The Prayer Test
The importance of praying correctly and without error is a superstition dating from Roman times. Priests officiating at religious rituals were required to perform every word and gesture exactly and without error. If they made a mistake, they had to begin again, lest their sloppy incantations offended the gods and bring down bad luck. This belief seems to have survived within Christianity and by the seventeenth century, trial by prayer had become yet another test for witches.
The theory was no agent of the devil would be able to pray to God or read from the Bible without tripping over the holy words. So, it became customary to make accused witches recite the Lord’s Prayer or read a passage from the Bible during their trial. They had to do this flawlessly without stuttering, shaking or in any way mispronouncing the words. Considering the suspect was in terror of their life, and were probably already fatigued by previous trials and torments, this was no mean feat. However, no mitigating circumstances were not taken into account by the court. If the accused were innocent, then God would give them strength. So, if they fluffed the recital, they were doomed.
However, to pray flawlessly was no guarantee that you would be proclaimed innocent. One of the accused Salem witches was a former Reverend of the community, George Burroughs. Burroughs was returned to Salem and tried for witchcraft, found guilty and sentenced to hang. However, when he reached the scaffold, he made a speech to the assembled crowd, declaring his innocence. Then he began to say the Lord’s Prayer.
Robert Calef was a witness to the execution. He noted that Burroughs’s prayer “was so well worded” and “uttered with such composedness” and “fervency of spirit” that it convinced some of the crowd that the Reverend was innocent. “It seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution,” Calef noted. However, the officials of Salem were having none of it for this. Calef described how “Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a Horse, addressed himself to the people, partly to declare that he [Burroughs] was no ordained minister, and partly to possess the people of his guilt, saying that the devil has often been transformed into an angel of the light; and this somewhat appeased the people, and the executions went on.”
Other tests for witchcraft had an even more dubious basis.