WEBVTT - Defamation and the Devil: False Accusations of Witchcraft 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.400 Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:16.200 partnership with I Heart Radio. In an ordinary crime, how 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.560 does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.160 prove his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso facto on its 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.919 face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it? Not? 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.080 The witch and the victim none other. Now we cannot 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.520 hope the witch will accuse herself. Granted, therefore we must 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.120 rely upon her victims. And they do testify. The children 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.840 certainly do testify. That quote is from Arthur Miller's partially 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.800 fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials, The Crucible, written 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:51.520 in Welcome to criminal Lea. I'm mariach Murky and I'm 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.880 Holly Fry. And let's talk about which panic. If your 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.560 crime is falsely accusing and then punishing an alleged witch, 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.360 what led up to that moment? Well, it was probably 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:08.280 more than one thing. There's a lot of talk about 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:11.240 the religious factors that have long been part of purging, 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.360 which is, and while that is often a fair explanation 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:17.400 based on the time and place, it isn't and can't 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:23.200 be the only explanation. Things like misogyny jealousy, dreams. There 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.440 are a lot of ingredients in this particular cauldron, and 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:30.039 it's kind of unclear exactly when which has hit the 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.720 world's radar, But there they are in historical and fictional 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.560 writing that goes back thousands of years into ancient times. 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.120 These stories about them and references to them teach us 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:42.560 that which is have long been considered dangerous and that 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:47.000 we should fear, punish and silence them. Marian Gibson, Professor 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:50.120 of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.520 continues along this idea, saying which is are often used 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:58.360 as quote a shorthand symbol for persecution and resistance, misogyny 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.640 and feminism in partic killer, So let's go back, way 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.680 back looking for witches. The Code of Hammurabi was one 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.679 of the earliest and most complete written legal codes, two 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.520 hund eighty two laws in total, ranging from topics like 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:18.560 family law to criminal law. It was proclaimed by the 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:23.040 Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from sevent b c E 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:27.160 to seventeen fifty BC. In this text is a record 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:30.320 of some of the earliest examples of the laws of retribution. 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:33.840 Rules we all actually know, such as an I for 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.520 an eye. It's also one of the earliest written examples 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.120 of the idea of an accused person being considered innocent 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.919 until proven guilty. But what we're interested in really is 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.800 in the second Edict about how to punish witches, and 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.440 it reads quote, if a man has put a spell 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.919 upon another man, and it is not yet justified, he 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:57.600 upon whom the spell is laid shall go to the 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:02.200 Holy River. Into the Holy rivers shall he plunge. If 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.040 the Holy River overcomes him and he is drowned, the 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:08.280 man who put the spell upon him shall take possession 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:11.840 of his house. If the Holy River declares him innocent, 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.120 and he remains unharmed, the man who laid the spell 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.440 shall be put to death. He that plunged into the 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.240 river shall take possession of the house of him who 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.560 laid the spell upon him. So malevolent magic, it's practice 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.400 and its punishment is also addressed in the early law 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:33.600 codes of ancient Egypt. So we're talking to three thirty 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:38.280 two b C. A very long period of time. One 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.280 of the earliest written stories of a specific which comes 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:49.520 from the Bible and was composed probably between and seven roughly, 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.720 so according to a story in the Book of Samuel 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.080 in the Old Testament, the Witch of Endor had an 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.400 interesting power. She had a fetish with which she could 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.440 summon the dead. At the request of King Saul of Israel, 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.680 she summoned to the recently deceased prophet Samuel's spirits to 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.720 help the king defeat the Philistine army. She did raise Samuel, 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.960 but he did not offer any advice against the Philistines. 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.840 He instead prophesied the death of Saul and his sons. 