Colonial World: Salem Witch Trials
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Transcript of Colonial World: Salem Witch Trials
Colonial World: Salem Witch Trials
If ever there were witches, men and women in covenant with the Devil, here are multitudes in New
England. - Rev. Samuel Parris (1692)
Historical tradition of witchcraft beliefs
"Act agaynst Conjuracions Inchantments and Witchcraftes“ (1563)
Attributes of witchcraft
• female
• middle aged
• "humble" social status
• married or widowed
• "somewhat less fecund“ (fertile)
• disagreeable or self-assertive personalities
Female property owner upset the Puritan social order, and made these women vulnerable to witchcraft
accusations
Girls under spells of witches
The Court of Oyer and Terminer
Believed to be possessed
Experiencing mental aberration:"mass psychopathology"
Ergotism:caused very vivid hallucinations
Unexplainable events attributed to witchcraft
Adults observing afflicted people assumed witchcraft almost from the beginning