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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
Jeanne d'Arc's visions were described by her inquisitors in 1431
in these words:
The great danger was shown to her that comes of someone so
presumptuous to believe they have such apparitions and
revelations, and therefore lie about matters concerning God,
giving out false prophecies and divinations not known from
God, but invented. From which could follow the seduction of
peoples, the inception of new sects, and many other impieties
that subvert the Church and Catholics.
Both Jeanne d'Arc and Girolamo Savonarola were burned at the
stake for their visions.
In 1516 the Fifth Lateran Council reserved to 'the Apostolic
seat' the right to examine the authenticity of apparitions. For poor
peasants whose visions had no political content, the punishments
fell short of the ultimate severity. The Marian apparition seen by
Francisca la Brava, a young mother, was described by Licenciado
Mariana, the Lord Inquisitor, as 'to the detriment of our holy
Catholic faith and the diminution of its authority'. Her apparition
'was all vanity and frivolity'. 'By rights we could have treated her
more rigorously', the Inquisitor continued.
But in deference to certain just reasons that move us to
mitigate the rigour of the sentences we decree as a punishment
to Francisca la Brava and an example to others not to
attempt similar things that we condemn her to be put on an
ass and given one hundred lashes in public through the
accustomed streets of Belmonte naked from the waist up, and
the same number in the town of El Quintanar in the same
manner. And that from now on she not say or affirm in public
or secretly by word or insinuation the things she said in her
confessions or else she will be prosecuted as an impenitent
and one who does not believe in or agree with what is in our
holy Catholic faith.
Despite the penalties, it is striking how often the witness stuck to
her guns and, ignoring the encouragements offered her to confess
138