WITCHCRAFT AND SORCERY.
_Witch_, is taken from the Hebrew word, rendered _venefica_,
meaning a poisoner and divineress; one who dabbles in spells and
fortune-telling.[1] In course of time, the term was used to indicate
those who held communion with evil spirits and derived a super-human
power from them, whereby they could not only foretell the coming of
future events, but bring about evil results upon the life, bodies, or
possessions of individuals. This unnatural power was supposed to be
acquired by a compact with the devil himself, by which the wizard or
witch bargained his or her soul to the devil as a consideration for the
power of enchantment.[2]
From the earliest times, men and women have tried to hold communion with
superior beings and to pierce the secrets of the future.
In the oldest code of laws in the known world, promulgated by Hammurabi,
King of Babylon, 2285 years before Christ, the first two sections of the
code are levelled at the crime of witchcraft, and we find that it is
there written, that:
“If a man weave a spell and put a ban upon a man, and has not
justified himself, he that wove the spell upon him shall be put
to death.”[3]
And the same code provided that the man against whom the spell was woven,
should plunge into the “holy river” and if the river overcame him, his
house should go to the weaver of the spell, but if the river made the man
innocent, he should take the house of the sorcerer and he was to be put
to death.[4]
According to the photogravure of the blocks of diorite, upon which these
most antique laws were written, therefore, when King Hammurabi, received
his law direct from the seated sun-god, Samas,—the judge of heaven and
earth—the old delusion of witchcraft and sorcery obtained. So prevalent
was the offense, according to the delusion then obtaining, that the very
first sections of the code were directed at this crime, established to
the satisfaction of the judges of that period, by the test of a plunge
into the “holy river,” in the absence of more direct proof of the
existence of the offense which existed only in the imaginations of the
superstitious inhabitants of that misty age.
During the time of Moses, we find that many imposters insulted the
intelligence of the Supreme Being, by claiming to have received delegated
powers from on high and hence Moses provided in his law that “Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live.” The long persecution of persons convicted
of witchcraft, by a misinterpretation of this text, was thus justified
by this Biblical injunction and many conscientious men and women, in
their inability to understand the science of common things, attributed
appearances which they could not explain, to supernatural agencies and
blindly believing in this Mosaic law, proceeded to violate the highest
laws of God and man, in the fanaticism that a Divine injunction was
being obeyed, in the punishment of those convicted of witchcraft and
sorcery.[5]
The Twelve Tables of the early Romans contained penal provisions against
one who should bewitch the fruits of the earth or conjure away his
neighbors’ corn, into his own field,[6] and a century and a half after
the adoption of the Twelve Tables, one hundred and seventy Roman women
were tried and convicted of poisoning, under the pretense of charms and
incantations, which led to new laws against such supposed practices.
As the Mosaic law against witchcraft was formerly interpreted, to mean
the punishment by death of witches who did positive injury to another in
his person or property, so the Roman laws were directed against those
supposed to have done positive injury to a person, in his property or to
have hurt him, physically.
In other words, the mere possession of magic art, in the old heathen
world, was not, in itself a crime, for while it was dreaded, as being
liable to be turned to malicious or wrongful purposes, it was also
recognized as a most beneficial art, through which the religion of
domestic life and the remedy of healing the sick, was supposed to come.
That this view of witchcraft continued to prevail for many centuries
after the reception of Christianity, is evidenced by the laws of
Constantine, in the fourth century, which ordained capital punishment
for all those who practiced noxious charms against the life or health of
others, by supernatural power, but exempted from the punishment of the
law, all those who practiced magical arts for beneficial purposes, such
as warding off hailstorms, and excessive rains or windstorms, or curing
cattle or persons afflicted with disease.[7]
The savage laws by the Christian Emperors in the early centuries did
considerable harm in after ages. The Anglo-Saxons patterned their laws
against sorcery and witchcraft after the folk-laws of the continent and
Cnut, even, legislated against the witchcraft which was heathenish.[8]
During the reign of Henry I., criminals who encompassed the maiming or
sickening of a person by maltreating a waxen image of him—a belief that
generally obtained from this time until the seventeenth century—were
either hanged or burnt.[9] And during the reign of this monarch, in
England, Archbishop Gerard, of York, was accused of necromancy and
sorcery and when it was discovered that he had died suddenly, and a book
on the subject of astrology was found under his pillow, his body was
refused burial in the Cathedral.[10]
After the influence of the Catholic religion had safely extended its
power over the western world, however, and the fear of a return to
paganism was looked upon as most improbable, the church was not inclined
to look with such aversion upon the class of criminals accused of
dabbling in the black arts. Astrology and necromancy were looked upon
with considerable admiration by the most powerful of the church and laity
and even Bishops and Popes tempted the powers of evil, by little harmless
excursions into the great realm of the supernatural.
