Between mediaeval times and the 17th Century, about 100,000 people were tortured and murdered around the world, accused of witchcraft. These included young girls, women and sometimes men.
Christianity is not completely to blame for this. It was, after all, a time of superstition and ignorance, in which the supernatural was still used to explain disasters, accidents and phenomena not understood. Bad events were often attributed to the Devil and witches.
As with slavery, we can't lay all the blame at the door of Christians. However, the church cultivated these superstitions; it was the church that arrested, tortured and murdered these innocents. And the church took on the role of "witchfinder".
The fact is: these murders were directly commanded in the Bible.
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Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live" (God talking)
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The Bible gives no guidelines about how these witches were to be identified; it simply gives a licence to murder anyone thought to be odd, wicked or mysterious.
For example, if a bolt of lightning hit a church tower, people looked around for someone to blame, some agent of Satan. The belief took root that older women were likely to fall in league with the Devil once they became widows, isolated and vulnerable. Women often had a medical role in the community - they were sometimes experts in herbal remedies. Knowledge and aptitude were passed down from mother to daughter. This was usually enough to cause suspicion in the neighbourhood; how did they obtain this mysterious knowledge?
Once a theory or practice has the church's backing, it becomes powerful and difficult to stop. The church has always arrogantly claimed the moral high ground for itself - as though a belief in the supernatural should make you a better or wiser person! In fact, these beliefs only give you a false certainty, a sureness that you are right when you are really wrong.
With the full authority of their local priests, the people would seek out and kill the witches in their community, hoping to free themselves from Satan's baleful influence.
Carl Sagan, in "The Demon-Haunted World" writes:
In 1484 the Pope issued a document called Malleus Maleficarum, the "Hammer of Witches", aptly described as one of the most terrifying documents in human history. What the Malleus comes down to, pretty much, is that if you're accused of witchcraft, you're a witch.
Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the validity of the accusation. There are no rights of the defendant. There is no opportunity to confront the accusers. Little attention is given to the possibility that accusations might be made for impious purposes - jealousy, say, or revenge, or the greed of the inquisitors who routinely confiscated for their own private benefit the property of the accused. This technical manual for torturers also includes methods of punishment tailored to release demons from the victim's body before the process kills her. The Malleus in hand, the Pope's encouragement guaranteed, inquisitors began springing up all over Europe.
It quickly became an expense account scam. All costs of investigation, trial and execution were borne by the accused or her relatives, down to daily wages for private detectives hired to spy on her, wine for her guards, banquets for her judges, the travel expenses of a messenger sent to fetch a more experienced torturer from another city, and the hangman's rope, wood for burning and tar. Then there was a bonus to the members of the tribunal for each witch burned. The convicted witch's remaining property, if any, was divided between Church and State.
The more who, under torture, confessed to witchcraft, the harder it was to maintain that the whole business was mere fantasy. Since each "witch" was made to implicate others, the numbers grew exponentially. These constituted "frightful proofs that the Devil is still alive" as it was later put in America in the Salem witch trials. In a credulous age, the most fantastic testimony was soberly accepted - that tens of thousands of witches had gathered for a Sabbath in public squares in France, or that 12,000 of them darkened the skies as they flew to Newfoundland. Legions of women were burned to death. (This mode of execution was adopted by the Holy Inquisition apparently to keep literally to a well-intentioned sentence of Catholic law: "The Church abhors bloodshed.")And the most horrendous tortures were routinely applied to every defendant, young or old, after the instruments of torture were first blessed by the priests.
In Britain witch-finders, also called "prickers", were employed, receiving a handsome bounty for each girl or woman they turned over for execution. They had no incentive to be cautious in their accusations. Upon the gallows, one mid-seventeenth century pricker "confessed he had been the death of above 220 women in England and Scotland, for the gain of 20 shillings apiece."
This is an example of what might happen:
Some accident or disaster occurred, such as the burning down of a barn. The superstitious people would look around and notice that a particular person, against whom they happened to have a grievance, was not present - not helping to dowse the flames. The cry would go up: "She's to blame, she's a witch!"
