Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
sanctioned mass murder and theft became institutionalized, as a
vast bureaucracy arose to serve it, attention was turned from poor
hags and crones to the middle class and well-to-do of both sexes.
The more who, under torture, confessed to witchcraft, the
harder it was to maintain that the whole business was mere
fantasy. Since each 'witch' was made to implicate others, the
numbers grew exponentially. These constituted 'frightful proofs
that the Devil is still alive', as it was later put in America in the
Salem witch trials. In a credulous age, the most fantastic testimony
was soberly accepted - that tens of thousands of witches had
gathered for a Sabbath in public squares in France, or that 12,000
of them darkened the skies as they flew to Newfoundland. The
Bible had counselled, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.'
Legions of women were burned to death.* And the most horrendous
tortures were routinely applied to every defendant, young or
old, after the instruments of torture were first blessed by the
priests. Innocent himself died in 1492, following unsuccessful
attempts to keep him alive by transfusion (which resulted in the
deaths of three boys) and by suckling at the breast of a nursing
mother. He was mourned by his mistress and their children.
In Britain witch-finders, also called 'prickers', were employed,
receiving a handsome bounty for each girl or woman they turned
over for execution. They had no incentive to be cautious in their
accusations. Typically they looked for 'devil's marks' - scars or
birthmarks or nevi - that when pricked with a pin neither hurt nor
bled. A simple sleight of hand often gave the appearance that the
pin penetrated deep into the witch's flesh. When no visible marks
were apparent, 'invisible marks' sufficed. Upon the gallows, one
mid-seventeenth-century pricker 'confessed he had been the death
of above 220 women in England and Scotland, for the gain of
twenty shillings apiece'. †
* This mode of execution was adopted by the Holy Inquisition apparently to
guarantee literal accord with a well-intentioned sentence of canon law (Council
of Tours, 1163): 'The Church abhors bloodshed.'
†
In the murky territory of bounty hunters and paid informers, vile corruption is
often the rule - worldwide and through all of human history. To take an
example almost at random, in 1994, for a fee, a group of postal inspectors from
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