This temporizing by the church continued until about the beginning of the
thirteenth century, when heresy had become so common that the interests
of the church were threatened and when the church began, in various parts
of the world, a most stringent prosecution of witches and sorcerers and
the crowned-heads of Europe, in humble submission to the demands of the
Pope, used the power of the kingdom in an attempt to rid the church of
this threatened evil.[11]
From an early day, in France, people were punished for supposed crimes
resulting from witchcraft and sorcery. Charlemagne frequently ordered
all necromancers, sorcerers and witches to be driven from the realm and
with the gradual increase of the crimes attributed to them, he published
different edicts, preserved at length in the “Capitulaire de Baluse.”[12]
By these edicts, death was decreed against all those who practiced feats
of sorcery and witchcraft, and those who conspired with the devil to
afflict either man or woman, with barrenness; who excited tempests,
or windstorms; destroyed the fruits of the earth, hurt cows, or other
animals, and afflicted human beings with sores or disease, were to be
immediately executed, upon their conviction.[13]
From the time of Charlemagne until the eighteenth century, in France,
England, Scotland and other European countries, the trials for witchcraft
and sorcery continuously multiplied and it became the common means to
enable a wolfish monarch to rid himself of a disliked rival or subject,
upon some trumped-up charge, based upon some trivial circumstance
connected with an unexplained phenomenon.
The destruction of the Stedinger, in 1234; the persecutions of the
Templars, from 1307 to the year 1313; the trial and execution of poor
Joan of Arc, in 1429, the tragedy of Arras, in 1459, and many other
horrible casualties, during the middle ages illustrate the prevalency
with which this delusion was used to bring about the death and
destruction of a large portion of the human race, who were guilty only of
living in an age of ignorance and cruelty.[14]
At the instance of Pope Gregory IX., the Emperor of Germany, Frederic
II., pronounced his banns against the valiant Stedinger, in 1233 and a
crusade was inaugurated against them in all Germany. Eight thousand of
them were slain upon the field of battle and the whole race extinguished
and their houses and woods were burned, because they would not embrace
the Catholic religion, but continued to adhere to their own ideals and
ideas in religion and government. The Pope charged that they “insulted
the holy sacrament, consulted witches to raise evil spirits, shed blood
like water, took the lives of priests and concocted an infernal scheme to
propagate the worship of the devil.”[15]
The Templars had also offended the Church and in 1307 the charge was
brought against them that they were in communion with evil spirits and
had sold their souls to the devil. This charge effected its object
and they were extirpated, even as the poor Stedinger had been, in the
previous century.
Philip IV., of France, acting under authority of the Pope, ordered the
arrest and trial of the Templars and the confiscation of their goods
and property. Hundreds were put to the rack and when tortured by pain,
confessed the most unreasonable charges which were lodged against them
and this only heightened the popular clamor and the persecution against
them, as a body. Fifty-nine Templars were burned alive, by a slow fire,
in a field adjoining the city of Paris, after they had been convicted of
witchcraft and sorcery, and other instances of their persecutions, upon
this charge, occurred in the different provinces, until the year 1313,
when the Grand Master of the Order Jacques de Molay was burned to death,
a fitting climax to this reign of terror, inaugurated by the Pope and
Monarch, to rid themselves of an odious order—a lasting stigma to the
memory of the Pope and Monarch responsible for such conditions and an
ever increasing source of pity to the millions possessing the divine gift
of a tender fellow-feeling for their own kind.
In 1429 the poor Joan of Arc fell a victim to the charge of witchcraft
and sorcery and like dual criminals, proceeding hand in hand to
accomplish the crime, religion and law, not only failed to raise a hand
to prevent the conflagration that consumed and tortured the sainted
body of this patriotic victim, but actually consummated the crime, in
the name of holy order and legal procedure, which will remain eternally
as one of the saddest and most pitiable spectacles of the weakness and
criminal blunderings of the Church and State.
In 1459 a devoted congregation of the Waldenses, at Arras, fell victims
to a charge of witchcraft and sorcery. Many of them, when placed upon
the rack, admitted their guilt, to escape the torture; prominent rulers
and people of wealth were involved and many were burned, while others
were thrown in prison, or paid large fines to escape a worse fate, at the
hands of the ignorant and intolerant courts, that reflected the hatred
and persecution of the enraged populace.[16]
In 1487 two old women were arrested for witchcraft, in Switzerland, for
having caused a tempest. They were placed upon the rack, where people,
enforc’d do speak anything, and after severe torture they admitted that
they were in collusion with the devil and were condemned to die, and if
the criminal register at Constance is to be believed, they were burned at
the stake, for after the name of each, appears the significant epitaph:
“_convicta et combusta_.”[17]
Speaking of the great prevalency of this accusation, about this period,
Florimond, in his work concerning the Anti-Christ, observes:
“The seats destined for criminals in our courts of justice are
blackened with persons accused of this guilt. There are not
judges enough to try them. Our dungeons are gorged with them.
No day passes that we do not render our tribunals bloody by
the dooms which we pronounce, or in which we do not return
to our homes, discountenanced and terrified at the horrible
confessions we have heard.”
But the _Witch Mania_ in Europe, may be said to properly date from about
the year 1488, when Pope Innocent VIII., in a determined effort to rid
the Church of Rome of the stigma and opposition of those supposed to be
prompted by the devil, appointed inquisitors in every country, armed with
the apostolic power to accuse and punish this class of criminals.[18]
Following the appointment of this commission and those of successive
Popes, a wholesale slaughter of innocent men and women, followed this
crusade of bigotry and ignorance.
