Witchcraft and Witch Trials

WITCHCRAFT AND WITCH TRIALS. I. General History, Official Deliverances Prior to the

Reformation (§ 1).

Official Responsibility and Private

Discussion (§ 2).
Individual Opposition (§ 3).
Superstition Abolished; Survivals (§ 4).

I. General History: In primitive belief the witch

is a person who by supernatural means .injures the

possessions of her neighbors or~of the inhabitants of a district, directing her destructive activity particu larly against the corn and wine and cattle and what nourishes the cattle. Witchcraft is in general the accomplishment of some purpose through the help

of supernatural means, particularly

I. Official through subordinated spirits with

Deliver- which alliance is made. It involves

ances Prior belief in such spirits and in the possi

to the Ref- bility of entering into association with ormation. them and in a practical philosophy of magic (see Magic). But these dealings may upon such grounds as the injury done to others be regarded as punishable offenses, especially under the control of a religion of revelation. But the better ground for interdiction of these practises lies in the essential impiety and idolatry which witch craft involves. On this ground witchcraft was for bidden by the Mosaic law (Deut. xviii. 10 sqq.), and also by the early Christian Church either on the ground of the emptiness of the practise or of its positive godlessness and commerce with the devil.

A less strenuous opposition was begun in the early

Middle Ages, as, for example, at the Synod of Reis

bach (799 A.D.), where rules of penance were made

for women convicted of witchcraft, but capital pun-

II. In Great Britain and the American Colonies. Legal Provisions against witchcraft (§ I).

Classes Affected by the Belief (§ 2).
Prosecutions in Great Britain (§ 3).

Early Prosecutions in the Colonise Q 4).

The Salem Episode; Early Stage 0 5).

The Later Stages and End (§ 8).

The Financial and Moral Effects

Psychological Problems (§ 8).

iahment was prohibited (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, iii. 730). John of Damascus occupied a similar standpoint in his writing " Concerning Dragons and Witches " (MPG, xciv. 1599-1604), in treating of the superstitions among Jews and Saracens; and to the same purport may be cited Agobard of Lyon (d. 840 A.D.) and John of Salisbury (d. 1180 A.D.), all holding witchcraft to be a delusion. At the beginning of the thirteenth century at the erection of the Inquisition the use of magic and heresy were regarded as two aides of the same offense and as the desertion-..of God for the service of evil spirits. Yet this very action of the Inquisition diffused and strengthened the superstition. Gregory IX., drawing his information from Conrad of Marburg, in a bull of the year 1231 invoked the use of civil punishment against heretical associations at the meetings of which the devil appeared as a toad or a ghost or a black cat. Dominican theologians were, however, the principal diffusers of belief in these meetings with the devil and of the superstitions of incubi and succubi, going back to Augustine, " City of God," xv. 23. The Dominican inquisitor Nicolas Eymericus wrote in 1376 his Directorium inqttisito rium, setting forth the use of magic as heretical, and stigmatizing those who used it as infadetes, superstitiosi, apostake, and subject to the Inquisition. Innocent VIII. in his bull of 1484 renewed the provi-

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eione which brought witches under the judgment of the Inquisition, and enlarged the powers of the inquisitors upon the basis of the close relationship between witchcraft and heresy (the text of the bull 1s in G. Roakoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leapsae, 1869, ii. 222-225). Supplementing these directions there was put forth under the Dominican inquisitors Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kromer a great work directing the process of inquiry into witchcraft, viz., the celebrated Mslleus malefccarum (Cologne, 1489, and very frequently thereafter), the title of which notes as a peculiarity that the practise of leaguingwith the devil was charged principally upon women. The first book shows the proof of.the occurrence of the offense and its deteatability accord!ng to Deut. xviii. and Lev. xix.-xx., and cites Augustine, St. Thomas,and experience. The second book continues along the line of experience and directs in the methods of detecting, dismissing, and curing the evils. The third book introduces the matter of trials and punishments. While the ordinary tribunals are competent, the union of heresy and witchcraft makes the inquisitors' duty plain, and there is no need to wait for an accuser; the witnesses need not be named; a counsel for defense was not necessary, indeed if such a one were too zealous he might be suspected of complicity in the offense; instruments of torture ass suggested. The authority moat quoted by this book is the Farmi csrius of Johann Nader (d. 1438), dependent upon Wisd. Sol., vi. 6.

