Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Liberals have been sneaking their bias into the Bible since at least 1599, didn't you know?

Proverbs 11:25, The Geneva Bible (1599): The liberall person shall haue plentie: and he that watereth, shall also haue raine.

Proverbs 11:25, King James Version (1611): The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Remember this quote, Ea?
.....The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.
..........— Rev. Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (1930 - ). From a fund raising letter sent out in 1992.

No, can't remember that, but thanks anyway

I can see there's a few things I still need to do; e.g. marry a man to divorce and get children by that I can kill... and become a lesbian(that I could do) at the same time - they cancel each other out, don't they? Witchcraft? I'd have to learn all these spells and things and it's boooring. And I really don't have time to destroy capitalism - and it's hard! Do you know how hard it is and how many things I have to do? ::whine::

[GeoffC]

If you chose witchcraft, is your choice to be tried by water .....

Float and you're guilty, sink and you'll drown ...

[Watched an episode of Cadfael last night where the guilty thief floats and has a hand removed, but the same trial was used for witches!]

[Ea]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

....
[Watched an episode of Cadfael last night where the guilty thief floats and has a hand removed, but the same trial was used for witches!]

I know. Barbaric.

[GeoffC]

absolutely !

it makes me wonder how did folk survive !!!

[Ea]

Maybe they didn't? (very often at least) I don't know how often the test was used though.

[GeoffC]

The episode of Cadfael was set in 1144 (if I remember correctly)

In 1215, the Pope forbade the ordeals of iron and of cold water, ruling that it be replaced by the already existing (and not always more merciful) method of trial by jury. :Phew:


Altogether throughout 1275 and 1929 just between Europe and the United States: Trials for witchcraft ....

2,386+ people in France,

114,517+ people in England,

24,577+ people in Germany,

30,303+ people in Spain,

25 people in the United States of America,

That's a total of 173408+ people killed for being a witch (according to the Catholic Church). That's one person a day for 475 years!

[FlorenceArt]

How come there were so many in England? I knew there was something devilish about those guys!

[Ea]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

How come there were so many in England? I knew there was something devilish about those guys!

That's a lot of witches in England....

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

How come there were so many in England? I knew there was something devilish about those guys!

Who knows - there were a lot of changes with kings and Queens messing about with the Catholic/Protestant religion - and some commoners may have been
accused of witchcraft during those times. And then the English Civil War saw the Witchfinder General.

[FlorenceArt]

Funny, I remember seeing a TV documentary about witches, and I think they mentioned there were a lot of trials in Germany, but I don't remember any mention of England...

[TimMason]

Brian Levack, in his 'The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe', estimates that the total number of people tried for witchcraft was a little over 100,000, about half of whom lived in German-speaking lands within the Holy Roman Empire. Poland and Switzerland also saw a relatively large number of trials. France was, as he says, 'the cradle of the great witch hunt', but was overtaken by Germany. There were about 5,000 trials in Great Britain, about half of those in Scotland, while about the same number occurred in Scandinavia.

Not everyone who was tried was executed. Contrary to popular opinion, the Church was quite careful about who they convicted, looking into other explanations for the ills that the witches were accused of. Secular authorities were perhaps less so. Outside of Germany and Poland, the percentage of those executed stood at around 50%, but in Germany it was closer to 90%. Altogether, during the period of the witch-hunt, about 60,000 people were executed for the crime.

Although a majority of the victims were women, this was not true everywhere. If I remember rightly, the majority of Scandinavian victims were men.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

If you chose witchcraft, is your choice to be tried by water .....

Float and you're guilty, sink and you'll drown ...

[Watched an episode of Cadfael last night where the guilty thief floats and has a hand removed, but the same trial was used for witches!]

Let us not forget the witch scene in Monty Python & the Holy Grail!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

If you chose witchcraft, is your choice to be tried by water .....

Float and you're guilty, sink and you'll drown ...

[Watched an episode of Cadfael last night where the guilty thief floats and has a hand removed, but the same trial was used for witches!]

A local road in our area is named in honor of a woman who was convicted here of witchcraft in 1706. Her name was Grace Sherwood, and the name of the road is "Witchduck Road" in Virginia Beach. She survived dunking in Lynnhaven River, thus proving her guilt, but she wasn't put to death. Instead, she spent several years in jail. Ms. Sherwood was eventually released and returned to the farm she shared with her sons.

Some info can be found at this link, but there's much more out there on the subject if you're willing to search:

http://www.virginiabeach.com/article...witchduck-road

Reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain, which I suppose I'll post in lieu of the quote I had already lined up or today.

[WT Sharpe]

.....During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
.....Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch—the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.
.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.
.....Is it not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end attain some semblance of human decency.
..........— Mark Twain [pen-name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910), American writer and satirical humorist. Europe and Elsewhere (1923), pages 392-393.