The Witchs : The Case Of The Salem Witch Trials

In response to The Hammer of Witches and the papal bull issued by Pope Innocent VIII, major witch hunts broke out in Europe. Moreover, these were aided by new technology, the printing press, which helped to spread the mania, even across the Atlantic to America. It is not surprising that the witch hunt started around the13-15th century. During this time, Europe was overpopulated and in a poor condition with dirty streets, crime and diseases everywhere. There had to be a scapegoat for all of the mess which the church decided was witchcraft. A complex social matrix was created once an accusation was made: the accusers would try to prove the source of what had been troubling them, and ideally to gain control over that source by forcing her to back away and remove the

Imagine being the cleaning lady for a prestige family, you worry about making money and staying alive, but the family has a greater fear -witches. It was the 17th century, residents in the Salem area and others believed that witches live all around them, doing the devil's work. The witchcraft conspiracy theory is the witchcraft is fake. Two major reason back up this theory.

Suddenly people seemed very paranoid and soon residents were placing blame on one another and accusing each other of witchcraft. In a fifteen month period between 1691 and 1692 nearly twelve dozen people were accused of witchcraft in or near Salem (Norton, p8).

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.

High numbers of executions for crimes of witchcraft in Europe primarily took place over 160 years, from 1500 up through 1660 and finally ending in about the 1680s. During this period in time, England reached a total of 1,000 executions for crimes of witchcraft. This is a significantly lower number than the 26,000 deaths in Germany and the 10,000 deaths in France at this time. The English legal system helped to significantly lower the number of executions for the crime of witchcraft in England over the 160 year period known as the witch craze.

Witchcraft has origins within the bible, where it states that they "shall surely be put to death."5 Those Christians involved in the witch-hunt "believed that God had an enemy called the Devil, who was very powerful. They believed that witches made a pact or agreement with the Devil and agreed to worship and serve him."4 The practices that

In January of 1692, two girls became ill, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris. When their state did not improve the doctor, William Griggs, was called in to help. In June of 1692, the special court of Oyer and Terminer sat in Salem to hear the cases of witchcraft. Presided over by Chief Justice William Stoughton, the court was made up of magistrates and jurors.

The Salem witch trails were in an age of superstition. There were great tensions with the fact that some individuals were changing religions, or they were leaving to gain different religious opinions. Although the Massachusetts colony was under a lot of stress and tension that did not give them the right to hang or burn individuals because they were witches. Now, some of the members of this colony that participated in the Salem witch trial might have had a psychological and issues, but that still did not give them the right to hang innocent people.

Over the course of a year, dozens of people, mostly teenage girls, claimed to be put in spells casted by men and women who had "enlisted the supernatural powers of the devil". This occurred in Salem village, a small village a few miles away from Salem town. The accusations started in the Parris household in 1962.

The Salem Witch Hunt was a phenomenon of witch trials in the Early Modern period. It occurred in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. It all started when a group of young girls, Betty Parris, 9 years old, and Abigail Williams, 11 years old, started to behave in a crazy manner, like screaming and barking like a dog, and it got to the point where they assumed they were “possessed”. Soon after that, Ann Putnam Jr. and other Salem girls began acting similarly. People started getting very scared and started accusing each other of being witches. The girls started accusing people the most and everyone seemed to believe them. I assume that the reason that this whole craze was so intense was because there has been witch scares before. This time, in particular, was more severe because these little girls were the ones accusing people. This spread so fast and so far because before this witch mayhem, there was a smallpox outbreak. Many people died and the Puritans started to believe that witches were among them. This event led people to easily assume others were witches, which is why it spread so fast and so far. Many members of the Puritan community believed the accusations made by the afflicted girls over believing their neighbors. People tended to believe them since they were children and had a hint of innocence in them. Also, Betty Parris’ father was Reverend Samuel Parris and since he played a big role in this community they thought the girls had to be telling the truth.

A fever in Salem: A new interpretation of the New England witch trial. (84) According to the article in the seventeen centuries people would experience all kinds of symptoms that were unmoral. Twisted joints, their vision would become blurry, teeth marks on their body’s would appear and even been capable to bark like a dog. But most imported causing them death. And all of this because they believed someone was doing witch craft to them. On 1692 the residence of Massachusetts in a town of six hundred residence of Salem Village. Started to have all different types of estrange physical harm happening to them. The doctor they had

By giving scripture like “Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” and “Leviticus 20:27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” This was the start of the trails of Burning Witches. People were charge of being a witch even when they were not. By the early 1500, they were burning people who they thought were Witches. There were given a book of Hammer of Witches book offered hints to judges and prosecutors to find out if a woman/man was a Witch in 1484. There are 30 to 40 thousand witches were put to death for being accused of being a witch but some historians believe that figure is low. There 75% to 80% of them were women and 20% to 25% of them were men who were accused and put to death during the 14th and the 17th centuries. There are still witch-hunts today in sub-Saharan Africa and above all in South Africa to where there are thousands of lives each year killed for superstitious beliefs.

Discoverie of Witchcraft was published in 1584. During this period in English history, accusations of witchcraft were rampant. People were so cynical about random events such as sickness and accidents. Scapegoats seemed to be a favorable option for the public. Many innocent people, mainly older women, were suspected as the prime offenders of many of the mysterious events that occurred. These victims were tried and executed for their ‘crimes’.

The Salem Witch Trials were a series of trials held against people that seemed to be bewitched, or controlled by the devil, many of these people, almost completely women, were eventually hung by the neck. This event during early American Colonization truly altered the lives of Massachusetts citizens for years to come.

With these factors in mind, we can now understand how the climate at the time leant itself to the witch hunt that unfolded. It all began in September of 1689 when Samuel Parris, his family, and his servants moved to Salem. By January of 1692, Parris’s daughter, Betty, was the first to fall ill with an unnatural sickness.