Linder, Douglas. "A Brief History of Witchcraft Persecutions Before Salem". 2005. University of Missouri-
Kansas City. <http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/witchhistory.html>.

This article is a very good text for observing the history of witch-hunting in general and what led to what we know today as The Salem Witch Trials. Many think the first sign of witchcraft persecution is in the Bible. As this text, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”, as found in Exodus 22:18 shows, witchcraft is alive and active in the world. The Bible states that one should not partake in it and should banish those who do. The early Puritans stuck strictly to the rules of the Bible and took its wording literally. The interesting thing about this verse is that the word “witch” in Hebrew means “one who whispers a spell”. This leads many people today to believe that this verse was actually commanding people from partaking in the practices of the surrounding tribes, not necessarily what the Puritans claimed to be witchcraft.

At first, the early Christian church, specifically Saint Francis Augustine, claimed that it was impossible for witchcraft to be an actual occurance on Earth. He claimed that Satan and his demons had no power in the world and that God was the only one who controlled any circumstances. Later on in 1273, Thomas Aquinas made a point that indeed, demons do exist and that they are at play in people’s daily life. He stated that not only do they exist to gain pleasure from their evil acts, but they also exist to simply tempt the human beings around them and discredit the work of God.

Then, in 1484, the pope got involved by asking two friars to publish a full report to put to death the old ideas that Satan had no part in the world. He wanted this text to encourage God’s people to hunt down and kill anyone involved in witchcraft. He told them that it was their obligation as a believer to do this. This book was called, Malleus Maleficarum, which means, “Hammer of Witches”, and it was published to define the crime of witchcraft and to help judges in the accusing process of witches. One of these radical beliefs in the Malleus was to look for any spectral evidence on the body of the accused, such as irregular moles anywhere.

Different events after this book came out effected witch-hunting. The first big shift in the hunting act was the Reformation which led to a rise in killings of witches. From 1500 to 1660, there were from 50,000 to 80,000 accused witches executed. Then the English civil war and the Thirty Years War sped up the hunting even more. The first sign of decreased hunting was in the late 1640s because many countries became tolerant of witchcraft.  Finally, the last witch was killed in England by 1682. The Enlightenment was a big contributor of this. During this period, a man named Lord Chief Justice Sir Francis North claimed that “The evidence against them (the accused witches) was very full and fanciful, but their own confessions exceeded it. They appeared not only to be weary of their lives but to have a great deal of skill to convict themselves.” His observations were very helpful in terminating witch hunting but the witch hunting shifted from one side of the Atlantic to another, as we now observe the well-known Salem Witch Trials in 1692.

Kittredge, George Lynam. "Witchcraft In Old and New England". American Literature. The Harvard University Press.
1929. <http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9831%28192905%291%3A2%3C213%3AWIOANE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1&origin=thenines>

This particular source by George Lynam Kittredge points out some interesting facts that make this book unlike others that have been reviewed. 

Much like many other sources I have read, Kittredge focuses on "broadening the field of its research" instead of focusing on Salem alone and the causes for this one specific episode. This source really tries to view the causes for the witch trials by observing the surrounding facts and causes in the world at the time. 

Kittredge states that "to believe in witchcraft was practically universal in the seventeenth century, even among the educated; with the mass of the people it was absolutely universal." Kittredge makes his view on the subject very clear by pointing out facts such as in the span of one hundred years, from 1580 to 1680, 3,400 people were put to the gallows in Scotland alone for being accused of witchcraft. Kittredge finds The Salem Witch Trials to be an absurd attraction and even considered it to be an "expected" event of the time. He claimes that it "was not a unique phenomenon".

To view The Salem Witchtrials accurately, I believe this source was a very important one. Kittredge's book was easily the leading source on witchcraft. "The notes alone, with their bibliographical content and their excerpts from the records of hundreds of cases, fill two hundred and twenty three pages." Even though I do feel as if Kittredge is rather nonsympathetic towards the Salem cases, he does provide hard-copied evidence that comes from several cases of witchcraft around the world at that time. Maybe Salem was only a small part of the corrupt world of witchcraft that surrounded them.

Lyons, Harriet. "Salem Witch Trials as Fact and Symbol". University of Waterloo. 10 Feb. 2004. 
<http://anthropology.uwaterloo.ca/courses/Anth311/salem.htm>.
 

This source is helpful in defining what the major causes of the “witch craze” in The Salem Witch Trials were. The Salem Witch Trials occurred in 1692 and resulted in 150 accusations of witches and 19 actual executions. The event of these witch trials is one that most people have heard of and still find interest in today. When looking into the causation of The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, some wonder what led this town into the obsession of hunting and killing these so-called “witches”.

The text concludes three social conditions to why these events were allowed to happen in this society at this specific time. These three conditions were “fairly rapid social change, a distrusted outside political authority, and new opportunities for betterment which were not evenly distributed throughout the population, causing increased social inequality.”

