My brother brought up the topic of 'Salem Witch Trials' today, and how most folks have no memory or a marginal amount of knowledge over them....when comparing it to the Moore episode in Alabama.
For the twelve years of school that I attended in Alabama....I think the total number of times that the 'Trials' were mentioned were probably twice. If you gleaned the history books used....it usually amounted to eight to twelve lines. The attempt by the teacher to explain this? It would have come across to the group as nuclear science.
After the high school years....I went off and had the luxury of the University of Maryland, Louisiana Tech University, and Pierce Community College. The topic of the Salem Witch Trials likely came up on one solid occasion and the lecture guy actually did spend thirty minutes laying out the basic story. It was better than nuclear science explanations....but really didn't do justice to the story.
So a decade or so later.....I picked up two or three books and read through the entire episode and branched out....because it's more broad than folks think.
You can go back all the way to 451 BC and find locals in Greece who were open to the idea of blaming crop failures on bad spirits and pretender-witches.
You can go to 186 BC in Rome and find regulations already existing on how to handle witches.
After Christianity was introduced throughout the Roman Empire, the idea spread. At some point around the 1100s, in Hungary....the King actually wrote out a regulation to halt witch-hunts because he just plain admitted....witches don't exist. Folks didn't easily buy off on that.
In the mid-1200's, the Pope tried to stop all this business....also saying....witches don't exist. That wasn't easily grasped by the general public. Around two hundred years later, another Pope stood up and said yes.....we need witch trials because they exist.
In the 1500s and 1600s, throughout Europe, the trials took off and were a fairly regular thing. I live around 15 miles from an area (Idstein) where the trials were regularly held in the fall, and some folks had to be killed to make folks happy. In that town, they tended to kill women, about eight to one over men. No one could ever explain why women were often the chosen folks for these episodes.
In the Salem witch episode? Around February of 1692, some accusations started the locals off on a mission with purpose. You can safely say that this was...even before the accusations....a fractured town, with people trying to get into each other's business.
In the year prior, that had been some heated church-talk in the region by Cotton Mather (a Billy Graham-like character who could preach for hours and hours) on potential witchcraft, and this got people all hyped up.
So, two kids (nine and eleven) made the act of this....going into violent fits. I think this was mostly to entertain folks but these locals actually took this serious. This drew out some minister, who viewed the two girls, and he claimed that they were under the influence of the devil. A couple of other young ladies then acted out the same way.
All of this led to three folks being detained and blamed for witchcraft. There's no logic or sense to this.....just that locals needed to bring this quickly to a closure.
A month later, a couple of other young ladies were dragged in and were identified for witch business.
By early summer, court action was now underway and a prosecutor of sorts had to determine the intent of the devil here.
By mid-August, five folks were executed.
In September, around 18 other folks were dragged in and accused. One of them was a guy who they asked him to plea and make an admission....while they put heavy rocks on his chest. He eventually died from the weights on his chest.
By January of 1693, things were on a roll....more convictions. Then, the Governor got involved and started to pardon folks. In a way, he knew they were all unfocused and unable to grasp what was going on.
By early summer of 1693, the last court episode occurred, and everyone got 'sane'.
What you can typically say is that the witch trials were all based on some fake evidence, which got the general public all churned up and hyper. The public at that point....could not grasp the landscape or understand the actual laws. They just wanted a no-witch atmosphere, and were willing to kill to reach that point.
You would think that this would be a five-day detailed review in high school, with things laid out in detail. Yet, no history teacher really wants to spend any time covering the topic.
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