Witchcraft

sorcery, the practice of the "black art." A witch may be a person of either sex, but particularly a woman, who has made a bargain with the devil. Later and better usage applies the term witch exclusively to women. The corresponding masculine word is wizard. From the remotest age the notion has been prevalent that certain persons sell their souls to the devil, receiving in return a diabolical power to commit acts beyond the ability of human beings. Witches were believed able to pass through keyholes, to ride in the air on broomsticks, to sail on the ocean in a sieve, to bring sickness on an enemy, and to perform many other acts of an evil nature. Their arts were practiced for evil, not for good. Not infrequently witches were believed to have power of prophesy. The Hebrews believed in witches. Saul, it may be remembered, visited the witch of Endor, a woman possessed of a familiar spirit, in order to inquire his probable fate at the approaching battle of Gilboa. Joan of Arc was condemned and burned as a witch in 1431. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull against sorcery. During the three centuries that followed it is estimated, but on somewhat discredited authority, that 300,000 women were executed in Europe on imaginary charges. The last European execution occurred at Glarus, Switzerland, in 1782. As late as 1770 two negroes were burned at Kaskaskia at the door of the French church but under Virginian authority. The delusion lingered longer in Spanish-America than elsewhere. Five alleged witches were burned alive by a mob in Mexico as late as 1877. The Spanish Inquisition was intrusted with the duty of burning witches.

Henry VIII of England employed witch detectives to travel the country and bring witches to the stake. Macbeth is represented by Shakespeare as consulting the three weird sisters. About this time, James VI of Scotland, afterward James I of England, ordered the torture applied to discover the cause of the tempests which had troubled his homeward passage with his bride, Princess Anne of Denmark. "Dr. Fian, while his legs were crushed in the boots, and wedges were driven under his finger nails, confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from the port of Leith and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the princess." It is said that the royal James attended the trial by torture of 200 witches who were burned for producing this storm. As substantial an authority as the Encyclopedia Britannica in the issue of 1797 says: "The reality of demoniacal possession stands upon the same evidence with the gospel system in general."

It is not strange that the delusion of witchcraft should have had a run in the American colonies. The English laws against witchcraft were adopted in New England as early as 1678, and some forty persons were executed, half of them during the "Salem madness." It was in 1692 that this terrible outbreak occurred. A niece and daughter of the parish minister at Danvers, then a part of Salem, began to act strangely. They accused an old servant woman in the family of bewitching them. The alarm of the family spread to the community and the colony. A terrible fear spread like a panic. It was believed that the colony was full of persons in the service of the devil and that no one's person or soul was safe from the machinations of the evil one.

A belief in a secret society of poisoners could not create more excitement at the present time than did this New England belief in witches. Scarce anyone escaped suspicion. Even magistrates and clergymen were accused. One worthy minister, a Mr. Burroughs, was executed. Cotton Mather, a leading clergyman of the day, an eminent scholar and divine, did much to encourage the investigation. During the summer of this year twenty persons were put to death. When the legislature convened in October there were 150 accused persons in prison. The public had no sooner time to rally than the scales fell from people's eyes and the cause of the excitement was seen clearly to be a delusion.