Heresies

The word heresy derives from a Greek word meaning “choice.” In the epistles of Paul, the word is used to refer to a cause of divisiveness and friction within the church. The opposite of heresy is orthodoxy, or the following of the rules of church doctrine. Three main types of heresies have been persecuted by the Catholic Church: The first is a heretical syncretism of Christianity and another religion, belief, or practice, such as Jewish law or withcraft; the second is related to doctrine, involving repudiation of or unacceptable emphasis on one or more theological issues; the third concerns movements such as Protestantism whose goal is to reform the church itself. Persecution of heretics did not begin in the Renaissance, but was condoned by the emperor Constantine during the fourth century, and heretics were executed as early as 385. Thousands of people were killed in southern France during the Albigen-sian Crusade of the 13 th century. The church thus attempted to enforce unity and the supremacy of the papacy. During the 16th century, Protestants also condoned the persecution of heretical individuals, such as Michael Servetus (1511-53), whose execution in Geneva was not contested by Jean Calvin (1509-64).

PERSECUTION OF WITCHES

Although the medieval Inquisition investigated allegations of witchcraft, not until 1398 was it given any jurisdiction over suspected witches. In the latter 15th century, two German inquisitors, the Dominicans Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris, persuaded Pope Innocent VIII (1432-92) to give them direct jurisdiction over witchcraft trials in Germany. His papal bull to this effect was published with the inquisitors’ book on witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of evils, 1486). Translated into seven languages and surpassed in popularity only by the Bible, Malleus Maleficarum gave major momentum to the hysteria about witchcraft that was to sweep across Europe in the next decades. The majority of individuals killed for supposedly practicing witchcraft were not executed by order of the Inquisition; many civil authorities, especially in rural areas, were responsible for these actions. The papal bull of 1484 simply gave free rein to all witch hunters in northern Germany, an area specifically mentioned in the pope’s text. In the 15th century several thousand people, most of them elderly women but also men and children, were tortured and killed. Many of these women were midwives and healers, who worked their “magic” by using medicinal herbs and practical medical techniques passed on by their mother or another older woman. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people, the vast majority female, were killed as witches, including those in Massachusetts in 1692. (So-called sodomites [homosexuals] were persecuted with the same degree of severity as witches.) The Catholic Church did not repeal its statutes concerning witchcraft until 1736.

ANTI-SEMITISM

Persecution of Jews began in Roman times, when baptism was forced on them as early as the seventh century. The Fourth Lateran Council decreed in 1215 that Jews were required to wear clothing distinguishing them from Christians. England drove out its Jewish population in 1290, and Jews were expelled from France at the beginning and end of the 14th century. Many people in Germany blamed the plagues of that century on resident Jews, and several cities forbade them to continue to live within the city walls. Other cities forced Jews to live in ghettos. By the 16th century, many cities, such as Vienna, Rome, and Prague, had ghettoized the Jewish population.

Although Protestants as well as Catholics attacked Jews for their cultural practices and religious beliefs, the Catholic phobia of the Jewish religion was more deep-seated and became a major impetus for the Spanish Crown to grant extraordinary powers to the Spanish Inquisition (see page 41). Various libels had been perpetuated against the Jews during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the most insidious of them the blood libel and the host libel. The blood libel consisted of the myth of Jews’ stealing and killing Christian infants and young boys to drain their blood for ritual use, including the baking of unleavened bread for Passover. An entire Jewish community in Trent was massacred in 1475 after a Jew was accused of mur-

Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe

Dering a Christian boy. The host libel involved a Christian’s being persuaded to steal the host during mass so that a Jew could vilify the host and thus torture Christ. Both of these libels were connected to the accusation that the Jews were responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ. Moreover, the very Jews whose money helped to salvage numerous Christian businesses were considered unclean because of their expertise in monetary management. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal three years later, the massive influx of Jewish families into other parts of western Europe led to strained relations among Jews and Christians. Partly because of the Inquisition’s treatment of Jews, in bigoted minds the spiritual “contamination” of the Jewish religion developed into an accusation of actual physical infection. Thus the Renaissance witnessed anti-Semitism not only in the form of verbal harassment of Jews but also in the proliferation of Jewish ghettos in many of the major cities.