The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

for eleven years. Meanwhile the Hammer of the Witches organized by the
Roman Catholic Church had spread to the Protestant Church in England.
The escalation of fanaticism that led to the Hammer of the
Witches had been in progress since the time of Emperor Constantine, who
reigned from 306-307CE. After his conversion to Christianity, Emperor
Constantine immediately banned all magic and magicians. Under this
law, the State could sentence offenders to immolation.
Shortly afterwards Constantine found it necessary to amend the
law stating that his intention was only to prohibit deadly and malignant
magic and that he had no intention of prohibiting magic used to cure
diseases and to protect the crops from hail and tempests. Nevertheless,
the Church's war on heresy and magic had begun. From 1200CE to
1500CE, the Church specifically targeted Cathars, Knights Templar,
Jews, Muslims and Gypsies. It accused them of witchcraft, sorcery and
satanic magic.
Chapter 13 related how Pope John XXII directed his Papal Bull
of 1317, called Spondent pariter, against magicians and alchemists. Pope
Eugene IV followed with bulls in 1437 and 1445 exhorting inquisitors to
be more diligent in searching out magicians and witches who produced
bad weather. Persecution of all types of magic redoubled.
Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis Desiderantes in 1484.
This bull sent inquisitors into Germany. The inquisitors’ manual was the
infamous Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of the Witches. It ordered:
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. 1102 Pope Julius II and Pope Adrian
VI reinforced the purging of witchcraft with similar bulls in 1504 and
1523 respectively.
Before Pope Innocent VIII’s bull of 1484, the Church had
distinguished between magia and malificia. Magia was acceptable magic
while malificia was magic used with criminal intent. The Church
regarded magia as a social ill rather than heresy and tolerated it, provided
it did not invoke the devil or other evil spirits. After Pope Innocent VIII's
bull, all popular magic became malificia and heresy.
Earlier, in 1252, the Church had sanctioned torture in Papal
Inquisitions and permitted both secret trials and execution by burning.
With the aid of Malleus Maleficarum, the inquisitors ordered ferocious
witch-hunts against the rural classes. These peaked between 1580 and
1660. Inquisitors and Puritans in England, Europe and America executed
hundreds of thousands of alleged witches over a two hundred and fifty
year period. Many tens of thousands of these were in Germany alone.
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