in Europe. Around 80 percent of them were women thought to be in cahoots with the Devil and filled with lust.
What is the Book of Shadows about?
Book of Shadows. Sources. Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians in Europe, inspiring the iconic Halloween figure. Images of witches have appeared in various forms throughout history—from evil, wart-nosed women huddling over a cauldron of boiling liquid to hag-faced, cackling beings riding through the sky on brooms wearing pointy ...
What is the Hammer of Witches?
The book, usually translated as “The Hammer of Witches,” was essential ly a guide on how to identify, hunt and interrogate witches. "Malleus Maleficarum" labeled witchcraft as heresy, and quickly became the authority for Protestants and Catholics trying to flush out witches living among them.
Overview
Background
While witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid-17th century, they continued on the fringes of Europe and in the American Colonies. The events in 1692–1693 in Salem became a brief outburst of a sort of hysteria in the New World, while the practice was already waning in most of Europe.
In 1668, in Against Modern Sadducism, Joseph Glanvillclaimed that he could p…
Timeline
In Salem Village in February 1692, Betty Parris (age 9) and her cousin Abigail Williams (age 11), the daughter and the niece, respectively, of Reverend Samuel Parris, began to have fits described as "beyond the power of epileptic fits or natural disease to effect" by John Hale, the minister of the nearby town of Beverly. The girls screamed, threw things about the room, uttered strange sounds, cra…
Legal procedures
After someone concluded that a loss, illness, or death had been caused by witchcraft, the accuser entered a complaint against the alleged witch with the local magistrates. If the complaint was deemed credible, the magistrates had the person arrested and brought in for a public examination—essentially an interrogation where the magistrates pressed the accused to confess.
Primary sources and early discussion
Puritan ministers throughout the Massachusetts Bay Colony were exceedingly interested in the trial. Several traveled to Salem in order to gather information about the trial. After witnessing the trials first-hand and gathering accounts, these ministers presented various opinions about the trial starting in 1692.
Deodat Lawson, a former minister in Salem Village, visited Salem Village in Ma…
Aftermath and closure
Although the last trial was held in May 1693, public response to the events continued. In the decades following the trials, survivors and family members (and their supporters) sought to establish the innocence of the individuals who were convicted and to gain compensation. In the following centuries, the descendants of those unjustly accused and condemned have sought to honor …
In literature, media and popular culture
The story of the witchcraft accusations, trials and executions has captured the imagination of writers and artists in the centuries since the event took place. Their earliest impactful use as the basis for an item of popular fiction is the 1828 novel Rachel Dyer by John Neal.
Many interpretations have taken liberties with the facts of the historical episode in the name of literary and/or artistic license. As the trials took place at the intersection between a gradually dis…
Medical theories about the reported afflictions
The cause of the symptoms of those who claimed affliction continues to be a subject of interest. Various medical and psychological explanations for the observed symptoms have been explored by researchers, including psychological hysteria in response to Indian attacks, convulsive ergotism caused by eating rye bread made from grain infected by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (a natural substance from which LSD is derived), an epidemic of bird-borne encephalitis lethargica, and slee…