ࡱ> KMJ @ 7bjbjVV !Dr<r</*N N N 8  *@  $*R|  "   dzڬN 0@PO"P**P$ X0J| **$N q**N SPECTRAL EVIDENCE This hotly disputed type of evidence was used in a few seventeenth-century French witchcraft prosecutions, but more often (and more successfully) in seventeenth-century England and New England. It derived from a belief that the witch, through a voluntary covenant, would permit the Devil to use his or her apparition or specter to afflict others. Crucial to this form of evidence was the complementary belief that those who were afflicted in this manner had a special ability to see and identify the spectral representation of the person attacking them. In the best-known trials that made extensive use of spectral evidence -- the Salem witchcraft prosecutions of 1692 and the trial at Bury St Edmonds in England in 1662 -- victims came forward in court to identify as witches the people whose otherworldly likeness or specter was tormenting them. What made spectral evidence so forceful as testimony against witches was the youth and perceived vulnerability of the afflicted victims, combined with the highly graphic manner in which they exhibited their suffering. The victims themselves were overwhelmingly female, but considerably younger and far more often unmarried than female accusers in other witchcraft trials. In New England, some victims of spectral assault were only seven years old, with most aged between 13 and 20 compared to the other accusers who were clustered between the ages of 20 and 49. Typically, the initial signs of an affliction were manifested by what contemporaries called fits or convulsions, often consisting of screams and complaints of choking, burning, and pinching sensations. These cries in turn were often accompanied by vivid displays of pain and suffering, particularly unusual physical contortions, in which heads were twisted at what appeared to be impossible angles or tongues distended beyond what seemed physically tolerable. In the courtroom, before spectral evidence could be introduced in a trial for witchcraft, the victims afflictions had to be attributed to supernatural causes and then to the malevolent action of a witch, rather than to the devil acting alone. Once these hurdles were cleared (or overlooked), spectators witnessed live demonstrations of these horrifying effects of witchcraft as afflicted young women writhed in pain while crying out the names of the suspects whose spectres were attacking them. Such evidence was vastly more dramatic than the more usual narratives of ancient quarrels and disputes purportedly resulting in various maleficia or acts of harmful witchcraft. Translating fits and convulsions into lawful evidence was highly controversial; in France, such demonic testimony was attacked sharply by 1600 and, after a few show trials, had become completely discredited by 1650. England was not far behind. Such guides as John Cottas Tryall of Witchcraft (1616) urged caution in the diagnosis of bewitchment after some recent scandals in which children who had acted as demoniacs had later confessed that their symptoms were counterfeit. Like most early French skeptics with their famous diagnosis of something to illness, much faked, and nothing diabolical, Cotta was a physician. For him, the proper evaluation of early signs of fits and fevers required the expert judgment of a skilled physician to separate what was caused by illness or other natural causes from what was caused by witchcraft. Likewise, Thomas Adys later treatise, A Candle in the Dark (1656), expanded the list of natural causes that would have to be ruled out before arriving at a judgement of bewitchment. Whether or not such works were in part inspired by a need to assert medical over lay authority in such matters, they represented a growing skepticism about the validity of accounts of possession and bewitchment. Paradoxically, the more serious challenge to the credibility of the afflicted came from within theology itself. Even if one accepted that their symptoms originated with the Devil or his representatives, there still remained the vexing question of whether the victim was truly gifted with the ability to see the specters that were hidden from the sight of ordinary people or merely an instrument of Satans subtle and evil design. Were the afflicted somehow enabled to identify the malefic witch who tormented them or were their senses fooled by a devil who with gods permission could impersonate virtuous and innocent persons? Increasingly, throughout the seventeenth century, Protestant theologians cast doubt on the availability of divine will to human understanding thereby undermining the confidence that could be placed in the perception of those who claimed access to the invisible world. As applied to spectral evidence, the result of these misgivings was that it was impossible to be sure on theological grounds whether the accusations of the afflicted were true identifications of witches and witchcraft or a product of Satans deceptions. By the end of the seventeenth century, in England and on the Continent, the combined effect of theological doubt and medical skepticism was apparent in the weight accorded spectral evidence by the more influential published legal guides that were intended to assist in the trial of witchcraft. Lawyers, of course, were more cautious than theologians and physicians. Continental jurists, trained in Roman law, ignored this problem of spectral evidence. In England, Richard Bernards Guide to Grand-Jury Men (2nd edition, 1629), followed by later texts, regarded spectral evidence or an apparition of the party suspected whom the afflicted in their fits seems to see as presumptive rather than convictive, i.e., it sufficed to bring an indictment for witchcraft, but was not sufficient to convict. Spectral evidence in the Salem witchcraft trials Among their other noteworthy