Huon

On July, 22, 1209, the population of Béziers, 22,000 people, was slaughtered by an army of crusaders, sent by the king of France, wanting to eradicate the cathar heresy in the south of France.

The motto of this day was : "Kill them all, God will know his followers !", in French "Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaitra les siens !".

Chili

Oops, the king bypassed the Inquisitor?

Scorpion

Depends on how widely you define "us". Hundreds of people are still getting lynched as witches every year around the globe.

-S-

Doug Shaver

In the same way there is no such thing as a true religion.

Of course I don't think the church invented it. It was invented by our prehistoric ancestors. All the church is doing is perpetuating it.

Doug Shaver

As I recall, the Inquisition was set up mainly to go after heretics, but it did get involved in some witch-hunting.

Your point is well taken, however, that the Inquisition was not the primary force behind witch hunts, which had been going on for a long time before the Inquisition was established.

If a man sincerely believes that he will burn in hell if he allows witches to live, he has my sympathy. I can have no sympathy for the institution that makes him believe such things.

jim_w

Oh, I see. It's true in the sense that you assert it to be true. ;-P

Bede

Skeptical,

My intention was a dispassionate statement of facts, not an emotional rant.

It is a fact that things were nothing like as bad as is usually implied. Your post reads like you resent this fact and want it swept under the carpet. A good comparison to you would be the polemic used by anti-abortionists who think that the neutral medical terms such as 'fetus' and 'embryo' hide the truth about killing babies. You are playing the same game. As a historian, I do try to get behind the rhetoric and have no interest in arguing with people just out to score points.

By the way, I did answer the question on how often torture was used. The answer was 'rarely'. Too often, but that hardly needs stating.

Best wishes

Bede

lpetrich

Fear of malicious sorcery is a very old fear -- perhaps as old as humanity. There's a traditional belief in parts of Africa that all sickness and death is caused by malicious sorcery. So when someone died, they would hold "witch-smelling" rituals to find out who was supposedly responsible, something that would perplex the travelers of a century or so ago. And they would do so even when it would be difficult to finger a sorcerer as the cause, like dying as a result of hunting elephants.

(I'd like to find sources on that)

Although the Inquisition was not as bloody as (say) the Albigensian Crusade, it was bloody enough to create a reign of terror. It's like defending Tsarist Russia as the Good Old Days by saying that the Tsars were seldom as bloody as Joseph Stalin.

sorompio

Sorry, Bede, but doesn't look like that at all. You seem to be defending the criminals, and to do it passionately indeed.

Knife

I read some of the information on Bedes link. There seems to be a reference to secular authorities and religious authorities. Which implies, when reading, that there is a definite and uncompromising separation between the two.

I think any essay about the inquisition should better explain the difference, similarities, and the relationship between the "secular" authorities and the religious authorities.

I just cant imagine there were actually what we call today a "secular authority" or "secular court". It seems to me from the very little history I have read of the time, the "secular" and the religous were so intermingled that it doesnt really make much sense speaking of them separately, unless the relationship is specifically noted beforehand.

I guess, what I am saying is...secular today, does not mean the same thing as secular back then and that should be noted. Was there even such a thing?