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.919 What came to pass was as he had said. After 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:23.120 fighting the Philistines at Mount Gilboa, Saul wounded killed himself 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:25.719 by falling on his own sword to avoid being captured 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.880 by the enemy. Another early written record of a witch 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:34.080 is found in Homer's Odyssey, written right about eight hundred BC. 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.640 It's in this poem where we meet Searcy, a sorceress 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:42.280 known for her knowledge of potions and herbs, and who, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:47.280 according to her myth, could transmute humans into swine. And 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:51.760 Greek mythology is of course filled with witches. And then 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:54.680 there's Empress Chen of Wu. She was empress of the 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.240 Han dynasty and the first wife of Emperor Wu of Han. 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:01.880 She lived between one st E and one ten BC, 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.160 give or take a year on both of those numbers, 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:08.240 and first ten had trouble getting pregnant and couldn't give 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.240 birth to a child. She had not had a son. 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.479 Becoming jealous of her husband's mistresses who were bearing his children, 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.080 she turned to magic. She retained witches to help her 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:22.040 curse his concubines and to win his love back, and 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.400 in some versions of her life story she's described as 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.520 having her own witchcraft practice, but not all include that. 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.440 When she was found out, she was placed under house arrest, 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:34.359 where she would stay through the end of her life. 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.520 Nearly three hundred of her attendants were accused and executed 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:42.200 on witchcraft charges. We are going to take a break 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.039 for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back, 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:47.120 we're going to look at some of the large scale 0:05:47.120 --> 0:06:03.080 witch trials that took place in Europe. Welcome back to Criminalia. 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:05.960 Let's talk about what the Hammer of the Witches was 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.640 and why it was the bestseller for almost two hundred years. 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.440 Stories and images of witches have described, which is in 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:18.960 various ways throughout history, from wart No sisters huddling over 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.480 a cauldron of boiling liquid to those wearing pointy hats 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.440 and cackling while riding through the sky on broomsticks, and 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:28.760 pretty much everything in between. If you were to describe 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.440 almost any human, that's what a witch has looked like 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.200 at some point in time. The actual history of witches 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.599 is dark, and, as we've seen throughout the season, often 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:43.440 deadly for the accused witches. Historians have identified a number 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.120 of key developments that led to what is known as 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:52.200 witch panic. We're gonna start in when Pope John whose 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:57.520 papacy lasted from thirteen sixteen to four, officially declared that 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.240 witchcraft was heresy and that meant that those who were 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.279 accused of practicing it could be tried under the inquisition. 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.120 The idea that which is were in bed literally and 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:13.320 figuratively with the devil was game changing, and that idea 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:18.280 caught like wildfire. The publication of the book Malleus Maleficarum, 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.000 or The Hammer of Witches, was written in fourteen eight six, 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:26.360 and that continued to stoke people's fears. The Hammer of 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:31.080 which is was essentially a handbook on how to identify, interrogate, 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:33.800 and punish whiches, and it did not take long for 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:38.000 it to become the authority for both Protestants and Catholics, 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.520 trying to purge their villages and cities of that perceived evil. 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:47.920 It was republished twenty six times between fourteen six and 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.840 sixteen sixty nine, and for more than one hundred years 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.520 that book sold more copies of any other book in 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.480 Europe except for the Bible, which is were believed by 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.520 early Christians in Europe to be evil. There was no 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:06.040 concept of a white witch or a benevolent magic, which 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.360 hysteria really had a grip on Europe during the mid 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.920 fifteenth century, and things kept snowballing. Up to eighty thousand 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.280 accused whitches were executed in Europe between the years fifteen 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.600 hundred and sixteen sixty, and as many as eight of 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:21.680 them were women who were believed to have had a 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:26.520 pact with the devil. Witch hunts were common, and being 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.880 a witch hunter was an actual occupation, although many of 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:34.800 the accused confessed, as we know, that was often under torture, 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:39.719 and often that was extreme torture. Most were executed by 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.800 burning at the steak or hanging. Single women, widows, and 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:47.719 other women on the margins of society were especially targeted. