Witchhunts, Catholic Church

[MorphRC]

[b]III THE EARLY MODERN WITCH-HUNT[/b]

The normal pattern of prosecution was for ordinary people to denounce a suspected witch from their community, and for magistrates to arrest and try the accused person. In normal circumstances, the trial was careful and the defendant had an 80 per cent chance of acquittal. Circumstances became horribly abnormal where the magistrates were closely associated with the local population and caught up in their fears. In that situation the proportion of acquittals to convictions was reversed, and the magistrates would employ torture to make the victim name accomplices, producing a snowballing pattern of arrests. That is why the worst areas of the hunt were Germany, divided into many little states, and Scotland, with a decentralized system of justice. [b]That is also why there were no executions in the popes' own territories, and why the Spanish Inquisition (see Inquisition: Spanish Inquisition) banned witch-hunting in Spain; the authorities in both cases felt too secure to regard the hunt as other than a nuisance.[/b]

[color=red][b]Microsoft Encarta 2004 Standard -Witchcraft, Contributed By:Ronald Hutton
© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.[/b][/color]

Hope that helps ya's

[MorphRC]

[b]IV THE AFTERMATH OF THE WITCH-HUNT[/b]

[b]Writers of the 18th-century Enlightenment, from Voltaire to Sir Walter Scott, treated the witch-hunt as an episode of horrific collective insanity, which could be used to embarrass the established Churches and states[/b]. Nineteenth-century liberals, notably Jules Michelet, suggested instead that the victims had been members of a surviving pagan religion, which had kept the cause of liberty alive in secret through the political and religious repression of the Middle Ages. This view was given some academic respectability in 1921, by Margaret Murray, but belief in it has rapidly declined. In 1951 an Englishman, Gerald Gardner, publicized the existence of a revived pagan religion called Wicca (from the Anglo-Saxon word for a male witch), which he claimed to be the same faith, re-emerging into the modern world. Belief in the literal truth of this has collapsed with the Murray thesis, but Wicca has established itself in many parts of the world as a viable religion, based upon feminism and a reverence for nature. At the same time, the figure of the witch has become very prominent as a positive one in wider feminist culture; it is, after all, one of the very few images of independent female power which survives through European history.

[color=red][b]Microsoft Encarta 2004 Standard -Witchcraft, Contributed By:Ronald Hutton
© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.[/b][/color]

[phatcatholic]

thanks bro!




































i wish you were still catholic

[phatcatholic]

got links?

[MorphRC]

Its from the CD-ROM I bought, but Ill try the online one for yas

[MorphRC]

[url="http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761578612/Witchcraft.html"]http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761578...Witchcraft.html[/url]

This guy:

Contributed By:
Robert S. Ellwood, B.A., M.Div., Ph.D.
Professor of Religion, University of Southern California. Author of Alternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America and other books.

Gives a total different version almost compared to Ronald :S

--------------------------
The late medieval and early modern picture of diabolical witchcraft can be attributed to several causes. First, the church’s experience with such dissident religious movements as the Albigenses and Cathari, who believed in a radical dualism of good and evil, led to the belief that certain people had allied themselves with Satan. As a result of confrontations with such heresy, the Inquisition was established by a series of papal decrees between 1227 and 1235. Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture in 1252, and Pope Alexander IV gave the Inquisition authority over all cases of sorcery involving heresy, although most actual prosecution of witches was carried out by local courts.
------------------

This is like a Semi-Condemnation but then stops and says

'although most actual prosecution of witches was carried out by local courts'

Weird..thats it for that topic online.

[Guest JeffCR07]

It just goes to show that there are lots of different slants and opinions on all sorts of different issues, even from credible sources.

[Mateo el Feo]

Ever since the merger between Microsoft Corporation and the Vatican[url="http://www.april-geniuses.us/microsoft-catholic-church.htm"](see link)[/url], there's been such a great synergy between the two organizations! The Catholic Church gets good press through the MS-media machine. The Vatican and it's subsidiaries get free software, and all Microsoft customers have the option of praying to someone important (not Bill Gates!) if their OS locks up!

[phatcatholic]

dude, ur an arcade freak of nature!

[MorphRC]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Jun 23 2004, 04:59 PM'] dude, ur an arcade freak of nature! [/quote]
I reckon! how the heck did ya get that stuff on ur profile?

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='MorphRC' date='Jun 23 2004, 01:38 AM'] I reckon! how the heck did ya get that stuff on ur profile? [/quote]
its called spending every waking hour over at the arcade.

if you have the top score for a particular game, u get props alongside ur avatar

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Jun 23 2004, 02:43 AM'] its called spending every waking hour over at the arcade.

if you have the top score for a particular game, u get props alongside ur avatar [/quote]
LOL. How about spending every waking moment growing up on Atari, Intellevision, Commodore 64, TI-99 4A, etc, etc.

:-)

[MorphRC]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Jun 23 2004, 05:13 PM'] its called spending every waking hour over at the arcade.

if you have the top score for a particular game, u get props alongside ur avatar [/quote]
Ah. Interesting...well not really... -_-

[Mateo el Feo]

Not to mention all my allowance pumping quarters into arcade games...

[Paladin D]

[quote name='Mateo el Feo' date='Jun 23 2004, 02:49 AM'] Not to mention all my allowance pumping quarters into arcade games... [/quote]
You are [b]Uber l33t[/b] OMG!!!1!!LOL!!11!!!!!1!!!