Thus a few centuries before the Reformation, in part under direct stimulus from the popes, there was a great increase of belief in witches and of prosecution of those charged with the offense.

z. Official Modern apologies for the bull of Inao- Responsi- cent VIII. miss the mark altogether in

bility sad view of the chain of deliverances from Private the papal chair, including those of Discussion. Alexander VI., Julius II., Leo., and Hadrian VI. That the sponsors for the Reformation made no point of opposing specifically the attack upon witchcraft even in the countries evangelized rests upon the general background of conception of such possibilities as existed in the minds of the ministry during the last two centuries prior to the Reformation. The Elector August of Saxony included in his criminal code of 1572 as a capital offense "that anyone should forget his Christian faithand make an agreement with the devil." Wachter speaks of the epidemic of witchcraft which broke out in Germany at the end of the fifteenth century, and resulted in the prosecution of thousands of unfortunates; and when the spread of the epidemic into France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and England is taken into account, the victims coming not only out of the Catholic but out of the Protestant Church, the estimate of many thousands is not beyond bounds. Not the least guilty part of the process was the secularizing of the trials, i.e., the turning of the trials over to the civil power, which took place in Protestant countries at the end of the sixteenth century. The earlier dependence upon "Italian habit and teaching" continued, and the conception was fostered by the makers of the confessions as a part of orthodox belief, while among

the masses of the people the superstition had the strongest hold. Among the Roman Catholic theorists who sought to justify the experiences of the witch trials by philosophical principles were Jean Bodin (Magorum dcenwnomania, Basel, 1579), Peter Binafeld, the suffraga,n bishop of Treves, the Jesuit Martin del Rio of Antwerp (Disguisitiones magtco, Louvain, 1599), and Georg Stengel of Ingolstadt (d. 1651, De judiciis). On the Protestant side the subject was discussed by the Heidelberg physician Thomas Erastus (Repetitio disputationis de lamiis seu strigibus, Basel, 1578); James I. of England (Dcemonologie, Edinburgh, 1597), and especially Benedict Carpzov (PrscticcE nova . . . rerum criminalium, Leipsic, 1635).

In recent times Protestants and Roman Catholics have joined in showing the unreality at the basis of this aeries of conceptions. It is due to the work of a Bonn professor of medicine, C. Bins, 3. Individual that a series of Protestant oppoaers of

Opposition. witch trials have become known as in past centuries exerting their powers in this direction. Thus the Lutheran Johann Weier (d. 1588) wrote the oldest Latin treatise against the practise of trying,witches (De preestigiis dcemonum, Frankfort, 1566), and he had several doughty followers during the sixteenth century. Similarly the German Protestant John Ewich, physician at Bremen (1584), Johann Georg Godelmann, professor of law at Rostock, and Augustin Lerchheimer, professor at Heidelberg (Christlich Bedencken and Erinnerung von Zauberei, Heidelberg, 1585, new ed., Strasburg, 1888), as well as the English Reginald Scot (d.1599; The Discovery of Witchcraft, London, 1584, reprint, 1886), energetically opposed the burning of witches. The Arminian preacher J. Greve, of Arnheim . in Holland (Tribunal reformktum, 1622), was another forerunner of the Jesuits Tanner and Spee. Tanner's Theologis scholastics appeared in 4 vols., Ingolstadt, 1626, and Spee's book was five years later, both protesting against the prosecution of the witches. The same cause was espoused at the end of the seventeenth century by Baathasar Bekker (De Betoverde Wereld, Leeuwarden, 1691), and at the beginning of the eighteenth by Christian Thomasius (Theses de crimine msgia;, Halle, 1701).