features, the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 represent a dramatic finale to use of spectral evidence. In less than a year after the initial proceedings, the special court that decided these cases altered their position from an almost-unqualified acceptance to an unqualified rejection of this evidence. It is hard to say which aspect is more remarkable: the lateness of the acceptance or the rapidity of its abandonment. At the outset of the trials in February, 1692, spectral evidence formed the basis for virtually all of the approximately 140 complaints that preceded the arrests of suspects on charges of witchcraft. The accusers consisted mostly of girls and young women between the ages of nine and 20, who cried out against the suspects whose specters they claimed were attacking them. Everyone tried for witchcraft during the Salem trials was indicted on charges that mentioned spectral evidence alone: the standard form of an indictment specified the name of the afflicted person and charged the accused with practicing witchcrafts and sorceries on the victim who was alleged to have been tortured, afflicted, pined, consumer, wasted, and tormented by these acts. Contemporary accounts and surviving records make it clear that live demonstrations of spectral evidence in the courtroom, testimony of witnesses confirming spectral assaults on the victims, and testimony of victims about torments at other times and other places formed the major part of the prosecutions evidence. It was primarily on this basis that the juries returned verdicts of guilty against 26 persons, of whom 19 were executed by hanging. To be sure, the Puritan ministers who were consulted for advice on the use of spectral evidence were unanimous in recommending that the court exercise extreme caution in interpreting this evidence and (like Bernard) insisted that no one should be convicted on the basis of such evidence alone. In fact, the special court endeavored to collect other evidence of witchcraft that might support the spectral accusations; with a few exceptions, it is equally apparent that only persons against whom there were other types of evidence, in addition to spectral evidence, were brought to trial. Nevertheless, when a new court was convened in January, 1693, with explicit directions to give less weight to spectral evidence, juries did not even bring indictments against a majority of the accused; the vast majority of those who were indicted (18 out of 21) were acquitted. Three were found guilty on the basis of their confessions, but even they were later released. The difference in outcomes between the court of 1692, that convicted virtually all persons who had been indicted, and the court of 1693, that acquitted or discharged virtually all persons who had been indicted, reflect the different weights attached to spectral evidence in each time period. Acceptance of the validity of spectral evidence was a necessary condition for conviction during the Salem trials. What happened to change the opinion of the court and the political leadership between October 1692 and January 1693? For one reason, by autumn 1692, the afflicted began to accuse persons of ever-greater prominence within Massachusetts Bay. When they cried out against one of the best respected ministers in the province, Samuel Willard, the magistrates rejected the accusation, nor did they issue warrants against others of similarly high repute who were accused. For the first time in the proceedings, the allegations of the afflicted were treated as fallible. Another important event was the publication of Increase Mathers Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits in 1693. The work of one of the most esteemed ministers in the province, endorsed and signed by fourteen other ministers, it forcefully discredited spectral evidence on theological grounds and demonstrated clear pastoral opposition to any continuation of the earlier policy. Finally, it is apparent that as arrests and accusations increased, public criticism escalated from dissatisfaction with individual cases to collective mobilization through petitions and resolutions questioning the entire proceedings. Whether prompted by one or more of these developments, the court that convened in 1693 reversed the policy of its predecessor of 1692. For all its promise as a spectacular demonstration of the workings of the invisible world and for all the sympathy that might be won through the appearance of a struggle between a young innocent and the specter of a malefic witch, spectral evidence over the long run contributed to undermine the credibility of witchcraft prosecutions wherever it was introduced, whether in Catholic France, Protestant England, or Puritan New England. After the Salem trials, there were no further legal executions for witchcraft in any of these places. --Richard Weisman See also Ady, Thomas; bewitchment; Bury St Edmonds; Cotta, John; evidence; Mather, Increase; possession, demonic; Salem References and Further Reading: Craker, Wendel D. 1997. Spectral Evidence, Non-Spectral Acts of Witchcraft, and Confession at Salem in 1692. The Historical Journal 40,2: 331-358. Hoffer, Philip Charles. 1997. The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press Karlsen, Carol. 1987. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Kittredge, George Lyman.1958. Witchcraft in Old and New England. New York: Russell and Russell. Reis, Elizabeth. 1997. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rosenthal, Bernard.1993. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Walker, D.P. 1981. Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Weisman, Richard. 1984. Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th Century Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.  PAGE 7 'Ee&,^a'=VWop5Tmnp49. 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