These social conditions were very present in Salem and it is seen specifically in the tension between the Salem village and Salem town. The town was very prosperous and made their money by being connected with the seaport. The town also controlled the church in Salem and you could only gain full membership and receive communion in the church by being associated with the Salem town church. The Salem village had to pay taxes to the town as well, making them even more prosperous or in control. If you look deeper into The Salem Witch Trials, you can see that this social tension, political authority, and social inequality between the town and village was a major cause in the accusations of witches. If you take careful notice of the people accused as witches in the witch trials, you will observe that most of the accusations were aimed towards members of Salem village, the people who were poor and less likely to attend weekly church services. They were an easy target and they weren’t socially or economically prepared to defend themselves effectively.

Other conclusions to why these events occurred so naturally in Salem are connected to the lifestyle of the Puritans. Puritans were taught to live sexually above reproach, women were taught that they were the lowest on the totem pole, and there just weren’t many venues of entertainment for Puritans to engage in. These factors may have led to the many accusations and killings of accused witches. Women who were sexual promiscuous were often claimed to be witches, people were given a source of amusement to make their lives more interesting, and women could accuse and be accused of something bigger than themselves. Seeing that there wasn’t much room for personal opinions and decisions, Puritans may have felt that a little rebellion would give them a sense of freedom and individuality. All these aspects of the witch trials were most likely very attractive and exciting for the Puritans at that time. This, indeed, may be a factor in the outbreak of witchcraft and fascination with witchcraft in Salem.

There is also a biological factor that may have caused all these things to happen. Anne Zeller, wrote an article hypothesizing that Salem villagers had “calcium deficiency” which leads to spasms and a “hysterical state”. Many of the accused witches in Salem were accused of hysteria, making this hypothesis seem fairly relevant to the Salem villagers.

Rosenthal, Bernard. "Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692.". American Literature. 1995. 
Cambridge University Press. 1993. 
<http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9831%28199503%2967%3A1%3C144%3ASSRTWT%3E2.0.CO%3B2- A&origin=thenines>

This text shows the viewpoint of Bernard Rosenthal by pointing out and critiquing the key points of his book, “Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692”. Rosenthal’s theory of the witch trials is both similar and different to the earlier texts I have read. They are similar, because he sees the causes of the witch trails as “a multiplicity of causes, with insights into them coming from the painstaking examination of case by case”. He thinks it is impossible to name the cause of the trials as a single factor, but prefers to see Salem’s witch episode as many different factors in the society coming together.

   
Unlike the other texts, Rosenthal does not contribute any of the events that occurred in Salem to “hysteria” or any form of magic being worked in the town. Instead, he claims that all these events took place because of their Puritan ways and the strictness of the Puritan church and morals. He also claims that the members of Salem, who were the accusers and were active in the courts, were also the ones who were benefitting and getting land from those who were being accused. This would obviously play a big role in all the “witch” accusations. The Puritans greed led them to fraud by accusing possibly innocent victims to be witches.

Rosenthal is a rationalist and builds strong arguments for the cause of the Salem Witch Trials. However, I believe he may be missing some of the key reasons for these events by leaving out any possibilities for supernatural occurrences or psychological problems. Sometimes realism can blind a person from looking at the deeper causes of problems. I agree with Rosenthal’s multiple-causation theory but I would not rule out the supernatural or slightly unrealistic factors so quickly like he did.

Robinson, David M.. "The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism". American Literary History. 1994. 
Oxford University Press. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/489962>.

This text talks predominantly about one of the key people involved in the Salem Witch trials and that person is Cotton Mather. Mather was “the figure who stands above all others in Foster’s account of Puritanism development”.  He had great influence on The Salem Witch trials and allowed much of what happened in the witch trials to occur.

Mather was both a hero and an attacker to the people of Salem during this time of crisis. He was a hero because he was the person who put a stop to the witch trials by concocting a theory that said “spectral evidence” was not enough to convict someone of a crime. He was an attacker because he allowed many months to go on of people getting convicted and murdered without taking a stand on what he knew was right. Apparently, what went behind this time of Mather’s silence was the fact that the most influential judge at this time, Judge William Stoughton, had recently formed an alliance with Mather. Many times in these witch trial cases, the judge was able to take the victims land and benefit from their loss. There is a possibility that Mather didn’t interfere with Stoughton or the witch trials because he didn’t want to break his alliance. In this period of four months, there were “19 people tried, convicted, and hanged, and on 19 September one man was pressed to death for refusing to plead.” This may be one of the many reasons the trials were able to go on so long without anyone putting a stop to it.

This text talks a lot about what led up to the witch trials and I find it interesting to relate these characteristics to how Americans act today. For example, it says that the early Puritans were “struggling internally to maintain order and continuity and responding constantly to external pressures.”  It interests me that one of the Puritans main struggles was how the world viewed them. They wanted to be seen as having it all together and in essence, flawless. America today, specifically the church, tries to hide things and pretend like everything is perfect in order to be viewed in the way they desire. Salem would automatically jump to conclusions about one another in order to get rid of anything that didn’t look “just right” in their Puritan mold. It is frightening that this can be seen today in America and in our religious system. I fear that we are so consumed with “looking the part” and all being flawless that we could run into a situation where we try to get rid of anything that doesn’t fit in. I’m sure the people of Slaem would’ve never dreamed of anything getting so out of hand for such a long period of time. It also concerns me that one of the most influencial people in the witchtrials, Mather, could let so much tyranny go on just to benefit himself. I fear that America may get so greedy one day that something like the witchtrials could repeat itself in its own way today.