The century of the Aufklkrung was not quite free from official execution of witches on German or German-Swiss territory. In W�rzburg in 1'T49 occurred the burning of the nun Marie Renate Singer, in Memmingen in 1775 the be-

4. Super- heading of Anna Maria Schwagelin,

stition and in 1782 that of the serving-mead Abolished; Anna Goldi at Glarus. Since then the

Survivals. dreadful epidemic seems to have died out; at least from European lands. But in Roman Catholic Middle and South America prosecution for witchcraft has survived almost to the present. Execution by burning for the alleged crime was visited upon a woman at Camargo in Mexico in 1860, upon a woman and her son in San Juan de Jacobo in the Mexican state of Sinaloa in 1874, and upon a woman, after frequent castigation, in the market-place of a city of Peru in 1888. That this should be the case under Roman Catholic dom ination is not surprising when it is recalled that a ,, ~ a I ~ ~i ~; ~ : ii a i ~ 5 ~ i E I~

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basis is laid for it in the Thomistic theology, which is practically the officially recognized and normative system of the Roman Catholic Church.

(O. Zöckler†.)

II. In Great Britain and the American Colonies: The belief in witchcraft was one of the earliest delusions entertained by man under the primitive dualism which events in the sphere of nature made

to appear so much a matter of course r. Legal (see Comparative Religion, VI., 1, a, §§ 4-5

Provisions ). That legislation under the

against earlier civilizations should take cogWitchcraft. nizance of it was equally a matter of

course. Thus Hammurabi (see Hammurabi and His Code, II., § 2; cf. DB, extra vol., p. 599) began his codified legislation with two sections dealing with the subject, and the Brahman and Zoroastrian legislation has much to say on it. Under Christianity the basis of the synodical, papal, and scholastic pronouncements described in the preceding discussion was found in the Mosaic and prophetic denunciations (e.g., Ex. xxii. 18; Deut. xviii. 10-11; Micah v. 12). The Biblical interdiction together with the remnants of heathen superstition aided in perpetuating the belief; and this accounts for the fact that the educated, especially the clergy, were so prominent in the actual outbreaks which occurred like epidemics. In Western Europe the seventeenth century may be described as the era of the witchcraft delusions, exemplified by the execution of seventy persons in Sweden in 1670, while 1,000 are reported to have been executed in a single province in Italy in one year. This epidemic period was anticipated by sporadic prosecutions of witches in the previous century. In England, Scotland, and the North American colonies the actual prosecutions were based on legal provisions which were provided from time to time, beginning in the sixteenth century. In England witchcraft, defined as a compact made by man or woman with. Satan, was made a felony in 1541 under King Henry VIII. (33 Henry VIII., chap. 8), and this act was extended under Elizabeth in 1562. The volume of James I. referred to above was partly the occasion of the new act of parliament in the first year of his reign (1603; 1 James I., chap. 12) exactly defining the crime. A well-known legal authority (M. Dalton, The Countrey Justice, London, 1618, latest ed., 1746) had a chapter on witchcraft aiming to define exactly the marks on the body of a witch. In Scotland the first act on the subject was dated 1563, amended 1649, under which the clergy were often the instruments of justice and presbyteries frequently the petitioners for the same. The repeal of the laws in England and Scotland in 1735 evoked many and persistent protests from high and low. Massachusetts in 1641 made witchcraft a capital offense; Connecticut followed in December, 1642; and in 1655 New Haven Colony based a similar law explicitly upon Ex. xxii. 18; Lev. xx. 27; and Deut. xviii. 10-11.

One of the noteworthy features of the witchcraft prosecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, due in part to the Biblical basis, is the eminence of those in Church, State, science, and society, who supported by voice and act the idea itself and the civil procedure against witches. Thus

Cranmer, in 1549 (Articles of Visitation), enjoined the clergy to make inquiries concerning the practise

of witchcraft. Bishop Jewel in a sera. Classes mon before Queen Elizabeth in 1558

