Watch this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpQGmy-pLRk about the most famous witchcraft trials of the history of the USA, dated from 1692. Which relations can you establish between the facts of Salem and the persecution of witchcraft that we have studied in this module? Discuss this question in the forum.

 

I’m not even sure how to begin a comparison of the witchcraft trials of Salem versus the persecution of witchcraft in the middle ages in Europe. The first thing that struck me was that Salem was a short, intense period of mass hysteria, utterly chaotic in its persecution of witches, while the search for witches in medieval Europe, while still cruel and ignorant, was more calculated.

In Salem, the accused could be found guilty simply by the accusations of their accusers, especially when “spectral evidence” was introduced. There was no way to refute these claims, so the accused were guilty without any sort of real proof. It was literally one person’s word against another, and the accused’s word had no value; they had no defense whatsoever. In medieval Europe, there was at least a chance of reprieve because the courts looked for “evidence”, especially if the interrogations were done by the inquisitors, rather than local courts. That, I suppose, is the similarity between the two. In European local courts, many more witches were accused and trialed because of small-town mentality, a sort of “mob mentality”, which is exactly what seemed to happen in Salem, a small town overtaken by mass hysteria and fear of one’s own neighbors.

While Europeans searched for witches to understand unknown tragedies, such as crop failure and infantile death (which was inevitable during those times), the people of Salem accused others of witchcraft, mostly out of spite against their neighbors, for revenge, and to further their own agendas. I could almost understand searching for a source to blame for tragedies that could not be understood at the time – we have done that for thousands of years through the concept of deities and such… but to accuse your neighbors of witchcraft to exact revenge for long-standing feuds – it’s just beyond my scope of empathy.

The accusations of witchcraft in medieval Europe were a way to eradicate paganism and any religion other than Christianity, and so started by the church but persecuted by the public and the secular courts mostly, such the witch hunts were started from above and prolonged by the proletariat. However, the afflicted in Salem appear to have behaved in outlandish ways, either to seek attention or for such intense fear of the devil in a severely strict religious society, by poisoning of fungus on rye (which I do think is a distinct possibility in some cases), or for revenge-filled purposes. The attacks started at the bottom, with public outcry, and spread like wildfire. The courts and the accusers all had something to gain, while the public itself was beset with terror at the thought of the devil among them or at being innocent and accused, punishable by certain death, except to claim guilt and name names, thus their lives be spared. I do believe that Mercy of Salem suffered from post-traumatic stress after seeing her entire family massacred, and then years later, hearing that the attacks had resumed nearby, thus she struck out at someone similar in features to those that killed her family and named him a witch. I have some sympathy for her alone. I don’t know what beset the original children, but I suspect a neurological or psychological disorder was at play.

There are some similarities between the two instances of witchcraft persecution, but so many differences in motive, time period, politics, beliefs, natural disasters, and deaths of unknown origin. It really is a Herculean task to compare the two; one could write an entire thesis on the subject or make it their life’s work, really, as I’m sure many historians do.