From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.pagan,talk.religion.misc,talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Reading the Malleus Malificarum
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 21:05:20 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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In article <2B63263F.9583@news.service.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis
Maria Cortese) said:

>P.S.: I actually got up the courage to read the _Malleus Maleficarum_
>straight through -- not just excepts, the whole damned thing.  I heartily
>encourage anyone who doubts the truth and the real evil behind the
>Burning Times to read it.  My jaw actually dropped when I read some
>stuff.  You know how the male pronoun is usually used to denote gender-
>neutral stuff?  Well, they use "she" EXCLUSIVELY to talk about evil and
>wicked people -- EXCLUSIVELY.  They talk about how men can be witches
>and stuff, but then talk only of evil "she's" and "her's".  They target
>women specifically and systematically, for anyone who doubts the
>misogyny of the early church.  Had I read anything like this in school,
>I would have renounced the catholic church even earlier than I did.  (As
>it is, I just kind of lost interest and dropped out.)  I have never in
>my life read anything so evil and hateful before; it's _Mein Kampf_ with
>the pope's seal of approval.  It is specifically stated that the
>Inquisitor in the court should call a woman an adulteress and concubine
>no matter her guilt or innocence because "although this is beside the
>point, yet such questions engender more suspicion than would be the case
>with a chaste and honest woman who stood accused."
>
>Read this book, and then talk of the Burning Times.  Else you are not
>informed -- I was not as well-informed as now before *I* decided to read
>all of it.  Later, I'll type in and post the Papal Bull that started it
>all.
>
>I say again, every person alive who considers themselves Witches or
>Pagans must read this.  Every person alive should read it, as an example
>of what we must be on guard against -- especially those in the xtian
>churches, who must bend their will toward making sure that it NEVER gets
>this out of hand again.

Brave act, Janis; you are very much to be commended for having stuck
with the Malleus to the end.  It's probably the ghastliest (and most
obscene) thing I've ever run into in my whole long life as a scholar,
-- and that's saying a lot, given humanity's talent for inhuman acts.

I most heartily second your recommendation that *EVERYONE* should read it
these days, just to see how evil Evil can get ...

It was only about 50 years ago, by the way, that a scholar discovered
the final detail that put the finishing touch on the whole horrible mess
where this book is concerned: the papal bull (which you propose to post)
authorizing the two inquisitors to proceed was in fact *forged* by those
aforesaid two inquisitors, and with sufficient skill that they weren't
found out (back in those days before investigative journalism) until they
were powerful enough to cow the few of their contemporaries who figured
out the whole story into silence.  (In saying this, I don't wish to excuse
the Pope in question either -- I don't have the dates at my fingertps, but
I seem to remember he lived long enough to have learned of the forged bull,
and didn't bother to repudiate it.)  -- Robert

(Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM)
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:69522 ca.politics:10648 ba.politics:8286 alt.sex:43030