938797
Year: August 27, 2024
Format: PDF
File size: PDF 7.6 MB
Language: English
The role of judges in a witch trial was central. Goldish argues that in Salem the judges' acceptance of questionable touch tests and spectral evidence was a result of their intellectual commitments. Several of the Salem judges were highly educated, and some of them were adherents of a particular philosophical school in England led by Henry More and Joseph Glanvill which Goldish calls and quot;the anti-Sadducees. and quot; He demonstrates how the ideas of these leading thinkers, friends of Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, could have led to the deaths of twenty accused witches in Salem.
This book will interest students and scholars of witch trials, American colonial history, Atlantic history, legal history and early modern Europe, as well as lay readers wanting a better understanding of Salem.