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

The Demon-Haunted World
In the witch trials, mitigating evidence or defence witnesses
were inadmissible. In any case, it was nearly impossible to provide
compelling alibis for accused witches: the rules of evidence had a
special character. For example, in more than one case a husband
attested that his wife was asleep in his arms at the very moment
she was accused of frolicking with the devil at a witch's Sabbath;
but the archbishop patiently explained that a demon had taken the
place of the wife. The husbands were not to imagine that their
powers of perception could exceed Satan's powers of deception.
The beautiful young women were perforce consigned to the
flames.
There were strong erotic and misogynistic elements, as might be
expected in a sexually repressed, male-dominated society with
inquisitors drawn from the class of nominally celibate priests. The
trials paid close attention to the quality and quantity of orgasm in
the supposed copulations of defendants with demons or the Devil
(although Augustine had been certain 'we cannot call the Devil a
fornicator'), and to the nature of the Devil's 'member' (cold, by
all reports). 'Devil's marks' were found 'generally on the breasts
or private parts' according to Ludovico Sinistrari's 1700 book. As
a result pubic hair was shaved, and the genitalia were carefully
inspected by the exclusively male inquisitors. In the immolation of
the 20-year-old Joan of Arc, after her dress had caught fire the
Hangman of Rouen slaked the flames so onlookers could view 'all
the secrets which can or should be in a woman'.
The chronicle of those who were consumed by fire in the single
German city of Wurzburg in the single year 1598 penetrates the
statistics and lets us confront a little of the human reality:
The steward of the senate, named Gering; old Mrs Kanzler;
the tailor's fat wife; the woman cook of Mr Mengerdorf; a
stranger; a strange woman; Baunach, a senator, the fattest
citizen in Wurtzburg; the old smith of the court; an old
woman; a little girl, nine or ten years old; a younger girl, her
little sister; the mother of the two little aforementioned girls;
Cleveland, USA, agreed to go underground and ferret out wrongdoers; they
then contrived criminal cases against 32 innocent postal workers.
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