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In the Middle Ages, spirituality, morality and even politics were heavily influenced (some would say dominated) by Christianity, especially through the Roman Catholic church. In medieval Christian ideology, the universe was roughly split into two opposing forces: God and Satan. Thus medieval clergy believed that one could either be good and enlightened (by being Christian), or deceived by evil (by believing in any other religion); there was no other alternative. This world view motivated religious fanatics to hunt down any person or belief that they deemed un-Christian or anti-Christian. Thousands of people fell under that definition for various reasons: some were targeted for openly following other religions than Christianity, many were killed for opposing the church's political decisions, and some were merely scapegoats who were superstitiously accused of causing natural disasters such as floods and storms. One of the accusations most frequently used by church officials to imprison, torture or kill their victims was the "sin" of witchcraft.
The Christian concept of witchcraft as a sin has a long history. The original Hebrew and Greek books of the Bible contained a few verses condemning the use of poisons and curses to kill people. Those verses were mistranslated into less specific verses forbidding all magical potions instead of poisons, and all spells instead of curses. As the church gradually built its beliefs and laws based on the Bible, it incorporated the idea that supernatural power was meant to belong to God alone, and that any kind of witchcraft was a rebellion against God's biblical rules. This made witchcraft one of the most horrible sins one could be accused of, and it became a symbol of everything anti-Christian.
The use of witchcraft as a symbol for evil eventually culminated in a book known as the Malleus Maleficarum, a medieval witch-hunting manual that was supposed to help the clergy by explaining how to detect witches, how to nullify their powers, and how to make them confess their sins through physical and psychological torture. Even though the theories and descriptions in that book were mostly imaginary, the Malleus helped to spread the false belief that the world was threatened by devil-worshippers who killed Christians in gruesome human sacrifices. Fear and hysteria based on that book spread everywhere across Europe, and later even reached America (remember Salem, Massachusetts, were a witch trial started by a hysteric teenage girl led to the execution of many innocent citizens).
As a result of this blend of ignorance, fear, intolerance and dogmatism, thousands of human beings lost their lives. The majority of the victims were women, as the clergy thought them more open to the Devil's influence than men, but thousands of men and even children were killed too. Some of the victims were lynched by angry mobs, while others were ceremoniously executed in church-approved public gatherings by hanging, decapitation, pressing with heavy stones, or burning alive at the stake. Today, those dark times when people could be arrested and killed under accusations of witchcraft are often called The Burning Times, in memory of those who died back then.
Fortunately, the fear of being attacked by evil, devil-worshipping, human-sacrificing witches has declined in the Western world with the evolution of society. Today most Occidental people are more educated and less vulnerable to superstition and religious fundamentalism than their old European ancestors. However, literal belief in an organized, anti-Christian cult of evil witches is still held by some modern conservative Christians. Even today, they confuse real Neopagan witchcraft (such as Wicca) with the imaginary satanic cult invented in the Middle Ages. This false belief leads a minority of Christians to discriminate against witches and condemn them as evil-doers.
Newer derived meaningNow that literal wich-hunting is over in most developed countries, the word witch-hunt has come to mean any exaggerated and irrational search for culprits, trouble-makers or evil-doers. It is no longer tied only to religion and the occult. For example, if a company that is struggling financially starts aggressively firing staff members instead of restructuring carefully, it may be accused of witch-hunting. MoreI would agree with the above, except that the witch hunts were not medieval. They were more a thing of the Renaissance and Reformation. The book, Malleus Maleficarum, which was important in promoting early witch hunts, was written in 1486 and published the following year. The dates for the Middle Ages most historians use put this after the Middle Ages ended.Medieval legal codes of the Carolingian Empire forbade belief in witchcraft as a superstition, and arrived at the logical conclusion that executing a person for witchcraft was murder and was a capital crime. Similar provisions were made in Lombard law. These laws applied to most of Western Europe, though some areas had laws against witchcraft.
