The years between 1550 and 1700, the approximate duration of the witchcraze, were years of change. The feudal era was coming to a close: but the capitalist era had not yet begun. A large pool of wage laborers was needed for the nascent capitalist system, peasants were driven off the land, and women's economic opportunities and status declined as women moved with their families from the farm to the cities. Women's traditional source of independent income, the kitchen gardens and the dairy, disappeared along with the peasant farms. Unemployment and famine were wide spread. The peasants suffered.

      The Spanish Inquisition to rid Catholic lands of heretics, lapsed Jewish converts (Morranos) and lapsed Moorish converts, desensitized Europeans to the use of torture to accomplish the ends of the church and the state. Eventually these techniques of torture would be used against Christians who opposed the state. And the peasants suffered.

      Posting his Ninety-Five Thesis to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany Martin Luther instigated the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The Catholic CounterReformation is generally dated from 1542 when Pope Paul III renewed the Inquisition. Catholics fought Protestants, Protestants fought Catholics, and Protestants fought each other. 50,000 Huguenots (French Protestants) were murdered by the French Catholic government in the St. Bathrolomew's Day Massacre in 1572. Religious upheaval and war swept across Europe. The Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, the upper nobility, and the upper clergy were pitted against the minor nobility, the minor clergy, the cities, and the peasants. As always in time of war and upheaval the peasants suffered.

      Science (Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, and others) was beginning to question of authority of the Bible in scientific matters. Yet, in 1616 the Catholic church was powerful enough to issue an edict against Copernicanism and in 1633 to condemn Galileo. And the peasants were afraid to think anything but what the church told them to think. And the peasants suffered.

      Discovery, exploration, conquest, and colonization dominated the news: America was discovered, Native Americans were subjugated, the African slave trade began, passages to the Orient were opened, and Mexico, Florida, Virginia, New England, New Amsterdam (later, New York) were colonized. For the rich and powerful, times were exciting and the lessons learned during the Inquisition about terror were used to control the newly enslaved Africans. The influx of gold and silver into Spain from the New World caused inflation to race across Europe. And the weak, poor, powerless peasants suffered.

      Modern nation-states were coming into being in Great Britain, France, and Spain; central governments accumulated power at the expense of local governments. Courts of law, once a village affair, were moved to the cities. In the hands of far-off magistrates, justice often was denied. And the peasants suffered.

      Men believed in the supernatural, in devils, magic, spells, incantations, and prayers. Bad omens, evil, destruction, suffering, and pain were everywhere. The secular elites told the peasants who was to blame: witches were loose in the land, cursing everyone and everything. Sin has always been subject to fashion and fashion then, as now, was set by the rich and powerful in their own interests. The religious elites developed a theology that said: Thou shall not suffer a witch to live. The church claimed that witchcraft was treason against God: the state claimed that witchcraft was treason against the ruler. Whether in Catholic or Protestant land, witches were to blame. And the powerless, suffering peasants knew that the elites spoke true: "All of our troubles would go away if only we rid ourselves of witches."

      Witches were often practitioners of folk medicine, including gynecological services, such as, assistance in child birth, contraception ,and abortion. Herbal remedies, psychology, common sense, spells, incantations and prayers, were the tools in these folk healers arsenal. (These tools were the same tools used by the university- trained male physicians and priests but few of them were accused of witchcraft.) Respected by their communities as physicians are in our own time, they were feared, too, since the natural and supernatural powers that are used to cure can also be used to harm. Strong women accustomed to being consulted and listened to, outspoken, often to the point of being brazen, learned, respected, feared, and self-employed (a modicum of independent income), these women were often poor. In earlier times, women were honored to be known as witches. Some, possibly, practiced the old, pre-Christian folk religions.

      Accusers came from a higher class, if only slightly higher class, than the accused. Women were accused as witches by a variety of people: by enemies of their husbands in political power plays, by husbands who wanted to be rid of them, by relatives who wanted to inherit their property, by vengeful neighbors, by the church, priests, prosecutors, judges, witch hunters, witch prickers, torturers, and executioners who depended on the witch trials for their livelyhoods.

