Witches = Fear

As I was writing my position paper, it really made me think of all the different reasons people used to be claimed as witches. Of course there are the typical ways of being summed a witch, like dancing naked in the forest with a chicken or using some sort of spell to wish death upon another. I feel, however, that cases like those were actually the rarest ones to happen. Most of the time, persecutions seemed to be based on a "he said, she said" bases. "She must be a witch because she was in my field two nights ago and now my crops have died." But of course the person would forget that it had stormed the night before, but he surely remembers this girl in his field, who just loves late night walks.
It was almost like a fear "norm" that everyone had to live up to or more like keep an eye out for. This fear of witches or being a witch seriously spread faster than the Black Plague itself. Look at Trier, Germany. Hundreds of people “claimed” to be witches were either hung, burned, drowned, and the list goes on. There is no doubt that some, if not a good majority, of those people were innocent. The people of Trier were so obsessed with the idea of exterminating “witches”, they didn’t even care to second guess the accusations. Well, even if people did question the large amounts of persecutions, like arch-bishop Flade, they were accused of protecting them. And we all know if you protect a witch you must be one yourself.

As it said in Kors and Peters, “A persecution such as that at Trier demands a population that believes in the efficacy of the process by which the witches are identified and exterminated” (310).

It’s crazy to think what fear can do to people. Clearly it can make people turn on one another. Even when there was “proof” that certain people dabbled in witchcraft, how legitimate was it? Everything in a court of law needs evidence to prove the facts stated. The only actual, tangible evidence that I've seen so far is what Kors and Peters said in the “Confessions of the Chelmsford Witches”.

“…of the intentions, the diabolical pact, and the unnatural powers of the witch, uttered by his or her own tongue and signed by his or her own hand” (303).

My real question is how valid these confessions were. In the text it says that the confessions were given willingly and through torture. Well if I knew I was in deep shit and there was no way out; even if I did confess, I would surely be put to death anyway. Most of these people probably just said things or agreed with the accusations to avoid any type of torture. Better be burned now, than tortured, then just burned later. The English said how the confessions were tangible proof, but I say bullshit. The majority of the accused were poor and uneducated, they had no clue what was going on. Just because of their social status, automatically made their words lesser than words of someone rich and educated. 

It's sad to think about, but come on, it happened all the time. Fear can do some crazy stuff, no doubt. Look at the Crucible. An entire town turned on each other just because a group of (LYING) girls claimed certain people were workers of the Devil. The ironic thing is that these girls were the ones performing the rituals! Talk about a scapegoat.