Cumanus burned forty-one women in one province alone, in Italy; Sprenger
burned more than five hundred in a year, in Germany; five hundred were
burned in Geneva, in 1515 and 1516; in the district of Como, in the
year 1524 about a thousand people suffered death for witchcraft and for
several years thereafter the general average in this district was a
hundred a year and one inquisitor alone, Remigius, took whatever credit
he was entitled to, for having during a period of fifteen years convicted
and burned nine hundred poor souls for this imaginary offense.[19]
In 1520 witches were burned in fires that were ever kept burning to
receive their tortured bodies, in France. In 1561 five poor women of
Verneuil were convicted of turning themselves into cats and prowling
around and performing satanic feats, as a result of which they were all
burned alive.[20]
In 1571 the celebrated sorcerer, Trais Echelles, after his confession,
was burned at the Place de Greve, in Paris.
In 1573 Giles Garnier, of Lyons, was indicted for being a loup-garou, or
man wolf,[21] and prowling around at night and destroying children. Fifty
witnesses testified against him and after being placed upon the rack, he
confessed the crime he was charged with and was condemned by Dr. Camus to
be:
“tied to a stake and burned alive and that his ashes be then
scattered to the winds.”[22]
The conditions in England, during the sixteenth century, were about the
same as in France, Germany and Italy, so far as the persecutions for
witchcraft were concerned. While rooting out many errors of ignorance and
superstition, the Reformation made no head-way at all against witchcraft
and sorcery, the greatest evil of the period and strange to narrate,
while their followers were persecuted for this crime, Luther and Calvin
were as firm believers in witchcraft as were the Popes whom they opposed
and their followers were even as zealous persecutors of the innocents
accused of this crime as were the churchmen of the old religion.[23]
A few of the English cases will not be found uninstructive as
illustrative of the prejudice and persecution levelled at those accused
of witchcraft in that country, during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
The celebrated case of the Witches of Warbois, in 1594, is especially
worthy of mention. The good old Mother Samuel lived in the neighborhood
of Sir Samuel Cromwell and a Mr. Throgmorton and the latter had several
daughters and among them a Miss Joan, who was a melancholy girl, whose
head was filled with stories of ghosts and witches and she conceived the
idea that poor old Mother Samuel had bewitched her, as she felt sudden
pains in her limbs and strange sensations, when she went near her. Her
parents believed her and after a few family casualties the poor old
woman was arrested upon a charge of witchcraft filed against her by the
family of Sir Samuel Cromwell, after the death of his wife, as she had
confessed, upon different persecutions that she had afflicted them with
pains and fits and turned their milk sour in the pans, prevented their
ewes and cows from bearing and that she had caused Lady Cromwell’s death.
She also confessed that her husband and daughter were leagued with her in
witchcraft and all three were found guilty and hanged on April 7’, 1593.
In Scotland, during the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, witchcraft
was made a crime punishable by death, and after this statute, the
superstition and fear of the people brought frequent accusations against
different people, many of whom were prominent in Government and social
circles.
The case against Dr. Fian and his accomplices will illustrate the feeling
obtaining in Scotland about this period. Gellie Duncan implicated
Agnes Sampson and when she was put to the torture, she also implicated
Dr. Fian, Marion Lincup and Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of Lord
Cliftonhall. They were charged with having attempted the king’s life,
through witchcraft and sorcery. It was charged that they had raised a
fearful storm at sea, to attempt to wreck a ship on which the king, James
VI., and his bride had sailed. Several of the accused were subjected to
the torture and finally confessed to the crime and implicated the rest,
and on June 25’, 1591, Barbara Napier, Gellie Duncan, Agnes Sampson,
Dr. Fian and twenty-five others were hanged for witchcraft and Euphemia
Macalzean was “bound to a stake, and burned in ashes, _quick_ to the
death.”[24]
After this conviction in Scotland, the renown of King James as an enemy
to witchcraft and sorcery, preceded him to England and when he ascended
the English throne in 1603, he was ready for a new crusade against this
obnoxious class of criminals.
The first statute upon witchcraft, in England, was that of 1541, which
defined the offense and affixed the punishment.
Two statutes were passed in 1551, one relating to false prophesies,
due no doubt to the machinations of Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid
of Kent,” and the other was levelled at conjurgations, witchcraft and
sorcery.
The statute of Elizabeth, in 1562, recognized witchcraft as a crime
of first magnitude, punishable by death, regardless of whether it was
exerted against the lives, limbs, or property of the subjects.[25]
On his accession to the throne in 1604 King James passed the statute
whereby it was enacted that:
“If any person shall use, practice, or exercise, any
conjurgation of any wicked or evil spirit, or shall consult,
covenant with, or feed any such spirit, the first offense to be
imprisoned for a year and stand in the pillory once a quarter;
the second offense to be death.”
The milder punishment was not inflicted, but all convicted under this
statute were hanged and burned, or burned, without previous strangling,
“alive and quick.”
This statute continued on the statute books until the year 1736, when
it was repealed and suffered no longer to disgrace the intelligence of
the country, after which date witches, conjurers and fortune-tellers
were only subjected to the jail sentences common to other misdemeanors,
confinement for short intervals, or the pillory.
