What was the religious group involved in Salem witch trials?
puritanism played a role in the outcome of the Salem witch trials because of their beliefs. puritans believed that these so called witched did not belong in the community and killed them by hanging them. some were saved however by giving up names of other witches. thus the cycle of pointing out witches begun. What role does religion play in the crucible? Religion is woven into the everyday life of Salem in The Crucible. The townsfolk practice a form of Christianity centered on a set of ...
What was the real cause of the Salem witch trials?
What was the real cause of the Salem witch trials? The Salem witch trials and executions came about as the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all of which unfolded in a vacuum of political authority. Did disease cause the Salem witch trials?
Who were the Puritans during the Salem witch trials?
These trials and the evidence associated with them was all based around the idea of good which was connected to God versus evil where the connection lied with the Devil. The Puritans were a colony of people from England who were escaping the effects of the Glorious Revolution and found themselves in Salem, Massachusetts.
What actually happened during the Salem witch trials?
The famous trials of Salem in 1692 saw a number of people executed. IN SALEM, Massachusetts, a group of young girls claimed to be possessed by the devil and pointed the finger at people they believed were secretly performing witchcraft.
What religion were the people in Salem?
PuritanSalem is a Puritan community, and its inhabitants live in an extremely restrictive society. Although the Puritans left England to avoid religious persecution, they established a society in America founded upon religious intolerance.
How did religion contribute to the Salem witch trials?
Religion played an important role in the Salem Witch Trials, because the Puritans were extremely religious people. They only followed the Bible and God's rules. After all, witches were in alliance with the devil, and the Puritans did not agree with this, which were why these witches were killed.…
Who were the people involved in the Salem witch trials?
Martha Corey, age 72- known as a pious woman, was an outspoken critic of the trials.Mary Eastey, age 58- sister of Rebecca Nurse. ... Mary Parker, age unknown- claimed to have been arrested in a case of mistaken identity, little is known about her.Alice Parker, age unknown- accused by Mary Warren of killing her mother.More items...•
Were the Puritans involved in the Salem witch trials?
Most accusers were teenage girls Mostly populated by Puritans, Salem Village was experiencing economic hardship in 1692, and residents were only too willing to blame someone else for their troubles. The accusers were generally young females between the ages of 11 and 20.
Did the Puritans cause the Salem witch trials?
The Puritans desire for conformity was so strong that they wanted to get rid of anyone that was different. The trials were an excuse for the people of Salem to expunge of all those people who were different. Witches were thought to be able to harm people and therefore were feared greatly.
Who were the 19 people hung during the Salem witch trials?
Hanged were Martha Corey (her husband Giles Corey was pressed to death three days earlier), Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Redd, Margaret Scott, and Samuel Wardwell.
Who is to blame for the Salem witch trials?
Abigail Williams is to blame for the witch trials as a result of accusing others. Abigail constantly lies throughout The Crucible to make sure she does not get caught. When one of the girls, Mary Warren, testifies against the others, they turn on her.
Who was accused of witchcraft?
The first three people accused and arrested for allegedly afflicting Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, 12-year-old Ann Putnam, Jr., and Elizabeth Hubbard, were Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba—with Tituba being the first.
How did church politics play a role in the Salem witch trials?
Salem Village, both before and through the witchcraft trials, was a religion-based community, allowing its minister to exert a level of political–economic control over its citizens. During the height of the witchcraft episode, there was an increased demand for ministerial services (salvation) in the Salem area.
What cultural factors influenced the outbreak of the Salem witch trials?
Religious fanaticism, power-hungry individuals, local disputes, misogyny, anxiety, political turmoil, psychological distress, and mass hysteria all contributed to the atmosphere surrounding the infamous Salem witch trials.
What influenced the Salem witch trials?
According to Pestana, there are five major factors which contributed to the Salem Witch Trials: government instability, religious insecurity, a “desire to combat atheism,” fear of Native American attack, and the increasingly oppressive overseas authority of the English government.
How did witchcraft affect religion?
Witchcraft, a perceived facility to summon evil spirits and demons to do harm to others, was linked to religion to the extent that the medieval Church had powers to punish those who dabbled in magic and sorcery. Its priests were able to exorcise those who had become possessed by malign spirits.
What caused the Salem witch trials?
In the late 1600s the Salem Village community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was fairly small and undergoing a period...
How many people were killed during the Salem witch trials?