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.640 Madeline Miller, an American novelist and author of the book 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:55.840 Sercy and Adaptation of Various Greek myths talks about which 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.960 is as women with quote more power than men have 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:03.720 felt comfortable with. Looking with a modern eye at the 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:06.960 large scale witch trials in Europe and in colonial America 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.160 makes a lot of us wonder how could this happen? 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:12.400 And why wasn't it stopped? It wasn't like it was 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:16.320 done in secret, So what was going on? Let's talk 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.640 about a few of these now infamous trials and what 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.520 scholars think about the events now that we are centuries 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:27.360 down the road. The largest single witch trial in Swedish history, 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.240 and also one of the largest mass killings of which 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:34.360 is in recorded history, took place in tour Soccer, a 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:38.960 village in central Sweden in sixteen seventy five. It began 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:43.440 when Laurentios Kristofori Hornios, a priest of the Church of Sweden, 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:48.720 was instructed to investigate witchcraft within his parish. He did 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.360 so by then instructing two young boys to identify, which 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.760 is by the invisible devil's mark on their forehead as 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.800 they walked into church. They did this, and the accused 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.160 suspected of abducting children and taking them to Satan's Sabbath. 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:09.040 Seventy one people were executed by beheading and burning in 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:13.000 a single day after two children claimed they saw a 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.520 mark on them that no one else could see. Also 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:19.880 happening during the mid seventeenth century. Let's let's turn to 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.280 Germany's Which trials. The Vertzburg Witch Trials took place in 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:28.240 southwestern Germany, a region where the highest concentration of which 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:32.679 trials occurred during the years fifteen sixty one to sixteen seventy. 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:36.319 It was one of the four largest witch trials in Germany, 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.440 alongside the Trier Which Trials, the Fulda Witch Trials, and 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.520 the Bamberg Witch Trials. The Vertzburg Witch Trials took place 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:47.040 between sixteen twenty five and sixteen thirty one, and that 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:49.400 was one of the biggest mass trials and one of 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:54.200 the biggest witch trials in history. One hundred fifty seven 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.679 people men, women and children in the city of Verurtzburg 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:01.360 are confirmed to have been executed, and an estimated nine 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.199 hundred were executed or died in custody in the entire 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:10.079 prince Bishopric of Wurzburg. That was the larger ecclesiastical principality 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:14.920 of the Holy Roman Empire. The accusations and executions took 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:18.520 place during the Thirty Years War, a conflict between Protestants 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:23.040 and Catholics between sixteen eighteen and sixteen forty eight. The 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.679 trials were conducted by a Catholic prince bishop with an 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:31.040 agenda of introducing the counter Reformation, a Catholic resurgence to 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.800 his lamp. This isn't a unique story, and the craze 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:38.200 of the sixteen twenties was not confined to Germany. Scholars 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.280 have suggested that politics, weather, poor economy, and weak government 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.560 could all have contributed to the witch trial period in Europe. 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:50.199 But according to a relatively new theory argued by economists 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.840 Peter Leeson and Jacob Russ, these trials were also away 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.080 for both the Catholic and Protestant churches to compete with 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:01.080 each other for religious followers. They right and we quote. 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:06.360 Similar to how contemporary Republican and Democrat candidates focused campaign 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:11.679 activity in political battle grounds, historical Catholic and Protestant officials 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:16.000 focused which trial activity in confessional battle grounds during the 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:22.200 Reformation and Counter Reformation to attract the loyalty of undecided Christians. 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.720 So these battle grounds were places where Protestantism had made 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.679 in roads, and that meant that people had a choice 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:31.800 about which church they wanted to be a part of. 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:35.920 And that is an interesting ingredient to add to this cauldron. Indeed, 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:38.319 we're going to take a break for a word from 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.400 our sponsors, So get ready for the Salem witch Trials 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:58.120 and how Massachusetts has since apologized when we returned. Welcome 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.440 back to Criminalia. There are so many theories about what 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.720 caused the Salem witch trials. At least one has to 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:11.079 be true, perhaps more than one. Let's review. Just as 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:13.400 this hysteria was beginning to wane in Europe, it was 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:17.000 growing in the Americas. The Salem witch Trials, though not 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.360 the first witch hunt in the Thirteen Colonies or Colonial America, 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:24.320 are perhaps the most famous in that time and place. 