Toto

This is an interesting article from the Beliefs column in the NYTimes on a subject that is mentioned here on occasion:

Historians and Scholars Produce New Picture of Witches and Witch Hunts, but Questions Remain

The books mentioned: Witches and Neighbors : The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft

and

Witchfinders .

Bede

Well, I've been banging on about this for long enough here, so it is nice to be vindicated by the NYT. Presumably, some here will briddle at this 'revisionism' and blame 'apologists' for trying to minimise the figures.

Best wishes

Bede

krosero

That link is not displaying for me, but I found it at the Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/22/na...gewanted=print:

Philadelphia Lawyer

Revisionism?

Is it anything to brag about that Christian Europe "only" executed 40,000 to 100,000 "witches", assuming that these figures are correct?

Apologists?

Briggs: "these figures are chilling enough, but they have to be set in the context of what was probably the harshest period of capital punishments in European history." (Briggs, Witches & Neighbours, p. 8.)

Steven Carr

I think Bede is trying to claim that Christians are no worse than other people, a statement which is obviously true.

gregor

In defense of Bede (I suppose), those asserting Xian-sponsored witch burning as support for the argument "All Xianity is bad" should think twice about this argument.

But, likewise those asserting "the message of the Bible is love and Xianity was a boon to society" can't minimize these events or assert tautologies like "the religious tribunals didn't execute the people, only the civil courts did."

Berthold

It is not really new that the witch craze was not a phenomenon of the High Middle Age (in which time, generally only few executions took place). Also the number that I had had in mind (about 60 000) falls into the range given.

Edited to add: The monks Spranger and Institoris, who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum ("Witches' Hammer"), lived in the 15th century.

countjulian

What the heck? "anti-Christian Nazi propagandists" ? Who exactly are these
"Nazi propagandists"? When was nazi-Germany ever anti-Christian at all? Certainly they were into the occult, but to say they were anti-christian is a gross over exaggeration.

Also, I love how people are constantly being reminded of the Inquisitions and the "witch-hunts", but the persecurion of REAL paganism during the conversion of the Roman Empire and the Northern Crusades are completely ignored, even though they claimed a far higher casualty rate.

andrewcriddle

It's not just a tautology.

Ecclesiastical tribunals such as the Inquisition didn't execute people they relapsed serious case to the secular courts for execution. But this is a technicality and doesn't take away the substantive responsibility of the church court for the person's death.

The interesting point about witch hunts is that the great majority of cases leading to execution seem to have started in the secular courts and not involved the ecclesiastical courts at all. (Although this does include secular courts in the German prince-bishoprics whose genuinely secular status may be questioned.)

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

There is a good discussion in Behringer's 'Witches and Witch-Hunts'.

From pps 234-235

The neo-Pagan writer (and probable Hitler supporter) Matthilde Ludendorff in 'Christliche Grausamkeit an Deutschen Frauen' 1934 (Christian Cruelties on German Women) popularised the figure of 9 million executed witches as part of an attack on Christianity.

The overtly Nazi feminist Friederick Muller-Reimardes in 'Der Christliche Hexenwahn' 1935 (The Christian Witch Craze) emphasised the persecution of witches as an example of the church as a representative of collective male evil.

Alfred Rosenberg the Nazi ideologue appears to have supported these ideas. He saw the Roman Catholic Church as motivated by 'Syrian' ie Jewish ideas.

Andrew Criddle