The Causes Of Witchcraft Hysteria In The Salem Witch Trials

During the 1600’s in the United States there was much economic and religious dissention within the Puritan society: a group of English reformed protestants who pursued the Purification of the Church of England. Among these issues, is the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials that prosecuted women to be found worshippers of the devil. The Puritans found the necessity to exercise this crusade in order to stay by their moral codes of conformity which included witchcraft to be the greatest crime, punishable by death. However, the true reasons of the trials was not to simply follow their religious constitutions. It is mainly in part from corruption of religion and how some had used the trials as a form of personal gain, the influences of the attitudes from the strict Puritan lifestyle, the need for unification between the Salem factions, and the society’s fear of evil.

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of prosecutions of people who were accused of acts of witchcraft or of being a witch in Salem, Massachusetts through the time period of February 1692 through May 1693. This was a dark time in history as more than 200 prosecutions took place and at least 20 people were killed during this time of fear and hysteria. The accusations began as three girls Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft from other young girls in the community. During this time period, fear of the Devil was common as people in Salem were very devoted to their religion and religious practices. As one of the accused girls, Tituba, confessed to working for the Devil and admitting to being a witch, this caused panic and hysteria as a massive witch hunt took place to find more of these witches. This confession was the main reason behind months and months of fear and mass panic as it triggered more accusations.

In the colonial era in Salem, Massachusetts the idea of witches became present in this time, this caused the Salem Witch Trials which killed and falsely accused many people from 1692-1693. Those accused of being a witch or part of the witch trials usually had some strange oddity to them, or they were different than the average person. People with any abnormality from the regular society of 1692-1693 would have been accused of being a part of the Salem Witch Trials and was the cause of this horrific event that happened from around 1692-1693. The largest “abnormality” group was the females at the time, most females in this area and time period would be accused of being a witch which would lead to the idea of sexism. People who wouldn't attend church like the rest society would be thought as outcasts or abnormal, and people who always had to depend on others and were less than average society, would most likely be accused of witchcraft.

During 1692, from June to September, 24 people died due to accusations from people who assumed they were witches. Many historians have come up with possibilities and answers as to why civilized people would kill each other. Using the evidence provided, The Salem Witch Trial Hysteria was caused by jealousy, supremacy, and segregation.

From the time of the 1690’s the entirety of Salem, Massachusetts were Puritans. “The Puritan lifestyle was restrained and rigid: People were expected to work hard and repress their emotions or opinions. Individual differences were frowned upon.” (Salem Witch Trials, The World Behind the Hysteria). These people believed that doing anything sinful would result in punishment from God. Just as much as they believed in God, they also believed in the Devil. Keeping up with the Puritan code, it led to the first women being accused of witchcraft. They were viewed as pariahs, and seen differently. Had the Puritan government let the afflicted defend themselves, not be so dependent on religion, not investigating the facts or scrutinize the trials the killing of many could have been prevented. The hangings from the trials would ultimately be the last in America.

In 1692, in the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, 20 people were hanged for offenses they did not commit. But what was the charge against the 20? The answer would be witchcraft. The charges deeply affected the small community. Neighbor turned on neighbor. Every act that a person made would be carefully scrutinized, dissected, and repeated to others. This would lead to the question. What caused the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of 1692? The 3 main factors that would cause widespread panic in the town of Salem were gender, marital status, and age, actors and attention seekers, and neighbor conflicts within the village of Salem.

The salem witch trials hysteria of 1692 was caused by the Puritans strict religious standards and intolerance of anything not accepted with their scripture. The largest account of witch trials as well as deaths by witch trials occurred in Salem, a village heavily populated with the Puritans. Because most of the trials were occurring in Salem, this meant that the accusations were happening among the Puritans themselves, which could very well be anything as long as the Puritans found it as contradicting their bible. Not only did the strict religion intolerance fuel the accusations and trials, but also the possible factor of ergot being involved which has been known to cause symptoms leading to hysteria.

Bever clarifies why he believes historians often focus only on the rise of witchcraft rather than their decline. He believes the reason this occurs is because, historians assume “their defeat seemed self-evident” (Bever, 2009, p. 264). The author explains how the rise of witches occurred, “chain-reaction trials started with a few stereotyped suspects but gradually widened to include previously unsuspected commoners and eventually friends” (Bever, 2009, p. 272). Bever also gives discusses of how witchcraft came to affect the society and how it became “an integral part of late medieval culture and society” (Bever, 2009, p. 288). The work relates more specifically to the field of the first centuries of colonization because, although some ideas presented in this article can be inferred, most are not that of the general

During the Salem Witch Trials period, three out of every four witches were female. Women living in this time period were at the bottom of the social

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he writes, “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Miller 77). This partially fictionalized tale of the Salem Witch Trials points to one of the causes of the trials, vengeance, but the over dramatized tale 's early stages were quiet. The Salem Witch Episode had humble beginnings in the town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, but evolved into one of the most widely known witch trials in American History. The gallows in Salem claimed the lives of nineteen men and woman during the spring and summer of 1692 due to the accusations of witchcraft with over a hundred people who were accused. After all the terror and the uproar of the trials occurred, everything came to a screeching halt (Linder 1). Due to the unique circumstances of this particular set of witch trials, from the rampant accusations to the discontinuation of the trials mass hysteria does not seem to be fault as with other witch trials, but a variety of factors. The Salem witch trials were not just a simple case of mass hysteria, but a combination of factors ranging from poisons to superstitions to scapegoats, resulting in the outbreak of the Salem Witch episode.

A good example was with Adam and Eve being punished for the sin of pride,

In the 1680’s and 1690’s there was mass hysteria in New England over supposed witchcraft. The most famous outbreak was in Salem, Massachusetts, hence the name Salem Witch Trials. In Salem, there were young girls who started acting strangely, and they leveled accusations of witchcraft against some of the West Indian servants who were immersed in voodoo tradition. Most of the accusations were against women, and soon the accusations started to shift to the substantial and prominent women. Neighbors accused other neighbors, husbands accused their wives, etc. and it kept going on for a while. There was this nature of evil and the trials didn’t end until nineteen Salem residents were put to death in 1692, more importantly before the girls

The 1486 Malleus Maleficarum set up the precedent for the witchcraft craze, which came to its prime in the mid 16th century, during the Renaissance period. Though the Malleus was not the only factor in this craze, as Margaret Sullivan notes, ‘it made no discernable impact… for nearly half a century’ , it, with a number of other social factors, provided a wealth of information to witch hunts and hunters. This treatise further established several of the basic ideas essential to the identification of witches such as the identification of witches as largely women; through the treatise’s continual argument that women were of gullible and carnal nature the text further advocated ideas of fear and hatred in regards to women.

In the year (1692) witch trials held the Salem area hostage people were terrified. People of

It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister 's daughter began to scream and convulse, while other girls manifested the same symptoms. Their doctor suggested one cause, witchcraft. That grim diagnosis launched a Puritan inquisition that took 24 lives, filled prisons with innocent people, and frayed the soul of a Massachusetts community called Salem. It ended less than a year later, but not before the hanging of 20 men and women, including an elderly man who was crushed to death. The hysteria spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in Salem. Aside from suffrage, the Salem witch trials represent the only moment when women played a central role in American history. There are many theories as to what caused the mass hysteria of the Salem witch trials and the bewitchment of several young girls including the lack of freedom and want of attention from young girls, the role of religion and Satan in Salem, lack of verifiable evidence, economic and social divisions within the community, and the possibility of ergotism.