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.360 So this is back to January of six two in 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:32.560 Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when Reverend Paris's 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.640 daughter Betty, aged nine, and his niece Abigail Williams, age eleven, 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:41.559 began having what we're described as fits. The girls screamed, 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:46.800 uttered peculiar sounds, and contorted themselves into strange positions with 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.360 no explanation for their alarming behavior. A local doctor was 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.600 summoned and diagnosed them as being under the control of 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:57.480 something supernatural. You got it, This was the work of 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:01.360 a spell and they were bewitched. And Putnam, age eleven, 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.360 also began to experience similar episodes, as did Elizabeth Hubbard, 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:09.880 aged seventeen. By the end of February, Pressured by local 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:16.280 magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls accused three women, Tichiba, 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.280 an enslaved woman in the Paris' is home, Sarah Good, 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.400 a widow who was living in poverty, and Sarah Osborne, 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.080 a woman in her late forties who had scandalously married 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:30.560 a man who she had hired to work in her home. 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:35.280 Four leaders in the community, Sergeant Thomas Putnam and his brother, 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:41.120 Deacon Edward Putnam, Joseph Hutchinson, and Thomas Preston, filed claims 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.160 on behalf of the miners, which led to the arrests 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.760 of the three women. All three of them were tried 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:53.760 and sentenced to execution by hanging. On June tenth, Bridget Bishop, 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:57.560 an older woman known for her gossipy habits and rumored promiscuity, 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.240 was not the first to be accused, but what as 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:02.200 the first to be put to death when she was 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:06.200 hanged at Proctor's Ledge. In total, more than two hundred 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.920 people were accused and one fifty people were arrested, thirty 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:13.880 were found guilty, and nineteen were executed by hanging. Five 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.600 others died in jail. Women weren't the only victims here. 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.920 Six men were also accused, convicted, and executed. One man, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.080 an elderly farmer named Giles Corey, is the only person 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.240 ever to be pressed to death by order of a 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:33.680 court to bewitched. Dogs were also killed. The trials ended 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:38.200 in six when a new Superior Court of Judicature banned 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.000 the use of spectral evidence, such as dreams or visions 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.480 as testimony. It had been a key component in the 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.440 conviction of many witches. The girls, for instance, testified that 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:52.480 Sarah Osborne had appeared to them and pinched and poked 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.920 them with knitting needles. That's spectral evidence at work in 0:15:55.920 --> 0:16:01.760 the courtroom. Hearsay, gossip and really any unsupported assertions were 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.920 routinely admitted in court, and of course that kind of 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.920 evidence is impossible to disprove those accused of being which 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:12.240 is were slandered, and they were denied their rights. The 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.280 exact cause of the Salem which trials remains contested, but 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.840 there's no lack of theories for how such a frenzy 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:24.000 of defamation and wrongful death could happen. At the time, 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.520 Salem Village was a very small town and populated mostly 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.320 by Puritans. Those who lived there were religious, and they 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:35.520 absolutely believed in the existence of the devil. Fear of 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:37.960 the devil, we should say, is never really doubted here 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:42.880 as a significant factor, but there are several other contributing ideas. 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.200 Some experts have suggested over the years that it was 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.960 actually war that drove this. The American Indian Wars were ongoing, 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.680 in particular King Philip's War between indigenous inhabitants of New 0:16:55.720 --> 0:17:00.280 England and New England's colonists and their indigenous allies during 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.680 the late sixteen seventies may well have contributed to the 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:08.280 hysteria that descended upon Salem. The war between France and 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:11.880 the American colonies, known as King William's War to the Colonists, 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.520 began in sixteen eighty nine and covered regions of Upstate 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:20.719 New York, Nova Scotia, and Quebec. Salem housed refugees, so 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.880 that offered up a source of financial strain for the village, 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.120 and at the very least, war fought at your door 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:31.679 was sure to have caused some intense anxiety. Mary Beth Norton, 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:36.280 an American historians specializing in American colonial history, believes that 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.440 the wars may have impacted the trials in another way. 