By the end of the Salem witch trials, 19 people had been hanged and 5 others had died in custody. Additionally, a man was pressed beneath heavy sto...
How did the Salem witch trials end?
After weeks of informal hearings, Sir William Phips, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, interceded to add some formality to the proceedings....
What is the legacy of the Salem witch trials?
The haphazard fashion in which the Salem witch trials were conducted contributed to changes in U.S. court procedures, including rights to legal rep...
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.
Who were the two women arrested in Salem?
When Sarah Cloyce (Nurse's sister) and Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor were arrested in April, they were brought before John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin at a meeting in Salem Town. The men were both local magistrates and also members of the Governor's Council. Present for the examination were Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, and Assistants Samuel Sewall, Samuel Appleton, James Russell and Isaac Addington. During the proceedings, objections by Elizabeth's husband, John Proctor, resulted in his arrest that day.
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.)
What was the purpose of the witch cake?
This may have been a superstitious attempt to ward off evil spirits. According to an account attributed to Deodat Lawson ("collected by Deodat Lawson") this happened around March 8, over a week after the first complaints had gone out and three women were arrested. Lawson's account describes this cake "a means to discover witchcraft" and provides other details such as that it was made from rye meal and urine from the afflicted girls and was fed to a dog.
What did Increase Mather say about the trial?
Increase Mather and other ministers sent a letter to the Court, "The Return of Several Ministers Consulted", urging the magistrates not to convict on spectral evidence alone. (The court later ruled that spectral evidence was inadmissible, which caused a dramatic reduction in the rate of convictions and may have hastened the end of the trials.) A copy of this letter was printed in Increase Mather 's Cases of Conscience, published in 1693. The publication A Tryal of Witches, related to the 1662 Bury St Edmunds witch trial, was used by the magistrates at Salem when looking for a precedent in allowing spectral evidence. Since the jurist Sir Matthew Hale had permitted this evidence, supported by the eminent philosopher, physician and author Thomas Browne, to be used in the Bury St Edmunds witch trial and the accusations against two Lowestoft women, the colonial magistrates also accepted its validity and their trials proceeded.
When did Betty Parris have epileptic fits?
In Salem Village in February 1692 , Betty Parris (age nine) 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, crawled under furniture, and contorted themselves into peculiar positions, according to the eyewitness account of Reverend Deodat Lawson, a former minister in Salem Village.
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.
How did the Salem Witch Trials happen?
The Salem witch trials and executions came about as the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all of which unfolded in a vacuum of political authority.
What was the significance of the Salem Witch Trials?
The haphazard fashion in which the Salem witch trials were conducted contributed to changes in U.S. court procedures, including rights to legal representation and cross-examination of accusers as well as the presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty. The Salem trials also went on to become a powerful metaphor for the anticommunist hearings led by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the 1950s, famously in the form of Arthur Miller ’s allegorical play The Crucible (1953).
How many people died in the Salem Witch Trials?
By the end of the Salem witch trials, 19 people had been hanged and 5 others had died in custody. Additionally, a man was pressed beneath heavy stones until he died.
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.
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.
What was the purpose of witchhunts?
The “hunts” were efforts to identify witches rather than pursuits of individuals who were already thought to be witches. Witches were considered to be followers of Satan who had traded their souls for his assistance. It was believed that they employed demons to accomplish magical deeds, that they changed from human to animal form or from one human form to another, that animals acted as their “familiar spirits,” and that they rode through the air at night to secret meetings and orgies. There is little doubt that some individuals did worship the devil and attempt to practice sorcery with harmful intent. However, no one ever embodied the concept of a “witch” as previously described.
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.
Who were the first three women to be charged with witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials?
Interestingly, the first three women that were charged with witchcraft in The Salem Witch Trials were: Tituba-a slave; Sarah Good-a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne-a sickly woman who married her slave. (Discovery, 2013) Excerpts from the Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, 1689-1694.
What were the Puritans in New England?
M ost people in New England were Puritans, which were people who left the Church of England to find religious tolerance. Ironically, Puritanism showed little tolerance to those that did not abide by its strict moral code. Individual differences were not well-received and often seen as sins.
What did Puritans believe?
Individual differences were not well-received and often seen as sins. Puritans believed that all sins should be punished, from sleeping in church to murder. They believed that when one suffered misfortunes, it was God punishing them for their sins. P uritans believed that the Devil was as real as God.
Overview
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and at l…
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 Glanvill claimed 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…