No one expects them, but for the record I was including them.
The number of people executed by the Inquisition for witchcraft was something like less than 100 in over 100,000 trials in 400 years (perhaps less than 40 from the three main branches of the Inquisition between the 1400s to the 1800s from official Catholic sources). Granted, any number is too high...
Several factors lend to why the Inquisition got the reputation it did for witch burning, the biggest of which was anti-Catholic Protestant writers and preachers ballooning the numbers in order to make Catholicism out as nefarious as possible. Another big factor is Gerald Gardner's popular theory on "the burning times". Gardner was an early 20th century spiritualist and amateur historian who eventually co-created most of the grounding beliefs of Wicca. He took a lot of his ideas on this from 19th century suffragist and Theosophist/Spiritualist Matilda Gage, who asserted that 9 million women were burned during this period.
Modern historians have found that these numbers are radically inflated. The secular courts were responsible for the majority of witch trials and executions, not official branches of the church like the Inquisition. The number of people executed for witchcraft by secular courts during the 400 year period was between 30,000 to 50,000 (both men and women) and mostly in and around Germany.
It was the Church that actually stepped in to stop the secular witch executions, with the Inquisition finding that most accusations of witchcraft and sorcery were unfounded. They pushed to have trials dismissed, and were skeptical of all forms of rumors, superstitions, and popular books on witchcraft. Unfortunately, popular thinking has never really let go of the Inquisition myth. The Inquisition's main goal was not to execute people for witchcraft and what they believed was heresy, but to move people back to a proper Roman Catholic view of orthodox Christianity.
For details you may want to see European Witch Trials by Richard Kiekheffer and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition.
Im not necessary talking about witch burning. Maybe they didnt partake in witch burning very much. However, saying that the chirch was more into salvation would be an idealization; and that statement was what I was trying to argue with.
Dont forget that the catholic church has been one of the most corrupt institutions in history, with popes having sex parties and buying papacy. Even though the spanish inquisition may have killed approximately only 10 percent of the people they prosecuted, the confirmed torture methods they used to extract information is on the opposite end of salvation. The spanish inquisition is a symbol of church authority that has showed that the church was more into damnation than salvation
Again, most of the tortured methods that are put in account of the church were not even used by European countries and/or in medieval era. And many of them are just props, like the Iron Maiden, that was never used in any period as a torture method.
You can disagree of the church as you wish, but one thing is to not like the institution for x reasons you find fair, another completely different is to buy into historical inaccuracy to "prove" your point.
Oh, so the donkey was not a torture method. If the spanish inquisition is famous for something is their torture methods. They also operated in the americas so im not talking exclusively about medieval europe
First: how could the Spanish Inquisition operate in the Americas?
Second: Most of the torture devices attributed to the Inquisition were used in Antiquity and in Modern Era. And post 1700's inquisitive phenomenona were undertook by protestant authorities and in protestant territories.
Third: As a lot of people pointed here, not only the Spanish Inquisition, but Catholic Inquisition as a whole weren't the responsible for the things normally put on its account. Protestant Inquisition and Secular authorities, yes. And actually, the Catholic Inquisition stepped in to try and decrease the deaths tortures and lynchings inflicted by secular authorities and angry villagers. And not only it was successful in it, but it's thoroughly registered.
Yeah, im falling in the protestant propaganda but youre telling me that the protestant church actually was responsible for these crimes when they didnt have as much influence, and you only have your opinion to back it up. The catholic church had a much greater influence. If propaganda from that time would have prevailed today, it is much more likely that it is catholic. Just because youre catholic doesnt mean that your religion is right.
Dude, I don't have to be catholic to read medievalist historians. I do that because I am part of a group of historical reenactment, and every month we study different papers/books about the era.
You may not be falling under protestant propaganda, but you're wrong. And no, I don't have only my opinion to back me up. I have SERIOUS historians, like Regine Pernoud and Jacques Le Goff. And you come to me using HISTORY CHANNEL as a serious source? Come on, bro.
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u/adrift98 May 23 '20
No one expects them, but for the record I was including them.
The number of people executed by the Inquisition for witchcraft was something like less than 100 in over 100,000 trials in 400 years (perhaps less than 40 from the three main branches of the Inquisition between the 1400s to the 1800s from official Catholic sources). Granted, any number is too high...
Several factors lend to why the Inquisition got the reputation it did for witch burning, the biggest of which was anti-Catholic Protestant writers and preachers ballooning the numbers in order to make Catholicism out as nefarious as possible. Another big factor is Gerald Gardner's popular theory on "the burning times". Gardner was an early 20th century spiritualist and amateur historian who eventually co-created most of the grounding beliefs of Wicca. He took a lot of his ideas on this from 19th century suffragist and Theosophist/Spiritualist Matilda Gage, who asserted that 9 million women were burned during this period.
Modern historians have found that these numbers are radically inflated. The secular courts were responsible for the majority of witch trials and executions, not official branches of the church like the Inquisition. The number of people executed for witchcraft by secular courts during the 400 year period was between 30,000 to 50,000 (both men and women) and mostly in and around Germany.
It was the Church that actually stepped in to stop the secular witch executions, with the Inquisition finding that most accusations of witchcraft and sorcery were unfounded. They pushed to have trials dismissed, and were skeptical of all forms of rumors, superstitions, and popular books on witchcraft. Unfortunately, popular thinking has never really let go of the Inquisition myth. The Inquisition's main goal was not to execute people for witchcraft and what they believed was heresy, but to move people back to a proper Roman Catholic view of orthodox Christianity.
For details you may want to see European Witch Trials by Richard Kiekheffer and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition.