[Ansteorra] Floating Dons (was: GULF WAR WEATHER)

[Tim McDaniel]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010, Peter Wohlers <donpieter at aol.com> wrote:
> In which country and period do you base that information on? In the
> SCA period witches were burned at the stake most cases that I have
> studied. Being a witch was a blasphemy which was a crime against
> god. The inqusition burned witches and heritics. In France during
> the 14th century thousands of people were burned as witches which
> continued way past 1431 when Joan of Ark was burned. During the
> 15-17th centurys witches and heritics were burned in England and
> Scotland. The Holy Roman Empire (Germany) was burning witches before
> the 1200's. Post SCA period more hangings as well as drownings
> happened to witches but in period hanging was more punishment for a
> civil crime then a religious crime of witchcraft.

"Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt"
by Jenny Gibbons, <http://draeconin.com/database/witchhunt.htm>,
may interest you.  It suggests that a lot of common beliefs are
mistaken, with citations backing statements that
- the most lethal persecutions were local panics, and the Inquisition
   often calmed them.  "And until the end of the Great Hunt, the
   Spanish Inquisition insisted that it alone had the right to condemn
   witches -- which it refused to do."
- church courts were generally gentler (that's true in other cases:
   consider the popularity of the "neck verse")
- there has been a lot of credulity.  For example, the Malleus
   Maleficarum has been taken at face value as the manual for secular
   and church cases.
- "When the Church was at the height of its power (11th-14th
   centuries) very few witches died. Persecutions did not reach
   epidemic levels until after the Reformation, when the Catholic
   Church had lost its position as Europe's indisputable moral
   authority."

Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_burning> says "In
England, only a few witches were burnt, the majority were hanged.",
though the article lacks sources.  Other sources say that burning was
the penalty for women convicted of treason.

Danyll de Lincoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com