Here's a request. For a novel I am writing, I wonder if anyone can suggest what chants or prayers may have been voiced by a crowd of ecstatically hateful Christians during a witch-burning.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Here's a request. For a novel I am writing, I wonder if anyone can suggest what chants or prayers may have been voiced by a crowd of ecstatically hateful Christians during a witch-burning.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Here's a request. For a novel I am writing, I wonder if anyone can suggest what chants or prayers may have been voiced by a crowd of ecstatically hateful Christians during a witch-burning.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Burn baby burn, disco inferno.... (sorry, couldn't resist)
[from wiki]
When Charlemagne imposed Christianity upon the people of Saxony in 789, he proclaimed:
If anyone, deceived by the Devil, shall believe, as is customary among pagans, that any man or woman is a night-witch, and eats men, and on that account burn that person to death... he shall be executed.
Similarly, the Lombard code of 643 states:
Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a witch, for it is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds.[2]
This conforms to the teachings of the Canon Episcopi of circa 900 AD (alleged to date from 314 AD), following the thoughts of Augustine of Hippo which stated that witchcraft did not exist and that to believe in it was heretical.[3] The Church of the time, rather than opposing witchcraft, opposed what it saw as the foolish and backward belief in witchcraft. To believe that witchcraft could possibly have any power was to deny the supreme power of God.
The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for “The Hammer of Witches”, or “Hexenhammer” in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches.
There are some good documentaries about the Salem Witch trials, some with reenactments. There was always a lot of shouting. A while back I read everything I could about them. Witches were never burned at the stake in the USA, they were drowned. There was a test to tell for sure if a woman was a witch. They tied her down with bags of rocks. If she floated to the top, she was a witch and had to be forcibly drowned. If she sunk, oops, she wasn't a witch but she was dead anyway.
[SIZE=+1]Were the victims of the Salem witch trials burned at the stake?
With the exception of Giles Corey--who was crushed to death for refusing to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, the executed were hanged, not burned. In Colonial America, witchcraft was a felony punishable by death by hanging. However, in Europe witchcraft was considered heresy and punishable by burning at the stake.
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This is a good resource: http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/
As a pagan/witch, I've done a bit of reading on the topic, but I think (as others have stated), you're less likely to have chanting and more likely to have the ignorant masses hurling insults and the like. Fear-based insults derived from ignorance, which is alive and well--even in this day and age.
Best of luck!
Interstingly the Malleus Maleficarum was banned by the Church for a long time, even at the height of witchunting mania.
While general consensus is that The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490 by placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”), the first Index was, in fact, produced in 1559 under the direction of Pope Paul IV. Therefore such claims are dubious, at best. I believe people are confusing the fact that the Inquisition reportedly denounced Heinrich Kramer in 1490 as being a ban upon the Malleus Maleficarum. Thus far, I’ve yet to find the Malleus on any Index Librorum Prohibitorum (copies of which are available on the Internet – most notably the 1559 and 1948 editions).
Common belief holds that the Malleus Maleficarum was banned just four years after it was written. However, it does not seem to appear on the first official list of banned books by the Catholic Church. Otherwise known as the “Pauline Index,” Pope Paul IV’s list did not include the Malleus Maleficarum. Still, it may have been banned, but it was not out of print or use. It was printed numerous times in the 16th and 17th century. It was also used extensively by both the Catholics and Protestants.