Affected lamented the multiplication of witches. by RichardBaxter's Certainty of the the Belief. Worlds of Spirits (London, 1691) places

him on record to the same effect. Cotton Mother in New England, who served on a commission to advise the special court which tried the cases and suggested caution in accepting certain lines of evidence offered (though on grounds which emphasize the extravagance of the superstition), approved after six executions at Salem the evidence and the convictions which resulted so fatally (Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World, Boston, 1693). The offense was understood as cognizable in courts of justice by great English jurists like Sir Edward Coke and Sir Matthew, Hale, while Lord Bacon and Sir Henry More gave utterance to their belief in the reality of compacts made between human beings and Satan. William Penn is reported to have sat as justice at the trial of two Swedish women accused of witchcraft, and they escaped only through a technicality in the proceedings. Physicians diagnosed cases as due to witchcraft. The pronouncement of Dr. Griggs, the Salem village physician in the case of the "afflicted" children of that place, is responsible in large part for the prosecutions which made it notorious, in which, between Mar. and Sept., 1692, nineteen were hanged and one was pressed to death. While among the people the opinions of the educated were reflected with a thousand weird and fantastic enlargements.

Under the Scotch statutes in Aberdeen in 1597 twenty-four persons were burned at the stake for this offense: At Prestonpans (?) Isobel Grieraon

met the same fate in 1607, a part of 3: Prose- the evidence being that she had ap-

cutions in peered in the form of a cat to work Great her evil deeds. In 1617 twenty-seven

Britain. persons were executed in Aberdeen or

the vicinity; in 1622 Margaret Wallace suffered death, her accuser being the minister at Garmunnock; and an intimate of hers, Alexander Hunter or Hatteraie, shortly after suffered death; Alice Nisbet was executed at Hilton in 1632. In the same vicinity the year 1643 saw several executions, some of them by mobs, one by the awful penalty of pressing to death. Ninety women are reported to have been hanged in Scotland in 1645, and 120 in 1661. Possibly the last execution for this cause in that country was that of Little Dean at Dornocli in 1722. In England the authority of King James I. gave increased currency to the belief in witches. In 1645-47 the infamous witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins, ran his horrible course, and in that time in Suffolk and Essex 200 witches were tried and most of them executed (J.. Howell, Familiar Letters, 1645, 10th ed., Aberdeen, 1753). .In 1664 two women were tried in Suffolk before Sir Matthew Hale, who then affirmed the certainty of the fact of witchcraft.

When in the mother country there was manifested among all classes so lively a sense of the supposedly supernatural, reenforced by official prose-

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Witchcraft cution and executions, it is not surprizing that the infection should have found lodgment in the colonies where contact with Indian su- 4. Early perstition was so close. The legal pro-

Prosecu- visions already cited are an index of tions in the public official opinion. The first victim

Colonies. in the colonies, so far as extant testi mony goes, was Alse Young (not Mary Johnson) in Windsor, Conn. (in all probability the case referred to by J. Winthrop, History of New England, ed. J. Savage, ii. 374, Boston, 1853). Mar garet (or Martha) Jones, against whom suspicion was raised in part by her skill in the use of healing herbs, was hanged in Boston in 1648; and Ann Hibbins, widow of a reputable merchant of the same city, was executed June 19, 1656. Mrs. Bassett suffered the death penalty at Stratford, Conn., in 1651, Mrs. Knapp at Fairfield in the same colony in 1653 (this was a particularly malignant case); Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith were hanged at Hartford in Jan., 1662, the wife after a "confession" in which she implicated her husband. The most important case, however, not in itself but because it was in great part the inciting cause of the Salem outbreak, was that of Mrs. Glover, executed in Bos ton Nov. 16, 1688, for bewitching the four children, aged, respectively, thirteen, eleven, seven, and five, of a Boston mason named Goodwin. The account, of the antics of these children, and of part of the legal proceedings which followed, given by Cotton Mather (Memorable Providences Relating to Witch craft and Possession, Boston, 1689) illustrates the hold which this belief had among the intelligent, as well as the credulity which could induce belief in impossible happenings. These children, according to Mather, barked like dogs and purred or mewed like cats; they fell into strange contortions; one of them cried out that she was being strangled, or that a chain bound her leg, or that she was in an oven, while the physical manifestations of choking, lameness, or perspiration were evident to bear out the statements. " Yea, they would fly like Geese; and be carried with an incredible Swiftness thro' the air, having but just their Toes now and then upon the ground, their Arms waved like the Wings of a Bird "-so reports Mr. Mather! One of the children manifested an unnatural precocity and pertness in her intercourse with Mr. Mather, who undertook to exorcise her, playing upon his antipa thies with astounding cunning. The children ac cused Mrs. Glover, a woman of violent temper, and the result was her conviction and execution. Be tween 1646 and 1688 twelve persons were executed for this offense in New England (W. F. Poole, in J. Winsor's Memorial Hist. of Boston, ii. 133, Bos ton, 1881), and this is only a small proportion of prosecutions some of which resulted in acquittal, though in all cases a stigma was attached which probably remained for life.