We are reliably informed that during the Long Parliament, in England,
three thousand witches were executed[26] and during the first eighty
years of the seventeenth century, it has been estimated that five
hundred people were annually executed for witchcraft, in England, making
a total of forty thousand who thus met their deaths, during the whole
period referred to.[27]
One of the rankest weeds in the garden of wild delusions that flourished
in England, in the seventeenth century was Matthew Hopkins, who prided
himself upon the title of “Witch-finder General.” About 1644 he made the
discovery of some moles or other marks on the accused persons, which he
advertised as “devil’s marks” and he immediately became in great demand
in helping to hunt down and convict persons accused of this crime.
He had several tests to subject them to, and one of the cruelest was to
tie the hands and feet of the prisoner together cross-wise, the right
thumb to the toe of the left foot and _vice versa_. Being thus tied, so
they could not swim, they were wrapped in a cloth or blanket and placed
in a pool of water or a river, on their backs. If they sank, they were
innocent, but drowned for their innocence, and if they floated, they were
adjudged guilty of witchcraft and hanged or burned.[28]
Another kind of punishment, to extort a confession, was what was called
“Waking” the witch. An iron bridle or hoop was placed cross-wise of her
face with four prongs, penetrating the mouth. The hoop was fastened
to the wall at the back of the head, so that the prisoner could not
lie down. She was kept in this position sometimes for several days,
attendants constantly prodding her, to keep her awake.[29]
In 1664 the venerable Sir Mathew Hale, condemned Amy Duny and Rose
Cullender, to be burned at the stake in St. Edmondsbury, upon the most
flimsy kind of proof, offered to establish this imaginary crime.[30]
When these two old women went to a shop to purchase herring, their
ugliness caused them to be insulted, and they resented it. The daughter
of the owner of the store was afflicted with epilepsy and the women were
charged with having bewitched her. She was blind-folded and when they
touched her, her imagination and nervousness was such that she was thrown
into a fit and this was received as proof positive of her bewitchment
and the fact that she also was thrown into a fit, when similarly
blind-folded, when others than the accused persons touched her, was held
incompetent as evidence in their favor.
Upon the evidence of Samuel Pacey, the girl’s father, Margaret Arnold,
her aunt, and Thomas Brown, as an expert witness upon Witchcraft, the
learned Sir Mathew Hale charged the jury to ascertain from the evidence,
first, whether or not the persons charged were actually bewitched and
if so, whether or not the prisoners had actually bewitched her. He
personally told the jury that he had no doubt of the fact that witches
existed, first because the Scriptures affirmed it and, secondly, because
the laws of the country recognized it. The jury promptly returned a
verdict of guilty and the girl and her father called the next morning to
see Sir Mathew Hale and advised him that the complete recovery of the
girl followed within a half hour after the verdict of conviction against
the prisoners.[31]
Eleven cases of witchcraft were tried before Chief-Justice Holt, between
1694 and 1701, but sentiment was changing toward this offense, by this
time and this rugged and astute lawyer made such an appeal to the jury,
in each case, that all the defendants were acquitted.[32]
Jane Wenham, known as the “Witch of Walkerne,” was tried and convicted
before Lord Chief-Justice Powell, in 1711, upon the most fanciful
and ridiculous kind of evidence, but she was pardoned, before her
execution.[33]
In 1716, however, a woman and her daughter only nine years old, were
tried and convicted of sorcery, at Huntingdon, because they had washed
their stockings and made a lather of soap and raised a storm and for this
terrible offense they were both hanged.[34]
But this was the last judicial execution for witchcraft in England,
although many prisoners were charged with the crime, between this date
and the year 1736, when the statute of James I. was repealed.[35]
While the delirium of witchcraft was raging in Europe,—until its victims
numbered tens of thousands and its votaries millions,—the fever spread
across the ocean and the New England colonists also fell a prey to the
superstition. The fear of witchcraft and sorcery seized the multitudes in
the United States, in the middle of the seventeenth century and supposed
criminals were arrested in such numbers that the prisons were not large
enough to hold them.
The persecutions at Salem, Massachusetts, lasted from February until
September, 1692, during which time, nineteen supposed witches were hung,
fourteen of them being women.[36]
Under the early statutes of New York and Pennsylvania, witchcraft was a
capital offense.[37]
The good William Penn, who fled from similar persecution in England,
presided in the “City of Brotherly Love,” at the trial of two Swedish
women, who were arraigned for witchcraft. The funeral pile had been
prepared and the flint and tinder were all ready to burn them, but
fortunately they were acquitted of the charge.[38]
In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the penalty for witchcraft was death
and the laws of these states were based not only upon the Mosaic code,
but upon the Common Law of England, as well.
A few trials occurred in Virginia and Maryland and six persons were hung,
in Connecticut, for witchcraft, during the last half of the seventeenth
century.
Margaret Jones was executed for witchcraft, in Boston, in June, 1648;
Mary Parsons, of Springfield, Massachusetts, was tried and convicted, in
1651; Mrs. Ann Hibbins was executed in Boston, in 1656, and Goody Glover
was executed at the same place, in 1688.[39]
The history of the persecutions at Salem, Massachusetts, has furnished
the basis for several books, presenting the harrowing details of the
trial of the several victims of the crusade against the delusion of
witchcraft, at that place.[40]
The Salem persecutions began with the delusions of a party of young
girls, who imagined they were bewitched. Elizabeth Parris, aged nine,
the daughter of Rev. Samuel Parris, her cousin, Abigail Williams, aged
eleven, Ann Putnam, aged twelve, the daughter of the parish clerk, Mary
Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard and several other girls furnished
the evidence upon which these persecutions were begun.
