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The Demon-riddled Hysteria of the Middle Ages

In all the many centuries of spiritual warfare waged against the human species, one of the most masterful and deadly ploys ever engaged by the Sons and Daughters of Lilith and their fellow disciples of darkness was begun at the beginning of the second millennium C.E. and continued for nearly 800 years. During these demon-riddled centuries, the very priests who had sworn to banish human sacrifice ripped the flesh and shed the blood of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent men and women. The very Church that preached the message that Christ had performed the ultimate and final blood sacrifice for the sins of all humankind began a monstrous campaign of gathering fresh sacrifices to be killed on the rack, the wheel, and the stake to atone for demon-inspired sins.

Some call this ghastly period “the time of burning.” The Roman Catholic Church called it the Inquisition.

Alarmed with what he believed to be the growing influence of Satan in Europe, Pope Innocent III actively began to condemn heretics as soon as he ascended to the papacy in 1198. The first burnings for heresy may have taken place in about the year 1000 in Ravenna, but the first actual recorded burning occurred at Orleans in 1022, and was ordered by Robert the Pious, King of France. Other burnings were followed by those at Toulouse in 1028 and conducted by Simon de Monfort.

In 1047 “Upir” made its first appearance as a term for a wicked or “blood-sucking person,” when a document referred to a Russian prince as “Upir Lichy,” or “wicked vampire.” The word “vampyre” would not enter the English language until 1734.

In 1196, William of Newburgh’s Chronicles included several reports of vampire-like beings in England. Executions of those who had fallen from grace with the Church were sporadic and few until 1197 when Pedro of Aragon ordered the burning of heretics who had lapsed in their promises to repent of their sins of doubt and questioning.

In 1198, Pope Innocent declared such individuals as traitors against Christ and condemned them to death by burning.

Defeating Demons by Sacrificing the Innocent

By offering the bodies of their human servants on the pyres of flames to defeat demons, the priestcraft had the creatures of the dark side laughing with delight and hungrily feeding on the soul energy of the innocent victims that the Church so self-righteously offered up to them. Once the burnings had been set in motion, it took little effort to convince those in power that they were only serving the god of their faith by finding more heretics and demon-worshippers to sacrifice.

In 1208, the Cathar sect—also known as the Albigensians—had become so popular among the people in Europe that Pope Innocent III considered them a greater threat to Christianity than the Islamic warriors who were pummeling the Christian knights on the Crusades. Although the Cathars centered their faith around Jesus Christ, they perceived him as pure spirit, like an angel, that had descended from Heaven on the instructions of the God of Good to liberate humankind from the world of matter. According to the Cathars, because Christ was pure spirit, he did not die on the cross and the teachings of the Church were false. To quell his concern, the Pope ordered the only crusade ever launched against fellow Christians by attacking the Cathars who resided in the Albi region of southern France.

The Cathars held out against the armies massed against them until Montsegur, their final stronghold, fell in 1246. Hundreds of the remaining Cathars were burned at the stake—men, women, and children. Pope Innocent III did not live to see his triumph over the heretics, for he died in 1216. Before he died, however, he enacted a papal bull that allowed a judge to try a suspected witch or heretic even when there was no accuser and granted the judge the power to be both judge and prosecutor.

In his report to Emperor Otto IV in 1214, Gervaise of Tilbury reported cases in Auvergne in which men were seen to take the form of wolves during the full moon.

In 1220, Caesarius of Heisterbach described numerous accounts of shape-shifting, pacts with Satan, and the ability of witches to fly through the air.

The Birth of the Inquisition

The Inquisition came into existence in 1231 with the Excommunicamus of Pope Gregory IX, who entrusted the office of Inquisitor primarily to the Franciscans and the Dominicans, who, because of their reputation for superior knowledge of theology and their declared freedom from worldly ambition, were deemed well-equipped to expose heretics. Each tribunal was to include two inquisitors of equal authority, who would be assisted by notaries, civil police, and counselors. Because they had the power to excommunicate even members of royal houses, the inquisitors were formidable figures with whom to reckon.

The sons and daughters of Lilith began a monstrous campaign against their human foes that lasted for nearly 800 years. Evil whispers provoked the very Church that preached the message that Christ had performed the final blood sacrifice to launch an Inquisition that shed the blood of thousands of innocent men and women (illustration by Bill Oliver).

In 1257, the Church officially sanctioned torture as a means of forcing heretics, sorcerers, and shape-shifters to confess their alliance with Satan. The Inquisition became a hideous kind of self-supporting industry. It employed judges, jailers, torturers, exorcists, wood-choppers, and experts to ferret out the evil ones who were threatening the ruling powers.