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:43.359 She suggests that because of the number of failed military 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:47.800 campaigns in King Philip's War, local officials blamed not their 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.960 own weaknesses on the battlefield, but rather that any failure 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.560 was clearly the work of the devil, and that would 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.640 have normalized that idea as an excuse, and it made 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:02.280 it really easy for people to point fingers at anyone 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.440 that they thought was in league with Satan, especially if 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:09.080 their life was just going wrong in some way. Another 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.240 theory is discussed in the book Entertaining Satan, Witchcraft and 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.240 the Culture of Early New England, where author and historian 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.760 John Putnam Demos explores the idea that the Salem witch 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.880 Trials can be boiled down to teenage rebellion and boredom 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:26.199 in a strict Puritan society, in addition to war and 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:30.200 various social factors coming into play. The weather is also 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:33.240 something that has been suggested as a potential cause or 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.760 contributing ingredient for all of the trials that we've talked about. 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.960 In two thousand four, now economics professor at Brown University 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:45.520 Emily Auster pointed out that both Europe and North America 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:50.160 were experiencing a little ice age between roughly thirteen hundred 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:53.879 and eighteen seventy, and the effects of that meant things 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:58.520 like food shortages, crops would fail, fish and animals didn't migrate, 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:03.200 and the economy to a downturn and people suffered. Says 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.280 Aust quote, people would have searched for a scapegoat in 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.879 the face of deadly changes in weather patterns, and because 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.080 people believed, which is, could control natural forces such as 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:17.800 the weather, which is, we're blamed. Let's talk about one 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:21.600 more theory at play here. Proposed in the nineties seventies, 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:25.639 this theory suggests that hallucinogenic fungi is to blame for 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.920 the salem which trials. First introduced by Linda Kapol, professor 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:34.120 at renstile Or Polytechnic Institute. This theory suggests that urgic 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:38.639 poisoning may have caused the girl's symptoms. Urge can be 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:42.199 found growing in rye and wheat under the right conditions, 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.120 and researchers have found that the weather conditions in Salem 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:50.280 that winter met those growing conditions. Ergotism can cause hallucinatory 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.000 L s D like effects in a person and can 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:59.159 cause vertigo, crawling sensations on your skin, extremity, tingling, headaches, hallucinations, 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:04.600 and seizure like muscle contractions. It's entirely possible and really 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.359 pretty likely in terms of odds, that several of these 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:11.399 influences were in play, and of course the people in 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.480 the middle of these events would not have recognized these 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.800 factors as the drivers for their behavior. No one was like, 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:20.920 I have anxiety about the war, I'm going to find 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.439 a witch to blame it on. They just felt fear 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:28.800 and anxiety and suspected there must be something mystical involved. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.880 Some towns and countries have since acknowledged the tragic events 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:38.000 and have expressed regret for the accusations and deaths. On 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.360 January fourteenth, the General Court ordered a day of fasting 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:44.720 and prayer in remembrance of the victims of the Salem 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:49.600 witch trials. Five years after those trials, and executions. Samuel Sewell, 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:53.320 the judge who presided over the Salem witch trials, publicly 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:57.520 apologized for his misjudgments. In seventeen o two, the court 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.520 formally declared the trials unlawful, and in seventeen eleven the 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:04.360 colony passed a bill restoring the rights of those accused 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:07.919 and cleared their names. It granted restitution to their heirs 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.320 as well. It wasn't until the nineteen fifty seven that 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:14.040 the General Court of Massachusetts issued an apology to the 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.159 descendants of some of the witches who were executed. It read, 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:21.159 and we quote, the General Court of Massachusetts declares its 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.480 belief that such proceedings, even if lawful under the province 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:28.320 Charter and the law of Massachusetts as it then was, were, 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:31.119 and are shocking and the result of a wave of 