After reading of witchcraft and magic, these children, who had worked
themselves into a state of nervous excitement, began to cut queer
antics, such as hiding in holes; crawling under chairs; assuming odd
postures and uttering loud and incoherent expressions, all of which they
attributed to the supernatural power exerted over them by three women
of the neighborhood, Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn and an Indian woman named
Tituba. Acting under the license of witchcraft, these girls disturbed
religious worship, at will and performed other little misdemeanors,
which their doting parents laid to the door of the witches, instead of
correcting them, as they should have done.
Finally the three women were arrested and arraigned for the crime of
witchcraft. They were unpopular and uncomely women, as Mrs. Upham shows,
Mrs. Good having been abandoned by her husband and Mrs. Osburn being
a poor unhappy woman, bed-ridden and suffering from nervousness and
melancholia.[41] Tituba, the Indian woman, believed in witchcraft herself
and had told the children stories of evil spirits until they firmly
believed in her unnatural power.
On March 1’, 1692, the trial was begun at the meeting house in Salem,
before Esquires John Hathorn and Jonathan Corwin. Sarah Good was first
examined and denied any communion with evil spirits and affirmed her
service of God. No counsel was allowed the prisoners, as this was the
custom according to the common law, in capital cases, unless the Court
was in doubt, as the Judge was supposed to be the counsel for the
prisoner.
After having been tormented for some time, and believing her escape
to lie only in the conviction of someone else, Mrs. Good accused her
co-prisoner, Mrs. Osburn, and she was remanded to jail and Mrs. Osburn
was brought before the court. Frail in body and feeble in her intellect,
this poor woman, when interrogated by the pompous oracles of the law,
could only protest her innocence and deny any communion with evil
spirits, or any knowledge of the offense charged against her by her
alleged accomplice.
After this travesty of a trial, she was again committed to prison, where
she was kept heavily chained, from March 7, until May 10’, when she died,
her innocent soul being thus forever released from the unnatural and
inhuman affliction heaped upon her body by her fellow-beings. The Indian
woman, when she was examined, did not deny that the children had been
bewitched, but she laid it all to the door of her co-defendants, Mrs.
Good and Mrs. Osburn.
The girls, when brought before the supposed witches, fell down and
shrieked, in their excitement; if the prisoners clasped their hands, they
screamed that they were pinched; when they bit their lips, they in turn,
asserted that they were being bitten; they produced pins, which they said
the witches had pricked them with and worked upon the morbid imagination
of the assembly so that the trials of the witches were little less than a
burlesque.[42]
Martha Corey was arrested on the 19’ of March, 1692, and the evidence
of her husband was used against her, to the effect that she had taken
his saddle to keep him from attending church; that she sat up late at
night and frequently kneeled on the hearth, as if in prayer, but uttered
no word; that certain of his cattle had been afflicted and that one of
their cats had had a fit. On such evidence as this, this good woman, was
adjudged guilty and was one of the eight persons executed on the 22’ of
September.[43]
On April 19’, 1692, when he was over four score years of age, poor old
Giles Corey was arrested for witchcraft, at Salem, and his case furnishes
the only instance in the United States, where to avoid the attainder of
his blood and the forfeiture of his estate, a prisoner obstinately stood
mute and was “pressed to death.”
His unfriendly course toward his wife and the attitude of two of his
four sons-in-law in testifying against his wife, no doubt so worked upon
his mind as to cause him to make a terrible expiation. He deeded all
his property to his two favorite sons-in-law, William Cleeves and John
Moulton, and decided to then stand mute and refuse to plead and let the
law take its course.
Of course he knew that the gates of justice were closed to him and that
he would be convicted, although he was innocent, but he determined
to defy the multitude and to withhold his plea, in order to save his
property for his sons-in-law and to show his courage, in the supreme test.
Longfellow, in his “New England Tragedies,” has described this feeble old
man, withstanding the exhortations of his friends, in his determination
to die the death of a martyr in an unjust cause, and one cannot read the
graphic and realistic account of this tragedy, without feelings of the
greatest compassion and admiration for this grand old stoic, of our own
soil, who bravely suffered his body to be pressed until all life was
extinct and whose soul took its flight from the open field, near the
Howard street burial ground, in the village of Salem, on September 19’,
1692.[44]
In the case of the gentle Rebecca Nurse, even after her acquittal, by
a jury, regularly empaneled and charged to try her for witchcraft, the
frenzied populace “recalled the decision” and she was sentenced by the
Court, to meet the demands of the mob; she was carted to the summit of
Gallows hill, and hanged, on July 19’, and her case furnishes one of the
most unjust instances of the “recall of a judicial decision” and one of
the grossest travesties upon justice in the history of any country.[45]
Because John and Elizabeth Proctor had absented themselves from the
meetings, during the trials for witchcraft, they were finally accused
and thrown in prison. He made a manly appeal for a trial at Boston, in
a letter dated July 23’, 1692, addressed to Mr. Mather, Mr. Allen, Mr.
