Bede

Note however, that modern scholars put the total death toll at around 50 - 60,000. This still represents a great crime and makes one wonder why some writers felt it necessary to exagerate these already high figures.

B

Dr Rick

from Brighid's site linked above:

"It must be noted that during the Inquisition, few, if any, real, verifiable, witches were ever discovered or tried. Often the very accusation was enough to see one branded a witch, tried by the Inquisitors' Court, and burned alive at the stake. Estimates of the death toll during the Inquisition worldwide range from 600,000 to as high as 9,000,000 [emphasis added] (over its 250 year long course); either is a chilling number when one realizes that nearly all of the accused were women, and consisted primarily of outcasts and other suspicious persons. Old women. Midwives. Jews. Poets. Gypsies. Anyone who did not fit within the contemporary view of pieous Christians were suspect, and easily branded "Witch". Usually to devastating effect.

It must also be noted that the crime of Witchcraft was not the only crime of which one could be accused during the Inquisition. By questioning any part of Catholic belief, one could be branded a heretic. 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. The Malleus Maleficarum played an important role in bringing such Canonical law into being, as often the charge of heresy carried along with it suspicions of witchcraft."

cjack

Bede,

It appears, at least on the surface, that anything that agrees with your position is "sober, modern and accurate," while anything which might disagree is "anti-christian tosh," or hopelessly out of date.

Oh, and MortalWombat hit the nail on the head, IMHO...

Bede

You are right cjack, except you are putting the cart before the horse. I reached my conclusions after reading modern scholarship, and found it convincing, so it is hardly surprising to find I agree with it. I am of course biased, and would rather be able to claim that the inquisition was not as bad as I acknowledge it was. But facts are hard to get away from.

BTW, Dr Rick correctly identified the passage in Brighid's link which inaccurate and to which I was refering. Doubtless he agrees that the figures he emboldened are hopelessly inflated.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Calzaer

So, in other words, "I disagree, therefore he's discredited"? A wee bit circular, isn't it? That evidence is bad because your "faq" says so, and your "faq" is reliable because all the evidence against it is bad?

Dr Rick

It's more than just circular reasoning; there's some not-so-subtle equivocation of terms at work, as well:

The revisionists have re-computed the death toll from the trials of witches in that range, not the total death toll from the Inquisitions.

For instance, Brian Levack, author of The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe estimated that as an end result of approximately 110,000 witch trials there were about 60,000 women put to death. Ronald Hutton used different methods to come up with an estimate closer to 40,000.

But these figures address only a small part of the carnage.

Many of the deaths attributable to the Inquisitions were extra-judicial, and not all the trials were for accusations of witchcraft. Only a fraction of those Jews, Protestants, Arians, Cathari, Albigensians, and other "heretics" that were slaughtered during all the Inquisitions or who died in the mass expulsions were actually put on trial as witches.

Doctor X

Like shouting "NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!!"?

[Cue Sounds of Crickets Chirping in the Still Night.--Ed.]

Wanders off dejected condemning the deplorable state of humor in modern times. . . .

Curious. . . .

--J.D.

nermal

Is there some rule which states that the most recent scholarship automatically trumps that which it follows? This may be generally true in science as new methods and more precise measurements result from advancing technology, but history? Why? If the up to date scholarship is revisionism, does it still trump the original? Do modern holocaust deniers have more credibility than war historians of the 50's and 60's?


I don't know much about this subject, per se, but I have seen photos of the torture chambers, and drawings of the devices. I saw one device in particular which was oval shaped iron in segments like an orange. It was inserted into the mouth, and as a screw was tightened, it opened like a flower, forcing the mouth open beyond its limit and breaking bones, etc.

Was this just for show? Was it decorative?

I saw a chair with iron straps openly woven for the seat. Below it was a pot for a fire. The chair was iron and was a restraining device. You strapped the victim in the chair, and lit a fire under him.

Was this just for when the Bishop's tushy got cold?

Ed

NOGO

Paul lived in a world which was quite hostile to his new religion.
He must have believed in freedom of conscience how else did he permit himself to oppose the established order. Strangely enough the freedom that he demanded from other he was not prepared to give to his own congregation.

Pope JP II declared freedom of conscience a fundamental human right. But does the chruch tolerate dessent?

So do you believe that the church erred or do you believe that it is Christianity's mandate to control people's minds.

I just want to know where you stand.

The link with the subject of this thread is obvious.
Since you admit that the church did not believe in the freedom of conscience I am satisfied. The only objection I would have is that you consider freedom of conscience a modern thing.

Bede

Ed,

In general, modern scholarship is better than the old stuff. True in all subjects pretty much. More archives have been explored, more data processed, more clever people's ideas assimilated. When we have a modern concensus it is best to accept it unless you really are an expert on the subject.

Torture was very real in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. The argument here is not that it didn't happen, but that it usually happened under secular rather than church jurisdiction. The inquisition, an exclusively church body, did use torture but to nothing like the extent that popular myth suggests or the contemporaneous secular courts did. It was not allowed to use instruments like the pear, the rack or the boot although we cannot know that this never happened.

My argument with Dr Rick is he is exclusively using very old scholarship or modern popular works and not engaging with modern scholarship at all. His research is done entirely on the internet. He is also avoiding all my direct questions and refusing to accept he has got anything wrong. This does get rather tedious. He is doing the equivalent of arguing about the New Testament, not from Crossan, Meier or Koester, but from Christian web sites and a shelf full of apologetics. Then, when the up to date stuff is pointed out to him, he ignores it and produces yet more apologetics.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason