THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS 1/2

The Salem Witch Trials have been explained by many.  The most common explanation is that it was some form of mass hysteria.  The Puritans are presented as strict and literal in their interpretation of the Bible, especially in the passage in Leviticus that says you must not suffer a witch to live.  But is this all there is to it?  We investigate. - ed.

Malleus Maleficarum

We quote from the translator of this larin work written in the 1400's.  

This is the best known (i.e., the most infamous) of the witch-hunt manuals. Written in Latin, the Malleus was first submitted to the University of Cologne on May 9th, 1487. The title is translated as "The Hammer of Witches". Written by James Sprenger and Henry Kramer (of which little is known), the Malleus remained in use for three hundred years. It had tremendous influence in the witch trials in England and on the continent. This translation is in the public domain.

The Malleus was used as a judicial case-book for the detection and persecution of witches, specifying rules of evidence and the canonical procedures by which suspected witches were tortured and put to death. Thousands of people (primarily women) were judicially murdered as a result of the procedures described in this book, for no reason than a strange birthmark, living alone, mental illness, cultivation of medicinal herbs, or simply because they were falsely accused (often for financial gain by the accuser). The Malleus serves as a horrible warning about what happens when intolerance takes over a society.

Further comments are made here:

Some modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his name, but the evidence to support this is weak. Both men were members of the Dominican Order and Inquisitors for the Catholic Church. They submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, seeking its endorsement.

While general consensus is that The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490 by placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”), the first Index was, in fact, produced in 1559 under the direction of Pope Paul IV. Therefore such claims are dubious, at best. I believe people are confusing the fact that the Inquisition reportedly denounced Heinrich Kramer in 1490 as being a ban upon the Malleus Maleficarum. Thus far, I’ve yet to find the Malleus on any Index Librorum Prohibitorum (copies of which are available on the Internet – most notably the 1559 and 1948 editions).

Margaret Alice Murray
Murray's hypothesis was that there was an underground nature religion in Europe which originated in the Neolithic and survived well into the 18th Century. This 'cult' (by which she simply means a belief system without any of the overtones which are popularly assigned to the word) had a cell structure like most underground movements. Murray believed that it was not a goddess religion, at least in the form it survived in during the modern era, although it was not totally male-dominated. The most controversial aspect of Murray's hypothesis was that the witch cult performed rituals involving human sacrifice and cannibalism (particularly of unbaptised infants). Naturally this is a very sensitive issue for modern Neopagans, whose practices most emphatically do not include child abuse or human sacrifice, despite what a small but vocal group of (admittedly non-mainstream) Christians claim. For a debunking of the modern witch hunters see this document.

The conclusion reached by some who have studied Murray's opinions write:

Whether or not Murrays literalistic interpretation of the Witch trial evidence is correct, whether or not all Neopagans accept all of her views, Murrays' ideas are at the basis of modern Neopaganism, and as such deserve serious study, as well as a healthy dose of critical thinking.

Some Accounts of Phenomena In Salem

There were supposedly non-Biblical "signs" of someone being a witch.  Perhaps the most superstitious phenomena was the "Marks of a Witch", Wikipedia states:

A witch's mark or devil's mark was a bodily mark that witch-hunters believed indicated that an individual was a witch, during the height of the witch trials. The beliefs about the mark differ depending on the trial location and the accusation made against the witch. Evidence of the witch's mark is found earliest in the 16th century, and reached its peak in 1645, then essentially disappeared by 1700.[1] The Witch or Devil's mark was believed to be the permanent marking of the Devil on his initiates to seal their obedience and service to him. He created the mark by raking his claw across their flesh, or by making a blue or red brand using a hot iron. Sometimes, the mark was believed to have been left by the Devil licking the individual leaving a death skull pattern in the skin. The Devil was thought to mark the individual at the end of nocturnal initiation rites.[2] The witch's teat was a raised bump somewhere on a witch's body. It is often depicted as having a wart-like appearance.

Of course, this idea of a mark is found nowhere in scripture.  It was a folktale.  

Many spoke about a book that the devil presented which he wanted signed in blood.  Jone Johnson Lewis explains the relationship between 

The idea that signing the devil's book was important is probably derived from the Puritan belief that church members made a covenant with God and demonstrated that by signing the church membership book.

Lewis goes on to explain further:

The idea that a person made a pact with the devil, either orally or in writing, was a common belief in witchcraft lore of medieval and early modern times. The Malleus Maleficarum, written in 1486–1487

And sure enough, we read in Malleus Maleficarium the following:

...it is to be said that, in all the cases of which we have had knowledge, the devil has always operated in a form visible to the witch; for there isd no need for him to approach her invisible, because of the pact of federation with him that has been expressed.

There was spectral evidence, which is defined as:

Spectral evidence refers to a witness testimony that the accused person’s spirit or spectral shape appeared to him/her witness in a dream at the time the accused person’s physical body was at another location. It was accepted in the courts during the Salem Witch Trials. The evidence was accepted on the basis that the devil and his minions were powerful enough to send their spirits, or specters, to pure, religious people in order to lead them astray. In spectral evidence, the admission of victims’ conjectures is governed only by the limits of their fears and imaginations, whether or not objectively proven facts are forthcoming to justify them. [State v. Dustin, 122 N.H. 544, 551 (N.H. 1982)].

This use of spectral evidence is based on an earlier witch trial, The Bury St. Edmund's trial:

We will continue with part 2 of this series tomorrow.