Moody, Mr. Willard and Mr. Bailey, but all to no avail. His friends
petitioned the Court; one of the girls who testified against them made
a statement that she “must have been out of her head,” when she gave
her evidence, as it was not true, but nothing could stem the tide of the
current of rapidly rising prejudice and resentment prevailing, so after a
farcical trial, he was convicted and executed on August 19’, 1692.
His fearless defense of his good wife saved her life and two weeks after
his death, she bore a baby in prison and it was no doubt due to her
pregnant condition that she too, escaped the fury of the mob.[46]
The trials of Bridget Bishop, Mary Easty, a sister of Rebecca Nurse, the
Jacobs family, Martha Carrier and Philip and Mary English, Elizabeth
How, Rev. George Burroughs, Sarah Wildes, Susanna Martin, John Williard,
Alice Parker, Ann Pudeater, Margaret Scott, William Reed, Samuel Wardell
and Mary Parker,[47] are all interesting and present the details of the
most stirring tragedies the courts of justice in this country have ever
enacted, but space in this chapter will not permit the detailed account
of these various trials.
From the earliest times, a great deal has been written upon the subject
of witchcraft and sorcery, in the different languages of Europe. The
delusion has furnished a theme for long and arduous treatises by
scientist, divine and philosopher and the poet and novelist, has found it
a fruitful source of inspiration for song and story.
The works of Dr. Joseph Glanvil, chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles II., and
R. Baxter, in his “Certainties of the Works of Spirits,” as vindications
of the superstitions of witchcraft and sorcery, did much to spread the
delusion, during the popularity of the superstition.
Balthazar Bekker, a reformed Dutch clergyman, was the first to strike
at the very foundation of the delusion, near the end of the seventeenth
century; Hutchinson, in his historical essay on Witchcraft, in 1718,
also took a skeptical view of the subject, and these men, with Weier and
Reginald Scot, along with the sturdy advocates who defended the prisoners
charged with witchcraft, and such judges as Lord Holt, in England, did
much to discourage and overcome the belief in the fallacy.
Burn’s lines to the “De’il” aptly express the popular notion of the time
when the belief in spooks and evil spirits obtained:
“Ae dreary, windy, winter night,
The stars shot down wi’ sklentin light,
Wi’ you, mysel, I got a fright
Ayont the lough;
Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight
Wi’ waving sough.
The cudgel in my nieve did shake,
Each bristled hair stood like a stake,
When wi’ an eldritch stour, ‘quaick, quaick’,
Among the springs
Away ye squatter’d, like a drake,
On whistling wiggs.”
The notion of the devil then was that he was a large, ill-shaped, hairy
sprite, with long tail, horns, cloven feet and wings, as we so often see
him pictured in the old representations.
Before Milton’s time, he was believed to be a mere mischievous, ugly and
petty spirit, who played fantastic tricks upon humanity, but Milton made
of him the paragon of evil, not merely grotesque, but a fiend, whose
power was all used for evil.[48]
“The other shape,
If shape it might be call’d that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint or limb;
Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d,
For each seem’d either,—black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem’d his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand.”[49]
From the history of Demonology and Witchcraft, as given in the works of
Bodin, Bekker, Leloyer, De Lancre, Garinet, Mackay, Lecky, Nevins, Upham,
Benson, Goodwin and Sir Walter Scott, demons of both sexes had existed
in the world, ever since the fall of Adam. They increased and multiplied
with wonderful rapidity; inhabited the air and had no fixed residence or
abode, and when they congregated, windstorms, hurricanes and earthquakes
resulted. They were supposed to delight in destroying the beauties of
nature and the possessions of man and entered the bodies of individuals
with their breath and caused pains and sickness and bad dreams. All
these demons were at the command of any person who would barter his soul
to them and his or her evil purpose was then accomplished, but no good
action would be undertaken.
In France and England the witches were supposed to ride astride
broom-sticks, while in Italy and Spain, the Devil, himself, in the shape
of a goat, carried them on his own back.[50]
This belief prevailed for many centuries all over Europe and in certain
sections of the world the belief in witchcraft and sorcery is not
entirely eradicated today.[51]
In 1627, a ballad entitled the “Druten Zeitung,” or “Witches Gazette”
was quite popular in Germany. The sufferings of the witches burned at
Würzburg, Bamberg, Franconia and other cities and provinces of the German
Empire, were minutely described, by the poet, who grew quite witty in his
descriptions of the contortions produced by pain, when the flames brought
forth shrieks from the poor wretches who were burned alive.[52]
The “Amber Witch,” by William Meinhold, being the most interesting
trial for witchcraft, of Mary Schweidler, is one of the most exceptional
and interesting of the books of fiction, based upon the delusion of
witchcraft.
But let us draw the curtain upon this continuous human tragedy enacted
for two and a half centuries, in Europe, in the name of the law,
cataloguing the long list of judicial murders, upon the stage where
superstition and delusion alone held sway.
It is sad, in the extreme, to contemplate the long list of human beings
whose lives were forfeited, in the early days of “little knowledge,” by
those who thus:
“Hoped to merit Heaven, by making earth a Hell.”
