UBC: A Quest for Security

[truepenny]

Gragg, Larry. A Quest for Security: The Life of Samuel Parris, 1653-1720. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.

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Ironically, while I was very excited to find Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem and picked this up mostly because (a.) it was right there and (b.) it seemed unlikely I'd ever find another copy, this was by far the better book.

It is exactly what it says it is: a biography of Samuel Parris. And Gragg doesn't try to make Parris seem either better or worse (or more interesting) than he actually was. The picture that comes through is quite clear: an ordinary man with a mediocre mind, not quite as smart as he thought he was, dumped into a situation that he had no hope of dealing with. Most of Gragg's primary evidence is Parris's sermon book, and he admits he's using that to make what conjectures he can about Parris's daily life and behavior, but he quotes the sermons extensively and persuasively to support his ideas. Like every other historian of Salem, he claims to have found the real reason the witchcraft trials happened as they did, but in Gragg's case, I'm actually persuaded. The decisions that Samuel Parris made were crucial: Parris decided not to treat the afflicted girls through isolation and prayer, which had been a successful method in a recent and widely publicized case (except for his own daughter Betty, whom he sent out of Salem Village, and Betty, it should be noticed, recovered without causing any further public drama); Parris seems to have been an instigator in the decision to ask the girls to make accusations and to act on their answers; Parris certainly was a champion of spectral evidence*; and Parris was the one, when members of his church started being accused, who decided to condemn and excommunicate them, rather than question the testimony of the afflicted.

And Gragg doesn't make the mistake of saying it's all Parris. He's very aware of the other factors; although, like most historians who focus on the male adults in Salem, he pays little to no attention to the afflicted girls and women, he at least shows some awareness of the absent subjectivity. And he has a wonderful lengthy footnote animadverting about other historians' tendency to explain away witchcraft as a transparent vehicle for psychological/social/sexual/economic/other discontents.

The only bone I would pick with this book is that Gragg works much too hard to try to find a unifying theme in Parris' life (the "quest for security" of the title). It's the one place where he seems to me to make the mistake of trying to inflate his material beyond what it is, and it just isn't necessary. Other than that, this is a patient, well-documented, coolly non-partisan biography that does an excellent job of explaining how and why Samuel Parris was instrumental in making the Salem witchcraft crisis the large-scale tragedy that it was.

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*"Spectral evidence" is the term for descriptions made by the afflicted of being tortured by the "specters" of the accused witches: i.e., spirit forms that no one except the afflicted could see. There was a serious controversy in 1692 about whether the Devil could take the form of an innocent person, and most ministers in New England, while uncertain theologically, came down very firmly on the side of saying that since it was possible the Devil could do this, spectral evidence should not be used to convict a witch. Samuel Parris believed whole-heartedly the other way.

Comments

Spectral evidence

[marycatelli]

Oh yes, that was bad. It's astounding what insisting on ordinary standards of evidence (for the era!) did to stop witch crazes.

Re: Spectral evidence

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

One of the most awful things I read in the class I took on witchcraft was someone's essay -- a Spanish friar, I think, though for the life of me I can't remember who -- pointing out, with inexorable logic, how impossible it was to clear your name if you were an innocent person wrongly accused.

Not that my other reading was cheerful, but the entire way through I could imagine myself in that position, and was semi-terrified by the thought.

Re: Spectral evidence

[marycatelli]

Well, actually, in Spain you would have been relatively safe, since Spanish friars were in charge of witchcraft trials. During the Basque witch trials, the friars were induced to go along -- for which they were punished, later -- but most of the time, they would throw cold water on the prosecution. As the time when a woman said another woman had been at the sabbat, the other woman said she was at home in bed, to the counter that that had been an illusion, and the friar in charge throwing out the case on the grounds that the figure at the sabbat could have been an illusion, too, so it was no evidence either way.

Large stretches of Europe, however, held witchcraft was an "excepted crime." Ordinary standards of evidence did not apply.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

This idea of "spectral evidence" reminds me a lot of Heian Japan's ideas about spirit possession; mediums' statements were accepted as evidence, and possession was an acknowledged social force. Rashomon goes into the medium side of it; The Tale of Genji has a couple famous incidents of possession.

Piterson

[rpointing.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more information? It is extremely helpful and beneficial to your readers.
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Re: Piterson

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

My posts about the Salem witchcraft crisis are all collected under the tag salem 1692 (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/tag/salem%201692).