See also: Salem

The lawsuit of the Sorcière S of Salem is a famous episode of the Colonial history of the United States which involves the judgment and the execution of marked people of Sorcellerie in 1692 in the Massachusetts. Generally analyzed like rising one period of internal conflicts and puritan Paranoia , this Procès causes the death of 25 people and the imprisonment of a much greater number.

These persecutions take seat in the Western context of the 17th century: historians and researchers estimate today the number of victims of the enquiry and the lawsuits in sorcery between 50.000 and 100.000 in Europe between 1560 and 1650.

Facts

In 1692, with Salem Village (today Danvers), some young girls, in particular Abigail Williams, Year Putnam and Betty Parris, show certain fellow-citizens to have envoûtées them and to be wizard or magicians, combined Satan.

The community, besieged by the Amerindian and deprived of legitimate government, lends faith to the charges and condemns the people blamed to acknowledge the facts of sorcery or to be hung. The charges extend quickly. In less than two months, the following communities are concerned: Andover, Amesbury, Salisbury, Haverhill, Topsfield, Ipswich, Rowley, Gloucester, Manchester, Malden, Charlestown, Billerica, Beverly, Reading, Woburn, Lynn, Marblehead, and Boston.

Beginning of the business

During the icy winter of 1691/1692, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, respectively girl and niece of the reverend Samuel Parris, is put - gift - to act in a curious manner: they speak an unknown language, hide, trail feet while going. The consulted doctors do not manage to identify the problem; one of them concludes even with a possession ic Satan. Parris and the other notable ones of the city has a presentiment of Betty and Abigail, then the other young girls reached in an identical way, Ann Putnam, Betty Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, Susannah Sheldon, Mercy Short, and Mary Warren, to name those which cursed them. The young girls then decide to give names.

The first three marked women are Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba. Sarah Good is a beggar, girl disinherited of a landlord Frenchwoman who had given himself death when Sarah was teenager, an equivocal woman: she murmurs when him food is given. Sarah Osborne is an old woman, confined to bed, who deserved general reprobation by collecting the heritage of the children of its first husband to give it to her new husband. As for Staggered, it is the Barbadian slave (or Ashantis) of Samuel Parris.

The three women officially are accused of sorcery on March 1st 1692 and are put in prison. Other charges follow: Dorcas Good (the young girl of Sarah Good, 4 years old), Rebecca Children's nurse (a sick and pious grandmother), Abigail Hobbs, Deliverance Hobbs, Martha Corey, like Elizabeth and John Proctor. The prisons fill gradually and a new problem emerges: without the legitimate shape of government, the defendants cannot be judged. Thus, no lawsuit takes place before the end of May 1692, when the governor Phips arrives and institutes off a Court Oyer and Terminer (to “hear and given” , to hear and decide). Sarah Osborn already died in prison without to be judged, Sarah Good was confined of a little girl, several others marked are sick. Approximately 80 people await their lawsuit in the jails.

During the summer, the court is in session once a month. Only one marked is slackened, after the accusing young people retract about it. All the lawsuits end in the death sentence of shown for sorcery, no payment is not marked. Only those which plead guilty and denounce other suspects avoid the capital execution. Elizabeth Proctor, and at least another woman, profit from a stay of execution “because they are large” ( “for the belly” , enclosures): though condemned, they will be hung only after the birth of their child. A series of four executions takes place during the summer, with the hanging of 19 people, with the number of which: a respected minister of religion, a former police officer who refused to stop more alleged witches, and three people having a certain fortune. 6 of the 19 victims are men; the majority of the others are miserable old women.

Only one of the settings to dead is not achieved by hanging. Gilles Corey, a 80 years old farmer, refuses to be defended in justice. The law envisages in this case the application of a form of torture called strong Peine and lasts , consisting in piling up with one of broad stones on the chest of the defendant, until crushing; after three days of atrocious pains, Corey dies while persisting in its refusal to defend oneself. One could believe in an erroneous way that Corey refused to be defended before the court to avoid the confiscation of its goods by the State: in fact, the confiscations were not systematic and generally intervened before the lawsuit and the judgment. It is thought now that the attitude of Corey is explained by the obstinate and litigious character old man, who knew himself condemned in advance.

