QUOTE (Christophe @ Dec 20 2003, 02:30 PM)
QUOTE
Not a bad idea? What's next? Maybe the concentration camps were also not "such a bad idea"?!
In present times: the Shariah (Islamic law) is the best to compare with the Holy Inquisition: take a thief's hand, whip sinners, stone unwedded mothers?!
So burning a "witch" is not such a bad idea?
Shame on you!
At first, let us remember, that witch-panic in Europe begins only during Renaissance (end of 15th - 17th cent.) - not on the Middle Ages.
In SPAIN there were burned less than a twenty witches FOR 300 years!
More than that - those witches were accused by secular courts, not by SPANISH Inqusition, who interfered and effectively ended "witch-panic" in Spain.
It banned even spreading rumours about witches and magic, saving thousands of lifes.
As for Catholic Ireland there was not witch-hunting too. In Poland or Great Duchy of Litwa (Belarus) - the same.
In Italy, where Inquisition was also active number of burnings was also minimal (about 10 for 200-250 years).
In France there was no Inquisition, only secular courts, result - hundreds of witches slain, Germany (half-Protestant) - 99% of death sentences for magic were also produced by secular courts, at least 50% - in Protestant lands.
As for torture - it WAS a common mean of EVERY SECULAR investigation at those times.
More than that - Inquisition, as opposed to secular system, said that you can be tortured no more that 3 times and a doctor must oversee the process.
System of advocats, who defend you in the courts - was also installed by Inqusition.
As for condoms and AIDS - make love to your wife only, as Vatican teaches, and you are 100% AIDS-protected!
As for protection of the Jews...
Just read this:
1198 - Jews are driven out by French barons and population. The Jews appealed to Innocent III to curb the violence; and in answer, the pontiff issued a Constitution which rigorously forbade mob violence and forced baptism.
In 1235 Gregory IX confirmed the Constitution of Innocent III, and in 1247 Innocent IV issued a Bull reprobating the false accusations and various excesses of the time against the Jews. Writing to the bishops of France and of Germany the latter pontiff says:
Certain of the clergy, and princes, nobles and great lords of your cities and dioceses have falsely devised certain godless plans against the Jews, unjustly depriving them by force of their property, and appropriating it themselves; . . . they falsely charge them with dividing up among themselves on the Passover the heart of a murdered boy. . . . In their malice, they ascribe every murder, wherever it chance to occur, to the Jews. And on the ground of these and other fabrications, they are filled with rage against them, rob them of their possessions without any formal accusation, without confession, and without legal trial and conviction, contrary to the privileges granted to them by the Apostolic See. . . . They oppress the Jews by starvation, imprisonment, and by tortures and sufferings; they afflict them with all kinds of punishments, and sometimes even condemn them to death, so the Jews, although living under Christian princes, are in a worse plight than were their ancestors in the land of the Pharaohs. They are driven to leave in despair the land in which their fathers have dwelt since the memory of man. . . . Since it is our pleasure that they shall not be disturbed, . . . we ordain that ye behave towards them in a friendly and kind manner. Whenever any unjust attacks upon them come under your notice, redress their injuries, and do not suffer them to be visited in the future by similar tribulations.
The protestations of the Roman pontiffs do not seem to have been much heeded in the Christian states generally. In 1254, nearly all the French Jews were banished by St. Louis from the king's domains. Between 1257 and 1266, Alfonso X of Castile compiled a code of laws which contained several clauses against the Jews and countenanced the blood accusation which had been contradicted by Innocent IV.
During the last years of Henry III (d. 1272), the Jews of England fared worse and worse. About this time, Pope Gregory X issued a Bull ordaining that no injury be inflicted upon their persons or their property (1273); but the popular hatred against them on the charge of usury, use of Christian blood at their Passover, etc., could not be restrained.
In Germany, they fared still worse during the riots and the civil wars under Louis IV (1314-1347). For two consecutive years (1336, 1337), the Armleder, or peasants wearing a piece of leather wound around arm, inflicted untold sufferings upon the Jewish inhabitants of Alsace and the Rhineland as far as Swabia. In 1337,also, on the charge of having profaned a consecrated Host, the Jews of Bavaria were subjected to a slaughter which soon extended to those of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, Benedict XII had issued a Bull ordering an inquiry into the matter.
Greater Jewish massacres occurred in 1348-1349 while the fearful scourge, known as the "Black Death", desolated Europe. The reports that the Jews had caused the scourge by poisoning the wells used by Christians, spread rapidly and was believed in most towns of Central Europe. Then Pope Clement VI issued the Bulls in July and September, 1348, declaring their falsity.
The same pontiff had ordered that Jews be not forced into baptism, that their sabbaths, festivals, synagogues, and cemeteries be respected, that no new exactions be imposed on them.
The next years were, on the whole, a period of respite from persecution for the Jewish race. In Castile, the Jews attained to a great influence under Don Pedro (1360-1369), and the misfortunes which then befell them arose partly from the prevalent view that they availed themselves of their power to lap up the people's possessions with their tax-farming, and partly from their constant loyalty to Don Pedro's cause, during the civil war which broke out between him and Don Henry. The latter, after reaching the throne, showed himself friendly to the Jews, and agree only reluctantly to some of the restrictive measures urged by the Cortes in 1371. In Germany, they were readmitted as early as 1355 into the very towns which had sworn that for 100 or 200 years no Jew should dwell within their walls.
In France, they were granted special privileges by King John (1361), which they enjoyed to the full extent under his successor, Charles V (1364-1380). But the last twenty years of the fourteenth century were again disastrous for the European Jews. In France, scarcely was Charles V dead, when popular riots were started against them because of their extortionate usury and encouragement to baptized Jews to recant, and finally brought about the permanent exile of the Jewish population (1394). In Spain, the reign of John I (d. 1390) witnessed a great curtailing of the Jews' power and privileges; and that of Henry III (d. 1406) was marked by bloody assaults in many cities of Castile and Aragon and even in the island of Majorca, on account of which numerous Jews embraced Christianity. In Germany (1384), and in Bohemia (1389, 1399), the Jews were likewise persecuted.
Pope Boniface IX had protested against such outrages and slaughters (1389); and it is only in his states, in Italy, and in Portugal, that the Jewish race had any measure of peace during these years of carnage.
Pope Martin V declares in 1419:
"Whereas the Jews are made to the image of God, and a remnant of them will one day be saved, and whereas they have besought our protection: following in the footsteps of our predecessors we command that they be not molested in their synagogues; that their laws, rights, and customs be not assailed; that they be not baptized by force, constrained to observe Christian festivals, nor to wear any new badges, and they be not hindered in their business relations with Christians."
But then began new persecutions against the Jewish population of Central Europe. In their distress, the Austrian and the German Jews appealed to the same pontiff who, in 1420, also raised his voice in their favour, and who, in 1422, confirmed the ancient rights of their race.
Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) opposed to mob violence against the Jews, and he enjoined upon the Inquisitors of the Faith not only to refrain from exciting the popular hatred against them, but even to see that they should not be forcibly baptized or otherwise molested.
After Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain had ordered all Jews to flee from Spain of to baptise, Jews of Rome offered 1000 ducats to Pope Alexander VI to prevent admission of SPanish Jews to Rome, and this offer which was indignantly refused.