The Goodwin case was naturally much discussed, and application of the laws of psychology suggests its relationship to the Salem episode. This subtle influence was enforced by the explicit statements of men in high esteem to the effect that Satan was making, in the situation so favorable to him in New England because of the newness and wildness

of the country, a strenuous assault on mankind. The manifestations around which the Salem persecutions centered began in the home of 5.. The the Rev. Samuel Parris, minister of the Salem village since 1689. He had in his famEpisode; ily his daughter Elizabeth (nine years Early Stage. of age; she was early removed to another place), his niece Abigail Williams (eleven years), and a slave called Tituba. With these there used to meet in the afternoons of the winter of 1691-92 a circle composed as follows: Ann Putnam (twelve), Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, and Elizabeth Hubbard (seventeen), Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon (eighteen), Mary Warren and Sarah Churchill (twenty), all unmarried, and Mrs. Putnam, Mrs. Pope, and a woman named Wenham, all of middle age. The object of the meeting was the practise of palmistry, fortunetelling, magic, and spiritualism. Before the winter was over these persons began to display before others certain curious actions, crawling under chairs, assuming queer postures, making strange outcries, falling into fits, and writhing as though in great agony. The village physician already named, Dr. Griggs, being called in diagnosed the case as one of witchcraft. It seems at least credible that this gave the circle its cue. The news spread concerning the doings, witnesses increased in numbers, and the excitement mounted. The exhibitions were no longer confined to the houses of the minister and the families to which the members of the circle belonged, but took place in public, even in the church, the services of which were interrupted by the "afliicted" with outcry or assertion of the occurrence of something unseen by the congregation. Under the assumption that Satan was at work, the children went unrebuked, and their impudence grew. Some members who seem to have retained their sense of the fitness of things were incensed and stayed away from church, thereby becoming marked characters and some of them figuring in the subsequent prosecutions as defendants. Mr. Parris called in for consultation the neighboring ministers, who witnessed some of the performances and accepted Dr. Griggs' diagnosis. The little world was now aflame, and the question naturally arose, who was accountable for the behavior of the circle. Questioning educed the statement from the girls that the witches were Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba. The magistrates entered upon their duties, the accused were examined, the assumption of guilt being at the basis of the examination. Tituba "confessed," while the others strenuously maintained their innocence. During these and the following trials the girls appeared to suffer whenever the accused looked toward them. Soon new culprits were sought, Martha Corey was accused, and in her examination and all her subsequent acts was manifested as a woman of unusual ability and strong common sense. Her husband was put on the stand and adduced some trivial circumstances which were interpreted as substantiating the charge, but were clearly the result of the current ferment. So it went, and person after person was accused until it seemed that no station, calling, or character was exempt from peril of accusation.

