The Witch Killing Frenzies

By Kate Blain

On the American scene, the word "witchcraft" inevitably evokes Salem, the Massachusetts town made famous by a spate of trials of accused witches in 1692. But fear of witchcraft dominated Europe as well for centuries before.

The Old Testament itself refers to Mosaic Law condemning the practice of witchcraft; the book of Leviticus notes that a man or woman possessing "a familiar spirit" should be stoned to death (20:27). The 6th century B.C. author of Exodus penned the adage, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (22:17).

For several centuries, witchcraft and divination were regarded as superstition and punished with church penalties. Belief in a demonic kind of witchcraft was considered a superstition. That would eventually change. By the 12th century fear of witches manifested itself in Russia, when all the women in one village were executed for supposedly practicing witchcraft.

In the 13th century, the scholastic philosophers and theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, theorized in great detail about the demonic forces rampant in the world. Witchcraft was eventually decreed a crime punishable by secular law, and trials for offenders became more and more common, particularly in France, Italy and Germany. As was the practice of the time, torture was regularly used in the investigation of crimes to get evidence. Defendants would admit to dallying with Satan, casting spells or having the ability to turn themselves into animals.

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII stepped into the fray, declaring that witches in Germany were performing heinous acts. He ordered an Inquisition to investigate the practice of witchcraft. Two Dominican friars used this declaration in support of their book, the "Malleus Maleficarum" or "Hammer of Witches" in 1487, which detailed the supposed practices of witches, including sex with demons and the murder of infants.

The Witch Killing Frenzies Continued

With this impetus, witchcraft hysteria soon spiraled out of control. Both Protestants and Catholics advocated the killing of witches, and victims were often defenseless in face of combined secular and church prosecutions that often had the effect of favoring the accusers. "Evidence" as minute as a mole on one's skin was said to represent an alliance with Satan or demons.

While men accounted for a substantial minority of the accused, mostly women were the target for suspicion, since they were already viewed as weak and more vulnerable to temptation. Pope Innocent reminded his flock that woman descended from man's rib, while the male gender was what God Himself chose in becoming human. Women who did not seem to typify the qualities of purity and innocence were easily assumed to be consorting with the devil.

The panic over witches echoed the turbulence of society in Europe: the religious revolt of the Protestant Reformation throughout Western Europe, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years' War in Germany, civil war in England. Early in the 17th century, William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” with its trio of witches, showed evidence of this social phenomenon..

By 1660, the death toll had risen to about 50,000 in Europe, with 26,000 accused witches executed in Germany alone. While the estimated total of those killed reveals an enormous human tragedy, they come nowhere near the claims of 5 to 9 million killings made by some authors, including in Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code.

But the 17th century also saw public interest in prosecuting and punishing witches beginning to wane. Pope Gregory XV (1621-23) advocated the death penalty for persons convicted of witchcraft in secular courts only if their actions had killed another. France and England each saw one more public outcry against witches wherein hundreds were executed, but Holland stopped prosecuting witches in the mid]1600s and England in 1682. The era known as the Enlightenment dawned at the end of the century. The focus on the power of reason by the thinkers of the time proved another calming agent, and the "age of witchcraft" ebbed. Germany's last witch trials were held in the mid]1700s.

The Witch Killing Frenzies Continued

Similar social conditions on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean led to a similar result. Many Puritans, Protestant dissenters from the Anglican Church, emigrated to America in the 1620’s and 1630’s and established themselves as the dominant religion in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans believed that there were persons who entered into a compact with Satan in exchange for the power to do evil. Given this belief, the coming witch hunts were unsurprising.

Cotton Mather, a prolific writer and greatly influential religious leader in the Colonies, published a book on witchcraft in 1689 called "Memorable Providences" that set the stage for public persecution of suspected witches. That book led to others on prophecy and fortune]telling, and among their many young readers during the long, tedious winter of 1691]92 were several young girls in Salem, Massachusetts.

Nine]year]old Elizabeth Parris, her orphaned cousin Abigail Williams and two friends lived in Salem Village, where Elizabeth's father, Rev. Samuel Parris, was a Puritan preacher. Having few amusements, the girls turned to the popular practice of fortune]telling for fun ]] a practice at which the Parris family's Barbados]born servant, Tituba, joined them.

War was raging on both the frontier and in the village, as competing sects of Puritans vied for prominence. Added to that were a smallpox outbreak in the colony, the impressionable nature of the sheltered girls and increasing discussion of witches and magic. It wasn't long before Elizabeth and Abigail began to exhibit strange symptoms: screaming, convulsions, hallucinations.

Then more girls developed the same symptoms. Their doctor, who couldn't find a cause, opined that there might be a supernatural influence, particularly since witches were thought to seek out children.

Suspicion began to focus on Tituba, who had often spoken of voodoo and told stories of witchcraft from her own country. Elizabeth declared that Tituba was the witch who had afflicted her, while the other girls fingered two more local residents, a homeless woman and an elderly woman who had stopped attending church (and was therefore seen as a sinner) as witches.

The Witch Killing Frenzies Continued

When brought before local magistrates, Tituba confessed. That confirmed the suspicions of those who already believed, and squelched any skeptics. All three accused witches were jailed, and witch]hunting began in earnest.

Over the next four months, 200 people were jailed as witches. "Victims" of witchcraft, many of them young girls, cited "spectral evidence," claiming that the specters of witches attacked them and caused contortions. Accused witches were also checked for birthmarks, believed to be signs of the devil.

Most accused witches were not executed, but 19 people were hanged and one crushed to death by stones before the witchcraft fervor waned in Salem. Ironically, Cotton Mather's father and fellow minister, Increase Mather, was among those protesting the persecution of witches. As an increasing number of respectable, popular residents were accused, doubt that so many could be influenced by Satan also increased.

In October 1692, Governor William Phips suspended witchcraft]related arrests and dissolved the court that had tried accused witches. By the following spring, all accused witches were pardoned. Although it would take years for Salem society to fully recover, the era of witch trials in America was over.

We look back on past eras with a sense of superiority over their gullibility. Still, the power of witches and wizards is a theme in a good deal of contemporary fiction whether, adventure, comedy, fantasy or mystery in books and in film and on TV. Halloween is rivaling other big holidays in the amount of money spent on the paraphernalia bought to celebrate it.

So it seems that humanity is not entirely ready to rid itself of the possibility that some people may have or can obtain occult powers to be used by them for good or for evil.

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