Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve. Episode four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five. Salem. In the stillness of winter sixteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: a creeping dread fell across the Massachusetts seaside village of Salem.
Speaker 1: Here you could hear the bare trees clung against shuttered windows,
Speaker 1: the wind ever present. If you've ever been to Salem,
Speaker 1: which I have, seems to carry something almost to natural.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to imagine it nowadays, but in
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety two this was a hard scrabble Puritans settlement
Speaker 1: on the edge of the world, and in this particular winter,
Speaker 1: men and women whispered only one thing, which is secret
Speaker 1: packs and invisible torments. That wasn't the first time that
Speaker 1: these fears had gripped a community, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1: But Salem is going to become infamous. Its fever would
Speaker 1: burn longer, spread farther, and end more tragically than most.
Speaker 1: But to understand why this happened, I need to take
Speaker 1: you back first. I need to go back all the
Speaker 1: way across the sea into Europe and explore the heart
Speaker 1: and the origin of witchcraft and which fear. Now, the
Speaker 1: idea of a witch was no idle superstition, It was
Speaker 1: grounded in theology across Europe. Beginning in the fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: Christian authorities constructed a systematic belief in diabol local witchcraft.
Speaker 1: No longer merely the village healer or cunning women, the
Speaker 1: witch was now redefined as a heretic in league with
Speaker 1: Satan himself. Manuals like the infamous Malus Malificarum The Witch's Hammer,
Speaker 1: first published in fourteen eighty seven, laid out in lurid
Speaker 1: details how witches were said to fly, conjure storms, cursed children,
Speaker 1: and engage in all kinds of sexual acts with demons,
Speaker 1: which hunts erupted in the Rhineland, France, Scotland and Switzerland.
Speaker 1: By some estimates, more than forty thousand people, mostly women,
Speaker 1: were executed as witches in Europe between fourteen fifty and
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty. New England, settled by Calvinist Puritans in the
Speaker 1: early sixteen hundreds, inherited these beliefs. Ministers warned their flocks
Speaker 1: of the devil's snares. Law codes of Massachusetts and Connecticut's
Speaker 1: expressly banned witchcraft. The legal basis often came from Exodus
Speaker 1: twenty two eighteen quote thou shalt not suffer a witch
Speaker 1: to live end quote. Trial secured sporadically in the colonies
Speaker 1: throughout the seventeenth century, in Hartford in sixteen sixty two
Speaker 1: and in Charlestown in sixteen eighty, but none reached the
Speaker 1: scale or intensity of what would follow in Salem. Central
Speaker 1: to this worldview was the belief that the devil could
Speaker 1: grant his servants a quote unquote spectral body. This was
Speaker 1: something that one could use to torment the innocent victim invisibly.
Speaker 1: If your milk spoiled, if your child grew sick, if
Speaker 1: your crops failed, it wasn't misfortune. It might be malice,
Speaker 1: and as always behind the malice was Satan. No figure
Speaker 1: better captures the complex mingling of science, superstition, and Puritan
Speaker 1: piety than Cotton Mather, the Harvard trained minister and son
Speaker 1: of the influential Increase Mather. Cotton was a man of
Speaker 1: prodigious learning. He was also a man deeply concerned with
Speaker 1: spiritual warfare. In sixteen eighty nine, he published Memorable Providences
Speaker 1: relating to Witches and Possessions, a herring account of the
Speaker 1: supposed possession of children in the Godwin family of Boston.
Speaker 1: Mather would write, quote, they the children barked like dogs,
Speaker 1: They were struck dumb, their limbs convulsed, their senses overcome
Speaker 1: end Quote Now what was the source of all these problems?
Speaker 1: According to Mather, it was a washerw and accused of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: Mather in fact personally observed the children and documented their
Speaker 1: torments in a clinical, yet faith driven prose. He concluded
Speaker 1: that Satan had indeed found an agent in the woman.
