When these ordinary women are framed as witches, what awaits them will be a humiliating trial, and then they will be burned, beheaded or hanged.
Over the past three centuries, countless women have died of injustice. This is not only the darkest chapter in the Middle Ages, but also the darkest time for women in the long river of human history.
The background of witch hunting actually originated before the Roman Empire, but the scale of witch trials in this period was not too large. After Christianity was widely recognized in the 4th century A.D., for a long time afterwards, the number of witch trials was small, and the trials of witches by the church were standardized, even helping many women to wash away? Witch? Because of crime.
At the paderborn Conference in 785, the Holy See also stressed that all believers should not arrest witches, and all those who hunt witches should be tried by the Holy See.
Generally speaking, witch hunting was not serious during this period. The Vatican even announced that only pagans and people seduced by the devil would kill witches. The attitude of the Vatican is not to recognize witchcraft and witches.
In the Church Law of 1 140, there are also relevant laws and regulations prohibiting witch hunting.
Although not many people hunt witches, it still exists intermittently. After the decrees issued by the Pope reached the local level, there was not much enforcement at all.
There are also written records in the history of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire:
Many lords directly ignore the orders of the church and don't convey them at all?
Most lords don't carry out Roman orders at all? .
In fact, before the arrival of the dark century, advanced women with knowledge were always respected by ordinary people, and some women occupied a great position in medicine, pharmacy and other industries.
The stereotype of witches in the west.
Fourteenth century ago, there was a man named? Ladies in green and white? Our knights are fighting for these innocent women who have been vilified as witches. If a woman is slandered or accused of being a witch for no reason, she can ask for help.
But the situation began to change at 1484.
1. Pope pope innocent viii issued a pardon order: Witches are unforgivable. They are heinous, dissolute and shameless ?
Then the Pope began to mobilize his priests and bishops from all over the country and began a witch hunting movement for three centuries.
1486, Henrik and Ekob published their "malleus maleficarum", the content of which was mainly about how to identify witches and how to guide people to treat witches, adding fuel to the witch hunting movement, and the huge witch trial began.
In the following decades, the printing volume of malleus maleficarum has been second only to the Christian Bible. It can be said that this book is definitely a sword to kill innocent women, and countless women have died of injustice and humiliation.
A persecuted witch? Scientists have no specific criteria to judge whether a woman is a witch, which leads to a ghostly statement:
If a wrinkled old lady wears a wrinkled coat and is accompanied by a cat, can she be directly sentenced as a witch?
Is it also a feature of witches to be surrounded by women with shrill voices, soft mouths and slender eyebrows?
Just by virtue of a person's appearance, you can directly judge that you are a witch and let an innocent woman die for it, but this is not the most terrible thing.
163 1 year, a priest came to the conclusion after trying hundreds of witches:
If the defendant lives an immoral life, it is enough to prove that she must have something to do with the devil; If the defendant is pious and dignified, then she must be faking it. The piety shown to the outside world is to divert people's doubts about her dealing with the devil. ?
If she is afraid of the trial, there is no doubt that she must be a guilty witch. If she stays calm before the Vatican and firmly believes that she is innocent, then the witch must be shamelessly lying, and she must be guilty. ?
If her eyes are rolling when facing the trial, then she must be looking for the help of the nearby devil with her eyes. If her eyes are dull, then she must be talking to the devil with her eyes.
Whether these innocent women are calm or afraid, whether they are pious, dignified or immoral at ordinary times, they are doomed to die at the moment when she is judged as a witch, and there is no way to prove their innocence.
In the name of hunting witches, the church has caused at least100000 people to die in vain for more than three centuries.
Witch on trial
The famous astronomer Kepler's mother was also wrongly imprisoned as a witch in 16 15. He also wrote a book "The Witch Case of Astronomers", also known as Kepler's battle to whitewash his mother.
In this era, not only ordinary women were wrongly accused of being witches, but Kepler, as a famous scientist, did not deny that many aristocratic ladies and gentlemen were also convicted as witches and then died with hardships.
The development of anti-witch hunting 16 14 years, the judges of the Spanish heresy trial believed that the statement that witches existed was completely fictitious and groundless. By the middle of this century, witch trials in Spain have basically been banned.
With the development of the Enlightenment in Europe, this witch hunting movement, which lasted for centuries, began to be eliminated in the bud of rationality, and the theory that witches harm people has no market in all countries.
1649 northern Germany issued a witch hunting ban; 1672, France also banned the trial of witches; 17 14 the king of Prussia issued an imperial edict to prohibit all acts of persecuting witches in China.
The last person to be tried and executed in Europe? Witch? Her name is Anna? Goldie died in a Swiss public trial on 1782.
But this is not the end. What you can't imagine is that Britain has also promulgated the witchcraft bill in 1735.
Its content is not complicated. Although people are forbidden to hunt witches without restriction, the government and nobles still have the right to judge witches.
1944, an English woman named helen Duncan was framed as a witch. The government authorities listed her as a witch according to the Witchcraft Law, and then imprisoned her for nine months for treason.
It was not until 195 1 Churchill learned about this helen Duncan case and this ridiculous law that it was officially abolished.
In the United States, it was in the Massachusetts Parliament in 1992 that the women who were wronged as witches in17th century were rehabilitated, which was more than three centuries late.
Ignorance is the biggest killer of these innocent women!