Historical Summary

SPORADIC upsurges of "hexing" in the Pennsylvania Dutch country attest the virility of witchcraft even in the Age of the H-Bomb. But in the Middle Ages witches were universally believed to be malignant beings who practiced all forms of the black art. Fearful persecutions of suspects followed, notably between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Witchcraft became an easy means of destroying an enemy or confiscating an estate.

On this side of the ocean witches were tried and executed in a number of the colonies, culminating in an unsurpassed ecstasy of witch-hunting in the year 1692, when a score of suspects were put to death in the Massachusetts town of Salem. When, several years earlier, the children of a Boston mason named Goodwin became afflicted with fits, a nervous, tensely suspicious community was thrown into paroxysms of fear. Several rag dolls were found in the house of an old, half-crazy Irish Catholic laundress. She confessed to having stroked them in order to torment her victims, the Goodwin children, and was executed.

At this point Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan minister, stepped into the picture. He brought the oldest Goodwin girl into his own home for observation and reported her every movement. Knowing nothing of child psychology, Mather had the wool pulled over his eyes. It was a field day for juvenile exhibitionism, and it all was solemnly recorded in Mather’s Memorable Providences (1689).

The climax of the witchcraft mania occurred in Salem Village. A group of young girls, steeped in West Indian voodoo lore, which they had picked up from two slaves, began to shout that they were "afflicted." They went through all sorts of contortions and acted like creatures possessed. They accused one neighbor after another of torturing them. Most notable of all the victims of their hysterical accusations was the Reverend George Burroughs, whose trial as reported by Cotton Mather in his notorious Wonders of the Invisible World has been included in our anthology. On the scaffold the condemned minister moved the crowd by the obvious sincerity of his remarks. The bystanders muttered. But Cotton Mather hurriedly came forward and satisfied the audience that the execution was an act of justice. This dramatic scene has been reported through the sympathetic eyes of Robert Calef, a clear-sighted opponent of the witch mania, who witheringly attacked Mather in his More Wonders of the Invisible World. The adolescents realized that they had the community completely at their mercy. They grew more reckless in their accusations, and the magistrates finally called a halt. Five years afterwards, Judge Samuel Sewall got up in Old South Church and courageously acknowledged his error.

Cotton Mather asserted that there was a "plot of the Devil against New England." Nevertheless, he denied his account of the trials was that of an "advocate" but insisted that he was an "historian." The court placed its imprimatur upon his report of the trials.

Key Quote

Certain wonders of the invisible world are witnessed by an insider: "It cost the Court a wonderful deal of trouble to hear the testimonies of the sufferers."