Speaker 1: The book was widely read in New England, and among
Speaker 1: its readers perhaps was eleven year old Abigail Williams, niece
Speaker 1: of the Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village. Mather's work
Speaker 1: laid the intellectual groundwork for accepting the reality of invisible
Speaker 1: affliction and demonic manipulation. He would later claim that while
Speaker 1: he urged caution in the use of spectral evidence, he
Speaker 1: believed firmly that witches were among them and must be
Speaker 1: rooted out. In a famous sixteen ninety two sermon, Mather
Speaker 1: Warren quote, witchcraft is a kind of treason in the
Speaker 1: civil man. Registrates may act against it as they would
Speaker 1: against those that would overthrow the commonwealth. All of these
Speaker 1: ideas beliefs, superstitions, quasi science would come to a head
Speaker 1: in January sixteen ninety two in the small village of Salem,
Speaker 1: Matt We'll be right after this. In January sixteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: in the village of Salem, in the home of Reverend Paris,
Speaker 1: a household crisis began to unfold. His daughter, aged nine
Speaker 1: named Betty, and niece Abigail eleven, began to suffer unexplained fits.
Speaker 1: They screamed, convulsed through objects, and claimed invisible hands were
Speaker 1: choking or pinching them. A doctor, WILLIAMS. Griggs, was called
Speaker 1: and gave a stark diagnosis the girls were a quote
Speaker 1: under an evil hand end quote. Within weeks, the symptoms
Speaker 1: spread to more and more girls in the village, Anne Putnam,
Speaker 1: Junior Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and others. Under pressure to
Speaker 1: name their tormentors. The girls accused three women, Sarah good
Speaker 1: a destitute beggar, Sarah Osborne, a sickly church absent landowner,
Speaker 1: and Tishuba, a West Indian woman enslaved by the Paris family.
Speaker 1: It's worth pointing out that notably all the girls accused
Speaker 1: quote unquote witches on the outskirts of society. Puritanism was
Speaker 1: an extremely conformist society. The three individuals named Sarah Good,
Speaker 1: Sarah Osborne, and Tishiba were those who were clearly on
Speaker 1: the outside or margins, of the Puritan life in Salem.
Speaker 1: There were people that were easy to go after. At
Speaker 1: her examination, Tishiba offered a shocking confession. She said, quote,
Speaker 1: the devil came to me and bid me serve him.
Speaker 1: End quote. She then went on to describe strange familiars
Speaker 1: black dogs, red cats, and flying on poles. She said
Speaker 1: there were other witches in Salem working with her. She declared, quote,
Speaker 1: there be four women and one man end quote. Whether coached, coerced,
Speaker 1: or perhaps deluded, her confession electrified the colony. If witches
Speaker 1: were conspiring, then they must be rooted out swiftly and
Speaker 1: according to scripture, without mercy. The months that followed saw
Speaker 1: Salem descend into utter chaos. Accusations multiplied the afflicted girl's
Speaker 1: pointed fingers with increased fervor, often at those who had
Speaker 1: spoken out interestingly against the Putnams or Reverend Paris. The
Speaker 1: political vacuum and social rivalries of Salem village, a place
Speaker 1: that had already been simmering with tension. Harvest had been
Speaker 1: bad for a time. There were tensions with Native Americans
Speaker 1: nearby provided perfect fuel for the fire, and so it
Speaker 1: was that in May of sixteen ninety two, Governor William
Speaker 1: Phipps established a special court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
Speaker 1: Chief Justice William Stoughton, a rigid and godly man, presided.
Speaker 1: The court decided that it was going to admit spectral evidence.
Speaker 1: Spectral evidences, testimony that the accused spirit had tormented someone
Speaker 1: in a dream or a vision. There were no alibis
Speaker 1: against spectral evidence because you didn't have to be there
Speaker 1: at the time. It was basically tantamount to allowing someone
Speaker 1: to testify to the accuracy of their dreams. Even Cotton Mather,
Speaker 1: in his writings, had warned against the admission of spectral
Speaker 1: evidence without other indistion of reliability, but Chief Justice Stowton
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to let it all in.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse, a saintly woman of seventy one, was accused
Speaker 1: and swiftly condemned. Her family's pleas were ignored as she
Speaker 1: was led to the gallows on July nineteenth. She maintained
Speaker 1: her innocent, stating quote, I am as innocent as the
Speaker 1: child unborn end quote That didn't save her. She swung
Speaker 1: from the noose. All the same, all nineteen were hanged.
