Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1871 — The Simple yet Little Known Facts of History. [ARTICLE]

The Simple yet Little Known Facts of History.

In the year 1092, at Salem, in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, accusations of ■witchcraft was brought against several persons. A special court was ordered by the Governor for their trial, and the whole community showed the deepest interest in the result. The evidence received was such as may be found in nearly all similar trials in Europe; it was conclusive of the fuilt of the accused to the minds of the udges, and they were condemned and executed on the gallows by order of this “ witch court.” The excitement increased; many more were accused and held for examination; but the whole matter being brought before the representatives of the people in their annual assembly, the special court was abrogated, and three .months' delay obtained. People grew calm, and reasoned together, and when the accused were tried before the legal colonial court, all were released. Belief in witch craft came to a violent end for the first time in the world’s history. The strong' good "sense of the Puritans overthrew one of the most deeply-rooted superstitions of the ages. While the foregoing contains the simple facts of the Salem case, as related by every historian of credit, nothing is more common than for ignorant or malicious persons to refer to the Puritan belief in witchcraft as au evidence of peculiar intolerance and religious fanaticism, k While the Puritans believed in the power of witches and in demoniacal possessson until 1092, it is a fact that they held their opinions in common with the whole civilized world. A belief In witchcraft meets us at the very dawn of authentic history. Instances are recorded in the Old Testament, and Moses commanded the childrea of Israel, “ Sutler not a witch to live.” It was a common faith in the pagan world, and flourished through the splendid eivilzations of Greece and Borne. Philosophers, naturalists and conquerors, Cicero, Pliny, and the Ca-sars, were equally its dupes, With the common tenacity of error, witchcraft survived the wreck of laws and learning, in the fall of the Roman world, and gathering strength into the twilight of the middle ages, it was much a matter of belief until the beginning of the eighteenth ceiitury as the Christian religion. Not only were both branches of the Christian Church fully committed to it by the united voice Popes, Bishops, clergy, and canon law, but it was unquestioned by the universities and philosophers, and recognized by the statute law. The men to whom the reformation is due, Erasmus, Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, could here join their adversaries on common ground. Belief in human spirits acting through the human agency of witches, was no superstition, but simple fact to minds like Shakspeare, Milton, Hobbs, and even down to the time of Locke. Sir Thomas Brown, author of the “ Exposure of Vulgar Errors,” testified in court as to his entire belief in witches. SirflKenelm Digby[and Bruvereare also on record as believers. While men so illustrious as scholars and philosophers held the faith, there could be no doubt in the common mind; nor was it safe to lie skeptical in England or France down to the close of the seventeenth century. In 1670, sixty people were executed at Mobra, ia Sweden, as witches, and several of them were children. In 1977, five men were mimed at Paisley, Scotland. In France, witches were burned as lately as 1718, and tried as late as 1785. James 11. of England tried some witches himself, and had them put to the torture, and the act against witches, under which thousands had suffered, was not repealed in England until 1780, forty years after the occurrences at Salem! Hundreds of instances can bo cited to provo, beyond question or cavil, that the Puritans only agreed with the current opinions Of the world, opinions not of the ignorant merely, but the learned also, and those of the highest station including the Sovereign Pontiff of the Roman Church, Kings onfall the thrones of Europe, the Judges on the bench, and the whole body of the clergy. And it is equally true that the Puritans were among the first who subjected this superstition to the searching light of reason, and exposed it as a delusion and error.— John K. Russell.