Mr Ellis's List: Catholic Church

• Inquisitions
• the Inquisitions themselves deserve their own entry. Their typically accepted dates are from the 1100s to 1808.
• anyone who roused the anger or suspicion of the Roman Catholic Church was in very real danger of the arrival of Inquisitors
• These tortures were lurid beyond belief, including branding, the rack, hanging by the toes or thumbs, toe crushing, bone breaking, simple beatings, foot roasting, and blinding by red-hot pokers. After such tortures, the condemned was almost always strangled, then burned at the stake. For seven centuries, the Catholic Church was all powerful, even terrifying monarchs, and the Inquisition held absolute sway by the most brutal methods imaginable.
• Medieval Witch Hunts
• Casualty numbers vary drastically because records were not well kept, but the average total is anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 dead, just in the period of c. 1480 to c. 1750.
• If a particular person irritated someone, the latter could accuse the former of witchcraft, and the Catholic Church showed up like a bloodhound. Or a nation or local government could suddenly become afraid of the influence of the Antichrist and take care of the matter with the Church’s blessing.
• The Church actually believed, and led the populace to believe, that it was doing witches a favor by torturing them and burning them to death. The methods by which to prove a witch were ludicrous, to state the obvious: a mole or birthmark was deemed proof of trafficking with the Devil; uttering blasphemy (and back then it was nearly impossible to open your mouth without offending the Church); denouncement by another witch (and since denouncing another passed the blame, the accused could save himself this way); to be afraid during interrogation; and the most infamous of all, anyone who could swim was most assuredly a witch, since only the Devil could teach someone to conquer water.
• Tortures were not always overseen by the Church itself, and thus, the rule of not shedding blood was ignored in these instances. So the tortures became much, much worse: flogging, skinning alive, castration by red-hot pincers, disemboweling, drawing and quartering, head crushing, tooth extraction, de-nailing. Death, if not by torture, was always via burning at the stake.

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• In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull declaring that witches did indeed exist and thus it became a heresy to believe otherwise. This was quite a reversal because in 906 the Canon Episocopi, a church law, declared that belief in the existence and operation of witchcraft was heresy.
• church authorities tortured and killed thousands
• in an effort to get them to confess that they flew through the sky, had sexual relations with demons, turned into animals
• In the place of real knowledge or information, Christian leaders made things up and created stories which were certain to cause people to hate and fear witches even more.
• People trusted their religious and political leaders to provide them with accurate information, but in reality the "information" provided was simply whatever furthered their leaders religious and political goals. Creating an enemy of out witches served the goal of increased religious and political cohesion because people would want to draw closer together in order to confront the enemy who wanted to destroy them. Isn't that ultimately more important than whether the stories were true or not?

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• Inquisition
• The word 'heretic' comes from the Greek hairesis, meaning 'choice'. When Christianity took the place, as it more or less did, of the Roman Empire as the cohesive force in Europe, choice of spiritual belief or practice of belief became something of an unaffordable luxury. It must be understood, that what is meant by the Christian Church in its early centuries and the Middle Ages is a very direct and active form of empire
• At the onset of what is called the Medieval Inquisition, the great crusades to the Holy Lands were over. These, in any case, were against pagans rather than heretics, and pagans were cases for conversion rather than inquisition.
• Inquisitors had previously been instructed to deal with sorcery only if it was clearly related to heresy. From now on, however, there could be no distinction. The first approximation of the witch craze that would evolve by the end of the century had actually occurred back in 1227, when the priest Conrad of Magdeburg, had been appointed to make inquisitorial inquiry in Germany.
• It was the charge of witchcraft that enabled the Inquisition to try and condemn Jean d'Arc in 1431 and Gilles de Rais in 1440. An Inquisition never occurred in England, but at this time, after Agincourt, England possessed part of France; the part they were battling for with the French army, led by a seventeen-year-old girl who claimed inspiration from Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret
• The actual causes and progress of the witch craze are a subject for volumes; but by the end of the fourteenth century, all the necessary elements were there. The witch craze and the Protestant Reformation, that ultimate, successful schism, were the forces that shaped the Inquisition from then up till the modern period. But special mention must first be made of that most notorious abuse, that was initiated in the Spanish region of Castile in 1478.
• The extreme reputation of the Spanish Inquisition derives from a number of factors. It was the first time since Gregory that an Inquisition occurred without the jurisdiction of the Pope; Sixtus gave his permission, but the entire operation was controlled by the Spanish crown. With the complete support it thus possessed, it was probably the most efficient Inquisition in history

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• The accused   would then be implicated and asked incriminating and luring   questions in a dexterous manner of trickery calculated to entangle   most. Many manual's used and promulgated were by the grand   inquisitor Bernardus Guidonis, the Author of Practica Inquisitionis   (Practice of the Inquisition) and the Directorium Inquisitorum   (Guideline for Inquisitors) completed by Nicolaus Eymerich, grand   inquisitor of Aragon. These were the authoritative text-books for   the use of inquisitors until the issue of Torquemada's instructions   in 1483, which was an enlarged and revised Directorium.
• The Inquisition   invented every conceivable devise to inflict pain by slowly   dismembering and dislocating the body
• Bernardus Guidonis,   the Inquisitor in Toulouse instructed the layman as to never argue   with the unbeliever, but as to "thrust his sword into the man's   belly as far as it will go
• George Ryley Scott describes how the   inquisitors, gorged with their inhumanity, and developed a degree of   callousness rarely rivaled in the annals of civilization, with the   ecclesiastical authorities condemning every faith outside of   Christianity as demonic.
• Men, women, and children, all legally   murdered on evidence by a church
• During the course, defendants had no rights to counsel or advice,   and was even denied the right to know the names of their accusers.   No favorable evidence or character witnesses were permitted. In any   case, one who even spoke for an accused heretic would be arrested as   an accomplice. Never would a prisoner of the Inquisition have seen   the accusation against himself, or any other. All efforts relating   to time, place, and person were carefully concealed.
• • "If women become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth, that is why they are there."
    Martin Luther (1483-1546)
    
    This appears to be fabricated - no source an be located.

• Most justification of the persecution of witches in Europe all later   based themselves on such biblical percepts as commanded through that,

   

   

    "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.   (with Exodus.22:18 )",

   

    or   that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to   devils, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have   fellowship with devils.   (1 Cor. 10:20)" 
• In The Dark Side of Christian History,   Helen Ellerbe provided a   baseline on the 300 year period of witch hunting from the fifteenth   to the eighteenth century, in what R.H. Robbins calls "the shocking   nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of western   civilization," that ensured the European abandonment of the belief   in magic. The Church created the elaborate concept of devil worship   and then, used the persecution of it to wipe out dissent,   subordinate the individual to authoritarian control, and openly   denigrate women.

• The witchhunts became an eruption of orthodox   Christianity's vilification of women, or "the weaker vessel," in St.   Peter's words. The second century St. Clement of Alexandria wrote:  

   

   

    "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is   a woman."

   

   

    The sixth century Christian philosopher,   Boethius, wrote   in The Consolation of Philosophy,

   

   

    "Woman  is a temple built upon a sewer."

   

   

    Bishops at the sixth century   Council of Macon voted as to whether women had souls. In the tenth   century Odo of Cluny declared,

   

   

    "To embrace a woman is to embrace a   sack of manure..."

• Lutherans at Wittenberg debated whether women were really   human beings at all. Orthodox Christians held women responsible for   all sin. As the Bible's Apocrypha states,

   

   

    "Of woman came the   beginning of sin/ And thanks to her, we all must die."

• The Inquisitors   who wrote       The Malleus Maleficarum, explained   that women are more likely to become witches than men because the   female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men;   being formed from a man's rib, they are only "imperfect animals" and   "crooked" whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst   Christ emerged.

   

     

   

    King James I estimated that the ratio of women to   men who succumbed to witchcraft was twenty to one. Of those formally   persecuted for witchcraft, between 80 to 90 percent were women.

