Bede

Family Man,

Just out of interest, do you consider all pre modern justice systems evil and corrupt? Given the Inquisition was the best of a bad lot, Christian,pagan or whatever, you surely need to feel more outraged about, say Roman justice where the evidence of slaves was only accepted under torture. Or Jacobin justice, where all that mattered was that someone had denounced you.

The point being, that there is so much you could feel outraged by that to pick the Inquisition out, as many infidels do, is a distortion of the facts.

B

NOGO

You are obviously living a totally different world than I am.

You live in a world of witches, fairies, demons, the possessed, the raised from the dead etc. etc.

The logical conclusion from this is that you believe in witchcraft based on those 60,000 odd available dispositions and you wonder how can I claim otherwise, not having read the material.

Just keep wondering, Bede.

Oh! but I forget. Your view of evidence is very different than mine.
You hold that the gospels are evidence for the resurrection. I guess that in that sense there is plenty of evidence for witchcraft, fairies, bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.

zwi

Dear Bede

You may be interested in the story Of Patrick Hamilton, Scotland's first heretic, who was accused, tried, convicted and executed for a first offence in a classic muck up in one day in 1528

http://www.firstfoot.com/Great%20Scot/hamilton.htm

Zwi

Sojourner553

Zwi, Bede is playing a game of carefully QUALIFYING his statements (ie to exclude heretics) so that by “proving” the Inquisition is not DIRECTLY torturing accused witches this gives the impression they were relatively benign. (Bede is going to argue you can't change the subject, even if it is related! That's part of the game)!

Here was the line I questioned as being accurate:

Per Bede:
“The Inquisitions did prosecute all forms of magic rather than just witchcraft, but the penalties were mild - penitential rather than retributional.”

I asked in response, “Got some citations for this? Was this true 100% of the time?”

So Bede: I see you are back to your old tricks in HIDING behind AUTHORITIES, so you feel no obligation to verify or question any facts.

No, Yawn. You just don’t like people disagreeing with your major theses.

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By the way to be consistent, Bede: are you going to call yourself biased and whiggished for maintaining a thesis (that modern science could only develop in a Christian-like society) when the #1 AUTHORITY on the subject during medieval times has stated his opposition to this????????
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You do need to learn to be consistent, instead of establishing one rule for you, another for everyone else.

Let me repeat what I said.



Did you miss the connection I was making?

Point 1: You cannot pretend the doctrine allowing for the legal torture and execution of witches occurred in a vacuum! It was a natural outcome from believing all heretics were evil and therefore HAD TO BE IN LEAGUE WITH THE DEVIL.

Here is an authority. (I’m sure one you don’t like, I mean recognize)

Norman Cohn, in his book EUROPE'S INNER DEMONS demonstrated that the INCREASED interest in witchcraft occurred primarily in the stronghold territories of heretics--that is, in France, the Low Countries, northern Italy, and the Rhineland. He noted that the allegations made by the Church against heretics practicing witchcraft were essentially the SAME as those made by the early pagans against Christians. That is, allegations of orgies, incest, cannibalism, and infanticide had been hurled at early Christians by Roman pagans.

When Cohn researched Catholic accusations of witchcraft aimed at dissident groups, he found that they almost always listed the SAME accusations—as if the Church had just copied the same text in attacking one dissident group to the next. Christian intellectuals and propagandists then took these accusations--and creatively interwove them into a general theme of the Devil conducting sexual orgies with his witch followers.

Cohn's studies convinced him that many of the groups charged with conducting Devil-worshipping orgies, were in fact strictly religious puritans, who practiced a chaste, celibate lifestyle. Because their Catholic accusers viewed their unorthodox religious beliefs with such horror, they believed that these deviants MUST somehow be in league with the devil-- and therefore be involved
in his sexual orgies. According to Cohn, "proof" was typically obtained against heretical sects such as the Waldensians and Cathars--by torturing members into "confessing" their complicity with Satanic orgies.


Point 2: Your attempt to claim that because the actual trials occurred more often in secular courts ignores that it was Catholic authorities who established the moral guidelines justifying torture and executions of witches.

In 1484, two Dominican friars, Heinrich Kraemer and Johann Sprenger, convinced Pope Innocent VIII to issue a bull allowing for the extermination of witches in Germany. Two years later, they published the MALLEUS MALEFICARUM (THE WITCH'S HAMMER) which became the authoritative encyclopedia on the subject of witches during the centuries to come. One does not have to look far for proof of this:

The official manual used by Church Inquisitors for trying witches,
"MALLEUS MALEFICARUM", claimed that: "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable." The MALLEUS MALEFICARUM described how witches blighted crops, ate children, and caused disease through their evil spells.

With this dogma, it would be natural for courts (secular or otherwise) to hunt down and torture/execute witches.

Maybe your authority has reconciled these facts, dear Bede.

But I doubt it. I challenged you once to find writings by Catholic authorities that would prove they were generally opposed to torture and executions of WITCHES (as I knew this was an area you were studying). I saw no response then, and I doubt i will see a response …

So, you’ll just have to keep hiding behind your authorities in carefully crafted statements to exclude any facts unfavorable to your position.

I don't think you are fooling many people. (Except those who want to be fooled ... if she is not Protestant, maybe luvluv.)

Sojourner

Dr Rick

Bede is implicitly attempting to justify Christianity-driven atrocities with relativist guidelines; that is just plain bizarre and ironic given the absolutist nature of Christian dogma. No one here except Bede has introduced the Roman or Jacobin justice systems has admirable models; his argument is a feint meant to rationalize supertitious beliefs and the horrors that arose from them by arguing that other systems were just as terrible.

If religion or god-belief was enlightenment or truth, the actions that they gave rise to would be model standards to admire and praise, not the disgusting tales of cruelty and torture that apologists feel compelled to defend with comparisons to other, equally barbaric systems.

The Romans were wrong, and the Christians still are; there is no rational reason to defend the one with the other.

Quote:

The point being, that there is so much you could feel outraged by that to pick the Inquisition out, as many infidels do, is a distortion of the facts.

We pick-out Christians not because we think they are/were any worse than the Romans, but because there are no more Romans, but there are still lots of Christians.

Rick

Family Man

Bede--

I don't recall Roman treatment of slaves or Jacobin justice as being the topic of discussion. And yes, I would and do consider both systems to be evil and corrupt, so I'm not sure how I'm distorting the facts or what point you're trying to make. Are you using that adolescent argument that it was ok to use torture because everyone else was doing it? And if you would condemn both the Roman and Jacobin method of jurisprudence, as I assume you would, why are you defending your church employing the same methods?

Bede

Hi,

Sojourner, I like Cohn and agree with him in large measure. I mentioned the Malleus in my FAQ. I fail to see your problem. The reference to the Inquisition going after good magic can be found in Edward Peter's Inquisition and Carlo Ginzberg's Nightflyers.

Family Man/Dr Rick,

As I have repeatedly said, I am not defending the Inquisition. I am seeking to inject some hsitorical reality into the polemic.

The US and UK legal systems are still around so I hope you attack those for their past misdemeanors as much as the Inquisition. Dr Rick's argument - that using the Inquisition (which no longer exists - and I know about the Congregation which is no more the Inquisition than the UK government rules to US) to attack modern Christianity is itself rather adulescent, but I'll let that pass. I know all the pat atheist self justifications for dredging up history (I've been on these boards long enough) so save your keyboards.

Anyway, the point of this thread was to show that the Inquisition was not much involved in witch trials and that it is not as bad as usually painted. Although there has been some wriggling, the points seem to be accepted so I'll go find something else.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

PS: Just out of interest, it seems the Germans are still witch hunting. Exactly the same accusations that were made in the 17th century...

Dr Rick

The history of religion, including Christianity, is one of cruelty and oppression. It is Bede that is "dredging up history" as he attempts to justify past horrors perpetrated in the names of gods. Unfortunatedly for him and all of humanity, religion is still the driving force behind evils committed at the World Trade Center and in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, and Bosnia. It underlies the economic wretchedness and over-population that dooms much of the people on this planet to endless suffering. As in the past, Christianity and all of religion to this day inflicts terror and war on the hapless people caught in the grasp of superstition and hate.

Rick

Bede

Rick, just for once could we avoid the boring atheist rant? We all know you hate religion and I for one could not care less. Far be it for me to suggest that actual history should get in your way, but these boards, of which you are a moderator, can hopefully aspire to a slightly higher level than than recycling the same old drivel.

A humane person, on finding something was not as bad as they thought, would be pleased. They would say, "Fancy that, I thought millions witches were burnt and it was much less. I am pleased there was less suffering than I previously thought". Or "I thought the Inquisition put hundreds of thousands to death without any legal procedure. How nice to see that it wasn't nearly as awful as I had feared. It seems torture was very rare - that is excellent as I hate torture".

Your view is like the warmongers who were disappointed that the death toll of 9-11 dropped from 10,000 to 3,000 because it made it harder for them to win the rhetorical argument. You, and others here, appear to sincerely wish that the worst possible happened because you so enjoy a feeling of righteous indignation. That's fine. A bit sadistic, but fine. One need only read an atheist lovingly dwelling on the different instruments of torture they know were hardly ever used in order to wonder quite what it is they get off on.

Anyway, as I said, I will update my FAQ in the light of Family Man's comments, continue to treat the matter as objectively as I can, continue to avoid ethical judgements in historical work and continue to puncture some of the mythology you lot hold so dear.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Dr Rick

Bede, your sense of balance and justice have been warped by the hateful beliefs you are haplessly defending. It's revolting to imply that the torture/murders committed by Christians was really no big deal because the numbers were small enough to not offend you. Anyone who truly has compassion would never hold such feelings and so easily dismiss the terrors perpetrated on behalf of your beliefs. It's bewildering that you somehow find solace in the knowledge that Christians don't kill and torture everyone that they can; a decent person would take no such comfort knowing that millions and millions of people have suffered and died at the hands of people like you.

Rick