Speaker 1: Giles Corey, refusing to submit to the court's jurisdiction, was
Speaker 1: pressed to death with stones over three agonizing days. His
Speaker 1: only words were more weight. Hundreds were accused, Jails overflowed,
Speaker 1: fear became self perpetuating. Even the wife of the Governor,
Speaker 1: Lady Mary Phipps, was rumored to be under suspicion, and
Speaker 1: still the trials marched on. By the fall, skepticism had
Speaker 1: started to grow. As accusations reached Boston elites, the social
Speaker 1: fabric began to fray. Doubt spread among the colony's leaders.
Speaker 1: It was one thing to accuse individuals who were on
Speaker 1: the margins of society, but quite another to accuse the
Speaker 1: wife of the governor. Increase mather Long, a voice of
Speaker 1: religious authority, issued a rebuke in cases of conscience concerning
Speaker 1: evil spirits. He wrote, quote, it were better that ten
Speaker 1: suspected wishes should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.
Speaker 1: Governor Phipps responded by dissolving the Court of Oyer and
Speaker 1: Terminer in October of sixteen ninety two, a new court
Speaker 1: was convened. This one would not allow spectral evidence, and
Speaker 1: within months, as a result, most of the remaining prisoners
Speaker 1: were released. No further executions occurred. By the spring of
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety three, the panic had all but subsided. The
Speaker 1: aftermath of the trials was a slow, painful reckoning. In
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety seven, the Colony declared a day of fasting
Speaker 1: and reflection. That same year, Judge Samuel Sewell stood in
Speaker 1: his pew and publicly repented, quote, God has visited me
Speaker 1: for my sins end quote. He wore a haircloth shirt
Speaker 1: for years thereafter as penance. In seventeen oh six, and
Speaker 1: Putnam Junior, one of the accusers, stood before the Salem
Speaker 1: Village church and confessed, stating, quote, I desire to be
Speaker 1: humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that
Speaker 1: befell my father's family end quote. Restitution came more slowly.
Speaker 1: In seventeen eleven, the Colony granted compensation to the heirs
Speaker 1: of those wrongfully executed, but the money could not undo
Speaker 1: what had been done. It would take until actually the
Speaker 1: year two thousand and one for all those condemned to
Speaker 1: be officially exonerated by this state of Massachusetts. You know.
Speaker 1: Ever since the Salem witch trials, historians, theologians, psychologists, and
Speaker 1: sociologists have wrestled with the same haunting question, why why
Speaker 1: did it happen? Over the centuries, a rich tapestry of
Speaker 1: explanations has been woven together, each offering a different lens
Speaker 1: on the fears that seized and gripped control of Salem Village.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest and most enduring explanations of course
Speaker 1: ponts to religion. Salem Village was a place drenched in
Speaker 1: Puritan ideology, a society where the devil was believed to
Speaker 1: walk the earth in tangible form. To these settlers, life
Speaker 1: was a fragile thread suspended between salvation and damnation. The
Speaker 1: ministers who preached from their wooden pulpits painted the devil
Speaker 1: not as a distant abstraction, but as a constant presence
Speaker 1: in the world, luring the weak and tempting even the righteous.
Speaker 1: Cotton Mather, one of the more influential ministers of New England,
Speaker 1: warned of quote an army of devils end quote among
Speaker 1: the people. In such an atmosphere, it was a short
Speaker 1: step from spiritual anxiety to just full blown which panic.
Speaker 1: Others have traced the cause to social tensions roiling beneath
Speaker 1: the surface. Salem Village in sixteen ninety two was a
Speaker 1: community divided. Old feuds over property lines, church appointments, and
Speaker 1: family alliances simmered in the background. Historians Paul Boyer and
Speaker 1: Stephen Nissenbaum, in their groundbreaking work Salem Possessed, argued that
Speaker 1: the accusations followed along these fault lines. Many of the
Speaker 1: accusers were from poorer, farming families who resented the wealthier,
Speaker 1: more commercially minded neighbors closer to Salem Town, which craft,
Speaker 1: in this view, became a weapon for the disenfranchised against
Speaker 1: the rising tide of mercantile prosperity. And then there is
Speaker 1: the theory of psychological contagion. In a rigid, high pressure
Speaker 1: society like Salem's. The stresses of constant surveillance for sin,
Speaker 1: the dangers of frontier life, and the ever present threat
Speaker 1: of Native American attacks created a perfect incubator for mass hysteria.
Speaker 1: The fits and strange behavior of young girls like Betty
Speaker 1: Paris and Abigail Williams may have been unconscious cries for help,
Speaker 1: ways of expressing rebellion in a society that offered few,
Speaker 1: if any, acceptable outlets for emotional distress. Once the first
Speaker 1: accusations were made, fear itself became more contagious. Each new
Speaker 1: arrest validated the terror of the last, until nearly everyone
Speaker 1: could see themselves imagining, which is everywhere. A more physiological
Speaker 1: theory surfaced in the nineteen seventies when historian and researcher
Speaker 1: Linda Kapol suggested that villagers symptoms hallucinations, convulsions, a sense
Speaker 1: of creeping doom might have been caused by ergot poisoning. Ergot,
Speaker 1: a fungus that grows on rye and other grains, can
Speaker 1: produce a chemical very similar to LSD. Contaminated bread could
Speaker 1: have introduced a real psychological madness into Salem's kitchens and taverns.
Speaker 1: While this theory remains controversial and many historians doubt its likelihood,
Speaker 1: it captures the eerie blending of the natural and supernatural
Speaker 1: defines this Salem story and part of what makes it
Speaker 1: so enduring. Of course, there were political factors too. At
Speaker 1: the time of the trials, Massachusetts was undergoing the political
Speaker 1: crisis its original charter had been revoked by the English
Speaker 1: Crown and a new one had just been implemented. In
Speaker 1: the instability and uncertainty that followed, the judicial system was
Speaker 1: fragile and ad hoc. Governor William Phipps, newly arrived and
Speaker 1: eager to assertain control, allowed the establishment of the Court
Speaker 1: of Oyer and Terminaire, which relied heavily on spectral evidence,
Speaker 1: the testimony of an afflicted that the spirit respector had
Speaker 1: harmed them. It was a legal house of cards, vulnerable
Speaker 1: to collapse under the way of fear and ambition. Finally,
Speaker 1: some scholars have emphasized the rule of gender. Nearly all
Speaker 1: the accused were women, many of them marginalized either by poverty, widowhood,
Speaker 1: or their refusal to conform to expected norms of female behavior.
Speaker 1: In a world where women were expected to be silent, obedient,
Speaker 1: and pious, those who stepped outside the prescribed boundaries became
Speaker 1: easy targets. As historian Carol Carlson has pointed out, the
Speaker 1: Salem witch trials can be seen as a violent reinformation
Speaker 1: of gender hierarchies at a moment when traditional structures were
Speaker 1: under pressure. In the end, no single explanation fully captures
Speaker 1: why Salem fell into madness. Rather, it seems that the
Speaker 1: witch Trials were just a combination of many factors, religious zeal,
Speaker 1: social strife, psychological trauma, maybe biological absence, political instability, and
Speaker 1: ever present gender tensions. Like a dark mirror, Salem reflects
Speaker 1: to us the hidden fears and fractures of our society
Speaker 1: even today. Maybe that's why it continues to haunt us still.
Speaker 1: I think the Salem Witch Trials endure because they reveal
Speaker 1: something really primal about human nature, the yearning for order
Speaker 1: amidst chaos, the temptation always to blame outsiders and the ease,
Speaker 1: and which fear can be weaponized. They remind us that
Speaker 1: justice without due process is a sword that cuts too deep.
Speaker 1: But the trials also bookend in age no belief in
Speaker 1: witches would persist. Salem marked the last time that the
Speaker 1: full force of the state would be used in New
Speaker 1: England to combat a supernatural threat, suggesting we did actually
Speaker 1: learn from it. In the century sense, authors, dramatists, and
Speaker 1: scholars have returned to Salem again and again. To some,
Speaker 1: it's a parable of the dangers of fanaticism. To others,
Speaker 1: it's a cautionary tale about political power. And social constrol.
Speaker 1: But in its essence, Salem remains a story of people ordinary, frightened, devout,
Speaker 1: convinced they were under siege by the Devil himself. In
Speaker 1: their fear, they lick fires that consume their neighbors. Now,
Speaker 1: next time, we're actually going to shift, finally, a little
Speaker 1: bit back away from the North American continent, back across
Speaker 1: the pond to England, where the English Civil War is
Speaker 1: going to erupt, changing English society and eventually American society
Speaker 1: once and for all.