How local wise-women who carried on ancient traditions were exterminated by Christianity
We have all heard of Europe’s 400 years of witch persecutions, from the 14th to the 18th centuries, but few are aware of the enormous extent of the holocaust. The church likes to pretend that “only a few hundred thousand” innocents were murdered, but secular sources estimate as many as nine million. (Four centuries of killing can dispose of a good many people.) Over 85% of them were female: grandmothers, mothers, maidens, even children, mostly illiterate peasants who couldn’t even understand the questions their torturers asked, and in their agony begged to be told what to confess to. Local chroniclers spoke of stakes set up as thick as a forest, and hundreds slaughtered in a single day. At the height of the frenzy, we read of villages in Germany and France where only one or two women were left alive. In some places, whole villages were destroyed altogether.[16]
The Inquisition was empowered by Pope John XXII to prosecute anyone who worked magic, as opposed to the heretics who had been largely exterminated by the Albigensian, Waldensian, and other crusades. In 1375, a French inquisitor lamented that all the rich heretics had been eliminated, their wealth having been appropriated by the church, and now it was “a pity that so salutary an institution” as the Inquisition should not have a future.[17] The solution was found in declaring witchcraft a demonic heresy. The persecution became a major industry, resulting in great profits from seizure of the victims’ possessions. Each procedure of torture carried a fee. Victims were charged for their food and lodging in prison, for the ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. After the execution of any comparatively affluent witch, officials would treat themselves to a banquet at the expense of the victim’s estate.[18]
A history of the Inquisition, written by a Catholic scholar in 1909, said the church “invented the crime of witchcraft and relied on torture as the means of proving it.”[19] The official handbook of the Inquisition was the Malleus Maleficarum, “A Hammer for Witches,” written by two monks, minutely detailing the techniques of torture. I have read this book, and it is truly vile. In my opinion, no organization that ever produced such a book—and its consequences—deserves to call itself a religion.
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/0...traditions-were-exterminated-by-christianity/
We have all heard of Europe’s 400 years of witch persecutions, from the 14th to the 18th centuries, but few are aware of the enormous extent of the holocaust. The church likes to pretend that “only a few hundred thousand” innocents were murdered, but secular sources estimate as many as nine million. (Four centuries of killing can dispose of a good many people.) Over 85% of them were female: grandmothers, mothers, maidens, even children, mostly illiterate peasants who couldn’t even understand the questions their torturers asked, and in their agony begged to be told what to confess to. Local chroniclers spoke of stakes set up as thick as a forest, and hundreds slaughtered in a single day. At the height of the frenzy, we read of villages in Germany and France where only one or two women were left alive. In some places, whole villages were destroyed altogether.[16]
The Inquisition was empowered by Pope John XXII to prosecute anyone who worked magic, as opposed to the heretics who had been largely exterminated by the Albigensian, Waldensian, and other crusades. In 1375, a French inquisitor lamented that all the rich heretics had been eliminated, their wealth having been appropriated by the church, and now it was “a pity that so salutary an institution” as the Inquisition should not have a future.[17] The solution was found in declaring witchcraft a demonic heresy. The persecution became a major industry, resulting in great profits from seizure of the victims’ possessions. Each procedure of torture carried a fee. Victims were charged for their food and lodging in prison, for the ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. After the execution of any comparatively affluent witch, officials would treat themselves to a banquet at the expense of the victim’s estate.[18]
A history of the Inquisition, written by a Catholic scholar in 1909, said the church “invented the crime of witchcraft and relied on torture as the means of proving it.”[19] The official handbook of the Inquisition was the Malleus Maleficarum, “A Hammer for Witches,” written by two monks, minutely detailing the techniques of torture. I have read this book, and it is truly vile. In my opinion, no organization that ever produced such a book—and its consequences—deserves to call itself a religion.
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/0...traditions-were-exterminated-by-christianity/
