4. You were illiterate: Even if you were dyslexic or just hated speaking in public, failure to quote fluently from the Bible might be seen as a sign of being possessed by evil
The Middle Ages was no time to be a dyslexic or to suffer from a stammer. Even a common affliction like struggling to speak in public could see you put on trial for witchcraft. That’s because it was believed that witches were unable to recite prayers or passages from the Bible. In what became known as the ‘Prayer Test’, women or men suspected of practicing black magic would be given a Bible and asked to read a passage aloud from it. Alternatively, they may be put on the spot and asked to recite a well-known prayer.
Failure to read clearly and without hesitation or struggling to remember the words to a common prayer may have been taken as a sign that the devil was inside you. This was certainly the case in England in 1712. In one of the country’s last witch trials, the accused, a lady called Jane Wenham, struggled to recite several passages of the Lord’s Prayer. However, even saying a prayer fluently wasn’t enough to save you – as George Burroughs found out during the Salem Witch Trials. On the gallows about to hang for being a sorcerer, he recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly. Even then, his accusers believed it was a trick of the devil and killed him anyway.