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Book: Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer
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Authors: Rosalyn Schanzer
Tags: Religión, United States, General, Juvenile Nonfiction, History, Witchcraft & Wicca, Massachusetts, Witchcraft, salem, Christianity, Body; Mind & Spirit, Witchcraft - Massachusetts - Salem - History, Puritans, Puritans - Massachusetts - Salem - History, Colonial & Revolutionary Periods, Christian Church, Salem (Mass.) - Church History
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On Saturday, October 29, Massachusetts’s Royal Governor William Phips put a halt to all further arrests and disbanded the notorious Court of Oyer and Terminer. He also released a lot of the people who were still in jail. On December 14, a brand new Superior Court of Judicature was established, though Chief Justice Stoughton and friends were still included. Their new job was to figure out what to do with accused witches who hadn’t yet been tried. And this had to be done without basing any cases on spectral evidence; all those stories from the Invisible World had been banned at last.
The upshot was that out of 52 people tried before the new court in January and February 1693, only three were convicted, and each of them had already confessed. (This rule had changed, too. If you confessed, you no longer got off scot-free or received special privileges.) The governor later released all three anyway, and nine suspects who had been sent to jail earlier weren’t even called into court. The Salem witch trials had ended.
W e may never know exactly what caused the tragedy in Salem. The root of all this horror and pandemonium lies buried in a dark and misty past. Oh yes, every single sentence in surviving trial transcripts, every surviving letter written by eyewitnesses, each legal document, and all of the books written during the period have been scrutinized by scholars for well over 300 years. And yes, every new explanation about the cause of the dread disease or the motives of the accusers has been debated over and over again by professional historians. Some of the most well-known ideas have been ruled out, but even so, plenty of questions and theories still remain.
WHAT CAUSED THE FITS AND THE HYSTERIA OVER WTICHES?
Was there really a dread disease running rampant in New England? If so, could it have been encephalitis or Lyme disease, both of which exhibit many of the symptoms described by the victims? Were any sick people and animals poisoned by hallucinogenic jimson weed or a fungus in rye called ergot?
Did people who had originally lived on the frontier during the Indian wars suffer from fits and see visions of specters because they had post-traumatic stress disorder? After all, many members of their own families had been massacred right before their eyes. And did the Puritans’ belief that Indians were devils and witches worsen their fear of attacks by unknown forces as well?
WERE THE ACCUSERS CROOKED OR HONEST? A
Were the families of at least some of the afflicted simply trying to protect their loved ones from the Devil and his witches? That might make perfect sense because most everyone believed in witches and the Devil back in those days. And it does seem that some people and animals were really sick.
Was there an evil plot by Reverend Parris, Thomas Putnam, and their supporters to take advantage of hysteria over the dread disease by doing away with their personal enemies? Did the Putnams’ jealousy and anger over the perceived loss of their property spur a desire to destroy the Porters’ supporters by making them look like witches?
Rebecca Nurse’s son and son-in-law and Sarah Cloyse’s husband thought so, and they later helped force Parris to leave the community. And a series of letters and documents Putnam wrote or co-wrote in 1691 and 1692 indicate that he may have set up the accusations against Reverend George Burroughs, Burroughs’s arrest, and his daughter Ann’s testimony against the minister. He may even have worked with the judges to see that Burroughs was found guilty and hanged.
Was some of the witch hunting the result of that big fight between Reverend Parris and the members of his congregation who refused to pay his salary? These members had also been incensed over a 1689 contract with Parris that had given him the house he lived in. (Usually, the church would own the house, and the minister working there at the time would live in it.)
What about the testimony of the young
On Saturday, October 29, Massachusetts’s Royal Governor William Phips put a halt to all further arrests and disbanded the notorious Court of Oyer and Terminer. He also released a lot of the people who were still in jail. On December 14, a brand new Superior Court of Judicature was established, though Chief Justice Stoughton and friends were still included. Their new job was to figure out what to do with accused witches who hadn’t yet been tried. And this had to be done without basing any cases on spectral evidence; all those stories from the Invisible World had been banned at last.
The upshot was that out of 52 people tried before the new court in January and February 1693, only three were convicted, and each of them had already confessed. (This rule had changed, too. If you confessed, you no longer got off scot-free or received special privileges.) The governor later released all three anyway, and nine suspects who had been sent to jail earlier weren’t even called into court. The Salem witch trials had ended.
W e may never know exactly what caused the tragedy in Salem. The root of all this horror and pandemonium lies buried in a dark and misty past. Oh yes, every single sentence in surviving trial transcripts, every surviving letter written by eyewitnesses, each legal document, and all of the books written during the period have been scrutinized by scholars for well over 300 years. And yes, every new explanation about the cause of the dread disease or the motives of the accusers has been debated over and over again by professional historians. Some of the most well-known ideas have been ruled out, but even so, plenty of questions and theories still remain.
WHAT CAUSED THE FITS AND THE HYSTERIA OVER WTICHES?
Was there really a dread disease running rampant in New England? If so, could it have been encephalitis or Lyme disease, both of which exhibit many of the symptoms described by the victims? Were any sick people and animals poisoned by hallucinogenic jimson weed or a fungus in rye called ergot?
Did people who had originally lived on the frontier during the Indian wars suffer from fits and see visions of specters because they had post-traumatic stress disorder? After all, many members of their own families had been massacred right before their eyes. And did the Puritans’ belief that Indians were devils and witches worsen their fear of attacks by unknown forces as well?
WERE THE ACCUSERS CROOKED OR HONEST? A
Were the families of at least some of the afflicted simply trying to protect their loved ones from the Devil and his witches? That might make perfect sense because most everyone believed in witches and the Devil back in those days. And it does seem that some people and animals were really sick.
Was there an evil plot by Reverend Parris, Thomas Putnam, and their supporters to take advantage of hysteria over the dread disease by doing away with their personal enemies? Did the Putnams’ jealousy and anger over the perceived loss of their property spur a desire to destroy the Porters’ supporters by making them look like witches?
Rebecca Nurse’s son and son-in-law and Sarah Cloyse’s husband thought so, and they later helped force Parris to leave the community. And a series of letters and documents Putnam wrote or co-wrote in 1691 and 1692 indicate that he may have set up the accusations against Reverend George Burroughs, Burroughs’s arrest, and his daughter Ann’s testimony against the minister. He may even have worked with the judges to see that Burroughs was found guilty and hanged.
Was some of the witch hunting the result of that big fight between Reverend Parris and the members of his congregation who refused to pay his salary? These members had also been incensed over a 1689 contract with Parris that had given him the house he lived in. (Usually, the church would own the house, and the minister working there at the time would live in it.)
What about the testimony of the young
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