The rise in prosecutions for witchcraft was contemporaneous with the beginning of the Renaissance, and came in the form of episcopal inquisitions. These were not witch hunts, because they were not proactively seeking out witches, but responding to accusations. Also, they had no prescribed punishments, and may have been aimed more at confession and penance than at punishment.
The actual witch hunts, in which people actively sought to find, prosecute, and execute witches, did not start until just the time the Middle Ages were ending, in the 15th century. They reached a peak in the the 16th and 17th centuries. They were fueled by books like Malleus Maleficarum, but also by the bounties paid for each witch punished. The people conducting the witch hunts were mostly secular, lay people, who increased their wealth by receiving a small payment for each person they burned to death. The people who paid them were mostly secular authorities, such as James VI, King of Scots, or King Christian IV of Denmark.
There is a link to an article on witch hunts below.
Wiki User
∙ 13y ago
andrew grice
a search for and subsequent persecution of a supposed witch.
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Why did Arthur millar write The Crucible?
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a result of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950's. He felt both era were times of hysteria and witchhunts. In both cases, people were accused without evidence and people were asked to name names.
Was witchcraft believed in 1818?
The classical period of witchhunts in Europe falls into the Early Modern period or about 1480 to 1700, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 executions. It is a matter of opinion whether the people of 1818 believed it or not.
What were women hanged for in shakespeares time?
The study at the attached link, although it is somewhat after Shakespeare's time, suggests that the crime for which women were most likely hanged for was murder. Next most likely was robbery, then other forms of theft and fraud, then arson. Religious offences were low on the list. One crime which was punishable by hanging, and which is not mentioned in statistics from the 18th century is witchcraft. This became a more common offence after Shakespeare's day, especially in the witchhunts of 1645-6. One crime which was not punishable by hanging was the murder by a wife of her husband. This was considered petty treason, the murder of a superior, and was punishable by burning at the stake rather than hanging until 1790. The murder of a husband by a wife was not considered to be the same crime as the murder of a wife by a husband until 1828 in England.
What problems resulted because puritan's did not believe in religious toleration?
Puritanism actually came about because of objections that the Church of England was too tolerant of views associated with the Catholic Church. Like many with strong religious views, they were intolerant of the religious views held by others, but were constrained by being in a minority in England and were themselves treated with considerable intolerance. One would expect that their experiences in England would cause the Puritans to adopt a more tolerant attitude in New England, but the Puritans wanted everyone to worship in the Puritan way. In order to ensure that Puritanism dominated the colonies, nonconformists were fined, banished, whipped, and even imprisoned for not conforming to the way of the Puritans. There was an element of profiteering in this movement, but the underlying theme was one of intolerance of those with whom they might disagree. Puritans were at the forefront of the witchhunts that resulted in the Salem witch trials.
Should Christians socialize with non-Christians?
By simply following Jesus' instructions - He is the savior of all mankind: Matthew 7:12New King James Version (NKJV) 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
What problems resulted because puritans did not believe in religious?
Puritanism actually came about because of objections that the Church of England was too tolerant of views associated with the Catholic Church. Like many with strong religious views, they were intolerant of the religious views held by others, but were constrained by being in a minority in England and were themselves treated with considerable intolerance. One would expect that their experiences in England would cause the Puritans to adopt a more tolerant attitude in New England, but the Puritans wanted everyone to worship in the Puritan way. In order to ensure that Puritanism dominated the colonies, nonconformists were fined, banished, whipped, and even imprisoned for not conforming to the way of the Puritans. There was an element of profiteering in this movement, but the underlying theme was one of intolerance of those with whom they might disagree. Puritans were at the forefront of the witchhunts that resulted in the Salem witch trials.
How might the history of Christianity have changed if Muslims had eventually conquered all Europe?