And it is doubly sad, to contemplate that the Temples of Justice were
peopled by these fears of fantasy and the imagination—like some of the
fetishes that modern critics of our present judicial system erect in
some places—and that the high priests of the temples blindly followed
the mad cry of the mob and laid aside the scales of justice to interpret
the unjust ideals of an intoxicated public sentiment, following only the
red flag of murder. These jurists of the past centuries who participated
in this wholesale slaughter of individual right, may have feared their
recall, if they withstood the frenzy of a wrought-up public clamor, and
in this a lesson can be learned, of the danger of following the demands
of public sentiment, in courts of justice, instead of the proper ideals
of equality and justice.
It is fortunate that only the small percent of the densely ignorant
now-a-days, account for the misunderstood facts and phenomena of nature
by the fears and delusions of witchcraft and sorcery and that in the
progress of the race, the delusion of witchcraft has been crowded into
the dark, remote and rugged sections where alone the foot of civilization
can find no resting-place.
There are few, if any, more deplorable episodes, in human history than
that of the persecutions for witchcraft. They illustrate to what an
extreme degree of relentless cruelty human nature will go, when fanned
to a fever-heat of excitement by some fanatical delusion. On the other
hand, the history of the persecutions for witchcraft show how little
reliance can be placed upon the credibility of witnesses, influenced
by some general excitement, or acting under a mistaken belief of duty,
based upon the attainment of some popular object. Thousands of witnesses
who appeared against the poor victims charged with this hated crime of
witchcraft and sorcery, honestly believed in the fantastical delusions
and tricks of fancy that they described as actual occurrences, which in
fact had no better foundation than their own fervid imaginations.
Regarding man’s self, alone, it is difficult to reconcile the beneficent
laws taught by the church, with the sad “scope and scheme” of things,
as disclosed by the pathetic facts of history, in connection with this
subject. And yet:
“You cry ‘the cruelty of things’ is mystery to your purblind eye,
Which fixed upon a point in space, the general project passes by.
...
The dreadest sound man’s ear can hear, the war and rush of stormy wind
Depures the stuff of human life, breeds health and strength for
humankind.
And thus the race of Being runs, till haply, in the time to be,
Earth shifts her pole, and Mushtari men another falling star shall see.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 169, 170.
[2] _Ante idem._
[3] Johns’ “Oldest Code of Laws,” 1; Scheil’s “Tome IV. Textes
Elamites-Semitiques,” etc., Johns’ “Babylonian and Assyrian Laws,
Contracts and Letters.”
[4] _Ante idem._
[5] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 169; Exod. XXII. 18. As
Mackay shows, the sublime hope of immortality, in the early days of
“little knowledge” became the source of a whole train of superstitions,
from which fount a deluge of blood and horror poured over Europe, for two
and a half centuries. “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 168.
[6] Niebuhr’s Lecture, Roman History (English Tr.), vol. I., pp. 295,
319; George Long’s article “Lex,” in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Antiquities; Mommsen’s History of Rome (English translation), vol.
I., book I., ch. II. and book II., ch. 2.
[7] _Codex Justin. lib. ix, tit. 18._
The “Dialogue on Witches and Witchcraft,” published by the Percy Society
from the literature of the middle ages, presents the reasons and basis
for the belief in Witchcraft, “in which is layed open how craftily the
divell deceiveth not onely the witches, but many other, and so leadeth
them awrie into manie great errours, By George Giffard, Minister of God’s
word, in Malden, published in 1603.”
In this Dialogue, Daniel quotes Christ’s words, as reported by Marke,
that his name is “Legion, for we are many,” as evidence of the existence
of “multitudes and armies of divels, as we see in the Gospel.” The
command of the Mosaic law “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” is
quoted as a sufficient reason for rooting them out; the words of Moses
are quoted that the Lord would cast out those nations that hearkened unto
soothsayers and diviners, pronouncing that every one that does those
things are an abomination to the Lord; that the Lord not only declared
that such as practiced witchcraft and sorcery were an abomination before
the Lord, but that they should “also bee rooted out.” (Percy Society Pub.
vol. VIII., 24, 40, 42, 52, 72.)
The belief that cats were bewitched to do the bidding of the devil, which
formed such a large part of the delusion of witchcraft, as practiced in
the middle ages, is also touched on, in the “Dialogue on Witches,” in the
above interesting publication, from the literature of the middle ages
which can be read with much amusement and entertainment, because it gives
in realistic hue, a vivid pen picture of the old delusion, just as it
existed in the early days of the seventeenth century.
[8] Cnut, II., 4; Lea. _op. cit._ iii. 420; Brunner D. R. G. ii. 678; II.
Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, p. 553.
[9] Leg. Hen. 71; II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, 553.
[10] II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, p. 553.
[11] II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, p. 553.
[12] Garinet’s “Histoire de la Magie en France.”
[13] _Ante idem._
[14] Dr. Sprenger, in his “Life of Mohammed,” computes the entire number
of persons who were burned as witches, during the _Christian epoch_, as
about _nine million_.