• The persecution of witchcraft also enabled   the Church to prolong the   profitability of the Inquisition. The Inquisition had left regions   so economically destitute that the inquisitor Eymeric complained,  

   

   

    "In our days there are no more rich heretics... it is a pity that so   salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its   future."

   

   

    The Inquisition exposed a whole new group of people from   whom to collect money. It took every advantage of this opportunity.  

   

     

   

    The author Barbara Walker notes:  

   

   

    "Victims were charged for the very   ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. Each procedure   of torture carried its fee. After the execution of a wealthy witch,   officials usually treated themselves to a banquet at the expense of   the victim's estate."

• The process of formally persecuting witches followed the grinding   inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it was   virtually impossible to escape conviction. After cross-examination,   the victim's body was examined for the witch's mark. The historian   Walter Nigg described the process:

   

   

    ...she was stripped naked and the   executioner shaved off all her body hair in order to seek in the   hidden places of the body the sign which the devil imprinted on his   cohorts.

   

   

   

    Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain   tokens of amorous relations with Satan. Should a woman show no sign   of a witch's mark, guilt could still be established by methods such   as sticking needles in the accused's eyes. The confession was then   extracted by the hideous methods of torture already developed during   earlier phases of the Inquisition.

   

   

    "Loathe they are to confess   without torture," wrote King James I in his Daemonologie.  

   

     

   

    A   physician serving in witch prisons spoke of women driven half mad:  

   

   

    "by frequent torture... kept in prolonged squalor and darkness of   their dungeons... and constantly dragged out to undergo atrocious   torment until they would gladly exchange at any moment this most   bitter existence for death, are willing to confess whatever crimes   are suggested to them rather than to be thrust back into their   hideous dungeon amid ever recurring torture."

   

   

    Unless the witch died   during torture, she was taken to the stake. Since many of the   burnings took place in public squares, inquisitors prevented the   victims from talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting   their tongues out.

   

   

• Protestant and Catholic   rivaled each other in the madness of the   hour. Witches were burned no longer in ones and twos, but in scores   and hundreds. A bishop of Geneva is said to have burned five hundred   within three months, a bishop of Bamburg six hundred, a bishop of   Wurzburg nine hundred. Eight hundred were  condemned, apparently in one body, by the Senate of Savoy. Nicholaus   Remigius, the criminal judge in Lorraine, boasted that in 15 years   he had sent to death 900 people for the crime of witchcraft. In one   year alone he forced 16 witches to commit suicide.

   

     

   

    The Archbishop of Treves burned a hundred and eighteen women and two men, from whom   confessions had been extorted that their incantations had prolonged   the winter. Paramo boasts that in a century and a half from the   commencement of the sect, in 1404, the Holy Office had burned at   least 30,000 witches. Cumanus, in Italy, burned 41 women in one   province alone. Strasbourg, burned 5000 in a period of 20 years.  

   

     

   

    It   was reported in 1518 when the Senate was officially informed that   the inquisitor had burned 70 witches of the Valcamonica, that he had   as many in his prisons, and that those suspected or accused amounted   to about 5000, or one fourth of the inhabitants of the valleys. In   Germany 500 were burned in 1515 and 1516. In 1524, 1000 females   accused of being witches died at Como, and for several years   subsequently, the number of victims exceeded 100 annually.

   

     

   

    In   France, about 1520, the fires for the execution of witches blazed in   almost every town; in one township in Piedmont there was not a   family that had not lost a member; at Verneuil in 1561, women were   burned on the charged of having converted themselves into cats. The   delusion spread like an epidemic through the villages. Many women   were murdered by mobs. At Leith, in Scotland, 9 women were burned   together in 1664; the bishops’ palaces of South Germany basically   became shambles--the lordly prelates of Salzburg, Wurzburg, and   Bamberg taking lead in the butchery.

   

     

   

    The executioner of Neisse in   Silesia even invented an oven in which he roasted to death 42 women   and young girls in one year. Within 9 years he had roasted over a   1000 people, including children 2 to 4 years old. In Wurzburg many   children were burned, some no older than 9 years.