AnswerThere is little evidence that the Muslims were keen to conquer all Europe. The Moorish conquest of Spain was at the invitation of Spanish noblement, who saw Islam as protecting their religious freedom, after the king converted from Arianism to Catholicism and then demanded that they do likewise. There was no real concerted effort to invade Europe from the East.Had Islam actually invaded and conquered all of Europe, history would have been dramatically different. A majority of Europeans would probably have eventually converted to Islam, if only because conversion would offer social or financial benefits. The Americas would not have been colonised by Christians, and so would have become Islamic nations.The Crusades would never have happened, nor the witchhunts and persecutions of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, Islam has demonstrated at times during its history, periods of severe persecution of the followers of other faiths. No religion is without fault when it comes to human rights abuses.
How did the Puritans feel about Catholicism?
Puritans were notoriously intolerant... If you didn't agree with their views, you were ostracized or even killed... Not the type of people that come to mind when discussing tolerance and acceptance of diverse beliefs.
Do the benefits of religion outweigh the problems and why?
OpinionThe benefits of religion probably do not outweigh the problems caused by religion. The benefits of religion are said to include greater social morality, although there is no evidence for this. Several studies have shown that, in fact, atheists are under-represented in our prisons, compared to members of the other major religions. Another benefit could be the work that most religions do to help in disaster relief, to help the poor, and to provide hospitals and education where that is unavailable. Against this, the churches have sometimes in the past opposed the provision of secular education by newly ermeging states. At a more personal level, religions do provide comfort in times of need.Some of the problems caused by religion include actual religious conflicts, such as the Christian attacks on the Bosnian Muslims and the Muslim attacks on the United States. In neither case did the supreme religious authorities condone those attacks, but they were nevertheless the result of religious tensions. Had there been no religion, we can be sure that this conflict would not have occurred.A more ambiguous case occurred in Rwanda in 1994, where the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people resulted from ethnic rather than religious tensions, but the Church facilitated the massacres. The Church authorities in Rwanda certainly failed to condemn the genocide at the time, and some in the Church's hierarchy have been tried and convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as a result of their participation. Kevin Ward (A World History of Christianity, Africa) says, "The Church's witness in Africa, in common with all places and times, is rarely unambiguous." From a lay point of view, the arrival of Christianity did not help prevent the massacre: Ward points out that most of the perpetrators must have been baptised and have had a Christian upbringing.While history may not repeat itself, we can also look to the past and see the witchhunts of medieval times and even more recently, and the widespread and absolute persecution of non-Christians from the fourth century onwards.
Could the church and state together be a good thing?
No doubt some useful opinions wil be given by others, so I propose to restrict myself to ing the question by giving a few selected examples, of which there are many. It is fair to define 'church' broadly, since the paradigm is really about religious leaders having some control over state affairs, as well as the state having some control over religious affairs. Also the question, in asking whether it is a good thing, seems largely directed to the present world. So, broadly speaking, the most well-known example of religious authorities having control over state affairs is: Iran. While the present regime may be arguably better for the populace than the corrupt and ruthless regime of the former Shah of Iran, many would say that it would be a good thing to separate religion and state in Iran. Several other Middle Eastern countries involve religion in state affairs. An important one is the allegedly repressive Saudi Arabian regime. The state of Israel may have no formal links between the religious authorities and the state authorities, but Israel does see itself as a nation based on Judaism. Evidence of this is in the automatic "right of return" that allows all Jews worldwide to take up citizenship and residence, while rejecting any right of return for former Palestinian residents of what is now Israel. China is, in one way, a state that puts church and state together, since the central government insists on the right to appoint bishops to the local Catholic Church. Many Christians find this offensive, although it was common practice in medieval Europe for the secular ruler to appoint his own bishops. The Middle Ages were the heyday of church and state together. This facilitated repression, persecution and witchhunts. It also lead to the disastrous Crusades in which so many lives were lost, without any direct long-term gain to Christian Europe.
How did Vlad the Impaler rule was he a good king or a bad king?
Yes, he is one of our most famous princes. He ruled over one of the countries forming present-day Romania (Wallachia or Muntenia) during the mid-15th century. After his first reign he was forced into exile, he returned to the throne and he was once again betrayed and murdered. He was a fierce enemy of the Ottomans and YES, he did impale those he sentenced to death, hence his nickname.