The ground suffers as much as the men. The animals are not looked after any more, harvests are left with the abandonment. Defendants escape towards New York or to escape the arrest beyond. The sawmills are empty, their missing or disturbed owners, their employees badaudant in front of the prisons, taking part in the Community meetings, or themselves stopped. The trade strongly slows down.

Epilog

The lawsuits in sorcery are completed finally in October 1692, the defendants are gradually freed until next spring. Officially, the royal governor of the Massachusetts, Sir William Phips, puts a term at the procedure after the call formed by the clergy Boston IEN carried out by Increase Mather. This one off publishes a “Boxes Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits” (Case of conscience looking at the spirits malefic) the October 3rd 1692, work which contains in particular the following sentence: “It appears preferable that ten suspectées witches can escape, rather than an innocent person” is condemned (It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that the Innocent Persson should Be Condemned) .

The business had an impact so major that it contributed to reduce the influence of the puritan faith on the government of New England and indirectly led to the principles founders of the the United States of America.

Causes of hysteria

Several theories try to explain why the community of Salem Village exploded in this is delirious démoniaques witches and disturbances. Most widespread consists in affirming that the puritans, who practically controlled the colony of bay of Massachusetts without royal control of 1630 to the promulgation of the Charter in 1692, crossed one period of massive and hysterical hallucinations caused by the religion. The majority of the modern historians find this explanation simplistic. Other theories are based on analyzes based on facts of Maltraitance children, or divinations turning badly, of ergotism (the badly of burning the of the Middle Ages, caused by the Ergot of rye, which contains a substance that one finds in LSD), of plot of the Putnam family to destroy the rival family Porter, or are worked out on the topic of the social crushing of the women.

The puritan community lived in the anguish. After having lost its charter at the time of the Second English revolution, it was always unaware of, in spring 1692, of what its future would be made. In hillock with the ceaseless attacks of the Amerindians, it could not count on the English support. Its militia was recruited only in its center and its population had been decimated during the general rising of the Amerindians of 1675 - 1676, the King Philip' S War : in New England, a colonist on ten had found death in the Amerindian attacks. Though these events were finished, the Indian raids and knacks occurred episodically. New England transformed itself into a commercial colony. Puritans and not-puritans grew rich, which the puritans regarded as a Péché as much as like a need. As the class of the merchants rose in the social scale, the Clergé declined.

Among the modern theories, that of Mary Beth Norton in In The Devil' S Snare (In the trap of the Devil) is perhaps one of most convincing. Mary Norton considers that all the explanations evoked above probably played a big role but that in addition the circumstance that Salem and the remainder of the New England was badgered by the Amerindian attacks, which created an atmosphere of fear which contributed much to the development of the Hystérie. Mary Norton insists on the fact that the majority of the victims of charges had strong personal or social bonds with the Amerindian attacks in the fifteen years which preceded the events. The indicters frequently referred to a black man (black man has) , supported the existence of Sabbaths between the alleged witches and the Amerindians, and described tortures coming directly from the accounts of captivity between the hands of the Amerindians. Moreover, the puritan clergy often compared the Amerindians to the demons, associated them to the wizards and, during interminable ignited sermons, fustigated Satan and its troops besieging the puritans, the holy army of God. The combat of the Amerindians became the attack of the forces of the evil trying to cut down the puritan company, and one had as well as to expect attacks of the inside outside. Towards 1691, the puritans were ripe for magic hysteria.

Salem Village constituted in itself a Microcosme of puritan anguish. Half of the village made up of peasants who approved the reverend Samuel Parris in his efforts to separate from the town of Salem Town and to institute a city with whole share; other half of the village wanted to remain in the perimeter of Salem Town and its commercial flows and refused to contribute to the maintenance with Parris and its family. In addition, of many survivors of Amerindian attacks in the Maine and the New Hampshire were sheltered in parents with Salem, bringing with them of horrible accounts. In 1691, Salem Village was a genuine barrel of powder and the had young girls were the spark which exploded all.