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Witherspoon The attention of students has been called to the fact that those first charged with active agency m the Satanic persecution of the girls were persons of little standing in the community, or even of disre pute; that the next stage was accusa 6. The tion of those who for property or other Later Stages reasons were persona non gratce either and End. in the community or to the girls. Then the accusers became bolder; those who under other circumstances could not have been thought of were charged with this guilt, and of especial significance is the fact that those who op posed or denounced the proceedings were noted and pursued with vindictiveness by the band of girls. Particularly noteworthy in this last relation was the case of John Proctor, whose entire family, including his wife's relations, were brought into the scope of the proceedings and suffered great personal and property damage. Among those who were assailed by these terrible experiences were Dorcas Good, a child between four and five years of age, Rev. Samuel Willard of the Old South Church, Boston, John Alden, and finally Mrs. Hale, the wife of the min ister of the First Church of Beverly. The virtues of the last-named were so eminent and her services so distinguished that the accusers at last overreached themselves, people came to their senses, and the delusion was dispelled. While arrests continued in 1693, in January of which year fifty indictments were found though only three convictions resulted, yet Chief Justice William Stoughton maintained to the last his position respecting the evidence to be admitted and his prejudice against all who were accused. In April of the same year the governor by proclamation set free all who were imprisoned on this charge, and in 1711 there was issued a legislative reversal of attainder in favor of those who had suffered, or their surviving relatives, and compensa tion to them or the survivors was ordered to the amount of £578 12s. Thus ended the Salem de lusion. That sporadic cases of prosecution and even of execution elsewhere should occur was natural. In July, 1706, at Princess Anne Court House, Va., Grace Sherwood suffered the ordeal by water and was committed to jail in fetters, though the final disposition of the case is not recorded. In 1712 in South Carolina a vigilance committee is reported to have seized and "roasted" several witches (whether to death is not clear), and a jury refused to award damages to the sufferers or their representatives. And in Illinois, under the jurisdiction of Virginia, as late as 1790, negro slaves, male and female, were done to death under legal prosecution by burning, hanging, or shooting. The dire results of the outbreak appear only par tially in the executions. Hundreds were put under arrest and confined in fetters, some died in prison, others were laid under suspicion with all the natural consequences thereof in communities which under the superstition developed a cruel fa t Financial naticism. Even where conviction was and Moral not reached, the victims were often Effects. mulcted in heavy costs for the trial which had issued in their release. Some broke prison and fled from the places where they had by hardship won a home from the forest and had to

begin again in fresh surroundings. Others, though not convicted, were banished, or suffered under the unjust avoidance of their neighbors. The families of the victims suffered under the legal attainder which rested on them for eighteen. years. These are but the most obvious of the consequences to the Vic tims and their families. Others were those which came to the community in the demoralization caused by the excitement of passions and the yielding to the opportunity for revenge. This does not overlook the deception of the group of girls and women to whose action the Salem outbreak was due, as they played on the sympathies, superstitions, and animosities of the neighborhood. While all classes, and especially the learned in law; medicine, and theology, were caught in the epidemic, obloquy rests in large measure upon the ministers who were so active in the affair. Much has been written both in accusation and defense of this class. Yet after two centuries the verdict, in view of the almost preponderating influence wielded in society by the clergy, must be that had they been free from superstition the outbreak could not have occurred, even with the physicians pronouncing in favor of witchcraft. Their prepossessions supporting the possibilities of compact between a physical Satan and men and women cast the deciding vote, and in this relation the influence of Cotton Mather was not the least. On the other hand, many of the clergy, from the first, labored mightily against the proceedings, mitigated the severity where possible; and finally aided in bringing about recovery, from the delusion.

The attendant circumstances present many problems to the psychologist. The first set of questions focuses upon the circle of girls and women who were regarded as bewitched. Many elements

8 Psycho- of trouble were present; the knowledge logical concerning the Goodwin children was

Problems. doubtless a primary stimulus; there was the intent to study occult phenom ena which was the purpose of the meetings; also the presence of the possibly half-witted Tituba with her Indian-negro proclivities acting on the minds of the others, which were gardens evidently tilled for that kind of growth; not to be forgotten is the impres sionability of the members of the circle, who were clearly open to suggestion and self-suggestion, and were probably nervous in temperament; the wonder that they excited awakened, stimulated, and minis tered to a desire for notice which grew as it fed; and this developed into a craving for publicity and an astonishing boldness, together with a precocious cunning and a progressive callousness and vindic tiveness which at the last overreached itself; finally, there was the predisposition of the community to accept at its face value every claim and assertion made by the "afflicted." The second set of prob lems is raised by the last condition noted. How could the ideas of justice of all classes, the common sense of the ordinary man and woman, the medical knowledge of the physician, the legal perception of the magistrate, and the acumen of the minister be so obscured as to permit the orgy of prosecution to con tinue for a year? The credulity evinced, the silliness of the beliefs publicly owned, seem at this date almost impossible. This lack of restraining eenai-

