Door24 History

Witch hysteria began in Europe in the 1300s. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull or order that directly involved the Catholic Church in the hunt for witches to protect society and the Church. In 1487, two monks wrote a book called the Malleus Maleficarum (mal ee us | ma lef uh kair em) or the Hammer of Witches. The authors argued that witchcraft was real, not superstition. They gave details on how to identify, capture, and punish witches. Witch hunts led to the arrest, torture, and execution of tens of thousands of people until the end of the 17th century. In 1692, the people of Salem, Massachusetts, were suffering. They had endured a smallpox epidemic, lived in constant fear of American Indian attacks, and were splitting apart over the proposed building of a new church. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, two Puritan girls played a forbidden fortune telling game. Perhaps afraid of what they saw or some other psychological ailment, the girls began displaying fits and convulsions and claimed the s