Weighing Witches
As CNN reports:
Governor Timothy M. Kaine gave an informal pardon Monday to Grace Sherwood, who 300 years ago became Virginia’s only person convicted as a witch tried by water.
Now some among you may have complained about the absurdity of a well-known representation of a witch trial not realizing that it was based on historic fact, for a given value of based.
The most common reason I have encountered regarding pitching people into the local bayou to see if they were witches was because witches had sold their souls to the devil. Obviously without a soul they would be lighter and would float, whereas good Christian would sink from the weight of their soul. This was sound Aristotelian logic, very advanced scientific thought for the time.
There was no satisfactory explanation, beyond the ever popular: “if they weren’t guilty of anything they wouldn’t have been arrested”, as to why you would present someone with the choice of drowning if they were innocent or being hauled out and hanged if they were guilty. In later ages the guilty were burned after death as they had to dry out first.
In English common law if you were accused of a crime and died when “put to the question” without confessing your guilt, your family inherited your property, otherwise it was generally forfeited to the court.
