The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…
It was extremely easy to be accused of being a witch in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century. During this time period, Europe was going through many changes such as the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of many national governments. Although all of these changes were taking place, many people were stuck in their ways and did not approve of these new changes. The people that did not follow the social and political norm of the time were often accused of witchcraft.The most common reasons of persecutions of individuals as witches were if you were a female, if you were middle age and not married(widowed), or if you were not practicing Christianity.…
Overall I think the salem witch trials were caused by ergotism, growing lies and fame/jealousy. Ergotism was causing many problems throughout the colonies which eventually caused innocent men and women to be hanged. Also once the girls started lying, they could not stop because their superstition kept growing. Lastly the girls might have wanted to get famous for their work and to get rid of…
In Rosalyn Schanzer´s Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, extreme disorder in civilization took place due to massive amounts of unjust witch accusations. In early 1692, mass chaos struck Salem Village, Massachusetts. In a ravenous sprint to gain revenge and play a game of kill-or-be-killed, approximately 200 people were accused of witchcraft. 20 of these were executed. Families turned on each other, civilians accused one another of unimaginable things, and all because of two girls. Betty Parris and Abigail Williams who together accused a staggering portion of the innocent so called ´witches´. Many people question the motives of these two. It is hard to imagine two young girls under the care of such a high public figure…
Salem was one of the most popular places where witches were executed, because people where afraid of devil which shows the Miller's story The Crucible. This horrible fear shaped the society of Salem and as it happened a lot of women were killed. As Dorothy Thompson said: "The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness". The book which I read is the story about how the society was manipulated by the fear of the unknown or different. Therefore, in my opinion people in Salem were afraid of a devil and this fear shaped their society to judge and perceive normal women as witches and in consequences killed them.…
In Salem the only evidence that sent people away for witchcraft was that Abigail, Betty, Mercy, and Mary called out people and they did so for no apparent reason. Since these girls had all the power when people went on trial, all the girls had to do was faint and say that they were being controlled by the supernatural forces. The people on trial had no way to prove that they were innocent. Most of the people convicted just succumb to being a witch because there was no other way to get out; if one denied being a witch, they would be hanged. If admitted to being a witch, they would be…
In Exodus 22:18, it proclaims, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” In 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, the Puritans believed every word that the Bible said, causing the death of twenty people because they were accused of witchcraft. What caused the panic and alarm that lead to the death of twenty people in Salem? There were three causes: conflict between young girls and older women, lying teenagers, economic and political power divided between two sides of town.…
The Salem Witch Trials article from History.com states, “On March 1, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, became the first Salem residents to be charged with the capital crime of witchcraft.” (Salem Witch Trials Documentary). All of these listed victims were women, and one of them was a slave. At the time, women did not have as much of a say as men, because they were seen as morally weaker. This idea originated from the Bible’s telling of Adam and Eve, when Eve gave into the Devil’s temptations (Salem Witch Trials Documentary). In the Puritan settlement, women and girls were forced to stay in the house all day and clean, while the men worked outside. A documentary from History.com states that, “once settlements started to grow… girls and women started to behave in new and different ways, that many men--and women--found threatening” (Salem Witch Trials Documentary). The people who had control over the trials were the religious leaders/politicians; they were all…
The Salem witch trials scared many people during its time. During this time people accused each other of being witches. Many of the accused were killed because they would not admit to being a witch. The causes of the Salem witch trials were town division, lying girls, and jealousy.…
The 16th and 17th centuries experienced a great shift of ideals with the Reformation that contributed to the rise of witch-hunts. Although the Reformation is notorious for the disagreement between the Protestants and the Catholics, what both groups agreed on was that witches were to be punished for their evil deeds. The two major religious figures during this time were John Calvin and Martin Luther. These two men believed in non-clerical celibacy, and less stress on chastity before marriage. Now, “obedience had replaced chastity as a women’s prime virtue”. This lead the image of the Virgin mary to become less important, and because there are no other positive, important female figures in the bible, Eve took Mary’s place. This had two major…
In early times people didn’t understand reason. Especially the Puritans who only saw God’s will and the evilness of the devil. During the Salem witchcraft crisis, Puritans struggled to decipher communal security and find the truth around them. They believed that Satan recruited humans to do his evil and be servants to him, i.e. witches. The witches had a magical power that allowed them to harm others. To protect the community the judges of the town took it upon themselves to hold jury trials and hang the witches as punishment. Many believed the witches were burned at the stake, however that is untrue.…
There was a certain time in a woman's life where she was most afraid of being accused. This was middle-age. When we think of witches, we generally think of older women, but the book proved that myth false. Younger women generally weren't suspect to being accused. "Women under forty were unlikely witches in Puritan society" (p. 65). After a woman turned forty, they began to fear being accused. "Almost 40 percent of older accused women were brought to trial and well over half of those tried were convicted" (p. 66). The book successfully proves that women over forty were the main focus of those who accuse people of being…
For decades, we have talked about the Salem Witch Trials and their unfortunate events in hanging woman for being witches. Most of the people that were accused of witchcraft were women. The amounts of men to women were diverse in different parts of Europe. They were usually older women over the age of fifty and were in lower classes. Woman during this time play a huge role in the trial, because more women are accused of being witches and selling their souls to the devil than men would.…
From June to September of 1692 nineteen men and women we accused of witchcraft. Some would say the findings of the Court of Oyer and Terminer are justified, but I believe in a concrete theory. Secrets of the Dead: Witch’s Curse depicts on the Ergot Theory, which believes the “bewitched” were suffering from a side effect of the fungi Ergot.…
The witch craze in Europe lasted from the fifteenth century through the seventeenth century. Women were targets to persecution. Witchcraft had already been considered evil but religious conflicts from the Reformation started another uprising. People, women in particular, were being persecuted as witches for suspicious behavior, fear of the unknown and religious beliefs along with ignorance. People being suspicious and accusing of others was a main source for persecution.…