“Witch persecutors … were craftsmen with a professional pride,” Kurt Seligmann writes in The History of Magic (1948). “A hangman grew melancholic when a witch resisted him unduly. That was akin to a personal offense. In order to save face he let the accused die under the torture, and thus his honor was not impaired, for the blame for the killing would then rest on the devil….The business became so prosperous that the hangmen’s wives arrayed themselves in silk robes….For every witch burned, the hangman received an honorarium. He was not allowed to follow any other profession, therefore he had to make the best of his craft.”

The torturers soon discovered a foolproof method for perpetuating their gory profession. Under torture, nearly any heretic could be forced to name a long string of his or her fellow demon worshippers, thereby making one trial give birth to a hundred. Inquisitors boasted that if the judges gave them a sanctimonious bishop, they could soon have him confessing to being a wizard! Cynical clergymen declared that the Holy Inquisition was the only alchemy that really worked, for the inquisitors had found the secret of transmuting human blood into gold.

In 1305, the Knights Templar, who had for centuries been the defense of Christianity against those who would destroy it, were themselves accused of invoking Satan, consorting with female demons, worshipping large black cats, and conducting human sacrifices. While many clergy, including the Pope himself, were reluctant to believe such charges against the Knights Templar, it soon became apparent that the order had become too wealthy and powerful to fit suitably into the emerging political structure of France and the aspirations of its king, Philip the Fair.

After years of persecution, many knights scattered and went into hiding throughout Europe and England. Those Templars who insisted upon presenting a defense were finally brought to trial in 1312; and in spite of 573 witnesses for their defense, at least 54 knights were tortured en masse, burned at the stake, and their order disbanded by Pope Clement V.

In 1313, as he was being burned to death on a scaffold especially erected for the occasion in front of Notre Dame, the Templar’s Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, recanted the confession that was forced from him by torture and reaffirmed his innocence to both the Pope and the King. With his last breath, de Molay invited his two former friends and allies to join him at Heaven’s gate. When both dignitaries died soon after de Molay’s public execution, it seemed to the public and a good number of political and religious figures that the Grand Master had truly been innocent of the charges of heresy and Satanism.

The Black Death Decimates the European Population but Increases the Number of Witchcraft Trials

In the fourteenth century, the Christian Establishment of Europe was forced to deal with an onset of social, economic, and religious changes. It was also during this time (1347–1349) that the Black Death, the bubonic plague, decimated the populations of the European nations and greatly encouraged rumors of devil-worshippers who conspired with other heretics, such as Jews and Muslims, to invoke Satan to bring about a pestilence that would destroy Christianity and the West. During most of the Middle Ages, those who practiced the Old Religion and worked with herbs and charms were largely ignored by the Church and the Inquisition. After the scourge of the Black Death, witchcraft trials began to increase steadily throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

In 1407, men and women suspected of being werewolves were tortured and burned at Basel. The first major witch-hunt occurred in Switzerland in 1427; and in 1428, in Valais, there was a mass burning of 100 witches.

The Spanish Inquisition Fashions Its Own Rules

In 1478, at the request of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I, papal permission was granted to establish the Spanish Inquisition and to maintain it separate from the Inquisition that extended its jurisdiction over all the rest of Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was always more interested in persecuting heretics than those suspected of witchcraft. It has been estimated that of the 5,000 men and women accused of being witches, less than one percent were condemned to death. The Spanish Inquisition was concerned with trying the Marranos or conversos, those Jews suspected of insincerely converting to Christianity; the converts from Islam, similarly thought to be insincere in practicing the Christian faith; and, in the 1520s, those individuals who were believed to have converted to Protestantism.

Prisoners of the inquisition were held captive under the most abominable conditions, such as this iron-barred cell.

The support of Spain’s royal house enabled Tomas de Torquemada to become the single Grand Inquisitor whose name has become synonymous with the Inquisition’s most cruel acts and excesses. Torquemada is known to have ordered the deaths by torture and burning of thousands of heretics and witches.

The Spanish Inquisition seemed to take special delight in the pomp and ceremony of the auto-de-fe, during which hundreds of heretics might be burned at one time. If an auto-de-fe could not be made to coincide with some great festival day, it was at least held on a Sunday so that the populace could make plans to attend the burnings.

The Malleus Maleficarum—A Hammer for Witches

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII became so outraged by the spread of witchcraft in Germany that he issued the papal bull Summis Desiderantes Affectibus and authorized two trusted Dominican inquisitors, Henrich Institoris (Kramer) and Jacob Sprenger, to develop a new weapon with which to squelch the power of Satan in the Rhineland.

In 1486, Sprenger and Kramer published their Malleus Maleficarum, “A Hammer for Witches,” which quickly became the official handbook for professional witch hunters. Malleus Maleficarum strongly condemned all those who claimed that the works of demons existed only in troubled human minds. The Bible clearly revealed how certain angels fell from Heaven and sought to bewitch and seduce humans, and Sprenger and Kramer issued a strict warning that to believe otherwise was to believe contrary to the true faith. Therefore, any persons who consorted with demons and became witches must recant their evil ways or be put to death.