In 1692, the otherwise unremarkable town of Salem, Massachusetts became the site of one of the most notorious episodes in American legal history: the Salem Witch Trials. By the end of the trials, more than 20 people had been executed or died in prison and more than 200 imprisoned in an atmosphere of hysteria. This series will explore this episode and will discuss the course of the trials and the causes of the hysteria, including issues of gender, race, social class, petty jealousy, church politics, mental illness, and even the possible influence of rotten grain. We will also consider the aftermath of the trials and the recurrence of similar incidents in American legal history.

This is Part One of our series on the Salem Witch Trials, “The Great European Witch Hunt.” We begin in Christian Europe before the Reformation, where the popular position held that witches existed and were a genuine threat. At the same time, church and political elites insisted that only God could work miracles and that witchcraft did not exist. Those who tried to practice it were viewed as deluded, and those who accused others of witchcraft were often regarded as both deluded and malicious. Attacks on alleged witches took the form of lynchings, unsanctioned by either church or political leaders. In this early phase, the primary targets were older women on the margins of their communities, frequently poor, quarrelsome, and considered unattractive.