"The Inquisition Myth" And Other Revisionist Tales

[JGeropoulas]

If you're looking for an advanced work-out for discerning (or stomaching) religious propaganda, here's the place to do it.
_http://www.thinking-catholic-strategic-center.com/the-inquisition-myth.html

Here's a sample:

In actual practice, torture was applied in the smallest fraction of cases, including the worst of the inquisitions. Torture could not endanger life or limb, and it could only be applied once, and only when the evidence of guilt was overwhelming. [sounds like the Bush/Cheney definition of "torture," generously forbidding "permanent damage or organ failure"]

...[Regarding these Inquisitions to defend the faith from heresy] We pray that more good than bad came out of all of that.

It's truly amazing that anyone knows any truth on this planet, given the many complex webs of lies and confusion, like this one, that compose human society.

Thankfully, the light pierces the veil of darkness occasionally.

 

[anart]

Thankfully, the light pierces the veil of darkness occasionally.

Very, very occasionally, J. It is vanishingly rare, but through all the new age, airy fairy, love and light, perception is reality, positive affirmation, chakra balancing, healing tones, thinking out there - I think you may be beginning to pick up on that.

;)

 

[ark]

Some relevant extracts from "Deviance and Moral Boundaries" by Nachman Ben-Yehuda (Hebrew University of Jerusalem):

[...] As time went by, the witchcraze spread over Europe. 'A French judge boasted that he had burned 800 in 16 years. .. In Geneva ... 500 persons were burned in 1515 ... In Travez 7,000 were reported burned during a period of several years' The Malleus itself reports '1,000 persons were put to death in one year in the district of Como. Remigius, an authorized Inquisitor, boasted of having burned 900 in fifteen years. ... 500 were executed in Geneva in three months in 1515' ... Between 1587 and 1593 the Archbishop-Elector of Trier sponsored a witch hunt that burned 368 witches from just twenty-two villages. So horrible was this hunt that two villages in 1585 were left with only one female inhabitant apiece. In the lands of the Convent of Quedlinburg, some 133 witches were executed in just one day in 1589. ... In just eight years Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg executed 900 persons including his nephew, nineteen Catholic priests and several small children ... The Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel executed 53 between 1590 and 1620, while Duke August of Braunschweig-Lunenberg eliminated seventy between 1610 and 1615 ... the Duchy of Bavaria probably executed close to 2,000 witches... In the Continental witch-hunts, children, women, and whole families were sent to the stake. ... One inquisitor cried, 'I wish [the withes] had but one body, so that we could burn them all at once, in one fire.... From a letter sent sent from prison: 'They never cease to torture until one says something ... If God sends no means of bringing the truth to light our whole kindred will be burnt'. ... In the end, as many as half a million accused withes may have found their torturerous death by burning, drowning, or hanging. Evidence indicates that the majority of victims were women. ... It appears that the worst witch-hunts occured in Germany, Switzerland and France, and only to a much lesser extent in other areas. It has also been observed that the witch-hunts were conducted in their most intense form in those regions where the Catholic Church was weakest ... In areas with a strong Church, such as Spain, Poland and Eastern Europe, the witchcraze phenomenon was negligible.[...]