THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS

Witches have long been feared and hated in most religious circles as of today. Even us Filipinos, most people would cast someone out or some shit if they are an alleged witch. Witches do exist, they say. According to what I hear, they are people cursing other people who did them wrong.

Fast forward to today, pagans and Wiccans remain a target of persecution, in many places including the Philippines. Saying that they are vile people who seek revenge, does rituals, and all that creepy stuff.

However, did you know that these witches exist even before then? No, not that Harry Potter kind of witches or the Hocus Pocus kind but in the real world. Moreover their existence back then have always been a sin to Christians as it is today. Today, let’s talk about the infamous with trials in which it is so big it made a mark in history.

WHEN DID IT BEGAN?

Everyone has heard of the infamous Salem witch trials, no? Well, it began during the spring of 1692, when a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts. There were two Salems in the late 17th century: a bustling well-developed commercial port community on Massachusetts Bay known as Salem Town, which would evolve into modern Salem, and a smaller, poorer farming community of some 500 persons known as Salem Village 16 miles within the inland. 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 case of these so-called witchcraft mishaps.

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. In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) at the time included the after-effects of a British war with France in the American colonies in 1689, a recent smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighboring Native American tribes and a longstanding rivalry with the more affluent community of Salem Town (present-day Salem). Amid these simmering tensions, the Salem witch trials would be fueled by residents’ suspicions of and resentment toward their neighbors, as well as their fear of outsiders.

THE WITCH HUNT

The “hunts” were actually more like a game of ‘GUESS WHO THE WITCH IS’ rather than pursuits of individuals who were already thought to be witches. They say 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 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,” or like their spirit animals, and that they rode through the air at night to secret meetings to worship Satan or something. Though there is little doubt that some individuals did worship the devil and attempt to practice sorcery with harmful intent, no one ever embodied the concept of a “witch” as previously described.

What happened 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 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. Most of the witch hunts happened in Europe mainly took place in western Germany, the Low Countries, France, northern Italy, and Switzerland.

THE WITCHES

On June 2 Bridget Bishop—who had been accused and found innocent of witchery some 12 years earlier—was the first of the defendants to be convicted. On June 10 she was hanged on what became known as Gallows Hill in Salem Village. On July 19 five more convicted persons were hanged, including Nurse and Good (the latter of whom responded to her conviction by saying that she was no more a witch than the judge was a wizard).

George Burroughs, who had served as a minister in Salem Village from 1680 to 1683, was summoned from his new home in Maine and accused of being the witches’ ringleader. He too was convicted and, along with four others, was hanged on August 19. As he stood on the gallows, he recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly something that witches cannot do according to them, raising doubts about his guilt for some in attendance, though their protests were refuted, most notably by Mather, who was present.

On September 22 eight more convicted persons were hanged, including Martha Corey, whose octogenarian husband, Giles, upon being accused of witchcraft and refusing to enter a plea, had been subjected to a punishment called peine forte et dure (“strong and hard punishment”) and pressed beneath heavy stones for two days until he died.

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.

In January 1692, 9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams (the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village) began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. After a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed bewitchment, other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba, along with two other women–the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the poor, elderly Sarah Osborn–whom the girls accused of bewitching them.

THE TRIALS

On May 27, 1692, after weeks of informal hearings accompanied by imprisonments, Sir William Phips, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, interceded and ordered the convening of an official Court of Oyer (“to hear”) and Terminer (“to decide”) in Salem Town. Presided over by William Stoughton, the colony’s lieutenant governor, the court consisted of seven judges.

The accused were forced to defend themselves without aid of counsel. Most damning for them was the admission of “spectral evidence”—or claims by the victims whom they have attacked (pinched, bitten, contorted) by spectres of the accused, whose forms Satan allegedly had assumed to work his evil. Even as the accused testified on the witness stand, the girls and young women who had accused them writhed, whimpered, and babbled in the gallery, seemingly providing evidence of the spectre’s demonic presence.

Those who confessed and named other witches—were spared the court’s vengeance, owing to the Puritan belief that they would receive their punishment from God. Those who insisted upon their innocence met harsher fates, becoming martyrs to their own sense of justice.

Many in the community who viewed the unfolding events as travesties remained mute, afraid that they would be punished for raising objections to the proceedings by being accused of witchcraft themselves.



As the trials progressed, accusations spread to individuals from other communities, among them, Beverly, Malden, Gloucester, Andover, Lynn, Marblehead, Charlestown, and Boston. On October 3 Cotton Mather’s father, Increase Mather, an influential minister and the president of Harvard, condemned the use of spectral evidence and instead favoured direct accusations:

The devil never assists men to do supernatural things undesired. When, therefore, such like things shall be testified against the accused party, not by specters, which are devils in the shape of persons either living or dead, but by real men or women who may be credited, it is proof enough that such a one has that conversation and correspondence with the devil as that he or she, whoever they be, ought to be exterminated from among men. This notwithstanding I will add: It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than that one innocent person should be condemned.

On October 29, as the accusations of witchcraft extended to include his own wife, Governor Phips once again stepped in, ordering a halt to the proceedings of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. In their place he established a Superior Court of Judicature, which was instructed not to admit spectral evidence. Trials resumed in January and February, but of the 56 persons indicted, only 3 were convicted, and they, along with everyone held in custody, had been pardoned by Phips by May 1693 as the trials came to an end. Nineteen persons had been hanged, and another five (not counting Giles Corey) had died in custody.

THE AFTERMATH

In the years to come, there would be individual and institutional acts of repentance by many of those involved in the trials. In January 1697 the General Court of Massachusetts declared a day of fasting and contemplation for the tragedy that had resulted from the trials. That month, Samuel Sewall, one of the judges, publicly acknowledged his own error and guilt in the proceedings. In 1702 the General Court declared that the trials had been unlawful. In 1706 Ann Putnam, Jr., apologized for her role as an accuser. Twenty-two of the 33 individuals who had been convicted were exonerated in 1711 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which also paid some £600 to the families of the victims. In 1957 the state of Massachusetts formally apologized for the trials. It was not until 2001, however, that the last 11 of the convicted were fully exonerated.

On May 9, 1992, the Salem Village Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial was dedicated in Danvers, Massachusetts.

The number of trials and executions varied according to time and place, but it is generally believed that there were approximately 110,000 persons in total were tried for witchcraft (wow.) and between 40,000 to 60,000 were executed for these allegations. Moreover, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.

Sources:

history.com

brittanica.com