Why did witch hunts occur

Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. Though the Salem trials came on just as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset. Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. The displaced people created a strain on Salem's resources. This aggravated the existing rivalry between families with ties to the wealth of the port of Salem and those who still depended on agriculture.

Controversy also brewed over Reverend Samuel Parris, who became Salem Village's first ordained minister in , and was disliked because of his rigid ways and greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed all the quarreling was the work of the Devil. In January of , Reverend Parris' daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having "fits.

Another girl, Ann Putnam, age 11, experienced similar episodes. On February 29, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris' Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman.

All three women were brought before the local magistrates and interrogated for several days, starting on March 1, Osborne claimed innocence, as did Good. But Tituba confessed, "The Devil came to me and bid me serve him. She admitted that she signed the book and said there were several other witches looking to destroy the Puritans. All three women were put in jail. With the seed of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed for the next few months.

Charges against Martha Corey, a loyal member of the Church in Salem Village, greatly concerned the community; if she could be a witch, then anyone could. When a local doctor was unable to cure the girls, a supernatural cause was suggested and suspicions of witchcraft emerged. Soon three townswomen were accused of witchcraft: Tituba, a slave, Sarah Good, a poor beggar and social misfit, and Sarah Osborne, a quarrelsome woman who rarely attended church. While the matter might have ended there with the three unpopular women serving as scapegoats, during the trial Tituba— possibly to avoid being unfairly prosecuted— declared she was a witch and that she and the other accused women flew through the air on poles.

With skeptics silenced, witch hunting began in earnest. Before long, accusations of witchcraft abounded and the jails filled with suspects who confessed to witchcraft, seeing it as a means to avoid hanging.

Evidence that would be disallowed today— hearsay, gossip, unsupported assertions— was routinely admitted, while defendants had no right to counsel or appeal.

Through the rest of , in a climate of fear, accusations flew, many were convicted, and a number were put to death. By the fall of the witch hunting hysteria began to die down as more and more people began to doubt that so many people could be guilty of witchcraft. People urged the courts not to admit spectral evidence and to rely instead on clear and convincing testimony. Once spectral evidence was no longer admissible, acquittals abounded, and the three originally convicted women were pardoned.

In May of the remaining accused and convicted witches were released from prison. Over the course of the Salem witch hysteria, of the people who were arrested and the 26 who were convicted, 14 women and 5 men were executed.

The Salem Witch Trials only lasted a little over a year and had very little practical impact on the Colonies at large. The puritanical colonialists who came from England rigorously cracked down on suspected witchcraft in their attempt to establish a theocracy in New England.

Fourteen women and five men were executed and dozens were tortured. August 10 marks the World Day against Witch Hunts. Held for the first time this year, the day was created by the Pontifical Mission Societies known in German as missio to shed light on a global problem that is still affecting too many people today. Between the late 15th and the 18th century, approximately 60, people around Europe were executed for supposedly being witches.

Offences such as allegedly flying on a broom or conjuring up crop failures were severely punished. Many confessions were forced through torture and the way they were executed was often horrendous. The historian told DW about parallels between the past and today.

Wolfgang Behringer: Calling someone a witch stigmatized them. You might call someone this because you wanted to harm them, or because you were afraid of someone to whom you attributed magical powers. In Europe, they were often women, but not always. There were certainly similarities between being labelled as a witch in Europe and in other parts of the world such as in Africa, Latin America or South-East Asia. In many cases the suspicion is directed against older women without relatives who could protect them, and against women who were perhaps a little bit odd.

In anthropology, it is said that they have something to do with misfortune — and that's pretty much how it is. Either it is about personal misfortune, for example the illness of a child, a paralysis that occurs, or the sudden death of a child. These kinds of cases affect individuals. There are also collective misfortunes, such as when livestock die or a hailstorm destroys a harvest. Then it is not only individual plaintiffs who appear, but rather entire communities who demand that the authorities prosecute the witches to avert the disaster.

Read more: How German took on its modern shape. Actual European witch-hunting did not begin until the 15th century when the Roman Church agreed with the view that this crime could even exist. Before that, since Christianization in the early Middle Ages, the Church took the view that witchcraft was actually a spiritual error.

But in the course of persecuting those who deviated from the faith, in the 15th century, the Roman Church came to the conclusion that witchcraft was real.

That was when things became dangerous in Europe; when not only the population but also the Church and the state courts believed in witchcraft. This "legal" persecution of witches lasted from the 15th century until the 18th century. In Europe, it peaked between and In 'Malleus Maleficarum' 'Hammer of Witches' in English published in , the Dominican monk Heinrich Kramer explained how to recognize a witch and how to force her to confess. There had always been opposition against the alleged existence of witches, against witch trials and against the behavior of authorities who allowed the persecution of witches to take place.

Just like today, lawyers back then believed that those accused should be innocent until proven guilty.