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bility was so pronounced that would-be defenders of the accused were for the time almost completely silenced, held back by fear and soon by the fact that defense of the accused involved danger of the charge of complicity in the alleged witchcraft. Previous good records and useful lives went for nothing in the frenzy which paralyzed humane impulses. The feature of the Salem episode which is most noticeable is the epidemic of spiritual insanity. The third set of problems is presented by the "confessions" of the victims. In some cases doubtless a morbid desire for notoriety, for which the opportunity so unique for creating a sensation furnished the occasion, was the moving cause. Moreover, the leading questions asked by the prosecutors and judges indicate a superstitious sub-current in the life of the day which in the minds of the weakly could easily stimulate the unhealthy imagination of the accused. In some instances it may well be that sensitive victims, shrinking from the badgering incident to the trials, and worn out by their tortures and the terrible situation in which they found themselves, confessed in order that an end might be put to their sufferings, and then concocted the story of their dealings with Satan, adding the details which the suggestive questioning indicated in order to bear out the "confession." But when all is said, there is much in the story which calls for further study. Few occurrences present more, or more difficult, problems than the Salem witchcraft delusion.

Geo. W. Gilmore.

Bibliography: : On the general subject consult: E. D. Hauber, BZliomeca, seta et scripts magica, 3 vols., Lemgo, 1738-41; G. g. Horst, Damonomagie, oder Geschichte des Glaubens an Zauberei and damonische Wunder, 2 vols., Frankfort, 1818; idem, Zauberbebliothek, 6 vols., Mainz, 1821 26; idem, Deuteroekopie, 2 vols., Frankfort, 1830; J. E. D. Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, 2 vols., Paris, 1838; W. yon Waldbrilhl, Naturforsehung and Hexeitglaube, Berlin, 1863; G. Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, ii. 206-364, Leipsic, 1869; J. Buchmann, Unfreie and freie Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zur Sklaverei . . . and sum Dumonismus, Breslau, 1873; G. Diefenbach, Hezenwahn vor and nach der Glaubensspaltung, Frankfort, 1886; P. Pitres and E. Regis, Les Obsessions et lee impulsiona, Paris, 1902; O. M. Hueffer, The Book of Witches, New York, 1909.

On prosecutions for witchcraft in the Middle Ages and in Europe generally consult: L. Scheltema, Geschiedenis der Heksenprocessen, Haarlem, 1828; F. Fischer, Die Basler Hezenprozesse, Basel, 1840; C. G. yon Wachter, Die perichtlichen Verfolgungen der Hezen and Zauberer in Deutschland, Tübingen, 1845; L. Hopp, Die Hezenprozesse und ihre Gegner in Tyrol, Innsbruck, 1874; F. Nippold, Die gegenwdrtipe Wiederbelebung des Heaenglaubens, Berlin, 1875; W. G. Soldan, Geschichte der Hevenprozesse, ed. H. Heppe, Stuttgart, 1880; G. LSngin, Religion and Heaenprozesse, Leipsic, 1888 (against the polemic of Diefenbach above); W. H. D. Adams, Witch, Warlock and Magician, London, 1889; A. D. White, A Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 2 vols., New York, 1896 (several chapters deal with the subject); S. Riezler, Hezenprozesse in Bayern, Stuttgart, 1896; J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition and Hexenprozess im Mittelelter, Munich, 1900; idem, Quellen and Untereuchungen zur Geschichte des Hezenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1901; H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. ii., New York, 1900, cf. idem, Superstition and Force, Philadelphia, 1878 (consult Index); N. Paulus, Hexenwahn and Hexenprozess . . . im 16. Jahrhundert, Freiburg, 1910.

For England and Scotland consult: T. Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, London, 1851; C. K. Sharpe, Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland, ib. 1884 (gives an excellent list of early books on witchcraft); J. Ashton, The Devil in Britain and America, ib. 1896 (eon-