Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we explore one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of New England, the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials are a complex phenomenon that coupled puritanical fanaticism with fear of not only the devil, but life in the new world. The laws that led to the persecution of witches in New England date back to 1484, when Pope Innocent VIII wrote a papal bull called Summis Desiderantes Affectibus (Latin for “Desiring with supreme ardor”). This proclamation said that witches were real and were servants of the devil, and from there, witch-hunting mania was born. A few years later, The Malleus Maleficarum (aka “The Hammer of Witches”) was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (and possibly a partner, the Dominican Friar Jacob Sprenger). Sprenger and Kramer were both given power by the pope to hunt and kill anyone they deemed a witch. While this sounds like the stuff of really cool video games, it more like rampant sexism and murdering women who didn’t adh