More often than not, it was lonely, vulnerable people who were accused.
The priest would lead the crowd to the door of the suspect. She would be dragged off, not to a house of law, but to the church.
In a small town, she might be tried straight away, perhaps by binding her arms and legs then flinging her into the nearest deep pool. There she might sink or float; if she floated, Satan was given the credit, so she was guilty and could then be burned at the stake. In some cases, a "ducking-stool" might be used to torture the woman, plunging her again and again into deep cold water until she confessed or was drowned.
In a larger town, there might be a little more order about the trial process.
The witch would be taken to a cell, strapped to a table and examined for the "Devil's Mark". There was no fixed definition of what the mark was, but usually a mole or blemish was enough to convict the victim. If no mark was seen - an invisible mark would do.
Ludovico Sinistraris's 1700 book explained that the Devil's Mark was usually to be found either on the breasts, or in the mouth, vagina or anus. As a result, pubic hair was shaved and the genitalia were carefully inspected by (all-male) inquisitors. At the burning of the 20-year old Joan of Arc, after her dress had caught fire, the Hangman of Rouen dowsed the flames for a few minutes so onlookers could view "all the secrets which can or should be in a woman."
Remember that the priests were celibate. They were sex-starved men who had a woman completely in their power, and complete freedom, even a duty, to examine closely all her most intimate parts. They could keep her there as long as they wished, and we can only imagine how the priests occupied themselves with their captive, day after day, night after night. Anything the woman accused them of later would only be seen as the "devil's prattle ".
The priests were remunerated based on the number of witches they caught. So a process of torture began, in order to get a few other names from the captive. She would be racked with pain as the priests used any methods they wished, determined to extract a list of her associates. Teeth were pulled, bones were crushed, skin was torn. Occasionally more public methods were used, such as the waterwheel. The witch would be strapped across the diameter spokes so that she rotated with the wheel, her head dragged under water with each rotation. She could be left here until she started confessing and giving out names of her friends.
At the end of the torture and "trial", the witch was dragged out into the public glare, stripped and killed, sometimes by burning, sometimes by drowning. And then the bill was prepared. The costs of the priest's time in the interrogation process, and the materials used in the execution, were added up. The bill was then given to the grieving family or the nearest kin of the witch.
The Christian church took a lead role in this process.
It is easy for today's Christians to dismiss this, saying, oh - that's not "true Christianity".
But remember, they were following the Biblical command in Exodus 22:18. They believed they were doing the world a service. They thought they were saving souls and foiling demons. An all-knowing god must have realised that this would be the outcome of his words. The Bible shows again that it cannot be trusted as a source of morals or justice. It is repulsive, and it is directly to be blamed for giving superstitious people a licence - the authority to murder and torture.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote: "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible."
William Blackstone, the celebrated jurist, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), asserted "To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages of both the Old and New Testaments."
The priests were living sexually-repressed lives because of their false beliefs, so they were always tempted to abuse their victims and were motivated to keep their jobs by perpetuating the witchfinding process. If they wished, the priests could even identify a woman in the community to whom they were attracted sexually, and start rumours about her themselves.
The belief in witches lasted hundreds of years, and was finally brought to a halt by the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th Century. It is interesting to note that the ending of witchfinding occurred in one country after another, in the same order as the progress of Enlightenment across the continent.
So it took a secular revolution of ideas to stop the murder
of all these innocents.
Today there are people who are, in a sense, witches. They practise the Wiccan religion, a peaceful way of life that identifies strongly with ancient pagan rites celebrating nature, the Earth and its seasons. The churches no longer catch and burn these people, which is rather ironic, as 350 years ago they spent a great deal of time accusing those who had never claimed to be witches!
Along with the commands to murder adulterers, sabbath-breakers, rebellious teenagers, homosexuals and unbelievers, the instruction in Exodus to annihilate witches is what shows us the horrible, intolerant nature of the Christian God. Remember, it was really the scribes who wrote these commands, on behalf of their leaders and law-makers. We can't really blame god for these murders - because god is an imaginary being.