      For the accused, brutal torture and mutilation, "body searches for witch marks" often accompanied by rape (who cares if a witch is raped), and imprisonment, also often accompanied by rape.

      For the convicted, death by burning at the stake or occasionally, more mercifully by hanging or strangulation.

      For the rare few who were acquitted, a lifetime of poverty and suspicion by the community that maybe she really is a witch. Often she was eventually banishment from the village.

      Women learned to distrust other women. After all, what woman would not accuse another woman under the influence of torture. For two centuries we women feared to speak out for our own rights and to join together to assert those rights: torture, mutilation, rape, abandonment, imprisonment and death were deeply etched in our psyche. Today we still turn from one another out of misplaced fear.

      So, when you see a cardboard witch, remember the depths of misogyny to which, at least some, men will sink. We must stand together and say "Never again will we permit others to use us as scapegoats for the failed policies of the rich and powerful. Never again will men be permitted to punish women for the wrong-doings of other men. Never again will we allow the spotlight to fall on us while the rich and powerful loot, rape, plunder, enslave, and pillage." And remember our murdered sisters, many of whom were innocent of any crime deserving mutilation, torture, and death.

Victims of the Salem Witch Trials:

1 hanged June 10, 1692: Briget Bishop
5 hanged July 19, 1692: Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wild, Susanna Martin, and Elizabeth How
5 hanged Aug 5, 1692: John Willard, old George Jacobs, Martha Carrier, John and Elizabeth Procter
8 hanged Sept 22, 1692: Martha Cory, Alice Parker and Ann Pudeator of Salem Town, Mary Esty, Margaret Scott of Rowley, Mary Parker of Andover, Wilmott Redd of Marblehead, Samuel Wardwell

Giles Cory, husband of Martha Cory, (who was accused after strenuously defending his wife against charges of witchcraft) died under torture. He was pressed to death under a large load of stones.

References:

The Devil in Massachusetts, A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials, Marion L. Starkey, Anchor Books, 1949
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England, Carol Karlsen, Norton, 1987
Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts, Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Pandora, 1994
Woman, Church, and State, Matilda Joslyn Gage, about 1894, reprinted by Arno Press, 1972

Encarta computerized encyclopedia
Grolier's computerized encyclopedia

"The Parliament of Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four hundreed women at one hour on the public square, dying the horrid death of fire for a crime which never existed save in the imagination of those persecutors and which grew in their imagination from a false belief in woman's extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory as to original sin."

Matilda Joslyn Gage
Woman, Church, and State (1893)

Rebecca Nurse, reputed to be prudent, charitable, an accomplished wife and mother to 8 children, a devout church goer with an unimpeachable character, lived a very uneventful live until the spring of 1692 when she was accused of witchcraft. Almost completely deaf, Mrs. Nurse was questioned while in her sick bed regarding her association with witchcraft. Since Mrs. Nurse was deaf, her answers to the questions were unintelligible. She did however deny any connection with witchcraft. The commission investigating her decieded that she did not take the charges against her seriously. Taken from her sick bed, she was questioned in court. Records indicate that she understood none of the court proceedings. Although forty persons at the hazard of their own lives testified to her character, she was convicted of witchcraft. A reprieve from the governor was voided by the church. At the age of 70, on July 19, 1692, Rebecca Nurse was hung.

The Devil in Massachusetts, A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials, Marion L. Starkey, Anchor Books, 1949
Woman, Church, and State, Matilda Joslyn Gage, about 1894, reprinted by Arno Press, 1972

A quote from Starkey on the logic of the prosecutors:
"Lawson had hit on the answer to the question that had most troubled the devout: how was it that those who had been considered true professors of the faith, Martha Cory and Rebecca Nurse, could be guilty of this thing? It became perfectly clear when one thought it over; what could Satan hope to accomplish with slaves and tramps whom no one respected? If his aim was to undermine the whole community he would naturally work with his whole force upon the respected and outwardly devout. What pressure he must have exerted to seduce these poor women, and what a pity that he had so hardened their hearts that not even Rebecca could be induced to confess." Starkey page 86

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