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:35.600 popular hysterical fear of the devil in the community. Massachusetts 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.119 state legislature was officially exonerating names of the accused witches 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:43.720 as recently as the two thousands. Massachusetts was the first 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.480 widely publicized witch pardon, but it is certainly not the 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.880 only occurrence. Just earlier this year, more than seven hundred 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:55.919 women executed for witchcraft between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries 0:21:56.160 --> 0:22:01.360 were posthumously pardoned by the Catalan Regional Parliament. Similar initiatives 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:09.919 have happened in Scotland, Switzerland and Norway. Let's have a 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:15.320 drink to toast all of this. This is a super 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:17.960 yummy one. It's also a really easy one to make, 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.800 a non alcoholic form if you want just a little refreshing, 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:24.960 slightly bubbly sip. I am calling it witchcraft, which means 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:26.639 that you get to do your own little bit of 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:30.199 alchemy in the kitchen because you gotta make some rosemary syrup. 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:32.840 That's all. It's super easy. So all you need to 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:35.200 do for that is get a couple of nice, kind 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.240 of fat spriggs of rosemary, throw it in a saucepan 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:42.280 with like a couple of water. Get it boiling. I 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:45.000 know there's a diversion here. Some people will pull the 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:47.439 rosemary out at that point and then add the sugar. 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:50.720 I add the sugar and let it keep going, and 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:52.920 I turned it down quite low. I let the rosemary 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:55.840 sit in there a little longer because it just infuses 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.280 a little better. In my opinion, you get a fuller flavor, 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.520 and I always want more. I'm that person that's like 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.159 it's a delicate flavor. No, thank you. I just like 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:07.600 more robust flavor. So then when it starts to thicken up, 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.000 you will go ahead and pull those rosemary springs out. 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:13.479 If any of the little prickly pine like leaves are 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:15.439 stuck in there, give them a little scoop out, and 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:17.560 then let it go for just a little longer until 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:19.159 it starts to thicken, and then you can turn the 0:23:19.560 --> 0:23:22.520 heat off and let it cool. And then when it's cool, 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.239 you're ready to make your cocktail. It's gonna be an 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:28.359 ounce and a half of vodka. I just did a 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.480 regular one. I think if you play with flavored particularly 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:33.880 herbal voe, because you can get something really interesting here. 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:37.440 But ann ounce and a half of vodka, three quarters 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:39.960 of an ounce of your rosemary syrup that you've just made, 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.520 three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, and then 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:47.400 three ounces of pomegranate juice. You're gonna combine that all 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:48.720 you can do in a shaker, or you can do 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:50.920 in the glass, and then on top of it. Because 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:54.000 I found that to be a little too that's a 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:56.840 little too heavy on the flavor, because the pomegranate juice 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.320 is so it has a lot of flavor or and 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:03.159 it totally will take over everything. So I put another 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:05.760 two ounces of just club soda on top of it, 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:10.159 and that made it like super refreshing and softened up 0:24:10.200 --> 0:24:14.159 that heavy, almost syrupy flavor you can get sometimes from pomegranate. 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.480 And it was absolutely delightful, And so we're calling that witchcraft. 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:21.160 This is one of those ones where I really hope 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:25.280 that people will use the basic structure and do some experiments, 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:30.600 because like you could make your syrup with different herbal ingredients. 0:24:30.640 --> 0:24:34.959 You can do that syrup with sage or with mint 0:24:35.040 --> 0:24:38.040 syrup is obviously super easy, peasy and lovely to do, 0:24:38.320 --> 0:24:41.880 or like coriander, you could do dill syrup very interesting. 0:24:42.040 --> 0:24:43.719 So you could play with that. You can play with 0:24:43.760 --> 0:24:46.160 your juice, You could play with whatever spirit you want 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:49.720 to do. Just remember the kind of balanced formula of 0:24:50.840 --> 0:24:53.919 two parts of your spirit, whether you're using like gin 0:24:54.040 --> 0:24:56.479 or vodka, or you could try it with some of 0:24:56.520 --> 0:25:00.720 the brown spirits. I didn't, but you do could. And 0:25:00.760 --> 0:25:03.800 then two parts of your spirit, one part of syrup 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:06.520 and one part of lemon juice, which you could also 0:25:06.560 --> 0:25:08.879 do as a lime juice. You want that citrus in 0:25:08.920 --> 0:25:11.639 there to make the syrup flow a little more evenly, 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.720 in combine with everything together, and then whatever juice you 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:17.919 delight in. You could make all kinds of things, and 0:25:17.960 --> 0:25:20.439 then you add club soda or like I've done but 0:25:20.440 --> 0:25:22.560 many times on the show, a sugar free ginger ale 0:25:22.640 --> 0:25:25.159 when you need to soften it up a little delightful. 0:25:25.440 --> 0:25:28.200