Tasso attributed the belief in magic and witchcraft to the Crusaders, but
M. Michaud, in his “History of the Crusades,” denies that the Crusaders
believed in witches. However, the edicts of Charlemagne demonstrate quite
conclusively that Tasso was right, for the Crusaders, in common with the
millions of their contemporaries who were votaries of the delusion of
witchcraft and sorcery, attributed the misunderstood facts in the natural
world about them, to supernatural powers of magic.
[15] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 186.
[16] Monstrelet’s Chronicle.
[17] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 194.
[18] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 195.
[19] _Ante idem._, p. 197; Danaeus, “Dialogues of Witches.”
[20] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 199.
[21] The ignorant Canadian French still believe in the Loup-garou, just
as the French did in the centuries gone by.
[22] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 201.
[23] Hutchinson, on Witchcraft.
In the year 1670 a number of women were condemned by the Parliament of
Normandy, for riding broom-sticks to the Domdaniel. Louis XIV., commuted
their sentences to banishment for life, when the Parliament of Rouen
presented to him a memorial, insisting that he set aside the order for
their commutation, but the wise King stood firm and refused to let them
be judicially murdered in his kingdom. (For this memorial in full, see
II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 289, 298.)
[24] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 226.
[25] Very severe statutes were passed during the reign of Elizabeth,
against the imaginary crime of witchcraft and sorcery. The statute 33
Henry VIII. c. 8, was repealed by I. Edward VI., c. 12 and as this left
no law in force to punish this class of offenders, it was enacted by
5 Elizabeth, c. 16, that if any person used or practiced witchcraft,
enchantment, charm or sorcery, whereby any one shall happen to be killed
or destroyed, it shall be felony, without clergy. And if anyone thereby
be wasted, consumed, or lamed, in body or member, or any of his goods
destroyed or impaired, such offender shall be imprisoned for a year, and
stand in the pillory once a quarter, during that time for six hours. (V.
Reeve’s History English Law, p. 349.)
[26] See “Butlers Hudibras,” edition by Dr. Zachary Gray (vol. II).
[27] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 237.
[28] Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe,” vol. I.
[29] Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe,” p. 146, vol. I.
[30] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 248.
[31] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 253, 254.
[32] _Ante idem._
[33] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 255.
[34] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 258.
While this hideous record of blood and murder, in the name of the law,
was being recorded in England, during the seventeenth century, a similar
record was being written, in the criminal courts of Spain, Italy,
Scotland and Germany. Thousands of innocent people lost their lives under
this charge in these countries, during this century.
As an illustration of this mad carnival of death, in Würzburg, alone in
the two years following 1627, one hundred and fifty-seven people were
burned, in twenty-nine burnings, averaging from five to six people at a
burning. The wealthy and the paupers, old and young, the ungainly and the
comely, all alike suffered in this unholy crusade.
Of the list there were three play-actors; four innkeepers; three
councilmen; fourteen vicars; the burgomaster’s lady; an apothecary’s wife
and daughter, the wife, sons and daughter of the councillor Stolzenberg
and Gobel Babelin, “the prettiest girl in the town,” thirty-two vagrants
and a large number of little innocent children, who were guilty of
no offense or crime other than that of living in a period when their
innocence was considered a crime. (Hauber’s “_Acta et Scripta Magica_.”)
[35] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 258.
[36] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft, in Outline”; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in Salem
Village.”
[37] Upham’s “Witchcraft in Outline,” p. 6.
[38] Upham’s “Witchcraft in Outline,” 6.
[39] The trial of Mary Dyer, Quaker, is presented in “Two Letters of
William Dyer,” 1659-1660.
[40] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft”; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in Salem”; Moore’s
“History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts.”
[41] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” pp. 25, 26.
[42] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” pp. 44, 45; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in
Salem,” 46, 69.
[43] Upham’s “Witchcraft in Outline,” 61.
[44] _Ante idem._, p. 69.
[45] Rose Terry Cooke, in her, “Death of Goody Nurse,” thus describes the
death of this good woman:
“They hanged this weary woman there,
Like any felon stout;
Her white hairs on the cruel rope
Were scattered all about.”
[46] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” p. 87.
[47] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” pp. 142, 143; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in
Salem,” pp. 70, 253.
[48] See article on “Demonology,” in Foreign Quarterly Review, London,
1840.
[49] Paradise Lost, book ii, Line 666.
[50] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 178.
[51] Many of the ignorant Canadian-French still believe in the delusions
of the loup-garou, or man wolf, and in the southern portion of Nigeria,
as recently shown by P. Amaury Talbot, superstition and witchcraft
lurk in all the forests and lakes of the country. Describing these
superstitions, in a recent article in the London Telegraph, Mr. Talbot
says:
“The bush with its soft green twilight, dark shadows, and quivering
lights, is peopled by many terrors, but among these ‘Ojje’, or
witchcraft, reigns supreme. The bird which flies in at your open door
in the sunlight, the bat which circles round you at night, the small
bushbeasts which cross your path while hunting, all may be familiars of
witch or wizard or even the latter themselves, disguised to do you hurt.
Sometimes the terror of witchcraft will scatter a whole town.”
And for belief in witchcraft, among the southern darkies, see Journal of
American Folk Lore, vol. III., p. 205; Bruce’s “Plantation Negro as a
Freeman”; and Jones’ “Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast.”
[52] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 277.