Coming to Terms With the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem witchcraft trials could not have occurred without a reversal of judicial restraint in resolving complaints about witchcraft. Prior to Salem, magistrates and ministers had grown suspicious of maleficium, or the production of evil, as a basis for conviction, and ministers felt that intrusion of royal authority threatened their godly society. Magistrates on the Salem court who had served on the Dominion Council had strayed too far from the "New England way." Neither group could afford to be lenient with witches. Their acceptance of spectral evidence essentially reversed earlier opinion on maleficium and allowed both the trials and executions to go forward.