Paper Topic:

Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials : Causation and Continuity

Introduction

The Salem Witch Trials have consistently fascinated scholars dating from their immediate aftermath in 1692 when a number of personal and academic commentaries were published up until contemporary times . This fascination , in turn , has tended over the course of the past three hundred years to be rooted in a sense of disbelief that religious people and neighbors could treat each other so unjustly and so horrifically To be sure , some of the written commentaries in the immediate aftermath attempted to defend and to

justify the trials on the grounds that witchcraft was real , that it constituted a grave threat to the social stability of the community , and that the only way to preserve the spiritual purity of the community was through a purging of threats such as witchcraft and magic . One of these defenders was Cotton Mather , a judge who presided over the Salem Witch Trials he argued , for instance that although the evidentiary methods through which guilt or innocent were determined were imperfect in certain respects that the spiritual and ethical needs of the community were properly served through the conduct of the trials . The majority of scholars and commentators , on the other hand , have characterized the Salem Witch Trials in less flattering terms . They have been described , respectively , as constituting "one of the nation 's greatest disasters " HYPERLINK "http /www .questiaschool .com /PM .qst ?a o d 20 (Callis 196 ) and as "the only example of a mass witch hunt...

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