The witch trials of Salem, when fanaticism imposed its law

The Salem trials (held in the famous American town in Massachusetts) were against women accused of witchcraft. The trials were held between 1692 and 1693.

There were almost 200 people prosecuted, of which 30 were found guilty, and 19 were hanged (14 of them women). It was a time when fanaticism was mixed with hallucinations and collective hysteria, according to some historians.

The Smithsonian Magazine recounts: "In 1711, colonial authorities pardoned some of the accused and compensated their families. But it was only in July 2022 that Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last convicted Salem "witch" whose name had yet to be cleared, was officially exonerated." Pictured a cemetery in Salem.

Some texts affirm that in Massachusetts (whose map of the time can be seen in the image), the Puritans wanted these trials to strengthen their power, to make it clear to citizens that religious norms must be followed.

Image: From Saunders, Jonathan Peele - http://maps.bpl.org/details_12094, Public Domain

"At least 172 people from Salem and surrounding towns, which include what is now North Andover, were accused of witchcraft in 1692 as part of an inquisition by the Puritans that was rooted in paranoia," summarized The New York Times in an article.

Image: Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15179244

Refugees fleeing war-torn territories in North America between England and France arrived in what was then Salem. This provoked tensions that, according to historians, resulted in the xenophobic accusation of the new inhabitants, to whom dealings with the devil were attributed.

And then there was the presence in Salem of a fanatic like Samuel Parrish, Puritan minister at the head of the Salem Church and who, faced with certain "strange" behaviours by his daughter and a niece, did not hesitate to unleash collective hysteria by accusing a slave of sorcery.

Image: Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70447

Some believe that a collective hallucinogenic delirium was caused by the continued intake of rye bread contaminated with laviceps purpurea (pictured), a fungus that causes effects similar to LSD, a possibility raised by a study in 1976 published in Science magazine.

Image: From Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen - List of Koehler Images, Public Domain

This hallucinogenic effect would explain why, as history.com explains, "after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft," panic spread in the area.

Image: Adam McCoid/Unsplash

Smithsonian Magazine further explains how it all began: "In January 1692, Parris' daughter Elizabeth (or Betty), age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having "fits." They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds and contorted themselves into strange positions."

Tituba (pictured) was one of Salem's first victims of fanaticism. The Caribbean slave was accused by the girls, and then after being beaten by her "master" (Samuel Parris), she confessed to being a witch.

Image: By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - "Giles Corey of the Salem Farms" (1868) (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), in The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston, 1902, Public Domain

Tortured, detained, pressured by the puritanical white society that was putting her on trial, Tituba's account in court included magical visions: "I had seen a pig, a big black dog, a red cat, a black cat, a yellow bird and a hairy creature that walked on two legs" according to History.com.

Image: Mateusz Klein/Unsplash

Many scholars emphasize that this phenomenon of fanatical terror occurred in an extremely harsh environment: North America, where pioneers lived, harassed by wild nature and disease and not very friendly coexistence with the native population.

"The air is ice-sharp, tinged with smoke and resin, the only sounds the rush of water, the muffled bellows of cattle and the distant cry of a wolf. It feels like the edge of the world, and to those who have settled here it is". Malcolm Gaskill describes 17th-century New England this way in his book 'The Ruin of All Witches'.

Perhaps the most revealing detail regarding the degree of persecution and madness unleashed is the abundance of confessions by women who, out of fear of torture, admitted to being under a spell.

Perhaps the most extreme and painful case was that of a four-year-old girl, Dorthoy Good, who confessed to being haunted. She was sent to prison.

The Salem trials, apart from being influenced by the troubles of their time, are also part of a long tradition of repression against women. Claiming women were witches calmed the threat to patriarchal puritanism.

Despite the general name of the Salem trials, the trials occurred in various towns in Essex, Suffolk and Middlesex counties in the then English colony of Massachusetts. In the image, Salem today.

Image: Pascal Vernardon/Unsplash

In 1953 'The Crucible' was released, a work by Arthur Miller inspired by the events of Salem in the 17th century. The playwright turned the persecution of those women into a metaphor for all the persecutions for ideological or social reasons that have been unleashed in the world throughout history.

In fact, 'The Crucible' is considered a work that alludes to the time (between 1950 and 1956) when Senator McCarthy launched an anti-communist crusade that plunged the United States into paranoia. This persecution of suspected communists was called a "witch hunt" and was especially brutal in Hollywood.

Long after the sinister trials against imaginary witches, Salem today symbolizes how the suggested and directed masses can become a relentless machine to crush the different. Those witches were simply women who, for various reasons, authorities wanted to eliminate from the social landscape.