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• The Malleus   Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), first published in 1486, is   arguably one of the most infamous books ever written, due   primarily to its position and regard during the Middle Ages. It   served as a guidebook for Inquisitors during the Inquisition,   and was designed to aid them in the identification, prosecution,   and dispatching of Witches.
• Estimates of the   death toll during the Inquisition worldwide range from 600,000   to as high as 9,000,000
• Scientists were   branded heretics by virtue of repudiating certain tenets of   Christian belief (most notably Galileo, whose theories on the   nature of planets and gravitational fields was initially branded   heretical).
• Writers who   challenged the Church were arrested for heresy (sometimes   formerly accepted writers whose works had become unpopular).   Anyone who questioned the validity of any part of Catholic   belief did so at their own risk.

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• Persecutions did not reach epidemic levels until after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church had lost its position as Europe’s indisputable moral authority. Moreover most of the killing was done by secular courts. These are not strange facts. A single strong Church would have continued to exercise control, but it had lost its total power. Where it retained the influence of the Inquistion, it retained control. Church courts tried many witches but few died. A witch might be excommunicated, given penance, or imprisoned, but not often killed. The Inquisition would pardon a witch who confessed and repented. Witches per se were not the Church’s target. The trouble was that they had defined the heretics as if they were Satanic, and the hysterical population had seen Satan in every peculiar person they saw, or in every cough they coughed. The local eccentrics became the involunary target.
• Christian Catholics unleashed the hounds of fear and prejudice onto the witches by stirring up witch hatred. They could placidly then drink claret while the secular courts of Europe killed the witches, leaving the Church spotless as ever. The pope says he is sorry for the deaths. It is impossible to apologize for such vile and monstrous crimes. Those who think an apology suffices have not got the scale and horror of the crimes into their heads.
• He convinced La Suprema, the ruling body of the Spanish Inquisition, that it was hysteria. An “Edict of Silence” forbade discussing witchcraft. The edict dissipated the panic and accusations. This serves to prove that the Church had it in its power to stop hysteria and mob rule when it wanted. It can therefore not pretend that awful mobs and greedy princes did things irrespective of the Church. It came to be so, but for most of the time the Church pretends innocence. It was not innocent. Jenny Gibbons says the Spanish Inquisition always insisted it alone had the right to condemn witches—which it refused to do. She relates a case where it stops a panic. Why did it not do it elsewhere? Any superstitious mob or prince needed only threatening with eternal death, and they would stop defying the Church.
• Reversing its policy of denying the existence of witches, in the thirteenth century the Church began depicting the witch as a slave of the Devil. The Church began authorizing frightening portrayals of the Devil in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Images of a witch riding a broom first appeared in 1280. The Church now portrayed witches with the same images so frequently used to characterize heretics—a small clandestine society engaged in anti-human practices, including infanticide, incest, cannibalism, bestiality and orgiastic sex. These were the Church’s descriptions of the Cathars after they had been scattered and forced underground by the Albigensian Crusades.
• Belief in the power of witchcraft itself is what gives rise to witch hunts, and the best way to stop them is to stop people believing in witchcraft. Even today in South Africa, western missionaries report that the Christian Zulu Zionists, “in claiming to be able to cure the evil influences of traditional magic, are reinforcing the belief in it”.
• Joan of Arc, whom Murray takes to be a witch, refused to say the Paternoster, and this is said to have been true of witches. For Cathars, it was the principal prayer, but only Parfaits were allowed to say it, not Croyants, and, as their most sacred utterance, it seems unlikely that a Parfait would say it at the insistance of their profane enemies. She also spoke of “their party” and said she saw those who spoke to her walking among the Christians. She used the expression “My Lord” instead of “Christ”. She was supposedly visited by S Michael, who is, in fact Christ, the archangel Michael. She was a Cathar, not a Pagan.
• Gilles de Rais, Joan’s main military supporter, was accused of sacrificing 800 children, and confessed to a string of crimes and abuses without even being tortured. His wickedness is laid on too thickly to be taken seriously, without patent confirmation. Even so he has been called Bluebeard, a legendary monster of Brittany. The simplest explanation is that de Rais chose voluntary martyrdom to save his fellow heretics, whether witches or Cathars.

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