Characters

Protestant clergy

  • Reverend Knitting machine Mather

  • Reverend Samuel Parris
  • Reverend Increase Mather
  • Reverend Francis Dane
  • Reverend Deodat Lawson
  • Reverend Samuel Willard

President of the court

President of the Runs off Oyer and Terminer

Judges assessors

Had

Those which complained about the facts of sorcery:

  • Sarah Bibber

  • Elizabeth Booth
  • Sarah Churchill
  • Martha Goodwin
  • Elizabeth Hubbard
  • Mary Lacey (was also shown to be witch)
  • Mercy Lewis
  • Betty Parris
  • Bethshaa Pope
  • Ann Putnam, Jr.
  • Susanna Sheldon
  • Mercy Shorts
  • Mary Walcott
  • Mary Warren (was shown to be witch when it retracted and affirmed that the young girls were simulatrices)
  • Abigail Williams

Shown

This list is not exhaustive. It between 150 and 300 had shown there sorcery recorded, and perhaps more still which were not imprisoned:

  • Cne John Alden Jr.

  • Daniel Andrew
  • Sarah Bassett
  • Edward Bishop
  • Sarah Bishop
  • Mary Black
  • Dudley Bradstreet
  • John Bradstreet
  • Sarah Buckley
  • Richard Carrier
  • Candy, slave of Salem
  • Mary Clarke
  • Sarah Easty Cloyce
  • Sarah Sticks
  • Gilles Corey
  • Mary Bassett DeRich
  • Ann Dolliver
  • Rebecca Eames
  • Mary English
  • Philip English
  • Abigail Faulkner
  • Ann Foster
  • Dorcas Hoar
  • Abigail Hobbs
  • Deliverance Hobbs
  • Elizabeth Howe
  • Mary Ireson
  • George Jacobs, Jr.
  • Margaret Jacobs
  • Elizabeth Johnson
  • Mary Lacey, Sr.
  • Mary Lacey (also had)
  • Sarah Osborne
  • Lila Mantion (disappeared before its judgment)
  • Lady Phips, wife of the governor Phips
  • Susannah Post
  • Elizabeth Bassett Proctor
  • Staggered
  • Job Tookey
  • Hezekiah Usher
  • Mary Withridge

Carried out

Died in prison

  • Sarah Osborne

  • “Dr.” Roger Toothaker
  • Year Foster
  • Lydia Dustin
  • infant of Sarah Good

Adaptations

Play

  • the Witches of Salem is a Play of Arthur Miller ( , in English) written, published and played for the first time in 1953. In this part, Miller uses the lawsuit of the witches of Salem like a Allégorie of the Maccarthisme. Miller itself was questioned by the House Committee one Un-American Activities (Committee on the anti-American activities) in 1956.

Films

Novels

  • Elizabeth Gaskell, the Witch of Salem , transl. of Laws the witch , ED. Jose Corti, romantic Collection, 1999, isbn 2-7143-0696-9
  • Maryse Condé, Me, Staggered, black witch of Salem , Gallimard, Folio, September 1988, isbn 2-0703-7929-9

Internal bonds

  • Hunting for the witches

External bonds

  • the site of the Museum of the Witches with Salem

  • Note of the Encyclopedia of the relative and absolute knowledge
  • 17th Colonial Century New England, history of New England at the 17th century seen through the business of the witches
  • Site of reference (files, iconography, etc)

Sources

  • Crested Liliane, Witch of Salem , Julliard, 1995
  • Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil' S Snare (The Salem Witchcraft Crisis off 1692) , Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002 (ISBN 037540709X)
  • Marc Aronson, Witch-Hunt: Mysteries off the Salem Witch Trials , Simon and Schuster, 2003

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